Ask HN: How would a foreign startup raise funds in US? - <AUTHOR> How can I get around doing this? I am a startup from Singapore with the intent on focusing on the US market, a rational move given that our local market is way too small. Anyone with an experience on this subject matter? Thanks! <comment><USER2> 1) Get traction.

2) Pitch your startup to investors which have previously invested in companies based in Singapore. 500Startups springs to mind. Talk to the local hometown heroes in Singapore who have achieved funding for recommendations on other investors.

Traction excuses virtually everything else. Not technically impressive? Doesn't matter, had traction. Not based in Silicon Valley? Doesn't matter, had traction. No business model? Doesn't matter, had traction... asterix. Market not obviously a billion dollar opportunity? Doesn't matter, had traction.

"Traction" can be sort of vague. You want to have a user adoption graph. You want that graph to be growing, ideally with growth accelerating. Ideally you want "use" to be less a measure of "signed up once" and more an ongoing thing, preferably, an ongoing thing that your users would be _severely discomfited_ if they lost. You want to have some acquisition channel, ideally proved in microscale, such that adding money explodes it. Ideally, you have a business model, also proved in microscale.

If you have a (channel proved in microscale and revenue) or (a whole lot of users) or, ideally, both of those, at least some investors won't care if you're on the dark side of the moon. If you don't have these, you could probably slice and dice your numbers such that you could _appear_ to have them, but honestly just going out and _getting_ the numbers is probably a better idea.

<comment><USER3> DM;HT - I like this.

One thing to note, all of those things will matter when it comes time to determining valuation and risk-level of you/your team, and potentially if you'll be a fit for the investment firm. I do agree if you have a product and traction that it will be easier to find money, and you'll likely find money from somewhere - though the terms offered will be based on the overall package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given the fact you are from Singapore makes it very easy for you.

See, many of those American investors you are hving in nind (VC's, Angles, etc.) are holding tones of money in Singapore for tax engineering reasons (or even better, white hacking the IRA).

Hence, there are plenty of Singaporean businessmen and women who manages this money for them and have great relationships with them.

Getting traction in Singapore shall be the only worry of yours, once you got that right, and local key people are aware of your success, offers will fly by.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And yes, we do intend to move operations to the states too, so we are not looking to get the funded and bring it offshores, but instead stay and build an american business.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an Australian I always find it bizarre this desire to goto the US when so much untapped opportunity exists in the region. Indonesia (240m), China (1344m), Japan (127m), Australia (22m) . All of which have have very little competition in so many areas.

I know there is a lot more money in the US but without any connections the only way you're going to get anywhere is by having a proven product. So why not exploit advantages closer to home.

<comment><USER6> As a fellow Australian, I think you've oversimplified.

1\. America is a better fit for Australians. We ostensibly speak the same language; thanks to cultural exports we are highly familiar with American popular culture and domestic affairs.

2\. There are 15 Americans for every Australian.

3\. America has a gigantic middle class. Only mainland Europe is its rival.

4\. It's easier to start and run a startup business in the USA than it is in Australia. Capital is much easier to come by, regulations are better suited to startups and you're not a pariah if you fail.

Comparing your list:

Indonesia and China don't speak English, have highly distinctive cultures from Australia and each other, neither has a middle class that's bigger than the USA's, capital is scarce unless you are politically connected, regulations tend to be based on personal schmoozing rather than impersonal rule of law and they are not tilted to favour small startups.

Right now, if you speak English and you want to launch an internet business, the USA is by far and away the most advantageous country to do it in.

<comment><USER7> If you want to launch mobile internet business, there is lots of opportunities in developing countries.

Quess what country leads mobile banking? It's Kenya. Something like 60% of Kenyans have made mobile money transfer. Money transfer via mobile phones has expanded to 16 percent of the total population in sub-Saharan Africa in just few years. Most of the third world people will never get landlines for the last mile, they just skip the whole step and turn wireless.

Mobile business in developing countries is just going crazy. Threre has been huge revolution in just few years and it's currently ongoing. I predict that cheap below $100 smartphones will turn the life of hunreads of millions people around in less than five years. They have less money, but they already use mobile phones more innovatively than we do.

The main difference in comparision to developing countries seems to be that mobile internet will provide much bigger productivity boost for developing countries than it will do for us. New iPhone app in U.S is nice but it will not turn your life prospects around. Lacking infrastructure (like roads that work in rain season) makes the ability to use mobile Internet more important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other tips:

1) Get on Angelist and try and get some followers.

2) Go on TheFunded to learn more about the process.</comment>


When to make a Git Commit - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/gonedark/when-to-make-a-git-commit <comment><USER2> The author is giving out bad advice that's not relevant to Git's mental model. He's using the CVS/SVN old mental model that treated commits as A Really Big Deal instead of embracing Git's new way where commits are merely a savepoint.

Instead, commit to your _local private_ repo _whenever_ you want. Whatever spurious commit you want to make, just do it without thinking. (E.g. _" WIP stopping temporarily to go get a soda"_). Then use rebase if you want to clean things up.

EDIT ADD: reading the essay again, the author may be restricting his advice to commits on _public master_. If so, the blog's title should make that distinction prominent because that drastically changes what the _" when"_ in _" when to commit"_ means.

<comment><USER3> Or don't rebase and teach people to use tools like `--first-parent` and learn to love the DAG. Git log doesn't have to be a perfectionist's straight line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is really nothing wrong with committing often. For me a unit of work can be fixing a typo. Of course if you share code with others or user CI/CD you might want to commit only working code.

You can always rebase before pushing upstream.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find Magit mode in Emacs to be very useful to create coherent and concise commits. It has a fabulous interface for picking out the chunks of an edited file that should be staged.

</comment><comment><USER6> It makes more sense to err on the side of committing too often. When you're ready to submit, use 'git rebase -i' to squash away any silly commits. Done. No blog post needed for this topic.

</comment><comment><USER7> Even on public repo it makes sense to keep commits small enough in case you need to do a bisect later on.</comment>


Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home - <AUTHOR> http://www.beneaththewaves.net/Projects/Motorola_Is_Listening.html?source=hn <comment><USER2> This seems related to Motorola's MOTOBLUR system: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoblur](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoblur)

In all fairness, it seems that the implementation uses a middle server (pretty common in big companies where good engineering isn't a requirement) where log in data is sent, is stored in the users' profile and where timelines and other content is parsed before being sent back to the user's device, in a "dumb" format that the BLUR system can understand.

Nokia has a bit of the same for their low-end phones (understandably) and BlackBerry used to do much of the same. Yet, in those days, and in an Android phone that can easily connect to social networks on its own, this seems like a very unfortunate techncial decision.

In other words: the official Gmail app, Twitter or Facebook apps are unlikely to be "compromised".

<comment><USER3> The article has been updated to point out that this model does not use to MotoBlur interface. Apparently having (what looked like) a mostly stock Android interface was an important buying consideration.

<comment><USER2> I have my doubts. It never stated _when_ it sent the passwords. Maybe it hasn't the UI overlay, but the social apps seem to be closely related to MOTOBLUR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I noticed that my Droid 4 running 4.1.2 was opening an XMPP connection to Motorola servers a month ago. I was watching the logs trying to diagnose another problem, and the XMPP connection happened to be failing at the time. The XMPP connection is no longer failing.

        D/CheckinProvider(  507): insertEvents Process tag not allowed: XMPPConnection
        I/XMPPConnection(  772): Preparing to connect user XXXXXXXXXXX to service:
            jabber1.cloud2.sdc100.blurdev.com on host: jabber-cloud2-sdc100.blurdev.com and port: 5222
        E/PacketReader(  772): 	at org.jivesoftware.smack.PacketReader.parseXMPPPacket(PacketReader.java:503)
        D/CheckinProvider(  507): insertEvents Process tag not allowed: XMPPConnection
        I/XMPPConnection(  772): Shutting down connection for user XXXXXXXXXXX to host jabber-cloud2-sdc100.blurdev.com
        W/System.err(  772): 	at org.jivesoftware.smack.PacketReader.parseXMPPPacket(PacketReader.java:503)
        E/XMPPConnectionManager(  772): Failed to connect user 'XXXXXXXXXXX' to host
            'jabber-cloud2-sdc100.blurdev.com on port 5222: Connection failed. No response from server.:

<comment><USER5> What logs were this?

<comment><USER4> logcat: [https://developer.android.com/tools/help/logcat.html](https://developer.android.com/tools/help/logcat.html)

apk to view them: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nolanlawso...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nolanlawson.logcat&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since lots of this data is sent through not encrypted HTTP, this means that NSA (and any other intelligence agency) can also get all this data...

Then people wonder the "nothing to hide" well, you might not, but will everyone you know be bothered you are sending their e-mails around to intelligence agencies?

