Second Life land value, premium accounts decline - <AUTHOR> http://thestandard.com/news/2008/07/01/second-life-users-spending-more-time-world-are-they-paying

<comment><USER2> Second Life recently substantially cut prices for their "new" island sales. I think it's likely the decreased land sales figures could be caused by that big price drop-- and not necessarily showing less demand for virtual land. More people may be buying from Linden rather than others.

Still, not the sort of trends Linden would want people to be thinking too deeply about.

</comment><comment><USER3> In MMOGs, the value of in-game assets inevitably declines. If you could short the WoW gold, that would be a great move. Just be ready for the Chinese New Year price fluctuation.

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't you be able to short it? If you have a good in-game and out-game reputation, would you be able to borrow gold, convert to cash, and then convert cash to gold when your debt comes due?

<comment><USER5> Yes, but for anyone with any professional skills at all, that kind of arbitrage just isn't a good time investment compared to real work. I did the math once. WoW doesn't really permit economies of scale on this sort of thing -- there are no free markets, so you have to go through uniformly shady RMT ("Real Money Trading") brokers who will be quick to freeze you out if they sense you're making a mass profit over their channels.

<comment><USER4> Do they freeze you out if you're making money for them, too? Let's say I am consistently good at predicting one-month 20% declines in the value of WoW gold. And I invest, say, $100 in gold on a 5% commission, and cash out with that same 5% commission. If I'm making them money (often), why would they give me a reason to switch to a different broker? Is $100 now really better than $10/month?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As we see global property recession/dip in the real world, will will see this in virtual worlds like Second Life et al?

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, screenshots of Excel spreadsheets? I hear HTML has a <table> tag for that sort of thing.

<comment><USER8> So it makes more sense to recreate a table than grab a screenshot? I'm all for hand-coding HTML, but I'd rather grab a quick shot than type tr, td all day long.

<comment><USER7> You must be one of those folks that designs their web site in photoshop and then just uploads the image to the server.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.</comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneurship – A second attempt | Feedback welcomed - <AUTHOR> I have come to the realization that my current startup's lethragic growth rate will not allow me to afford a living in the bay area. As such, I am presented with a few options: Get a job, or take another shot at starting a company (albeit, working out of a cheaper city). I am heavily leaning toward the latter, but this time I want to take some feedback earlier on from the YC community as I have found the people here to be amongst the most honest and knowledgeable.
I would appreciate your critique (as well as pointers) of some of the ideas I am proposing for my next startup. Also, do you think there is a market need/ actual problem to be solved, or am I just forcing the issue?
a]
 Outsourcing: As I plan to operate out of Africa for a while, I was thinking of a managed outsourcing business where we train and place the smartest candidates on projects ranging from creative services to development. I see a shortage in talent locally and this model could allow companies to augment their talent pool with affordable labour.
b] Similar to A above but a focus on deploying and managing opensource projects such as wordpress, moodle, open ERP etc. Not only would I provide the technical talent, but also the operational labour to perform services like order management, chat management etc
c]
Building a tool gamifies social actions (twitter, fb, instagram sharing etc) - with a lotto/random winnings component that creates recurring engagment by players
I would appreciate any feedback.
Regards. <comment><USER2> I believe there will always be a demand for problem solving, especially in the technical industry.

\- A: Large scale businesses would benefit greatly on this idea. An idea where a company can save money is always a good idea.

\- B: This idea could work, but I can't see it going far.

-C: This is actually something that could hit the world. One thing people like is winning and if they can get some type of physical reward out of it, they would definitely use it.</comment>


Doom Editing Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/dmedit16.html <comment><USER2> John Carmack is a really great guy. He's been supportive of hacking and opensource from the start seems like. I suspect that iD's support for modification of its games is in big part his initiative.

<comment><USER3> I think Carmack always has but id software used to claim a patent(!) on the Doom WAD file format made all user editing illegal.

<comment><USER2> Really? Why would they release tools to aid modification, then? Like the midi2mus mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I had a printed copy of this in a binder. I had messed around with map making from Wolf3D to Quake, but Doom was a great balance between simple yet powerful tools, and complex map design. My favorite map I made has a room surrounded by a lava moat and when you got to the middle of the room, triggers would simultaneously close the doors in and out, and then open several elevated panels that hid a bunch of imps.

</comment><comment><USER5> "In no way should this promote you killing yourself, killing others, or killing in any other fashion."

You don't see this disclaimer too often

<comment><USER6> I think it's a reaction to Columbine. Didn't one of them make a Doom map?

I think some time after, the news got a hold of it and sort of blamed violent video games for the mass shooting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> New tools make things too easy. [http://slade.mancubus.net/index.php?page=screenies](http://slade.mancubus.net/index.php?page=screenies) [http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32392](http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32392)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ah, good old dehacked! Man, that brings me back...

[http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/index.html](http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> #makelovenotwar</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for personal email? - <AUTHOR> I've used gmail for a long time but don't like that they have emails in plain text on their servers to do who knows what with. <comment><USER2> What threat model is it that a email vendor can receive your email in essentially plain text (TLS between SMTP servers doesn't protect you from the provider themselves snooping) but cannot be trusted to store that same email in situ?

Hard to recommend something without understanding the thought process.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to be concern over what happens to all the sensitive information I put out on google's servers, I was so concerned that I even started following Richard Stallman's guidelines until I realized how quality of my life decreased and how unhappy I've become for the sake of being secured. You can of course achieve some balance and protect only the most important things to you but don't fall into the trap of overdoing it.

I'm back to using Gmail again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand the sentiment. I certainly have my own bouts of intense paranoia related to security and the privacy of my personal stuff. It can become unhealthy. However, I think as long as the majority are complicit with email providers that don't offer end-to-end encryption, we may fall deeper into the clutches of government surveillance, targeted advertising, and other practices that IMO are an overall toxic influence on humanity. I don't practice what I preach at the moment but hopefully the loss of convenience is not too significant as I make the switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> posteo.de is great. Here's a good chart [1] comparing various providers with respect to privacy and other important factors. In my case, I went with Posteo because they offer the nice combination of anonymous payment method, located in Germany (so not as bad for my metadata as, say, five-eyes countries), and offering POP3/IMAP, so you can use your own client and have a local copy of my mail without any weird bridge software.

[1] [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/email-comparison- chart/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/email-comparison-chart/)

<comment><USER5> Don't allow your own domain, which should disqualify them. Especially since nobody knows whether they'll survive the next years.

Having a GMX address, fine. I wouldn't want it, but I'd expect them to be around in ten years. Posteo, who knows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use @icloud.com email address. Just make a new Apple ID and it comes with free icloud email address. It pairs well with Mail on macOS as well as Outlook. I trust Apple way more than Google or any company that is in the advertisement business for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fastmail; cheap, fast, reliable, and I can use my own domain. If you want end- to-end encryption, ProtonMail is an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER8> mailbox.org has been great. They can encrypt all your incoming mail content with your PGP public key. And you can enforce to receive the mail over a TLS encrypted SMTP using a special subdomain.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use ProtonMail with a custom domain.

</comment><comment><USER10> Gmail I believe is technically encrypted at rest, just they also happen to have the keys.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use tutanota.com

</comment><comment><USER12> Outlook.

</comment><comment><USER13> try superhuman.com</comment>


Gun-toting robbers force wealthy currency trader to transfer Bitcoin fortune - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5441251/robbers-bitcoin-oxfordshire/ <comment><USER2> We're going to see a lot more of this. Banks don't just provide security in the form of trust, they provide a physical security as well. Any robbery attempt will involve more than just a single victim, ie. Bank staff.

Do cryptocurrencies have a way to make a single person less vulnerable to being held at gun point and stripped of an entire fortune?</comment>


The Bitcoin Model for Crowdfunding - <AUTHOR> http://startupboy.com/2014/03/09/the-bitcoin-model-for-crowdfunding/ <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about this for a while, particularly with bandwidth as the scarce resource. I don't _quite_ grok the connections between the crypto aspect, the stock aspect and the currency aspect.

The problem is that (the way Naval treats them) each of the main variables _seem_ arbitrary, but could easily determine whether the economy you create is viable.

> _Pre-mine or early-mine Appcoins and keep some non-threatening amount._

In Bitcoin, though the system itself is "trustless", participants _trust_ that they are all treated equally according to the protocol & open source code.

In the case of a startup raising funds, you wouldn't get the same sense of altruism. The incentives are not aligned for the major players: the startup founders, the protocol developers, the other coin owners/shareholders and the miners.

Should an arbitrary pre-mined amount be set (as the founders' equity), and simultaneously be _non-threatening_ , what is to stop the network from invalidating the pre-mined amount at will?

