Berkshire Hathaway of the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@awilkinson/the-berkshire-hathaway-of-the-internet-391a8ee83db#.4msesyaie <comment><USER2> This is what I wrote to a friend in an email on this post:

A few challenges with the trying to replicate the Berkshire model on the internet:

##Lower cost of Capital (Float): One of the unsaid rules of BK is that their cost of capital is cheaper than most operating companies because of thier insurance float (Ajit Jain, General RE, GEICO etc). So, they can take an existing business & assume absolutely no changes to their changes & still make better ROI because their capital structure is more efficient. It is a different matter that they take portfolio companies like BNSF & use float to expand their capital projections (this is like making a private investment vs a public investment. From the BK 2015 Letter on how capex is linked to float:

 _After a poor performance in 2014, our BNSF railroad dramatically improved its service to customers last year. To attain that result, we invested about $5.8 billion during the year in capital expenditures, a sum far and away the record for any American railroad and nearly three times our annual depreciation charge. It was money well spent. BNSF is the largest of our "Powerhouse Five," a group that also includes Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Marmon, Lubrizol and IMC. Combined, these companies — our five most profitable non-insurance businesses — earned $13.1 billion in 2015, an increase of $650 million over 2014._ *

##Bullet proof Revenue (Moat): One of the operating assumptions behind BK's acquisition is that the business does well regardless of management. Therefore, if the revenue assumptions hold (i.e. this is the moat part of the strategy)- then the float kicks in & does magic.

However, the challenge with using a BK model in tech i.e. acquiring companies & being hands off without PRODUCT ENERGY- the products atrophy & revenues goes. The reason that BK hates tech is because there is moats are hard to sustain & it is too competitive.

I am looking at Tiny's portfolio: [http://www.tiny.website/](http://www.tiny.website/) & I am hard pressed to think of any product that has moat. I would suspect that once the founder leaves in almost all of these cases, the products will atrophy.

<comment><USER3> This is an outstanding comment. Few people understand what Buffet and Munger mean when they discuss "moat" and even fewer understand the importance of cost of capital in BK's investment successes.

It may be possible to build a BK of the internet but it's not easy to imagine how.

<comment><USER4> Buffett has famously stayed out of tech companies because he (self admittedly) doesn't understand them.

A BK of the internet would buy ugly tech companies, turn them around, and sell them. Buffett is definitely not the only guy in that business, but he's probably been the most successful. An internet version of that would have to really really understand technology and the markets driving it, along with understanding the modern financial system and sources of capital (to finance buying the companies). It is kind of a weird combination.

However, I do think we're going to start seeing waves of consolidation in tech, and maybe some interesting turnarounds.

<comment><USER5> Buffett has bought some tech in recent times - IBM and Apple. More established stuff with cash flow.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. What do you think he meant when he talked about not wanting to invest in tech companies in the past? Or did he never say that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of people here pointing out that BRK's buying strategy isn't what distinguishes their business so much as their access to insurance float. That's a good point, probably the most important one.

Also worth looking at is the relative contribution of these kinds of acquisitions to BRK's overall performance. Simply put, it's not Borsheim's and See's Candy that give BRK.A a $425B market cap. There's an enormous portfolio of high-ticket investments --- many of them in gigantic public companies --- that dwarf these mom-and-pop acquisitions. Even among the wholly owned subsidiaries, and even in the smaller "Manufacturing and Retail" segment, contributions are dominated by very large companies like Clayton Homes.

Noted below in the thread, the "powerhouse five" of Berkshire's portfolio: BNSF Railroads, IMC (one of the largest metalworking companies in the world), Lubrizol, Berkshire Energy, and Marmon (one of the largest home builders in the US). I doubt very much the acquisition of any of these companies followed the casual pattern listed in the post. Some of them weren't even acquired all at once.

Finally: having twice been involved in the sale of a company I was a principal at, the acquisition process was pretty unlike the breakdown this person provided. It was somewhere in between what he reports Buffett's process to be and what he claims the normal process is. The actual decision --- getting to an MOU with a notional price --- was reasonably informal and didn't take up much time. Certainly nobody did a road show. The rest of the process was legal, and I very much doubt Berkshire avoids much of that work either.

<comment><USER7> As I've said separately, I believe BRK's float is over-rated. It's just a loan and only a small part of their capital base.

But your focus on the "powerhouse five" over See's Candy's is backwards. The powerhouse 5 are all very new acquisitions, and were purchased in part because See's candies was so amazingly successful as an investment.

In 2011, Buffett said that See's had directly earned $1.65B for Berkshire since it's acquisition. Those earnings were reinvested in Berkshire, so over the years they've probably added as much as $10B to Berkshire's value. That's enough to have enabled the purchase of one of the "power house 5" by itself.

<comment><USER2> Not sure why you believe float is over-rated. Buffet himself has said that a $1 in float is equal to a $1 of value. BH's market cap is about $300 BN & their float is about $90BN which means Buffett considers the float to be about ~25-33% of the total value of BH.

 _Another measure of Mr. Buffett's firepower: Berkshire Hathaway's insurance float, paid in premiums that can be invested until claims have to be paid. Float was about $89 billion on March 31 2016, compared to about $88 billion at the end of 2015._ [http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2016/05/09/at-berkshire-hathaway- ca...](http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2016/05/09/at-berkshire-hathaway-cash-tumbles- as-float-inches-up/)

<comment><USER8> What is a "float?"

<comment><USER7> Part of the money insurance customers pay the insurance company for insurance. They are required to hold reasonable amounts in safe investments to pay out claims with, and the insurer gets to earn interest or investment gains on it. The longer term the insurance commitment the more aggressively the insurer can invest part of it, because it won't be "owed" for years,

<comment><USER8> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Buffett's own writing on selling him your business is quite interesting. "Appendix B" at the end of the 1990 letter [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1990.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1990.html)

<comment><USER9> I wonder what the good reason to sell is that he described. Like he pointed out, when you sell youre moving your safe assets to risky assets. Odd.

<comment><USER10> > when you sell youre moving your safe assets to risky assets

That's not exactly what he is saying nor what he means. Both are risky assets. A 100% owned business you deeply understand is still a very risky asset. On its own. I agree with aeden's comment that diversification is one of the main reasons to sell.

The other good reason to sell...you get cash! Sure some of the cash will "probably" go to a diversified stock portfolio but some of it will be spent on cool stuff. You can't use stocks to buy your dream vacation home or donate money to charity for it to be spent on medical research. Cash is also the reason to sell.

Lastly, people die. A business founder must sell the business or give it to someone else at some point in one way or another or it will be done for him or her.

<comment><USER11> That last part, death, is important, especially to Buffet. He supports the death tax because it strongly encourages business owners to sell to some outside investor.

My understanding is that many businesses cannot support providing the Government with amount of cash necessary pay the tax, or the net reduction in income makes running the business not worthwhile.

Note how the letter is worded to carefully state that the family members will still have some ownership and management will be maintained. While this is certainly wise acquisition tactic, it is also very appealing to a seller who is on the margin and primarily selling to avoid the death tax.

(If you are thinking, "but the inheritor will still have to pay the tax on the cash," you are correct, but paying tax on cash still provides immediate payback with what is left over, whereas running or even just owning a business or any investment asset for 10+ years and getting zero or close to zero is not going to be desirable to a great many people.)

<comment><USER7> Buffett doesn't support estate taxes because of self interest, that would be silly as it's just a tiny factor in Berkshire Hathaway's business. He just doesn't believe the concentration of wealth and power is healthy for a democracy. That's a big reason why 99% of his wealth is going to charity instead of his kids.

Now I think he's wrong about this. Rockefeller had a roughly ten times greater share of our nations wealth as Gates or Buffett ever had. And somehow our democracy survived and flourished, because inheritances typically get split up among children, grand-children and eventually hundreds of great-grand kids and great-great grand kids, and predominantly those descendants dissipate the wealth because they don't have the same drive or abilities as the wealth creator.

And lots of that money ends up in charities before it's all gone.

<comment><USER11> Non-profit entity is not the same as "charity". Most of the large non-profits operate on a percentage of the interest earned on a large endowment. It's essentially a scam for the very rich and the banks. If the purpose of the entity were truly to benefit the needy, then they would operate directly on donations and not withhold so much funding from those in need.

I specifically discussed sellers who are _on the margin_. While it can be difficult to know exactly how many of these are, I'm willing to bet this would result in a very real and measurable reduction in investment opportunity for Berkshire. If it were 10 businesses in a year at Buffet's stated minimum of $10 million annual net profit, then that would represent $80 million in annual revenue for Berkshire.

In the world of big business, famous personalities, and politics, my position is to assume the worst case scenario, which is that the only reason someone like Buffet supports the death tax is because he profits from it. In this case, it is not a coincidence.

<comment><USER5> >my position is to assume the worst case scenario

If you always assume some extreme in the absence of evidence your assumptions are probably not going to be very accurate.

There's a bunch of evidence Buffett is not like that.

<comment><USER11> I like how you removed all of my prerequisites so as to completely change my position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The TL;DR: if you skip the admin and due diligence of a deal, you will close more deals. For example: "I couldn't understand why buyers felt they needed to dig into accounting minutiae".

