Ask HN: 4K on 13 or 15 inch? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking of getting a new laptop (xps 15 1080p) but am curious about 4k and smaller screen size. I am a web developer and often have code editor and browser or docs open side by side. People say that 4k gives you more real estate but don't you also have to scale it to 200 percent just to see.
So my question is 1) is 4k worth it just for a programmer? (I know it's great for image quality and what not) 2) is 13 inch too small for side by side apps Or coding for long periods of time?
I've went to the stores and checked out the demos and a 13inch 4k looks fine but I can't be sure without installing actual apps and sitting with it for hours. <comment><USER2> 4K is worthless on a 15" screen. Text is too small and many UI components are unscalable on linux. I run at 1920. I had an Inspiron and it took some kernel hacking just to get 4K to work in Ubuntu (seems to be fixed now) Only good thing with 4K is you know the gpu will probably work with an external 4K tv or monitor.

Also Dells will run ass slow and won't charge the battery if it does not detect a genuine dell power adapter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm I didn't know that about dell. The only other similar laptops are the yoga 720 or the new zenbook pro. I don't trust Asus as a company (shitty motherboard on my first build) and the yoga is alot cheaper but has a significantly less bright screen. Any reccomendations

<comment><USER2> I like the dell except for the power adapter bs. Just don't lose the adapter. Otherwise I would probably get a MacBook Pro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My eyes find 4k too small to read well even on a 15" display. So unless you have very good eyesight, you will probably run 1920 x 1080 or similar resolution. Personally, I prefer to use a pair of 23" screens to get enough screen-space.

</comment><comment><USER4> I miss 17" laptops. I wish I'd had the cash to buy one of the 17" macbook pros before they stopped making them.

<comment><USER5> I have the last model 17" mbp that was made (late 2011) and even though I had the foresight to order it with an SSD upgrade, it's showing it's age.

For most tasks performance is ok (I assume ssd access is much faster in newer machines though) but it's a maintenance issue now.

I've had.. 3 mainboard replacements I think (failed discrete gpu). A swollen battery. Just had to replace one of the fans, and due to its age it's now a solely DIY option. Apple won't repair it for any amount of money and their authorised repairers can't order parts.

These days I think a multi-machine setup is more practical, (and with a wife & child I work a lot more from home now than I did 5 years ago) so my next machine will likely be a 4K iMac, with the 17" relegated to "definitely need a portable" duty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 4K will give you more real estate, but, on a laptop and without proper scaling, you'll be watching if from low orbit.</comment>


Introducing Koala: a new gem for Facebook's new Graph API - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twoalex.com/2010/05/03/introducing-koala-a-new-gem-for-facebooks-new-graph-api/

<comment><USER2> Nice! I just experimented with it.</comment>


Auto-disable AirPort when ethernet is active [osx][scripts] - <AUTHOR> http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100927161027611

<comment><USER2> I wonder if its possible to have different security settings when one is on the home wifi. Would be nice to lock up very frequently in coffee shops and not have to login all the time at home.</comment>


SoftBank Is Breaking the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ae7y/weworks-implosion-shows-how-softbank-is-breaking-the-world <comment><USER2> It seems pretty clear to me that the root of all this nonsense is artificially low interest rates for a decade paired with increasing wealth accumulation among a small portion of people. The former has led money out of traditional investments and into VC seeking high returns while the latter has led to an explosion of angels and LPs with too much money and not enough productive things to spend it on.

Unfortunately, it looks like neither of these is going to be resolved any time soon. However, we at least now have a couple years worth of public investors who've been burned this time around and startup kids who got hosed by highly devalued options before they could cash out, so maybe a small amount of sanity will return to the startup world.</comment>


The Government Technology Awards from Code for America - <AUTHOR> http://awards.codeforamerica.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> New awards from Code for America recognizing the best government technologies delivering better government for the people, by the people, in the 21st century. Deadline: July 13!

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I work with the awards team at CfA. Will pass on questions and answers in this thread.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Someone is stealing things from my car. What security camera would help? - <AUTHOR> Someone has been stealing things from my car.  I don't know where or when.
I want to put a camera in my car so I can see who, and ideally also put a camera on my front porch to watch the car.
Can anyone suggest a camera that can watch inside the car, ideally battery backed with local storage, easy to mount to whatever surface, doesn't look too obvious, night vision, motion detection and also uploads to somewhere outside that camera so if they decide to steal the camera too then at least I'll get to see a little bit of the action....
And yes I know I could lock the car or get a car alarm but I want to see who is opening the door and searching the car. <comment><USER2> The ones I can think of that would be good for in car would be pretty pricey to risk being stolen themselves. However, you might be able to find a small 5v camera (and use an adapter from the cars accessory port) that will capture stills on motion for a reasonable price, maybe try tiger direct or monoprice, newegg etc. Then just hide it reasonably well in the car, rear trunk deck or above the rearview mirror would be ideas -- use colored tape to make it blend into the interior. To transmit the image as well as store local that is a little more involved. Outside of something like a nest camera, you could use a RaspberriPi with camera and have it connected via wifi to your house so you could get the images. It would be a little tougher to conceal, but still very doable.

Obviously I think just locking your doors (if you don't already) is the smartest idea. And setup a camera outside, at least that way you can start to deter this behavior and possibly catch a glimpse if it does happen. I'd also bet if this is happening multiple times, it is someone you know, or a local teenager etc. That's what happened to me when I found my car getting egged etc repeatedly one summer, I setup a system to catch them which allowed me to have a little discussion with them to make it stop before it escalated.

A little fun too, if you only use the outside camera, put a sign in the car that says "don't look back" or something to that affect (to get them to look towards the camera). Most people when they read that immediately do the behavior you wrote to see why, and they'll look right at the camera. Only the real criminals will just bolt and not do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've got an old cell phone you no longer use (but haven't thrown away / recycled), just tape it somewhere in the car and cover it with something so it's not obvious. Then connect it to your home wifi (assuming the car is parked closed to the house), and turn on a live streaming app like ustream / whatever. It'll burn through the phone battery pretty quick though, so you'll probably need to plug it in somehow.

Wouldn't do much for motion detection or night vision, but might be an easy way to get started.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just like the other user said, go for a mobile as it's the least expensive option you have</comment>


Ask HN:  Won't Local Newspapers Still Survive? - <AUTHOR>

Hacker News has been REALLY busy lately with all the noise about newspapers 'dying'.  However, local newspapers seem to be doing quite well.  I opened up my local publication this morning and saw it was filled with advertisements and seemed quite healthy.  I can't imagine a day when Mom and Dad would ever stop cutting out pictures of little Jimmy playing soccer.  It seems to be part of our upbringing.  Is it the same for you? <comment><USER2> hyperlocal newspapers will always do well, but that is because the bar is effectively lower for them. where i grew up, the local newspaper was run by one person, and it wasn't their only job because the profits couldn't sustain them. content was always coming in and was a self-sustaining cycle -- stories about the little league, usually submitted by the little league itself or a coach or something, will bring in eyes of the league participants to the paper.

they'll probably always be profitable, but they won't be churning out jobs.

<comment><USER3> Mine as well. I think there are two people there.

So just wondering--if this goes in reverse, is there a space for extremely local newspapers that cover just a tiny portion of a city or suburb? Implying that economies of scale are not scaling anymore.

<comment><USER2> i think that its possible. i don't believe that many of the local papers are run as effectively as possible -- most are probably not run by business- oriented people, but by people who are popular inside the community (or at least, ours was and so were the ones in the general area).

they probably do scale, it is probably more likely that the same problems we're seeing with larger papers are happening with smaller ones. they're not keeping themselves modern with respect to technology and business practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends on your definition of Local. Most City newspapers are owned by conglomerates, the Orlando Sentinel is part of the Chicago Tribune and as a result is bankrupt. We're all waiting to see what they do but it's not doing well afaik.

As for the local newspapers that aren't part of the bigger machines, yes they should fair just fine so long as they keep costs down and adopt to the online markets available to them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Local dailies that run a combination of world, national, state, and local news are hosed. That segment of the industry is in a tailspin. Ad revenue slips, then a round of layoffs to try to cap costs. Fewer people means fewer articles, shoddy reporting, or both. Quality of the paper declines. Ad revenue slips, then a round of layoffs to try to cap costs...</comment>


Announcing Clojure/core - <AUTHOR> http://clojure.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-clojurecore.html

<comment><USER2> Nice. I have been appreciating Clojure a lot more recently because my largest customer uses it (so I am using it). There is a lot to like: practical language, good decisions on how Java integration is done, nice setup for supporting contrib library, easy to use stable 1.1 or 1.2 depending on project (since with leinigen I put clojure.jar and clojure-contrib.jar in each project's lib directory), nice Emacs support with swank-clojure, etc.

I dont hire other programmers but if I did I would appreciate have so much Clojure specific talent in one organization. I hope that Clojure/core prospers - they deserve it.

<comment><USER3> Who is your largest customer? It would be interesting to know about companies using Clojure.

<comment><USER2> They are in 'stealth mode.' I'll ask them what I can talk about.

<comment><USER3> Sure, thanks. At least make an announcement on HN when they come out of stealth mode.

<comment><USER2> Our Techcrunch presentation is over, so here you go: <http://www.compasslabs.com/>

Video of presentation: [http://www.livestream.com/disrupt/video?clipId=pla_b6c62d26-...](http://www.livestream.com/disrupt/video?clipId=pla_b6c62d26-0557-4110-9178-e80678cdf301) (the judges liked it :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something about a commercial website with its sense of self-interest versus welcoming-user-focus causes me a gut bad reaction.

