Dear HN - help me with my online dating site - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN,
I'm trying to come up with some wildly different approaches to the online dating problem. I'm emphasizing concept development instead of technological development (which is overemphasized, in my opinion).
One strategy for instigating creative ideas is to ask oneself "what is the dominant idea behind all this?" Take Speed Dating, for example. The dominant idea behind speed dating is "going on a large number of small dates instead of a small number of long dates". One can throw out the "dating musical chairs" format, but still keep the basic concept. So my question is:
What is a good excuse/activity for people meet up for 5 minutes?
I'm thinking about hooking up people via gps/cell phones, although that may change. I would like to get some input or ideas of anything that comes to mind. I don't care if it's outlandish or "probably won't work". I'm not looking for "right", I'm looking for "different". While the "crazy, but wrong" idea might not work, a related idea could, so please don't hold back.
- Steve
PS Any hackers on my list who are into experimenting with concepts (not necessarily this one), join my meetup "Hacker Codejam": http://www.meetup.com/hacker-codejam/ . It's kinda a hangout for programmers who like to work on their side projects from time to time. <comment><USER2> Plug into facebook. This will allow you to attract users because there's no registration barrier, and collect information about the user's tastes and interests. Then use that information to find like-minded individuals who would be a good match. Now you could connect that with your GPS idea. If you're within, say, five miles of a good match, a notification goes off on your cell phone saying you should meet this person. If both parties confirm, your service would provide a means of having them connect in real life. Either it could call them both and connect them, or it could propose a mutual location for them to meet.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about you make a deal with theaters etc... in the area.

Couples go online and pick shows/movies they want to watch.

You match people by show, time, area, etc and when they both agree they PayPal you the money to buy the tickets online.

They meet at the theater or a nearby public place.

So, they have a common interest, feeling of safety, immediate discussion points, etc...

And maybe you can squeeze a percentage of the ticket price from the theater.

<comment><USER4> Okay, I've never been able to figure this one out... you're saying the perfect place for a first date is a large darkened room filled with strangers and an attention grabbing audio-visual bonanza?

I just don't get it.

Maybe as a second or thid date, once you've figured out some particularly interesting inde film you think he/she might like. Otherwise it just seems a bit uncomfortable to me.

Anyway, having said that: I wonder if you can utilise aspects of speed dating and social media. The _point_ of speed dating is the anonymity (it's a person, not a profile), and a (woefully) popular part of social networking are those abhorent lists of likes and dislikes. Throw people together "willie nillie" (anonymously so to speak) and provide them with some of the aforementioned evil lists to fill in about the other half. This can then be pushed as marketing info, and you can direct the latest black and white french film that the local picturehouse is showing to the perfect couple... the idea being that it is the other way round, (active instead of passive) so it still has the feeling that you invited her to this movie because she _told you_ it was her favourite. You didn't just read it on a profile and think that'll do.

<comment><USER5> I like a movie as a first date. You meet and get to chit-chat for about 10-15 minutes before the movie. Then you get to just quietly get used to being by the other and no pressure of conversation during the movie.

After you can continue to chit-chat and get dinner or coffee. If things aren't going well you can easily bail (or they can). I find it's a nice simple format. Compared to starting with say dinner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think there needs to be a way to leverage a person's social graph. I'm in a three-year relationship that came about because a mutual friend played matchmaker.

By having the two parties connected to each other via mutual friends you also address some of the safety concerns - perhaps you require someone in the chain from person A to person B to vouch for each of them.

This may or may not tie into an existing social network - the problem with making it tied to Facebook is that not everyone wants to announce to the world that they're looking for a date, for fear of appearing desperate, or because they use Facebook for other purposes (such as business connections). Another potential downside is that a lot of people go online specifically to date OUTSIDE their current circle of friends.

(As an aside, I typed this and was reminded of what my little brother and his friends called the "Friendster game" in college - going through acquaintances' friends to score who had the hottest friends.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I had an idea to make a designer clothing retail store into a dating site a while back... I'll share my notes:

If you are trying to build on online e-commerce site that sells apparel and want to BE something different, then... build a free Online Dating site with a Catch:

Validated Profiles (aka. Real People) - Must have/buy an outfit from [Designer Clothes Retailer] and wear it on the photo to be able to use all of features of the site (look but don't touch model).

You can coerce people at the stores to register (discounts or good salespeople) to get it started ( just need a camera and a laptop, good lighting, and a backdrop with logo on it).

Have buy this outfit on every profile, and given the ability to rate people and clothes separately (hot or not style) then you overcome the (straight) guys looking at guys problem by showing them what outfits were top rated by girls... and so on.

</comment><comment><USER8> speed dating is in large groups of people, it's safe, and there's not much pressure.

a lot of people (especially women) don't want a spontaneous meet-up alone with some random internet person they've never seen nor know anything about.

even on sites like okcupid where you can email/instant message someone for weeks while having a completely filled out profile with pictures and background information, many are still uncomfortable meeting up in person.

unless your site is going to be geared towards hookups and one-night stands. then it would probably work exactly for those same reasons; it's somewhat anonymous and quickly provides a way to meet someone extremely local.

</comment><comment><USER9> One Idea I've thought in this area solves the question you were asking about, what activity/excuse the users have to come meet?

Well instead of that being a question for you, make it for the users... Users can enter in activities they want to do? (may it be grab some coffee, see a new show, bird watching, even slightly non dating things like jogging or carpooling, etc). It'd be something like Craiglist, but more focus and non chaotic on this aspect of person-person activities... Now the site would do is match up these based on relatedness of activities the person would like to do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Try this: Have your user select some 5 people they would like to date. Once selected shoot an email off to 5 of the user's friends asking them to have a look at the prospective date's profiles and tell which would be most appropriate for the user. Then confirm with the user and setup a date.

DISCLOSURE: This idea is not my own. I read about it somewhere, most probably a previous HN thread.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had some friends that started dating from hotornot.com and the interesting thing I think is that it is more like a game or a place to amuse yourself for a few minutes than a dating site. So I think that's an interesting principle, wrap up a dating site in a game format.

</comment><comment><USER12> You could base your meet-ups on anonymity and uniformity. I've always wondered why these sites focus so much on pictures. I think they should be based on personality and similar interests. Take the pictures and user-ids out of the list of people going to meet up. Also you can add structure to the event. I find people are much more likely to meet a bunch of strangers if they know exactly what to expect and what is going to happen.

The social map idea isn't bad at all: you might not get a great idea about a person by their biased autobiographical profile. Looking at their facebook or myspace activity may glean much more insight as to their personality.

One of the things that strikes me about dating sites is how they're designed for people who are the absolute best at communicating and putting forth a good impression. If online daters were so good at that they probably wouldn't be trying to get a date online! There needs to exist mechanisms that help people to express themselves. Also, I could just be crazy, but it seems like there's some inherent dishonesty in presenting yourself via online dating. Are you lonely? Horny? Bored? There doesn't seem to be a way to express any emotions or desires that others may share without appearing undesireable. Some way for people to connect based on their emotional state seems useful to me, I just don't know how you'd present it to users (other than perhaps through hidden settings and a "show me users who feel similarly to how I do" list method).

</comment><comment><USER13> i speculate that with dating paradigms, women fear:

1) safety 2) stalking 3) hurting a guys feelings

men fear

1) rejection 2) stigma of "resorting" to a dating site 3) not having to face a girl he's not interested in

so, if you can solve these things you've got something.

i think an iphone/gphone app with faces you can flip through (here are some guys/girls in your area) would be neat. really simple interface. also, i'd let anyone browse, no signup, but if they want to date, they have to sign up and get verified. or something like that.

i agree about the other comment about verified identities. you might want to drop a postcard in the mail with a code and have them enter the code online to verify they're real. that would help remove the safety and stalking factor for women.