However, to paraphrase something I read from a sailor, "every regulation in the Navy is written in the blood of your predecessors". If you do 10 deals, one might wipe out any upside from the other 9, even if you got more upside by negotiating a better valuation, and having a faster turnaround and lower cost of doing business. And of course, if a buyer got the reputation of not doing due diligence, it would attract all the problematic companies.

There is a reason behind every "annoying" stage, and those reasons collectively explain why the entire industry is made of buyers that follow those stages.

Since he runs 10 businesses, it is probable that the author has other ways of doing the work. He will keep track of most of the promising names in his industry, he will have a network of insiders to keep him appraised of the real story in those companies (although never officially), and he will know when the timing is ripe. His good relationship with his existing bankers means financing will be quick and standardised already, his back office experienced and streamlined. His experience tells him how you can play with what numbers to present a rosier picture than the reality, as well as how much to offer to get a founder to come to a quick decision. Unless he decides to go buy palm oil crushing plants in Indonesia, it might work out quite well.

<comment><USER13> As far as I understood the linked post, that's an incomplete tl;dr. You missed these important parts:

1) In the words of Buffet, "there would be no chance that a deal would be announced and that the buyer would then back off or start suggesting adjustments (with apologies, of course, and with an explanation that banks, lawyers, boards of directors, etc. were to be blamed)" [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13906176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13906176)]. Most of such re-negotiations can only be explained by screw ups in the decision making process or dishonesty of the acquirer trying to squeeze more from the tired owners.

2) Not screwing with the acquired businesses: they buy companies because they know their owner-managers are what made these companies successful, so it would be a stupid decision to replace them or change their operations.

<comment><USER14> Selling your company definitely has a certain Darth Vader feel to it. The buyer usually alters the deal, and the only thing you can pray for is them not altering it any further.

<comment><USER7> Get a second buyer on the hook. Then they both will pray you don't alter the deal any further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I doubt The Berkshire Hathaway is successful because of their processes. They are successful because Buffet and Munger are geniuses in their respective field and to build the internet version of The Berkshire Hathaway, you would probably need to copy the wisdom and not merely their processes.

There's an interesting video about how Magnus Carlsen makes his chess moves. He makes the next move in seconds and then thinks if it's the right move, ref: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZFS0kewLRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZFS0kewLRQ) \-- And maybe Buffet does a similar thing, he can look at balance sheets and quickly decide if it's a business worth buying or not.

<comment><USER16> > I doubt The Berkshire Hathaway is successful because of their processes.... > Buffet and Munger are geniuses

Numerous writers in different fields have debunked this myth. Starting with Taylor in organization theory [1]

It is the process that matters, not some undefined 'talent'

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_theory)

<comment><USER17> If that were true, there would be many more successful conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway.

Processes are ante into the game, great process and lousy leadership will fail.

<comment><USER16> There ARE many more successful conglomerates like BRK.

Many, many, more.

<comment><USER7> There are actually zero.

First there aren't many $500B conglomerates to start with, and not with BRK's returns.

Second, there is almost certainly not another conglomerate even a tenth the size with such a tiny executive staff. He's got only 24 people total at the corporate headquarters, and their role is mainly just doing the tax returns. He has more than a hundred businesses reporting directly to him.

It might be the least duplicatable process in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one here looking at Tiny's site and wondering when they acquired buffer?

I didn't know it was sold and can't seem to find an announcement anywhere?

<comment><USER19> Well they say "We start, invest in and buy wonderful internet businesses. Here's a few of them..." so maybe they are just an investor in Buffer?

<comment><USER18> Ah! Good catch you're probably right ... it should probably be more clear on their site which ones they own a majority stake in and which ones they are a minority stakeholder in

<comment><USER20> I don't know if this is true in Tiny's case but many VC firms do this intentionally to mislead people into thinking they're a large investor in big hits. I.e., they'll put in a relatively small amount of money (and overpay) in a later round for a unicorn like Uber just so they can have the Uber logo on their site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where's the float?

One of the reasons BH has an advantage is their insurance business, which throws off large amounts of investible capital. He talks about how special and important the insurance businesses are in his annual letters. They make it easier for Buffet to be patient or to handle bad deals.

Does Tiny have access to this, or something like it? Maybe existing SaaS products that have very high gross margins?

<comment><USER7> Yea, float is over-rated as a BH advantage. It's simply a low cost short term loan, over many years it's even a negative interest loan, but in bad years it costs lots of real money.

He has to keep money ready to repay float when insurance subs need it, or regulators would shut them down. So it can't be directly invested in long term equities.

Any investor who wanted to ape Warren could borrow against 20% of their portfolio and achieve a similar "advantage". You shouldn't borrow more because one day the market will drop 50% and you could have your entire portfolio liquidated at the worst possible time.

And obviously borrowing doesn't help if you aren't a skilled investor, if you are paying 7% to try to earn 8% the extra return isn't worth the risk. But if you are the next Buffett with the skill to average over 30% a year for your first decade with a smaller portfolio, it's a reasonable strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Berkshire Hathaway derives no small part of its advantage from extremely cheap internal financing (insurance float) and very small leadership organisation (Buffet and Menger).

I don't think this yet qualifies as the Buffet of Baud. But I admire the excellent marketing.

</comment><comment><USER23> It sounds great, but I'm not sure the space needs to be "disrupted".

I get it that there are a number of steps needed to buy a business, but this isn't exactly buying a chocolate bar from the supermarket where all we need to check is the "best before" date has not passed.

Proper, thorough, due diligence takes time, and knowing how much you are paying for a business versus how much you are handing over for goodwill (which is far from guaranteed) is hard, let alone being able to understand cultural fit, internal politics, market forces and the myriad of other internal and external factors that all influence a business on a daily basis.

Warren Buffet apparently does it quickly (I didn't check beyond the claim in this article), but he has a talent for it, and I will guess a fairly large research team that are fully prepared and informed before they approach a prospective target.

Comparing Warrent Buffets approach to this service to me comes off like a very well-intentioned but frankly naive initiative.

Of course, if the author is planning to buy businesses at a massive discount to what they are truly worth then he indeed can probably skip some of the diligence - but that's a pretty poor outcome for the seller.

<comment><USER7> Warren's key competency is recognizing and valuing good businesses, he's not farming that out to any research team, even his own employees.

Buffet has 24 total people at corporate, mostly finance people working on tax returns and a CFO obviously. Warren evaluates the business, values it, makes the offer, and relies on his CFO I believe to do basic due diligence and close the deal.

But the key value Warren relies on is "moat" and that's a hard one to quantify for many tech businesses. Warren can buy a chain of furniture store because he thinks they are run well, efficiently but most importantly have a strong moat because of a great brand and locations in their market. So he can be confident the business will be around in decades.

Will a web development company be? Will the web be? Those are harder questions and make applying Buffett's techniques far harder in this market, even if author had similar skills to Buffett, which is also very unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Berkshire Hathaway buys successful operating companies, preferably with a long history. They look at GAAP earnings, assets, and debt. Evaluating such companies is straightforward. This simplifies acquisitions.

They rarely buy "growth companies". Those are speculative investments.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome! I can imagine these kind of buyouts becoming really popular in the future. The usual process (detailed in the post) is awful and has to be disrupted.

</comment><comment><USER26> Finally the reason for the different approach is covered in the P.S. at the end:

>> They are fiduciaries managing money for huge institutional investors.

Most of the due diligence is the intermediary covering their ass. In fact, a huge institutional investor is also an intermediary for a bunch of other people and they like to cover their ass. It's all about minimizing risk of getting sued by someone.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think every time someone uses a comparison to Warren Buffet or Berkshire Hathaway to market their own product, they should pay WB a commission.

That said, it should be noted that WB doesn't like tech companies and invests in very few. He likes businesses that have steady cash flow, containable costs, and reliable yield/growth. This isn't tech.

<comment> the-dude Mouser.com is a Berkshire Hathaway company.

<comment><USER27> Like I said, very few. This mouser is more a retail play than a tech play. He also invests in IBM and Apple, both of which have yields to justify the investment. Don't expect to see him put money into Facebook/Twitter/Snap/GoPro/Twillo any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Its brilliant. Andrew wrote the post in a way that makes it feel so obvious, even though its not. Reading it felt analogous to some of early 2000's YC writings and coverage.

</comment><comment><USER29> This post wholly ignores why Berkshire Hathaway is successful. The company is not successful because they make selling companies to them easy. They are successful because they buy good, cash rich businesses and find excellent management to run them.

<comment><USER30> The post isn't about why Berkshire Hathaway is successful, it's about why their acquisition process is successful. Totally understandable to focus on the latter and gloss over the former in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > he has amassed a collection of over 65 wholly owned companies

Just a side note, the above likely referenced this Wikipedia page[1], but it misses that MiTek, which _is_ listed on that page, represents holdings of another _20 companies_ that aren't on that page. I didn't research if other BRK company are also holding companies.

I currently consult for two companies, a PaaS company and a CRM/SaaS company. Both were recently purchased by MiTek and focus on the Builder Industry. They both continue to operate independently as do the other companies held by MiTek. This follows the traditional BRK business approach to keep the existing management and corporate culture in place of the acquired company.

