Bill Gates: Bitcoin Is 'Better Than Currency' - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238103 <comment><USER2> At the moment Bitcoin is not better than other currencies because it is a layer on top of existing currencies and their related infrastructure. Because almost nobody accepts Bitcoins there is a constant need to convert back and forth between Bitcoins and other currencies. While I really liked the idea of Bitcoin when it came into existence I now tend to believe that Bitcoin will die slowly because it does not solve any important problem for the average person. Anonymity is not important for almost all transactions. Relying on banks is not an issue for most people. Transaction are executed fast enough and are cheap enough in most cases. There is just not enough incentive to adopt Bitcoin.

<comment><USER3> This is especially true for online purchases. Right now the entire ecosystem of Amazon / Paypal with banking services directly linked or through credit / debit cards, works pretty flawlessly. You can buy anything on the internet immediately with real money linked to FDIC insured banks running through two huge easily trusted middlemen, with little to no setup other than having bank account.

<comment><USER4> You are clearly an American :) Also, Amazon would approximately double its profit if it were not forced to pay the 2% markup on credit card charges. And before you criticize coinbase for their 1% conversion fee circle is here with 0% :)

<comment><USER5> Amazon will accept your credit card payment and won't accept your Bitcoins, which is a pretty good indication of which payment method they feel is more hassle than it's worth.

<comment><USER6> Fortunately Overstock does accept Bitcoin already[0], so it's a pretty good indicator that there are other considerations too. Also, you can use Gyft[1] to spend bitcoin on Amazon and even get a discount - if there's enough business that another company can support itself on users you are not catering for, then there's definitely a business case...

[0]: [http://www.overstock.com/bitcoin](http://www.overstock.com/bitcoin) [1]: [http://www.gyft.com/](http://www.gyft.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like bitcoin supporters, in talking about things like the convenience and simplicity of transactions, while not incorrect, are missing the critical issues that are going to determine bitcoin's fate.

If we look at bitcoin vs. US banknotes, a paypal balance, a pile of gold bars in a bunker, whatever, if we're looking at how bitcoin performs vs. all these things at the moment in time when we're transferring them to someone else, bitcoin is superior in every case. The problem is this window is brief. Non- transactional moments in the life of bitcoin is where the problem lies.

Looking at historic pricing of bitcoin, and seeing a peak at a little over $1k, what does the future price need to be for people to feel comfortable receiving bitcoins and just holding onto and forgetting about them, in the same way they could with, say, 100 bucks in their wallet? Being divisible down to 8 decimal places might rationally address the issue of how to spend something where the base unit costs as much as an Xbox. But even if bitcoin could somehow split at something like 300 or 500:1, to make a bitcoin roughly equal to a US dollar or a Euro, does that really solve the problem of perception? The historical chart, with the accelerated volume and insane swings in both directions, might never recede from the mind of the public.

I just have a hard time understanding what a path to acceptance as a legitimate currency looks like. Years of price stability would be a great start. But the beginning of that period hasn't even begun. In the past month alone, the price has moved by 30%, and daily volatility regularly sees the price change by 5%. I can sort of squint my eyes and imagine scenarios where bitcoin, the currency, wins. What I can't see is how bitcoin, the speculative investment, also does well. That these two things are at odds leads to other issues, too, but this is already unnecessarily long.

<comment><USER8> > I can sort of squint my eyes and imagine scenarios where bitcoin, the > currency, wins. What I can't see is how bitcoin, the speculative investment, > also does well. That these two things are at odds leads to other issues, > too, but this is already unnecessarily long.

I don't think those two things are are necessarily at odds. Many people trade well-established currencies for investment purposes. Forex is bigger than futures or equities markets with USD as the most popular currency.

<comment><USER7> The speculation and trading of bitcoin, if it succeeds as a currency is a given, I think. But right now, some of its most vocal/visible supporters view it as a long term, buy and hold investment, and not just as a hedge.

With equities, no matter how far a stock price declines, profit is still there to be returned to shareholders. Other currencies don't provide the same kind of guarantees, but the backing of governments and inertia might be more valuable. Once people grow concerned that the only thing propping up the long term value of bitcoin is the person next to them believing in it, a quick reversal of sentiment, with ugly consequences, seems likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don't have to be physically in the same place and, of course, for large transactions, currency can get pretty inconvenient."_

Yes, bitcoin has some specific traits that are superior to carrying wads of cash. Much like many other forms of digital exchange. This is not really news.

<comment><USER10> Another advantage if I understand correctly is no middleman to deal with. No more banks and not beholden to their policies and procedures.

<comment><USER8> There is a middleman. Someone has to maintain the block chain where all the transactions are written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I mean, anyone who ever used bitcoin will see how it's clearly superior than going to a bank office, getting an account, waiting days for it all to work out. And then transactions take a night (at least in the countries I've lived in).

Bitcoin transactions show up instantly. There's no need to a trusted middle man. Anyone I show it to is swooned, because it's simply really really cool.

<comment> aaron-lebo Signing up for Coinbase isn't instant. Yes, you could find someone locally to exchange cash for Bitcoin, but that's hoping for a lot in terms of security, and isn't exactly convenient, either.

<comment><USER12> Signing up for Circle is instant.

<comment> aaron-lebo When I said signing up, I meant the whole process of getting to where you can actually exchange USD for Bitcoin. On Coinbase they ask for bank account information, and that can take several days to verify.

There is no process of identity verification on Circle before you can actually buy Bitcoin from them?

<comment><USER13> No there isn't. I have no idea how they pulled it off, but it really is instant. In less than 5 minutes, I went from not having a Circle account to having a Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain transferring BTC I bought with a credit card to my own private wallet.

Circle is amazing.

<comment> aaron-lebo The issue with this (as you probably know) has always been the danger of chargebacks.

I ran across a reddit post [1] discussing it. I dunno if they've completely dealt with the issue, but it is pretty fascinating to see they are even trying.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2hvld5/let_me_addre...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2hvld5/let_me_address_the_elephant_in_the_room_how/)

<comment><USER14> Is it possible to charge it as a cash advance to avoid that issue? It's essentially a cash advance...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I tend to shudder when people talk about bitcoin being "cheap". There's a massive amount of energy wasted to maintain the public ledger. It became much more clear to me how this impacts the cost of transacting bitcoins after reading this article: [http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/how-many-bitcoins- does-...](http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/how-many-bitcoins-does-it-cost- to-maintain-the-bitcoin-network)

...and particularly after seeing this graph: [https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per- transaction](https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction)

I'm more excited about proof-of-stake, as there isn't this arms race to throw more and more computing power to generate bitcoins. I'm not sure why it hasn't seen more adoption, but I will admit that I don't pay a lot of attention to the cryptocurrency space...

<comment><USER16> Proof-of-stake isn't being adopted because it simply doesn't solve the Byzayntine General's problem [1].

[1] [http://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf](http://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Interesting, thanks. I see the problem, but this paper takes as a given that individuals can introduce transactions that tilt the system in their favor. I can't immediately see a solution to this, but I don't think it's necessarily impossible.

An additional problem I just thought of, however, is that there will be some number of stakeholders that leave the network, lose their keys, etc., and there is a chance that they are the only ones chosen to sign a given history extension. So there has to be some way to recover from this, while still being resistant to denial-of-service attacks.</comment></comment></comment>


Sendfile: a system call for web developers to know about - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2016/01/23/sendfile-a-new-to-me-system-call/ <comment><USER2> Related...Apache, nginx, and probably other web servers can be coerced into handling sendfile() for you.

[https://tn123.org/mod_xsendfile/](https://tn123.org/mod_xsendfile/) [https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/examples/x...](https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/examples/xsendfile/#)

<comment><USER3> That nginx config is hard to grok. Is it really that complicated and not just "sendfile = on" ?

<comment><USER4> If you have a public url for a file, then you can just point your users to that url and use sendfile=on. Nginx will then use sendfile.

But consider the usecase where you have a bigger download hidden behind some kind of authentication. You'd do that authentication in your normal backend and return the X-Accel-Redirect header in your response. Nginx will then take over and send the data using sendfile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really old but the article mentions splice() and here's the original thinking on that syscall. Linux didn't take all the ideas but they took some:

[http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/splice.pdf](http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/splice.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Or even earlier there is "Exploiting In-Kernel Data Paths to Improve I/O Throughput and CPU Availability" by Fall and Pasquale: [https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~pasquale/Research/Papers/usenix93.p...](https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~pasquale/Research/Papers/usenix93.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems quite useless to me. For, what if you want to prefix the file with a header first, or add a trailer? Or what if you want to escape certain parts, or zip the file before sending? Or if you want to send the file incrementally?

It is better (more powerful) to have simple primitives, and work up from them.

If you really want something like sendfile, you could also just find the right library.

<comment><USER5> Any well written server application eventually comes down to how fast can you copy the data. This avoids a copy so it can double performance.

As for headers/trailers, it's a file descriptor, nothing prevents you from writing to it before or after the sendfile() call.

Simple primitives are fine but this is faster. Unless you are going to do the page flipping tricks that Irix did, you can't approach this speed (and Irix tricks aren't as fast as this, better than the bcopy() but not as fast as this).

