Is Java the platform of the future? - <AUTHOR> http://markclittle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/is-java-platform-of-future.html

<comment><USER2> No. It has a flawed concurrency model. Heap objects have too much overhead. Poor support for functional programming. Not open source.

Except for a major redesign of the JVM (is that still Java?), it's a dying/stagnating platform.

<comment><USER3> I think Java is a pretty bad language, but most of your points are provably wrong. You're either grossly misinformed (some of what you say was true about a decade ago, but hasn't been since around the 1.5 release in ~'04) or purposefully spreading lies.

You're factually wrong about the open-source thing: the primary impl of Java is open source (<http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7u/jdk7u>). Sure, some impls like Azul might not be - but that's the joy of an Open language with a real spec, anyone can write an impl under any license they choose.

The claim that Objects have 'too much' overhead is subjective - but also basically wrong. Generally Objects in Java have 8 bytes of straight book- keeping overhead, plus padding to get the size of the fields to the nearest multiple of 8 bytes. That's expensive relative to C, but cheap compared to almost any other object oriented, GCd language (and can often be avoided via primitives, escape analysis, etc). For reference, CPython (the main Python impl) has ~30 bytes of overhead on an Int between tag bits, book keeping, etc last time I investigated.

How do you think the Java concurrency model is flawed? Almost any concurrency model I can think of, from Erlang-style message passing (see: Akka) to the new Fork/Join framework can be implemented in Java since its concurrency primitives are complete. I've even done basic impls of STM on AtomicRefs. Frankly, Java has one of the better defined and fine-grained concurrency models I know of. C++ just got a well-defined memory model in the '11 standard IIRC (vs '04 for the JVM).

I'm with you on the functional programming thing - syntax on anonymous inner classes and a lack of type inference make it way too verbose. But it's (largely) fixed via Project Lambda in Java 8. And, in the meantime, there are plenty of great JVM languages (Scala, Clojure, etc) with better support.

<comment><USER2> Hm... I'm not trying to argue with you, you're right that I only have a superficial overview of the Java/JVM/J2EE ecosystem, but I will try to elaborate on the points of my original post, which was rather sparse, I admit.

As I read Wikipedia, HotSpot is opensource. I'm not sure if that includes the best JIT compiler (what the JVM is known for) as well, or if that's still closed/proprietary, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if it's open source as well. Still, we have the patents issue, i.e. the current legal battle between Google and Oracle. Releasing the source but suing anyone who uses it is not the way to do open source, IMGO (true, the source was release by Sun, and Oracle is the one who's suing, but still).

I believe that a general purpose programming language (suitable for business applications) has to be able to perform as well as C for heavily optimized code. What I mean is that you have to be able to write algorithms that run very fast. You can probably do that with C# (supports unboxed structs) and maybe even Objective-C (supports MemoryPools, and method lookup caching), but not Java (AFAIK). Sure, you can always link to external C libraries, but then you have to face dependency hell and portability issues.

The issue that I see with Java's concurrency model is not that it is not powerful enough, but that it is _too_ powerful. It allows synchronization on any heap-allocated object, which probably has a lot of overhead (used to be performance overhead, but HotSpot was heavily optimized for that, so after a lot of programmer-hours overhead, the performance overhead was lowered). However, I think that this kind of threading model is not scalable to massively parallel/distributed environments. Synchronization/sharing will have to be limited, e.g. as in Erlang/WebWorkers/Rust, using GCD in Objective-C, using MVar (Haskell) or transactional variables (Clojure). Java probably can never do that, without sacrificing backwards compatibility.

Lack of support for functional programming was meant more on the JVM level. There are no tail calls, no fast object allocation, no true polymorphism, and I'm guessing that since closures have to be represented as objects, they are not particularly cheap.

<comment><USER3> Hotspot is the most commonly used JVM impl I was referring to. Last I looked into it (probably a year ago), some of the graphics libraries it includes weren't open source - but everything important (including the JIT) is.

The patent issues are regarding Dalvik AFAIK, so I don't see how it's relevant to this discussion ... (although, from what I've heard, it seems like Oracle's being a jerk ...)

If you think that a general purpose language has to be able perform as well as C without calling native code (JNI, FFI, etc), I guess I'd have to agree Java isn't 'general purpose' . But I'd contend neither are Python, Ruby, Erlang, Javascript, etc under that definition. Therefore, that's probably not the right definition, since it excludes most general purpose languages ;-)

Being able to synchronize on any object is actually really efficiently implemented (8 bytes of Object overhead total, neat optimizations like biased locking, etc). And, if you don't want to share state between threads, Java can do pretty clean actors/message passing (<http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.0/java/untyped-actors.html>) or transactional variables (AtomicRefs are built in). Java concurrency _does_ give you the ability to shoot yourself in the foot if you use it wrong, but so will any sufficiently powerful tool.

Re the JVMs support for FP:

\- JVM7 added an InvokeDynamic instruction which I believe addresses your polymorphism concerns.

\- It sucks that there isn't a bytecode instruction to allow TCO. But, in practice, many JVM languages will convert recursion to iteration at compile time with constructs like [http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special%20Forms--(recur%20e...](http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special%20Forms--\(recur%20exprs*\))

\- What do you mean by 'fast object allocation'? I'm not familiar with the term ... Creating objects is fairly fast in Java though. A quick test suggests I can alloc around 200 million objects per second on the heap once the code path is JIT'd on my laptop. Incidentally, it's surprisingly tricky to fool the JVMs escape analysis and force a heap (not stack) allocation, without introducing too much extra work in a microbenchmark ;-).

\- AFAIK, you're right that closures require an object allocation - but how else would you do it? When I was writing Common Lisp, we had to avoid creating closures in tight loops for the same reason

<comment><USER4> I checked (FMI, For My Info, the non-open pieces are the launcher, Iced Trea vs. javaWS, and fonts which are replaced by FreeType in OpenJDK

[http://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/m1dks/poor_performanc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/m1dks/poor_performance_and_high_memory_usage_make_sure/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> does the author maybe mean JVM is the future? good video on the subject: [http://www.confreaks.com/videos/684-rubyconf2011-jruby- polyg...](http://www.confreaks.com/videos/684-rubyconf2011-jruby-polyglot- heaven)

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't seem to find it, but I read an article about a compiler that brings another language to the python virtual machine!! "Is Python the platform of the future?"

EDIT: here's a language running on rubinius (a ruby VM) <http://rubini.us/2011/02/23/introduction-to-fancy/>

</comment><comment><USER7> maybe. The virtual machine makes it possible to develop completely different languages like Scala and compile into Java bytecode. Play does a decent job of rivaling Ruby on Rails in productivity, but it is still Java no Ruby. JRuby?

ah, and as java on the desktop has been dead for a couple of years, I think security holes are a minor issue. We've got firewalls for that!

</comment><comment><USER8> I believe that the JVM might be 'the future'. Java the language gets too much bad press in our community, but isn't really bad. Just slow to change to suit our trends of the month/year by now.

That said and rather meta: That blog had the most mobile friendly layout I encountered so far.

<comment><USER9> > but isn't really bad

I keep hearing this from PHP people, too. :-) Yes, it is not as bad as PHP, but probably just 15 years behind modern language design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't forget Java has a bunch of patents associated, and you will get sued by Oracle if you implement JRE yourself like google.

</comment><comment><USER11> Java is still the most used language in the world [http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html). It used on the web, mobile, and desktop. Java problem can be fix and have made strides to modernize like the play framework which modernizes a lot of the things in Java to make it work more like typical web frameworks. Not to mention android which is done in Java which is the most widely used mobile platform. How can a language thats being used more than ever be dying to languages who can crack the top ten most used programming languages.

<comment><USER12> While I agree Java is used everywhere, I think the reasons are very similar to why VHS was much more popular than BETA, or why COBOL still represents a _HUGE_ share in programming language usage. Javascript is also used in the web, mobile and desktop. I see the latter much better suited for the future.

<comment><USER11> Javascript from my experience is just a bad language. I know that just like objective-c and java aren't going away on desktop or mobile because the underpin a lot of the tech that runs those platforms despite javascript may be running on top. Html 5 needs to fully conquer the web anyway before taking mobile and desktop on which won't be one for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sure hope not.</comment>


Don Rickles dies at 90 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/06/entertainment/don-rickles-dead/index.html <comment><USER2> It is like losing a grandfather... RIP. He brought great joy and comedy to many and he will be missed.</comment>


Facebook ads: good for likes, bad for sales - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/facebook-ads-good-for-likes-bad-for-sales/swizec/6233

<comment><USER2> the results you report are in line with other similar fb ad case studies. but I would suggest you 'declutter' your landing page, especially above the fold. there simply is way too much there and not enough empty space to attract the eye. an A/B test that pits a more spartan landing page against what you have right now would be helpful

good luck and keep us informed</comment>


On being a nerd - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/on-being-nerd.html

<comment><USER2> I think we 'code writing nerds' are to some extent influenced by the machines that we interact with on a daily basis, we learn to spot the 'bugs' before they bite us by mental emulation.

Computers have the uncanny ability to do literally what you told them to do, but rarely what you meant. So when someone says something (even in poetry) we tend to temporarily suspend our humanity and we read it in this exact literal sense, out of sheer habit, and respond just like the machine would respond to us to any inconsistencies or ambiguities.

"Tea or coffee? Yes, please."