<comment><USER7> What if you DO have something to hide? Company secrets can be very, very valuable for someone.

<comment><USER8> Use encryption all the time, and don't use any Microsoft products. All companies that have valuable secrets should already have this policy in place.

<comment><USER9> _Any_ Microsoft product? They shouldn't use any Google product by the same token.

Report: Android malware up 614% as smartphone scams go industrial [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/26/android_malware_bloo...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/26/android_malware_bloom_security_updates/)

From [http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked- tee...](http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied- on-chats)

In at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source. After accessing the kid's account to retrieve her name and phone number, Barksdale then taunted the boy and threatened to call her.

In other cases involving teens of both sexes, Barksdale exhibited a similar pattern of aggressively violating others' privacy, according to our source. He accessed contact lists and chat transcripts, and in one case quoted from an IM that he'd looked up behind the person's back. (He later apologized to one for retrieving the information without her knowledge.) In another incident, Barksdale unblocked himself from a Gtalk buddy list even though the teen in question had taken steps to cut communications with the Google engineer.

<comment><USER8> I completely agree. _If_ you want to keep something secret, _do not_ use Google products.

I don't recommend taking the time, but if you were to trawl through all my posts on Hacker News, you'd find that I've said this about Google several times in the past, before the breaking of the NSA scandal.

<comment><USER10> I do not use Google products either, but you need to add more companies to that. You can't use Facebook, or Yahoo products.

Funnily enough I stopped using Google products because they keep alienating me with their decisions like the Real Names policy or killing Reader. Taking my privacy back is an added bonus.

That also means no Android phone, although FirefoxOS phones look promising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wait, am I understanding correctly that your Facebook password (for example) is being shared with Motorola?

<comment><USER11> Yes, they're taking all of your logins and passwords, including your Google account, and their back end servers are even occasionally logging in with them.

"Also interestingly, while testing Picasa and/or Youtube integration, Motorola's methods of authenticating actually tripped Google's suspicious activity alarm. Looking up the source IP in ARIN confirmed the connection was coming from Motorola."

<comment><USER12> Only when you are using the motoblur versions of those packages. Setting up a Google Account through the initial setup won't send the info to moto, setting up any account in your stock-homescreen for widgets will send your information to moto.

<comment><USER3> Not true. The article has been updated to clarify that this model does not use the MotoBlur interface. Apparently the code is still there, and still active.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If true, it's surprising that it took so long for someone to find this. Isn't it trivial to check on what your phone is sending off if you use wifi with a network scanner?

With that said I bet this is all for their social networking integration, some engineer thinking it would be cool for them to aggregate all your social data in the cloud, with no concept of the privacy implications.

<comment><USER11> Apparently others have reported concerns as early as 2011:

[https://forums.motorola.com/posts/64e9971ab3](https://forums.motorola.com/posts/64e9971ab3)

Amazing that they've been doing it for so long.

<comment><USER14> The phone from the OP article was released in June of 2011.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why did it take someone 2 years to spot this????? Doesn't anybody care to watch what's going in/out of their appliances any more?

Furthermore, if this report is true: why aren't there more tools out there so that there are more eyes watching this stuff? Or is everyone just too busy being "social" ??

<comment><USER16> Not a lot of people know how or have the time to setup sniffers for their appliances and then go through the logs. Maybe like 0.001% can do that.

How would you sniff your device? WiFi and let your router do the thing? It wouldnt be difficult for your phone to stop suspicious activity when WiFi or VPN is turned on.

How do you sniff 3G? Can you sniff GPRS/GSM for any suspicious activity? Now we're talking 0.000000001%.

<comment><USER16> Ahem, not to sound like a pessimist.

Android 4.x has vpn, so one way to sniff data is to setup openvpn and on your server tcpdump or wireshark everything.

To sniff 3G/GSM I believe one would have to root their phone and sniff it there as most people dont have 3G/GSM hardware. I dont know more about that, perhaps its as "easy" as rooting it and running tcpdump on the device and saving to sd-card from some of its interfaces?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Small nit to pick: IMSI + IMEI aren't enough to clone your phone - the SIM card stores a shared secret used for challenge-response authentication with the network, and the device (theoretically) can't read the secret, only send the SIM a challenge and get the response to send to the network.

<comment><USER18> The article is about a CDMA phone from Verizon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought this is well know information. Motoblur always restores your accounts with passwords after factory reset. It is not even possible to start phone without logging in to your Motoblur account.

Anyway Cyanogen solved problem on my Defy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Isn't that the whole point of the Blur service...it logs into all these social services and combines them to produce a unified presentation? How else could it work?

<comment><USER21> By using these services' APIs instead of holding onto your credentials?

<comment><USER22> Yodlee, the worldwide banking network, happily stores millions of people's BANK ACCOUNT passwords, with no interest in using a secure Auth API, and nearly no one cares.

Why should Blur care about keeping your FB credentials private?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure the servers that this data is stored on are completely locked down from malicious employee access, are protected by a diligent legal department from overzealous government access and above all completely safe from malicious external threats. Oh and I bet the logging is water tight.

</comment><comment><USER24> Basically, I need to make all of my technological tools out of raw steel, silicon and wood and then I'll be OK, but otherwise, somebody's monitoring me. Right?

* sigh *

Well, if I must...

</comment><comment><USER25> The author seems perplexed that Motorola is not collecting information from Google or Gmail accounts. This is probably because they already have the information: remember that Motorola is owned by Google.

<comment><USER26> That theory makes no sense. This phone predates the Google purchase by over a year (and there were probably other phones with the same software even earlier). Also, Google has no plausible use at all for any of this data and misusing it would have huge PR and legal risks. Certainly most of Motoblur got trimmed out with the upgrade to 4.0, and from what I hear completely eliminated with 4.1. Just didn't matter for this phone, since it got stuck on 2.3.

It's pure engineering incompetence from Motorola, not a nefarious way to collect data.

<comment><USER14> This phone predates the Google purchase by 2 months. It was released in June, Google purchased Motorola Mobility in August.

<comment><USER26> That's the date when Google announced that they were intending to buy Motorola, but such an announcement is irrelevant. Until the deal closes, the companies are legally obligated to continue behaving as if nothing has changed. For example in this case there were anti-trust issues in at least China and the US.

According to Wikipedia pages the dates were:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_X](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_X): On May 19, 2011, Motorola released the Droid X2

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility#Acquisition_b...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility#Acquisition_by_Google): The deal received subsequent approval from Chinese authorities and was completed on May 22, 2012.

That's over a year, if barely.

<comment><USER14> Good to know, though I'm sure the announcement came after much research into Motorola Mobility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Account passwords?! WTF?

Just curious, were these devices manufactured before or after Google acquisition?

<comment><USER14> The phone in question (Droid X2) was released on June 19, 2011. Google acquired Motorola Mobility on August 15, 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is unacceptable!

</comment><comment><USER29> Further evidence that no matter how "free" and "open" Android may be in theory, manufacturer and carrier modifications make it no better (and in this case worse) than the iPhone in practice.

</comment><comment><USER30> My next phone probably won't be a Motorola then.

Does anyone know if this is a part of the Android Kernel? If it is it means they've modified the source code and they're obligated to share their changes.

<comment><USER31> They can make changes in user space and in application space and not share the source since only the kernel is GPL

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fuck you, Motorola. Why do you want my login and password information for?? Your EULA is nothing but a fraud. I smell lawsuit.

Wait, isn't Motorola owned by Google now???

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this not grounds for a major investigation? I'm not familiar with the law, but I know that there's been a number of cases of people that added RATs to their applications they created to monitor all traffic on that computer and email them passwords.

That's pretty much the exact same thing. Although: 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.'

</comment><comment><USER34> Motorola has never been one of my favorite cellphone brands but after this I am never buying a Motorola phone.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been wondering if there's any reason to actually keep the original OEM modified operating system instead of replacing it with a vanilla Android installation. I haven't found any but it seems that there are now compelling reasons to _not keep_ it in any case.

</comment><comment><USER31> Question - Can I trust cyanogenmod binary? Compile the rom from source. Question - Can I trust cyanogenmod source? ????, no idea, have to trust some one. (Remembering an argument from GEB about uncertainty).

</comment><comment><USER36> [from the article]

        *" I was using my personal phone at work to do some testing related to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. In order to monitor the traffic, I had configured my phone to proxy all HTTP and HTTPS traffic through Burp Suite Professional - an intercepting proxy that we use for penetration testing - so that I could easily view the contents of the ActiveSync communication.

        Looking through the proxy history, I saw frequent HTTP connections to ws-cloud112-blur.svcmot.com mixed in with the expected ActiveSync connections."*

Whoever said that this has nothing to do with ActiveSync; You are being disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER37> What are some of the good tools on Android to monitor all network traffic incoming or outgoing of the phone? Like a super sniffer app for TCP, SMS, 3G/4G data.