If it were instead _threatening_ , why would miners be interested in spending compute power?

Naval also writes of supporting the open source developers with transaction fees. Unlike the commodity on which the coins are based, these are not easy values to calculate.

Certainly there are a lot of possible new models, and autonomous corporations are very exciting. I just don't see how you can _add_ a founder-controlled, for-profit startup to the other players in a crypto currency ecosystem (the miners, the non-profit developer foundation and the coin owners) and get something that works.

<comment><USER3> > _In Bitcoin, though the system itself is "trustless", participants_ trust > _that they are all treated equally according to the protocol & open source > code._

But Bitcoin participants do not have to act on " _trust_ " because they can inspect the protocol and open source code to verify equal treatment. In Naval's system, if the premise for participation (eg equal treatment) is equally verifiable by inspection of the protocol and open source code, is there any material difference between the two? It is true that there is nothing to "stop the network from invalidating the pre-mined amount at will", but participants will only participate in the network if it is easily verifiable that the network gives effect to the premise for participation.

> _I just don 't see how you can_ add _a founder-controlled, for-profit > startup to the other players in a crypto currency ecosystem (the miners, the > non-profit developer foundation and the coin owners) and get something that > works._

I think I agree with that statement, but only because of the words " _founder- controlled_ ". If a network like this is to succeed, the founders must forfeit control to the network. Given that it is the founders who write the protocol, they should be happy to do that, and then set it free. I don't think it would work if the founders made some attempt in the protocol to reserve to themselves a power to intervene in the operation of the network.

Can I offer another interesting hypothetical:

Is it possible for a network to incorporate some kind of mechanism for democratically amending its own protocol according to some objective characteristic (or subjective vote) of the participants? If participants are mining 'shares' in the 'company', should they have the power to act as 'shareholders' and to exercise control accordingly?

(Assume that some aspect of the protocol means that the controlling majority is always held by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, which I think is meant to be the case with Bitcoin.)

<comment><USER2> > But Bitcoin participants do not have to act on "trust" because they can > inspect the protocol and open source code to verify equal treatment.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I agree that trust is the wrong word, I should have said "participants _can verify_ that they are all treated equally".

Perhaps I'm stuck thinking of these startups _like_ I would think of most for- profit startups where each round of fundraising adds complexity (different "classes" of shares, etc).

One of the more important _advances_ in startup fundraising over the last few years has been the lengthening of time where the startup is under the founders' thumb(s). Fundraising in the manner you suggest would give you the money of an angel round (or less) + the loss of control of an IPO.

Many startups severely regret going IPO, because (unless you carefully manage the process a la Facebook or Google) you immediately cede a great degree of control to the shareholders.

In this case, the _only_ benefit to the founders (assuming their coins aren't invalidated) is monetary, while the _costs_ are manifest. I think the pre- mined allocation will be competed out of existence, as it adds no value to the process and because as long as the currency gets adopted, the founding developers (like Satoshi and the early bitcoin devs) will still benefit greatly.

Basically I can see very few benefits to the startup's founders for going this route vs normal fundraising. Democracy may be the least worst form of governance for a nation-state, but the point of a (good) nation-state is to preserve liberty, not to realize a particular vision (unless that vision _is_ liberty or in the case of bitcoin, _is_ the currency itself).*

What could work in the manner suggested is more akin to an autonomous, non- profit corporation. (Yes, individuals can profit by being early adopters or providing value-add services, but the corporation itself is self-perpetuating and not-for-profit).

I'm not saying such autonomous corporations shouldn't be built, of course they should be if they fill a need (just like non-profits). I just don't see this as a viable alternative to fundraising for a for-profit startup.

* There are of course several examples to the contrary (of a "vision" being achieved in such a manner). Wikipedia (and now bitcoin) being perhaps the most notable, but all that I can think of remain non-profit organizations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea in this blog post is not novel...it is actually an idea called "Distributed Anonymous Corporation" which was described in this blog post last september: [http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of- rob...](http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-robotics/)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's how Ethereum will be launched, too, and once it's launched thousands of others can do the same on top of Ethereum, without having to reinvent their own "coin" from scratch. Building their own DAO's will also be much easier.

[https://www.ethereum.org/](https://www.ethereum.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Exactly what I've been thinking over the past week as I've watched some cause- themed coins start to take off.

Most people try to squeeze their mental model of what cryptocoins are into something like a currency, but there are really interesting equity / p2p database aspects too.

<comment><USER7> would you mind elaborating?

<comment><USER8> this addresses the p2p database aspect [http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the- by...](http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the-byzantine- generals-problem/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is exactly what I'm trying to do with Coinpunk (in addition to doing a classic crowdfund): [http://igg.me/at/coinpunk](http://igg.me/at/coinpunk)

</comment><comment><USER10> If this is used for proprietary business models, that's completely backwards. The future involves recognizing that digital works are NOT scarce, only development time or server bandwidth is.

Paying this way for server bandwidth is fine. Otherwise, this is about _excluding_ poorer people from accessing resources, just like the traditional broken proprietary business model.

I hope this idea dies quickly. We don't need anything that further extends proprietization, we need systems to fund Open projects.

<comment><USER11> If digital works are not scarce, where are all the great public domain licensed movies, TV shows, and video games?

<comment><USER10> It's _copies_ that aren't scarce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You're still paying for the service. Basically this is talking about making free services non-free to support the creation and growth of the service.

<comment><USER13> > this is talking about making free services non-free to support the creation > and growth of the service

Naval (author of post) already did this with Angellist, in a way. They systematized the introduction of founders->angels. Which was happening freely over email beforehand. The service inbetween can add value over free methods.

Nothing wrong with that really as a starting point. Centralization is sometimes needed for trust. The angels may need to trust some escrow, dispute process, or software stability if they want to invest money this way.

But agreed it could technically be decentralized/free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't that exactly what Marscoin (www.marscoin.org) does - trying to privately fund space exploration by letting people buy into the altcoin.

</comment><comment><USER15> He mentions FastCoin as a fast-clearing currency. Bitcoin's confirmations are slow for the sake of security. There's a new method that makes it possible to get fast confirmations with good security, but I don't see any indication that FastCoin is using it. For details and a link to the academic paper, see here: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=359582.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=359582.0)

Ethereum is the only new coin I know of that's planning to use this protocol, though I'm sure there are others.

<comment><USER16> Bitcoin's confirmations are slow because it takes several new blocks to be generated before a transactions is considered really confirmed. A block takes about 10 minutes.

If you speed up the block time, you speed up the confirmation time, no?

<comment><USER17> The value of the confirmations roughly corresponds with the amount of computation wasted on them.

(or whatever word you want to swap in for wasted; it's the difficulty of matching the computation that is interesting, not the number of blocks)

<comment><USER16> Ah, fair enough. I had assumed it was to do with having a few block set in stone and propagated around the network, but it sounds like its more entwined with the 51% question and that sort of stuff...

<comment><USER15> Max is correct, but the new idea is basically to incorporate all the computation that goes into side branches that end up abandoned, so you get equivalent security in a much shorter time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Naval's model isn't a million miles away from ASICMiner's "corporate" structure. It's also a step in the general direction of a commodity future- like cryptocurrency, with computing services as the underlying commodity.

A crytocurrency can't succeed, in my opinion, unless it has intrinsic value or exists as a means of exchanging value within a closed ecosystem where fiat currencies are impractical for whatever reason.

<comment><USER19> There is no such thing as intrinsic values in any currency Fiat, digital or crypto.

The value in a crypto-currency is determined by how much the "nodes" trust the network. This trust takes time to build as we are seeing with the various alternative CCs coming out these days and thats just ok.

But keep in mind that the currency is only one way to use the technology. You could in theory have an ebook be based on the technology.

<comment><USER20> >> The value in a crypto-currency is determined by how much the "nodes" trust the network.

Could someone explain it clearer?

<comment><USER16> The value, like with anything else, is simply what someone will give you for it. It's psychology. There is no hard calculation you can do to arrive at the 'value' of a bitcoin.

The trust between the nodes and the network may be a factor that informs some people. Some people will use it because they consider it to be free from central control, or anonymous, or because "Hey! Computer Money!", or simply because they have a gut feeling it's the next big thing.

HTH.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As long as the entire internet isn't tolled because it is a new way to tax. Crypto coins have been branded for all types of needs, pay it forward is a big part of many coins. What would suck is if it became pay to use everywhere if biz runs away with it. We might be entering a bad era of tolls and tiers if we aren't smart.

</comment><comment><USER22> Micropayments has come to pass.

