REBOL 3 Source Code Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r?view=0519 <comment><USER3> Politically incorrect question for Rebol jocks: Doesn't Red (<http://www.red- lang.org/>) appear to have the vitality lost years ago by Rebol?

Am seriously not trying to be rude to Carl Sassenrath, Rebol's inventor. Just discovered Rebol lately so am not very tuned in to the ecosystem. But Red has been open source for some time, it appears to be dramatically faster, and seems to be free of Carl's understandable urges to keep some kind of control in an anarchic world?

I say this as someone trying to decide which one to invest my very limited non-work time in one of these two very worthy projects.

<comment><USER4> not sure if you're astro-turfing or really unaware of the difference, but in its time rebol had the level of awareness of, say, the rust language now - <USER2> something a lot of people used, but with a decent profile in the technical press. a known, interesting, but unlikely to make it language. a class B if you like.

in comparison, red is class C. it's new, has little awareness and little coverage. it's even less likely to make it.

this is not a judgement on the merits of either language (although if you want that, rebol's syntax aware approach looks more interesting to me than anything red has to offer), just trying to give a historical perspective: rebol _was_ bigger than red is now and, i suspect, still has more users, even now. on the other hand, rebol is clearly heading down while red can only go up.

<comment><USER4> oh, sorry - above is wrong if red is derived from rebol. sorry again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> apache licence. <https://github.com/rebol/r3/blob/master/LICENSE> isn't that significantly more free than rebol in the past? edit: yes, the original rebol licence didn't allow modification. <http://www.rebol.com/license.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Repo: <https://github.com/rebol/r3>

</comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, this is perhaps too late. This would've been much better timed when Rebol was more popular.

It is very, very cool, however.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like REBOL community was quite seclusive: they weren't using web nor IRC to communicate, but AltME[1]. So, who knows what will happen, when they "come out".

>It is very, very cool, however

Agree. It feels* like if Clojure is a Lisp done right, then REBOL is a metacircular scripting done right.

[1] <http://www.altme.com/>

* It's just feeling, no intention to start holywar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The wikipedia description makes it seem like it's cat's pajamas. Has anyone coded in this? If so, what's your experience?

<comment><USER7> I wrote a small email client in Rebol in 2001, it could download email via POP and send via SMTP directly via the protocols and a socket.

It was a TINY program and it worked cross platform due to the fact that there was a web client for Rebol. I actually used it in production just for myself. Amazingly, I just googled my name and Rebol and found the mailing list archives where I was asking about the project... ah, the power of the web's institutional memory!

Rebol (the language) took a bit of getting used to because the syntax was more functional in nature (although it is note a pure functional language). I had just come from working on some C++ and CGI/Perl programs so it was pretty different. It was a fun experiment to stretch the mind.

Honestly, I hadn't given Rebol a thought since I just saw this post... nice to know it's still alive and well.

The book (still have it on the shelf) I first used as a reference was "Rebol: The Official Guide".

<comment><USER7> Looking back I recall this article I read in 2005, it was interesting to note it had some similarities to the way data is expressed in JSON and similar ways to declare functions that we now use in javascript (myfunc = function(input) { }, etc.). JSON was released in RFC 4627 in 2006 - the timing and similarity is interesting.

<http://www.rebol.com/article/0206.html>

<comment><USER8> Not an accidental similarity, Douglas Crockford credits Rebol as an influence for json.

<https://erikeldridge.wordpress.com/tag/crockford/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Erm, _interesting_ style of in-line documentation, with the function declaration embedded in the comment block. Also, alphabetically enumerated (categorized?) source files.

</comment><comment> iso-8859-1 Where can I find stuff implemented with REBOL? Stuff like factorial, a web server, Unix tool implementations.

<comment><USER10> A pretty full featured web server: <http://cheyenne-server.org/>

But I also built an infrastructure configuration server from the 2kB <http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=webserver.r> to avoid LDAP/Chef/Puppet and similar bloatwares.

What do you consider a Unix tool? File and directory handling and serial port access just as HTTP/IMAP/POP/SMTP clients are all built in. See <http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-12.html> and <http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-13.html>

Instead of lex/yacc it provides the parse function and instead of grep it also provides the parse function (with a more readable BNF-like syntax, which is less effective to write for very small hacks, thats true).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am reading about Rebol the first time now. And I have some problems to understand what exactly it is.

Just a scripting language like Python but with some more stuff included, mainly a cross-platform feature-rich GUI framework? And a very own syntax...

Or more like an embedded programmable VM like Smalltalk?

Also, <http://www.red-lang.org> was mentioned here (and I also haven't heard about it before). How does that compare?

<comment><USER12> It's a programming language + standard library. The particular feature of REBOL that makes is special is the ease with which you can define your own DSL within the limits of the REBOL lexer. This allows libraries for specific purposes, such as making UIs or parsing text, to be very succinct yet readable.

A bit Lisp-y but with a stronger focus on what in Lisp would be macros.

When first published, REBOL was way ahead of its time, having explicit support for a variety of well-designed DSLs before the term DSL even existed (or at least, was widely known). The downsides of REBOL always were its closed source commercial model and the lack of a strong community as a (probable) result therefore, plus the fact that by default, the UIs made by the built-in UI library look absolutely horrible, which isn't a big problem really but helps scare newcomers away.

That one first downside seems to have been taken away now.

A nice REBOL showcase is, IMHO, it's oneliner page:

<http://www.rebol.com/oneliners.html>

Plus the (excellent) associated commentary on some mailing list:

[http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of- Mon-20091109/0545...](http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of- Mon-20091109/054578.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wonder if this code has survived into this version: <http://ll1.ai.mit.edu/marshall.html>

Added: no: <https://github.com/akavel/sherman></comment>


What are five things you hate about your favorite language? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/282329/what-are-five-things-you-hate-about-your-favorite-language <comment><USER2> "Closed as off-topic"

Never change, StackOverflow - most consistent moderation in the past decade.

<comment><USER3> Damn you Stack Overflow -- well what I hate about my favourite language is all the noobs who think they know what they're doing who don't even know how to compose a commit in the imperative</comment></comment>


BitCoin and International Crime - <AUTHOR> http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-bitcoin-20131125,0,3265347.story

<comment><USER2> "Stop Bitcoin. Save the children (and rhinos, too, while you're at it)!"

When will we learn that money and systems (especially X new technology) aren't the issue (or the solution)? People are both. Until society admits both its faults and its failed solutions, it probably will be plagued with deplorable crimes such as those facilitated by Bitcoin (and USD and CAD and CHF, for that matter).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Submitter here - I hate, hate, hate this post. It is the worst FUD I have seen in some time, and I'm only posting b/c I think it needs the full HN lens. Please don't think I agree with a single word.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I'd be interested in hearing Prof. Green's rebuttal -- I'm sure he's long since thought these issues through very carefully.

One of the commenters to the article mentioned, money was never designed to be a tracking system. That "feature" has only been added over the past few decades.

And law enforcement will always be inconvenienced in a free society, the kind our founding fathers most definitely envisioned here in the U.S. (and elsewhere, I'm sure).

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's hope there is a rebuttal... his last major blog post[1] was censored by his university. In a flash of reason, the decision was reversed (woohoo academic freedom!)

In this case, since Zerocoin is actually a university-sponsored project (from the Johns Hopkins Information Securuty Institute), we can hope for a response... hopefully it will be a rebuttal from the researchers and not a kneejerk response from administrators.

