Surviving the Series A Crunch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/surviving-series-crunch/ <comment><USER3> _any entrepreneur able to build a prototype can get an idea funded_

Except this is not true and I don't know where people are getting this idea. Maybe it's just SV or YC that has money but Angels and VC's in D.C. and NY at least are looking for solid traction before even bringing up the word term sheet.

At a recent Cooley pitch event a friend of mine who is already revenue positive came up from Ohio to pitch his startup. He told me not a single investor had followed up with him about a term sheet despite multiple discussions after the pitch. Another friend in CO is in the same boat, being revenue positive but with no interest from angels or anyone else.

I think stating that anyone can get money is a dangerous thing to say because it gives the wrong impression about availability of dollars. That post about things being frothy is so insanely different than the reality here on the east coast that it's staggering and totally unbelievable (not saying that I don't believe it by the way).

<comment><USER4> > Except this is not true and I don't know where people are getting this idea.

It's a bit of casual hyperbole that can feel kind of bad to read if someone is _not_ part of the crowd that can get money.

That said, there is a lot of seed funding out there these days.

<comment><USER5> Where? More specifically, where is it easily available in the quantities and for the types of pre-revenue startups discussed by the OP? In my experience, most startups have a tough time raising that first seed round, let alone doubling down on that round.

<comment><USER4> There are tons of YC clone type things popping up all over the place. Maybe you guys don't remember the dot com days, but it is _significantly_ easier to get funded these days, and you can do so much more with less.

That said, of course "anyone can get funded" is not true and probably a bit hurtful to some who are trying and aren't managing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the founder can get the 90K cost constant and keep the rev growing at 9% per month, there is only a $10K shortage by month 7 (and cash runs out in month 6 only). This can easily be solved with some annual prepayments.

Source: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RSHx9pwrSKfOlUr2jyqK...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RSHx9pwrSKfOlUr2jyqKvaJiF4BgYfO- rvh0btojRkg/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER7> Funny - you did exactly the same thing I did while reading the article - <USER2> spreadsheets are basically identical :)

So here's my thoughts -- I think some outside "real world" perspective is needed here. While 9% M-M growth may seem OK in the VC-fueled hockeystick growth world, in the real world of profitable businesses it's spectacular. Some companies spend years running losses trying to get to profitability, and if that 9% is real (and sustainable), then I can think of only two things going on here: A) Either the whole world has gone crazy or B) More likely - there's missing information here.

As peter points out -- at a 9% growth rate the business turns profitable after 6 months and on the 13th month is net profitable. Any rational investor would be frothing to get involved in that sort of business - it becomes a money- printing machine in short order.

So I'm assuming that there's missing information here -- either the 9% monthly growth isn't sustainable (then it's not a true 9% M-M growth rate) or the costs must rise substantially to sustain it. And if that's the case, then you can start to see the real reason VCs might be hesitating.

So I guess my point is: Don't obsess over the raw growth number as the sole problem. That sets the wrong target. In the end, profits drive businesses, and massively profitable businesses can go public (and get great valuations), and public companies make VCs happy.

<comment><USER8> > A 9% growth rate the business turns profitable after 6 months and on the > 13th month is net profitable. Any rational investor would be frothing to get > involved in that sort of business - it becomes a money-printing machine in > short order.

That's not 100% true.

1) Growth rates like this are not sustainable long-term, and a 9% growth rate doesn't look great when lots of other companies are at 15-25% monthly growth with similar revenues.

2) The revenues multiples for Series A startup are very high. Would I invest in a $600k revenue/year startup growing 9% monthly at a $4m valuation? Sure, that sounds good. But a Series A would be more like investing $5m at a $25m valuation, which is way higher than the startup is worth based on pure fundamentals. The reason to invest at a $25m valuation is because you think there's a 10% shot the startup will be worth $500m, not because you think it's a 100% shot at $25m. High growth rates are one of the best indicators that a startup has a shot at $500m.

(My fund does seed/Series A investments.)

<comment><USER7> Sorry, bad choice of words on my part -- I shouldn't have said "any rational investor". What I meant is "any profit-focused, long-term investor" (as opposed to a moonshot-focused VC investor). I don't mean any of those things as negatives, just descriptives.

Your first point is right (and I addressed 1 later in my comment) -- if 9% isn't sustainable long-term, then the whole picture is quite different and a different metric should be used. And your second point, put differently, is "asking prices are too high", which is a fair point.

So I'd recast the original problem in a different light: "Company X is growing at 9% now, expectations are that it's unsustainable and won't be profitable for a while, and at the same time, they're asking a very high price relative to that growth & profitability rate", which explains why they're having trouble a bit more clearly.

My fundamental point is that the meme "anything less than 5% growth per week is bad" in a vacuum feels crazy by itself. With more context, it makes more sense.

<comment><USER8> I fully agree with that (and didn't read it negatively at all). The 5% meme/week is definitely surreal -- that's >10x/year growth! I'm always really impressed when I see companies with that kind of growth, especially after they've reached non-trivial revenues (e.g. $50k-$100k/mo)

<comment><USER9> My latest startup's user engagement is growing at >8x YoY, and while the revenue history is not deep enough for a good YoY, it's... let's say, within your scope of interest. Want to talk?

<comment><USER8> I'd love to chat. I'm leo at susaventures.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the plan of action when you can't raise more money is "Try pretty much everything and hope it works?"

I realize you have to provide advice that might apply to all startups, but in this specific case cutting the burn to 60k (maybe losing a bit of equity to keep employees happy) and trying really hard to hit 60k in revenue and bam, you're suddenly at breakeven and your runway can start to grow, you can breathe, etc.

Raising money is always good, but it's hard, and if you've received a lot of nos, it's not going to get easier. Planning for the acquihire is pretty much admitting defeat.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great advice and solid post.

Some data on how long companies typically wait between Seed and Series A rounds. The median is 349 days so raising for 18 months is smart.

[https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/days-between-funding- rounds/](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/days-between-funding-rounds/)

A couple of other notes:

\- Might want to look at revenue-based financing. More of a debt instrument but if you can't raise or are getting bent over by equity investors, it is an option.

\- I wish the funding is required to grow quick meme would die. Our company is revenue funded and growing at a very good clip. If you can make your customers your de facto "investors", life can be very good.

<comment><USER12> What are some financial institutions willing to work with startups via revenue financing?

Mind sharing some stats on the typical repayment rates & approval requirements? This sounds like a great way to finance B2B/enterprise type startups with revenue coming in the door from day 1.

Not giving up any equity doesn't hurt either.

<comment><USER11> There are a bunch. I know of a couple but don't know how good/bad they are so don't want to "recommend" anyone. But quick google search of revenue-based funding SaaS should turn them up.

I've heard they generally work like this:

\- Will lend you money equivalent to 1/4 to 1/2 your monthly or annual revenue/billings

\- Take a % of revenue every month as repayment. Your repayment goes up or down with revenue which is a good feature.

\- Take some warrant coverage as well (1/3 to 1/5 of the loan value)

Some will want to be hooked into your payment solution to take money right as it comes in but as we've not done it ourselves (have only looked at superficially), I'm not sure if that's all that common.

For B2B SaaS startups who can customer-fund to traction, this is the way of the future IMO. Unfortunately, the revenue-based financing guys aren't doing a great job marketing themselves primarily cuz their funds are quite small so far.

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like Paypal Working Capital, which they have been "suggesting" to me rather aggressively.

It makes a lot of sense. If you use Paypal for your business they have a good sense of your revenue, and they can be sure they're first in line for repayment.

[https://www.paypal.com/webapps/workingcapital/](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/workingcapital/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember when I first started reading HN, when having a business model on the table from day one, bootstrapping, and literally running your company out of a garage was all the rage. Easy money really ruined all that. I hope we end up back there some day.

<comment><USER15> That option is still there, but does not make headlines. Lots of companies, namely those not in the Valley, go for the organic growth route. It is very fulfilling, but won't make you the next Bezos or Shuttleworth. The VC route is a high risk high reward game. The organic route lowers risk and reward.

What I mean is that absence from the media is not non-existence.

<comment><USER16> "The organic route lowers risk and reward."

Yes on the risk, fully disagree on the reward part. And i am not talking about the reward of being able to focus on the business rather than raising money.

I am talking about cold hard cash. In a successful small business, many owners will make mid 6 figures, year in, year out, and still many will make 7 figures. After a few year, it beats a lot of exits. And there are many many more of those than the few IPO / big acquisition we can read about. Even with IPOs, the remaining share of the founder sometimes makes me sorry for them.

VCs don't publicize that though, understandably.

