How to Do QA Testing with Fred at Rainforest (YC S12) - <AUTHOR> http://www.talkingcode.com/podcast/episode-6-fred-stevens-smith/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday there was a related post by the folks at Rainforest here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9566542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9566542)

I highly recommend the article and discussion there.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great podcast! I feel like this podcast really fills in that gap between non- technical and technical.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Being right in the middle myself and working with developers on a regular basis...I really am enjoying the insights on this podcast!</comment></comment>


The Controversial Chinese Economist Uncovering Tough Truths - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/the-controversial-chinese-economist-uncovering-tough-truths <comment><USER2> >"Statistics were never about serving the public. They were — and still are — for the purposes of serving the government bureaucracy"

That statement has a familiar smell here in America.</comment>


The hate-speech law will turn the Internet into television - <AUTHOR> https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2019/07/11/the-hate-speech-law-will-turn-the-internet-into-television/ <comment><USER2> I'm just glad that "hate speech" will always be responsibly defined and enforced, and everyone will agree on exactly what it means.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure "hate speech" are exactly the things that "free speech" intended to protect: things people do not want to hear.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unregulated systems become regulated systems - the moment they begin to carry more than a threshold monetary value.</comment>


Show HN: PersonaVerified, Twitter verification - <AUTHOR> http://personaverified.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear thoughts on accuracy of our verification algorithm - <USER2> suggestions welcome!</comment>


MIT Economist David Autor on the Future of Work and Polanyi's Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/10/david_autor_on.html <comment><USER2> For someone who's a techno-libertarian, like myself, it's hard to have a good response to the "computers are taking all our jobs" argument.

The most straightforward response is "It will PROBABLY turn out OK, new jobs will probably show up", but that just isn't a very satisfying retort, even if it's the truth.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you could tell them that the question betrays a deep misconception. We can use computers to decrease and deskill employment. Or we could have fewer hours at greater pay, with less drudgery for the remaining work.

(It's like energy research. Want nukes, or sustainable or clean energy? That's up to society to decide.)

Of course, passive people who stick to the status quo means we get bad outcomes.

<comment><USER4> > Or we could have fewer hours at greater pay, with less drudgery for the > remaining work.

Right. However, GP may have alluded to the question of whether such an outcome is compatible with libertarianism. Does _that_ question betray a deep misconception?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunate to discover that this new-to-me paradox isn't a paradox at all. "Some things we know/understand can't be written down [easily], thus we know more than we can explicitly explain". It's not counter-intuitive at all, and doesn't oppose itself in any way.

<comment><USER2> The paradox is the part where things that are hard to write down (i.e. do laundry, trim your fingernails, make a sandwich) seem extremely easy and seem like the first things machines would have taken over, whereas things that are easy to write down (playing chess, arming nuclear missles, diagnose a tumor) seem very hard but are relatively easy for a computer to do.

(And yes, it still doesn't qualify as a paradox, in the mathematical sense.)

<comment><USER6> I don't know, the first group of things is wholly physical, and the second group is wholly digital. It's incomparably easier to build things (and rightfully so) that never touch the physical world because you don't have to build any physical hardware manufacturing infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Offtopic but is there a way to load these kind of one-off podcasts onto an iPhone?

<comment><USER8> You can download the episode, without subscribing, from the EconTalk "page", or whatever it's called, in the iTunes store.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GitMap – A location based job board powered only by GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/idoco/GitMap <comment><USER2> I don't see myself in that board.

<comment><AUTHOR> The map doesn't show the current user location. You will need to submit a new entry to see it on map.

Submitting a new entry creates a pull request on your behalf to push the new data to the gh-pages branch.</comment></comment>


The Null Professor (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://tagide.com/blog/2014/10/the-null-professor/ <comment><USER2> For me, this article was thought-provoking throughout, but there was a very deeply-buried lede as well: in the linked interview with Maria Klawe[1], all the way at the bottom, where she mentions separating the 101-level CS class by previous programming experience. I think that an exceedingly large portion of the barriers to entry faced by students trying to enter the field is due to the disparity in _experience_ , which masquerades as a disparity in _aptitude_. That disparity turns into a large barrier to entry, due to both self-selection on the part of the students (feeling intimidated and outclassed), and also the issues being discussed in this article about being written-off as no good by the professor.

There may, perhaps, also be an inherent aptitude component as well. I still sort of think that there probably is. But we still shouldn't confuse that with what's really going on in the intro classes. Some kids that have the aptitude, and still have the potential to become exceedingly competent, should not be weeded out just because they didn't have the good fortune to be exposed to CS before college.

[1] Full disclosure: HMC alumn

</comment><comment><USER3> I compare coding with making music. You can teach everybody to make music, but most people are to shy to begin. Learning to make music requires lots of boring practice. Lot of people fail after a few month of guitar lessons as a kid.

But then there are those manic musicians. A real musician must play everyday, regardless if he has audience, if he gets payed, if it sounds good to anybody but him. A real musician is manic and becomes depressive, if unable to make music. Some of them become great musicians.

Its the same with coding. Most people are to shy to try even. Lots of people fail to get traction. Only a few become manic, and of those a some become great coders.

<comment><USER4> I've been using the analogy for 30 years now.

I've taught both programming and guitar over the years, and in the end, those that _endure the frustrations and loneliness of learning_ , because of whatever-inner-drive, have become successful, although it would seem that in this context, the word "successful" is perhaps fairly arbitrary, which also may be at issue here.

It really isn't much more complicated then that.

I just cannot see any shortcut in learning to play guitar besides actually playing an hour a day, with very sore fingertips and sounding like crap, for months, although, of course, my encouragement and beginner-level instruction in how to play "Seven Nation Army" and "Brain Stew" is, at some level, probably sort of helpful.

Same with learning Python/C/JS/etc.

I have always loved the term _grok_ as a wonderful descriptor of gaining these type of skills and knowledge, as it captures the essence of the idea almost perfectly.

[edits]

<comment><USER3> > Same with learning Python.

A language is like an instrument, once you know one, learning the next will be much easier, because you already know about rhythm and harmonics. Each new instrument, even a new guitar, is a ear opener, as it forces one to play different, to learn fresh.

Same with programming languages. Learning a new language becomes trivial after the first dozen. But each new one widens the way one see code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author introduces a catchy archetype: The Null Professor. She then proceeds to tell a story about elite universities, which apparently are a breeding sites for such educators. When the author finally turns to explaining the term, 'pedagogy' is invoked. Just pedagogy.

Somewhat later in the post, the word can even be clicked upon. I honestly hoped that the link would explain the specifics in teaching methodology, but it was simply a link to the Wikipedia page about the term.

Good teachers use pedagogy. Bad teachers, which are 'Null Professors', don't use pedagogy. Simple. The author herself once didn't use pedagogy. Now she does. She understands now.

The article then turns to a question: "Why student's don't get it". This also is easily answered: educators should use "problem-driven and hands-on [methods] rather than abstraction-driven".

<comment><USER6> If you asked an experienced effective high school teacher "how do you do it?" What could they tell you? It took a lot of work to learn how to teach: experimentation, analysis, etc...you simply have to learn how to teach!

What you are fishing for is "how to teach", whereas Crista post is simply pointing out that "you have to learn how to teach". It is a bit circular, but in university most professors come in without any formal training on how to teach undergraduates; the idea that you have to learn how to teach is still quite radical.

<comment><USER7> _If you asked an experienced effective high school teacher "how do you do it?" What could they tell you? It took a lot of work to learn how to teach: experimentation, analysis, etc...you simply have to learn how to teach!_

Take a look at _Teach Like a Champion 2.0_ by Lemov. It answers this precise question! ([http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Like- Champion-2-0-Techniques/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Like- Champion-2-0-Techniques/dp/1118901851)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with CS education is that many students have had experience programming (and with computers generally) during their teen years, so professors can get away with not properly teaching CS fundamentals as many students already know them, or at least enough to easily grasp the rest.

But there are plenty of students who _don 't_, and they're the ones left out. They have no idea how to program, and the useless programming course won't help them, because for the past 30 years most of the students taking it have already known how to program, so the people designing the course have no idea as to its actual quality. The professors see them struggling and assume they just "don't get it".