And with that, Charlie Brooker's scifi television show becomes more apparent.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is what Invictus has been doing to raise money for their DACs via AngelShares

</comment><comment><USER24> crowd equity will be huge</comment>


Pony 0.33.1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ponylang.io/blog/2019/12/0.33.1-released/ <comment><USER2> Does Pony still work on Windows? There's an issue about it[1] from 2015 and the one developer who uses Windows hasn't committed to the repo since 2016.

1: [https://github.com/ponylang/ponyc/issues/434](https://github.com/ponylang/ponyc/issues/434)

<comment><USER3> Sure. After that ticket a Windows build-recipe, CI and deploy was added.</comment></comment>


Lang-8: For learning foreign languages - <AUTHOR> http://lang-8.com/ <comment><USER2> Although it seems like a potentially useful tool, I am disappointed by the lack of information available on the main page. There is no reference to names of the languages that are available for studying, only a reference to the count.

<comment><USER3> To add to this, the mobile main page simply displays a login form and some register links.

The only thing I know about this website is that it is a service that has something to do with the ambiguous concept of language, and possibly the number eight.

<comment><USER4> So, I haven't used lang-8 in quite a while, but iirc the site isn't really like duolingo etc; i.e. it doesn't contain any courses for specific languages. It is more of a social-like site where you post something random in a language that you'er learning and someone corrects it. And in turn, you correct someone else that's learning your native language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why can't I see at least some actual content without creating an account/logging in?</comment>


HMO: Help Me Out (May Edition) - <AUTHOR>

If you need any help with a project, a startup, or an idea, just post it here. Mention any details that might be required, and make sure to add contact details!<p>Let's see how we can get some good rolling here.<p>[1] http://tomcritchlow.com/post/82380207991/let-me-know-how-i-can-help <comment><USER2> Last month's thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172)</comment>


Ask HN: In what language should I invest my time? - <AUTHOR>

A couple years ago I was a C++ dev; I then switched to Python (and really enjoyed it for a while), but I'm getting a bit tired of it. So, I'm searching a new language/community/framework to invest my time in.. I'm thinking something between node, clojure, Qi, or Objective-C(With all the iphone development obviously)..<p>What do you think? (Note that I've already read a bit on these languages and few others) <comment><USER2> Language as a distinguishing trait is overrated.

Pick a project that you want to spend time on, then learn the tools that make it easiest to accomplish your design goals.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hm, the question is, why are you getting tired of Python? What are you looking for instead? Better performance? A more dynamic language? Extensible syntax? Something more math related; or less? Good concurrency/parellelism? Friendly community? Something obscure, different or more "enterprisey"? ... If you know the answer to that, it will be clearer where to look for your next language.

</comment><comment><USER4> Learn whatever you need that will get you to your goal with the most satisfaction.

If you want to make iPhone apps, obj-c is probably the way to go. If you want to go into Android development, Java is solid. If you like the web sphere Ruby is awesome. Javascript in general is a highly sought out skill plus you said you were interested in Node, so that's an option as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Languages are nothing but tools for you to get something done. And as with all tools, what matters the most is what you want to get done.

If you are looking purely from a learning point of view, learning a functional language like clojure or erlang can open up your eyes to new paradigms and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER6> JavaScript. Not because of the language, but because its API's will take the language where no others can go. Between HTML5, NodeJS, and WebGL there is an awful wide range of things that can be created.</comment>


The Effects of CPU Turbo: 768X Stddev - <AUTHOR> https://www.alexgallego.org/perf/compiler/explorer/flatbuffers/smf/2018/06/30/effects-cpu-turbo.html <comment><USER2> With credit to the author, it feels like they found out something interesting, but the article feels like a mess.

On one hand, they made a performance optimisation to a library - cool.

On the other hand, the title and the conclusion talk about the difference between turbo boost in a CPU, which seems completely missing from the articles contents....

<comment><USER3> There is a bit of connecting transitions missing, but basically I understand it thus:

He was using a slower buffer serialisation library (for reasons unexplained), and when challenged set out to prove _his_ choice was the fastest, but pretty soon found out he was wrong. Then he wanted to do the test himself, and along the way he discovered how his processor made benchmarking very noisy in turbo mode.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for summarizing it better than I did. I'll edit and make that a bit more clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Plenty of other data points in the table show _reduced_ stddev with turbo enabled. The 768x line looks like an anomaly.

Without knowing how many runs were made and the other test conditions, it's difficult to know what actually changed. There's far too much noise in the table to come to the conclusion that turbo was the culprit.

We're only talking about a 30% difference in clock rate for 3.2GHz vs 4.2GHz. If there's more change than that across turbo vs. non-turbo, something else in the benchmark setup is messed up.

<comment><USER4> ~20%. The difference however is a max of ~2.3x in that direction. 100% of the code is there, what do you suggest is 'messed' up. I probably ran the benchmarks 100s of times over 7 days trying to understand. That particular I posted seemed aligned with the others, but that was the stddev of 3 runs provided by Google Benchmark --benchmark_repetitions=3 I made it 10 and not much difference there. That was the point of 768X anomalies. The values are never like that w/ capped frequencies.

<comment><USER5> Hang on, so we've got:

\- SD increase of 768x

\- Mean increase of 1.2 to 2.3x

\- But n=3?

You need a _lot_ more samples to make a reasonable statement about whether Turbo had an impact or not. Noise is completely overpowering your measurements.

AFAICT, you're measuring SD of the time (nanoseconds) to run your task, and mean is around 9000ns. 1ns SD is abnormally low, and 768ns SD seems about right (this _is_ a desktop machine, after all). But I couldn't really figure this out from the article.

<comment><USER4> No no.

\- capped freqs: stddev 768x. in the non-turbo-to-turbo direction

\- in the other direction it is 2.3x. So was just acknowledging that there are 20% of samples in that table with your previous point

<comment><USER5> 25% of 'samples' in the stddev table show absolutely no difference between Turbo and non-Turbo. Assuming that this line of argument makes sense (it doesn't) that leaves merely 55% of samples that support your case.

I appreciate what you're trying to do, and I'm intensely interested in this issue (I have a feeling that we face very similar issues in our day jobs) -- but I can't see a reasonable way to interpret your data that supports your assertion that Turbo meaningfully increases variance.

There's just not enough data.

<comment><USER6> Turbo and Hyperthreding gernate a ton of noise when benchmarking. Disabling both results in a one or two order of magnitude reduction in outlier results (maybe you want to call it noise - but it is not symmetric like classic noise).

The primary way turbo introduces variance is due to the turbo transitions forced by the "max turbo ratio varies by active core count" behavior. Eg on my Skylake chip, the turbo speed is either 3.5, 3.3, 3.2 or 3.1 GHz depending on whether 1, 2, 3 or 4 cores are active.

Let's say you are running a threaded benchmark with "nothing else" running on the box. Of course other cores will still occasionally fire up, to handle scheduler ticks, interrupts from you network card, background processes, whatever. Every time this happens, the chip has to immediately undergo a frequency transition which leaves it running at 3.3 GHz. The main problem isn't the lowered speed, it's the fact that the transition itself puts the chip into a halted state for 10 to 20 us, presumably to allow the multiplier transition to occur, for voltages to stabilize, etc. Especially for short, precise benchmarks, this shows up as a lot of noise.

Turning off turbo fixes it, but so does just setting the max turbo ratio to the "all cores" value (3.1 GHz in my case) since then you don't have these forced transitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Ensure that your BIOS says performance when connected to AC_

This was the most interesting tidbit for me. It wouldn't occur to me to run benchmarks on a laptop (I guess due to my advancing years...)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. That machine has a server processor and ecc memory 64GB. Specs are pretty similar to a small server. But yeah. Hardware has changed a ton :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Minor: "Friday, June 28 2018". June 28th was actually a Thursday this year.

<comment><USER4> ... i guess I was tired when i wrote it. I meant to write 29th! thanks!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That page seems to make Android Chrome hang.

<comment><USER10> If that's happening to you, then it's probably an issue with asciinema and your particular version of Android's Chrome.

That's most of the JS on the page. That being said, the page transfers ~500Kb, and loads into memory ~30Mb, which shouldn't be that substantial. Most of it lies in the asciinema player (which should be mostly JITing), or an array.

<comment><USER11> > _loads into memory ~30Mb_

Is that the asciinema player, or the "video" it plays? Either way: I thought part of the point of asciinema was that it compresses better for terminal capture? Just how much data was stored by that particular session?

<comment><USER12> I think it compresses file size/network transfer, but in order for playback to occur, the video must be decompressed into memory, even though the terminal colors will be mostly the same color hex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17485536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17485536)

<comment><USER14> That one is empty,old and with no upvotes.</comment></comment>


Ad.ly - twitter spam marketing is the future - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotcoma.it/2010/02/24/twitter-spam-marketing.html

<comment><USER2> Submitted url is content void spam.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least they show who is spamming:

<http://ad.ly/publisher-list/>

So you can unfollow.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this is a bit of a naive post from dotcoma... Twitter haven't waited this long to just spam adverts at people randomly.