<comment><USER14> What you're very close to describing here is the Loopt Mix app. There is a small sign up, but its pretty quick and simple. The number one issue with these platforms is that they are plagued with a large number of males completely throwing off the male to female ratio. The problem to overcome is how to get women to use these applications.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Podcast Generated by GPT-2: The GPT-2 Experience #1 – Elon Tusk - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkLOTn2o9o4 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

Here's a podcast episode I created with GPT-2, after fine tuning with transcripts of Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Voices by Google Wavenet TTS.</comment>


A Guide to Setting up Gmail Inbox Actions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.meldium.com/home/2014/5/19/setting-up-gmail-inbox-actions

<comment><USER2> I'm confused about this statement: "you'll almost certainly need your own Google Apps domain" Perhaps because they automatically configure DKIM/SPF? But so do many other providers and it's not particularly hard to configure your own mail server to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea.</comment>


Allegiant Air: The Budget Airline flying under the radar - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/allegiant-air-the-budget-airline-flying-under-the-radar/ <comment><USER2> With respect, this is a case where you really want to know how they make their sausage before you take a bite.

You don't want to sign your life away because you made a stupid decision about cheap airline prices.</comment>


AirAsia Flight 8501: What Makes Thunderstorms Such a Threat to Airliners - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/airasia-qz8501-thunderstorms/

<comment><USER2> _In the US, the FAA tracks storms six to eight hours in advance, and assigns routes to avoid them_

Is this not true in other countries?</comment>


All you need to know about founding your startup in Vienna - <AUTHOR> http://magazine.startus.cc/preview-vienna-startup-guide/

<comment><USER2> good one

</comment><comment><USER3> really enjoyed this one!

<comment><AUTHOR> welcome

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> useful tips!</comment>


Show HN: The most popular emojis on Facebook. Right now. In real time - <AUTHOR> http://emojibook.plan3labs.se <comment><USER2> I'm curious how you analyze all the posts for emojis?

<comment><USER3> I too would like to know where this data is coming from.

Peoples wall posts, messenger, other things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you see the api the occurrence count is very low ( if it means the total count as the name suggests ) . So not pretty sure of the data ! ..</comment>


Ask HN: How can I improve my app? - <AUTHOR>

www.summeup.com And https://itunes.apple.com/app/id910665762
I just launched my app last week, I've been working on it for several months and I would love to get some feedback
My app is called SumMeUp and it analyzes a persons Facebook profile to find out a bunch of stuff like:
-Who forgot your birthday(and vice versa who did you forget?) -Who likes your posts the most? -Which is your most liked photo? -What do you talk about with your friends? -How good of a friend are you?
Long or short feedbacks, doesn't matter, any opinions are highly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Would be nice to see on the website / app description in iTunes what privileges the various social network api's will be asking for before someone goes through the trouble of downloading and installing.

People are (very?) paranoid about granting apps access to they're social network accounts now adays. Your asking the customer to trust your app to not do anything stupid without any prior history of being trustable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the feedback, you raise a very valid point. My app does all of the calculation on the device so the users data is never handed of to anyone but themselves. I think adding some more information about this will make people feel safer about trusting my app. I'll make sure to add it very soon.

Apart from that how did you find the app? Very curious to hear more opinions.</comment></comment>


Speeding up hyperlinks: topics - <AUTHOR> http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2013/02/speeding-up-hyperlinks-topics.html <comment><USER2> Google used to have this implemented for PDFs when you used their "quick view" functionality. It seems to have been disabled, though.</comment>


Landing on a Comet, 317M Miles from Home - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/12/science/space/rosetta-philae-comet-landing.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

<comment><USER2> The mediocre engineer in me can't look at those photos and just appreciate them...all I can think about is...geez, the _mechanical acuity_ to took to make sure all the moving pieces moved...from the shutter to the antenna that receives the signal and transmits the data...at the right time, 300+ million miles away. What a party those engineers must he having right now.

Came across the other NYT news article on this...this is the kind of detail that I imagine must keep those rocket engineers up for many nights during and after launch:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/science/space/european- spa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/science/space/european-space- agencys-spacecraft-lands-on-comets-surface.html?rref=homepage)

> The operation proceeded despite a few small glitches and one potential > showstopper problem: an apparent failure of a thruster that was to fire > right after touchdown to press the lander against the comet's surface. A pin > was supposed to break a wax seal on the gas tank, but repeated attempts did > not appear to succeed.

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking the same thing, and adding that they launched it 10 years ago... and had to avoid planets and other space junk while doing a crazy orbit until it could fling of to meet the comet at a precise location... But I wonder if engineers can change things a bait after launch with thrusters?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Those photos of the comet are just amazing.

I know those photos are real, and I know our understanding of the universe has made them possible, but they still seem like science-fiction magic to me. I'm still looking at them in awe.

Thank you for sharing them.

</comment><comment><USER5> The ESA has their own Flickr album of the Rosetta mission (with more pics), for anyone interested

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157638315605535/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It landed but the harpoon did not fire. I'm not sure what that means, but XKCD is live-drawing the event and has the Philae Lander's status as ???, so now I'm worried.

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

[http://xkcd1446.org/](http://xkcd1446.org/)

[https://twitter.com/Philae2014](https://twitter.com/Philae2014)

</comment><comment><USER7> That's 510 million kilometers for the rest of the world.

<comment><USER2> Normally I would've considered your comment a bit too glib...but in my total ignorance of this mission, I had assumed it was a NASA project. If the headline had mentioned "kilometers" \-- and I can't imagine the metric system _not_ being used by engineers regardless of nationality -- I don't think I would've been so quick to assume it was a NASA accomplishment.

<comment><USER8> > and I can't imagine the metric system not being used by engineers regardless > of nationality

You must be aware of the Mars Climate Orbiter incident [0] that metric people are quick to raise when dealing with this.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm stunned that there is a dusty surface that looks like sand. How much gravity does the comet have?

<comment><USER10> "The acceleration due to gravity on the surface of Churyumov–Gerasimenko has been estimated for simulation purposes at 10^(−3) m/s^2, or about one ten- thousandth of that on Earth."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko)

<comment><USER11> So it seems safe to say that a 'landslide' will not occur (as suggested by one of the captions). Instead, a boulder might break off and float away? The whole thing must be held together by the chemical bonds inherent to the material.

<comment><USER10> Hard to say. The whole point of sending a robot to the comet is to see what it's made of and how the surface is set up. It could be all loose snow, it could be rock, could be something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why the Comet 67P/C-G, as seen by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope array ( [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/11/08/rosetta...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/11/08/rosetta- philae/assets/140811_Rosetta_comet_observed_with_Very_Large_Telescope.jpg) ) is so different than close-up? Here for example, I can't see any trails or fire. Is also white instead of orange? Can be this caused by the speed? [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/11/08/rosetta...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/11/08/rosetta- philae/assets/140813_Comet_on_13_August_2014_-_NavCam.jpg)

<comment><USER13> The sensors involved are very unlike the human eye, and unlike each other. And they aren't color, either, anything that shows color involves adding together several monochrome images taken with different filters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykzg5X41-_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykzg5X41-_E) What blows my mind is that "a million miles away from home" isn't at all far away as far in a space context. (Link goes to cheesy song)

<comment><USER15> > (Link goes to cheesy song)

And I thought for sure it was going to be this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I studied telecommunications and this stuff is really fascinating. From job prospects though your options are fairly limited.

