Management Debt - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2012/01/19/management-debt/ <comment><USER2> _"An excellent engineer decides to leave the company because she gets a better offer. For various reasons, you were undercompensating her, but the offer from the other company pays more than any engineer in your company and the engineer in question is not your best engineer"_

Why isn't the root cause addressed? If this engineer was a key player, what made her decide to look elsewhere for a job? The decision to jump ship is always made long LONG before the interviewing starts.

One could reason that she opened her eyes and realized that she's a key player, but unappreciated. Shouldn't that have been uncovered in a 1:1?

<comment><USER3> > "An excellent engineer decides to leave the company because she gets a > better offer. For various reasons, you were undercompensating her, but the > offer from the other company pays more than any engineer in your company and > the engineer in question is not your best engineer"

Umm, that's not the biggest problem.

She's not the company's best engineer and she's leaving for more money than said company pays said any engineer, including the best.

That tells us that the best engineer is underpaid too. And now she probably knows it.

Many companies think that they can hire better than average folks for industry standard, aka average, salaries. How many good engineers can't compare two numbers that are in currency units?

<comment><USER2> You can't compare numbers if you don't have them. Aside from partially- reliable anonymous sources like Glassdoor and Vault, how do you know what an engineer of her experience and skill set is making in her area?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Insight Generation Using Text Network Visualization - <AUTHOR> https://infranodus.com <comment><AUTHOR> I will be happy to answer any questions about this product. It is open-source and a free version available to install is available on [https://github.com/noduslabs/infranodus](https://github.com/noduslabs/infranodus) otherwise you can try it for free for 14 days or contact me for a coupon if you don't want to bother providing the credit card. Would like your feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> How is a vertex created between two nodes? Is it created when two words appear in the same sentence?

What do the different colors represent?</comment>


Web Application Firewall - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/solutions/infrastructure-software/web-application-firewall?linkId=63795649&sc_campaign=AWS_Marketplace&sc_category=AWS+Marketplace&sc_channel=sm&sc_content=Organic_UC_WAF_v1&sc_country=Marketplace&sc_geo=GLOBAL&sc_outcome=awareness&sc_publisher=TWITTER&trk=sm_a131L000005tww0QAA_TWITTER&trkCampaign=sm_a131L000005tww0QAA <comment><USER2> We used F5 Big-IP Viprions for 4 years. It was a colossal waste of money.

The bugs in these supposed "best in class" devices were ridiculous.

Here's a taste:

There was a bug where it would crash on a TCP FIN packet not associated with an existing connection. When a patch was released, installing it on the standby device reset its config and caused it to takeover as master, wiping the old master in the process.

I'm not putting anything business critical behind an F5.

Hopefully they don't screw up NGINX.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if not having all the bot traffic hitting the application would create savings in resource requirements that would match or exceed the cost of the WAF. I.e. would it pay for its self if you had a lot of bot traffic.

</comment><comment><USER4> WAFs seem to be pretty universally regarded as garbage by the security professionals I know.

\- there's a (closed source for F5) black box that's gonna mess with some of your requests

\- it might block legitimate requests that "look" like SQL injection attempts (false positives)

\- a WAF adds a bunch more latency to your request/response cycle

\- malicious requests will still get through the WAF (false negatives), so it's not like you can just forget about application security after you set one up

<comment><USER5> I think a big problem is the advertised idea that a WAF can be "turn-key" and effective with defaults, which just doesn't work, + quality issues with at least some offerings. Making a WAF truly effective means to understand what actual traffic for the application looks like, and building a profile around that. Which is a lot more effort, and might mean the effort is better invested into other hardening measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just an F5 advertisement really.</comment>


Show HN: Bulk Upload Emojis to Slack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.andyjiang.com/emojipacks-bulk-uploading-emojis-into-slack/

<comment><USER2> Tiny thing: the "demo" link to the bottom gives a https warning - might want to remove the s.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the heads up!! Fixed :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Clojure as a first progamming language? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
Thanks for taking the time to read. I'm interested in trying out Clojure for my first programming language--at least, the first programming language in which I intend to commit myself to becoming proficient. This might make more sense if I give a bit of background on my situation.
I have minimal experience (a couple college courses) with Java and C++, and I've tinkered with HTML, PHP, et al. on my own time. For a while, I've been intent on picking a language to learn for web application development, since got the startup itch. But being the person I am, I had to survey all the possible options first, since this is my first programming language we're talking about. That wouldn't matter to a lot of people, and maybe it shouldn't to anyone, but I feel there's a chance an experienced programmer has a certain connection with his/her "native" programming language, and if so, I want to choose a language worthy of that--none of this Java/C++ nonsense.
So after a few months of general web information gathering, I found and became intrigued by the ideas and concepts behind the Lisp family of languages. Being a math guy myself, I felt Lisp might be a more natural fit for my mind, that I might have a stronger natural connection with the language than I would with anything else. That said, of all the Lisps, I'm leaning toward Clojure at the moment due to its many features which make it far more ideal than most Lisps for say, web applications--which are what I intend to code once I've achieved the level of skill necessary.
With all that in mind, what do the readers of HN think about choosing Clojure for a first language? Are there any reasons I may want to consider going in a different direction? How necessary is it to be proficient with, for example, Common Lisp or Scheme, before picking up Clojure, for somebody whose mind hasn't been molded to think in terms of C or Python or Java or whatever?
Thanks again for reading. I appreciate any and all responses. <comment><USER3> _I feel there's a chance an experienced programmer has a certain connection with his/her "native" programming language_

Sure, you will tend know more about the language that you have worked with the most, which in turn tends to be the one you prefer. But that need have nothing to do with the language you learn first.

A very large number of the programmers you will meet today learned programming via something like C64 or Applesoft BASIC, or (at best) Turbo Pascal. These languages were not exactly Lisp. In those days, BASIC only had global variables. Our growth was not stunted. The idea that learning BASIC stunts your growth was a load of crap at the time, and it remains a load of crap.

If you have the startup itch and want to teach yourself good habits, here's my advice: Don't dither, and don't pick up habits that encourage dithering. Like fretting too much about your language of choice. If you actually plan to build web software, take up Ruby, Python, or even PHP. You know, something normal. Something which features lots of libraries and blogs and books and colleagues and infrastructure.

And learn Lisp too. At the same time. Start with SICP, which involves starting with Scheme. Another useful Lisp to tinker with: emacs Lisp.

Eventually you will learn at least four languages, so don't worry too much about which comes first.

<comment><USER4> Ruby and Python and PHP all built their success because they were once the experimental non-normal choice. Argument holds no water.

And I'm sorry bad programming habits will stunt your growth (speaking from personal experience).

Learn the most expressive language you can that's still practical for your goal. Learn the language that you will find most fun and exciting - <USER2> be damned (Clojure has a ton of them anyway).

<comment><USER3> _Ruby and Python and PHP all built their success because they were once the experimental non-normal choice._

Yes, and back when they were new, they weren't what beginners learned. When PHP was new, beginning programmers with an eye on the Web learned Perl, Java, or even C, because they had larger communities and better documentation, libraries, and books.

