Lost HP Lovecraft work commissioned by Houdini escapes shackles of history - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/16/hp-lovecraft-harry-houdini-manuscript-cancer-superstition-memorabilia <comment><USER2> I hope the text will be made available publicly by the buyer. Copyright obviously has expired, but whoever buys this text could keep it to her/himself.

<comment><USER3> What if it contains secrets Man was not meant to know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In short, the new found text is just 31 page, typed. And one whole chapter of that never finished book "was published in the 1966 book The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces."

That book has an entry in Wikipedia even if there's less than 4000 copies of it:

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

The picture in the article, if real, features exactly the title page of the already published chapter.

"The Cancer of Superstition was previously known only in outline and through its first chapter. Houdini had asked Lovecraft in 1926 to ghostwrite the treatise exploring superstition, but the magician's death later that year halted the project, as his wife did not wish to pursue it."

And it's probably not written by Lovecraft but CM Eddy, as stated near the end of the article, "according to Lovecraft scholar ST Joshi."

</comment><comment><USER5> A fascinating aspect of being a Lovecraft fan is that, due to his impressive list of correspondents, whole collections of letters (and other materials) surface from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Lovecraft had previously ghost-written an adventure story for Houdini, "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", published in _Weird Tales_.</comment>


Nasa develops modular avionics systems for small missions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/brains-of-the-operation-nasa-team-develops-modular-avionics-systems-for-small-missions <comment><USER2> SpaceX ran into this issue too. Off the shelf parts are rare and prohibitively expensive. Musk's biography goes into this a bit:

"But how do you know if a $5,000 radio designed in-house is going to work against the tried-and-true legacy parts? How do you build the entire rocket's avionics computer system for just over $10,000, when standard rocket companies use systems that cost in the neighborhood of $10 million?

Well, you test both of them on the same flight. While we've been watching SpaceX try to land a rocket on a boat, Vance notes that the company has been performing dozens of experiments in secret. It'll load a rocket with both the legacy part and the one it's designed in house, and test them both without making a big deal out of it."

<comment><USER3> A bit unrelated but I've been told biohacklabs reimplemented lab/med equipement for a hundredth (even a thousandth) of the price. Not 2015 state of art, but still usable.

Free market has blind spots.

<comment><USER4> > Free market has blind spots.

Not sure this is blind spots so much as regulation. You can built it for far less, but you can't get it approved as safe.

<comment><USER5> > You can built it for far less, but you can't get it approved as safe

You can build anything for less. Safety isn't a regulation issue, it's an issue of harming human beings. I'm very glad for those regulations.

<comment><USER6> We need to bring pain back. Humanity has become soft in most first world countries. Eliminating pain is big, big problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's great when tech is advanced like this, but why do all government programs require ridiculous acronyms?

MUSTANG, short for the Modular Unified Space Technology Avionics for Next Generation.

<comment><USER8> Who wouldn't jump at the chance to make a kickass acronym.

<comment><USER9> GOES-R is my person favorite.

<comment><USER10> I still think USA PATRIOT is the most impressive, though it's followup USA FREEDOM is pretty good.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech firms are departing from their see-no-evil stance on society and politics - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21716020-tech-firms-are-last-departing-their-see-no-evil-stance-society-and-politics <comment><USER2> This _really_ has to be put in perspective.

You never saw Ford or GM campaign against the Iraq War. You never saw Wall Street criticize the Patriot Act.

Some people call this activism, others would call it hysteria. Case in point: many people, mostly in the Silicon Valley subculture, are calling Trump an actual fascist, and saying that any CEO collaborating with him is just as evil as him. Textbook definition of hysteria. The grassroots left has been revitalized, but most Americans don't care much about Trump either way.

Now that's the big picture. Of course, immigration matters to people, and, in a minor way, to Silicon Valley. But discourse has become so tinged with emotion that corporations staying mum is now seen as evil, rather than business as usual. This mob-mentality may be productive now, but isn't an entirely positive development.

<comment><USER3> > many people, mostly in the Silicon Valley subculture, are calling Trump an > actual fascist, and saying that any CEO collaborating with him is just as > evil as him

I mean... how is Trump _not_ an actual fascist? What definition of fascism does Trump not embody? I'm being serious--if he could actually wave a magic wand and create the government/world he wanted, how would this government not be a fascist government?

Consider this: Why are Hitler and Mussolini fascists, but not all dictators are fascists? That's the definition of fascism. Now please tell me how that doesn't fit the definition of the government Trump wants?

As far as CEO's collaborating with him being evil... Yeah, I would say working for the Trump administration at this point is basically like working with fascists in the 30s. Lots of people did. Many of those companies are still around. People are people. But they're--rightly--not congratulated by history for it. In fact, mostly history says, "They should have taken it more seriously at the time when they had the chance."

This is one of those cases where if you're _not_ a fan of fascism, you should be fighting Trump every chance you get. It's not hysteria at all; calling it hysteria is in fact (mostly effective) propaganda.

<comment><USER2> > Consider this: Why are Hitler and Mussolini fascists, but not all dictators > are fascists? That's the definition of fascism. Now please tell me how that > doesn't fit the definition of the government Trump wants?

Here's what I can think of: Hitler and Mussolini wanted to create a "New Man", unlike Hussein, Assad, and... Trump.

Trump isn't even a dictator yet, and may never become one. The biggest charge you can make against him is that he's pro-oligarchy, and empowers nefarious radical grassroots movements on the right. It may get a lot worse, but we're not there yet, not even close. The real problem is in public opinion, i.e. how to convince people on the right to care more about facts, and make better voting decisions. But rejecting Trump wholesale isn't a solution to _that_ problem.

> As far as CEO's collaborating with him being evil... Yeah, I would say > working for the Trump administration at this point is basically like working > with fascists in the 30s.

We're not talking IBM-participating-in-the-Holocaust. We're talking left-wing businessmen getting the president to listen to them about how to best create manufacturing jobs. There's miles of difference between the two.

Edit: this article, "Nationalism is Rising, Not Fascism" is a great read.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-friedman/nationalism- is...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-friedman/nationalism-is-rising- not_b_10281138.html)

<comment><USER3> > Hitler and Mussolini wanted to create a "New Man", unlike Hussein, Assad, > and... Trump.

Interesting that you hone in on that; it's true but their views on "men being more manly" do strangely reflect the alt-right and Trump. So yes, this is a fascist-like concept; Trump holds it in spades.

> Trump isn't even a dictator yet, and may never become one.

Don't quit smoking until you're riddled with cancer?

> The biggest charge you can make against him is that he's pro-oligarchy, and > empowers nefarious radical grassroots movements on the right.

No, that's not the biggest charge, but those are themselves rather strong reasons to not want someone to be president. "He's a fascist" is the biggest charge in my mind.

> The real problem is in public opinion, i.e. how to convince people on the > right to care more about facts, and make better voting decisions. But > rejecting Trump wholesale isn't a solution to that problem.

That is A real problem, I agree. It's also a separate (but related) problem. The most acute problem is a fascist president (cancer), an uninformed public is more like "smoking" (the environment the cancer needs to form).

> Edit: this article, "Nationalism is Rising, Not Fascism" is a great read. > [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-friedman/nationalism- > is...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-friedman/nationalism-is..).

Thanks! I disagree though; Trump is very very much a fascist, not merely a nationalist (we don't need any more of those either, btw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think tech firms were thrown into politics more so than other industries. Tech has had to fight for privacy: PRISM/SOPA/PIPA; Apple vs FBI; Google in China; even Blackberry vs middle eastern countries (if i recall correctly).

I bet they don't want to be involved, but have been thrown into it. It's almost expected of them to say something to protect their brand.

If they made coffee like Starbucks, sure... no politics, no problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't want any _publicly owned_ companies to get involved in politics, no donations, no comments, no lobbying, nothing.

Just stay out of it.

If the CEO wants something that he feels is good for his company let him donate personally.

Privately held companies can do what they want.

The reason I'm opposed is that the CEO is putting his opinion into the mouth of his shareholders, who may or may not share his opinion. The shareholders hire the CEO to decide things related to the company, but not political things.

There are obviously gray areas like laws the impact the company directly, but I think people can handle those case by case, with the general policy of stay out of it.

<comment><USER6> There's something to this, but it's also possible for shareholders to divest from companies that don't share their political views (in the same way that you can refuse to work for or buy from a company whose views you hate.)

<comment><USER5> Not if you buy index funds you can't. And index funds are the best way to invest.

<comment><USER7> To be fair...

That's an opportunity for an ideology based index fund.

Of course, having said that...

I'm not sanguine about the relative performance of such an instrument.

<comment><USER8> I would be surprised if it did as well monetarily standard index funds, though that would be rather beside the point. The set of companies in which a morally aligned index fund may invest is, by design, smaller than the set of companies in which an amoral index fund may invest, and so they may be intentionally passing over profitable companies.

One of my favorite quotations is from A Man for All Seasons, with Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More. "If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kind of a shame, one of the thing I value most about working in tech is the apolitical stance a lot of companies take.

