Eric Schmidt Plans To Sell 3.2M Google Shares - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/08/google-chairman-eric-schmidt-plans-to-sell-3-2m-google-shares-42-of-his-stake-in-the-company/ <comment><USER2> Anyone who can end up with > 1B$ in cash after taxes and fees at the end of the day is in an interesting place.

I have really been impressed with the gusto in which Bill and Melinda Gates have thrown their fortune behind their philanthropy goals. From a cultural history perspective, older families with dynastic wealth tended to get diversified as the generations spread wider and wider, but modern day generations are quite narrow, between one an four families at any given time, rarely spreading.

Many people believe that as production capacity outstrips demand at any cost point we'll enter a sort of 'star trek' like period where nobody has to work. Of course somebody has to do some work, but who that will be, that will be the economic factor of the times.

With fertility at 1.6 births per family then for a 21st century family patriarch, a billion dollars in a trust fund could probably provide a living for you descendants pretty much forever.

<comment><USER3> It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. The "negative" possibility is a reemergence of old-style landed gentry, where wealth passes down from generation to generation with relatively little perturbation or erosion, interrupted only in the case of the "bad apple" bone-headed heir who actively blows the family fortune. It's interesting that both Gates and Buffett pretty consciously opted out of finding out how that would play out.

Of people currently in the list of top-20 richest people, the ones to observe (successfully into multigenerational territory) seem to be the Waltons, Kochs, and Bettencourt. But probably more, since the cutoff for top-20 is $22 billion, and you hardly need that much to start a multigenerational fortune, especially if people aren't having a lot of kids anymore.

I wonder if there's enough data to put together a graph of how previous American fortunes fared, actually. What did the trajectory of the Rockefeller estate look like as it was split among heirs and invested in various forms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems a well timed move by Schmidt.

Google share price has had a lot priced into it recently (Jumps on self driving cars, google glasses etc) and the Inevitable drop in QE means the price is going to have to slow. Not decline, just grow slower.

That's not to say google is in particular trouble, but their growth markets for the future are BIG markets, fibre, cars, home automation - All markets that need lots of pump priming, lots of infrastructure work and that will eventually become ubiquitous.

There may not be a lot of profit in the markets or google may not be able to capture it but there will be a lot of cash, and that maybe google's destiny - PG&E.

Just my two cents (been reading up on profitability and ROI of 19C railways - fascinating)

<comment><USER5> Their work on Google Fibre is definitely an interesting one and there is a huge opportunity there if they can get navigate their way around the massive players there already. But Google is playing smart by lobbying governments to open up competition.

The car opportunity is pretty much non existent for them. All of the top 20 car manufacturers have had projects for years and Volvo, Toyota already have plans to launch in 2014. They may look to someone like Tesla for a partnership but they are niche.

<comment><USER6> Interesting that you're appear so dismissive of Google's self driving cars.

I'm not claiming you're necessarily wrong, but I am intrigued about the other self driving options and how they surpass Google's solution?

It would appear to be a widely held belief, that Google is the pioneer and leader in the field, at least with respect to the software/AI.

<comment><USER5> > It would appear to be a widely held belief

Among people who don't know much about the automotive industry.

The software/AI is secondary to the ability of the solution to work in hundreds of millions of cars in hundreds of countries (all with varying regulations) under an infinite array of conditions. The car companies have decades of experience at this. Google has none. And even worse they have a penchant for beta software and a concerning inability to ship products properly.

So whilst Google's software may be technically better (I don't know) in the grand scheme of things it is a meaningless consideration.

<comment><USER7> Sigh. Stop rationalizing your pet Google peeves.

> _The software/AI is secondary to the ability of the solution to work in > hundreds of millions of cars in hundreds of countries (all with varying > regulations) under an infinite array of conditions._

No it doesn't. It's perfectly fine if it works even with _one_ car model if that spurs demand and further development. It's perfectly fine if the self- driving system initially only works in "good" conditions, since a driver should always be prepared to take over. It's perfectly fine if the system detects ice or snow and sets off a shit-ton of alarms warning the driver to take over. No initial offering of a brand new technology ever deals with every imaginable scenario.

> _The car companies have decades of experience at this._

The car companies have decades of experience designing mechanical and electromechanical systems. Their software expertise _sucks_. Other than the Tesla, have you seen the dismal state of modern car software? Even BMW uses a system of rotary dials, and "apps" are just _now_ becoming commonplace.

Robust self-driving cars involve an unimaginable amount of software complexity. There are machine vision algorithms, sensor fusion algorithms, estimation and planning algorithms, learning algorithms, and probably a bevy of common-sense heuristics. There needs to be extensive testing of these algorithms, and careful bounds on their latency and reliability. These are _computer science_ problems, not automotive problems.

> _Google has none._

Google has cash. They can acquire people and expertise. See [1]

> _And even worse they have a penchant for beta software and a concerning > inability to ship products properly._

May I be bold enough to presume that the vast array of smart people they've hired might have realized that Gmail and self-driving cars require different approaches to software development....

[1] [http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/11/ron-medford-google- nhts...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/11/ron-medford-google-nhtsa/)

<comment><USER8> Quite right.

Just like TSLA is going to beat the big car companies at electric cars, so too will GOOG beat them at self-driving ones.

The electro-mechanical and mechanical aspect of a self-driving car is the easy part; it is the software that will be where the real innovation occurs, and Google has arguably more software expertise than any other organization on the planet, and much, much more than any car company.

If anyone can win that race, it's Google.

<comment><USER5> That's hilarious because Tesla doesn't exist outside the US where as today electric cars can be purchased via GMs Volt program e.g GM Volt, Holden Volt, Opel Ampera. Likewise when BMW releases their electric car it will overnight be available in countless countries through their vast dealerships and partnerships.

You are being naive if you think that technology alone is all you need in business.

<comment><USER9> Tesla store in Toronto [http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20121116_C8623_PHO...](http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20121116_C8623_PHOTO_EN_20801.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's gotta be a good feeling. One I may never feel in 1000 lifetimes, but I sure would love to know that feel.

<comment><USER11> A feeling of winning life's lottery? You've already won:

[http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and- sta...](http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it worth the trouble to sell rather than borrow against it? Anyone have any idea on the economics of borrowing against such a large amount of equity in such a stable company?

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. Eric lived through the Dot Com explosion where he had multiple millions of dollars in Sun stock that had he borrowed against he would have no collateral today.

The first mistake made by young people who are suddenly 'rich' on paper because the one stock they own is worth a lot of money, is borrow against it as if it _was_ money. Only to have the stock value vanish and they end up destroying what savings they did have repaying those loans.

There were a number of stories in the Mercury News about people who built dream homes starting pre-bust, only to sell them for pennies on the dollar post-bust because they couldn't afford them any more.

<comment><USER13> People _do_ that? Maybe it's just that I lived through the dot com explosion too, but that seems astonishingly foolish - it might as well be gambling. If you want to acquire some asset, like a house, sure, sell your stock and buy the asset - but you don't get to have it both ways! You can't have the security of a slow-appreciation asset like a house _and_ the upside of a risky, high-appreciation asset like tech company stock. Use one to back the other and you just amplify your risk.

<comment><USER14> CNet founder Halsey Minor bought a ton of real estate against his paper fortune and then lost it all in the financial crisis: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the- sorry-f...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-sorry-fate- of-a-tech-pioneer-halsey-minor-and-historic-virginia-estate-carters- grove/2012/05/30/gJQAwdJG4U_print.html)

Larry Ellison has been living off credit for the last decade or so; he's put up ~$4B worth of Oracle stock as collateral. [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Inside-look-at-a- billiona...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Inside-look-at-a-billionaire- s-budget-Larry-2542603.php) [http://www.forbes.com/sites/calebmelby/2012/09/25/larry- elli...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/calebmelby/2012/09/25/larry-ellison- americas-third-richest-man-down-1-billion-on-drop-in-oracle/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would buy them all if I could..

<comment><USER5> Not me personally.

If Facebook Search even remotely takes off then that will siphon away a significant amount of advertising that Google relies on. And Google has shown a worrying inability to monetize any of their recent projects. Docs/Gmail/Youtube/Android aren't making much money, Glasses is niche, none of the OEMs are interested in their self driving car technology and their Motorola acquisition has been an unquestionable disaster.

<comment><USER16> YouTube is driving billion+ in ad revenue if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Which is 2% of their total yearly revenue.

They still rely far too heavily on their existing Google Search/Google Adsense cash cows.

<comment><USER17> Yeah but this is the scenario many companies face. It's not like there are THAT many companies with Billions in multiple revenue channels that aren't effectively umbrella corporations.

Google funnels most of their diverse online product set back into the primary money generator. I'm sure we'll see less of that in the future as there are so many people that have pointed this out it's almost tiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When the news about the change in structure of the shares came out a while back I decided that this is a company that I could never invest in (a big enough discount to intrinsic value may change my mind). The execs can reduce their economic interest in the company while maintaining control, which isn't great for keeping their interests aligned with shareholders.

e: Here's a study that shows that companies with dual-class share structures pay executives more in compensation than usual and make value destructive acquisitions.