As a beginner it isn't your job to push the envelope of platform design. Unless your primary goal in learning programming is to tinker without necessarily shipping anything.

And, yes, bad programming habits are bad. Unfortunately, avoiding bad habits isn't as simple as choosing one language over another. You can write bad code in any language -- indeed, expressive languages let you explore the _really complicated_ corners of the bad-code phase space -- and you will write bad code, until you've had practice. One good way to get that practice is to pick a language where there's a lot of well-written existing code and documentation and style guides and Stack Overflow comments to read over. See above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to learn a language from the perspective of getting something done (in the startup webapp sphere), go for Python/Django or Ruby/Rails - they both have mature, well-established communities with plenty of documentation and available libraries.

Clojure seems quite cool, but it's a relatively new language and, especially when compared to the other two platforms mentioned above, it lacks the wealth of institutional knowledge about delivering good webapps that forms a significant portion of the value of Rails or Django.

Clojure is the exciting new thing you blog about. Rails or Django is what you used to write the blog itself.

<comment><USER6> Your last thought is quite opinionated. The other approach is to write the actual code (in whatever you want) instead of blogging ;P

<comment><USER7> There's something to be said for starting with a language that has great library support. While one approach to learning is to write from scratch, another is to read existing code and be able to build what you want to build using parts that are already there (less likelihood of losing your enthusiasm out of frustration too). Clojure does have Java library support, but it's native library support doesn't match that of Python or Ruby or Java.

<comment><USER6> Yeah of course decent amount of good quality libs is crucial for learning, because you can see how idiomatic code is written.

For me, Clojure has enough. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a good idea I think. I would consider learning Java, the basics, with Clojure. At the same time because you will have to regularly make use of the huge Java library. So it's a good idea to know about classes, objects, basic syntax and primitive types. Of course you will put the focus on Clojure. I also recommend SICP and Scheme. Scheme, in its R5RS form, is a really good pedagogical programming language. I learned it at school and it was a really good experience. One that forever changes the way you think about programming. But I didn't get that at the time, only later :) You can do the SICP exercises with Clojure instead of Scheme. I would avoid digging into C++ or Common Lisp now. Those are quite complex. Keep CL for later, and forget about C++ :) Next get deeper into Java and start to learn a "scripting" language like Ruby, Python or Perl. All in all, I think it is really important to grasp different programming paradigms: functional (Lisp, Haskell, ML, Erlang, ...), logic with Prolog, procedural/OO with Java (can get you a job :-), distributed (Erlang) ... There are a lot of other interesting languages out there but it is a good start: Clojure + Java.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd say something a bit different that most responses, well I guess it's worth taking your time.

Choose language which seems most natural to _think_ in. It's really important.

For example, many people just don't have that wires in brain which cause them to see everything as objects, so all that OO & design patterns stuff seems missing the point. But others love it and use this approach naturally!

You just want to avoid the situation when after a first-time crush on some programming paradigm "wow how is it powerful" there comes realization that writing anything in it is a boring and misplaced experience. Just switch to another paradigm instead.

And don't be lured by the current popularity of some web frameworks, tools or whatever. They come and go. Your language of choice -- given that it's actively developed and not only an academic experiment -- will have them sooner or later. In the meantime you will expand your mind with the language you really like. It's worth.

</comment><comment><USER9> Clojure has a simple functional language foundation that should be good for learning as a first language. The biggest impediment may be the lack of a tutorial from a beginner's perspective, that focuses on that foundation. Using most material for Clojure a beginner will soon be exposed to features probably beyond their understanding.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Clojure is not a simple language. The reason is, that you have to learn about 1) Lisp, 2) Clojure's approach to concurrency (immutable data structures + reference types) and 3) the JVM. These are all fairly complex systems on their own. The combination of them is what makes Clojure interesting, and, in my opinion, you can't leave one out and still have a great language.

Depending on your knowledge, this may make it a bad choice as a first language because it's so much to learn at once. You could be better off, to start by learning something more similar to what you already know (possibly Python/Django or Ruby/Rails for web programming).

That said, Clojure is learnable, of course. It may just take more time. If it feels right to you, then go for it. Enthusiasm about the tools will help your learning. And either way, it's not like you are making a mistake.

<comment><USER4> Clojure's beauty is in that it _is_ simple. It's also a language where it's completely unnecessary to have to understand all the parts at once. I coded in it for 6 months and never used a single concurrency primitive.

That said, JVM stuff does present a challenge but not more than the various non-sensical annoyances I've experience with every programming language. Two other real difficulties is lazy-sequences and less than ideal error-reporting.

lazy-sequences is like learning pointers- tough and then you get it. error- reporting is a symptom of early days. This issue is offset somewhat by Clojure's FP sensibilities.

<comment><USER11> Lazy-sequences may also help to prepare you for a completely lazy language.</comment></comment></comment>


Snails Are Dissolving in Pacific Ocean - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/05/snails-are-dissolving-pacific-ocean <comment><USER2> "Outside the laboratory, however, just a handful of studies have linked falling pH levels to damaged shells."

This is odd considering those in the aquarium hobby have known this as common knowledge for a long time now.

Maintaining reef tanks has made it extremely apparent to me just how badly we're harming our oceans even with small changes in chemistry. I hope articles such as this can help make the general public more aware of the dangers.

<comment><USER3> The question is not "are we doing damage" The quesiton is how to fix it... Fix it with out destroying the economy and leading to billions of human life losses.

At this point many extreme climate change activists want to send the world back to the 1700's level of technology which while would save the planet, bring about the end of the human race as we know it

<comment><USER4> "At this point many extreme climate change activists want to send the world back to the 1700's level of technology"

Really, who? I can't see the people in the 18th century using PV (or much electricity at all for that matter).

I think the _real_ problem is that people somehow believe "the economy" is more important than the environment. Destroying "the economy" would have little to no effect at all on about two thirds of the world's population.

Fixing (and preserving) the environment will have an _enormous_ benefit to the entire world population, with the exception of the _very_ small number of people who currently profit from treating the environment as an infinite resource, or a static back-drop to our own civilization.

<comment><USER5> _Destroying "the economy" would have little to no effect at all on about two thirds of the world's population._

I don't think you have a good grasp of how interdependent almost all modern national economies are today, regardless of their current size or per capita GDP. There is an almost inconceivably huge difference in aggregate quality of life (especially for the poorest!) between a 2100 that saw a century with 3.5% global annual real "gross world product" growth and one where growth averaged 2.5%.

Some back of the envelope calculation tells me it's a choice between a global economy worth ~$620T and one that's worth ~$1460T. You can pay for a lot of amelioration when your economy is that big, and still have a bunch left over to make people's lives so much better than they'd have in an economy less than half as productive.

Obviously there is a potentially serious downside to emissions growth that goes along with that economic growth. But the consequences of even moderately throttling the world economy to deal with it have huge costs that can't be waved away.

<comment><USER4> You're conflating the amount of money involved with the number of people involved. This rarely works for global situations.

The land-owners of the Alberta Oil Sands (last I heard the Koch brothers were #1 in this regard) have little or no incentive to put the money they make back into the Alberta community. They almost certainly have some token gesture scheme in place that will provide <1% of the profit to local funding, but that's just PR spin.