<comment><USER8> Reality is sometimes a bit different from theory here. Let's say you want to send a small amount of data (1k) from a file to network, some header before it and some trailer behind it. With sendfile you would do three system calls, two normal writes and a sendfile. Without it you would read the file, copy the content, the header and the trailer into a single buffer and issue a single write syscall with it (of course you have the read call before). Due to the lower number of write calls this __could __be faster then sendfile, as copying a small amount of data might yield a lower overhead then multiple write requests. Of course that situation will change depending on the amount of data - so I think sendfile is one possible optimization that should be benchmarked for the particular application before using it everywhere.

<comment><USER9> Three syscalls instead of one will probably not make a difference. Copying a 50mb file multiple times will.

<comment><USER10> But they aren't free and if the file size is sufficiently small, the overhead of the constant overhead of the additional syscalls will dwarf the variable overhead of the extra copy. FreeBSD/OS X's sendfile allows specifying a header and trailer in a single syscall to avoid this limitation.

<comment><USER9> I'd be interested in reading how small the file has to be for this to be necessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pokemon Yellow hack recodes the game from within - <AUTHOR> http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=332488&sid=1d8670bd80327418d202b6608e5cd2a9#332488 <comment><USER2> This is a great example of Bratus et al refer to as a "weird machine" [1], in which an attacker uses crafted input to create a new and unexpected computational environment. That is, by using special input, the attacker manipulates pieces of the target program to act like a CPU that processes "weird commands" (ie more special inputs are used as assembly instructions that run on the weird machine).

Anyway, there is a rising field ("language-theoretic security") that studies this phenomenon. If this Pokemon example interests you, then you should give it a look.

[1]<http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sergey/langsec/>

<comment><USER3> A fantastic talk by Meredith L. Patterson on this very topic at 28c3:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEfedtQVOY>

<comment><USER4> Wow - excellent link. I've been thinking about this lately. I'm not alone in thinking that languages are going to be important here. This is a great resource for further study! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating. I always wondered if this sort of thing was possible when I noticed as a child that pressing multiple buttons at the same time on my parents calculator made the screen show stuff that wasn't actually real numbers (things like a 2 with a part missing, etc.). Likewise seeing which buttons on the VCR have precedence (e.g. if I hold down "play" and press "stop" then what happens? And vice versa?). I always assumed the device wouldn't be designed comprehensively to handle all possible inputs like that, so there was a chance some of them would allow you to do funky unintended stuff.

Given the complexity and freedom of access that a videogame has, I'm not surprised that this hack is technically possible, but it is very impressive that someone's managed to do it!

<comment><USER6> There's this kind of unintended effects all over the place in tech.

A particularly interesting one for programmers might be the M6502 CPU.

All opcodes on the M6502 are 8 bits. Due to the way it was implemented in order to keep transistor count low, various patterns will trigger specific functionality at specific stages of execution (you can find a javascript emulation of it that displays the execution in excruciating detail as the result of creating a transistor exact clone of the design by decapping an actual 6502 CPU and scanning it...).

These were arranged so that the documented instructions present a suitably useful instruction set. But all of the remaining opcodes still does _something_ that was simply deemed pointless by the designers.

Some have been found useful by demo writers in particular as a way of saving cycles. Some are just totally bizarre and/or unstable. Some does fun stuff like putting more than one value on the memory bus at the same time. Some even locks the CPU up so solid it needs to be power cycled to recover...

Here's an overview of the nitty gritty details from someone who actually knows what they're talking about: <http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "This script walks from the Viridian City pokemon store to Oak's Lab in the most efficient way possible. The walk-thru-grass function guarantees that no wild battles will happen by manipulating the game's random number generator."

I've noticed similar behavior before in the Fire Emblem series. <http://m.ign.com/walkthroughs/520430>

<comment><USER8> Most tool-assisted speedruns (TASes) for old-school video games, usually RPGs like Pokemon, include a "manipulates luck" clause. The emulator uses save- states, and if there's a random encounter, the player reverts to an earlier state. Repeat until successful.

Some games have naturally exploitable RNGs too. The GBA RPG Golden Sun and its sequel, for example, had a RNG that was completely reverse-engineered for players to get the top items that normally only randomly drop extremely rarely.

<comment><USER9> see also: Nethack RNG trickery: [http://taeb- nethack.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/predicting-and-co...](http://taeb- nethack.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/predicting-and-controlling-nethacks.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The next step is to find a vulnerable seam like this in the real universe.

<comment><USER11> Yudkowsky Ambition scale (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702>):

> 10) We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is > running on.

It seems Software Engineering still has a long ways to go as a discipline: games like this fall to exploits by a small community after only a few years, while somehow the universe we live in has survived our civilization (and maybe others) banging on it for billions without any noticeable hiccups. ;)

<comment><USER12> I think the issue is most software is not designed with security as a primary concern, so a determined users can produce a convoluted input that breaks a system. Having said that, if you take out buffer overflow exploits, how many games would still be hacked?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that a key part of the hack requires the hardware to reset while a save game write is in progress. This causes the file to have invalid data -- an inventory list count is set to an "impossible" value.

Then, within the game, the invalid-length-list is used to overwrite other arbitrary locations, including a function pointer to an update procedure. Once that's overwritten he can jump to his own code and it's "game over" as in, he completely controls the hardware.

But from what I can see, it wouldn't be possible without the initial hardware resetting during a write. Not that it diminishes the awesomeness, it'd just be a bit purer if it was a software-only hack.

<comment><USER14> The reset button is software-only. On most games, you can do a reset by holding down all four buttons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're really into this, spend some more time on tasvideos.org

The guys that do these tool-assisted speed runs are incredible. One fellow plays 4 Mega Mans all at once with a single controller doing input for all 4 games at the same time.

This Pokemon hack is insane, but was inspired by a guy who uses it to beat the game in around 2 minutes. That particular speed run abuses the fact that everything in the game has a simple identifier. So, what he does is inserts a warp point into his inventory, drops it in front of himself, and walks through it to the end of the game.

<comment><USER16> Here's a Chrono Trigger TAS that uses similar types of hacks as this Pokemon one:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVVcnGm0eM&sns=em](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVVcnGm0eM&sns=em)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> His blog post goes into a little more detail about the actual "code" that runs than the forum post

<http://aurellem.org/vba-clojure/html/total-control.html>

<comment><USER18> It's quite interesting:

        I built a layer of clojure code on top of the JNI bindings to get
        an entirely functional interface to vba-rerecording. This
        interface treats state of the emulator as an immutable object, and
        allows me to do everything I could do with the lower level C
        interface in a functional manner. Using this functional code, I
        wrote search programs that take a particular game-state and try
        out different combinations of button presses to get any desired
        effect. By combining different styles of search with different
        initial conditions

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One more aspect to this is how the game becomes interesting _because it has bugs_ , not because it is bug-free.

<comment><USER20> One popular game bug in the Quake series was "strafe jumping" [1]. It became a canonical movement technique that got ported into other games.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafe-jumping>

<comment><USER21> Another one is "wavedashing" in Smash Melee. Not really a _bug_ , but certainly strange behavior that became vital in competitive play.

<comment><USER22> so many exploits in that game.. so many days i'll never get back.. anyone down for a quickie?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're interested in seeing what happens when you _really_ want to hack the game though glitching/RAM abuse via cheat codes, check out this Let's Play of Pokemon Blue.

<http://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Blue/Update%2001/>

<comment><USER23> Sigh... you know, I really could've used those 4 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is really clever. Figuring out the first bootstrapping program with such a limited instruction set must have been a pain though.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's hilarious how much the My Little Pony reference derailed their conversation and excitement about the awesome hack.

</comment><comment><USER26> Or you can just rewrite the game from source code :)

<https://github.com/kanzure/pokecrystal>

<https://bitbucket.org/iimarckus/pokered>

(Red is fairly close to being the same as Yellow. But there are definitely differences.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Now I might get stuck reading the author's blog all day: <http://aurellem.org/>

The Cortex project they having going is stellar and there are some _great_ examples of Clojure-java interop.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how many job offers this guy's going to get from security companies over the next 24 hours...

<comment><USER12> Probably not many. He used a buffer overflow exploit (found by someone else) to achieve arbitrary code execution (in a program not designed for security). That is not a trivial task (given the limited number of op-codes he was able to use), but not something that deserves job offers.

<comment><USER27> I think you overestimate how easy it is to hire people capable of overflowing buffers on their own initiative.

<comment><USER28> I think you underestimate how easy it is to exploit buffer overflows on systems with no exploit mitigations. Come back when you have ASLR and DEP running on the gameboy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just another reminder that anything is possible.

For those that are wondering if something like this is possible outside of computers/video games, I would recommend a study of Lucid Dreaming. If brain hacking is possible, this has to be the best method of entry into the system.

</comment><comment><USER30> So am I correct in my understanding that this sort of hack is made possible only because the Gameboy uses an 8080 derived chip with Von Neumann architecture? ie. if it used a Z8 (or any other Harvard Arch chip) it wouldn't be possible to "bootstrap" like this?

