The New York Times uses WebRTC to gather local IP addresses - <AUTHOR> https://webrtchacks.com/dear-ny-times/ <comment><USER2> Forum post from Dan Kaminsky, co-founder of WhiteOps[1][2]:

"Dan Kaminsky here, my apologies for kicking up a ruckus. This is part of a bot detection framework I've built at White Ops; we basically are able to detect browser automation using resources exposed in JavaScript. Nothing dangerous to users -- or we'd go file bugs on it, which we do from time to time -- but it does provide useful data regarding post-exploitation behavior. Happy to jump on a call with anyone concerned or worried; I'm over at email@example.com."

[1] [http://www.whiteops.com/company](http://www.whiteops.com/company) [2] [https://isc.sans.edu/forums/STUN+traffic/745/2](https://isc.sans.edu/forums/STUN+traffic/745/2)

<comment><USER3> Honest question, why?

What problems are caused by browser automation? Slightly more on point, what issues might the NYT be seeing that detecting browser automation is the sensible solution?

<comment><USER4> I deal with this all day every day working with advertisements. A lot of money is spent trying to detect "bad users" and/or "bots" (usually the same thing). I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions a year in some cases.

I'm actually working on developing a system to track browser analytics and usage to detect if it's a person on the other end or a bot.

The quick solution of course would be to have a captcha when viewing ads on sites so the advertiser could confirm it's actually a legitimate user, but there are users that are doing everything they can to not be tracked/or view ads, so what incentive do they have to confirm they are a human just so they can be targeted for advertisements? That's why there are companies trying to work behind the scenes to see if the browser is a legitimate session, or a bot session.

Companies looking to buy advertisement space are really honing in now on bots, because it's become such an issue where server farms are set up that will automate views on pages to inflate profits, or like in the case of the company that runs this script on NYtimes, to see if the user is viewing the page through a legitimate viewing session, or if the user is running software in the background of their computer pushing page views automatically.

I could probably talk all day long with this, but advertising is a huge HUGE market. There is little to no day-to-day talk of the users that are running ad block on their computer, it's a low percentage of the actual users we are running into. The large talk is the people that have created botnets of hundreds of computers to push thousands of fake impressions and how to handle that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a friendly reminder for anyone using uBlock Origin on Chrome or Firefox that you can now configure it to prevent webRTC from leaking your real IP:

[http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/02/you-can-block-webrtc- from-l...](http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/02/you-can-block-webrtc-from-leaking- your-ip-now-in-ublock-origin/)

You _do_ need to enable this. After reading the article I immediately checked by dashboard and saw that the option was available, but unchecked.

<comment><USER6> After enabling it I keep seeing my public address here. [https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/](https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/) — What gives?

<comment><USER7> I went there with Firefox without ublock and saw my public and local addresses (docker0, eth0 and virbr0 - VirtualBox). I installed Disable WebRTC [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/happy- bonobo-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/happy-bonobo- disable-webrtc/) and all the addresses disappeared.

NoScript mitigates the problem because WebRTC won't work with scripts blocked but I'll still have to disable the plugin to make it work on legitimate sites. It's annoying and I'd prefer a browser permission popup along the lines of what has been suggested in other posts here.

<comment><USER8> Going to about:config and setting media.peerconnection.enabled to false seems to work, without the need for an extension.

Now to find out how many sites break in fun and exciting ways for having done this ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A whois on the domain serving the offending javascript leads to White Ops[0], who seems to sell tools to protect against Ad Fraud. So I'm guessing this is part of their fingerprinting system, to determine whether I am a human or a bot.

[0] [http://www.whiteops.com/](http://www.whiteops.com/)

<comment><USER10> It is indeed here's a comment by the author on a github issue:

[https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadgerchrome/issues/431#iss...](https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadgerchrome/issues/431#issuecomment-120668684)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I believe that WebRTC, just like JavaScript, should be disabled by default and enabled only on sites that you really trust and need it; and in the case of WebRTC, the argument is much stronger since its use-case is so specific.

<comment><USER12> And what should browsers prompt users with? "Would you like to use WebRTC?" What would that do to improve security for users?

<comment><USER11> I'm sure someone could do better than this but here is a first try at a suitably informative prompt:

        $site_name wants to use WebRTC.

        WebRTC allows voice calling, video chat, and P2P file
        sharing, but can also be a privacy risk. We recommend
        allowing WebRTC only on sites that you expect to use
        such features on.

        [Link to learn more]

        Allow WebRTC for $site_name?

Something like Flash's audio/video access prompt would also be a good idea:

[https://voicethread.com/image/howto/flash_settings_camera_mi...](https://voicethread.com/image/howto/flash_settings_camera_mic.gif)

<comment><USER13> The preposition at the end of that sentence is unnecessary. Guessing you're from the midwest? :)

<comment><USER14> It's not; I think you're parsing 'expect to use' differently than intended.

"sites that you expect to use such features on"

This means "sites on which you expect to use such features"

Not "sites where you expect them to use such features"

The preposition is key to having you be the one using, not the site. It doesn't have to go on the end, perhaps, and you could rewrite the sentence without that preposition, but simply removing it would leave you with an entirely different meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a tool I wrote that grabs your internal IP and scans your LAN using response timings and HTTP asset fingerprints:

Demo: [http://joevennix.com/lan- js/examples/dashboard.html](http://joevennix.com/lan- js/examples/dashboard.html) Code: [https://github.com/joevennix/lan- js](https://github.com/joevennix/lan-js)

If you are interested and have some time, find and contribute HTTP "fingerprint" assets from devices on your LAN to src/db.js.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ironic that loading up this site, webrtchacks.com, Tor Browser warns me: "Should Tor browser allow this website to extract HTML5 canvas image data?"

I've now given up on "naked" browsing of the web and only surf via the Tor Browser Bundle. I use a standard Firefox only for web development.

<comment><USER17> Are the rest of us who don't use Tor going to have our lives ruined? Certain data such as social security numbers and bank passwords are obviously critical, but I wonder what drives this seemingly excessive paranoia. For example, who cares about your IP address in general purpose web situations? Obviously if you're doing sql scans or pentesting obscuring your location is extremely important, but I'm not convinced of the benefit of high paranoia in most use cases. Reasonable paranoia sure, but going so far as to Tor everything?

<comment><USER18> For me it's more about the fact that companies are collecting too much data and not anonymizing it properly or securing it properly. I doubt Walmart, or whomever is going to do much more than send me annoying emails or postal mail at worst.

What I'm more concerned about is things like criminals obtaining the info and realizing my personal machine might be a good target for some reason. Or some company selling the data, which eventually gets to a healthcare company that is able to connect my browser history to my name and start denying me coverage or marking me as "potentially high risk" because I looked up the wrong thing, or things like that.

I haven't gone as far as using Tor, but I block cookies from 3rd parties, use ad blockers and browse entirely in private mode until I'm forced not to by some lame web site. After I'm done, I delete as many tracking things as I can and turn private mode back on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I said this when the vulnerability/bug/whatever you want to call it was posted here: I use the same method for fraud detection, and it works unreasonably well.

That said, I'd rather there be permissions surrounding WebRTC, but my clients are happy.

<comment><USER20> How do you use it for fraud detection? What does it tell you/what are you looking for?

<comment><USER19> Financial card fraud; Most of the time someone just hops on a SOCKS4/SOCKS5 proxy, doesn't have a VPN behind that. We can grab the user's IP.

Original discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949953)

<comment><USER21> That's beautiful. One of my passions in life is seeing carders get caught.

<comment><USER19> I was one in a former life. Now I use my insights to help.

You'd be sickened and surprised by how many startups overlook handling chargebacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's easy to gather local IP addresses. WebRTC is just one of dozens of methods of doing this. Others include various DNS tricks, reverse TCP traceroute, <img> tag tricks, JavaScript/XMLHttpRequest tricks, etc. Private IP addresses (10.x.x.x) are _not_ all that private.

<comment> TD-Linux Don't forget Flash, the #1 tool for persistent tracking. Uninstalling Flash should be your first priority if you care about this.

<comment><USER22> Look into browser fingerprinting, among other things. This is a losing battle.

I am deeply pessimistic about the potential for tracker-blind browsing without extraordinary measures. A simple plugin or cookie rules simply do not and cannot cut it.

There are just umpteen million ways to fingerprint a device. What plugins do you have installed? What is your font list? What can be deduced about your device's make/model/revision from things like HTML feature support? Then you have WebGL and other technologies that potentially allow for hardware fingerprinting via various methods, slight differences in JS performance revealing things about your JS runtime engine's revision (JIT differences, etc.). Don't even get me started on all the myriad things you can do with TCP, ICMP, network latency, geo-ip, etc.

Anything less than onion routing (Tor and friends) combined with a high- isolation virtual machine or separate hardware device and a browser with _no persistent state whatsoever_ is probably _provably_ inadequate to protect you from fingerprinting or tracking. _Any_ un-obscured network path back to you, access to any form of non-generic local hardware or storage, or persistent state equals fingerprinting/tracking hacks.

It's like using simple XOR for "encryption" and then saying "well, it's better than nothing." Yeah, maybe it's a nano-something better than nothing but it's basically nothing. You might as well not even bother.

