Mono on AIX and IBM i - <AUTHOR> http://www.mono-project.com/news/2018/05/29/mono-on-aix-and-ibm-i/ <comment><USER2> Seems like IBM is really increasing its investment in open source software and hardware for PowerPC recently. I've noticed them offering bounties for PowerPC related work on Rust, there's this recent work on Mono, and OpenPOWER has led to the development of truly open servers and workstations like the Talos II.

<comment><USER3> It does seem kind of odd though. The price/performance of PowerPC compared to Intel is still quite bad. To me it seems they'd be better off giving up on this term and focusing on other things. Maybe they could start with making Watson an actual thing instead of just a marketing term for consulting services.

<comment><USER4> The $1300 18-core / 72-thread Power9 seems like a good deal IMO. That's severely undercutting Intel's i9-7980XE (18-core / 36-thread), and offering grossly superior specs to boot, like wtf 90MB L3 cache, 8x DDR4 controllers, and dual-socket support.

In contrast, the i9-7980XE is MSRP of $2000, only has 4x DDR4 controllers and is single-socket only.

The 18-core Xeon Gold 6140 is $2400. Only 6x DDR4 controllers (although it seems to go up to quad-socket for what its worth).

AMD EPYC offers the single-socket 24c / 48t 7401p in and around $1300 (I'm seeing it ~$1100 and $1200). 8x DDR4, so its far more comparable to the Power9 machine. But Power9 is likely faster on a single-core basis, has a unified mesh instead of the 4x NUMA configuration of EPYC. EPYC doesn't have a unified L3 cache: tasks only effectively have 8MB of L3 (but there are lots of 8MB L3 caches scattered throughout EPYC).

So EPYC vs Power9 is a fair comparison at ~$1300, but Intel is severely overpriced in comparison. Actually, I'm not liking any of Intel's higher end options this generation, EPYC and Power9 seem superior on paper... as long as you don't need AVX-512.

<comment><USER5> I think the main problem is that there are no low-cost POWER systems for people to tinker with like there are for x86 and ARM. You are limited to expensive high-end servers, and that leads to a lack of software support.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa- inc/TWR-P1...](https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa- inc/TWR-P1025/TWR-P1025-ND/3198171)

Power certainly exists, its just less popular. The above board is under $250 and seems to be good enough for tinkering usage.

Software support is certainly weaker. I think Power9 primarily exists for people who are planning to write their own application servers, or otherwise are willing to spend time recompiling OSS over to the Power9 architecture (Gentoo style or similar).

A "real" server application will want to buy a Talos II Workstation, for $3000+. If you're worried about performance, you have to develop and test on the big stuff.

If you're planning on a high-performance database optimizations (ie: lets say you wanted to improve PostgreSQL's performance), you wouldn't test on a Rasp. Pi or Intel i7. You'd buy a Thunderx2 ARM, Intel Gold, or AMD EPYC to test on. The architecture of "big boy" chips is grossly different than the smaller scale stuff.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

And the way you "test" on big-boy machines, is through cloud services. You don't necessarily have to buy a full machine if you're testing (although local access is certainly useful).

<comment><USER2> Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: [https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html)

That is starting to approach the price point where it's worth it if you want to tinker, but with something that is a lot closer to a real machine than a $250 embedded board.

I tried taking a look for cloud services that offer POWER machines, but couldn't find anything that I could just sign up for and try for relatively cheap. There are a couple of universities that have free POWER clusters that you can request access to, but for tinkering I'd actually rather be able to pay for what I'd need rather than having to manually request access.

Do you have references to cloud services that would allow you to easily get access to POWER9 systems by the hour? IBM's own cloud services only seem to offer bare-metal POWER8 servers by the month; as far as I can tell (from their fairly confusing pricing page and docs), all of their virtual servers or hourly servers are Intel.

<comment><USER4> I remember hearing of some Power cloud offerings, but unfortunately I can't find any these days.

I find old-press releases going to broken web-pages: [https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom...](https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom_offers_ibms_power8_on_runabove_the_public_cloud_instance_up_to_100_times_faster)

But that's not really helpful. Hmm, I guess Power8 / Power9 cloud systems seem to have disappeared. IBM really needs to work on getting cloud-instances ready for tinkering.

> Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: > [https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html)

With RAM and storage, it will be $3000+.

With "price/performance" parts, like the $1300 18-core CPU (something that would make the entire purchase worth it IMO), you'd be above $4k+.

<comment><USER2> Oh, yeah, looks like you also have to add the CPU, that's not included in the base price.

Although, for RAM and storage you can purchase that separately at cheaper prices.

I just tried to sign up for IBM's cloud, to see if I could use the limited free trial or $200 credit to try out one of the bare-metal systems.

Nope. The limited free trial only seems to apply to a few of their SaaS offerings; and the $200 credit also doesn't apply to their "infrastructure services" like VMs, bare metals servers, storage, etc.

Additionally, it looks like you need to get manual approval for you account to be able to use the VMs; even once I added my credit card info, they tell me my account needs to be reviewed by someone before I can actually rent server time.

On AWS or GCS, you just sign up and spin up VMs. I've used that many times for quick compat testing against different operating systems, some quick extra CPU cycles, deploying test servers, and so on.

But on IBM's cloud, you need someone to actually manually approve your account before you can do anything but use their SaaS offerings.

They really don't seem to want to attract people casually trying things out.

 _edit_ : after a bit, they did approve my account for infrastructure access. But the bare-metal POWER servers can't be rented by the hour, only by the month, and they start at $1000 per month. Still not really helpful for casual exploration. They also have such wonderful usability features as requiring you to allow popups in order to configure and order servers or VMs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IBM people, if you're reading this and ported Mono to work with XCOFF, how about adding an XCOFF back-end to LLVM? Hell, I'd even take being able to bootstrap GCC 8 from source using your compiler.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow seems like a lot of work for something that won't run fast (until PASE is cut out of the picture), and likely has a very small user base. Who is likely to use it?

<comment><USER8> Actual IBM users, according to the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Huh. I honestly thought AIX was dead by now. I remember porting something to AIX 20 years ago, it wasn't fun. I guess IBM stuff doesn't die, it just gets more expensive.

<comment><USER10> I mean... it's Unix. That's like saying "I ported something to Linux 20 years ago, shouldn't it be dead by now?" and also like saying "I ported something to OSX or Solaris, it wasn't fun" because AIX is Unix exactly like OSX or Solaris.

<comment><USER9> Cause every Unix-like OS is exactly the same?

At the end of the 90s they had spent like 15+ years diverging from each other. Some more gracefully than others.

<comment><USER10> But it's not Unix-like. It's Unix. It's _actually_ Unix, as in UNIX™.

But at any rate, your comment implied it should be dead because it's so old. Which is a silly statement, considering just how old UNIX™/Unix systems actually are.

<comment><USER11> I think the implication was that he thought it sucked 20 years ago, so it is surprising that it has continued to suck for 20 more years

<comment><USER8> Actually it was much better experience than HP-UX, where aCC was stuck between K&R and ANSI C, during the time I happened to do heavy UNIX development.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visa, Plaid, networks, and jobs - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2020/visa-plaid-networks-and-jobs/ <comment><USER2> _"He had three girls working on Burroughs bookkeeping machines, each handling 1,000 to 1,500 accounts. I looked at the size of the accounts: $4.58. $12.82. And he was sending out monthly bills on these accounts. Then the customers paid him maybe three or four months later. Think of what this man was spending on postage, labor, envelopes, stationery! His accounts receivables were dragging him under."_

I never got why credit cards were such a big deal for merchants, until reading this.

I never got why credit cards were such a big deal for consumers, until I heard this: [https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/736352315/episode-922-the- cos...](https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/736352315/episode-922-the-cost-of- getting-your-money-back)

What a week of learning about credit cards it has been!

<comment><USER3> I was born in 1980, and do remember our family having a credit account at the local grocery store. This was in Helsinki, Finland.

I think our account number was 14? Simple enough for a child to remember.

Around age 9 I was using the account on my own to buy food after school. I'd state the account number, and the cashier would write the credit down with a pen into a special notepad they kept under the cash register.

<comment><USER4> We also had a similar system in Turkey too, with local grocery shops. The owner would have two notebooks per customer, one would stay at the store and one would be given to customer. Whenever you needed to buy something but you wanted to pay later, the merchant would put the transaction on his notebook with a copy on your notebook, so at the end of the month you would simply bring your notebook and cross reference the transactions and pay your debt.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's a Turkish thing? Because the owner of the copy shop I mentioned [0] is a Turkish immigrant ;)

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22047151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22047151)

<comment><USER4> It definitely could be!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Huh. And all this time, as a person who uses credit cards heavily, but never paid a penny on interest for years, but used all my card benefits, I thought I was cheating the banks. This is the first time I learned that they make money on each transaction regardless of interest or late payment fees. That's a revelation.

