Open Source is losing,  SaaS is leading,  APIs will win… - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/point-nine-news/open-source-is-losing-saas-is-leading-apis-will-win-663648d9c8d0#.cbwjwb2dg <comment><USER2> Not quite.

If I want to start a project in, say R, I don't think I will start by searching "Open Source". I will search for "R". Here is the trend: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20as%20a%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20as%20a%20service%2C%20open%20source%2C%20API%2C%20R&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

So, this analysis is not accurate. Someone searching for "Open Source" might have been prevalent when the OSS movement was nascent. Now I think people will look for specific technologies rather than blanket terms.

<comment><USER3> I use "open source" when searching for Windows applications, to avoid the trialware etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Today, the CTO of a company can spend engineering resources to build their > search solution with Elasticsearch or buy speed with Algolia's SaaS.

I think OSS has the long term advantage here.

Everyone needs log storage and search. The combination of OSS and highly competitive IaaS will drive this part of the stack towards commodity pricing and little total cost of ownership (setup, and operations)

It's already happening. Elasticsearch is quality software. You can provision an Elasticsearch cluster on AWS with a click of a button. You can also store all your logs in CloudWatch forever.

This stack costs pennies to run compared to logging services like Splunk.

Yes configuring it takes some time but an end state for this container generation is much less config.

Now you own your logs and data and search. Not some SaaS vendor.

Disclaimer. I'm working on an OSS platform, Convox, with the goal of helping the CTO get cost effective and reliable private infrastructure without big setup burdens and huge SaaS bills.

<comment><USER5> The big disadvantage of OSS versus (competent) infrastructure SaaS, is that open source software tends to have very poor operational efficiency. A major component of the infrastructure SaaS business model and defensibility is arbitraging the OpEx between open source and a properly designed SaaS implementation, primarily by radically reducing resource requirements to deliver a given level of scale and performance.

The rule of thumb for most infrastructure SaaS like databases, big data platforms, etc is that you can get a 10x reduction in hardware requirements versus OSS, hence the OpEx/CapEx savings, with a well-engineered implementation of the same functionality. As someone in the business of doing exactly this, I can tell you that this is simple to achieve. OSS may be "free" but if it requires an order of magnitude more hardware to deliver the same performance and scale as my cloud implementation of the same thing, it makes the OSS much more expensive to the end user.

This dynamic would go away if OSS infrastructure software was designed with performance and efficiency as a priority, but in practice that has been pretty far down the list of priorities for most popular OSS software. But I think most people are surprised by just how inefficient OSS software actually is compared to other implementations. I have been telling people for some time that without an increased focus on absolute performance and efficiency in OSS, it will be increasingly marginalized in usage because the CapEx/OpEx of deploying it is far too high compared to the alternatives.

<comment><USER4> This is a really great perspective.

You're totally right, SaaS companies have far more motivation to maximize performance and operations to reduce the cost of keeping their services running.

OSS often doesn't have the need or the expertise to do this.

But I do see some of this shifting...

Some OSS projects are now built by folks that have lots of performance expertise and goals.

There's also more funding or sponsorship for OSS development which will help.

For example Redis is ridiculously cheap and easy to run on your own.

antirez is a world class engineer with high standards and he has sponsorship to work towards his goals full time.

AWS offers it as a service through ElasticCache which removes what challenges remain about configuration, replication or failover.

So I wouldn't build, integrate or bet on a SaaS "cache" platform/company any more. It's been commoditized.

I see signs of the same thing happening to more parts of the stack. ELK isn't the most performant log analysis platform, but it's close to Splunk in my experience, with the added benefit of the possibility of anyone, Elastic or the community, contributing performance improvements.

Yes there is lots of wishful thinking here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel This smacks of a complete misunderstanding of SaaS and FLOSS. How did this person even get into software development? Seriously, because to me if a SaaS is using a FLOSS licensed library and regularly contributes to it on its github repo then it's clearly not a matter of FLOSS in decline. It's just that FLOSS as a whole has become the ordinary of software development (just like CAD/CAM is the ordinary of aircraft manufacturing).

Also, using Google Trends to prove a point on something that requires you to see actual participation just proves my skepticism is right on this point. Google Trends doesn't look at git commits. Google Trends doesn't look at symposiums or standards organization contributions (cash, research, code, etc). All it does is look at search words. Wow! You found out that people aren't searching that much on the subject anymore, WTG! /s

</comment><comment><USER6> This whole article is predicated on the wrong measurement.

When you search Google Trends for Open Source Software as a type of Software Industry [1], you get a much different picture.

[1] [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01pjyj&cmpt=q...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01pjyj&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

<comment><USER7> 100% agreed, but for different reasons. I recently realized that I've been mistaking google trends as accurate feedback on the popularity of a subject. It is not.

My current thought is that it much better indicates a lack of consensus (or foreknowledge) of the proper source for information about a search term. If, for example, you know that godoc.org is the best place to search for golang libraries, you'd probably just type godoc.org. If not, you'd probably just google "golang rest library" or some such term, adding to the results for golang.

Once those sources become well-known and begin being passed around on side- channels (outside the reach of google searches), then google trends is no longer accurate. For any given suject, it's impossible to get a gauge on how much traffic is just going directly to bookmarks or links.

Unless you're collecting anonymous usage statistics from a market-leading browser. For example. :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article feels like it's saying "measurements show that the sky is actually yellow!". No, it's not. I can plainly see that open-source code is 99.999% of my stack, with a tiny bit of proprietary code (mine, and even much of that is open-sourced by me in library form) on top. If your measurements show that OSS is losing, your measurements must be wrong.

<comment><USER9> anecdotes != data;

<comment><USER8> That's another fallacy. Anecdotes are data, they're just an extremely weak form. A million anecdotes may be better than a single data point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I disagree. While SaaS blinks in and out, requires maintenance, and most fading away over time when interest or business model dwindles, open source projects lives on even in orphaned form. Time is on open source's side.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you add a trendline for the term 'Software' you will see that it has been steadily decreasing at the same rate as 'open source'.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Came across this article on Medium and wondered the people here on HN think about it.

I am not sure about the author's methodology for comparing OSS with SaaS APIs. Looks very pseudo-sceincey. But if there's any truth in the conclusion (that people are leaning more towards SaaS APIs than OSS), I am worried over time it will increase the barrier to entry for building new software thus resulting in fewer awesome stuff unless you have deeper pockets.

</comment><comment><USER12> The three trend graphs at the tops are disingenuous. Here they are in relative comparison to one another: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20as%20a%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20as%20a%20service%2C%20open%20source%2C%20API&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

Software as a service is a completely flat line by comparison.

<comment><USER12> adding "saas" makes a bit more of a difference: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20as%20a%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20as%20a%20service%2C%20open%20source%2C%20API%2C%20saas&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did the same thing just before you replied. The difference with "saas" is super trivial though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't agree that the free software business models are failures. Many large companies need actual enterprise support and licensing to fulfill their business requirements. Just because most start-ups (which is clearly the author's circle of friends) aren't big enough to need such support doesn't mean that it's "failed". Support is a real value add, because it means that you have developers on call that can maintain the system you based your stack on. The fact that the code is free software doesn't make a practical difference to you (aside from moral differences I won't go into here).

</comment><comment><USER14> > Open Source is losing, SaaS is leading

And what are these SaaS apps mostly built with?

Open source software. They usually build on a mix of technologies that can be called an "open source web technology stack".

I even believe the current effort of M$ to open source some of it's technologies is geared at making sure those do not become irrelevant in the SaaS-age.

</comment><comment><USER15> Eh, the search term Open Source is becoming less frequent simply because it has become the default and software that is _not_ Open Source has become the exotic case. Just search on google trends for 'github' which has basically become a substitute word for 'open source' and you see a nicely growing curve.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe one of the reasons people don't search for "open source" as much as they used to is that it doesn't need explaining any more. Anybody who has reason to care has already been exposed to the concept by now.

</comment><comment><USER17> > The increase in development speed is driven by the innovation of re-using > existing blocks. Basically, developers don't need to reinvent the wheel > every day.

In the 60's, when TTL integrated logic chips appeared, the digital hardware world took off. Anyone could design at a higher level of abstraction. For many years people said that there needs to be a TTL of software. It seems we might be getting there.

</comment><comment><USER18> It rather seems to me that software that has been successfully established feature-wise as service will eventually get copied as a off-the-shelf OSS software (see the discussion about cloning Slack)? Basically like commoditization of other goods, but in the information economy with zero marginal costs obviously being a free commodity.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's some good points in this article, but those are lost in the false comparison of OSS/SaaS/APIs.

That's not even like comparing apples to oranges, it's like comparing apples to apple trees.

</comment><comment><USER20> What does Microsoft do these days? Open source many of its software! And OSS is preferred not because it's free & open, because it works and it gets things done!

<comment><USER13> > What does Microsoft do these days? Open source many of its software! And OSS > is preferred not because it's free & open, because it works and it gets > things done!

I prefer free software because of the fact it respects my freedom. Even if there was a "better" proprietary editor then Vim I wouldn't use it. Stop spreading the wrong message, practical convenience is a side-effect of freedom allowing innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "All this has happened before. All this will happen again." \-- the writings of Pythia.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why digital humanities education is important and useful.

It stops this kind of mistake.

