Ask HN: How to use $10,000 for max 1 yr ROI? - <AUTHOR>

Decent: >15% ROI, <40% risk. (??)<p>Just a random thought that I was curious to see what people would do. Also the numbers were off the top of my head and I have no idea how viable they are for the situation. The risk was added to mitigate obvious hi-risk hi-return options (e.g.- gambling) <comment><USER2> Put 4000 in the bank and give 6000 to Greenpeace, Amnesty or Red Cross.

<comment> marco-fiset You've got to be kidding.

<comment><USER3> He didn't ask "where do I donate 60% of my money". You answered a different question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It depends on the risk you want to take:

Super high-risk: go to freelancer.com / elance and pay a freelancer to build the next top-grossing app.

Low risk, low return: Open a savings account, although with interest rates lower than inflation, you'll probably lose money in real terms.

</comment><comment><USER5> just buy gold. The difference is that you won't be making 15% ROI but save 15% if you get what i'm saying..

Also, 0% risk.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but bitcoin is probably a good place if you are willing to take anywhere near 40% risk of ruin. Bitcoin is like 102 right now, I'd say the chances of it hitting 120 within the year is easily >60%.

Obligatory disclaimer: I have bitcoins and I think they are awesome. Also, if BFL ships and you can get one of their miners, it will likely give an easy 15% ROI (and probably be relatively liquid)

<comment><USER7> Historically (such short as it has been), it has dropped substantially ($33 to under $2 in a short period of time). Probably not going to see it get that bad again, but current rise is based on market sentiment, not anything magical due to crypto or tech.

Even so, a 20% gain probably isn't that big of a deal. A random growth fund can do that.

<comment><USER8> I believe stocks on the whole fit this growth profile, based on the last bit of portfolio analysis I got. The next category up (higher risk, greater return) is things like options and futures.</comment></comment></comment>


How to write good content as a mediocre UI/UX Designer – [Design Case Study] - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/weareevermore/how-to-write-good-content-as-a-mediocre-ui-ux-designer-design-case-study-f299fcdb199d <comment><USER2> What was the point of this? To rant?

Anyway, I ran into this issue where I have hundreds of people visiting my website daily, but any web dev complains about my UI-

"Fascinating concept, but site looks like its from 2000"

Does it matter what the trendy look is? I believe as long as its useful, it should be fine? Idk if I should care.</comment>


One day, the computers will fit on a desk. (1974) - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sTdWQAKzESA <comment><USER2> Modern World: one day, the computers will be secure.</comment>


GitHub Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/?hn=1 <comment><USER2> This is becoming a regular occurrence. Must be the 3rd time in the last two months at least.

Looking at [https://status.github.com](https://status.github.com) shows more than just 3 outages.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's related to the Eclipse! :)

<comment><USER4> Jupyter's totality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Current discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15064618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15064618)

It's not down. They're experiencing connectivity issues.

</comment><comment><USER6> A lot of things are down right now it seems. A few OpenNIC DNS servers, USPS shipment tracking, and a few forum boards I frequent.

</comment><comment><USER7> Kinda curious what's going on. 30 minutes is an eternity in our industry.

<comment><USER8> If it's _your_ responsibility. Otherwise, there's always something else to click on. A surpluss of clicks. ehehe

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Working for us. Looks like connectivity problems mid-network.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bitbucket is having issues too. Strange.

</comment><comment><USER11> No problem connecting from the UK</comment>


Ask HN: An Online Spreadsheet Certain People can Edit - <AUTHOR>

So my wife is coaching a team, and she wants a way for the parents to all post their contact information somewhere online where only her and other parents of the team can see it.<p>What's the best method to accomplish this?<p>(I thought a google spreadsheet might work, but not everyone has a gmail account, and if I make it public I wouldn't want to take the chance of exposing everyone's contact info to the internet.) <comment><USER2> How about a public Google Docs form that sticks its data into a private Google Docs spreadsheet?

[http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...](http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87809)

<comment><AUTHOR> That would almost work but I'd need a way for the parents to view the spreadsheet without exposing it to the internet or requiring them to have gmail accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not sure on your level of technical savvy, but it would be trivial to make a website, put it behind a password, and have a simple form for their name and number.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could do that. I was really hoping there would be something off the shelf I could use (even if I have to install it on a server.)</comment></comment>


Revisiting 'Monadic Parsing in Haskell' - <AUTHOR> http://vaibhavsagar.com/blog/2018/02/04/revisiting-monadic-parsing-haskell/ <comment><USER2> > This was the first application of monads I encountered that actually made my > life simpler, and I started to realise that there was more to monads than > smugness and being inaccessible to newcomers.

I had the same experience, Parsec is one of the best examples of the power of Haskell and what really sold me on the language.

It's also a great way to communicate the utility and effectiveness for using monads to solve programming problems (in this case as an alternative to messy Regex).

I'm really looking forward to Purescript [1], which has its own Parsec library in development [2] so I can use it with my frontend development... which is typically where I used Regex the most (in the DOM).

[1] [http://www.purescript.org/](http://www.purescript.org/)

[2] [https://github.com/purescript-contrib/purescript- parsing](https://github.com/purescript-contrib/purescript-parsing)

<comment><USER3> I've had a similar experience, where I'm not even a fan of the Haskell ecosystem overall, but Attoparsec is such an astoundingly good library that it makes everything worth it. It's not just a convenience like other libraries would be -- in fact, it comes with the built-in inconvenience of using a language I don't normally use. But it actually gives me the ability to solve problems I would not solve without it. Parsing is the killer app for Haskell.

So far I haven't been satisfied with any Parsec port to another language. This article helped me understand how a lot of the design of [Atto]parsec is just the natural result of using Haskell for what it's good for, and that aspect seems to translate badly when Haskell is replaced with another language. But maybe the Purescript port can do better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Graham Hutton, one of the authors of the original paper, also wrote a wonderful book "Programming in Haskell". I would wholeheartedly recommend it to both the programming novice and the experienced programmer trying to learn Haskell and monadic programming.

Chapter 13 of (the second edition of) that book also revisits the original paper from a modern viewpoint and overlaps with the current article. For example, both the book and the article mention the similarity with the state transformer, introduce instances of 'functor' and 'applicative' before the 'monad' instance, and discuss the 'alternative' instance.

</comment><comment><USER5> The rhyme for the altered Parser: A parser for things is a function from strings to potentially a pair of that thing and its string.

<comment><USER6> At the end they mention the yoctoparsec library which abstracts away the String to a free stream type.

        type Parser b t a = FreeT ((->) t) b a

I'd like to see someone make a rhyme out of _that_.

<comment><USER7> A parser just means A function from streams To maybe a pair, One in which there Is the stream, and the thing that it means

<comment><USER8> You should win a Grammy for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fwiw, we can go even further and define these combinators in terms only of typeclass constraints needed on the return monad, the "finally tagless" or "mtl" style.

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/parsers-0.12.8/docs/Text...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/parsers-0.12.8/docs/Text- Parser-Combinators.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Great article! Also, I was surprised at how short and readable the original paper was. This is a really nice follow up.

I only recently started learning Haskell seriously, and it was surprising to learn that "Applicative" is a more recent discovery.

<comment><USER11> To be precise, Applicative was known for quite some time by mathematicians as "lax monoidal functor". That this concept is useful for structuring programs is the recent discovery. Even in the last 10 years we've learned a lot about functional programming and I'm sure in the next 10 years we'll learn a lot more that really changes the way we approach it.</comment></comment>


From 1995: Esther Dyson on Monetizing Creative Content - <AUTHOR> http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2009/07/from-1995-esther-dyson-on-monetizing.html

<comment><USER2> I think particularly there's a lot of merit in the suggestion "to distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships". But how to manage that profitably remains the tough question.

I've heard that music artists increasingly make more money from concerts etc than through their music, which is so readily copied / stolen. My business is very mindful of the value of our intellectual property (business frameworks to aid growth), but ultimately my clients pay mostly for their relationship with me / my team. Would giving away IP help attract more clients, or would it create competitors who would then undercut my relationships by competing on price?</comment>


Science Hidden in Your Town Name: How place names encode ecological change - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/the-science-hidden-in-your-town-name <comment><USER2> Yup. Last time we had flood conditions, the list of closed streets was ... enlightening. Most of them translated to something like this: "Between Waters St.," "River Rd.," "Wetland St.," "$X Brook Rd.", "Wharf Ave." "Ponds Drive", "Canal Rd.", "Boatmen St."