Even beyond its obvious utility (for good or ill), zerocoin is a fascinating problem in cryptographic research, and we should be grateful it's occuring in the light of day and not as some super-secret project.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa- mat...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa-matthew- green-takedown-blog-post-johns-hopkins)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is the real crime... It is a currency that no government can manipulate or control. Bitcoin with tumblers is "true" economic freedom from any beaurocratic or government control. You get the bad... But you also get the infinite good of not having any government able to take your wealth away from you at its whim.

</comment><comment><USER5> As if rhino poachers would ever use bitcoin, lol. After all, the money has to enter and exit the BTC world (e.g. at places like MtGox), where it can and will be recorded.

Far too risky for poachers and large-scale criminals.

</comment><comment><USER6> Playing the devil's advocate here:

In 30 years time, you consider retiring, and you have a significant portion of your savings in Zerocoin. Someone, somehow, manages to fraudulently acquire your Zerocoin savings, perhaps through a flaw in the Zerocoin system itself. You go to the authorities, and ask them to help you recover your stolen retirement savings. They reply, "Sorry, as you know, Zerocoin is completely anonymous. We can't help you, no-one can."

What do you do?

<comment><USER7> Simple: You don't invest in Bitcoin/Zerocoin in the first place.

Digital currencies are the online equivalent of cash, not of a savings account or stocks. Like regular cash, it can be stolen (e.g., by hacking into your computer) or lost (hard drive crash with an outdated backup), and thus, you shouldn't have more on hand than you can afford to lose.

Different rules apply to speculators, of course, but you are talking about retirement savings. Putting your retirement savings in a Bitcoin wallet is about the same as having a pile of cash under your mattress.

<comment><USER6> That much is already clear. I'm more interested in comments from those who appear to think Bitcoin/Zerocoin is an "infinite good": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806395)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bitcoins don't kill people, people kill people.

<comment><USER9> Rhinos don't poach Rhinos, Bitcoins poach Rhinos</comment></comment>


Studying how the brain relinquishes childhood memories - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/this-is-where-your-childhood-memories-went-rp <comment><USER2> Aside from the changes to the brain hardware, I'd imagine the way in which we construct memories changes to a much higher level of abstraction in early childhood (e.g. building "photographic" memory from a set of concepts around location, lighting and types and condition of objects rather than simply colours and shapes, building our memory of human interaction from a mental model which assumes the other people have motivations and personality traits not just tones of voice etc). So even if some of the information from earlier years is actually preserved, our older brains may not be able to parse it unless it was important enough to reconstruct with a different mental model.

<comment><USER3> Young children deal with memories on perceptual level - images, smells, feelings. Adults deal with memories on a conceptual level - words.

My wife is a clinical psychologist specialized in the treatment of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. For her dissertation, she developed a new treatment that takes these memory processes into account, and it is extraordinarily effective.

Adults in this population are often totally unable to articulate and reason about their childhood experiences, acting out emotionally and developing secondary psychological issues. But it turns out they are able communicate and treat terrible deeply held beliefs through art.

It is not my subject area and I can't explain it with justice, but just wanted to point out that your intuition is on the right track.

<comment><USER4> Could we get a link, perhaps? I'd like it very much to read more about the method.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I try very hard to avoid making myself special in amongst the general case. But, I came here to observe I had verified memories from close to pre-verbal times, something I am told is not common.

If these were subsequent implants from conversation or comment from my elders, it was pretty subtle. The memories are far weaker now, but up to my twenties they were strong, lasting visual impressions of three specific locations.

(I'm in my fifties now)

<comment><USER6> I believe I remember potty training but my parents said I learned at 13 months. I'm likely misremembering using a tiny plastic toilet in the bathroom from that age to 2-3.

I can almost certainly remember the daunting climb onto a full sized toilet between age 3-4.

<comment><USER7> I think my earliest memory was standing at the door to my basement with one hand on the door knob and the other hand counting, saying something along the lines of "I'm 3 now" or something. Either that or it was some sort of daycare visit. Order is difficult to remember.

As I began typing this I just remembered this football toy chest I used to have in my basement.

The earliest thing I don't remember for which there is (was?) recorded evidence of, is me as a toddler picking up giant carpenter ants and trying to put them in my mouth before a parent came over and stopped me.

<comment><USER8> Football toy chest! I had one of those. I remember climbing inside it -- being able to fit inside it even. I remember, when I was older, trying to climb inside but backing out because I was afraid of getting stuck in there (and trying to imagine how they would cut me out of the thing, that kind of gives me the heebie jeebies even now).

<comment><USER7> Lol, yeah, I think everyone that had one of those must have climbed in at some point. Me and my cousins used to put the lid on and roll each other around probably giving us brain damage in the process. I think the last time I got in was after one time when my older cousins were torturing me by sitting on the lid and not letting me out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been remembering a lot of my childhood lately. Perhaps it's due to recently adding DHEA to my supplement stack, though not exactly sure what the cause is, but it feels good and sad at the same time.

I've wasted a lot of my life due to reasons both within and out of my control.

In any case, one memory that came to mind recently was the ponzi scheme I tried starting around 4th grade -- I think it was? -- when playing around with Print Master Deluxe's fun "ye olde" paper background template. I called it "Joe's Money Club". The point of the club was that people would join and pay dues on a certain schedule, and we'd use those funds to try to make money. I'm joking partly about it being a ponzi scheme ... I think; the story is more fun if I play it up that way, but as I think about it, I don't think it was technically a ponzi scheme, because I do remember trying to sell ear plugs (my dad worked in a factory and had a ton of these packs of orange ear plug pairs). In any case, the club disbanded around a week later due to lack of interest, and I tried to give the money back from dues, but everyone just let me keep it.

<comment><USER9> Ok

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> wow, this article explains why I don't remember my childhood and the most part of my teenage years, and even later memories are registered as some facts, not actual memories. I always thought it's a protective mechanism my brain developed to get rid of all the negative things, but the authors say it is just the price for being physically active (I run 10k every day, play Ultimate, + martial arts, mountaineering/alpinism and other extreme sports) => growing new neurons:

"A few years back, Frankland and his wife Sheena Josselyn—also a neuroscientist at the Hospital for Sick Children—started to notice that the mice they studied performed worse on certain kinds of memory tests after living in a cage with a running wheel. As the couple knew, exercise on a running wheel promotes neurogenesis—the growth of whole new neurons—in the seahorse-shaped hippocampus, a brain region that is essential for memory. But while neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus likely contributes to the ability to learn and remember, Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University and others had suggested5 that it might also necessitate a certain amount of forgetting. Just as a forest has room for only so many trees, the hippocampus can hold only so many neurons. New brain cells might crowd the territory of other neurons or even replace them altogether, which could in turn break or reconfigure the small circuits that likely store individual memories. Perhaps, then, the especially high rate of neurogenesis in infancy was partly responsible for childhood amnesia."

And this also explains why I always try to schedule my long runs after the calls to my mother (they are stressful), and add more miles if I have more stress in my life in general:

"when adults ran on a hamster wheel after the shocks—thereby stimulating neurogenesis—they started to mirror infants in their forgetfulness. Prozac, which also encourages neural growth, had the same effect. Conversely, when the researchers hindered neurogenesis in infant mice with drugs or genetic engineering, the young animals formed much more stable memories."

