Detection of Rapidly Growing Informal Settlements - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thinkingmachines/geoai-immap <comment><USER2> Kinda shameful to boast about a project designed to make it easier for 'authorities' to displace people who are just trying to 'live' some kind of existence.

Please don't justify it with weird edge-cases like 'oh but we can detect drug cartels' or some BS.. This is about forcing people to conform to a designed western capitalist modality that expects humans to be happy living as battery- farmed chickens..

* get an education so you start out life with an 80k debt so you: * get a high tax paying job so you can aspire to: * get a home mortgage for the next 45 years with a bank so you: * support the system that funnels money and power to the few at the top.

This project is just another small rivet in the armor of that system which you should be fighting to de-construct not re-enforce.. wake up and realise you're building your own cage.

If I buy land to start a community on it of like-minded people who don't feel comfortable supporting an oppressive system that creates injustice then that's my business, when are software engineers going to realise we have an OBLIGATION to HUMANITY to refuse to create the chains that bind us to the wheel of oppression?? JUST REFUSE, it's OK! you can get a job elsewhere! You don't NEED to build another system for a company who makes money supplying the technology that governments use to keep their population compliant to the machine.

<comment><USER3> Completely on point, but this community leans conservative/libertarian and will quite likely not see eye-to-eye with you on this.

<comment><USER2> I've watched the up/downvote bounce -1 to 1 for the last 40 minutes :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clicking through to their sponsor [0], one finds that the purpose of this endeavor is to find undocumented immigrants. Theoretically this would be useful if one wanted to give them food and medicine, but here in the real world there is little cause for celebration.

The best thing we could do is the best thing we could always do: stop the sanctions and aggressive militarist actions.

[0] [https://immap.org/colombia/](https://immap.org/colombia/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a missing link in our modern sci-fi dystopia. This sort of tooling is how the drones know where to fly to hunt down the intentional community of rebels trying to take down the oppressive systems. The fact that we are using this tooling for ethnofascist tracking of undesirable people is not accidental, but is basically the intended use of the tooling as designed.

What's interesting to me is that this work was funded by a non-profit and under the guise of humanitarianism. They went in through the front door and got legitimacy and funding.

<comment><USER4> Lots of "humanitarian" work in Colombia are CIA-funded fronts for anti- socialist and anti-indigenous violence. For example, see the "aid convoy" that Maduro supposedly burned. In general many nonprofits don't care to look too closely at their donors. Lots of money is floating around, searching for a way to oppose Venezuelan democracy. Colombian ruling elites are eager to cash in on the gravy train, and the disdain they feel toward the poor and indigenous of Venezuela is actually less than that they display toward those groups in their own nation.

<comment><USER6> Be that as it may in terms of secretive support for anti-government efforts against a government that the U.S doesn't like for assorted political and often hypocritical reasons, you're deluded if you think the monstrous Maduro Regime is in any sense a good guy in the situation that Venezuela is going through. Opposing it is hardly opposing democracy, given that this government itself is grossly anti-democratic and repressive whenever it feels threatened.

<comment><USER5> Of course; there are no good people, anywhere, at all; good is a fiction that we tell each other in order to justify our atrocities.

In this particular instance, it can be the case that _all of_ the Colombian, Venezuelan, and American governments are committing crimes against humanity.

<comment><USER6> This kind of whataboutism does nothing good for anyone who appreciates honest debate. It only helps further cement dishonest arguments. Yes, the U.S has its hands full of cloak and dagger blood from who knows how many regime changes it's been complicit in or a direct cause of (not to mention the deaths caused by its direct invasions), and Colombia has a long, sordid history of human rights abuses by all sides.

Despite these things, both of those countries are internally, practically far better places to live in than Venezuela for both economic reasons and in terms of individual/political freedom. Venezuela is all the opposite in so many more ways. What's more, it is distinctly a repressive state that does not at all allow free elections and whose executive government branch does everything possible, legally or not, to rig all state structures for its own perpetuation. Meanwhile, this same government's economic mismanagement has achieved catastrophic, humanitarian disaster depths of damage.

More basically, whatever the sins of the U.S or Colombia or whichever other country you pick, not one of them excuses any aspect of what the Chavez/Maduro governments have done to their own country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What in the world is this?

"Informal settlement" suggests someone's trying to hack the system, that is the social / legal / administrative system for real estate, as in physical land and buildings. But I don't quite understand the purpose, motivation, and mechanics of the hack.

Are these enterprising individuals that built houses on a vacant parcel they don't actually own, hoping the real owners would stay away for 20 years or however long they need to establish squatters' rights? It seems like an incredibly gutsy gamble with an awful risk/reward profile. Surely if you have the resources to build that many buildings, it would certainly be within your means to simply buy the vacant land outright, you know, _before_ you built a single structure, and then maybe build 2/3 as many houses in case your bankroll was stressed by buying the land?

Or maybe they do own the land, but are hoping the local zoning board is more likely to grant forgiveness than permission? So they build houses where they aren't supposed to be built, and hope to get away with it since no one will want to tear them down once they've been constructed?

Maybe it's some kind of tax scam where they don't tell the government the land's been improved and hope to pay property tax on empty land while collecting rent from all the houses? But surely tax assessors will drive by at some point and notice that, y'know, there are buildings there now which sure doesn't match what's in the records? And whoever built them will be in hot water for lying about the tax status of an entire housing development, and owe not just back taxes but fines, fees, interest, and maybe even theoretically be liable for criminal tax fraud? Or maybe they plan to sell the houses and get out of Dodge, the inaccurate documentation's the buyer's problem, the contractor's long gone by the time the authoirities catches up with them? But then wouldn't the sale go amiss when some buyer, y'know, _reads the deed for the property they 're spending tens of thousands of dollars on_ and notice it doesn't accurately describe the structures on the land?

It's not exactly out in the countryside, it seems like it's right in an existing suburban area. So it doesn't look like they're even trying to keep it secret from people at street level. Explain again, why do they need satellites and AI image analysis to find this?

</comment><comment><USER8> I was thinking this would be great way for a government to work out allocation of services and resources. To help its citizens! But no..</comment>


U.S. Startups Fail to Attract Expected Crowd of Small Investors - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-19/u-s-startups-fail-to-attract-expected-crowd-of-small-investors <comment><USER4> Crowdfunding appears to be a _terrible_ deal for retail investors:

* VCs survive by maintaining portfolios of companies in which 1-2 in 10 survive (most VCs fail to generate returns that beat the public markets). This means more than that you need 10 companies --- it also governs the kinds of companies you can invest in. Despite being a message board in part dedicated to startups, it feels like very few of the relatively specialized people here understand why VCs don't back quietly, steadily profitable companies.

* VCs compete for access to dealflow. The very best startups don't need to crowdfund and will usually get better terms from VCs. Moreover, there are logistical hassles with adding retail investors (in any form) to your cap table. All this is compounded by a signaling problem, where taking crowdfunding taints your company in the eyes of future VCs. So there's a huge adverse selection problem.

* Retail investors are given a deceptive view of the outcomes for startups. We all know most startups fail and zero out their investors (any S&P 500 component that did that would generate nationwide headline news for weeks). But more startups fail than we think, because many (maybe most) startup acquisitions are really managed failures.

There are probably more reasons than this.

I think equity crowdfunding is structurally broken, and more likely to hurt people than to do anything for our technology market.

<comment><USER5> Why not to create a massive crowd-funded or publicly traded VC fund? (as opposed to crowd-funding for a single startup)

Thus more people could expose themselves to VC but in a diversified manner. Also, more capital would be available for startups.