<comment><USER15> A six or even seven figure salary won't make you a billionaire. The success cases of the highly leveraged approach _are_ billionaires. The highest return with high leverage is higher.

I do agree with you on the rest of the comment. The mean return for a highly leveraged approach is probably lower than the mean return for organic growth startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This resonates. We raised just under $2m through a seed round and then were fortunate enough to be able to raise a bridge that deferred any crunch. But then we did 2 other things: we focused our sales, marketing, and product design on the greatest pain within a single industry (instead of 3) and we reduced expenses. Now growth is great and we are very close to being able to say that raising money is completely optional indefinitely, and no matter what investors do or don't decide, we will be fine. A wonderful feeling but the challenge to get to that next level has also been nearly inexplicable. Great post-mortem.

</comment><comment><USER18> Haha, I know so many people in this boat. I even know of one startup that was walking the line between B2B and B2C, and just temporarily made a slight turn to B2C to see some easy (non-paying) user growth just to raise the A, only to go back to their B2B route that they are confident will succeed in the long run. I'm sure this story is not going to be popular amongst the investor crowd, but it's much harder to raise an A once there is actual margins involved.

</comment><comment><USER19> While $50,000 a month is nice revenue, a growth rate of 9% month over month does seem quite low. Was the majority of the $50,000 front-loaded? I'd really be curious to hear what market they are in? Seems hard to believe given their pedigree (YC), monthly revenue 50K, and lean team (8 people), they can't find a VC to bite.

If they are charging monthly, what about blasting all paying customers with an upgrade to yearly promotion (20% off). That would bring in a lump sum of cash upfront which should provide additional runway.

<comment><USER20> I was surprised that 9% month over month growth rate is a bad number, given numbers in [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html).

I suppose the difference is "during YC" vs "leading up to a Series A"? What are good numbers?

<comment><USER21> Well pg is talking about weekly growth, not monthly:

"A good growth rate during YC is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you're doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it's a sign you haven't yet figured out what you're doing."

<comment><USER20> Oop, yep, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a real wakeup call - raise bigger seed rounds to last until you're a breakout success.

</comment><comment><USER21> If anyone from 42Floors is reading this: your link to your own site with the anchor text "office space" is a relative link and therefore broken:

office space

You need to make that [http://42floors.com](http://42floors.com) or it's not going to work for users (and search engines ;) )

<comment><USER23> Thanks! Fixing it now.

<comment><USER19> Also, all your images are loaded over http, when you are serving from https, resulting in:

        Mixed Content: The page at 'https://42floors.com/' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image 'http://images.42floors.com/8ede644d63d36e5e26d7a394ee5061d07e87389d.jpg?s=75x48%23'. This content should also be served over HTTPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Really great post, and not just for founders but for early stage investors as well. This is definitely why we are seeing so many more bridge rounds, but I'm not sure if those are really as bad as they've been made out to be, or just a new reality (for example, I know startups that have done a "damaging" bridge round only to then raise a huge A).

Either way, even more reason for founders to bootstrap for longer if they haven't hit that huge growth curve yet, or just bootstrap forever!

</comment><comment><USER25> > (...) _preparing severance packages_ (...)

Do US startups typically pay severance packages?

<comment><USER26> I've never been in a position to receive one from a startup, but I have received one from a well established company before.

Most of the time severance is used as a vehicle to establish good relations with the person being fired (so they don't bad mouth the company), and as a way to get former employees to sign a document stating they wont sue for any reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The real problem is that this game is controlled by ADD children who can't differentiate between 9% monthly growth in something of quality and 15-30% "viral" monthly growth in Snapchat-for-cats (the original Snapchat was idiotic, and give cats some credit because they have way better taste than sexting tweens) bullshit.

<comment><USER28> I treasure the occasions on which you and I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> i dont get why you have 8 engineers when you can't afford it. does raising money give you a false sense of optimism?

I've seen a startup where they just broke even year after year for the past 6 years. they just increase the revenue for the sake of higher valuation but what ended up happening was, it created a toxic working environment, highest attrition rate (because they simply fire people and replace it), eventually a year came around when they started bleeding. eventually the founding members were fired. now the company is getting outdone by the competition, A list clients have jumped ship, and business is dwindling.</comment>


Nokia Cnxn 2011 livestreaming right now. They'll reveal N9, the new MeeGo phone. - <AUTHOR> http://streamstudio.world-television.com/CCUIv3/frameset.aspx?ticket=678-750-9907&target=en-default-&status=live&browser=ns-0-0-0-10-0&stream=flash-video-500

<comment><USER2> There are some leaked photos supposedly of the N9 available:

[http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/06/20/nokia-n9-surfaces- ah...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/06/20/nokia-n9-surfaces-ahead-of- official-announcement-photos/)

If the rumors are to be believed, the N9 is the touch-only device, and the new device with hardware keyboard will be called the N950. A somewhat older article with video:

[http://gigjets.com/05/upcoming-meego-based- nokia-n9-n950-vid...](http://gigjets.com/05/upcoming-meego-based- nokia-n9-n950-video-promo-leaked/)

<comment><USER3> I certainly hope the N950 is keyboard-equipped and Meego-powered as rumored; thanks for providing the link. I can't cope with touch-only devices, despite the many times I have been told by friends/coworkers/HN/Twitter/etc. that I can. (It's surprising how often I have to defend a personal preference.)

<comment><USER4> I second you. I long for a cell phone having the same keyboard as my old- glorios Nokia 9300 (also known as "brick"). Forget about blackberries, that was the best cellphone to type __ever__

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure, but they may have been pushing Qt more than actually pushing the Windows 7. Good to see the trolls are alive and well.</comment>


Palantir just got its hands on the UK's post-Brexit border and customs data - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2020/09/17/palantir-got-its-hands-on-uk-post-brexit-customs-data/ <comment><USER2> The UK is an example of why you want your government to collect the least amount of data possible.

So thanks to British people for testing how fast their data gets sold on the private market.

I think if people knew what was done with the data...</comment>


I need my website's header redesigned - <AUTHOR>

Hello,<p>I have a website, and I need the header redesigned. Anyone affordable to recommend? <comment><USER2> Try <http://99designs.com/>

You probably would have gotten more responses if you had asked a general question like "Ask HN: Who do you outsource design work to?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah you're right, can't seem to update title now. But thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure HN is a suitable forum for your request, and at any rate, you should consider providing at least some basic details.</comment>


20 Years of Side Projects - <AUTHOR> http://bertolami.com <comment><USER2> Wow. This is fantastic. I've been a developer ( or back in those days just a programmer ) for almost 12 years now and from now and then I dig out some old Perl code that I wrote decade back in time.

Sadly I don't have any "side-projects" that I consider "complete", but I hope I would find time these days and share them too.</comment>


Show HN: JavaScript books, free online - <AUTHOR> http://exploringjs.com/ <comment><USER2> I love these books! The author is an amazing writer. He also writes very high quality blog posts.

I've suggested Exploring ES6 to all my coworkers, and it's my go-to reference for when I need a more detailed explanation of something.

When I picked up Exploring ES6 I thought I already everything, but I actually learned about tons of features that hadn't gotten as much public attention. I'd strongly suggest everyone check it out, even if you just glance over the topics that catch your eye.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dr. Rauschmayer also maintains one of the best blogs about Javascript [http://www.2ality.com](http://www.2ality.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Full disclosure: I'm the author.)

<comment><USER4> Since you're the author, we put "Show HN" in the title, which is the convention when sharing your work on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks for the help!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At first I thought these books were not free-- and was a bit miffed. However, they are quite free in HTML form, and you may support the offer via LeanPub for offline purchase. So thank you too the author, these look like great resources and I will dig into them. When/If my checking account displays a positive number I will certainly consider purchasing. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you to the author. Amazing resources!

</comment><comment><USER7> Great job! Thanks very much for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow! So much in ES6?! I've added a bookmark to the online version in my bookmarks toolbar.

Although I am sorry to day the digital version is just too costly. If it was cheaper like most of the books we get for kindle, I would have bought it immediately.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a project to translate some of your books to french ? I would be pleased to contribute to this kind of projects (I am french and this looks like a good way to improve my javascript).

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a great work! Thank you so much for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone recommend a good JavaScript executrices or exams

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice curation, thanks</comment>


APL – a Glimpse of Heaven (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10011550 <comment><USER2> I did quite a bit of APL programming when I was younger.

When describing APL, people talk about the strange symbols, the mathematics, etc... but I have never seen anyone describe something I only realized after some time: APL makes you approach problems quite differently, when you are familiar with it.

