Dave McClure responds to Arrington's post - <AUTHOR> http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/09/fire-in-the-valley.html <comment><USER2> Having skimmed through that incoherent babbling rant, I know as a founder I will never want to do business with that guy.

<comment><USER3> He tries to come off as some sort of "angel from the hood". I wouldn't be surprised to hear him say "yo boyyyyy, I be funding companiez."

His money's as green as the next guy's though.

<comment><USER4> Honestly the biggest problem with Silicon Valley is that 90% of the startups aren't trying to build real businesses, they're just trying to build something that will impress Mike Arrington to compensate for the fact that they had no friends in high school or whatever. At least Dave actually understands the mechanics of leadgen, SEO, margins, and the rest of what makes a business work unlike the rest of the hacks in the valley.

<comment><USER5> Can't downvote this enough.

Really? All 90% of people who quit their job to found a startup want to do is impress Arrington? They want the same thing that any founder wants-- a combination of happy users, business success, and an exit (though there's more emphasis on the exit for a lot of Valley folks).

Save your venom for people who don't have the guts to start a company. Or better yet, save your venom entirely. The internet doesn't need any more.

<comment><USER4> "They want the same thing that any founder wants-- a combination of happy users, business success, and an exit."

I'm sure the founders think that's what they want, but their actions say otherwise. Anyway I didn't mean it to be venomous, I was just trying to defend Dave.

<comment><USER6> Would you provide us five specific examples of how their actions say otherwise? Since 90% of startups exhibit this kind of behavior, it should be easy to come up with five.

<comment><USER4> If I were to start calling out individual companies I'd only do it on my blog under my real name, not as a pseudonymous blog comment. As it stands though I wouldn't feel comfortable blogging this only because it's not my idea, I stole it from someone else.

<comment><USER7> So you're just impersonating Alex Krupp?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since everyone seems to just be agreeing with the last person whose take on this they've read, think about it this way: If they were indeed colluding, do you think any of them would come out and say "mike's right, we are colluding"? No, they would come back with totally legit sounding blog posts to discredit him.

I still think it doesn't make sense for Mike to lie about what he heard, especially when it relates to such big players. Mr McClure's defensive, arrogant, immature rant indicates that a sore spot has been touched. I don't think we should take any of the angels' words at face value.

<comment><USER9> Let's turn that around for a second and look at it as though it is true:

A bunch of 'angels' (for want of a better term, none of them were sprouting wings) get together in a bar but omit one of the regulars.

They discuss in great detail the way in which they are going to 'corner the market' and convince each other that nobody will invest in any start-up over a certain price point.

How long do you think that would fly in the real world. Before they'd been out of the door someone would have already decided to break the arrangement, it's the nature of the beast you're dealing with here, and besides, most if not all of the dealings between angels and their investment targets are confidential so you'd never know anyway.

I wasn't agreeing with Arringtons view on this when I read it, I just interpreted it as 'wow, you take being marginalized quite badly', and this post pretty much confirms that that may be all there is to it.

Hell hath no fury like a 'blogger' scorned it seems.

It's not as though people need Arringtons permission to meet, and it's not as though every meeting that he isn't in on is automatically grounds for suspecting a cartel being formed.

<comment><USER10> Earlier this summer when LeBron James decided to go to Miami to play with Dwyane Wade, there was a lot of discussion over the next week about the fact that many players have basically grown up together in the countless shoe company basketball camps and all-everything teams that top recruits go through these days. The lament was that you don't compete against your friends the same way you compete against rivals you have some distance from, and it was starting to affect the league, even to the point where players who you'd expect would want to carry their own teams instead decide to play together.

<comment><USER11> There were even accusations of collusion:

[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0709/LeBron-James-and- his-...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0709/LeBron-James-and-his- superteam-Player-collusion-or-OK)

"Worked out among friends at a "summit" earlier this summer, the James free- agency move – aired live as ESPN's "The Decision" segment Thursday night – in one stroke shifted the NBA's power structure and could undermine attempts to achieve parity in a league dominated by a few select teams."

(I bet Mike Arrington wasn't invited to that meeting either.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let me summarize.

"Yes, the meeting described indeed happened. Yes, we talked about what Arrington claimed we talked about. No, Arrington was not welcome. No, it was not the big deal Arrington claimed it was."

If it was not the deal that Arrington claimed it was, then why were they so uncomfortable when Arrington sat down? Why did Sundeep delete his tweet? And why did people tell Arrington that they were uncomfortable with the direction the conversation took?

This leaves me more, not less, likely to believe what Arrington reported. The side evidence leaves me leaning towards the belief that Dave McClure's judgment is more likely lacking than that there is no fire behind the smoke. However I have no really concrete evidence behind that position.

It will be interesting to see this play out.

<comment><USER13> I agree. It seems likely that at least some of the people in the meeting might just be talking about things that would benefit them without fully realizing that the whole setup and the conversation they were having was actually collusion. Under that premise, I can believe that both Arrington and McClure are telling the truth, but only Arrington saw a spade for a spade.

<comment><USER14> ... _saw a spade for a spade_

I haven't seen that one in a while :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Arrington has said that many who attended this event were friends of his. I'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to sense a strange vibe and that something unusual was going down. I've seen Arrington make some big claims (last.fm handing over records to the RIAA (unsure if that was resolved)), but these are pretty damaging accusations, and you've got to realize that more than just page views, there are a few other things riding on this recent piece -- like the friendships of those he's accused of colluding, general respect among the angel/vc community and beyond. That coupled with this post, with a tl;dr of HE's WrONg ANd I WanT TO BE AbraSIVE AnD NOT PROviDE REASONABle LEVel-heaDED ARGumEnTS, makes me side with Arrington for now, although Fred Wilson's post does make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER16> Frankly, that's more just McClure's style -- to be abrasive and have 9 different colors in his posts.

<comment><USER17> I can't wait until I have enough money to have a style!

<comment><USER18> Can't help but think of:

 _Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy, you'll be classy. If you win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press'll think you're colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you are a slob._

\- Crash (Bull Durham)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There seems to be a severe case of group think on HN today.

Why are so many people raining on Dave? The points he makes seem to make a lot of sense.

I'm pretty sure that an agenda that will attract the smartest angel investors for a meeting will stretch far beyond "collusion to bring valuations down".

The fact of the matter is that owning 1% of a company that exits for $100mm is far better than owning 10% of a bankrupt startup. These investors know this better than anyone and I'm pretty sure that increasing the size of the pie, attracting more startups, increasing the number of exit channels etc were the chief points of discussion and not "how do we make sure we own 10% instead of 5%".

Having said that, it's pretty much Dave's word against Mike's and I'll pitch my tent in the proven serial investor's camp any day.

<comment><USER20> Yeah seriously. So much of the criticism is about his style and attitude that it made me wonder if this was really HN?

Dave is a great guy in person. Yes, he's aggressive, super-cynical, outspoken,has a sense of humor and a good track record. These are all good reasons why he's one of the few investors (along with Mark Suster) that I would actually _want_ to do business with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >\- startups & investors bitch & moan about price (aka valuation) all day long, but i don't really give a damn what other people think most of the time. buy or don't buy. negotiate or don't. This is America, This is Capitalism, and it's a Free Fucking Country.

I read Arrington's article with a grain of salt, but after that line McClure convinced me he's up to no good. That is _exactly_ what a colluding price- fixer would say to defend his actions. The fact that he denies it is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER22> Did anyone else get a headache just trying to read through that rant?

<comment><USER23> You know the only other place I've seen where someone uses 14 different type styles for emphasis is the Time Cube guy and other similar nutjobs.

<comment><USER24> You should see his PowerPoint presentations ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Request for fact check: If you agree that the definition of collusion is that "collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit." Wikipedia.

And you read McClure's post that admits to discussing pricing amongst these industry competitors: "at the dinner, there was a fair amount of kvetching about convertible notes, capped or not, hi/lo valuation, optimal structure of term sheets, where the industry was headed, who was innovating and who wasn't, and 10 million other things of which 3 were kind of interesting and 9,999,997 weren't unless you like arguing about 409a stock option pricing. However, in addition to pricing & valuation..."

then how can you not conclude that collusion (which is illegal) did not take place?

Where is this argument off-base?

</comment><comment><USER26> Why?

Disregarding all the abusive and offensive language, his points are unnecessary. He could just as well have written "We are not colluding. Mike got it wrong. This is what we talked about: ..."

He's leading Arrington's claims ad absurdum and concludes that everything is horse shit and hater shit and a steaming pile of crap, yo, bitches.

Why is Dave McClure important again?

<comment><USER27> Just because he does a bad job of making his argument doesn't make it wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I could not finish this article. Why does he write like that?

<comment><USER29> It's a "fuck you and your grammar" style of writing. It might come off as ghetto at times, but I think it's a deliberate decision to write that way, as a way to rebel-against or reject whatever that's considered _standard_.

I personally identify with his writing, in a sort of "game recognizes game" way.

<comment><USER30> What with all the things to read and learn out there, I think I'll stick to writers who are able to wield the English (or Italian) language to make their point, rather than those whose web pages look like something from 1998 recounting how their space-brother told them the secret of how to construct a perpetual motion machine that they cannot build because of the Icelandic government's mind control rays.