</comment><comment><USER23> I find it quite annoying that recently web hipstors apparently hijacked the term "API", and now everyone assume that by default "API" means something totally different from what it used to.

<comment><USER24> "Hipstors" didn't hijack shit and "API" is correct usage here. The fault is with the (hypothetical?) morons who think "API" only refers to web services.

<comment><USER23> When was the last time when somebody used the words "web API"? When web monkeys say "API" they expect anyone else to understand it as the new default hipstor meaning. It is extremely annoying.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Socket Wrench – Insomnia/Postman for Websocket Testing - <AUTHOR> https://asleepysamurai.com/articles/socketwrench?show=hn1 <comment><USER2> Looks very good. I have been using some CLI like [https://github.com/esphen/wsta/](https://github.com/esphen/wsta/) but definetely a GUI like this is better.

This is why I also hate socket.io, it's not a raw socket to just simply connect and start sending raw payload.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the suggestions that came up more often from people who tried out Socket Wrench was the ability to connect to Socketio servers. However supporting socketio namespaces complicated the UX, so I decided to wait till I got a lot more people asking for SocketIO support to implement it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Would love to be able to use this with socket.io

<comment><AUTHOR> I've created a new issue ([https://github.com/asleepysamurai/socketwrench/issues/2](https://github.com/asleepysamurai/socketwrench/issues/2)) to track this. If it get's enough votes from other users, I'll add it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now need one for kafka!

<comment><USER5> Does kafka not have something similar to RabbitMQ's management plugin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where's the source?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not open source. I want to keep any possibility of future monetization open for now.</comment></comment>


Project Zero: Analysis and Exploitation of an ESET Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/06/analysis-and-exploitation-of-eset.html

<comment><USER2> Not that it matters in this instance, but AV companies forcing you to turn off other security mechanisms(ie. SELinux) should really raise more red flags.

<comment><USER3> I don't see a better solution. Antiviruses are required to be invasive for behavioral based detection. The alternative would be to have a modified/patched kernel or forgo behavioral analysis completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a little nervous about the disclosure timeframes here. This post with exploit code was released only ~24 hours after the patch. Would it have been impossible to allow a slightly longer window for long-tail users to update?

</comment><comment><USER5> > _On MacOS ... ESET opt-out of DEP by not setting the MH_NO_HEAP_EXECUTION > flag in their Mach header_

Doesn't Xcode by default mark heap as non-executable?

<comment><USER6> Yes, by setting the MN_NO_HEAP_EXECUTION flag in the Mach header..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ESET is still the best antivirus in my opinion. Doesn't drag down the machine's performance. Few negatives. The most real positives. - just a customer.

<comment><USER8> Few negatives. The most real positives. Is, in a meaningful sense, itself a kind of dangerous malware. Verdict: best A/v product.

<comment><USER9> "This Satan guy is still the best babysitter in my opinion. Doesn't cost a fortune, always has the kids in bed when we get home, and they love him. Only requires us to sacrifice one of them on an altar to him when they reach middle school."</comment></comment></comment>


Adobe CEO Refuses to Explain Why Adobe CS costs $1400 more in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=78yigV0GYGQ

<comment><USER2> Honestly, as an Australian who has been in the design/development industry for sometime now I am not surprised. Adobe software might be the industry standard, but their customer support and ripping off Australian companies without reason is anything but first class. A quote from Jesse Pinkman a character in the TV show Breaking Bad sums up Adobe ripping off us Australians quite well:

"Getting the shit kicked out of you — not that you get used to it — but you do kind of get used to it." ~ Jesse Pinkman.

</comment><comment><USER3> This video is purely rephrasing the same question over and over to receive rephrased nonsense each time. Its exactly what I expected.</comment>


Corruption Or Carelessness? GOP Deletes Its Own Copyright Reform Report - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/18/corruption-or-carelessness-gop-deletes-their-own-progressive-patent-reform-report/

<comment><USER2> I'm going to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I honestly believe my opinion is the truth. The corporations truly run America by financing the politicians and if they say pull this paper or lose funding, you are going to pull the paper.

The big corporations (that run America) don't want patent reform. They buy up all the patents and force the little guys either out of business or to pay them large sums of money that shouldn't have to be paid. The patent system allows big corporations to keep a monopoly.

When I see a company get a patent for page turns, I can't help but put my hand to my face and just worry about the future of innovation.

<comment><USER3> You need to define who you think the "big corporations that run america are":

A large number of big corporations "running america" really do want patent reform. How do i know? I've been there, in meetings with congressmen and senators, listening to them push for it. I've watched them do everything they can to push the bills forward.

I've watched them get beaten down by _other_ big corporations, like pharmaceutical companies, or patent trolls (Intellectual Ventures).

So please define who the big corporations you think are trying to stall it are. I know who has stalled it in the past, and at least the first few times, it was never the usual suspects in the tech industry.

Also note that at least from where I sit, the senators and congressman I've seen really do want to do the right thing (most of the time). They just don't know what it is, and they are often being told, by people they trust on both sides, to do opposing things.

Also, anybody who thinks this kind of politics is about money should be forced to be a legislative assistant for a few years.

<comment><USER4> > You need to define who you think the "big corporations that run america are"

The point is regulation is determined by the highest bidder. Does it matter who the highest bidder is? It doesn't change the fact that America is a whore.

<comment><USER3> But it's not determined by the highest bidder, because money is not the sole driver of politics, despite what many think.

Do you think Chris Dodd made more money as a Congressman, or do you think he makes more as the head of the MPAA?

A Congressman would make a lot more money being a lobbyist. Most of the money they get goes towards reelection campaigns, which are wildly expensive, and deplete a large percentage of their funds. They are not Congressman because it pays a lot of money personally. If that was the goal, they'd all do short stints and move to being lobbyists. Instead, they stay in Congress for a long time.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not defending anything. I'm more trying to get folks to see that it is dangerous to equate money with power in America. Power is power. Money is money. Some of one may get you some of the other. But they are not the same, and until folks get around to realizing this, they'll never change anything.

<comment><USER4> You're right, money and power determines regulation. Let's just not fool ourselves into thinking it's something silly like "the consent of the governed".

<comment> daniel-cussen Which brings us full circle to Copyright reform.

Copyright (as opposed to patents, pushed by Intellectual Ventures et al) is pushed by Hollywood. Hollywood, composed of television and radio media, which heavily cross-hires with film and music. In other words: the same people who own a radio station might use their knowledge of acoustics, their installations, their relationship with relevant engineers, bring in appropriate celebrities, and so forth, so that this form of horizontal expansion is an effective, and therefore common one. Film and TV, radio and music, and all four, are frequently in the same hands. So we have the voice and the asset: entertainment being the asset, news coverage being the opinion- forming political capital.

Hollywood's greatest political asset is not, as many believe, its lobbying. Certainly it engages in lobbying; most industries do. But the true, cocky power of Hollywood is its influence over its viewers.

I forget most of the numbers, but I remember that in Peru, during the Fuji Mori (dictatorship) years, the government paid bribes to members within and without it. Within it: judges, and many others. Without it: television station owners! Yes sir, the largest bribes, far and away, were paid to television station owners; bribes in the millions, in a country where nobody had millions. The moral of the story? Media has a lot of political capital.

So what we're left with is, Hollywood would have a strong, even gravitational, influence over Congress even without lobbying, merely because of the millions of people it influences into voting one way or another.

In other words, it molds the consent of the governed.

<comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491115>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a petition to the Republican Study Committee to republish and support Khanna's report on copyright reform. I've signed: it's at [https://www.change.org/petitions/paul-teller-and-the- republi...](https://www.change.org/petitions/paul-teller-and-the-republican- study-committee-rsc-republish-and-stand-behind-their-policy-brief-on- copyright-law)

</comment><comment><USER7> Discussion from when the paper was put up: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4797036>

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a reflection of the growing influence of younger generations within the GOP and their attempts to rectify much of the old-fashioned GOP hypocrisy regarding "small government" and copyright reform, military spending, surveillance, the war on drugs, etc.

Ars Technica had a bit of a profile on the "tech-savvy" Derek Khanna who authored the memo: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/influential- gop-g...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/influential-gop-group- releases-shockingly-sensible-copyright-memo/)

</comment><comment><USER9> If this upsets you, you need to contact your representative now and complain, especially if they're GOP. If they're a good one and they hear some noise over this, they'll take note of it.

<http://house.gov/representatives/>

</comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing how biased the media is..even online.

There are plenty of things on the Democrat side that are just as questionable..but they aren't talked about. Why is that?

Here is a good example:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill- re...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets- feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/)

<comment><USER10> The responses to this prove my point.

Thanks

<comment><USER11> A friend of mine used to think he was the best debater around. His primary technique? Declaring his argument proven without even making any claims.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bitly is expensive so I made a tutorial on shortening links with Mnesia - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-write-a-super-fast-link-shortener-with-elixir-phoenix-and-mnesia-70ffa1564b3c <comment><USER2> Was just cursing the skies for how expensive Bitly was, and was searching for alternatives. Going to dive deeper into this, thanks!</comment>


These Hand-Drawn Maps Helped Create 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/choose-your-own-adventure-cyoa-books-hand-drawn-maps <comment><USER2> This is a totally different article that the one submitted in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558106)</comment>


Coronavirus: 'Murder threats' to telecoms engineers over 5G - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-52395771 <comment><USER3> I had an idea which is basically this:

Social media companies know which videos/tweets/statuses you've looked at. If it's known you viewed content which is a conspiracy theory then they could, at a later date, show you a rebuttal from a trusted source. This could be targeted based on the specific content you viewed.