<comment><USER10> So build stuff that completely disrupts entire industries, and eliminates whole categories of jobs, but STFU about it's actual effect on people? Just cash the check, geek out about the tech, and get on with your life?

<comment><USER11> > So build stuff that completely disrupts entire industries, and eliminates > whole categories of jobs, but STFU about it's actual effect on people?

Yes. The jobs weren't their responsibility when the existed and shouldn't be when they're gone. We have other entities to worry about things like that, governments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't like the fact that American society is becoming so heavily politicized. I have family members, cousins who are brother and sister, refusing to _talk_ to each other because of this nonsense.

This needs to end.

<comment><USER13> I agree. This is a primary concern for me as well. What are your ideas on how this can be addressed and improved?

<comment><USER14> Cultural change is hard. Like really hard. It's easier to join a culture you like than it is to change a culture you don't like. Cultures form a part of someone's identity and when you mess with someones identity they get defensive and sometimes violent.

I'm not sure that there is a fix for this that isn't a local long term commitment to finding common ground with those around you.

<comment><USER13> Is there anything you are personally doing?

<comment><USER14> I'm doing exactly what I said in my last sentence. I'm committing to a local long term effort to find common ground with those around me. I'm also under no illusions that it will happen quickly.

<comment><USER13> I think that's a great idea, and I'm of the same opinion that it needs to be done locally and personally. Do you have specific strategies or tactics you're using? The status quo doesn't appear to be enough.

<comment><USER14> The thing about local and personal is that the strategies tend to be pretty specific to your particular situation. But there are some general things that will help.

1\. Listen first. And don't just passively listen actively listen. Ask questions which leads into the second thing.

2\. Try to genuinely understand why someone believes as they do. What is motivating their actions and reactions.

3\. Once you are able to empathize with someone that should inform the tactics and strategies you use.

<comment><USER13> Agreed on all points. Even though actions may be specific to the local situation, I think it can still be useful to share, as it can provide a starting point for ideas, even if it's not directly applicable.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sam Altman's anti-Trump blog posts are the main reasons I am not applying to YC this time, and won't do so in future. As a pro-Trump founder I don't want to have to face a political litmus test just to get into a fucking accelerator.

<comment><USER16> Your political posturing is considered by the gatekeepers of the industry to harm the industry. Fine by you, but I don't think you'll get nor deserve any sympathy.

<comment><USER15> And how does that apply to Peter Thiel? Or is he not part of "the industry"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What they're missing is that by speaking (and acting) as moral arbitrars, they're stepping into a position they may not want to be long term.

If Facebook and/or Twitter are people's primary source of information and they're moderating content that is annoying (but not illegal), do those actions start to fall under FEC rules? What about Google's tweaking of Page Rank? How does that affect their valuations?

Since these processes are opaque, it's _easy_ to imply and accuse them of all kinds of things.

We may see a situation where they have to open up processes, procedures, and potentially algorithms. And I suspect they don't want that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tech firms are already heavily involved in politics. It's just that now that the government is no longer doing what they want, they are going to get more involved. News at 10. Has nothing to do with ethics or evil or any of that, has to do with the fact that their profit is built on the backs of immigrants. They don't want to lose that gravy train.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tech firms over-value their own tech by only tweeting, posting or emailing saying they are "concerned" or "upset".

Should be more actions. They can expand/setup offices in foreign countries for developers (not just manufacturing), in effect moving jobs out of the US (and the expensive SF area).

Some good would come of it. They can pay less because cost of living would be cheaper. They would have less visa constraints in recruiting. They would be spending their offshore cash (less cash to repatriate and pay tax on, less currency risk). They would have better visibility into local/international trends and preferences to create growth. Countries would give tax breaks.

They can do this loudly and publicly to get Trump's attention. Imagine the headlines of jobs moving out of US because of Trump's actions.

EDIT: and this would be more business, less politics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Technology just means applying what we know (science) to making tools or systems for solving our problems. Ultimately we cannot avoid using technology in that broad sense to solve societal and political problems.

I must once again challenge readers of Hacker News to consider the possibility that the popular news feeds do not provide an accurate view of the global political situation. This is because information control is a critical aspect of warfare, and that comes in the form of propaganda. And, whether you believe it or not, the United States maintains its position in the world through deadly force that requires projection. This projection comes in the form of extensive, connected military campaigns that have been ongoing for decades. This warfare makes it important to shape information around it -- hence American propaganda.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism#Critic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism#Criticism) as a criticism (I suggest that America is _not_ an exception to history, but much confusion comes from the belief that it is).

In the context that I am trying to make accessible, my own worldview, the fact that these countries are largely Muslim is in a way a distraction from the real issue, which is: the US and overall current geopolitical order is dependent upon control over distribution of fossil fuels (with much, much more resources allocated to US and closest allies), that (unequal) resource control requires military force to protect key areas for extraction and transport, military control over much of the territory of the affected countries is unavailable/not secure, and those areas are all critical in relation to maintaining the resource control and current order.

Look at a map [https://email@example.com,36.995...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,36.9953577,4z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x181d2ea7ecd15b83:0x9e393ace5ce9e5be!8m2!3d5.152149!4d46.199616), see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz), see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption), compare to map of affected countries of recent immigration action [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-immigration- ba...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-immigration-ban-conflict- of-interest/img/2017-trump-immigration-ban-conflict-of- interest_twitter.png?v=1)

In my opinion, religion is not the real issue, and although (obviously) immigration actions against these countries is likely to mainly inflame the situation more, the problems are much more severe than people want to believe. Its not just that we have some people who are prejudice against other religions, however nice it would be to believe that is the whole problem. The root of the problem is really the unequal resource distribution, unresolved military security issues (or in some cases, undeclared war against) (with) those countries, and the reality that the global order is maintained by deadly force and propaganda.

<comment><USER20> "I must once again challenge readers of Hacker News to consider the possibility that the popular news feeds do not provide an accurate view of the global political situation. This is because information control is a critical aspect of warfare, and that comes in the form of propaganda. And, whether you believe it or not, the United States maintains its position in the world through deadly force that requires projection. This projection comes in the form of extensive, connected military campaigns that have been ongoing for decades. This warfare makes it important to shape information around it -- hence American propaganda."

Yep. And let's not forget Steve Piecnizk

"The counter coup saying, we will convict and indite the president of the united states" ... "we are going to stop you from making hilary the president of the united states"

this guy was Psychological Warfare !!!!! for US State Department

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Pieczenik#Professional_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Pieczenik#Professional_life) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5kvWSz5LM&t=95s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5kvWSz5LM&t=95s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think tech firms are opening up pandora's box by introducing themselves into politics. What is next? Separate http protocols for liberal and conservative websites? No good will come of this.

<comment><USER10> That is bull. Everything about what tech is creating is political. Software cannot "eat the world" and not be political. Ignore it at your own peril.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I basically consider Trump the devil and his immigration EO to be evil by both it's motivations and by its effects, but the Snowden revelations should have already done this.

In fact these companies should have done this before they started secretly collaborating with the U.S. government and making Snowden revelations necessary.</comment>


Ask HN: When would we reach Silicon Valley equilibrium? - <AUTHOR> Just a thought experiment, please take it with a grain of salt.
If the major Bay Area firms keep outsourcing tech to Southeast Asian countries for cheap labor, how long until those countries keep up and become as good as Bay Area itself in terms of:
1. Income offered
2. Infrastructure
3. Opportunities
On another note, why do you think the equilibrium hasn't happened yet? <comment><USER2> The past 30 years of outsourcing has not reached such an "equilibrium".</comment>


US puts brake on H-1B visa processing - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/f1aec40a-0075-11e7-96f8-3700c5664d30 <comment><USER2> Slightly click-baity title. This is the same as the suspension of premium processing (which is already on the front page on HN [1]), where you could pay USCIS extra to get a quicker turn-around on your application.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13787701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13787701)</comment>


Scribble: The Racket Documentation Tool - <AUTHOR> http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ <comment><USER2> I like Scribble - I can include math in my documents getting HTML _and_ PDF (via PdfLaTeX) for free. That and LaTeX makes pretty documents.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm just not getting it, but why is this better than going with straight LaTeX? Pandoc can be used to convert LaTeX to HTML. So why the need for an extra layer of complexity? Other than a reason to use a Lisp.</comment></comment>


NeXTSTEP Programming (1993) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://simson.net/ref/1993/NeXTSTEP3.0.pdf <comment><USER2> I love the old NeXT stuff, and all that they've bequeathed us, but I always wondered why they put the scrollbar on the left side of the window?

<comment><USER3> NeXT put it on the left to differentiate themselves from Apple, who put it on the right! (Or maybe they just missed Smalltalk-80.)

When NeXT merged into Apple, the UI was harmonized with that of MacOS, and the scrollbar went back to the right. Until it vanished and was largely replaced by multitouch gestures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ahhhh, the good 'ol days. Love it.</comment>


Build a Team that Ships (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://nav.al/build-a-team-that-ships <comment><USER3> I've been shipping for more than thirty years. Twenty-five of them, as a manager.

Not everything has been a success, and I was not the "big boss," during most of that time, so I often had to work in far-from-perfect systems.

