Developers mentoring other developers: practices I've seen work well - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/developers-mentoring-other-developers/ <comment><USER2> A big mistake I made when I started mentoring other developers was making the answers to their questions too easy.

I spent a lot of my early career crawling around on linux servers trying to fix weird bugs in pretty typical web stacks. Later on, when other developers needed help diagnosing an issue on a server I would say something like "sounds like X problem, look at the log file in Y". After several years of this, the same devs were still asking the same questions. I was helping them solve immediate problems quickly and easily, but I was _not_ mentoring them.

Developers don't grow by being given the answers. They grow by trying things and experimenting and solving problems themselves. These are the skills and the lessons that will serve them well as they level up their career. Not giving them the answers but giving them the tools to find the answers.

These days, if there's no urgency, I would say something like "where are the places in the stack where a problem like that might occur, and what can we do to narrow down the set of likely issues?" I might give them some ideas, but let them do most of the legwork.

<comment><USER3> I can echo this experience. I guess this comes down to the Socratic method of teaching people: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method)

I have yet to see a more effective method of teaching developers, as this encourages understanding and learning about underlying concepts and problems

<comment><USER4> Yes, the best teachers ask questions of their students, engage in a dialog and provide "guard rails" for the student to gain mastery of a topic. The end result of learning is not merely knowing answers but being able to ask strong questions (pithy, but true).

This is also part of the reason why Stackoverflow is in such a negative light lately. SO is extremely good at providing answers to narrowly-focused well- defined questions, people forget or aren't aware that this IS NOT a good way to learn subject-matter. It leads to frustration from users because they're expecting someone to give them pointers on how to move forward on general problems and it's frustrating to point-mavens because they aren't empathetic enough to see what the problems are.

<comment><USER5> SO answers are really good learning place. That is if you read the whole thread instead of copypasting the accepted answer.

Usually, at least for .net, there are explanations not only how to do something, but why do it this way.

I learned quite a bit from SO, it at least pointed me towards right direction in docs. Nowadays i just read the docs instead, but i still google for SO answers for new problems.

Maybe there is an API i have no idea about ,nor my colleagues do? Maybe there is a better way to solve problem XYZ?

Instead of skimming myriad of blogs i can just read the answers on SO and then read up the docs.

SO is as good, or bad, as you make it - if you just copypaste answers, or provide an answer in form of code with minimal explanation why - then that's on you.

<comment><USER4> SO is a great place to go when you're in a jam at work as a pro doing your stuff. It has specific answers to specific questions. Sure, if you have enough background expertise to navigate the answers, you can "learn something" (1) along the way.

The kinds of questions that people ask when they're focused on learning something new, however, are DEFINITELY NOT what SO is intended to handle. It is why SO is actively hostile to people that try to use it to learn by asking questions.

(1) For .net in particular, Jon Skeet's answers are magnificent resources. He even made the content from his answers into a book. The book, of course, has context and coherence. It's not just the answers copy-pasted into a text. Sadly, Skeet is the exception rather than the rule. For everyone putting up nice answers to questions following the example of Skeet, there are dozens of smug, persnickety jerks making people feel like shit in a hundred different ways for daring to ask a question.

<comment><USER5> >> The kinds of questions that people ask when they're focused on learning something new, however, are DEFINITELY NOT what SO is intended to handle. It is why SO is actively hostile to people that try to use it to learn by asking questions.

Exactly, at this phase of learning go and read other questions and answers related to your topic instead.

Jon Skeet is a goddamn national treasure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine a mentor who belittles you, exaggerates your flaws, and brings up false accusations only in private, during one-on-one meetings, and only picks on you in secret. But outside they are very friendly.

I have had two such mentors.

I am extremely suspicious of any such one-on-one arrangements when there are no written records and opportunities for challenging unfair assessments formally. There has to be second opinions from disinterested parties.

Now imagine an office politician who relays to you bad things other people said about you, and relays to others bad things you said about them, and encourages retaliation between staff. I have worked with one such person. Again here, under the guise of mentorship of one-on-one feedback there is a lot of gossip being generated.

I can already predict that there will be more people who think they can mentor than people who think they can improve.

<comment><USER7> I totally agree that mentors and mentees should be free in their choice with whom they partner. So if you had bad experience with your mentors it should be easy and penalty free for you to change.

On the other hand, I would decline to mentor you:

> I am extremely suspicious of any such one-on-one arrangements when there are > no written records and opportunities for challenging unfair assessments > formally.

I'm not interested in wasting my time with a mentee on bureaucracy instead of actually mentoring. Luckily, there are many different workplaces we can pick from, so your need for proper documentation can be satisfied while my wish to use the time for mentoring is also satisfied (possibly in different places).

> I can already predict that there will be more people who think they can > mentor than people who think they can improve.

I love to be a mentee. It usually feels better to learn than to teach. It also increases your value more. I quite often struggle that I don't have a mentor (and it is a good reason to change workplace). As compensation, I frequently send out mentees to learn new stuff and teach it to me.

<comment><USER8> > _On the other hand, I would decline to mentor you:_

Here's a thing. If both of you knew each other personally, started becoming friendly, then you might end up mentoring GP and I'm sure GP wouldn't demand written records. This is how mentoring looks like. It's not some top-down prescribed job task, and it's not done by matchmaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my personal experience, apart from onboarding, "forced" formal mentoring is bullshit and a total waste of time. No one benefits.

I totally get the benefits of getting advice from more experienced folks, but you can do that ad-hoc so I just don't see the point for formal set ups and have chalked it up as something that someone somewhere in the organisation thinks is useful that everyone should do - kinda like all the bullshit "team work" or "what colour are you"/"look inside yourself" training courses that we are all required to take from time to time but no one actually wants to do and are a 100% totally pointless exercise.

<comment><USER10> Please don't state your opinion as gospel truth.

In my experience I have benefited from being on both sides of the mentor- mentee relationship. I learned a lot from mentoring an intern, especially.

<comment><USER11> How do you read comment starting with "In my personal experience" and respond with "Please don't state your opinion as gospel truth.". Wtf?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I started as a software engineer in the Aerospace industry, I was the "kid", one of the few young guys working amongst a large group of middle age (and up) engineers. Interestingly, there wasn't much in the way of mentorship -- just dump all of the grunt work on the kid. "It's good for you to cut your teeth on testing/maintenance/etc." And also "You need to pay your dues, son." \- whenever I asked for more responsibility / new projects, etc.

Now that I'm middle-aged (39), I'm one of the few older guys working amongst a large number of younger folks. Formal mentorship and leadership development programs (so you can be promoted past the Gen Xers we're currently targeting for layoffs) are real things now focused solely on the younger generation...

Any other Gen Xers feeling cheated?

<comment><USER13> > Any other Gen Xers feeling cheated?

I'm unlikely to be called Gen X, but my attitude has always been the same: it's our duty to make the lives of future generations better than ours. Raise our children better than we were raised. Provide our juniors the opportunities and resources we didn't have.

So, I don't feel cheated. I feel happy because my efforts are helping future generations.

<comment><USER14> Similar experience for me and we are the same age. I don't feel cheated per say but I agree we had less opportunity available to us and less ability to affect change.

The thing to remember is that we are a small generation sandwiched between two big ones (baby boomers and millenials). We never got to move the needle as much culturally as these two generations did.

The boomers set the rules, which we begrudgingly followed. And the millenials are breaking the rules and we have to roll with that too.

Sometimes it feels like we are caught between both worlds, and forced to choose a side where we only agree with them 50% of the time.

<comment><USER15> Aren't those of us born in 1980 (+/\- a year or so) millennials?

I'm about the same age (38) and I guess I count myself as a millennial. I'm certainly considered a millennial by everyone older than me. I'd always heard the cutoff between Gen X and millennial was 1975, but now that I search I'm seeing '82 or '83 a lot. That doesn't fit with how I typically see the term used, though.

That having been said, I feel like there were plenty of mentorship programs when I was first starting my career, but I haven't worked for too many pure software companies. It may have been very different in actual tech companies. The more traditional corporations I've worked in tend to be big on formal mentorship programs.

<comment><USER16> Millennials were born early 80s to late 90s. The exact years depend on who you ask and are a bit fiddly anyway depending on how you interpret the phrase "was a teenager during the 'new millennium' (decade).". (For example, does pre-teen count, did the millennium start in 2000 or 2001, etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My issue with mentoring is that in practice it's often just a way to help the mentor transition into managing or becoming a TL. Which isn't necessarily good for the mentee because the incentives aren't really there for you. Your org might force you to grab a mentor who does something unrelated, and not particularly well, just because of their level and career aspirations.

That said, technically capable mentors who actually care about mentoring can be great, I'm just not sure about top-down forced mentoring as a career requirement.

<comment><USER18> > I'm just not sure about top-down forced mentoring as a career requirement.

Indeed, it feels like saying "oh you two are gonna be friends!"

I feel there's a confusion around terms. Life is a bit more complex. Mentoring is a rather specific thing, and 'real' mentors are a rare (and precious) relationship; it's long-term (at least in perspective, however long it actually lasts) and much more emotional in that there's admiration (reciprocal), there's care (genuine) for the other, it just can't be decided (even for oneself). It's not something you can commoditize with policies or incentives. You don't have 6 or 10 such people in your life, more like 1, rarely, 2 if you're really lucky.

What most of the article seems to be talking about is very good but it's not really 'mentoring'. More like "skill sharing", good "onboarding" (even with seniors as we onboard others onto the systems we happen to know better in the organization or the field at large). It's informal teaching, transmission, it's an organization thing he's describing — not a human-driven relationship that exists around all else.