Little children sometimes go through phases of this kind of behavior too, and as a programmer I can usually have a lot of fun with them by playing the game right back and watching their responses.

<comment><USER3> I once offered a (computer scientist) friend of mine some chocolate. He said "I'll have one or two squares, please". I gave him three.

<comment><USER2> Hehe, that's funny. That's what you get for not specifying if you mean a binary or a logical or.

<comment><USER4> In binary the logical 'or' _would_ give you three. Take'em one bit at a time from least significant to most:

      2 | 1
      -----
      0 | 1 = 1
      1 | 0 = 2

      1 or 0 => 1
      0 or 1 => 1

      2 | 1
      -----
      1 | 1 = 3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironically the true literal interpretation of "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born" is more correct than Babbage gives credit for.

If one and 1/16th is born, then certainly one is born!

<comment><USER6> So maybe, "Every sixteen moments die sixteen men, every sixteen moments seventeen are born" ?

<comment><USER7> Plays havoc with the poem's meter, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You mention that anyone who deals with computers _"ends up training themselves to spot minute details that are incorrect or out of place"_. I agree, but would also come at it from the other direction; people who are inclined to spot minute details are good at dealing with computers.

<comment><USER9> Mathematicians. Musicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > persons of great computational ability (which I shall refer to as nerds)

I consider myself a nerd (obsessed with computers, technology, programming), but I'm not of "great computational ability", in fact, I hate crunching numbers, and I hated highschool math. The value of PI never fascinated me, I never tried to memorize any portion of it (other than 3.14).

I'm an 'INFP'[1] so I tend to look at the big picture and ignore the details. I only dive into a detail temporarily, on an as-needed basis, to fix a bug or improve performance, or something like that.

Point is, not all computer nerds are math geeks.

The only math I loved was elementary math, first degree equations, and from university: discrete math.

[1] <http://personalitytype.com/career_quiz_2>

<comment><USER11> _Point is, not all computer nerds are math geeks._

He didn't say they are, he merely said math geeks are nerds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Precision makes me happy. :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> If poetry is about reality, then there's no such thing as poetry.</comment>


Ask HN: Pitch Practice on Skype? - <AUTHOR>

Would any founders on HN like to schedule a weekly pitch practice on Skype?
I really need to practice and perfect my pitch and I think skype sessions would really help as its convenient and helps one improve ones pitch through practice and feedback.
Let me know if you a founder and is interested in practicing your pitch over skype. <comment><USER2> I would also like to schedule a weekly pitch practice on Skype with an experienced founder.

Please let me know if we can work something out.

Thank you, Shahed</comment>


Square Pickup - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/pickup

<comment><USER3> I don't think most people realize how hard online-to-local-pickup is for a retailer. "Interested in local pickup? Give us a call." is going to be a better customer experience 9 times out of 10. I hope Square gets it. Retailers - many of them with limited resources and technical skills - face big technical, UI, and logistical issues. I'll give one implementation example that shows all three; this applies to all retailers who don't stock everything in the store OR have multiple locations.

The retailer must essentially keep availability counts for items that can be sold online (if different), then a separate list per store. These lists _must_ be accurate or you're going to have angry customers showing up to grab items you don't have - and anyone who has done retail knows how hard accurate inventory can be, especially with entry-level staff.

Once inventory is accurate, these retailers must then program their sites to show which items are available for pickup at which locations. THEN if you want to allow customers to pick up items that aren't in the store, you need to communicate when they can pick it up based on delivery time.

It gets complicated: do you have the customer choose their closest store up front, even if they don't want to do local pickup? This implementation wastes online buyers' time and creates a barrier to browsing. Do you have customers choose the store when they check out? If so, the option might not be available for the items they've chosen thereby frustrating your customer. Do they choose the store on the product page? The product page is usually your busiest page already, and you generally don't want to add any steps between it and checkout.

Regardless of which option you choose, you then have to figure out how to deal with available at nearby locations. Do you really want your user selecting all 3 nearby locations to check availability for pickup? Do you want to display every nearby store that could fulfill pickup? How do you give them the message that it's available nearby? Should you share the negative when it's not available nearby either to prevent them from checking each store?

The questions just go on.

It's not impossible, but _there 's a lot that could go wrong here for two or three-store retailer_. Even Target got it wrong when I recently tried to buy a wedding gift. They wanted me to wait 2 days for them to deliver a vacuum to the store, even though they had half a dozen in stock when I called.

<comment><USER4> Not related to Square, per se, but to give you an example from a completely different domain-- car sales.

My wife and I were researching minivans in our metro area. We got calls from the dealership asking if we're still interested in the vehicle. We said 'yes'. One hour before we drove to the 'burbs' to check it out, I called to confirm the availability of said vehicle. They said 'yes, it's still here.' We get to the dealership only to find out that the vehicle was sold THE DAY BEFORE. A major car dealership didn't have a system in place to know their inventory at any given point in time. They're a part of a weird "sharing" system between dealerships that can borrow/trade/steal vehicles from their partner dealerships-- all within the same "family" company. But they clearly had no way to track this activity.

It seems that inventory control/management spans many domains. Needless to say, they lost our business and we bought from someone else.

<comment><USER5> Maybe they wanted to get you on the lot even if the car you wanted was gone.

<comment><USER4> It's possible, especially given the research available to anyone with a smartphone. They were a big dealership, but the whole experience smelled of a shady used car salesman.

<comment><USER6> Yes sadly the sales guy thinks like this i) Tell him the car is not here they don't come chance of sale = 0%. ii) Tell them the car is here then it's not here but maybe sell them something else = 10%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is (to me) the most interesting thing I've seen Square do since they launched. It's a bit pricey, but there are lots of great examples of pickup/takeout working well -- chipotle, for one. If smaller stores could do this easily, I'd be a lot more likely to order from them, especially if it's a larger/group order where spending the time on the phone is a pain (and often incorrect).

I don't think the economics of a lot of the delivery services work, especially for single-person or other small orders; here, it's pure cost savings. The 8% cut is ...ambitious, but it might make sense, and they can always drop it to something more reasonable like 5%.

<comment><USER8> For business with a limited sales window and highly perishable inventory (bagel store in the morning), standing in line may be the bottleneck preventing more customer and order throughput. If the store is able to expand their capacity via an order ahead app allowing them to capture new sales they would not have otherwise gotten, 8% seems much more reasonable.

Of course, some existing customers and sales will also move in that direction, so the answer here may be, as is often the case, it depends.

What I find truly fascinating is that Square is(was) a "payments" company. Or, more specifically, a credit card terminal company. But this offering and their recent acquisition of BookFresh makes them more of a back-end for small business. They may be one of the few companies to have figured out how to sell to small business at scale.

Apparently the answer there is, find something small, complicated, and annoying... fix it. Build that toehold into a platform to take on the larger opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For food trucks, this seems interesting. Most food trucks I see using square enter the orders directly into square already. If I can avoid the line at a food truck by putting in my order and just wait for them to call my name with my food, that would be pretty amazing.

<comment><USER10> Busy food truck lines are not great for calling names out. With a line of people yapping, and traffic noise, you have to be nearly under the canopy to hear your name called, and there's only room there for ~8 people (crowded). So they'd have to send you an update to your mobile device, which now creates more questions like, how to communicate to the person in line that's been waiting for 15 minutes that no, you are not cutting in line. Once you navigate the line to the truck, do you show your phone to the person and hope they have good organization of orders pending pickup? Does Square help the business with that aspect?

<comment><USER11> > So they'd have to send you an update to your mobile device, which now > creates more questions like, how to communicate to the person in line that's > been waiting for 15 minutes that no, you are not cutting in line.

Something like a pick-up window would work.

> do you show your phone to the person and hope they have good organization of > orders pending pickup?

In my opinion, if the food truck has implemented this Square software, they might keep "organization of orders pending pickup" in mind. Showing your phone to the person should be enough, (with some sort of simple identification on the phone message).

I don't know if Square Pickup does this but I'm just arguing against your doubt that it wouldn't work.

<comment><USER12> I used Paypal to pay for something in-store recently and they identified me by matching the selfie that I took in the app (that showed up on their iPad screen tied to my name) to the same one shown on the app on my phone that I held up for them. Pretty neat/clever and would work just as well here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 8% per order.

Yikes.

<comment><USER14> [http://qz.com/182961/grubhub-and-seamless-take-a-13-5-cut- of...](http://qz.com/182961/grubhub-and-seamless-take-a-13-5-cut-of-their- average-delivery-order/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Overall I can't help shake the impression that this is kind of a "Yelp move": your core business model isn't that hot, so break the glass of the nearest hot business model and copy it. Yelp's done that with daily deals, checkins, etc.. This is Square doing a "GrubHub".

But, finally a product from Square with a fat profit margin (an extra 5.25%). I wonder if this is a sign of their future monetization strategy.

Their base processing fee of 2.75% + $0.00 is probably actually pretty low- margin for the particular "very small business" market they're targeting. There are big advertising costs, lower volumes per business and probably higher fraud rates.

And upmarket from that, medium-sized businesses are used to commodity processing fees closer to 2%. The whole "free reader/register" pitch is not as appealing there, where a higher processing fee would end up costing a lot more.

Maybe their strategy is to break even on the base processing to get mindshare and sell premium services like this. The challenge, as with all "Yelp moves", is that it makes you a follower not a leader.

(P.S. I don't mean to single out Yelp too much here.. plenty companies do it. I think they came to mind because they're also in the small business space.)