The one thing that has been a constant drumbeat, throughout my entire career, was a relentless focus on "Done."

"What does 'Done' look like?" Is a question I'm constantly asking myself. It can change, as the project progresses, but it's always there.

I tend to start vague, with "Done" being almost abstract, and get sharper and more focused, as the project coalesces around an end-user deliverable.

As I said, I have had many less-than-stellar outcomes, but I've always delivered an end product.

The best ones have been the ones with the least planning up front. Not always the most ambitious ones, but the best ones.

I've learned to adopt an "organic" project process, based on the assumption that it's impossible to know the end result when I start.

I write about that in these articles:

[https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/evolutionary- design-...](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/evolutionary-design- specification/)

[https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/forensic-design- docu...](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/forensic-design- documentation/)

[https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what- ships...](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are- built-for/)

<comment><USER4> Edit: skip this. I've read your links and it's clear you wouldn't fall into this trap. Sorry.

I had a boss who relentlessly focused on getting things done, neglecting anything but the immediate cost. If the cost could be pushed into the future (well, that wasn't the calculation - it was more like 'can I ignore this right now') then it was. He built up a whole lot of technical debt that was expensive to deal with, and some never was dealt with, so continued costing permanently. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER3> It's cool.

Tech debt is a HUGE deal. Since I work alone (for the most part) these days, it's an absolute killer.

I can't afford it at all.

The single biggest guarantor of a massive debt (IMNSHO) is a rigid up-front specification.

<comment><USER5> >The single biggest guarantor of a massive debt (IMNSHO) is a rigid up-front specification.

Or the lack of _any meaningful_ upfront planing.

This goes in both ways. But I agree of course with the above. Detailed specs, especially done in some ivory tower, will cause massive problems, no question.

<comment><USER3> This is what I do: [https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/forensic-design- docu...](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/forensic-design- documentation/)

I call the upfront spec my "Napkin Sketch." It's often a single diagram.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds eerily familiar, especially "People choose what to work on.".

You can't have that for the whole team in the real world. There are tasks which are universally unpleasant. Usually this devolves into one guy (the one who "ships" the most so is favoured by management) picking the best, most "shippable" tasks and the rest getting what's left.

That's because what this philosophy does is it turns what was supposed to be teamwork into some kind of weird competition over who shipped the most.

And contrary to popular belief when people compete instead of working together the outcome is usually worse.

I know one company that implements very similar rules and while they do make good money, they ship unmaintainable crap. Fortunately for them there's a niche for that as well.

<comment><USER7> "making good money" is the goal of a company.

<comment><USER8> Humans locally minimize entropy, sometimes in exchange for fulfilling an objective function or following some optimization gradient (profit).

It's nice when it works out and we leave things behind in better conditions than we found them, but that's not what the universe is playing at. Nor is it necessarily a/the goal.

It's weird how this all works, and how short a time we have to affect it. It would be nice if everything we made was good and worthwhile, but it's hard to know where things are even going to wind up, and if our investments in making certain things better will pay off. You have to consider opportunity cost when making improvements.

(This pandemic is really screwing up my sleep schedule.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where are the companies that try to make their employees better? As someone who is an employed software developer, but has never been confused for a rockstar coding ninja, things like this hit me emotionally when I read them.

This might not be the smartest thing to put onto the internet, but I'm not someone who comes in guns a-blazing and ships dozens of features my first week. Or do I ever get to a high velocity. Would I like to? Sure. But that's not where I am at now.

So, a lot of companies talk like this. I suspect this is like baseball before Moneyball -- what if you can get people who are undervalued and make them better? What companies are doing that? Or even, how does one do that on their own?

<comment><USER10> My company does this, but our pay is somewhat under market rate - <USER2> developers make not much compared to what is bandied about here. But then again, I run a company in a desirable field, the rules are pretty lax, and we invest a ton of money in employees.

You might find the inverse relationship, unfortunately. High salaries often come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of your high salary. That's been my experience, and I've worked for a fair number of large and small tech firms.

<comment><USER11> > You might find the inverse relationship, unfortunately. High salaries often > come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of > your high salary. That's been my experience, and I've worked for a fair > number of large and small tech firms.

This is surely correct. I just ask myself whether this is just a very different formulation of what zck wrote:

> I suspect this is like baseball before Moneyball -- what if you can get > people who are undervalued and make them better?

If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them.

<comment><USER10> >> If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them.

Yeah, I don't disagree with this at all. My software architect was writing JCL COBOL full-time before he took this job and has a degree in Computer Science from a no-name private school. He knew nothing of our tech stack, but he was a hard worker and a good culture fit, so I hired him and gave him two months (EDIT: on salary) to teach himself - bought him all the courses, books, and such he could stand. Within 3 weeks he was pushing to our repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've worked on several teams, but mostly solo in my programming career. I can tell you without hesitation that the times I felt the "best" were when I was shipping things every single day.

There were a few jobs I had where I'd work on a project for what seemed like an endless amount of time and almost never saw any sort of real-world feedback --it was sad and demotivating.

I definitely agree that if you want results, keep your team small, have everyone ship things, and be personally responsible. It's highly motivating and from what I've experienced, draws out the best in people.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can compare this philosophy to "Publish or Perish" in academia. Universities tell scholars if you don't "ship" (publish frequently, get citations), we fire you.

In that system, quantity is more important than quality. It's about pointless journals, conferences and citation rings, rather than actual research. "Publish or Perish" is about institutions trying to inflate their ranking, rather than fulfilling their original purpose: advance the frontiers of human knowledge.

Another example: When IBM projects paid engineers based on "kilos", or thousands of lines of code added, what was the result? millions of lines of pointless, redundant code. Bloated software that doesn't work and is impossible to maintain.

Another example: Stacked ranking/Vitality curve. The idea is simple: you evaluate each employee, producing a score. Then you rank all employees within a team. The lowest scoring 10% gets fired. Repeat every year... result? teams hire the worst employees they can, because that improves their chance of surviving the next stacked ranking iteration. Repeat for many years and you obtain an incompetent organization incapable of doing anything, full of toxic people.

If you use sprint velocity as your most important metric, the result will be a lot of redundant actions followed by corrective actions to undo those actions. It looks like a lot is getting done, but that's the same as saying that a truck driver driving in circles is productive based purely on fuel utilization, when in reality the guy is not going anywhere.

A perverse incentive, that's what it is. Want to have 0% crime rate? Have a population of zero, problem solved. Want to end elephant poaching? Kill all elephants, problem solved.

What is important is not only when you ship, but what you ship, and how you ship it. Don't upset your customers in the process of releasing changes. And keep the vital aspects of your product working...

[https://youtu.be/XXBxV6-zamM?t=4072](https://youtu.be/XXBxV6-zamM?t=4072)

<comment><USER14> Most of these problems can be curbed by pproper oversight and exception handling, however i also find that techniques based on empathy and trust tend to help longterm.

<comment><USER13> So there are aspects of development that rank higher than shipping, right?

That invalidates the "shipping is #1" credo. Sustained and sustainable growth is #1.

Accountability is important, but being forced to ship a broken release is irrational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "All doers, no talkers"

Some of the absolute worst teams I have been on were like that. Full of self- proclaimed "doers". Always doing things without thinking even the basics through, no coordination whatsoever. Creating complete shitshows and clown- fiestas that others then have to fix somehow and always, always (did I say always already?) with the dumb excuse "well, at least _I_ did something".

These are the "net negatives" on your projects.

P.S. And no, "be smart gets things done" people do not refer to themselves as "doers".

<comment><USER16> I assume 'talkers' means people that _only_ talk. OP isn't making a case for or against planning, just saying that if you're taking a small team approach, once the planning is sufficient, the people who do the planning also have to jump in and produce. Your 'small team' can't be one programmer with a team of BAs, POs and designers looking over their shoulder for 40 hours a week.

<comment><USER17> This obviously doesn't apply across the board (but what does), but in my experience, on engineering teams I've been on, so-called & self-proclaimed "doers" are only doers of highly visible work, whereas the "talkers" are the real behind-the-scenes doers.

They do the invisible maintenance work and a part of the reason they "talk" so much is because they know from experience what the burden of managing technical debt. is (and that they'll be stuck doing it) and they want to talk/plan out/advise people on the least burdensome options.

They invisibly help/mentor the self-proclaimed "doers" on the projects they've eagerly taken on without any clue as to how challenging it will end up being (the same project the "talkers" cautioned others about because their knowledge gave them some degree of foresight).

The truth is, you probably need both breeds. The "doers" for ambition and the ability to actually start something (without getting lost in months of talking/planning) and the "talkers" to insist on the limited amount of talking/planning needed and actually have the knowledge to follow through.

<comment><USER18> There's always more people willing to tell you what to code than the people who can code. You are not mentoring anything if you can't step in and do the job yourself.

<comment><USER19> I would point out he described people who do the most uncomfortable work on the project and therefore also talk to other people.