</comment><comment><USER38> This reminds me of the Nokia HTTPS proxy incident.

</comment><comment><USER39> Samsung must be rubbing their hands with glee :-)

<comment><USER40> No one except Apple and Samsung make any money out of cell phones.The glee started a while back. [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/07/apple-samsung- profits...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/07/apple-samsung-profits- canaccord/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Everyone should immediately install CyanogenMod upon booting up their Android phone.

Spyware like this is depressingly universal among carriers.

</comment><comment><USER36> I believe that the keyword here is "ActiveSync," which is another Microsoft product.

Since I made a conscious effort (years ago) to remove all Microsoft products from my life, ActiveSync is another app which I have never used.

Who needs it?

<comment><USER42> Did you even read the article? It has nothing to do with EAS or Microsoft; it's Motorola software siphoning pretty much _all_ the user's credentials off to Motorola servers.

<comment><USER36> Yes, I did read the article in its entirety. Did you? The author mentions ActiveSync more than once.

        *" What I am going to do as a result of this discovery

        As of 23 June 2013, I've removed my ActiveSync configuration from the phone, because I can't guarantee that proprietary corporate information isn't being funneled through Motorola's servers. I know that some information (like the name of our ActiveSync server, our domain name, and a few examples of our account-naming conventions) is, but I don't have time to exhaustively test to see what else is being sent their way, or to do that every time the phone updates its configuration.
        I've also deleted the IMAP configuration that connected to my personal email, and have installed K-9 Mail as a temporary workaround.
        I'm going to figure out how to root this phone and install a "clean" version of Android. That will mean I can't use ActiveSync (my employer doesn't allow rooted phones to connect), which means a major reason I use my phone will disappear, but better that than risk sending their data to Motorola.
        I'll assume that other manufacturers and carriers have their own equivalent of this - recall the Carrier IQ revelation from 2011."*

ActiveSync is not only used for "Exchange Server" connections.

Judging by your past comments, you are merely another Microsoft shill who believes that they can do no wrong...

<comment><USER36> To beat a dead horse, regardless of the opinions of the mindless:

[from the article]

        *" I was quickly able to determine that the connections to Motorola were triggered every time I updated the ActiveSync configuration on my phone, and that the unencrypted HTTP traffic contained the following data:

        The DNS name of the ActiveSync server (only sent when the configuration is first created).
        The domain name and user ID I specified for authentication.
        The full email address of the account.
        The name of the connection.

        As I looked through more of the proxy history, I could see less-frequent connections in which larger chunks of data were sent - for example, a list of all the application shortcuts and widgets on my phone's home screen(s)."*

Would someone please illuminate me as to why my reference to ActiveSync is alleged to be irrelevant to this conversation?

<comment><USER43> The author originally noticed the snooping because he happened to be examining the phone's traffic when the ActiveSync credentials were sent. If you actually read the entire article, you'll notice that credentials were sent for Exchange, Facebook, Twitter, Photobucket, Picasa, YouTube, IMAP, POP, Yahoo Mail, and Flickr. Of those, the Microsoft and Yahoo services are the only ones where passwords are NOT sent, meaning you leak less data using ActiveSync than you do using IMAP.

<comment><USER36> So what is the name of the software which is sending the information, if it's not ActiveSync?

<comment><USER44> Motoblur.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/19/apples-secret-cloud-strategy-and-why-lala-is-critical/

<comment><USER2> Would Apple actually store individual copies of each song, or would they use compression at some level so that if two users uploaded an identical MP3 rip of a song, it would "compress" down to only one copy on their servers?

Would it even be legal to swap one MP3 rip of a song for another(e.g. "upgrade" everyone to the 320kbps iTunes rip), assuming the source material was the same?

<comment><USER3> I assume this strategy works because they would be functioning as a Dropbox- like service where they just supply the hard-drive space in the cloud. Since space is pretty cheap (and Apple has a ton of cash anyways), it seems like the perfect glue that can connect all of Apple's offline products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This goes along with the fact that Apple has released a their own draft standard for a http-based streaming format:

HTTP Live Streaming: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live- streaming-...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-02)

HTTPLS is currently built into Mobile Safari and Sniw Leopard's Quicktime X.

<comment><USER5> From what I saw at WWDC, it's also pretty good about switching bitrates based on connection speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would the cloud version of my iTunes library mean that I was effectively downloaded data each time I played a song? That'll kill me data cap on my iPhone plan!

<comment><USER7> Maybe someday. No wireless carrier could withstand millions of iPhones exclusively streaming content anytime soon. I think it's more likely streaming would be used only when you didn't have a local copy available. 32GB+ is probably enough storage for most people to keep the bulk of their collection local. For people with bigger collections I imagine a smarter syncing algorithm could reduce the need for streaming. Sync newly added files, don't bother syncing stuff I haven't listened to recently, sync my most played songs, etc.</comment></comment>


Investigation Shows Coke Doesn't Give Back as Much Water as It Uses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17377964/coca-cola-water-sustainability-recycling-controversy-investigation <comment><USER2> How is this news? Or why did anyone waste time or money investigating it? Just evil marketing lies.</comment>


Google begins shutting down its failed Google+ social network - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/2/18290637/google-plus-shutdown-consumer-personal-account-delete <comment><USER2> I guess you could put it that way. But I think it's also fair to ask "Did Google+ fail Google, or did Google fail Google+?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I would say, Google+ didn't succeed, rather than Google+ failed. That's more better way of wording.</comment></comment>


Netgrafio – Visualize your network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nullsecuritynet/netgrafio

<comment><USER2> This is pretty nifty.

I took a quick glance through the docs but (I am not a "programmer" and) I couldn't see how you were going from IP traffic on the wire to JSON. I guess what I'm asking is, what is capturing/listening on your network interface and taking what it sees and converting that into JSON?

My first thought (I _am_ a network engineer) was that it would be cool to generate flow data on your router, have that sent to a Netflow collector (there are plenty of open source ones), and hack on the collector so that it would generate the JSON that gets sent over to Netgrafio.

That way, you wouldn't be limited to only the network traffic that your own machine can see (on a switched network, for example, it won't see much).

<comment><USER3> I was thinking something similar but a bit more advanced. Let the interface execute the command, even being able to run the command on a device directly, so if there is a network issue, you could run something like mtr and graph the data, response times causing hosts to change color etc. A realtime network analyzer.

You hook something like that into a monitoring system and ticketing system and you could have a real proactive network environment.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pair programming whiteboard for system design interviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerrank.com/products/codepair <comment><AUTHOR> You can try without signing up. Would love to get your feedback!

<comment><USER2> Looks cool! :)</comment></comment>


The gas-powered truck killed magazines, not the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.markbernstein.org/Jan10/Supply.html <comment><AUTHOR> The article he's commenting on: [http://motherjones.com/media/2010/01/death- of-literary-ficti...](http://motherjones.com/media/2010/01/death-of-literary- fiction-magazines-journals)

</comment><comment><USER2> I read this link expecting the "gas-powered truck" to be powered by natural gas, and for it to be a modern phenomenon, not a petroleum-powered truck killing magazines through bookstores.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting argument. As it turns out, it isn't only the quarterlies that are getting whacked, it is also magazines like saturday evening post, or life or look as well.

The Mother Jones article sounds a little eliteist in this light. However, we are consuming, by OP's measure, more stories now than in the heyday of the quarterlies.

</comment><comment><USER4> The first "gas-powered truck" was born one year after Ernest Hemmingway, so I'm going to say that it was something else. Likewise, the book-of-the-month club started in 1926 and their business model was basically the same as Amazon's, except they did the ordering. So, I wouldn't blame distribution systems of any sort.

<comment><USER5> Actually, the negative-option book club is an entirely different business model from Amazon. Book of the Month, moreover, contracted for special printings; they were an aggregator/publisher, not a reseller.

The Hemingway point is really unconvincing; by "truck", of course, I mean the changing economies of direct interstate shipment of bulk items. When Hemingway was born, moving mass economically meant either water or rail transit; when he died, trucks were careening down interstate highways to deliver parcels for a fraction of what they cost in the 19th century.</comment></comment>


Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > the amount of information on the web itself dwarfed anything available in > books

Yes but that information has turned out to be largely shallow and meaningless noise. For example, if you're searching for anything of substantial importance - something like "why do I feel an aching sense of spiritual emptiness" \- all you get are blog posts citing other blog posts with titles such as "7 ways to feel more happy and boost your self esteem, with pictures."