Personally I think privacy is _dead dead dead dead dead_ and we need to start talking seriously about what kinds of new political mechanisms and safeguards we need to mitigate abuse. This is a political problem and does not have a technical solution that doesn't come with a lot of cost -- e.g. the enormous performance overhead of onion routing and the inconvenience of secure computing environments. 99.999% of users are not going to do any of that stuff and never will.

<comment><USER23> The EFF have a tool that shows how unique your browser fingerprint is: [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

It's pretty scary

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can they grab local IPv6 addresses using this? While a huge number of computers are going to be on 192.168.0.1, their IPv6 address could actually be unique, making user fingerprinting easier.

<comment><USER25> Yes they can grab the IPv6 address but IPv6 has a privacy extension to cater for this. It will alter your local IPv6 address periodically. You could configure it to update every hour and effectively they'd be thinking you were a new PC on the network.

IPv4 you'd have a small range of IP addresses but with IPv6 you can have a different IPv6 address each hour if you so choose.

[http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/privacy-e...](http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/privacy- extensions-for-ipv6-slaac/)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for that link (IPv6 newbie here, I really need to properly learn it some day...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> there's really no way in chrome to disable webrtc? That's amazing.

edit: from the horse's mouths [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=457492](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=457492)

edit2: you can install this

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webrtc-leak- preven...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webrtc-leak- prevent/eiadekoaikejlgdbkbdfeijglgfdalml)

and test here:

[https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/](https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/)

though google sure seems to be dragging their feet on this so I'm sure they'll break this workaround soon

<comment><USER27> Tracking is a feature, not a bug, in Chrome.

<comment><USER28> _rolls eyes_

Disabling Javascript and Plugins is much easier in Chrome than in Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I recently added tagsrvcs.com to my Privoxy blocklist. Source site? ycombinator.com.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, tagsrvcs.com is not a bad apple, but they are broadly used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> On OS X, Little Snitch catches this in Chrome, as it would in any browser [https://i.imgur.com/hWmpc42.png](https://i.imgur.com/hWmpc42.png)

</comment><comment><USER32> WebRTC, a protocol proposed by Google to W3C has applications in user tracking and detection of bots. Cui bono.

<comment> TD-Linux WebRTC's protocols are actually standardized at the IETF in the RTCWEB working group, by a large number of people. The W3C is in charge of the Javascript API (which is actually what people are complaining about here), again with a lot of contributors (yes, Google was bigger here).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> www world really needs more www "browsers", particularly some more that do not implement javascript. Would it hurt to give users more choice and see what they choose?

Only my opinion but there is much one can do without all the .js

I certainly do not need Javascript to fetch some newspaper articles via HTTP.

<comment><USER34> I use dillo and netsurf for that. Both are quite fast, dillo is the faster one, netsurf's layout breaks less.

Dillo is freaking fast, once you try it you start to wonder where the web went all bloated. Of course its layout engine is quite dated, AFAIK no HTML5 support whatsoever and I think there are many layout bugs too. I use it to load up huge static html pages, they just kill Firefox or Chromium on my netbook. It's certainly nicer than lynx, sometimes you want to look at images too.

<comment><USER35> Yay another dillo user!

[https://blog.sphere.chronosempire.org.uk/2013/11/26/dillo-a-...](https://blog.sphere.chronosempire.org.uk/2013/11/26/dillo- a-eulogy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So wasn't everyone up in arms about WHOIS recently but seemingly uses the service to identify who wrote this script?

<comment><USER37> WHOIS to identify companies is good, WHOIS to identify people can be dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The only possible reason I can fathom that this would be useful would be for tracking unique users behind a NAT (i.e. corporate or educational) who block all cookies. Seems like a pretty niche edge case in the U.S., but I'd imagine this could be useful in, say, the EU where cookies are opt-in by law?

<comment><USER39> _Tracking_ , and any other kind of fingerprinting, is opt-in in the EU. The directive does not say "cookie".

[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0058:EN:HTML)

"The use of electronic communications networks to store information or to gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned is provided with clear and comprehensive information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing, and is offered the right to refuse such processing by the data controller."

So acquiring my internal IP address without consent for reasons other than need for establishing a webrtc connection that the user has asked for is against the law.

<comment><USER38> > "stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user"

This seems like a very odd way of phrasing the law. The default user-agent string, for instance, is stored on the terminal equipment of the user, albeit in read-only memory. It can be used to distinguish one user from another. Therefore, could one argue that any site that includes the user agent in their logs would be violating this law?

And what if the user is not behind a NAT? In that case, the user's external IP address is the one their terminal equipment places in the TCP header... which would mean that it is necessarily stored in said terminal equipment. Did the user give up the right to the privacy of the information by connecting to the website in the first place? Must there be a right-to-refuse all the way down?

/s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Reasons to block javascript, #12395 in a series.

</comment><comment><USER41> To be clear, its not a developer at the NYTimes that has implemented.

It looks like the script in question is hosted on a domain ("tagsrvcs.com") that Adobe uses when loading JS assets for Omniture.

This is very likely a standard Adobe Omniture thing. So its not the NYT acting alone (or necessarily with awareness of this).

</comment><comment><USER42> Why are they doing this?

<comment><USER43> Probably part of their marketing fingerprinting. Lets say you have a big company that only has a specific set of public IPs and you centrally manage browser updates, add-ons, and extensions. Previously any user from that network might show up as the same user in the NYT's marketing data. Now they have an extra piece of data to help differentiate them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> i've had a bit to drink, can someone ELI5 this to me?

</comment><comment><USER45> In other news: If you create a IP connection the other party knows your IP- Address. With WebRTC some parts of this ugly NAT madness are gone.

Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER11> The issue isn't that the other party knows your IP, it's that this is an _unexpected_ connection for no other purpose than to obtain your public IP, _in addition to your LAN IP_.

<comment><USER46> There is not even a connection. During the RTCPeerConnection's "ICE Gathering" process local IPs are discovered and, if STUN/TURN servers are configured within the RTCPeerConnection, STUN requests are sent to those servers (which help retrieving the public IP of the computer/router). But you don't need even to send a single packet in order to get local IPs (private ones, VPN ones, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Here's another White Hat use case for local IP addresses.

You can use it to unobtrusively monitor license compliance for a SaaS biz. You charge each user. A user is constantly logging on from multiple browsers during the day (e.g. IE and Chrome). With local IP knowledge you can determine whether or not this is being done from the same machine (still abiding by license terms), or from multiple machines (most likely sharing with a colleague and breaking license terms).

Before this webRTC hack the only other way to do this that I am aware of, is via the dreaded Flash cookie.

<comment><USER48> I hope that doesn't catch on. I have a laptop, two desktops and a phone that I use depending on where I happen to be sitting. They are all me, though. Even desktop software like Adobe Creative Suite seems to acknowledge that people use more than one device these days.

<comment><USER49> I guess the approach is something like: 3 PC's? fine, 6? fine I guess. 58? ok something is going on.</comment></comment></comment>


The 99% (of startups) - <AUTHOR> http://justinkan.com/the-99-percent <comment><USER2> This gives an interesting glimpse into the prognostication abilities of supposedly brilliant VC's. It also shows the the near-impossibility of cashing in private company shares, at least through VC's. In addition to this story, the Sony hack revealed that Evan Spiegel of Snapchat wanted to cash in about $40 million worth of shares just after he spurned Facebook's $3 billion offer. He was also roundly rejected. Had someone bought those shares, they would have been worth around $200 million today.

So anyone thinking that they're going to get much liquidity as a private company founder should think again. If the Snapchat and Twitch guys were rejected, the odds are not good that you will be the exception.

<comment><USER3> _> This gives an interesting glimpse into the prognostication abilities of supposedly brilliant VC's._

The question isn't whether VCs are brilliant according to some absolute metric. The question is whether they deploy capital better than random chance. The numbers show that top ten VCs consistently do.

<comment><USER4> Take 1000 people, have each predict a coin flip 10 times. The top 10 players will have predicted way better than random chance would have you believe. Why several of them are even 10 for 10, they must have special prediction powers! ;)

Grow the player base, increase the number of predictions, you'll end up with some real super-stars who just go on winning. They'll probably write books and lecture about their techniques. Right up until the moment they lose. Kind of like hedge fund managers.

<comment><USER5> Explain Berkshire Hathaway for me then, please.

<comment><USER6> Berkshire doesn't just buy stock. It buys a controlling interest and influences the way the company is run.

<comment><USER7> VC investors tend to influence the company too.

<comment><USER8> While true, the difference between the decisions the board of a company makes and the 'investors' is pretty significant. VC investors are not there to act as a board of directors. Where as many private equity/takeovers deals usually end up replacing many people on the board and executives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would love to see a series of good curves:

(1) of all startup's started by people who working in the industry, quit FT jobs to do startup or put in serious moonlighting hours in startup; total earnings - opportunity cost, annualized:

(total income from startup - opportunity cost of hours worked on startup) / years spent

Maybe this data-set should be split further into bins of founders whose last title prior to startup were only individual contributors, or were executives, their age and pedigree etc.

Would love to see the distribution + standard deviation say, for computer programmer who quits the job to do a startup would gain or lose in earnings per year.

(2) of funded all startup; the alpha of investment: total return on investment - (S&P500 Index return in duration of funding to IPO/exit) / (S&P Index Return)

Maybe this data-set should be split further into bins of people involved: founders, first 10 percentile employees by join date, second 50 percentile employees and so forth...

