Reasons Not To Raise Venture Capital - <AUTHOR> http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/five-reasons-not-to-raise-venture-capital <comment><USER2> You just need this sentence:

 _" VCs aren't unintelligent. Nor are VCs evil (not all of them anyway). They're not even necessarily misaligned with you. What they are doing is optimizing for a very specific outcome. Share that alignment, or don't take their money."_

If you understand what the VC wants and you want that too, then you are aligned. If you don't then you are making a mistake.

<comment><USER3> That almost gets you there, but founders who misunderstand what VCs want will still take the investment. That sounds like a nitpick, except that, in my experience, lots of entrepreneurs misunderstand what VCs want, thinking that 7 - 8 digit exits are what VCs aim for.

<comment><USER4> I'm very curious. What is it you believe VCs aim for?

<comment><USER5> I think he is suggesting VCs want much larger exits than the average founder (at higher risk). Isn't most of Y combinator's success from just a couple massive paydays (airbnb and dropbox etc)? Whereas an exit like reddit in the 15 - 20 MM range is considered a big win for the founders, but quite "meh" for the investors. VCs need big wins to be really successful.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That is what I was suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just some examination of the math:

If the VC firm is taking 15% of your company for $15m, then you've got a valuation of $100m. As far as I know, the "We all know that nine out of ten startups fail" applies to all startups, not the ones that are being valued at $100m. Also, I think very few VCs are investing $15m into a company that they expect to have a 90% chance of failure. You're looking at more of a 3-5x on some of the deals to carry the consistent 1-2x that the rest of the portfolio is returning.

I don't disagree with a lot of the points in the article, but saying that a VC firm with a $150m fund is betting the farm on one $15m investment exiting at $3bn should raise some eyebrows.

<comment><USER7> Just looking at YCs returns, the vast majority of the wealth appears to be concentrated into 3 of 600+ starts (Dropbox, AirBnB, and Stripe). Even a Heroku sale for 200M+ is a drop in the bucket compared to $10B private market valuation, say it out loud and it will sound weird. "Dropbox is worth 50 Herokus"

Betting the farm implies that they have no other options, which is not the case with VCs, and it's impossible to know which will be their "super unicorns" when they write the checks, so they write lots of checks.

There's not much reason to believe YC is unlike other angel groups, individuals, or VC firms, and their data should back up that the majority of their returns is 1 or 2 companies every so often with huge wins.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that YC isn't investing $15m into companies, they're investing $20k. The corresponding valuations for the companies that they invest in is $1m on the high end (20k / 2%), not $100m. The risk profile for different check sizes is vastly different.

<comment><USER7> The risk profile as you seem to be thinking of it is an irrelevant metric when you're only interested in the return profile. They're optimizing for dollars returned, not % of companies sold for greater than money put in.

Consider a "soft landing" (VC gets their money back), vs complete death (VC gets no money back). When put alongside a $3B acquisition they're both completely irrelevant, even if on paper the 1x money back is not considered a "failure".

Check size doesn't appear to matter, the data for YC and for VC that I've seen suggests a similar power-law-ish distribution of returns.

<comment><USER6> Nitpick: VCs are optimizing for % return, not on an dollar return basis.

I would say that the risk profile is not irrelevant: if you're betting that 1/10 of your investments are returning your fund, then just one miss is the difference between a good year and "I don't have a VC firm anymore". Compare that to betting that half of your investments are returning your fund: one miss is the difference between a good year and an "ehh" year.[0]

That's true; when you compare both of them to a 30x, the difference between a 1x and 0x is small. But what I'm saying is that at a $15m investment, very few VCs expect to see a 30x, and when you compare it vs. a 3x or a 5x acquisition, the difference between no money back and your 1x liquidation pref paying out is much larger, proportionally.

The same power law may apply, but you see more of the tails in when you have a much larger sample size. If there were just as many $15m investments happening as $20k investments, you'd see the same result, but there aren't.

Off-topic: are you the same Scott Klein I talked to over the summer re: statuspage.io?

[0] Of course, that glosses over different probabilities of success and failure, but what I'm trying to say is that VCs are risk averse.

<comment><USER8> > _if you 're betting that 1/10 of your investments are returning your fund, > then just one miss is the difference between a good year and "I don't have a > VC firm anymore"_

To add to this, the top 10 VC firms make up around 85% of _all_ of the returns of VC firms combined, and the top 15 VC firms make up around 95%. (don't quote me on those specific numbers, but I believe they are roughly accurate based on a report from a16z).

Long story short - very very few VC funds see worthwhile returns. The one's that do are absolutely killing it.

<comment><USER9> The best VCs have basically created a self-fulfilling prophecy: many of these firms do well BECAUSE the top VC firms invested in them. If a16z or KPCB invests in you, it makes it a lot easier to get press and additional rounds of funding from other VCs because one of the top firms "blessed" you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Investors sometimes say mean things about these "lifestyle businesses" but you don't have to care what investors think._

There's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business, as long as it's run like a business. There can be decent exits (purchases by competitors, private equity, etc). But the employees seldom see a big payoff. In return, you usually get a pretty comfortable work experience.

<comment><USER11> Employees seldom see a big payoff. Period.

Startups trade salary and benefits now for maybe huge payoff later. The maybe in previous sentence is important, most startups fail.

Some business are build to stay there, grow and earn enough for founders to make them upper middle class/rich for the rest of their lives. It is different then Facebook like success, but most would count that as successful too.

<comment><USER12> I have often thought that it would make sense for employees of different companies to pool any equity. You already take on enough risk being employed by a startup business without adding on your equity risk too.

<comment><USER13> That's an amazing idea. What would it take?

<comment><USER12> A YC application - lets call it poolr :)

More seriously there is a number of ways of doing this. I would imagine the simplest would be to create a trust and have everyone give their equity and options to the trust.

The bigger issue is how to ensure that people don't game the system. The assets being put into the pool need to be accurately valued so people don't put in what they know are worthless assets. Of course there is there is the reverse situation where those already in the pool undervalue new assets.

Most of the effort of this idea needs to go into setting up the rules so that everyone does the right things and everyones interests are aligned. While I think this might be hard, I don't see anything that can't be solved by some smart people.

<comment><USER14> A simple voting mechanism would work where you announce the shares you own to the pool you want to join.

<comment><USER12> Yes this might work - you could also have a bidding process where you put up your shares and the various pools can bid on them.

<comment><USER15> Derisking makes economic sense, but incentive stock options are mostly nontransferable. You're describing a market for shares of a privately held company, which the SEC doesn't want (except through some very specific protocols like JOBS Act crowdfunding).

<comment><USER12> The stock or stock options aren't really being sold as such, just given to the pool. I am wondering if the pool members could continue to hold the options, but enter into a secondary agreement to share any gain with their fellow pool members. This would be a derivative of some sort I guess.

<comment><USER16> The problem is that when a company goes big and someone gets a good exit they personally own that money until they make good on their secondary agreement. It would be easy to rationalize that it was specifically their personal hard work that helped make the company succeed. And since it's their money they have a big enough war chest to fight giving it to the pool. Or they can just skip the country. If the payoff is big enough there are plenty of folks who wouldn't mind trashing their reputation. And then that's the end of the pool.

Don't get me wrong, it seems like an interesting idea. I would love to have some way for my un-diversified work portfolio to get diversified. But short of creating a sweat equity only market/exchange I don't really know how you'd do it.

Even that has problems because people could fake a startup well enough to gain access to the returns creating a free-rider problem. It's probably easier to cook up a bunch of buzz and interest over an orchestrated 3 month campaign (esp. with a Kickstarter) than to actually do a startup. And since you're faking it you can promise the world and raise huge money from unsuspecting dupes with no intention of (much less a plausible method for) making good on your promises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The most interesting section of this article is the very appropriately named section "venture math is a harsh mistress". Out of the 1000 companies 188 were acquired, 28 went bust big time, 8 went public, leaving 80% unaccounted for. What are all these companies doing?

<comment><USER17> Worst outcome: just slogging along, not good enough to exit but not bad enough to kill so people can get on with their lives.

<comment><USER18> That's not all bad though, assuming you are successful enough to be pulling in an equivalent salary to what you could make elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> Also, if you recognize that it's where you are, you still have the option of pivoting it into something bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I found the comments about the derision of lifestyle businesses interesting, particularly in light of some of the consternation around the Tarsnap price cut [0]:

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953)

<comment><USER17> There's a world of difference between, at one end, taking VC that puts you on a rocket ride of "get rich or die"; or, at the other end, not taking any money at all so that you cannot hire even 1 engineer to help you making the essential backup service into something that's one bus away from losing all my data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The other issue that didn't come out here, is that venture funds are time limited by definition. So it's not _just_ that the VC fund wants their portfolio company to have a big exit, but they want them to have a big exit _in a specific timeframe_.

This is one thing I like about bootstrapping... the timeframe goals are down to a combination of what me and my co-founders want, influenced by competitive issues. But, as it stands, our burn rate is low enough that our "runway" is, essentially, infinite. Except that's not _completely_ true since we don't live in a static ecosystem. Other companies are out there advancing tech and making moves of their own.

But still, I generally like not being bound to a VC and having to deal with the whole misalignment of objectives issues. We may still raise VC money at some point, but it'll be if/when conditions clearly mandate it - it's not something we'd do "just because that's what startups do".

