Show HN: *.temp.website – Host temporary static sites with a single click - <AUTHOR> https://temp.website/ <comment><USER2> So, it's like bitbaloon but with a self destruct timer? I use bitbaloon when needing to host a few static HTML files for demo purpose. Also, please add a message for disabled js users (noscript with site text in it)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your description is apt. Bitballoon seems limited by the fact that it requires an index.html page. I want to provide a way to temporarily host a wider range of content in further iterations. Think autoindexing, download as zip, display as gallery etc. As for noscript, good point, I completely forgot about that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, developer here. This is a small passion project to solve a simple problem - sometimes you just need to temporarily demo/serve something over http and be done with it. The idea is simple, you drag and drop your files (for Chrome and Firefox directories work too) and get a link in return, that expires in 24 hours. That's it. As always, feedback from the community is greatly appreciated and will be put to good use.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't personally imagine using it while gh-pages is free - but I love how simple it is, good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! For me the use case is to show some work in progress demos/prototypes without messing around with git. Obviously this is meant for simple use cases, there are far better tools for static site hosting for more complex issues.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I don't know though, git is usually the first thing I do for a demo or prototype so I'm not sure I see it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting! Do you think you will also add the option to password-protect the link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually that was one of the next things on my mind, adding something simple like Basic Auth to it.

<comment><USER4> Nice to hear!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> how about pastebin, ghostbin or even HN comments as websites? maybe run them through archive.org or even some other site with RSS as an overlay ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate?</comment></comment>


Why Your Startup Shouldn't Hire Consultants - <AUTHOR> http://mrdanadams.com/2012/why-your-startup-shouldnt-hire-consultants/#.UONJOeJQKmw.hackernews <comment><USER2> I think most people who say you should hire full time, or you shouldn't hire consultants (or vise versa) are doing you a disservice.

It's hard enough to find quality team but then you add requirements on top of requirements and you wonder why you have a hard time finding a job? Seeing postings like this reminds me why employers are hiring 24/7/365 and failing.</comment>


Polybius (Urban Legend) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(urban_legend) <comment><USER2> The great polybius documentary by Ahoy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7X6Yeydgyg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7X6Yeydgyg)

<comment><USER3> Ahoy's videos are absolutely amazing. So much work goes into them and each one is a full documentary on a particular gaming topic.

Can't recommend that channel enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Angry Video Game Nerd's video on Polybius has gotta be one of my favourites.

[https://youtu.be/x4hktqhBpzY](https://youtu.be/x4hktqhBpzY)

<comment><USER5> Loved that one as well :-) It brought my my first notion of Polybius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was the theme of one of Nine Inch Nails recent music videos: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDV- dOvqKzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDV-dOvqKzQ)

<comment><USER7> Well, not really, that's an actual game that uses the "Polybius" name: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/906120/POLYBIUS/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/906120/POLYBIUS/)

It's a pretty great game though, it feels like what someone that had only ever played 80s arcade games would think VR games would be like. There's a good video here of Jeff Minter (the developer) talking through the first part of the game: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VXsAiNdelk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VXsAiNdelk)

<comment><USER8> I am pretty sure Minter's game functions as a hypnotic induction device. Luckily he has chosen to load it with a text generator that commands its user to EMBRACE ENLIGHTENMENT or ESCHEW SLIGHTLY WARM TEA rather than do anything horrible.

That is, unless I have only seen the decoy "subliminals" and missed the _actual_ subliminals buried far too deep in the visual noise to make out consciously...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Odd that the Wikipedia article doesn't mention what is almost assuredly the actual basis of the legend -- the real East German arcade game "Poly Play" (so named because it had several games in it). After all, besides the similarity of the name, there is the fact that the Polybius game was supposedly created by a fictitious German company "Sinneslöschen". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play)

<comment><USER10> The only connection is the shared lexeme "poly" which is a common lexeme in English, and having a single detail connected to Germany? That's thin for "actual basis" of the legend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The YouTube Ashens had a successful fundraising last year for a heist movie based around the Polybius legend. Filming just begun last week.

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ashens-and-the- polybius-h...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ashens-and-the-polybius- heist#/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, this is right in my age bracket and I never heard this one at all.

Surprised it hasn't made the rounds again revamped as "Don't go to this website!" or "OMG my friend's brother downloaded this app. and..."

</comment><comment><USER13> Ah, I remember reading about this in EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly). Scared the shit out of me as a kid.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Polybius episode of Dimension 404 was pretty fun.</comment>


Why we raised our SaaS prices - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DatabaseLabs/why-we-raised-our-saas-prices-70831fc53c15 <comment><USER2> Interesting. "Customer acquisition is irrationally expensive" is true, but partly driven up by the Ubers and Paypals of the world buying customers

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. They have a huge VC war chest, and they deliberately set out to lose money on every sale for years, just to gain market share, in the hopes that their competitors will go out of business before they run out of money.

Of course, the competitors also mostly have huge VC war chests, so an arms race develops..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Basecamp also just raised their prices from $29 [1] to $99 [2] in the past week.

Fun factoid, they are now annoucing how many paying customers they have. Apparently they have 100,000 paying companies using basecamp and 2.2m accounts. [3]

Makes it fun to guess their annual revenue now given these data points.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20160617192441/https://basecamp....](https://web.archive.org/web/20160617192441/https://basecamp.com/3/pricing)

[2] [https://basecamp.com/signup](https://basecamp.com/signup)

[3] [https://basecamp.com/](https://basecamp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I didn't learn anything of note from the article after the three summary bullet point paragraphs (Users are mostly price insensitive, User acquisition costs are high, Good tech support costs a lot of money).

I would tend to think that the first reason - the demand side factor of ("users don't care much about price") is the best reason for keeping a higher price - the market will bear a higher price.

Supply side factors ("costs are high, therefore lets raise prices") do not seem sustainable in the long term. They're a good reason to try raising prices, since without them the business would be unsustainable. But if the market won't bear a price above your costs, then it's an indication that you must lower costs (e.g., reducing support) or close down, not that you've gotten the pricing wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> The part about costs was not in the article... the old, lower prices, were already well above our costs. Now they're even higher than our costs.</comment></comment>


PlayStation Network being rebuilt - <AUTHOR> http://www.shacknews.com/article/68217/playstation-network-being-rebuilt

<comment><USER2> The big concern that they didn't mention is the manner in which all the PS3s in the field seem to trust their back end. In addition, the PS3's hardware root signing keys have been leaked.

Consider that 50 million PS3s sit in perfect position (behind the firewall) to execute a local-LAN man-in-the-middle attack on millions of home PC users.

What would happen if Sony's compromised backend were to push down a malicious software update? Perhaps they already have.

This attacker could instantly have the biggest botnet ever, by a factor of 10x.

What's their next move?

<comment><USER3> This is a huge stretch. So all a hacker has to do is break into Sony's update servers, create a signed hacked boot loader that automatically starts a MiTM attack on home users? Wouldn't it be easier to break into Google servers and install a malicious Chrome update?

<comment><USER2> _This is a huge stretch._

It's the type of thing that's been done before.

 _So all a hacker has to do is [1] break into Sony's update servers, [2] create a signed hacked boot loader that automatically [3] starts a MiTM attack on home users?_

Yup. Sony appears to be saying that 1 has happened with malicious intent. I believe 2 has been done by console hackers with not-necessarily-evil intent, at least as a proof-of-concept. 3 exists as portable C code.

Alternatively, the bad guys might just want to use their PS3s as the world's largest DDoS platform.

*Wouldn't it be easier to break into Google servers and install a malicious Chrome update?

I doubt it, Google's security is usually pretty good. Even still, that's something that would probably be easier to uninstall.

I wrote a blog post about this with more info at <http://extendedsubset.com/?p=47>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote a comment about this on Reddit and got downvoted to oblivion, don't know why, but here it is:

I have a PS3. Last night I unplugged it to move it from one room to another. Most of the games I have are downloaded from PSN, and I found out today that I can't play them, even single-player.

See, it apparently checks the system clock before it runs things, unplugging it reset the clock, it only trusts the clock if it was able to set it from the network, and with PSN down...

So is anyone else having this problem?

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck finding competent security developers, Sony.

</comment><comment><USER6> We use the PS3 for Netflix streaming and so we haven't been able to watch Netflix for a week. It always pissed me off that I had to create a Playstation Network account then log in to it just to watch Netflix.

<comment><USER7> I've thankfully had my TiVo to use for Netflix as a backup, but the TiVo interface for it is extremely limited by comparison. No searching, recommendations, captions, or anything other than the instant queue; anything else has to be done from a PC. Oh, and the normally slow input for TiVo is even worse when using the Netflix interface...

