A casino card shark's first time getting caught - <AUTHOR> https://narratively.com/a-casino-card-sharks-first-time-getting-caught/ <comment><USER3> Card counting is romanticized but really it is almost impossible to get away with now (while making any meaningful money). The whole premise of card counting is to vary your bets where you are betting more when the count is in your favor, and less when it isn't. Also "penetration" into the deck is important because the less cards there are remaining in the deck the probability of you getting the cards you want (positive count big cards) is higher.

So with that said:

\- Casinos employ methods such as continuous shuffling machines that make counting impossible. Tables that have hand shuffling of 6-8 decks cut the deck and reshuffle with 2 decks remaining or so. So it is harder to get penetration.

\- The way to be maximally profitable is to vary your bet very widely depending on how positive the deck is. This could be 30x your low bet. Behavior like this will get you detected.

\- Security personnel and even dealers keep counts. It is not some savant activity. It is not hard especially since all these people do all day is look at cards. So they know when the deck is positive and if you are always betting big when that happens you will be detected.

So the people that are left counting have to avoid heat by "camouflaging" their actions. They don't vary their bet that widely and make purposeful bad decisions to make it appear they are not keeping a count. They want to appear like someone that does not know how to play basic strategy and raises and lowers their bets based on superstition (there's a lot of them). This all eats into their advantage substantially. Then in addition betting big at high limit tables is going to be more carefully scrutinized as well.

With that all added together the life for a modern card counter is grinding out for comps and very low player advantage for very long times. Casinos aren't dumb anymore. So while we watch the chronicles of the MIT team, and others, those days are long, long gone. Makes for great stories as people love Robin Hood like tales, but it just isn't happening like this anymore.

Edit: Also the tactic she mentions: Entering a game mid shoe after watching for a while, and waiting for a positive deck, is called "Wonging" After Stanford Wong a longtime gambling expert and advantage player. There is NO WAY you'd get away with "flashy big bettor Carlos" coming in after she counted detected a positive count. Tables with any meaningful limit usually do not allow mid shoe entry for this reason. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book and you wouldn't get away with that for long or at all.

<comment><USER4> Every time card counting comes up in discussion there seem to be people talking about how it works (not taking a shot at you, just attaching my comment here). But not once have I seen a link to the actual numbers.

If I want to know something about chess, the source code is available, endgame tables are available, everything that we say we know about chess can be confirmed.

Everyone seems to know how card counting works, with vague things like a count goes up with 5's or down with 10's, but there is no first post link to the "solution". The only thing I see referenced is some 1 deck study from the early computer days.

I'm halfway convinced the money making avenue of card counting is telling stories about card counting.

The conspiracy theory part of my brain says these stories are written by casinos to give players hope.

So, where is that github link?

<comment><USER3> I agree with you on that. The money is to be made telling stories about it vs doing it. Which is why I think the article is complete fiction. But the math behind counting is sound and it is indeed profitable if done right.

[https://github.com/seblau/BlackJack- Simulator](https://github.com/seblau/BlackJack-Simulator) is an example of this. The house advantage of blackjack is under 1% for good games (for example 0.33% at Mohegan Sun). So to beat it you just need overcome that which IS possible by counting. But you can see if you play with that sim, decreasing penetration, bet spread and amount really starts to eat into your numbers.

But with the mitigation strategies listed like low penetration, heat gained by betting big, or wild swings in bet amount, and finally no mid-shoe entry it is not possible now to do it and make good money.

[https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/card- counting/high-...](https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/card- counting/high-low/) Michael Shackleford is an expert on gambling analysis and is employed by gaming companies to check out their games. He has loads of detailed information and statistics on his site about every casino game.

But yes. Mathematically possible, and possible in the distant past when casinos didn't know. Pretty much impossible now due to casinos detecting it easily. Not because it isn't mathematically possible.

<comment><USER5> You can spend about five minutes Googling around and learn that the events in this story happened in the early to mid 2000's, mostly at smaller regional casinos, and no, the participants did not make much money - about enough to be useful to a struggling grad student (as described in the article!).

You can find the author and one of her teammates discussing their careers on a podcast from a couple of years ago here:

[http://bobdancer.com/podcast](http://bobdancer.com/podcast)

But I appreciate your commitment to upholding the proud HackerNews tradition of supremely confident snap judgments uncontaminated by actual knowledge.

<comment><USER3> Here are some quotes from the article:

"Carlo was betting stacks of orange chips we called "pumpkins," up to $10,000 per hand."

"Our Big Players naturally drew attention with their wagers in the thousands."

No I didn't read every single story about this ever just the one linked. And yes it is a snap judgement from what I know that it is complete fiction. That doesn't sound like small casino action to me. Also, please let me know about the casino that allows 10k bets mid shoe entry.... I've never seen one.

If this was a story written about some struggling grad students that made small amounts of money on small action at small casinos as you claim on your throw-away account I would not have posted what I posted. But alas this thread is about the article posted and I stand by my claim that it is almost certainly untrue from what is contained in it. I don't need to know the entire history to decide that. The article contains information that is at best highly embellished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Counting cards isn't illegal, but a casino, like any business, has the right > to refuse service to anyone. I know players who have been handcuffed, > searched and dragged into windowless back rooms

But surely handcuffing someone for doing something that isn't illegal is itself illegal search and detention?

<comment><USER3> That treatment, along with the tactics used in this story like Wonging at the table, last occurred/were effective long before the author was born. Typically casinos if they are nice put you on a "flat bet" which makes counting completely useless since profiting on it is predicated on varying your bet. Another thing would be not allowing the player to play blackjack anymore. Usually the harshest punishment is banning the player from the casino, having them cash their chips, and leave. Subsequently coming back would be trespassing then you'd be put in cuffs and brought in the back.

<comment><USER7> You can profit from counting cards with a flat bet. The MIT team did exactly this. The trick is to have counters at multiple tables, all betting a small but flat amount, and floaters that move from table to table while betting large, but also flat, amounts.

The counters lose a small but steady amount of money over time while the floaters make large amounts of money by only playing at the tables with favourable counts.

<comment><USER8> Are there any decisions at all for the player in a "flat bet" game? Or is it simply a game of 100% chance then, with all skill/reading your opponent removed?

<comment><USER7> This is blackjack we're talking about, not poker. There's no "reading the opponent". The opponent is the dealer who hits on a sixteen or less and stays otherwise.

For the people with a flat bet (on a card counting team) there's no decision making at all. They simply follow basic strategy which prescribes exactly what move to make in each situation.

<comment><USER9> In fact there is opponent reading (literally) in Blackjack. The opponent (dealer) must check his hand for blackjack, if the dealer's upcard is a 10 or an Ace, after having dealt the initial two cards to every player. "Hole peeking" is a technique where a teammate stands behind the dealer so they can see the hole card when the dealer checks for blackjack. They then signal this information to the player so he knows the value of the dealer's hand. Hole peeking used to be so common that casinos now have card readers built into the blackjack tables so that the dealers don't have to expose their hole card to check for blackjack.

It is/was also possible for a player at the first seat of the table to see a sloppy dealer's hole card when checking for blackjack. This is called "first basing" while using a teammate is generally called spooking.

<comment><USER10> That's card reading not opponent reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Card counting was literally my gateway into professional programming.

The first "real" program I ever wrote was a blackjack simulator, in MS-BASIC, around 30 years ago. My brother and I were getting ready to go with my Dad to Vegas for the first time, and we were keen on not being typical dumb ass gamblers...we wanted an edge.

We quickly learned that the only beatable game in town was card-counting at Blackjack, so I got busy first verifying that card counting wasn't some casino ploy (it wasn't), and then modifying the same simulator code to actually "teach" the systems it was simulating.

I wish I still had this code... I absolutely loved developing it, and eventually it was a very powerful blackjack system. It had configurable _everything_..system counts, decks, rules, players at the table, etc. I literally spent 7 years plus working on it. Eventually it was ported to Turbo Pascal for speed.

I became a whiz at counting... I eventually settled on "Wong Halves", the most complex but supposedly the most accurate count system there was. Remember, this was in the late 80s early 90s, and back then casinos were wide open to be taken.

