The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity - <AUTHOR> http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/ <comment><USER3> I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get _just_ the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible.

There's gems in there, too -

> A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a > group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring > losses.

Indeed. You can deal with a person who wants to gain, and is comfortable gaining at your expense. They're somewhat predictable, so you can deal with them if you're careful. But the person who is a whirlwind of calamity - <USER2> his own life worse and others around - you can't deal with that guy.

The author continues:

> A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

And then, and I love this -

> A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

Indeed! Bandits are unpleasant, but usually easily understandable. With appropriate cautions, you might even be able to transact with a bandit for a short time if it's necessary. But like the author says, the man who does stupid things is much more dangerous.

With a bandit, it's possible to assess what you have and where you're at that they might want to take from you, and to take precautions. With the man who randomly breaks things for no reason, no such precaution can be taken because even the most basic, unevaluated, routine action could be bungled leading to bad results for all inclined.

Gosh, I always enjoy reading this piece, even though I've seen it a bunch. I should send it to some people who might have not have read it.

<comment><USER4> Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

<comment><USER3> > Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, _and you don't even gain from it!_

You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, lose/lose, or win/lose behavior.

He calls those "helpless", "intelligent", "stupid", and "bandit" - but normal definitions of stupidity and intelligence don't really apply, as he notes that Nobel laureates often engage in stupid (lose/lose) behavior, despite being intelligent under normal definitions.

Your comment here? It's a pretty good example of lose/lose behavior - it's designed to be a bit of a jerk towards me and makes you look snarky in the process. Lose/lose. So yeah dude, stop doing that ;)

<comment><USER5> Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it didn't actually seem to me like he was trying to say anything nasty about you. I thought he was just joking/reflecting on the universal appeal of the article--it's well-written and accessible, so it would make most readers feel smart, and everyone likes feeling smart.

<comment><USER6> If we could see how many votes each of the comments got we'd know who had done better out of the exchange :-)

<comment><USER7> Winning an appeal to the populous does not imply correctness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head.

Just in case, I will critique in the spirit of the original article:

The first immutable law of madeupistan is that this article makes no sense. If one quantifies by Q the amount of sense this article doesn't make, and divides it by L, which is how badly the sense it doesn't make is, one can plot the result on a graph, with axes and everything like in science.

As you can see by even a cursory examination of the diagram, anything can be positioned from "scotsman" to "no scotsman" on the Y axis, and "sense" to "no sense" on the X axis. This explains the fundamental nature of mankind.

The second immutable law of madeupistan is that your position on the scotsmanian axis is irreversibly determined at birth. You may be confused initially by the observation that even someone with a high degree of scotsmanity will sometimes act like a non-scotsman and vice-versa. Never fear, that is explained by the graph.

The fourth immutable law (and, by extension, the third) is that anything can be proven by decomposition into a punnett square.

The fifth immutable law is that once someone has been determined to be a scotsman, they will take actions without any basis in rationality whatsoever (I will heretoafter call these actions "Just So" actions). Note, though, that as per the second law, sometimes they will not.

The danger of these Just So actions is inexplicably large, and it behooves any non-scotsmen among us to immediately seek out and prevent Just So actions by dangerous scotsmen. If we do not do this, society will collapse.[1]

[1] Myself, 2011, Journal of Just So Information

<comment><USER9> Well - I think it's part parody.

I mean - obviously the author hasn't done the sort of empirical work discovering the amount of stupid people in each kind of social class. It was at this point in the text that people like me laughed and people like you required a laugh-track.

It's interesting though. I meet dudes like you that respond to something that for some reason irks them with:

"It's not formulated to the highest standards of intellectual rigour - and so is worst kind of crap"

I have to wonder what really is provoking the hyperbole. Because it hardly seems warranted to me.

Just a suggestion - but maybe you might profit from stepping back from this a little. Plenty of contributions to a discourse can still possess insight without all the trappings of intellectual rigour.

<comment><USER8> The reason I say it's the worst kind of trash is (ironically) the same reason the author says stupid people are the most dangerous - it has about as much merit as, say, a Daily Mail article, but because it's presented in a way that mimics science, it more easily slips past peoples' defences.

I suspect that you are falling victim to hyperbole yourself with "highest standards of intellectual rigour". I don't expect a double-blind randomised trial or publication in Nature, but surely when someone says to us "this is the truth", we must ask "why?"

If the author had said "I think that people are born stupid or clever, and stupid people are very dangerous, so we should watch out for them." I would disagree, but not loudly - it is, after all, a matter of opinion unless someone has facts to bring to the table.

But when someone dresses up their conjecture in make-believe laws and pseudo- scientific formulae, they are being deceptive. Perhaps a more acceptable thing to do would be dispassionately describe the flaws in his argument, but the deception made me angry and I don't see anger as necessarily wrong. I don't believe I wrote anything inaccurate, or anything I wouldn't say if the article was brought up among my friends.

Frankly, I'm surprised I was the only one. Perhaps it's just the wrong crowd.

<comment><USER9> To a certain degree I emphasise - in spoken contexts I often fail to pick up sarcasm. But I have far less problems in navigating through subtle shifts in tone in a piece of text.

While you seem to see it as a wolf in sheep's clothing and are terrified that the sheep are about to be devoured, I'm seeing the wolf, dressed in sheep's clothing, comically delivering a lecture to said sheep about avoiding wolves - and actually dispensing some pretty good advice. Surely you can see the wonderfully playful irony here.

What's more, the sheep are sitting around (i.e. hacker news readers) having a good ol laugh at the wolf. And you're amongst them shouting loudly - WATCH OUT THE WOLF WILL DEVOUR YOU! And when they look at you strangely your response to this is to conclude that you're just in the wrong crowd.

Just a shame is all - you're obviously quite a smart chap. It's like meeting Beethoven and finding out that really he hates listening to Mozart. It would boggle the mind!

<comment><USER10> _It's like meeting Beethoven and finding out that really he hates listening to Mozart._

Apparently, Ludwig was rather taken with Wolfgang's music:

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

<comment><USER9> Indeed - so that's why it would be quite boggling to learn otherwise! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate._

We could always start with 100% and see how it goes. I suspect this upper bound method was applied by more than one writer.

Never mind the quibbles, it's good to see this one back. As the footnote says, there's genius in it.

<comment><USER12> I believe the point here goes along the lines: ``instinctively, one perceives the fraction as (N-1 / N)'' -- where N is size of the group in question and the -1 is oneself... Which curiously renders oneself as a not-very-smart one. Which suggests one underestimated the fraction ;-)

Especially as the two supporting points (a: unpleasant letdowns; b: frequent bothering ``at the wrong moment'') are quite subjective.

To quote the venerable fortune(6):

      Renning's Maxim:
            Man is the highest animal.  Man does the classifying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just look at the first picture and completely lose it laughing. "Hmm - something wrong... what could it be?"

Aside from that - if I may add a serious comment - I think the most important insight of this article is to recognise that stupidity has a kind of power. It reminds me very much of the writings of Castaneda whose Don Juan character always advised to disrupt ones routines in order to prevent others from taking advantage of them.

I think what the article misses, however, is that intelligent people can in fact take advantage of this very same power. If your reasons are thought out ahead of time - to a degree beyond what most people are capable, then your individual actions may well appear random to those with short attention spans. It is just too much for them to place them within a greater whole.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article is very funny, but I do find the definition of stupidity as the tendency to perform actions that benefit nobody as particularly insightful.

<comment><USER14> I agree that it is an important insight.

intelligence is less confusing when regarded as an optimization process.

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/tx/optimization/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."

This is assuredly true, on the basis of replicated research, with regard to IQ. There is essentially no correlation between IQ and rationality.

[http://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1/Engli...](http://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1/English)

High-IQ people can be every bit as irrational ("stupid" in the language of the submitted article) as low-IQ people, and worse still, not notice that they are being stupid. There are whole books on the subject.

[http://www.amazon.com/Why-Smart-People-Can- Stupid/dp/0300101...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-Smart-People-Can- Stupid/dp/0300101708)

[http://www.amazon.com/Blunder-Smart-People-Make- Decisions/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Blunder-Smart-People-Make- Decisions/dp/1596916435/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes- Without/dp/076792...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes- Without/dp/0767928067/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational- Beha...](http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational- Behavior/dp/0385530609/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised- Expande...](http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded- Decisions/dp/0061353248/)

All we can do about that here on HN is take other people's comments seriously and try to see ourselves as others see us as we ponder our decisions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes stupidity is indistinguishable from pure evilness. That's why I believe it's more practical to focus on removing inefficiency instead of corruption.

<comment><USER16> I suspect that humanities worst moments come from a combination of evil _and_ stupidity, even if that stupidity is just a failure to predict what your actions will actually mean for others.