Postgres is an good example of doing this right IMHO: <http://www.postgres.com> the commercial aspects are underplayed and yet they have a good business. With Postgres I feel I can contribute even if I am not part of the "core." I think Clojure and the businesses around it benefit from keeping the same open, welcoming feeling.

I have been very interested in Clojure and haven't seen it put a foot wrong so far. This is an unexpected "off" note.

EDIT: Languages and tools do prosper and my point here is to highlight how they do so by building a community and what Clojure's "core" risk through making this distinction.

EDIT: I know about <http://clojure.org> \- my point is that <http://postgres.com> (note the .com) downplays the us-vs-them-ness that comes with a commercial tombstone site. Also the announced redirect indicates to me the change in tone is intentional - I hope they readjust. They can keep the community-sense and still have a good business.

<comment><USER5> I think the us v.s. them aspect of this is all in your head. We all like working on our hobbies, but unless we're able to get paid for it that's all they'll ever be.

Clojure has been trying to solve this problem for a while (see <http://clojure.org/funding>). If they're able to make something like this work then I think that's great. It's still an open source project, it's not like they'll be rejecting patches because they come from the wrong people.

It just means that more people can do Clojure for a living, which'll improve the language itself and the platform for everyone.

<comment><USER4> You may have missed my point. I take time to offer supported criticism because I want to see Clojure succeed. To succeed, Clojure must keep the community or there is no business in supporting the language.

Some language comparisons: Perl got where it is on the strength of its community which now supports many language-focused businesses. Community is also cited as one of the strengths of Python and Ruby which also have associated thriving businesses. Community is regularly cited as a problem with LISP (wait, wait, hold the spears - I'm a LISPer too!). PTL Scheme is the exception that seems to prove the rule - good community there.

Languages and tools do prosper and my point here is to highlight how they do so by building a community and what Clojure's "core" risk through making this distinction.

I see I may initiate a language dispute and that is not my intention. Other projects just seem the best source of supporting comparisons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Commercial site url:

<http://clojure.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if Arc is the tortoise to Clojure's hare.

<comment><USER7> Besides being a Lisp, Arc does not exist anywhere near the the same territory as Clojure.

Lisp introduced us to: code == data

Clojure introduces us to: code == concurrent high-performance immutable data

<comment><USER6> In a hundred years, is that something that will matter?

<comment><USER8> "Multi-core is here to stay", says Rich Hickey

<comment><USER9> Hopefully not. Multi-core should be seen as a stepping stone on the way to better technology.

<comment><USER10> Why not have multi-core version of other tech, unless you are talking Quantum Computing, though isn't that in some ways the ultimate form of multi-core?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple to create new London HQ at Battersea Power Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed-apple-to-create-stunning-new-hq-at-battersea-power-station-a3356201.html <comment><USER3> There was an interesting bit in Private Eye about the redevelopment a few months ago.

Apparently a common pattern for listed buildings on valuable land is for the owners to hire developers who get planning permission to take down the listed parts, restore them, then put them up again. Then after taking down the listed parts the developer "unexpectedly" goes bankrupt, leaving the owners with valuable land no longer encumbered by a listed building.

But in the case of Battersea Power Station, when developers applied to take down all four towers at the same time, planners only granted permission for them do to one tower at a time, preventing such an "accident" from happening. Private Eye considered this a rare and impressive show of wisdom on planners' part.

<comment><USER4> London has many many planning problems but the architecture around the River Thames I always find to be pretty awesome...so many amazing buildings to look at when on a run...Glad to see they were careful with the permission this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, that is the one from the Pink Floyd album "Animals".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_(Pink_Floyd_album)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_\(Pink_Floyd_album\))

<comment><USER6> In a few movies, often as dystopic backdrop

[https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2016/jun/22/monty...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2016/jun/22/monty- python-children-of-men-battersea-power-station-films)

<comment><USER7> Apple could make their employee onboarding look like their 1984 commercial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is brilliant news! It's one of those iconic London buildings. You'll see it on approach to London to Victoria station, it's clearly visible from the London eye, and as the other commenter noted it's on the cover of that pink floyd album. It's use and renovation has been mooted for years but presumably it's always been held up because it's both a listed building and will be very expensive to renovate due to old hazardous materials and the like. It would take a company with Apple's cash to do this and I'm delighted to see it finally happening.

<comment><USER9> The renovation has been underway for years now. Apple are simply taking out a lease on some of the new office space.

I love the building but the surrounding area is ground zero for grotesque property speculation in London. Recently it looked like the developers had overplayed their hand and wouldn't be able to shift all the £1M+ flats - <USER2> now with a bunch of Apple devs looking to rent them out, who knows?

<comment><USER10> High London property prices are primarily a function of demand outpacing supply, and supply having been particularly slow for a couple of decades. If property developers struggle to shift flats in Battersea, then that's excellent news, that means that the market for expensive flats appear to have been saturated, and that developers will begin addressing the market below this price point now.

Also, important to remember, Apple is _moving_ their HQ, not adding a brand new location. The majority of the people working in that office already live in London, so when they moving in to pricey flats in Battersea, they're moving out of similar priced flats elsewhere. While possibly a windfall for those particular developers, the overall supply/demand situation in London won't change much.

<comment><USER11> The only reason anyone is paying £1m+ for pokey two beds in Battersea is because they think a greater fool will pay more in a few years time.

<comment><USER12> Also, "sales" on these new developments often turn out to mean "off-plan Asian investor put down a £20k deposit which they can and will walk away from in a heartbeat if the market looks like turning, because what are you going to do about it?". In some ways they behave more like options for property speculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Will it have an inflatable pig balloon over it?

</comment><comment><USER14> When this was reported on the bbc radio today Apple was described as iPad and iPhone manufacture Apple. So desktops and laptops old hat now!

</comment><comment><USER15> The Battersea Power Station was also once considered for redevelopment into a football stadium, while maintaining the towers and facade: [http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/artists- impressi...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/artists-impressions- show-how-battersea-906467)

</comment><comment><USER16> "Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters." C.N. Parkinson</comment>


Face2Face: Real-Time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos (CVPR 2016 Oral) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk <comment><USER2> this is amazing! can't wait to see the paper.

how do they create a 3D model out of video.</comment>


ycombinator.com Alexa Profile - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com

<comment><USER2> From the "Related Links" section: _If you like ycombinator.com you may also like: Graham, Paul_

Pretty much dead on...</comment>


LinkedIn is a breeding ground for lies and brown-nosing. Exposing the worst - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/StateOfLinkedIn <comment><USER2> Then what does that make Twitter? a cesspool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Am guessing you did not click the link, it's a riot!

<comment><USER2> The title was enough for me... Did the user just get banned? Getting error now. hah

<comment><USER3> Twitter is down. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20414407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20414407)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mads Torgersen and Dustin Campbell on the Future of C# - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/19/mads_torgersen_and_dustin_campbell_on_the_future_of_c <comment><AUTHOR> It's fascinating to me to think about C# living outside of the Microsoft world. I really have no idea what that is going to look like in the future, but I'm excited to watch.</comment>


70 hour workweek  - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/gallery/smallbusiness/2013/03/06/70-hour-workweek/index.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know how much longer we can romanticize this notion of more hours= better. While a certain amount of sacrifice is required, if you're working 70, 80, 100 hours a week you might just be inefficient. Sometimes longer hours will be required but I think for a lot of new entrepreneurs they just assume this is how long they have to work, almost as if it's just a matter of accumulating hours.</comment>


Daring Fireball: Google's Open Web - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/04/15/google-open-web

<comment><USER2> Gruber's commentary:

 _"The assumption here is that the only way to search is through Google, and that the "open Internet" is only what Google can index and sell ads against."_

That's it...that's the entirety of the original content of his post. Whoopty Fuckin' Doo

<comment><USER3> He likes to point out (what he sees) as the implied motives for things that happen, particularly when Google is involved :)

Maybe he's right, but is indexing and a common access mechanism really such a bad description of open? Sure they want to sell ads against it, but they can still do that even if they just aggregate content from 1000 different access mechanisms.

They've tried to crawl Flash sites before, but those are still distributed through a browser, contrast that with an app that has a (sometimes limited) JSON api but requires a specific platform just to access the interface. If they don't "crawl" the actual interface while it's running, they can't see anything.

That's a dead end though if the person searching has to install an app built for a device they dont have just to follow a search link.

Maybe the real answer is that not everything should be crawl-able in the first place? Or not everything needs to be instantly searchable?</comment></comment>


Freetserv: a free serial terminal server - <AUTHOR> https://freetserv.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Cheap multiport terminal servers are available surplus.[1] This one is $69 for 24 ports. You'll need a 48VDC power supply for it, though; this must have been for a telco installation.

[1] [http://www.unixsurplus.com/product/digi-cm-32-console- termin...](http://www.unixsurplus.com/product/digi-cm-32-console-terminal- server-32-ports)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link.

Before starting this project, we actually bought an old commercial serial terminal server, but ran into multiple issues with it.

One of them was a hardware issue where the vendor suggested the only fix was to replace the entire CPU.

Another is that these devices are so old by now that the software is full of security holes that will never be addressed.

Hence, I'm a bit sceptical of commercial serial terminal servers now :).