</comment><comment><USER11> My anecdotal observation is that very smart people have few early childhood memories, whereas less smart people have many early childhood memories. Possibly the brains of the smarter people accomplished a more efficient restructuring in which essentially all storage resources became available for adult memories.

If this were true, I wonder if anyone would try to exploit it in contexts such as job interviews. Specifically, could the ELI5 concept be repurposed? Do I ask an applicant to "Explain When You Were 5" and, if they have a coherent response, put that person at the bottom of the pile?

<comment><USER12> That assumes that "smart" is what you need. What about things like discipline, consistency, honesty, cooperativeness, etc? For example some smart people think that only they are right, and if you task them to do something they don't fully agree with they lose all motivation, even if the "right" in that context is subjective and/or a matter of taste. In some organizations and jobs, the ability to work together as to allow business continuity and redundancy is more valuable than the heroic contributions of any one person. Some smart people also hate unchallenging work, but not all work can be challenging -- indeed a lot of my work as an entrepreneur and supervisor is boring but it is necessary.

You also assume that "smart" has a single definition -- or a good definition at all. What about two different people who are smart in different ways, but only one of those ways is correlated to childhood memories?

What if you are simply observing someone's communication style, and merely interpreting a certain communication style as "less smart"? For example, some people are extraverted and respond really quickly, but on the other hand they didn't really think things through, miss details and change their minds often. Other people could be described as more introverted, don't respond quickly and need to think about something for a couple of nights, but when they come back to you they've really given it a thought and understand all the details and don't change their mind quickly. People in the former group and more easily perceived as "smart" and "a leader" while people in the other less so.

I've seen the definition of IQ. I've studied a bit of psychology. The more I know about those two the more I think that the concept of "IQ" and "smart" are bullshit. There is often no "more/less smart", there is only "different".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did some meta-learning where I wrote out my thought process while learning and then came back 3 months later to verify retainment as well accuracy.

From doing this I have a few theories about memory (All from my mind. We could record memory different.):

\- Memory is read once write many. That is, every time we retrieve a memory we rewrite it back, modifying it slowly.

\- The emotional state of the recorded memory combined with the last few recalls determines how easy the memory will automatically pop up, without digging for it. This is based on the emotional state while retrieving the memory. (eg, studying in a class room increases test scores do the environment being the same. Depression, manic depressive, DID, and many other emotional states determine what memories or thoughts will arise in the mind next in relation to the current moment.)

\- Memories of just the individual moment (usually slices in time or elements of spacial awareness) are in a sort of tree structure. Details of an event are recursively retrieved while the most important parts to that moment to the individual usually sit higher in the tree. (eg, near photographic memory shows a person who constructs a deep tree, and usually recurses it quickly.)

\- The key aspects of a "concept" (a unconscious part of a knowledge instance, not the whole piece) are retained through the distance of neighboring similar concepts (metaphor, or literal), and by how many neighboring concepts there are. This makes a graph. I originally suspected you'd want 3 neighboring concepts, but 2 seems to work perfectly fine for long term memory retainment (if not 1 neighboring node), as long as the neighboring concepts are not too distant. The distance between concepts strongly determines the "pressure" on the mind during learning, the resolution of the knowledge learned, and ultimately if it is retained or not. Oddly, this seems to be somewhat black and white for long term memory: you either retain the concept or you do not, even if that concept is not used, as long as the mind has some level of importance tied to it enough to record it to begin with.

\- The finer details of what the patterns the mind processes is a difference between two or more patterns in space and/or time. This functions similar to a video codec where the entire detail is not recorded, but just the relational change. Without this difference between two or more patterns, we may not be able to record anything. (eg, the static on an analog tv. The difference to 'not-static' is recorded, but it is a higher level concept. The individual squares on the screen are not recorded into memory, but instead only the details that can be pattern matched to a neighboring pattern.)

\- Neighboring aspects within concepts can and do bridge multiple domains of pattern matching sensory experience, but usually do not unless necessary. I've labeled these axoms and they take longer to learn / more pressure on the mind than normal concepts. (eg, learning addition is more difficult than learning multiplication, because addition crosses from the abstract into the concrete, but multiplication only requires the knowledge of addition to be learned.)

\- The name of word that represents a concept can be learned through neighboring word concepts, as it is somewhat like a concept on top of a concept, but I've found the easiest way to remember the name of a thing or the vocabulary word coupled with the concept is to build a story for it. So far I've found two kinds of stories that work best: 1) Humorous metaphors, as humor for some sort of reason creates a strong memory. and 2) An interesting story about it. This could be a mythology, usually a fiction with metaphors to tie it together (see Memory Palace) but for me, my personal interest is etymology: _Why_ is that thing called what it is called? If I have a story for the thought process of why it is called that, the name is recorded. This can be fiction or nonfiction, but I find nonfiction to have the added benefit of understanding the thought process of others or a moment in time, which is a cool added bonus.

\- When written down or said out loud during a memory record, it solidifies far better. I have a few theories as to why that is. One of them is akin to 'rubber duck debugging', where writing it out unchunks assumptions and forces one to walk over the entire structure.

\- If within a single domain over 220-250 concepts are recorded, either headaches can happen, or old concepts will fall out, much like an LRU. This most likely ties into the size our brain, as that determines how many people we remember (roughly ~250) and the numbers seem to line up here too. By creating categories for subjects this 250 element restriction no longer applies.

This, as mentioned above, is a tree structure being recursed upon and written out in list format, but because there are subtle details beyond these points, I'm probably forgetting a lot that is there in my memory, but I don't have a reason to dive into more detail. (eg, how examples can concrete abstract thoughts solidifying them, ...most etymology for vocabulary is visual, if you go far enough back, ...)

My recall of 300 concepts learned in 3 months is easily above that of 95%. Two years later, with no use of the concepts and retainment is still clearly above 90%, but the etymology of the vocabulary in certain domains (namely logic) seems to fade for me.

<comment><USER14> I've been considering my mind's data structures as well recently.

I find it, normal?, that humorous metaphors work best. I assume it's easier on the psyche and 'funner' to recall.

<comment><USER13> Some of the people I know who naturally retain memory the best are some of the brightest and clear headed people. (Not including near perfect memory recording individuals, who do not have humor associated with their memories.)

I on the other hand suck at humor. I find if I try to make a humorous association it seems forced, which does work to some extent, but leaves me feeling a bit forced during recall, so I don't find that worth it. However, when it is naturally funny or amusing, you better believe it sticks.

I suspect this has to do with anxiety. Humor isn't the opposite of anxiety (that would be closer to hypnosis, I would guess) but humor breaks tension like cutting melted butter. So much so, if you get pulled over, and if you can make the officer laugh within a minute, your chances of getting a ticket are nearly zero.

There is clearly something going on here, but what it is, I admit I'm in the dark.

If you're the kind that can find humor in everything, especially puns and similar, you've very lucky.

<comment><USER14> >Some of the people I know who naturally retain memory the best are some of the brightest and clear headed people. (Not including near perfect memory recording individuals, who do not have humor associated with their memories.) >I on the other hand suck at humor. I find if I try to make a humorous association it seems forced, which does work to some extent, but leaves me feeling a bit forced during recall, so I don't find that worth it. However, when it is naturally funny or amusing, you better believe it sticks.

For me, I find that unless the joke has been expressed to others I simply forget the attempted association. Even if it's a bad joke or bad association, the expression portion helps to make the association of humor with the concept/memory more concrete.

