Worlds Most Expensive Burger: 1/4 million euros - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21548147 <comment><USER2> Almost as important as the technology is the marketing. They need to get on message for this even at this early stage. Calling it "Artificial Meat" is already conceding the battle. It's not artificial, it's real meat.

"Cultured"? Conjures up images of lab coats. "Man-made"? Not much better.

I'd say some better ideas:

\- Humane meat

\- Painless meat

\- Slaughterless meat

\- Guiltless meat

\- Pure meat

To me, pure meat probably wins. It's meat, but without all the ugly impurities introduced by having an animal grow it in the wild. See how much of a difference successful framing can make to how you "feel" about a product?

<comment><USER3> _See how much of a difference successful framing can make to how you "feel" about a product?_

I like knowing what I'm eating, not how you want me to feel about it. I am just fine eating artificial meat, cultured in a lab by people in white coats.

<comment><USER4> And you're in the minority, which is why marketing campaigns are not aimed at people like you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm waiting for the technology to reach the point where we can create whole new meats. Like, imagine a world where pigs had never evolved, and then a scientist, working in a lab, invented bacon. They'd make millions and millions of dollars, and dramatically improve the lives of a billion fat people.

And even in our world, just think: There are meats out there, waiting to be invented, that are a thousand times more delicious than bacon.

<comment><USER6> I'm kind of hoping cultured human is delicious. I'm going to send a cheek swab to a PO box, and six weeks later a slab of my own pseudo-shoulder will show up packed in dry ice. My first experiment will be:

        1 kg own cultured flesh
        3 cups orange juice
        lime, kiwifruit, or pineapple juice to taste
        1 clove of garlic, mashed
        pepper and salt to taste

Combine and put in a saucepan on low heat without a lid. Let simmer until the liquids steam off and it begins to fry in the rendered fat (about 2 hours). At this point it should be very tender and break apart into threads. Serve over rice or in tacos.

<comment><USER7> There's something a little terrifying about this, which I can't quite place.

<comment><USER5> He's mixing imperial and metric measurements in the same recipe.

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting. I rarely use actual measuring cups for main ingredients, so I was thinking of everyday cups, not the well-defined unit.

So I guess my error was using an ambiguous unit, which is even worse than mixing units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The true cost of beef is staggering. It is, by far, one of our most selfish indulgences the rich have. It's sad that our economic model doesn't adequately capture this.

A lot of numbers get thrown around, but the amount of grain and water you need for 1 pound of beef is enough to feed something like 25 people. Then there's the environmental impact (land, pollution, ....). The more I travel the world, the harder it is for me to eat beef.

<comment><USER9> Those claims are only valid for feedlot raised cattle which you shouldn't eat anyway if you care about your health. Cows aren't meant to eat grain. Plus, you get to support your local community by buying from local, responsible farmers.

And if you want to be completely honest with yourself, take a good look at industrial agriculture and tell me how self-righteous you feel.

Here's a couple of decent articles to start: <http://www.alternet.org/story/13900/> <http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/IndustrialAg502.cfm>

Also, the documentary Food, Inc. is a well done introduction to the issue.

<comment><USER8> The majority of beef comes from feedlots. 90% of the beef we eat _is_ grain- fed. Also, I can't find any evidence, one way or another, that grass-fed cows take less land or pollute less (in terms of methane).

There's no doubt that it's healthier for us, and better for the cows, but there seems to be plenty of back and forth with respect to which of the two is more sustainable. And I don't see anyone arguing that grass-fed cows are more efficient (or even close to as-efficient) than chicken, pork or plants.

Thanks for the links on agriculture...going through them now!

<comment><USER10> The majority of beef comes from grass-fed cows. Of the about 1.3 billion cows, only 100 million are fed grain (those in industrialized countries).

According to a quick googling, it seems that grass is more sustainable but lower output.

<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/207/4433/843.abstract>

Free trade would mean less or no grain-fed livestock, hopefully (here in Uruguay we have almost 7 million cows, all of them grass-fed, neighbour Argentina has 40 million cows, also grass-fed, Australia and New Zealand also have similar numbers of grass-fed cows).

In any case, as you argue, cows are not the most efficient means of producing meat, that's why chicken is much cheaper for instance :) .

Grass-fed cows probably take more land, but I suspect they pollute a lot less (for example there's a lot of indirect pollution from the grain produced to feed the grain-fed cattle)

Edit: about free trade - both the U.S. and Europe have trade quotas and subsidies in place to maintain the local agriculture. I understand not wanting to destroy it entirely due to strategic concerns (and excessive dependency on a provider), but I believe it's gotten out of hand.

Edit2: the number of cows in Uruguay was inflated, changed for more reasonable source.

<comment><USER8> 1.3 billion is the _total_ number of cows. Almost 300 million of those are in India, where I doubt very much that they are used for beef. I'm finding it hard to get numbers since it's largely given in metric tons...

Although, I'll agree that looking more into it, grain-fed appears to be a largely North American thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm.. pretend this takes off and the quality of the meat is good. Would a vegan be inclined to eat this lab meat? Seems like most vegans that I talk to are mostly motivated by animal cruelty issues.

Just curious.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure strict vegans (is there any other kind?) would continue to have a problem with it. The original definition is:

Veganism is a way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom, and includes a reverence for life. It applies to the practice of living on the products of the plant kingdom to the exclusion of flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey, animal milk and its derivatives, and encourages the use of alternatives for all commodities derived wholly or in part from animals

Note that they consider honey to be an exploitation of animals...so I assume extracting muscle tissues from a cow would also be considered exploitation of animals. Furthermore, it pretty explicitly states "living on the products of the plant kingdom".

<comment><USER12> Yes, but one has to wonder whether linear output requiring nearly constant animal input, vs. linear output requiring linear animal input, will cause some people to rethink this (thus resulting in a split in veganism). Every burger may ultimately come from exploitation of a cow, but if the burger in front of you does not come from any _additional_ exploitation of a cow, many people may not have a problem with it.

Unless there are already existing products that have this property, in which case I guess we have our answer. Or if it's not so non-linear as it sounds, in which case there's no question.

<comment><USER8> Well, there's still the issue of "living on the products of the plant kingdom." The only thing I can think of that's similar would maybe be recycled leather. I still think ethical vegans would have a problem with it, and I don't see this changing the opinion of anyone doing it for health reasons.

I think environmental vegans are the most likely to buy into this..if it even becomes an efficient way to produce nutrition/calories. I could certainly see some more pragmatic organizations throwing their weight behind it.."if you must eat beef, at least eat this kind of beef (but consider X, Y and Z as even better alternatives)."

<comment><USER13>
         I still think ethical vegans would have a problem
         with it, and I don't see this changing the opinion
         of anyone doing it for health reasons.

I think very few will have an ethical problem with it, most non-meat-eaters are vegetarians and not vegans, and I suspect even among vegans most are not as strict as you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having been to a factory farm that used homogenized grain and had "attendants" in white coats and re-breathers this really isn't far from the present reality. Anything that can make livestock mass production more humane is a very good thing.

</comment><comment><USER15> The real benefit of this will be ending overfishing.

<comment><USER16> The real benefit of artificial non-descript meat sausage will be ending overfishing? I'm assuming you mean when they come out with artificial fish meat, but I can't find any mention of that in the article.

<comment><USER15> fish meat is muscle too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "... they are encouraged to exercise and build up their strength by being given their own gym equipment (pieces of Velcro to which they can anchor themselves in order to stretch and relax spontaneously)."

Creepy. Do they give these cells an electric jolt to make them exercise?

</comment><comment><USER15> nonsense. I can make one for you at twice the price.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why? Because we can!

</comment><comment><USER19> Given the issues with "whole" organisms which are genetically modified, and our continuing "tiny keyhole" understanding of nutrition, it seems very unlikely that lab grown meat will be nutritionally comparable as real meat.

<comment><USER20> Not comparable, but that doesn't mean worse. It will be easier and cheaper to provide good nutrition to artificial meat than it is to whole cows. It's easy to imagine that the cost-cutting inhumanity of ranches includes poor nutrition.

Besides that, few people eat beef for its nutrition (beyond the protein), and McDonald's meat is probably more tuned for 1) ease of production and 2) taste than nutritional value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Vegetarians from birth will probably not be inclined to eat this. They've never acquired a taste for meat. I think this is awesome. Livestock are a haven for pollution and pestilence, most recently implicated in producing antibiotic-resistant superbugs that will probably be the death of us all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Slightly misleading title. However this reminds me of an episode of better off Ted, in which they create a steak in a lab. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Better_Off_Ted_episodes...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Better_Off_Ted_episodessee) episode 2</comment>


A VC's take on the Season 5 premier of Sharktank - <AUTHOR> http://lsvp.com/2013/09/21/a-vcs-take-on-the-season-5-premier-of-sharktank/ <comment><USER2> I built a postcard sending product called babygrams over the last few months:

[http://babygra.ms](http://babygra.ms)

After 5-10 iterations over 6 months, 500 or so paying customers, almost 100 4+ star reviews, and a decent amount of data, I concluded the business model doesn't work. Citing vanity metrics like number of downloads and even revenue (as was done here) is a nice way to obscure this fact.

The catch is that to get people to send postcards you need to give them one for free otherwise nobody converts. (This makes sense since they otherwise don't know what they're buying.) You also need to let them pay in bulk for credits or else it is a completely lost cause. The problem is for every person who ultimately becomes a customer, you have too many people who send a free one and forget about you, which costs you real money. The margin on your paid customers needs to make up this sunk cost, which leaves little room for real profit.