Does anyone know what type of waves are used for commucation at such large distance ? I know satellite uses microwave communication but not sure what could they possibly using for communicating to 317 M miles ? Do they use booster and amplifier satellites intermediaries ? I would interested to know more about signal and communication setup and instruments used.

</comment><comment><USER17> Rocket science for the Europeans, still miles and yards for Americans.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The first trillionaire in the world is going to be the person who first mines the asteroid belt" -NDT</comment>


How do you warn someone 24,000 years from now to avoid our radioactive waste? - <AUTHOR> http://daily.jstor.org/can-we-use-art-to-warn-future-humans-about-radioactive-waste/

<comment><USER2> There is a documentary about the same issue called 'Into Eternity'[1]. The film focuses on the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository[2] being created in Olkiluoto, Finland. It deals with the issues of creating something to last for the massive time frame and the communication issues presented in this article.

1- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_%28film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_%28film%29) 2- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have never understood this concern about radioactive waste. Just bury it so deep that nobody other than an advanced civilisation with Geiger counters could possibly get to it. Problem solved.

<comment><USER4> its actually simpler than that. my understanding is that the more dangerous stuff burns down by then. if something has a half life long enough to still be around thousands of years from now its decaying too slowly to be really dangerous. also, new nuclear tech is under development that is supposed to burn waste as fuel. the likelyhood this is even going to be an issue in twenty years is pretty small.

so its really just an interesting problem. something for the philosophers and psychologists to mull over.

<comment><USER3> Yes it seems to be a way for people with no scientific background (or understanding) to feel like they have something to contribute.</comment></comment></comment>


Will the Last Startup Leaving Dodd's America Please Turn Off the Lights? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigstartups.com/wac6/blog/1273/Will-the-Last-Startup-Leaving-Dodds-America <comment><USER2> This is really silly. First of all, I would recommend that if there is a short blog post that does nothing more but summarise an article, one should submit the article and not the blog post.

Second, the actual businessweek article is so silly it is laughable. It mentions that Dodd wants to connect the accredited investor metrics to inflation but admits that it does not know how that will happen. Then it makes a silly guess out of the blue how it may happen and and assumes that is how it will happen and then goes on to complain how it will be the end of the world. This is a classic straw man argument.

Here's the thing - politicians do not like to make drastic changes unless they are warranted. I guarantee you Dodd is not going to double the income and net worth requirements for accredited investors overnight. The requirements will probably be connected to inflation starting now, which means they will keep their current values when the law passes and will slowly increase with inflation in the future.

<comment><USER3> I would not be too sanguine about what politicians beholden to the trial lawyers might or might not do in this sort of area. When you shrink the pool of accredited investors, you remove many of the avenues by which startups can raise capital in a manner by which they can be assured they are not violating securities laws. If the safe avenues are no longer there, the risks of lawsuits increase dramatically. It will all be done in the name of protecting investor rights, but the real beneficiaries here will be the trial lawyers and the losers will indeed be all early-stage companies that seek to raise capital.

Maybe it will happen quickly or maybe it will be gradual but the underlying motives here are pretty clear and have nothing to do with promoting the health of startups.

I express no opinion about the quality of the article posted here but it is a mistake to assume this legislation is benign for startups. It is not.

<comment><USER4> George, I am disappointed by the superficial assumptions which you make here, which I feel serve to obscure rather than clarify the issue.

(Before going on, grellas is a lawyer and one I respect due to his extensive experience, while I am not only not a lawyer, I have no qualifications of any kind on such matters and the following is nothing but my personal opinion. If you need guidance in this area then you should be consulting someone qualified to practice securities law instead of wasting your valuable time reading my upstart ideas.)

First, the relevant material we're talking about. The text of the bill is to be found here: [http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/ChairmansMark31510AY...](http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/ChairmansMark31510AYO10306_xmlFinancialReformLegislationBill.pdf)

The relevant sections are #412 and #413, as follows:

 _SEC. 412. ADJUSTING THE ACCREDITED INVESTOR STANDARD FOR INFLATION.

The Commission shall, by rule— (1) increase the financial threshold for an accredited investor, as set forth in the rules of the Commission under the Securities Act of 1933, by calculating an amount that is greater than the amount in effect on the date of enactment of this Act of $200,000 income for a natural person (or $300,000 for a couple) and $1,000,000 in assets, as the Commission determines is appropriate and in the public interest, in light of price inflation since those figures were determined; and (2) adjust that threshold not less frequently than once every 5 years, to reflect the percentage increase in the cost of living.

SEC. 413. GAO STUDY AND REPORT ON ACCREDITED INVESTORS. The Comptroller General of the United States shall conduct a study on the appropriate criteria for determining the financial thresholds or other criteria needed to qualify for accredited investor status and eligibility to invest in private funds, and shall submit a report to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate and the Committee on Financial Services of the House of Representatives on the results of such study not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act._

'Commission' here refers to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Accreditation criteria as they currently stand are set out in rule 501 of Regulation D of the SEC's rules, under the authority of the Securities Act 1933. You can read those criteria here: <http://www.law.uc.edu/CCL/33ActRls/rule501.html>

Now, to my argument.

First of all, the proposed bill lets the SEC itself recalculate the financial threshold for a natural person to be an accredited investor. As I am sure you are aware, the SEC proposed raising that threshold to $2.5 million in investment assets back in December 2006 (primarily as a prophylactic against fraud by hedge fund managers) but abandoned the idea following the feedback they received during the public consultation period. I fail to see how requiring the accreditation threshold to keep pace with inflation and tasking the GAO with a review of current practices - to which both attorneys and entrepreneurs will presumably contribute - is a bad thing.

Perhaps your specific objection is to the suggestion that the SEC consider CPI in its reassessment of thresholds from the limits established in 1982. I would respond that pointing out that requiring consideration of the changes in CPI is very different from mandating their use as a metric, and only uses inflation as a rationale for future long-term maintenance of threshold amounts.

Incidentally, even if such thresholds were imposed by fiat tomorrow, are we really to believe that the risk of any given to investors is only 43% of that which it was in 1982? Is it logical to maintain a fixed dollar amount as the threshold for individual participation in offerings? Surely a period of inflation which further eroded the real value of that threshold would not in any way improve investors' collective security. I cannot fathom that investment risk declines in direct proportion to the purchasing power of the currency.

In any case, Regulation D also provides that becoming a director, partner, or executive offer in a business venture confers accreditation status, as does certification of an entity as a business development company in accordance with the Investment Company Act of 1940. So as a purely practical matter, someone of middling means who might not qualify as an accredited investor under future revisions of the income or asset thresholds could still invest in a startup by the fairly simple expedient of joining the startup in one of the capacities mentioned above.

Your allusions to predatory trial lawyers and obscure motives trouble me; rather than discussing the likely outcome of changes in the law (but rather assuming the shrinkage of the investor pool as a fact), you engage in a kind of ad-hominem by proxy, casting aspersions on the proponents of change without addressing the substantive issues in their proposal.

I know you are not giving legal or political advice here, just expressing a brief reaction to these proposals. I do not think you are a conspiracy theorist or someone who seeks to mislead, and that your concerns on behalf of current and future clients are real. Nor am I a proponent of reform at all costs, or oblivious to the potential headaches for those seeking to raise capital - as an independent filmmaker of extremely modest means, these proposals could affect my ability to raise capital too. But I fundamentally disagree with your suggestion that this bill represents a covert attempt to enrich trial lawyers at the expense of honest entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your thoughtful response, which I just upvoted for its very helpful content.

I must confess that some of my comments were indeed superficial but I did want to explain briefly why I have the perspective that I do. It is perhaps as much philosophical as anything else.