>I suspect this has to do with anxiety. Humor isn't the opposite of anxiety (that would be closer to hypnosis, I would guess) but humor breaks tension like cutting melted butter. So much so, if you get pulled over, and if you can make the officer laugh within a minute, your chances of getting a ticket are nearly zero.

This is a good point. I seem to recall reading somewhere that there a variety of reasons we find things funny but a large one has to do with inhibiting flight/fight response after a close call.

>There is clearly something going on here, but what it is, I admit I'm in the dark.

>If you're the kind that can find humor in everything, especially puns and similar, you've very lucky.

If I take an extreme view (one which I don't fully believe but will use for illustration), then humor of a particular variety helps us to recognize situations that are dangerous/seemingly dangerous, but survivable, if we can recall what decisions extricated us from that situation previously. I feel like that's heading in the direction of creating strong, positive, associations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At 38, given, how little I remember about the details of events of last two decades, places I've been, people I met, things I've done... I'm surprised I have any memories of events from my childhood.

</comment><comment><USER16> What I have been curious about for some time is if there's a neurochemical basis for actively hiding away memories or feelings from your conscious brain, aka compartmentalization.</comment>


Talk of Chief's Health Weighs on Apple's Share Price - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/technology/23apple.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> no, he looks thin. He had pancreatic cancer. The pancreas is a primarily digestive organ. You cut out the pancreas, people don't digest as efficiently. After several years, they tend to loose weight. This is actually why cystic fibrosis patients are thin also: their pancreas becomes plugged with mucus and they have problems digesting enough protein. There are enzyme tablets for just this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Holy crap. He looks sick.</comment>


10k Bootstrap Challenge: Launch of hnalerts.com - <AUTHOR> http://hnalerts.com/

<comment><USER2> And guess how I found out this had been posted here? ;) Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I figured you'd notice that, been following your blog since i saw you started, figured you'd be happy to see a text altering you that it was submitted. :) Carry on, you're doing awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Painting is called Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, by the way [0]...

Original reply was: Thou art a turkish imp, the damned devil's brother and friend, and a secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight art thou that cannot slay a hedgehog with your naked ass? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou son of a bitch wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother. )))

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a really cool concept - all the social monitoring tools I've seen focus on social networks (fb, twitter, that sort of stuff), which is great for some companies with an existing fanbase - not so much for startups.

I've signed up :)

</comment><comment><USER5> It is nice to know when your site hits HN, but for me <http://ifttt.com/> works fine in addition to doing a lot more.

<comment><USER2> ifttt is pretty much my favourite service at the moment. It saves me hours a day and everyone should use it!

edit: Well, let's say it saves me _hour_ per day. Hours plural is probably stretching it

<comment><USER6> Can I ask how it is saving you hours per day... I like the idea, I just can't think of cool ways to use it.

<comment><USER2> For example, I do a little video blog where I film a 1 minute video about my startup progress most days[1]

I make the video on socialcam, which sends it to youtube. ifttt then picks up the youtube video once it's uploaded and turns it into a wordpress post, then picks up the wordpress post and tweets about it. It turns a 5-step process (full of annoying upload delays) into a 1-step process with no delays.

I haven't found any consumption use cases for it, but I love it for tying together all the places I create stuff at.

[1] <http://bootstrapchallenge.com>

<comment><USER6> Wow very cool - I had no idea. Thanks for the reply :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just wanted to say that this is a terrific project (and experiment). Inspirational for those of us who need a kick in the ass to shut up and get to work on that MVP. Maybe the next product is a $10k bootstrap challenge everyone can take? :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can you use an email address instead of a phone number? I don't use a cell anymore.

<comment><USER2> Enough people have asked about it that I'll add it asap -- I only check my email about once a day so it didn't even occur to me as a relevant use case!

<comment><USER8> also FYI. Most people in the US do not have free SMS/text messaging plans like other countries. Text messaging is unfortunately expensive here. That is another reason to add email which is readily available these days with smartphones. I know it is weird but most carriers in US charge you extra on top of minutes and data plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great idea. Now, how do I unsubscribe or disable alerts in the future?

<comment><USER2> If you reply to the text message, it will cancel all alerts going to that number.

So if you are signed up to get alerts on 3 domains and only want to cancel one, you'll have to send one unsubscribe (which will cancel all 3) and then re-add the ones you still want to be active.

Not ideal in that edge case, I know, but I wanted to make sure unsubscribing was easy in case someone got cheeky and starting signing other people up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work, I had this idea a while ago and actually owned (not sure if expired right now or still in my posession) hnalerts.com to do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> How much is just hosting this service costing you? I can't see any method of payment, do you have plans to monetize it?

Great MVP by the way.

<comment><USER12> Should "monopolise" be "monetize?" :)

I suppose we should all dream big, though...

<comment><USER11> Yes, yes it should. ;) thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's really cool! I've signed up and will hopefully wait for the sms message :D

<comment><USER2> It's super fun when they arrive unexpectedly. Here's to hoping you don't have long to wait! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I checked it out. If you input is not good (for example, I entered letters in the phone number field), it breaks the app and exposes the entire Django stacktrace since it seems ilke DEBUG is set to True. I guess this is a small side project of course but thought to point it out.

<comment><USER2> Right you are. Glad I had the thing hooked up to notify me about this potential trainwreck! Big thanks for the heads up.

It's fixed & off debug mode now. It will fail silently, which still isn't exactly ideal, but at least it doesn't reveal its innards any more. Thanks again.

<comment><USER8> no problem. Are you using Django form validation ? It should take care of this then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks good.

How does it work? What tool is being used to send the text message? And why text message over email or other online notification?

<comment><USER2> It's just twilio for texts plus django and a cronjob. Text messages are the use case I wanted most for myself, so I just did that first. I'll add email/twitter/etc if the simple version gets a good enough response to warrant it

<comment><USER15> Yeah, email would be cool for a lot of international "customers" as text messaging doesn't work in a bunch of European countries with twilio.</comment></comment></comment>


The world's largest domain name registrar is seeking a new CEO. - <AUTHOR> http://domainnamewire.com/2012/07/30/go-daddy-ceo-warren-adelman-steps-down/

<comment><USER2> Can't wait for that company to die.

<comment><USER3> It's an exciting question: will the typical MBA private equity idiocy [1] kill this hateful company? Or will GoDaddy somehow metastasize and start contaminating other niches in our industry?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I talk to people on a daily basis." Sounds tough.</comment>


Missouri Attorney General Schmitt Files Lawsuit Against Chinese Government - <AUTHOR> https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2020/04/21/missouri-attorney-general-schmitt-files-lawsuit-against-chinese-government <comment><AUTHOR> Key factual allegations are described[1] with the summary:

"The COVID-19 outbreak has caused hardship in Missouri and across the globe—death, isolation from sick and dying loved ones, massive unemployment, economic dislocation, uncertainty, and trillions of dollars of economic losses. China should be held legally responsible"

[1] [https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press- releases/2019/k...](https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press- releases/2019/key-factual-allegations.pdf)</comment>


To Stay in Love, Sign on the Dotted Line - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/style/modern-love-to-stay-in-love-sign-on-the-dotted-line-36-questions.html <comment><USER2> > We were together for almost a decade, and in that time I somehow lost track > of my own habits and preferences. If I wanted to split the grocery bill, he > suggested I buy only things we both liked. If I wanted to spend weekends > together, I could go skiing with him and his friends. And so I did. I made > my life look like his.