<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1080361>

<comment><USER19> This is kind of a weird way to evaluate Google in particular since they already have a dual class share structure. Just check their executive pay levels and acquisition patterns, which you should do anyways. You don't need to make a probabilistic argument when you have direct evidence.

Meanwhile, in many instances shareholders tend to be capricious and uninterested in long term health, especially when particular shareholders are heavyweights but in unrelated markets (e.g. hedgefunds under plurality voting charters)

edit: also what jmillikin said, which is particularly apt since the study you cite did not claim those results as more likely in dual-class companies, but found them correlated with the _growth_ of the divergence between insider voting rights and cash-flow rights.

<comment><USER18> See my response to jmillikin. Your comment about the study's findings is semantic, because it does claim that its more likely to happen:

"These findings support the hypothesis that managers with greater control rights in excess of cash-flow rights are prone to waste corporate resources to pursue private benefits at the expense of shareholders."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That is a huge amount to sell in one year. Wonder why he is unloading so fast. Why not a 5 year plan?</comment>


GopherCon Singapore 2019 Videos - <AUTHOR> https://engineers.sg/conference/gopherconsg-2019 <comment><USER2> Every time these things appear I feel very happy because it seems that the gopher protocol has finally returned! Then I click on the link.

<comment><USER3> Every time an article about Go is posted to HN, I feel optimistic that people have finally given up making the same bad joke about a thirty years obsolete protocol that happens to share a similar name. Then I click on the comments :(

<comment><USER4> The thing is that its not a joke, that's truly what we think when we see these headlines. And at least for me sometimes they are about the gopher I'm interested in.

<comment><USER3> > The thing is that its not a joke, that's truly what we think when we see > these headlines.

I'm sorry, but this isn't believable. In the general context of technology, "Go" and "Gopher" have unambiguously referred to the programming language for a decade now.

<comment><USER5> Nah. It's also not a joke for me. It's literally my first thought.

Maybe what you say is true in social circles specific to the Go language, but it's not unambiguous outside of that.

HN often refers to technologies that more mainstream communities might refer to as obsolete, but it's not so for us. There are active Gopher servers _right now_ , and surely a community that still uses them.

I believe there is also a rising interest in Gopher among people that believe that HTTP has become far too bloated.

From a quick search, here's a blog post from February of _this year_ of someone that decided to also host their website via Gopher:

[https://petermolnar.net/gopher/](https://petermolnar.net/gopher/)

He even mentions how he was inspired by an HN post of 3 months ago that talks about the Gopherspace:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19178885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19178885)

<comment><USER3> Your "rising interest in Gopher (the protocol)" is a handful of enthusiasts. Maybe if you tried really hard, you could identify two dozen of them. There are over half a million Go programmers in the world.

<comment><USER5> I really don't like that attitude where everything that's not mainstream should just die. It takes effort to be outside the mainstream. It makes it worse that the reason is simply because a monopoly-sponsored language wanted to use the name for a mascot for their language. Of course a language sponsored by Google is going to be popular. As _the_ most powerful marketing company in the world, they have the power to rub whatever they want on all our faces.

Linux was only for handfuls of enthusiasts. The *BSDs were for a handful of enthusiasts. Plan9 is still only for a handful of enthusiasts. I guess they/we should all just disappear or submit to just using Chrome on Windows and programming everything as webapps in Javascript, right?

I'm not really a user of Gopher, but I appreciate anything that helps alleviate the insane Internet monoculture that we have right now, where the Internet is becoming synonymous with the Web and where it's very likely if not done already that world laws will be written with only the Web in mind.

<comment><USER3> > I really don't like that attitude where everything that's not mainstream > should just die.

I'm not being normative i.e. trying to persuade you that Gopher _should_ die, in my opinion.

I'm being descriptive i.e. describing the world in which we live where Gopher _is_ dead.

<comment><USER5> Gopher will be dead when there are no Gopher servers left online and when installing a Gopher client takes substantially more effort than any other package. Right now, Gopher clients are in official repositories. All I need to install one is:

      sudo pacman -S elinks

and all I need to visit one is:

      elinks gopher://gopher.meulie.net

<comment><USER3> > Gopher will be dead when there are no Gopher servers left online and when > installing a Gopher client takes substantially more effort than any other > package.

This is an impractical definition of "dead".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> YouTube playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq2Nv- Sh8EbYBYteOWx9r...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq2Nv- Sh8EbYBYteOWx9rNuy0JSF8mzsu)</comment>


What are the best ways to shrink your carbon footprint? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/carbon-footprint-choices-1.4403708 <comment><USER2> Don't have kids</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't you use formal methods? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested to gauge what the prevailing opinions on formal methods are amongst "software developers at large", specifically those outside of academia or of companies with serious R&D wings.
Some specific questions I'd be really interested in hearing answers to:
* Have you ever used formal methods outside of your professional life (e.g. in personal projects, in a previous academic career)? If so, what methods did you use, and what did you use them for?
* Do you think your professional work would benefit at all from the use of formal methods? Why/why not?
* Have you ever used formal methods in your professional work?  If so, what methods did you use, and what did you use them for?
* If you have never used formal methods, do you perceive a significant barrier that prevents you from using them (applicability issues aside)? If you have used formal methods, do you see issues which prevent widespread adoption?
(I mean you specifically; I've read some of the many articles which give varying explanations on why formal methods have never taken off in the mainstream.) <comment><USER2> Maybe this is just my ignorance speaking, but I think that using formal methods would take a lot of time; more than the projects I am working on are worth.

Also, I don't know how to do it. I mean, at school we had some examples, but those were for math-like stuff (how to verify that the algorithm calculating the square root actually calculates the square root), but I wouldn't know how to apply that to programs that are mostly reading something from database and displaying it on a web page.

Now that I googled a bit, I found a paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.03162](https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.03162) claiming that "Tools for formal verification of Java programs are in generally poor shape, and do not support recent versions of Java". That would explain why smarter people around me are also not using them.

Give me a tool that is easy to install and works reliably, and I will be happy to learn a new thing.

<comment><USER3> I think you've hit the problem of "why it isn't adopted" really well. Most people seem to have learned formal methods as "prove this _source code_ does exactly what it should based on the spec", but formal methods don't have to apply at just that level.

Formal methods can be applied at the specification level, instead. This can be _much_ simpler as you get to ignore a lot of extraneous details. This is also important because many real-world problems are not because the code is implemented correctly, but because the code implements a bad specification (the spec doesn't do what they think it does).

Using something like TLA+ or state diagrams or other things which can be executed (in a sense), which are formal representations of the specification, you can find the issues in the specification before you even touch the code. I've also used it as a way to "debug" by taking the ideal, creating the spec and showing it does work correctly, then weakening the constraints in the model until it behaved like the implementation, which gave an idea of where to check in the implementation (which found the problem, but was hard to debug because it was an embedded system).

A (more) concrete example: We had an embedded system with multiple nodes running internally and concurrently that communicated via a shared memory system. You may have already guessed that this could lead to race conditions, and that's what we found. But in trying to sell TLA+ to a colleague, I showed a model of how they were using the system for a part that was constantly giving them errors. We were able to create a much simpler model than the code (which had become several thousand lines in each of two nodes). The model was maybe 100 lines long and focused strictly on how they communicated. We dropped out the message contents (irrelevant) and only modeled the size (variable, but we simplified to 1-10 or something like that) and the buffer size (for the model this was configurable) and the list pointing to where in the buffer messages started (list length was configurable), and a few other details. In making the specification it became clear where the problem was and we didn't even have to run the model checker.

If they'd started with modeling that specification more formally (what they had was all prose and tens of pages long in two specification documents), they would've saved months of headaches cleaning up the numerous issues with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle put it well. Formal methods are unstoppable but they're also really slow.

A lot of it is incorrect too. For example, there are methodologies to doing software estimation. Some of the more complex ones are less accurate than some of the simpler ones. Nobody really cares that there's a 90% chance that this feature will be completed between 4 hours and 4 months, and a 30% chance that it will be completed in 2 weeks. If asked for an estimation, someone will just toss out the "2 weeks number" because it has the highest odds. Nor do you really want to spend several hours or days narrowing that range, because not only would you still be incorrect, you'll have spent time on estimation that you otherwise would have spent doing work.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Yes, I did a deep dive into TLA+ (Hillel's publications are great for this) and used it as a proof of concept (attempted to convince the office to use it) to demonstrate the nature of a bug (I described how we thought the system behaved (per spec), no issues, then recreated the bug by selectively weakening the model, which mirrored exactly the problems in the real system). I've also used TLA+ as a model checker for non-programming systems to demonstrate where we could anticipate errors/problems and strengthen policy, physical, or software controls to prevent/mitigate them, that was a side project for me but the information was used by my sister professionally. That worked well because real world systems are inherently concurrent. It was another case of trying to convince management that simulation/modeling was good (it worked in her case, to some extent).