<comment><USER7> That 3% is also baked into the price of goods at this point, so youre paying it even when using cash.

However, some people think the credit card companies are inflating the price of goods with rewards, without taking into account how expensive cash is to deal with. To count, to detect counterfeiting, to lock up, to trust employees, to move. Processing cash isnt cheap, and can involve considerable risk, including increased IRS scrutiny.

Handling money is a cost, like rent and electricity, built into everything we do. Credit card networks are much more efficient than existing alternatives.

<comment><USER8> > That 3% is also baked into the price of goods at this point, so youre paying > it even when using cash.

Every once in a while, I'll run into places that do a cash discount, usually smaller businesses. It's super common at gas stations - even big chains.

<comment><USER7> I have to feel its misguided in some cases. Credit card transaction fees hit the hardest on small purchases, as they take a larger percent. A business thats lots of tiny transactions might come out slightly ahead with cash, but now youre losing customers, and maybe not book keeping accurately enough to be legally compliant.

I have noticed gas stations are more prone to this (along with very small business), although it happens on occasion at restaurants as well. I figure, with 3% restaurant rewards, I break even at 3% restaurant charge and or using cash.

<comment><USER8> > A business thats lots of tiny transactions might come out slightly ahead > with cash, but now youre losing customers

Why would businesses that offers a cash discount (which means they also accept credit/debit) lose customers?

<comment><USER9> Because card paying members may choose to shop the store where they don't feel like they're losing.

Ie; gas station 1 has a 3c cash discount. Gas station 2 has no discount, but you don't feel like you're not getting the discount. Gas station 3 can even compete by having a 1c credit discount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "At first glance, open banking might seem to be a problem for Plaid, but ... developers will still prefer to use one well-built API that abstracts away thousands of financial institutions"

This type of centralisation makes me sad, but it's probably true for most startups. By using Plaid or an Open Banking service from another party (e.g. Experian) you'll pay fees to get information you can get for free if you integrate directly with the banks.

Even though the open banking APIs are uniform, any company wishing to use them still has to register with each and every bank, and test the integration works with each one. Until you've done it once, it's hard to know whether it will be easy (you write the code once, and it works flawlessly for all banks) or you have edge cases (e.g. some banks have funny timeout issues). So if you're a developer on a deadline, you will likely prefer to use a single API.

<comment><USER11> > _you 'll pay fees to get information you can get for free if you integrate > directly with the banks_

For the data Plaid was providing, this isn't really true at all in the US. Last I checked, the big banks were very guarded in their API access and you either had to have (1) a large payment (2) a high minimum balance and (3) pay for an audit from their auditor of choice.

I _think_ Europe is different in this regard but the US players really had no incentive to do anything Plaid offered.

<comment><USER10> "For the data Plaid was providing, this isn't really true at all in the US."

Right, I'm talking specifically about open banking, which isn't a thing in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And then it all falls apart when Plaid gets hacked and millions of people's _actual bank account usernames and password_ get stolen. That is not a safe premise to start a business (or to acquire one).

<comment><USER13> And because most companies that use plaid don't even show the Plaid logo, you don't know who is directly integrated with a bank and who is using Plaid

<comment><USER14> Some companies[1] indicate their Plaid dependency in their Privacy Policy, just like it is common to do when they use Google Analytics. But yeah, it's unfortunately not a standard.

[1] [https://zerodown.com/privacy](https://zerodown.com/privacy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recall a podcast a Plaid tech person did for Software Engineering Daily where it was alluded that Plaid had moved away from using screen scraping to something much better — it sounded like they had paid for connections to the bigger banks — perhaps a one off API access only for Plaid or were leveraging some other way to get around the problematic screen scraping approach.

</comment><comment><USER16> The narrative here is internally consistent but there are a few pieces that I don't quite understand when it meets reality:

* It's suggested is that Visa will 'fix' the security concerns that Plaid introduces (the use of username & password collection), but it seems unclear how Visa would be able to change the fundamentals of the Plaid<->bank interactions?

* It's also theorized that European banks will prefer to use Plaid rather than a privately recommended solution (not referenced in the article) to achieve EU open banking compliance. Do Plaid have strong relationships with EU banks at present, and would it not be more likely that Plaid would implement against the existing EU open banking APIs (single implementation, no lobbying) than that Plaid would implement their own alternative (requiring per-institution implementation, and also lobbying to ensure their approach is accepted both by banks and EU regulators)?

<comment><USER17> On #1 I assume it's simply the fact that Visa is big enough and stable/reliable enough that banks would be willing to do the integration to them to get the benefits instead of doing hundreds of bespoke integrations for little apps/services.

<comment><USER16> The trusted, widespread brand angle does make sense there as a reason for banks to choose to integrate with Visa, agreed.

But does that then imply that users authenticate with their bank via Visa (i.e. Visa becoming an identity provider -- not totally unimaginable given their association with customer-issued cards)? Or instead that banks would implicitly offer this data to Plaid/Visa under their card issuance ToS, without user authentication required?

(I'm not really asking for answers, I don't think we can really know at this point. It just leads to questions like this and I'm curious)

<comment><USER18> User authentication would be handled somewhere :)

But ya, I bet they're going to push hard on "provide us openid connect" in future contract negotiations to solve the security problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ben Thompson talks a lot about networks and platforms in his blog, and it's always from the perspective of the capitalist: here's a great way to capture value and make a profit.

When he does consider the perspective of the user or consumer, it's still indirectly from the perspective of the capitalist: users/consumers will behave in X way, get Y value, etc, which is why [megacorp] should do Z.

I'd really like to see him take a broader view. Could he imagine a set of rules/regulations that would result in a better outcome for the public?

I've long been thinking about this problem:

\- we all much prefer a single platform/network

\- but if there's a single platform/network, then there aren't good market incentives on the side of the provider

This seems like such a fundamental problem in a space he writes so much about. Ben Thompson, please think and write about this!

<comment><USER20> Right! Banks are already regulated by the government and this seems like an opportunity for them to improve the retail banking market by requiring interoperation. Maybe it wouldn't work but it would be interesting to hear from him on this topic - can the government make this market work better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had no idea how recently modern credit cards were invented until reading that first paragraph. Wild.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> > that same Treasury report highlighted the fact that the United Kingdom and > European Union have initiatives requiring API access to bank accounts, but > recommended a private solution.

This is the Trump government failing us and gifting the next generation's financing needs to the next generation of rent-seekers.

<comment><USER23> I have a mixed position on this. Considered in isolation, the UK's API regulations are a spectacular boon for customers.

Considered in the context of the rest of the UK's regulatory environment (porn filters, etc), it seems plausible that the UK gov's push for bank APIs is less about being kind to their citizens and more about undermining cash and pushing all financial activity onto infrastructure that's easily accessible to a surveillance state.

I'd like to have tech like this in America, but I don't think we have the spine on any front. We aren't willing to hardball businesses on timeline/featureset (for example: the partial and late rollout of chip/pin in the US), and we aren't willing to write legislation that protects citizens from abuse and creates punitive structures that make abuse of citizen data by companies an economically irrational act.

In light of that, I wonder if shitty APIs are the lesser of two evils.

<comment><USER24> Minor quibble, US has chip/signature, not chip/pin. This is because the US banking system is stupid (technical term).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They have competitors though, Yodlee and Salt Edge to name but two. Have had some 'fun' recently in the UK when the FCA introduced open banking without actually allowing foreign companies any way to particiapte. This broke the budgeting app that I use (Pocketsmith [https://www.pocketsmith.com](https://www.pocketsmith.com)) because Yodlee, the bank feed provider they used, isn't a UK company and neither are they, thus they didn't comply with the regulations.

Pocketsmith got around this by adding feeds from Salt Edge, thankfully. I've actually become quite dependent on having proper cashflow, balance sheet and P + L statements for my personal finances.

<comment><USER26> There is the Swedish company Tink in this space too.

[https://tink.com/](https://tink.com/)</comment></comment>


Guilt when hiring employees - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I have no one to talk to about this so I decided to post here.
Our company is doing quite well so we are hiring more entry level support staffs at around $15/h .
We have resumes flowing in. One thing that bothers me the most is when I see resumes of older applicants applying to entry level positions.
I feel really bad that they shouldn't have to work at entry level position especially if they are much older than me (24). On the other hand, I can't offer someone more than what they can deliver.
I feel less guilt when I offer a $15/job to a 22 year-old than to a 40 year-old.
Is there any way I change my mindset?
edit 1: this post is not meant to look down on people who don't make as much money. In fact, I only worked in minimum waged jobs before I started my company so everyone I'm paying now makes more than I've ever did when I worked for someone. <comment><USER2> One way I would recommend is to look at these candidates with an extra variable to your consideration: value add. Entry-level support can often be a good pipeline into development or operations for persons that satisfy more than the laundry list of 'must haves'.

