Shon Hopwood and Kopf's terrible sentencing instincts - <AUTHOR> http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood-and-kopfs-terrible-sentencing-instincts <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the comment by the judge's former convict:

[http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood- and-...](http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood-and-kopfs- terrible-sentencing-instincts/#comment-2810)

I feel like I'm in some fantasy alternate reality, where prison rehabilitation really works, and where the Internet is used for polite, intelligent, and uplifting discussion.

<comment><USER2> I was soooo tempted to troll that comment :-)

I am struck however by the agreement by the judge and the ex-robber that 5 years is about the max you should give if hoping to reform someone.

> In the "for what it is worth" category, I have thought > for a long time > that 60 months was about the maximum > sentence one should impose if you > were were solely hoping > to make a positive impact on the prisoner.

It would be interesting if we genuinely tried prison as a reform institution. Stop the violence, stop the drugs, provide real meaningful work, and ... err.

<comment><USER3> It was intellectually in vogue in the 1960's to treat prison as a reform institution. Then the 1970's and 1980's happened, and the great cities of the U.S. dissolved in crime and violence, and those ideas went very much out of style.

I think it's an unfortunate accident of history more than anything else. When I was growing up in the 1990's, us suburbanites from Northern Virginia would never dream of going to D.C. at night. What took the capital of the country and dragged it down into that sorry state was a combination of economic issues, the drug war, deteriorating race relations, political conflict, etc. But whatever the cause was, it happened, and the end result was that we had an entire generation of people (the boomer generation), that saw the purpose of the criminal law as keeping the criminal element from spilling out into civilized society. Hence, the focus was, through the 1990's, "victims rights" and "tough on crime" not rehabilitation.

<comment><USER4> _whatever the cause was, it happened_

The incarceration rate since the 1960s has remained virtually static; but the incarcerees are in prison, where previously they would have been detained in mental asylums:

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/saving- normal/201303/pri...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/saving- normal/201303/prison-or-treatment-the-mentally-ill)

Also note the strong correlation between falling crime rates since 1970 and the removal of tetraethyl lead as an additive in gasoline:

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/theworldin2013/2013/01/lead-a...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/theworldin2013/2013/01/lead- and-crime)

A punitive prison regime isn't going to cure the sick. What we need is to swing the focus onto mental health issues -- and yes, this may mean building new asylums, to replace the punishment regime of prisons with a medical/treatment oriented system -- and shrink the prison system and re-focus it on actual _criminals_ rather than unfortunates who hear voices in their heads.

<comment><USER2> Huh? Lead causes crime?

<comment><USER5> Correlates with, does not necessarily cause.

<comment><USER6> But it is difficult to imagine a mechanism where the lead could be caused by the crime and easy to imagine one where the crime is caused by the lead. A separate independent cause that affects crime and lead is easy to imagine, but if you control for location where people live, or lived when young (which is largely a measure of poverty) and still saw the correlation between lead and crime, then I would say that was quite strong evidence that lead poisoning (which is known to have mental effects) causes behavior patterns that lead to crime.

<comment><USER7> One causing the other is not the only possibility.

Maybe it's a complete coincidence.

Or maybe (keeping in mind that somoene above suggested the correlation has been shown in different countries at different times) -- societies that work to reduce lead also tend to be societies that work on other social issues, and those other social issues reduce crime. So the lead is correlated to crime historically, even though neither causes the other directly.

Now, i think the study showing lead/crime correlation is _awfully_ interesting, and I don't dismiss it.

But "correlation does not prove causation" does not just mean "B could have caused A instead of A causing B." And this is important to understand in order to evaluate statistical findings properly. There are all sorts of things that can cause correlation rather than either A or B causing the other -- including things nobody's actually even thought of yet, but may still be what happened. And complete coincidence is always possible as well.

<comment><USER6> > Maybe it's a complete coincidence.

The word "correlated" means that it is NOT just a complete coincidence. One might not cause the other, they might be correlated because of a separate factor that interacts with both, but if they are "correlated" then complete coincidence can be ruled out.

> [...] So the lead is correlated to crime historically, even though neither > causes the other directly.

Yes, this is what I mean by a third factor affecting both. But lead is a physical effect -- there are only certain sorts of things that can cause it. Things like eating lead, breathing lead, or having a diet that causes one to incorporate less lead into neurons. Thinking happy thoughts cannot change your lead levels (directly). So there are only certain categories of separate factors, C, that could be the cause of both A (lead) and B (crime). Where your name comes in the alphabet might conceivably cause crime, but it simply cannot cause lead. C, if it exists, must be a physical effect.

That's why I mentioned controlling for location where people live. That is a likely candidate for C: it is plausible to correlate with crime and it is possible to correlate with lead. If you control for it and still find an effect, then either A causes B, B causes A (not reasonable), or there is a different C'. Perhaps a genetic mutation that increases lead absorption and also alters brain chemistry to increase propensity to crime? That one is already a bit of a stretch.

I guess what I am saying is that it is true that correlation does not imply causation, but that there are reasonableness constraints on the kinds of interactions one can hypothesize, and after a certain point Occam's razor implores us to consider causation.

<comment><USER7> _The word "correlated" means that it is NOT just a complete coincidence._

How do you figure? The word 'correlated' means that a relationship has been shown to be statistically _unlikely_ to have happened purely by chance. It can never be shown to be _impossible_ however. And there can (and often are) subtle mistakes in the calculations that mean even the correlation isn't what one first thought.

And obviously statistics alone can never prove (or rule out)_ a causation, I think we agree there.

I haven't examined the research under discussion in detail enough to know if they controlled for all the things you suggest would be good to control for, etc., I have no idea.

But yeah, in the end we use our judgement as to what statistical correlations actually mean (such as a causation, and what sort through what mechanism). We can also do experiments or analysis to try and rule out (or confirm) other plausible alternate explanations. That's science, yep.

I think we mostly agree. I still object to what I think was an overly facile implication on your part that a few minutes of thinking of alternate explanations and deciding they are implausible -- on your own without seeing what other people's responses to the study in the literature have been, without an in depth analysis and consideration of the original research -- is sufficient to determine that there's "quite strong evidence" for correlation. That's not science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's not the title.

The title is "Shon Hopwood and Kopf's terrible sentencing instincts".

Choice quote: "Hopwood proves that my sentencing instincts suck. When I sent him to prison, I would have bet the farm and all the animals that Hopwood would fail miserably as a productive citizen when he finally got out of prison. My gut told me that Hopwood was a punk–all mouth, and very little else. My viscera was wrong."

That's quite a stand-up thing to write.

<comment><USER9> I believe the title is highlighting something most folk will miss. Hopwood and Kopf have a fascinating back-and-forth in the comments section.

Whilst the article itself is a good read, the comments (which I would have otherwise skipped) are fascinating.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. The title is a little misleading (they agree, rather than debate) but I wouldn't have gone to the comments without the hint.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Debate" generally does mean "argument" (and if on the Internet, a contentious one), but it also has the connotation of discussion. That said, I do think the judge asserts a point that the ex-convict rebuts:

Judge Kopf:

> _Hopwood proves that my sentencing instincts suck. When I sent him to > prison, I would have bet the farm and all the animals that Hopwood would > fail miserably as a productive citizen when he finally got out of prison. My > gut told me that Hopwood was a punk–all mouth, and very little else. My > viscera was wrong_

Hopwood:

> _I wouldn't say that your sentencing instincts suck. While I meant what I > said at sentencing, I was hardly the person that could back it up. I was a > reckless and selfish young man back then. I changed._

And later:

> _But as a judge, you're constrained by the system we have. I've never > believed that it's up to judges to fix that system on their own. It requires > citizens to view criminal justice issues differently (and heck, to view > prisoners differently), and a Congress to actually pass some legislation._

Hopwood disagrees that the judge's instincts were off, because at the time of sentencing, the judge was right to see the convict as a "mouth-off". Furthermore, Hopwood disagrees with the Judge Kopf's implication that he, a judge, bears the agency and responsibility of harsh sentencing. The system is not one that judges alone can fix, Hopwood says, and up to the legislature (and the voters who vote in lawmakers) to effectively reform the system.

That last point is, IMO, an extremely important nuance that is often overlooked in debates over controversial judicial matters. It's easy to blame the judge (hence, the focus on the party of the executive who appointed a particular federal judge) because it's the easiest part of the system to personify. Much harder to sustain interest in the chain of laws, voter attitudes, and societal values that puts the buck in the judge's court.

So in other words, it is a debate, albeit a small one that doesn't catch fire...which makes it so unusual. Also, note the comment thread in which a Huffington Post reporter tries to get Kopf and Hopwood to participate in an online talk, and how Judge Kopf declines: [http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood- and-...](http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood-and-kopfs- terrible-sentencing-instincts/#comment-2820)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Prison works for a very small minority of people who are reasonably intelligent and curious, but lacking direction or drive. Being incarcerated for a short time is a hell of a wake-up call, and for me, Shon Hopwood, and a few others ever, leads you to turn your life around.