Twitter are smarter than that. I think they will be more Hyper-targeted adverts that will be way more subtle than annoying. That's what I would be thinking about doing.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've had experience of putting what I'm trying to do on Twitter and having a company send me a message offering their service. I'm not sure if it was a bot or not.

It occurred to me that maybe in a few years time we won't be googling for stuff by rather just "asking twitter" and automated bots/crawlers will respond based on where I am, what I asked for and details from my profile.

If twitter could bake in some kind of spam prevention (or reputation system?) it might just work.

<comment><USER4> You are right about "asking Twitter".

That is something that Facebook have been teasing Google with for years, that they could be a better search engine because results would come based on your friends results.

I think this is very realistic reaction, people listen to the people they trust more than someone on I'm feeling Lucky. I'm basing my own startup on exactly that ethos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been running a Twitter feed for <http://Newsley.com> for about a month or two. I've been stunned at how much spam is already on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ad.ly as viewed by AdBlock Plus <http://www.adambreckler.com/proof-that-ad-ly- is-spam>

</comment><comment><USER8> Just as publishers have the right to monetize their websites and blogs, they should have the right to monetize the content they produce on Twitter.</comment>


WWV Centennial - <AUTHOR> http://Wwv100.com <comment><AUTHOR> This should be an excellent amateur radio special event, Sept. 29 through October 3. Please encourage school radio clubs, in particular, to sign up for a contact. Contacts on the station used for school clubs may be longer and include a talk with NIST/WWV personnel. The four regular stations will probably have shorter contacts with a certificate available.</comment>


No. 1 in Poverty, CA Isn't Our Most Progressive State - It's Our Most Racist One - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/31/number-one-in-poverty-california-isnt-our-most-progressive-state-its-our-most-racist-one/ <comment><USER2> This seems a stretch to use that definition of racism. But for sure absolutely correct that the typical wealthy California liberal is full of shit. For proof just spend a day in San Francisco or Palo Alto. People talking loudly about their $40,000 watches they bought on a whim one night "he-he" while being served by minimum wage baristas, and stepping over the homeless person in the doorway. Meanwhile they do nothing to fix any of this such as increase housing supply. I love CA but it's become a disgusting place in this regard.</comment>


706 Earthlike Planets Discovered By NASA Spacecraft  - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/kepler-spacecraft-finds-hundreds-possible-planets-100618.html

<comment><USER2> Not only are the 706 planets only potential candidates, but I believe they include all possible planets, not just the "earthlike" planets. The article is poorly written in that manner, and the headline here is magnifying the error.

That said, 306 of the 706 have already been confirm. No stats on the number or percentage of false positives in that first batch.

<comment><USER3> The article is quite clear - "NASA's Kepler spacecraft hunting for Earth-like planets around other stars has found 706 candidates for potential alien worlds while gazing at more than 156,000 stars packed into a single patch of the sky."

Potential. No claim that any of them are 'earth-like'. The person who wrote the title either doesn't know how to read or is being deliberately sensationalist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 706 promising candidates, not confirmed. As many people are pointing out there they are aiming for 3 transits to confirm something is a planet, it doesn't seem to be clear though whether those 706 are including things that have transited more than once in the 43 days which would indicate very short orbits.

Should note to that most exoplanets don't transit their star when viewed from earth. A quick Google search suggests that only 54 of the first 333 exoplanets discovered did.

<comment><USER5> There are other methods to finding planets. Most of the early Hot Jupiters were found by measuring the "wobble" of a star - a bulge at the surface - caused by the gravity of the massive gas giant careening around it.

Also, the title is wrong, just because the telescope is looking for earth like planets doesn't mean it can't find gas giants as well.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware, just pointing out that the transit method that kepler uses can only pick a percentage of planets even if they are of significant enough size to be found because from our viewing angle they don't transit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I say we attack immediately. Not wise to take chances they _might_ be peaceful. ;)

<comment><USER7> hawkings:

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece)

Life on this planet is predicated on material transformation/consumption. that's what we do - we eat and excrete our environment. no reason to believe it would be fundamentally different on other planets.

<comment><USER8> Surely there is enough _uninhabited_ bodies of matter\resources in space to preclude the necessity of fighting with aliens over them for the next 100,000 years?

<comment><USER9> Perhaps; perhaps not. There's many situations it would be worthwhile.

\- They want to kill us just because

\- They have already occupied virtually everywhere else, and want more (our) space

\- We are in the way of their wave of expansion, and they don't care (and are set to steam-roller over us)

\- Earth or nearby planets are valuable to both them and us, and equivalents are too far away (nobody says FTL travel is possible)

There have been plenty of wars (not every single one, but plenty) here on Earth already that demonstrate that.

<comment><USER8> The fact that a human has killed another human in the past is hardly sufficient reason for recommending Xenocide as de facto future policy, mein Fuher.

<comment><USER9> Did you examine my hypothetical scenarios? They all basically revolve around _another race_ that wants to commit xenocide _on us_. Or can you simply not conceive of a scenario where humans are not the superior species calling the shots? If we are not the only sentient race, then there's bound to be quite a few out there, and I can guarantee you we aren't the best, the strongest, the most adept or adaptable, or the most competent. There's always someone better, and odds are if the other race finds us, they are superior (they managed to go exploring and expanding before us).

The history of human wars is purely an example demonstrating that even when there is enough land to go around, there are times when you have to fight (unless of course you are ambivalent towards your own survival). To use your apparently favorite example, Hitler, America engaged in WWII and yet did not win a scrap of land. Nor did America want land. Was this just some stupid unjustified, unreasonable mistake?

<comment><USER8> Straw man, argument 'self-defense == bad' not present.

Possible arguments:

1) The ethics (and humor) of pre-emptive strikes

2) Given that the proportion of resource-containing matter forming planets inhabited by sentient life to total resource-containing matter in the galaxy approaches insignificance, it seems _extremely_ improbable that homo sapiens will ever be engaged in a competition for resources with sentient alien life at a time point where homo sapiens still exist and have not evolved into several other species.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite comment there:

 _Aerospace_Cadet wrote: Wouldn't any planet found no matter it's size or location be considered alien?_

<comment><USER11> Not in one particular instance: if we saw Earth. Current ideas about the shape of the universe don't make this an entirely impossible proposition (just an _extremely_ unlikely one that we'd stumble across our own image from billions of years ago, and I, personally, don't buy it at all).

This idea is covered in an episode of Astronomy Cast. I forget which, but most likely [http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-78-what-is-the- sha...](http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-78-what-is-the-shape-of-the- universe/)</comment></comment>


Reviewing Amazon Dynamodb - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pxue/reviewing-amazon-dynamodb-f8a252d4a839

<comment><USER2> Very insightful. I don't even consider DynamoDB as I don't want to deal with its complicated pricing model. Basically, in order for me to estimate the costs, I need to invest time and play with it, which I'm not gonna do if I don't know how much this will costs me. It's a vicious circle and goes against the spirit of EC2 and most of AWS pricing.</comment>


Crowd-Source Competitive Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://coworkintel.com <comment><AUTHOR> We created a competitive intelligence platform targeted at flexible workspace. The deal is simple: if a space provides data, it gets access to a group of four competitors' data.

We then sell aggregated data to investment funds and landlords.</comment>


Did youtube make HTML5 Video the default on chrome? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=ClOdWeP-6uc

<comment><USER2> I wish they did (for FF, too), and leave Flash as fallback for everyone else. It might push other sites to adopt WebM.

But in this case they didn't. It's showing Flash for me. Maybe you sign-ed up to HTML5 by mistake.

youtube.com/html5</comment>


Facebook users getting annoyed at 'invite friends' requirement - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/20/friend-spam-is-the-worst-kind-of-all/

<comment><USER2> The Facebook Applications Platform has effectively driven me away from using the service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a link that lets you quickly ignore all non friend or group invites- I find it quite handy:

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

I don't mind being invited (not with that tool) but its annoying because every so often (its very rare) I actually want to try an application, but I refuse to go to the effort of inviting friends before I try it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Umm.... you can just ignore them. It's like 3 words and a number on the sidebar. Not the end of the world. Get a life people.

