Show HN: Goodbye Old Editor – Reinventing coding with the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://friendco.de/ <comment><USER2> After taking a look I want to ask about a few features I would expect to say goodbye to my "old" editor (I actually just migrated from VIM to Emacs). Are they there, or are they going to be included?

        - auto completion, file names, var names, classes and functions, words in general etc. (like in: vim - omnicomplete, emacs: auto-complete)

        - fill column marker (v: colorcolumn, e: many, fill-column-indicator)

        - code outline (v: TagBar, e: Speedbar)

        - refactoring support, rename var/fun/class (many options)

        - go to definition (for Python v: python-mode, e: elpy; or generically with ctags, etags)

        - comment region (v: NERDCommenter, e: comment-region)

        - declare and insert snippets (v: vim-snipmate, e: yasnippet and others)

        - rectangular selection and operations (v: Ctrl-v, e: C-x r ... or rect-mark)

        - find file in project (fuzzy matching optional) (v: Command-T, e: find-file-in-project, ifind, others)

        - find in files (v: :(vim)grep or other, e: lgrep or multiple others)

        - change/set surrounding "'([{ chars (v: surround, e: wrap-region or (somewhat) paredit)

And probably many others I don't remember now.

I don't want to sound like I'm saying the product is a bad idea or that what we have now is sufficient and we don't need new things. I'm honestly very used to these features and they make me more productive; if I was a hobbyist, I could switch to less featureful editor right now, but for a professional your productivity determines your income for the large part. So, while I like the idea of in-browser editors, I cannot use them unless they have the features I need. If they are in different places then ok, but not if they are lacking.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure that you like the idea of in-browser editors? The only feature that I see as useful is the "zero deployment/any device" and I can't imagine that feature coming in handy very often.

What else do you like about them?

If you like vim or emacs - the Cons seem to far outweigh the one Pro that I can see for these types of editors:

      - Online only.
      - Client and service back-end usually not open source.
      - Far less robust, feature-wise.
      - Limited to using these for languages that their back-end supports.
      - Limited by browser technology. For instance:
      Can I break those tabs out to a new window?
      How well does that perform?
      Can I middle-click a document-tab to close it?
      Does it integrate well with the rest of the
      programs running on my operating system?

To the folks at friendco.de: Sorry for being negative. It's nothing personal - I just prefer native over web for my applications and I'm curious as to what people find to be good about web apps besides the one Pro that I mentioned.

<comment><USER2> Well, if everything else was equal and all features implemented the "zero deployment/any device" would be a great thing, no? As I said I like the idea, not current implementations.

Personally I would use it - and even if it had only a fraction of functionality I mentioned - for remote pair programming. It's so hard to make people feel comfortable with Emacs/Vim+screen/tmux!

As an aside, I think that an online editor with scripting capability would quickly catch up to native editors in terms of features.

<comment><USER4> Well actually all the online editors have awesome scripting capability via javascript:)

> \- rectangular selection and operations (v: Ctrl-v, e: C-x r ... or rect- > mark)

Ace (cloud9 editor which friendCode uses) have pretty good support for sublime text style multiple selections, (with ctrl-alt-arrow keys) so emacs or vim style should be easy to implement. The main problem is that there are oly a few people who use online editors, so most of this things are not implemented yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks pretty cool and I'm going to check it out, but I'm not signing up with GitHub since you ask for access to my private repos by default. Given that I use GitHub for my day job, I'm not really comfortable giving a service I've never heard of access to our code base. It would be great if this was opt-in. (e.g. ask for my public repos now and then ask me later about private ones)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, happy to hear you like it.

We don't import your private repositories as of now, only your public ones.

I think you did good to point this out, we'll make it more clear and visible in the future.

We're only six months into our adventure so far and we're in beta, but we're definitely improving.

And your feedback is very helpful. Thanks for that

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know of a self-hosted variant of this? I'd kill for the ability to toss some file on a webserver & use it to edit files locally..

<comment> martin-adams Cloud9 IDE? <https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9/>

<comment><USER6> Thanks! Will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work! Have you played with Koding.com at all? This is very similar and seems to be a space that is heating up. I will definitely give this a shot.

One quick piece of feedback: some of the grammar felt strange. I'm assuming you aren't native english speakers? No problem, I'm sure someone can help you polish that later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We know of Koding, we haven't spoke with their team though.

It seems like coding is really focusing on it's social features and wants to become the "facebook for developers".

I can't condemn that, but I think there is more value to be built, by focussing on improving the coding experience and it's simplicity.

We're a two man team, I'm a native english speaker, but taking care of the backend side of things I don't always have the time to perfect the grammar mistakes my co-founder makes.

He's french by the way, and I think he still does a pretty good job :)

Thanks for pointing that out, we'll definitely improve that when things calm down a bit

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Few things needed for me before I even consider the change:

PS: I am a PHP developer using Netbeans

\- Autocomplete (for function names, vars and methods)

\- Control + Click on a var/function/method opens the file where that is located and bring you there

\- Also would be easier if it had Dropbox/Google Drive support, I am cheap so I don't pay github, I find it too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be nice if I didn't have to set up _another_ repo. Integrating with GitHub or BitBucket would be preferred (be backed by, not just import). That said, I wouldn't actually use it since GitHub lets you edit individual files through the UI. Just an observation. The rest looks nice though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we integrate both with GitHub as a "Repository provider" and Heroku as a PaaS.

If you connect your Github account we'll import your GitHub repositories.

And we do have a primitive and slightly awkward way of pushing back to your github repository. That will be improved in the coming days. To make it more obvious and easier.

Thanks for pointing that out. We want to integrate as well as possible with current existing services.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel regarding code hosting and we want to focus on what makes us different.

Hope that answers your question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While running the sample nodejs code, it opened a virtual terminal with the message "Building application in a new virtual machine" - Are you actually creating a new virtual machine for every app that is run? Isn't that resource- consuming?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, each app is run in a new virtual machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just curious, are you guys building the FriendCode app by using FriendCode?

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks great. When will you shut up and start taking my money? I'm worried of getting too attached, that this beautiful piece of work looks like it has no business model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, happy to hear that you like it. We do have a business model and multiple possible revenue streams. The most obvious one being freemium. We're in beta right now, so it made sense for us to keep it free during beta. We will be rolling out pricing as soon as we leave beta.

It'll always be free for individuals, but we'll have paid versions for larger teams and companies.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to let you guys know that there are a few issues with the execution system due to the load we got from HN.

We're on it right now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Error 500 on redirect back from Github login.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks interesting. Is there--or will there be--any kind of integration with GitHub, SourceForge, et al?

