Search the 58,928 leaked Twitter user names - <AUTHOR> http://twitterleak.martinwittmann.at/

<comment><USER2> Cool service, thanks! Glad to see I'm not affected, though I do think the majority of these addresses are just spambots.

<comment><USER3> Actually i am afraid to search my name, what if the blog itself is a trap? how do you overcome this?

<comment><AUTHOR> hello! I'm martin, I created that little search tool.

no need to worry, all it does is search in the usernames that were posted on pastebin.

nothing else :)</comment></comment></comment>


Two Phases of Angular 2 Applications - <AUTHOR> http://victorsavkin.com/post/114050927521/two-phases-of-angular-2-applications

<comment><USER2> This is somewhat of a response to a lot of discussion recently about how Angular2 doesn't have two-way data binding. It's sort of funny because two-way data binding is a really nice feature for prototyping and getting people started, but it is horrible for building large, robust web apps. I think the Angular team made the right move here, but I hope that they are able to come up with other easy ways to get people started on Angular and enable quick prototyping.</comment>


What do managers most need to improve - <AUTHOR> https://www.comparably.com/blog/what-do-managers-most-need-to-improve/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Surprisingly... Communication :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Big data on countries - <AUTHOR>

What's the best way to find big data on economic performance of countries? <comment><AUTHOR> Wondering where is the best info for economic performance and other govt data in the world? Any APIs other than Census API?</comment>


Twitter Begs Users to Target Themselves for Ads - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-begs-users-target-themselves-133035454.html <comment><USER2> I don't actually see a problem with this. I find it way more respectful than stalking users to try to infer what they like, and allows users to correct mistakes of the algorithm (I remember a few years ago I tried Facebook again, and for some reason it was convinced I was some sort of gambling addict and started recommending me pages & bot accounts about some kind of casino game; no amount of flagging helped so I just deleted the account and never looked back).</comment>


EMC Considers a Buyout by Its Own Subsidiary VMware - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/08/05/emc-considers-a-buyout-by-its-own-subsidiary-vmware/

<comment><USER2> Discussion from a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998714)

<comment><AUTHOR> That submission/discussion is about the opposite (EMC buying the ~20% of VMW it doesn't own), this article is [mostly] suggesting EMC is considering getting bought _by_ VMW.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do geeks in Palo Alto do on weekend nights? - <AUTHOR> How do you (or do you) socialize? What do _most_ do?<p>Yes I realize that geeks are normal people too. But lets not kid ourselves... they aren't. <comment><USER2> I lived in Palo Alto for a couple of years, and basically just didn't go out (weekend or otherwise) after 8pm unless one of my friends with a car wanted to drive to San Francisco for the night. Caltrain is fine during the day on weekends (e.g., for shopping and dinner outings) but shuts down far too early to really do bars/clubs/concerts in the city and still get home. (BART has similar issues, if you're trying to get in and out of east bay.)

The upside is that the city is only 40 minutes away; the downside is that SF tends to be kind of a black hole for culture, sucking everything cool into the city limits and leaving the south bay with all the strip malls, supermarkets, and car dealerships.

If you're going to school or working a startup, it can be survivable. There are enough coffee shops, cafes, and restaurants around downtown Palo Alto to let you pass a lazy Sunday afternoon pleasantly enough, and the occasional trip to SF by car (or by train, with a hotel stay in the middle) helps to alleviate the boredom.

<comment><USER3> >(BART has similar issues, if you're trying to get in and out of east bay.)

Fortunately, the AC Transit 8xx bus lines run from the Transbay Terminal in the city along East Bay BART routes after BART shuts down and leave every hour (and every half hour for awhile on weekend nights.)

There are SamTrans buses that take you between the city and Palo Alto after Caltrain shuts down but they leave every hour and take a couple of hours for the trip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a different perspective to show the grass isn't greener on the other- side:

I've lived in San Francisco for 4.5yrs and sometimes I feel lost for interesting places to hang out in the evenings here in The City.

I'm not really interested in the pretentious hipster scene bars of Mission, I don't like the LA-wannabe scene of Marina and most of SoMa's clubs cater for East Bay bridge and tunnel crowd _(before you think I'm being snobby I find the East Bay crowd unfriendly to city living folks, and all of the violet situations I've witnessed in clubs/bars have been from East Bay types. We're not talking Berkeley types but the more 'heavier' Oakland/Freemont/Hayward scene)_.

And everything closes at 2am (although granted, that's a CA-wide policy).

I guess I say all of the above with the disclosure that I'm a native of London, a 24/7 city with more bars and clubs than you could visit in a year.

<comment><USER5> If you need NYC/London/LA/Moscow/Mexico City/etc -style megacity sense of scale and/or civilized drinking hours to stay sane then you'll _never_ be happy in SF. But if you can deal with its boutique dimensions (and the cold), then the problem may simply be that you're hanging out in the wrong neighborhoods.

The "real" SF resides pretty much in the Tenderloin - Nob Bill - Chinatown - City Lights triangle these days, I find. There are also pockets of civilization out in the "lost" neighborhoods: Cafe Du Mond; the Rite Spot; Amnesia on Valencia; and (yes) the Utah Bar, as well as a few others too cool to name here.

But the main thing is that wherever you go, there you, umm, are. Ultimately you have to _decide_ to be happy with your surroundings -- or decide to change them.

I think in SF/Oakland/Alameda it's pretty easy to concentrate on the positives. The South Bay and the Peninsula are pretty much lost causes, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Despite the facade of University Avenue, Palo Alto is a pretty tame suburban atmosphere. I tend to drive or Caltrain out to San Fran if I want to do something on the weekend.

Then again, if you have someone to hang with, all these awesome Open Space Preserves makes for great hiking/biking. My favorite is Astradero just because its a 5 min drive from my house.

</comment><comment><USER7> I bet that in some startups, the following answer applies: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!"

</comment><comment><USER8> Code. Sometimes under the influence.

</comment><comment><USER9> Beats me. I had to leave the South Bay because it was driving me insane.

I worked on an acquired events-related startup, and when we lived in the South Bay, none of us went to any events.

Although SF is tantalizingly close, it is always too much of a hassle when you factor in transportation or parking.

<comment><USER10> No specific knowledge of this area yet, but in a similar situation elsewhere I/we just grabbed a hotel room in the city for a night or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing. That's why I left. Some folks like the SF nightlife scene but I wasn't a big fan of that either. Too many hipsters. Plus it's impossible at nights because of the lack of transport back to the south bay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, so where are you now and what do you do on weekend nights?

<comment><USER11> I travel the world. Three months ago I was in Brussels, for the last two months I've been in Munich, now I'm in London, then I go to Chicago for Christmas with the family. Munich is one of my favorite cities and the atmosphere there soundly beats anything I've found in the states. London is, well, London--there's a reason it's been one of the cultural capitals of the western world for as long as it has been.

That's one of the perks of being a young, single web entrepreneur living in a time of global English, wifi, and cheap airfare--I can live and work wherever I want :)

Edit: for a map of some places I've been, check out my company's web site: <http://turkeysandwichindustries.com>

<comment><USER12> I'm currently staying two months in Tokyo to visit friends and work on my own software startup, and I think traveling around like like you do would be my ideal lifestyle. (c:

May I ask how you're organizing the practicalities of accomodation and food, and how much you're spending compared to at home?

<comment><USER11> It's all pretty easy. Every country seems to have their Craigslist equivalent where you can find apartments to stay in for a short term (a month or two). I've spent a lot of time in hostels in the past, which are a fun and cheap way to live as well. If you're new to long-term traveling those would be a good option to get you started because you meet lots of interesting people. But after a while you kind of need your own space and living in a 20-bed dorm stops cutting it, regardless of how cool the people there are.

Since I rent rooms in apartments they usually have their own kitchens. I cook for myself or go out with friends to eat.

The rent varies greatly from place to place. I've been told by many that Munich is the most expensive city in Germany. I rented a big room in a rather small apartment in a great part of town (next to Ostbahnhof) for 150 euro a week with one roommate That seems to be about the right price based on the other offers I found. In Belgium, I lived in a small town just south of Brussels. I rented a room from a retired couple who lived in a 3-story country house with a huge, beautiful garden and massive kitchen for 100 euro per week. They were frequently gone so I had the house to myself. In London there's a website called Gumtree that's like Craigslist. I found a room for 160 pounds per week. It was much harder finding a room in London than anywhere else because everything is outrageously expensive and everyone seems to want a minimum 6 month stay (I'm only here for 3 weeks).

In Belgium you can get a bottle of 12% Trappist for ~2 euro; in Germany a liter of beer for ~6 euro and a pint for ~3 euro; in England a pint for ~3 pounds. Food at the grocery seemed cheapest in Germany, where I never found myself spending more than 15 euro in one visit that would last me a few days of eating well.

So, after you convert euros and pounds to dollars, you can see that it varies a lot. In England in particular the conversion rate is killer--something like 1.6 dollars to a pound right now.

My advice would be if you really want to do some long term travel, just buy your ticket and do it. It's really extremely easy to figure things out once you arrive somewhere. You can email me at my username at ucla.edu if you want any more info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a big fan of Friday Night Waltz (<http://www.fridaynightwaltz.com/>), which is cheap, fun, social, and darn good exercise too.