For most people it's not about rehabilitation, but deterrence, retribution, and physically restraining inmates from committing crimes in mainstream society.

I completely agree with Shon about the impact of long sentences. He says:

 _Five years is about the maximum amount of time for someone to "get it" and change and create a different life. More than that, and prisoners feel hopelessness and they think "why bother, I just need to get through this and go home." It's very difficult to "seize the day" in prison and use every day to prepare for release when you staring at a 10- or 20-year sentence in the face._

I would add that many people become institutionalised. After a few years in prison you can become socially important in the community. But on the outside, you are nobody. The longer you're in there, the less attractive it looks to reform and try to build a life on the outside.

<comment><USER12> Also helping Hopwood's situation - he had a strong, supportive social network while in prison and after his release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Smart white guy gets locked up, manages to make something of himself once his hormones cool off over the course of a few years. This is not rare. Nor is it something you can apply to the general prison population. I.e., think of what the racial makeup of prison would look like 5 years after you started giving smarter people lesser sentences due to their lower rates of recidivism (and vice-versa).

The average prison inmate has an IQ of 85. What can you do with that? That is McDonalds or a government-job level human potential. Further, large swaths of criminals come from parts of our society that don't avail themselves of a traditional means of attaining social restraint: marriage. While everyone here on HN has been solving such important world problems as gay marriage, America's underclass has more or less stopped marrying. Bizarrely, the libertine paradise has not ensued.

<comment><USER14> I'm amazed you haven't deleted this post considering it must have been down- voted into oblivion. Or so I hope.

> government-job level human potential

I'm so fucking sick of hearing (presumably conservative) people badmouth and dismiss all government employees. Are you contemptuous of the law enforcement officers who protect? The firefighters who would risk their lives to save your ass should your home catch fire? The over-worked, underpaid, disrespected teachers like my wife who slave away educating your [God I hope you don't have any] children? The National Guard and FEMA workers who would pick you up off your roof in the event of a flood? The DOT employees who construct the highways you drive on? The FDA workers who make sure that everything you put in your mouth is safe and poison-free?

But no, those whole groups of people are to be held in contempt. They're all incompetent DMV workers unfit for jobs in the private sector.

I'm sorry that I'm kind of losing my shit on here right now. Maybe you don't deserve that, IDK. I've kind of been rehearsing this diatribe since a few weeks ago when my uncles went off on this tangent at a family gathering, even declaring "the only thing a government employee cares about is their paycheck." I said nothing at the time and regretted it later as the arrogance, scorn and fucking vacuity of that comment wormed its way further and further under my skin.

The patently obvious thing to say at that moment would have been something along the lines of "Oh, and are private sector employees not motivated by pay?" What a moronic assertion, that public employees, who are frequently overpaid and certainly not overpaid compared to their private sector counterparts, are somehow more motivated by financial gain than private sector employees. I suppose the firefight working for < $30k/year is just greedy. Same for my wife, who with her Master's in Education pulls in less than a Junior developer at Innitech. Obviously the only reason they do the work they do is for the pay. Whereas the VP of Sales at GE does what he does out of altruism and selflessness.

Ridiculous.

Are there incompetent, unmotivated government employees? Certainly. Are they more prevalent than disengaged employees in huge private corporations? I'm not so sure. All I know is, with all the shitting on that gets done en masse on government employees, someone needs to defend them.

<comment><USER15> I don't know about the rest of your argument but I know that police officers have to take an IQ test in many places, and if their IQ is too high they don't get the job: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/too-smart- to-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/too-smart-to-be-a-good- cop/)

<comment><USER16> Maybe that's a wise policy though? I don't think mandatory IQ tests are common in private industry, but there are plenty of jobs were being "too smart" is a huge knock. And it makes sense really, smarter people are more prone to boredom and stirring up trouble if unhappy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's not what I call a "debate". Both the ex-inmate and the judge largely agree with each other, unfortunately the judge is constrained by the system. Pretty inspiring story though!

<comment><USER18> In this case the judge wasn't constrained by the system and he still agrees with his 12 year sentence. Where the constraint often comes in is the federal minimum sentencing guidelines as pointed out by Shon here[1].

 _In the 1990s, Congress passed several get-tough-on-crime mandatory minimum sentencing bills. One of those laws requires a judge to impose an additional 25-year sentence for anyone convicted of a second or subsequent firearm charge. Without these laws, Adam may have received the same 12-year sentence I did. Instead, mandatory minimums allowed prosecutors to transform a crime that averages a 10-year sentence into life imprisonment._

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/i-got-a-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/i-got- a-second-chance-after-robbing-banks-and-others-should-too/266567/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the beautiful of the internet. People always look at the internet and see the facebooks and the twitters that connect us, and that's cool, but people don't see the beautiful parts. this is the beautiful.

<comment><USER20> agreed. The judges comment at the end nearly yanked a tear from me; sounds like an old professor, with a genuine care:

 _Shon,

Savor your third year! Luxuriate,now,in your incredible success.Keep a daily journal–30 years from now it will amuse you while giving your grandchildren warm insights into who you were and how you became the distinguished lawyer that you will become.

Most of all, be happy. All the best.

RGK_

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where's the "debate"? Seems like they agreed with each other.

</comment><comment><USER22> * > giving smarter people lesser sentences due to their lower rates of recidivism*

Do you have any evidence for this claim? My limited personal experience with criminals and from what I've read is that many are highly intelligent individuals who don't care about hurting other people (sociopaths), don't think the rules apply to them and have a deep and abiding grudge against society.

</comment><comment><USER23> On a side note - the level of discourse in the comments on that site is surprisingly high. It would be interesting to see how such a level is achieved.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow. This is such an amazing story.</comment>


One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/one-order-of-operations-for-starting-a-startup/ <comment><USER3> Hello - I've been invited to some universities lately to talk to students about Y Combinator and the question "how do I come up with a good startup idea?" comes up every time. In this essay, I've attempted to write a guide for people with the same question. One thing I'll point out from the onset is that there are many paths to starting a startup and this one is not the only one (and probably not even be the best). While providing a possible path - <USER2> primary goal was to destroy some commonly held myths about "the right way" to start a startup. Even more specifically the idea that you need a "great idea" at the beginning. Happy to hear your thoughts and questions on the subject.

<comment><USER4> Hi Michael. I appreciate your candidness and openness to accept counterpoints. How would you evaluate a startup that's only a couple weeks old, however close to shipping a prototype but probably won't have time to get users by Sunday ( YC deadline ). It's an idea that could generate a billion jobs and hence we feel it's better to get YC support than try to grow it slower with a revenue model. Should we apply anyways or wait to get traction and apply late?

<comment><AUTHOR> In my experience, the answer is almost always "just apply" - there's no harm in it and answering the questions can be helpful to consider various aspects of your idea in more detail.

<comment><USER4> True. It's just going to physically hurt if the hurried demo doesn't do the idea justice. Won't be fair to the scope and scale of the idea. I guess just apply is the answer regardless. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Just apply man :)

<comment><USER4> Ok! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a more cynical possibility: What if casting about for brilliant startup ideas is actually a signal that you are unlikely to be a founder, by DNA.

In my experience, founders simply can't help themselves from starting things, regardless of how ridiculous (or great) their ideas are. There are obvious exceptions to this (for example, I wouldn't include people who inherit businesses, who have a lot of startup capital, in this founder pool).

<comment><USER6> this is so dumb. I'm a founder. I was chosen to be the technical co-founder of a company where the space had been selected and problem had been identified. before that I wanted to start something but because I'm not asinine nor had any useful domain experience I didn't have any notions of valuable problems to solve. i have all of the makings of a founder (work ethic, risk tolerant, creativity, people skills, etc.) and we're alive because I do. are you really going to argue because I didn't just start another Shopify clone for dogs and then pivot 10 times that I don't have founder DNA?

edit: i'm probably getting downvoted because i come off as a braggart. maybe but that was not my intention - i just meant that there are plenty of counter- examples to this claim that if you don't go out and start from scratch impulsively then you're not genetically predisposed to being a founder.

<comment><USER5> You make a great point that there's a lot more to being a founder than simply pulling the trigger on a business license. Props for making it work in your bidness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post doesn't mention when to sign an operating agreement with your co- founders and legally form a company.

IMO, the answer is: you should have a signed equity agreement before you start working on the MVP, and and you _must_ have one by the time you finish working on the MVP.

In practice, you'll probably need to incorporate a business to build your MVP. If you're accepting money from customers, the company should accept their money, not a co-founder directly. (Y Combinator recommends a Delaware C Corp.)

Even if you're just spending money, maybe at first one of the co-founders can fund it out of a personal bank account, but it's way better to have a business with its own bank account and operate the business out of that.

Your MVP isn't really viable unless your co-founders have signed an agreement. Sign one, early.

<comment><USER3> We have a number of companies who apply to YC with an MVP before incorporation. While I agree getting this done is a good idea - its not an absolute requirement for YC.