You can look at the money, or the people. As of October 2013 (according to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population)) 10 countries had 58% of the world's population. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy) it can be calculated that 64.67% of the money (by GDP) is controlled by 4 countries.

The population growth is decreasing due to (mainly) education. The disparity in the distribution of wealth is only growing greater. Those in the USA and Europe should realize that this _isn 't_ happening in their favour. In 2000, the USA was 22.61% of the world's GDP with China at 4.62%. The estimate for the next 6 years puts China at 26.79% and the USA at 15.45%.

Try telling the _billions_ of people in the world living hand to mouth that the actions of some for-profit corporation will mean that they see an improvement in their quality of life.

EDIT: See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMF_Developing_Countries_M...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMF_Developing_Countries_Map,_2014_\(revised\).png) for an illustration of what the IMF refers to as "developing countries". This should give you an idea of the amount of the planet that isn't a "player" in the world economy.

<comment><USER5> _Try telling the billions of people in the world living hand to mouth that the actions of some for-profit corporation will mean that they see an improvement in their quality of life._

Hundreds of millions of people in China who would have been living hand to mouth a few decades ago are now living much fuller, longer, happier lives because their nation provided cheap labor and manufacturing for "some for- profit corporation[s]". A global economy half today's size couldn't have supported them in that way, and a global economy of 2100 cut in half by lower growth rates will have many more relatively poor people. I'm not sure what the Koch brothers have to do with that. Your argument does not appear to coherently respond to what I wrote.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you're actually defending the labour practices of China over the last few decades. If so, I can't argue with you.

EDIT: In addition, the improvement of China's living standards should _never_ be used as an example of capitalist success. China was at a cultural and economic low due to the effects of the Chinese "Cultural Revolution". _Anything_ would have seen an improvement in living standards across a lot of China.

The point about the Koch brothers is that a project with _staggering_ environmental implications is being controlled by a very small number of parties, when the actual people living in that same environment are going to receive little or no compensation for the destruction of said environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently these sensitive snails are dissolving p <because> they are in an alkaline ocean of around pH 8.14. Amazing. The paper does not point out that some parts of the ocean naturally vary in pH by 1.4 units. Of course none of the massive amounts of chemical junk dumped into the oceans and poisoning the fish we eat, has any effect on these snails. Did they check?

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0028983)

"This natural variability has prompted the suggestion that "an appropriate null hypothesis may be, until evidence is obtained to the contrary, that major biogeochemical processes in the oceans other than calcification will not be fundamentally different under future higher CO2/lower pH conditions""

<comment><USER7> >major biogeochemical processes in the oceans other than calcification will not be fundamentally different

But calcification precisely the process in question here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The evidence sounds a bit weak - as I understand the paper summary they collected a bunch of snails just the one time in 2011 and found a correlation between shell damage and the concentration on aragonite in the water which is a form of calcium carbonate of which the concentration presumably varies with acidity. There could be a bunch of reasons why some snails where more damaged - storms, different ages etc. One sample with no control experiments is pretty weak data. If you wanted to check it you could put a bunch of snails in tanks and with varying pH and see if the effect is replicated I guess.

<comment><USER9> This isn't a new thing and there are heaps of evidence. Google "ocean acidification" for lots more studies and reports.

Here's 1: [http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification-- a-r...](http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-risky- shell-game)

"In tanks filled with seawater, they raised 18 species of marine organisms that build calcium carbonate shells or skeletons. The scientists exposed the tanks to air containing CO2 at today's level (400 parts per million, or ppm), at levels that climate models forecast for 100 years from now (600 ppm) and 200 years from now (900 ppm), and at a level (2,850 ppm) that should cause the types of calcium carbonate in shells (aragonite and high-magnesium calcite) to dissolve in seawater.

The test tanks' miniature atmospheres produced elevated CO2 in the tiny captive oceans, generating higher acidity. The researchers measured the rate of shell growth for the diverse species ranging from crabs to algae, from both temperate and tropical waters. They included organisms such as corals and coralline algae, which form foundations for critical habitats, and organisms that support seafood industries (clams, oysters, scallops, conchs, urchins, crabs, lobsters, and prawns)."

<comment><USER10> So-called ocean "Acidification" appears to be 100% propoganda.

 _" scientists do not think the seas will become truly acidic (with a pH less than 7.0), but rather less alkaline"_

So, it is not "acid" that is eating away anything. If these shells were in "pure water" with ph 7.0, the deterioration woud be worse.

<comment><USER11> "Less alkaline" is the same as saying "more acid" as you move in a specific direction along the scale.

Srsly can't believe you tried to make that point

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutralization_%28chemistry%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutralization_%28chemistry%29)

There seems to be an established name for what you call mixing an acid and a base: Neutralization Chemistry.

Even freshwater lakes like lake erie ar pH 8.4, yet for some reason when articles are published about pH variance, it is never referred to as "neutralization" but rather "acidification"\--with no mention of the net- alkalinity of the solution. The latter would paint the former phrasing as self-evidently awkward, of course.

eg> [http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-08-16/news/ct-met- gr...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-08-16/news/ct-met-great-lakes- acidification-20100816_1_carbon-dioxide-zebra-and-quagga-mussels- acidification)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's the likely solution here? Is it possible to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere without damaging it in some other way? Or are we destined to slowly but surely destroy this planet?

<comment><USER13> > What's the likely solution here?

 _Turn your computer off_. The CO2 that acidified that ocean came from the fossil fuels + oxygen that were burned to make the power needed to build that wind turbine that powers your computer. So, if you want to save the life of a snail, turn off your computer. And stop breathing.

Instead of having a 'war on terror' and a trillion dollar arms trade we could get serious about greening this planet, as in planting green things that look pretty, take in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. If we set our minds to it and found some political will we could do it, to create a true paradise on earth and not have this fear of climate change. We could steward this planet whichever way we wanted rather than always going for the tragedy of the commons and electing the evil, corrupt, lying retards such as the politicians we have.

I thought we had reached the turning point (of no turning back) about 15 years ago when action would have been worthwhile. But, since then we have gone the other way, hit on fracking and decided to go for mass die-off.

Are we to be no better than bacteria on a petri dish, to bloom exponentially, hit resource depletion and die off? Is that it? Arthur C Clarke and Carl Sagan had us conquering new worlds rather than just assuming the zombie apocalypse will miss our generation.

<comment><USER14> _" And stop breathing."_

That will also stop you eating, you'll die, decompose, and the carbon will become available to other things that respire. Humans don't breath out any carbon that wasn't recently in the atmosphere. What's needed is to somehow have more carbon sequestered in things-that-are-not-the-ocean-or-air. Some of that can be biomass. Some of that is "big puddles of gunk deep underground" (which is what we've been un-sequestering). In principle, doing more manufacturing with carbon (carbon fiber, synthetic diamonds, plastics) would help _provided_ the carbon itself came from the atmosphere (or something that would've ended up there) and the energy was produced without emitting still more carbon - in practice, the amounts involved in manufacturing are probably too small to be relevant...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This strange behaviour whether its creatures dying and filling up the ocean floor 98 percent or this snail thing is related to the fukushima radiation which is reaching the west coast. No other explanation can possible explain these which has never happened in history.