> It wasn't until I moved out that I began to see that there hadn't been room > for me in my relationship. And not merely because my ex hadn't offered it — > it had never occurred to me to ask.

This happened to an ex of mine.

I think the success of her next relationship was not the contract _per se_ , but internalizing this epiphany. The contract is her specific implementation of how to deal with it, but the important thing for everyone, I think, is the quoted portion above.

I would not be so quick to scoff at the writing part either. For a lot of people I know (many of them journal-keepers), physically writing something out is the most meaningful part of completing and internalizing a thought.

<comment><USER3> I've long felt that those of us with odd relationship needs had a leg-up here. The fact that the sort of things I find sexually fulfilling aren't what you should spring on someone mid-coitus has made necessary my whole adult life a level of candidness that I don't see in the romantic relationships of my friends.

The fact that I need to have those conversations early makes a lot of other conversations very easy to have; any relationship I'm in started with one of those discussions going well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised there is so much resistance to this idea on this site of all places. The fact is that in real life (unlike in TV and movies) few people have the emotional intelligence to divine their partner's wants and needs from subtle cues. It may be somewhat unromantic (what does that even mean?) to sit down and write things out, but explicit communication about expectations, boundaries, and priorities can make a relationship function much more smoothly.

<comment><USER5> We should rewrite the article with the same core ideas, but make it about communicating in a tech workplace and see how people respond to it.

<comment><USER6> Or let it be about relationships, but implemented with Ethereum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Better title: "To stay in love, communicate honestly and openly" | these guys just happened to find a way to do that in writing

<comment><USER8> "Trust" also happens to be the foundation for a good relationship.

<comment><USER9> It took me nearly 10 years to understand the line "I believe that trust is more important than monogamy" in that old Savage Garden song. It took an ex who was (I think) physically faithful (at that point) while completely dismantling my faith in humanity to figure that one out.

<comment><USER10> I can second this. Infidelity was pretty much the last thing that happened, and by then I was already done.

<comment><USER11> Infidelity grows out of a shitty relationship, not the other way around.

<comment><USER10> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe that this is a concerning side effect of the increasing inability for people to communicate and to trust others.

A contract is just to re-enforce an insecurity on both parties in a relationship. I'm all for discussing things even in that great detail to avoid conflict before hand. But a contract seems excessive and will probably be thrown away anyways.

[Soapbox] I'm convinced that most people are completely disconnected to others, and lack the skills to meet new people, handle rejection, and come down from overly high expectations. Just seems like narcissism and the lack of flexibility.

<comment><USER4> People weren't able to better intuit the private minds of others back in the day. Instead, what's changed is that expectations used to be externally (socially, legally) imposed in the past, and now they are not. What was the expectation regarding marriage? You were going to get married before you had sex. What was the expectation regarding kids? You were going to have kids soon after you got married. What was the expectation regarding monogamy (see the author's point)? Not being monogamous was not an option. What should you do with your extra time/money? You didn't have any so it was a moot point. All that is up for negotiation now. The contract just makes that explicit instead of pretending that all those points of agreement can be achieved without formal discussion.

<comment><USER12> That's one of the great things about traditional gender roles. It's well defined about what's expected of you in the relationship and addressing the other person's needs becomes easier. (Rather than mixing the two and neglecting based only on what you don't want to do.. which is going on today)

<comment><USER13> Careful. There aren't a lot of longstanding systemic injustices you can't defend with the argument "at least everyone knew what was expected of them."

Women choosing to function in their "traditional" marital roles isn't inherently unjust, but women being in any way pressured to give up self- actualization (through career, personal freedom, &c) in the service of those "traditional" roles sure is.

<comment><USER12> I'm in no way defending anything who requires people to accept particular roles. Have respect for all roles. (Right now the traditional roles, and the people who choose them, are being aggressively being bashed)

My point is that traditional gender roles solved a lot of problems and attempting to just cherry pick what you want (just because you want that) or to expect different behavior has lead to many bad/toxic relationships (which affects others and creates even more of a barrier to a relationship) and sociality issues. (If you'll allow for me to stretch it that far)

I'm of the opinion that if you want to change something, you should be very sure that it is a good change. Previously these kinds of changes took forever as that adoption is slow, but it prevents massive breaking changes.

<comment><USER13> The change that occurred was a reduction in pressure and coercion for women to accept "traditional" roles. I think we can be confident that reducing that pressure is a positive step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author is happier in this new relationship and it has absolutely nothing to do with the contract. Her last boyfriend didn't respect her, and the new one does. The end.

</comment><comment><USER15> Intimidated by divorce statistics (a $50 billion industry in the US alone, 30-50% chance, etc.) and by a spate of divorces among my friends whose weddings I attended, Stephanie and I decided to do a domestic partnership. So far so good.

<comment><USER16> _Intimidated by divorce statistics (a $50 billion industry in the US alone, 30-50% chance, etc.)_

FYI: Those statistics are incredibly misleading and/or inaccurate.

Do you know what the divorce rate is for 35-44 (and 45-54) year old college graduates? Somewhere around 10%:

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead- yet/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead-yet/)

<comment><USER15> Double that probability if you are ever diagnosed with ADHD. (I was.)

You're right, though; there are a LOT of positive and negative correlations you can find on this stuff if you do your homework (which I did). Caucasians seem to have more stable marriages than non-caucasians, for example. And marrying later boosts the probability of success by quite a bit.

Also, by the time you reach 45 years of age, you're no longer a spring chicken and aren't really incentivized to leave the marriage, anyway.

But you're wrong about the stats being inaccurate (perhaps not about them being "misleading"): I did my homework here, and overall it seems to be somewhere between 30-50% chance of dissolution in the first 25 years of marriage, depending on how you tweak the input variables. And that stat gets worse and worse on every Nth marriage after the first... which is exactly why many people whose first marriages don't work out ever get married again.

For what it's worth (and this is all anecdotal evidence), 100% of the numerous divorces I've seen in my circle were by college-educated people.

<comment><USER17> > Double that probability if you are ever diagnosed with ADHD. (I was.)

What's the story behind this?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your- attenti...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/may-i-have-your- attention/201309/adhd-doesnt-cause-divorce-denial-does)

"The impact of adult ADHD on marriages can be terrible for couples with one or more partners with ADHD. Research suggests that the marital "maladjustment" rate may be close to 60%. Statistics on the divorce rate for those with ADHD vary, seemingly depending upon the age of the respondents in the study. Studies with younger respondents don't show statistical differences in divorce rates, while studies with older respondents show an almost doubled rate of divorce." (I almost definitely fall under the "older" category.)

I told you guys, I did my homework here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >We spent weeks anxiously enumerating the pros and cons of cohabitation.

The older I get, the more I come around to the conclusion that thought is bad.

<comment><USER19> Which part of it is bad, thinking about cohabitation, or cohabitation itself?

<comment><USER18> Oh, now I see how my sentence was ambiguous.

The "anxiously enumerating pros and cons part" is bad. Cohabitation is fine.