The platform is more interesting. People with a desire to mentor may find a good match, and stick with it. Reciprocally. But the truth is that no more than online dating, you just can't be sure there's a match right now for you, you may find students / teachers (like find people to grab a drink sometimes), but mentees / mentors (long-term relationship) is a whole other ballpark.

I'd say this: it is a good cultural evolution to value mentorship and try to form minds into engaging in such relationships, like you'd think it good people want to marry or raise kids. It also shows how learning isn't a school thing only, actually very little, but a life-long endeavor wherein all parties grow in the process. But just like Disney movies aren't reality for most people most of the time, a little temperance on the real felt experience of mentorship may be in order when encouraging people to the possibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What everyone has to learn over time is

\- why you choose to do things a certain way

\- how you figured out a pattern or solution

\- extracting the most from your tools, such as debugging

\- that this isn't magic, persistence can be key for tough bugs and performance problems

I've had mentors just answer one-off questions, and I've had others that gave me the above insights. When I'm helping someone, I try to "think out loud" and teach them process.

Language-specific structures and patterns can also be taught, but they shouldn't be the focus. More like incidental tidbits a junior can and should pick up along the ride.

<comment><USER20> > I've had mentors just answer one-off questions, and I've had others that > gave me the above insights. When I'm helping someone, I try to "think out > loud" and teach them process.

I find it incredibly hard to think out loud and work through a problem with an audience. Going away, to my own workstation, spending 2-3 minutes looking at things and investigating will often get me some ideas. Which I can communicate back. Often describing how I got there.

Put me on the spot and if I don't already know the answer I probably cannot find it under scrutiny. This is my failing, I know, but it's demonstrably true.

<comment><USER19> It helps if you don't think you're being judged. To me, these skills are learned through trial and error. Error is ok and I'm fine stumbling through ideas that could be wrong.

As soon as you start to perform with your status as a skilled developer hanging in the balance, your brain will lean towards " fight or flight" mode and decrease your cognitive abilities.

<comment><USER20> > As soon as you start to perform with your status as a skilled developer > hanging in the balance, your brain will lean towards " fight or flight" mode > and decrease your cognitive abilities.

You are 100% correct that this is a large part of the problem, but I cannot get rid of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It helps to have a sharply defined goal. At a previous job, I mentored someone in a support role who wanted to move into a dev position. (They were also highly motivated, which was helpful.) Our meetings largely focused on preparing for the dev interview -- filling in knowledge gaps, working through standard whiteboard questions, understanding and being able to articulate software design principles, etc... We actually covered pretty broad ground here. They got the job and I found the experience quite rewarding.

After that, without the clear goal, I think we drifted a bit. Mentoring still had positive value, but I in general I think the value curve is logarithmic and after a while one reaches a point of diminishing returns.

</comment><comment><USER22> The site mentions [https://codingcoach.io/](https://codingcoach.io/) several times. Has anyone tried this service? How useful is it?

<comment><USER23> I was also noticing that - it almost seemed like an intentional plug. If anyone has experience with it I would love to hear about it!

<comment><USER24> Same here. I came to the HN comments to see if there was any other comparable alternative in some comment(s)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do you choose what to focus on with structured mentoring?

It feels like current issues are too short term for this, unless it is a fundamental issue like no having enough domain knowledge. Googling and/or a quick discussion with your colleagues should suffice in most cases.

If it is a more general subject, how to choose which one? Obviously there are a lot of things I don't know, but it's quite hard to pinpoint what would be the most beneficial thing to learn right now; otherwise I would have researched it already.

Maybe reviewing the recent work with the mentor, and trying to extract pain points from there could work?

<comment><USER26> We have had success at my org by anchoring a lot of the mentor/mentee discussion around our documented career ladder. If there's not a pressing specific discussion topic for one of their meetings, they can always bring that out and go through the ladder items to brainstorm ideas on how to progress.

We also recommend mentors to sit in on some agile ceremonies with the mentee's team to get a feel for how the mentee's dynamic is with their team, which can spark some discussion as well.

Fundamental, long-term issues can include encouraging the mentee to be more assertive, how to help their team become more effective, and how to approach navigating the inevitable politics of the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if this is something new, at least it seems to me new. Working now more than 10 years in Software engineering, I never experienced anyone appearing as mentor.

Nowadays I both have to mentor and get mentored. This seems so weird to me. People did really well for years without it. People got really crazy skills, came up with great ideas and wrote rock solid software. This works very well when being both responsible and open to experimentation.

</comment><comment><USER28> i am looking for a mentor. I have 3 years of expirience of programming profesionaly. Currently working as a backend java spring programmer. I am on this weird spot where I am not junior anymore but I feel like my skills lacking big time to advance to mid / senior

<comment><USER29> While you're looking for a mentor, take a look at this guide and see if it helps. [https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap#back- end-...](https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap#back-end-roadmap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been fortunate to mentor a couple very sharp young engineers, while I can provide context and experience in long-term problem solving and project management I'm finding myself learning a ton from these guys who have more up to date coding skills.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'll come back and edit this after I've finished the article but I have to admit I'm skeptical about taking advice on mentoring from Uber.

 _Edit:_ My skepticism was misplaced. A lot of this advice is very good and, as the site implies, practical.

<comment><USER32> This is not "Uber" but an employee of Uber who has worked other places too.

<comment><USER31> That's true. However, it does seem like the foundation for their mentoring- related experience is Uber:

 _I joined Uber. Until then, I 've never received or done mentoring, or at least never put this label on any activity I've done before._

I've never worked at Uber and I don't know many people who have. So most of my knowledge of how Uber operates and of the culture they espouse comes from places like HN. Overwhelmingly the press' depiction of Uber's culture is extremely negative. Mentoring is one of those potentially formative experiences in a person's career. Presumably the "Uber way" of mentoring forms a large part of the author's experience and approach to mentoring. It was an interesting divergence from what I would have expected. It's a good data-point on the other side of all the negative we hear related to Uber.</comment></comment></comment>


Ultibo: Unikernel for Raspberry Pi / boots in 2 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://ultibo.org/ <comment><USER2> Repository: [https://github.com/ultibohub/](https://github.com/ultibohub/)

FAQ: [https://ultibo.org/faq/](https://ultibo.org/faq/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Scrolling is broken for me on this site. Overriding default scrolling behavior is a major pet peeve of mine and I'll just skip the site instead of fighting with it. Too bad, I might have been interested.</comment>


Is it an accident? No, it's a wildcard subdomain - <AUTHOR> http://www.eBay.c.uk <comment><USER2> I think this is a good demo to share with family and am glad this organization has c.uk.

Another more general example to share with family is:

[http://www2.scotiaonline.scotiabank.com.online.authenticatio...](http://www2.scotiaonline.scotiabank.com.online.authentication.authentication.bns.c.uk/)

These are both cases where the subdomain can trick people. The .c.uk one is a bit more dangerous as they claim a lot of people end up landing on those pages. I had a quick look through some other second level domains to see if anyone else had a site like this.

The more details on two level domains here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second- level_domain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-level_domain)

<comment><USER2> What I find hard to believe and just realized was that this domain was registered on 10-Jun-2014.

Edit: People were first able to register .uk domains last year, and if the .co.uk domain already exists then you must own it in order to register the .uk domain.

<comment><USER3> Direct registrations under .uk (and not just .co.uk, .org.uk etc) were only opened last year.

<comment><USER2> That explains it; I was completely baffled. I wonder how much of a bidding war there was for this domain.

<comment><USER4> The owner of the .co.uk has first dibs, so in this case there was no bidding war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was an ok.su that would accept any traffic sent its way: mail, web, im, dns, so on.

I often wonder how many errors sent ok.us traffic to that black hole, and what they did with the data. I assume there are several other .su domains set up with blackholes as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't know single letter domains were allowed? For example none of a.com, b.com, c.com etc. work - do other gTLD allow single letter domains then?

<comment><USER7> [https://t.co/](https://t.co/) is very well known. Probably the most used single-character domain in existence :)

Unrelated, but I've never understood why t.co counts against your tweet length.. for example, if you tweeted "ebay.c.uk", it would count for length([http://t.co/xxxxxxxxxx](http://t.co/xxxxxxxxxx)) characters (15 characters even though you only typed 9).

<comment><USER8> Related: [http://qntm.org/twit](http://qntm.org/twit)

<comment><USER9> > This was the case as of 2011-08-16 [...] I'll let them know about it > tomorrow and I expect it'll be rectified in a day or two

Quite optimistic :-) especially since the situation has gotten worse by two characters since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another fantastic outcome of non-profit (lol) Nominet's recent, desperate attempts to squeeze every last penny out of the .uk tld.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that they would allow such an odd domain to be registered in the first place. It seems like a big security hole.

<comment><USER2> You're missing something here. The UK is a country that allows second-level domains e.g., co.uk, gov.uk, org.uk as well as just domains ending in .uk.

This organizations owns c.uk (so the who-is you should lookup is just c.uk.

What I find hard to believe is that ti looks like it was registered on: 10-Jun-2014!?

<comment><USER12> You need to own the .co.uk to get the .uk (at the minute), unless the .co.uk hasn't been registered.

<comment><USER2> That's a sensible practice. Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, does this mean, I can buy com.uk and edu.uk now?

<comment><USER14> You could buy e.uk and catch typos like <college>.e.uk with the same page!

