Tell HN: Why I want to start a startup - <AUTHOR>

I love my life. No kidding. I do. I'm a young guy in his early twenties and I'm doing great in college. I'm going to grad school next year, that's exciting! I love Computer Science. I'm having fun with friends. I ride my bike, even when it's freezing.  Does that mean I'm healthy and in shape? You're right. I have grand plans for the future and everything is fine. Still, I get written off all the time and I guess I'm not the only one. Personally, I just try to not let it get to me. Here's why.
How I got written off: phase one
It all started when I was in my final year in high school. One day, my math teacher asked me what I wanted to study. I've always been pretty determined and told him the truth. I'd like to study Computer Science in college, sir. Go for a master's degree. He laughed at me, in my face. Point blank. I studied economics and languages back then, and I admit, the math I was taught was pretty poor. A few weeks after, he did the same to my mom on parents' evening. It's this sort of event where parents go to and get an evaluation of their kid. Your son will be lucky enough if he gets a bachelor's degree and eventually graduates. It didn't matter much to me. I would go to college and get this damn master's degree. I couldn't and wouldn't give in now. And here I am, my CS degree almost in reach.
How I got written off: phase two
My first year in college was all right. However, I had some problems with calculus. I (still) had to learn how to derive a function and calculate surfaces, while the other guys in my class were pretty much all ready for some advanced differential equations. Damn it, I should've taken more summer classes. That's what I thought back then. Would that have helped? I don't know. Eventually, I passed the course by studying day and night. Bottom line is, I got through and my grades weren't even that bad. That's great!
Three years later, I met a friend from elementary school on my weekly train. He was going nuts over cycling and I recently bought a bike too. That's when I decided I wanted to get in shape again. I hadn't been practicing sports for three years. That's a long time. Too long to keep you physically and mentally healthy. Basically, he became my trainer and mentor for the coming months. I stopped eating fried food, limited my meat consumption and ate a lot of pasta (gotta love carbohydrates! ;-)). Hahahahaha, you're cycling now, are you? And you've stopped eating fast food? You goof! You won't carry on, I tell ya! That's what many of my dorm "friends" said. I'm in my second year of cycling now and I love it. Still going. And I will be going harder and faster. Mens sana in corpore sano.
How I'm getting written off: leaving college
So… it's almost time for me to leave college now and I have a clear plan. I want to start a startup. Actually, I am starting a startup. We've been working on it for two to three months now (not only coding), and it's going pretty well. It's got to do something with photo sharing. I know what a lot of you will be thinking now. Another Instagram clone? Another PicPlz? I already share my photos and I don't need another service! That would sound a lot like my math teacher in twelfth grade. But that's ok I guess. My dorm "friends" are reacting likewise. They think going to the USA to pursue your dreams and start a startup is ridiculous. Maybe it is? I don't think so. Let them have their way. I'll have mine.
What exactly am I getting at now? It's pretty simple. Believe in yourself, because no one else will. People tend to believe only in the successful. A lot of us have a strong belief in top CEO's and other successful guys. Take Steve Jobs as an example. He's seen a lot of resistance from Apple around 1985, but he kept going. At the end of 1997, he finally got it right. He's got his own child back. And see how it has grown over the years.
If you never believe in yourself, you'll never get somewhere. I haven't got a lot of life experience, but I've seen some pretty insecure boys and girls in my time at college. Stand up for yourself and you'll be able to change lives. Did you ever notice how nothing or no one ever changes in your town? Nothing ever changes. Everyone goes to the same church or the same job, the same restaurants, the same swimming pool and everybody goes to the same basketball game every weekend. It's like this huge fish tank we're all stuck in and you can't find a way out. Well, I may be kind of stuck. And I think the perfect way to be unstuck is by pursuing your dreams and by doing things you like. Pursue your dreams. Start your own startup. Create something. Yes, some of us may fail. Yes, you probably won't be the next Zuckerberg. Failing is all right, as long as it's constructive failing. Don't listen to what others have to say all the time, because it will hunt you down. Do what you think is right. Just have no regrets and create some memories.
- The thoughts of a 22-year old with no life experience. <comment><USER2> I think you'll find that most people really don't care what you're doing. You're just a mild curiosity to others, and your greatest motivators and your greatest stoppers are going to be you yourself.

So don't frame things in terms of how much other people don't want you to do them - more likely than not, they really don't care. Just do what you want to do and don't do what you don't want to do. That's what every other person is doing.

<comment><USER3> One of my favorite lines from Fight Club: _You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile_

The real world is cold. It takes time, especially out of college/uni, to realize this, but you have to keep on pushing. Best of luck to you.

<comment><USER4> A tough lesson I've learned is most people simply don't care. They don't wish you bad but they don't wish you well that much either - they simply don't care.

This isn't a good or bad thing; it's just most people, the vast majority of the time, don't particularly care about what you're up to.

Long term friends do, of course, at least a little, but in perhaps limited doses.

This is both saddening and inspiring (liberating), depending on how you look at it.

<comment><USER5> I learned this lesson after my recent business failure. I spent months working extremely hard to get the doors open only to find that no-one cared I was there. I didn't neglect marketing but I didn't push hard enough either. I think I got caught up in the fact that because _I_ cared, everyone else would too. It's a very sobering feeling when you're standing in an empty shop on opening day wondering, "where is everyone?"

Lots of lessons learned there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Other people do not think about you nearly as much as you think they do"

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame induction speech. [0]

Is Michael Jordan one of the greatest basketball players ever? Yes. Did he work incredibly hard to get there? Yes. Does he come off as very, very bitter in his speech? Absolutely, because he still dwells on insignificant stuff 30 or 40 years later.

I'm happy for you finding motivation in the random, slightly negative throwaway comments of your peers. Just remember that negative drive might make you successful, but it will definitely make you bitter.

\-- from a formerly bitter 25-year old

[0] [http://www.nba.com/video/channels/hall_of_fame/2009/09/11/nb...](http://www.nba.com/video/channels/hall_of_fame/2009/09/11/nba_20090911_hof_jordan_speech.nba/)

<comment><USER8> I just skimmed through that video and Jordan seems pretty positive and upbeat. Did I miss something?

<comment><USER9> Oh, yeah. Jordan actually invited and mentioned the person who beat him to get a spot on the varsity high school team to his PROFESSIONAL Hall of Fame event.

For those that even read a book about Jordan, and what his peers said about him and his reputation, wasn't really surprised by the speech. Most Hall of Fame speeches are somewhat dull, mostly about thanking people who helped them in life, what their life was like before and after success, and what lessons of life they learned from their experiences. Not Jordan.

Jordan mentioned every slight that was done to him, perceived or otherwise, and told the audience about how he found motivation from those slights. It was all about him, and his, hunger, to be the best. He even stated then that he could STILL come back right now and play in the NBA. To him, basketball was the way for him to be the best, and by God, he was going to do it, no matter who got in his way. Personally, it was way more enriching than someone like David Robinson's, but it was somewhat shocking when it was done at the time.

People always get shocked when they hear how people got successful, and what they REALLY had to do to get there. People like hearing about the successes, but rarely the failures and hardships endured. Everyone ignorant of his history thinks Mark Cuban just got lucky getting his wealth from selling broadcast.com to Yahoo (and even he admits it), but they rarely really listen to how he was living 5 guys to an apartment, how for 3 years he was paid low wage selling computer programs and parts to other businesses, how in college he was working his ass off teaching dance classes, running a bar, plus other business ideas I don't remember off the top of my head, while trying to get his degree.

Instead of glossing over that part of his success like most other HOF speeches, Jordan I believe high-lighted them, which just surprised people, that's all.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for responding to my question. So how does this make him bitter? He is a driven person and was reflecting on the events that challenged him.

<comment><USER7> _Jordan mentioned every slight that was done to him, perceived or otherwise, and told the audience about how he found motivation from those slights_

Think about this for a second. Jordan has played almost two decades, won 6 (?) championships, and is heralded as the best player ever. At an event meant to celebrate his career, he instead talks for several minutes about being slighted _in high school._

Can you imagine being a grown, old man that's bitter enough about high school to mention it at an event celebrating his career? It doesn't sound fun.

<comment><USER8> I guess we just see it differently. The event in high school was obviously an important motivator for Jordan, so much so that he thought it important to bring it up again. I have the same events in my life from high school and early college and if I was giving a retrospective on my life, they would certainly be included. Bitterness is usually accompanied by anger and cynicism and Jordan did not display either of those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think I have a somewhat similar experience, only I deserved what I got, you didn't.

Up until this (school) year I had been assessed by my peers as a nothing. Although I had been doing small-scale computer repair for a while at this time, I still lacked both the self-confidence and maturity to do anything substantial. I did however want change from an awful summer spent mostly alone in my room. Upon returning to school that year I had received probably the worst people in my classes I could, or rather, the people most like me, the people who were terribly unmotivated, for one reason or many. The school had specifically picked out the academically troublesome students based on their previous year and put them in slightly smaller classes with lower expectations but more teacher assistance. This was a great move by the school. This alone was not enough though, as most of the students and myself made a dismal effort to do well, the ability in these people weren't lacking, it was motivation.