<comment><USER14> And for those people who feel their dancing skills are inadequate, one of the best dance instructors in the country (Richard Powers) gives two hours of introductory lessons before the dance. The atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> After wasting 6 years living in the peninsula and south bay, mainly because I was afraid of the commute (I still work in Santa Clara), I moved up to SF a couple months ago. Best decision I've made in recent memory.

I'm lucky in that my work schedule is flexible, so I get to/from the office in 35-45 minutes. Much better than the 2-hour train/light rail commute would be.

I agree with one of the other posters that the best places to hang out seem to be in and around the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, etc. I do enjoy the Mission as well, but that's a little farther for me, and I prefer to walk places when I can. SoMa is kinda eh, North Beach is a wasteland, Marina... not so much.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just moved here in October and I don't really know anyone. The more I'm here the more I wish I lived in SF. The ridiculous thing is that it takes me 25 minutes to get to work from where I live (the Willows in Menlo Park) to SLAC because the intracity traffic is so SLOW.

Basically though, I think the bar scene here blows. It's cool that a lot of the food places are open late on University though.

That being said, while I think long commutes generally suck the life out of people, I'm seriously thinking about moving to Noe Valley or the Mission and commuting on the 280.

Anyways, I'm up for doing stuff if anybody here wants to. I still don't really know anyone in this area.

<comment><USER17> 25 minutes is not a long commute. I used to do 2 hour commutes, and knew people whose commutes were even longer.

<comment><USER16> Well, 25 minutes isn't bad. The thing that sucks is that it's 25 minutes over 5 miles. If I'm going to be in my car for half an hour and living in a place I don't really like, I might as well commute a bit longer and live in a place I like better.

The fact that live music is pretty much non-existant in this area is sort of a bummer as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> * House parties - at peak, I was throwing a house party once a month.

* Hacker Dojo - almost always something interesting going on. Highly recommended.

* Bars - Rose & Crown or the Nut House.

* Watch a limited release film at Aquarius or CineArts.

* A lazy afternoon drinking wine at Vino Locale followed by dinner out at a nice restaurant.

* Board games, poker, or whatever with friends.

* Chill out by the pool at a friend's apartment complex.

etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is something that has bugging me for some time; why is there such a lack of nightlife in Palo Alto? Does anyone know what the latest allowed time for a bar to be open?

Anyone interested in opening a hacker friendly bar that's open late and has coffee/wifi during the day?

Edit: I'm actually quite serious. I have restaurant experience and it sure as shit seems like its in need. Anyone at all interested should drop me a line!

<comment><USER20> No girls. A bar full of dudes gets boring really fast. You go once, twice, then you don't go there anymore.

Better just stay home and code and drink a beer. I meet my friends at coffee places (Red Rock in MV., or Coupa Cafe in PA).

<comment><USER19> a fair point, but where the hell do the ~6,500 female stanford students go every night/weekend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Go play Starcraft or Rock Band with a bunch of friends from work.

</comment><comment><USER22> Go to tech parties where you stand around and drink with the same people you code with during the week.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you're single, you have flexible hours at your work and you want to meet girls, move to San Francisco. Period.

Once you get married and have kid, move to the Peninsula and wonder how anyone could ever enjoy living in the City.

All the single girls are either in SF or work for Google, so you know what to do.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm glad you posted this, as I'm considering working at a startup in Palo Alto. If I end up moving up there, I can say with near-certainty that at least one geek in Palo Alto will be out drinking beers on weekend nights!

</comment><comment><USER25> On weekends on the peninsula there is still plenty to do. Catch up with folks at their houses, go to bars/restaurants like Town and The Refuge. Go to Rooster T Feathers in Mountain View for a comedy show. Pampas in downtown Palo Alto has a great Friday night happy hour.

Other times I'll drive up to the city. When I lived in Mountain View I used to occasionally get a hotel room in the financial district - $70 on Priceline for a 4* hotel. Now I'm in San Carlos it's only a 20 minute drive to SOMA which is great, or otherwise 40 min by train.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reading these posts it seems to me that there is a huge opportunity for an entertainment-oriented entrepreneur in Palo Alto.

For Heavens sake, someone open up a bar for these guys and don't charge a cover for women!

<comment><USER27> Assuming you do charge a cover for men, this is a really good way to get sued. See Angelucci v. Century Supper Club, 158 P.3d 718 (CA 2007) and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_night#California>

<comment><USER28> "Ladies' nights in Illinois have been upheld under the anti-discrimination provision of the Dram Shop Act.[11] The court determined that the discount was intended to encourage women to attend the bar in greater numbers, rather than to discourage attendance by males."

Illinois gets it. California doesn't. Way to be the state with the stick up your butt again, CA.

<comment><USER29> > The court determined that the discount was intended to encourage women to > attend the bar in greater numbers, rather than to discourage attendance by > males.

Regardless of whether it should be legal or not, "positive discrimination" is still discrimination.

<comment><USER30> Price discrimination is a very important part of marketing. It's everywhere, necessary, and not evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Go to the city. Go out in Palo Alto. Work. Play board games with friends.

<comment><USER32> What's it like going out in Palo Alto?

<comment><USER33> It depends on what you mean by going out. There isn't a lot of stuff, and sparse offerings of typical "nightlife" type destinations (clubbing, live music), but there are a decent number of bars if you're into sitting around drinking beer and chatting. Rose & Crown has a good craft-beer selection.

Also, a bunch of random stuff happens at Stanford now and then, if you're into things like <http://slork.stanford.edu/>

<comment><USER34> 2nded on the rose and crown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Work out. Network if there's the right events. Fairly regularly play games of one sort or another (poker night, RPGs, and lately a reasonable amount of Starcraft 2). Watch really dumb movies and have a couple drinks. I like to take a day off a week and just do creative things; lately that's been composing, remixing, and nanowrimo sorts of nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER36> Antonio's Nut House on Cal Ave with friends.

</comment><comment><USER37> I see geeks at Rudy's Pub in downtown Palo Alto every time I'm there.

</comment><comment><USER38> I lived and worked on University ave for 2.5 years. Every so often we'd walk over to Nolas or Old pro, realize that it's still crowded and crappy, and go back to the office and code.

</comment><comment><USER39> What do _most_ geeks do? Most probably don't socialize at all.

</comment><comment><USER40> Three are more restaurants in Palo Alto/Mountain View than you can imagine. I had a very good time trying different ones out (sometimes with people from work).

<comment><USER41> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Join a club, go indoor rock climbing (see planet granite), do running, biking, find something you are interested in @ meetup.com and go to there events.

</comment><comment><USER43> I grew up in Palo Alto. There's 3 options that come to mind:

* Happy Donuts on El Camino, which is open 24/7 and often is filled with geeks coding at all hours. Lots of people are happy to talk and socialize / be engaged in conversation.

* The downtown PA bar scene: Rose and Crown & Rudy's are probably the most geek-friendly. Old Pro is ok if you're also into sports. Blue Chalk & Nola can be good hangout spots but I wouldn't label either of them first choices.

* California Avenue has Antonio's Nut House. Lots of notable geeks can be seen there. I heard [redacted] was mobbed the last time he went in.

Going to San Francisco sucks unless you already know where you can sleep. I recommend making friends with some local residents and crashing with them after going out (with them). I actually met a dude on HN and we've been out partying in SF a few times; I crashed on his couch a couple times and it's been real sweet.

I also recommend Hacker Dojo, which is open late if you're a member, or 'til 10 if you're a guest, and they've been having some nighttime weekend talks recently.

Finally, I recently moved back to the area after growing up here, and would like to make some more friends, especially tech & business minded people. Contact information is in my profile. I would love to buy you the drink of your choice at any of the above-mentioned venues and hear about what you're working on.

<comment><USER36> Blue Chalk is closed. =(

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> palo alto doesnt even have a good movie theater. you gotta drive to mountain view.

mountain view has the movie theater, which is basically next to google. mountain view also castro street, with the red rock cafe, lots of good little restaurants, and some night life.

<comment><USER45> Maybe not in the usual sense, but the Stanford Theater on University Ave is a really neat place. They show old movies, mostly from the 30s and 40s, every night.

<http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/stf/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I got another good tip:

Paul Graham's essay on "Where to See Silicon Valley" is a valuable primer for anyone not familiar with the area. A must-read for anyone that wants to "get" the area: <http://www.paulgraham.com/seesv.html>

The two tips I personally found the most useful:

* Red Rock is a great place to meet other people working on start-ups.

* Taking the 280 between Silicon Valley and San Francisco is infinitely more scenic than taking the 101. Plus, you can avoid the 101's frequent airport traffic.</comment>


Show HN: Social beat machine built on Node.js #NKO - <AUTHOR> http://eightbitbeats.com

<comment><USER2> Excellent progress in 48 hours, I really like your entry!

Looking forward to seeing this project continue after Node Knockout, I'd hate to see it die out like a lot do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really awesome concept. I loved playing around with it.</comment>


Google sues BT in UK and US over alleged patent infringement - <AUTHOR> http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/february/google-sues-bt-in-uk-and-us-over-alleged-patent-infringement/

<comment><USER2> "Don't be evil."

I guess that they couldn't stick to their motto.