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to hear you like it.

We do integrate with Github and Heroku as of now.

Expect this integration to involve over time and we'll also integrate with other services (Amazon AWS, DotCloud ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to see the pricing structure before I give you any data (including my Google/FB/GH credentials).

</comment><comment><USER15> Have you seen <https://koding.com/> ?

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the concept. You may want to fix the language autocomplete during sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we'll look into that and get it fixed ASAP

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is different about this from Cloud9 (genuinely interested in the answer)?

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all Cloud9 is a very good solution, they are the initial pioneers in cloud coding, and they built some good technology that we contribute to (and use small parts of).

We really try to focus on simplicity and extensibility.

We're trying a few different approaches, one of them being providing a whole network besides the code editor itself, so people can share plugins, build teams, find freelancers (that kind of stuff).

Cloud9 is very good, we're just about 6 months old and a two man team, so we're exploring things and trying to innovate.

Hope that answers your question.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, that does answer it! Good luck :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's incredible. I've been trying all morning, and do not stop to amaze me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm happy that you like it :)

<comment><USER18> Hey man, i just found a problem with Ruby. When i run the demo code with sinatra, tries to download dependencies with Bundler, i got this error:

Installing dependencies using Bundler version 1.3.2 Running: bundle install --without development:test --path vendor/bundle --binstubs vendor/bundle/bin --deployment The source :rubygems is deprecated because HTTP requests are insecure. Please change your source to '<https://rubygems.org> if possible, or '<http://rubygems.org> if not. You are trying to install in deployment mode after changing your Gemfile. Run `bundle install` elsewhere and add the updated Gemfile.lock to version control. You have added to the Gemfile: * source: rubygems repository <http://rubygems.org/> * sinatra (= 1.1.0) * thin ! ERROR: Failed to install gems via Bundler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ;)</comment>


Can You Fall In Love with This Beautiful Girl? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5814813/can-you-fall-in-love-with-this-beautiful-girl <comment><AUTHOR> I almost missed it myself, so I wanted to point out that you watch the second embedded video in full screen @ 720P ... very impressive.</comment>


How FPGAs work, and why you'll buy one (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/195.php?1 <comment><USER2> I remember this article. This is by _yosefk.

I love FPGAs. They're awesome for interacting at a low level with just about any kind of hardware, at nano-second-level latency.

But although _I_ bought one, I don't think most people will end up buying one, unfortunately; the vast majority of the consumer stuff that we considered putting on FPGAs in the past (graphics rendering, heavy math) is solved six ways to Sunday by today's GPU. The FPGA also lacks an open-source (or even shared-source) toolchain, there's no way to perform resource sharing, they have code constraints that are physical limits, and so on.

Basically, FPGAs rock when used for chip design or for powering custom prototype or small batch hardware. But they fall into a really narrow portion of the market, because there are few cost-effective consumer-level solutions that make use of FPGAs.

A shame, really. They're super cool.

<comment><USER3> You can always spend $40 and use this to play with one: [http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/](http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/)

<comment><USER2> Oh, wow. I have never seen this before. That's enormously useful and could be a huge step towards getting FPGAs on the "maker" market. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a shout-out about the Icestorm project which provides a complete open- source toolchain for Lattice's iCE40 FPGAs. It's mostly the work of one guy (Clifford Wolf): [http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/](http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/).

It's worth noting that arachne-pnr ([https://github.com/cseed/arachne- pnr](https://github.com/cseed/arachne-pnr)) is written by a different person (Cotton Seed).

</comment><comment><USER5> Two previous discussions with lots of comments.

(109 points, 331 days ago, 107 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9388751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9388751)

(379 points, 999 days ago, 152 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5895672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5895672)

</comment><comment><USER6> There's an important caveat that this is missing: yes, FPGAs can do a whole bunch of multiply-accumulate operations at once, but each of those units really wants to carry out the same multiply-accumulate operation every clock cycle, with inputs coming from the same sources and outputs going to the same destinations. With DSPs you can trivially execute a completely different step of the computation every clock using the same multiplier, but on FPGAs you either have to set up all your own control logic to multiplex all the DSP units in and out at the right time or have one multiplier per stage in the computation and inevitably lose efficiency because the rate you're feeding data in is slower than the speed the FPGA can run at. And large FPGAs are relatively expensive and, well, big - the bottom-of-the-range Artix 7 with 45 multiply-accumulate slices (enough for one 45-stage computation without complex tricks) is $25 and the smallest package you can get it in is 1cm2.

<comment><USER7> >And large FPGAs are relatively expensive

That's an understatement.

[http://www.findchips.com/search/xcvu9p](http://www.findchips.com/search/xcvu9p)

<comment><USER8> Intel and NVidia also sell chips in this price range.

[http://ark.intel.com/products/84685/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E7-...](http://ark.intel.com/products/84685/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E7-8890-v3-45M-Cache-2_50-GHz) [http://www.amazon.com/Nvidia- Accelerator-passive-cooling-900...](http://www.amazon.com/Nvidia-Accelerator- passive-cooling-900-22080-0000-000/dp/B00Q7O7PQA)

Now, I guess you can decent performance out of cheaper chips already, but paying $5000 for an Intel CPU is hardly rare.

<comment><USER9> You are ignoring that the 12 core Xeons are still relatively cheap at $2000 which means it's still affordable to just buy four of them and put them into a single server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The thing that really got me excited about FPGAs was working with the "HappyBoard" that was used for MIT's 6.270 robotics competition[1]: it's similar to an Arduino (AVR microcontroller with pin headers broken out and USB), but with most of its IO (sensors, motors) going through a Xilinx FPGA rather than directly connected to the ATMega128.

What that meant was that the AVR, which was relatively slow at 8MHz, was free to run all your logic (including multithreading!) while the FPGA handled most of the timing-critical things, like motor PWM and sensor decoding.

But the coolest part was that you could dynamically modify the IO if you needed different behavior. Instead of having to find, buy, and wire up a standalone quadrature decoder IC to count axle rotations, I just had to write some code [2] and suddenly the board has a high speed quadrature decoder (or several) built in!

The biggest roadblock is the toolchain though - even though [2] was a pretty simple change, it took a long time to download and install the Xilinx ISE tools, and they're not the easiest to use.

I would love to see a general purpose AVR+FPGA board with the FPGA toolchain neatly packaged the way Arduino/Wiring has done for AVR. Verilog has a somewhat steep learning curve, so you might want to hide that in some kind of module system, with basic library modules like PWM, edge counting, or quadrature decoding that can just be mapped to the pins you want. Maybe something building on top of Icestorm?