2\. Some of it, not all of it. (1) was a concurrency issue and was well-suited to TLA+'s approach. Present office does not deal with concurrency to the same extent so I wouldn't try to sell TLA+ here. Other methods would be more appropriate (especially things like proper state diagrams/statecharts which are amenable to simulation, versus the traditional prose version of software specifications). These are lightweight formal methods or spec-centric formal methods that don't necessarily require heavy proofs to gain a benefit from them. Since most of the errors I've encountered fall into two camps: straight up logic errors (verification should catch) and specification errors (validation should catch). My focus has been on the latter. I think testing in general catches the former pretty well, or using a language that lets you code out a lot of logic errors, but specification errors are hard-to-impossible to catch until you place the product in front of the customer. Applying formal methods + simulation & modeling to the specification can really help here, even if it's only to subsets of the spec, as you can test against that verified/validated specification more effectively than against a prose specification (what I usually see in my work, 1k+ documents that are largely self-contradictory).

3\. See 1. I did that on my own, but it was intended to start a conversation in the office about modeling our systems more formally to gain similar insights elsewhere (and better understand the system design). It did not take off.

4\. People don't want to learn the methods, especially in legacy systems (which I demonstrated at my previous office would benefit from formal methods). There's also confusion over what formal methods bring you. I had to repeatedly state that I wasn't going to prove that our system worked correctly (in the sense of proving theorems about the code or something), but only properties of the specification (which for most systems were 1k+ page documents). Without a compelling case study, you will not convince a harried office that it's worth investing in something that seems slow ("Why aren't you coding!?!"), even if it does ultimately save time (once you start coding you can more directly implement the feature or have a better idea of what/how to test).</comment>


New York Times R&D group is braced for the future of content delivery - <AUTHOR> http://www.rss4gadgets.co.uk/2009/05/11/new-york-times-rd-group-is-braced-for-the-future-of-content-delivery-being-totally-chill/

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool video: [http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/05/the-new-york-times- envision...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/05/the-new-york-times-envisions- version-20-of-the-newspaper/)</comment>


Making Online Notarization Legal - <AUTHOR> http://blog.signnow.com/2012/07/08/the-struggle-to-make-online-notarization-legal/

<comment><USER2> That was a great read. Some of the author's enthusiasm comes across a bit campy at points, but in general, they seem justified in casting themselves as pariahs.

The whole scenario is a collission of off-color concerns. On one hand, you have notaries and the notary establishment (yeah, I made that up) fighting to save their place in the market. Then you have lawmakers who see it, fail to understand it, and are then lobbied by the aforementioned establishment. Then you've got consumers like PG who are (rightfully) on edge about the legality and scam-factor associated with the idea. Everyone is watching this out of the corner of their eye, defaulting to the position that something is fishy.

Notarization is something business people are trained to treat with some reverence. The entire concept of a signature as an agent of identification is a bit bizzare when you think about it. Your signature is not a secret, but it remains a critical security element. Notarization is a hack. It's another layer of the same thing varnishing over the whole "signature means agreement" show. Yet it's so simple, and so engrained in our way of conducting business that any attempt to change it freaks everyone out. Fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really excited to see this concept made real.

Based on comments here, multi-factor (non-wallet) authentication is used to identify the parties. This method of ID verification is a technique that I helped pioneer at Equifax many years ago, and I've been disappointed that it hasn't ever really seemed to take off before. I occasionally see it in use here and there, but now really expect it to be recognized for its value. Not perfect for every case, but a useful tool nonetheless.

Cheers and way to go!

</comment><comment><USER4> I was disturbed to see that pg killed an earlier thread on this company, on a rather flimsy basis. The financial industry is obviously ripe for disruption, but if those being disrupted can kick up enough dust to have HN erase all memory of a new idea, we have a bigger problem.

<comment><USER5> It was not a flimsy basis. The site was specifically claiming online notarization was legal in all states, if I recall correctly[1].

It is NOT legal in California.

They now appear to have modified their claims. As far as I can see, they only say online signing is legal, not online notarization.

[1] The Internet Archive has not crawled them since 2009, when the domain appears to have been used for something completely different, so I can't check to be sure exactly what they said and what has changed.

<comment><USER6> You're not understanding the facts, online notarization IS legal in California... the notaries themselves can't be in California, but the signers can.

Signers can notarize from anywhere in the world, including California, since the notaries follow Virginia law. It's like how lenders and credit companies often use Utah law (but can lend elsewhere) or corporations incorporate in Delaware.

<comment><USER5> The California Secretary of State says: "California law requires a person to appear personally before a notary public to obtain notarial acts like acknowledgments or jurats".

<comment><USER6> Yes, if you are a CALIFORNIA NOTARY than you must follow their requirements. NOT if you are a Virginia Notary, then you follow Virginia Law, and your clients, wherever they are in the world, adhere to your Virginia requirements.

<comment><USER5> There have been many cases of state courts rejecting out of state notarizations that did not comply with the requirements of the state in which the court sits.

There was a bill a few years ago in Congress that tried to make it so that states would have to honor out of state notarizations, but this bill was vetoed. Until such a bill is signed into law, or either the 9th Circuit or the Supreme Court rules that states must accept out of state notarizations that do not meet the in-state notary requirements, then any notarization in which you are not present is questionable in California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm excited to see online notarization occur. Traditional, pen-and-ink notaries really shouldn't exist in today's age.

</comment><comment><USER8> I flagged this before and I am going to flag this again: this service is _not legal_ in any state _except Virginia_ and will not satisfy the in-person verification requirements of any state (except Virginia, which does not require in-person verification of identity). This does not mean the service is illegal; it simply means that this service cannot be used for any legal purposes in any state or federal jurisdiction (except Virginia).

There is a reason this service is not, nor will it ever be disruptive--it does not address the core underpinnings of the notary system: verification of documents and identities. Online identify verification using inaccurate third party verification databases is not sufficient to prove identity for _any_ purposes. Holding up a document or id card to a webcam does not allow for sufficient examination by the notary of the document or card showed to prove that the document or id card is what it is alleged to be.

Indeed, this system would actually aggravate the notarization scam problem it claims to address.

Going digital does not solve every problem. Most people at HN may not realize this, but there are a lot of situations where things cannot be done through a computer.

<comment><USER6> You are factually incorrect, and you are a big part of the problem here.

If you are a signer, you can go online now to signnow.com, sitting at Paul Graham's desk IN CALIFORNIA and legally notarize your document. It will be legally notarized by a Virginia Notary, and your notarization is 100% legal everywhere in the US.

"The service is not legal in any state except Virginia" just means the NOTARIES must be sitting in Virginia, again, the clients can be anywhere. Interstate commerce, and the National Association of Secretaries of State have proven support for accepting other state's notarizations.

Regarding identification, you should read the law, and try signnow's service since it does NOT rely on holding up an ID card for identity. The law requires, and signnow uses, out of wallet verification questions from a third party provider to verify identity. Anything else done is above and beyond the law, and is FAR ABOVE what currently occurs with the inconsistency of pen and paper notarizations.</comment></comment>


WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives the Inside Story on #DeleteFacebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind/amp/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690).</comment>


Tim Berners-Lee: hateful people on the web are 'staggering' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/24/tim-berners-lee-hateful-people-on-the-web-are-staggering <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the movie "Forbidden Planet". An alien race develops a technological version of telekinesis and... well, this is what happens. "Monsters from the id!"</comment>


NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=13OkD0C_TWU <comment><USER2> Not yet, not until re-entry. It's arguably the most dangerous part of the missions since launching on Falcon 9 has happened many times before.

Both Soyuz and the Space Shuttle had fatal accidents on re-entry.

<comment><USER3> You're not wrong, but I think it's cool how much safer the generic capsule design is than something like the Shuttle. Really the Shuttle got a whole lot wrong—heat-intolerant aluminum structure and critical, sensitive machinery directly beneath a layer of tiles so fragile you can crush them in your hands (IIRC).

SpaceX's Starship will probably be a lot more tolerant to defects in the heat shield because of the relatively heat-tolerant steel underneath, but landing safely relies on the operation of massive aero surfaces _and_ a relight of the engines with thrust vectoring. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

<comment><USER4> The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.

<comment><USER5> Huh interesting. Do you have sources for that information?

<comment><USER6> The idea that you could capture a satellite and return it was part of the mission requirements for the original shuttle design. If it was a 'friendly' or 'unfriendly' satellite was left unspecified.

It was also limited by the Shuttle's OMS in terms of delta-v so the orbits from which a satellite could be retrieved was constrained.

<comment><USER7> Unfriendly satellite can blow up or cause fire inside of shuttle, so it's bad idea to capture enemy satellites. It's like sending billion-worth mine capturer behind enemy lines, which can be destroyed with AK.

<comment><USER8> Don't see why you're downvoted for posting this. Certainly, satellites designed before the Space Shuttle would have to be very paranoidly designed to include a self-destruct mechanism, but it only takes a couple kilograms of explosives to strongly disincentivize kidnapping it.

If I was a military satellite designer, heaven forbid, I'd definitely include that in a world that included the possibility of stealing satellites. The capability, quietly communicated between the powers, would be enough to ensure that the satellite would never be stolen. And therefore, the billion-dollar kidnapping capability becoming useless.

<comment><USER9> Even without self-destruct, a satellite not programmed to be captured could simply fire some thrusters if it detects an orbit change, and that would likely make some big dammage inside the capturing shuttle.

<comment><USER10> That's typically ion thrusters, isn't it? That's very low mass at very high speed, and would probably take hours to even leave scorch mark. It would feel like a slow breeze.

