Evernote CEO to entrepreneurs: "don't do it" - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/video/2012/04/27/evernote-ceo-phil-libin-my-advice-to-aspiring-entrepreneurs-dont-do-it-video/ <comment><USER2> People in this space live in a thickly-lined bubble if they think something like Evernote is changing the world. Wisdom is not suddenly bestowed upon you because your note-taking service was recently valued at $1+ billion.

I have always had a really hard time heeding to the advice of rich people who tell you what all the right and wrong reasons to become an entrepreneur are, especially when they start preaching about how it's not about the money, but about the journey.

Also, "don't do it"? I'm sure companies that are having 100x more of an impact in this world than Evernote will ever have were started by people who very bluntly went against that sort of advice. Steve Jobs' "Stay hungry, stay foolish" comes to mind, and I'll side with his blissfully ignorant optimism any day.

<comment><USER3> I think you are thinking of "change the world" in the "topple bad governments, empower the meek, help make this world a utopia" type of way. Evernote is changing the world.

If you make 30 million people's lives just a tad bit easier, then yes, you've changed the world. If you've caused other companies to take note and copy your business strategy/idea and THEY make people's lives easier, then yes you've changed the world.

Yes, he's rich, but I think he's saying that was a side effect of purer motivations. If you're in it to be rich, then you're in it for the wrong reasons. If you're in it create an amazing product and be impactful on a stranger's life, then you're in it for the right reasons.

Just my take. Could be wrong.

<comment><USER4> > If you make 30 million people's lives just a tad bit easier, then yes, > you've changed the world.

By that reasoning, if I kick a rock on the street and it shifts 10 feet to the left, I've changed the world too.

EDIT: more analogies

* Bic pens have changed the world

* Toilet paper has changed the world

* Shoes have changed the world

<comment><USER5> Kicking a rock on the street is different than the other examples you gave in that the directly measured impact is minimal.

It is possible that it could cause major change (in a butterfly effect kind of way), but usually it would be hard to measure and predict.

But if you kick a rock and a few days later that rock ends up causing an accident of an "important" person you did in fact "change the world" by kicking that rock.

IMO, the other things that you mentioned have changed the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "A lot of people think that they want to be an entrepreneur because it's a good way to make money. It just isn't, that's just wrong. Depending on how you count, 95% to 99% of companies fail."

Excuse me. It is a way to make money. That figure assumes the definition of entrepreneur is only startups as discussed in places like HN, Techcrunch etc.

Not only is the figure of 95% or 99% wrong with respect to "entrepreneurs" (unless of course you increase the time to, say, 100 years at which case it may be true across the board) but its like saying "don't apply to Harvard or YC because the chance...". It doesn't take into account any particular persons idea or qualifications to be a success.

But most importantly, the definition of being an entrepreneur also includes running a small restaurant or opening a physical warehouse and selling exercise equipment or starting a website to sell new and used office desks or a million other ideas that will never make it to HN or TC that can make you a good living.

<comment><USER7> > _Not only is the figure of 95% or 99% wrong with respect to "entrepreneurs"_

I believe he's quoting numbers from Shikhar Ghosh at HBS. Here's one article that google brought up with a little more detail about how "failure" is defined:

 _The statistics are disheartening no matter how an entrepreneur defines failure. If failure means liquidating all assets, with investors losing most or all the money they put into the company, then the failure rate for start- ups is 30 to 40 percent, according to Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School who has held top executive positions at some eight technology-based start-ups. If failure refers to failing to see the projected return on investment, then the failure rate is 70 to 80 percent. And if failure is defined as declaring a projection and then falling short of meeting it, then the failure rate is a whopping 90 to 95 percent._

<http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6591.html>

<comment><USER8> Yup. But I'd like to see the numbers for second or third try entrepreneurs. of all types. If my first three goes tank it, but the fourth one makes it, OHBOYOHBOYOHBOY!. Then I've got a 75% fail rate, but I'm still a success. (insert inspirational "fall down seven times, stand up eight",I havent failed, I just found 99 ways that don't work" etc...)

<comment><USER9> Don't know why people are voting you down. I'd rather hit middle-age penniless but full of experience and no regret, than look back and say "Well, I sure managed to scrape by in life without taking any chances or attempting any of my dreams!" There are plenty of stories of people who didn't start successful business until their 40s but the net effect of the preceding 20/30 years gave them a massive boost (e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Bannatyne>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I think you know what it is: it's to change the world"

This is such hogwash and brainwashing. People have to earn money and make a living. Nothing wrong with that at all. And if you want to change the world you have a better chance after earning a load of money.

There are people who have gone into medicine to make money (and not better the world and save lives) and are great physicians and provide a service. And they live in big houses have expensive things and enjoy themselves. That's fine. Nothing to apologize about. Same with entrepreneurship or any pursuit (education).

<comment><USER10> Nowhere in the article was "earning money" chastised as being bad. It just suggested there are better options if that is your main goal.

"If you're smart enough, if you're talented enough, if you have the drive, if you have the ability, and you're motivated by making money, then you should just get a real job instead, like become a banker or an investor or a consultant or something. You'll be much more likely to make a lot of money over the course of your career than by starting a company."

<comment><USER6> "It just suggested there are better options if that is your main goal"

Totally depends on the person. I visited my dentist the other day who clearly didn't have a business head on him (we've spoken many times). He is better off and will make a better living as a dentist giving his intelligence and abilities. I'm married to a Physician and wanted to set her up in her own office. She isn't interested, she would rather just work for the Hospital and get a salary. Everyone is different. The best option for a particular person to make money depends on the persona and their abilities.

As an aside, as far as being a "consultant". In general (as always) a consultant doesn't really build any equity unless they have others working for them. They don't have anything to sell (to someone else as an entity) and over time need to constantly pick up clients and interact with clients. I built a business and after 10 years I had something to sell. It was something that didn't depend on me it had customers, employees etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or, if you _really_ want to change the world, alleviate the spectre of massive world hunger by coming up with radical agricultural techniques and selective breeding for drought resistance, then teach that technique to everyone you know for free[1].

Or, come up with a novel vaccine for one of our most vexing diseases of our time, then give away the formulation for free[2].

That's how you change the world.

Cue the capitalism-as-religion downvote squad, but this guy is a world class putz if he thinks a cloud-based notepad is changing anything but 1st world slight inconvenience.

[1]Norman Borlaug

[2]Jonas Salk

<comment><USER12> While those men did great things, who actually implemented their discoveries? Drug and biotech companies. Businesses have their place too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _But there's only one good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it > is: it's to change the world._

I think this is going overboard. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to want to start his/her own company for less noble reasons than "changing the world." This advises people to not give it a shot at all. Would I like to change the world? Yes, I would. Do I reasonably expect that it will happen? No, I'm more realistic than that. While I'm still young and don't have much tying me down, though, I want to give it a shot. I'd much rather try, fail, and then have to go back to the workforce than wind up staying the workforce my whole life regretting not trying to start my own thing. I suppose you could make the argument that any successful company will have to add value to the world in some way, and adding value to the world changes it, but that isn't the way the statement reads.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reasons not to listen to this guy:

1\. Not all CEO's work 20 hour days, and he probably doesn't either

2\. Starting your own company can give you the ability to challenge the outdated 9-to-5 sit-at-your-desk status quo more than working for someone else can

3\. His skewed view of upcoming entrepreneurs as only the subset that bother him for advice doesn't reflect on you or your ability to successfully launch your own business

4\. Seriously, Evernote? It's cloud data with a bow around it.

5\. Working long hours doesn't mean slaving away at the office for long hours, it means that you're always "on". If you start a business around something you're passionate about, you'll be thinking about it all day anyway.

6\. Ryan Carson just told us last week that he works 32 hours a week, and his company impacts the world a whole lot more than Evernote IMO (subjective, yes, but Treehouse and Carsonified educate and connect people in a way they couldn't have done otherwise, whereas you can eliminate the need for Evernote by creating a folder or two on Dropbox).

7\. If you fail, you can always try again and/or re-join the work force.

8\. Most people would feel a lot better about trying and failing than not trying at all.

And the number one reason I'd say this video should be completely ignored is that you might actually succeed.

This video tells me very little about entrepreneurship. The real message is that Evernote is run by a pretty unlikeable guy who would advise you, without getting to know you, to be a working stiff your entire life instead of taking chances. Advice that he obviously would not have taken himself.

</comment><comment><USER15> > _If you're smart enough, if you're talented enough, if you have the drive, > if you have the ability, and you're motivated by making money, then you > should just get a real job instead, like become a banker or an investor or a > consultant or something._

This sounds like terrible advice for someone who is not motivated to do the work of a banker or investor or consultant. I've seen many exceptionally driven people lose their drive when employed at the wrong occupation.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love Evernote. It has changed my life. Before, I didn't have anywhere to put all the ideas, insights, jokes, and stories I had in my head. Now, with one key from anywhere I can get it out of my head and the feeling is incredible.