Prior to that acquisition I thought the BRK team was not tech savvy. I can tell you first hand (at least when it comes to the MiTek team) that is not the case.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Berksh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Berkshire_Hathaway)

<comment><USER7> The MiTek people may be tech savvy, almost certainly Buffetts sign off for their purchases is cursory, if they think it benefits their business and purchase price was reasonable.

Berkshire recently bought Apple stock but I believe that was done by two young investment managers he lets manage smaller parts of the Berkshire portfolio.

Buffett is clearly more tech savvy than he lets on, but his objection to tech investments is he doesn't think he can identify durable competitive advantages there. It's certainly harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The best thing about Berkshire Hathaway in the context of internet is their website. I've given it as example numerous times.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone currently selling their internet company for several million... I could definitely appreciate a BH type buyer.

</comment><comment><USER34> I immediately thought of Naspers. Not a single mention of it still.

</comment><comment><USER35> Are the emoji on every list item really necessary? I find that they don't add any meaning to the post, and they're just distracting.

<comment><USER36> To share an alternative viewpoint, I read your comment and wondered _" what emoji?"_. I had to go back and skim over the article again -- and reading it in full -- to see what you were referring to.

In other words, I really didn't even notice them. To me, at least, they certainly weren't a distraction at all; in fact, just 30 seconds after closing out that tab I didn't recall seeing them in the first place.

<comment><USER36> _Edit:_ s/and reading it/after reading it/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> lol</comment>


The HTML5 vs. iPhone payment argument is nonsense - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/03/the_payment_arg.html <comment><USER2> Heh. It feels like the same sentiment there was around shareware back in the day. Suddenly, there was this idea that if you could hack three buttons together in Delphi, you not only _could_ , but you ware _entitled_ to make money from your software. I've lost count of how much shareware I've used, where I had the distinct feeling that more effort went into "protecting" the copy against piracy then making the software itself.

<comment><USER3> Shareware is also alive today in the App Store ... many apps have a limited free version.

Because of the similarity I also think Apple's App Store isn't sustainable, because there will be so much crap that users will only go for established brands (it's already happening, even with Apple's strict control ... which serves more to ban competitors of Apple's own offerings).

<comment><USER4> The reason many apps start as crap is due to the _arbitrary_ nature of the "standards" set by apple. They literally reject your app for any reason (or no reason), even after "suggesting" several changes that cost quite a bit of money. It is professional malpractice to council your clients to build anything other than the bare minimum before publishing (if you're a third party app developer as I am).

So basically, Apple gets crap apps because good apps are too risky to build as Apple can reject it ex post facto. There isn't a way to even say, pay them 20k dollars to do a preapproval study. So no one is willing to drop the big bucks required to put out complex full featured apps until the app has been in the store and selling for awhile.

Apple's approval process makes only iterative development worthwhile, and biases what people SHOULD be doing towards low cost work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> iPhone developer here.

> The first and most obvious way is just getting paid by a client for creating > the app. Now that's a payment model I can believe in...

At least 75% of the contract offers on my desk are people who want to sell an app direct to consumer (not an online ordering system or advertising; a game or a utility or calculator, etc.) So developers (albeit 1 step removed) are still very subject to the app store market pressures. If clients can't make money then there will be no contract work. Unlike other markets where there are other sales channels, in the iPhone world, Apple is the only sales channel.

As for the motivations of developers, I think the author's got it wrong, or at least he's got it wrong for me. I might write an app to scratch my own itch, but I wouldn't polish it, document it, pay an artist, or promote it without the nominal income that a niche app provides.

I'm not in it for the big million-dollar gambles. But if an app can pull in $5k year-on-year for about a week's worth of actual work, that's a very attractive investment for me.

You don't have to be EA to get rich on the app store, you just need to work hard and be patient and consistently churn out high-quality products.

<comment><USER6> The estimation is wrong, too.

1\. Many apps can be written in 2 - 4 weeks time.

2\. Many developers aren't paid $125/hour.

I wrote an app for a client that's now on the app store. The development time was six weeks _part time_ , and my rate was substantially lower than $125 per hour (in part because I have ownership of the source and the client has a royalty-free perpetual licence). The client was responsible for the graphics work (custom button designs, icons, etc.) and the content. Counting his own time, he probably spent around $5k total.

I'm not sure if the app has made its investment back, but I suspect that a large number of the 150,000 apps are $5k-or-less investments and a few of them are $10k-or-more. A rarefied few will be even more expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I buy the argument of '1.5 billion spent developing iPhone apps' vs '500 million in developer revenue'. Even if every hour of iPhone development only gets 30% payment in the macro sense, then I'd wager it's still wildly more lucrative then the startup world at large. Many startups never earn a cent before dying.</comment>


Brands ranking by 1000 teenagers - <AUTHOR> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8glsGGU0AAkusx.jpg:large <comment><USER2> AT&T is cooler than Facebook Messenger.

Whatsapp is _really_ uncool, beaten even by TMZ or Yahoo.

Twitter is surprisingly cool, although easily beaten by Instagram and Snapchat (no surprise there).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This image is a segment from a study done by Google, page 9 of 16.

[https://storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/its- lit.pdf](https://storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/its-lit.pdf)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Facebook is less cool than Walmart and Wendy's...Pizza Hut.</comment>


Wired Scores Exclusive Aerial Photos of Apple's 'Area i51′ - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/apples-secret-data-center/

<comment><USER2> "Exclusive?" You rent a plane and fly over it.</comment>


Ask HN: Rude Smart People Locked in a Room? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious.  You know all those super smart people you didn't want to be apart of your team because they had personalities which was horrible to work with.<p>What would happen if you took a bunch of them, lock them up in a room, and told them they can't leave until they created something interesting?  What would be the output? <comment><USER2> I've been on a project like this-- they ganged up on me, got me kicked off the team and then turned on each other.

I went back 6 months later and the last 2 remaining guys had overengineered something that the customer hated but they were happy with, and they'd taken so long to do it there was no money left for any sort of frontend.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on how introspective they are. Some people with horrible personalities are able to think critically about things after the fact. It doesn't take a stubborn ego to have a bad personality. You could, for example, have a bunch of people insensitive about one another's ego (but secure enough not to care about their own).

</comment><comment><USER4> "had personalities which was horrible to work with."

Output will probably be 0. To create something good, you need to do it as a team. If they could not work with non-rude ppl, there is no guarantee they will get along with each other just because they are all alike (rude).

<comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone tried it before?

<comment><USER5> Many companies have (sometimes without intending to) and it almost always ends really bad. You hope for a an agressive argument and an ultimatum( vs lawsuits)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of the worlds best music albums were created in that way.

</comment><comment><USER7> Either a last-man standing deal or they'd invent a practical faster-than-light motor and open up the galaxy.

Nothing in between.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe you would get a bunch of brilliant products each of which produced by an individual, working individually.

</comment><comment><USER9> A machine to escape from a locked room.

</comment><comment><USER10> Java

</comment><comment><USER11> bloody</comment>


Show HN: Ezras.com – Craft Marketplace for Whiskies - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys - we just launched our curated marketplace for whiskies and other spirits at www.ezras.com. Been up for about a week and would love any feedback. We are always open to new distilleries to check out and how we can make our site better. Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.ezras.com](http://www.ezras.com) for the clickable link.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN!
(Regular HN-lurker, but I never really had anything helpful to say!)--This is my first personal web project and I'd like to see the feedback from the community that I've learned most of my web/start-up/tough-times-in-life stuff from =).
willworkforamac.com
Thanks =)! <comment><USER2> Keep an eye out for PayPal shenanigans; lots of donation drives have had problems with them lately.

Oh, I will donate $10 when the html is 100% valid :) [http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwillworkforam...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwillworkforamac.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Aw, thanks for your support =)

I hear some mean things about PayPal sometimes too! Unfortunately it was the simplest donation process I knew how to implement (I was checking out Stripe but there was a lot of API/developer stuff I didn't understand--my friend had to help me install my Mixpanel trackers because I didn't really understand Javascript either), and it seemed like a convenient way for people to donate.

I just checked/validated my site on w3.org after googling what you might have meant by valid html, haha. (What a neat tool!) 31 errors .. ! Uhoh. Will get working on those, thanks for your review =)!

<comment><USER3> Check out www.wepay.com. Full disclosure, I use them and they're awesome.

<comment><USER4> Came here to say this, I used wepay.com to raise money from family and friends to buy my brother-in-law a birthday present. They are super easy to use, and super easy to get ahold of a real person if you run into problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just put up a WePay button. =) Thanks everyone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, I'd like to not criticize anything at all, and just say that this is a neat idea, it's presented beautifully, you've written it in a way which got me to actually stop and read it (and visit it a second time), and I dig your sense of design, which seems to do a great job of balancing humanism with engineering.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Rob! Your compliments are encouraging =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be interested to know the percentage of date requests (mildly put) _donuts_ will receive through her site. Hope this won't end in a stalking disaster.

<comment><USER7> Thank god she didn't put her home address on that site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice design. Direct link:

<http://willworkforamac.com>

Suggestion: put design as 1 instead of 4. Also, putting your email in the same line as "talk to me at:", or aligned, would convey the information better.