<comment><USER15> It's ac.uk for "academic".

<comment><USER14> then *.a.uk

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is a wildcard subdomain configured?

<comment><USER17> Something along lines of

      *	IN	A	<ip_address></comment></comment>


New Data Science book paid preview: Practical Data Science with R - <AUTHOR> http://www.manning.com/zumel/

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of you on Hacker News do heavy duty data science and analytics, and we have been working very hard on a new book on this topic.

Please forward this to anybody interested in data science or R. Also Manning is offering 50% off until the 18th with the promotion code: pdswrco .</comment>


Ask HN: Did Apple ban the Lala iPhone app? - <AUTHOR>

Several blogs posted on the new Lala music streaming iPhone app a couple weeks ago such as this one: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/28/an-exclusive-first-look-at-lalas-iphone-app/
However, the app is no longer listed or available in the app directory.  Furthermore, there is no promotion of the app on Lala.com.
Did apple pull this app from the directory or is it still "in review"? I'd bet Apple has a close eye on this app as it is clearly a service that is competitive with iTunes. I would not put it past Apple to use their terms of use (ie, "duplicate functionality") in their favor.
Anyone have any info on this? <comment><USER2> Interesting... I used to love lala several years ago but it seems they are just getting less and less interesting. I'd try the app though.</comment>


Scientists plan huge European AI hub to compete with US - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/23/scientists-plan-huge-european-ai-hub-to-compete-with-us <comment><USER2> Is there really a brain drain from Europe to the US? I wonder...</comment>


Ask HN: How to find good business co-founders? - <AUTHOR>

I asked a question yesterday on HN titled: ["Ask HN: My co-founders are trying to get rid of me. What should I do?"](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9803111) and I took some great advice from HN community and based on those I have decided to part ways with my co-founders.<p>I'm a technical person and I definitely need a some help in the business side of things. I don't know wether I should hire a business guy or find a business focused co-founder. A business co-founder would definitely be much more dedicated than an employee who gets paid and has a very small amount of equity <comment><USER2> Go to conferences where you can meet like-minded individuals, with skills to compliment your weaknesses. Being able to get along and trust each others' opinions are the most important criteria IMO (aside from being technically competent).

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask them what double entry accounting is.

Ask them how they would move your product.

What would they do about an underperforming employee?

Ask them to name a few of their favorite books. There are many good business books but not everyone reads them.</comment>


There May Be a Dangerous Shortcut to a Coronavirus Vaccine. Should We Take It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-covid.html <comment><USER2> I signed up as a volunteer on 1DaySooner and have to imagine that public support would be for human challenge trials. Limiting it to those under a certain age and who are in good health seems like a no-brainer.

While I understand health professionals across the board hesitancy to push for such things, doing so in this case would border on zealotry.

</comment><comment><USER3> How many people would you need to infect?</comment>


Expedia Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Hotel Bookings - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/11/expedia-starts-accepting-bitcoin-for-hotel-bookings/ <comment><USER4> It's interesting to think what announcement like this have in aggregate on the price of bitcoin. Counter-intuitively the price of bitcoin should face downward pressure as merchant adoption of this sort increases. Expedia doesn't hold any of the bitcoin they receive. The bitcoins are instantly converted to dollars on a market exchange. This means that holders of bitcoin, especially those who are sitting on large capital gains, now have a new outlet to realize their gains.

On the other hand merchants who choose to accept bitcoin using Coinbase (or Bitpay) and who also choose to keep some fraction of their profit in bitcoin (thereby exposing their profits to currency volatility, which may even be a good thing for growth of their profits) will tend to increase the market price of bitcoin.

Overall it seems like most merchants accepting bitcoin are not holding any of the bitcoins they accept. It would be great to see more merchants choosing to keep some fraction, however small, in bitcoin itself.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that, arguably more counter-intuitively, it will push the price up, fed by increased speculation due to apparent signs of Bitcoin "going mainstream" that will far exceed any actual Expedia transactions taking place.

I'm more intrigued by the commercial decision from Expedia's perspective. Presumably they've done a back of the envelope calculation and decided "group of people more likely to pick Expedia over other OTAs if they can use Bitcoin" > "group of people that will be sufficiently confused by an additional payment option to abandon their cart"

<comment><USER6> > I'm more intrigued by the commercial decision from Expedia's perspective.

I suspect pure marketing. A mainstream player announcing support for bitcoin is still newsworthy. In another year, probably not so much as there will have been a series of such announcements by then.

Even if they don't do a single bitcoin transaction, the coverage and back- links will more than cover the cost of integration, and any resulting bit coin transactions (that don't replace a more traditional form of payment) are upside.

<comment><USER7> Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn't so cynical. I sincerely hope crypto currencies annihilate the credit card industry. I guess any publicity is good publicity?

<comment><USER8> _Yea--some Harvard MBA making a name for themselves? I wish I wasn 't so cynical._

It's not cynical. Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional currency. There's no benefit for consumers, because consumers have to buy bitcoin in order to spend bitcoin, and buying bitcoin means consumers have to manage their own wallet or store their money in a third party service that can fail or steal their money at any time.

The singular benefit is the publicity your business gets by accepting bitcoin. In other words, bitcoin is trendy.

This isn't a dismissal of bitcoin. History has shown that trends are a powerful force. If it achieves a kind of critical mass, then that will open up other avenues for bitcoin to become useful. But in the meantime, be assured that your gut instinct of "there doesn't seem to be any reason to accept bitcoin except publicity" is spot on.

As an aside, I think these announcements won't affect the fundamental price of bitcoin. They'll cause fluctuations, but not any long-term rise or fall. The price of bitcoin is driven by speculation. It always has been, and always will be. The fundamental price at any given time is due to speculators with large amounts of bitcoin who place large buy orders in hopes of getting _other_ speculators to place large buy orders, then they sell. From a game theory point of view, if a bunch of gamblers all place large buy orders, the first gambler to sell stands to profit, and the other gamblers will lose out. You can see the evidence of this at any time: [http://i.imgur.com/SYHhSCv.png](http://i.imgur.com/SYHhSCv.png) ... A gambler buys a bunch of bitcoin, which causes other gamblers to buy a bunch of bitcoin, which lets the first gambler sell off their position and make out handsomely.

There's no long-term speculation going on. Or, if there is, then the long-term speculation is being done by a few dozen people with massive bitcoin holdings. No one else's speculation is a significant price mover.

It's true that the market responds to announcements, but it's not true that the market price is driven by announcements. They just serve as a trigger for gamblers to initiate gambles. Hence, I don't think the fundamental price will shift very much; what shifts the price is when large players enter or exit the market, which happens much more rarely than announcements do.

<comment><USER9> > Accepting bitcoin as payment isn't beneficial right now. There's no benefit > for merchants, because it's instantly converted back to traditional > currency.

I see two advantages: 1) They get their name in the news (and in consumers minds), and 2) they get the bitcoin spenders that they may not have otherwise (an admittedly small bump at the moment, but a bump nonetheless and at virtually no cost).

<comment><USER8> _2) they get the bitcoin spenders that they may not have otherwise (an admittedly small bump at the moment, but a bump nonetheless and at virtually no cost)._

I'd love to see evidence of bitcoin spenders. So far, they haven't been: [http://blog.samaltman.com/bitcoin-price- pressure](http://blog.samaltman.com/bitcoin-price-pressure)

 _I hear from merchants who start taking bitcoin that after an initial spike they see almost no volume._

The above quote fits with my experience as well, though my sample size was a single merchant. I noticed they were accepting bitcoin, so I sent a congratulatory email and got a response along the lines of, "Surprisingly, no one at all has bought my product using bitcoin! Maybe that will change in the future..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I first read this I thought, why would they start with hotels? may be because the big profit they make out of reservations?

Then I remembered what an accountant friend once said to me: "Hotels are big portals between the black and white worlds".

So you may have black money in bitcoins (and a Hotel which is your "legal business"), and want to "wash" it? now you can do it through Expedia (they having a bite in the process, hence their motivation).

<comment><USER11> Makes sense, but I'd love to here more on this. What features of hotels makes them particularly good portals between the black and white worlds.

<comment><USER12> Hard to prove how many people actually stayed in the hotel would be my guess. Other businesses like restaurants have inventory so you can't as easily make it look like you made a great deal more money than you actually did.

<comment><USER13> This idea is really seductive. Wouldn't it be kind of hard/traceable to fake bookings though? It seems like strip clubs or some sort of service company would be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The common thread in many of these announcements seems to be coinbase.

<comment><USER15> Does coinbase sit on the Bitcoins, or turn around quickly and convert to USD somehow (where?)?

Holding thousands of bitcoins as a startup seems like it would introduce a lot of volatility, even if the long-term prospects of bitcoin are good (still need to pay the employees).

<comment><USER16> Coinbase has an account on bitstamp where they hedge their net position. In times of high demand for btc, it sometimes happens that they run out of fiat on bitstamp and cannot process orders instantly.

<comment><USER17> What happens if bitstamp follows mtgox?

<comment><USER18> Probably nothing. At worst Coinbase would only lose the fraction of their USD/BTC holdings that they have stored in Bitstamp, but they would continue business as usual.

Coinbase could abandon Bitstamp if they wanted to, since they have their own customers selling and buying coins (therefore providing a supply of coins, and a way to liquidate them). And Coinbase also trade coins on multiple other exchanges (according to their claims). This makes their overall Bitcoin trading activity decentralized with no single point of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well it seems that Expedia did a great thing by allowing you to use Bitcoin to pay for hotel bookings. So that means I don't need to use my credit card any longer when I check into the hotel?

