GitHub flags repo, breaks Julia ecosystem, Github CEO fixes within the hour - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Viral_B_Shah/status/1241847951443492865 <comment><USER2> > It is appalling that @github flagged the JuliaImages org without any prior > warning. This has broken the #JuliaLang ecosystem in a pretty bad way > because many packages depend on Images.jl.

Well they control the platform and its Julia's fault for choosing them and hosting the entire repository and essential ecosystem on GitHub instead of self-hosting the essential repositories themselves. This already happens to all Github-hosted projects in general.

Ideally, in a self-hosted environment involving open-source projects, a trusted sys-admin of the project would be on-call and step in to fix the issue, rather than wait for support or even the GitHub CEO to step in and fix it for you.

Platform-wise, congratulations to GitHub for showing once again why free and open-source projects should be self-hosted using either GitLab, Gerrit, cgit or Gitea instead of being centralised in one platform.

<comment><USER3> We certainly are grateful to Nat Friedman for stepping in and fixing this.

We have been aware of the centralization issue generally, and in fact just this weekend, we released Julia 1.4, which has redesigned the internals of the package manager such packages can be served from our own infrastructure. There's already a plan for migration away from Github as the source that serves packages. For Julia 1.4 it needs to be turned on by the user, but going forward, the new infrastructure is likely to be the default.

We imagined many reasons for needing to do this to safeguard the long term stability of the Julia ecosystem. For example, an author may delete a key package they own, accidentally or for their own reasons (like the lpad case in javascript), or as we learnt in this case, packages can get accidentally flagged and break things.

Thankfully the Pkg team has been one step ahead on this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could someone make a sarcasm font? - <AUTHOR>

It's hight time we got one. <comment><USER2> [http://sartalics.com/](http://sartalics.com/) You're welcome.</comment>


NTP Security Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.ntpsec.org/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps these guys should talk to PHK who's also implementing an NTP dæmon:

· [http://phk.freebsd.dk/time/](http://phk.freebsd.dk/time/)

· [https://github.com/bsdphk/Ntimed](https://github.com/bsdphk/Ntimed)</comment>


Cluster analysis for concise results in eye tracking - <AUTHOR> http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/cluster-analysis-for-concise-results-in-eye-tracking/

<comment><USER2> Do you think that some form of dynamic time warping algorithm, performed on the data of each distinct group, could help give a better overall view of that group's behavior in a static heatmap image? Presuming participants share similar scanpaths within a group.

Just a thought, I understand the data may be too noisy / have too much variance for this to work in practice.

<comment><USER3> The problem with applying complicated algorithms to an infographic is that it makes it more difficult for the reader to know what exactly they are looking at. I think infographics should always have a "transparent" quality where a reasonably seasoned person could explain exactly what each individual point of data means. When you start applying sophisticated kernels to the data, this becomes hard to do.</comment></comment>


Scribd Steps Up Its Game With iPaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/19/scribd-steps-up-its-game-with-ipaper/

<comment><USER2> The new iPaper has ridiculously smooth scrolling. They apparently built it from scratch, and are off Flash Paper, Adobe's product. It's quite an upgrade. Props to Trip and co.</comment>


A young person's guide to building something - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zmitri.com/startups/2012/12/14/young-persons-guide-to-building-something.html

<comment><USER2> This blog post is almost 6 months old. The author quit his job. The app is free and it looks like it's been . So what's the result? There's some basic advice here about starting and building something. We've all read that sort of simple "just build something" advice. Is their story unique or worth reading about? Any revenue or even a business model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. We are still going.

The point of this article was to communicate to younger people that it is possible to go off and build something on your own. Many don't think about it or know it's possible.

If you're interested, about a week after this post, the app hit top 100 free apps in the store -- 88 I think was the peak -- and national news sources started using it to scoop stories from.

Either way, I've learned a lot, things I would never had learned had I not gone out on my own. I've also had a lot of interesting experiences -- some good, some bad.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to hear more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> But what happens if there is a person with a great idea, no programming skills and not enough money to invest in developing the product? How should a young person approach this?

<comment><USER4> you've got to change one of those things. there are plenty of reasonable obstacles to not starting something - it's your job to decide whether or not it is worth finding ways to overcome them.</comment></comment>


PureState.js, the stupidiest state management library that works - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maiavictor/purestate <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this after trying to find something to keep state in check for React applications and noticing a lot of over engineering and a lot of misunderstandings about FP even from libs that claimed to do it. I hope this isn't too stupid for this (site), but I really think we should write less code and think a little bit about the problems we are actually trying to solve.</comment>


Go turns three - <AUTHOR> http://blog.golang.org/2012/11/go-turns-three.html

<comment><USER2> We've been playing around with Go where I work. The concurrency model is great, and the type/object/interface approach is pretty flexible. The language designers also succeeded in eliminating many of the pain points they felt with C/C++/Java: dependency bloat and compilation speed. My workflow with Go has more in common with an interpreted language than anything else.

However, the lack of generics seems like a pretty bad oversight. It's annoying to rewrite common functional operations (e.g. map, reduce) over and over again with slightly different argument types (or sprinkling type casts all over your code).

<comment><USER3> _However, the lack of generics seems like a pretty bad oversight._

The lack of generics was not an oversight but an explicit design decision.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a link to a wiki page or blog post or anything that explains why they decided to omit generics?

<comment><USER2> <http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#generics>

<comment><USER4> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations to everyone involved with Go. I've been loving using it and it's nice to see CloudFlare mentioned in that post as we are using Go more and more for our production systems.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, I've been having a lot of fun with the language and have been using it more and more on a daily basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the upvotes, apparently Go has a lot of support on HN, and/or there are a lot of Googlers here. I am particularly curious about Go and Ceylon, 2 recent languages with strong corporate backing. Is anyone using Go in a startup? Congratulations to Go open source for 3rd year. Go Go!

<comment><USER8> Soundcloud use Go, as others have mentioned so do CloudFlare, Heroku use it for a few things...there's a list of production users here: <http://go- lang.cat-v.org/organizations-using-go>

Personally, I've used Go for some prototyping work internally. I thought it was a great language to write in. Sadly I haven't had a chance to do something in production with it myself yet!

I've been keeping a close eye on Revel as well (<http://robfig.github.com/revel/>), which is a Play-like web framework under active development.

<comment><USER9> Great link with revel, it looks promising. I've used Go in production but only for internal things like command line utils for wiring things together. Its a great language especially if your coming from c.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its nice to see my name in the Contributors file. I found that submitting patches was easy and said patches were quickly reviewed.

What isn't easy is reading and understanding the documentation. The jump between the Go tour and the Go docs is gaping. I wish some five star technical writers would take a look and fix it since I feel that is Go's biggest problem right now.

<comment><USER11> Really? I feel pretty much the exact opposite way. I find the docs to be thorough, accurate, and concise.

<comment><USER12> I wish the docs included basic examples of how to use various packages and functions. I end up searching for golang packageX example instead. And often I end up on StackOverflow where someone else is using it wrong and ten others are trying to correct them.