<comment><USER10> _I suspect that humanities [sic] worst moments come from a combination of evil and stupidity_

Witness:

        - Failure of military leaders to recognize the implications
          of advancing firearms technology starting in the Civil War
        - Failure of national governments to recognize the geopolitical instability
          embodied by the competing systems of alliances prior to WWI
        - Failure of national governments to recognize the economic and political
          instability caused by treaties prior to WWII
        - Disconnect of German leadership from reality through advocacy of
          economic and biological pseudoscientific theories
        - Disconnect of Soviet leadership from social and economic reality

It seems that the caveman-mob level of broken thinking we exhibit as national groups caused all sorts of technology-amplified havoc in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I wonder if it's any better in the 21st century?

        - Burgeoning US debt, and the political impediments to solving it
        - Calamitous global environmental changes, also accompanied by political
          impediments to solution

What are the odds of solving our current problems without bloodshed? Probably very near zero. The best we can hope for is to limit the scope of bloodshed to militants, small regional conflicts, and assassinations. After all, we are still mostly just mobs of tribal cavemen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of truth here, but one statement seems incorrect:

"If all members of a society were perfect bandits the society would remain stagnant but there would be no major disaster."

There would be no incentive to actually work, as everything presumably would be stolen. So I don't think stagnation would be the result. A steady decline back to hunter gatherer seems more likely.

<comment><USER18> No, because robbing someone of their incentive to work is a net loss to society, so the bandits would no longer be perfect (unless they in turn gain a corresponding incentive to work, or some other equivalent gain).

There are no perfect bandits, let along a society full of them. Scenarios like "If all members of a society were perfect bandits" are hypothetical and don't really translate to any actual human society that you could imagine. Even so, they're useful for illustrating concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a basis for a World View and model for conducting one's affairs this is pretty hard to beat. The Second Basic Law and σ in particular also gives plenty of material for more comtemplative moments.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hey! I came up with 4-th law independently. All I needed was 5 years of business experience as freelancer and striving entrepreneur.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842922>

</comment><comment><USER21> reminds me of the Wizards First rule: "People are stupid...given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."

<comment><USER10> That's just a paraphrase of Herman Goering:

<http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some very apt descriptions there, good read. Interesting and pithy lens to view the world through.

One dimension that struck me as missing: What about indifference? Surely there's a difference in quality between say helplessness and indifference, even if it isn't captured in the win/loss-for-me/you framework.

Many behaviours can be explained by indifference, as it's not obviously right or even rational to think of the Total Humanity Utility as a goal-in-itself. There seems to be an assumption of utilitarism hidden there.

Despite this problem the view described here seems to me to shine light on many phenomena of human existance.

</comment><comment><USER23> Definitely has the slant that everyone in the world is stupid. I don't like that kind of world view, but still somewhat interesting. Can't stop estimating that most of the people in the world are stupid. Pretty antisocial.</comment>


Disruptions: A Blogger Mocks the Denizens of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/disruptions-a-blogger-mocks-the-denizens-of-silicon-valley/ The return of Valleywag. <comment><USER2> Valleywag is the TMZ of silicon valley reporting, it isn't clever humor, satire or insightful. It's mostly poorly written articles with limited research going after easy hits and the lowest common denominator.

There's some irony in defining your job as noting how self-absorbed silicon valley is from an article that exists primarily to boost a self-absorbed ego (picture and all).

The rationality of why it's better for them to be in New York is probably the most enlightening part. Clearly they need to be based in a place free from a hostile culture that's focused on image and wealth. Can't have their hard hitting journalism be stifled.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't deserve to be posted anywhere, much less on the front page.

<comment><USER4> Gossip rag aside, alot of the criticisms brought forth by valleywag is on point...

There is A LOT of dumb money. There ARE a ton of idiot startupbro/princesses.

Anything to deflate the delusional silliness bubbling up here is probably a good thing in the long run.

The HN hivemind loves to rally against the stuffy culture of the corporate world. Are the rapgenius bros any better?

Let's ditch the douchiness and get back to the good ole days of building meaningful, _truly_ world-changing, shit out of our garages.

<comment><USER5> Half a century of paparazzi and celebrity gossip has now deflated the delusional silliness in Hollywood--it's time to bring that style of hard- hitting journalism to Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER4> Silly analogy. Hollywood bros don't claim to be saving the world nor do they cast themselves in a superior light than all the other bloodsuckers.

When you take yourself this seriously (Saray Lacey... classic example), you're going to get ridiculed and made fun of. Rightfully deserved too.

IDK. Digging up people's private lives is not cool (e.g. valleywag's articles about Eric's open marriage), but pointing out blatant douchiness is admirable. We need more of that shit to keep us all in line (e.g. Sandberg's unpaid intern fuckup - which let's be honest is fucking disgusting).

Enough toeing the line brah.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Why are we building an open source mobile backend? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getcloudengine.net/why-are-we-building-an-open-source-mobile-backend/

<comment><USER2> Related: [https://usergrid.incubator.apache.org/](https://usergrid.incubator.apache.org/)</comment>


Python messaging with ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.nighttale.net/activemq/python-messaging-activemq-and-rabbitmq.html

<comment><USER2> I would be interested to see a detailed comparison of the above and SQS which I've used to great success with the python library boto (<http://code.google.com/p/boto/>). And yes, I googled and haven't found anything good :)

I haven't used ActiveMQ before due to no reason other than horror stories from basically everyone I know who has used it heavily.

RabbitMQ seems like an interesting solution to explore if I ever need more speed than SQS provides.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, boto is a great library. IME, SQS seems to be a good option only when you have low throughput. I tried running a high volume of jobs through SQS and found that I needed a lot more workers (EC2 instances) to do the work because each message was so slow to pickup. That made things cost prohibitive. I'm currently working on another AWS based project. It was initially using ActiveRecord based db queues but that, of course, failed at high volume. So I replaced it with kestrel, which works with any memcached client, and that's been great. However, kestrel doesn't do topic/group subscriptions where lots of receivers can get the same message. That's where these message servers seem to be potentially valuable options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Obtuse question - what are the practical use cases for these ..umm.. enterprisey solution things? What problem do they solve?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you've never needed asynchronous systems and messaging, perhaps you should consider yourself lucky.

<comment><USER3> Similar small scale problems of mine were easy to solve with Python Queue's. Maybe I am lucky those problems weren't at a scale azim and gthank explained though. oh the goose-bump :)</comment></comment></comment>


Self-Driving Cars with ROS and Autoware - <AUTHOR> https://www.apex.ai/autoware-course <comment><USER2> Every time I see ROS I have nightmare flashbacks to a project i worked on using it ...

I did not enjoy the cmake wrapper (catkin) -- and I bloody hate the garbage fire that is the python ecosystem ... someone needs to rebuild this project in rust -- could be a million times more plug and play and also better performance ... does something like that exist?

<comment><USER3> > someone needs to rebuild this project in rust

I was in agreement with you until this. C++ would be better in terms of compatibility. Rust is non-existent in the world of robotics which is mostly dominated by C++ libraries

<comment><USER4> ROS is already mostly in C++. I find it very enjoyable to use with C++. Python documentation and support is lacking, and Python 3 support is very recent. But yeah; ROS has problems and they don't have anything to do with the language. Saying "rebuild that in Rust" is missing the point. How does that address the parent's complaint which is Python support?

<comment><USER2> my main reason for suggesting rust was to avoid the temptation to "solve the problem of the c++ build system ecosystem" which seems to be why catkin was created -- but i think this problem is basically intractable ...

Rust seems to me a reasonable language for developing the library of functionality that ROS offers -- with distribution and building and component development story all solved by the ecosystem default build mechanism ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a great resource and it comes at a good time for me, I was just starting in on installing and learning ROS yesterday. Thanks for posting!

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a very detailed project there, with Autoware. It wasn't easy to find what the hardware interfacing looked like, however. Could this be used in a DIY manner that attaches to cars without automation mechanisms built in?

</comment><comment><USER7> I am really looking forward to the announced lectures :-D</comment>


Hidden device distorts news at hotspots - <AUTHOR> http://newstweek.com/2011-01-07-device-distorts-news-on-wireless-neworks

<comment><USER2> Try clicking around on that site. Most of the links all just go to 'newstweek.com' and none of what are apparently meant to look like links on the frontpage actually go anywhere. The only page that actually functions is the 'article' page. The only links on the page go to:

* <http://hotglue.org/>

* <http://julianoliver.com/>

* <http://k0a1a.net/>

Both of the photos of the supposed perpetrators link to the home pages of the same guys that are in the Copyright notice at the bottom of the page. So far as I can tell this is a total hoax.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's also called "Newstweek" and it's clearly a replica of the Newsweek website (<http://www.newsweek.com/>).

So, it's definitely a hoax/satire. It's just kind of not really very funny..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any outside information on this? At first glance it looks like a complete hoax.

The supposed story about it is hosted on the homepage of the device in question, and I see no other hits for it on Google.

Edit: It looks like ibejoeb has the right of it. It is a hoax in the in the stunt/prank/hype/performance art manner, rather than the malicious deception sort.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, this looks like hype.

Still, the hardware (a Sheeva Plug?) and consequent hack described is very possible, tho I understand that setting up a man-in-the-middle DHCP server to override that on the public hotspot is more straightforward.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree that it could be an actual thing.