<comment><USER7> Incorporation isn't required, but delaying equity agreement is a recipe for a painful co-founder breakup later when it emerges that I thought we were going in 50/50 and you thought it was 70/30.

<comment><USER8> You should at least have talked about all the points that go into an incorporation document and some that don't (equity shares, vesting, time & work commitments, decision-making, roles, etc.) and have a verbal agreement that everyone's on-board with. You don't have to actually file the paperwork, which is expensive and creates ongoing administrative work. You _should_ file the paperwork ASAP, but if a founder starts working on the project and then decides that his true desires lie elsewhere or he's not happy with the working arrangement, that's often easier to fix before there's a real company than afterwards.

<comment><USER3> totally agree

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My problem: lots of ideas and enough technical skills to make them happen, no idea how to build any initial buzz even with an mvp. Even when I try researching upfront, asking friends and family about problems and potential solutions, most of the responses are like, "well that could be cool I guess." I'm not sure if this is a sign that I haven't been coming up with the right ideas, or iterating enough, or that I just suck a selling (or perhaps all three).

Any suggestions?

<comment><USER10> I just don't see the point in asking someone's opinion.

To me the only thing that counts is how people respond to actual software, and even then it's got to do what you envision the core functionality being.

I know everyone else disagrees but I think you basically got to build it to find out what people really think.

And even then the only real measure is whether they jump on it without much selling explaining or persuading.

But then again I've never succeeded so there you go I'm provably wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "There are a lot of counterexamples to the "failure" scenarios I described > above, both for first time and repeat founders."

As a reminder the two failure scenarios are (1) idea -> pitch -> raise -> start company and (2) non-technical team.

What are these counter-examples? I can't think of any, although I have the vague feeling they must exist. In particular, counter examples to (1) must exist since the MVP/lean/validate idea wasn't as prevalent even 20 years ago, and counter examples to (2) must exist especially outside of technical startups where there are other moats.

Can you think of some?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is good advice. It is sometimes preferable to start with the right people though, and together explore various problem spaces.

In reality this isn't much different from the reverse order, since usually you find out what kinds of problem spaces are interesting to you from talking to friends.

Great people that you work well with come around way less often than reasonable ideas in my experience. So I think it makes sense to prioritize finding the people rather than finding the problem space.

</comment><comment><USER13> The biggest advice I'd add is to talk to users _before_ buidling your MVP. You can potentially save yourself a lot of work.

Also, there's a ton of details in how to identify risks and validate assumptions. Four Steps to the Epiphany is a good tactical book on how to do this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Slightly related, the Startup Podcast has two great episodes on Justin.tv: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/almost-famous- season-3-e...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/almost-famous- season-3-episode-1)

<comment><USER3> That was so much fun :)

<comment><USER14> I really enjoyed your episodes, thank you for taking the time to do them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for this!! I've started pitching my idea to incubators and accelerators (cold) but now I don't think I've done a well enough job of showing progression beyond the idea phase. Time to start making my software more publicly accessible. Scary. Can't wait though. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a lovely blockchain idea but don't really know an appropriate person to deep dive with on it. _sad face_

<comment><USER4> Hey! I would suggest following an existing tutorial with an adjacent concept and modifying it as close to your idea as possible. I am sure you can find a close enough one on medium or Udemy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey Michael, nice article. I saw in a comment you said students frequently ask you "how do I come up with a good startup idea?" and I know in the article you also included "This by no means the only path to an MVP...but it is a path that I've seen work for a number of YC companies."

I wanted to share something tangential that has worked for me as I also speak to students regularly and get the exact same question every time. My response includes the standard "Is there a problem you are passionate about?". But I've also observed how many students don't see problems as "problems" when asked to brainstorm about it and many would-be entrepreneurs end up left out of the process and discussion. I'm not sure all the reasons why but maybe a pain point isn't significant enough for them to label it a "problem" in their head when asked ("oh that's just an inconvenience not a real problem"). Or maybe their personality leans toward accepting status quo without realizing it can be changed and they can be the ones to change it. Or maybe they are too shy or introverted at first to describe and complain of a problem out loud.

So I've modified my response to students a bit to include: I have seen startup ideas come from 1. An idea for a solution to a problem and 2. An idea for something "that would be awesome" if someone created it but no one has yet or at least not done a good job of it. Here's what I mean by "that would be awesome" ideas, to take the example of Justin.tv, it leads to the same startup being created but 2 different types of entrepreneurs might get there by thinking:

1\. _What 's a problem you experience and want to solve_: "TV used to be entertaining but TV shows now feel stale, boring and with writing that feels so formulaic."

2\. _What is something "that would be awesome" if someone created it_: "I love TV and movies, The Truman Show is one of my favorite movies, _it would be awesome_ if someone made a TV show for based on following someone's life similar to The Truman Show but for real and with real people not actors".

Same startup. Two ways to get there. Hopefully this all makes sense. I've had good results engaging with students by adding the "that would be awesome if that existed" to the ways to think of startup ideas. This especially true with students who are shy or less likely to complain about problems out loud for some reason as well as for students who know how lucky they are to be at a fancy university in a first world country and they feel guilty describing anything as a problem worth solving if it isn't on the level of world hunger or similar (in which case I encourage those students to go solve world hunger if that's what they want to do).

Also one more thing. In my opinion the real major problem for aspiring entrepreneurs, bigger than coming up with a problem to solve, is how to brainstorm!

Most people assume brainstorming is just "sit and think". And it can be that and some people are very good at that (and other people aren't good at sit and think brainstorming at all but they just get lucky and a good idea pops in their head one day). But there's a lot of literature out there with research on _effective brainstorming_ as well as tips and tricks to get one's brain into a better brainstorm mode (hint there's a reason why so many people say their best ideas come while showering or jogging). I am outside the valley so your mileage may vary over there but I see _guided_ brainstorming sessions work much better than the usual casual 'shoot the shit type brainstorming' for the majority of people as brainstorming doesn't come naturally to them. Hence everyone has 99 problems and no good ideas.

The most popular thing I do when talking to students is a class discussion to come up with a problem and get the entire group of students brainstorming and iterating solution ideas together, with the goal being "find the first 5 feasible but bad solutions" (Asking them to come up with a "good solution" is too much pressure and then no one wants to raise their hand to say an idea others in the group might think is bad, so it helps to make clear it's OK we don't need good ideas at this point). Another thing that helps is I hand out index cards to start things and get students to anonymously write down one "problem to solve" idea or one "That Would Be Awesome" idea. I collect the cards and pick the idea that best facilitates brainstorming and discussion to start things off and then do guided brainstorming together. Most students have never been part of a real brainstorming session beyond some brainstorming how to do a group school assignment that gets an A and isn't too much work for everyone and that really they don't care about. Real brainstorming is hard and they have never done it for real in a group setting.

Sorry for the long comment. Just wanted to share something that has worked for me getting more students more involved in entrepreneurship, especially for the types of students who currently are under-represented among the population of founders these days for whatever reasons. Yes. Also shout out to my fellow shy introvert founders and anyone who doesn't walk around all day thinking about problems or like complaining about them. It's OK to start a company with the goal to make something awesome a reality, everyone has 99 problems and zero good ideas, try thinking up something awesome instead.

</comment><comment><USER18> Using Airbnb as a reason why your idea doesn't matter is like using Bill Gates as an argument for dropping out of college. The idea is super important; in Twitch's case, the process of getting to that idea was putzing around with something terrible for a while. Ideas do matter and you're not doing anyone any favors with this quixotic reductionism.

<comment><USER3> Clearly the idea (or the solution) is important - my argument is that knowing the right solution day one isn't very important. Airbnb and Twitch are great examples of this.

<comment><USER18> You're extrapolating from the winners and applying that to the masses. Read up on their history; Airbnb and Twitch almost died multiple times and that's not a good model for any startup. Even startups that actually start with a good idea fail frequently.

<comment><USER13> Yes, Michael Seibel, please read up on the history of Twitch.

<comment><USER3> Lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was looking for more "operations" closer to the day of nicely positive earnings.

Idea? Had that. Started with a problem that essentially every Internet user in the world has and that so far is solved piecemeal, with poor means, and, net, at best poorly. For a solution, the first good solution, and what should be a really good solution, invented one based on some original applied math based on some advanced pure/applied math prerequisites. The applied math makes good progress on the _meaning_ of Internet content.

Team? Just me.

Technical Founder? Just me. I've been in applied math and computing for a long time, have written a lot of code. Did applied math and computing at IBM's Watson lab in an AI project. Once at FedEx quickly wrote some code that scheduled the fleet, alleviated some severe concerns of the BoD, enabled some crucial funding, and saved the company. My Ph.D. dissertation research was in stochastic optimal control. Since in that field, commonly the computational demands are absurdly high, some good computational experience was important. So, I made some progress in computational algorithms and wrote and ran some code that had the computational demands quite reasonable. Have written a lot of other successful code otherwise, especially for US national security.