It's this which also causes the massive gender bias in CS students: male students, to whom early (and current) computers were marketed, had learned to program at home. Female students, to whom home computers were never marketed, mostly didn't learn to program at home. So they take the course, are considered by the professors to "not get it" unlike most of their male peers, and drop out: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- wom...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women- stopped-coding)

<comment><USER6> The post specifically addresses this in paragraph two:

> First, after the first few years of being a professor, my conclusion was the > same: there's nothing I can do, some students get it others don't. I've > learned a few things since then, and I know I was completely wrong. I was > being a "Null Professor" at the time. Now I know better.

...

> A Null Professor is someone who never has to think about pedagogy. The Null > Professor is not necessarily a bad professor, although that may happen too; > it's just that he/she doesn't think about pedagogy, teaching comes as > whatever natural teaching skill he/she has.

<comment><USER8> Only partly. As lmkg points out ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351075)), the post hints at but doesn't directly state the aptitude/experience distinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I currently get a teaching degree. The education for that is split in two parts: The academic part in the university and the practical part at a school. I'm currently in the academic part, but some time ago a professor (not actually a professor) of the practical part gave some insights what the expect in the second part.

He said that no matter how good we will be, in CS half of our (high school) students will not learn much, if anything.

I was (and still am) absolutely shocked about this statement.

He claimed that this was a unique property of CS. If such a thing would happen in any other subject the teacher would be a total failure. But it would happen to him in CS, every college and every teacher in education he was ever responsible for.

This person is responsible for the education of teachers, engaged, probably very well thought and I have every reason to believe him to be a very good teacher. I'm don't know what I should think about this.

But The link at the end is really not helpful.

>At Harvey Mudd we've focused on changing four things about learning CS: make it fun, make it relevant, make it not scary and make it clear that lots of kinds of people have careers involving CS. We changed the context of the intro course to "creative problem-solving in science and engineering using computational approaches with Python" instead of "learn to program in Java" and made sure that the homework assignments were a lot of fun. We did not reduce the level of rigor or challenge, and we increased the amount of programming.

So, you made CS less like math. That good for some. But you completely ignore that math education does not suffer these problems. Why not making making it more like math? Well, in the end AFAIK neither works. At least for worse half of high school students.

<comment><USER10> There is a considerable literature on 'the CS1 problem' in education. It is a long-term, robust observation that the marks in first-year computing courses in university are strongly bimodal in a way that is not seen in other, comparably difficult subjects.

Here is a discussion of a paper (with link to the paper itself) that looks at these issues: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1338](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1338)

And some follow-on, where I build a simple model that reproduces the biomodal mark distribution under the assumption that there is a single characteristic that is uniformly distributed amongst the population but that exhibits a threshold when it comes to programming: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1471](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1471)

My bet is there's one (or a small number) of characteristics that are possessed in different degree by people and that if you fall below some threshold you will have a hard time learning to code. I liken this to height with respect to getting over a wall in an obstacle course: for people who are tall enough, it'll be easy. For people below some threshold it will become increasingly hard. There are two other variables that matter (strength and weight) so it may be difficult to pull out height as a single parameter, but some linear combination of height, weight and strength should be a good predictor of ability to get over the wall.

No one has found such a small set of factors for programming ability yet, but I'm not aware of anyone testing the things that are likely to be important, particularly a) ability to follow instructions; b) ability to create a set of instructions for a task that, when followed by a person unfamiliar with every element of the task will result in its successful completion; and c) ability to arbitrarily use anything to represent anything else.

<comment><USER4> I think your entire thesis can be boiled down to "if there is a will, there is a way."

Which, I believe, also hold true with learning to program.

<comment><USER10> Not at all. It's "Some (maybe many) people will require an implausibly large amount of will for learning to code to be a worthwhile use of their time."

Like anyone who has pursued a diversity of interests fairly seriously over decades, I've found that some things are really easy for me, others not. I'm an excellent poet, if I do say so myself, and although I've worked hard at it, it comes easily to me. But after forty years of steady practice I'm pretty sure I will never be much of a prose stylist, no matter how hard I work at it. I can tell a decent story, but when I look at people like Iain Banks or David Mitchell I recognize that they "get it" in a way I probably never will, no matter how much effort I put in.

So the belief that force of will can overcome all obstacles is not one that I subscribe to. It can help, but some obstacles are simply too big. It is an open question if this is often the case with regard to learning to code, and while I think it is, the lack of any independent measure of "getting it" makes my position implausible. As such, all that would take to convince me otherwise would be a way of teaching CS1 that didn't routinely result in the traditional bimodal mark distribution.

<comment><USER4> > Not at all. It's "Some (maybe many) people will require an implausibly large > amount of will for learning to code to be a worthwhile use of their time."

I totally agree with this, and, if fact, it I were totally honest I would say that I took up programming at 15yo because it came easily to me and seemed like a great way to make a living, although performing music was my true love.

I am not saying " force of will can overcome all obstacles", but I am saying if someone wants to overcome their obstacles, there should be no additional ones placed in their way just because they are on the wrong side of the "bimodal mark distribution" curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't agree with the fact that programming can't be taught. However, I also can't overcome 12+ years of (mis-)education in one semester.

There was an article posted that showed that you could predict performance in introductory CS from a single test given at the beginning of the semester. There were 3 groups:

1) the group who understood about rules, applying them to a computing system and had the correct interpretation of them--they did well unsurprisingly.

2) the group who understood about rules, applied them consistently, but simply had the wrong rules internalized. They did well after being taught since all you had to do was correct the wrong rules.

3) the group who simply didn't have any logical understanding of how to apply underlying rules to a system--they simply failed miserably. To teach these people CS, you _first_ have to teach these people logical cause/effect thought. This is so fundamental a building block that you can't possibly cover it in a CS course. So, to a first approximation, these people actually _can 't_ be taught because you have to fix something else first.

And, _that_ problem, I suspect, is actually buried in the article:

"give me a fake problem, and I don't think it's worth my time; my brain shuts off. I suspect a lot of people (especially women) are like me."

When faced with this situation, some of us get told: "Tough. Suck it up. You don't always get to do interesting things, and you have to succeed even if it's boring." Others of us get sympathized with and are allowed to slack with excuses like "Math is hard; I wasn't any good at it either." A couple iterations of this and you wind up with a gap in final achievement even though there is no gap in initial ability.

If I were throwing around stereotypes like the author, I would say that "Men get told to suck it up or get out. Women get sympathy and are allowed to stay and make excuses." And thus you wind up with an achievement gap between men and women.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I strongly agree with Crista on the notion that some people can inherently program, and some cannot. I think that's as ridiculous as she does. However, I see the sentiment repeated here, often. I posted this to present the arguments of a CS professor on the topic, one who has even more experiencing in it than I do.

<comment><USER10> The one thing I don't see in stuff written by people who are committed to the idea that everyone can be taught to program is before-and-after mark distributions, demonstrating _how_ we can get rid of the apparently robust bimodal distribution that has dominated first year computing courses for decades.

It's great to contend that everyone can be taught to program, but decades of research have yet to answer the question of "How?" Or even "Why?" Many people have very strongly felt opinions, but there is a surprising paucity of data.

The idea that some people get it, some don't is not at all ridiculous: it is a perfectly plausible hypothesis given the robust bimodal mark distribution seen in first year computing, which differs from what we see in math or the sciences. The problem is no one has been able to find anything that correlates well enough with this to be predictive, and if "not getting it" and "getting it" were features of humans we might expect to be able to measure them in ways other than teaching first year computing.

On the other hand, no one has ever been able to get rid of that bimodal shape (so far as I know), so there is an equal and opposite knock against that hypothesis.

I lean toward the "inherent" hypothesis and have some ideas as to what might underlie it, but would be easily convinced otherwise if anyone could actually generate an intro computer curriculum that resulted in a mark distribution that looked more like what we see in first year math or physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let me start by saying I do think there are definitely "Null Professors" who do not properly teach, and thus allow competent students to fail.

However, I must agree with the notion that some people inherently can't program. To take the most extreme case, do you think the dumbest human on earth could learn to program? I don't. All concepts require some level of intelligence to grasp. Many animals have some intelligence, but cannot learn how to count. Humans know how to count because humans originated the concept, and therefore the first human to do it must have had some intrinsic ability others lacked. Teaching can spread the insight, but it cannot create insight from nothing.

