FreeNAS 9.2 is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.freenas.org/whats-new/2013/12/freenas-9-2-0-release.html

<comment><USER2> I just built one recently. Motherboard-wise you should get one that supports ECC ram. Other than that it doesn't matter that much. You typically don't use the onboard SATA ports either, so the motherboard specs aren't very important. I built one recently. A bit of CPU overkill, but otherwise a pretty standard build. You can see the hardware list here:

[http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/58-Building-a- NAS.html](http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/58-Building-a-NAS.html)

<comment><USER3> What reasons are there for ignoring the onboard SATA ports?

<comment><USER2> It is also hard to find a motherboard with 8 SATA ports. They are out there, but you end up getting them split across different types of controllers which makes things complicated. And since you can pick up an M1015 for around $100 and flash it to IT mode I see no point in messing around with shaky onboard SATA controllers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Recently you can also get an Asrock Avoton motherboard with 12 SATA ports, spreaded across three controllers, but that shouldnt be any problem.

<comment><USER2> That board actually splits the SATA ports across 3 controllers and they are not all 6Gbps. It also costs nearly $400 and doesn't support ECC ram. If you are going to build a ZFS-based NAS you really should be using error correcting ram. Buying a cheap $130 Supermicro board and a $100 M1015 seems like a smarter and cheaper solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses 3 controllers, true, but 8 ports out of 12 are SATA III 6GB/s ports, and the controllers split should not be an issue. The statement about not supporting ECC is untrue, that board in fact does support ECC RAM. Also, its $400, but its not a board alone but it also includes the CPU and cooling for it, it wont require PCI controller due to high number of ports (wider choice of smaller cases) and requires amazingly low amount of power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4122937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4122937)

Lowcost home file storage,

HP Proliant Microserver (mine is N60L me thinkz) Can get cash back on it if you look around (sometimes 35% back) ECC memory 8gb max (recommended if going for ZFS) Western digital reds 3tb x 4 (reds have 3 year warrently and built for raid) ZFS in raid 2 i think. (one disk redundancy)

Total space is about 7.9tb

Running FreeNas from a usb inside the case.

it works, and cost wise it was cheap minus the drives.

<comment><USER5> HP UK are currently offering £50 cashback on servers bought on/before the 31st December.[1]

So basically, you've got until newyears to get one ordered.

CCLonline[2] and ebuyer.com[3] are offering the servers for £180, so £130 after cashback.

I've got one already at home and plan on ordering two more tomorrow. Surprisingly powerful boxes, can take upto 16gb DDR3 (ecc unbuffered), internal USB and proper hardware virtualisation.

[1] [http://h41225.www4.hp.com/UK_focus/PA0074%20-%20HP%20Microse...](http://h41225.www4.hp.com/UK_focus/PA0074%20-%20HP%20Microserver%20%C2%A350%20Cashback%20December%202013%20v2.pdf?jumpid=re_r10104_uk/en/ent/tsg/promoindex- ot-xx-pu-golden_offers_smb/chev-hp_microse_18068/)

[2] [http://www.cclonline.com/product/108949/704941-421/Branded-S...](http://www.cclonline.com/product/108949/704941-421/Branded- Servers/HP-ProLiant-G7-MicroServer/SRV0383/)

[3] [http://www.ebuyer.com/430446-hp-proliant-g7-n54l-2-2ghz- micr...](http://www.ebuyer.com/430446-hp-proliant-g7-n54l-2-2ghz-microserver- ebuyer-704941-421)

PS> "zfs in raid 2" -I believe you mean raidZ, the zfs equivalent of raid5. raidZ2 (zfs raid6) would only leave you with approx 6tb usable space rather than the 9 you're quoting. As the microserver has only 4 drivebays (well, 5 if you use the optical bay) you'd probably get better speeds and same real space by using the zfs equivalent of raid10 rather than raidz2.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, nice find! But doesn't the max RAM say 8 GB?

<comment><USER7> 16gb works just fine, regardless of what the sticker says :-)

<comment><USER8> Which RAM are you using? I've only been able to find 4GB sticks and that are unbuffered ECC. All of the 8GB I've found are registered ECC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ZFS is great. But one thing scares me away from using it. With ZFS, you can't just simply add a new disk raidz set. You have to either build a new pool to send your data to, or :

1\. Buy the same amount of (but larger) hard-disks 2\. Replace them one by one 3\. After the last disk is done, the size will grow. 4\. Sell your old hard- disks.

Much more painful then other raid solutions.

<comment><USER10> Depending on how you have the arrays organized, I'm sure you can expand a zpool with additional sets.

[http://www.itsacon.net/computers/unix/expanding-a-zfs- pool/](http://www.itsacon.net/computers/unix/expanding-a-zfs-pool/)

zpool add -f poolname raidz[or raidz1,raidz2,etc] /dev/driveid /dev/driveid /dev/driveid ...

You'd then have a pool with another raidz section within it, whose size was represented by the capacity of each of the sections within.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD and provides great platform (allowing you to use such awesome features like ZFS, BSD/Linux Jails virtualization and many others)for self made NAS appliances made out of any hardware available, but also for very solid business product (like TrueNAS), when proper hardware is used. Personally, I've switched to FreeNAS after being in love with Synology for many years.

<comment><USER11> I have a Synology atm but I'm thinking of making a FreeNAS machine when I'm done with the Synology. What would you say are the biggest differences? What features did you miss the most? What features did you gain by using FreeNAS that you thought were very nice?

<comment><AUTHOR> What I've really lost is a no-brainer solution, as in purchasing, plugging and that's it, I've also lost a vendor lock in but I dont really miss any of these ;) The most important thing I've gained is the reliability - in case Synology dies we're screwed until we're able to buy the same or close enough model in order to get back our data. With FreeNAS (and the bare FreeBSD based solutions people mentioned here) I can simply take out the disks and plug them into anything that has the ability to run FreeBSD/NAS to get back my data, since its just ZRaid on top of ZFS. I've also gained the flexibility of building the right NAS for my needs thanks to the wide hardware choice, FreeBSD and Linux Jails virtualization, and most things I really was afraid of, that are AFP support and Time Machine targets are there. And, the coolnes factor, you get a chance to dig around and build it on your own, gazzilion TB's of storage ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm thinking about building a NAS this week. Any build recommendations, suggestions on where to start? I know people used to recommend NAS4Free over FreeNAS, is that still the case?

<comment><USER12> FreeNAS was suffering from technical debt because it was build on the code base of a firewall appliance for small CF cards. The project initiator gave up on it and it needed a rewrite. Most active contributors had a Linux background and wanted to use a Linux distro as starting point. At that point iX Systems moved in and offered to take over. They started the rewrite and leveraged the improvements made in FreeBSD. The new FreeNAS lacked some features home useres wanted e.g. a BitTorrent client and media streaming until the new plugin mechanism was ready.

I'm a FreeBSD user and tend to avoid any automagic between me and the system but the FreeNAS 9.2.0 RC looked very promising.

<comment><USER13> I enjoyed a brief experience with FreeNAS but ended up wishing I had a full FreeBSD system -- it's easy to miss things like ports and the like. I was able to upgrade in-place to FreeBSD 9-STABLE however, which was a great experience.

I probably should have better documented by upgrade-in-place procedure but at the time I didn't know whether it would work. It was fairly straightforward, using documentation for root on ZFS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone successfully written a FreeNAS plugin? My experience is with Linux, not FreeBSD, and I'm struggling to figure out how to package up my server as a FreeNAS plugin.