Edit: I'll add that I think Fred Wilson's reasoning is convincing, and written for the people of planet Earth to boot. Even the original article states that some of the people were just there to see what's up. If they're already spilling beans to Techcrunch, the likelihood of managing to get everyone on board with anything really damaging for any significant duration is small.

<comment><USER29> Some of the more creative literary figures have taken great liberties with language, as a whole, and convention specifically.

You might not like it, but I think the juxtaposition of hard-nodes business insight and MySpace typography is jarring, in a positive sense. He routinely craps all over the industry.

But what do I know. I am a 30 year old with a mohawk.

<comment><USER30> > Some of the more creative literary figures have taken great liberties with > language, as a whole, and convention specifically.

Certainly. Is he aiming for "great literary figure" status, though? My guess is that in 50 years, people will still read the work of "great authors". A rant about a silicon valley "conspiracy"? My guess is no.

<comment><USER29> The entire thread has been about Dave and his writing.

How many other investors can you recognize by their prose and style? how many do you talk about afterward?

I think the point has been made.

<comment><USER30> > How many other investors can you recognize by their prose and style? how > many do you talk about afterward?

Paul Graham comes to mind:-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Before I clicked I figured it was going to be yet another "Michael is a great guy but way off base here," and indeed that's pretty much all there is to see here. Coupled with a lot of fist-pumping.

</comment><comment><USER32> why do people need to use so much f _ck sh_ t and d*ck when defending an argument I'll never understand. It doesn't make it any more influential or cool, if that's what is intended.

<comment><USER33> speaking his mind, like he would speak to you in person, is influential and cool.

<comment><USER30> After a few minutes of someone spouting profanities, you mostly become inured to it and it ceases to have much of an effect. In some cases you wonder if it's simply a verbal crutch.

You get a much greater effect if you rarely use that sort of language: when you do, it's quite powerful.

<comment><USER34> I don't know - I tend to notice that the people who say "smart people don't swear" are offer people who aren't really that smart themselves - or know many smart people. I know a lot of smart people, and they all fucking swear. ;-)

<comment><USER30> I didn't say "don't swear". I do myself, and have nothing against it in the proper context. But if you overdo it, you come across looking like a bit of a horse's ass.

<comment><USER21> It's very much a mistake to say that given words should universally be saved for emphasis or used liberally. In most social contexts, there are a variety of words that can and should be used liberally. In the contexts where profanity is to be avoided,they tend to be things like "please" "thank you" and "that's great" or "I'm looking forward to it."

But in contexts where profanity is encouraged, and even a sign of belonging to a social group, there's no point in being elitist about it. I'm not sure I like social stratification, but I've found it's difficult if not impossible to have meaningful social interaction without adopting the social conventions of those around you.

That is of course distinct from a style guide for an investor writing about business, who should probably maintain a clear and inoffensive tone to his writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> OK People. Yes, Dave McClure writes like ee cummings' high school geocities page, but I think I know why:

If I'm a high visibility blogger and I'm going to write a piece wherein I intend on relaying a point to the people whose opinions I care about, there's going to be a lot of noise in the responses, no matter what. More often than not (and this happens on HN too) you get people giving long-winded, zero- value-added answers in hopes of being a part of the discussion.(edit: yes, this post kind of falls in that category, but I'm writing it anyways)

Writing something you want to talk about underneath a bunch of stoff that's easy to jump on is a good way to flag the worthless posts.

For instance, I might start off a blog post about how the White Stripes are shit. They are not good and they are certainly not ushering in a new era of anything. What I really want to talk about is how they got famous because, somewhere along the line, Rolling Stone started bottling their own farts. So then, if I get 100 responses, I can skim past the ones that amount to "OMG The White Stripes are like the best band EVAR! [personal attack] [grammer correction]" and get to the meat of the discussion about what happened to the zine touched by the minds of Hunter Thompson, Lester Bangs, and Patti Smith.

Also, I think he likes to give the impression that he's too busy and important for things like style. And, as far as I know, that's true, so I'd just let him get away with it and look what he was actually saying.

<comment><USER36> _"Also, I think he likes to give the impression that he's too busy and important for things like style."_

His blog post looked to me like he spent an awful lot of time messing around with fonts and embedding videos.

Not spending time on style, grammar or spelling looks sloppy, but intentionally making your writing look like horseshit comes across a lot worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So Mike does some investigative work and finds something amiss, people flock and agree (which I still agree) amid some suspicious actions online, then one of those involved deny anything amiss in a horribly written blog post and everyone says, "Oh, Mike, you're so wrong!"

Really? Yes, 10 people that are purely angel investors and no one else get together to discuss "stock options" and pretty much give Mike a big F-U when he shows up and jokingly says stuff about sitting down for a drink. This guy doesn't even deny that Mike showed up and they all were silent: that alone is worrisome to me. Furthermore, Mike lead us to believe he got this information from a few of those attending: not anonymous sources as some try to portray.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is pure rant, not much content.

But at least McClure is coming out and identifying himself as one of the people attended the meeting.

I wonder where and how this battle is going to end, both sides are equally powerful players.

<comment><USER9> What battle? To me it's all smoke an 0 fire.

<comment><USER38> Well, the battle between media accusation of 'colluding' and super angels asserting they are doing good for the valley.

Arrington definitely burned lots of bridges here to post this story out. While I'm not sure how credible his sources are, I envy his courage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Mr. McClure's hyperbole about goon squads aside, his public assertion about the nature of the meeting holds a lot more water for me than the frantic whisperings of anonymous sources.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anytime a bunch of people who sit on the same side of the table, economically speaking, get together, even socially, it's some flavor of collusion. Just forming social ties with people you should be in competition with is a little suspect. That doesn't automatically mean it's cartel-building, but it's not good news for the rest of us.

That said, is this a surprise to anyone? VCs are already groupthink-y enough. It is the natural behavior of oligopolies (de facto or otherwise) to seek to erect barriers to entry, and fix prices. We here operate in a sector that is still so wildly dynamic that we have better tools for breaking through that than begging the governmental leviathan to do it for us. We're faster, and can hit harder.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is just me, but I find this response entirely unnecessary.

I think everyone in that meeting should have just kept their mouths shut. Admittedly, there are a bunch of reasons not to. A brief, to the point statement would have sufficed (Like, say a Tweet, or 2). Regardless of personality or writing style, the post seems a bit over the top.

But then again, I don't know/follow the guy, so it's probably standard fare.

Regardless, his excessive, contrived hip hop/"ghetto" attitude is quite annoying and setting your Twitter display to a bin38 logo says enough to me.

Edited cause I missed a word.

</comment><comment><USER42> You figure he could be a little more professional. I guess a strategy for managing reputation risk is swear like a sailor in response to criticism and always ignore any specific concerns.

</comment><comment><USER43> Having met Dave, I can say he's one of those people you immediately trust. The guy is set financially, and is only is the investment game for the fun of it.

And yeah, his style is bizarre, but that's just the way he likes it.

Anyway, if he says this is all much ado about nothing, he's almost certainly telling the truth.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well, it seems Arrington was right...

</comment><comment><USER9> I think that balloon has been convincingly punctured.

There is a hint of the old English society in there, where who would get invited to which parties mattered almost as much as what was actually discussed. (not to mention the seating arrangements).

Mike being sore for not being invited to this particular get-together is something straight from the 1890's, he's interpreting it as one of two things, either TC (and his person) is irrelevant, _or_ there is something shady going on.

It can't be the former, so it has to be the latter.

A bit paranoid maybe.

<comment><USER45> Why would he be sore about not being invited? He's not an investor. He's a journalist/blogger.

<comment><USER11> Ego. He wasn't just not invited, but not even welcome for a drink. Normal people wouldn't have tried to crash in the first place, but Mike isn't normal.

<comment><USER9> Maybe they didn't want to read about their talk in TC in the morning so they decided not to invite him.

<comment><USER46> Well that sure seemed to backfire.

<comment><USER9> Yep. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dave: when you're talking about the changing world, your tone smacks of bravado and is refreshingly blunt. But when you're responding to somewhat serious allegations, that same tone comes off as Vicky Pollard. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLd3-cfLlvU>)

My humble advice? Have jeans and a suit; know when to wear what.

</comment><comment><USER48> Reading this post and Arrington's yesterday, I am starting to wonder about the meaning of the word "friend". If these guys are really all friends, maybe they ought to turn to their enemies because I wouldn't want friends like these as my own enemies ;-)

</comment><comment><USER49> Anyone who starts a post with "Unfortunately i probably have more balls than sense" is worth reading, if only for laughs. The typography and grammar leave a lot to be desired... but I'm in two minds about the content.

It's possible that this is a case of multiple perspectives, multiple interpretations. Some insiders think they're sitting down for a bit of kvetching, others think it's heading for a cartel (and blow the whistle). It'd be interesting to hear the perspective of a few of the other people around the table, especially the ones who tipped off Arrington.

Is there any other informed reaction to this stuff out there? Anyone else 'at the table' who's commented yet?

</comment><comment><USER50> Yes it is his normal style I get that but given the amount of attention the post was going to get, and the likely way people reading have taken the situation you'd think he would have toned it down a little.

</comment><comment><USER51> Anyone else notice the lack of denial of the wiki that Arrington spoke of?