[1] [http://spacecats.mit.edu/contestants/happyboard- manual.pdf](http://spacecats.mit.edu/contestants/happyboard-manual.pdf)

[2] [https://github.com/sixtwoseventy/joyos/commit/44975ea9bc64e5...](https://github.com/sixtwoseventy/joyos/commit/44975ea9bc64e507106fb2afda53e0a51002e498#diff-2cca5d619d44fd4f2b13b4440c410a03R1)

</comment><comment><USER11> To be frank after having experience with both FPGA and software development. If you can solve the problem in software, just do it.

The cost in time and complexity of solving a problem in hardware is almost always larger.

When writing software you gain a level of abstraction. You do not have to deal with getting a special hardware (the FPGA), mess with proprietary buggy tools, and all the nitty gritty stuff of proper reset, multiple clock domains, timing closure where each rebuild of your code might take multiple hours to close. And don't get me started with writing HDL-code.

I implemented an object tracker using a FPGA and a webcam and there were multiple hardware problems that needed to be handled such as buffering data in the sdram (design a sdram memory controller), research and implement image filters and debug why the camera image sometimes got corrupted (the connection cables were too long).

Almost all of these problems would have been gone by instead connecting an USB-webcam to my PC and utilize the openCV library.

<comment><USER12> > The cost in time and complexity of solving a problem in hardware is almost > always larger.

Why?

I have exactly the opposite feeling when I'm dealing with software - "if only I could design my own cache here, how much easier would it be to get around this bottleneck!"

<comment><USER13> Are you arguing against the claim that it's much harder to design hardware than software to solve a problem? That's the main claim.

<comment><USER12> No, I'm arguing against a universality of such a claim. There is a performance/complexity threshold above which hardware or hybrid solution is a way easier than a purely software one.

<comment><USER13> I can see for performance. Software seems better at managing complexity if good structure is used. What example do you have where software is harder to develop and test than hardware due to complexity?

<comment><USER12> > Software seems better at managing complexity if good structure is used.

Not until you hit a deep semantic difference between your hardware and a code you're trying to build.

For example, there are many things that are best expressed as a Network-on- Chip: a pipeline of specialised CPU cores each doing something simple. And such a notion is not that easy to represent in a pure software without a gigantic performance penalty. A pair of a CPU core and a small piece of code running on top of it can be far simpler than any piece of code written for an existing but not fitting architecture.

A simple example of such would be a dedicated Forth processor plus a Forth implementation. They two together are often much simpler than, say, a standalone Forth implementation for x86.

<comment><USER13> I still doubt it's better at reducing complexity because that stuff is horrific in RTL. I can express it with a parallel programming language with ease. A parallel programming language with macros and automatic placement onto cores/DSP's would be even easier. Describe it, compile, and it probably runs. With hardware, I'm looking at several more layers of verification, testing, material checks, and so on.

High-level synthesis tools on the other hand might make your claim true. They're a combo of HW and SW languages.

"A simple example of such would be a dedicated Forth processor plus a Forth implementation. They two together are often much simpler than, say, a standalone Forth implementation for x86. "

Simpler for who? The person implementing both a Forth implementation and a x86 processor? Or the person just implementing a Forth on x86? I've seen Forth implementations in SW. They're trivial. Compilers, libraries, and hardware do all the heavy lifting. I'll put it to the test, though, as I feel you might have picked a good example.

J1 Forth CPU Verilog code [http://excamera.com/files/j1demo/verilog/j1.v](http://excamera.com/files/j1demo/verilog/j1.v)

eForth assembler for Z80 & such in few assembly instructions [http://www.figuk.plus.com/4thres/systems.htm](http://www.figuk.plus.com/4thres/systems.htm)

Forth interpreter in Ada (1985) [http://www.forth.com/archive/jfar/vol3/no2/article7.pdf](http://www.forth.com/archive/jfar/vol3/no2/article7.pdf)

Maybe it's just that I don't know Verilog. However, the Verilog code looks more like the assembler in second link. It's like a pile of gibberish. The Ada code is very straightforward. I bet the debugging was easier, too. S, I'm still not sold on hardware reducing complexity versus software implementation.

I'm 100% agreeing on improving performance esp where semantic mismatch occurs. Hell, that's what inspired me to ask you and some others to evaluate those two or three HLS tools so I could start cranking out accelerators if one was legit. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FPGAs are awesome. They help solve problems that software is too slow to solve, but aren't large enough in scale for ASICs. They're also great for prototyping new chips before actually shelling out the hundreds of thousands of dollars NRE for a new ASIC design.

Here's a great stackexchange discussion on why and how FPGAs can outperform CPUs for certain tasks: [http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/101472/how- ca...](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/101472/how-can-an-fpga- outperform-a-cpu)

</comment><comment><USER15> In the projects where I use them in university I always found them quite hard to work with.

While the idea of programming them with VHDL or Verilog is quite straightforward, there were a lot of bumps in the road to getting a working design. Specialized tools which generate reports that go on for pages and pages (our team was completely unable to do something about the path of longest delay), complicated information about the clock, and having to work with vague documentation and intellectual property.

FPGA's are really nice when they work, but I feel like they are just too complicated for developers to get started with on their own, at the moment.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, they're a bit of a dark art. They require hardware design tricks like pipelining for best performance, you can run into fun stuff like routing fabric congestion which absolutely kills performance and in turn is affected by stuff like the layout the tools choose and whether you're using cheaper or more expensive FPGAs (which at least for Xilinx have very different balances of routing resources), etc. I've seen timing failures due to the signals having to divert around the clock generators at the edge of the chip, which were effectively a wedge with no routing fabric in between two sections of logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a nice intro but the author forgets another downside of FPGAs which is power consumption. The hard cores help, but in the limiting case you end up with an ASIC.</comment>


Big Banks Face Another Round of U.S. Charges - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/big-banks-face-another-round-of-u-s-charges/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I'm with Richard Stallman on this. [http://blogs.reuters.com/great- debate/2013/02/04/fixing-too-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great- debate/2013/02/04/fixing-too-big-to-fail/)

Banks have way too much power in both our politics and economy. We have to change that.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the interesting read. I'm not 100% certain splitting the companies up would be the best alternative, but this definitely makes me ponder a bit. It makes sense to split up, but who would make the actual call? The shareholders? I'm assuming any CEO figure of the company would prefer to keep it growing so they can maximize their collective resources rather than splitting among smaller ones. Or maybe I'm missing some other incentives?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting, and troubling, that so many still trust these institutions:

* Banks that have been caught repeatedly both intentionally defrauding people and acting with extreme incompetence (and who knows who often they haven't been caught). Yet most customers, from individuals and to large corporations continue to trust the banks with their money and to take the banks' advice.

