SeedRamp - <AUTHOR> http://www.seedramp.com/ <comment><USER2> The have a bad attitude: "For the next 15 minutes, we will try to explain why you and/or your ideas suck" ([http://goo.gl/NNKtIK](http://goo.gl/NNKtIK))

And want to invest with a $1M valuation ([http://goo.gl/2686da](http://goo.gl/2686da)).

To my mind, not so interesting. Sounds more like shark loans

<comment><USER3> In fairness, the next sentence is "If we fail, you get a check.", so I'm taking that more as an attempt at dry humour. Watching a random sampling of videos, the feedback is pretty thoughtful and polite. Of course the valuations aren't going to be the highest bearing in mind the tiny amount invested and absence of due diligence.

<comment><USER4> I agree. this is just a poor attempt at dry humor. That being said, If you read his manifesto, he sounds very angry about the need for connections to get investors and his anger comes off as crude and disrespectful in general. Maybe it's just me, but he can do without all the contempt and anger and net the same or a better result.

<comment><USER5> why not? it's a mildly refreshing change of pace from the smarmy bullshit and platitudes most people put out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 20k ? Can you not just generate that much by consulting on the side? Thats what I am doing. But then I have no choice as I am old , unattractive and have an accent.

<comment><USER7> In a month?

<comment><USER8> I once did a code review for $3,500 and it took about 8-12 hours. After I was done, they asked me to fix the few bugs I found. I told them I was super busy (which I was) and they offered me $10,000 to do the work ASAP. Since it would only take me 8 or so hours to fix the bugs I could hardly pass it up. For two days of work I walked away with $13,500 dollars, of course there is also tax on that, so I netted like $9,000.

Depending how hard I/you try to find consulting work, you can totally make 20k, of course it depends on the month. The best part, is that you can write off business expenses on your taxes. So, you pay significantly less (if any) tax on that 20k.

<comment><USER9> Okay how many of those can you find in a year though?

I found $20 on the ground once. Doesn't mean I can just go outside and start bending over till I get to 20k.

<comment><USER8> I mean, it depends.

If you join a bunch of the freelance marketplaces it's really not hard. I literally receive offers for jobs every day or so, most aren't that good, but probably once every month or two it is as described.

The problem is, I have no idea going in if a code review is going to be easy, or if the bugs are easy to fix. That's somewhat just luck.

<comment><USER10> What freelance marketplaces do you use? I'm always looking for people who are consistently good, but I'm wary of Elance/Upwork.

<comment><USER11> what kind of skills are you looking for? I believe I am (we are) good at a few things

<comment><USER10> Hi, do you have a company URL?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not really sure how I feel about SeedRamp but I love the published interviews. It's interesting to watch different personality types and how they all answer questions/explain their businesses.

Are there many resources like this anywhere else out there?

<comment><USER13> The only one I know of (but I'm a biologist...) was This Week in Startups, the podcast by Jason Calacanis. He had a segment in which he would critique pitches. Not sure if the podcast or segment exist anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If it was $50k or $100k, they might onto something. There's just not much any team can do on $20k, especially in Silicon Valley.

So far, they've rejected every single startup except one, which they gave just $5k to.

[http://www.seedramp.com/history.html](http://www.seedramp.com/history.html)

<comment><USER15> If that's true, sounds like a great idea to gather startup ideas and business plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't speak to this idea, but these videos are PAINFUL to watch. In an age where we are inundated with mediocre content I would much rather watch interviews of carefully curated applicants and VCs than some random guy trying to get money to put his dad's piano music on an app (this is really in one of the videos).

The idea on paper sounds like a clever way to piggy back for a relatively low risk level on a lot of startups...and as much as contrarian thinking is pontificated, you have to wonder if there is a reason things are done the way they are in the first place.

I am not saying you can't disrupt an industry, but you have to first understand why the industry does it the way they do in the first place. It's not like a bunch of dumb people got together and said lets do this thing as backwards as possible. I have never met an idea for disruption that didn't at some point come to realize that there are often forces beyond control at play and it is very rare to be able to actually disrupt an industry just because intellectually it seems backwards.

I think it's time to dial back the disruption rhetoric and focus on the value creation as defined by people willing to pay more than it costs to make, sign, seal, and delivered.

<comment><USER16> I found the videos really interesting to watch because we see lots of polished pitches here on HN, but here we're seeing everything. These are mostly just going to a VC with a hand out - asking for money. But, that's what pitching a company is. I think a lot of people who haven't done it imagine a slick deck presentation in a boardroom. The reality is that you have to be able to sit down in a coffee shop and sell your idea to someone who has more money than you.

As far as the terms - I didn't look it over closely to see if it's a fair or predatory deal. Anybody know if it's a fair deal?

<comment><USER4> His terms are at your own discretion, but he assumes a few % points. (i.e you decide what to offer.)

I guess I am not everyone, so some people can find value where I might not. So, take everything I say with a grain of salt.

You have a point, but I've seen many non-polished, no pitch deck pitches that as rough as they were you walked away with a sense that they are on to something. They have some epiphany or insight and are attempting to turn it into something real. These videos (i didn't watch all) come off as people that have no idea what they are doing or even thinking other than, "I am going to make an app and be a founder."

The problem this guy has is that most serious entrepreneuers won't partake in his process, and this leaves over the large portion of people who don't have access to capital for a very good reason. Not to say there aren't many serious people who struggle with connections and who this guys offering is a good fit for, but his content strategy of sharing all these videos, even if a few have nuggets of gold is going to annoy viewers much like a listicle does after you click through to page 2 or 3 of a slide.

It's time to kill off this mantra of content, content content. We don't need more content, we need content that can't be found anywhere else. (admittedly, this guys content cant be found elsewhere, so that is a plus unless the content continues to be boring and lacking insights.

If you can hire a content writer to run a few searches and write a well written article...THAT IS NOT CONTENT WORTHY OF ROYALTY.

The only content that is king is content that you have to work hard to produce that cannot be found by reading half a dozen articles you found with 2-3 google searches.

<comment><USER16> I agree about the quality of those few pitches I watched. But if you notice the red vs green monetary amount next to each video - all of them except one were rejected. So you can skip and watch only the green ones, I'd assume, to see the decent pitches.

I rather thought the videos were examples of what not to do, along with constructive criticism explaining why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do they honestly believe that startups so close to death can actually turn around with a sufficiently high probability that this investment is worth it?

If so, all power to them. They obviously know something others don't.

<comment><USER18> I'm sure the valuation cap will be low, and maybe SAFEs with a discount too. It's corporate payday lending.

Not necessarily saying it's bad. Payday lending to poor consumers is scummy because you're addicting them to high interest debt, but corporate finance is different. A SAFE is not debt -- at least not to an individual -- and this might rescue a few good companies with a high enough probability that it would be worth it to the investors, founders, and economy as a whole. You're gonna take some dilution but if you believe in your venture and persevere then... well... as they say it's better to own 1% of success than 100% of failure. :)

<comment><USER19> >>A SAFE is not debt -- - at least not to an individual

There's a dissolution clause that requires payback before any other distribution of company assets. So, not an individual debt, but effectively the same if there are any assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If they're going to video the interview and make it public then there needs to be a minimum cap that's publicized on the website. Fair is fair.

This is pretty clever though, can't wait to see where it goes.

<comment><USER19> The prominent placement of the "didn't fund this company" videos seems a bit harsh, there's even a red background striked text label showing you how much they were denied.

This particular thumbnail caught my eye...ouch: [http://i.imgur.com/03f63JZ.png](http://i.imgur.com/03f63JZ.png)

<comment><USER20> Sure, that's their marketing. I don't think it would be unfair if the terms were reasonable, right now they're not. But if there were a minimum cap and we were talking 3 months of funding instead of one month then this would totally be a viable option. Maybe not a first choice option, but at least a reasonable backup plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can somebody with a better understanding of investment finances explain how much SeedRamp gets for their investment?

I skimmed the agreement, but I don't quite know how to interpret it.

<comment><USER22> The agreement has a blank for the most meaningful term: the valuation cap. If you raise a round below that cap (or just above it) the SAFE ends up being a good deal. But if you raise the next round at a valuation significantly higher than the valuation cap, you could take a haircut. For example, a $1MM cap that's followed by a $15MM pre-money valuation at the Series A would give SeedRamp a 93% discount on their equity. That's the risk.

TLDR: No way to tell what they might get for their investment until they offer you a valuation cap (and even then it still depends on the future valuation put on the company by the next equity round).

<comment><USER23> Beware beware. The investors in your next round WILL NOT LIKE THIS DEAL. Why? Their money doesn't go to building your business, it goes to paying off this SAFE.

<comment><USER22> They might not like it (especially if there's a large effective discount), but that's not why.

If you raise a next round the SAFE _never_ gets paid off - it converts into equity in the round. None of the equity investors' money is at risk of being used to pay off the SAFE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Haters will hate, but they're doing it and there's nothing stopping them.

Gapjumpers, Stripe-o-Auth, and analytics viewing requests should be the defacto standard for quick due diligence in the early stages.