<comment><USER21> I've seen this time issue with a couple of companies. There hits a point when the VC wants to exit so they start pushing to shut down areas of a business that have future potential to maximise the expense/revenue/profit ratios within their short planned exit window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is what I have learnt from my experience and what I have seen in Indian startup ecosystem

1\. VC making money, Company making money and Founders making money are three different things. Don't get confused between them. Most often, the founder get the leftover, with big exit, it can be huge amount but not for everyone.

2\. VCs are there to make money. That's it. That is there ONLY goal. Anyone VC firm who is saying that they are behind entrepreneurs, they are NOT. They are only after money and the entrepreneur is between them and money. So if your goal is same as their's, start chasing money.

3\. You will lose your freedom for ever once you raise VC money and along with it, your choices.

</comment><comment><USER23> But there is one important reason why to get VC money: if you have business model working, VC money will help you (or it is necessary) to hire more people and generate more revenue.

Now, of course VCs want great returns but they are also ok with ok returns.

<comment><USER24> But did you see the bit about preferred investment shares? An "ok" return may be ok for the VC, but it could leave the founders and options-holding employees with very little (or nothing).

Contrast this to a bootstrapped company. In that case, an "ok" return can be pretty good. If you're bootstrapped and you own 40% of the company, a $5 million sale is pretty great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's interesting how things work out. Since we didn't have the connections at first, we wound up getting our company to the point where we don't NEED venture capital to get to where we want to go. We can get there organically. If we take VC, it will be for a land grab and massive acceleration. So in some ways, things work out just the way they should if you don't go out of your way to chase people.

Kind of like how you get married to the right person if you just keep being yourself.

<comment><USER26> It baffles me that more startups don't have this approach. If you're going to take VC, you'd damn well be targeted and have a specific idea of how your going to use it to grow your business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The main problem with the OP is that it was looking at broad averages while necessarily venture capital and ambitious start ups need to be quite exceptional. The broad averages say next to nothing about the exceptional cases. In particular, the probability of being exceptional is just irrelevant. Instead, what is just crucial is the conditional probability of being exceptional given the details of the specific project. So, it's just crucial to consider the details of a particular project.

A sad part about venture capital is that it is looking for exceptional projects, necessarily ones that will in effect push forward the boundary of computing in our civilization, and doing so with in nearly all cases very poor qualifications in doing or evaluating such projects.

And venture capital has another problem: Too few projects on the other side of the table have much potential of such pushing the boundary.

For all concerned, only a tiny fraction of the venture general partners have any hope at all of evaluating projects that push the boundary.

We should be making much faster progress.

</comment><comment><USER28> An article on reasons to raise venture capital would be more appropriate. The default should be bootstrapping.

<comment><USER29> Oh, the article's definitely appropriate, because right now there are a lot of people for whom raising money is basically the point.

I mentor sometimes at startup events, and there's a big difference between the people there to build a business and the people who have been freebasing startup propaganda. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the post-bubble period when startups were unfashionable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wonder if any VC would refuse to invest money in a very promising startup after realizing the funders are not "aligned" with the VC goals ( providing the money would give a certain amount of control of course ).

We put the blame on funders for accepting, but maybe offering is to be considered as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> I heard an interesting explanation a while back ago about not seeking venture capital, and instead seeking an investor.

Investors are more committed and interested (by the explainer) to the entrepreneur instead of looking for deal flow and exits above all else (which I guess most VCs are more interested in)

</comment><comment><USER32> Mirror: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/five- reasons-not-to-raise-venture-capital)

</comment><comment><USER33> "2\. Raising venture capital doesn't make you a good person." Is there anyone out there trying to raise money because they think it'll make them a good person?

<comment><USER34> I think that would be probably better put as "Not raising venture capital doesn't make you a bad person", but that doesn't sound quite as good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ... because equity is gold.</comment>


GitLab SSH broken - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/907133090530721792 <comment><USER2> They updated the certificate recently.

[https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/905862774340939777](https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/905862774340939777)

There are also some replies on that tweet reporting current problems. "ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host"</comment>


Learning the Meaning of Words - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/118227548810368513262/posts/YLkAR2Duizw

<comment><USER2> Link to the paper, rather than another bloody g+ plug: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3781.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3781.pdf)</comment>


Quora Is Down, and They're "Not Pointing Fingers at EC2" - <AUTHOR> http://quora.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been debating where to put the servers for our startup -- Rackspace is looking better and better.

<comment><USER2> Despite the fact that my site has been down for 3 hours, I'd still say Amazon is a great place for your startup.

Just don't use EBS.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like the AWS outages are happing more and more frequently -- didn't you guys just have an EBS issue about a month ago?

<comment><USER2> > didn't you guys just have an EBS issue about a month ago?

Yes. Since then we've moved about 1/2 of our stuff off of EBS, but we're still migrating away from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Scary. I actually remember those TV segments from my childhood. 0_0

And I'm feeling better that I decided to go with Rackspace instead of EC2.</comment>


Show HN: Smoothie, a GIF Camera that respects your privacy. - <AUTHOR> http://www.smoothiecam.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I helped write some of the first iterations of this app. This is one of the few camera apps that doesn't even have a backend server. The goal was to create a fun way to share a moment with somebody. I'd be curious to see what those on HN with an iPhone think.</comment>


Alphabet vs. the SEC: Google fights YouTube revenue disclosure - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-sec-wants-to-know-why-google-doesnt-report-youtube-revenue-2018-02-26 <comment><USER2> I find it unfathomable he doesn't have a firm pulse on how YouTube is progressing as a business. It is effectively their Instagram and could end up being bigger than Google search itself. It's their next step forward in monetization which clearly (one would think) would solilcit regular oversight by the founder of the company.</comment>


Massive MRI dataset released as part of ongoing AI project - <AUTHOR> https://www.radiologybusiness.com/topics/artificial-intelligence/nyu-facebook-release-knee-mri-dataset-ai <comment><USER2> I'm a radiology resident with a master's in computer science. It's great that healthcare organizations are finally releasing larger datasets. There's much progress to be made in medical ML/AI.

However, my attitude towards radiology AI startups has changed quite a bit since starting residency. There really isn't a sustainable business model that involves selling standalone AI products, or even software suites. I think AI is a feature for the scanner, the PACS or for existing dictation software. That is, I think PowerScribe or GE would help a lot of radiologists by integrating AI features into their existing tech stacks.

I also think the only feasible exit strategy for radiology AI/ML startups is to get bought out for their tech talent and algorithms. I don't know of any hospitals/clinics/imaging centers that are buying AI products directly from startups. There's a ton of hype, but I'm not aware of a single positive-cash- flow radiology AI company.

<comment><USER3> It seems like reducing the cost/making MRIs more comfortable would be much more useful.

Presumably if the machines didn't cost 3-5 million, with huge energy requirements, etc, you could get scanned a lot more often which probably be better than just using AI/ML?

If you were able to scan cancer patients cheaply and quickly for a much lower cost and faster, I'd assume that would have a significant impact.

<comment><USER4> MRIs are typically (from my perspective working in the health insurance industry) profit centers for those who own them.

Which leads to perverse incentives, like MRI manufacturers assisting physicians with setting up imaging consortiums, promising recoupment and profits within 18 months. Perhaps unsurprisingly, such doctors order imaging notably more often than others.

Low field MRI machines are around $1M. $3M gets you a brand new, state of the art 3 tesla machine.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like an obvious "disruption strategy" for a startup here. Why hasn't anyone tried that yet?

<comment><USER6> Many states limit supply of MRI machines through a "certificate of need" program where you have to convince a regulatory body that you should be allowed to own one.

<comment><USER4> That's part of the issue. MRI manufacturers "assisting" people through the process of this certificate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think either of these are much more useful links:

[http://fastmri.org/](http://fastmri.org/)

[https://fastmri.med.nyu.edu/](https://fastmri.med.nyu.edu/)

Looks like a decent effort, FAIR and NYU involved, open source baseline system etc. Still have to apply for access to the dataset though.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. @dang could you look at possibly swapping the link out with the fastmri.org link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is for MRI reconstruction, it has no other labels or annotations, as far as I know, only the raw data in k-space and the reconstruction. It's also only for knee.

<comment><USER10> How are they expecting 'faster' MRIs from this? Are they searching for a way to hone in on the important parts to take more detailed scans?

<comment><USER11> The data is sampled in the Fourier domain. A complete scan (frequency up to a desired Nyquist limit) takes a long time for the MRI machine to acquire all of these samples.

If you can get by with sampling only a subset of this space and approximate/reconstruct the rest with a mathematical model, yet yield reasonable accuracy (wrt diagnosis or other criterion) relative to full sampling, the MRI session will be a lot faster because you don't need to acquire all the data you did before.

<comment><USER10> I'm not clear which scenario you are alluding to. It the expectation figuring out only how to sparsely sample the same area or how to quickly sample the larger area so that a detailed scan can be taken after that?

<comment><USER12> The former.