Not exactly:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27vc4x/expedia_star...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27vc4x/expedia_starts_accepting_bitcoin_for_hotel/)

If you read down in the comments you see hotel workers saying they will still apply a 2X block on the daily rate of the room to your credit card, even if you've paid for the room with Bitcoin. A block that can take up to two weeks to be released.

Obviously the standard hotel procedures will need to be revised but until then Bitcoin buyer beware ;<(.

Rick

<comment><USER20> Think of it this way: you're paying by Bitcoin, but you're guaranteeing that you won't drink the minibar dry or trash the room with a credit card. This won't change until there's a well-established Bitcoin credit facility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems good. But at the heart of it I fear it defeats the whole point of Bitcoin the payment system. Why? I thought the whole point of Bitcoin was to create a decentralized payment system. And here is Coinbase (or Bitpay) becoming centralized payment systems...

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I hear you. I am hoping they are just crutches to bootstrap bitcoin adoption. If bitcoins become popular, perhaps we can lose the crutches. Or perhaps we'll have tons of competing escrow businesses.

What is it with humans' tendency to centralise anyways? Here is democracy... now here's an all-powerful president and congressional oligarchy. Here is the industrial revolution to facilitate transportation of goods all around the countryside... now here are the giant megalopolises in which most of us now live. Here is the internet... now here's Gmail, the single location to email, and Facebook, the single location to put all of your personal data. Here are DVCSes... now here is github, a place to centralise all of our DVCS work.

Maybe there's just something fundamentally ingrained in human psychology that makes us converge like this.

<comment><USER23> > What is it with humans' tendency to centralise anyways?

I think it's less about human psychology and more about managing efficiency.

A well-run centralized system will always be more efficient than a well-run decentralized system, by virtue of having less overhead. Whether it's overhead from arranging logistics to one large city, instead of a hundred small cities, or overhead from interacting with one large federal government, instead of 50 small state governments.

<comment><USER24> > A well-run centralized system will always be more efficient than a well-run > decentralized system, by virtue of having less overhead.

That's a circular definition, unless you have some objective way to measure how "well-run" a system is other than just measuring its efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Expedia accepts Coinbase, not Bitcoin. This is no different than accepting PayPal. Did you pay with PayPal balance, credit card, or bank account - <USER2> doesn't matter. You implement PayPal APIs and you receive dollars from PayPal. The rest is just speculation, but seems that price is dropping as "acceptance" like this can only lead to selling pressure if it ever gains any traction, of course. I'm really surprised all these merchants implementing Bitcoin for the PR, but confusing their checkout routine. The path to checkout should be as short as possible with as little decisions to be made along the way. Any distraction can lead to abandonment. Is the cheap PR all worth it? I personally doubt. It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in fact, getting bored. I keep polling non-techie friends, the common theme is "Bitcoin is a scam". Even most tech people aren't much interested except the small share who invest in stocks, i.e. the speculator by nature.

<comment><USER26> > It's obvious that the general public is not interested in Bitcoin and is, in > fact, getting bored.

Do you have any proof to backup this statement?

Bitcoin related growth abound. The number of My Wallet Users has doubled in the past 6 months.

[http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n- users](http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users)

<comment><USER25> Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further.

<comment><USER26> >Also, I'm sure there are speculators running scripts to generate new wallets and pump the bubble further.

That sounds like pretty strong, objective evidence. /s

There are Bitcoin bulls and bears. Nothing wrong with being either. But, if you're going to make claims, at least have facts to back them up.

<comment><USER25> I can't prove it as I'm not the NSA. We're not in court anyway - <USER3> here is totally acceptable.

What I proposed was solid - after all the Bitcoin theft recently, many learned to use hot/cold wallets, not split holdings in several wallets, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Has there been much talk about how stores using Bitcoin reduces the anonymity of Bitcoin by tying IDs in the transaction of acquiring that coin to the person that ultimately uses it?

I'm sure the uber nerds were already aware of this but has it been brought up enough that the general community thinks this through? One booking on Expedia and you've revealed any possible Silk Road or other curious transaction you've ever made, right?

<comment><USER22> How does this work, exactly? I use a unique address each time I receive bitcoins. Then I sometimes move money between more unique addresses in plausible-looking ways. I always use Tor for talking to the bitcoin network.

How easy is it to de-anonymise me?

<comment><USER28> See the two heuristics in this paper for creating clusters of bitcoin users [0].

The first (and rather obvious) one is to cluster all inputs of a transaction, so if you use A and B, and later use B and C, we now know the same user owns A, B, and C and only need to tie your identity to one of them.

The prior one is rather weak, and could be avoided by consistent usage of unique change addresses. Thus, the second heuristic works to reveal which output is the change address. There are various ways of performing this prediction, some more deterministic than others. A pretty conservative and reliable one, described in [0], assumes an output is a change address if it (1) is the first appearance of the address, (2) the tx is not a coin generation, (3) there is no self-change address, and (4) #1 is only true for this address.

There is an open-source implementation of these ideas called BitIodine [1,2] (albeit with slightly different criteria for change-address identification, including an off-by-one error in bitcoin core that caused the first output to always be the change address in a 2-output transaction until it was fixed in early 2013). Punch in one of your addresses and see what it comes up with. However, I may have found a bug that reduces input-clustering, so if it doesn't find your addresses don't get too excited.

Also, don't forget about the recent technique for de-anonymizing coin mixing transactions [3].

[0] [http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf) [1] [https://github.com/mikispag/bitiodine](https://github.com/mikispag/bitiodine) [2] [https://bitiodine.net/](https://bitiodine.net/) [3] [http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can- ide...](http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified- says-security-expert/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The common thread is coinbase creating a low-friction opportunity for merchants to accept another form of payment, but to be paid in - most likely - USD as far as they are concerned.

This does nothing to disperse bitcoin into many little places. In other words, accepting bitcoin by online merchants everywhere doesn't make many people want to go trade fiat for a volatile currency with all the inconveniences inherent. You need a frictionless means and stimulus for many swathes of people and organizations to accept and _hold_ BC instead of wanting fiat conversions immediately.

"We take Discover/American Express etc." only really got so far to help with consumer adoption of those networks. This keeps coming around to a currency without a country is a PITA.

What are return policies around goods bought with BC? Do you get BC back or fiat? Do you get spot prices at time of return request, etc?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does Expedia hold any bitcoin reserves? Do they interact with bitcoin at all?

Nope. They let someone else do it and just accept real money.

<comment><USER31> That's okay though. As bitcoin proliferates large businesses will eventually start cutting out the middle man.

But currently, with the drastic swings, it's not a sound economic move (especially publicly owned) to actually have holdings in bitcoin. It requires infrastructure for cash exchanges too. Is Expedia going to pay its dividends with its bitcoin reserves?

Not yet!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this as big as it seems to me? This seems huge. Is it huge? I can't tell. Should I be excited? I am.

Now if only I could make it easier for people to pay me in bitcoins for small freelance work...

<comment><USER32> Can you accept Coinbase payments?

That's the thing here: Coinbase is just another payment processor. Most businesses are used to having to accept "some extra payment processor".

Since you get to do some sort of announcement, which more most companies means you get to be in the news in a semi-positive way, why not? It's risk free for them - or at least only as risky as their ability to sue Coinbase for missed payments.

<comment><USER22> > Can you accept Coinbase payments?

I don't need help for accepting bitcoins. I trust bitcoins themselves, I consider them a real currency, not something that has to be immediately exchanged for centralised currency. So I'm fine just accepting them without an intermediary. My hope is that as bitcoins get more popular, businesses like Coinbase will seem less important.

Instead, I need help getting bitcoins from all the people out there who have no idea how to get bitcoins.

<comment><USER33> I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that _doesn 't_ need an intermediary, many of your customers are likely to need/desire an intermediary to facilitate for the people you mention, with no idea how to get bitcoins.

Regardless of whether you, I, or HN hates Coinbase or loves Coinbase, they provide a layer of accessibility to an otherwise intimidating ecosystem.

<comment><USER23> > I would contend that though you are at the tail end of the curve that > doesn't need an intermediary

If you want to do away with intermediaries, what Bitcoin needs is a large ecosystem, such that my BTC never needs to be converted to USD to be useful - I want to be able to be paid in BTC, then to be able to exchange that same BTC for food. The food vendor in turn needs to be able to exchange that BTC for, say, a car.

For that to happen, Bitcoin needs a critical mass of adopters. Unfortunately, the Bitcoin feature of capping the number of total BTCs in circulation means that the number of BTC users will always be limited.

<comment><USER34> _the number of BTC users will always be limited_

Mmh.. mathematically true, but practically? First consider that block awards will continue being generated until roughly the year 2100 and probably up to another half decade on top of that.

Empires have crumbled in less time..

Secondly, remember that 1BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places. There's no reason that .00000001BTC (aka 1 Satoshi) couldn't become the base unit of transaction.

If this were to happen (say with a client update), that would mean, once the block awards cease generating in a hundred years or so, and all 24,000,000 BTC are mined, that would mean there's (24M * 10^8) 24 _quintillion_ individual units of currency in the world.

<comment><USER35> There will never be even 21 million of BTC. Pretty close to 21M, but it won't get there. Also, 99,99% of block rewards will be distributed before 2040. The next 60 years till 2100 blocks will only reward a few satoshis each, except for transaction fees.