Would love to see the distribution of return on investing in startup's as an investor vs. investing in S&P500.

<comment><USER10> Dug up a post of mine from 2 years ago [1]. I bootstrapped for 14 months without salary and then took a pay cut for 2 years. Here are my numbers. I blogged about this as well [2].

      Loss of salary for 1 year, 2 months
      Does not include loss of 401k match or ESPP
      -$140,000

      Successful Kickstarter @ $25k
      +$20,000

      8 week contracting project @ 20hrs / week
      +$16,000

      Living expenses for 14 months (savings/stocks)
      -$70,000

      Post funding difference in salary from market rate
      -$50,000 (year 1)
      -$40,000 (year 2)

      Total ≈ -$264,000

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7570428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7570428)

[2] [http://jaisenmathai.com/openphoto- trovebox/](http://jaisenmathai.com/openphoto-trovebox/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the numbers. I imagine you got equity of the company in the end, so in terms of your personal asset accounting, it should be factored in (not that getting a valuation on equity is easy, if it hasn't been traded).

<comment><USER12> Trovebox shut down in January 2015 so that equity is worth nothing.

<comment><USER10> We sold the technology to Western Digital and went along for an acquihire. In the end it approaches break even but even that's nearly negligible.

<comment><USER12> Pity! I had my fingers crossed that you would have some kind of neat exit, you certainly deserved it with all the hard work put in. Better luck next round!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why the hell is this so negative ? He is very clear "This is for all the founders who know they have built something that people want, but the rest of the world hasn't recognized it yet." It must be tough as a founder to prove yourself and others that there is an certain value to his/her business. Isn't a good exit is what an investor's or founder's option ?

<comment><USER14> Or to paraphrase Horowitz.

 _Building a startup is hard. You will have to stand up to a lot of people who will tell you everything you are doing wrong. If you care a lot about social signals you probably shouldn 't be an entrepreneur._

<comment><USER15> Then again, 99% of the people telling you what you're building will never work are right.

<comment><USER14> Sure there are no certainties. But you won't know if you don't try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Watching people play video games is a niche" is now "I'm in charge of our consumer, marketplace and esports investing." Fuck them. Build your business. Thank You Justin, just what I needed today !

</comment><comment><USER17> I kind of don't understand this post.

Surely Twitch is an example of the 1%, not the 99%?

Not that I disagree with the end sentiment - I'm currently at a startup that was acquired as part of the 99%, but I don't think this is the most effective person to be saying this.

<comment><USER18> Twitch is surely an example of the 1% now, but he's saying that you may not be at that point yet and still have a great startup, regardless of what you are valued at, at this moment.

<comment><USER19> Right. He's saying that Twitch is a 1%-er now, but even 9 months before their deal they were in the 99%, aka VCs are clueless sometimes.

<comment><USER20> What's interesting is that they had already raised $42M at that point (according to comments here).

Certainly raising $42M and having an over-$100M valuation already put them in the top 1%, right?

<comment><USER12> > Certainly raising $42M and having an over-$100M valuation already put them > in the top 1%, right?

No, it put them in the top .1%.

Easily.

But even then, as a founder selling some of your own stock to a VC is not easy.

The reasoning behind this is twofold: first the VC wonders if the founder wants to set aside some money for themselves in case things go belly up, in other words, does the founder do this as an insurance premium? (Answer: yes, and why not, why should founders be always stuck with risk). Then the second: ok, so we'll make this guy 7 figures rich, what if he doesn't show up next Monday or absconds to Tahiti?

These and other (minor) fears are reasons why VCs are skeptical about deals where founders cash out (even partially) before they (the VCs) do.

Whether that is just or not is up for debate, I think VCs are well within their rights _not_ to do deals, at the same time when you've been in the traces as long as Justin has (I've followed their story right from day 1 because we were in some ways a competitor) a bit of goodwill would be appreciated and I can see a couple of ways in which such a deal could be structured where most of the fears would be laid to rest. Still, it's an arrangement between consenting adults and if there is no consent then there is no deal.

That's tough but that's a trap that many founders are caught in, they have the stock but they don't have the liquidity and there is no market for their shares where they can get a chunk of cash 'just in case'. (pun intended).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those that don't know, Justin's new app The Drop is pretty cool. It's like reddit for EDM. [https://thedrop.club](https://thedrop.club)

<comment><USER22> wow, layout looks like a total rip off of Product Hunt

<comment><USER23> Is that seriously the only site with this layout you've seen?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's the most clear use of 'fuck you money' that I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice. Sadly it's super rare to see anyone who's made it deviate from the script and share authentically like this.

I suspect this is more a case of "VCs colluding against founders" than "VCs being too dumb." When you have a legit $100 mil valuation, SOMEONE will buy those shares, unless you're blocked from selling.

</comment><comment><USER25> "...but there are hundreds if not thousands more startups that will make their founders and investors rich."

I think the correct word here would be "richer". For VCs 5x return on an investment while desirable, it's not the ideal outcome.

Consider a VC invests in 100 companies during X years, $1 million each. Ballparking here but 80 of these will be a total failure. 19 of them will make 5x return. That is -$100 million spent and $95 million gained. So if the last one is "only" a 5x return the VC gets their money back (-inflation, time spent, etc). Thats why they are looking mostly for Ubers and AirBnbs imho

<comment><USER26> > Ballparking here but 80 of these will be a total failure

Would those 80 still have failed if the mindset was "get 5x returns" rather than the current "get 100x - 1000x returns"?

My gut says the demand for high-returns results in "total failure" in many cases due to insane burn-rates in quest for "hockey-stick growth"

<comment><USER25> That is a fair question, and a "what if" type so its hard to answer. if you assume an ideal world with sane CEOs than it shouldn't matter what the investors expect. The startup should burn cash at an optimal rate to achieve the highest profit. Of course don't live in an optimal world...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The interesting question to me is if Twitch would have done as well if he hadn't gotten rejected 9 months earlier. Unfortunately we can't spin up another universe, alter that one variable and run a test.

</comment><comment><USER28> 90-99% of startups fail[1], which should be mentioned in a post with that title.

[1] See e.g. [https://s3.amazonaws.com/startupcompass- public/StartupGenome...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/startupcompass- public/StartupGenomeReport2_Why_Startups_Fail_v2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm unaware of the timeline but I'm curious was he trying to sell shares in JTV or did twitch eventually spin off to a separate corporate entity from JTV. It makes a huge difference because JTV was a huge liability nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love Justin Kan's writing. If you read this Justin keep writing more man!

</comment><comment><USER31> These investors aren't paying enough attention to their children / their colleague's children.

I would think that this guy's fame would have made this market opportunity super-obvious.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Garrett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Garrett)

With his own personalized collection of Minecraft toys and all:

[http://amzn.to/1O4VQNi](http://amzn.to/1O4VQNi)

<comment><USER32> There's a big difference between YouTube fame and Twitch fame. Counterintuitively, there's actually little overlap.

Relaively few YouTube gaming celebrities stream due to quality control. Twitch celebrity streamers use YouTube primariy to host stream highlights as Twitch's VODs are not convenient.

Notably, YouTube Gaming, which was YouTube's Twitch competitor, failed miserably since there was no clear advantage to switching from Twitch (among UI/Content ID/monetization issues)

I know many YouTube gaming celebrities who have become successful enough for merchandizing, but not any Twitch celebrities. They're separate markets.

<comment><USER31> I don't disagree.

I used Stampy Cat to make the market point, because there were hints that the "alright, let's play this game" spectator video was going to be a big thing, even before Twitch was Twitch.

This guy has been operating since Minecraft was in it's infancy, and he had a large following before Twitch was a big thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." \--Roosevelt

</comment><comment><USER34> Questions for YC (I think):

(1) Is this a good thing? IE should founders, employees, VCs or other shareholders be able to cash in shares? (2) Is this fixable in some way?

</comment><comment><USER35> It's depressing that Amazon paid four times as much for this business as Bezos did for the Washington Post.

<comment><USER36> 27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. It's pretty clear eSports is going to be huge. Having the biggest streaming site/brand will be valuable and doesn't seem crazy in that perspective.

[1] [http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome- leagueof...](http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome- leagueoflegends-141201/league-legends-championships-watched-more-people-nba- finals-world-series-clinchers)

<comment><USER37> That's a high single-event number. Do the numbers sustain across the year? MLB and NBA have over 100 events per year (considering all the days games as one daily "event")

<comment><USER38> While some people stay with a game/genre/gaming forever I notice a lot of people "age out" and can't even invest the time to keep up with watching esports (much less playing the games they're watching). I wonder if, assuming my observation is the norm, that will impact numbers as society has less children.

<comment><USER39> People age out but those that age out don't have the attitude of "old people", which in this case is "why would people watch this" and "this is a waste of time". (not trying to generalize older people but i think you guys know what type of people I'm talking about) Slowly esports and will become more and more mainstream (probably not completely mainstream but I can't predict the future) and more and more people will watch it.