I was only a $5 to $25 player though, so I never got any real heat. I used a 1 to 5 bet ratios (1 unit at low counts and 5 as "big bets"), which was very conservative, and looking back, I had a good deal of small-time success. Unlike my brother, I was never banned... I was far better than he at "blending in" and being personable.

Nowadays, I live in Vegas, and they have _completely_ destroyed the chances of winning any real money at the casinos. Hell, I remember my simulations showing me that the primary money advantage was made when you had a large bet out at a high count (favorable to the player), that the fact that blackjacks came at a higher rate WAS THE ONLY REAL MONEY MAKING ADVANTAGE THERE WAS.

This is why, I feel, that the high end strip casinos NO LONGER PAY 3-2 for natural blackjacks...an outrage if ever there is one! Strip casinos now pay 6-5 for a blackjack. I have had heated arguments with pit personnel that the game should no longer be called Blackjack, so "Blackjack" pay 3-2 for naturals.

Unsurprisingly, they never saw it my way. No matter how well you count, you will NEVER win long term with natural blackjacks paying only 6-5, so save your money and your time and just goto Vegas for a good time.

<comment><USER12> I haven't been to Vegas in a few years but I could still find a few 3-2 tables, generally in the back at some places. Also higher minimum tables tended to have better rules.

The tables that were sure to fill up with low stakes, uninformed players, tended to have really bad rules. I've seen 6-5 blackjacks, no splitting aces, and even no doubling after splitting.

Like why not just give the casino the money?

I like playing blackjack because you can sit there for quite awhile and generally not lose too much (that's a relative term of course) while socializing and getting free drinks. I'll run a count after a few shoes here and there but not every shoe as I'm not trying to do this for profit so much as entertainment.

<comment><USER11> Yep...and I never meant to imply that no 3-2 games could e found, just not on the Strip _per se_. El Cortez downtown still has a banging 3-2 $5 blackjack game that's a lot of fun to play.

Your absolutely correct about your approach to the game now. Just sit, try to find a friendly dealer and some fun people to play with, and you will have an outstanding time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like her writing style. Each sentence flows into the next.

Although I'm not quite sure what the last sentence means. She gets caught... and then what?

<comment><USER14> Lol definitely left it hanging at the end there!

<comment><USER15> This looks like an excerpt from the in-progress book mentioned on the author's web site: [http://rozannatravis.com/](http://rozannatravis.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's always fun to read these kinds of stories.

But still in the end, if you distill it all down, doesn't it always come out to the conclusion:

If your potential winnings are capped (fair or not, by the casino), and your losses are unlimited, what is gambling but a slower way to lose a bunch of money while getting a little entertainment out of it? At least for those of us who are not going to become professional card counters...

<comment><USER17> > _what is gambling but a slower way to lose a bunch of money while getting a > little entertainment out of it?_

That's generally how I look at it when I'm in Vegas. I'll take $100 from the ATM and sit down at a poker table. Occasionally I get unlucky and play really poorly and I'm out in an hour, but usually I get at least a few hours, and on the flip side, I've spent an entire night at a table on that $100, and it's a blast. Of course this also depends on the other people at the table, and the dealers that come through. Some tables just aren't that fun to be at (you're of course playing _against_ the other people at the table, and some people take it very seriously), while others are great.

Craps can be a huge amount of fun, especially when people are lucky, because you develop a kind of silly temporary camaraderie with random strangers at the table. Blackjack can be the same way, too (though I never learned how to properly play, so I usually don't last long).

Consider that if you go to see a movie (often $15-25 just for the ticket these days), and you're the kind of person to get concessions and whatnot, you can easily spend $50 or more for 1.5-2 hours of entertainment. I'm cool paying $100 for sometimes 6-8 hours of fun, plus free drinks. Now, for people who don't find that kind of thing fun, then sure, that's not for them. And for people who have a gambling addiction, that's great way to spend money they don't have. But if you enjoy it, and are good about setting yourself monetary limits, and consider your buy-in to be a cost of entertainment, it's fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > But part of me worried that I wasn't seen as enough of a threat to warrant > intervention from casino management. Maybe it meant that I wasn't as good at > this as I thought. Maybe I didn't belong with the team after all.

She felt like because she never got caught, she "wasn't good enough"? How does that make any sense? I get self confidence issues are often irrational but, c'mon...

That's like a criminal lamenting that they weren't a very good criminal because the police could never catch them; everyone knows _real_ criminals get caught and arrested.

<comment><USER19> There's a layer that you're missing, I think.

If you cheat, and cheat badly, it's often the case that the casino has noticed and is choosing to let you continue.

Almost everyone who sits at a high stakes blackjack table thinks they have a system for beating the casino (perhaps by breaking the rules), but in most cases their system doesn't work or they don't execute it well enough to make a consistent profit.

If it's profitable for the casino to allow this type of cheating, they will absolutely let it continue.

I once sat at a table with someone blatantly marking every card that passed through his hand, but not in a way that gave him a hope of profit. The dealer was clearly aware of him doing it, and play continued. (I was quick to leave that table)

<comment><USER20> Adding to this as someone who has mingled with people that worked at some casinos: if you're losing very badly and seem like a 'problem gambler', sometimes they'll send someone to try and dissuade you. It's bad PR if the casinos ruin people. On the other hand, if you're winning a lot, you will get A LOT of scrutiny and extra measures, and if you're cheating, you'll probably get caught.

This is likely why she had that level of nagging doubt. "Am I not winning enough to warrant extra scrutiny? Certainly if I was that good they'd have figured out what I'm doing and busted me?"

<comment><USER21> >if you're losing very badly and seem like a 'problem gambler', sometimes they'll send someone to try and dissuade you. It's bad PR if the casinos ruin people.

That's a really good point. Casinos aren't a windfall business. They're there to rake the 1% advantage on blackjack. It's important to have people at the tables moving money, not to have 1 person lose their $100k nest egg in 12 hours.

<comment><USER22> I disagree. Although I'm not in the business, my understanding from wide reading in the topic is quite the opposite.

Casinos make money from "whales," who may or may not end up ruined to a man, but who are certainly losing enough money to ruin an average bettor.

The guy losing $500 at BJ once in a while (and once in a blue moon winning some back) is the "economy coach class super saver" flyer. Yes, enough of those small fry help defray the fixed costs of the flight. But it's the last minute business class flyer that brings the margin.

Similarly, the real money for the casino is in some mix of 1. problem gamblers, almost by definition, and 2. money laundering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "When I sat down to write, _I was no longer paralyzed with self-doubt. I wasn't thinking of failure, I just wanted to keep trying._ "

This is a brilliant place to be in.

</comment><comment><USER24> The comments about card counting are interesting, but not all that relevant to the story, which is a pretty stock bildungsroman-lite of a sort that by design says very little about anything or anyone beyond its author.

I really feel for people in that kind of situation. Say what you like about the wisdom or foolhardiness of deciding out of high school not to go to college and take on student debt, it did put me in the situation of having very quickly to work out whether and how I was going to be worth a damn - <USER2> flippantly, it put me in the position, at the beginning of my adult life, of deciding what I was going to do _with_ my adult life, and how to go about accomplishing it.

I can't imagine what it must be like to hit your mid-20s with tens of thousands, if not these days six figures, of undischargeable debt, and _then_ have to start figuring out what sort of worth you're going to have in the world. It's a hell of a racket to run on teenagers, and, just as in the casino business against which this writer chose to try herself, it seems like the house always wins in the end.

</comment><comment> 1e-9 I went through a short beat-the-casino phase for kicks. You can increase your edge significantly beyond standard card counting by targeting flaws in casino randomization methods. Randomization is hard. For example, card shuffles aren't random, not even mechanical ones, and particularly not human ones.

It is possible to carefully observe and model a variety of randomization processes at different casinos, find a weakness in a particular game at a particular casino, and construct a profitable strategy that is nearly impossible for the casino to anticipate. Even so, they will eventually notice someone who is a consistent winner, assume you are cheating, and force you to play a stressful game of cat-and-mouse that will lower your expected profit, increase your variance, and lead to a less-than-desirable lifestyle, in my opinion. A team can improve these things at the cost of adding management and human resource headaches.