In this area, there has always been a continual tension between protecting investors (the very purpose of the securities laws) and giving people freedom to invest freely in ways that promote capital formation.

The Securities Act of 1933 imposes registration requirements upon the issuers of securities. The basic idea is that stock (and other securities) can be sold to the public only when accompanied by suitable disclosure materials such that a prospective investor can have a good understanding of the risks associated with the investment. Each state also has its own version of such laws, and these are known as "blue sky" laws. Thus, any issuer that desires to sell stock to public investors must register it with the SEC and also comply with the parallel blue-sky requirements.

Section 4(2) of the 1933 Act provides an exemption from these registration requirements for private placements. This is required for small-company capital formation because such companies would choke on the compliance costs involved with registration and, more importantly, in a private placement, the problems associated with selling stock to mass numbers of small and often unsophisticated public purchasers are just not present and it is overkill to apply the full force of the registration requirements to such situations.

The question is what is a "private placement"? Before Regulation D was adopted in 1982, this whole area was a mess. Did an offering to 5 people constitute a public offering? Or to 10? Or to 20? How about if stock were sold to 5, then another 5, then another and another, and so on, all in succession? At what point did such offerings cease to be private placements and become "public" offerings and hence illegal unless accompanied by suitable SEC registration? What if stock were sold to 15 people but were done via public forms of advertising? Did that make a difference? What if the investors numbered 50 or 500 but were all sophisticated investors capable of understanding the nature of the investment? Did that make a difference? What if they were given audited financials and similar forms of disclosure as part of the offering?

All such questions went all over the board prior to the enactment of Regulation D as courts struggled to make sense of the meaning of Section 4(2), and the result was a proliferation of litigation all over the nation that could easily ensnare issuers and their principals with large legal expenses and possible large judgments. And the penalties were not small. A violation of the 1933 Act by an issuer that does an improper unregistered offering meant that investors could rescind their stock purchases out to 3 years after their purchase and, moreover, could get their money back not only from the issuers but also from the principals who controlled them.

I remember this vividly. I clerked for a federal judge in the 1979-1980 period and saw firsthand the kinds of crazy cases that could wind up in court over such issues.

And here is the key point about such litigation: it could take all shapes and sizes because of _uncertainty_ surrounding the meaning of what constituted a private placement. In other words, a company that sought to issue stock in a private placement could never know for sure (except in really extreme cases) whether investors could come back to bite the company and its principals simply because the company wound up failing. This set up all sorts of situations where lawyers could second-guess the offering even a long time after the fact because they could always point to this or that fact or circumstances that they would argue took the offering out of the 4(2) exempt category and subjected it to registration requirements. This uncertainty made it risky for companies to attempt to raise capital via private placements and hindered such offerings accordingly.

Starting in 1982, Regulation D solved all this by bringing certainty to this process. It set out clear rules for what was or was not a private placement and it did so for various types of offerings, small and large. It did so by delineating "safe harbors" by which an issuer could know, if it met the rules, it would clearly be doing a private placement that could not be second-guessed after the fact. And, of course, by second-guessed, I mean that lawyers could not bring expensive proceedings against the company and its principals based on creative interpretations of facts and circumstances by which they would argue that an offering was not really a private placement (at least they were not likely to win such cases, and this deterred bringing them). Such issues were off the table so long as the rules of Regulation D were met.

The definition of an "accredited investor" was a key part of this because, with such investors (or at least with a predominance of them), the safe-harbor requirements could easily be met for any given offering.

Thus, in practice today, when I tell my clients to try to limit their offerings to accredited investors, I can know as a lawyer that they are on relatively safe ground in how they handle their offering. It is _easy_ to structure such offerings without undue legal risk and hence such startups can much more easily raise capital for their ventures.

Now take that same scenario and shrink the number of accredited investors radically and the whole structure of Regulation D is compromised such that we are nowhere near as likely to have the certainty of "safe harbors" for issuers and their management but we instead have a much larger element of uncertainty and room for after-the-fact second-guessing if an investment goes bad.

If you have a startup and need to deal with large numbers of non-accredited investors (as newly and more restrictively defined), and your company goes south, it is simply much easier for investors to sue for alleged violations of the 1933 Act. This means they can sue not only the company but also its officers and directors. This means those who sit on boards face larger liability exposure. This means even VCs who invest in companies and get board sits run higher risks in subsequent offerings unless the investors are all accredited under the stricter definition. All in all, it means that capital formation efforts will be hindered as much of the activity now falls into the more uncertain category where lawyers can easily second guess.

This is the practical reality. And this is why I made my statements about this sort of bill effectively promoting the interests of the lawyers. Yes, you can say that it really protects investors and that is the purpose of the securities laws in the first place. But that was true as well of the legal landscape before Regulation D was enacted in 1982 and, though investors were theoretically protected, it also meant it was hard to raise capital without running an undue risk of potentially being devoured by lawsuits if things didn't go well with the investment. Thus, the Dodd bill signifies, for me, a move in the wrong direction, philosophically speaking. It is the same type of bent that would lead to further steps in the direction of removing "safe harbor" protections from issuers wanting to do offerings.

I don't think this is paranoid thinking. I am simply looking to the philosophy of the proponents of such changes. The state of affairs that I fear might happen as lawmakers go down this path is not something that is unheard of - after all, it did exist for over four decades prior to 1982. And it is Regulation D that altered this and that ushered in a great era of small- company capital formation.

Thus, the Dodd legislation, in giving the SEC an impetus to scale back who can be an "accredited investor," is effectively going to make this area more litigious and is going to hinder small-company capital formation activities accordingly. Maybe this is good. But laws can and do work counter-productively even if they are enacted in the name of protecting investors. Just think about what Sarbanes-Oxley did to the IPO market. The question here is what this signifies and whether it will lead to tightened laws relating to small-company formation that will make it much more difficult for startups to raise funding.

I believe that is why many of the VCs, angel groups, etc. are worried about the Dodd legislation. It is perhaps not so much in what it does as an immediate step but in what it signifies about the future of Regulation D and a strong system of small-company capital formation. No serious problems have arisen under the current system. Why tamper with it, then?

I think it is legitimate to raise questions about the motives of those who would seek to fix something that is not broken when the practical effect of such steps is to make the process much less certain and much more prone to litigation. Like I said, I hope I am wrong about the potential implications of this legislation but I worry about where it might head.

<comment><USER4> You're welcome, and thank you in turn.

We basically agree on the purpose and utility of regulation D. By clearing defining what the safe harbor provisions are, it opens the doors to capital formation for small business without imposing hugely expensive compliance requirements, and I am heartily in favor of keeping capital formation a relatively simple process - especially in times like these when credit markets remain chilly and many otherwise healthy or promising businesses are unable to expand for lack of ready capital. I also agree that imposing stricter fiscal requirements for accreditation risks shrinking the liquidity pool and thus starving one of the most dynamic segments in the economy, with serious implications for job creation and economic growth.

Now, you mention that this legislation, if enacted pushes the SEC in a regulatory direction that will make this area more litigious, and here we differ, although I know I am presenting a rather flimsy theoretical opinion against your solid empirical one! It seems to me that you're assuming a shrinking liquidity pool will drive entrepreneurs to engage in increasingly risky behavior in order to develop their businesses; if the pool of accredited investors shrinks then capital will have to be sought from unaccredited ones, and uncertainty will ensue, followed by painful and expensive legal wrangling when a good portion of these ventures fail or underperform.

But is it not rather simplistic to assume that if the supply of investors is artificially constrained, the demand for investment will necessarily run towards the same uncertain and litigation-prone methods of capital formation that preceded the establishment of Regulation D? Might we not instead see an increase in the number of partnerships or directorships taken up as a condition of investment, but still in accordance with other safe harbor provisions of regulation D besides those based on the net worth of a natural person?