<comment><USER20> Why is that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One may not necessarily need to go as far as signing a physical contract (which I'm sure many will find aromantic), but the sentiment is absolutely true. Everyone has different expectations of what they want out of a relationship, all guaranteed to deviate more-or-less from the stereotypical date-cohabitate-marriage-kids script, and being open and honest about your expectations before embarking on a long-term relationship is the best way to avoid heartache. And this is scary! It takes a certain level of emotional maturity and courage to sit down with someone you may have only recently met and have this sort of conversation, but even if you mutually decide that your long-term interests aren't compatible that doesn't mean that you can't continue having a casual relationship (or even "just" a friendship).

</comment><comment><USER16> You know, I went into this article skeptical, but I'm now a believer if it works for this couple.

Solid relationships are built on communication that enables conscious compromises and deliberate decisions to accommodate one another while ensuring one's own needs are met.

For this couple, putting those needs, compromises, and decisions in writing is what facilitates that communication. Pretty brilliant idea if you ask me!

That said: Speaking for myself, going into marriage I thought "How will this change anything?" But, for me, it changed a _lot_. It's not about the legal commitment... that's just a technicality. Rather, it's the conscious decision to truly commit before friends and family that changed the way I thought and felt about my wife... it's hard to put into words, but at least for me, it was absolutely different.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't get it.

The title of the article is "To Stay in Love, Sign on the Dotted Line," but there's absolutely nothing in it that supports the title. All it is is about an unmarried woman whose been in a relationship for only 3 years saying a scheduled conversations and paper an pen (or keyboard in this case) helps her have relationship communication.

The title should really be "communication is helpful for my new relationship."

It's misguided at best to conclude every couple should create this sort of formal contract. Every couple communicates differently.

<comment><USER22> Precisely. I kept waiting for a paragraph beginning: "and now, ten years into our marriage..."

But it never came, since this couple isn't married and hasn't even been dating that long. Clickbait titles like this are common on the internet, but I expect better from the New York Times. This article is bereft of anything remotely newsworthy. Perhaps their new slogan should be "All the news that's fit to print, plus some vapid millennial musings".

<comment><USER20> I actually wouldn't mind it if it was an op-ed with a title such as "how I learned effective relationship communication." But with that title I am expecting something of substance.

Also saying they were drinking beers while doing it has the implication that they needed alcohol to be able to have such important conversations. Not saying that's the case, I'm saying it gives the impression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If it works for them, more power to them! And as they say, there's someone out there for everyone.

I personally react poorly to the idea that I--along with my relationships--am this computer that must be programmed by my intellectual self. I connect this with the overall trend of lifehacking.

That said, I still learn from people who take such an explicit approach, and just try to find more organic ways to apply some of these things to my own life. It lets me feel like I'm striking the right balance of spontaneity and intention.

<comment><USER24> >There's someone out there for everyone.

Sorry, wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish that I had done this in my previous relationship. We were young, and we talked a lot, but I didn't realize what was really important to her (travelling, saving money). So when we'd talk about goals, I'd never realize how much things meant to her. A contract may have helped us define our goals, and what we wanted, and make things a little easier for dense ol' me.

</comment><comment><USER26> I guess I wouldn't have a problem with drafting such a contract in concept, but I think it would be nice to have some slightly sappier stuff mixed in with it. Even with the touch about the dog, it comes off as super formal to me. Like, their sole goal is to make each other more ethical? I mean that's the definition of a platonic, not an erotic relationship. I have plenty of friends who I already relate to in that way.

What about, even, a word like "nurturing"? Much less "spending time lost in one another's eyes"?

Boundaries make a loving relationship _functional_ but they don't make a relationship loving.

</comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't looks like a universal solution to me. It looks that this particular solution works for them.

I know god knows how much families in my home country (Russia) who had no problems living together to old age without having to do anything special. I also know god knows how much dysfunctional families as well. I knew quite a few oddbals too, a couple that were still lovey dovey and dating casually for close to 12 years since their mid-teens. I knew a married couple that everybody suspected to be "mutually-infidel," yet they had a really strong bond.

It is all luck and compatibility/synergies of individual differences

</comment><comment><USER28> Can't wait until they have to litigate this one!

<comment><USER29> It is probably unerforceable. It is a peer agreement, not a legally binding contract, with opt-out provisions. Still, immensely useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds strange, and horrible. A relationship isn't a business.`

<comment><USER31> Sure, it's not. But what they've found is a way to communicate openly and honestly; ultimately, if this approach helps to further that, then why's it horrible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This feels like something only a woman could put forward or demand in a relationship based on their value in the dating market. A man would be in a much higher risk of being left with the same arrangement.

<comment><USER21> Man here. Before getting serious in my current relationship, I sat down with my girlfriend and gently initiated a frank conversation about about what each of us expect out of a relationship and what our short-term and long-term priorities are, not just in terms of relationship goals, but also in terms of general life goals to see whether or not a relationship would hinder or help those goals. As someone who's experienced, not one, but two traumatic parental divorces in my life, the last thing I want is to get ten years into a relationship before discovering that our goals are incompatible. This isn't anything exclusive to women.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is this allowed on HN? It's not tech, startups or anything in between.

Is there a website like HN that's actually focused/moderated and doesn't mix Cosmo type clickbait with actual news?

<comment><USER34> >Is there a website like HN that's actually focused/moderated and doesn't mix Cosmo type clickbait with actual news?

There probably isn't one that will never, ever, ever include a link that you're not interested in.</comment></comment>


Samsung Buys Every Ad Position on CNet On New iPhone Launch Day - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/ <comment><USER2> For a brief period of time I turned off my adblocker and temporarily reverted my hosts file to the default to see what was going on. It is 2013 and internet advertising still ruins the browsing experience. Very quickly I've put everything back in place. I don't even care about how I am not supporting website owners. This isn't worth it.

<comment><USER3> Ad blockers are tools for theft. Do you avoid all websites that rely on advertising for all or part of their income or are you perfectly fine stealing their work/services by denying them the opportunity to make a little money during your visit?

Alternatively, do you only use services for which you pay a fee?

Which search engine do you use?

Email?

Social sites?

Just trying to understand this position. Unless someone explicitly gives a product or service away (HN being a good example) the correct moral and ethical position is to not tamper with their revenue generation strategy or otherwise not use their product or service. Anything else is theft.

Being annoyed does not entitle you or anyone else to steal. It doesn't magically make it OK.

<comment><USER4> If you want to make the case that using ad blockers is akin to theft, you have to explain what the advertiser is deprived of when a person chooses not to view their ad. Sure, the advertiser is paying a website to put an ad on their page, but just because they paid to put it there doesn't entitle the advertiser to a certain amount of your attention. It may or may not be profitable to put it there, but the advertiser has no moral claim on anybody's time or attention as a result of their business model.

The only reason this argument ever came about is because it's easy to measure who sees an ad on the internet, which is not the case for billboards, TV commercials, newspaper ads, and so on. Since the measurement was cheap and intuitively it made sense for advertisers to charge based on the number of people that see or click on an ad, they chose to pay website owners based on the fine grained statistics of the webpage rather than by assessing a priori the market value of an ad on a particular webpage for a particular length of time.

The "theft" here is imaginary and entirely self-imposed by the business model of the advertiser. Especially when you consider that the demographic that uses adblockers probably wouldn't click on very many ads if they didn't use the adblockers. And whatever impression the mere presence of an advertisement would create might very well be a negative one to this demographic.

The conceptual leap from "our business model requires ads to make money" and "some people don't want to view these ads" to "those people are stealing from us" is a syllogistic fallacy.