Just because everyone has forgotten about the paved-over waters doesn't make them disappear.

<comment><USER3> Whitewater paddlers wind up spending an inordinate amount of time driving between the put-in and the take-out along "River Rd."

Doesn't matter where you are, that's often what it's called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Boulder, they renamed one of the main streets that runs next to the Boulder Creek from Water St to Canyon Ave (in the 1960s: [https://books.google.com/books?id=v66nBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA114&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=v66nBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=rename+water+st+to+canyon+boulder&source=bl&ots=kWbx- FkRS0&sig=CXREGOzpWruHaKSXFqRfe5IWnkY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMI7vicsMmcyQIVAdJjCh3EFQMV#v=onepage&q=rename%20water%20st%20to%20canyon%20boulder&f=false) ).

But there's still a Water Street Building on Canyon: [http://www.gibbonswhite.com/listings/boulder/lease/waterstre...](http://www.gibbonswhite.com/listings/boulder/lease/waterstreet- office-or-retail), interestingly enough.</comment>


Post-launch marketing / public relations - <AUTHOR>

Just something I threw together last week, but in case anybody needs it, I've put together some resources for post-launch at http://loudstartup.com/
The inspiration was based on something HN user 'str' put together last month, but that seems to have disappeared now, which I noticed when I needed it.
It's not a startup, or even a side-project really, just a page with some links, ordered by popularity.  If anybody would like anything added, please let me know. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable - <http://loudstartup.com></comment>


Cloud insurance - <AUTHOR> http://popalg.org/cloud-insurance

<comment><USER2> I don't quite understand what you're trying to get at. Are you saying that cloud providers should provide you some sort of insured access to data in case something catastrophic happens, or are you saying that you should be able to store encrypted data in the cloud so the cloud provider or another authority cannot read it?

As for the former problem, cloud storage providers such as Amazon S3 already provide more redundancy for your data than you could possibly design cost- effectively on your own (in fact, they even offer a _reduced_ redundancy service if you don't want to pay for the S3 redundancy).

The latter "problem" isn't really a problem --- it's entirely up to you to encrypt the data you want to store in the cloud and keep the key to yourself, and you can easily have an encrypted frontend to your S3 block storage or even your Dropbox folder. I don't see the relevance of something like SUNDR... IIRC, it is a way to merely store your data on an untrusted service. However, most business use the cloud for _computation_ (which of course requires storage). So SUNDR won't apply when you have to trust both computation and storage to an untrusted entity?

You could of course run a distribution on your compute node VM that encrypts data going out of the VM to the cloud provider infrastructure, but the benefit is limited because your applications are finally running on the provider's hardware. I suppose we need to wait until that homomorphic encryption stuff becomes real :)

<comment><USER3> I took it to mean protecting yourself from this:

You select a cloud based CRM provider, work with them for a couple of years, store all your contacts, leads, opportunities, issues there, and then they go bankrupt, shut down the service, and you have no access to any of your data. A couple of years of very important data gone...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. This is what I meant regarding what the problem is. The mention of SUNDR was more of a side comment on how one might implement a service whose only job is to store your data without being able to understand it. I wanted to point out that it is possible. But this is a technicality anyway. The big questions are:

(a) What does it even mean to require that the cloud companies provide you with a mechanism of converting the cloud data to some common format that you can use without the cloud app. In some cases, there might be no such common format. And,

(b) Do cloud companies have an incentive to play along and provide you this way out. It would be work for them. Somehow they need to care.

These are questions with unclear answers. Yet, the problem stays: your time and data are completely unprotected. What is more problematic is that the common user is not sophisticated enough to be aware of the (high) chances that the cloud app they use will go bankrupt and shut down leaving them with nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea. I've started using a few more cloud apps lately, and the thought of losing everything certainly crossed my mind again. The problem thought is often the data is tied to some sort of object structure, which may be hard to replicate. For example, lately I've built a couple of mind maps on MindMeister that I would not want to use. However, the data mostly has meaning in the mind map structure, and having it in raw form, while better than nothing, would still mean I would need to convert it into something workable again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid concern. I wonder what is a good common-denominator solution.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What questions to ask when somebody offers you an equity in his startup? - <AUTHOR>

I own an IT service company providing development services to clients.
Recently one of our clients offered us an equity in his startup against the development services we provide.
He will give us shares worth of X amount per month for 3 months. The risk on our side is 3X/2.
He is planning to sell his company in next 6 months. He has done that before also. But for us this is the first time.
So I was curious what questions should I ask him before accepting or rejecting the equity offer?
I am sure HN community knows the best about this.
Update: The beta version of the product is launched and it got covered by ReadWriteWeb. <comment><USER2> Just as a starting point, I'd want to know how many shares are outstanding, are the shares dilutable, is this a grant or an option (where you don't have shares per se but you have the ability to buy them from the company)? If it's an option, what's the strike price (the price you buy them at)?

I'm not even very knowledgeable about this, but just knowing a number of shares tells you about as much as if a baker offered you "pieces of cake". There's just not enough information present.</comment>


Ask YC: Best ways to pick up chicks? - <AUTHOR>

follow up to:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169295<p>(what us geeks really care about) <comment><USER2> Let her know your HN karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea. I'll tell you how it goes.

<comment><USER3> It works for me all the time...

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? I used to just stand on a corner and yell at girls until one would go out with me. This other method may actually work better. I'll start yelling out my karma score instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/ers/?query=w4m>

<comment><USER4> Perfect! This one must be a Lisper:

 _Apr 21 - (((((((((((((( So eXXXciting )))))))))))))))))) - w4m - 30 - (excelsior / outer mission) pic_

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is like trying to teach martial arts through text:)

Hmmm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a question: when you try to get a girl interested in you, what's going on intuitively?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't try too hard and be yourself.

<comment><USER7> LOL, that's the sort of advice that's sure to frustrate anyone who actually needs the advice.

<comment><USER6> If you want a more complicated answer, you're over complicating the situation. This isn't rocket surgery /dhh</comment></comment></comment>


The Slippery Eel of Probability - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150730-the-slippery-eel-of-probability/ <comment><USER2> _> "You can paint a single sea creature of your choice on each of these canvases, with one condition. I would like to see a picture of an eel when I move my gaze vertically or horizontally. So there must be at least one eel in the vertical column and at least one in the horizontal row."_

It does not mention each canvas must be a unique sea creature - merely that it must be single (one sea creature per canvas). I'd paint an eel on every single canvas, out of laziness.

Introducing a bet to not paint in the corner means I would paint on 5 canvases, not including the corner piece. This changes what I am predicting though by skewing my decision. It's asking a completely different question. As catbird pointed out, this is like asking the probability of flipping a coin. Then asking what if you knew the coin was biased to always land on heads and you placed a bet with a friend about the result being heads or tails, what would you vote?

The probability is 1 in 6. Their are 6 canvases and only a single corner piece. When introducing the bet, do we assume you want to win $2 over paying $1 100% of the time? If so the probability turns from 1/6 to 0/6 - as the artist, in their best interest, would never paint an eel in the corner.

The probabilities of 1/4 and 1/3 are asking different questions. It's no longer asking if the piece is a corner piece but whether it is at a specific end of a row or column.

It's extremely naive because it doesn't say which end of the row or column forms the L with the column or row. Therefore both ends are valid and it would be 2/4 and 2/3 because the eel could be at either end and still form an L.

So it's 0/1, 1/6, 1/3, 1/4, 2/4, and 2/3 depending on the actual question being asked.

</comment><comment><USER3> To those saying that the question is essentially asking "predict a coin flip" without knowing if the coin is biased or not ascribe to the tenants of Frequentist probability. That is, conclusions cannot be made until trials have been done. In this specific case, you'd have to ask the artist to paint an infinitely many L shaped canvases before the true probability is revealed. To those that ascribe to Bayesian probability, our first assumption is to assume all valid orientations are part of a uniform distribution. By my counting, I get 32 valid combinations with an eel in the corner and 21 combinations with no eel in the corner. This means that I get 32/53 ~= 0.604 as the probability that the eel is in the corner.

<comment><USER2> Do you mind explaining how you got 32?