</comment><comment><USER15> Still no HyperV support for directly attached disks/raw storage :(

<comment><AUTHOR> FreeBSD 10.0 should be out soon ([http://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.0R/schedule.html](http://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.0R/schedule.html)) and there should be something there to make your day ([http://vvm.blog.tut.by/2013/10/08/freebsd-10-on- hyper-v/](http://vvm.blog.tut.by/2013/10/08/freebsd-10-on-hyper-v/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a recommended motherboard or cpu to use this in a house?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, its anything that FreeBSD can run on (and that's a lot, on its own: [http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.2R/hardware.html](http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.2R/hardware.html)) and that will at the same time fill your needs (in terms of platform architecture, power consumption, number of available/supported IO/storage options, size and so on). If you're still unsure, there's a great community and forum available, and some general hardware guide can be found here (it covers entire NAS appliance): [http://forums.freenas.org/threads/so-you-want- some-hardware-...](http://forums.freenas.org/threads/so-you-want-some- hardware-suggestions.12276/)

<comment><USER16> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does this compare to NAS4Free ([http://www.nas4free.org/](http://www.nas4free.org/)), the original FreeNAS?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are very similar, yet very different at the same time ;) You can read more here: [http://ivoras.net/blog/tree/2013-02-22.freenas-vs- nas4free.h...](http://ivoras.net/blog/tree/2013-02-22.freenas-vs- nas4free.html) and here: [http://forums.freenas.org/threads/freenas-vs- nas4free.16422/](http://forums.freenas.org/threads/freenas-vs-nas4free.16422/)</comment></comment>


The Elon Musk Forecast Correction Function - <AUTHOR> https://aaboyles.github.io/Essays/portfolio/ElonMuskForecastCorrectionFunction.html <comment><AUTHOR> Someone pointed out that Musk predicts very accurately if you measure in Mars years. Mars year is 1.88 Earth years, the correction function is 1.775.</comment>


Photos, Texts, And Emails Show The Alleged Betrayal At The Heart Of Snapchat - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-lawsuit-photos-texts-and-emails-2013-8?op=1

<comment><USER2> A typical BusinessInsider headline. If it's alleged, it's not shown. If it's shown, it's not alleged. Except in sleazy journalism, "shown" and "alleged" are mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER3> You're quite right, BI headlines are often "sleazy".

Still, I love spending time there. I love clicking on the misleading headlines.

Like it or not, BI is the future of journalism on the Internet.

<comment><USER2> > Like it or not, BI is the future of journalism on the Internet.

Sad but true.</comment></comment></comment>


Performance-pay Perplexes - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/11/12/071112ta_talk_surowiecki <comment><USER2> This is an interesting point. If you pay for performance, you have to measure performance over a long enough time. Stock options have a similar problem, actually. What you should really do is pay people not for what they do to the stock price today, but what they do to it several years from now.

<comment><USER3> When you create incentives, you always have to be careful to find out exactly what scenarios maximize the rewards of those incentives. These scenarios may be unexpected (Freakonomics touches on this alot). Creating incentives that are short term or simply give rewards in the face of egregious errors is why CEO compensation today is a scam. Many CEOs don't expect to be at a company longer than a few years, so their horizon for increasing the stock price is short term, often hurting the company in the longer term. You can see this when companies have firesales to save a quarterly result, only to hurt the next few quarters. With the alternative being three mediocre quarters with no rewards, in some incentive system it's better to artificially pump up one quarter and tank the next two quarters.

If stock options vested over a period of, say, 20 years, I wonder how the actions of CEOs would change? I'm not sure, but I think, on average, they would be vastly different than they are today.

I'm reminded of an article about Costco, where the CEO (who is an unusual type of CEO) said that Wall Street was clamoring for him to raise his profit margins and reduce the pay of his employees. He thought that this strategy would definitely raise revenues in the short term and destroy the company in the long term, by opening up an opportunity for a competitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was it freakonomics, or elsewhere, where they mention the anthropologist who paid a flat rate for bone fragments? Apparently, the natives were pretty smart, so they took whole bones and smashed them to little bits, to get more money. Oops!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know why anyone would invest in a fund that does not have the managers keep a large portion of their own net worth tied up in the fund. There is a huge information asymmetry. The investor does not know if the fund performs well because the manager is brilliant, or if it's because the risk profile is far worse than advertised.</comment>


Make_windows10_great_again.bat - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6e9a442e0121b1d <comment><USER2> Whereas I commend the effort that has gone into this script, the end result for most users will be an unusable Windows 10 installation. The script is VERY aggressive, and does not explain what it is turning off and/or removing and nor does it give the user the ability to control what's being done.

It's nice to see a transparent script with all this in (as opposed to all those sealed EXEs that are floating about), but it's definitely a) not for machines that end users will use, and b) only useful for techies who want to cherry pick out the bits they care about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Protip, huge warning! never run these scripts on any computer!</comment>


101 Great Computer Programming Quotes - <AUTHOR> http://www.devtopics.com/101-great-computer-programming-quotes/

<comment><USER2> That could have been a good list if it didn't have so many errors. There are some where the attributed person never said anything remotely like the quote (e.g., Bill Gates and 640k), and many where it looks like what is quoted is some second hand or third hand or worse retelling from memory of the original quote, so the wording has drifted significantly.</comment>


Text My gate operator to open ... No Arduino required - <AUTHOR> http://www.zachbruhnke.com/text-my-gate-operator-to-open-i-think-so-thanks-twilio Would love to hear feedback on this idea and what end users opinions are of the product! <comment><USER2> "...and only has internet at his house because I 'borrowed' his neighbors with the help of aircrack-ng and repeated it in his house."

This is superfluous to the primary subject of the article, but I have a really hard time respecting or upvoting a story that opens with a prideful statement that you're intruding upon your neighbor's network, despite their efforts to secure it.

Just because you can defeat your neighbor's deadbolt with a crowbar doesn't mean you should feel free to enter and enjoy the comfort of their home at your whim.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that struck me too. I'm pretty sure that's definitely a pretty serious crime to be blogging about casually.</comment></comment>


Kort - a thumbnail preview concept - <AUTHOR> http://lab.hakim.se/kort/ <comment><USER2> I don't really like this concept, but I do like this guy and his other work.

What I don't like: It isn't obvious that there are other thumbnails other than the first one. If a user wasn't aware that there are other thumbnails to view they would never think to hover over the image.

<comment><USER3> Your critique seems to be focused on the wrong details. The author was not demoing their ability to indicate there is a mouseover action. They were indicating their ability to create a compact, intuitive (once hovered) technique for browsing thumbnails. Your issue can be fixed in a number of obvious ways, but the behavior once activated is a non-obvious contribution.

<comment><USER4> You're right – the intent is to demo the interaction when hovered and I did not spend any time designing the resting states. If this were to be used for something like a gallery thumbnail I think it's perfectly fine to not promote the hover preview at all. Users would discover it naturally as they mouse over to click on the thumbnail.

However if it's important the user discovers what's in the stack, this could be communicated visually like <http://cl.ly/image/1c041l2e1S0O>

<comment><USER5> I think an obvious stack (perhaps even more obvious than depicted in your screenshot) would help. Another thing you could consider is having the stack give a little more affordance as the mouse pointer approaches. Perhaps it could expand a little to indicate "hey, there's a behavior over here!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the concept. However, to me, it was a little bit too easy to accidentally move my mouse outside the thumbnail area when trying to look through some pictures.

Could you try extending the mouseover area beyond the images themselves? I'm not sure if that would be more intuitive, but I think it's worth trying.

<comment> saint-loup I agree. Even to watch the pictures correctly and one at a time, I had to learn to move the pointer really slow.

I really like the concept and the execution anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hakim El Hattab, the guy behind this concept, is on fire right now, with innovative UI concepts rolling out pretty much every month.

If you're interested in bleeding edge HTML5 experiments, you can watch Paul Irish interview him here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogumRA9LxR4>

<comment><USER8> He's got a very impressive portfolio of work: <http://hakim.se/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is basically unusable with a mouse pointer because the bounding box is too small. The user interface is also non-obvious, at first I didn't know that I could move my mouse around and I would not have discovered it if this wasn't a tech demo.