* They trust LIBOR and similar services as accurate and fair, when they've been tampered with repeatedly.

* They trust the financial markets as safe, fair places to invest, despite the problems above and others that pervert markets directly, such as high-frequency trading.

* They trust the 'Free Market', a good idea in concept but in execution appears to be a rigged marketplace, where the powerful win and if they don't, they get bailed out.

Do you still invest your savings in the financial markets? Do you have debts whose rates are tied to LIBOR? If Goldman Sachs offered to advise your company, would you trust them? Most people, knowing all of the above, still say yes. I think in part that's because there aren't many alternatives and in part it's due to lifetimes of of habit. These problems must be hurting trust and I imagine many people eventually will realize the disconnect at some point -- maybe in reaction to some big event -- and pull out.

The point of regulation is to make markets safe, which prevents fraud and attracts more investment. It's good for everyone. It seems like many in the financial industry, and the knee-jerk anti-regulation crowd, have lost sight of that.

<comment><USER5> How does High Frequency Trading pervert the market? They are acting as middle- men.

<comment><USER6> ...middle-men that aren't providing any service or benefit to anyone except those that profit from those trades.

These "middle-men" are injecting themselves between buyer and seller to take their cut simply because they have the money, resources, and -- increasingly these days -- the geographic location to beat someone else to the punch.

<comment><USER5> isn't the typical benefit of a middle-man that they have the money, resources, and geographic location to help facilitate transactions?

<comment><USER6> HFT doesn't "facilitate transactions".

What is often happening is Seller A wants to sell something for $10. Buyers B, C and D submit an order to buy it for $10. The computer sees this, knows that it might be worth more than $10, and while Buyers B and C get their orders through, the computer buys it out from under Buyer D because their computers are faster. Buyer D now gets a notice that "oh, sorry, that thing you wanted is now $11."

It's the same thing as you overhearing your neighbor saying the Apple Store only has one iPhone left for sale at the Apple Store and, because you have a faster car than your neighbor, you get to the store and buy it and then offer it for resale at a higher price. That's not facilitating a transaction, and it certainly is perverting the market. When the people with the fastest computers and best geographical location get items cheapest, that's not a 'free market'.

Middle-men have classically existed to provide a _service_, adding value to a previously less valuable or more difficult transaction -- wholesalers or retailers. Wholesalers existed to pare down which goods are offered, and existed primarily because smaller retailers couldn't afford to purchase in bulk. Most 'middle men' of these classes have gone away due to the digital age and/or conglomeration. Grocery stores or websites that provide value by having multiple items in the same place that you can pay for all in one financial transaction.

<comment><USER5> If Buyer D is still willing to spend $11, how is that perverting the market? All HFT does arbitrage, which has been around forever and only serves to make a market more efficient.

<comment><USER6> "If Buyer D is still willing to spend $11, how is that perverting the market?"

What if Buyer D isn't willing to spend $11?

"only serves to make a market more efficient"

I would say it's exploiting inefficiencies. That doesn't make the market any more efficient. In fact, given the sizable number of 'computer errors' leading to significant volatility when they occur, HFT is in fact a destabilizing force in the market at times.

<comment><USER5> >What if Buyer D isn't willing to spend $11?

If Buyer D isn't willing to spend $11, then he simply doesn't buy the item. The HFT took on risk by buying the item and needs to either find someone else willing to buy it for >$10 or lose money.

>I would say it's exploiting inefficiencies.

Exploiting Market Inefficiencies == A More Efficient Market. The whole idea of "buy low, sell high" is exploiting inefficiencies in pricing, which is all HFT's are doing. As a result, they bring the buy/sell prices closer together, making it easier to trade. In return for making the market more efficient, they get a profit, and everyone wins except those who are acting in an inefficient manner. (Remember, buying something for less than it's worth is ALSO an inefficiency!)

The point about volatility is fair, but that has to do with market stability, not market efficiency. The HFTs are HIGHLY incentivized to not destabilize the market because they stand to lose a LOT of money if they make a mistake. Now, it _is_ possible someone could concoct a scheme where they profit from a destabilization caused by faulty HFT, but HFT is the means by which that actor perverted the market, not the reason the market is perverted.

<comment><USER6> > Exploiting Market Inefficiencies == A More Efficient Market. The whole idea > of "buy low, sell high" is exploiting inefficiencies in pricing, which is > all HFT's are doing.

There's a difference between pricing inefficiencies and technology inefficiencies. In theory there should be equal access to markets. This is why SEC laws on disclosure exist. When people with greater technological ability can, in effect, toll everyone else, you are eliminating this idea of equal access.

> The HFTs are HIGHLY incentivized to not destabilize the market because they > stand to lose a LOT of money if they make a mistake.

So are all traders, but that doesn't stop things like Enron and Lehman Brothers from creating smoking holes in our economy. When you start creating legal fictions and technologies that are barely understood by those that create them, much less those that provide executive oversight, government oversight, or the general public, you are getting into very dangerous waters.

Software only works as long as the assumptions of the programmer stay valid. HFT quants are incentivized to make their companies money, not to protect the market at large. An application on a desktop computer crashing and exhibiting weird behavior isn't a big deal. A HFT process going rogue is going to cost a company millions or billions of dollars at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These companies (bank in specific) often repeatedly do these type of things trying to get away with m/billions in profit. When caught, the penalties just aren't enough to dissuade them from it. They probably get away with it most of the time, so there is no incentive to do otherwise. I really wish we would push for real penalties (jailtime, as we have done in the past during bank scandals) or even entire shutdown of the companies when they act unethically.

<comment><USER5> This was only true up until recently. In the last year B of A and JP Morgan settled for $17b[1] and $13b[2] respectively. Each settlement was more than their net income for the preceding year. That hurts. A lot.

Furthermore, the settlements since 2008 have largely not precluded the banks from facing criminal charges[2]. The Justice department needs to get these initial settlements out of the way before they can pierce the corporate veil and pursue criminal action against individuals and these giant banks unsurprisingly have spent lots of money and lawyers dragging these investigations out for the last 6 years. I'm ever an optimist, but I think it's inevitable that some criminal charges are still coming. Those charges will likely fall on scapegoats, but still.