Books are more authoritative than websites. In an age where folks complain of a post-fact society, we should return to books as a source of confidence in absolute truth.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14172791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14172791)</comment>


Show HN: we know the questions, you know the answers - <AUTHOR> https://botfuel.io <comment><AUTHOR> Automate your customer service with industry-specific pre-trained chatbots.</comment>


How Apple could have avoided much of the controversy - <AUTHOR> https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-controversy/ <comment><USER2> As discussed earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12842270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12842270)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like someone who doesn't need a pro machine: doesn't use the SD slot, so not a photographer. Doesn't use ESC, so not a heavy terminal user. Doesn't need RAM for VMs or for 4K

The docks are a good solution for local drives and wired network, but---this sounds like someone who doesn't need a pro machine. Some of us do. Maybe Dell sells one.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, professional photographers would be using a compact flash card with their cameras so they would have an adapter.

[http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/COMPARE.HTM](http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/COMPARE.HTM)

It's primarily hobbyist that use SD cards. Of the subset of Mac users that have Macs, how many of them actually use the SD card slot? I'd imagine a very small percentage and they probably have the data to back it. Most people just shoot on their phones. Flickr data backs this. Rank 1, 2 are all camera phones.

[https://www.flickr.com/cameras](https://www.flickr.com/cameras)

<comment><USER5> With the introduction of UHS-II (last year I think), SD cards are much faster than compact flash now. If you're not shooting directly to a portable hard drive, that is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This guy sounds like someone who feels the new MBP satisfies his needs well. Good for him.

There are other people with differing needs. Really. No need to put them down with straw-man rhetoric.

</comment><comment><USER7> "I've never used the SD card" \- stopped reading right after that. Most common use case in my family is to plug SD card from DSLR and import into photos and view it in all the retina glory. I still don't get why was the need to get rid of SD card port .</comment>


Worse Than Random (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/vp/worse_than_random/

<comment><USER2> I think Eliezer is failing to consider a very important set of problems--those for which the set of dumb things to do is small, but delimiting that set is extremely difficult. An example given in another comment is Monte Carlo integration: you know that the set of points at which the function is ill- behaved is small, and that you want to avoid these points, but it is computationally unfeasible to determine which points they are. These examples abound in mathematics, where it is often easy to show that the set of "trouble points" in some generalized sense is small, but very hard to determine where these points are.

In a more technical sense, whether randomness gives algorithms more power is still an open question in computer science (depending on interpretation, the question is either whether RP=P or whether BPP=P). The answer is widely believed to be that it does not, but this is on the basis of the hypothesized existence of strong psuedorandom algorithms rather than randomness being useless.

<comment><USER3> As far as your first point is concerned, it has been 6 years since Eliezer first wrote that post so I wonder if maybe he would give a more nuanced view if he had to write it again. Perhaps to include the twice mentioned Monte Carlo integration.

Your second point is something I hadn't really thought about. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that Eliezer is probably correct, but it doesn't matter because randomness is an incredibly useful tool that we would use regardless of whether or not RP = P or BPP = P. I'm interested if you (or really anyone) could expound on that a bit?

I guess the analogue that comes to mind is that I find monads to be a really easy way to write parsers and it's really lucky for us that bind happens to be derivable from the monadic laws, but I'm not doing anything that can't be done on a turing machine. Is that more or less on track?

<comment><USER2> My point that probably P=RP=BPP is that randomness probably doesn't give you any computational power, but not for the reason Eliezer gives (that we can come up with an equally good structured way to do things), but rather because we can make deterministic algorithms which look sufficiently like they're using randomness.

I don't think your analogy really holds up--monads are just an abstraction implemented on a turing machine, they can't possibly give you anything a turing machine can't, since you are actually using a turing machine. With randomness you are in principal actually extending a turing machine, although it's an open question whether or not this actually gains you anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Usually I agree with Eliezer, but this is one of the cases where I don't. Randomness is a useful tool that you can use to make algorithms more efficient and harder to exploit. In fact, there are several examples in the wikipedia article [1].

A more practical example: suppose you are writing a poker bot. It looks at the game state, and outputs a single move to make. After you complete the bot you will publish it, and an opponent will analyze the source code and make a counter-bot to play against yours. Access to randomness is clearly a huge advantage here! Without it, your bluffs are less effective.

That being said, I do agree with the general sentiment that in most cases randomness is a quick simple hack that can be improved upon.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_algorithm#Where_rand...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_algorithm#Where_randomness_helps)

<comment><USER2> At the end of the article he notes that algorithms designed to work against an intelligent adversary are a specific exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wanted to understand more about how randomized algorithms worked, so I bought Randomized Algorithms[1]. The book is full of proofs involving probability theory and computational complexity theory. It's also kind of dry; I had a hard time reading it.

My complexity and probability theory are both at kind of an elementary level, so I'm sure it will take me several more years of periodically reading this type of material to get a good grasp of what "randomized algorithms" really are.

However, like I said this type of material contains a bunch of complexity and/or probability theory, but Eliezer's conclusion doesn't really seem to be drawn from the same level of rigor that I've seen elsewhere (at least he didn't publish his proofs here, did I miss something). So I'm not sure how much I really want to trust his conclusion.

Also if his conclusion is correct in a way that provides useful derandomization algorithms (that is an algorithm to derandomize other algorithms), then why are the academics all talking about nondeterministic turing machines? It seems like we could move past that (although I'm willing to accept that nondeterministic turing machines are an archaic idea from a bygone era that people continue to cling to because it gets them grant money, but I would like the proof of this so I can be certain it's safe not to spend my time on it).

Finally, if his conclusion is correct, is it correct in a way that will allow me to get work done? I guess my point is that I would rather not rely on intuition in order to derandomize my algorithms if I can use some sort of technique or series of techniques. Additionally, it seems like understanding such a technique would also answer a lot of the questions I had about the nature of randomized algorithms in the first place, so if there's anyone out there who knows about these things (or has a list of papers/books/websites) I would really appreciate if you step in and give us your two cents.

[1] - [http://books.google.com/books/about/Randomized_Algorithms.ht...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Randomized_Algorithms.html?id=QKVY4mDivBEC)

<comment><USER5> There are several kinds of nondeterminism. In the case of nondeterministic complexity classes like NP, it's angelic nondeterminism: whenever the algorithm makes a non-deterministic choice, the machine obeys an oracle that will guide it to an accept state if there is any such choice. (I prefer the certifier view of NP, but that doesn't really explain the N in NP.) Nondeterministic complexity classes have little to do with randomness, and I think it's clear that always guessing right would be a good mutation to have ;)

There are _randomised_ complexity classes, which are germane to the discussion. Some classical ones are RP, ZPP and BPP (and RP's negative twin, co-RP). They are all variants of Polynomial-time with access to random bits.

\- RP captures Las Vegas algorithms (if the algorithm returns NO, the string is definitely rejected; otherwise, we may have a false positive with a probability bounded away from 0).

\- ZPP is the intersection of RP and co-RP: there is no error when the machine finally terminate, but only the _expected_ running time is polynomial.

\- BPP captures Monte Carlo algorithms: the machine always terminates in polynomial time and is correct more often than not. However, any result (accept or reject) can be spurious.

None of these complexity classes are known to be equivalent to P, although there's a strong feeling that BPP = P. In practice, any implementation is likely backed by a quick PRNG with a couple thousand bits of state at most, so it's not clear what separating ZPP and P would mean ;)

If we visit more exotic complexity classes, we get some interesting insight in the relationship between P, NP and randomness. Probabilistically checkable proofs define families of proof systems. A PCP(r(n), q(n)) verifier accepts an input string and a specially constructed certificate (e.g., a proof witness that this SAT instance is satisfiable), and confirms that the certificate is valid in polynomial time, by using at most r(n) random bits and reading q(n) bits of the certificate. The _verifier_ has to run in polynomial time; the witness itself can be arbitrarily complicated to build.

It's clear that PCP(0, 0), the set of languages that can be checked probabilistically with 0 bits of randomness and 0 bits of certificate, is equal to P: the verifier has no additional tools. PCP(O(log(n)), 0) is also equal to P: a deterministic verifier could just enumerate all sequences of log(n) bits. The same is true if the verifier has access to log(n) bits of the witness, but no randomness: the verifier can enumerate all witnesses of log(n) bits.

The magic of the PCP theorem is that PCP(O(log(n)), O(1)) = NP! That is, if I have access to log(n) random bits and a suitable proof that a given instance is in a language like SAT (or any other language in NP), I can verify that proof in polynomial time, by looking at a constant number of bits of that proof. The key is that we have enough bits of randomness to choose randomly from all the bits in the witness.

Intuitively, I still have a hard time believing the PCP construction works. However, it does hint at how randomness can give us more leverage. That said, I definitely agree that most uses of randomness seem unwarranted in practice, especially if we understand the problem domain very well. But then again, what if we don't? I would often rather have a consistently robust but suboptimal solution than one that is optimal in a small range of parameters but fails hard outside of the expected input.