It is known that we can reconstruct MR images at full fidelity- with _no_ loss of information- by randomly sampling "k-space" at something like 10% of the usual sampling rate. This leads to much faster acquisitions. I believe Siemens has a product based on this technology that is currently going to market- [https://usa.healthcare.siemens.com/magnetic-resonance- imagin...](https://usa.healthcare.siemens.com/magnetic-resonance-imaging/mri- technologies/speed-technologies/compressed-sensing)

One issue, though, is that truly random sampling isn't great from a practical point of view. Sampling patterns are constrained by other equipment considerations. There is also the issue of noise.

Machine learning for MR (and CT, and PET/SPECT, and...) is an active area of research, eg [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.06869.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.06869.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a dangerous research direction under-regulated by the FDA. In order to get this sort of thing approved you just have to prove it doesn't affect the diagnosis of a small set of abnormalities. The power of these models is enormous. They could potentially recognize and "smooth" out only certain abnormalities and there is no real way to guarantee that they won't do that without testing it on all abnormalities.

<comment><USER13> I just spent 20% of my time at RSNA arguing with people doing similar things and everyone seems to be happy to jump over the FDA's existing bar for reconstruction algorithms. However previous reconstruction algorithms weren't universal function approximators with the potential to exhibit abnormality- specific behavior.

We know very well these models have the capacity to recognize certain abnormalities or learn to model the normal state of anatomy. There is also the danger of the fact that deep learning powered reconstruction will not work alongside a radiologist like other AI for medical imaging applications such as nodule detection. This means we won't find the problem with FDA's low regulatory bar until patients start dying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This makes me so happy I've been looking for good MRI datasets...

<comment><USER15> A few years ago, we at Harvard have released a high quality data set of 1500 people with MRI images and behavioral information. You can get the dataset [1] and/or read the Nature paper [2].

[1] [https://www.neuroinfo.org/gsp/](https://www.neuroinfo.org/gsp/)

[2] [https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201531](https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201531)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has someone done any work using ResNet architectures with mri/xray images? Would be interested to here hows that working.

<comment><USER7> Yes.

Plenty of Kaggle competitions in this space.

Generally UNet/RetiniaNet for finding the object of interest, then classifiers built on ResNet (or variants) feature extractor works well.

Here's a good overview from the recent Pneumonia detection challenge (chest XRay images): [https://www.kaggle.com/c/rsna-pneumonia-detection- challenge/...](https://www.kaggle.com/c/rsna-pneumonia-detection- challenge/discussion/70421)</comment></comment>


Github: thekarangoel is now karan - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/karan

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a brave new world folks. I was able to snag my most-wanted username on my favorite website.

A tip - if your desired username is taken, check the person's profile. If it's inactive, report it and GH will delete it.</comment>


Twitter Founders Say They're In for the Long Haul - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/the-twitter-guys-were-in-it-the-long-haul/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this what founders say just before an acquisition?

<comment><USER3> _"If an acquirer thinks you're going to stick around no matter what, they'll be more likely to buy you, because if they don't and you stick around, you'll probably grow, your price will go up, and they'll be left wishing they'd bought you earlier..."_ \-- The Hardest Lessons for Startups To Learn #5

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is commentary - original item linked to from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628724>

</comment><comment><USER5> I just hope they don't run out of cash 'in the Long Haul'. Must be some secret revenue source they're not mentioning.

<comment><USER6> Depends how long is long. Fred Wilson stated that their latest VC is about having a war-chest for the purpose of convincing people that they're going to be around long enough to make it worth your while to build twitter-based services. <http://www.youtube.com/user/insiteny></comment></comment>


Ask HN: In times of corona how do you tip so. w/o transferring physical money? - <AUTHOR> In times of corona with social distancing, e.g. when the home delivery is already paid online and the delivery guy doesn't want to touch anything you handover (could be already infected), how do you give a tip to somebody? or to somebody in need on the street when you don't have any coins with you? <comment><USER2> Its safe to keep using cash [https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus- cash/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus-cash/)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Money may contain a host of infectious agents, including coronaviruses, at > any time, regardless of the presence of a novel outbreak. For this reason > the WHO recommends — in general — washing one's hands after handling money.

It became common practice that the delivery personal is leaving the package and backing off. While keeping distance, trying not to engage in further physical exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Like we always do, by paying more than the amount on the bill using a (contactless) card or phone.

People in need are a bigger problem, they do not carry a payment terminal...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not aware of any online shops where you can "tip" on top of the payment - e.g. for postal service.

Also, a "tip" is defined (at least for me) as "a thank you for a service well provided". Therefore I can't calculate in advance how satisfied I will be with the delivery, e.g. if it's on time and the person is friendly then the tip will be larger, versus late and cold pizza...</comment></comment>


Google plans to bring back paperback books - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,551363,00.html

<comment><USER2> I've been wondering how long it would take for someone to start doing On Demand Printing of books out of copyright.

I'm really not sure how I feel about Google printing books that are out of print though. On the one hand, I think it would be awesome to be able to get ahold of some of those rare, hard to find books that just sound awesome, but are ridiculously expensive. On the other hand, it seems a little wrong to not compensate the authors, who still own the copyright for the book.

The only other question I have is: price. I think there is at least some market for cheap, on demand printing of just about any book. If I can get (throwing numbers out there) any book printed for 100 page for $0.75 (or something equivalent), with reasonable shipping, I would definitely turn that way for a large portion of my reading (rather than buying used books for essentially the price of shipping).

</comment><comment><USER3> pg is there any chance that you could get On Lisp printed this way? I know its not out of copyright, but you have freely put the pdf up on your site.</comment>


Short Methods in Arithmetic - <AUTHOR>

Someone posted, a while back, a link to the Wired Wiki on some shortcuts in Arithmetic. I thought I would post those plus more that I have found.
To multiply a number by 5, 50, 500, etc., divide by two and multiply by 10, 100, 1000 (or multiply then divide by two).
Ex: 84 * 5 = (84 / 2) * 10 = 420
To multiply a number by 9, multiply by 10 and subtract the multiplier.
Ex: 35 * 9 = 35 * 10 - 35 = 315
To multiply by 11, multiply by 10 and add the multiplier.
Ex: 76 * 11 = 76 * 10 + 76 = 836
To multiply by 25, 250, etc., divide by 4 then multiply by 100, 1000, etc (or multiply then divide).
Ex: 52 * 25 = (52 / 4) * 100 = 1300
To multiply by 125, divide by 8 and multiply by 1000 (or multiply then divide).
Ex: 848 * 125 = (848 / 8) * 1000 = 106000
To multiply a number by 33 1/3, 16 2/3, 12 1/2, 8 1/3, 6 1/4, multiply by 100 and divide by 3, 6, 8, 12, or 16 (or divide then multiply).
Ex: 84 * 8 1/3 = (84 * 100) / 12 = 700
To multiply a number ending in 1/2, as 2 1/2, 4 1/2, 11 1/2, by itself, multiply the whole number by the whole number plus 1 and add 1/4 to the product.
Ex: 8 1/2 * 8 1/2 = (8 * (8 + 1)) + 1/4 = 72 1/4 (72.25)
Those are all of the ones I've found thus far in my books and on the internet that seem the most applicable (there are some that are shortcuts but they aren't by much). <comment><USER2> To square a number, adjust it up and down by the same amount to get two numbers. If you choose carefully, one of them will be easy to multiply by. Multiply them, then add the square of the amount adjusted.

Ex: 53 x 53 converts to 50 x 56. 50 x 56 (using your methods) us 100 x 28, or 2800. We adjusted by 3, so add 9 giving 2809.

I used this the other day to compute 3^10 in my head and stunned my work colleagues.

3^10 = (3^5)^2 = 243^2.

243^2 = 200 x 286 + 43^2 = 57200 + (40x46+9) = 57200 + 1840 + 9 = 59049.

Alternatives:

240^2 + 6x240 + 9 = 57600 + 1440 + 9 which are all numbers geeks might know (although this is a completely different method)

243^2 = 236 x 250 + 49 = 118 x 500 + 49 = 59 x 1000 + 49

Finally, 3^10 is also 9 x 3^8, and you should all know 3^8 is 6561, because that's so close to 2^16/10, so the answer is also 65610-6561, but I can't do subtractions like that in my head.

As with most things, constant practice helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> A book I read way back was on the Trachtenberg System. Amazon has it with ISBN-10: 0313232008 and ISBN-13: 978-0313232008, but way too expensive (I thought the one I read was paperback). Wikipedia describes it at:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachtenberg_system>

which also mentions "Vedic mathematics,"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Bharati_Krishna_Tirtha%27...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Bharati_Krishna_Tirtha%27s_Vedic_mathematics)</comment>


How We Increased Our iOS App Conversion Rate By 500% - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pilipop.com/2013/11/14/how-we-increased-our-conversion-rate-by-500/

<comment><USER2> Good feedback, thanks. And kudos for the neat charts.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Dark Sky Replacement for Android - <AUTHOR> Apple officially shut down Dark Sky for all Android users yesterday. The app helpfully cleared out the 7 day forecast on the widget to let me know that it really wasn't going to work at all after August 1st.
What is currently the best replacement on Android? I don't mind paying for a reasonable subscription service if its privacy conscious or atleast isn't egregiously anti-consumer privacy. Dark Sky hadn't been as good for the past year but previously it was amazing knowing when rain was starting and stopping down to the minute, so it'd be nice to have great features like that.
I initially switched to Dark Sky and became a paying user due to the controversy of Accuweather's free app taking and selling user's location data without permissions [1] so I'd prefer not going back to their ecosystem. However when I was doing light research when the shut down was announced I couldn't find any good alternatives. Carrot seemed like the strongest contender, but it relies on Dark Sky's API in the background [2] so I don't know if its safe from Apple. After deleting Dark Sky I realized that on my 6 home screens half had some kind of widget with weather data from Dark Sky so I'd really like to get something setup soon.
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/accuweather-caught-sending-geo-location-data-even-when-denied-access/
[2] http://support.meetcarrot.com/weather/ <comment><USER2> Right now, the best solution I've found is forecastie. it is open source an available on F-droid. Here is the link to the repo: [https://github.com/martykan/forecastie](https://github.com/martykan/forecastie)

It uses Openweathermap for its data.