I'm tempted to buy a Roku or Apple TV just to use until PSN is back...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this related to the geohotz thing?

<comment><USER9> I've heard - though nothing more substantial than rumor, it seems like it could be true - that some pirates had modified their PS3s to sign in to PSN dev channels, and then hacked the dev channels to pirate games via direct download from PSN. Although not directly related, some of that would have been facilitated by GeoHot's publishing of the signing keys for PS3 binaries.

<comment><USER10> I have seen tutorials about that method in several forums. People were adding funds to their account for free and downloading tons of paid content. That's plain stealing, and I'm happy that Sony may be fixing that.

<comment><USER11> Would Sony really take down the whole network just to stop some pirates? Maybe the dev network has access to more juicy stuff (e.g. CC data)?

<comment><USER12> Given the use of a static 'random' variable, who knows what other kinds of trusts were hidden behind simple obfuscation?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Obvious to you. Amazing to others. - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/obvious <comment><USER2> This is why it annoys me when someone posts a link to some advice on HN, a bunch of commenters are talking about how they had never thought of it before and how useful it is, and then someone has to leap in saying "This stuff is old hat. Everyone has heard of this before. I thought of it myself back in 1843."

Because everyone has to learn some time, and what is obvious to one person isn't obvious to the next one. And anything which helps people realise something true is worth repeating from time to time.

<comment><USER3> _someone has to leap in saying "This stuff is old hat. Everyone has heard of this before. I thought of it myself back in 1843."_

Aside from the last part of that, I have some sympathy for people who make such comments. Often ideas are presented as "new" which are covered in any basic undergraduate textbook in the field; if someone working in the field isn't aware of these ideas, it simply means that _they didn't do their homework_.

There's a place for brilliant new ideas, but it generally comes _after_ reading a book (or doing a google search) to check if a problem has already been analyzed to death.

<comment><USER4> At first I agreed with what you said, but then I realized that not only is it an elitist sentiment, it also misses the mark.

I graduated from a university that is known for its CS department. I can still remember most of the concepts that were introduced. I can also imagine that if you work with a narrow slice of that curriculum for 10 years after graduation, you might forget or get rusty on a good number of unused algorithms or ways of thinking.

But I have also seen a lot of cases where different universities focus on different things in their curricula. For example, my university did not mention the phrase "functional programming", although that concept was well- known for over 15 years before my attendance. I was blissfully unaware of first-class functions. This is not new stuff, but several years after I graduated, I discovered it for the first time.

And imagine my surprise and glee when I discovered over six years after my graduation first-class classes, multimethods (or generic methods), and the like. Suddenly, languages like C++ and Java -- which a lot of universities force-feed their students -- seem very restricting. Yet all this is fairly basic, just different ways to think about and approach our problems.

The reality is that college can give you only so much, and you must accept that others coming from other colleges have been exposed to a different array of concepts and know about those more than you. You have to continue your career forward where the college left off.

And it sure helps when a place like Hacker News can occasionally bring up these various subjects. On the one hand, it exposes different people to new ways of thinking, and on the other hand, it might encourage other readers to join the field.

This stuff _is_ old hat. But mentioning that and that you thought about it back in 1843 is a meaningless ego massage that, no, does not deserve sympathy. In a significant system, you cannot develop alone. Bring others up to your level, and learn from them, too.

<comment><USER3> _This stuff is old hat. But mentioning that and that you thought about it back in 1843 is a meaningless ego massage that, no, does not deserve sympathy._

I agree -- I did say "aside from the last part".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I'll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they > were playing or saying was pretty obvious.

No, Feynman specifically said it takes a lot of effort and top quality understanding to explain stuff well enough for it to seem obvious to others. He didn't think it was automatic.

He further thought, for example, that being a good physicist takes a lot of imagination to come up with new and different ideas. In other words, physicists have to think of non-obvious stuff.

It's weird to assume someone who had lots of new and important ideas, and who put tons of effort into being a clear explainer of ideas, would be someone to just assume their ideas are obvious.

A sibling comment discusses people who don't do their homework before writing. I think people should not _talk about public figures_ without doing their homework -- if you don't know what someone is about just stick to the topic instead of invoking his name.

<comment><USER6> Great point, and I totally agree. I recklessly picked Coltrane and Feynman as two extreme examples without knowing their thoughts on their work.

Sometimes little tiny essays like this can be too vague if they use no examples at all. The examples are never the point, though, and it's assumed the example will just get translated in the reader's head into their own more personally-meaningful example.

But FWIW the Feynman interview that I was trying to find was his moment of seeing the spinning plate, which I think led to his Nobel prize-winning work. I couldn't find that interview, but I thought I remembered him saying that it seemed obvious at the time.

<comment><USER7> The point of the anecdote with the spinning plate is that he was surprised by the physics of it, once he worked it out. That is, what he thought was obviously true turned out to not be true.

That kind of playful work - done for the fun of it after a long period of burn out - got him back on track for the work that eventually led to his Nobel. Interesting anecdote, but I don't think it's related to your thesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Hit songwriters, in interviews, often admit that their most successful hit song was one they thought was just stupid, even not worth recording._

A lot of times, hit songs don't have much depth to them, even if they're catchy on the surface. A musician is probably perceiving the lack of depth more than the catchiness, whereas the listeners who make it a hit song perceive the catchiness long before the lack of depth catches up to them.

<comment><USER9> Maybe that's true of "pop" (whatever the heck that means) music, but I think it's a legitimate statement on musical quality. For example Springsteen just released an entire album of songs that he wrote back in the 70's but never published, even fellow songwriter Steven Van Zandt basically said he has no idea why they weren't released.

<comment><USER10> Brian Eno wrote talked an unreleased album of his, My Squelchy Life, in an interview:

        What happened was, I finished a record and as nearly always
        happens to me, in finishing the record I started to get a
        glimpse of the next step. There's always a cutting edge and
        a trailing edge to what you are doing. Well, when I
        finished that record, I knew what the cutting edge was.

        The record was due out in September 1991. And so I went
        straight back into the studio and had begun working on some
        new material, which followed what I felt was the cutting
        edge of this soon-to-be-released record.

        Then the company said, "Well, September is a terribly bad
        time to release; can you leave it to February?" And I said,
        "I don't mind leaving it to February, but I won't release
        this record then. I'H release what I've finished in
        February, which is likely to be quite a lot different."
        So that record just disappeared in the mist of time and I
        carried on working with the new material, and that's
        what became Nerve Net.

[http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/audi...](http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/audio93a.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tangentially related: when you stop yourself from creating a product because, after hours of research, you find "something out there already that does it". But, if that existing site/product is so obscure that it took you hours of research to find it, then they've failed.

It may be obvious to you, because you're doing market research, but it may be totally obscure to an actual consumer looking for the solution.

</comment><comment><USER12> The catch is that while this might apply to some specific brilliant ideas, most ideas you might come up with are probably not new and not amazing. The risk is in your own bias of your assessment in the other direction.

Although as startups go, we know that it is all in the execution.

</comment><comment><USER13> Additionally, things you or I may find easy are often difficult for large quantities of people who would be willing to pay for it. I've recently become more self-aware of this, after seeing lots of examples of successful companies created to solve problems I thought were easy to solve. I'm a sysadmin, so things like Git repository hosting seem easy to me, but are certainly seen as genius by GitHub's thousands of users.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been thinking about this a lot after I began working as a programmer. I think my ideas are pretty obvious and simplistic.

But after reading a bunch of books and blogs over the course of a couple of years. I have come to realize that stating the obvious is pretty hard. And only a few, will think of the obvious for the many.

</comment><comment><USER15> We thought WhiteyBoard.com was pretty obvious, but now it's killing it! It's true, you are your own hardest critic. Let your users decide for themselves whether your idea is awesome or not. Then listen to your users, because they will help you make your idea go from obvious to amazing.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a fair (well trodden) point, but of course, let's not forget that often things that seem obvious to me seem that way because quite frankly they are obvious. I mean this anti-gravity machine I've got sitting here, who would want that...?

</comment><comment><USER17> _Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?_

Well, yes and no. My problem is that other people find it so "amazing" it moves it into "incredulous"/incredible...ie "I don't believe you and think you are lying" territory. :-/ Still working on figuring out how to talk about my ideas without going down in flames, being called names, yadda yadda. Phooey.

(And, yes, I still think some of it is terribly obvious and is based in part on things that are "common knowledge", so I remain somewhat baffled by the strong reactions.)

<comment><USER18> I think the convention is that it's "ok" to be amazed by material goods and observable feats, but it's not "ok" to be amazed by lifestyles, philosophies and moral codes, or speculative experiments.

A: "How did you make so much money, B?"

B: "I got up early every day, worked hard, kept learning and stuck to my principles."