[1][http://www.masslive.com/business- news/index.ssf/2014/08/bank...](http://www.masslive.com/business- news/index.ssf/2014/08/bank_of_america_weighs_17_billion_settle.html) [2][http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/19/investing/jpmorgan- mortgage-...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/19/investing/jpmorgan-mortgage- settlement/index.html)

<comment><USER8> Part of the problem in the past is that we've expected the justice department to go after the heads of the bank. This has been wholly ineffective when we do try because the people at the top do a great job as shielding themselves from hard evidence that implicates them. What I like about this new approach is that the focus is on the rank and file traders and other employees. The great thing about this new strategy is that it gives all these lower level employees caught in a criminal investigation net and incentive to produce the hard evidence necessary against their bosses as part of a plea bargain.

Once we go through at least one round of these types of criminal investigations, any future lower level employees would be stupid if they didn't intentionally keep hard evidence against their bosses in their possession as a get out of jail free card next time the shit hits the fan.

All in all, splendid news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another round? When was the first round. The banks have been caught with they hands in the cookie jar at least half a dozen times in the last ten years and nothing at all has been done about it (either from the US or UK side).

<comment><USER10> Came here to mention what's linked to in @comatose_kid's response. There have been some really _huge_ settlements with many/most of the banks, but it's happened so long after the fact, it's kind of out of the limelight. Obama's DOJ really hasn't gotten a lot of political mileage out any of it at all.

<comment><USER11> If they want political mileage, settlements are useless. You'll need to dismantle organizations, similar to what happened to Arthur Anderson after Enron.

<comment><USER12> That would generate political mileage with the left, but probably generate howls of 'socialism!' from the right, since the systemic nature of the financial crisis and the widespread abuses would mean multiple institutions being dismantled or split up.

Financial crimes are generally slow and difficult to prosecute because of the vast quantity of documentation that has to be sifted through for evidence, so when you look at the DoJ's financial fraud page you see a bias towards smaller firms - not necessarily because they're weaker legally, but simply because it's easier to pinpoint individuals (eg some of the insider trading prosecutions). Another issue specific to the financial crisis is that in some cases large firms erred by being negligent and/or overconfident in their market strategies, resulting in huge losses and/or bailouts, but they imprudent rather than mendacious and their conduct did not cross the line into criminality. In a normal market those firms would have gone out of business and things would have been resolved through civil lawsuits, which was what happened with Lehman bros. and Bear Stearns. But in the financial crisis so many institutions were over-leveraged, and so many markets were moving in sync with each other (eg Europe and US both having huge housing bubbles) that the options were government stepping in to backstop the financial industry as a whole or the collapse of the payment system, which would have been a disaster.

Getting back to politics, my read of the US landscape is that about 20% of the US electorate leans to the left and wouldn't object to hanging all the bankers. About 30% leans to the right, and they've convinced themselves that the whole financial crisis was caused by Those Bums on Welfare and the Democratic party who forced the banks to give money to TBoW. The other 50% of the electorate is more fact- than narrative-driven and while they have misgivings about who should bear responsibility for the crisis they're also more pragmatic and primarily concerned about economic stability. There's a danger in this, insofar as many of the socioeconomic conditions that led up to the crisis remain unresolved or have even worsened in some respects, which means greater political tension and potential for crises; on the other hand revolutionary change is notoriously difficult to manage which is why no developed country has so far attempted to grasp that particular nettle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These bankers have indirectly stolen millions of dollars from people. Why are they not going to jail for hundreds of years? Why is there even talk of a settlement? That is only going to incentivize similar behavior.

</comment><comment><USER14> So they'll be barred from doing business as a corporate form of prison, and barred for live, i.e., all eternity, from doing business related to currency or finances, right?

</comment><comment><USER15> How about going after some of the _human beings_ who directed and profited from all this illegal activity instead of just milking banks for more money.

This country is so screwed up. We send in a SWAT team when someone is growing okra in their backyard (apparently it looks like marijuana from a helicopter) yet let the rich and connected get off scot free after stealing billions of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER16> _" Prosecutors have explained publicly that banks would earn credit for exposing their misbehaving employees or face charges for protecting them."_

Hopefully they offer extra credit for exposing C-Suite level involvement.

Also, where was this deal when the Fed was investigating toxic asset fraud?

<comment><USER17> Doubtful. Also ftfa: _The charges will most likely focus on traders and their bosses rather than chief executives._

This seems akin to the drug enforcement policy of targeting the users. Which has been shown to be completely useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Better call Bitcoin.</comment>


Apple Wouldn't Risk Its Cool Over an Ad Gimmick, Would It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/15digi.html <comment><USER2> Most people probably don't care. They still watch ads online and with their TV shows. I work in an office building that is completely owned by my employer, and there are little screens in the elevator that show ads all day. You walk into the elevator, and instantly any conversation you were having stops, and people stare at the ads. It is mind-blowing that the ads exist, and mind- blowing how interested people are in them.

(The ads are sometimes even for our competitors! WTF!?)

<comment><USER3> This is, perhaps, another reason I prefer stairs beyond the nominal extra exercise[1]: I don't like being a captive[2] audience. I feel similarly about advertising inside of public transit vehicles and facilities.

[1] Perhaps another reason I hate high-density cities with high-rise office and/or apartment buildings.

[2] I'm not claustrophobic, even though I joke about being "trapped" in a little metal box, especially here in earthquake country. An elevator bigger than my car wouldn't be any more comfortable.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you. I would take the stairs, but I don't know where they are. (You would think, for fire safety reasons, that they would be clearly marked. But I have never seen any indication of their existence in this building.)

(I am OK with advertising on public transit. The government won't pay for public transportation, but advertisers will.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone has been watching the new Apple over the past decade, it is obvious that they are not interested creating new market areas, but rather coming late to an established areas and beating the competition.

If Apple launches an ad-supported device, I would bet it will only be in response to a move into that area from Google or MS, after learning from their mistakes (just as they learned from the many problems of Windows-based smartphones).

</comment><comment><USER5> The fact that a big company has filed a patent doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to make a product. Usually it means that they care about that area in general and need some amount of patent "presence", some asset that they can take into negotiations to give them a bit of weight.

</comment><comment><USER6> The television networks have not accepted a viable internet distribution system. Until that happens, Apple and others will continue developing treats to entice them.

Consider the recording industry. Apple had to use DRM that made purchases feel like the familiar single copy sale of the industry. Eventually the music industry got over that and adapted to unlocked sales.

The television networks or studios will be happier with ads in their internet distributed product, since it is how they work. Maybe they will get over it with time and accept a model that people prefer, or maybe people will prefer to serve the advertisers instead of paying for the content. Time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apple already lost its "cool" a while ago.

Openness of iPhone Development (or lack thereof). 'nuff said.

</comment><comment><USER8> While it would seem unlikely for Apple to implement a scheme like this for ad- subsidized computers, it does seem like something they would do for the music industry. I can see ad-supported itunes store content; watch this 30 second ad, and then you get to listen to the song.