But, fuck the CEO of Evernote. How _dare_ he tell people not to start a company? Not only is it idiotic (I mean, first and foremost, he did it so he's a hypocrit; but secondly, someone started every company that exists. So if people actually followed his advice we'd be stuck with the current crop of companies...forever) but it's downright evil. To discourage people from starting companies is to discourage people from building, from creating, from giving form to their dreams. And that's inexcusable.

tl;dr Evernote is great; the CEO is a fuckwit.

EDIT: I got my first downvote, but I don't care. Discouraging people from creating is evil, and when confronting evil there's no place for 'nice'.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how many of these speeches are motivated by salesmanship? Like, _Do it because you've got a decent idea and you kinda think it might work and maybe you'll make a little bit of money_ just doesn't have the same ring to it as _Go change the world, kid!_

So, in order to get invited (or invited back) to speak in front of 100s of people and plug your product/company, you change your speech (and backstory) until it fits the mantra-du-jour. 3 years ago, the speech would be "Fail Fast". A year ago, it would be "Learn to Pivot". Today, it's "Change the World!"

As others have mentioned here, Evernote is not really an earth-shattering, universe-changing product. That's perfectly OK in my book, but own up to that fact. It's tiresome to hear people rewrite history and their own motivations just to sell themselves.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article's title is misleading, it should read more like "...Don't do it for the wrong reasons" as he explains in the actual post. Beyond these reasons there are tons of people who want to make a company because:

\- They will offer something novel or fresh

\- They have the passion to change an industry that has otherwise been stagnant

\- They want to offer choice or competition for a product that has been relatively monopolized

\- And to a smaller degree if they're outside of the NYC/SF area, bring the tech scene to other areas of the world

<comment><USER9> It's more than that. He's conflating personal motivation with business model validation. Yes your business model should be validated, but what's wrong with pursuing money?

My goal has long been to work on my interests without having to worry about money. But to do so requires financial independence. That's reality. So now I'm pursuing money and looking at ways of generating income without selling my time.

Is there any real evidence to show that people who pursue money don't end up successful? I doubt it.

<comment><USER19> _Is there any real evidence to show that people who pursue money don't end up successful?_

I once read that the 2% of people in some defined group who set financial goals outperformed the other 98% _combined_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Evernote is obviously a very successful company, and I'm sure Phil Libin is a smart guy, but he comes off as a total snob saying this...

> "I think you know what it is: it's to change the world" Most people who > start a company start it to MAKE MONEY. Of course, he presents us with a > false dilemma: you can either aspire to change the world, or have the desire > to make money, earn power, etc. These are not mutually exclusive options. > It's noble and all to want to change the world, but most people probably are > out there trying to make a living...

> "If you're smart enough, if you're talented enough, if you have the drive, > if you have the ability, and you're motivated by making money, then you > should just get a real job instead, like become a banker or an investor or a > consultant or something." I'd be fine with this if he finished the sentence > with "become something you're passionate about." If you have all the > qualities he mentions in the first part of the sentence, than pursue > something you're genuinely interested in.

As a side note, I'd be interested to see a list of some entrepreneurs who started companies with the sole intention of changing the world...

</comment><comment><USER21> As someone who's about to become an entrepreneur, my reasons are: \- Money: I do believe I can make a lot of money with the company I intend to start, but I should say I'm not going to start anything revolutionary, just corner a part of the market where there's a big demand (mobile development by contract). It should make me more money in less time then my current job does. \- Flextime: I'm a bit of a work-a-holic so I'm kinda used to working 6 days a week. Most of the time I enjoy it. What I don't enjoy in a regular job is the fact that my employer wants me to work from 9 to 5. I'd like to be able to go jogging and shopping in the afternoon for example and continue some work early in the evening. \- Fun: I enjoy short-term projects (1 to 2 months) more then long- term projects (1 year or more). \- Power: well, with power I mostly think about the power to choose my own working processes and tools and not be limited with what my manager decides upon. For example: I'm not very fond of many aspects of SCRUM, but it seems kinda popular these days.

<comment><USER6> Would love to know why your comment was being downvoted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "you should just get a real job instead, like become a banker or an investor or a consultant or something"

yeah, consulting. the pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie. but at least you have a nice salary to pay back your MBA student loans. and you get to travel every week and get fat eating out every meal and drinking at networking events.

<comment><USER23> In direct contrast to software jobs, where you can stay very healthy by spending an hour in the gym every day after sitting in a cubicle for your 10-hour workday.

<comment><USER24> If you eat well and go to the gym for an intense (ie. not just jogging on the treadmill) 1-hour workout every day, I think you'll be in quite decent shape.

<comment><USER23> Actually, no. Sitting for large periods of time, past a certain age as I remember, is simply harmful to your health. You can't "make it up" with exercise later in the day.

<comment><USER24> You don't make it up the negative effect of sitting, but you'll be in generally better shape, perhaps by a greater margin than someone who never sits but also never gets any strenuous exercise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It felt like I was a fresher listening to a senior at college doing the raw talk about the truths at college. You might not like them at first, but you will realize utterly that they are the truths and might even find yourself saying the same to another fellow, a different day.

I couldn't agree with everything though - Evernote is second brain of the universe? Is it not under rating the human brain? Human brain is capable of many amazing things. If I am going to hear some one call something a second brain, it should be able to take decisions. Evernote is only a digital notebook that is accessible from many platforms keeping all the users away from a lot of dirty work(copying, syncing, etc.). That's it. I don't think that could ever CHANGE THE WORLD. That will only MAKE MY LIFE EASIER. I could even argue that entrepreneurship is more about MAKING MY LIFE EASIER than about CHANGING THE WORLD.

When I get five minutes of waiting time, I don't open evernote to write something or read something. I open my twitter account and follow up with the links on hackernewsbot and few other tweets from people I like. That makes me feel productive. If I don't feel like reading technical things, I open my facebook and check what my friends are upto and I still feel productive.

</comment><comment><USER7> > _A lot of people think that they want to be an entrepreneur because it's a > good way to make money. It just isn't, that's just wrong. Depending on how > you count, 95% to 99% of companies fail._

Bubbles like the one we have now are not common. It will continue until the Fed takes away the punchbowl, so make hay while the sun shines (and mix those metaphors while the mixing is good.)

<comment><USER26> What about the entrepreneurs who pay themselves ridiculous salaries once they get even a little funding? It seems like a great way to make money. Our founder is the highest paid person in the company and we live one month at a time because of it. Is this common during the bubble, or is my situation unique?

Highest paid is fact, one month at a time is opinion.

<comment><USER7> > _Is this common during the bubble_

Yes. We saw it a bunch during Bubble v1.

I thought it was nuts then: Weren't the people/VCs supplying the money paying attention? After a while, you realize that easy money covers up a lot of sins over several levels of the foodchain.

When money tightens, those sins will be expurgated, but until then: Party on.

EDIT: To expand a bit, it's not "normal" as ericflo says in another reply and I agree it's a "bad" sign.

I'm just pointing out that as long as those supplying the money are seeing positive returns, they're busy working their other opportunities. When Sequoia republishes "RIP: Good Times", out comes the microscope on spending and board meetings will go over details that were ignored before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Regarding "Flex time" it is nice to also compare with the other extreme "On managing my time" by Martin Varsavsky: [http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/new-ideas/on-managing- my-...](http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/new-ideas/on-managing-my-time.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> A true entrepreneur wouldn't be dissuaded by somebody else's "don't do it" advice.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't think this advice applies to every type of business. Particularly service-oriented startups that are able to land paying clients right from the beginning.

I will agree though that working at a company that isn't financially stable is not a good place for someone who needs financial stability. Imagine your boss telling you that your next paycheck will only be half - or they can't pay it at all, but you'll get paid back later. Imagine that happening occasionally throughout the year. Add to that a constant, looming feeling that your company could go out of business any day even though you love working there. If those kinds of things upset or stress you out then a startup probably isn't a good place to work.

</comment><comment><USER30> > Power ... join the military

Actually, I'm a mid grade officer in the Navy; I was recently told I was "part of the seniority plan" in my unit. I knew where Libin was going with that as soon as I read the subtitle. I answer to _everyone_!

</comment><comment><USER31> IMHO the article misses the best part of the talk (in the middle somewhere). Ironically, given the "don't do it" bit.. Libin makes the point that now's a better time than ever to be an entrepreneur, and among the usual OSS/StuffsCheapNow points, he concludes that today the best product is more likely to 'win' than it has been in the past... Especially in the consumer space. Further pointing out that this essentially creates a meritocracy for people who are good at making things (even if they suck at sales/marketing).

The talk is definitely better than the flamebait title.

</comment><comment><USER32> Starting a company should be about making money. There are also other reasons but I think they should be considered as secondary.

</comment><comment><USER33> Who's the audience? Sounds to me like he's looking for employees who will take a piece of changing the world (equity?) over cold hard cash.

Based on all the talkers I hear, and the positive feedback they constantly get about how "cool" it is that they want to be an entrepreneur.. I think a good hard "don't do it" would be helpful fire under their butts to JFDI.