A: "But there must be some kind of trick. How did you _really_ do it, B?"

Ego also comes into play, since people lacking self-respect will see themselves as a static entity seeking outside validation, not a work-in- progress that grows through achievement. Suggesting otherwise attacks their blind spot, and they'll tend to react to it as a threat.

<comment><USER17> It seems to me my biggest issue is with individuals who are doing substantially better than expected and have been amazing other people for some time but whose achievements fall far short of mine. These individuals are typically defacto social gatekeepers. It is a catch-22 because offending them alienates a large number of people but kowtowing to them in order to stay on their good side would involve agreeing with them at times when I really don't.

<comment><USER19> Hah. They have enemies. Find them and explain.

If you're talking about Bill Gates, sell to Larry Ellison "Here's how I'm going to put a thumb in his eye." Or at a more accessible level, tell the same thing to Calcanis as regards Arrington.

<comment><USER17> Nice idea but I don't think it applies in this situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Recent example: Try explaining web app session stealing (to other web developers or management) two months ago versus now. Two months ago you get blank stares or outright disbelief, but now you get "oh, to protect against firesheep? yeah, let's use SSL everywhere."

It was just as obvious two months ago as today, but now people have a one word conceptual model to use without needing to understand cookies, browser requests, proxies, broadcast domains, or cross site issues.

Obvious to us. Amazing to the normals.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm. I agree with your conclusion, but I wouldn't say that Firesheep is a "one word conceptual model." Rather, it's a concrete instance, _not_ a model.

That was the problem with before: in order to understand the threat, you needed to have a sophisticated mental model to be able to convince yourself "Yes, while I am unaware of any actual threats that use this, but I can see the potential for abuse." You needed to be able to deduce a threat from first principles. But once an actual threat exists, you get a shortcut; you can work backwards from the known threat rather than forwards from the system itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is encouraging to those looking for ideas for startups, it basically means that someone will find your idea 'amazing' or 'genius'.

The trick is, not just finding 1 person, but many people who think it. And not only that it's amazing, but so amazing that they'll pay you for it.

On the plus side, this should mean that for any reasonable idea, given the size of the internet, you should be able to find at least a small bunch of people that will pay for your 'genius'.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is so obvious to me that I'm amazed that anyone finds this idea amazing. Pretty meta.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think his advice is correct but doesn't matter in practice. People post stuff online when they learn something and when they are excited about it (some people try to keep blogs just for marketing purposes and usually it doesn't work). If you are a good writer and happen to be slightly ahead of the mainstream, your stuff gets popular. If you are far ahead or with the mainstream, or behind - then it doesn't.

<comment><USER24> I dunno man, I have a whole bunch of stuff I'd write up, but the soon as I sit down, I dispair that anyone would think it was interesting because it was so obvious. It's happened to me a whole bunch of times. This advice helps in practice because it's way better to just spit stuff out until you hit upon something cool than bury it all. The stuff that will last will last.

<comment><USER23> If the stuff you'd write seems obvious and boring, you probably waited too much after you figured it out. I'd say write it up immediately, even if it's unpolished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I suffered from this. I have a couple of ideas that I did not think much of, only to have it (or a facsimile) go IPO/public about a year later to much fanfare. I still remember my "private payments between friends" idea which came along before PayPal. The concept came about after lunches where someone would pick up the tab for someone else due to "forgot my wallet" syndrome. For me the trust barrier seemed too high - but ventures like PayPal prove that people sometimes part with information easier than I assumed. And I never imagined the size/transaction volume that PayPal would grow to - props to them.

In the end, execution is the key and it does not have to be perfect on day one. Half baked can be made 3/4 baked and so on...

</comment><comment><USER26> Quite a true piece, this is. Often we feel like this, but what I find more awe-inspiring is when I feel an idea that I have come up with is great, I meet someone with a rather similar idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have the exact opposite. I take a long time and much effort to come up with an idea, and then find out that it has already been found a long time ago, and it seems obvious.

<comment><USER28> That sounds like the same phenomenon, actually, not the opposite. Just flip 'you' and 'others'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a great article but I do wonder if it isn't merely trying to produce more wantrepreneurs (a term I learned while lurking on HN)

I think almost everyone would feel enlightened by the title but the way the article is written, it seems it's tailored to inspire those who cannot build but would want to dream rather than those who can build but feel like the implementation of a concept is obvious enough and requires no extra polishing.

</comment><comment><USER30> I like trying to see where things that are obvious to me aren't to my clients.

I was recently working on building a mobile app for a web service, and I suggested to my client that he could open the API and give out the documentation. He didn't understand why, so I said developers might build more apps on their platform, or make little things like widgets.

It blew his mind, but it seemed totally obvious to me, so obvious that I almost didn't suggest it.

</comment><comment><USER31> _I'll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they were playing or saying was pretty obvious._

This is probably true, yet largely irrelevant. Whether someone's ideas are obvious to them or not matters little compared to how much impact those ideas have.

<comment><USER32> It may be irrelevant in the big picture, but I think it's quite relevant and interesting from a psychological point of view that talented individuals sometimes have difficulty judging their own work because, from their perspective, it was easy and obvious.

It seems particularly relevant for mental or theoretical work where choosing the right approach has a great deal of leverage. If "all" you have to do is "just" look at a problem in a certain way, or examine the equation like so, or frame the issue from a particular viewpoint, then the resulting breakthrough may simultaneously be quite stunning to people who didn't think of it and quite obvious to people who did. Changing your viewpoint is as easy as deciding to do so - it's a task that doesn't even require the mental effort of, say, memorizing the dictionary, or similar feats of mental and memetic agility. But knowing that you can change your viewpoint, and choosing exactly the right viewpoint to use, is an extraordinary ability that not everyone has.</comment></comment>


The Drug That Is Bankrupting America - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-drug-that-is-bankrupt_b_6692340.html

<comment><USER2> Man, and I thought the scalability of software led to bullshit profit margins. Folks, we're in the wrong business.</comment>


Ask HN: Successful launch without networking? - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible?<p>I find the idea of going to these monthly meets and things like them a bit tedious. Is it still possible to have a successful (financially at least) launch without doing the networking? <comment><USER2> Sure it is. You just need to realize that a launch isn't a singular, end-all event.

Unless you're building a marketplace, promote constantly. Don't worry about your launch day, have thousands of little launches.

When I launched Planscope, I had a strong announcement list in place. Had I not, it would have been weak. But I kept blogging and talking about the product, and a slow, linear (profitable) growth is the result.</comment>


How to use Google Alerts to find out if your site gets hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/how-to-use-google-alerts-to-find-out-if-your-site-gets-hacked/

<comment><USER2> It's a good backup solution as by the time Googlebot finds the cracked pages, it's a bit too late.

I'd set up a cron job to check the database once a day or 12 hours or so. That's more pre-emptive.

<comment><USER3> I think you're missing the point. These SEO hackers don't announce themselves by defacing your front page or deleting your database. They insert hidden links in your HTML to boost their PageRank and it's in their interests to go undetected for as long as possible.

<comment><USER2> I'm an SEO and know full well what they're doing. My daily cron job suggestion is to detect their activities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You would need a slightly larger set of words, but nonetheless an interesting solution.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. Perhaps harvest words from blog spam.</comment></comment>


How to build Artificial General Intelligence (Really) - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/7318781

<comment><AUTHOR> A combination of deep learning (as in the recent google brain) and reinforcement learning can create AGI according to Professor Itamar Arel. (singularity summit 2009 video)

<comment><USER2> yeah right

<comment><AUTHOR> ?

Have you watched the video? Have studied the subject?

<comment><USER2> yeah i've studied the subject quite a bit. he 'might' remotely have a point, but historically, this kind of reductionism hasn't helped the field.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Never Go on Reddit" by Neil Cicierega - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOqb_UzJSUQ <comment><USER2> Speaking with a friend in a coffee shop yesterday, they mentioned this axiom:

 _If you want expertise to engage, post something with a mistake and there will be no shortage of keyboard warriors telling you how stupid and wrong you are, with a small amount of helpful information._

It seems a modern _taking the shit with the sugar._</comment>


Font Smoothing Detection in Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://swapped.cc/font-smoothing

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my stuff. The page has been up for about 3 months now and the stats will go up in a week or two.

Also, about a month ago I amended the test script to check which fonts are installed on visitor's machine. I think it could make a fairly interesting data point too. The script is currently checking for

      Arial
      Calibri
      Candara
      Lucida Sans Unicode
      Segoe UI
      Verdana

      Helvetica
      Lucida Grande

      Georgia
      Droid Sans

It was also supposed to check for _Trebuchet MS_ , but I misspelled it :) If anyone has any suggestions for additional fonts to test for, I am all ears.

