Soviet Calculators History (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/russian_calcs.htm <comment><USER2> I loved my MK 85 a lot! When I was at school in late 80s I used to store complex physics and trigonometrics formulas in it as a BASIC program text. Those days using calculators was allowed on exams so this little electronic cheat-sheet saved my sole many times :-).

<comment><USER3> A computational cobbler?

<comment><USER2> If you mean the thing was not used for its intendent purpose, yes. But, who uses cell phone to make calls nowadays ? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > the calculator combined not only the functions [+=] and [-=], but also the > multiply-divide functions [X -:-].

Very interesting. It finally solved the mystery for me. My aunt was an accountant and she had one of those in her office. I remember looking at the keyboard and wondering how in the world you're supposed to divide and multiply with a single button. [-=] seems to be something like "invert the previous operation and then produce the result"

</comment><comment><USER5> It was a joke in Soviet Union that our Micro calculators are the biggest in the world!

<comment><USER2> Well, I admit that soviet calculators were of nearaly same size and same functionality as their western siblings. Some, were very interesting from engineering and use points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Revers-engineering of B3-34 internals (in Russian): [http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34](http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34) . Some more: [https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/267234.html](https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/267234.html) .

</comment><comment><USER7> Max levchin stated he learned indirection in memory addressing because his mom was assigned to work calculator programming in the USSR before the family fled to the US in the early 90s. Amazing that a calculator had pointer features.

</comment><comment><USER8> I learned to code on MK-52. It was fairly cheap and accessible by the time i have got my hands on it.

After programming (and patching) in hex codes, any other programming language seems fairly simple.

And on the back of MK-52 there was a potentiometer you could use to overclock it.

I did not know the trick of re-soildering the BRP jumper though.

Ah, good times.

<comment><USER9> Any hyperlinks about that overlocking? I have an MK-52 and didn't know anything about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > In general, the first models of calculators had their own operational > language, and the user had to learn the specific procedures related to each > calculator. Let's take, for example, the C3-07, the first calculator of the > Series "C" manufactured by the Leningrad factory "Svetlana."

Forgive the focus on tangential information, but I'm curious, was this factory named after Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva? If so, it would seem a little strange that the factory would remain in the '70s with this name long after Khrushchev's secret speech and the subsequent de-Stalinization that took place to deconstruct the influence of Stalin's cult of personality. I can't seem to find any real info on the factory with a google search, but does strike me as curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_\(company\))

<comment><USER10> D'oh!

I must have used too many search terms in my query. Thanks for providing the link. Appears the company was founded in the late 1800s, so certainly not named after Stalin's daughter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _To calculate (20 - 8 + 7) it was necessary to press the following keys [C] [2][0] [+ =] [8] [-=] [7] [+=]. Result: 5. To multiply the result, say by 3, the calculation could be continued by pressing the keys: [X] [3] [+=]. A [K] key was used for calculations with a constant._

When you design a product with a a committee of 27 engineers..

 _A group of 27 engineers were assigned to this complex problem. It was a huge project which involved: producing the drawings, circuit and patterns consisting of 144 thousand points required to fit a microprocessor with 3400 elements within a 5x5 mm crystal._

<comment><USER12> Don't old HP scientific calculators have a similar syntax?

It's actually pretty logical; there's a running total, and you decide what to do with the number you just typed in, after typing it. Costs an extra button press to 'add' the first number to the total, I suppose.

<comment><USER13> No, HP calculators were more efficient it would seem with their RPN.

"20 ENTER 8 ENTER - 7 ENTER +"

So you push 20 onto the stack and then 8 on the stack. Then you hit the minus key which returns 12 and puts that 12 on the stack, then you put 7 on the stack and click the plus key to give you 19.

<comment><USER14> You only need the first ENTER to separate the numbers; the rest were optional:

"20 ENTER 8 - 7 +"

<comment><USER6> Not in general, I guess; 20 - 8 * 7 would be "20 ENTER 8 ENTER 7 * -". So if you need to do first operation which is not the leftmost, you'd have to add another "ENTER".

<comment><USER11> 7 replies in from my (downvoted) original post and people are still arguing about syntax.

I rest my case</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm experiencing pair programming exhaustion, how best to cope with it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is very ideology over common sense. There is no scientific approach in software development. Did anyone conduct a reproducible study that was peer reviewed that concluded that pair programming was x-times better in creating relatively bug free software?

We just latch onto hysteria.

<comment><USER3> There is no need of studies to see that pair programming is a great way to pass experience from a more to a less experienced software engineer. It might not be the only one way to tutor a junior, not even the best, but works.

<comment><USER2> Hopefully you don't work in medicine or in any discipline where lives are at stake.

<comment><USER4> The irony of this comment is that letting people die via A/B guessing is exactly how modern medicine got to where is today.

You give one group a "cure", the other group a placebo. Whichever group survives or does better is the winner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Place a stack of books so that only you can see the monitor, then feed your partner info as needed when you get stuck.

</comment><comment><USER6> What is your experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> The company I work for is completely committed to pair programming, which means everyone does it a 100% of the time. It is fine to help you ramp up when you just joined, but after 4 months of non-stop pairing, it seems like it's just too much.

<comment><USER7> That's ridiculous. Pairing 100% would seriously hamper productivity. You need time to withdraw into your mind and think through solutions.

This is why code reviews were invented.

<comment><USER8> Highly recommended:

[https://www.gerritcodereview.com/](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/)

<comment><USER9> Or (tooting my own horn) for a friendlier but still powerful approach to code reviews that integrates better with GitHub you could try [https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stop pairing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Threesome</comment>


Show HN: Tocbot – Create a table of contents based on the html heading structure - <AUTHOR> http://tscanlin.github.io/tocbot/ <comment><USER2> I like the sound of this, But why is a smooth scrolling library a _requirement_?

Can't you just detect that library and use it if it's available, and use regular ID/name anchors otherwise?</comment>


Evolving-Snakes: Snakes from the classic game evolve using a genetic algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/indjev99/Evolving-Snakes <comment> Method-X Video demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQoa- uFyXFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQoa-uFyXFw)

</comment><comment><USER2> Semi-related question: could you train a bot to play a game like Agar.io by pitting a whole bunch of bot players against each other in the same instance?

<comment><USER3> Not a neural net, but here is my attempt at that:

agar.evo

[https://codepen.io/lilgreenland/pen/aNemmK](https://codepen.io/lilgreenland/pen/aNemmK)

Each cell has about 10 behavioral parameters that are assigned randomly. Cells that eat enough can reproduce with slight variation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, guys. Author of the project here. Just checked the traffic on the repo of the project and you make up about two thirds of it and I didn't even know about this forum or that my project was linked here :D Glad you found it interesting.

<comment><USER5> Welcome to Hacker News! (I work on HN.) You're the sort of user we hope will find this site interesting and stick around.</comment></comment>


Beta Testing of the Book: "Development and Deployment of MMOG" - no-bugs http://ithare.com/book-beta-testing-development-and-deployment-of-massively-multiplayer-games-from-social-games-to-mmofps-with-stock-exchanges-in-between/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting experience, I'm curious to see if basically giving the book for free as a beta will help or hamper sales.

I'm not a big fan of the cover, not that it would stop me from buying the book though.</comment>


Re-Inventing Takeaways. Building the Marketplace for Home-Cooked Food on Demand - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@liammckay/re-inventing-takeaways-building-the-marketplace-for-home-cooked-food-on-demand-2bf7b1972e4e <comment><USER2> Unless made in a certified commercial kitchen, this is totally illegal where I live.

</comment><comment><USER2> Who's liable for any food issues?</comment>


Game Modification: 60 FPS Hacks in Dolphin - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/02/07/game-modification-60-fps-hacks/

<comment><USER2> Last night I set up Dolphin and it ran both Super Monkey Ball 2 and Mario Kart Double Dash in 1080p at 60fps. It was amazing, and super easy

<comment><USER3> Do you use a usb controller? If so, which one?

<comment><USER4> Dolphin uses DirectInput on Windows, so basically anything works. If you're in the market for a PC gamepad, it's hard to go wrong with a 360 controller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, 60fps really does look fantastic in Super Mario Sunshine. Amazing that this kind of thing is possible now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Man I love these guys. They strive for accurate emulation first and foremost, but they still care about giving the emulator the power to enhance games in such amazing ways. They really have their priorities straight.

</comment><comment><USER7> Tutorial on setting up Dolphin on a rMBP that I wrote. Although 60fps is unlikely in most games. [http://benguild.com/2013/07/18/how-to-play-nintendo- wii-game...](http://benguild.com/2013/07/18/how-to-play-nintendo-wii-games-on- your-retina-macbook/)

<comment><USER8> I have one of the high-end i7 rMBPs with an Nvidia 750M chip inside. In Boot Camp, I get 60fps the vast majority of the time playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid Prime Trilogy with mostly default settings — albeit at 1.0-1.5x internal resolution. Can't complain! Love having all the best Wii games on the go, original jaggies and everything.