<comment><USER16> > your core business model isn't that hot

You can't just make a statement like that and play it off. Citations? I see Square devices used everywhere in retail, and no, I don't live in San Francisco or the Bay Area.

<comment><USER17> I do live in the Bay Area and the only place I have seen Square is at coffee shops and farmers market stands. I don't think it has that much traction and their growth is reported to be poor (or negative, I forget which). The mag stripe reader was a cute hack but when you get down to it the service is pretty expensive and you need a huge up-front investment in equipment, compared to ordinary cash registers which are dirt cheap.

<comment><USER18> Square is a POS system, comparing it with a cash register is ridiculous. Many POS systems sold to restaurants fly well above the thousands of dollars with shitty UIs that take hours for employees to learn (knowing the turnover in the food industry, it's a lot of wasted time).

<comment><USER19> Not anymore. Clover costs $500-$1000 and works for categories of retailers that Square doesn't, particularly table service restaurants.

<comment><USER20> Must not have been Square that I saw a server using to swipe cards on an iPad mini, then.

(edit: nope, it was Breadcrumb)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this kinda like GrubHub but more general? Or is it more about making it easy for businesses to take pickup orders on their websites?

<comment><USER22> From a quick read of the docs, it's just simple status management - <USER2> a kitchen ticket tracker. Orders move from Pending to Accepted to Done and parties are notified along the way.

[https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5227-accept- pickup-o...](https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5227-accept-pickup- orders)

The most interesting part to me was this:

"Square's standard fee of 2.75% will be applied to the total amount of each pickup sale for a limited time, until July 1st, 2014. After this time, the fee will be 8% per pickup order."

<comment><USER23> Steep, but this part sounds expensive:

"If an order isn't accepted within 2 minutes, a Square Team member will call you directly, so please keep a phone nearby."

I do think Square could better explain why this service is 8% while everything else they provide is included in the 2.75% normal rate.

<comment><USER24> "While the 8% fee seems high compared to Square's standard 2.75% transaction fee, the average merchant fee for food ordering services is about 13.5%, McKee says. Square is offering a promotional rate of 2.75% per order through July 1."

[http://www.paymentssource.com/news/square-piles-on-new- featu...](http://www.paymentssource.com/news/square-piles-on-new-features-for- online-in-store-sales-3017729-1.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is totally the right direction Square is heading to: provide complimentary service which makes the real profit. 8% seems steep but you get their super low 2.75% credit card processing fee so the total package is still appealing.

It's like bundle sale: have something charming as primary item and earn real money by less attractive add-ons.

</comment><comment><USER26> One other contender in the restaurant domain is EatStreet.

As a consumer I've had great service from EatStreet and their local restaurant partners. No idea what the vendor side of the process is like. Square is building quite a tie-in to their handy hardware as much as the app itself.

[https://geteatstreet.com/](https://geteatstreet.com/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/following-competitor- grubhu...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/following-competitor-grubhubs- successful-ipo-online-food-ordering-platform-eatstreet-raises-6-million/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Novel, but I sure hope they aren't banking on this.

I worked for a retail store in College that had this implemented with their POS. The setup was similar, without the iPads. More customers would still order the product from the warehouse and have it delivered to the store rather than pick it up that day out of the stores stock.

So, it's my experience that this will not work. However, I wish them the best. Maybe they can shake things up a bit.</comment>


An OS platform for building business web applications with only JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.wakanda.org

<comment><AUTHOR> Ugh! The Wakanda Studio for Windows, works only with Vista. While the integrated server works ok with win xp pro sp2.</comment>


Math Meets Football: The Transitive Property Is Real - <AUTHOR> http://www.theplayerstribune.com/math-meets-football-the-transitive-property-is-real/ <comment><USER3> This past NFL season there was a perfect cycle where every team was both transitively better and worse than every other team: [http://i.imgur.com/GRC6lT1.png](http://i.imgur.com/GRC6lT1.png)

<comment><USER4> It's also happened in 2013 ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early- lead/wp/2013/11/26...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early- lead/wp/2013/11/26/nfls-circle-of-parity-in-one-neat-graphic-2013-edition/)) and 2012 ([http://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/131qfn/parity_2012_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/131qfn/parity_2012_the_circle_of_life_in_the_nfl/)) and 2011 ([http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/nfl-parity- chart-2011/](http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/nfl-parity-chart-2011/)) and 2010 ([http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/nfl-parity- photo/](http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/nfl-parity-photo/)) and 2009 ([http://mathfridge.blogspot.com/2010/11/nfl-2009-parity- wheel...](http://mathfridge.blogspot.com/2010/11/nfl-2009-parity-wheel.html)). In 2007 the Patriots were undefeated, and in 2008 the Lions were winless; I can't find any instances of this concept in 2006 or before. But I suspect that this perfect cycle has a very good chance of happening if there is no undefeated or winless team.

<comment><USER3> I think it's more common now, with the switch from five-team divisions to four-team ones. More distributed schedules, something like that, although I don't have the mathematical knowledge to prove that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a website about this for several years called beatpaths.com . Some of the graphs for it are still up, and another person took the idea and continued auto generating similar graphs over at beatgraphs.com.

It was fun, but not really revolutionary. You'd often end up with cycles, and I had a system to discard the "beat loops" (smallest loops first) until you'd end up with a DAG.

You could make predictions by saying Team A would probably beat Team B if it had a path to team B in the graph (the basic transitive property), but still, the performance wasn't better than Vegas.

I went as far as coming up with some custom tsort algorithms; various tiebreakers, to come up with a full power ranking that fully respected the implied orderings in the graph.

In pro football, there's a dummy algorithm you can use to test your homemade custom snazzy algorithm. The dummy algorithm is: pick the team with the better record, and if they tie, pick the home team. If your algorithm doesn't match it, then your algorithm isn't worth a whole lot. My tsort algorithms didn't regularly beat it. If I had altered the dummy algorithm to just say: 1. Pick the team with the better record, 2. pick the team that has a beatpath to the other, 3. pick the home team - then I probably would have beat the dummy algorithm by a very little bit. But still, not close to Vegas performance.

In college football, trumpeting 88% is dumb because college football regularly has crap matchups. I had some full beatgraphs to college football, too - <USER2> were huge and loosely connected, and its performance wasn't surprisingly good or anything.

</comment><comment><USER6> This should save everyone a few minutes: _Okay, let's get back to the big question: Does the transitive property work in college football?_ _Yes._ _..._ _But sometimes it might take a little imagination_

I wish I could go into detail on why everything about this article is wrong, but I can't. Luckily the author discredits his own premise, but unfortunately not until you get to the end.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. "It works, except when it doesn't".

Considering he even says that it only holds 88% of the time, you would expect 1 or 2 games out of every teams 12-game season to go the "wrong" way. That is more than enough to screw up any ranking you want to make based on the transitive property when you take into account that the top 25 teams all range between 0 and 3 losses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author is also a guard for the Baltimore Ravens.

<comment><USER4> A month ago he and some coauthors published a paper "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians" in a math journal ([http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0565;](http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0565;) note that the arXiv date is earlier than the publication date, since arXiv is a preprint server) and the media had a field day with the "NFL player publishes math paper" story.</comment></comment>


NIST statement on Daylight Saving Time (DST) problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/wwvb.cfm

<comment><USER2> Nice read, interesting. A quote: "A computer is used to automatically tune the antennas during icy and/or windy conditions. This automatic tuning provides a dynamic match between the transmitter and the antenna system. The computer looks for a phase difference between voltage and current at the transmitter. If one is detected, an error signal is sent to a 3-phase motor in the helix house that rotates the rotor inside the variometer. This retunes the antenna and restores the match between the antenna and transmitter."

Remarkably, given the technical meaning of the above, the author managed to avoid saying "standing wave ratio" even once.</comment>


DWANGO v2.0 (c) 1994 - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/xBWdks52

<comment><USER2> Matchmaking pre-Internet looked to be pretty expensive... Seems the product only lived a year before its rapid demise in 1995.</comment>


Would anyone use a charitable payments API? - <AUTHOR> Recently built a tool providing a real-time, direct link between donors and recipients (living on ~$2 a day or less). Donors can send cash to very low-income people and exchange messages (e.g., confirmation message, a SMS indicating how the gift was used). Wondering whether it is worthwhile to make it open via API, so that anyone could integrate an option to make direct cash transfers to globally poor people into products, sites, etc.
My question is if people would use such an API, or more specifically:
a. What are the use cases / potential needs solved that would motivate developers to use the API (e.g., something for people to use for side projects to develop skills, a way to encourage more customer spending)?
b. Are financial incentives important (e.g., developers keep 1% of transfers sent through their application)?
c. What other motivations might be there for use?
Curious to hear thoughts. <comment><USER2> I definitely think an API for donating to charitable _organizations_ would be extremely useful. Most of them have terrible web flows for making/managing payments, and I've thought for a while about what it would look like to have a single website you could go to to make/manage donations to any number of nonprofits. Could significantly lower the bar and open the door to micro- donations.

Unfortunately, such a project would likely require case-by-case relationships with each organization.</comment>


Launty – The Uber of Laundry - <AUTHOR> http://www.launty.com

<comment><USER2> risky business. losing or damaging clothes turns a customer quickly. having just gone through it this morning with flycleaners (2nd offense), there are plenty of broken hearted potential customers out there looking for the right solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

To some degree it can't be helped. Accidents will happen, but I firmly believe that the right response to this is to minimise the chances, and delight with customer service.