<comment><USER2> Do you realize that there's RGB, BRG, vertial-RGB, vertical-BGR possible subpixel layouts in LCDs?

<http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/subpixel.php>

Does your script take that into consideration?

<comment><AUTHOR> It does not tell apart between these, no. It simply checks if there is any color fringing going on after a glyph is rasterized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's a mistake to classify all subpixel-level renderers as ClearType. There are different styles of subpixel rendering, some of which look better than others with large @font-face fonts.

The system described puts Windows 7 and iOS in the same category, which is a really bad idea IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _There are different styles of subpixel rendering, some of which look better > than others with large @font-face fonts._

An example would be nice. Also, do keep in mind the context, which is an issue of a poor rendering of non-CT hinted fonts on Windows.

> _The system described puts Windows 7 and iOS in the same category, which is > a really bad idea IMO._

The JS detection result is meant to be used in conjunction with the UserAgent string of course, not just on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd prefer that browser developers give me more choices regarding how fonts should be rendered. Firefox 6 seems to have made an effort to look more like IE9, which is why I don't use IE9, and why I immediately Googled for hacks to disable forced Cleartype rendering as soon as I installed FF6.

I know it's hard to believe, but not everybody likes Cleartype. And I'm tired of killing the first 4 hours every Firefox upgrade searching to figure out how to put things back the way they were.</comment>


Ask HN: Markdown-capable wiki software? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to find a good wiki tool that is Markdown-capable and has access control options to hold design documents and general information. Google Sites doesn't work for this. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Gollum

<https://github.com/github/gollum>

It's the wiki that powers Github, so you use it with Git and it's markdown enabled. I thought it was a pretty great tool

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.WikiMatrix.org> compares wiki software. <http://goo.gl/saome> shows the "Top 25 Wikis" Markdown support.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Ikiwiki will do Markdown. Have not used Ikiwiki myself, but was quite impressed with their page on security, which is a good sign of overall competence.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use ikiwiki extensively and it's exactly what you want, and incredibly awesome and fully featured.</comment>


AT&T Customers to Receive More Than $88M in Refunds Following Mobile Cramming - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/08/att-88m-mobile-cramming-settlement-payout/ <comment><USER2> OK, so it also says the unauthorized customer charges were usually $9.99 _per month_ , and the average refund is $31 per customer. So any customer that didn't notice for more than 4 months is still losing, before you even take into account whatever else their customers might have needed an extra $10 a month for in life (like paying different bills, or buying food). AND, AT&T surely received plenty of extra money from whichever 3rd parties were asking them to do this, money that was probably not covered in any fine.

Meaning that AT&T still profited from doing unreasonable things, and customers still suffered even if they received a refund. Businesses still do not have sufficient incentive to do right, they can still just wait until they're caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

To change behavior, a penalty has to be really extreme: some amount where it _clearly pose a massive risk to shareholders_ if the company were to exhibit the questionable behavior. Something like: "400% refund to all affected customers, plus a fine equal to 12% of the profits made illegally, plus a 5 year probation period where the company must submit to full audits every quarter (paid for by the company)", etc.</comment>


It's a good time to be a developer (infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20089727-62/its-a-good-time-to-be-a-developer/

<comment><USER2> its bs. 80+ engineers as sample size ? WTF. From what I see its a race to the bottom.</comment>


Co-Meeting Is Google Wave-Inspired Group Collaboration Tool - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5899346/co+meeting-is-google-wave+inspired-group-collaboration-tool

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO co-meeting is the best GWave alternative available today. Basically it's an user-friendly version of Apache WiaB. For now it only lacks OpenSocial gadgets but according to a co-meeting developer, they could be added in the near future.</comment>


Rails Rumble – Let the Judging Begin - <AUTHOR> http://railsrumble.com

<comment><USER2> Wow, Refactor Cop is a great idea.

I still think Ruby has the best ecosystem out there because of projects like this, code climate, etc. The community can have it's ups and downs but the strong emphasis on code quality, testing and great documentation around open source contributions is bar none.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some honest feedback: Putting dark grey text as description copy against a dark background makes trying to even start participating useless.</comment>


AmazonSupply: Amazon Is Attacking A Potential Trillion-Dollar Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/amazonsupply-wholesale-2014-5

<comment><AUTHOR> As I submitted this, I saw a dead submission - possibly automatically killed because of the Gawker URL - for this piece: "I Do Not Know One Person Who Is Happy at Amazon" at [http://gawker.com/i-do-not-know-one-person-who-is-happy- at-a...](http://gawker.com/i-do-not-know-one-person-who-is-happy-at- amazon-1572478351)

I think it's also worth a read.</comment>


Great Russian Firewall is up - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
strangely any news about that stuff worldwide and even local news sources barely post anything (tho I can bet major ones are just being muted).
Some fella posted here a good text about the current situation in Russia https://pastebin.com/Etp2TNBi
Long story short - the clownfiesta here hits real hard the average netizens. I cannot use PSN anymore, part of Google is dead for me (especially their static service IPs, like googlefonts and so on), that breaks a lot of websites using them too.
The fact that everyone talks about it in person but online there is complete void is not even amusing anymore, tbh.
That probably won't make a front page anyway but if at least some people will read this - I'm telling you without exagerration, the shit is real here, we're losing our worldwide internet access little by little every day. About 18+ million IP addresses were blocked past 3 weeks, and they keep blocking more stuff every day. <comment><USER2> Confirm. Although, it depends on ISP. Some block all IP addresses blacklisted by Roscomnadzor as soon as their appear in list, others, mostly ignore it. Say, my home provider blocked a lot of things -- Google, YouTube, Coursera, Udacity, all not working. But at work, seems that corporate provider didn't blocked anything, yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah 2 days ago my ISP finally "caught up" and bunch of stuff got borked for me. They even made a popup with excuses on their website, like "Amazon, Google, Youtube, Microsoft services can be broken for you, sorry about that".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hate the fact that I stuck in Russia. It seems that the upcoming 6 years are gonna be tough.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone else corroborate this?</comment>


Show HN: An app to cherry pick text from the real world - <AUTHOR> http://autopick.co <comment><USER2> This looks great! There are so many times I want to quickly grab text from things.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I built it for, Please share it with your friends and colleagues that would mean a lot to me, Thanks.</comment></comment>


The Real Cost of Seattle's Next Transport Bill Would Come from Not Passing It - <AUTHOR> http://civicskunkworks.com/the-real-cost-of-st3-would-come-from-not-passing-it/ <comment><USER2> I'd be willing to take transit activists more seriously if rather than advocating for more money, they advocated for reforms to get costs under control. US costs are insanely out of control relative to, well, everywhere.

Construction costs are 2x-10x more than everywhere else in the world.

[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative- subway-construction-costs-revised/)

[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us- rail-construction-costs/)

Labor costs per ride are 3x more than Paris, 4x more than London.

[http://www.wsj.com/article_email/mtas-costs-loom- large-14688...](http://www.wsj.com/article_email/mtas-costs-loom- large-1468803446-lMyQjAxMTE2OTE0ODAxODg5Wj)

Yet transit activists always ignore the fact that we could get 2-10x more transit for the same money. It almost makes you wonder if their real goal is just funneling more money to the people currently taking all the money, rather than actually getting transit.

<comment><USER3> How do you propose we cut construction costs? Should we cap labor rates on the workers? Looking at your lists (and from my own personal experience with people who have been on the various jobs listed), it seems obvious to me that the major differentiator between jobs is the labor costs. It just flat out costs more to hire skilled labor in the US and UK versus Singapore or Japan. This is largely related to union rates and municipal regulations on wages.

How do we get 2-10x more transit for the same money? Where in your mind can we actually cut costs?

<comment><USER2> One way is, as you note, to cut wages to British or Spanish levels. Another is to eliminate "buy American" provisions and just buy Japanese trains. A third way is to cut labor usage down to international levels.

A fourth would just be to hire foreigners to build/manage us trains as per their own standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is only semi-related, but if anyone here has an interest in making a meaningful difference in improving their fellow Seattleites' mass transit experiences, I'm always looking for more people to pitch in on OneBusAway for iOS: [https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway- iphone](https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone)

Well thought out PRs for any bug or feature you care about are always welcome.

Also feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you'd like to discuss more details.

<comment><USER5> Oh wow I didn't realize this was an entirely volunteer project - I thought it was from the various transit authorities for the Puget Sound.

This was an incredible app when I lived in the Seattle-Tacoma area, and I wish more places had it or at least a similar app.

I lack the skill to contribute code-wise, but are finacial donations beneficial? Is the best means of donation through the UoW website as listed or do you have alternate donation channels? (i.e., does the UoW donation page slice off some of the donation for the University or is it earmarked in whole for the project?)