I will go one further to say some people who can't program make it into universities. Admissions aren't perfect. People can get in because of their parents, because the school wants them as an athlete, because of Affirmative Action, or a simple misjudgement by university staff.

I think people lose sight of this because intelligence and knowledge are so hard to measure. Footraces are much easier because you can only measure speed against a clock, and I know most humans will never have the ability to run a 4 minute mile. No women has done it yet.

This is not to say this makes some people "better" than others, but everyone has their own skills. It is folly to think everyone can do anything anyone else can do, even in principle.

</comment><comment><USER13> > A final word on genetics. There is increasing evidence that there are > substantial differences in the way that various segments of the population > learn. For example, studies have shown that men's and women's brains are > wired differently. So maybe we need to use pedagogies that work better for > each group, instead of uniformly using the white male-dominated learning > paradigms that have been forced on us for centuries, only to discover that > they tend to turn women off.

No. Just no.

First, the study linked to is indeed an interesting finding on neuronal differences between men and women... that is easily twisted to justify existing stereotypes. It doesn't actually say anything about FUNCTIONALITY - just anatomy. But it's easy for the author to connect those dots, despite no scientific basis.

Second, there are no "white male-dominated learning paradigms" that are SPECIAL to computer science. Women have achieved parity in biology, despite "white male-dominated learning paradigms" there, and women have achieved dominance in psychology, again despite "white male-dominated learning paradigms". Those show that such "paradigms" are not the issue.

Honestly, after such a thoughtful article, I was disappointed it ruined itself so thoroughly at the end.

<comment><USER12> Structure influences functionality. This is the case in both engineering and biology.

For example, dolphins have tails and flippers while I have arms and legs. No one disputes the dolphin is a better swimmer and I am the superior runner.

Why should this be any different with brains? Brains with different structure are suited to different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The part about undergraduate versus graduate marks, to me at least, doesn't seem to say what the author thinks it says.

To me, it says "your marking scheme for graduates is broken".

The entire purpose of marks is to classify the people taking the course. Or, to put it another way:

When everyone is super, no-one is.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I only one who read this as "the null processor" and thought it's a dumbed- down CPU for educational purposes?</comment>


I spent $200k on biohacking.Became calmer,thinner,extroverted,healthier&happier - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/im-32-and-spent-200k-on-biohacking-became-calmer-thinner-extroverted-healthier-happier-2a2e846ae113 <comment><USER2> ...and there is no control factor whatsoever, so we cannot even begin to guess whether we should credit 1) the meditation 2) the supplement piles he consumed twice daily 3) the mdma 4) the exercise 5) the litany of other "wellness" practices he concatenated.

I have no doubt whatsoever that that the author did indeed achieve his goals.

We have, however, no clue as to what is useful versus bogus due to the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach.

Perhaps I would find it more useful to extrapolate valuable lifestyle advice from if the author did: 1) a month of only mdma (lol) 2) a month of only meditation 3) a month of only supplements and to make it fair, it should be the same month over and over again, so we will need a time machine.

It might also be easier to clone the author and then apply the various treatments to the individual clones.

Maybe the next round of tests should incorporate ayahuasca ceremonies and hanging from inversion boots.

<comment><USER3> is very complex to nail the real factor, behind the consequence, for example you can loose weight, by just tracking your weight daily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My observation is that a higher probability of being comfortable with who you are is among the benefits of growing older. It doesn't happen to everyone of course, but it seems to happen to most people. It's one of the connotations of "maturity". Having a few hundred thousand dollars to throw at a hobby probably helps people get comfort with who they are.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems pretty weird to me, after all healthy stuff, the all supplements might be normal for Americans, but it is shocking for me after eat, exercice, meditate well that you have you take antidepressants, modafil etc..

<comment><USER6> Don't forget toward the end of the article he mentioned taking HGH and clomid...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Donate shares of startup to charity for carryable tax deduction? - <AUTHOR> Throwaway account for ovious reasons.
I'm a co-founder at an ~3 year old startup that has closed two rounds of funding and raising a 3rd, giving my founder shares a rather large paper valuation in the 10's of millions. However things have changed, and I lost faith in our leadership and product, and I lack power to do anything about it. So I already parted ways and am working on my next startup.
But those shares remain, and even heavily discounted as common stock my shares are still a life changing amount of money. However I'm personally certain that I have a snowball's chance in hell of actually seeing a liquidity event that pays me out. Nevertheless the investment market has spoken, and investors with the same or better access to information than I have now have decided to make further investments at an even higher valuation.
So.. can I cash out on this? My shares are illiquid, subject to all the usual restrictions. But I would have no trouble convincing the company to allow me to donate a large percentage to a charity of my choice, or even a self-directed charitable fund. I should then be able to claim a tax deduction equal to the paper value of the shares today. While my bank account will still remain empty, it would allow me to pay approximately zero federal taxes from now until I stop working, giving me effectively a 35% salary boost. And this wouldn't be tax fraud -- the new investments coming in demonstrate that sophisticated investors who know what they are doing and should be trusted more than me, do in fact think the company is worth this amount or more.
Did I miss something? Some googling hasn't shown any examples of this. I've read examples of successful entrepreneurs transferring shares into charitable organizations, but not any early-stage companies as far as I can see. Surely somebody has done this before? <comment><USER2> I'm not US based, but can you offset capital gains against income tax in the US? Most jurisdictions don't allow this. But perhaps there are income tax deductions for donations to a charity.

Honestly, not a bad idea, but perhaps worth getting an IRS tax ruling for, since we're talking tens of millions (paper gains). However, you'd be set for life then, and the IRS wouldn't be able to challenge that decision in the future.

Alternatively, have you tried selling part of your stake to the new investors in the round, at a discount? If you could sell 10% of your stake, discounted, you just figured out the entire (actual) value of your equity stake.

<comment><AUTHOR> > can you offset capital gains against income tax in the US?

You can offset charitable donations against income tax. The personal capital gains is avoided by transferring shares directly, without selling. (The charity typically then pays the capital gains via unrelated business income tax.)

> Alternatively, have you tried selling part of your stake to the new > investors in the round, at a discount?

Unfortunately, no. I tried :(

<comment><USER2> Another thing to consider if you do do this: if tax law changes are made, it could be that the carry forward mechanism no longer works indefinitely, but is capped at a certain amount of tax years before it is permanently lost (e.g. 5, 7, 9).

Just a thought: having a large carry forward tax loss in itself has value, and if it were a sure thing you would get the deduction (e.g. through an IRS revenue ruling), then if I were you I'd probably look for some way to team up with someone. Ethics aside, there are probably ways to help someone else avoid taxes using this loss. Maybe you can make a million dollars, by helping someone else save 5 or 10 million in taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You really need to go see a tax lawyer and report back to us since I don't think anyone has a clear answer to this.

As a non-lawyer, I don't understand how this will zero out your taxes. You will get X amount and then take a X deduction, so wouldn't it look like 0 change on your taxable income on your tax returns?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would never see the shares as income, because you can "donate in-kind" by transferring ownership of the shares to the charity directly. The charity then inherits the cost basis and pays the capital gains when they sell.

It's important to note that I hold stock as an 83(b) election, not a stock option. Options can also be donated in-kind but that is even more complicated.

That said, it seems it wouldn't zero out my taxes. If donated to a public charity it has the potential to reduce taxable income by 50% for up to five years. That's still significant though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check if [https://founderspledge.com/about- us](https://founderspledge.com/about-us) ([https://founderspledge.com/faq](https://founderspledge.com/faq)) can offer free legal/tax advise here. They have a forum as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. It seems their pledge is structured to not do anything until an exit occurs. It's worth reaching out to them though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is there is no way to prove to the government how much they are worth, because as you said they are illiquid and there is no market... the best is to talk to a tax lawyer, because you can get into a lot of trouble for tax evasion...