If all 6 paintings have an eel then all 53 combinations of the 6 paintings would have an eel in the corner, as it is impossible to not have an eel in the corner if every painting is of an eel.

The solution, if an eel is not in the corner, requires 2 paintings of eels.

It seems you made an assumption that there is only a single eel painting?

<comment><USER3> I believe the correct way to do the counting for this problem is to list the valid orientations with an eel in the corner and divide by the total amount of valid orientations. This is correct if you assume that the artist is choosing uniformly from the set of valid orientations. Let me list a couple of valid orientations (X marks no eel and O marks an eel). Pretend the first position is the top of the L and you go down then to the right as you move through my list (corner is in the 3rd position if 0-indexed):

XXXOXX OXXOXX XOXOXX XXOOXX XXXOOX XXXOXO OOXOXX OXOOXX ... OOOOOO

These are some that are not valid as it doesn't satisfy the owner's conditions:

XXXXXX OXXXXX OOOXXX XXXXOO

If you wish me to list all the valid combinations I will, but it a simple matter of combinations.

EDIT: Reformated my answers as HN clobbered my newlines

<comment><USER2> /Begin Edit

Ignore me I got confused. :D I see what you did. I'll leave the below so that others might see my confusion. I was confused by your emphasis of "eel in the corner" because there are valid combinations that lack that.

/End Edit

The issue is that all combinations are valid given the conditions.

 _> You can paint a single sea creature of your choice on each of these canvases, with one condition. I would like to see a picture of an eel when I move my gaze vertically or horizontally. So there must be at least one eel in the vertical column and at least one in the horizontal row._

"At least one" means there can be multiple - and, in fact, without having an eel in the corner it is necessary to have at least 2 eels. So "a single" simply means a painting cannot be of an eel _and_ a sea turtle.

Given X = No eel and O = Eel

      X
      O
      X
      XXO

The above is a valid combination. As is the below:

      O
      O
      O
      XOO

Now if you consider:

      O
      O
      O
      OOO

All combinations will result with an eel in the corner and all combinations are equally valid. All paintings are of a single sea creature (an eel) and meet the requirement of vertical and horizontal inclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow that puzzle is complete nonsense! Either the artist paints an eel in the corner, or not, is entirely at their own discretion. That's like asking you to predict a coin flip when you have no info on whether it is biased or not.

<comment><USER5> The point of the puzzle is to show that there is not a unique way of applying the Principle of Indifference when there are different ways of enumerating the possibility space.</comment></comment>


Easter egg: Up up down down left right left right b a - <AUTHOR> http://www.vogue.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> That's the so-called "Konami Code" \- nothing too unusual, this has been used on a variety of websites to display/hide easter-eggs..

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the Raptorize plugin from Zurb: [http://zurb.com/playground/jquery- raptorize](http://zurb.com/playground/jquery-raptorize)

I assume they wanted to make this fully responsive but there's much work to be done.

</comment><comment><USER4> In case you're wondering, they're using the Raptorize jQuery plugin [http://zurb.com/playground/jquery- raptorize](http://zurb.com/playground/jquery-raptorize)

</comment><comment><USER5> And flipping the suffix to "a b" causes a debugging console to appear

</comment><comment><USER6> Having some experience in this, I can tell you it's never a good idea to put a contra code on a major publication's site!

<comment><USER3> Can I ask why? Marvel used to have easter eggs displaying Deadpool and other Marvel characters when typing in a key combination. I'd imagine the average user would never consider trying it and if they did they might be pleasantly surprised.

<comment><USER6> The magazine editors, especially for somewhere like Vogue, have very strict brand guidelines. This falls out of it. I did Zombie Newsweek a long time ago and the only reason I wasn't fired was because it was "on brand" :)

<comment><USER3> Well the raptor is wearing a fashionable hat so maybe it's still "on brand" :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> o0-0o Contra +1</comment>


Clinical trial finds blood-plasma infusions for Alzheimer's safe, promising - <AUTHOR> https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/11/clinical-trial-finds-blood-plasma-infusions-for-alzheimers-safe.html <comment><USER2> Safe, yes, but I think "promising" is more aimed at the investors than a reflection of reality. Both Alkahest and Ambrosia's results are essentially ambiguous, which reflects the equally ambiguous animal data for plasma transfusion.

This isn't going to stop other people from trying analogous things.

The Conboys are trying apheresis to strip out harmful factors from old blood ( [https://www.leafscience.org/conboy- interview/](https://www.leafscience.org/conboy-interview/) ), which seems to me unlikely to move the needle either, and other groups are trying to identify and deliver signals from young blood.

What all of these things have in common is that they are failing to address root causes. Why does signaling change in old blood and tissues? Because the cells that generate that signaling are either damaged or reacting to damage. Trying to force the signaling to be more youthful has very definite limits - it might compensate a little for one consequence of the damage, but that damage is still there, still producing all of the other problems that it causes. The "change the signaling" approach requires the research community to map every single one of potentially hundreds or thousands of individual changes, then understand which are relevant, and then run individual projects for each one. It just won't happen - look at the cancer research community for a guide as to how slowly that sort of scenario progresses.

The plausible outer limits of signaling adjustment are probably indicated by the effects of first generation stem cell therapies, which largely work through the signals introduced by the transplanted cells. Assume that something somewhat better than that can be achieved: meaning temporarily improved regeneration, less increased cancer risk than was originally suspected, but not much of an impact on aging and age-related disease, when considered in the context of the bigger picture of what is possible.

(What is possible if people would just stop tinkering with downstream consequences and start repairing the root cause damage. At least the flurry of interest in senolytics is a start in that direction, and should hopefully prove the point by being so very much better and more cost-effective than just about everything else on the market when it comes to treating age-related conditions).

<comment><USER3> All of these approaches are going to run into the reason why ageing is happening in the first place - to prevent cancer. Ageing is one of the original anti-oncogenic systems and anything that messes with the rate of aging without doing something about cancer is doomed to failure.

Interesting there are some human mutations that slow down the ageing rate [1]. These all cause an increased cancer rate, but if you manage to make it to old age you are physiologically much younger (20-30 years in the case of the Brazilian p53 mutation).

1\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27663983](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27663983)

<comment><USER2> Which is why the SENS portfolio includes a universal cure for cancer.

This is not as hard as people have been made to think it is. The present mainstream approach of the past few decades is just not a good one. It is picking strategies that are very expensive to implement, and that attack vulnerabilities that are peculiar to tiny subtypes of cancer. There are hundreds of subtypes of cancer, most of which are cheerfully capable of evolving their way around many of the existing attacks on their biochemical vulnerabilities. There are only so many scientists, only so much funding. If it takes twenty man-years to produce a therapy to tackle transient vulnerability A in subtype 1 of 1000, we'll never see the end of it. Yet this is largely what is happening.

What should be happening instead is the whole-hearted pursuit of vulnerabilities that are common to many, many types of cancer, or all cancers for preference.

There is one very good one, which is that cancers must lengthen their telomeres, and there are only two ways for that to happen, neither of which should really be operating in somatic cells. So block telomerase, block ALT, and get that hooked up to some kind of cancer-cell-targeting-mechanism of the sort that has been under development for the past decade, and that will work to kill any cancer. A number of high profile groups are working on telomerase sabotage ( [https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/usmc- rtt1231...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/usmc- rtt123114.php) ), and the SENS Research Foundation has been funding the necessary research to address ALT ( [http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens- research/c...](http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens- research/cancerous-cells) ), still at comparatively early stages.

There are other, prospective targets. The comparative biology crowd is reverse engineering naked mole rats to figure out what it is that makes them next to immune to cancer. There are a few leads there; p21, ARF, hyaluronan, alpha2-macroglobulin, etc. Another recent discovery relates to re-engaging the limitation on processing nutrients; apparently all cells have a food limiter, and all cancers abuse that limiter in order to enable rampant replication. Re- enable the limiter and cancers wither: [https://www.salk.edu/news- release/salk-scientists-curb-growt...](https://www.salk.edu/news-release/salk- scientists-curb-growth-cancer-cells-blocking-access-key-nutrients/)

So there is no shortage of possibilities for people who want to kill all cancer. There is no excuse for continuing the wasteful business as usual of the past decades. This is an age of revolutionary progress in biotechnology - we should act like it and aim high.

<comment><USER4> >"there is no shortage of possibilities for people who want to kill all cancer."