<comment><USER10> Also these kinds of mouse hover events are useless on touch interfaces.

<comment><USER11> Actually it works perfectly on mobile safari on my iPhone. I wasn't expecting it to, being a hover effect, but was pleasantly surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has promise, just needs some tweaks.

I would try to make it 'less sensitive' when transitioning, so the user doesn't accidentally switch images.

Also there needs to be a way to tell that there is a layer of images. Maybe some relative positioning on the ones that are hidden?

Cool idea though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting idea, the interaction would get very difficult with more pictures in the stack. Also lacks a way to work in mobile. But you are really onto something here, would be interesting to see how this can be improved!

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the concept, but the thumbnail should somehow show that there is a 'stack' of photos that you can page through. At first glance, it's not obvious that you can hover over a thumbnail to see more.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a big fan of the concept, but it's an interesting tech demo.

Now, compare the page as designed versus the page without CSS enabled. The one without CSS enabled is a much better user experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like this, but could you make it a bit slower? Slowing it down would make it a little bit more accessible for those who have mouse trouble. Also keyboard keys!

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like this. Could also be a great time-saver for professions that have to screen large volumes of photos, like busy newsroom photo editors.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like author's Avgrund and Meny better. The thumbnail is neat but functional deprovment as it's not obvious there is a any more than one image.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great idea. It capitalizes on the attributes of the mouse pointer and web browsers. If I were Apple, I'd acquire.

<comment><USER20> Apple acquires scripts now?

<comment><USER19> Programmers. You know, people who can make inferences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very cool. I like the transitions, especially the last one. Just a heads up, it doesn't work on chrome 22.

<comment><USER22> I'm on chrome 22.0.1229.94 (osx) and it's working fine for me.

<comment><USER23> I'm on the same version for windows and getting diddly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's not working for me on Chrome or IE and just barely almost working on my android.

</comment><comment><USER24> Intuitive and efficient. You, sir, have too many ideas.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love all of his work. Worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER26> source on github - <https://github.com/hakimel/kort></comment>


Open Response to Anonymous from Government of India - <AUTHOR> http://armchairoutrage.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/open-response-to-anonymous-from-government-of-india/

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's start with crap "6. What do you mean by file-sharing? Did you not know that people in India have to pay anywhere from Rs 100 to get their files moved in offices? Is not this action hitting the Babu's stomachs? You do not have any right to take away their rightful incomes." says Armchair Outrage

If you don't know what file-sharing means then don't comment, don't post your stupid "Open Letter", and what the hell is "babu" doing here? You retard.

"5. Now, with a country whose population is a vast majority of youth, porn is detrimental to their moral fabric. We do not want them to grow into sex- maniacs and rapists. Do you want every Indian city to become a Delhi?"

Hey man, if you're against pornographic stuff then first go and block the Child-pornographic websites funded by your Ministers, and No torrent is not a method to share "pornographic material", And Delhi is the capital, people there are mature (not cunt like you). Lack of sex-ed in India (No your govt. schools don't provide sex-ed) has led to population rise.</comment>


Snapchat COO Emily White steps down from company - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-snapchat-emily-white-leaves-20150313-story.html

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why newspapers always feel the need to try to come up with a 'clever' headline, and force it in even if it isn't actually particularly clever. It takes away from the story itself.

<comment><USER3> I think they do it for the same reason developers often leave 'clever' comments in mundane, boilerplate code: it gives them an outlet for creative expression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something doesn't smell right here. They're losing an executive per month in 2015. They must not be very profitable, because their valuation is supposedly (according to TFA) US $15B and they recently got a large investment. I wonder what's up?

<comment><USER5> Snapchat appears to be pivoting towards a curated media company, which is a far different beast than the photo sharing model 2 years ago.

It requires deep relationships with Madison Ave NY agencies and the LA entertainment industry.

Google App Engine may be their own remaining "must have" connection to Silicon Valley, from an Investors perspective.

<comment><USER6> I never understand the rationale behind building a huge userbase and then abandoning them... pardon... 'pivoting' to something completely different. That hasn't worked particularly well for Foursquare/Swamp and it won't work for Snapchat either.

<comment><USER7> It would depend on how much money the founders have been able to syphon out of the business along the way. If investors are dumb enough to give you money to build a business that can't be monetized then who are you to say no (provided of course you can figure out a way of getting your hands on some of the cash).

<comment><USER6> True. But obviously at some point that system will stop working. And then everyone in the biz, from engineers to product and design people to even the investor types will suffer. As they did in 1999/2000.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


People Are Dying Because of Ignorance, Not Because of Opioids - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-are-dying-because-of-ignorance-not-because-of-opioids/ <comment><USER2> Heard a piece on the Phoenix NPR station about how this fellow got prosecuted for calling 911 to save his heroin dealer. There was a laughable section about how Arizona's governor hopes to reduce overdose deaths by 25% in 5 years, as if that's the best they can do.

#GovernmentAssistedSuicide had already been used, but I think it appropriate to apply the hashtag to this so-called "epidemic". Real epidemics are not the entirely caused by mistaken government policy.

[https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/919771336355938305](https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/919771336355938305)

<comment><USER2> Just saw another article from this site, commenting here for my own future reference.

The Social Life of Opioids (Sept. 18, 2017) - [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-social- life-o...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-social-life-of- opioids/)</comment></comment>


Add two-factor authentication to your ssh in 30 seconds. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.authy.com/two-factor-ssh-in-thirty-seconds

<comment><USER2> I've used the libpam module for Google Authenticator[0] before, the difference being that it isn't dependant on the availability of a third-party service, but you have to be much more careful about losing your device. That said Authy do have pretty great uptime[1]

Nice for production servers, but becomes a an annoyance after the cool factor wears off for servers that don't really need it :) Installable on aptitude using libpam-google-authenticator (guide [2]).

[0]: [https://code.google.com/p/google- authenticator/](https://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/) [1]: [http://status.authy.com/](http://status.authy.com/) [2]: [https://scottlinux.com/2013/06/02/use-google- authenticator-f...](https://scottlinux.com/2013/06/02/use-google- authenticator-for-two-factor-ssh-authentication-in-linux/)

</comment><comment> chris-tucker So what if the site goes down?

I can't ssh since force command is failing?

<comment><USER3> Hopefully there's a fallback mechanism or a backup code. Otherwise it all looks really shady.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looked at the site for some time and couldn't find an answer to my question. Does anybody know if the SMS is just for US cellphones?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone tell me if that's really worth it? Looks like a bit of an overkill considering the protection given by ssh keys.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does it works just with SMS?</comment>


The science of customer service: emoticons make 84% more users happy - <AUTHOR> http://www.uservoice.com/blog/entries/emoticons-customer-service-data/

<comment><USER2> I must be in the minority, i hate emoticons, especially considering they are different on different platforms, Android, iOS, WP, FB, Msn..on & on...</comment>


Ask HN: Someone ripped off my website and is making money off it. What can I do? - <AUTHOR> Many years ago I made a website and posted it here. It because a hit and I am proud of it. It's open source under a share-alike non-commercial license. Someone took it, bought the same domain with a different extension and slammed ads on it. This has been going on for many years and I never knew what to do, we are talking pennies and it's not something I would like to get in to legal stuff to fix. I don't have neither the time or money. But if someone knew a way I could at least have this person remove the ads it would be great. Thanks!<p>Edit: could I maybe complain to the domain hosting? I would go to the advertisers but really it's mostly just referral links bitcoin exchanges. <comment><USER2> I remember that there was some debate inside the Creative Commons community about whether ads on a website made the web site "commercial" for purposes of CC-NC. There were certainly many people who felt that it shouldn't, arguing that many sites that people understand as "noncommercial" do include ads.

You might want to try to find out a bit more about how this issue has been discussed (and resolved?) within the CC community, for example because it's possible that the person who copied your site might feel that the copy is genuinely "noncommercial".