</comment><comment><USER16> The question is: have they been dissolving before as well?

</comment><comment><USER17> This strange behaviour whether its creatures dying and filling up the ocean floor 98 percent or this snail thing is related to the fuku shima radiation which is reaching the west coast. No other explanation can possible explain these which has never happened in history.</comment>


Why Events Are A Bad Idea (for high-concurrency servers) - <AUTHOR> http://www.usenix.org/events/hotos03/tech/full_papers/vonbehren/vonbehren_html/index.html

<comment><USER2> I thought it was strange that in the '"Problems" with Threads' section they didn't even mention testability - which is the number 1 problem we have in trying to create high-reliability systems with threads.

I work in embedded systems which run unattended for months at a time so they have to be reliable. The interactions between threads can create all sorts of unexpected race conditions which are very hard to predict. And if you can't assure repeatable behavior you can't properly test a system. On the basis of testability alone we avoid threads.

<comment><USER3> This paper uses cooperatively scheduled threads (i.e. no preemption or concurrent execution of threads), which means you don't have to deal with synchronization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth pointing out that one of the authors, Eric Brewer, is now part of the effort to design Google's next generation infrastructure:

<http://twitter.com/#!/eric_brewer/status/68051541063503872>

<comment><USER5> And while we're at it - he is much better known for the CAP theorem: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We just had this yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907415>

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, i was hoping NH would find a dup if it were already there! :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He also tweeted this in relation to it:

<http://twitter.com/#!/eric_brewer/status/105160325824917504>

Its a response to <http://twitter.com/#!/ericflo/status/104972704016379904>.</comment>


Is there anything developers won't do for a pizza? - <AUTHOR> http://advice.cio.com/pizza

<comment><USER2> My girlfriend is a doctor, and I can confirm that doctors will do just about anything for free food. Mainly this means sitting through a 2-hour spiel about new drug X.

Although sometimes the food is better, oftentimes I'd much rather have decent pizza than the mass-produced crap they serve.

(And she's a No Free Luncher, so we don't do these anymore, and she doesn't eat the free food in the hospital that everyone else does. Somehow, everyone is the one that isn't affected by the advertising.

Maybe Microsoft should start sending reps around to software shops with free lunch? I bet it'd be an effective strategy.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft already sponsors a lot of user group meetings -- with plenty of free food. Largely pizza.

I briefly wrote for a magazine for professional conference organizers. (Think: the people who run MacWorld or TechEd.) I was told that, despite techie's assumption that we run the universe, the profession responsible for most conference bookings is doctors. Seems that every drug company HAS to do a "full disclosure" meeting for every new medicine. Most of those vendors have more money than tech companies do.

But you note that they don't promise pizza. They may deliver bad rubber chicken, but they can promise a full lunch.

<comment><USER2> I actually went to one of those "full disclosure" meetings when I used to work for a pharma. They put me up for 2 days in the Vegas Four Seasons in exchange for a 15 minute presentation :)

Rubber chicken indeed, but I'll take free food in exchange for that room any day of the week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In case you're wondering whether the condescension exuded by this title is for real, check out the first paragraph:

 _Need more productivity from your software development staff? Need 'em to put in more hours to get a project done on time? Buy 'em a pizza and hand out t-shirts. It's an age-old and effective method to get programmers and techies to willingly (sometimes enthusiastically) give up a weekend. But why do they come so cheap?_

What a great summary of everything that's wrong with this moribund, soulless industry.</comment>


BlockPlus: remove Google+ requests and nav elements from other Google sites - <AUTHOR> http://nikcub.appspot.com/blockplus-a-browser-extension-to-block-google-notifications

<comment><USER2> Nik - I'd love to be able to block the entire bar. That real-estate is precious. Maybe an auto-drop in when the mouse moves up there - either when on a google site, or an option when off it too -- a small mouseover box could appear.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok - I will add it as an option. If anybody else has feedback let me know. Install now and I will push out an update today with new stuff

<comment><USER2> I'd make sure it works with people not using Plus, and maybe option to make it white too??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like G+, but I'm glad this exists (just like Faceblocker or Click2Flash).

</comment><comment><USER4> I want this functionality for Firefox.

<comment><USER5> You could probably convert this extension to a greasemonkey script pretty easily. Might even be able to pull it off with AdBlock.

<comment><USER6> Here's the important file: [https://bitbucket.org/nik/blockplus/src/f654b42e8530/chrome/...](https://bitbucket.org/nik/blockplus/src/f654b42e8530/chrome/src/content.js) The rules look pretty straightforward, but I don't know if AdBlock supports such granularity.

<comment><USER5> AdBlock supports CSS style selectors so I think you could do it: <http://adblockplus.org/en/filters>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sweet jeebus - thanks!</comment>


Show HN: Stat Tracking website for fantasy baseball. - <AUTHOR> http://stattracker.heroku.com/ This is a web application for a class. Need feedback for it. After checking out the website, could you please fill out this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3Q829LX <comment><USER2> Where are you getting your stats from? You can access live stats via Yahoo's Fantasy Baseball API like I do in my app here <http://trackstatter.heroku.com> and <https://github.com/rudle/track_statter>

<comment><AUTHOR> Got the stats from lahman baseball database. We thought about using Yahoo's Baseball API, but thought wanted to compare players from past eras too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a web application for a class. Need feedback for it. After checking out the website, could you please fill out this survey: <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3Q829LX>

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you need to run heroku rake db:migrate again, as I receive a bunch of 404 issues when trying to access data from the database.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for letting me know! please check again later.

<comment><USER3> Still hit the 404 page when checking the career stats of different players in pitching and hitting.</comment></comment></comment>


The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/agents-of-automation/568795?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120322)

</comment><comment><USER3> Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script</comment>


Ask HN: Workout for coders? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This video motivated me [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXQLil_SGCI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXQLil_SGCI) It is by Michał Taszycki at wrocloverb.

You can subscribe to his email newsletter but i have not subscribed there yet but I am following his workout plan designed for myself with the skills I want to improve.</comment>


Writing a DOS Game in 16-bit Assembly Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adamsmasher/sokobanDOS/tree/master/lesson1

<comment><USER2> Looks like an interesting project, however, I think the author should focus on all the non-technical elements of the game first before diving into the code. I.e. get a plan in place and get all the required assets ready (graphics, sound, text, etc.).

The author seems to be very comfortable with the technical aspects and what I fear for this project is that once it gets into the stage where the actual game needs to be made, it might fall down.

In other words, I think it would be better to do all the (to you) boring parts first, then focus on the things that interest you. It will increase your success rate.

Having said that, I do not know the author and I'm looking forward to see more of this project. It brings back nostalgia for me beyond words.

Edit: Maybe I spoke to soon. I was looking at the Lesson 1 part of this. Outside the Lesson 1 directory there seems to be some assets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment - that's excellent advice for anyone making a game.

I've intentionally kept the scope of this project very, very limited to make sure it's easily completable; the art is just simple blocks and the level design is taken directly from the Wikipedia article on the game I'm cloning. For me, this primarily an exercise in working on my technical writing and getting practice writing assembly language.