Your posts in this thread make me think you have a different view of what is going on regarding aging and cancer than I do...

As mentioned below, it seems that after each division more and more "genetic errors and other junk" accumulate in tissue stem cells. After a certain number of these divisions the stem cell needs to stop replenishing the tissue because the risk of generating a cancer cell is too high. Thus the turnover of terminal cells must slow and eventually stop as each tissue stem cell becomes "exhausted".

So the options upon exhaustion (of safe divisions) of the stem cells are either:

1) Continue replenishing the tissue at a high risk of cancer. Even the non- tumorgenic new terminal cells are also becoming less and less functional due to the accumulated erros/junk.

\- high cancer risk, slow organ failure

2) Stop replenishing the tissue and let whatever cells are there survive as long as possible (these are the senescent cells).

\- low cancer risk, slow/intermediate rate organ failure

3) Stop replenishing the tissue _and_ remove the senescent cells, replacing the space with connective tissue. In this case the tissue will become less and less functional eventually leading to organ failure.

\- low cancer risk, fast organ failure

All of your ideas proposed here seem to be #1 or #3. Nature's solution is #2, and probably for good reason.

Also, obviously the ultimate solution needs to be either reducing the number of cell divisions or the rate of junk/error accumulation per division. This all seems to follow very easily from the premise that errors/junk accumulate after each division, so I would be interested to know what you are reading that makes you think it is incorrect.

<comment><USER3> The other solution is as suggested which is increase the robustness of the anti-oncogene systems. This way the stem cells will still accumulate mutations (hard to solve this problem), but they won't progress to cancer.

This approach is how evolution has solved the problem of cancer in large animals with long lifespans.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by "anti-oncogene systems? That makes me think of stuff like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor_suppressor_gene#Function...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor_suppressor_gene#Functions)

Those functions are pretty much the same as what I mentioned above (adhesion isn't included in my list):

"obviously the ultimate solution needs to be either reducing the number of cell divisions or the rate of junk/error accumulation per division"

<comment><USER3> Tumor suppressor is a synonym for anti-oncogene. The systems present in each species is not the same and the large long lived animals of more and better systems. Unfortunately, we don't know too much about them.

<comment><USER4> That is called Peto's paradox: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox). Afaik the idea that larger animals have more robust tumor suppression systems is an assumption required due to a possibly incorrect understanding of the stem cell division scheme: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25459141](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25459141)

If you look close enough at this topic you will realize that we don't have good data on how many divisions are actually happening in each tissue. Our understanding is very rudimentary so it is extremely dangerous to take anything as fact on this topic. As a science, cancer research is not even yet at the point of astronomy when people began estimating the number of stars...

It is in a pre-astrology stage where all sorts of wild speculations and fads reign supreme.

EDIT:

Note that in the Morris 2014 paper I linked he calls Peto's paradox the "man- mouse paradox" and uses 'Peto's paradox' to mean something else.

<comment><USER3> We actually know that elephants have extra systems for controlling cancer and we haven't really looked carefully [1]. We have also learned a little about these systems in bowhead whales [2].

I think we are a bit further along with understanding cancer (we haven't found a major oncogene in a while), but I do agree we still have a way to go, especially on the treatment/prevention front.

1\. [https://www.nature.com/news/how-elephants-avoid- cancer-1.185...](https://www.nature.com/news/how-elephants-avoid- cancer-1.18534)

2\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536333/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536333/)

<comment><USER4> This is still wild speculation. "Elephants live a long time and have multiple copies of p53" (these retrotransposed copies so they are under different promoters, missing introns, etc ...) does not equate to what you said. Look at all the functions for p53 on the right of this page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP53](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP53)

It is not difficult at all to look at a genome and find some pattern that you can weave a plausible story around.

Also, here are the conclusions of your two papers:

> _" To our knowledge, this study offers the first supporting evidence based > on empirical data that larger animals with longer life spans may develop > less cancer, especially elephants.

[...]

Compared with other mammalian species, elephants appeared to have a lower- than-expected rate of cancer, potentially related to multiple copies of TP53."_

> _" The genetic and molecular mechanisms by which longevity evolves remain > largely unexplained"_

Now consider how simplistic the idea behind these studies is: "Elephants/whales live a long time and are rarely observed to get cancer relative to humans, we should look into why". Investigation of the most basic aspects of the problem has only begun a few years ago...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When these findings came out in November, SciMag felt the results were less promising. [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/blood-young- people-d...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/blood-young-people-does- little-reverse-alzheimer-s-first-test)</comment>


Hundreds of Devices Hidden Inside New York City Phone Booths - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-hundreds-of-devices-hidden-inside-new-york-city-ph <comment><USER2> _Beacons are Bluetooth devices that emit simple signals that smartphones can pick up._

 _A beacon in a New York City phone booth ad would need to recognize a corresponding app to push beacon-linked content to that phone._

From what I can see from reading the article this isn't the scary "things that watch you without your knowledge" but more like "things you can connect to if you're nearby" \- and given that there's WiFi hotspots and other things in this category too, it doesn't seem all that frightening. In other words you'd have to have allow your phone to connect to them for them to gather any info, and in that case it's not much worse than connecting to a WiFi hotspot setup for marketing purposes (e.g. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/10/19...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/10/19/how-stores-use-your-phones-wifi-to-track-your-shopping- habits/) ).

(The fact that the majority of people leave their phones in a "promiscuous" mode with all the radios enabled and constantly looking for things to connect to, and submissively install apps without reading their privacy policies/terms of use carefully, is a different although related issue - but this _is_ something you can educate yourself and protect against.)

<comment><USER3> It does seem a bit exaggerated:

 _" In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive 'opt-in' permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.) ... Gimbal-powered apps may collect your current location, the time of day you passed the beacon, and details about your device."_

If the beacons are doing anything more, it is not reported in this article.

<comment><USER4> It is however a rather small step to such a 3. party app being bundled with your branded phone, which you've opt-ed into by buying the phone.

<comment><USER5> Then let's wait for that step to happen before jumping to conclusion.

<comment><USER6> Are there any rules or precedent preventing this? Or is it a chicken-and-egg not-enough-beacons-out-there-to-make-it-worth-it type situation?

One smells like conclusions are a bit premature, the other smells more like inevitability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate all these FUD headlines that claim iBeacons can track you or send you adverts - everything to do with beacons is (at present) mediated by an app, and therefore subject to a user installing it and granting permissions. Sure, you can get people to install stuff that they don't understand and which will allow snooping etc. but that's by no means constrained to anything using the (Apple-owned) iBeacon standard.

I'll be more interested in keeping an eye on the URL-centric 'physical Web" experimental project recently revealed by Google ([https://github.com/google/physical-web](https://github.com/google/physical- web)) as that potentially removes the need for app-based mediation of beacon (without the "i" prefix) interactions, uses the universality of http and URLs for content identification, and could make for a much lower-friction way of implementing beacon integration across different platforms.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the physical web link - you can easily see Googles "play to our strengths not Apples" thinking behind it ([https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documenta...](https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documentation/introduction.md))

I like it - might have to try a RPi build for one

<comment><USER7> It makes total sense to make beacons broadcast something that devices can interpret / interact with directly.

iBeacons are an interesting "first move" for the technology thanks to the weight Apple / iOS puts behind the potential for adoption, but the current model of interaction is just too convoluted / clumsy:

iBeacon broadcasts UUID/major/minor > subscribed app listens > app checks internal database or more probably fetches some data from a web-based API > decides what to do with that data / response.

vs

beacon broadcasts a URL > OS (or subscribed app) pulls data from URL > user (or app) decides what to do with that data / response

The abstraction provided by the iBeacon model is interesting but arguably too abstract, whereas the simple use of a URL is decidedly simple and logical by comparison, and (potentially) cuts out the app mediation.

If you combine the simplicity of using a URL with the idea that either the OS interacts with it directly or an app with a URL- or domain-specific mapped intent takes over that interaction then you get a simpler and more transparent journey as a result.

I think it's very early days for the Physical Web project, but it should definitely be one to watch!

<comment><USER9> Doesn't "pull a URL specified by an untrusted third-party" just scream potential security and definite privacy problem?