<comment><USER3> _"We have always seen litigation as a last resort, and we work hard to avoid lawsuits," a Google spokesperson said, according to a report by The Register. "But BT has brought several meritless patent claims against Google and our customers - and they've also been arming patent trolls. When faced with these kind of actions, we will defend ourselves."_</comment></comment>


The philosophies of software languages, from Go to Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://www.welcometothejungle.co/fr/articles/languages-software-go-elixir <comment><USER2> > Multicore processors and concurrent programming

> To take full advantage of multicore processors, a programming language needs > to provide mechanisms for concurrency…All of the languages in this > chapter—Go, Rust, Kotlin, and Elixir—were specifically designed to address > this need for concurrency.

This confuses concurrency and parallelism. All of these languages have support for I/O concurrency. But the CPU parallelism support varies significantly. Go is fairly bad at such parallelism, because it doesn't have generics for concurrent data structures, parallel iterators, etc. Rust has pretty good support for it, with Rayon and Crossbeam. Kotlin does too, since it inherits the Java ecosystem, including the excellent java.util.concurrent package. I'm not sure about Elixir; my understanding is that the Erlang VM is not really designed around shared memory, which limits the potential for CPU parallelism.

<comment><USER3> Erlang VM is actually design around full CPU utilization. It will typically spin up a thread for each core and schedule processes (Erlang not system) across them. It's actually because it's designed to not share memory that it excels at parallelism!

<comment><USER2> This design does not do well at CPU parallelism for many workloads. Consider texture sampling in rasterization, to name just one example, in which shared memory is extremely important to get good performance.

<comment><USER4> thing is not optimized for another thing and tradeoffs exist, more news at 11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Kotlin:_

> _Some readers will question why this chapter doesn't include Scala. Although > it's a language that has great support for concurrency, its original guiding > philosophy was more centered in functional programming. Kotlin, however, > which was inspired by Scala in a way, does have a specific focus on > concurrency._

Something similar can be said about Kotlin: The main design goal is the two way interop with different platform APIs (JVM, JS, LLVM). And of course it has many features a modern general purpose language is expected to have. Specifically for asynchronous progamming it has coroutines. However, I think for asynchronous and parallel computing Scala and Clojure have more to offer...

</comment><comment><USER6> Once the revision is published I welcome more comments/corrections. I have never worked with Clojure and could easily be getting some part of what I write wrong.

<comment><USER6> Revision has been published

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi, I wrote the article. I wanted to thank you for the comments, I have updated the article to reflect these corrections.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where is clojure?

<comment><USER8> The same place as the author's understanding of Moore's law.

(Moore's law hasn't broken, because it said nothing about clock speed, it talks about transistor density, and sure enough multi-core and lithography improvements have continued that trend).</comment></comment>


Google's top quantum scientist explains why he resigned - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/04/30/googles-top-quantum-scientist-explains-in-detail-why-he-resigned/ <comment><USER2> I think that this article points to a general challenge with our education system. By and large, the people who stick with training all the way through a PhD and postdoc in a complex field are not hoping about being a cog in someone else's machine. In academia, I've observed that the sign that that a trainee is ready to move on to independence is that they begin to have disagreements with their mentor that don't reflect misunderstandings of fact, but rather proper, interesting diverging hypotheses. In this story, the wiring incident reminding me of this.

The problem is that solving these sorts of hard problems require both leaders and workers. In this case, and many others, there is not an educational path for training people to be technicians with equivalent knowledge as a PhD (which is why they poached an academic lab to do this). Moreover, if there was a path, history has shown that the people that accept the follower role (rather than wanting intellectual leadership) are highly dispensable. (See, e.g., the optics industry moving laser fab to Malaysia.)

It's also a problem in medicine - physicians resist loss of diagnostic or treatment control. Though in medicine, there are NPs and PAs, but they're generally treated with much less respect.

I think it's interesting that he talks about how "he" Martinis was doing the wiring. Was he? I suspect he had a team working very hard with substantial responsibility, but...

<comment><USER3> > I think that this article points to a general challenge with our education > system. By and large, the people who stick with training all the way through > a PhD and postdoc in a complex field are not hoping about being a cog in > someone else's machine.

That's not limited to academia. In the industry (and even outside of tech) people who will have a sufficient understanding of how something works will at some point in time no longer purely want to follow orders, but want to drive things and innovate on their own.

In this situations both sides - the current leaders and someone who wants more responsibility - need make some compromises in order to try to accomodate this interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The pattern seems familiar, take a succesful, self-propelled creative inventor, typically an engineer kind of person, put that person in a group where they need to submit to ideas of others, and things eventually go wrong.

It's not that unusual to see a founder get excluded even if that person was arguably the primary driver, the deteriorating relations don't allow the situation to continue and the alternative is blowing up the organization.

<comment><USER5> This is one reason you should always just execute - never ask for permission. Have conviction - think your objective through - plan - cross your t's and dot your i's - and then just execute and show your results to everyone in your mgmt chain.

...to the degree that you can do that without getting fired.

It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Trying to convince a bureaucracy of anything is futile.

<comment><USER6> It's personality dependent. As in your actions have to align with your personality - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Inventory#Personality_dimensions)

Some people can. Some people cant. There are no general rules that work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What an interesting and apparently frank interview. Martinis was the UCSB professor whose lab setup was basically purchased by Google. Apparently he and Hartmut Neven, another somewhat legendary figure, had "creative differences" and Martinis has left Google. But they also talk about Google's big plans for quantum. Thanks for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER8> I almost joined his lab around 2014 as a PostDoc (without knowing about the Google deal, which was not yet official I think) but eventually I stopped the application process because I wanted to pursue my own startup instead. Today I kind of regret not having stayed in quantum computing as my startup was only modestly successful and as I would probably have been much better off working for Google, in retrospect. I'm working on my next startup now but I keep wondering if I should go back to quantum computing eventually, I'm not sure though if I'm still relevant as my PhD dates back to 2013 already (I had good results though and did it in a renowed QC group on superconducting qubits).

<comment><USER9> As someone who started off in "quantum" in similar conditions around the same time, but decided to stay on the academic researcher track:

A great deal of the recent progress has been on honing, parallelizing, and automating the same processes one used to do by hand/at small scale in 2013. You'll probably instantly recognize most of the things going on in the lab, and could become productive on a short schedule.

However, I'd be wary of the medium-term prospects of the field: The discord between the perceived and actual capabilities of the hardware remains as big as ever. You could consider re-entering the field if you're happy contributing to incremental technological advances relevant to other researchers. Progress with meaningful societal or economic impact is probably much further off.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing your view, I appreciate it! The point you mention was a large factor in my decision. Most of my former colleagues and advisors also "abandoned" superconducting quantum computing later to work on more fundamental research again (e.g. inventing new types of qubits) as they weren't interested at all in the engineering aspects of building a quantum computer. Personally I always enjoyed applied research so I think I would have had fun working on "engineering" problems as well, on the other hand I get to work on challenging computer science problems now too and in addition I can mostly decide myself what to work on (as long as I turn a profit, though). Maybe I'll return to QC after my current startup, which I think will turn out better than the last one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm studying psychology and team dynamics and this is such a great example of conflict destroying the relationship. Want to share couple of thoughts on how we can avoid sacrificing the relationship.

-I'm 'The responsible'. Yes, as leaders, we are responsible for the results, at the same time there are people above us who is responsible for the results more than us. The responsibility is never on the shoulders of a single person in the company. When higher-ups support anti-leaders (as in this case), they take on some of our responsibility, and the honest discussion about their expectations is required. There could be lots of reasons for them being not confident in me driving the team, and it would be very beneficial to get their feedback before proceeding. Our assumptions and using formal understanding of the roles is only helping to fuel the conflict.

-The 'I know' trap. We really believe in our understanding of the future, it is always linear and always clear. At the same time, future we understand consists of 2 things: all the bad stuff happened to me before and all the good stuff happened to me before and depending on our feelings right now, we are projecting the mix of those 2 into the future. The question here is where is that 3rd category of all the thing that never happened to me? Where are the things I've never experienced? What if I don't know how this will play out? To me, creativity is something not known and something haven't been done before. Allowing ourselves to not know exactly how it will play out, helps us to keep an open mind and learn from the new experiences.

In other words we are never 100% responsible for controlling everything around us and the world is a bit more complicated than we want to believe. Hoping this was useful! Happy Friday!

<comment><USER11> It was useful, thanks! I've definitely seen this in tech, esp. the latter case, which I've seen make smart people who deserve better miserable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reading the transcript, he comes off as a shitty boss that refuses to give people independence in this group to try new things. It's his way or the highway. He hides this behind him being a "rare" kind of optimist when really he seems to just ignore the important social factors in being a leader.

<comment><USER13> This is not my reading at all.

If you have ever spent time in a FAANG research org - it can be incredibly frustrating to see so much lack of focus. Everybody does what they want. This is not an issue for most e.g. ML research (my org) because there is so much money to go around, and researchers will leave if they are too constrained.

For hardware/critical projects or customer retention, this is very much an issue. Just look at how the TF ecosystem developed API wise.

There can literally be a project with enormous importance for an ecosystem where multiple teams under one VP do the same thing slightly differently. VPs do nothing and have no opinion on the details. Internal and external users get frustrated because there is no clarity.

If you do a project where you have resources for just one shot in a given timespan, this simply won't cut it.

<comment><USER14> TF?