<comment><USER5> says the person defending facebook</comment></comment>


Google Nexus 4 goes on sale in US - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb

<comment><USER2> On my side: Oops, we had trouble processing your request. We're working on fixing the issue. Please try again later.</comment>


Israeli Company Will Judge Applicants Based On Diablo Skills  - <AUTHOR> http://techli.com/2012/07/diablo-3-job-interview/

<comment><USER2> About as objective and useful as the filters most startups use in selecting candidates, actually.</comment>


The future of Lisp... - <AUTHOR> http://12monkeys.co.uk/2009/01/21/the-future-of-lisp.html

<comment><USER2> I've mentionned it on the Clojure thread, but I think the major distraction of CL isn't age itself but rather all the dead websites, the libraries documented by a bunch of 1998 Usenet posts, etc.

I can't even find a fairly complete and maintained GUI library. I know a lot of people do web programming, but desktop software is still alive and well. Even wxCL, which is pretty much the most complete available, has been updated on May 20, 2006, and its documentation page says "Coming soon". And the mailing list is nothing but spam. You mean _this_ is what I'm supposed to use to build a GUI in CL?

Personally, that's why I don't use CL. It's not because of Emacs (which I use for most programming), it's not the cruft... it's the fact that I feel like I'm stepping in a graveyard and won't find anyone to help me if I try to use one of its libraries.

On the other side, I really enjoy Clojure. I know I'll always have access to the libs I need, there's help easily available, and I can really see it going somewhere better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do all new languages have to be built on top of existing popular VMs? If so (a) that's a new rule, because Ruby, Python, Perl, etc, weren't, and (b) the article could have a much bolder title: it could be about the future of programming languages, not just the future of Lisp.

And if it's not the case that this principle applies to all new languages, what's special about dialects of Lisp that makes it only apply to them? Why can you build a new language with infix syntax and Greenspun's-tenth-law semantics up from scratch, but not a new Lisp?

<comment><USER4> Because Lisp has about a million pounds of stigma attached to it.

<comment><USER3> Even at current exchange rates, that's a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I quite agree with Mr. Veldstra, and would add a few things. 1) Clojure isn't always fast, but it's fast enough. 2) When you need more speed, you can always write Java code and then trivially call into it. No need to worry that you'll be trapped by performance issues. 3) There's no need to get rid of your current Java infrastructure or code base. Clojure works WITH that code base, not INSTEAD of it. This will give most CTO's a warm, fuzzy feeling. 4) Clojure can easily and safely exploit multi-core processors, something that's about to become an issue. Given how difficult it is to make multi-threaded Java work correctly, this is a big deal. 5) It's going to make your developers a lot happier, which can produce a competitive hiring advantage. And the kind of developers you get are likely to be sharper. Given how dramatic the differences between developers can be, this is an especially important and (I think) underappreciated point.

As for CL, I think most CTO's will have a single question that's foremost in their minds: if Lisp has been around for half a century and CL for about a quarter of a century and they still don't have a good story for GUIs, sockets, and a clean-up language, why is any of that going to change if OurCorp starts using it?

<comment><USER6> _It's going to make your developers a lot happier_

That's pretty amusing, given that Clojure is a Lisp and we all know how unfriendly and unpopular and weird Lisp is. (You could look it up in that post you quite agree with.)

 _they still don't have a good story for GUIs, sockets, and a clean-up language_

This reminds me of Gilbert Ryle's old line, "She came in a flood of tears and a sedan chair." What do these things have in common? And what on earth is a "clean-up language"?

 _most CTO's will have a single question that's foremost in their minds [...] why is any of that going to change if OurCorp starts using it?_

It just doesn't matter. Lisp (including CL) is what it is, an amazing tool for those who want to take the time to learn it and a competitive advantage for those who figure out how to leverage it on a problem. It probably isn't going to become popular, and it certainly isn't going to go away. The ignorance of CTOs isn't going to affect it much either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It might be true. I like CL as much as the next guy on YC, but I would quite happy if someone offered me a paycheck to use Closure.

Hell, I'd be happy to get a paycheck using Python at this point.

(I use Java in my day job. It is alright to pity me.)

<comment><USER8> Clojure, my friend.

You may have said you wanted to use Jython. Spelling does make a big difference in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's wrong with PLT-Scheme? It's well-documented, has a decent amount of libs and its syntax its much cleaner than CL's one, but can't find any reference about anyone using it in production code(other than Arc).

<comment><AUTHOR> you answered your own question there. the community isn't bothered about the popular image of PLT Scheme as merely a Lisp for teaching. (whether they should be bothered or not is a whole different question, but choosing not to care ensures that PLT Scheme won't be a mainstream Lisp.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lisp's age is not an issue. The fact that the Common Lisp standardization process happened prematurely and effectively killed the language is a problem.

<comment><USER11> I've not heard of that. Can you provide more info on how/why the standardization process happened prematurely?

<comment><USER12> I think he's referring to how the standard says nothing about threads and GUIs and sockets and other crucial features. (But I think other standards like C don't even say anything about that either...)

But most implementations address those issues and there are even libraries that expose those features in a uniform way across implementations.

<comment><USER13> So, the solution is a Lisp'09 standard that talks about GUIs, threads and sockets?

I guess the really big problem probably is that there is no canonical implementation, no obvious way to go like there is for other languages. When you want to play with Java, you grab NetBeans or Eclipse and you have Sun to turn to for a runtime. When you want to play with Ruby or Python or most newer languages, you go to <http://{$language}.org>.

Smalltalk suffers from the same problem - too many different implementations, and no obvious path to follow.

<comment><USER12> Just use SBCL. Problem solved. It's a great implementation with a big following among Lispers.

<comment><USER13> It took me a while to get to that decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to consider Lisp as an Algol equivalent. It says something for the staying power of the language if these sorts of opinions are just now starting to gain prevalence.

I like CL, but I do think that its age is a distraction; people have a hard time getting past that sometimes.

<comment><AUTHOR> age per se is not a problem – just look at Erlang, which is one of the "cool" languages at the moment.

the issue is, in addition to the 3 i mentioned in my post, that there isn't a problem that you think of and then you think that CL is the answer:

* an enterprisey app → Java or C#

* a web app → Ruby, Python, Perl or PHP

* an HTTP/XMPP-based server → Erlang

* a bunch of scripts to glue things together → Ruby, Perl or Python

* a desktop app → C, C++, Objective-C or C# (depending on the OS)

* ??? → Common Lisp?

<comment><USER12> Big problem --> New DSL --> Common Lisp

<comment><USER15> I think most new DSLs are either Ruby under the hood, or extensions to Tcl or Guile.

<comment><USER12> What?... I think the big problem with DSLs is that people think it's a complicated technique that's applicable only in a few specific, obscure cases.

It's actually a technique that scales well, in the sense that you can make languages as simple or as complex as you need, with an implementation as featureful of trivial as you need (just a bunch of macros VS a full compiler and VM complete with high-level debugger), and if you use a language like Lisp that makes it easy to prototype new languages (the lisp reader, macros and closures help a lot) you can afford to make a few DSLs just for one app if you like.

Just for my web framework in the making, I have 5 DSLs:

Purely declarative configuration management (almost done), static and dynamic HTML and CSS generation and manipulation (done, but I have plans for something better), HTML and CSS rewriting (in the making), i18n resources (in the making but very simple).

And no doubt I'll need a few more for my specific applications.

<comment><USER15> Indeed - I'm just saying that people generally aren't using LISP to write DSLs in. If I needed one now I'd probably either use Tcl as a base or write it in OCaml. LISP isn't really even on the radar for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "the community is not making an effort to make CL _seem_ cool."

Sorry if we value _being_ over _pretending to be_...

<comment><AUTHOR> my point is you _are_ , but few people are aware of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's also Factor, which is pretty much becoming a postfix Lisp.

<comment><USER17> There was actually some recent discussion about this on the Factor mailing list.

Factor's macros aren't really the same as Lisp's, as they are a compile-time optimization of dynamically-generated code, rather than a means of syntax extension. Factor does have a method for extending its syntax (called parsing words), but as of now they are not really first-class citizens in the way that Lisp macros are. There are, however, plans to remedy this and make them more declarative & easy to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> ABCL, Rhino and JRuby provide a countercase by examples. Running on a VM is not enough, easy access to the VM libraries is not enough, and the version on the VM won't automatically be more popular.

</comment><comment><USER19> Emacs is also the default editor for Clojure. There's an Eclipse plugin coming along but I think it's not ready yet.

<comment><USER20> I had no problem getting Clojure running on Eclipse. I much prefer emacs though.</comment></comment>


New Book: Groupon's Biggest Deal Ever:The Inside Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Groupons-Biggest-Deal-Ever-Unbelievable/dp/125000084X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338696909&sr=1-1

<comment><AUTHOR> Find the WSJ story on the deal at the link below:

[http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405270230364010...](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303640104577440580610986086-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html)</comment>


Tesla Model S owner hit with $11,000 fine for excessive emissions - <AUTHOR> http://www.techspot.com/news/64063-singapore-first-tesla-model-s-owner-hit-11000.html <comment><USER2> It's in Singapore, so I'm not surprised.

