64 bits. It's Nothing. You Don't Need It. And We'll Have It In 6 Months  - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/09/22/64-bits-its-nothing-you-dont-need-it-and-well-have-it-in-6-months/ <comment><USER3> I don't understand how you write a post this long and meandering, talking about how Google will select a 64-bit processor, without even noting the obvious, fundamental fact that _Apple 's new processor is faster because it's a new ARM architecture, not because it's 64-bit_. It would probably be faster if it were 32-bit. Doubling the size of your pointers and/or machine words certainly does not make typical code (passing around 32-bit integers - <USER2> smaller - most of the time) faster. Architectural improvements make code faster, and the arch used in the A7 is much improved.

EDIT: Does the new iPhone even have 2GB of addressable memory? Does it benefit from the 64-bit address space at all? Apple's specs don't say how much RAM the thing has, and whether it has any VRAM. What else would the address space be used for? I imagine you could map the whole internal flash to memory, but that seems like an incredibly awful idea to me unless you want random addressing errors to corrupt storage (maybe it'd be fine if only ring 0 had access)

<comment><USER4> It is obvious that smartphones will break the 4GB limit fairly soon (< 5 years), though I think right now the 5S has 1GB.

They added more registers and cleaned up some cruft in the 64-bit ISA, so that is where the speed is coming from. You also get some speed from the extra bits even if you aren't addressing 4+ GB of memory (e.g. 64 bit longs are native).

It doesn't make much sense to clean up the architecture without adding 64-bit at the same time. X86 -> X64 followed the same path.

<comment><USER5> It would be much sooner than 5 years. And it's not about smartphones but tablets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely horrendous post that uses the trope of presenting a wide array of opinions as if they all come from a singular. ARMv8 is pretty cool, which is why the entire industry is moving to it, and were before this.</comment>


Fresco for Android: A powerful painting app featuring layers and filters.  - <AUTHOR> https://market.android.com/details?id=org.seanw.fresco.lite

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the independent developer who made the app. I'm happy to answer any questions about Android development and I'd love to know what you think of the app.

The link above goes to the ad-supported Lite version. The Pro is available here: <https://market.android.com/details?id=org.seanw.fresco.pro></comment>


Google's Mail Goggles Prevents Drunk Emailing (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2008/10/googles-mail-go/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's an official Gmail Blog post about the same feature, although the images are broken.

[https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop- sendin...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail- you-later.html)</comment>


Second Life, making money and the lack of imagination - <AUTHOR> http://qiss.textdriven.com/blog2/?p=9 <comment><USER2> I did not have the impression that there is a lack of imagination in Second Life. That there are lots of boring creations is meaningless, as it does not say anything about the amount of interesting creations.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree.

If there are many crappy things out there and some rare jewels stick out, I think it's justified to say there is an overall lack of imagination.

It's that what many people notice when they visit Second Life the first time. Large abandoned places. Nothing of real interest.

Second Life is missing Google. There is nothing that really helps people to find the good things in Second Life.

I'm sure it was a kind of "google effect" in the old days that showed people what sites on the internet were good and widely accepted, and by that they started to improve their own sites. Maybe if something like that is built, true innovation and improvement will be noticed and more easily adopted by the citizens...

<comment><USER2> I agree that it is hard to find interesting things in Second Life, especially as the internal search functionality seems to be quite crappy (like so many other aspects of the interface). That doesn't say anything about the creativity going on, though - it only means that the search engine is broken. I tend to read about interesting places in Second Life in blogs. Several web pages try to address the search problem for Second Life, too.

At the times when I was just trying my luck with the internal search engine, I found interesting places, too. Many of them were abandoned, that is true, but that doesn't imply that they were boring.

What would you do as a first time user of the World Wide Web? Would you be able to find interesting web pages right away?</comment></comment></comment>


Maker of 'Candy Crush Saga' plans IPO - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323566804578553292301803254-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwODExNDgyWj.html

<comment><USER2> They've been profitable since '05, which is great. With an IPO lurking they must have something else big in the pipeline - otherwise it's a Zynga 2.0.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you show off your portfolio of dead side projects? - <AUTHOR> I feel like I've made many side projects that I was proud of, but didn't take off commercially. Eventually I turn off hosting, then don't renew the domain name. My code is left on GitHub but much harder to show off your past projects by saying "go dig through my code and build on your machine".<p>Any ideas on how to keep your side projects out there for people to see without the need to continue paying for hosting? <comment><USER2> Well, Depending on what kind of projects these are, keeping a copy of the website somewhere is usually a good start.

If it is program based, keeping screenshots or recording of what the software did can also be of help.

My third and final tip would be to write some form of post explaining what the project was and maybe why you think it didn't take off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Buy 1 cheap domain for 10 years or get a free domain (.gs), buy 1 cheap hosting for 10 years or use some free hosting (Red Hat Openshift) and deploy all your stuff there + make sure you have README.md in all your projects with single-script deploy script. As EKSolutions said: screenshots, documentation etc.

<comment><USER2> Just a bit of bonus information to add on here, you can get free domain names from [http://freenom.com](http://freenom.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well an alternative is to have an online portfolio site where you can keep screenshots, examples or even gifs showing your the features of these sites. Also, you should keep the code in case you want to show it as well</comment>


NIST Random Beacon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/nist-randomness-beacon <comment><USER2> There are two clear uses for this, and one anti-use.

First, in scientific coding, one of the big challenges is in reproducing the results of a program that uses random numbers. A classic solution is to use a deterministic pseudo-random number generator that can be seeded, such that if it's seeded with the same number on two different runs, it will always generate the same output. This could be a great replacement for that, since you could write a rand() routine that accepts a start point in the chain and traverses forward to output random values on demand.

Second, you could use this as a source of future randomness -- for example, I will award you $x if the next eight bits out of the random generator represent 0-127, and will award the $x to me if they represent 128 or greater. We can both check the value, and we don't have to trust each other.

The caveat with the last example is that we both have to trust that NIST has not been compromised ...

The anti-use would be in any sort of cryptographic implementation, since any "entropy" you'd be gaining by using this data as a source of randomness is completely counteracted by the fact that the source is known. Randomness becomes deterministic once the source of the randomness is disclosed and broadcast ...

<comment><USER3> "The anti-use would be in any sort of cryptographic implementation"

I'm not ready to disagree with you (yet) but I was thinking about the possibility of turning a pseudo-random number into a truly random number. If you generate a number using a PRNG and use that as a bit offset (via the timestamp), you might get a better string of random bits as an input to your cryptography system. Of course this relies on there being enough previously generated bits available.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't the weak point in that system then be the PRNG? If so, doesn't that require the use of a crytographically secure PRNG in the first place?

<comment><USER3> Yes ... the PRNG is the weak point (just as it always is). And if you're only using enough bits from the PRNG to generate a timestamp, you also have to worry about whether the distribution is flat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "DO NOT USE BEACON GENERATED VALUES AS SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS"

but people will do it anyway, the level of insanity out there is really high [https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/68pusp/gavin_andresen_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/68pusp/gavin_andresen_on_twitter_im_looking_for_beta/dh1cmfl/) or even [https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/05/crypto-flaws-in- blo...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/05/crypto-flaws-in-blockchain- android-app-sent-bitcoins-to-the-wrong-address/)

also why would it be a good idea to use a centralized source of "entropy"....? why is NIST involved at all?

<comment><USER6> > also why would it be a good idea to use a centralized source of > "entropy"....? why is NIST involved at all?

Actually there's a very good use-case for NIST's Random Beacon in [OpenTimestamps]([https://opentimestamps.org/](https://opentimestamps.org/)): preventing miners from backdating their blocks undetectably.

Background: The Bitcoin protocol constrains block timestamps to not be >2hrs in the future, by virtue of the (kinda weak) rule that nodes reject forward dated blocks. However, for a timestamp proof that rule is irrelevant: a forward-dated block is a weaker proof, not a stronger proof. Unfortunately the reverse is problematic: a Bitcoin block is valid so long as its timestamp is > the median time of the last 11 blocks; nodes will happily accept backdated blocks, with the only constraint on backdating being that you eventually push the difficulty up.

Now, if you assume it's only a small percentage of miners doing this, the median time past rule helps you a bit, but it's hard to model; if a majority of miners are backdating blocks, there's a risk of backdated timestamps being generated with significant (hours/days) of backdating. While that risk is mostly theoretical because it's easily detected, it'd still be nice to rule it out.

Since the NIST Random Beacon represents a nonce that NIST claims did _not_ exist in the past, we can easily use it to constrain and detect block timestamp backdating, a useful improvement to the security of OpenTimestamps. While not a priority, I'll probably add support for random beacons to OpenTimestamps at some point, and have the calendars do this automatically as part of the timestamping process.

Of course, I wouldn't do this with just NIST: all blockchains act as random beacons, so it'd make sense to use a merkle tree of this NIST random beacon and a few other blockchains at the same time to achieve this.