<comment><USER7> The intention is that the client (whether that's the OS itself or an app as in the current Android proof-of-concept) visiting the broadcast URL will return specific metadata that will allow the user to know what the target content / action is, rather than content itself - [https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documenta...](https://github.com/google/physical- web/blob/master/documentation/technical_overview.md)

There is obviously some potential for data snooping and privacy issues, but if the experiment becomes a full standard then it will likely be fleshed out much more to avoid this issue.

Pulling metadata from a publicly broadcast (and therefore inspectable) URL still feels more transparent than the iBeacons implementation, which mediates all beacon interactivity through the "black box" of an app with unknown configuration (with regard to exactly which beacons it listens for - it could be a single UUID, or it could be _all_ beacons) which could be phoning home with all kinds of data without the user knowing.

<comment><USER9> And if a vulnerability is found in the client's HTTP header parser or other part of the client?

What about these URLs recording client IP addresses and locations (based on the known beacon location)?

Is there no way to put everything in the beacon? Will users be prompted before their devices perform actions dictated by a third party? Will beacons be featured in future pwn2own contests?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wifi beacons were deployed in London[1][2] as part of advertising systems on waste bins. These logged your MAC address as you passed by and allowed targeted advertising. I believe they were removed once the rollout was publicised and people rightly kicked up a stink about it. It was an opt-out system because if wifi on your smartphone was switched on (which most people probably do) then it would automatically log your phone's presence. Users would have had to switch off wifi to avoid being tracked.

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490) [2] [http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following- you/](http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/)

<comment><USER11> Do people normally have wifi enabled when they're out-and-about? I turn it on when I'm at home/at a friend's house, but otherwise turn it off since there's no wifi to be had, and it's just an extra drain on the battery.

Or does London have widespread public wifi?

<comment><USER12> Yes, most people I know, certainly. For example, since my phone uses Wifi at work and at home, my phone uses it most of the time.

I'm not going to turn off Wifi when I leave work and then turn it on again when I get home... I've never even heard of anyone doing that, it sounds pretty annoying to have to keep track of...

<comment><USER13> Many phones have geofencing which should take care of switching on and off things like wifi at particular locations. Should become mainstream soon.

<comment><USER14> So now I need to have my phone ping GPS periodically (which takes longer without wifi for guidance) to check my position so it knows whether it can scan for access points it knows?

Personally, I think I'd rather just have it scan for access points. Apple's MAC randomization has the right idea (if perhaps an imperfect implementation)

<comment><USER10> You can use Smarter Wifi Manager but its average at best. It uses Cell IDs to ascertain approximate location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article is cheap sensationalism to foster Luddite paranoia. The beacons will only track those that want to be tracked. And there a lot of valid situations where people would want to share geographical information in order to be guided, notified or rescued.

Sometimes I feel that valid concerns on privacy are doing to IT what pollution did to chemistry: people got so panicked that blindly reject any valid contribution that technology might give.

<comment><USER16> The main point is that the beacons were installed in secret, without any public notice or consultation. And that, time after time, many "opt-in" services prove to be not so "opt-in" after all (thanks to technical backdooring and/or murky service agreements).

It isn't Luddite paranoid, or cheap sensationalism to point this out; it's good journalism, coming from a surprising source (BuzzFeed, which for years seemed to have cheap sensationalism written into its very DNA).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought Buzzfeed was on the list of domains you can't link to? If not, this post is a good example why it should be..

<comment><USER14> Buzzfeed does some really fine reporting. But this doesn't seem to be a good example.

<comment><USER18> There are users here who do some really fine commenting. But they got "deaded" for one reason or another. I would love to see buzzfeed and similar sites punished for their wrongdoings even if sometimes they might provide something good. The worse clearly overweighs the good to me.

<comment><USER14> Is the existing voting system so broken that we need to resort to heavy handed tactics like that?

I'm not sure I'm a fan of shadowbanning people either, except in really exceptional situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive "opt-in" permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.)"

FFS, Buzzfeed. This is buried practically at the end, AFTER the giant infographic and 10+ grafs of scare text. It's like running the headline:

YOUR BREAKFAST MAY CONTAIN POISON

and then at the end of the article:

"Well, if you bought the cereal that said 'CONTAINS POISON' on the box and decided to eat it right now, that might be true."

<comment><USER20> Clickbait at its finest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is this exaggerated journalism even on here? These aren't tracking everyone in NYC within range, only those who have bluetooth enabled, downloaded a very specific application, and then allow the app to track you in the background. Now this is all for IOS, android on the other hand does have potential to be troublesome.

</comment><comment><USER22> Several commenters here have stated that Bluetooth beacon interactions are mediated by apps and they are therefore not surveillance devices.

That's just not correct. Bluetooth beacons can log and report information about devices that come within range of those beacons with active Bluetooth radios. Only interactive-time applications of a beacon need the cooperation of an app on a wide-area connected device.

Beacons that don't have external power generally can't use WiFi or mobile networks to do it, but this information can be uploaded on demand. For example, this information could be collected when coins from pay phones are collected.

Moreover, these beacons are reportedly installed in pay phone kiosks that do have wired connectivity. It's possible, even likely, that they "phone home."

</comment><comment><USER23> There are still phone booths in NYC? Without reading the article, just seeing the headline above, my first thought was that a reporter discovered strange, long-forgotten _devices_ with handsets and number pads and coin slots, collecting dust in the booths.

</comment><comment><USER24> People should not be tracked. Full stop. Even with their permission. We are headed for worse than Orwell ever imagined. I cannot believe some people consent to this.

There will come a time and soon whereby people will not be able to do a thing without someone tracking it.

<comment><USER25> I'm having a difficult time thinking of something I do that is not tracked by someone somewhere.

Even the city knows when I take a crap thanks to "smart meters".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> And I just became aware of the NYC Halal carts run by the NYPD (in the talk by Steve Rambam at HopeX recently) [0].

[0] [http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s](http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s)

</comment><comment><USER27> I recommend watching Person of Interest. The TV show has started long before the NSA scandal, but it's like a Hollywood post interpretation of some major event. Except it was a premonition.

<comment><USER28> It's one of my favorite shows because it's at least plausible, and felt that way even before the 2013 revelations. A lot of the tech and storylines in the show are of course fictionalized and a bit "out there", but the core concepts it presents are at least within the bounds of possibility. I tend to view it both as suspension-of-disbelief popcorn entertainment, and as a telling allegory on today's surveillance state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ah Gimbal, the HaaS company... the beacons that require you to register them on-line to be able to reconfigure them. Also, iBeacon compatibility doesn't work well in Series 10, i.e. those you can order a dev-kit of for free.

I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to force all those various beacons to talk the same language. Right now, everyone is trying to lock users in to a particular brand. It's incredibly annoying (and the same thing goes for the entire IoT and home automation market).

</comment><comment><USER30> UPDATE:

And they're being removed: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york- city-to-adv...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york-city-to- advertising-contractor-take-down-secretly-i)

</comment><comment><USER31> Out of interest does anyone have any statistic on how often phone booths are used? I'd have thought that with most people owning mobile phones the need to ever use a pay phone is very rare

<comment><USER32> I thought they were all gone in NYC for some reason.

<comment><USER33> As of 2009, only 4 phone _booths_ remained in Manhattan: [http://www.scoutingny.com/the-last-phone-booth-in-new- york-c...](http://www.scoutingny.com/the-last-phone-booth-in-new-york-city/) Comments on that thread note that in 2012, at least 2 of those were verified as still around, but not sure about now.

There are a lot of phone stalls still around though - a number of which have been sites for experimental improvements for some time now, including a Google initiative to outfit some with public wifi: [http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/business/future-of- public...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/business/future-of-public-pay- phone-wifi.shtml)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook cancelled a student's internship after he highlighted privacy issue - <AUTHOR> http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/itinsider/facebook-cancels-internship-after-student-flags-privacy-flaw/ar-BBlHH1a?ocid=spartandhp&pfr=1 <comment><USER3> discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10051613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10051613)

</comment><comment><USER4> That seems fine. This wasn't a responsible security disclosure, they're not punishing a whistleblower. Publishing an extension to the Chrome Web Store that lets anyone exploit the bug is NOT the responsible way for anyone to "highlight" a security issue unless normal channels have repeatedly failed (which was not the case here), let alone someone who is working for them.