A business colleague of mine lives in Singapore and paid $100,000 for a driver's license. This doesn't include the 100% tax on the car and the black box that he needs to have in the car at all times (If he travels to certain areas of the city, he pays a tax).

To get a license you pay into a lottery system and are randomly picked. You don't get the money back.</comment>


How does HN's ranking work? This seems like an error - <AUTHOR> http://haplo.mindstab.net/hn_ranking.png

<comment><USER2> <http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574>

probably one of the better analyses.

Basically, time decay and velocity of votes affect the vote ordering. The older an article is, the more votes it needs to stay in the top positions. Therefore, the 304 points/15 hours and 122 points/9 hours have roughly the same weight as the 16 point/2 hour submission.</comment>


The Most Incompetent TSA Story Yet? - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/01/possibly_the_mo.html <comment><USER3> I can't speak for the TSA, but here in Australia I am routinely "randomly selected" for bomb screening.

I have a terrible beard. I know it, my family knows it, my friends know it, people on who drive past on the bus know it. But it conceals the chinese phone directory beneath my jaw, so it stays.

But it definitely gets unkempt and quickly. If I forget to clean up before I fly, bam, I'm chosen for the bomb test. If I'm clean shaven or have trimmed that day, I sail through.

It's absolutely random, I'm assured. No bias whatsoever. When asked to show a random number generator the staff tend to get a bit grumpy. Appeals to the combinatorial unlikelihood of being chosen so many times in a row fall on dead ears.

Because my beard makes me look like a convert to Islam, I get bomb tested. It's as simple as that, in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> I've watched them, they are random.

If they aren't screening someone, they choose the next person to walk out from the x-ray screening area.

If they are screening someone, then they are busy.

Given the fact that they probably screen 5-10% of people travelling, I think you've just gotten lucky.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why this is downvoted. I think it's probably right.

I get randomly selected for the bomb test almost 100% of the time in Australia. I don't think there is anything about me that is being discriminated against (typical white male).

I think they just screen a high percentage of people. Also, I think the longer you hang around after the x-ray (repacking your bag, getting dressed, etc), the more likely they are to approach you.

<comment><USER3> Even if it there was a 50% chance of being picked, to have it happen (I've been counting) _8 times in a row_ so far is highly, unlikely -- 3 in a thousand. At 10% we're talking millions-to-1 that it's purely random.

I just don't buy it. Humans are involved. Humans are not cryptographic-grade RNGs.

<comment><USER4> You're either very lucky, go through security at quieter times or self- selecting (subconsciously) by choosing the optimum time for you to be chosen.

<comment><USER3> Airports bunch flights together so they can cut costs. It's always busy. As for "self-selecting the optimum time", I don't have to. I can self-select an interesting beard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've got one of those stories.

My parents live on the opposite side of the country. I flew to see them one Christmas and then flew back home. As I unpacked after the trip, I discovered that my huge hunting knife had accidentally been in my carry-on bag the whole time. I had carried it through both Salt Lake and Philadelphia International Airports. Literally no one bothered me about it.

Someone once told me that America is "fully prepared for the past" with regards to terrorism. This experience makes me wonder whether even that is really true. And indeed, when I read up on the actual security practices, I discovered that on an alarmingly frequent basis, it is not our security measures that foil terrorists, but their sheer ineptitude. The underwear bomber, the attempted Times Square guy, and a whole host of other idiots had the opportunity to seriously hurt people, and had they even a modicum of expertise, they would have succeeded. Our security forces may be able to take credit for stopping some of these events, but how many? These were incredibly simple strategies, and given that they still couldn't identify and neutralize the threat before it would have been too late, I can't imagine it's an astonishingly high number.

In spite of this I'm not worried about terrorism at all. If someone started a security-free airline, I would fly on it every single time I had the option. What does frighten me is that we spend so much money on this stuff. Why isn't the TSA held accountable by the government? (And if it is, why are they so bad at it?) Do we honestly know that increased spending in technology catches more terrorists? We are trying to identify very sparse features, and it is not at all obvious that this is the best way to catch them. On the other hand, the American government has eliminated (I'm told) 200 of Al-Quaeda's top leaders. This seems like a much more effective method for demolishing this behavior.

<comment><USER7> Same here . I'm a competitive shooter and I've travelled internationally with live ammo lost in my bag that I found after unpacking. Total facepalm moment. It wasn't much, 5-6 rounds but I'm sure enough to get me in heaps of trouble had it been found in my carry-on. Then, they finally did detect something I had forgotten in my backpack again, but it was just airgun pellets, basically little pieces of lead.

<comment><USER8> 5 year prison sentence in England, so go careful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the comments, made my entire week:

 _They were obviously homeopathic bombs. Security found no traces of explosives, which had been diluted to the point that it wasn't present - <USER2> making the devices even more effective._

</comment><comment><USER10> Heh. A couple of years ago I tried to carry on a microphone stand (something like this: [http://www.amazon.com/Stage-Stands-7701B-Tripod- Microphone/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Stage-Stands-7701B-Tripod- Microphone/dp/B000978D58/) ). TSA freaked, ran it through the x-ray a couple of times, escorted me out of the security area and stood buy while I checked it, watch as it went through the baggage scanner, and then finally allowed me back through the security checkpoint.

This story shocks me not at all.

<comment><USER11> And yet I've taken a Volcano [1] through TSA's "security" at least 5 times. The first time the TSA agent asked a bit about it and, basically, he said: "oh, it is like a fog machine?" to which I answered "Yes"....

From then on, it has been a "fog machine" as far as TSA was concerned... ;-)

Admittedly, and sadly, I haven't tried to fly with it within the last two years [and, at that time, I didn't worry about it a bit nor did I clean it obsessively, etc. - these days, though, I'm hesitant to even attempt flying with it]... =\

[1] = [http://www.storz-bickel.com/vaporizer/volcano- vaporisation-s...](http://www.storz-bickel.com/vaporizer/volcano-vaporisation- system.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we need a stufftheTSAconfiscated.tumblr.com.

I went through for a job interview and I had a cast on and a blow dryer and flat iron in my luggage. They swabbed my cast, and took the items and made me wait while they checked them out. I bet someone walked away that day with perfectly styled hair.

<comment><USER12> Well, that kinda exists...in auction format: <http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ntsa>

<comment> X-Istence I don't see any 8 inch hunting knives, so clearly they haven't learned their lesson ... they let me through security in Denver, Chicago, New York, Newark and Houston with a HUGE blade in the bottom of my computer bag.

Noticed it when I was unpacking my bag because I bought a new one... yep, TSA at its finest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The TSA did them a bit of a favour, confiscating this stuff: <http://www.alivewater.net/prod/owr.htm>

<comment><USER13> Wow, just look at the ad copy:

"The Vortex Water Revitalizer is based upon a revolutionary concept in water treatment. It performs far beyond what any filtration system, distiller or reverse osmosis system will ever do for you. It processes all the water in a direct way, leading it into a double spiral, which creates a powerfull vortex energy field.

This uses Mother Nature's own methods of generating energy within the water. One of the results is that water's self-cleaning ability is re-established and the water is being restructured on a molecular level. The Vortex Water Revitalizer will restore the health of your water. It will make the water alive and well again."

This kind of derp wouldn't get through an elementary-level science fair. Definitely a lesser-of-the-two-evils kind of situation, though.

<comment><USER3> "The vortex energy created by a double spiral flowform, restores the natural energy in your water, using Nature's wisdom _with a little help from quantum physics_ "

Yahtzee!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> from the comments:

> _I have a college degree. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa. I work as a substitute > teacher, and I make about $8.25 per hour, have no benefits, and have to find > alternative work in the summer._

$8.25 is £5.24; that's less than UK minimum wage which is £6.08 if you're over 21.

I have no idea why Americans accept this. Why are Americans allowing billions to be spent on security theatre while schools struggle for funding?

</comment><comment><USER14> The TSA let me board with a lighter and an aerosol form alcohol. Didn't realize until I'd landed that they'd let me board with materials for a small- scale flamethrower. I donated the lighter to a smoker I saw at the airport and checked the other in my additional luggage before my return flight.

<comment><USER15> From my understanding you are allowed one lighter in your carry on. I had two one time and had to throw one out.