Of course, military use could do something different, but that's more along the lines of "pack a kilogram of explosives in a pipe bomb".

<comment><USER11> Hydrazine thrusters more likely. Ion thrusters are novel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mods, a better headline would say "returning", or that they've departed the ISS. They haven't returned to the surface yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't easily link to it because it's still live streaming but at 4:10 in they seem to be debugging a local internet/HTML error on their iPads. Next level debugging in production.

<comment><USER14> Related, I wonder if there's going to be a postmortem on this mission on the UI, because from the brief scenes when its shown updating or being clicked on, it looks to have a responsiveness on the order of _half a second_.

<comment><USER15> Think it's Electron. Doesn't surprise me. I wouldn't want to take slack into space with me.

<comment><USER16> I'm fairly certain there's no Electron on iPad (can't take Chrome to iPad). I also don't think that a native wrapper app that loads (local) html files would display a "Safari" error message.

It was probably just a cached/saved website saved to the home screen. I'm not a rocket scientist, but as a web developer, I would rely upon that for anything earth-bound, let alone in Space.

<comment><USER17> > I'm not a rocket scientist, but as a web developer, I would rely upon that > for anything earth-bound, let alone in Space.

...would?

<comment><USER16> would NOT. Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Undocking stream ran earlier and can be found at [https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU](https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU), with the undocking procedure beginning 2 hours 14 minutes in. The actual separation is at 2 hours 19 minutes.

Currently there is a live stream of the autonomous "return coast" phase while the crew sleeps: [https://youtu.be/zMsxviPT2Cw](https://youtu.be/zMsxviPT2Cw)

The splashdown stream is at [https://youtu.be/tSJIQftoxeU](https://youtu.be/tSJIQftoxeU) and starts at 4:25 AM PDT, with deorbiting expected around 10:55 AM PDT.

</comment><comment><USER19> The first comment I saw in the live chat was "You people have it wrong, space is flat, not earth".

<comment><USER20> Well from what I've read the observable universe is fairly flat, but I was wondering what if we're just living in a basin or on a plateau that extends beyond our observable reach?

I suck at math though so I'll just wait for theoretical astrophysicists to tell me interesting things on blogs.

<comment><USER21> Then we can all say we live "in the Valley"!

<comment><USER22> We all live in the valley on this blessed day

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The SpaceX crew land in Florida at 2:48 p.m. ET on Sunday.

<comment><USER24> Or 19:48 for those of us in the UK.

NASA/SpaceX really should start using UTC for their timestamps.

<comment><USER25> I feel like it's not at all weird to say that something is arriving somewhere in that somewhere's local time zone.

<comment><USER26> More importantly, that's the timezone Mission Control is in. There are no timezones in low Earth orbit because you're orbiting every 90 minutes, so the only timezone that's relevant to anyone involved in the Mission is the one that all the hundreds of ground personnel are using (in Mission Control and to a smaller extent on the recovery ship).

<comment><USER27> From my understanding, mission control usually doesn't use their own local time. The choice of time depends on the mission, but common choices are UTC or Mission Elapsed Time. The ISS missions use UTC, since the ISS is jointly controlled by Russia and the US, and neither would agree on using the other's local timezone(s), so they use UTC.

Stuff published to the public is not coming directly from mission control, it is being filtered through NASA PR and SpaceX PR. And PR often tries to simplify things for their audience, like converting UTC (which the average person isn't very familiar with) to local timezone. (And sometimes NASA PR also likes to turn metric into US customary, although SpaceX PR does that less.)

The primary target of NASA and SpaceX's PR is American voters, because it is American taxpayer money that pays for all this. Putting things in terms which makes it easier for an American to understand, but harder for a non-American, makes sense in that context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Re-entry happening some time tomorrow. Cool to see the ISS separation though!

<comment><USER29> I waited all day to see it live but then I had to take the cat in from outside. And missed the live undocking. Plus I got bitten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really glad I got to drive out and watch this launch.

It was fantastic seeing us send people back into space again.

</comment><comment><USER31> Perseverance also launched a few days ago: [https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/](https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/)

Hopefully the landing is just as smooth as Curiosity's.

It would be really cool to see actual, high quality footage of it, but at least there's the simulated renderings. Extremely impressive.

<comment><USER32> There are multiple landing cameras this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> *are returning home. They haven't made it back yet. They are on track to land 11:48am PT on Sunday

</comment><comment><USER34> What's the link for the technical feed? Right now someone is filling time with a history of the ISS.

<comment><USER35> Hit the rewind button to see the departure. All of the "action" is pretty much done for today. They are now just floating through space waiting for the next burn. Tomorrow afternoon will be the re-entry an splash down activity

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The ship departs from the station at 2 hours 19 minutes.

<comment><USER37> The video seems to be no longer live, so times have changed (?). Undocking now starts at 6m45s: [https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU?t=400](https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU?t=400)

Physical separation is at 11m35s: [https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU?t=695](https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU?t=695)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What happens in the event of a parachute failure? Would they be in a position where they could fire up the Super Dracos for a propulsive landing?

<comment><USER39> There are four parachutes. It's designed to support at least a single-chute failure, I don't know about multiple chute outages.

As for propulsive landing - the latest I can see[1] is that while the craft is technically capable of propulsive landing, it's not approved by NASA, even for emergencies. So it's likely that these options are not even available for the crew, and they wouldn't have trained on how to use it/activate it.

[1] [https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-crew-dragon-emergency- landi...](https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-crew-dragon-emergency-landing/)

<comment><USER40> Not even for emergencies? Does that mean that it is officially not there, but in the unlikely unlikely event it can be used, or that it really isn't there anymore and the capsule would just drop dead on the ground?

<comment><USER39> Further reply, this question was just asked and answered on the new live- stream.

Official response from SpaceX: Superdraco thrusters are completely inhibited once the launch is sucessful.

So, no, not even as a backup.

Also, one other thing I remembered - the draco and superdraco thrusters require different pressurisation levels for their fuel systems. Before launch, the system is put into a high pressure mode, to enable launch escape. After they make orbit, the system is depressurised back to enable the draco thrusters to operate.

So they'd need to have time to re-pressurise the system, too.

<comment><USER41> Repressurisation hardware has to exist anyway to have restartability (it takes 15 minutes to switch to high pressure feed, 15 seconds to low pressure feed). Do you know which component has inhibition affected? SW only? Blown fuse? Something different? Certainly not a jettisoned part, because this vehicle is planned to be reused after minor refurbishment.

PS re repressurisation failures: If it becomes absolutely necessary, a procedure could well be devised to operate the larger thrusters at a lower flow rate, albeit with a diminished efficiency and thrust.

<comment><USER39> > Do you know which component has inhibition affected? SW only? Blown fuse? > Something different? Certainly not a jettisoned part, because this vehicle > is planned to be reused after minor refurbishment.

They didn't elaborate, it was a 30 second response.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is Zend Framework worth learning? - <AUTHOR>

I started reading Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP a few days ago. The book relies heavily on the Zend Framework and Smarty templates to build a blogging website.
Does anyone else have experience with these? I'm willing to devote a lot of time learning modern web programming, but am not sure whether I'm headed in the right direction. Any advice?
Thanks in advance,
Matt <comment><USER2> As a general rule, if you have a choice, I would recommend learning Python (Pylons or Django, I prefer Pylons for it's looser coupling) or Ruby + Rails.

While PHP is used all over the place, if you want to keep your sanity you're better off getting into more...structured systems.

Apart from that, Zend is pretty good. At my last place of employment we went through a bunch of frameworks including Code Igniter, Symfony and Cake. The various members of development all had violent disagreements over all of them. For some reason that I am still unsure about Zend seemed to ... work for us. It was stable, and nobody got into religious arguments over it's implementation. Not sure that's a good sales pitch, but it certainly didn't suck from my view. It added to PHP where it needed to, but didn't require you to learn an entirely different way of doing things. e.g. Lower barrier to entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> solid answer, thank you.

i hadn't even considered python. what are its selling points?

<comment><USER2> It's incredibly easy to learn & use - what I've always liked about it is that I spend very little time thinking about how to accomplish a task in Python.

In addition, Python has solid support for object oriented programming which I can't really say for PHP (PHP's object 'support' is slowly improving but it's still a crappy patch). This is represented at it's core by the fact that EVERYTHING is an object - if you say:

foo = 5

foo is an object of type int. It's still loosely typed, in that you don't have to declare that foo is an int, but the contents being objects gives you a lot of power for dealing with them.

There are a lot of great tools for Python as well - Pylons (which Reddit is based upon), Django and TurboGears are pretty well entrenched and established. They are easy to learn and work with (Django has an incredibly low barrier to entry/learning curve) and powerful.

Mark Pilgrim wrote a great book called "Dive into Python" which is available for free on his website: <http://diveintopython.org/>

It gets things moving pretty quickly if you're looking to get a taste of what Python offers.

<comment><USER2> The other point of course is that if you learn PHP, you've only learned a tool to build websites.