And finally, yes, you're quite right: using the random beacon as a source of entropy is beyond stupid.

edit: Come to think of it, the simplest possible implementation of this would be a cronjob that just grabbed the latest beacon and timestamped it... All you need to achieve is proof that the block had a dependency on the beacon after all.

edit2: ...and it's live: [https://alice.btc.calendar.opentimestamps.org/experimental/i...](https://alice.btc.calendar.opentimestamps.org/experimental/inject/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "DO NOT USE BEACON GENERATED VALUES AS SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS."

Can this at least be used to seed a CSPRNG at boot / device install, ideally with a mix of other entropy available? Is the problem that they're shared for everyone at some given time?

<comment><USER8> You need a TLS connection to get the NIST beacon, which requires a seeded rng. That seems like a chicken and egg problem.

<comment><USER9> As long as this data was signed by NIST, and we trusted NIST, there should be no need for TLS.

<comment><USER10> except that you would need to download the _entire_ random number sequence blockchain history instead of, say, specific parts. Otherwise, the specific parts you download would be known and therefore part of your randomness would be known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A clock for transactions. Since this produces verifiable data every minute, you can use that data as to sign any transaction and be able to verify that the transaction did not occur prior to the publication. However you can not verify that the signed data was not modified or even created after the publication of the data. Any thoughts on how this concept can be useful then?

<comment><USER2> It's mostly not. The block chain is much better suited for this case, because you can insert a hash of your data into a particular block and prove that you were in possession of it at the time the block was mined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My hero, John Walker, built this thing in 1996: [https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/)

</comment><comment><USER13> At Tierion, we think the inclusion of the NIST Beacon in every Chainpoint 3.0 proof we generate is a powerful feature.

We announced that we had started including the Beacon in our new proofs at Consensus in May. The first of its kind.

[https://tierion.com/blog/chainpoint-innovations-in- blockchai...](https://tierion.com/blog/chainpoint-innovations-in-blockchain- timestamp-proofs/)

Its also featured in our white paper if you'd like to read more about how we're using it.

[https://tokensale.tierion.com/whitepaper](https://tokensale.tierion.com/whitepaper)

Tierion has been collaborating with the leader of the Random Beacon project at NIST and we've been providing feedback on their new release, expected this summer.

Every Chainpoint 3.0 proof has the most current available NIST timestamp and its associated random value merged into the proof directly, allowing easy manual audit and cross-check. This is in addition to server NTP time in the form of a v1 UUID, which contains both a timestamp and randomness.

We also include the NIST Beacon in a new Calendar block every time it is updated so our Calendar blocks can have enhanced temporal anchoring, even in the absence of aggregated Merkle roots being anchored to the Calendar.

We've thought for a while that the NIST Beacon it pretty cool and we're glad to see others coming around to the idea as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> How susceptible would this be to government influence?

NIST have a long history of positive work in the security field, so they have that in their favour. They also publish the "hash of the previous value to chain the sequence of values together", so presumably someone could record all of the values and test them for randomness ... but still, if this became the default source for random number generators in operating systems everywhere, it would present a very attractive target.

<comment><USER15> How much would it matter if you used this as one source of entropy for your rng?

<comment><USER2> The fact that it might be non-random is a much smaller concern than the fact that it's known by the world. The whole point of seeding a RNG with entropy (at least for cryprographic purposes) is to attempt to prevent someone else from duplicating/predicting the state of the RNG.

<comment><USER14> Ahhh ... yeah, that makes total sense. So it would literally be the worst thing you could do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If I read the announcement correctly, the hash is computed on the last value and is distributed separately. Either I miss something or they can change ANY value in the chain and the last hash would still check out.

It is only viable to use this while constantly querying /last. If network/power/etc. outage lasts more than 60 secs, chains should be considered separate.

Or maybe I'm missing something obvious

<comment><USER17> I read "Each... value includes the hash of the previous value... chaining the sequence of values together" which is how immutability is ensured. (Amending a prior value would invalidate the hashes of every subsequent value.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What would be the typical usecase for this beacon?

The first usecase I could think of would be a warning canary that signs the data of the beacon akin to the plot in movies where someone holds up today's newspaper.

The 2nd would as said on the page as kind of "nothing up my sleeves" random number generator

<comment><USER19> Financial Times was already doing something like this years ago (still is?):

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/Root_of_Merkl...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/Root_of_Merkle_tree_as_published_in_Widely_Witnessed_Media.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Compare to the Dice-O-Matic [0] just recently featured here.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14806986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14806986)

</comment><comment><USER21> Similar: [https://www.random.org/](https://www.random.org/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Gambling seems like an interesting use case. Having a public seed and a public algorithm would mean that results should be verifiable but not predictable.

I suppose it would be interesting to consider how latency of this public resource represents a risk and how it could be mitigated.

<comment><USER23> One would assume that all bets would close X units of time before generation time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For those interested, here's a Haskell interface to the Beacon I put together some time ago [1].

[1] [https://github.com/bstamour/haskell-nist- beacon](https://github.com/bstamour/haskell-nist-beacon)

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember using ANU's one as the random source for a first year CS assignment once haha

[https://qrng.anu.edu.au/](https://qrng.anu.edu.au/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm, what if a government agency with warrant / hacker can force a specific consumer of this service to be fed with known "random" values?

</comment><comment><USER27> /dev/random seeding on bootup from NIST will be implemented in systemd in 3..2..1..

<comment><USER28> That would be a terrible idea. Seeding a (C)PRNG from a publicly known value is one of the worst ways to shoot yourself in the foot.

<comment><USER29> I'm pretty sure that's the joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think NIST implemented the random beacon when they announced the WTC towers report?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM)</comment>


Chemists Discover Why the Nose Is Hypersensitive to Sulfur Odors - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chemists-discover-why-the-nose-is-hypersensitive-to-sulfur-odors/ <comment><USER2> > Evolutionarily, it pays to have a nose that can pick up the minutest > presence of thiols, says study co-author Eric Block, a chemist at the > University at Albany, State University of New York. The sulfur compounds are > released by rotting food, for instance, and some predators give off > olfactory cues to their presence in this form.

Ah the classic, " _Your body evolved to let you know when things will kill you_ ". That's usually a successful evolutionary process.

<comment><USER3> I feel that this is the most commonly misunderstood thing about evolution by laypeople.

'evolving' as a verb is incredibly misleading. There is no active process that is 'evolving'. The body didn't 'realize' that this was useful so it kept it. There was no 'success'. We're merely looking at survival bias.

When scientists say that X is probably because of evolution, they don't really explain how X happened. Just a random genetic copying error, not anything exciting. Instead, they are saying that 'not X' has disappeared because those individuals had a higher chance to die before reproducing.

<comment><USER2> Okay if you want to get technical, bodies with more sensitivity to detect things that could kill them had a higher survival rate prior to reproducing. That in turn lead to higher sensitivity to detecting things that can kill us.

Saying " _they evolved to..._ " is just short hand for " _others were more likely to die so X won out_ ".

<comment><USER3> Sorry, this wasn't meant against you or your post personally, just a random rant about how poor language choices can confuse a lot of people.

And by that I don't mean that you made a bad choice, just when the terms were introduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original paper link: [http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b06983](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b06983)

The paper mentions that in 1977 a Robert Crabtree predicted that copper(I) would be a likely coordination site. Copper is a pretty reactive metal when it comes to sulfur, and lets it do all sorts of stuff.

Here is a tangentially related post from In The Pipeline: [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/05/15/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/05/15/things_i_wont_work_with_selenophenol)

Which discusses some derivatives of selenium, the element directly below sulfur on the periodic table.

From personal experience, you can get used to the way sulfur compounds smell. Amines, and other functional groups stay vile.</comment>


The Economics of Soaking the Rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html <comment><USER2> I agree with most of this, however it misses out the obvious.

The issue of taxes isn't just about how much is raised, it is also about what it is spent on.

Asserting that it's optimal to raise as much tax as possible is based on the assumption that the government is better than anyone else at deploying resources.

This is the assumption that conservatives challenge, and which is at the root of the drive to lower taxes.

An extreme conservative position would be that the government should be as small as possible and taxes should be minimized.

The opposite extreme would be to maximize tax revenue, and hence maximize the power of the government.

Krugman is making the case here that AOC is taking a well informed but nevertheless extreme position whose goal is to maximize government.

We can argue about whether this is the appropriate policy for our current situation, but it's clearly at the extreme end of what's possible.

<comment><USER3> > An extreme conservative position would be that the government should be as > small as possible and taxes should be minimized.

No, that's an extreme libertarian position. While conservatives often adopt libertarian arguments when the subject is an area where liberals prefer active government (and, conversely, liberals do so, though less often, when the area is one where conservatives prefer active government) [0], conservatives aren't generally minarchists the way libertarians are.