My lack of motivation was a progression, I didn't have much motivation to begin with but, due to a summer spent mostly alone I frequently browsed Warez forums and attempted to write a package manager for Windows (I had been taking an interest in Ubuntu and really liked apt-get), and released a customized version of Windows for them a couple years prior. That was the height of my productivity in that school year, because in the following December I had begun smoking a lot.

After that I spent most of my time smoking. I smoked a ridiculous amount of weed, on average three times a week, but mostly on the weekends. I never went to school high however (and I don't plan on it). My friends (and the same people in my classes) were the people I would smoke with, although I paid for a lot of it, as I had a decent amount of income for an 8th grader ($75 per month or so on average, I fixed computers over Craigslist). I hadn't gotten a pipe or any smoking paraphernalia up until summer, and so I would use what was around me. Most of the time those were the insides of pens, with taking out the top where one clicks the spring to bring out the tip, and putting a tiny chunk of weed in it, lighting that end and breathing in where the tip of the pen would normally be. The joy I got from smoking started to end though.

It started to end in June or so. I remember wanting to stop back then but didn't feel motivated enough to do it. June also happened to be when I smoked more than before, as I had nothing to do other than that (This was after school had ended). I would just go to town and smoke with people, practically everyday, and then when I wasn't high I was around people who were, eating Taco Bell, or just walking around with people. However, I started to feel a need to be productive, and that was really when I stopped smoking.

My brother was in his fifth year at UCDavis, when I started sitting in at a class there. That class was ECS30, a 6 week course that taught the foundations of C. I had a fairly limited knowledge of C# and Visual Basic but I really didn't know how to program. This taught me how to do that. My brother had talked to my parents before about the possibility of me taking a class over the summer, and I thought it was a really good idea. So, I took the Amtrak train every Sunday afternoon for 5 weeks (last week was Finals week) to Davis, where I walked in a straight line for about 15 minutes to my brothers apartment on B street. I would wake up every morning at 7:30, shower, eat, have a cup of coffee and leave to go to class for two hours.

Taking this class was one of the best experiences in my life. Although the people weren't by any means entrepreneurial, it made me want to do something with my life. Just walking to the class was amazing. Passing the various lecture halls and weird decorations. Seeing all the sleep-deprived people on bikes heading to and from their classes. Wondering if people would give me weird looks seeing a 14-year-old with a significant amount of stubble go to a college class.

The class itself was fantastic, I would generally sit in the back due to fear of being called out for being 14. I was also the one who asked the most questions. I don't know if it was summer, if these people were just plain shy, or if people didn't really care about the subject, but few other than me was asking questions, and the professor seemed to like that I was asking questions. I don't know if he knew that I was 14, he probably had guessed though.

When I walked back to my brother's apartment I played a lot of Fallout 3 and did a lot of homework. The homework was incredibly time-consuming. That was by far the most time I had spent on school throughout my life. In the beginning I did all of the homework, and it was amazing. As it got more time-consuming I lost the patience for doing the homework (some were 20+ hours and I hadn't been doing more than 25 minutes of homework my entire life). But, I learned an enormous amount and got the foundation and drive I needed.

I didn't do anything with that drive for a short while, other than just thinking about a few ideas. I spent a lot of time thinking about those ideas, I had at one point a folder of about 20 different ideas I thought were good, and three that I thought were excellent. One of those three is something like I'm working and spending the majority of my time outside of school on, it's called Jantire. It's a document reader for a new format for posting, combining the learning-capabilities of a wiki entry with the discussion-elements of a forum post. I applied to the Summer 2011 Y-Combinator session and went to one of the dinners to review the Y-Combinator applications with Alumni and fellow applicants.

I feel like I'm finally earning my keep.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hate when people think that life is some kind of philosophy debate over "what should i do?", just fucking live and do whatever your heart tells you to.

I doubt your stupid steve jobs after getting fired from apple and having a spare billion(or even more?) and being 30 did it because of the money, or for approval... or anything. He did it because what he felt about his creations was bigger and stronger than himself.

Maybe you shouldn't start a startup but be a teacher in CS, maybe marry a beautiful woman or even be a serial killer... I don't know? But follow your heart and you won't need to write a wall of text to prove yourself to HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm holding out for your autobiography. Please expand the part where you had trouble with calculus but were able to do ok in the end to at least 50 pages! Also the part where you decided to get into shape, I really cared about that.

I'm personally inspired by how you didn't let the kids on your dorm stop you with their mildly disinterested comments. If you didn't let that stop you, there's no way you're going to be stopped by an under-inflated bike tire, or even as many as 3 broken spokes (not all on the same wheel of course). Where do I invest?

<comment><USER13> Was that really necessary?

<comment><USER14> Well, he does make a good point. The original post is about extremely mundane situations. Everyone not getting excited about your startup, people questioning whether or not you'll stick with cycling and your new diet? These are the hardships of life? Seriously? Sorry, I don't mean to sound rude, but the original poster needs some real world experience, and the ability to understand the commitments that come in life, before criticizing people for working the same job and living in a fish tank. We know the way out of the tank, but unlike the original poster, we know why we need to stay at times.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. However, the situations I described where not really the hardships of my life. They where just situations in which I was disappointed in other people and I just wanted to share that with you. It was initially something I had written for myself to know the real reason why I wanted to start a startup. Then I thought, why not share it?

<comment><USER12> Why not share it? Because nobody reading it will benefit in any way, and many will be annoyed that you wasted their time, and you did waste the time of everyone reading it.

Send me your email address, I'll send you a 10 paragraph rundown of the trials and tribulations of laundry day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A curious question: where are you from and which college did you attend? I have a vague hunch.

<comment><AUTHOR> going to University of Antwerp :) I'm from Belgium.

<comment><USER15> Same here. I guessed because you said you studied "economics and languages" (Economie-Talen) and because you had a bunch of teachers discouraging higher scientific studies because of less math background.

You do need to be really good in maths, have a really solid basis or _work your ass off_ to succeed in the first few years of university-level computer science education. You did the latter, and you have my respect for that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to just tell myself that this is someone either doing a sociological study on cyber-bullying or else demonstrating an uncannily sophisticated natural language generator built upon the extensive corpus of previous Ask HN posts.

It's probably not true, but somehow helps...

</comment><comment><USER17> You also could adjust your focus... instead of telling us all how you are being blown off, figure out WHY. Even if they are all wrong, something is giving that incorrect impression. And you will have a hard time recruiting others to your cause unless you figure out what that is.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." - Jim Rohn

You can do it. You have the drive for it. It's all one big learning experience. Never stop learning. Learning to gain knowledge is important. What's more important is learning how to learn, learning through understanding. Building your photo sharing site is one small learning experience in the grand scheme. You've got nothing to lose. Sure, you're investing time into it, but you'll walk away with knowledge and connections that you previously didn't have.

I, too, was written off. I dropped out of college and was a temp for 2 months at $9.50/hr before landing my first job in IT. It's been well over a decade and I haven't looked back.

</comment><comment><USER19> >\- The thoughts of a 22-year old with no life experience.

Life experience my dear son is relative, and with your attitude and outlook, you're going to have some great experiences to share with future generations.

Good luck, friend.

</comment><comment><USER20> I only have one comment to offer: No.

<comment><USER20> Obviously my comment was misunderstood. Given everything the author of the post wrote about, "No" should be his "Yes". "No" is something you'll hear in life many, many times and it doesn't even phase people who are truly motivated.

So "No" in this case is brief language for meaning; "Go build a great product, kick the teeth out of the competition/market and don't fall into a rut."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Believe in yourself, because no one else will._

That may be the single most important point of all... well said, sir.

 _The thoughts of a 22-year old with no life experience_

Well, FWIW, this 37-year old agrees wholeheartedly. :-)

<comment><USER22> _Believe in yourself, because no one else will.

That may be the single most important point of all... well said, sir._

I don't think that's true at all. While I'm not going to diminish the importance of believing in oneself, one of the greatest loves you can show toward someone else is demonstrating that you believe in them, too. Everyone should surround themselves with people like that.

<comment><USER20> Awesome point, Bundini. Not all entrepreneurs need to be leaders, but "The One" in every venture needs to be able to influence others to believe. Cultivating people skills, understanding basics of business communication that Dale Carnegie published nearly 80 years ago.

Charisma, people skills, energy, good-vibe - call it what you will, but if you can engage people in a trusting and real dialog they WILL believe in you and follow you into fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't forget -- it's nothing until it's something!</comment>


The Senate's SOPA Counterattack? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-senates-sopa-counterattack-cybersecurity-the-undoing-of-privacy/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: the key part is in this bit:

"Consistent with the Constitution of the United States and notwithstanding and other provision of law," it says (emphasis added), entities may act to preserve the security of their systems. This means that the only law controlling their actions would be the Constitution.