The numbers just don't work, and no amount of additional product tweaks or marketing pushes really seem that they can move the proper needle (free-to- paid customer conversion rate) enough (to me) for the model to make sense. It took a lot of work to get to the point to validate this so it's not surprising there are a lot of dead in the water apps in this space that get no traction at all. Essentially you have a low profit-per-sale product that has a fixed customer acquisition cost, and the margins are so tiny that you're threading a needle. Unlike other apps, where the customer acquisition cost can in theory drop to zero.

So I'm not surprised to see that Postcards on the Run is bleeding cash. I looked at their app in the beginning and I can't even imagine how they're getting any orders since the app is so poorly designed. Asking for more money for marketing purposes is hilarious since that will just likely scale up the rate at which they are losing money. I also would not be surprised if Postagram is bleeding tons of cash also. Their app is spectacularly designed but it's an unprofitable model. They have a high volume app for which they are almost certainly losing money on most of those users. ("We lose money on every sale, but we'll make it up on volume.") I'm also fairly certain all of these companies are using the same printing company, so I have a sense what their margins are and I had the same. (There's also not much flexibility there since US postal service costs are known entities.)

I could be wrong though and they may have cracked it somehow. I know they have tried partnering with advertisers to subsidize the free cards (which could work, in theory) but I can't imagine an advertiser paying the amount needed per card to offset things properly. The fact they actually recently did this tells me they realize the free cards are killing them, otherwise why plaster ads all over their product (the design and quality of which they obviously put a lot of care into.) They also give away 5 free cards which to me is absolute madness since I failed to make things work even when giving away a single free card.

Obviously sinking 5-10k of your own money into an experiment like this for 6 months seems much more attractive to me than burning through a few million VC dollars and spending a few years of your life on an idea that is likely doomed. (And then having to go on Shark Tank for more money?) This is why it's important to bootstrap and validate the main hypothesis with an MVP and a few iterations before going big. I am able to keep this app running cheaply for friends and family, learned a lot and improved my design skills, and can focus on something that has more promise being confident I know what the opportunity cost is.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing this. It really does seem like it is all about execution and not the idea in this particular case. The get one free to start is directly tied to conversions, minimal features versus added features tied to profitability. And above all the App has to be super dead simple to use.

Given that the ideal monetization would be a 'refillable' credit card type deal where you work off your balance and 'refill' automatically when you get below a certain threshold might have problems in the Apple moneygrab pipeline though. Still it works for the NYT so there must be a way to do it.

So discounts on holidays, calendars to pre-setup sending a card on various events, premium features like multi-picture, or instagram like filters, and card-on-demand with things like QR codes to blog entries or something. I could see the feature set that would be interesting but man it would not tolerate a hiccup in the pipeline that is for sure.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the majority of my app's revenue is from bulk-credit orders, so people drop $20-40 at a time to buy in bulk. Most of them don't use all their credits actually, and I'd guess this is probably in my favor in the long run vs. getting them to keep coming back since that is essentially all profit. (If credits expire.)

Here's the thing though. If you assume that you need to give someone a free card, which I'm all but certain of, it doesn't really matter how easy your app is to use, how many features it has, or anything like that. All those things control is your conversion rate of people who get to the point of sending a free card. (In my case, I was getting about 33% conversion rate here, which I think is pretty great.) So, 1 in 3 people who downloaded the app got all the way to the point of sending a free card.

The catch is who comes back and spends money? It's _this_ conversion rate that determines the fate of the business. You don't have a lot of wiggle room here. You can spam them. You can try to improve the design and fullfillment of the cards so they get positive feedback from the recipient. You can give the recipient a way to notify them they enjoyed the card. You can even get people who receive the cards to pay for credits for them. I did all this. But beyond that, what else can you really do to entice users to come back and spend money? This isn't about improving the flow of the app, the use cases, qr codes, or whatever, it's about taking someone who experienced the product for free to decide to pay for more. It's all about sales.

There aren't many levers here at this point in the funnel, and in my experience _this_ conversion rate I was getting (about 1 out of 8 people) is so low it's fairly hopeless when you consider sunk costs for free cards and not to mention marketing costs. You've spent money to send 8 free cards, which came from 24 installs, and you have one person left who is paying you for more. Ballpark you spent about $15-20 to find this one person. The _margin_ on this person's purchases needs to pay for this plus server costs, employees, support, etc. Depending on your pricing they'll need to send (or buy up front) probably around 10 postcards _on average_ per paid user. You have like no margin of safety here.

You'd really need it to be more like 1 out of 2 or 3 for it to be worth the "lets raise $1m and get to the top of the App Store to reduce marketing costs to zero" case. Also don't forget I was in a highly vertical market where there is a real obvious need (grandparents receiving pictures of grandkids.) Good luck to those guys :) The only way I could see it working is if you are at the top of the app store _and_ you leverage the fact that a large % of your credits go unspent, and you can realize this as a profit. This isn't a business though, it's a ponzi scheme. It might be how Postagram has stayed afloat while they try to make the product solvent.

<comment><USER4> Assuming the marginal cost of printing an extra card is fairly small, have you considered sending a copy of the card to the sender?

Unless the recipient provides some sort of feedback the sender doesn't really get anything to show for it. This could also let the sender see the quality of product sent. You could limit it to just the first card sent to limit your cost increase.

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty cool idea. I had considered it but not deeply enough in that it would likely increase the rate at which customers ended up returning which is the key metric. I might give it a shot, since it's easy.

The only reason I'm skeptical is that I'm _already_ contacting people after a few days to follow up with them how their order went, so I'm unsure how much more upside there is to interacting with senders more post-free card.

The other two problems is you've now doubled your acquisition cost so it'd need to at least double your return rate to be worthwhile. Also you'd need to get people to enter their own address which will reduce your top-funnel conversion rate, but this isn't really a huge deal in the long run if you assume you can drive users cheaply to the app.

<comment><USER4> Additional thought, you could put a unique promo code on the senders copy (code tied to their account) where if they buy X credits they get Z free.

<comment><USER2> Yeah good idea! Right now recipients of cards have a code they can punch in to buy credits for who ever sent the card. If I send a free card to the sender also I could tweak this logic easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most of these inventory-financing deals for physical products seem like they would be much better dealt with via loans, unless the equity stake is really more of a quid-pro-quo for whatever connections the sharks have.

<comment><USER6> A lot of the Shark Tank investments seem like bets on the underlying technologies or products, but against the entrepreneurs themselves. When Mark Cuban (for instance) invests in Company X on Shark Tank, he basically buys the founders out of their controlling stake for what amounts to pennies on the dollar, figuring that he can always monetize whatever inventions the entrepreneurs have developed.

From Cuban's perspective, that seems pretty reasonable. He's basically figuring "You got lucky, you came up with something interesting, but you're not the guy (or girl) to make that something work. I'll take it off your hands and let you cash out." In a way, that sort of deal feels more like corporate M&A than it does a VC investment.

As Jeremy puts it in his recap: _" If barriers to entry are low, all the startups do is serve as outsourced R&D for the big incumbents who can come in and use their scale to eventually recapture share from the startups who proved out a new market."_

That's basically the Sharks' playbook. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the first thing a Shark does, upon buying a controlling stake in Startup X, is take it to BigCo Y to flip or license it.

<comment><USER7> I've watched Shark Tank from the first season. The radical majority of Cuban's deals in fact are minority positions. He very rarely buys controlling stakes.

His most valuable asset is time, and he's already loaded up on investments. He doesn't want to run the companies, so most of the time he prefers to retain the entrepreneurs or not invest, and he makes that clear routinely on Shark Tank.

Kevin is the shark that most frequently seeks complete buyouts.

<comment><USER6> You're probably right. I thew Cuban's name out there as a random example, and I probably shouldn't have.

That said, I've seen most of the show (perhaps not much of the first season, but most of the series since then), and I would guess buyout -- or at least buy-to-flip -- deals are the majority and not the exceptions.

<comment><USER8> No the buyouts are the exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone watch "The Profit" on NBC?

I love the few episodes I've seen so far.

<comment><USER10> You can watch them online for free

[http://www.cnbc.com/live-tv/show/The%20Profit](http://www.cnbc.com/live- tv/show/The%20Profit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Zynga's not a great example because startups got a foothold and are now doing well why Zynga flounders. Kabam, Kixeye, etc. Zynga's audience was 100% casual users, and they've been unable to use any cross-promotional muscle to get into the mid to hard-core segment. Also there aren't real economies of scale and there is no third party distribution problem.

<comment><USER12> Flip video isn't a great example either, for reasons I left in a comment there:

 _One example of this was the Flip video camera. [...] These huge companies put pricing and margin pressure on the category, and about a year from the acquisition, Cisco shut down the Flip business altogether_

I'm not sure this is a great example: most of the press at the time claimed that Flip was still profitable and that Cisco shut Flip down not so much because of the company's profitably as because it wasn't profitable enough for Cisco, which had too many product lines and distractions.

Was this analysis accurate? It's hard to say, and I liked the company but found the narrative around itself shutdown unlikely: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/will-we-ever- find-o...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/will-we-ever-find-out- what-happened-to-flip-video/).

Perhaps the strangest thing, as noted at the link, is that Flip had a new suite of products ready for rollout the same week Cisco shut the company down.

<comment><USER13> Seems like GoPro validated the market that Flip could have continued to serve. They've seemingly done well (though I have no clue whether their financials agree) despite increased competition from cell phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Funny that the author has confused Mark Cuban for Steve Case.