</comment><comment><USER34> Reason to do it: Because you have to. When all else fails, your only option my be to hustle up your own work. For the thousands of people in the U.S. who have been unemployed for over a year, do it! I'm another example, I live in the Philippines but I can't work here because I'm a U.S. citizen, so my only option is running my own business.

</comment><comment><USER35> I hear this exact message a million times on Hacker News: a speech from an entrepreneur discouraging others to be like him/her... unless they are really serious about it. This is played to the point of cliche. For once, I'd love to see an article entitled "don't do it" and really actually mean it.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure what the point of this talk is. Are people supposed to walk away, saying "wow, that was inspiring!"

If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it at all.

Entrepreneurship is very much an individual sport in that there are no hard and fast rules. Take all advice with a grain of pepper.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Seven out of 10 new employer firms survive at least 2 years, half at least 5 years, a third at least 10 years, and a quarter stay in business 15 years or more." - According to the US SBA <http://s831.us/IXGBFK>

</comment><comment><USER38> Who doesn't start a business thinking they're going to make money? Wouldn't it otherwise be called charity or a hobby? Sure, maybe not hogwild money, but I think getting paid for something for delivering something of value might be a definition of business?

</comment><comment><USER39> My number 1 reason to be an entrepreneur is freedom, and money is the means to freedom ...

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't know anyone who makes more than $500K a year. Everyone I know who makes more than $60K a year running their own business, says their only regret is not starting earlier.

</comment><comment><USER41> What else are we suppose to do?

<comment><USER42> We're supposed to be his employees instead of challenging him in a crowded market. This way he makes more money from ideas we might have put forward and each one of us is one less competitor for him.

Really though, if an entrepreneur is going to be dissuaded by this speech, they probably shouldn't be trying in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ooh, me, me, pick me. Let me guess! Do it because you want to _change the world_?

It's a laughable, tired cliche now, especially coming from a guy who made the equivalent of a digital hipster moleskine who isn't changing a god damn thing about this world. People are still broke, sick, and starving. But I can take awesome notes on my MacBook Air!

The better answer is "because it's interesting and fun and challenging and sometimes disappointing and a fantastic learning experience and you might get rich or go broke while experiencing the full, unfiltered range of human emotions and potential".

It also happens to be more truthful and conforms more to the modal outcome.

<comment><USER44> "because it's interesting and fun and challenging and sometimes disappointing and a fantastic learning experience and you might get rich or go broke while experiencing the full, unfiltered range of human emotions and potential"

This is one of the best articulations of why I'm an entrepreneur that I've read. Thanks.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely agreed. All I know is I will COMPLETELY lose my mind if I'm still working for somebody else (as a contractor or employee) in 5 years; his advice to stick with the paying job while figuring out what you want doesn't address what to do when your repeated conclusion after all the thinking is: "work for myself, build out my ideas".

The only way to deal with this conclusion is to _act_ : to go out there and experience working for yourself, and _test_ your instincts and savy against reality. I don't care whether my projects succeed or fail at this point; I'm just happy I'm focused on exploring my potential and my desires.

I still have the day job, for security and capital, and I have only chosen to pursue ideas that DO impact people's lives (otherwise why would people use it?); none of this stuff is mutually exclusive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Troll or motivation by saying "rest of you can't do what I did." Sounds like a troll.</comment>


Google tries to patent ANS, which they did not invent - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/wiadomosci/artykul/uj-google-jaroslaw-duda-proces-patent,189,0,2352061.html <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Numeral_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Numeral_Systems)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google is doing a lot of this stuff, filing patents on machine learning techniques from decades ago and loads of other things, and often getting the patents granted. It's pretty infuriating.

<comment><USER4> A lot of it is probably defensive. If they don't Microsoft will and they'll just have to pay Microsoft. It's not their fault. It's the patent systems fault. I don't think you should be able to patent an algorithm, but that's just me

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Figured stuff like this would happen when the US switched from first to invent to first to file. It was a bad change... But benefits the big co's who write the legislati.. I mean participate in our fine democracy by providing campaign contributions to those fine selfless individuals who run things from Washington.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't the patent be immediately rendered void due to prior art anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another take from a Daala developer: [https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/84214.html](https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/84214.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> This must be part of that "Don't be evil" mantra I keep hearing about.

<comment><USER9> The one that was officially dropped? Google may be a lot of things, but one can no longer throw that motto at them and call them hypocrites.

<comment><USER10> Well, they kinda replaced it with Alphabet's "Do the right thing", which is equally meaningless and similarly hilarious when compared with their actual conduct.</comment></comment></comment>


'I am going to say quiet words in your face': a conversation with the Zuckerbot - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/22/zuckerbot-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-botnik <comment><USER2> ctrl+f "brisket"

ctrl+f "ribs"

ctrl+f "sweet baby ray's"

No hits. Color me disappointed.</comment>


15 years of best paper awards from top cs conferences - <AUTHOR> http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Found it on reddit compsci but thought it'd be more appropriate here.

The ranking on the bottom is interesting:

Microsoft Research 20.2

Carnegie Mellon University 19.77

University of Washington 14.67

Stanford University 12.43

IBM Research 9.7

Cornell University 9.62

University of California Berkeley 8.28

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 8.0

University of Alberta 7.14

University of British Columbia 7.0

Yahoo! Research 6.82

AT&T Laboratories 6.58

University of Toronto 6.33

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.53

University of Massachusetts Amherst 4.92

</comment><comment><USER2> It seems that most of the papers are hidden behind ACM's paywall. Of the ones that were part of my limited, random sample at least.

<comment><USER3> just google the papers, or look up in google scholar :-)

In most cases, the authors would have uploaded it on their webpage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! would have been even better if there were SIGCOMM,SIGMETRICS were included.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are the ones for SIGCOMM: <http://www.sigcomm.org/awards/best-paper- award> It looks like there's only 3 years of them so it would be easy to add.

SIGMETRICS seems to have only a few years of awards as well. But there is no central list of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> haha. is there someone out there who believes you get an education in these subjects by reading those papers that won best paper awards?</comment>


Let's Automate Let's Encrypt - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/lets-automate-lets-encrypt <comment><USER2> I just used [https://certbot.eff.org/](https://certbot.eff.org/)

Put "certbot-auto renew --quiet --no-self-upgrade" in crontab and it does its own thing.

<comment><USER3> Visiting that website was eye opening.

Previously I had a monthly crontab script that updates my LE cert, but now it seems that certbot has been backported to my server's OS (Debian Jessie) which makes my script redundant.

I'll be glad to retire my script. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All the Let's Encrypt automation I want to see is:

sudo service nginx start

And nginx gets/renews certificates automatically.

<comment><USER5> That's where we'd like to see things go as well. Same for Apache. -Josh, head of Let's Encrypt

<comment><USER6> Right this is exactly what the Letsencrypt folks are trying to solve. Thank you for your work Josh! SSL has been a pain in the ass for decades! Generating certs, deploying them, maintaining them. This is why we are not at 100% SSL on the web. The LE folks are trying to fix this. Please send a few dollars their way on their fund raising page to help this goal along.

It's not unobtainable to make using certs MUCH easier and automated, their work should be supported by us all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We've fully automated Lets Encrypt on our handful of servers and so far it works really well, with only a few glitches. It's specific to our setup but:

-> We do DNS verification through Dehydrated ([https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated](https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated)). Because we use in-house DNS running PowerDNS with a MySQL backend, updates to records are a cinch.

-> Dehydrated has "hooks" that allows you to call your own scripts for each step of the verification process. We have an on-prem sysadmin box that does remote administration of the servers (so that none of our servers have direct access to any other server, just in case of a breach), so we just had to update a few commands to work with Dehydrated's hooks.

-> Each remote server has its own directory within the Dehydrated environment, and there's an "update" script that runs from cron that: a) asks that particular server which hostnames it currently has, b) updates the hostname list in that server's Dehydrated directory, and c) invokes Dehydrated.

Because we host some client sites, it felt skeezy to me to be updating files in their web directories on a regular basis even if it's really temporary. DNS updates however are just fine.

All in all Letsencrypt has been a huge, huge win for us. I'm really grateful for both them and for Dehydrated.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain to me the following

1) Why did it take so long for an open source version to come into existence ? (there must have been some serious hurtles Let's Encrypted had to overcome to do this)

2) Given that you can get LE certs for free and use certbot for auto-renewal, why is anyone purchasing certs anymore ?

<comment><USER9> > 2) Give that you can get LE certs for free and use certbot for auto-renewal, > why is anyone purchases certs anymore ?

Let's Encrypt only offers Domain Validation certificates, not Organization Validation or Extended Validation (green bar) certificates [1]. The certificates themselves are only valid for 90 days, which might pose a problem for organizations where their infrastructure makes changing certificates difficult or time consuming. LE does not offer wildcard certificates [1], and there is a rate limit of 20 certificates per week per registered domain [2], so organizations with too many domains won't be able to use LE for all their certs.