<comment><AUTHOR> Well as I mentioned the company is currently in the process of closing a 3rd investment round. Therefore investors that are much more sophisticated than me (in both the colloquial and regulatory sense), with access to better information (e.g. up to date financials, whereas I've been out of the loop) have decided that the company is worth $x per share. If the company follows best practices in assigning a 409(a) valuation for my shares based on this sale of preferred shares, that is as far as I can tell the gold standard for valuation. My concerns are simply a lack of faith in the management and product. I'm not sure how this is any different than me saying Disney is overvalued because I think Bob Iger is a bad manager and I didn't enjoy their latest films -- if I chose to offload some Disney stock the IRS will still use the market valuation. Well, the market value of illiquid common stock is the fair 409(a) valuation based on the latest sale of preferred shares.

I will take this to a tax lawyer before proceeding, but I was hoping to find some precedent (for or against) before doing so. Tax lawyers are not cheap, and I'm presently living month to month (paper valuations notwithstanding).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting idea. Ask lawyer about it and let us know. Maybe it could even be deducted against shares you cash out for your next startup!?</comment>


WikiLeaks plans to post video showing US massacre of Afghani civilians - <AUTHOR> http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0412/wikileaks-plans-post-video-showing-massacre-afghani-civilians/

<comment><USER2> The use of the word "massacre" implies something like My Lai or the Katyn Forest, a deliberate killing of large numbers of noncombatants, especially by infantry.

Attacks by aircraft, like those in this video (as indicated in the article) and the previous one, should be described as something else -- although it remains the case that Apaches, F/A-18s, and B-1s (the US counterpart to the Backfire) do not have the large role in COIN that the Pentagon has assigned them, and their employment in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals a poisonously cavalier attitude towards non-American lives.

The right way to fight COIN campaigns is known (see David Galula, _Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice_ (1967)); it is not the same as the Pentagon's -- although in fairness, the US military has been trending in the right direction since the happy day when Rumsfeld was given the boot.

<comment><USER3> _The use of the word "massacre" implies ... a deliberate killing of large numbers of noncombatants_

I expect that the most famous "massacre" in history, at least to Americans, was the Boston Massacre in 1770. In that incident, 5 people were killed.

<comment><USER2> Just because the Boston "Massacre" is called that doesn't mean that it _was_ a massacre. Revere and Sam Adams picked a fight, and then pretended that the violence they began had been perpetrated by evil, aggressive foreigners against their pure and noble citizens -- the same contemptible monkey-trick that Putin used in Georgia. The South Ossetians began the Russian-Georgian War, by firing artillery at Georgian villages; the Boston rioters began the "Massacre," and the British fired in response to one of their soldiers being knocked down -- not by a thrown rock, but by someone hitting him with a club. That's self-defense, not My Lai or the Katyn Forest; and the verdicts from their trials support that statement.

The US has a nasty history of describing anything it doesn't like as a massacre; this is particularly visible in the Indian Wars, in which every incident in which the US wipes out an American Indian village is a "battle," and every incident in which an Indian tribe wipes out a US village is a "massacre." I'm not saying that the US was always in the wrong or that it was always in the right -- "American Indian tribes" is a pretty broad brush to be painting with, and some tribes (the Cherokee, most prominently) were more civilized than the US while others (the Sioux, for ex.) were honestly pretty barbarous -- but I am saying that traditional US historiography is propagandistic.

However, this is changing (although sometimes only by becoming propagandistic in the other direction); and the connotations of the word "massacre" remain the same regardless of how the word's been abused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is a very minor point, but could someone edit the title? "Afghani" means the currency; "Afghan" means the people of Afghanistan (Afghan-i Stan, "Land of the Afghans [originally another name for the Pashtuns]", in Persian).

This is a pretty common mistake, for what it's worth; demonymns in the eastern Middle East are kind of unpredictable.

</comment><comment><USER4> How should I feel about the possible reaction in Afghanistan given that we still have US citizens in the country? My father is due to make a two week tour of Afghanistan next week and this makes me worry for him.

I realize that exposing the realities of war is the best way to end a war but I can't help but worry for the people on the ground.

<comment><USER5> nothing should change...the people in Afghanistan already know all about all this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikileaks were exceedingly disingenuous with their presentation of the material in the former video - in which 2 helicopters killed a group carrying loaded RPG and assault rifles that were an imminent threat to a passing ground patrol that was already taking fire.

I hope that they'll let the material stand for itself rather than lying like politicians trying to score points.

The way they handled the last one was like some sort of Microsoft marketing exercise.

<comment><USER7> Did we watch the same video? The RPG and assault rifles were professional cameras in mine...

<comment><USER8> Depends, did you watch the full video or the cut one? AFAIK, there are no weapons in the cut one but there were people in the group walking around with weapons before.[1,2]

Wikileaks's goal is not neutral publishing of leaks- it's maximum political impact.[3]

As long as they continue to release the full video, I still think they do far more good than harm. The editorialization forces it into the public eye. Although I do think they were misleading, they're no worse than the MSM, and the full release allows it to be analyzed more objectively later.

"US covers up a video that should've been made public" is not as sexy as "Collateral Damage: US covers up the murder of two reporters." And when you're dealing with a public that seems more interested in Tiger's romantic escapades, perhaps that's what is necessary to seize their attention.

\-----

[1] "there do appear to be two other—two people in that crowd having weapons" -Julian Assange[[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape...](http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military)]

[2] "The [army's] report claims that at least two members of the group which were first fired on were armed"[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike#Release_of_Army_report)]

[3] Assange's interview with Colbert. [http://gawker.com/5515720/stephen- colbert-grills-wikileaks-f...](http://gawker.com/5515720/stephen-colbert- grills-wikileaks-founder-on-helicopter-video)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's wrong with using non-lethal weapons when one side has an overwhelming advantage?

<comment><USER10> I think it's possible that the widespread use of non-lethal weapons could result in greater attrocities than the use of lethal weapons on the macro- level. It may not always be aparent, but in general, there is human restraint against killing other humans. A group of people would have to do, or at least be pegged with doing, something fairly high on the "bad scale" to justify use of lethal force. I suspect the threshold for beating them into submission with shotgun fired beanbags, high-pressured water, etc. would be much lower. At the level of an individual life, non-lethal would obviously be better. But at the level of one group of people trying to exert their will over another, I think non-lethal weapons would lead to more of that exertion, because it would be less difficult to justify.

<comment><USER11> Tasers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If it's anything like that pathetic excuse for an exclusive video from last week it won't be worth watching.

Report the news . Don't make it, fabricate it or skew it.

The days of yellow journalism are still alive and well.

<comment><USER13> >>>The days of yellow journalism are still alive and well.

Ahem, Fox?</comment></comment>


Only Street Dogs Are Real Dogs (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/72/quandary/only-street-dogs-are-real-dogs-rp <comment><USER2> Interesting. I used to live in the Canary Islands where all dogs look identical, a medium size brindle kind of like a Rottweiler.

The islands were actually named for the dogs (perro canario from the Latin _canis_ ) and the bird named for the island.</comment>


CrowdSourcing a corporate logo - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/your-business/start/mark-evans/crowdsourcing-a-corporate-logo/article1813247/

<comment><USER2> > Mark Evans is a principal with ME Consulting, a content and social media > strategic and tactical consultancy that creates and delivers 'stories' for > companies looking to capture the attention of customers, bloggers, the > media, business partners, employees and investors.

The Globe and Mail lets PR shills pose as reporters?</comment>


Aussie startup to swiftly notify users if their website crashes - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/aussie-startup-to-swiftly-notify-users-if-their-website-crashes/2014072512829.html

<comment><AUTHOR> We're using a little bit of computer vision to visually compare websites over time. Just getting a little bit of media attention down here in Australia and globally via Twitter.

Our most interesting engineering problem at the moment is scale. We've home brewed a distribution engine to scale across multiple digitalocean regions without heavy weight messaging between them. There's no quorum to this 'cluster' if a check node dies then the remainder take on its load till another helper can come on board and help distribute the load once again.

We're working hard to build a solid product, please give it a try and let us know what you think!

-Shaun</comment>


Show HN: My first Mac app, Foreman, free and on Github. Would love feedback - <AUTHOR> http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/foreman/

<comment><USER2> EDIT: Just to be clear, because I missed it, the app doesn't HIDE other applications it _aggressively_ CLOSES other apps. Including some background processes, system preferences etc. Luckily it doesn't shutdown dropbox and backblaze. If you want that functionality (and can live with bug below) this might be useful to you but I'm no longer interested.