Don't you think you'd mention there was no wiki if there was no wiki? There must be a wiki with something on it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I can't think of a time when Arrington was seriously wrong. His leads get in way before the news breaks and his stories have even altered what was to be announced.

I doubt Mike just made this all up. Especially how everyone in that room has feed him stories for the past 5 years. Do you think Mike (a lawyer) would seek legal advice unless this was real.

Funny enough, both sides of this story are trying to win over startups! Either way, we win.

</comment><comment><USER53> Not enough colors!

</comment><comment><USER48> All this drama begs 2 questions from my POV: Are we seeing the end of the net startup ecosystem as it's been since Netscape? Is this happening because too much transparency, too much blogging, tweeting, and spewing your guts publicly all the time only creates negative emotions: jealousy, fame obsessions, arrogance, hate?

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm trying to figure out who this was aimed at. Was it Mike? Was it PG? or Us the readers? Who is hating on Dave?

</comment><comment><USER55> Here's how the next Arrington/McClure interview will pan out:

-

Arrington: Did you order the (code red) meeting?

McClure: I did the job I ...

Arrington: Did you order the (code red) meeting ? [shouting]

McClure: You're God damn right I did. [shouting]

-

A Few Good Men. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/quotes?qt0470412>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOYGbM3nK9k#t=3m59s>

</comment><comment><USER56> McClure's post looks like the emails the whole company used to get from my menopausal VP back in 2001.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is a necessary denial. Why did Sundeep delete his tweet? He should've also made a denial.

</comment><comment><USER58> I know McClure somewhat personally, and while Arrington's speculation was fun, and I'm sure many investors are trying to counteract YC's strength, I think he is an upstanding guy, and one of the most honest, cut to the shit people in the valley.

<comment><USER59> I think it was established yesterday on Quora that McClure was actually Arrington's source on where the meeting took place, and judging by the language in Arrington's post - that same source was also one of his post- meeting sources, so it might be him again.

McClure was in the TC office right before this dinner took place.

<comment><USER58> So you're saying he's playing both sides? Wouldn't Arrington have called him out on that? I don't know the quota discussion you are referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Isn't the real question: Does he get results? That's all HN cares about, right? Not the outer trimmings?

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm at a complete loss as to why presumably intelligent people pay attention to technophobes like miek Arrington. It was obvious to me many years ago that lacked integrity.

McClure and Paul Graham, for instance, are people who I disagree with on at least one subject, but they have integrity. I cannot say the same for Arrington. He seems to be pathological to me.

<comment><USER62> He runs a business, and he tries to keep it relevant. A SV blog about start- ups that has to come out with 5 blog posts a day? You're going to run out of things to write about... why not create them?

I personally haven't dug deep enough into any of the flame-baity stories of tech-crunch, but considering more than half of them have typos, grammatical errors that make it difficult to read sometimes, little or no substantiated FACTS, make it all seem like gossip. A Tech-TMZ if you will.

It seems like they crank those stories out so fast they don't even bother to proof read them. _Some are starting to believe they don't bother to stop and evaluate the merit of the story to begin with._

Techcrunch is only relevant because enough people go there to _GAWK_ at MA's posts. Any of the legit stories are on other news sites within a day, usually better written and with more information. Its obvious that TC can be an armpit sometimes because it has the most stories written about itself.

I would be willing to entertain the idea that even if Mike was on to something, his reputation and execution on this story is like the boy crying wolf for real but no one takes him seriously anymore.

<comment><USER62> Don't understand the down votes - look at what other people are writing about this story on their blogs and in the comments. My sentiment seems to be adopted widely.

God forbid someone on HN evaluates TechCrunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Agree. It's nice to see what goes on in the backrooms of SV. And whatever Dave was on, get me some!</comment>


The 75-Year Saga Behind a Game That Teaches Preschoolers to Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/07/the-75-year-saga-behind-a-game-that-teachers-preschoolers-to-code/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion, including comments from the game's designer: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412780)

</comment><comment><USER3> aim really low, could not get a seven year old who loves computer stuff to play with it. I am not sure where the age break point is but it has to be pretty low. By then both niece and nephew were already into games on tablets/computers; usually minecraft; and didn't care for a board game (read: bored game)

Is there a iPad equivalent?

<comment><USER4> We need a way to introduce automation into minecraft.

<comment><USER5> I know there are mods that incorporate turtle graphics-controlled agents for automation. Of course, there is also redstone automation, which is useful, but also much more complicated.

For slightly older kids, there's the Minecraft Pi edition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It sounds very much like RoboRally, likely with dramatically simplified rules.

<comment><USER7> I thought the same. My friend introduced me to RoboRally with the words, "you'll enjoy this, since it is all about programming." I'll have to check out Robot Turtles with my 4 year old.</comment></comment>


World's first apartment recommendation engine. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/apartmentlist-launches-recommendation-engine-to-match-you-with-the-right-apartment/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I had a similar idea a couple months ago, but was more focused on being the Yelp for apartments/buildings/etc.

There's a huge opportunity for disruption here, and I think there's a good revenue model as leads are valuable to the people who lease the apartments and thus the commissions could be pretty good.</comment>


Walmart is abruptly closing 63 Sam's Clubs and laying off thousands of workers - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/walmart-suddenly-closes-sams-club-stores-2018-1?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> I really feel bad for the workers who are without a job with no warning. Interesting that this seems to be going under the radar compared to their "plans to raise starting hourly wages to $11, expand employee benefits, and offer workers bonuses of up to $1,000."

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the WARN act applies since they got laid off without any warning?

<comment><USER4> I imagine, if it does aoply, WalMart is just doing a pay-in-lieu, which is often cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given Walmart's history - I wonder if there was any union organizing going on at those locations?</comment>


Show HN: Serverless 2-player 2048 Game Using WebRTC with Annotated Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.instapainting.com/2x2048/ <comment><AUTHOR> Due to Safari's lack of WebRTC support, the demo does NOT work in Safari. Chrome and firefox are fine though.</comment>


Learning to Prove Theorems via Interacting with Proof Assistants - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09381 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20786982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20786982)</comment>


I analyzed the history of "Who is Hiring?" threads - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/web-scraping-with-python/ <comment><USER2> A little off topic... but I love this because it gives me an idea.

I've been looking at LinkedIn with some immensely negative feelings for some time now. I've always wished someone would just disrupt the hell out of them, because they don't deserve the near-monopolistic position they're in. They just don't care about their users!

And before someone says, "well [pushes up glasses] their real users are recruiters that they sell $20k/year seats to their search tool". Yeah, as a hiring manager I've tried using it. Awful! :)

And jobs boards are nothing new, I guess, but something feels really nice about how much bigger these "Who is Hiring?" threads are getting on HN. Maybe we really do need a jobs-centric "social network" for industry verticals. Beyond terrible UX and general disrespect, LinkedIn also just doesn't do enough with their data to make it useable. Maybe that's because it's just too hard to do for every job and industry out there.

And maybe that next-gen professionals' social network can be the first open and free one?

Or maybe I'm just wishing too hard for something that can't/won't be done.

<comment><USER3> LinkedIn has become plagued by self-help-like stories and other self promoting, vague and meaningless write ups, in my experience.

It wasn't always like this. I used to have a reasonably cool feed centered towards technologies and news that are at least partly relevant to me and my industry. No more. It's all 'I gave a homeless person lunch and today they are the #1 duck breeder in Brazil' or some other nonsense.

I don't know when this started or if it is localized, but it renders the 'place to find useful information' aspect of social media completely void. There's no amount of reasonable curating effort that will save a news feed like that.

I try not to be too negative about things but without some serious change I'll use a static LinkedIn profile and visit it for a fraction of a second every week - to check for messages - and nothing more.

<comment><USER4> I just can't stand the humble brag posts!

<comment><USER5> I know! As someone with 500+ contacts to high powered professionals I'm inundated with a huge amount of humble brag posts!

<comment><USER6> *chuckle

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I scraped 8 years of data on Who is Hiring? threads. The data is available through the article and on GitHub. Spoiler alert: people want to hire full time software engineers in San Francisco. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER7> If not intended as a learning exercise, why not use the existent API?

<comment><USER8> The author is still an undergraduate, so yeah, I'd file under "learning exercise".

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope to engage in learning exercises long after I graduate!

<comment><USER9> Hearing this was pretty refreshing and encouraging. Thanks for posting that, and I mean it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The data on "Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" is interesting and I think it can be misleading.

The disparity between freelancers seeking work and people seeking freelancers on HN is huge - way more people looking for work, than people looking to hire. That makes it feel like there is an oversupply of freelancers, which would drive down the pay rates.

However, I think it's more of a reflection of the HN audience than the broader market. I.E. HN readers don't hire as many contract/freelance employees. This aligns with what we've seen in practice as well. If software is the company's core competency, they will be less likely to hire contract or outsource.

On the other hand, there is a huge need for non-software companies to hire senior devs and they hire a lot of contract/freelance. Demand is high and rates are good ($120-200/hr)...at the right companies. So, if you are a contractor looking for work, I would target companies where software isn't their primary business.

Source: I run a company that helps senior software engineers find contract work. (Shameless plug: www.facetdev.com)

<comment><USER11> > I run a company that helps FAANG-rite-of-passage-waving software engineers > find contract work.