From a hardware and security perspective it is, as you say, all of the shelf hardware and techniques, ARP poisoning vs. MitM DHCP server have tradeoffs which have slipped from memory, but you can basically go either way.

The doubt is entirely about the hype and false appearance of a third party news story.

Maybe the intent is to highlight the problems with using unencrypted HTTP? I can dream that it's a well intentioned stunt can't I?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely looks like a joke given the BusyBox banner.

However, the technology described is something that is completely technically possible -- ARP spoofing on an open wireless network and performing MITM content modification.

</comment><comment><USER7> How the devil did this get injected into Hacker News! <checks plug>

</comment><comment><USER8> c.f. <http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html>

<comment><USER2> I don't know if that's the original, but there have been many such 'pranks.' IIRC there was a video circulating a while ago showing the reactions of people at DEFCON who had their connection hijacked to redirect to goatse (or was it all of the images were replaced with the goatse guy, I can't remember full).

<comment><USER8> Appears to date to 2006. Goatse prank in 2004. You win :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this wasn't a joke, this would be way wrong. This article is so focused on the computer aspect of getting away with this that they forget the physical world. There is such a thing as a camera and if your going to be going about installing this at enough locations to be meaningful, enough information will eventually come out to get you caught. Moreover, once a device like this began to scare people enough to enter the news, people would find it near the hotspot and its threat would be neutralized.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is obviously some kind of awareness campaign, but it makes me wonder where the joke ends. Did anyone actually make the device (it certainly is possible) or is it just a hoax news article?

This made me laugh though:

"a Nokia N900 phone turned in at a police station in the area had a number of images of the device on board, along with these two photos, taken just minutes after one installation in a large Starbucks in the central suburb of Mitte, east Berlin. Note the black hat worn by what may be a colleague in the first photograph."

<comment><USER11> If I'm not mistaken, the second photograph of the Asian man is the one taken by authorities of a man who boarded a plane as an old man, then removed his mask and by the time the plane landed, he was young:

[http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/old-man-boards-plane- leav...](http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/old-man-boards-plane-leaves-a- young-man/story-e6frfq80-1225948618084)

I have no idea what the first picture is originally from. I don't recall any recent stories of anyone replacing their head with a Rubik's Cube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a device! I think the network here may be affected because I've noticed ~NOTHING UNUSUAL WHATSOEVER~ when reading the news here.

</comment><comment><USER13> "In a rush to leave I reached under the chair to pull out my laptop plug and accidentally knocked this little box to the floor. I plugged it back in and apologised to the cafe owners. They said they'd never seen it before.."

Reads just like a bad movie script.

</comment><comment><USER14> The hardware to do this exists. <http://www.tonidoplug.com/>

Edit: This example may lack wireless, but it's close. Anyone know of better examples?

<comment><USER15> The Guruplug has wifi: [http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-guruplugdetails.asp...](http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-guruplugdetails.aspx)

I have a few, they're pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really love their reference to running arpspoof as "a sophisticated modification of the Address Resolution Protocol Table" as opposed to "brute force flooding of the Address Resolution Protocol Table".

</comment><comment><USER17> Looking at the 'most popular' section, it's clear that it's a joke.

</comment><comment><USER18> If it replaced/injected advertising--that would be believable.

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks like some hype for the forthcoming "Black Hat News Network" advertised on the same page. The article looks like it was written by the site directly.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit skeptical of the facts - but there's nothing really hard about this - this could easily be built and do exactly what it claims to do.

</comment><comment><USER21> Assuming it's not an hoax - this wouldn't work if WiFi hotspots used WPA2 with same password as the SSID or something known to everyone.

<comment><USER22> It's obviously a joke, but ARP spoofing to mitm your gateway will easily work on a WPA2 network, WPA2-enterprise or even a wired network. This isn't passive eavesdropping.

<comment><USER21> Got it, thanks. SSL enabled sites would not be vulnerable to this so the impact of this attack is limited, no?

<comment><USER22> It's a decent approach, though in most cases like that an sslstrip type of attack would still fool a majority. A certificate based VPN may be the most practical client only defense.

Engineering wise this is really a problem to solve at the local LAN, employing individual vlans or other techniques to strictly segment traffic on top of encryption, or simply implementing port based network access control via 802.1x.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is this some kind of satire site?

</comment><comment><USER24> Newstweek.com is obviously a parody site. Reddit material. Just ignore this, or better yet, flag it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love how this is all possible albeit not practical.

</comment><comment><USER26> maybe its a how-to disguised as a news/fake article? others have commented that it seems technically possible whats being described.</comment>


Bill Gates surrendering Microsoft helm - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080622023728.dfhtivcb&show_article=1 <comment><AUTHOR> "You could see Microsoft struggling after Bill Gates stepped out of day-to-day roles," Enderle said.

"A founder takes such a larger-than-life role and directs a company in very subtle ways that are often forgotten when a founder leaves. That gap, for a lot of companies, has been almost terminal."

</comment><comment><USER2> It is kind of sad to see Bill Gates leave Microsoft even though I've essentially stopped using all Microsoft products.

He is a true genius, though, so I think devoting his time and problem solving skills to the world will end up solving a lot of problems.</comment>


Mindfuck WebGL  Zorropark - <AUTHOR> http://zorropark.com

<comment><USER2> I would like to thank whom ever wrote it for leaving he source unminified. Though its easy to unminify code for most developers, it was a bit overwhelming encountering it when I was new. Being able to study things like this as easily as possible can really help the community.

Awesome job =]

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain what I am seeing (or not seeing)?

It renders pyramids on Chrome, but just a black screen (with the words ZORRO PARK) on Firefox 4, IE 9, Safari and Opera.

The wiki on WebGL suggests this should work on Firefox 4.

<comment><USER4> I see pyramids with firefox 4. I'm not sure what the 'mindfuck' part is though...</comment></comment>


Traction mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/07/traction-mistakes.html <comment><USER3> "Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers ". I disagree, at least when it comes to me and duckduckgo (which Gabriel founded). Here's why:

Three months ago, I started using ddg instead of Google. I'm quite disappointed:

\- search speed is slow. Instead of <1s, it's often more like 2-3 seconds.

\- search quality is adequate to quite bad. Example: "amazing spiderman rotten" (I was looking for the rotten tomatoes page for that movie that just came out, entered a typo) gave the right page for google, while the right page is not amongst the 20 top results in ddg.

\- while ddg says that they don't track me, the still insist in not using direct links in their search results, but indirect results (via duckduckgo.com/l/u?=...). Not only is this insincere, it also messes up my browser history: when I visit a page through ddg, Safari lists that strange ddg url in the browser history instead of the target page.

Now, Gabriel was succesful at "aquiring" me. I tried it out. For a long time. And I'm on the verge of leaving. Why? because he failed at building a good product.

But maybe that is exactly why he is failing. He is focusing very much on these other "most likely cases of failing", while ignoring the very reason he is failing in this instance.

\--edit: examples, conclusion.

<comment><USER4> We did not really acquire you (at least not yet). Traction is about acquiring real customers (who stick), and if you tried it and left or are thinking of leaving then you are not a real customer yet. I would love to keep you, however!

I'm sorry to hear about your disappointment, but all those things are things we're of course actively working on. If you want to email me at email@example.com I'd love to get to the bottom of them.

\--Speed has improved a lot in the past three months. Where are you located? I'd love to trace this down. 2-3sec is way outside the norm and our internal metrics show much, much lower.

\--Same with search quality. We'd love specific examples if you remember any: <https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html> \-- that's the best way we improve. Are you using a region setting?

\--We do not use indirect results by default on our main site. Check out our privacy policy, specifically the section on search leakage: <https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html>. On HTML5 browsers we can do an internal postMessage to strip the referrer header in-line. However, if you open in a new tab/window, we cannot do that. Nevertheless, you can turn this behavior off on the main site in the settings (under privacy): <https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html>. If you're using a modern Safari though, this shouldn't happen. Again, would love to figure this out.

<comment><USER5> My experience with the search quality are quite similar. While I like the idea and personally would even accept some 5 sec+ delays if the results were at least equal to Google, they are not. Even for relatively simple queries: For example if I search Journal of Brand Management the right url is not even on the whole first page, while at Google it is exactly the first result ( www.palgrave-journals.com/bm ).

Maybe you could add some special "dissatisfying results" button or something like that where we just can enter the keyphrase and a short line what Google did better. Or I wouldn't even mind activating some track-me option occasionally if it would help you guys improve your results. Just let us know how we can help making DDG better.

<comment><USER6> _While I like the idea and personally would even accept some 5 sec+ delays if the results were at least equal to Google, they are not._ .. _Or I wouldn't even mind activating some track-me option occasionally if it would help you guys improve your results._

So why, exactly, don't you like Google?

<comment><USER7> Not everyone has to use DDG because they're worried about privacy. It offers features that Google doesn't have (like that box at the top (though Google has recently added something similar) and suggested additional terms on the side) and there are political/non-product reasons to support a competing search company (Google is practically a monopoly). I guess on rare occasions, the search results may be better, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually I think the info in the article is on the mark. The most important aspect is a systematic approach to obtaining customers.