[0] As well as spending, this included taxes, hence why Reagan presided over both a historically large tax cut and a historically large tax increase that together amounted to a massive tax burden shift down the income scale.

<comment><USER2> Agreed - that's a fair correction, although it doesn't change the point about AOC and Krugman assuming the extreme goal of maximizing government.</comment></comment></comment>


The Minimum Viable Product from our lean, bootstrapped startup - comments? - <AUTHOR> http://www.powergrabber.com

<comment><USER2> I felt bad for my observation of your title, so felt I should leave some feedback as well, I apologize.

Your primary message: "PowerGrabber is an invitation manager. It captures the addresses from your inbound and outbound emails, so you can invite the people you email to join your LinkedIn™ network."

I don't know what an invitation manager _is_ , _captures_ sounds non-friendly. How about: PowerGrabber ensures the people you email are connected to you via LinkedIn. No more lost connections.

I'd also drop all the trademark symbols, whilst probably more legal it looks very corporate and almost scammy as it breaks the line flow.

I'd put the benefits above the "What is PowerGrabber" (you duplicate your appropriate primary marketing message, only with more detail)

In reality your benefits are _that the people you email are your linkedin contacts_. I'd spell this out by a short scenario about losing a contact that would be really valuable in the future. The benefits you list are complex and scary and marketing speak. "Systematically".

From the application point of view - the most useful data is _who do I email the most that I'm not connected to?_ do you offer that? A video would help. The "how it works" image isn't clear as to how it works. Your best bet is to make a few screens in PowerPoint and record them as a video.

Your privacy policy is a pdf, i'd put that as html.

I'd also consider changing the logo as when I see that logo I think of the soviet union which is uhm, probably not appropriate :)

It's a neat idea and I'd use it if it worked with GMail and Mac. It solves a problem and is of clear value to the user, I'd make sure your marketing messages were similarly clear.

Just my $0.02

<comment><USER3> Just to back this point up with my upvote, I don't like the 'invitation manager' terminology. I basically read that first paragraph, didn't get why it was useful to me, then closed the page, no offense!

The first sentence already describes what PowerGRabber is. Below that, SHOW me why it's useful, whether it be a flowchart, a screenshot, or whatever :)

also I just scrolled down to your diagram at the bottom and still didn't get it :X

<comment><USER4> I had the same reaction. For a moment, I thought 'Invitation Manager' was some kind of automated RSVP system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Benefits sell software, not features. Don't tell us what it does, tell us the concrete improvement in our lives we'll experience from using it. (Hint: the things you have listed under benefits are not actually benefits. Nothing that starts with "Systematically" is a benefit. To normal people, systematically says "sounds a whole lot like _work_.")

Your button does not look like a button to me (CrazyEgg will tell you if I'm nuts or not) and is off to the side. If your customers are like my customers, I'd suggest supplementing that with a button in the main content.

</comment><comment><USER6> Too much writing and pictures in landing page.

Also what is your future value proposition? Is it only the ability to link emails to linked in?

<comment><USER7> Agree with too much writing. For example, "PowerGrabber is an invitation manager. It captures the addresses from your inbound and outbound emails, so you can invite the people you email to join your LinkedIn network." is too long for a headline.

Shorter version could be: "Easily invite more people you know to Linkedin", or something like that (you surely know the value proposition better than me ;)

And then but the most important things in bullets: the price, the fact that it's a Windows download, etc. Edit down that text, shorter is better :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> MVP, Lean, Boostrapped. You certainly win at buzzwords.

<comment><USER5> This is rather more snarky than usual for the top comment on a Rate My Startup post. I would rather not see that become a trend, since they're some of the most enjoyable (and useful) posts this community has, and -- of all people -- we should understand that getting something out and ready to show takes both courage and hard work.

<comment><USER2> I agree. I think I probably should leave some feedback (aww, can't edit..) as well, but at the same time felt the amount of buzzwords thrown around by startups these days is getting alarming.

And these _are_ buzzwords. Lean, Boostrapped, MVP - tell me _nothing_ of the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You will have tough competition from i.e. Xobni. They are free to use, well integrated with Outlook and let you display LinkedIn info about every email address that you are dealing with. <http://www.xobni.com/social-outlook>

<comment><USER9> Great! Someone else has done something similar! That means there's a market.

<comment><USER8> You have a good point. But the next thing you need to think of is: \- is Xobni really serving the market in an optimal way? \- Is there something we can do better?

To be honest I don't see answers for those two questions on their landing page. My first feeling was that it was like more complicated version of the "connect" button in Xobni.

<comment><USER9> Well, that's why you should release early and pivot - to learn and explore.

I just don't want them to get frozen by the First Mover Paranoia: [http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/21/stealth- disease-...](http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/21/stealth-disease-and- first-mover-paranoia/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about a platform independent version (i.e. web)? There are a lot of people that either don't use Windows, or don't use an email client ON Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> We wondered if people might feel nervous about email addresses being captured on their machine and then sent to a database somewhere on the Internet. But perhaps not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the MVP here would be a comma separated list of email addresses harvested by sniffing in/out going emails.

That product appears to be probably more useful too. The linkedin stuff moves to a particular use whilst simple CSV email list doesn't - linkedin allows you to invite by pasting a CSV list of email addresses, but here's the clincher, so do many other sites.

Fair enough, have a button to open up the browser and paste in the list (rather than use the linkedin API this seems most adaptable to other sites, indeed the config could probably be a page address and div ID pair per site and users would most likely adapt and upstream their configs).

Yes I expect this is badly flawed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does "Viable" mean you have sales data to share? ;)

<comment><USER5> MVPs do not necessarily need to demonstrate economic viability. Some of the best ones I've seen can't be sold at all -- for example, Dropbox's MVP was a _video_ of someone using the prototype of the product. The thing they're Viable at is that they're just good enough to start giving you actionable information about those big freaking questions about the market you have.

"Will people pay money for this? In numbers sufficient to pay for my rent? In numbers sufficient to compensate me for my risk?" are all big freaking questions, but for some startups they are logically after questions such as "Does anybody actually _want_ a website which tracks when their baby has an excretory event?" (+)

\+ : Yep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seriously, Xobni is awesome and already popular. Plus, they sent me two T-shirts. So I love them.</comment>


Fresh CS graduate wages down 20 percent - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/12/03/fresh-cs-graduate-wages-down-20-percent/ <comment><USER2> Hi guys, I want to know how much exactly do fresh CS graduate(B.Sc) gets in US nowadays? I'm based in Japan, and we will get 2147 USD(200k yen) for base salary only no matter how good you are. It seems very cheap :( since the high living cost here. The yearly bonus is about 4~5 months of base salary, but you don't usually get it unless you are really recognized by the management team.

EDIT: I must say, this is also the same for big companies like IBM Japan, SAP, etc.

<comment><USER3> It varies greatly on skill/pedigree (the two often, but not always, correlate). If you are poor to average you'll start at $50K-70k/year. If you're average to good you'll start at 70k-90k, and 90k+ if you're particularly good (about 150K is the maximum I've heard of, and that's more in modeling or quantitative development than straight programming). About a 10% bonus is normal in my experience, but that obviously varies based on skill/industry. There is also some give based on what sort of company/industry you want (e.g., I personally know someone who just this week turned down a six figure offer at a hedge fund for ~20k less doing AI research).

Those numbers are for a programmer in/near big cities (Boston, Silicon Valley, NY, etc). Revise them down ~10% for more rural/suburban areas (but it's harder to find work beyond code-monkey level at all in many of those places). And all this is based on my anecdotal experience, so figure there is likely some selection bias.

In my experience, between federal and state income taxes, FICA, and sales tax you'll lose ~50% of your of your income to the government. And we have to save for our own retirement (we expect nothing from social security) and our kids' college education (currently ~15k-30K/year tuition).

How are your taxes/retirement/etc in Japan?

<comment><USER4> Don't pull numbers out of nowhere.

[http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresu...](http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_IT10000001.html)

There's no way that an "average" starting salary is 70k. Salary.com is famously inflationary and they have the median at 54K--and that's not just fresh grads. My guess would be more like 40K, with huge variations depending on where you live and whether you went to a well-known school. But then, "average" people don't go to well-known schools for the most part.

<comment><USER3> First of all, I said my numbers apply to major cites. Your own source places the median salary in th 60K-65K range for most metros.

Second, my numbers aren't pulled out of nowhere they are based on my friends and my experience. And they seem to be independently corroborated by litewulf.

Third, note that my poor/average/good ratings weren't based on quintiles or anything like that - it was based on my personal characterization of skill/pedigree (pedigree being a combination of experience, personal projects, and school - in about that order). I incidentally think that about 90% of programmers are crap (sturgeon's law), so it's likely that the median salary is ~60K with everything I said being true.