<comment><USER6> > (I prefer the certifier view of NP, but that doesn't really explain the N in > NP.)

I like the "parallel worlds" interpretation: whenever you need to make a choice, the algorithm tries both at once, _in parallel_. Its still magic because a real computer can't run an exponential number of threads in parallel but its a bit less magic than an angel that can predict the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about Monte Carlo integration?</comment>


Amazing Search Experience using Bing's AJAX API - <AUTHOR> http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ <comment><USER2> Recent submission to blog post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=775616>

</comment><comment><USER3> now this is what web search should be.</comment>


My Favorite Debug Ever - <AUTHOR> http://ryan.hypnoticocelot.com/post/136617949294/my-favorite-debug-ever <comment><USER2> I prefer using AddressSanitizer for finding bugs like these now. In addition to heap overflows it can also find stack and global overflows.

As a second option I'm using valgrind which can find uninitialized memory (and doesn't require recompile of all libs as MemorySanitizer does).

</comment><comment><USER3> ElectricFence is great, and I recall having a similar feeling to the OP when I first used it because many of the described issues were also new to me at the time. It's a great experience :)

If you're on Solaris or a Solaris-derived OS, you also have the libumem and watchmalloc libraries that can help you out. I have used libumem to great effect in the past.

It's been a while, but I anecdotally recall that Solaris is more stingy with its mallocs than Linux. I used to compile and run my C projects on Solaris as a first pass in my search for memory errors.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is using GDB and Electric Fence to find a normal buffer overflow bug really interesting enough to warrant a blog post these days, let alone a HN story?

I guess it might be interesting for all the people who, like the author, are Java and PHP programmers and have no experience with C?

<comment><USER5> > I guess it might be interesting for all the people who, like the author, are > Java and PHP programmers and have no experience with C?

Maybe it isn't snark, but that reads like it, and it seems unconstructive. Why knock down someone who's learning by denigrating his background? What's the harm in someone sharing something interesting (to him) that he learned, whether or not you think he should have known it already? It's easy enough not to read it, especially on a random blog and even on HN, if you don't want to share his experience.

<comment><USER4> I'm _mostly_ trying to understand why this is deemed interesting, and not to snark. I mean, sure, anything voted up is interesting enough, but I thought that this was below the minimum level of knowledge a C programmer ought to have. It's like if there was a story on the front page of HN about debugging HTTP using "telnet".

<comment><USER6> But there's loads of not-C-programmers who might still work on segfaults from time to time.

For example I am absolutely able to use gdb, but have never heard of Electric Fence. (But I had heard of AddressSanitizer mentioned above.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Usually the toughest things to debug is when stack is overwritten. Worse, if it's stack and heap. Not my favorite things to debug...

Here's what I usually do in such cases:

Call stack is unreliable at that point. You'll see puzzling things like function calls with impossible parameters, etc. If things just don't make any sense, it's better to map all code paths that can lead to the crashing EIP/RIP (hopefully valid pointer to the instruction that caused the crash). Check EIP/RIP if it's in some rep movsd (= potentially inlined memcpy, check ECX (RCX) rep counter, EDI (RDI) rep pointer), or if the execution is in some runtime library code such as memset, memcpy, etc. similar. The next thing is to make sense of the call stack manually, if there are portions not overwritten, but what stack walk couldn't resolve. Of course it pays to take a look around stack otherwise as well, for signs of overwrite and contents of the overwrite.

It's also possible a pointer to stack object leaked at some point and the crash occurs at completely different part of code than where it actually segfaulted. Or some runtime structure was corrupted, like heap. Sometimes you can find those by just inspecting and guessing struct/object shape and values near stack pointer ESP (RSP).

If the bug can be reproduced, memory breakpoints, logging (especially if multithreaded, but watch out for blocking I/O from logging), tools for debugging memory corruption (valgrind, compiler paranoid mode, etc.) etc, even mapping some pages unreadable and unwritable. It can take a while to find the actual bug.

If reproduction is not possible, good luck. Better spend some quality time with memory hex view, disassembler, trying to locate registers and stack values that might contain pointers, etc. It might take a while to find the issue...

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing this! I could wish for some tool use (gdb) screenshots, though really the inspiration to learn is valuable enough.

A next read in this vein might be Bug Hunter's Diary by Tobias Klein: [https://www.nostarch.com/bughunter](https://www.nostarch.com/bughunter)

</comment><comment><USER9> Great article! I had a similar experience, a Java programmer turned Linux Kernel programmer. The first think I remember doing was debugging a kernel panic using crash. It is not doubt challenging for Java/PHP programmers to debug C coredumps/KP, when there is pointer reference involved. But at the same time I learned a lot, specially memory management.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how many of the young so called "programmers" would be able to solve this. It's a pity that one can call himself a "developer" without having the tiniest idea how a computer actually runs, what a process, a thread or a pointer is...

<comment><USER11> We all stand on the shoulder of giants. I'm pretty sure when the first languages appeared, some people said things like "It's a pity that one can call himself a "developer" without having the tiniest idea how a transistor actually runs, what a perfored card is..."

<comment><USER10> The problem is: what happens when there is no one any more who remembers how the basics work?

The banking and healthcare industry already has this problem because there is a huge amount of decades old legacy stuff still in use and they have to pay through their noses for expertise.

<comment><USER11> I'd say it's not the same kind of basic. We still need people that know how to manually manage memory. We don't need them as much though. But at some point, Sun needs people to develop the JVM, and its memory management algorithm. The "how this works" is well documented in academic papers too.

Obviously, as you mention, the less there are people that are capable to do X, the more they cost. But it's not the same as "totally forgetting something".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A categorized database of ~400k journalists - <AUTHOR> Hey guys!
Press Hunt (https://presshunt.co) is a categorized database of almost 400k journalists, reporters, and media outlets.
Finding the right journalists to pitch your business to––then finding their email address––is a nightmare. The data is spread out all over the internet, down the google rabbit hole, news sites, and twitter accounts.
Research can take hundreds of hours on it's own, not even counting the time it takes to run an effective email campaign.
Over the last year we've run hundreds of PR campaigns for companies like Instacart and Dos Toros. Our campaigns have been featured by hundreds of media outlets like The Washington Post, The Independent, and VICE.
We started out building media lists by hand, but that sucked. We built crawlers to compile the 1.0 of this data, then purged, cleaned, and enriched it all. With this update we've added millions of data points: new tags, phone numbers, journalist media outlet, photos, and more!
Since our 1.0 almost a hundred companies (startups, photographers, PR agencies, etc.) have used Press Hunt, logging almost 80k searches.
For our 2.0 we've completely revamped the UI, updated & enriched our dataset (with new attributes like phone numbers, social media accounts, and millions of new data points), and built out a new system for you to save journalists to media lists and export their contact info to CSV (so running email campaigns to them is now even easier).
Like our 1.0, journalists are categorized by tags representing what they're likely to write about next (based on what they've written about before, where they write, and what they tweet about). The dataset includes emails, phone numbers, where they write, and their industry focuses.
We'd love feedback––thanks for reading this
- Matt & Aaron <comment><USER2> Is there any way for journalists to check if the information you have is accurate (and provide accurate information if it isn't) without subscribing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Anyone can use the trial search on our homepage for free to see if they're in the database and how they're categorized.

If you're not in there and want to be added, just let me know. If you're in there and don't want to be, just leave a message in the live chat of our site. Same goes if you'd like to update your tags!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great. I'm curious how your offering differs from incumbent media database like Cision and Meltwater.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Cision is one of those behemoths that doesn't care too much about UI or UX, or improving their product quickly for that matter.

Used Cision in the past and hated it, figured there was a better way to build something for this use-case.

Working on a lot of data science opportunities here + integrating other web services like gmail to 10x the efficiency of the PR outreach process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what does your data look like? say, i looking for journalists about 'fish' or something similar, can you provide a sample of what the output might look like? it can be blury or whatever

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you can actually search through our entire database for free on our homepage (we've just redacted premium data like emails and phone numbers).

For 'fish' we have almost 17k results. A lot of media outlets related to fish like Fishipedia.

For 'fishing travel' there are results from Voyages de Peche (which I'm pretty sure is literally "fishing trips" in French), who writes about 'fish' and 'travel'.

We have their writer Julien's name, email, and phone number here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Our of curiosity, how long did it take for your team to build this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting! We've been working on this for ~3 months, and we've exclusively invested all our engineering resources into this for the past 6-7 weeks

<comment><AUTHOR> We launched Press Hunt 1.0 in late March, so we've been validating etc. since then</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's autonomous gliders seek out thermal updrafts to stay aloft - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/16/microsofts-autonomous-gliders-seek-out-thermal-updrafts-to-stay-aloft <comment><USER2> This is an interesting article, but it positions the Microsoft project as the first effort in this area when in fact there is significant amateur and professional research covering the same ground (same air?). NASA has been looking into this for at least a decade [1].