<comment><USER34> _There will never be even 21 million of BTC._

Why not? As I understand the algorithm, the decay rate of block awards is pretty much a constant, understood thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Side note, I'm noticing a lot of merchants accepting bitcoin asking for more information than they should need.

For example I tried to buy an ebook recently and it required my home address.

For Credit cards I believe that's required to verify the billing info, but there's no reason bitcoin purchases should need it for non-shippable products. And it cancels out a lot of the benefits of using bitcoins (fast purchase, anonymous from marketers)

<comment><USER37> We sell digital services (ebooks count), and require the customers address (or part of) to determine the VAT status of the sale.

Even though buying an e-book for Bitcoin seems like you shouldn't need any personally identifiable information, quite often merchants do need to collect it.

<comment><USER38> So collect the country or state, not the home address.

<comment><USER39> You do know that in the US counties (and possibly cities, I need to double check cities) can leverage sales tax as well. However, it should only really be an issue of where you have nexus.

It's probably just how their system handle's orders (you need home address for CC for AVS, so it's probably just required everywhere in their code.

<comment><USER40> In the US, cities can levy sales taxes as well. Also, the city field in your address does not accurately indicate your municipal boundaries; it's more of an identifier of which post office serves you and which municipal boundaries it falls within.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> These is very good news overall, taking into account that we are now in the first-stage-of-adoption of bitcoins, where the most important is to spread the info about bitcoins and increase its usage.

In a later stage, when bitcoins are more diseminated and people feels bitcoin more "domestic", then there will be a interest for "personal-wallets" and "business-wallets", which may be hardware-wallets, or multisig-insured-online- services...

TLDR; this is a good-first step toward bitcoin adoption, further later will be another step towards personal-wallets.

</comment><comment><USER42> How does this deal with damage deposits? Why would I pay with bitcoin when many rewards cards pay out extra when you use them for travel-related use?

Honestly, the cynic in me says the use case for spending bitcoin is a quick way for speculators to "cash out" in a way that makes it easier to hide earnings from the tax-man.

<comment> rational-future Honestly, the cynic in you may say everyone buying a kitchen knife plans to cut a child throat, but that won't decrease the usefulness of kitchen knifes.

Damage deposits - not something Expedia does with credit cards or PayPal, hotels have to ask their clients for a credit card at check in.

Rewards - it's just a matter of time for Bitcoin rewards schemes to appear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Speculative bitcoiners will not spend their hard-earned BTC on travel goods and services.

They will HODL and continue to buy their air and hotel with fiat cash which will be cheaper, faster, and easier.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is only in US, I went to expedia, no bitcoin option, well that was a let down.

</comment><comment><USER45> Too bad, I liked expedia. Now I have to use travelocity.</comment>


Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai's Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170906/13431338159/case-dismissed-judge-throws-out-shiva-ayyadurais-defamation-lawsuit-against-techdirt.shtml <comment><USER2> This is great news! It's disgusting that it needed to even go to court.</comment>


Arduino OpenCat - <AUTHOR> https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/petoi/opencat-845129 <comment><USER2> Seems odd to call it "OpenCat" but refuse to share STL files for the 3d-printed parts or source code for the project.

<comment><USER3> I definitely noticed that irony. I think he'd probably get just as many customers even if he open sources it, just because a lot of people like me don't really have the time or expertise to assemble this.

<comment><USER4> Sure: I'd like to purchase three versions of it _simultaneously_ to learn how it works: fully assembled, as a kit, and in a source form. That way I guess debugging it would be much easier, and should the two get assembled successfully, they'd make great gifts!

<comment><USER5> Making two of them interact with each other would be fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I always wonder when seeing animal-like robots: they don't have a tail, which however seems to be pretty important for animals to keep balance... how do robots (or de-tailed animals) compensate for the lack of a tail?

<comment><USER7> I think a lot of the compensation comes from slower speed and lower-complexity movements. It's absolutely the case that a cheetah uses it's tail when making turns at high velocity, but it's also true that a robot can ovoid the need for a tail by turning slowly and not having any lateral g-forces to contend with.

Off topic, but this has always astounded me - the cheetah's tail was the inspiration Kobe Bryant used for fixing his form on his fade-away jumper; one of his legs is always stuck out in a seemingly awkward manner but he's using it to balance his body as he falls away from the basket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Excellent work. I have been using the Arduino for some projects. Other than a horrible development environment it is very fun to play with. Been trying to get it to work with CLion, but after a good twenty hours of work there are still uglinesses.

<comment><USER9> I suggest you try programming the AVR chips directly. I use Atmel studio to compile, notepad++ to edit , and the following to burn a chip:

[https://www.amazon.com/High-speed-TL866CS-Universal- Programm...](https://www.amazon.com/High-speed-TL866CS-Universal-Programmer- Programming/dp/B00AWJ7SA4)

Tutorial :

[http://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/programmer-minipro- tl866-howt...](http://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/programmer-minipro-tl866-howto)

<comment><USER10> You can use avr-gcc, no need for a heavy ide.

<comment><USER11> I heartily recommend PlatformIO. It makes hardware programming much, much easier by handling dependencies, compilation, etc.

<comment><USER12> "Handling" dependencies automatically is _fantastic_ when it works. But it reaches varying degrees of anarchy and hopelessness when it doesn't.

The more ambitious the framework, the more you have to wade through to figure out what it's actually doing when something breaks...I'd much rather have to deal with some cross-compilation headaches and dependencies than to be at a dead end when the 'black magic' stops working.

<comment><USER10> Or, I assume, when the company behind the service goes out of business or shifts focus...

<comment><USER8> That is a risk when you use any service, even if it is open source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hope this guy does some kind of kickstarter with the parts. I would buy one in a heartbeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would really like to see how the leg assembly works.

the joint reminds me of troody a little.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/walking-the- dinos...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/walking-the-dinosaur/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> cool work. Has anybody similar project references for opensource work on animal walking?

</comment><comment><USER14> very cool</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know of any good product taking advantage of voice interactions? - <AUTHOR> Voice interactions seem very popular today, but are they actually any good and useful? When was your last encounter with a good product taking advantage of this technology? <comment><USER2> Might not be what you meant, but SuperCoco is an iOS app that teaches Spanish primarily through voice interactions.

</comment><comment><USER3> "good?" product "taking advantage?" of voice interactions?

sorry for the semantics, but good and taking advantage seem opposed to each other.

In my experience, voice interaction products chronicly misinterpret what is being said, and seem to be a field of embedded advertisements. I predict this will go the same as mobile did.

sorry but i dont know of any good products of this nature at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't used it but I'm watching the development of the Mycroft virtual assistant closely.</comment>


Show HN: PartKAM – a flash-based 2.5d CAM application (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://partkam.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Figured I'd post this before the flash player is EOL. This is an open-source flash application I wrote 10 years ago while I was in school.

[https://launchpad.net/partkam](https://launchpad.net/partkam) here's a youtube video, if you don't want to enable flash:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocmYJlFGjXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocmYJlFGjXY)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P__6HAEeiIk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P__6HAEeiIk)

It's a CAM program that imports SVG files, performs offset operations, then exports toolpaths as Gcode for CNC machines. It's written in flash/AS3 because I really wanted it to be web-based, and it wasn't quite possible to do this kind of graphical application in javascript back then.

It uses a custom offset/intersection algorithm that I wrote in AS3, mostly because there were no other options (now there's clipper.js)

I think over the years a few people have used it. There weren't many options for free CAM programs, which is mostly why I made this.</comment>


Yep, Slack Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/12/21256717/slack-is-down-disruption-outage <comment><USER2> Don't post this kind of thing. It is not interesting</comment>


University of Farmington - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington <comment><USER2> There is some detail missing here.

It is all a DHS run operation, but they arrested the recruiters?

They actively sought recruiters?

Then arrested folks who the recruiters duped?

This is a weird story, and for a Wikipedia page it has a lot of holes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link after ICE took down the website: [https://universityoffarmington.edu](https://universityoffarmington.edu)

<comment><USER2> >THIS SERVER HAS BEEN TAKEN OFFLINE

Obviously not...</comment></comment>


Make Your Own Deficit-Reduction Plan - <AUTHOR> http://projects.wsj.com/my-deficit-plan/#sel=19c2e4d3-6fcfb7ff-1f

<comment><USER2> So basically end the Bush tax cuts…</comment>


Rock Band game platform opens to indie music - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10289771-27.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I had recently been thinking about if it would possible to hack original songs into Rock Band/Guitar Hero. I guess this will enable it to happen officially for Rock Band at least (with required approval...).

<http://creators.rockband.com/>

It is already possible in Frets on Fire or course:

<http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Fellow HNers are running jamlegend.com</comment>


When it comes to startups, products and services don't mix - <AUTHOR> http://giffconstable.com/2010/01/when-it-comes-to-startups-products-and-services-dont-mix/ <comment><USER2> I'm a 'bit' investor (angel round) in a small startup that has been doing both, a product and a service.

There is a really nice synergy between the two happening there. The product functions as the ice breaker, the services come after.

It saves them a ton on marketing costs for their services division, basically the customers come to them, find out what a nice little company it is and then decide to trade 'up'.

\--

edit: In general I think this is bad advice, small startups that do only 'one thing' and are not willing to move where the money is tend to die out rather quickly.

It often doesn't really matter what brings in the $ to stay afloat, as long as you are clear about where you want to be.

If consulting or fixed price jobs are what keeps you in business long enough to get a solid product or if you use a product as the door opener to sell more services, as long as you don't let the interests in the one conflict with the other you should be in good shape.