The DMCA takedown process is easy to use, and you don't need a lawyer to use it. However, it's only available if the site is hosted in the United States and the hosting provider has a DMCA agent (which typical hosting providers do). There's also no guarantee that the site will _stay_ down or that you won't end up in court since, by design, the other party has the right to challenge the DMCA notice either by a counter-notice (asserting that the use of the copyrighted work is in fact legitimate) or by asking a court to resolve the dispute (an "action for declaratory judgment").

Also, by design, it's hard to force other people to do things without involving the legal system in some way. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the answer! I'll see if I can do DMCA but I might just have to live with it I guess

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recall (but cannot find) a story of someone that this happened to. The copycat in his case was not very sophisticated and just did a direct copy clone of the source site. His solution (IIRC) was to add some simple javascript that detected if the host was the copycat site and redirected(?) the visitor to the real site (his).

When the copycat site did a verbatim copy, it picked up the javascript as well and solved the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> The website is basically a single static page, so it's not pulling resources from mine.

<comment><USER3> The concept is you update your script.js with the code to check the source and redirect if the source is hackertyper.com and then get the copycatter to copy your New Improved source as his script.js.

Unfortunately, I see the copycat edited your source so he is unlikely to fall for the "update" trick since he would likely see and understand the redirection when he re-edited any changed script.js that you provide. You would also need to have some New Improved features in your script.js to entice him to re-copy your source with the redirect - the copycatter doesn't really have any reason to re-copy your script.js.

:-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- Best solution: use a more permissive license so you don't create these problems for yourself as people then have the right to use your work how they see fit.

\- Second best solution: never think of it again. There are no actions you can take against that person that will end in time well spent, they might not even be the only such person or method of monetizing your work, it's futile and your time and attention is worth much more.

\- Third best solution: don't publish your work where others can see it. Fortunately the many unthanked people who invented our internet, our computers, the languages we use etc, all the stuff that enabled you to make your website, did not choose this route!

</comment><comment><USER5> Try a DMCA/similar intellectual property takedown request against the host or domain registrar.

</comment><comment><USER6> It might help if you told us the domains involved so we can see for ourselves what is going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> hackertyper.net is mine, .com is the other.

<comment><USER7> Ha, wow! Almost everyone in my office has brought up hackertyper.com at some point, I'd never heard of the .net one. I do recall once noticing that the 'ad shortcuts' weren't there and thought nothing of it, maybe I'd stumbled upon the .net version that time.

Was there a reason you didn't buy the .com if it was available? I'd personally see it as a lesson learned and move on.

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason other than being young and naive, I guess I'll do that and just live with it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are REST's Days of Dominance Numbered? - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/02/27/social-web-kingdoms-collapse-as-fast-as-they-expand-a-sign-that-rests-days-are-numbered/ <comment><USER2> There are so many 'buzzy' words in such a short space that my brain hurts. This is an excellent example of why I think most blog posts are useless. They have as much information as a 2 minute inebriated conversation at the bar. There is no digging into topic, just a quick scooting over the surface.

<comment><AUTHOR> There really was an idea in there, I swear.

Most folks don't think about how the system they participate in functions. They just use it, and maybe even optimize it.

Here's a post where I had a little more time to dig in. <http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/01/08/why-gods-a-hacker/></comment></comment>


Is Anyone Watching Quibi? The streaming platform raised $1.75B and can't - <AUTHOR> https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/is-anyone-watching-quibi.html <comment><USER2> With all that money raised, large audience competition due to no cinemas being open at the time and everyone staying indoors due to lockdown, this looked like the perfect opportunity to launch. Problem is they still failed and Netflix, Disney+, etc just got even bigger.

If they failed at lockdown, they failed in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see myself paying $8 a month for watching short videos. There already is an overload of free short videos available and that's the same price as a basic Netflix subscription.

This may become a textbook example of the benefits of MVPs, or at least of shipping something quickly and to see how it goes before literally investing billions (inc. swanky offices, star execs, and sky high pay for celebs) in something that does not have a big enough market.</comment>


Ask HN: What's this for? :) - <AUTHOR>

http://news.ycombinator.com/yc
Just wondering, came across it after thinking what other easter eggs could exist like:
http://news.ycombinator.com/best
I understand if it's a secret and/or not very interesting. ;) <comment><USER2> The /best is listed on the Lists page linked at the footer of every page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/lists>

<comment><AUTHOR> And this?: <http://news.ycombinator.com/yc></comment></comment>


Facing Immigration Crackdown, Silicon Valley Rethinks Its Dreams - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/facing-immigration-crackdown-silicon-valley-rethinks-its-dreams <comment><USER2> These companies need to screen more for motivation rather than pure talent. Stop with the boiler-plate job descriptions: must have 3-5 years experience with xyz technology etc. AND I kid you not: must have a minimum of a 3.5 GPA in STEM - talk about lack of imagination. Put some creative thinkers in the HR department please!</comment>


Are airport body scanners a radiation risk?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13990434

<comment><USER2> Answer: no.</comment>


Digital Ocean Experiencing Issues - <AUTHOR> https://status.digitalocean.com <comment><USER2> They have issues almost every day. I like them, but they're not the most reliable company in the world.

<comment><USER3> They may have issues regularly, but we have had almost zero downtime over the multiple servers we have with them.

Now Vultr on the other hand, single server, multiple outages

<comment><USER4> We could go on and on with anecdotes, but I think it really comes down to luck whether an outage affects you. If you can't afford downtime occasionally, you should set up a cluster, probably across different providers/locations.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Does Dry Ice Really Cool Five Times Better Than Regular Ice? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeremymorgan.com/tutorials/raspberry-pi/dry-ice-vs-wet-ice/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see this repeated, but allowing the melted water to drain. I think that this might be why the wet ice seemed to keep cooling for so long.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I agree. The steep drop off with the dry ice was likely after it dissipated, and the air temp recovered. The question then would be, when to drain the water though.

<comment><USER2> I'd add a drain in a bottom corner to allow drainage as it melts. I think the temp in the dry ice container would remain lower if there were enough thermal mass, too.

Have you ever played with dry ice? I just read of someone using it to remove old tile and mastic from a concrete floor. There was also an article on another site describing a city dropping chunks into rat holes to kill rat nests.</comment></comment></comment>


ISIS executed a journalist, then hacked her Facebook to trick her friends - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/01/06/isis-syria-journalist-facebook-hack/#CUd.8utpe5qi <comment><AUTHOR> Dam this is sad...This story is very very close to my heart and work, its the reason why I've been training activists and journalists in physical/digital security for the past decade. It's why I get up in the morning. It's why we spent two years busting our asses to build Umbrella App ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella)) in the hope that people who we can't train, can at least know some of the basics about how to operate in this type of shitty hostile physical/digital threat environment. Every time something like this slips through I take it personally, I feel like there are so many things that could have happened to prevent such a thing from happening. It's about the 5th member of Raqqa is Sufdering Silently to be murdered by those bastards. :(</comment>


Interview with Rusty Klophaus on the Nitrogen Erlang Web Framework - <AUTHOR> http://erlanginside.com/interview-with-rusty-klophaus-on-the-nitrogen-erlang-web-framework-37

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but I'd like some more depth/detail. The guy has been doing Erlang for all of 10 months, noticed some of the good stuff about it, and created a web framework with it. Ok... but... what does it really do that takes advantage of Erlang? They talk about the DB layer a bit, but isn't that really sort of the killer for most people, rather than Rails or PHP or whatever? Looks interesting, but I want to hear more than why Erlang is cool - I know that already, I want to know what they did with it that takes advantage of its strengths.

<comment><USER3> Hi Davidw,

Thanks for your interest and questions.

For now, Nitrogen is primarily aiming to bring Erlang up to par with other languages for creating dynamic, Ajax-ified Web 2.0 applications.

"What does it really do that takes advantage of Erlang?"