In native OSX, performance is 1.5-2.0x worse.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this is mainly because Apple's OpenGL drivers are terrible. They're eternally behind the GPU vendor drivers in OpenGL version/feature availability and have worse performance. I'm crossing my fingers that in a few years the clean slate of glNext will give Apple a chance to fix this, but not counting on it...

<comment><USER8> Hilariously, most of my multiplatform games run better through Parallels (pointing to my BootCamp drive) than in OSX native. How that works I have no idea. (Dolphin is demanding enough to require BootCamp for 60fps, though.)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. Is the Dolphin inside Parallels using the DirectX or OpenGL driver?

<comment><USER9> Er, disregard the above I guess; I misread your post as saying Dolphin worked better in Parallels. Or you edited it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those interested in a more technical explanation for the Super Mario Sunshine 60FPS romhack, go here: [http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=17475](http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=17475)

The hack seems like it was possible because the engine was designed to run at arbitrary framerates, and the romhacker (ehw?) found framerate and vsync- related functions in the demo version of the game, which actually has debug symbols baked in!

Romhacking sounds really fun.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am really interested in reading more about the 60FPS hack for Gauntlet: Dark Legacy but I could not find anything online.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this makes me want to play Sunshine again. I only played it after Galaxy and was put off by the framerate (though I still beat most of it).</comment>


On psychedelics: researchers are heading into the world of psychedelics - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/erik-davis-psychedelics/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I love this piece. I can't resist quoting a couple of paragraphs:

 _And now there is a new competing narrative. Studies recently carried out at Yale, and published last month in the journal Science, have confirmed earlier reports that ketamine offers remarkable, nearly instantaneous relief for people who suffer from forms of major depression impervious to other treatment methods. Interpreting depression as a hardware problem largely caused by the loss of synaptic connections, the researchers argue that ketamine works by encouraging sprightly neural growth in brain regions correlated with memory and mood. Journalistic reports also linked this research with the development of a new vein of antidepressants, including Naurex's GLYX-13, that have the neurone-fertilising power of ketamine without, as one report describes them, the 'schizophrenia-like effects'.

Rarely has the new neuro-reductionism been so naked in its repackaging of human experience. Nowhere in the research or the journalism does anyone suggest that heavily depressed people feel better because ketamine sends them on a first-person voyage through profound, sometimes ecstatic, and certainly mind-bending modes of transpersonal consciousness whose subjective power might itself boot the mind out of its most mirthless ruts._</comment>


Ask HN: Does it make sense to visit SF for a week? - <AUTHOR> Always wanted to stay a bit in the Bay area to get to know the tech-scene and there is a cheap flight this Saturday; does it make sense to come to SF for 8 days? <comment><USER2> I like your idea! I too have been interested in staying in a different city (NYC) to check out the tech-scene before considering relocating there. Though I've been to NYC probably 10+ times to visit family, I have yet to see if it's a place "tech-worthy" enough to consider making a home there (in the sense of having enough job opportunities, like-minded folk, etc).

I found this digital.nyc site which has a lot of resources. Perhaps SF has a similar site.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's lots to see and do in the Bay Area (everywhere, not just SF). Do you have an itinerary in mind? Here's just a few of the things you can do:

      - Hiking (tons of places with great trails e.g. Mt Tamalpais)
      - Food
      - Museums
      - https://www.san-francisco-theater.com/
      - Napa/Sonoma
      - etc. etc.

And if you have a list of companies to visit, that can fill up your days pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why wouldn't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> What would you recommend to do? Go to meetups / what else? is there a website where I can see all cool events in SF for next week?

<comment><USER2> I think you may be looking for something like this, but for SF. Does anyone know if something like this exists? [http://www.digital.nyc/events](http://www.digital.nyc/events)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are you worried that you'll be bored? You certainly shouldn't be.

Worried that you have other things fighting for your attention that might be better uses of your time? That's a more personal question.</comment>


Connect on the map, own part of the world, hunt treasure / startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.geopieces.com

<comment><USER2> If one long term business case of this is to make a database of people, things and places, using Google Maps is probably a bad idea because of derived database copyright, and possibly Google's terms of use. However, it looks like that's not their goal - rather it's convincing people to pay real money for virtual property.</comment>


I did it: 6 days of eating dog food (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ozy.com/true-story/i-did-it-6-days-of-eating-dog-food/36846 <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rQLLpgxjvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rQLLpgxjvs)</comment>


Show HN: Slack-imgur: Get a Random Image from Imgur in a Slack Channel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/juanpabloaj/slack-imgur

<comment><USER2> This looks really similar to a giphy plugin we use at work.</comment>


Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest, asks for a second chance at charity - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/24/21369773/larry-ellison-foundation-oracle-philanthropy <comment><USER2> I wonder if at this point, the focus on `accomplishments` is a bit contrived at the level that Ellison is operating at. Legacy and impact seem like more reasonable monads of operation when you are dealing with billions.

Maybe those dollars would appreciate in value, if he put efforts into shoring up social policy in the US.</comment>


Show HN: Failmap – show where your local government is failing at security - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/failmap/admin <comment><USER2> So, I'm having trouble understanding how I would use this tool with respect to the local government near me.

What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we only have an instance deployed for the Netherlands (because we are Dutch). For our organisation it's currently not possible to create maps for other countries as we lack the local knowledge and because of possible legal issues. But the project is setup in a way that it should be easy for everyone to set it up in their own country and we can assist here if needed.</comment></comment>


Obama Seeks to Make Mark on Genetic Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2016/07/06/obama-seeks-to-make-mark-on-genetic-medicine/#68fa4dc12b0d <comment><AUTHOR> This is the century of biology. Hackers everywhere, its time to start hacking our own source code.</comment>


Opera Mail - an email client and feed reader in one - <AUTHOR> http://www.opera.com/cs/computer/mail

<comment><USER2> I like Opera mail client but at this point, it is unusable for me: I have plenty of rules set in GMail but as in Opera Mail, there's no inbox, I only have a view with "unread mails", not taking in account those moved other labels for later read.</comment>


Fast tracking the global adoption of electric vehicles to save our planet - <AUTHOR> https://maoev.activium.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

I'm Husam from Maoev, there is approx. 1 billion fossil fuel cars running on our planet. We are trying to help accelerate the transition to electric vehicle by making long range practical EVs accessible to more people.

Building electric cars alone will not reduce our transportation emissions fast enough. We are building Maoev to make it practical and cost effective for fossil fuel car owners to switch to electric cars.

You can email me at: husam[at]activium[dot]com if you have any questions.</comment>


What the Hell Is Microsoft Doing with My Computer?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2182967,00.asp <comment><USER2> 2.3 Internet-Based Services Components. The Software contains components that enable and facilitate the use of certain Internet-based services. You acknowledge and agree that Microsoft may automatically check the version of the Software and/or its components that you are utilizing and may provide upgrades or fixes to the Software that will be automatically downloaded to your Workstation Computer.

2.4 Internet Gaming/Update Features. If you choose to utilize the Internet gaming or update features within the Software, it is necessary to use certain computer system, hardware, and software information to implement the features. By using these features, you explicitly authorize Microsoft or its designated agent to access and utilize the necessary information for Internet gaming and/or updating purposes. Microsoft may use this information solely to improve our software or to provide customized services or technologies to you. Microsoft may disclose this information to others, but not in a form that personally identifies you.

I've always simply assumed that Micros~1 was doing this sort of thing without my knowledge. This is why, if I must run Windows, I do it on a dedicated machine or inside VMWare rather than dual-booting, and won't store my PGP keys on Windows systems. Just think of Windows as malware and treat it accordingly, and you won't get upset when it proves you right.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately this silent update itself is not the biggest issue. The history teaches us that any new feature in Windows brings another security breach with it. I'm 80% sure we'll soon have a virus that will exploit WU and will silently install itself even if your automatic updates are off.

(dfranke, do you read your emails? I sent you 2 emails already. Remember our conversation about SQL?)

<comment><USER2> I got the first one and just realized I mistook the second one for spam. Sorry about the delayed reply. I'll get back to you soon.