Make sure it happens as infrequently as possible, and when it does happen make sure compensate the user accordingly.

As I say, accidents will happen, but they shouldn't happen twice to the same person, and that person should be amazed as to how far you will go above and beyond to set things right.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Writer.so – You are happy every day by writing - <AUTHOR> https://www.writer.so/ <comment><USER2> So this is only for people with depression? Not a single word for people who don't think they're depressed but still want to write? Why is it better than any other text editor?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Why is it better than any other text editor?" writer.so offer special questions and subjects which can help a user better describe the thought. These questions focus on emotion, mental health, and living things. It's like a journal to help better understand emotions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I need to be able to try it before signing up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. I will think about it. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any expression? pls, feedback! :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice!</comment>


US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/us-burns-through-all-high-skill-visas-for-2015-in-less-than-a-week/ <comment><USER2> What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?)

(I'm genuinely curious about this, as an American who has lived overseas--with the proper visas of course--for three years in the 1980s and for three years spanning the turn of the last century. I've only lived long-term in one other country, so I still could learn a lot more from all of you who participate here on HN about why people leave their country of birth, which is surely disruptive, to go to another country to live. What's the big deal about living in the United States?)

<comment><USER3> There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US. I will operationalize "good" as "an intelligent worker can make an exceptional living relative to their country of origin."

Each of these places only take a limited amount of immigrants each year. Some are more difficult based on the national language -- learning Danish isn't more difficult than English or French, but there are fewer learning resources to do so.

So, your best options for the greatest amount of opportunity is to learn English -- you have the UK, America, Canada, and Australia as potential landing spots. (This is, of course, not universal. Developing countries with French as a national language will prefer France, for example.)

So, the answer is that it's a way out.

<comment><USER4> With the advent of remote work upon us, I find it hard that you'd be limited to those countries.

In fact, literally the ENTIRE WORLD is your oyster, assuming you can reliably, regularly find power, wifi, and a team that'll work with you on your timezone's timeframe.

<comment><USER5> Remote work is lowering some barriers, but others aren't so easily fixed.

I'm a first-gen immigrant. My family originally moved because of rampant pollution due to unrestrained industrialization, as well as geopolitical risks (having air/bomb raid drills in school isn't really that fun). Telecommuting doesn't really fix these.

Suffice it to say, emigration/immigration is a Big Deal for the people who do it, and for the most part it isn't being done simply because the jobs are better. There are usually far more fundamental concerns behind the decision, a better economy is just one factor out of many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They really should call them "indentured servant slave visas". The H1-B visa holder has to leave the country if he gets fired (and doesn't find a new employer quickly), and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over.

Because the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job, he becomes more attractive than hiring a US citizen, (assuming equal salary and qualification).

<comment><USER7> The H1-B visa really needs to be completely divorced from the company that originally applies for it. At the end of the day, the US government makes a decision if an individual adds value to the country by working for a US company. Which US company shouldn't matter. The only time the visa should be re-evaluated in a way that the employer may be deported is if the worker is fired for cause. Beyond that the visa should belong to the employee, not the employer.

The fact that the green card process resets if the employee switches jobs is crazy. That really does make it an "indentured servant slave visa".

<comment><USER6> I'm in favor of immigration. I'm saying give them an unlimited work visa, instead of making them a slave to the employer.

Also, H1-B visas get 50%-150%+ raises when they get their green card, which proves that the H1-B visa suppresses wages.

<comment><USER8> Quite right. It's not a free labor market if laborers aren't free to move around! H1Bs keep wages down for that very reason. If they were attached to the worker, not the company, H1B wages would rise overnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis?

Last year, apparently 40,000 of the 85,000 available visas went to outsourcing companies, and one outsourcing company, Cognizant, got 9,000 visas!

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134694/Whos- Hiring-H1-B-Visa-Workers-Its-Not-Who-You-Might-Think)

At my last job, we tried to get an H1 for just _one_ person, and failed in the lottery!

I feel there would be much less abuse of the H1 if each company could receive only say 100 visas a year max, or a % of their US workforce size max, or something.

<comment><USER10> Or just rank em by salary/comp. More skilled people => more valuable to the economy => receive higher salary => more likely to get visa (=> pay more in taxes).

<comment><USER11> I think they should be auctioned off. (Either the company or the individual could pay the final auction price.)

The end result is the same: the most valuable workers are let in. It'd also have a small, but nice benefit: a voluntary revenue stream for the US to spend on whatever it would like (perhaps improved education and training for citizens).

<comment><USER12> This is one of the things I proposed in a comprehensive high-skilled visa reform proposal: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_yEsHOtzN3yZ3JoYXlTdDh0R0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_yEsHOtzN3yZ3JoYXlTdDh0R0k/edit?usp=sharing)

Never really got around finishing it and pushing it out tough, although I am curious to see what the feedback is on it.

<comment><USER12> I just made a separate post for discussion on it as it goes a little out of scope of the subject of H1-Bs: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7550560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7550560)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i recently saw a table of firms awarded these visas. it seemed nuts to me that a large proportion of the visas go to firms whose primary business line is outsourcing in one form or another.

i typically think of visas as fulfilling unmet hiring needs for domestic US firms - like Facebook! - but instead see they are largely squirreled away by firms whose primary function is overseas labor cost arbitrage.

I would be interested to hear informed opinions as to why so many visas go to these firms. i thought the stated objective is to help american firms meet their hiring needs where the local work force is deficient.

instead, it seems like all the demand is corralled into a few firms which do the dirty work for everyone else. if your primary purpose is outsourcing, how can you plausibly claim to be searching for qualified workers inside the US, and thus deserving of access to these visas?

<comment><USER14> The visas _are_ helping american firms meet their hiring needs... through the outsourcing firms. The people who want to hire don't want to be burdened with the paperwork of actually keeping track of work-visa'ed employees; the outsourcing firms are willing to take that burden on for them. Everyone wins.

<comment><USER15> The "real" (as opposed to outsourcing/staffing) companies that want a visa for an employee and don't get one because of the cap aren't winning. Plus I'm guessing the pay / benefits would generally be better at many of those places as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Does turning away highly skilled and educated people due to an artificial > cap on visas sound silly?

This is a false way of framing things on many levels. First, as Norm Matloff has extensively documented, they are not all "highly skilled and educated people". Secondly, they can be given green cards and other such things, why is this specific visa necessary?

Also, if there's a shortage of talent, then the Silicon Valley CEO's can put an end to things like their conspiracy to drive down tech wages that is playing out in the courts, which is something that would obviously depress the number of engineers applying for jobs. Instead of the federal government cutting loans and grants to college students, they could expand them if they want more engineers.

And if there is some humanitarian concern for immigrants, there are waiting applicants from Africa who have far more of a humanitarian need to get into the USA then an Indian IIT graduate.

<comment><USER17> If the supply of "highly skilled" people could not keep up with demand (which is what these companies lobbying Congress for uncapped H1Bs are effectively saying is the case), then salaries would be rising.

They are not.

/end of story. All other propaganda and testimony by these companies that say otherwise is bullshit.

<comment><USER18> That's not really true; if the supply could not keep up with demand, the companies would throw more resources at the problem of meeting their labor demand -- that might be raising wages (in the most simplistic economic models, that's the obvious thing), but it might equally be putting resources into lobbying Congress to allow increased immigration. If they expect lobbying to pay of greater returns for the investment than higher wages will, then that's where you'd expect them to put the resources.

<comment><USER17> Sorry .. that is totally disconnected from reality. Not only have wages NOT risen, they have stagnated (and not kept up with inflation). Further, if you look at the list (link is in this thread) of the companies along with the # H1Bs allocated to them/their ranking ... you'll see a certain big blue company in that list who is in the Top 5. They have been doing layoffs by the 1000s on a regular basis for years. I know. I work for them. I have seen personally at least 10 people on actively billing customer engagements (i.e., they were billing the customer, not riding the bench or working internally, etc.) layed off. These were highly skilled professionals with good reviews that were doing great work.

Further, I've seen many dozens of "replacements" come in in the form of H1Bs. These were literally DIRECT replacements. They were inexperienced and WORSE at the job.

This is no longer anecdotal. This is happening NOW. All over this country in the IBMs, Microsofts, etc.

It does not take a genius to see what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to be in this lottery and it's unnerving thinking about how different my life could turn out if I get this visa vs. don't. Young male, can't imagine I'd try again next year so it could be the difference of a much higher paying job plus living 5+ years in America vs. staying in my home country probably for life. Nothing wrong with my home country, but I'm excited of the prospect of living in America and the experiences that go with.

For people in the same boat: I think it's easier to cope with this if you take the view that you have to be lucky to get the visa, not unlucky not to. No one complains of ill-luck when they buy a lottery ticket and don't win millions. Positivity folks! :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am in USA on H1B.

A lot of American problems seem to be around the thinking that there is some kind "fixed" number of jobs, misery, poverty, disease etc.

A lot of welfare systems here seems to assume that there is a fixed number of single mothers, disabled etc. without acknowledging the fact that the more incentives you give to them more people will try to get into that category. For example more dole you give to disabled I would assume more people would try to get themselves into disabled bucket than in healthy.

Similarly the H1B cap seems to have an assumption that there are some fixed number of STEM jobs out there and if Indians fill it up, somehow the Americans will not get it. I would assume a higher concentration of Engineers in USA would only lead to more innovation, more engineers trying to earn more money by being far more creative and so on.