Python is a pretty multipurpose tool that happens to have the ability to build web applications. (And Ruby as well)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been using PHP for webdevelopment for 7years now and I recently started using Zend professionally and I must say it works ok from my point of view. It should be easy to learn php with it. But it has some downsides too. Like skinnging of forms for example, is not as easy as it looks! There are also still problems with the form validations. Overall it's not bad, especially because it gives you much freedom of where to put your files and things like that. But to be honest, like I mentioned before, after those 7 years of php, I suggest looking at python (django for example) too. I don't say you shouldn't learn php, it's really great, but django just seems to have it al. Don't know about scaling though...

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web- development-...](http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development- with-rails-third-edition)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do most people agree that Rails is better than PHP to master?

<comment><USER5> i don't.

its too situational and dependent upon time, i feel, to be able to make a generic, blanket statement like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> fair enough. i typed up a lengthy post, but it boils down to this: Will Rails be around for a long time?

<comment><USER5> i don't even necessarily think that it won't be around for a long time.

look at java. it'll be here for a long time to come. and it was very hot for a few years. but now its the cool, safe, standard language CS people pick up. and ruby, for rails, is the new hot language (which was virtually unknown outside of japan for many years until rails hit).

how long till rails cools down and something else picks up steam? how long until the answer to the question "i'm new, what language should i learn?" is something other than "ruby"?

on the flip side of that coin, COBOL programmers get paid a pretty penny nowadays because there are so few of them, but so many COBOL programs are still alive. how long until java programmers become the COBOL programmers of today?

whats "worth" learning depends on what you want to do and whats happening in the industry currently. imo.

<comment><USER6> As an addendum, there will always be jobs out there for writing boilerplate code.

<comment><USER7> Throwing together UI screens isn't sexy but it pays the bills so we can do things like hack code (at home) for fun

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> zend is a good php framework. its used more in corporate environments, from what i've seen, with cake/symfony/codeigniter being used in smaller dev groups or by freelancers.

i don't have enough experience using it to give you my thoughts on how it works and stuff, but i will tell you that for the most part, the php frameworks are all similar in how they work.</comment>


Why Aren't More Women Commenting on VC's Blog Posts? - <AUTHOR> http://tarathetiger.com/2011/09/29/truth-with-tiger-why-arent-more-women-commenting-on-vcs-blog-posts/

<comment><AUTHOR> A very quick and admittedly unscientific survey lead Tara to ask the question, and she doesn't blame the VCs. So what, as always, is the solution?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get deeper into cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> Hello world, i´ve a quick question. I own some bitcoin crumbs (not even a half one haha). One Ether and some IOTAs worth 50 dollar. What should I do to get more into cryptocurrencies.What is your strategie to invest/make money with cryptocurrencies. <comment><USER2> Making money with cryptocurrency is similar to stock. I'd check out /r/ethtrader and similar subreddits.

When you say "deeper" most people will assume you mean the technical stuff. Try making some dapps on ethereum.</comment>


Is Internet censorship out of control? - <AUTHOR> http://memeburn.com/2011/07/is-internet-censorship-out-of-control/

<comment><USER2> "Arab countries including Iran". I hear fact checking helps with the credibility of the discourse...

</comment><comment><USER3> I think we have this all backwards in a sense. When the internet was new and governments were not involved, hackers claimed sovereignty in the anarchistic universe called cyberspace. Now that controls are being forced upon it, we are up in arms. Well what about the physical world? There are just as many arbitrary rules which only exist to protect the interests of the few at the expense of the many already in place. We should be up in arms about governments, or anybody who thinks that they have a right to decide anything but what they do with their own lives, for that matter, not just freedom on the internet.

Take patents, for example. Are we really so deluded that we think that if medical patents didn't exist then not one person would have the drive to cure diseases? Do we really think that compassion does not exist and that profit is the only reason for doing something for another person?

<comment><USER4>
        Do we really think that compassion does not exist and
        that profit is the only reason for doing something for
        another person?

That's a straw man.

The purpose of patents is to encourage companies to publish their research. The purpose of patents is also to discourage pharmaceutical companies to produce yet another variation on acetaminophen and instead spend money on doing research with huge sunken costs.

That this doesn't happen in real life is yet another story, but to appeal to human emotion, as you did in your comment, is shortsighted and wrong too.

The reason for that is that -- yes, most humanitarian efforts have egotistical value, profit being the strongest motive for companies to advance the state of the art. Surely, other than companies, state-sponsored institutions, like the army, have been known to produce valuable research, but most such research was in the context of a war.

<comment><USER3> >The purpose of patents is to encourage companies to publish their research.

I would agree with you if it wasn't for this - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent>:

>certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods, treatment of the human body, and mental acts

And the fact that we have a culture built on the idea that it's every man for himself. What's short sighted isn't an appeal to emotion but the social structures we currently have. Cooperation is a simple and effective way to combat these issues and an appeal to emotion is the mechanism to encourage it.

Now, before you mention it, I understand that there are physical limitations which are hindering this change in paradigm, in particular, Dunbar's number - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number> From what I have researched, my current working model is that this has to do with the amount of serotonin in people's brains, hence drugs which raise serotonin levels such as MDMA or stimulate serotonin receptors, such as psychedelics, result in feelings of being connected to humanity and trigger a marked increase in compassion. Meditation also has these effects which suggests that it increases serotonin production. Perhaps when we start to modify our own DNA we can permanently increase the amount of this neurotransmitter for everyone and raise Dunbar's number to something more workable (in the sense of triggering said paradigm shift). Until then, it's up to individuals to do this work.

The bottom line is that the way we are doing things is backwards and can be improved by orders of magnitude, so I firmly believe that patents of all types are a transient effect which will disappear as humanity evolves socially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Internet Censorship is futile. The internet was designed to treat censorship as system damage, and immediately routes around it.

Trying to censor the internet is like trying to stop birds from migrating north and south by erecting barriers. The birds fly around the barrier.

<comment><USER6> What protocol is it that routes around censorship, exactly?

What is the software that automatically prevents a server from being unplugged by a co-location facility? What about TCP/IP prevents a blogger from being beaten unconscious in front of his children, then taken away by plainclothes 'police'?

(I sometimes think that only a totalitarian government's propaganda minister would keep repeating this trope about routing around in the age of China's firewalls, etc.)

<comment><USER7> _What protocol is it that routes around censorship, exactly?_

The "global" part. There is always some country in which a certain thing is not censored. The servers can be placed there, the traffic can be routed through there.

This does not prevent anyone from beating anyone else up, that's right, but I don't think anyone ever claimed that the internet would prevent physical violence. Just censorship of information.</comment></comment></comment>


Azure Stack Running in an Azure VM - <AUTHOR> https://azurestack.blog/2017/07/deploy-azure-stack-development-kit-on-an-azure-vm/ <comment><USER2> It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER3> Maybe 'cos it's getting a bit too meme-y, but I was honestly surprised that (or some variation of) wasn't the title of the article.

<comment><USER4> Yo dawg... (I had to google the spelling of dawg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a reason you would ever want to do this in the real world or is this just pushing the boundaries for the sake of experimenting?

I'm not sure what the use case is for adding an extra layer of azure infrastructure on top of the existing azure infrastructure. I assume it costs more than just running on azure directly and doesn't really get you any privacy/efficiency/performance benefits since it's still running on the azure cloud. Perhaps it makes migration/deployment easier in some way?

<comment><USER6> Or maybe to understand the deployment process before doing it for real?

<comment><USER7> To test the deployment process you need to do it on like hardware. This is why proper operations practice is to stage migrations/deployments.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Two startups, one me: Which opportunity would you take? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in a bit of a quandary that this group might be a be able to give me some advice on. I have two job possibilities laid in front of me, both of which are very intriguing. I don't really care which opportunity you would choose, I'm curious WHY you would choose it.
Opportunity one is a very early stage startup. I would be the first full-time employee. We have financing through an seed-stage VC. One of the partners is currently directing the company as a "side project." My job would primarily be product management with some amount of coding (which I'd rather not be doing). We have a licensed technology that we need to productize; I have to figure out the product. Pay is low (not surprisingly), potential upside is pretty significant. I'm a little concerned about the complete lack of structure at this stage. I'm trusting the VC (who I've known for 10+ years and really do trust) to make the right things happen from a compensation standpoint, but I'm not 100% comfortable with that. I have to do consulting on the side to stay afloat.
Opportunity Two is a fairly well established start up that recently secured a second round of funding, has customers and products, etc. Again, I'd be joining as product management. Upside is not nearly as attractive, since I'm joining much later, but current pay/benefit scale is much more appealing.
There is a small chance I could take opportunity two and continue working with opportunity one in a part time basis.
So, what would your thought process look like? <comment><USER2> For now treat the pay and benefits as zero and focus on what really matters.

Which one will give you the most challenge and highest responsibility? 2-3 years from now, your salary wont matter that much. So you made 80k, whooptidoo. Pay-check money comes and goes, but experience is eternal. And so are contacts and exposure.

The lack of structure should be encouraging. You will be the one to bring order to the chaos; you and the team will go through hell together, and that will shape you, in a year's time, better than any school.

If you don't make much money, the experience you gain from a position of heavy responsibility will give you a lot of back-bone. I spent 6-months building a startup with someone; it wasn't mine, I was freelancing, but I made all architectural decisions and coded the initial version all by myself. I made pennies, worse than minimum wage. But since then, all my job interviews felt like an interrogation, with all the power on my side. I could pick and choose who to work with and how much of myself to give them. I conjured up my salary and fees, based on faulty mental arithmetic and currency conversion, and had them agree to an atrocious figure that added up to my income from the previous 3 years combined.