I am not attempting to argue this as a debating point. Rather, I am seeking to understand why you anticipate one outcome rather than another. For example, is it your professional experience that angels are tolerant of risk but don't wish to shoulder the various obligations of a directorship, whether due to the burdens of compliance or because it might compromise their objectivity as investors? Is the distribution of wealth such that an increase - say, a doubling - of the financial barrier to accreditation necessarily halves the size of the capital pool, or shrinks it in direct proportion to the number of angels? In other words, if middling investors with more than a million but less than two all disappeared from the angel pool, what of the fact that no upper cap on the assets of wealthier angels exists - a newly imposed $2m threshold is of no material consequence to an angel with $10m to invest, whereas the middling investor's capital contribution is necessarily limited to less than the accreditation threshold. Finally, such restrictions might create opportunities for business development companies, not unlike YC, which are large enough to shoulder the burden of compliance and act as reliable brokers for high risk investors (eg a hedge fund manager who might wish to put 1% of his fund into high risk ventures with great upside potential and can easily offset the risk with more pedestrian investments, but lacks the time or expertise to seek out many tiny startups). The 'shotgun' approach of investing small sums in many disparate ventures with the understanding that only a few will yield significant returns could probably be formalized and maybe even simplify the capital formation process for startups, as YC seems to be doing. It seems to me that one of the most common and frustrating questions for new entrepreneurs is where to find an angel in the first place - for many people and industries, finding someone who can listen to and act upon your pitch is mysterious, so I feel there's an unmet demand here for business development as a kind of brokerage service.

I don't mean this as an endorsement or even a comment on the Dodd legislation as a whole - I've only read three pages of this 1300-page bill, am ambivalent about committing the 1-2 week sot evaluate the whole thing, and am painfully aware that its introduction to the senate is taking place in a charged and acrimonious political atmosphere, which is rarely a recipe for regulatory bliss. For that matter, it is inevitably molded by the global financial crisis, and as we know hard cases generally result in bad law, just as Sarbanes-Oxley's burden of compliance is thought by many people to have cost more than the problem it was intended to solve. So I appreciate your worries that the legislation might well be reactionary - by intent, in effect, or even both.

It does strike me that the prescriptions in this bill as they relate to capital formation are pretty mild. To the extent that the bill is agenda- driven, I think its primary purpose is to rein in the perceived excesses of large financial institutions and the fast-talking social engineers of the financial world as exemplified by Bernie Madoff - in short, to put a leash on fat cats for the public good (one may or may not agree that this a worthy aim; I just think that this is the basic intent). I agree that startup capital formation has not been a bed of nettles for investors or played any major role in the structural problems of our financial system, and frankly I doubt the bill's intent is to choke off investment in startups.

While uncertainty of the kind you describe may enrich trial lawyers, is there really so much profit to be had in litigating cases brought by investors who sit between the existing and potential future thresholds? I suppose one could see a situation where some breakout company does well and and has an IPO and is awash in cash, only for someone to point out an obscure legal failing of their very first fundraising round 5 years later and sue them for a billion...but it'd be a lot easier to buy some old company with a patent and take a vacation in Texas. I don't know a whole lot about the economics of the legal industry; it just seems to me that you're extrapolating an awful lot from a fairly bland directive to inspect and tune up one small component of the regulatory mechanism. After all, a great many people subscribe to the view that inflation is the economic equivalent of rust, and the bill basically says to consider its effects rather than issuing detailed prescriptions for dealing with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Money quote: <i>Currently, a person must have a net worth of $1 million or an annual income of $200,000 if single or $300,000 if married (and filing jointly) to be an accredited investor. The senator's proposed bill doesn't say what inflation adjustment will be used to convert these numbers, established in 1982, to today's dollars. But if we use the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator to adjust these figures on the basis of the consumer price index, then the annual income requirements for accredited investor status would become $449,000 if the investor were single and $674,000 if the investor were married, while the net worth requirement would become $2.25 million.</i>

So, in other words, the bill's not even finished being drafted and they made some noise about maybe adjusting some figures, but they have CPMs to sell so they'll just assume "adjust" means "multiply by 2.25" and get the snappy headline.

That said, Dodd clearly shouldn't do anything to hurt actual startup investment.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know enough about the legislation to comment on it specifically but I do know politics -- it appears the Republicans are pulling another HCR strategy here and simply letting the Democrats go forward on this unchallenged on substance in an attempt to score a political Waterloo 2 (since the first one didn't quite work) Pretty sad state of affairs I think. I'm willing to accept Dodd's bill isn't great (or even good) but the response of trying to make it purely a political issue with dishonest speculation of repealing it later is pure lunacy from the opposition. People are desperate to see some major financial reform so it _will_ be extremely popular no matter what's actually in the bill. The political narrative of saying "the people who caused the meltdown oppose the fix" is political gold. As a committed liberal I'm actually a bit worried that the classic check & balance of right/left is getting out of whack due to the massive failure of the Republican party to put governing over politics. They need to come to the table with honest intentions and substance and try to be part of the solution.

<comment><USER7> > They need to come to the table with honest intentions and substance and try > to be part of the solution.

If Democrats left to their own devices do dumb things, why should we want to let them stay in power?

What's wrong with holding Democrats responsible for their proposals?

<comment><USER4> When elected members of a political party find themselves in opposition, they are not paid to just sit on their hands and say 'fuck it'. They still have an obligation to their constituents to participate in the legislative process even if they don't expect to succeed. That's why we have a legislative branch instead of just an executive.

<comment><USER7> > When elected members of a political party find themselves in opposition, > they are not paid to just sit on their hands and say 'fuck it'.

Remind me - did you complain when Dems did that to Bush? (Pre 2006)? You remember - "Disent is patriotic" and all that. Or is that somehow different?

Of cours, the Repubs actually do have proposals. You don't hear about them in the "tingly leg" media, so you'd have you'd have to look elsewhere. Or is that their fault too?

<comment><USER4> As a matter of fact, I have, though I have not been here on HN so long. This is hardly the place for a political argument, but I believe a pragmatic approach is entirely compatible with robust debate.

I do not care for the zero-sum outcomes which often result from or are promoted by the adversarial nature of our political system. But I learned very early in life that no matter how bitter a competition becomes, almost all the spectators are united by a disdain for the referee.

This cartoon humorously summarizes my worldview; I like that fellow with the pipe. [http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u316/sisdecadence/subgeni...](http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u316/sisdecadence/subgenius_big.jpg)

<comment><USER7> > This is hardly the place for a political argument, but I believe a pragmatic > approach is entirely compatible with robust debate.

Interestingly enough, your "pragmatic approach" involves chiding Repubs for not making proposals even though they actually did.

Why are you blaming Repubs for your ignorance of their proposals? (I'm not saying that it's necessarily wrong to blame them - I'm asking why you are doing so.)

btw - You do realize that the fellow with the pipe is a smug parasite, right? Snark, while "cool", isn't actually productive. It's a way to feel superior without actually doing anything that justifies the feeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do investors need to be accredited at all? If I, someone with savings and income far below those thresholds, want to invest a large portion of my net worth into a startup I really believe in, why should the government stop me? It's so risky that it's a horrible idea, but don't I have a right to be stupid?

<comment><USER2> Because of scams. Of course you are going to say that you should have the right to fall for scams if you want to, but some scams become so prevalent they actually have an effect on the economy, or can crash the stockmarket.