Also, for the people that age out it seems like 3 more people join. Search viewership growth for games like League of Legends, Dota2, and CSGO and you will see that watching videogames is serious business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> At the time he attempted to sell his shares, Twitch had raised $42 million, and had been valued at around $100 million several months earlier [1]. He is complaining about the gall of VCs not to buy his shares at a price that would imply a valuation of less than $194 million (and presumably not that far below). I do not believe that this is a good attitude for entrepreneurs to internalize.

[1] [https://www.pehub.com/2014/08/amazon-pays-970-mln-for- twitch...](https://www.pehub.com/2014/08/amazon-pays-970-mln-for-twitch- nearly-10x-last-vc-valuation/)

<comment><USER41> His sentiment is worth much more than the raw numbers.

Raising a round is a very very hard thing to do. As an entrepreneur, you look around and all you see are the 1% in the media. On the other hand, the fundraise feels like you go door to door getting your idea shot down by everyone you talk to. The passion and tenacity to fight through this negativity is what Justin is trying to elicit.

<comment><USER12> No, that's not why no deal happened. I suspect it was because he was not raising money but because he was selling some of his own shares. In other words: he was trying to take some money of the table. And those are very hard deals to close.

This is the key line:

> I tried to sell some of my shares in a secondary transaction at less than a > fifth of that price – and I was turned down by every VC I asked.

So, he eventually actually made more on those shares, about 80% more and lucked out. But there is no way of knowing what would have happened in an alternatively universe where some VC would have bought a chunk of stock from Justin. Maybe then this deal would have never happened. You don't get to play twice, but it's nice that it all worked out so well for him.

<comment><USER42> _about 80% more_

Correction: at least 5x more.

Also: obviously I don't know the full context about this particular deal, but it always seems a little sleazy to me when still-involved founders sell in a secondary without making that deal available to the rest of the owners.

<comment><USER12> You're absolutely right, what was I thinking. Need to sleep more and more regularly.

> it always seems a little sleazy to me when still-involved founders sell in a > secondary without making that deal available to the rest of the owners.

Well, that depends. If the founders have laid everything on the line for a really long time then I can imagine taking some off the table so you don't have to go back to work in your dads garage if things go badly wrong. If someone is past their vesting period and they own the stock free and clear they should be able to sell it if there is a market. Other stockholders will have these abilities as well (assuming there are no limitations or shareholder agreements to the contrary).

Usually the rest of the stockholders would have an option to purchase the stock at the price agreed between the founder and the outside party anyway, and if there are drag-along clauses then the buyer might find himself forced to buy from many parties.

It all depends on what the papers say and what kinds of shares there are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What the hell is he talking about?

Is the summary of that article something like "this one VC didn't buy shares from me but then I got rich so fuck the haters 99% of you are going to be rich too" or something?

The article is like a word salad.

<comment><USER44> Justin is saying that VCs understand what's hot now, but are sometimes bad a predicting future value. So to founders, if you're creating value, keep going even if VCs don't see the light yet. They'll come around.

<comment><USER32> The haters-gonna-hate philosophy in Silicon Valley is starting to become a problem.

There's a lot of luck involved in making a startup, and startups can fail for any number of reasons that no data can predict. The notion that if you do your best, you will succeed, is _dangerous_ to naive entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER45> The parent article contains this line:

> "trust your numbers and growth to give yourself confidence in the face of > rejection"

I don't imagine the people that you're worried about this being dangerous for can always find comfort in their numbers and growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Tl Dr:

About Twitch.tv - "Watching people play video games is a niche" is now "I'm in charge of our consumer, marketplace and esports investing."

Fuck them. Build your business.

Makes sense :)

</comment><comment><USER47> "I was successful even though there was a long time that I thought I wouldn't be all that successful, and I've gotten to where I am because I believed in myself."

I paraphrase, but Poe's Law is in full effect here.

<comment><USER48> I disagree with your interpretation. I think Justin is saying,

"If the fundamentals of your business are good, believe in the data even when investors don't recognize its value. Eventually, they will."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "I tried to sell some of my startup shares for below what the market turned out to be willing to pay for them, but people said no because it wasn't trendy and it sort of hurt my feelings, but then I got rich so haha!"

I feel really sorry for you bro. If you want some consolation you're free to PM me and we can totally hang out and you can buy me a house.

<comment><USER50> I really don't think that was the message he was trying to convey. If anything, he was trying to inspire other startups/founders that feel unappreciated/underestimated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> "There is a tremendous amount of excitement about the top 1% of startups, but there are hundreds if not thousands more startups that will make their founders and investors rich."

I cannot agree more with Justin and we have had several investment cases like that.

<comment><USER52> What an odd comment. Reads like a spam for "zillionize".

<comment><USER52> (Parent has edited the comment now)</comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 3G unboxing? - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/08/the-iphone-3g-gets-unboxed/

<comment><USER2> It's a phone. Being taken out of its box. If I knew I could get people reading my blog by putting up pictures of things leaving boxes, I'd have gone one better and done a whole gallery of me "unboxing" and putting together my IKEA bed.

<comment><USER3> It just goes to show you that it can sometimes be hard to tell what will be a money-maker on the internet.

Some friends of mine made a TON of money by putting videos online about how to make babies. Except, they weren't really making them, they just got the people in the room and had them practice a lot. They said that sometimes it wasn't even a man and a woman, it'd be like two women or something. I told them I couldn't figure out who would be so dumb as to watch that sort of thing; they weren't even doing it right! But they said they made a ton of money on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, it looks pretty real - all the stuff you would expect to see on an iphone 3g is there.</comment>


One day, we'll all hate WikiLeaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2010-11-29-one-day-well-all-hate-wikileaks

<comment><USER2> > information terrorist

right

> In the case of the war logs, we got a picture of a military operating in > difficult circumstances in the most effective and humane way possible.

I think your bias is showing.

> So let's ponder the implications for the rest of us. When your company's > secrets – profit margins, production methods, distribution deals, and > marketing plans – are no longer confidential, how will you compete?

You mean like when TC posted the Twitter files ?

> When your personal medical or financial records can be disclosed at any > time, will you still enjoy the notion of "free speech"?

Free Speech is not a privacy issue, and medical and financial records being public will not limit your ability to speak out.

> Whether as private individuals or public officials, WikiLeaks will come back > to haunt even those who applaud it today.

Time will tell. I think it is much too early to make that call.

> It will plunge us into a new dark age of Shakespearean whispers and plots.

The only thing that would have stopped this stuff from being juicy and interesting would have been impeccable behavior, so there are multiple solutions to this.

It speaks volumes that you would immediately assume that like any organization that can not stand 'the light of day' that diplomacy would move underground. And if it does that will tell us two things _and_ nothing will change so in that case if it does not harm it does not hurt either.

<comment><USER3> >Free Speech is not a privacy issue, and medical and financial records being public will not limit your ability to speak out.

If one cannot communicate private information without worrying about its release to the public, one may be pressured internally NOT to speak as one would wish.

<comment><USER4> Then it is whoever is causing the internal pressure that is harming freedom of speech.

<comment><USER5> Sometimes it's self-censorship. If people don't trust that their own communication will remain confidential, they may censor themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We need government transparency one way or another. Democratic republics work better that way. Totalitarian governments work better with less. If our governments refuse to provide it, what choice do we have?

Ironically our governments are asking for the power to snoop in our personal communications and records without a warrant or a valid reason. This is a taste of their own medicine.

<comment><USER7> Do we really need government to be this transparent? It makes sense to me that war and diplomacy are not things that 100% need to be in the public eye.

Are some things unnecessarily secret? Of course. I'd love to see papers exposing the motivation behind the Iraq war or about who knew what when about torture or what is going on at Gitmo.

Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?

I think if you gave me a choice between a country in which a lot of things are classified but the populace actually read and understood what the competiting parties platforms were, and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter.

<comment><USER6> "Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?"

I guess this is opinion but I didn't think that the released information was _mundane_.

"and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter."

Actually imo the US is a country where "a lot of things are classified, but where most of the populace is too disinterested to read public documents or stay current on news." However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any value for educated, interested parties in having access to public documents.

Wikileaks is a recent phenomenom and not an age old one.

<comment><USER7> You made the assertion that "democratic republics work better [with a lot of classified documents getting leaked]"

I don't think you can just state that without justification. Anything juicy enough to be a revelation will probably also cause diplomatic problems for our country. Is that helping us? I think almost everyone in this country agrees we wouldn't want to see Iran or North Korea with nukes, we just disagree on what should be done about it. Diplomacy on those issues could well be more difficult now because of this leak. Why is that a good thing? What benefit has outweighed that cost? That now _you_ know what our state department's negotiating plan is?

I get why certain things should be leaked when it is necessary, but this seems to me to be one guy with sour grapes dumping reams of data for no clear reason and some tidbits of it being interesting.

And what happens after X millions of pages are leaked when the one super important thing (ala the Nixon papers of today) are leaked and nobody cares? Has that made it a better place?

<comment><USER6> What's the alternative? Being completely in the dark about everything? I admit that it's far from perfect, but the government is not transparent enough given their size and strength nor are main stream media outlets doing their job well enough.

Maybe if the government was less pervasive and more hands off (i.e. taxes and so on) I would be less interested in their day to day affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FTA: "[Whistle-blowing] can be ethically questionable but ultimately moral..." and "Someone I spoke to . . . called Julian Assange . . . an "information terrorist". I thought the terms were overwrought, but the more I think about it, the more I agree."