FTFY.

<comment><USER12> Please don't do this here.

<comment><USER13> I get the comment is a bit snarky, but if you dig into this guys site it's required that you have worked 3+ years at a "top tier company" with a rotating ticker of FAANG and other giant SV behemoths on it's front page ad, which IMO is fairly pretentious and warrants a bit of a call out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat. I'd be interested in seeing how many job posts are reposted each month, and which companies post the most. I have noticed many jobs/companies that are present almost every month.

The rainbow coloring of the graphs is distracting.

<comment><USER15> I had "plans" a while back to put together a cynically-named "Who's Not Hiring" script that did just that. Look at which companies post the same or extremely similar jobs month after month. Life got in the way and I abandoned the project early, but it would be interesting to see the results of such an effort.

<comment><USER16> I'm on a team at my current job with ~10 other engineers, and at my previous job I was on a team of ~12. With growth, retirements, and turnover at both jobs we are always hiring. My rough approximation from both jobs (spanning about 10 years) is that we're able to hire one person every 6 months. I'm not a hot tech geographic region, and the field I work in is somewhat niche, but there are many non-cynical reasons a job might be posted indefinitely.

<comment><USER17> Indefinitely posting while hiring only once every six months is actually the poster child of the problem. If it really takes six months to find someone to fit the role, you might want to take a look at your hiring process because as you must be rejecting (or ignoring the applications) a lot of great, qualified people.

IMHO if someone did take the time to publish the metrics of companies who perpetually post the same positions, it would be a fair counter balance.

<comment><USER18> I'd argue six months is about average for the jobs I've seen and had over the years. Not every role needs an off-the-shelf front end dev.

A lot of things really do require significant domain and industry specific knowledge. For those roles, it takes a very long time to turn up even one minimally qualified candidate. It's easy to say "find someone bright who can learn on the job", but that's not practical in the cases I've seen.

Many things need either specialized education or experience in a similar role to be effective within a 2-3 year timeframe. When on-the-job training would take multiple years, it's worth spending six months to a year to find someone who can fill the role. At least in the industries I've worked in, the roles that require extensive and rare training/experience outnumber the roles that don't.

<comment><USER15> If you take six _weeks_ to hire someone (let alone six MONTHS!) then you're probably missing out on candidates who have other good, quicker options. I remember doing a phone screen with a major telco whose name starts with A, ends with T and has a T in the middle. It seemed to go well, then silence (as often happens with tech interviews). Well I did a few interviews at other companies, picked one, signed everything, moved my family across the country, and started work there. About 9 weeks after that phone screen, they finally got back to me with: "We thought the initial interview went great! How about coming onsite for the next step?" LOL

<comment><USER16> Our hiring process doesn't take 6 months -- we're only able to find a candidate, interview them, negotiate, and have them accept an offer every 6 months. Our biggest problem is just finding people to apply. In the last ~8 years I count only about 100 total applicants to our jobs (I'm not counting internship job listings where we got a lot of student applicants). We tried posting jobs on HN Who's Hiring for about 6 months and got _zero_ serious candidates, so we stopped.

<comment><USER19> Out of curiosity, do you put a competitive salary range on your posts? I suspect that if you put a range that is above the median for your locale you might have more bites. Only other reason I can think is if your technology stack is outdated or you are located in an area where no one wants to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People who are saying that the author should have used an API are missing the point; sometimes the only way to gather data is by resorting to scraping, and this article details how one could go about doing that, by using an interesting target: HN.

To the author: Good job, I'm sure many people will find your article useful! I wish I would've had this article at hand a couple of years ago when I needed to aggregate data from several websites that provided no API.

<comment><USER21> > sometimes the only way to gather data is by resorting to scraping

Nowadays, web scraping has a nonzero risk of hitting _legal_ issues for sites when "the only way to gather data is by resulting to scraping", especially when an API already exists with a ToS/Guidelines on how the data should be obtained and used. And even moreso if the data itself has monetary value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> HTML scraping should be the _last_ option you consider to get data after all else fails.

Even though the Hacker News API ([https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)) is somewhat old, it's a much more kosher way of getting data.

Even better is to use the public data dump in BigQuery ([https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/y-combi...](https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/y-combinator/hacker- news)). Quick query to get all top-level comments in posts by whoishiring:

        #standardSQL
        WITH whoishiring_posts AS (
          SELECT id from `bigquery-public-data.hacker_news.full`
          WHERE `by`="whoishiring" AND type="story"
        )

        SELECT text
        FROM `bigquery-public-data.hacker_news.full`
        WHERE type="comment"
        AND parent IN (SELECT id from whoishiring_posts)

<comment><USER22> The API that [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) provides can also be used! In my experience, it's more verbose and the queries are more customisable.

<comment><USER23> This is great! I've been wondering for a while how to efficiently load a comment tree without spamming the Hacker News API with hundreds of requests, and this seems like it would work nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While the article seem intended as a web scraping tutorial, it's good to remember that there is an official HN api [1] in case you really want to do data science on the site.

[1] [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

</comment><comment><USER25> Why didn't you just use the Algolia API? I used the Algolia API to build a 24 / 7 live stream of randomly selected highly voted HN vídeos [https://www.crowdform.co.uk/hntv](https://www.crowdform.co.uk/hntv) saved me a lot of time

</comment><comment><USER26> The last section about when not to scrap warms my heart.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It was important to me to include that in an article intended to teach the skill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you're still feeling froggy with your data, I'd love a follow up with some NLP term frequency used in the posts.

Did intern frequency drop or did the sheer increase in posts shrink their overall percentage? The concern I have there is the idea of becoming too "top heavy" where no one is interested in helping interns grow and only want to recruit experienced people.

<comment><AUTHOR> You raise a great question. I also wonder if Hacker News as a platform tends towards more senior people, I know that I usually feel like one of the least experienced people in most comment sections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nice work! One comment - the plots show the fraction (not percentage) of postings for interns and remote workers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Since we're in the middle of the Who is Hiring cycle, what's the best way to post a couple of jobs?

</comment><comment><USER30> What happened on December 2011 and June 2013? Why is there no data?

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple of months were missing for each data set, if you page through the "whoishiring" user submissions you'll notice them missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> love this, beautiful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what are the best start-up/entrepreneurial blogs of 2013? - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading The Lean Startup and Running Lean over the holidays and they both originated from blogs. I'm wondering what are some of the best startup blogs out there right now? I'd love to read some of the most cutting edge work in this space. What have people leaned in the years since these books were published?<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> Reading about doing startups is something like reading about sex--it fails to show the messiness of the endeavour, everyone seems to be a lot more successful than they actually are, things seems like harmless fun all the time, and ultimately you're just wanking.

Read less ship more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get the point you're trying to make however instinct only gets people so far. Sometimes by sharing experiences with others who've done leads to fewer mistakes. I agree that if you only read and do nothing it's a wank.

<comment><USER2> Well, that's also why you want an experienced partner for both endeavours. ;)

<comment><USER3> LOL</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Advice from America's Worst Mom - <AUTHOR> http://theweek.com/article/index/96342/The_last_word_Advice_from_Americas_worst_mom

<comment><USER5> From the point of view of a Soviet immigrant to the US, the predominant public reaction the author describes is quite bewildering. It is hard for me to imagine how an 8 or 9 year old child riding a subway could be the basis of a sensational news story; if anything, 8 or 9 sounds like a seasoned, advanced age.

I came here when I was 6, in 1992, and did quite a bit of my growing up subsequently in a well-tended, well-watched family-oriented graduate student housing facility on the campus of a private university. Not exactly the 'hood. My parents, as all the (predominantly foreign) residents there, were busy graduate students trying to make it on a ~$10k/year stipend with student visa- based work restrictions, and, being in the humanities field, faced quite daunting demands to excel so distinctively according to the rules of their field in order to have a stab at staying in this country after their visa ran out. So, of course, they were busy working/studying until 10-11 PM.

Never in my wildest dreams as a Moscow child could I have imagined that leaving me alone in that highly enclosed, heavily security-patrolled, communal environment full of watchful neighbours and fellow parents would be considered "child neglect" under Indiana state law, nor that, in fact, it would be so until the age of 12 to leave me home alone for _any_ amount of time, strictly speaking, as a statutory matter.

In fact, I was one of the very few children of ex-USSR or Eastern European extraction who was not, at some point during this tenure, essentially kidnapped by university security with no notice given to the parents and placed in a foster family for a few days while the shocked and aggrieved parents were badgered with saber-rattling about child neglect by whatever state agency. I avoided it narrowly by a stroke of luck; on many occasions, e.g. winter nights, when I was playing outside - in the dark! - at the precarious hour (!) of 8 PM, I saw the university cops peering out of their patrol cars, eyeing me like prey. Honestly, these keystone cops were a far greater danger to my welfare than any conceivable predator. They were often unpleasant and openly contemptuous, amplifying the psychologically traumatic fear of police and other martial authorities that is already built into any child of Soviet parents by inheritance. To this day, I still have this reaction to cops that I must surely be "guilty" of something, even though I'm innocent. The way that they provided foundations for that feeling, with their hostile dispositions, abrasive lines of questioning, etc. was a lot more injurious to my development as an individual than free association with other kids until mid-evening in a protected communal yard.