<comment><USER15> TensorFlow. The API is outrageous.

<comment><USER16> I'm not quite a dev, but I have always felt there's something awful with the TF ecosystem. I thought I was the only one 'struggling' with it and that probably there was some fundamental insight I was missing.

<comment><USER17> What is awful with it?

<comment><USER18> This summed up my experience with it pretty well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21216200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21216200)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > But Hartmut didn't back me up and wanted to go ahead and try both.

This seems very Google, and not in a good way. I'm reminded of when they tried to launch Allo and Duo on the same day, causing both to flop.

Google is the poster-child of the company that has the resources to try everything, but that lacks the conviction or the leadership to actually make a decision.

<comment> B-Con Allo and Duo were complimentary apps, their simultaneous release was necessary and had nothing to do with their adaption rate.

<comment><USER19> Sure, that's the official Google line.

Meanwhile, everybody who actually tried to follow the launch was confused about why there were two, which ones did what, why there was no interoperability, why wasn't hangouts being replaced, "Mobile-first? More like mobile-only," and "Should we even bother? They're going to kill them both off in three years anyway."

It absolutely did hurt the adoption rate -- It would have gone much better if Google management had announced one communication platform and committed to making it their bet going forward.

They were hedging, and it was obvious. Nobody wants to pay switching costs to use a new thing if the creator isn't even confident in their new thing.

<comment><USER20> As far as I understood, they had 2 teams making the 2 communication apps. The simultaneous release date would explain that they were competing with each other, and they didn't want the other team to get the head start on the market. It was probably left to the PR department to sort the problem out and make a press release that made the company look sane.

Imagine if Microsoft had an Excel team and a "Spreadsheetr" team...

<comment><USER21> I for one can imagine a Microsoft that has Skype, Skype for Business, Teams chat, Yammer, Kaizala...

<comment><USER22> Live Meeting, MSN Messenger, Lync, Office Communicator

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can anyone describe what the research scientist interviews are like in a FAANG company? How are they similar or different than the SWE interviews?

<comment><USER13> (FAANG researcher):

The first few tech rounds tend to be the same.

Then there is a set of research interviews and usually a research job talk.

The main observation is that hiring researchers, after passing basic tech rounds, is much more about taste and how people subjectively rate someone's research. It's insanely competitive, but in a sense it is also easier than pure SWE because there are not as many whiteboard hurdles to pass. You just can't really leetcode your way into the role, without a good track record with really interesting research most teams will not be interested.

<comment><USER23> Do interviews tend to include system design, if the applicant doesn't have industry experience?

Been curious about this too: do FAANG companies hire, say, professors with strong research records, but poor coding skills? I always wondered if everyone on these sort of team were all solid coders, or if there were people there that are exceptions.

Based on your experience do FAANG companies tend to be invested in basic research, or more product focused research?

<comment><USER13> System design is not a typical part of a research interview.

Yes, they do. The rule of thumb is: The higher the level you are hired, the more wiggle room is there. A random PhD grad will need to pass the normal coding screens which are carried out by SWEs who do not know anything about the candidate.

Last q depends on the FAANG org, everything exists. MS research is very pure, Amazon/Apple very applied, everything in between.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice that they actually published the transcript.

</comment><comment><USER25> > The Google plan is roughly to build a million-qubit system in about ten > years, with sufficiently low errors to do error correction. Then at that > point you will have enough error-corrected logical qubits that you can run > useful, powerful algorithms that you now can't solve on a classical > supercomputer. And maybe even at a few hundred qubits, with lower errors, it > may be possible to do something special purpose.

Can an expert please explain the applications of this? Specifically, are they expecting to break Bitcoin, forge signatures (break SHA), and decrypt old TLS traffic (break Diffie-Hellman) in 5-10 years?

</comment><comment><USER26> > Yes, that's right. I was a professor at the University of California, Santa > Barbara, and we had government funding and were doing quite well. Google got > interested and my group and I came over to work at Google, basically because > we both wanted to build a useful quantum computer.

So basically US taxpayers were involuntary seed investors who funded the highest initial risk to achieve validation and proceeded to be wiped out at Round A by Google.

<comment><USER27> No, this is exactly why Universities exist. As idea machines that occasionally turn out something that changes the world. As well as educating our (elite) children.

<comment><USER26> And that's great, but nowhere does it say that this something should end up as the property of a corporation who will then charge the public for its use.

<comment><USER27> Can't enslave professors, so its part of the deal. Been happening about 1000 years. And I'm not sure I care to make Universities into profit centers (any more than they are).

<comment><USER26> Neither is what being proposed nor is a reasonable reading of the above, if Google hires out an entire group and its associated work then the university and federal research funding agencies should maintain equity in its results, many universities have programs for exactly this kind of thing.

Also afaik John Martinis maintained a paid and tenured position at UCSB during his work at Google.

<comment><USER27> Not sure how that's different at all. Hiring out === freedom of the individual. Not going to support any rule to keep University employees from going to work wherever they please.

Its the idea that the University would 'own' part of a commercial enterprise that's chilling. Means even more commercialization of Universities than at present.

<comment><USER28> It's not unusual for universities to own part of a commercial enterprise. Stanford owned a chunk of Google, IIRC. More commonly they derive revenue from licensing intellectual property.

<comment><USER27> Um hm. And its not unusual for Universities to have become commercial juggernauts run by for-profit administrators with 7-figure salaries, at the expense of faculty and students.

<comment><USER26> And yet the private sector is not impeded by "freedom of the individual" when it comes to protecting investments with NDAs, non-competes all the way to Levandowski-style criminal prosecution.

Obviously noone should be forced to stay where they don't want to be or prevented to work where they want but in this case it's about what they take and bring with them beyond their innate skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great, but it didn't actually tell us much of anything. What would have been so bad about trying his way and also somebody else's way? How does no longer being equipped to try his way make anything better? If the other way won't work, how can Google's project make any progress?

</comment><comment><USER30> What I find weird is that a technology advances because public money are funding much of the research and innovation.

And there comes a private company and gets whole teams and even patents and projects.

Wouldn't it be fair that tax payers also get something in return of their funding?

<comment><USER31> we get the technology

<comment><USER32> Oh yeah behind patents and embedded in corporate secrecy that is almost guaranteed to be irrecoverable once the people that created the technology leave or die. I don't think cooperations are bad and they should be reimbursed for their expenses, but our current way of handling these things leaves a lot of room for improvement if our goal is to advance the cooperative future of humanity (which it should be).

<comment><USER33> The point of patents is to incentivize disclosure of knowledge in exchange for limited protection. I personally think that public institutions funding research that leads to patents should share benefits of said patents. I believe most operators of those public funds (ie. Universities) actually benefit from this most of the time. At least in major public European universities

<comment><USER34> Unfortunately, patents don't really do that in practice. For example, it is typical for engineers to be advised _not_ to read any patents at all. Plus, most patents are written in a style that's pretty much opposite to how you'd write if the goal was dissemination of knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So he read a Thiel book recently and it now pervades his every answer to this interview? And his team had problems with his hyper-focusing? Funny coincidence.

Honestly there's pretty much nothing being said in this interview. People don't get along sometimes.

<comment> dawg- >So he read a Thiel book recently and it now pervades his every answer to this interview?

Yeah that was kind of annoying. Amazing how even a certifiable genius can fall so completely for such meaningless self-help bullshit

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> John Martinis speaking at a conference on "Google AI Quantum" last quarter.

[https://youtu.be/K_H_mbSH45s](https://youtu.be/K_H_mbSH45s)

</comment><comment><USER37> Non paywalled access:

[https://outline.com/CnEsTN](https://outline.com/CnEsTN)

</comment><comment><USER38> I still don't know why he resigned

</comment><comment><USER39> Let me guess: before anyone asked about his employment status he was both working and not working at Google?</comment>


I love animals but I kill them too – Hunting Alaska style - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/I_love_animals_but_I_kill_them_too_hunting_alaskan_style <comment><AUTHOR> Really interesting article about subsistence hunting for food, but also a great design, with scrolling taking you through a beautiful slideshow of images of hunting and nature.</comment>


The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscientist-who-lost-her-mind.html <comment><USER2> This is the thing that mystifies me the most about the ideas of consciousness and the soul. If we are more than our mind, then how do we explain how changes to our brain, artificial or natural, can drastically change who we are. What does that mean for an afterlife, if we can't even really say who we are in this life.

<comment><USER3> I think most tech savvy millennials already subscribe to determinism in some form.

<comment><USER4> Quantum physicists do not. Determinism has been experimentally disproven.

<comment><USER5> That's not right. The combination of

1) local 2) realist 3) determinism

has been disproven by Bell's theorem. But I it's still a "pick two" kind of choice.

I, personally think that by Occam's razor, the Everett interpretation ("Many Worlds") makes the most sense, because it's simplest. And actually it retains all of the above three, but it introduces "self-locating uncertainty" ([http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.7907](http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.7907)), which effectively has the same kind of effect from our perspective.

<comment><USER4> If you subscribe to many-worlds, then you subscribe to quantum theory, which means you subscribe to quantum indeterminacy. Non-determinism is literally the name of the principle.

<comment><USER6> But the only thing that's undetermined is which universe you will find yourself in. In many worlds the multiverse is determined.