The real tricky part though is figuring out how to use each traction approach (the article calls them verticals) properly. For example, in my first three years of business, I learned a bunch of hard lessons here. These include:

1) Most advertising doesn't work unless people already know of you. Push your advertising later. Advertising that does work at that stage is that which has a personal feel to it (like infomercials).

2) PR is golden. Go for it at every opportunity.

3) Your biggest friend is your competition. If you can reach out and build good relationships with folks who are already in the field, that is support that can't be underrated. I thought at first that this was specific to smaller businesses but it turns out that the more I look into it, the more many successful businesses of all size do it, and do well because of it.

4) Public service announcements are very good as well. If you are just doing tech support, and the local radio station has an open hour or so, call up every time there is a major virus outbreak and let folks know. Or buy advertisement space in these cases, or the like.

<comment><USER9> >Your biggest friend is your competition.

I dont get this. For example how can Google gain anything by maintaining a really good relationship with Bing.(which in fact they dont!)

Conversely,it seems like you can build traction by picking fights with your competition.Ex Tesla vs Edison, Google vs Bing, Apple vs Microsoft.

<comment><USER8> Bing is a new-comer. But I bet when Google started up, they would have gained a lot by having good relationships with Yahoo and Lycos. Moreover, I would be surprised if Google is not pursuing a good relationship overall with Microsoft even if it tense and filled with lawsuits around the edges.

<comment><USER10> Google did have a deal with Yahoo! early on and it was absolutely crucial because they got Google's branded search box on the Yahoo site

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I knew before I opened the thread there would be a bunch of detractors. Not sure why Gabriel seems to attract the naysayers on here?

To me this and the traction verticals stuff on this blog are absolute gold.

I don't think I would be far off the mark if I suggested that 90% of the people on HN would be capable of building a product, but 90% would also fail to get something off the ground in terms of users. (Partly through lack of skills, partly just because it's a hard problem in a competitive world.) It's only where the skills intersect that they're even in the game.

Anything that breaks 'getting traction' down into an analytical approach is great, and much more actionable than most of the fluff that passes through here. Fantastic article.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would love to see a framework developed - like Lean/Agile Startups - <USER2> specifically deal with a scientific process for startups across all/most verticals.

Just like I can use the principles of Agile Software Development to build my product, I would love something similar for marketing.

I know there are many theories - AARRR from Dave McClure is one that jumps to mind, along with the long-tail of SEO landing pages like BCC & Patio11....but there isn't a coherent, or rather I don't know of one, framework that pulls it altogether.

Anyone care to take a stab at this?

I am sure many founders would find this immensely useful.

<comment><USER13> We're working on something like that with Traction Book - <http://tractionbook.com/>. Would love your feedback!

<comment><USER12> That looks good Justin...but it looks more like a book of 'case studies'...rather than an analytical take on the subject matter.

Not that I am saying your approach is not good, it sure is. It adds to the body of knowledge on how people get traction.

But just like how someone sat down and came up with best practices like Test Driven Development and the Agile Manifesto and Customer Development and Building a Lean Startup.

I would like something similar for customer acquisition and growth hacking.

<comment><USER13> It's a combination of both, but definitely more strategy and framework-centric than case studies. We're still working on figuring out the positioning for it.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought this post was great, and I cringe when I read the comments in this thread that are so negative about the product. Kudos to GW for tackling a massive, difficult problem in the most competitive space in software. Obviously there's still work to be done, but DDG has invested, what, 5 orders of magnitude less into search than Google? This is about as hard as it gets in startup land.

I imagine there's a GW post yet to be written [1] on the related point that some problems are harder than others (e.g., search >>> picture-sharing-app), and the complete lack of correlation between effort and value (DDG <<< Instagram, at least so far) [2].

But line that I didn't fully understand was:

 _I believe distribution is equally important as product. That means quite literally you should be spending 50% of your time on it. For tech people, you should probably bias it to 75% so you end up getting to equal in the end._

What exactly does "distribution" mean in this context?

[1] or maybe there already is such a post.. [2] yes, I know there are many reasons for this, search is valuable, etc.

<comment><USER15> > _"I believe distribution is equally important as product. That means quite > literally you should be spending 50% of your time on it. For tech people, > you should probably bias it to 75% so you end up getting to equal in the > end."_ What exactly does "distribution" mean in this context?

Distribution means a method for getting your product to the customers who need it.

Imagine slaving away for years, building the perfect solution to the biggest problem, only to never have anyone discover it because you never put any effort in figuring out how to reach your customers.

A distribution channel can be anything from the AppStore/Steam, to advertising, to door-to-door sales, to engaging users in a niche news forum, to referral/affiliate schemes, and so forth. Ideally, it's something that closely and effectively targets your ideal customer with the exact problem you're solving.

<comment><USER15> The parent post is a perfect example: An informative comment that nearly no one will read because I posted it too late to catch the organic influx of readers, and I didn't invest in other means of distributing it to an audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I commented on your blog but I thought I'd repeat it here to get more answers :)

How do you determine if your product is something people don't really want? I'm looking for my hypothetical early adopters(new and young restaurant owners) and a lot of the older restaurant owners don't care too much about the product. How do you determine whether your product is not ready for the mainstream or whether people just don't care about the problem and/or solution?

<comment><USER17> _"... How do you determine whether your product is not ready for the mainstream or whether people just don't care about the problem and/or solution? ..."_

Ask for payment. This will quickly sort out if a product solves a problem that people care about.

<comment><USER18> One thing I will always remember from my college economics class was the professor saying, on day one, that that's how you measure what people want.

"You want a lot of things. You want an A in this class. You want a trip to Hawaii. You want a tasty lunch. And you want all of those things ... 'a lot.' Well, I'm economist, I'm trying to be a scientist. I can't measure 'a lot.' What I can measure is - _what are you willing to give up in order to get the things you want?_ "

<comment><USER17> _"... One thing I will always remember from my college economics class was the professor saying, on day one, that that's how you measure what people want. ..."_

I didn't take economics at Uni, but I certainly noticed a corollary of 'desire' for object and payment as a kid. The lack of money required you work out some scheme to make money to buy or your hack your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We are right now doing all these mistakes.

Currently, we have the problem that somehow majority of people signing up to our service are not at all potential customers.

The main problem for us that majority of blogs and advices we got are actually about how to acquire customers in consumer segment.

There is very little blogs on how to acquire customers which are small businesses via internet.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers._

Citation needed.

<comment><USER21> This is clearly his opinion, based on experience. There isn't really any good way to collect data on why a company fails. So basically by definition, it is impossible to do an analysis that would provide you with a citation.</comment></comment>


What is the hardest part in writing test cases? - <AUTHOR> To me, memorizing relationship between modules to make sure my test cases cover most commonly used combinations is the hardest. And I'm still figuring out better solution. <comment><USER2> The hardest part is planning what you are going to write; that is, identifying the most important of the possible things to test. The writing itself should be fairly straightforward.

<comment><AUTHOR> How are you identifying important cases to cover right now? I rely on QA and she uses TestRail to manage but it's still common to miss out some important flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mocking third party libraries is pretty hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you explain more in a scenario example?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any one else think it's a strange time to be a computer scientist? - <AUTHOR>

Having looked into our fields' history -- most of the real exciting stuff (new) happened in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I'm not the only one but many other prominent members of our field also express that nothing new has been done for ~30 years. Some really exciting stuff I have come aware of: Timesharing, the internet, Smalltalk, Lisp, designing hardware for software, different methods of programming, tools to enhance our understanding of science.<p>At first enthused about browser/server web applications (using rails framework) -- I find completely dull, and now feel to constrained by the browser and the server interaction. Working with squeak I find I just want my computer too be squeak and build off that.<p>(caveat: graduated 4 years ago) <comment><USER2> You might want to read about fully homomorphic encryption, the PCP theorem and many other mind-blowing results to have come out of computational complexity theory community in the past 15 years. These results use powerful mathematical tools like Fourier analysis on the boolean cube. Here are a few links to get you started:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf)

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/jmitesh/Mitesh_Jain_files/draft....](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/jmitesh/Mitesh_Jain_files/draft.pdf)

[http://theoryofcomputing.org/articles/gs001/gs001.pdf](http://theoryofcomputing.org/articles/gs001/gs001.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> DISCLAIMER: I'm not a computer scientist

I'm a self-taught programmer which means that I don't feel qualified to answer the cs questions, nevertheless, I think I can answer your question.

First, thinking that "the new stuff" is the same as the exciting stuff is wrong. The exciting stuff is the stuff that excites you and not necessarily the new stuff. For example, the principles behind the modern web apps aren't exactly new (client/server, CRUD), and yet, you had a love affair with rails :)

Second, there are two kinds of "the new stuff". The first kind is the stuff that's a new development in cs, the second kind is the stuff that's new to you. If you focus on the second kind you'll see that there's a whole new world out there waiting to be explored and conquered. Scratch that, there are worlds upon worlds of potentially exciting stuff waiting for your attention.