The big advantage is that, with Nitrogen, you can develop your entire Web 2.0 application in Erlang. Before Nitrogen, most people did the front end in Rails and the back end in Erlang, and used a bridge, such as Apache Thrift, to get them talking.

Once your web app is in Erlang, you can:

* Run on Mochiweb or Yaws, both extremely performant http servers.

* Distribute your web server across multiple nodes without worrying about sticky sessions.

* Reap all of the other Erlang goodness, such as hot code swapping, built in application monitoring and restarting, an extremely stable environment, etc. (All of the stuff that made Amazon use Erlang for SimpleDB and Facebook use Erlang for Facebook Chat.)

"What about the DB layer?"

Mnesia, Erlang's built in database, actually does the job quite well. Languages tend to add a DB layer to ease the pain of jumping into and out of SQL, and we're so used to this that we expect to have to do the same in any language. But in this case, Mnesia thinks in Erlang syntax, so there is really no need to wrap it in anything. Plus, Mnesia works really well for documents with changing schemas, which is very Web 2.0.

If you'd rather avoid Mnesia and use SQL, then ErlyDB is your best option.

Happy to answer any more questions.

Best,

Rusty - Creator of Nitrogen Web Framework

p.s. - Saw this post through a backtype.com alert (hooray BackType!)

<comment><USER2> Cool, thanks for replying. Mnesia is not part of Erlang that I've ever looked at in depth, so it remains something of an unknown. I really wish someone would publish some information and statistics about how it handles ever larger data sets. Something like Postgres or Mysql is more of a 'known quantity' in terms of what it can handle, how to improve it, and so on. Mnesia, we know, does distributed really well, but I know less about how its performance/scaling characteristics for other aspects.

Anyway, looks like a cool effort, so good luck, and keep writing about it!</comment></comment></comment>


Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars/1 <comment><USER2> Dup:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2864349>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2864531> <\- Lots of comments</comment>


Mathematicians Discover the Perfect Way to Multiply - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/mathematicians-discover-the-perfect-way-to-multiply/ <comment><USER2> Preceding discussion on hackernews [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474280)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _in 1960, the 23-year-old Russian mathematician Anatoly Karatsuba took a > seminar led by Andrey Kolmogorov [....] Kolmogorov asserted that there was > no general procedure for doing multiplication that required fewer than n^2 > steps. Karatsuba thought there was—and after a week of searching, he found > it._

Karatsuba's method is beautiful and actually quite simple to explain.

Suppose you want to multiply two 200-digit numbers. Write them as aX+b and cX+d, where X=10^100. We want to compute the product (aX+b)(cX+d), which is (ac)X^2 + (ad+bc)X + (bd).

By the naive method, we'd end up effectively performing all four multiplications ac, ad, bc, bd. Karatsuba observed that we can do it with just three multiplications: ac, bd, and (a+b)(c+d) — and get our (ad+bc) as (a+b)(c+d)-ac-bd.

Doing this recursively (so that T(n) = 3T(n/2) + O(n)) gives Karatsuba's method, cutting down the n^2 time of the naive method to about n^1.58 time.

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

<comment><USER4> Karatsuba's algorithm is a shining example of creative applications of simple concepts.

I used to teach math to gifted elementary school students and used some problems from Japanese exams for the talented. I think the creativity and complexity of thought required to come up with this algorithm is about the same as some solutions to a harder problem in those exams. (The creativity required to solve them is significantly more than for American Math Competition, which typically involves difficult but quite conventional thinking.) [1]

More countries should adopt these Japanese-style problems in their gifted education as well as simpler versions for normal students. They are a great training ground for creative problem solving, which has become increasingly essential for successful careers in most fields.

PS. Hong Kong holds annual creative math problem solving competition for primary and secondary school students:

[https://www.edb.gov.hk/en/curriculum-development/major- level...](https://www.edb.gov.hk/en/curriculum-development/major-level-of- edu/gifted/resources_and_support/competitions/local/cps.html)

There was also at least one international math competition for primary students in Asia-Pacific which focuses on creative math problem solving.

[1] AMC problems and solutions [https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_Problems_...](https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_Problems_and_Solutions)

<comment><USER5> Interesting; I thought that a common criticism of Japanese-style education was that it's based to a large extent on rote memorization, whereas the West tends to focus more on concepts and creative thinking. Can you speak to that? Is the conventional wisdom wrong, or am I just wrong about what the conventional wisdom is?

<comment><USER6> One anecdote: My North American math education seemed to focus on rote memorization, with little creative thinking at all. Did you have a different experience? Not sure how they teach math in Japan though.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Not necessarily related (and avoiding the attached political junk)—

here in Ontario (Canada), the current government as ... strongly advocated... for going back to the "good old days" of rote memorization for the math curriculum versus modern discovery math methodology—ie: problem solving and creative thinking.

There tend to be pillars of thought in NA.

<comment><USER7> Don't see what the current ON government has to do with the abhorrent state of math education here. It was just as bad under the previous governments

<comment> 52-6F-62 I was not getting into the political junk, as I said. Only pointing out that there are pillars of thought in NA who think that rote memorization as the sole method for learning mathematics was "the good old days" and is the only worthy method (with a practical example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ,,Hardware changes with the times, but best-in-class algorithms are eternal''

Nowdays for these kind of problems the really interesting solution is the best parallel solution. It may be elegant to still prove things for turing machines, but a GPU has 2000 running threads (and if the tensor cores could be used, it's even more instructions), so an algorithm implementation that's not using it is about 100x inferior in practice.

<comment><USER9> I saw Jack Dongarra say that plain parallelism is now old and the thing is "communication avoidance". Also made the point (relevant to your quotation) that changing hardware means redoing the algorithms every ten years to exploit it.

<comment><USER8> That's a great model that even helps running algorithms on FPGAs.

Are there researchers working on finding the theoritical communicication limits of classical numerical problems?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is "Perfect" really an appropriate qualifier here? Did the source article present a proof that O(n log n) is the lowest growth order for this kind of task? Or am I just out of the loop and it's already known that this is the case?

 _Update:_ Apparently, the article actually says that the approach is _not_ perfect.

<comment><USER11> From the article: "Harvey and van der Hoeven's algorithm proves that multiplication can be done in n × log n steps. However, it doesn't prove that there's no faster way to do it. Establishing that this is the best possible approach is much more difficult."

<comment><USER10> Thanks. I skimmed it but didn't read thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> frosted-flakes This article was originally published in Quanta Magazine: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-discover- the-p...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-discover-the-perfect- way-to-multiply-20190411/)

<comment><USER12> Ah! I was wondering why the Wired graphic is similar to how Quanta does it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Paper: [https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02070778/document](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02070778/document)

</comment><comment><USER14> "The speed gap between multiplication and addition has narrowed considerably over the past 20 years to the point where multiplication can be even faster than addition in some chip architectures."

Does anyone have an example of hardware where multiplication is actually faster than addition? That's not an intuitive result unless they're talking about floating point numbers, and even then...

<comment><USER15> I don't know of a architechure that actually _does_ this, but I suspect they're comparing a N->N->N truncating multiply with a N->N->N+1 addition that sets the carry flag. In addition to forcing the compiler to reorder test- fiddle-branch sequences in a potentially suboptimal way, you'd also introduce speculation hazards for any instructions that depend on the flags.

I'd be interested to see any hardware where that's enough to make addition _slower_ , though, since usually you can make up for it by dumping a extra (very cheap) adder into the execution system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember implementing strassen, only to be surprised that the naive implementation was actually faster, because it better exploited the machine architecture... that is until I tried using absolutely huge numbers.

This recent innovation is very exciting.

<comment><USER17> Strassen is for multiplying matrices. This is integers.

<comment><USER18> They probably meant Schönhage–Strassen, which is for integers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "It was kind of a general consensus that multiplication is such an important basic operation that, just from an aesthetic point of view, such an important operation requires a nice complexity bound"

It is just nuts that this kind of reasoning works out reliably.