Example:

Candidate A: Older person with years of industry experience at higher levels, outstanding list of accomplishments with a couple of former companies that just announced major gains on the NYSD. He's been exposed to all aspects of your business, some many atmospheres above support.

Candidate B: Younger candidate fresh from college, virtually no professional industry experience, maybe two or three awarded assignments his/her senior year, maybe they've listed a github profile on their resume and you see the candidate has forked and contributed to lots of repositories.

Who do you hire? The veteran professional who has seen it all, or the younger candidate you can groom in the organization and help the team grow organically?

Think of the Indianapolis Colts; for the longevity of the franchise continuing it's successful ways, the decision of going with reliable and familiar (Peyton Manning), which came with rigidness and inflexibilities with a rost full of aging players versus building a new team with individuals that can weather the long haul and grow as members of the organization familiar with the quirks of keeping the team moving forward (Andrew Luck).

I'm two years removed from active recruiting, but that's a broad overview of the style I took.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Dave.

I have 2 more questions: 1\. A student who was offered a paid internship just asked if there is any vacation. My first reaction was "WTF?". Is it even appropriate to ask for vacation when you will only be working for 3 months? 2\. On my job postings, I usually ask the candidate to answer 3 questions when they apply. However, more often than not, most candidates don't submit the required answers. Should I automatically discard those resumes?

<comment><USER2> 1 Internship

I wouldn't say it's explicitly inappropriate, just a very unusual and curious question. Given this is a paid internship, I would look into your local job regulations and determine how to proceed. My first reaction was an arched eyebrow, but if it's known by the candidate that they will only be working for three months (i.e. you put it in the job ad), then it's possible they're asking because of some upcoming event they've been planning. Find out what their motivation is.

2\. Unless you spot something on the resume that sticks out, stays in your mind and demands you call the person in, yes. You obviously are deriving some sort of value and introspection into your candidates by asking them these questions; it also shows basic reading comprehension and ability to follow directions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I get a lot of resumes, a large number of them are just not suitable, I think of them as being close to spam. You should think of them like that to.

there is a fair chance the 40 year olds are applying for roles that don't suit them, especially if you are clear in your job ads that it is for a junior/graduate. Sometimes it is because they have just moved to the country or are changing careers and are looking for a way into the workforce.

Even if you give the unsuitable people a chance, you will probably find that they really want to get paid more and will leave you for a pay rise as soon as possible ( perhaps within a few months ), leaving you in a bad situation where you have to then rehire.

You will only be doing yourself and your business a dis-service.

This applies at any payrate

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks all. 2 more questions:

1\. A student who was offered a paid internship just asked if there is any vacation.

My first reaction was "WTF?". Is it even appropriate to ask for vacation when you will only be working for 3 months?

2\. On my job postings, I usually ask the candidate to answer 3 questions when they apply. However, more often than not, most candidates don't submit the required answers. Should I automatically discard those resumes?

</comment><comment><USER4> Entry level is entry level in my mind. If someone did a pivot in his career at the age of 40 (was a teacher/mother/whatever before) they should get special care, but not special salary. Remember that a "senior software engineer" position isn't for seniors, it is just for those with a few years experience in the field. Age (and gender.. and nationality, religion, etc) shouldn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pay them more, and help them develop into more than what they are.</comment>


Why Tech Journalists should become Tech Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://lukas.zinnagl.com/2010/11/why-tech-journalists-should-become-tech-entrepreneurs/ Let me hear your thoughts if you think it's true - or not. <comment><USER2> Good piece - be interested to see others' views.</comment>


Who Owns the Website, and Why - <AUTHOR> http://distributionhacks.com/who-owns-the-website-and-why

<comment><USER2> I'm going to summarize the overall problem here as, "everyone has different goals for the same product," and the OP has some suggestions on how to unify them.

While the the evolution of roles described in the OP are steps in the right direction, usually the inefficiencies caused by the problem require some deep organizational changes beyond hiring some "growth hackers" or "product managers."

I encountered this a lot at previous employers where I developed SEM management systems (ie. optimizing keywords on Google Adwords). SEM had its own P&L (profit/loss) goal so we ran into issues like:

\- Bidding on our own "brand" terms. Like if we're oursite.com, we would bid on "our site." Naturally we'd get ranked #1 on AdWords. Yet our site was also #1 on Google's organic results. I'm sure we were absolutely cannibalizing our (free) SEO traffic and hurting for the business units that had SEO P&L responsibility.

\- Pretty much any change to the site threw our numbers out of whack. There was one major release that improved the UI greatly, but did add some additional load time to pages. Our Adwords rankings got killed, the SEM team freaked out because it was now mostly impossible to hit our P&L, and it turned into a disastrous political situation.

\- We had no input to the actual site ourselves. When our site had no relevant content for whatever was being searched for, the resulting page was pretty much like yelling "OMG WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EVEN SEARCH FOR THAT YOU SHOULD JUST LEAVE RIGHT NOW BECAUSE WE PROBABLY DON'T HAVE ANYTHING YOU'LL EVER LOOK FOR IN YOUR LIFETIME" at the user. So if a user came in on a keyword that would lead to one of these pages, there was very little chance they'd hang and poke around for something else, which made bidding on the "wrong" keywords incredibly costly. We REALLY wanted to change that page to something more consumer-friendly, but we never really had any channels to do that.

\- Ironically, at the team level, the director of SEM resisted hiring any product managers. He wanted tech and operations to feel like one team and communicate constantly. We all talked with the analysts directly. Our wins were theirs, our needs were theirs, our pain points were theirs and vice versa.

Most organizations I've been at, the "product manager" is really just "have a meeting with everyone that's not an engineer, find out what they want, tell the engineers what to do." You know, kind of like this guy: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGS2tKQhdhY>

I recognize that this is not an easy problem to solve. My understanding is the idea of the growth hacker is someone that can "see the big picture" and then implement the solutions that lead to the best possible overall outcome. Beyond the right individuals though, it's important to have the right organizational structure to even allow that process to manifest. A very obvious example of a company that understands this is Apple, who has exactly one person in the entire company with a P&L goal[0].

[0] [http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/steve_jobs_solved_the_innova...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/steve_jobs_solved_the_innovato.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh you are so right, I didn't mean for this to read like solving a growth hacker or product manager would solve the problem -- I intended to say that these people could be part of the solution, and that often product managers have historically been the titles who do this kind of work so if you are pattern matching it might help. Thanks for the feedback, and the specific examples -- I will work to use more of those in the future

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > This allows designers to take back the reins, no longer accepting "I just > can't do that in HTML" or an endless litany of unqualified feedback as > excuse for poor implementation of beautiful Photoshop mocks.

That is demoralizing (and even offensive) to front-end developers. The "beautiful Photoshop mocks" of a designer that can code will be _nothing_ like those from a designer that can't, and that's a much more important factor for it making it to production "intact" than the abilities or intentions of the developer.

I'm certainly biased, but I can only laugh when a designer complains that text doesn't look the same everywhere and wants to use a static image instead. Having the 'freedom' to do that from the start is not any better.

</comment><comment><USER4> Loved the post and the blog overall!

I would be interested in reading more about different 'types' of Distribution Hackers. You mention they are often a 'mix of coder and marketer,' but I would be interested to see what other skill-sets might produce distribution hackers.</comment>


How to Rebuild Your Attention Span and Focus - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/how-to-rebuild-your-attention-span-and-focus-5596964 <comment><USER2> I'm not trying to imply that attention spans aren't shrinking. I don't know if they are.

That said, more often then not, I don't finish an article because its crap content-wise, or because someone decided they don't know how paragraphs work and made it one huge block, or someone needed to meet a word count requirement, or thought they could amp up the prestigious by going long-form without the meat to back it up.

I love that everyone is a content creator, but I don't have to give a bunch of mediocre blog posts on lifehacker the same attention I give to a James Joyce novel. I consider that an advantage not a problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Their reason for not having a second monitor is the exact reason why I like having a second monitor. One is for work, the other is for everything else to accumulate. Occasionally I need to do some comparison work copying a mapping or something, but for the most part, my second monitor is more of an aside than a real threat to my focus.</comment>


YC App – Should Responses Still Be 120 Words or Less? - <AUTHOR>

I was just looking at Drew Houston's application from Summer 2007 and saw that they asked applicants to keep all responses under 120 words. Is this still the case? <comment><USER2> Try to keep your responses succinct. I like how Garry Tan put it in this blog post ([http://blog.garrytan.com/super-last-minute-advice- for-s](http://blog.garrytan.com/super-last-minute-advice-for-s)): Answers should be "crisp and articulate, and to the point. One way to do this is to write every last idea down -- write copiously. Then edit. Edit mercilessly until there is not a single word you could remove without losing significant meaning."