<comment><USER4> Someone has to get paid to do that, so now the premise of equity crowdfunding has been reduced to: in the best case, you can crowdfund another venture capital firm, and pay a tax out of your returns that wealthy investors don't have to pay.

And, again: most VCs fail! A lot of money is invested in VCs not in the expectation of those investments being lucrative, but instead in the hopes that VC returns are uncorrelated with the public markets. But _no_ retail investor does that.

<comment><USER6> > And, again: most VCs fail! A lot of money is invested in VCs not in the > expectation of those investments being lucrative, but instead in the hopes > that VC returns are uncorrelated with the public markets.

Are there meta-VC's that treat VC funds like startups and invest in multiple VC funds with the understanding that most will fail? That is, can you confirm my suspicion that it really is turtles all the way down (or up)?

<comment><USER7> Fund of funds exist. They typically become LPs in PE funds and Hedge funds. Their value add is that they provide fund selection for sovereign funds / pensions / endowments that feel that they do not have the expertise to become LPs directly in the right funds (I find this value add to be bs, but I guess I'm unfamiliar with how clueless someone directing a random sovereign fund could be).

Larger VCs will become LP in smaller upstart ones to have better visibility into earlier stage companies [1].

[1] Bessemer, Emergence, Social, and Sapphire are LPs in Saastr Fund [http://www.saastrfund.com/strategic- partners-1/](http://www.saastrfund.com/strategic-partners-1/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is anecdotal, but I chatted with a VC for a while at an event and he said their firm will not invest in anyone who did equity crowd funding, on the theory that it signals a weaker company. If they were stronger, they would have raised proper VC.

I think the existing VC investment structures hate the idea of crowdfunded VC as it threatens their model, which is personal connections and an old boys (and girls) network which allows more favorable terms for investors, especially for first-time founders.

I hope that crowdfunding becomes more normal. Not every idea has to have billion dollar potential, which is what most VC's are looking for.

<comment><USER9> I was a VC. I think it is mainly that it is a very weak signal. A good VC or a select group of high quality angels does help a company get itself in order, so raising money from a large collection of distant angels tends to be a signal that the quality of the company must be low - as they _should_ have tried to raise from high quality individuals first.

A company with crowdfunding will have to display stronger metrics than a company with strong angels / VCs.

Imagine two companies come to pitch, both are identical in every way. One has crowdfunded a $1M seed, the other got a check from Andreessen Horowitz and the CTO of LinkedIn. Which one do you put your money in? Even the potential deal flow from those individuals helps hedge your bet.

As a side note I think that this relationship of quality and crowdfunding is true (though not always by any means). I have seen fraudulent behaviour by companies misrepresenting their data to a group who are, by a VC's standard, very unsavvy investors. This company was certainly not able to raise money from a VC, but raised two $M+ rounds on a crowd funding site. However, I have also seen good companies who don't have an 'in' to the VC world raise money in this way.

<comment><USER10> I think this bias is mistaken--because VC's use their network as a filter, it falsely equivocates strong business/strong founder with individuals who landed on a social graph that happened to have VC connections.

Biases like this are market inefficiencies that can provide outsize returns for those who learn to look past it.

<comment><USER7> It's basically a filter that tolerates false negatives.

Figuring out a way to create that VC/Angel connection implies abilities and characteristics that they pattern match to past success. There may be high potential teams that cannot pass this filter but will still succeed, but the industry's deal flow is large enough that they are fine with a small number of false negatives since false positives in their portfolio hurt more, especially when you consider VC math needing 100x-1000x return potential from each of their companies.

It's just like the FaceGooAmaSoft hiring filter we're familiar with that is designed to prioritize low false positives at the cost of having a higher false negative. (skilled programmers who aren't interested in the contrived coding quizzes or can't do them well will be a false negative in the hiring process)

<comment><USER11> > _" the industry's deal flow is large enough that they are fine with a small > number of false negatives since false positives in their portfolio hurt > more"_

This is backwards. Funding a company that goes nowhere is _far_ smaller an error than turning down the next SpaceX.

<comment><USER7> A fund only has 10~20 bets it can make though. That likely influences the human decision making (could still be suboptimal).

Afterall didn't A16Z catch some criticism for not investing a large enough sum into Instagram (which iirc had 500x returns or something) to make a large enough difference to the fund?

<comment><USER12> A16Z didn't invest more in Instagram because of a portfolio conflict; they had already invested in Picplz, and decided they couldn't continue to back Instagram (which was Brbn, a social check-in app, when they invested).

A costly adherence to their own ethical rules, but it reinforces how seriously Andreessen Horowitz takes portfolio conflict.

source: [https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/how-andreessen- hor...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/how-andreessen-horowitz- fumbled-an-instagram-investment/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Swat said the practice is still in its infancy. Wefunder, StartEngine and SeedInvest are the primary crowdfunding platforms, and many founders aren't aware that equity fundraising is an option._

This, and some people (like me) probably just got tired of waiting for the SEC to do their part, and quit paying attention to the whole thing. When the JOBS Act first passed, I was pretty excited. Then something like 3 years went by and you _still_ couldn't do crowd-fund equity fund-raising. By then, the whole thing had pretty much dropped off my radar.

I think as information about this percolates through the ecosystem, it will become more commmon place. But right now there's a lot of uncertainty and doubt surrounding the whole thing, and I expect that's hurting adoption.

<comment><USER14> > some people (like me) probably just got tired of waiting for the SEC to do > their part

Yeah, same. Last I checked, the rules they _did_ come out with were pretty restrictive. This article almost makes it sound easy, but if you read the full text, it basically comes down to "If you can raise money from any other source, like VC, private equity, institutional investors, or angels--do that instead because it's easier."

You can read them here: [https://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/secg/rccomplianceguide-051...](https://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/secg/rccomplianceguide-051316.htm)

The SEC pretty much said to congress, "Nope, we know better" and they've effectively killed the bill by dragging their feet for 5 years and then coming out with guidance that kills the intent.

Maybe there can be a new bill that takes "crowdfunding" out of the hands of the SEC? Not sure how you would word that exactly, but some kind of exception that removes their jurisdiction? Maybe even not classifying them as public companies? (SEC has no jurisdiction over private companies).

<comment><USER15> Sadly, the SEC is fairly correct on this one. At least in terms of the history of finance.

If you let companies raise either a lot of total money or a lot of money from one person the incentives to make a company are less than simply get good at raising money and then skim as much as possible. Then run for the hills or repeat.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you historically.

> the incentives to make a company are less than simply get good at raising > money and then skim as much as possible

I worry that, with the rules the way they are, the only people who will use them _are_ people that are trying to do this. For instance, the company the OP is about. If you make it _actually easier to raise money_ , more legitimate companies (that want to spend less time on raising money and more time on the company) will use that system.

The internet and reputation effects are enough, I think, to mitigate the valid downsides of past experiments with "very free markets".

<comment><USER16> I don't think internet reputation effects are enough at this stage. The SEC's fear of everyman investors getting taken advantage of appear well-founded. Just yesterday Kickstarter started a program aimed at addressing the provenance of high profile flops that were funded and then skimmed: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/18/kickstarter-launches- tools...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/18/kickstarter-launches-tools-for- creators-because-hardware-is-hard/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish the crowdfunding platforms well but, in the end, there is an inherent tension between the core idea of crowdfunding and the idea of investor protections under the securities laws.

U.S. securities law give two broad choices to issuers trying to raise money: take your company public or do a private placement. With the former, you can deal freely with all sorts of investors, in any number and with whatever background. With the latter, you deal with sharp restrictions on the number of investors you can deal with (if unaccredited) and on the qualifications of investors for investment in such offerings (accredited, unaccredited, etc.).