<comment><USER3> What did Dark Sky use? Their source was always very accurate for me.

<comment><USER2> I'm honestly not sure on that one. I suspect they used NOAA data, as well as had partnerships with different weather stations. Based on their size, they were probably doing their own weather models and predictions, or may be had meteorologist on staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure about the Android version, but the cheapest subscription option for Carrot on iOS enables selectable data sources. Accuracy will vary for your area but there may be a good replacement.

</comment><comment><USER5> darksky.net the web site still works on Android</comment>


The desktop is not dead dammit - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390630,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585

<comment><USER2> Another thing he failed to mention: expandability. I got so sick of all these different external hard drives, each with their own power brick and USB terminator (micro? mini? heck knows). Bought a Mac Pro and put them all on the internal drive bays - now everything lives in a single box and runs off a single power supply. I also put a blu-ray burner in the 2nd optical bay - another external box saved.

The same is true of other outboard hardware - for example, I use a UAD-2 card for music production. Sure they have a FireWire version for laptop/iMac owners, but in place of another box with another power brick taking up another (often scarce) port, I got a tiny little PCI card that goes _in_ the box and is never seen or heard from again.

I understand not everyone needs tons of storage, or dedicated audio/video hardware, but if you do, desktop can't be beat.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont think i will ever convert to Laptops for fulltime work. They are fine for on the go and inbetween, but for serious work i want my desktop. Why?

1) Much more ergonomical. I get neck pain when working on my Macbook for hours, looking down at the screen

2) I need two external screens. A Laptop Screen + an external Screen is again not ergonomical, pains my eyes to look from a decent 24" into the Macbook Display with its insane pixel density. I like same pixel density on both screens, and same size

3) Noise. For what i am doing the Macbook constantly screams at me through its fans (i7 quad version). My Desktop is silent when doing the same tasks

4) Glossy Screens, i totally hate them and today its almost impossible to get around them.

5) Laptop only is a compromise. A 15" is pretty huge and heavy. A decent Desktop for serious work + Macbook Air for on the go would be perfect.

6) Sync tools are so good nowadays (yay dropbox) that its pretty easy to have everything in sync across multiple machines.

<comment><USER4> Have you looked at any of the ThinkPads? It's pretty easy to get one with a matte screen (in fact, I'm typing on one right now!), and from my experience they're fairly quiet. Not the most beautiful machines, though.

<comment><USER5> 15" and 17" MBPs have matte screen options. Or you could spend no more than $10 and buy the screen protector (it's more like $2 if you buy it online though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are more or less the same reasons I pointed out in a post from three years ago about desktops versus laptops: [http://jseliger.com/2008/12/26/computer-post-desktop-or- lapt...](http://jseliger.com/2008/12/26/computer-post-desktop-or- laptopnotebook/) , and, as people observed then, some of them can be overcome: external peripherals for ergonomics, larger screens, and extra storage.

The real question is whether you a) can or want to afford a laptop, which still tend to be relatively more expensive than desktops and b) whether you're actually mobile enough to bother. In my case, I have a great chair, a sweet desk, two large monitors, and a room of my own; this means I tend to do my best work there.

(Note: I also left this comment on pcmag.com).

<comment><USER7> > some of them can be overcome: external peripherals for ergonomics, larger > screens, and extra storage.

Once you've attached an external monitor, external keyboard and mouse, and an external hard drive to a laptop, you're using the laptop exactly as you would a desktop tower: something you only need to touch if you want to insert a piece of removable media.

In that case, you might as well fork out a few more dollars and put a real desktop tower in that space. Sync everything and enjoy the extra speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really hope it isn't.

As someone who enjoys tinkering with hardware, having access to the internals of a computer that desktops afford is just plain fun. I've never experienced the same with laptops, which typically require jumping through flaming hoops just to get the case open.

<comment><USER9> I don't think such things will go away. HAM radio and radio operators are still plentiful, even though they are technically unnecessary for 99.9% of the population.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Even if Dell were to shutter their doors tomorrow, there would still be plenty of hobbyists and those willing to supply them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reads more as an argument against netbooks than an argument for workstations. I don't think anyone really needs convincing that netbooks are dying, but it's not desktops that are killing them.

While I agree that the workstation is not dead, the reasons listed are neither compelling nor convincing. #1 Ergonomics, #6 Keyboard and #2 Screen Space all make sense, but I am typing this right now on a Macbook Pro connected to a 27" monitor with a bluetooth keyboard at my desk. Suggesting that these things aren't available to a laptop is a false dichotomy.

#3 Storage is similarly unconvincing. All my photos I host on SmugMug and music on Google Music. This not only removes storage requirements from my laptop, it also provides access from other devices.

#5 Dents and Dings is just ridiculous.

Laptops not only have almost all these things available to them, they also have the added advantage of portability.

If one were to make an argument against laptops, I would say the biggest drawback would be the security risk posed by portability, as others have mentioned. Secondary to that would be #5 Processing Power provided by heavy duty workstations for things such as video processing. For other applications, laptop processors are more than capable.

</comment><comment><USER11> Now consider what the average users buy: for every 20 laptops sold at the big retail store where my friend works, only 1 desktop is sold. It's pretty obvious that people prefer portable all-in-one computers. They also hate cables (me too). Intel WiDi (wireless display connection) is what everyone is talking about these days. I don't see any future for desktops among general public only professional niche groups which need a lot of cheap computational power. Again gaming makes much more sense on tablets and gaming consoles, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ultimately the economics of a desktop just work better.

You can build an i5-2500k, 8gb ram, 1 tb hdd, gaming caliber video card machine for $600.

Rather than buying a $2500 macbook pro, you can get a gaming desktop with a 30" display, and a macbook air/ultraportable and really come out way on top.

Of course there's the question of juggling 2 environments if you have complex needs, but most people would be fine with a simple dropbox setup or something.

<comment><USER7> Your last point is really interesting.

I use a desktop at home and a small laptop on the go, and everything I need is always on both computers. Files, bookmarks, browsing history, you name it. I can just log into either computer and keep working. The advent of cloud-based synchronization tools makes it very easy for people to juggle 2 or more computers. So instead of fighting over the "Desktop of laptop?" question, one can get both and not suffer any inconvenience.

After all, what would the average North American middle-class family do if they needed a vehicle that was both large enough for the kids' hockey games and fuel-efficient enough for the dad's long commute? They wouldn't settle for one mid-sized car; they'd buy a minivan _and_ a Prius.

The proportion of people who are "always on the go" is rather small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1) Ok. I'll agree to that.

2) HDTVs suck as displays when you are doing anything other than presenting content.

3) External Hard Drives take up about as much space as internal hard drives, but you have the option of where you would like to put them. How is a desktop with 2 big drives more convenient than a laptop with an SSD and an external drive?

4) Apple's laptop lineup is purely sandy bridge now, and those processors scream.

5) My Desktop is thrashed. Tons of dings and dents from my chair bumping into it on the floor. Also, whenever I need to get to the cabling at the back, I pull the tower forward, and then push it back when I'm done. Sometimes it catches on my desk and I get a huge scrape across the side.

6) My Macbook Air has the exact same keyboard as my iMac. Both work great. I don't do data entry so the numpad isn't necessary.

Overall.. this article is a shot from the hip attempt to attract attention ("dammit"). It lacks substance though.

<comment><USER14> >It lacks substance though.

It has much more substance than your response, which consists mostly "oh yeah? well for my use case...". Kinda a dumb way to respond to an article that argues "hey, these have got their fair share of uses cases that they'll be sticking around".

I use an hdtv as my primary monitor all the time, I know plenty of people who do the same. It all depends on the particular display if it will look decent or not.

External drives are kind of a pain in the ass. Except for the drive I move between devices all the time, its just more to get in the way.

Ah, so one line of laptops has good hardware. That does not mean the pc moving ahead, portables eventually catching up cycle is dead, or that software's ballooning requirements are ever going to stop ballooning.

You treat your tower like shit and are surprised it's beat to hell?

Yes, the itty bitty mac keyboards are neat on a desktop, but they're infuriatingly slow for a lot of things you apparently don't need to do. I have numbers to calculate and programs to write, consequently I have an apple bluetooth keyboard-shaped dent in my wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The arguments regarding desktop computing environment (display, ergonomic keyboard, mouse) are irrelevant. Any one of those things that is a necessary expense for a desktop could just as easily be used to transform your laptop's computing experience to a more traditional 'desktop' one.