It's nice that the Constitution would apply</sarcasm>, but the obligations in the Privacy Act of 1974 would not. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act would be void. Even the requirements of the E-Government Act of 2002, such as privacy impact assessments, would be swept aside.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget:

 _The Constitution doesn't constrain private actors, of course. This language would immunize them from liability under any and all regulation and under state or common law. Private actors would not be subject to suit for breaching contractual promises of confidentiality. They would not be liable for violating the privacy torts. Anything goes so long as one can make a claim to defending "information systems," a term that refers to anything having to do with computers._

 _Elsewhere, the bill creates an equally sweeping immunity against law- breaking so long as the law-breaking provides information to a "cybersecurity exchange."_

<comment><USER4> Whenever I suspect that politicians might be writing a "power-grab" law, the one sure way I know to confirm it, is to start looking for immunity clauses. They know they are doing something bad that would require the "immunity" or else they wouldn't preemptively put it there.

<comment><USER2> _Whenever I suspect that politicians might be writing a "power-grab" law, the one sure way I know to confirm it_

A second way to detect it is to look for the word "bipartisan". If politicians on both sides support it, there's a very good chance that the group being screwed is the public.

<comment><USER5> > A second way to detect it is to look for the word "bipartisan".

My key is the word "reform". It's almost always used to label something that's going to make things significantly worse.

<comment><USER6> Bipartisan just means whatever is in the middle of the window of acceptable discourse, which then shrinks further into nothing, until they're no longer debating what policy should be, but merely who should implement it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There seems to be a good supply of legislators that are willing to take donations for laws that benefits special interests at the expense of the many.

If this legislative problem persists I believe there are only three ways of fighting back:

Entrepreneurship: inventions that speed up the demise of the companies funding this and remove the dependency legislators have on special interests.

Legislation: increase cost of enforcement. Donate to legislators that increase friction to these processes by adding requirements and process to:

          - the submitter of a request (e.g a copyright holder).
          - the processor of a request (e.g the FBI)
          - the executor of a request (e.g the dns system)

Technology: make the laws unenforceable by:

          - making information untrackable (e.g making it X%
            likely that trackable information is incorrect)
          - changing the trust model of the internet (e.g replacement to dns).

</comment><comment><USER8> > Elsewhere, the bill creates an equally sweeping immunity against law- > breaking so long as the law-breaking provides information to a > "cybersecurity exchange

There's a germ of something that could be useful in there. If you a) have knowledge of a security issue and b) can't get the vendor to respond, the options available aren't great. Being able to get men with badges to go bang on doors before full disclosure could help users, and provide a certain amount of satisfaction for security researchers. Maybe a commemorative helmet-cam dvd could be included.

</comment><comment><USER9> If we can't censor at the dns level because of protesting, maybe we can get some tsa like government agencies to oversee internet security. Start it simple and meaningless, give it a nice name like "sharing" and "information". It will pass.

Then we'll slowly build its power and establish its rightful duty to preserve the security of the internet, loyal to the Federal reserve and Congress. Thus establishing ownership of the global net. Then we can tax the hell out of every imported and exported byte we don't like.

Sigh... Its an improvement over sopa at least!</comment>


Assembla Introducing Simple Planner for lightweight Agile, Scrum, and Kanban - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/84665/Introducing-Simple-Planner-for-lightweight-Agile-Scrum-and-Kanban.aspx

<comment><USER2> I know I am going to sound snarky for saying this but it seems like every company that doesn't actually have a game changing idea for a product ends up building some sort of planning tool.

I am not saying that planning tools can't be innovative but most of them are a combination of overly complex and not easy on the eyes.

I am assuming that most people who want to go with a scrum board that is digital are going to use trello <https://trello.com/>. I again believe even trello is overly complex but at least it's easy to look at.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'd easier for a repo hosting service provider to provide an integrated planning tool. It'd be easier for customer too. Of course, only when they do it right.

I love Trello, but it's supposed to be generic, and thus, not easy to use it as a Kanban board (limit number of cards per list, etc) out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Am I wrong or is that just a pivotaltracker.com ?

<comment><USER4> The Simple Planner has a very similar setup to Pivotal but also allows you to then switch to your task on an online card wall or a filterable task list view. So the new tool appears to be similar but with much more functionality depending upon what your workflows are.</comment></comment>


Voting Simulation Visualizations - <AUTHOR> http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ <comment><AUTHOR> Not mentioned in the article, but you can drop determinism to satisfy 4 other criteria for optimal voting: <http://rangevoting.org/GibbSat.html></comment>


Here's the basic problem: you're writing a text editor. Stop doing that. It's 2007. - <AUTHOR> http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/01/21/wrongroom?re

<comment><USER2> What is the problem if you learn something in the process?

Do you really think that the world needs more condescending blog posts and less text editors?

</comment><comment><USER3> Silly. This is like saying "Stop innovating." Everybody thought search was a done deal when GOOG arrived. Mp3 players all seemed fine until the iPod arrived.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. But what innovation do we have in a text editor that is only able to function in full-screen mode?

What is new?

<comment><USER3> Well, nothing may be new in this case, perhaps. But innovation happens very erratically and in spurts. One never knows what an artifact will be used for in the future, or what it will inspire to be created next.

Regardless, my main argument was against the author's overly sensationalistic and dangerous "stop writing text editors" point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We have to reinvent the wheel every once in a while, not because we need a lot of wheels; but because we need a lot of inventors." - Bruce Joyce

</comment><comment><USER6> I dislike this post. Reading between the lines he's negating much of open source software, e.g. "You shouldn't develop B because A exists"

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's the basic problem: you're writing a blog. Stop doing that. It's 2007. __

__This comment tries to be funny.

</comment><comment><USER8> That post is stupid, and the author comes off like a condescending know-it- all.

(1) If someone wants to write a text-editor, what's it to you? There are countless independent software projects, the vast majority of which are developing new versions/implementations of a pre-existing concept. Look at mail clients: there are hundreds, and they all still basically suck, IMHO. The fact that there is clearly an audience for this style of editor suggests that there is something valuable about these editors that is not found in older editors (I don't use them, so I don't know).

(2) Text editing is a fundamental activity; if we could improve its efficiency by even a few percent, that would be enormously useful. Developing a slightly better solitaire game, say, is far less useful than developing a text editor that makes people (even a small group of people) more productive.

(3) The griping about runtime size is inane. "You're bitching about 22MB language runtimes. Stop doing that. It's 2007.", one could say. If you need a very small editor, there are already 10+ to choose from, and a dependency on a .NET/Java runtime is otherwise not a big deal.

(4) As for the evidence-free claim that the people using these products are analogous to "script kiddies", and that the "real authors" don't use them -- well, not sure any further comment is needed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Even if the rant seems to be about nothing (who seriously cares if someone wants to make another text editor? let them make whatever they want), you have to admit the quote used as the YC news headline is great.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is one of my favs of 2007

</comment><comment><USER11> and planned economy is superior, too.</comment>


Anyone else a Shoemoney fan? Great reading for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.shoemoney.com/ <comment><USER2> He seems to be more on the shady/darkhat side of things. I think YC readers are more interested in the "create something cool/valuable/fun and love what you do" method.

Personally, I would rather be building things and creating value, rather than playing cat-and-mouse with search engines and ad networks.

Maybe I am misinterpreting him though.

<comment><AUTHOR> He definately does a lot of very commercial stuff certainly but I think that's useful to know about if you're building something cool/ valuable/ fun if you want to monetise or promote it.

Also he built Auction Ads recently which is a real valuable product.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love these online marketing sites - you really learn a lot about SEO, monetising users and so on. It's a great change from reading techcrunch reviews and that kind of thing.</comment>


No One Likes To Be Left Out: VCs Require Co-Sale Rights - <AUTHOR> http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2009/08/no-one-likes-to-be-left-out-cosale-rights.html

<comment><USER2> save yourself the blogspam click:

"Fighting Over Money

VCs generally require co-sale rights when they make an investment. This right enables them to participate in any sale or transfer of stock to a third party.

This term enables investors to avoid missing out on opportunities to liquidate their shares. The founders or a sub-set of the company's shareholders can't secretly find buyers willing to pay a high price for their shares and engage in the transaction without giving their VCs the right to participate."

that's the whole article...</comment>


RISC-V 3D GPU - <AUTHOR> http://libre-riscv.org/3d_gpu/ <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18094734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18094734)

What I said then:

I don't have particularly high hopes for this. "Start looking at HW" is their last step in the roadmap. GPU microarchitectures are all about being a reflection of the hardware, amortizing a lot of traditional CPU components across as many threads as you can, to such a degree that there are ISA implications.

EDIT: What would be cool would be a more traditional GPU architecture, married to RISC-V minion looking cores that today already exist, but aren't open at all. There's a lot of very closed (even more so than shader unit) RISC processors in GPUs. AMD has a RISC core reading and processing the command lists, among other things. [https://github.com/fail0verflow/radeon- tools/tree/master/f32](https://github.com/fail0verflow/radeon- tools/tree/master/f32) PowerVR has one doing thread scheduling and argument marshaling (Programmable Data Sequencer). Nvidia has their cores that they just switched to RISC-V.