Code? So, with my idea, I designed and wrote the code. To users, my work will be just a Web site. So, I needed to write the code for the Web pages. And the Web site needs to make some use of relational database and also, of course, my applied math. So, for the coding, I selected Windows over Linux and there selected the .NET version of Visual Basic (apparently essentially just a different flavor of syntactic sugar compared with C#). I designed the software and server farm architecture: There are several programs that communicate over a server side local area network (LAN). The communications are based on TCP/IP and de/serialization of object instances. One of the server types is for the Web pages. The software architecture is so that there is no _session affinity_ between a particular user and a particular instance of a Web server, and for this there is a session state server; I could have used Redis but, instead, wrote my own based on just two instances of a .NET collection class. For the code for the Web pages, used ASP.NET. For the code for the database access, used ADO.NET. My code has about 24,000 programming language statements in about 100,000 lines of typing. So, about 76,000 lines have comments. So, the code is well documented, with the comments and with various external documents. The applied math is documented using D. Knuth's mathematical word processing software TeX. The code appears to run as intended: So far I know of no bugs. The code doesn't need refactoring. Execution timings show that the code is nicely fast. The code is for a serious service and company and not merely a _minimum viable product_ (MVP). I wrote all the code.

The next operations I have in mind are (1) tweak the code to make a few small changes, (2) for the code for the crucial applied math, do some severe testing a third time, (3) gather a lot of data for the database, (4) do an alpha test and tweak the code as advisable, (5) do a beta test, (6) arrange to run ads, (7) get publicity, users, revenue, and earnings.

There are some user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) features: (1) There is no use of HTTP _cookies_. (2) The Web pages are simple; the pages should load quickly since the largest page sends for just 400,000 bits. (3) I wrote no JavaScript; Microsoft's ASP.NET wrote a little JavaScript for me, likely for some aspect of cursor positioning, but for the users enabling JavaScript is optional. (4) The site is interactive, but the UI is simple. (5) Many users should find the UX fun, somewhat game like. A good user might spend a hour a week using the site. That much time per week for a significant fraction of all developed country Internet users would be a lot of usage, Web pages and ads sent, and ad revenue.

The latest is that my development computer developed some data corruption and finally quit. I ordered parts for a new development computer and first server. So, I got an Asus motherboard, an AMD FX-8350 processor (8 cores at 4.0 GHz), 16 GB of ECC (error correcting coding) main memory, etc. As of yesterday, the system boots and runs the power on self test (POST) and BIOS (basic input/output) code successfully; the BIOS finds the details on each of the motherboard, the processor, the one disk drive installed so far, the CD/DVD device, etc.

The OP seemed to concentrate on the earlier operations I've already done, that is, the idea and the ability to design and write code, but the operations from the running code to good earnings also stand to be important.

For venture funding, I found that all the well known venture firms in Silicon Valley, Boston, NYC, etc. were not at all interested -- e.g., nothing about the description here is of any interest at all. So, I funded this work from my own checkbook and am 100% owner. Maybe once I have, say, $250,000 a month in revenue, some venture firm would be interested, say, write me a Series A check for $5 million. But with $250,000 a month in revenue, cash won't be a bottleneck; I won't need their check and won't want to take on the overhead and risk of a BoD, and won't accept their check. I got no meaningful response at all from YC. That I am a sole, solo founder seems to be a big negative for venture firms and YC.

Should I be able to be a sole, solo founder of a successful company with no equity funding? Sure: In the US, border, villages, town, and cities, people do that by the millions in pizza carryout, auto body repair, .... Should I be able to be successful as a sole, solo founder of a Web site business? Sure: The founder of the romantic matchmaking site Plenty of Fish did that.

<comment><USER6> you're getting downvoted because 1 you're rambling 2 this isn't the time or place for this.

<comment><USER19> I'm not "rambling" at all. Instead very much I'm responding quite directly to the OP. I'm responding point by point on just what the OP concentrated on, the business idea, what constitutes a promising business idea, the founders, technical founders who could write code, the code, minimum viable product, the "team" of founders and the point about a sole founder, and venture funding, in particular, YC funding. Those issues were all central in the OP and also in what I wrote. So, I'm right on topic. And I went point by point and didn't "ramble".

And to be more clear, I illustrated with a project I know well, my own.

Then from my example, readers who are a natural audience for the OP can see some likely important points: (1) Getting a promising business idea can be less obscure than suggested in the OP. (2) Getting a "team" that can do the work is easier than suggested in the OP, e.g., some sole, solo founders can do all the work from the business idea through the code ready to go live. (3) Venture funding and/or YC funding can be much more difficult to obtain than suggested in the OP.

Then I made the point that the OP didn't say much about the "operations" from the running code ready for production to good earnings -- there's more to say there, too.

And for the potential of a sole, solo founder, I gave some arguments and examples why that is not unreasonable.

You noticed how what I wrote was really a direct response to the OP, right? Apparently not. What you wrote about my post makes no sense. So, your concerns must be elsewhere, and a strong suspicion has to be that you do have some bitter reactions to what I wrote but not like anything you wrote.

So, you don't know me at all but want to mount a personal attack on me. Okay, I understand.</comment></comment></comment>


The PC clones of the post-PC era - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2010/12/31/the-pc-clones-of-the-post-pc-era/ <comment><USER2> Operators just want a premium, locked-down device which they can sell for a subscription. But their hand is being forced by these new, cheaper, yet powerful devices.</comment>


Andrew Napolitano: Executive Salary Caps are Unconstitutional - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123388405082355077.html

<comment><USER2> "We can presume that the senior executives of the banks that have received TARP funds who are paid more than $500,000 annually are worth at least that much to their employers. Otherwise the employers would be violating their fiduciary duties to their shareholders by paying those salaries."

We certainly can't presume that. These executives are their own employers, sit on each other's boards and grant themselves billions of dollars in cash and stock. That's part of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I mean, imagine if the private sector ran like this with VCs attaching requirements to how their money is spent! It could never work!

</comment><comment><USER4> If they don't like the caps, then don't take the bailout money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your argument is the same as "if they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to worry about"

The point Napolitano is making that is unconstitutional for the government to ask an entity to surrender his constitutional rights in exchange for funding.

Just like the government cannot abridge free speech of welfare recipients or PBS.

<comment><USER3> I disagree on both counts. Free Speech is pretty clearly in the Constitution, but which part of the Constitution protects my rights to get paid without limit?

It seems not unlike a bank granting you a loan, but only if you use the money for home repair.

<comment><AUTHOR> Article I Sec. 10 No State shall ... pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts...

So the government cannot interfere with contracts already entered into and, unless the government owns the company outright, cannot interfere with any future contracts between the company and the executive.

Also, private parties such as between banks and clients can agree to whatever terms they wish, but the Article I clearly states that the government cannot do the same.

<comment><USER3> Err, they're not interfering with contracts -- they're _offering_ a contract. I agree it would be wrong for Congress to alter a contract between two parties, but that's not what's happening. They're offering a line of credit and the terms for that credit include some stipulations on executive pay.

Likewise, if you agree to accept unemployment benefits, there are strings attached to that too.

Surely you will concede that Congress has the right (obligation, really) to stipulate how taxpayer money is spent? That, by itself, is not a violation of anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "contract" in TARP stipulates that Treasury purchase mortgage-back assets from financial institution in exchange for non-voting shares of the institution.

So not only salary are negotiated between company and management, two private parties, Treasury still do not have the right to "condition benefits on the nonassertion of rights".

Also, because the power to delegate TARP money was given to Treasury, something Napolitano also considered unconstitutional, and that the plan to cap executive salaries belongs to Obama, not Congress, Congress will have no role in setting these conditions.

So not only Congress do not have the right to make these stipulations, they're not even the ones doing the stipulating.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Gets Called 'Civil War'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/06/08/what-gets-called-civil-war/ <comment><USER2> that's why we call it the "War between the States"

[http://www.ncwbts150.com/CivilWarorWarBetweentheStates.php](http://www.ncwbts150.com/CivilWarorWarBetweentheStates.php)

<comment><USER3> There's very little difference between the terms 'Civil War' and 'War Between the States'. The former emphasizes the people, while the latter emphasizes state governments. I prefer Civil War because I am generally predisposed to thinking of war in more personal tragic terms and not as a struggle between governments.

Also, from the TFA: "The term "civil war" concedes all that the North ever claimed, makes [the South] guilty of treason, "

Actually yes, the attack on Fort Sumter was an act of treason. To think of it otherwise is to partake in hagiography of white southerner's struggle.

<comment><USER2> "Actually yes, the attack on Fort Sumter was an act of treason."

Yes, the attack on Fort Sumter _is now considered_ an act of treason, to no dispute, since the north has won and (probably) the country is better for it.

However, _at the time of the conflict_ , it was the sovereign state of South Carolina exercising its sovereignty on its territory.

I personally think the emphasis on state sovereignty of the phrase "War Between the States" is ever more relevant today in the face of the ever expanding power grab of the federal government.

<comment><USER4> South Carolina wasn't a sovereign state from the day it joined the union.

<comment><USER5> Have you forgotten about the Articles of Confederation? They were created with the specific goal of maintaining state sovereignty.