It is difficult to imagine a safer environment for a child than the kind of place that this was. If there were ever a place where there were some adults around at almost times, and neighbours you knew and could count on in case of an emergency, this was definitely it.

The stream of sanctimonious busybodies from the state child/welfare agency that would occasionally come around to harass these poor, tired foreigners was just unbelievable. Now that I've lived in Georgia for 10 years, I make an analogy to what Georgia's agency - DFACS (Department of Family and Children's Services) - spends its time doing in predominantly working-class Hispanic- occupied trailor parks and poor black neighbourhoods down here.

Some of this is just an incorrigible cultural and institutional defect, as other comments have pointed out. Another important difference with the USSR specifically, though, is that we had households with two working parents for a lot longer than has been normative in the US; our entry of women into the workforce dates back almost to the revolution, in keeping with the Marxist gender equality premise. So, Soviet society developed institutional solutions and accommodations[1] for this relatively early. A necessary consequence is that children had to lead a parent-independent existence much earlier in their lives than if the premise of a full-time stay-at-home mother is granted.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia#Pre- school_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia#Pre- school_education) \-- see the paragraph ("The Soviet system...")

</comment><comment><USER6> In Japan there are lots of kids commuting to school at six or eight years old, often across town or in different cities. Everyone thinks I'm batshit insane when I tell them what Americans would think of it. I am mostly on board with this, although I did walk an eight year old to the station in downtown Nagoya because he was walking there at ten pm.

<comment><USER7> Same in Vienna. There are no special school buses, kids just use the same buses and trains as everyone else. In more rural areas (such as where I grew up) kids either get the bus or walk/cycle. In fact, I remember walking home from school together with friends as being quite fun (highlight of the day?), with various adventures to be had along the way. And nobody freaked when it took me twice as long to get home as it should have because we found something exciting in a ditch along the way or decided we needed to climb a tree.

I'm pretty sure any incidents would hit the media pretty quickly. That said, driving your kids to school seems to be much more common now than it was 20 years ago.

My girlfriend, who grew up in the UK, was amazed when she first witnessed the kids on public transport, but then the UK is an extreme case of overzealous protection. These days you apparently can't just pick someone else's kids up from school without special paperwork.

<comment><USER8>
      UK is an extreme case of overzealous protection

Which does not work? I am too lazy to look for sources right now, but wasn't there a research wich found that childern in UK are the most unhappy in the world? Not to mention problems with alcohol and teenage pregnancy. I guess this kind of protection is like trying to protect someone by not allowing him to walk on his feet. When finally let go he'd just collapse at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Me (4 back then) & my cousin (5) took off one day from the city where our moms were with us, to our home city (20km - not much) - we walked, ate some grass, kicked some signs, tooks two buses - one in right direction, one wrong - <USER2> from 9:00AM, uptill 4pm or later we were at the door of my grandmother & grandfather asking for the truck toy (that's why we started, we needed to play in the sand and we were missing an important vehicle).

That was in Bulgaria, around 1980s - Yes people were worried, but not much - it might've been the communist era that either did not produce much child related crime, or such were hiddenly took and dealt with (by still spreading that everything is okay).

Nowadays (especially was it 2004-2005) - there was whole media frenzy of kids disappearing - for about week or so. I've looked at the statistics - <USER3> nothing was different for that week compared to previous years - it's just that media picked it up.

It's exactly that - media - not news source - I'm talking about CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the crap that they do. I used to love CNN, I don't think I do anymore...

Anyway just my experience.

Oh, and later it was no problem for me taking of one part of the city (Burgas) and walking 2 or 3km through couple of streets, just to go to where my grandmother worked, and they go back, and stroll the streets.

Hell, our most favourite kid movies were about kids strolling all day streets either at their home cities, or at tourist resort places their parents were staying.

But nowadays.. It's just too much, too soft, and too tight at the same time.

As the article is saying: "Preaching independence while warning against it."

</comment><comment><USER10> I grew up in rural Alaska. By the time I was 8, I was hunting small game unsupervised. I was allowed to operate an ATV on my own as soon as I was physically able to work all the controls (I rode it with a parent's assistance before that). It was a bit longer before I got to take out the motorboat on my own. I may have been a bit younger than average for the area when I started doing some of these things, but not by much.

None of these things caused problems. People didn't start having ATV or gun accidents until they discovered alcohol and inhalants. No children were eaten by wolves or bears. I was a much happier child because of the freedom, and I think, a much more self-reliant adult.

</comment><comment><USER11> Since I was 9, I looked for my 6 years old brother after school and brought him back home by bus every day. Granted, occasionally it would take me 20 minutes to find him and I'd get frustrated at why he was playing in the sand pit when we were supposed to go home, but it's not like we ever got kidnapped by strangers or anything....

That was only 11 years ago in Australia.

</comment><comment><USER12> My son (about 8) just managed to walk a half mile across streets and traffic lights to the grocery store to buy lemons -- for lemonade.

Beyond the fact that he managed to overpay for the lemons, he came back safe, proud and happy.

Sign me up for worst father!

<comment><USER13> Jesus, who would rip off an 8-year-old?

<comment><USER14> I can so see a too energetic kid throwing money on the table and not listening to the clerk to come get his change and running out of the door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why isn't she teaching her children to be afraid of everything? So unamerican.

I fully expected this to be a Jessi Slaughter article. _That_ is a set of bad parents.

</comment><comment><USER16> The U.S. stands far and beyond any other place in this respect, though I suspect some of the same influence is starting to creep in elsehere as well.

In The Best Country in the World(*), I used to walk to first grade by myself and thereafter rode buses/subway/trains by myself or with schoolmates - <USER4> like everyone else here. Most of us even came home to an empty house and had to manage to feed ourselves before the parents got home some hours later.

This used to be the norm about a decade ago still when my younger brother was in that age range, but recently based on public discussion it seems the bubblewrap parents are gaining a foothold.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really wonder if all these parents today were so tremendously traumatized by their freer range that they have to coop their kids up all day to avoid that kind of catastrophe? Are there really millions of child rearing adults suffering from PTSD because they go to ride the bus alone at 9? I've yet to really understand this strange phenomenon of the shrinking roaming area.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How- children-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children- lost-right-roam-generations.html)

I grew up in an urban area, then moved at 10 to a very rural one. In both places my "roaming" area was several miles in any direction from my house. In fact, my parents set my roaming area in the city to a specific triangle of roads that they felt were too big to and dangerous for me to cross, but weren't too mad when my friends and I did on occasion veer outside of those lines. If I had an older friend with us (he had to be at least 13) then we could pretty much go anywhere our feet or bikes could take us in a day.

I did this until I was about 10, then we moved to a very rural area and my boundaries became very large indeed...basically as far as I was able to walk.

My parent's were aghast when they were contacted by the local rural middle school after the principle had seen me cutting across an intersection in front of the school after class one day to get to the local shopping mall to hang out at the arcade. He demanded that I either take the bus home, or get a cab to take me literally across the street, an activity I had previously performed, at a much younger age, dozens of times a day.

</comment><comment><USER18> When I went to study for a semester in Rochester, I didn't have a car and tried at first to hitchhike.

What really surprised me was how scared most people were (especially when it was around 8pm at night) when I would approach them. It was as if they automatically thought that only a thief or a criminal would be coming to them in a car park.

In France, Spain and Germany (I used to walk 40 minutes to school there when I was 12), I've never seen that, people don't expect the worse to happen to them and don't seem to have their heads filled with tabloid whatifs scenarios or at least not yet.

<comment><USER19> I'm wary of people at night, but that's because I actually got mugged recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "A year ago, journalist Lenore Skenazy caused a media sensation when she let her 9-year-old ride New York City's subway by himself."

a) Outside of how many acres of Manhattan? b) Which lasted until when? The next silly-ass story for an ADHD media cycle, I suppose.

Back in the day (Kennedy administration) having your Mom walk with you to school was a fine way to be marked as a loser (though we didn't know that word yet). I usually read on my way to work, but I'm fairly sure I do see kids younger than middle school riding solo or at least without adult supervision on DC buses.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would absolutely worry, but I hope I'd be able to let it happen.

This is a nice, semi-controlled experience that's probably good for everyone. Should the parent and child become separated, for example, I'd imagine that the knowledge each has--that arriving independently at a safe destination is routine--is serious peace of mind factor.

This is similar to the fire safety plans a lot of us did as kids. Didn't anyone else crawl out the window and down the fire escape and meet our parents a few blocks away, despite the building not actually burning, just to be prepared?

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the outrage over this is part of the same trend described in the 20-somethings article ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614280> ). If kids are more sheltered, then it would make sense that it takes longer for them to "grow up" and start making decisions of their own. It could also explain why the partying and debauchery is so crazy at American colleges (the first real taste of independence), although I can't honestly say I know what its like anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER23> Times are different. I walked to school since kindergarten, but no way I let mine when it came time. (Certain years we drove just because we lived where there were no bus routes, and making a small kid walk that far with heavy backpacks just never made sense from a time POV.) Imagine that though, they actually survived my paranoia.

But now? No way unless they were a few years older. NYC needs to watch more of that news they dismiss: Attempted kidnappings happen a lot in the burbs. All paranoia is local though.