<comment><USER3> I remember back in '95, someone basically saying exactly the same thing when asked why they were using a Linux machine stuffed with a couple of Cyclades cards to do the exact same thing. The more things change, the more they stay the same ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love an open/non-shit IP-KVM, too. Right now it's basically a Raritan vs. Avocent duopoly (with lots of other rebrandings), and then IPMI (which is the right choice for huge numbers of homogenous machines, but wrong for a test lab).

<comment><USER5> I've often wondered about this as well. A Raspberry Pi 2 seems to have enough horsepower to act as a very capable KVM type unit, and has an Ethernet port.

How hard is it to digitize analog VGA or interface directly with HDMI and encode to something like VNC using the GPU if necessary?

<comment><USER6> I've been fiddling with this idea for a while and have basically come to the conclusion direct VGA capture isn't worth the trouble. There are VGA to HDMI converters available for about $20-$30 that do the job surprisingly well. There used to be a number of VGA -> digital chips available (TI TVP7002, etc) but they've all been EOL'd or NRND (Not recommended for new designs.)

For HDMI/DVI capture at this scale, the best option seems to be an FPGA based system. There are several boards available that have the necessary hardware but are expensive (relative to a 1-port IP-KVM), power hungry, or large (or all of the above.) The Digilent Zybo may have enough to pull it off (and has the ARM cores to boot) but is still a bit on the pricey / power hungry side. I'm hoping the new Snickerdoodle Zynq based boards will be able to do the job (with an add-on board)

Regarding using the Pi2, it might work, especially if it can be fed via the camera interface. The lack of USB-OTG (linux gadget support for KB / Mouse / Mass Storage) limits the usefulness somewhat.

I've been hopeful about the Beaglebone Black / X15 due to the USB-OTG and the tons of extra IO.

The other board of interest is the Dragonboard 410C - it can supposedly capture at 1080p60 (more than enough for the average system you'll stick a KVM on) but I'm not sure what that means explicitly (yet.) It does have USB-OTG (though it can't do USB Host / Device simultaneously.)

<comment><USER7> There is a board that'll pull hdmi to the CSI port. It's abou 150 euros, but there have been success reports, up to 60 fps

[http://www.auvidea.eu/index.php/theme- styles/2014-12-30-22-3...](http://www.auvidea.eu/index.php/theme- styles/2014-12-30-22-32-06/b100-hdmi-to-csi-2-bridge)

Regarding emulating a USB device, first thing that comes to mind is possibly using a micro of some sort that can act as a usb device, like an arduino or teensy. it's a bit hackish, but sending things over SPI should get more than ample speed for keyboard/mouse emulation, and there's code written already for a lot of micro platforms to do both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This would pair like fine wine with [http://www.conserver.com/](http://www.conserver.com/) to make a distributed console server system for large infrastructures.

</comment><comment><USER9> Turn an old Linux pc into a terminal server: [https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/utils](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/utils)

(look for serial connect / c.c)

This lets you telnet to a serial port (uses xinetd and telnetd), just like commercial ones. It includes locking and a way to force disconnect of an inactive user hogging a port. I think it should work on the raspberry pi / Freetserv.

Other features: hex dump mode, suppress ansi mode, logging, reports name / ip address of user already connected to port.

Also there is a script to control the outlets on this device: [http://www.cpscom.com/controlled-ac-power-strip- cps-468.html](http://www.cpscom.com/controlled-ac-power-strip-cps-468.html) (which is the cheapest computer controlled outlet strip I could find).

The idea is you can connect to the console port of some machine under test. Once connected, you can also control its power. This is great for working on hardware remotely or linux kernel development.

</comment><comment><USER10> Using a raspberry in one of these would make me scared that it won't come back after a power cycle because it has inevitably killed the filesystem or SD card.

A MIPS system from a router running OpenWRT would be a good fit, they usually boot from read-only mounted rock stable flash and have proper networking hardware.

<comment><USER11> freetserv also recommend going readonly...

[https://freetserv.github.io/software- setup.html](https://freetserv.github.io/software-setup.html) (last section)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly — I've been running a couple of Raspberry Pis in a read-only setup ever since they were released, and they are still working fine with the same SD card and filesystem :).

<comment><USER12> I've been running my home server off of a cheap USB flash drive for years, and mounting it read-only essentially fixed all my fs troubles, even when the power cuts off (I don't use an UPS). The only problem is having to disable logging (I don't have anywhere to ship them to).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I haven't looked at the details of this design but from past experience, I've found USB based serial ports to lose data at high speeds. I tend to use PCI/PCIe based cards instead.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is very cool. I'm amazed at how expensive it is even built yourself. How much is the equivalent professional version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Commercial serial terminal servers (used to?) go for about a thousand bucks.

Bottom line, I think it's (barely) cheaper to build one yourself, but only if all the research & development (read: ordering multiple prototypes) is already done, like it is now :).

<comment><USER15> You can buy used ones on ebay for $100 though.

I picked one up for $90ish shipped a few years ago. Not with anywhere near this many connections though.

I can hardly give the thing away now.

<comment><USER16> I buy the Perles off of eBay for a few hundred dollars. Way cheaper than this, good software support, multiple gig PHY's, and often dual psus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I would be interested in is:

USB HUB, 10-20 Ports

Each Port switchable

19" Rack-mount case

Was once available from a Russian company for an insane price (2k US$).

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually considered that as an alternative in the beginning, i.e. use a bunch of usb2serial adapters on a 1U rack-mountable USB hub.

We decided to go for serial ports because that ultimately is less clutter in the rack, i.e. the usb2serial adapters "go into" the unit instead, and you get to use rj45 connectors instead of bulky db-9 connectors.

That said, of course a generic usb hub could satisfy more use-cases. What's yours?

<comment><USER17> I have a bunch of USB Devices and don't like the cable chaos. Also, some of the USB powered USB devices I use rarely, hence each USB plug should be switchable.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is that code snippet / command that you Google every single time? - <AUTHOR> Example: every time I update my .gitignore I can't remember the commands that I need to run on git to remove the cached files before doing "$ git add" again.. My brain seems not able to incorporate such information. <comment><USER2> Every time I want to forward a port through ssh I need to remind myself the formatting of the command.</comment>


Everything I Knew About Reading Was Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/everything-i-knew-about-reading-was-wrong-bde7e57fbfdc <comment><USER2> Note: the 14 book links are all affiliate links. Fourth submittal.</comment>


Latest Chromium builds for Mac OS X support Chrome Extensions - <AUTHOR> http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/

<comment><USER3> Chromium Mac builds have supported extensions for a couple of months :)

I wrote an extension using Chromium on a Mac <http://github.com/tumult/jdic- chrome>

It's in need of updating to take advantage of NPAPI (to reduce its giant memory footprint) and the new preferences page feature. Hopefully I'll get find some time to work on it before too long.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I guess I assumed they didn't since the official Chrome betas don't yet.

<comment><USER4> They took extensions away from Chromium for a few days and re-enabled them a bit ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm using it right now, and I was so impressed that it is now my default browser (replacing Safari).

Extensions I'm currently using are: Gmail notifier, Feedly, Goo.gl shortener, Google Translate, and Facebook. All work well, and they don't seem to be slowing down the browser during normal operations.

<comment><USER6> The biggest extensions that's still missing is 1password and that's probably the only reason google chrome is not yet my default browser.

<comment><USER7> Same here as well.

Unrelated - I've been using 1Password for about 2 months and am realizing my biggest concern is coming true.. that I'm relying on 1P so much that I'm forgetting all of my passwords. Have you run into this issue?

<comment><USER8> Yes. I've been using 1P for over a year now and 80% of my passwords were generated by the password generator. They are impossible to remember. The other 20% are passwords for web-based apps that I access on other computers from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool, it was no longer possible to live without an ad blocker for me. Not that I hate advertising so much, but the CPU usage (and battery life) was disastrous with all this flash ads around.

</comment><comment><USER10> I know this sounds small and I'm likely nitpicking, but the one thing that bothers me a bit in chromium is that the entire page "flashes" white for a second while it is loading a page. It seems that when you click on a link it "blanks" the page real quick, then loads. There's no doubt it is fast - <USER2> this "flash" on every click is annoying. Am I the only one that sees this? I don't see this in Safari, and I thought they were both based on the same rendering engine.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use a plugin called no-script in firefox - is there any news on when it will be available for Chrome? I will hang on to firefox until I can decide what js to burn my cpu cycles on, thank you.

<comment><USER12> I don't think there is and I don't think there will be. There are limitations with what you can do with Chrome extension, which is why in its current form, extensions like noScript and ABplus (the one that works) and Firebug (not firebuglite) is not possible in chrome. They intentionally did that so that extensions don't hamper browser performance. Unlike Firefox, your chrome browser doesn't get slower with more extensions. Their performance is actually the same.

Another thing to think about, is that one of the biggest selling point with Chrome is it's ability of render scripts faster. If you are going to use an extension like noscript, whats the point of using Chrome? Might as well stick with Firefox.

<comment><USER13> You don't need Firebug in Chrome, fyi.

The built-in developer tools are WebKit's, which have been far better than Firebug for about the last year now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> LastPass works. That means I finally can have a working password in Chrome Mac.

Yay!

Good bye Safari!</comment>


Trying something again - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cynically.moe/blog/tech_thoughts/trying_something_again.md <comment><USER2> Makes sense to me. Good luck!