If you have the talent to succeed at this, my experience is that the same talent can be applied in much more productive endeavors that pay far better and yield a much higher quality of life.

<comment><USER25> > the same talent can be applied in much more productive endeavors that pay > far better and yield a much higher quality of life.

I'd guess that the edge you can get, along with max bets and not drawing attention to yourself means you're better off with a tech or hedge fund job? I've heard that pulling six figures playing poker takes a lot of skill and a lot of grinding. The story of the professional gambler is compelling, but in practice, it seems like most people just aren't smart enough or work hard enough to make it work, or they're smart and work hard enough to do better at something more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I challenged myself to learn to count cards last year and I found it really fun. Being able to count a deck in under 30 seconds is one thing, but putting the skill to work is another challenge completely. It is hard work.

Ultimately, if you aren't playing with a team or $50+ minimums, you won't make a huge amount of money on a per-hour basis. I still count occasionally but now only for one or two shuffles before getting back to having fun with friends.

</comment><comment><USER27> Amazon Prime has the "Inside the Edge" documentary about Blackjack Advantage Player. A lot of insights about how hard it is and how much money they can make now. Basically it looks like this only makes sense against smaller casinos who are behind on countermeasures.

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3575954/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3575954/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't it a "card sharp?"

<comment><AUTHOR> They are synonyms - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sharp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sharp). Curiously, I've never heard the term "card sharp" before (or I mis-heard it as "card shark").

<comment><USER28> I suspect card shark has bled over from loan shark or some other term like that

<comment><USER29> Pool shark perhaps?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Forgive my ignorance but why is tracking the play of the deck not a legitimate strategy?

<comment><USER31> It is a legitimate strategy, but if you do this well enough, the casino will not allow you to play, since you can turn the game's odds into your favor.

<comment><USER32> With face/gant recognition and other means of tracking, once you are barred from play at one casino you are at almost all.

<comment><USER33> they already had this long before facial recognition came into play. they were called griffin books/black books. when you were "caught" they took a photo and a company called griffin investigations would pass this info around to all the other casinos.

<comment><USER34> So was there a person who had the job of memorizing hundreds (thousands?) of faces from a book and then watching every person who came to the tables?

<comment><USER33> These people eventually start winning money at the tables, which will draw attention from casino security. When that happens, yes, someone at security would have to recognize the person there. But once that happens security will also notify the rest of the casinos and its pretty much over by then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I dunno why so many people keep trying to beat the casinos. Casinos hire professionals whose job it is to track card counters and collusion , as well as advanced security systems. All these signals an gestures are obvious to those whose job it is to detect them. Certain patterns of behavior become obvious to the trained eye.

<comment><USER36> The explicit goal of every gambler is to walk out of the room with more money than they started with. The casinos make sure that actually happens sometimes, or else they would have no customers. Under those circumstances, it's basic human nature to look for ways to maximize your return. Many people do that by not gambling, but others try to find loopholes that the casinos haven't figured out yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The article describes the card sharks using disguises, apparently to get around being banned from a casino. Wouldn't that be trespassing, if they've been told not to enter the casino again?

<comment><USER38> Depends. There is an interim step between formally, legally trespassing you, it seems where you are told you are no longer welcome, they may use your camera footage and "ban" you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Counting cards isn't illegal"

it all depends how you are counting them, if you use a secondary device or person assisting, that is cheating, which is illegal, even though you are using it to count.

<comment><USER40> Counting cards is legal, because counting cards is a solo, mental thing. Yes, once you bring in devices or other people, it's not cheating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> to article's author: -it was too short, I want more. Some epilogue or something. This only made me thirsty for more.

<comment><USER42> Looks like the article is an advertisement for a book, it seems it served its purpose

<comment><USER41> well, i like it, so i won't mind buying the book. and if all ads on internet would be written like this then we'll welcome them instead frown upon...my 2 cents</comment></comment></comment>


Gitlo: GitHub-Trello Integration - <AUTHOR> http://gitlo.co?utm=hn <comment><USER2> I'd like to learn more about it, in particular how/if it can work with private repos. What's frustrating is that all the links on the page don't go anywhere other than a login prompt. Do I really need to login to read the FAQ ?

<comment><AUTHOR> FAQ is there: [http://gitlo.co/faq](http://gitlo.co/faq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks very pretty, but the image doesn't really show me how it integrates with Github. Perhaps I am missing something.

The About, FAQ, and T&C links all take me to the top of the home page, changing the URL path to /login# -- do I need to authenticate to find out what it does?

<comment><USER4> The image is directly copied from the Trello website. I also find it a bit strange that I need to first provide my account in order to find out what the service does...

<comment><USER5> The image is definitely a bad choice, I don't know many people working on the kitchen redesign using GitHub.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. It's no longer in kitchen now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Plenty to choose from...

* ZenHub - Project Management for Agile Teams in GitHub || [https://www.zenhub.io/](https://www.zenhub.io/)

* Kanban Software | Online Kanban for Business || [https://kanbanize.com/](https://kanbanize.com/)

* Waffle.io · Work Better on GitHub Issues || [https://waffle.io/](https://waffle.io/)

* Agile issue tracking - sprint.ly || [https://sprint.ly/](https://sprint.ly/)

* SprintHub – Agile Layer for your GitHub Repositories || [http://sprinthub.io/](http://sprinthub.io/)

<comment><USER7> * Kantree | Agile project management (saas + self-hosted) || [https://kantree.io](https://kantree.io)

We already integrated with Github, Trello and Asana.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Both have open APIs and can be easily connected. If your focus is on syncing trello cards to github issues (in multiple repos), there's a small PHP tool[1] we hacked together to connect those APIs (shameless self plug). It also supports 2-way sync.

[1] [https://github.com/loopline-systems/trello-github-issue- mana...](https://github.com/loopline-systems/trello-github-issue-manager)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great! Besides linking up the cards and issues, GITLO supports synchronzing issue and Pull Request status (Open / Close) too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Howcome the the image on the site is just a trello screenshot? This tells me nothing about how your product integrates with GitHub.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a new one now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What are the advantages of Gitlo in comparison to the official Trello GitHub integration[1]?

[1][http://blog.trello.com/github-and-trello-integrate-your- comm...](http://blog.trello.com/github-and-trello-integrate-your-commits/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Gitlo supports 2-way-sync. So you can comment and close cards via Trello?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to use, but I do not understand why many of this GitHub integrations asks for "read code" permission.

I cannot share code on my private repositories, otherwise my company would make them public, hence I cannot use this service.

@gitlo: can you fix this?

<comment><AUTHOR> This permission is required to sync Issues from the private repositories. But actually GITLO doesn't need your code, and will never touch your code as well.

Slack and Waffle have to request this permission to work too :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This application will be able to read and write all public and private repository data. This includes the following:

\- Code \- Issues \- Pull requests \- Wikis \- Settings \- Webhooks and services \- Deploy keys

No sir, you may not have my deploy keys.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I could have trello cards auto move whenever a pull request is created for a card and when pull requests are closed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this similar to ifttt.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is similar to 30 x IFTTT integrations with many and many state management?

GITLO is tailor made for GitHub x Trello, which handles many special use-cases ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What chat service do you use in your website? - <AUTHOR>

I'm deploying my startup website now and I'm really interested in a Facebook-like chat service that I could embed in my website to speak to clients, but I'm having no luck searching google for it. Do you have any advice? <comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Olark seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately I couldn't see them in my Google results

</comment><comment><USER2> Most every business site with live chat I've encountered was using either SnapEngage, Olark or LivePerson.

</comment><comment><USER3> Olark is very common from what I notice. I like their simple interface as well.</comment>


First 5 Minutes Troubleshooting A Server - <AUTHOR> http://devo.ps/blog/2013/03/06/troubleshooting-5minutes-on-a-yet-unknown-box.html <comment><USER2> That's what I often do, however it is clear that most of this tasks can be done automatically, so there should be somebody doing a 'linux-doctor' open source project that will try to identify issues automatically. Assuming it does not exist, but I never saw it before.