[1]: [https://letsencrypt.org/docs/faq/](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/faq/) [2]: [https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate- limits/](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate-limits/)

<comment><USER10> This is basically where I am. I have a VPN appliance I have to maintain. It's a manual process to update the certificate. Just about everything else I use runs LetsEncrypt, but this VPN box has a nine dollar cert from Namecheap because nine dollars is totally worth not having to manually deal with the certificate replacement more often than once a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As everyone is mentioning their favorite tools, I like acmetool[1] in particular. I began to work on a docker/compose/nginx integration[2], but never finished it due shifting priorities. The missing piece was a reload hook for nginx. It would have been easy with simple cgi script (just send nohup), but alas, nginx does not support cgi.

[1] [https://github.com/hlandau/acme](https://github.com/hlandau/acme)

[2] [https://github.com/zokier/acmetool- docker](https://github.com/zokier/acmetool-docker)

<comment><USER12> To integrate my acme client with nginx running in a separated Docker container I started nginx together with a shell script that reads from a named pipe and then sends signal to nginx to reread configuration. Then the client writes to the pipe when it gets a new certificate.

<comment><USER11> That sounds like it would work just fine. I personally took kinda dogmatic approach and tried to avoid having several (long running) processes in a container. As such I think a embedded Lua script in nginx would have been most suitable solution

<comment><USER12> If you have Docker 1.12 or later you can run your acme client in the same process namespace as the nginx container. Then the client can signal nginx directly about certificate change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use [https://github.com/jetstack/kube- lego](https://github.com/jetstack/kube-lego) and so far it works . I didn't get the to 90 day expiry yet, but it successfully automatically acquired the first certificate. I heard good things from people who have been using it for a while.

I recommend the nginx as ingress backend ( [https://github.com/jetstack/kube- lego/tree/master/examples/n...](https://github.com/jetstack/kube- lego/tree/master/examples/nginx) ), as GCE had problems talking over https. Also wait for a bit (e.g. 30 minutes) after updating your domain records and enabling kube-lego (i.e. just before this section: [https://github.com/jetstack/kube- lego/tree/master/examples/n...](https://github.com/jetstack/kube- lego/tree/master/examples/nginx#enable-kube-lego) ).

</comment><comment><USER14> The man page for acme-client shows how to automate renewal with cron. It is quite simple.

[http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man1/acme- client.1](http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man1/acme-client.1)

</comment><comment><USER15> I just remarked the other day that I haven't had an automatic renewal work yet with tiny-acme. In theory, it should be ok, but for the first renewal the intermediate certificate changed, requiring manual intervention. For the second renewal, the Let's Encrypt terms of service changed, again requiring manual intervention.

Alas, I don't really want to use the official client. It seems messy and complex, and docker kind of contributes to that impression. I wish there was a tool that was simple, clean and elegant.

<comment><USER16> FWIW, both of these issues are acme-tiny-specific quirks. The protocol allows clients to handle both intermediate certificate changes and ToS updates without any user interaction (and without breaking renewal). These things were not implemented in acme-tiny in order to keep the LOC count low from what I can tell.

I tend to recommend lego[1] to anyone needing a high-quality ACME client without certbot's complex auto-configuration features. Might be what you're looking for. It's written in go and can be installed by fetching a single binary.

[1]: [https://github.com/xenolf/lego](https://github.com/xenolf/lego)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you need a solution that works with your existing load-balancer/proxy/L7 router/nodejs server/microservice architecture, I built ten-ply-crest [0]. It's express middleware that is fully automatic to register new domains, when used with Consul and an L7 router (Fabio, Traefik, Envoy, HAProxy) to route to .well-known/.

Ten-ply-crest can run as a standalone microservice or on top of any existing express app. It supports pluggable backends for storage, and doesn't rely on the local filesystem.

It's really short on docs, but "release early and often!". It has been running all my sites since the beginning of the year, Feel free to open issues with any questions and I'll help you get running.

If you need a complete client lib for the LetsEncrypt API in JS, that's included too [1].

[0]: [https://github.com/nextorigin/ten-ply- crest](https://github.com/nextorigin/ten-ply-crest)

[1]: [https://github.com/nextorigin/ten-ply- crest/blob/master/src/...](https://github.com/nextorigin/ten-ply- crest/blob/master/src/models/letsencrypt.coffee)

</comment><comment><USER18> Let's Encrypt worked well for me the other day, except that I hit a firewall problem. I firewall all "new connection" outbound traffic, so that if a web app gets compromised, it can't start sending spam or try to spread a compromise to other sites.

This caused Let's Encrypt to fail.

I worked around this by temporarily allowing outbound connections, but I wonder whether this needs to be fixed more generally? It seems reasonable to me to block all outbound connections on a web server that isn't expected to need any. But Let's Encrypt's (perfectly reasonable) need to renew certificates breaks this assumption. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem easy to set up an exception on an IP-based firewall to allow Let's Encrypt outbound connections only. This makes automated renewals hard.

<comment><USER19> Use the DNS challenge: no open ports or listeners on your machine, just set a DNS record.

<comment><USER18> No, it's the _outbound_ API connection that is the problem. The server listens on HTTPS from the world, so having that listening inbound wasn't a problem.

<comment> ygjb-dupe Right, so you can run the dns01 challenge on a separate service, up to and including running it in jenkins to automatically renew and push your certs, and kick the nginx server. I should document how my setup works and put it up somewhere...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like automating via docker there are various docker images with haproxy or nginx in it that automatically refresh certificates. Just install them as reverse proxy for your frontend and here we are. Very useful and almost no configuration needed.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love the Docker solution for this. Every day I find more and more problems that Docker can solve for me.

However I dont think this will work for my setup. I run Arch Linux on a Raspberry PI, which serves OwnCloud via Apache. I have always had to go the manual route with lets encrypt because I dont run Debian.

The problem is these docker images are probably built with ubuntu or debian and assume an intel architecture. So I would have to recreate these images for arm - which means I would have to start with a different image.

Not hard to build myself, but I would basically need the original Dockerfile and then recompile from there.

</comment><comment><USER22> How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu 14.04 [0] also provides details on how to use certbot to obtain SSL certificates.

[0] [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- secu...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-nginx- with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-14-04)

</comment><comment><USER23> > _Don 't sweat the permissions for this directory; the certificates > themselves will not be publicly accessible._

Maybe still a good idea to sweat the permissions - the way it's set up right now, any process on the system can _delete_ the certificates from this folder, thus breaking your site until such time as you renew them.

</comment><comment><USER24> > "Are you wondering why I used 2:17 am? Well, there is a simple explanation > for that: almost everybody else did not."

Reminds me of the "fair dice": [https://xkcd.com/221/](https://xkcd.com/221/)

<comment><USER25> Seems like cron really should have a way to run a job at a random moment between two points in time. I searched around some and all the solutions involve terrible hacks like prefacing your command with /bin/sleep $((RANDOM\%3600)).

<comment><USER26> Terrible hack, or building a solution from parts, i can't really tell the diff.

<comment><USER25> I think what turns it into "terrible hack" for me is the fact that it won't properly handle the situation where the machine reboots after firing the cron job and before the sleep completes. Having an extra process sitting around for potentially hours doing nothing but waiting also seems ugly. Neither is particularly _important_ though....

<comment><USER27> Try scheduling a job with "at" in that crontab entry, some systems have it installed by default and jobs persist across reboots. The at jobs are executed through cron themselves.

<comment><USER25> Good idea! I'll keep that in mind if I ever try to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd really love to be able to use let's encrypt with gitlab pages. I know there were people working on this but it still isn't available.

<comment><USER29> I use let's encrypt for gitlab pages, as seen here: [https://robigalia.org/](https://robigalia.org/)

The key is doing a dns-01 challenge, instead of http-01, so you don't have to put challenge-response garbage in your repo.</comment></comment>


Linux Kernel 3.2.41 Released - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/543662/

<comment><USER2> Is there something notable about this? Fixes for a severe security bug? Performance improvements? New features of broad relevance?

The Linux kernel is released all the time. Windows updates aren't usually notable either.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, no, there is nothing especially notable about this release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Eh? I thought current stable was 3.8.4

<comment><USER5> 3.2 branch is "8th long-term stable release from March 2012 to 2015, used in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Debian 7 Wheezy and Slackware 14.0" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Maintenance>).

Not "current stable" but still stable and maintained.

<comment><USER6> Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS is on Linux 3.5.0 now.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious if it's worth upgrading servers; I've stuck to the 184.108.40.206.47 (current) on 12.04.2 LTS boxes so far.

<comment><USER8> Nah, I upgraded a few servers...Didn't see much improvement.

Wait for 3.8, with tcp slow start improvments.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Flight Simulator comes on 10 discs - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-07-15-microsoft-flight-simulator-comes-on-10-discs <comment><USER2> I'm an avid flight simulator enthusiast with marginal internet and I think this is a great gesture by Microsoft.