<comment><USER5> Fourth, "average" usually refers to the mean, and for distributions with big upper tails (like salaries), the mean is higher than median.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every year, the University of Michigan publishes a survey of salaries for its Engineering graduates:

<http://career.engin.umich.edu/salary/>

Average annual full-time salaries for computer science graduates finishing in the 2007-2008 school year, by degree:

Bachelors - $73,761

Masters - $79,762

PhD - $103,740

All of these amounts are up from the previous year.

Caveats: the sample size is small, it's a top Research I University in Engineering, and participation is on a volunteer basis, so the participants may self-select in certain unknown ways. Also, the most recent survey is from the class that graduated in April, which was before many of the scary economic things began happening.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't put much weight on this.. it's a 3 sentence blog post without much backing.

<comment><USER8> This is from Phillip Greenspun's blog, so it has more credibility than if it would be just some random blogger.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Greenspun>

<comment><USER9> No it doesn't. It's still just an anecdote.

<comment><USER8> Credibility of the anecdote, title is a bunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've done some research in this area (my startup is dev recruitment related) and from what I've seen that large tech companies aren't cutting fresh graduate wages because it complicated internal politics. If you pay this years grads less than last years, then they will find out about it and it creates ill-will and bad politics within the company.

However the number of grad roles at the top-end are being cut, so previously grads who could have got a high-paying job at a top-end company now have to take a lesser paying job at a slightly worse company.

</comment><comment><USER11> Employers / recruiters can use the bad economic news (Adobe layoffs, etc) in conjunction with the "exploding offer" to drive down wages of new graduates.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone know what yc startups like scribd pay their developers?

</comment><comment><USER13> That's just one data point. I don't have any numbers, but this doesn't seem to be the case at the big software companies.

</comment><comment><USER14> I mis-read this as "French" CS graduate wages down 20 percent :)

<comment><USER15> same here

<comment><USER16> So did I, and it didn't make any sense. Wages don't adapt to changing market conditions that easily in France.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe if they stop cursing and start recursing. Sorry for the worst and most annoying joke ever.

</comment><comment><USER18> ...for a sample size of one?</comment>


Berkley Astronomer Geoff Marcy Violated Sexual Harassment Policies - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/famous-astronomer-allegedly-sexually-harassed-students <comment><USER2> This is absolutely disgusting. I heard rumors about exactly this for years as a grad student, it's sickening that things are only being done about it now, and even then no repercussions of consequence will be visited on him. Does Berkeley really see the chance of an exoplanet Nobel prize to be more important than the safety of students and staff?

<comment><USER3> "Safety", really?! There always would be rumours.

<comment><USER2> Except now an investigation has substantiated these rumors and Prof. Marcy has issued a public apology. These are real incidents. And yet, he is still allowed to take on students. This is insane.

<comment><USER3> My point is that "safety" is a groundless exaggeration. As I've passed through Sexual Harassment training several times already, even a look could be a harassment. To conclude that a scientist could be putting female students' safety at risk is both statistically and morally incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very depressing. Fire him now.(Although knowing Janet N they will likely botch this as well).

As a former Cal Bear, we don't need Nobel laureates as much as we need to preserve Cal's moral reputation.</comment>


A3 - Toyota's way of solving problems and creating plans - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/mgrtbx/a3-1946262

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen this "A3" referenced, and I'm trying to find out more about it. It seems that all the information is nebulous and points to this one book, but there are some hints on what it's about.

Here's another link.

[http://www.improvementandinnovation.com/features/articles/a3...](http://www.improvementandinnovation.com/features/articles/a3-reporting- tool-drives-toyota)

If you have more information about this, please share.

Thanks.

<comment><USER2> I work for a company that models their a3 process on the Toyota process. Essentially the A3 is used as a structured method of problem definition, requirment planning, and solution implementation tracking within the business. A3 originally refers to the size of paper that the analysis was performed on. A pretty basic and typical outline of an A3 process can be found here (<http://www.coe.montana.edu/IE/faculty/sobek/A3/steps.htm> ). To my understanding, originally the A3 process was done with paper and pencil, and the A3 updated as conditions or understanding of the problem changed. The size of the paper (16.5" × 23.4") allowed for a fairly deep analysis of the problem. A3s can be used for anything from analysis of a single failure, all the way up to planning at the business level, with cascading A3s below being referenced by higher level a3s to drive specific actions all the way to the implementation level.

In practice the deep analysis of an A3 tends to be squeezed onto a single powerpoint slide (which makes Mr. Tufte cry) and much of the problem solving and communicative power of the A3 is lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> accidentally upvoted... I don't see much about A3 given this link</comment>


Sails.js: Realtime MVC framework for Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://balderdashy.github.com/sails/ <comment><USER2> This looks incredibly cool, but if there is one thing that I've learned, it's that less magic is generally better when building a real production application (vs a weekend project). While typing something like 'sails generate model User' is nice, I literally have no idea what that just did. In the video it then shows a user creating new attributes on the model via a REST API - what??(he even mistakenly adds a bad attribute and then proceeds to just leave it there...).

After working with a few of these frameworks it always seems to lead to spaghetti code where the code I write weaves in and out of the framework at different pre-defined connection points (Sails calls them policies I think). I always take note of all the times the developer says 'automatically', these are all the places that will break when my requirements don't exactly match up with theirs.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more. On a different topic, I've been toying with various JS MVC frameworks, but a lot of them tries to do their "magic" without actually explaining why the magic is necessary. These so called "conventions" at times hide way too many things, it actually makes it frustrating to understand. In the end, my choice came back to Backbone, which is the minimalistic framework.

Having said that, I'm trying to pick up NodeJS soon, what frameworks would you recommend to start off with? Express?

<comment><USER4> Yes, express is very simple, and easy to learn and write. It's also the most popular web framework for node.js.

It's less like rails/django and more like sinatra/flask.

<comment><USER5> Hey guys, I wrote Sails.js. The controllers are just sets of Express middleware. The reason I did it this way is that I wanted a conventional abstraction (MVC) without the burden of a new API.

The only real "magic" here is how Sails handles Socket.io requests using the same controllers. Sails generates req/res objects for socket requests and allows you to handle WebSocket requests in the same code base as the rest of your app. If you need to do more custom stuff, you can still directly access Socket.io through sails.io, and each request object that came from a socket request contains req.socket, which gets you access to the socket which sent the message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks great! The automatic API generation is a killer feature that makes me want to try this out sometime soon. Only thing that seems strange to me is adding the <resource>/create, <resource>/update, and <resource>/destroy GET endpoints -- why not keep it RESTful?

<comment><USER7> I can see the desire to be able to execute non-GET commands via the browser's address bar. Another way Sails could accomplish that would be to accept "?method=PUT|POST|DELETE" to mimic the desired HTTP method.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that solves the underlying problem of side effect-ful/dangerous GET requests that may be easily exploited via CSRF attacks. You really don't want to expose POST/PUT/DELETE actions via GET.

<comment><USER9> Avoiding GET requests is not a fool proof way to mitigate CSRF. If your website has just one XSS vulnerability an attacker can send POST requests. It's much better to use some kind of token that is always sent with your forms.

<comment><USER10> There's nothing stopping anyone from sending POST requests to wherever he wants, even without an XSS. the same-domain origin policy only forbids you from reading the response, not from sending the request. CSRF-wise, POST requests are just as vulnerable as GET requests.

Also, if someone does manage to find an XSS vulnerability, using a CSRF token won't be any good - the attacker can simply read the token from your website and use it.

<comment><USER11> No. Before performing a POST/PUT/DELETE or any other method with side effect to another domain your brother will issue an OPTIONS to get authorization first and will never perform the request if the server do not authorize it.

Then if your authentication is cookie based and you allow to delete resource via GET then all the attacker have to do is to insert <script> or <img> tag on any other domain with the proper src attribute to delete your content silently.

These endpoints are a VERY bad idea and are absolutly not REST. RESTful do not mean CRUD.

<comment><USER10> `<form>`s are allowed to send POST requests to wherever they want, without any restrictions. By creating a form that points to another domain, and automatically submitting it, you can send a POST request to wherever you want [1].

POST requests can be easily sent cross-domain. NO ONE SHOULD EVER think that just because he's not using GET requests he's safe from CSRF attacks.

[1] See <http://jsfiddle.net/8xnB3/5/> for example (which sent this comment).

EDIT: Just to clarify - I'm not saying that exposing those endspoints via GET is a good idea, I think its horrible. But people should be aware that avoiding GET does not protect against CSRF, and you still have to use CSRF tokens.

<comment><USER5> Hi nadaviv, if you don't want to expose those endpoints via GET, you don't have to. Those are set up that way in development so it's much easier to get started. You have full control over your routing table and access control policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish more people would read this blog post before writing another MVC framework in Node.

[http://eflorenzano.com/blog/2010/09/27/why-node- disappoints-...](http://eflorenzano.com/blog/2010/09/27/why-node-disappoints- me/)

<comment><USER13> Except without leveraging those V8 features, we don't have what makes node.