Glad you're enjoying the nostalgia of this as much as I am.</comment></comment>


Developing a modular, nanoparticle drug delivery system - <AUTHOR> http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2007/10/06/developing_a_modular_nanoparticle_drug_delivery_system.html

<comment><USER2> I worked on designing something along these lines in a bioengineering design class I took for fun freshman year.

The idea (for us) was motivated by the work that Ram Sasisekharan had done in his lab along these lines:

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/nanocell.html>

Some food for thought: There's a lot of control that wrapping stuff in nanomaterials could offer (targeted delivery/delayed delivery)- but the issues that you run into include material compatibility (the biggest problem) and difficulty getting to especially tricky organs like the lungs.

<comment><USER3> It's really amazing how quickly cutting edge biotech trickles down to the undergraduate level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As the son of someone who recently went through a cancer scare, I'm really excited about this stuff. I used to think chemotherapy was such a primitive therapy - flood the body with poison and hopefully it will just hurt the cancer - but this is a game changer.</comment>


Who's Worth What at the White House: The Financial Disclosures - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/us/politics/white-house-releases-staff-financial-disclosures.html <comment><AUTHOR> The entire repository on Google Drive:

[https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/0BwDYM_Qm5fLWe...](https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/0BwDYM_Qm5fLWelV6UUNPZ1REalE)</comment>


Defending Economics - <AUTHOR> http://greyenlightenment.com/defending-economics/ <comment><USER2> The layman attack against economists is that they can't do macroeconomic predictions very well. But if you look at what it would require, I don't think anyone can expect them to do so.

What macroeconomic modeling attempts to do is to look what are the effects of policy changes in fiscal or monetary policy __if everything else would stay the same__. Central banks use DSGE as reasoning tool, not as accurate forecasting tool for the future. The signal (their actions) is mostly buried in the noise (all other variables). Macroeconomic models exaggerate individual rationality and foresight, and understate heterogeneity, because that's correct thing to do with current level of knowledge. Knowledge reburied for modeling limited rationality and heterogeneity at the level where predictions become more accurate would turn economics into psycohistory in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

One of the most important variables affecting the future is what consumers think future will be. Consumer sentiment and its relation to changes in their income and savings is accurate only to one or two quarters. After five quarters it's just noise. Consumers don't have the data or reasoning ability that macroeconomic models have. They only have gut feelings formed by events around them and narratives in media.

Another important variable is what investors think about future investment needs based on future demand linking their predictions to consumer predictions. They are not very accurate either. Consensus forecasting and other means are just hints.

To correctly predict the macroeconomic future would require that consumers and investors could predict the future with more accuracy.

The best possible future model is agent-based computational macroeconomic model that simulates collective behaviour of future predicting and speculative agents who can read the predictions from the models predicting their own behavior. It must include several empirically discovered mental models for layman to model heterogenic agents.

Once the accuracy of the model becomes widespread, it would change the world. Speculative agents would use the model as base of their actions and forecasts. Saying accurate would require stable dynamic interaction between the model and the environment.</comment>


Social Customer Service is the new Marketing hero - <AUTHOR> https://unbabel.com/blog/social-media-customer-service/ <comment><USER2> Xbox is one the best examples out there of how social media can be used for customer support and happiness. Not all kinds of audiences would like to be supported on Twitter though :)</comment>


Launch HN: Dharma (YC S17) an open protocol for borrowing/lending cryptoassets - <AUTHOR> Greetings HN!
My name's Nadav Hollander, and I'm the founder of Dharma Labs (https://dharma.io). At Dharma, we are creating a suite of protocols, standards, and developer tools for issuing and administering tokenized debt agreements on the Ethereum blockchain.
After three extensive external security audits of our smart contracts, we are releasing the public beta of Dharma Protocol v1 on the Ethereum mainnet -- developers can take a crack at building decentralized lending applications at docs.dharma.io, and non-developers can try out borrowing and lending a wide variety of crypto-assets using Dharma Plex (https://plex.dharma.io).
I first became interested in the cryptocurrency ecosystem in 2015, when I took Dan Boneh's class on Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies at Stanford. Though the technology was (and still is) quite immature, I fell in love with the nascent space, and subsequently worked as an engineer at Coinbase.
At Coinbase, I was struck by the fact that a huge amount of users' cryptocurrency was sitting idle in cold storage, instead of being deployed in some capacity as dollars would in a savings account.  The advent of generic, programmable blockchains like Ethereum presented an intriguing possibility -- what if we could build borderless infrastructure for borrowing and saving that wouldn't require a company like Coinbase to sit in the middle?
That's why I started working on Dharma -- a framework for originating, issuing, crowdfunding, and trading debt on blockchains like Ethereum.  In essence, what we do is create tools, standards, and smart contracts that developers can use to build profitable lending applications that can tap into a borderless pool of credit liquidity.  These tools are all fully open source and free to use -- there is no native "Dharma token" that users are forced to leverage in some capacity.
We look forward to hearing HN's feedback / thoughts! <comment><USER2> Congrats on getting to this point! Been following Dharma closely for a little while now as we (Kiva) have an interest in trying to increase financial inclusion and decrease lending costs for the world's poor and have been hoping Dharma may end up being one piece to the future of our work.

Could you possibly speak to how you intend to enable KYC (Know Your Customer) / AML (Anti-Money Laundering) to work with Dharma? The best bet so far has seemed to be trying to incentivize it through providing automatic fees to external parties to perform these actions and holding the money in escrow until it goes through. However, it would be great if you could share if you'll have discussed this problem at all.

I'd love a world where we didn't have to deal with KYC & AML, but we do, and the sooner we figure out how to make it work in an efficient and inexpensive manner for the world's poor, the sooner we can reach the UN Sustainable Development goals around financial inclusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :)

We've pretty deliberately opted out of baking jurisdiction-specific protections (be they KYC / AML, accreditation, etc.) into the protocol insofar as we really want this to be a universal standard that's jurisdiction-agnostic -- to give a somewhat crass analogy, most developers would agree that it does not make sense for content-protection against, say, child pornography, to sit at the level of TCP / IP. Jurisdictions vary widely in how they treat lending law, and so we've opted to be as flexible as possible on a technical level.

With that being said, we're actively working on making sure that, at layers above the protocol, developers have an easy time plugging in / restricting functionality on the basis of regulatory parameters. There are several interesting projects in the decentralized identity space that are tackling ways of natively attesting to KYC / AML screening on blockchains like Ethereum, and we're actively in conversations with them to make sure we maintain compatibility.

<comment><USER3> I also work in the exchange space like you used to and my thinking is pretty much fully aligned with the way you pose the issue and I'm very excited about your intention behind Dharma. I also agree with your current thoughts on approaching KYC and AML (please see my post in response to this one's parent). I'll reach out to you via your website if you don't mind since HN doesn't have PMs, would love to figure out if there's a way I can contribute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I propose one more tiny step. Instead of having to use these cumbersome cryptocurrencies as payments method, you could also use these IOU's of selected trustworthy institutions as payment tokens. I mean, Instead of you needing to get your currency back from Coinbase and then transfer it to your coffee shop owner, you would just say to Coinbase that hey, you do not need to pay me this cryptocurrency, pay the coffeeshop instead. Wouldn't that be much more efficient?