<comment><USER13> <http://gobyexample.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if I tend to criticize the decision to leave out generics, my congratulations to the Go team for their work.

</comment><comment><USER15> In 2010, there was a poll between haskell and go. That time, haskell won.... Why not have this poll again?

<comment><USER15> +1 Haskell

+1 to you pjlmp

Haskell We Love You</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you made any use of IndexedDB? - <AUTHOR> I'm talking about the browser-based database API that is more robust purportedly than localStorage.<p>Looking for interesting use-cases. <comment><USER2> I use it on a simple website I built: [https://covid19incharts.com](https://covid19incharts.com)

This website fetches the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 data from GitHub (in CSV files), and fetching this every single user action is not feasible.

When a user first enters the website, this data is fetched from GitHub, parsed and formatted, and stored in IndexedDB (until it's deemed "stale").

I first used Local Storage, but I needed more space than most browsers allow on Local Storage, so I moved to IndexedDB.

By the way, the API of IndexedDB is somewhat awkward, but there are great libraries like IDB ([https://github.com/jakearchibald/idb](https://github.com/jakearchibald/idb)) that make it much more developer-friendly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I figure now that it's mostly used to cache (relational/made relational) datasets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've used it in a personal React note-taking app project, to add basic offline functionality.

It's a nice idea, and it's pretty magical to be able to build an interactive website that can work fully offline. That said, there are some pitfalls you have to watch out for, e.g. database connection contention if you have multiple tabs to the same origin open.

The lack of great tooling around indexeddb is also a bummer. Something like TablePlus but for indexeddb would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like overkill in that case, unless you were using just because. Thanks for the additional information.</comment></comment>


Thanks Mozilla Firefox - <AUTHOR> This morning I woke up - feeling good for some reason which then I remembered: I had installed Firefox 57 on Ubuntu and Android and experienced the new speed. It may seem a small update in some small open source software but it results in an improvement in the lives of hundreds of millions of people in 1 day.<p>So thanks Mozilla, Firefox and open source software in general. <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the update for Mac doesn't solve the battery usage issue.

<comment><USER3> Can confirm this. It drains the battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Loving Firefox since 2005 on Windows, Linux. Awesome release.

A bit annoying is crashing on Android while using more than 5 tabs, phone is completely crashing, have to restart again.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been using Nightly for sending time and glad people get to experience the numerous improvements

<comment><USER6> I've also been using Nightly since about 2 months ago, when I noticed how fast it became. However, it does have its share of glitches. For instance switching between tabs with C-S-Tab, doesn't take me to the previous tab, but jumps seemingly at random (this doesn't always happen but it does happen often enough to be annoying).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like complete shit; breaks add-ons.

I reverted back to 56 after 5 minutes of using this garbage release.

<comment><USER7> Wife has 57 running on her older model laptop (Win7, 32 bit). Just found her trying to kill firefox because it was too slow; she was dismayed by the proliferation of multiple firefox.exe processes instead of the usual one. (I advised about "kill process tree"; seems to have worked).

Faster, my left foot.

Not in any real sense for the everyday user.

Task manager is still your best friend.

To add insult to injury, the "Restart firefox" extension (your other best friend) is gone.</comment></comment>


Maxwell: Like Material Design or Bootstrap for the SwiftUI Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maxwelldesign/lux <comment><AUTHOR> Hey hello

We invite the hacker news community to try MAXWELL, a Look development framework composed of an Open Source DSL/Lirbary called LUX , and an interactive specification app called MAXWELL offering also its source code for research and learning.

feedback firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


The problem with having great ideas - <AUTHOR> http://nodemaker.posterous.com/the-problem-with-ideas <comment><USER2> Sooner or later, I think all of us who are entrepreneurially inclined encounter the paradox of outsized ambition. Big dreams seem necessary to keep yourself motivated, and to overcome the crushing loneliness and uncertainty that comes with striking out on your own. But those same dreams can be convenient ways to avoid, defer, or will away present responsibility.

Know that the world will never reward you for the thousands of great ideas you've come up with in your spare time. Those pipedreams will follow you to the grave, and no one will speak of them when you're no longer around to do so. But the world _will_ reward you for the one idea you managed to bring to life. Maybe you won't strike gold, and maybe you won't become a "rock star" fixture on the scene of your choice. But you'll have created something real. You will have turned your time into great personal meaning, and, hopefully, into value for others. And, if nothing else, you'll have learned that becoming good at the task is more important than what started the task. (To your point, being an entrepreneur isn't about generating brilliant ideas; it's about being brilliant at implementing ideas).

As an aspiring writer, I went through a solid portion of my twenties telling anyone who'd listen -- often women -- that I was a "writer." (I don't think I ever became cheesy enough to call myself an "artist," but that thought couldn't have been far from my mind at any moment). I enjoyed the status that this self-imposed job description bestowed upon me -- or, more accurately, upon my own self perception. But did I write a single work, significant or otherwise, in those ten years? No. Instead, I focused on my "day job," and continued to nurse the daydream.

Maybe something about turning 30 brought things into focus for me. Maybe Steve Jobs's passing, coupled with his quotes about the clarifying force of mortality, lit a fire under my ass. Maybe a few choice words from an ex girlfriend provided a necessary reality check. And maybe the delayed realization that Hank Moody's story on "Californication" is meant to be a cautionary tale, and not an ideal, shocked me into submission to reality. I'm not sure. But now I'm actually writing shit. And it feels good. The world may never care about the product of my effort, but it sure as hell will never care about my idle fantasies and unrealized concepts.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with big ideas is that they are usually fantasies. And the problem with fantasies is two-fold: First, dreaming about them will largely satisfy you and reduce your urge to actually make it happen. Secondly, you will be more easily discouraged when confronted with the obstacles that will come your way.

According to the book "59 seconds", the trick to getting things done is to interleave realistic daydreaming of the benefits of success with an assessment of the biggest problems and setbacks you are likely to encounter. It motivates you and puts you in a frame of mind of attacking the problems rather than getting discouraged by them.

Also, big ideas tend to minimize implementation difficulties, which is also why they make good fantasy material. Running the USA better than Obama? Easy - I'd close Guantanamo, put the banks in their place, provide universal healthcare, stop all wars, reduce defense spending and make sure businesses that really create value have plenty of investment and freedom. But finding 10 new clients for my web design business in the next month? No way, man. That is WAY too hard.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author appears quite young, so I want to give my two cents to him (her?): when HN people downplay the importance of "ideas," be wary of what an idea counts for in the HN community. A PHP photo sharing site[1], useful markov chain eigendecomposition[2], and the underpinning of our entire industry[3] are all lumped under 'ideas' and yet the HN crowd seems skewed toward being the next PHP photo sharing site rather than the other two.

HN is focused primarily on business. A PHP photo sharing site has a much lower effort-to-bux ratio than some wacky electrical switch. This is completely fine, but you have to make the separation between "dollas" and "innovation." Often they live under the same roof, but one doesn't automatically imply the other. Ideas are where researchers play, and researchers are the antithesis of business.