So, the app crashed while I was configuring it. It shutdown ever app I had added to Foreman, unsafely, and a few others I hadn't yet added (like Terminal! WTF?).

DO NOT USE. It's a nice concept but not ready for prime time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry that happened to you, Ensorceled, and I hope you didn't lose any work.

The way it's supposed to work is, if you click on a horizontal row then it opens all the apps in that row (if they're not already open) and closes any apps that aren't in that row. So, for example, Terminal was closed because it sounds like it wasn't in your app group.

About "unsafely" - it should behave just as if you had hit command+q in the app. So if you have unsaved documents, the application should prompt you to save them.

Sorry again for the frustration it caused you!

<comment><USER3> I'd be nice if you could just _hide_ apps not in the group, not kill them... But I guess that would mean they still show up in command-tab.

It sounds like you're forcefully killing processes - can you at least kill them more gracefully? Basically "kill" vs "kill -9".

<comment><USER4> I wonder if there is a way to programmatically hide apps from the cmd-tab switcher? I know some apps (e.g. apps that have a system-wide menu) let you hide its open status from the dock (which in turn hides it from the app switcher); Can you show app icons in the dock and not in the cmd-tab switcher? I'd like to be able to access certain apps through the dock but don't want them cluttering up my precious cmd-tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea and congratulations on your first app. My only criticism about the landing page are some of the superlatives put me off slightly (e.g. Foreman Switches Your Apps Quickly _and It's Amazing_) -- I wonder if other people got the same feeling?

Perhaps I don't have a sense of humour when I'm at work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that was all meant to be over-the-top. Because... well it's a very simple little app. Like, "This is why Steve Jobs invented computers" doesn't even make sense. Maybe I should make it more ridiculous? Or maybe I should just get to the point, ha. I'd love to know if other people had the same impression.

And thank you for your congratulations :)

<comment><USER6> Don't let a few bores discourage you; the open source world needs more tastefully done over-the-top humor. Most of the times I've seen someone try to be funny in a landing page or a pull request, it's either obnoxious, cringeworthy, or lame. This page made me smile enough to read the whole thing, and I don't even own a Mac.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, ANTSANTS! It makes me happy to see that you and others appreciated the humor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool. If you are going to head towards a CLI version, consider a name change though. Foreman is also the name of a very popular CLI based web development tool (<https://github.com/ddollar/foreman>)

<comment><USER8> Seconded - it's also the name of an automation framework that uses Puppet (<http://theforeman.org/>).

I got really excited for a minute upon seeing the headline thinking this was a Mac native interface or somesuch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Might want to work on your website's copy. "What a pain in the ass!" and "Holy smokes!!!!!" doesn't instill much confidence, to be frank.

<comment><USER10> This comment is part of an annoying trend on HN lately, of people looking at announcements for new companies or products and then picking nits with the copy, the layout, the formatting, the SSL configuration, and screenshots, and what- have- you to talk about the "lack of confidence" they have in the announcement.

What makes this such a great example of that trend and how silly it is is that you are here discussing the confidence you have... in a free app switcher.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't happen often, but I disagree with you on this, Thomas.

OP said, "Would love feedback" and king_magic gave it to him.

When someone posts their app here for feedback, we should be ruthless. Nothing, not even the smallest nit, should be safe from scrutiny. Let OP decide how important that feedback is to him, but we should not be holding back how we really feel.

This reminds me of a phenomenon from my fraternity days, when we voted on prospective members. It worked like this: 1. Positive comments. 2. Negative comments. 3. Secret vote. Prospects were often blackballed even though there were no negative comments, and people bitched about that. So what happened as soon as someone made a negative comment? 1. Everyone jumped all over him. 2. Someone would inevitably say, "That's why there are never any negative comments."

If someone asks for feedback, we should fire away. Better they hear it from us than their prospects out there in the real world.

This applies to all apps, even free ones. Remember, it's not "Practice makes perfect," but "Perfect practice makes perfect". king_magic may have done OP a much bigger favor than any of us can see right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely appreciate the honest feedback provided, even if I don't act on it. Plain, honest feedback of your own experience is very valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's a great idea! It definitely has issues, but keep at it because it's a great start. Here's another feature idea: when I'm using xcode, i don't want other distraction to come in; so maybe find a way to make it harder for me to open browsers and other distraction (i see you, hn & reddit).

<comment><USER13> "when I'm using xcode, i don't want other distraction to come in; so maybe find a way to make it harder for me to open browsers and other distraction"

How is that related to his application? Your idea would probably make more sense as a separate application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think you should spend a paragraph giving a more clear explanation about what it does. The superlatives should be separate from a clear explanation.

</comment><comment><USER15> I tried using it on OSX 10.8.1 but I can't seem to get it to work. It doesn't let me drop anything into the box where it says "Drag Apps Here To Create New Group"? It just does the typical "delete from dock" _poof_ animation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback - this is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. You have to drag the icons from finder, not from the dock. Does that work?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, that worked! Could you see if you could get it to work with dragging from the dock? Also, when you switch groups, I didn't realize it "exits" all of your other apps. It may be a good idea to just hide the other apps. Thoughts?

<comment><USER16> I think dragging from the dock always just removes the apps from the dock. At least that's the default behavior, and I have not found a way around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like this app. My current way of doing this is keeping everything inside Launchpad folders and opening them individually. Foreman seems to solve this daily issue.

My only real suggestion is that you change the text on the right side:

      Click on an app group and Foreman closes all apps not in that group and opens the apps in the group.

To something simpler, like:

      One click to Launch all Grouped Apps & Close everything else!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm totally going to steal your suggestion. I was trying to come up with something simpler but couldn't, so thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another way to save app-switching sanity: Get 9 or 10 work spaces. Set up command+number keyboard shortcuts to switch to that number. Use a single app on every workspace. Scales well to 10 or so apps open simultaneously.

Basically, I configured OSX to imitate XMonad to some extent. It's not as good, but it works and is a lot better than using the mouse or command-tab.

<comment><USER19> I did the same thing with KDE and have been very productive with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like fun, and I'll have a play in a while.

A couple of things from the top of my head; Alfred integration would be cool, currently I keep nothing in my dock (other than finder and trash) and launch everything via Alfred, being able to launch a group by name in Alfred might be cool.

On switching groups, when it's choosing what to close, does it only close app's that are explicitly listed in other groups? How does it cope with tray apps like dropbox? When I (infrequently) fire up Steam/games I tend to manually kill off a few of the background servicey apps like dropbox I'd otherwise leave running all day.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will close any open app not listed in the app group that you just clicked on. So, for example, if I don't have Excel in any of my app groups and I click on an app group that has Emacs and Terminal, then Excel will be closed.

It only closes apps that appear in the dock. It won't close dropbox or alfred or any background processes.

edit: And I also want Alfred integration :) I was thinking it could create .foreman files which you could then open with Alfred. Foreman would then handle it the way it handles clicking on an app group now.

<comment><USER20> Ah that makes sense, and it's probably the way the majority of people using it would want it to happen.

I'm not sure how widely used this would be, but would it be possible to have it launch bash scripts as well as apps? That way I could manually deal with anything 'special'. (just tried it before I asked and it didn't seem to let me drag them into a group)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very cool, looking forward to trying it out.

I would start versioning your releases—even if you start at something like 0.1.0. Then add a changelog to the site and drop tags in git corresponding to each release.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, great idea!

I haven't tried the app yet, but if it immediately shuts off other applications when switching to a group, I think that needs to change, or at least provide a setting to just keep all the apps running but hide them from the tab switching menu some how (i know it could be a memory killer, but for my own personal use, which usually doesn't require a lot of apps running, i think it would be perfect).

Other than that, it's a great little app, put it on the AppStore for some cash :) (and add a screencast)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I wish I could add it to the AppStore but unfortunately I can't sandbox it, so it would never get accepted.

One nice thing about Mountain Lion (not sure if it's true for Lion) is that if you quit an app it's usually kept running anyway, so when you reopen it it should start quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Love the idea. Congrats on launching.