I stopped reading right there.

<comment><USER2> That's such an old device that I'm actually surprised the author would resort to it, it basically says 'I made this up, and I agree with myself, you who are skeptical now should agree with me too'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really love how the press mutated the word "terrorist", it used to mean people who cause terror, but now it simply refers to people who don't agree with the media or the government.

<comment><USER10> I think the term always implied people who don't agree with your viewpoint. People in the rarely call their own military "terrorists" even though they are more than willing to cause both terror and massive death.

PS: I would much rather the term not simply mutate into yet another name for evil / bad people, but good luck fighting that fight.

<comment><USER11> I learned this categorization from somewhere: If we like them, then they're freedom fighters; if we don't like them, then they're terrorists; and if we haven't decided yet, then they are guerillas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that when it comes to classified information like this, it is important to have an aim when releasing the information (The Nixon leaks showed Nixon's abuse of power, for example)

Thats were Wikileaks went astray in my mind.

What does this show us except how the metaphorical sausage of National Security and diplomacy is made?

What has the exposition of this information done, except make it harder for the American government to do its job?

Releasing classified information, just for the hell of it, strikes me as a bit silly. There's a reason that information is classified ... and if you disagree with the reasons, then the information you release should clearly show why the information should be public knowledge (covering up civilian casualties in the Iraq/Afghan wars for example).

Little if any of the information I've seen has passed that test. I love wikileaks, but they screwed up on this one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well this is a really long propaganda. We need to know why is the US attacking random Arabian nations. And the press should really stop using the word "terrorist", because I feel that it has lost it's true meaning.

<comment><USER13> If you ever watched a Reagan speech you'd probably agree that "terrorist" has been a pretty meaningless word for some time. The man literally called on group "terrorists" and the other "freedom fighters" even though they were both doing the same things (well, he was paying one group so I suppose that might adjust his perspective).

<comment><USER14> Well, at least that was properly political.

Now, it's become "someone who makes us in the media look bad for doing such a terrible job of investigative reporting the last 25 years".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > She adds: "The US position on freedom of information and the press should > not be questioned"

Heh. I know she (likely) didn't mean it the way I'm reading it, but that's amusing phrasing given the context.

</comment><comment><USER16> > After all, despite the massive volume of documents released, there has been > surprisingly little material for scandal.

I feel really sad reading this. The impression I've gotten from the media (mostly newspapers, little TV coverage) about this leak is that any and all "issues", "scandals", whatever you want to call them are downplayed, dismissed or worse, not even mentioned. I have the uneasy feeling that had this come to light when Bush was president, the outrage would be massive; now, however, few seem to care and I don't see any willingness to make people care either.

As a sidenote to, quoting: "When your personal medical or financial records can be disclosed at any time, will you still enjoy the notion of "free speech"?" : The Greek government, with consent from EU, is planning to make any and all citizens' financial records public. The legal basis for this enterprise exists since 1992, and it's only awaiting approval from the DPA (Hellenic Data Protection Authority). I assure you that barring the initial exclamation-filled newspaper headlines, nobody's said a word about this.

So, Mr. Vegter, the people are far too misinformed and manipulated by biased executives to care about their privacy anymore, let alone "free speech". Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER17> So many loaded words and there is no evidence with which to agree with. However, I like the use of affective language and I like the way he expects you to agree with maybes and then suddenly swings you into believing in absolutes. It just might work on most people...</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to manage your business and what changed when growing? - <AUTHOR> I am currently in the scaling stages and need some advice from experienced founders.
I am talking about requirements that could count as ERP like e.g. payroll, timesheets, requests, tasks, communication, CRM/Sales, etc..
I know this depends deeply upon ones business model and needs generall advice. Currently we are using GSuite Enterprise which is nice but not an ERP system. <comment><USER2> Payroll: depends on the countries in which you have employees. If US-only, Gusto.

Timesheets: Depending on the scale, why not Google Forms, Google Sheets and/or Airtable?

CRM: Heavily depends on what type of business you have (e.g. few large customers with long sales cycle, vs. many small customers). Go with something simple (Google Sheets) if you don't know your workflow and requirements yet.

Tasks/communication: buy a copy of 'The Great CEO Within' and read it cover- to-cover. Pick something to implement. Do it. When you're done, open the book and find the next thing.

Sales: what type of business? Maybe read 'Presictable Revenue' by Aaron Ross, SPIN Selling (classic book on sales) or (if SaaS), Holloway's new book 'Founding Sales'.

ERP: not sure what you need here. Do you manufacture or sell a physical product? If so, maybe something like Netsuite? Or maybe look in Shopify's app directory to see what's popular.

Most important: document processes so that you avoid single points of failure, are prepared for rapid scaling in # employees, and can easily identify and act on opportunities to increase efficiency.

You may also find something useful in Verne Harnish's book 'Scaling Up'</comment>


Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/29/alibaba-mariadb/ <comment><USER2> Good move, will be good for the database for sure. I think of this article [0] every time someone says "why not just use <some hipster database written by 2 people over the course of a year>":

Rule 1: Developing a good DBMS requires 5-7 years and tens of millions of dollars.

That's if things go extremely well.

Rule 2: You aren't an exception to Rule 1.

0: [http://www.dbms2.com/2013/03/18/dbms-development- marklogic-h...](http://www.dbms2.com/2013/03/18/dbms-development-marklogic- hadoop/)

<comment><USER3> Has Postgres received tens of millions of dollars in funding?

<comment><USER4> If you assume an average 10 person years of development effort over the 20 year history of Postgres, absolutely.

20 years * LoadedLaborCost (USD$150k/personyr) * 10 people

=>USD$30m.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good for MariaDB - they're really pushing the MySQL ecosystem forward at an incredible pace.

RocksDB from Facebook, ColumnStore, MaxScale...really cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> For context, Alibaba uses their own fork of MySQL which is AliSQL:

[https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL](https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL)

<comment><USER7> I'm curious what would be their motivation for investing so much in MariaDB when they already have their own? Hedging bets? Encouraging competition?

<comment><USER8> Getting out of the business of having their own?

<comment><USER9> With Alibaba cloud, infrastructure like databases is their business. Take AWS Aurora and GCP Spanner as examples.

<comment><USER10> But it's also easier to sell a standard DB people already know vs a custom

(see (google) Bigtable vs (amazon) Postgres)

<comment><USER11> Odd comparison, Google has supported MySQL for a long time, as has AWS.

Dynamo might be a slightly closer comparison

<comment><USER9> Google Cloud SQL supports postgres as well.

<comment><USER10> that's kind of my point

databases people know and use already (eg in fun projects) are easier to sell

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any time I hear that a Chinese company is investing in a product I use, it's as if the Chinese government is now part owner of it as well. This may be general paranoia, but given the latest crackdown on VPNs and privacy, I don't know that I want a foreign government with a significant stake in Alibaba have access to direct the future of MariaDB. Is anyone else feeling this?

<comment><USER13> Not everything has to be about politics. Sometimes a big company investing in an open source database it already uses is just trying to improve its own infrastructure, not trying to hack your country.

<comment><USER14> That's besides the point. Even if every single employee at Alibaba is well- intentioned (which is close enough to reality to be considered the case), in the end the government of the PRC has the capability to coerce the company to exert influence in a direction we almost certainly wouldn't like. The only question is whether the PRC would consider the trade offs worth it.

<comment><USER15> > in the end the government of the PRC has the capability to coerce the > company to exert influence in a direction we almost certainly wouldn't like.

It's open source- when that happens, you can fork it and influence it in the direction that _you_ like. I mean if the GCHQ has an active github account[1] - I think the PRC gets a pass to publish open source, let alone Alibaba.

1\. [https://github.com/gchq](https://github.com/gchq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't really understand the MariaDB love around here. If you look at actual production usage, MySQL gets the lion's share, looking at the customers each lists at their website. Oracle has been surprisingly benevolent as stewards of MySQL. That Business Source License that MariaDB put forward for new code at one point[1] looked like something I think would have cost an awful lot of goodwill if anyone else had used it.

1) [https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-mariadb](https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-mariadb)

<comment><USER17> Actually:

\- MariaDB MaxScale 2.0 will be under the BSL.

\- MariaDB Server will continue to be licensed under GPL in perpetuity, while its connectors will continue to be under the LGPL.

To be honest I cannot blame Monty. Google and Facebook were built on MySQL and probably didn't give back as much as he thought would be a fair shar. I guess he doesn't want to see this happening again.

<comment><USER18> He's free to do what he wants with his company.

The problem is all these people going into headless chicken mode about how Oracle could discontinue the open source licence of the "original" MySQL, so they're embracing MariaDB (the company) because it's run by Monty so it must be open source friendly.

You can use/support MariaDB all you want but let's not pretend they're great bastions of open source compared to Oracle in the MySQL realm.

<comment><USER17> The grand parent made it sound as if they changed the MariaDB server license, so I wanted to make a clarification that this is not the case.

<comment><USER18> Not really. S/he referenced the BSL, which MariaDB (the company) absolutely uses for it's MaxScale product.

<comment><USER17> > That Business Source License that MariaDB put forward for new code at one > point

As I said, I just made a clarification on that "new code" means other products and not MariaDB server.