The arguments regarding cost and horsepower are more compelling, and even though the gap is closing, I doubt that a laptop will ever outperform a desktop of comparable costs. It's just cheaper to manufacture components that are bigger and less heat-sensitive.

</comment><comment><USER16> 50% of these (1,2,6) can just as easily be applied to laptops as desktops.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a good argument saying the desktop is still alive, but it is a bad argument saying that it isn't dying.

Most of the points that the author illustrates the importance of desktops with will matter less and less in the next 5 years as storage and CPU power become cheaper. But most importantly, as hardware innovations make tablets convenient to use for typing (1) and easy to use with large displays (2), the desktop will become a niche power-user market.

(1) <http://wingstand.com/> (2) [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/breakthrough- device-of-ces-201...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/breakthrough-device-of- ces-2011-motorola-atrix-phone-pc/43406)

</comment><comment><USER18> My new Macbook Air is fantastic for on-the-go work, but I don't think I'll ever give up my desktop. I've used my Air exclusively over my two week vacation (and I've gotten lots of work done on this little guy), but I still find myself missing my 24" monitor, full keyboard, and mouse.

My ideal setup, which I've only recently implemented, is a powerful desktop workstation with a thin-but-fast mobile laptop. My custom desktop build and the Air fit this perfectly.

This fall, I'm studying abroad in London and I'm only taking my Air with me... very interested to see if I get frustrated with its limitations or not.

<comment><USER19> You can close your Air, hook it up to a 24" monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and use it like a desktop. Best of both worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What he misses is that you can generally have the desktop experience by hooking up a nice big second monitor, comfortable keyboard & mouse and an external hard drive. That usually means having a dedicated space in your office/home but with a laptop you're not tied to that space.

I'm actually surprised he didn't mention gaming as a big driver for desktops as an area which need the big fans or graphics cards that you don't get in laptops (though gaming laptops have come a long way in the last 5 years)

</comment><comment><USER21> The only time that I've ever _really_ needed a laptop was at college. I was constantly on the go, always in a collaborative environment with others, working on projects or assignments, etc. But when I got home and needed to really hunker down and get something done, then in went the VGA cable and USB peripherals.

My Thinkpad doesn't get a whole lot of use these days, I've gone with a desktop to suit my needs and I keep the laptop around for those odd times where I travel.

</comment><comment><USER22> The screen real estate argument as well as the separate keyboard/trackpad argument never made sense to me for a MacBook Air. Can't you hook it up to a Cinema Display (which has hookups for USB, Thunderbolt, etc)? I also use a wireless keyboard/trackpad with my air, so I still have desktop ergonomics. But I can understand the argument for extendability.

</comment><comment><USER23> The desktop will be around for a long time. It's just not a toy anymore -- nobody buys it because it's shiny these days.

</comment><comment><USER24> "A family of four will certainly have more than 20GB to 60GB of photos and home videos"

a family of four will also probably have more than one computer. you can pick up a 2TB NAS for about $150, that should be plenty of room for all their home movies and photos and it is accessible from all their computers.

</comment><comment><USER25> The sudden explosion in other form factors has people thinking they'll somehow replace the desktop. Unless my office starts making everyone work on a tablet, this is not the case.

<comment><USER26> You won't be sitting there hunched over a tablet. But you might hook your tablet to a monitor, attach a keyboard and mouse to it, and run "conventional" software.

Monitors, keyboards, and mice aren't going anywhere. But it won't be very many years before a desktop machine becomes a niche item for those who even today can't get enough power (3D artists, etc), while the rest of use are using one variety or another of portable core device with multiple IO options. (Though it isn't tomorrow, either. This stuff actually exists now, but it's bleeding, bleeding edge, as in the "cut yourself" type of bleeding edge. But still, that will fix itself.)

<comment> mkr-hn External GPUs. The on-board capacity is a non-issue if you can give your work laptop (or tablet) a gaming/rendering GPU when you need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > The desktop is not dead dammit

Did anyone claim it was?

<comment><USER28> Yes. Though really this "prediction" comes along at least once a month, every month, since the mid 90s when the desktop PC rose to prominence. Prior to that the "prediction" was that the desktop PC either wouldn't exist, or would never take off.

The only thing that makes the claim different this time is it's IBM saying it, not some journalist hack. See here:

[http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/081011-ibm- pc.html?pag...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/081011-ibm- pc.html?page=1)

<comment><USER29> Thanks very much for this link. My reading of the article is that communications and social interaction will be the main use for computing devices, and that market will grow significantly. It might be that the desktop PC is still sold in large quantities for those that need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I disagree about the keyboard. My thinkpad's laptop is much more confortable for me than full sized keyboards.

<comment><USER31> Lenovo makes desktop versions of the Thinkpad keyboard, sounds like you might like one of those: [http://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-USB-Keyboard-with- TrackPoint/...](http://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-USB-Keyboard-with- TrackPoint/dp/B002ONCC6G/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> And, of course, high-end gaming. You can build a PC that runs the latest titles for a fraction of the price of a gaming laptop. Its pretty easy to learn at reddit.com/r/buildapc

</comment><comment><USER33> ~7 billion people, ~2 billion PCs and ~5 billion Cell phones.

</comment><comment><USER34> Of course not. It just isn't the only game in town anymore.

</comment><comment><USER35> Probably wrote that on his grampa box.</comment>


Scribd Protests SOPA By Making A Billion Pages On The Web Disappear - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/21/scribd-protests-sopa/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to be working for me, when I visit some of Scribd's varied completely legitimate content.

Like this 288 page book, found in seconds on Google (does Kernighan still work there?) , which I guess must be in public domain, right? [http://www.scribd.com/doc/59247191/PRENTICE-HALL-The-C- Progr...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/59247191/PRENTICE-HALL-The-C-Programming- Language-Second-Edition)

Just how much of Scribd's value comes from books like this?

<comment><USER3> Are you outside of the US? Reluctantly, we decided to target the animation to US users because there is unfortunately little that foreign citizens can do to stop SOPA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Serious question, here. How difficult would it be for anti-SOPA corporations and supporters to block congressional IP addresses?

Assumption (possibly incorrect) on my part that it would be fairly easy to identify blocks and ranges of congressional IP addresses, and that it would be legal to block them in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never really understood how SOPA will deal with websites that are indisputably multi-use. I don't think anyone could, with a straight face, argue that Scribd doesn't have a significant amount of non-copyright infringing use (unlike Napster, which was close to 99%+ copyright infringing by volume) - thought it does have a significant component of copyright infringements that rights holders are always having to stamp out with DMCA takedown requests.

So - what to do with sites like Scribd, post SOPA? Just blacklist the entire site because it gets a lot of DMCA requests?

What do the SOPA proponents (do we have _ANY_ of those on HN, I really would love to be educated by them) have to say about that?

<comment><USER6> I think we have arrived here, in some part, because of how much some sites relied on safe harbor provisions. They were added to protect a host which had a tiny bit of inadvertent infringing material. But people have been (ab)using that as a free pass to deliberately host copyrighted things until they get caught. If everybody claims to be indisputably multi-use, the net effect is that no one is.

Since the DMCA appears to have failed (in the eyes of copyright holders), and since that failure appears in large part to be due what they consider a loophole, don't be surprised if the next round of legislation is not going to include the loophole.

If you don't want the government regulating your business, a little preemptive self regulation often goes a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We as the internet should do everything in our power to mute Congress. Encourage Twitter and Facebook other social networks to shutdown their accounts for a day. Show them that their laws impact them as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are sooo many factors about this that its hard to make a point that covers everything, and its had to stay partial when explaining your point. From reading the comments etc and various reports about SOPA, it seems everyone is going on about the music companies rather than the artists they represent. IMO the music companies are the ones who have been making the money off of someone else's talent for a long time now, perhaps taking more than their fair share. Do I feel sorry for the profit driven record labels? No I don't. Its no coincidence that all of the richest artists in the world are the ones who have built their own record labels and cut out the middle man, and hats off to them, the ones with the talent are the ones who should make the biggest share. With the opening of apple's itunes it gave (even the smallest) artists the chance of putting their content on the internet to buy, without having to necessarily deal with the companies who have have been making millions/billions off them for years.. Several artists (and i would go as far as saying most) have now accepted that downloading music is the new norm and itunes is the way to keep the money coming in, whilst also being able to appeal to the masses. When you read ([https://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt- downloading-movies-and-m...](https://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading- movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/\)then) take into account that alot of music artists have actually uploaded their own albums to torrent sites prior to release to gain attention, it would seem the artists know exactly how to play the market. I can truthfully say I have been to many gigs I wouldn't have known about etc had I not downloaded the artists albums, I have also bought merchandise as a result of this.

then you read something like [https://torrentfreak.com/retired-computerless- woman-fined-fo...](https://torrentfreak.com/retired-computerless-woman-fined- for-pirating-hooligan-movie-111222/) , and realise this is what would happen if the music companies had their way. Profit at any costs, even when it cant even be proven that any crime has been breached.