Conceptually, crowdfunding tries to straddle these two worlds when it offers true equity (as opposed to promotional giveaways only) in the ventures. It seeks to broaden the number and type of investors who can invest in a startup venture while simultaneously trying to protect prospective investors from dishonest or otherwise improper offerings.

Problem is: the larger the number of investors and the more latitudinarian the standards for who qualifies, the more it looks like an unregulated public offering and the more it becomes susceptible to all the problems that brought public offerings under strict regulation in the first place.

So today we have a hybrid that theoretically tries to open up startup investment to all sorts of small investors but that practically attempts to keep a whole variety of restrictions in place to ensure investor protection. This hybrid is what is failing to gain popular appeal. There are too many restrictions needed to ensure investor protection to make it a fluid vehicle for small investors to invest and to make it attractive for startups to use it as a means of doing their funding.

Thus, the _technology_ is there today to facilitate a robust crowdfunding marketplace but the _law_ is not there for traditional reasons of investor protection. And so the current efforts sputter along akin to how an otherwise intriguing startup might seem to have almost unlimited potential but never quite seems to gain traction.

It took five years to get the regs in place to support the statute that put this funding mechanism in place. That is slow because the issues (in my view) are intractable. Will another five years make a substantial difference. In my view, no.

But who knows? My free market side says do away with the investor protections and let it rip. But the lawyer in me says, no way - such a free-for-all will likely cause many to be duped and few to prosper. It is not an easy choice and that is why I think this will ultimately remain sputtering along with highly uncertain prospects of effecting true change in the investment landscape.

<comment><USER18> Genuinely curious, been looking into it recently - what're the problem with unregulated public offering? Things i can think of are insider trading, misleading information, ponzi scheme, etc.

<comment><USER19> Add "Our business model consists of paying salaries to ourselves, using investor funds."

The regulations that public firms are burdened with are intended to make it possible for investors to figure out if these kinds of shenanigans are happening at your company. Private firms are exempt, because only sophisticated investors can invest in them, and they can do their own due dilligence/can afford to lose their investment.

If your crowdfunded startup is willing to provide enough information for your investors to be able to figure this out, you may as well take it public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I thought the whole deal with startup investing was: Invest in a few dozen companies and hope you get one hit so big it makes up for all the others, which you expect to all go down in flames.

That can work if you have millions to spend and the time, connections, and access to pal around with dozens of founders, looking for the good eggs. For a "small investor" who has a small fraction of a middle-class paycheck to spend and access only to the web, it would just be the most boring form of gambling ever invented.

Who "expected" a crowd of small investors for this, exactly?

<comment><USER21> My hope for crowdfunding would be that it would be exactly like you describe: spend the time, connections, and pal around with people doing projects, but the only difference would be the dollar amounts. $1,000 here, $10,000 there, on things like performances, food carts, etc. Stuff a VC would never touch because the max payout is like $50k.

But for a small investor to make 10 ~$5k investments, and get back principal plus $50k over the course of a few years that's pretty good. And they can do it in their own community on projects that don't make sense for someone in New York or SV to even know about.

</comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Not only that, the ones that are can be quite scammy.

Highlights from this startup raising money:

-Advertised with TV commercials by former Seinfeld actor

-$160k in assets, raising $50million at >$200million valuation

-CEO was formerly barred from leading companies by the SEC due to security fraud

-The management team has a few more planned IPOs in the biomed and aeronautical industries, and has a graveyard of past businesses that got investor money and went bankrupt.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/yayyo-ipo-ads-tv-ramy-el- batr...](http://www.businessinsider.com/yayyo-ipo-ads-tv-ramy-el-batrawi-sec- rule-jobs-act-2017-5)

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmmm. I'm an accredited investor. I'd have to be crazy -- or altruistic -- to invest in a typical SaaS / software / Sili Valley startup via crowdfunding.

Why?

* Waste: Absurdly high cost of living in places with startup culture means labor costs must be excessive or you can't get the people you want.

* Focus: Not every software-style startup has Joel Spolsky or another leader with his kind of focus.

* Unicorns. For investors they bring to mind the mid-20th century play by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. "No Exit."

If I'm going to be altruistic I'll put my money into paying off student loans for young friends, to give them the freedom to make altruistic choices themselves.

<comment><USER23> None of those reasons are exclusive to crowdfunding, though. I get that there are few good investment opportunities and a lot of cruft, but I wouldn't list the same reasons. For me the biggest issue is vision: All startups hope are chasing money, but some are chasing it to the exclusion of everything else. They don't see a different future, a better future; they simply see themselves richer. Funding such startups isn't even altruistic. The opposite, it's enabling a broken culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been following the equity crowdfunding sites, and here are a few observations on why it seems disenchanting.

1\. A lot of companies seem to be lifestyle and not startups; they don't plan to grow 7% a week.

2\. Many companies aren't raising for the first time and are looking for a bridge or 2nd or 3rd seed round.

3\. The cap on the notes is way too high.

4\. Many sites incentivize by offering T-shirts and other crap. The purpose is investment so the sites should optimize around investment education and not what reward you can get for just a few hundred dollars more.

In the end it is going to be hard to even 2x overall investment. I suspect most people will just lose their money.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would be willing to buy into a crowdsourced VC fund- I give money to the fund for a slice of it, which in turn vets and invests in early stage startups. They hit a big payout, my slice becomes more valuable.

The thing is, I don't want to do any work. I want someone else to do the vetting and the paperwork to invest. Obviously, they get a bigger piece of pie.

Basically, I want an index fund for early stage startups. It would be high- risk, but it's the same risk (in principle) as VC firms have.

<comment><USER7> Iirc VC as an industry loses money (or has poor returns), with the top 10 firms dominating the returns and some small number of startup firms posting great returns (iirc this is from a Jason lwmkin's post)

So i think your index fund performs quite poorly.

<comment><USER26> Are there any viable ways to open the top-10 for investment by bug funders ?

<comment><USER27> I suspect that what you're seeing is basically than the large firms are successful enough and funded enough so they don't need more money that they "negotiate" themselves 100% of the value. What can you bring one of the top-10 investors that they don't already have, such that they'd be willing to share the benefits with you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As an investor, consider the following:

1\. They give you very little information. Sometimes just sales numbers or some "traction" metric and a para on future plans. They talk about their unique angle but not about their challenges.

2\. You put money in and you get very infrequent updates. Sometimes something along the lines of "sales are ok" or "sales fell" without much detail. It is treated as a favor to you, not an absolute right as an investor.

3\. If they need to raise funds again, suddenly they become more chatty.

4\. As an investor, my alternative is: public stocks! A lot more information, a lot more liquidity. For the large stocks you're competing with geniuses at hedge funds but the smaller stocks usually have less competition.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was chatting with a startup that recently raised £1m crowdfunding as their second round. They were really happy with their choice and not having VC strings attached. I think an undervalued aspect of this is how powerful crowdfunding can be in creating a few thousand early product evangelists (who have vested interest in the company).

And I think TheDAO - though it was too early /fragile, had a half-baked voting model and got too big too fast - was onto something. I think cryptocurrency based equity/ dividends and decentralised, crowdfunded companies will definitely happen at some point in the future.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not seeing AngelList syndicates listed here, which is probably the most obvious way for a small investor to invest in a startup; you still need _someone_ to do the diligence and find the companies to invest in, but I could put my money into an "Index Fund" led by dozens of smaller investors, which seems to be the most logical way to do something like this.