<comment><USER3> First, the Articles of Confederation were superceded by the Constitution.

Second, Article XIII of the Articles states the union will be perpetual:

"Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State. "

So I really don't know where you're coming from with this comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JPMorgan: The odds of a recession starting in 12 months has hit a high - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-recession-risk-new-high-160251309.html <comment><USER2> Every time Jamie Dimon faces something he doesn't like, he threatens to lay off 1,000s of workers. It's his go to threat.

Jamie Dimon Says a Brexit Could Cost J.P. Morgan 4,000 Jobs

[http://fortune.com/2016/06/03/brexit-jpm-job- cuts/](http://fortune.com/2016/06/03/brexit-jpm-job-cuts/)

<comment><USER3> The click-baity title of that Fortune article you linked is misleading vs what he's actually saying.

The title refers to cuts in positions _in the UK_ , but these would actually move to continental Europe in the case of a Brexit.

His own quote from the article : "So if the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to re-organize our business model here. Brexit could mean fewer J.P. Morgan jobs in the U.K. and more jobs in Europe."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who are in to financial markets and investing, if this prediction were true, what moves would you recommend making now and once it happened?

<comment><USER5> Disclaimer, I am at BEST a hobby investor, if even that much, please do not take my advice.

You have a few obvious options. A bear market in equities increases the relative strength of the dollar, so going long USDX or similar is an option. You can can short something like SPY as well, to try and get the direct impact.

"once it's happened" there's the fine art of catching the knife. Close out the above and take inverted positions when you think the dip is bottoming out.

Now; people who ACTUALLY know a thing or two about investing, please tell me why this is a terrible idea! (I'm not being glib, I actually have no faith in my mental models and want to learn more)</comment></comment>


FBI asked Sony for data on user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp73/fbi-asked-sony-playstation-4-user-data-cocaine-dealer <comment><USER2> That reminds me of when they found out that people would clandestinely use the draft of a shared email account in order to send messages without actually sending an email. It's ingenious and terrorists and even General Pertaeus used it.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres- the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/?outputType=amp)

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special/techsidebar.html)

<comment><USER3> Sounds interesting but now there are encrypted decentralized e-mail systems like bitmessage. So if you are doing anything supersecret then bitmessage is the perfect solution.

<comment><USER4> Connecting to mail.google.com is frequently going to be much less conspicuous than participating in a peer to peer network.

<comment><USER5> That's why you hide even when you have nothing to hide, so that hiding doesn't itself become a signal.

<comment><USER6> That argument works assuming you're the only one being watched. "Oh chris hasn't done anything bad even though he's hiding, we can just ignore him now". It's more like "99.8% of people don't hide, chrischen is one that does, monitor that guy".

<comment><USER5> That argument is why Apple tries to encrypt by default... and is actively employed by privacy advocates.

Your iMessage history is hardly banking website info, yet it employs the same "Military Grade Encryption."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The other day I was playing in a private (pirate) server of World of Warcraft and some guy was yelling in one of the major cities that he was selling pills and shipping worldwide. I wondered if he was serious. It was, definitely, really original.

<comment><USER8> I can remember this being done between my college dorms when Halo 2 came out. We were not able to play Xbox online but figured out we could play over LAN. Business hippies found an opportunity to spread the good word.

A friends brother also met someone online from "Amsterdam" around 2003 who would acquire some choice product if you sent him cash. Nothing was ever sent back...

<comment><USER9> >Nothing was ever sent back...

perfect scam really, who is going to call the police and say their drugs never arrived?

<comment><USER10> By the same token, who's going to go to the police and say they got the shit kicked out of them for not holding up their end of a drug deal?

<comment><USER11> That is different because your face is now evidence something happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A friend of mine recently showed me an instagram account that sold magic mushrooms. To place an order, you had to friend the account and send them a DM with a specific set of emoji.

I couldn't believe it, might as well have been a public Venmo feed.

<comment><USER13> Oh yeah. This is one of those mindblowers that you can tell even older young adults and we realize how out of touch we are getting with The Youth.

"Kids are getting bootleg THC vape liquid, where are they getting it?" "Oh, its gotta be their dumb older friends." "Well, not usually; would you believe The Internet?" "Oh sure, some dark web site." "Nope. Its a popular app." "Snapchat, with its self-destroying messages for sure?" "Nope." "I hear a lot about tik tok these days, its popular with the youth." "Ha, no, the Chinese are actually good at censorship and moderation, unlike us." "Ok, craigslist? that's always been a little seedy" "No one uses that anymore, least of all kids; Would you believe... Instagram." "What?!"

<comment><USER14> If it has a messaging system, it will be used for illicit sales. Doesn't matter what system it is.

If it's popular, doubly so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The burden on the state for a search warrant is also hilariously bad/low; basically they can say whatever fantasies they like in a warrant application to a court and they will almost always get rubber stamped.

The idea that you need probable cause for a search warrant in the USA is only plausible to someone who hasn't read very many of them that bear a judge's signature. Doubly so when computers of any kind are involved.

Whenever you see the phrase "based on my training and experience", a colossal steaming heap is almost always about to immediately follow.

"Only disclosed upon a valid warrant" is no privacy protection whatsoever.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. This is why it is important for individual users to take responsibility for their own privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "The CHS [Confidential Human Source]

Anyone want to guess which other animals the FBI has convinced to talk?

Because there are some dogs and cats that might solve a lot of crimes.

<comment><USER17> Well, there is the case of the parrot trained to alert its drug-trafficking owners when the police were nearby.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot- dru...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot-drug-dealers- raid-police-brazil-teresina-custody-a8887906.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This would seem to be Exhibit A on why otherwise innocuous data collection by companies can come back to harm you.

<comment><USER19> Specifically, how does catching drug dealers harm you, unless you are a drug dealer? IMO this is exactly why we should collect more data to catch them, terrorists, pedos, and so on. And this is a good example to why if you are not a criminal you need not worry. If you are, it can indeed harm you.

<comment><USER20> "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say"

[https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide- is-...](https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong- way-to-think-about-surveillance/)

<comment><USER19> I do care about the right to privacy, and the freedom of speech. But I also care about police being able to investigate these new ways of communication that criminals have at their disposal. If it were classic letters, phone calls, or a restaurant discussion these would have easily been intercepted by the police. The same needs to happen with online communication when there is a crime taking place. And online communication can only be "intercepted" by storing it somewhere and making it available when need be.

<comment><USER20> It's a slippery slope. Making a system insecure for one makes it insecure for all. A 'secure' data storage system with a backdoor is not a 'secure' system at all.

And criminals can build their own encrypted apps. They don't need to use PSN to communicate. And if you look at some of the more oppressive regimes in the world, a lot of things that you and I would consider freedom of speech, they would consider a crime and lock you up for it.

"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer"

<comment><USER19> I agree with the statement that oppressive regimes around the world abuse this, but I would argue it's up to peoples of those countries to fight back.

"They don't need to use PSN to communicate." but they do, and that's the issue. We know they use publicly accessible communication systems that law enforcement needs to have visibility over _when required and approved by a judge_. Therefore I think the issue is how do we make sure that law enforcement can access such data when they genuinely need to? What laws need to change in that regard, instead of what laws need to be made so we can obscure their visibility even more, and have the likes of ISIS or other organised cults / crime rings organise right in front of us. To be honest, although a very bad thing, i'd rather have one person falsely accused rather than 100 people dead because of a terrorist attack organised on the PSN network that we just wouldn't hand data over, so we can protect kids' privacy over making jokes about "yo mama".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When your PSN buddy is a government informant

</comment><comment><USER22> Um...is this effective overall or does it feel the government's resource is being misdirected at a superficial level. How hard is it to get to the root of evil?

<comment><USER3> Of course it is a waste but it allows the FBI to make claims about how they busted a "kingpin". The war on drugs was never about actually stopping the flow of drugs. It just gives a justification to keep funds flowing into FBI/DEA etc type agencies. If you really wanted to stop the flow of drugs then we need a war on addiction. When you compare how much we spend on interdiction type enforcement versus drug treatment, it is obvious that the United Stats was never interested in actually helping people.

<comment><USER23> I think the state of addiction is often times a symptom of a larger problem - similar to the symptom of terrorism - what social and geopolitical factors have driven young men in the Middle East into the embrace of radicals? Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven people into the throes of addiction?

I think often, when fighting or attempting to mitigate a symptom, you may decrease said symptom in the short-term but in the long-term, precious little is being done to solve the problem (e.g. War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, etc.).

<comment><USER24> > Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven > people into the throes of addiction?

It's not the whole story, but access to cheap addictive substances is part of the equation of how someone becomes addicted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it just me or did anyone else read the title as: FBI asked Sony for Playstation users in order to sell cocaine to them.

<comment><USER26> We're off topic, but I also read it that way at first. The title could be less ambiguous. Setting the user data as X makes your interpretation much clearer:

> FBI asked Sony for X to sell cocaine

Where X = data on user who used PlayStation network.