<comment><USER3> It's really funny to watch people who don't want to pay for anything run around in circles trying to justify their actions. The only morally and ethically correct behavior is NOT to visit sites with advertising. It isn't to use the sites and block their ads. It's as simple as that.

Don't want ads? Don't use the service. Go pay for a service that will use your money to build a site without the ads that bug you so much.

<comment><USER4> > _" Don't want ads? Don't use the service. Go pay for a service that will use > your money to build a site without the ads that bug you so much."_

Where possible, I do exactly that. For example, I have a Netflix subscription, but don't watch regular TV.

The reality is that many services are simply not offered in an ad-free model. Most people are ok with ad-supported services in exchange for not paying for them, so the business case for creating an ad-free version for the minority that isn't ok with ads doesn't always exist. But those who don't want to have their browsing experience polluted by distracting and space wasting ads for irrelevant products aren't suddenly going to change their minds because they're in the minority.

Personally, I would be willing to pay a small monthly fee for an ad blocker (I did make a donation once) and have a portion of that distributed to website owners whose ads were blocked. It's probably not a very realistic scenario, but the bottom line is that an ad blocker is something that many people find useful and which some would be willing to pay for if there weren't ample free alternatives. The adblocker provides a service to me 100% of the time I visit a website with ads, whereas an ad is only useful to me if I find it relevant and choose to act on it (0.000001% of the time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every company has it's moments, but why does Samsung so often come off as particularly petty. Whether it's completely knocking off designs or launching half-baked products, or buying all the ad space on the day of an apposing company's product launch. The rules of capitalism allow all of this behavior, but generally mankind frowns upon it when this behavior is exhibited by a person. Why is it not frowned upon when it is exhibited by a group of people operating as one; as a corporation?

<comment><USER6> Apple does stuff like book so much air freight space from China that they squeeze out other users:

[http://www.cultofmac.com/150519/massive-apple-air-freight- de...](http://www.cultofmac.com/150519/massive-apple-air-freight-deal-could- mean-ipad-3-will-ship-even-sooner-than-we-thought/)

Bad for the planet too, and all just to save a couple of weeks on a boat. Buying up ad space seems pretty minor by comparison. I guess minor does go along with "petty". Funny how we're sometimes much more upset about a small slight than a large one.

<comment><USER7> Inventory sitting around on a boat for a couple of weeks costs you a lot of money. We're not talking about sewing machines or anvils here, we're talking about a high-margin item that weighs very little and is extremely "perishable". Air-freight is perfect for this.

<comment><USER6> Well, they only do it once a year. I have to wonder just how much it would really cost to move production up a couple of weeks, or move the release down a couple of weeks. Most of the time they're fine waiting for inventory to come over the slow way.

<comment><USER7> The cost of shipping a phone by plane is insignificant because they're booking so much capacity. This isn't like FedExing one phone from your house to a friend. This is a whole other scale. They probably only pay a couple of bucks and they save way more than that by not having to stockpile these phones anywhere, with heavy security to keep them from "leaking", for weeks on end.

Apple turns over their inventory almost as fast as McDonald's. Think about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure this will be particularly successful. Looks like well over half of the content on the CNet homepage is iPhone related. That's the kinda of advertising only Apple seems to get, much better and a lot cheaper. The amount Samsung has to spend to overcome the "organic" Apple advantage must be rather large.

<comment><USER9> > The amount Samsung has to spend to overcome the "organic" Apple advantage > must be rather large.

It is indeed. Samsung spends a roughly-flat 15% of their revenue on advertising. As their cellphone share grows, this spending grows... to obscene levels.

[http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/29/the-cost-of-selling- galaxie...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/29/the-cost-of-selling-galaxies/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like a run of the mill homepage takeover... many advertisers do that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Obligatory "CNet has ads? I use AdBlock!" post.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I didn't see any ads. Ignorance is bliss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember hearing that Samsung devotes a fixed proportion of its sales revenue to advertising, so in boom times they end up with ridiculous amounts of money in their marketing budget. This smells to me like their ad people literally have so much money now they can't work out what else to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is genius.

<comment><USER14> I thought so too until I actually saw the page. Every single article is about the iPhone, it's actually hard to notice the Samsung ads (imho). I still think it was worth doing on the part of Samsung, but they'll probably get more traction from the press about buying all the ad space than the actual ad space itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> +1 to AdBlocker

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't see anything on that page that says that?

<comment><USER17> This is more of a 'show and tell' post. There is no article about this happening... the OP just linked to CNET where this is happening.

If you don't see it, perhaps you have AdBlocker on?

<comment><USER16> Ah, I was expecting an "article" on CNET about it. Totally see the ads now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It just shows Barclays adverts for me (UK IP address)

</comment><comment><USER19> people use cnet ?</comment>


Livefyre Acquires Storify - <AUTHOR> http://blog.livefyre.com/livefyre-acquires-storify/ <comment><USER2> Storify attempted a monetization plan 5 months ago: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/18/storify-business- plan/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/18/storify-business-plan/)

I guess that didn't work as well as hoped.

<comment><USER3> It's tough. I think they had some scale, but not the epic massive scale needed to undergird a new ad platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read Spotify and had a major WTF for half a minute.

</comment><comment><USER5> Storify is a pretty great tool but lots of other 'pretty great tools' exist in the same space - we just started using [http://vip.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/building-media- explorer/](http://vip.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/building-media-explorer/) on our sites, which is awesome and very extensible.

</comment><comment><USER6> A social aggregation service I've had good luck with:

[https://www.rebelmouse.com/](https://www.rebelmouse.com/)

It can pull in feeds from any website, or from social APIs by linking in accounts. You can also manually post items. It creates a page with a Pinterest-like layout and drag-and-drop rearranging.

</comment><comment><USER7> (Random thought: I didn't realize how easy it was to embed tweets. More information at [https://dev.twitter.com/docs/embedded- tweets](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/embedded-tweets))

Great news for the Storify folks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know if they'll be keeping the name or re-branding it as the parent product?

<comment><USER9> The article states that it will remain a separate product.</comment></comment>


While you were partying last night... - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/YK32P.jpg

<comment><USER2> This has been all over the New York Times (to give just one example):

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs- mi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military- spending-bill.html)

More in the L.A. Times: [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na- obama-d...](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama- defense-20120101,0,1970762.story)

MSN/MSNBC covered it, as did Rachel Maddow on her show. I couldn't find anything recent on Fox News or the Wall Street Journal so maybe the "media blackout" is just the right wing press.</comment>


The Phoenix Is Not Burnt Out, It Is Just Rebooting - <AUTHOR> http://michaeldehaan.net/post/140649196217/the-phoenix-is-not-burnt-out-it-is-just-rebooting <comment><USER3> I feel a lot of this as well. It's deeply troubling, when you attach so much of your self worth to work, and the work erodes you so strongly. What's left?

I wish it were more accepted so that we could sort it out without having to be so drastic. I don't know how to tell my boss "I can't really do this right now. I need at least 2 months. Maybe 10. Dunno." I'm just going to leave, and....

and then what? who knows.

When you stop working yourself to the bone you get to... not have health insurance? Wonder how long you can coast before going under? San Francisco, and I imagine most of America, is a tough place to just _be_.

It sucks.