Hell, give email access to the investors if it's not delicate info. "o-auth"-ing in to see metrics etc,,, I think that will be the future of VC investing. Also, more of the 1-10 founding team will have much more equity.

<comment><USER25> I dunno. All we are talking about here is 10 videos and 5k spent over 3 months. I can't see how this is much more than a marketing gimmick to help their name stand out from the pack.

I'm sure if something legit started brewing they would shut off the camera and head to the fine dining spot.

Though maybe what you are saying is that the VC who wins is the one who invests in a product that makes being a VC obsolete?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Read a lot of comments here, and I don't know what's with the idea that you need $1,000,000 to fund a startup.

Most of these startups could have the operating costs of the following:

1) $100/mo good, solid servers 2) $500/mo freelance illustrators and designers (if that) 3) Time of the founder (if he's a programmer)

I know because I've made plenty of web apps for that. The difference is the programmer's time was mine, so I got paid.

<comment><USER25> From what I understand, a million is what you need to get you an "industry presence" that creates a gravitational effect. Where in you prompt people to join you vs competing with you.

5k-20k investments almost seem silly... Why not just bootstrap it yourself?

<comment><USER26> Not everyone has that opportunity. Not everyone has rich friends or family. Some people have expenses they cannot control.

You don't know everyone's situation, why do you assume to?

Later on, sure, you'll have to raise more money. Immediately, even $1k can help you a lot depending on your situation...

Why not let the market take care of it?

<comment><USER27> If you're in a rough spot, starting a company isn't likely to help out much. You're far better off building a career and getting stable first.

If you have to start a company instead of getting a job for some reason, a tech startup isn't the best choice for immediate cash flow. Particularly one that requires investment to get off the ground.

There are knowledge, skills, and savviness gaps to bridge, unless you're a serial entrepreneur, you won't have done this when you start. You need the stability to weather through the failures caused by those gaps.

If you're a developer, you need time to understand the business world and the business mindset. Alternatively, you can find someone who does, but in that case you need to be able to properly vet business cofounders. You also need to have the social skills to not blow up the relationship.

Asking an investor to fund you while you learn these lessons is unreasonable. He has no clue how long it's going to take. If you approach one with an idea, he is going to be looking at you as much as the idea, and they see dozens of hopefuls just like you every day.

<comment><USER28> That's a lot of reasoning but little insight. Very few people have 20k cash to spend, world-wide. Some of them might have true innovation in their pockets.

The problem is, an investor _needs_ these people more than the other way around. There this general pretense that when you're funded you've been blessed by 'angels', but they need the big hit more than you do. And yet, they won't budge. They refuse to see that it's a two-way relationship and so everyone loses.

In other words, we don't have the innovation we all want partly because we are so bad at figuring out how to connect funding to innovation. Currently, we use inane heuristics, ego and bankrupt intuition -- and it's not working.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure 'true innovation' is what investors are looking for though. I mean that's what they say because it 'sounds right'. In reality they want to create a buzz and draw attention to something. I do agree that they need people, but the good ones make sure they have the right network.

I think what they do is entirely based upon intuition and ego. If it was just about making sure that things 'add up' a computer could do it and banks would make big bucks. They need to be sure that the idea really can be big in society, and that the founder is the type of person who will drive it there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought YC gave little money, but $20K is just ridiculous. That would buy you what, like a month of a senior dev time including all expenses.

It's absolutely awesome that they post all their interviews, such a great idea.

<comment><USER30> For a long time Y Combinator gave less than this. For 6+% of the company.

<comment><USER31> The reputational and institutional benefits of YC dwarf their actual investment (even now that they're investing $120k).

<comment><USER30> Which certainly wasn't true at the beginning.

<comment><USER31> True, but YC was specifically designed to provide funding for people who otherwise wouldn't have access to capital. There's a reason that the first few classes had many college students.

It turns out that their thesis was correct (that giving young, hungry founders small amounts of capital would work well). That's why we've seen tons of copycats, which have largely fulfilled that demand.

I suspect SeedRamp is going to suffer from some serious adverse selection problems. I can't imagine anyone with better funding options turning to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Any lawyers want to explain SAFE to me in simple terms?

<comment><USER22> A SAFE is basically a convertible note developed by YC[0] that is better for founders (at least mechanically) than most traditional convertible notes. As with other notes, the investor basically gives you money now in exchange for some equity at your next round TBD by a fixed formula.

As I noted elsewhere, the devil is in the details and the SAFE could be a good deal or an awful deal depending on the relationship between the SAFE's valuation cap (which is left blank and would be negotiated with each company) and the eventual pre-money valuation at the equity financing. I'd be surprised if SR is giving very high valuation caps.

[0] [https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/](https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Honest feedback: The videos taint the image of this VC. They should select videos where the people applying actually show something interesting.

I couldn't watch any of the videos for more than 2 minutes because of the rambling, and the hosts "Uh huh. Uh huh." responses to irrelevant details from the applicants.

Interesting idea, polish the execution.

</comment><comment><USER34> Could SeedRamp be a support business for Teamed.io? Fund technical startup founders, 90% startups fail, so invite them to be project managers and team leads on teamed.io projects?

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor256](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor256)

</comment><comment><USER35> Payday loans for startups?

<comment><USER36> I was thinking the same thing. If you're a new startup needing $20K with a low cap and high equity take of your company, you may be in bigger trouble than you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If this is just about having a conversation with different Founders and hearing more about their business, I'd be fine with it. I would be curious to see what the cap is as well as the equity they're taking for $20K. Hope they weren't hoping for a Board seat. ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> Venture capital meets Cash Converters.

</comment><comment><USER38> It is a startup VC with a new model for investing (we may not all like it or we may like it). It would be interesting if this is a model that could be an alternative to current funding models. All the best to SR.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if their primary market is for bridge loans to startups running out of gas or to seed lots of fledglings as an alternative to accelerators, without the "program" (YC started out giving 20k).

</comment><comment><USER40> I seriously don't get this. 20k for equity? You could loan 20,000 and still pay it back at a modest interest rate.

What could you possibly do with 20,000? Buy Adwords? Hire someone for 3 months? Does it lead to more people investing?

Looks like they are just spraying 20k across the board in hopes to find something that sticks.

You could easily get $20,000 to invest by working or even asking your family or friends. Then you would have a far better chance of raising money with a viable business that you won't have to get into bed with someone looking for hockey stick growth that ultimately kills startups.

<comment><USER41> It's a tiny amount indeed, but not everyone looking to start a startup has access to f&f with $20k to blow.

Their goal, for better or worse, seems to be to circumvent the relationship- building part of fundraising at the earliest stages of startup development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is the credibility worth it? Does being able to tell investors that SR invested in this mean anything?

</comment><comment><USER43> Mmhmm</comment>


You can try crowdfunded space sim 'Star Citizen' for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/star-citizen-free-fly-event-cloud-imperium-games-123500477.html <comment><USER2> I would not recommend it if you expect anything resembling a final product.

I've been trying it and the amount of breaking bugs I hit (which make the session unplayable) is significant. Most of these are already reported, FTR.</comment>


A front row seat to Steve Jobs' career, by Robert Scoble. - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/a-front-row-seat-to-steve-jobs-career-by-robert-scoble/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised there is no mention of Jonathan Ive needing to step up. I think he's got a lot of Steve's aesthetic senses, and also has some of the same unquestioned authority/credibility that Steve does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Take a look here - <http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/cupertino-two-step/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does the Android phones are slowed down over time as well? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Can't imagine it being a possibility because of so many variants and custom ROMs available. I am sure the ROM developers, kernel developers would have noticed something odd.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know about slowdowns. Of my androids the nexus 4 I cracked the screen and the nexus 5 bricked itself after 2 years.</comment>


The desktop belongs to Electron - n-izem https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/16/17361696/chrome-os-electron-desktop-applications-apple-microsoft-google <comment><AUTHOR> Electron is the new Java+Swing.

It does work on every major desktop platform. It takes a while to load, uses more RAM, and is noticeably slower. Its apps have basic native features, like system tray/indicator support, but never support them very well and break metaphors used by truly native apps.

Electron is great for having an "offering" of a native app that's really just your web app with an installer. But the experience is never great.</comment>


How to Gracefully Take a Site Down For Maintenance? - <AUTHOR>

YouTube and others are putting up a nice looking message page while they are doing a release or maintenance.  I'm wondering what's the best way of redirecting all requests to this "Sorry we're temporarily down" page.
Would you modify the VirtualHost entry in Apache's httpd.conf?
Would you change the DNS entry?
Any other ideas?
The technique should ideally be easy to turn on and off. <comment><USER2> Have a backup directory ready to go, and modify the DocumentRoot on your virtual host.

If your home page doesn't involve dynamic content (and even if it does, but you aren't touching those parts of it), keep your home page up.

If you aren't taking down your DB, keep the user sign-up up.

When someone tries to log-in, then display the message.

Keep your roll-out window to under 30 mins if at all possible (rolling out features in smaller batches makes this easier).

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever you do, don't try redirecting using DNS. Many DNS servers don't properly respect TTLs and this will cause you endless pain.