<comment><USER9> Love the design too. While you're at it, you may want to change the link for your email to "mailto:email@example.com" instead.

It's currently linking to "<http://firstname.lastname@example.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for spotting that! The link's been changed to the mailto.

And it's aligned on the same line and centered now, with an e-mail icon instead. Icons are cute!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would suggest a minor tweak to your site. To me, the "How can I earn your support" part of the page is the most interesting, especially because you are asking for money. But the panels switch too quickly for (at least me) to read an entire one. You should either slow down the switch frequency or let users switch between them manually.

Interesting site idea though. And your copy is engaging. I noticed the issue because I was engrossed in reading your ideas.

Edit: It appears steve8918 beat me to the punch as I was writing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> & Steve8918 - Thank you for letting me know!

Sorry for that usability peeve! I originally set the slider to pause whenever the mouse is hovering over a slide, but I didn't forsee that the short timeout session would be bothersome in case the cursor was elsewhere (like on the actual buttons, oops!)

I've just quadrupled the timeout time, so viewers will have more time reading a more stationary slide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not to be over-critical, but your "starting ideas" transition too quickly, so that I can't read the full page to figure out what you actually can do to help me. I would slow it down a lot more.

<comment><USER12> same problem here. Had to keep pressing the buttons again and again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very nice site, I'd donate if I weren't saving to buy my own MacBook (probably would also help if I had a PayPal account)

I know exactly how it is to lack a mac. I've been a Windows user up until about a month ago, when I finally threw my hands up and said "screw this, I'm getting Ubuntu" (surprisingly, Photoshop works on Linux quite painlessly)

Best of luck in getting a Mac and I hope it serves you well!

<comment><AUTHOR> & chromedude,

thanks, thanks! =) my trusty Dell has been good to me. but i'm curious about the other side! Good luck to both of you in getting a mac =)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of fancyhands.com. Keep doing what you're doing and on top of that, maybe you can drop Ted Roden a mail and ask if you can be a part of his team. This way you may get to own a Mac in double quick time. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> Very cool idea! Would love to hear how quickly you are able to get one ;). I definitely would give you some money myself, but I actually have the same goal and am tight on money as I am trying to start a startup myself.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting idea for donations. I'll give it a try once my PayPal account stops hating me.

Maybe add some alternate payment gateway support (e.g. WePay, Google Checkout, etc.)? :)

<comment><USER16> Stripe?

I'm going to donate $5, just because the thought of someone being stuck using anything other than a Mac is more bothersome than not having another latte. Maybe I'm too big a Mac fan. Maybe I still have a functioning Mac Plus on my desk.

<comment><AUTHOR> =P Thank you, Ivan!

If you're ever in the bay area, shoot me an e-mail! Hopefully I'll have a Mac by then, and I'll take you out for some local coffee =)

& ltamake, zacharycohn: thanks for the payment suggestions, currently setting up an account!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fantastic design, amazing for a first project! You definitely want to add the amount people have donated so far, it would be a nice motivation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! I wanted to have a thanking board or some sort of real-time donation tracker (a la humble bundle), but I'm not a developer/didn't know how to implement such a thing that linked to my PayPal/WePay =(

<comment><USER17> Well, it doesn't have to be real time, could be daily. Just check the donation figure and update your page manually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I was you I would check out <http://i.crowdfunded.it/>

Might be related to what you're doing :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion =)

I've donated on similar cause-funding platforms like kickstarter.com before, but I decided to make my own website because I wanted to get some hands-on experience in building my own site, marketing my site, and understanding my user feedback and analytics--things that I'm interested in doing professionally in the web industry. So the project is a challenge for myself to validate and improve on my marketing/copy skills, and also a kind of social experiment because I'm generally curious how the whole thing will turn out =)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Funny, I was dreading re-writing the "about" and "help" copy on my project, for exactly the reasons you suggest. I'll be in touch.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hi Francine, nice site! Did you design it? If so, you should put web design as a 'willing to help with'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, and thanks!

I bought a theme (from themeforest.net) to make quick changes off of, and my friend gave me some CSS that I used to format the top. Here's the theme I purchased: [http://tanshcreative.com/symple-lp- preview/symple_v1/index.h...](http://tanshcreative.com/symple-lp- preview/symple_v1/index.html)

I'm not a developer and I'm pretty inefficient at marking up webpages (it took me hours of trial and error for parts that I feel like a normal web designer would take half an hour to do), so it's not something I'd advertise--and that's for your benefit rather than mine =P. But I am definitely willing to help as much as I can, with what I can of it =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> i just remember the time some homeless dude came up to me near union square in san fran and tried to trade me a stolen macbook for a box of doughnuts.

it's like "what the hell is wrong with ya man? i've already got a pro in my backpack..."

<comment><USER22> A box of donuts, and the opportunity to return someone's computer seems like a good deal. I guess you're just feeding the steal-macs-for-donuts outbreak though.

At least donuts are kind f food and can't be translated to drugs or alcohol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great job! Looking forward to hearing the end result. Never quit!

-A

</comment><comment><USER24> What font did you use for "& I'm raising money to buy a mac"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I used Yanone Kaffeesatz Regular, available here: <http://www.dafont.com/yanone-kaffeesatz.font>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Donuts - did you do the entire front end code work?</comment>


Downsides of Freelancing - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanschneider.com/the-downsides-of-freelancing <comment><USER2> It's been said many times on HN, but if you freelance and in case you missed it: 1. Double or triple your rates (if you are fairly new to this you're likely not charging enough. 2. You are now a consultant. You don't provide a service, you provide solutions (if you are not sure what you are solving, figure it out). Forget the term freelance and anything associated with it. 3. Stop charging hourly. Try day rate, week rate, bi-weekly. Experiment. 4. Be picky. Fire clients if you have to. You are not a tool, you are a business, act the part.

<comment><USER3> Yes it's been said many times and they make it sound so easy, yet its not!

>> "You are now a consultant" <\- this kills me.

there are so many steps and effort before rising your rates, and becoming a consultant This is so similar to the "how to draw an owl" meme

<comment><USER4> I heard that advice from HN when I started freelance out of university at age 23.

I ended up embarassing myself a couple of times, by either:

\- asking for a high day rate when I lacked experience (e.g., for freelance Rails work, when I kinda knew Rails but lacked experience with most of the tooling, testing frameworks, etc)

\- trying to sell "consulting" work when I had only a vague idea how consulting worked.

So, yeah, while "charge more!!!" might be a useful message for underconfident programmers who don't know their own value, it's too simplistic and it omits many essential steps.

My takeway: if you plan to freelance long-term, you should treat it as a business, and plan to build a specialism. Once you've built a specialised skillset, and demonstrated credibility, then you should start systematically looking for higher-paying clients, and be confident in asking for what you are worth. But you have to know you are worth it, first. Once you've done that for a while, then you can start thinking about business-level problems and doing something higher level (which requires nailing a whole bunch of soft skills, too).

Another factor to consider is that if you're in a major city, there are probably other programmers doing freelance/contract work in your skillset, which you can use to gauge what a sensible rate would be, and what knowledge you need to gain.

Oh and - there's also the factor that as a newbie freelancer you often find the really crappy low-end clients that have a fixed budget and high expectations (e.g., small local businesses. I have nothing against small local businesses, but they're not good clients for freelance coding work). I went through a lot of stress working on such projects. Working for more high- paying, professional clients (digital agencies, banks that hire a lot of contractors, etc) is ironically a lot less stressful.

<comment><USER4> And finally - I never ended up doing freelance work for that long. It was only something I ended up doing in-between other stuff. I realised that it was not a career path I wanted to pursue -- if you are a very ambitious person, doing client work can become a grind after a few years. However, if you want to run a nice small business, starting off as a freelancer and growing into a small consultancy or digital agency can be a very good path to take. You will not become a billionaire, but plenty of people become millionaires that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Be a gatherer & not a hunter. In other words, find clients you can put on a monthly retainer instead of big projects that pay you once and force you to look for work for 5 months when done.

<comment><USER6> I have done this by working for a single employer. I got tired of the uncertainty of contracting and like the steady pay and benefits. Some people might think I'm a sucker but a feel like I sleep better these days (for the last decade, I guess).

<comment><USER2> Doing your own thing is not for everyone.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying parent is not doing his own thing, or that the people who think he's a sucker aren't doing their own thing?

I agree with the latter :)

<comment><USER2> There's nothing wrong to work for an employer if it's easier on your life. Some people prefer solo for whatever reason - whatever works for you ya know...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> a lot of obvious stuff and it reads like an advertisement

 _When I first moved to Amsterdam, I gave myself a 3-month "trial period" to figure out if I could find work and if I wanted to stay. This sounded then like a good amount of time, but it goes by much quicker than you think. I only started to contact people when I arrived and looking back now, I probably should've started much earlier. Building a network is a slow process, so you have to start before you quit your job._

it's slow and hard? who knew. How does someone with no experience move in one of the most expensive cities and suddenly have a good living? Yeah a lot of stuff does not add up.

<comment><USER9> I gave up here:

> I must admit that I've also never worked with a contract and that I don't > have any other form of terms and conditions for clients to sign.