I live in "rural" Canada, approximately 10 kilometers (6 miles) from a municipality of 160,000 people, and internet access for me is a mix of LTE and Satellite, and unlikely to improve (maybe Starlink!). Even limiting myself to focusing on a single flight simulator platform, Digital Combat Simulator, downloading and keeping the simulator updated requires planning and timing to work around my bandwidth cap.

I've been following the development of Microsoft's new Flight simulator, but as soon as the download size was announced it seemed like a non-starter for me. But the announcement of a physical DVD changes this, and I'm now quite interested in their simulator.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, shocking they're actually spending the money to produce a physical edition.

Good guy Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER4> Shipping a read-only 128GB thumb drive would be more practical, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER5> Interesting which is cheaper to produce. I have no idea about wholesale prices, but let's look at retail to get a rough ratio:

10 DVDs at retail cost $25 [https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-DVD-R-4-7GB- Recordable-Media...](https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-DVD-R-4-7GB-Recordable- Media/dp/B003ZDNZT2/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=100+dvds&qid=1594930720&sr=8-2)

So $2.50 for 10 discs.

An unbranded 128 GB usb stick is $16 [https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk- Cruzer-128GB-Flash-SDCZ36-128...](https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-128GB- Flash- SDCZ36-128G-B35/dp/B00TKFCYP0/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=usb+stick+128gb&qid=1594930866&sr=8-3)

Assuming the box will be about the same size, it's likely that the DVDs are simply still cheaper.

An interesting lament is that disk media did not really evolve past DVDs to blue-rays or multi-layer to the mass consumer market, as 100GB blu-ray discs are actually available (still more expensive per-GB than DVDs!) [https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-100GB-White-Inkjet- Printable...](https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-100GB-White-Inkjet- Printable/dp/B00POY826G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=224DK5Z66DFRK&dchild=1&keywords=100+gb+blu- ray+disc&qid=1594931021&sprefix=100+gb+blu-ray+disc%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER6> One thing to keep in mind is that those DVDs need to be burned. Retail DVDs are usually "pressed" (like vinyl) IIRC, which is much cheaper.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: new iOS app Postys – Best Videos. Aka Yahoo News Digest for Video - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/id989570652

<comment><USER2> I'd be more interested in downloading it if the iTunes page included actual screenshots, and not just marketing material. As it stands, I have no idea what the app looks like, and the description doesn't matter to me as I don't use Yahoo News Digest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for valuable feedback, will do my best.</comment></comment>


Stop more than SOPA, demand INTERNET FREEDOM bills - <AUTHOR>

It's simple. Demand the complete opposite. Demand SOPA to be replaced with INTERNET FREEDOM related bills.<p>Stopping SOPA is delaying the inevitable; they'll keep doing it until there's protest fatigue and it'll be easier to make compromises that will still lead to less internet freedom (SOPA Lite)[0]. Especially when they'll keep presenting such bills to less internet freedom.<p>[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique <comment><USER2> Yes, this is exactly what I was thinking, too. Stopping SOPA will only be temporary. They will remake the bill and try again either by end of this Congress or with the next one. There need to be some definite laws that protect the Internet - without compromise. And these laws should stop any SOPA-like law dead in its tracks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a list of past attempts to control the internet:

The Commercial Felony Streaming Act. Makes illegal streaming a felony recently: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_S.978>

Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. It's an attempt to confiscate domain names legally. Now re-entered as PROTECT-IP: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combating_Online_Infringement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combating_Online_Infringement_and_Counterfeits_Act)

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Not a bill but an international discussion behind closed doors rumoured to get foreign governments to adopt three strikes, etc. USA says details can't be released due to 'national security reasons': [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- Counterfeiting_Trade_Agre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement)

DMCA. There's no protection for people who wish to share music freely as civil judges ask "How much damages did you suffer when <abusive company> took your free music down?" and many USA attorneys refuse to touch DMCA abuses: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)

There's still more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who will lobby for it? No company cares anywhere near as much as Disney, the music labels and so on. Even if a clever, up to date congressman did get a sensible bill written, it'd be completely weakened by the time the others were done with it, before it was law.</comment>


Fugitive on run for seventeen years found living in cave by a drone - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49874969 <comment><USER2> There was a similar case in the US. In the 70's, there was a crooked cop who was convicted (for some lewd acts) and had to surrender himself to prison. He chose to run instead and spent 22 years in the forest.

Eventually he couldn't take it anymore and surrendered himself. He was then given a suspended sentence citing that he already has been through enough.

Here's a podcast episode on that: [https://snapjudgment.org/cop- out](https://snapjudgment.org/cop-out)

<comment><USER3> It sounds like he used the power of his job to rape several women. Now that he is free, it says he is helping fight police corruption and donates to organizations that help victims of sexual assault, but if I was one of his victims, I don't think I would feel justice is served just because he hid in the woods for 22 years. This is a pretty tricky scenario imo.

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of people who feel like the primary goal of what we call the criminal justice system is making the victims feel like criminals are treated poorly enough. While perhaps satisfying to some individuals, it results in high rates of recidivism, which makes society less safe for everyone.

A criminal justice system centered around reform results in a safer and more humane society for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait he sufficiently exiled himself and rejoined nature, survived (likely alone) for 17 years, and they take him back to prison?

<comment><USER6> Right or wrong, a large function of the prison system is to ruin someone's life in a sufficiently public way for performing actions outside of the given society's norms and values to serve as a deterrent to those who would follow in their footsteps.

<comment><USER7> Except that has never proven to reduce recidivism, and in the US seems to increase it. The Swedes seem to have much better luck with education, training, and rehabilitative options.

<comment><USER8> Op mentioned nothing about recidivism or it's usefulness to the prisoner. That's just about irrelevant if the intended desired effect is deterrence.

<comment><USER7> Apologies. Punishment is not a deterrent.

<comment><USER9> And you are wiser than anyone in authority that has walked before you? (eg. parents, law makers, authorities, teachers, etc).

Punishment is a deterrent and has been proven so for millennia.

<comment><USER10> > _Punishment is a deterrent and has been proven so for millennia._

A proven deterrent? Do you have any facts to back-up your posit? The crime and recidivism rates would seem to indicate the contrary; especially, in the states.

Essentially, we should - in theory - have no crime by now (given it's been over a millennium) as all rates should've diminished to zero, yeah?

At best, punishment as a deterrent is keeping the for-profit prison-industrial complex in business and that's about the extent of any benefit[s] (if it can even be called that) it might be providing to society.

<comment><USER6> "Deterrence in relation to criminal offending is the idea or theory that the threat of punishment will deter people from committing crime and reduce the probability and/or level of offending in society." \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(penology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_\(penology\))

So, punishment as a deterrent is currently a theory.

<comment><USER11> > Theory

I want to reply to wickedsickeune below, "Gravity is also a theory," but I think the thread's hit max-depth.

The word "theory" in the context of Deterrence_(penology) is not the same as the word "theory" in "theory of Gravity." The _Theory_ of Gravity refers to a model or explanation that follows from observed facts.

Deterrence, according to the Wikipedia page, doesn't fit that definition of the word.

> Despite numerous studies using a variety of data sources, sanctions, crime > types, statistical methods and theoretical approaches, there remains little > agreement in the scientific literature about whether, how, under what > circumstances, to what extent, for which crimes, at what cost, for which > individuals and, perhaps most importantly, in which direction do various > aspects of contemporary criminal sanctions affect subsequent criminal > behavior.

<comment><USER12> (Off-topic) It's sometimes (always?) possible to reply despite the missing "reply" button. Click the timestamp of the post to see it on its own page. That page seems to have a reply button even when the thread does not.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for this comment! I realized I was missing something when I got a reply (with my post being at the same depth as the one I couldn't reply to).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They guy had managed to inflict himself punishment at no cost to taxpayers. At least victims will have some relief, otherwise it's a waste of time.

<comment><USER14> It's unclear from the article what his crime was, only that he escaped from a prison camp. It could be that his only crime was being Tibetan or Uighur or a member of Falun Gong or that he said something against the government. It's China, so the only 'victims' might be the prison guards on whose watch he escaped.

<comment><USER15> It says so literally in the first paragraph:

"The 63-year old, named Song Jiang by the police, had been jailed for trafficking women and children but escaped from a prison camp in 2002."

<comment><USER14> Don't know how I missed that. Sorry everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> He had a source of water and fuel. But what did he eat? The "household rubbish" suggests he had some sort of supply line?

</comment><comment><USER17> > Yongshan police received clues about Song's whereabouts in early September, > they said on their WeChat account.

So there is no tech or surveillance story here. Only the use of a relatively common high tech gadget aiding good old fashioned police work.