</comment><comment><USER4> For smaller sites, I would just redirect everyone but my own IP address over to a maint.html page.

I wrote up how I did it with .htaccess here: [http://www.answermysearches.com/htaccess-block-everyone- exce...](http://www.answermysearches.com/htaccess-block-everyone-except-one- ip-address/226/)

<comment><USER5> Good thing it's impossible to spoof an IP address. Then again, as long as you're only relying on this for customer service and not for security, I suppose you're fine.

<comment><USER4> How do you spoof an IP address?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+spoof+ip+address&i...](http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+spoof+ip+address&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Why do you need to take the site down to do maintenance? Even if moving physically from one server to another you should be able to migrate with almost zero downtime.</comment>


Ask HN: What exactly constitutes free will? - <AUTHOR>

I am a fundamentalist. I believe free will means chaos. Convince me otherwise.
If free will means freedom of choice, then why is hate a crime? i.e. Hate crimes
If free will is what we actually pursue as society then why do we put constraints on it? i.e. Rules and laws.
Why is it that when the supreme court still criminalizes an act, a state can go ahead and legalize it but when the supreme court legalizes an act, no state can refute it?
So what is free will really, are we even pursuing it? Regulation, by definition is the restriction of free will.
So what do we really want, let's not call it free will if it's not absolute. <comment><USER2> > Convince me otherwise.

This statement presupposes free will.

Free will is not primarily a political concept but an epistemological concept that has political implications.

Free will is an irreducible primary that many people today want to ignore, deny, evade to shirk the responsibility of judgement.

Free will is validated by introspection and no one can convince you of its axiomatic nature except your self, i.e. your own will, which makes it paradoxically circular or self-referential but nevertheless it is at the base of ALL knowledge.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you would agree with me then that free will ultimately leads to chaos? It would constitute freedom to hate openly and freedom to retaliate openly too.

<comment><USER3> Not really. We have rules but free will allows you to do whatever you want. Hence why hate crimes actually happens, or terrorists or whatever things we have rules against.

Absence of rules may lead to chaos (I'm not entirely convinced since we didn't have rules before, so absence of rules may actually lead to rules) but this has nothing to do with free will imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, your question asks on a few different levels. There is the personal level, the societal/community level, and the over-encompassing reality.

On the personal level, we're restricted somewhat by our current situation, so you have free will like a stream has the ability to curve paths down a mountain. It could go left or right, but every decision branches, and if the stream is going quickly, there is less choice involved, whereas if it is running slowly or smoothly, there is a lot of directability.

On the societal level, our basic premise here in the United States is that we are all entitled to life liberty and property, and conventionally we extend this to happiness. Actions that don't impinge on another citizen's path to these are considered alright, and I think that is a fine way to be: don't harm others. Why? Well you wouldn't want it to happen to you, and in the world of generalities (and overall reality) you could just as easily have been born on the other end of that string/strand.

Then what would absolute free will be? Well, the ability to change your body shape, change your environment by thinking.. perhaps even with less effort than is involved in "thinking" with words and images. It's an interesting question, but in general free will is the ability to direct your flow, it doesn't necessarily entail being able to change the pre-existing flow, unless you mean gradually. I find the river and stream metaphor extremely valuable in this context, and have heard karma spoken of in a similar fashion.

Everything dissolves, you can make skillful actions and direct your stream to goodness. Ideally, intelligent and sensitive people are directing their flows to unbound potential, because as you can see, it is easy to continue into a spiral that minimizes, whereas it is actually possible with effort to "flow back up" the mountain, coming to a place of total potential, where you might be able to experience or talk about an "absolute free will"

Thus, in my simpleton opinion, free will is not an absolute unless you are directing your own capacities toward the experience of an absolute freedom.

The Supreme Court thing... could you provide an example?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with most of what you said, except your definition of absolute free will. I think the absolute one would mean doing whatever you desire and is in your capacity. Changing shape and such are mere desires that we cannot accomplish due to limitations of our nature. That does not take away from our free will. Free will is the ability to do what we want and can do with our resources. Free will is having the choice to kick you or cat for no reason. It is also the freedom for both of you to retaliate.

So is free will ultimately what we desire or we rarely take time comprehend what it comprises and its repercussions?

Supreme Court example: Marijuana is not legalized by the Supreme Court, but states have individually legalized it. In the same light but in different directions, gay marriage was legalized last week, can a state go ahead and illegalize it?

<comment><USER4> As far as I know, the supreme court has not ruled on controlled substances. Those are established by congress (and the DEA) and states have their right to have legislation that negates or otherwise "violates" congressional action. Congress can always withhold monies for roads and infra, though, so they can coerce states into cooperation in a different way.

The Marriage Equality action by the Supreme Court explicitly states that states cannot illegalize same-sex marriage. Can a state illegalize it? No.

Can states legalize the sale of cannabis? Yes. Can the DEA still come in and bust people in those states? Yes. Is that fucked up? You betcha.</comment></comment></comment>


Jailed hacker allowed into IT class, hacks prison computers - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57572282-71/jailed-hacker-allowed-into-it-class-hacks-prison-computers/#.UTSCHbTy72k.hackernews <comment><USER2> I love the reporting in that article. No details what so ever; they basically just reiterated the headline several dozen times for content.</comment>


Show HN: Angular Hotkeys – Keyboard shortcuts for your angular apps - <AUTHOR> http://chieffancypants.github.io/angular-hotkeys/

<comment><USER2> Looks cool, but the homepage only shows me what's wrong with the current solutions (markup). I had to dig into the repo to figure out what your solution entailed.</comment>


Show HN:BUBBLE,sharing networks on top of Twitter, check and give feedback - <AUTHOR> http://bubble.ly/posts/view/4e9e1acad0796216630002dc/

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what this does, the explanation is not clear. there is no way for me to try it without signing up for an account. Therfore I am going to ignore it and close the window.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also all feedback is great, but If you really won't spend 2 minutes to create an account, I'll wonder your enthusiasm to give valuable feedback and take this into consideration while valuing it, but nevertheless you can use apples credentials...

email... firstname.lastname@example.com password... appletest</comment></comment>


Pet Cloning as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://viagenpets.com/faq/ <comment><AUTHOR> Saw this on ProductHunt...and thought it was a joke/hoax, can't believe this totally exists.</comment>


Capsule Networks Tutorial [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPN8d0E3900 <comment><USER2> When Hinton approves, you know you've done well...

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/7ew7ba/d_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/7ew7ba/d_capsule_networks_capsnets_tutorial/dq8yc9p/)

<comment><AUTHOR> For anyone who hasn't watched the video: this comment is on topic and certainly relevant, because Hinton himself invented Capsule Networks. [https://www.wired.com/story/googles-ai-wizard-unveils-a- new-...](https://www.wired.com/story/googles-ai-wizard-unveils-a-new-twist-on- neural-networks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is the same author that published "Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow...". The quality of the book (thus far) is so high that I immediately started Googling about the author to try and learn more (and did not learn much), assuming he must be well known. I did not learn much, but can at least say the book is fantastic.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit- Learn-T...](https://www.amazon.com/Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit-Learn- TensorFlow/dp/1491962291)

<comment><USER4> I second that book. Well worth the small price and very accessible to read

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, same author. He has a picture of his book at the end of the video (21:40). With these recommendations, and after that video, I am going to buy & read his book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice video, however instead of riding the hype train of arxiv, could we wait until peer review analyzes the paper?

If someone other than Hinton presented a YADLA (Yet Another Deep Learning Architecture) that does not achieve state of the art level of performance in the basic datasets, it would not be very well received.

<comment><USER6> /user/geoffhinton 1 year ago

> Over the last three years at Google I have put a huge amount of work into > trying to get an impressive result with capsule-based neural networks. I > haven't yet succeeded. That's the problem with basic research. There is no > guarantee that ideas will work even if they seem very promising. Probably > the best results so far are in Tijmen Tieleman's PhD thesis. But it took 17 > years after Terry Sejnowski and I invented the Boltzmann machine learning > algorithm before I found a version of it that worked efficiently. If you > really believe in an idea you just have to keep trying.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4w6tsv/ama...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4w6tsv/ama_we_are_the_google_brain_team_wed_love_to/d6dmw6f/)

Most of the deep learning papers published are just exploring and incrementally building upon the ideas 'Canadian Mafia' (Hinton, LeCun and Bengio) discovered years ago. At some point this 'idea space' is explored and understood and we hit the wall just like before. Let's hope that people doing basic research can find new breakthroughs in less than 17 years.

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying to discard this research. I'm suggesting to wait until it is peer-reviewed and published before jumping on it.

To me, the capsule concept seems reasonable, and I have my personal opinion about its strengths and flaws. But my opinion hardly matters.

I expect peer reviewers from NIPS to have a better understanding that I have, and I trust them to filter and clean this idea, instead of trusting the research just because of the name that signs the paper.

To me, although it has its flaws, the _double-blind_ _peer-reviewed_ processes is important.