Experience under high pressure and immense constraints will trump a pay check, equity, or whatever monetary gain you can imagine. Three years ago I used to hope for a "Programmer I" position. Today .. heh, "keep the titles, but first tell me a little about yourself" .. I can safely say I am more cautious of my heart than the prettiest of girls in my high-school. Along with the right money, I demand the right people to _believe_ in, because I _know_ what I am talking about :-)

Go for the more ambitious startup and give it your all. Two part-time jobs don't make a career.

<comment><USER3> I'll second this opinion. Experience under pressure will lead to a stronger you(smarter, faster, better at making decisions, weighing the odds...).

However, make sure that the start up does have a chance of succeeding. If not, then make sure that you actually have the authority to change directions to make it so.

All in all, if the opportunity doesn't have a short term gain(via salary), then make sure that it has a long term gain. And weigh things subjectively.(yes, that's not a typo. follow your heart)

Of course, this is all just an opinion of some dude on the internet. So take it for what it's worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you don't have significant equity (at least 10% or more) the second is the right choice.

If you do have significant equity then it depends on the expectation ([estimated] probability of successful outcome * magnitude of outcome ) multiplied by your percentage.

you have to estimate future dilutions and so on but the above is how I would choose, at a first approximation.

That said, the first option doesn't sound very compelling. I have had bad experiences with "productizing" projects. Now when I hear that word I run.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hard to say without knowing more details but there are two big red flags in the first option: that the co is run by a VC as a side project and that it is "productizing" technology licensed from someone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> The VC part of the equation is one of the most concerning parts. I fully trust that he can "run" the company, he has a successful track record of building successful startups. My concern is that the focus and drive to build a successful startup won't be there.

In general, productizing a technology scares me to death, too. It really feels like that is doing it completely backwards. However, in this (very) particular case, it is actually less concerning to me, given what the technology is and what the current product plans are (subject to change by me once I am involved full time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since you haven't said much about the companies themselves this is about early vs late.

One potential way of looking at this is thinking about the development of option #1 into something similar to #2 in some period of time.

What do you think the chances of that happening are? How long would it take if it did? Is there relatively costless "fail early" mechanism built in to the company at the moment? Would company #1 with the size & funding of option #2 be better? worse? equivalent? How much better off would you be if you arrived at option #2 via option one? (stock, salary, position)

If, for example, co #1's current path seems to be, "Spend the next 12 months building then raise more money," and after that it's similar to option #1, you might be able to compare them a little easier. 12 months cost for whatever the difference in stock.

Obviously this doesn't take into account anything about the likelihood of the companies' success. That's probably more important, but you gave very little information about that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Only you can work out what the upside of 1 is but if the upside is significant and you think you will be able to consult as well then you have the opportunity to take the leading role in creating something. You can be the one to shape the structure, which seems far more appealing to me but then I'm an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER8> My thought process would be, aside from the money, in which company would I enjoy working more, which means 2 things: coworkers, and the product. Productwise, is #1 exciting? Will you have the power to really develop it? How about #2. And how are the coworkers?

<comment><USER9> I second that one, plus:

I would especially check up on the persistency of the founders. Are they really dedicated to the product/company or are they going to lose interest if either VC money is used up, they have not become rich after a few months or there are harder times ahead for some other reason?

It usually takes years to build a really cool company/product, so I would make sure that I'm not the only one still putting his best effort into that project after the initial euphoria has faded away and the others are doing not much more than just hanging around … or even worse: start bitching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I say take the most challenging option as mahmud mentioned. There is a certain level of magic when you are at the forefront of startup and that everything you do shapes the outcome.

This is an opportunity to make a name for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER11> #2 sounds much better - it gives you safety, and the job description doesn't sound different. The amount of potentially negative variables in #1 would make me shy away - unless you have serious faith in the product/business/team.

</comment><comment><USER12> Take the one that gives you best ownership chance... if you are capability of getting job B then you can do in a year from now if A is to fail. But beware... if A is true startup your bound to go on an adventure.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd take #2 unless you feel you can play a role in tacking down #1's business structure because it sounds like it will likely need it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd pick #2 in a heartbeat! Customers! Products!

</comment><comment><USER15> I always go for the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER16> Choose your co-workers not the job.</comment>


Ghost Diagrams (tile pattern generator in Javascript/SVG) - <AUTHOR> http://www.logarithmic.net/ghost.xhtml

<comment><USER2> If you're having trouble making sense of it, as I did at first, here's what I've learned:

* You enter a list of "tiles" in the box, on either a square grid (four characters per tile) or hex grid (six characters).

* Upper case letters (like "A") represent pointy sides, and lowercase letters (like "a") are convex sides. You can use A through D.

* Numbers 1-4 are "flat" sides, which makes sense as they have no case.

* A hyphen seems to be a second kind of whitespace that has to match itself, unless it has some other special meaning.

* The program, while running, searches for a way to fill the entire view area with a consistent pattern, though not necessarily filling every grid cell with a tile. Sometimes it finds one quickly, and sometimes it struggles for a while.

The shapes of the "pieces" are strange-looking enough that I didn't realize at first they are simply a function of the input.

Very cool!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the best thing I've seen in months. I can imagine utilizing this in many projects: Generating creatures in a shooter, generating maps, aleatoric music composition... Incredible.

<comment><USER4> > aleatoric music composition

You made me look 'aleatoric' up just now ("a process is said to be aleatoric ... if its course is determined in general but depends on chance in detail" per Wikipedia), but all I found was stuff I had heard of a long time ago, in that you can generate various types of music randomly and a reference to a very old dice game attributed to Mozart.

So I'm left wondering how this generator would be more useful for generating random music than ordinary dice or a RNG?

<comment><USER3> Perhaps aleatoric is the wrong word... I imagine that you could overlay the ghost diagrams on grids, follow the tiles (as if traversing land on a map), and your paths would produce melodies. There are hex-based musical keyboards (search for "hex keys" on Google or YouTube), so every position would be assigned a specific pitch. You could expand this concept to generate note lengths, rests, key changes, timbral effects, etc.

That's one way to implement it. All of the generative music algorithms I've seen have been very limited, and have produced one specific flavor of music. Seeing all these amazing patterns in the ghost diagrams, I wonder if there's a clue to generating more diverse/expressive music lurking within this system. (Emergent behavior?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> looking at the original version of it, which is written in Python helps to understand the whole scenario much better.. (Probably because I'm familiar with Python more than Javascript..) [http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh- files/ghost-diagrams/ghost-di...](http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh-files/ghost- diagrams/ghost-diagrams-0.8.py)

</comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating and awesome and _how do they do that?_ Must. Read. Source. And. Paper.

<comment><USER3> dgreensp explained it nicely, in another comment ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> avatar generator!</comment>


What's the best browser home page for developers? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've always like about:blank. It even comes with a friendly reminder. <http://imgur.com/jRmfB>

</comment><comment><USER3> I have mine going into a private corkboard. Screenshot: [http://shadowcatcher.mindcast.com/clips/1331434175oei42xz279...](http://shadowcatcher.mindcast.com/clips/1331434175oei42xz279.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> News.ycombinator.com and popurls.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes I also have about:blank

</comment><comment><USER6> This one

</comment><comment><USER7> localhost

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't know if this is the best home page, but I have this: <http://cl.ly/012B0V3C2P2Y2L1v101I>

Currently active projects with links to admin site, stats etc.</comment>


The Open Standard. Open Source News by Mozilla - <AUTHOR> https://openstandard.mozilla.org/

<comment><USER2> This is nice, but I find it somewhat frustrating that there doesn't appear to be an RSS icon for the RSS feed. This despite highly visible icons for proprietary mechaniisms like Twitter, Facebook and G+. This is what we get from supposed defenders of the "Open Web" vision? Sheessshhh...

Oh well, in this day and age, I suppose we should just consider ourselves fortunate that they even publish feeds at all.

[https://openstandard.mozilla.org/feed/](https://openstandard.mozilla.org/feed/)

[https://openstandard.mozilla.org/comments/feed/](https://openstandard.mozilla.org/comments/feed/)</comment>


Edward Snowden's New Job: Protecting Reporters from Spies - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/02/reporters-need-edward-snowden/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read. I'm glad this work is being done, but I remain skeptical about its efficacy... particularly the "plug and play" options. I think that hiding the details, and making things turn-key, will only make it easier for the NSA and others to subvert them.

Perhaps the news organizations need an in-house crypto-ops paid position to give them direct access to expert knowledge. Rely on that expertise rather than try to automate and abstract something that is inherently complex.

<comment><USER3> This is true, however without a turnkey solution it's impossible for most people whose interest is not in machines to lock the door. Putting your eggs in one basket is a totally reasonable strategy if you watch that basket very carefully. I think people will. Your concern is still valid and reasonable.

<comment><USER2> I was sort of thinking along the lines of how companies have IT departments (or used to). Domain experts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless he moved, his job protecting journalists is quite ironic given the stance of those protecting him:

[http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/putin-signs-low-that-could- bl...](http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/putin-signs-low-that-could-block-social- media/)

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

Still good he's trying to do something about it. I'd just review any tech or methods extra carefully for anything coerced in by the state.