As for direct crowdfunding, I would be comfortable angel investing if I knew someone was doing the due diligence, but no way am I putting my money into a startup blind, or spending the time to do that due diligence myself.

After that, the signaling risk and additional regulatory complexity behind this type of crowdfunding is likely a bad thing for a company, and likely mostly filled with companies that can't raise by traditional means, so you have an adverse selection problem and you're making it worse.

I think Naval and AngelList could change that, but there's quite a long ways to go.

</comment><comment><USER31> This isn't an accurate assessment or headline.

The accurate headline or assessment is "Equity Crowdfunding sites fail to attract legitimate, investment-worthy startups"!

I've seen the startups posted at the crowdfunding sites and they look terrible / borderline scammy e.g. a site that's not growing and doesn't have much going for it raising at a $25 million valuation.

Part of the reason is that there's a big gorilla in the room and it's Kickstarter! If you have a great product, it's better to take it there than to an equity crowdfunding site -- at Kickstarter, you get pre-orders, gauge demand, get actual buyers/users, and don't lose any equity or have those legal complications. It's much better than equity crowdfunding.

I also think AngelList should be evaluated as I bet it's enabled a lot of brand new folks to get into angel investing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't know why investors would be interested. There's really no innovation happening at the startup level anymore.

There was a time when you would hear of some interesting startup that had a huge, grand vision of the future. But the last ten years have brought us startups like Facebook and Snapchat -- and that's just not very inspiring.

I, for one, am looking forward to the next economic correction and Sili Valley implosion, so that the froth will clear away and all that will be left are those fighting for a vision instead of scheming for a profit.

</comment><comment><USER32> The main problem for investors is the principal-agent problem - simply that the managers of the company will use the funds invested into it for their own advantage instead of advancing the company. There are degrees of this - <USER2> blatant fraud to slightly overpaying themselves or making deals with their friends instead of best offerers. It is impossible to entirely stop this - <USER3> there are ways to diminish the impact.

1\. Become involved in the company - this can work only if you have a big stake in the company (with dispersed ownership you get collective action problems) and the company is a big stake of your activities (you cannot get involved much in many companies).

2\. Lend not buy equity (and require collateral etc).

3\. The laws for public offerings - with all that red tape involved: the strict accounting, governance rules, information disclosure rules, etc.

4\. Investing in startups. This is a small special case where investing can be something between becoming fully involved in the company operations and being a small shareholder of a public company. This relies on the theory that startups goal is to grow a 100 times or die - so small continues extractions by the executives are ruled out.

The crowdfunding initiatives, try to reduce the red tape involved in a public offering of equity - but they don't even try to address the problem that the bureaucracy addresses in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER33> The problem is supply side. Crowdfunded companies are giving the platform 5-10% of the capital raised. Why crowdfund and have a whole bunch of investors on your captable and give up some of that money AND deal with the compliance cost of you're strong enough to get it from angels/seed VCs. Current regulations force a broken model.

</comment><comment><USER34> The problem with equity crowdfunding right now is that most of the tech startups aren't raising money through the portals. What percentage of the YC Summer 2017 batch do you think will go on to raise money through the equity crowdfunding portals? My guess is that few, if any, of the YC Summer 2017 companies will raise money through equity crowdfunding. And this is a huge problem for potential equity crowdfunding investors. Equity crowdfunding investors simply do not have the opportunity to invest in large number of the best startups. Go check out the types of companies raising money on the funding portals, most aren't tech startups. You'll find all sorts of bullshit companies, everything from board games to restaurants!

</comment><comment><USER35> I went to a workshop and asked a the guy what benefit does the investor have to buy shares of Tom's Tire Shop. The guy said it is just like buying Apple or Microsoft, and blah, blah, blah. No it is not like buying Microsoft. There is no way to liquidate your shares.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think that if they actualy want a crowd to do this that they have to improve discovery of not only the ability to do this and the companies that want to be crowdfunded. Up until know I vaguely knew that the JOBS act contained this wording (and I presumed that something changed about the JOBS act) which was false. The other part is discovery which could be helped by either partnering with Kickstarter or making an independant website that would do this.

On the other hand it could be that Kickstarter is performing crowdfunding to the point that the technique of using the Jobs act is not needed. Adding up 2 or 3 large kickstarter projects and you get the total amount raised. Currently Kickstarter has funded around $3 billion dollars.

</comment><comment><USER37> Small dollar amounts, but not necessarily "few" in numbers of people. Granted, I'm not particularly interested in crowd-funded equity, but crowd-funded interest-free charitable loans that Kiva has been doing in the U.S. have been steadily growing. [https://www.kiva.org/lend/kiva- u-s](https://www.kiva.org/lend/kiva-u-s)

Growing at the bottom may not produce eye-popping changes right now, but could have some great long-term effects for re-invigorating small business growth (which has been on the decline in the U.S. as I've posted elsewhere).

</comment><comment><USER38> What would the numbers look like if the authors hadn't excluded ICOs? Given that this is where the majority of the small-dollar equity crowdfunding is going, it seems weird not to include them.

</comment><comment><USER39> Another slice of the explanation for this can be found in the ceiling there is on crowdfunding: Your investors aren't people with deep pockets; it's those who generally don't have even one full extra paycheck in the bank. When they give you $20, that may mean they don't see a movie with their S.O. that weekend, etc. The money pool is much shallower.

Raising the minimum wage would be good for crowdfunding.

</comment><comment><USER40> Another reason for Small Investors to stay away is the senseless tax hassle. I didn't invest because I had any ambition to get wealthy, I just wanted to "give back" and help some ambitious young entrepreneurs get started. Now I'm filing complicated tax forms for money I'll never see because those young companies made 10$ in interest from the money sitting in a bank.

</comment><comment><USER41> I looked into investing a small amount in crowdfunding, but there are very few platforms offering it and the companies seemed to be raising money at overpriced valuations. It would be nice if crowdfunding could grow, since ordinary people could get a share of large growth and they could also offer certain unique benefits for a company the raising money (e.g. help with marketing).

</comment><comment><USER42> My problem has been that I haven't seen a single deal that I felt had moderately favorable investor terms.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how they are letting people know about this. I wasn't aware this was possible and I still had in mind that you had to be "credited" investor, even as a Hacker News reader, somehow this was flying under my radar. I don't expect a lot of people to know about it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Turns out only the rich have enough money to invest. Everyone else is living paycheck to paycheck.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've had a look at a few of these startups that were trying to raise money this way, and none of them seemed very promising. I'm not going to give money to something just because it's there, it has to be something I truly believe in.

</comment><comment><USER46> Honestly I thought there would be some marginally ethical VCs that would team up with similar salespeople to scale up this type of investing.

I'm a little surprised this void hasn't been filled.

</comment><comment><USER47> Startups have an enormously high risk profile. I'm simply unable to come up with enough money to spread around enough startups that my expected ROI will beat an indexed fund.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think the huge win here will be things like Kickstarter. Just takes one oculus to inspire folks. I could have potentially made 40K off my $400 investment.

Oh, and a free rift!

</comment><comment><USER49> Small investors lack the biggest benefit of a good VC – good connections. $120k from 12 non-F&F investors = 12 people to bother you without much benefit.

</comment><comment><USER50> ICOs are wildly popular (granted, not all from U.S., but crowdfunding seed capital is proving successful for the right "idea spaces")

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not to create a massive crowd-funded or publicly traded VC fund? (as opposed to crowd-funding for a single startup)

<comment><USER51> Fidelity does this (FBGRX, FDGRX) and GSVC has been around (top investments are Palantir, Spotify and Dropbox) [http://gsvcap.com/portfolio/](http://gsvcap.com/portfolio/)

So I'd guess that demand for high-risk investment of the kind is well-served by existing instruments, and even if Schwab or Vanguard have evaluated a possibility of launching such fund, they have not pulled the trigger yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> VCs will always do much much better, they have the connections to do the exits...