<comment><USER6> The paper has already been accepted to NIPS 2017. Poster session is Tue Dec 5th 06:30 - 10:30 PM @ Pacific Ballroom #94

[https://papers.nips.cc/paper/6975-dynamic-routing-between- ca...](https://papers.nips.cc/paper/6975-dynamic-routing-between-capsules.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two impressions: 1. when I saw the original Hinton proposal of capsule networks, I thought it was kind of halfway to a hofstadter-style cognitive machine from his work "conceptual slippages". Now understanding it more, I am more confident in my assessment.

2\. I think that implementations are going to be hamstrung by the clunky nature of tensorflow's architecture... Did anyone else feel this?

<comment><USER8> What is clunky exactly about tensorflow's architecture?

<comment><USER7> for starters, the problem that you have to separate the definition of the computational graph from the actual execution of the function (there's separate declarative and imperative stages).

This problem is not insurmountable. Something like this would be really cool:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijI0BLf- AH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijI0BLf-AH0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this video to be much easier-to-follow than previous posts focusing on intuition, e.g., [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15690121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15690121)

</comment><comment><USER9> How does it compare with, Spiking Neural Network? Both use vectors (but in different way) to encode more information

</comment><comment><USER10> The author answers some questions in the comments as well. Worth checking out!

</comment><comment><USER11> I predict capsule networks will not nearly have as big of an impact on the ML community as many think it will. Why? Because the main reason they exist is to address performance issues in really advanced, cutting-edge, models. But that is not what drives upvotes here and on reddit. The failure of capsule networks to pick up steam and the continued popularity of GANs, I think, is a signal that the main reason ML is still trendy and in vogue is because the subject, AI, tickles the imagination of engineers, but is still, five years after ML started to become popular, not as big in actual practical engineering systems as what the outside public might think it is.

<comment><USER12> I think you have a misconception of what capsule networks are. They are not intended to address "performance issues in really advanced models", they are intended as another paradigm in deep learning that Geoff Hinton thinks has a lot of promise.

I also don't know what you mean by "the failure of capsule networks to pick up steam". The paper literally came out a month ago. It's too early to say whether it'll "pick up steam" or not.

I also don't understand what you mean by "the continued popularity of GANs" showing anything.</comment></comment>


What is the largest bi-truncatable prime? - <AUTHOR> https://www.primepuzzles.net/puzzles/puzz_950.htm <comment><USER2> So, is there a truly largest one?

Let's assume we have B(n) bitruncatable primes of length (n)

For B(n+2), we have at most 45 times that number (digit added at the front can't be a zero; digit added at the back must be odd)

The fraction of them that's prime is about 2/log(10^(n+1)) (factor 2 added because we already dropped all even numbers; n+1 in the denominator as being halfway between n and n+2 digits; neither factors affect the conclusion)

That gives us the recurrence relation

        B(n+2) ~= 90B(n)/log(10^(n+1))
                = 90B(n)/((n+1)log(10))
                = (90/log(10)) B(n)/(n+1)

That number gets smaller and smaller once n > 90/log(10) (about 39)

So, I think it's very likely there is a largest one.

This line of thought applies to all integer bases > 2 (there isn't a largest one in base 2 because there isn't any in base 2)

<comment><USER3> I think B(n+2) is at most B(n)*36. you can't append a 5 to get a prime number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I overlooking something, or is it obvious that if this is the single largest bi-truncatable prime known so far, that any larger one has to contain this prime in its middle?

So finding a new largest bi-truncatable prime is just a matter of trying to add each single digit at both sides of this prime; if any of them is again a prime, we have a new largest and if none of them is (which I guess is the case because the author must have tried this out already), then there exists no larger bi-truncatable prime.

<comment><USER5> If by "this" you mean the 83-digit prime in the question, then no. There's no indication that there are no other 83-digit bitruncatable primes - that's just the only one the author had found.

If you mean the sole 97-digit solution given in the comments, the implication that all the bitruncatable primes have been found and enumerated by your method, and the assertion that there are no such 99-digit primes - then yes, that looks pretty legit, though I'd want to see an independent verification before accepting it as a proof, since computer programs have bugs.

<comment><USER6> > I'd want to see an independent verification

I wrote a solver for this problem: [https://github.com/jwilk/bitruncatable- primes](https://github.com/jwilk/bitruncatable-primes)

I haven't run it yet, because I don't have a powerful-enough machine at hand. It needs ~6 GB of RAM and ~20 CPU core-hours.

<comment><USER6> After fixing exorbitant memory use, I have now independenty verified that

7228828176786792552781668926755667258635743361825711373791931117197999133917737137399993737111177 (97 digits)

is indeed the biggest bi-truncatable prime.

This was done under assumption that zero digits are not allowed. If they are allowed, bigger bi-truncatable primes exists, such as:

90072457733413689120801410250233316614403998951220231333193991731791997911317971131797197339199333933 (101 digits)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it difficult be interested in these, primes are primes; bi-truncatable are base-10 specific. It feels more like numerology in the same way that we assign meaning to powers of 10 and the natural world does not.

<comment><USER8> "What's the smallest power of pi that spells your name when encoded in base64?"

<comment><USER9> There's probably an infinite set of such powers inside any neighborhood of zero.

<comment><USER10> I was going to say, that irrationality would mean that any power of pi would contain your name given enough digits.

<comment><USER2> That logic is incorrect. The base 2 Liouville number ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liouville_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liouville_number)) is transcendental, so surely irrational, but mostly contains two repeated characters.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Show Horse and the Work Horse - <AUTHOR> https://granolashotgun.com/2019/07/22/the-show-horse-and-the-work-horse/ <comment><USER3> Not emphasized in Johnny's post, there's also a ton of neighborhood pushback against flea markets and such in many communities. Basically the wealthier folks don't like the aesthetics of these things, and will argue that they're a nuisance or crime-magnets or whatever, a thin veneer over the discomfort they have with anything that draws a low income crowd.

You'll see things like the "Sunday Farmers Market" that closes a block of a street somewhere because temporary event permits are much easier to get and harder to block, but the kind of semi-permanent marketplace described in the article remains rare.

And he's right, cities don't have a lot of incentive to try and make space for these sorts of entry level incubator environments because in most cases they can't skim any tax off it - the underlying property is still just a parking lot and they usually can't reassess the value for impermanent activities happening on top.

<comment><USER4> Maybe we should work on making cities less greedy about tax revenue and instead care more about benefiting the people who live there.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that's a lovely sentiment until there isn't enough money to keep the libraries open.

<comment><USER4> Tiny rural towns manage to have libraries. Cities are just addicted to tax revenue.

<comment><USER6> > Tiny rural towns manage to have libraries.

Often, when they do, it is either:

(1) Because of state funding specifically for rural counties, which amounts to a revenue transfer from urban counties, or

(2) Because the rural town is in a county with, and deriving revenue from, a city, funding county libraries in the rural town as well as the city.

Even more often, tiny rural towns _don 't_ have public libraries, and you have to go to a neighboring town or the nearest city.

<comment><USER7> In my experience most small towns big enough to have any services have a "library" that is comprised of a few rooms in the shared town hall/police/public offices building that is run by some (usually senior citizen) volunteer(s) and has a fairly poor collection of books but can get anything you want on loan as long as you don't need it that day. If they don't have a library they probably have some other "nice to have but not essential" type service that's run in the same manner. My experience is limited to the rural northeast. I suspect the rural midwest is even more likely to have libraries because of how those towns were planned out back in the day.

I think your bias is showing.

<comment><USER8> The parent comment would work better without (or rewording) the remark on bias.

I have lived in rural, suburban, and dense urban areas in my life (currently high density urban), and there is a bias on HN toward the idea that rural communities are unsustainable on their own and mere leeches on the city dwellers. That's likely true in some places, but not universally. Sustainable rural communities have exports of resources, housing, and/or tourism, that outweigh their cost.

As the parent comment describes, one model for remote communities is volunteers who work at the library because they care. The cost of everything is lower -- labor, food, matetials -- so what looks too expensive for a town might actually be fully sustainable.

<comment><USER9> I wish we could get some numbers on this, as I've lived in the same spread of places as you and I agree with the GP. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

The sustainable rural community is exceedingly rare - most are propped up by ag subsidies and state aid. For much of the central part of America, there's no housing benefit or tourism to speak of, just resources (corn/soy in general, maybe livestock).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The armchair planner in me was a little taken aback at first by the description of the flea market as "amazingly good urbanism" \-- good urbanism looks like bike lanes and trees and mixed-use development, not parking lots! -- but of course that's falling into the very thought trap illustrated by the post.

Parking lot flea markets are exactly 'tactical urbanism' in the same mode as pop-up bike and bus lanes -- the repurposing of car storage for more economically valuable and human-centric use, and (us) urbanist types should talk about them more often!

<comment><USER11> It turns out that the most financially sound communities are higher density, where you get the most economic activity per unit of infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh, it's worse. Some expensive houses now have a show kitchen and a work kitchen.

Why would someone make counter tops from permeable stone? That's idiotic. There are stone materials like granite that are impermeable. Besides, why is marble high-status? You can get that stuff at Home Depot.