It's a space-time graph (tree?) with a root at the start of time and leaves at infinity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I kept thinking in that last paragraph, where she describes everything as going good again, what if its still a delusion like before?

</comment><comment><USER8> Suppose you created a machine which, in the style of Solomonoff induction (sorta), was designed to find as short or as "elegant" (in whatever sense of that word) of a (computation based) description of the world (so, it makes a model of the inputs it receives, and it receives many inputs, including from the internet, etc.)

Further, pretend that it has arbitrarily large computational resources.

Even if it could completely predict the inputs it receives (modulo quantum mechanics based randomness), would you expect that it's internal model of the world includes some description of consciousness, of an internal experience?

I do not mean, would it have some sort of a model of agents, entities that act in a way that tends to optimize some things or other,

Rather, I specifically mean the internal experience of things, not just being able to predict that people would say that they experience.

I do not think that it would come up with a model of internal experience, And yet, I experience, and so do you.

So, I think an understanding of reality based only on computation about physical objects, is incomplete.

<comment><USER9> Yes. If you ran Solomonoff induction on the world, it would generate (countably infinite!) many simulations of people in the world, each of which would act exactly as they do in the world. They would experience the same things, say the same things, behave exactly the same way in every respect. Including having the same thoughts and feelings you are right now, and typing the exact same comment.

<comment><USER8> Two things:

1) I didn't necessarily mean exactly Solomonoff induction, as what I was describing would be for finding a single good description, rather than making good predictions using a weighted combinations of many descriptions.

2)Well, whether they would have experiences is a topic which is of some debate I think. They would behave as if they did, but, would they? If the simulation is run twice concurrently, are the experiences had twice as much? There are all sorts of potential complications with things like computation with secret sharing schemes, and so I don't think the question is really settled.

____

My point was that even if something describes what occurs, what particles end up in what configurations, that doesn't seem to be a description of what is experienced, even if it predicts how people will self report their experiences, and give causal explanations for their self reporting of their internal experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, I could accurately describe my experience of mania due to bipolar disorder using the exact same words / description as the author. The similarity of the subjective symptoms is overwhelming. And yet, the pathology seems very different.

</comment><comment><USER11> Meh. I always hate these articles about neuroscientists having non-ordinary experiences. Either heterophenomenology is valid or it isn't, whether or not you're a neuroscientist should be largely irrelevant.

If her training as a neuroscientist was providing some sort of special insight into her subjective experiences then that would be one thing, but that's never actually the case with these articles, other than intermittently having some basic awareness of what might be going on.

By privileging the experiences of people whose backgrounds don't have any real epistemological relevancy, I feel like these articles epitomize the hegemonic aspects of science, which is troubling on multiple levels.

<comment><USER12> I have almost the opposite reaction to it.

As an article designed for an educated but non-scientific audience, it's only nominally about neuroscience, but really about conceptions of self. I think the point of the article is that despite considering herself an expert, she has no particular insight into her own disease. This is intended as a parable for other experts, suggesting that they may be wiser to trust in the collective wisdom of others rather than assuming they understand the world better than others. It's not quite an anti-science article, but it seeks to "cut science down to size", by (correctly) showing that its practitioners are all too fallible and human.

What are the specific ways in which you find it troubling?

<comment><USER11> I suppose this isn't as egregious as, say, some guy writing a book saying that God is real because of a dream he had and you should totally believe him because he's an MD.

That said, what's to say that her experiences (which perhaps highlight the limits of science) are more valid than anyone else's experiences which do the same.

The reason I find it troubling is because it fits into a multi-hundred year paradigm of, say, indigenous people not being believed about their medical knowledge until some white guy flies down to South America and puts his stamp of approval on it. Or, say, some western religious studies scholars flying to Japan and teaching them what their religious beliefs really are, or whatever.

I'm all for experts when they have real expertise and something to add. But what I find troubling is when a supposed lack of credentials is used to systematically invalidate the knowledge and experiences of certain groups of people, especially when those credentials have no actual relevance to the issue(s) at hand.

<comment><USER13> There were a lot of false indigenous beliefs. If people just listened to some random native dude and took his stories at face value, they would have been convinced of a lot of wrongness.

Basically you need a big institution that can exert quality control over issued statements. Not necessarily a white one.

<comment><USER11> > There were a lot of false indigenous beliefs.

Sure. There's a lot of false non-indigenous beliefs also. I realize that a lot of the time there is a real value add happening.

But there are research universities down there also that can do the same work. And as often as not the research done up here isn't really any better than the research that's already been done.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: React Native or Not - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
There has been a few threads in the past on the same question. But considering the current status of the project, do you think React Native is good to develop an app? It's not a super complex app but  with decent functionality (Think like coursera app). I'm not sure how well Native supports video playback.
Also thinking in business perspective, i assume most startups cannot afford to develop both Android and iOS when they hit the market. What is the approach you follow? If not react native, Is it better to start with the iOS app and if there is traction, think about Android? <comment><USER2> It depends.

If you're already using React for the website, or are very proficient with React, then React Native is probably a good place to start.

If you're building a MVP, expect to iterate a lot, don't need anything fancy or super custom, React Native is probably a good option too.

If you have the resources and/or want to provide the best experience on Android and iOS, then you probably should go native.

If you don't already have a mobile website, you probably should tackle that first.

</comment><comment><USER3> At initial stage, when you do not have complex thing happening inside your app. It's fine to start with react native, but as soon as user grows, Native is best especially in terms of performance.

Readout Airbnb thread - [https://medium.com/braus-blog/airbnb-is-dropping- react-js-sh...](https://medium.com/braus-blog/airbnb-is-dropping-react-js- should-you-too-dcbff36def5c)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think all depends on the project. In ur case a Coursera app would be easy to do even with video play back. But issues seep in when you try to do complex features and their bugs and implementation. My 2:cents would be time box your react native implementation and decide if it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the only advantage to developing a React Native app is if you only know JS and are weak in actual native mobile. Both Swift and Kotlin are easier to build and maintain.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think development with React Native without the issues (compatibility would be much faster than Swift or Kotlin). People build prototypes within hours</comment></comment>


Why the K-computer is the fastest and energy-efficient? - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurechips.org/thoughts-on-latest-happenings/why-the-k-computer-is-fast-and-energy-efficient.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The K computer became the fastest computer in the world today. This article looks into reasons why the K deserves the crown. A decent in-depth analysis of the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER2> Whats the deal with GPUs? Doesn't this show that GPUs are over hyped?</comment>


I Tried to Get an AI to Write This Story - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-17/i-tried-to-get-an-ai-to-write-this-story-paul-ford <comment><USER2> Not mentioned but [https://narrativescience.com/](https://narrativescience.com/) are a major player in this space. I believe they are more oriented around turning structured data into natural language, however, so their tech gets used for financial reports, match reports, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Machine Learning is very different than software engineering. There is no reason that being good at one makes you good at the other.

Does being a carpenter with vast knowledge of tools give you the ability to build a rocket that can fly to mars?

Machine Learning is very very math based - the nitty gritty matters when you want to do something custom.

There are many free pre-trained models that can get you started easily for defined tasks. Custom work requires much more knowledge.

<comment><USER4> It's not magic. Anyone can learn.

I think you are doing yourself and anyone reading a disservice by thinking it cannot be learned like any other field, like software engineering.

<comment><USER5> like any other field... like higher mathematics?

<comment><USER6> If you have the motivation to learn, it can be done. "Higher mathematics" is a bit broad, but you can choose a more specific topic you're interested in, get a textbook and work through the exercises. When you get stuck, find someone you can discuss your solution attempts with, either in person or e.g. on MathOverflow. If you realize that you're missing some prerequisites, get a textbook on those and recurse. Don't expect this process to be faster or require less work than getting a degree.

<comment><USER5> My comment contrasted parent and GP.

      > > Custom work requires much more knowledge.
      > Anyone can learn.[...] like software engineering.

Math is hard.

BTW I tried the recurse method for about a year, but it became impossible to find some prerequisites - I think because certain basics are assumed, and not always explicitly taught at any stage. A kind of oral tradition. So I'm now refreshing (and sometimes learning) high school algebra/pre-calculus at Khan Academy (and Math SE).

Though that mightn't apply to someone with solid high school maths already. My high schooling was interrupted, also maybe I'm a bit stupid, and also need deeper explanation to get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd say that the limits of AI and Machine Learning were succinctly captured by an episode of The Prisoner back in 1967:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljGH07Unfe8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljGH07Unfe8)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there an objective measure of how well DL generates text (as in the article)?

No. But there is one for how accurately it predicts test text, not in its training corpus.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good. The last thing we need is people manipulating AI to write fake articles to generate dishonest revenue (and frankly, it's probably half-happening already).

<comment><USER9> Comments created by bots have existed for years.

Before AI was the new hotness, hyperbolic tech tabloid The Register used to (it may still? I only ever read the BOFH articles) have a frequent commentor called 'a man from mars' who was quite clearly a bot of some description outputting semi-coherent nonsense based on the content of the articles and other comments.