<comment><USER27> Disagree -- that's more confusing because the English use of parentheses is to encapsulate something that can be _removed_ , so your version is equivalent to

> FBI asked Sony for to sell cocaine

I would instead group as follows

> FBI asked Sony for data on (user who used PlayStation network to sell > cocaine)

<comment><USER26> I noticed this as well and updated my comment. Also, I don't think either of those examples work. It makes more sense to talk about an "order of operations"; unfortunately parenthesis in English are not used to specify an order of operations. In this case, the order of operations is ambiguous in the title.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Obey JavaScript Data Validation and Modeling - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TechnologyAdvice/obey <comment><USER2> Looks cool. Does it generate human-readable documentation about the schema? How does it relate to JSON Schema (if at all)? We had to create an ad hoc schema definition DSL for validation and doc gen, and I wish there had been more tools like this at the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since the models are "Just JSON" you can do a lot with them. We wrote a doc generator internally; I never thought about adding it to the lib but I will now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why it returns a promise. Are some of the validators asynchronous (ex: call an outside resource and validate against the response)? All of the example appear to define validations that could be run synchronously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two reasons: 1\. It allows for asynchronous validation, see: [http://technologyadvice.github.io/better-email-validation- wi...](http://technologyadvice.github.io/better-email-validation-with-obey- and-mailgun/) 2\. It more cleanly supports the nature and flow of data i/o - in our use of Obey we are (almost) always following validation up with another async operation, i.e. obey.validate({}).then(...something else with the data...)

<comment><USER3> So the answer to the question "are some of the validators async?" is "Yes."

That makes perfect sense then, thanks! Looks like a great lib where async validators are needed.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's SSD/hard drive? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to wipe and reinstall the SSD on my mac after replacing its logic board, and I'm wondering if encrypting the drive is worth it. I spent maybe a year with an encrypted APFS drive before the logic board died, and don't think I really noticed much of a difference in performance during daily use (although I admittedly didn't run any benchmarks, nor did I have an equivalent system to compare against).
Is there an advantage/disadvantage to encrypting the drive versus, say, using a strong login password? Should I expect a significant performance hit if I do end up encrypting the drive?
Right now I'm just using the laptop for office work, but I plan on heading back to school in the near term and probably should worry about theft. <comment><USER2> Yes, I encrypt my laptop drives. Laptops are incredibly likely to get left behind somewhere or stolen, so it's super critical to make sure you aren't keeping the sole copy of important data on it and that the data that is on it is encrypted.

Performance impact is pretty negligible on an SSD with most modern operating systems.

EDIT: Another thing to be aware of, built-in hardware encryption on a drive is not necessarily adequate, and some encryption schemes will default to just using the hard drive's own encryption if available (such as BitLocker): [https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security- guidance/ad...](https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security- guidance/advisory/ADV180028)

You want to make sure you're using software encryption from your OS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, do it. I just use Filevault. You wont notice any performance loss and the gain is huge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a functional difference between FileVault and encrypted APFS?

<comment><USER4> Short answer - no functional difference between encrypted APFS and FileVault. [https://www.blackbagtech.com/blog/2018/04/02/ask-expert- apfs...](https://www.blackbagtech.com/blog/2018/04/02/ask-expert-apfs- encryption/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pitchdeck Inspired Resume - <AUTHOR> http://resume.timsegraves.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey Tim,

I'm a little confused by the two different colored bars (blue and gray) in the skills section of your resume. What is the difference between them?

Also, it may be nice to include your name in the fixed header on the page. I think it's more important to constantly see your name rather than the navigation circles, especially if some people will simply scroll down the page rather than click on each circle.

Although people have said that resumes are no longer relevant, I'd still offer the viewers the option to print or download a standard resume from your site. Just cover your bases.

<comment><USER3> Instead of being confused by the different colored bars, it caught my interest because I didn't see any legend explaining it.

After about 15 seconds of studying it, I deduced that what it must mean because of the blue text color of "beginner / expert" at top and grey text color of "rarely / everyday" at the bottom - although those color clues could be a bit more pronounced. The top and bottom placement of the labels also helped.

Some might think it lacking usability; but after figuring it out, others might think "smart".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you think about the purpose of a resume, it's to provide your potential employer with a snapshot of your skills and experience. This presentation method is probably the most inefficient way to do it.

The reason folks recommend resumes be a one-pager is because it's the best way to quickly digest information and see if you're going to be a good fit.

If you're going to use the web as the medium for your resume, make it something like a one-page scroller with the ability to easily jump between sections, minimizing the animations and maximizing readability.

Additionally, I'm not sure who you're shooting for as far as a potential employer, but I'm personally turned off by the "Oh Hai!" It just makes me think you'll spend half your day surfing Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER5> Apart from "Oh Hai" I like it. Do you really need to associate yourself with a meme like that? In my experience, meme-loving people aren't very interesting to be around in real life, and that opening statement caused me to instantly jump to a lot of conclusions about you that are most likely incorrect.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. If I were an HR guy, I'd reach for the X in the corner the moment I saw "Oh, Hai!".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that was sort of the point of that. I wanted to scare off certain types of companies. I may end up removing it though just to clean things up a bit. The feedback I received on it was about 50/50.

<comment><USER6> Definitely understandable. To me, "Oh Hai" comes across as unprofessional, not laid back (which is what I assume you're going for.) The "Hi; I'm Tim." seems to work a lot better in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally I'd go with a somewhat better photo. It doesn't need to be a standard resume picture with you in a suit. Just something that isn't clearly cropped from a random party snapshot.

</comment><comment><USER8> Tim it looks like you used our (Dress Rush) online pitch deck as inspiration... very cool.

<http://investors.dressrush.com>

Did you use the jQuery plugin we built too?

[http://dressrush.com/blog/post/12506021124/dressrush- online-...](http://dressrush.com/blog/post/12506021124/dressrush-online-pitch- deck)

Good luck with the job hunt!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes Aaron, thanks for the inspiration and the great plugin. I hope you guys do great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice job on the resume. It's unfortunate the applicant systems preferred by big companies (Taleo, Brassring, etc) do not give candidates a channel through which to differentiate themselves in a creative way as you have done. Of course there are ways to bypass the process entirely using social channels, but that doesn't scale from a systemic standpoint. I'd love to see someone invent a better system.

<comment><USER3> True, but it also depends on what you are looking for. This seems like the right tool for the job.

He states, "The ideal company would be a small, rapidly growing startup with a team of super smart hackers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think resumes like this are nice to show off your front-end design capabilities, but it takes a long time to get relevant information out of them, as opposed to glancing at a black-and-white single-sided 8x11 sheet of paper. You still need something that people can look at and instantly make a decision as to whether or not they want to dig deeper into you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all of the feedback already. I agree that paper resumes won't be going away any time soon so I'll definitely need one of those if I pull the trigger. I also agree on the profile photo and the experience graph. I'll try and get those cleaned up.

@Feanim, thanks for the bigger image. I couldn't find one so I had to stretch it a bit.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is something about the progress bars (in the 'languages/syntax expertise levels' section) that just doesn't work visually. Actually it does work, but I just had to find one area for your improving it - as to offer some feedback.

Very clean and good job.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been debating leaving my current job (4 years post acquisition) for a smaller startup. I decided to create something a little different after all of the talk recently of resumes no longer being relevant. I'd love any feedback.

<comment><USER12> I think this is a great way to go. And any company that only accepts standard resumes that have to go through an HR department is a company you probably don't want to work at. So if your goal is to work at a smaller startup, then this seems a lot better than a resume.

I love this approach because it demonstrates what you can do. But, as others have said, I would redesign the "other skills/tools" page. I think the two scales are nice, but it needs to be more obvious upon first glance what I'm looking at. And maybe more compact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like it, good job!

p.s. you should use a bigger macvim image <http://macin.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/macvim-7-2-icon.png>

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought blue and gray bar graph was awesome. It took me just a second to figure out what the two colors represented. I also love the fact he didn't put a facebook link.

</comment><comment><USER15> I built mine the other week, my first time building a website: <http://www.angusthompson.com/>

</comment><comment><USER16> DOA in the US corporate world because of the headshot.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you can't find a job without a snazzy online resume, then you do not have saleable skills.

This undoubtedly seems harsh, but go do something useful and live your life.

<comment><USER18> From his listed skills he clearly can find a job, it's a matter of finding a job you want to work at with a culture that will let you enjoy the life you live. You have that option when you are in high demand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks loceng, that's exactly right. I haven't applied for a single job yet but just thought I'd try something a little different this time around. I currently manage a team of software architects and I've probably conducted over 100 phone and in-person interviews in the last 2 years. I can tell you that the resume (online or paper) never means that much.

Until you talk to someone you just never know. I've seen crappy resumes that turned out to be strong candidates and great resumes where they didn't make it past the first 5 basic questions.</comment></comment></comment>


Beware of sudo on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/08/psa-beware-of-sudo-on-os-x.html <comment><USER2> Honest question:

Why does anyone still care about root escalation on workstations? When do we stop pretending our MacBooks are multi-user UNIX mainframes?