I'm not a freelancer, but this sounds pretty unprofessional to me.

<comment><USER10> Yes and no, but there are still people that can be honest to each other without contracts and nasty clauses and so on.

A job description though, that both parties know what to expect from each other. (When the work is done and payment is due) can be done in an email.

<comment><USER11> > Yes and no, but there are still people that can be honest to each other > without contracts and nasty clauses and so on.

Contracts are not about honesty. They are a way to avoid having to negotiate how to act when predictable problems occur by setting the conditions (i.e., what to do when something happens) on paper.

If a project stays permanently on its happy path then you don't need safeguard clauses, but often it doesn't and having to decide how to proceed after problems occur is not easy or enjoyable for any part, because someone's ideal solution may not be aligned with someone else's best interests.

<comment><USER10> I meant that some people will not be honest and fair if things aren't 100% in writing with signatures, and that's on both sides

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With working from home and unlimited vacations becoming more and more widespread, I wonder are there any upsides left in freelancing?

<comment><USER13> Quite a lot I think - setting your own hours, picking what you work on, picking who you work with, picking how you work (tools, meetings, 100% remote etc.), being able to work on side projects you can profit from without them being owned by your employer, potential to earn a lot more since you're working directly with clients, not having a boss to answer to (you have to answer to clients but not in the same way especially since you have multiple clients) and lots of freedom around vacations (which I'm guessing is closer to "unlimited vacations" than you'd get from an employer).

Unstable income, having to market yourself and more means it isn't for everyone though.

<comment><USER14> > being able to work on side projects you can profit from without them being > owned by your employer

Is not being able to even legal? I'm pretty sure employer can't put anything like that in the work contract where I live. My spare time is _my_ time. Sure one can sign a non-competing clause, but employer owning your side projects sounds just insane.

<comment><USER15> Discussion on this from 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A big surprise many run into: the amount of time it takes to find and sign up new work ("sales").

It can be incredibly time-consuming, leads to a bunch of stress and uncertainty, and you can't really bill for it.</comment>


SuperTux v0.4.0 – first stable release since 2005 - <AUTHOR> http://supertuxproject.org/ <comment><USER2> I went to school with the maintainer at the time (tobgle, ca 2004). He was 14 when he rewrote large parts of the C++ code base. Plus he knew OpenGL.

<comment><USER3> Rewriting anything is usually a bad idea.

<comment><USER4> Not if you are learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surprised to see this on HN! I played this when I was young and it was a great, charming substitute for the Nintendo games my parents refused to buy me, haha.

<comment><USER6> Surprised? That was the best game for many linux nerds :)

I was playing that a lot on my first Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was fun to dive into the source code. It's C++ with multiple inheritance :) [https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/blob/master/src/badguy/...](https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/blob/master/src/badguy/bomb.hpp)

There are several methods for dealing with each type of collision.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just by looking at the screenshots, I can feel the nostalgia... I remember I've tried to create a clone of SuperTux with SDL when I started coding. I might still have it somewhere... I'm going to download it again and play for a while !

</comment><comment><USER9> This was very touching to the heart. An amazing open source project using open source projects with collaborators everywhere.

<comment><USER10> I believe there also was a paid version with more levels. Was that discontinued?

Edit: Oh, I was thinking of TuxRacer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This game is actually really fun and stable for an open source game. I can't believe I haven't tried it before now. It even mapped out the buttons for my Afterglow controller without any adjustment required. That's a refreshing surprise since most of my Linux games on Steam don't even recognize the controller.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what you mean? I have seen plenty of stable and fun open source games (esp. while HappyPenguin.org website was still live). I have also seen a lot of shitty games, both open and closed source (take a look at Google Play). I'd say that ratio is probably the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Never played this on my Linux desktop, though on my Nokia N900 this was the only game that I had installed. Great times, will play it again now it has been released again!

</comment><comment><USER14> Last year, my 3.5 yr old niece, loved this game on linux laptop. Though she can't play much. Happy to see tux jumping :) Glad to see new release.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wonder why it took 1 week to get posted.

Anyway, we've actually just now published packaged builds for Linux distros, available at [https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Am...](https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Amaths22%3ASuperTux&package=supertux2)

</comment><comment><USER16> I noticed there's a recently uploaded youtube clip of 0.4.0 in action - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Hwx1FfpEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Hwx1FfpEo)

<comment><USER17> Hard to tell from the video, and it has been ages since i tried Supertux, but all too often when i try SMB clones they have this slippery feel to them. That when i let go of a directional button the character do not stop instantly, but "slides" for a block or two before coming to a halt.

<comment><USER18> Isn't that part of the later SMBs? It's not in Super Mario 1 + 2 for the GB, but sure is in SMB3 (although I only played the latter on emulators only).

<comment><USER17> Possibly, but i don't think it is as pronounced as in the various clones. Or at least i never found it annoying in the SMBs, but kept noticing it in the clones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like that I can play SuperTux on my Windows machine. (:

<comment><USER20> Probably thanks to SDL.

<comment><USER21> Not to diss the people who made SDL, but that's one part out of many parts that makes a Windows port work.

<comment><USER22> Actually, SDL is generally most of the parts that makes a Windows port work (having done that myself...); at least for older 2D titles and assuming you're not using any "middleware".

SDL provides input, graphics, sound, and even some OS-level abstractions. That's quite a bit of the effort involved in porting a game typically.

3D titles that were using DirectX or C#, of course, can be significantly more involved.

<comment><USER21> Hm, that doesn't match my experience with porting. You end up making a lot of changes to code for simple things like "list the files in a directory" or more intricate changes for complicated things like networking code or threading. Then you end up making a bunch of changes because the compiler you use on Windows is vastly different from GCC. Anything involving IPC will probably end up getting rewritten from scratch, along with any UIs that appear outside the game. Paths will have to be made case-sensitive for Linux ports. Endian issues had to be worked out on OS X ports (this was pre-2010).

Maybe we are porting different kinds of games?

<comment><USER22> Yes, I think that's likely. The titles I've contributed to or worked on generally don't have networking, threading, or muck about with the filesystem.

They usually are single-threaded, have a single file archive or open files from a single directory (without any searching or the like). Surprised you've run into IPC use at all really.

I have had to deal with the file case-sensitivity issue, but that's usually not the most difficult issue to resolve. SDL_physfs and SDL itself provides solutions for a lot of the usual hackery in dealing with file I/O though.

Never had to deal with Endian issues as I've only been involved with ports that ran on x86.

Still, I'd say that the parts that SDL provides abstractions for are the parts that I least want to deal with -- especially when it comes to input handling or dealing with screen resolution changes. Years of knowledge there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's been a long time since I played a good old jump'n'run. This is going to be fun.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of [http://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/](http://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/)

I am playing xmoto for years and it is probably the only game that I install on some of mine machines.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very fun. Reminds me of Mario in a big way, and I love it.

<comment><USER12> If you love such games, take a look at Secret Maryo (another open-source Mario clone):

[http://www.secretmaryo.org/](http://www.secretmaryo.org/)

<comment><USER26> It's been forked due to inactivity, the newest release is available from [http://www.secretchronicles.de/en/](http://www.secretchronicles.de/en/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool. I remember playing this when it first showed up. Glad it's still alive :)</comment>


Unearthing the Secrets of New York's Mass Graves - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-york-mass-graves-hart-island.html <comment><USER3> You can't take it with you, folks, and that includes your body. I don't get the rituals around what happens to bodies after consciousness leaves them. Let the dust return to dust. So what if it happens together with a bunch of other dust? My dust won't know the difference at that point.

The important thing for me is to leave a legacy besides what happens to my body. A work of art or technology, or memories passed down through offspring. Maybe a nice little obituary.

The stories in the article are great, I just don't get the attitude that asks, "how dare these people be buried this way?" I think it has everything to do with the irrational fear of death, maybe one of the only things we won't be able to rationally, personally comprehend.

<comment><USER4> The want for a traditional burial of some form isn't for the departed - as you say they have no need of it, it's so the family can grieve and have some form of closure and often a place to go and visit.

This is going to entirely depend on the family and is a very personal thing and not rational, but the widespread of emotional response to loss is anything but rational.

Myself I don't care what happens to my cadaver when I'm gone, but my family can deal with it as they please to bring whatever peace they need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I certainly understand the frustration and 'hurt' expressed by what is in the article. And there are some questionable circumstances and decisions, yes, along with unwillingness to work with the poor.

But it's not as if these people are being pushed into mass graves with a bulldozer. Or willy-nilly flung around without respect.

Most of these stories were of people already forgotten - <USER2> relationships, mental illness, or otherwise out of contact with their loved ones.

If someone hasn't spoken to another member of a family or friends in a number of years and kept in contact with the caregivers/caregiving facilities, and their only contact is with someone who is paid to care for their most basic needs, how can we entirely blame a system for not going to utter lengths to 'restore' those?