<comment><USER20> That is amazing. Do we understand why aesthetics and intuition are so effective here? Or actually if that's even trueish in the general case?

<comment><USER21> The human brain is an incredibly powerful unconscious pattern recognition device. The conscious mind is unaware of most of this processing.

For chess positions where there is no tactic that gives a clear advantage, the best move is determined by subtle positional/strategic considerations. It's interesting that often, top players will all agree what the best move is, but be incapable of explaining why except in very vague terms. It just "feels right".

I haven't read about computer chess in a while so I'm not sure if this is still the case, but at least for several years after it became impossible for a human to beat a computer, a human+computer team was still much stronger than a computer alone, because of this intuitive strategic/positional ability that computers lack.

<comment><USER19> The marvel isn't that we're good at picking up on patterns, it's that nature itself is so patterned to begin with.

<comment><USER21> Both are incredible!

I guess to explain my comment a bit further: I conjecture (as a pure layman) that a similar process is going on when a chess grandmaster says "I played Nf7 because it looked natural" as when a mathematician says "I expect this statement to be true for aesthetic/intuitive/moral reasons".

I think in this case the mathematician's unconscious mind has correctly identified some pattern that his or her conscious mind is unable to access.

Just like I can't really explain why I know my dad's face is his, and not that of some other man of similar race, age, and build.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ok I'll be that guy - where is the reference implementation and at what n can I expect an improvement over existing libgmp multiplication on a core i7 ?

<comment><USER17> It only really kicks in over the previous best at about n>2^2^4000 iirc.

This is a theoretical paper, but it is possible that some of the new fourier transform ideas can be used by libgmp down the line.

<comment><USER23> Not that it matters, but the constant used in the paper is 4096, not 4000. This algorithm is proven to be O(n log n) only for numbers with at least 2^4096 ≪ 10^1200 bits.

For comparison, we estimate there are 10^80 or so atoms in the known universe, so we would need quite a bit of progress in physics to even store one such number; this clearly is theoretical computer science.

On the plus side, they didn't set out to minimize that constant, and think it can easily [1] be decreased significantly.

[1] 'easily' in the mathematical sense of "we think everybody who understands this paper and is willing to do potentially a lot of hard work will be able to pull it of"

<comment><USER24> > This algorithm is proven to be O(n log n) only for numbers with at least > 2^4096...

No worries, all the rest runs in O(1)..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was going to make a joke that they could have found out years ago by talking to biologists, but then it turned out that this article is really fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER26> Strassen, perhaps unsurprisingly, also has something to say about matrix multiplication:

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

"Strassen's algorithm works for any ring, such as plus/multiply..."

</comment><comment><USER27> Could someone explain how one can use the FFT in an algorithm for multiplication?

I guess I would understand if I understood what FFT actually does 'under the hood', but I assumed fft itself required multiplication.

<comment><USER28> Discrete fourier transforms have always been a way of doing fast _polynomial_ multiplication -- which is also called convolution. That is we can do

         (a0 + a1^z + a2*z^2...) * (b0 + b1^z + b2*z^2...)

As

        fa = DFT([a0, a1, a2...])   # O(N log N)
        fa = DFT([b0, b1, b2...])   # O(N log N)
        fab = element-by-element multiply fa by fb # O(N)
        return InverseDFT(fab) # O(N log N)

Now this is well established if we are literally doing a convolution of two sequences of complex numbers. But this is different from integer quite multiplication because:

1\. Polynomial multiplication doesn't have carries.

2\. It does inexact arithmetic on complex-numbers, we want exact results on integer digits.

I am guessing (2) is solved by getting modulo-arithmetic do the same algebraic gymnastics that make the FFT work.

Also I didn't think any of this was new -- I vaguely remember reading about fast convolutions using discrete algebras in old textbooks from the '70s. Maybe the hard thing was to do it in a way that leaves enough information left over to do the carries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Might be fastest but it's not intuitive for my way of thinking. Perhaps because I am so entrenched with the n^2 method.

<comment><USER30> Multiplication using FFTs was one of the most mind-blowing things I encountered in my professional career. It involved realizing that third-grade multiplication is in fact polynomial convolution, and in the frequency domain that just becomes coefficient-wise multiplication.

The Karatsuba method is almost as cool and more practical for smallish numbers.

<comment><USER26> Can you explain the connection with FFT? Or provide some useful links? Sounds really interesting.

<comment><USER31> I gave a quasi-explanation in response to lamename's comment. If you want some search queries, learn what convolution is, then observe the connection between discrete convolution and polynomial multiplication, then learn about the convolution theorem.

<comment><USER26> This bringing back control theory for me. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is a lovely, readable summary of a relatively abstract mathematical result.

</comment><comment><USER33> Are exponentiation operations much faster than multiplication since an exponentiation b^n is just n additions? Given that is true, I wonder if there is a fast approximation method of solving a multiplication by solving an exponentiation that would have a close result?

<comment><USER34> Except it's not, because exponentiation is not something reserved for integers. Just because you can write out b^4 as b * b * b * b doesn't mean that "that must be the rule". How would that rule even begin to explain how to calculate b^2/3 or b^π?

It's a cute little rule to use in middle school, when you get your very first glimpse at exponentiation, but it's also incredibly wrong if you try to actually use it with the rational, real, or complex numbers =)

([https://www.reddit.com/r/3Blue1Brown/comments/a6mqsf/how_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Blue1Brown/comments/a6mqsf/how_is_exponentiation_different_from_repeated/) has some more information in case you want to know what _would_ be a way to understand exponentiation for all numbers, not just integers)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Slow paying client and how do you deal with them? - <AUTHOR> We run a small web service business.
Our products mostly SEO are a monthly subscription and range about 5K/month. We are experiencing a bit of a cash flow issue as most invoices are pending from 3 months or more.
The clients are all happy with the services they receive but are not making the payments on time. How do you deal with your invoices ?
Whats the structure at your business ? <comment><USER2> To a first approximation, when a client doesn't pay on time, I stop working for them. Clients who don't pay are worse than one less client because there's no income and there is an allocation of resources...both directly and to collections.

There are cases where I have had a long standing relationship with a good client who was experiencing short term problems and let me know about it and we worked something out. Those cases are very rare and required an existing good relationship.

On the other hand, people who started out slow to pay never get better.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had this problem, and solved it by giving discounts. Hopefully, your pricing will allow this. It is fairly standard to see a notation on an invoice like 1/10 net 30

That means you will give a 1% discount if they pay in 10 days, or the entire undiscounted invoice is due in 30 days. This made a huge difference in my business, since all my customers wanted the discount.

I should add that I was doing projects and billing for projects for the Fortune 50 - with a good margin. So I'm not sure if this will apply to your customers.

<comment><USER4> It's interesting that you got a positive outcome. I also thought about this solution, but I just assumed, that it would work like a fine on them. And if clients would simply be fined, then they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not. And would obviously frequently choose to be late. And that's not something I want.

Of course, it may depend a lot on how you put it. I guess your clients rather felt a loss aversion and didn't just get comfortable with late payments.

<comment><USER3> I quoted a price - say 6 thousand dollars, for the job. Then, when I billed it, I would bill for the full six thousand dollars, with the notation of 1/10 net 30 or sometimes 1/15 net 30 (since a few organizations had trouble getting checks out quickly, and wouldn't even try for the ten). So there was only a discount seen by the accounts payable people - and it was never discussed at any time. I don't know if anybody that I actually worked with even knew I was giving the discounts. They were just there to motivate quick payment.

At any rate, they worked very well in real life. Never any problems. Just a matter of adding the notation at the top of the invoice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have a small agency, and have these issues too. Most of the time it is just the occasional slow payed invoice. If they get past two weeks we shoot them an email.