The "does" he described cherry pick easy, fun, highly visible work, refuse to coordinate with others, dont help with integrating other peoples parts and then take offense when people doing integration complain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My coding career started in 1987. For the last 3 years, and for the first time in my career, I've been working on a product that has a team of professional designers, ie proper graphic designers, artists, "empathetic" people, etc.

And for the first time in my career, I've looked at the product and thought "Wtf! that's a thing of _beauty_ ". As a result I'm confident that users will actually, you know, _like_ our product, not just tolerate it.

So, IME, having confidence in what you're producing has a material benefit on the motivation of the developers to get their end of things right too.

</comment><comment><USER21> > You have to ship something into live production every week – worst case, two > weeks. If you just joined, ship something.

I've tried this. To be frank, it's the wrong incentive. All processes will start revolving around this. It gives a great rush to the head but a false sense of security.

Despite patting ourselves on the back on our great release cycle and velocity, we never had the time to listen and adapt to our users.

We changed. We now measure how quickly we respond to any kind of feedback.

<comment><USER22> This is one the most important jobs of product managers, if you have them: building out a backlog of shovel-ready high ROI work aggregated from customer requests, user analytics, and strategic engineering efforts.

If PM is doing their job well, engineers can build and ship multiple times within a sprint without significant delays waiting to gather feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I work on a team that functions this way. We're pretty productive for a team of 4 doing 100 story points a week. We usually deploy a day or two after our 1 week sprint ends.

The down side is that I'm exhausted all the time. We don't interact much outside of reviewing PRs, questions and help regarding our domains on the project. This can be a lonely experience during the COVID WFH days. Its a difficult pace to sustain week after a week with no real days to work on personal projects. At the end of the day I'm disgusted by screens, terminals and editors. That is not a good sign.

The upside, I'm outputting the most code in my career (I came from enterprise/IGO work). I'm learning how to perform at a high-pace. There is a lot of focus on preparation: eating right, sleeping/resting correctly and spending time off-computer time breaking down problems I need to solve during my next 'shift' into sizeable, ordered chunks. All done so I can make my 8 hours productive the next day.

Committing, merging and deploying at a rapid rate feels good but I become more and more like a factory worker each week.

<comment><USER24> I also feel that being disgusted by editors and terminals at the end of the day is a really strong sign of something off. I can say that in some jobs I would study / do personal stuff at night, in some others I just wanted to drink after leaving the office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Half baked and complex are hardly descriptions that endorse their process:

> It's not perfect. We ship too many features, many half-baked. The product is > complex, with many blind alleys. It's hard to integrate non-engineers – they > aren't valued.

<comment><USER26> > It's hard to integrate non-engineers – they aren't valued.

> But, we ship.

That in particular meant I viewed the article as a cry for help.

But it seems like all the commentary here thinks it is sincere and not an ironic piece?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Peer-management. Promise what you'll do in the coming week on internal Yammer. Deliver – or publicly break your promise – next week."

This idea of commitments as value keeps coming up. It's difficult to explain to many technologists who see their value as measured in work, middle managers who see their value measured in negative time. If you just take the problem you are solving, express it functionally in terms of what goes into it, and what it will produce when it is solved, committing to that creates value for others. If you've seen Ray Dalio's "economic machine" video, commitments are are not unlike creating credit that facilitates spending, which creates growth. I get there are dodgy anti-patterns for creating fake commitments and fake credit that project managers tend to use, but a team that is creating growth doesn't need people like that.

</comment><comment><USER28> What constitute "shipping" exactly? "Just ship more" is as ambiguous as "be a better driver". It doesn't tell you much about the quality of code, amount of tech debt they're creating while shipping frantically and generally not taking the time for careful design. Software should be designed like they do mechanical engineering - you get a few prototyping shots at it but it's expensive to iterate too many times - prototypes cost a few thousand dollars depending on the complicity of whatever you're designing. So spend the energy and focus into designing robust code that isn't gonna fall apart in 6 months. Stop chasing after "shipping" madness. Instead of shipping, perhaps ask for a solid chunk of the equity. Don't do cheap labor for small startups unless you're handsomely paid for the appropriate risk involved in your career.

<comment><USER29> This is 100% true for later stage companies with established products/stakeholders and 100% false for early stage startups.

I have found product market fit 3 times in my life. Each time was with an extraordinarily shitty, unmaintainable, low quality codebase. But those shitty codebases iterate the end product faster and the speed of iteration is all that matters when you are trying to make your worthless startup become a useful company. Once you find what your users want, 100% it will be rewritten from scratch in a scalable, robust, thoughtfully designed way anyway.

With you on the equity bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was on the ship ship ship, bandwagon for a long time. Until, I realized there is a technical debt that you eventually need to pay down the road. Its like playing tetris. There are only soo many blocks you can place at will. Eventually, it catches up with you and game over!!!

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm going to take a stab at responding to this, to see whether it's the insufferable tone of the writing that bothers me, or something else.

If we assume the author is part of a team that makes software and has users, to "ship" for him or her is another way of saying "deliver a product that our customers will find valuable enough to use" and hopefully pay for. Do the people who use this software depend on it for any important purpose, or would its failure be inconsequential?

Maybe I'm wrong with the assumption that the author wants to make a product people would pay for, since they lead with "we want a team of self-managing people who ship code." It doesn't say we want to make a business. It begs the question of Why? We ship to what end? Would it be less impressive to say, We just like to write software and want everyone to leave us alone?

Why write an article and observe that your process creates too many half-baked features but do nothing to reflect on that and reduce waste?

Why make the ridiculous claim that you don't value people who aren't programmers? What goal, if any, would such a statement help you reach? Why are we shipping so often (...customer feedback...?) if we don't care about anyone?

And of course the pithy final line.

So no, it's not just the tone that bothers me. It's the dismissive and plainly antagonistic approach to software development that says the creator is the only one with any worth.

I'd be interested to know how the author might reflect on this piece today.

<comment><USER32> Yes.

The least surprising sentence after all of that was:

> It's hard to integrate non-engineers – they aren't valued.

This describes a bunch of hackers, not a company.

<comment><USER16> I wonder how many CEOs have said something like this just before a "bunch of hackers" has eaten their lunch and decimated their stock price?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." (Goodhart's law)

A team that ships often is arguably doing great (because complex things that work are made out of simple things that work, and early feedback is important), but you can definitely just ship random shit and be satisfied with it if you've set your mind to ship often without regard to the proper way it should be done. Shipping often is easy, shipping often good things is hard.

</comment><comment><USER34> > Absolutely no middle managers. All BD via APIs.

What does BD refer to here and how do APIs eliminate middle managers?

<comment><USER35> Assumed business development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What works/worked for AngelList isn't going to work for your team necessarily.

Choose your culture and incentives wisely and use an approach that helps you to solve problems.

If the consequence of shipping software that has an unknown and undesired behavior could cost your customers millions of dollars an hour you should probably invest in a team that is familiar with formal methods (or some other approach to ensuring you ship the _right_ thing). Shipping the first thing that works on your dev machine that passes a few unit tests isn't generally sufficient when property or people are on the line.

</comment><comment><USER37> How does one go about improving this in a big corporate company? Our development team is focussed on shipping, but most of our delays come from the business changing their mind and changing requirements constantly.

The people who act as the bridge between development and business just side with the business. Anything that goes wrong is blamed on our development team.

It's probably just a hopeless situation and time to move on.

</comment><comment><USER38> I was trying to work out who the author(s) were, and whether this was the kind of content-marketing blogspam that doesn't belong on HN. But it's pretty anonymous. Their twitter account retweets Scott Adams and seems to be on the "unlockdown young people to keep the economy moving" viewpoint. Some data points for your bayesian filter.

<comment><USER39> It's Naval Ravikant:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > People choose what to work on. Better they ship what they want than not ship > what you want.

Among many drawbacks to this idea, it puts a hard cap on your organization size. Building large companies with hard to build products requires getting hundreds of engineers moving in the same direction, i.e. someone telling someone else what to make.

<comment><USER41> I think there's (at least theoretically), the idea that folks could flock like birds or fish in a shoal and all make independent motions based on observation of others with no heirarchical orders and self-organize into a coherent mass which is efficiently moving in the same direction, but I haven't seen it arise in practice so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Over-simplification, mentally convenient; however, won't go far in the real world. Some good point though to narrow-minded. Read more man.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wait what here is the advantage again?

</comment><comment><USER16> I think OP is describing the winning formula for a productive team, but he's attributing it primarily to the wrong factor.

Shipping often increases quality if you're getting good feedback from users and acting on it. But it's not a slam dunk obvious "best practice" or whatever. The end goal is to deliver the best quality software (or alternatively the most sell-able software), shipping early isn't some arbitrary metric you use to assess your engineers, it's a strategy to get your product from point A to B as quick as possible, where B is something really useful that the market wants, and A is presumably something crap that you can't sell. Because if you already have a piece of great software then your focus should be on selling it, not throwing more darts at the wall and hoping you don't knock the dart board off.

Looking at the dot points, I have no doubt that all of OP's teams are successful. They're all great advice, except for the one the title and conclusion of the article are based on.