<comment><USER4> Financial donations are definitely welcome. It can be a bit of a hassle to find the money for domain registration, even.

There's a Donate table item on the Info tab of the iOS app you can tap. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first, this seemed like a politically-motivated editorial that I would consider out-of-place on HN, but then I realized this skunkworks guy has a point.

Seattle's public transit runs around the Bay Area's in circles right now. The Link light rail is clean, modern, and actually useful. Buses come EVERY TEN MINUTES, and they take you anywhere in the entire Puget Sound. There's even ferries and trains.

As tech companies hire more people, you're going to be looking at more gridlock. Think about how packed the 101 has gotten since 2011 when FB and Apple went on their hiring frenzies.

This transit packing is about to happen in Seattle (in fact, I consider in many ways the Bay Area to be a leading indicator for what is about to happen in other cities), which is already bottlenecked by two bridges, and Redmond already has the greatest daytime population shift in the US during commute hours.

It's a shame that the companies that are causing the problem (Amazon, especially) in Seattle can't help pay for solving the problems they are creating.

<comment><USER7> Amazon did help build the South Lake Union Streetcar and in my mind it's been a huge success: "The majority of property owners along the alignment supported the project, despite being asked to pay increased taxes to fund its construction. Only 12 of 750 affected property owners formally objected to the proposed "Local Improvement District" tax."

Without having to tax anyone, some private organizations just pitched in to improve the service: "In May 2011, increasing ridership led the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Group Health Cooperative, UW Medicine and Amazon.com to underwrite a third streetcar to operate during peak commuting evening hours (4pm – 6pm), reducing headways from 15 minutes to 10."

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

The thing was cheap and quick to build. I wish we could just build streetcars all over the whole city instead of this ST3 mess.

<comment><USER8> > I wish we could just build streetcars all over the whole city instead of > this ST3 mess.

Amen to this but I want them _only_ in dedicated lanes, preferably lanes separated from general purpose traffic by more than just paint. A streetcar would be great on, say, 23rd Ave between University Station and Mt Baker Station. Or replace route 7 down Rainier and connect it to the south side of the First Hill Streetcar. (As an aside: the Broadway segment of the FHSC is an example of how _not_ to build them.) Or, if I'm wishing for ponies, start at Carkeek Park and go south on 8th Ave NW, turn right onto NW 85th St to go west until either the terminus of the most northern Ballard Link stop (and that's where you plant the maintenance and operations base for this streetcar) or continue on to the foot of the Ballard Bridge and run the M&O shop into the run down area just south of Ballard Blocks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not necessarily wrong, but not a well thought out piece. I'm all for public transit, but this doesn't cover the issue in sufficient depth to actually be informative.

Assuming $30/hour opportunity cost? Pulling 20 minutes a day out of a hat? Ignoring the alternative forms of public transit?

Commutes are complex beasts. The article ignores the demand curve of commuting, and dynamic responses like people moving closer to their work.

If we are going to look at opportunity cost, what is the expected gain by investing $53B in existing public transit? Or rezoning density downtown?

<comment><USER8> > Or rezoning density downtown?

You can't really get any more dense in Seattle's downtown core. There aren't any single-family houses left and everything between Denny and, say, Yesler is zoned much, much more dense than pretty much anywhere else in town.

I completely agree that there needs to be more dense zoning, especially around the light rail stations. (I also read somewhere that the new Roosevelt station will have less density zoned for it, because of neighborhood opposition, than already exists in areas of Seattle not getting light rail. The math seems to bear that out, at least from the zoning maps I have read.)

<comment><USER10> Seattle still has a long ways to go for densification. Lower Queen Anne is not dense at all if you walk through it.

There are also still a lot of surface lots in downtown and throughout the city that should ideally be buildings with parking garages instead. If we converted some of those garage spots to paid public parking (similar to the pearl apartments on 15th), we'd get the best of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just watching the staggering change that has happened now that Capitol Hill and University Link stations have opened makes me both thrilled for the next ones (U-District, Roosevelt, and Northgate) and insanely jealous of the handful of areas inside the city that are going to get real, grade-separated mass transit over the next two or three decades. It is already far too late for me to afford to buy housing in any of the coming-very-soon areas that is walkable to the new train stations and the new stations (Ballard and West Seattle Link) are going to areas that are already priced out of most affordability.

Though I understand the political and infrastructure reasons _why_ we have to build light rail to the suburban areas before filling in the urban core[0], that doesn't stop me from being sad that, in my lifetime, already-dense areas like Georgetown or the Central District or Lake City or even Greenwood[1] won't see real high-capacity transit. (Having a single station in the CD's Judkins Park doesn't really count, not when Interbay and Ballard are getting five stations between them, or when West Seattle has four.) I read somewhere, probably on Seattle Transit Blog[2] from someone who likes to rant about this stuff like I do, that route 48 through the CD has more daily riders _now_ than the train to Issaquah is supposed to have five years after it opens in 2035.

But Goldy makes the most salient point: Voting against Sound Transit 3 doesn't accomplish anything except, maybe, make Sound Transit _more_ cautious in a second vote and less willing to put out a big package to build for the next generation. Voting for it doesn't get a perfect system, but I think that it helps more than saying no.

0 - Because Sound Transit is a regionwide taxing district so the region has to pass it and selling voters in Everett on a transit package that builds only in Seattle will not fly; because we should have been building Ballard Link 30 years ago so, by that same logic, we need to build Redmond and Issaquah Links _now_ instead of waiting 30 years...

1 - Yes, I realize that "85th St Station" is marked as "provisional" and that 85th is the southern boundary of Crown Hill and that having a light rail stop west of IH-5 with easy bus and RapidRide access from west Greenwood and Crown Hill would be a good compromise...but nothing would beat having a station parked right at NW 100th and Holman.

2 - It's a good blog, you should read it: [http://seattletransitblog.com](http://seattletransitblog.com)

<comment><USER7> I've decided recently that I'm voting against ST3. It bums me out because I've always been a big transit supporter (I know how republicans voting for Hillary must feel).

The thing is, ST3 builds a ton of crap to the outer suburbs and 50 billion dollars and 20 years later it will still be a pain to get from the University District to Ballard. But at least the taxpayers of Bothell will have an easy way to get to Totem Lake!

<comment><USER8> > ST3 builds a ton of crap to the outer suburbs and 50 billion dollars and 20 > years later it will still be a pain to get from the University District to > Ballard. But at least the taxpayers of Bothell will have an easy way to get > to Totem Lake!

That's one of the shitballs that the Washington legislature has handed us with how Sound Transit 3 works. It's called "subarea equity" and means that taxes are spent only in the area where they are gathered--areas called things like "North King," "South King," "Snohomish," and so on--which sounds great and all _but_ the tax rate has to be uniform across the district _and_ the entire district must vote in a single yes/no vote. So Bothell is spending its own money to go to Totem Lake but Seattle's more expensive needs can't be fully met because it would take the tax authority of the entire district to be spent in a single subarea and neither the voters or the Sound Transit district organization would go for that.

This is what I alluded to when I wrote that I understand, politically, why ST3 is written as it is. Seattle as a city is never going to have the tax authority for us to buy the kind of in-city dense transit we really want. There's absolutely no reason for the state legislature to give it to us (especially not with that 1% hard property tax cap written into the state constitution) since leveraging Puget Sound's representatives for votes on allowing us to tax ourselves on a handful of transit packages is what the rest of the legislature uses to strongarm votes for road packages in the rest of the state (that, conveniently, never seem to have to go to the ballot).

So I'm voting yes on ST3 because, with all due respect to Mars Saxman whom I really respect and really want his ideas to come true, I don't think we'll get a better package in four years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I instantly have problem with anyone touting the opportunity costs related to an entirely made up number. 10 minutes off a fictional commute is not a convincing metric. How about instead we have say, line X needs $Y for modernizations after which line X will be Z minutes faster along its route. Or, which arterials will have new transit solutions.

I'm not arguing this is a bad spend of money (quite the opposite) but this article badly needs some real numbers to make its point.

</comment><comment><USER12> If ST would include the Renton-Bothell train tracks, which are already there, it would form the right half of a circle all the way around Lake Washington. This would greatly increase the effectiveness of the system, at minimal cost.