I was imagining it as a more modern version of the "right of reply" rules that broadcast TV in the UK has.

Would something like this be workable?

<comment><USER4> I know a 5G conspiracy theorist who is an electrical engineering graduate, admittedly from a low ranked school.

I've manually sent him better information. He of all people should be able to understand it. He doesn't process it and continues to cheer people burning down towers.

<comment><USER5> Could you share that information, if you don't mind. I was trying to figure out if the radiation is safe but I couldn't find anything on the effects of the high frequency signals.

<comment><USER6> Fun facts: It is not "radiation" and also not high frequency.

<comment><USER5> From Wikipedia: "In the U.S., Verizon is using 28 GHz and AT&T is using 39 GHz. 5G can use frequencies of up to 300 GHz"[1]. That is high frequency relative to the frequencies of 4G, and WiFI or Bluetooth which are around 2-4 GHz.[2]

Not sure what definition of radiation you're using, but yes, electromagnetic waves are radiation.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And this is why I'm perfectly at ease with the likes of facebook and youtube squashing these dickheads.

It's not censorship or a free speech violation, it carries no legal penalties and they are free to shout elsewhere. Private platforms are under no obligation to propagate this crap, indeed (as with more traditional media) it seems to me more of a moral obligation _not_ to allow such webs of lies and fantasy to propagate.

<comment><USER8> I hate this argument.

What about when the private company is bigger than multiple countries combined?

This whole "it's a private company, so it can do what it wants" misses the point: These companies are so massive that if they kick you off, they can ruin your life. You may think that's ok because it's affecting the "degenerates", but what about when it happens to you? There's hundreds(?) of articles about how Google kicked people off their platform for no reason.

Look at the (somewhat) recent Markiplier incident where people were banned for spamming the chat despite Markiplier _telling them_ to spam. It only got resolved because he was big enough that Google would listen.

Saying it's ok to censor because it's legal and it affects the "bad people" is the same argument that people use to justify police violence: "They wouldn't beat up someone if they didn't have it coming for them." Because we all know that bad things only happen to bad people.

Yes, the _First Amendment_ only applies to the government, but _free speech_ as a _concept_ is a thing too, and should be fought for, regardless of who is negatively affected.

If these people are burning down towers, send them to jail. But a random nobody who is just spouting conspiracy theories? Ignore them. Conspiracy theorists will always exist. They always have, and they always will. If you want to help them, you aren't helping my pushing them down; You're just making their views stronger. Education fixes idiots, not censorship.

<comment><USER7> I would say that because these companies are so ubiquitous, with such reach, they have a duty to stop the people spreading the lies that lead to tower burnings.

It's not true that education fixes idiots, however much you may wish it. Pushing them down stops more people stumbling on their material. The idea that free public debate will stamp out bullshit is a bust. It's failed. Debate, facts and education don't matter for shit against a torrent of nonsense. See for example the antivax folks.

You are content that society plays whack-a-mole with tower burners while the people that actually cause the problem spread their lies and usually make a very nice living fleecing the people they recruit. All enabled by tech platforms run by private companies that you would constrain from acting for some bizarre reason.

It's not that it's ok to censor - removing people from youtube is not censorship. Publishers don't have to publish books they don't want to, newspapers are not obliged to publish articles by antivaxxers, google have no duty whatsoever to provide a platform for lies about 5G and coronavirus.

There is no free speech issue here. I am not obliged to let you stand in my yard and yell, even if it's the best spot in the neighborhood.

<comment><USER8> > There is no free speech issue here. I am not obliged to let you stand in my > yard and yell, even if it's the best spot in the neighborhood.

You're _again_ ignoring the size of the space. If you owned all the publicly available land in a city, and stopped just me from protesting on it, that's a free speech violation. When YouTube first started, this wasn't an issue, but now it is.

Also, I'll say it again: _free speech_ and the _First Amendment_ are different things. I recognized that in my post, but you seem content to blur the line between the two in the name of censorship.

<comment><USER7> Not even google own all the space. There are other video sites and if none of them want you, you can put your propaganda up on your own site.

I'm not American, I'm not really interested in the details of your first amendment. The difference is between government telling you that you can't speak or spread ideas and a publishing platform taking a decision not to carry your pernicious lies.

I'm fine with the latter. It's their commercial choice and it's a benefit to society in this case.

Are you going to get upset at Penguin and tell them it's censorship when they don't publish your novel too? Or maybe Barnes and Noble?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is understandable. Modern technology is magic for large fraction of the population. 5G is just magical word that can contain anything. If you don't even understand the basics of science and technology, you have to trust others to decipher it for you. There is no shortage of explainers.

Most people interpret: responsible and correct statements like "there is no evidence" as "so it could be true".

<comment><USER4> Maybe the elites of old were on to something locking all knowledge in a tower...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "People are stuck at home - whether they want to watch their box set of Peaky Blinders or somebody's isolated and they want to keep in touch with family."

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does watching a box set of Peeky Blinders require a telecom network?

<comment><USER11> Well it does require electricity, and I doubt the people who want to burn down 5g towers can tell the difference between electrical towers and telecom towers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As long as there are knowledge and cognitive gaps between groups and demographic, there will be luddite. This brings up an interesting thought; Is it in the best interest of politicians to keep the divide and gap?

</comment><comment><USER13> > _"Read the claims carefully and investigate every single one of them because > there are so many half-truths doing the rounds on social media._

Actually, there's half truths (and full lies) being told _everywhere_ , from advertising to politics, and it's definitely not just limited to social media.

Once people lose trust in institutions it's hard to get that trust back and people will look elsewhere.

<comment><USER14> And yet the people who lose trust in institutions tend to trust the alternatives they find without question.

CNN says the earth is round, obviously it's globalist deepfake propaganda, because the mainstream media is nothing but fake news.

Reddit says it's flat, well that's probably true because we know what the "elites" have to say about it, and _they_ can't be trusted...

What, science says it's round? The same _mainstream_ science that only serves a globalist agenda to reinforce the status quo and prop up big pharma, and brainwash people into conformity? The same scientific establishment that lies about gender and race and climate change? Obvious bullshit.

<comment><USER5> I think most people tend to have an innate need for answers and don't like having unknowns. The institutions used to fill that gap, but now it's back since the institutions violated that trust. Educated people are still able to find other means for sense-making such as finding good sources, considering multiple opinions etc. But for everyone else, it seems they're left with the strategy to just trust whatever they see that hasn't previously lied to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are all kinds of response to this insanity but ignoring distracting details and not trying to comprehend the worst of society, something I've noticed over the decades is whatever hoax, whatever conspiracy theory that pops up, the common denominator to the most destructive responders is poor education and poor critical thinking skills.

Once a society has lost those fundamentals, it's over. It's also why the movie "Idiocracy" seems to slowly become reality.

<comment><USER16> > the common denominator to the most destructive responders is poor education > and poor critical thinking skills

smart, highly educated people believe dumb stuff too.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/smart- people...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/smart-people-do- stupid-things-not/)

<comment><USER13> Well educated and critical thinkers will easily "turn off" their "critical" thinking when it comes to subjects as politics and religion. Like most of us, people seek confirmation of their biases in whatever form that takes on.

These groups remind me of the cults of ancient Egypt, which seems to be a part of history ready to repeat itself.

<comment><USER16> >seems to be a part of history ready to repeat itself.

Talking about history, this 5g nonsense is a symptom of something else - <USER2> lack of trust in governments in general and certain authorities.

If nothing changes, someone might pull a Hitler and channel the frustrations of the poor...

This reminds me of a class I took on Communication within organizations.

When official channels of communication cuts off, the unofficial channel of information (grapevine) takes over.

In such environment, the grapevine will manufacture and spread wild theories, stories, gossips... And that's what happened here.

<comment><USER13> > _If nothing changes, someone might pull a Hitler and channel the > frustrations of the poor..._

This is a much more likely scenario with broad joblessness as the economy continues to be shut down than it is with the vocal 5G crowd.

There's always consequences to our actions. Surprised so many people are whistling past the graveyard with regard to crippling unemployment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IT Salary: National Averages for 45 IT Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3914646/IT-Salary-National-Averages-for-45-IT-Jobs.htm

<comment><USER2> I always wonder where they get the data for these numbers. Out of the developers that I know still working 9-5's they are all making well above those numbers.

I have some fresh out of collage HTML, CSS, light Javascript guys that command better numbers than most of the quoted and I am in Florida (silicon swamp). We are not the mid-west, but we are definitely not NY or the Vally. In both those markets 6 figures starts the salary negotiation process and is realistically attainable in the Florida market with 5-10 years experience.

When I see numbers so out of skew, I suspect an agenda. With the market steaming again, it makes them that much more suspect.</comment>


Show HN: Generate Your Waifu - <AUTHOR> https://waifulabs.com <comment><USER2> I'm a simpleton when it comes to AI/ML, but this was pretty impressive to me! It's really interesting how well this seems to have paired up because the portraits, while generic-ish, do seem like they're legitimate human creations. There's probably an overworked animation studio out there that would be interested in this.