<comment><USER14> Ohhhhhh. I was wondering who he was referring to. They do _kind of_ look alike but seems like a hard mistake to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting. I've seen a few seasons of this and the international versions, and found it odd how different valuation works compared to with valley VCs.

<comment><USER16> Shark Tank also takes 2% stake regardless if they get funded or not.

<comment><USER17> Not really, it was 5% equity or 2% royalty and according to a Forbes article[1] ABC hadn't asked the two people interviewed for any money. The article also said their source claimed ABC wouldn't be asking for either in upcoming seasons.

[1][http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/06/13/is-shark- tank...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/06/13/is-shark-tank-really- worth-5-of-your-company-business-owners-say-absolutely/)

<comment><USER13> Not sure if these are still the terms, but here's the original 5% / 2% document:

[http://a.abc.com/media/primetime/sharktank/SharkTank3OpenCal...](http://a.abc.com/media/primetime/sharktank/SharkTank3OpenCallApplication.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Good Academic Bad Human Being - <AUTHOR> http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-academic-bad-human-being.html

<comment><USER2> I think the same can be said about any field and discipline, not just academia. You gotta live it and breathe it to become the best...but it's all about moderation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even after doing all that success at being the best is not a given. So that makes it even less worthwhile.</comment>


Kernel Debugging with LLDB and VMware Fusion - <AUTHOR> http://ddeville.me/2015/08/kernel-debugging-with-lldb-and-vmware-fusion/

<comment><USER2> Just a few other notes to help make kernel development with VMware Fusion easier:

1\. Add -zc and -zp to your boot args. It's not documented but it greatly helps catch zone allocation problems (OSMalloc/OSFree/buffer overrun) issues.

2\. Use snapshots instead of rebooting. It's much faster to revert back to a snapshot than to reboot your virtual machine instance after a crash.

3\. If you use a shared directory between your instance and host machine for moving your KEXTs/other code, make sure to MD5 the files before loading. It's very common for the instance to be using stale cached blocks.

4\. While not necessary, I create a separate network interface that's host only to debug on. I give it a static ip and add an entry to my host's host file. It makes debugging instances easier to do since I can connect by name, i.e. kdb-remote vm0.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips! I had never thought of using a snapshot as a quick way to return to the state before a panic instead of rebooting. This is genius, I'll definitely use it a lot!</comment></comment>


The Fiasco microkernel - <AUTHOR> https://l4re.org/fiasco/features.html <comment><USER2> There are two notable projects here:

L4Re is a (reasonably) portable L4 userspace environment and has a large collection of ported libraries (e.g. zlib etc).

Fiasco is the L4 microkernel they have developed for many years. It is different to the others because it is written in C++ and heavily object oriented. It also has concurrency in the kernel unlike simple systems like seL4, although at a complexity cost.

As a side note, these guys also develop L4Linux: a paravirtualized mod of Linux that runs on top of L4 as a task. This enables more realtime tasks to run alongside Linux. Kudos to these guys and their projects.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a lot of promise in pulling mature components from Linux, OpenBSD, and Solaris/Illumos (or whoever does SunOS these days) across that paravirtual barrier, and progressively tailoring them toward the microkernel environment; while testing them using the systems they originate from.

Over time, maybe a microkernel could become the basis of most of these former monoliths.

<comment><USER4> The Dresden and Genode folks do it a bit different: just virtaulize the OS as a user-mode application. Then, some add ability to reuse device drivers across VM's to get the drivers specific OS's (esp Linux) support. From there, you can slowly pull code out as standalone or native applications as you described. There's usually middleware (eg Camkes) that lets the standalone code talk to code inside the VM. I'll give Genode as an example of mixing native and VM code.

[https://genode.org/documentation/general- overview/index](https://genode.org/documentation/general-overview/index)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested in background of the microkernel (not the L4 runtime environment): Jochen Liedtke, On microkernel construction. [http://elf.cs.pub.ro/soa/res/lectures/papers/lietdke-1.pdf](http://elf.cs.pub.ro/soa/res/lectures/papers/lietdke-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> I only have superficial knowledge of kernel-level systems, so a list of features doesn't give me a sense of a project's reason for existing. What's this project solving, exactly?

<comment><USER7> It is an implementation of the L4 microkernel API. Microkernel systems can be more reliable than monolithic kernels, but traditionally have the problem of high communication overhead between the services constituting the kernel. The Mach kernel (used by macOS and others) is an example of a known slow microkernel. L4 implementations have been demonstrating since the mid 90s that low overhead microkernels are possible.

I wonder why neither Minix 3 nor Fuchsia are using L4. (I guess they may have learned the main lessons from L4 and chose to write those few thousand lines of code themselves for flexibility and control. Strangely, nobody likes to talk about it.)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the overview. This is exactly the level of analysis I was looking for!

>The Mach kernel (used by macOS and others)

Where/how does this typically manifest itself? Why isn't macOS slow/sluggish?

<comment><USER8> While Mach 3.0 was designed to be a microkernel, macOS doesn't actually use it as one. The entire kernel, called XNU, runs in kernel mode, just like Linux.

The macOS kernel had a reputation for sluggishness back in its early days, due (to the best of my understanding) due to the sluggishness of Mach messaging, which is how Mach implements system calls to the kernel. macOS also supports BSD syscalls, and Apple has apparently done enough optimization here that it's now roughly on par with Linux.

Around 2006, Apple did have an internal, experimental version of macOS ("Darbat") which ran Mach on top of the L4 microkernel, but this project was canceled, for whatever reason.

<comment><USER9> Darbat seems to be what's running in the Secure Enclave of the iPhone. Or at least something like it.

[https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Mandt- De...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Mandt-Demystifying- The-Secure-Enclave-Processor.pdf)

Pretty darned awesome.

Fiasco is GREAT. You at least used to be able to run it with DROPS which had a cool desktop/demo disk where you could just launch a bunch of Debian Linux instances as L4 tasks. It was like VMWare on crack at the time when I tried it.

I think FiascoUX might still exist... you can run Fiasco as a userspace process on linux then run linux in ... oh I've gone cross-eyed..

<comment><USER4> DROPS is still available here:

[http://demo.tudos.org/eng_about.html](http://demo.tudos.org/eng_about.html)

It was one, cool-ass demo. I especially liked firing up VM's lightening-fast given I was reading people say they use containers since VM's are too slow and inefficient. Maybe the people building their favorite VM's just aren't good at efficiency. Build on L4/L4Linux instead. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As Portuguese and microkernel advocate, I would really like that they had chosen a different name for the OS.

Fiasco means total failure without any kind of possible rescue in Portuguese.

<comment><USER11> It means that in English, too.

<comment><USER12> Also in French!

<comment><USER13> Wondered why that name was chosen too. Etymology meaning _failure_ does show it to come from Italian _far fiasco_ = _make a bottle_ = _dud theatrical performance_. Reminds you of GM motors wondering why their Chevy Nova wasn't selling well in Latin America. Why? In Spanish _Nova_ = No va = It doesn't go (work).

<comment><USER14> Snopes[0] disagrees with this story.

[0] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name- spanis...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanish/)

<comment><USER13> It is still a marketing class cliché [1] however debunked

[1] [https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt- go-3078090](https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt-go-3078090)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> License is GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 2.0 according to fiasco-18.09/src/kernel/fiasco/COPYING

</comment><comment><USER16> In Martin Amis's "Money" (1984), the protagonist drives a purple Italian sports car whose make is Fiasco.

No relation to the microkernel, except maybe the modest suggestion that a purple car would make a nice logo because it's a great book.

</comment><comment><USER17> Been following along with the development of Zircon.

[https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon](https://github.com/fuchsia- mirror/zircon)

What is cool is Google does this in the open and you can follow along. See which things have place holders and where the focus moves from day/week/month to day/week/month.

Also developers on iirc and Travis super nice guy.

I am old an worked with internals for decades and this is the most excited I have been about a kernel in a very long time.

Looks to me the layers of Fuchsia are going to also be ala cart.

So Flutter on multiple platforms. Zircon able to be used for a variety of purposes and then in addition the kernel for Fuchsia.</comment>


Startup looks to re-invent the resume for design students. - <AUTHOR>

Our platform will be the umbrella over all design portfolio sites like Behance, Deviant art, Dribble, Linkedin, ect. We will be using our technology to automatically pool all design students projects into a central hub where high profile employers will hire out of. We will be using a dating style platform for employers to match with the perfect students. <comment><USER2> If design students are in fact designers AND at the same time students, I belive -as a design student- that they will be capable of designing their own portfolio and resume that will stand out from the rest. Otherwise how else can you stand out from the rest?</comment>


Programming on Early Microcomputers: A Retrospective - <AUTHOR> http://blog.smartbear.com/programming/programming-on-early-microcomputers-a-retrospective/

<comment><USER2> That was pretty cool, but the image of the 3.5" disk left me groaning anachronistically. Where's my 5.25"? Or better yet, the 8" Wargames-style floppy? Kids these days.

<comment><USER3> The machines detailed (where they had storage at all) were primarily using paper tape and audio cassette anyway. Floppy controllers for S-100 machines were still a few years in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I very much enjoy the relative power of today's programming languages. There is nostalgia, but I don't miss assembler at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this has to be one of the most annoying mobile styles I've ever seen. There's this big green tab at center left that covers up the beginnings of lines. Right at the place your eyes want to hang out while reading.