Edit: I did.</comment></comment></comment>


10 dream directors to replace George Lucas on 'Star Wars: Episode 7' - <AUTHOR> http://www.hitfix.com/news/10-dream-directors-to-replace-george-lucas-on-star-wars-episode-7

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW - after seeing MI:4, my pick would be Brad Bird. As much as I'd like to see Guillermo or Chris Nolan do it, I just think they'd bring the wrong energy to it. SW is supposed to be Fun, not dark and brooding (part of why ep1-3 suck so much IMHO)</comment>


Curated + code-verified software engineering talent - <AUTHOR> https://gradberry.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey guys, founder here! Happy to field your questions. We moved out to Bay Area in January of this year, and are excited to be working with startups to curate and recommend software engineering talent. Here's how we envision the future of recruitment: 1- Curating talent based on actual work performed: i.e. with software engineering talent, our engineers are consistently checking code repositories on github for selected candidates, and we're building out algorithms that can actually decipher whether the candidate can plug in to a startup's code base as soon as they join. 2- Timed scenario-based challenges: Our challenges will identify the "ideal" candidate for the startup by assessing current employees at a startup, and timed scenarios determine how quickly a candidate can -write clean code or even -make cold calls and meet sales quotas. Our sales challenge has been able to accurately determine the likelihood of sales performance, and candidates achieving a score of 85% or higher have been able to achieve sales quotas. 3- Actual skills gap assessment: We're building out a trending skill engine (in beta), that determines which skills employers are consistently searching for. This allows us to advise a candidate exactly WHY they aren't getting hired. For e.g. C++ or Java developers who should consider learning Python or Ruby or Marketing graduate.</comment>


Groupon is Effectively Insolvent - <AUTHOR> http://m.minyanville.com/?guid=34936&catid=4 <comment><USER3> The word "effectively" in the title is a weasel word.

Groupon is balance sheet insolvent by definition. Their liabilities are greater than assets.

Groupon is cash flow solvent by definition. They are able to pay liabilities NET60.

In Q2-Q4 2010, Groupon had $669mm with a net loss of $398mm. That is a ratio of about -0.59. In Q1 2011, Groupon had revenue of $644mm with a net loss of $102mm. That is a ratio of about -0.16.

If you are long Groupon, then you are betting that -0.16 approaches zero and then turns positive.

The moral of the story is: haters gonna hate.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this link ([http://allthingsd.com/20110602/where-did-groupons-billion- do...](http://allthingsd.com/20110602/where-did-groupons-billion-dollars-go/)) to be a scathing indictment of Groupon, to the level where it could attract the label "Ponzi Scheme" or the less harsh "Very bad Investment choice".

Seeing that the lion share of the two recent funding rounds were used to pay back investors, leaving very little on the table to fund their growh (this is when they are bleeding over 100 million per quarter) sounds unbelievably stupid or criminally insane.

Its one for the history books boys!

<comment><USER5> This was a purchase: the investors _bought part of the company._ When they signed over a billion dollars, they were not trying to fund operations; they wanted to become part owners. They know that the vast bulk of the money would go straight to earlier employees and investors.

This was a risky investment, yes. But it is neither unbelievably stupid nor criminally insane to make a risky investment. High risk investments can be quite at home in a well developed portfolio.

Now, if Groupon deceived the investors about where the money was going, that would quite possibly be a criminal act. Literally. But that almost certainly didn't happen, or we'd be hearing about it.

<comment><USER4> I cant agree with that. When I invest, I have some expectations as to how that money should be invested, and for a company that is in desperate need of cash inflow to sustain its growth, thats where it should go. Period. Not to the coffers of early investors and employees. No one has any problem with them cashing out a part of their equity. This however (almost 400 million went to an early investor couple!) was a careless and completely selfish act to line one's pockets.

And now, they are ready for the next round, and only this time, its the public who stand to get scammed.

<comment><USER6> _When I invest, I have some expectations as to how that money should be invested_

More than that, you have a prospectus (or term sheet) that will specify those kinds of things. In this case, the Series G investors knew exactly where the money was going, and they were ok with that.

As for the public getting scammed, the SEC has a metric buttload of regulations aimed at seeing that that doesn't happen.

<comment><USER4> I am not worried about the Investors who led the G round being scammed out of anything. They knew what they were getting in to. I was pointing out how irresponsible this move was, on the part of the Groupon team to allow this to happen. One one side, you have a company bleeding money aching for growth and spending over 200 million just in Ads and over 320 million in salaries to their 8000 sales staff. And you choose to cash out instead of plowing it in to maybe eking out a better profit margin than last year? They are not even trying, for Christ's sake!

And I dont have to look that far back to see how effective the SEC has been, with their metric ton buttload of regulations. You dont live in the US, do you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're trading that temporary debt for hypergrowth, as the article says.

"For the remainder of the year they had $669 million in revenue (simply staggering), but had a net loss attributable to Groupon of $398 million. This year, Q1 results showed revenue growth continuing to soar, with revenues of $644 million, but a net loss attributable to Groupon of $102 million."

So the time periods were different, but the revenues were the same. They went from losing $400mil to only losing $100mil... That sounds to me like they are getting close to being profitable again... And in a very short timeframe.

As for it being like a Ponzi scheme, it's not. Ponzi relied on lying to the investors and telling them the money came from good investments. It wasn't sustainable, and nothing could fix it. Groupon is sustainable and hasn't lied (that I know of) to their investors, new or old. It doesn't even need fixing as it looks like it's already on the fast-track to profit, based on the numbers provided.

<comment><USER8> I'm glad you said this. I gave up on a reply yesterday to the initial story for lack of time, but basically it said "anyone that thinks that Groupon is like a Ponzi scheme doesn't understand how a Ponzi scheme works".

You can say all you want about their lack of differentiation from competitors, there huge debt levels, their dicey use of the series G funding, and what appears to be a poorly scaling business model.

You can intend to short them, sell puts.... whatever. But stop calling them a Ponzi scheme. It's an insult to them, it's hyperbolic, and it's ignorant.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. The heart of a ponzi scheme is continually securing new investments to pay out earlier investors--which is exactly how Groupon has operated up to this point. They're not alone in this concept; it's becoming increasingly common in the tech industry.

The only argument to say that they're not a ponzi scheme is that there's _actually_ a legitimate business with revenue associated with it. It's a somewhat compelling argument--but I'd personally contend that the business, in this case, has really been nothing more than a front for the scheme (at least, historically speaking--though unlikely, Groupon may yet prove out to become a profitable business). No one has made a dime of profit off of the business that is Groupon--yet several early investors and the founder have made an absolute killing based on the "ponzi" side of things.

Dress it up however you want, people have made money hand-over-fist operating a de facto ponzi scheme; having a "real" business along with it has shielded them from the ire of the law.

<comment><USER8> "The only argument to say that they're not a ponzi scheme is that there's actually a legitimate business with revenue associated with it."

That isn't a minor point. There is a big different between stupid investors with full information and a Ponzi scheme. It is not an abstract argument. The first is common, the second will land you in prison.

<comment><USER9> If the purpose of a business is to generate profit for its owners (investors), then the only business Groupon has successfully operated to this point has been a ponzi scheme.

Just because it's common doesn't mean it's not a ponzi scheme. It's just a ponzi scheme in a pretty dress. I'd be willing to go further and say it's just as bad because if you read their S1 and their made up accounting "principles," they're actually attempting to deliberately mislead people into thinking the business is in a much better state than it really is.

Again, it may be possible to transform Groupon into a legitimate business going forward; however, to this point, it's been anything but that.

<comment><USER10> You're basically saying that any business that doesn't generate profits from day 1 is a ponzi scheme. This is a ridiculous position to take.

<comment><USER9> Really? That's what you concluded from reading my comments? I'm almost tempted to call "troll" and not respond; but against my better judgment, I'll bite.

Any business that does not generate profit is NOT a ponzi scheme and I did not even begin to imply that was the case. Any business which pays out dividends to their investors based ONLY on money secured from later investors is operating a de facto ponzi scheme.

[edit] It's fine for early business to operate at a loss; it's not ok for an early business to funnel money to early investors while still operating at a loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't roll your eyes, but this is exactly what Reagan did to the Russians. Basically, spend more and faster than the other guy until he cries uncle.

Groupon is raising money, spending like crazy to be the top dog. When the other "coupon" companies can't keep up, Groupon will buy them, retaining their #1 position. Once all of the others are gone or reduced to a tiny size, they'll go back to a sustainable model. This explains why they have a focus on hyper growth.

What do you think?

<comment><USER12> Perhaps. It took Amazon 6 years to turn a profit, and a mere $5m on $1bn revenue at that.

<comment><USER13> Totally true. At least one year in there it looks like they lost almost $1.5B: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=amazon+profit+from+1994...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=amazon+profit+from+1994+to+2010)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To save people having to fight with that sites asshole design, here's the text:

I'll start by tipping my hat to Andrew Mason. He caught social mood just right, creating a coupon/local/flashmob hybrid business model at the perfect time, and has created the fastest-growing company on a revenue basis in American history. That being said, it's operating like a Ponzi scheme that needs constant infusions of cash to stay afloat as it's hemorrhaging money.