</comment><comment><USER9> Apple hasn't filed the patent to implement it, but to stop others from doing so. It damages the Apple brand if third-party crapware like that mentioned in the patent shows up on the Mac, and they just want another tool in their pockets to get rid of it if they ever need to.

</comment><comment><USER10> Simple answer: no. If they use this for anything, I imagine it'll be for something similar to the iPhone, but without another company (like AT&T) backing them up financially. This allows Apple to sell something at a low price but still be financially viable.

</comment><comment><USER11> My guess: This is for the Apple Tablet. Either pay for subscriptions, or view ads. And, since it's Apple, I'm going to guess that all ads must go through an ad approval process.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was covered by Patently Apple a few weeks ago. NY Times is late to the party. To me this is to prevent Google's Chrome OS from being profitable.

<comment><USER13> Or maybe for the apple tv?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do we know this technology isn't targeted for the Apple Media-Industry- Saving Tablet Device? Is this how Steve plans to save the newspaper biz?

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe they're going to do the _right_ thing and use the patent to keep other idiots from ruining the "mac experience" with garbage like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looking forward to the mods and jailbreaks for cheap subsidized Apple hardware.

</comment><comment><USER17> Large companies have patents for multitudes of ideas that they don't actually implement. Getting worked up over patent filings like this is a waste of energy, since it's rare that anything comes of it.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you look at the article, it mentions that the ad enabled devices are optional and that too on a lower price. Now a person who cannot afford an iPhone may opt for the ad enabled device and may make it through the price barrier own a shiny new iPhone.</comment>


Syrian war spurs first withdrawal from 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/world/syrian-war-spurs-first-withdrawal-from-doomsday-arctic-seed-vault-20150921-gjrte0.html <comment><USER2> Why don't they wait for the situation to stabilize there for a few years before they start replanting crops that are just as likely to fail or be destroyed? The war isn't even over.

If they're planting the crops elsewhere just to get something going now that is not in storage, to replant later in Syria, then it makes sense.

<comment><USER3> The organization that runs the Middle Eastern seed bank moved the location from Aleppo, Syria to Beirut, Lebanon in 2012.

The article doesn't explain it very well but this transfer is meant to restock an active agricultural seed bank, that distributes seeds to the region's farmers, from last resort cold storage. Once the seeds are planted and bred, more seeds will probably be sent back to cold storage to replenish what they took.

Edit: ICARDA [1], the requesting organization, is also decentralized by default with operations in almost a dozen countries so the seeds will be safe.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Center_for_Agr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Center_for_Agricultural_Research_in_the_Dry_Areas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Holy mackerel. This war has led to the destruction of antiquities. Now it's threatening plants domesticated since ancient times. We humans think we hit a home run when we were born five feet from home plate!

Enough already.

<comment><USER5> When you say "enough already," which solution do you propose to end the war?

<comment><USER6> USA apologize to Asad and help him? Why do they hate him so much? I know he openly criticized USA international politics and prefers to be friends with Russia but is that enough to want him gone at such enormous cost?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rather than going immediately to the Arctic seed vault, you would think that it would make more sense to have seed vaults a little more convenient - something like an L1 cache as compared to treating the Arctic Seed vault as main memory. (Or tape backup, if you will)

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Rather than going immediately to the Arctic seed vault, you would think that it would make more sense to have seed vaults a little more convenient"_

Reliability over convenience?

<comment><USER8> No, having multiple backups would also be more reliable.

<comment><USER9> It's still good to test the main backup - untested backups are not backups.

Which reminds me, I should test our backups again...

<comment><USER10> "Noone wants backup; They want restore."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this a request for the complete deposit of seeds bearing their distinct traits, thereby impacting the entropy of the seed reserve, or only a portion, thereby reducing but not draining distinct strains?

<comment><USER12> They requested 130 of 325 boxes

<comment><USER13> "ICARDA wants almost 130 boxes out of 325 it had deposited in the vault, containing a total of 116,000 samples."

Its possible that an entire population of one species' "archive" is being requested ,though hopefully they wouldnt do that because of the obvious risks.

<comment><USER14> It does seem like it would make more sense to wait until the conflict is over before getting the seeds? What's the chance that the seeds could be destroyed again before the conflict is over?

<comment><USER15> They moved to Beirut in Lebanon, they're fairly safe. Other than ISIS (which is on the opposite side and expanding east) the spill over from Syria is mostly economic and refugees instead of fighting.

<comment><USER16> They are not expanding East. Coming from Iraq and moving into Deir Ez Zour and then Palmyra it's basically the Mosul - Beirut suggested route [1] via Google Maps. They are at the doors of Aleppo and expanding in the suburbs of Damascus as we speak.

The situation there is very serious. There are many economic refugees in this migratory wave but I don't believe many of them are from Syria.

[https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Mosul,+Iraq/Beirut,+Lebanon/...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Mosul,+Iraq/Beirut,+email@example.com,39.9449429,7.5z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x40079464db1a88b9:0x9745d74edd0f0930!2m2!1d43.1640004!2d36.3566484!1m5!1m1!1s0x151f17215880a78f:0x729182bae99836b4!2m2!1d35.4954794!2d33.8886289!5i1)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


List of the verified oldest people - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people <comment><USER2> TIL people over 110 years old are called "supercentenarian".</comment>


Introducing our new venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2009/07/introducing-our-new-venture-capital-firm-andreessen-horowitz.html

<comment><USER2> This caught my eye: "We have the ability to invest between $50 thousand and $50 million in a company, depending on the stage and the opportunity." Somebody sees an opportunity!

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome to hear the announcement. Sucks that this is the first pmarca blog post in nearly a year.

I really hope he starts back up again; many of his posts have been absolute gems.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool stuff. I think Anreessen gets the whole startup thing a lot more than the current crop of investment bankers.

<comment><USER5> Actual tech guys as VC. It's fantastic. I think it explains their past success and why they are capitalized at $300mm. I expect nothing but success from these guys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would have seen this as good news, if I hadn't read this article the other week: [http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/ning-exposed-tech- comp...](http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/ning-exposed-tech-company-ning- scams-its-clients/) . I noticed Marc stopped blogging just before the first questionable action that's reported in the article. Marc's blog posts in 07/08 were fantastic stuff, but the behaviour of his current business, with no reasonable response that I could find, undermines his otherwise good reputation. Does anybody know more about what's going on here?

<comment><USER7> see this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689521>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is unfortunate that someone so geeky doesn't take the kind of approach PG does, with the YC application. It seems to me a detailed application and a video should be the preferred way for a VC to screen deals.