I've tried a number of apps to manage OSX's clunky alt+tab, but none have worked out long term.

The only thing that keeps me from trying Foreman is the "closing" of other apps. Like many other users here, just because I want apps out of the way, doesn't mean I want them closed. Is there no way to filter them from the task list instead?

You do make it clear on the site that Foreman closes apps, but I did come back to HN to confirm via the comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

As far as I know, any app that's active on the dock will show up in the task list. You might want to try out Witch - I'm not 100% sure that it does what you want, but it might. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is great. I'm excited for the CL version so I can integrate it with Alfred.

By the way, I knew exactly what this app did 2 seconds after page load.

Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER25> The concept is really awesome and I'm excited about what the app could turn into. My suggestions would be to fix the force closing issues, and to turn this into a taskbar style app which stays opened all the time, instead of having to open/close every time you want to switch to a different environment. Also, a more polished ui/ux would be apreciated, I don't like the way you add apps to the group. But for starters, good freaking job.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've always wanted to write a Ruby app launcher, like QuickSilver but the language the end user uses is Ruby. So you could define sets of apps like web_dev = [:macvim, :chrome, :iterm], and then web_dev.launch to launch them.

This app tackles that aspect of my launcher, and makes me wonder if my launcher idea is even necessary. Maybe this app is enough. I'm looking forward to it maturing some more (based on other comments)

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been looking for a way to solve that exact problem for a long time. I'm not 100% sure this is going to improve my current workflow though. Will try...

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually I'm going to release a command line utility that does the same thing. You'll do something like define a .foreman file with

design "Photoshop CS5" "Google Chrome"

and then do "macforeman design" and it will act just like the gui app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One big mistake, you show a screenshot without any _real_ information. Wow! Awesome!.... What the fuck is it good for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I do have a description further down, but I've also added a description in the screenshot caption.

<comment><USER28> Great, I have actually found the description - tried to point out there were no apparent benefits at first glance, which should be the main focus on sites, trying to sell something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Very nice app. I would add the possibility to drag from the dock and a group for never closing apps (such as mail or browser).

Many thanks for sharing on github. BTW, would you consider using a well known license (e.g. GPL or MIT)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure how to get it to work when dragging from the doc but I'd like to. A "never close" group is next on my todo list :) And it does in fact use the MIT license: <https://github.com/flyingmachine/foreman/blob/master/LICENSE>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd add some good use-cases for this. They're outlined in the screenshot and the blurb next to it, but a couple paragraphs below the fold going over your workflow would provide a more illustrative example.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can you please sign the app with a developer certificate?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've updated the app so that you can now define a list of apps that won't ever be closed.

</comment><comment><USER32> i guess i'm doing it wrong, but dragging any app from dock or /applications does not work. icons just zip back to where i dragged them from. snow leopard 10.6.8. :/

</comment><comment><USER33> it crashed Outlook. Also, it would be nice if it stayed open in the menu bar up top.

</comment><comment><USER34> Get rid of the text as much as you seem to love it. The screenshot already explains everything.

All you need is one screenshot. One download button. One donate button. One mention that it's free.

<comment><USER15> I can only imagine that if it was JUST a screenshot, I would see this exact same comment but saying to add text because a screenshot doesn't explain everything. But that's more of irony on HN comments. Haha

However, this seems like a nice/simple app and I'm excited to try it out!

EDIT: My 1st joking point is perfectly demonstrated by tzaman's comment below. Haha

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a whole section in there which was nothing but silly, "atmospheric" text which was meant to be ridiculous and jokey, but which didn't add any information. I've taken that out, so hopefully it's tighter and more informative while still retaining the overall tone.</comment></comment></comment>


O(1) Data Lookups with Minimal Perfect Hashing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.demofox.org/2015/12/14/o1-data-lookups-with-minimal-perfect-hashing/ <comment><USER2> Ilan Schnells AOT generator for perfect hash functions[0] has served me well. It takes a code template so you can generate code for any language. It also uses the much more elegant CHM algorithm[1] (Which is also implemented by the venerable CMPH library[2] if you want to compute these things dynamically.)

If I was doing dynamically in C++, like the author of this post, and didn't want to add a runtime dependency, I might be tempted to implement CHM using Boost Graph.

[0] [http://ilan.schnell-web.net/prog/perfect-hash/](http://ilan.schnell- web.net/prog/perfect-hash/)

[1] [http://ilan.schnell-web.net/prog/perfect- hash/algo.html](http://ilan.schnell-web.net/prog/perfect-hash/algo.html)

[2] [http://cmph.sourceforge.net/](http://cmph.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking about how I'd implement CHM. I think I'd use a union-find data structure to generate the acyclic graph, as in Kruskal's algorithm. This would fit into an N-element integer vector. After finding the acyclic graph (forest), I'd represent the forest implicitly in another N-element integer vector, for finding the vertex weights.

You can take advantage of the graph being just a forest of trees and use simpler data structures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh my, again a blog post talking about MPH being O(1) but not talking about the constant factors which make this simple approach only useful for >100.000 keys.

People, those two-way hashing schemes are already available in the cmph library, even compressed. But even the fastest of the 6 cmph algorithms is much slower than any other perfect hash algorithm with a normal number of keys. (i.e. <100.000) There is a high constant overhead and a high run-time overhead with the 2 hashes.

For comparisons see [https://github.com/rurban/Perfect- Hash#benchmarks](https://github.com/rurban/Perfect-Hash#benchmarks)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. AFAICT, Cuckoo hashing:

0) Cuckoo hashing is much simpler to implement (correctly).

1) look up and delete is also O(1), but Cuckoo is faster (especially if you can exploit the inherent parallelism in the two table probes).

2) insert for Cuckoo is O(1) amortized. It's unclear how this compares.

3) Cuckoo can mix and match insert, delete, lookup ops.

4) Cuckoo uses more memory (as the OP is per definition minimal).

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Cuckoo looks pretty favorable to this for most usage. EDIT: formatting.

<comment><USER6> Cuckoo's insert is, in fact, hard to implement correctly. Every implementation I looked at was vulnerable to "chosen key" attack which made it either O(n) or worse -- run into an infinite loop or fail to insert.

<comment><USER5> Good point. Isn't this a problem with the hash functions exclusively? Can't you avoid this by picking the two hashing functions at random every time you rehash?

(I acknowledge that my original comment was misplaced given the off-/on-line difference).

<comment><USER6> You can if you're just avoiding bad luck; You often cannot if you're avoiding an active opponent - in which case, your random would need to be cryptographically secure AND not leak any data through timing or other ways.

Here's an observation: Quicksort is similarly vulnerable to an active attacker[0], and can similarly be "protected" with random pivot selection. How many quicksort implementations have you seen in production quality libraries that actually have a random pivot selection? I have seen none. As a result, I avoid quicksort (and cuckoo, and any other basic algorithm which depends on good crypto to perform well).

[0] I'm not referring to McIlroy's "antiquicksort" here, which makes quicksort O(n^2) even in the presence of completely unpredictable pivot selection -- I'm assuming the data to be sorted is laid out before the sorting starts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AKA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_perfect_hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_perfect_hashing)

<comment><USER8> There doesn't seem to be anything dynamic about the algorithm in the article. They still need to precompute the perfect hash function(s) from the entire input data, whereas the hashing approach you linked to can handle adding data incrementally (hence the "dynamic" part).

<comment><USER7> Good point. The article just does one iteration of generating the layered hash structure for lookups/reference and does not address the issue of growth of the structure. The dynamic perfect hashing technique addresses growth of the structure.</comment></comment></comment>


Bypass Paywalls with Chrome extension (Hover) - hover-dev https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hover-bypass-paywalls/ajbennpkmbahpfdalicgaogjbfhngeok <comment><AUTHOR> helpful</comment>


Books to a Young Man – 10 Titles to Kickstart a Good Life - <AUTHOR> https://jacobmorch.com/10-books/ <comment><USER2> That is a wonderful list. In addition I would add "Sapiens". It showed me how the world really operates. Its key ideas is: Humans are different from other species because they can communicate in larger groups by telling stories, even about imaginary things. These are called 'Myths'. Some examples of popular myths are Money, Religion, Companies, Laws, Nations etc.