<comment><USER3> >There's probably an overworked animation studio out there that would be interested in this.

Mobile and indie game studios too... generating anime skins for 2d or 3d models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wikipedia: A Waifu is an illustrated female character from an anime or any non-live action media in which an individual becomes sexually attracted to.

Yes, I am getting old.

</comment><comment><USER5> Allowing people to order their waifus on a poster or pillow at the end is sheer genius. I'd be surprised if this isn't paying for itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> You just created an avatar generator for social media trash mobs (trolls, channers, alt-reich scumbags).

Thanks. I hate it.</comment>


Slack raises $160M at a $2.8B valuation - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/04/16/why-slack-just-raised-160-million-at-a-2-8-billion-valuation/

<comment><USER2> Interesting seeing some of these "unicorn" companies quickly raising massive rounds of funding due to the relative ease of raising large rounds of private capital over the past 12-18 months.

There is definitely a trend for these companies, Quora, Snapchat, etc to raise large private rounds to avoid the stress and uncertainty of IPOs.

</comment><comment><USER3> s/slack/irc -- I still don't get it :(</comment>


Wikipedia isn't officially a social network, but the harassment can get ugly - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/us/wikipedia-harassment-wikimedia-foundation.html <comment><USER3> Why I do I see the problems of harassment and of lack of representation being conflated here.

While harrasement is deplorable and needs to be tackled, I think it is wrong to insinuate that it is a major cause for lack of participation by women in Wikipedia.

It is a voluntary effort, and besides editors do not have to declare their names or gender in Wikipedia. Editors need not even have accounts. So the numbers the article cites are likely to be unreliable.

<comment><USER4> I have an anecdote to share which has (perhaps unfairly) biased my beliefs regarding underrepresented people on Wikipedia.

On /r/twoxchromosomes, a profile of a somewhat accomplished (more like John Aaron, less like Alan Turing) woman was posted. In the comments were some six to ten people lamenting that she didn't have a Wikipedia page.

I thought perhaps it had been put up for RFDs or something the way they complained about how a man in the same position would have a page. Anyway, so I waited a day to see if they'd do anything and they didn't.

The woman in question did deserve a Wikipedia page so I made one, described her story, and added citations. Within the week, various bots had made it pretty. I was then able to go request a picture for her Wikipedia page. I just checked and the page looks pretty good. Lots of people have contributed.

Nothing I did was impossible for any of them to do. So why didn't they do it? Why instead did they write absolute reams of comments about the unfairness when they had the tools to fix it? Why are they so helpless?

On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog. You can be the change, quietly.

<comment><USER5> One thing I've noticed with wikipedia is that it has an insanely high barrier to entry. I will never create a wikipedia page for 1 reason: The first time I tried to edit a page was a nightmare. I was doing a degree, looked up some information, followed the source and it was very clear in the source that the equation on the page was wrong. I corrected the equation on the page. It was then reverted. I pointed out in the chat that the page was wrong and the source proved it. I was told the page was already based on the source and unless I could find a new citation to prove what I was claiming the page would stay as it is. So wikipedia is factually wrong on some basic engineering equation, and I walked away because I'm not going to wade through bureaucracy for some charitable change I was making.

Over the years I've found out that this is the standard experience for most first time wikipedia contributers. So whilst it may be easy for someone to create a page, that is not the experience for a first time user, and high barriers to entry are a great way of creating an exclusionary environment.

What you're describing is a problem not for the people in that thread. It' sa failure of wikipedia that it's created an environment where the average person doesn't feel able to contribute on a topic they know.

<comment><USER6> It's absurd to say that Wikipedia has an "insanely high barrier to entry". You click "Edit" and that's it - you don't even have to create an account. It's hard to imagine a lower barrier to entry. Of course, the flip side is that anybody can revert your change as well; your edit is not sacred. I mean, what alternative do you propose? That Wikipedia should never revert edits? Change into Everything2?

<comment><USER7> That low barrier to entry is just for the more minor changes, like correcting a typo. For anything more complex, you'd have to successfully use their editor, find acceptable sources and correctly quote them.

<comment><USER8> Even seemingly minor changes can be fraught.

The discussion about whether to use –,— or - takes several hundred thousand words, and went all the way to ArbCom. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=429209333#Hyphens_and_dashes)

For a while merely chosing a username was risky business. It's got a bit better now, but it's still weirdly complex process if someone disagrees with your choice of name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It is a kind of social network where users debate the minutiae of history > and modern life, climb the editorial hierarchy and even meet friends and > romantic partners.

Exactly. Just because Wikipedia doesn't have traditional profiles and like buttons doesn't mean it isn't a social network. A social network at the end of the day is literally just that: a graph of people (nodes) with relationships (edges) between them.

For some reason, people tend to think of social networks as more specific things than they actually are. That happens all the time with language. Some big brand comes along and monopolizes an entire widget[0]. Twenty years later, we get a small fraction of people who actually believe that something can only be a widget IFF it looks like that brand's widget. Social networks can look very different than Facebook or MySpace. Wikipedia is one such example.

If you can model Wikipedia as a graph of people with relationships, then it makes sense to think of it as a social network. It's actually pretty easy to establish a toy model. There are lurkers and editors. Lurkers visit pages built by the editors, and editors effectively interact with each other through edits.

In any system where you can interact with people, unwritten social rules become relevant, and we can expect things like harassment.

[0] [http://mentalfloss.com/article/56667/41-brand-names- people-u...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/56667/41-brand-names-people-use- generic-terms)

<comment><USER10> > _doesn 't mean it isn't a social network_

Social networks don't tend towards meanness _per se_. Only those that are incentivised to drive engagement, like those powered by ads, have an inherent tendency towards devolving into cesspools. Wikipedia doesn't appear to be inherently corrupted in the way Facebook or Twitter are.

<comment><USER8> Wikipedia is a cesspool and it's incredibly hostile to some users, which is why wikipedia and wikimedia foundation keep trying to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title doesn't match what's in the article. A better title would be 'Wikipedia's editors are mostly men and they don't have an understanding of non-heterosexual ideas or people'.

It seems like editors have arguments on these topics, according to the article. Not harassment on every topic under the sun

<comment><USER12> How do you go from "having arguments over topic x" to "having a poor understanding of topic x"?

<comment><USER13> How do you go from "posting pictures of genitalia on user pages" to "having arguments over topic x"?

<comment><USER12> Not rereading the article again, but I am pretty sure posting pictures of genitalia on user pages was not the only thing going on.

As a rule, just because an asshole or idiot disagrees with you, it doesn't make you right. Stop trying to use that as an argument.

<comment><USER13> _> Not rereading the article again, but I am pretty sure posting pictures of genitalia on user pages was not the only thing going on._

On the other hand I'm pretty sure that "having arguments over topic x" wasn not the only thing going on either.

 _> As a rule, just because an asshole or idiot disagrees with you, it doesn't make you right. Stop trying to use that as an argument._

Where is that used as an argument?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whilst I can understand and empathise with the possible good natured intent of the NYT article, if one looks at the stats (that they, themselves, referenced), the demographics for other languages are _vastly_ different[0].

Also, "Simple English"[1] is vastly different from "English"[2] and stats referenced don't seem to list "English" but, rather, "Simple English"; so, referencing it is bordering on intentionally misrepresenting the statistics to favour your argument.

The stats also notate the following: " _This cutoff is arbitrary for the sake of clearly visualizing the distribution across major Wikipedia languages._ " This, to me, would seem to be the most disconcerting aspect/notion of the stats, in question. Arbitrarily deciding what a "cut-off" point is will, surely, make the stats askewed.

...but if we're to proceed with taking the article at face-value, then we must also ask the question:

Why is there such a stark contrast between the languages in these stats? For example, Welsh (the second-highest stat) is almost at 50%.

Why would there be such a discrepency between the two languages (English versus Welsh), if they share nigh equal hardships? Does this actually come down to culture as a byproduct of language representation?

[0] - [https://whgi.wmflabs.org/gender-by- language.html](https://whgi.wmflabs.org/gender-by-language.html)

[1] - [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wikipedia does a decent service, but its community is a toxic cesspool.

And I think one of the underlying issues with Wikipedia is its is community incredibly hostile to new editors. So any attempts by Wikipedia to correct for the bias toward white male editors is often undercut by its own community.

<comment><USER16> A good example of the extents of Wikipedia bias is the GamerGate article[2].

It's extremely biased when put in contrast with Infogalactic[0] and even against Encyclopedia Dramatica[1] despite its nature.

[0][https://infogalactic.com/info/GamerGate](https://infogalactic.com/info/GamerGate)

[1][https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gamergate](https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gamergate)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like fights over political issues. Disingenuous to frame that as simply harassment of women or trans people (as is to be expected from the NYT).

Also, it is the internet. It just takes one awful person out of several Billion people to harass other people all over the world. More specifically, if you post insults (like, for simplicity, implying via feminism that men are assholes), you are bound to hit somebody among the Billions of people who fights back.

So far I have mostly heard of Wikipedia being rather left leaning and many topics being controlled by installed moderators.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is interesting, it seems Wikipedia has changed a lot. 10+y ago we wrote a Wiki software (SnipSnap) and had been to several Wiki conferences with Wikipedia side tracks, and Wikipedians seemed very diverse.