I stopped thinking in 'steps' applied to the individual data points, but rather I solved the problem in my head (and writing the line along the way) by aggregating the data points into larger data objects, and then letting the data objects expand in a many-dimension universe, always larger and larger... and then I simply looked at the resulting mega-thing from a different angle, and started crushing it back along different dimensions until I finally got my answer (and my line completed). The resulting one-liner was very hard to read ... but gave me the correct result.

Inflation, Change of view-point, Big Crush. That is the core of APL.

Yeah I know... sounds crazy. But that was how APL programming felt to me, and I bet I am not alone. No other language I worked with ever triggered in me that kind of mental problem-solving process.

<comment><USER3> So what I'd like to know is how that "quite different" approach to problems differs from the standard mathematician approach?

I've been playing with J lately. I've also been a longtime numpy user, going back to the days when it was still numarray. Maybe I'm just writing numpy in J, but I find that my approach in both languages is more or less identical: set up a vector, do some matrix operations, maybe some statistical aggregates, write down the answer.

Can you provide an example for which the APL approach is significantly different from what one would normally do? It might help me understand what insights I'm supposed to gain.

<comment><USER4> It's quite similar to the standard mathematician approach. It's extremely different from the standard (imperative-trained) programmer approach.

(Note your use of "write down the answer": this is a giveaway that you understand it so well that you're not even aware of your understanding, and might therefore find it hard to explain)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've dabbled in J, and it's left me with a permanent sense of slight disillusionment with regards to every other numerical programming language I've used. It seems mind-boggling that NumPy, MATLAB, and even Julia lack the versatile broadcasting rules of APL family languages. In J, if you write a simple function that composes several built-in operators, your function is fully vectorized and can act on lists and arrays properly, and even arrays of arrays. In MATLAB, the same function stands a pretty good chance of only accepting scalar inputs unless you put extra effort into making it vectorized, and almost certainly won't do the right thing when given higher-dimensional arrays. Julia seems to likewise default to being mostly scalar-oriented, and only makes it less painful by having efficient JIT, but still lacks the expressiveness advantage.

<comment><USER6> I am still optimistic about Julia in this regard. That phantom limb pain after having used J is there, but the nice thing is that Julia is very extensible, for example hopefully soon infrastructure to cast a 2x4x4 array into a length 4 vector of 2x4 arrays without copying memory will be implemented which is an important step forward to mimic APL style programming if you think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "To believe that "plain language" programming would be more readable is Utopian, even intellectually dishonest. For if I say, "a linear function of a variable is equal to the sum of a constant and of the product of a variable and a second constant", it is incontestably English but completely obscure, even incomprehensible!"

This is absolutely true. People try to make a big deal out of natural language for both programming and simply interacting with computers. Rarely would a natural language description be easier, clearer, or faster than a more precise interface (e.g. text for programming, mouse/keyboard for interacing with computers).

<comment><USER8> Of course you wouldn't write it all out like that in any programming language. But instead of writing code like this:

      y = a * x + b

You could write code like this:

      height = slope * run + ground

It may not be helpful to write out simple math using colloquial language, but it can be helpful to future maintainers if your variables have meaningful names. Calling it "a variable" instead of "a" is not useful, but calling it "slope" can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> But only if you have the digital flexibility of a monkey.

That said, this is always worth watching as a demo of the language's power: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4). I'm not afraid to admit that I wish my language could do that.

<comment><USER10> This is one of my favourite coding videos and everyone should watch it. It's nice to see it again having read through a description of how APL works.

<comment><USER11> f you want to try it in your browser without having to send each command to the server for evaluation: [http://baruchel.hd.free.fr/apps/apl/](http://baruchel.hd.free.fr/apps/apl/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have an issue with APL. My grandfather who is a researcher in forest science (sorry English is not my main language), made his own software in APL to manage his own forest. Now, he is becoming old, and trying to get me to get the software, and to understand it for when he will pass.

The thing is, I'm a C++ dev professionally, but whenever I see his code in APL, I cringe. I can't get to make him understand that building what is basically a dynamic spreadsheet in APL is kind of complicated for me, coming from an OO side of programming. Also, that's the only language he knows.

I have a hard time telling him that all the work he did and still does in APL (I guess now there are like thousands of lines) will just go to trash and my uncles will just use Excel to do that when they'll take over the forest business.

Edit: I have another issue with DyalogAPL. When my grandfather sends me a workspace , I can't open it because DyalogAPL is not that much backward compatible ! So if we don't have the exact same version, I just can't open his workspace. It's 2014 , damn !

<comment><USER13> Man, I hope when I have grandchildren, they won't want to throw a bundle of my life's work in the trash.

Maybe github instead?

<comment><USER12> Well, I don't want to... but I have no time nor real interest in trying to understand what he did in APL. My only issue is that he is not interested in hearing from me that nobody will take over what he did.. He won't listen ;( He thinks everything else sucks.. I tried to make him read some stuff about python for example. He said this sucked also ! lol

<comment><USER14> Just because some tech is _old_ doesn't make it bad. People solving and writing programs in 60s and 70s were just as smart as we are, work to extract their wisdom.

<comment><USER15> And worked with limitations sufficiently strong that they had to extract every ounce of functionality out of the hardware they had at their disposal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From a PL standpoint:

1) APL clearly made good use of an extensive symbol set. Now that many languages support unicode, this is totally do-able.

2) APL is in love with overloading. It's not totally my cup of tea, but you could definitely fit this into many modern languages.

3) I see a whole lot of MATLAB in there.

4) Did... this article actually define any functions at all? Perhaps I missed this.

5) It looks you could easily implement APL as a DSL within an existing language with an extensible parser. Racket, for instance.

<comment><USER17> _5) It looks you could easily implement APL as a DSL within an existing language with an extensible parser. Racket, for instance._

I'm working on something along these lines, but not planning on keeping the APL/J-like syntax (the many meanings of juxtaposition makes parsing a line depend on the run time values attached to names). You can get more of the core idea of APL out of prop:procedure than out of extensible parsing.

<comment><USER18> I've been doing something similar as a gem to add J commands to Ruby: [https://github.com/michaelfeathers/jop](https://github.com/michaelfeathers/jop)

The fluent interface is likely to win because I don't want to implement hook and fork.

<comment><USER17> Are dyads only done by putting the other operand in the string of J code? Or is there a nice way to apply a dyad to two Ruby arrays? (I wasn't sure from the Readme if this is already there or your second point in "future directions," and I'm pretty new to Ruby)

<comment><USER18> No real nice way. I'm not sure where I am going to go with this, I could use a string interpolation but I'm hesitating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The writing is kind of verbose.

<comment><USER15> Hehe, that had me chuckle. I'm sorry you got downvoted, that must be by people that either did not go to the article or that don't have a clue what APL looks like in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you like APL or are in general interested in material like this then you should definitely check out the J language (which is sort of the successor to APL).

[http://www.jsoftware.com/](http://www.jsoftware.com/)

and

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_%28programming_language%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_%28programming_language%29)

</comment><comment><USER20> Another descendent of APL is the K programming language from Arthur Whitney (whose One page APL interpreter inspired the J implementation)

I would say that K:J is like C:C++ in terms of complexity (not of heritage). I personally prefer the K and C to J and C++ but to each their own.

</comment><comment><USER21> All I could think of while reading this was, how am I supposed to type all those weird characters?

<comment><USER11> You can use Emacs: [https://github.com/lokedhs/gnu-apl- mode](https://github.com/lokedhs/gnu-apl-mode)

Yes, I'm advertising my own work here.

<comment><USER22> Lazy query: do you do overstrikes? The keyboard one has to commit to memory is _so_ much smaller.