Tapping it reveals social buttons. No thanks, I'm not sharing this, I don't want to inflict this mobile style on anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be all set now. Thanks for letting me know about the issue. You've made this post more readable for millions of nostaglia-starved programmers across the globe!

<comment><USER5> Cool, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Can you draw a perfect circle? - <AUTHOR> https://vole.wtf/perfect-circle/ <comment><USER2> On my mobile phone the circle does slide a bit up and down. But aside from that is really funny. My best try was 94.6%.</comment>


New derivation of pi links quantum physics and pure math - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-11-derivation-pi-links-quantum-physics.html#jCp <comment><USER2> The article is interesting. but the title of the phys.prg article is horrible that I'm almost crying.

The title of the research article is much better: "Quantum mechanical derivation of the Wallis formula for pi"

Can we change it? Pretty please.</comment>


Scientists Find Worms that Recently Evolved the Ability to Regrow Complete Head - <AUTHOR> https://neurosciencenews.com/worms-evolved-regrow-complete-head-10865/ <comment><USER2> Do these worms have memory?

Seems like there might be some interesting experiments exploring the memory/instinct boundary?

<comment><USER3> I seem to remember reading about experiments showing that some worms retain memory throughout the body.

Researchers discover flat worms retain memories even after decapitation [0]

[0] [https://phys.org/news/2013-07-flat-worms-retain-memories- dec...](https://phys.org/news/2013-07-flat-worms-retain-memories- decapitation.html)

<comment><USER4> Even humans have neurons in the heart and the gut. It would not surprise me that some kind of memory can be stored in there as well.

<comment><USER5> if anyone else wondered, it is of course pseudoscience that hearts have neurons, they have cardiomyocytes which are quite different than neurons. But its easy to understand why thats a another fantasy spread by popular "science" journalism (add it to the list of bullshit they spread lol).

<comment><USER6> All major organs have neurons, or at the very least project axon "fibers" (but the heart specifically has full nerve bundles).

They make up the autonomic nervous system, which is the network of motor and sensor neurons connected to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). The latter does your thinking, the former keeps you from suffocating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first question was: what does recent mean? Would be nice to have that at the top of thw article instead of in the middle. It's 10-15 million years.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you cut one of these worms into 100 pieces would you get 100 new worms?

<comment><USER9> The article indicates you could get a complete _lineus sanguineus_ with just 1/200,000 of the original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I call that self healing system.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you have a personality disorder? Then our surgeric decapitation is just what you need. We offer painless decapitation and half an year of head regeneration in a comfort conditions for your body. Tasty glucose with vitamins and protein mix will be injected each half an hour into your bloodstream. Twice a day our nurses will tickle your body to support its reflexes.

<comment><USER12> I tried this once as it was advertised as a way to instantly lose 10 points of ugly fat - which did work, but my head grew back again.

<comment><USER13> How much did it cost? You could repeat the procedure every once in a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This thing looks gross ...</comment>


Anorexia May Be Habit, Not Willpower, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/health/extreme-dieting-of-anorexia-may-be-entrenched-habit-study-finds.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur <comment><USER2> When medical staff see someone resolutely starving themselves in a state psychiatric institution, drinking liters of water before their daily weigh-ins to nudge the number up, and hiding their full Ensure cans from nurses to avoid the calories, it is hard to chalk it all up to any normal and relatable definitions of the words habit or willpower, especially given that the behavior overcomes the drive for energy consumption, one of the strongest and most primitive drives in all organisms, and one which seems abolished in a deranged fashion. Even if habituation plays a major role in the development of the disease, it is hard to seriously consider the proposed solutions like "switch to eating with the left hand, as a reminder to think about eating different foods" as promising therapies in cases of recalcitrant anorexia. Which is not to say it won't be tried; I imagine side effects are minimal...

<comment><USER3> Yeah... definitely worth trying, but there's good reason to be sceptical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a rationalist perspective, relying on "willpower" is the same as just saying "I should really do that" without action to follow. To make changes in your behaviour, you should rely on forming habits, and you should make it as easy as possible to fall into those habits. This is how "fake it until you make it" works.

(Obviously, things get tricky if you have a mental illness.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Willpower is fake as shit. You'll note it isn't mentioned in the article body. Executive function is a thing, but it isn't what people refer to when they talk about willpower. Then again, usually people talk about willpower to establish a hierarchy between people who do a thing, and people who don't do a thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Most non-obese adults have calorie restricting habits to some extent (I, for one, would eat all day if it didn't make me gain weight). People with anorexia just take it too far.

<comment><USER7> Wait, what? Don't you get, I dunno, _full_?

That's what stops me from eating all day. I feel satisfied with the amount I've eaten. You, know: this automatic thing.

If you _don 't_ feel that, there's something amiss. You've described it so strangely, by calling what you have a more moderate type of habit to anorexia.

<comment><USER6> Being "full" is a spectrum. I meant that if it didn't matter, I would stuff myself all day long without any regard to calories.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Fit Preview SDK now available - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2014/08/google-fit-preview-sdk-now-available.html

<comment><USER2> I can't wait to see some of the app developers are gonna make, this could actually help assist a lot of people with health issues ( blood glucose monitor is what I'm hoping for ;) ).</comment>


Judge Denies Oracle's Renewed Motion for JMOL or for a New Trial  - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120713124912289

<comment><USER2> Let's hope we see more of those sensible decisions in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> My understanding is that Oracle completely expected this and knew the outcome before they filed it but they need the judgement to be made before they can appeal it.</comment>


Tulip – An untyped functional language - <AUTHOR> http://www.jneen.net/posts/2015-03-01-tulip-language <comment><USER2> This might seem strange, but if there's one thing from Common Lisp that should receive wider adoption in other languages, it's hyphenated names. They are so much more readable than anything else (well, C with underscores comes close).

<comment><USER3> I've been playing around with creating a toy language which treats '-' as a name for a function. It means there always needs to be white space around a - (the syntax of the language isn't like LISP), but that increases readability at the cost of two extra key presses.

<comment><USER4> Also, note that, in the same breath practically, you can support true negative integer constants:

       -1234

which are distinguished because there is no whitespace. You can distinguish the unary operator being applied to 1234 from a true -1234 constant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If that sort of thing interests you, also check out my language 'tab' ([https://bitbucket.org/tkatchev/tab](https://bitbucket.org/tkatchev/tab)).

Tab is a statically-typed, functional, type-inferred language that occupies a niche between bash and python.

It's also not Turing-complete but can compute almost everything you could ever think of.

(I wish more languages aimed for Turing-incompleteness -- unsurprisingly, it turns out Turing-incomplete languages have big benefits for performance and resource management.)

<comment><USER6> How is yours not Turing-complete and what benefits are there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I strongly dislike macros that can hide in code. I get really frustrated > when I open a source file and see (foo ...) and can't tell whether it's a > function or a macro until I read documentation.

Well... that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Seriously though. In Elixir, for example, much of the language itself is implemented via its own macros, which demonstrates a certain nice extensibility. If Elixir followed this same pattern, it would get really annoying really quickly, as even simple if statements would require a leading slash.

Also, I preferred "unf" ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's my opinion, and that's why I put it into the design. Lots of language design comes from opinions. I hope it's borne out. FWIW it's the same approach Rust has taken, where macros have to end with a ! to make them visually distinct.

<comment><USER7> That might be because Rust might not eat its own dogfood in that department, and build some of its own functionality out of its macro system.

But I can see just "knowing" at a glance if it's a macro or not.

I think the answer would basically be determined by how much of the language itself uses its own macro system AND what type of macro system it actually is. If it's significant, having special syntax would just look weird.

<comment><USER8> Rust does eat its own dogfood with regard to macros, and over time has steadily replaced former language-level features like `log` and `panic` with macros. Syntactic distinction is a philosophical choice in service of making costs more explicit (and while it's true that functions can hide behavior, overuse of macros can trigger enormous code bloat, such as the `regex!` macro which compiles your regex into a state machine).

(There are also valid technical reasons for requiring syntactic distinction, as the sheer flexibility of Rust's macros in their ability to create new syntax run the risk of making it a nightmare to parse if you remove the unambiguous ability of the compiler to drop into macro-parsing mode. These challenges aren't insurmountable, just very hairy.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link is down for me.

Google Cache Text-Only:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cOp3ebJ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cOp3ebJoVLEJ:www.jneen.net/posts/2015-03-01-tulip- language&client=ubuntu&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Argh, thanks for the cache link. I'm still on heroku free-tier :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks cool -- is there any source code? What language is it written in?

"Tulip is still in active development, and I could use a whole lot of help, both filling in the design gaps here and actually churning out the implementation"

<comment><USER11> [https://github.com/jneen/tulip](https://github.com/jneen/tulip)

<comment><USER10> OK interesting, it actually appears to be written in RPython, not full Python:

[https://github.com/jneen/tulip/blob/master/tulip/libedit.py](https://github.com/jneen/tulip/blob/master/tulip/libedit.py)

(RPython is the "static" subset of Python used to bootstrap PyPy)

<comment><USER12> They have moved towards treating RPython as a framework:

[http://rpython.readthedocs.org/](http://rpython.readthedocs.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's basically a toolkit for building jitted languages. Basically the easiest way to get a tracing jit these days. So it'll be a self-hosting jit similar to pypy or pixie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that it definitely has types, they just aren't required explicitly. It seems to use dynamic type matching.

<comment><USER14> It's unityped! It has one type with infinitely many variants/tags (.<string>). Match failure occurs at runtime as in any other safe typed language such as Haskell or ML.

<comment><USER15> >Match failure occurs at runtime as in any other safe typed language such as Haskell or ML.