As a side note I'm discouraged because of the labyrinth of arcane rules (which I assume have all a reason to be there) around Wikipedia, and when adding something it goes into weird modes sand needs to be reviewed which last time took several weeks.

</comment><comment><USER18> I see a lot of comments here saying "editors don't have to declare their names and gender", but in many ways, that's point.

Men have the option of declaring their gender without fear of any consequence. They don't have to excise any mention on their profile of details that might reveal their sexuality or gender. Some are even able to wear it like a badge. They're able to lay down roots on Wikipedia - create a profile and become a respected editor.

Women and LGBT people aren't able to do the same without hiding their gender - and have to go out of their way to hide it for fear of harassment. Saying "they can just use the WYSIWYG editor" misses the point. Other people _can_ be more than an IP address.

The point isn't that people are able to hide their gender or sexuality, it's that anyone has to do it in the first place.

<comment><USER19> Men are more likely to be harassed online than women. Women are far more likely to experience one of the types of harassment: sexual harassment, but when looking at harassment as a whole including threats of violence or being called offensive names, men are more commonly victims.

[https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/07/11/experiencing- online-h...](https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/07/11/experiencing-online- harassment/)

<comment><USER18> That distinction matters though: online, people are in a position to reach many thousands, or millions of people through their work.

If women are driven out of the online space by harassment or otherwise, the vast majority of that influence and opportunity will accrue to men.

While threats of violence and being called offensive names are not nice, they don't limit the man's potential in the same way by virtue of being offline.

(Neither, I might add, does it seem to be having a large impact on men's advancement in the professional offline space, where the vast majority of senior positions are also held by men).

<comment><USER20> > While threats of violence and being called offensive names are not nice, > they don't limit the man's potential in the same way by virtue of being > offline.

I don't think you're understanding the data. I read the study, too. Men received more harassment overall online. All the harassment in the linked study is online harassment. I'm not sure what you're talking about this harassment being "offline" for men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Let us read our Shirky again: yes, Wikipedia is absolutely social software.

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic link: thank you. This is why HN is my favorite website, which I return to 5-10 times daily for just this sort of unpredictable Easter egg.

<comment><AUTHOR> Remarkably, Shirky's essay predicted much of what has transpired with the rise of Facebook from its February 1, 2004 beginning — nearly a year after the piece appeared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am sure there is also harassment, but many of the examples mentioned in the article are rather bitter divergence of political opinions, not harassment. And I don't see how it could not be the case, you won't get people with opposite political opinions to agree on a single narrative, and when one reads an article on any slightly politicized topic on wikipedia, one should always be mindful that one is reading merely some dude's political opinion, not some absolute truth. The NY times only calls it harassment because it has picked a side.

</comment><comment><USER23> In other news, although collections of human beings in the West aren't officially societies (see [https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689](https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689)), the harassment can still get ugly!

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x47bb/wikipedia- editors-elite-diversity-foundation)

</comment><comment><USER25> I find Wikipedia tremendously useful and have made modest acknowledgement of that financially. That said, I tried to get them to correct/augment something they had based on a thesis from the 1970's at a top US school. The matter could have been verified but instead it was rejected out of hand and so the content on Wikipedia is less than it might have been. I had a sense the matter was handled with great dispatch and finality.

</comment><comment><USER26> I find Wikipedia tremendously useful and have made modest acknowledgement of that financially. That said, I tried to get them to correct/augment something they had based on a thesis from the 1970's at a top US school. The matter could have been verified but instead it was rejected out of hand and so the content on Wikipedia is less than it might have been. I had a sense the matter was handled with great dispatch and finality.

<comment><USER23> I am just having a similar problem at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Haken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Haken)

There is no source that would prove that Armin Haken is his son, and so unfortunately Armin's work cannot be mentioned in the context of the article, as apparently somebody tried to do before me. (I actually read Armin's article that was mentioned on Wikipedia and then encountered Wolfgang Haken in a different context, and I was wondering if he is the same guy.)

So, the usability of Wikipedia is decreased (ironically, it can still be found in the history). I wish they took a more nuanced view on source reliability than just black and white.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is nytimes running out of social networks to bash?

<comment><USER28> Sounds like the NYT is preparing for the Democratic party primaries. I presume Wikipedia must contain unflattering facts in the articles for one or more female candidates. Now these can just be dismissed as harassment by bigoted male wikipedians.

<comment><USER29> I feel like this is an uncharitable interpretation that dives into intent. Humans in my experience are generally not prone to such nuanced planning regardless of their influence. A more reasonable assumption is that the writers of the article genuinely believe that Wikipedia is biased against women, which is evidence towards a world belief that systemic bias against women exists in the writer's society, which is a position increasingly associated with the Democratic party of the united states. In other words, correlated but not causative events are occuring.

<comment><USER28> The media, and the NYT in particular doesn't deserve too much charity here. They are almost all members of the Democratic Party, and heavily invested in the outcome of the primaries. They're in a unique position to shape the national conversation in a way that favors their favored candidate (e.g. by deciding what is or is not newsworthy), and they frequently use that power. Do you remember how Howard Dean's "yee-haw" was a sign that he was dangerously unstable? Do you remember the moral panic about misogynistic 'Bernie Bros'? Why after all these years did the media suddenly notice Joe Biden is kind of handsy? I don't think it's too cynical to believe that the media is trying to play kingmaker (or queenmaker) in the Democratic primaries. That's more or less their favorite hobby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I saw an article here a couple days ago that there's this one guy who's edited or authored a third of all Wikipedia articles. Sounds like a decidedly un- democratic practice, to me... Not that I'm criticizing the guy, more power to him, just pointing out that this ideal of Wikipedia as a totally democratic base of knowledge just isn't true in practice, there are a few people holding all or most of the power, just as in any institution.

<comment><USER31> It is democratic. Just that democracy does not mean the best or the ideal - <USER2> just means the majority.

<comment><USER32> Wikipedia is not democratic, and certainly not in the sense of a majority (vote). It is governed by a feudal model where there are lords and vassals, and you are the peasant.</comment></comment></comment>


Things Stanislaw Lem Predicted - <AUTHOR> https://culture.pl/en/article/13-things-lem-predicted-about-the-future-we-live-in <comment><USER2> Not to take anything away from Lem, who is one of my favorite science fiction writers and who I absolutely adore, but I was much more impressed by E M Forster's predictions in _The Machine Stops_ [1][2]

Writing in 1909, Forster predicted many things we take for granted today -- the internet, internet addiction and withdrawal, chat rooms, video conferencing, online learning, widespread international air travel.

[1] - [http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops)

<comment><USER3> Weirdest one for me: in "The Roads Must Roll" (1940) Heinlein invented the Segway.

"A tumblebug does not give a man dignity, since it is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized on a single wheel. But it is perfectly adapted to patrolling the maze of machinery 'down inside', since it can go through an opening the width of a man's shoulders, is easily controlled and will stand patiently upright, waiting, should its rider dismount."

<comment><USER4> sounds more like an electric unicycle rather that the original Segway

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Er... This is the 'prediction' for "Google":

>At around the same time, Lem envisaged a future where people have an instant and universal access to a giant virtual data base which he called a 'Trion Library'. Trions themselves were tiny crystals of quartz, 'whose particle structure can be permanently changed'. Trions operate like modern pen-drives, but connected by radio waves, forming a giant library of knowledge. This is how he described it in his The Magellanic Cloud from 1955 (our translation):

> _Trion can store not only luminescent images, reduced to a change in their > crystal structure, that is images of book pages, not only all kinds of > photographs, maps, images, graphs and tables – in other words, anything that > can be observed by sight. Just as easily, Trion can store sounds, the human > voice as well as music, there is also a way to record scents._

Um; this doesn't sound like Google at all. I mean; maybe if this was described as predicting the internet or smart phones, it'd be more reasonable. However, the author follows this description with

>Lem's description is quite accurate, only that what he describes, we call today the Internet or simply Google.

I'm a bit concerned that an index of a thing has been confused with the thing itself. Is this common? Has anyone else encountered this confusion between Google and the Internet?

<comment><USER6> Umm. Yes. Most normal people have no idea Google isn't the internet, I'm guessing.

<comment><USER7> > Umm. Yes. Most normal people have no idea Google isn't the internet, I'm > guessing.

The same people that think you can only access the web through the Microsoft Internet Explorer :]

<comment><USER8> And before that, those same people used to walk into computer stores and ask if they could buy an "AOL".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lem is an underrated genius. He explores deep ideas in philosophy of mind, through entertaining and creative thought-experiment-type short stories that are set in the future. He wasn't a futurist per se, but crafted futuristic scenarios specifically to force the reader to question the fundamental nature of consciousness.

<comment><USER10> Is he underrated?

I have always understood that everyone agrees that he is one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever. His writing and philosophy has depth and he understood the future would be interaction between the society and technology.

Maybe he is underrated in the sense that while he is considered a great, many of his writings are still relatively unknown.

His nonfiction is also remarkable (Golem XIV is technically sci-fi, but it's so philosophically heavy that it can be seen as philosophical work).