App sandbox to full user privilege escalation may be scary. But if someone can run arbitrary code as my user, then by all means, have root as well.

<comment><USER3> I was part of the original UNIX porting team at NeXT, and we were just trying to get the most popular non-proprietary operating system (UNIX) modernized (by using Avie's CMU Mach) as the modern core to a standard OS. We didn't even think about any server type applications. And Steve told us that he was tired of being beaten-up at Apple for being closed source - so he wanted UNIX. (As an aside, he refused to allow any object-oriented tools in the system - but in Engineering we realized that Steve wouldn't know an object-oriented system from a hole in the ground, so we ignored his direct orders to not put in anything object oriented. The rest is history.)

<comment><USER4> Why was he against object orientation?

<comment><USER5> My guess: Back at that time, it was harder to afford the extra resources for OO. It's not until the time I graduated college that machines and VMs of managed environments started to get faster than "embarrassingly slow" in mainstream hands. This is also a big part of the reason why there were languages like Eiffel and also why C++ got so entrenched. Also explains the existence of Objective-C.

<comment><USER6> > the extra resources for OO

Thinking like this annoys me, because it assumes a specific implementation for OO. Are people conflating OO with Java? Are they conflating it with Smalltalk? Are they unaware you can write C in an OO style?

> It's not until the time I graduated college that machines and VMs of managed > environments started to get faster than "embarrassingly slow" in mainstream > hands.

Yes. People are apparently conflating OO with Java or Smalltalk.

<comment><USER7> The GP is talking about what OO was like _back at the time_. What the heck are you complaining about?

There were very few fast OO languages and they were emerging at the time. The most prominent examples of those languages are those languages GP names, and they do not exactly live up to the promises of even contemporary OO research, much less modern research.

<comment><USER8> I share the poster's sentiment. OO is a mental box and a lot of people end up with overly narrow definitions or have trouble escaping the box thinking. You can apply the same ideas without language support. It is orthogonal to bytecodes, VMs, GC or even a "class" keyword. But a lot of people have very specific expectations and will have a hard time seeing this for what it is.

<comment><USER9> Actually I think this is the beautiful thing about Perl 5's OOP support.

It was clearly an after thought and a bit of a hack, but it works, and it makes it transparent how everything works. I had been taught Java at university before that, and the whole OOP thing was a bit of a hidden mystery. Perl gave me a far better understanding of OOP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >What this means is that if you use sudo to give yourself root privileges, your sudo authentication is not bound to the TTY in which you ran sudo. It applies to any process you (or malware running as you) start after authentication. The way Apple ships sudo it is, essentially, a giant privilege escalation vulnerability.

But even if you enable TTY tickets, a malicious process on your system can still elevate itself by patching the shell (in memory, using /proc/id/mem) to inject commands alongside the original sudo command. For example:

User types:

        sudo apt-get update

shell executes:

        sudo bash -c "apt-get update; evil.sh"

<comment><USER11> Or simply append `alias sudo="sudo evil.sh; sudo"` to .bash_profile.

Although, OS X is a bit like Windows. A bad program running in userspace can essentially ruin your system as much as a program running as root. Privilege escalation is not a relatively big deal when you can `shred -u ~/` without root.

<comment><USER12> > _Although, OS X is a bit like Windows. A bad program running in userspace > can essentially ruin your system as much as a program running as root._

Erm, OS X has sandboxing. So, no. Except if you use unsigned third party stuff.

<comment><USER13> I think he only sandboxed apps are the ones from the App Store—Signing is orthogonal to sandboxing. Even signed apps that you get from anywhere other than then App Store aren't sandboxed.

<comment><USER14> You can sandbox non-App Store apps the same way as App Store ones, you're just not forced to. And so developers don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funny, I always thought this was supposed to be a feature. It remembered your authentication for a few minutes after using sudo. I assumed it was part of the OSX auth system and would forget if you locked the screen.

<comment><USER16> Yeah I was thinking the same thing, probably that is why they ship those defaults, better UX.

<comment><USER17> Don't call a security flaw a UX feature please.

<comment><USER18> Passwords are both security flaws and UX features -- they're inherently flawed, cannot be fixed, and are the only authentication system most people can use successfully.

Security is always in tension with usability.

<comment><USER19> I think the flaw marcoamorales intended to point out is how sudo doesn't always re-prompt for a password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence And this is a good reason to lock sudo down to a single application that is allowed to be run. In my case I only allow su for my user. Now even if an attacker were to try and use sudo they would also have to know that they can only use su, and most automated attacks will fail.

<comment><USER20> They'd just have to "sudo -l". No logging of executed commands either, that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apple is going through the same awkward phase as Microsoft did with WinXP. Except unlike what Microsoft did, Apple has not started a decisive internal process to change things for the better.

<comment><USER22> How do you know this to be the case? Just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there some kind of advantage to this option not being set by default?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, it makes things more convenient. Convenience and security are always a trade-off.

<comment><USER24> The parent comment was probably asking about some specific advantages.

<comment><USER25> Convenience is a specific advantage. It also is a great boon when you are used to working in multiple terminals or are running a lot of remote sudo commands over ssh (say testing an ansible setup).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Beware of sudo, always, everywhere. Seriously.</comment>


New John Carmack Software Doubles Oculus Home Resolution on Gear VR - <AUTHOR> https://uploadvr.com/new-john-carmack-software-doubles-oculus-home-resolution-gear-vr/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how those "cylindrical layers" JC implemented are a product of just well enforced dogmas (again).

Carmack never does things twice, mind you.</comment>


Incels are trying to leave toxic men's rights communities but don't know how to - <AUTHOR> https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/11/involuntarily-celibate-men-are-trying-to-leave-toxic-online-spaces-but-dont-know-how-to-escape-10677202/ <comment><USER2> Duh, just unsubscribe. Staying in "toxic" communities is begging for ridicule and abuse.</comment>


China rare earths group supports counter-measures against U.S. 'bullying' - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rareearths-usa/china-rare-earths-group-supports-counter-measures-against-u-s-bullying-idUSKCN1UX1GY <comment> ga-vu Ah, China's rare earths... the Achile's heel in the US trade war strategy.

Watch US companies get bullied and have their supply chain grind to a halt.

</comment><comment><USER2> Trump had a point to protect US Steel and Aluminum plants and perhaps a few other industries, but Trump failed miserably with his "maximum pressure" strategy. Only in a couple of years we will be able to oversee the results of the mess of today.

</comment><comment> a0-prw bullying, not 'bullying'.</comment>


Worlds Skinniest House - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/113203/worlds-skinniest-house-fastcompany <comment><USER2> Posted earlier and has still live conversation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813665></comment>


Eddie Van Halen Talks Building the Frankenstein, Honing the 5150 and EVH Gear - <AUTHOR> http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/eddie-van-halen-talks-building-the-frankenstein-honing-the-5150-and-evh-gear-641564 <comment><AUTHOR> Fortunately this seems to be quite focused on talking gear and that sort of thing, not talking about music opinions or current events. To me it makes it a better article:

> _So a lot of it came out of solving problems?

"Yeah, a lot of it was through necessity and just mistakes. A lot of accidents. Like the one-pickup thing wasn't intentional. I just didn't know how to wire it back up to the five-position toggle switch, it was just too complicated!_

& this one:

> _"Then I went 'Ding! I wonder what'll happen if I hook my main amp up to the > light dimmer in the house?!' Of course, I blew out all the fuses in the > house because I wired it backwards, but once I figured it out, I went down > to an electronics store and asked 'Do you guys sell an industrial type of > variable voltage regulator?' and they go 'Yeah, here you go!' It was called > a Variac._

Gems like that really seem to align with the hacker ethos of diving in sometimes and still being ignorant enough to have room to learn over time.</comment>


StoryWall - cards on a wall. But, like, totally digital. - <AUTHOR> http://storywallapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Despite an abundance of excellent management tools for project tracking in lean and agile environments, nothing has ever quite matched for me the flexibility and effectiveness of good , old-fashioned cards and post-its on a wall.

With StoryWall I've tried to craft something that replicates an analogue story wall as much as possible. Essentially no business rules at all, cards and tokens (think post-its) with colour to create meaning. StoryWall: now with even fewer features!

</comment><comment><USER2> My #1 feature request would be to make it touch-screen enabled. Along with flexibility, the other major benefit of a physical storyboard is that it fosters communication and collaboration by forcing people to get up from their desks and talk face to face. Also in standup meetings it is invaluable to be able to stand around the board and talk about what it is showing you regarding blockages and flow, and immediately do something about it. So ideally you'd project the board up on a big screen or a big TV or something. Then if anyone has an ipad or iphone handy, you can update the board on the fly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, there seems to be some consensus on the touch-enabled version. Definitely something I want to solve (hopefully just a matter of hooking the drag drop into touch events)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks very slick. Took a little while to understand that the buttons at the top all work via drag/drop. It looks like you can only add information in a single text box. I can see the appeal if you're just organising a single iteration but a title and tags are probably going to be required to organise a backlog.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been thinking about the BackLog problem a lot ... the problem I've always had is the backlog tends to massivity (that's a word, right?) really quickly. A profusion of ideas and notes and bugs that end up as a special type of project debt and dragging the tool and team down with it. My current thought is that beyond the immediate future, the backlog doesn't belong on your wall at all ... use a wiki, or a bug tracker, or something designed to capture that sort of information more completely than a planning tool. Stories get promoted to the wall during planning and they are acted on immediately.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I agree. Part of the point of lean is not specifying too much too early. Inevitably new ideas, problems, priorities will crop up and if you've specced out too much too soon, some of it will go to waste.