Imagine having a custom command list tailored to your application sort of like the benefits custom N64 RSP microcode had.</comment>


The next generation of journalism students have no idea what's ahead - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/606401/the-next-generation-of-journalism-students-have-no-idea-what-theyre-getting-into/ <comment><USER2> > _Frankly, I think the incentive is born out of desperation. These are dark > times. The current state of rapid media creation and frantic consumption is > creating widespread stress and anxiety that's no longer sustainable._

Journalism always was a low-paying field, but besides being satisfying, it still was a job you could retire in a decade ago. Very few of the young newspaper reporters I used to work with 10 years ago are still in the business, having gone into doing PR or government for saner work hours and much better pay. I can only think of one of my fellow interns who put her years as a beat reporter at a regional paper who successfully made her way to a national outlet. I made the jump myself but only because I was also a programmer. While there are new avenues into big journalism careers, such as blogging or getting your start at places like Vox/BuzzFeed...it doesn't seem like the career path from college to small to regional to national paper exists anymore (I've heard the freelancing route has been just as decimated), and the jobs created by online outlets are a fraction of what traditional news outlets used to have.

<comment><USER3> > I made the jump myself but only because I was also a programmer.

I think having some experience in tech is going to be the norm alongside writing skills. My friend teaches at UNC and focuses on the tech side of things. Their students are learning JS, some Django (as of 2013, maybe something else now) and the basics of how the web works. I think understanding more of the medium might help prepare future journalists for what's common across the field.

However, coming from having worked at a newspaper, I don't think anything prepares them for the "rapid media creation and frantic consumption". It's amazing how ephemeral online media is yet how much effort still goes in to a lot of the content prep and presentation.

<comment><USER4> Interesting to learn that programming is being taught to writers. Perhaps it's a poor analogy, but the term Singer/Songwriter comes to mind when I imagine such a hybrid. Either one of the two component skills could earn a living; but the two together have greater potential for producing works of significance. Also, it reminds me of Scott Adams career advice[0], where he suggests being "good" at more than one thing.

[0] [http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career- advice.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Democracy needs journalism. It needs people out there looking under rocks for things someone doesn't want published. (If someone wants it published, it's PR, not journalism.) Journalism makes politicians afraid. Without that, you get Russia Today or China Daily or Outbrain.

We're losing that, in the name of clickbait.

<comment><USER6> And the driver of clickbait is our dependence on advertising for revenue.

Advertising totally subverts and corrupts the invisible hand. If that doesn't make sense, draw a diagram of the forces that move the invisible hand in a straight up consumer-producer relationship for your website. Now add in advertising into the picture. Note that consumers spend just as much if not more than before, only the cost of the website appears free, but is baked into an entirely unrelated product they pay for.

<comment><USER5> _" cost of the website appears free, but is baked into an entirely unrelated product they pay for."_

That cost may be substantial. There are many products whose marketing cost exceeds the cost of making and delivering the product or service. Movies, many prescription drugs, long distance phone service, soft drinks, vitamins, and many online services are mostly promotional cost. There's an argument for taxing advertising to push this down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've said this before in other threads but I'll say this again: THERE IS TOO MUCH NEWS. In any market as the quantity goes up (and the amount of news content has skyrocketed in the last decade or so) the value goes down. There are so many news websites out there, and I'm not even talking the niche ones that cover certain things, there are hundreds if not thousands of large general coverage entities online all vying for the same eyeballs.

When we hit a Paywall here on HN, we either use the Google link to get around it, or go to a different website offering the same content for free. There is no incentive for me to pay the New York Times 99 cents a month or whatever it is when there are a dozen parrot websites offering the same product.

The bigger institutions involved in this are getting drowned by parrot clickbait shitty websites for their "rapid fire" coverage. They should stop covering that kind of garbage and move purely to more thoughtful, innovative and interesting topics and just stop doing the rapid shit altogether. I would pay to read an NYT that had interesting a thoughtful content that I wouldn't be able to get at every other website.

In short: No one gives a shit if the New York Times doesn't cover the latest Twitter scandal: We know, we were on Twitter watching it happen, we don't need 5,000 articles from a thousand news sources about how horrible it was. Go find us something INTERESTING to read.

<comment><USER8> Thoughtful, innovative and interesting writing takes a long time and has only niche appeal. Clickbait can be written quickly and is massively lucrative.

Buzzfeed are doing some of the best investigative journalism in the world, because they can afford it. Their mastery of clickbait allows them to cross- subsidise the kind of quality reporting that many newspapers can no longer afford.

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/markschoofs/jaw-dropping- investigati...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/markschoofs/jaw-dropping- investigations-we-published-in-2015)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My father was a sports broadcaster for 30 years in one of the biggest and most successful sports markets in the United States and he just retired/quit his job a couple years ago because he couldn't take it anymore.

He said he made it through the golden age of TV but now things are different and he didn't enjoy his job anymore so he had to get out for reasons similar to those stated by the author of this piece.

Side note: I boycott a few websites that I feel have particularly bad, click- baity, cheap content.

</comment><comment><USER10> Journalism ought to strive for compact, quality pieces that can be read at a fast pace. Many articles posted are much longer than they need to be, and their information density is not that great. It's not that it is never good, but rather that it is nowhere near the limits of what humans are capable of as far as communication goes.

<comment><USER11> Maybe the average article could be denser (though if you can give some examples of what you mean that might be more convincing). The "long form" piece is a rich stylistic tradition and it would be missing the point to try to compress it. Take John McPhee's writing, for one thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In general people don't know what's ahead regarding the rapid changes that will inevitably come,not only journalists

</comment><comment><USER13> While there is a need for traditional journalism, I do believe that grassroots journalism by internet activists has its own value, so this shift in journalism is both positive and negative. For example, "responsible" journalists in Germany failed to report on the nature or extend of attacks by immigrants on German women during New Years Eve celebrations, e.g. in Cologne. It was only viral videos that brought these events to more widespread attention.

<comment><USER14> I suspect incidents like the one you mentioned might be one of the reasons why traditional journalism is running into trouble. It's completely lost touch with the public it supposedly serves, treating a significant portion of the mainstream with contempt and trying to foster narratives that a significant amount of people don't agree with (but which happily align with those of politicians or the current government). It's why only 40% of the American public trust the media as of 2015. *

Perhaps the one sided coverage of various issues, the refusal to cover certain issues and other such problems are why the news business is finding it so hard to keep afloat.

* [http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/media/media-trust-americans/](http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/media/media-trust-americans/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Haven't read the article yet. But the same goes for most fields these days</comment>


Leading geneticist Steve Jones says human evolution is over  - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4894696.ece <comment><USER2> Advanced Paternal Age is rare, but Advanced Maternal Age is skyrocketing. This guy is not that impressive, he totally forgot to mention this little fact.</comment>


How Americans Get To Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/07/22/204550565/how-americans-get-to-work-in-2-graphs

<comment><USER2> Carpooling is tough when everyone doesn't leave right at 5pm. I'm curious if this has been studied, but I wonder if hours are both longer and more variable now than in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm most surprised that with all the remote work tools we have today, the amount of people who "work from home" has actually gone down.</comment></comment>


Jargon File moved to github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Jargonfile/jargonfile <comment><AUTHOR> Should the personal who wrote:

One was: their skin color looks fecal. The other was: their bone structure doesn't look human. And they're just off-reference enough to be much more creepy than if they looked less like people, like bad CGI or shambling undead in a B movie. When I paid close enough attention, these were the three basic data under the revulsion; my hindbrain thought it was surrounded by alien shit zombies.

Speak for hacker culture?

<comment><USER2> I think ESR is an idiot for a lot of reasons, but to be honest you're taking that quote a little out of context. The whole point of that blog post was to show his superior rationality and analytical introspective prowess--despite the "irrational" feelings he describes in the quoted paragraph, he was able to reason his way through all that and his neocortex and non-bigotry came victorious. Or so he claims.

One a certain level I agree with what he writes in that post in the sense that we shouldn't let certain mental reflexes, which are no fault of ours, overpower our reason, compassion, whatever... But on the other hand, I have to agree with you at least in part, because that paragraph is just messed up (it's the exact part that startled me when I read the post[0] a few months ago). Without it, that post would be one of the rare reasonable things he wrote lately. It left a bad taste in my mouth not knowing what to think really. Although, he has gone on verbal racist sprees before, without much analysing own visceral processes.

[0] [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001)

EDIT: Oh, and just to add: he self appointed himself as a speaker for hacker culture. I don't think anyone has taken that seriously. Who cares what one person with delusions of grandeur thinks?</comment></comment>


Zucktown, USA - <AUTHOR> https://thebaffler.com/latest/zucktown-usa-tveten <comment><USER2> This article's main topic is just "tech companies are building big offices", dressed up in some purple prose. And they're also to blame for high rents. But if they build apartments to help ease the housing shortage, that's a "company town" and we can't have that either. And Amazon is a "commandeering leech" which "suck[s] up our resources and refus[es] to participate in daily upkeep", but when Google offers Mountain View neighborhood benefits, that proves it's "seeking to wrest control of the city from its government".

I suppose the next step is to blame the Google buses for being "elitist" and "gentrifying", while in the next paragraph, blaming Google for putting cars on the road and making traffic worse....

"Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, a priest who heard the confessions of condemned witches, wrote in 1631 the Cautio Criminalis ('prudence in criminal cases') in which he bitingly described the decision tree for condemning accused witches: If the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away."

<comment><USER3> The article is a badly written opinion piece that meanders through various topics, but your critique of it is beating a strawman.