</comment><comment><USER18> His crime is sufficiently distateful that I dont want to defend him specifically. But the overall subject raises interesting questions about enforcement of laws and their applicability as enforcement approaches perfect. (ie 100%)

For example consider speeding laws we can actually approach perfect enforcement using GPS data and engine management. But then the question becomes how does the archaic law morph when perfectly applied? Should _every_ driver who _ever_ speeds be charged the fine? That is roughly every driver every time they drive whom uses the highways near me. And how often should they be charged? Each time they exceed the speed limit (for example if speedlimit is 65 and I brake to 64, then speed to 66 several times, is that several tickets?) ...

I suspect that most of our laws have been written without grace/forgiveness knowing that we used to only catch a small percentage of perpetrators, and likely the most egregious of them (assuming frequency & magnitude would increase probability of being caught). What ought do if that percent sky rockets, but the laws were designed for the former value?

<comment><USER19> > I suspect that most of our laws have been written without grace/forgiveness > knowing that we used to only catch a small percentage of perpetrators

Or that we can choose not to prosecute in order to use their testimony against a bigger fish. It's called prosecutorial discretion, and it seems reasonable at first, but it's responsible for the slow encroachment of government in all aspects of private life. After all, why change or protest a law you break every day if it will never be used against you?

Everyone probably breaks multiple laws a day without realising it.

If everyone that broke any law had to be charged and prosecuted, we would have a much more politically engaged populace, a much more efficient process to appeal judgements and repeal unjust laws.

<comment><USER18> I would also argue that having to mount a defense against an accusation is sufficiently punitive (can easily bankrupt) almost any individual in today's society (at least in north America).

Maybe it's easier to just pay the speeding ticket because to fight it would cost 10x in lawyers fees. That's not justice, it's just economic extortion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've watched "Alone" on the History Channel from time to time. One of the things that surprised me was how the contestants were affected mentally. Often enough they tap out not from lack of food, but from lack of human contact.

It's amazing this guy survived. It's close to a miracle he did it alone.

</comment><comment><USER21> Establishing a new identity wasn't a huge task when we were paper based. A pretty common approach was finding someone that died young, roughly your age, in a rural or religious community that probably didn't file the right papers to document the death. Or somewhere small enough that destroying the single paper in a file accomplished the same.

Then bootstrap that up from a birth certificate to a social security card and so on.

I imagine it's not that simple anymore.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's strange to imagine how much the world has changed in 17 years, from this guy's perspective.

<comment><USER23> I beg to differ. For example Enemy of the State which dealt with aerial surveillance was released 21 years ago.

Predator drones were deployed in the middle east in 2000 but were in use from 1995 in the Balkans. Quadcopters are new though.

17 years and people were living online lives. With Web 2.0 which began a couple of years later around 15 years ago. There's not much that has changed fundamentally which could cause a psychological shock.

Now, if he was on the fun since 1980 maybe ... but 2002 was just around the corner (at least for the type of people who read HN).

<comment><USER22> > Predator drones were deployed in the middle east in 2000 but were in use > from 1995 in the Balkans. Quadcopters are new though.

Quadcopters wouldn't have even been possible without serious advances in battery technology and radio infrastructure.

There was no reason for him to expect the police would've had access to these kind of resources.

> 17 years and people were living online lives. With Web 2.0 which began a > couple of years later around 15 years ago. There's not much that has changed > fundamentally which could cause a psychological shock.

Even just the invention of the smartphone would be alien to him. I think you may have lost perspective on how different it is. People did not expect to be connected like we are today. It's obvious in hindsight but nobody could have predicted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Living in a cave not able to leave maybe _slightly_ better than a jail cell? Of course I'm not sure what other horrors he faced in a Chinese prison.

<comment><USER25> Personally I would rather live in a cave. When you're in a jail cell, you might end up on an operating table because some wealthy someone needs a new liver, and yours was a match. This person did live in exile, but he lived nonetheless. To some life itself is more important.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China)

<comment><USER26> There are hundreds of thousands of people who live in caves. China and Turkey leap to mind.

The article I read about it in Turkey showed it as a kind of cultural heritage thing, not a poverty thing.

The article I read about it in China was about the Chinese government forcing people who live in caves to move to cities, where they have no social nets or coping skills. Apparently there is some huge number (hundreds of thousands? millions? I forget) of people in China who live in caves in the western part of the country, and Beijing considers their lifestyle an embarrassment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if he'd had means, not a lot just a few thousand dollars, he would have been able to remain free.

Maybe moving completely out of the area, buying a used car cash and driving to another state entirely?

Somehow getting himself into Mexico and boarding a ship somewhere in south america or asia?

I wonder if these days with all the surveillance it really takes living in a cave to get away from law enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER28> And how much longer before they use facial recognition to identify the fugitive then execute the arrest?

<comment><USER29> Execute made me think of Judge Dredd. What the movies gets wron is it won't be a person who is the Judge it will be an AI. Fugitive match found, sending drones to confirm, deploying Cop AI, running Judge routine, sentenced to death. I am the law.

<comment><USER5> We call it, law-and-justice-as-a-service

<comment><USER30> _Justify_ (tm)

Sadly, both justify.com and justify.it are squatted it appears.

<comment><USER31> justify.ai too.

<comment><USER32> justif.ai

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reminds me of the famous examples of Japanese soldiers fighting on after 1945, two of them ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda), [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teruo_Nakamura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teruo_Nakamura), on separate islands) until 1974.

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout) even mentions "Shigeyuki Hashimoto and Kiyoaki Tanaka joined the Malayan Communist Party's guerrilla forces to continue fighting, returning to Japan in January 1990")

</comment><comment><USER34> Might be a good twist: it's a state sponsored DJI ads, PRC gently saves the drone industry.

</comment><comment><USER35> What an amazing script for a movie

</comment><comment><USER36> Julian Assange?</comment>


Show HN: A PHP parser written in PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nikic/PHP-Parser <comment><USER2> This is not a snide comment, I'm truly curious. What is the point of "An [x] parser/interpreter/compiler written in [x]." I've seen one now for JS and this one for PHP. I lean more toward the sponge learning [1] side of HN, so forgive me if this is super obvious.

[1] <http://alexrosen.com/blog/2011/05/sponge-learning/>

edit: grammar.

<comment><USER3> For instance to allow meta-programming (programming code executed at compile time) in the same language as is being interpreted/compiled.

But more formally, a self-hosting compiler says stuff about the language per se, see also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)>.

<comment><USER4> _a self-hosting compiler says stuff about the language per se_

That it's Turing-complete and can write to a file? I think all it really says is that somebody was hard-headed enough to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would be a great way to create a PHP-based templating system that just uses a subset of PHP as syntax. Would be very fast.

<comment><USER6> This must be a stupid question because I've noticed that it's commonplace, but why do PHP-based projects try to build templating systems in PHP? Do they not realize that the original use case for PHP was to turn plain HTML files into dynamic templates?

I saw this in Horde, the other day; mixed in with the usual PHP tags they had added their own XML tags for doing "if/else" type things in the template. What is the purpose of that?

<comment><USER7> I believe it's an attempt to assure there is no logic in the template code.

...which I think is retarded and anal, since the important part is separation of _business_ logic and presentation. There is bound to be some level of display logic, which is why most template languages have loops and conditionals. But if you are going that far, why not just use PHP? It is arguably a very good template language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool... Now define your Node datatype in Haskell deriving Show & Read, and pretty-print to that. Then you can (easier) do some interesting analysis and transforms!

</comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare to PHP_CodeSniffer, and it's Tokenizer? You're both using token_get_all under the hood, but PHPCS has support for CSS/JS as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP_CodeSniffer - as you already say - works with the source code at a token level. This is necessary, because it looks at the precise formatting of the code (like whitespace usage).

The parser is more for analyzers that are _not_ interested in the precise formatting of the code, but want to look at the code from a higher level perspective.

For example, if you want to do control flow analysis and type inference working directly on the tokens would be really hard. An Abstract Syntax Tree makes this kind of work much easier, as you don't have to think about the tiny details of the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the interesting things about Groovy for me has been the runtime AST transformation stuff - annotating something as @singleton, then having the engine make it in to a singleton at compile time, etc.

Certainly this project doesn't get us there immediately, but might give some neat ideas for future PHP versions to incorporate.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can it compile itself then?

<comment><USER12> It's only a parser - it just transforms plain source code into an abstract syntax tree representation. However, if you wanted to, you could use this tree for a variety of things - including translating and generating compiled code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <?php eval($codeBase); ?>

</comment><comment><USER14> Yo dog...

</comment><comment><USER15> PHP inception _brain explode_

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems like you could have saved yourself quite a bit of parsing/lexing work if you had used the parser that ships with PHP:

<http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.token-get-all.php> <http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.token-name.php>

Very cool nonetheless.

<comment><USER17> They are very different things. token_get_all just tokenizes the code, but this tool parses PHP code into an AST. If you look at the source of this project, you'll notice that it does indeed use token_get_all to handle the lexing.

<comment><USER16> I just went and read Lexer.php to see what you mean. Never mind on my previous comment :)

Well done with the project--I have a use case for it regarding enforcing PHP style guide @ $work.</comment></comment></comment>


Why humans need to rethink their place in the animal kingdom - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/01/why-humans-need-rethink-their-place-animal-kingdom <comment><USER4> Even if we can't justify drawing a sharp line between humans and everything else, you get into very tricky ground if you do not.