<comment><USER11> No, I don't do that. I didn't find it very hard to learn the full APL keyboard. That said, it should be easy to make a Quail-based input method for it. If you could provide me with a list of the necessary combinations to generate the APL symbols, I could help you out in making it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> He is missing the middle generation - he jumps straight from the 70s (mainframe) to the 90s (Internet) while missing the people like me who grew up with 8-bit systems in the 80s.</comment>


Learning React.js is it okay to do remotejob? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone my first post here, hoping to have a long journey ahead.
I have been practicing to create web apps Node.js/Express.js and before that Python Django and I just 22 out of college since July '17 so then I started giving interviews through AngelList here in India, but they all seem to pay as low shit as US$ 115-240 per month and others don't reply after several rounds of interviews so now I started learning React.js and I'm wondering if it would be okay for me to get remote jobs/freelancing projects to enhance my understanding of the concept and grow my developer career, will that be okay?
And also what are future paths and possibilities with React because it seems a rockstar currently with Native that allows creating apps as well. I hope I land at some place soon so my parents feel relived that a good potential kid landed at some nice place and earning more than average then others who just know ( I'm sorry I'm not trying to sound narcissistic but I feel alone and numb day by day LOL )
PS: those interviews with Backend on profile count has reached 46 now but no chance or low pay as stated
BTW /r/webdev and /r/learnprogramming are so welcoming and helpful community I love these and few other discord channels as well, do this sub have it's own discord channel too? <comment><USER2> Choose a stack (I started with MEAN but MERN is legit as well.) then build everything you can think of with it, both to build your skills (and your github commit history!) and to potentially show off to potential employers. Something CRUD (like a blog or todo list), an app with a semi-complex form, an application with complex data passing: child component -> sibling or parent.

follow the road maps

[https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer- roadmap](https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap)

This first (real) gig is the hardest to get, because you your job history/experience is short. Doing these personal projects won't expand your job history, but it can do wonders for your experience. My first software job I had one thing listed under job history on my resume, and 3-5 listings under Projects/Experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have a personal website? Leave one here; Who knows maybe someone reading your post would hit you up in the next few weeks.</comment>


Ask HN: what do you think about my Quora redesign? - <AUTHOR>

I tried my hand at redesigning the main Quora home page. I would love to get some feedback on it:
http://folyo.me/guides/quora-redesign
For what it's worth, here's what Quora's own head designer had to say about it:
"You're right about a few problems you decided to solve, wrong about all the proposed solutions."
(http://twitter.com/#!/artypapers/status/131401350272647168) <comment><USER2> I do not have a lot of time to make a full drawn out comment as to what I liked and disliked about the redesign. But I will say this.

In a number of areas like "Answer question" and the search bar, I felt you helped give them more prominence which is good!

I'm a sucker for less is more and many of the tweaks you made to remove clutter also helped.

That said I found your method of notification and menu aggregation a little to heavy handed.

On a side note: When doing a site redesign like this, it is a good idea to try and keep the same content as your sample. Adding that new copy forces the viewer to separate what is a design change from what is content. This in turn causes people to loose focus on the design changes, and even in some cases fail to see or understand those changes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to the redesign: <http://folyo.me/guides/quora-redesign></comment>


Seven Days of Heroin - shaki-dora http://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days-of-heroin-epidemic-cincinnati/ <comment><AUTHOR> I lived on one of the streets they mention in the article while attending college. The hardest thing one would see was malt liqour abuse or the occasional nodded off opiate user.

I was just in the area last week, and it is arresting how different things are. Boarded up houses, handwritten signs for suboxone treatment with phone numbers, addled users staring into space on many corners - things have changed.

Stories like this give me a bit of hope because people do recover, I know that. But what is the longterm solution here? The causes of the opioid epidemic are debated ad nauseum, but it seems much harder to put a finger on the pulse of a solution. It's wrecking lives at an increasing rate, that much is for sure.

<comment><USER2> Recover to what? Working two or three jobs to scrape by? Drugs are only thing keeping these sad people alive.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any interest in Swift based server side web framework? - <AUTHOR>

Apple has released python/javascript/c# like language for ios/mac programming. exciting things about swift is it runs way faster than python/objective-c but with ease of scripting language syntax. How nice it would be to use the same language for ios/mac development as well as server side component.
Imagine a ExpressJs like framework for Swift along with npm like package manager would bring a type safe but still expressive framework running in a mac pro.
Any thoughts? is HN has similar thoughts? <comment><USER2> Actually, this was discussed at the last session of Alt Conf. WebObjects is "Server Side Swift." (SSS) If you look at EVERYONE that presented during the keynote, they all had a hand in developing WebObjects. I think this would be the Apple play:

* A lot of App developers develop iOS first as it is (Think Instagram). * The entire toolchain is provided by Apple. From IDE to digital distribution. * However, they have to go outside of the Apple ecosystem for Servers. * What if Apple could provide - along with distribution a server side EC2 style service. * Then, developers could use Swift in the cloud and their apps.

Here is the kicker: * Now developers can develop Web Apps to push to Android and Windows phone devices with a completely Apple toolchain.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem would be, swift needs xcode to develop and will run on OS X and iOS. Even if there is any web framework for it, you need OS X (Mac) to run it and your production server should be Mac :) Unless Apple released Swift runtime for other OSes, I am not sure how helpful the web framework will be.</comment>


Concerning trend in commenting on news.yc submissions - <AUTHOR>

Based on the few number of comments in most discussions on this site, you'd assume everyone's just reading for the links. Which is cool, I guess. Anyway, the only exception, it seems, are threads on Paul Graham essays in which everyone and their mother has something to say. We're talking something like an average of around 1 comment for most front page items vs. probably and average of 40 comments for anything PG's written. <p>Is everyone just sucking up/karma whoring by agreeing with PG? Or is PG the only thing worth talking about here? As I think the real value of having a community of hackers is talking, I'd really like to see more general chatter. Am I alone here? <comment><USER2> _Is everyone just sucking up/karma whoring by agreeing with PG?_

I think the volume of comments is at least partially because everyone reads them and thinks about them.

_Or is PG the only thing worth talking about here?_

Hardly, but given that it was his essays that brought many (most?) of us here to begin with, it's something we all have in common. So his essays generally get more attention. Furthermore, his essays tend to attract attention from all over, and visitor comments probably wind up on news.yc.

</comment><comment><USER3> [ascend to soapbox] [begin sermon] I like to think of news.yc as a social learning machine. It would be nice to see karma computed more as a function of the contribution to the community rather than pure popularity. In terms of information content, the PG links are going to be low because almost everyone here would have read the article regardless.

Seriously, is the 100 karma points gained through linking to a pg essay worth as much as the 100 earned through 10 informative (in the classic _suprising_ sense) links? We seem to be converging to this eigenvector [a(1) a(2) ...a(n)] where a(1) == pg_essay_link, a(2)== mattmaroon_essay_link...etc.

The reason I believe pg converted this forum to hacker news is that the learning machine was stuck on the search surface in a local minimum and he wanted it to 'learn' new things. We can't learn more if we reward behaviour that is not truly informative. He could put a damping coefficient on karma obtained from known links, but a better bet would be for the community to not reward the links as much.

I have done my share of dumb, uniformative submissions and will try to make better contributions in the future. [end sermon] [get off soapboax]

<comment><USER4> In the end, Karma ends up rewarding activity. I'm not any better or smarter than anyone else here, I just surf the internet a whole lot.

<comment><USER3> Dude, I've seen your website. You are going to change the world.

<comment><USER4> That's what we're going for. :) My partner Josh deserves more credit than me because he's the actual biological hacker but we complement each other pretty well.

Our make or break moment is in the next couple months as we launch. Here's hoping...

<comment><USER3> Hoping with you, man. Tell ingenium to keep at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, you are not alone. But what do you propose? Like danielha said, some stories are more interesting to talk about than others. On the features page, I suggested separating ask news.yc posts into another area, so they don't move off the front so fast and perhaps get more discussion going as a result. However, no one has really up voted that suggestion. Another alternative is to have a different site that is more of a message board like webmasterworld, but for hackers. After all, this is Hacker News, not Hacker Discussion. This is evident in the fact that it is geared more towards new links than open discussion topics.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree about not everything being interesting to talk about. If anything's worth reading, I think it's worth sharing your thoughts on. If you vote it up, you must think it resonates well. Even sharing the reason why would be interesting to others. If you don't vote it up, something must be wrong with it. Et cetera.

<comment><USER5> I think we are in agreement here. I just don't find myself upvoting that many stories, and I generally try to comment on those I do. So I was just basically saying the ones I don't think are interesting to talk about are the ones I'm not upvoting. Obviously there isn't an exact 1 to 1, but generally that is the case, at least for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site has lost some of its appeal since it was opened up to topics that aren't strictly startup related.

I've noticed that accompanying the larger amount of posts, the quality has been more spread out. It's no surprise that PG related posts attract more of that quality.

<comment><USER7> > The site has lost some of its appeal since it was opened up to topics that > aren't strictly startup related.

To you perhaps, but pageviews per visitor are conspicuously up since that change.

<comment><USER8> Do you think there is a relationship between the two things, or could other factors be involved (appearing on reddit, essays linking to yc.news...?).

To tell the truth, it seems that things have "got back to normal" - the meta discussions have died down, thankfully not too many political discussions have been started, and things seem to be going pretty well.

<comment><USER7> More links from outside decrease pageviews per visitor, because they bring in more visitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've had a few posts deleted which were "general chatter", but were directed more towards one person. Thats understandable however as it can distract from the topic of the post. But it makes it difficult to continue interesting topics of conversation which are starting to diverge from the post. This is where I think a simple messaging system for the site would be useful, especially given the networking incentives of beginning startup entrepreneurs..