</comment><comment><USER31> I have nothing but admiration for people that do this.

Wow!

</comment><comment><USER32> Holy f this completely blew my mind

</comment><comment><USER33> Beautifully done.

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh, that's how you beat the game...

</comment><comment><USER35> wow, this is amazing.</comment>


Introducing Nemo: A Pythonic Haml - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/9cloud/Nemo

<comment><USER2> I like what I see and of course I had to optimize it for my very peculiar taste:

        html
        head
          title My web page
          meta name=this content=that
          link rel=stylesheet href=style.css
          script src=jquery.js
        body
          header
            logo
              img src=logo.jpg
          main
            content .center
              h1 Welcome to my site
              p
                This is my first post
                Feel free to comment at the end.

              pre #hello
                a=1+2+3
                print a

          footer
            p no copyrights at all

Assume every first word is a known tag or convert it to div with id. Use significant white space. Content tags like 'p' or 'pre' are closed by a blank line.

It may work for 90% of my own projects and it is by far the simplest markup I have seen, evar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you fork it on Github?

I'd love to see your code.

Right now, its' looking like a better version of SPHaml, but who can tell without seeing the gotchas'.

Like when it comes to assumptions, you'd be surprised how many times I write the word "option" as the first thing in a sentence. =)

<comment><USER2> No no that's just a quick brain dump just to see if it could be optimized a bit further. I love simplicity and always try to simplify stuff just for the fun of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it.

If you do get the time, check out the code and see if you can tweak things to your liking.

I'll be doing a cleanup/refactoring later this week to make things better.

However, the core of Nemos' parsing is handled by pyparsing, so if you can read and write eBNF, then you can tweak Nemos' syntax to your liking pretty easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should probably mention. Nemo is built on top of Mako, so there's a tiny speed bump for Nemo processing then its as fast as Mako once the templates are compiled and cached.

Mako is faster than Django templates--at least by a factor of 4--and in the neighborhood of speed with Cheetah. Only Spitfire templates are faster.

This is important for any app that is CPU bound due to rendering speed.

</comment><comment><USER3> A while back, I wrote a very small Python HTML rendering library that gives some of the benefits of this notation while still being Python source code. You _may_ find it interesting if this is the sort of thing you find interesting...

<http://hotwax.cjmunday.com/python.html#sec-1.2>

See the CherryPy file browser example later in the page for a demonstration of how it's used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh definitely.

To me, it seems that _everyone_ is striving to find an easier way to programmatically create HTML in Python. The current range of templating languages just don't cut it.

I think there's no definitive solution partially because everyone is copying Haml, and Hamls' syntax and trade-offs aren't really appropriate for Python users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been contributing to another HAML derivitive for python called HamlPy (<https://github.com/jessemiller/HamlPy>). It compiles down to Django templates, which made it very easy for me to convert my existing project. It's under pretty active development right now.

<comment><USER5> I forked that project and made it compile down to a Mako template (I use pylons). <https://github.com/raineri/MakoHaml> :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You might want to update your readme file so everyone knows that it compiles down to Mako just at a glance.

Right now its confusing.

But if I'd known about this project a few days ago, you'd have definitely been added to my list of Muses.

Also, does your fork support the full range of Mako control structures? Looking at the nodes.py it seems that its still targeted towards a Django- templates backend.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I quickly hacked it together, I will update the readme soon. It does support the mako control structures. You see them rendered around line 200 in nodes.py.

<comment><AUTHOR> You forgot to change the list of self-closing tags.

I'd suggest making 'while' self closing.

How do you handle Mako defs, and namespace tags?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Mixed content documents, and more rope than you know what to do with. That's Nemo."

Hilarious. And probably true.

</comment><comment><USER7> Love it! And will definitely use it. I was looking at using Haml to build my sites alongside Django but I'll give this a try!

</comment><comment><USER8> Another one: <https://github.com/riffm/mint>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I forgot about Mint.

I don't want to talk badly about it--because to be honest it has some really cool features like chained-method-calls that allow you to quickly compose HTML attributes via inheritance----but Mint has always struck me as more Perl than Python.

Look at this:

        @p.class(title).title({{ doc.title }}) {{ doc.title }}

That transforms into this HTML (unescaped urls because Mint produces XML by default):

            title

The alternative in Nemo is:

        % p .'title' title='${doc.title}'   ||   ${ doc.title }

I don't know why Nemo looks better in my eyes but I think it has to do with explicit separation, and string substitution instead of a method-call syntax.

Mint feels like a programming language that happens to produce HTML as a side- effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So awesome! Was looking just for this last week! Than you sir! Kudos! =)</comment>


Strange Attractors - <AUTHOR> http://pollrobots.github.io/strange.html#GKISQQMCTDLATCLQUPMOCVTOTRRIMA <comment><AUTHOR> Notes:

This finds and displays a quadratic strange attractor in three dimensions. The Z dimension is used to choose a color by mapping to hue.

The search button will find different attractors, the code makes some effort to ensure that it finds "interesting" parameters.

Increasing the density will make the image clearer at the expense of compute time.

View in 3D will show the same parameters as a particle cloud.

</comment><comment><USER2> The "search" button is something like "random"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It's randomly searching the state space for interesting parameters.</comment></comment>


Good job Apple. You fucked the world... - <AUTHOR> http://www.baekdal.com/opinion/good-job-apple-you-fucked-the-world/

<comment><USER2> This is why I don't buy Apple products in the first place... their ethics as a company are not exactly news. Don't be surprised at what happens when you give money to a tyrant.

Since I'm probably about to be downvoted out of existence by Apple fans, it was nice knowing you HN.

<comment><USER3> So it's ethical to copy and deceive but not to defend your own ideas?

<comment><USER4> "Patents are okay when it's Apple getting them."

<comment><USER5> All companies, including Samsung, have sued others for patents, including trivial patents, including in this very issue. So it would hypocritical for Samsung to cry because it lost the trial.

Now Samsung has to either make a different enough phone, or pay Apple a cut. In any case, it's not like we're loosing much as consumers. Even if we are to absorb the extra costs of patenting some phone tech. A $20 more expensive phone? Big deal, that's less than the monthly phone bill. If anything, we might get some original UI concepts by Samsung in their effort not to fork for Apple patented concepts.

That said, there is a field, were patents are literally killing people, either by illness or by starvation, by technically inflating the cost of medicine and agriculture. Talking about Big Pharma and Monsanto patents. How about some outrage for those?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple did what they had to do and Samsung did not just try to solve a usability problem, they willfully copied Apple even when they knew there were patents on these features. The reason Microsoft is exempt is because they licensed rights to these patents and agreed to steer clear of the aesthetics of the iPhone which they did with Nokia's version of Windows Phone. And I think the Metro UI is creative and innovated while Android and what Samsung is actually devoid of creativity and innovation.

Given all the years that Samsung has been making phones they could have come up with these solutions but they didn't. If tap to zoom was so obvious why didn't they do it? Why was Apple the first to do it?

Apple has been screwed before. And mostly by Microsoft copying features and putting them into Windows while marginalizing Apple just enough to keep their market share small enough so they were not a threat, but big enough so they could survive and create new features which Microsoft could "borrow" time and again. Innovation is a process and Apple does a good job of doing it incrementally with each OS X update. The original OS X did not have gestures. They worked on the iPad and iPhone for 6 years before releasing it. They carefully worked out the gestures, which the Open Source community was experimenting with but was completely ignored by Microsoft. Now Apple's OS X relies on a solid trackpad with lots of gestures in Mountain Lion and Microsoft is jumping in with many similar features in Windows 8 to make it a tablet-friendly OS. Without the patent protects Apple would continue to be marginalized and since they are known as a strong innovator I think it is best for them to defend their work as much as possible.

Consider what The Oatmeal's review or Telsa's contributions and how Edison took advantage of him because Tesla did not protect his work with patents while Edison leveraged the system as much as possible for his personal benefit. Tesla felt his work should benefit the world. The result was that Edison won, for now.

<http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla>

Apple's second act under Steve Jobs has been to fight to protect the hard work done by it's employees and continue pushing the envelope.

This is not the end of creativity and innovation for other companies. It is insulting and disgusting to suggest that. Copying Apple is not innovation. The likely result here will be more unique offerings from the Android OEMs who will be forced to blaze their own trail just as Microsoft has done with Windows Phone.

</comment><comment><USER4> The level of Apple fanboyism on Hacker News is really evident in comment threads like these.

<comment><USER5> So, you preemptively assume that anyone defending Apple in this thread or others cannot be a rational individual with valid arguments but surely a "fanboy".

In other words, yours is the only stance that can ever be right in this issue.

Am I getting this right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's 'just business'. Agreeing or not doesn't really matter and the 3 people here not buying Apple products because of it also doesn't matter. Apple makes (in my opinion) great hardware: I haven't found a better iPad-like or Air-like or even Macbook-like. I like the Lenovo t420 but I like my Macbook more; I really don't care at all about looks or brand; it's just nice to work with IMHO.