Ant colonies have a similar biomass to humankind [1]. If humans aren't exceptional, do we acknowledge some sort of responsibility to provide for ants? Can they draw on welfare?

If we separate by intelligence ... humans are clearly quite exceptional. Even then though, if we reject human exceptionalism we will need convoluted definitions. Can a town itself sue you for leaving because the intelligence of the town itself decreases? Is a corporation a philosophical as well as legal entity? Can they feel pain? A corporation can 'speak'; to some extent independently of the people in it.

Humans may well not be exceptional in the harsh world of facts and science. We still have to act as though we are or we may as well give way to nihilism. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_\(ecology\))

<comment><USER5> There's no need to define boundaries that give rise to bazillion exceptions.

Nihilism isn't the ultimate end.

I'd say that if you can choose between eating a fruit, and killing a bird and eating it's flesh, a virtuous agent would eat the fruit.

It's unnecessary to go the utilitarian way of trying to draw the lines and meet every single exception to the rule.

Acting in the world as a virtuous agent is a much more practical approach.

Would you test and experiment on someone who has a nervous system capable of feeling pain and suffering, if it could save thousands or even millions of people? Given the data of the lack of success of a huge percentage of studies, you would, being virtuous, deduce that it's better to seek other means of testing instead of doing a hit and miss approach on animals.

People don't behave as virtuous agents, and they do not act kindly. Especially not to those they deem less worthy than them.

That's why stuff needs rethinking and regulation.

<comment><USER6> Where is it enshrined as truth that being virtuous (by the implied definition above) is important or even desirable as a trait in a species?

<comment><USER7> This is the crux of the issue. What makes one moral framework "virtuous" and one not? It could be considered virtuous to ensure the dominance of the most competitive species (us in this case).

Even if one, for the most part, cares for the world around them, is it virtuous to attempt to ensure the survival of a species like the panda? As a species it would vanish without any outside intervention.

<comment><USER8> Considering humans the most competitive species is also something that could be called into question. We certainly think we're special, but we're probably falling into Dunning-Kruger territory.

I think the only obvious route is to treat other living things the way we would like to be treated - after all, we have a common ancestry and a case could be made that we're just one big multicellular organism

<comment><USER7> I do buy the golden rule as the only unarguably reasonable philosophical principle (I hold it pretty highly as an essential combination of rationality and empathy), I'm just arguing for the sake of it.

The reason I consider humans the most competitive is because we could potentially wipe out any form of life (for some, we would have to go too). As for the special thing, I don't think we're special in the sense that we have some innate quality that separates us from other animals, we're just more intelligent. Some unknown gap between the smartest animals and us results in the situation we see today: humans have created technology and industry, pursued math and science. No other species has, as far as I know (or at least not to a degree that makes it significant relative to human understanding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great article.

> "The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, > certainly is one of degree and not of kind."

I think deep down we all inherently know this. This is largely why I try my best (although it is difficult) to eat mostly vegetarian. I think if it were a matter of survival killing and eating is natural, however what we do with live stock and factory farming is obviously unethical.

It's hard to watch footage of the process, from birth, life, and ultimate death of animals in captivity. It reminds me of a video game I played called "Prey" (great game, worth playing even today).

A recent film that strikes this chord but misses the chance to drive it home is "Arrival" (2016). Another recent film is "Bladerunner 2049" (looking at the farming practices of both protein and replicants)

There are countless documentaries on Netflix (and likely other services) regarding factory farming animals which are worth watching. They certainly helped clear some of my own ideological barriers.

<comment><USER10> If the difference is of degree, could the degree be discrete rather than continuous? What I mean is that is that of the shared faculties between higher animals and humans, such as language, it does not appear as if increasing animal capacity by some factor would yield near human capacity. Instead, it seems that animals and human operate in different, discrete, levels of using a faculty.

Using language again, and I'm going to have to dig through my magazines to find the book reference, but recent research by Noam Chomsky into animal language reveals that it is fundamentally different than human language. Human language is non-linear and recursive, that is, words can have antecedents and self-referential clausal structures, whereas animal language is all linear; the current sound is always in direct relation to the previous sound. Moving from even highly developed animal language to human language, then, is not simply a continuous increase but a discrete one.

Not disagreeing with you here, just trying to nuance the point that to suggest that rather than seeing humans as fundamentally similar to animals and on a higher continuum, that we are fundamentally similar to animals and yet at a discretely higher level not achievable by increasing any given factor of those animals' faculties.

<comment><USER11> Fair points, but does it follow that because human communication is significantly different from animal communication, that therefore all other aspects of the human experience must be equally remote from those of animals?

I think that's an inference too far. The parts of our brain responsible for language are quite different from those of animals, but the parts of our brains responsible for body image, sight, hearing, locomotion and emotional experience are pretty unremarkable compared to other higher mammals. Therefore it seems likely that our experience of those things is unremarkable too, at least when it comes to mammals. It's just that we can talk about it, and they can't

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With respect to the author, he has it backwards (Wittgenstein and humans' anthropomorphic assumptions are at the core of my work these days).

Humans always discuss non-human actors in human terms. This can be useful (think of Dennet's "the thermostat wants to keep the room at 70degrees") but also lead down a false path (the "queen" of a hive isn't the boss — innfact there is no boss).

So the very model the author decries is a specfic tool to _avoid_ these kinds of errors. Animals that killed humans were sometimes tried and hanged in medieval Europe. That's a foolish absurdism. And people do understand this — his example of the elephant minders shown that people can adapt these models just fine.

This conception of agency explains some opposition to, for example, self- driving cars. People are confused when they can't make eye contact with a car's driver. They make assumptions as to why certain material shows up in their Facebook feed. Etc. I'm not working on cars, but am working on on systems that don't violate human assumptions.

<comment><USER13> The authors of this review and the books reviewed are not proposing a return to that sort of literal anthropomorphism; they are calling for a less dogmatic, more realistic look at the evidence.

It would be something of a problem for evolutionary theory if every scrap of conscious and intelligent behavior was exhibited by Homo Sapiens alone. The current situation is probably a contingency of history: between now and the last common ancestor of us and chimpanzees, many species have come and gone, with some of them leaving evidence of intermediate cognitive abilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The view more or less described by the article probably has its (most recent, at least) origin in Descartes. Cartesian metaphysics posits two kinds of things in the universe, namely, mind and matter. Mind is associated with thought, desire, emotion, sensation, consciousness, etc. Matter, of course, is not. Of all life on earth, only man is a composite of mind and matter. Non- human animals are therefore mindless which is to say devoid of emotions, desires, sensations, consciousness, etc. This view, I claim, goes against common sense. Try telling anyone who owns a dog that Spot is merely a machine devoid of emotions, desires or consciousness.

In the context of intellectual history, this Cartesian view is rather recent. Aristotle, for example, describes plants, animals and human beings quite differently in De Anima. In his analysis, human beings entail all faculties that are essentially proper to animals, and non-human animals entail all faculties that are essentially proper to plants; the entailment is transitive so that the faculties essentially proper to plants are entailed by human animals. For Aristotle, animals are living things that possess the faculties of locomotion. The only faculties that essentially differentiate human beings from other animals are the intellectual faculties. So in this sense, human beings are "exceptional" in the sense that among the animals, they alone are known to possess intellectual faculties, but it is not so extreme as the Cartesian position. Still, it is an important difference with important consequences.

</comment><comment><USER15> The author is, to put it mildly, mistaken to say that "most of our science, philosophy, and religion" assume a hard division between humans and other animals.

Most of our religion? Yes. Most of our philosophy? Maybe. Most of our science? No. Wrong.

How could anyone post-Darwin write what this author has written...unless the person is utterly ignorant of anything approaching modern biology?!

</comment><comment><USER16> > Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed, "If a lion could speak, we could not > understand him." But Ludo, mind if I ask how much time you've actually spent > with lions? Thought not. Because that's rubbish, at least in the sense that > humans and lions couldn't possibly have common ground for a conversation. > Wittgenstein can beat me in any logico-philosophical contest of his or > anyone else's choosing, but he hasn't spent as much time as I have hanging > out in the bush with lions.

How can I take this seriously now...

<comment><USER17> Preposterous really, it should be Ludi, not Ludo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > I try my best (although it is difficult) to eat mostly vegetarian.

But presumably you don't hold lions to the same ethical standard.

> what we do with live stock and factory farming is obviously unethical.

I don't disagree, but it is specifically the belief that it is unethical that makes us special.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been watching Black Mirror recently and have reflected on this - <USER3> exceptionalism. We'd like to think of ourselves as gods, or almost-gods, and with technology we are surely achieving some god powers. But we always seem to fall back to misery just when we thought we've conquered nature - <USER3> nature, animal nature.