Much better shape than those that only have a product or only do contract work. Ideally you need three legs to stand on, so three products, preferably aimed at different markets, or a services division that you can use to pick up the slack.

Just a single product or just contracting is asking for trouble, and contracting with only a single large customer to bring in more than 40% of your total income stream is really playing Russian roulette.

<comment><USER3> I think you're wrong. Once you go down the path to doing consulting, you lose the hunger to build the product business because the money keeps coming in.

pg says[1] that most product startups die when they become consulting businesses, and I think he's right. Do you have counter-examples of how a product startup became a consulting company and then went back to being a product startup? Not saying it isn't do-able, just that it's much harder. I'm in the spot now, and having an interesting time dealing with the challenges.

EDIT: By wrong, I mean, I think you're right that you shouldn't let the consulting business interfere but in practice that is almost impossible to do.

1\. <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html#f2n>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 37signals is an obvious counter-example.</comment>


Low-priced, ARM architecture-based dedicated root servers [Hetzner] - <AUTHOR> https://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/news/neu-preiswerte-root-server-auf-basis-der-arm-architektur

<comment><AUTHOR> I just discovered they added an ARM line of dirt-cheap dedicated server to their offer. But I'm surprised by the maximum 2GB RAM available... I mean, there are many phones with more memory than that!</comment>


Show HN: Get CRON translation in your terminal – Written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bufrsh/cron <comment><USER2> i was hoping this was a utility that i could use in my console not a webservice. though it seems very useful in its purpose!</comment>


Responsive v3 Released - <AUTHOR> http://responsivebp.com/

<comment><USER2> Whenever I see frameworks like this I immediately try and work out whether it uses mixins or classes to achieve layout.

I have it ingrained in me that css identifiers (classes/ids) should be semantic to the data and not the visual side.

I know this isn't a big factor for some people, and on that front it looks super and design philosophy is very cool (lightweight is great!).

<comment><USER3> I also agree that HTML classes and ids should describe the content and CSS mixins should be used to connect the right style to each HTML id.

At first it seemed to me that Responsive did not use mixings, but this is not completely true. The utilities are all mixings but the partials are fixed instantiation of mixins (`.row { @extend .clearfix; }`).

In my perfect world it `.row` would be `.row { @extend row; }`, so I can be able to avoid using the "row" class altogether and do things like `#definitions > p { @extend row }`.

<comment><USER4> But once the .row class is defined, you can do @extend .row in sass and it will do what you want...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the look of this and it's more what I'd be looking from in a css framework than Bootstrap or Foundation, which I feel I can never use in a project because most(all) of the projects I work on don't look like Bootstrap.

This looks like a great starting point. It's a bit like Normalize on steroids.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can you please explain how it differs from skeleton ? Would be helpful in choosing for new projects.

<comment><USER7> I was under the impression that skeleton is no longer actively developed? Looks like the last commit on their github repo is from 2012.

<comment><USER6> Agree, however haven't found any problems with it. Isn't the point of minimalist framework is to avoid feature creeps with each iteration? Realistically it's a simple CSS framework.

<comment><USER8> But the browser landscape keeps changing?

<comment><USER9> but if you do grids, and they already work now, what do you add in the next iteration?

It's not like float: left and width: 30% will stop working in the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it too much to ask for a responsive, js-less framework? Or am I just the only one who hates javascript?

<comment><USER11> I agree, but the problem is that JS is part of HTML5; so we're supposed to just deal with it. :(</comment></comment>


Illegal prime number - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

<comment><USER2> "Illegal number" is a loaded term designed to point out the ridiculousness of certain copyrights.

However, I've always found this odd. Since pretty much any information can be conveyed as a number, why aren't people complaining about the UTF-8 encoding of Harry Potter being an illegal number? Why does this term seem limited to crypto/DRM?

<comment><USER3> Harry Potter isn't illegal, you're just violating copyright if you distribute it.

However I believe the DMCA makes DRM circumention itself illegal, hence DeCSS itself is illegal.

That's my understanding at least.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. Would child porn be a valid comparison then? It's illegal to possess child porn. So should this reasoning fly?

"Sir, this is NOT a pornographic image featuring a minor, it's just a very large number!"

<comment><USER4> The argument that "it's just numbers" was considered insipid 20 years ago. There's a Dilbert where Wally says "I was just transmitting 1s and 0s, it's your computer that is really at fault for encoding them into <whatever the thing that got him into trouble with HR>." We are, of course, not meant to take Wally's argument seriously.

I could encode my inciting of a mob to violence as a prime number. No one, least of all HN, should accept this argument that "it's just a number."

<comment><USER3> The thing about the illegal prime wasn't so much that it's "just a number", rather that it would be archived and published independently because it's a novel prime for mathematical value, not for the purpose of breaking DRM, hence providing an interesting test to free speech law (can you really say that a specific prime cannot be published in a list of primes simply because it happens to represent DeCSS's source code?)

<comment><USER4> The law is full of contradictions. Pointing out an inconsistency is not a victory[1]. One principle or the other will lose, and the one that loses might be yours.

[1] [http://xkcd.com/651/](http://xkcd.com/651/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the last two times this came up:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6568660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6568660)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045150)

</comment><comment><USER6> The coolest thing about this is it actually works. You can go ahead and copy the number out of the wikipedia page put it into a python prompt convert it to binary write it to a file and decompress it. Pretty awesome!

        >>> s = '''4 85650 78965 73978 29309 84189 46942 86137 70744 20873 51357 92401 96520 73668 69851 34010 47237 44696 87974 39926 11751 09737 77701 02744 75280 49058 83138 40375 49709 98790 96539 55227 01171 21570 25974 66699 32402 26834 59661 96060 34851 74249 77358 46851 88556 74570 25712 54749 99648 21941 84655 71008 41190 86259 71694 79707 99152 00486 67099 75923 59606 13207 25973 79799 36188 60631 69144 73588 30024 53369 72781 81391 47979 55513 39994 93948 82899 84691 78361 00182 59789 01031 60196 18350 34344 89568 70538 45208 53804 58424 15654 82488 93338 04747 58711 28339 59896 85223 25446 08408 97111 97712 76941 20795 86244 05471 61321 00500 64598 20176 96177 18094 78113 62200 27234 48272 24932 32595 47234 68800 29277 76497 90614 81298 40428 34572 01463 48968 54716 90823 54737 83566 19721 86224 96943 16227 16663 93905 54302 41564 73292 48552 48991 22573 94665 48627 14048 21171 38124 38821 77176 02984 12552 44647 44505 58346 28144 88335 63190 27253 19590 43928 38737 64073 91689 12579 24055 01562 08897 87163 37599 91078 87084 90815 90975 48019 28576 84519 88596 30532 38234 90558 09203 29996 03234 47114 07760 19847 16353 11617 13078 57608 48622 36370 28357 01049 61259 56818 46785 96533 31007 70179 91614 67447 25492 72833 48691 60006 47585 91746 27812 12690 07351 83092 41530 10630 28932 95665 84366 20008 00476 77896 79843 82090 79761 98594 93646 30938 05863 36721 46969 59750 27968 77120 57249 96666 98056 14533 82074 12031 59337 70309 94915 27469 18356 59376 21022 20068 12679 82734 45760 93802 03044 79122 77498 09179 55938 38712 10005 88766 68925 84487 00470 77255 24970 60444 65212 71304 04321 18261 01035 91186 47666 29638 58495 08744 84973 73476 86142 08805 29443'''
        >>> s = s.replace(' ', '')
        >>> import ctypes
        >>> PyLong_AsByteArray = ctypes.pythonapi._PyLong_AsByteArray
        >>> PyLong_AsByteArray.argtypes = [ctypes.py_object,
        ...                                ctypes.c_char_p,
        ...                                ctypes.c_size_t,
        ...                                ctypes.c_int,
        ...                                ctypes.c_int]
        >>>
        >>> def packl_ctypes(lnum):
        ...     a = ctypes.create_string_buffer(lnum.bit_length()//8 + 1)
        ...     PyLong_AsByteArray(lnum, a, len(a), 0, 1)
        ...     return a.raw
        >>> with open('/tmp/i', 'w') as f: f.write(packl_ctypes(i))
        ...

then in a bash prompt

        $ cat /tmp/i | gzip -cd

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not usually fond of the argument that "all data is just numbers so copyright is invalid" (cue the "color of your bits " article) but I must say this is pretty clever.

I wonder if you could extend this principle by writing a program that would extract copyrighted material from public domain work.

Like, you write a program that would take text as an input, apply a transformation and output the result. If you input the bible, you get the source code to DeCSS. Is this code illegal? I don't think you could fill a DMCA against the bible...

<comment><AUTHOR> The source code would practically be in the transformation, the bible would only be a key.

<comment><USER3> Eh, you could deliberately word-substitute and reformat the bible so that it, itself, contains the data in some form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only if you could do that by some meaningful and simple process. If you simply generate a table (of the same length as the source code) that produces the source code when added to the bible, that's just basic cryptography, a sort of indirect way to store the source code.

<comment><USER3> Nah, what I'm proposing is steganography not cryptography. Encode it hidden within the text in terms of word lengths, comma positions, number of commas per sentence, word capitalisation, or some other property like that:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I take issue with the presenting of this.

The prime itself is kind of useless. What is useful is the number, plus the instructions about what to do with it, how to run it, how to apply it.