> Ironically, this sort of cross functional work is highly valued, but if > you're drawn to this path, you'll find yourself doing much more cutting > through red tape than real work.

I find myself in this position. I've been with my company since it was tiny (10 employees total) to now (~150). I have functioned as a generalist for most of that time and I'm somewhat divided between architecture and coordination efforts versus actual coding. The original core dev team has mainly become the backend team and we have a newer frontend team. I recently shifted from the backend team to frontend, and now I'm able to help bridge between them so I'm hoping to help avoid some of those siloing pitfalls.

</comment><comment><USER3> On the list of things the OP wants was, "Product I believe in – alignment of the team towards a true north centered on product, Minimal levels of team toxicity"

A quicker way to find this may be by popping up a level and asking, "who do I really want to help, and then what product do they need?"

That lack of a "who," in the north star turns companies into a race to the bottom. The "why," implied by the "who" needs to be there as well, but find some people you like or admire and build something they want. It's a different class of problem than working for a large org where most of big corp products are just about leverage and optimization, instead of desire and growth.

Who do you want to help?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this is a great point. I remember when this epiphany hit me early on in my career; trite as it was, when I focused on a human centric (rather than task centric) approach, all of a sudden, the tasks themselves got easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _.moe is a proposed TLD in ICANN 's New gTLD Program. The applicant is Interlink.[1] It is a Japanese word with a meaning analogous to both "geek" and "passion". The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 31 March 2014._

[https://icannwiki.org/.moe](https://icannwiki.org/.moe)

<comment><USER6> The only good thing to come from the gTLD cash grab.

<comment><USER7> I find the application description hilarious

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks like after this post, he started working at Salesforce: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/femi- agbabiaka-5b5984108/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/femi-agbabiaka-5b5984108/)

<comment><USER9> yeah! I need to write another follow up, but the Salesforce position is pretty unique* and closer to what I was looking for in this post. It's definitely an experiment, but I'm happy with it so far.

* It's a small startup-like team with a specific mission and visibility/management backing to achieve it, which also allows me to be more of a generalist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I don't know everything, I just know what I know."

Not sure if this is a reference, but this is a catch phrase of a character from the monogatari anime series. [1]

That being said it's an interesting post. I mostly feel the same way but kind of dropped out of tech altogether after 2 bad experiences at $BIGCO companies. Maybe a startup would be a better experience for me.

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

<comment><USER9> it is definitely a reference!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has been my anecdotal experience also, working at startups.

I noticed it in the reverse direction: once $BIGCO employees (often "big catches") come to a growing-from-small-to-midsize startup, some level of political gamesmanship is introduced. If your department has a manager hire with a bad case of the politics, you and your soon-to-be ex-colleagues may be in for a wild ride.

It only makes sense that, if you extrapolate that behavior to the source where it came from, you'd see a lot more of it. There are some big companies that seem to be exceptions to this rule, but there are much more that prove it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel so too. My gf, who has worked at a series of ${BIGCO}s, is a little frustrated frustrated by this: "but you could be earning more and working shorter hours" (what a laugh when you see the hours she puts in).

Yes, but I would not be happy, and while my take home is lower my lifetime earnings have been a couple of orders of magnitude higher (the sum, not most years of course).

But it's less the money than the fun.

</comment><comment> ur-whale "Good engineers move towards juicy problems. The skills that would make you successful at a big tech company are almost mutually exclusive with the profile of the best engineers I know."

This has been my exact experience while working for various SV-based $BIGCORPS

</comment><comment><USER13> The frustrating thing is, all the assumptions here really _should_ be true. Big corps _should_ be the best place to do focussed, meaningful work on a product you believe in. And start-ups, with all their constraints in terms of budget, personnel, brand recognition, sales, etc. should be the worst.

I still hold out hope than some day someone will crack how to structure large organisations in a way that eliminates or minimises the politics and dysfunction while retaining the economies of scale. I feel like this will require a radically different approach, with innovative legal and technical structures to enforce the right incentives.

<comment><USER14> My big organization has good management. What the author writes about is ineffective management, which should have economic consequences, so when director asks upper management for funding, I suspect, his ineffective management will raise questions if not replacement. We have surveys what employees think about quality of management and other things. The organization participates in manager ratings. I think the quality of management is simply monitored here and can't go unnoticed. Or maybe it's not big enough? It's certainly much bigger than startup size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have basically only ever works at very small startups a research labs. I have toyed with the idea of joining one of the large companies. I have even interviewed and received job offers. In my head the upside would be (maybe) better pay, definitely better benefits, better on the job learning and collaboration (code reviews / mentorship), and most of all lots of new faces! All that being said I have never pulled the trigger on one of these offers. Thanks for sharing about what you have learned!

</comment><comment><USER16> Man, this is a great read and probably the wrong day to read it :). Hit home harder than it should have haha. Have fun in your new endeavor!

</comment><comment><USER17> >My grand experiment at working at a $BIGCO has ended. It was fruitful – I made more money than I ever have, and the name recognition was nice the first few times someone asked where I work. Despite all that I'm moving on, back into the startup world.

I checked, and it looks like the author now works for Salesforce. I wonder how the internal culture compares

<comment><USER18> Salesforce has twice the revenue than LinkedIn and is publicly traded. At what point does a startup stop being a startup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find this really interesting because it (almost) exactly mirrors Herzberg's theory of motivation.

<comment> ryan-allen The theory for those who haven't heard of it (like me): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two- factor_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory)

<comment><USER19> I should've linked it, that was a bit rude of me. Thankyou!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My experience too. Small, tightly-focused but widely-skilled teams with at most 2 layers of management (but usually only 1) are where I do my best work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like he went to a startup, Back to LinkedIn (why?) and then to Salesforce (double why.)

</comment><comment><USER22> i have to say i love the formatting of this blog. i miss this style of page being more common.</comment>


Ubuntu masters of the universe - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU

<comment><USER2> good luck recruiting Indians to be MOTU :p motu = fat person in Hindi.

For the humourless, MOTU is the acronym used on that page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> he-man reference :)

<comment><USER3> Flash (Gordon) reference .. ?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNf9rEPoc8Q>

<comment><USER4> Bonfire of the Vanities reference?

" The story centers on Sherman McCoy, a white, millionaire, New York City bond trader with a wife and young daughter. His life as a self-regarded _"Master of The Universe"_ on Wall Street is destroyed when he and his mistress, Maria Ruskin, accidentally enter the Bronx at night while they are driving to Manhattan from Kennedy Airport. "</comment></comment></comment>


Do waterfalls play chess? and other stories - <AUTHOR> http://aeporreca.org/2011/08/13/do-waterfalls-play-chess/

<comment><USER2> I must admit each and every chapter description wooshed way over my head. Hopefully this means that this stuff is not pitched at the intelligent layman, the alternative explanation being that I am unintelligent.

I am pretty sure that waterfalls don't play chess though. And I _know_ the author doesn't. A middlegame position with white's king on e3, supplemented with a knight on f1, a rook on e2 a queen on g3 and in particular a black king sitting between squares, but maybe on e5, while not illegal is so unlikely as to hurt a chess player's eyes. This is a common meme actually; People who use chess graphics in advertisements, TV, films, photo shoots etc. _never_ seem to ask a chess player to set up something that makes sense. I suppose I could just be grateful that at least the board's orientation is correct. I get the strong impression that this happens less than 50% of the time in such situations, although that of course defies common sense.</comment>


The car century was a mistake. It's time to move on - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/02/29/the-car-century-was-a-mistake-its-time-to-move-on/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Good public transport coupled with fast, safe, pleasant walking and bicycling can easily meet the need for movement within our cities._

Where would you place the boundary between car and bike? Would one of these be allowed in the city center? [http://organictransit.com/](http://organictransit.com/) What about several generations later, when it's just as fast as a car?

<comment><USER2> It's not like this is a new question as e-bikes and electric golf carts have been around for decades.

Here's the EU definition for pedal assistance, from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws#European...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws#European_Union_definition) :

"Cycles with pedal assistance which are equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having a maximum continuous rated power of 0.25 kW, of which the output is progressively reduced and finally cut off as the vehicle reaches a speed of 25 km/h (16 mph) or if the cyclist stops pedaling."

If it goes "just as fast as a car" then it requires a licensed driver, and it is not permitted on the bicycle lanes any more than an electric motorcycle would be.

The FAQ on the Organic Transit site points out that while it's a motor assisted bicycle under federal laws, some states classify it as a moped or motorized bicycle.

The boundaries for what counts as a "bike" will necessarily require an arbitrary definition, just like the boundary between different classes of moped and motorcycles. Here in Sweden, for example, a class 2 moped (the smallest type) is designed for a top speed of 25 km/h, has an engine with maximum 1.0 kW, and unless marked otherwise can go on bike lanes, while the heavier class 1 moped (maximum speed of 45 km/h) requires a license and registration plates.

The vehicle you pointed to can go 20 mph using the electric motor, so in Sweden would be a type of moped.</comment></comment>


Ukulele Lessons, S'Mores Bars, and Wine Tours - The New Zaarly is Here. - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/09/zaarly-wants-to-be-the-etsy-of-skill-providers-with-the-launch-of-zaarly-storefronts/

<comment><USER2> Glad to see such amazing stuff happening at Zaarly! What a team you must have to pull this stuff off :)</comment>


Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/why-does-your-company-deserve-more-money/ <comment><USER2> The top advice from all startups that 'survived' seems to be, 'don't hire, be lean', when almost all of them did hire and then lay off employees to get over bad times. In my view 'not hiring good people' during rosy times is an impossible thing to do.