The greatest lesson we'll ever learn is our own insignificance in this world. Only then will we stop fighting the world, and indeed each other. Only then will we stop destroying, and accept our true place and destiny among all living things.

<comment><USER20> Living an insignificant life and living in misery are not the same thing.

<comment><USER21> Almost the opposite; one of the things that most bedevils successful humans is the drive to make their lives significant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given the ethical dilemma presented in this article, after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that cannibalism is acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have twice the biomass of the average human. Should I get two votes?

</comment><comment><USER24> Humans should have reconsidered their place within the global ecosystem well before the twenty-first century, but our limited longevity and innate myopia, along with rapacious capitalism and religious dogma, kept us from doing so. Now we've destroyed the one thing that sustains us, and to what end?

</comment><comment><USER25> The article argues that we because our existing differentiation between humans and those others, we need a revolutionary change, meaning a large change.

That last bit is very nicely done rhetorically. But I don't see any actual argument in the article that the practical effects of the philosophical shift have to be large, or even will be large.</comment>


Number 3 Startup Hub?  - <AUTHOR> So it's pretty obvious that the Bay Area is startup hub #1, and Boston is #2, but what is #3?
New York? Boulder? Chicago? Seattle?
Follow-up question - what cities that are not the top three seem to have the most potential to become #3?

<comment><USER2> There is no #3. Boston is WAY behind the Bay Area, even though die-hard Bostonians (er... I mean Cantabrigians) like to believe otherwise.

If you don't feel that the Bay Area offers any advantage to your startup, you could probably be based almost anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too US Centric no?

Canada has got some pretty interesting startup scenes, Vancouver, Waterloo area and Ottawa come to mind.

And Europe is certainly not to be forgotten about, let alone India as well.

I'd be interested to see how things compare globally, although I think you've got 1 and 2 pegged.

<comment><USER4> What's in Ottawa? (I grew up there)...

<comment><USER5> "What's in Ottawa?"

A lot of non-Web2.0 stuff. Like wireless, telecom, computing, etc.

<comment><USER4> Right - I'm aware of telecom (I worked for a telecom when I lived there), but I mean does anyone know of interesting startups, web 2.0 or otherwise?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Re: Boulder: Why not Fort Collins? Close to Denver, beautiful area, nice weather, college town, and - more than anything else - the place is just loaded with young people, and local businesses seem geared towards a younger market more so than most any place I can think of.

<comment><USER7> I'm thinking of moving to Boulder from Silicon Valley (Palo Alto) simply because the cost of doing business is so insanely high here. My apartment rent has gone up $1200 over the past 5 years, the traffic sucks, taxes are high, wages are inflated, and we don't need to raise capital.

There are ways to deal with these factors (BART, biking to work, cooking at home, handing out equity in lieu of cash, etc...). But, why bother when there are more affordable places to do business in the U.S.?

I'm looking for a place in the U.S. that meets three criteria: (1) a great year-round outdoor lifestyle with lots of hiking trails, mountain biking terrain, and possibly rock-climbing and/or skiing (2) young, smart people (3) affordable living (rental prices, food prices, traffic) (4) a nearby university with a top-40 School of Engineering (5) not a resort/retirement community

Right now I'm looking at Ventura, CA (ocean sports are a good substitute for moutain sports), Boulder, or Bozeman Montanta. Neither Ventura nor Boulder are "cheap", but they are a bargain compared to Palo Alto. Ventura is within 40min of UCSB (Santa Barbara is too expensive) and Boulder is obviously a college town.

We're keeping our servers in a Bay Area datacenter, but there really is no reason to stay here since our company is profitable and cash-flow positive (an algorithmic hedge fund specializing in OTC energy derivatives).

I've never been to Fort Collins. How does it compare with Boulder?

There is no reason to be in Silicon Valley if your company is profitable, cash-flow positive, and self-financing. If not, then Silicon Valley is a superb place to raise capital; however, be prepared to pay dearly for it (both in equity and in cost of doing business).

Thanks!

<comment><USER8> I lived in Boulder from 2002 to 2005. I spent 2 months in Boulder this summer trying to figure out if it's the place to be. I love it. I love the quality of life. I love the relaxed atmosphere, the perfect weather & proximity to skiing. TechStars is there, Boulder OpenCoffee Club is active and there is some VC, as far as I can tell. There's a decent pool of relatively cheap talent in the Denver/Boulder area, CU has a reasonably well regarded engineering school, Sun and IBM have campuses there. StartupWeekend was born there.

I couldn't find the energy. The pace is an opiate. I couldn't find the noise. I couldn't find the 20-somethings actively changing things in tech; it seems like if you have any drive there, you leave. The vibe is bohemian (it's Boulder), and part of me would love to, as pg commented, move 10,000 geeks there and give a $500m endowment to CU to try to architect a new SV in the Rockies, but it's missing something. It seems like the scales are tipped 75/25 between play/work.

Please prove me wrong. I'd be there next week if I thought the startup infrastructure (developers, investors, etc) was active enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You're in luck -- the last version of YC news on archive.org had it!

[http://www.darrenherman.com/2007/04/04/where-are-the-tech- st...](http://www.darrenherman.com/2007/04/04/where-are-the-tech-startups/)

The O'Reilly Radar post is here: [http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/startup_centers.ht...](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/startup_centers.html)

The numbers are a year old but Seattle was #3 and NYC was #4. Although Tacoma is grouped in with Seattle, I'm not sure how meaningful that is -- it's kind of like grouping Oakland with Mountain View.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm hoping for Atlanta to your second question. Quite sure it's not #3 now but there's a few of us working on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> it's not chicago, but it should be.

<comment><USER8> What's the story with Chicago. You'd think with 37signals, feedburner and ... I can't think of a prominent 3rd, you'd get a local startup community slightly more active than TechCocktail...

<comment><USER12> Chicago is just getting close to reaching critical mass. The startups that succeeded here before did little to foster community. The startups here now are coming around to the idea of a start up community. It should be interesting to see how it plays out. The other problem here is that a bunch of the good hackers go to places like Citadel rather than do a startup.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like we should get a Chicago news.yc meetup going. I'm thinking something more frequent than Tech Cocktail, is there a Chicago OpenCoffee Club yet? I know someone's working on a StartupWeekend here: <http://startupweekendchicago.wetpaint.com/>

<comment><USER12> A news.yc meetup here would be great. OpenCoffee Club here has been ruined by MidPhase but theres no reason we can't set up a weekly or monthly meeting time at a coffee shop where news.ycers can come and go, with some way to identify ourselves like a post-it note on your laptop or something. Anyone up for it?

<comment><USER12> Campfire set up for organizing and just general ChiTown talk. <http://ycombinator.campfirenow.com> if you want an invite mail cubend#gmail.com Works well as a message board or a chatroom. I'll be in there off and on all week

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No, not NYC... most hackers are paid too well by i-banks and hedge funds to risk joining a startup, and those startup founders who do succeed don't stay here to become angels (as they do in SV and other startup hubs).

</comment><comment><USER14> What metric do you think one should use to do the ranking? Absolute # of startups? Size of VC investment? Biggest nerd community?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whatever metric you want. By whatever metric that everyone agrees that the bay area and boston are 1 and 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seattle, I'm told.

<comment><USER16> Yes, probably Seattle, or maybe Austin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Austin. I didn't even think of that. Who's the catalyst there?

<comment><USER17> Austin is like the only city in 750 miles with a substantial high-tech background and a creative-class culture, isn't it?

I've spent time in Dallas (home of Texas Instruments) and while it is a nice working-class metroplex, Austin seems to have far more of the character of a startup hub. Same thing with St. Louis, I understand.

On the other hand, Lawrence, Kansas has the character but not the high-tech (and it's kinda little).

<comment><USER18> Austin also has Univ. of Texas - ranked seventh in CS research. The startup I'm involved with is planning on opening up offices there when it's time to grow.

<comment><USER15> Also, the slogan of the town is "Keep Austin Weird". I like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would hope that it would be DC, but it's probably not. If we're talking about web startups. Could it be NYC?

<comment><USER20> DC is for enterprise Java programmers and only big government contractors. I think the general job market in DC is ranked #1 though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seattle, followed by Austin and then Ann Arbor and Madison in a tie for fifth

</comment><comment><USER22> Seattle is probably number 2, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER23> London?

<comment><USER23> My reasoning for London:

Lots of Big Co's have offices here such as Google, Yahoo, BBC, Skype, etc

Lots of great startups: Last.fm, Moo, Crowdstorm, Mind Candy, Gottabet, etc

Some great universities: Imperial, RCA, near to Oxford & Cambridge

Good VCs: Index Ventures, Accel, Atlas plus Seedcamp

Plenty of events: Ranging from weekly openCoffee's to big barcamps and Hackday and conferences like Future of Web Apps. Last nights Facebook Developer Garage pulled in 200 or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Portland, OR</comment>


Hey, Startup founders: You're networking wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3017319/dialed/hey-startup-founders-youre-networking-wrong

<comment><AUTHOR> Everybody says something different about this</comment>