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV)

'The Philosophy of Chance' has not been translated to English.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Chance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Chance)

<comment><USER8> Philip K Dick underrated him.

[http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick](http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick)

Unless you consider it flattery that he told the FBI that "Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual".

But the lack of respect was not mutual!

Stanislaw Lem: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans

[https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm](https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm)

<comment><USER11> That's really interesting, I had no idea they'd intersected in this strange way. Although Dick was likely suffering from mental illness and Lem's critique of him seems like a writer's version of the the not-entirely-uncommon 'great ideas, terrible writing'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Solaris_ is one of the greatest novels I've ever read. The way the planet behaved felt as palpably real as it was mysterious. It made me feel that it's a good thing that the cosmos is more complicated and can't just be divided into what's known and what's not yet known. Thank goodness for the unknowable.

<comment><USER13> It really was. Lem made a good point about how most scifi treats aliens either as humanoid versions of ourselves, or creatures from our nightmares. After Star Trek Next Generation introduced the Borg, they found they needed to humanize them by having a Borg Queen individual.

The 2002 movie version had Gibarian's recording say that our enthusiasm for exploration is a sham. We're looking for mirrors. The point of Solaris was that the alien was not at all like us, and therefore humans couldn't understand it, because we're too busy projecting onto it. And Solaris used that to create disturbing human analogs, because it didn't understand either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Until I used the Internet, I didn't know there were so many idiots in the > world

The whole article was worth reading just for this quote alone

<comment><USER15> I mean, Poorly Drawn Lines had IMO the best take on that so far: [http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/](http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/)

It becomes more relevant as the free-for-all we knew and loved slips away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Of all the recurring themes in Lem's visionary work, extreme body modification is perhaps the one where mankind has least scratched the surface so far. The fashionable tattoos and plastic surgery we have now is so limited in scope, it's like looking at a PDP-10 and trying to predict an iPhone X.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's a stretch to call some of these "predictions", but .. yes, some of them were reasonably good predictions.

I can wholeheartedly recommend anything Lem wrote; Don't be discouraged if you didn't like the movie adaptations - these books are probably impossible to do justice to in movie form.

<comment><USER18> What would your top Lem book recommendation be?

<comment><USER17> Mine would be "the futurologist convention" (or however it was translated to English) - it is rather short, but I found it an extremely fun read, with just enough text and story to support the idea and no fluff. YMMV.

<comment><USER19> All "serious" stories in Tichy series are worth checking out. The humorous ones are good too, just unsure how much is going to be lost in English translation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> He definitely predicted ridiculous airport security in The Chain of Chance.

But really, the list is meh. It's not about individual technologies. The impressive part is that most of his books have more overall relevance now than when they were written. _That_ is a sign of great science fiction.

For example, he wrote a lot about emergent phenomena of all kinds. Not something I see a lot in American SF of 60s-70s, but as we create more and more complex systems, emergent phenomena (runaway computer viruses, etc) becomes more and more important.

</comment><comment><USER21> Summa Technologiae ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae)) is an excellent read and stunningly predictive.

</comment><comment><USER22> These predictions are interesting, but spectacularly off in some respects. For example:

 _... The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They could be read with the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it._

Predicting the reading tablet without predicting the Internet and wireless networking to feed it seems like a half-prediction.

This does raise an interesting question: which writer from the 1960s had the best track record of predicting the world we now live in?

<comment><USER23> Clarke's _Profiles of the Future_ was off on a whole lot, but still impressive.

There's a recent book _Where is my flying car?_ with the thesis that old sci- fi visions of the future could've been accurate if not for unnecessary stagnation in key areas like nuclear power. The 70s were the turning point in this view, which I think isn't crazy, though the book was pretty self- indulgent. Reviewed here: [http://www.bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2018/10/14/wh...](http://www.bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2018/10/14/where- is-my-flying-car/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And there is more. A lot more. I've read all his books available in Hungarian and I've learnt that:

\- The world is over hyped due to cold war. From this grandiosity we should step back to earth.

\- Asymmetry is the new world order

\- The overall presence of information overflow, the logorrhea of information introduces anarchy

\- In arts the next paradigm is reincarnational postmodernims: I'll reborn to destroy more.

\- Emotional over rational.

\- Universe is just an illusion: an illegal loan with no cover. The Cosmos exists on an unlimited credit.

\- Evolution is non-linear but random.

\- The border between natural and artificial will disappear. There will be an electronic brain and soul not distinguishable from the original.

\- Information becomes genital, fully sexualised: Everything that would serve humanity turned to be a strangehold of restrictions.

\- It is more difficult to distinct truth from fake. Information leads to paranoia.

\- Internet has a Marxist / Communist aspect: information & knowledge as individual property goes to service providers, corporations.

\- The American Dream is replaced by Virtual Reality.

\- Homo sapiens is the latest specie of the natural evolution. We are the latest reliquiae of the uncivilised nature.

... and more: [http://metamn.io/gust/whats-next/](http://metamn.io/gust/whats- next/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Lem is one of my favorite authors!

I worked with Will Wright on The Sims and SimCity, and I think it's more accurate to say that Lem predicted SimCity in "The Seventh Sally" of Cyberiad. Or at least that's what Will says inspired SimCity, long before he developed The Sims, which was just an elaboration of that original inspiration.

But Philip K Dick predicted The Sims in "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", with its "Pre-Fash Consultants" and "Perky Pat Layouts":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch)

>Layouts are physical props intended to simulate a sort of alternate reality where life is easier than either the grim existence of the colonists in their marginal off-world colonies, or even Earth, where global warming has progressed to the point that Antarctica is prime vacation resort territory. The illegal drug Can-D allows people to "share" their experience of the "Perky Pat" (the name of the main female character in the simulated world) layouts. This "sharing" has caused a pseudo-religious cult or series of cults to grow up around the layouts and the use of the drug.

That describes the cult-like Sims user created content community to a tee: online pre-fash consultants share elaborate downloadable layouts with minned versions of real world objects and architecture, for players to incorporate into their own fantasies:

[http://sas.woobsha.com/CulturalHF/CulturalHeritageFoundation...](http://sas.woobsha.com/CulturalHF/CulturalHeritageFoundation.htm)

>Conservation projects of the magnitude you will find here usually requires the contribution of many skilled professionals, vast amount of time and almost unlimited budget. But not in your Sim Neighbourhood! Thanks to The Bunny Wuffles Cultural Heritage Foundation, all you need do is sacrifice some Simoleans, a few moments here at the Foundation and a few MB of your hard drive.

[http://sas.woobsha.com/CulturalHF/PalmHouse/PalmHouseTheme.h...](http://sas.woobsha.com/CulturalHF/PalmHouse/PalmHouseTheme.htm)

>With the permission of the Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this theme celebrates the wonders of not only the Palm House, but the Temperate House, Dome and Formal Gardens of Kew in this prestigious time of it gaining World Heritage Status. You can read more about this important event here.

[https://musculoskeletalkey.com/when-adam-dalf-and-eve- span/](https://musculoskeletalkey.com/when-adam-dalf-and-eve-span/)

>Another lesson in the practice of moral authority can today be derived from The Sims (Electronic Arts 2002), a computer game in which players create and manipulate families of individuals in an environment that is also designed by the player. If the player fails to endow the characters he or she creates with life skills, they have accidents, fail to eat or drink, and die. Their ability to participate and respond to events in their virtual environment depends on their ability to interpret the phenomena around them. Without being able to understand how what they do affects their world, their behaviour quickly becomes chaotic.

>An antecedent to The Sims occurs in Philip K. Dick's dystopian novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Dick 1973). Here the players are linked to each other through taking a drug that enables them to assimilate the roles of the figurines that are used to play the Perky Pat game in a simulated environment. The Perky Pat layout provides an exciting and absorbing alternative reality to the occupationally deprived conditions of the protagonists, whose main motivation in life becomes the pursuit of the game and the accessories linked to it. This dystopia explores a recurrent theme of Dick's novels, a view of social participation being largely centred on the pursuit of trivia to the extent that it becomes hard for the characters to distinguish what is significant and meaningful in their lives from the fantasies in which they are enmeshed. [...]</comment>


Ask HN: a solution to the patent mess - <AUTHOR>

Issue a software patent for 5 years with a possibility to extend if it's being used in a actively selling product (measure the revenue). The product value must come from using the patent.
Reasoning:
1) software is easy to build, so 5 years is more than enough
2) to claim any damages the patent needs to be validated by the market first
Makes sense? <comment><USER2> Make the patent term proportional to the value of the disclosure contained in the patent. That is, the value of the claims in the patent should dictate the length of the patent term. We could crowd source the value. the USPTO can list "here's the problem" and ask for estimated values. Or, the patentee could suggest the patent term, and then the USPTO discloses the problem solved by the patent (or the new thing you can do because of it), along with how much the inventor is asking (in months). We create a threshold that must be reached in order for the term to be granted. Example, you invent a new compression algorithm for video, and file a patent. The USPTO publishes the following (simple version):

"A patent to compress video by an average of 8x over current state of the art algorithms.

Inventor seeks 240 months of protection for disclosure of the algorithm.

[ ] Worth it [ ] Not worth it"

If we set the threshold at X thousand, or Y % of those in the sample, then the inventor can get the patent protection for 240 months. This could be done as the very first step. So if value-less inventions are applied for protection, they could be screened out without draining resources.