That is incredibly disingenuous. The only way a Haskell or ML program could be as colossally unsafe as a unityped language program is if the programmer used only one giant sum type for the entire program, and most functions in the program were non-total with respect to that type.

"Unityping" provides no static type safety. It is isomorphic to, and usually a euphemism for, the lack of any static type system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it was a difficult decision to remove types - I'd gotten myself into a corner trying to tack on dependent types, and it just wasn't happening. My bet is that unlike most of the un{i,}typed languages out there (most of which I'd categorize as lisps and smalltalks), tulip provides tagging and destructuring that allows the programmer to maintain some level of control over the polymorphism. Tulip will panic at runtime for non-total functions, but ideally you'll have the tools necessary to keep the panic as close to the problem as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I've renamed the language from Unf to Tulip, because some folks pointed out that the old name created an unnecessarily sexualized environment"

Are fifth graders critiquing programming languages now? Seriously, who makes that association and then feels the need to comment on it?

<comment><USER16> "Unf" is quite widely used as a spelling of a moan, to express sexual desire or gratification. While it _can_ be used to express non-sexual enjoyment, the sexual connotation it evokes is just unnecessary when it comes to a programming language, regardless of the original intent.

<comment><USER17> While I've never seen this use personally, UrbanDictionary very strongly corroborates this.

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=unf](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=unf)

<comment><USER16> It's worth noting that "universal noise of fucking" is a backronym—the word was originally onomatopoeic.

<comment><USER18> It is, still, but urbandictionary users like making inaccurate definitions as an attempt at "humour"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack - <AUTHOR> http://maxklein.posterous.com/im-not-an-enterpreneur-im-a-dirty-hack

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this got traction on HN just because it's against the usual grain here, which focuses on high standards, good design, and taking pride in one's work. But I still don't really get why this post is deserving of the upvotes it got.

Is it really any surprise that you can make lots of money if you use cheap labour, if you're okay with releasing - and perhaps even selling, though I hope not - garbage software ("Release a really crappy version", "I don't spend money on design"), and if you're content without innovating or trying to break new ground?

The world is full of people who do that, and yes, many of them get by just fine, and some make lots of money. But there's far more to life, and work, than that.

For me, that's what's so great about HN: it is full of inspirations for a web developer like myself. Inspirational companies and inspirational people who don't rest until they get it right. Who push the envelope. Who care deeply about the experience of using their software.

This post contains nothing inspirational like that. I've worked for people like this before. Never again.

<comment><USER4> As far "release a crappy version", it's just a blunter way of saying _release early, release often_

And the following part "No response, abandon. Complaints, improve" is just the concept of the minimal prototype; also used in "Discovery-driven planning". <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_driven_planning>

You seem to be speaking from a professional mind-set, which is perfectionistic. An entrepreneurial mind-set is a little different: why perfect something if no one wants it? Or, as pg says "build something people want". Find out what they want first, _then_ perfect it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is looking for tips on working with offshore programmers, read Max's few but timeless points!

He nails his experience about getting designers from Romania. They have really great taste! And Russians for math-related complicated programming. And India for cheap average quality programming work(btw, Indian designers are in general _pathetic_ ). These have been my experiences too over 8 years of being on both sides of the outsourcing market(as a freelancer and as someone who has hired folks offshore). It is an art working with people offshore and if you can manage it, it can give you a real edge especially in starting phases.

Curious, are you deep into affiliate marketing?

<comment><USER6> A company I worked for used a relatively big web company in Romania, hiring a few developers over there to work full time on their site.

The HTML and CSS they wrote were generated using Dreamweaver, and their PHP was a mess with tons of copying and pasting. It was impossible to get the company's higher level management team to understand why continuing to use these guys was bad idea, because they saw the front end 'just working', yet it was so hard for us to modify and understand any of their code.

If you intended to have a site that one day has skilled programmers working on it and is actually maintainable, be careful about things 'just working' with outsourced code.

<comment><USER7> Hi, I also live in Romania.

> _relatively big web company in Romania_

Little quiz ... what should set your alarm on? The "big" size of that "web company" or its location?

For me it's a no-brainer ... simply because for a consulting company to scale to that "big" factor ... you need to hire a lot of third-rate, cheap code- monkeys ... that's business 101 ;)

Second of all ... your company should've asked for a portfolio of the actual developers that ended up working for you, simply because the quality of the employees varies greatly even in well-respected organizations.

Or was there some kind of manager acting as a proxy between you and those doing the actual work?

And out of curiosity, in your country there aren't any "big software companies" that are doing consulting work of dubious quality?

This seems to me that it was more a problem with your management. Blaming it on "outsourcing" is not really accurate.

BTW ... in my small company that does consulting work, we aren't taking outsourced projects very often. We don't do it simply because those kind of clients that would outsource to us are of very poor quality, leading to poor communications, unmet deadlines, unmet payments and generally disastrous results.

<comment><USER6> To clarify, by 'big' i meant not just in size, but in number of highish profile clients.

Towards the end of me being there, they added a more senior developer/manager to the Romanian team -- his code was much better (i.e. not dreamweaver generated HTML/CSS) and was easier to communicate with, but still the code quality from the others on the team was very unmaintainable.

I apologize if it seemed as if I was generalizing the entire country of Romania's programming abilities -- definitely not what I intended. If all the developers were as good as the senior developer added on later, I'm sure it would have went much better.

My main point remains the same though, and I think is one that we can both agree on - that hiring inexpensive labor with only focusing on the front end user experience, without any respect or idea of how well the back end is being constructed is a bad idea. I'm sure outsourcing can work, but only with careful attention to the behind the scenes backend code quality, to ensure the project is not being held together by duct tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "After a while, however, the feeling disappears. Seeing your daily revenue go from $1000 to $2000 starts to mean nothing. It's all just business. That's no longer where the excitement is."

Not true at all. It never gets old watching the average daily profit rise.

<comment><USER9> Folks are different.

I find I have to make myself care about those numbers. I tend to fall into a comfort zone, where my brain has decided, "Yes, we have enough money coming in to keep us in food and houses, so we're OK. Think about more important things, now." I've made myself stop dealing directly with our technology lately, and begun to focus more on the money side of things. I've only recently started doing regular bookkeeping and monthly revenue reports and such. And, it is satisfying to watch the numbers increase, but it's not as satisfying as building something new, to me.

<comment><USER10> After the first $1000 / month I started caring a lot less, because I could eat and pay rent. After $2000 I stopped caring some more, because that is enough for budget travel, which is the biggest "thing" I want. Now I've found my next motivation to be "for each extra $2000 I make, I can have these things some month in the future when I've lost my revenue source".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >I don't invent shit. Look at what is invented already and make it a bit easier to use

This is great advice!

<comment><USER12> He also says:

>I stay 2-3 years behind the trend. After the early adopters have left, there is this gap that can be filled by people who are willing to learn from the failures of the early adopters

That sounds great in theory, but can anyone expand on that? What are some specific examples?

<comment><USER13> Do pardon me if I'm being obvious or not addressing your question, but the following examples spring to mind:

pets.com, etoys, et al. -> zappos,

altavista, goto, yhoo, et al. -> goog,

broadcast.com, real media, "quicktime TV" -> youtube

These examples were all established a few years after the original players came in fully loaded with cash, hype, etc yet failed to solve or even identify underlying problems.

<comment><USER11> One way to get ideas is to visit your local library and go through all the technology magazines of +- 3 years ago.

<comment><USER14> +3 years ago?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _You see, there are lots of enterprenuers out there_

His description of entrepreneurs is, I think, not very good.

Im sure there are lots of people like he describes who would call themselves entrepreneurs.

But every good one that I've met or "seen" doesn't even half fit such a stereotype. In fact I suspect most really good entrepreneurs are hacks just the same :)

Dont mix pretenders with the real thing!

</comment><comment><USER16> $12K/month, but unwilling to quit his job to start a company. Must be a sweet job.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very nice. Someone who outsources all his work to poorer parts of the world boasting about judging people by the country they come from. Sounds just a little bit like picking your new "employees" at a slave market.

<comment><USER18> It's not slavery if you pay an amount that is fair for the foreign employee. In the Philippines, $275.00 USD is equivalent to a 2k job here in the states.

That's not slavery. As far as classifying quality of work effort by country, try it yourself and in a short time you will learn that different cultures deliver different types of workers, and thinking, and creativity. I know that sounds strange, but it is true.

And here is the funny part of the entire deal. If you suddenly found yourself transported to Russia, Romania, India, the Philippines, or China, good luck getting work as Americans are mostly viewed as fat, lazy, complaining do nothings, who barely understand the concept of a hard days work for a fair wage.

Ask every foreign employee that works for me and not one of them would agree with your comment. They are grateful to have the work, to work at home, to raise their families well, and to do so by using their brains.

I don't feel the least bit bad for outsourcing either. Americans are the hardest employees to manage, and rarely deserve their high cost. There is a huge downside to working with the ME generation. Most think that a job is an entitlement. Ugh...

<comment><USER17> OK, outsourcing does not equal slavery. That said, we all do stereotype all the time. For example, you probably thought from reading my comment that I'm a fat, lazy American teenager with a sense of entitlement :)

I lived in Russia in the 90s, and I saw exactly the opposite effect from the one you describe first-hand. There were people coming from English-speaking countries who could get management-level jobs mostly by virtue of coming from an English-speaking country. I knew some personally, and I don't hold it against them at all. They were seen as having an understanding of how the capitalist world works, and this was valued (whether or not this was true).