It's not making the "you can't win" argument that tech companies should be critiqued whether or not they build housing.

Rather, it's that they're supposedly constructing "company towns" in the sense that the housing stock they build won't be for sale, and presumably only rented to employees. If you get fired you also get evicted.

Furthermore they'll own the nearby retail space as well. Will an Oculus competitor be for sale in the Facebook-owned chain of stores? Will someone trying to organize a Facebook union be allowed to use the meeting spaces at the Facebook town hall?

<comment><USER4> > If you get fired you also get evicted.

If you get fired, you basically lose your healthcare, which in many cases is much worse. Though quite a number of Americans seem fine with that arrangement for some reason.

<comment><USER5> If I'm a healthy individual then the risk that I need my healthcare insurance are low (But it has a big impact on my economy if I do need it). However the risk that I need some form of housing is 100% and the impact of not having it is huge which to me makes it a bigger risk. However YMMV depending on your situation.

<comment><USER6> Circumstances change quickly.

I'm married, things happened, and we ended up having a baby. Due to various circumstances beyond our control. That cost $100k.

As a healthy guy in my 20's, I suffered an injury through no fault of my own that led to me needing a serious back surgery. Net cost -> $250k.

Rolling the dice on something that fundamentally life altering, and expecting society to pick up the tab for the consequences of your risk management is bullshit. It is a good illustration of why you can't treat healthcare as a market driven thing unless you're willing to drop the moral obligation to preserve human life (and expect the providers to "absorb" it).

<comment><USER7> So you had a baby due to circumstances beyond your control? And you had an injury, again through no fault of your own? And the sum of those are over $350K.

Who is responsible for your health? I'd argue that the baby is entirely on you, and $100K for a delivery is insane unless you had incredible complications.

And if the back injury wasn't your fault, you could seek redress from whom is responsible. If it's work related, then work should pay. If it's an accident, then whomever is negligent should pay.

Unfortunately, no one wants to take responsibility, and expects "society" to make an individual whole after a loss.

<comment><USER8> How do you feel about people with debilitating genetic diseases/disorders? Through no fault of their own other than being born into this world, and no health care provider wants to anything to do with them. They are guaranteed money losers, and if insurance companies didn't have to deal with pesky regulations, they would happily find and drop these patients.

I make no judgements on your moral character, but to follow your philosophy requires a fundamental acceptance that certain human life has less intrinsic value than other human life.

<comment><USER7> I have no issue with society picking up after people who truly have catastrophic illnesses (though that's really what health insurance SHOULD be, not the way it is currently.) My issue is with people expecting society to pay for health care that's not catastrophic nor "accidental." If I choose to have a child, I should expect to pay for it. My partner and I had to have IVF, and we paid for it.

<comment><USER6> You paid for the IVF.

You likely didn't pay for the prenatal care after the first trimester, and likely didn't pay for the delivery beyond coinsurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> HN is criticizing the article wording but completely ignoring its point. This article coupled with the other one on the dystopian reality of San Francisco[1] have me feeling completely disgusted at the current state of the tech industry.

Simply put: these tech giants are making too much money. They are losing touch with the average people and simply put with reality itself. It wouldn't surprise me if that's exactly how all "evil" companies of the past became evil themselves.

[1]: [https://www.mhudack.com/blog/2017/10/1/san-francisco-now- wit...](https://www.mhudack.com/blog/2017/10/1/san-francisco-now-with-more- dystopia)

<comment><USER10> Making money is not evil. Wall street makes money, pharma makes money, lawyers make money, insurance makes money, automobiles, consumer goods, real estate - all huge industries. Now that tech is being used on a massive scale of course the tech companies are making money. So what? It doesn't make sense to equate rich with evil - either for companies or for people.

SF (and many cities in the US and across the world) have always had poor people. The world has always been very unequal with kings and paupers and everything in between. Now some of them are in the same town and it freaks people out.. welcome to the real world. Anyone who has ever lived in NYC has seen the same inequality.

<comment><USER11> Making money is not evil, but social class increases likelihood of utilitarianism. Being a tech elite in the valley arguably makes one more likely to be more of a utilitarian. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201304/the- rich...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201304/the-rich-are- differently-moral). Large scale usage does not increase likelihood of profit, either. There aren't any hard disk drive billionaires, for example. Also they aren't in the same town; those who are trying to make it or work in the 'supporting cast' take BART from oakland or richmond, or do extreme commuting from the san joaquin valley.

<comment><USER12> This argument seems a little surreal. Is the take here seriously "utilitarianism is so intrinsically bad that wealth is evil because it causes utilitarianism?"

Utilitarianism is an exceedingly broad category; hedonistic, rule, preference, and negative utilitarianism all recommend different behaviors. But none of them equate to selfishness or abuse of others.

I mean, the article does give us "Piff's earlier work suggests Richie might act in a way that neither a utilitarian nor a non-utilitarian would support, benefiting himself at the expense of others." But that's a completely different, contradictory argument being thrown in as though it bolsters the main point about utilitarianism. Also, it relies on a truly wild series of leaps from "people taking anti-anxiety drugs" to "psychopaths" to "rich people".

(That older paper linked is setting off all my alarm bells for shitty social psych research. The second one doesn't look promising, but is paywalled.

\- "We derived the ethics of the rich from an online quiz" is a bad sign.

\- "We didn't control for education" is a problem in its own right.

\- PNAS is a bad sign.

\- 'Neutral primes' versus 'greed is good primes' is a disastrously bad sign, it's not even clear if those things work.

\- Human-coding of driver behavior is questionable at best.

\- Deriving human ethics from groups of ~100 Berkeley students is almost cartoonishly bad.

My baseline here is "forking paths plus massive bias risks got us a catchy headline".)

<comment><USER11> You are biased against social psych research, as I think we all should be, but I'm not sure singling it out is the best strategy. The issues of reproducibility and 'p-hacking' among others are a big problem in a variety of disciplines right now, and there is a good synopsis of just one aspect of the problem in hard sciences here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis). For a non-paywall link to the original research this is better: [http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.short](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.short)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh Lord. A bunch of poor 19th century miners in a remote town is not the same as this at all. These are some of the richest and easily employable workers in the country living in one of the most populated regions.

They wouldn't have to do this if the local government wasn't so restrictive either. These companies don't care if their employees own their own homes or not. But unfortunately big companies are the only groups with enough power and resources to push through new housing development.

<comment><USER14> Well, there are a couple responses there. Obviously the mining towns are the most extreme expression of the problem, but is it not reasonable to say you might see smaller echoes of this in the tech companies' case? White-collar workers in general are working longer hours, etc., so I don't think we can say they write all the rules.

But perhaps a bigger question is, what about all the people who work at Google or Facebook who are not in-demand engineers? It seems like once you've established the principle it's easier to expand it to less prestigious positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And you'd go to Zuckshop and buy Zuckbread:

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

It would be creepy having to live in a employers' housing unit. But if it is subsidized enough many would jump on it.

The interview process at many of these company is already geared to bring in college graduates. So a dorm of sort would make sense. Then they could outfit them work spaces so you could live there and maybe work remotely (but only from a company provided housing unit).

How about just letting people work from home to begin with so they don't all have to be crammed into one town or one building so that they can then all type on a computer? It is rather interesting I think these companies sell digital connectivity, collaboration, -- but when it comes to themselves they like to shove everyone into buildings.

<comment><USER16> Japan has a lot of this, but it's usually a building in the middle of a city so you're not like... completely surrounded. But your neighbors are probably from the same company.

<comment><USER17> Can you expand on this? I've spent a lot of time in Japan, but have never heard of it.

<comment><USER16> Many companies have appartments to rent for their employees, especially bigger companies in things like civil engineering. They'll usually let you rent for a super low rate (like $100/month), and though obviously your salary is given with an understanding you'll stay there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With an average tenure of < 2 years at these companies now, subsidized housing may force people to stay in companies longer especially if they have families. I'm not sure they can recreate Kodak/Rochester type place as there are so many rich companies vying for the same people.

<comment><USER19> > With an average tenure of < 2 years ...

citation needed :)

<comment><USER20> [http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate- top-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-tech- companies-2017-8?utm_content=buffer30d08&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

Matches my experience at FB & Apple. I spent about 2 years at each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The wording makes this really hard to read.

<comment><USER22> I cringed at this: "Its CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, has vowed to acquire four million more over the next five years, a muscular move meant to complement his midlife-crisis physique."

<comment><USER12> Is it just me or is Bezos' fitness a _bizarrely_ common topic for tech-skeptic pieces? I swear I see it written and meme-d about more than basically any other single human-interest factoid about executives.

If that's true, it raises the question of _why_. The look isn't all that exceptional, he's just somebody who works out a fair bit, and didn't when he was younger. He's not exactly Erik Prince. So the focus on it, and the frequently malicious tone, sort of parse as "he doesn't look like nerds do anymore, that's suspicious".