I think there may also be a general reluctance to post things which are challenging or negative for fear of either being downvoted like crazy, or looking bad in the eyes of YC if you have plans to apply. I wouldn't go as far as calling it sucking up, but it could refrain some people from saying whats really on their mind.

The rate of submissions seems to be increasing too, which can make sifting through the new postings more difficult. It also dilutes commenting I've noticed. This could be why major posts like a new PG essay seem to gravitate more discussion. I would personally be game for the idea of limiting the number of new submissions a user can post over a given time. Maybe scale this value based on karma. This would at least make people think more carefully about what they are about to post. I understand this starts to limit the "anyone can post" nature of the site, but it could reap an overall benefit for all users by reducing information overload and concentrating discussion on fewer, good submissions.

But you bring up a good point.. I'll make a conscious effort to post more challenging, thought provoking comments. I've got karma to burn :)

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure if I like the idea of reducing the amount of links one can post. While certainly sifting through new items becomes harder the interesting ones will gravitate towards the top. As long as submissions aren't completely off topic I'm interested in reading them.

<comment><USER9> True, but the limit need not be anything aggressive. Just simply having it and users knowing it is there could subconsciously promote more thoughtful postings. If anything, its good protection against a malicious flood attack (since users currently cant bury posts). Just an idea.

Also, some of the most interesting postings to me personally never got upvoted by others very much. Was I not watching the new queue all the time I would have missed them completely..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think people are sucking up, because a lot of the threads for the most recent pg essay were disagreeing with parts of it.

I don't think people are karma whoring, because that would mean commenting on lots more stories. The average comment is more likely to be upvoted than downvoted, so a karma whore would comment as much as possible.

I don't want to see more general chatter. I just want interesting comments. I'd rather see no comments than uninteresting ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we should encourage commenting at all costs. The karma system can handle not showing you the uninteresting/bad ones.

Actually, now that I think about it, the karma system could be the reason people don't post as many comments. If you submit, you're looking at all upside. But you can hurt yourself by saying something dumb, so people opt to say nothing at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> <http://news.ycombinator.com/active>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool link. The fact that this thread is already 20th on that list probably proves the point.

edit: it's slow enough that I don't think pg's planning for many people to be looking at it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see what you are saying. For example, I posted this link which I think is an awesome read for everyone on hear, and it got squashed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49579> Read it people, read it!

But I don't think there is any karma whoring going on. I think PG articles come with a pretty safe bet of being a good read. Whereas you aren't sure what you are going to get with the others. Im assuming pretty much everyone reads the PG essays, and thus there is more discussion to be had. Whereas I would like to know the proportion of people who read all the other links submitted, as opposed to just their titles.

</comment><comment><USER14> People expect much discussion of a new pg essay, partly because its his site, partly because of trends in this site so far, and partly a stop-over from the old reddit days. A guaranteed-attention feedback loop, dragging in anyone with an inclination to chat or have a little limelight, lurkers and regulars alike.

I too would enjoy more general chatter (of the thoughtful, interesting kind).

</comment><comment><USER15> The RSS feed for this site doesn't offer a link to comment pages; I've only commented on a few submissions that were themselves just links back into new.ycombinator.com.

There is an element of suck-upness ("I hear what you're saying but what I think Paul Graham is looking for in a submission is XXX") that is off-putting, but, I mean, it's Graham's site.

<comment><USER16> _The RSS feed for this site doesn't offer a link to comment pages_

Yes, it does: the comment tag is defined in each item.

<comment><USER17> Great, show me a real RSS client that uses those. So far, the only one I've heard about is rss2email, which seems like utter stupidity instead of a real client.

<comment><USER16> Well, SeekSift.com does ( _disclaimer: this is my current project_ ), so feel free to give it a try.

If you click "Sources" -> "Add a Source Not on this List" -> "Search for Sources" and type "Hacker", you'll see the news.yc feed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nothing sinister, just network effects. If twice as many people read PG's essays, that's four times as many potential conversations.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've noticed a TON of comments anytime someone posts "Just launched my startup... Feedback please!"... Just as a counter-example.

<comment><USER20> and by startup, they mean website. Big difference, usually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While the number of "10 ways to do x", "10 x about y" , articles have decreased, there are still a lot of links that, frankly, I could find on another site, and have little or no relevance to software/web startups or hacking.

I come here mostly for the discussions, essays, and new idea posts, not to learn what I can get on google/news

</comment><comment><USER21> No earth shattering news here, but discussions have comments and news links don't have as much. When someone asks for help understanding something by asking a question, the community lends it expertise. If more questions were asked, more discussion would proceed.

\- my 2 cents

</comment><comment><USER22> I am, in fact, a PG fanboy. If I wasn't I wouldn't have noticed this site. That has to skew your results. It will be a while before the site attracts a population of people who don't find his topics of interest. Meanwhile, why worry? You could go back to Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER23> Some stories are more interesting to talk about. I wouldn't much further than that.

</comment><comment><USER24> PG is a VC. I won't consider him a technology evangilist in a broader scope. Sometimes agreeing with a VC is simply agreeing with a non-evangilist.</comment>


An iTunes for news? Dumb, dumb, dumb - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2009/01/12/an-itunes-for-news-dumb-dumb-dumb/ <comment><USER2> I thinks 'iTunes for news' is an excellent idea. I would pay for stories.

I will not pay for AP stories or similar ones. Usually the headline contains as much content as the story.

What I will pay for are those incredibly written expose stories that appear in magazines from time to time. I do not care enough about music to purchase a subscription to Rolling Stone. I do want to read their longer essays though, for example the one on McCain a couple months ago.

I never would have thought to read _Gourmet._ But I loved David Foster Wallace's _Consider the Lobster._ I would have paid for that article alone. The rest of the magazine doesn't interest me much.

I would also pay for newspaper stories that are more than just daily reporting. I want the investigative stuff. Stories with insight.

I would consider a monthly subscription to the WSJ so I could get their daily news.

I would pay for the WSJ and NYT op-ed pages so I could read the letters written by CEO's. big time politicians, etc.

<comment><USER3> I share your preference but I think as long as a significant number of people still buy the entire magazine or even a subscription to get the 'great stories', unbundling will only hurt publishers' profits.

<comment><USER2> Maybe. But maybe the people that want the magazine will keep the subscription and the publishers will gain me as a customer.

I read _BusinessWeek_ every week. I pay for that subscription. They would not lose me as a customer if they went on iNews.</comment></comment></comment>


Email Marketing will helps in branding your business - <AUTHOR> http://www.epurplemedia.co.uk/article_zone/article4.html Email Marketing, as the name suggests, is the marketing done through emails. It is the business of presenting, advertising and selling a company's products through the electronic mail. It is a powerful and cost-effective means to marketing for both established businesses or new start ups. As Internet Marketing grew, the potential of eMail Marketing was realized and capitalized on by all and sundry <comment><USER2> This is spam about spamming.</comment>


Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends To 150 - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26824/?p1=Blogs

<comment><USER3> For those who may be interested in such things, the original paper is

Dunbar, R. I. M. 1992. Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution 20:46--493

pdf: [http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic514568.files/Dunb...](http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic514568.files/Dunbar_Neocortex%20size%20as%20a%20constant%20on%20group%20size%20in%20primates.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Also relevant is the follow-up paper published the following year, which extends Dunbar's argument:

Dunbar, R. I. M. 1993. Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16:681-735.

pdf: <http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~johnson/COGS184/3Dunbar93.pdf>

That said, Dunbar's paper - and the entire concept of the "Dunbar number" - <USER2> the shoddiest piece of science I have ever seen. Dunbar arrives at the magical 150 by extrapolating from the neocortex ratio to mean group size correlation of nonhuman primates. However, the human neocortex ratio is 30% higher than that of any primate and the resulting "corresponding" mean group size of 147.8 is more than double the highest nonhuman mean group size of 65.5, which makes the validity of such a large extrapolation highly suspect. In an attempt to justify this, Dunbar gives a 95% confidence interval of 100.2 - 231.1 (quite a wide range), then sets out to find as many examples of real-world data as possible that fit in this predetermined interval. As is often the case when one knows exactly what to look for, it appears to be everywhere. My favorite moment is where he encounters Naroll (1956)'s observed maximum settlement size of 500 yet deems it "likely that the equivalent mean settlement size will not be too far from the value of 150 suggested by the above analyses" (Dunbar 1993 p687).

How are you supposed to go about falsifying an argument like that?

Edit: Better formatting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dunbar's number continues to be misunderstood. It is not so much a measure of individuals as a measure of relations between individuals that are important for us to track. It is not the node that is important, it is the connections that the node has.