Just for the record I am not a MySQL-based DB user, so I don't really care at all about MariaDB or BSL. My license of choice for releasing my code is AGPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really very happy about this. I would love for MariaDB to outpace MySQL in terms of features, as I'm never quite sure which direction Oracle will take with MySQL (especially in terms of licensing)!

<comment><USER18> It's ironic in a tragic way that people fear monger about Oracle changing the MySQL license (which has not changed from before Monty sold it to Sun) and advocate for a fork operated by a company that shits on the very concept of open source.

If the MariaDB MaxScale licensing bullshittery didn't make you think twice about relying on MariaDB, why do you worry about Oracle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow. Monty made a cool billion from Sun. Why does he need external investors now? How can MariaDB possibly have blown through that epic fortune?

<comment><USER21> He only made 300m. Us other MySQL employees (about 250) shared crumbs for that purchase (VPs excepted). He screwed us, but he never had respect for us - "people are lazy and greedy" ([https://www.pythian.com/blog/mysql-ceo-marten- mickos-intervi...](https://www.pythian.com/blog/mysql-ceo-marten-mickos- interviewed/)) . Then he promised he would fix the mistake he made with Maria by being more generous. Ha.

<comment><USER22> Funny use of the word 'only'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just looked through the Crunchbase profiles of a few Western SQL/NoSQL database companies, and I did not see any Chinese investors. This investment will certainly give MariaDB a significant competitive advantage in China. It will be interesting to see if other startups follow their strategy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Strange, why not go for postgres

<comment><USER25> Probably because they don't use it: [http://techstacks.io/alibaba](http://techstacks.io/alibaba)

<comment><USER26> What's the reason nowadays to use MySQL/MariaDB instead of PostgreSQL?

<comment><USER27> In-memory capability, hiring pool of MySQL/MariaDB developers tends to be larger/wider, Galera cluster (M-M functionality), if the queries trend towards simplicity then MySQL/MariaDB tends to be more performant, Postgres can have issues with write amplification, etc.

Uber (I know, I know) switched to MySQL, here are some reasons why:

[https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/](https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/)

<comment><USER28> Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585)

Re: Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12179222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12179222)

Why we lost Uber as a user | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201353)

> naming / pronunciation diversion: > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201672)

<comment><USER29> please don't use uber as an example. they made just so many mistakes with postgresql (mistakes that would probably blow up a ton of databases including mysql)

<comment><USER30> The fact is there are decision makers - often non-technical ones - who do look at Uber as an example.

It's something we should at least consider an issue, even if it doesn't feel like a valid technical issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> happy to see MariaDB getting some investment, hoping it will continue growing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Chinese government is leading a $27M infiltration, code injection, and backdoor scheme in MariaDB in order to steal and hack account information for millions of sites around the world.

<comment><USER33> Proofs? or you are just another troll.</comment></comment>


Harnessing the Chaos of the Cosmic Microwave Background for Better Encryption - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/harnessing-the-chaos-of-the-cosmic-microwave-background-for-better-encryption <comment><USER2> In C (using openssl):

* [http://blog.cros13.net/2014/08/cheap-entropy-using-your-rtl-...](http://blog.cros13.net/2014/08/cheap-entropy-using-your-rtl-sdr-as.html)

* [https://github.com/pwarren/rtl-entropy](https://github.com/pwarren/rtl-entropy)

In Go, potentially (using its native encryption library, possibly a worthy trade-off in terms of security and speed(0))

* [https://github.com/jpoirier/gortlsdr](https://github.com/jpoirier/gortlsdr)

* [https://github.com/porjo/hamsdr](https://github.com/porjo/hamsdr)

* [https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr](https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr)

0: [https://github.com/rfjakob/gocryptfs#performance](https://github.com/rfjakob/gocryptfs#performance)

</comment><comment><USER3> One word: Spinthariscope. The seller of mine said there used to be a version sold for one-time-pad purposes. All the cosmic voodoo you need, in a package as small as a USB stick, or less.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I start with Machine Learning? - <AUTHOR> My last company dabbled with the usual web data mining, but with some text mining / NLP twist for ads. Then later tried to apply machine learning but it closed down on our locality.
I wish to continue learning and trying to research on it. I am horrible at math, but I'm trying to change that, so I'm trying to re-learn high school algebra as a starting point. I know some machine learning resources on the web speak heavily using linear algebra, so that would be my long term goal.
What I wish to be is an active researcher on the field of machine learning. An independent researcher, which I know is possible since, from what I understood, one doesn't need government approval or very huge funds to start with it.
Going to university is out of the question. I have to do researching myself with my own resources.
Any help would be highly appreciated ;-) <comment><USER3> First, finish lectures by Professor Gilbert Strang. <http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/>

To my memory, session notes of CS229 is good enough for understanding SVM and gaussian distributions. Also watch youtube videos. <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/materials.html> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E>

If you just want to use the libraries, you can stop here.

If you want to know more, read chapters 1-3 of nonlinear programming by Professor Dimitri Bertsekas before convex optimization. <http://www.athenasc.com/nonlinbook.html>

Then, you can try to finish EE364 and watch the videos. <http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee364a/> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McLq1hEq3UY>

If you want to roll your own algorithms, you have to know some optimization tools. <http://cvxr.com/cvx/>

And there is some statistics knowledge you have to fill in. I used these: <http://www.stat.umn.edu/geyer/5101/> <http://www.stat.umn.edu/geyer/5102/> R is used in the courses.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! For an achievable short term goal I just wish to use the libraries first so I can roll my own simple apps. This way I get to learn the basics while making use of what I already know (build web apps). An integration of sorts, should keep me motivated all throughout. Eventually I'll go deeper, and will definitely work on the advanced topics you posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Programming Collective Intelligence ([http://www.amazon.com/Programming- Collective-Intelligence-Bu...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective- Intelligence-Building-Applications/dp/0596529325)) is a great resource. It serves as a practical introduction to several different machine learning algorithms. Although they are presented from a specific perspective (collaborative filtering), many of the techniques are general and are used across machine learning. The explanations of the algorithms are clear, simple, and the author does a nice job of building up the level of complexity over the course of the book. Also, you will get much more out of it if you follow along with the provided python-based implementations.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great! Python is actually my favorite language as of the moment, using it on freelance work as well as personal projects. Thanks for the link

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Start with the MIT linear algebra course (18.06) by Gilbert Strang and Stanford course on linear dynamical systems (EE263) by Stephen Boyd. Then move on to Boyd's course on convex optimization (EE364). Lectures for all of these are on youtube.

Do not try to read any books on "machine learning" (most of which are a total mess) before you have this background or you will just end up hopelessly confused.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! thanks for the tip, didn't realize youtube could be a better help to me that most books about the subject at my level

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take a look at Machine Learning video lectures by Professor Andrew Ng (Stanford). Highly recommended. <http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A89DCFA6ADACE599>

You'll also find a bunch of resources on this page - [http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good- res...](http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good-resources- for-learning-about-machine-learning)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! actually saw the first A.Ng lectures already, and he framed all concepts by way of linear algebra, which made me stumble on just the second video

<comment><USER5> Definitely give the courses I've mentioned in another comment a try - <USER2> material will make a lot more sense. Also keep in mind that Andrew Ng is a rather poor lecturer and many of his explanations are unclear or incomplete.

<comment><AUTHOR> will do! thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It depends on what you want to do as a researcher. If you want to prove theorems in machine learning theory, courses like convex optimization make sense. I would also add statistical machine learning (CMU 10-702) for a broader view.

But a large part of ML research is not theoretical stuff, and involves building real systems. And in that case you should get a cursory overview of ML and then focus on the subdomain you may be interested in. By cursory overview I mean getting a gist of things like graphical models, SVMs etc.- a typical entry level grad ML course. This should be enough when you delve deep into your domain of choice.

<comment><USER5> Not sure this is good advice - without background I have mentioned there is no chance of actually making sense of the material in the CMU course - note how linear algebra is a prerequisite and they cover convex optimization at the very beginning of the class (even though it is not possible to do the subject justice in 2 lectures).

<comment><USER7> Yes, you are correct. Sorry for the confusion; I meant that courses like 10-702 should be the star course he should work at, to have some short at understanding and contributing to theory heavy side of ML.

The first basic course for the latter approach can be 10-601, it's a machine learning course meant for senior undergrads. Look at schedule and assignments.

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~roni/10601-s10/>

Also since you have interest in text mining etc. and if you want to focus on that, you can skip a lot of courses, and go directly to language and statistics-1. It's a great course if you wish to work primarily with text, and it covers the prerequisite ML.

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~roni/11761/>

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, thanks! bookmarking those, especially great for the text mining related course

<comment><USER7> If you are interested in a course, save it's slides and assignments. They will be down in a few months. They keep recycling the course sites whenever a new semester starts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A great textbook as an intro is by Duda and Hart, Pattern Classification. [http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Classification-2nd-Richard- Dud...](http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Classification-2nd-Richard- Duda/dp/0471056693). Its pretty well written and gives a good overview of the main techniques. If you want a bit more theory, try Cherkassky and Muller, "Learning from Data".<http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Data-Concepts-Theory- Methods/> Has a good overview section on statistical learning theory. And also, take WEKA and just play with it.Its nice to just check what works and what doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are great books, thanks! Haven't heard of WEKA but it sure looks pretty nice, must like like MLDemos?