Things we do to lower the risk as much as we can. #1 we get paid upfront for the month. #2 We always ask for a credit card or ACH as part of the contract, we still do get checks because for some that is the preferred method for them, but we try to get the CC / ACH.

For us, if it's becoming an issue over 1-2 months, I'll personally make the ask and find out if something is wrong. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt that the invoice isn't getting to them or was missed.

Something people have suggested is when the payment is late, a nice notification email that just says that you haven't received payment for this month and according to policy, work is suspended until payment is received.

The reason we don't do this is because for us 100% of the time it has been a missed invoice, not an intentional stoppage of payment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for you advise. I appreciate it.

One of the problems with setting up Stripe/credit card payments for us is the amount is close to 5K. Most client would prefer a invoice as opposed to a direct debit.

Clients on a 1-2K retainers generally ask for an automated payment. Clients above the 2K mark generally pay but are usually much slower.

We email them after 10 days and then a personal call is made every 15 days.

We have never had a non payment issue as such but the invoices are always waiting for the directors or someone's signature to go through.

We have tried the following so far

1) Automated payments. 2) Personal email after 10 days 3) Call every 15 days. 5) SEO invoices are month in advance yet payments come 30 days after service is delivered.

For ongoing clients that have been us with over 6 months it may be difficult to stop services. We know they will pay as we have a good relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have lived this many times over. You will always have clients like this, these are the best ways I have found so far.

1: do not give net 30 day terms unless a client has earned them or applied via credit. Some exceptions can be made for large firms, but many small to medium businesses are terrible about paying. Large businesses might be a little slow, but almost always pay consistently the same, unless there is a known issue.

2: If you do give net 30 terms (or anything more then 10 days), provide a discount for payment within 10 days. This makes almost all larger businesses prioritize your invoice and get you paid. You may think it is minor, but many businesses do this over hundreds or sometimes thousands of invoices and they save significant amounts of money doing so.

3: Make payment details clear within your TOS/contract. For my smaller consulting clients, if their invoice was unpaid after 3 days from the due date I stopped all work and they lost their spot in line for services. So essentially most of those clients had 7-10 days to pay me or I halted all work. I also had it up front that if that happened 2 times within a short period (defined in the contract) that all future work (if accepted) would be prepaid. This was part of my non-negotiable contract terms. For my SaaS product, I used similar terms, we billed their credit card for small/mid sized clients (generally under $2k/month) and if their card was denied or we were unable to collect that months service after 5 days we suspend their account until it was brought current. They typically had until the next billing cycle to do so and then their account was disabled and couldn't be reactivated without talking to me. For enterprise clients on the SaaS product we used invoice terms with a built in discount and a time bomb suspension, it was just typically a little longer as I never had an enterprise not pay.

Employing those three strategies fixed most of our cash flow issues and helped stress levels go down drastically. But sadly, it never fixes all the issues so like others said, no client is better then one sucking up resources, dump them.

Also, I had clients get super upset when their accounts got suspended or we stopped working their project and they went back into the queue. But in the end, it isn't my problem, it is theirs. I would always try to empathize with them and would work with some to help out where it seemed right, but in the end, fuck you pay me. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your detailed post and time you took to explain your process.

1) We only give 10 days for payment. We have also tried inserting a admin fee of $150every time invoices remain unpaid after 30 days. Clients are usually happy paying that extra 150 then paying the invoice on time.

The important thing is that they have never questioned or even shown disappointment/issues with a late payment fee.

2) Yes this is something a lot of people have suggested. I will be happy to give this a try.

3) Being a service business, we emphasize this when signing them up and also talk about invoices by building up a personal relationship. I am unsure that stopping work will work in our favour. However this sentiment is being echoed by many people here.

<comment><USER6> Your welcome.

$150 on an average invoice of $5k isn't nearly enough. My penalty is 10%. Yea that is insane if you do an APR but I don't treat it as that, it is a one time penalty. Also, I usually set a minimum of say $100.

On #3. You have only one option if someone doesn't pay you. Stop the service. It is kind of like if you don't pay your cable bill, they only have one option really, stop giving you service. Sure they can send you to collections but the only real punishment is removing your access. Same for you.

I totally understand that being a hard concept as you probably are a good person and want to see the good in people. But people will take advantage of that until you draw a line and prevent it. It sucks but it is just how some people work and have to be handled.

Here is the plus. If you setup your marketing correctly and target the correct clients etc then this becomes a small percentage of the people you deal with. And honestly the people who routinely do this to you are the people to cut loose. The guy/gal who had a rough month and calls you is almost never the worry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Monthly subscriptions for your monthly services . . .

Setup your payments with Stripe so they are recurring subscriptions . . . this will keep them paid on time.

I expect most clients will just signup so they don't have to handle your invoices.

I would start getting your slow to pay clients signed up first but roll this out to all clients. If a client is shying away from signing up offer them a discount to get on subscription payment.

For slow/non-paying clients . . . not on subscription . . . a friendly email reminder that invoice are due upon receipt or 30 days net (spell out terms on invoice). After 30 days we will stop providing services till invoices are caught up.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input.

Unfortunately, for us some of these clients make up a good chunk of our business. They also have been with us for a good time.

Stopping work might not work in our favour. However I think your other suggestion echoed by some others about offering some discount to either sign up on a automated payment or paying by a certain date also makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I prefer the horse head in bed route. Seems to work about 92% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Speak open and friendly to your client that it is important for you being paid on time. I would always call over email a client. You get a better feel on what's going on. If multiple follow up attempts fail, I'd speak more serious and eventually involve a lawyer. You could also explore selling your invoices. Factoring can be a good way to mitigate the cash flow issues.</comment>


Starbucks' "Venti" Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-gross4mar04,0,2819241.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail <comment><USER2> Go In-n-Out!

"In-N-Out Burger, which is privately held, has maintained a cult following, in large part because it has insisted on not turning burgers into an industrial process, all while expanding gingerly in California, Arizona and Nevada. As a result, it remains a destination, a privilege, a brand that is owned by the minority of Americans who have regular access to it."</comment>


A Last Lecture by Dartmouth Professor Thomas Cormen - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQRrNdpMsU <comment><USER2> I had Cormen for my Algorithms class (using the CLRS textbook, of course) and he was great (iirc the problem sets were epically long, at least for me).</comment>


Watch Everything in 3-D? Here's How One Inventor Is Making it Possible - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/02/watch-everything-in-3-d-heres-how-one-inventor-is-making-it-possible/

<comment><USER2> Okay, I give up. HOW? What does his 2d-to-3d converter actually DO in order to produce 3D? I read the whole linked article and watched the video on his fundable page and it seems like it's all just handwaving. What is being done, and what are the tradeoffs?

On the output end of things, it looks like his glasses are the old red-green color filters. Yes, you can use color filters to generate 3d "on any device", but only at the expense of losing color info in the source image. (Will people really want essentially black-and-white 3D over either full-color 2D or the full-color 3D you can get using polarized lenses (with a special screen) or active (powered with a smart shutter) glasses?)

On the input end of things, suppose your input is, say, a bugs-bunny cartoon. How does his software give us useful 3D info where none was present in the source signal?

</comment><comment><USER3> glenra - Good questions! On the display end of our technology we use two different 3-D glasses technologies to provide full-color 3-D video to viewers. When using a 3-D TV or projector, you simply wear the 3-D glasses that came with the 3-D TV or projector. When watching a 2-D TV or projector, whether it's CRT, LCD, plasma, DLP, or laser, we supply a special pair of RF shutter glasses. When watching a computer monitor or handheld device such as a smart phone, we supply our FullColor 3D glasses. These are not anaglyph glasses. We spent several years on research and development to develop complex notch filters that would work with every kind of display to provide full-color with no eyestrain or headaches. These glasses have been tested successfully by millions of people and, while not providing quite as good color as shutter glasses, the longer you wear them, the more the brain adjusts to provide a more natural looking color image. In addition, the output of your computer (VGA or HDMI) can be input to our converter, making it viewable on any 3-D TV or projector with our shutter glasses (or on a 3-D TV or projector using its 3-D glasses). Our patented 2-D to 3-D conversion technology works in a unique way that is different from all other attempts to convert 2-D to 3-D. Our algorithm compares two frames at a time and presents stereo pair data that is designed to work hand-in-hand with the algorithms the human brain uses to create the 3-D experience. Our software makes use of the facts that objects further from the camera in a scene exhibit less brightness, sharpness, contrast, and color saturation, are located higher up in the frame, get smaller, and objects that occlude other objects generally move faster than the objects they occlude (telephone poles move by faster than buildings as seen from a moving car, for instance). I hope this is helpful in clarifying your excellent question.