This is similar to saying "Book is just a collection of letters, but you can distribute the actual letters one by one and it's allright, isn't copyright absurd?".

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, the "it's just a number" argument doesn't hold up. What's interesting in this case though, is that it's not just any other number, but a prime of mathematical relevance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Check out [http://www.magnus-opus.com/](http://www.magnus-opus.com/)

It's a copyrighted algorithmic composition that contains most, if not all international phone numbers. They conveniently supply a form so that you can gain a license to use your phone number if it is in the composition.

</comment><comment><USER10> A fun project on similar lines: [https://github.com/philipl/pifs](https://github.com/philipl/pifs)

</comment><comment><USER11> Why prime? Is that because they're remarkable? Then any number would do since all numbers are remarkable (otherwise if there was a (set of) non-remarkable numbers, there would be a smallest one, hence it'd be remarkable itself, and so on).

<comment><USER9> I think it is because primes are widely accepted as remarkable. They are seen as things you discover - you don't invent them.

The fact that they have practical application is important too. Do we really want a legal system where you have to get clearances from the MPAA to make ship building software, for instance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good idea for some tshirt printing. By extension won't be PI illegal as it can contain all the information in the universe ? (at infinity at least)

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)</comment>


Naming Names on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/technology/naming-names-on-the-internet.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print

<comment><USER3> It's only passingly relevant to the story but I hate when people bring up Choi Jin-Sil in this context (that's the name of the South Korean actress mentioned in the article). A few facts about that case...

1\. She had a history of battling Depression and at the time was depressed over the suicide of her close friend.

2\. She didn't leave a suicide note or give any reason for her suicide.

3\. Her brother, who also had a history of depression, also killed himself a couple years later

4\. Far from being bullied by the Internet trolls she had fought back and pressed charges. The police had made an arrest at the time of her death (libel is obviously a much bigger thing in South Korea)

5\. Less than 6 days passed between when she reported the issue to the police and when they made an arrest. So anonymity didn't pose that big an obstacle

The South Korean policies were really just politicians jumping on the tragic death of a popular star and trying to make it look like they fixed a problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer." - <USER2> Schmidt

There are no dogs posting on the internet and there's no such thing as a "fake person". That leaves real people and spammers. There are lots of tools to filter out spam and you mostly see spam on websites that are just not using any of them.

So, if that's really the argument Google's chairman has for abandoning anonymity and pseudonymity on the internet, can't we all just move on now and not pretend that "real names" policies are anything other than sheer demonstrations of dominance by these services and politicians?

<comment><USER5> Not to mention I'm seeing spam on Google+, while my pseudonymous friends are very difficult to find and/or recognize. In fact, _because_ they're not allowed to use their names by which I know them, for _each and every spam_ I am forced to wonder whether this might not be somebody I actually already know - clearly the reverse of a sane antispam strategy.

So all in all, this Google policy is wrongheaded and basically we all know it. I'm with you. It's yet another power grab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, people should only publish pamphlets under their real names. If you want to opine on American politics, you should have the guts to put your name on the front of the pamphlet, like our Founding Fathers did, not hide behind a cowardly videogame pseudonym like "Publius" or something.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll repost something I commented a few months ago about the comparison of anonymous and real-name or 'transparent' systems:

Ultimately the question is one of freedom vs enforced rules.

If you have a system of anonymity or pseudonymity, it's always possible to identify yourself by a real identity if you want to. Whether this takes the form of 4chan's "photo with a shoe on your head" or Reddit's "Post about this to your twitter account", reliably associating a pseudonym to a meatspace person is easy. So you can get the advantages of the 'transparent' system in a pseudonymous system _if you want them_ , but you're never forced to.

The only way to properly run a transparent system is to force everyone to identify themselves. Then you can't get any of the benefits of anonymity.

The only people pushing for 'transparent systems' are people who have some material gain from them - advertisers, information miners, law enforcement etc. I think they have enough power as it is.

So I'm in favour of anonymity by default, keeping the choice to be transparent in the hands of the individual.

<comment><USER8> Not the only ones. I have no power to leverage or gain via a transparent society and yet I advocate it. Or, at least, no personal gain that everyone else would not also share.

To me it merely seems inevitable and if we acknowledge that we can make sure it's actually a transparent society, instead of just a glass-walled prison.

<comment><USER7> > we can make sure it's actually a transparent society, instead of just a > glass-walled prison.

I'm not being flippant, but what do you see as the difference?

<comment><USER8> Transparency up versus down. London now has only the wrong sort, for instance. They can watch you on almost any street but if you tried to record a police officer they'd arrest or add you to a watch list or something.

Whereas if encryption and hidden cameras go far enough we'll be able to spy on the authorities as well as them spying on us, thus keeping things in check.

These guys call call it sousveillance <http://wearcam.org/sousveillance.htm> but I think they overthink the idea a little. Simply put, who watches the watchers? Unless it's me at some level I'm not funding/legitimizing the system.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Genius use of Pinterest by UNIQLO. Keep scrolling down. - <AUTHOR> http://pinterest.com/source/uniqlo.com/

<comment><USER2> I can't seem to find an ideal column number to keep the items in an order where matching items go together. I think it's because the first item is shorter and it causes misalignment. I do see what they're trying to do, and it's definitely cool. Only pinterest board I've thought was worth looking at.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some images are 192x8228 pixels. This is probably scrolling in the shop monitors (if there are any). It has a catchy effect.</comment>


Does Organic Agriculture Contribute to Climate Change? - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/does-organic-agriculture-contribute-to-climate-change/ <comment><USER2> All agriculture contributes to climate change.</comment>


IRS Issues New Safe Harbors for Management Contracts to Facilitate P3s - <AUTHOR> http://www.bondbuyer.com/news/washington-taxation/irs-issues-new-safe-harbors-for-management-contracts-to-facilitate-p3s-1111686-1.html <comment><AUTHOR> This quote is toward the bottom but I think it has a significant point to why this IRS perspective matters:

> _" An owner is one who shares in the profits and losses of the business," > Caprera said. "If the manager's compensation is reasonable and not tied to > profits or losses, the Rev. Proc. recognizes that the manager is not an > owner."_

The details in the article clarify the reasoning. Maybe a few here are tax/policy students too (amateur or otherwise). Hoping the US infrastructure will find ways to benefit, I'm of the belief a lot of investment is needed and employment of local, perhaps stationary labor in a CCC-type make-work program. Worked before...

</comment><comment><USER2> I read that as "Management Contracts to Facilitate PS3s" and couldn't for the life of me understand why they'd want to use an older console.</comment>


Knowledge gap is a new Wealth gap - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/qoorio/knowledge-gap-is-a-gap-in-life-quality-standards-680678b21eb5 <comment><USER2> New? It is older than material wealth as a gap. Being the only one who knows how to fish in a band of human hunter-gatherers. Hell specialization is even in the name.

<comment><USER3> Actually knowledge gap is a gap in life quality & standards.</comment></comment>


Linuxbrew – The Homebrew package manager for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://linuxbrew.sh/ <comment><USER2> What does Linuxbrew do better than existing package managers?

<comment><USER3> Root-less installation of packages into user-directories.

I use it a lot in our scientific cluster environment. My User home directory contains a linuxbrew installation and is shared over NFS. Every cluster node can access all linuxbrew software.

It beats central coordination with the administrators, or writing module files for the cluster environment by a lot.

A cp -r $HOME/.linuxbrew $HOME/.linuxbrew.bak && brew potentially-destructive- operation is also super useful.

Packages are also very close to the latest version.

You get all the work people did got MacOS on Linux.

For package developers, their recipe system is really good and easy.

Of course, a transactional package Manager like nix or guix that can also run inside a user-directory would also give most of these advantages, but I am already used to brew from my MacBook, no additional learning effort required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any news here? An announcement from the project or something?

</comment><comment><USER5> why use this over Nix or Guix?</comment>


Why is HTML Suddenly Interesting? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/why-is-html-suddenly-interesti.html

<comment><USER2> HTML and the whole dynamic web-app thing became interesting once a major party deployed a wide-spread application that used asynchronous updates.

Wait, let's go back a little.

HTML became interesting once Microsoft implemented an ActiveX XMLHTTPRequest object to enable a web-based Outlook client.

It became a stable development target once Microsoft disbanded the IE development team ('we've won the browser war so let's add some features to Word instead') and other browsers (primarily the Mozilla XUL/Gecko-based Firefox) took this de-facto standard and provided a viable alternative to IE with a more-or-less API compatible XMLHTTPRequest object.

That IE6 is still the industry standard is a thorn in the eye of many developers (including yours truly), but it has presented Microsoft with enough inertia that they now can no longer dictate how the next generation of browsers is going to behave.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because "HTML 5" has very little to do with "HTML" the markup language. Most of the interesting features are accessed via JavaScript APIs, not markup.

<comment><USER4> So my gut feeling to stay with HTML 4.01 and use the new cool javascript features is perfectly sane?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Short answer: HTML 5 and fast Javascript engines.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why asynchronous file upload still a pain?

</comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr version: because html5 is coming and MS can't ruin it for everyone this time.

I agree and have been getting acquainted with HTML5; I advise everyone else to.

<comment><USER8> What does _tl;dr_ mean? I've seen it a few times here and wondered about it.

<comment><USER9> too long; didn't read

<comment><USER8> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> onreact-com Yeah, exactly. I started coding HTML in 1999 and soon moved to JavaScript and DHTML which quickly got forgotten until lately the AJAX wave started. My love affair with Flash was only a very short one. My hope in SVG never materialized. Before that HTML was dull and outdated. We still use only 5 fonts for web copy etc. and it's already ten years later.