<comment><USER3> DataDog[1] + PagerDuty[2] do a good job at being linux-doctor. You have to be pro-active about it though...

[1] <http://www.datadoghq.com/>

[2] <http://www.datadoghq.com/>

<comment><USER4> Data Dog is pretty fantastic really. We love it at devo.ps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a simple bash script which is a good starting point for checking server issues.

<https://github.com/BashtonLtd/whatswrong>

The idea isn't too tell you the problem exactly, but more to stop you missing things that are obviously wrong.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish I had recorded some of my better moments when I worked web hosting tech support. Being able to jump onto a box, poke around at two or three things, notice something wrong from that, and come up with a solution was magic. It's hard to believe unless you actually see it happen, though.

I have the recording capability now (and, more importantly, playback too), but the constant influx of broken boxes is gone. Funny how that works.

<comment><USER7> What do you use for recording and playback?

<comment><USER6> Recording: 'script' from util-linux, with a custom patch or two to make it less broken. <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/03/02/bugfix/>

Playback: a fork of term.js derived from the jslinux terminal with some minor adjustments, plus a wrapper of my own which plays back the data with timing intact. <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/03/04/jvt/>

I've been using them to demonstrate how I go about writing certain bits of code, with the goal of eventually showing the creation of something larger.

<comment><USER8> Script with saved timestamps is a godsend.

Particularly useful when you're accessing via a serial console, as you'll get full boot from BIOS. You can both log and troubleshoot based on output.

Playback utilities can take a multiplier to speed (or slow) playback from realtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty similar (even we start with the same two commands) to what I typically do in my checklist :-)

[http://www.fduran.com/blog/quick-linux-server-review-for- mor...](http://www.fduran.com/blog/quick-linux-server-review-for-mortals/)

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the most useful pieces of information for me when troubleshooting is network activity. Both network monitors and traffic flows can often tell you exactly what the problem is so you don't have to spend five minutes collecting data samples.

<comment><USER11> A ring bufferred dumpcap is a huge time saver. Narrows the scope of troubleshooting quickly and reliably. Start with looking at what actually happened on the wire for X problem. Then use the rest of the tools/logs etc... to determine why it happened that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally, I think that top and vmstat are a bit low on the list; they're typically the first things that I run. While they're too general to provide good troubleshooting of the actual problem, they do a great job of pointing out to me where the problem probably is.

User experience reports are nice, but rarely indicate something other than "load is high", or "server is unresponsive". vmstat and top not only can tell you that, they can start telling you why and where to look for your problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've written a command (that we're still playing around with here) to take a 'snapshot' of things that a server is doing (many of the things mentioned in this article). This can allow you to look at it later to see what's going on.

<https://github.com/rory/SystemAutopsy>

</comment><comment><USER14> One key thing missing imo. "history" can be a huge help. Even more so if there are multiple admins on call.

<comment><USER15> And the infamous reboot?

<comment><USER16> A reboot is the _last_ thing you should be doing on a problematic box. A reboot should only be attempted if you're 100% sure that the problem can actually be solved by a reboot (for example in extreme cases a buggy kernel module might require a reboot, but even that's a very rare occurrence).

I've seen inexperienced sysadmins remotely rebooting a server only to discover that it won't boot up anymore because the original problem was that the server had run out of disk space.

<comment><USER15> Yes, that's why I think the article should mention reboot.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a valid point; mention that one should not reboot until proven otherwise.

Same idea for services restart; don't do it unless absolutely needed. While it may be doing the trick in some cases it can also generate its own set of new false symptoms.

Take the example of :

\- mysql is "slow"

\- let's restart ! ...

\- mysql init script has been puking dots (.) for the last 30 minutes on shutdown

\- let's kill -9 it ! ...

\- mysql db is corrupted ! Hurray!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> doing "ps auxf" will put "ps aux" in forest mode and give you the same effect as "pstree -a" while giving you all the information that "ps aux" will give.

</comment><comment><USER18> Something that's been missed: atop Its a similar set to top/htop and friends, but has an additional system process snapshot daemon, allowing us to answer the perennial question of how a server got into a particular state. Something particularly useful is the wide view (see here: <http://www.atoptool.nl/screenshots.php>) and average disk response times in ms.

</comment><comment><USER19> What I found interesting while reading this article was the parallel to what a doctor does when diagnosing problems.

In medicine, it's commonly known that the interview with the patient (the 'history') is the first thing a doctor should be doing. Not just because it establishes a relationship with the patient, but because the diagnosis of most illnesses is guided primarily by the history [1] - even with modern MRI machines and DNA amplification techniques! At the very least the chat with the client provides context for the problem that you are investigating - you are now putting flesh on a skeleton of meaning rather than trying to create it on your own.

This article stresses the importance of first getting a verbal 'history' from the client - what the problem is, characteristics of the problem, time-course of the problem and co-incidence with other events (like software upgrades). There is also a parallel to medicine in that in this field a skilled practitioner may be able to diagnose the problem based solely on the history alone [2].

The second thing I noticed was the fault-finding mindset. As a medical student halfway through his second year of hospital placements this is something I took some time to learn. The initial approach to finding the reason for a problem is usually to (1)think of a possible reason for the problem, (2)try to fix that reason, and (3)if that doesn't work, goto 1. While this is a good because it shows you are actually thinking about the cause of the problem rather than its effects, it's not the most efficient way of going about things. One way doctors can narrow down problems is by restricting them to systems such as the cardiovascular system or the neurological system. A searing pain in your chest is more likely to be due to a problem with your heart or lungs than due to a problem with your kidneys or gonads.

This article takes exactly the same view of servers, classifying the individual hardware and software components that make up the vast majority of (linux) servers in the wild.

I don't fiddle around with servers much any more, but I'm bookmarking this page because it is such a useful illustration of a fault-finding mentality.

[1] [http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=11058...](http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1105870) [2] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/08/29/10344...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/08/29/10344405.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER20> I always cringe when I see shell code like this > cat /etc/passwd | cut -f1 -d:

Usually this comes as > ps -ef | grep something | grep -v grep | grep -v $myownpid

why not use _one_ simple and concise awk statement which does it all in one go?

awk -F: '{print$1}' /etc/passwd ps -ef | awk '/[h]ttpd/{print$2}'

But apart from that: very nice summary of things to consider and the sequence for analysis.

<comment><USER21> > why not use one simple and concise awk statement which does it all in one > go? >awk -F: '{print$1}' /etc/passwd ps -ef | awk '/[h]ttpd/{print$2}'

IMO is easier to type the "grep/grep -v" statements than the awk ones. Usually we are more used to use grep and we add pipes and filters until we get the expected result.

I'm using zsh and thanks to the Global Aliases I can do, though: $ ps -ef G something GV grep GV ownpid

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On OSX (even though the HN title says linux, the original article title doesn't say "Linux" and many of the same steps apply to OSX server), you can't run dmesg as a normal user -- you have to run it as root or within sudo

</comment><comment><USER23> It's a nice checklist. I personally would do dmesg and log-checks right at the beginning. Also checking sw-raid and drives is missing (cat /proc/mdstat, hdparm, fdisk -l, smartctl ...)

</comment><comment><USER24> A quite good check list/advice on server trubleshooting. The ones I am mostly missing in the list is network tools such as telnet/dig/ip/fping/mtr.

</comment><comment><USER8> vmstat and iostat are also useful for tracking memory issues.

sysstat ('sar') reporting can also provide some of that much-needed history. Sar output is pretty readily visualized with utilities such as gnuplot.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yet another site that disables pinch zoom for iOS devices. Pointless..

<comment><USER4> Not sure why it is so: I'll look into it today.

<comment><USER26> Take the maximum-scale out of your meta viewport tag.

<meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum- scale=1'/>

<comment><USER4> Fixed. Thanks for the tip and sorry for the annoyance. That was coming straight from the Jekyll boilerplate I used: Foundation (<https://github.com/Wiredcraft/foundation>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> the crontab business is unnecessary. ls /var/spool/cron?

other than that, I learned some new tools - ss is pretty awesome!