Your advice ('think less, do more') still stands. I just want to let you know that ideas _do_ have merit, you just have to look in the right place. Good luck!

[1] <http://www.facebook.com> [2] <http://www.google.com> [3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor>

<comment><USER5> He doesn't downplay the importance of ideas. He points at the next step which is to turn the idea into something real and concrete. Some people fail to even start the next step. The concluding advice is to go for the next step and make your idea/dream come trough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What atrocious writing.

The message (which was poorly conveyed) is correct however. Have results as soon as you possibly can (just try not to sacrifice too much elegance).

A (lousy) example would be Linux & GNU Hurd.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) Being the writer I would like to know more about why you find it attrocious!

<comment><USER7> Just some random advice, consider some, all or none:

1\. Eliminate the following words and phrases: So, Now, But, In my opinion, anything you might put in a text message to shorten it, 95% of all words that end in "ly". Tighten things up. Nouns and verbs build great sentences, adverbs and adjectives stink up the joint.

2\. Show, don't tell. Don't tell me it's not going to be a post about pickups. Show me it's not.

3\. Effective use of parenthetical phrases is hard. Read some David Foster Wallace for great examples. When you say "Ouch" then stick the rest of the sentence in a parenthetical, it actually loses some of the punch because instead of being orthogonal to the "Ouch", it's should be the punchline of your joke.

4\. Use imagery to get your point across. Instead of saying that you'd get wasted, say "If some chic said that to me, I'd be headed for a three day bender that would make Ernest Hemingway look like a teetotaler." Paint the reader a picture.

5\. I don't mind the "bro" style but it's going to put a lot of people off. It's very tricky to do well but don't let that stop you if you like it. Style is in the eye of the beholder. Just tighten things up a lot if you're going to use it.

6\. Write it one day, proof and publish it the next. I find this to be terribly difficult. However, you'd be surprised how much better an essay gets with even a single revision. At the very least, write in the morning and publish in the afternoon.

<comment><USER8> Gonna have to disgree with #1. I think it's a giant myth that adverbs and adjectives are somehow bad. By all means be _judicious_ in your use of them, but it's absolutely ridiculous to say they're categorically taboo or something. Same with So, Now, But - they _can_ stink up the joint if they're every other sentence, but they can also help segue from one thought to the next, or (in the case of In my opinion) allow for some disagreement to your point.

Totally agree with #2: "Actually I will go even further and tell you that-" can be eliminated. "I will share a personal example with you." Well, just go ahead, I'll be able to follow along.

#6 is great, and I'd go one further and have someone you trust (or pay somebody to) proofread as well, especially if it's not your native language.

<comment><USER7> The problem with "they can stink up the joint" is that writing that relies on adverbs and adjectives does stink up the joint. Jazz musicians can break the rules because they both know the rules and understand the rules. Beginners can't break the rules because they don't know when broken rules are ok.

You have to learn how to write without adverbs and adjectives before you can know when to "be judicious in your use of them". Our natural inclination is to use them constantly (see, constantly). Learn how to write without them then the occasional use of them will strengthen and empower your writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ze Frank said it better in Braincrack - <http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/replay/?p=363>

<comment><USER6> Thanks, he made some strong points. I transcribed the most relevant part:

      If you don't want to run out of ideas, the best thing to do is not to execute them
      You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do them right
      Then they stay around in your head like brain crack
      So no matter how bad it gets, at least you have those "good ides" that you'll get to "later"
      Some people get addicted to that brain crack
      and the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed
      and they imagine it on a beatiful platter with glitter and rose petals
      and everybody is clapping, *for them*
      but the bummer is must ideas kinda suck when you do them
      and no matter how much you plan, you still have to do something for the first time
      and you're almost guaranteed the first time you do something it'll blow
      but somebody who does something bad three times still has 3x the experience of that other person who's still dreaming of all the applause.
      when I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out in the world asap
      cause I certainly do not want to get addicted to brain crack

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't agree with the xkcd, and I don't agree with this post either.

Look, everyone _likes_ epiphanies. If you're reading HN, you probably like them _more_ than most people. I don't think this is a bad thing. Yes, it's important to be producing. Yes, you need feedback on your ideas from reality. But this is only true if we have ideas to begin with. The widely accepted startup methodology---start small and iterate---is just a process for generating epiphanies.

If we're "stumbling from one epiphany to another," we're not acting on them, or we only see part of the picture, or we just haven't gotten the right one yet. Despairing that rather than our methods, it's _us_ that's broken is both unfounded (really? You've had every epiphany ever?) _and_ unhelpful.

The girl in the comic is known to deploy cruelty for her own amusement; I think the author had excellent insight into the newbie pickup artist's mind, and gave his character a response calculated to strike at the core of the would-be Casanova's psyche.

Anyway, thanks for the post, OP.

<comment><USER6> Two different issues

As Ze Frank said:

      "The longer they [those with the "good" ideas] wait, the
      more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea
      should be executed, and they imagine it on a beatiful
      platter with glitter and rose petals."

It's a simple discussion about implementation. Not sure what you're arguing against.

<comment><USER10> I guess I focused too much on the comic. You're right, the post does a good job of stressing the importance of implementation.

But it also dismisses the value of ideas too glibly. Bill Gates may have been "some dude who liked writing interpreters and funny games," but that is miles ahead of some dude who liked making marijuana sculptures. The ideas were what made the difference.

It doesn't seem odd to anyone that we're reading a post describing the author's epiphany that epiphanies are useless?

<comment><USER6> > But it also dismisses the value of ideas too glibly. Bill Gates may have

Agreed.

> It doesn't seem odd to anyone that we're reading a post describing the > author's epiphany that epiphanies are useless?

Not overly so. Meta can cause strange cases of logic at times (e.g. there are always exceptions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like this post for the guy's writing. The point he is making isn't exactly novel, but the way he says it is so down to earth and conversational that I felt like he and I were talking about it over a beer. Because so many bloggers are condescending or preachy, I'll read a post and nod my head and move on with my life without really lingering on whatever topic. I understand but from a kind of 3rd person perspective as if x topic applied to y people but not necessarily to me.

Now that I go back and read it again, I can't decide if the post actually did that to me, or I read it wanting to believe it would.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just because you state something as if it is fact does not make it so. Do you personally know Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, James Watt, or Albert Einstein? Probably not. So how do you know what motivated them?

Even if you did, business rules are like looking through a prism. They seem great from one angle, and then when you view another angle you realize the previous one was just an illusion. Likewise, business rules sound great when forcefully delivered, but if you ponder them for a little while longer, you realize there are not only a few exceptions, but many, many exceptions.

I think the bigger problem that you are getting at is that most people come up with an idea, and then when they don't see immediate success, move onto something else that seems more promising. More often than not, the successful people commit to a single idea they are passionate about, and see it through because they believe in it and have a long-term vision for what they want to create. If your goal is to be a millionaire before you are 30, well that is a tough goal and if you don't see instant success you panic and shift to another idea and another idea. Instead if you encounter a real problem and you say "I'm going to solve this no matter how long it takes," you are probably a lot closer to success than most.