After a decade, the people were not seeing the quick returns from the switch to capitalism that they were hoping for. As a result, the general attitude towards the West in Russia has changed. You can read all about it in the news.

I also have friends back in Russia, who work for an outsourcing company. The majority of programming jobs there that pay a livable salary are outsource. There are few Russian companies that work on original products of their own (Parallels comes to mind).

I hold no illusions. As long as the US market remains the largest, that's where the money will be, and outsourcing will remain a viable strategy. Does the idealist in me wish that the people working outsourced positions could access this market directly, without effectively paying a middleman? Or better yet, have a thriving local market? Yes, but I realize this just won't happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The dropbox comment sounds a little cheap. Making $12k and going out of your way to avoid paying $10 for a quality app?

<comment><AUTHOR> The only webservice I pay for is DabbleDB. Dropbox I can live with the restriction, but you absolutely need a database when you need to track a large amount of items.

I'm REALLY suprised that there are not cheaper alternatives to DabbleDB - <USER2> there had been anything a bit cheaper or a bit more ajaxified, I'd have gone for it.

Also, the main reason I don't pay for dropbox is that you need to pay for EACH user! So at just 5 users I'm paying $50 a month. That's crazy wasted money!

<comment><USER20> If you are only sharing a subset of folders that are under the free limit, I'm pretty sure the other side can still use the free account.

I'm doing this with a friend right now, I have the paid account and am using 30+GB, he has a free account, and we share just the folders we need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is his business? I can't find a link anywhere...

<comment><USER22> "niche sites" according to his twitter.

<comment><USER5> Usually code for affiliate/seo/ebook business.

I have a few friends making a killing doing this. It isn't as easy as it sounds. And it isn't as scammy as it sounds. When done right, it can make good money.

<comment><USER23> The classic Parrot eBook gold mine:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can you share one of your sites? I think we're all pretty curious to see. We won't make fun of you.

</comment><comment><USER25> Certainly being a web entrepreneur is considered "not following the herd", but within the "not following the herd" there is also two paths, and one is indeed another herd. I love his philosophy, do not follow the herd. Do your own thing.

</comment><comment><USER26> what is the point in separating the two, can't you be both?

i would be willing to bet that the majority of people here that consider themselves "entrepreneurs" or are working in startups would identify with almost every single one of those points.

are we all hacks? or is there one point on there that makes you a NON- entrepreneur compared to everyone else who thinks they are?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd put it this way: Some people are born to be independent businessmen. They read the theory, they talk the talk, then they take the step and start off in business.

There is the other way - just making money on the internet, and there is no grand plan behind it. It's more of a thing that just develops itself without some type of enterpreneurial drive or theory behind it.

<comment><USER27> Max - what's with the picture above your post? Not sure I understand what you're trying to say with it.

Edit: Nevermind. It's late and I skimmed your post too quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "I make about $12k a month, which is not very much in the global scale of things, but it's fine."

I'm sorry, what?

<comment><USER29> Hmm, 12K/mo was 8K/mo a few days ago. Not that this particularly detracts from his points, but .. grain of salt included.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014220>

<comment><AUTHOR> In that post, I was just talking of one particular income source, which is the main one I am doing now. I'll write another post in a few days breaking down exactly where I make the money from. It's not standard landing page crap - it's actually a bit more unexpected (for standard web ppl) than that.</comment></comment></comment>


Getting Started with LaTeX - <AUTHOR> http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/ <comment><USER2> I would advise reading lshort instead. A bit longer and slightly outdated (read the documentation from AMS for math modes) but very comprehensive and easy to understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, lshort was good introduction. Brief and succinct. I liked it.</comment></comment>


Website to check domain availability for all tlds? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://www.united-domains.de/landingpages/welt/>

This Site check >=270 tlds.</comment>


The Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/the-matt-cutts-debunking-flowchart-79152 <comment><USER2> I love that Danny Sullivan put an explicit "Is it on Hacker News?" question on the flowchart. :)

<comment><USER3> The best part of that is where it's placed in the chart-

It implies that the users of HN a subset of the overall nutjob population, but one worth addressing at least ;)

<comment><USER4> Actually, it implies the opposite.

If someone who is not a nutjob is spouting the theory it will get debunked, regardless of placement on Hacker News. If Hacker News were in the nutjob category, it would be irrelevant in the flowchart. The chart would simply point from "repeated by a nutjob"->"Am I bored?"

Hacker News only takes effect if a nutjob's theory winds up on Hacker News, which based on the chart, is more akin to "Are they a nutjob?"->"No" (but not quite the same). So, while something does not need to be on Hacker News to be debunked, placement on Hacker News will result in a theory being debunked. Thus, the article implies that Hacker News is a community made up of people who are expressly not nutjobs.

<comment><USER5> To me the chart simply considers HNers influential nutjobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Matt Cutts must now debunk the myth of the "Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart", per the "Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart".

<comment><USER7> Double check. Assuming it's true, etc., it goes to "let PR handle it" ;-).

<comment><USER8> ... Assuming he does not consider Danny Sullivan a nutjob. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just out of curiosity, what are the outrageous claims that have come up?

<comment><USER2> Here are the claims I can think of in the last few days:

\- Claiming that your email newsletter's Gmail reputation affects your ranking: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600933> I did a full debunk here: <http://goo.gl/6A8f9>

\- Claiming that Hacker News was penalized by Panda: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595704> I did a full debunk here: <http://goo.gl/7Tw9o>

\- There was an SEO blog that had a headline "Google Copying Bing's Image Results? Google Cheating Bing?" at <http://www.seroundtable.com/google- indexing-bing-13477.html> when in fact it was just images on bing.net and Bing neglected to have a robots.txt file. We have a policy against search results in search results, so we were happy to remove the images in less than a day. The SEO blogger changed the headline to be less sensational.

\- Oh, one more debunk: [http://allthingsd.com/20110527/google-no-government- investig...](http://allthingsd.com/20110527/google-no-government- investigations-have-not-frozen-our-manual-search-tweaks/) The webspam team continues to take manual action to remove spam in the same way that we have for the last decade.

Those are the four debunks that come to mind from the last week or so. Sigh.

<comment><USER10> So much for debunking the fact that you don't do much debunking, I guess? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From his videos, it would appear as if Matt Cutts is a Nice Guy. Can anyone confirm this?

<comment><USER12> Matt is an incredibly nice guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just curious...What tool was used to create this flowchart?

<comment><USER14> Based on the quick shadows, manually-placed arrows, and PNG metadata I would say Inkscape.

<comment><USER15> SnagIt Editor. Not the best choice, but it's what I had :)

<comment><USER14> Neat! I didn't know it was so powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is interesting to note that it is impossible for a theory spouted by nutjobs to be true in this flowchart. A non-nutjob must endorse a theory before it enters the realm of possibly true. Danny must have an incredibly low opinion of conspiracy theorists and a high opinion of Google's practices. ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> This chart makes it look as though Matt's fine as long as they're no worse than Bing. Somehow I doubt it's as simple as that.

<comment><USER17> i'm going to go ahead and make the assumption that this is not actually how matt deduces problems.

<comment><USER16> I thought I said that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> -5 points for frame-breaking.</comment>


More SSH Brute Force Protection - <AUTHOR> http://www.longren.org/more-ssh-brute-force-protection/

<comment><USER2> From [http://sourceforge.net/projects/denyhosts/files/denyhosts/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/denyhosts/files/denyhosts/), the last release of DenyHosts seems to be from 2008. The article says it's actively developed, though.

Debian says:

[Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 23:47:41 +0000] [ftpmaster: Ansgar Burchardt]

Removed the following packages from unstable:

denyhosts | 2.6-10.1 | source, all

Closed bugs: 732712

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

RoST; dead upstream; unmaintained; dysfunctional in sid

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

Also closing bug(s): 395565 436417 497485 514024 529089 546772 567209 609032 611756 622697 643031 690524 720130 721502 729322 731963 734329

Also closing WNPP bug(s):

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely needs updated. I'll write something more up-to-date up in the next few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm amazed that the easiest way to make brute force attacks useless isn't hardly ever mention. Simply disable password auth in your ssh server entirely and use ssh keys _only_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I need to update the post to include this as this is what I use for all servers now.</comment></comment>


You become an expert at what you constantly practice... - <AUTHOR>

Congratulations. You are currently becoming an expert at reading Hacker News.<p>Hopefully, that terrifies you as much as it does me, and you're inspired to go and build something! <comment><USER2> Does that mean I'm also an expert at learning and exploring new ideas? Sounds good to me :)</comment>


Nvidia: Our crypto business is dead and it's never coming back (NVDA) - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/nvidia-stock-price-crypto-business-dead-not-coming-back-2018-8-1027467378 <comment><AUTHOR> _" We believe we've reached a normal period as we're looking forward to essentially no cryptocurrency as we move forward," Nvidia CFO Colette said.

"Our revenue outlook had anticipated cryptocurrency-specific products declining to approximately $100 million, while actual crypto-specific product revenue was $18 million, and we now expect a negligible contribution going forward."_

Is that due to the bear market in crypto, a saturation in the market, or algorithms that favor non-GPU processesors?</comment>


Somewhere, a JavaScript Village is Missing Its Idiot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2012/10/idiot.js.md <comment><USER2> I like readable/clean syntax as much as any other developer, but only someone who has never created a stack frame in assembly would decide to call a function instead of assigning to a variable.</comment>


Apple Sold 120,000 iPads Yesterday; Made $75m in 19 hours - <AUTHOR> http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/13/day-1-estimate-120000-ipads-sold

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite quote in there:

"Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven't touched or for that matter, even seen in person," said Victor Castroll, an analyst with Valcent Financial Group.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's approximately 1.5 ipads per second, let's hope they live up to expectations.