The Microsoft monopoly has killed progress.

Seeing Apple blocking Opera from the iPhone and another behemoth, Google being the main contender I don't see a much better "mobile" future. The market will soon "consolidate" and another monopoly will make HTML dull again.

We need a really free web with really free software. I don't think the "mobile" one will be it. Maybe the "Internet of things" will be the one that frees us from the shackles of stifling monopolist corporate rule.

<comment><USER10> I think there's a bit of pessimism in your comment, specifically in regard to Apple/Opera and ignoring the strengths of Webkit. In fact, I believe the iPhone already supports some HTML 5 standards.

However I can't say I blame your negativity given the bad taste MS left in everyone's mouth.</comment></comment>


Is this how to get banned for life from Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/09/the-y-combinator-companies/#comment-365012 <comment><USER2> That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen someone attach their name to.

<comment><USER3> Hands up who makes mistakes? I do, usually technical, a lot social but some mistakes reveal more about character. Character is lot harder to judge than skillset, passion and being smart. Character means you can trust this person, know that they will do what they say they will do. Do the right thing.

Two instances I've seen where someones character has been exposed, one resulted in sacking (trying to hack the server & being caught, then police being called) and the other - hacking (after being in the company for 1 day, hacked root, added themselves to wheel & logged in externally via ssh, ordered software on company money). What was their motive? Curiosity, greed? I don't know. I do know I wouldn't want to work with them. You simply can't trust them to do the right thing.

From the looks this bloke is pretty young & eager. [0], [1] Reading the post does expose a character flaw (we all have them), _impatience_. More and more I'm reading of people getting frustrated in not getting acceptance as if this is their only shot. Now or never. This is simply not the case. In fact if you think this I really question you _determination_ and resolve.

Now back to ' _cash for comments_ '. Inside information for the highest bidder. So what was the cash for? Well to start the startup of course. Just another way to raise money? Well it's pretty stupid, ill planned and looking at the responses out of step in what's expected. And to do it on such a high- profile site with your name. That's punishment enough.

Maybe there ought to be another item added in, 'Startup Mistakes'. [2] Perhaps what should be added is something about _"how you respond to failure & setback"_. What is the right way? What is the wrong way explaining what you have to loose.

Reference

[0] bootload, 'What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?':

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13193>

[1] In a post I added on what 'best is the best idea you _could_ be working on' rms gave this reply ~<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13193>

Reading the reply may give you a better insight into his _character_ and help you determine his motives.

[2] pg, 'The 18 mistakes that kill startups'

<http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

<comment><USER4> Why do you always post footnotes? It's starting to bother me a lot.

Especially when you cite yourself. First.

<comment><USER3> ' _... Especially when you cite yourself. First. ...'_

If you follow the post thread you'll see why. It's been asked here ~<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14404> to death.

'hint': Meaning Economy ~ <http://jeremie.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070328-000042>

<comment><USER4> Self quoting is bad form any time, it's worse when you do it recursively. Especially to boost your own relevance in google.

<comment><USER3> Do you have anything meaningful to add? I do ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=11826>

<comment><USER4> Simple answer: yes. Relationship credit models have been pretty widely explored.

A decent way to do it is to build a matrix of friends/enemies/etc and iterate over it until you have absolute values.

Example implementation (not mine) here: <http://bitchun.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bitchun/tracker/ruby/>

<comment><USER3> ' _... Simple answer: yes... build a matrix of friends/enemies/etc and iterate over it until you have absolute values ...'_

Slashdot tried a model similar to this. The result you still got polarisation of views, short snipes without any real value. I don't think it's simple. Why? You can't change "human behaviour". Anything you do there will be some person trying to find a loophole. Joshua Schachter (delicious fame) went into great lengths in his talk on itconversation about this.

Especially just with an algorythm approach. Though one thing I can think of that did more than anything for me was a points filter (meaning you can simply not view someones comments below a certain threshold ) . A more broader approach has better chances of encouraging (enforcing) good behaviour.

One successful approach I have seen, can be found in the _perlmonks_ (a perl programming) site where users gain karma through numerous means (time on the system, posts and moderation) enforced by a top down 'Benovolent dictatorship' and in effect a hierarchy.

You join the site as a novice & work your way up earning rights through encouraged & enforced behaviour. For instance you have to be a certain level (say level 5) before you can front-page a post. Another level and you can join groups effecting the design of the site. This type of conditioning means for instance users don't have power beyond their maturity. If they do things _out- of-line_ (say for instance random down-modding or excessive referencing) they can be pulled in before the inevitable _kitten fights_ (al-la slashdot) begins.

In time, as a user reaches a certain level (of maturity) certain rights are allowed. So the combination of brute user moderation and a more subtle framework encourages finding solutions to problems rather than /. type brawls.

I don't think mere code alone solves undesirable behaviour in systems. And it would be a good area for developers with a 'psychology', 'group dynamics' background to explore and add more knowledge.

<comment><USER4> The system I pointed out is free from those flaws, for precisely one reason: karma in that sort of system is always relative.

That is, everyone moderates according to their own tastes, and nobody is 'better' than anyone else. It all sums to zero, the only filtering is by individual preference.

<comment><USER3> _'The system I pointed out is free from those flaws, for precisely one reason: karma in that sort of system is always relative '_

Can you give me some sites that use this (aside from skype)? Can you explain how say person 1, rates person 2 and how the rating is viewed from person 2's point of view? ... or say person 3 observing?

<comment><USER4> person 1 allocates one or many positive or negative points to person 2.

person 2 shows person 1 as having higher/lower karma, person 1 shows person 2 as having higher/lower karma.

Person 3 has no viewpoint unless they are in the system. There is no 'absolute' objective viewpoint without taking a stance.

A user with no ratings of anyone sees everyone with the same karma.

All four of the major extended interactions work too. (friend of a friend, enemy of a friend, enemy of an enemy, friend of an enemy)

Another property is that it doesn't matter how many points you use. You may rate someone up or down as much as you desire, or make up your own rating system, whatever works for you.

<comment><USER3> ' _... Person 3 has no viewpoint unless they are in the system ...'_ So there is effectively no visible karma? - unless person 3 intersects person 1 and person 2?

That's a pretty good system. How do you measure (unless you have admin on the system) person 1 compared to person 2 and person 3? From the way I see this would it work on a system where a (visible) reward is given out for effort? (I define effort as creating links + comment).

The reason I ask is that how do you encourage users here to add content and create a leader board? I know the constraints are bit tight, but if you solve this it would be worth recommending to features.

<comment><USER4> Well, one way is to pick a viewpoint and use that. But really, the important thing is, you see that you are valued by the people you respect. As long as you're a user in the system, it's obvious whether you have good or bad karma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I saw this post several months ago, I e-mailed the guy and chewed him out ("what on earth are you thinking", yadda yadda). He emailed back with an apology, something along the lines of him being a bit drunk when he posted it. Fair enough.

He had the balls a few weeks later to ask me if I would VOUCH for him to PG. Yeah, no, that didn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER6> Web-based OS. LOL:

CPU multitasking ... OS Scheduler ... Threads as implemented by C++ or whatever ... Browser ... Javascript Interpreter ... Faked-out single-threaded multi-thread emulator ... "Browser-based OS".

And of course, if you want an "application" in your "OS" you can always fire up Sun HotSpot.

<comment><USER7> Um... I readily admit that Web OS is a misnomer. I mean a browser start page that implements useful tasks beyond what Netvibes and Pageflakes offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Banned? Wasn't rms selected at this most recent SFP?</comment>


Why Louder.me Isn't "Just a Music Platform"? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@dima_pavlenko/why-louder-me-isn-t-just-a-music-platform-d8a145d3b5 <comment><USER2> Love the concept, but a few key points drove me away:

\- Add Spotify login right at the front page so when I login I start listening to music right away, not a separate login page.

\- I want to use you app to listen to music while doing something else, not paying attention to the web client. Can I do that? If so, make it clear enough on the front page and make a better explanation of what 'Arcade' means.</comment>


5500 questions and answers for learning web development with Rails. - <AUTHOR> http://www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk/other/web_development_flashcards

<comment><USER2> Looks very useful!

(Minor quirk: whenever I get to the bottom of the page, it automatically scrolls up again about ten lines after a second. Happens in both Safari and Chrome, running on OS X)

</comment><comment><USER3> Going to take a look now. Looks very interesting and useful. Will leave a donation if I learn from them.

BTW, your anki link doesn't point to the anki flashcard viewer site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out the url problem, I've taken care of it now.</comment></comment>


Secrets Management for Applications in Cloud Agnostic Environments - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cruise/secrets-management-3a7c47fe81b <comment><AUTHOR> Introducing Daytona, a tool for automating secrets injection in AWS, GCP, and Kubernetes environments.

[https://github.com/cruise-automation/daytona](https://github.com/cruise- automation/daytona)</comment>


Trivago helps secure webpack's future with 120,000 sponsorship - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/webpack/trivago-helps-secure-webpacks-future-73a58a016873 <comment><USER2> Checkout the other HN post here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911836)

</comment><comment><USER2> trivago blogged about this in their engineering blog here: [http://tech.trivago.com/2017/08/02/sponsoring- webpack/](http://tech.trivago.com/2017/08/02/sponsoring-webpack/)

I am working for trivago. If you have any questions, i can answer them or forward them to the right team to get the answer. AMA!</comment>