I think Andrew Carnegie said it best when he said "No man can become rich without himself enriching others."

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem is that constant replaying incredibly awesome ideas in you head until you get bored with them is much more pleasurable than actually making the effort to attempt to build it, watch it how horribly it came out and then watch it crumble or go utterly unnoticed. Even if you succeed it sometimes turns out less pleasurable than it was anticipated.

You can either get pleasure by running the idea on your internal neural network or run it in cruel physical reality and get pain.

</comment><comment><USER14> Some articles tell you to dream big. Some articles like this one tell you to dream smaller and learn how to execute on your ideas.

The real problem is in understanding how to match the ambitiousness of your ideas to the level at which you are able to execute. Everyone is different and most people are better at one vs the other.

Difficulty in finding that sweet spot seems to be the real source of difficulty that motivates blogs like the one being discussed in this thread.

<comment><USER15> >The real problem is in understanding how to match the ambitiousness of your ideas to the level at which you are able to execute.

Start small, build bigger and more ambitious over time. If you wanted to become a runner, you wouldn't start with trying to run a marathon the first time your feet hit the pavement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _> You look like you're going to spend your life having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out whats holding you back and how you can be productive and creative and finally turn your life around. But nothing will ever change. That cycle of mediocrity is'nt due to some obstacle.Its who you are._

This is precisely what I've realized about people and famous cliches like "you can do anything you set your mind to". The problem is that it's not true for most people. People's aspirations rarely match what their capabilities are. They do match in the case of the few who succeed, and that's who we hear these cliches from.

I wrote about this exact issue here [http://andrewoneverything.com/life-is- exactly-what-you-make-...](http://andrewoneverything.com/life-is-exactly-what- you-make-of-it-for-most) ("Life is exactly what you make of it - For most people, this is a bad thing"). There's a poem at the end of the post that exactly matches the sentiment I quote at the beginning of this post.

<comment><USER17> Yes but we rarely even know ourselves. We don't know our limits until we try to reach it. We don't know how far we'll get until we take the journey. We don't know if our ideas will work until we try it. You can only theorize about an idea so much, at some point the time for theorizing is over and the time for doing it begins. The trick is figuring out when that is. I think it happens very early....

<comment><USER18> "Our lives teach us who we are" Salman Rushdie.

On a more cynical tone: "Anything can happen in life, especially nothing." Michel Houellebecq

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What kind of mind game is this comic playing on me (or am I just doing it to myself)?

Reading the following part itself was an epiphany moment:

 _"...having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out whats holding you back and how you can be productive and creative..."_

Because I saw myself in that. I thought "Holy crap that's exactly...that's...so true...that's me! That's the problem!"

Then I thought "Damn it, the problem is that exact problem...Right now is just another one of those epiphanies. I need to stop this."

Which led to the thought "But how would I have become aware and known that was the problem if I _hadn't_ had this epiphany?"

So the ultimate question I have for myself is: "Will this epiphany be any different? Maybe it actually can snap you out of the cycle."

So to ensure it isn't just another useless epiphany, I will tape this quote from the comic to my wall: _"That cycle of mediocrity isn't due to some obstacle. Its who you are."_

Thank you XKCD. You've woken me up.

<comment><USER20> All the cycles end on the epiphany that cycles themselves don't exist. They are just pieces of an internal storyline you've been writing since childhood. The story is not optimized for your happiness, because you didn't even architect it. Try reinventing a suitable story for yourself from scratch.

Go ahead and skip the accomplishment part. Skip right to giving yourself success and happiness now. Time is the real resource at play here, so don't deplete by screwing yourself out of happiness every day instrospecting through these cycles. The only person that will/can give you what you want is you, and you have direct access to make it happen without the gauntlet you are imposing on yourself.

Or at least this is the direction I'd like to go...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been thinking about what you said!...thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another lesson is to not rely on the opinion of the opposite gender (or the same, if you prefer...not that there's anything wrong with that) for your self-esteem.

Also, don't give too much weight to well-meaning writers who ask you to do more and dream less.

After all, we're no more than little grubby organisms clinging to a dirty, water-covered rock in a rather humdrum star system that sits on the edge of a pretty ordinary galaxy. Against that backdrop, even the Apollo program is not much better than your soon to be forgotten project.

<comment><USER22> Thinking like this helps me center.

Whenever I find myself down and my productivity low, I stop and think of how insignificant all this is, on a cosmic scale. We're here, and then we're not.

You'd guess that this thinking would make you feel nihilistic: what is the point of what I'm doing? Ironically, I only feel like that when thinking on a human scale, of life, of what I want to accomplish, of how unattainable it all seem in the moment. Then I step back, and I see that we are a spec in time and all this self-doubt and torture is unnecessary. At the end of this game, there are no winners. Enjoying the sport is your personal victory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are reasons why many many more people are 'dreamers and thinkers' and have tons of ideas. Because it's easy. Executing those ideas is much harder for most, as it entails actual effort, time, planning and most critically, endurance. I know I had my fair share of TONS of ideas, MANY of them started and very few actually finished.

</comment><comment><USER24> This seemed promising, but I stopped reading after the second "lol".

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome piece of writing. Really inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER26> Great article. It's inspired me to get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hackernews have just jumped the shark.

</comment><comment><USER28> Am I the only one that judges HN stories on an 'I regret wasting my time on this' scale?

As in:

Outcome A) working, take a break, visit HN, read linked post, regret wasting my time on terrible blog post, immediately think: I should be working right now, not reading about some supposed megalomaniac's personal problems.

Outcome B) working, take a break, visit HN, read linked post, judge my time well spent learning something of value.

In some form or another I value appraise all HN stories by this scale.

When the guy started talking about getting his feelings hurt by a stranger's nearly worthless opinion (why would you value a stranger's opinion so highly Mr. Megalomaniac?), and then getting wasted accordingly, I knew I was in for a real special read. When he followed that up by calling himself a megalomaniac, I bailed. And it is thus that piece of junk goes in the 'I regret reading any of this' category.

<comment><USER29> I agree. I was trying to pick out the wisdom in this post; I mean, the comic was entertaining I guess. All I gathered was:

1\. I had an okay idea and did absolutely nothing about it for 18 months... until I saw other people built what I was thinking.

GUYS, DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE I DID OF DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Seriously? That in itself is not a lesson worth 1,000 words.

<comment><USER30> another tl; dr:

Edison: Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.</comment></comment></comment>


YouTube faces backlash on Twitter over lifted, uncredited holiday video - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/26/18156483/youtube-lily-hevish-lifted-video-dominos-christmas-holidays-twitter <comment><USER2>
      Update December 26th, 12:55PM ET: YouTube recognized Hevesh's channel in a followup tweet.

Gee, that's so nice... now, will they give her the appropriate payout for those views that should have been credited to her channel in the first place?

<comment><USER3> Had that same thought, I'd give her triple what she should have made as well as an apology.

If an arrogant staffer can get away with this sort of thing it sends a very powerful message to every one else at Google that they can as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the article: >But YouTube does own a limited license to people's videos, so legally, the company can take Hevesh's content and upload it to its Twitter account.