This could all be apophenia, obviously. It just raises an eyebrow since I've seen athletic programmers greeted with "but you don't _look_ like a programmer!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On a related note, another recent Baffler piece concerning Facebook had some new-to-me information about Facebook helping to enforce blasphemy laws: [https://thebaffler.com/salvos/military-messaging-complex- zak...](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/military-messaging-complex-zakaria)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's exactly these biggest companies that should take moral responsibility and relocate / redistribute their work to various cities on the one hand, and if they want to go through with the idea of company towns, campuses etc, they need to move way out of the SF area - there's huge wads of unused space in the US, they could found their own city if need be. Probably not something very attractive to their employees, but it is one possible solution; especially if they can build it near SF, with e.g. only a 30 minute hyperloop or maglev train trip required to get to HQ.

<comment><USER4> > Probably not something very attractive to their employees...

I keep hearing this meme and I'm skeptical. Far more people live outside the Bay Area than inside it. Are they all poor saps who are waiting to move to Silicon Valley but haven't yet figured out how?

<comment><USER24> > Far more people live outside the Bay Area than inside it. Are they all poor > saps who are waiting to move to Silicon Valley but haven't yet figured out > how?

Usually when people claim that companies should try to recreate Silicon Valley in some cheaper "heartland of America", they are talking about flyover country. And demographically, many people still in flyover country may well be poor saps who haven't yet figured out how to move to the coasts, as statistics show a steady drain of young people to the coasts or at least a few major metropolitan areas in their part of America.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe they're just moving to where the money and career- building jobs are.

I think the causality is at least more complex than the aforementioned meme implies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Last time I checked, Facebook, Google et.al where not philanthropic organizations. For it to be less evil they should build the houses, then sell the properties, not rent, for below market prices.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is such a ridiculous impasse. Why don't the authorities do what most sensible countries do i.e. build multi-storied apartments with decent public transportation? Yes I know in the US that equates to the ghetto/projects/low income housing (which is a mindset that needs to change).

As far as the bay area goes this is possible since most residents are foreigners or 1st and 2nd generation Americans who are probably more open to the idea of living in a skyscraper.

</comment><comment><USER27> news from near-by Google-town:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/02/google-backs-down- from...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/02/google-backs-down-from-threat- to-cancel-mountain-view-housing/)

"Google has backed down from a threat to deny badly needed housing in Mountain View if it isn't given more office space for its futuristic new "Charleston East" campus."

</comment><comment><USER28> The linked anti-union article is more interesting than the original article IMO. [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/silicon- valleys...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/silicon-valleys-anti- unionism-and-class-warfare.html)

I would tend to agree with the tech-ie opinion that unions are becoming obselete in the US. Unions existed to protect workers who were unskilled and interchangeable; the endgame of tech is to automate all those jobs. But obviously I'm not a labor scholar and this is just an unfounded opinion.

<comment><USER4> > ...unions are becoming obselete in the US...

They don't make sense for knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are rarely interchangeable, so standardizing contracts, job titles, pay schedules, working conditions, etc., makes little sense. There is also the chance for protectionism (closed shops) that runs counter to the freelance culture in tech.

 _Some_ sort of worker-administered group could make a _lot_ of sense. But maybe a guild or cooperative instead.

Services that would be useful, especially (or only) if employers weren't paying the bill:

* Personal negotiation agents

* Career consultants. Lots of engineers are very underpaid and need some help holding their boss accountable. Or finding the next job.

* (Re)training. Engineers shouldn't specialize themselves into early retirement.

* Lobbying and marketing. Do you want BigCo telling your congressman what _you_ think?

* Independent research and reporting on work environments. Some push back on penny-wise, pound-foolish facilities decisions.

* Charitable technology work not under a corporate brand

* Insurance, modulo whether competitive tax advantages can be arranged. Setting up pools for disability and life insurance, at least. Maybe healthcare if the tax advantages can be worked out.

<comment><USER29> A guild is just a union by another name. The Screenwriters Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, and the various professional sports unions (e.g. NFLPA) are all good examples of unions representing highly-paid, non-interchangable workers.

<comment><USER4> I actually had those in mind as close to what might make sense. Though agent responsibilities might be assumed by the guild as well.

However, the organizations you list have gone in strike as leverage in collective negotiations. That is an aspect I doubt makes sense for tech outside of basic health or ethical concerns. Both the collective bargaining and the striking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe instead of complaining about how facebook and google have the made the area popular, you should take aim at the entrenched owners who refuse to allow higher density housing to actually relieve the pressure on the market.</comment>


Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30688/30688-h/30688-h.htm <comment><USER2> It's always kind of wonderful to read older texts. For one, the style is often much more approachably clear; for another, sometimes you find hidden gems of history.

One of my favorite bits of science history is the first edition of a text on metallurgy, that was meant for sales reps for a carnegie steel affiliate company.

The purpose of the book was to give sales reps enough clue to not embarrass themselves; it's evolved and the book, now in its 8th edition or something, is a standard reference text for undergraduates.

Anyway the first chapter or so of the 1914 text was explaining the basic chemistry of the universe and went something like:

 _The three things that make up our physical universe are: matter, which is stuff that has mass; energy, which is the capacity to do work; and the luminiferous aether, which is the medium through which light propagates..._

<comment><USER3> I've been reading a lot of H.G. Wells' nonfiction. As a child in a one-room English schoolhouse, he was still being taught the four "elements" of earth, water, fire, and air. Aristotle would be proud!

<comment><USER2> but everything changed when the martians attacked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I dislike reading a book in my browser. Here's the Project Gutenberg page with all file types for offline viewing.

[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Why does it get hot? Because when the electrons stream through it they bump and jostle their way along like rude boys on a crowded sidewalk. The atoms have to step a bit more lively to keep out of the way."

<comment><AUTHOR> I can be a bit dense sometimes, and the imagery helps me to grasp the concept. Fortunately, the book is packed full of descriptions like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You might enjoy this old radio program where Jean Shepherd discusses getting his Class A ham radio license when still young and in school:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU) part 1

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc) part 2</comment>


Spotify's Algorithm Knows What You Want to Listen To - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/how-spotifys-algorithm-knows-exactly-what-you-want-to-listen-to-4b6991462c5c <comment><USER2> Spotify can't keep up with my musical tastes, just repeat what I play.</comment>


Vanilla ice cream shortage cascades across the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/7d3dd28b-a168-4889-8325-41d5a41a83bb <comment><USER2> Help is already here and vanilla ice cream (and other vanilla things) can be flavored with artificial vanilla. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanillin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanillin) give the details. In fact, many vanilla products get their flavor artifically. Natural vanilla wins on complexity, nuance, and flavor, but it costs much more even in the absence of natural disasters and crop failures.</comment>


Fuzzing an API with DeepState - <AUTHOR> https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/01/22/fuzzing-an-api-with-deepstate-part-1/ <comment><USER2> A software QA engineer walks into a bar. He orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 99999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers.

First real customer walks in and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts into flames, killing everyone.

Using symbolic execution to simultaneously test all edge cases is a really powerful idea. DeepState is especially powerful since it'll generate test cases you can use to fix bugs and then use them in your traditional CI tests.

<comment><USER3> >it'll generate test cases you can use to fix bugs and then use them in your traditional CI tests

That's what I like about hypothesis, it will try to generate minimal testing cases and save them for later. If you're a Python dev and you like what DeepState does, consider hypothesis too.

[https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DeepState provides a Google Test-compatible interface to writing C++ unit tests; however, underneath it all, it is really a C unit testing framework. That is the reason for some of the strange naming of functions like DeepState_Int: these are the underlying C interfaces. If you're using C++, you can choose to use Symbolic<int> or symbolic_int. However, if your codebase is pure C, then have no fear, DeepState can still help you!

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been doing a similar thing in Rust with cargo-fuzz and the `arbitrary` crate. One thing that could have been made more clear is that a big advantage of something like DeepState is that the fuzzers it uses support instrumentation guided fuzzing, which is exponentially more powerful than the simple random fuzzing from regehr's original post.

<comment><USER6> Good point! I added a little paragraph emphasizing the reasons you want libFuzzer etc. over a dumb fuzzer, in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The second part is already available: [https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/01/23/fuzzing-an-api- with-...](https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/01/23/fuzzing-an-api-with- deepstate-part-2/)</comment>


Show HN: Kapow! - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/Bamblehorse/full/ZoxyGj/ <comment><USER2> I'm constantly surprised that SVGs aren't more popular on the web for small, scalable content. You see them around (Github's contributions graph, the Guardian's crossword puzzles, etc) but they're still quite unusual despite having lots of advantages.

I made a similar thing years ago using a WebGL shader and a PNG ... [https://codepen.io/onion2k/full/peeVNd/](https://codepen.io/onion2k/full/peeVNd/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah me too. They're basically fully supported now so there isn't really an excuse.

Hahaha I love your potato. Maybe make the overflow hidden so it all fits. It's beautiful!! :-D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Breath-taking! Awesome Job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow thank you. :-). That's a big compliment.

<comment><USER3> :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Re-sizable to any size e.g. 50px

\- because SVG :-D

<comment><USER3> Can I use it in my one of the side projects. please :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah of course. Why not?

Just give a link to the original on codepen if you don't mind. :-P

Edit: Either way show me the finished thing. Would love to check it out.