At the end of the day I see the music companies fighting a losing battle (the megalupload takedown certainly didnt help), the musicians still "making it rich" and the consumers who buy music STILL buying music, though direct from the musician, thats why the companies are trying to have this act passed.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would be interested in seeing some stats on number and % of unique visitors that clicked on the 'call now' or 'write now' buttons. ( see: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/75153093/Tribe-Legis-Memo-on- SOPA-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/75153093/Tribe-Legis-Memo-on- SOPA-12-6-11-1) )

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be awesome if that "Call Now" button was implemented with Twilio Client to directly call someone.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good start.

For maximum impact: Google should disable all of its public facing web servers for a week.

I think Congress would get its act together pretty darn quickly if there were no Google search or GMail.

<comment><USER12> So you think Google should fuck over millions of people to protest Congress _potentially_ fucking over millions of people??

<comment><USER13> I think a good start would be filtering out access to all government IPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is certainly good of Scribd, but I suspect this is more about "Hey, we've got a billion pages!" than it's about "Let's stop SOPA!"

<comment><USER15> Oh, it's about SOPA, trust me. I felt defenseless when the DMCA (and the "European DMCA", 2004/48/EC) were introduced (I went to a couple of demonstrations, but that only goes so far), and SOPA is even worse. It's nice to work at a place where you can have more of an impact, and take a stance that has an actual chance of being heard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I applaud all of these anti-SOPA efforts. What I can't figure out is why our legislators are hell bent on passing this thing.

I've not heard of a single rational person being individually in favor of this bill. Now, that certainly doesn't mean there aren't any, but by and large I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of US citizens are either ambivalent or in opposition when it comes to SOPA. The only groups that are for this bill, so far as I can tell, are big content providers and their lobbies.

If almost no one is in favor of a piece of legislation, and there are millions vehemently opposed to it, why in God's name is it still being considered? Is it really just so certain Congressman can collect money from the proponents of the bill? That seems far too cynical to be accurate. If there's more truth in that statement than false, I think we owe it to ourselves to never re-elect a single sitting member of this Congress.

The longer I live, the more ashamed I become of the United States government.

<comment><USER5> If I worked for the music or entertainment industry, then the act, as described <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act> would be very attractive.

I'm sure HBO, and all of its employees, and their families, would appreciate being able to somehow DNS blackhole all the search engines leading to torrents of the content they try and sell for $18/month on digital cable, or $85/Season for DVDs.

If you are Adele, or one of the tens of thousands of artists like her (or their families, or the people that provide services to them) - don't you think you'd like to DNS blackhole, and remove from every search engine of note, <http://mp3skull.com/mp3/someone_like_you_adele.html> starting today?

The Global entertainment industry is worth 100s of billions of dollars, much of it created in the United States - SOPA is an attempt, however ham handed, at protecting that industry.

I'm curious, dos1 - how would you protect rights holders? I don't have any good answers, but perhaps you do.

<comment><USER17> > how would you protect rights holders?

The entertainment business hasn't ceased to exist despite a decade of internet piracy -- and in fact seems to be doing quite well. Both of your examples, Adele and HBO ([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/media/time- warner...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/media/time-warner- reports-double-digit-revenue-increase-expects-more.html)) are doing great -- so I wouldn't hold them up as examples of the plight of the entertainment industry.

So, I'd ask you instead, how can you show that our existing laws that protect rights holders aren't adequate.

<comment><USER5> The United States has been pretty effective at shutting down wholesale internet piracy.

What many (most?) commentators fail to understand is that the entertainment industry is not interested in anything that account for less than 1% of the population. If 2.6 million americans wish to use some wacky "Direct Connect" or "Darknet" or "Unregistered Usenet" system - have at it. You are round off error.

It's when it moves into the wholesale category of piracy - ala: <http://www.google.com/search?q=adele+mp3+download>

Then they have a problem. As do the artists.

It would be interesting to see a study of "Health of Entertainment Industries with heavy emphasis on Content Resale" vs "Protection of Intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, internet policing" in various countries.

HBO and Adele may be doing okay - how many thousands of artists can't make a living (and don't even try) - because they would be just ripped off.

Don't get me wrong - I'm opposed to SOPA, but not because I don't think it wouldn't help the entertainment industry - I'm certain it would. I'm opposed to SOPA because I care more about the internet industry (which SOPA would hurt).

At the end of the day - it's really a question of which we value more - creation of high-value entertainment content, or individual rights, freedoms, and the entire internet industry.

I know where my vote is.

<comment><USER17> > how many thousands of artists can't make a living (and don't even try) - > because they would be just ripped off.

This is the crux of the issue. I contend that more art is being created now than ever before. I know so many musicians in my personal life, I can't even keep track of all of their albums and shows. On SoundCloud and YouTube and Internet Archive I could listen to music freely given for months on end and never listen to the same song twice.

However, I have never once met a musically inclined person that decided not to make music because of GrooveShark or BitTorrent. I've never heard someone say "well, Adele is only worth 20 million, and I'll never be as big as her, so why bother?"

<comment><USER18> _ding_ Your experience mirrors mine. I actually do play an instrument, but I'm not "talented" in any stretch of the word; I just enjoy it. I've said for a long time there are 2 types of musicians; those that have to do it and those that can afford to. I'm in the latter camp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _This comment contained unauthorized information about the rectangular shape of the new iProduct and has been censored by an agency who's identity has also been censored for national security. Thank you for your continued cooperation._</comment>


Hacker News categorizer with MonkeyLearn - <AUTHOR> http://hackernews.demos.monkeylearn.com/ We used MonkeyLearn to train a machine learning categorizer with categories like `programming`, `business`, `science`, and downloaded samples from relevant sub-reddits to do the training.
The plot at the top shows you the distribution of categories for each hour, and you can filter the news by category.
The actual classifier is public so anyone can use it: https://app.monkeylearn.com/accounts/login/?next=/categorizer/projects/cl_GLSChuJQ/
Every five minutes the app polls the HN API to categorize the latest submissions. <comment><AUTHOR> We used MonkeyLearn to train a machine learning categorizer with categories like `programming`, `business`, `science`, and downloaded samples from relevant sub-reddits to do the training.

The plot at the top shows you the distribution of categories for each hour, and you can filter the news by category.

The actual classifier is public so anyone can use it with a free MonkeyLearn account: [https://app.monkeylearn.com/accounts/login/?next=/categorize...](https://app.monkeylearn.com/accounts/login/?next=/categorizer/projects/cl_GLSChuJQ/)

Every five minutes the app polls the HN API to categorize the latest submissions.</comment>


Being the Averagest - <AUTHOR> http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/being-the-averagest <comment><USER2> Interesting piece. How can programming be tested in competition? There's always TopCoder (http://www.topcoder.com/).

<comment><AUTHOR> One idea that has been on my mind recently is the Arts Digita (and other) system where you have small teams that work directly with the customer. If they do well, they will get a bonus, if not, then everyone knows who is at fault and things need to change.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have a product that makes tens of $ a month. What should I do? - <AUTHOR>

I built a CRM for Petsitters after my sister complained about how her $99 per month solution was bought by a competitor and decommissioned. I didn't know much about programming but knew enough to know she was paying too much. So I learned (more) about RoR, and built a product for $10 per month. I launched it with my brother-in-law handling marketing and me handling new features.
Since the launch we've had at most 8 monthly active clients. After many months of no growth, we stopped marketing, and I stopped building new features.
We just had a bug pop up where the free heroku postgres maxed out and our users couldn't add new clients. I removed all of our churned clients, but the question remains, after 10 months of not working on this at all, what should I do with it? <comment><USER2> Congratulations on executing, launching and getting customers.

I expect you have a list of emails of previous signups(in a backup of your db), send out a personal email to each one thanking them for giving you guys a try, what did you like/not like about the app. What feature could we add or change that would get you to sign up again. Get some feedback and see if there is a killer feature you're missing that would gain/keep customers.

Try sending emails to pet sitters inviting them to join.

Is there a feature you could add that would benefit the pet owner, maybe a live chat, photo uploads, live updates on a status page that the pet sitter could add to and the owner could check periodically. Maybe drop brochures at vet offices and try to get pet owners to require their sitter uses your app.

You're probably charging too little . . . although Petsitters might have a lower comfort zone that most b2b apps but your sister was paying $99 so maybe $49 is a better price point.

I would second going with digital ocean. $5 to $10/mo plan would probably work easily for 8 total users.

Definitely think about it as a learning experience. Learn more about marketing, A/B testing, user engagement.

Track how often users are logging in, track users that visit the cancellation page and don't cancel (follow up with users who aren't engaged or thinking about canceling send them a personal email and offer a tutorial/on-boarding session so they are getting value out of your app.

Email each user that cancels and try to get some feedback on why they left, ways you can improve.

Listen to Startupsfortherestofus, lots of good info there.

Patio11 also has lots of great gems in his articles, HN posts and podcasts.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughtful response and resources. I've done some of these, like emails, and started/stopped others. I'll look into the podcast, I can never listen to enough :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fire your brother in law - your business has failed to grow and that failure rests with the person responsible for driving growth through marketing.

Also, consider marketing your product at > $10/month. If a previous (inferior?) product was $99/month, then match that price and market the features your product has, otherwise you marginalise what you've created. Being cheaper is a play that works at scale, but shouldn't necessarily be the reason people choose you.

Does your sister think your offering is awesome, or could you do something to delight her and market this feature/capability as widely as possible?