We'll start by looking at the balance sheet, which is typically a waste of time for hypergrowth companies. However, for Groupon there are all kinds of red flags. They have $290 million in current assets ($208 million in cash) and $520 million in current liabilities -- current assets minus current liabilities puts them $230 million in the hole. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that they're wildly unprofitable, which we'll get to in a moment. Another concerning part of their current liabilities is that $290 million of it is "accrued merchant payables" -- in the US they take up to 60 days to repay merchants. So that $290 million is merchants who have rendered services waiting to get repaid by Groupon. Not exactly the best merchant experience. Oh, and by comparison, LinkedIn (LNKD) has current assets well in excess of current liabilities, and isn't losing money.

The income statement is even worse. In Q1 of last year they had net income of $8.5 million on $44.2 million in revenue, for a profit margin of nearly 20%. Not bad! At some point around that time, they decided to abandon a profitable growth strategy and went for the hypergrowth revenue strategy. For the remainder of the year they had $669 million in revenue (simply staggering), but had a net loss attributable to Groupon of $398 million. This year, Q1 results showed revenue growth continuing to soar, with revenues of $644 million, but a net loss attributable to Groupon of $102 million.

They lost $49 million in Q3, $313 million in Q4, and $102 million in Q1, with revenue leaping from $185 million to $396 million to $644 million, so it's incredibly difficult to have any idea what Q2 will look like let alone what the business will look like 6-12 months from now. That being said, the most likely reason why they're going public now is because they desperately need the cash, plain and simple.

There are all kinds of questions about the business. How can they possibly sustain this kind of revenue growth? Can they get costs under control? What about merchant and customer fatigue? How about deep-pocketed and savvy competition, either doing exactly what they're doing (LivingSocial) or coming to the table with a ton of customer data, i.e., Facebook and Google (GOOG)? The Daily Deal I got offered today was for a restaurant 30 miles away: how does that make sense either for the customer or merchant? How can you possible build a sustainable business by going from 0 to 8,000 employees in two years? Why did the COO and CTO both leave the company in late March, barely two months ago? How do you value a business that could do $3 billion in revenue this year but might not be able to keep the lights on in 12 months?

Most concerning of all, however, might be how their most recent capital raises have been handled. Their Series F and G capital raises, which occurred in April and December of 2010, raised a combined $1.08 billion. Of that $1.08 billion, $150 million went to the company for working capital purposes. The other $930 million? Paid back to founders and early backers by buying their shares from them.

So a company that owes $230 million more than it has, and appears to be burning through $100 million or more a quarter, is using money raised from later investors to pay back early investors? Sounds vaguely familiar. I'm not accusing Groupon of doing anything illegal or unethical. Ponzi, Enron, and Madoff all swindled their investors by misleading them about the financial health of their enterprises. As Minyanville's Todd Harrison likes to say, "The only difference between intervention and manipulation is communication." Groupon is telling you exactly what they are in their filing forms and by their actions. Invest at your own risk.

<comment><USER15> What is it with everything being described as a Ponzi scheme these days? Groupon, Bitcoin, Subprime MBSs, Social Security, etc.

<comment><USER16> At least 2 of those things are actually Ponzi schemes, sir.

I'm not sure what an unknown lady or gentleman thinks is wrong with this, but I wish he or she would tell me. These things (subprime MBS and Social Security) are Ponzi schemes in the sense that they are paying out more to participants than the participants put in, and not providing anything of value or performing any investment by which to make that process sustainable. In the case of subprime MBS this action is obscured by the fact that some participants have collected "promises" on the parts of borrowers who cannot possibly meet their obligations. Social Security is much more straightforward, however.

<comment><USER17> Calling Social Security a ponzy scheme is just partisan propaganda. Since 1983 workers have been putting in way more than is being paid out in anticipation of the retiring baby boomers. The trust fund is invested in Treasury securities backed by the full faith and credit of United States, some of the safest investment in the world unless Republicans manage to raid the fund to finance more tax cuts for the rich.

<comment><USER18> The SS surplus was spent by Congress, and replaced with non-marketable IOUs managed by Treasury (not securities!), literally kept in a file cabinet in West Virginia. There are no assets in the "trust fund" and there is no legal requirement for the government to pay anything on its Social Security promises.

<comment><USER19> Do you have a link for the West Virginia portion of your comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker." - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER21> So, after they stop investing in expansion and reach a stable level, what is the realistic value of Groupon? Or does nobody really know enough to speculate?

<comment><USER22> Well Amazon is a high volume relatively low margin business which is valued at a bit over two times revenue. So if they stablize out at a revenue of $4 - $6B/yr it might make sense to value them at $8 - $12B.

<comment><USER19> What with all of Groupon's intellectual property, infrastructure, and goodwill?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was very young during the dot com boom, but this sounds awfully familiar. Someone (PG?) described the approach of the era as burning investment to create revenue, profits be damned, then looking for a huge IPO.

Presumably Groupon has actual plans for becoming profitable, but big IPOs of companies with dubious fundamentals does sound like a description of a bubble to me. (Linkedin's stock was briefly over $100 - crazy!)

</comment><comment><USER24> The balance sheet my not give an accurate picture of the value of a business.

Google was willing to pay $6 billion more than the book value of the business. Google aren't that stupid - I'm guessing that Groupon owns billions of dollars worth of intangible assets which are not listed on their balance sheet. (The biggest such asset is probably their email list).

</comment><comment><USER25> I doubt Groupon will bankrupt any of hacker news readers' portfolio; I bet most of them are licking their chops to short this thing (just like they are shorting LinkedIn).

Effectively, all these IPO/overvaluation bubbles are meant to steal from (mostly public) pensions of older investors. So the next time you see your uncle or grandpa, buy them a nice bottle of wine! They're paying for your startup (while losing their retirement money), don't you know.

<comment><USER26> quoted from [http://shortlogic.tumblr.com/post/5834390772/right-now- our-d...](http://shortlogic.tumblr.com/post/5834390772/right-now-our-desk-is- seeing-something-theyve):

"Right now our desk is seeing something they've never seen before. It currently costs roughly 100% annualized to short LNKD. So put in monthly terms, if you borrowed $20,000 of LNKD to short, each month you would have to pay an 8.3% borrowing charge (100% / 12 months = 8.3%) or $1667 per month. That is absolutely unreal.

Of course this charge amount can change, and it probably would decline if/when LNKD becomes easier to borrow. But right now is virtually impossible to borrow, so the charge is off the charts."

<comment><USER27> There are no shares to borrow that I can find. The options are so expensive I'm tempted to buy some shares. You can make 4 percent writing june calls (15 days). Annualize that.

<comment><USER28> You probably want something to hedge your long position while you write calls against it, though, or at least limit the downside a bit. After all, you're betting that the stock will go down.

Go long, buy some out of money puts, and write calls against your long position, hoping that you get to write enough calls that the cost of the puts is covered?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For possibly the most serious concern about GroupOn, the article came close with its statement:

"The Daily Deal I got offered today was for a restaurant 30 miles away: how does that make sense either for the customer or merchant?"

but still did not score the points:

The statement is a starkly clear illustration of a big, HUGE fact about GroupOn's business:

It's heavily just a LOCAL business.

So, even if they are in Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, and parts of Argentina and Australia doesn't cut much ice in Podunk. Instead, to make it in Podunk, they just have to be the best in Podunk, and the rest is irrelevant.

For the best 'coupons' in Podunk, customers and merchants in Podunk can go to a GroupOn competitor in Podunk who can be someone on the bank board and the school board, a former mayor, and known very well to all the merchants and most of the customers. This competitor in Podunk can be trusted in Podunk much more than GroupOn by both the merchants and the customers and, thus, get more deals and revenue, can have much lower overhead per dollar of revenue, and can undercut the GroupOn prices.

Such a local competitor has close to a 'geographic natural monopoly': In Podunk, the local guy can sign up several leading merchants just because they know him and trust him (and maybe invest with him); then he can get a lot of local customers signed up because he is well known and has the leading local merchants signed up. Then the rest of the merchants sign up not to get left behind. Then all the customers sign up because all the merchants did. Then all the merchants keep offering deals because all the customers are signed up. And there is no competition more than 60 miles away.

E.g., maybe the guy in Podunk also runs the popular local shopping center based on much the same mechanism of a 'geographic local monopoly'.

A Web site for the Podunk competitor? If that is a problem, then HN developers listen up: Develop a suitable general purpose Web site and lease it to the competitors in each of Podunk, Peoria, Poughkeepsie, Pleasantville, etc.

For the guy in Podunk, maybe there is another little town, Parsonville, 15 miles away: Okay, the guy in Podunk can use his success to expand to Parsonville.

More generally, if there are competitors in other surrounding towns, then he can, one town at a time, use his earnings from his natural monopolies in Podunk, Parsonville, etc. to undercut the prices in these other towns, buy out the competitors, raise prices, and repeat. Relevant terminology includes 'predatory marketing practices' and 'roll-up'.

I don't see how GroupOn can be successful for long with their current business model.

<comment><USER19> I am in complete agreemnet with you.