My advice is to keep looking.

</comment><comment><USER4> I definitely felt a lot ennui about the state of things when I was about 4-5 years out of college (although to be fair I jumped out to join the dotcom boom).

I'm actually pretty stoked about the state of things right now though. Ubiquitous compute power through virtualization, big data (map reduce!), open cv, machine learning, SAT solvers, you name it. Now that we have cheap, plentiful and fast computational power all that stuff they dreamed about back in the 60s and 70s is now a reality.

CS as a discipline is nowhere near tapped out. Sure, we're probably not going to find too many more core algorithms in many of the various disciplines, but come on.. we don't even have true general purpose AI at this point!

</comment><comment><USER5> _" Some really exciting stuff I have come aware of: Timesharing, the internet, Smalltalk, Lisp, designing hardware for software, different methods of programming, tools to enhance our understanding of science."_

On the timescale of human endeavor, those ideas, like the idea of computer science itself, are all new. But even though old on a relative scale, there is nothing wrong with pursuing an interest in them - lambda calculus, information theory, etc. don't rust as they age. Indeed, what makes many of those computer science ideas interesting is that they are still applicable and relevant today.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rails is Cobol. There is a lot of excitement in, for instance, AI, geoscale graphics or biocomputation.

</comment><comment><USER7> \- information theoretic optimal succinct/compact/implicit data structures \- cache oblivious algorithms, especially CO-B-Trees \- linear work suffix array construction \- new lower bounds on external store and search \- sure there must be plenty of results on distributed systems techniques too

Plenty of amazing results in the last few years.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you had graduated in the 60s or 70s (or even 80s) chances are that you wouldn't have worked in Computer Science at all. Today you can choose from a vast field of possibilities. Keep looking and go to the edge of one area

</comment><comment><USER9> Are you looking for intellectual stimulation? Or something else?

If the former, read Bram Cohen's paper on BitTorrent. A lot of academics were working on the peer to peer buzzword right after Napster came out. Bram's work shook that little corner of academia IMHO. Academics regained their footing with the horde of DHT papers that followed ala Chord, Pastry, etc. I think Cassandra uses these ideas.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you look at what we could have got versus what we actually got, two things will happen:

1\. You'll drive yourself mad.

2\. You'll start to appreciate the Right Thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pick your favorite topic and think about all the things computers can do for it that they don't right now. That's pretty exciting.</comment>


Show HN: HiFiC – High-Fidelity Generative Image Compression – demo and paper - <AUTHOR> https://hific.github.io <comment><USER3> I've been waiting for something to implement this concept for _so long_ , and I'm so happy to finally get a chance to explore how it works in practice!

It's really fascinating to zoom comparing the compressed version with the original -- the "general idea" is all there and the quality is roughly the same, but strands of hair move to different positions, skin pores are in a completely different pattern, etc. -- it's all regenerated to look "right", but at the lowest level the texture isn't "real".

Which is so fascinatingly different from JPEG or other lossy schemes -- the compression artifacts are obviously exactly that, you'd never confuse them for real detail. While here, you could never guess what is real detail vs. what is reconstructed detail.

My hunch is that this won't actually take off at first for images, because images on the internet don't use up _that_ much of our bandwidth anyways, and the performance and model storage requirements here are huge.

BUT -- if the same idea can be applied to 1080p _video_ with a temporal dimension, so that even if reconstructed textures are "false" they persist across frames, then suddenly the economics here would start to make sense: dedicated chips for encoding and decoding, with a built-in 10 GB model in ROM, trained on a decent proportion of every movie and TV show ever made... imagine if 2-hour movies were 200 MB instead of 2 GB?

(And once we have chips for video, they could be trivially re-used for still images, much like Apple reuses h.265 for HEIC.)

<comment><USER4> > because images on the internet don't use up that much of our bandwidth > anyways,

On the Internet, Yes. But for web pages, Image is still by far the largest payload. It could be anywhere between 60 to 90% of total content size.

Thinking in the context of latency, where you could benefits with images appearing much quicker or instantaneous ( embedding inside the HTML ) because of its reduction. Especially on first screen.

<comment><USER3> Progressive JPEG's go a long way towards that though, no?

<comment><USER4> Not JPEG in its current form. ( May be JPEG XL ) The user experience is horrible. And during the last HN discussion on Medium using progressive JPEG it turns out a lot of people have similar thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here! This is the demo of a research project demonstrating the potential of using GANs for compression. For this to be used in practice, more research is required to make the model smaller/faster, or to build a deticated chip! Currently, this runs at approximately 0.7 megapixel/sec on a GPU with unoptimized TensorFlow. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER4> >Currently, this runs at approximately 0.7 megapixel/sec on a GPU with unoptimized TensorFlow.

Forgive me, is that in encoding or decoding? And size of library required to decode it? ( Edit: Looks like answered below )

It was only an hour ago I was looking at some pictures encoded with VVC / H.266 reference encoder, it was better than BPG / HEVC, but this HiFiC still beats it by quite a bit.

This whole thing blows up my mind on limitation I thought we had on image compression.

May be I should take back my words on JPEG XL is the future. This seems revolutionary.

<comment><USER5> (coauthor here) The 0.7 megapixels/sec is PNG decode (to get input)+encoding+decoding+PNG encoding (to get output we can visualize in a browser) speed.

Thanks for your kind comment!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is impressive; but isn't this also susceptible to the type of bug that Xerox copiers got hit with many years ago?

[https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...](https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_means_dodgy_numbers_and_dangerous_designs/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Small text is indeed one of the fail cases, and more research needs to be done here (see also my other comment [1]). We mention this issue in the supplementary materials [2], and you can check out an example here at [3]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654161)

[2] [https://storage.googleapis.com/hific/data/appendixb/appendix...](https://storage.googleapis.com/hific/data/appendixb/appendixb.pdf)

[3] [https://storage.googleapis.com/hific/userstudy/visualize.htm...](https://storage.googleapis.com/hific/userstudy/visualize.html?perPage=1&page=5)

<comment><USER7> This might be a good opportunity to lead to research on a "good faith watermark" for GAN-compressed images that may include hallucinated details.

<comment><USER5> One of the things we discussed to address this is to have the ability to: a) turn off detail hallucination completely given the same bitstream; and b) store the median/maximum absolute error across the image

(b) should allow the user to determine whether the image is suitable for their use-case.

<comment><USER8> Is it possible to put the decoder into a feedback loop and search among multiple possible encodings that minimize the residual errors? Similar to trellis optimization in video codecs. [http://akuvian.org/src/x264/trellis.txt](http://akuvian.org/src/x264/trellis.txt)

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be possible - but by minimizing residual errors you end up in a similar regime as when minimizing MSE again, likely making reconstructions blurry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Generally lossy compression methods have a 'knee' below which the percieved quality rapidly drops off. The default jpeg examples here are well below that knee.

Usually comparing below the knee isn't very useful except to better help understand the sort of artefacts that one might want to also look for in higher rate images.

It would be interesting to see some examples from a lower rate HiFiC specifically for the purpose of bringing out some artefacts to help inform comparisons at higher rates.

<comment><USER10> > _The default jpeg examples here are well below that knee._

The examples are chosen as multiples of their file size 1x,2x,...

<comment><USER9> I used the word 'default' for a reason! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The HiFiC model we show is already the low model :) We show JPEG and BPG at the same rate to visualize how low the bitrate of our model actually is. And for JPEG and BPG we show 1x, 2x, and so on to visualize how many more bits the previous methods need to look similar visually.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but it isn't low rate enough to produce the level of gross artefacts needed to train the viewer to recognize faults in the images.

E.g. after looking at those jpeg images you're able to flip to much higher rate jpegs and notice blocking artefacts that a completely unprepared subject would fail to notice.

In my work on lossy codecs I found that having trained listeners was critical to detecting artifacts that would pass on quick inspection but would become annoying after prolonged exposure.

From a marketing fairness point since the only codec you evaluate 'below knee' is jpeg, it risks exaggerating the difference. It would be just about as accurate to say that jpeg can't achieve those low rates-- since no one will use jpeg at a point where its falling apart. This work is impressive enough that it doesn't need any (accidental) exaggeration.

I think it's best to either have all comparison points above the point where the codecs fall apart, or have a below-knee example for all so that it's clear how they fail and where they fail... rather than asking users to compare the gigantic difference between a failed and non-failing output.

<comment><AUTHOR> In addition to my sibling comment, I would like to add:

> since no one will use jpeg at a point where its falling apart.

Hence we also put it at bitrates people actually use :) And then the point should be that HiFiC uses much fewer bits.

> below-knee for HiFiC

We actually did not train lower than this model, HiFiC^lo. That it works so well was somewhat surprising to us also! From other GAN literature, it seems reasonable to expect the "below-knee" point for this kind of approach to still look realistic, but not faithful anymore. I.e., without the original, it may be hard to tell that it's fake.

<comment><USER9> > expect the "below-knee" point for this kind of approach to still look > realistic, but not faithful anymore.

If so, that might be kinda cool on its own.