In India a typical outsourcing giant pays somewhere between $5K to $10k per year to new engineers. The only way I could break such low pay was by getting a master degree, being an excellent coder and joining a more tech focused company in Silicon Valley. After reaching Silicon Valley I realized the tech giant I was working for did not pay me enough. So I changed the job and joined a start-up which eventually did far well making me richer.

Also the Democrats which beat their chest in the name of poor are actually those who treat poor the way a Dog treats a lampost. The lampost helps the Dog navigates but only after it is soaked in his pee.

More engineers would mean cheaper engineering services which means more money saved for rest of the non-engineering Americans which a overwhelmingly high population. By putting an artificial cap on H1B American government is forcing the poor American citizens shell out more money.

<comment><USER21> There is another important point of outsourcing. If there is more competition here, in the US, then chances of outsourcing to India, China (where pay is substantially low) will also reduce. That might mean more jobs here, in the US.

Take Cognizant Technology solutions for example. I know a friend who works for the company. They are a US company (NJ based) but the majority of their life- sciences projects are outsourced to India office. They pay my friend one- thirds of what they charge the client for him in the contract. Him and about 5 other people who work here for the client, send work off-shore to India office to about 50 people. This model of outsourcing the majority work to India suits the client because the total costs about one-tenth of what they'd actually pay if everyone of those employees was hired here, in the US.

Not only is this model hurting jobs in the US, it is bad for the employees here well. For my friend, he has to work during the day, and then spend most of the night delegating tasks off-shore. He practically sleeps only over the weekend.

This might be a one-off example with this specific client only for Cognizant but I am aware that the profits from pay-scales are company-wide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good to note that this does not include the E3 visa available exclusively to Australians. Australia never uses its full allocation of 10,000 E3's each year and they are incredibly easy to get. the candidate simply needs a Bachelor's degree or higher as well as a job offer. If approved, their spouse is also instantly eligible for a E3 visa entitling them to work too.

Generally, it takes 2-4 weeks to get one from start to finish if you have a good immigration lawyer.

This sort of visa should not be exclusive to Australia. As an Aussie, I get the benefit from it but at the same time, I feel everyone should have access to it. I hope visa reform comes soon!

Anyone struggling to hire, big or small, should market to Australians. Its very cheap to fly out and interview a heap of smart candidates who would love to work for startups in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER23> Are you aware of the details of the free trade agreements Australia signed with the US? We paid our dues to the US, has to be some reciprocity.

<comment><USER24> > We paid our dues to the US

Indeed. You gave them a base from which to spy on Asia and Oceania. Should have negotiated visa-free entry for that alone.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article is slightly misleading, IMO.

The agency working on my application specifically timed it so that my application was submitted on April 1st, when the applications initially opened, instead of in November when I submitted the paperwork. If all agencies time applications this way, then the reason that all applications were exhausted within a week is because the entire year's applicants queued up until their requests were submitted this week.

This does not detract from the fact that there are too few visas granted, however, the situation isn't quite as insane as you would expect from reading this article.

</comment><comment><USER26> A good friend of mine works in the US under a high-Skill visa - as a tenured professor at Cornell, with oh, the Presidents medal for something very clever.

I think high skilled is a term that we coders are happy to apply to themselves, but really folks we are not compared to a genuine elite. The future will be invented by a very small number of brilliant people - the rest if us are just here to fill in the gaps behind them.

let it go, start building a remote-working-orientated company and hire people wherever they live. Stop worrying about the country's tax take.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. Sure _some_ H1-b visas might be used to just increase programmer supply, but many are like the professor you're talking about. Even catching a few geniuses in an extremely broad net is an invaluable boon to our country. Our concerns should be that we are missing some.

<comment><USER28> There is a visa for that. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I"m surprised only 124,000 applications were received. I was expecting the number to cross 200K. It gives more 85,000/124,000 probability which means slightly more than 68% of the people have chances of getting the H1B Visa.

<comment><USER19> Not quite 68% because there are two categories: 20,000 for advanced degree holders and another 65,000. There is an initial lottery between the advanced degree holders for the 20,000, and then the unsuccessful people go into the regular lottery. Don't know if the figures were released for the number of advanced degree holders who applied, but assuming the cap here was also met, the chances in the main lottery would be 65,000/114,000 = 57%

<comment><USER29> Ok that makes sense but then it's not 57% either for all of them since some people would end up getting a shot at the lottery twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If this is genuinely an issue (I never really tried, I just asked a handful of interesting offers if they'd consider making the effort and never really received a positive reaction), why haven't more companies tried to set up large teams in Europe and Asia?

I never heard anyone say that Google Zurich (a terrible location, work-visa- wise) or Sidney didn't fit the bill. Remote work appears to be common practice — a third of offers consider it, and cools start-ups advertise not having an office.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does it matter? Canada is much more liberal about giving out work visas, so US companies just open offices in Canada and hire the employees there. Meanwhile, Canadians can come work in the US under the TN status, which has no quotas.

All the US gets is less tax revenue.

<comment><USER32> No quotas, but some disadvantages too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "In 2013, 124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 slots in the first five-day period."

Considering that Americans seem to have little difficulty affording computers and software, yet continue to bankrupted by health care costs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to give those 85k visas to cheap doctors from overseas to drive down medical costs, instead of giving them to cheap foreign programmers to drive down the wages of American developers?

<comment><USER32> Except that won't work because they will just come over and charge the same as every other doctor.

<comment><USER24> Until their second week when they discover that due to increased competition, they have to lower their rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can't help seeing this as a higher level in some grotesque cultural fractal that, somewhere along the line, also involves ticket middlemen monopolizing admittance to most concerts and shows.

I don't know if they're part of the same problem or the same problem expressing itself in different ways, but I have a hard time calling this coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is just companies trying to get cheap labor. Work visas are modern indentured servitude.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe companies will have to look domestically....

</comment><comment><USER37> FYI those visas are not the only way to get foreigners to work in the US. But it is one that is very interesting for companies.

</comment><comment><USER38> Next year they should let people apply for the chance to be randomly selected to receive a visa.

<comment><USER39> That's what they already do. Anyone who applies in the first five days has a chance of being randomly selected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Companies who scooped up most the Visa slots last year (2013) are Outsource/Consulting companies by far: [http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa- Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER17> Are salaries rising for "high-skilled" domestic workers?

</comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone have more information ? That article seems to be talking about the numbers last year.

</comment><comment><USER41> >"In the United States, nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed, and 14.7 percent of those who hold degrees in information systems have no job. Graduates with degrees in STEM - science, technology, engineering and medicine" [http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-p...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving- post-employment-economy-201311373243740811.html)

How does opening up more visas help this? It is not about helping the people of America. It is about corporations getting richer. There are plenty of people already here to fill tech jobs.

</comment><comment><USER42> > _124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000_

So if we gave them all Visas - we'd be good for less than two weeks?

Sounds like a bigger problem here.

On a related note, how many _highly skilled and educated people_ live here already who are currently unemployed?

Two observations.

* Immigrants will go to where the work is. They will live almost anywhere the work is, they are moving already so it is easier than for someone who has roots somewhere.

* Immigrants will work harder and for less money. This is like starting a new job x10. Typically starting a new job - people work their tails off (for the first year or two at least). Think about that plus moving half way around the world just for personal achievement. Imagine the motivation that would give you. You would want to prove yourself, get permanent status, make a lot of money to bring family here ETC. And the money? think about it. Would you take less money for a huge opportunity in life?

Here is the thing though. Bringing in skilled immigrants is great for greedy capitalism, you get talent, hard work, and for cheap. The problem is - we are just working around a growing problem. What about the people who already live here. Not just the adults, but the kids who will be in high school and college in a few years. Why can't they be the ones who fill these jobs?

Bringing in immigrants is a short term moneymaker for corporations. Longer term, and in a couple of generations, these immigrants grand kids will be the ones who don't have a job. Let's put more focus on that aspect rather than always rallying behind opening the floodgates without properly considering the ramifications.

<comment><USER43> Einstein, Tesla and Musk. None of those guys would have ended up in the US if you had any power over immigration policy. Oh.. and are you native? Genuine question as I have no idea.

<comment><USER41> What kind of argument is this? You can't argue fate. You could also say that without the level of immigration we have, the world trade center would never have been attacked, we would have never invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Millions of lives would be saved.

One could say that Einstein changed fate such that a certain person was never even born who would have surpassed his achievements. This is nonsense and illogical.

 _In the United States, nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed, and 14.7 percent of those who hold degrees in information systems have no job. Graduates with degrees in STEM - science, technology, engineering and medicine - are facing record joblessness, with unemployment at more than twice pre-recession levels. The job market for law degree holders continues to erode, with only 55 percent of 2011 law graduates in full-time jobs._

[http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-p...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving- post-employment-economy-201311373243740811.html)

<comment><USER43> The argument is that if you deny people entry you miss out on talent. It is that simple. Now you want to deny people with proven talent who's abilities will further the interests of the nation state. Some of those you deny will have exceptional abilities. The nation as a whole loses.

It is very sad that nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed. Why is that? Why are they not fulfilling the already critical need for skilled IT workers? A clue - it's not because the immigrants are taking all there jobs.