</comment><comment><USER6> AKA "the Monkeysphere", as described in this scholarly article: <http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't have Twitter friends - just a list of people that I want to know what they are up to.

<comment><USER8> I also has friends who I follow on Twitter but I rarely if ever message them via Twitter. Thus according to this study, they wouldn't be my friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It makes sense to me that a person only has time and attention potential to manage a certain number of relationships. However, the number depends on the person and how deep those relationships are. Twitter is _not_ a medium where it's time consuming to interact with someone, and the relationships, while revealing, are somewhat shallow. I don't think the Twitter reference makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER10> The mean of my friend's Facebook friend count agrees. I noticed the ~150 before, interesting to see an explanation for this.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember when they said on facebook you can only keep track of 300 friends max. Couldn't find that old post but heres a similar Mashable post <http://mashable.com/2010/01/25/brain-facebook-friends/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess the formula works something like

Max friends = (max message length) + 10

At least, it would make more sense than a number Dunbar pretty much pulled out of thin air.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nothing new to see here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_Number>

<comment><USER14> I suspect that you didn't read the article. In addition to heavily discussing Dunbar's number, the entire point of the article is that, even with the aid of social networking technology like Twitter, Dunbar's number still applies. From the article:

"The bottom line is this: social networking allows us to vastly increase the number of individual we can connect with. But it does nothing to change our capability to socialise. However hard we try, we cannot maintain close links with more than about 150 buddies."

<comment><USER15> So indeed, nothing new. They might have the same results if they used phone calls as well. I 'm not sure twitter is the right medium for such studies, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No no no no no. A thousand times no.

First of all, the monkeysphere does not work this way. The old cracked article (linked elsewhere but also provided here[1]) is sanctimonious overstatement. Not all friends are equal. We don't live in groups in the same way anymore. (Its most blatant stupidity is to claim that we have absolute no interest in strangers, but only slightly less grating is its ignorance of the 6-degree effects that keep us united as a species.)

All the monkeysphere can _safely_ say is that there is a limit to the number of connections you have; from an I/O perspective this is obvious.

But there's nothing special about the number 150 as it is an _average_. And TWITTER IS NOT REAL LIFE. Strictly speaking the damn article doesn't even get the terms right, you don't _have_ twitter friends, you follow people in order to build a stream of interesting things.

Why am I so angry? WHY AM I SO--uh, sorry.

I'm angry because this is the very worst of pop psych, the very worst of science writing. Someone took a sensible scientific concept--Dunbar's number-- and starts applying it to everything in sight without regard to the scientific method.

Then someone else writes about it.

The valid science of the article, such as it is, is to show that online connections follow some similar patterns to offline connections, with variable levels of connectedness.

Also, I've got a knee-jerk visceral reaction to that cracked article and knew I'd see it here. In fact it'd probably be fair to say I'm ranting more against it than against the submission. Oh well, I still think I have a point.

\--- oh yeah oops [1]<http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what- monkeysphere.html>

<comment><USER17> curiously, dunbar talks about a bunch of different groups inside the "150" exactly as you say.</comment></comment>


How to build an OS like Android but for an e-ink based e-reader? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to develop an operating system for hardware manufacturers who might want to use it to for an e-book device.
At the moment I have a prototype built using Raspberry Pi and a small 2.7 inch e-ink display.
I am able to write python programs that can parse a book in text file and write to the e-ink display using a python library that comes with the e-ink manufacturer.
My goal is write a simple GUI so that users can select books they want to read. I have looked into existing GUI library for python but they are too complicated for e-ink display. And, usually these programs are not written for an embedded system in mind. I'd like to write an OS that can go to sleep mode easily when the book is close. The OS also should have low memory, CPU requirement.
I think the Android OS is a good model to follow but maybe an overkill for what I am intend to do with my project. I am looking for suggestions on the approach. I also welcome any recommendations on existing framework, Linux distribution to look into.
Here is more info about my project on Github. Thanks. https://github.com/obicho/ebook <comment><USER2> hi mate im doing the same. I would love to show you what we have so far. Care to collaborate?</comment>


International Backup Awareness Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001315.html <comment><USER2> Services like Amazon's S3 and Rackspace's Cloud Files are well worth the $0.15 to $0.30 a month that it takes to keep a backup of most websites. Better yet, keep a copy in each service and avoid problems that could occur from either service. If your website is static then you could actually serve directly out of either service in case of an emergency.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post strikes me as very defensive. I will grant that yeah he made a mistake but like the rest of us he's entitled to make mistakes. I'm not sure the images matter much but it's great that he got the text back.

I hope that the people who feel inclined to jump all over him will recall one stupid mistake they made before doing so at least.

<comment><USER4> First of all, props to Jeff for this blog post. He put himself in an embarrassing situation, but handled it gracefully, without excuses. Well done.

That said, I don't think the post is defensive at all. It's not that Jeff made "one stupid mistake" and everybody is jumping on him-- it's that Jeff has been dispensing advice about best practices, including backups, and failed (spectacularly) on a very basic point.</comment></comment>


Why wall street likes linkedin more than Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/08/04/why-wall-street-likes-linkedin-more-than-facebook/

<comment><USER2> Consistent Revenue for years which can even be more in future (for sure)</comment>


Ask HN: I want to create a software business, where do I start? - <AUTHOR> I'm sure a lot of us feel the same way, I know I do. We have great ideas for software but when we actually start thinking about creating a business, there are many legal hurtles we have to jump over in order to make everything "official."<p>To those who have done it, can you share advice with us? Is it possible starting a one-man business? Are there companies that help startups get their feet off the ground with the necessary resources? <comment><USER2> Not sure of your country but it's extremely simple in the UK.

Here's what I did in the UK.

1\. Create company for £15 on government website

2\. Get bank account in company name, applied online, took 20 minutes. I had card and everything within a week.

3\. Enrol for tax on government website (optional in UK if your company turnover is less than £80k). Bit confusing, but accountant can help and only takes 1/2 hour at most

4\. Start selling subs to my app, stripe integration

There are some admin tasks I have to do regularly:

1\. Monthly, keep on top of accounts. I use an app, QuickBooks online. But I've previously used a spreadsheet for my consultancy company as there were only a handful of invoices and expenses each month

2\. Every 3 months. Submit VAT returns and pay government tax. Takes 1/2 hour

5\. File accounts yearly. Accountant will do this for £400 per year or you can do it yourself (half days work, but confusing)

6\. File confirmation statement yearly (UK company thing, confirms who the shareholders are and the share composition). Costs £18, takes 10 mins

To break it down:

\- Incorporate company

\- Get bank account

\- Register for taxes

\- Make sure you do your admin

You might find you need to get certain things certified when providing ID, our Post Office does that. There's other little things I'm skipping over, like some people prefer not to use their home address and setup a virtual office, etc, but generally it's pretty simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Incredibly helpful. In the US here, some of these are definitely things I'll need to do, but I don't know the places I need to go yet. Something tells me that registering is easier in the UK, but I'll find out.

How do you keep on top of your accounts for your business?

<comment><USER2> In the new one it's mostly all automated, with the app it imports your bank statements and you just need to match the payments to invoices and classify the expenses. Upload pictures of any receipts for expenses, etc.

In my consultancy business I have a spreadsheet tab for invoices and one for expenses, and try and update it every month. And then a template for calculating the p&l accounts and tax I need to submit each year. I would use an app, but never get round to sorting it out.

I really would recommend just getting an accountant and accountancy app unless your turnover is very low.

It is worth getting your ledger codes right if you get to the sort of size where you employ people (codes are how you classify your income and spending), and I would recommend the less ledger codes the better, you can always create more later.

To be honest, you should be able to find a 'dummies guide' to setting up a business in the US, I would just buy that. Read it and then come back and ask more specific starting a web app business questions. People will recommend you the right US state to incorporate in and corp structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I started Surreal CMS 10 years ago. By far, my biggest fear was how to setup a business, taxes, etc.

It's actually quite easy.

I'm in the US, but from what I've read below, it's very similar to the UK. I think people get confused about the types of businesses and how they're taxed. For a one-man show (and even some larger businesses) an LLC is probably the easiest way to go.

With an LLC, your business taxes are passed through to you. Instead of filing taxes for yourself AND your business, you'll just file once and include a Schedule C for the business. Makes things a lot easier.

It's a bit different in each state, but setting up the business is a matter of searching for a name (usually done online) and submitting a couple of forms. Once you're "approved", you'll receive Articles of Organization.

You'll also need to get an EIN number from the IRS. You can do this online in minutes and print it out. Take all this to bank and you'll be able to setup an account. Now you're in business.