<comment><AUTHOR> Very helpful, thanks! I definitely have the "write copiously part" down. I'm going to go pick up some red pens...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> no- check out the muse's yc app [https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-muses- successful-applicat...](https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-muses-successful- application-to-y-combinator-w12)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Well-written piece by the Muses. Love the mission. Cool product. Nicely done.</comment></comment>


Kod.app is open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rsms/kod

<comment><USER2> Sadly, it is a precious snowflake license (MIT + Custom term) with a very ambiguous custom term:

"The Software and/or source code cannot be copied in whole and sold without meaningful modification for a profit."

Great to see it semi-open source, and well within the rights of the author, though :-)

<comment><USER3> So by definition, this is _not_ Open Source. Unfortunately, the author claims to have done so nevertheless:

[http://groups.google.com/group/kod- app/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/kod- app/browse_thread/thread/8bc80d18932f5e99)

It is a very questionable practice to claim to have produced Free Software / Open Source, when in fact this isn't the case. That's misleading marketing, if not unfair competition. Such practices are especially unfair on the huge number of authors and companies who _really_ produce Open Source software.

The terms "Open Source" as well as "Free Software" have a well-defined meaning that includes giving others the right to distribute the software and to make a buck with it. If you don't like that, it's okay. You may still claim to have switched to "more liberal license" or something like that. But you may _never_ claim to have switched to Open Source. That's not okay, because it is a plain lie.

I find it especially strange that the reason for this unfair behavior against competitors is to receive more fairness from competitors. That's a clear case of double standards.

<comment><USER4> How is this not open source? This is basically an open source licence with an added restriction on commercial use. To my mind, commercial use is completely orthogonal to whether a licence is open source or not.

Note that "open source" != "under a OSI or FSF approved licence" and that at _no_ time that I've seen does the developer claim it's "Free Software" (which it certainly isn't, although it does dynamically link a GPL'd library...).

<comment><USER3> _> This is basically an open source licence with an added restriction on commercial use._

Adding that kind of restriction will make any license a non-OpenSource license. This is not orthogonal but an important aspect.

Maybe a failing analogy helps here. From a linguistic point of view, the above is like saying: "Belarus is a democracy, with an added restriction regarding elections."

 _> Note that "open source" != "under a OSI or FSF approved licence"_

This statement is plain wrong. OSI defined the term Open Source very precisely, so using it to describe non-compliant licenses is a _clear misuse_ of that term. Even Microsoft doesn't do that, despite their power! Instead, they coined an own term to describe their less-restrictive activities: "Shared Source". (And yes, a small minority of Microsoft's Shared Source projects are also Open Source.)

So although there are different opinions about which term to prefer, "Open Source" has technically the same meaning as "Free Software". This has been clearly stated by the Open Source movement from the very beginning. In other words, the term Open Source _has been designed_ to be a byword for Free Software. You can find that in the early articles of ESR:

<http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html>

Finally, note that this license won't ever be approved by neither OSI nor FSF, because it violates an essential freedom. Of course you can always say: "I don't care about that certain kind of freedom". That's okay. But then you should neither claim to do "Open Source" nor to do "Free Software". That's unfair on all real Open Source developers who grant that freedom.

<comment><USER4> _This statement is plain wrong. OSI defined the term Open Source very precisely, so using it to describe non-compliant licenses is a clear misuse of that term._

They may have given a definition but that does not give them a monopoly over usage of the term. Language does not have a One Definition Rule! For example, my dictionary states:

        open-source: Computing denoting software for which the
        original source code is made freely available and may be
        redistributed with or without modification.

Under _that_ definition the licence is most certainly open source. Indeed, this definition is more in line with what many people think when they hear "open source".

I understand there are political reasons to have open source exactly equivalent with the OSI definition. However, this does not seem to have happened.

<comment><USER3> _Language does not have a One Definition Rule!_

This is only true for day-to-day words. However, legal words and technical terms need strict, stable definitions that are equally understood at least by all experts in that field. Otherwise, serious communication would become next to impossible, let alone serious discussions.

 _> For example, my dictionary states:_

Dictionaries don't provide exact definitions. However, your quoted description seems to be the best you can get out of three lines. If you care to read 4-6 lines, you'll get the quite accurate FSF definition. If you care to read even 10+ lines, you'll get the detailed OSI definition.

 _> Indeed, this definition is more in line with what many people think when they hear "open source"._

That's an important issue. Neither the term Free Software nor the term Open Source are completely self-explanatory. So people will inevitably have misconceptions about those if they've neither read a proper definition, nor had someone explaining it well enough to them.

The concrete issue with the term "Free Software" is that people might think: Oh, this software is free (no cost), so it must be Free Software. Eric S. Raymond and others tried to solve that problem by inventing a new synonym, "Open Source".

However, the term "Open Source" has issues as well, because people might think: Oh, the source code lies open in front of me, so it must be Open Source.

Note that this is a general problem. Hardly any technical term is totally self-evident to ordinary people. Just because a technical term is not self- explanatory doesn't mean you can simply ignore its exact definition.

<comment><USER5> I think the point he was trying to make is that he rejects your definition of the term. As do I; notwithstanding what some foundation or some famous hacker thinks, you need a fairly broad consensus to really define a term.

I don't think that your definition of "open source" (or even "Open Source") meets that test. I think most people probably still think of it meaning that all of the source code is available to you to read/modify/compile.

What set of legal restrictions govern that is another can of worms. The software might be illegal, patented, or otherwise restricted, but those issues are independent of whether the source code is available or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks nice. One note: It says it requires MacPorts. You should probably say it requires the source-highlight package, regardless of how you get it. (I'm going to install via Homebrew, some might compile it manually.)

<comment><USER7> It's worth noting that you can just install the app binary.

Compiling it is for people that want to hack the source themselves, it's not the main distribution method.

<comment><USER8> ==> <http://kodapp.com/download/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The announcement with details can be found at [http://groups.google.com/group/kod- app/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/kod- app/browse_thread/thread/8bc80d18932f5e99)

</comment><comment><USER9> If TextMate 2.0 is not released soon (or doesn't meet expectations), MacroMates is in trouble.

<comment><USER10> I really wish people would stop complaining about TextMate 2.0, just because it's been talked about doesn't mean the current version stopped working or lost features. I'm a daily TextMate user for nearly 6 years and it has never once not met my expectations. It's first app I install on a new machine/install.

Kod is a great start so far, but still has a ways to catch up. I wish the developer the best and that it works out for him. Hope it doesn't turn out like Smultron (now Fraise).

<comment><USER11> Granted it's a one of the most used software on my laptop, it's definitely not at the "never once not met my expectations" level. I don't think I have super high expectations either... I want soft-wrap to happen properly. I could go on with list of needs but it's pointless.

I've given up hope that there will be ever an update and learnt to live with v1.x. However, that's just settling. As soon as I find something better, I'm gone. I bought Espresso with the hope that supporting that would encourage a lot of development but MacRabbit has been pretty slow on the improvement side as well (as shown by the sparsity on their blog <http://macrabbit.com/blog/>) so I've had to make do with TM since it feels better and more natural than Espresso for now.

Ahhrrgg <sigh>

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, MacRabbit won't be updating Espresso until the first half of 2011 (probably 4-5 months).

See: <http://twitter.com/#!/espressoapp/status/18041354806370304>

<comment><USER13> Yuck! I really like Espresso but the lack of momentum and Sugars forced me to TM.

If Panic could create a TM to Coda migration path for those of us not interested in Emacs or Vim, they could snag a ton of customers. A way to port bundles and to turn off the dreamweaveresque portions of the app and they'll have my money. They actually ship software or at least keep people in the loop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I need to retract my previous comments on the other HN post that the communities would just choose over other open source alternatives for Node.js stuff. Well, now this is open-sourced too!

Cheers and happy holidays~!

</comment><comment><USER15> Speaking of open-source programmer text editors, what's the best embeddable editor control for OSX? Sort of like a Scintilla for the OSX world.

</comment><comment><USER16> I get "You cannot use this version of the application Kod with this version of Mac Os X." - ???

<comment><USER17> Are you on 10.6? If not, you're out of luck.

<comment><USER18> Fine for a free application, a wise decision.