The pace of invention today is based on iteration, building upon other successes and similar ideas - and its happening in real-time across a vast community. This is awesome.

Personally, I love that we have choices like derby, meteor and potentially, sail. Every effort has pro's / con's that may or may not be ideal for a particular use case. I would rather have more options than none.

<comment><USER14> I think my issues with this are that it's cool, but there's no example of security, and the tests are pretty much missing... I tend to look for either tests, or samples for how things get done, and without any security/authentication bits, I don't know what I would use something like this for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Judging from the description it does what the other 1000+ Node MVC frameworks do. What's the advantage of Sails over them? CRUD scaffolding is nothing new in Node's ecosystem.

Apparently their edge is that users can manipulate the database on their own in the default scaffold?

EDIT: Downvote without a comment is not constructive. This is a legitimate question. Care to explain?

<comment><USER16> I'm guessing the downvotes are for the snideness of your remark. A more respectable way to phrase your question would've been to simply ask how this framework compares to some of the other well known Node frameworks and why might I look into Sails to solve a specific problem instead of some of the others that are available.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for your feedback. English is not my native language so I can sound rude unintentionally in written expression (it's hard enough already in my native language.)

I'll try throwing random smileys next time :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that there is some abuse of the term real-time these days:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing>

<comment><USER18> Well the definition is Soft Real-Time (which may apply here) vs. Hard Real- Time (i.e. car ECU).

But having done university research work in the field of hard real-time systems I also think "naahh thats not real-time" every time I see some Web- Framework advertised as such. There is a big set of interesting problems in hard real-time systems: Complex scheduling algorithms, fault proctection and recovery, bus systems that are also able to fulfil your timing requirements....

If you spend some time doing this kind of work your had will wrap around different problems. You cannot take malloc granted, you always fear that the compiler does something wrong or that you better write that routine in inline ASM. Etc.

That said, I do a lot of stuff in python now and its refreshing, but I miss these problems a little bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Please stop calling anything on the internet real-time. Response time is not guaranteed here.

<comment><USER20> I guess you mean hard realtime. What usually on the web is called realtime is soft realtime IMHO.

<comment><USER19> Sure I get, but I think it just dilutes the meaning of the term "real-time" to use it in a soft context.

<comment><USER21> > Sure I get, but I think it just dilutes the meaning of the term "real-time" > to use it in a soft context.

Soft realtime isn't a new thing. Chat has always been soft realtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love how this is put together and packaged. The graphics, nice intro video, and very clear docs. Well done!

I wish more OSS projects would put more care in their docs. Adding more personality and character and just cleaning it up - making it feel more approachable.

<comment><USER15> This is pretty standard presentation for Node.js packages.

<comment><USER22> Oh really? As a non-Node.js guy, I would love to see some others. Can you show me some examples please?

Thanks!

<comment><USER15> Node.js packages are usually small and self-contained. Without typing/APIs Node relies heavily on documentation, so packages which are not well- documented will fall into oblivion quickly. Who'd write a OSS library which nobody can use?

My personal favorite, interactive docs!

<http://coffeescript.org/>

I like these ones because of the straightforwardness:

<http://socket.io/>

<http://jade-lang.com/>

<http://mongoosejs.com/>

And many more:

<http://visionmedia.github.com/mocha/>

<http://meteor.com/>

<http://derbyjs.com/>

<http://compoundjs.com/>

<http://learnboost.github.com/stylus/>

Almost all packages without a website have a README (npm spits out warnings if missing README):

<https://npmjs.org/package/request>

<https://npmjs.org/package/browserify>

<https://npmjs.org/package/formidable>

<https://npmjs.org/package/forever>

<comment><USER23> To be fair only one of these has a video

<comment><USER15> Well, not all projects show off on video. IMHO, a video is a sloooow way to present information. I'd rather skim through some examples/demos/interactive docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The whole point of Node/npm/Express (as a popular module) is its modularity. Node is not just about JS on the server, it reflects a paradigm shift -- a movement away from too much abstraction and magic back to lean and simple systems. And it's unbelievable fast.

Sorry to say but such frameworks and ideas are from the last decade (Rails was the main reason why I switched to Node).

<comment><USER25> The whole point of Node is evented I/O in JavaScript. That's it - it doesn't take a stance on frameworks.

The point of npm is ... to be a package manager.

Express is a framework. I admittedly don't know much about it, but I believe it basically has pluggable middleware, like Rails.

Not sure these things share the "point" you are claiming they do.

It's great Node has both framework choices and a wealth of _small modules that do one thing_. I think there's room for both.

<comment><USER25> There was a bit of snark in this comment with the "..." which I apologise for, but I think my point was fair. Trying to paint Node as an anti-framework ecosystem is disingenuous and this is clearly not a goal of either Node, npm or Express.

I love Node, and am consistently impressed by npm, but pretending that these technologies represent a "paradigm shift" and some sort of cohesive shift away from frameworks is faintly ridiculous.

If you work on a team and are faced with the task of creating a large app your choice is to pick a framework or create your own from libraries. I'd argue that a (good) framework is likely to be better because the conventions are likely clearer and better documented than anything you cook up yourself by combining libraries and filling in gaps with your own code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I started using sails.js and I loved it. I'm new in node so I needed some starting point. Before that I was coding in php and used frameworks. I couldn't imagine working without one so I started to look into node frameworks. All of them have good sides and bad. But sails.js was the one which I loved from first sight. I don't know why but it looked so similar to php frameworks I used. It was very simple for me so I started working with it and contributing. Yeah this framework lacks some futures but it's only a time question when it gets better and better. Because I think this framework will become choice number 1 for starting coders. Good luck guys and nice job!

</comment><comment><USER20> I've looked the past week into sails.js. It brings a really cool new way to MVC Frameworks and makes it easy to do certain aspects. What I missed (and that's why I'm using express.js now) is the documentation (lacking) and testability (lacking as well). Also the ORM is really lacking. I'd recommend the authors to look into an existing ORM (sequelize or node-orm2) instead of creating an own one.

Sails certainly needs more polishing but I look forward to use it in the future at some point, because I really like what it wants to accomplish.

If you like certain aspects (exposing models via REST, policies etc.) it's really easy to do in express.js as well.

<comment><USER5> Hi mweibel,

I originally used Sequelize, but we wanted (a) noSQL support and (b) a bundled in-memory database.

Waterline has very good test coverage, and it's professionally maintained by my Node.js studio, Balderdash. We invest heavily in its development, because it makes our client projects better and faster.

Happy to answer any other questions about why we built our own ORM.

<comment><USER20> Ok I understand the decision now. Surely both (sequelize and node-orm2) aren't the one and only solution yet but I needed some stuff to be supported which you didn't (yet), e.g. indexes or something like that.

Did you have a look at jugglingdb? I don't use it also because of similar reasons why I didn't want waterline but basicly I think it's more mature than waterline is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think old RailwayJS now CompoundJS has similar goals to look like Rails, yet bring goodness of NodeJS to the masses.

<http://compoundjs.com/>

I tried it before when it was RailwayJS and it was really good and fast. I didn't do any major projects in it.

<comment><USER28> I really enjoy using CompoundJS for quick prototypes. Wish there was a larger community though; well, really, I wish any of the MVC nodeJS frameworks had the kind of community that Rails and Django have.

<comment><USER27> I agree. It will probably take someone making successful site and the word will get out. My experience with it was that it was super fast, very responsive, so I imagine it can handle more trafic then rails I am currently using. It is no rails as rails has features that are out of this world, but you often don't need those...

<comment><USER5> We've been using Sails in all of our client projects for the last year, so I guess we'll see what happens :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Node is excellent from an architectural point of view, but I can't get over JavaScript. I really think web developers have Stockholm syndrome with this language.

<comment><USER30> Doing simple JavaScript is easy. Doing JavaScript well, that scales and doesn't become a spaghetti mess is _hard_.

Having said that, there are a tonne of libraries and tools which make it much better these days. A language is only as good as the available libraries and there are some really good ones on npm.

What, particulary, do you find problematic?

<comment><USER5> Totally agree. I created Sails to provide us a clean way of solving the problem of building large projects for our clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool, looking forward to watching the projects progress!

Quick question: when demonstrating the socket.io piece, one aspect that differs with meteor is their ddp which only sends data diffs on a per client basis, not the entire subset as your demo showed. How are you planning to tackle that with any decent about of clients or data size?

<comment><USER5> Great question! I'm really pumped about more folks getting involved.

First off, you can manage pubsub as you like using Socket.io. The most important thing to realize about Sails is that we're not trying to be Meteor. This is for real, production projects, with a straightforward fallback to trusted technologies. How you manage publish and subscribe is completely up to you-- but if you're using the API blueprint, here's how it works from a pubsub perspective:

GET /user => the socket who issued this request is subscribed to the class room, and the instance rooms for all models returned (until the socket closes)

POST /user => the model created is "introduced" to the class room, subscribing all sockets connected to the class room, to IT. Then, all of the class room subscribers are notified that the new model has been created.