Love the quote BTW - from and immigrant news service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The same company that has a press release that they do not wage collude:

"Not everybody took part in the no-hire agreement: last week, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg said the social network rebuffed Google's approaches."

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/30/tech_giants_fail_to_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/30/tech_giants_fail_to_get_hiring_collusion_case_tossed_again/)

Is the same guy pushing for visas to drive down wages:

"Fwd.us, a group founded in part by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, has pushed for immigration reform. Joe Green, another Fwd.us founder, lambasted current law regarding the cap structure of high-skill visas in an email to TechCrunch, calling the current set of regulations "dysfunctional." "

I guess being a prick knows no bounds.</comment>


When did web sites become "properties"? - <AUTHOR>

Seems like one of those faddish language things.  When did it come to pass, exactly?  I suppose it appeals because "property" sounds a lot more concrete than "web site". <comment><USER2> They called them that at Yahoo in 1998. I think it's derived from the entertainment industry, which Y was then trying to imitate.

<comment><USER3> Spot on. The re-organization along old-media lines accelerated when Semel took over, all the way down to separate budgets, server allocations, and almost no communication between the "properties".

Frankly, I don't know what the fuck they were thinking... the most obvious effect of the internet on business is how it dissolves structures like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> people were calling websites properties back in the mid 90's.

developers : properties :: web developers : web properties</comment>


The coronavirus's domino effect on startup layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/coronaviruss-startup-layoffs-6c4a0716-b246-4009-8e59-e05c6dcb5329.html <comment><USER3> 2.5 million jobs last year created by startups according to the article - <USER2> we lost all those jobs over just a single week, it would still barely register for people reading the news. 6 million jobs lost versus 8 or 9 million, both are so staggeringly large most people wouldn't feel any different after reading one of those headlines versus another. It's extraordinary to see how deep the impacts of this virus have been on the economy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I know many neighbors who were double income families and now none have jobs. I am unemployed and it's truly a tragedy. I haven't witnessed anything like this in my lifetime.

If people don't get back to work soon, it's going to be disastrous.</comment>


The Macedonian Teens Who Mastered Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ <comment><USER3> You can shape somoene's political opinion almost any way you want by reporting honestly on each story, without omitting anything relevant. Just choose carefully which stories to report.

That's why I find it hard to worry about stereotypical fake news - <USER2> sampling is a powerful tool, and much harder to debunk.

Focusing on statistics instead of individual stories helps, but is doubly limited - it doesn't sway people as much as appeal to emotion, and the statistics have to be available. If you're trying to decide which one of several warring factions is the 'good' guys, there will be no statistics, only a bunch of isolated reports, possibly funded by some government trying to sway public opinion for its own purposes (e.g. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/how-britain- fu...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/how-britain-funds-the- propaganda-war-against-isis-in-syria) \- in this case it's against ISIS, which I happen to agree aren't the 'good' guys, but there's no indication such methods are limited to opposing ISIS, and deciding -which- group of rebels to help can be just as powerful - wouldn't want to give power to someone who's gonna nationalize oil production, or weaken patent protections on crops ( [https://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new- patent-...](https://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new-patent-law-a- declaration-of-war-against-farmers) )!).</comment>


Viking warship discovered in hidden burial site in Norway - <AUTHOR> https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/europe/viking-warship-discovered-in-hidden-burial-site-in-norway/news-story/cf1b24a3ddec6fdc384934b3ca2a956e <comment><USER2> This was found in Oct 2018 [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/10/viking- sh...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/10/viking-ship- discovered-norway-archaeology/)</comment>


Z80 Labs - a new Buffalo (NY) startup incubator's website goes live - <AUTHOR> http://www.z80labs.com/

<comment><USER2> I would've thought Z80 was a registered trademark for Zilog. Those little monsters (and their smarter/faster successors) are still kicking it everywhere.</comment>


LucidCatcher – Real Benefits from Dreams - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/luciding/lucidcatcher-real-benefits-from-dreams <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys, AMA – kickstarter live now, and we're done with 3 years of research. What do you know about lucid dreaming?</comment>


SimpleCDN bust - <AUTHOR> https://admin.simplecdn.com/login

<comment><USER2> Other SimpleCDN submissions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1997107> \- sajalkayan.com - no comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008064> \- gigaom.com - no comments

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And there goes my ~$50 worth of credits unused :(</comment>


Show HN: Using deep learning to detect objects from your webcam - <AUTHOR> https://modeldepot.github.io/tfjs-yolo-tiny-demo/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Everyone!

After seeing the announcement of Tensorflow.js, and being a lover of both JS and ML, I couldn't help myself from creating a demo with a non-trivial ML model. YOLO is definitely one of the most interesting/useful ML models out there (as we saw on ModelDepot) and thought that'd be cool to get working.

As far as I know, there hasn't been any prior work with getting YOLO object detection working in JS, I assume mainly because the post-processing code to transform the model's outputs to bounding boxes is a whole heap of math. Luckily tf.js makes it a lot easier to translate from Python and so here it is!

You can drop this into your project with just a couple lines of code (and no ML required) using NPM! (via npm i tfjs-yolo-tiny)

If you want to help with perf/bug fixes, PR's are more than welcome @ [https://github.com/ModelDepot/tfjs-yolo- tiny](https://github.com/ModelDepot/tfjs-yolo-tiny) !

</comment><comment><USER2> Hope some of the entry/mid level security cam vendors are working on this type of detection as motion detection currently leads to so many false positives once you want notifications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given the proliferation of ML and easy to access pretrained models, I imagine they would! Though still the computational cost might be a bit high, but certainly could act as a second level filter for motion detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. I'm about to start using Pixy sensor to track people for a project I'm working on.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely interesting, from the quick demo I just saw, doesn't it only use colors to detect? If so, you'll definitely need something more powerful.

Depending on how accurate you need your model to be, (and what platform you're looking to build on), you could use tfjs-yolo-tiny if it's a browser-based environment. Otherwise I'd recommend doing processing in the cloud using the full YOLO model which is more accurate than Tiny YOLO but slower ([https://modeldepot.io/mikeshi/yolov2/overview](https://modeldepot.io/mikeshi/yolov2/overview)) or FSSD which is more accurate than YOLO but slower ([https://modeldepot.io/lzx1413/fssd/overview](https://modeldepot.io/lzx1413/fssd/overview))

Oh and if you might be doing something self-driving car related, a segmentation network might be useful as well (ex. [https://modeldepot.io/hellochick/pspnet/overview](https://modeldepot.io/hellochick/pspnet/overview))

<comment><USER3> yes, I haven't done all of my preliminary research yet, but from what I know it uses color matching to track things ie. clothes people are wearing. It's for a robot that will follow a person. I'm going to be doing a lot more research on this in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks for all this information, it seems I have a lot to learn! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yeah in that case color might make sense :) I'm not familiar with persistent tracking of people for sure, but I hope your project works out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems very very slow on iPhone (safari)

Here is what it detected for me [https://imgur.com/a/DSIZQ](https://imgur.com/a/DSIZQ)

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately iPhones just don't have a ton of computation power, but I've been given some suggestions and hopefully will have a good perf boost coming out soon!

As for that detection, this model is using Tiny YOLO, it's a simpler ML model made to run on more constrained hardware (end user devices) and therefore does not perform as well as the full YOLO or SSD. The other issue is that usually these models take context heavily into account, a fun experiment is to raise anything (ex. wallet) up to your ear and it'll interpret it as a cell phone. I've read an interesting paper recently that forces models to focus more on the object itself than the context to classify things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone ever scraped HN and checked number of exclamation points per post and compared to story rank (eg time spent on front page)? On this page there are currently 6 exclamation points and 5 posts. This seems higher than usual, and actually I have noticed more than usual in ML-related threads before...

Does HN use the rate of exclamation points in their ranking algo?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm honestly just very excited to share this! ;) but certainly! if exclamation! points! help the ranking! then I'm all for it!

<comment><USER5> I've noticed it in other threads too so don't think it is just you. It just could be a coincidence...</comment></comment></comment>


Fart joke myth busted using Frink (a language for calculations) - <AUTHOR> http://futureboy.homeip.net/frinkdocs/#FartJokes <comment><USER2> I was hoping to see a proof there for 'whoever smelt it, dealt it'. A little disappointed, but the other calculations made up for it.

<comment><USER3> I was hoping to see a proof for 'whoever denied it, supplied it'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > 12.5 kilotons TNT / (6 years + 9 months) -> horsepower

At first I thought that this is some peculiar quality of bizarre american unit system that energy released by kiloton of TNT divided by one month equals power of one horse. As opposed to usual joules, seconds and watts.

Amazing how fast you can do "back of the envelope" calculations with such tool empowered by default with unit conversions.

<comment><USER5> You can do exactly the same thing sans frink with google, except you have to look up the KT --> J conversion yourself (google is still missing some obscure units).

Just stick in:

12.5*4.184e12 J / (6 years + 9 months) in hp

<comment><USER6> WolframAplpha is also useful for those kind of calculations (couldn't find a way to do the last one, though): [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=12.5+kilotons+TNT+%2F+%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=12.5+kilotons+TNT+%2F+%286+years+%2B+9+months%29+in+horsepower)

<comment><USER7> (12.5 kilotons of TNT) / (6 years + 9 months) in horsepower

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2812.5+kilotons+of+TNT...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2812.5+kilotons+of+TNT%29+%2F+%286+years+%2B+9+months%29+in+horsepower)

329.5 HP

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just as operating systems are not all the same, farts are not all the same. Some really stink, while others don't. Some pack a lot of energy while others don't.