</comment><comment><USER28> df -i

</comment><comment><USER29> network cable light

</comment><comment><USER30> All these commands are very fine and handy but...

Typically they're better when you can put them in context: you _should_ run all these regularly on fully working servers which you know are operating normally so you have "something" you can compare your results to when the shit hits the fan.</comment>


I've supported myself for the past decade with my side project - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-work-week-for-a-decade <comment><USER2> Great story from a great era.

And as I was reading this I was humming Springsteen to myself

 _" Glory days, well, they'll pass you by

Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye

Glory days, glory days"_

Turns out directlyrics doesn't have those lyrics. Google however returned them at top of the search homepage.

And... wow!

TIL there is a version of this great song with a verse that was not included in the original 80s version.

 _" My old man worked twenty years on the line

And they let him go

Now everywhere he goes out looking for work

They just tell him that he's too old"_

Here's the video: [https://youtu.be/P5-IoEcolp8](https://youtu.be/P5-IoEcolp8)

 _Glory days!_

</comment><comment><USER3> Great story. I worked as your competitor with metrolyrics about 5 years ago. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. I think you put the correct amount of effort in, added some value and moved on nicely. Much kudos

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like starting a business with a massive theft of other people's intellectual property isn't a great model to follow.

<comment><USER5> Serious question: is this theft of IP? I know if a songwriter writes a song, you need to license it in order to perform it for profit, but are the actual lyrics intellectual property?

<comment><USER6> Lyrics are copyrighted. Musical scores may be separately copyrighted. Individual performances or recordings of music and lyrics together may also be separately copyrighted.

Typically, the latter is pursued by recording companies, because that is the IP they own or exclusively license. The rest is rarely handled by the individual rights-holders, as they usually just let ASCAP or a similar organization handle the business and litigation end, and just cash the royalty checks.

Licensing the lyrics should be a whole lot cheaper than the music or a specific recording. So it would not cost a lyrics site as much to be fully legit as it would for a music streaming site. Likewise, it may cost less to license a cover band to perform something than to license the recording made of it by a famous group, if the song was not actually written by them. This is why ABC's Dancing With the Stars uses so many covers, but obviously still uses recognizable recordings where Disney already has or can cheaply obtain a performance license.

<comment><USER7> > Likewise, it may cost less to license a cover band to perform something than > to license the recording made of it by a famous group, if the song was not > actually written by them.

You could even pay the original artist to perform it. The recording is what's licensed, not all performances by that artist. On Spotify I've seen quite a few older artists re-recording their old hits, presumably because they get more money if they themselves own the license to their own cover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, OP here. Happy to answer any specific question...

<comment><USER8> Why does [https://www.directlyrics.com](https://www.directlyrics.com) have a TITLE of "Azlyrics" and an H1 of "Azlyrics" but [http://www.azlyrics.com](http://www.azlyrics.com) seems to be an entirely unrelated web site? The latter is typically what I end up at when I search for song lyrics if I click one of the first few links (though if I want to read some amusing analysis, usually there is a Genius.com link a few below).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, good eye. A great example of continuious testing SEO opportunities.

What if Google would start ranking directlyrics on specific 'azlyrics' queries? I haven't seen it happen yet, but if it worked... expect it to be reverted next week.

<comment><USER8> Right, so you're using one of your competitors' names quite prominently on your own site? And, er, you think that's ok?

<comment><USER6> It's AZLyrics's responsibility to police their own trademarks, so it's okay, unless they say it is not in a C&D letter.

So it's _legally_ okay, as far as we know.

Still a dick move, though. It's not okay in _my opinion_. But I'm not the one who may gain or lose thousands of dollars by deciding whether or not to do it, either. I can't say for certain whether it would be okay or not from outside my comfy judgment armchair.

<comment><USER9> It's blatant, intentional trademark infringement for direct commercial gain. IANAL, but I would think this might result in something quite a bit more expensive than a C&D -- like a lawsuit with punitive damages.

ETA: and now the site owner is _on record here on HN_ stating that the intent was to steal search traffic. I'm sure this is a cutthroat business ... but this is an open invitation for one's own throat to be cut.

<comment><AUTHOR> So many lawyers here on HN, I forgot...

<comment><USER9> It's not us you need to worry about. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> how much has rapgenius taken away from you? i know i used to land up in one of many crappy lyrics sites, such as yours, because those seem to be the only places to find them but these days i mostly stick to rapgenius for its clean interface. i imagine rapgenius's rise must have done some damage with their clearly superior technology?

<comment><USER11> It's also cool that artists will jump on to elaborate on their own lyrics. Here's Eminem talking about his hook in 'Rap God' [https://genius.com/2566991](https://genius.com/2566991)

<comment><USER12> Do they jump on because of the community, as part of a PR plan, or does Genius pay them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The transition from unlicensed to licensed seems like a big step. Did the publishers just reach out and ask you to pay a fee?

<comment><AUTHOR> So back in 2010 the first law suit started against lyrics sites: > [http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/californ...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/california/cacdce/2:2009cv06160/452250/219/)

It was pretty clear that others would be next. Hence unlicensed wouldn't be maintainable.

Next to that, I wanted to sell advertising to big brands. My advertising partner insisted we needed to be licensed for the Coca Cola's of this world to spend money on my traffic.

So for me it was an opportunity to increase revenue, at the costs of lower profit margin.

<comment><USER14> I think the commenter's question was more about _how_ you did it :) (Thanks for answering questions here btw)

Did publishers just reach out to say "hey, pay this fee"? Or did they straight up start with lawsuits/C&D? Or did you reach out to them and say "hey I got this site, how much do I pay you to become licensed?"

<comment><AUTHOR> So I went out and found licensing pro-actively. I wasn't contacted before in a formal way. But I know they (NMPA) did sent C&D letters to over 40 domains eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found one line from that article really funny:

> an LA-based company that was run by a self-proclaimed co-founder of MySpace

I've met several people in southern california that say they are myspace co- founders. Why on earth is myspace the go-to mark for them?

<comment><USER16> Big enough for name recognition, but obscure enough that most people don't know offhand who founded it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Read the whole article waiting to find out how he got the lyrics and was disappointed. An article on a website selling content should at least include the source of the content.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've contracted malware twice from merely clicking on Google search results for lyrics. I never visit lyrics sites anymore.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd be curious to see some month to month (or year to year) financial charts.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually pretty aligned with the traffic graph shown.

Exceptions are months (e.g. around Christmas) where my advertising partner would be able to attract up to 3x revenue from the same amount of traffic as the month before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "And that's all there is to it." srsly?

</comment><comment><USER21> That's a lot of content to get licensed. You have to individually negotiate with every band and artist to get the license for their lyrics?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are two companies available who are intermediaries between me (site) and the lyrics publisher (writer) and handle all licensing:

\- Gracenote (they sold their lyrics licensing to lyricfind)

\- Lyricfind

E.g. Google and Bing also license their lyrics offering through Lyricfind.

I only deal with them.

<comment><USER22> Out of curiosity, is getting the rights to a lyric catalogue a 4 figure, 5 figure, 6 figure deal?

<comment><AUTHOR> Back then there was a minimum commitment in the 6 figures.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why So Few Women Break Through Tech's Bro Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-02/why-so-few-women-break-through-tech-s-bro-culture-quicktake-q-a <comment><USER2> This is a good point-by-point discussion and worth a read. It isn't really about 'bro culture', more about underrepresentation of women in software development.

As with many such articles, this one talks a bit about the toxic reception women get in the video game industry. While the game world's treatment of women is particularly nasty, male developers don't exactly have an easy time there either. It's a nasty business. While game development is a good source of lurid examples of mistreatment, I feel like that particular industry is not a good proxy for tech in general. Happy to be shown to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> At risk of drifting a bit off topic, the Keith Rabois "if you're not bleeding from your eyes you're not really trying" attitude probably isn't helping either. Women are more sensitive to these things, for all sorts of reasons from shouldering a greater share of family burdens (not just child care BTW), to maintaining broader friend networks, to general attitudes about spending time in vs. outside the home. "This is your home now" can be unappealing to men, but IMX it's at least 2x more so for women.