Despite largely spouting wordy nonsense, people would regularly reply to it's comments and attempt to engage a glorified toaster in rational debate. Now throw tensorflow at that, and you can do some fairly interesting things...</comment></comment>


Mlock, munlock, mlockall, munlockall - lock and unlock memory - <AUTHOR> http://linux.die.net/man/2/mlock

<comment><AUTHOR> Posting this to raise awareness. No need for hare-brained schemes like encrypting the swapfile. Just don't write sensitive data to it in the first place!</comment>


Pokemon Theme in Windows Task Manager - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/aschilling/status/1279781830472937474 <comment><USER2> Here's the original on youtube if anyone wants it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtjvn19GorM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtjvn19GorM)</comment>


YC is now on twitter, will be updating with YC news and events - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ycombinator <comment><USER2> surprised there wasn't one already...

<comment><AUTHOR> there was someone squatting on it</comment></comment>


Startups that launched today at Y Combinator's W18 Demo Day - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/here-are-64-startups-that-launched-today-at-y-combinators-w18-demo-day/ <comment><USER5> Voicery and Storyline are the two that connect with my interests.

I think Voicery does itself a disservice by featuring a "pick the human voice versus pick our machine voice" demo quiz on their website. I got 100%, and it led me to emotionally response "they have failed", but in fact the voice sounded great.

A more useful demo would have been to hear a range of different voices and be able to put my own text in and hear it read back.

But it is not the point that a machine voice can be determined versus a human voice. The important question is "does the machine voice sound good enough".

Instead, their marketing approach has forced me to make a comparison in which my conclusion was that they tech "lost" in some sort of contest.

<comment><USER6> Reading your comment I just tried and also got 100%. There are more micro- pitch variations, vibrato and harmonics in the human voice; the robot voice kind of sounds the same, but on some short sounds sometimes produces a kind of monocord sound that is not only non-human, but probably impossible for a human to imitate.

It seems some people are more sensitive than others to robot-sounding or robot-looking. I have a very hard time watching modern movies because most special effects completely ruin the experience for me; but other people seem to not mind at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> California Dreamin' sounds pretty cool, I wonder how it tastes. I like the choice to do 10mg because it's enough for a decent buzz. It would be good if they did a 5mg version too, then you could have 2 or 3 without it getting too intense. If their target market is people drinking alcohol I imagine that being able to have more than one in a sitting will be important.

<comment><USER8> What's driving impairment like, after this amount?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure, I guess it depends on the person. For me 10mg is enough to give me a pretty good buzz and be satisfied with watching anime for the night. 20-25mg and I'm time traveling. I wouldn't drive on either amount. 5mg is probably _okay_ but still I'd rather just take a cab/lyft/uber/transit.

I think if they could do three things (other than be in my jurisdiction which is currently complicated by laws) I would be an avid customer:

1) Make it taste pretty good with food

2) Make it fizzy

3) Make it not terrible for you (vs soda, juice, alcohol) so you could have a couple at the end of the day / with dinner to de-stress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude "Correlia Biosystems is able to analyze microsamples of blood"

This sounds familiar ...

<comment><USER9> It's a shame Theranos poisoned the well so badly. There's a lot of good work to be done in the space. But that kind of science just cannot be done by hyper-secretive overfunded outsiders. For the good of us all, try not to let Theranos drag down an entire kind of company - but in that, be critical of science, credentials, and data.

And though science is still hard, signals from the NSF, QB3, Berkeley, UCSF, MIT and Cornell all point towards a much different culture and kind of company than was to be found in Theranos.

<comment><USER10> I am out of the loop. What's with Theranos ?

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos#Controversy)

Most recently, in particular:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos#SEC_fraud_charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos#SEC_fraud_charge)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an excellent list. YC will do very nicely with this batch. Modern agriculture is about shift hard and a few of these companies will go far even if they look to be "failures."

      - Bear Flag Robotics

      - <USER2>

      - Culture Robotics

      - <USER3>

      - Reverie Labs

      - <USER4>

I can see all of these being positively impacted. I just hope they can capitalize off it in some fashion. Definitely follow these companies for a while.

</comment><comment><USER13> Congrats to OpenSea! [https://opensea.io/](https://opensea.io/)

They're one of the best crypto asset exchanges around.

Crypto Racing League is excited to finish integration with them soon! [http://cryptoracingleague.io/](http://cryptoracingleague.io/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's demo day #2: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/these-are- the-64-startups-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/these-are- the-64-startups-unveiled-at-y-combinator-w18-demo-day-2/)

<comment><USER15> Really exciting to see a bunch of startups trying to tackle hard problems like trying to find treatments/cures to cancer

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sourcify is a really interesting outlier. From their case studies they seem like a (barely) tech-enabled service firm that puts real domain-expert human consulting _effort_ behind every customer query for sourcing manufacturers. This is something where costs scale linearly (unlike software), but when the alternative is an opaque industry where only insiders can find good information regardless of price, a "low-tech" startup can still win by being a brand known to give this access at reasonable but linearly-scaling-sustainable prices. Democratization, not virality, is the key. Silicon Valley would do well to look closer at other firms with similar business models. Software isn't the only way to make money and satisfy a B2B need.

<comment><USER17> They're pricing significantly higher than e.g. importdojo with less supplier relationships. I don't see what they're doing that justifies something like a 3X premium over incumbents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So many startups... am looking forward to track their progress using [http://yclist.com/](http://yclist.com/)

It would be interesting to analyse the categories of startups that succeed and fail.

<comment><USER19> This reminded me YC World([http://world.ycombinator.com](http://world.ycombinator.com)), which probably needs little update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > "Reverie Labs uses machine learning to scan public molecule research, modify > and develop its own molecules, and license the drugs they create to big > pharmaceutical companies. The startup claims it can sell molecule licenses > for $100 million, and has already signed a milestone deal worth up to $87 > million."

I wonder if this is really molecular innovation or does it result in derivative work from a machine learning algorithm pattern matching human successes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Safety Wing caught my eye ([https://www.safetywing.com](https://www.safetywing.com)), but I've been using the same provider for years and would be hesitant to switch for only $30 extra a month, then worry I'd be getting lesser coverage. Does anyone have any experience with Safety Wing, or comments? Reading the coverage document is one of those things I think you need a medical or law degree for..

<comment><USER21> Same thing, it seems it would be simpler for me than using WorldNomads. I don't really know where I'll be next more than a 2-3 weeks ahead, and every time I finalize my next couple legs and head somewhere new, I need to apply for a new policy with WorldNomads. Also WorldNomads can be pretty expensive, sometimes it's a bit of a turn off. But I sort of trust that they'll cover me since they cater to "extreme" activities, so I still go with them.

Wondering what sort of coverage SafetyWing will do and their policy is way too long and opaque for me to make sense of. If they could have something that's like "You can go canyoneering/scuba diving/mountain biking" like WorldNomads does, and add to this "anywhere in the world with a subscription and we'll cover you for x$/month", I'd be sold. Even if it's the same price as WorldNomads in the end, just for the convenience.

<comment><USER21> Follow up: since it seems to be rather cheap and why not try it? I'm trying to sign up and the password policy is a bit scary/suggests that the passwords are not stored properly:

        Password contains invalid characters (^, {, >, ?, >, ;)

Something that should be addressed I think. Devil's in the detail and this makes me wonder how my data will be secured on your servers.

[edit] well after sign up, it seems there's no way to get coverage and maybe the product isn't yet working. I guess this is really early days. =P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Beanstalk is an indoor farming startup that grows produce at the cost of outdoor farming._

Sure about that? With no details at all on the website, I will believe this guy first, who in late 2015 estimated USD$400,000 worth of solar energy per acre of land from outdoor growing. [https://youtu.be/ISAKc9gpGjw?t=13m26s](https://youtu.be/ISAKc9gpGjw?t=13m26s) [https://youtu.be/ISAKc9gpGjw?t=21m17s](https://youtu.be/ISAKc9gpGjw?t=21m17s)

</comment><comment><USER23> Veriff really caught my attention. I've had to scan the front and then the back of my drivers license a bunch of times and send the jpeg into a company for verification. Doing it all on a phone would be great.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are a lot of interesting ones here, but Sheerly Genius is the one where the founders will either make a billion dollars or perish in a mysterious accident.

<comment><USER25> Why?

<comment><USER26> The pantyhose mafia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lots to look at, but one that caught my eye was evryhealth. Health insurance, and they're talking to... employers. Employer-provided health insurance is a huge barrier to personal mobility. Might it not have been better to try to tackle the personal market, and help grow that, vs just moving $ around the employer-provided insurance market?

<comment><USER28> Group health insurance is where all the good risks are, which is why it is cheaper in general than much riskier individual policies. Obama care was basically doomed when they didn't eliminate the group market like Switzerland did.

<comment><USER29> Seems like the larger the group the better the overall risk profile. Which seems to me like an argument for single payer.

<comment><USER28> Well, it depends how the group is defined. Group insurance: educated (they got a job that provides benefits), probably better health. Individual market: everyone else. So if the group is defined as left overs from healthy pickings, it can really suck even if it is very big.

Switzerland eliminated the group markets, so everyone buys in the individual market even if they don't have single payer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Excited to see repl.it on the list. Congrats!

<comment><USER31> Yeah same ! I use it everyday, such a nice tool

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't see Nectome mentioned.

Ah, there it is [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/these-are- the-64-startups-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/these-are- the-64-startups-unveiled-at-y-combinator-w18-demo-day-2/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I've worked with and talked to the Molly team. I think they are on track to do something really interesting in the AI space and bring a particular human sensibility that seems to be missing in other AIs that I interact with. If anyone is going to build the AI from Her, it's this team.