</comment><comment><USER4> The converter layers frames to determine depth information. The reviews by people who have seen the converter say it's fantastic.

<comment><USER2> Setting aside how that works, to then get "3D on any device" do they use the resulting info to make a cheesy old-fashioned color separation, or is there something new involved on that end?

<comment><USER4> There are glasses involved, but from the looks of a video posted on Hip Hop Gamer Show the picture isn't blurry without the glasses. He's freaking out in the vid playing COD in 3D... hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> im looking forward to 8-bit NES in 3D!</comment>


Show HN: A tool for busy Airbnb owners - <AUTHOR> https://alfred.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys!

I'm an Airbnb host and I just launched a tool for busy Airbnb owners. It's called Alfred and you can find it at [https://Alfred.co](https://Alfred.co)

Alfred aggregates all your bookings from multiple properties & platforms under one handy schedule that can be shared with your team.

Your team can add notes and mark guests as checked in & out. Invite Alfred to your chat group and he will keep everyone updated.

I hope it's useful for some of you</comment>


American Air: TSA is our #1 problem right now, and it's only going to get worse - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/659461/tsa-is-our-no-1-problem-right-now-long-security-lines-are-frustrating-us-airlines-too/ <comment><USER2> TSA-Pre is cool but your friends won't have it.</comment>


I go to sleep 1 hour later every day - <AUTHOR> http://romansnitko.com/blog/sleep.html <comment><USER2> I experimented with this back in college. I was going to sleep 2-3 hours later every day because I found a 26/27-hour day was more natural for me. I loved it. But I only did it for a few weeks, because it was impossible to meet other social and professional obligations.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope I don't sound arrogant, but a short way to put it is that it turns out social and professional obligations meet you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/320/](https://xkcd.com/320/)</comment>


Spying on Scammers [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-51660982/criminals-on-cctv-scammers-caught-red-handed <comment><USER3> "What Jim did was illegal."

That sentence annoys the heck out of me. As in- somehow - his actions should be vilified, yet the scammers _ON THE VIDEO_ are provided the benefit of "allegations" against them?

It's very clear to me that we have lost trust in our public institutions because they have failed us. It is trivial, given a lack of a certain moral compass, to set up an international call center scam like the one in this story. I receive at least 3-4 of these calls _per day_ on my own phone - <USER2> scale is absolutely immense. And yet the person who successfully reveals the depravity of what these people do is the one who is the criminal? To that I say let the scammers try and sue him.

If the governments can't or don't have the will to solve the problem, I say let the people do it for them. Before you accuse me of advocating for vigilante justice, there is precedent for this sort of thing: the TCPA, passed by Congress in 1991, provides for a Private Right of Action against these telephone scammers - meaning that private individuals have the right to sue the scammers, rather than waiting for collective government action. However, this no longer works with the international scale of modern phone scams.

It's a classic tragedy of the commons. The cost of making phone calls over VoIP is basically zero at this point. I believe that the solution is simple: first, make the economics work against the scammers by making VoIP more expensive and use those funds to create an abuse reporting and enforcement mechanism; second, make the source of all phone calls completely transparent to end-users (or at least power-users). VoIP abuse must be taken seriously otherwise there will be no public telephone network left for the rest of us. It'll just be a bunch of bots calling each other and us- what a dystopia.

<comment><USER4> It's amazing how email spam exploded in the nineties and was fought over for a couple of decades before the current uneasy truce was established. And now we're seeing phone calls have the same problems.

You could even cross "charge more" and "authenticate senders" off the spam solutions bingo card.

(This seems to be less prevalent in the EU, but maybe that's my imagination? Or due to having only a mobile? We're certainly not free of tech support scammers)

<comment><USER5> Maybe the English language is the barrier to entry in most EU countries, AFAIK the scammers mostly speak English...

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing it's not as much a barrier to entry, but it's making US and the UK more cost-effective. There isn't enough competition among the international scammers for it to make sense to start calling the rest of EU countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome to see 'Jim' on the BBC! If you like this, there's a lot more on his YouTube channel. His more adversial videos are justice porn.

[https://youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw](https://youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw)

<comment><USER8> While it's very satisfying to see the scammers being "pwned", unfortunately there's too little real life impact on the scammer market. They operate from poor regions where an overextended (possibly corrupt?) police force has little incentive or possibility to pursue such crimes. From their perspective they are essentially victimless crimes. The victims can't complain, they're are on the other side of the world, too far to matter when there are more pressing matters at home, and the fact that they can afford it lessens the moral burden of stopping the crime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, kudos to this guy, he did a lot of work to uncover these scammers and still uncovering more. I was attempted to be scammed by phone but quickly figured out it was a scam, IRS never calls, but older people bite into these scams. I think more should be done to prevent these.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you find this sort of "justice porn" interesting you might enjoy listening to Toao.net's "Lenny" bot. It's basically a telemarketer (and often scammer) time wasting machine that often seems to lead to spirited outbursts. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nO...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl- i_3g)

</comment><comment><USER11> For what it's worth I always try to keep scammers as long as I can. Time spent on me won't be spent scamming someone else.

</comment><comment><USER5> Overuse of the glitch effects annoyed me... over-editing.

<comment><USER12> BBC news has long been declining toward entertainment, just like many other news outlets.

<comment><USER13> This was a clip from Panorama, which has been particularly bad for this kind of thing. BBC News proper is not as bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ouch. That was unwatchable.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's funny how they credit "Jim Browning", but are careful not to mention he's youtuber doing scam baiting videos.

<comment><USER16> I hadn't heard of Jim before, but from watching the report, I understood he is breaking the law and that it is all on YouTube etc etc. The report did an excellent job of making that clear imo.</comment></comment>


NYT explores the life stories take on in social space - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/04/the-new-york-times-rd-lab-has-built-a-tool-that-explores-the-life-stories-take-in-the-social-space/

<comment><USER2> I just watched the video on this, anyone that thinks the NYT is still the 'Old Gray Lady' is certainly mistaken. The visualization of the link relationships and the interaction of the tool is just beautiful.</comment>


Ask HN: Ruby on Rails or PHP for MVPs - <AUTHOR>

In general which do you prefer for building MVP's? I can build an extremely basic (and crappy) CRUD app on the LAMP stack but my code isn't very modular. Would Rails be better for rapid modular development? <comment><USER2> This is easy to answer: use the stack that you have the most experience with so you can concentrate on writing a web app, not learning new tech.

Personally I like to separate "learning new tech" from "getting work done."

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point. what frameworks do you like for PHP?

<comment><USER2> None. I sometimes use PHP on AppEngine, but use it without any framework except for the Google Auth support.</comment></comment></comment>


CacheBrowser: Bypassing Chinese Censorship Without Proxies Using Cached Content [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.cs.umass.edu/~amir/papers/CacheBrowser.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Related to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10606806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10606806)

Section 3.2.1 (results of their experiment loading 'forbidden' content from outside-China Akamai servers) contains the interesting and surprising stuff.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm curious about how the remote bootstrapper works. Is there a way to determine which sites are served by CDN and obtain a list of that CDN's edge servers without having a database in the first place?</comment>