<comment><USER5> > Publishing an extension to the Chrome Web Store that lets anyone exploit the > bug is NOT the responsible way for anyone to "highlight" a security issue > unless normal channels have repeatedly failed

I think that's the core behind responsible disclosure. If I was management at facebook - I would be perfectly fine if he published a paper about it after we patched the bug (in fact I would encourage him to do it) - but not create an exploit allowing N number of people to use it then tell me about it.

Edit: changing point of view

If someone told me about an exploit in one of my sites - I might even pay him a small reward.

There is of course those who are completely out of touch with reality and completely ignore legit issues. Never forget the Super Meat Boy incident of 2010 [1]. That has actually made me stop playing their games - because it makes me uneasy to think they were sitting in the kitchen table or office and thinking "it would be a great idea if we connected directly a MySQL server to query custom level data!" \- and not at least find someone to bounce that off of to wonder why other people aren't doing that.

[1] [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&thr...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=2803713&pagenumber=258#post398884189)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why would he apply to work for Facebook if he cared about privacy anyway?

</comment><comment><USER7> Facebook should probably also get sued... I have trouble to believe that this was not intentional on their part since there is a setting to share or not to share your location.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems silly to needlessly antagonise your future employer?

I mean, it's a cool hack, but common sense seems to have gone out the window.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems unlikely given that they pay out thousands of dollars for security glitches? huh.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure the kid will be OK. And maybe he can find somewhere better to work than Facebook now. I mean, who wants to spend their life working on helping find better ways to mine people's personal information to help make better ads anyway? Sure FB have some interesting technical challenges and they do release a lot of code as OSS, which is good. But they're not exactly a "cool" company.

</comment><comment><USER11> <snark>Luckily msn is here to report on big companies that invade our privacy that aren't Microsoft.</snark>

<comment><USER12> I too enjoyed a bit of that delicious irony!

In other news, Facebook is actively looking to purchase a global news organization so that they can report on Google's privacy violations - <USER2> say it's not Fox News. Completing the circle, Google's move to Alphabet allows them greater freedom to create their own news agency. Due to long periods of dog-fooding followed by eternal beta programs, pundits expect Googles service to reach general availability sometime in the fourth millenium.</comment></comment>


VC bias in viewing pitch decks can affect fundraising success - <AUTHOR> https://www.docsend.com/blog/how-vc-bias-in-viewing-pitch-decks-can-affect-fundraising-success/ <comment><USER2> Where did this data come from?

I had to dig five links deep before I got an answer. DocSend is a service that allows founding teams to send pitch decks to investors. DocSend invited founding teams to participate in this research.[0] It's worth noting that they don't seem like they asked for consent from the VCs whose browsing behavior they observed for this study.

In DocSend's privacy policy[1], the VCs are Viewers, whereas the founding team is the User. DocSend apparently allows Users to give consent on behalf of the Viewers:

> _If you are a Viewer who views Content you receive from a User via the > Service, we automatically collect information about your interaction with > such Content and our Service. The information we collect includes: Whether > or not a you have viewed or are viewing Content; Date and time you viewed > the Content; Number of times and length of time Content was viewed; Which > portions of the Content were viewed; and Your IP address and location._

[0] [https://docsend.com/view/my4w3gf](https://docsend.com/view/my4w3gf)

[1] [https://www.docsend.com/privacy-policy/](https://www.docsend.com/privacy- policy/)

<comment><USER3> Not a VC but if I was I would never click a DocSend link. And VCs hold a lot of power — sure they are all chasing deal flow but if they just responded "I don't click pitch links, send me a PDF" they would get their PDF 99 times out of 100.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, but this is a pretty popular perspective in general, let alone VC. Many high-profile folks don't care about your links or secure sites or what have you, they just want the PDF or PPT file.

They also generally want the ability to keep it and show it to others, even if you don't want them to. Classic display of power.

<comment><USER5> I'm an investor and I don't love clicking on the docsend links, but I will. I really dislike clicking on linktracked links, especially from a cold pitch.

The worst part of docsend for me is I will get an email saying "check out our new thing" and then I click on it sometime later to look at it again and it's already expired. Or I remember, "hey that deck about xxxyyy, other investor zzz should talk to them" and I can't search for it because there was zero content in the email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great hard data. Hopefully at least some VC's will look internally at the way they talk about "pattern matching" and recognize it for what it is, a selection bias tuned for young white male founders.

<comment><USER7> like the rest of the world

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this. Definitely the gap needs to close.

Starting with an obvious - people gravitate towards people like themselves - so that means we need more women represented in VC first at the Principal and IC level.

Even if you were able to mask who the founding team is from the initial deck and pitch (similar to how hiring has started), a face to face has to happen at some point. This will keep the same problem perpetuating until that particular group is represented as a decision maker.

The phrase "no taxation without representation" seems apt.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why this could not be different because of gender itself, not because of bias? For example, men prefer to talk about solutions and may be more focused on enterprise and women are more product oriented? Isn't you have to use pretty much the same keynotes to make any conclusions?

<comment><USER10> Yes this doesn't make any sense as a "study", just an ad for docsend. The Harvard study they referenced [https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer- entrepreneurial...](https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer- entrepreneurial-ventures-pitched-attractive-men) is much better

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The linked article I found more convincing: [https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer- entrepreneurial...](https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer- entrepreneurial-ventures-pitched-attractive-men) The original article someone could argue "this just shows men make better pitch decks" which is clearly not the case

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there any study that shows the effect on the environment caused by the current slowdown on polluting industries and travel?

</comment><comment><USER12> No shit.</comment>


SXSW Food Crawl - <AUTHOR> http://foodcrawl.co My friend and I decided to throw a SXSW Food Crawl. Originally the plan was to get some foodies and techies together and crawl the best places in town. However, the attendee list has grown unexpectedly high and we are being forced to reconsider our options.<p>Seeing as we have no budget, we are completely open to any suggestions on what we should do or how we can secure sponsorship. Please halp! <comment><AUTHOR> My friend and I are hosting SXSW Food Crawl 2013 and attendance has gone way over expectation (2600+). Thus, we are scrapping our original plan and trying to think of ways to make this work.

I'm completely open to suggestions!</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone offer 110% guarantee for their products? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone actually offered a 110% cash back guarantee for their products or services?  I read about it in The Four Hour Work Week, but it's a little scary to actually do it in practice.  Ferris claims very few people maliciously take advantage of it.  Has anyone here gotten burned by this type of guarantee? <comment><USER2> The price of the product probably matters a lot.

e.g. I don't plan on prorating monthly subscription cancellations but this won't result in any severe amount of money gone if someone tried to abuse unless there was some giant, coordinated scam. In the latter case, whoever's credit card got stolen would likely do a chargeback anyhow.

</comment><comment><USER3> The request rate for 110% cash back might be similar to the rates for rebate offers. People have said rebates get returned anywhere between 2% and 60%, but it sounds like the industry average is less than 10%. So I doubt many people would ask for the 110% cash back.

And as for customers taking advantage of it, I really think the number would be less than of people who didn't take advantage of it when they weren't satisfied. Personally I know of one small rebate that I didn't end up cashing in because I never got around to it, and I would have to be really unsatisfied with a product to go through the time and hassle of asking for my money back.

Wikipedia Link:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebate_(marketing)#Some_redempt...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebate_\(marketing\)#Some_redemption_estimates)

</comment><comment><USER4> I offer a 120% guarantee at SmartFlix.com.

I've only had one customer ask for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks. That's good to know.</comment></comment>


A Canvas Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://tomtheisen.com/spread/

<comment><USER2> I didn't realize it at first, but you can click on it as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very good. I think the fade option should be set by default. Can you make a screensaver or something with this stuff? I would definitely use that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try setting it to spawn a new tree every 1 or 2 frames; you get some amazing patterns around the outside.

Performance is good on Safari, even after a few minutes and fade turned off.

<comment><USER5> Canvas is a bitmap drawing field. The browser actually has to do less work with fade turned off, and performance won't degrade with time running.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I had no idea; I've only ever done animation in flash and—without thinking about it—made the assumption that canvas would also be vector based. Knowing this is going to be really useful at some point, so again, thanks.

<comment><USER5> You can of course work with vectors on the web as well by using SVG. Well, if you ignore IE, but then you'd be ignoring it by using canvas :) They're both good at their own field. SVG gives you the doctree and accessibility, canvas raw speed and bitmap tricks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flux Capacitor Fluxing.