<comment><USER17> Fine for any application; nobody can dictate which platforms anyone must support and which they can't.

10.6 is much nicer than 10.5 on a bunch of levels. It's slightly annoying now, but will pay off in the future.

<comment><USER19> If you say so. :( That it will be worth the wait till I skip 10.6 and upgrade straight to Lion. Was looking forward to using something shiny.

<comment><USER17> Why'd you skip 10.6? It was $30.

<comment><USER20> And also a HUGE improvement in a lot of different areas! Speed, especially.

<comment><USER21> It is much buggier, frequent crashes of Safari, iTunes and Mail for instance

<comment><USER22> Not sure why you are getting down-voted. I have 2 MBPs. One is s ~3 year old running 10.5 and his baby sister running 10.6.

This is _entirely subjective_ per my experience:

\- the 10.5 'feels' more responsive.

\- the beachball is a very frequent event in the 10.6, specially Safari, sometimes even when switching tabs which is quite annoying.

\- I haven't rebooted the old MBP in months. Sitting pretty on my desk. The new one has frozen few times and occasionally I feel the need to put it out of its misery myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone use this? Pros/cons vs Textmate/vim/emacs?

<comment><USER24> It's not comparable at all, though it could be after a few man years of work.

Crashes on quit. In C mode, hitting return doesn't indent. No preferences. No toolbars or widget menus. It does attempt to color keywords but this doesn't really work, with "in" in "int" being blue and the "t" inexplicably being white, etc.

It's a text editor with fewer features than TextEdit. No idea what the big deal is. It's description as version 0.02 seems accurate.

<comment><USER25> Sad. I saw the screenshot and imagined a modern vim of sorts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I downloaded Kod.app to check it out. Great Nordic looks! But this is really not even ready for prime-time, is it?

Given the amount of work involved, I'd like to throw in the suggestion here that if you are thinking of building your own (programmer development environment -- these things are not simply "editors") on top an OSS foundation, to review and consider IDEA:

<http://git.jetbrains.org/>

(Not in any way associated with JetBrains).

</comment><comment><USER7> This 'feature', is what I was waiting for to get me away from TextMate.

I am extremely pleased.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not quite sure how/why you think this is news. Something going open source historically means 99% death. I really hope you get to be that 1% of the lucky ones... but...

<comment><USER27> Something _not_ going open source historically _also_ means 99% death.

99% of all software die, whether open source or closed source. Not sure what point you're trying to make. The (flawed) point that something will die _because_ it's open source?</comment></comment>


RMS interviewed on Radio NZ - <AUTHOR> http://nb.inode.co.nz/articles/rmsrnz/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> [KH] If economic gains are not guaranteed by private software rights, would that not lead to less innovation on the part of computer companies, software companies.

[RMS] I don't know, and I don't care.

[KH] Well, that's an interesting response. Why don't you care?

[RMS] Because I want freedom more than I want innovation.

<comment><USER2> And this is why open source is doomed to fail in _practically_ any commercial setting. Industry requires innovation, and paying costumers demand it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not going to hit the down arrow, but your comment needs more depth to it. Open source is very much used in tons of commercial settings. Maybe what you're getting at is that cutting edge stuff is likely to remain proprietary?

One of the strengths of open source is that people can pay for _innovation_ , not innovation + a whole heap of stuff that's not really that interesting. With open source, you can build up a huge amount of infrastructure and concentrate on your cutting edge secret sauce type of stuff to make money on.

Of course, RMS wouldn't be ok with that, but... well, "I don't care", to borrow his words. I'm glad he's around to frame the conversation though, he makes me look like a moderate.

<comment><USER2> By _this_ I meant putting philosophy in front of practicality. 99% (or some other arbitrary percentage) of users want just that... to use software X to do Y. For them, software is a tool, not an end in it self. People care as much about the source code as they do about the plans to their cars engine... they just want it to work without giving them any problems.

<comment><USER4> I think in many cases people just don't _know_ that they care. They don't make the connection to more everyday objects like cars.

Cars are a good example. Lots of people can do basic maintenance on their car. They get frustrated when they have to go to a mechanic to find out what the "check engine" light is complaining about _this time_. They buy the Chilton's or Haynes' car repair manuals. On the more extreme end they do a complete engine rebuild, or even assemble a kit car from publicly available reference designs.

Cars are getting more complex and computerized though. I hear complaints about how much harder they are becoming to service. And the example given in the interview of the proprietary software in engine management chips is real. Racers will completely replace the ECU controlling fuel injection and engine timing with one which is programmable.

My parents' generation takes for granted that they can do these things with their cars. But with my generation we changed from the grease monkeys to the hackers, and the freedom to tinker has to come with us. For most people a car is just a tool to get from point A to point B. But we are all poorer when the hobbyists and amateurs don't have the freedom to tinker with, explore, and hack their own computers and cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about the freedom of organisations and individuals to profit from their software-writing efforts?

'Freedom is good' sounds like a tautology, but freedom to do what, or freedom from what?

Some freedoms are a good thing for people to have, others not (e.g. freedom to escape the law (assuming the law is good)).

For RMS, the freedom of the many to use, see, modify and distribute code always trumps the freedom of the individual person or organisation to keep their code secret and restricted to the end of making money for themselves.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that RMS tries to equate 'freedom' with 'the freedoms RMS is in favour of'. But there are other freedoms which one can argue for, and which conflict with RMS's preferred freedoms. (Which he does argue for, but my point is that there are good arguments for other views too.)

<comment><USER3> IP is basically one solution to the problem of provisioning 'public goods', which is what software would be without artificial restrictions, as it's definitely non rivalrous, and difficult to 'exclude'.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions>

It is, however, very much an artificial construct, created and enforced by the government with the intention of striking a balance that benefits consumers by encouraging producers. So, while I disagree with RMS, I don't know that I would call intellectual property a very natural 'freedom'. More than anything, it's a compromise that has worked reasonably well until now, with some obvious defects (software patents).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anybody have audio link? I'd love to listen to this on my drive home this evening.

<comment><USER7> [http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sat/sat-20080809-0845-Richard_S...](http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sat/sat-20080809-0845-Richard_Stallman_Freedom.ogg)</comment></comment>


A portable, simple zip library written in C - kuba-- https://github.com/kuba--/zip <comment><AUTHOR> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


What does your ad/tracker blocking setup look like? - <AUTHOR> With the multitude of possible approaches to ad/tracker blocking, and varying personal opinions about the merit of doing so, I'm curious what people are actually using day-to-day to improve privacy of their desktop and mobile environments. <comment><USER2> Safari with JS disabled on macOS and iOS, Firefox with a custom user.js on elementaryOS. I enable JS only when necessary — looking at you, Help Scout.

For actual blocking, I run a Pi-hole on a VPS that connects to multiple DNSCrypt servers that I control, which block everything I want while improving privacy. Planning on replacing Pi-hole with AdGuard Home for DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS, since I want to have this server public at some point, for others to use.

If anyone is interested in testing, shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com. No logging, DNSSEC, disk encryption, Canonical Livepatch, 24/7 monitoring and completely open source.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't use one.

I like not paying directly for content and accept that ads and tracking are the price I "pay". I personally don't feel comfortable taking something without holding up my end of the bargain.

It's really not a big deal. Sometimes I see products I want to buy or things I looked at and forgot about and end up buying them.

It's also not the horrific and torturous experience I read about on here. I wonder if I'm just going to the wrong sites lol?

<comment><USER4> It depends a lot on how much you are paying for your internet service, and/or how fast it is.

If you're paying nothing or just a little, and/or it's very fast then the extra time/cost of the ad content is negligible.

On the other hand, if your internet connection is slow, expensive or you have a small monthly quota, then any time or cost involved in downloading largish volumes of ad content becomes a huge fraction of your costs.

I once had a _monthly_ quota of two gigabytes when travelling. An average of only 60 megabytes per day. It doesn't take many two-three megabyte webpages full of ads to soak up that 60MB daily quota.

<comment><USER3> Nope, doesn't have anything to do with that IMO.

I don't get to pay less at Nordstroms because I don't make as much money as a surgeon. I shop at Gap or a thrift store instead.

Either go to different sites or don't visit those sites at all.

Despite what so many posters here seem to think, it's not a god-given right to read the NYT without looking at ads lol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Firefox for iOS and macOS. I have strict tracking protection [1] enabled on the former, and NoScript + uBlock Origin set up on the latter. I also use Little Snitch on the Mac.

[1] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection- ios](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-ios)

</comment><comment><USER6> Use the modern primitive browser mothra on 9front at home, dillo at work (linux), and then iridium on openbsd with ublock origin, when mothra or dillo are not enough for the site.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have JavaScript disabled mostly. And then, I have various custom CSS rules defined. And other settings. I do not actually have a ad-blocker installed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Firefox Focus on iPhone / iPad. Ublock Origin on Mac.