</comment><comment><USER53> Yup. And this is because if you're a startup and you take investment from these "small investors" I can't recall the actual classification (class 3 maybe or something like that?) VC and accelerators simply won't touch you. So there's no point. And then, if you're a "small investor" and you had, say, $5,000 to kick toward a startup for speculative investing, the VCs simply say that it's not enough money and they're just not interested in your small change.

<comment><USER13> _And this is because if you 're a startup and you take investment from these "small investors" I can't recall the actual classification (class 3 maybe or something like that?) VC and accelerators simply won't touch you. So there's no point._

Sure there is, if you never planned to seek VC funding anyway. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that just need a little money to get over the initial hump or two, and then plan to rely on organic growth. If you're not worried about being a "moonshot" and don't have huge capital expenses (eg, manufacturing a physical product, drug trials, etc.) then this could quite possibly work for you.</comment></comment>


Programmers And Prostitutes - <AUTHOR> http://kirubakaran.blogspot.com/2007/10/pros.html

<comment><USER2> _She works hard for the money

so hard for it honey

she works hard for the money

so you better treat her right!_

Blast it in your headphones in your cube and use your mouse as a microphone.

</comment><comment><USER3> You are a Pro... ;)</comment>


Python and vim: Two great tastes that go great together - <AUTHOR> http://www.tummy.com/Community/Presentations/vimpython-20070225/vim.html

<comment><USER2> I've recently spent a little time working on a Python-based GPG module for Vim, and I have to say the Python <-> Vim interface is... clunky. You do get a very basic object for navigating the current structure of open tabs, panes and buffers, but when it comes to interacting with Vim, the Python code is literally reduced to pushing keystrokes at it. Whatever the user would type at the keyboard, you have to put into a string and send - with no assistance for proper quoting or anything.

Given that "add integration with Python instead of inventing more Vim script" has been near the top of the feature-vote results for quite a while, I hope the situation will get better soon:

<http://vim.sourceforge.net/sponsor/vote_results.php>

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is great stuff! As always with slides online, I wish I could get a transcript or even better a recording of the original presentation!

I'm currently trying to switch to vim for all my editing, this certainly opens up a few doors to further customization.

<comment><USER4> Try toggling the Javascript off. All the text is there in one page. As a side note, I _love_ this presentation script.

<comment><USER5> This is Eric Meyer's S5: <http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Trying to install vim-python on Ubuntu 10.04 generates this message:

        Package vim-python is a virtual package provided by:
          vim-nox 2:7.2.330-1ubuntu3
          vim-gtk 2:7.2.330-1ubuntu3
          vim-gnome 2:7.2.330-1ubuntu3
        You should explicitly select one to install.
        E: Package vim-python has no installation candidate

Any suggestions?

<comment><USER2> If you're using standard GNOME-based Ubuntu (not Kubuntu or Xubuntu), then you probably want vim-gnome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cute idea, vim script is... unintuitive, and reminiscent of bash.

But, similar to Javascript in a browser, half the battle is knowing the environment (ie vim's internals, analogous to DOM for js).

</comment><comment><USER7> Presentation seems to be ancient and the Python code is fugly with camelCased identifiers. :-/

</comment><comment><USER8> fyi, title is cut off on first slide, if you're the original author. (ff 3.6 os x 1920x1200)</comment>


How to Grow as a New Software Developer - <AUTHOR> http://appendto.com/2016/07/how-to-grow-as-a-new-software-developer/ <comment><USER2> as a recent FE grad, this is helpful and i'm mindful of these tips as i put together a portfolio of work</comment>


The Dataflow Model: Balancing Correctness, Latency, and Cost in Data Processing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/43864.pdf <comment><USER2> Eric Schmidt is in the list of authors, I wonder if he is doing CS research again as an executive.

<comment><USER3> There are multiple Eric Schmidt's at Google. That one is not the Chairman/former CEO :)

<comment><USER4> Wow. Just imagine all the opportunity for social engineering, with a name like that :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow ... this is awesome! Quoting from the paper, "live and breathe under the assumption that we will never know if or when we have seen all of our data, only that new data will arrive, old data may be retracted, and the only way to make this problem tractable". That's another amazing mindshift!

<comment><USER6> Fundamentally still operating in an 'anticipatory' [1] model of computing. A trending shade of pink lipstick for the old pig.

[1]: the margin of this post is too small to contain an elaboration on this ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is there no related work section in this paper? I'm not sure simply calling it 'The' dataflow model is very friendly either to all the other previous dataflow models for parallelism that have been developed over the last four decades or so. Why can this implementation be the definitive one so much that it doesn't even need a qualified name and why aren't any of the others even worth a mention?

<comment><USER8> IMHO the same thing happened with the "object" concept in the '90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Url changed from [http://blog.acolyer.org/2015/08/18/the-dataflow-model-a- prac...](http://blog.acolyer.org/2015/08/18/the-dataflow-model-a-practical- approach-to-balancing-correctness-latency-and-cost-in-massive-scale-unbounded- out-of-order-data-processing/), which points to this.

<comment><USER10> This is unfortunate---Colyer's summaries are well worth reading.

<comment><USER9> They're good summaries, but after thinking about this a fair bit, I don't think they're enough to trump HN's preference for original sources. Anyone who wants to can read both, since when we change a URL we include the previous one in the comments, as above.</comment></comment></comment>


One Year, Six Products: What I've Built and Learned - <AUTHOR> http://alexlod.com/2012/07/10/one-year-six-products-what-ive-built-and-learned/

<comment><USER2> Here's my suggestion.

Pick a niche market. A market that you don't have to create and a market that is already lucrative. At this point you are not building a product to test a market/theory because it already exist, and proven. Then build something that's better than what's out there and compete on features/pricing because you can obviously build products fast and this can give you an edge.

Personally, as much as I like building products for consumers I learnt (the hard way) to avoid them (for now) because they will most likely fail for reasons like: audience is hard to reach, requires viral-lity most of the time for people to hear about it and use it, and requires a very well polished UI. Not to mention that they whine and expect things to be free. :)

Before you create a product, answer these two questions accurately: 1. How will I reach my audience? 2. Am I solving a real problem? (don't kid yourself)

<comment><USER3> But how would one compete with already established competitors when it comes to domain knowledge? I mean... picking up a niche market may be easy, but then you must know it better than those who are already there.

<comment><USER2> You have to pick a niche that you think your knowledge in this domain is an advantage over the current competitors or allows you to compete at the same level. Don't think you'll ever enter a market where you'll be on your own with no competitors and everyone is paying you. That won't happen. If this happened then you are creating a market and soon after you'll have competitors.

Don't be afraid of competition. Competition is at the core of running a business.

<comment><USER3> That is the kind of thing I would like to see in case studies. I always see articles about starting the next facebook or something, the 'sexy' startups. But when it comes to building stuff to niche markets like, say, agriculture or logistics, theres not much said.

I'm actually trying to find something for myself, though acquiring the domain knowledge is something the puzzles me. How do one gets, as was suggested, immersed on a given field, knowing that no one will pay you just to learn.