</comment><comment><USER7> It runs very well on the iPhone 3gs</comment>


Web Property Systems: Why good content and backlinks are not enough - <AUTHOR> https://tractionloops.com/web-property-systems/

<comment><USER2> yes and no

for online growth you should build a system, not a website.

but a system does not necessarily mean multiple webproperties. running, promoting, maintaining a successful, growing webproperty is a full time job. if you start out with multiple webproperties you will do to much, to soon and you will fail. i see this again and again with publishing startups (here in europe) that target multiple markets or multipel languages. running two interconnected webproperties (i.e. language versions) is not double as hard as running one, but hard². a webproperty must definitely be seen as something that must scale and something that you can "branch out" from (diversify) but start with just one (1) thing (market, language, webproperty). if you found what works, then do more, do them differently and make sure that the parts make sense when seen as a whole.

ad risk distribution: yes, if you have just one strategy - i.e.: one webproperty and have an aggressive risk startegy you are betting on just one horse, and you are running it hard and at one point, it will fail. so yes, hedging is necessary.

in the past hedging (in regards of traffic growth) was meant having multiple webproperties, multiple domains. because search was basically the only way you could drive massive and growing traffic to it. this is no longer true: native apps, push notifications, social push, social shares, mail push (i.e. newsletters, email alerts) can now deliver enough (traffic/user) growth that your company can thrive and succeed. this is already hedging - and thank to zuckerberg and jobs and mailchimp (and other) we now can hedge our traffic/user (growth) strategies instead of needing to hedge our SEO strategie (from the start)

tumbs up for the Donella H. Meadows reference, she was the ultimate growth hacker decades before the term existed.</comment>


Labeling A company as YC rejected? Not OK? - <AUTHOR>

Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?<p>We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.
<comment><USER2> Labelling a company as having been rejected by YC is misleading, because it implies a value judgement which wasn't made. Probably 90% of the people who visit your website leave without signing up; equally, my understanding is that most startups (even successful ones) find that 90% of angels and VCs turn them down. Do you label yourself with the names of all the potential users who "rejected" you?

As Paul has pointed out in the past, there are many reasons why a company might not receive funding, and most of them have nothing to do with the merits of the company itself. Being not accepted by YC doesn't mean that they necessarily think there's anything wrong with you -- in this case, "not accepted" is not a synonym for "rejected".

</comment><comment><USER3> There should be a special logo for YCombinator rejects to display. I humbly offer [http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/1251010963_4787666411_m....](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/1251010963_4787666411_m.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha i like that.

<comment><USER4> Why the obsession with YC? Are you making lists of everyone that's ever turned you down or told you your idea won't fly? If you have a good idea, that'll turn into a long list...

"We label ourselves as a rejected company to show perseverance..."

I think it shows more of either: a) taking rejection too personally, or b) mean spirited demonstration that YC made a mistake by not funding you.

Either way, I don't think it's in any way "unethical"... just unwise. If you think YC made a mistake, and you want them to correct it, explain so in your application for the next round. If you've changed your mind, and don't want their support anymore, don't dwell on it and go on with your life.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely kind of neat to see companies that were turned down by YC and worked on their project anyway. If there were a list of them somewhere (similar to TechCrunch's deadpool, but a little more cheery) I'd love to read it.

I'm really curious what percentage of the submissions that get rejected go on to incorporate and put something out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a rash of startups doing this to get attention a few months ago. After the first couple we started deleting such descriptions. It's an edge case, but probably abuse, especially considering the motive.

Which incidentally is probably also a large part of the motive for this post. If you were really just interested in the abstract question, you could have avoided the appearance of an ulterior motive by making this a straight question instead of linking to your original post. Want me to change that for you?

<comment><USER6> Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a _truthful_ description? I think making a title that catches the attention of news.yc readers is only abuse if it does not truthfully describe the link it points to.

If there is some other reason why you don't like "YC reject" in titles (unhealthy us vs them mentality?), why not comment on the submitted article asking the submitter to edit the title? I'm not affiliated with knewjax, but it looks to me from his comments that he would be happy to comply. I think most, if not all, previously-rejected applicants who post here would do the same.

<comment><USER7> _Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a_ truthful _description?_

It is truthful, but it is not a description.

<comment><USER6> If the site linked to was submitted in a YC application and was not accepted, then "YC reject" is truthfully an attribute of the linked site. It is as descriptive as, say, the color scheme the site uses. You may see it as an uninteresting attribute; others may find it interesting. Voting answers the interesting/uninteresting question. What the editors do is to answer the appropriate/inappropriate question.

<comment><USER7> From your argument follows that any true statement about something is descriptive. Under that acception, my post is self contradicting.

I was relying on a less inclusive meaning of the word: to describe as in to relate _intrinsic_ properties of something. Yes, 'intrinsic' itself is a sloppy concept defined mostly by convention, but that's true for most of our language. I'll leave it at that, apologize for my sloppy language, and appeal to common sense.

My point is that the "rejected by YC" tag doesn't add much information, certainly not enough to merit being in the title. Its main effect is attention grabbing. Those priorities are inappropriate enough for me, and I support the banning of this kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're being silly and it makes me think you have nothing else worth talking about. There were 400+ apps to the most recent YC program...I don't want to know if you were one of them. It's relatively interesting when a company is a YC company, but is distinctly uninteresting that you took 20 minutes out of your day to fill out the application. That just tells us you had 20 minutes to spare.

<comment><USER9> I think I agree with your main point, but I object to your reasoning. Did you really spend only 20 minutes on your app? I'm skeptical that it's possible to literally spend that little time on it and still get accepted to the program. The app even says, "We look at online demos only for the most promising applications, so don't skimp on the application because you're relying on a good demo."

Spread out over a few weeks, we probably spent 24 hours on the app (this estimate includes tasks like market research, for example, to answer the "who are your competitors" question). Maybe this seems like a long time, but I think it takes a long time to come up with well-written, concise prose.

Now, we didn't get accepted, but we did make it to the interview.

<comment><USER10> He didn't literally mean 20 minutes. Even if he did, that's not the point he was trying to make.

<comment><USER8> Actually, in my case I did literally mean 20 minutes. Apologies to folks who spent significantly longer (and I'm not disparaging you for doing so). It was merely lack of knowledge on my part that led to me filling it out so quickly.

I didn't even know about the program until the afternoon on which applications were due--I had seen the Boston one come and go, but would have never considered a move from Austin to Boston...by the time I realized there was one in CA, it was close to too late. I submitted it within hours of the deadline, and had dozens of other things going on at the same time. I looked back over it later (before going for the interview in Boston), and it was pretty bad, except in a few spots where deep knowledge of our field and code overwhelmed the slapdash nature of the thing as a whole.

If it makes you feel better, we just scraped by, on the obvious difficulty of the problems that we had already solved when we arrived for the interview (and even then pg was not on board with what we were doing...I'm pretty certain we owe our acceptance entirely to Trevor and rtm, who have done system administration and recognized the pain that our product takes away, while pg seemingly couldn't figure out why we would even want to address those problems).

But, you're absolutely right: It's not the point I was trying to make.

s/20 minutes/2 fortnights/g and the intent is the same.

<comment><USER9> Congrats on wasting no time, then. That's a great story, btw. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?

We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.

<comment><USER11> Naw, I don't mind. Editors probably feel a bit protective of YC though, maybe that's why the title got edited, because the word 'reject' has some negative connotations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I agree. With so many startups launching it just seemed logical to highlight YC applicants here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe in the future companies could just use "YC funded company" or "YC applicant" if they felt the need to highlight it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend reading the forum and just waiting around for the next time someone asks "Have we heard from any companies that got rejected and still went forward?"</comment>


Woman cons dozens of men into 'date' then sets them against each other - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/21/tinder-new-york-union-square-mass-date <comment><USER2> What an awful attention seeking thing to do. I'm sure she thinks she's witty and amazing, but this really is pretty cringe worthy.

And people wonder why trust in online dating is the way that it is.</comment>


New Zealand admits illegally spying on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom - <AUTHOR> http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/27/14120478-new-zealand-admits-illegally-spying-on-megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom?lite

<comment><USER2> This is my surprised face.

Other western countries do what is asked of them when the US comes calling.

<comment><USER3> The US government is the last true sovereign.