Another sad reality is: some people don't care.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd heard about this sort of thing from listening to "Porgy and Bess", but I didn't know it still went on over there :(

Getting a municipal burial if necessary is one of the perks of living with a social safety net that I guess I didn't appreciate.</comment>


My idea on connecting job seekers to companies - <AUTHOR> http://vamshisuram.blogspot.in/2014/05/connecting-job-seekers-with-companies.html

<comment><USER2> you rock</comment>


PyTorch – Tensor computation with strong GPU acceleration - <AUTHOR> https://pytorch.org/ <comment><USER2> The #1 NLP repo on Github and the author of the most popular NLP course is moving from PyTorch to Tensorflow 2.0/Keras

[https://twitter.com/GokuMohandas/status/1174497967232782336](https://twitter.com/GokuMohandas/status/1174497967232782336)

> _We'll still use @PyTorch but more for research lessons, I'll post more on > this decision soon! I did deliberate for several weeks on this though but > ultimately it sped up development and decreased overhead for the practical > lessons by a lot._

<comment><USER3> > decreased overhead for the practical lessons by a lot.

What do they mean by that?

<comment><USER4> Presumably that it was easier to use to illustrate the actual content as opposed to implementation details. This is definitely the case, at least in TensorFlow 1.x there were a lot of details which made converting from [the way we think about the problem] to [practical implementation] more cumbersome. Some of these existed for good reason (eg. performance) while others were simply architectural cruft which the benefit of hindsight makes unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://github.com/blue-season/pywarm](https://github.com/blue-season/pywarm) PyWarm is a lightweight, high-level neural network construction API for PyTorch. It enables defining all parts of NNs in the functional way.

<comment><USER6> I don't see much of a reason you want to clutter your code with that, if you need a wrapper around pytorch use fastai not some obscure library nobody has ever heard about.

<comment><USER7> Thank god you weren't around when keras was released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The framework which put my trust back into frameworks. Very good!

</comment><comment><USER9> Apart from the official tutorials what are the best resources out there for learning PyTorch?

<comment><USER10> I really enjoyed this book for RL. [https://www.packtpub.com/gb/big-data-and- business-intelligen...](https://www.packtpub.com/gb/big-data-and-business- intelligence/hands-reinforcement-learning-pytorch-10)

If you learn well from videos many rave about the free fast.ai courses which now use PyTorch I believe. Seems to start with image classification. [http://fast.ai](http://fast.ai)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really old, it came out in 2016.

Why did you reshare it ?</comment>


Problems with simultaneity in distributed systems - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2745385

<comment><USER2> Also discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184779)

</comment><comment><USER3> One pull quote: "Within the production environment of Spanner, clock drift at any moment is typically from one to seven milliseconds."

</comment><comment><USER4> Already been discussed, and the title is "There is No Now."

Very good reading material though.</comment>


The $12 startup that was sold on Twitter for about $100,000 - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/sean-percival <comment><USER2> It's a $12 startup only if his time was worth nothing.

<comment><USER3> It's a $12 startup because somebody thought it made a catchy headline.

<comment><USER4> 4 hour workweek, etc etc. It all screams 'bs' though.

<comment><USER5> If you know the most sensational aspect of a story it gives you a good idea of the range of the story.

I like the title 'Four Hour Workweek' because it tells me right off the bat that it'll probably have some extreme stories of increasing productivity and working for smaller amounts of income. When you know the extreme you have a better idea of the story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He found a pretty unlikely niche and made a good bit of money in a relatively short amount of time, which is commendable.

Since it is a market that is probably easy to saturate (who would ever think that as many people would want a European vanity plate) selling it was probably a good decision.

It certainly doesn't sound like a must-have item in a growth market.

The big trick now will be to leverage the take of the sale in to something bigger.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only person who hates reading/visiting/watching/listening to Mixergy interviews?

<comment><USER8> I think they're great. Andrew has a knack for asking good questions, including ones that the interviewees may not really want to answer.

I like the format that he uses, and the transcripts are pretty decent if I want to revisit later to see what someone said.

Some of them are better than others, but given the sheer number of interviews that Andrew does that's inevitable.

What's your issue with them? Andrew reads HN, maybe if you offered some feedback about what you didn't like he could take it into consideration, instead of just saying that you hate Mixergy for some unknown reason. If anything, he's shown that he constantly modifies how he does things, perhaps you can raise a point that he hasn't considered previously.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, he pinged me on Twitter.

My problem with Mixergy is that there's a ton of enthusiasm and it gets to be a bit much. The design of the site also screams "I will show you how to make money online", and is a bit of a turnoff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> $100,000 != a successful deal. Surely an interesting experience for the founder, that was able to put his hands in what startup means, but... after months of work and customers I think 100k are ok and will not change your life.

<comment><USER6> I sincerely wished that every two bit project that I start would net me $100K.

How many > $100K exits have you had? What fields were they in?

<comment><USER10> Took the words out of my mouth. it's easy to get caught up being an armchair entrepreneur and a lot harder to see a 100k opportunity in a tiny market and actually make a legitimate exit.

Kudos to this guy. Technology as a means to an end, now there's a concept

<comment><USER11> $100k is more than what most people make in a year. Considering his startup was lean in the first place he could probably invest in his next idea more with that sort of nest egg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a grasshopper ad frozen on the embedded video in this article. The title is "Sound Professional and Stay Connected." At first I though this was a quote by the license plate guy about how he sold his website, then I realized it was Grasshopper's slogan. Anyway, I have noticed that successful business folks seem to take themselves very seriously, often to the point of being annoying, but it seems to be a recipe for success, since potential customers are so bombarded with noise that they are looking for any reason to write you off.

</comment><comment><USER13> The format of the raw transcript instantly turned me off from reading it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have wondered why there is no vanity licence plate market in the US. Do the US laws not allow them to be transferred to other people? Or maybe it's not allowed with money involved?

</comment><comment><USER15> Here in Australia, or at least my state of Victoria, the local road body realised how much money this could generate and "euro plates" were introduced in 2005. They've really taken off this last year especially.

<http://www.vplates.com.au/euro-plates/></comment>


Gmail Password Goes Missing - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that several times since I've started using Gmail on Android devices, Google now stupidly assumes that I wish to use them for email password recovery.  If I can't log into Gmail on my computer, WTF makes Google think I'll have nay better luck using a smartphone with a tiny little keyboard that makes my keyboarding far more error prone in the first place.
Google hates myopic people whose 3+ year old eyeglasses just don't make it anymore. It seems that every time I manage ti mis-type a Gmail password more than once, usually on a smartphone and/or after being forced to create a new password that isn't yet burned into myu fingertips, I end up in a pointless loop trying to recover the password for my main Gmail account and can't do that because it locks me out after I fail maybe three times.
Gmail is becoming less and less useful to me and thus more and more annoying. <comment><USER2> On [https://myaccount.google.com/security](https://myaccount.google.com/security) you can configure an alternative recovery email address. That should get you out of the loop of Gmail trying to send you a recovery link to an email address you're already locked out of.</comment>


The Beginner's Guide to Intermittent Fasting - <AUTHOR> https://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting <comment><USER2>
      decreased body fat (down 3% from 14% to 11%)

A decrease from 14%BF to 11%BF is a decrease of _over 20%_ , not 3%. Three _percentage points_ is not 3%, unless the base is 100.

But what's really distracting is the basic terminology fail. The strategy being described is _Time-Restricted Feeding_ , which is but one form of intermittent fasting.</comment>


Another wordpress core exploit in the wild - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sucuri.net/2017/02/wordpress-rest-api-vulnerability-abused-in-defacement-campaigns.html <comment><AUTHOR> This privilege escalation vulnerability affects the WordPress REST API that was recently added and enabled by default on WordPress 4.7.0.

So basically people who updated religiously were hit, and those who did not, were fine.

I am left wondering if running wordpress sites in read-only state (both files and database) should be the only reasonably safe method.

A lot of people run the files with php ownership (so they could update via /wp-admin, or they just don't care) which opens the site to be exploited by any vuln plugin/theme

But now it looks like even running proper permissions (NOT www-data) on files is no longer enough, and we should consider mysql in read-only state when no editing is happening...

VERY SAD.</comment>


Google News Is Mostly Down - <AUTHOR> Currently Google News: World shows this message:<p>"We're sorry we are unable to show any "WORLD" stories. Please try again later."<p>This is true for U.S. and Technology sections too. I'm in Mexico and perhaps that is relevant. <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting - I searched on google news / web search, and didn't find anything that would suggest it is down. I thought my browser is acting. Oh well, good to be off google news for few hours - will get some work done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply. I was beginning to doubt myself.</comment></comment>


Stream Animal Crossing to Your Oculus - Sean-Der https://mzyy94.com/blog/2020/05/11/play-nintendo-switch-on-smartphone/ <comment> Sean-Der I just stumbled upon this repo and it is blowing my mind. I bet there are a lot of other really cool things that you can do with this tech :)

Nice little video on Twitter here[0] to see it action.

[0] [https://twitter.com/_pion/status/1273910045244133376](https://twitter.com/_pion/status/1273910045244133376)</comment>


Unikernels, meet Docker - <AUTHOR> http://unikernel.org/blog/2015/unikernels-meet-docker/ <comment><AUTHOR> We'll be releasing the code sometime tomorrow afternoon. We need a bit of extra time to clear out the unused code, make a readme, and also get some rest. :)

I'll add a link to the blog post when it's live.