<comment><USER4> At the risk of self-promotion: [http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio/UsefulAndBeneficial/](http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio/UsefulAndBeneficial/)

It may or may not help you. I've shown it to a lot of people and I have to admit that most people don't really connect with it. However, for me it was a pivotal realization that got me out of the grind and I hope it will help you too.

At that time I quit my job and spent 8 months writing free software. I didn't know what to do and thought seriously about quitting being a programmer altogether. During those 8 months, I wrote code almost every waking moment and discovered that I _loved_ writing code. What I hated was fighting with people over all the broken stuff at work.

And that's when it hit me. My colleagues hated fighting with me over all the broken stuff at work too. That's why I was burning myself out and getting no recognition. They didn't realize that everything was broken and I spent all of my energy trying to convince them.

I realized that if I simply did what I enjoyed, writing code, the other people would be happy with me too -- even if the company came crashing down around my ears. So I decided to try it in my next job. Not only were people delighted with me, but they increasingly invited me to fix their other problems (as they realized them). I stopped fighting and started just fixing stuff. I was happy.

I've since realized that many people and organizations need help. But if you dive in too much, you get caught up in their craziness. Their life and death struggles become yours -- and you can't do anything about it because it depends on _them_ changing. If you step back and simply lend your strength where it is desired -- allowing them to fail if they are intent in doing so -- you can live a peaceful life.

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for posting!

I am about to quit my startup and plan on writing free software and trying to find myself a bit again (and what to do next). I am not sure if I will come to the same conclusions (and I think thats something I would have to experience first hand), but it sounds very encouraging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know you stated you don't like editing in your post, but I'd highly recommend passing your posts on to a friend who _is_ willing to edit them, before they're public. I appreciate the sentiment and resonated with many of the remarks. I could have gotten the same message in about 30% of the words.

<comment><USER7> Too long? Don't read it.

This is emotionally charged territory for the author. Respect it, and respect him. It takes courage to write like this in public.

<comment><USER8> No need for the abrasive tone, the GP was simply offering constructive criticism. Does that not have a place in your idea of respect? If not, why not?

<comment><USER7> I found the criticism both non-constructive and selfish. The commenter is welcome to their opinion, but in _this context_ does it need to be said? Has the commenter added value or further reinforced what the author says in the first paragraph: that people are afraid to write about sensitive, personal, private topics in the public eye?

Context matters.

If this was an article about the relative merits of monads in Haskell vs OCaml I would have taken no issue - criticize away. It wasn't; it was another human being pouring their feelings out in long form. "I could have gotten the same message in about 30% of the words" is selfish. Who cares what the commenter wanted, again, in _this context_. The commenter feels better, the author and others who might be in the same shoes feel worse, and on the cycle goes. This still raises my hackles 10 hours later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >I'm not a jerk, I just care too much and want other people to care the same amount.

I don't know the real situation, but based on this rationale it sounds like you were being a jerk. You're not even really denying it, just trying to excuse your behavior because it was in service of some higher goal.

That said, acting like a jerk is a behavior, not a permanent attribute. The feedback from your boss should have been about the behaviors you engaged in that negatively impacted the team.

<comment><USER10> What led you to choose the label "jerk"?

<comment><USER11> Perhaps because the author wrote "jerk"?

<comment><USER10> This is not satisfactory response. Put another way, what I'm wondering is what it is that seems unpleasant or morally objectionable about the OP's behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That was long and rambling but I think the summary is that when you try to make the world a better place it does not yield all to easily. And sometimes you are ok with that but sometimes your stamina is running low. Managing stamina is important and just as important is managing hubris - I am reminded of the anecdote about Plato told by NN Taleb. Plato was offended by the fact that most humans are naturally right-handed and not ambidextrous because that is woefully asymmetric. I guess even the most able people are often offended by the wrong things.

Michael has made the world (well at least a small part of it) a genuinely better place. I think he deserves to chill out a bit before returning to his attitude of caring too much.

</comment><comment> Chiba-City Beautifully written. This is sleepy stream of consciousness, but I'll add that the conscientious developer internalizes their discipline and then sees new problem spaces everywhere, some realm of actual or potential responsibility. Most otherwise good folks in the world don't - can't really - <USER2> reciprocate. I turned 50 today, and it's in the last year that I learned so many otherwise qualified professionals all around me just don't ever really study the manuals. Creative systematic development must cease being needlessly sacrificial. There's some emerging awareness of its occupational hazards that needs to be addressed if we want to transfer wisdom successfully over generations to better thrive. A few chapters of Shrage's "No More Teams" refer to software languages as a legitimate standard for what collaborative innovating literacy might someday mean.

<comment><USER13> I can't understand a word of this. I could be mistaken, but it smells like like a gem or two of insight, too greatly attenuated via the sleep waves.

I'd very much like to read the well-rested organized retransmission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Get a dog. You have to walk it and it treasures your time. It forces time to relax outside of computers. You get fresh air. It loves you for just being there...

Either that or children.

</comment><comment><USER15> Narcissist</comment>


A Short Guide to Strategy for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/10/a-short-guide-to-strategy-for-entrepreneurs <comment><AUTHOR> and link to the author's comprehensive notes: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2784718](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2784718)</comment>


Rate my business plan: Porting a classic to the iPad - <AUTHOR>

This began as one of those "y'know, I really wish someone would..." ideas. Then I realized it might not be entirely impossible to start it myself.
There's a series of PC titles from the late 1990s that are generally considered among the best video pinball games ever released. There's a glut of pinball games on the App Store in 2010, but quality is pretty thin -- pinball design is just not an easy art. Fortunately, Empire Interactive's Pro Pinball series would make a fantastic port to the iPad -- the game runs at a native 1024x768, and the controls would map to touch and accelerometer even better than they ever did to the PC keyboard. Someone just needs to secure the rights and original development assets, find a developer familiar with x86-to-ARM, design some revised UI elements and assets, test, and release.
Much easier said than done, of course, but here's my theoretical plan:
1. Figure out how much the lawyering to secure the rights would cost
2. Figure out how much the development would cost
3. Add figures from lines 1 and 2 and enter into the amount field in Kickstarter (download voucher of final product for $10 contribution!)
4. If funded, pursue rights and development
5. Do UI design myself (the one part I actually have experience with!)
6. Develop, test, release on App Store
It's all napkin-scrawl at this point, largely outside my areas of expertise, and probably too demanding to start as a side project (as if I don't have enough of those). But what do you think? <comment><USER2> I have no idea.

I see two basic problems, though.

One: I'm not sure you're going to be able to sell a pinball game _that does not exist_ , in a world full of other iPad pinball games, based on _quality_. Why should we believe that the quality will be higher, or that we'll even notice the difference? You can't show us a high-quality prototype. You can't show an impressive resume of earlier products. You can try to find enough fanatical fans of the original PC games, but one wonders if there are enough who remember or care, or who won't be understandably skeptical that your port will be just like the original. And ten years is a very long time in gaming.

The other is a chicken-and-egg problem with the "lawyering". As long as nobody knows about these games the rights aren't worth much. But the Kickstarter model you outline requires you to talk up the games before you bid for the rights. Every iota of praise you heap on the games, _especially_ on the oh-so- Googleable internet, is going to raise the asking price for the rights.</comment>


The Greatest Leap, part 5: Saving the crew of Apollo 13 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/the-greatest-leap-part-5-saving-the-crew-of-apollo-13/ <comment><USER2> Very good write-up of the root cause which I didn't know of (only that an oxygen tank blew off, but not why).</comment>