Perhaps the ability to hook up with APIs would be useful though, so you can manage features and bugs in other tools (GetSatisfaction eg).

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the ideas I have been toying with is using StoryWall as the visualisation tool that plugs into your other apps ... so purely for communicating and visualising workflow, and the details of your system are in tool of your choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great - seems a be a wave on Kanban and Scrum tools launching at the moment. I wish there had been 2 years ago when I started using Agile/Scrum.

Currently using the beta version of scrumwise.com and am loving it. Working great for us, but will check this (and Trello) out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen scrumwise before, will have a look.

As I mentioned elsewhere, StoryWall is clearly a very light-weight take on the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It feels like a less-complete version of Pivotal.

Which is good in a sense, because Pivotal is an awesome product.

Can you explain why someone would choose StoryWall over a service like Pivotal?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have used Pivotal Tracker for years (including a current freelance project), and it is pretty awesome. It does however have a pretty specific view of how process should be visualised (current. backlog, icebox) and has a foot pretty firmly in the Scrum school of thought. In a more kanban-flavoured process you visualise your workflow as cards that move through different states (from simple flows like todo, wip, done to more complex ones like plan, analysis, develop, qa, release) at any point in time you can visualise exactly what the state of your work is.

So ... to eventually get to the point, StoryWall is much lighter weight and not really designed to complete with a fully-fledged agile project management tool. But in that light weight comes great flexibility for visualising workflow. Individuals, small/micro teams, lean environments, where just enough process is enough ...

<comment><USER5> Well said, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slight problem, on exiting the page and reloading the changes are all gone (firefox)

No login is great for single users but I think you should persist changes across reloads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be using LocalStorage ... what version of FF, OS you on? Possibly a bug and I will have a look.

<comment><USER6> 4.0, ubuntu, cool idea btw, I hope you fly with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I really appreciate it. Will post back here when I track down the storage issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We are currently using Joel Spolsky's Trello (<http://trello.com>).

<comment><AUTHOR> I've definitely timed my run pretty well :P

I've had a look at the site, but not signed up as I have had a pretty clear vision for storywall that I wanted to get out in the last couple of weeks.

What do you think of trello?

<comment><USER7> We've been using Trello for a week now (coming from Basecamp) and it's pretty great.

We really like the following features:

\- It's free

\- It's Realtime, every action (drag-drop edit etc) get's pushed to the other users.

\- Great UX because it's made by the guys (or some of them) that did Stack overflow.

\- Responsive design so we can use it on our webkit enabled phones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trello looks pretty good, will have to have a deeper look.

Realtime updates are deceptively complicated to get right. I bumped that whole branch of development so I could get something out (really try to work some of the ideas of Lean and the Minimal Viable Product).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


George Carlin ~ The American Dream - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q <comment><USER2> I really like Carlin. But what has always struck me in his attitude is that he claimed he didn't see and didn't want to find any solutions to the problems he was talking about. Maybe it has something to do with the age differences. People in their 20th are more likely to think of changing the world while those at their 60s are more likely just to criticize. While I respect it, I can't understand this attitude. Maybe I will someday. Although this episode is still funny. What was so nice about George is that he was never afraid to take the side.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like Carlin but this rant is way too cynical for me. I live by the maxim to keep at all costs my positive outlook on life and never, ever let the bastards grind you down.

</comment><comment><USER4> As much as I generally like George Carlin, this seemed to reduce down to unsubstantiated claims.</comment>


Ask HN: Could Snowden still be a U.S. agent? - <AUTHOR>

Was just thinking to myself that Snowden:
1. Only gave away enough information to make people respect how much power the NSA and U.S. govt has.
2. By giving away that information it gave the NSA/U.S. govt reason to put money towards ensuring secrecy of its information, which may have been in danger after cutbacks.
Reasonable? <comment><USER2> not really....

With the new information available to the general public IF and i mean IF they really wanted to do something nasty it would now be easy to provide mis- information in a way that has a good chance of being picked up and using it as a distraction to actually do something.

While they have access to a lot of communication sneaker-net is still a lot more likely to be untraced and therefore a lot harder to snoop on.</comment>


InfoQ: Debate: Prototype vs. jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/01/prototype-vs-jquery <comment><USER2> I prefer jQuery. Mainly because for what I do with javascript, it feels a lot more "declarative" (best word I can think of at the moment) than Prototype.

</comment><comment><USER3> > which JavaScript/Ajax framework is the best

Well, personally I do plenty of Javascript (DOM manipulations, in-page logic and interactions...) but barely any "Ajax", and prefer jQuery. But isn't that in the end always the answer: "which one do _you_ prefer"?</comment>


Important and Non-Obvious iPhone Tips - <AUTHOR> http://ronfeldman.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/important-and-non-obvious-iphone-tips/

<comment><USER2> > Leave some free disk space on your iPhone [...] 20-25% free should be plenty

This tip is a bit misleading. iPhone doesn't use swap space, so free space shouldn't really matter to performance at all. That said, I believe flash memory tends to have performance issues with writing if there's very little free space (please correct me if I'm wrong). However, 20-25% is way overkill.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, will correct the post. I hadn't experimented with how much space to leave, but had some serious issues when using the whole disk (via fill free space with music) and got some advice from the genius bar about leaving a buffer.</comment></comment>


How to win against startups with strong technical teams - <AUTHOR> I am thinking about building a startup in a cutting edge AI/B2B space but I am worried because some of the competition is led by very strong technical people. I would like to hear stories of startups that have won against other companies with stronger academic/technical pedigree and what factors led to them overcoming their competitions' strong academic leadership. <comment><USER2> Marketing will save you

</comment><comment><USER3> Strong technical teams can get stuck solving the wrong problem, or building a more general/elegant solution than is truly necessary for the problem at hand. This is particularly likely to affect teams with a lot of folks from academia.

But if you don't have any particular edge in this space, why do you want to get into it? Why would customers buy from you rather than the other teams?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds reasonable, but the question is whether building the elegant and user- oriented solution is really such a hard problem if you can do engineering very well. Any case studies or historical examples?

<comment><USER3> I see the problem as difficult in the same way that losing weight is difficult: we know how to do it, it's relatively straight forward, you just have to really want it and commit to it for extended periods of time.

I'm sure you can find plenty of startup materials that talk about how it's important to look for a problem and build a solution, rather than building a solution in search of a problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Important notice for free software supporters using Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/jstrap/gmail/

<comment><USER2> This campaign is ridiculous. People don't want to run their own mail server, because Google can do it better. They understand and are willing to sacrifice ownership of their data for the convenience of letting Google manage it. Given this, the difference between using their javascript frontend and an open source mail client is so minimal in comparison I don't even see the point. Gmail's frontend is also much better than Thunderbird or any OSS client's I've ever used.

</comment><comment><USER3> Worrying about Google's Javascript being proprietary while not worrying about, say, Google's spam-filter being proprietary seems a bit silly.

The important thing from a software-freedom point of view isn't whose computer the code runs on, it's whose data the code is processing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really..?</comment>


Ask HN: What to do about a fake cofounder? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
What happens when someone you fired a while ago claims they're a co-founder on Linkedin?
Basically hired a terrible independent contractor, and had to fire him a few months later. He now claims he is a co-founder, despite the contract stipulating that he clearly is just an independent contractor.
Last thing I want are investors asking about him. I fear he has lots of baggage. <comment><USER2> This post got killed by a spam filter; sorry, those are tuned more aggressively for new accounts. We've marked your account legit so this shouldn't happen if you try again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be OK for me to re-post this question?

<comment><USER2> Oh yes, that's what I meant by try again.</comment></comment></comment>


Exploiting Node.js Deserialization Bug for Remote Code Execution - <AUTHOR> https://opsecx.com/index.php/2017/02/08/exploiting-node-js-deserialization-bug-for-remote-code-execution/ <comment><AUTHOR> This vulnerability is really naive. Put it in the level of SQL injection rly</comment>


Solving iCloud backing up of "cookies" using certificates - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appblade.com/news/2012/12/if-you-cant-trust-a-cookie-who-can-you-trust/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a useful method if you need to rely on anything being device unique.

I'll be going over how I did this (in Ruby,) alternative methods, gotchas, and some other practical uses and considerations at Boston.rb in January <http://bostonrb.org/presentations/month/January-2013> (it'll be live streamed over Google Hangouts)</comment>