I could have sworn that you posted a while back here on HN, talking about your start-up.. there can't be that many people who start pet-sitting CRMs... do let us know how you go :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, yes I think I posted when I was highlited on Nitrous's blog. I'll update if it takes off, or gets shuttered, freeing up some AWS juice for all of you.

[http://blog.nitrous.io/2013/10/15/built-on-nitrous-io-pet- si...](http://blog.nitrous.io/2013/10/15/built-on-nitrous-io-pet-sitters- pal.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you can sell it to a couple of people, then you should be able to sell it to more. I would take a two pronged approach going forward.

First, focus on explaining the value add of your CRM on your site. The video on the site doesn't really talk about what you do but that people should be using you because you don't offer lots of bells and whistles.

It seems like there are three big value adds: _simple scheduling_ rapid invoice *smart pricing

But, these aren't listed on your landing page. They are listed on your Tour page, but only once you click past the Responsive Design tab (how many pet sitters know or even care about responsive design?). Make it absolutely clear what you offer. (I like your "Get Organized and Efficient" line, as that is really what you're helping the sitter do.)

Second, have your brother-in-law get out and sell. I'm not sure where pet sitters congregate, but maybe just standing in front of a pet store asking people about their pet sitters might net you a couple of leads. If it does, figure out what it takes to close those sales. Then, use those people as testimonials, run a case study and sell off of those numbers.

You might also have some of the pet sitting tutorial-type people on youtube review your software.

Just some thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER5> A number of folks have given you advise on what to do to keep the business going. But I would suggest sending out an email to your current customers, giving them a shut down date, and then shutting it down. It might sound harsh, but here's why:

You have learned a lot! You made a product, you launched it, you made a little money. That is a fantastic education. But remember not every "business" actually takes off and becomes a business. I have started and given up on a number of great ideas. It's ok to move on to the next idea.

In fact, sometimes it's best to move to the next idea right now. You are in a lull on this idea. It's not working out. It's not sustainable. It will take a significant amount of time to make it sustainable and honestly, will it make you happy? Do you love it? Are you passionate about it? If you are waffling on these at all, then move on and make something great.

I am reminded of a rather well known Angel investor that often tells a story of when she was young having an idea for a particular business. She worked on it night and day for 2 years and didn't make a dime. She was so disappointed as she had to take a part time job selling apartments in New York to make ends meet. Then she realized that this was her real business and passion. She killed off the first business, and made a killing in the second one.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't hurt to just leave it as is, in maintenance mode. Especially since he built it for his sister.

Or implement a 'pay for features' model where its kind of like contracting work- anyone can request a feature and they are publicly displayed and sponsored, once the set value is reached then he implements it.

<comment><USER5> Certainly, that is an option. Both of those are. And of course with a sister who uses it you might want to keep it going somehow for her.

However, let's look at it like an investor. (I tend to think all entrepreneurs should stand back and look at their own business as an investor would). Is this a business? No not even close. This is a hobby. Would giving it $100,000 make it a business? Not without a substantial amount of work. Would the risk and reward play out correctly? No, the market is too small and there is no play there. Does the founder seem like he has learned something and would do well in another business? Yes! Absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Migrate to DigitalOcean, you can probably keep the site on the $5 month plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about that. To keep on heroku free, I removed churned clients data. I'll keep that in mind, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Find a home for it that keeps the lights on for $80 a month or less, and with any extra, purchase some Google AdWords or Facebook ads. Let it roll on its own for a couple of years till either all of the users are off, or it makes more money. Use it as a learning platform in web design and back end coding. It will look great on a resume if it is still active.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you have a link to share for some feedback?

<comment><AUTHOR> App is petsitterspal.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you considered selling the product?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have, but not seriously.</comment></comment>


My History of Visual Studio (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/ricom/archive/2009/10/05/my-history-of-visual-studio-part-1.aspx

<comment><USER2> "C++ is like that, a lot of things seem easy until you combine them with other things and then they get hard."

Could've been said, usefully, of Drupal in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=860049>, and of many another things as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty fascinating history of a single application from a first person perspective. Hopefully some of the valuable lessons learned can leak into modern web programming practices (speaking from a desktop to recent web coder)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone remember the joy of using VB4 or Turbo Pascal 2.0? I'm feeling nostalgic. Podcast featuring early Turbo Pascal history via the original authors of the Wildcat BBS (visit to Ander Hejlsberg's house). Listening to this now..

<http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2009/05/14/38310/>

<comment><USER5> I was a turbo c++ user - it was my first compiler and dev environment ever. I purchased it from one of the 'software sales expos' at our local convention center along with a really bad 'how to program c++' book :) - must have been in 1995 or so (summer of my junior year in HS). Moved to visual studio in college.</comment></comment>


Where robots fail: Why education can't just be digital - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/17/where-robots-fail-why-education-cant-just-be-digital/ <comment><USER2> Yet another weekly post saying the same thing about completion numbers, the only argument they have.

According to this argument, 1500 students from all nations of the earth successfully completing a CS class at Harvard, provided at absolutely no cost to them, is a complete failure.

Meanwhile they don't mention how the schools they represent have programming weeder classes with 900 people enrolled at the start and 100 at the end. This is considered OK since 800 officially dropped the class and the class is supposed to be tough.

Every week, the same argument.

If 90% completed the class the exact same people would write their PR articles claiming that the classes have failed for not being rigorous enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here - that's not at all what I said. I'm saying these courses set their own standard of measurement, and haven't lived up to it yet. They're iterating by bringing in different support systems to raise completion rates. I hope the MOOC model succeeds, but it's a long way from fulfilling its promise thus far.

<comment><USER2> > I'm saying these courses set their own standard of measurement

No, you are claiming that and saying that that is their standard. It's a straw man, which is a dishonest form of argument. Your arguments here are without merit. If you want to succeed with your tutoring company you need to establish yourself as a reliable and honest person, not someone trotting out absurd self serving arguments attacking other ventures that you incorrectly and very foolishly see as your enemy.

To succeed focus on your product, make it good, and show how it benefits people and is worth paying for. Focusing on these other people instead is a waste of your time and shows that you presently don't understand either what to do to succeed in your own market, or how to run a startup business. You might take what I am saying as criticism, but it is highly targeted and good advice. You should think about it. Ignore it at your own peril.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. People seem to expect that MOOCs/or the like are for the same old feed-people-into-the-system. It's like people can't see the glass houses around them with all the stones flying around, to see that something else will emerge when their glass house shatters and not somebody elses. Long student loan defaults and tuition hikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I see it as a great opportunity. Today you need a great teacher that can sit down and figure out why a student has problems understanding a specific concept etc, and explain in many different ways. I don't see how computers can't do that. Online education will actually level the playing field and make the best material and pedagogy available to everyone. Today, if you get a lousy mathematics teacher, you're set back years potentially. I know, I had one for 3 years in high-school. Compared to my peers, it really set me back. Had to work very hard to catch up, but fortunately I was motivated enough to do it.

While Khan Academy might be good today, what I think would help even further is to find the absolute best teachers out there and "capture" the way they teach. Capture all the questions students have and incorporate them into the videos. For example, if there's a video talking about the number PI, the student should be able to pause in the middle of the video and see commonly asked questions and answers about this portion of the video. This also has the great benefit of students being able to go through the material at their own pace. Today teachers have to either leave half the class behind, or spend too much time on the weaker students.

<comment><USER5> I think this is heading in the right direction but teaching methods of the best teachers have been studied for years and I don't think the algorithm is simple. I have no doubt that computers can be better than the worst teachers but I think we're far a way from beating the best ones.

I'm surprised at the negative comments here, I'm guessing there are a lot of education software entrepreneurs who somehow interpreted the article as a swipe at their industry. I thought it was a good counterpoint to the hype around online courses although it was also clearly a plug for another product.

My kids are already growing up with a mix of online and warm-blood teachers. They talk a lot about how they like or dislike this or that teacher and they try very hard to succeed in the classes of the teachers they respect. They use Khan Academy and stuff like that but it's just this thing on the web they can draw on, they have zero emotional connection to it.

<comment><USER4> Let me clarify that I think computers would help the most with explaining concepts in an engaging, pedagogical and interactive way. Having a personal tutor that helps you with your homework and example problems is much further into the future. But my biggest problem in school was not that I didn't get help to solve problems and do homework, it's that the teachers often didn't explain high-level concepts in a way that made it click for me. It's the one- to-many teaching that is especially bad today if you get a teacher that either can't explain well, or just doesn't understand the subject deeply enough to explain it well.

Edit: As an example, listen to Feynman talk about anything and everything, and compare that with your average or below average college lecturer. The difference in your understanding is immense. A good teacher helps you build a mental model of the world and gets you excited about it. A bad teacher just regurgitates what the course material says with no real engagement. I wish I could have had Feynman-level lectures on everything from the start, it would have saved me years.

<comment><USER6> My aunt has a story about this: one time she listened to a Feynman talk on tape. Afterwards she was explaining it to her son and she started to draw out some diagrams that Feynman had been drawing on the board during the lecture. Her son said "Wait, weren't you just listening to this? How do you know what the diagrams looked like?" She realized that his explanations were so clear that she had been able to picture everything without even consciously thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "While MOOC proponents argue that these completion rates are irrelevant because of varied interest levels of participating students at the outset, they've set the stage for their own measurement by using enrollment factors as their topline metric in interview after interview."