I also have to say that the accredited investor rules do not exactly prohibit you from investing in startups. Or from owning stock. They are part of a complex securities regulation framework and it is difficult to explain in a quick message board post exactly where they fit in.

<comment><USER9> But the result of the rule is that submillionaires can't invest in YC-like companies, but they can still lose _all_ their money (and whatever additional amount banks will loan them) on...

\- day-trading

\- real-estate-speculation

\- investing in 'safe' public stocks like Enron, Fannie Mae, Lehman, and GM

\- trading forex following rules they learned from late-night-informercials

\- gambling in licensed casinos offering rigged games

\- buying state lottery tickets

All these often-negative-expectation activities are allowed. So what, exactly, do the 'accredited investor' limits prevent a gullible person from doing? A fool will be parted from his money; these rules just change the form of the transactions that will be used.

Meanwhile, the limits prevent wise-but-poor people from being shareholders in small businesses that they actually have some expertise about, and which are more likely to be positive-expectation than the above activities.

<comment><USER4> First, wise-but-poor people will be able to invest in small businesses as you describe, but will have to satisfy other non-financial criteria in order to do so. (these criteria already exist, and apply if you don't meet the current accreditation thresholds.)

Second, to turn your argument on its head, why not get rid of the limits altogether? Let anyone invest in anything, whether or not the investment vehicle is registered with or reports to the SEC. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, historical experience with this approach is that people get ripped off left, right and center, and taxpayers end up holding the bag.

True, taxpayers end up holding the bag for a lot of things anyway. I'm not sure how to fix this, but I'm pretty sure that removing all limits on the size of bags ain't it.

<comment><USER9> _wise-but-poor people... have to satisfy other non-financial criteria_

...which limits them to a tiny fraction of the private investment opportunities available to millionaires. Why make things harder on the wise- but-poor? Or those who have wise-but-poor friends-and-family?

 _...to turn your argument on its head, why not get rid of the limits altogether..._

That's not the argument on its head -- that's the argument itself! Net-worth- based discrimination has no place in securities regulation.

If an unwise or gullible person can throw their entire net worth -- and then some, via leverage -- into a single risky real-estate transaction, or risky options trade, or risky loan to an unreliable acquaintance, or risky superbowl wager -- then there's no rational basis for preventing them from buying private securities.

Some will be burned, and learn (and teach others via their example). They'll do better the next time -- as with all the other expensive failures we let people experience with their own money.

Fraud can be prosecuted under existing fraud laws. And the majority of honest entrepreneurs and wise-but-poor investors will have many, many more opportunities to explore the small-business solution-space with angel capital.

<comment><USER4> I can't help feel you're responding to individual bits of my reply rather than the whole thing. As for the rational basis of such rules, I invite you to consider why the securities act of 1933 was created in the first place, and the circumstances which led up to that.

<comment><USER9> Whatever good was in the depression-era securities regulations, other parts were an overreaction, just like SarbOx has been. Now, much of their paternalism is obsolete. Non-millionaires of 2010 have knowledge and resources far beyond that of depression-era barons.

And irrational exuberance, not fraud, is how the masses lost the bulk of their money -- then and now.

We just lost trillions in real estate value. Should non-millionaires be prohibited from buying real estate, by law, because circumstances have shown they're just too feeble-minded to make such investments? That would be a modern equivalent to 'accredited investor' rules originating from depression- era biases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- What problem does Dodd say this is going to solve? Is he trying to reduce the workload of the SEC?

\- Whatever the problem is, _is_ it a problem?

\- Does this solve it?

\- Who is paying/lobbying Dodd to do this? I imagine it wasn't on his radar until someone who stands to gain brought it to his attention. Is it just Tourette legislation?

\- If the result will be as bad as the article says ... how/why do we let Congress get away with fucking things up?

<comment><USER4> It would increase the workload of the SEC, though only very marginally. The SEC proposed (but then retracted) a very similar change about 3 years ago. You can read about it here: <http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2006/33-8766.pdf> their rationale is set out on pages 17-18.

tl;dr the SEC was worried that the explosion in house prices during the 90s (which raised many people's net worth above the accreditation threshold set in 1982) and the parallel increase in both the popularity and complexity of private investment offerings were tempting many people out of their financial depth. Large numbers of people borrowing against the value of their home to invest in hot deals without much understanding of the risks involved struck the SEC as a dangerous situation.

Arguably, the events of the last few years proved them correct. The SEC was not trying to strangle startups (nor was it blind to the the possibility of such a result), but to maintain a barrier between overconfident homeowners and glib fund managers whose only business case was that markets tend to rise over time.

<comment><USER11> Good thing the highly trained professionals on wall street weren't out of their financial depth, eh?

<comment><USER4> I think most of them are doing just fine. The problem is that too many of us paid for their swimming lessons :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Step 1. Make private investment difficult and costly. Step 2. Save the day with gov small business investment. 3. Pick winners based on political agenda.

There's more than one way to build a command economy...</comment>


Linux 5.2 Is Introducing the Fieldbus Subsystem - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.2-Fieldbus-Subsystem <comment><USER2> Did a computer write this "article"?

<comment><USER3> Welcome to Phoronix!</comment></comment>


Open Source Robotic Arm  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:387 <comment><USER2> I've always wanted to see an open source bipedal walking bot, too, but this will do. :)</comment>


My findings after browsing the web without a User-Agent header for one week - <AUTHOR> https://webplatform.news/issues/2020-03-19 <comment><USER2> That was interesting, thank you. I first set `general.useragent.override` to empty and as you say arstechnica.com 403ed. I then set it to `Hello, I am a human` and arstechnica.com worked just fine. Oddly google.com renders a basic mobile-like UI.</comment>


Use the Source, Luke - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/07/17/use-the-source-luke.aspx

<comment><USER2> $10 to anyone who can successfully summarize an idea that all the buzzwords on this page might be trying to form.</comment>


Justin.tv breaks live flash video streaming record - <AUTHOR> http://blog.justin.tv/2007/09/new-record-for-justintv-set-with-jonas.html

<comment><USER2> This is typical press release-type posturing. It's not like there's a published record of concurrent Flash streams somewhere to measure against. They hit a very high number for their site and then arbitrarily declared it record. A bit delusional or naive I think.

Regardless, 14,000 is an impressively high number. All the more if they're doing it with a custom Python RTMP server implementation for $100. Totally worthy of the Amazon prize.

<comment><USER3> While it's true there is no independent body that records the record number of flash streams, we checked with everyone else we know that runs large streaming flash video and it's the highest by a wide margin.

<comment><USER4> How do they compare with YouTube's?

<comment><USER5> YouTube doesn't do any _live_ streaming AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the right rack. I sent them a mail a few months ago to do so but didn't got any answer though.

I would now suggest to do the same for young people who had success in making their dream come true: startup, band, art, business, job, invention, science, etc.

The message should be: we are normal people, like you, we had a dream, tried it and it came true. They'll hit another gold vein because the emulation it provides is addicting.

Continue the good job.

</comment><comment><USER7> kyle is the man.

how about those MIT dropouts? =D</comment>


HN meet-up in Bangalore on Saturday 10th Jan at the Headstart conference? - <AUTHOR>

I will be at the Headstart conference (http://headstart.in/) on Friday(9th) & Saturday(10th). Entry to demo pit & stalls are free.
I was wondering if anyone from HN is attending this conference, if so we could meet-up -- I am assuming there are quite a few folks here from Bangalore.
If so please send me an email or add to the comments here. <comment><USER2> Ah, I was thinking of going to the proto.in <http://proto.in> on Jan 23, 24 at Bangalore.