<comment><USER3> sure ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Happy Birthday, Bill Gates You Made Steve Jobs Possible - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2011/10/28/happy-birthday-bill-gates-youve-changed-our-world-way-more-than-that-jobs-guy/2/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't support authors opinion thought that "Bill Gates You Made Steve Jobs Possible"</comment>


Double Slit Experiment and Bayes (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.yulingyao.com/blog/2019/double-slit/ <comment><USER2> That is an extremely interesting blogpost! Thank you for sharing! It's been a problem I have been struggeling with lately, as to how qm seems to have negative probabilities in some contexts. I will study this blogpost deeply.

It does seem very technical for a hn audience.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. My reaction was the opposite: I find it a very muddled and unclear blogpost, and frankly I am not sure there is anything insightful or useful in it. I'd say, yes, Answer 1 is it, you are looking at two different settings, each of which is reasonably well understood by now. What has Bayes got to do with it?

<comment><USER2> I agree, the blogpost is not written clearly. But there is something fundementally odd about how wavefunctions cause seemingly negative probabilities. And understanding that might lead to improvements in how we deal with probabilities and statistics.

Contrary to what people might think from their schoolbooks, a lot of statistics is built on a swampy foundation.

<comment><USER4> Constructive and destructive interference are generally well-understood and common phenomena even in the macro world. Sound waves, ocean waves, string instruments. With QM, the probability can never be negative since it is calculated as the amplitude squared.

Somewhat similarly, with ocean waves, we are not concerned that troughs are somehow creating negative energy when energy of an ocean wave = amplitude squared.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Infusionsoft Campaign Builder – how does it actually work? - <AUTHOR>

Sure, you're not going to know exactly, but can you hazard a guess?
I've used the frontend (examples: http://ug.infusionsoft.com/article/AA-01060/0/Campaign-Builder-Overview.html) and it does my nut in that I can't figure out how this data is stored in their database (assumption #1), how if an event is triggered someone is moved from point C in a campaign to point D, and how someone can be in multiple campaigns at once.
The hacker in me has tried to figure this out and failed. Give me your speculation, your knowledge... just help me with how does it frickin work??? <comment><AUTHOR> Some more behind-the-scenes info at [https://developer.infusionsoft.com/blog/read/Campaign_Builde...](https://developer.infusionsoft.com/blog/read/Campaign_Builder_for_Developers_By_a_Developer)</comment>


Microsoft is replacing dozens of MSN news production workers with AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/microsoft-is-cutting-dozens-of-msn-news-production-workers-and-replacing-them-with-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> I suspect we'll see more of this in future, since a lot of the work journalists/reporters do now can easily be automated away with AI.

It's already started happening with stories on sports results, which some outlets have already automated with templates and a data feed. It's probably going to happen with entertainment news too, given how many TV/movie/game/book/music related stories are just rewording press releases or posting trailers/advertisements.

And with the kind of tech mentioned in the article, a lot of the BuzzFeed style low effort stories seen on clickbait focused news sites are probably going to go the same way.

So yeah, we'll probably end up with a far smaller media industry in the foreseeable future, and one where eventually, everything except big ticket stories are written by machines rather than people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this mean the marginal cost of journalism is 0? :-)</comment>


The Creator of the Roomba Just Launched a Lawn Mower - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/irobot-s-follow-up-act-to-the-roomba-vacuum-mowing-the-lawn <comment><USER2> I thought this was cool, but my coworker said these are shit compared to the husqvarna automower which have been out longer. [https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-lawn- mowers/](https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/)</comment>


Container Clusters on VMs - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/02/container-clusters-on-vms.html?m=0 <comment><USER2> I feel like I'm entering buzzword land.

<comment><USER3> Similarly, I was just wondering how the _n_ th virtualized infrastructure provider - regardless of their identity - can make their stuff sound like its novel in the slightest. You have to admit they're good at that, even though it's mostly bullshit.

TLDR;

 _Reducing Deployment Risk_ = distribute complete container images.[1]

 _Modular App Components_ = run your services on a cluster you control[2] on our infrastructure

 _Modular App Components_ = we don't trust container security either.[3]

 _Shared Resources and Forecasting_ = cgroups[4]

 _Conclusion_ = we wrapped containers. now you can pay us money.[5]

Notes...

[1] You are now distributing larger pieces. Sending the pieces to a new infrastructure provider just became significantly more difficult to impossible, since there is no container format standard between providers - ie. Google just achieved lockin. The pieces you distribute are processor architecture specific and no longer optimized for the deployment environment.

[2] Why they can't offer the cluster functionality themselves between containers is beyond me. I can only assume they want to make more money by having people run more simultaneous instances on their infrastructure, and also achieve cognitive lockin to their platform from a marketing standpoint.

[3] What? You mean Google doesn't guarantee isolation between containers running on their infrastructure? What does that mean? Are your containers co- hosted with other clients'? What does this mean from a security standpoint?

[4] From the 'Teach a person to fish' department: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt)

[5] Maybe I want to run containers myself, on another provider? Maybe I want to do both? Or maybe I just want a tool that finally renders these 10,000 infrastructure providers a commodified industry and allows me actual freedom to move, without trusting in any single partner? Oh wait, that makes no commercial sense for these entities, who are just trying to get me to pay them money on a subscription basis...

<comment><USER4> 1\. Google Container Engine runs Docker containers, the same as other providers like AWS EC2 Container Service and Joyent Compute Service.

2\. I don't understand what you mean.

3\. You run your containers on virtual machines dedicated to you, so you rely on the hypervisor for security.

4\. Cgroups is one of the technologies that linux containers are built on. What is your point?

5\. Google is building their container service on docker and kubernetes [0]. Both of these are open source, already adapted by multiple providers, and possible for you to run yourself.

[0] [http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/01/everything-y...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/01/everything- you-wanted-to-know-about-Kubernetes-but-were-afraid-to-ask.html)

<comment><USER3> 1\. Yeah. Which is a tangent to the point that they spent a paragraph talking up the nominal benefits of distributing an entire container without facing either the reality that there is no standardized format (yes, really, look it up) or the necessary loss of binary portability. So yeah, marketing drivel .. all benefits, no frank discussion of drawbacks.

2\. From the article, it seems like they are encouraging people to build their own cluster atop their platform rather than using a packaged cluster service.

3\. OK. So allegedly two layers here. That's a lot better than one, though it makes you wonder how they schedule client slash client cgroup association across physical hardware (ie. VMs).

4\. That's just a paragraph of fluff around cgroups, was my point.

5\. The fact is you can't migrate easily between arbitrary providers because nothing offers you that level of abstraction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Input keyword to calculation - <AUTHOR>

Hello all,
  I'm new to HN. So its christmas break, and I'm working on some side projects.  One project I'm working on is to take some entered text from an input and do some calculations (ie "I bought 5 grand theft auto games"). Then when the user submits this query they might be returned the total aggregate price.  Any ideas how to program this?  I started by laboriously creating a database table with subject, verb, object and quantity and then some PHP to calculate stuff, but am wondering if there is a more clever way.<p>Also, somewhat unrelated, but I'm currently studying machine learning techniques for my PhD, and I'm really curious how to implement it for web applications. Any thoughts or resources? Take care <comment><AUTHOR> I ended up finding this algorithm for use in .Net if anyone is interested. <http://tomasp.net/articles/ahocorasick.aspx>.</comment>


How to marketing for a mobile app? - <AUTHOR> I am creating a mobile, it's nearly finished. Now, I am thinking about the way to promote my app. Could you please tell me the way to marketing a mobile app? <comment><USER2> What does the app do?

What platform is it for?</comment>


Prospecting on the Playa: 19 Tips to Network and Generate Leads at Burning Man - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leadgenius.com/prospecting-leads-at-burning-man/

<comment><USER2> I hope this is a joke, but just in case anyone thinks this is a good idea, remember that this violates one of the ten principles:

Decommodification In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing tips and tricks for closing dealz at burning man</comment>


Virgin Galactic Spaceship in catastrophic explosion and crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2816224/Virgin-Galactic-spaceship-flight-problem.html

<comment><USER2> Cultural note: the Daily Mail is a _terrible_ newspaper. We don't have the same culture of fact-checking in UK print publications as the US has; and our newspapers are chock full of bias and distortion and misinformation. The Mail is among the worst.

Please, if you want to be credible don't link to the daily mail. It's probably a site that could be added to a site block list.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279)</comment>


Why Employees at Apple and Google Are More Productive - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3068771/how-employees-at-apple-and-google-are-more-productive <comment><USER2> "This difference compounds every year; over a decade, they can produce 30 times more than the rest, with the same number of employees."

I am not sure if the math works out here. Unless they have also found a way to reinvest the output of this 40% extra productivity into more individual productivity which would be the real story.

I imagine this came from 1.4^10 = 28.9. This might make sense if they used the proceeds of the extra productivity to get more employees with equal productivity and so on..

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see the another nail in the stack rank coffin.

</comment><comment><USER4> Breaking News! Properly aligning incentives leads to increased productivity! Nobody could have predicted this!