<comment><USER16> What could you possibly do with 2 lighters that you could not do with one

<comment><AUTHOR> Along the same lines, lots of companies make sunscreen in 10x ml quantities for the associated benefits. When the agent wanted to take away my 106 ml bottle, I asked if I could squeeze 6 ml out and take it on. No dice.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do free services on the web make money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/02/26/how-do-free-services-on-the-web-make-money/ <comment><USER3> Interesting coincidence - last night I finished my first post in a series of posts about startup business models. Specificaly, advertising: [http://blog.chewxy.com/2013/03/06/startup-business-models- ad...](http://blog.chewxy.com/2013/03/06/startup-business-models-advertising/)

My startup is going thru a series of heavy re-thinks, so I thought I would blog about the different models, and how to approach them in a rather thorough fashion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks chewxy. The only issue is that advertising is getting increasingly sophisticated and contextual. The big boys (Facebook and Google) have way too much data and crowd out the smaller startups. So, startups should start thinking beyond advertising as a main source of revenue.

<comment><USER3> I maintain that if you know what you're doing, advertising is ridiculously profitable. Most of the time though, most startups that use advertising do it because: they don't have other business models, and so advertising is shoe- horned in.

On the other hand, a startup that knows what they're doing will know that building out the correct audience is the way to go - if you provide your clients (the advertiser) what they want (quality, relevant audiences, preferably with intent to buy), you can do quite well.

<comment><USER4> Any examples to support your case?

<comment><USER3> Google (the search engine) would be the prime example. A search engine is the service that Google provides, and by virtue of its service, they build their product (audiences) by making the audience self-select into niches (i.e intents).

Google isn't a startup anymore. If I were to be asked about more recent startups, I'd list Buzzfeed, the 9gag peoples, Ben Huh's company (can't remember the name) amongst those with quite decent strategies for advertising. You may notice that they're almost all content based companies/startups - that's because it's easier to build audiences with content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a big one missing from this list that is somewhat recent.

Selling the placement of audience segmentation/retargeting cookies on a publisher's site to a data aggregator like Bluekai (typically on a CPM bases) who then sells that aggregated data to DSPs/DMPs for use in display advertising.

If you want to learn about a whole different layer of the ad tech industry, just start perusing some of the questions on Quora for Bluekai (<http://www.quora.com/BlueKai>) and then do some digging on the companies in the Data Aggregator and Data Supplier buckets of the LUMAscape for display advertising ([http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/display-ad-tech- lumas...](http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumascape/)).

<comment><USER6> I wonder how they're going to work around two of the four major browsers blocking third-party cookies by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ironically, the original author (who has some sort of Quora affiliation) did not include "generate content and resell it to other free web services" in the list.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's one he forgot: I've seen niche content sites that after building a community hold conferences. They may have advertising but it's the conference that's their main money maker.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good feedback, rmason. It is a niche model that could be added to the article.

<comment><USER9> Its not that niche eg TED.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Disclaimer: I'm going to comment on my personal experience running a free web application,<http://sleepyti.me>. It's not meant to be self-promoting, but I feel that the experience is relevant._

There are a lot of ways to make actual profit (not just break even) with free applications.

The Hacker News crowd doesn't always show a lot of love for the "small, free application" crowd, and the echo chamber is correct that having a webapp doesn't mean you're a startup.

I know that I don't consider myself the "founder" of my app, because my site is not a company. I'm not trying to make it a business.

That said, though, this write-up glosses over what has been, in my experience, the easiest and most straightforward way to profit from free traffic: _non-_ targeted ads. For me, that means a single banner advertisement served over Google Adsense.

Now, like I said, I'm not trying to make <http://sleepyti.me> my primary income. If I wanted to charge users, or enter deals with, say, large mattress vendors, that would be different. But that isn't to say that the traffic and feedback I've received hasn't helped me both personally and professionally.

Personally, I've received a lot of attention from my app. It's pretty popular with college students, and it's gained media attention from outlets such as Lifehacker, the Toronto Star, and most recently the New York Times.

I'm not listing these sources to self-promote, but to show that from a personal exposure standpoint, it's opened many doors for me.

The same goes professionally: I had a brief partnership with YC-backed WakeMate, which, although now defunct, allowed me to interact with an early- stage YC company that I otherwise would not have been able to experience. I get between 1.6 and 2 million hits a month, and the financial reward has been steadily increasing through my single banner ad as well.

People always say that "if you're not paying for it, you're the product," but I don't think that that's always true. I don't prey on my users, and I can think of several free apps that operate in a similar--even _less_ obtrusive-- manner. Trello, for example, neither serves ads nor sells my personal data (I hope!). Sometimes it's worth it for a developer to create something and truly release it for free, without having the immediate motive of profit.

I always tell college students who ask how to break into an industry--whether it's information security, professional programming, the startup world, or anything else--to _do_ something. Sometimes a free application, such as the one I created as a free weekend side-project, turns into more than what it is. I'm more than aware that my experience is mostly a fluke, though. The take- home message should be that _even if it doesn't_ become some massively- profitable, highly-trafficked app or site, it's still something that you built.

And that has value.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I did the very same thing, made a small app that showed off my coding skills. It only made about $1000 through Amazon Affiliate sales over the course of a year, but it got some press coverage and got me numerous job offers, one of which I ended up accepting.

There is a lot of value to be had from providing a free web app if you are a lone hacker looking for a job.

<comment><USER12> So - the people who make enough to pay you a salary - what business are they in, and how do they make their money?

I'm not trying to be snarky. Well, maybe just a little, but in a good-natured way - I think you got a good deal that probably met or exceeded your expectations, which is commendable!

But you did not create a sustainable business. To do so with ads is not impossible, but since each user generally gives you way, way less revenue than with something where they pay for it, you really have to parsimonious with resources per user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Advertising sucks because worldwide inventory grows faster than the supply of eyeball-hours to view the ads. So there's constant downward pressure on prices.

Subscription sucks because you have to fight subscriber fatigue ... if you can get someone to sign up at all. People sweat over $5/month memberships; meanwhile they spend $20/wk on coffee.

Micropayments suck because everyone hates the mental overhead.

I have a solution I call "microsubscription". The only problem is that it's been tried by others and failed. Naturally I feel I've got the magic ingredients that the others didn't have, but ... we'll see.

<comment><USER3> And yet, there are still sites that will command a high eCPM. The difference is of course, the audience quality.

Like I mentioned in my latest blog post[0],

> Real time bidding engines are getting more and more intelligent, and would > be able to guess with quite good results, how valuable a user is to the > advertiser. This allows the advertiser to only pay high amounts for > audiences that matter to their ROI, while paying low amounts to audiences > that don't.

> What happens is then this: a segregation of high paying advertisers and low > paying advertisers form. When I say high paying advertisers I mean > advertisers who would pay high for the right audience. They will pay > significantly higher than the low paying advertisers, who would "spray and > pray" their ads in hopes of reaching the right audience.

I maintain that if a startup is able to build the correct audiences (StackOverflow building an audience of IT professionals for example), the revenue from advertising will be substantial.

[0] [http://blog.chewxy.com/2013/03/06/startup-business-models- ad...](http://blog.chewxy.com/2013/03/06/startup-business-models-advertising/)

<comment><USER13> My original motivating problem was: how do blogs I like make money?

Blogs that aren't about answering Oracle Obscure Platform 6.75a-R2 questions. Blogs that aren't about mesothelioma. Blogs that aren't "review" websites.

Honest, good old fashioned smart people writing thoughtful stuff.

Based on who I've talked to in areas of business and politics and the visible spread of ideas in Australian public intellectual life, the demographics for the blogs I directly host are _amazing_. Highly paid professionals all round. They're read in ministry offices and C-suites all over the country.

To scrape some of this high-quality audience $$ I'd need to adopt a very high touch advertising policy and use invasive user tracking to prove my demographics. I don't have time or the moral flexibility and neither do the bloggers.

Hence: how do the blogs I like make money?

(Answer right now is: at their dayjobs.)

The technology I've developed allows users to be tracked visiting participating websites without the websites being able to piggyback on my scheme to track users across multiple sites. It's resistant to the visit falsification attacks present in any standard tracking scheme.

Pointless without a business, of course. So watch this space, I suppose.

<comment><USER3> Ever thought of advertorials? Advertorials + rev share would be a good idea had you not listed "moral flexibility" in your list of constraints.

I noticed you host John Quiggin. I used to read him a lot. This is how he would use his blog to make money: sell his books to his blog audience. Tyler Cowen, the guy behind Marginal Revolution used to have this trick where he would give you access to his private cooking blog if you bought his book. Some form of managed affiliate system would be my best guess.

Also, mesothelioma is soooo 2005. :P

<comment><USER13> When I wrote my honours project (which was the first version of the tech I developed) I mentioned merchandising; it's pretty hit-driven though.