Alternatively, you could do something more like a market value approach, and ask folks how many months of protection the invention would be worth, and take an average of the most commonly suggested amounts (in terms of months).

The point is, there are much better alternatives than a fixed N years of protection for any invention of a particular category. Not all inventions are equally valuable, so it doesn't make sense to price them by category any more than it does to price them (in years of protection) the way they are now (everything's equal to 20 years of protection).

So, rather than wait for the market to validate the patent after it's been granted (which wastes USPTO resources), let's validate it's value ahead of time. If no one thinks it's worth much, the inventor may abandon the claim. Or the USPTO can reject it outright as not meeting the utility criterion since the estimated value (by society) is too low.

</comment><comment><USER3> I say ban software patents outright. In most cases, the tricky part is the implementation of the idea and not the idea itself. IMO, the advantages of banning them far outweigh the disadvantages.</comment>


Mistakes That Kill Startups (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html <comment><USER2> Interesting to see how this aged. By my reckoning:

1 (Single Founder) - people just ignore this one, more or less.

2 (Bad Location) - this one became a horrifying monster that devours everything it touches.

3 (Marginal Niche) - probably the biggest killer, then and now.

4 (Derivative Idea) - meh. People worry about this too much. Is there an unserved market?

5 (Obstinacy) - on point. Serve the market.

6 (Hiring Bad Programmers) - This one also became a horrifying monster. Graham says "In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people they think are good programmers (it says here on his resume that he's a Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren't." Darkly hilarious in hindsight.

7 (Choosing the Wrong Platform) - meh. People use fucking backend Javascript now.

8 (Slowness in Launching) - Pretty valid.

9 (Launching Too Early) - maybe, I guess.

10 (Having No Specific User in Mind) - absolutely important. You have to be serving a market.

11 (Raising Too Little Money) - this pendulum has swung way over the other way now.

12 (Spending Too Much) - Yes. (Hiring too much. Stop trying to feel like an important funded company.)

13 (Raising Too Much Money) - Something of a subtle point, but still an important one - especially now that you can get too much money thrown at you more easily.

14 (Poor Investor Management) - of course.

15 (Sacrificing Users to (Supposed) Profit) - I'll just note that Graham writes that Google puts users first. Hindsight!

16 (Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty) - Graham means with sales work. Very much true.

17 (Fights Between Founders) - This is why you vest, I guess. Graham was still down on founder vesting at the time.

18 (A Half-Hearted Effort) - I mean, why put in more of an effort if you have a route to fail upward?

<comment><USER3> > 7\. Choosing the Wrong Platform

> But there is a trick you could use if you're not a programmer: visit a top > computer science department and see what they use in research projects

Please don't shoot yourself with this suggestion. From my personal experience Academia is so distant from what is relevant or practical to the industry.

<comment><USER4> In my experience in European research, you don't get research funding if you don't work on something relevant or practical to the industry.

<comment><USER5> I guess this varies a lot. To my shame I don't have hard numbers (! I really should have.)

Personally I've worked on a half dozen global research network projects bringing together both public and private funding and 10-15 organisations, mixed universities, research institutes, and small to behemoth companies.

The target is always some wide ranging new radical technology platform and they spawn a bunch of startups and spin off projects.

Some targets can turn out to be too difficult, or simply wrong, but I've never seen a project that hasn't lead to at least one startup / product / new technology.

<comment><USER6> Oh! That's super interesting — what are some examples of this happening?

<comment><USER5> Eg: Start out looking at nanoparticle functionalisation, then stumble on a very useful sensor application or targeted molecular delivery.

Eg: Work on autonomous air sensor, then find simple off shoot application for tuberculosis using a completely different technology.

Eg: Build a medical laser for transdermal drug delivery then find applications in dental work and scar tissue removal.

Eg: Design a flexible heterogeneous compute cluster for hpc application, then get customers who want it for the low administration cost.

You start by bringing some very competent and diverse people together to tackle some tricky and new problem. Then after a while you'll have found a bunch of peripheral questions and applications for one thing or other you create in the project.

People talking and sharing experience and knowledge will almost always find new stuff out in the dark. If you're working on the edge of knowledge there is almost always interesting stuff hiding just outside the light of your personal flashlight. Bringing people together in multidisciplinary projects is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the Wrong Platform section he mentions how the new PayPal CEO wanted to switch the company to Windows and "Fortunately for PayPal they switched CEOs instead." That CEO they gave the boot? Elon Musk.

It was probably still a good decision and maybe we wouldn't have spaceX or Tesla without that change, but still hilarious!

<comment><USER8> If anyone knows, I'd be interested in more details around the windows thing.

<comment><USER9> IIRC from reading the book PayPal Wars, Elon wanted to switch PayPal over to Windows because he saw it as the future. At the time, PayPal was on Unix. Max Levchin and the other main programmers didn't want to switch. The disagreement on platform eventually came to a head and Elon was replaced by the board with Peter Thiel.

If you haven't read PayPal Wars, it's a great book.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. I think it was also a power struggle over which engineering team would be in control moving forward. Musk's X.com was built on windows and he wanted everyone to switch over on the merge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The REAL mistakes that kill startups:

1\. Not solving a real problem - Product / market fit

2\. Raising Too much money - Growing beyond ability for the market to support

3\. Hiring the wrong people

4\. Too much founder ego

5\. Too much founder inexperience combined with a lack of a desire to learn

6\. Focusing too much on investor needs vs. customer needs

7\. Spending too much money

8\. Perfect is the enemy of good - Start small, think big, iterate often.

I think single founder issues, so-called "bad location" issues, derivative ideas are not really issues at all. The top 7 will kill you even if you have great locations. And there are many examples of great business started by sole founders outside the high expense "prime" locations.

<comment><USER11> On "bad location": consumer-focused startups will need to scale up fast if they get traction. Those are the ones that benefit most from being in SV: a pool of skilled labour they can bid their VC dollars + stratospheric ambitions on.

B2B companies may be better off located in one of the top areas for the business vertical. For example, non-consumer FinTech startups may be better off in New York or London than SV.

<comment><USER12> I still firmly believe that a lot of people get the scalability/sustainability thing wrong, and then overhire like crazy.

If you ran a lean startup, would location be as much of an issue? Or asked the other way around: should all startups outside of the valley be lean startups?

It may just be the horizontal versus vertical question. A lot of the work I do, when to have the autonomy to do it, is to make sure that every developer can get more done, or be more certain that the work really _is_ done. I'm trying to vertically scale developers.

In systems design, when communication is cheap you scale horizontally. When it's expensive, you scale vertically. What have we really done as an industry to improve the effectiveness of human communication? I mean, really? Most of those improvements were made in the 90's, a bit more in the 00's, and everything since has been refinement (or regression.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > PayPal only just dodged this bullet. After they merged with X.com, the new > CEO wanted to switch to Windows — even after PayPal cofounder Max Levchin > showed that their software scaled only 1% as well on Windows as Unix. > Fortunately for PayPal they switched CEOs instead.

It's pretty funny to see that in 2006 Elon Musk didn't even deserve a mention of his name. How things have changed...

<comment><USER14> We laugh now, but I remember reading that iis on windows nt blew the doors of Apache in the late 90s/early 00s.

I'd love to find the source as I can't find it right now, bit I thought that was bc Apache could only fork back then, etc

<comment><USER15> I remember reading that too. I think Ben Horowitz might have talked about this in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, though I might be misremembering the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hiring bad programmers is so common it's crazy. Most hacker news types probably won't know this, but there are so many startups out there than aren't VC backed and they have a limited dev budget. They try and hire who they think is good, spend all their money on programmer salaries, and then what get's built is a total turd. They never get traction because they keep failing to launch. Company dies. All too common.

<comment><USER17> The funny part is they scoff at an extra 50k for a better programmer, and then watch as that cheaper guy that looks good on paper writes a pile of garbage

<comment><USER16> True, but how can a non-technical founder know who is good, or who is just expensive? I've seen dev consultancies that are very expensive, and they play the part in every way, but they produce total garbage. There really isn't any way to know unless... well you know.

The best way to figure it out is through a vigorous investigation of references I think, but even then, the past projects they worked on may have been better suited to their skills that what you're hiring them for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very insightful, as with most of Paul's work. But it also shows a very specific mindset. In my opinion #15 was wrong back than and is even more obviously wrong now in 2020.

The idea that you have to build first and monetize later has barely worked for some and forced many many many others to sell at no gain or close. We mostly saw the successful ones, but what happened recently with the likes of wework is causing that perception to shift.

#16 though is super important, and not just from the programmer direction. A good founder needs to understand the moving pieces of their startup, regardless of whether they have the training for that or not. I'm not saying they should be the ones to lead the effort on something they have no clue about, but they should be able to understand it. This is critical for single founders and important for multiple founders who make decisions together.

</comment><comment><USER19> The only mistake that kills startup is running out of money. Every other piece of advice is hand-wavy at best and lacks context. For example - How much is too much to raise? How much is too little? What constitutes a bad programmer?

<comment><USER20> I agree but don't think "don't run out of money" makes for very helpful advice, hence a bunch of other suggestions that help you not run out of money. If a doctor told me "don't have a heart attack/stroke/etc" I'd probably have some follow-up questions.