It's on par with the iphone, which sold 128,000 units on the first day.

It will be interesting to see if the curve remains consistent with iphone sales over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those 128,000 people got to play with an iPhone before making the purchase though.

For me and everyone who's pre-ordering, we're simply buying blind and trusting Steve. That's pretty amazing in my opinion.

<comment><USER2> > That's pretty amazing in my opinion.

It is. Being 'second best' is usually the best position to be in when dealing with new tech, invariably there are kinks to be worked out.

I think after the imac, ipod and iphone experience Apple has created a solid following that has forgotten about things like the 'lisa', the 'newton' and the 'macintosh portable' and the 'pipin' or whatever that game computer was called.

<comment><USER3> I think it was pippin with 2 p :)

<comment><USER2> Ah, yes, you're right, that was it!

No wonder I couldn't find it in google :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, technically they haven't made $75million in 19hours. It is estimated that they did.

If you read it, they are basing the numbers on Apple Online store numbers which is accurate enough to boost stocks if you own them, but woefully inaccurate otherwise (because you don't actually know what percentage of sales are iPad sales).

It means even less when there is no comparison with competing devices). Finally, its pre-orders which means less, because the percentage of people who preorder a device, depends on the device.. I personally believe iPad sales will be slow, at least until WWDC and people know where the embedded OS is going..</comment>


Inventor temporarily disables all garage doors and key fobs in neighborhood - <AUTHOR> https://bgr.com/2019/05/06/science-news-inventor-key-fob-garage-door-openers/ <comment><USER2> I assume the FCC is going to be sending this guy a strongly worded letter. If someone's creating interference bad enough that folks start killing power to neighborhoods to try and shut it off, he's likely in some deep legal crud.

<comment><USER3> It was probably 433MHz. That's unlicensed spectrum where the rules are rather lax.

Deliberately jamming someone else's signal isn't allowed, nor is transmitting over a certain power.

Anything beyond that is fair game. If this guy designed his doorbell to transmit all the time, but then stop transmitting when the doorbell was pressed (ie. The opposite of a regular doorbell), he would be well within his rights.

If car keys and garage door openers wanted assured spectrum, they should have properly licensed some spectrum.</comment></comment>


Random Acts of Optimization - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.riotgames.com/news/random-acts-optimization <comment><USER2> This brings up a thought that I've had for a very long time. Almost every type of optimization that a programmer could employ is repeatable. It involves matching patterns ("Identification" in the context of this article), analysis ("Comprehension"), and rewriting ("Iteration").

All of these steps can be efficiently automated. And it turns out that compiler writers collectively know about the vast majority of these techniques, but refuse to implement most of them for what I would consider to be the ultimate copout ever: Compile times. I don't know about you, but I would take 100x increase in compilation times for a release build over a 2x increase in development time due to manual optimization. I'm not sure who wouldn't, especially if it also allows you to eliminate technical debt, eliminate leaky abstractions, and improve code comprehensibility.

Perhaps I'm being overly idealistic, but I can't help but hope for a day that I can work with a high level language and have the compiler take care of optimizations that range from removing redundant elements from struct definitions all the way down to bitshift optimizations like i * 28 == i<<4 + i<<3 + i<<2\. And if I have to wait all day long for a release build of something, so be it.

<comment><USER3> Insulation from performance concerns also makes your performance model less predictable. Because the _ends_ of optimisations are observable, but their _means_ are not, people resort to "butterfly programming". As a small example, in ActionScript 3, people used to write their conditionals like this:

        if (a) if (b) {
          ...
        }

Rather than this:

        if (a && b) {
          ...
        }

Because the dumb compiler generated better code for the former.

In the real world, I've seen seemingly benign code changes prevent optimisations from firing—optimisations we didn't know we were relying on. So people start coding to the implementation, rather than the language or the human, _without even being able to see what they're doing_. I _really_ don't like that.

Optimisers are like garbage collectors—they give you better ergonomics than, and equal _average_ performance to the manual alternative, if you're willing to relinquish predictability and a non-voodoo mental model of your code's performance.

<comment><USER4> > I really don't like that.

Unfortunately, the nature of optimizations makes tracking these sorts of things really hard. They don't occur in a vacuum - nearly every optimization transformation interacts with a dozen other transforms, sometimes with very surprising (and usually counterproductive) results.

If you simply implement "book" optimizations, you'll find that they often don't even work without some considerable re-engineering from the bottom up. Many book optimizations make the code slower. And then there are the myriad of optimizations that make code faster on one CPU and slower on the next release of that CPU.

If you think that compiler optimizer writers are holding out on you, they aren't. It's a bit of an arcane art, like samurai sword making technique.

<comment><USER3> Of course. I have no problem with generic, implicit optimisation. However, people often need to optimise further, manually. Without good language support, they start coding to a particular implementation: using less-than- portable intrinsics, or worse, trying to trigger heuristics that produce the optimisations they actually want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey everyone, I'm the author of this article and I'm glad you've found it interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread, so if you have any questions or comments I'll address them as soon as I can. I can already see some awesome questions here - looking forward to the discussion.

<comment><USER6> Why scan the table of precomputed values? It seems like the code would be both cleaner and faster like this:

      class AnimatedVariable {
        int numValues;
        std::vector<float> values;
        // ...
      }

Then:

      if (!mPrecomputed) {
        float idx = time * numValues;
        float before = values[idx], after = values[idx+1];
        return lerp(before, after, idx - (int)idx);
      }

I guess there's a bit of float -> int coercion going on there, but it shouldn't be too bad.

<comment><USER5> Because we are interpolating between keys which aren't evenly distributed in time. What you have there is pretty much what we do when looking up the precomputed values from the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >In our case we output the profile buffer to a file and read that into the visualization tool which is conveniently built into Chrome. (You can find more information about the tracing tool here and you can try it out by typing "chrome://tracing/" into your Chrome browser. It is designed for web page profiling, but the format of the input profile data is a simple json format that can be easily constructed from your own data.)

Clever! Never heard of doing that but it makes sense.

<comment><USER8> Another term for these profiling charts in Chrome is flame charts, you might be able to find even more tools by it.

<comment><USER9> Yup, basically Chrome is using an inverted flame graph (See [1] for additional infos and tools).

[1] - [https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph](https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi all,

I work with Tony the author of the article and answer (or find someone to answer) any league questions you might have. Tony will be most likely be online later in the day as he works remotely with us from Australia.

<comment><USER11> Could the order of condition-statements-machine-code (as in the case handling code)e.g. in the particle code be made rearranging according to in-game-heat- counting?

<comment><USER5> You _could_ , but I doubt it would have much of an effect on performance. Modern CPUs are ridiculously good at looking ahead and executing paths pre- emptively, meaning that branching is far less of an issue. On the older consoles, branching was a big issue, so that would have helped there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting article, but Riot hasn't really earned any trust of mine at all as it comes to code quality; for a while they couldn't show the damage output of a spell because it caused the user's other summoner spell to go on cooldown for 15 minutes[1] when they tried.

[1] ([https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2hvukl/smi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2hvukl/smite_damage_should_be_shown_on_the_icon/))

<comment><USER13> "Its defects do not reflect issues with our code base (though there are many), but rather my own hacky implementation."

Every code base has tech debt. You can't predict the requirements of the future, and even if you could, trying to account for them means you never release your product.

<comment><USER14> Riot's code base has a massive amount of technical debt, to a point where a rewrite is likely the best choice because of past technology decisions.

<comment><USER15> A rewrite would murder them. I'm not going to link that article everyone links about "never rewriting your code", because I don't think it's got the argument right, but I strongly feel that if they tried to rewrite a system as complex as theirs, they would either a) never finish or b) stop developing the game and, by the time they finished their rewrite, have no customers left.

Anyway, it would end up being called a sequel.

<comment><USER14> Not having a well-written client is murdering them. Sometimes the hard way is the best way.

<comment><USER16> No, it isn't.

They have the most popular video game of all time and you think that a poorly written client is killing them? It has had some problems over the years that are annoying to users (and frankly embarrassing when compared to DOTA 2), but at the end of the day the quality of the client is insignificant to most players compared to the fun-factor of the game itself, as proven by their unprecedented success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dota 2 has custom games now. Maybe they can write the new client in Hammer.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems they don't want anyone using PIA to access their blog... Tried reconnecting and got denied again, had to switch endpoint country to actually get access.

> Error 1008 Access denied. The owner of this website > (engineering.riotgames.com) has banned your IP address (188.8.131.52).

> Error 1008 Access denied. The owner of this website > (engineering.riotgames.com) has banned your IP address (18.104.22.168).

<comment><USER18> Or that's the end effect of having been attacked from those IP addresses, which I'm assuming are not unique to the user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> p.s. The world finals of the e-sports game 'League of Legends' made by this company is happening this weekend.

Last year's event generated more global viewers than the NBA final.

</comment><comment><USER20> The biggest optimization would be to change their programming language.

<comment><USER21> To...?

<comment><USER22> Lisp, clearly. /s

<comment><USER23> Real Optimizers use Fortran.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


As MtGox trading remains suspended, bitcoin price falls from $160 to $60 - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinity.org/markets/btce/USD <comment><USER2> So one thing I've noticed and have been logging for a while is the fact that there is huge disparity between prices on various exchanges. My first inclination was to create an arbitrage bot that would buy on one exchange, then transfer to another, and sell again. There are numerous problems with this approach, not the least of which is that you can only really transfer BTC between exchanges and not other currency.