</comment><comment><USER24> This kind of thing is very common in almost every corner of the world where there are subways and in general a decent public transportation system. That's how my brother and I grew up. We were basically on our own since 1st grade because where I grew up everything was a two station ride and a block away.

<comment><USER17> Something similar is also common in very rural places. Where walking miles through the woods, or along a dirt road are the normative ways local kids find each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Man alive! I was taking the bus home from school by myself from FIRST grade.

<comment><USER9> My boss, a native californian, told me that he used to take the bike and cycle for about mile, two or more to his school, and then back (San Fernando Valley).

<comment><USER26> And that's special? Jesus. I was walking to elementary school starting in first grade (half a mile) and biking to my next school right from the beginning (fifth grade, a bit more than a mile) and I was taking the bus when the weather was too bad for me to take the bike (which includes walking half a mile to the nearest bus station). That's nothing special in Germany. Everyone does it.

<comment><USER17> I live in boring suburbia. The elementary, middle and high schools are a 10, 15 and 20 minute walk from house respectively. Somehow, I still have to contend with kids all over the neighborhood dutifully lining up so that the bus can come pick them up at the crack of dawn and then drive them, 2...maybe 3 minutes to their schools. It's stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorry, another post.

But what happened to the "Little Red Riding Hood Story"?

How do we interpret in nowadays US standards? I guess it makes sense, huh! The big bad wolf, right!

<comment><USER27> Actually, my understanding is that "Little Red Riding Hood" is a tale of sexual predation. "Little Red Riding Hood" is a euphemism for the clitoris and it's generally a lot more obvious in French that it's a sexual morality tale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've lived without a car for about 2 1/2 years in Suburbia, USA. The character of my neighborhood has changed. You see more kids outside playing. Teens walk to the nearby shopping center now. So this stuff can change -- and I think it needs to. I think Peak Oil will compel America to make some changes of some sort. Hopefully, we will use it as an excuse for constructive changes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ride a train? By the time my daughter is 9 she'll be flying alone back and forth betweenOK)</comment>


Ask PG: Will you ban links to theatlantic.com? - <AUTHOR>

Regarding the publishing of a "sponsored content" piece promoting Scientology (http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/scientology/archive/2013/01/david-miscavige-leads-scientology-to-milestone-year-/266958/) discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5057819<p>Would you be willing to consider banning/deleting all links to theatlantic.com? I propose that they've shown they cannot be considered a trustworthy/serious source of news and/or commentary. <comment><USER2> I trust PG to make the right decision.

As an Atlantic editor, I'd only note that this decision was not made by the people who produce our magazine's journalism.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would hate to be in your shoes right now. Whoever did make this decision has significantly harmed the brand that you as an editor work hard to build up. I'm sorry that you have been put in that situation.</comment></comment>


Linux Ftrace TCP Retransmit Tracing - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-09-06/linux-ftrace-tcp-retransmit-tracing.html

<comment><USER2> > I really should be using a programmable tracer like SystemTap

I was gonna say, I have done exactly this using SystemTap.

Looking at your script, stap has a lot more "batteries included" so such a script ends up being a lot shorter.

Even with a custom guru-mode function to pull more data out the skb, such as window size or retransmission timer, it's easy to do this in under 30 lines using SystemTap.

SystemTap also has the advantage of being able to modify data in the running kernel, not just read it. I haven't used this a great deal, but some other guys at work have used it to reproduce corruption bugs which would otherwise take months to re-appear.

<comment><USER3> It's borderline. While this is a hack, ftrace and kprobes are built-in to the kernel, and are immediately available on all our production Ubuntu and CentOS instances. And /proc/net/tcp is usually still valid for long-running sessions with retransmits. I'll install and use SystemTap when there's no other practical way.

I wrote some other TCP scripts using ftrace, and the caching of /proc/net/tcp approach didn't cut it (due to short-lived sessions, which were too often missing by the time /proc/net/tcp could be read), and I'll need to rewrite them in SystemTap (or something else). Those make much better examples of why SystemTap. I'll publish them when I get a chance.

<comment><USER2> I do like your method in that it doesn't require anything additional installed, that's a big advantage.

Sometimes SystemTap isn't an option because of various restrictions, such as long-winded change control or simply not allowing compilers on production systems. Plus debuginfo packages just seem to confuse people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> get it</comment>


Ask HN: If Donald Knuth woke up 10,000 years ago, how would he build a computer? - <AUTHOR> Assume he knows what he knows now, but is a strapping young man. <comment><USER2> He wouldn't. He would finish TAOCP. Frankly the math is more important than any chunk of hardware.

Even if he just got really bored and wanted hardware, I don't think he would have the knowledge to do it. It is one thing to know how to use all the tools, it is another thing altogether to know how to engineer high quality tools with nothing but sticks, stones, and no help.

<comment><USER3> This is the man who, when he wanted good looking typesetting for the second volume of TAOCP, spent over a decade making TeX to do that with.

Of course he would stop and build a computer first. And universities where people would read his books, banking and mail institutions to send people checks through after they report bugs, and so on. One needs to have some preconditions in place first, obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that even a mechanical computer like Babbage's would be pretty far beyond what you could accomplish with the technology available 10K years ago - to make precision gears you'd need a machine shop, and to build that you'd need to be able to build the machines and tools, and to make those you'd need to be able to refine metals, etc. 10000 years ago was 5000 years before the Bronze Age and 3000 years before the Iron Age. It would be hard for one person to reconstruct all that technological infrastructure single-handedly (and as far as I know, Knuth knows a lot about CS but not a whole lot about metalworking). And to build any kind of electronics (e.g., vacuum tubes or relays) you'd have to be able to manufacture glass, wire, etc. Forget semiconductors...

(I assume that by "computer" you mean a device that can store a program in memory and execute it.)

This reminds me of an old quote from Mr. Spock on Star Trek:

"I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins." [1]

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708455/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708455/quotes)

<comment><USER5> With a little creativity. computers can be made out quite primitive items. Of course, one might need to define what constitutes a computer.

The Tinkertoy Computer

A. K. Dewdney's article, "Computer Recreations: An ancient rope-and-pulley computer is unearthed in the jungle of Apraphul

Domino computer

[http://www.blikstein.com/paulo/projects/project_water.html](http://www.blikstein.com/paulo/projects/project_water.html)

Lehmer sieves

How to Build a Working Digital Computer (1967)by Edward Alcosser, James P. Phillips, and Allen M. Wolk

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He would bang stones together. Then, on finding the different tones they make he would discover the inherent math in music. He would then utilize this to make a basic program to make people dance. From this he would find out about looping (repeating sections of music).

Then he would invent a way for others to program (musical notation) and start to write it on cave walls. But, unhappy with the quality of the charcoal used for writing he would devote years to developing a new type of ink capable of pretty printing.

Finally he would retreat to a distant cave to work on The Art of People Programming.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think he would build a computer. 10k years ago was before writing. I imagine if anyone were transported that far back they'd want to focus on the stuff that has a huge impact (hygiene, food, basic medicine, potable water, writing, architecture, etc.) for the people at that time period.

There's a lot of common things we all know that we take for granted that would make a world of difference for people so long ago.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most readily available material is sticks. Make em into gears powered by water flow in a river. Your very own prehistoric calculator. After ciliization starts mining and improving it's ability to shape raw materials your computers can advance with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Version 1:

Hey mum!, what's this animal?

Oh, my fungus!, a human thing!, aren't they extinct? throw your scholar computer to it, and crawl as fast as you can, little blob!.

Alternative version:

1)-Chose the colour of your computer

2)-Press a button.

"Thanks Mr. Knuth, your new computer will be 3D-printed in computer modern and delivered in 20 minutes".

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)

</comment><comment><USER11> He'd build the the Abacus 10000BC using advanced wooden disk and stick technology.</comment>


Learning from Steve Jobs, 2 years on - <AUTHOR> http://jimrattray.net/blog/2013/10/7/learning-from-steve-jobs-2-years-on

<comment><AUTHOR> The author asks whether legacy is better measured by tangible accomplishment or lasting influence?

IMO one large tangible accomplishment can lead to lasting notoriety. If you stack multiple accomplishments together, a lasting influence starts to build.

If Steve Jobs only built the Apple II, then that would be it. But he was able to continuously string together a series of accomplishments (even amongst some spectacular failures).</comment>


Reddit: can anyone clean up the mess behind 'the front page of the internet'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/12/reddit-can-ceo-ellen-pao-clean-up-the-mess <comment><USER2> "That's more than double the population of the entire UK, so it makes about as much sense as generalising every single person in the UK, if the UK had twice as many people."

Great quote.

One thing I have noticed with subreddits is that whenever a subreddit passes a threshold of subscribers and gets more frontpage exposure, the quality gets worse and worse until everyone starts hating it, unless moderators take serious action. It happened to many of them, from /r/atheism to /r/gaming, to /r/adviceanimals. As you get more people into any community, it needs more policing and moderation. AskReddit and some others have stricter rules and seem to be doing better.

<comment><USER3> This is so true. I frequent a wide variety of online communities and the same can be said of any of them. Any increase in the rate of new posts always leads to a degradation in post quality until 'stream rate' is reached and people are posting without the expectation of their posts even being read. Maintaining a healthy post rate is crucial but, as you say, quality also needs to be enforced by some form of moderation with unambiguous rules. Evolutions of a community can be tied strongly to post-rate fluctuations over time and most long term users are well aware of these iterations. On forums, large communities can be splintered for the benefit of quality and discussion.