What's the term to describe this logical fallacy whereby you dismiss a valid proposition by quoting something that your opponent has said about something different.

Completion rates and Enrollment numbers are connected but both must be weighed separately when judging online education.

(Also where are the robots :-( )

<comment><USER8> It sounds close to a Strawman argument but not quite... <https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Summary: MOOCs have (1) really really low completion rates and (2) a user base that is already highly literate and educated. So MOOCs don't target the majority of students who actually need a person to direct their learning. (Author then mentions his tutoring directory company called Tutorspree).

Then the author cuts MOOCs some slack and says they are hiring TAs and encouraging meetups.

</comment><comment><USER10>
      > This is a guest post by Tutorspree CEO Aaron Harris [...]
      > a New York-based startup that finds the perfect tutor for every student.

<comment><USER11> The same could be said of advocacy for online-only education by (e.g.) the Kahn Academy.

<comment><USER10> Interesting that you picked that example! From the article:

      > Sal Khan isn't pushing for his videos to be the final say in teaching.
      > They are meant as a gateway to unlock significantly higher rates of
      > one-to-one teacher student interaction in the flipped classroom.

<comment><USER11> It was just an example, Sal Khan seems like a reasonable guy, so I wouldn't have expected him to take a hard-line, but they were the first 'online only'-type education startup I could think of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> misleading headline. there is no mention of robots teaching anyone anything or even how robots fail.

How's tutorspree any different than sylven?

What was the point of this article again?

</comment><comment><USER13> This article and others like it are arguing against a strawman. No one ever proposed removing teachers from the equation. The idea is to leverage technology to allow teachers to reach more students and/or teach more effectively.

Sure, no online educational platform can rival a good teacher in a classroom setting yet, but that's because a good teacher is able to pick up on and respond to a lot more data through a physical interaction (a student's posture, tone, and other social cues) than a computer can online.

That being said, in theory an online education platform should be able to track all that and more. They potentially have access to an incredible amount of data including the exact amount of time a user takes to engage with a lesson, how fast he or she is typing / is able to complete tasks, even the varying levels of difficulty at which different concepts are being learning, etc. This is all stuff that none of the current online education platforms have even tried to do anything with yet.

But to say that an online education platform will never be as good as a teacher in a classroom is like going back to 60s and saying that computer image recognition sucks so we might as well stop trying.

</comment><comment><USER14> Founder of company that specializes in adding humans to online educations says that you need humans in online education.

Self promotion doesn't need to attack other good causes. There is a bit in the article about the failing brick & mortar institutions, but that should really be the entire focus. That is the only real story here. Online efforts are scrambling as offline continues to be a clusterfuck.

</comment><comment> alan-crowe The article made me think about home schooling. Some home schooling is done for religious reasons, but other home school is motivated by academic concerns. There is not so much of the second kind because it raises an awkward question: how is the parent to do better than school at teaching a subject about which they themselves are ignorant?

Enter the MOOC. The content is available, at a level and pace to suit a child. The stay-at-home parent can learn along, providing the child with both guidance and flesh-and-blood encouragement on learning and learning to learn.

I anticipate that MOOC will change the balance in home schooling with a big expansion of the academically motivated aspects.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article is a massive fail. I don't see where the "robot" is. Is Sal Khan not a teacher? Andrew Ng is a "robot"?

<comment><USER16> How do you define a teacher? If it is anyone who teaches, then yes. If it is someone who understands most of the issues related to teaching, then no, by a long shot.

<comment><USER12> > If it is someone who understands most of the issues related to teaching, > then no, by a long shot.

I would love some more details on this.

<comment><USER17> As I understand it, pre-college teachers generally have Actual Training for dealing with kids, like child psych.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if that's what rimantas meant though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Point out current problems with X. Somehow proves X is never possible.

A real hacker would think, ok robots don't work yet, how can we make them work.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this article is all over the map, and I hope akharris is a better entrepreneur than writer. Though he makes one or two good points.

The title is total bullshit. "Linkbait" is giving it too much credit. "Robots" is a complete head fake, and the article literally says nothing at all about whether or not education can be totally digitally mediated.

The completion-rate issue. First of all, I think we can all agree that completion rate is at least _somewhat_ interesting, and the link to Katy Jordan's piece is useful if you haven't seen it yet. And while I agree it's not a HUGE deal, for the reasons many others have gone over, akharris makes a good point, as follows: The MOOCs opened themselves up to this criticism, because over and over again they post their vanity metrics of _enrollments_ , and compare them to classroom enrollment, and that's crazy. It's like comparing Facebook signups to private plane purchases. If they had been bragging about completion numbers (not ratios, obviously) all along, they'd be fine. Anyway, my point here is that the focus on the completion rates isn't the worst part of this article, it's pretty near the best part.

The next chunk talks about K-12. Obviously most of the MOOCs were never aimed at K-12, so it's an evasion. If you look at the forum conversations or the StackExchange sites or whatever, there are obviously lots of students who are adults from eastern Europe, or Asia (and lots who appear to be middle-class Americans, of course). That's access to education, baby.

The rhetorical deceit here actually enrages me. I might make a perfectly- parallel criticism of Tutorspree: "[Harris's] company states that its mission is connect students with great private tutors. So who is getting those tutors? Certainly not Tamil-speaking children in Sri Lanka." What a stupid argument I just made. Just like akharris's argument, that because 7-year-olds aren't benefiting from Sebastian Thrun's robotics courses, he's therefore not living up to Udacity's lofty mission statement.

And of course, Khan Academy IS improving access to education. Not in some ideal future, but in the present and in the past. Without one-to-one tutoring, which by the way is obviously beyond the budget of, you know, most families (average price for tutors in my Zip: $88/h). So where's your access now? Admittedly Khan requires an internet connection, but $50/month for internet that the whole family can share, plus a $250 computer, sounds better than $88/h to me.

Though it is nice that akharris isn't duplicitous enough to grossly misrepresent Sal Khan's vision for an ideal classroom. Nice work there.

The weird part is that the thesis that he's trying to weave, about the value of human contact and personalized teaching, is kind of a no-brainer. And although I think he overstates the awesomeness of his business, I'm willing to assume it's more part-of-the-solution that part-of-the-problem. So why did he have to stoop to all these dodgy half-truths and misdirections? Maybe he needs to hire a composition tutor.</comment>


Ask HN: need help writting a pig script - <AUTHOR>

Hi There. We need as part of our start-up product to compute "similar user feature". And we've decided to go with pig for it. I've been learning pig for a few days now and understand how it work. So to start here is how the log file look like.

  user		url				time
  user1		http://someurl.com		1235416
  user1		http://anotherlik.com		1255330
  user2		http://someurl.com		1705012
  user3		http://something.com		1705042
  user3		http://someurl.com		1705042
 As the number of users and url can be huge, we can't use a bruteforce approach here, so first we need to find the user's that have access at least to on common url.
The algorithm could be splited as bellow:
#Find all users that has accessed to some common urls. #generate pair-wise combination of all users for each resource accessed. #for each pair and and url, compute the similarity of those users: the similarity depend of the timeinterval between the access (so we need to keep track of the time). #sum up for each pair-url the similarity.
here is what i've written so far:

  A = LOAD 'logs.txt' USING PigStorage('\t') AS (uid:bytearray, url:bytearray, time:long);

  grouped_pos = GROUP A BY ($1);
 I know it is not much yet, but now i don't know how to generate the pair or move further. So any help would be appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> This isn't really the place for this, you should try stack overflow.</comment>


Show HN: My first ebook: Passions and Other Lessons - <AUTHOR> http://personalopz.com/books/passions_and_other_lessons.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This book is a collection of notes from the wonderful Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series at Stanford. ([http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html)) I've found those to be very inspiring but many people don't know about them. Hopefully this gets more people aware of that resource.

I also used Leanpub to publish this. That was a very pleasant experience. I had originally planned on doing it in Google Docs and release only as PDF (maybe converting in Calibre) but then saw an ebook discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago. Decided to redo from scratch and was glad I did.</comment>


The FBI v. Apple isn't at all the way you think it is - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2016/02/19/the-fbi-v-apple-isnt-at-all-the-way-you-think-it-is/ <comment><USER2> An interesting, if improbable, theory.

My own thought is that the FBI's efforts are just what they seem to be: an attempt to use an emotional event to push a legislative agenda (mandated access to all data, even encrypted data, which means backdoors, or key escrow or some such dumbness) that otherwise wouldn't pass the laugh test.

I don't see why Apple is being so vehement in this, since such backdoors or key escrow or whatever is definitely a good thing for them and other big corporations. First, the burden of security is off them: they can always blame the backdoors, instead of the current situation, where they have to use intelligence, and deal with pesky hackers I mean researchers. Second, some form of immunity from liability will undoubtedly go to companies that use the mandated lame-ass key escrow encryption, or incorporate "golden key" backdoors. Third, mandated backdoors especially will do in open source operating systems, if not most open source software. If it's only legal to sell an OS that does the mandatory key escrow or contains a backdoor, then it's illegal to sell or provide or even encourage an OS that doesn't have the mandatory features. Buh bye Linux, FreeBSD and Temple OS.</comment>