<comment><USER19> So, how is "don't hire bad people" good advice when you can't describe what a good or bad hire looks like?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Many of the applications we get are imitations of some existing company. > That's one source of ideas, but not the best. If you look at the origins of > successful startups, few were started in imitation of some other startup. > Where did they get their ideas? Usually from some specific, unsolved problem > the founders identified.

I'm not sure if I'd agree with that point. Google were not the first search engine, Facebook was not the first social network, etc.

I mean, for a user perspective, Google literally worked like other search engines at the time. You enter your phrase, see results.

Of course the results were better than Yahoo, the user-interface cleaner, etc. But that's definitely incremental value for the user, not a whole new category of product.

<comment><USER22> Meh, I kind of think you're both right. I mean, while Google was just the evolution of a search engine, they _did_ solve a very specific unsolved problem that the founders identified (namely, how to rank results in a manner that was a much better indicator of relevance and quality). When it comes to Facebook, people forget that before them, using your real name and identity online in a social network was extremely rare.

Similarly, there were loads of dating apps before Tinder, but they solved a very specific problem: how to let either partner indicate interest withOUT letting the other partner know unless there was a match, in an intuitive way.

So yes, there are not many startups that are bold ideas that are completely new (for exceptions see Elon Musk), but they mostly DO bring something fundamentally new to the table.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I bet many of you have read all of Paul's essays, I thought I have read this one. I didn't know this one exists until today. Many of the points in 2006 are still hold true

</comment><comment><USER23> Shameless plug - I put (almost)all PG essays in podcast form here:

[https://www.roderick.io/feed/pg](https://www.roderick.io/feed/pg)

This is the rss(xml). In most podcast apps you can add a podcast by url.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm gonna take a stab at assessing the relevance of the mistakes to a self- bootstrapper:

1\. Single Founder: Plenty examples of successful bootstrappers on Indiehackers. There are also plenty of failed bootstrappers, but you likely won't hear about them obviously. The reasons pg listed for single founder failure is still valid for a bootstrapper though - it's a very lonely journey.

2\. Bad Location: this is important for a different reason: as a bootstrapper relying on their own savings, I'd say location with low cost of living and fast Internet is the most ideal.

3\. Marginal Niche: bootstrappers target niches since they're not focused on hyper-growth like conventional startups do.

4\. Derivative Idea: not that big of a deal. Derivative ideas are pretty common amongst bootstrappers. You spend less time finding product/market fit if you work on popular/derivative ideas - but of course you'll also run into plenty of competitors.

5\. Obstinacy: yeah, big killer. Be willing to adapt is sound advice regardless of your situation. The question is when do you know things aren't working well, or you just need to push a little more? Talk to users.

6\. Hiring Bad Programmers: Definitely a killer. For bootstrappers who work alone, the question becomes am I skilled enough to build the product within a realistic scope and timeframe?

7\. Choosing the Wrong Platform: people tend to use whatever they're most skilled at/comfortable with. It's still important that you do a survey of what's available out there before you commit, and always have a realistic migration plan when your success outgrows your initial scope.

8\. Slowness in Launching: bootstrappers are big on the idea of MVPs and launching fast, but in practice, this is hard. Perfectionism is the bane of those who failed to launch.

9\. Launching too Early: valid, but I imagine this is less of a problem for bootstrappers since you likely don't have much attention at the initial launch anyway.

10\. Having No Specific User In Mind: totally valid.

11\. Raising too little money: irrelevant.

12\. Spending too much: I can't speak for all bootstrappers, but if you're bootstrapping from your own savings you're likely to be more careful with your spending.

13\. Raising too much money: irrelevant.

14\. Poor investor management: irrelevant.

15\. Sacrificing Users to Supposed Profit: bootstrapped companies have to be profitable from day 1. There's no investor money to keep you going. I believe a good trade-off can be achieved here.

16\. Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty: yeah, arguably the most important one. Only way to deal with this is to constantly reach out to people and talk to them.

17\. Fights Between Founders: totally valid, but irrelevant to single founder bootstrappers (plenty of these).

18\. A half-hearted effort: a killer, for sure. But you don't necessarily have to quit your day job. Ideally, work part time as a consultant/contractor, and work on your business the rest of the time. It comes down to self (and time) management.

</comment><comment><USER25> this still holds pretty true, but you know the essay is dated when he calls it "The Facebook"

</comment><comment><USER26> Here are relevant thoughts from 10 years later by another well-known venture capitalist (and 2x founder) Mark Suster: [https://bothsidesofthetable.com/how- to-decrease-the-odds-tha...](https://bothsidesofthetable.com/how-to-decrease- the-odds-that-your-startup-fails-e0fc13213792).

</comment><comment><USER27> Most software startups die due to lack of demand for their product.

</comment><comment><USER28> messages from a bygone era

<comment><USER29> Which parts do you think have been antiquated?</comment></comment>


Google goes cancer: search algorithm to find cancer biomarkers - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/plos-ggc051412.php

<comment><USER2> misleading title. researchers are using their own implementations of google's page rank. that can mean anything.</comment>


Live coding a basic Go compiler with LLVM in 20 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pwaller/go2ll-talk <comment><USER2> Note this uses golang.org/x/tools/go/packages and golang.org/x/tools/go/ssa to get to the go SSA AST and then generates some LLVM IR from that. It's not implementing a go parser or the transformation to SSA.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, I had to take certain liberties in order to cram the talk into 20 minutes! I hope one of the takeaways was that you don't need to implement a parser to get started playing with this sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> AFAICT parsing is the easy part, admittedly more than 20 minutes but... (Also AFAICT) Go was specifically designed for easy lexing/parsing as part of their core principals.

After you get from text->AST is when all the magic happens. I've been reading up on this off and on for the last year or so and it's less magic than breaking the problem down into (not quite) simple steps that can be studied individually.

It's actually a quite fascinating field to go diving down the rabbit hole -- there's a lot of "lost" ideas from 20-30 years ago that one could take from pseudo-code to a fairly reasonable compilation pipeline without too much trouble. True, it wouldn't win on any benchmark test against something like LLVM with their millions of person hours invested in the optimation phases but it would be reasonable none the less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does a recording of this talk exist?

Ran `go run .` and it ended with:

       [...]
       go: downloading github.com/mewmew/float v0.0.0-20181121163145-c0f786d7da73
       go: downloading github.com/pkg/errors v0.8.0
       go: downloading github.com/rickypai/natsort v0.0.0-20180124032556-f194e6bd5b0c
       @$const_str = global [16 x i8] c"Hello world %d\0A\00"

       declare void @printf(...)

       define void @main() {
       0:
           %0 = add i64 30, 12
           call void (...) @printf([16 x i8]* @$const_str, i64 %0)
           ret void
       }
       0>

<comment><USER6> Minor nitpick: "%d" format string for i64 isn't quite right on most (all?) platforms.

<comment><USER7> How so?

<comment><USER6> %d is for regular 'int' sized arguments. Most popular platforms have a 32-bit or smaller 'int'. i64 refers to a 64-bit int. For that you would use '%ld' or '%lld' depending on if long or long long was 64-bit. (Or '"%" PRId64' if you really like the inttypes.h syntax.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> somewhat OT but: ended up in the 'go/constant' package's source from there somehow and there saw the comment on "Prevent external implementations" [1] regarding using a non-exported function in the definition of 'constant.Value' interface.

Here is an external implementation of constant.Value:

[https://play.golang.org/p/3dVFCT2-kN8](https://play.golang.org/p/3dVFCT2-kN8)

[1]: [https://golang.org/src/go/constant/value.go?#L58](https://golang.org/src/go/constant/value.go?#L58)</comment>


Window & tab switching with 'type to search' for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, this is my OS X window management application and it's got some unique features I thought fellow hackers would enjoy: the latest update adds tab browsing for Safari, Google Chrome and Terminal, combining this with 'type to search' makes for really fast window and tab switching. Watch the screencast to see what I mean.

Developing a OS X window manager is risky business, Apple could wipe it out at any time and Lion's certainly got some really nice features with Mission Control. But I reckon Optimal Layout's still going to appeal to keyboarders, what do you think?

<comment><USER2> I bought Optimal Layout from the App Store as soon as I saw it. The first version was okay, but the latest upgrade is absolutely fantastic. The ability to switch so quickly to different windows makes the app really worth it and I use the Divvy-like grid to re-size windows constantly in different Spaces.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I've found it indispensable in my workflow. Handles spaces very well too, and works well with Parallels windows in Coherence mode. Plus the developer has been very responsive when I've brought up issues in earlier versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does Optimal Layout deal with switching between single and dual monitors? That is, can I save layouts for each case and have your app switch when a second monitor comes online or off?

Yes will get you another paid user ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> The layouts you save are monitor agnostic; so if you save it on one monitor then apply it on another it will be applied proportionately the same.

It's also really easy to rapidly apply any kind of custom position using the grid.

This isn't exactly what you are after but it still gives you a lot of flexibility.</comment></comment>


Draft Cyber Executive Order calls for immediate 60-day cyber miracl - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/draft-cyber-executive-order-calls-for-immediate-60-day-cyber-miracle <comment><USER2> This appears to be 60 days to create a plan and a list of adversaries, not 60 days to solve Cyber security.</comment>