My own countertops are inch thick glazed fired ceramic tiles, from the 1960s. Same material as those indestructible walls schools and gyms used to use. Fifty years of use have not marked them, they can be cleaned with strong cleaners, and they are unaffected by contact with hot pans.

<comment><USER13> Good lord... a show kitchen? Not to doubt you, but I have never heard of this. Clearly I don't travel in rarefied circles. But, it's hard for me to imagine being held hostage to the psychological drive to own such a thing.

<comment><USER14> The living room in my grandparent's house was basically for show and never used, and they were by no means affluent. It was (and still is) a collection of antique and early-sixties furniture, often inherited, thick carpets and baroque wallpaper. They gradually stopped using the room and converted the dining room into a second living room after their children were out of the house, and by the time I was a child, the room was basically a museum where children were not allowed. My grandpa is 90 and lives in the house alone now, he still never uses the room. There even is an alibi television set in there that was last used in the 70ies.

<comment><USER15> My grandparents had a room exactly like that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is being described here is a working multi-functional town centre - <USER2> place to walk to, make necessary purchases and hang out and even eat out.

We know how to build more and more of these "town centres" \- we used to find them at the centre of almost all towns. The problem is it's not something governments can do or force - it's something they allow, and don't strangle.

It's waaaaay harder.

It is what evolves naturally until it is stretched out of existence by roads and car journeys, or bored to death by same-old franchises that suck revenue back to HQ

It involves ending the nice suburban compromise ( ala StrongTowns) and that is probably a bigger change to modern Western lifestyles than almost anything.

How could we all move back into city-level densities?

<comment><USER17> If state governments made suburbs pay their bills and externalities out of current accounts instead of mortgaging the future and cutting up and poisoning city residents with highways, the invisible hand of free market economics would push people to live together in cities if they want to keep their highly materialistic lifestyles. As it is, people make short term optimal, long term bankrupt, and tragedy of the commons, pollution externalizing choices.

<comment><USER18> I doubt you could build a public transit system without mortgaging the future. If the pollution externalities are priced in, people will buy electric cars.

<comment><USER16> What do they drive the electric cars on? I agree about mortgaging the future, but roads + (electric) buses makes a perfectly sensible public transit system for a lot of density levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > This place [farmer's market/flea market] is a work horse. It grows small > businesses from scratch without recourse to bank loans or government > subsidies. It provides products and experiences that are genuinely needed in > the community. And it costs almost nothing to create compared to the usual > economic development model meant to induce artificial prosperity through tax > holidays and subsidies for mega projects. ...

> So why don't local governments embrace more of this sort of pop up grass > roots mom and pop enterprise? Officials are in a trap that requires them to > boost tax revenue to pay for all the attenuated infrastructure and municipal > overhead that's accumulated for decades. Highly functional flea markets > don't generate enough cash surplus to skim. So municipalities are obliged to > search for show horses with all the associated prestige, complexity, and > expense. ...

Those local governments probably bought into the Growth Ponzi Scheme and are now trapped in an endless cycle of megacorp courthship that with each iteration further destroys the means for the area to survive independently:

[https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi- scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme)

<comment><USER17> Why is the article assuming away the obvious solution? Tax the flea market and everybody still wins. Or leave the flea market untaxed as a public good, and raise property taxes to account for how the flea market cashlessly raises quality of life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This parallels my favorite Mr Money Mustache article, which happens to be about work trucks[0]. There seems (to me) to be so much money ill-spent on façades.

[https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your- wo...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-work-truck- say-about-you/)

<comment><USER21> MMM has some great content. It's a shame he doesn't put out many articles anymore.

<comment><USER22> He has a youtube channel that he started posting to regularly this year.

But yeah, unfortunately theres only so many ways you can get tell someone to not spend money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the UK there are a lot of flea markets, or "car boot sales" as we call them.

You still have the same stigma attached with them, and being honest they are sometimes not for the faint hearted. A lot of them are similar in they are hosted in old car parks or industrial brown sites.

However a bargain can always be had; 24 pack of just expired Duracell AA batteries, mahogony furniture from a house clearance, old style lightbulbs etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Notice how any parking lot is instantly ADA compliant for people in > wheelchairs who require a barrier free environment.

It's almost funny how any plaintext/simple web page like this one is the same way.

</comment><comment><USER25> Probably not an HN-worthy comment, but when I read the title my mind immediately went to the constitution of engineering teams. Now I'm curious if there's a treatment of this anywhere that is worth reading. Seems like you need a bit of both to maximize effect (or at least wear both hats to the extent you're willing and able).

<comment><USER26> If I wanted to make an industry analogy, I'd go for neural networks in Machine Learning being the show horse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Something I've wondered is why people don't turn abandoned big-box stores (and smaller malls) into flea markets. There wouldn't be any problems with the weather. The merchants can rent by the month and not have to tear-down their shops on Sunday evenings. Bathrooms would be available. Power could be run.

<comment><USER28> Flea markets are an eyesore and typically sell low quality merch, attracting ebay type resellers slinging phone cases, gold by the inch, stuff like that

<comment><USER27> But setting up an indoor flea market means they wouldn't be an eyesore, and would put a property to productive use that would otherwise sit empty, generating no tax revenue, possibly becoming a target for vagrants, arsonists, and graffiti taggers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If the goal of the renovation was to add resale value, as opposed to meal preparation value, to the home they did the correct thing. Kitchens and bathrooms are the "runway models" of real estate.

<comment><USER6> Expensive nonpractical kitchen remodels are at the top of every list I've seen of projects to avoid when looking to resale value because they usually add less resale value than they cost to do.

<comment><USER22> The emphasis there is on the expensive though.

How many really well laid out kitchens have you been in, where you have adequate prep space, and the fridge, cooker and sink are in sensible positions?

Kitchens are generally designed to look nice, not be practical unfortunately.

<comment><USER6> > The emphasis there is on the expensive though.

Right, but anything involving substantial marble surfaces in a ktichen, as in the article, is both expensive and impractical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This like a good parallel story to the Cathedral and the Bazaar: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar)

The Cathedral takes decades to build and is fragile , while the Bazaar is quick to assemble and resilient.

</comment><comment><USER31> > This particular municipality is often described as a food desert. A > significant proportion of the population buys its food at gas stations and > quickie marts where healthy fresh food isn't usually on offer.

I'm flabbergasted by this comment. How can people accept living like this?

</comment><comment><USER32> This also applies to engineers, it is a universal concept.</comment>


Gravity, Quantum Objects, and Violations of the Equivalence Principle - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24050/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a bit skeptical of this myself, but I thought it was interesting enough to post.</comment>


1099 will end the world in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://academicvc.com/2010/07/23/2012/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AcademicVC-Main+%28Academic+VC+%C2%BB+Main%29 <comment><USER2> [warning. rant head]

This has to be the most mind-numbingly stupid thing I have seen the government do in the last couple of decades -- and that includes bad wars, if that's your thing.

Why can it be so bad? Because it screws with every single economic entity in the nation, in a way that pervasive, subtle, and micro-managing.

If you want to know where "1984" is, with Big Brother watching all of your moves, it's not bullshit programs like TIA. It's making you rat out the guy who is on disability but mows lawns on the side, or the guy who paints houses at nights without reporting the income so he can send his kid to school. Or the mom that babysits kids so that she can stay home.

Yes. These people are law-breakers. In a web of such complexity that 80% of IRS's own employees can't answer sample tax questions, we are all law- breakers. But this takes tax collection to a new low -- now I am going to be responsible for "double-checking" on my neighbor who sold me those used lawn mowers last year. I need to do my part to make sure he's reporting everything.

It is so outrageously stupid and infuriating that I still can't believe it is true. I'm beside myself. So if I eat at Burger King during the week when I travel, about the 120th time I buy a burger, I need to chalk them up for a 1099.

It's the worst thing for small businesses and the underground economy that I've ever heard of the government doing. It just can't be true.

</rant>

ADD: And don't get me started with some bullshit about how the agency hasn't decided yet how to enforce it. This is like saying the Congress voted to install cameras in everybody's homes, but that might not be so bad because the administrative work hasn't been done to decide who _exactly_ gets a camera and when. As if this somehow mitigates things.

Also, for all of you folks down-voting me. Tell me I am wrong. I'm not a tax professional and I don't read the political spin sites. The only reason I've commented now is that this is the 3rd or 4th time I've seen this posted on HN. So please. I would love to be wrong about this.

<comment><USER3> Man, talk about hyperbole. This is probably a terrible idea economically, but it's hardly a _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ scenario. It's not becoming illegal to say "the IRS sucks", the IRS will not have cameras in your house looking for the slightest sign of dissent, and it'll actually be nearly impossible to get imprisoned for anything at all (tax penalties are generally merely more taxes, unless you deliberately lie).

Also, you, as an individual, won't have to send 1099s to anyone, whether your baby-sitter or lawn-mower or Office Depot. Only businesses will, though this does include small businessmen and sole proprietorships (the way to distinguish a sole proprietor from "just a person" is by whether you're deducting those expenses as business expenses on a Schedule C or not).