<comment><USER4> RIAA is the last true sovereign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In other news, New Zealand's prime minister seems to have issued a public apology to Kim Dotcom:

[https://torrentfreak.com/new-zealand-prime-minister- apologiz...](https://torrentfreak.com/new-zealand-prime-minister-apologizes- to-kim-dotcom-120927/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah but New Zealand still doesn't let the US nuclear powered ships in their waters! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-free_zone#New_Zealand>

Why should they fold to the US government who is basically being controlled by the media industry?

There is a process to get someone extradited it should be followed

</comment><comment><USER7> Our government has been at the beck and call of the White House ever since they came to power. Key is financier, a snake.

</comment><comment><USER8> Rule #1 of spying: Never admit to it.

</comment><comment><USER9> The real question: is Dotcom innocent of his alleged crimes? The real story is that if Dotcom was facilitating piracy. The technicality of if he was wire tapped illegally or not is important in theory, but it comes down to this: Dotcom would not be in trouble if he hadn't broken the law. If he was innocent, then this would be a big story. This is similar to someone caught in video robbing a store but beating the charge because of a technicality.

Criminals winning cases on technicalities while still having committed the crime is not justice. Justice is getting punished for crimes actually committed. Justice is when innocent people are acquitted of crimes they did not commit.

Turning Dotcom into somekind of folk hero is ridiculous. He became very wealthy by facilitating theft. It isn't like he was donating the proceeds to build schools for girls in Afghanistan. If he broke a potentially unfair law as a statement and did it for something other than getting rich, maybe then we could consider him something other than what he is -- a self-serving criminal.

<comment><USER10> "Justice is getting punished for crimes actually committed."

A government's complete disregard for due process is a far greater crime than piracy.

The punishment for this crime is "[c]riminals winning cases on technicalities".

<comment><USER11> > The punishment for this crime is "[c]riminals winning cases on > technicalities".

I disagree. The punishment is to find the person or persons responsible and, at a minimum, fire them. That should serve as a warning to others that you either do it right, or not at all.

The "[c]riminals winning cases on technicalities" is a side-effect of erroneous judgement.

<comment><USER12> I would argue that, in the US at least, criminals winning on technicalities is _not_ a side effect. It is a direct punishment of the government not following proper procedure. Authorities cannot illegally search your home because if they do they forfeit the right to use that evidence. If that repercussion was not in place, there would be no incentive for the government to actually follow the law.

Do it right or you lose the case. That's the deal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ruby is faster than Python, PHP, and Perl - <AUTHOR> http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2012/06/ruby-is-faster-than-python-php-and-perl.html

<comment><USER2> Did anyone else find it strange that Ruby only beat Python and PHP in the median range? On both ends Python and PHP are both quite faster. I don't really know how to read this thing, but I feel like this title is probably misleading?

<comment><USER3> This post is a rhetorical rant, so it's best not to take the core premise too seriously. Even though the title is "Ruby is faster than Python, PHP, and Perl", I don't think it's the author's intention to make that broad claim. Rather, the intention is to beat out of everyone's head that Ruby is "slow".

When speaking about languages in the same ballpark (Ruby, Python, Perl, etc), it's difficult to make blanket statements about which one is "faster", because they each have their warts. Depending upon what your application needs to do, you may run in to those warts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author seems very excited to rub this in anyone's face he can. The data seems much more murky than he makes it out to be.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not another one of these...

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't matter... Dynamic languages are slow by design!

Caching and JIT compilers to the rescue!

</comment><comment><USER7> Does this really matter?

I mean,seriously, if speed is what you want, you'd write it in C. These days, with virtually unlimited CPU, we choose our languages based on suitability for the task, readability and community support (at least I do).

Other than assembler for games, I have never chosen a language based on speed of execution. Anyone else?

Can't we also just compile Ruby (or PHP or Python) to C and then let the C compiler optimize it these days? I think we can.

Additionally, the fact that Javascript kicks the crap out of the vast majority of languages is surprising to me.

<comment><USER8> I imagine Javascript's advantage is because V8 is a JIT compiler. It's unfortunate LuaJIT is not shown since it would probably be around the same level or higher than V8.

<comment><USER9> I'd also be interested to see Pypy's experimental JIT compared here (or pypy at all, for that matter).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love ruby and I would like to support any effort to dispel the myth that Ruby is slow.</comment>


Ask HN: At 9 cents/GB downloaded, how can any company afford cloud computing? - <AUTHOR> I get it if you generate little traffic, but for any site that generates any substantial traffic, it seems like costs would rapidly go through the roof. Or am I missing some key understanding?
Or is it just that companies pay attention to pricing except for that critical little 9 cent line item?
So if your user watches a 1 gig video, that costs your company 9 cents? Seems like a lot of money. <comment><USER2> It's nowhere near that straightforward: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/open-guides/og- aws/master/...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/open-guides/og- aws/master/figures/aws-data-transfer-costs.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the first response. Cloud is simpler to manage and lowers (typically) the cost to maintain infrastructure. There's the cost, them there's the total cost.

Who is charging 9 cents a gb? S3 transfer cost is .023 cents per gb.

Also, what is the value of your 1gb video to you? Does it drive sales? Does it enhance a brand? What cost are you willing to incur to distribute the content? At some point you're going to pay some amount to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> This page says s3 is 9 cents [https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Certainly don't serve videos through the cloud. Besides that, if your revenue doesn't cover your cloud bill then your business was never viable anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cloud hosting is for companies that have money and don't want to worry about managing everything themselves. You can get much better rates elsewhere.</comment>


What is your opinion about feedback tabs? - <AUTHOR>

What do you think of those feedback tabs that pop up everywhere recently? When I first saw them I found them quite cool but since they are now on almost every new page site I visit I'm starting to get annoyed by them.<p>And I'm wondering why? What is your take on this? Do you think they are useful or bad design? <comment><USER2> I find any floating UI element that stays in the same place independent of how I scroll obnoxious. It's not how I expect, or want, webpages to behave.

</comment><comment><USER3> They're pretty annoying. If they want to get feedback, maybe make it prominent on the front page, but to have it right there on every single page - occasionally covering up other things - it's really obnoxious.

</comment><comment><USER4> It depends on the current state of the project I guess. It might be quite important that your visitors quickly spot the feedback-button when they have not yet discovered the full value of the service provided, IE when there's no incitement for them to scan for a way to send feedback.

In a later stage when feedback from users -- as opposed to visitors -- is more important the feedback-button could move down into the footer instead to make other calls-to-action more prominent.

Having that said, I'm also a little allergic to these feedback-buttons.

<comment><USER5> Also in the allergic-to-feedback-buttons camp. To the point where I'm starting to block them.

If I really want to give feedback, I'll look for a "Contact us" link, not something floating on the left or right side of my browser window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I developed a simple webapp that generates jogging routes that come back to their starting point.

I wanted to know what functionalities I could add to make the service more useful; since services such as Get Satisfaction start at $19 a month, I developed my own solution (a very simple one, but truly independent of the source website, so it can be deployed on other sites).

The button is named "help us help you" which I thought was cooler than "Feedback".

I'm sad to report, however, that in the week it's been up, it's never been used by anyone... Maybe I need a feedback button to gather feedback about the feedback system?!?

For those interested, the jogging service is here: <http://tjp.adgent.com/>

<comment><USER2> Consider that most people don't expect a UI element to appear on the left hand side of the page, completely removed from all other UI and text. Most users are used to scanning the part of the page that already has text. Also consider that the text is vertical, so it's a little difficult to read.

I think people are tempted to use these feedback buttons _because_ they break normal expectations. By not being a normal UI element, they draw attention to themselves - in theory. The other side of this is that by breaking expectations, some people may not realize it is a UI element.

Of course, an alternative explanation is that your users did not have anything to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a result of a strong campaign by <http://uservoice.com>. They've been pushing hard for the past 1-2 years and, if you were watching carefully enough, you could see those buttons slowly but surely appearing on more sites. They've simply reached a tipping point now so you notice them. It's somewhat akin to seeing a specific car model more often if you own the same model -- once you notice a pattern, it's difficult to un-notice it.

I like the UI. I dislike the UX, or rather what the button does to a site's overall UX.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I am showing my age here, but years ago we had a link in the footer right next to "contact" and "about us" called "feedback. And you clicked on that link, submitted your feedback and it worked fine.

Does a feedback tab really need to be positioned so prominently on every page and popup in a modal DIV using Javascript? My feeling is no, a simple feedback page is fine.</comment>