This is actually one of the more frustrating issues for me in cryptocurrency discussions. The underlying monetary policy is of fixed or predefined money supply, that is supposed to somehow stabilize the price/value of the cryptocurrency in the long term because of hand waving, wishful thinking and reasons, all the while having _exactly no_ way to stop fractional reserve banking emerging nor regulating it or the additional monetary supply it will create. This being one of the main reasons why current crop of cryptocurrencies will never be used as economy-wide payment method and why their price will always stay chaotic (unless the price stabilizes to zero...)

</comment><comment><USER5> There's something I don't understand about Smart Contracts.

Normal contracts are written by lawyers. They are reviewed by both parties' lawyer. Sometimes, after the contracts are signed, the lawyers disagree what a particular provision or clause means.

At which point, they either negotiate or sue. In which case, a human judge weighs up the case and decides.

How do disagreements work with smart contracts?

I assume some contracts will be buggy - mostly because programmers are just as fallible as lawyers. So how are disagreements resolved in an equitable way?

<comment><USER6>
        How do disagreements work with smart contracts?

If you are big or popular or have connections, then the guys in power will bend the rules in your favour. Google 'The DAO' for an example.

Otherwise, an algorithm will decide.

<comment><USER7> Not quite. The ecosystem was much smaller back then. Nowadays, I'm not sure one company would be able to make a case for forking the currency.

Besides, you can still buy ETH classic, if you disagree with the decision. It's just not worth much.

<comment><USER8> I am 100% sure that if I went and "the code is the contract"ed whatever ends up being DAO2.0 out of 5% of all existing ETH, that Vitalik would come save it "just this once" one more time... I _absolutely do not believe for one second_ that there wouldn't be another fork. And I say this as someone with a substantial interest in the currency.

<comment><USER9> Nope, won't happen again. Look at EIP-999. It's backed by Vitalik but is still dead.

<comment><USER10> EIP-999 isn't backed by Vitalik but it was backed by major figures in Ethereum, including at least one co-founder. And yes it's dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> With any new lending platform I have to ask: What happens if I borrow assets, spend them, and never pay back the lender?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the current implementation / use cases we're focused on, your collateral, which is held in a smart contract, would become eligible for seizure by the lender.

<comment><USER11> And what is the collateral here? My house? A car? Money?

If my collateral is another liquid asset it doesn't make sense to borrow, and if it isn't how exactly does the lender go about seizing it? I want this explanation to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> The collateral can be any other asset that is represented by a cryptographic token. Right now, few crypto-assets map to real world assets in some capacity, but we're willing to make a bet that this will change faster than most expect.

Already, though, there are many interesting assets in the world of crypto that are particularly well suited to being put up for collateral -- namely, the emerging class of crypto-collectibles such as CryptoKitties.

<comment><USER12> > namely, the emerging class of crypto-collectibles such as CryptoKitties.

You can't honestly be serious about this. Please get outside the Silicon Valley bubble and look around.

<comment><USER13> Look at the number of people that collect all kinds of crap: DVDs, video games, stamps, baseball cards, in-game virtual items, comics, art, etc. You can argue that some of it has more utility -- art is culture! you can watch a DVD! -- but the mindset of collecting goes beyond that, and certain utility, like games or trading cards, maps just as well to the crypto collectible world. Cryptokitties is an early example, but I am 95%+ confident something like it will be a HUGE hit within the next few years. So yeah, why not use the crap you already collect to secure a loan?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My company[0] will be using Dharma later this year to put personal loans on the blockchain. Dharma is the best of the bunch in our opinion, and we are very pleased with the support the Dharma team has provided.

[0] [https://airfox.com](https://airfox.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> I didnt see this mentioned on the website, but what about the legality of this ?

Is this legal in the US ? Or where is it legal , illegal to use ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes -- two parties are permitted to lend money to one another in a mutually agreed environment. It's important to note, though, that developers who build end-user applications on top of Dharma ought to be cognizant of lending regulations / securities law in the jurisdictions they are active in. However, we've opted to build Dharma in a non-jurisdictionally-biased manner -- we think that jurisdiction-specific regulatory restrictions are better implemented at the application layer rather than the protocol piping.

<comment><USER16> That is a dangerous position to put yourself in. AML and Terrorist financing laws make everyone responsible, you generally cannot claim innocence if you take no precautions and are involved in some kind of incident.

Good luck.

<comment><USER14> No, this is akin to building a protocol. The creators of HTTP are not in trouble when someone uses the web for illegal activities.

<comment><USER16> HTTP is not intrinsically tied to finance, though. This is specifically a protocol for financial transactions, for sure it would fall under AML laws.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry but you are mistaken. I think you should research this technology more.

<comment><USER12> Are you a finance law attorney? This is marketed as a financial protocol. Completely different than HTTP.

<comment><USER14> An RFC and source code does not constitute participation. That is dharma at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What stops someone from putting up some collateral, disappearing with the loan and then just creating a new account?

<comment><AUTHOR> The collateral is held in a smart contract -- if the borrower disappears and fails to make a repayment, his collateral becomes eligible for seizure.

<comment><USER17> Are the collaterals always worth equal or more than the amount borrowed?

I asked that assuming people put up 1 eth as collateral to borrow 2 eth.

<comment><USER18> Usually collateral is supposed to be equal or more than the amount borrowed, especially in a situation like this where there is no 'credit score' to use to determine likelihood of default.

<comment><USER19> The protocol doesn't have a credit score. That's a concept better suited for the application layer built on top.

<comment><USER18> Right, which was why my point was that the collateral is probably going to be at least equal in value to whatever is borrowed.

<comment><USER20> Dharma Protocol doesn't require that the value of collateral be greater than the principal of the loan, but we do expect the market will demand full- or over-collateralization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, you've reinvented fractional reserve banking, minus all the protections we've built into the modern version of it we all use today through decades of hard lessons? Should be fun.

<comment><USER22> Welcome to the crypto "space". It is a bunch of people who don't understand math, finance, politics, monetary policy, legislation, government, economics, computer science, or seemingly life itself. All sit around and rediscover why society is shaped the way it is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This service sounds incredible! However, naming it "Plex" seems like a bit of a hiccup since most just think of Plex as the most pervasive home media server in existence...

<comment><USER24> Or that currency I used to buy my first space ship. In eve online.

<comment><USER25> ISK was the currency, PLEX was the subscription, right? Or did you use PLEX to buy it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What is the advantage of using the blockchain rather than creating a fully centralized debt exchange?

<comment><USER20> I'd recommend reading this blog post we put out. It explains better than I can in a short comment: [https://blog.dharma.io/dharma-an-open-protocol-for- generic-t...](https://blog.dharma.io/dharma-an-open-protocol-for-generic- tokenized-debt-agreements-9a4e6a4e6fc0)

<comment><USER26> I am interested in knowing if there are advantages to using blockchain generally outside of Bitcoin - I don't understand it in this case from reading the post. A centralized exchange could be fully transparent, publishing every transaction, and handle every type of debt, if it wanted to.