This kind of 'practice' has been going on for a looooong time. All 'younger' people should read about MS in the 80s & 90s. You didn't see it and maybe you think they are great now and Windows 7/8 is so much better than mac/lin etc; read up on the history. They used to be hardcore evil. If HN was around in those times, there would be stories of disgust and misery on the frontpage every single day. It's nothing new.

Companies defend their backyard in any way possible and they just add power- points to their company by taking this kind of action. If they didn't take this action or they would've lost, maybe Samsung could just 1 to 1 copy their products and get away with that. Would that be good for consumers? I don't think so. I am against patents and i'm actually against all patents; I don't believe they are for the greater good of humanity. If you cannot get your 'invested research money/time' (which is bullshit for most patents) back by execution, maybe you should just sell the entire research to a company that can and not try to peddle it yourself.

But as long as this kind of shit exists, don't worry about it. It doesn't affect you nor 'the consumer', Samsung has to say that as 1000s and 1000s of companies did before them who lost. In reality Samsung just pays something per infringing product sold to Apple and that's it. Hopefully cases like this will have companies fighting harder against patents and make pacts to open up patents for the real greater good. Not sure if I'll see that in my lifetime though :)

<comment><USER8> It's not just those of us who won't buy from them. It's about how many people we tell who come to us for hardware and software advice, and it adds up very quickly.

<comment><USER7> True. But the thing with that is (i don't know how it works out for you of course); I don't want people to turn up on my doorstep expecting help because I advised that product. With Apple I had that 0 times. My Macbook with which i'm typing this right now, is on top of a Windows laptop and next to another Windows laptop which I (in a moment of craziness?) advised. I'm fixing them; reinstalling Windows 7 because they messed it up by installing a trillion illegal games/apps and now 'its so slow' 'its broken' etc. I know you can do this on Mac OS X easily as well, but people just, well, don't. I think it's the price point (cheap cars dent easily not because they dent easier, but because people don't care as the cars are cheap) and the OS which just doesn't have the quadrillion shit apps coming out for it. Limiting even the illegal installs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There has been a lot of things (and a lot of nonsense) written about patents recently.

To me, this piece was spot on. A simply expressed reminder of why patents (at least, some) are evil.

<comment><USER8> The worst part against software patents specifically, is that it's a patent on the idea, not the solution. Even if you come up with a vastly superior implementation of the same idea, you're 'infringing'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good job Apple?

All your complaints are about the patent system. Good job Congress. Good job Representatives. Good job voters. Good job you.

Focus calls for change where the change is due.

<comment><USER11> Good point, came here to say the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!" -Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER13> No company should be able to patent a grid of icons, a pinch-to-zoom gesture or shape of a phone. Fair enough I do agree to an extent that Samsung infringed, but the incompetence of the jury in this case will make for a delicious appeal and halt the celebrations.

Some of the solutions like pinch-to-zoom, etc would have mostly been solutions another company would have eventually come up with anyway.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The things that Apple has highlighted are not inventions. It's simply solutions to common problems."

Name a consumer innovation that isn't a solution to a common problem.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. And if you really don't like the game, go change the game.

</comment><comment><USER15> All this energy complaining about Apple in the law courts is ridiculous. Of course Apple shouldn't own the market using the law courts. But it is a legitimate business practice to protect yourself in the courts because if they don't they tacitly approve of every other company 'copying them'.

Everyone does it, (google bought motorola for their patents). If you don't like it talk to the WTO, congress, parliament, UN and lobby to get it changed.

Every company, I am sure, would rather spend their time and efforts creating great things, no one more than Apple spends their time creating things of beauty. CEOs don't get in to CEO-ing so they can pay hoards of patent lawyers to sit in court all day.

<comment><USER16> Apple builds beautiful products on one hand, but on the other tries to stifle competition using patent laws instead of with their products.

The problem is with the system that allows patenting obvious solutions such as rounded corners or click-to-call and not with Apple itself. Heck, even my Game Gear from 20 years ago had rounded corners. Luckily for Apple, Sega didn't think about that patent then. Apple is just the symptom, patent laws need to be completely overhauled (or at least the system for examining existing patents and new patent requests).

<comment><USER15> Why didn't Samsung use the game gear as prior art and undermine the patent?

<comment><USER16> I guess they're not into video games ;-) I'll send them a note for their appeal

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Every invention solves a problem, or else it has no reason to exist. Patents are supposed to protect the person who found a particular solution first; this isn't new.

I'm sure it was wrong of Eli Whitney to patent the cotton gin, too, since that's clearly the only way to quickly separate cotton seeds and fibers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Let's not blame Apple for a court's decision. Blame the court.

<comment><USER8> The judge and jury were both very poor at their jobs, but Apple gets at least half the blame. Just because the system is broken doesn't mean it's meant to be abused. They started this 'patent war', and I hope in the end, someone else finished it. I'm hoping for a 'SeaWare/PkArc' sort of conclusion to it, but consumers of their products are far less informed that they were at the time of PkArc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whoa, cowboy! It's all just swings and roundabouts. Stop, count to 10 and breathe. Then remember what's really important; family and friends.

<comment><USER20> This ruling is going to harm family and friends.</comment></comment>


Enough with The "Electric Cars Pollute More" Bullshit Already - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/enough-with-the-actually-electric-cars-pollute-more-bu-1834338565 <comment><USER2> "And while yes of course, Germany's energy policy is "ruinously" expensive, as anyone who has waded through the decrepit ruins of the once-proud city of Stuttgart can attest, that makes total definite sense and is true, the entire argument falls flat on its face in a bizarre pratfall just as soon as an ounce of thought is put into it. Electrical grids powered by wind and solar do not just completely collapse as soon as the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining. Not only are there stacks of traditional batteries to store excess energy for those low times, humanity has devised ingenious ways to store massive amounts of power in ways you might not think, just to get around this notion"

The author of this article doesn't know what they're talking about. The amount of energy we can store just isn't enough to supply the grid when wind and solar stop, and probably won't be for quite a long time if ever. (The "ingenious ways" they're referring to is pumped hydroelectric, which suffers from a severe lack of suitable sites, most of which are already in use. It's also probably one of the first things people think of as a solution.)

<comment><USER3> What about batteries in the cars themselves? And residential batteries such as Tesla powerwall?

<comment><USER4> This keeps getting brought up but the power stored in your car battery is usually there so you can, ya know, drive. If grid uncertainty can deplete your car battery to smooth the grid out, then you have to accept that you could very likely not have your car on demand which is pretty unacceptable for most people. I mean can you imagine that on a particularly hot day, the car you took to the office and expected to charge at the charging station instead has a lower battery at the end of the day than when you arrived and now you can't drive home?

<comment><USER5> I had imagined they were talking not about depleting the battery into the grid, but rather choosing when to charge them. Right now Tesla is pretty primitive about when to charge, all you can do is give it a time to start charging.

But it is easy to imagine something much more advanced. Given some input like how long we've been plugged in, if we use the app to say "charge now", what utility we have (by selection or by GPS possibly), interact with the utility to adjust the charging rate.

At the moment I'm just set to charge starting at midnight. This is for 2 reasons: We recently switched to a 3x higher utility cost from 7pm-10pm, and also the car charging when I plugged it in made it hard to read my bill. We have these bills that say "You use X% more energy than your neighbors, can you think of anything you do from 5pm-7pm that you could cut back on?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the WSJ take may have presented a somewhat one-sided take on the findings, those findings do exist and his presentation is just as one-sided. For example, his comparison to his Tesla is a vehicle with 384 grams of CO2/mile.

Well, that's probably a gasoline powered SUV or truck in the US.

In Germany, you typically have smaller cars, much smaller engines and, well, Diesels, which these days easily manage around 5l / 100km, and that's in the range of 120 g of CO2/100km. So definitely competitive with the Tesla and with those small differences, differences in production become more relevant.

The studies I saw indicated that when driven long distances, Diesels are (still?) somewhat more efficient than EVs. Over short distances, EVs are better, but then you typically aren't driving a lot, so the extra production costs may not be amortised over the life of the vehicle.

The best case for EVs are vehicles that are constantly moving, but only small distances with lots of stop-and-go. So public transit, taxis, etc.

That said, I'd still prefer an EV if possible: quieter, fewer/no emissions at point of use (so less concentration of emissions in the cities), amazing torque, fewer parts, etc. And once we go fully nuclear/fusion it becomes a real no-brainer.

And electric propulsion for airplanes is also really interesting: short power bursts possible without much weight penalty for cruise, cost, reliability, noise (big issue in Germany, the only country in the world where people can _see_ airplane "noise")

<comment><USER7> "(big issue in Germany, the only country in the world where people can see airplane "noise")"

Can you clarify?

<comment><USER6> People will complain about airplane "noise" if they can see a plane in the sky. (A small black moving dot is enough).