<comment><USER5> Without a valid passport how can he be anywhere else?

Blame the US for his current location (they revoked his passport as he tried to catch his connecting flight to Ecuador), not Russia and certainly not Snowden himself.

He's in a weird predicament because as you say he is guest of a country that has an appalling track record in this sphere.

What else is he to do though? Russia is only granting him asylum to stick a finger in the eye of the US and that could change at any time now that Trump is in power. His two choices are either stay quiet on the debate he started, or speak up in spite of his predicament.

<comment><USER4> There's no blame here. There's the fact that he's in a subversive, police state... in the open to them... producing solutions to resist subversive, police states. Peer review them carefully. He should also tread carefully on that.</comment></comment></comment>


UC Santa Cruz Reinstates 41 Graduate Students After Months-Long Strike - sneeze-slayer https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg8mdn/uc-santa-cruz-reinstates-41-graduate-students-after-months-long-strike <comment><AUTHOR> I attended UCSC on and off over a period of 10 years. The level of blatant corruption in the administration, both at the school and among the broader UC system and regents, is something you would have to experience to believe. For years the administration has been squeezing the life out of UCSC's academic programs (both grad students and instructors) while simultaneously awarding administrative staff with new positions, titles, huge raises and lavish lifestyles.

This is an incremental win for a very hard-working and talented group of staffers, but hardly even a chip in the armor of the bloat and waste that is the UC administrative complex. I'm actually low key ashamed to have a degree from them.

<comment><USER2> > This is an incremental win for a very hard-working and talented group of > staffers

There is a large, high paying labor market for very hard-working and talented staffers, about 40 minutes north on CA-17. I went directly from a UC campus to a private Silicon Valley company, and learned more there, more broadly and more quickly. I'd recommend it to those that feel the sacrifice to work in academia is too high.

<comment><USER3> There are some kinds of careers and questions that can only be pursued in academia, so advising that grad students abandon ship really isn't a satisfactory answer in general. Academia needs to be reformed.

<comment><USER4> "Academia progresses one funeral at a time"? Not sure how apt a rephrasing that might be, never progressed past community college.

<comment><USER4> It just seems like there's an old guard of administrators that have grabbed onto this huge source of money and are lining their pockets, and nothing substantial will change until enough bodies swap out that the people who actually want to provide a good affordable education are in the right seats.

Not suggesting the administrations get culled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm happy for these students, and the housing stipend they managed to get will help them, but I don't think it's a net positive overall. It just adds more demand to the local housing market, so a different set of people on the margins end up homeless. The only way to improve the situation is to build more housing.

<comment><USER6> UCSC is sitting on a lot of land while offloading housing onto Santa Cruz

<comment><USER7> And as a state entity they can develop their land without approval from local governments, one of the largest obstacles to new construction. UCSF has used this to great effect in San Francisco.

<comment><USER8> That's interesting. UC employees aren't classified as state employees, they are employed by the regents. CSU employees are state employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I am somewhat (and really, only somewhat) in support of the grad students lobbying for better benefits, I am discouraged by UCSC essentially walking back any penalties for violating their no-strike clause. They agreed to terms, and actively chose to violate them.

All this does is incentivize other similar groups to do the same, and learn that the longer and harder you go, the more likely you are to get what you want. And that public institutions can be held hostage.

Add to that a frustration with a definite viewpoint-based forgiveness of the approach. If students had been violating their contract for other kinds of less popular speech, I highly doubt they would be forgiven like this. I'm not glad to have public universities making those kinds of tacit judgement calls.

<comment><USER10> What is this no-strike clause? I am not familiar with the story.

Was it something that each students individually decided whether to sign or not and if they signed, they received a benefit for it? Or was it a non- negotiable part of every contact that was forced on everyone if they wanted to go to or stay in UCSC? If it is the latter, I don't see anything morally or ethically wrong with violating it. Legal matters are of course another issue.

<comment><USER11> Here is a link to the union, their collective bargaining agreement, and the specific subsection.

[https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining- un...](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-units/bx/)

[https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining- un...](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining- units/bx/contract.html)

[https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining- un...](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining- units/bx/docs/bx_2010-2013_19_no-strikes.pdf)

So, it is a specific clause with its own sub-section in the contract that the union made. From what I understand on how collective bargaining agreements work in the US, this means that all UC grad students, including non-members, are bound by the terms of the agreement as the union represents the entire UC grad student unit (except UCSF) and thus is the sole, exclusive, legal representative of all individuals in the unit regardless of whether they are union members or not. As far as I know, there is no legal way for any individual in the unit to be bound by a different agreement (except maybe if the union and employer allows it?) as it is illegal for organizations to make agreements with individuals in the unit without union approval.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Semi-technical manager to technical individual contributor? - <AUTHOR> I'm a semi-technical manager who wants to go full-technical, and I think that the best way is to move back to an IC role. My undergrad is in a non-technical area; I worked my way into my current role from a support position. The technical part of my job is by far the most interesting, and I feel like I'm at the point where the only way to improve further is to do it full time. Right now I'm working on my engineering abilities in my free time, but side projects only get you so far.<p>I'm wondering if management -> IC is a bad choice in terms of future options or if anyone's done something similar. For those who hire, would you see the move as a step back or a demotion? <comment><USER2> I have moved back and forth between technical and management several times in my career - there has been no problem getting a new job later on. The only issues is that I did not progress to 'senior management' as fast as I would have liked, but I always had an edge over average managers that did not understand the tech as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's helpful. That's about what my expectations are. I'd prefer not to be the manager who talks out of his ass, and I think this would help.</comment></comment>


MongoDB Gotchas - <AUTHOR> http://www.vancelucas.com/blog/mongodb-gotchas/

<comment><USER2> These seem a bit obvious to me. "String searches are case-sensitive"? "Strings and integers aren't equivalent"? I was hoping the article would be a bit deeper.

<comment><USER3> For the majority of people migrating from MySQL, these would be deep enough for them to say "Oh $h1t, my codes will break!" since MySQL defaults to not caring.</comment></comment>


German Environmental Minister Returned Tesla Model S Over Charging Range Anxiety - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/german-environmental-minister-returned-tesla-model-s-ov-1798363790 <comment><USER2> Bad title. The car was impractical for his role.

> In an internal memo, a senior aide explained to one of the state's fleet > managers in June that while the Tesla's performance was superior to other > EVs in the market, it was nonetheless "ill suited" for official business > given the distances Remmel needed to cover in North Rhein-Westphalia.

> Not only was the certified European range of 500 kilometers (311 miles) > impossible to achieve, even 400 km could not be realized with a fully > charged battery, the aide said. That meant in practice the environment > minister could travel only as far as 150 km before being forced to turn back > — otherwise "the style of driving has to be adjusted to an extreme degree to > the charge status of the battery."

</comment><comment><USER3> Saw a model S in a car show. Got in the back seat. Is it just me or is your body position in the back more of a crouch? I assumed it's because of the thick battery-laden floor.</comment>


Show HN: Tim – AWS Cost Management for Busy Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tim-4 <comment><USER2> Hey, we're Jason, LV and Todd. We're tired of Cost Explorer and overpaying on the AWS bill. You know, "Bill Shock".

Beyond the "agency" issue all cloud providers obviously bring, there are still some major problems with cloud billing that are largely unsolved by the market. Here are some that I think are more important than ever and that we want to solve: \- There is a gap in billing information (waiting days makes a difference when you're deploying constantly) \- It takes too much dev time to dissect a cost report and get key info \- Available cost alerting is mostly threshold-based and super noisy (you also have to set it up) \- I can't see how decisions I make impact cloud costs \- The big cloud management platforms are complex to set up / good for enterprises, suck for startups \- It takes a long time to go from insight to action

We launched Tim today to address this: [1] [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tim-4](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tim-4) It's simple (yet effective, and you can go deeper) AWS cost management developers really like using. We have many cloud-native companies of decent scale using it and we want to solve the aforementioned problems.

What do you think is most painful with AWS billing? If it matters enough, we'll build it.

Oh, and happy re:Invent!</comment>


Building a Housing Ladder: Lessons From, and For, Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/urban-policy-2018-building-housing-ladder-lessons-silicon-valley-11511.html <comment><USER2> Maybe we're doing something wrong, but those charts severely underestimate the percentage of income going towards housing. In San Jose, it says 12% of families earning 150K are cost burdened. In SJ the avg townhouse/house now costs 1.1 million with 200k down, that means you pay 60K per year just on mortgage, plus 14K in taxes, (no longer deductible after state income taxes), plus 4K in home owners insurance and possible HOA, plus another 3K in basic utilities. The total is over 80K on 115K after tax income, making it 70% of your total take home pay. And that doesn't even cover repair costs.

The only thing that can explain it: I suspect what's going on is that they're averaging everyone out together, including those that bought over 20 years ago. if the ones that bought over 20 years ago represent a sizable majority 60 to 80% or more then that would explain why they underestimate housing costs so much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there any example cities that improved housing affordability significantly?