</comment><comment><USER4> A couple of observations:

1) The discrepancy starts at an early age. When I was in college, there were very few women in my CS classes, and nearly all of them were international students. This SMBC comes to mind more than anything else: [http://www.smbc- comics.com/?id=1883](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883)

2) Looking at my own employer, I noticed some interesting things. First off, we're a mid-size B2B telecom with a _very_ corporate culture, which is antithetical to the "tech bro" startups that are often discussed on HN. Different departments have strikingly different gender ratios. Only sales and technology are really male dominated, and even then they're not exclusively male. All departments outside of sales and technology are either gender- diverse or female-dominated. In sales: our sales operations and client experience teams are diverse, and we have a few female executives. In technology, our business intelligence/data warehousing people and our business analysts are all women, the QA lead is female, and we have a couple of female software engineers and a female IT tech. I am the only woman in the network engineering department, though. We're still above the curve compared to SV tech bro startups, though, and I have never once felt discriminated against for my gender.

<comment><USER5> I noticed to same (2) in all the startups I have worked at!

about (1), to make matters worse, most of those international students are kicked out of US because their luck didn't favor them with the H1b lottery.

A few years ago, as an international student myself, I found it weird to see hardly (compared to other courses) any American women (of any color/race) in CS/EE/CE/IT courses.

Some of the international students (including women) who graduated also had to leave US because no H1b.

Easy way to flood US tech companies with techie women is to give unconditional Green Cards to International students (stapled to women graduates' degrees). That way there wont be anyone pointing fingers at the pipeline. (the article also doesn't mention a solution to this problem)

Once there's close to 50% parity in tech work places, in a few years, girls in US will have enough "women in tech" role models to look up to.

Until then, they can feel comfortable in the techy bro culture only if they love Star Wars, Marvel and DC comics, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and console games, which is not a lot of women (and men) out there.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying we should have H1B quotas exclusively for women (as you say "stapled to women graduates' degrees")?

How is that not discrimination?

<comment><USER5> Not specifically H1b. H1b visa by itself gives unfair leverage to the employer, combine that with work place bias against women, especially in tech companies, I'd be surprised if any non male employee on a H1b visa dares to speak up against any kind of sexual harassment.

w.r.t "Staple to graduate degrees", I meant green cards(gc). Similar to how canada does based on points. And sure, not just for women, anyone who is eligible based on points, should get a GC stapled

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've found it interesting how my colleagues refer to the gender of hypothetical engineers. One principal engineer that I work with always uses "Suzie" in examples; "If Suzie is ..., she ...". Many others simply use the pronoun "he/him". ("When a manger..., he should ...").

I'm not sure if the principal engineer chooses "Suzie" deliberately because of her gender, but as a female engineer I really respect him for it and appreciate it anyway. Conversely, while I don't find it that big of a deal, I do lose a bit of respect for the speaker when I notice them only using "he/him".

Something to consider.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have two sisters - one is an engineer and the other holds a degree in romance philology. From their accounts I can tell, that the sexism is real regardless of the type of industry, but its source is usually this one person in the team who either: a) Is the owner of the company and also a pig. b) Disregards any warnings directed to him which are toothless anyway, because the company cannot afford to fire him(Über much?).

</comment><comment><USER9> It is amazing how quickly the slur "bro" has become an accepted part of the public lexicon.

<comment><USER10> since when is "bro"! a slur???

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Innate differences.

Its time to accept the fact that some things are simply more fit for man and some for woman and that there is nothing to be done about it.

If we take gaming as an example, man are simply more devoted/involved, generally. Do they like to play more with things or they have better spatial ability or whatever else, its irrelevant - it is clear to anybody who actually does games what the situation is. Sure, I played with some woman that are better then most man, but that only strengthens the point.

There is no reason to be politically correct about it or ashamed to admit it or make a strategy about it. Just acceptance.

</comment><comment><USER12> This word "Bro" is banded around a lot without a clear definition. I've taken it to mean some sort of combination of sports-team-like camaraderie, aggressive in-group socialization and ingrained misogyny.

In the case of tech, this couldn't be further from the truth. The vast majority of programmers are introverted, quiet and socially awkward.

I have a theory that part of the contention about the skewed gender ratios in tech is due to Millenial female entitlement. Imagine if your entire adult life you'd been pandered to at every step:

1) If you are remotely attractive, men will bend over backwards to ask you out on dates or be friends, the stories I hear from female friends are absolutely amazing - the insanely extreme lengths of tolerance men will go to. On a social level, you can be flakey, lacking in personality and never initiate anything and yet there'll always be some sexually-desperate guy trying to win you over. Sure, its not genuine interest, but its constantly there.

I've actually tried this before, creating the most boring possible profile on online dating sites, to see what will happen. Within minutes, decent-quality men send you reams upon reams of sweet messages ("Oh you're from the midwest too? Golly I miss it there" etc). You get endless validation without any effort.

2) In education, news and job-hunting there are endless women's groups, women's incubators, women-only nights here, free entry in places for being female. You're winning from stage 1. You can breeze into large companies because they're so desperate to fix that embarrassing gender skew.

All of this goes to your head until you finally join that coveted startup, or finally take those gender-blind exams and actually have to produce the goods. No one is giving you a leg up any more and suddenly you realize that things are really hard.

I'd be upset too.</comment>


Want Some Awesome Life Advice? - <AUTHOR> http://anatown.com/index.php/2017/01/29/awesome-life-advice/ <comment><USER2> > Buy jewelry and fancy things for yourself.

Ugh, "awesome life advice". Treating yourself well doesn't necessarily involve buying things. Consumer culture really is quite insidious. No, I don't need some friggin jewelry to be happy or have a happy life. I don't need to buy my partner a $<too_high> diamond ring.

Treat yourself well by investing in what you actually use- a quality bed, quality pillow, quality shoes, quality clothes, quality tools. You don't need many things to be happy, just a few quality ones. The rest is better served as life experiences like traveling, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I could go 80:20 on this. I doubt the 20 that doesn't attract me lines up with anyone else's but the bottom line is to be kind to yourself, in being kind to others.</comment>


Animated Atari Logo - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/labs/animated-atari-logo

<comment><USER2> If anyone's looking for a good front-end dev/designer, they should totally hire the guy that made this when he gets back from backpacking in China / Southeast Asia. I've worked with him before and he knows his stuff.</comment>


Show HN: Myelin – Machine Learning on Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/introducing-myelin-4e8dc8968981 <comment><AUTHOR> We are looking to get some feedback from the Hacker News community.

Code examples: [https://github.com/myelinio/myelin- examples](https://github.com/myelinio/myelin-examples)

Installation: [https://myelin.io/#blog](https://myelin.io/#blog)

Let me know if you have any questions! Looking forward to your comments/feedback.</comment>


Are You Going to Leave Facebook for Diaspora? - <AUTHOR> http://thefastertimes.com/socialmedia/2010/09/26/will-you-join-the-facebook-diaspora/

<comment><USER2> If a significant amount of my friends do, yes. I'll probably wait to delete my Facebook account until at least some of my friends are on Diaspora.</comment>


US health insurers doubled profits in second quarter amid pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/14/us-health-insurers-coronavirus-pandemic-profit <comment><USER2> Friend of mine works at Anthem doing dental contracts. He said they were making money hand over fist for the last few months, because everyone was still paying premiums, but no one was filing claims because most dentist offices were closed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This headline reads like it's a bad thing... Elective procedures keep hospitals open and costs low. When we look at the year in whole, I'm sure things will even out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well almost all elective procedures have been off the table for 4 or 5 months here so i'm not sure why this should come as surprise to anyone.</comment>


Apps that Sync Music Across Devices Prompt Copyright Concerns  - <AUTHOR> http://www.project-disco.org/intellectual-property/051013-group-playback-apps-let-you-choose-your-own-copyright-adventure/ Thanks to Rob for his interest!
We demoed the app for him at event last Saturday and it worked as it always does for us.
Bummed during his personal demo he didnt have same success.  Thus we are testing the heck out of it and if interested helping test let us know in the comments here.  We'd appreciate it - thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to Rob for his interest in our work and this space!