It's really quite silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a mistake to engage in debate with, or even to read, the editorial pages of the WSJ. It is a propaganda operation.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article made me wonder, if overnight everyone switched to electric vehicles what would happen to the coal industry? I'm not advocating for either, but would we see a significant resurgence? I'm unsure if electric vehicle use is factored into the daily requirements for places that are ramping up renewable energy...and if not I can only assume the requirement for every household charging their cars is massive.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure the question is useful, but yeah if everyone were to shift to electric propulsion tomorrow, most electric grids wouldn't be able to cope. You'd have to throw any mean of production that is still working, coal plants being one of the probably still available but under-used means of productions.

But it's not happening tomorrow, it's happening in the next decade and any respectable grid operator is already planning the changes such that it isn't a problem.</comment></comment>


Cloudflare bug data leak exposed - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39077611 <comment><USER2> _He told the BBC there was no evidence yet that the data had been used maliciously._

Huh?

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VlVylT...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VlVylTZMmhAJ:www.hebeicy.com/supplyinfo/supply_detail.aspx%3Fpid%3D1529&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=0&vwsrc=1)

That request is scrubbed now, but it contained an Uber driver's lat-long coordinates. I used it to look up where they were driving.

CloudFlare really aren't helping themselves with these statements. The people who decide whether to use CloudFlare are programmers, are programmers generally can't be duped with statistics like "1 in 3.3M requests were leaking data" (translation: 100k requests per day were leaking data[1]) or "There's no evidence anyone used this data maliciously" (translation: we have no idea what is being exploited).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719518) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13722606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13722606)

<comment><USER3> There's still leaked data all over google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oN9z-b...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oN9z-biFgzkJ:fujiyoutube.com/search.php%3Fq%3Dsithata+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER4> Interesting. That site still has pages in the yandex cache as well.

[http://hghltd.yandex.net/yandbtm?fmode=inject&url=http%3A%2F...](http://hghltd.yandex.net/yandbtm?fmode=inject&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffujiyoutube.com%2Fsearch.php%3Fq%3Dautoriepas&tld=com&lang=lv&la=1487287680&tm=1487957179&text=%22Cf- Int-Brand- ID%22&l10n=en&mime=html&mysign=1487957443.743f8e2ee16e7c5deed26dfce54b89e4&cht=1&sign=5cdcdae13d2709c06bbd7356a8d7f0a3&keyno=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "I am not changing any of my passwords. I think the probability that > somebody saw something is so low it's not something I am concerned about."

I am confused. The probability of someone seeing it is irrelevant, given that the leak happened already. Is security not supposed to be preemptive? For such an easy measure to take (password changing), saying you don't want to change it seems pretty silly. You can change all of your passwords in 30 minutes tops.

I believe the CTO is also mistaken about the probability anyway. As this is more publicized the likelihood of malicious people exploiting this will only increase. Therefore it's a race between them and the good actors fixing the problem. In the interim, changing your passwords at the very least should be done.

<comment><USER6> I feel like I'm missing a partial context but "You can change all of your passwords in 30 minutes tops" is not true. I have a minimal amount of accounts (I close accounts I don't use) and I can't imagine it taking me less than several hours of slogging through it to change all my passwords (e.g. updating password database, 2FA confirmations, making sure I don't lock the account I change the password on, etc.)

So I have to aim for the clearly impacted ones from this (if named/discoverable) and then have to decide how vulnerable I feel and whether I should go through the extra effort (or not) for every password I conceivably have.

<comment><USER7> I am halfway through changing the 60 passwords for services and accounts I have used since last September.

Cloudflare's COO publicly dismissing the danger with a wan smile and a wave of his hand was motivation enough for me.

That, and this ridiculous statement: "Unfortunately, it was the ancient piece of software that contained a latent security problem and that problem only showed up as we were in the process of migrating away from it," he wrote.

My understanding is that they were not "in the process of migrating away from" an "ancient piece of software," but rather that this was something they implemented five months ago and that they had no idea anything was wrong until Google told them what they found.

That sort of behavior does not inspire trust and confidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damage control PR at it's finest. The CTO should resign over this terrible advice. No one knows just how much cached data is out there or just how much this was triggered since September 2016, and to assume the best case scenario is irresponsible and reeks of CYA instead of putting the public interest first.

<comment><USER9> > The CTO should resign over this terrible advice.

Whether or not he does I hope companies who use CloudFlare strongly consider alternatives. His comment certainly isn't out of ignorance, he has blogged at length on the necessity of password security and lambasted other companies for their behaviour in situations such as this.

[http://blog.jgc.org/](http://blog.jgc.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another Cloudflare customer also said basically this is much ado about nothing, but prefaced their comment by saying "We take security seriously".

Whats offensive here is if you take security seriously, then if there is a .01% chance of a disclosure - you tell people to change thier passwords,tokens,etc. That is taking security seriously.

<comment><USER11> Would you say the same at .001%? How about .0001%?

It is possible for someone to take security seriously but not blindly value the tiniest bit of security over every other possible factor. Perhaps because they also take usability seriously.

<comment><USER10> You have to evaluate the type of account disclosure that was possible against your own use cases.

My company bills 1m a day through our online site, if my logins to our domain registrar were exposed then yes. .00001 is worth it, in the case someone would gain access and change our dns or do something else nefarious.

Like wise if my login to this site was disclosed, I can live with cleaning that up should it get out.

What shouldn't happen is the companies who were affected or the company who caused this (cloudflare) to say "no big deal"

At the very least they should say if you potentially used a serious service during this time and that service was using cloudflare then you might consider changing for reasons X,Y,Z.

<comment><USER11> >You have to evaluate the type of account disclosure that was possible against your own use cases.

Exactly. Evaluating risk levels and weighing tradeoffs accurately is taking security seriously. Overreacting to insanely unlikely scenarios is not.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but you might not understand me. I meant they are assuming they are doing the evaluating on behalf of their customers. I'm the customer and I've got to do the evaluating , but I might not understand the potential but telling me there is almost no issue doesn't help me do that.

<comment><USER11> If they understand security better than their customers, it's correct for them to say so when an issue doesn't require customers to individually review whether they are affected.

If they misjudge that, it isn't an indication that they don't "take security seriously". It just means they made an error in judgment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A good advice in password security is that you should never store passwords in plain text on your private machines and on servers. With CloudFlare bug your passwords can be stored unencrypted in local browser caches of random people who may have malicious intentions or whose machines may be compromised (already or in the future).

</comment><comment> josh-wrale If the technical issue wasn't enough reason to leave CF, this should be.

<comment><USER13> Is it though? Is anywhere else really any better? Won't CloudFlare be reviewing everything now? Will they be more secure after this and more trustworthy? I'm asking myself these questions now.

Really, I don't know the answers, but I'm not leaving because this seems like something that could happen anywhere at anytime. I honestly don't know though.

<comment><USER14> > Is anywhere else really any better?

Yes. A t-shirt contest is a joke of a security bug bounty.

[https://hackerone.com/cloudflare](https://hackerone.com/cloudflare) (t-shirt)

vs.

[https://hackerone.com/coinbase](https://hackerone.com/coinbase) ($500-$10k) or [https://hackerone.com/uber](https://hackerone.com/uber) ($500-$10k) or [https://hackerone.com/facebook](https://hackerone.com/facebook) ($500-$10k) or dozens of others...

<comment><USER15> That's a bit of a straw man. Bug bounty payout isn't any indication that one company is better at security than another. Also, any one of those companies could be sitting on some obscure bug that is currently unknown to anyone in the company until it tragically makes itself known.

<comment><USER16> Look at Tarsnap's bug bounty: [http://www.tarsnap.com/bounty- winners.html](http://www.tarsnap.com/bounty-winners.html) . This guy has given out more than a thousand dollars and this is (as far as I know) a one man shop. How big is cloudflare? How secure should it be given that it asks for customers' private SSL keys? I would say they should have the biggest bounty program.

This leads to one of the two conclusions: 1) They are too cocky to think that they may have security problems (which is a big problem) 2) They know they may have security problems but don't care enough (which is a bigger issue).

There is no way you can cut this to make them look good.

<comment><USER15> I'm not making any argument for or against CF. I'm saying that equating the size of a bounty program to the perceived level of dedication to security or code quality of a company is a straw man argument.

<comment><USER14> If you offer less than $50 for something someone else in the market (albeit for a likely unethical purpose) is willing to pay $10k for, what do you expect people to do?

It isn't a strawman to state economic incentives matter. Or do you genuinely believe people everyone experienced in security will take the $50 because of "ethics"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I agree this is a silly comment to make. I too won't be changing my passwords until my regular yearly password change in a few months. If I CIA level intelligence floating around I would but I find it rather unlikely that I'm exposed and if I am it isn't the end of the world as I selfhost my email and other critical services thus I know for certain they are unaffected by this.

</comment><comment><USER18> That's not a very helpful statement to make.

<comment><USER13> Good point. While the chances are really high that SOMEONE will be affected in a really bad way the chances that any single person got hit is really low. But as CEO he should be erroring on the side of caution here I'd think, because of his position. Him saying that kind of implies that it's not a big deal and no one should be taking any steps to be sure they're not the person who is in trouble.

The number of people who lost passwords is low, but it certainly happened to someone and none of us know if we're that someone.