</comment><comment><USER9> uBlock Origin at work (Chrome / Edge). Wipr at home (OSX, iOS). This gives me an ad free environment without the hassle (such as disabling JS).

</comment><comment><USER10> Chrome with ublock origin advanced mode - 3rd party frames & scripts blocked by default.

iOS - Safari with AdGuard as content blocker

</comment><comment><USER11> default mode is no JS, and no 3rd party anything. 2nd parties are strongly suspect. if those criteria leave me with a white page then i drop the CSS style into no style and read text, or source code for text strings. if i get nothing after that then i search DDG for similar pages where i can see the content without problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ublock origin + PiHole</comment>


Spotify is Microsoft. Rdio is Apple. [March 2012] - k-mcgrady http://zackshapiro.com/post/18562359130/spotify-is-microsoft-rdio-is-apple

<comment><AUTHOR> In other news, a poorly supported thesis with a well constructed tag line got on the front page.

Reword title to reflect content: "I like Rdio, I don't like Spotify. I cannot describe why, but I am also going to rag on Microsoft because apparently that is cool".

</comment><comment><USER2> The only difference indicated between the two is that rdio has soul? Poor article, no evidence to support your opinion at all. Have a look at the availability of songs after release date compared to itunes? Spotify wins in this case.

<comment><USER2> Oh and spotify is cheaper....

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We had the opposite experience here in the UK. That is, Spotify has been here years but Rdio only launched recently. I tried Rdio for a few days of the trial period and hated it (too visually noisy, too much emphasis on social, poor/shallow selection of music available). So I could sincerely write the opposite of this post but I won't because it's too subjective.

</comment><comment><USER4> So little content, so much fanboy-ism.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use rdio because it was available in Canada when I signed up. It's a good service, but I'm getting a little sick of them revamping the android app and introducing major bugs every few months.

</comment><comment><USER6> As an audiophile and someone who has a very diverse music collection; both service aren't even close to worth it. Combined they can't even cover half my music library.

</comment><comment><USER7> Full disclosure: I work for Rhapsody.

If you are in US, UK or Germany, please try Rhapsody/Napster as well. There's a free 14 day trial anyone can sign up. iOS app and Android app recently got big updates and the apps look really polished and snappy.</comment>


How Facebook Squeezes More From Its Machines - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/12/16/facebook-dyno/

<comment><USER2> Oh no, have they started to embed scribd on web-pages. I absolutely hate scribd. Worst thing to hit the internet since that guy crying about Brittney Spears on youtube.

<comment><USER3> I love this Chrome extension: [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnbmlagghjjcbdhg...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnbmlagghjjcbdhgmkedmbmedengocbn)

Solves PDF to ~99%.

<comment><USER4> Here's a user script that does a similar in thing for several browsers: <http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~murray/code/#googleviewer>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only 30,000? I would have guessed much more.

<comment><USER6> Wonder how many of them are just almost idle, running something like memcached?

<comment><USER7> Facebook's actually encountered scaling problems from memcached taking up too _much_ CPU time; that's why there's the binary protocol, and they're talking about the multiget hole at [http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/10/26/facebooks- memcach...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/10/26/facebooks-memcached- multiget-hole-more-machines-more-capacit.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> any link with more info about Dyno? the article assumes readers know about this testing tool.</comment>


Rocket AI: 2016's Most Notorious AI Launch and the Problem with AI Hype - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/rocket-ai-2016s-most-notorious-ai-launch-and-the-problem-with-ai-hype-d7908013f8c9 <comment><USER2> Highly respected AI researchers who were in on the joke publicly praised it. VCs are not idiots for showing interest given the circumstances. If they aren't going to judge AI startups by the opinion of world-class experts, how exactly are they expected to judge them?

<comment><USER3> Maybe the fact that RocketAI didn't have a product, wasn't solving any problem, or was touting a bogus algorithm with absolutely zero details should've set off some flags. They didn't base their interest off of any value they were creating, it was just unsubstantiated hype.

<comment><USER4> The filter for relevance for investment that has overwhelmingly survived in the market is social proof ("warm intros") for a reason: it's substantially more expensive and harder to fake third party signals (including their own quality) than your own.

Why did Google beat all the search directories? The latter used keywords on pages to figure out relevance, which was easily gamed by sites putting up thousands of keywords. Google weighed (still weighs) both the number of links and the quality of each referrer. The SEO vs search relevance war continues to this day, but PageRank gives Google a long term advantage.

The attractiveness of an investment has many variables with the two most important team quality and traction. Many VCs are on record saying they'll fund a pre-product company if the team is worth it.

If a number of high quality referrers are recommending the team, then the team quality variable might override the others. The hype's _substance_ here was the referrer quality.

<comment><USER5> What exactly is the advantage given by PageRank today?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A machine learning researcher, a crypto-currency expert, and an Erlang > programmer walk into a bar. Facebook buys the bar for $27 billion.

[https://twitter.com/ml_hipster/status/438418306769244160](https://twitter.com/ml_hipster/status/438418306769244160)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm about as far away from AI and a developer can be. I found this article to be a fun read. When there is hype, there is really hype.

This should be a lesson to journalist, fan boys/girls and VC. Pay attention to reality.

</comment><comment><USER8> And here I would have thought that Tay was 2016's most notorious AI launch...

(RIP 3/23/2016 nevar forget, #taken3soon)

<comment><USER9> Tay wasn't known for how it acted once launched though, it was notorious for what it was vulnerable to/ what it learned after launch.

<comment><USER8> Tay was only online for a grand total of about 16 hours. I'm sure she was a very sweet, innocent chatbot for the first five minutes, though.

[http://i.imgur.com/QYvM2kp.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QYvM2kp.jpg)

 _" 1998 – The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day. In many ways, the initial test goes well: Within one picosecond of being switched on, GLaDOS becomes self-aware. The "going well" phase lasts for two more picoseconds, at which point GLaDOS takes control of the facility, locks everyone inside, and begins a permanent cycle of testing."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am sure AI is over hyped, but I think this is more of a demonstration of how if you provide people with booze and a venue you can get them to attend anything. A lot of the social media response reads as tongue-in-cheek.

</comment><comment><USER11> For VCs who focus on AI, I think it would actually be irresponsible if they didn't show interest in a start up that was garnering so much praise from AI experts. Its not as if term sheets were sent.

<comment><USER12> It also wouldn't be irresponsible to send term sheets - the fact that the company doesn't exist will come out in due diligence pretty quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While I appreciate the trolling, it just feels like people in general are abusing the most important idea in the history of humanity.

Exploring the possible early components (DRN, GAN) that could lead cumulatively to AGI is not a joke. It's going to be more powerful than nuclear or bio weapons. Are those funny?

<comment><USER14> I used a combination of networks to turn news articles into memes.

I guess I should apologize for not respecting how news2meme could be a stepping stone to AGI, and promise to be more austere in the future.

You don't even want to know what I'm doing with Reinforcement learning and flappy bird.

<comment><USER13> No those are great uses. Creativity in satire is a necessary trait. My problem is with people who say and then reinforce the idea that AI is just hope it's disrespectful to people who are really working on it.

<comment><USER15> Yes, we must create safe spaces for these people to ply their trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm reading this thinking, "Wait, why is _Anders_ introducing this algorithm... Oh."

</comment><comment><USER17> If you like Borat, RocketAI and this author are for you.

But for me, it's just Jumping The Snark.</comment>


The Inside of a Neutron Star - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/the-inside-of-a-neutron-star-looks-spookily-familiar <comment><USER2> Back in college I was in a high-energy astrophysics class. The professor noted that understanding neutron stars was the most difficult problem in physics. In order to understand neutron stars, you need to use every single branch of modern physics: general relativity, solid-state physics, nuclear physics, and fluid dynamics, among other things are all important.

<comment><USER3> It touches a lot of things. But we are not very good at even understanding basic things on everyday scales of size and energy, like trying to predict the angle of repose of a heap of granular matter.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash This article reminds me of the intro in the Cosmos reboot, where all kinds of natural phenomena merge into each other, like the pattern on a flower turning into the iris of someone's eye.

Given that so many physical combinations have the potential to exist, it's almost surprising to think of how few common forms of matter and life (that we know of) take.

For years I have imagined - to no avail - how a form of intelligent life could reach industrialization without resembling humans: bipedal animals with opposable thumbs and multiple digits, heads on top, genitals between the legs. It's probably why most of the Star Trek aliens can only be differentiated by skin color and forehead shape.