After that, the only really complicated thing is taxes. You'll need to pay quarterlies, and the amount is estimated from what you've made and what you expect to make. Once you have revenue, I 100% recommend hiring a CPA to help with this. They're not as expensive as you think. (I was doing my own taxes with software for a couple years. Then I hired a CPA and she saves me more money than I pay her each year.)

That said, until you actually have something earning revenue, you probably don't need to start the business yet. Here in the US, you can operate as a sole proprietor. The big drawback here is your personal assets aren't protected, but until you have customers you probably aren't worried about that.

I probably just made it sound more complicated than it really is, but I promise, once you get through the intial setup you'll think, "what was I ever worried about?" Just keep in mind that this is my experience as a one-man show. More complex business structures should probably consult with an attorney.

My takeaway is this: starting a business is easy. Running it can be tough sometimes, but it's one of the best decisisions I've ever made and it's extremely rewarding.

Best of luck!

Edit: fixed typos

<comment><AUTHOR> We've talked before- I really enjoyed your earlier HN posts on Surreal CMS and the experiences/challenges you've faced (and overcame).

My really big questions are when it comes to the taxes. I know I'll need some provider to take in payments, but then how do I report this properly to the IRS. Your explanation gives me some insight how it can be done for one-man shows. So you say the CPA helps you file all of this? Or do you do the quarterlies by yourself and go to the CPA with this?

What about all the legal? As a one-person business, I imagine it's too much to understand all the legal rules w/o consulting with an expert.

<comment><USER3> > So you say the CPA helps you file all of this? Or do you do the quarterlies > by yourself and go to the CPA with this?

Every year, I bring my invoices, receipts, etc. and my CPA figures out what I owe and handles all the details and the filing. Then she estimates my quarterly taxes and sends me "bills" before they're due. I basically write a check and I'm done.

A good CPA will meet with you when you get started to coach you on what things to keep track of (e.g. invoices, receipts, mileage, etc.).

> What about all the legal? As a one-person business, I imagine it's too much > to understand all the legal rules w/o consulting with an expert.

For more complex businesses, maybe. I've never had an issue. If you're really worried, consider getting a prepaid legal service as cheap insurance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello!

I have not started a business yet but have kept track of three resources folks have found useful (I think I saved them off of HN, not entirely sure):

Book:

Acceleration: What All Entrepreneurs Must Know about Startup Law [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NLK5GZM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Xv...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NLK5GZM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XvKaDbNHNK7GQ)

Blog (26 min read):

HOW TO REGISTER A COMPANY IN THE USA: COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE FOR FOUNDERS [http://aynuriev.com/how-to-register-company-usa/](http://aynuriev.com/how-to- register-company-usa/)

Free document generator (a YC company):

[https://business.axdraft.com](https://business.axdraft.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look at all of these resources, thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Checkout StartUpsForTheRestOfUs.com podcast, it has a lot of great info, start with greatest hits and then the archives.

You can start out as a sole proprietorship. Get an EIN number from the IRS website so you don't use your SSN.

Use stripe for your payments, you could create a separate business checking account but not 100% necessary till you start making sales.

If your software takes off, then think about an LLC or other structure.

</comment><comment><USER6> You're better off thinking about your idea, implementation, marketing strategy, etc. first. The "paperwork" is the easy part.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have all that done, the "paperwork" part is the step I'm at now. It's the "paperwork" part that's a mystery for me, as unless I imagine you are in business or have been exposed to it, there's a lot of area you've never covered before (this is the way it is for me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The folks over at Knowable ( knowable.fyi ) are launching an audio series on this topic that is really great. I got a chance to hear an early cut, and the content is top notch. I'd recommend adding yourself to get notified when it launches, as I learned new things even as someone who has launched a VC backed startup.

</comment><comment><USER8> Build the software first (or at least a proof of concept). Don't get caught up in paperwork, because that ultimately won't matter if you don't have anything to sell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion! I do have software that's ready, just need to start working in the "legal how-to's."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are in the US, don't bother with paper work or any of that garbage for now.

You can run sole proprietor and not bother with unnecessary paperwork for now.

I saw you said "software is ready." How many have you sold? What's your validation?

A business is about the cash, not the paperwork. I paid $500+ to register a startup that never got off the ground or even had a customer. Dumb, dumb past me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aren't taxes going to be an issue if I run as a "sole proprietor"?

<comment><USER9> Not really. 1040 Schedule C and 1040 Schedule SE.

Between an LLC and sole proprietorship, my understanding is that an LLC creates a legal barrier between yourself and the business. The tax implications are the same. LLCs, from what I understand, especially a one- member LLC will just be pass-through (I believe you can elect differently) tax-wise but an LLC protects your personal assets from the business.

No one should really mess with C-corps or S-corps until they have someone telling them to. It's expensive and cumbersome to maintain one. Stripe Atlas is misleading a lot of young startups into believing they need a Delaware C-Corp immediately, when really it just benefits VCs not having to make businesses convert to those structures. If you aren't going VC, don't bother.

For instance, a C-Corp costs about $700 / year before doing taxes. An LLC costs about $30 / year.

A C-corp requires you to file monthly (or is it yearly?) minutes... which costs money to do... and you'll be the president, secretary and treasurer of. Then you have to fill out forms and junk (Stripe Atlas makes this easy but costs $).

An LLC on the other hand, you file a yearly report basically just saying "Hi, we are still around." and pay your yearly dues to your state.

Sole proprietorship is even easier. You just declare yourself as one. Like, just say "I am a sole proprietor" and boom, you are one. No filing required (Check the state, I am sure some are different). You can file a DBA (Doing business as) with your state treasurer and still be a sole proprietorship.

To be honest, an LLC is probably the safest thing to do in the long-term but short-term sole proprietorship is fastest.

The thing that I do is have an all encompassing LLC that I run all of my projects under, rather than having a new structure for every business.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an incredibly helpful explanation of everything, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stripe Atlas provides a pretty good service for the nuts and bolts stuff. Getting going from the business side is best left to reading PG, SA, et. Al.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do those acronyms stand for, PG, SA, etc?

<comment><USER10> Paul Graham, Sam Altman

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Public-Pihole - <AUTHOR> https://public-pihole.com/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting. If they added DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS I'd use give them a try.</comment>


NSA: Please Stop Mailing Us FOIA Requests - <AUTHOR> http://www.mynsarecords.com/blog/2013-06-21-nsa-please-stop-sending-us-foia-requests/ <comment><USER2> So.. they said please, didn't threaten you, and pointed out a few potential problems with the method you are using (like missing return addresses).

That seems.. helpful?

<comment><AUTHOR> They were certainly polite. :)

I did a quick check for people submitting things like "FUCK YOU" and "YOUR MOM" in every field and deleted those before sending. A couple I let through had things like missing city but valid ZIP code, which I assume would actually be enough to get the letter to them. 95% of what was sent had a full address.

<comment><USER3> _A couple I let through had things like missing city but valid ZIP code, which I assume would actually be enough to get the letter to them_

Did you ever read their instructions for filing a FOIA request? "If you do not include a name and complete postal address, NSA will be unable to respond."[1]

While you are here I dont understand what you mean by:

"It seems that the NSA does not quite get that this is a protest, in addition to a request for information."

How did you expect them to act? And/or what behavior would constitute recognition that this is a "protest"? NSA is required by law to respond to FOIA requests. The civil servant that emailed you was doing what her employer told her to do so that she could continue to bring a paycheck home. Are all the "protest" FOIA requests supposed to get tossed in a burn bag at the end of the day?

[1] [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_foia_request/foia...](http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_foia_request/foia_request_form.shtml)

<comment><USER4> Yes, civil servants who flout the oath they took should be just as respected as those who don't.

> I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the > Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; > that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...

<comment><USER3> These people work in the FOIA compliance department. How did they violate their oath?

<comment><USER4> She works for the NSA's FOIA department, hence bearing sufficient responsibility for the NSA's wrongdoing.

<comment><USER5> Well, if she's lucky, and if the NSA is competent (at being scumbags) this lady never gets anywhere near anything interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As far as I am concerned that email is the work product of a dedicated civil servant. I wish more companies I interact with would do something like google my name in order to learn about my needs and then email me advice on how to better utilize their service.

</comment><comment><USER6> Protesting can be great. But if a protest only affects low-level paper handlers with no decision making power, then what are you really accomplishing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am quite sure that the fact that they are getting so many requests will travel up higher than the paper handlers. :)

<comment><USER7> What makes you so sure?

<comment><USER8> Well doing nothing is one way to be sure that it won't travel up to the higher ups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the actual protest? That the paper FOIA requests don't include the required information to honor said request, allowing the NSA to throw out the requests entirely without having to spend time fulfilling them?