I've hired great people based on personal referrals, but I've also hired great people based on resumes and interviews...

That said, I'm really excited for them and can't wait to see who they invest in and what the outcome is.

<comment><USER9> >It seems to me a detailed application and a video should be the preferred way for a VC to screen deals.

Maybe if they have a lot of time to read applications, but for the very large companies this fund is going for, the referral system really just works.

<comment><USER5> I agree, for large companies, referral makes sense.

But they were quite clear they want to get involved in seed stage and for that, referral-only is another way of saying "innovation, but only where it comes from certain connected people in a few places". Innovation is occurring everywhere and yet it languishes. It needs people like Marc and Ben. If they are serious about seed funding (and they have been and they should be), they need to set up a more indirect process as well.

<comment><USER10> I would think the opposite. With large companies there's a track record and probably enough visibility that the investor knows of their existence and could approach the company directly. Look at the way Fred Wilson works. It seems like he often starts by trying out the product before he knows the team(although he may spot them through his own web of connections).

With smaller investments, there's so many, it seems clear that there needs to be a filter to what you see. From the outside, it might seem like you need to be on the in-crowd in order to get a referral, but there are actually plenty of ways to work your way up to that referral by impressing people on the periphery.

One of my friends just took (or maybe is just about to take) money from Marc and he started out as an unconnected founder. But he worked is way into the meeting by impressing a series of people. The process, though, took two years, went through at least three levels of filters. So start by impressing the people around you. If you really are impressive, they'll introduce you to more people.

However, if you have an idea, nobody will vouch for you, and you need money now, then you're probably not going to get money even if you could get a meeting with Marc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Isn't generic views in django a bad practice (seperation of concerns) - <AUTHOR>

In the Python tutorial documentation, it teaches the use of moving stuff like index, detail, etc into the urls.py. But isn't this bad practice, since it now mixes the url handling with presentation logic? What is HN's take on this? Link to documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/intro/tutorial04/#use-generic-views-less-code-is-better <comment><USER2> Not really a bad practice, more of a personal style choice. The concerns here aren't any more mixed than if you created a views.py and sub-classed the generic views settings your own options. urls.py just maps patterns to views, it's just in this case you're setting several options on some generic views.

That being said, I almost always DO separate them because over time your generic views often become more complex and more overridden. I also personally prefer my urls.py to not get so "messy", but it's not really a horrible practice or one with a lot of downsides.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I was thinking, just doing the simple example in the tutorial makes the urls.py seem bloated in my eyes.</comment></comment>


Tupac brought back to life with holograms at Coachella - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A_WTIBcOGPQ

<comment><AUTHOR> A better video [http://duckandroll.tumblr.com/post/21202051257/hologram- cg-t...](http://duckandroll.tumblr.com/post/21202051257/hologram-cg-tupac- performing-at-coachella-2012)</comment>


Why Google+ Looks Good: Original Macintosh Team Member Andy Hertzfeld - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-design-andy-hertzfeld/

<comment><AUTHOR> Google's new products, including this new "Plus" thing, all remind me of the 'Star Wars' prequels: lame expensive gimmicks the audience will see right through. Instead of showing off some fresh energetic talent, Google brings in the guy that designed the Macintosh 30 years ago. Your powers are weak, old man.

I'll put it in perspective: original Google = Yoda. "Google+" = Yoda... now with a friggin' lightsaber!

Attention Google: You need a magician, not developers.</comment>


Ubuntu 15.04 released - <AUTHOR> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2015-April/000195.html

<comment><USER2> This is the first version of Ubuntu to ship with [GrooveBasin]([https://github.com/andrewrk/groovebasin](https://github.com/andrewrk/groovebasin)), a music player server I've been working on for 4.5 years.

<comment><USER3> I look forward to trying it! RhythmBox is okay, but there's something about the window behavior that bothers me - IIRC the application still plays in the background when I hit the close button, it always throws me off.</comment></comment>


Belgium: 288 days without government and counting - <AUTHOR> http://lerecorddumonde.be/

<comment><USER2> Well, no central, national government. They still have police, etc.</comment>


Fighting Over Chores? Spend Some Money, Save the Marriage - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/upshot/fighting-over-chores-spend-some-money-save-the-marriage.html <comment><AUTHOR> Another data point - almost always the first thing that counselors suggest in couples counseling is to hire a house cleaner. It just seems that in a world where time is becoming even more precious, doing something you hate (e.g. washing dishes) just drains you even more and decreases the quality of the time you spend together.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I Access the Contents of a contenteditable without JavaScript - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to write a browser-based editor but I don't want to use JS in any way. In fact, I would prefer to use C - basically it will parse the input for syntax highlighting, etc. Basically I need to know, can I access the contents of a contenteditable div through an HTTP server? <comment><USER2> Since contenteditable won't have a value similar to a standard form element [1] it seems you will need Javascript. Either ways, Stack Overflow is a better place to ask questions like this, not HN.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/a/6247785/1470607](https://stackoverflow.com/a/6247785/1470607)</comment>


Don't Go to College This Fall - <AUTHOR> https://www.perell.com/blog/dont-go-to-college-this-fall <comment><USER3> This is bad advice.

Even the stereotypically low-earning majors (Education and English) are very (financially) rewarding to those who complete degrees. This is true even though most majors confer almost no useful skills or knowledge. The only caveat is that there is almost no reward for attending college, so you should only go if you are reasonably certain that you will complete the degree.

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

<comment><USER4> Businesses are very financially rewarding to those who "complete" them, much more so than degrees can be. Your upside for completing a 4-year bachelors degree is maybe $150k/year, best case, if you study CS from an Ivy League and end up at a FAANG. Your upside for building a successful business can potentially reach hundreds of billions of dollars.

There's an issue of probabilities: you're probably a lot likely to complete a 4-year degree than found a billion-dollar company. But that's a risk/reward tradeoff, and it's worth remembering that there are a number of "off ramps" from the startup path that may not be billion-dollars but still lead to a job just as good as a college grad would get. Being able to run a profitable, self-sustaining business is viewed very highly by many employers.

<comment><USER5> "There's an issue of probabilities" undersells it. Lifetime average ROI on a college degree over the population has historically outperformed those entering the workforce - either employed or as an entrepreneur - over the past 50 years. And while the ROI difference has shrunk (mostly due to exorbitant tuition increases), it is still more profitable over a person's lifetime - <USER2> average - to go to college instead of starting a business.

Georgetown actually did a fantastic site that shows ROI for a variety of institutions:

[https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew- reports/collegeroi/](https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/collegeroi/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me outline this for you:

1\. Pontificates a bit on the "Don't go to college, start an online business instead" meme, arguing it as good advice.