That sounded very strange, so I looked up the YT terms[0] to see the wording.

Section 6 part C: For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. ...

Right there, it clearly states that they can do what ever they want to do with the video you uploaded. Yes, the part about reproducing, distributing, and perform the Content makes sense. That's the entire point of the Service. "Prepare derivative works of" is the part that gets me. Is that just lawyer speak for "you provided a single video, but we will then transcode to different frame sizes/bitrates", or does it specifically mean what it sounds like in they can take your footage as source to create new content? If it's the former, then okay, just say so. If it's the latter, then, wow.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/t/terms](https://www.youtube.com/t/terms)

<comment><USER4> Important to remember that monetization of her content is under the Partner Program Agreement. They've left some wiggle room in that part, but not much.

"Advertising Revenues. YouTube will pay you 55% of net revenues recognized by YouTube from ads displayed or streamed by YouTube or an authorized third party on your Content watch pages or in or on the YouTube video player in conjunction with the streaming of your Content. YouTube is not obligated to display any advertisements alongside your videos and may determine the type and format of ads available on the YouTube Service. For clarity, YouTube reserves the right to retain all other revenues derived from the YouTube service, including any revenues relating to ads on search result pages."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Statistics Editor of FT joins London startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.timetric.com/2010/09/22/welcome-to-simon-briscoe/

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the original story:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/sep/22/timetric- fin...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/sep/22/timetric-financial- times-simon-briscoe)

</comment><comment><USER2> Well, now that respectable people are joining startups too, perhaps my dad will stop telling me to stop this startup silliness and get a real job... _grin_

Yeah right, keep dreaming.

<comment><USER3> No chance - my parents still are. It's cause they love us, really...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to Andrew, Toby, and Dan for making such a great hire. It bodes well for the next months!

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad to see that startups (especially in London where it's far less common than California) are becoming more and more of an option for people with already steady jobs looking for something new.

</comment><comment><USER6> This isn't the fellow who does BBC Radio 4's brilliant "More or Less" program is it?

<comment><USER3> Nope, that's Tim Harford ("the Undercover Economist"): [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/1628489.s...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/1628489.stm).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> yay timetric! still fuzzy as to what you guys actually do :) (i suck at maths)

<comment><USER3> Index the world's economy. Specifically all the bits people will pay for insight into. :)

<comment><USER8> Selling tools during the goldrush always was a winning strategy, it's a long long way from "atomistic studies of glass behaviour" :)

Much good luck to you guys, large datasets have always held a magical lure for me, you never know what you're going to turn up.

<comment><USER3> Yep. <http://www.lexical.org.uk/science/thesis/>.

But then it's less far than you'd think. The starting-point for most of the ideas in the Timetric platform for us cofounders was building tools for scientists (who aren't programming specialists) to manage really obscene amounts of data. The thing is, the best scientists usually weren't the best programmers – they'd spent their time studying atoms, not bits – so there was a real problem; there were a bunch of inaccessible problems because no-one had the expertise they needed in both areas.

It's just a profligate waste of talent, really.

File off "science" for that problem and you can see where we're going with Timetric.

<comment><USER3> msy: no, our primary market's people who want macro/socioeconomic/industry data – and, yes, that includes journalists (our friends at the Guardian Data Blog have done some really nice work using Timetric).

It's more explaining the thought-process. An economist, or analyst, or journalist _shouldn't have to be a programmer_ to do their job. That's _our_ job.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. Are you just providing graphed data or how far are you taking this for your users? Moving averages and derivatives? Regression analysis?

<comment><USER3> Moving averages – yes, though it's tricky to get to them right now. The remainder: watch this space.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft has a new Android app called Switch to Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.citeworld.com/mobile/21768/switch-to-windows-phone <comment> jack-r-abbit I think the name is a bit misleading. It is only useful for people that have already switched and need to "port" everything over. This is not in itself going to get more people to switch. If the app installed on the Android phone just presented a side-by-side list of replacement apps, _that_ might actually get more people to switch. Although, if MS is scared they don't have enough solid replacements, that type of app might actually scare people away more.

</comment><comment><USER2> Now if they only had an app that said "Fix Windows Phone Bluetooth so your apps can work with your car #firstworldproblems".

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm. I'm a bit surprised Microsoft hasn't created a Windows Phone launcher to go along with that.

<comment><USER4> A Metro-style launcher for Android actually sounds quite nice. The only problem is that few to no widgets actually adhere to that style, so it would look a little weird. Still, I can hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This also points to why "apps" are a broken model.

We desperately need mobile device standards, and HTML5 is just one step on that needed path.

Could you imagine, if browser had to do this? (Say, you're on Firefox, thinking of using Chrome, & have to use a complicated feature that analyzed all of your most recently visited sites, & told you if those sites worked on Chrome, & then if not, showed you comparable sites)

<comment> jack-r-abbit I don't really see this any more broken than trying to switch your PC from Windows to Linux. As it is right now, I've been using Windows for so long and have a decent list of apps I use everyday... I don't really have the time/energy to start all over in a new OS and try to find the replacement apps. But if I had an app that would analyze the currently installed apps on my Windows machine and then gave me a super easy way to install all those same (or replacement) apps on a Linux machine, I might be less hesitant to make that switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that's just pathetic. Can they not come up with anything more clever than blatant poaching of customers?

Same approach with many Bing commercials. Microsoft just hates Google for reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's not like Google ever tried never tried to poach Hotmail customers with Gmail, tried to poach IE customers with Chrome, tried to poach Office customers with Google Docs, tried to poach Windows customers with Chromebooks, and so on. It's really unfair of Microsoft. It should just let Google poach _all_ its customers.

<comment><USER6> Did Google ever come right out into the open and bash another company? No. There are much more subtle ways to get your point across. Targeting another brand, stealing happy users right in the middle of using their using the software, right out in the open for everyone to see? It doesn't matter who it is.

It's so aggressive it makes Microsoft look heartless and as if they're trying too hard.

Maybe the downvotes don't understand what I said or what's actually going on here.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Maybe you didn't really understand what the app does. It is only useful for people who have _already_ switched from Android to Windows. This is a useful tool for them to be able to make that switch easier by automagically locating apps for their new phone that should be able to replace the apps they used on their old phone. I don't see any bashing going on here. And it doesn't seem that aggressive to me. Again... these are people who have already made that switch. The only thing it _might_ do to make people want to switch is by making it less painful to switch... thereby lowering the barrier to entry. But that seems like a stretch to me.

<comment><USER6> " _Microsoft figures customers will be more likely to switch from Android smartphones to Windows 8 phones if it makes it easier to find the same or similar apps for their new phone as were on their old phones._ "

Are you sure? Either way, you shouldn't downvote somebody because you disagree. I stated a valuable opinion, and personal love for some company doesn't change that. I'm hesitant to comment at all now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clearly other people didn't think your opinion was valuable, in this particular case. HN is very fond of signal and generally has a low opinion of noise. Unless it's witty, of course.