</comment><comment><USER5> Kinda weird that there's 141 companies in the batch and only 3 of them listed in "Show HN".

<comment><USER26> YC companies go up as "Launch HN".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Veriff looks like a great product but also seems to compete with checkr, another YC company. Is it common for YC to invest in competitors of existing portfolio companies?

</comment><comment><USER35> Does SafetyWing covers health insurance for families on vacation? It says it is targeted to digital nomads but I wonder how this is different than a vacation insurance.

<comment><USER36> Travel insurance, now with hip fonts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Curious, how many startups does a YC batch have?

<comment><USER26> 141 this batch. There's some detailed info in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Am I the only one that thinks "a social network for women (Leap)" is a bit sexist?

<comment><USER39> Sexist because men aren't welcome? While it would be the case that a social network for men could be considered sexist and maybe this represents a double standard, I'm sure there is a very good argument for why networks like Leap aren't sexist, just as there are good arguments for why pro-diversity hiring policies are not necessarily racist.

<comment> racer-v I'm sure there are too, I just can't think of any.

<comment><USER40> I'll bite. At their heart, all antidiscrimination laws are based on the idea of equalizing power.

The law doesn't care if people with one set of genitals doesn't want to hang out with people of another set. What it is concerned about is if a given group has significant power to prevent another group from pursuing life, lib, and happiness.

Viewed from that angle, it becomes clear why antidiscrimination laws favoring AA in traditionally Cauc challenges are legal, but the reverse would not be true.

[https://www.acacamps.org/resource-library/campline/single- ge...](https://www.acacamps.org/resource-library/campline/single-gender-camps- hiring-employees-gender-appropriate-hiring-criterion)

Note that, for example, Hooters Rest. lost a discrimination case against males on the grounds that the hiring criteria was unfairly weighted (power applied) towards women (given their ostensible marketing strategy).

<comment> racer-v _if a given group has significant power to prevent another group from pursuing life, lib, and happiness.

Viewed from that angle, it becomes clear why antidiscrimination laws favoring AA in traditionally Cauc challenges are legal_

I'm not sure it's a good idea to enshrine the idea that "Cauc" have an inherent power over "AA" into law. This seems close to running afoul of Equal Protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Correlia Biosystems

Theranos but real?

</comment><comment><USER41> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626054)

<comment><USER42> No discussion and few points, so not a duplicate</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I make something which people appreciate? - <AUTHOR>

It's one of my dreams to make something which makes someone who I don't know say, "Wow! That's cool!" Either that or build a community. Or both! However, I'm unsure how to do that. I think that I'd like it to be something web-based because of the wide audience which the medium offers. Can anyone give me some advice on how to accomplish this goal? <comment><USER2> I did that on a small scale, sort of accidentally, and dozens of people have emailed me with the equivalent of "Wow! That's cool!" It has also developed into a small, active community.

Although customer development is great and popular right now, what I did didn't use any customer development. It also wasn't originally intended as a business either, but your post doesn't mention anything about money :)

I took an existing web application and gave it a great user interface. That's it. If you can take an application that already exists and make it:

* 10X easier to use

* 10X more fun to use

* 3X faster to use

* Free

then you'll grow to thousands of users via word of mouth and your users will love you.

The easy part about it is choosing the application. Anything that you currently use that's cludgy can probably be improved a whole lot. The difficult part is innovating the user interface, but luckily that is also the fun part (at least it is for me).

This is also similar to what Gmail did. They made web-based email much easier, faster, and fun to use (while staying free), and that app probably has the largest number of appreciative users on the planet. Google didn't have to reinvent email to get those passionate users; they just took an existing thing and made it much better.

</comment><comment> barry-cotter Modulo the rare exception it takes time, bloody minded persistence, talent and a certain amount of luck. The more of the first two you invest the less the latter two matter, talent because the more time you put in the less your initial (lack of) talent matters and luck because if you spend long enough at it some will find you.

So really you need persistence because if you've got that you won't have a problem keeping it up for (time). Persistence is easiest when you're motivated; when you're doing something you enjoy or that pays well enough.

You're unlikely to get paid until you've made something impressive and people ask you to do it for them. So what you need to do is find something you think is cool and do something about it, publicly, over and over again.

Get a hobby and write about it (blog) or think of an interest and set up a forum around it (e.g. alternatehistory.com for what-if). Things that are harder to do are more impressive and get more attention and link love, e.g. a relatively professionally shot and edited 20min video put up reliably every week on... Chinese cookery, or a programming screencast.

 _Persistence is key. Calendar time, not wall clock time._

</comment><comment><USER3> Talk to people.

Don't ask them what they want you to build--they probably don't really know. Ask them about the problems they're having, and work with them to solve one.

If you've done a good job of that you'll have at least one happy user, and they probably know others with the same or similar problems.

<comment><USER4> People have all sorts of problems, so restricting your efforts to a domain you care about is probably the most efficient approach</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whats the cheapest and best way to file a patent - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Read the book "Patent It Yourself", published by Nolo Press.

After you write your patent application, pay a patent attorney to look it over for you. That won't cost much at all.

You'll need a prior art search; if you want to hire someone to do that for you, I do prior art work from time to time, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot, i ordered the book and will look into it, i am at bay area can you advice a good patent attorney ?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Someone has stolen my startup - what can I do? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I asked an acquaintance to be a co-founder for my startup that was in alpha. After 6 months it was plain to see that he was having a negative influence and the product was going nowhere (in fact backwards). At this point I asked him to leave the startup after we failed to see eye-to-eye on a major issue.
Fast forward 12 months and I have found out that he has copied my idea and made his own version of the startup (which was all my original idea).
Is there anything I can do? I only just saw his site and I feel sick to the stomach.
Cheers <comment><USER2> I'll be honest, I do not have any experience with this, but I have to say that 12 months sounds like a long time, especially 6 months of development with him there. Do you have anything up and running to claim or prove that you were first? On the largest stage, we've seen the precedent for something like this, with Facebook. I would imagine that odds are not in your favor, unfortunately. Unless you had a non-compete.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just do what you do and be better. If you didn't see eye to eye, you'll probably end up with 2 different products.

It could be worse. I applied to a well an incubator/investor type program and made it to the final screen...only to find out several months later, the program founders launched a very similar idea with a very similar customer acquisition strategy, involving the same company we were in talks to partner with. I'm not explicitly saying the idea was stolen from us, but common courtesy would be to not pick our brain and let us know about the conflict up front. Needless to say, we weren't selected.

Needless to say, our strategy back then was a loser. Today, our products have more similarities than differences, but we've diverged enough b/c we've both had to pivot and were drawn in different directions.

Just rock what you have out of the park. Most ideas aren't right out of the gate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neat, you got some validation! What about customer validation? Is investors or people are talking about your competing company? Note down the sources so you can talk to them, especially if they are your ideal market. It means you can find out what they'll pay for and/or market to!

Next step is to go through your logged or memorised history with the cofounder. How do they treat people? What's their style? etc. Look for their strengths and weaknesses.

Now, if you believe that you have a better direction after all this, then you'll know competition much better than most people. eg Microsoft doesn't understand due to the paranoid nature of Google's NDAs for example.

Sorry, but your idea is one direction and pretty useless on its own. There's many ways to evolve your idea though. Investors especially love executors.

</comment><comment><USER5> His doing a startup doesn't prevent you from doing it. An idea is just an idea - it's not a real product and it's not even a patent. There's a lot more to a startup than just an idea, and takes a lot of work.

If you're passionate enough about your idea, you'll find ways to win. Besides, no startup can succeed without competition, so in some ways, he's actually helping you to create or grow this market. Also, he cannot support all of his customers by himself so there will be other customers out there where you could serve.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does it matter if someone copies your idea even if you have worked with him in the past ?

Look in the broader landscape there are so many ideas who are the same at their core. But only the user makes the decision who will be successful and who is not, try to deliver the best experience.

I got over this "we have to find some unique idea to start a business and we wont if someone is already in it".

Whip it off and go out and build a better product/service than your ex-co- founder their is enough room in every market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alas they have more resources than myself, so will most likely end up with a better experience than me. But you are right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen this happen to many early-stage startups. Not exactly with a cofounder copying the idea, but along the lines of the idea being copied. My advice is the following:

Your biggest problem is still finding product/market fit. It's very possible that you both are still building a product will eventually fail. Or at least in it's current form.

Focus on getting your traction/revenue. Once you're raking in the cash, you can determine whether its worthwhile to go after your old co-founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. The bitterness must be left behind, focus on moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All else being equal, your problem isn't that someone stole your startup, it is that you don't have a cofounder. Find one and keep moving. Him copying you or not has no consequence.

<comment><AUTHOR> good point :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been there before, but instead of focusing on what to do about him, just focus on getting out your product finished to your standards. Make sure it is what you want it to be and then place it as the competitor. You also have the benefit of watching where his product fails so you can make yours all the stronger. In the end, its your vision and only you can truely make it what it is suppose to be, and if it is good then you will do well and he will fall.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Ideas are all alike. The devils are in details." - Ted Cui

The sick feeling will pass. What you have is time. Time is an amazing thing. Forgiveness is a weapon.