Their first point is "keep the team small, all doers, no talkers". IME that already puts you way ahead of the pack. By far the easiest way to cork a startup is to hire one of everything and wait for Parkinson's law to bone you. A small team of programmers isn't the ideal setup for everything, but I bet it does well above average compared to the field (which is good, because the average startup goes down like the Hindenburg if YC's data is accurate).

Outsourcing stuff that isn't core is also good advice. Half the reason big teams don't work is exponential growth of communication. If you can modularise your business so that one app/feature/whatever is tied strictly to one communication channel, then you avoid all that. Obviously it can backfire. I'm sure everyone has seen a few projects eat dust by outsourcing to the wrong people, it's not exactly an original story. I think it's good advice in general though.

Aligning people's development goals with the business's goals is obvious. The further suggestion to prioritise employee's wants over the business's is interesting though. I think it's on the right track but the actual good advice is buried a layer deeper here. You should prioritise work your team wants to do, but there's a prerequisite that you probably also need a team that wants to do work that is good for the business. I think the real advice is hire people who are (or can become) mentally invested in what your business is trying to accomplish. And the easiest shortcut to that is probably to make them financially invested in it by offering equity. Align everyone's goals then trust your team completely. I think if you're already in a position where your employees don't care and have tangential goals (like a bit of resume driven development), then you probably don't have a great move to make, and blindly following OP's advice isn't likely to improve the situation much.

One person per project is fantastic advice for some definition of 'project'. Big businesses and big teams hate this approach, it's all about bus factors and treating everyone like cogs that can be moved around to wherever they're needed. Most of the teams I've been on would rather everyone have a shitty basic knowledge of an entire huge codebase than have anyone be responsible for any subset of it. And IME it always devolves into one hero that tries to control everything and everyone else feels like they have no control. I've been on both sides of it countless times, and I don't think it's the best way to build software. Not by a long shot.

I think the reason it happens is because good developers have an innate want for more control, to take on more power and the responsibility that comes with it. Supressing that might work for average teams that can do their job with average developers (including good ones that are brought down to the mean), but if you want to stand out from the crowd you need to build an environment where everyone can have responsibility and be a core part of the team.

'Peer management' works great. But OP's approach isn't the way to go about it. I know a handful of great developers, people who I would entrust with my business or back with my own money. One of the things they all have in common is that timed status reports designed to hold them accountable wouldn't work on them. They might put on a smile and suck it up but I can guarantee you they wouldn't actually give a fuck what anybody thought about their delivery speed unless they actually respected them as a peer. So this is another dot point with a huge pre-requisite. It's great advice as long as you already have a team that all respect each other's abilities and are all close friends who don't want to disappoint each other. And if that's the case then you don't actually have to take action as a founder or CEO. You don't need to set up weekly reminders for your staff to make promises, the accountability will have grown naturally and already be there. Good engineers are self managing. OP says that themself in the opening paragraph. So this specific advice seems a bit out of place.

That leaves 'no tasks longer than one week'. I think in the context of OP's teams, this advice is crap. If you're already nailing everything above, then you have a team that will deliver results and build great software. In every project I've worked on, there has been stuff in the pipeline that would take longer than a week and be a net positive for the business. Especially if you're running a small team and have a modular workload with shared responsibility as above. There's always going to be something that, if you broke it down, would represent a big hairy mess of interrelated tasks that have a high level of complexity, affect the same parts of the code base, and require the same high level of domain knowledge. Breaking those kinds of tasks down is usually a mistake, and it's totally fine to have a team member you trust go off on a little odyssey for a fortnight or a month to deliver them. That doesn't mean they work in a silo, or you don't get kept in the loop, just that they're given space to work.

In large teams these tasks are usually brute forced by breaking them down, creating jira monstrosities with every dependency thoroughly tracked, then splitting them up amongst a team of 10 people. They always, without fail, slip a couple of sprints and end up taking a month anyway, with the added bonus of tying the whole team up for that time. Nobody notices of course because we all know the correct language to use to make it sound like everything that was done was efficient and necessary and nobody really wants to suggest that whatever project management best practices are in these days might not have a 100% strike rate over the extremely varied work that goes into a complex software product.

So, tldr; OP has a bunch of great advice that you should definitely follow, but I think they're off base on a couple of things.</comment>


FastFlow: Programming Multicores - <AUTHOR> http://calvados.di.unipi.it/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=ffnamespace:about

<comment><USER2> I looked into FastFlow a few months ago. Its pretty interesting, especially the pipeline stuff. In the end, I decided to use Intels Threading Building Blocks instead, just because its more complete and better documented. Its worth keeping an eye on FastFlow though.</comment>


Ask HN: Forum(s) that you visit daily? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> forums.somethingawful.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, there's 4chan. But seriously, I like reddit, especially the iOSProgramming, the swift and the financialindependence subs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hacker News, Reddit, Wario Forums, Gaming Latest, The Admin Zone, Discord. Also visit a few others every other day or so.

<comment><USER5> What's some good non-tech Discord channels that you subscribe?

<comment><USER4> Well, I'm mostly interested in gaming and gaming culture, so the ones I subscribe to are related to that. But either way:

General Gaming:

GamesPress 1-Up World Wario Forums Discord Source Gaming Discord

Gaming YouTube Related:

REGNR8 Blue Jack Generation Snoman Gaming

Speedrunning Related:

Super Mario Odyssey Speedrunning Breath of the Wild Speedrunning

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> BlackHatWorld, HN, Reddit

</comment><comment><USER7> HackerNew, Reddit, Twitter, StackOverflow.

</comment><comment><USER8> IH community is my new special splace

<comment><USER9> What is IH?

<comment><USER10> [https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Twitter HN CloverBells Lobste.rs The Q Community

I'm going to start using Mastodon more.

I used to visit MeatBall Wiki a lot more often.

<comment><USER12> What is CloverBells? I tried Googling it without any luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even me too. I can't find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> cruisersforum.com, sailing forum.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would not share them here because I don't want hn users to ruin them.

<comment><USER15> Dissing this community while participating in it is not only in bad taste, it breaks the site guideline against shallow dismissals. Please don't post like this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


ISRO successfully launched 31 satellites carried onboard PSLV-C40 - happy-go-lucky https://www.isro.gov.in/launcher/pslv-c40-cartosat-2-series-satellite-mission <comment> happy-go-lucky PSLV-C40/Cartosat-2 Series Mission Liftoff and Onboard Camera View:

[https://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c40-cartosat-2-series- satellite...](https://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c40-cartosat-2-series-satellite- mission/pslv-c40-cartosat-2-series-mission-liftoff-and-onboard)</comment>


Esnek enables a minimalistic Ruby interface for JSON APIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sayarus/esnek

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a ruby gem I had created one year ago to interface with ElasticSearch from Ruby, but is used against any JSON-based API and any version of it. Compare this to domain-specific ruby gems for individual APIs. Though I am not proud of documentation, I believe the idea to use a single Ruby gem against any API will enable some people to simply read the API manual, and program against it directly.</comment>


Mercury.js: a modular, fast, virtual-dom, functional-reactive frontend framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Raynos/mercury

<comment><AUTHOR> An interesting framework, somewhat similar to Mithril ([http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/](http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/)), and nearly as fast, which means its quicker than Angular / Ember / Bootstrap etc.</comment>


Petition for Death Star by 2016 passes 25,000 names, White House must respond - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/12/13/petition-to-build-a-death-star-by-2016-passes-25000-signatures-white-house-is-required-to-respond/?fromcat=google

<comment><AUTHOR> I think a smarter goal would be to build a spaceship capable of reaching Moon or Mars a lot faster. Also able to transport robots and supplies to build a colony for humans within a decade or two (hopefully). Just a thought...

<comment><USER2> No. Death Star or nothing.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Maker Feed – Latest updates from the worlds greatest entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://makerfeed.co <comment><AUTHOR> Maker Feed collects the latest updates from a collection of the worlds greatest tech entrepreneurs, founders and makers so you can stay in touch with stuff that happens in the tech world.</comment>


Ask HN:DippinDots is going bankrupt can someone buy their 4.5 MIL Facebook fans? - <AUTHOR> I saw the link on HN that Dippin Dots was going bankrupt and I clicked to see their Facebook page. They have 4.5 million followers and it would be a shame for a company that put so much effort into building their social media presence like that to have it deleted without some profit.
Is their a way for a company in the same market like Ben and Jerry's or Hagen Daz's to purchase the  account. I'm assuming this violates some of Facebooks guidelines but it thought it would be interesting..
We may see companies liquidating their social media accounts as they do other commodities and assets.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-04/dippin-dots-flash-frozen-ice-cream-maker-seeks-bankruptcy-protection.html <comment><USER2> Chapter 11 is reorganization which doesn't mean the company is disappearing.

Chapter 7 and 13 are the ones where the company is liquidated and ceases to function.

IF they are not able to use their cash as collateral for the loan from Regions Bank, then, they will amend their filing and at that point, perhaps the fanpage would be counted as an asset - at which point creditors would be first in line to obtain the asset.

<comment><USER3> > perhaps the fanpage would be counted as an asset

But it's not something they own, right? If anyone owns it, it's Facebook.