The paper doesn't dig deep enough for the facts. (sorry!) There are many hundreds of different kinds of bacterial active in the gut. The bacterial mix varies from person to person. The mix of the fuel varies too. Even without advanced analysis (anal-ysis?) it isn't hard to confirm some of the differences. For example those with flora producing high metane more frequently produce floaters. Do yours float?

Probably the best demonstration I've seen was a group of bored college guys sitting around having something of a farting contest. Being the educated group they were, they went a step beyond that and dug out the propane lighters to see who could throw the biggest flame. (warning, don't try this nude, some got pretty hot even with some protection from clothing)

It turns out some threw substantial flames while others just couldn't get lit. Aside from the bacterial and solid-food variations, it seems that beer farts don't burn.

Perhaps someone can get a grant for continued study...

<comment><USER9> I don't think you bothered to read the page.

A simple knowledge of thermodynamics demonstrates the sheer impossibility of the myth. The last calculation on the first section of the page will suffice: If you have a 1-inch pipe, shooting out pure natural gas at 28 MPH, you would have the equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb in 6 years 9 months. The methane produced in the gut has nowhere near that concentration, so it would have to be blowing _much_ faster. A 1/10 ratio would mean 280 MPH.

<comment><USER8> I read the page, and don't disagree with the conclusions. The myth has already been sufficiently clubbed to death. But if by extension this topic invites us to ask how much energy there actually is, there are some things missing from the analysis. The distinction between farts that burn and those that won't is a huge variation. In the case of farts that don't burn, the easily extracted power may be only what a micro-turbine could produce.

I'm not sure why my comment got negative ratings. It wasn't meant as a troll or flamebait and opens a related area of scientific analysis to the topic.

I think it would also be interesting to ask what could be potentially powered by farts? Is it possible to make a thin fuel cell in underwear that can produce some power? What useful things might be run with the expected amount?

To whoever down-modded me... please try to be a little more open-mined. Otherwise a fart in your general direction...

<comment><USER10> There have been a variety of hog-farms that have experimented with generating heat from methane from the hog pens.

But putting humans in the sorts of conditions needed to make it viable would generally be frowned upon by society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know, this Frink thing looks interesting. Gonna give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER12> Under "Advanced Farting," isn't the molar volume wrong? I think the program is assuming STP, but the human body is much warmer and possibly under more pressure as well.

<comment><USER4> Depends on whether 2000 ml in the study was measured assuming STP. I guess it should have been.

<comment><USER13> But STP is at 0 degrees C. Shouldn't it be at 298K instead of 273K?

<comment><USER12> The one I was thinking of was 20 C. According to Wikipedia, it could be either. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_conditions_for_tempera...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_conditions_for_temperature_and_pressure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn I think it's telling that this technology that has been used to wage wars, create and drive industry, and save lives has matured to a point where we can afford the CPU cycles for such calculations.

Perhaps one day it will be able to test "your momma" jokes. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Being off by a factor of 2.8 million is not that bad if you look at something like the Drake Equation for comparison :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what Wolfram thinks about Frink.

<comment><USER16> I think he's getting ready to release something similar in five years, say he invented it, and sue Frink's author.

<comment><USER11> Besides Mathew Cook, who else did Wolfram sue?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook#Work_with_Stephen_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook#Work_with_Stephen_Wolfram)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Frink is awesome. What's even better, is that I see it's finally been ported to Android!!</comment>


Where do you store your passwords? - g-garron https://www.garron.blog/en/blog/your-passwords-online.html <comment><AUTHOR> LastPass has been serving me well. I understand their data was breached before. yet I always wonder, what happens if a security-centric firm gets hacked? Where else can we truly trust other than our own pen & paper at home? Hehe, just my two cents worth. What are your thoughts? I know of alternatives: 1password

</comment><comment><USER2> mysql database on my private server. And you have to log into mysql using a password to access it.</comment>


End of MVC is near, let's learn MVVM - <AUTHOR> https://www.juvo.be/blog/end-mvc-near-lets-learn-mvvm-zk <comment><USER2> Errrr.... this must be a post from 2004.</comment>


Show HN: Checkout our app Hot5 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/hot5/ Workout videos with personal trainers. 5 minutes. 5 exercises. 1 intense workout. Train like you live. <comment><AUTHOR> Let me know what you think.</comment>


Kawasaki and Truemors: The stupidest idea ever? Not anymore. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=7059903&siteId=568

<comment><USER2> Venture funding: The stupidest idea ever? VC WAS DISSATISFIED WORKING ON SMART IDEAS, SO HE WENT THE OTHER WAY By Elise Ackerman Mercury News Article Launched: 10/02/2007 01:35:04 AM PDT

     As managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, Guy Kawasaki funded all the really smart ideas he could find. None hit it big.

So earlier this year the guru of Silicon Valley start-ups decided to fund a really dumb idea that cost as little as possible.

In May, Kawasaki started Truemors, a site specializing in what it calls "true rumors" submitted by readers. It cost less than $13,000 to launch and was almost immediately dubbed "the worst site ever" by a leading European technology news site.

Why would a respected venture capitalist and author of bestselling business books make a site like Truemors his next act? Because Kawasaki, 53, wanted to get firsthand experience with a user-generated, Web 2.0, social-media Web site.

He also felt that starting the site would illustrate what he saw as a problem with venture capital - these Web 2.0 sites did not need lots of funding, and even if they did it was becoming harder for VCs to pick the winners.

For nine years, Kawasaki and his partners had invested millions of dollars in companies that seemed like smart bets. They had their share of successes, but nothing on the order of Google or Yahoo.

Meanwhile, ideas he dismissed became stock market sensations.

Like Yahoo. In 1995, venture capitalist Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital asked Kawasaki if he'd like to interview to be chief executive of Yahoo. "It was a list of David and Jerry's (co-founders Filo and Yang) favorite Web sites," Kawasaki recalled. "It had no business plan."

Kawasaki said no. Years passed. Two guys from Stanford created yet another search engine. "The 15th search engine - what a dumb idea," Kawasaki quipped about his reaction. That turned into Google.

"The only thing you can conclude is that it's a crap shoot," Kawasaki said in a recent interview at his home office in Atherton. "You have no idea what is going to succeed."

Bill Reichert, Kawasaki's partner at Garage Technology Ventures, said the tipping point for his partner came after Kawasaki chaired a panel discussion featuring start-ups like Hot or Not - a Web site where men and women submit photos to be rated by strangers - and Plenty of Fish - a free dating site.

Neither site had raised venture capital, but both were enjoying advertising sales of more than a million dollars a year. That made it clear to the folks at Garage that the problem was the venture capital model itself, which seemed out of whack.

Kawasaki decided to find out how little it cost to start a Web 2.0 company himself. He paid $4,500 to Web developers in South Dakota whom he had met through his personal blog. He spent $4,824 on legal fees. He spent almost $3,000 more on a logo, domain names and other miscellaneous expenses.

And he began devoting himself to what he truly loved: Selling products and ideas.

At Apple Computer in the 1980s and 1990s, Kawasaki had helped turn Macintosh users into Apple fanatics. He left the company in 1997, and made a career as a venture capitalist and speaker. His book "The Art of the Start" became a bible for would-be entrepreneurs.

Some of his key advice: "Don't be afraid of polarizing people," and "Don't let the bozos grind you down."

Two days after he launched Truemors, Kawasaki discovered the value of his own advice.

Kawasaki had wanted the site to be a place where news and gossip met. He imagined his average reader as a Google programmer who was about to go on a date with an East Bay non-profit activist.

What would they talk about? Truemors could help. Its news items covered everything from politics to sports, Hollywood gossip and technology culled from the Web and, occasionally, firsthand accounts.

"I promise, if you read Truemors, it will make you a more interesting person," Kawasaki said.

Unlike Digg, a similar user-generated site that lets people rank stories on its front page, Truemors lists stories in the order they were submitted. Users can vote to move a story to a "Greatest" page - or to the dumpster if they think something is untrue.

The blogosphere's first reaction to Truemors was a blistering attack. A hacker broke in. Obscenities were submitted as news. Kawasaki himself was trashed.

"I have a very low opinion of the blogosphere," Kawasaki said. "I think it is made up of about 250,000 people who are mostly 45-year-old men who live with their mother and have dead cats in their refrigerators."

Kawasaki didn't let the bozos get him down. He cleaned up his site. The attacks quickly died down.

Earlier this month, the European news outfit with the scathing early review recanted. "We're big enough to admit that Truemors is definitely not the world's worst Web site any longer," Martin Veitch, executive editor of IT Week, wrote in a Sept. 10 article on theinquirer.net, a technology news site.

Kawasaki said the coverage was responsible for a huge spike in page views, which are now averaging about 150,000 a month, according to Google analytics.

Drew Curtis, founder of FARK, a Web site of interesting and amusing news stories that was one of Kawasaki's inspirations, said those numbers are pretty good. He said FARK, which now gets 53 million page views a month, got only 50,000 page views in its first year. FARK was launched in 1999.

"He certainly has critical mass," Curtis said of Kawasaki.

Kawasaki insists he wants the site to be a success, but he acknowledges that the stakes are not high. His monthly break-even point is only $3,000.