PUT /user/n => sockets subscribed to the instance room for the model being updated receive a message

DELETE /user/n => sockets subscribed to the instance room for the model being deleted receive a message and become unsubscribed

The "magic" here is actually just a controller- you can take a peek here ([https://github.com/balderdashy/sails/blob/master/lib/scaffol...](https://github.com/balderdashy/sails/blob/master/lib/scaffolds/controller.js)) for more about what's going on in the blueprint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cool project, but the syntax highlighting they are using makes it really difficult to read: <http://cl.ly/image/0W2m1x1g2u29>

</comment><comment><USER32> The logo on the front page makes me feel old ...

<comment><USER33> jQuery rockstar anyone?

<comment><USER5> lol for anyone else like me who didn't remember the reference, it was back in '08: [http://blog.jquery.com/2008/08/29/death-to-javascript- rock-s...](http://blog.jquery.com/2008/08/29/death-to-javascript-rock-stars/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Cool project. Automatic API generation will be very helpful for quick prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER35> Any example applications made with Sails? A chat app?

<comment><USER5> Not that we can show yet! But we are currently working on several large client projects that use Sails in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> sails business case rev2.pptx ?

<comment><USER5> eh?

<comment><USER36> Look at the files on this desktop

<comment><USER5> Ah, we are a services company which helps brands and startups build web applications. Sails is an instrumental tool in making our team agile and effective, so I give presentations on that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN : How Do We Program Intuition, Instincts and Insights into a Computer? - <AUTHOR> I read some articles online and was wondering if we can ever manage to create algorithms that can create human like Intuition, Insights and Instincts ? Any thoughts would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Read these articles. I do not know of any way to program these into algorithms. Too vast a subject and not yet done.

[https://www.quora.com/Does-intuition-draw-from-a-persons- kno...](https://www.quora.com/Does-intuition-draw-from-a-persons-knowledge)

[https://www.perchingtree.com/instincts-intuition-insights- ke...](https://www.perchingtree.com/instincts-intuition-insights-key- differences/)

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-intuition](https://www.quora.com/What-is- intuition)</comment>


How Your Computer Can Cure Diseases - <AUTHOR> http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/3-ways-your-computer-can-cure-diseases.html

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised this article didn't mention Fold.It (by the same people as Rosetta) which does not just let you contribute CPU cycles to grid calculations, but allows users to add their brainpower by actually working on protein folding interactively, and builds useful skills in the process. I came across it a year ago, and was surprised to find what a fun hobby protein- folding can be.

<http://fold.it/portal/></comment>


Ask HN: How do I know if I'm ready to launch? - <AUTHOR>

I'm petrified of launching my web application because I'm fearful that I won't …
acquire users, support my users well, scale in a timely manner, react quickly to feedback, or monetize the application
How do I prepare myself mentally for launch?  Do you think I'm ready?
web application: http://linkpeek.com <comment><USER2> Prepare your expectations accordingly. Have you been collecting emails from a landing page while you were developing? Do you have organic search traffic coming to your site? Do people know about your app? Have you validated the market for your application?

If you answered no to those questions, expect zero people to know or care about your app. Launching and running a successful web app is 10% development and 90% marketing.

I'm telling not trying to discourage you, the opposite actually. Just because no one signs up when you launch doesn't mean your app sucks. It means no one knows about it. Start marketing, start blogging, start SEO, start guest- posting, start doing everything you can to get the word out.

As an aside, you should probably have a way to monetize the app in mind and put it in place before launching. Very few apps can get away with ads or freemium effectively, especially if it is a small micropreneurial endeavor.

Edit: Looks like you have an email list. That will help you convert well on the first few days and give you a morale boost. Don't worry about the rest, tackle it as it comes. You'll never be ready enough, so just go for it when you have a working product :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow thanks for the insight! I think I need to work on my marketing skills at this point.

Do you have organic search traffic coming to your site? (no) Do people know about your app? (no) Have you validated the market for your application? (not really)

As for monetizing I plan to eventually allow subscribers to choose bounding box sizes or access to the raw (and large) screen shot. My competition in the market charges lots for this service but I have no idea what a fair price would be. I was thinking monthly subscription based on usage: 1gb $9.99, 5gb $19.99 and unlimited plan for heavy hitters. Is that a fair price, I have no idea.

Thank you agian

<comment><USER2> A trick you can do is A/B pricing schemes to see which gets you more purchases.

You can even do this before your product is ready. Make two pages with different prices, A/B test them and track conversions on the "Buy" button. Since your product isn't ready yet, just show a "Thanks for your interest, but we aren't done yet!" page. Collect email addresses too.

This gives you an idea how many people will buy at what price-point, and help provide more email signups. The caveat is that it requires some level of traffic coming to your site first

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I guess I would need much more traffic to even test the smallest a/b test. Currently I only get about 20 hits per day on the homepage. Seems like I should have started marketing first.

<comment><USER2> You can test even with low traffic...it just takes longer. :)

Try testing incrementally. Run some tests where your conversion is going from Home Page -> Pricing page. This is pretty easy to do since clicking through to a pricing page is a lot less friction than buying a product, so you'll have more data to work with.

Once you get a good conversion there, move on to the next step in your funnel (probably Pricing -> Buy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a potential customer who has been researching the available options for web screenshots. I need to be able to download 1024x1000 screenshots of websites in real time available through an API similar to what you have.

I'm sure there are a number of potential customers just like me who have their own unique requirements. But you'll never know if what you're building is in line with what your customers need until you launch. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions,

I hope to make <http://LinkPeek.com> useful and fair for the majority. You are correct, to do this I'm going to need to communicate a lot more with potential customers and fellow developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey foxhop, I understand your fear (we all do to an extent).

Most people advocate a MVP approach (minimum viable product) for many reasons. First, you can do less work before releasing. Second, it allows your ideal users to help you develop the product further. The few users you have (heck even if it is only 5) will be able to tell you what they like, how it is useful etc. You may not know all the uses for your product and a group of people might find that it is useful for X. Then you can market it as the "perfect solution for X"

Your initial users will most likely be HN members. Most of us know how hard it is to do all of those things so we're not going to worry if you don't scale in a timely manner etc. If your site crashes, we'll calmly inform you, if you take a while to respond to feedback, we will understand.

I'll send you an email and I'll see if I can help you..

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to have feedback and running this service alone might not be the smartest move. Please contact me via email anytime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As most people say, you can launch a half-feature not a half-assed one. If you think you have the minimum features necessary to make your app 'useful' for your initial customers you should just launch.

I do not see a blog link on your webpage. If not, start doing it soon. Start talking about your app, use cases, problems and how you are solving them. Anything that you think is relevant for your broader audience.

And iterate based on feedback from your initial customer base. Don't worry right now about scaling. If you have that many hits on your app that is a good problem to have. The worst is indifference.

Good luck with you app and I am sure you'll do well.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's going to suck. It's going to break. People will not sign up. Get over it. You cannot change that until you launch it.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely true - when you launch and it breaks, you will fix it. When nobody comes you'll have to figure out what you did wrong and fix it and when it sucks you'll make it better. You can't do these things in a vacuum and without real, live people using the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are you ready to launch? Then launch. You could spend years wondering if you're going to be good or bad (but can improve) at doing the items you listed, but you won't ever know until you just launch it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice. Also I just joined up crowdwoo twitter lotto <http://twitter.com/#!/RussellBal>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In some sense, you launched when you posted this Ask HN!

I think this is a good way to do it as well, as you're likely to get some helpful feedback and tyre kicking from HNers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, you are correct. Looks like I might have walked off the cliff without knowing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Launch isn't the bad part, do a search for the trough of sorrow :)

</comment><comment><USER11> In direct answer to your question: just launch.

In response to your app itself: I would suggest offering arbitrary thumbnail sizes( not just 72px ), up to and including full-screen resolution. In addition, I would suggest a snapshot scheduling service, such that regular images are captured for given urls on a regular schedule.

A company like us, for instance would probably pay for a service that allows us to build a design history of our web properties automatically, instead of adding "screenshot the existing live site before deployment" to the design or technical workflow, or relying on the Wayback Machine to do so.</comment>


Randi Zuckerberg Also Confused About Facebook Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100339568

<comment><USER2> I think there is an interesting gray area here actually that I haven't seen discussed.

Randi posted the picture as "friends only" but due to Facebook's policies it turns out that people other than those friends could see the picture.

First question: If a friend posts something as "friends only" are you ethically bound not to publicly share it? I think most people would answer YES, under the assumption that if they wanted to make it public they would have posted it publicly.