<comment><USER3> I am planning to go to proto.in as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe we should do one at proto.in as well. why don't you send me an email? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> I'm coming to proto.in as well. Mailed you

<comment><USER5> will be there at proto :)

<comment><USER6> I'll be there at Proto.in

<http://twitter.com/sdawara>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meeting up other HN regulars seems a very good idea. Unfortunatlely, i have no plans of being in B'lore around this time. Please do put a blog post (if possible) later, on how the meet-up went for all.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am one of the organisers of headstart.There is a tweetup planned as well in case you guys are interested. Mail me - vinayak at headstart dawt in, in case you need any help from the organisers.

</comment><comment><USER9> I will be there. How do we coordinate?

<comment><AUTHOR> please send me an email. It's in my profile. Based on the # of replies we can find a suitable place in/around the conference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will there be something like this in Delhi, sometime this year?

Somehow i always miss the dates for events like this.

<comment><USER5> we can do something like this in Delhi, but hopefully hackers only :P. I am not impressed with the barcamps which are usually sales pitch for companies.We can have some workshops to do something cool.

Dipankar Sarkar firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER10> I'm in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> won't a weekend inbetween be better.

we're based out of ~pune, will see if can make it to proto (hover.in was part of it's jan edition last yr).

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd be there.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any b'bay hackers around?

</comment><comment><USER14> i am planning to go to proto.in</comment>


Show HN: Unbound, the ultimate iOS app for your Dropbox photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.unboundapp.com

<comment><USER2> I spent the $1.99 it and found it to be well worth it. This review at cultofmac.com pretty much sums it up for me:

"Unbound Is The Best Dropbox Photo Browser I Have Ever Used" <http://goo.gl/ttxl2></comment>


Computer Scientists Guide to the Algorithms? - <AUTHOR>

As a first year studying pure mathematics and computer science, I've been exposed to many different algorithms, trees, data structures and etc. Many of these are fascinating and I always tree to think of examples of how I would be able to implement them in the real world.
However, I am starting to find it hard to keep track of so many different algorithms, data structures, tree and etc. Is there a "Big Book of Algorithms" that contains most, if not all of the essential algorithms?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'm going to express size in Knuths, where one Knuth is the size of one volume of Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming."

Knuth's work is THE seminal text for this sort of thing. It's very long -just over 4 Knuths thus far, and Volume 4 is actually only the first subvolume of something much larger- and it's very, very dense. If you want The Big Book of Algorithms, it certainly fits the bill, but does so in the almost cartoonish sense of the massive book that breaks whatever desk you put it on. It may also break the bank: this many books of this quality and length can get expensive.

Introduction to Algorithms, by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and (in later editions) Stein, also has a very good reputation. It's about 1.5 Knuths long, and it's not as dense, so you're not going to find as much raw STUFF in here, but it covers the basics quite well, and also a fair amount of the not-so- basics.

O'Reilly's "Mastering Algorithms with _____" (there are versions for a number of languages) can also be good for quick reference. Length-wise, they're about a Knuth apiece, and there's only so much you can fit in a book that size. On the other hand, unlike the previous two that I've mentioned, these books present algorithms in a language people actually use. CLRS uses pseudocode, while Knuth himself often uses a kind of assembly language (I told you it was dense).

Speaking of O'Reilly, they also have "Algorithms in a Nutshell." This is the shortest one I can really talk about here -about 0.5 Knuths, maybe shorter- and that really limits what you can put in it, but it hits the most common cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> The TAOCP[1] is the reference for all the types of algorithms it covers, the Cormen book[2] is a reference for its breadth and the Algorithm Design Manual[3] is quite nice to learn how to design your own.

[1]: <http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/taocp.html>

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Corme...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Cormen/dp/0262033844)

[3]: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1848000693>

</comment><comment><USER4> This would be a good start:

[http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Corme...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H- Cormen/dp/0262033844)</comment>


Database of Lost Crypto Assets - <AUTHOR> http://www.ohmycoins.xyz/ <comment><USER2> Somewhere in this, is my ~50K of BTC. Mined in the extremely early days, well before that first bitcoin pizza, back when people were still enthusiastically trying to decide if this whole "distributed ledger" thing was implemented correctly and just how good of an idea is it at all.

I used a 32 node OpenMosix cluster/lab to CPU mine just shy of 50K BTC one lazy semester break after finding out about this BitCoin thing and thinking "this will make a neat distributed stress test" much more interesting than just running the usual CPU benchmark toy programs. I fired it up, let the shell scripts fan it out till every core in the cluster was busy, and checked back about two weeks later when the next semester started. I made a note of the number and my shell scripts, deleted the wallet because its just useless data on my preciously small university school student home directory. I moved on with my life and completely forgot about it until recently when researching some cluster history I recalled the OpenMosix work I had done at University, the various ways I had used it, and to my temporary horror, the BitCoin benchmark.

I've come to think of it a bit like a failed lottery ticket or a bad bet at a casino. I had no way of knowing at the time 10 years ago, that the couple of megabytes of space these files took up, could one day be worth half a billion dollars. That's not to say i'm 100% zen about it, it does still hurts a little to think about sometimes though.

Edit: Corrected my time window, a decade does wonders for compressing the experience of time passing, thinking about it again reminded me that the bitcoin block reward meant I must have run it over the semester break, not overnight.

<comment><USER3> Damn... and I thought I had it bad when I lost a 10 BTC bet against a UCLA football parlay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coincidentally, I was browsing the "Just Sold" section on Flippa this morning and came across this site: [https://flippa.com/9361923-ohmycoins- xyz](https://flippa.com/9361923-ohmycoins-xyz).

<comment><USER5> Off-topic: let's say I have a really old (~18y) two-words-smashed-together domain name that I think would probably fetch a decent price and that I've considered selling. What are some reputable sites where I could obtain a reasonably accurate "valuation" of the domain?

Basically, I'd like to get a realistic idea of what it might be worth before going through the trouble of actually trying to sell it.

<comment><USER6> Valuations: domainiq.com + godaddy valuations (ballpark) - [https://www.godaddy.com/domain-value- appraisal](https://www.godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal)

You can sell via uniregistry.com, sedo.com, or flippa.

What's the name?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Got ill, had to pay for medical care : <_

Doubly depressing to see this listed under "Bad Trade". What a first world country…

<comment><USER8> Close friend [daughter's godfather] had to sell his $BTC to pay for medical bills. He was basically homeless; forgot he owned them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes me feel better about my own lost opportunity

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this site really laggy while scrolling for anyone else?

It utilizes up to 50% CPU while scrolling according to Chromium task manager.

<comment><USER11> Maybe it's speculatively fishing for cryptocoins and private keys in your kernel memory...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started by reading this as the tale of one person's tumultuous trading history... which made me really concerned for this person's money.

</comment><comment><USER13> I try not to think of the ~30 bitcoins I lost on an old drive several years ago when it was worth only a few cents per coin.

<comment><USER14> Don't you think you would have sold them long ago anyway?

I sold my 0.5 coin at $200 and I have no regrets. I find it futile to cry over things I did because I couldn't tell the future. I'm more likely to wonder why I didn't pork up on GOOG at the IPO price, but that's no different.

<comment><USER15> At one point I had dogecoins that would today be worth $100k. I was mining them when it was absurdly easy to mine a ton of them.

I have no regrets, because it's effing dogecoin, and we're in a huge bubble right now. It would have made no sense for me to hold on to them because there was never any indication or reasoning for dogecoin going to nearly $0.01 per. It would have been irrational for me to hold in the hopes of the future irrational exuberance of the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pretty good. A max of 100,000 Dogecoins is definitely not enough though.

</comment><comment><USER17> schadenfreude.