<comment><USER8> Sound Transit wanted to run light rail on the Eastside Rail Corridor. Kirkland's city government strenuously objected: [http://www.kirklandwa.gov/Residents/Community/ST3.htm](http://www.kirklandwa.gov/Residents/Community/ST3.htm)

<comment><USER12> There are still tracks from Tukwilla to the southern edge of Kirkland. Adding the tracks to that point would cause a lot of pressure on Kirkland that I doubt they'd be able to withstand.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Made a UX design portfolio, will really appreciate everyone feedback - <AUTHOR> http://theduokids.webflow.io/ <comment><USER2> A bit too much white on the initial landing screen, need to separate the hello message from the explore work. Maybe separate each project even if just by a line. Text size changes when you click onto about. However, the image/section sizing and placement is good.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Perhaps a light gray background on every other project?

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, we were just thinking about that, thanks :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are 3 things you would want from a non-technical co-founder? - <AUTHOR>

I am a non techie, trying to fix that via udacity and o'reilly, for the mean time I would love to know what 3 qualities/skills you would look for in a non technical co founder. <comment><USER3> 1\. Actually understands the full extent of the business side.

You wouldn't partner with a coder who can't code and is learning on the job so why would a technical founder want to partner with a non-technical "business" cofounder who doesn't know anything, worse, think he does?

This includes actual knowledge on things like knowing how to actually acquire customers and said metrics, not just be able to recite shit you read off HN or some blogs. Actual experience...

2\. Without knowing how to code, at least be extremely knowledgeable about technical topics. Steve Jobs probably couldn't code squat but he understands enough. That's all I need too.

3\. Extremely fast learner and can break habits quick. This one almost every person I've met failed at. Very few actually have been able to do this and they are gems.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not what you want, it's what you want them to be responsible for, that they can achieve success in:

\- Fund Raising and Financing \- Customer Acquisition, Marketing, Content Marketing, PR \- Metrics Metrics Metrics

Basically - the Start; the Operations (customer facing, not dev obviously); the Intelligence (where the overlap is and the co-founders work closely together on sharing their perspectives).

</comment><comment><USER5> IMHO:

A -> Always be learning. Always.

B -> Books. Books are good. O'Reilly is great. Other books can be great too.

C -> Competence -> Comprehension -> Confidence

(ok, i'm cheating. this is four things)

4 -> in my opinion, competence is simply a process where you keep trying new things over time. you keep learning as you go. always.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) Want and Care about the project above all else.

2) Keep your eye on the competition and market needs.

3)(And I cant stress this enough) Stay the f@#k away from my code! - <USER2> I bring non-tech people in for just that reason. I need eyes from people who don't understand the tech side.

:)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Care about the project. 2\. Care about the users. Know what the user wants and what is in the best interest of the user. 3\. Be able to defend yourself and our product in a battle royal (Accepted). 4\. [Because there can be more] Help the technical co-founder anyway you can.

<comment><USER8> You don't need a non-technical co-founder for these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Customer Acquisition 2\. Marketing/Copy Writing 3\. Start-up Metrics

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Connections 2. Money 3. Macgyver-like business skills

</comment><comment><USER11> 1) Connections in the domain the startup is working in

2) Marketing experience in that same domain

3) Someone who is honest and genuine

</comment><comment><USER12> 1) can at least prototype something in code. 2) Connections / hustle. 3) You should tell me #3.

</comment><comment><USER13> Being as crazy talented as me at everything that's non-technical.

Ideas are worthless without sales, marketing, money (earned or otherwise), and execution.</comment>


Facebook Plans to Become World's Biggest Central Bank? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lancengym/facebook-plans-to-become-worlds-biggest-central-bank-7d99d967b73c <comment><AUTHOR> This article is being shared and trending rapidly on Facebook... irony...</comment>


"Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tschneidereit/status/1293868141953667074 <comment><USER4> Hi everyone, the Rust core team has been talking about making a statement on this, but I left this comment in a personal capacity yesterday:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Mozilla employs a small number of people to work on Rust fulltime, and many of the Servo people contributed to Rust too, even if it wasn't their job. They also pay for the hosting bill for crates.io. They also own a trademark on Rust, Cargo, and the logos of both. Two people from the Rust team have posted about their situation, one was laid off and one was not. Unsure about the others. Many of the Servo folks (and possibly all, it's not 100% clear yet but it doesn't look good) have been laid off.

The vast majority of contributors and team members are non-Mozilla, though the Mozilla folk are very important. Rust will survive. This situation is very painful, and it has the possibility of being more so, but (thanks to a lot of work from people (not speaking of myself here) who used to be at Mozilla!) Rust is bigger than Mozilla, and has been on a long road towards diversification. Some other companies have stepped up to pay a bunch of the bills that Mozilla used to pay, namely Amazon and Microsoft. Here's hoping that we get even more involvement in the future.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree, Rust will survive.

AWS is investing heavily in Rust. If anyone who is reading this was affected by these layoffs and you want to continue to work in Rust, get in touch with me. We have many Rust opportunities open across the company on a variety of different teams.

<comment><USER6> Any Rustaceans who have been working at Mozilla, have probably done so for the mission that Mozilla work on (publicly), not too earn a ton of money. Amazon/AWS, who's main goal is closed down infrastructure, is the opposite of that mission. Worth keeping in mind when trying to recruit people from the opposite spectrum of yourself.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the feedback. I disagree with your premise and your characterizations, but that's what opinions are for!

I believe the success of Rust, as a technical goal, can transcend the business goals of whatever organization uses it. Solidifying the future of Rust is a noble goal, and it would be a huge win for our industry.

<comment><USER7> It could be a major win if layoffs result in a multiplier effect where concentrated Rust talent now spreads across industries. However, this can amount to a net loss if those with bleeding edge Rust skills and experience cannot continue putting them to use. Further, unused expertise atrophies.

After the Great Depression, the New York City public schools became some of the best in the country as those with amazing credentials and work experience were displaced and needed jobs. The same can happen with Mozilla's layoffs, where Rust can spread faster and have a great impact on software development, but only if people can put their bleeding edge skills to best use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The internet is the platform now with ubiquitous web technologies built into > it, but vast new areas are developing (like Wasmtime and the Bytecode > Alliance vision of nanoprocesses). Our vision and abilities should play in > those areas too.

Two days ago, the CEO said that focusing on technologies like Wasmtime was one of their plans for the future[1]. Now we find out that they're actually getting rid of the team. They really doubled down on the corporate speak for this round of layoffs.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world- chan...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing- mozilla/)

<comment><USER9> Why call it corporate speak, when it's plain old lying?

<comment><USER10> Being more charitable, it's possible they changed their minds, rather than they were lying.

<comment><USER11> It wasn't a change of mind. This was the layoff blog post. They just didn't mention it.

Tuesday blog post: "Wasmtime is our future!" "We're going to be smaller across the board".

Thursday it becomes apparent that the Wasmtime was laid off on that Tuesday.

"... specifically, a much smaller future ..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This shows that open-source in general is expensive for Mozilla but cheap for the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google who own their own Web browsers and have other open-source programming languages maintained by some of their employees full time.

The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant sources of revenue. Maybe they should turn into a Rust consultancy of some sort. I don't know.

If the mission statement is about 'privacy' then it doesn't make much sense to continue to bite the hand that feeds them as its up to Google if they want to re-new their contract with Mozilla; which unsuprisingly they had to.

<comment><USER13> For Apple, Microsoft, and Google, their open source activities are all loss leaders for their profitable ventures.

Apple sells hardware, and most of their software offerings, like MacOS, their office suite, and Safari, and given away to convince people to buy that hardware. Also, it's not like they're spending a whole lot of time making Sarafi the best browser around.

Microsoft's web browser was created (and bundled) specifically to prevent the web from disrupting their monopoly on the desktop, and their new browser is just a fork of Chromium.

Google's browser was a way for Google to drive web technologies in service of their advertising platform.

Mozilla's open source efforts are/were a loss leader for ... nothing. Their work was motivated by altruism, not profit, and that turned out to be, well, not profitable. That's why they're pivoting; altruism alone wasn't enough to pay the bills.

<comment><USER14> Is open source a loss leader for Apple, really? Or is it something they mostly get for free, but have to contribute a little back to shape it how they want?

The point I read from GP, at least, was that open source is cheap for these big corps because they get a ton of benefit for it, but non-profit (either orgs or individuals) are bearing the brunt of the cost.

<comment><USER15> > contribute a little back

Clang was certainly an in-house Apple project from the start, and it would be hard to claim that it hasn't been a project that has seen huge uptake outside of Apple.

<comment><USER16> This is not entirely accurate. LLVM was started by Chris Lattner before he was hired by Apple, which were probably spooked by gcc going GPLv3 by then.

<comment><USER17> Yes for LLVM, but Clang was made entirely while Chris Lattner was employed by Apple[1]. Before Clang you have to use LLVM GCC frontend (llvm-gcc) to compile C code under LLVM, which was the default in Xcode until 5.x (although Clang was added in Xcode 4.x, I remembered it being quite unstable at the time).