Facebook >> Myspace / Friendster etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something to remember when ever I start thinking about him.. Thanks for your comments

<comment><USER10> I've experienced this personally circa 2005-06. So I kinda know how difficult it is for you. Its now 2011, all I can say is I'm very glad for 05-06 event.

if you get time, watch this movie :

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Apple-Guy Do you have an NDA or non-compete agreement? If not, live and learn.

</comment><comment><USER11> Best to get over it. This will not be the first time or the only time it has happened to an entrepreneur.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the average SAT score of a Google engineer? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I don't think it matters. I wasn't asked my SAT score when applying, and in general stuff you did in high school doesn't matter when you're applying to full-time jobs (except a few of the Intel/Westinghouse Talent Search winners had that on their resumes). They did ask my college GPA since I was <5 years out, but apparently a 3.0 is enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't imagine it's that high. Are you under the impression that Google is a highly selective employer? Maybe ten years ago it was. There's a high volume of people for whom passing the Google interview is a complete triviality. This has been the case for 5+ years now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mine was 1480/1600\. Will Google hire me? Oh wait, I just gave away my age lower bound :)

<comment><USER3> Do you think 1480 is a good score?

<comment><USER4> 1480 was a good enough score, that a student with a strong application in other areas can get into any college. I don't consider it proof that I was a good student, but it's certainly not a negative signal that a lower score would be.

I do think I could have scored much better though, considering 1480 was my first try without much preparation.</comment></comment></comment>


The 4 Personality Types Every Startup Needs - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/94858/The-4-Personality-Types-Every-Startup-Needs.aspx

<comment><USER2> _If we can't find you online, you don't exist_

I always find this pretty strange. In my case I'm trying, as much as possible, to have the least possible number of things linked to my real name online. So googling for my real name will lead to nothing (or people with the same me) but not mine.

Is this really a bad habit that I should lose?

<comment><USER3> Why would it have to be all or nothing? Use your real name for things you want the public to find and fake ones for the things you don't.

<comment><USER2> Yes but I'm trying to have nothing "public" linked to my name and I was wondering if it was really a bad habit that I should try to downplay a bit to at least leave my linkedin (or other professional social network) profile public for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting that the number 4 seems to keep coming up in the topic of work personalities.

The head of innovation over at Wells Fargo, who happens to be the father of a good friend of mine, actually wrote a book on the topic and came to some very similar conclusions as you did. It's a short and good read.

Link: [http://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Goats-Your-Lemonade- Stand/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Goats-Your-Lemonade- Stand/dp/1463665482/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359995349&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=goats+on+my+lemonade+stand)

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally, I prefer the A-Team:

[http://caseysoftware.com/blog/the-software-development-a- tea...](http://caseysoftware.com/blog/the-software-development-a-team)

Hannibal - provides the Vision & plan;

BA Baracus - knows how to get things done the _right_ way;

Face - can get anything, find anyone, or knows someone who can;

Murdock - tries things that "everyone knows" won't work.. makes it work anyway (sometimes).</comment>


The Dire State of Rural Mental Health Care - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/rural-mental-health-care-montana-41fb2b48-f4c8-4027-9d56-9902d99db448.html <comment><AUTHOR> Bloomberg article with more info but paywalled [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/the- state...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/the-state-with- the-highest-suicide-rate-desperately-needs-shrinks)</comment>


33C3: WORKS FOR ME – All Videos for Download - <AUTHOR> http://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2016/h264-hd/ <comment><USER2> Won`t they all be on youtube sooner or later?

[https://www.youtube.com/user/mediacccde/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/mediacccde/videos)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One-liner to download torrent files:

      H=http://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2016/h264-hd/; curl $H | sed -rn 's/.*href="([^"]+)".*/\1.torrent/p' | xargs -i wget "$H{}</comment>


An easier way to make fractals in PowerPoint - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=101&v=O8l_awjgoMI <comment><AUTHOR> I'm submitting this because it's a really enjoyable look at some weird ways of using Powerpoint features to create fractal images.</comment>


Show HN: Learnawesome.org – Discover the best learning resources on any topic - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
Over past few months, some of us had been collecting links to learning resources (courses, interactive explorables, books, podcasts, apps, forums, livestreams etc) in a GitHub repository of markdown files. Since we also wanted to have features like advanced search ("Show me podcasts on machine learning which are entertaining and less than 40 minutes long"), we felt the need for an app. Give it a try: https://learnawesome.org
You can think of LearnAwesome.org as a GoodReads-equivalent tool generalized to links to ALL media (not just books). Some features you might like:
- Advanced search on topics, formats, length, and quality tags (interactive/visual/challenging/entertaining etc)
- A browser extension to show reviews on your current tab or quickly add it to LearnAwesome
- Automatic data extraction for links from GoodReads etc.
- Embeddable widgets so that you can show off your learning activity (such as books read) on your personal websites
- Random item (which can also be restricted to your favorite topics)
- A point system for contributors
Coming soon:
- Topic-specific chat rooms to find fellow learners
- See recommendations only from people you follow (i.e. unidirectional graph)
- Connections across items to discover whether an author of a book or a teacher of a course has also presented the same ideas in a video, or an article - saving you time.
Do expect a few rough edges here and there, but feedback is very welcome. <comment><USER2> you should add an actual link to the thing you want to show.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Also, here's a clickable one: [https://learnawesome.org](https://learnawesome.org)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you read Hacker news? - <AUTHOR>

tl;dr - Do you read the story or the comments first?
tl -
I'm a new HackerNews user. I love it. The posts are interesting and the comments are (usually) thought-provoking and typically provide more information that the original article.
When I first started lurking here, I would open the article in a new tab and then read it. Then I started opening both the article and the comments in their own tabs. I would then read the article first, then the comments.
Over the past few days, I noticed that I've shifted a bit, opening both the article and the comments in new tabs, but reading the comments first.
So my question to you, seasoned HN users, is "how do you do it?" Generally speaking, article or comments first? <comment><USER2> Comments first. If the comments are interesting enough, I read the article. I never comment without reading the article.

<comment><USER3> Yep, the comments usually tell you whether the article is worth reading.

0 comments on something probably reduces my click-through rate by 75%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I come to the HN web site on slow work days or when I need a breather and generally look at front page stories or glance over the Ask HN list.

I noticed what seemed like a pattern: stories with a high ratio of points to comments were often more valuable and the discussions more interesting. Entries with more comments than upvotes are frequently pop culture-y or bike shedding discussions.

So to try and see a "best of" without lower value discussions I threw together a Twitter feed that lists stories with high points and a high point to comment ratio: <https://twitter.com/HighSNHN>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this awesome twitter account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I usually go to

[http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=<user_id>](http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=<user_id>);

where <user_id> is an admirable user who's opinion I respect. I generally start with patio11 to see what he's read/commented on. My theory is that if he commented on it, I probably want to read it because he's smart and wouldn't comment on garbage.

I have a few users bookmarked this way on my primary pc but I don't have access to the bookmarks right now and I can't remember their usernames.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look at the link/article first. If I'm interested in the topic I'll read comments.

I read both the main page and occasionally switch to new topics only.

That's about it...

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you should always read the article first so you have context. If you only read the title first, and then read the comments, you might be getting misleading information.

The problem with reading the comments is the sheer amount of them that are crammed into a small space. I have setup a user style sheet to change the font to 16px and the line-height to 24px. If you spend a lot of time reading the comments, you may want to considering doing the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try that. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Read the article, then back button (caches are friends). If it was a worthwhile article, I click the link to the comments. Never more than one tab related to HN, keeps tabs organized.

Oh, and Hi :) I lurk a lot too.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes article first, sometimes first few comments to see if article is worth reading. e.g. the link about 'Linus not reading code' was quite a misnomer and I should have checked the comments first. Also, i use Pentadactyl which allows for vim keys -- works great on this clean, imageless site.

I tried loading HN in elinks, but the More button gives an error?

Strangely, I don't see a box to post. Only one or two posts have a "reply" link, so I had to use that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I generally read articles first but quite a few articles I've already read something similar so then just read comments.

</comment><comment><USER12> First of all, welcome to HN Pete -- I didn't realize you were on here.

Secondly, to answer the question, whichever appeals to me more. If it's a new programming language, or a new library, I'll generally go to the comments first and look to see the general opinion of it.

If the title is abstract, or not clear as to what it is, then I might open the article first (example from yesterday, "Do You Wanna Touch[1]"

If the title sounds appealing, or straightforward, like today's "Here's the simple rule you need to know when using a foreign ATM[2]", then I'll likely open the article first.

Generally, I open both in new tabs and close them as I consume them.

While I normally don't comment on the article before reading it, I sometimes comment on other comments without having read the article. If there's an article about Python, and somebody says, for example "But Python doesn't even have a print function", I can safely comment on that without having read the article.

[1] - [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/11/do-you-wanna- touch....](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/11/do-you-wanna-touch.html)

[2] - [http://transferwise.com/blog/2012-11/choose-local- currency-a...](http://transferwise.com/blog/2012-11/choose-local-currency-at- foreign-ATM)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Barry, I think my profile says I've been here all of 49 days at this point (or sometime in the recent few days).

I've heard of HN for a long time but never visited. Now it's my go to site for interesting and tech-related things.</comment></comment>