So if the inside of a neutron star looks like pasta, then that's what makes sense to nature.

<comment><USER4> That might just be human pattern matching at work, rather than actual similarities.

Regarding intelligent life looking similar, I sometimes have the opposite thought. What if the reason we haven't seen any aliens isn't that they don't exist, but rather that they are _so_ different we can't even recognize them as intelligence or life? If intelligent creatures existed that were built out of magnetic field lines in the Sun, or variations in density in the interstellar medium, we might never recognize them as life, and they might never recognize us.

<comment><USER5> This comment reminded me of the book Dragon's Egg [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg)

<comment><USER6> At risk of spoilers, The Ouroboros Wave also qualifies: [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7326882-the-ouroboros- wav...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7326882-the-ouroboros-wave)

<comment><USER7> Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem, also seems to qualify. (The novel, not the movies.) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_\(novel\))

<comment><USER8> Yes. Solaris is the first thing I thought of.

Well I liked Tarkovsky's rendition. Here is an example of how Tarkosvky envisoned the ocean:

[https://youtu.be/USCiKknufaM?t=647](https://youtu.be/USCiKknufaM?t=647)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You get the same gnocchi, spaghetti, lasagna phases occurring throughout nature. I've seen it most often in block copolymers, [https://goo.gl/images/OXgy4H](https://goo.gl/images/OXgy4H). The cool part is you get the different morphologies as you vary the relative concentrations of the copolymer types. I imagine something similar is happening in the neutron stars; different proton neutron ratios give you spaghetti or lasagna.

</comment><comment><USER10> "If the Flying Spaghetti Monster did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."</comment>


Apple Could be Worth $1 Trillion on April 9, 2015, at 11 a.m. - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/will-apple-be-the-first-to-break-1-trillion/ If Apple continues on its current trajectory, it might break a barrier on April 9, 2015, that no company has ever touched. <comment><USER2> Part of the reason Microsoft has 'slumped' is that it started paying dividends. It realized it got all the market share it could, and became a blue chip. Apple also started paying dividends, so this is a real possibility. Of course, it is no way a sign of failure.

<comment><USER3> I would say the reason Microsoft slumped was that they lost the main driver of their innovation, Bill Gates. While this article ([http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/chart-microsofts- performance-u...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/chart-microsofts-performance- under-gates-vs-ballmer/35415)) is a bit old now it shows pretty clearly a difference in Microsoft's performance before and after Gates.

To me it's the same question that has to be answered for Apple. Will Apple post-Jobs, be able to keep performing? We'll find out in a couple of years, but it is possible that the issues with Apple Maps, Siri and iMessages are a sign of the pre and post Jobs eras. I contend that Apple would not have released any of these products in their 'beta' states if Jobs were still CEO. It is that type of sloppiness that could keep them from reaching $1 trillion and falling from grace.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A book/online resource with pragmatic approach to learning programming - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a book or an online resource to help me learn computer programming. After covering fundamental concepts and intermediate topics with examples and exercises, I expect it to include a project or two to work on and cement my understanding.<p>Please avoid suggestions/recommendations costing a lot of money which I'm short of. Thank you. <comment><USER2> How to design programs 2e... Freely available online.

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/)</comment>


Open Source REST API for SpaceX data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/r-spacex/SpaceX-API <comment><USER2> Just want to point out that this is not an official API made by SpaceX, but by people hanging around [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex).

<comment><USER3> > hanging around

You make them sound like junkyard dogs :)

Edit: Added smiley face to show I was merely amused by the phrasing.

<comment><USER4> Bit harsh wording wise, but yeah I totally agree that's a rough description of a community that made something neat.

<comment><USER5> Is this a generational disconnect? I have no negative connotations of the phrase "hanging around" (currently in college). Just curious.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps, I'm 30 if that helps.

In _this_ context it sounded very derogatory, as if they had nothing better to do and were just doing something likely useless or some such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a schema definition available for this API or you are supposed to figure it out by looking at actual replies and hope it doesn't change?

Is there even an equvalent of XSD but for JSON?

<comment><USER7> Like [http://json-schema.org/](http://json-schema.org/), or [https://swagger.io/specification/](https://swagger.io/specification/) ?

Doesn't look like there's any schema or spec in the repo.

<comment><USER8> Example of using json-schema will be json-editor[0] and for swagger(openapi) the online specification editor[1].

You can also generate client and server code from your swagger spec for multiple languages. The generated code a bit crude. But you can tweak swagger- code-gen to fit your needs.

[0]: [https://json-editor.github.io/json-editor/](https://json- editor.github.io/json-editor/)

[1]: [https://editor.swagger.io/](https://editor.swagger.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What could that be used for, apart from news reporting automation?

<comment><USER10> I used it as a data source when I wanted to learn React: [https://kuroikyu.github.io/spacex- launches/](https://kuroikyu.github.io/spacex-launches/)

<comment><USER11> Great site, thank you! Looking at the Falcon Heavy Roadster launch, is it intended that all stages have "Land success: x" even though just the center core failed to land?

<comment><USER10> Thank you! You're right, I'll have to investigate. It's been a while since I made it and I might have missed something, good catch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this kind of data would be better structured in a semantic web way, with a well-defined schema and RDF rather than a siloed JSON REST thing.

<comment><USER13> I smell a GraphQL rewrite!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> .Net, PowerShell

We are doomed.</comment>


Scala on LLVM - <AUTHOR> https://days2011.scala-lang.org/sites/days2011/files/ws3-2-scalallvm.pdf <comment><USER2> I am very sceptical about an approach that concentrates on code generation and punts GC to later. My experience is that you can always improve the code generation later, but the early decisions you make about GC will be with your forever. Things like data representation, whether objects can move, the interface to native code, the concurrency model etc. are very dependent on the GC and once you have built a big system that doesn't have a moving, precise GC you have probably boxed yourself in in terms of making a good design for your memory management later.

<comment><USER3> LLVM has almost no support for GC and it is about the biggest problem that just hits you in the face when you use it.

What I've been doing for my own experiments is very naive (and quite possibly broken). I've been implementing an interpreter with all GC done on the "compile side" of the Jit. What this means is that to allocate at runtime it reaches back around and calls functions which are pre-compiled into the interpreter codebase.

The interpreter itself uses linked lists extensively for its symbol table and to hold references to memory that it needs at compile time, and this is just hooked into by Jit compiled code at runtime, i.e. there's automatically an object associated with each allocation done at runtime because there is an object associated with it at compile time which is stored in the symbol table. Once a given object is out of scope, assuming no other object (which is still in the symbol table) holds a reference to it, the GC can then see the object can be cleaned up.

[And just writing this I know this sounds very much like nonsense. After all, once something is out of scope at compile time, what is to stop the GC cleaning it up before runtime? Indeed one has to be careful about this. In my case, the source code itself is connected with the symbol table. The source code is itself represented as a linked list and the symbols in it _are_ the symbols in the symbol table. Until the source is relinquished, the part of the symbol table that is currently in scope is not relinquished. And of course the source is not relinquished until after it has been "evaluated", i.e. Jit compiled and executed.]

So far I haven't managed to trick it, and it is very efficient. But then again I'm using Boehm-Demers-Weiser which is possibly so conservative that nothing is actually getting cleaned up in the examples I am running. I simply don't know.

I do know that this is a technical kludge and (I think) I can see it isn't going to work for a compiler, only for an interpreter.

<comment><USER4> Have you looked at how GHC provides a GC for its LLVM backend?

<comment><USER3> No. I did read an article about the GHC LLVM backend and it mentions the Cmm language (a variant of C--). But there was no mention of GC.

In fact, this thesis:

<http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~pls/thesis/davidt-thesis.pdf>

seems to state that Cmm implements almost everything but the runtime aspects of C--. In particular GC and exception handling are done more directly by Haskell without the need for direct support in the back end.

I do know some hooks were added to LLVM to support Haskell, e.g. the calling conventions used by GHC.

If you have any references regarding the GHC garbage collection, I'd be interested in seeing them. Of course I can also dig some up for myself.

I assume they do something clever.

(Pretty much everything that is clever that is missing from Scala, from a mathematician's point of view, is in Haskell or Lisp I suppose. Shame, because most mathematicians refuse to learn something as mind bending as Haskell.)

Edit: OK, now based on what I do know, I'm going to take a guess at this. The GHC GC is written in Haskell? Now that's gonna bake someone's noodle.

<comment><USER5> Lots of Lisps have GCs written in those Lisps, too. But I guess it's harder for Haskell, since you can not just "not cons" and mutate in Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll totally jump back on to the Scala bandwagon once it breaks free of the JVM.

I'd love for Clojure to make the same jump to LLVM however it relies far more on the host platform's libraries (the Java/C# libraries).