<comment><USER18> I am almost certain someone is scanning archives for this data and reviewing it for anything sensitive now they know it exists. Yesterday when Google announced the SHA-1 collision, someone else took that and used it to unlock a 2.4btc reward, at the same point a bot scanning for this attempted to double spend the reward with a higher fee to claim the reward.

The first guy knew how to take advantage of the information but the second guy could sit and wait for someone else to solve it and take the reward, it also meant the bot programmer wasnt in a competition with everyone to submit the solution first.

Given that there are many bitcoin sites listed with cloudflare there is some potential reward in locating and scanning that data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Albeit he may be true, as the CTO he's way too optimistic beacuse he can't know, he can just assume! Just let the people understand (get to know) the problem and change the password, what's the problem?

</comment><comment><USER20> I changed most of my passwords today.

It's good to change the passwords every so often anyway - it took me less time to just change my important passwords, than to check if the sites they are for, were using Cloudflare.

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems that they're intent on downplaying the severity. It's one thing to present this confidant attitude to the end user but I wonder what the companies who pay CloudFlare, make of this attitude? Perhaps it's a tactic so that if the end-users aren't worried then they won't pressure whichever services they use to move away from CloudFlare? Regardless, I think his entire statement is tripe.

</comment><comment><USER4> The story also highlights this _" Unfortunately, it was the ancient piece of software that contained a latent security problem and that problem only showed up as we were in the process of migrating away from it"_

Out of context that omits the fact that it was a new feature. Ragel might be old, but they did leverage it, on purpose, for net new functionality. The fix didn't remove Ragel either.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like a bad advice in general. For the cloudflare CTO it would sound a lot better to hear something like: "Whille I don't think anyone needs to change their password, but I changed mine, I actually do it regularly, to keep my accounts safe." Unfortunatly it would not give such a good sound bite.

</comment><comment><USER22> "I am not changing any of my passwords. I think the probability that somebody saw something is so low it's not something I am concerned about"

So... just cross your fingers and hope nobody saw anything then? The way they're casually downplaying this incident is outrageous.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like they are going to downplay this. Interesting choice.

<comment><USER23> See other comments here, the event log, and the comments of the main story. They're downplaying it. [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project- zero/issues/detail?id=11...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project- zero/issues/detail?id=1139#c19)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hate the BBC's article format

Heading :(some alarmist half truth) Content :( what we said in the headline probably isn't true )

</comment><comment><USER25> This is silly, irrespective of everything changing passwords is innocuous; why make a big deal out of it.

</comment><comment><USER26> "What it shows, bigly, is that we may have just dodged a bullet."

"bigly" is a word now? Thanks Trump!</comment>


Learning how to code - <AUTHOR> http://cultivatus.co.uk/2011/11/09/3-simple-steps-for-learning-how-to-code/

<comment><USER2> Since the link isn't working, I'm going to take a guess.

1) Start coding.

2) ???

3) Profit!

Or maybe...

1) Start coding

2) Google everything you have a problem with

3) Return to step 1

That's how self-taught people learn. Okay, maybe Google wasn't around when some of us started, but we used books, magazines, and trial-and-error. Google is much faster and more reliable.

But honestly, that just isn't for everyone. Some people need a more structured environment, and that's fine. That's why classes and learn-to-program books exist.

<comment><USER3> "Google is much faster and more reliable"

Until our novice looks for information on PHP and mysql and thinks 'mysql_real_escape_string_honest_this_time' is a great idea.

Or until our novice decides to learn Perl:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3158276>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't like the article because of the fatal flaw I see with novice programmers that this fails to address... tunnel vision.

When I say "tunnel vision" though I mean the fact that novice users don't entirely understand what code does or how it works. They're only understanding the very surface of what they're doing and without more fundamental knowledge they'll fail to understand when a different approach is better suited, or why certain things are avoided, or why their tool is not the best tool for what they're trying to accomplish (square block in circular hole type issues).

Sure its a good start just "diving right in" but its also a great way to get bad habits. The good coders, ones that have the natural talent, will figure things out regardless of their starting block. The problem is the swarms of bad programmers that come out of the wood works because "anyone can do it!"

How would I improve it? Don't gloss over the details as if they're entirely that simple. Programmers need to start simple (a calculator) and then build up iteratively so they're not overstepping their bounds. Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER5> The link is broken.

<comment><USER6> And the RSS feed is abbreviated. Too bad.

<comment><USER5> One failure express the next one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is this being up voted when the link is broken?

</comment><comment><USER8> Now let's read it.</comment>


Tiny Core Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.tinycorelinux.net/welcome.html <comment><USER2> My favorite thing to do with TCL is to create a live distro[1] that boots of off usb/cd and eject[2] the device it boots off of entirely while the OS is still running. I would do this in libraries/cafes all the time. No device plugged into the computer but running a different OS.

[1] [http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=8924.0](http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=8924.0)

[2] [http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,8522.0.html](http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,8522.0.html)

<comment><USER3> Back when I was in High School, I would boot a floppy with UnetBootin (the BIOS did not support USB boot), and boot a flash drive with TinyCore, then put the floppy and flash drive back in my pocket. I would end up with a working browser before anyone else was able to login to Windows XP, and my computer wouldn't freeze, crash, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Judging by the comments, it seems like people haven't realized yet that the distribution is precisely this small so the entire thing can run in RAM. TinyCore wants to be super fast, so they try and got everything in RAM.

<comment><USER5> At 11MB, it could be located inside the L3 cache on some processors [0] :)

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_%28microarchitecture%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_%28microarchitecture%29)

<comment><USER6> Is that something that might be doable/useful? Or just a size comparison?

<comment><USER7> Anythings doable. But you probably need the space for the processor. Itd be hella fast though

<comment><USER8> Do you have to do anything special to load it all into the cache or is that just something that would happen by default?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I knew of TinyCore but I hadn't heard of dCore, which apprently has Debian/Ubuntu package support. According to [http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/dcore:welcome](http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/dcore:welcome)

"minimal live Linux system based on Micro Core (Tiny Core Linux) that uses scripts to download select packages directly from vast Debian or Ubuntu repositories and convert them into useable SCEs (self-contained extensions). "

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd also look into Buildroot [0]. I'm currently using Buildroot for a project and the whole distribution (including libraries and executables) is under 40MB. Since I am using a fixed dev board (i.e. peripherals are not going to change), I used lsmod to detect which drivers are needed and only build those, which really shrinks the kernel.

Buildroot also includes a cross compiler, so that you can rebuild the entire toolchain, kernel, and libraries in one go.

[0] [https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot](https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot)

<comment><USER11> I was under the impression that if you really want to optimize for space that you should avoid kernel module overhead entirely and build in your modules statically. Maybe it only saves a few bytes and a couple clock cycles at load time but it sounds like it's worth a try for you.

<comment><USER10> Oh sorry, I wasn't clear about that. I run it first where every possible module is built 'M', and then once the system boots up, run lsmod to see which modules are loaded.

Then, I take that list of modules and set them to "Y", and disable everything else. That way, needed libraries are statically linked and unneeded libraries aren't built at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SliTaz was another great distribution, very feature complete and highly polished for its incredibly small size. Unfortunately - and you could see this coming a mile away - like so many other projects (open source or otherwise) they decided they'd "do a rewrite" and the project really lost its way and fizzled our thereafter.

<comment><USER13> I notice there are apparently still rolling releases coming out for it?

I've run the latest ones and for a quick and dirty live desktop from a super small image, it still seems to be a good option.

I tried looking around for what happened to SliTaz, is there an article/detail anywhere on that (the transition/rewrite/zombification)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember a time when stuff like this fit on a single 3.5 floppy.

<comment><USER15> Remember the QNX 4.25 demo disk that fit on a single 3.5 floppy and included a GUI, networking, a web browser (with basic javascript), clustering, and various other applications?

What a great little OS.

<comment><USER16> I really wish that there was still a free version of QNX around. I enjoyed playing with it.

<comment><USER17> I am sorely tempted to push my own little OS for another round but just porting the whole thing from 32 bit to 64 bit has me depressed. It should be a lot easier than the first time around though, now that we have VMs to test with, that is a lot faster turnaround wise than to have to reboot a physical machine every time you mess up in kernel code or some critical device process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finnix was another good small Linux I had tried out some time earlier. Again, it is more for booting up and then maybe for doing some maintenance work than for regular use.

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

[https://www.finnix.org/](https://www.finnix.org/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I recommend searching their forum if you're actually trying to use Tiny Core. It fills in a lot of gaps in their docs.

</comment><comment><USER20> I built something to boot Tiny Core Linux (and other Run-From-RAM OS's) on Amazon, Digital Ocean or Google Compute Engine - [http://www.bootrino.com](http://www.bootrino.com)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to see this type of distribution on Windows Subsystem for Linux. The default Ubuntu is over 500MB!

<comment><USER2> I actually ran TCL in virtual machine and SSHed into it like this back when node.js only ran on linux well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is so cool, what are some great uses for this?

<comment><USER23> I use it to produce 50-minute radio shows for my country's public broadcasting. I work with a Thinkpad T42 from circa 2004. Swapped the PATA HDD for a Compact Flash card -- prior to this, everything was just surprisingly snappy thanks to Tiny Core Linux's RAM boot; now the machine is also wonderfully quiet.