(and perhaps also useful for anti-forensic purposes, e.g. use it as a de- noising mechanism that makes it more difficult to identify the source camera)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really impressive. But it raises some questions for me.

What size library would be required to decode these type of images?

And would the decoding library be updated on a regular basis? Would the image change when decoding library is updated? Would images be tagged with a version of the library when encoded (HiFiC v1.0.2?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words!

> What size library would be required to decode these type of images?

The model is 726MB. Keep in mind that this is a research project - <USER2> research needs to be done on how to get faster now that we know that this kind of results are possible!

> And would the decoding library be updated on a regular basis?

Only if you want even better reconstructions!

> Would the image change when decoding library is updated? Would images be > tagged with a version of the library when encoded (HiFiC v1.0.2?)

Yes, some header would have to be added.

<comment><USER12> I'm very curious how such thing could be standardized as an image format. With classic image formats there's an expectation one can write a spec and an independent implementation from scratch. "Take my X-MB large pre-trained model" is unprecedented.

Would it still be competitive with H.265 if the model was 10MB or 50MB in size? 0.7GB may be difficult for widespread adoption.

<comment><USER5> Independently of this work, we have models which are competitive with HEVC while being significantly smaller (this is from previous work). They will not look nearly as good as what you see in the website demo, but they're still better.

I don't have any such model handy but perhaps it's 10x-20x smaller.

We don't claim that this (or even the previous work) is the way to go forward for images, but we hope to incentivize more researchers to look in this direction so that we can figure out how to deploy these kinds of methods since the results they produce are very compelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 0-_-0 I'm very impressed, I was waiting for an image codec that combines something like VGG loss + GANs! (Another thing that I'm waiting for is a neural JPEG decoder with a GAN, which would be backwards compatible with all the pictures already out there!) Now we need to get some massive standardisation process going to make this more practical and perfect it, just like it was done for JPEG in the old days! (And then do it for video and audio too!)

What happens if you compress a noisy image? Does the compression denoise the image?

<comment><USER5> On the standardization issue: the advantage of such a method that we presented is that as long as there exists a standard for model specification, we can encode every image with an arbitrary computational graph that can be linked from the container.

Imagine being able to have domain specific models - say we could have a high accuracy/precision model for medical images (super-close to lossless), and one for low bandwidth applications where detail generation is paramount. Also imagine having a program written today (assuming the standard is out), and it being able to decode images created with a model invented 10 years from today doing things that were not even thought possible when the program was originally written. This should be possible because most of the low level building blocks (like convolution and other mathematical operations) is how we define new models!

On noise: I'll let my coauthors find some links to noisy images to see what happens when you process those.

<comment> 0-_-0 Absolutely! Being able to improve a decoder for an existing encoder (and vica versa) is a great advantage!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is amazing. Not only it completely blows JPEG and BPG out of the water in efficiency, but it makes some images look _better_ than the original! It seems to reduce local contrast which works well for skin (photos 1, 2 and 5), and what it does for repeating patterns is quite pleasant to the eyes (1 and 4).

The only downside I see is the introduction of artifacts like you can see on the right-side face of the clock tower.

<comment><USER14> > it makes some images look better than the original! It seems to reduce local > contrast which works well for skin (photos 1, 2 and 5)

It's better than the lossy JPEGs but I strongly disagree it's better than the original - or even close. Examining image 1 closely, the loss of contrast and the regularising of the texture of the skin make the HiFIC image feel fake when I look at it. I downloaded and opened the images at random on my computer to get rid of the bias of "the right one is the original" and it was the original I preferred each time.

Regardless, it's impressive work and I look forward to future developments!

<comment><USER15> How about image 2? On both of my monitors, the colors in the regenerated image have a striking subjective advantage over the original. I'd be surprised if 95%+ of observers didn't favor the compressed version of image 2.

<comment><USER14> Checked on 2 monitors here (one color calibrated) and I see the HiFiC version of image 2 has slightly more muted colours than the original.

Unclear what you're seeing to get "striking subjective advantage" but it's not visible here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In addition to being an amazing result, props for including a variety different sets of skin tones in the hero sample box. It's extremely good to see that there was thought put into reducing any potential bias for this compression algorithm which has unfortunately been an issue in the history of image capture [1]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis- racial-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-racial-bias- photography.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> The obvious question when looking at the comparison is, what kind of jpeg did they pick, and was it fair? It turns out that mozjpeg, which is pretty much state of the art, can squeeze out an extra 5% out of shades_jpg_4x_0.807.jpg.

Your comparison would be even more impressive if you produced the best jpegs you can at those sizes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your suggestion. We use libjpeg for the Demo. Keep in mind that we compare against JPEG files which are at around 100%-400% of the size of the proposed method, so 5% would not really add much as far as we can tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Finally someone's instantiated something like Vernor Vinge's "evocation" idea, quoted here:

[https://www.danvk.org/wp/2014-02-10/vernor-vinge-on-video- ca...](https://www.danvk.org/wp/2014-02-10/vernor-vinge-on-video- calls/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> If you are into this you may also like to see a similar model facebook used for foveated rendering (Nov 2019): [https://ai.facebook.com/blog/deepfovea- using-deep-learning-f...](https://ai.facebook.com/blog/deepfovea-using-deep- learning-for-foveated-reconstruction-in-ar-vr/)

</comment><comment><USER10> A number of comments here mention the regularity of the noise in the Lo variant as producing a slightly artificial appearance (zoom on the woman's forehead in picture 1). Would it improve anything to look for swathes where the dominant texture is noticeably uniform noise and mix it up a bit?

<comment><USER5> Not sure how that would work out in practice. We kind of rushed with the experiments in any case - maybe we could let the methods train for longer. In the end the adversary might learn any regular patters that appear, therefore forcing the generator to come up with something that cannot be detected easily.

(We trained everything to 1M steps. Perhaps letting it train to 2M would solve it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Super exciting! Fantastic work and cool demo!

I hope this can be 'stabilized' to allow video compression. If you run eg. style transfer networks on video, the artifacts in the outputted frames arent stable, they jump around from frame to frame.

(Not sure if you can decode this at 24 fps on normal hardware, but still...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And agreed - doing is in real time for high-resolution videos still needs quite some research though.

<comment><USER20> Shipping the network in device ROMs seems like a pretty far-off thing at this point, but I wonder if there could be something in the nearer term around time-shifting bandwidth usage, eg:

\- Media appliance under your TV downloads a 5GB updated network during the night so that you can use smaller-encoded streams of arbitrary content in the evening.

\- Spotify maintains a network on your phone that is updated while you're at home so that you can stream audio on the road with minimal data usage.

\- Your car has a network in it that is periodically updated over wifi and allows you to receive streetview images over a manufacturer-supplied M2M connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Amazing work! It's something we knew would come at some point, but I didn't expect it to be that good so early!

Since some of the authors are in this thread answering questions, I have one: I wonder if such project requires Google-scale infrastructure or if it's something that can easily be replicated. For instance, how big is the training set? And how much compute was necessary to train the model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! It depends on how far you want to go. For this project, we did a lot of exploration, _because_ we had Google-scale infrastructure. Replicating _all_ the exploration will need a lot of GPUs (in the 100s), replicating all the experiments that actually went into the paper maybe a few dozens. Training something similar as what's in the demo with the code we will release takes 1 V100 :)

We can't release the internal training set, but expect a dataset of a few hundred thousand images (e.g., openimages) to be sufficient, maybe even less (AFAIK this has not been explored in a controlled setting).

<comment><USER21> Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hmm, it's too bad that none of the methods (including the novel one) accurately represent her pupils. In the original image, you can tell which direction she's looking, and see how dilated her pupils are.

What I feel could be a high priority is machine learning for rate distortion. It would be really good to have higher rate on the pupils.

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, the network uses the hyperprior probability estimation network (citation [6] in the paper), which already adapts the rate depending on the image region.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fantastic.

When can we install the 1TiB video player/codec/plugin, that'll allow us to stream 4K movies on a 1Mbps connection?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully soon! However, in addition to research needed to make this work for video, it also needs research to make it smaller and/or to put it in silicon (see my other comments). The network shown is "only" 726MB BTW :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has this been extended to video (beyond compressing each frame separately)?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first time that GANs have been used to obtain high-fidelity reconstructions at useful bitrates. We haven't tried extending it to video.</comment></comment>


Avalon Bitcoin Mining Rig Batch 2 Orders open 02/18/2013 at 9am EST - <AUTHOR> http://store.avalon-asics.com/?product=avalon-asic-batch-2

<comment><USER2> Currently the bitcoin network total hash rate is 30.078 Thash/second. Within a few months that figure will certainly be much higher.</comment>


Uber's Ad-Toting Drones Are Heckling Drivers Stuck in Traffic - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602662/ubers-ad-toting-drones-are-heckling-drivers-stuck-in-traffic <comment><USER2> Marketers are really making a lot of of effort to overpass lawyers and bankers as the most loathed profession :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I know if I was in traffic I would react a lot differently, but as a bystander that's hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER4> How on earth can it be legal to fly drones low over traffic ?