<comment><USER4> This _is_ a 1984 scenario, because virtually everyone becomes a criminal, as everyone will fail to fill out all the proper 1099's. Consequently, at any time you do something the government doesn't like, they can come and get you for those incorrectly or unfiled 1099's.

(Reiterating what madair already replied to sprout, but I felt his point was not as clear as it could be)

<comment><USER3> That would require that "virtually everyone" is a business, which is not the case. Somewhere less than 5% of the U.S. population run businesses. Again, contrary to the misinformation rampant in this discussion, individual expenditures that are not business expenses won't require 1099s. (Did anyone even read the linked article?)

Even if that were not the case, it would hardly be a _1984_ scenario, especially given that there are no criminal penalties for failing to file the 1099s. That's pretty absurdly embarrassing hyperbole that makes you sound like you came from DailyKos or something. The war on drugs is more of a _1984_ scenario than requiring 1099s is, especially since it comes with widespread criminal penalties.

<comment><USER5> >it would hardly be a 1984 scenario, especially given that there are no criminal penalties for failing to file the 1099s.

I think that's the key of it right there. The worst the IRS could do if you failed to file the 1099s is... force you to file the 1099s. The horror.

<comment><USER6> They could also fine you or use it as an excuse to audit. Both of those things are pretty unattractive for a small business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What the hell is up with this thread? This has to be the worst thread I've ever seen at HN. You'd think this were a comment thread on Fox News or something.

People: Chill the fuck out. The IRS is accepting comments on the issue. The rule doesn't go into effect until, realistically, April of 2013. By then, it is almost guaranteed that the rule will be significantly weakened to the point where it is not much different than what we have in place now.

This isn't a world-ending or economy-destroying fuckup organized by big- governement Democrats. It was a short-sighted clause put in by a politician trying to close a loophole. This is why we have checks and balances- the executive branch, which is actually in charge of implementing these rules, will implement them in a sane way.

So put your conspiracy theories to bed and get on with life. File a comment with the IRS and wait a couple of years. Then maybe you'll see that this was just one big stink over nothing.

<comment><USER8> "By then, it is almost guaranteed that the rule will be significantly weakened to the point where it is not much different than what we have in place now."

This is probably only true if people flip out over it now.

<comment><USER9> Intelligent and measured comment is more likely to be listened to, especially if it comes from people educated in tax law and accounting.

I don't think the IRS is reading angry internet forums.

This law is just noodling. They're just fishing around for new income ideas, throwing spaghetti at the wall, and seeing what sticks.

Don't freak out.

<comment><USER10> I am not so sure that is true. It is like saying, be polite to people in stores and restaurants and you are more likely to get what you want, but the fact is that you see pissed of people making a stink, and getting treated better for fear of pissing them off.

We wish it was true, but it ain't.

<comment><USER11> I work in a small store, where I'm the only person running the place. I eject people who cause trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The good news is that purchases made with a credit or debit card will be exempt from this requirement. However this requirement is still likely to be a huge pain for me at least because I use PayPal for a lot of vendors for totral purchases over $600 in a year.

The IRS is accepting comments on this requirement at <http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=225029,00.html>

<comment><USER13> Exactly. I'd assume most businesses do nearly all their purchasing through credit/debit card. I know we certainly do. So I don't see how this is such a big deal.

<comment><USER14> The massive processing fees charged by the colluding credit card duopoly? Why aren't checks, electronic funds transfers, and electronic checks included?

<comment><USER15> Thank's for bringing this out - it really gets to the heart of who is getting paid off and the results of lobbying in creating artificial barriers through regulation.

Ostensible justification is likely along the lines that the IRS can already track credit & debit card purchases far more easily than purchase orders, checks and cash. Regardless, this would be a major boon for the credit card industry if it in fact goes forward as planned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This will be an unmitigated disaster. Office Depot will get 50 million or so 1099's. How do you deal with that many accounting discrepancies? How do you match that many transactions to all those forms. What about under and over- reporting? This is a Democrat clusterfuck if there ever was one.

<comment><USER16> More likely: most businesses will completely ignore this rule. It will either go away before it comes into force or it will be so impractical to police that it will be useless.

<comment><USER17> The trouble with rules that remain on the books despite not usually being enforced is that they create opportunities for selective enforcement when they decide to crack down on you for other reasons, such as your political views.

<comment><USER16> Yup, they create potential for abuse of power. They also erode trust in legislating bodies and the law in general.

See also: [http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/1594032556)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This can't generate remotely enough revenue to offset the compliance cost to the business sector.

This is nothing more than a Federal jobs program at the expense of the private sector.

<comment><USER19> Part of what they are doing is getting the system ready to put a sales tax on services. That will generate some serious revenue (or provide another effective mechanism to steal money from some people to give to other people, depending on your perspective.)

<comment><USER3> Aren't services already covered by most states' sales taxes? I paid sales tax when I got my oil changed recently, and my VPS provider charges sales tax if I'm in the same state.

<comment><USER5> >if I'm in the same state.

And that happens what, 8% of the time? Most online services are evading sales tax.

<comment><USER20> Hell, if you're in Washington, Amazon will ship from an out-of-state warehouse so that you still don't have to pay.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't matter where the shipment is from; if the business has a point-of- presence in the shipped-to state, they charge you sales tax for that state. For instance, I bought some stuff at the Pendleton store in Portland, Oregon, and had it shipped home to Illinois, and the clerk (very apologetically) told me that he'd have to charge me sales tax since Pendleton owned stores in Illinois. This despite the fact that I was physically in Oregon, the sale was taking place in Oregon, the blankets were still in Oregon, and Oregon has no sales tax at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is an incredible amount of rhetoric from both sides of the isle on supporting small businesses, supporting the entrepreneur, that entrepreneurs are the job creators, that innovation will lead us out of this recession. But it's all just politically correct talk.

This forum is filled with entrepreneurs and innovators. It has one of the highest density of job creators of any forum on the web. Has anyone here seen any help from the government in creating jobs? Either on the supply side (grants) or on the demand side (tax breaks)? Or by reducing our administrative workload? From either side of the isle, conservative or liberal?

Instead we have bureaucratic nightmares like this 1099 legislation that create work that has a not insignificant opportunity cost for innovation and job creation in this country. You could be coding, but instead you're issuing 1099's to walmart.

The reality is that even if this passes, we'll all do just fine and keep innovating. But the next time some politician tells you he supports job creation in this country be sure to call bullshit on him. They only say it because it sounds good and they have done nothing to help us create jobs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Check out: [http://www.taxgirl.com/new-rules-about-forms-1099-are- causin...](http://www.taxgirl.com/new-rules-about-forms-1099-are-causing-a- stir/)

for a less dramatic look at things.

<comment><USER24> Thanks that link was the most helpful thing I read on the matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> [http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/smallbusiness/1099_health_ca...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/smallbusiness/1099_health_care_tax_change/)

      In any case, the final impact of the law won't be known
      until the IRS issues its regulations on the new law,
      which aren't expected to arrive until sometime next year.
      The IRS has not yet commented on when it will release
      regulations or schedule public hearings, and an agency
      spokesman was unsure when it will do so.

<comment><USER26> another quote: "Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., introduced legislation last week that would repeal the new 1099 requirements."

Bottom line, a misguided attempt to improve income reporting and tax collection is going to be either watered down by the IRS or killed in congress. Maybe I'm a sad optimist, but to me it looks like democracy's still working well :-)

<comment><USER14> Democracy would be allowing the populace the time to read and digest multi- thousand page bills before voting, and not allowing totally unrelated sweeping changes hidden in bills. This has nothing to do with health care, whatsoever, in any way shape or form.

<comment><USER27> Then you haven't been paying attention to either health care in general, or the health care effort in specific.

The health care bill was effectively implemented as a tax bill. The entire structure of the bill is a set of rules and initiatives set up to encourage businesses and individuals to get or provide health insurance through a series of tax raises and tax cuts.

The tax code is the mechanism through which this policy is implemented. I'd love to hear what other mechanism you'd prefer for implementing a health care plan. (And copping out by saying "it shouldn't have been implemented" isn't gonna fly)

<comment><USER28> Of course it shouldn't have been implemented.

If they were going to actually try to implement national health care it should be done as constitutional amendment.

<comment><USER29> If the Air Force wasn't a big enough deal to require an amendment, neither is health care.

<comment><USER30> Article 1, Section 8: _The Congress shall have Power To [...] raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;_

Are you seriously going to argue that "Armies" doesn't include the Air Force?

<comment><USER29> Specifically, I meant that the constitution explicitly gives each of the Army and the Navy cabinet-level power and responsibility. The Air Force was given the same power and responsibility, without amending the constitution.

<comment><USER30> Actually, I think I agree with you. They should change the org-chart and put the AF back under the Army.

I still don't understand your comparison to Obamacare. Are you asserting that the constitution would authorize Obamacare with some tweaks to heirerarchy? Please explain.

<comment><USER29> Nope, I was just comparing the magnitude of the changes, not really the structure.