<comment><USER2> did you do that already?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet (sorry) but will do soon!

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to close the loop, we did release the code.

See the post at: [http://unikernel.org/blog/2015/contain-your- unikernels/](http://unikernel.org/blog/2015/contain-your-unikernels/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> this reminds me of a recent presentation posted here about OpenBSD's coming support for "pledges" [1].

I suppose the difference here is that pledges use a single kernel but restrict kernel interfaces for each process while the unikernel approach creates a kernel subset for each VM (and thus each process, for VMs dedicated to a single process).

Can anyone knowledgeable comment about the advantages or disadvantages of each? I'm guessing unikernals will be more portable (only OpenBSD is doing pledges to my knowledge) and more popular with the containerization movement. Can pledges accomplish the same objective with better use of system resources?

Edit: clarity about portability point

[1] [http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD- current/man2/...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD- current/man2/pledge.2)

<comment><USER4> They're compatible approaches, you could use pledges in a unikernel for exactly the same reason in order to _further_ reduce the application's attack surface: a unikernel includes only what the application needs but it can't take advantage of the application's needs varying (reducing) over time[0], which is pledge(2) allows.

[0] one of the reasons for pledge(2) was the realisation/understanding that many applications have an initial setup phase followed by a "stable state", where the stable state needs significantly less services than the setup e.g. setup might require reading config files but the steady state doesn't and just listens on a socket, so you can call pledge(2) multiple times and further reduce the application's abilities (attempting to increase them will fail with EPERM)

<comment><USER5> Neat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What this is ignoring is that the hypervisor already is a full operating system. If the linux people finally make isolation secure I see no future for unikernels.

<comment><USER7> A hypervisor has a much smaller attack target than a full blown OS. The kernel alone of a mainstream OS can be an order of magnitude larger than a hypervisor. Xen, for instance, has fewer than 150,000 lines of code. The Linux kernel has about 15 million. A full Linux distro probably has around 200-300 million. So a full OS has about two orders of magnitude (100x) more potential for exploits.

<comment><USER8> Is there any Xen-based public cloud that's not running a full conventional OS kernel (Linux or otherwise) in dom0? If not, then the theoretical smaller TCB of Xen doesn't matter in practice. And of course, some major public clouds use KVM, so they're effectively using a full Linux kernel as the hypervisor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think rump kernels are definitely the future. It will be interesting to see if any of the other *nixes attempt to reorganize their kernels a la NetBSD to make them potentially useable as rump kernels.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Personally I'd like to see the monolithic Unixes get decomposed into multiserver, as was attempted with the IBM SawMill project in the late 90s for Linux.

<comment><USER10> Personally I much rather like the approach Plan 9 took to decomposition vs what SawMill attempted.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Going the Plan 9 way would be a blank state reset of everything, doing a retroactive modularization would retain the existing environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks great. Hopefully this can be configured to set off a big fat alarm if any unexpected syscalls get called. Will be a huge security win.

<comment><USER5> Well, seccomp already does this, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So what if I need to run centos and ubuntu containers on a centos host?</comment>


A rendering of Lumia 800 and its icons made in pure CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://tjrus.com/lumia/ Lumia 800 and its icons made in pure CSS3. No images, no base64, no SVG, no canvas, just a lot of CSS3 and a little bit of Javascript (with jQuery, of course).<p>Viewed best with the latest versions of Safari and Chrome in Mac OS X. <comment><USER2> This title is extremely misleading. It is absolutely not made in "pure CSS3". It's very much heavily javascript based: [https://github.com/TjRus/Lumia.js/tree/master/js](https://github.com/TjRus/Lumia.js/tree/master/js)

You should really refer to it as you did in your readme as "imageless".

That said, this is really quite cool. Nice job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying that whole Lumia with inretaction done with pure CSS3. Rendering (!) of Lumia and it's icons made in pure CSS (as I write in the title), interactions and few other things - with the help of JS.

<comment><USER3> It's still somewhat misleading. Like things like css3 transitions and page states maybe using :target or hash to keep state for "is phone on" and stuff, vs just using jQuery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So what?

There is not secret to rendering Windows 8 icons.

The secret is rendering it on real time, more than 60 times per second, on limited hardware.</comment>


Google AdWords - eleven herbs and spices revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/21/google_secret/

<comment><USER2> Ach -- El Reg has been playing up the "evil Google fooling people" angle for years. a) the general algorithm has been written up and confirmed many times. b) the power-law distribution of rankings is not a secret either. You don't need a three-page conspiracy piece to point out the implications of a + b.

I love this line, after 2 pages of conspiracy wanking: "Never mind that it's obvious."</comment>


My Favorite Shortcuts for JetBrains' IDEs - <AUTHOR> https://www.markusdosch.com/2020/04/my-favorite-shortcuts-for-jetbrains-ides/ <comment><USER2> While we talk about JetBrains, I think they really should push some priority on their remote development support. Take the VS Code Remote SSH extension as a good example of how it could work, which is extremely seamlessly, and it just works. E.g. even the embedded terminal provides a shell on the remote host, and if you e.g. open a file in there via `code somefile.txt`, it will open in your VS Code.

It's basically this feature request: [https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-226455](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-226455)

Maybe they just need a few more votes on it. Or some more popularity.

Or is it just me and most people don't really need this? I'm still not really sure about the optimal remote work setup. Other people might just use Mosh + Tmux + Vim... I heard that Google has some very nice internal web IDE. If there would be a web IDE as powerful as PyCharm and the other JetBrain IDEs, that would also be a nice option.

<comment><USER3> FWIW: In the 2020.1 updates that have been rolled out in the last week the SSH support is now much better.

But serious question though: what workflow do you have that remote code editing is necessary?

<comment><USER4> I find remote code editing to be useful when I don't have the necessary resources on my machine such as disk/memory/gpu and I am still prototyping a solution, which happens a lot in ML/DL.

I agree that remote code editing is not strictly necessary since you can perform such task with sshfs or git push/pull workflows.

On the other hand, having the remote environment in your local IDE quickens the development and you don't have to setup a full replica of your environment locally.

edit: ML/DL here stands for Machine Learning/Deep Learning

<comment><USER5> I get that through remote interpreter and automatic upload features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple of "problems" I've had with Jetbrains' (more specifically IntelliJ IDEA's) shortcuts are:

\- Not everybody uses a "standard" set of shortcuts (understandable); so whenever I need to do something on another's system, unless they're on "IntelliJ IDEA Classic" keymap, I'm clueless for a while.

\- Not wanting to re-learn the "default" (shipped with) "macOS" keymap in case they change it again because of clashes with system shortcuts

\- When switching to Linux (when my MBP just decides to limit all cores to 0.8GHz for thermals and I can get no work done), I have no idea what shortcuts are there. It's a hit-and-miss, hoping Cmd maps to Alt and it's the same combination. If it were possible to replicate the entirety of the Apple keymap on Linux, I'd switch to using IntelliJ IDEA on my beefier linux machine in an instant. (Oh and if there's a terminal configurable such that I can set up iTerm's shortcuts, bliss!)

\- "complex" shortcuts, like Cmd-Shift-Option-N; afraid to remap it to something (moreso, figuring out what'd be the best remap option), afraid to hurt my little-finger the more I use that.

<comment><USER7> FYI you can export your shortcuts (and other settings): [https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/sharing-your-ide- setting...](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/sharing-your-ide- settings.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ctrl-alt-L (cmd-alt-L) is my all-time favorite. It reformats the code consistently. It's the first thing I do when I start work on a new codebase, and the last thing I do before a commit.

No need for endless discussions on which style is best, as the IDE allows you to set the preferences on a per-project basis. It can also read editor config dotfiles so you can use code formatting consistently throughout a team.

<comment><USER8> A potential next step if it fits your workflow is to create a macro triggered by save. I have one that optimizes imports, reformats code and do silent code cleanup.

<comment><USER9> There is already an intellij plugin called Save Actions which does this (import, reformats, and some extra stuff, like adding final to variables wherever possible(optional off course).

<comment><USER8> Oh that's nice! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> `Ctrl+W` is awesome, but after it has been ingrained in the fingers it's easy to close browser tabs by accident :D

Another one (not mentioned) is "Dobbel tap and hold Ctrl" to add multiple carets using the arrow keys (might need to enable in settings (Under smart keys)).

Another "smart keys" settings I recommend is "Surround selection on typing quote or brace" (not sure it's default or not)

<comment><USER11> > _Ctrl+W is awesome, but after it has been ingrained in the fingers it 's > easy to close browser tabs by accident :D_

This is why Ctrl+Shift+T is my favorite browser shortcut!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently installed the "Key Promoter X" plugin, which tells me the keyboard shortcuts for things I do frequently with the mouse. Pretty handy.

</comment><comment><USER13> The JetBrains IDEs implement their own raw keyboard event handling, which means that if you have your system set up with a non-standard keyboard layout and JetBrains hasn't implemented their own support, it just won't work.

The issue on their public issue tracker has been open for something like 8 years.

Unfortunately for me this means that no keyboard shortcuts using the Cmd key work, despite me using a built-in macOS keyboard layout with no special customisation.