Granted, this is pushing it, but I've been using this setup every day for almost two years. (I just like to use old hardware until it dies -- or, is this what old IPS-screened Thinkpads generally turn people into?)

Sure, you probably should be a "computational minimalist" by nature (e.g. there is an older version of Chromium, but I suppose your main browser will be Dillo -- which, actually, is just wonderful once you get used to it). But if you are a minimalist, I'd say it's a really solid system.

Also, it's fun for me to think that I bought this Thinkpad T42 three years ago for €20. And now I use it as my main workhorse in a field where typical setups consist of new-ish MacBooks with high-end SSDs and an up to date version of Pro Tools. (And where people occasionally still think that "duh, you can probably only edit a text file in Linux".)

So it's an awesome, clean, fairly easy to maintain distro (e.g. in case of a typical install you have a pristine system after every reboot). And the community is very friendly and responsive.

<comment><USER24> I'm also using a T43, circa 2006.

Nowadays I've found myself mostly using it for VNC to a slightly better machine (my old desktop, on permanent loan to a family member after their laptop broke. This works...). And... even on my not-great 802.11g, and the CPU even locked to 800MHz, typing this text over TigerVNC is literally realtime with no perceptible lag or delay. I'm honestly amazed. But anyway...

FWIW, launchpad.net have multiple sources providing the latest 32-bit builds of Chromium. These are built for Ubuntu, but I find they've worked 100% fine on Slackware. :P (After some work I even got the debugging symbols into the right place!)

(Nothing stopping you from building the world's largest LD_PRELOAD to pull in "enough Ubuntu" that Chromium boots, but I find that 100% unnecessary at this point.)

Some build daily(ish), some build fortnightly-to-monthly-ish. Before I set up VNC, I was in the process of figuring out an autoupdate script (CLI PHP, easily rewritten) that would find and fetch the packages off Launchpad. Let me know if you'd like a copy, I never finished it but I did do the Herculean bit of figuring out the magic API URLs, the rest is just boring scripting and downloading.

Protip. If you open 100-170 tabs (possible! on 2GB! with The Great Suspender), the main process will hit 4G VIRT. xD

Besides that, NetSurf is a bit better than Dillo, you're probably already aware of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> TCL is really nice. boot2docker was based on it before they switched to Docker for Mac & Alpine.

<comment><USER26> We switched to LinuxKit [https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit](https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit) \- it was very hard to maintain boot2docker and TCL and make them usable. LinuxKit is generally a little larger, as we use a bunch of Go code rather than C and Go is a little bloated, although that will improve no doubt. You can make very small LinuxKit images if you really want too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> tomsrtbt

</comment><comment><USER28> Point to note: many Alpine Linux base docker images are in the 6MB ballpark.

What's tiny core's advantage over Alpine? Given the outsized interest in Alpine from the docker community, it may have better packages and security updates

<comment><USER29> Correct me if I'm wrong but a docker image doesn't include a kernel.

<comment><USER30> You are correct, docker images don't generally contain kernels (and if they do, they don't load them).

A more apt comparison would be vs alpine standard which is 109 MB and contains a kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In spite of needing something like this a few weeks ago, I wonder what the role of such reduced distributions actually are these days. Storage is ridiculously cheap. A 64MB compact flash card doesn't cost significantly less than a 2GB card (32x the storage).

I have a few old PCs sitting around, a Pentium 4D, a core duo or two. These are full-size PCs, old Dells and IBMs. It doesn't make much of a difference if they are running an 11MB distribution or a full Debian with GUI.

What I'd really like is a small form factor PC with full x86 support so that I can run DOS, or other PC oses, like the BSDs or BEOS. Ideally it would be the size of a Raspberry PI and cost the same. I know such systems are available, but the cost is an issue. Emulation just isn't the same either.

<comment><USER32> One thing that drives me nuts is how these embedded systems always want to use goddamn BusyBox instead of full fat Bash and userland. There's just enough stuff removed from BusyBox to break scripts and generally make life annoying. And for what, to save 20MB of space on your 16GB device?

<comment><USER33> Not every embedded device has the luxury of 16 GB of storage.

<comment><USER32> They're getting increasingly rare now that storage costs are so low. Why hobble something with an 8MB flash chip when a 1GB flash chip costs almost the same? Maybe you can shave some fractional pennies on not having to wire up so many address lines, but even that's marginal.

<comment><USER33> > Why hobble something with an 8MB flash chip when a 1GB flash chip costs > almost the same? Maybe you can shave some fractional pennies on not having > to wire up so many address lines, but even that's marginal.

If you're making a hundred million of them, the marginal gains add up. There's no point in adding stuff you don't need.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside Silicon Valley's Secretive, Orgiastic Dark Side - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-valley-secretive-orgiastic-inner-sanctum? <comment><AUTHOR> Bouncing around my Facebook feed... am I naive if I think this is just media titillation?

I'm sure there are parties thrown by rich VCs that end in sex being had, just like there are parties thrown by Oakland artists that end in orgies. But I'm suspicious this "rich VCs start a sex party network to take advantage of women entrepreneurs and force them to have sex for money" is a real thing.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise, though, especially if someone has real life knowledge of this. Even if they comment anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER2> duplicate from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051603)</comment>


The #1 most important personality trait of an entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.16thletter.com/2008/02/22/the-1-most-important-personality-trait-of-an-entrepreneur/ <comment><USER2> Over the last few months, one common trend I've seen on Hacker News is that there are a lot of articles about characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, or where to live if you want to succeed, or the ideas/implementation debate, and so on. I think a lot of people (including me) are constantly trying to reassure themselves that they have what it takes to succeed, by double- checking if their own attributes are contained in the "must-have" checklist of the day.

I think this is okay as far as academic learning and analysis goes. But a lot of times (not in this post though) people get into flamewars about which attributes will actually lead to success. If the "idea people" win out over the "implementation camp", no shit, the hardcore programmers amongst us are going to feel left out and start arguing for the opposite argument. If we say Silicon Valley rules and everywhere else is sub-optimal, Europeans are going to be pretty pissed.

But I think it's silly for anybody with attribute X to feel upset or left out because the latest "attribute discussion" decided, by popular vote, that attribute X will lead to failure. There is sufficient variation in attributes amongst successful entrepreneurs, that you don't need to make any grand changes in your lifestyle to succeed at this game. I.e. you don't need to switch from being a programmer to an idea guy, or vice versa. You don't need to move, or change industries, and so on.

I'm just saying that tons of people already have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and if they just think for themselves about what to do and ignore all the external discussions, they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.

<comment><USER3> Well said. 10 different entrepreneurs, will tell you 10 different things as the #1 most important characteristic.

That article written by Tony Wright comes to mind:"Every Piece of Startup Advice is a Lie (including mine)"

[http://www.tonywright.com/2008/every-piece-of-startup- advice...](http://www.tonywright.com/2008/every-piece-of-startup-advice-is-a- lie-including-mine/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have researched this extensively through blog posts and articles posted here over the last year, and I have come to the conclusion that the #1 most important personality trait of an entrepreneur is the ability to have multiple, unrelated, and sometimes conflicting #1 most important personality traits.

</comment><comment><USER5> Indifference to lists describing the most important traits.

</comment><comment><USER6> Adaptability is obviously important, but I wouldn't put it at #1.

I would say "ability to take action".

It doesn't matter how smart, personable, determined, passionate, or adaptable you are if you don't take action. Until you do, you have nothing.

<comment><USER7> Luke asks: Shoe - in your opinion, whats the best resource (other than shoemoney, of course) for affiliate noobies to learn how to get started and what are the best offers to get started with (sorry, that's sort of 2 questions in one)?

Thanks!

ShoeMoney: I really dunno any site including this one that will teach people that much how to make money. They need to dive in and learn. Its so simple and costs nothing to start that people need to stop being lazy. No website will replace experience.

jim asks: Do you have a mentor? If so, who is it? If not, who would you love to be mentored by?

Thanks Jeremy!

ShoeMoney: I don't have a mentor but there are a lot of people I have taken pieces from… seth godin, malcom gladwell, guy kawasaki. I am not a big fan of "mentoring". I think more people need to do things for themselves and learn from there own experiences and not from the experiences of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> (If you think what's below is off topic, then make sure you've read the article and be sure to read all of the comment.)

The Clancy Brothers are best known as a seminal Irish singing group, but they started out as a troupe of actors that went to New York to become famous by putting on works of Shakespeare. The folk music craze was in full force, and they noticed that they were actually making more money renting out their venue to folkies than they were making by putting on shows, so they decided to get into the act themselves. They pretty were much like other folks who emulated the Weavers and other popular acts of the day, but since they happened to be Irish, the songs they knew were Irish traditional songs, and so they stood out and became international stars.

</comment><comment><USER9> Having been a struggling entrepreneur for the last fifteen years and having my share of spectacular failures and some occasional modest successes, I have learned to live by one simple rule, Conservation of Single Malt Scotch, which has served me well ... "If I don't drink too much on the way up, I don't need to drink too much on the way down."