All of these giant companies trying to serve individuals at the local level seems a bit complex.

A franchise model for a local operator would be a win-win situation.

The franchisee doesn't have to worry about servers or infrastructure, only sales and marketing.

I feel this web franchise model can be applied to many online "social" business models.

<comment><USER29> E.g., romantic matchmaking? When looking for a mate in Podunk, it's not much help for the service also to be in Australia! It would be a rare, very 'long' man who could make good use of that service feature!</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter lists for YC 2017, YC 2018, YC 2019 companies - <AUTHOR> These are all participating founders. It is a great way to learn what they are all up to now:
* YC S2017 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230735563034021893
* YC W2017 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230735739861618691
* YC S2018 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230734925881470976
* YC W2018 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230735246502424577
* YC S2019 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230728767556833280
* YC W2019 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230734559743922178
Also:
* YC S2020 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230850014617862145 (will be populated in the future)
* YC W2020 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1230849940101844999 (will be populated in the future) <comment><USER2> Reading material such as curated lists can't be Show HNs, so we took that out of the title. Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

Are you sure that these lists contain "all participating founders"? I didn't think that information was public.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why Twitter? Can we not put these in a proper sharing site? Even a GitHub repo should be good.</comment>


Show HN: Yime – Inverse of Google Calendar - <AUTHOR> Hey guys!
We're building Yime. It's basically a way to let your friends see when you're free this week and hit you up with potential plans. And even make group (squad) plans. Easier than texting everyone and trying to figure out when everyone is free.. and never actually come around doing that. App would let you pick friends and find common free time as well.
We're close to launching very basic MVP. I'd love to hear any thoughts as well.
https://yime.app <comment><USER2> Cool idea. For it to work well, it needs a very large proportion of the group to be sharing their free time. I can imagine four situations in which this would be the case:

1\. Every member of the group sees it as extremely important that a time to meet is found, OR

2\. It's super-easy to enter your free time manually, and you're prompted automatically and frequently to update your free time info, OR

3\. Each person's free time is updated automatically from their primary calendar, OR

4\. People only need to enter their free time for a very short period (under 2 weeks) and that period is coming up soon (within the next 4 weeks) so their is little uncertainty.

I'm curious to know how you think about the use cases and usability challenges.

<comment><AUTHOR> right now how it's setup, you only put time for a the whole week. and it's repeated. usual life is pretty repetitive. (work/school) etc.

there would be buttons to "become available" or "set busy"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I dig the concept. Would I be able to import my calendar from google calendar or whatever nightmare Samsung calls it's calendar application? (Only asking because I didn't specifically see it mentioned.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually yea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very smart!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, and your github profile is sight to be hold.</comment></comment>


Scala Macros: "Oh God Why?" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.empathybox.com/post/19126121307/scala-macros-oh-god-why <comment><USER2> The blog post and tweets seem to say the Scala community only cares about fancy language stuff and not about the developer experience. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take Typesafe for example. We have three full time engineers on staff to improve the Scala IDE for Eclipse. We made a lot of progress and are continuing to do so. Nobody pays us for any of that; we do it because we know that IDE experience is crucial for Scala developers. Typesafe is just one company and it cannot pour unlimited resources into all aspects of Scala development, so we need to rely on the community for that. And the community does step up to the task. One of the criticism was on documentation. I wonder whether people have recently looked at <http://docs.scala-lang.org/> ? In my mind, that's community-driven development at its best!

Why macros? I was a long-time sceptic. I now tend to think about them differently because I believe we hit on a brilliantly simple scheme that can express a lot of different use-cases. In particular we'll be able to do the analogue of Microsoft's LINQ with macros. And we can express optimizations such as turning foreach applications into while loops. And we can remove a lot of compiler plugins. And finally it looks like we can remove down the road several special cases in the language and the compiler. So macros might pay for their own complexity handily. But I should also say that at present this is a SIP, a Scala Improvement _Proposal_. It's not yet accepted. And part of the current proposal is also that macros will be enabled only under a special compiler flag.

<comment><USER3> We definitely appreciate the work that you and Typesafe are doing: thanks! I apologize for my brusque reaction in that tweet.

Regarding macros: it's quite clear that they simplify the job of the compiler writer: you can provide more features, more efficiently to the end user. But every feature has a cost, and increasing the end user's surface area onto the language by providing 1) macros, 2) new features enabled by macros, is very much a double edged sword. Being enabled by a compiler flag definitely helps to minimize end-user exposure to the former.

Macros in lisps can be used as a replacement for many of the features that Scala provides, including call-by-name parameters, (certain types of) implicits, and many uses of generics. If we could deprecate some of those features in Scala by replacing them with macros, then this would seem like more of a net win to me. But that doesn't seem likely: instead we will probably have all N, and Scala programmers will need to decide which of the growing list of ways to accomplish cat-skinning is best.

<comment><USER4> I am very much aware of the double-edge sword nature of macros, and therefore follow and aid their progress with much trepidation. The single thing that sold be was that macros by themselves already could replace a compiler phase, which did code reification (i.e. generate ASTs at run-time; something that's needed for LINQ like technologies). So in that sense, macros, if they arrive, would already have paid for themselves. Concerning possible misuse, I believe the best thing we can do is give an option to developers. So we plan to enable macro definitions only if a special import is present. Something like:

import language.macros

Of course that will not prevent misuse, but it will make it much easier to enforce policies, if someone desires that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The bug in this post is thinking that if you have someone willing to contribute feature X to an open source project, they were also available to contribute feature Y.

Open source patches are all itch-scratchings. For Scala macros, it's a researcher at EPFL, I believe. I don't think you could write a thesis about fixing bugs in the IDE. So this contributor was not available to submit IDE bugfixes; they _were_ available to submit macros.

It's the same for other contributors. Someone building an app on Scala may be available to submit a fix for some scalability issue they are hitting in production; they will not be available to work on macros, or on IDE bugfixes.

Open source projects get the fixes they get. You can't act like the priorities are set by some central product manager.

So I think it's just not correct to argue that "the priorities are wrong, why are they doing this instead of that, etc." - everyone is doing what matters to them. Some people _are_ working on IDE bugfixes, other people are working on macros. People can do what they want.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but the communities behind all the FP languages seem to share this same weakness. For obvious reasons, they attract people much more interested in hacking on funky compiler techniques than on mundane things like I/O libraries and documentation.

In contrast, I think Python and Ruby both owe a lot of their success to the people willing to put a lot of energy and polish into this essential but less glamorous work.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, this has not been my experience with Haskell at all. Not only do plenty of people work on all sorts of libraries (there are some really great web frameworks, for example), but they also work on all sorts of "less interesting" stuff. For example, there are some people working to improve Hackage, which is the site that contains Haskell's libraries and their documentation, and Haskell has really good support in Emacs (which is much better than good IDE support!).

<comment><USER6> I haven't spent much time with Haskell lately but the last time I did Cabal was still way less polished and useful than Ruby's gem system or even Python's pip/distutils stuff. Robust, easy to use package management is step one in getting any new language off the ground, IMO.

<comment><USER8> Yup. This week's cabal anguish:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/qxopq/announcing_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/qxopq/announcing_the_yesod_platform/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/qwj5j/the_cabal_of_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/qwj5j/the_cabal_of_my_dreams/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where I work (i.e. write code for money, to satisfy Ted Nyman's requirement that my opinion matter), our reaction was exactly the opposite--we're very much looking forward to having macros in Scala.

If this was a more esoteric language feature, I'd be inclined to agree, but macros (if done well), I think will be a huge boon to the language.

I do all sorts of hackery in Java now (external code generation, heavily using annotation processing tools (APTs) which are a very, very limited form for language-based code generation) to do semi-metaprogramming stuff and can't wait to do the real thing.

(And do it well, e.g. not to make things "even more cryptic" just for the fun of it, but to solve real problems.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Macros make language design experimentation easier. This issue is not orthogonal to tackling the other issues the OP cares about.

There are good reasons to doubt the overall value of macros in production code - I won't argue this either way - but OCaml has had success by separating the macro expansion mechanism (camlp4) from the main language. People who want macros can have them, people who want a production language without macros can have that too.

</comment><comment><USER11> "I understand macros to provide two things (1) forced code in-lining and (2) a kind of non-strict semantics or lazy evaluation of arguments"

False. There isn't much else to say, but if this is all he thinks macros are about, he doesn't know anything about them, their uses, or their potentials.

Macros would basically take a large amount of nasty extra-lingual stuff (code- generation, byte-code generation, compiler plugins) and codify it into a systematic, easier to use and easier to understand framework.

F#-style Type Providers? Compile-time typechecked regex literals? Compile-time typechecked html? Compile-time typechecked CSS? This sort of thing is already being done (see Play!) and is pure awesome as a user (i <3 the type-checked HTML templates) but the implementation involves a huge amount of mysterious extra compilation steps and magic that macros could help simplify and codify.