I studied computer science, but this just teaches one how to use technology to build stuff. Now I'm on the weird position of not knowing what to build :D

<comment><USER4> People often pay you to learn, but that's not the point. To answer the question you posed in the earlier post about domain knowledge: you focus smaller and smaller until you find something where you can become an expert in a reasonable time.

e.g., "agriculture" is not a niche. Breeding management software for Silver- laced Wyandottes is a niche. You reduce the huge term "agriculture" by going agriculture->poultry->poultry husbandry->poultry breeding->breeding- chickens->breeding-Silvery-laced-Wyandottes.

Now, is there a market for that product I picked out of the air? I don't know, but I suspect, based on my knowledge of the field, that there could very well be. And you could _own_ it if you wanted to.

<comment><USER3> thanks for the explanation, I liked your example :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm kinda baffled by memcachier. Who is your target market? I would think everyone who uses memcache would be frightened by WAN latency to your service.

<comment><USER6> I'm going to have to second this as well. Memcached is one of the simplest services in the world to set up as well.

Maybe if you solve the problem of cache invalidation...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting to read about each product and the lessons learned. Looking forward to the follow-up article.

I'm a bit concerned about how long the writer can continue, though. There isn't a single mention of sales or income, both in terms of actual results (which is fair enough) and hoped-for goals (more worrying). Is the aim to get by with funding and deal with revenue later? Sounds high risk to me.

<comment><USER8> Here's the follow-up:

[http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six- products-16-tips-...](http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six- products-16-tips-for-new-entrepreneurs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good post but surprised by his understanding of cash-flow positive: _Being cash-flow positive is...when your costs not including salaries are lower than your revenues_

<comment><USER10> Well spotted. Many businesses fall over by misunderstanding cash flow, especially in the early days when they don't have much incoming cash.

Terms like 'costs' and 'revenue' have no place in cash flow forecasts - it's all about cash in and cash out (including salaries, assuming they're paid). If your product costs are less than revenue, you have margin (sometimes called profit, but that's not quite right either); but if you have to pay lots of costs before you receive revenue, you can hit a cash flow wall no matter how large your margin is.

I had one client who re-sold physical products. They were paid by the buyer on 14 day terms, and had to pay their provider on 30 day terms - so they actually got paid two weeks before they had to pay for the product. Margin was low - but cash flow was ridiculously positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pivoting is great, but sometimes you have to give it some time. You need to pivot strategically. Almost every startup experiences a curve, first you launch. Maybe you make some news sites, growth goes up. Then people promptly forget about you. Usage plumits, and you fall in to a depression. You don't come out of the depression until you 'make it'. Starting a new projects puts you right back at beginning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's the promised follow-up article, One Year, Six Products: 16 Tips for New Entrepreneurs:

[http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six- products-16-tips-...](http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six- products-16-tips-for-new-entrepreneurs/)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's amazing how many products you've built this year. I love these retrospectives on your year (with lessons learned). I think I'll do one soon too.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Unfortunately I can't talk about it because it's still in a closed beta

This makes me a sad panda every time I hear it.

A good way to spot a first time founder is to see if they're concerned about competition before they even launch the product.

<comment><USER14> It looks to me like he built the product for someone else as a consultant. So maybe he's under some NDA with the person that hired him.

<comment><USER13> Yep, to clarify I was referring to the client not to the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So if I build a website for a non-existent product to test the waters that counts as 1?

<comment><USER16> It counts for more than doing nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd strongly advise looking at other areas than the memcache cloud service. The whole point of memcache is to be incredibly fast to prevent having to do a much heavier weight process, like making requests to databases.

While you offer locating the memcachier product within some datacenters this is such a narrow offering, and for something that's already mind numbingly simple to automate anyway.

While 'cloud' anything is hot right now, this just doesn't solve a real problem.

I think you're rushing into building something, without looking at the market and what problem you're trying to solve for customers.

If you'd had a good mentor they would have saved you a lot of hours wasting time in ideas that are obviously doomed, they neither solved a problem, nor provided entertainment.

Except one you discarded, the celebrity photos from twitter. With a great front end, and preferably an iPhone app that served up celebrity photos in a magazine style format might very well have legs. People seem to love celebrities, and they seem to love looking at what they are getting up to. This app would have the advantage of twitter's speed at disseminating information, and people like knowing first so they can send the photo to their friends and show how cool they are.

Forget the tech for a moment, think about psychology - what human need are you targeting, then think about the business, the market, how you'll reach them and finally the tech. I hope this helps.

*edited for spelling and typos.

</comment><comment><USER18> my 9 year old makes a lot of little stuff like this too; lego constructions, sticks woven together, playing card pyramids. Pretty cool stuff...</comment>


The Open-Closed Principle, again – from a new perspective - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/the-open-closed-principle-c3dc45419784 <comment><USER2> Unclosable pop-up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Um, that's strange, can't reproduce that in any of my devices :/</comment></comment>


Show HN: Display binary Minecraft file from a web server as 3d in browser - <AUTHOR> http://minecraft-dungeons.com/viewer.html?url=r.0.0.mca&x=172&y=67&z=189&size=3&showstuff=diamondsmoss&ymin=0 The github link is at the bottom of the home page.  http://github.com/ithkuil/mcchunkloader <comment><AUTHOR> Written in CoffeeScript. The github is at the bottom of the home page. <http://github.com/ithkuil/mcchunkloader></comment>


Ask HN: How is my app doing? - <AUTHOR>

It has been 1 month since I released http://doosracricket.com/ and wanted to check how is my app doing?
In 30 days there were
331 Visits,
200 Unique Visitors, (this includes approx 100 HN users when
I posted for feedback)
1,124 Pageviews
32 users (signups)
18 Facebook Fans
Expenses: $25 on Facebook ads and server cost.
Any suggestions will be very helpful. Thanks <comment><USER2> What are your goals? Are your visitors returning? If you stopped paying for ads, how much traffic would you have? Did you intend to make money?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not thinking of generating money right now. The main goal is to get the visitor returning on there own without pushing(notification) and ads.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SSVM – Speed up your Node.js apps with Rust and WebAssembly - <AUTHOR> https://www.secondstate.io/SSVM <comment><AUTHOR> Raw performance (the lack of) is always a contentious point for JavaScript, especially in our post-Moore era of computing. Node.js gets around this issue through extensive of use of native libraries and modules written in C, including the V8 JS engine itself.

But as application developers, how do YOU create high performance functions? Write in C and run as a NAPI module? Write in Rust and run as a V8 wasm? Well, there is another (better and faster) way now!

The SSVM is a fully featured WebAssembly VM ([https://www.secondstate.io/ssvm/](https://www.secondstate.io/ssvm/)) that is optimized for server-side applications.

You can write functions in Rust, compile to WebAssembly and run in SSVM, and access it as if they are JS functions in Node.js. Easy as pie. Give it a try! ([https://www.secondstate.io/articles/getting-started-with- rus...](https://www.secondstate.io/articles/getting-started-with-rust- function/))

By rewriting computationally intensive functions from JavaScript to Rust, developers could achieve 10x to 100x times performance ([https://www.secondstate.io/articles/performance-rust- wasm/](https://www.secondstate.io/articles/performance-rust-wasm/)) gain in terms of startup and/or execution speed.

BTW, Why not just use v8? For starters, SSVM runs much faster than V8 ([https://www.secondstate.io/articles/ssvm- performance/](https://www.secondstate.io/articles/ssvm-performance/)) and it also supports more server-friendly extensions than just WASI.