<comment><USER6> <\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>---- Go ahead.

Here's another arrow for you to click. If it gives you that much pleasure, I'll give you as many arrows as you'd like.

Whatever you do, don't reply to my actual comment with actual logic. Has your argument been completely invalidated by me? I had better pay for that. Teach me a lesson. Witty enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't sweat the small stuff. Life moves on apace....

<comment><USER7> What a prig...

<comment><AUTHOR> lol</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Edge extensions support delayed until 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/22/9596298/microsoft-edge-extensions-support-2016-release-update <comment><USER2> As much as I like the direction the new MS is heading, I can't think of literally any person wanting to use a browser which does not support adblockers.

</comment><comment><USER3> The one thing that could actually make the browser decent is the one thing they delay. Naturally. So frustrating.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you try my web app beta and give me some feedback? - <AUTHOR> I am nearing launch for my web app and it is currently in Private Beta. I would like to request HN to give it a try and provide some feedback.<p>Here is the link: http://aiphotosearch.com <comment><USER2> Why oh why would you put it behind an email wall? Why would you need my email to show me "what I assume" is image search.

My feedback. Ok, I can search for stock photos. But can't I already do that? There are lots of stock photo searches. But this one uses AI. So what?

Ok, let's see how your solution is better than anybody else. Oh, I can't you want my email, and I'm not really that bothered.

<comment><AUTHOR> tldr; I solved a problem that I had. Would love to get HN community's feedback.

Appreciate your feedback. I have not launched the app yet, it is in private beta. This is a hackers community. I am looking for fellow hackers willing to go through the e-mail wall to try what I have built and provide feedback.

 _There are lots of stock photo searches. But this one uses AI. So what?_ I have been buying stock photos a lot these past year. Every time, I have spent a lot of time (and the time value of money) finding the photo that I like. If you value your time at $100 per hour, the real cost of the stock photo that took you 30 minutes to find is the stock photo cost + $50.

<comment><USER2> As far as the cost being $50 in time. You haven't answered the question as to why AI is the answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I am planning to add this description to the site as well.

There are two problems in stock photo search. First, there are multiple marketplaces with different inventory and price structures. So if you are looking for stock photos that are not very common, you need to go to multiple marketplaces, search and comb through the results. We solve this by using APIs from those marketplaces to bring results for your search so you do not need to go and repeat your search at multiple marketplaces.

This leads us to the second problem. You now have a lot of photos to comb through. This is where the AI comes in. You "like" few of the photos in the search result that are close to what you are looking for and the AI learns your preferences to bring the results that are similar to the ones you have liked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You are wasting your precious chance on the front page of HN, especially when you're asking for help.

I'm guessing the bounce rate is like 99% right now.

If I were you, I would just let people access it if they came from HN referer

</comment><comment><USER4> (clickable link: [http://aiphotosearch.com](http://aiphotosearch.com))

If you give us a demo page to try without signing up (at a private URL and with a clear time limit if you want), you are going to get a lot more feedback. Or at least show what we are going to get inside. And don't ask for a twitter account during signup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! Just removed the twitter handle field in the form. The email is just to send a private invitation - within a minute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did a few quick searches and it seemed to narrow down what I would want pretty well. Good job.

2 things I noticed though:

\- If I do a new search for something I've already searched for, it doesn't work, nothing happens (console says 500 error). \- You have an about section that is empty, not sure if you meant to remove it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad that you liked it! Also, found and fixed the bug causing problems with repeat searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> you can just type a fake email and get to the actual site.

1\. change the title, it's still "My ASP.NET Application"\

2\. It works OK (searching for 'pizza' shows some photos) and the design is pretty nice. I think you could improve it by reducing the number of different fonts you're using.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Fixed the title 2\. Initial result is regular image search, you get results based on your keywords. From then onwards, you can like the photos you somewhat like and click Refine Results. The AI algorithm analyzes the photos you have liked vs. the others and brings results based on that. You are basically training your model on the fly. 3\. Good observation on too many fonts, will work on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went to the site with the intention of helping you and giving feedback but it's not accessible without signing up

</comment><comment><USER8> A similar app can be built using google image search api ? how does it differentiate in feature set ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets say you are looking for a stock photo of a dog to use in your landing page like this one: [http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-110687501/stock-photo- dog-ab...](http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-110687501/stock-photo-dog-above- banner-cute-jack-russell-terrier-with-empty-white-banner-mockup-template-for- gift-certificate.html?src=h0kA1QuwvOuIOUP6QpVF0g-1-71)

Google Image Search API does not let you search multiple Stock Photo providers for photos. We are using APIs from multiple vendors to fetch the stock photos.

Secondly, our AI is geared towards stock photos. You can start searching for "dog" in aiphotosearch.com, then like a couple of photos that are closest to the one you are looking for and then refine results. We train a model that "understands" what you liked vs discarded and uses that to bring more results.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to earn money on the side? - <AUTHOR> Hi Hackernews!
I'm a longtime lurker, but i finally managed to register.
Just to give some background: I work fulltime for about 5 years now doing as an analyst. So my main job is pretty much wrangling data around, write new (small) tools to help with that, etc.
In my spare time i am learning a lot about web development, both front- and backend. I want to be able to sustain myself, for which i would need ~1500 USD/month.
My problem is, that i have never learned how to earn money, except for trading time for money.
Does someone here know some ressources?
Thanks in advance! J
Edit: fixed format <comment><USER2> Make something people need everyday. Start small...

Reuse your analyst skills and provide some useful data calculations or aggregations with mobile apps. Reuse you new font-end skills with React Native, Apache Cordova etc.

Mobile app stores handle a lot of hassle like distribution and billing. I would avoid complex backend at all cost if you don't want to be on 24/7 devops duty. Maybe periodically updated CVS at basic webhosting would be enough.

Some basic resources [https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most- indispen...](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most- indispensable-books-for-indie-hackers-e2ec3a13e9) and IndieHackers community in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would prefer something simple too. Solving hard problems is fine, but I tend to prefer simple infrastructure vs "resume driven" tech.

Mobile apps is something that I thought about too, the ease of distribution seems like a big win, but isn't it hard to sell on these platform nowadays because they get flooded with x numbers of apps every day?

<comment><USER2> But it is the same case with web, the SaaS market is flooded. Also payments are tricky, however there is a thing called Merchant of Record which may reduce organizational burden for busy indiewebhacker. Anyway, an user need is what is essential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you start a website that offers some service people need, you can begin charging for that service. Be aware that if you are in the US for example, you would need to file a more complicated "self-employment income" document on your tax return.

Also be aware that you can be sued for pretty much any reason and will need to defend yourself in court. If you remain a sole-proprietor and don't have much to lose, there are legal hotlines that will help defend you for a very low price. If you form an LLC, this service isn't available and life becomes more costly and complicated.

Also be aware that if you are running a successful site, security and performance will be important and costly vectors for you to consider.

Lastly, health insurance is more difficult and expensive to obtain when you are self employed in the USA, compared to a W2 job.