</comment><comment><USER5> iOS 10? Did they mean OSX?</comment>


IPv6 Jumbograms Maxing - <AUTHOR>

An IPv6 node can optionally handle packets as large as 4294967295 (232−1) octets.  Are there any examples out there of a network that maxes out their jumbograms? <comment><AUTHOR> And for reference:

IPv6 Jumbograms <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2675></comment>


Russians attacking U.S. election systems? Here's the real risk - <AUTHOR> https://bobsullivan.net/cybercrime/russians-attacking-u-s-election-systems-heres-the-real-risk-from-a-man-who-fought-soviet-electronic-attacks-during-the-cold-war/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original, long title: Russians attacking U.S. election systems? Here's the real risk, from a man who fought Soviet electronic attacks during the Cold War</comment>


Doing an HD Remake the Right Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.fortressofdoors.com/doing-an-hd-remake-the-right-way/ <comment><USER2> When thinking about what is considered the "original" representation of the sprites, one should be aware of the nature of the original medium (CRT) as well. Most importantly: pixel aspect ratios, color space, overscan ...

Highly recommend reading Kyle Pittman's articles on CRT simulation:

[http://www.piratehearts.com/blog/2014/03/28/crt- simulation/](http://www.piratehearts.com/blog/2014/03/28/crt-simulation/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364800)

[http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_S...](http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php)

<comment><USER3> The Rare Replay collection is somewhere else that a lot of work has been put into the CRT emulation for older games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The art in Skullgirls was done somewhat similar to the way the article describes in "Recoloring". Each frame was composed of three different images and each sprite had a palette along with it. The palette was a list of color gradients. The first image was the black and white line work. The second image was a solid color key layer whose value acted as an index into the palette (i.e. which gradient should be selected). The third image was a monochrome shading layer which acted as the position into that gradient that should be drawn. The gradients were rendered to textures at runtime, and the shader did all the work of actually composing the layers.

It did have some downsides, in particular that it was a bit unnatural for artists to work with, and memory was a constant struggle on console. Skullgirls characters could have well over 1000 frames of animation, and the game supports 3 on 3 fights. Mike did a handful of clever tricks to optimize memory usage, including breaking the images into smaller tiles and throwing out all the empty ones, and compressing the images even in memory. I'm a big fan of the final effect; I think the sprites look great, are high resolution, and allowed artists to create an extremely varied set of palettes for the game.

<comment><USER5> Hey there! I'm the author of this article. Would love to swap some notes with you sometime about your pipeline! Mind dropping me a line at lars {dot} doucet {at} gmail {dot} com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article.

When an indie developer does an HD remake, it's a labor of love. Each sprite is scaled up meticulously and a lot of thought is put into how to make the game look the best.

When a big company like Squeenix does an HD remake, they toss it to a third party, who will do...well, pretty much what you see here. FFV has never been a big moneymaker for Square (wasn't even originally released in the US, so the nostalgia factor isn't even there for many of us who grew up with their games), so I'm guessing "cheap and good enough" trumped "actually good".

What's funny is that those who _are_ nostalgic for these games (or who just think they're better than most of the stuff on the market today) are willing to work long and hard with no monetary compensation to produce actually good versions of the game in question. I wonder if there's some way for Square to work with these folks to produce a legal, well-done version of the game for Steam. Probably too risky, but it's a shame.

<comment><USER7> Tracking down rights to rerelease old games is GOG.com's secret sauce. And once they've got the distribution rights, they'll work with people who build emulators (like DOSBox) and wrappers.

See also: [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/16/how-gog-com- save-...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/16/how-gog-com-save-and- restore-classic-videogames/)

Granted, some companies do want to keep those rights to themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fantastic writeup. Another example I can think of offhand would be the VBA remake of the original Genesis Shining Force.

Some comparisons:

Original: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pewTGCkt4qE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pewTGCkt4qE) Remake: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uVuOd4Aiag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uVuOd4Aiag)

Not sure which one is really better - the original has a very different color palette. The sprites are probably nicer on the remake, although I think the character portraits in the original are superior. The remake does have a number of gameplay improvements.

<comment><USER9> Another interesting example is FF6 Advance. The original GBA had a screen that wasn't backlit, and would be hard to see darker colours in, particularly if played outside or near a window etc. So many games (FF6) included, compensated for this by using a brighter colour palette across the board than NES/SNES/etc versions.

Of course, once you play that version on a emulator on a modern LCD (or even on the backlit GBA SP), the colours end up being too bright, to the point that there is a fanmade patch for FF6 advance to bring back the SNES colour palette:

[http://www.fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff6/images/ff6gba_c...](http://www.fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff6/images/ff6gba_colorrestoration.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Waifu2X is a powerful upscaling algorithm based on deep convolutional neural networks, and specifically trained on anime._

Huh. I guess it goes to show what good solutions fan groups can come up with. That's fairly bleeding edge, with a well chosen training set and it produces great results. Really fascinating. I wonder how well it works on regular old line-art or if it really is dependent on working with anime-like artwork.

<comment><USER11> The best part about waifu2x is that it tends to work really well even on images it wasn't intended for, at least in my experience. I use the web version [1] all the time on all sorts of images, usually with excellent results--even for photos.

[1] [http://waifu2x.udp.jp/](http://waifu2x.udp.jp/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the HD remake of the Resident Evil remake for the GameCube (the remake of the remake of the PlayStation original, just to be confusing).

Back when it was released on GameCube it looked absolutely amazing. When they released the PC port, more than a decade later, they talked about re-creating some of the iconic scenes in the game engine so that they were more dynamic. In the end only two scenes re-created. The remaining scenes were just upscaled from their GameCube originals. This was unfortunate since not only where they a low resolution (something like 700x300), but some of the scenes were heavily compressed and upscaling them produced a lot of haloing and noticeable compression artefacts.

Why Capcom couldn't just re-render the original scenes is beyond me.

<comment><USER13> Game companies seem to be particularly bad at retaining original assets. Developers and artists keep a lot of stuff on their locally non backed up machines and regular staff churn, combined with deliberate software obsolescence and bit rot pretty much spreads the ashes of original source files to the cosmos.

<comment><USER12> I would like to think that is the most likely reason behind why the assets weren't re-rendered. The alternatives are just laziness or budget issues, which I wouldn't put past Capcom either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The new "Waifu 2X" neural net based up-scaling algorithm is impressive. That should be applied to older anime.

Improving older anime, drawn at low-res and 5 FPS, has real potential. Especially if you can get better source material than old VHS tapes.

<comment><USER15> The low framerate is a much more obvious, and much harder to solve, problem I think...

You can't easily auto-tween a 3D rotation of a 2D character, for example.

I think the author's approach of "use upsizing algorithms as a basis for humans to remaster" is probably the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER14> _" You can't easily auto-tween a 3D rotation of a 2D character, for example."_

Actually, you can. See the previous HN discussion of "Framefree", which decomposes an image into separately moving layers and uses a full mesh morph layer by layer to interpolate between frames. Some ultra-slow motion for sports is done that way.

<comment><USER15> I assume you mean this? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052626)

That's pretty awesome! I stand by my point that it's not _easy_ , but I'm amazed by how effective that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here is a great interview with the developers of the Gears of War HD remake for Xbox One. They used the original, nine-year-old game engine and scripting to keep the same feel.

[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-the- ma...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-the-making-of- gears-of-war-ultimate-edition)

</comment><comment><USER17> Right or wrong can only be reckoned with respect to one variable: THE BOTTOM LINE. And Square Enix can make money by turning the crank and shitting out an old Final Fantasy game slapped with a fresh coat of paint, at much lower cost than doing a proper, polished remake and certainly lower than releasing a new game.

I suspect after FF7Remake Square Enix will pull out from console gaming altogether and release more "get Cloud's sword with microtransactions" style mobile farm fests.

Because that's where the money is.

<comment><USER18> I feel like most (all?) popular art is that way. Games, movies, music.

1\. Create something amazing, pour artisan-level craftsmanship into it, gain huge following

2\. Exploit your popularity by churning out branded garbage

3\. Profit

Even Disney's not immune. Have you seen how many direct-to-DVD/streaming 'movies' there are that cash in on their popular franchises? It sucks.

<comment><USER19> > Have you seen how many direct-to-DVD/streaming 'movies' there are that cash > in on their popular franchises?

I have a strong feeling that a lot of those are made exclusively for toddlers, who tend to frequently get obsessed with consuming anything-and-everything related to a given franchise. I don't feel bad that they're not well-made; nobody could keep pumping _good_ pieces of media out at the rate an obsessive toddler will want to consume them.

<comment><USER20> My obsessive toddlers would watch the quality stuff over and over again. They didn't need the filler.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Looking for an AOL contact to help rescue older browsers - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/02/seeking-contact-inside-aol/

<comment><USER2> Andrew, something less obvious..contact techCrunch since they now work for aol as they would have the right contacts and it would make a nice TC article that has actually interesting content.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, the actual article is by jwz - Jamie Zawinski (though the suggestion is a good one)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> May I ask what mcom is/was?

<comment><USER5> Mosaic Communications, an early and short-lived name of Netscape Communications.

[http://www.holgermetzger.de/netscape/NetscapeCommunicationsN...](http://www.holgermetzger.de/netscape/NetscapeCommunicationsNewsRelease.htm) (1994)</comment></comment>