Kawasaki is still a venture capitalist and continues working with Garage's portfolio of companies. "Truemors helps me understand Web 2.0 better than any other experience," he said. "Life is good for entrepreneurs these days."

</comment><comment><USER3> Print link (no registration): [http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/pr...](http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=7059903&siteId=568)

<comment><USER4> Isn't it amazing how their registration shit is easily defeated? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 150,000 page views? That's not very much, is it? My book on the web was getting 30,000 pageviews a day when it was first published...and these days it gets about 100,000 per month in its current wiki form four years later (about 1000 visitors per day and slowly climbing). And it's not at all Web 2.0 or constantly new. Our business website even gets 100k page views per month (similarly, 1000-1500 visitors per day), and we definitely don't consider that a triumph.

I'm not begrudging him success with Truemors. I, unlike a lot of folks here, think very highly of Kawasaki. I found his books inspiring and occasionally educational, and his Art of the Start presentation is awesome. But I think it's too early to call it a success at 150k page views per month...the 250k users thing doesn't quite gibe with the 150k page views...that would mean that almost no one EVER comes back to Truemors after their first visit, which is a very bad thing.

<comment><USER6> What book ?

<comment><USER5> The Book of Webmin. It was published by No Starch Press in 2003, sold modestly (but got lots of readers on the web, too). It's now been combined with Jamie Cameron's book about Webmin (which was published in the same year) to form a wiki at <http://doxfer.com/Webmin>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the first time I heard about Truemors, I thought it was stupid. And it's still stupid. The only reason it gets any press/traffic at all is because of Kawasaki. You always hear of it as "Kawasaki's Truemors."

At least the man knows how to leverage slight success on his name's reputation alone.

</comment><comment><USER8> If Guy could get paparazzi to publish real _inquiry minds want to know_ news and somehow give them the same amount of cash for the news; now that would be an interesting competitive business.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone with an account please summarize? I am curious.

Edit: The article basically talks about how Truemors is not as bad as it once was, and is slowly building a better reputation as they learned from some mistakes, like how to keep the content clean and useful. Nothing revolutionary here..

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not registering to read this.

<comment><USER11> I decided to break my rule of "no registering to read" and immediately regretted it. They demand that you pick a password with numbers and letters! To read a newspaper article!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 150K a month... is not alot of views....

</comment><comment><USER13> > _"The only thing you can conclude is that it's a crap shoot," Kawasaki said > in a recent interview at his home office in Atherton. "You have no idea what > is going to succeed."_

(Guy passed up on Yahoo and Google.) I think to someone without the requisite skill necessary to evaluate the technology and people it's like a crapshoot, sure.

However, I think a more accurate analogy would be that it's poker. Luck is a factor but it's dominated by skill (execution). If you're not an expert player then it _seems_ like it's all luck; but expert players finish at or near the top over and over again.

Start-ups are like players that don't have a track record, so you have to watch their play carefully to decide if they're good or not. But in order to do that accurately you have to be an expert yourself.</comment>


Jenkins Atlassian Theme – So you want Bamboo but you can´t afford it? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/djonsson/jenkins-atlassian-theme

<comment><USER2> Looks good, will definitely try it out!

</comment><comment><USER3> Sexy Jenkins! Love it!</comment>


Get notified whenever there's a new top post on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://top.hn <comment><USER2> " _Read and change all your data on the websites you visit_ "

No thanks.

<comment><USER3> The reason we use this permission is that we request an image from the source url to show you in each notification, but see my earlier comment about the mvp-ness of this project ([https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9612790](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9612790)) – in future iterations, we'd create our own api and just require access to [http://top.hn/](http://top.hn/).

<comment><USER2> While I understand that, there have been many extensions that have been sold and turned to malware, so I do not trust Chrome extensions any more than I trust executables downloaded from ThePirateBay, unless the extension demands reasonable permissions. I know that Chrome doesn't have a good permission model or a review process, but I still won't install your extension though.

<comment><USER3> We're not going to sell this extension to be turned into malware! I suspect I'm not going to be able to convince you with a comment, though. :-)

<comment><USER4> You could open source it

<comment><USER5> Chrome extensions already are open source (so to speak). They're simply .zip bundles, which run HTML, CSS and JS in the context of the page/browser [0]. The location depends on OS, but its pretty easy to find [1].

[0] [https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/overview](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/overview)

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/a/14544700/2078412](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14544700/2078412)

<comment><USER6> This extension will help you find the source for any extension you encounter on the Chrome Web Store: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome- extension-s...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-extension- source-v/jifpbeccnghkjeaalbbjmodiffmgedin)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obfuscated code plus these permissions isn't helping me trust you. As a Chrome extension developer, I can tell at a glance that many of these permissions are not necessary to implement the functionality as described.

        "permissions": [
            "<all_urls>",
            "activeTab",
            "alarms",
            "background",
            "browsingData",
            "chrome://favicon/",
            "clipboardWrite",
            "contextMenus",
            "cookies",
            "declarativeContent",
            "fontSettings",
            "gcm",
            "identity",
            "idle",
            "notifications",
            "pageCapture",
            "power",
            "proxy",
            "sessions",
            "storage",
            "system.cpu",
            "system.display",
            "system.memory",
            "system.storage",
            "tabCapture",
            "tabs",
            "topSites",
            "tts",
            "unlimitedStorage",
            "webNavigation",
            "webRequest",
            "webRequestBlocking"
        ]

Definitely not taking any chances installing this.

<comment><USER7> Asking full privileges is a way of avoiding changing them on a update.

If you change permissions on a update, chrome will ask for user interaction.

That being said, if you don't plan to broad the scope of an app or extension in the future, there is no point.

This technique is applied on a lot of android apps too.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's okay to do this as long as the developer explains in the app/extension overview that the permissions are for planned features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would love a script that shows me posts with exactly 2 upvotes. There's a lot of interesting links on the new page that is mixed in with spam.

<comment><USER9> There are various "Hacker News N" Twitter accounts, where n == number of upvotes.

I really like "Hacker News 20" it's just high enough of a number that it's not a constant drip, but a little more diverse than the front page. [https://twitter.com/newsyc20](https://twitter.com/newsyc20)

<comment><USER10> Personally I think just the front page has too much noise. I'd love to be able to filter out topics and submitters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the #1 spot (the one you get a notification from) has very little movement. I was surprised by that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Considering how much time I already spend on Hacker News, I certainly wouldn't want any notifications popping up.

<comment><USER3> You should give the extension a whirl – you only get a few notifications per day. Perhaps you'll even end up spending less time here. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> nice!

any plans to open source the extension?

\--

Here's how it's working on the page, not sure if the extension works the same, but seems poll based:

1\. they grab the top stories from [https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json) which is a huge json array of ids .. then they take the one in the head and ..

2\. load: [https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/9611829.json](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/9611829.json) which is a json object with the post's metadata

<comment><USER3> I think we will: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9613213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9613213)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a one-day, mvp-type project that our team made, mostly to scratch our own Hacker News–junkie itch, but we're also inclined to do more if the project gains some traction, so please let us know any feedback/ideas/meditations!

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice! You can also join the channel ##hackernews on freenode and see top stories in IRC! (That's how I saw this one!)

<comment><USER14> Sounds like something #hackernews should be used for.

<comment><USER13> Last I heard, #startups was the official channel, and I didn't want to spam that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there any services out there that do this by email, and in particular that have domain filters? I'd love to get a notification when any domain I'm associated with gets posted to HN.

<comment><USER9> You could modify this service to email you instead of send you a text message (this is a tutorial to text you anytime a certain URL shows up on HN) [https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/04/get-notified-when- someon...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/04/get-notified-when-someone- posts-an-article-from-your-domain-on-hacker-news-using-node-js-firebase-and- twilio.html)

<comment><USER15> Interesting idea.

I wonder what it would take to get an HN article source added to services like ifttt or zapier?

<comment><USER16> I have one, actually!

Check out the top Zap listed here: [http://mikeknoop.com/my- zaps/](http://mikeknoop.com/my-zaps/)

(it uses the Algolia search engine as a feed of posts to trigger on)

<comment><USER15> Perfect, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For what it's worth, and for people with iOS (not sure if Android has a similar app), I use Hooks[1]. I set it to 500 karma threshold to notify me and that seems to have been working out fine so far.

[1]: Hooks - Alerts for Everything by Oleg Kozynenko [https://appsto.re/us/teuc3.i](https://appsto.re/us/teuc3.i)

</comment><comment><USER18> +1 for having the real top story on their site

</comment><comment><USER19> Also check out Hacker News 300 and Hacker News 100 on twitter

[https://twitter.com/newsyc100](https://twitter.com/newsyc100)

[https://twitter.com/newsyc300](https://twitter.com/newsyc300)

</comment><comment><USER20> Consider using ServiceWorker notifications for an extension-free way to do this.

<comment><USER21> I prefer sockets over Service Worker, no installation, no warnings. But definitely I will read in depth about this. Thanks.

<comment><USER22> The advantage of ServiceWorker is that it can show notifications even when the website isn't open. Browser support is limited for that, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice one. What about Mozilla?

<comment><USER21> We'd love to, if the project gains some traction we'll definitely do it.

<comment><USER24> Or maybe open source it and let us do it for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Out of curiosity, what registrar did you use for the hn TLD?

<comment><USER3> Gandi. Credit to niico for discovering that Hacker News has their own tld. :-P

<comment><USER26> It's technically for Honduras. [1]

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hn)</comment></comment></comment>