Like many who have been entrepreneurs, I have learned quickly that entrepreneurship is the great equalizer. Everyone has an equal chance to success and equal chance to failure, irrespective of their age, education, family wealth and of course, cultural background and race.

In fact, the more that people tells us that it cannot be done or that it should not be done, it seems that the more enjoyable is the journey.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think that the most important trait is perseverance. You may be willing to change directions and adapt, but if you quit, you're done.

<comment><USER11> Completely agree. Courage to persevere when faced with adversity is what makes or breaks people and companies. Change and adaptability is great but what if it's a wrong direction?! Those who change directions whenever the wind changes direction shift focus quickly and almost always don't get the prize. People who change directions all the time are usually people who chase fads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> imho: #1 quality is "Burning desire to be an entrepreneur no matter what".

(definitely necessary. may be even sufficient.)

</comment><comment><USER13> > _In her blog today, Penelope Trunk wrote that it really isn't possible to > know if your idea for a start-up is any good. I agree with her._

I think both of them are dead wrong.

Starting a company should come _after_ the idea is evaluated from as many angles as possible and you have a confidence that the idea _is_ good. Based on not just a gut feeling and a dream of being a founder, but on a research, planning and a feedback.

In this light the adaptability is hardly a #1 trait, the rationality, the sensibility and the patience are.

<comment><USER14> you can have a large degree of confidence that you idea is good, but you cannot KNOW it is good until you build it.

<comment><USER13> you cannot know _anything_ for sure before it happens

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These types of things always seem like saying that the key to being a good runner is to have strong legs. While this is an important part, being a good runner also depends on lung capacity and a whole host of other things.

To distill it all down to one thing seems a bit naive.

<comment><USER16> Maybe naive and pointless, but it is "sound byte quality."

Like the myriad self-help/improvement programs that tout, "Do this and your life will be better. Your truck will start, your girl will come back and you'll find your dog..."

Oh wait, that's what happens when you play a country song backwards. That's IT. The answer to being happy is to play country songs backwards. To which it has been said that to every problem there is a solution that is correct, easily understood and wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have written extensively on this topic - What Makes Them Entrepreneurial here - [http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/what_makes_them_entrepren...](http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/what_makes_them_entrepreneurial/index.html)

One of the traits I have mentioned is this adaptability attribute - [http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/2007/07/what-makes- them.h...](http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/2007/07/what-makes-them.html)

I am still interviewing few successful entrepreneurs and understanding what made them entrepreneurial. It's very important to learn these traits and develop those.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hate this shit. It's like the self help shit that always gets posted here. Just a complete waste of time for all you aspiring entrepreneurs. This linkbait crap is to truth about entrepreneurship as Brittany Spears scabby anal warts are to beauty.

To someone knowledgeable on Asperger's syndrome (not knowledgeable in a saw it on slashdot and in Wired once way and think I'm an expert way, but knowledgeable in a could diagnose it accurately and debate the merits of the different diagnostic methods way), the different shit that ends up on all these different lists are all obviously related to Asperger's, in that they are positive aspects of the syndrome. Further, most or all of the people on PG's list of hero's clearly have strong elements of Asperger's or High Functioning Autism in their biography. Being a risk taking perfectionist with little to no desire for close family relations and an obsessive attention to small details, along with hyperlexia and extraordinary memory, is both the profile of an entrepreneur and aspergers syndrome. Further, one of the unique cognitive capacities of certain Asperger's people is an ability to synthesize original insights from diverse sources of seemingly unrelated information.

The character trait that Melissa describes is good to have. But, it's better and more fully understood as the atheoretic oreintation certain philosophically inclined people with Asperger's tend to demonstrate, than as a trait that can be considered in isolation.

If I was running a VC shop or a start-up hub, I would make damn sure to ignore shit like this, and instead read the book called The Genesis of Artistic Creativity. I'd make all the employees read it too, and then find ways to recruit people with desirable constellations of those traits, which are what people are actually but blindly talking about (without getting to the heart of it) with these psychologically unsophisticated linkbait analysis. In fact, everyone who takes links like this seriously should stop and read that book instead.

[http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Artistic-Creativity- Aspergers-...](http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Artistic-Creativity-Aspergers- Syndrome/dp/1843103346)</comment>


Tell HN: How to fail like an idiot - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN!
Now, this is a story all about how my start-up never got flipped or "started-up" in any meaningful way.
Enough with all the success stories - let me share a gory tale of how to systematically fail at developing a concept into a real company.
First off, let me tell you a bit about the product I made. OpenPanels is its name, Consumer surveys were its game. In 2010 I came upon a gap in the market for Consumer Surveys; Only large corporations seemed to be utilizing real randomized and stratified, demographic Market Research as part of their product development cycle. Entrepreneurs were almost non-existent in as customers of Research Agencies, which was strange to me - wouldn't they find MR most useful?
The answer came when trying to buy Market Research myself. It is very expensive, and quite frankly a PITA to purchase. When it comes to getting Market Research through panel surveys, you are basically left with two choices:
* Ye Olde Guard: Nielsen et al. - Have your survey questions ready, call their offices, wait 3-14 days just to get a price quote and a launch date. Pay through your nose, then wait some more.
* NewKidsOnTheBlock: AskYourTargetMarket et al. - Horrible respondent quality, mainly due to dis-honest recruitment tactics ("Win an iPad! Oh and you also have to fill out this survey to enter the lottery"). But pricing at the right mark for entrepreneurs/start-ups.
(part I - cont. in comments) <comment><AUTHOR> (part II)

At that time, Cint AB (privately owned panel admin service. International scope, HQ in Stockholm, SE. www.cint.com), launched Cint Direct Sample (Today, Cint Link). CDS was an API providing programmatic access to their +5mio vetted(!) respondents in 42 countries. They would take care of re-imbursement and administration of all the respondents, quality-control of the panels in use (mainly making sure that no "professional" respondents were allowed to answer). My end of the of deal was to supply a survey tool and the customers of course.

/* Sidenote: Google has since my "launch", opened the doors to <http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home>. I consider this an affirmation of market viability for Openpanels or similar. */

Enter Openpanels.net. An unholy Frankenstein using WordPress as a CMS (Hacker gag reflex #1), and a heavily customized (also imposing the venerable "spaghetti-architecture" upon the code) fork of Limesurvey. I was the glorious Taskmaster, endlessly hiring and firing freelancers until I found someone that actually worked out. For you Hackers, this will seem crazy, but it cost me nearly USD10,000 and 9(!) months to get it running at the current state. But it worked. Just barely. But it worked (still does, technically speaking). And then I ran out of money.

The project was self-funded (read: under-funded) because my bloated sense of self-entitlement didn't allow me selling myself or my project to anybody else. So, when I ran out of money, I literally didn't know how to pay my upcoming rent.

(cont.)

<comment><AUTHOR> (part III)

But my real mistake - in my own opinion - was not so much being under-funded, as it were my own personal issues. Personal issues that prohibited me from from reaching out to investors. Issues that prohibited me from creating a team that could cover for my many shortcomings as an entrepreneur. An inflated sense of ego, I would never allow myself while working on someone elses dime. A bloated sense of self-entitlement leading to arrogant "Fuck it! We'll do it live!!!" type decisions. I am asshole, tremble in the presence of my lack of introspection.

It has been an immensely valuable learning experience, in a very real, pragmatic "this doesn't work; this does" kind of a way, but my most valuable lesson was: I am not an entrepreneur. I do not possess the qualities needed to run a company. Maybe I will someday, but if I don't, I'll survive. I also dreamed about being Captain of a Star Cruiser, and I survived not fulfilling that dream :)

I am definitely not done with start-ups, but will focus on a supporting role. I am Beta, tremble in my supportive presence ;)

If this post can inspire some of you to share your stories of failure, I would feel some value has come out of it. And long as this post may seem, I haven't really described any specifics of my road to failure, but I'm very happy to field any questions this esteemed community might have.

My Failure-app: <http://openpanels.net>

Thanks for letting me ramble!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! It sounds like the lessons you learned will provide a much clearer path in the future. Moving forward, how has your perspective changed on 1) ego & 'personal issues' 2) Spending $10K & 9months for validation 3) where the opportunity exists today ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It really is my cathartic pleasure to share, thanks for reading.

1) That's the biggie, and changing that will probably be part of my life for a long time. Being aware is a big step - but still just a step in a long journey.

2) I've learned basic js and php, so I'll never outsource a version 0.9 again. Funny thing is that before I started on this venture, I was a consultant helping clients to prototype in smaller, cheaper iterations - with great success. It's always easier helping others, than helping oneself, since introspection takes bigger balls.

3) There are so many! But in the realm of Market Research, Openpanels as a product suffers from many flaws, that only became obvious when trying to market them to a real audience. I have a semi-working prototype of what I believe is a much better and simpler approach for penetrating the Market Research segment laying about. If there's interest, I'm happy to share the concept.

<comment><USER2> Definitely interested. feel free to email me at mark8555 [at] gmail [dot] com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing.</comment>