Things like these are self evident only in retrospect.

<comment><USER3> The startup I was a part of in a previous life did that.

The two owners took too much money for personal stuff and couldn't pay the employees. Several times we were told to not cash our paychecks for a few days or were asked to take an unpaid day off, etc. That same year that they let 3 employees go and they each bought a new house, new vehicles, and one of them bought a $75k trailer. So between the 2 of them, we figured that that year they could barely afford to pay us they got around $800k worth of personal stuff.

Then they pushed all the extra work onto the remaining employees. 4 more left a few months after they let go of the first employees which caused them to change their business model quite a bit to retain the remaining employees.

Now looking back, the 3 employees they let go were paid less than $80k between them and were considered contractors (until the IRS was involved).

The lean stuff here burnt several of us out, and for those that remained, the thanks they got was being told there wasn't enough money for a holiday party.

I keep in contact with several of the employees. They're a successful startup in most aspects I assume, but only because they were forced to change stuff that they didn't want to. If they didn't change the business model, they would have bled more employees within a few months and probably would have went under.

<comment><USER4> That sounds more like fraud than a legitimate startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good way to think about this issue: As you prepare to sell preferred shares to raise money, ask yourself "Is this product worth the next ten years of my life?"

Come up with an answer that will satisfy your parents or spouse, not just your co-founders and seed investors.

What can make it worth ten years?

1\. A product with the potential to delight paying customers and make them talk to each other about how great it is. (If your revenue depends on ads, your customers are advertisers, duh.)

2\. A big enough stake in your company (after you sell those shares) to give you good choices when it's time to do the next thing.

<comment><USER6> I think this is a crucial question every entrepreneur should ask his or herself before taking money with a liquidation preference - and that includes long term debt (the ultimate liquidation preference).

Whenever you take on leverage, you have to deliver a return to investors (or lenders). How long will that take? Do you really want to do this for another X years? And ten years is not a bad guess for preferred equity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hiring folks also increases the communication overhead. If you are a team of 3 and hire a 4th you now have a new person that needs trained, needs to learn tribal knowledge, asks the other 3 people different things and keeps them busy distracting them from what were doing - finding product market fit. Any more, I prefer lean & scrappy teams. Small teams get more done. Only scale up the other bullshit when you absolutely have to.

<comment><USER8> >Only scale up the other bullshit when you absolutely have to.

Yet scaling becomes absolutely essential for a company doing anything sufficiently complex. The question is how do you maintain that small team efficiency across an enterprise. It seems that business and engineering are very similar in this regard in that the ultimate baseline problem to be solved is managing complexity. The answer seems to be in adhering to the Unix philosophy of tiny, self contained, composable parts which can be easily reasoned about and composed with.

<comment><USER9> As the parent comment states, the biggest killer of efficiency is communication, particularly across disciplines and across domains. Reducing the overhead of communication and reporting would seem to the the skill most essential to management but generally it's the skill that is generally lacking, or indeed, absent.

The unix philosophy of composable teams can only happen when the communications are clear, concise and don't generate much, if any, overhead. I'd love to see a company with a CCO - Chief Communications Officer - who has a team responsible for making sure that the information passed among the various parts of the organisation was effective and free of bullshit or grandstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's easy to believe that letting go of employees before finding product market fit was the right move, and maybe they never would have never been able to build and grow Twitch under the existing structure. But given that at least one of the products sold for a billion dollars, this seems like a textbook example of a company that did deserve more money based on having built a good platform but not yet having the required traction.

If investors knew the company was going to sell for over a billion dollars, would they really not have invested? Maybe this is the case, but it doesn't seem like it. Instead it seems like the investors didn't believe the company would actually sell for a billion dollars based on the growth rate to date.

<comment><USER11> We didn't deserve more money when things weren't working. It's the investors who decide who deserves more money and if you are setup to need their money you better learn their rules and figure out how to convince them to give it to you.

<comment><USER12> I think here deserve is the wrong term, semantically speaking.

Investors do not decide who "deserves" more money, they decide who GETS it.

Deserving is more a moral term and makes things confusing: a company could deserve the money but not get it because they are not good enough at fundraising, or they need the money at a time when money is very hard to get etc. And many companies get money without deserving it because some investors are stupid, or because they are way too good at looking shiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, at least they _had_ a plan 'B'. Quite a few companies have none and if their current investors don't pony up then it's end-of-story really quick. It's one thing to go raising money when things are looking good, quite another when you've lost momentum.

B2B or B2C can make a huge difference here, in B2C there are some options that are much harder to come by than in B2B (see: youtube), but B2B is easier to land softly because it is far easier to monetize.

</comment><comment><USER11> Happy to answer questions about the post here for the next couple of hours.

<comment><USER14> How do you reconcile this advice and position yourself if the seed round is only enough to prove out whether the product can be built at all?

As an analogy, say I had the idea for a car when everyone is still using horses. I raised a seed round to build my car but the funding is only enough to build a car prototype that goes 10mph. At 10mph, there is obviously no product/market fit since horses are still faster and cheaper. However, the prototype proved out the technical challenges, so I know with more capital I'd be able to make a car that can go 80mph, making the horses obsolete. How would your post apply in this case?

<comment><USER11> I think there are certain companies with significant upfront capital requirements that first time founders will find it almost impossible to get funded. This is unfortunate and probably reducing overall innovation but I think the revolution that has caused first time founders to get funding has been software. Software has significantly reduced the upfront capital required to get a business off the ground. I think we Founder venture further and further away from pure software companies they are going to find fundraising much more challenging.

<comment><USER15> A company that comes to my mind is Kestrel Aviation. They had a great plan up front, founder pedigree, and experience. But they got distracted by hubris and stopped executing.

Launching a new general aviation company is massively capital intensive. They raised a bunch but failed to do anything that resembled shipping. They could have made individual parts, they could have sold kits. Any number of things.

Sometimes you have to start with the small pieces, or do services engagements. These things generate revenue, attract staff, and enable you to build the kind of organization necessary to do something capital intensive.

Trying to go to Mars as step one won't typically work. Try to find business models for the components and assemble over time. My guess is that Elon Musk's portfolio follows this model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do you deserve to invest in my company?

<comment><USER17> That's a fine question to ask if the investor comes to you. If you are coming to the investor asking for money, you are not profitable and spending way more than your income, then I'd suggest not asking this stupid question.

I consult for VCs on a technical side and I sit in on many series A pitches. It's funny how often when you ask a struggling startup why you, as a VC should invest millions into their business, they give the question like this back. "Why do you deserve to invest in my company?" "What are you as a VC bringing to the table?" "What kind of acceleration will you bring to my startup?"

The answer is "Millions of dollars in cash you just asked for" and in our minds we say "you stuck up asshole, you came to us." At that point we often look for different investments. And we never go looking for companies to invest in. They always come to us.

<comment><USER16> The point I was trying to make is actually entirely unrelated to the issues you've raised. My goal was not to turn the tables so much as to illustrate that the use of the word "deserve" in this context makes the question inane because it's moralistic.

In any event, the fact that beggars can't be choosers does not obviate the importance or utility of posing some form of the question to the prospective investor.

<comment><USER17> That makes sense and those are good points. I think it's about tone all the way around. It's entirely fine and beneficial to both parties for the startup to ask questions. But there are some distinct differences in how people ask these questions. Some really are stuck up. It's shocking how deeply people can believe the stories they've made themselves about how good they really are when in fact they failing miserably.

Some of the better questions I've heard are prefaced with comments like "we're aware we're having troubles in this operational area, would you be able to offer guidance and advice to get us out of this sticky situation?" Self awareness seems to be a sign of a great and investable company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > We let a lot of good people go and doubled down on generating the > advertising dollars we needed to stay alive.

And then

> We even took all of our employees to Hawaii to celebrate

This is an interesting juxtaposition within the same paragraph. I hope I'm not out of line for reading this as, "Let's celebrate our thriftiness that led to people becoming suddenly unemployed by splurging on an extravagant vacation!"

<comment><USER19> I took it as after laying people off they were able to actually make money and a year later they were making enough to do extravagant events. With the limited context it doesn't sound the best. With different framing it's more reasonable but I probably wouldn't have included it in the article.

<comment><USER18> > and a year later

I'm not sure I see where this "year later" is derived from in the article.

This is what the relevant section of the article says as I read it now:

      After 4 months of failed pitches (in a process we organized poorly) the only option we had left was to cut expenses and break
      even (here is how to organize a good process). We let a lot of good people go and doubled down on generating the advertising
      dollars we needed to stay alive. Within 2 months we went from burning $250k a month to making $100k a month and we ended the
      year at $8m in revenue and $1m in profit (Suhail, co-founder of Mixpanel, describes that tactic in a great tweet). We even
      took all of our employees to Hawaii to celebrate

Starting at some point in time, they spent 4 months failing then 2 months in correction, then ended the year profitable and celebrated.

If t0 was in late June, the delta between the 6-month ordeal and the celebration would have been zero. If t0 was in early January, it would've been six months. (Plus/minus a month depending on calendar/fiscal year.)

<comment><USER20> given the phrasing I'm working on the assumption that they didn't end up >$250k net income/profit (not clear what the $100k number refers to) soon after getting in the black. Given that they were in the red before, they still had some losses to work through before they could start building towards that $1M profit. The one year timeline sounds about right

<comment><USER18> Okay, I think your analysis is reasonable.