<comment><USER3> How are Money or companies a myth? They both have impact and are literally tangible.

I can understand how aspects of religion are mythical, but the others ...

<comment><USER2> I think Yuval explains this the best in his blog post: "How does money work? Gold coins and dollar bills have value only in our common imagination. Their worth is not inherent in the chemical structure of the metal or paper, nor in their color or shape. Money isn't a material reality—it is a mental construct."

Here is the link if you would like to read further: [https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and- politics/](https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and-politics/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well-intentioned, actually the exposition it the best part. The book list - well are mostly about "beating the system."

The Frankl book is excellent for readers from any century, it will be a future classic on the scale of Epictetus, unless suffering is someday conquered by future people.

My top book for young minds: Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

</comment><comment><USER5> A nice list, except for Choose Yourself, which seems a rather typical 'be an entrepreneur, it's easy' message (or maybe I misunderstood the summary) and Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is a bunch of made up stories by a guy that himself has not actually had a healthy financial life (until the book became profitable) and introduces some nice ideas but is mostly nonsense.</comment>


Fake news: an insidious trend that's fast becoming a global problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/02/fake-news-facebook-us-election-around-the-world <comment><USER2> To offer a different viewpoint on this: [http://observer.com/2016/11/bernie- sanders-presidential-run-...](http://observer.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders- presidential-run-was-sabotaged-by-fake-news/)

The war on "fake news" bothers me. The Ron Paul Institute & Wikileaks, both won a badge of honor by being claimed to be "Fake News" and "Russian Propaganda" in the Washington Post's "news" section.

Sources: [Article in question]([https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian- prop...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda- effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts- say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html))

[The Source that Article Cites]([http://www.propornot.com/p/the- list.html](http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html))

Truly shameful journalism by the Washington Post.

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact a candidate was scuppered does't mean fake news isn't a problem.

 _" Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media."_

And this disclaimer at the bottom.

<comment><USER2> > The fact a candidate was scuppered does't mean fake news isn't a problem.

Sure, I agree with you, it's a problem - actually, the article I linked to doesn't deny that. In fact, it actually says that in the title.

From the article I linked:

> WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton > campaign chair John Podesta implicated several mainstream media journalists > in colluding with the Clinton campaign.

> In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the media in the United States. > By 2000, that number had dropped to six corporations

What's scary is the US media is trying to marginalize independent media, for reasons of erroneous reporting, however they're also guilty and have been caught red handed of "fake news."

The increasing monopoly on disseminating information to the public, along with declining press freedoms, declining freedom of speech and evidence the US Gov't is engaging in propaganda inside the US is all a very scary and disturbing trend.

Technology won't matter too much anymore if our civil liberties are gone.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" What's scary is the US media is trying to marginalise independent media, for reasons of erroneous reporting, however they're also guilty and have been caught red handed of "fake news."_

These are good points @wallace_f.

 _" Technology won't matter too much anymore if our civil liberties are gone."_

Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not just "fake news" in the sense of stories that are made up from "whole cloth" so to speak... we have an equally large problem with "fake news" which is nominally real, but has been spun, distorted and tweaked so as to promote on agenda or another. Mix "fake" news and "fake" news together and the whole mix is just one big fester cesspool of malfeasance.

It really makes it hard to know what to believe. I mean, if you read a post from the "Denver Tribune" you know that's fake, since there is no such outlet. But if you read something on CNN or MSNBC, why would you believe it when you know about the various shady schemes going on where journalists and politicians conspire with each other behind the scenes, etc? Or if a paper reports "numbers" (jobs data, climate data, etc.) from the government, why believe those number are real?

The more you think about it, the harder it is to take anything at face value. In the end, it takes a lot of work, that most people probably aren't willing to do, to try and filter this stuff out. I mean, you can read/watch/listen to news from multiple sources, and look for the commonalities, or analyze news with an eye for known existing biases, etc. Or if you're equipped to do so, you can do you own statistical analysis on the numbers your given and see if they make sense. But realistically, how many people are going to expend all that effort?

<comment><AUTHOR> _" you can read/watch/listen to news from multiple sources, and look for the commonalities, or analyze news with an eye for known existing biases, etc. Or if you're equipped to do so, you can do you own statistical analysis on the numbers your given and see if they make sense. But realistically, how many people are going to expend all that effort?"_

Good point. This is why knowing who writes the articles and knowing sources matter. When a serious news article is written, journalists cross-check the facts. In the Watergate scandal, Woodwood/Bernstein used three different sources for each assertion. [0] The source, _" Deep Throat"_ who remained anonymous for many years was the deputy director of the FBI at the time.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_media)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only #FakeNews I saw this election cycle is all those fake polls by the mainstream media.</comment>


Elefant is an open source library for machine learning  - <AUTHOR> http://elefant.developer.nicta.com.au/ <comment><USER2> For those who want to play with data mining a little bit, here are some dataset from the past data mining contest: [http://mill.ucsd.edu/index.php?page=Datasets&subpage=Dow...](http://mill.ucsd.edu/index.php?page=Datasets&subpage=Download).</comment>


New Dropbox for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dropbox.com/2012/12/super-new-dropbox-for-ios/

<comment><USER2> I don't know if I really get Dropbox for iOS. I absolutely love Dropbox the platform, have an annual subscription to a 100GB share- and I use it constantly, all day, to share files both between my various desktops/laptops, as well as for sharing files with friends.

I _access_ dropbox from my iPhone and iPad constantly as well, but I do so from GoodReader, where I download files, organize them, read them, password secure them, etc...

I've tried out the new "Photo's" feature - but I already have 100% intelligent photo syncing between my systems with Photostream - so I stopped the camera from syncing after about 5 minutes - my photos are already in my Camera Roll + PhotoStream, and therefore in my Aperture Library. I couldn't understand how, or why, I would want to use Dropbox to sync them again.

This is one of those extraordinarily rare times where I think Apple's Photostream, with shared photostreams, and Albums, both public and shared - actually provide the "Web/Internet" services that I want.

Anybody else find a use for the iOS client for Dropbox?

<comment><USER3> I agree about native Photostream working better than Dropbox's camera upload stuff. But as for the other uses, you've already nailed it: easy access to your files. You just use a $5 app to do it, whereas Dropbox's is free. What's not to get?

<comment><USER2> I find it hard to believe that anybody who has an iPhone, and works with documents, hasn't purchased GoodReader. It's on the top-3 of applications for people who work with documents, and the top-10 of iPhone apps in general.

But, I'll accept your premise - for the _casual_ user of Dropbox, who doesn't ever want to buy apps for their iPhone (unusual, the vast majority of the value of an iPhone comes from it's ecosystem, but i'll run with it) - they can access their files through the iOS client.

But, really, everyone who does this seriously should have Goodreader on their iPhone.

<comment><USER4> Clearly you don't sell iPhone apps for a living :-) you'd be shocked how many people won't pay for apps. I've met multi-millionaires who refuse to pay for apps. Not kidding at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still can't sort folder items by date added or date modified. sigh.

I have folders with tons of photographs in them that I upload from my desktop. Whenever I'm on my ipad or iphone, finding a picture I just uploaded is an absolute nightmare if I can't remember the name ... I usually have to go load up dropbox.com in my browser, do the sort there and download the file.

I guess my particular use case doesn't occur that often :(

<comment><USER6> Same here. I write a lot of notes in markdown that I sync using Dropbox. I often want to read and edit those notes on my phone or ipad, but I don't remember the exact file names.

Similarly, I wish photo apps had a "use most recent photo" button, instead of making me select my photos, scroll down to the very bottom, and click on the last square.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, there isn't much love in the comments below that post on dropbox.com. I find this is surprising to a point.

I love Dropbox, and I use it in exotic ways. That said, I don't "get" why Dropbox wants to be involved with my photos. I've balked at this, and I am surprised that Dropbox seems to be over-pushing in this direction.

Someone once said that 'Dropbox does only one thing, and it does that one thing VERY well'. I fear that this fixation on photos may be the juncture where Dropbox lost its focus, and ultimately loses the game.

As a succinct commenter posted on Dropbox.com: 'I don't need to post photos to Dropbox'.