<comment><USER2> I think it would be a pretty good test of the value of social media. If anything, they could create a small spinoff that manages their social presence, which could be converted which may not violate any T&C that Facebook has.

However, it could be counted as goodwill which is not a tangible asset. There is intrinsic value in it, but, you'd have to hope Dippin Dots knows that, and a creditor also places a value on it.

Otherwise, as the original poster suggested, it might just vanish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What makes you think that 4.5MM fans want to hear about anything else? They signed up for DD, not actual ice cream. Sure, you might think you can pivot them into regular ice cream (which is not actually the 'same market' as DD), but that was obviously not the user's expectation in signing up.

</comment><comment><USER5> On a side note, Dippin Dots is cool about the first time you try it. After that its kinda "meh". I bought some last month (probably years since I last had it) and I was asking myself "why the hell did I get this again?".

<comment><USER6> I respectfully disagree. Dippin Dots has always been happiness in a cup for me. Hearing that they are going bankrupt truly marks a sad day for me :-(</comment></comment>


Autonomous Vehicles Were First Used to Help Soldiers Avoid Roadside Bombs - <AUTHOR> https://beth.technology/podcast-autonomous-vehicles-bombs-torc-robotics/ <comment><USER2> (audio)

"First" is incorrect. Autonomous aircraft go back to _WW2;_ JFK's older brother died in one.</comment>


Show HN: What do you think of my resume? - <AUTHOR> http://arthur-moreau.net

<comment><USER2> i would put the position title on the job history

i would change the "i like" x to "i do"

i would put a portfolio/i made section page (and a little a little interactivity)

just my opinion tho :)

<comment><AUTHOR> All ideas are welcomed ! I take note ! Thank you !

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fun. However, I don't know if these kinds of resume actually work to get a job, so you should probably make sure you still have a "traditional" copy somewhere :)

(I think that there are a few grammatical errors, but I'm not a native speaker so I won't elaborate.)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah you're right, and you're not the first to tell me that ! i will make a 'traditionnal' resume in addition, just in case :)</comment></comment>


People Use Chalk to Write Plant Names on Sidewalks to Help Connect with Nature - <AUTHOR> https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/people-using-chalk-to-label-weeds-growing-in-sidewalks/ <comment><USER2> They risk a £2,500 fine for "graffiti", wow.

Always wondered why farmers don't put up more signs saying what they are growing in fields and orchards, or raising in livestock fields. Seems like a cheap and easy way to get people to engage and appreciate what they're driving past.</comment>


Funny: Ashton Kutcher tries on Steve Jobs' signature outfit for new film - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/12/3016210/ashton-kutcher-steve-jobs-signature-outfit-film-biopic

<comment><USER2> Too soon.</comment>


This is how web design should be presented - <AUTHOR> http://mocku.ps/

<comment><USER2> Rings a bell, <http://www.bounceapp.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Bounceapp is not precise.</comment></comment>


FedEx CIO Rob Carter talks real-time analytics - <AUTHOR> http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/fedex-cio-sees-analytics-driving-a-world-of-enterprise-change/

<comment> dumb-dumb "subscribe to a common message bus"

I like this idea a lot. Give us the raw data feed and let us build our own applications to process it.</comment>


Tell HN: Reminders With Friends free promo codes before launch - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
An app I helped develop called Reminders With Friends has been submitted to the App Store and will be released as soon Apple approves it.  If you head over to http://www.slyceapps.com/reminders and sign up, we will email out promo codes to remove ads for free once the app launches.
Just wanted to give you guys the opportunity to get codes to remove ads before launch.
Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link:

<http://www.slyceapps.com/reminders></comment>


Show HN: 3sName – The Fastest Startup Name Generator Made with Vue - <AUTHOR> https://3sname.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Annoyed by finding suitable product names and available domains, I've created 3sName.com to generate names automatically. It's a simple static site. I developed the website with Bulma CSS and Vue. After that, I deployed it on Vercel.

For the API, I created it with Django to get data from NameCheap.

Feel free to give me any feedback!</comment>


Copyright Royalty Board Boosts Songwriters' Streaming Pay Nearly 50% - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/copyright-royalty-board-boosts-songwriters-streaming-pay-nearly-50-1202679118/ <comment><USER2> This perfectly captures the problem with Spotify's business. Netflix has the same issue on the video side and is working around it by producing original content.

However, music is different than video. With music, Spotify needs a full catalog for a great streaming service. With video, Netflix just needs sufficient compelling content to keep the subscriber from churning.

<comment><USER3> > _However, music is different than video and Spotify does not have the same > choice._

Not only _have_ they been creating more and more original audio content, but they're about to try video content again (their first effort failed) as well. In their mind, music was just their beachhead offering.

[http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/spotify-lures- courtney-...](http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/spotify-lures-courtney- holt-from-disney-for-top-content-job-exclusive-1202546835/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Jerkins' stake in the song generated $146,000 in performance royalties, while streaming revenue from the same period garnered $278 for 38 million Pandora plays and $218 for 34 million YouTube streams. _

In those two scenarios, how much does the band/performer get?

<comment><USER5> If they didn't participate in writing the song, 0%.

<comment><USER6> Is that really true? That seems pretty insane.

<comment><USER7> This carried over from radio. It was decided that recording artists benefited sufficiently from the publicity of being played on the radio leading to record purchases and concert ticket sales. Song writers managed to get a compulsory royalty instead. Their compensation is written in law, they can not negotiate for more, but at least they get paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what this will do to negotiated rates, will the Spotify's of the world succeed in arguing that they're paying ~20% more for the music, so the base negotiated rate should go down to compensate for this, or will labels manage to hold the current prices?

I.e. whose pocket will this actually come out of in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER9> Content is incredibly cheap nowadays. I used to spend most of my paycheck in high school on CD's.

</comment><comment><USER10> Idea:

Rather than all-you-can-stream, charge a low rate per song play to users. Assume that existing services charges $15/mo, and heavy users might play 16 hours a day, and act song length is 3 minutes, that comes out to about $0.0015 per play to be the same value proposition. But guessing average is much lower so we could up the rate 2x or 4x and customers come out the same. Everyone gets the same cut of revenue per song play, so popular artists get the same cut of streams as indie artists.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER11> The high-volume users are probably the biggest proponents of the service, so putting prices up for them might have negative effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is it songwriters aren't negotiating these individually? Copyright Royalty Board sounds like a union.

<comment><USER7> They are a panel of three judges which sets the statutory compensation rate for music played on streaming services. Their goal is to set it at a market rate of what a willing seller and a willing buyer would agree to.

It is what keeps streaming stations from having to have lawyers negotiate hundreds of deals for the content they play and then still get sued when they screw up and play an unlicensed song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Imagine programmers asking for a per-execution rate.

<comment><USER14> We have in the past, and we are again, which is just a little ridiculous, and I think everyone can see that.

Back in the day, IBM trialled it with some version of their mainframe and a particular database program, or tried to.

From what I recall, IBM said it would save us in the long run, and claimed they were able to because we hadn't bought the mainframes, they were under a contract. It didn't fly. (Business hint - don't try and fudge numbers when dealing with an insurance company.)

Today? AWS Lambda, and other "function" cloud services, charging for execution time, which isn't quite the same, but I have to feel we aren't far away from someone building their product around Lambda... And then directly passing costs to customers with the same pricing model.</comment></comment>


Keep TODOs in git - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/r2g2rq <comment><USER2> This is a bad idea. I can come up with a TODO at any time; I especially _do_ when I'm in the middle of something and have staged local changes. In that case, this:

        git commit --allow-empty -m "TODO: $*"

Will do the wrong thing—committing my staged changes even if I didn't want that, and giving them a wrong commit message. If the change is small, I might not notice. _If_ I were going to involve Git in my task tracking, I would much prefer something like this:

        todo() {
          touch TODO
          printf "%s\n%s\n\n" "$(date)" "$*" | cat - TODO > TODO.tmp
          mv TODO.tmp TODO
          $(git config core.editor) TODO
        }

<comment><USER3> Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about keeping a TODO file in your revision control so that you can see when things are added/removed by reviewing the history.

<comment><USER4> I do this with tdl and add the .tdldb file to my commits. Works great!

<comment><USER5> Funny that neither Google nor Bing know what "tdl" is on the first page of results; luckily, tdldb makes it work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not just use 'git notes'? This seems like exactly the sort of use case that feature is for.

<comment><USER7> Would notes survive a rebase workflow? (not that the original tip's empty commit does, which is quite a flaw)

<comment><USER6> It appears that the notes survive a rebase but they don't point to anything in your history. They continue to point to a commit before the rebase.

<comment><USER7> Too bad. As I understand it that's because rebase relies on the patch format as the full representation of a commit; but that excludes the commit's notes. replacement refs and grafts survive it in squashed form because they are part of the graph traversal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice,

But I've checked nearly everything thing out. Online kanban boards, Trello, Asana, Org-Mode you name it...