[1]: [https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe- dev/2007-July/000000.ht...](https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe- dev/2007-July/000000.html) (announcement)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From many of the comments in this thread, one might think that FAANG companies invented the concept of open source software or that software doesn't exist outside the context of a "profit model." Whatever is going on at Mozilla right now, the notion that a piece of open source software even needs to be profitable (let alone supported by a single large company) in order to continue existing is ridiculous.

I'll concede that there are unique challenges associated with developing a web browser (it's certainly a moving target) and that there need to be several people working on it full time, but is that really something that can only happen when one big company/organization is funding the project? As for Rust, maybe someone could point me in the direction of the one benevolent large company that's backing GCC/G++ or CPython or Ruby?

I'm not saying what's going on with Mozilla isn't absolutely terrible, but the notion that Firefox or Rust are going to somehow just go away (and that this is what was destined to happen all along because Mozilla is not profitable) just doesn't really make any sense.

<comment><USER19> > but is that really something that can only happen when one big > company/organization is funding the project?

Have you any examples of any large OSS projects that don't have this problem?

> As for Rust, maybe someone could point me in the direction of the one > benevolent large company that's backing GCC/G++ or CPython or Ruby?

gcc [0] has a list of maintainers, which features a lot of redhat email addresses. The ruby maintainer is employed by Heroku. CPython is maintained by a RH employee. The linux kernel is mostly comprised of people paid to develop by their employers.

[0] [https://github.com/gcc- mirror/gcc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS](https://github.com/gcc- mirror/gcc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS)

<comment><USER20> PostgreSQL is probably the best example. It's maintained by many people from many different companies.

<comment><USER19> That's a really good example of the opposite, thanks! I wasn't aware of it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I always wondered how Rust at Mozilla was sustainable. Maintaining an ecosystem like that and bringing it into an already complex project like a browser is a huge undertaking that probably has eaten up significant amount of manhours.

At a Microsoft sized company I'd get it because they can basically blow billions on that sort of thing but I always wondered if it actually took time away from improving Firefox or other products.

I can't imagine that from a standpoint of time investment and technical improvement Rust ever made sense for Firefox to be honest.

<comment><USER22> > At a Microsoft sized company I'd get it because they can basically blow > billions on that sort of thing

It also helps that Microsoft is in the business of selling IDEs.

<comment><USER23> Interesting question: why isn't Mozilla in this business too? They've got a cross-platform desktop app toolkit sat _right there_ , and big enough developer mindshare to be interesting. There's room for a Firefox-flavour web dev IDE in the market, surely? Firefox dev tools, only with edit-in-place and live debugging for server-side assets. Seems odd to me that they've never gone that way, given everything else they've tried.

<comment><USER24> A web editor was actually an integral part of the original suite from which Firefox was derived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Firefox doesn't have the developer tools that Chrome does so developers use Chrome to develop with meaning their websites work better in Chrome so Firefox is playing catch-up or just plain looks worse keeping adoption of Firefox lower.

Mozilla solves the problem by killing development of developer tools insuring Firefox is an afterthought.

Is there anyone in Mozilla management that has a technical bone in their body?

<comment><USER26> I'm sure management understands those teams are important. Who should they have cut instead?

These are hard decisions. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that management doesn't understand tech, they obviously do, it's Mozilla.

<comment><USER25> _I wouldn 't jump to the conclusion that management doesn't understand tech, they obviously do, it's Mozilla._

What in these decisions should make that obvious? Just because its Mozilla doesn't mean its management staff understand tech.

Cut the CEO salary and remove some management first.

<comment><USER27> They cut 25% of their workforce. That's 250 people. Figure all-in loaded cost of $200K per person let go, and that's $50 million in budget they cut. Mitchell Baker had made $2.5 million. You don't get $50 million out of non- technical cuts.

<comment><USER28> But a pay reduction to all C level execs would free up a few million that would allow you to maybe keep some of (what the community consider) Mozilla's most important projects.

I used to donate to Mozilla until these news. In fact, I started specifically donating because of the Servo and Rust projects. I was impressed with the way Mozilla was pushing the envelope and once again returning to the forefront of tech, in an open source manner.

Instead, C execs keep getting raises and the guys doing the real work keep getting axed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Mozilla's decision makes a lot of economic sense. They got rid of projects requiring lots of engineering effort with negligible benefits for the company or for the internet or for our privacy.

I'm not sure at this point if it makes sense for them to keep the Firefox code base or give up, switch to Chromium and focus on what they do best - spy less on us than Google. When Microsoft gave up anyone paying attention knew this was coming.

The only company that can still afford to develop a Chromium competitor is Apple. I hope they're not forced by the masses of web developers to switch to Chromium too.

<comment><USER30> It's still WebKit under the hood isn't it?

The JS engines are different though

<comment><USER31> No, IIRC Firefox's render engine is called Gecko, and it's a completely separate (older I believe) lineage from Webkit.

Ed: I may have misunderstood which "it's" you were referring to. Oh well.

<comment><USER30> I meant between Safari and Chrome. Saying Apple maintains their own, yet they share tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mozilla has decided to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as a business strategy.

<comment><USER33> The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser.

They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway.

It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market and building consumer products and less on infrastructure.

FF as needed back when all the browsers were proprietary.

Sure... Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - <USER2> can always be forked. There's nothing advantageous in maintaining FF as a dedicate code base. It's just duplication.

One of the major points of OSS is to prevent people from competing on things that are non-differentiating. If's OSS so they can fork it and make their own changes if they want.

<comment><USER34> > Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can > always be forked.

It takes more to maintain a Chromium competitor than its source code. You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing web.

If Google decided to close the source code in 2030, nobody would be able to do anything about it. Mozilla would have laid off its last engineers by 2025 and they'd have found new jobs by now, having 5 year old outdated knowledge about how browsers work. Even if you have engineers with the required knowledge, you still need to organize them, etc. All of this takes time, and gigantic investments.

<comment><USER35> > You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing > web.

What kind of things are rapidly changing these days?

<comment><USER36> JavaScript itself (ES language changes), APIs callable from JavaScript (there are a lot), CSS, HTTP(s)/TLS and evolving security, ever-evolving compatibility requirements to keep popular pages working, performance expectations of the rendering model (what must be smooth nowadays didn't used to be and it's expected by sites), things like WASM, WebGL (new version on its) & WebGPU, the sandbox, evolving security patterns (HTML/HTTP/JS security model is complex) and dealing with new security issues (it never stops), compatibility with OS version releases (always new issues), compatibility with GPU drivers (always new issues), video codecs.

These things by themselves require a well-funded team to keep the browser relevant to modern sites. Well-funded because they take a lot of time and ideally to be done to a professional standard. The number of spare-time or independently-wealthy volunteers around to do the work seems thoroughly insufficent compared with what it would take to keep up.

That list doesn't even have new user-visible features (so nothing to "sell" to users except "we still work with current sites").

They are just moving-target "basics", minimal expectations by users and sites to remain "current" on the web. I'm sure I've left off a lot too, it's just off the top of my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's the focus of Mozilla now given the layoffs of Rust,MDN,Wasmtime and Servo?

Is Mozilla/Firefox becoming VPN company?

<comment><USER38> They're refocussing on the user experience of the browser. They're stopping their more developer friendly endeavours and research projects such as servo.

The VPN client and Pocket are just ways to make money to fund browser development. Firefox itself does not and can not make money (and not from lack of trying). It turns out people don't want "ads", "nags" or "suggested content" in their browser.

<comment><USER39> I understood the exact opposite, that they are moving out from the "focus on the firefox browser" mantra because it is not a competitive strategy anymore and they want instead to find and build new products.

<comment><USER38> They need to find a build new products to actually make a decent income. Firefox alone doesn't do that. They are still committed to the core browser.

<comment><USER40> When their other products sell, they would probably just use a chromium fork with FF branding and some tweaks to make it resemble FF to sell nostalgia like Ubuntu.

<comment><USER41> Iceweasel was a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What is actually left of mozilla after this?

<comment><USER29> The projects which are essential for Mozilla. These were all side-projects which maybe a FAANG can afford, but not a normal company.

Mozilla was operating a long time under the mistaken assumption that they're a tech powerhouse when they're obviously not. You can lie to yourself only for so long before the market corrects your assumptions the hard way.

<comment><USER43> They fired the Servo team. Servo's CSS engine is shipping in Firefox. Servo's rendering engine was supposed to become the primary Firefox graphics engine. It's weird to call that a side project when it's clearly development aimed at becoming the basis of their primary product.

<comment><USER29> Their primary product is the Mozilla brand and the browser, not a CSS or rendering engine. The innards can be swapped out and even the entire browser could and probably will be.