There's an oblique reference in the Times article to an "autonomous soaring world record"\--I believe that was Dan Edwards at NCSU in 2008.[2]

[1] [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200700...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070022339.pdf)

[2] RCGroups thread documenting his efforts: [https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?502046-Autono...](https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?502046-Autonomous- Soaring)

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, this post links to the original times article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15027339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15027339)</comment>


You can't tell people anything (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/ <comment><USER2> > I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can > afford to get some work done. Mainly that's about being able to do things > without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be > the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement.

I believe this is true for almost every ambitious (maker/engineer). It's really hard to convince Management about something new because they don't experience the pain. Sometimes their Job depends on not understanding it.

Probably a reason why Startups outperform big companies in certain niches.

The big dilemma right now is there's little funding available that can compete with the salaries of big companies. Rents have shot up so high that it's not easy to take 6 months of to build something so you don't have to explain. Failure has become expensive.

My theory is that even though people are getting paid more, we're in this weird paradox of having less innovation.

<comment><USER3> It is sad that we're at this point where people can't just live in a relaxed manner tinkering on new ideas. I remember Silicon Valley in the early 90s you really had a more hippie mentality and not everyone had a high paying salary and some people were just hanging out and talking and try new things. Austin has a little bit of this Vibe now.

<comment><USER4> don't get why everyone's pretending you need to live in silicon valley or a major metro area to tinker for 6 months. i saved enough from a year in silicon valley to support myself multiple years in other parts of the country.

<comment><USER5> The parent mentioned "hanging out and talking" (i.e. network effects) in addition to "try new things" (tinker).

Could the same effect be accomplished remotely? Perhaps, but TFA essentially claims otherwise.

<comment><USER6> IRC is kind of nice for that. As someone who grew up in the middle of the woods that was my substitute for hanging out in person and talking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a physics TA in grad school. I was very good at explaining solutions to problems, so of course during exam reviews I would get big crowds to watch the explanations. I was also somewhat aware of this principle, so during a review I was trying to get students to come up with approaches or ideas while solving a problem, and they demanded "why don't you just tell us!" It was pretty frustrating.

Watching someone explain solutions well can be dangerous, since it gives you the very real feeling of understanding, without actual understanding. To actually understand, you have to try a problem from scratch. Then you will understand why the solution/approach is what it is, and why other approaches fail, which will give you intuition about which approaches work on future problems. But counter-intuitively, you will get lost in the weeds during the process, which makes you feel like you don't understand!

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm kinda on the other end of this. I often didn't do as well as I should have in school because I always "understood" what was going on in the classroom. It was confusing for me when those who struggled to understand what was being taught in class did better on exams. From a cursory glance I always seemed to understand what was being taught, so I never did the deep work where you really learn the subject. I figured out better ways to really learn the subject matters later in academia. It was almost never about reading more on the subject, but rather doing more problems (ideally exams that were use in previous semesters) on the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Eventually people can be educated, but what you have to do is find a way give them the experience, to put them in the situation. Sometimes this can only happen by making real the thing you are describing, but sometimes by dint of clever artifice you can simulate it.

With luck, eventually there will be an "Aha!". If you're really good, the "Aha!" will followed by "Oh, so that's what you meant". But don't be too surprised or upset if the "Aha!" is instead followed by "Why didn't you tell me that?"._

This jives with how children learn. Perhaps adults are actually the same in many respects. Kids don't learn how to pronounce words by listening to someone explain how to form the lips and place the tongue and vibrate the velum to form a z sound. They just learn by observing it and then trying to attempt it. Ironically, foreign language pronunciation may be one of the examples where you do need to teach adults how to do it before they try to do it because their brains have already defined what's normal and find it difficult to make foreign sounds.

But various other topics? Learn by doing. Light bulb moments by doing.

<comment><USER10> I don't know how to make this point clear and concise, my apologies.

As a Dutchie when I tried to learn Italian I just did it mostly. I did it exxagerated and in stereotypical fashion because I found it fun. Doing it in exxagerated manner also gave me the feeling I could have fun with the language, was allowed to fail and had an understanding where the exxageration came from and soon got to understand how to do it in a more normal fashion.

This approach worked so well that my teacher at one point said to a couple of Russians in class "just pronounce it like Mettamage." They were dumbfounded, "really? Do we have to? It is so over the top." They did it anyway, their Italian accents improved immediately. Before they were really monotone and had a heavy voice, and now their tone was all over the place and their voice was less heavy.

Dutch and Italian are closer in pronounciation than I initially thought. So you have a point. But not quite:

The point of this whole post is this: when I got back home to The Netherlands, I wanted to continue my studies. I suddenly lost interest in Italian. I realized that learning Italian words on paper is not the same thing as learning Italian words in Rome. The biggest reason: when I learned Italian words in Rome I saw people speak. Not only did I learn a word, I apparently remember how their lips moved to such an extent that the movement was encoded in my lips. This didn't happen straight away but if you forget a particular word a couple of times and you see the word being said all the time, you start to remember how people say the word with their lips. I could clearly remember a distinct feeling of not feeling any muscle memory in my newly learned Italian words that I learned in The Netherlands.

<comment><USER11> re: learning how to pronounce foreign words via exaggeration—a friend told me that pronouncing Japanese words in the most racist way possible actually earned him nods from his teacher.

<comment><USER12> When I was taking Chinese classes, our teacher would always demand that talk loud, exaggerate the pronunciation, and be as over-the-top as possible. Apparently there's a popular english learning method in China called Crazy English that takes this approach.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics):

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

</comment><comment><USER14> This harmonises well with my career experience, and I could cite multiple examples from just the last few months without even thinking about it. (I'm not going to because the project is ongoing.)

We waste so much time explaining and justifying things to people that they're just never going to get when we'd be much better off building even a minimal experience for them so they _can_ get it. Of course, if you try to explain this to the people concerned they still look at you like you're from Mars and complain that we "can't" work like that. It's deeply frustrating.

I absolutely loved the line about becoming independently wealthy so he has time to get some work done.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, "the people concerned" might themselves not have the authority to just diverge from the process.

The lesson to learn is that rigid processes don't work too well in creative fields such as software development. Every company wants to be innovative, i.e. come up with better ways to do things. The innovation will most likely not come from management, because they are busy doing management stuff to keep the company running smoothly. The good ideas will come from the employees that spend most of their time actually working on the subject. If a process prevents these employees from taking what they think is the best decision, then there needs to be a conversation about that process.

Rather than specify how to work, companies should focus on goals and have those goals shared across the organization: "We want to build the best possible product." The goals should inform everything else, because how can anything be more important than building the best product? If it's clear that a process is in the way, people should be empowered to change it.

Which is the point of agile: setting up your organization as a system that allows teams to do the right thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have an insulated drink "cozy" that has this written on the side:

"I can explain it to you but I can't _understand_ if for you."

<comment><USER17> Funny! Some smart guy was quoted as saying that the biggest barrier to communication is the assumption that it has taken place. If you ask somebody if they understand you will rarely hear, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's very difficult to communicate something when in most cases, in order to do it right, you need to understand the mental model of the other person, or explain a new —usually simplied— model from the ground. And as the article mentions even then it's hard to succeed, and you can't ever achieve perfect understanding anyway. You would need to be capable of mind control to have others always understand you, and then that's kinda paradoxical. But we will always have that drive, to try to explain no matter who's on the other side. Good work brain.

</comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of Feynman saying "Yeah, I took the door" and people later thinking he'd lied and denied it: [http://home.agh.edu.pl/~szymon/humor/feynman.html](http://home.agh.edu.pl/~szymon/humor/feynman.html)

We usually don't memorize things we see or hear (or say) word for word. We translate them into the meanings and reconstruct them from that. And if we don't correctly understand the meaning, it makes sense that we don't remember it accurately.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am good explaining things to people.

I just realize what people take for granted and make it easy to understand.

Everybody in Swizzerland-Austria knows how to sky. Kids learn so soon they do not remember when they learned like most people do with learning to walk memories.

In some Pacific islands they learn to dive. In New Zealand they learn to sail. In Japan or Spain people eat fish by tradition, in most Argentina it is a strange thing to do, you eat meat.

People on HN are mostly hackers, programmers, using a command line, what is a parser is or how to program is obvious for them, but is very strange to general population.

What is normal to us, is very strange to other people raised under other circumstances.

Learn about your audience. Use parables like Jesus to explain what they don't know with things they know very well.