My next thought was this: watch MtGox and assume that it drives the market price. Then buy/sell on another exchange, taking advantage of the fact that there is a delay.

Long story short, it's not as easy as this. However, there is definitely an opportunity for arbitrage here as for example currently BTCe is showing $65, while BitStamp is showing $61.

<comment><USER3> Are transaction fees small enough for that to work? $65 versus $61 is only about a 6% difference, and you need two transactions for each trip, so the fees would have to be under ~3%.

<comment><USER4> Fees are under 1%. Mtgox's highest fee is 0.55% and bitstamp's highest is 0.5%

<comment><USER3> Better than I expected, obviously. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reactions on r/bitcoin, are interesting and tragic. The title of the top thread with 515 comments: _I think this subreddit should seriously consider having suicide hotline info posted_

<http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin>

<comment><USER6> To be fair, most of those are from 6+ hours ago.

<comment><USER5> True. That just means it's going to get _worse_ once the 60% drop today is accounted for, and looking at the new posts, people are in a panic.

<comment><USER6> I'm definitely just waiting to see what's up when Mt.Gox comes back online. Wish I had some money in btce to buy a few though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin is not dead, it will come back. Technically, it won't even disappear.

Bitcoin has many fundamental uses as an exchange of value (note the vernacular) that is not done properly by anything else. It is the reason that markets like the Silk Road can exist. The "fundamental" flaw of bitcoin is that it is deflationary. This causes mass speculation, which causes instability.

It's instability means that it is not a good store of value. It is good for exchange of value under certain conditions (anonymous, distributed, trust required, cryptographic, etc.). Bitcoin is taking a hit right now because all of the speculators are cashing out (or panicking, or whatever). Most of the people who use bitcoin for it's fundamental strengths only hold on to bitcoin briefly. This is one of the (perhaps unintended) features of the commodity.

Bitcoin is not good for measuring value. You would never set a price in terms of bitcoin. You would set the price in terms of dollars or euros and then use a conversion to figure out what the price in bitcoins should be. This will probably always be the case for bitcoin transactions, because that's just how bitcoin is.

But as long as bitcoin does 'distributed, anonymous, and cryptographic' better than everybody else, it will be used for those strengths, and this will keep it alive. Bitcoin is not dead until there is something to replace it. A market crash does not count.

It just makes for some sad speculators.

</comment><comment><USER8> Speculations affect every currency or share. But it affects bitcoin stronger because of its low market cap.

Think bitcoin as a some random micro cap manufacturing company located overseas, one news coverage and everything changes.

<comment><USER9> Can you describe the mechanisms in the bitcoin system which will drive down the investment-based and speculation-based trading and drive up the currency- based trading?

It seems to me that the exact opposite trend is more likely. The use of bitcoin as a currency will become increasingly swamped by speculative investments and the swings in value will only get larger and larger, not smaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The link in the article has BTC at $65 right now and <http://realtimebitcoin.info> has it at $124.90. How is that possible?

Edit-

It looks like <http://realtimebitcoin.info> is using mtgox for their data, which explains the discrepancy.

<comment><AUTHOR> That site is pulling data from Mt.Gox, the largest exchange. Mt.Gox suspended trading a few hours ago, and has been showing a "last price" of $124.90 since. On other exchanges (where trading is not suspended), the price is currently hovering at $60-$65.

Mt.Gox reopens at 02:00 UTC. (This comment was written at approx 22:25 UTC, so when this comment is about 3.5 hours old. When that happens, I predict, all hell will break loose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So I don't quite understand is the falling price because mtgox is down for maintenance (if so why does it have that effect, I don't run into the street and burn my cash just because the banks are closed on Sundays) or is that just a coincidence?

<comment><USER12> Imagine what it would be like if there were bank holidays, but they are not predictable in a calendar sense in advance like our holidays... and every bank has their own list of holidays. And also there are only five banks.

I think the price is falling because there's been a speculative bubble rising, and the speculators' confidence is a fickle thing. Maybe up until now, you were a speculator and you didn't think you needed to go anywhere else. Now Mt.Gox has frozen trading and they are also not processing withdrawals. Most people stop trading too.

So, it's a fire sale, because nobody knows if our bubble will blow itself back up again, or how long it's going to take for that to happen. If you were keeping 2/3 of your money at Mt.Gox and now you're afraid that it's utterly gone (at least you know you won't be trading it today), so you've only got 1/3 of what you had, and everyone in town says it's worth 1/7 what it was yesterday.

A few people would surely take the money and get rid of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Recent research has shown that placebo works even when patient knows (s)he's getting placebo.

Now it looks like the economic bubble works even when everyone knows it's a bubble: <http://imgur.com/jvSKdEv>

<comment><USER14> "Recent research has shown that placebo works even when patient knows (s)he's getting placebo."

Huh? Why would it be surprising that placebos work when the patient knows they're getting the placebo?

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20091554>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not terribly impressed with Bitcoin. But it might be possible to make a few bucks on this downturn.

"A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." -Warren Buffet

</comment><comment><USER16> You seem to have capitalized the name of the exchange incorrectly. It's not MtGox (like a mountain), it stands Magic The Gathering Online Exchange, a website where you can trade children's playing cards.

<comment><USER17> > it stands Magic The Gathering Online Exchange, a website where you can trade > children's playing cards.

I'm not sure if you did it to drive the point or not, but Magic: The Gathering is by no means "for children". The average age of players is way over 18 in most areas.

(Slightly biased as someone who's been playing M:TG for over 18 years.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it likely the mass sell off will come once mtgox reopens? Certainly many have their bitcoins tied in there and will begin selling once open?

<comment><AUTHOR> While I'm not qualified to say, I certainly would predict so.

Many price-monitoring tools pull data from MtGox. For anyone using those tools, the price has been stable at $125 for the last few hours and will stay that way until the exchange reopens at whatever the price is then (currently around $65).

When that jump happens, I can only imagine a vast quantity of BTC will be sold and the price will crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a list of distinct URLs of Bitcoin charts, for next time the rate goes crazy?

</comment><comment><USER20> Back up to 82 ... end of the milking machine for today.

</comment><comment><USER21> Please. Bitcoin fanatics, come out and tell me that Bitcoin will change the world.

That there will come another rise, and this time it won't be a bubble.

Because I know you think these things, that you're true believers, and you think that an unregulated currency with a track record of insane volatility will replace our means of commerce somehow.

Here's the thing:

The majority of people that have Bitcoins now are the people that don't want to sell them. Ever.

The mainstream media watched you this time. It saw just how dysfunctional Bitcoin is.

You lost.

<comment><USER22> Straw man army. Which bitcoin enthusiast said that "winning" requires "replacing our means of commerce" or "changing the world" or even "never having insane volatility"?

I consider myself a bitcoin enthusiast, and I have never made any of those arguments, and I don't consider myself to have "lost." If the value of bitcoin goes to zero and stays there, I don't consider myself to have "lost." It's still an awesome idea that interests me from computer science and economic/political perspectives, and everything we've seen happen in the bitcoin economy is to me a cool proof of concept.

I don't understand why the "anti-bitcoin fanatics" are so vehement in their criticism of bitcoin enthusiasts. You seem to deriving much more excitement from the recent bitcoin price drops than I ever did from its price increases. Honestly, I just think the decentralized transaction log based on proof-of- work is a really cool idea, and the hypothesis that there could be a trustworthy means of making and verifying transactions without a government or central authority controlling the thing being transacted is compelling. I would think that even if I just read the white paper and there had never been a single bitcoin transaction in real life. The fact that there is a high- profile bitcoin economy is just icing on the cake.

The anti-bitcoin fanatics have carefully constructed their position to ensure that they can interpret literally _any_ event as evidence that bitcoin is stupid or doomed or a scam. Is the price rising? That's obviously market irrationality and pure speculation. Is the price falling? That's clearly the market correcting itself. Is a certain exchange doing well and gaining a good reputation? That's an evil monopoly that goes against the decentralized goal of bitcoin. Is a certain exchange experience technical difficulties? Then that's just a bunch of incompetent amateurs, or worse, malicious scammers trying to distort the market. Is there a lack of people actually buying useful things with bitcoin? That's clear evidence that there is no real bitcoin economy. Is a business supporting bitcoin payments? Well that's still crap, since they're tying the price to the USD exchange price, or using credit cards, or the business owner is just some bitcoin shill, etc.

<comment><USER23> Dear baddox

My name is Danjuma Sule, one of the sons of major Gen Gumel Danjuma Sule, The late Nigeria's former minister of mines and power in the regime of the late former Nigeria's military Head of state, Gen Sanni Abacha. When my father died he left me an inheritance of 13002422.34343422 bitcoins. Unfortunately bitcoin exchanges are not yet set up in Nigerian currency and I am in need of a young techno wizard with a bank account denominated in US dollars to assist me in gaining access to my inheritance.

It is on this basis I am seeking for assistance. Your percentage is negotiable. Please note; your age and profession doesn't really matter in this transaction. Waiting for your immediate response and bank account specifics.

Regards, Danjuma Sule

<comment><USER7> I would like to point out that there aren't even 13 million bitcoins in circulation.

<comment><USER24> I would like to think that number was chosen on purpose. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There really was no need for the hardware upgrade. The volume won't be coming back anytime soon.</comment>