<comment><USER4> The phenomenon is quite old. See e.g. "eternal september" [0]. The sad thing is that nobody has any better idea than strict rules enforced without mercy.

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

<comment><USER5> > The sad thing is that nobody has any better idea than strict rules enforced > without mercy.

The other sad thing is that so many online communities die because the moderators aren't willing to resort to that, even though it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried to take the article serious until it classified all NSFW subreddits as reddits dark side.

Yeah because collections of pictures of naked women are now so horrible they must be "cleaned up".

<comment><USER7> I've got some news for them. Everyone is naked under their clothes. Its horrible.

<comment><USER8> "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." \- Mark Twain

<comment> mkr-hn That depends on what they're doing while naked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The subreddit infographic is terrible on its own, but the underlying logic (moderator connections) is just abysmal. There was a time (maybe now, even, if they haven't fixed it) where any subreddit could add anyone as a moderator without their permission. Here's Zach Braff's actual reddit profile, for a fun example: [https://www.reddit.com/user/zachinoz](https://www.reddit.com/user/zachinoz)

</comment><comment><USER10> But reddit isn't a single thing, it's a place for communities. Surely, it can't all be messy, let alone equally messy.

<comment><USER11> The "clean up Reddit" campaign is likely an effort to get Reddit to impose ideologically-driven authoritarian administration (more so than already exists). 4chan was subjected to a similar campaign and eventually yielded.

Reddit's traditional approach has, for the most part, been to err on the side of freedom of speech with minimal rules. Aside from the core rules, subreddit fiefdoms are allowed to manage their domains as moderators see fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reddit _can 't_ clean itself up, which is actually _the primary reason_ why it's looking into alternative business models outside of advertising (Reddit TV, RedditMade, Reddit Coin), since advertisers may not be willing to sponsor a website with such material.

The fact that all of those models have failed miserably is a separate issue.

<comment><USER11> One thing they could do is create a separate domain/branding for subreddits that aren't squeaky clean so things look different on the surface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >SRS moderator: "but there are hate movements that use Reddit as a propaganda organ… and someone needs to step up and get rid of them."

Well yeah... like SRS. These people are oblivious to irony.

</comment><comment><USER14> I personally like the mess. If Reddit ever got "cleaned up" I don't think I would ever return.

</comment><comment><USER15> NSFW also images of deliberate self harm

Interesting that they mention goatsac. He helps moderate /r/cuttersgonewild - a sub reddit that reposts images from /r/selfharmpics and adds sexual language. Admins have been told, many times. They don't care. On Reddit it is fine to take a vulnerable person's image, add sexualising language, and repost it to a different sub.

To view /r/selfharmpics you need to change your settings to stop subs showing you custom CSS. For some reason /r/selfharmpics blanks the display.

See this example:

Original post to /r/selfharmpics

[http://www.reddit.com/r/selfharmpics/comments/2zbipf/nsfw_br...](http://www.reddit.com/r/selfharmpics/comments/2zbipf/nsfw_bruise/)

Repost to /r/cuttersgonewild

[http://www.reddit.com/r/CuttersGoneWild/comments/2zef7c/dadd...](http://www.reddit.com/r/CuttersGoneWild/comments/2zef7c/daddy_spanked_her_but_its_self_harm_because_she/)

(The Imgur header text is confusing. It's a bug[1] caused by /r/selfharmpics blanking the display in CSS.)

I've seen users send multiple PMs to suicidal young people telling them to just kill themselves. The users report the PMs; they block the account; they take screenshots and message the admins -- nothing happens, even if that account has messaged multiple people telling them to kill themselves.

Ask someone to upvote a post in a different thread? Fucking instaban.

</comment><comment><USER16> Censorship of things you find offensive is not a great answer.

<comment><USER17> I would like a comment system that lets me choose my own moderators either directly or indirectly based on comments that i upvote. Then, if enough of my moderators downvote a comment, i wouldn't see it.

<comment><USER8> Interesting idea. But, echo-chamber much?

<comment><USER17> Possibly, but I think it would be easy to engineer solutions to make an echo- chamber less likely. I would still be in control and able to see hidden comments like reddit where the hive-mind basically censors things but still allows them to be accessed if you dig.

I guess that I just want something where I have a little more control as a user. Many times on reddit there is a huge thread of jokes or puns that is totally off-topic and I'd like to avoid them if I choose to. Many times I want zero moderation so I can see what everybody is saying without having to click "load more comments" on every sub-thread.

I can think of lots of variations on the basic idea of picking your own moderators. I like the idea of untying a subject from a specific set of moderators. So a sub-reddit would just be a subject, but not a set of moderators. There could be a moderator marketplace where individuals or teams of moderators who advertise their style and specify things like no-jokes, no- puns, etc. There could be robot moderators as well. I would also like to give my team of personal comment-curators more controls than just up and down-vote like tagging or like the slashdot system where you could mark things as funny/off-topic/etc.

(Crowd voting is a type of moderation too and I'd like to be able to ignore them because I don't always trust the alleged majority.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As long as there are clear guidelines, they can use text, image, and behavioral algorithms to do some serious clean up. I doubt it will ever be perfect

</comment><comment><USER19> Guardian call for censorship, with primary source being SRS mod which goes by moniker Dworkin, which happens to be a nod to Andrea Dworkin - very radical and men-hating person.

Good job, Guardian!

<comment><USER20> The brits have been cuckolds for a while now, so this isn't really surprising.

<comment><USER13> One article by two journalists for one paper does implies nothing about the British opinion of reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think anyone involved in SRS can be taken seriously enough to be cited as an authority on anything. Yikes

<comment><USER22> On the contrary, good satire is often founded upon deep insights.

<comment><USER23> I don't find SRS to be satirical in the least. Hateful, sometimes. Aggressive, frequently. Strongly biased? Their bias is spelled out in the subreddit name.

The reason they bubble to the top of so many news articles is because SRS' brand of equality is so strongly polarized in a way which makes for great soundbites. Want to know what's "wrong" with Reddit? Grab a headline out of SRS. Want a view on how to "improve" Reddit? Talk to a SRS moderator.

If you're looking for satire, check out /r/circlejerk/. They do a great job at finding what's so wrong with the posts that hit the front page and satirizing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love how there's a "[sic]" after "penes", even though that's the correct plural.

</comment><comment><USER24> Internet: can anyone clean up the mess behind 'the world wide web'?

<comment><USER25> That makes me remember the now famous quote:

      The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural
      resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made.
      When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-
      -free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

        -- Alan Kay

<comment><USER26> What year is that quote from?

<comment><USER27> 2012: the full interview is here: [http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and- design/interview-wit...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and- design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442?pgno=1)

The complete quote:

Binstock: One thing about jazz aficionados is that they take deep pleasure in knowing the history of jazz.

Kay: Yes! Classical music is like that, too. But pop culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you're participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future — it's living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from] — and the Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

Edit to add some context:

Kay: Go to a blog, go to any Wiki, and find one that's WYSIWYG like Microsoft Word is. Word was done in 1984. HyperCard was 1989. Find me Web pages that are even as good as HyperCard. The Web was done after that, but it was done by people who had no imagination. They were just trying to satisfy an immediate need. There's nothing wrong with that, except that when you have something like the Industrial Revolution squared, you wind up setting de facto standards — in this case, really bad de facto standards. Because what you definitely don't want in a Web browser is any features.

<comment><USER28> It's amazing how much harder a decent wysiwyg is to make in web technologies than you'd think. Content editable was supposed to get us there, but needs a ton of override. Grouping key and click events into actions the way youd expect ms word to function is again not easy!

<comment><USER27> It is difficult, I agree. But that's not really the point Kay is trying to make. Why should we implement these things in the web browser? Further in the interview, Kay remarks that _that_ is exactly the problem - that we are reinventing technologies that were around for decades (reinventing them poorly to boot, as he puts it "reinventing a flat tire").

I happen to agree with him in theory: I think it's a huge missed opportunity to force the browser to be an application delivery mechanism instead of a content-delivery mechanism (or "object"-delivery as he puts it).

But of course in practice, there are historical and political reasons as to why web-as-an-app-delivery-mechanism happened, not least of which - if we took Kay's example of MS Word - is Microsoft's unwillingness to open up the platform (or proprietary software, in general). So we had to re-solve these problems in non-proprietary ways, while forcing proprietary app providers to conform to web standards that would ultimately and perhaps knowingly cannibalize their software sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nope they can't. Reddit is too much full of bullshit, hate, and things like that.

<comment><USER30> The mainstream subreddits can be, but get into hobby subreddits and it is a great community. /r/startups, /r/homebrewing, /r/malefashionadvice. Even /r/personalfinance got front paged is still going strong.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Browser extension that uncovers email address from linkedin profile? - <AUTHOR> I remember it was posted here a few months ago and it was a free extension that someone made and it put a button in the top of your browser bar that you could click when you were looking at someone's linkedin profile and it would find all of the email addresses associated with that person. I can't seem to find it though... <comment><AUTHOR> Found it, its contactout.io - looks like they don't allow free email accounts anymore and also limit it to 50 searches.</comment>


Show HN: Noticeable – Easily keep your audience updated on what's new - <AUTHOR> https://noticeable.io <comment><USER2> This is how the page looks for me on first load in FF Nightly 59.0a1 (2018-01-16) (64-bit): [https://imgur.com/RME3NZA](https://imgur.com/RME3NZA).