I personally make money on affiliate links to Amazon. By which I mean "I get a minute subsidy on my book habit".

Some of the bloggers make a few dollars on advertising, but the amount has steadily fallen because they aren't sufficiently narrowly focused to be worth finding a niche advertiser. And they aren't sufficiently widely read that a more general A/B brand-awareness advertiser would pay much over open-market CPM.

<comment><USER3> You seem to have found the problem by yourself. IMO this would be the trough of sorrow[0] for any startup with advertising as a monetization plan - <USER2> growth but no growth phase.

In my blog post I mentioned that here there are basically two paths to go - both of which you have identified. If you want to stick with advertising, choose one?

[0]<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/the-startup-curve.html>

<comment><USER13> I am choosing to invent a new model, actually :)

<comment><USER3> pray share (microsubscription has been done before as you said). How would you do it?

<comment><USER13> Email me.

Edit: "invent a new model" is hubristic code for "independently invent a new model that actually can be analogised to some pre-internet models".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice list where the author is trying to make a comprehensive list, but then I also have some criticism of the article. It lacks some models, and it makes an implied relationship between for-profit and non-profit. In the English language, this is commonly refereed as making money vs raising money. A charity or non-profit (say Wikipedia) is commonly not talking about making money.

Some projects is funded by an indirect sponsorship model. Best example here is google and their model of giving 20 percent of an employees time to do what ever project that the employee wants. While Khan academy model is direct funding, projects that are an result of the google employee free time model is indirectly funded project.

Then we have non-profit and what they will consider to spend money and man hours on. Sometimes, that not even remotely related to their primary purpose, but is just something that interest the people in the organization.

</comment><comment><USER15> Note that many of these fall into a bait-and-switch category. You use the product for free for a while, and then all of a sudden you are spammed to high hell, or functionality is taken away unless you pay.

Paying isn't really that bad of an option sometimes.

<comment><USER16> That's not bait and switch.

> "Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also practiced > in other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by merchants' advertising > products or services at a low price; then customers discover the advertised > goods are not available. Other products are "switched" for them; however, > these items are often costlier." > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_switch>

Bait and switch means that you're promised or enticed with one specific thing, but that thing is not available and you're offered something different. The idea is that you wanted something, so fuck it just buy it and get it over with. And of course some people won't even notice the switch.

Free now pay later and the other schemes are not bait and switch. When you get there/sign up, you have the free version right now, exactly as advertised. And there is no attempt (usually) to hide the fact that free is only for N days, after which you'll need to sign up.

Similar for free/paid for reduced/enhanced. You're getting exactly what's being offered.

<comment><USER15> But they are bait and switch when the terms and offers change after you sign up. Instagram for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They don't. They hemorrage money in an attempt to get some claim of silicon valley gold.

</comment><comment><USER18> Gullible VCs.

</comment><comment><USER19> I clicked the link and got a full page ad and thought that was the joke.

</comment><comment><USER20> Many times they don't. It's usually something like Instagram where they give out a product for free in hopes that piles of people will start using it, and they'll "figure out something later". Worked out great for Google and Instagram, not so great for 999,999 other startups who tried it.

Personally, I like the idea, but it's tough.

<comment><USER21> I always thought if you have a product that works but is free , you can commditize it by selling your infrastructure as a service ( paid API , hosting , etc ... ).

For instance , instragram could sell a way to make instragram clones in the cloud, like wordpress has a free blog script and sells blog hosting for that script, you get my point. Once you understand a domain and develop an app for that , should be easy to sell your app infrastructure as a service for thirdparty apps.

<comment><USER22> The problem? They can't really sell that.

Want to make an Instagram clone? Write a web interface for Imagemagick Youtube clone? Interface for ffmpeg... This gets boring quickly. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Scaling a Rails Webservice on AWS/EC2 for a #1 iPhone and iPad App - <AUTHOR> http://discovr.info/2011/07/scaling-a-rails-webservice-on-awsec2-for-a-1-iphone-and-ipad-app/

<comment><USER2> I was really hoping for a bit more meat in this article. Perhaps some discussion on their caching strategy, or how they're building their JSON (i.e. traditional model-based #to_json approach, or something along the lines of Rabl).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the RABL reference (<https://github.com/nesquena/rabl>), interesting stuff, perfect timing for one of my projects.

<comment><USER2> I'm using this on a project right now and am finding a lot of successes derived from its use. We tried to build our JSON in the model using the traditional #to_json/#as_json approach in Rails, but found this was falling on its face when our data model became more complex (which, itself, is probably a code smell, but that's another story).

Good luck! I hope it brings you success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would you actually go with Rails compared to a smaller framework? If all they are serving is JSON wouldn't something like Sinatra be better? Less fancy stuff they probably don't use anyway?

</comment><comment><USER5> Linkbait; there's nothing here about either scaling or an iPhone app.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article doesn't really bring anything new to the table - folks have been using this setup for a long time. They could at least talk about how they're managing deployment and scaling under high loads (manual? automated?), or how they're splitting the DB requests between the master and the slave under Rails.

</comment><comment><USER7> According to the picture; does it mean that you have 4 instances (Rails) serving all traffic? I know that you can scale it horizontally. But, at the moment, is 4 the real number?

</comment><comment><USER8> Agreed, really would like to see more technical information about this. A deeper dive is preferred...

</comment><comment><USER9> This scales well for reads, but not for writes. The single MySQL instance is still handling all writes and (in it's current form) will have to be scaled vertically.

</comment><comment><USER10> I see the EC2's are in different regions but not the RDS, can you choose which region your put your RDS in or is that not a factor?

<comment><USER11> To clarify they said "availability zones", not "regions", which is a huge difference in terms of latency. And yes, you can tell RDS which availability zone to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> rl baoo</comment>


Show HN: Video calls and web browsing in Minecraft. - <AUTHOR> http://verizoncraft.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Two things:

1) This is pretty cool! I wanted something like this when i played; although with a better screen. and no video calling. But still, doing it with individual blocks renders cool results nonetheless. I was pondering something similar in space engineers (which, is like an adult minecraft in space) but for breaking up LCD panel textures.

2) Fuck Verizon with a rusty nail. I cannot underscore this second point enough. There is no back peddling from who they are and what they do. The day they are broken up cannot come soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> Time for a corollary to Atwood's Law: any application that can be created in Minecraft will eventually be created in Minecraft.

<comment><USER4> I'm waiting for a nested X11 server.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is powered by some very real Minecraft plugins. A stripped down version is available here: [https://github.com/VerizonCraft/Boxel- client](https://github.com/VerizonCraft/Boxel-client)

</comment><comment><USER5> For me it's yet another example of technology (that was predicted long time ago) emerging from quite an unexpected direction:

1\. For many years we were reading/watching SF about computers worn on the wrists. They materialized as an extension of phones.

2\. For many years we were reading/watching SF about (successful) virtual/simulated world. It materializes as extension of an "ugly", indie game.

I'm quite sure there are other examples, but can't recall them right now.

<comment><USER6> MineCraft is uses an engine that's flexible enough to accomodate this kind of use. It's both moddable and very flexible. Even if the game supports mods, you usually can't affect the geometry in a wide reaching way like you can with Minecraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> But why?

<comment><USER8> To promote Verizon, obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice cell tower.

</comment><comment><USER10> that first sentence though...</comment>


Ask HN: Why do I see ads for websites I just visited in my Facebook Feed? - <AUTHOR>

It feels a little disturbing that after visiting a website like One Month Rails I see ads for that site in my Facebook feed. Is that just an ad program that looks at the cookies I have, or what? Am I being irrational by finding this troubling? <comment><USER2> It is all part of targeted advertising by tracking your online behavior and it is not irrational to feel creeped out by this.

A few months ago, Facebook partnered with some of the largest data companies such as Acxiom, Blue Kai, Epsilon, and Datalogix to help improve their targeting. ([https://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/partner- categories...](https://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/partner-categories-a- new-self-serve-targeting-feature))

One way to help prevent targeted advertising and companies collecting behavioral data about you is to use a browser plugin called Ghostery. ([http://ghostery.com](http://ghostery.com))

Disclaimer: I work for Evidon, the owner of Ghostery.</comment>


Ask HN: How has your life changed since working remotely/digital nomading - <AUTHOR> Would be interested to listen to personal stories. <comment><USER2> I gradually lost touch with reality. Days without speaking to another human and even then a minor interaction in the store.

My team kept in touch via IRC.

Bedroom -- Kitchen -- Office -- Bedroom (+ bathroom)

My friend once said to me "I'm going crazy working from home, how did you manage to stay sane" to which I could only answer "what makes you think I did?".

I am so glad to have gotten out of that life and back into a cube.</comment>