</comment><comment><USER12> I seems to be a rather common tension in open source projects developed by research institutions.

The goal of users of those projects is immediate usability which clashes with goals of developers, research.

I have some doubts where one can get PHD (publish an article with high citation index) by improving a compiler error messages. As opposed to adding a new cool feature to the language/compiler, cryptic error messages be damned.

<comment><USER13> True.

I still think it is a shame that neither Red Hat nor Jet Brains has joined forces with Scala/Typesafe. Both of these companies know how to ship products and make developers happy. This is something that Typesafe has to learn now. On the other hand, Red Hat and Jet Brains need to learn how to do language research... (which may actually be harder, once they go beyond fixing the obvious Java flaws).

<comment><USER6> As much as I personally like Scala I understand why a lot of people are taking a wait & see attitude. I think it's not too unreasonable to imagine that a less ambitious Java++ like Kotlin might find the traction that has so far eluded Scala.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The listed points are valid, but they are by far not as easy as the author thinks they are. I don't say they are not improvable, but they are not 'little things' that need to get fixed before new features come in. For example, the jars are large because every closure needs its own class (thank you jvm!). Compile time is high because of type inference. Error messages and stack traces are cryptic, because you do high-level programming but get low-level diagnostics. etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> The author doesn't even know what macros are: "I understand macros to provide two things (1) forced code in-lining and (2) a kind of non-strict semantics or lazy evaluation of arguments"

<comment><USER16> What else do you think macros provide?

As a former professional Common Lisp dev, those two features strike me as the real difference between a macro and function call.

<comment><USER17> The other difference is (of course) what the macro returns - more code to be compiled, which enables things like binding of new symbols/types/etc. The most important part is that the generated code is adjacent to user code, so the two are lexically coupled. But in CL land, you probably take the codegen for granted and the lexical coupling doesn't matter as much.

Although, Scala specifically, I ran away from. The language itself isn't terrible, it just forces one to confront the endgame of the bankrupt Java philosophy. The stdlib is basically the cross product of pre-optimized category theory with noun-hell, and idiomatic scala is far too overabstracted through abuse of first-class modules (which, admittedly, was a design goal).

<comment><USER18> what do you use when have to use the JVM?

<comment><USER17> The emergency exit. (sorry, couldn't help it)

I tried to use the JVM for a long time, I really did. I thought the advantages of multiple implementations, platform flexibility, and a common type system were fantastic. The fundamental problem is that no matter the skin, when you want to peek through the abstraction you're still fundamentally writing Java. I absolutely detest the Java language itself, as it's basically what should come out of a compiler, not be fed into one (I realize this criticism is about 15% unfair given that Java did actually introduce some new concepts to mainstream programming but implemented them in the VM rather than the compiler, but it has really failed to keep up with the times).

At this point if I were using the JVM, it would most likely be to make use of some hypothetical _damn good_ libraries. In that case, as I'd be gluing together things that are already typed, I'd use whatever dynamic language seemed prudent. The Java type system is an everpresent fact of life on the JVM, and I'm now of the opinion that trying to use a second type abstraction concurrently is foolish (especially if one wants to run their code on anything other than Hotspot). I think Clojure is an amazing piece of work, and would still be using it, but its lack of importance on typed data structures really kills my ability to reason while developing new abstractions (the lack of well-supported algebraic data types and pattern matching especially). Taken together, those last two points imply that a statically typed JVM language has to utterly commit itself to the Java type system. If I absolutely needed to write a library on the JVM, I would look into and most likely go with Ceylon/Kotlin (or Gosu if they ever actually did a source release), but failing those probably write java-in-kawa for the straightforward class definitions with macros to ease the pain.

In any case, I'd be damn certain of exactly what I was writing beforehand. The Java ecosystem is absolute _garbage_ for prototyping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The post raises a few good points -- those are real problems in using Scala -- but the problems are mostly a result of the compiler targeting the JVM as its primary backend. Obviously, a JVM-based language can leverage a rich infrastructure of libraries, but it also will have to deal with the fact that the JVM is primarily designed for Java, not as a more general backend (such as the LLVM or the CLR).

(That the compiler is slow has other reasons, but is also something that they've been working on simultaneously for 2.10, so it's not as though that has been pushed aside by macros.)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to single out this line from the linked article:

"Unlike Java, type signatures in Scala don't really explain idiomatic usage to mortals very well."

This is a great diagnosis of one of the big issues with Scala's style of static typing. Everyone knows that the type descriptions take a bit to grok compared to a C-style languages. Why? Well, in C-style languages, a function definition is itself a representation of idiomatic usage. In Scala and its brethren, you have to translate from one to the other.

I'm sure that's a commonplace observation, but it had not jumped out at me like that before.

<comment><USER21> Ii have not used Scala but I have found the opposite to be true in Ocaml and Haskell. The type definition of a function is quite often sufficient information to infer the usage. I think this is because of the type variables. Looking at the definition of fold in Ocaml, for example, it becomes very obvious what is the input output init and the signature of your function from the type where such information generally seems to be less clear in C-like languages.

<comment><USER20> The point is not whether you have sufficient information to infer the usage. Do you have to infer the idiom at all? Usage is homomorphic with declaration in C, so this step is unnecessary.

<comment><USER21> I don't follow what you mean, I'm saying a list of function types contains vastly more useful information than a list of C function types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those curious about what Scala macros actually are: "This facility allows programmers to write macro defs: functions that are transparently loaded by the compiler and executed during compilation. This realizes the notion of compile-time metaprogramming for Scala." <http://bit.ly/zeMjOb>

<http://scalamacros.org/usecases/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> Macros are useful in Scala. Mostly not for application developers, but for library or framework developers. It enables you to do things while keeping the typesafety nature that makes Scala so great.

In Play, we have generated code for forms validation and json serialization. This enables the compiler to see code that can't work, while a more dynamic approach would lead to an exception at runtime.

</comment><comment><USER23> For those interested the next release of Rakudo will be the first to (partially) implement Perl6 macros.

ref: [http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/macros-progress- report-d...](http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/macros-progress- report-d1-merged)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think many people share some concerns about macros, especially the need for good error messages. A far as I know Scala's language designers have been against including macros for a long time. So the proposal for macros has to be damn good if they change their opinion.

Macros are supposed to be a replacement for writing compiler plugins in many cases (compare with Java annotation processing vs. Java compiler plugins). The API is easier and more straightforward, semantics are easier to understand and don't require separate setup step.

In the meantime work has of course not stopped:

\- Syntax has been simplified and several confusing bits have been removed/deprecated (Octal literals, FP literals without digit after dot, ...).

\- The jar size of the library has been reduced, while adding fixes and functionality.

\- Value classes have been integrated, which provide the performance of primitives with user-defined classes.

\- Inlining has been improved a lot.

\- Compilation speed has been improved a lot.

\- Some collection classes have been performance optimized and are now a lot faster (and sometimes faster than the Java implementation).

\- Play 2.0 and Akka 2.0 have been released, both with huge amounts of documentation.

\- Documentation has been improved.

\- ...

My personal impression is that while Scala has roots in academia, solving real-world issues is the focus of the team.

<comment><USER25> As far as I can tell, value classes provide the performance of primitives with primitives. Is there a way to make a value class that contains more than one primitive, so that you could have semantics similar to those of a struct in C?</comment></comment>


The WebSocket Protocol - Past Travails Are To Be Avoided - <AUTHOR> http://www.rlgsc.com/blog/ruminations/websocket-rediscovered-travails.html

<comment><USER2> The part about the WebSocket connection close handshake is pretty valid. The spec should clarify the expected behavior when the underlying TCP connection is terminated prematurely. You probably want to restart the connection automatically since the WebSocket is still expected to be open. There are some failure modes to consider here for in flight data as well. Good stuff.

But he starts going off the rails when he starts talking about port exhaustion and port randomization. A server can listen to a single port and service many requests, so long running requests definitely will NOT require listening to more one port.

As for routers becoming clogged with alive TCP connections, the solution to this already exists. Router will drop any connection above capacity and let each party now. As long as the protocol can handle TCP termination gracefully it'll be fine.

<comment><USER3> He in fact understands that the server is using a single port, and even uses the correct terminology for it in the document (which isn't normally important per se, but indicates that he really does understand it).

In fact, the issue that he brings up seems quite insightful: most use cases of sockets in the past have involved one or two per high-level protocol, such as a chat client, or a VoIP connection.

WebSockets promises an era where every document that I have open thinks it is a cool idea to have an "always up" connection to their home server, just in case I want to click on a new article (which I likely won't).

In this situation, we are talking about each computer having many tens of outgoing long-lived connections as an "expected case", with some users (me, with my "too many tabs open") possibly having a couple hundred.