Its extremely hard to beat the flexibility of a diary and pencil/pen. You can doodle, scratch, draw, record, take notes, maintain time, review history, write a lesson, work out problems... The list is endless... You can do all this in a easy extremely distraction less tool. And to be frank maintaining a diary gives me a great deal of discipline in fighting procrastination. Diaries also are great progress indicators.

Most successful people I know maintain diaries. Diaries and Pens are here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER9> For a more fancy mature solution, consider <http://bugseverywhere.org/>

Git (and dvcs generally) is a nice hammer to hit all sorts of things that look like storage/content/versioning nails.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. I was looking for a demo but bugs.bugseverywhere.org is currently down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> clever code: keeping an empty todo commit in the repo tree.

clear code: keeping a textual todo or org mode file committed in the repo.

While this is another fun and a clever trick that can be done with git and it delights the geek within me, I wouldn't do this while collaborating on production code with a team.

</comment><comment><USER12> For that purpose I use ticgit which creates an unrelated branch in a git repository to store data. There's even a web client if you want to go fancy.

<https://github.com/schacon/ticgit>

<comment><USER7> The last commit is two years old and points to: <https://github.com/jeffWelling/ticgit>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, nice tip. Seems like combining this with Sublime Todo (<https://github.com/robcowie/SublimeTODO>) would make for a really good setup.

</comment><comment><USER14> The best TODO tool for me is pen & a paper. Silence is also the best music I have found to listen to while working :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone using <http://todotxt.com/>?

</comment><comment><USER16> I pretty much always have a file called TODO in version control.

<comment> j-m-o Agreed, at least for independent projects.

I could use all sorts of git tricks that could do the same thing, but sometimes it's nice to just keep an easy, version controlled text file I can knock things off of.

That said, I frequently sprinkle in '//TODO: ...' or '//XXX:' in source code comments when I'm in the middle of hacking. It's pretty easy to aggregate those back into my main todo list when I'm done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bad advice. Keep tasks in issue tracker.</comment>


Coconut oil isn't healthy and it's never been healthy - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/06/16/coconut-oil-isnt-healthy-its-never-been-healthy/402719001/ <comment><USER2> It's precisely the fact that Coconut oil is 100% plant-based, saturated fat that it IS healthy. The notion that saturated fat causes heart disease has been thoroughly debunked as sham science. It's the inflammation in the arteries stimulated by excess sugar consumption (refined carbs, table sugar, soda, etc) that causes the problem. The body sends cholesterol to the scene to patch the damage.

Reference: [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s- all-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a- big-fat-lie.html)

Best analogy I've heard is "Gee whiz, everytime I see a fire, I see firemen. I guess firemen cause fires". Cholesterol does not cause heart disease all by itself.

You'd think scientists and the media, by this time, would have stopped relying on Dr. Ansel Keyes for their rationale for what causes heart disease. His 1950's "Seven Countries" study was an example of cherry-picked data to support a pre-determined outcome that was desired.

Reference: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar- co...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy- robert-lustig-john-yudkin)

Finally, I can show you cultures, such as the Inuit, who's diet is almost exclusively saturated fat and protein and which are healthy (as long as they stick to their native diet). I challenge anyone to show me a culture who's diet is primarily sugar-based which has comparable health.

Reference: [http://www.theiflife.com/the-inuit-paradox-high-fat-lower- he...](http://www.theiflife.com/the-inuit-paradox-high-fat-lower-heart- disease-and-cancer/)

<comment><USER3> So why does the AHA still say that saturated fat raises LDL, and cites multiple trials? This goes beyond the media and Ancel Keys. Are these studies not able to control for confounding factors like replacing the sat. fat with sugars and refined carbs?

For what it's worth I don't think saturated fat is necessarily bad. I don't have links but I've read a couple of good studies that showed saturated fat raised LDL in a cohort of sedentary participants, but had no impact on LDL in a cohort of regular exercisers. This suggests it may be more important to focus on exercise if you're worried about HDL/LDL.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Keep in mind there's also increasing evidence that HDL/LDL are symptoms, not causes of heart disease. Maybe the strongest is the failure of drugs that lower LDL and increase HDL - they don't make people better.

E.g. Eli Lilly's Evacetrapib: tested on 20k patients over 24 months, LDL down 30%, HDL up 125% - _but zero difference in cardiovascular health outcomes_. Needless to say it failed the trial and has been scrapped.

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/05/18/now...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/05/18/now- this-is-a-drug-that-does-not-work)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I stopped thinking the AHA were credible after they stuck dogmatically to their 'salt is evil' message despite the complete lack of any evidence to this effect, (and some evidence that low salt consumption is problematic).

<comment><USER5> Salt for some!

(turns out response to salt varies wildly between people)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis (ie, that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic). Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis."

[http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401.full](http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401.full)

"We might also point out that the vast area in the middle is shared by both those with and without heart disease. In fact, the solid line represents about seven times as many people as the dotted line. That means that the vast majority of people who developed heart disease developed it with cholesterol levels similar to those of seven times as many people who remained free of heart disease."

[https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2011/03/14/genes-ldl- choleste...](https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2011/03/14/genes-ldl-cholesterol- levels-and/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Look, everyone should be making their own informed decisions about their health and nutrition. I've made mine, and that's to completely cut out extraneous carbohydrates, and eat adequate amounts of protein, with healthy fats thrown in for flavour and satiety. I've never felt healthier, more focused, and full of energy in my life. For me, I stick to green and cruciferous vegetables. My fats include olive oil, butter, avocado oil, and coconut oil, in that order. Canola oil is used sparingly. And of course, any fats normally found in meats, nuts, eggs, and dairy.

Even if you don't subscribe to my way of eating, please understand that the American Heart Association has a financial interest in promoting this biased research. They receive most of their funding from private donors, and are backed by pharmaceutical companies that produce statins which they sell to us for big money. Finally, in the US, a lot of your food is labeled with the AHA's Heart-Check Food Certification Program.

To meet the AHA's Heart-Check requirements, you need to adhere to these requirements: [http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/He...](http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Heart- CheckMarkCertification/Heart-Check-Food-Certification-Program-Nutrition- Requirements_UCM_300914_Article.jsp#.WUQWesYZN70)

They have a financial interest in promoting these loaded facts so that companies keep paying them for the label.

Coconut oil is definitely not going to meet those requirements. These are the same people that keep telling you to eat less butter, and eat more grains. If that worked, then why are so many of us struggling with our weight, diabetes, and heart disease? Moreover, I'm sure these studies increased fat intake without decreasing carbohydrate intake at all, which completely changes the interactions in the body.

Do your research, and judge for yourself. I just hate that folks are being told these loaded facts and are being set up for failure.

BTW, as of today, I've lost 18.6 lbs in 53 days with this new lifestyle. It does work, and I'll be getting a follow-up blood panel in 3 months to confirm it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bullshit, the problem is not fat, it's the carbs. Watch this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vr-c8GeT34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vr-c8GeT34) David Diamond, Ph.D., of the University of South Florida College of Arts and Sciences shares his personal story about his battle with obesity. Diamond shows how he lost weight and reduced his triglycerides by eating red meat, eggs and butter.

This one is not heart problem related, but still interesting:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ) Can a person be "cured" of Type 2 Diabetes? Dr. Sarah Hallberg provides compelling evidence that it can, and the solution is simpler than you might think.

So after learning a lot about it I just started ketogenic diet a couple of weeks ago (very low carb, high fat, moderate protein). Everything I read about it says MCT is good, so coconut oil is good. Pure MCT is much better but it's £18 half litre so I'm not going to cook with that.

KCKO :)

<comment><USER9> And what was his caloric intake? Virtually every eat only X diet is based on the fact that the portions combined with the limitation on ingredients limit the caloric intake by as much as half. These diets work pretty well on overweight people since their BMR tends to be quite high due to their body mass. I would really like to see the person that eats 3-4 500g rib eyes with a sunny side up on the side topped with half a stick of butter a day for a year that some how still gets a clean bill of health.

On the other hand eating lean red meat (<5% fat), egg whites and a bit of butter for fatty acids is a completely different story but then the initial premise is misleading.

That said unless you get a ton of fiber supplements daily I wouldn't bet on having comfortable bowel movements on that diet.

<comment><USER8> I don't think he was fat. Anyway, obviously it doesn't mean that you can eat as much as you want, it's never healthy.

I can only speak for myself, my calorie intake is restricted by about 20%. Most of it has to come from fat, not protein and your biggest problem is how can you eat that much fat. So lean meat is fine, but bacon, pork, steak is better :) And whole eggs, butter, cheese, avocados, carb free peanut butter, mayo. I measure everything, and it's still a lot of food. Since your blood sugar is basically constant during the day you don't feel hunger.

Yeah, you need fiber, but not a ton, just a teaspoon of psyllium husk powder daily, I mix it with my protein shake. Works.

Go to reddit /r/keto, there is a faq there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I pretty much take the stance that any bit of news that says "don't eat this thing", without also saying "do eat these things instead" is a completely worthless energisation of pixels.

From the article: _" While the AHA warns against it, people who cut saturated fat out of their diet might not necessarily lower their heart disease risk, a 2015 BMJ review suggested. That's because some people fill the void with sugar, white flour and empty calories."_

So this bit of news translates to saying precisely "blah blah blah blah, you're all going to get heart disease. We don't know how to prevent or treat it".