But there are a couple of interesting wrinkles here :

1\. Facebook's interface did not make it clear to Callie that this was a "friends only" post. Because it showed up in her feed she assumed it was public and meant for public consumption.

2\. The presence of Mark Zuckerberg in the picture. Zuckerberg is essentially a celebrity and it seems there is a widespread assumption that ANY picture with a celebrity in it (whether Justin Bieber or President Obama) is fair game for sharing in a way that does not apply to non celebrities. I think if the picture did not include Mark Zuckerberg it is far less likely Callie or anyone else would have thought it was appropriate to share it.

<comment><USER3> If you want someone to not share something, you show them in person - on your own computer - without giving them access to a digital copy.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's too much to ask for someone to be polite and decent.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, yet they didn't ask - it was assumed. Both parties assumed. Equally so it's not too much to ask for someone to state how private or public an image or piece of information is. This is really why it's up to the individual to keep things private when they truly want them to be. There is no real thing called privacy. And human behaviour on average dictates that a) people make mistakes and could share things they might not mean to, and b) that many people, the less close they are to you the more so, that will not think about being able to easily share something (perhaps unless expressly stated otherwise in that moment).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you post something on internet, not to mention on a Facebook page, be ready to make it public. End of story. Decency/shmecency. Facebook constantly leaks your data or change the policy by adding some checkbox to your settings that is set to yes by default and if you missed that change ( I am sure we all read through a huge policy updates) then you are screwed until someone points out the new UI change. I thought decency works both ways because Facebook is also "people"?

<comment><USER6> _Facebook constantly leaks your data or change the policy by adding some checkbox to your settings that is set to yes by default and if you missed that change ( I am sure we all read through a huge policy updates) then you are screwed until someone points out the new UI change_

Do you have any specific examples?

<comment><USER7> [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/epic-facebook-timeline- ch...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/epic-facebook-timeline-changes- users-privacy-settings/7103)

[http://us.gizmodo.com/5921085/facebook-just-changed-your- ema...](http://us.gizmodo.com/5921085/facebook-just-changed-your-email- without-asking++heres-how-to-fix-it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems most people are not aware that tagging someone as present with you basically posts to their timeline and expands the viewership of your post to whatever the settings are of all the tag-ees.

We want to talk privacy with Mark Zuckerberg as well. We put a $2.5k bounty on it: [https://businessleads.com/post/592-Mark-Zuckerberg-Wed- Like-...](https://businessleads.com/post/592-Mark-Zuckerberg-Wed-Like-to- Speak-With-You)

<comment><USER9> Users are given lower-class features than pages/brands, unfortunately. For pages, you can see how many people see your posts; for users, you have to do the math yourself. Users can select how much of another user's posts they see (most important | all | only important), whereas users can only turn page updates on or off.

I wonder if people would post differently if they saw how quickly their posts propagated through Facebook when people like and comment their public posts, or when people are tagged in their photos.

<comment><USER8> Right. For brands it encourages them to see those numbers. If it doesn't, it encourages them to sponsor stories. For users it's more likely to have them taking a look at their privacy settings and locking stuff down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So after pushing every single one of its billion users to make more things public, to the point of physically changing your settings, they complain that one of their photos was made public and shared. To complain about someone elses etiquette here is absolutely laughable, and the fact that it was done in public versus in private makes me think that the ex-director of marketing just missed the spotlight and wanted a story.

</comment><comment><USER11> People are all talking about Zuck's sister, but the major issue here, as I see it, is that private family photos of _Mark Zuckerberg himself_ are spreading across the web because of Facebook's privacy shortcomings.

Honestly, it just shows that internet privacy, far from being just a "really hard problem" is essentially impossible. I'd prefer it if Facebook just dumped the pretense and made everything public from now on. At least then nobody would get the false sense of security and be fooled into thinking they can control who sees what they post online. It's all public, guys. Even Mark Zuckerberg's private family Christmas photos.

<comment><USER12> it's not a really hard problem in general; it's a really hard problem when layered atop facebook's constant attempts to subvert it. from a technical perspective it would not have been hard to add a "only these people can see it, and no one can reshare it" setting, which would need people actually copying the image and making a deliberate effort to violate (a very different thing from a psychological perspective).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The picture in question. [http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/189jscna7tjb4jpg/original.jp...](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/189jscna7tjb4jpg/original.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is no privacy online. Period. A few years back when Mark Zuckerberg's pictures leaked out, he kept quiet which was a great PR move unlike this time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I tried helping a stereotypically computer-unskilled person with some Facebook issues recently. They had some problems that made it look like someone might have gotten access to their account. So I wanted to go in and make sure that they were in good shape - change password, check that the emails were all ok, make sure that the phone number for the account hadn't been changed by someone so they could get access into the account again. It's rather difficult to do. Facebook's interface has become so difficult and complicated, that I had to look around for quite some time to be able to do these basic things.

</comment><comment><USER3> A similar issue is going to arise when Facebook Poke photos start showing up in public. Someone can easily use another device to take a photo of the 'self- destructing' photos.

I'm unsure if Snapchat/Facebook put this unsexy disclaimer that would stop the behaviours people think the possible consequences of might be protected - however I'm guessing the virility from its sexiness and infamy would diminish greatly.

</comment><comment> martin-adams The sad fact of this is that while Randi managed to figure out how the mishap happened, there are a billion other users who might not.

Yes, posting anything online should be assumed to be in the public domain. But that doesn't mean we should have to put up with the poor UX of unclear expectations and no visibility of what is going on.

</comment><comment><USER16> In case anyone wants to see the rather unremarkable photo that this whole thing is over, see:

[http://jezebel.com/5971234/randi-zuckerberg-accidentally- sha...](http://jezebel.com/5971234/randi-zuckerberg-accidentally-shared-a- private-family-photo-because-she-doesnt-understand-facebooks-privacy-settings)

<comment><USER17> How about not paying Nick Denton for it?

<http://i.imgur.com/en5PP.jpg>

<comment><USER18> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given that she was a key force behind the _"Startup: Silicon Valley"_ show, I'd say she is confused on a lot more than just FB issues she ostensibly should have been familiar with given her position there...

I cannot say enough bad things about hat show.

<comment><USER20> The show was effectively canceled due to poor ratings, along with its sibling LOLWork.

It self-corrected.

<comment><USER19> I did not know this. Thanks.

We really could use a fantastic silicon valley focused TV/Video channel/site -- but I don't see it happening any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's no evidence in the article that she was confused about anything. She figured out that the tweeter could see the photo because of a connection with her sister.

<comment><USER17> Her stated intent contradicts your interpretation. She posted not thinking it could propagate and she only figured it out after the fact.

<comment><USER22> She posted it as "friends only" and tagged her family members. The person who tweeted it saw it and assumed that it was showing up because she is a subscriber of Randi's public posts, though in reality it wasn't public and she saw it through a friend connection with one of Randi's sisters. She tweeted the image based on that assumption. Randi saw it, was surprised, and then discovered how it happened (because Randi knows how privacy controls work quite well). They communicated on Twitter and realized the misunderstanding. The end.

<comment><USER23> Randi didn't seem to know that "friends only" meant that Callie-- and presumably other friends of those who were tagged-- could see it.

Her 12:36am tweet indicates as such: [http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr03/2012/12/26/...](http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr03/2012/12/26/0/enhanced- buzz-12528-1356501313-0.jpg)

<comment><USER22> No, she (understandably) didn't know Callie was friends with her sister.

<comment><USER17> Now she knows that she has to check, despite the text of the feature, thanks to the FB security model.

I think we can all expect an FB permissions update in 1Q13 that touches on this experience of hers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The stand out for me is not getting FB "privacy" wrong, no one seem sure what that actually is, let alone how it might manifest its self, but the amusing fact that she thought deleting the twatter conversation would hide her blushes. If one is going to fail at that point, dont even bother trying to decrypt FB "privacy" controls.

<comment><USER17> Maybe it's guerilla research for free user-volunteered information about their sharing-privacy shortcomings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> TL;DR: Randi Zuckerburg doesn't want her Twitter followers to see photos of her looking ugly

</comment><comment><USER26> There is a way to fix this madness.

<http://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674>

</comment><comment><USER8> When I first saw the story I was sure it was going to be about how easy it is to save and broadcast a photo from the Poke App.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _"Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo > publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency," Randi > said in a tweet._

Schadenfreude and just desserts aside, Randi has a good point here. So much of the talk about privacy on social networks overlooks the problem of human nature. Most people won't have their privacy most painfully violated by a service, but by those in their network who carelessly forward their digital communications.

(to clarify: I'm not absolving FB of blame...I'm assuming that just about everyone here agrees that FB's privacy implementation is not great. I'm just saying that Randi's point, even if it was said to deflect responsibility, is true in the larger sense. As we'll find out as Poke w/ pics becomes more popular)

<comment><USER28> The interface led Callie Schweitzer to think the photo was public. Instead of criticizing the interface, Randi pretends that "human decency" is the issue. What a crock.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, this also highlights that most of your 'Facebook friends' aren't really friends or people who would care or think twice about making sure your actions would fit with the person/people who'd be affected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Who cares what Zuckerberg's sister thinks? Does being his sister make her some form of authority on online privacy, such that her being confused would be some kind of "see, I told ya!"?