(Let alone for the purpose of advertising).</comment>


Linuxbew - <AUTHOR> http://brew.sh/linuxbrew/

<comment><USER2> This is actually exciting for users on corporate managed Linux systems where the built-in package manager may not be up to date anymore (e.g. Ubuntu LTS after a couple years).

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr it's a linux&mac package manager. It promises to install to your directory so you don't need to sudo. It also promises to update out of date software. eh, I'm not it's target market.</comment>


Top Devices Running Linux, Including No. 5 Electrolux refrigerator - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/09/19/linux-birthday-celebration-not-just-for-nerds/

<comment><USER2> This article is nothing more than a small paragraph followed by a list. As cool as it is to see where Linux is, I don't see why this (relatively contentless article) is on the front page of HN...

<comment><USER3> Slow news day?

Anyway, most Panasonic TVs also run Linux. There's an option in the menu to read the GPL

[http://patrick.wagstrom.net/resources/images/blog/tvLicense1...](http://patrick.wagstrom.net/resources/images/blog/tvLicense1.jpg)</comment></comment>


Pure python bitcoin miner to understand how it works - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jgarzik/pyminer <comment><USER2> One of my frustrations with bitcoin is that there is a small cable of investors who own significant amounts of the outstanding bitcoins. They stand to make a fortune if the currency were to take off and it seems that would leave us with an economy controlled by a small number of participants, defeating much of its potential benefits.

A better proposal would be to distribute the available bitcoins equally to everyone on the planet, creating a fair and true starting point... wishful thinking, or could we hack the algorithm and shortcodes to do this?

<comment><USER3> _A better proposal would be to distribute the available bitcoins equally to everyone on the planet, creating a fair and true starting point_

That's exactly the point of the algorithm, but instead of distributing bitcoins to everyone _in the planet_ , it distributes it to everyone _running the software_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is even a javascript implementation out there somewhere but it only runs at 4khash/sec.

Oh here's a variation <https://github.com/progranism/Bitcoin-JavaScript-Miner>

But what we really need is some code with true hash throttling because limiting it to one CPU just makes performance unbalanced as it still runs at max cpu.

</comment><comment><USER5> for pure curiosity... isn't bitcoin like a pyramid scheme? 25% of the money is with the early adopters and the first individuals have big amounts compared to people that came 1year after.

<comment><USER6> Could you describe how that makes it like a pyramid scheme?

<comment><USER7> The return one gets is a function of elapsed time since bitcoin started with every newcomer getting ever-diminishing returns even if they expend the (Moore's law inflation adjusted) same amount of work. With pyramid schemes, the wealth of those who got in early is entirely supported by those who came in under them at a later date. It's not entirely analogous as later bitcoin adopters aren't kicking back value to the early adopters, but there are similarities in the end result: someone new to bitcoin in the year 2029 has no chance of catching up with those who were new in 2009 due to the fact that the total number of bitcoins has been mathematically limited to 21,000,000: <http://www.bitcoin.org/faq#How_are_new_Bitcoins_created>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone provide an explanation as to what we're looking at here?

<comment><USER9> This python script is communicating with the bitcoin program (the one available from the bitcoin website which is running in headless mode) via JSON-RPC. It's asking the program which is communicating with all the other nodes for work, performing that work and returning an answer eventually to the bitcoin program which then will propagate it to other nodes. This python script is simply performing the work in python instead of (in parallel?) the bitcoin headless server performing the work.

Essentially, attempting to implement the communication protocol of bitcoin, it's piggy backing off the bitcoin application and just attempting to perform the work. If you've ever looked at the "specification" of the communication protocol you can certainly emphasise going with this route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How long does it take to create a coin using the official client? The only coin I have is from that bit coin faucet that I heard about a while back. I've been running the client now for almost a month, and nothing. I've dedicated 2 of my laptop cores on coin generation, but I haven't seen anything. Or, are the only people getting coins those that are using their GPUs to generate coins?

<comment><USER11> Check how many khash/s do you process and use this calculator <http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php> to estimate how long you'll have to wait to get bitcoins with 95% probability.

I currently have 150 000 khash/s on Radeon HD 6850 And I'm hoping to see 50 bitcoins per two months (I don't run my computer 24/7).

Six core AMD 1090T does only 9 000 khash/s so with two cores of laptop you'll see your first mined bitcoin exactly 5 seconds after hell freezes over. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, I want a lesson on this. @tenzwarszawy</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a RSS feed for new links? - <AUTHOR>

The RSS link at the bottom of the Hacker News site lists out the sites that get enough votes. But what about the new sites? Is there a RSS feed for those? <comment><USER2> _shameless plug_

Create one with Feedity - <http://feedity.com></comment>


Ask HN: Best Data-Driven Application Interfaces - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested to hear from the community which data-driven applications - think QuickBooks rather than Twitter - you think are the most well designed. Not only aesthetics, but particularly well thought out input or analysis workflows, thoughtful visualizations, etc. <comment><USER2> Google Analytics is the first the comes to mind naturally.

<http://get.gaug.es/> is quite nice.

<http://www.xero.com> is good</comment>


Machine Learning Spots Treasure Trove of Elusive Viruses - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03358-3 <comment><USER2> The article doesn't really say how the algorithm works aside from "they use machine learning," but the basic principle turns out to be pretty simple. In the work by Amgartden _, they classify lengths of sequenced DNA by looking at the counts of k-mers (read: substrings of length k, where they use k between 2 to 10) that occur in each; it simply turns out that k-mer occurrence differs sufficiently between viral DNA and cell DNA this works.

_ The article mysteriously doesn't cite Roux, and I don't have time right now to track it down, but it's probably similar.

<comment><USER3> Google the reference text leads to PubMed site, download paper free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> paper: [http://rdcu.be/tZ33](http://rdcu.be/tZ33)

code: [https://github.com/jessieren/VirFinder](https://github.com/jessieren/VirFinder)

[EDIT] CNN based approach: [https://github.com/jessieren/VirFinder/tree/master/VFdeep](https://github.com/jessieren/VirFinder/tree/master/VFdeep)</comment>


Using Apache Spark to Analyze Large Neuroimaging Datasets - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dominodatalab.com/pca-on-very-large-neuroimaging-datasets-using-pyspark/ <comment><USER2> If you're doing neuroscience image analysis, you probably want to take a look at Bolt, Thunder, Lightning:

[http://bolt-project.org/](http://bolt-project.org/) [http://thunder- project.org/](http://thunder-project.org/) [http://lightning- viz.org/](http://lightning-viz.org/)

and associated work going on at the Freeman lab at HMMI:

[https://www.janelia.org/lab/freeman-lab](https://www.janelia.org/lab/freeman- lab)

<comment><USER3> Good stuff, thanks! Recently saw this Nature article on the state-of-the-art in neuroscience imaging and it's amazing:

The Human Connectome Project's neuroimaging approach

[http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v19/n9/full/nn.4361.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v19/n9/full/nn.4361.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did you try applying sklearn's PCA to a subsampled dataset? Randomly sampling 1% of your dataset would probably allow you to find the first four principle components in less than 30 minutes.

It would be interesting to see whether these components are significantly different to the ones you got on the whole dataset.</comment>


A recap of front-end development in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://levelup.gitconnected.com/a-recap-of-front-end-development-in-2017-7072ce99e727 <comment> 10-6 I really enjoyed you recap, nice job. I think vue.js, GraphQL, and wasm will become more popular in 2018. We'll see though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I'm very excited to see how they grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Excellent write up. I learned about a lot of technologies I had missed! Thanks for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you enjoyed it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> thank You for this article!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!</comment></comment>


Why There Isn't a Perfect Ebook Reader - <AUTHOR> http://i.gizmodo.com/5152092/giz-explains-why-there-isnt-a-perfect-ebook-reader <comment><USER2> The feeling I got while reading this was the same one I got many years ago when reading why Microsoft's PocketPC was going to wipe the floor with the simplistic PalmOS. Ironically, I agreed with those PocketPC articles at the time but now see why the simplicity of the Palm made it the winner back then.

Amazon clearly understands readers better than Gizmodo does and the Kindle, if Amazon's sales pronouncements are to be believed, clearly resonates with people. I think that's why Kindle sells so well and will continue to do so.

One final point, the author thinks the disappearance of actual paper books is inevitable but I don't believe that. Paper is easy to produce, easy to recycle and most people like the tactile feel of books. So paper may disappear but it's not inevitable imho. Paper Books are certainly here for a long time to come.

<comment><USER3> Paper books are to ebooks like the theatre is to cinema. Cinema is more storable, purer, more controllable. It's more permanent in the sense that it lasts in different form. That said, there's an art to theatre that can't be replicated on-screen, and because of those arts, and because of the incredible history of theatre, it won't ever go away. It might not be constantly in the spotlight, but it'll always be there.