<comment><USER21> (s/sky/ski/, for those that had problems parsing it like me)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Although it's good to realise "you can't tell people anything", it's also good to be aware that "people can't tell you anything". As in: you're (and I'm) probably not exceptionally special, so we should take into account that we're probably not able to grasp the full picture when someone describes us something, and thus might do well toning down some of our inherent reflexive scepticism sometimes.

Somewhat related: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five- minutes](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes)

<comment><USER23> It's right in the OP

 _For example, their server ran on five (not four, not six, five) Fujitsu A60 minicomputers, and became hopelessly bogged down after about 80 concurrent users. We were never able to get a clear picture of why. We asked lots of questions and they'd try to answer them, but none of the explanations made any sense that we could puzzle out. They were trying to tell us, you see, but you can't tell people anything._

<comment><USER22> Yes, I liked that part, but thought it got de-emphasised a bit when it continued on to say that they didn't really understand the architecture themselves. In this case, I'm sure that played a large role in the Japanese not being able to tell them.

<comment><USER24> It's not that the Japanese couldn't communicate in English.

It's the fact the Japanese felt, like Asians generally do, they shouldn't disrespect their partner by saying what the partner said seemed liked gobledycook to them.

So the Japanese internalized the failure to understand and eventually did things the way the knew...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is deeply true.

I reflect on the times in my life in which I've tried to tell people things, I wish I hadn't. It would have been better for the relationships.

<comment><USER26> This applies so much for relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The author says you can't explain anything really new, and people have to experience it for themselves. I had an experience like the author talks about when I first "got" the web.

I had read lots of stories about it, and a lot of people were excited by it, but I didn't really see its value. Then I went to a web demo day the local NPR station held in hall with a bunch of computers.

I wandered around looking techy things I didn't understand, and then a public demo started. The guy typed in a url and hit return, and in a bit we were looking at the home page for an art museum in Moscow. "That's nice." I thought.

Then he clicked on a link on the page, and we were looking at a painting at the museum. "That's nice," I thought, but I still was not very excited.

But then he clicked on a link underneath the painting, and suddenly we were at a museum in Paris that had paintings by the same painter.

"Oh my god," I thought, "the potentials for that are just limitless," and thought of a long list of amazing things you could use this for. And now I understood the web.

</comment><comment><USER17> Learning is about context and we tend to assume others have the same frame of reference. This is why it is so lonely being an expert in any given topic. It is also why certain very commercially successful musicians kill themselves. The better you are at something, the harder it is to find someone to relate to.

</comment><comment><USER28> Years ago, I was developing a desktop aquaponics unit that I was planning on selling and turning into a business. I know it doesn't sound innovative, but at the time most prebuilt aquaponics systems for sale were large and unsophisticated. My idea was to build a 5-gallon aquaponics system that someone could have on their desk or windowsill that was extremely energy efficient. In fact, it'd be so efficient that only a moderate amount of sunlight would be required to keep it running. I developed a unique pumping system that was intended to require little power and few moving parts.

I told people what I was doing and I was told either "Yeah, I guess that's cool." or "Nobody's going to pay for that! You're crazy."

Eventually, I believed them, and so I quit what I was doing.

A year and a half later, this thing appeared in stores across the country:

[https://backtotheroots.com/products/watergarden](https://backtotheroots.com/products/watergarden)

It's nearly identical to what I was developing, although its less sophisticated and required more electricity(not that most people buying it would actually care). I was pissed off like no other time in my life. I'm not a violent person, but that one time I went out into the woods and beat shrubs with a stick to release my anger. :)

Looking back, I should have picked up where I left off even after learning that I'd been beaten to the finish line. Still , I felt very defeated. It was heartbreaking to see someone take what I thought was an original idea and make money after I'd spent countless hours building the electronics and testing various water pump/lifter designs.

More importantly, I shouldn't have listened to anyone. The average person doesn't know what they're talking about, which is why they're not coming up with their own ideas, why they elect slick-tongued buffoons into office, and why they're miserable working their lives away for other miserable know- nothings.

If you have an idea that you are passionate about, you're better off trying something and legitimately failing than to have watch someone else live the future you could have had because your family and friends think you should play it safe. Regret is tragic, but simple failure can be recovered from and forgotten once you've learned from it.

I recently quit my job to pursue an idea. We'll see what happens! I did decide to tell people what I was doing, but my previous experience taught me to disregard anything they say, including encouragement. I've been told "go for it" by some and "the gap will look bad on your resume" by others. It might have been a mistake to tell them anything at all because I do believe that exposing yourself to negative ideas can be damaging to your motivation, and same with positive ideas if you become worried about living up to them, but at least I've discovered that I've become a master of _not giving a shit_ about what others think.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for sharing your experience. I had a similar experience and what is uncanny is my idea was related to hydroponics. After I shelved my ideas, literally a year later I heard radio adverts in my local radio station advertising similar product to the the one I had developed.

At this point in time I have just started a new job and getting up to speed with my day job. A part of me feels there is enough space for many players in the field. We have Dell, HP, Apple. So maybe there is space for your product in aquaponics.

<comment><USER28> No way! :) I think aquaponics gained a lot of popularity around 2011, which is when I became aware of it and started hammering away at ideas. Maybe it had something to do with that rapture prediction at the time? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, there's certainly room for more small-scale aquaponics products. Possibly larger scale, too. I had this foolish mindset that if my idea wasn't 100% original then it wasn't worth doing. The reality is that even the biggest of companies that exist today weren't the pioneers of their core products, nor did they necessarily innovate any faster than their competition.

Thanks for the encouragement, and I would say the same for whatever ideas you shelved. Maybe we'll have to join forces some day. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's even worse for new mediums that you can't experience without new hardware or interface differences, like Virtual or Augmented Reality.

For example I've spent literally hours trying to explain to potential customers over the phone what AR is and how it works, but if I got people to try it, they understand it in about 5 seconds. That was a lot harder to do two years ago than now.

</comment><comment><USER31> You _can_ tell people and have them understand but you have to know what you're doing.

Most of our ideas about human communication are still in the "alchemical" stage. There are a handful of people who have initiated the rigorous "chemical" stage but their work is not accepted by mainstream psychology. This hasn't prevented diffusion of the knowledge at various rates through various subcultures, but it has grossly interfered with the _scientific_ investigation of mind and communication. I'm talking about the general body of knowledge and technique collectively referred to by the moniker "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" (the _other_ NLP.) Normally I would link to a wikipedia article here but the one on NLP is shit. (It's one of the rare cases when I've found an article about something I know well that is highly inaccurate and biased. It's a bit of an apparent paradox that many people who have trained in NLP still do a lousy job of communicating in many ways, and, ironically, often about NLP!)

In a nutshell, it all started around 1974 when some therapists were videotaped during therapy sessions and the transcripts were studied in light of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar and regularities were detected. Within a decade something like the "operating system" of the human mind was mapped out. As a side-effect, various algorithms and techniques were developed. One example is the "Five-Minute Phobia Cure" which is a simple algorithm that eliminates phobic responses. (If you have a phobia and would like to _not_ have that phobia you should look into this. It's a simple verbal algorithm that any practitioner should be able to lead you through. It only takes five minutes or so, works immediately, and is permanent.)

Anyway, it's the real Information Revolution. I have no doubt that when all is said and done the calendar will be divided into two epochs, before and after 1974, as the discovery of the formal methods by which the brain thinks supersedes in importance the discoveries of fire or atomic structure.

</comment><comment><USER32> The last comment on that page suggests we should all have a good knowledge of pedagogy. Seems like an interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER10> The main point of the article that I got is that people learn by doing.

Procedural rhetoric, pioneered by Ian Bogost, does just that: you simulate a certain system (or you create a game) and people can act in that simulation (or game) to experience the point. In his paper [1] he gives an example of a game called the McDonalds game. The player eventually has to make very unethical decisions in order to keep their McDonalds restaurant alive. The rhetorical point of the game is that McDonalds is unethical.

I find it interesting that project Xanadu is mentioned. The thing is: I have been working on a hypermedia system called XIMPEL. I think hypertext should still be a thing that should be discussed and improved upon, even if it will never be in global use -- for academic reasons. XIMPEL is a bit different though, it is definitely not the best hypermedia system out there. But it is a hypermedia framework in which you can make the quickest prototypes for interactive video and (by extension) for making procedural rhetorical arguments.

I would like to give you guys a demo of it in action, but unfortunately not many quality applications have been made with it (in my opinion). The best one is [2], but it does not show anything about procedural rhetoric and it is partially Dutch. It does give you a baseline application on what hypermedia is supposed to be (and the simple XML language accompanying it, it is meant for non-programmers). Experience it all yourself at [2].

Arguably, I did create an example of procedural rhetoric when I created a Turing Machine program with the language itself [3]. I don't have the money at the moment to spin up a server for it, but here's a video of it [4].