<comment><USER20> Censorship resistance is a big factor - since no one entity controls the Ethereum blockchain or smart contracts that have been deployed to Ethereum, there is no way to shut down the service. This paves the way to a single global capital market that is much more inclusive and efficient than the haphazard and heavily intermediated capital markets we have today.

<comment><USER22> It absolutely is not censorship resistant. It is 100% mob rule. Smart contracts are complete horseshit and this one will be no different. See also: the DAO. Can't work and never will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Congrats for the Dharma team for this anticipated launch! Been following them for a while, great team and very focused exection!

Our company [0] is building an API platform to transact on digitized real estate assets, and we intend to leverage Dharma as much as possible in the future.

[0]: www.fabrica.city

</comment><comment><USER6> How is paying the debt back enforced or incentivised?

<comment><USER20> Right now we expect most loans will be fully collateralized by other crypto- assets. So the default deterrence would be that if you don't pay back your loan, you lose your collateral.

We also support unsecured loans (i.e., loans that are not fully collateralized). We consider these pretty experimental and lenders should do a lot of diligence before investing.

For unsecured loans, counterparties can agree to any kind of default deterrence that they want. Could be off-chain legal agreement, could be a reputation scheme, etc.

<comment><USER28> What exactly is the use case for a 100% secured loan?

<comment><USER20> Even if you 100% collateralize, you can get 2x leverage. That leverage can be applied to all sorts of use-cases, but we think one of the main ones that will be common today is speculative margin trading (e.g., short selling)

<comment><USER22> So basically, like all crypto it's just another layer of speculative trading, fraud and scams all the way down?

Congratulations, I guess...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your product looks interesting and I really like the website. I'm going through the Tutorial and it is AMAZING. I like that you put in the time to make it game.

Do you think that your product would be useful for Insurance contracts on the Ethereum blockchain?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Glad to hear that you enjoyed the tutorial.

There are numerous ways in which Dharma debt agreements can interface with insurance contracts:

1\. We've already seen some members of our developer community working on trustless credit default swaps -- which are functionally insurance contracts that use the programmatic endpoints of Dharma debt agreements to assess claims on defaults. 2\. For non-fully-collateralized insurance contracts, Dharma debt agreements can serve as the mechanism for tracking and administering the tokenized bonds that capitalize the insurance contract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there any simple explanation of what exactly it is? I tried to understand it by reading various places on site but too heavy words used like credit liquidity, tokenized debt. When you are targeting normal people can you explain how exactly this works? Is it like I give bitcoin/ethereum and you give me fiat money and when I repay fiat money you give my bitcoin/ethereum back?

</comment><comment><USER31> This looks really neat! - I was talking to a friend about something similar to this a few weeks ago.

It looks like you'd need to trust the counterparty right now unless they put up substantial collateral. Do you intend to add something similar to a credit rating / history to make it possible for random strangers to lend to each other? Or do you have other ways to handle this?

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

In the short-term, as you correctly alluded to, we're focused on loans that are fully-collateralized on-chain. In the future, however, we hope to integrate trusted third-party underwriters into the network in order to open the door for unsecured loans. There are many technical / game theoretic challenges to be solved on this front, though, so we've included unsecured loans as an "experimental" feature set in this initial release.

<comment><USER31> Is a public marketplace in the works? Right now you have to paste a json string from the counterparty.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup -- there are several. The most mature relayer project on Dharma we're aware of is Bloqboard (bloqboard.com), though I believe they are not ready to launch on mainnet quite yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Shouldn't money be Dukka, not Dharma? Or is money too often an amoral scapegoat for many individual acts of greed?

</comment><comment><USER33> When one lends cryptocurrency I assume the loan comes with an interest? Given the fixed supply of bitcoins or what have you, where will the coins to pay the interest come from? Or does it work differently in cryptocurrency world? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER34> I'm not the op, but fractional reserve lending isn't the only form of lending, and fixed supply isn't the only form of cryptocurrency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Beat me to the reply :)

Indeed, even with a fixed supply token, a borrower would simply have to come across the necessary amount of principal + interest in the loan term.

<comment><USER33> But that's kind of the point, isn't it. With the fixed supply the "\+ interest" would be harder to come by. Wouldn't it lead to elevated levels of defaults?

<comment><USER20> One way or another, the borrower has to come up with the principal + interest or they will forfeit their collateral. So they will want to use the loan in some sort of income generating capacity: financing a project, speculative trading, etc. If they are able to use the loan to earn more than the interest rate they've committed to, they'll make money overall. If not, they'll lose money.

Bottom line: we don't think the monetary policy of crypto-assets will have much of an impact on default rates in the short term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice, a trading vehicle [https://hackernoon.com/its-not-about-the-ico-it-s- about-the-...](https://hackernoon.com/its-not-about-the-ico-it-s-about-the- trading-vehicle-38fa3425e9e3)

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://plex.dharma.io/request](https://plex.dharma.io/request) spins forever... website down?

<comment><USER20> Are you using a web3 browser? Chrome+metamask, cipher, toshi, brave, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What does this have to do with helping all sentient beings to awaken in this lifetime?

Consider a name change.

</comment><comment><USER38> How is this different than SALT and MakerDao?

<comment><USER20> Similar to the question about SALT and EthLend, these are both applications. See our answer there fore more details.

Re. MakerDao, they offer one type of loan, the Collateralized Debt Position, in which a borrower collateralizes ETH and the principal is denominated in DAI. And they have built in many automated mechanisms to keep DAI stable against the value of a US Dollar.

Dharma can support a similar use-case (getting liquidity on crypto-assets without selling them) -- you would collateralize any currency and borrow in DAI. That way you can get fiat liquidity today, but if you pay back your loan on time you can still benefit from appreciation of the asset you collateralized.

In addition, Dharma is capable of supporting other lending use cases: short selling, speculative leverage, venture debt, corporate bonds, muni bonds, etc. etc. We are a platform for any kind of debt agreement and for companies that want to issue these debts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How is this different from EthLend or SALT

<comment><USER20> EthLend and SALT are both lending applications. While we have created a lightweight lending app in Dharma Plex, our core offering is Dharma Protocol.

Dharma Protocol is a suite of developer tools that enables entrepreneurs to create apps like Ethlend or SALT easily and securely. It's open source and entirely free to use.

<comment><USER39> Ah thanks for the response. What's the business model?

<comment><USER20> We discuss our business model a bit in this blog post: [https://blog.dharma.io/dharma-isnt-currently-doing-a- token-s...](https://blog.dharma.io/dharma-isnt-currently-doing-a-token-sale- and-here-s-why-afa04e78247b)

Happy to discuss more, but that's a good start

<comment><USER40> You don't really though? Unless I missed the bit on how you want to get payed. All I see is 'building a great open source infrastructure', which while I applaud and is noble, is not widely accepted to pay rent so far

<comment><USER20> Ha, you're right, sorry. We think we'll be able to sell value added services to our ecosystem (for example, consulting services, insurance, data feeds, etc.).

We will also investigate token models to see if there is a way to make the underwriting process less trustful, and this token model may be a revenue generator as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> lot of components did not load on initial landing of the page on FireFox Nightly 62.0a1

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for pointing this out -- I've flagged our team and we're looking into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> How do you make money?