<comment><USER30> How is the magnitude comparable? Obamacare is not authorized by the constitution at all - to become constitutional, it would need to be eliminated. To become constitutional, the Air Force would need one arrow in the org chart to be changed.

I don't see the changes as being remotely comparable in magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's things like this that will eventually force me to move my business (and invariably, my employees) to another country. Why do they want to make it even more difficult for small businesses?

</comment><comment><USER32> Last year a customer accidentally double entered my invoice in their system, and paid me two checks instead of one. I contacted them to let them know of the discrepancy, and never cashed the second check. Their system was never corrected, and I got a 1099 showing I earned double the actual amount. I'm still trying to iron this mess out, and it's just _one_ 1099.

<comment><USER12> The good news for you is that the uncashed second check will eventually show up as a discrepancy on their books and they will have to deal with it. It make take some time but it will happen.

<comment><USER14> And if he gets audited before then for under-reporting his income?

<comment><USER33> The original invoice and uncashed check would substantiate his explanation of the error. I don't enjoy filling out forms etc., but somehow I manage to keep my tax paperwork and business receipts chronically organized in case I ever need to verify something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Already discussed here in-depth: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1306434>

(and about 10 more I don't feel like linking)

<comment><USER35> A bunch of uninformed whining is hardly in-depth. You'd think you couldn't file these electronically or that people have to create, gasp, invoices for the vast majority of such transactions.

<comment><USER14> Cool so where do I send the 1099 for SAMs club, Office Depot, and the restaurant down the street to? Will you come deal with the reporting discrepancies for me. I'll be getting at least 1000 1099's a year, will you deal with those for me? This is needless bueracratic bullshit to the maximum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The underground economy will explode. Working under the table will become much more prevalent.

<comment><USER37> maybe? the problem is that if I pay you under the table, I'm paying you out of /post tax/ money. this is to say, paying people under the table costs me about 50% more than reporting it. I don't think 1099s jack up the cost /that/ much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sounds like a business opportunity to me? Build a specialized service that handles those for mom'n'pops, small businesses, etc?

<comment><USER39> And how; a service that just _catalogues_ tax IDs and handles sending out the right paperwork would make mint... this might be perfect for somebody like Indinero (a recent YC addition).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> New budgeting guideline - spend no more than $599 at any individual supplier.

<comment><USER41> Wait -- wouldn't this help the economy by creating many competing entities in any given space?

<comment><USER42> Or hurt it by forcing people to use a less efficient supplier. Competition is only good if it organic in nature, (ie: comes about because both have efficient methods and high quality products, even though they differ to some degree) not if it forced competition. Then you end up getting a worse product when you could have gotten a better one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't like this at all but if you want to attempt to take a positive spin on it you could see that this would be a lucrative area for many startups to start offering services for handling these 1099's.

<comment><USER44> Cam here to make this comment. Wouldn't be too difficult to build a quick site that aggregates all your transactions, auto-generates appropriate 1099s and mails them to the company accounting addresses it has on file matching the transaction records.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's almost like the government is _trying_ to get its populace to silently replace it.

<comment><USER46> With what?

<comment><USER45> I don't have a good "end goal" answer for that right now. I do think that the technology that has popped up over the last few decades allows for means of organization and collaboration for providing life necessities that were not available for the vast majority of human history.

If I'm being idealistic, I think that a good bit of the historically useful functions of government ( on a more abstract level, historically useful functions of centralized authority )is made quite outdated by the availability of global communications and exchange to the "common man". It's a can of worms of a topic, and I don't really have the time to get into it right now, so I'll leave it at that.

If I'm being extremely idealistic, I think we should be in a state of post- scarcity in terms of shelter and food, and I think that the internet is a large part of the way that humanity will get to that point if it ever does. In the same vein, I lean towards thinking that getting to that state will become rather _necessary_ for the continued growth and survival of our species, if we're going to continue to grow and survive.

But yeah, can o' worms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I know this is a really alarming issue, but there's no way this will ever happen. Business lobbies are far too powerful to allow something like this to slip by without a serious fight, and we've got 2 years.

Solution: write your congress person. Sign petitions etc and make a whole lot of stinkin noise..

But I'm sure every Fortune 500 corp will be making even more noise about this than small business owners. I can't imagine Walmart likes this anymore than Joe's Hardware

</comment><comment><USER48> In addition to the 1099 nightmare, there's also the S-corp self employment tax nightmare where all s-corp income has the 15.3% self-employment tax imposed, not just the earned income. I predict a mass switch to C-corps.

From [http://www.businessbrief.com/feds-take-aim-at-small-biz- loop...](http://www.businessbrief.com/feds-take-aim-at-small-biz-loopholes/)

 _Both House and Senate bills address what some lawmakers see as evasion of employment tax by certain individuals. The Internal Revenue Service has stated that many taxpayers receive nominal salaries and take their earnings through distributions by S corps., limited partnerships, or other entities. The House and Senate bills would change that situation by imposing self-employment payroll taxes on 100% of S-corp. pass-through income when:

\- The S corp. is engaged in a professional service business, with the key assets being the reputation and skill of no more than three employees, or

\- The S corp. is a partner in a professional service business._

</comment><comment><USER49> A popular tactic of totalitarian governments is to pass laws which everyone will have to break. So that if they don't like someone, there is always a lawful reason to take them down.

<comment><USER50> We should do that to migrant labor.

</comment></comment><comment> bsnss-mn-cdr If (Government && GetRidOfCash) $response = MakeCashUnusable($year=2012); // Returns array with multiple options

echo $response[0];

"Success! New law implemented that will effectively make it so painful to use cash, checks, ach and wire-transfers that everyone will use credit and debit cards which we have full digital access to without direct user knowledge."

echo $response[1];

"Success! New law implemented that will effectively make it so painful to use cash that everyone will start buying everything possible from overseas companies who still accept PO's ( checks, ach and wire-transfers ) because the shipping cost are more easy to predict than cost associated with absolute compliance with this new law."

</comment><comment><USER51> I see this as an immense opportunity to automate this via an software by your identity at purchase. Why can't this be part of the software transaction and automatically reported and available at the IRS real-time.

Our tax system is way too form and administrative based still. It is always delayed and never real-time. Get this stuff out of the way and automate it throughout the year. Hide income taxes and 1099s for contractors just like they hide sales tax in transactions, or just rid of the income tax altogether and go another direction.

</comment><comment><USER52> Anyone know why this was put into the bill? What good intentioned upside someone is trying to accomplish?

Are cell phone companies going to issue 1099s to most of America, and all users have to do the same?

<comment><USER12> _Anyone know why this was put into the bill? What good intentioned upside someone is trying to accomplish?_

To make sure that retailers/sellers are accurately reporting their sales and not lowballing their revenue numbers on their tax returns. It's basically to reduce tax fraud with the hope that the extra tax income (which is assumed that corps or fraudulently not paying) can be used to pay for health care without having to add additional taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> While I disagree with the manner in which many of the "calm down, folks"-esque comments take for granted that this issue will automagically sort itself out, I do agree with them that there are more constructive ways to deal with it than writing rants on HN.

Please, if you are, as I am, concerned about the potential consequences of this provision, please calmly inform your representatives (especially ones on the [very powerful] House Ways & Means Committee) that you would like them to support HR 5141 ( <http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h5141/show> ), which selectively voids this provision.

Concisely and realistically emphasize the impact you believe this provision will have on your present or future business(es). Also, IMHO, it would be constructive to mention that (regardless of your stance of the ACA) you are not expressing concern about the ACA as a whole, but rather about this specific provision; Democrats may otherwise interpret your message as a general attack on their hard-fought (perhaps Pyrrhic?) victory and Republicans may take it as encouragement to frame the debate over HR 5141 as part of an overall attack on the ACA, which would likely cause the the bill to fail. IOW, know your audience.

</comment><comment><USER54> [http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/smallbusiness/1099_health_ca...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/smallbusiness/1099_health_care_tax_change/)

</comment><comment><USER37> seems like an opportunity for automation. I bet you could do something where you slurp down a csv of your credit card transactions (most banks let you do this) and then go through the merchant IDs to figure out who to send the 1099 to. Now, sure, going from the merchant ID to a tax id and address for a 1099 would be quite a lot of work, but that's where the central service comes in. You could either sell the credit card id-> tax id database, or you could 'crowdsource' it- (though you would have to solve a major trust problem) when one user of your service figured out the tax id mapping they would share it with the others.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am a little concerned about this. While I do some consulting work for large companies and we do 1099s anyway, I also do a lot of very small projects (mostly helping other developers get started or get up to speed on something I know more about than they do). For these little jobs that are paid for via PayPal, now small customers need to do a 1099 with me - a hassle for them probably means not as many little 1 week jobs.

Also, as a consumer of goods and services, now I need to do a 1099 for Amazon, people I hire for small bits of work, the local electronics store, etc.?

<comment><USER7> As for getting paid for small jobs and paying people for small jobs, if you paid the person more than $600 in a tax year, you should have already been giving/receiving 1099s.

The only difference with the new rule is that you'd have to give 1099s to vendors.