</comment><comment><USER18> the bulk of these aren't lost crypto assets - as in irreparably immovable - they just have different owners.

</comment><comment><USER19> Beautiful. But I don't see Coinye listed.

Would like to submit my experience rage-deleting my wallet after the pre- mining shenanigans were revealed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thinly veiled ledger ad</comment>


Greenpeace 2017 Tuna Report: "StarKist continues its trend of ocean destruction" - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/oceans/tuna-guide/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Maritime Executive ran a cover story with more information on the Tuna Report: [http://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/progress- made-t...](http://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/progress-made-towards- sustainable-tuna-fishing)</comment>


First Support for a Physics Theory of Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/ <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14858250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14858250)

</comment><comment><USER3> OT: I'm not a front end guy, so maybe this is a dumb question, but why do so many sites with some kind of floating header mess up page at a time scrolling?

By "floating header" I mean that thing at the top on the story site that has the story title, the link to comments, a read later link, and a share link, that stays in a fixed position in the window as you scroll the story.

When you scroll the site (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) by hitting the space bar, it scrolls an amount appropriate for what would be visible if the floating header were not there. What this means is that the first line or two that are invisible before the scroll, because they are below the bottom of the window, end up at the top of the window, under the floating header.

Is there no way in CSS or something to set the size of the viewport that the scrolled content is shown in, so that the browser can scroll the appropriate amount? Or do you have to take over scrolling yourself in JavaScript to make that work, which then tends to result in scrolling that does not quite match native scrolling and so annoys people?

If the latter, couldn't you leave scrolling alone when done via the mouse wheel or clicking in the scroll bar, but intercept keyboard events and handle space processing yourself, so that you ONLY take over that form of scrolling? That would be a big improvement over the current situation.

<comment><USER4> This drives me mad, too. The NY Times does space-bar scrolling right. Random example:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/immigration- visa-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/immigration- visa-h1b-trump-.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why all of life seems to come from one origin.

For example, the chirality of basic biological molecules all seem the same across all life forms. Mathematically and chemically speaking, a different chirality would be exactly as plausible for life.

<comment><USER6> > I wonder why all of life seems to come from one origin.

The most likely explanation is that it does come from a single origin. Either it only started once, or the particular lineage that led to all the life we see now outcompeted other, less efficient forms of primitive life.

<comment><USER5> Imho, the first explanation is not plausible, because life started really early after Earth was formed (increasing the plausibility that life can spark at any moment).

The second explanation is not plausible because at least we would have found some evidence, i.e., samples of dead and outcompeted life forms.

<comment><USER7> Those initial life forms would probably take the form of something like prions, or viruses: small protein assemblies, with a tendency to replicate. They would, almost by definition, have no defences against the armada of today's microbiology roaming every crevice. They would be devoured within seconds of accidentally forming.

Of those that formed billions of years ago, no trace would remain, or, if it did, it would be indistinguishable to us from any non-living molecule that once swam in the primordial soup.

<comment><USER5> We could test that assumption by synthesizing biological molecules with a different chirality, and dumping them into a soup of "normal" life, and see how much of it remains.

<comment><USER8> That's a really good experiment to try. I wonder why no one has tried it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good read concerning this topic: Into the Cool ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52737.Into_the_Cool](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52737.Into_the_Cool))

</comment><comment><USER10> How does this relate to the 'constructal law'? For reference: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I can get behind his premise here. England suggests that life is a result of molecules forming combinations that burn greater amounts of energy (paraphrasing), but it seems to me that life burns _less_ energy over a sustained period of time. This is why we live for 80 years instead of spontaneously combusting.

<comment><USER12> Compared to a rock on the moon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It could also be the case human's use of fire and now fossil fuels are the universe's way of achieving a maximum energy releasing mechanism

</comment><comment><USER14> A simple set of rules can lead to exceptional structure ... Isn't that what everyone including Stephen Wolfram already knows?</comment>


Show HN: We built Pipe in 48 hours using Singly, Node.js & Ember.js - <AUTHOR> http://pipeapp.co/

<comment><USER2> Application Error: <http://cl.ly/1c393d1e451x0P000s2h> Nodefail?

A writeup somewhere about what you went through to build this, as well as your team's background and previous experience would be cool.

<comment><USER3> Yeah - thanks for pointing that out. We're pitching in 45 minutes, but will aim to get some posts up describing our experience.

You can check <http://blog.pipeapp.co> (we need to connect it to the live app still so there's links between, but I've been posting about our experience) for the time being.

Thanks for asking!

<comment><USER4> You posted to HN before your pitch? Did you need the site live to pitch? Isn't that risky?

...unless you needed HN traffic for that voting link, then it makes sense I guess ;)

<comment><USER5> It seems to be quite a bit more stable.... found and fixed the main bug that was causing it to crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, but I personally don't see a need for it. If I haven't talked to one of my contacts in a while its most likely because they have nothing to offer me and I dont need to...Or maybe you just need a better sales page to pitch the benefits to me.

<comment><USER3> Keeping up with a professional network can be a lot of work. The idea is that Pipe breaks this down into one person to contact each day. It's not going to be for everyone, but for people that want a little push each day reaching out to the people they've lost touch with.

For me, as a transplant from the East Coast to SF, there are high school friends, college buddies, and plenty of colleagues that I don't talk to regularly. Pipe will tell me which one person to reach out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your font doesn't look good on my browser (Chrome v19 on Windows 7) :( <http://screencast.com/t/DPuvV2Z9>

</comment><comment><USER3> The singly hackathon has been a blast. I'm on the Pipe team and am happy to answer any questions you have about our experience and what we built.

<comment><USER8> getting an application error, here comes the hn crowd.

<comment><USER3> yeah, we're working on that - sorry!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It doesn't work for me. The screen that should be showing my contacts is blank. Tried reloading, skipping. No fez.

<comment><USER5> So currently what we didn't make clear (and will fix soon) is that you need to be signed in with LinkedIn in order for it to populate. Our apologies!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have a rare bug that pops up from time to time that I'm trying to catch, so bare with us through this

</comment><comment><USER10> auth page has font issues on chrome-20/windows xp

refer: <http://minus.com/lbrEHujglOtZHm>

<comment><USER11> Same here; I can't read it.

<comment><USER12> Ditto, Chrome 19.0.1084.52 m/Win7

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't get it. Sounds like you want me to target one person to spam or stalk each day. But if I already don't talk to these people now then why should I do it through this website?

<comment><USER14> Nowhere does it mention stalking or spamming.

However, that being said, it still seems easier and more practical for me to pick some random person from my social networks myself if I really wanted to do this.

<comment><USER15> Does it take someone at random? I thought it would use some algorithm based on, say, frequency of contact.</comment></comment></comment>


A Fireside Chat with Grant Imahara (2015) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/2ntnEC8Wy0o <comment><AUTHOR> At 9:15 he talks about using a BASIC Stamp [0] to make the Energizer Bunny and R2D2. A huge inspiration and creative builder. Very sad to hear about his passing today, I wanted to share this talk I attended.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Stamp](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Stamp)</comment>


Soylent's Secret Ingredient Isn't People–It's Excuses - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/07/22/soylent-food-replacement-bad-customer-service?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=readwr.it-twitter&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesmsharetools-sharebuttons&awesm=readwr.it_t2BV <comment><USER2> A lot of people saw this coming from a mile away. This is why I rarely back crowdfunded projects: they're rarely on time. I didn't want to wait so I just made one of the DIY recipes from the soylent forum. I use People Chow 3.0.1 and am happy with it, though I might try something else once my ingredients run out. Maybe a keto recipe. Official Soylent has always been bullshit though, since you can just make it yourself for cheaper.</comment>