We are bummed the app didn't work during his personal/private test like it did when we demoed it at a conference last week to him and attendees.

His private test is helpful, as we are now looking for services to test the heck out of our product before our upcoming release.

If interested in helping us in this regards, please leave a comment. Thank you!</comment>


The Awesomest 7-year Postdoc - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life/

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw this through a friend on Facebook and it really resonated with me. I'm slowly approaching the completion of my PhD and it occurs to me that I'm not entirely certain what I plan to do with it. At this point though, I'm fairly certain that I don't want to go the R1 route.

I sometimes forget this myself, but I don't really have a master plan. I just do whatever seems most interesting and important to me at any given time, and I really don't think it's too terrible a philosophy. Interestingly, that would make this PhD the longest pet project of my life so far.

Edit: Just noticed that this article was already posted

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081501)</comment>


The Costly Paradox of Health-Care Technology - <AUTHOR> http://m.technologyreview.com/news/518876/the-costly-paradox-of-health-care-technology/ <comment><USER2> > In every industry but one, technology makes things better and cheaper.

that's because "better and cheaper" usually means more profit.

> Why is it that innovation increases the cost of health care?

because the health industry recognized there was no cap on "demand" \-- how much of your savings would you spend in order to keep yourself from dying? -- so they set out to make as much money as they could from the rich people.

no procedure was too costly -- the more it cost, the better! there was always some rich person who was willing to pay it.

then, because that model basically incentivized everyone to get insurance, the health industry realized that they could rob _everyone_, not just the rich people, by hiding the real cost of their industry via "insurance premiums".

spread out your bloated costs over enough people such that nobody realizes just how obscene they really are, and bingo!

over time, _everyone_ was demanding the expensive treatments, egged on by the system that said "insurance will pay for it", as if "insurance" was this magical money-tree up in the clouds.

so now they have essentially forced _everyone_ to pay out _all_ of our life- savings in order to keep ourselves alive, either by "health insurance" or by outrageous medical bills.

one way or the other, they'll eventually get all your money. because your cash does you no good when you are dead, buster.

and then, of course, you'll end up dying anyway. tough luck.

> Yossarian was moved very deeply

> by the absolute simplicity of

> this clause of Catch-22 and

> let out a respectful whistle.

>

> "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

>

> "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

-bowerbird</comment>


Show HN: Nightcoders.net, a cloud IDE for ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://nightcoders.net/ <comment><USER2> Nice,this is super awesome.</comment>


Three Startup Dudes looking for an apartment in SV - <AUTHOR>

After two years of dominating the soccer-playing robotic dog world, two of us are doing a startup in the education space.  One of us works for a startup.  We need an apartment!
Any suggestions for Mountain View, Palo Alto, or SF would be totally sweet, and by that I mean completely awesome. No need to exalt the virtues or bitch about the landlords at YScraper -- we've read quite a bit about it.
Rock On! <comment><USER2> Mountain View and Sunnyvale both have a decent number of "reasonable" areas, though that's all a relative term. I moved out here about a year ago and was looking for something with a balance of affordability, comfort, and location (near Stanford). Most of Palo Alto was out of the question because of price, and I never really felt comfortable (safe) in East Palo Alto or the parts of Palo Alto near 101. Going north, Menlo Park and Atherton are even more expensive. Redwood City can be somewhat cheaper but neither the area nor the apartments were in great shape.

So, that leaves Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Both cities are very safe and quiet (maybe _too_ quiet for some). There are a lot of apartments in these two cities which aren't ridiculously expensive. However, most of the apartment complexes are relatively small, so your best bet is to come down here and drive around and see which complexes meet your needs.

I personally moved to Mountain View near Rengstorff Ave. and California St., an area we call "apartment city" because the housing is so dense. It's quiet and residential and there's a lot of shopping within walking distance. I definitely recommend this area, but you should still come down and check it out before signing a lease.

As an aside, I've got some experience with startups in education. I worked for a couple successful startups in higher education, and almost founded a K-12 company in the spring. Drop me an email if you'd like to share war stories -- now, or after you move.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey man! Thanks a lot. This is all great stuff.

We actually visited a place very near 'apartment city' today. Not bad. I like MV a lot, despite it being quiet. I figure we can also go into the city and, without distractions, work is bound to flow.

I'll stay in touch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Used to work in Sunnyvale and I have friends who live in San Jose and Mountain View. Have lived in SF, Foster City, Burlingame, and San Mateo now.

Sunnyvale got its wide variety of low cost rent places and decent Indian and Cheap and good Asian food places. El Camino Real is basically a mobius loop of America e.g. McDonalds, Starbucks, Ethnic Zone, repeat. Sister used to live in Mountain View off 85 by the Albertsons. Personally, if you're gonna live in Mountain View, somewhere close to downtown Castro Street would be cool to get food and beers and that kind of stuff. A bunch of startups (Meebo?) are around that area too.

Foster City is quiet. They have a bunch of golf courses and a Costco going for it. San Mateo is just about in the middle of everything, I like it because of the laid back downtown and being 5 min from the airport, 15 min from SV, 20 min (no traffic) from the city. That being said, San Mateo dies after 9pm. So if you're one of those party types lookin for a midnight saturnalia, the city is your only hope.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey man, thanks a lot for the overview. This is some of the best information I've gotten yet.

We've seen a bunch of places in Palo Alto and Mountain View that we could see ourselves living in. We've walked around Castro and University Ave's to get a feel for those city centers.

Thanks particularly descriptions of those other areas I've haven't heard about but now see popping up in the craigslist ings.

<comment><USER3> No prob man. Startup guys should help each other out :D.

Drop by san mateo some time. Drive up 101 and get off the 3rd Avenue exit heading West. Check out the area around 2nd to 4th Avenue, and B Street to El Camino. Got a movie theater, a Japanese Tea Garden and Central Park that hosts Free Concerts and Outdoor Shakespeare events, Caltrain station, and Ramen shops galore. Not to mention there are/were a bunch of techs that made it big time here. Youtube and Napster to name a few.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=E+3rd+Ave+and+B+Street,+San+Mateo,+California+94401,+United+States&sll=37.566708,-122.322958&sspn=0.017553,0.027852&ie=UTF8&ll=37.566113,-122.322421&spn=0.017553,0.027852&z=15&iwloc=addr&om=1)

<comment><USER3> I guess while we're on the topic, I might as well kill it with TMI. The city in itself has its own little zones and flavors. I'm sure there are readers more familiar with the intricacies of each area, but Mission is really grunge and you could get mugged but in a cool way kinda thing. Major street cred if you pull a startup off from the Mission. SOMA has a bunch of newly minted apartment buildings. There are quite a few startup incubators (e.g. South Park) and existing startups (Six Apart) in the area. You'll also find office sharing available in that area. North Beach has its coffee shops and food. Potrero Hill is cheap and got its share of bars and convenient local good eats. On the west side of the city you got Golden Gate, Sunset, New Chinatown. If Soma and the Financial District are the respectable areas but culturally dead (unless you count Pacbell Park and Sony Metreon as culture) and Mission is the Wild Indie Fest, the rest are all somewhere in-between. Worth looking at if you're concerned about fit. And you can't afford Pacific Heights so skip it. Friend of mine was thinking of moving out to Russian Hill, claimed it was nice and close to a lot of clubs so it was convenient for the wink wink. OH yeah. Check out the Castro too. Walk ALL around the area... thats where you whip out your leather pants with no buttcheeks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Follow Rank and Follows in Common for Twitter, a GreaseMonkey Script - <AUTHOR> http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/64286

<comment><AUTHOR> What does it do? Displays the "Follows in Common" and the "Follow Rank" for a given users profile page, and lets you discover how important they are in your (Twitter) Social Network. Requires FireFox, GreaseMonkey extension(<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748>), and use of <http://www.Twitter.com></comment>


Facebook's grand plan for the future - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/57933bb8-fcd9-11df-ae2d-00144feab49a.html#axzz17BFI1gMU

<comment><USER2> Facebook is the big story of the decade, but I wish publications who do these puff pieces do a better job for covering the company.