<comment><USER55> We are OK on paying vendors: for hiring a handyman one or twice a year, a plumber about once a year, and a brush removal service we are under the $600 limit - we mostly do things ourselves. I am more concerned with small customers who pay me a thousand or two a year via PayPal - now they have hassles. It would be really good if PayPal had some service that automated this!

<comment><USER11> They very well may, by the time this rolls around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> So, is this going to be mitigated somehow, or will everyone just ignore the requirement, or will somebody launch Fresh1099s.com and make a pile of money to reduce my headaches considerably? Stay tuned . . .

</comment><comment><USER57> I think that we feel a loss of control over our common politic and that is making even the most rational of us feel like we have to yell and curse to have our disagreements registered, even in a quiet room.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'd be curious to hear how many of the outraged people in this thread already deal with at least, say, 4-5 1099s (other than the obligatory one your bank sends you to report interest earned) in a year.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's easy to see that this is much ado about nothing: if it actually happens as described, it will do significant harm to major politician-owning interests. Therefore it won't happen.

</comment><comment><USER60> what this means in practice I suspect is that audits will result in more findings of non-compliance, therefore more penalty revenue for the IRS. While I agree it's stupid paperwork, if your vendors pay their taxes, and you are keeping your accounts correctly, it probably won't be the biggest deal on the planet to generate a bunch of 1099's for your expenses.

</comment><comment><USER61> The great injustice here as I see it is, Wall Street destroys the economy, makes billions doing it, passes the cost on to US Government via skilled use of FUD (especially the F part), capture, and paid-for access, and gets away clean (with a few show trials like Madoff).

Now the government is so cash strapped that they're looking to squeeze the rest of the country to make up for it. This appears to be the greatest reverse wealth transfer I've ever witnessed or even read about.

</comment><comment><USER62> All they did was make corporations the same as people for 1099 reporting. Don't you just LOVE the hypocritical irony?

</comment><comment><USER63> 1099s are for services only, not products. Buying paper doesn't count as a service.

<comment><USER11> This bill changes the requirement to apply to physical goods as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Sounds like job creation to me.

<comment><USER65> Agreed, but also wealth destruction for all of us except those employed in these unproductive jobs.

<comment><USER66> Not "except." The jobs of the wealth destroyers don't count as wealth creation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> _Theoretically, an Age of Bureaucracy can last until a paper shortage develops, but, in practice, it never lasts longer than 73 permutations. — Adam Weishaupt_

      — Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy

I say great, bring it on! The sooner we Immanentize the Eschaton, the better!

Fiction aside, I predict this law will get repealed pretty quickly and quietly before it goes into effect. The amount of added annual tax revenue from this is projected to only be $20 billion, and as soon as various interest and trade groups realize how much more the extra paperwork is going to cost them, then they'll be screaming at the Congress-critters. They already went through this process with SOX.

It's the Government's duty to maximize tax revenues, so if the cost of doing business in general causes a decrease in many company's profits, then there is less overall income to tax. If that amount of lost tax revenue is more than the projected increase of $20 billion, and I bet it is, then it makes sense to repeal that particular law.

<comment><USER68> > I predict this law will get repealed pretty quickly and quietly before it > goes into effect.

> They already went through this process with SOX

Has SOX been repealed, then? I know of at least two businesses it's prevented from an IPO.

It only makes sense to repeal if the gov't _motive_ is to maximize revenue. As we've seen repeatedly, "duty" is not a concept that impacts career politicians in the slightest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Next time link to the original article, which is here: [http://www.chcchoices.org/Article/28083/Consumer_Power_Repor...](http://www.chcchoices.org/Article/28083/Consumer_Power_Report_231.html)

In this case the report was produced by the Hearland Institute which Wikipedia describes as "an American conservative public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois that advocates free market policies."

Based on some of the bullshit they have published when it comes to global warming, they seem to be more interested in pursuing a political agenda than sticking to the facts.

"Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth's climate."

"The most reliable temperature data show no global warming trend."

"A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization."

"The best strategy to pursue is one of 'no regrets'."

<comment><USER70> How is that relevant to anything?

<comment><USER69> How do you know they are telling the truth? Maybe this is just scaremongering from a group with a certain political agenda. Before getting excited it would be nice to see the same information from a less biased source. How is that not relevant?</comment></comment></comment>


Mother Kills Son for Having Small Member - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/mother-kills-son-small-penis-indonesia_n_2779668.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

<comment><USER2> The word is penis and that is the (very correct) word used in the article headline. Roughly half of us have one so there is no need to be mamby pamby about it.

Here in the UK we have members of parliament and they are all - OK maybe that is it...

<comment><USER3> That word is auto-deleted by the HN software, even from the interior of strings of letters, so something else has to be used if you want to get the message across.

But aside from that, this is not HN material. Flag it and move on to something "deeply interesting".

<comment><USER2> Holy crap - do you mean that penis is a "rude" word in your part of the world - when did correct and accurate English become rude? The mind truly boggles.

How about vagina? Or does the female population of (I assume the USA) not have one?

The interesting bit here is the reputed censorship of standard words not the original article which had no relevance to HN.

<comment><USER3>
      > ... do you mean that penis is a "rude" word
      > in your part of the world ...

Has it occurred to you that this is actually nothing to do with me, and that I'm merely informing you of something I happen to know from observation in the past?

Has it occurred to you that I am not actually in the USA, nor a citizen of the USA?

Or do you simply leap to these conclusions automatically?

 _Added in edit: This is not the first time I've provided information gained over the years I've been on the site, only to have someone then accuse or blame me for something they think is wrong or misguided. So you are not alone. Perhaps I should put a disclaimer on everything I write, or possibly just not bother answering at all. What do you think? I'd value your thoughts since you have, in fact, been on HN longer than I have._

<comment><USER2> Sorry mate - as you did not seem outraged at such censorship (perhaps just grudgingly used to it) I sort of lumped you in with the sorts of people that thought it was OK.

My sincere apologies - no deliberate offence was intended to you - all my ire being reserved for the sorts of people that think in that strangely bizarre and nasty way.

Addendum: First bit of such silly nonsense I have become concious of on this site so perhaps I reacted a bit strongly. If there have been others they have passed me by.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Hex – Logic Board Game - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hex-ai-board-game/id1326484730?ls=1 <comment><USER2> Hey! I bought and played your game. It reminds me of the game Catcha Mouse on ios, where you have to block off the mouse from getting to the edge. What would be cool with your game though would be multiplayer (even if it were on the same device). Aswell as that, arbitrary board size, and more levels would be cool. Other than that, its very clean aesthetically and love to see minimal games like this being made.</comment>


Chebfun – Numerical Computing with Functions - <AUTHOR> http://www.chebfun.org/

<comment><USER2> This is a cool package that offers a new capability. I've been trying to find a use for it -- although Mathematica could do some of this also.

They have a nice examples page ([http://www.chebfun.org/examples/](http://www.chebfun.org/examples/)). Here's one on convolving probability distributions that is much easier and cleaner than discretising the problem manually ([http://www.chebfun.org/examples/stats/ProbabilityConvolution...](http://www.chebfun.org/examples/stats/ProbabilityConvolution.html)). Of course, also much more accurate. The same could be said of computations of expectations or probabilities on such distributions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to require a MATLAB installation. I would have loved a stand-alone version.

<comment><USER4> There are a couple of projects inspired by chebfun that are adding similar functions to other languages:

* [https://github.com/ApproxFun/ApproxFun.jl](https://github.com/ApproxFun/ApproxFun.jl) (Julia)

* [https://github.com/olivierverdier/pychebfun](https://github.com/olivierverdier/pychebfun) (Python)

* [http://nines.cs.kuleuven.be/software/CHEBINT/](http://nines.cs.kuleuven.be/software/CHEBINT/) (Octave)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat unfortunate name, "chebs" are slang in some parts of the UK for breasts.

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

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

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_equation)</comment></comment>


Lguest Adventure: a lightweight x86 virtual machine monitor by Rusty Russell - <AUTHOR> http://swtch.com/lguest/ <comment><USER2> This looks sort of like UML, although I guess its pretty neat in 5KLOC, and "an alternative to UML" if you wanted one. Jails/Zones have always made more logical sense to me when dealing with the "the guest OS is the same", especially since they're much more lightweight...</comment>


Show HN: Markdown to HTML Converter - <AUTHOR> http://markdowntohtml.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was writing in a lot of Markdown, and didn't want to edit our CMS to support Markdown -- so I was doing a lot of converting from Markdown to HTML.

Most tools require a few extra clicks to convert Markdown into HTML -- and I wanted something really simple. Here it is.

It has the side effect of helping you play around with and learn HTML, if you're familiar with Markdown.</comment>


Farmville has more users than twitter, but it's more addicting than fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkNewheiser/20091204/3733/Farmville_Social_Gaming_and_Addiction.php

<comment><USER2> Good article. But... while the article states that Farmville spreads itself "throughout your social network innocently" ... I don't know. It seems that there is a lot of (for lack of a better work) begging related to this game. "Does anyone need a horse?" "Can someone look after my crops?" I can't say I understand how this might help one's social network, and therefore, how "innocent" this might be.</comment>