I still wish the article was more clear about the timeline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Do you have product market fit or not? If not, save as much money as you > can, spend more time with your customers, and build a product they need.

I'm still waiting for the tech VC world to unilaterally agree on what "product market fit" is.

<comment><USER14> It is defined in the linked blog post and I believe it's a pretty good definition.

"The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can."

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure Marc invented the phrase so he gets to define it: [https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html](https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yc-kraln What would be the equivalent gate from Series A to Series B?

</comment><comment><USER22> "because we're not spending n*10e06 per month on hosting."

</comment><comment><USER23> >The hardest conversation I have to have with a founder is when they've spent their 1-2 million dollar angel round but haven't found product market fit.

As someone who has bootstrapped a company that found a product market fit and is profitable, I can't even explain how foreign it is to think that people raise and exhaust millions of dollars without finding product market fit.

I constantly have anxiety about all of the facets of running the business. I cringe even thinking about the pressure an entrepreneur must while being in this predicament. I couldn't handle it.

<comment><USER24> > I can't even explain how foreign it is to think that people raise and > exhaust millions of dollars without finding product market fit.

I agree. It feels strange. Whatever people say, it was pretty uncommon for most of the time in human history that some people with a vague idea were given some million dollars to build something. Most people had to argue _a lot_ to get this kind of money.

I think it's because money is cheap. Book money can be easily printed by banks and our currency is worth nothing and investors know that. If the price correction happens, the system could blow off and leave many people in poverty because all their wealth was based on debt. Investors are smart enough that they know that all those dollar bills are worth nothing and that the only currency for startups is attention and massive usage (talking about B2C here).

<comment><USER25> > it was pretty uncommon for most of the time in human history that some > people with a vague idea were given some million dollars to build something

I feel like that might not be true. Seems like anecdotally there's been a long history of people being funded for speculative adventures, going back centuries. The one that "discovered" the Americas being an archetypal example, but surely there were many more examples of patronage and underwriting of ideas, it's a core part of society.

<comment><USER26> That it happened is without doubt, that it happened as often or as easily as in Silicon Valley? Never even close in the history of the human race.

<comment><USER27> One has to wonder how expensive those expeditions were, comparatively speaking, to the average Angel or Series A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?

It's a business, it makes no sense to talk about it "deserving" anything. Either you think your investment will pay off or you don't.

(And try to avoid taking VC cash or you'll wind up doing all the work while they walk off with the profits.)

</comment><comment><USER29> Why do you deserve the privilege to control our lives?

<comment><USER30> We are accountable to those people who we need stuff from, are we not?

<comment><USER31> This is literally profit.

If you do not create enough value you dont get paid.

<comment><USER30> Indeed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Unfortunately, I have to ask them a very unforgiving question: why does your > company deserve more money?

This is so stupid--do VCs ever ask this question in the first place? No. By the time your board is asking this question, they've already decided you don't deserve more money. Any random justifications they make up about "deserving" is a complete distraction from the fact that these choices never have a logical basis.</comment>


Show HN: WOLUXI Data extraction using LED for headless devices diagnostics - <AUTHOR> http://www.woluxi.com/info.html <comment><USER2> To try this out you can install the app and test with the libraries provided or on the test drive page [http://www.woluxi.com/xmit.html](http://www.woluxi.com/xmit.html) , where you can create different types of messages supported.</comment>


Is It Possible to Beat Doom Without Firing a Single Shot? (2018) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o78DzBJ4Rv8 <comment><USER2> It's also possible to beat Doom2 without firing a shot, although you must go tool-assisted to exploit the random number generator to beat level 30. It takes nine minutes of setup to spawn all the Arch-Viles. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpmPLrpGSos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpmPLrpGSos)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love his comment "These can get you stuck for days". I wonder how long he had to play.

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR: Yes, dodge enemies and use shortcuts. Some levels require the use of glitches to make other monsters kill the final boss.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of "pacifist" conduct in Nethack.

</comment><comment><USER6> B-b-but shooting is fun!</comment>


Ask HN: Making meetings compete with each other (not with your ability to work)? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a meeting app for remote teams that's unique in that it doesn't allow people to select times for meetings. It makes meetings compete with each other for a limited number of hours dedicated to all meetings. This forces everyone to change their habits and embrace shorter, focused meetings with fewer people. As a result, the median duration of meetings is 10 minutes, 4% of meetings are 5 only minutes, and some users are reporting a 6+ hour productivity boost every week.
This is somewhat like CPU scheduling that makes the system efficient, fast, and fair. For some reason, this concept doesn't resonate well enough with people of an engineering mindset to take action. At the same time, it's these same people who suffer most from inefficiently scheduled and very long meetings.
Can anyone share any insight on why that might be? If you are an engineer, what's your take on reading this? <comment><USER2> I spent over a year building a company that tried to fix meetings. It's not enough of a burning problem for companies and we pivoted away. Happy to share more insights; email is in my profile.</comment>


Meet Paulo Machado, the man who has lived in hospital for 45 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23364127 <comment><USER2> Sweet.

I only know one person who contracted polio, when he was 10 or eleven polio was nearly over in the US, he was one of that last children to get it here, and his case was relatively mild, he basically just lost functionality of his left calf muscle. He showed me his leg once, it's a really interesting contrast, one leg is full and normal looking and the other looks like it was taken from one of those starving african children, it's really just skin and bone.

He's been a judge in Philadelphia for more than 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> The unanswered question upon reading this article for me has been, "how do these two afford this kind of care for decades?" Wealthy parents? Generous relatives? Great national healthcare coverage in Brazil?

It's just unthinkable for a normal family in the United States (I understand that these two are in Brazil) to be able to afford this, at least in this day and age.

<comment><USER4> Genuine question - what happens for these types of cases in the US if the patient isn't rich? Does the patient get turfed out onto the street once they run out of money?

<comment><USER5> Medicaid pays for it. (And eventually Medicare when they get old enough.)

People have such a strange view of medical care in the US. Medicaid is available to anyone who needs it (i.e. financially plus special medical circumstances).

And all children in the US are able to have medical coverage - if they can't afford it the government pays for it (or gives a pro rated discount).

There is no such thing as not [being able to] have coverage for your kids because you can't afford it.

So basically the old and the young are both covered. The gap is in the middle.

<comment><USER6> Not a wonderful situation, though, is it? $78k for a hip replacement will make one hell of a dent in the money you saved up for retirement, but hey, once you're poor you can get Medicare.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/health/for-medical- tourist...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/health/for-medical-tourists- simple-math.html?_r=1&)

<comment><USER5> You don't have to pay $78K though. If you are old enough medicare will pay almost all of it.

And if younger you should have catastrophic insurance which will pay all but a few thousand of that - and that type of insurance is very cheap.

PS. No one - at all - pays list price for medical care. So completely and utterly ignore such numbers unless your goal is to be disingenuous. The numbers billed by medical providers are from the output of a random number generator, they have no basis in reality, and no one pays it.

<comment><USER6> > If you are old enough medicare will pay almost all of it. And if younger you > should have catastrophic insurance

You ignore the situation this man was, at 67, not eligible for Medicare and not insurable.

> So completely and utterly ignore such numbers unless your goal is to be > disingenuous.

He already pulled strings to get the price of the implant in the US down to $13,000, 'list price, no markup'. Crazy.

<comment><USER5> Medicare starts at 65. I don't know what's going on with this person. I suspect we are not being told everything in order to make a good story.

And that's something to keep in mind: The strange stories you read are in the news precisely because they are so unusual.

> $13,000, 'list price, no markup'. Crazy.

That's what he paid out of the US as well, I guess that's what it costs.

Please explain why you said $78k in your original post.

<comment><USER6> > That's what he paid out of the US as well, I guess that's what it costs. > Please explain why you said $78k in your original post.

No no, you're mixing up different numbers. By the way, the $78k ($13 + $65k) didn't even include the surgeon's fee:

"[...] he reached out to a sailing buddy with friends at a medical device manufacturer, which arranged to provide his local hospital with an implant at what was described as the "list price" of $13,000, with no markup. But when the hospital's finance office estimated that the hospital charges would run another $65,000, not including the surgeon's fee, he knew he had to think outside the box, and outside the country."

" [...] he ultimately chose to have his hip replaced in 2007 at a private hospital outside Brussels for $13,660. That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors' fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America. "

"The Belgian hospital paid about $4,000 for Mr. Shopenn's high-end Zimmer implant at a time when American hospitals were paying an average of over $8,000 for the same model."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Polio doesn't always leave visible long-term side-effects. My father had it and was partially paralyzed for a couple of years as a child, but is normal now. He got lucky! One can only hope that, when we're so close to the final goal, people continue supporting vaccination efforts to finally put an end to this disease.

<comment><USER8> I just wanted to add some more information to your comment. The long-term side-effects are called Post Polio Syndrome and there's a International Polio Network at [http://www.post-polio.org/](http://www.post-polio.org/)

<comment><USER9> The more obvious long term side effect is nerve damage/paralysis, as in the case of the article, which is distinct from post-polio syndrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This jumped out at me:

"The danger of infection means that they have to live in hospital."

Isn't a hospital like the worst possible place in regards to infection?

<comment><USER10> I believe the author refers to the danger of infecting others.

<comment><USER5> Is polio really contagious 50 years later?