Any issued and feedback are welcome. Checkout the GitHub link: [https://github.com/second-state/SSVM](https://github.com/second-state/SSVM)

<comment><USER2> I am highly skeptical of any claim that anything can be 10x-100x faster that JavaScript. Do you have any concrete example where a similar program coded in (decently written) JS is that slower? I work on a compiler from C++ to JavaScript & WebAssembly (Cheerp), and I have basically never saw any such a difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> The speed differences between Python, JS, and C++/Rust are well documented. [https://www.secondstate.io/articles/performance-rust- wasm/](https://www.secondstate.io/articles/performance-rust-wasm/)

But, of course, they are not universal and tend to have a large effect in areas where JS is rarely used — a selection bias one might say.

<comment><USER2> Do you have any single example where Rust+WebAssembly are 100x (or even 10x) faster than JavaScript?

I did got to the page you linked, but also there is no actual "proof".

<comment><AUTHOR> We took that experts at IBM and MIT would be honest about their performance findings. :) But, it appears that actual performance numbers are of great interest to the community. We will create repeatable benchmarks and open source them. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting project, but since this seems to be limited to Rust, what's the point of WebAssembly, instead of writing JS extensions directly in Rust?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the same reason why people write Java but not C++ Apache extensions on the server side. It is safer and more portable to run bytecode inside containers.</comment></comment>


Make an animated gif of a developer each time their app throws an error - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oozou.com/lol-errors/

<comment><USER2> Nice little hack I guess, but I'm just baffled how many people seem to be comfortable to keep a camera pointed at them at all time, especially when things like this are going on: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa- webcam...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam- images-internet-yahoo)

<comment><USER3> Diversity is everywhere.

Some people have very strong sense of self as a separate entity from outside world, they guard their privacy well.

Other people derive sense of self from community and self expression.

Yet another group of people simply cannot grasp potential tail event consequences of exposing so much information about themselves.

There are few people do know consequences, but also have a sense of just how unlikely a tail event would be and they deem it an acceptable risk. Whether they are right about their risk estimation or not is incidental.

This is a small sample off top of my head based on the people I know. Moreover, as people live, learn, and interact with other people their opinions change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, we're so doing that! I have the perfect picture of a monkey or maybe a nice cat gif :)

<comment><USER5> I think you're missing that the gif is created from the webcam facing the developer so their reaction to the error can be captured :-)

<comment><USER4> Yep you're right. If you could see my face now, it would be red :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I set up [https://github.com/mroth/lolcommits](https://github.com/mroth/lolcommits) almost two years ago and set it to upload to tumblr - and it's a fabulous, fabulous thing to scroll through.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also, add this to the error reporting function of Firefox. Every time it crashes, they get know what the person looked like. Fix only the bugs of the highest upvoted pictures.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is the best idea. Make a database of these GIFs. I promise I'll spend an entire day watching them.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is dumb. Why not a system in which the developer provide his inputs as well as the affected user all done by a dll that's carried by all the appliations on the company that fills the correct TFS (or Git/Svn/Etc) so you can get some interesting data? So many things to log without user intervention, plus his data, OS, version, date, apps running, stack trace, you name it...

and in the name of down voting, the idea of this news and post was done by hipster from a cafe...

" I have the perfect picture of a monkey or maybe a nice cat gif"

so 9gag does.

<comment><USER10> You seem to have completely missed the point. This is for when the app throws an error in development, it's nothing to do with live.</comment></comment>


Google Paid Apple $1B to Keep Search Bar on iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/google-paid-apple-1-billion-to-keep-search-bar-on-iphone <comment><USER2> Title is misleading. Google didn't pay up front to keep the search bar, but rather agreed to share a percentage of the revenue generated, which ended up being $1B.

<comment><USER3> The title should be changed to reflect this

<comment><USER4> why? It's effectively the same thing, except the risk profile is different. The resulting revenue wasn't a complete mystery so they probably knew the deal equaled about 1 billion.

<comment><USER5> But the deal wasn't Google giving Apple $1B to be the default search on iOS. It was Google giving Apple a 34% share (perhaps - it's still a bit unclear in the article) of iOS search revenue. It is still a deal _worth_ ~ $1B, but not a deal for $1B.

The context is important. If the number is 34%, then Google's iOS revenue would be around $3B, of which Apple got a cut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oracle is really letting out Google secrets. First Android earnings, now this. Both said not to be public knowledge. Google going to go after oracle now?

<comment><USER7> How are they not being found in contempt?

<comment><USER8> There are two types of contempt (civil and criminal) and as a general rule contempt is triggered by violating a Court's Order(s). What Court Order has been violated?

<comment><USER7> None, because I didn't read the article before asking (shocker, right?). I think it's bad form for the judge to publicly release Google's financial information like that. I have a hard time believing that's normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google also used to pay Mozilla to be the search engine there, until Yahoo outbid them.

It's amazing that Google search, which is quite useful, has negative market value as content. In the cable TV world, there are channels cable systems pay to carry, such as ESPN, and channels that pay to be carried, such as the Jewelry Channel. How did Google end up in the latter category?

<comment><USER10> Cable TV is a fundamentally wrong analogy here, because there is only one search bar and only one default search provider, not a near-infinite number of channels to be filled.

Being the default search engine on iPhone means you can generate a lot of revenue, and so it is a valuable position to sell. As you say, Google got outbid by Yahoo a couple years ago for Firefox. If Google weren't paying, apple would sell the search bar to somebody else.

<comment><USER11> I don't use an iPhone so have to ask, can users not select the search engine they want to use? Oneplus tried to change the default search on their phones to Bing and the first thing I did was switch back to Google.

<comment><USER12> yes, but a vast number of users tend to stick with the defaults.

<comment><USER13> Until the default changes and those of us who don't like change will learn to make the effort to revert back.

I have no idea if google is actually a better search engine, just that it's a familiar one.

<comment><USER14> For most searches the average person does - aka I want to go to the wikipedia page or official site for X - the results are indistinguishable.

<comment><USER15> That's not a good measuring stick. Probably even before Google existed search engines we're good at those kinds of searches. But people use search for much more than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Therefore the iPhone share of total search ad spend is about $3B. This link puts the overall market (inclusive of Android) at roughly $9B in 2014. That makes sense if you assume iOS to represent roughly 1/3 of devices.

[http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Account-More-than- Ha...](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Account-More-than-Half-of- Digital-Ad-Spending-2015/1012930)

<comment><USER17> Isn't the $9B for all mobile advertising, not just mobile search advertising? According to a Glodman Sachs report for 2014, back then they estimated that iOS advertising accounted for 75% of Google's revenue on mobile. That would make the Android search ad space worth about $1B.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a link to that report? I'd be curious to see if that's just the US or worldwide.

<comment><USER17> It's not available online. The story originally came from the NY Times, but I think Business Insider has the best info as they directly quoted a section from it.

[http://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-walked-away-from- iad...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-walked-away-from-iad-to- starve-googles-core-business-into-irrelevance-2016-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bing powers Siri, and I assume now powers all of the internet search functions (unsure about Safari.) So I wonder if Microsoft paid this amount, or if Apple decided that less money made more sense so they could harm their competitor?

<comment><USER19> I thought Siri only used Bing because Google doesn't allow services like Siri to use google.com?

<comment><USER20> Pretty much. And Apple had to roll its own maps because Google would not allow Siri to use maps. Apple Maps are pretty darn good by now, so I think it's safe to assume that Apple started building their own search engine for Siri well before it made a deal with Microsoft, and Bing is a stop-gap measure. Apple likes to own its core technologies.