</comment><comment><USER42> You may ponder longer on the name. As the comments in this thread show, not everybody is happy with your capitalizing on a word that for centuries was at the center of Buddhism.

</comment><comment><USER43> Love the idea

</comment><comment><USER44> `dharma` is the term we buddhists use to designate the (sacred) teachings of Buddha. Would you use `Coran` or `Bible` to name your project? Probably not. It would have been a good idea to take more time to reflect on your choice of name.

<comment><USER45> I'm also a Buddhist (a savaka, technically). I have no issues with the name. If the name causes one person to learn what the Dharma is and to stop harming themselves and others, that's a great thing.

It looks like a cool project too.

<comment><USER46> The main things that give me pause are (a) unadorned use of the word out of context and (b) the general level of scamminess I associate with crypto projects.

<comment><USER45> I take all cryptocurrency projects case by case. This one appears straight up as it's proposing an actual protocol and the associated token actually addresses a problem. Being YC backed ups its cred too.

But yeah, 95% of all ERC-20 tokens are BS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Maybe you don't realize but this name is offensive to Buddhists...

It's like an insurance company calling itself "Gospel"

<comment><USER48> > It's like an insurance company calling itself "Gospel"

Is that offensive? Doesn't seem like it to me.

<comment><USER47> Does "disrespectful" instead of "offensive" satisfy your need to play semantics?

<comment><USER49> What about it is disrespectful, and why should anyone care? It's true that if you look hard enough, you'll always find an offended party, but so what?

<comment><USER50> This is a successful global branding strategy...NOT!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Nadav,

"Dharma" is widely recognized as the term to denote the teachings of Buddha. I feel the use of the term in this new context is cultural misappropriation.

Would you care to address that concern with your thoughts on the topic?

<comment><USER52> Not the author here, but Dharma has several other meanings in Indian languages. A predominant one is virtue, righteousness, and duty.

I hardly think of this usage as cultural misappropriation; just loanwords from a different language.</comment></comment>


IPage deleted all my content, settings, emails, data - EVERYTHING - <AUTHOR>

iPage.com is the worst web hosting service. I had an account with them where I hosted all my a lot of stuff - my blogs, websites of my company and my friends' companies - mostly wordpress sites. Their renewal date was 20th March 2013. However, on 19th March, they arbitrarily DELETED ALL MY STUFF - WEBSITES, DATABASES, EMAILS, DOMAIN SETTINGS - EVERYTHING. Since then I have been struggling with them - trying to get my account restored. Their service guy told me if I buy a new account, everything will be restored. So I bought a new account. Then they said that it will cost additional 75$ to restore my stuff. I got that waived after fighting with them. Now almost 2 days have passed. My settings have not been restored. A lot of our emails are bouncing - sites are inaccessible. :( iPage is the absolutely WORST web hosting service - My advice to everyone is - DO NOT USE IT. <comment><USER2> Other advice: automate backups, and manually check backups.</comment>


Spotify's Podcasting Strategy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/spotifys-podcasting-strategy-ee09dd74926e <comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to share some views on Spotify's recent podcasting acquisitions and what I think their long term strategy is.</comment>


Moodymann on Rollerskating in Detroit - <AUTHOR> https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3544 <comment><USER2> I am a DJ and a programmer, didn't expect to see Moodymann on Hacker News, but kudos for this :)

Moodymann is a legend, I haven't yet read this interview, but there was one video interview recently, done by Gilles Peterson, where Moodymann opened up much more than usually.

<comment><USER3> there are more of us than we imagine :-)

<comment><USER4> Likewise! Well the 1200s are packed down but I still know Moodymann.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love when my two favourite worlds intersect. Does anyone know of an electronic music news aggregator similar to Hacker News? I'm aware of some decent Subreddits but I still feel something is lacking.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, did not expect to see a link to RA when I checked HN this morning

<comment><USER7> Speaking of RA, I thoroughly enjoyed the latest podcast with a mix from Aïsha Devi.

[https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast- episode.aspx?id=699](https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast- episode.aspx?id=699)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> D, skates, and funk

"Sloppy Cosmic", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vTfloaph-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vTfloaph-M)</comment>


STEM Employment: Enter at Your Own Risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.eggplant.pro/blog/enter-at-own-risk/ <comment><USER2> H-1B coupled with employment-at-will is a way for a company to control employees with fear. As the article states, if the employment relationship is terminated, there's a very narrow window to obtain a new sponsor before having to leave the US.

When I worked with H-1B employees, I noticed that management was demanding more from these employees than the non H-1B employees.

The way to fix this is to increase the window to the same duration as unemployment benefits (usually 26 weeks in progressive states). Also, the H-1B visa holder should be eligible for unemployment benefits during this time.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the newest hobby you have picked up?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm generally looking for new things to try and things to get into. I'm just curious what others do in their spare time. <comment><USER2> skateboarding!

I was raised by single parent mom so I just kept to myself and nerded out on my computer all day.

Never really played sport and never actually hurt myself.

Which sounds weird and sadistic but now at 24 I've gotten REALLY into skateboarding

Started 6 months ago and it was a painful first couple of months but i barely ever fall anymore

most importantly, i feel SO much more alert on a daily basis

Like the frame rate on reality has been turned up

Kinda have to be because if you're not fully present and aware when skateboarding, you'll probably bail and hurt yourself

Plus it's just so much fun

Chicks dig it too

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood" ;)

Some inspiration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGiO2etwAYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGiO2etwAYI) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPuEU16P3zg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPuEU16P3zg) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHrn3-Cb3iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHrn3-Cb3iM)

have fun :)

<comment> adam-_- About 12 years ago I had this on VHS [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdY9BjFEgAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdY9BjFEgAg)

Loved it, although I was never any good at skateboarding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Snowboarding.

Coworker talked me into group lessons in January and February. Had such a fun time I got a board and a season pass for next winter.

</comment><comment><USER4> flying single engine piston aircraft (mostly Cessna 172 and Piper 28). it's awesome, unfortunately very time consuming and expensive.</comment>


Why development teams are adopting GraphQL? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.graphqleditor.com/why-companies-adopt-graphql/ <comment><AUTHOR> The results of a survey made by one of the GraphQL adopting companies asked the CTOs and lead developers of a variety of companies about:

\- their experience with the implementation of GraphQL,

\- expectations toward GraphQL,

\- transition results.

They made a great job gathering data tech giants like Uber or Paypal, as well as small/medium teams ranging from 1 to 100+ software engineers. A short sum- up of the results here: [https://blog.graphqleditor.com/why-companies-adopt- graphql/](https://blog.graphqleditor.com/why-companies-adopt-graphql/)</comment>


Show HN: Give an answer. Take an answer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youniv.com/askme <comment><USER2> I feel like the video should have some summary, because I didn't want to watch it (just read) just to know what the credits were for.

Also, the voice in the video is strange. It feels like it is cut as well as volume changed. I feel it is some form of text-to-speech going on but it doesn't really sound like it usually does. What's going on?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I agree. We will definitely get a new video made

</comment><comment><USER3> what a unique project, this app can really enable someone to see what anyone around the world is thinking</comment>