Sounds more like the ~~company~~ guy is trying to cover for ~~its~~ his fuckup filling out the forms. It's a _much_ more effective protest to actually make the NSA follow through with the requests.

Edit: Also, from [http://www.mynsarecords.com/contact/](http://www.mynsarecords.com/contact/)

        To reach Jon, please e-mail: jcorbett [at] fourtentech.com

Yes, how did they get your email, indeed. Probably some kind of spy technology.

This man is an idiot, please don't fill up HN with this drivel.

<comment><USER10> > This man is an idiot, please don't fill up HN with this drivel.

This personal insult is uncalled for. It's easy to sit around and complain about what the government is doing, but this man has actually gone out and done something - setting up infrastructure to make it easier for the average person to submit these requests, he is spreading the word, etc. He has also done great work protesting the TSA.

<comment><USER11> The linked post is not "great work". It's ignorance piled on indignation.

<comment><USER12> Piled on your mom!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > It seems that the NSA does not quite get that this is a protest

I don't get it. What's it achieving?

> Imagine the NSA ending up with a desk full of a million records requests, > and what a statement that would make, even if they refuse to process every > one of them.

Well, they've got at least 500 so far. Only nine hundred and ninety nine thousand to go.

I wonder how many of those 500 have any records with NSA?

<comment><USER14> 500.

The NSA is capturing all internet and telephone traffic for every individual on this planet with a phone or email account.

But perhaps they don't index it by person name, and so 500 becomes 0 because of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> We include the phone number for them so they can look it up :)

<comment><USER15> Still don't see the point. You're not going to find anything like phone transcripts or what tags might be applied to your person. I'm guessing 99% of the requests will be sent back with "we don't have a folder specifically for you". Because there isn't one...specifically. We're probably all in their database as some random character string, only actually linked to our identity if needed. Unless they have an actual investigation on anyone requesting information, I doubt anyone's going to get anything more that a boilerplate response.

Also, the site sending out mail that will just be thrown out because it's not correctly filled out is a complete waste. I just don't see what the goal of this is. Just to spam snail mail? If the goal is to just clog up their office and be a general nuisance as a protest of some sort...at least the forms would not be sent if they don't have all mailing information. Otherwise it looks like really childish trolling. To me that is. You providing a phone number does nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> In order for a record to be releasable under FOIA, it need not be in a file attached to your name. If I ask the NSA for every document that has the word "purple" in it, they are required to provide that document or claim a valid statutory exemption. Likewise, if I ask them for any record that contains 8005551212, they are required to provide it regardless of the labeling on its container.

<comment><USER3> It is now clear that you have not done any research about what constitutes a valid FOIA request. If you would like to do some research the DOJ Procedures guide that I have previously recommended is extremely detailed and thorough. I was serious when I said you might enjoy reading it if you are interested in FOIA. Please note, I have only included footnotes 107 and 108 because they seem to be the most relevant to this comment.

      Courts have recognized that the legislative history of the 1974 FOIA
      amendments indicates that a description of a requested record is
      sufficient if it enables a professional agency employee familiar with
      the subject area to locate the record with a "reasonable amount of
      effort."[105] Courts have also found that requests that are so broad and
      sweeping that they lack specificity are not reasonably described.[106]

      Courts have explained that "[t]he rationale for this rule is that
      FOIA was not intended to reduce government agencies to full-time
      investigators on behalf of requesters,"[107] or to allow requesters
      to conduct "fishing expeditions" through agencyfiles.108 Courts have
      recognized that an agency's FOIA staff is neither required to have
      "clairvoyant capabilities" to discern the requester's needs,[109] nor
      must they spend "countless numbers of personnel hours seeking needles in
      bureaucratic haystacks."[110]

      [107] Assassination Archives & Research Ctr. v. CIA, 720 F. Supp. 217,
      219 (D.D.C. 1989), aff'd in pertinent part, No. 89-5414, 1990 WL
      123924 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 13, 1990) (per curiam); accord Nurse v. Sec'y
      of the Air Force, 231 F. Supp. 2d 323, 329 (D.D.C. 2002) (quoting
      Assassination Archives & Research Ctr., 720 F. Supp. at 219); see,
      e.g., Bloeser v. DOJ, 811 F. Supp. 2d 316, 321 (D.D.C. 2011) (reasoning
      that "[b]ecause 'FOIA' was not intended to reduce government agencies
      to full-time investigators on behalf of requesters, . . . [t]o the
      extent that plaintiff can identify documents which he believes exist in
      a particular office within [DOJ], such identifying information should
      have been included as part of his original FOIA request"); Satterlee
      v. IRS, No. 05-3181, 2006 WL 3160963, at *3 (W.D. Mo. Oct. 30, 2006)
      (finding that request was improper where it would require agency to
      "conduct legal research" and answer questions "disguised as . . . FOIA
      request"); Frank v. DOJ, 941 F. Supp. 4, 5 (D.D.C. 1996) (stating that
      agency is not required to "dig out all the information that might
      exist, in whatever form or place it might be found, and to create
      a document that answers plaintiff's questions"); Lamb v. IRS, 871
      F. Supp. 301, 304 (E.D. Mich. 1994) (finding requests outside scope of
      FOIA when they require legal research, are unspecific, or seek answers
      to interrogatories); Trenerry v. Dep't of the Treasury, No. 92-5053,
      1993 WL 26813, at *3 (10th Cir. Feb. 5, 1993) (holding that agency not
      required to provide personal services such as legal research).

      [108] Immanuel v. Sec'y of the Treasury, No. 94-884, 1995 WL 464141,
      at *1 (D. Md. Apr. 4, 1995), aff'd, 81 F.3d 150 (4th Cir. 1996)
      (unpublished table decision); see also Dale v. IRS, 238 F. Supp. 2d 99,
      104-05 (D.D.C. 2002) (concluding that request seeking "'any and all
      documents . . . that refer or relate in any way'" to requester failed to
      reasonably describe records sought and "amounted to an all-encompassing
      fishing expedition of files at [agency's] offices across the country, at
      taxpayer expense").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They found your e-mail without you giving it to them? Sounds like NSA.

<comment><USER16> Pretty spooky. Or maybe the woman just went to his website, and looked at the contact page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but... I didn't give them my Web site, either. All they had was my name as the return address.

<comment><USER17> took me 30 seconds...

If I have your name, which is: Jonathan Corbett.

I google searched "Jonathan Corbett NSA"

The first link is your twitter account: [https://twitter.com/tsaoutourpants](https://twitter.com/tsaoutourpants)

Which mentions: [http://www.mynsarecords.com/](http://www.mynsarecords.com/)

I do a whois on the site: (public information)

          Corbett, Jonathan  firstname.lastname@example.com
          FourTen Technologies, Inc.
          407 Lincoln Road
          11th Floor
          Miami Beach, Florida 33139
          United States
          8774100410

I am assuming he emailed you either there or got your email from your website which has it in the contact section...

Not very difficult really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Read receipt requested? That seems unnecessary given its the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER19> So the NSA's secret spy tool is Google search?

</comment><comment><USER20> You would think the NSA would sign outgoing communication.

Guess not.</comment>


I Want a Smartwatch That Can Do More - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/karticks-consultancy/i-want-a-smartwatch-that-can-do-more-4a788e3b2f95 <comment><USER2> Until we solve the battery problem I do not see all these additions being of much benefit.

<comment><AUTHOR> A bigger smartwatch has a lot more space for a battery.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to set up a laptop for teaching a teenager programming - <AUTHOR> The internet connection is pretty bad so I'd like the install to be as self-contained as possible. The programming language does not matter, what's important is the ability to teach basic principles while being fun/interesting enough and  does not require online content. A linux based system would be an added bonus <comment><USER2> I think this looks like a good way to teach a teen using minecraft. It is windows 10 based though, and doesn't look to use an actual programming language, but does provide a good way of learning the fundamentals that most languages do have. [https://makecode.com/blog/minecraft/10-18-2017](https://makecode.com/blog/minecraft/10-18-2017) After they make it through that you could transition them to learning java and making minecraft mods which should be interesting enough. Personally, I think having access to google/stack overflow is a must when learning a language, not being able to ask or find answers to questions can be a huge turn off for newer programmers and may make them want to give up.</comment>


Tips for juggling fatherhood and your startup - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/21/4-tips-for-juggling-fatherhood-and-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> He has been a father for two weeks, hmmm sure the right guy to give tips?

Perhaps the title should be, how to exploit anything to get some clicks .... Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there who just get on with it :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> any other new dads on hacker news? What tips do you have?

happy father's day!</comment>