<comment><USER21> Not really -- the Apple Maps vs Google Maps trouble started when Google refused to allow turn-by-turn directions until Apple started turning over more user data. If I remember right, Apple Maps launched "early" (before the deal with Google expired) in an effort to put Apple into a more powerful negotiating position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In a world so abundant of information, i think user attention is indeed a significant resource every major player should fight for. I guess the distribution of attention follows power law, that a few entrances take up most of the mobile use cases. For example, I use Uber, Wechat, GMaps much more often than the other apps. Search bar definitely is one of the most critical entrances.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how much Google got charged for the opportunity in 2015

</comment><comment><USER23> That's about 5% of what Google has made in profit from Android since ~2008.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how much Apple would pay for [https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/) just to screw over Google.</comment>


Why You Should Stop Reading News - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/2013/12/stop-reading-news/ <comment><USER2> As an experiment, I've stopped reading casual news entirely, aside from a few stories on HN each day. Feeling better already. The "Did you hear?" news from the people around me is plenty enough.</comment>


Connecting home cooks with their neighbors for $10 a meal - <AUTHOR> https://www.umama.io/ <comment><USER2> Is this legal? Once you're preparing food for paying customers, haven't you become a food service business that's subject to all the standard regulations, including health inspections, commercial zoning, etc.?</comment>


Nginx vhosts in databases - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I am currently learning nginx, has anyone come across a way to pull vhosts stored in a database?
I have seen scripts for lighty to do this but is there a legit way for nginx?
cheers <comment><USER2> You may find it more useful to ask this question at one of the Stackoverflow sites.</comment>


Hoag's Object - ani-ani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoag%27s_Object <comment><AUTHOR> As a summer student at Kitt Peak Observatory in 1974, I had the honor of working with Art Hoag. Not just a brilliant astronomer and a super efficient observer. Art was a true gentleman of the old school: kind to students and quite progressive. Forty five years ago, over night-lunch at the observatory, he told us of the importance of bringing into astrophysics more women, minorities, gays, and foreign students.

<comment><USER2> Wait....Is this the account of THE Cliff Stoll? Author of "The Cuckoo's Egg"?

<comment><USER3> For those not aware of this book, I just looked it up and found a video enactment of it starring cliff Stoll on Youtube. Started out slow, but after a few minutes in when they started getting into the details I was hooked. Looks like I just lost an hour tonight, lol.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qubEamdc4Ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qubEamdc4Ng)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool that there's a second ring galaxy you can see by looking through the first one! And here I was not even knowing ring galaxies existed until today!

</comment><comment><USER5> It's neat that such an interesting and pleasing object just happens to be facing us.

<comment><USER6> Maybe that is a selection effect. Objects like this that are more inclined will tend to look more like regular galaxies so will not be identified as ring galaxies so easily.

<comment><USER7> well sure.. but if one average an arbitrarily chosen vantage point (ours) sees only one of these so well, then we can infer that many other arbitrary vantage points see none. and that would be sad.

(i know the article mentions others, so this might not hold up to a full cataloging of our night sky)

<comment><USER8> Wikipedia is usally pretty comprehensive but seems to list much less ring galaxies than spiral galaxies:

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

Compare with "list of spiral galaxies" \- shorter by far.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A somewhat bigger Ringworld? [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ringworld](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ringworld) Which, by coincidence, I am currently re-reading.

<comment><USER10> A classic! I'm working on the Culture novels now, which have their own variant ("orbitals"), minus the shadow squares or central star. Can't recommend them enough, so far.

<comment><USER11> Orbitals, while enormous (greater surface area than earth), are much smaller. The Culture novels do have Ringworld-sized rings as well, though. E.g. from Consider Phlebas, flying under the orbital Vavatch: "It was like flying upside-down over a planet made of metal; and of all the sights the galaxy held which were the result of conscious effort, it was one bested for what the Culture would call gawp value only by a big Ring, or a Sphere."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This structure seems like it should not be stable. If the middle part were not centered, it would be gravitationally attracted to the ring.

<comment><USER13> If I understand correctly, the middle part _far_ out-masses the ring. If the middle part were not centered, then the ring could continue to peacefully orbit it, as the planets orbit the sun, even though their orbits are not (quite) centered on it.

<comment><USER12> Ok, then the ring would be pulled in. But only to the extent that it behaves like a solid which it isnt.</comment></comment></comment>


[HEADS UP] New project name: Monitoring Plugins - <AUTHOR> https://www.monitoring-plugins.org/archive/help/2014-January/006503.html

<comment><USER2> My header was "Nagios-Plugins Renamed to Monitoring-Plugins After Nagios Enterprises Highjacks Website"</comment>


Apple, Apps and Algorithmic Glitches - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/apple-apps-and-algorithmic-glitches-f7bc8dd2cda6

<comment><USER2> The analysis is interesting, but what leads the author to believe that the top charts 'should' be stable, other than innuendo to spice up the story? It seems eminently reasonable for there to be an algorithmic shake up every once in a while so that the performance of otherwise non-charting apps can be sampled.</comment>


Watches Are Rediscovered by the Cellphone Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/fashion/watches-are-rediscovered-by-the-cellphone-generation.html <comment><USER2> The suit is back.

<comment><USER3> I read this and thought of you.

I think you've said you bought PR for Viaweb. Any guidelines you can share? In short, what can founders do to best shape how they're covered?

<comment><USER2> I don't think most startups need to anymore.

<comment><USER3> Does YC prepare startups in any way in talking to the press? Or is that more informal?

<comment><USER2> To some extent, case by case.

<comment><USER3> Any tips or thoughts you could share publicly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Mr. Chai, 38, has been wearing a vintage Rolex, loosely dangling around his wrist, "not as a timepiece, but as a piece of jewelry," he said"

This is exactly what Rolex is. There is a fantastic book on the history of Rolex, the name I forget, but the opening quote is from a Rolex designer and it is along the lines of "do not ask me about the watch industry, Rolex is not in the time keeping industry, Rolexes are fashion accessories."

I believe the reason why watches "are back" is because the mobile phone industry is far more contained than it was even five years ago. Five years ago, having a flash mobile phone was impressive - but now - everyone just has iPhones or Blackberries. A Rolex is timelessly classic, it is subtle yet if you happen to notice it, you know the guy has good taste - or money, and those two are regularly conflated in fashion.

Timex are the guys that are really capitalising on this trend, if you got into a slightly up market fashion retailer like J Crew, you are bombarded with classic Timex watches and then you can tailor them with multi coloured nato straps. [http://www.jcrew.com/mens_category/accessories/necessaryluxu...](http://www.jcrew.com/mens_category/accessories/necessaryluxuries/PRDOVR~27460/27460.jsp)

<comment><AUTHOR> _it is subtle yet if you happen to notice it, you know the guy has good taste - or money, and those two are regularly conflated in fashion._

Almost. The trouble (so to speak) with something like a Rolex is that has a known, built-in, association with "taste"; knowing nothing about taste but wanting to impress people I could pick a Rolex and be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This depends on the industry you're in. When I was in a sales floor, everyone had a nice watch. They were considered status symbols and proof of your skill as a salesman. When I went to my first tech conference I noticed most people had either no watch, or a digital one that didn't seem expensive. Also, now that I'm away from sales, I either sold or stored every watch I own. When I want to know the time, I just look at my cell phone. Atomic time is good enough for me.

<comment><USER6> Watches haven't been a major time-telling device in nearly two decades. Watches are jewelry, just like earrings, bracelets and necklaces. That is the main point of the article, and I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wearing a $10K piece of bling to work is tacky.

<comment><USER8> Not all $10k pieces are bling, in case that's what you're inferring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _A watch these days may strike some people as an impractical, frivolous and often costly way to express individual style. But that is just another way of saying that it's fashion._

Whether or not the rest of the article is hogwash, that's a golden quote.</comment>