The way that we have our router infrastructure setup--little NATs and DMZs all over the place, and with the poor implementation of the notion of "ephemeral ports"--is simply not setup to handle this kind of load at scale.

I mean, if you have just a hundred users at a conference, you are in "danger territory" with regards to using many thousands of ephemeral ports on your out-bound facing firewall: this system wasn't really designed for that.

That said, there are ways to rectify this, such as dropping existing connections, but do most routers actually do that, or do they instead deny new ones? Even if they /do/ drop existing ones, what is the behavior of the client?

Example: you just stated, and this even seems reasonable, that if the underlying TCP connection "is terminated prematurely you probably want to restart the connection automatically": but as that will cause other peoples' connections to fail, that will just lead to a connection storm.

In fact, this is a serious issue that I'm really glad this person has brought up, as I really hadn't seen this be highlighted in any previous conversations on this subject (although, I will happily admit that I don't read all of them, so it may be discussed every Tuesday on the WebSockets mailing list for all I know ;P).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/hybi/current/msg07070....](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/hybi/current/msg07070.html) is a discussion about the essay on the HyBi WG mailing list.

Why he choses to publish an essay and not to join the discussion and actually participate to the drafting process eludes me, it's not like he doesn't obviously have the background to usefully contribute.</comment>


How Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, Restricted Advertising for Trump's Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@garycoby/twitter-restricts-trump-eb7e48ccf5ff#.x0kc7fpti <comment><USER2> Your paying a private company to run ads for you and you are surprised when they kill your ads and refuse your money? Grow up, companies do this all the time in the advertising industry when their interest conflicts with that of their customer's.

Twitter isn't a public forum, you are at their mercy when using their servers, bandwidth, and software to push your agenda.</comment>


Topics in Tcl Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.magicsplat.com/articles/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> I started with Don Libes' classic book on Tcl/Expect[1] and am moving on to the 3rd edition of Clif Flynt's book[2].

Someone in #tcl on Freenode suggested that this set of essays would be a good resource for exploring some of the new/er features in Tcl.

I'm experimenting with using Tcl as a basis for rapid prototyping and testing[4] of services and service compositions built with docker and docker- compose[5].

It would be awesome if O'Reilly would consider making _Exploring Expect_ [1] an Open Book[3] – it's an _" oldie but goodie"_!

[1] [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920903.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920903.do)

[2] [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780123847171.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780123847171.do)

[3] [http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/](http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/)

[4] [http://caiusproject.com/](http://caiusproject.com/)

[5] [https://github.com/docker/compose](https://github.com/docker/compose)

<comment><USER2> I'd like to add Welch's Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk [1]. I used it for learning TCL for an internship and it was not a bad experience for an undergrad.

[1] [http://www.beedub.com/book/](http://www.beedub.com/book/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, people still develop with Tcl? That's not me being an ass; I'm genuinely surprised and delighted. Tcl is an old-school way of getting things done; it's not sexy like Ruby or Node. But its time to functional program is refreshingly low.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm new to Tcl myself, though I've seen it mentioned here and there for many years. It seems that, like Perl, the language and its ecosystem have continued to evolve while many folks' impressions of it are linked to an earlier stage of development.

To be more precise, consider the face of Perl that's presented by the _Modern Perl_ book[1]. It's quite elegant, really, and that "way of Perl" has been around for more than several years, but many negative impressions of the language come from the "line noise" days of earlier perls, both by way of lore and legacy code that is still in production.

Tcl 8.6.3, the current release, has a wealth of great features[2] including tail calls, coroutines, lambda functions, and a robust core object system. I imagine that relatively few former Tcl pogrammers, who moved on to other technologies over the last decade, are aware of those developments.

[1] [http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/](http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/)

[2] [http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.6.html](http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.6.html)

<comment><USER4> Whoa! Adtivestate's license for the community edition is quite restrictive:

Dev and test machines (non-production) only

[http://www.activestate.com/languages/compare- editions](http://www.activestate.com/languages/compare-editions)

I am glad to see that there are other binary distributions available for a wide variety of OSs, including Android:

[http://wiki.tcl.tk/668](http://wiki.tcl.tk/668)

<comment><USER5> If I remember correctly, ActiveState has been in business for _two decades_ , their news goes back to 1998, and I remember using their Perl for Windows in 1998, so they seem to be doing something right.

What I remember from back in the '90s was that you paid them for polish, support and running well on alien systems like Windows. When I first used them, it was in a "Windows Shop" (well, I was the 2nd programmer :-), and their Perl was a trivial to get running version which then allowed me to show what such a language could do for the right tasks, e.g. an IIS backend page in it instead of Javascript or VB, or quickly importing a database of Nielson advertising categories for a contract with them.

<comment><USER4> I have the greatest respect and regard for ActiveState, and I am grateful for their community editions. I believe that they were pioneers in this at a time when one either had to spend a lot of money, or go through the headache of compiling your own distribution if you wanted to use a half-way decent language on Windows, even just to learn.

It makes good sense to buy a license if one is going to use one of their products commercially because the value that they add is well worth the price.

I just hadn't realized that I would be contravening the license agreement if I had used one of their community editions to make money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tcl is awesome for building cross-platform GUI's when used with Tk. Python's Tkinter and Dlang's Tkd are simple wrappers to provide GUI toolkits for those languages too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Tcl is perfect for rapid application development and proof of concept algorithm innovations. Used it to develop search engines, pattern matchers and other analytics related to text mining and knowledge discovery. The R&D100 award was won with it too in addition to the development of a few machine learning methods with Michael I. Jordan and David Blei: "Statistical modeling of biomedical corpora: mining the Caenorhabditis Genetic Center Bibliography for genes related to life span" \- Blei DM1, Franks K, Jordan MI, Mian IS. - [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533868](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533868) \- . [http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news- releases/2008/07/09/berkeley-...](http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news- releases/2008/07/09/berkeley-lab-wins-four-2008-rd-100-awards/) Hey, everything's a string!

</comment><comment><USER8> There's really not a thing I can't do in TcL. I move back and forth from Python and TcL all of the time. I had Tcl before I had Python and it's quite mature which makes sense considering how long it's been around.</comment>


Ask HN: Any founders here on H1B? - <AUTHOR>

I have been debating for the last few days whether I should start my own company to test a product idea I have. My problem is that I am currently on a H1B visa in the US and I've been told that I can only work/get paid by the company which sponsored my visa. Is it possible for me to keep my current, full time job (hence my visa) and still own 100% equity stake in my own company? I don't mind not getting paid by my own company for a few years till I become a US resident.<p>Anyone else been in a smilar situation? If you're a startup founder did you face any legal hurdles along the way because of your visa? <comment><USER2> This is from memory, so double check.. A. C or S corp only (S corp need a US citizen) B. Theoretically you can transfer your H1B and keep your I40 only if you have a non-controlling interest in the company (i.e. less than 50% or biggest share, not sure) - so if you get 2 co-founders or serious funding you'll be fine. C. Until then, you cannot work for your company, and cannot withdraw a salary (not even as a contractor), only dividends.

</comment><comment><USER3> I researched on this a while ago and it is a difficult situation. You can open a company on H1B (not all types though. E.g. Only US citizen/permanent residents can open an S-corp). The problem comes if you actually want to work actively using that company. You are allowed to have equity stake as long as you do not do any work yourself. It is kinda like holding stocks in a company which is allowed to anyone under the sun. In short, you _cannot_ perform any active duties as part of that corporation. You can perform some volunteer work but that remains in a grey area which only attorneys can help with.</comment>


China suddenly has way more of the world's most powerful computers than the US - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1128704/china-has-way-more-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-computers-than-the-us/ <comment><AUTHOR> China's increase of 42 systems on Top500 is largely attributable to a single company. Chinese "internet company A" (as labelled by Top500 [https://www.top500.org/site/50596](https://www.top500.org/site/50596)) is presumably Alibaba, judging from its residence city of Hangzhou. It alone counts for 35 new machines on the list since June! (Click on the history tab to see the number for yourself.) I wonder if they are part of Alibaba's cloud services or for internal uses. Either way presumably Alibaba sees commercial value in owning them.

<comment><USER2> It's also rather misleading since the majority of computing resources in the US are in "cloud" data centers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) and they never bother to take the time to run Linpack on their clusters because making $$ is more important. I would wager Google's compute cells alone would constitute a few dozen slots in the top 100.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Because China doesn't believe in God but in Science. In the US we rather subsidize churches to the tune of $70B a year than to invest in computing infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Churches provide services to communities far exceeding 70 billion. Trying to judge churches on what some fringe groups and politicians do is short-sighted.

<comment><USER5> That service should be provided by the government, not a privileged special interest group.