<comment><USER9> > despite me using a built-in macOS keyboard layout with no special > customisation.

I also use a built-in macOS keyboard layout with no special customisation, and I regularly use shortcuts with Cmd. Perhaps you might want to change your Keymap in IntelliJ(this can be done by Double Shift -> Type Keymap -> Select new value.

Edit: For me, almost all the shortcuts detailed in this post work, just need to replace Ctrl with Cmd.

<comment><USER13> I'm using the Dvorak Cmd-QWERTY layout in macOS. This changes the layout to QWERTY whilst the Cmd key is held so that keyboard shortcuts are mostly in the same physical place (because most are about easy hand movements rather than letter). JetBrains does not match this behaviour.

<comment><USER14> Huh, never realized that was a thing. Do the shortcuts in the menu show the QWERTY key or the Dvorak one? I'm curious how you learn the shortcuts if it still shows the QWERTY keys.

<comment><USER13> Shortcuts all show the correct letter value. So for Ctrl+T, I'd press what is the K key on a QWERTY keyboard. For Cmd+T, I'd press what is the T key on a QWERTY keyboard.

This can get a little confusing, but most common shortcuts contain the Cmd modifier on a Mac, so it's only really Terminal/iTerm where things are different.

My keyboard is still physically a QWERTY keyboard which makes knowing where Cmd shortcuts are very easy, I can just look. I switched to Dvorak when I was 18, but learnt with a Dvorak keyboard so I didn't learn it well enough and when I got to uni and had to use shared lab machines I couldn't manage and had to switch back. Then just over 3 years ago I had 3 weeks off work so switched at the beginning with no physically different keyboards and learnt it all by position and I'm still using it today. Less hand pain, and I can touch type where before I was proficient but not entirely by touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of my favorites, which I didn't think to look for for years, is 'Ctrl + Shift + Enter'. This completes your statement for you. Very convenient and lots of wasted punctuation characters skipped.

<comment><USER16> My favorite too. I always remap that to shift+enter though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The best thing about this is the consistency across languages. Whether I am writing Java,C++,Rust, Go,Javascript, the shortcuts are the same with similar behaviour as much as possible. Shift F6 refactors the variable name. Cmd Alt M refactors a method from a chunk of code. Being able to use this muscle memory across languages is fantastic.

<comment><USER11> > _Shift F6 refactors the variable name._

Funny you mention that. As a long-time Windows user, that is the first thing I remap when I set up any JetBrains IDE. F2 is the rename shortcut in File Explorer, so I set it to be the refactor variable name shortcut too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use the vim plugin and various jetbrains commands in IntelliJ.

Multi-cursor select is taken care of by vim's visual block. Basic editing/macros/navigation within a single file also done with vim.

For more IDE/multi-file specific tasks I use IntelliJ's shortcuts:

* cmd+shift+f for global search

* 2xshift for symbol search

* cmd+b to jump to method declaration

* cmd+shift+left/right is also useful to jump to previously navigated cursors

refactoring:

* cmd+alt+v/c/m for extracting variable/constants/methods (good for refactoring after prototyping)

* shift+f6 for renaming variables

* alt+enter for suggestions

EDIT: formatting

</comment><comment><USER18> I've asked this before in other conversations but, what makes VS Code so popular compared to more mature IDEs with a more full fledged set of features like IntelliJ?

I have tried VS Code and the minute I couldn't ctrl + click navigate the code or get contextual ctrl + space bar method or input parameter suggestions I abandoned it.

<comment><USER19> > I have tried VS Code and the minute I couldn't ctrl + click navigate the > code or get contextual ctrl + space bar method or input parameter > suggestions I abandoned it.

I'm using VSC for a project the moment. You can definitely Cmd+Click on Mac to navigate, so I assume you could too, but perhaps it's not indexing your code for some reason?

I also see completions for method parameters, but I don't yet know the shortcut to redisplay it. Typing the opening brace, or a comma will display it, however.

What I miss the most in VSC is a decent VIM emulator. A number of the shortcuts in that list (and more) can be key combinations in Vim. But even crucial things like search with /, *, #, and ? (find symbol and regex search prev/next) aren't implemented properly, and undo/redo sometimes falls apart and corrupts your code. I believe the emulation in JetBrains products are actually made by the JB team themselves, so they can probably get all the necessary hooks in the extension API for Vim to function properly.

<comment><USER20> Last I heard, they were embedding neovim in VS Code, have you tried this? Or did they give up on this?

<comment><USER19> Looks like it's a thing:

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetlia...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode- neovim)

When my annoyance at the vanilla Vim plugin exceeds my laziness to install and configure Neovim, I'll have a look at it :) Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think WebStorm has the problem that the keyboard shortcuts are more or less meaningless key-combinations, it's difficult to remember them unless you use them frequently.

Luckily you can reassign the functions to different keys. For instance I have re-assigned "Show Breakpoints" to Ctrl-Break. Easy to remember right?

I re-assigned Ctrl-I to also Ctrl-E. Why? Because that Evaluates Expressions.

I've been using WebStorm for years now and I still discover useful stuff and keyboard shortcuts in it. That is both great but also a sign of how it is not completely obvious how to do things.

Recently I discovered what I think is the greatest shortcut of them all: Ctrl- Tab.

That pops up a widget from which I can choose which tool-window to make current. Keep the Ctrl down and you can use Tab or arrow-keys to navigate to the tool-window-name you want to activate.

</comment><comment><USER22> You forgot a huge timesaver. I can't remember the shortcut (maybe Ctrl+F6) change method signature.

You can add a parameter and specify a default value that will be added to every call site. You can also reorder parameters or delete one and all the call sites will be updated.

</comment><comment><USER22> Another favourite that I'd been missing since switching from Eclipse (back around Eclipse 3.6/4.2 days) is Field Call Hierarchy. Cursor on a data element and get the 'call hierarchy' from it.

Of course fields aren't 'called' per se, so JetBrains didn't do this. I'd been promoting issue IDEA-160274 where ever I could and now you can cursor on a field and press Ctrl+Alt+H (macOS) and see references to that field, and then selectively expand those references in a caller tree.

[0] [https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-160274](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-160274)

</comment><comment><USER23> Ctrl + Shift + A is my favourite shortcut in JetBrain IDEs. Having all editor commands in one go without the need to click through menus is a bliss. Especially so because I don't use IDEs as regular as Neovim and thus keep forgetting some shortcuts.

Double Shift is also extremely helpful to navigate to a file if the project has a lot of nested subdirectories.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a video showing top 15 IntelliJ shortcuts by Trisha Gee. I know it's like watching top 15 Federer shots. Some of your favorites may not be there. Still it's quite good.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYO5_riePOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYO5_riePOQ)

</comment><comment><USER25> Alt-shift-arrow up/down for creating more cursors above/below. Easy multi-line editing (I may have set that up manually, but I do it in every ide now if it's not by default)

Ctrl-Q opens documentation, which you can pin as a tool window.

</comment><comment><USER26> One of the best things I did now that I work on a Mac was use the force touch trackpad to ctrl-click whenever I push harder and a custom gesture for forwards and backwards.

</comment><comment><USER27> I really wish they had ctrl-shift-t - reopen tab. I use it in chrome so much and it kills me when I accidentally close a file and I can't just reopen.

<comment><USER28> They have a "Reopen Closed Tab" action you can map in Settings -> Keymap. You can also use "Recent Locations" Ctrl-Shift-E to see recently touched files, the first one will be the one you just closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You know what the best shortcut is?

The menu key (windows and linux only)

Want to fix spelling of a word? Press menu key Want to refactor? Press menu key

You name it... press the menu key.

</comment><comment><USER30> While we are at it: Does anyone know how to hide the new commit view? I haven't found a related action I could assign a shortcut to.

<comment><USER31> In the Keymap editor, Tool Windows -> Commit

<comment><USER30> Thanks, it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ctrl+J to select multiple occurrences for editing. That works for me on Linux. I think it's different on Windows/Mac.

<comment><USER33> Ctrl + G is select multiple occurrences on Mac.

It's one of my favorites as well. It is really good when you need to quickly rename, reformat or tweak a handful of lines that isn't a viable refactor action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> ctrl+Up: selects increasingly larger scopes, great for selecting the content of a string literal (either with or without the quotes) or grabbing chunks of call chain

</comment><comment><USER35> One of my absolute favorites is multi-cursor editing. I first stumbled upon this in Sublime Text, but now I can´t live without it.</comment>


Swiss company issued patent for calculating health scores - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dacadoo.com/blog/2014/06/19/intellectual-property-u-s-patent/

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.google.com/patents/US8706530](http://www.google.com/patents/US8706530)</comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't any startup fixed K-12 school lunches? - <AUTHOR> Giving the saturation of food delivery startups, I'm surprised there has been no disruption to the much-chagrined public school cafeteria. Working parents don't have time to make lunches and public school cafeterias in the U.S. serve notoriously low-quality low-nutrition lunches. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure there is a lot that startups can provide at the local/state level, while also generating large profits for VCs, that would seriously outperform the government's way to do it while simultaneously fitting within a school's operational constraints. I would like being wrong, though.</comment>