Similarly, paper books won't disappear. I'll be able to hold on to my Little Nemo and Krazy Kat and Series of Unfortunate Events and my kids will be able to have that same thrill of opening a new book for the first time. Maybe they'll read more ebooks than they'll read books, but the books will always be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm kinda in the Cory Doctorow school of thought. Whenever I see it reported that this or that e-book reader will soon be _the_ thing, I can't help but think of: [http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/03/cory-doctorow- you-d...](http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/03/cory-doctorow-you-do-like- reading-off.html)

Those waiting for the e-book to "arrive" may have already missed the fact that it's here.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to be a dick and argue with Cory Doctorow, who is bright and famous, but every time I read this article I feel frustrated. I tolerate computer screens, yes. I can read off one for eight hours a day. It is _not_ a good screen for reading a book off of. It's bright and very slightly stresses my eye and most importantly, it's not invisible. I don't sink into the content. E-ink vanishes as I read it. I curl up into it mentally the way I'll physically curl up with a good book. I gladly put down money for the Kindle. It was utterly worth my money.

The problem with Doctorow is that he's a geek more than he is a writer. Yeah, he got himself published thanks to BoingBoing, but he's not from the breed of writer that lives and breathes for language. I'm not the best spokesperson here because I'm lodged in between the two types, but I'm close enough to the one side, and I'm friends with enough people over the brink, to be able to definitely say that the people who are obsessed with language will never tolerate something like a light-based screen. Some people I know are in fact physically sensitive: they won't watch TV because they don't like how jumpy and powerful the screen is. Those same people are fine with e-ink, because it's so neutral.

Maybe most people here either don't get that or don't care. I've been in arguments with people here who think that literature is overrated and overblown by English majors: it's a typical elitist hacker response. Doctorow absolutely has that opinion. But as somebody whose startup is focused entirely on the English language, and on emphasizing beautiful language, I rather disagree, and I'd say that the people who are really pushing literature forward today are still the ones who read ink and write ink, and a lot of those people won't put up with screens as a primary reading type. I'm sure that many non-writers are the same way.

<comment><USER4> Disagreement isn't being a dick. And I agree more with you that Doctorow, I have cases and cases of books (my back remembers this every time I have to move). But I, and I may have misread Doctorow's article, take it that his point wasn't that "the screen" (phones, e-readers, laptops, etc.) is a _good_ device to read things from but that it is _good enough_.

I think of this as similar to the comparison between a live concert, a CD and an MP3. The concert is the one that really moves me, that's the one that makes me want to get up and dance or at least tap my feet. A good band vibrates my guts just as well as I hear them.

A CD is _nothing_ like that experience, it's flat by comparison, the tones aren't as low or as high and I can't feel the music thump in my stomach like I can at a concert. But at the end of a great show, I'll plunk down $10 so that I can hear a really great band again.

Now an MP3 is even more flattened, I don't know what the science is but I think that on a lot of rips I _can_ hear some sort of difference from the CD. There are parts that don't feel as crisp, etc. But MP3s, (and by this I mean "compressed digital music files") are doing really well out there. Apple sells a lot of them. In other words they seem "good enough". Or it may just be that when people evaluate different formats, concert, CD or MP3 they choose the most portable one and don't care as much about the quality.

That's what I was trying to cite, without judgment, that it seems people will sacrifice a lot of quality for a gain in some other area. I don't see why it would be different with books.

I remember reading a book ("Scrolling Forward" by David M. Levy, Arcade Pub., New York, 1st ed.) the author was an alum of Xerox PARC; he had written his thesis on one of the first WYSIWYG word processor typing systems, an early machine with a mouse. After this experience he went off to learn the very analog art of calligraphy. He felt that he had lost his connection with the feel of the page and the art of writing, he also wrote this whole book about what "document" means in the digital age. I mean to say that there may also be a more expanded notion of what _reading_ and _novel_ mean in the future. Or maybe not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      The problem with that E-Ink is expensive, slow (you can't
      have moving cursors or any kind of video) and boring.

The price will decrease once the technology behind its production improves (and people stop there willingness to actually spend that much), it will also speed up over time (its just how things work. To address the last point: WTF?

Secondly, from the Pixel Qi site:

      Our screens use 1/2 to 1/4 the power of a regular LCD
      screen, and when integrated carefully with the device can
      increase battery life between charges by 5-fold.

and from Giz:

      Jepsen says it's even possible to get a week of battery
      life from LCD tech, of course depending on the device the
      screens are embedded in.

I really don't see how those two can statements can coexist. Currently we get around 8 hours from labtops, improve that by her 1/4 estimate and we now get 32 hours which fall short of our weeklong estimate.

Lastly:

      Infrastructurally and perhaps historically speaking, the
      odds are in LCD's favor.

I'm going to need this one spelled out for me...

<comment><USER6> I think the important part was _when integrated carefully with the device._ Laptops spend energy on other things than just the LCD. However, reducing energy in other places has diminishing returns when the LCD is draining a lot of juice. Take the 17 inch mackbook's battery and use it to power a dell mini 9 with this type of LCD and you might get a weeks worth of use (7 * 8hours + standby) out of the thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shorter Mary Lou Jepsen: My company's magic vaporware will solve every single display problem by 2010.

<comment><USER8> Considering I have one of her displays (an XO), it's hardly vaporware. In eBook mode it is very much like an eInk display, super crisp and great in sunlight.</comment></comment>


Python Startups and the True Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://clouddbs.blogspot.com/2010/09/python-startups-and-true-entrepreneur.html

<comment><USER2> At the end of the day, a "true entrepreneur" is someone who builds a business.

</comment><comment><USER3> But ... it's just _fun_. Who cares about the rewards, I want _fun_ and I want it NOW.

A steady job just can't give you that. And to top it all off, it can't give you the possibility of a big reward either. lose-lose

edit: that is to say, a big reward that somebody gives you, isn't a reward at all, you're supposed to go get it yourself

<comment><USER4> Exactly. To draw from my experiences, working on historious is so amazingly fun that I can't wait to finish whatever else I'm doing to work on it.

It's not work, it's a hobby that (sometimes) pays. It's exactly the same as playing WoW, only more socially acceptable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah but when your startup isn't covering the bills and you're already eating and living cheap - what do you do?

<comment><USER3> The most important job of your startup is to MAKE MONEY.

So when there isn't money in the bank you go out and you MAKE SOME DAMN MONEY.

If all else fails get an out-of-focus purely-for-money project. There's usually a lot of those lying about if you're willing to work on them.

full disclosure: my startup has yet to pay bills, but we have a knack for getting government grants

<comment><USER5> If money is your sole motivator, I don't think you'll get very far, at least in the startup world.

You should do what you love. Make peoples' lives easier. Financial gain is just a by-product.

Go out and change the world, with a passion to change the world (rather than financial gain), and the rewards (whatever they may be, money or otherwise) will come.

<comment><USER3> Yes, obviously. But a startup that can't pay the bills for itself and the people who work there will die even quicker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did I miss how Python fits in here? Seems to be a rather large cognitive gap between the premise and the supporting argument.

The commentary about the "true entrepreneur" has some interesting insights, although it seems a bit religious. We are all organic variable individuals, not Platonic types.

<comment><USER7> Python was there for linkbait purposes and because it represents working on what you want to work on with what you want to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't there for linkbait purposes, it was there because the startup my friend was considering which initiated this post is crazy about python, another startup in progress is all python-based, and python is always coming up in the discussion. If I wanted to linkbait I would have used a more popular language like Java.</comment></comment></comment>


Laird Hamilton's age-busting 10-point plan to supercharge your body - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jun/10/why-laird-hamilton-is-still-making-waves-surfing-legend-lifestyle-guru <comment><AUTHOR> When I'm old(er) I want to be like Don. That's an awesome attitude he's got (and a good friend in Laird Hamilton).</comment>


Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than - <AUTHOR> https://lobste.rs/s/huw2lc <comment><USER2> Direct link to article: [http://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html](http://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html)

<comment><USER3> article is from 2011 and it's shown up before

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3175629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3175629) (115 comments)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=turbo%20pascal%20smaller](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=turbo%20pascal%20smaller)</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Help our startup and get cheap advertising - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone,
Since starting at Galaxy IT in January (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89615), I've been responsible for developing our advertising system. We had to roll our own because our application is built on Adobe Flex, and traditional advertising services (ie. Google AdSense) won't work. Besides that, we want our advertisements to be a bit more visually appealing than the standard boxes you see throughout the web today.
In order to get our system tested and off the ground, we need companies to advertise with us, and I figured News.YC would be a great place to ask. How interested would any of you be in helping us test our ad system? We'd be offering discounted rates, of course, and you'd get a pretty nice looking ad. This is kind of a "startups helping startups" situation: we need help getting our ad system tested, stable, and off the ground, and we want to help other startups by providing some cheap advertising.
Please note that this post is solely to gauge interest. It'll still be a while until we're ready to go.
More information: http://www.galaxyit.com/index.php?page=game <comment><USER2> If you want to hack adsense into your sys, check out this article I wrote for thenextweb:

[http://thenextweb.org/2008/02/20/adsense-in-adobe-flash- now-...](http://thenextweb.org/2008/02/20/adsense-in-adobe-flash-now- possible/)</comment>