<comment><USER6> I agree, however as someone coming from Europe I don't think that's easily possible. The US seems to require means that don't sound socialist/communist to some people. A lot of investment and subsidization into common good seems to go the route through lowered or absence of taxes and other laws (non profits, churches, etc.) and military (either research, that is later released to the public, and that's not just GPS or infrastructure and services, welfare, education for the poor, if they join the military).

To me it seems that both churches and military investment (in the very broad) are essential and integral for the stability of the US.

I think whether this should be changed is debatable, however I don't think this can be done over night, as it would destroy said stability. Even if a majority could be gained for such a project I think it would have to be a very slow process, as so many other things are built on this foundation and many things seem to have been optimized for this system over time.

However, I am not an expert by any means and just rely on what I see, hear and think when I compare it with Europe. The only thing I have learned is that telling people to do it like others isn't something that can just be done - while keeping some stability that is.

<comment><USER7> Germany has tithe taxes that supports churches

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The implication is that computing power has some inherent value, like a country should stockpile it or something.

<comment><USER9> Much like electricity generation, unused computing power is useless but capacity is very useful and tends to be consumed.

<comment><USER8> Yeah but there's no "computing race" in which countries compete to have more computing power than the next, despite the implication of articles like this that hint such a race would be important.

Makes not the slightest difference who has computing power. Its relevant only if you have reason to use it, and even then might be completely pointless.

Gave me 100 Cray Y-MP computers and I can't think of a damn thing to do with them. Countries are no different. Giving a country 100Mflops gives it nothing over the next country without 100Mflops.

BUT what I would absolutely say is true is that politicians - those great scum suckers at the bottom of the human pyramid - are highly likely to believe that it is VERY important that a country does not get left behind in its supercomputing power. Fuckwits. This is the sort of article that would send politicians racing to spend government money on state run supercomputing facilities which do..... nothing of any REAL value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > China's president Xi Jinping recently said the country is "taking a driving > seat" in fighting climate change

One of the only things giving me hope right now.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.top500.org/green500/lists/2017/11/](https://www.top500.org/green500/lists/2017/11/)

There's also a Green500 list of most performance-per-watt, i.e. greenest, most efficient computers, and Japan is the clear leader there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ironic part is we denied them Nvidia chips so they built their own supercomputer chips.

<comment><USER13> Don't know if that is the reason, but China can build super computers without US parts now.

<comment><USER4> China made a huge investment in AMD a year or two ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this counting "black" systems or not :-) ie those run by TLA's defence etc and never avowed

</comment><comment><USER14> More interesting would be to find out what exactly they are doing with all that power.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you go down the list [https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=2](https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=2), after about 100th place, many are listed as "web service providers" or "service providers" or "internet companies".

<comment><USER15> probably many of them are bit coin miners.

<comment><USER16> Bitcoin is one word, but you are definitely on point about China's mining prowess, those are asic miners, so not that super unless the figures are swarmed based.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Positive News Reader based on sentiment analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.sentinewsmob.ml/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was interesting the first time I saw it... but you've submitted this to Show HN 13 times now, including multiple domains that redirect to the same site, and you're also using multiple HN accounts to keep resubmitting it.

Don't you think that's a bit much?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Yeroniomus](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Yeroniomus)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sentinewsteam](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sentinewsteam)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=hacakton](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=hacakton)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sentinewsmob.ml](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sentinewsmob.ml)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sentinews.ml](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sentinews.ml)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=intellexer.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=intellexer.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Concept is great! The screenshots don't inspire a sense of it working effectively though. I don't think raw sentiment analysis is enough. 'Good' news to me has one or more of the following qualities:

\- It's actionable \- It's informative in a pragmatic sense \- It invokes a positive emotion, such as curiosity, wonder, appreciation, hope, fascination, delight, laughter \- It doesn't aimlessly invoke apathy/fear/anger/disgust/disappointment/hopelessness \- It has substance and is more than a mere report or thin and reflexive reaction \- It isn't tailored to reinforce a specific political agenda \- It's within a domain of interest \- It makes be better equipped to deal with the world

That rules out almost all news articles and virtually all of the examples in the screenshots. I don't think that kind of selecting can be done purely with a sentiment analysis.

<comment><USER4> The political agenda one is important. "Good" news to me in some areas of society are very much not good news to some other people (say, an abortion- related court case being decided).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If 3 of the 4 top "good news" stories mention Trump, as seen in the ad, there may be a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, not very good screenshot for the landing page. But all of the predictions were made by AI :-)

<comment><USER6> I think that's something really important to consider -- related the tailoring/personalization question in this thread too.

I looked at the page and every article (picked by AI) was quite negative in the sense that I believe it. They were articles about geopolitical grandstanding, extrajudicial executions of drug dealers, etc. Even if you took the pro-con Trump angle out (if possible), and put in <your favorite politician> I'd still not consider them positive topics.

My immediate reaction was this was really incongruent. I imagine it'll be for many others too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haven't there been several of these posted to Hacker News already? All of which look almost identical.

EDIT: Ah, apparently they're all links to this page.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm far less interested in "positive" news than in news that is _relevant_ to me. So much of online news has become clickbait political nonsense. I'd really like a news reader that is human curated to filter out the fake nonsense that makes it into Google News, while using ML to pick out the stories that matter to me from publishers I trust.

<comment><USER9> Aaron Swartz made a good point about the relevance of news [1].

[1] [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello, Hacker News users! It's my first Android app and first experience of Android development :-). SentiNews is based on sentiment analysis which helps to classify news as positive or negative. What do you think about general concept of the app? Will be waiting for your feedback.

<comment><USER10> Congratulation on shipping! Regardless of the feedback you've made it a lot further than most. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the suggestions and feedbacks to everyone. My nearest plans: small interface redesign, improvement of sentiment analysis algorithm, personalization of news feeds and the iOS launch. Keep on updates!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any reason you didn't include either the Atlantic or the National Review? For US based news, they seem pretty hard to beat if you can bear to give reporters a few hours to digest stories and provide meaningful insight.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sorry I may have missed something.

So how is "sentiment analysis" done? I assume that this will be personalised, rather than the binary good/bad news classification?

Congratulations though, I think the concept itself is good :) But, I think it may work better if it focuses solely on the "uplifting" type of good news. (As others have pointed out, a piece of news could be good for some people, bad to others.) Most of us get upsetting news everyday, so imagine if your app is the go-to place to rinse out all that $h!++y aftertaste with positive, inspiring stories :)

Edit: word

</comment><comment><USER13> Curious to know which algorithm and the sourcing of corpus you chose to train your system on.

On a similar note, here a curation of great sentiment analysis methods and implementations: [https://github.com/xiamx/awesome-sentiment- analysis](https://github.com/xiamx/awesome-sentiment-analysis)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the link. I've used the technology called Paragraph Vectors [https://cs.stanford.edu/~quocle/paragraph_vector.pdf](https://cs.stanford.edu/~quocle/paragraph_vector.pdf) for sentiment features extraction. Training collections were created in a semi-automatic mode and included news title+short description gathered from popular RSS feeds.

<comment><USER14> Sentence vectors encode the data, but how do you determine if a story is positive or negative?

<comment><AUTHOR> After collection of possible positive/negative features with weights I used logistic regression classifier with some modifications (e.g. position algorithm) to classify the article. It determines the article polarity based on features (words, phrases and etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great idea, I wonder of they took some inspiration from the sunglasses of Zaphod Beeblebrox.

[http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Joo_Janta_200_Super- Chroma...](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Joo_Janta_200_Super- Chromatic_Peril_Sensitive_Sunglasses)

<comment><USER15> I wonder if the user will like it , some authors will use terms that are all good for items considered bad by the customers - depending on the bias of the author. Sentiment analysis will fail if an opposite political bias is considered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does the system learn about an users preference and classify news tailored to your personal profile, or does it simply do a general prediction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not now. It does a general prediction. Maybe I will add this feature in future releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Love the concept!

I'd be interested when/if this launches on iOS. Perhaps add an email capture to the landing page?

</comment><comment><USER18> > BUILT YOUR OWN NEWS BLOCK

I think you mean Build

</comment><comment><USER19> Ironically, Perez winning the DNC chair was awful news.

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems like an interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER21> So, the software equivalent of soma?

<comment><USER22> Yes, I am surprised by the lack of criticism by the community. Only see what is happy and awesome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is not owning the copyright to the news displayed an issue? If so, how do you plan to deal with it?

<comment><USER24> If you look at this slide you can see it showing the content via the website that posted the content: [http://www.sentinewsmob.ml/img/slide_5.png](http://www.sentinewsmob.ml/img/slide_5.png)

So, no, this is not an issue, no different than Google, HN, etc. linking to a story.</comment></comment>


How Google sets goals: OKRs - <AUTHOR> http://www.gv.com/lib/how-google-sets-goals-objectives-and-key-results-okrs

<comment><USER2> I just don't believe that OKR is not used for evaluation. Every report with "marks" is inevitably leads to evaluation.</comment>