</comment><comment><USER4> Stopped reading when I saw the name "Carl Guardino" and so should you. Guardino's lobbying has resulted in a litany of pointless and wasteful taxes and fees that have served to enrich his org while producing nothing of value.

Its time Bay Area residents understand that the YIMBY-Industrial Complex exists and is very effective (and not to be confused with legit and effective YIMBY efforts)...SVLG is at the forefront.

If you have lived in the Bay Area since the 90s you have probably voted for, and seen approved, literally dozens of transit and housing measures, propositions, and bond floats. Yet the area continues to show dismal progress in infrastructure....maybe its time to start asking where the money is going from the last half-dozen measures before voting for a new one. SVLG benefits from the fact that most residents in the area are relative newcomers so they don't realize most of the goodwill measures they are voting for have been floated and funded many times prior to their arrival.

Sure enough in the next election there are even more transit fees on the ballot. Has the money from the recently approved Measure B even been allocated yet?

<comment><USER5> It's like one quote. SVLG is not even relevant in the article.

<comment><USER4> The rest is the standard new urbanist claptrap written by someone who seems to know nothing of the Bay Area at all. Some gems:

\- Suggests strip malls replace parking lots with housing...citing the fact that vehicles occupy 8x the space of diners. Its freaking SAN JOSE who is going to eat at a restaurant with NO PARKING? Cue reliable HN responses about public transit...NO people in San Jose do not take their family out to eat by riding the bus. If you remove retail parking you just end up with no tax revenues and blighted plazas.

\- The suggestion that infill development is cheaper since you don't need to do sewers etc. Wow okay now I know the author is from NYC...99% of San Jose's sewer infrastructure is probably 10 years past its replacement schedule...theres no freaking way the city will let someone increase density but ignore sewer work. In fact, this work will be substantially more expensive than new work in the middle of a field. No different than software folks - upgrading a running working system is much more difficult than greenfield development.

\- Suggests schools have closed in San Jose due to under-enrollment. Uh no in many cases this is the result of mismanagement of funds sometimes resulting in lawsuits. See Alum Rock for many examples.

\- Same tired citations of nefarious moustache-twirling NIMBYs...who by now have taken on the aura of a Bond villain.

pretty much the whole article is similarly useless

<comment><USER5> Metered street parking, city lots and underground parking all suffice.

With mixed use you get enough local traffic for restaurants who won't use up the street parking. Also see uber.

<comment><USER6> I don't live there, but underground parking is almost never the right answer. It's just too expensive.

<comment><USER5> All of the skyscrapers downtown have underground parking. You can make it level one if you want.

<comment><USER6> Skyscrapers require extensive excavation already, because you don't want them to fall over. You might as well drop some parking in there, since it won't double the cost as it would for a strip mall. It still won't "suffice", because although you've added a couple hundred spaces (at the _most_ ) you've also added at least a couple thousand more people who need to get to and from the building.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Only 106,185 people have signed up for plans through ACA exchanges as of Nov. 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/obamacare-enrollment-numbers-99812.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The big question is how many people paid.. not enrolled.</comment>


Show HN: Automated Status Pages - <AUTHOR> https://hund.io/blog/introducing-hund-automated-status-pages-for-everyone <comment><USER2> How does this compare to StatusPage.io? At first glance Hund.io appears _much_ cheaper but pretty close feature wise?

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest benefit over StatusPage.io is that our platform's design focuses on automation through integrations with third parties. StatusPage.io pages can only be automated through their direct integration with PagerDuty, or by parsing email notifications (from services like New Relic or Pingdom). We have the ability to add countless integrations with third parties for both monitoring and notifications.

Branding is important for companies, so we've chosen to offer complete white- labeling on our single plan. We leverage Let's Encrypt so that status pages can be instantly configured to use a secure custom domain.

These are just a few of the key differences, our features section outlines these and more.

<comment><USER3> FYI, my first question was also "how is this different than StatusPage.io?". It might be a good idea to have a comparison page or make the differentiation very clear in some other way. Your target audience has most likely heard of StatusPage.io (they are the incumbent in my mind) and will likely ask themselves the same question as soon as they land on your site.

If someone is using StatusPage.io, why should they switch to your service? Or, are you only targeting customers who do not already have a status page solution in place?

Best of luck!</comment></comment></comment>


The VoltAir Project - <AUTHOR> http://google.github.io/VoltAir/doc/main/html/index.html <comment><USER2> Additional context: Latest commit 88bc3c8 on Jul 16, 2014

</comment><comment><USER3> I would rather see the Fun Propulsion Labs make SceneKit and SpriteKit like tooling from Android than the pile of random libraries that they have placed in their Github.

One watches WWDC and Build game related talks, they talk about how to make games on their platforms. One watches Google IO and it is all about Play Store and Firebase integration.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what backend infrastructure Google is training from the input generated from the uses input

</comment><comment><USER5> app last updated in 2014. This seems pretty old?

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.fpl...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.fpl.voltair)

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one that read the FAQ half-expecting to see some crowdsourced data mining / AI training piece along with this? Perhaps because it was released by Google and had the word "project" in the title.

<comment><USER7> Could they be developing some physics aware neural nets, and needed a high performance physics engine, to use for training? /sips his conspiracy tea

<comment><USER8> I know some of the engineers on the project, and can verify that they are not doing neural nets or AI at all. Their reasons for writing this are exactly as they say publicly.

Occam's razor applies, but in terms of conspiracy tea, do you like the green kind or the transparent kind? ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


"MtGox's plan is simple and genius" - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1y247y/mtgoxs_plan_is_simple_and_genius/

<comment><USER2> Citation needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Citation is the reddit link itself. Am I missing something?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Derulo, a tool for manipulating JSON files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lavelle/derulo

<comment><USER2> This is the funnest thing I've seen in weeks in regards to tech. Nice job. And looks like a nice tool too.

<comment><USER3> Why is everyone saying this is funny? I don't get it.

<comment><USER4> Jason Derulo is a successful pop musician right now. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Derulo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Derulo)

The wordplay is Jason -> JSON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The name is funny, but after a minute of clicking around the repo I'm still not sure what this actually does.

The linked help text for your `Usage Examples` isn't very helpful either.

How about an animated gif of you... adding multiple key-value pairs to be written to the file?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice idea. That could definitely explain things faster than a description of it. I'll make one this afternoon.

<comment><USER6> Understood immediately when I saw it, thanks to that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How are you supposed to exit the REPL? I end up with empty braces in the file.

      ~ ❯❯❯ derulo hello
      Entering Derulo interactive JSON builder.
      prompt: key:  foo
      prompt: value:  bar
      prompt: key:  %
      ~ ❯❯❯ cat hello.json
      {}%

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, as a quick hack I made it so typing 'end' for a key or value exits it. This is obviously a valid key or value though, so something else is needed.

Maybe some control sequence would work? Not sure how you handle those in Node.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed now. Just type Ctrl-C. Thanks for the report.

<comment><USER7> How about Ctrl-D as well. Probably makes a bit more sense.

<comment><USER8> +1, Ctrl D is interrupt, and bash, node, python, etc. use it to quit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I'll keep Ctrl+D for quitting the whole program, Ctrl+C for just finishing the REPL and going to the save/discard prompt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you need a JSON "API" to test it against, may I suggest derulo.json: [http://gabebw.com/derulo.json](http://gabebw.com/derulo.json)

</comment><comment><USER10> If Jason Derulo finds out about this, he might sue :P There was an instance with Kanye West and the altcoin Coineye which he destroyed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the idea of Jason Derulo becoming aware of the existence of a Node.js module.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not a developer - but this is funny.

</comment><comment><USER12> please add a feature to re-order properties alphabetically, that would be super useful. derulo package wiggle ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> oh no you didn't..

<comment><USER14> He did, and I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> hahahahhahahahaha</comment>


How Optimizely Improved Facebook Ad Retargeting Cost by 83% - <AUTHOR> https://blog.optimizely.com/2020/04/21/reduce-facebook-retargeting-cpa-case-study/ <comment><USER2> While I'm sure the methods in here are valuable, the initial claim of 83% seems suspect.

> After launching the Adaptive Audience campaign, CPA for our technical > audience went from $34.47 for general remarketing to $18.80 for the targeted > remarketing via adaptive audiences, so an 83% overall improvement for CPA > for our technical audience – which is a huge win!

This seems like a misleading way to phrase this. When I hear 83% improvement from $34.47, I expect a 83% ($28.61) drop, ie, 34.47 * (1 - 0.83) = 5.86.

This is more reasonably a (34.47 - 18.80) / 34.47 = 45% drop. Still impressive, but not the same.

Is it really standard to express your improvement in these terms? This would make it trivial to have a >100% drop in cost, which is clearly wrong.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, going from 18.80 to 34.47 would be an 83% increase.

But going from 34.47 to 18.80 is a 45% decrease.

As to your question about whether this is some sort of acceptable alternative way to calculate percentage decrease ... no, this is just a math error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's always great to reduce costs where you can.

It's not always great, in my humble opinion, if this results in my being inundated with more ads on the internet. I wish this technology would go away.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been working pretty closely with Optimizely for the last year or so. I would go ahead and say its difficult/impossible to realize the advertised effect of their product. Can't speak to this one directly though.</comment>