<comment><USER30> Sister? No. Former marketing director of Facebook? She probably should know the privacy settings. Having people at your company (or that _used_ to be at your company) confused about policies is usually a sign that you should either clarify or simplify them.

<comment><USER29> >>Sister? No. Former marketing director of Facebook? She probably should know the privacy settings.

Wait, what? I work for a software company, and our marketing people (including up to Director level) are some of the _least_ knowledgeable people when it comes to how our software actually works.

<comment><USER31> Privacy isn't some obscure feature or an implementation detail, it is one of facebook's major issues from a marketing perspective. The fact that she so publicly got it wrong is a disgrace.

<comment> k-mcgrady How did she get it wrong? The photo wasn't posted publicly. Somebody she shared it with took it and posted it publicly on a different social network.

<comment><USER31> Did you read the article?

Somebody Randi shared it with used the tag (or comment) feature, which then caused it to show up in the feed of Randi's friends-of-friends. Those people had no idea that the image wasn't public (because they don't directly know her), and simply assumed it came through a public feed.

Randi thought that one of her friends somehow shared the image, which wasn't the case at all. They were simply using a common Facebook feature. She clearly misunderstood what was happening. And she acknowledged her misunderstanding by deleting her twitter comments on the matter.

<comment> k-mcgrady Did you read the article??

Directly from Zuckerberg's tweet:

""@cschweitz not sure where you got this photo. I posted it on FB. You reposting it to Twitter is way uncool," Randi said in her tweet."

It was reposted to twitter. Randi shared a photo on Facebook. This person was able to see it because she was friends with Randi's sister (friend of friend). The user then took the photo from a semi-private space and shared it publicly on Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is the LOL of the day :) I almost dropped my post PC device laughing out quite loud. Twighlight-scale drama. A Keeper.</comment>


Ask HN: Why aren't there any families with a trillion dollars in assets? - <AUTHOR> If you graphed out family fortunes, it would resemble a power law function (similar to monthly website hits). But I'm wondering why none go higher than the $100-$200 billion range. Is it because Western society hasn't been stable for a long enough period of time? <comment><USER2> The size of a family grows exponentially with generation. Assuming a young couple. In 3 generations (~70 years) the family size would have become close to 10x. More often than not, wealth is divided among extended families. So, to maintain per-capita wealth, the initial pool would need to grow at a matching rate by 10x in 70 years -- which is an annual growth of roughly 3-4% (in real value, i.e. over-and-above inflation). Otherwise, wealth will simply be diluted exponentially, apart from getting consumed/expended. (Unless at every step you manage to keep marrying rich)

If you start with a large amount of wealth, achieving such a growth rate (3-4% per year, in real value) is no mean feat.

1\. For starters, one cannot depend on "employment" which has a relatively small return. You need to find a way of earning money on your capital.

2\. The political and societal conditions might not be conducive. The person(s) in the zeroth generation might have been lucky in many ways. This relates to the idea raised in the OP above.

3\. People growing up in wealth might not have the skills, or the luck.

4\. Or they might not have the desire. They might prefer to move higher along Maslow's hierarchy once the lower level needs are met. To quote John Adams: "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicks and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelaine."

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually I believe the House of Saud aka Saud Family (in Saudi Arabia) has a well known estimated net-worth of over 1.4 Trillion.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud#Wealth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud#Wealth)

<comment><USER4> That's about 15000 people.

15000 people in the 99%-99.9% would have about 120 billion. 15000 people in the 99.9%-99.99%? They'd have about 600 billion. The top 0.01% has about 6 trillion.

So, it's a family of 15,000 99.97%ers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well this probably isn't what you are looking for but the Saudi family (of Saudi Arabia) is worth "well over $1.4 trillion." That is spread out between an extended family.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_family#Wealth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_family#Wealth)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Rothschilds [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family)

<comment><USER7> This. Interestingly, I was just reading on this topic the other day. Many sources (see Wikipedia article) suspect/assert that the Rothschilds are worth somewhere in the trillions. Since that's more than the GDP of most countries, it fuels a lot of illuminati/"new world order" conspiracy theories. With that kind of wealth, one family has the power to manipulate international markets. By coupling that manipulation with timely investing, the Rothschilds can multiply their fortune indefinitely.

Honestly, neither the idea that they control trillions+ nor that they are manipulating markets, seems that far fetched to me. Their family has multiple dozens of individuals spread throughout the world in financial roles, some of them visibly managing billions of dollars in assets. They've controlled their wealth far longer than transparency laws have had any real effect, so it would not surprise me at all if combined, they controlled trillions of dollars.

If you've got a family who all knows each other, meets up multiple times per year, and controls trillions of dollars, what do you think is going to happen? Obviously their loyalties all lie to each other, not individual countries. I imagine their family retreats include more than a few "back room meetings" of the most powerful members, where they openly discuss their assets and strategize how to use them to their advantage.

It's not hard to imagine a small group of people controlling that much money becoming hungry for power and influence. It's a scary thought, but the world seems to be doing fine so far, so I'm not too worried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do you know what assets these families have? Most of them I'd imagine would have assets so wrapped up in opaque trusts in secrecy jurisdictions (Caymans, British Virgin Islands etc.) that I can't see how you'd ever really know.

For a very interesting read on the above, check out [http://treasureislands.org/the-book/](http://treasureislands.org/the-book/) ... a fantastic read.

<comment><USER9> Exactly this. There is an article about how the super rich in Germany keep very quiet.

Wealth lists are only on what people can find and often exclude royalty.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28472884](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28472884)

<comment><USER10> Plenty of people not in those lists have laughed at them - many have reasons to lie low, others count as their fortune assets managed by family, retainers, figureheads and frontsmen.

I know the list for my country (Uruguay) is wildly inaccurate, and have no reason to believe that it's different in other countries - possibly in the U.S. they're more open, but not in the Middle East, Brazil, Mexico, China or Russia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a saying my mom used to say: "money never makes it past the third generation". The idea is that if you grow up wealthy, you don't have the skills/drive necessary to keep that wealth going.

<comment><USER12> "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations".

I always took that as an estimate of the lifespan of a firm. If that firm lasts beyond that, it's been reengineered to be relevant.

<comment><USER13> I always heard that as "rags to riches to rags in three generations".

<comment><USER12> That too :) Either is nicely snappy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Waltons may only be worth 1/10-12th of that, but they sure as hell have control over a nearly half-trillion dollar revenue corporation. At that scale, what matters more is direct influence over the lives of the many,i.e. _power_ , not fiat dollars that can be pressed up and dilute you arbitrarily if need be.

"You may have all the money Raymond, but I have all the men with guns." ~ Frank Underwood

<comment><USER12> "Control over" maybe, but the thing is on rails. And some dilution: there are five years since 1992 where CPI ( which has a reputation for overstating inflation ) is over 3%: [http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/teacher/ca...](http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/teacher/calc/hist1913.cfm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The primary issue with the question is the "Why" part. This would imply that there was some reason if there wasn't. This implies some form of soft historicism, or some agency.

There is not _why_ , there is only there is/not. Why would make sense in some novel case statements.

</comment><comment><USER16> Rockefeller's Standard Oil split off into most of the major US oil companies today. With shares spread through family members, foundations, and diversified into other companies, it's not inconceivable that they are massively more wealthy than a Forbes list member.

</comment><comment><USER4> The answer is very simple: As total investment increases, return on investment trends towards a stable average. Inheritance tax takes care of the rest.

This is why we as a society need inheritance tax. It prevents dynastic wealth from taking over.

</comment><comment><USER17> Mubarak's family was estimated to have hidden $700 billion in assets:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/11/egyptian...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/11/egyptian- estimate-of-mubaraks-wealth-soars-to-700-billion/)

</comment><comment><USER18> How do you know there aren't any families with a trillion dollars in assets? Wikipedia? ;)

<comment><USER19> yes, having incredible wealth would draw a lot of unwanted attention. The Rothschild's had their wealth confiscated at least once through nationalisation of banks they owned.

It's best to lie low and disguise crazy wealth as much as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The truth is, we don't know who the richest family is. It was revealed that Egypt's ousted dictator had about $100 billion in assets stashed away. That would make him the world's richest man. How many others are out there and how much are they hiding, who knows?</comment>


If a nuclear weapon is about to explode, here's what you can do to survive - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/survive-nuclear-explosion-go-inside-shelter-no-windows-2018-1 <comment><USER2> >That makes a single blast or even a limited nuclear exchange survivable for most people.

Lol.

This whole article...

Lol.</comment>