But we _do know_ the risk factors, so we should do those things that reduce or eliminate the risks: Eat food, but not too much, mostly plants. Fast regularly. Exercise, but not too much. Relaxy. Practice diaphragmatic breathing exercises. Get plenty of rest, and ensure you sleep properly. Avoid those things you find stressful. Have good relationships with your family. Get a dog and love it. Stop eating high carb foods all the freaking time. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

I think that roughly covers most of the risk factors for heart disease.

You will still die, something will snuff you out eventually.

Edit: fixed a word

<comment><USER11> > You will still die, something will snuff you out eventually.

God someone please explain this to some of my friends who have a minor panic attack if they accidentally eat GMO food. Like one meal will reduce their lives by half.

<comment><USER10> What I say to people who bang on about pesticides and GMO:

The problem isn't that people are eating too many vegetables sprayed with pesticides.

The problem is that people aren't eating any <expletive> vegetables.

That's not entirely fair, the green grocers and supermarkets sell a lot of vegetables. But it is a fair description of what I see my colleagues eat.

Also, I don't live in a major city, so my organic grocer options are limited to precisely one. I should go there more often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, I guess the American Heart Association is still committed to the LDL cholesterol causes cardiovascular disease idea.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure that I follow. Does high LDL cholesterol _not_ increase your risk of cardiovascular disease?

<comment><USER14> There's been increasing evidence that high cholesterol is a symptom of cardiovascular disease, not the cause.

 _Editing because lots of people want sources._

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513492/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513492/)

[http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop- warni...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warning- about-cholesterol-in-food-201502127713)

[http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401](http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis#Accelerated_gr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis#Accelerated_growth_of_plaques)

This is a group I was unaware of until providing you links: [http://www.thincs.org/index.php](http://www.thincs.org/index.php)

<comment><USER15> There's not much of a correlation. I think only half of the cases of cardiovascular disease have elevated LDL cholesterol. It's always more complicated than simply having elevated cholesterol; it's overall diet, exercise, and plain old genetics that have the largest effect.

<comment><USER14> Yes, and I'm not advocating that you should inject LDL Cholesterol everyday, just saying the science may have unfairly focused on one variable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OMG the back and forth is exhausting.

What I've personally decided is: my entire family has been using coconut based products for generations and my grandparents have lived to sufficiently long ages. I would be happy to live just that long and thank you, I will continue to use coconut oil.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately, I am failing to readily find good references, but coconut oil has long been medically recommended for serious stomach disorders, including cystic fibrosis (which causes pancreatic insufficiency, among other things) and stomach cancer. This is in part due to the fact that it can basically be used directly by the body without digestion. It can simply be absorbed.

I have no idea if it is heart healthy, but this sort of broad dismissal is unfounded. Maybe it does bad things for your heart, but if you have gut problems that are literally killing you, coconut oil has a long track record of helping with those. This can be life saving if your gut issues are severe enough.

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who drinks Bulletproof coffee (ala Brain Octane oil), how does this fit in? Is the concentrated coconut oil in brain octane oil also just as bad? Or is the fact that its very concentrated mean it contains less of the negative qualities?

I feel like what this article is saying is that, just guzzling oil isn't good for you, which is obvious, but in small doses, is it ok?

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article: 100% MCTs may increase your metabolic rate, but traditional coconut oil only contains about 15% MCTs and isn't good for your health in any quantity.

<comment><USER17> ah, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >never

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/25/scien...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/25/scientists- have-figured-out-a-simple-way-to-cook-rice-that-dramatically-cuts-the- calories/)

</comment><comment><USER19> If this article is correct, please explain why my blood pressure and cholesterol figures go through the roof when my diet includes fructose.

Please also explain how and why everything goes back to normal when I cut fructose out entirely. I am an quite serious - I do not allow even trace amounts in sauces and mayo and the like, nor in hidden sources such as "agave nectar" (which is 50-90% fructose).

Oh and BTW, I eat TONS of pasta, saturated fat (including butter), plants, and a really nice steak every month. I pour heavy whipping cream into my coffee every morning (not the usual trash, but the fancy expensive stuff free of polysorbate 80 and carrageenan.)

Unless you're eating a _fresh_ strawberry that hasn't been mutilated in a blender (and even then, not too many all at once), fructose makes you fat because it messes with your appetite regulation in the bad direction. Even a little fructose makes you hungry.

Dietary fat (saturated or otherwise) does the exact opposite: all other things being equal, it makes you feel sated.

Don't just take my experience over the last ten years into account - here's a leading endocrinologist that's overturning decades of dogma. He'll set you right: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

</comment><comment><USER20> Coconut oil is one of the more stable fats at high temperatures - which is a health benefit.

Or rather, it's less of a health detriment.

</comment><comment> Prime-997 Why does the AHA even still exist? Anyone who is at all informed about nutrition has long ago stopped listening to their nonsense.

The answer is of course that the AHA exists chiefly to promote the financial interests of the entities that fund them - the processed food industry (i.e. wheat, corn, and soy), and to give their "heart healthy" product marketing campaigns the illusion of scientific/medical legitimacy.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm vegan. "Plant-based" is not a panacea and not automatically healthy. This article is one-dimensional when there are multiple health considerations including both cholesterol effects, cancerous compounds in cooking vapors and cancerous compounds like aldehydes generated depending on the amount and time of heating.

In general, olive oil is the healthiest oil to use for frying, both in terms of cholesterol effects and aldehydes. Furthermore, oil consumption can be greatly reduced by good cooking and minimal frying techniques.

The graph in this news report probably started the coconut oil cargo cult, which overlooked its inherent unhealthiness:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11981884/Cooking...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11981884/Cooking- with-vegetable-oils-releases-toxic-cancer-causing-chemicals-say-experts.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Good as cry-proof mascara remover tho. Just saying.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been substituting to avocado oil. Seems healthy.

<comment><USER24> Is it expensive?

<comment><USER25> I've found that avocado oil is really expensive. I've only been able to find it at my local Whole Foods. Haven't checked Trader Joe's, though I'd wager that if they did have it, it'd be a bit less expensive than WF.

<comment><USER26> Check your local Costco, they had some last time I was in. I forgot what it cost but I imagine it's a lot cheaper than Whole Foods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel vindicated. All my hipster friends cook with this crap... My main issue is it makes everything taste like coconut.

<comment><USER28> > makes everything taste like coconut

I'd say this is a feature :).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where is Julian Assange, what's happening to him now? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Today, Assange sits behind bars in a London prison under shocking conditions even a murderer wouldn't expect. Renowned filmmaker and journalist John Pilger visited him there and fears for Assange's life, noting he is held in isolation, heavily medicated and denied the basic tools needed to fight his charge of extradition to the United States"

[https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-blackout-imprisonment- es...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-blackout-imprisonment-espionage- act-julian-assange/261510/)

<comment><USER3> What does "medicated" mean? (There is no "heavily" in the original tweet.)

Is he suggesting he is being drugged? Because "medicated" generally has positive qualities.

<comment><USER4> The tweet also says he is isolated, not that he is held in isolation. Anybody in prison could be considered isolated from society, but held in isolation means something much harsher.

<comment><USER5> Or you can be isolated from the other prisoners, such as being shunned...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can watch a video of him in prison here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a9qh6OiEmE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a9qh6OiEmE) (note that the video date is wrong because it's just the default date of the phone)</comment>


Ask HN: iOS landscape in China? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I am an iOS developer from the west. My apps are downloaded around the world except for one country: China. It seems that China is a quite a different world, with hundreds of chinese App Stores. It's true?, Any recommendation in order to tackle the Chinese market? <comment><USER3> What type of app do you have? Would it be usable by, and useful for, a Chinese person who reads/writes only in Chinese?

The 'hundreds of chinese App Stores' issue is irrelevant for iOS. Jailbreaking and 3rd party iOS app stores are far less common than 5 years ago.

As zhte415 said, you will need to re-think any social/sharing features to work with WeChat.

Finally, make sure your app actually works in China. Some companies' servers are blocked by the GFW.

</comment><comment><USER4> Be careful when handing off code to a Chinese team to internationalise - <USER2> heard a friend's friend got the work done, was able to serve the Chinese market, but those guys re-branded his app launched as a second alternative - so two of the exact same apps are serving China.

That's all I got.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, there are ways to deal with this, providing all the texts to translate to the translator team without the code of the app. Anyway thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Engineer your app to have a usage+ nice feature. That should be aligned to your WeChat/Alibaba</comment>


Are You Building Something That Will Move the Ball Forward? - <AUTHOR> http://aseidman.com/2010/11/building-something-that-will-move-the-ball-forward/

<comment><USER2> Just remember that "moving the ball forward" doesn't have to mean moving it in giant leaps and bounds like the examples he cites.

Even a little forward motion is worthwhile, if it means a lot to you personally.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree -- a high-school basketball coach has massive impact on a relatively small number of people yet a really good coach can have deep and lasting impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He could be describing O'Reilly books here :).</comment>