2\. Claims writing is an important skill for starting an online business.

3\. Provides call-to-action selling online course about writing: [https://writeofpassage.school/](https://writeofpassage.school/)

We were all just making fun of the dropshipping cargo cult a few days ago and here we are upvoting this.

<comment><USER7> What's annoying is the article has no intention of delivering on its more modestly stated title — don't go to college this <fall>. I was expecting a narrative that gathers together facts about how schools were intending to reopen on time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The smartest people I know are mostly self-educated."

Which direction do you think the causality arrow points in this sentence?

</comment><comment><USER9> I get the sentiment, but it would also be good for a lot of people to goto junior college and knock out some pre-reqs at the same time.

Also, I think you should make it the whole school year, not just a semester (if we have issues this fall, we're likely to also have them in January and February of next year).

This gives you several advantages:

1 - you don't fall a year behind in schooling

2 - you can still start a business, as junior colleges aren't trying to weed out students

3 - your cost will be lower (no room & board, lower tuition)

I fully agree with the author that now is a time to try something new, even if you fail completely, you'll learn a lot more than you ever thought you would.

<comment><USER10> Junior college is a great option which far too many people dismiss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Use your time to start an online business.

I feel like some people have been in the startup world too long and forget not everyone is trying to be an entrepreneur.

> But what if my college goes out of business from a lack of tuition dollars?

Students aren't concerned about this. No one goes to college with the goal of funding their college.

Degrees still matter in many industries, and this article seems to be targeting too broad of an audience.

</comment><comment><USER12> Honestly, it sounds like the author lives in his own bubble. There are a ton of people who give zero shits about online businesses. I'm sure all of us heard of those people, you know, they call them doctors, architects, teachers, actors, police officers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> > The smartest people I know are mostly self-educated. They already know the > secret: With an Internet connection and strong work ethic, you can teach > yourself.

> To sum up, don't pay $30,000 for Zoom classes. Start a business instead.

Author seems to be trying to be provocative, but at the risk of stating the obvious - there are lots of other in-between options too, including a formal education that doesn't cost $30k/yr (zoom or no zoom).

<comment><USER13> For example, an undergraduate degree from Harvard's Extension School costs less than many Big State U degrees.[1] $60k for a Harvard degree seems like a bargain (yeah, it's the extension schoo, but by most accounts, it's still a rigorous, high-quality program).

1 - "At the 2019–20 rate, the total tuition cost of earning the full undergraduate degree is $58,880." [https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor- liberal...](https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal-arts- degree)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cue another "college is useful/useless" debate in the HN comments...

</comment><comment><USER15> > In the best-case scenario, you'll end the year with a path towards a > profitable business and the money-making skills you thought you needed > student loans to build.

Author should include a pie chart (or something) of the odds of this happening. When you're unable to see the "profitable business on first try after 4 months" slice for how vanishingly small it is, that will put this advice into context. Basically, if someone wants to do this, they should definitely do it _for the experience_, not because this is a viable means of starting a profitable business.

I say this as someone who is not a fan of "college for all" and think that taking a year after high school to work & experience life without grades (and without someone else paying the bills) before heading to college is very good idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> In general, this advice can make sense in some cases. However, I want to share some advice that I've found while both investing in hundreds of businesses and running a few myself:

1\. Don't start something you're not actually passionate about. The easiest way to work your a __off and never procrastinate is to love what you do.

2\. If you build it, they will /not/ come. It's all about marketing, marketing, and, did I say, marketing.

That said, I agree with many of these comments here. Having a degree really will help you get a job unless you're the top in your field already.

</comment><comment><USER17> And what if you are going to College to learn something, rather than "for the experience", or "to socialize"?

What if you don't care how many amenities they have, or that the cafeteria is something special? You just want some classes?

It seems to me college has gotten more and more expensive as teens are treating it as some sort of adult theme park/experience.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Use your time to start an online business" instead of going to college? Does that strike you as a good idea? A better strategy is comm. college for a year especially if you live in i.e. CA that has very good ones.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is self-promotion. He urges readers to "Learn by watching YouTube tutorials and taking online courses" instead of going to college and talks about his YouTube videos and then links to his online courses.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why flagged?</comment>


With a few tweaks, Airbnb could disrupt yet another multibillion-dollar industry - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/368229/with-a-few-tweaks-airbnb-could-disrupt-yet-another-multi-billion-dollar-industry/ <comment><USER2> Not a very compelling proposition. I could see hosts offering write-ups of the vicinity but am not sure how monetization would work.

I'd like to see AirBnB go after regular vacation rentals. I have much better luck on VRBO and FlipKey than AirBnB.

</comment><comment><USER3> The suggestions to spread to the travel industry seem a bad idea to me. Loads of strong competition.

Now spreading from 5 day rentals to 6 month rentals and long term - that would probably work as it overlaps what they already do. I just took two one month rentals on my place and if I needed to let for a year or two I think I'd prefer to use airbnb to the unknown, likely sketchy, letting agent down the road.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guessed it would be car rentals before clicking on the link... relative to a media/publishing arm I don't think my guess was so stupid after all.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't call it disruption, I would call it content marketing for acquisition and affiliate marketing as monetization.

Nothing new or interesting or compelling here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Quartz really went down the drain quickly.</comment>


Java Spring - or the Biggus Dickus effect - <AUTHOR> http://fiber-space.de/wordpress/?p=1016

<comment><USER2> It is short and funny. I just spent a few months diving in the Spring/Hibernate/Struts world wondering if all this cruft necessary. Apparently I am not the only one with these thoughts.

<comment><USER3> You're not. It's becoming an increasingly common sentiment as people spend time working with frameworks that are designed with productivity in mind, most of which appear to be following the example of Ruby on Rails (e.g. .NET MVC).

That does, of course, include Ruby on Rails, which in newer versions is following the example of earlier versions ;)</comment></comment>


Firefox Add-on for Scribd - <AUTHOR> http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5103 <comment><AUTHOR> any improvements that you guys can think of for this add-on? what else would make your life easier when using Scribd.com?

Tim</comment>


Stack Overflow: How We Do Monitoring – 2018 Edition - <AUTHOR> https://nickcraver.com/blog/2018/11/29/stack-overflow-how-we-do-monitoring/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic. The wait was worth it to get the full tour of monitoring with lovely screenshots. Must take time to write article length posts and keep the sites from exploding.

SO's relatively relatively boring infrastructure actually makes for interesting reading because few others show this much detail. I love the hardware inventory, don't get me wrong, but the software stacks are what make the magic happen.</comment>