<comment><USER7> I'm actually a little confused by this. Isn't one of the major benefits of Scala, Clojure, JRuby, et al, that it _is_ hosted on the JVM?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is. And I suspect the Scala people aren't advocating that it move away from the JVM.

However, I can definitely say, should a Scala on LLVM become available with trivial FFI with native code and close to compiled C performance _even for the Scala interpreter_ (this is definitely possible), I would heartily switch to Scala from C.

I absolutely love the idea of Scala on the LLVM back end. That opens up a whole new world to me which currently doesn't exist.

I've recently been trying to design my own language on the LLVM Jit. So far, many of the design decisions I am making are very similar to, or the same as Scala, even though I am familiar with many different languages.

What's missing from Scala for me personally, is precisely what is proposed in this paper.

<comment><USER8> Functional and hybrid functional languages benefit _greatly_ from a highly tuned GC. I don't see LLVM supporting something on par with the JVM's collector anytime soon so I think you'll lose a lot of the speed you see with Scala on the JVM unfortunately.

<comment><USER4> The flip side is that the Scala developers can provide a GC tuned to Scala's use case, rather than the JVM's focus on Java's use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Were there compromises in Scala's design because it targetted the JVM?

<comment><USER10> Scala had a CLR version from pretty much the beginning, so I don't think it was designed with the intention of exclusively targeting the JVM.

<comment><USER11> The current CLR version is definitely not at production quality like the JVM version, and afaik it never was.

At a recent talk in the Netherlands, Martin Odersky also basically admitted that there's still a fairly long way until the CLR version is really at production quality, and even then it will probably keep lagging behind the JVM version.

So surely you're right about intention, but that's also about all it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this works out, it basically also means Scala->JavaScript through emscripten (<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten>).

Slow, probably, and probably with nearly impossible interfacing with the DOM and JS libraries, but still - pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm really interested in that idea. That would create the possibility to clean up the remaining Java cruft like "every object is a monitor", clone vs. Cloneable, ...</comment>


The Story of Humans and Neanderthals in Europe Is Being Rewritten - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/apidima-greek-skull-oldest-human-fossil-outside-africa/593563/ <comment><USER2> Most comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20410756).

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it just me, or does the field or human history seem have it's story "rewritten" every few months?

Can an expert chime in on whether this is a false narrative produced by the media or an actual happening?

<comment><USER4> Make me doubt the term "Settled Science"

<comment><USER5> This isn't really science.

<comment><USER6> Why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> in Rust?</comment>


Should You Hire a Bootcamp Graduate? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.professorbeekums.com/2016/12/should-you-hire-bootcamp-graduate.html <comment><USER2> You may hire professional or Intermediate level person</comment>


The trouble with software engineer CVs - <AUTHOR> http://rubyglazed.com/post/22606840883/the-trouble-with-software-engineer-cvs

<comment><USER2> great post. you're right on the money with how important it is to clearly explain what you actually worked on.

i'm working on some statistical modeling of resumes that have come in to my company in the past year. surprisingly, thus far, providing git hub accounts, objective/mission statements, and links to personal site/past projects have only been minorly important.

by far the most significant indicator of success has been the keyword saturation of the resumes. by keyword saturation, i mean the number of languages/operating systems/tools/etc listed divided by the total word count. the lower this number, the better.

this may change as n grows, of course.

<comment><USER2> i should also mention, another surprising feature that came out as significant was the flesch reading ease of the resume ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readabil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test#Flesch_Reading_Ease))</comment></comment>


In favour of recursive functions, not imperative constructs, to make loops - <AUTHOR> https://www.gresearch.co.uk/article/in-favour-of-recursive-functions-not-imperative-constructs-to-make-loops/ <comment><AUTHOR> (Author here.)

Yes, folds exist, but it's nice to be able to "imperatively" short-circuit really easily.</comment>


How to tell what font is on a webpage? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Actually quite easy. In Chrome, right-click, "Inspect," click "Computed" and click "show all." Then, scroll down to "font-family."

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://fontface.ninja](http://fontface.ninja) \- easy to use browser extension - enable it and hover the text you want to see the font of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In general it is not possible, because your system can replace the font face specified by CSS with something else, and the browser doesn't know. For example, what font is used for "font-family: serif"? Fontface Ninja doesn't know.

In these cases you can sample the font and analyze it with something like _WhatTheFont!_ or _Font Matcherator_.

[https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/](https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/)

[https://www.fontspring.com/matcherator](https://www.fontspring.com/matcherator)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is there a way beyond combing through and parsing endless CSS files?</comment>


Show HN: Mezon PHP Router is up to 82 times fatser then Bramus Router - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexdodonov/mezon-router/blob/master/doc/router-bramus.md <comment><USER2> I like the performance tests you put in there however there was this sentence just felt ahh too close. Very excited with the future of the project.

>> As you can see Mezon Router is up to 82 times faster then Bramus Router almost in all cases. Traditionally Mezon does not work well with non-static routes but I swear I shall fix it soon )</comment>


Ask HN: Overdone "apps" are in abdundace, is that necessarily a bad thing?  - <AUTHOR>

For example: Task management apps. They are a dime a dozen, sure the app doesn't have much chance of taking off, but it gets you off your ass to CREATE something. Does having something like that under your belt help your credibility? Is it a good jumping off point to becoming a "founder" of many things? <comment><USER2> Building something is certainly better than nothing. But a successful startup founder has an uncanny ability to fix problems.

Task management apps are, like you said, a dime a dozen. So a good project for a founder would be to download a bunch of those apps, see what they are all doing right and more importantly what they are all doing wrong. Then build one based on what you learned. That way you get technical experience but more importantly you are solving a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would say having something original is the best way to get some credibility. For instance, when I started out in app development I built a couple of calculators that are specific to my engineering course at University. Nobody else had done anything similar. From that my career took off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. I think that's part of the reason WHY we see so many task management apps. Everyone organizes differently, and their apps try to reflect that. No two apps are the same, but for whatever reason, none really provide that "complete" experience.

I suspect that when a founder builds something tailored to themselves, not torn apart by superfluous outside input, is when they really shine. Workflowy for example.</comment></comment>


How Dropbox is printing money - <AUTHOR> http://marcgayle.com/how-dropbox-is-printing-money <comment><USER2> The reference to rsync in Dropbox's YCombinator application is a bit of a tipoff --- rsync uses exactly this technique to avoid recopying files that already exist at the destination.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep...I never dived much into that reason - but that's why I quoted it and quoted the definition of 'Diff'. I guess I never brought it home as coherently as I wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought this was common knowledge. It wouldn't make sense to store Pirated.Movie.DVDRiP.avi thousands of times if it's the same file for thousands of users. Files that translate to the same hash, get served from one single file on DB's servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well perhaps the technology was common knowledge, but the business model behind it - I don't think was ever popularly discussed.

It must have been overlooked.

If it is true that this is what they are doing, then Dropbox has literally discovered one of the most profitable business models ever!

<comment><USER4> It's a pretty common optimization. They had a good plan, and executed well, but let's not get carried away; other people were working on similar ideas. I'd bet that data stored in s3 are deduplicated in a similar manner.

Another plus to their setup is the hash for the file is calculated on your machine, so you pay them so you can calculate the hash on your own files and only upload them if they haven't seen them before.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sure other people were working on similar things, but how many of them were able to execute on them as well as Dropbox has?

Google has supposedly implemented something like that for Gmail Attachments, but Dropbox seems to have the complete package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunatley, they also waste money on bandwidth. Here's the scenario:

1) Copy file into Dropbox on Server1

2) Client1 & Client2 on the same LAN will start downloading the file from the Dropbox servers at the same time; wasting their bandwidth and mine.

I wish the LAN sync feature would be expanded for downloads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well..considering the alternative, that's the least. The alternative being that they store every file X number of times, where X is the number of users that upload that file.

Wasting money on bandwidth by doing multiple transfers is minimal in comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this what Dropbox is doing? Storing just one copy of each unique file? It would make sense for large files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well...I am not 100% sure, but that's the only logical thing given that if you tried that example I gave you with the 241MB file, it uploaded in a minute or two.

This is just me putting 2 and 2 together.

If they aren't, they should be :)

<comment><USER5> I am 100% sure. Pirated MP3s "upload" in seconds and my self-ripped music takes the regular amount of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! But didn't want to include that in the post, lest the RIAA and MPAA start breathing down their throats.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to promote new software? - <AUTHOR>

As the title suggests, we have developed a new software, how to promote? And to maximize retain customers? There are good suggestions? THX. <comment><USER2> what the heck is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> How to let users know more about your product, and retain users?</comment></comment>