The quote below is enlightening:

"This is a somewhat different Zuckerberg to the one the public knew just a year ago. In recent months he has transformed from an awkward wunderkind with a preternatural ability to anticipate where the web is going, into an amicable executive unafraid of laying out his grand plan."

So, Mark has become better at communicating the vision of where the web is going. And what exactly is this vision? It is that Facebook will grow and expand and with one of the largest audience platforms in the world, any move it makes into adjacent domains (places, deals) will be instantly successful. Talk about self-realizing prophecies and stating the obvious.

Next:

"In other words, the world will be experienced through the filter of one's Facebook friends."

If you think this is a strength, it is actually not. On the open web the universe is the set of all indexed pages. On Facebook, this universe depletes to what your connections know/discover and now the pages that have the opengraph data on them. I do think that we are quite safe from a world which is exclusively experienced via Facebook because it can't, as things stand, represent the actual universe of information out there.

Facebook is a big and important company, but it is also at the height of a frenzy in a domain that is desperate to realize some of the potential it holds - thus the breathless accounts from media, bloggers and of course, the investors. We keep hearing about 500MM active users, but last I checked, they had about 130MM visits in a day, which is not too far off from what a Youtube gets at 103MM. Some degree of perspective is badly required in analyzing these companies, especially when you have nearly zero public data to rely on.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The fear, according to people close to Google, is that as Facebook users index the web through their Likes and shares, Google's algorithmic indexing of the web will become less relevant. "Search is a business that will be pretty profoundly disrupted by social media," said Augie Ray, an analyst with Forrester Research. "Ultimately, what matters to you is not what Google thinks is important, it's what your friends think is important."_

What ultimately matters to you is what you think is important. Whether Google's algorithms or Facebook's social graph better predicts what's important to you remains to be seen.

Actually, what really matters is what you will pay for. Google's algorithms are currently winning at figuring that out.

<comment><USER2> The entire concept of 'like' and 'share' via the open graph has been badly misread.

What OG gives Facebook is the ability to classify and index (not sure if they are doing this) 'active' pages on the internet. Look at it as a cheaper and more efficient way of classifying pages on the web that are being accessed by users. The OG metadata identifies the page content in a structured manner, thus offloading a lot of the classification pains to the content publishers.

It is a smart way of attacking the subset of active pages, but it can't compare to the indexing and classification of a larger web - which is what Google does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "According to comScore, about one in four online display adverts in the US now appears on Facebook."

Most of the Facebook ads are easily ignored, but some are quite well targeted to things I'm actually interested in.

There's far too many "get a college degree" ads that don't go away no matter how many times I give negative feedback on them. Note to facebook- if I explicitly reject an ad more than once, you're wasting opportunity by showing it to me again, no matter how high the ppc is for education-related ads.

But there's also a decent percentage of very, very niche items that are advertised that I am truly interested in. I click on FB way, way. WAY more than I do on any Google ads.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe Robert Scoble was prescient [2009].

"Here's the phases of Facebook:

Phase 1. Harvard only.

Phase 2. Harvard+Colleges only.

Phase 3. Harvard+Colleges+Geeks only.

Phase 4. All those above+All People (in the social graph).

Phase 5. All those above+People and businesses in the social graph.

Phase 6. All those above+People, businesses, and well-known objects in the social graph.

Phase 7. All people, businesses, objects in the social graph."

[http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/21/why-facebook-has-never- list...](http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/21/why-facebook-has-never-listened-and- why-it-definitely-wont-start-now/)

> The takeaway from that is that the social features are really the killer > part of this," Zuckerberg told me. "Having good social integration is more > important than high-res photos."

Look at the rapid rise of Instagram. If you make a product that makes you appear cooler to your friends and followers, you can attract a lot of users quickly.

[1] "Previously, Instagram reported 100,000 users in its first week post launch. The startup is now said to be close to the 1 million mark"

[http://news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20101203/tc_mashable/instag...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20101203/tc_mashable/instagram_now_seeing_two_to_three_photo_uploads_per_second)

</comment><comment><USER6> "During his presentation, Zuckerberg uses words such as 'revolution' and 'disruption'."

Fun to contrast this with Jobs thoughts from the interview that was on HN recently: "What's the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?

The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't. "

<comment><USER7> Yeah the comparison between Jobs' veteran attitude and Zuckerberg's um, exuberance came across strongly reading this. The personal computing revolution was far more important, in my opinion; and if Jobs doesn't think that Apple technology isn't changing the world significantly then Facebook certainly won't. Slogans like "This changes everything. Again" for the iPhone 4 are just marketing spin.

 _"Zuckerberg was still on stage, an analyst leans over to me and says, "They just changed local commerce forever." It wasn't even lunchtime yet."_

Wrong, wrong, wrong. First, they haven't done anything yet. Not anything visible that I can see anyway. (The 'analyst' is speaking in the past tense.) Secondly, people like to read newspapers and magazines, watch tv then go browsing shops and buy stuff they may need or not based on ads they saw. Facebook or the internet does not enter the equation. The majority of people I know are like this to one degree or another. Amazon and eBay, two companies aimed squarely at bringing shopping online, haven't dampened people's affinity for buying stuff on the high street. And they've been around for years.

 _"What we're imagining is very different," says Chris Cox, who dropped out of Stanford to join the company in 2005 and is now one of Zuckerberg's closest lieutenants. "If you imagine a television designed around social, you turn it on and it says, 'Thirteen of your friends like Entourage. Press play. Your dad recorded 60 Minutes. Press play.'" In other words, the world will be experienced through the filter of one's Facebook friends."_

This is also dead wrong. Most of the people I've friended on Facebook have much different tastes to me. The last thing I would want is to get recommendations based on what my 'friends' like. If you were talking to some random person at a party for five minutes it's almost becoming a faux pas not to friend them on Facebook. Do I really want to be spammed with updates about Glee or whatever?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'And while this may sound hubristic, it reflects Zuckerberg's belief that Facebook's map of human relationships is among the most important developments in business history. "That, I think, is the strongest product element we have," he said. "And [most] likely one of the strongest product elements that ever has existed."'

I've been coming to grips with that statement being true.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if Zuckerberg also implied this but what I find truly awesome is that that map of human relationships is available to anyone now through Facebook. Zynga is just one example of a business that has used the social graph so well. There will be more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Working on something similar. The business plan is coming this February. In fact, I'm looking for financing to get it started.

<http://miximum.ca/en_newProjectPage-kiosk.html>

gallerytungsten, I agree with you that it's part of the race, but I believe Facebooks approach is fundamentally different.

What's important in this idea is that the content has to be geographically significant to the consumer. Some apps focus on other things, like game mechanics, search, etc. As mentioned in the FT.com article: "Facebook's application can "check in" to a physical location, such as their local coffee shop,". Significant geolocalized information is key. For example, this concept clearly works a lot less well on a PC. Has to be on mobile or in my case a well localised kiosk.

The objective is to make it significant. Adding friend metadata to the info makes it more important to us.

</comment><comment><USER11> From the article:

"As Zuckerberg was still on stage, an analyst leans over to me and says, 'They just changed local commerce forever.' It wasn't even lunchtime yet."

I'll be a contrarian. They're keeping up with their neighbors. Groupon, Living Social, Yelp, Foursquare. It's all part of the race.

The interesting thing for me is that reading the article generated my idea on a way to do better: offer the "local discounts" without the privacy intrusions, overly intensive emailing, or any of the other trade-offs that current solutions have as a byproduct.

<comment><USER12> The only motivation for the advertisers to do the local discounts is so they can tap into your profile and market very targeted offers to you. Without the privacy intrusion and emailing, how would they do that?

<comment><USER11> I suspect there are "more anonymous" possibilities than the current implementations of these ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _from the web to the TV to the restaurants you choose to eat at – is informed by your stated preferences and your friends' preferences_

This is something we need to overcome, not accentuate.</comment>