<comment><USER9> No, it is not. They do not "have" polio now, they were paralyzed by the disease and the paralysis remains after the disease is gone. My mother had polio as a child and is crippled in one leg, but otherwise of normal health. I'm not sure what the infection worry is - it might be something to do with the paralysis/use of the iron lung?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One short article that was equal parts inspiring, heart-rending and heart- warming.

I look forwards to the animation.</comment>


1930s Household Refrigerators (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://musingsonentropy.com/2013/04/04/1930s-household-refrigerators/ <comment><USER2> Anecdote, but I rescued a 1947 Kelvinator C-7-R (essentially a 1930's pre-war design) last year from the National Grid fridge scrapping scheme. It'd sat in an unheated garage since 1993, after being continually in use by the same family from 1948 to 1993. I plugged it in once I got home, and it cooled down to 38F within an hour. :)

Functionally, it just needs a new door seal to go back into service. Unfortunately I turned it into another restoration project... the original glass drawers got smashed in the 70's, and replaced with pieces of wood paneling, the interior door panel is cracked, and most importantly, it needs all the wiring replaced.

Something of note for post-war appliances like this; due to copper shortages, a lot of manufacturers switched to aluminum wire. This, combined with the natural rubber insulation, and the lack of grounding, it's basically waiting to electrocute me, then set my house on fire.

A lot of other 40's and 50's appliances are probably the same in terms of aluminum wiring. Pretty much everything prior to the 70's is gonna be full of natural rubber insulation and no grounding (or double insulation), however.

<comment><USER3> What is the energy use of such an old fridge compared to a new one?

<comment><AUTHOR> Much better than you'd think --- I have a late 30s Frigidaire which consumes a bit less than 300kWh/year, which is actually on the low side compared to some of the newest ones today. GE's famous Monitor Tops from the same era (which sell for absurd $$$ in working condition today) are also very energy- efficient:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20121218033749/http://www.greenbu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121218033749/http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/choosing- energy-efficient-refrigerator)

The ones with the highest consumption are the late 60s to 80s thin-walled ones (which makes for more interior space, but obviously less insulation) and those with defrost heaters.

It's both depressing and a bit amusing, both from the point of view of historical accuracy and saving working products from being scrapped, that a basic search on how much energy a fridge uses turns up misleading results like [https://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/refrigerators.html](https://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/refrigerators.html) \--- that one cuts off at 1976, and is essentially claiming 2200kWh/year for all models before that year, which is a gross generalisation and exaggeration. 2200kWh/year is equivalent to consuming 250W for 24/7\. The compressor in my fridge has a rated power of less than 100W, and certainly doesn't run 24/7.

<comment><USER3> The thing I think is really interesting about this is the implication that efficiency got much worse before starting to get better.

I guess intuitively that makes sense since the first refrigerators were probably upgraded actual "ice boxes", where efficiency is obviously very important.

<comment><AUTHOR> Electrical costs were also quite high --- many places still had not been electrified yet. Combine that with The Great Depression and efficiency definitely became a concern and marketing point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An aside but i'd like to point out the biggest design difference and why that changed. The doors. They used to have a latch. That resulted in numerous deaths of children. The modern design using magnetic seals came about because of this.

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

<comment><USER5> Glow in the dark interior trunk release handles in passenger sedans also exist for this reason.

<comment><USER6> Similar reasons, at least. There is also usually a way to access the passenger compartment from the trunk.

If you like to be prepared for worst case scenarios, get a friend to duct tape your hands together and lock you in the trunk of your car and see if you can escape. Make sure the friend sticks around to rescue you if you fail or cry out for help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> His article [https://musingsonentropy.com/2013/01/26/i-caught-the- refrige...](https://musingsonentropy.com/2013/01/26/i-caught-the-refrigerator- bug/) is an informed summary of issues with current refrigerator designs.

 _Full of toxic plastic, insufficient insulation, energy wasting door construction, poor compressor and condenser placement, almost no thermal mass, highly toxic and expensive refrigerant gas, uneconomic to service generally. Basically, they're cheap boxes of toxins designed to be discarded and replaced!_

<comment><USER8> Hmm, there could be some context I'm missing, but his comments on this come across to me as a bit ill-informed. But I'm just an avid DIYer who has taken apart and repaired many appliances, so take as you will.

> toxic plastic

I'm not sure what this is referring to. You don't normally eat (or eat off of) the plastic components of a refrigerator. Maybe this is more an environmental concern than a health one?

> almost no thermal mass

Isn't this a desirable property of a highly-insulated box? Ideally, the most thermal mass should come from its contents, not the appliance itself.

> highly toxic and expensive refrigerant gas

R134a is the most common refrigerant used in residential refrigerators these days, which is not particularly toxic to humans. It's the primary ingredient in canned air dusters and no one seems to have a problem with that. 30lb tanks of this can be had for a little over $100, and a refrigerator would hold less than a pound of it. It does have a very high GWP though--an environmental concern, not a health one. (Side note -- I've also noticed propane (R-290) is becoming more common in commercial refrigerators.)

> energy hogging

To be fair, modern refrigerator compressors have become much more energy efficient than they used to be. Additionally, a variable speed compressor would have previously been unheard of in a residential appliance, but are now becoming relatively common in middle-to-high-end refrigerators.

> uneconomic to service generally

Well, this is hard to refute :) The problem is definitely broader than refrigerators, but residential appliances do seem particularly prone to it. One issue here is that refrigeration work in particular requires special equipment and expertise. From my experience, parts are often the least expensive aspect of repairing an appliance.

<comment><USER9> As someone dealing with a failed fridge right now, I'd beg to differ.

Most modern fridges rely on controllers that are vulnerable to fail in high heat conditions, which are common given the awful placement of the coils and motors of fridges.

The pursuit of energy efficiency replaced easily serviced, long lasting gear with "efficient" junk with a MTBF of ~60 months. I have a garage fridge that my dad pulled out of the garbage 35 years ago.

<comment><USER10> > given the awful placement of the coils and motors of fridges.

Oh, man. So much this. The refrigerator that came with my house, a circa 2006 Samsung, has coils that grow ice. The (evaporator?) fan is positioned in such a way that the ice eventually grows into the fan blades. First it makes a super-annoying scraping sound, then the temperature in the fridge slowly creeps up to unsafe levels.

The fix only takes about an hour. You have to remove the back panel and defrost the coils with a hair dryer. I've done it a couple times now.

It boggles my mind that we can't have nicer appliances. I'd certainly be willing to pay more at this point in my life, but I have zero confidence I wouldn't just be paying more for the same trash.

<comment><USER7> Modern fridges have a defrost cycle built in which does this automatically. Are you by any chance in a high humidity location or running the fridge without adequate ventilation? You could possibly ask the service staff to adjust the thing to make it run more frequently, or request a replacement controller.

<comment><USER10> > Modern fridges have a defrost cycle built in which does this automatically.

I believe you. The point is this doesn't work very well. It's a pretty common complaint with the model.

> Are you by any chance in a high humidity location or running the fridge > without adequate ventilation?

Eh, I have AC and a dehumidifier. The humidity is well under control inside my house.

As for ventilation, the refrigerator is in the only place you could possibly put a refrigerator in my kitchen. If it's not designed to work for that placement, then Samsung has no business being in the refrigerator business.

> You could possibly ask the service staff to adjust the thing to make it run > more frequently, or request a replacement controller.

I am the service staff. I'm sure I could spend a good chunk of money on this. I'd rather not. I don't enjoy it, but manually defrosting the coils every eight months beats handing a couple hundy to a service person.

<comment><USER11> Issue is with controllers is that you can't manually defrost anymore.

They rely on boards like you said, or thermistors that only close when cold to turn on the defrost coil.

Look up if your fridge has an actual manual defrost method(rather than your 'manual' defrost). Some of them are rather absurd. But if you're lucky enough to have one you can simply force extra defrosts when it's real hot/fridge being opened often instead of having to pull the shroud and manually do it.

 _First Test Method:

        Turn the thermostat off for 15 seconds.
        Turn the thermostat on for 5 seconds.
        Turn the thermostat off for 15 seconds.
        Turn the thermostat on for 5 seconds.
        Turn the thermostat off for 15 seconds.
        Turn the thermostat on for 5 seconds.
        Turn the thermostat off.*

<comment><USER10> If I follow you, you're suggesting I look up some of the obscure button sequences to press to force some hidden behavior? We did that early on and didn't get great results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Little known fact: Albert Einstein and Leo Szillard worked on refrigerator designs in the early 30s. They didn't find commercial success but the designs are revisited occasionally. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator))

(Leo Szillard conceived of chain nuclear reaction few years later and this friendship with Einstein allowed him to indirectly petition Roosevelt to start the Manhattan Project.)

<comment><USER13> It always blew my mind that refrigerator gas used to murder people in their homes.

aka "The two were motivated by contemporary newspaper reports of a Berlin family who had been killed when a seal in their refrigerator failed and leaked toxic fumes into their home"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> An aside, but watching old 40s and 50s programming (older silent movies as well) do expose you to a bit of how things were back then -iceboxes in people's homes, the decor they used, lighting choices, modes of transport, undershirt habits, milkmen, ice blocks, all kinds of incidental things outside of the main thrust of a movie or TV programming.

<comment><USER15> This is true but you may also encounter some anachronisms. For example, married couples sleeping in separate beds was not something that historically happened- it was just how TV producers dealt with censorship dictated by The Hays Code, the rules that governed what could be shown in television and film. If you tried to use programming from the 40s and 50s you might wonder why none of these people seem to have indoor toilets!