<comment><USER8> I think what's so great about Dropbox is that they don't really have a focus. They do synchronization, and they're superb at it.

It seems to me that Dropbox is trying to change how customers perceive them and that managing photos is just the first step. Until recently, I think they've largely been viewed as a handy service to share files quickly between friends and across devices. There are a certainly a lot of exotic use cases for their product, and some other commenters have touched on specific ones, but the average person doesn't take advantage of them (or have them). If Dropbox can position itself as a base to store and share photos, videos, music, etc (notice the range of sharing options in the top right of the iPad in the blog post) they can give users peace of mind and easy access to content that is now strewn across several services and not carefully curated in other storage solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A little nitpick on a glitch that I immediately noticed:

The navigation bar (title bar) up on top looks pretty horrible. Opacity of the icons flickers when navigating back and forth, and "very long folder names..." are truncated differently the moment animation starts, causing them to jump around and overlay buttons for the duration of the animation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it possible to share a folder via the IOS app? I keep trying to do this and can't figure it out and not sure if it's just me or if it's not possible.

<comment><USER11> I don't think you can. You can delete and create new folders, and I think thats about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > And since Dropbox is a one stop shop for all your memories, you can also > check out the photos you've uploaded from everywhere else!

As long as I'm online.

If I could mark whole folders as favorites and have them available offline, I would subscribe in a heartbeat and host all my photos on Dropbox. Why do laptops do this _by default_ but the iPad can't?

iTunes' sync of photo folders serves me well, but it's a one-way street. I'd love to edit images on the iPad and have them sync back when I'm online. I'm waiting for Apple, Adobe _and_ Dropbox to fill the niché but how long should I hold my breath?

Also, has there ever been a poll if users (not designers, managers or HN regulars) prefer custom UI over the stock iOS UI?

</comment><comment><USER13> Dropbox? I have switched to Cubby which has almost every feature of Dropbox(no photos, but Photostream does photo syncing well for me and I use Picasa for online backup).

The thing that I like about Cubby is that it is quite fast and you can sync any folder! And they offer more free space out of box. (I'm waiting for their pricing to be announced and will surely switch to paid version)

<http://cubby.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> I am currently leaning toward replacing my Dropbox with Google drive. More (free) capacity, better integration with other Google services, easy creation of notes and spreadsheets, easier file sharing...

Anyone else feeling the same way?

<comment><USER15> The Drive client on the Mac was badly behaved in my experience, putting a lot of load on the system and constantly grinding Spotlight indexing. I've uninstalled it until it has time to mature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does it still compresses the photos on the iPad? Cause that's the only thing holding me back from subscribing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Saving a picture finally downloads it at full resolution rather than a horribly compressed one. Thumbs up.</comment>


Microsoft to U.S. military: We've got your six - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/26/microsoft-to-u-s-military-weve-got-your-six/ <comment><AUTHOR> Couldnt find the original thread

except [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18311988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18311988)

Original Blog post here

[https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2018/10/26/technol...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2018/10/26/technology-and-the-us-military/)

>Employees who don't want to support military initiatives can transfer to another division within the company, he added.

It is about the JEDI contract</comment>


The Power of Pair Programming Lies on the Execution - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/the-power-of-pair-programming-lies-on-the-execution-a27938447994 <comment><USER2> I love pair programming; it is my favorite way to write code. I've been "in the passenger seat", I've been "in the driver's seat", and in both cases, I thought it was just great. The person looking over my shoulder could spot bugs as I was writing them, and I could do the same, so in both cases they would get squashed before they would even be released.

When I do pair programming, the time to a finished program always seems much shorter than when I program by myself.

Programming is so much more enjoyable to me when I have someone else to enjoy it with.

However, it seems to be that most people do not like pair programming. Is that really the case, and if so, why is that the case?

<comment><USER3> I think it depends on your copilot, and your own programming style.

For example, I find that, when fleshing out an idea, I blackbox a lot. I end up with five or six stubs, as I work on a core idea, knowing where to go back to. Then from there, go down over the new code, adding safety once what I have is a working "template".

When I'm driving, the passenger either a) continually interrupts, breaking my flow and interrupting the memory-model of the code I have, or b) doesn't say anything at all, till the end, and it's a major refactor to add in the great ideas they've had. People have trouble with timing, though that might be because a lot of my team find me intimidating.

When I'm a copilot, I do struggle to know when to change the direction, but the biggest issue is that people... Like to "own" their code. Its a personal insult to point out flaws, or to suggest a new way to do something.

In other words, a lot of what the article talks about has been my experience, and some people can't adapt to it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite mathematical law or scientific principle? Why? - <AUTHOR> I am always absorbing more and more about the cosmos, what a joy and a blessing to feel like a kid in an adult's body.
HN is the brightest and most productive group of people I have access to currently, every day I am reminded of just how much I have to learn but also how far I have come.
Where better than here to ask this question and get quality responses from people who see the obvious value of math and science? <comment><USER2> Tobler's first 'law' of geography: All things are related but nearer things are more related than distant things. This is the concept that describes regularity and order to all spatially variable phenomenon. It is essentially the concept of spatial autocorrelation. Without it, the world would be a chaotic place. Imagine if moving from one room to another meant you could encounter a 100-degree drop in temperature or if you had to regularly face a 100 m drop in elevation when walking 100 m down a road. It also means that we can infer an underlying spatial distribution from a sub-sample of point measurements, which is central to understanding most geographical phenomena.

</comment><comment><USER3> Power laws in economics [0]:

        Many of the insights of economics seem to be
        qualitative, with many fewer reliable quantitative laws.
        However a series of power laws in economics do count as
        true and nontrivial quantitative laws—and they are not
        only established empirically, but also understood
        theoretically.
        I will start by providing several illustrations of
        empirical power laws having to do with patterns involving
        cities, firms, and the stock market. I summarize some of
        the theoretical explanations that have been proposed.
        I suggest that power laws help us explain many economic
        phenomena, including aggregate economic fluctuations.
        I hope to clarify why power laws are so special, and to
        demonstrate their utility.
        In conclusion, I list some power-law-related economic
        enigmas that demand further exploration.

[0] [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.185](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.185)

</comment><comment><USER4> "No free lunch in search and optimization" \--> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_op...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization)</comment>


What will Facebook be to us to in 10 years? - <AUTHOR>

It's an interesting question, and one that as brought up last night at a dinner I was having with one of my older family friends. He said "10 years ago, things like Facebook and LinkedIn didn't exist and 10 years from now, they will likely be dominated by something new".
It struck me hard mostly because as a 21 year old, Facebook and LinkedIn (among others of course) are our primary ways of connecting online. But older people have seen things come and go for far longer, so is this really what's going to happen?
The reason why I highlight Facebook is because I really don't think it will disappear that fast, or even be dominated by something else for a long, long time. Twitter can be brought into this discussion as well--both are used by such a diverse population that it seems impossible that something will come and make them irrelevant to society. Just a 21 year olds thoughts, though--interested to hear others'. <comment><USER2> I'll throw out the radical idea that it won't be anywhere near what it is today. Probably still used casually but no longer the center of everything taking place online.

I've had a FB account since 2006, am up with the tech trends, very social online, but am feeling HEAVY Facebook fatigue. I go back and forth on just ending it for good, but my usage has gone down and will continue to drop.

<comment><AUTHOR> But don't you think Facebook is something that is being picked up by the younger kids and will continue to be through the next generation?

<comment><USER3> I think it's kind of counter-intuitive to a person in puberty to join a social network where your mommy and grandma are on.</comment></comment></comment>


SF Mayor Gavin Newsom Tweets His Way Into The Race For California Governor - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/sf-mayor-gavin-newsom-tweets-his-way-into-the-race-for-california-governor/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting to me since he's my mayor. Of course both in Ca in general and SF in particular, the main candidates have been known for months, the announcement i just a formality.

It's notable how strong a statement the _selection_ of Twitter makes, though. Marshall McLuhan rides again!</comment>


Apple, Google, and Amazon create "CHIP," a new smart home standard - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/apple-google-and-amazon-team-up-for-joint-smart-home-standard/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to know if they planted a backdoor in the standard as well for data harvesting</comment>