<http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What are the best resources to use when starting machine learning for an experienced programmer?

[http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/334/what-are-the- best-r...](http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/334/what-are-the-best- resources-to-use-when-starting-machine-learning-for-an-experienced-programmer)

As other commentators have said, try to build something and ask for help along the way, unless your goal is to be a theoretician (which I assume it is not).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link! You're mostly correct, I wish to build stuff around, but I also want to get deep into the theory. Just deep enough to be able to try out stuff I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Machine learning consists of parametric optimization to reduce some error function on training data and then use the learnt parametric model on unseen/held-out data and evaluate. The first step is to construct the right parametric model by studying the data domain and then iterate till the performance is achieved within acceptable level. Machine learning research is highly mathematical, but you can start by using some open source ML tools and tweaking the models to get a feel for the capacities of different models.

Some topics you should familiarize are: Probability Theory, EVD/SVD, ANN, ML/MAP estimation, Minimum classification error training, SVM, LMS fitting, PCA/ICA, FSM and HMM.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Once I brushed up on the math, I'll be diving deeper onto those topics, which seemed to be math-intensive

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have not checked these out, but I know that there is a Hacker Dojo course that posts course material to the following site.

[http://machinelearning101.pbworks.com/w/page/32890312/FrontP...](http://machinelearning101.pbworks.com/w/page/32890312/FrontPage)

I have seen some of the lectures and notes posted on the following Stanford CS229 site. However, they will probably be hard to follow prior to learning some linear algebra.

[http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a...](http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a6d-4052-937d-cb017338d7b1)

<comment><AUTHOR> going to my bookmarks, and, yeah, got to get that linear algebra problem sorted out, could take me months

<comment><USER11> The Khan Academy site has linear algebra videos for free: <http://www.khanacademy.org/#linear-algebra>

Also, Octave is a free software package similar to Matlab that I imagine could be useful when learning linear algebra, to see instant results for problems that you are trying to solve without a computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> MLDemos is a great free cross-platform GUI program that you can use to play around with various algorithms and visualize their effects: <http://mldemos.epfl.ch/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks sleek! thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> some good toy projects to start with: [http://www.quora.com/Programming- Challenges-1/What-are-some-...](http://www.quora.com/Programming- Challenges-1/What-are-some-good-toy-problems-in-data-science)

for more see [http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good- lea...](http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-good-learning- projects-to-teach-oneself-about-machine-learning/answers/452183)

<comment><AUTHOR> bookmarked, Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For a broad(er) perspective on AI, checkout UC Berkeley's CS188 <http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188>. I think it's a good entry course into AI. One advantage is that the math requirement is not as high as Stanford's CS229 or EE263 (both of which are fantastic courses to be clear, but are easier to appreciate with the correct background).

<comment><AUTHOR> Bookmarked! Thanks!

I know Machine Learning is a subset of AI, but lately I'm beginning to see it more of under Statistics. That's just my impression, I could really be wrong given my very limited knowledge.

<comment><USER14> Yep your intuition is good -- a lot of the mathematical techniques used in Machine Learning are motivated/derived/understood from Statistics. I'd recommend starting with a broader approach to this topic. In particular, there are often simpler heuristic approaches to a problem that are reasonably good and worth trying before trying to build a full-blown ML system. What I've learned is that knowing where ML systems fail/are overkill is just as important as knowing when to use them/build them.

<comment><USER15> If you have already brushed up on linear algebra and calculus (which you're gonna need if you want to do any serious ML) take a look at Hastie et al's Elements of Statistical Learning. The PDF is free, and the book is both extremely well written and super comprehensive. <http://www- stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/>

You might also want to check out R, as its an amazing statistics language which has hundreds of packages available for ML. There's a large user community, and the really obscure error messages you get will teach you a lot about statistics. <http://cran.r-project.org/>

Also, a lot of machine learning is getting the data into a usable form, so learn how to use Unix command line tools such as sed, awk, grep et al. They are absolute lifesavers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On the other issue, re the 'horrible at math', if you can manage, work through 'Project Euler'(google it), say one a day or 3-4 a week. If you can do more, great, but the aim is to get a long-term habit going. Get into the habit of doing a few of those problems a week and you will have a working capacity with 'real math', which is more than remembering formulas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I already played around that site when learning Python. I actually got until (I think) problem #34. Then I sort of stopped, because I can't solved it without resorting to endless nested loops, which made me think I need to brush up on my mathematics because it is somehow limiting me when dealing with some problems. Kind of a chicken and egg situation as far as I could tell now that you mentioned it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wish I would finally follow my own advice, but I think it would be best to pick a problem and start hacking. There are lots of data sets available on the net, and competitions like the Netflix prize, too.

A while ago there was a story on HN about somebody who built a recommender system for boardgamegeek.com, for example. I thought that was inspiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe this to be sound advice, so what I'm actually thinking of right now is to go and pace slowly on the math/theory, while starting a super beginner project to get my feet wet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> MIT open course ware. Its like going to college, but free xD [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-867-machine-learning-fall-2006/)</comment>


Ask HN: Average time to receive a reply to a Y Combinator application? - <AUTHOR>

I was just wondering how long does it take for Y Combinator to review applications.
I am sure they are very busy and it is not easy to choose which startup you want to accept. I just wanted to know how long does it take to receive a reply or a question in your account?
Are rejection letters given right after they review your application or after they are done the application deadline?
Gracias <comment><USER2> You'll hear back on April 7, either way. If you get a question on your app, that means they're atleast mildly interested, but it could still go either way. It's all very opaque and for a good reason: Once you submit the app, go back to building your product/company, don't worry about the result. Since you're going to do your startup ANYWAY, right!?!

 _On April 7, we'll invite the groups that seem most promising to meet us in Mountain View during April 23-28. We'll reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses_ [1]

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/apply.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Your definitely right. I was just wondering from past experiences, if anyone had an idea of how long it takes or if anyone receives a rejection letter right away.</comment></comment>


How to validate a startup idea? - <AUTHOR>

I want to make a roguh model for validating startup ideas. I want some help.
Here are some of questions which come to my mind? 1. Where will the revenue come from? 2. How many users are required to get this revenue? 3. How to get user to use the product / service? 4. Is the product / service and absolute must, something which users cannot do without? ...
Can you add more or give me pointer to information? <comment><USER2> [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is- custome...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-customer- development.html)

<http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/>

<http://venturehacks.com/articles/customer-development>

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976470705>

[http://www.amazon.com/New-Business-Road-Test- entrepreneurs/d...](http://www.amazon.com/New-Business-Road-Test- entrepreneurs/dp/027373279X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293600659&sr=1-1)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5E38frHo1U>

etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read Jason Cohen's latest article for a start: <http://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting-startup-ideas.html>

The only validation that matters, besides real revenue, is a solid promise of revenue from your target customers.

</comment><comment><USER4> also see:

<http://survey.io/> <http://startup-marketing.com/></comment>


Lenovo ThinkPad Chromebook - for schools - <AUTHOR> http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2013/01/for-schools-new-lenovo-thinkpad.html <comment><USER3> For what it's worth, this looks like a CrOS variant of the existing X131e[0] which is also an .edu-only model. Not new and shiny, but gets Lenovo in the CrOS market. I'd like to think this is a precursor to a mass-market CrOS ThinkPad.

EDIT: it's available to mass-market as well[1], but the sales pitch still makes the target market fairly clear

[0] <https://www.lenovo.com/education/us/en/edu-series.html>

[1] [http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x...](http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x131e-intel/)

<comment><USER4> The X131e is available for purchase by consumers. I have the AMD model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a CR-48 owner, I think this is both good for education and bad.

The good parts of this is that ThinkPad's are well built machines and this particular model has been ruggedized. This form factor seems perfect to me for the educational environment: light, portable and rugged.

The negative is ChromeOS itself for an educational environment. It's a fine machine for doing Internet research and light writing, but more traditional OSes allow for more experimentation and learning. You won't be messing around with video editing on these in any significant way. Web design wouldn't be easy either. Web design was one of my favorite high school classes.

For library and research computers, this seems like a great option. Rugged, secure, portable. For a learning tool, wouldn't something more open, more able to run more applications be better?

From an IT perspective I get it. These machines require so little maintenance and are much more hardended than your typical PC.

In many ways, I feel the original ThinkPad that this is based off of would be a better educational tool. This of course comes down to whether or not school want students experimenting these days. I hope they do.

<comment><USER6> Students have never been allowed to "tinker" with school-owned computers. I have been involved in educational programs that relied on school-owned laptops at the college level. In my experience having a locked-down machine is really the only way to make this sort of thing work well.

Unless you're teaching CS or networking or something along those lines there is just no benefit to allowing students fiddle with the computers that isn't completely overwhelmed by the negative effects of students accidentally hosing the machines.

I guess in a perfect world we would let everyone tinker with everything. You never know where the next brilliant idea will come from and all that. But in the world we live in, there are costs and there are benefits. When the costs of something dwarf the benefits of that thing you don't do it.

<comment><USER7> We weren't allowed to meddle with them, but did that stop us? No.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and that's fine. What I'm saying is that when the computer is a primary mode of delivering course material or is otherwise absolutely necessary for the curriculum, malfunctions, whether caused by user error or otherwise, are unacceptable. Most schools just don't have the resources to support "real" computers in the hands of the students.