If all of that doesn't scare you, then begin to focus very hard on problems that people need solving and are willing to pay money for. One example would be online tutoring for whatever skills you have :)

Else, there is always stock trading, which comes with risk, but so does everything else in life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, and the whole "liability issue" is something that I worry about. Being a sole-proprietor here (EU) means that you are liable with every personal asset, but it's cheaper to set up and has not as much bureaucracy overhead.

I was also thinking about using something like Stripe Atlas to set up a US company, but I'm not sure how expensive it is to run it (hire an tax attorney etc) over the year if it doesn't generate any money.

I mean, I probably just have to try it out without worrying too much

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for a less expensive option, check out [https://blook.io/stripe-atlas-alternative](https://blook.io/stripe-atlas- alternative)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Write an book and self-publish it on Amazon KDP, give it away for free for three days so it has a chance to climb the amazon algorithm ladder.

It can be anything: fiction (romance/thriller/novellas) or nonfiction: how to books on the skills you already have.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a nice idea! I always wanted to write a fiction book, and I think it could be a nice hobby. Thanks for the input :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wrangling data around is highly sought after - don't undersell it! One idea would be to write about your experiences learning and implementing data transformation in your industry niche, and advertise a consultancy service to help other companies with similar requirements.

You specified you want to earn the money on the side and you allude to not wanting to trade time for money, so it's a perfect arbitrage opportunity to get client work and outsource it, positioning yourself as the manager/architect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Consultancy was something that I thought about too. But I'm not sure if I feel "ready" for it. Maybe there is a slight imposter syndrome here. I could see myself do consultant work for a week a month or so, never thought about arbitrage something like this. How difficult is the bureaucracy here? Having employees / paying them + their insurance seems like a lot of overhead to me.

Do you have more information how you would tackle that problem?

<comment><USER6> You are ready - if you stick to your niche, you'll be competing with consultancies who might not even have a niche and don't have a deep understanding of all the nuances with the data that you do.

Re: bureaucracy - it depends a lot on where you're based, how regulated the industry is, and how sensitive the data is. I wasn't really suggesting hiring employees, you can find remote contract workers on freelancing boards as well (just be careful to filter out all the noise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion your number is $900,000 which is:

1500 / month * 12 months / year * 2 for taxes (this feels genetically safe as a high bar but maybe not) * 25 in order to safely pull 4% yearly forever

Trying to come up with a plan to get a business running that can safely yield 1500 / month (more for taxes) can be dicey and prone to all sorts of risk, and the time horizon is unknown. Just saying, don't discount leveling up with learning and trying to move upwards, keeping your current lifestyle, and saving your way up.

<comment><USER8> I assume the meeting of the "number" stated here is an estimate of how much wealth would need to be invested in a stock portfolio to yield 1500/month net of taxes and inflation, without needing to trade time/labour for income.

Pretty reasonable, but without knowing more about OP's situation, advising someone asking how they can earn more income on the side to earn it by having $1m wealth invested in the share market may not be the most immediately actionable advice! A bit catch 22 if the current problem is "not enough surplus income".

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm from the EU and don't earn a lot of money, so no wealth here which I could invest.

But I would love to be able to earn enough to live (simple, I don't need a luxury life) while saving the rest to become financial independent at some point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi J,

Sorry for deviating from the topic.

Mind telling how you "wrangling data around", the tools you use? I just got a my 5 years bank transactions in a csv. I just looking at the data in excel, wondering how to "analyse the data". Thats when I noticed your post on HN.

Sorry :)

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem!

I mostly use Splunk, since I have to correlate a lot of different data sources.

You can also set up an ELK stack (Elasticsearch / Logstash / Kibana)

My excel skills are not that advanced, but depending on the result you want to achieve it might be sufficient.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Any material you can recommend that I look at for learning ELK stack & Splunk? Which version of splunk is ideal for me learn the tool - I see too many options?</comment></comment></comment>


Otto joins Uber - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ot.to/our-next-chapter-otto-joins-uber-307ee347a5bf# <comment><USER2> What's the story behind Otto? There are exactly two blog posts on the Otto blog- Otto launches and Otto sells to Uber.

The line 'When we started Otto we committed to rethinking transportation' \- what, three months ago?

I hadn't heard of these guys before, but a business designed to be quick flipped? Was this business ever not part of Uber? What kind of three month old startup has a team that size?

There doesn't seem to actually be even an MVP product there. How do businesses like this end up getting built and sold so quickly?

<comment><USER3> This is from the big Bloomberg article/interview that came out today:

'Kalanick began courting Levandowski this spring, broaching the possibility of an acquisition during a series of 10-mile night walks from the Soma neighborhood where Uber is also headquartered to the Golden Gate Bridge. The two men would leave their offices separately—to avoid being seen by employees, the press, or competitors. They'd grab takeout food, then rendezvous near the city's Ferry Building. Levandowski says he saw a union as a way to bring the company's trucks to market faster.'

Which implies to me that the plan was for Uber to acquire Otto all along.

"Okay, Travis, but I don't want to just get hired on as another employee, I want to be cool like Kyle Vogt. Give me a few months to buy some trucks, rig them up with sensors, put splashy logos on them and get some press, and then you can acquire me using some of those Saudi gigabucks you picked up in your series F."

<comment> wh-uws Can you really blame a person if they could pull this off?

<comment><USER4> I see nothing wrong with it. Otto takes on the risk of developing a new business, and gets acquired if the risk pays off. Uber gets to benefit from Otto's efforts without taking the risk, but they have to pay for it in order to make it theirs. It's mutually beneficial, and risks get taken that probably wouldn't be taken otherwise, which is good for innovation.

This kind of thing is pretty common at Adobe and Cisco as well. There is a bit of a revolving door of executives and senior engineers leaving to start companies, intending from the beginning of being acquired by their former employer if their business pans out.

Many companies could not take the risk of running an innovative new business internally -- their board wouldn't let them, or their investors wouldn't. This kind of thing probably results in more research and innovation taking place that would have otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's some big mis-information by Otto.

They quote: " It's no surprise that trucking companies see over 90% of their drivers quit every year in search of better opportunities. " That was in 2014, and it was due to (from the link they provide) "larger fleets raising pay, offering bonuses and attracting more and more drivers from smaller fleets to fill seats." They were still truckers, just different companies.

The Otto piece made it sound like they were leaving trucking all together.

The whole tone of the article of "making lives better for truckers" just falls flat. Not sure why they're trying to suger-coat it.

<comment><USER6> It seems a dichotomous goal - make truckers' lives better while building tech to put truckers out of work.

<comment><USER7> If Otto takes the 11-hour highway stints out of trucker's days, and instead they work shift-work in major hubs, it is entirely possible that they will do both. The winners will get predictable, stable hours, the losers out of a job.

<comment><USER8> > predictable, stable hours

Probably with gradually reduced overall pay, because there will be a fraction of the jobs with the same number of potential truckers. I'm sure investors will see a solid return though.