I do want to gauge interest at my university to see if we could make a XIMPEL production regarding the user experience design process. Such a process is messy and different everytime, which requires non-linear storytelling, which is exactly what XIMPEL is made for. Done right, it will be possible to let students experience the user experience design process in a short time (and hopefully get it) before they start to do it. I know one thing: telling how the user experience design process works does not help. It should be experienced. What I wonder is whether we can let students experience purely the process of it.

[1]: [http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/public_html/ruiz/EGDFall2013/readi...](http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/public_html/ruiz/EGDFall2013/readings/RhetoricVideoGames_Bogost.pdf)

[2]: [http://ub-viz01.uio.no/abelprisen/](http://ub-viz01.uio.no/abelprisen/)

[3]: The Turing Machine is created with 2 counters. The two counters are represented as stacks through representing the numbers in binary fashion and simulating push and pop functions by multiplying times 2 (push 0), multiplying times 2 plus 1 (push 1) and dividing by 2 (pop). More details on it here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_machine#Two- counter_ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_machine#Two- counter_machines_are_Turing_equivalent_\(with_a_caveat\))

[4]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NhRtKY0VzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NhRtKY0VzQ) (until 5:12) -- Note: I made a small mistake at 3:50 but it did not affect the output. In most cases it does affect the output and from mistakes you learn.

</comment><comment><USER33> I own a restaurant. In the 90s, I actually managed it for six years when I lost a programming job, though I only planned to do so for a few months. The restaurant ran like "a well oiled machine" customers and staff would tell me.

Nowadays, I get irritated when I walk into it and find people don't know what they're doing and inconsistencies are everywhere. I found out our manager was the type that would show you how to do things but not let you do them yourself. Later, when a new person needed to do it themselves, she would complain about their incompetence if they didn't do it right.

My point has always been, until you do it yourself, you don't know how to do it. "Turn this switch on", I'd say. "This is how you stretch this, now you stretch the next 10."

I ran three restaurants back then and had no managers at all. Each employee was better at their job than my current manager is.

<comment><USER34> Maybe you should show your current manager how to manage

<comment><USER33> It's .... complicated.

<comment><USER35> Reader, I married them...?

<comment><USER33> No but close. Got back into IT. Wife quit her job to run business. Hired managers but takes a hands off approach. Doesn't want to work in restaurants directly.

<comment><USER36> Curious question: what makes/made more money?

<comment><USER37> Profits are better than wages.

<comment><USER36> Oh yeah… I concur. That holds true even though the former be lesser in magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Context is everything, however agreed in some cases people are like sheep and only want to be told what's acceptable from the media</comment>


Show HN: Gun – A distributed, embedded, graph database engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amark/gun#gun-

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=gun+graph#!/story/forever/0/gun%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=gun+graph#!/story/forever/0/gun%20graph%20engine)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dang, that post was back when I only had a proof of concept. I've made a ton of progress since then and actually have a working usable MVP now.

It is an open source Firebase or DynamoDB. It does realtime push notifications of all updates to the data, and handles conflict resolution for you (even in a decentralized setting).

Personally, I feel like your comment here is trying to say "this is old news", when it isn't. This is a new release, with hundreds of hours of work, achieving a new milestone. So having a bit more support would be nice (and reverting the title to the original one I posted?). Thanks for all your hard work though!

<comment><USER2> The rule on reposts is that if a story has had significant attention in a year then we bury it as a duplicate ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). But sure, if there's something significantly different, a post making that clear is ok. We obviously can't study every story in depth to determine how much has changed.

There were a couple of other problems with this post, though. First, "Show HN: Open Source Firebase" is a pretty baity title on the day when Firebase's acquisition is the top story. Using titles to grab attention that way isn't ok on HN, where we want titles to be accurate and neutral.

Second, this post set off the voting ring detector. I looked at the data and the ring detector was obviously correct, by a large margin. You probably shouldn't protest about being treated unfairly when you're flagrantly breaking the rules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dang, To address your concerns in reverse order:

1\. I'm part of an incubator, and thus all the other companies are on the same IP. I'm not creating bots or violating anything, they are upvoting my work out of their own free will. Why is that bad?

2\. I've been pitching it as "Open Source Firebase" or "Dropbox for Developers" since my original proof of concept (the submission you linked to in your comment). So of course when I see a bunch of developers in the Firebase thread concerned about Google's acquisition (not knowing if they can trust it/if it will be shut down), I naturally decided to post about my alternative. What wouldn't be appropriate would be if I paraded gun inside the Firebase thread as comments to people, that wouldn't be cool. But now you are punishing and hiding something that other HNers were asking for in the Firebase thread. What do you suggest I do instead?

3\. This isn't a repost, it is a new version. In the same way that Meteor 0.8 to Meteor 1.0 shouldn't get buried, the same logic applies here. It is incredibly hurtful that you're trying to accuse me of foul play when I've spent countless hours trying to build something that people will like, especially when it is open source. Why are my new version releases buried but not RethinkDB's, or Meteor's, or Postgres? I feel like I accidentally rubbed you the wrong way by trying to post my work, and I'm sorry for that. What can I do instead?

<comment><USER2> > What can I do instead?

It's simply a matter of following the three rules I mentioned: make clear what's changed, use an accurate and neutral title, and don't solicit upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey this looks a lot better. Excited to dig into it!</comment>


Joke Of The Week: Microsoft Plans To Charge For Its Mobile Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5473855/joke-of-the-week-microsoft-plans-to-charge-for-its-mobile-operating-system?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

<comment><USER2> I agree that MS is going to find it increasingly hard to compete against Apple and Google.

But the logic in the article is insane:

 _Microsoft is so big that its new Windows Phone operating system has almost no chance of making enough money to move the needle anyway. So it might as well join rival Google in giving it away for free, in an effort to drive up device sales and market share._

That's just stupid. For any big company, if you divide up their product line, most of the products will amount to only a small portion of revenue. Then we could apply this logic to each of those products in turn, and pretty soon that company will be giving everything away and getting no revenue.

Ball Corp. makes most of its money through glass jars and stuff, and only makes a fraction of its income through its Ball Aerospace subsidiary. I don't think you'd expect them to give away satellites.</comment>


Real Blogs Don't Have Interstitial Ads - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/real-blogs-dont-have-interstitial-ads/

<comment><USER2> Real Blogs Don't Have Six Hour Meetings To Kill A Nagging Feature Which May Or May Not Have Been Bestowed Upon Them By Their New Corporate Overlords.

TechCrunch is a real blog either way. However, this article could be more of a useful tutorial on dodging bullets and shifting blame, than a post I'd expect from Arrington.

</comment><comment><USER3> _So far my internal requests for more information have been ignored._

So who are you to be writing posts about it then? Maybe you need an anonymous tipster within TC to deliver the scoop.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like Dell is really getting their money's worth for that ad. Do you think the salespeople put it in writing that Dell would get an Arrington "news" article featuring the video? Or was it just a "nudge nudge wink wink" kind of thing?

</comment><comment><USER5> "They aren't as bad as the ridiculous ads that float over the text you're trying to read, but they are in the same ballpark."

The ads I really detest are the ones that are in the background on the margins on either side of the content; when you go to click the window to make it active for some reason, you end up clicking on an ad.

<comment><USER2> I like the part where the ad doesn't show up because I've blocked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ok, here is how it works. Many "real blogs" have an agenda. They don't need ads. Maybe it's a friend's product they review, or an opinion they post, as long as they have an influence on you, ads aren't needed. Ads are for when your audience is so large that you don't have a single message that reverberates with all of them or a significant percentage of them. Ads are also good if you might want to change positions about an issue/product/agenda later.

A nice little trick next time you read anything. Identify all the proper nouns in a passage, compile up the adjectives as well and take a fresh look at the whole article.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or has there been an uptick in the number of TC stories on the HN frontpage?</comment>


Ask HN: Is anybody facing issues with GoDaddy DNS - <AUTHOR> From past hour or so we are facing issues to connect to domains which are using GoDaddy DNS. I checked from some AWS servers too. It seems that from Asia we are not able to connect to GoDaddy DNS.
From some servers in AWS Singapore region:
ping ns73.domaincontrol.com ping ns74.domaincontrol.com
Results in Unknown host exception.
But from US region the ping works.
Is anybody else also facing similar issues? <comment><USER2> Yes. From a Singapore Digital Ocean instance I cannot lookup domains (using dig) for the company I work for that have DNS hosted by godaddy.com. I am able to resolve some personal domains hosted on custom DNS servers. Weird.

A dig +trace works fine until it times out at godaddy:

dig: couldn't get address for 'pdns03.domaincontrol.com': no more

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. My personal website has been down for more than an hour now.</comment>