<comment><USER7> Yes they do. Most of them are contracted out to companies which have state restoration software on, so if someone screws it up, they can re-image it instantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When it comes to Google, HN often exhibits a surprising amount of tolerance for vendor lock in.

<comment><USER9> It promotes using web apps, web apps which can also be accessed with browsers on any OS. Not happy with Chromebooks? Use Windows or Mac instead and access the same webapp. That's the _exact opposite_ of vendor lock-in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unless the build quality is stellar and/or the size makes a difference, I would much rather pick a machine from their Essential series (to keep the discussion to the same manufacturer, similar options exist). It is not tied to an ever-changing online service, it has the specs to act as a stand alone work machine for myself, let alone school students, and only costs $369.

[http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/essential/g-series/...](http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/essential/g-series/g580/)

I recently picked one up for a family member and was impressed by how much computer <$400 will get you.

<comment><USER11> You're suggesting giving schoolkids a 3kg 15.6" laptop? It seems clear that it's not acceptable no matter how good the specs are. A rugged 11" laptop makes way more sense.

As for ChromeOS, it seems like a perfect fit to a school environment. But the same ThinkPad model has been available for about a year with Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good to know there's now a ThinkPad flavour but it's a shame about the chiclet keyboard. Seems to be a trend at Lenovo. They might look better but that doesn't mean they are any easier to type on. The keyboard on my x220 is one of the best things about the laptop. Molded keys are so much more responsive but if I remember rightly they went chiclet-style on the x230 too. If it ain't broke...

<comment><USER13> I've been using Thinkpads for years and find the new chiclet keyboards just as good, if not better than the older ones.

<comment><USER12> Fair play. Ought to admit I haven't used one on a ThinkPad yet. Never enjoyed typing on other manufacturers' chiclet keyboards so I am judging them on that skewed basis. It's my first ThinkPad so I'm still a bit spellbound about the sheer quality of the keyboard compared to every laptop I've used before. Shouldn't be all too surprised to learn Lenovo's are a cut above the rest and, in light of your comments, I won't be so dismissive of them when buying my next ThinkPad. Don't knock it and all that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sweet. Too bad it is for students only because my CR-48 is starting to show its wear.

<comment><USER15> What was your usage pattern for you with your CR-48?

I tried using it initially, but I very quickly ran into speed issues when I was trying to rapidly find information and take notes in Google Docs. The hardware simply couldn't keep up.

I've recently ressurected it by connecting it to my stereo and running Rdio on it, but I have a feeling that this is a misuse.

<comment><USER14> Mine is mainly used for everyday web browsing while sitting in front of the TV. I agree it is a bit slow but I am generally not in a rush.

Personally, if I had to fault ChromeOS for something, it would be that there is no way to create an account on the machine without having a Google account. I believe that needs to be changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Chrome OS with Thinkpad? Sweets. However, if I get one of this laptop, I will install Ubuntu or other Linux system on it. Because in most time, without networking, Chrome OS is useless.

<comment><USER17> It boggles my mind how popular ChromeOS would be if it did indeed have strong offline capabilities (like say, an Android tablet).

This is likely why I would recommend a Transformer+keyboard instead - <USER2> the same price, but higher utility.

<comment><USER18> Chrome supports offline apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is it double the price of the other chromebooks 0_o?

<comment><USER4> Better construction and it's a bit more armored than your typical laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Too heavy. Samsung ARM still the best Chromebook.

</comment><comment><USER21> They should've used a quad core Cortex A15. It would've made them cheaper, and there's no reason for x86 in these machines.

<comment><USER22> Half of the Chrome Web Store uses Native Client, which doesn't work on ARM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Honest question: for $430 why would anyone want this crap instead of a decent tablet?

<comment><USER24> Build quality. Support. Keyboard and mouse. Able to be locked down to limit app installs. Many reasons why a laptop, even a Chromebook, is more useful in certain situations than a tablet. This isn't meant for your home, it's meant for the classroom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> $430 seems to be expensive for something with no real hard drive (only 16GB solid state) and with a Celeron processor.</comment>


Free Hackation in New York to work on your side project - <AUTHOR> http://joingrouper.com/hackation

<comment><USER2> If I weren't already running a company, I'd jump on this in a heartbeat. Spending a weekend working on people-matching algorithms sounds like a blast.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm guessing that the restriction on location is mainly related to keeping the travel costs down. I 'm mainly just curious as to why the US Citizenship is a hard requirement, particularly if I'm accepted to work on my own stuff.

<comment><USER4> Just in case you didn't see, they responded that this was not a hard requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty cool. Although I wonder what "grouper" is getting out of this. And why grouper is willing to part with good money. It seems wasteful to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a great way to screen, invite, carry out an extended interview and potentially hire/acquihire selected targets. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Who owns the IP that may come out of this?

<comment><USER4> It would be pretty shitty if they said you can work on your own projects and then demanded that they own the work you do. They definitely should clarify this on the site though....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the items on the application form is "I am a US citizen". Is that a requirement for their Hackations?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely not a requirement. Awesome Non US citizens should apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. Developer interaction always sounds good to me, so, signed myself up. Let's see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER9> I added a clarification to the application that US citizenship is _not_ required.</comment>


Student fined for bringing university into disrepute with FitFinder site - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7140721.ece

<comment><USER2> Sarcastic memo:

Seems like there could be some good money to be made fining final year students for whatever little offenses we can think of. What are they going to do, forfeit their degree over a few hundred (or thousand) dollars?

This will have to do until we can find a way to retroactively cancel their degrees at any time in their ensuing professional lives because they do something that as a graduate of this university might cast it into a bad light. (Or just when money gets tight).

<comment><USER3> They might call your bluff. Graduation rate is a sizable component of the all- important U.S. News ranking. Given the acrobatics top-tier colleges perform to ensure each student leaves with a diploma, I wouldn't be surprised if an unfinished degree is as costly to the school as it us to the student.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The university is bringing itself into disrepute by punishing a student who's actually motivated to create something.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention the fact that they're trying to regulate legal and socially acceptable conduct by students outside the university.

<comment><USER6> Good point on that. It's like applying controls on children in high school to college students.

<comment><USER5> It really wouldn't matter if it _was_ high school. If it's not created or hosted at school, the school has no justification for doing anything to the creator.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if you're speaking philosophically, but there's plenty of precedent for high schools in the U.S. punishing students for off-campus behavior, and sundry justifications that seem to be accepted for doing so.

<comment><USER5> I'm saying that's generally unacceptable. I can think of a few exceptions, such as online bullying where the off-campus behavior directly produces on- campus behavior, but the school's jurisdiction should generally be limited to the campus and school-sponsored activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> £300 to get articles written about his site? Sounds like the best marketing ROI he could have hoped for.

<comment><USER8> But the site had to be taken down. £300 to get articles written about a site that once existed.

<comment><USER9> He has plans to put it back up as soon as he has his degree. I'm sure the petition asking for it to come back doesn't hurt either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now if that's not extortion, I don't know what is.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it actually legal for the university to do this?

<comment><USER11> Of course. He's not legally obligated to pay the fine, but they don't have to give him his degree.

<comment><USER10> If I walk into a store, buy something, and am then "fined" $300 and told I can't leave with the item I just bought unless I pay the fine... someone's going to be sued, and it's not going to be me. Of course, colleges won't admit that they are a degree store, but...

<comment><USER11> I'm in high school, but surely you sign some sort of document giving the college the right to do that?

<comment> loup-vaillant Such a clause would have to be very broad, like "don't do _anything_ that _might_ embarrass the university". That would probably be considered abusive, and void.

They probably don't have the right, and count on your inability to effectively sue them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> His site is worth so much more than his degree, IMO.

I guess this is the I-am-pot-committed-so-i-have-to-go-through-with-it effect. It's hard to make decisions based on future returns as suppose to past efforts.

<comment><USER13> He's a few weeks away from getting his degree, I think he's probably made the right call here - Take site down. Get degree. Put site back up.

<comment><USER12> Which do you think grabs more attention in a resume:

\- Graduated from xxx University with Honor in computer science

OR

\- My site was so engaging to students that my university had to threaten to retract my degree three months prior to my graduation in order to force me to shutdown my site.

This is the kind of PR Bill Gates get by dropping out of college. If I was him, I'd keep the site running, let the university take my degree, then take them to the court (knowing that I won't win), just to create more media attention.

"A few weeks away from getting his degree" is exactly the kind of thinking that I'm trying to avoid. But of course, who knows what I would actually do when I'm in his shoes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Their petition on their website: <http://www.thefitfinder.co.uk/witnessthefitness/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Shades of 'FaceMash'?

Invest in this kid's next project -- especially if he drops out to do it.

</comment><comment><USER16> he should drop out of school and use it as an excuse to get on every tv station and written about in every paper in the country.

who wants a degree from such a dumb school anyway. walk away. some of the best companies of our time have been built by drop-outs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does he really need a degree given the success claimed in the article ?

<comment><USER18> Thought experiment: If he doesn't _think_ he needs the degree, why is he there?

<comment><USER19> Peer pressure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am really interested to know how this brings disrepute to the school. Is it a so school known for churning out world class theoretical computer scientists, that those building dating websites degrade its reputation?</comment>