Always follow the money. If they got rid of these people it likely means that:

a) Rust is not part of Mozilla's future any more

b) Gecko's future doesn't look too bright either

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm not technical enough to understand what are the strategic implications of this.

I have been reading a lot of reactions to this that involves hitting at C-level of MozCorp (mostly around their pay, but also perceived lack of focus?) so I wanted to understand what are the strategic changes that management is enacting.

Is building a web-based platform not a priority for Mozilla anymore? What is? Or is it that the layer of intervention on the web platform has shifted to other things, other than rendering engine and documenting it's capabilities?

</comment><comment><USER45> Is the plan now to sabotage every core Mozilla project people care about and focus on selling 3rd party VPN services?

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if Rust has enough momentum to sustain itself now.

<comment><USER47> Wasn't Microsoft hinting that it was going to adopt Rust for some projects?

<comment><USER48> Microsoft has Rust bindings for WinRT and I think some internal tools at Azure. But Microsoft has a long history of creating programming languages for every niche, so they'll probably make one in the tradition of Rust.

[https://github.com/microsoft/verona](https://github.com/microsoft/verona)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Does Mozilla not make enough money to sustain long term investments?

<comment><USER50> They make 90% of their revenue from Google paying to have Google be the default web search on FF. A deal which is expiring in 2021 and hadn't yet been renewed.

<comment><USER51> The deal was renewed today[1], which makes the layoffs that much more baffling.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla- extends-critical-firefox-search-deal-with-google/#ddfa8dd6ea2d)

<comment><USER52> Then it was a negotiation tactic. Mozilla showed that they don't desperately need the money because they are willing to cut all expenses. Thus, Google can't play the 'take whatever we offer or you will be bankrupt in 2021'-card. Firing the developers should have led to a better deal and they can now silently rehire them back.

<comment><USER53> Google doesn't need the search engine placement in Firefox. The market share is tiny. (sadly)

I can imagine that Google is somewhat interested in keeping Firefox alive as an independent browser though, just to ward off monopoly issues.

Yes, there are plenty of Chromium reskins, but Firefox is the only other remaining full, cross-platform browser engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Given Microsoft's recent forays into Rust, they should acquire these engineers and put their muscle behind Rust.

<comment><USER55> They also have people in the C++ committee (even making proposals to add features made popular with Rust also to C++) and they have their own C++ toolchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is why I call people to not rely too much on "opensource" software held on corporate life support.

</comment><comment><USER36> One reasons some people use Rust is to target WebAssembly and WebGL.

Will this change at Mozilla mean that evolving features in WASM, WebGL and other "advanced but it works on all evergreen browsers" features becomes a less interesting target as Firefox starts to fall behind the leading edge due to lack of developers, but still has enough users to make the "lowest common denominator" fall behind as well?

Or will Firefox keep up somehow?

Or will it stop keeping up, and site/webapp developers working with leading- edge web platform features like evolving WASM just drop FF from concern at the cost of a few percent more users?

I know plenty of developers already don't test or know much about Firefox, and many sites don't work properly on it. I've had a number of commercial sites where I couldn't even login or couldn't pay except by switching to a different browser. But I have the impression people that folks working on leading-edge tech stuff are a bit more likely to include FF in their matrix, and the assumption is FF is quite up to date (more than Safari) so it's worth bothering with as an alternative target.

</comment><comment> a-nikolaev Maybe, donating to Mozilla would be nice, instead of giving to Wikipedia or other projects that don't need more money.

<comment><USER57> Donations to Mozilla go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization. These layoffs are in Mozilla Corporation, which doesn't get the donated money and is mainly funded by the partnership with Google for the search engine setting in Firefox.

<comment><USER58> The foundation can totally fund the corporation at their leisure, so I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. Money is fungible, and if the foundation thinks the best use is funding e.g. dev-tools, they can either direct money to the corporation or how engineers themselves. (Usually the latter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think for Rust to succeed long term it needs to be run more like C/C++ with standards and multiple compiler implementations for as many platforms as possible. I would be very nervous betting on Rust for a big long term project if there is uncertainty about Mozilla's future.

</comment><comment><USER60> I wonder if someone is going to pick up the mantle that Mozilla dropped. One of the FAANGs, maybe Oxide?

<comment><USER61> I wonder if Microsoft could be interested. They've written a lot recently about investing in Rust internally. Also VSCode seems to be the de facto standard Rust IDE these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Does anyone know what the consequences for this will be? WASM was what motivated me to learn Rust.

<comment><USER63> He just added another tweet to address this question: "Another thing to clarify: Rust, Wasmtime, and the Bytecode Alliance will all be more than fine! [...] They all have a bright future!"

<comment><USER62> Damn, that was a cliffhanger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> > One thing I want to clarify: I was the engineering manager for this team. I > didn't lead strategy for Rust — that's @nikomatsakis. And together with > @luke_wagner I supported @linclark in leading strategy for Wasmtime and Wasm > outside the browser.

Looks like Lin Clark was one of those affected:

[https://twitter.com/linclark/status/1293207099766431744](https://twitter.com/linclark/status/1293207099766431744)

edit: fortunately I'm wrong and need to read more carefully.

<comment><USER65> Not like you're implying though: "I was not included in the layoffs, but I am deeply affected by them."

<comment><USER64> Facepalm - I botched the interpretation of that one badly. No ill intended - <USER3> actually interpreted it as she was let go for some reason. Fortunately, I'm wrong. Doesn't look like a comment can be deleted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Time to get off the Firefox train. Brave (the browser) it is...

</comment><comment><USER66> I'd like to see Microsoft stepping up to the plate and hiring the Rust team...

</comment><comment><USER67> Mozilla tech brought value right? MDN bright value right? Wasm, rust etc, brought value. But no profit.

Could it be that profit isn't synonymous with value? Just a thought.

<comment><USER68> Of course it isn't. Think about the value Linus Torvalds created with his contributions to Linux and git. He's wealthy, sure, but not even a fraction of that value generated profit for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Rust, not Firefox, is likely to be the enduring legacy of Mozilla.

Rust will survive if Mozilla does not. I doubt Firefox will.

</comment><comment><USER70> I am wondering if Mozilla considered to re-skin Chromium as similar to Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER71> Oh man Microsoft or some other less activist company needs to sponsor rust

</comment><comment><USER72> Hopefully this will mean fewer "We're rewriting $WORKING_SOFTWARE in Rust!!!" posts

<comment><USER45> Am I to read that as you rooting for Rust to die?

<comment><USER73> No, just the overenthusiastic rustafarians</comment></comment></comment>


Division By Three (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0605779 <comment><USER2> Could someone give a layman's overview of this paper?

<comment><USER3> As best as I understand, they've proven the following:

If 3x = 3y, then x = y.

(and that's all)

They claim: "In this paper we show that it is possible to divide by three,"

and they've done this in the sense that dividing something by 3 has only one unique solution - i.e. dividing by 3 will never give you an ambiguous result.

This may seem obvious to anyone who is past kindergarten. But, the point of the paper is that they've done this from the ground up: starting with the fundamental Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms (and without using the modestly- controversial axiom of choice) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory)

<comment><USER4> So the "kindergarten obvious" statement is:

"For all natural numbers x and y, if 3x = 3y, then x = y"

An equally trivial but rather more abstract way to phrase this is in the category of finite sets:

"For all finite sets x and y, whenever there's a bijection between the product x cross 3 and the product y cross 3, then there's a bijection between x and y". (Here "3" represents any set of cardinality 3, but typically chosen to be the set {0,1,2} where 0 = {}, 1 = {0}, 2 = {0,1}).

What's (apparently!) not so trivial, is when you remove the "finite" restriction from the above, and you want to show it holds for all sets, including those of various infinite cardinalities. Actually constructing the bijection seems like it would require an infinite number of arbitrary choices, which is why it's impressive they don't rely on the axiom of choice.

<comment><USER5> I'm reminded of a professor who told us that we shouldn't distract ourselves with the concept of "infinity". I'm pretty sure he would have felt the same way about kindergartners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Their failure to give anything of a proof must have frustrated Sierpinski, for it appears that twenty years later he still did not know how to divide by three."

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there something special about 3? I would think the result would be true for any positive finite n.

<comment><USER7> The authors say (1) that division by 2 is much easier (though not trivial) and (2) that their methods generalize to enable you to divide by any other odd number (and hence, together with division by 2, to divide by any positive integer).

So what's special about 3 is that it's the smallest tricky case and that once you've done it you've effectively done everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it disturbing that, as stated in the first footnote, John Conway can be listed as an author of the paper, against his approval (or despite his non- approval).

What if someone gets hurt because of this paper and Mr Conway's responsibility is engaged ?</comment>