Console prints error: SyntaxError: expected expression, got '<' webcomponents- hi-sd.js:1

Works fine in Chrome but IE and Edge have the same blank page issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your feedback.

For FF it seems due to a service we are using (hotjar). We have pushed a new version that removes it. If you clear the cache and refresh the page it should work with FF.

We are investigating for IE and Edge. Could you please share the versions?

<comment><USER2> Same result (blank page) in Nightly after cache clear.

Correction for Edge - it does work, just takes a second for the page to appear.

IE is 11.125.16299.0.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's weird. We will perform more testing on Windows. Thanks again!

<comment><AUTHOR> We identified a problem caused by LastPass. If you use the extension and want to browse our website, please disable the extension. We've contacted LastPass support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Every Changes Matter(tm)", is there a reason you've written this as opposed to "All Changes Matter" or "Every Change Matters"?

<comment><USER4> Grammatically, it should be "Every Change Matters."

I'd also recommend staying away from "All Changes Matter." At least for me, that brings to mind Black Lives Matter / All Lives Matter a little too much.

<comment><USER5> As an opposed view, I didn't do that connection at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see the Zapier integration and I'm wondering why I would use noticeable as opposed to managing the timeline in Google Sheets and using Zapier to chain actions to other sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good question.

Here are some answers:

\- The smart widget that displays updates in context (your website) \- The possibility to collect emails from the Timeline \- Posts filtering \- Markdown formatting \- SEO friendly URLs

Soon we are going to:

\- provide Zapier Templates for most popular integrations \- send Weekly or monthly reports and reminders \- collect user reactions and feedbacks from the Widget and the Timeline \- ...

Below is the link to our roadmap if you are interested in:

[https://trello.com/b/wXvOSwII/noticeable-public- roadmap](https://trello.com/b/wXvOSwII/noticeable-public-roadmap)

For sure, if you have time and money for building these features, then the service is not a good fit for you. What we provide is an all-in-one solution to easily keep your audience updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful, this hits a need for me. A decent changelog is something that has been on our backlog for weeks but was never quite important enough to invest the engineering time ourselves. Not only that, it's better than our specs and cheaper than doing it in house.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let us know if you have any questions or need help for using the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All the value you provide is made redundant by copy pasting a bunch of your formatting and hosting it in-house. And the cost is fairly steep cost for the small amount of value. I'm not sure there's a viable business model here.

Edit: To clarify, it seems like you a bunch of other features as well tacked on. I don't fully understand how they're all related, but insofar as things such as customer relations and branding, these are things that typically the company should own itself and is unlikely to want to delegate.

<comment><USER9> You could say the same about uservoice.com

I'd very much like one place I could monitor everything I use for changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is smart. Kind of like StatusPage.io, but for your changelogs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use the free tier of Headway ([https://headwayapp.co/](https://headwayapp.co/)) for this. Works well.

<comment><USER12> I used Headwayapp in the past too. However, they take ages to implement what users ask for. Noticeable seems to already have most of the requested features. Also, the roadmap looks promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The premise is compelling!

Curious how you set the API call pricing tiers. It seems like this would not be contacted more than several times a day by builds and direct traffic would be free. I can't imagine 500k calls unless I was serving your data uncached in a client app, but maybe that is a popular use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply.

API calls refer to the number of requests that reach our servers. It includes requests when people visit a project Timeline, load Widget data but also requests sent to our GraphQL API and events received from or sent to Zapier integrations.

However, requests made while using the Noticeable website ([https://noticeable.io](https://noticeable.io)) do not count against the quota. Also, as you mentioned, requests are cached by default by a first-class Content Delivery Network (CDN). All CDN requests are free of charge and do not count against the quota.

In other words, not only _direct_ API calls counts but also indirect ones.

Your comment lets me think "API calls" is misleading. Do you think "requests" would help to clarify? or an on hover popup with the explanations above?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are you using for the "word carousel" animations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello foxhop. We use a customized version of a web component available on webcomponents.org. Below is the definition if you are interested in:

[https://gist.github.com/lpellegr/64005a58f29865099dcc47621cc...](https://gist.github.com/lpellegr/64005a58f29865099dcc47621cca2fba)</comment></comment>


Facebook and Google Were Victims of $100M Payment Scam - happy-go-lucky http://fortune.com/2017/04/27/facebook-google-rimasauskas/ <comment><AUTHOR> What is the state-of-the art way to block those annoying autoplay videos?

I have previously enabled click-to-play for flash, but now that videos have moved to html5, that no longer works. So then I installed the "Disable HTML5 Autoplay" chrome extension, which worked for a while, but seems to be less and less effective these days. Then I resorted to picking site elements with Ublock. Amazingly, this didn't work today for this Fortune article. I finally had to just block their CDN (brightcove) via Privacy Badger.

Surely there must be a better way. This is just getting insane.

<comment><USER2> Have you tried to disable JavaScript? That might work. There are even add-ons that let you do with one click.

<comment><USER3> Then you get an empty page...

Disabling JS and CSS kinda works, if you don't mind useless images that take the whole screen.

Here's an archived copy, which also works with JS disabled:

[https://archive.fo/JwNn6](https://archive.fo/JwNn6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The interesting aspect is how a $100m theft is not considered a "material event" with regards to SEC reporting at these firms.

<comment><USER5> You would be shocked by how much large companies can loose as a result of fraud and inventory loss without reporting. Typically companies establish a percentage of revenue which when surpassed triggers disclosure. It's usually in the 1% neighborhood. Alphabet reported $89.5 billion in revenue in just 2016 & this fraud reportedly took place over two years. In other words, not even close to what most companies would consider reportable from a percentage perspective.</comment></comment>


Election Fraud Commission Asked for Sensitive Voter Info via Insecure Email - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/trumps-election-fraud-commission-asked-states-to-send-s-1796535568 <comment><USER2> !! Phishing Achievement Unlocked !!

</comment><comment><USER3> .

<comment><USER4> No it doesn't?

> _You may submit your responses electronically to <e-mail address>_ or _by > utilizing the Safe Access File Exchange_

It in no way calls the second way out as the "only" or even just the more safe one.

<comment><USER3> The tweet image in the article didn't show the "or" clause at the end of the line. Now I understand.

<comment><USER4> on [https://twitter.com/vanitaguptaCR/status/880479649817649152](https://twitter.com/vanitaguptaCR/status/880479649817649152) in the second image ([https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDgWEZfXsAELY12.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDgWEZfXsAELY12.jpg:large)) I see [https://imgur.com/a/cB89e](https://imgur.com/a/cB89e), as is quoted in the article

EDIT: looking at the thumbnail of the image on twitter, it indeed is cut off badly there</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Learning Kotlin if you don't know Java - <AUTHOR> I want to learn Kotlin for Android development. I am a competent self-taught Python programmer. I have found a number of on-line and e-book sources about learning Kotlin, but to paraphrase all of the ones I have found say,"Learning Kotlin is simple for someone who already knows Java". Well here is the thing, I don't know Java! Is it really the case that to learn Kotlin I am going to have to learn Java first?!? Does anyone know a  good first book for learning Kotlin from scratch? <comment><USER2> You don't need to learn Java before you learn Kotlin. As you may notice in your paraphrasing, it doesn't say you need to, it says it's simple if you know Java already.

More concretely, what you'll find is that a lot of tutorials and books will likely assume some familiarity with Java. Not necessarily to a point that you can't learn, but more in regards to what they emphasise. For example, they'll likely talk about nullability and Kotlin's approach to it. This makes a lot of sense if you've come from Java but maybe less if you've come from a language that doesn't have nulls.

Having said that, I would expect that, although learning Kotlin should be fine, once you start developing in it, you'll soon find that you'll need to have some familiarity with Java. The reason is that a big selling point of Kotlin is its easy integration with Java. As a consequence, you'll probably find that the libraries you'll want, beyond the basics, won't have been ported to Kotlin. As there's not much call for this.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend a book for non-Java developers as I don't know any Kotlin developers who weren't Java developers first!

</comment><comment><USER3> I asked a very similar question last week, you might be interested in the responses: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16281374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16281374)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think that you should learn Java first because of all other Android code is written in Java. It would be hard to stay in isolation without interacting with other third party libraries. All Android ecosystem is written in Java.

</comment><comment><USER5> What language are you coming from?

Kotlin is a modern language comparable to swift, rust, Scala or ocaml. Learning it is workthile as you'll learn modern language concepts.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm coming from Python.

<comment><USER5> Might be tricky at first but embrace the type system, it's a good tool for larger projects.

You'll have to bite the bullet eventually and Kotlin is a nice inroad.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am more than happy to embrace static typing, I wish it was an option for Python (Yes I know about hint's)! I think I am going to do some beginner level Java and get the basics of the language, and then switch over to Kotlin and learn the advanced concepts there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad to hear it's not just me. I am considering just learning Java for Android for exactly this reason</comment>