<comment><USER16> I know it happened in some cases. My paternal grandparents had separate beds in their house.

Grandmother is in her 90's now.

<comment><USER17> Mine did too, but grandpa was gay.

<comment><USER14> I guess you mean after he had kids?

<comment><USER18> Used to be quite common for gay people to have kids heterosexually; at one time it was more or less socially expected that everyone would marry and have children, particularly in the middle classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not widely known is that if all the HFCs currently in use end up vented, it will produce as much greenhouse effect as all the CO2 currently in the atmosphere, and do it orders of magnitude longer than the CO2.

We all thought that HFCs would save the world from the Ozone Hole, not realizing what a disaster they would turn out to be. Specify refrigeration equipment that uses ammonia or propane refrigerant.

</comment><comment><USER20> > they had typical charges of 1# to perhaps 3.5#

Is this using the pound sign to represent an actual pound? First time I've ever seen that!

<comment><USER21> It was still very common when I was a kid - as were handwritten bills of sale. That's probably not mere coincidence. (I haven't been a kid in quite a while.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I forgot where I heard or read that fridges were one the main factor driving post war urbanism, supermarkets/mall far away. Prior to cheap refrigeration people just bought local and ate fresh because they had no choice.

<comment><USER23> Bought local yes, ate fresh not necessarily. The staple diet for factory workers living in cities was mainly starches and fats

<comment><USER24> Pickles. Everything was pickled because it didn't keep otherwise. The invention of the refrigerator significantly reduced the incidents of stomach cancer.

<comment><USER22> so the past was filled with a lot of ulcers ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The number of U.S. and Canadian deaths due to suffocation in refrigerators > declined a significant amount in the years following federal legislation.

Who would have thought, government regulation literally can save lives.

<comment><USER14> Seatbelts. Safety glass (not sure if that was gov reg).

Little is ever black or white. Some things are best implemented by gov, some by the marketplace.

<comment><USER25> Seatbelts were available in the mid 50s, it took until 1966 for Congress to mandate them.

<comment><USER6> Safety features in cars usually get invented before they become mandatory. Backup cameras took about a decade to become mandatory, too.

<comment><USER26> backup cameras are nice, but are marginal at best as safety features even though they're marketed heavily that way. they're for convenience, so we don't have to crane our necks when backing up or parking. seat belts, on the other hand, have easily saved thousands of lives.

point being, mandating backup cameras is an overreach of safety regulation, but not for seat belts.

<comment><USER27> The individual who lead the effort to mandate backup cameras (after backing over and killing his son) cited ~200 deaths and 15,000 injuries, annually, mostly small children and elderly [1]. I don't know if I'd call it overreach, but I also don't know what the equation is for cost versus tragedy when looking at an issue like this.

[1] [https://www.kidsandcars.org/2018/05/14/after-his-sons- tragic...](https://www.kidsandcars.org/2018/05/14/after-his-sons-tragic-death- this-doctor-fought-to-put-backup-cameras-in-every-car/)

<comment><USER26> running over anyone is tragic, and i'm not trying to make light of it, but that's the same misapplication of risk, fear, and bias that lead to security theater, housing crises and regulatory capture generally.

we don't regulate for the people (US, annually) who accidentally drown in a bathtub (~300) and get injured in a bathroom (~250k), even though it would address more harms (at a larger scale and possibly greater cost, depending on the mitigations).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UV blood irradiation: Is it time to remember "the cure that time forgot"? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4783265/ <comment><USER2> The President appears to be unaware that the States of Florida abd California have been doing large randomized trials of the impact of UV radiation on disinfecting the outside of the human body for a number of decades now. However, the CDC has expressed concern that the UV radiation may have unacceptably elevated side effects, such as skin cancer. Commercially developed irradiation devices for external sterlization using UV radiation have been similarly frowned upon.

The President also appears to be unaware that Europe conducted very large scale randomized trials in 1915 through 1918 to assess the beneficial impacts of application of common household disinfection agents applied to the skin or internally by inhalation and ingestion.These products were not found to be particularly efficacious in mitigating the 1918 flu epidemic. Comparison of the test subjects with civilian control groups indicated that there were numerous undesirable side effects such as death, blindness, severe respiratory damage, and numerous other deleterious effects. The side effects were sufficiently extreme that the nations signed treaties agreeing not to conduct such mass disinfection experiments again with these products.

<comment><USER3> IIUC in this procedure they extract (a part of) the blood, irradiate it and then reintroduce it, so there is no risk of skin cancer. It may be harmful for white cells, and it is discussed in the article.

Apparently it was useful against polio, that is also caused by a virus. But I don´t have any idea if that can be extrapolated to Covid-19 that is a very different virus with a very different action.

(Also, I don´t know if this method scales when you need to treat hundred of people.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: GridCentric - High Performance Cloud Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.gridcentriclabs.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

We were inspired by our friends at AeroFS to do a little show-and-tell and solicit some feedback. Specifically, we'd like to know:

\- Is it apparent what we are actually selling?

\- Is it apparent how it is different from other cloud / virtualization stacks?

\- What are some key things we should focus on to increase conversions (i.e. to get more people to sign up for trials etc)?

Any feedback/advice on who we should be targeting both for our current compute farm product as well as customer development for our upcoming enterprise product is also much appreciated.

Of course, any other feedback/advice is also appreciated!

Thanks in advance, Tim

<comment><USER2> This is the coolest point to me:

"GridCentric enables on-demand scale by distributing virtual machine state to hundreds of processors in seconds."

Or more specifically, the concept of being able to "fork a VM into hundreds of instances in seconds."

That's what I'd want to see as a big tagline somewhere. Also I'd want to see a few concrete scenarios where this is super useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, the "VM fork" thing is something we have trouble getting across to the general population. That probably should have been the title of this post though.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: AdolfHitler.com. What the hell should be done with it? - <AUTHOR>

My old partner and I bought AdolfHitler.com about 6 years ago from a domainer. I figured we could donate it to charity and take a tax write-off, but that didn't pan out for a variety of reasons. Over the years I've wondered what to do with it besides startling people at the Genius Bar with my email address. I've had a couple of fun ideas like blogging as Hitler himself (as if Hitler had the temperament of 16 year-old, lolcatting through his day), but I figured I'd open it up to suggestions to see if anyone else had any thoughts. I'm not looking to make money off this, nor am I looking to offend anyone -- I just think it's being underutilized (it has type-in traffic), and maybe the HN community has some ideas, or people interested in developing something fun with it. <comment><USER3> I don't think it's appropriate to try and make money from it, or make anything "fun" with it. There are millions of people who really can't see the humor of anything that has anything to do with Hitler.

I would consider redirecting it to his Wikipedia entry, redirecting it to the donation page of the njdc, or something equally classy.

I think there's a lot of room for offensive humor and "crossing the line" -- trust me, I got my PHD in that, from the university of South Park. But in the end, there are too many people on this earth that are still alive that have lost members of their family due to that man. Doing something fun with it would not be respectful to them, their families or what they went through.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you, but I do think there's room for some humor. It would have to walk a fine line, for sure, but it's doable.

<comment><USER4> Humor? Over 60 million victims of World War II and their living ancestors surely would disagree.

Use it to teach history. If that's not your bag, give it away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Make it redirect to Apple.com.

<comment><USER6> Haha! Jokes aside - it would be interesting to see the fallout of that - <USER2> Apple have any legal recourse, may be they can offer the OP money to give up the domain or to redirect it to some other 'convenient' place etc. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fill it with ads. Profit.

See also: <http://josephstalin.com/></comment>


AWS is down? - <AUTHOR> Unable to access my instances and sites like Quora and Slack <comment><USER2> AWS shows all clear. I know there are some backbone issues in the mid-west United States.

[https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

<comment><USER3> The aws status dashboard is the monitoring equivalent of the "this is fine" meme [1]

[1]: [http://www-static.weddingbee.com/pics/342067/this-is-fine- me...](http://www-static.weddingbee.com/pics/342067/this-is-fine-meme.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But i guess working by using proxy for different country, i think it is linked to region ?

</comment><comment><USER4> I am having this issue too in pakistan</comment>


Statuses of 380+ Services in GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sahin/status-page/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> any good and bad suggestions?</comment>


Ask HN: What are the funniest songs that match programming? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a complex golang program where I need to close various open TCP sockets. I keep running into bugs where I forgot to close one. I turned on "Closing Time" by semi-sonic while I fixed all the bugs. <comment><USER2> Whenever hacking in perl, this comes to mind...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPkTGm4RtVM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPkTGm4RtVM)

</comment><comment><USER3> Code Monkey [https://open.spotify.com/track/1rIFZk9tTUtHP3vULR5wXe](https://open.spotify.com/track/1rIFZk9tTUtHP3vULR5wXe)

</comment><comment><USER4> Windmills of Your Mind Especially the more breathlessly sung versions - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEhS9Y9HYjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEhS9Y9HYjU)

Reminds me of coding and holding all the methods and variables, internal visualizing problems, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Deadmau5 - While 1 < 2 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While(1_Is_Less_Than_2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While\(1_Is_Less_Than_2\))

</comment><comment><USER6> The proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM0sTNtWDiI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM0sTNtWDiI)

</comment><comment><USER7> Suse (a parody of Sugar - Maroon Five)</comment>