<comment><USER9> If I were a trucker I would look for a career change...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Commercial long-haul freight belongs on railroads for both environmental and economic reasons because it is so much more efficient. It doesn't make sense that in our glorious free market freight on highways is taxpayer subsidized while freight on rail is mostly private.

<comment><USER11> This is a common misinterpretation of who pays for roads. Effectively roads are paid for by gas tax. Gas used to be a great proxy for how many miles you drive and where you drive those miles.

Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. Consumers are the ones getting freebies (especially electric, hybrid etc.)

<comment><USER12> > Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor > to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. Consumers are the ones getting > freebies (especially electric, hybrid etc.)

I couldn't disagree more! Wear on roads is to the fourth power of pressure. And while trucks might have 10x the contact patch your car does, they might weigh 30x as much. So the pressure might be 3x and thus the wear 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 81 times as much.

If you look at road costs as largely maintenance then cars are subsidizing trucks because one truck could do orders of magnitude more damage, but have to buy orders of magnitude more fuel. Why is that? Because past a certain point fuel consumption is dominated by drag, and thus, frontal area. 8-10 MPG for an 18-wheeler is reasonable. That's not 81 times worse fuel consumption, perhaps only 2x or 3x compared to modern cars.

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

<comment><USER13> > Wear on roads is to the fourth power of pressure.

This isn't quite right. The pressure on the outside of the tire is the same as the pressure on the inside, and truck tires aren't inflated to 3x the psi of car tires - they might be 55 psi instead of 35. If pressure were really the issue, bicycles would be much more damaging to the road. Racing bikes are typically inflated to 100-150 psi.

As your link points out, the correct relationship is linear in the fourth power of the weight per axle. Your conclusion is correct of course.

<comment><USER14> What does the tyre inflation pressure have to do with the pressure applied to the road due to the gross vehicle mass?

Nothing.

<comment><USER15> > What does the tyre inflation pressure have to do with the pressure applied > to the road due to the gross vehicle mass? > > Nothing.

Well, the "pressure applied to the road" is approximately the same as the tire "inflation pressure"... It's not exactly the same because you need to take into account that the pressure in the tires increases (a bit) when you load the truck, and you have to be clear that you're talking about "overpressure", i.e. the relative pressure difference between the inside of the tire and the atmosphere.

What I think you meant to say is "What does the tyre inflation pressure have to do with the _force_ applied to the road due to the gross vehicle mass?" Then your conclusion ("Nothing") is correct.

<comment><USER14> Yes, sorry, you're right, the second occurrence of the word 'pressure' should have been 'force'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it really possible to have an "observer" of a self driving vehicle step in to save it in the event of an emergency? If you trust the vehicle for thousands of hours, and it never has a problem, you would of course start sleeping, reading, watching movies, etc. while it drives. The act of driving keeps you engaged, watching a car drive itself would be beyond boring.

<comment><USER17> The goal seems to be fully autonomous driving for the easy parts (highway driving, which automatic systems are already quite good at) and a human driver just along for the ride to handle the hard part (city streets) at the ends.

<comment><USER18> A driver could meet the truck at the freeway off-ramp to take over or supervise for the last few miles. Truck depots are already close to freeways, so depot-to-depot transfers could be completely unmanned.

A trucker's job would be to ride out to the edge of town and back again. Life would be like that of a UPS driver (though driving a big truck is real skill so it might command better pay). No more weeks away from home.

<comment><USER19> Today's truck stops could actually become where drivers start their drive. Do a local delivery, pick up new freight and drop the rig back off at the truck stop to send it on its way to wherever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd love the hear their justification for why this is going to lead to truckers getting paid more...

<comment><USER21> It's going to put them all out of work, eventually. Similar to training your replacement.

<comment><USER22> Im not so sure of that. The hardest part of trucking is the first 1% of the trip and the last 1% of the trip. I envision that the robotic trucks will leave and enter into designated facilities at the outskirts of town, from there a trucker can take the truck to the client to unload and sign the paper work, bring it back and set it on its new course. I think it will allow truckers a more specialized role of client service and trickier city driving, and to work in one city every day, instead of travelling.

<comment><USER23> And how many truckers do you think this job would need compared to now?

It's hard to imagine that not a lot fewer unless you expect that number of trucks on roads would rise by some multiple of now.

<comment><USER24> You may well be right, but that doesn't change the fact that it would justify the original statement regarding truckers being paid more. The part that was left out of the original statement was demand for truck drivers, which is generally accepted will drop with increased automation.

It's true in the same way that we can say that "factory workers" in the US get paid much more than they used to. This is because they are more likely to be _technicians_ now, who service the robotic assembly line. The nature of the job has changed with automation, and truck driving will be similar.

<comment><USER18> With 98% of truckers suddenly on the job market, you think trucker pay would rise?

The last-mile drivers aren't debugging robot trucks. In the worst case the robot truck just turns back into a regular truck. No new skills required for a trucker.

<comment><USER24> If we assume navigating a city is the harder part of trucking (and I believe that, I've seen some crazy trucking maneuvers on city streets), and that truckers of the future are going to be largely navigating the city over and over, then we are quickly going to see which truckers can do that well without problems. The number of truckers available on the market will increase, but the job will be fundamentally different in the composition of skills required. It's _possible_ that those that can quickly and reliably navigate city roads without problem will rise to the top and be able to command higher wages. It's not guaranteed and it wouldn't be immediate, but I'm not sure it's unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So..How will drivers get paid more when they don't have a job?!

I'm all for this kind of technology but they need to at least be honest about what they're working towards.

<comment><USER26> This is the same spin that Über employs themselves. It's clear the ultimate goal is to remove human drivers completely. Their rhetoric otherwise is so transparent it's insulting.

<comment><USER27> Right isn't their pitch to drivers "be your own boss"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> News release from the future:

After 2 years the original Otto product failed to get a footing in the market. Simultaneously, all attempts to integrate Otto technology into the core uber product failed due to internal politics and the fundamental impedance mismatch between self-driving AI for trucks and urban transportation. Additionally all original core Otto staff have left, and some are pursuing a new company that will revolutionize the future of truck driving.

<comment><USER29> I'm putting a reminder in my calendar 2 years from now to check in on this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is additional context in the Bloomberg article posted this morning. [1, 2]

Based on the timestamps, kinda looks like the Otto blogpost was prompted by the Bloomberg article -- even though the "agreements were reached" in July according to Bloomberg.

1 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311559) 2 - [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s- fir...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self- driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on)

<comment><USER31> The agreements were reached but the press release wasn't until today. Also it is likely employees of both companies weren't informed until today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe it's just me, but name collisions seem to be happening a lot lately. My association with "Otto" is Hashicorp's tool.[1] This announcement makes more sense than the one I expected to read.

[1]: [https://www.ottoproject.io/](https://www.ottoproject.io/)

<comment><USER33> Another collision: [http://www.ottogroup.com/en/](http://www.ottogroup.com/en/) (although probably not that well known in the english speaking world).

<comment><USER34> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_GmbH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_GmbH)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wait, so this link isn't to a parable about a former school bus driver who "loves to get blotto" becoming an Uber driver? Um, well, uh, good for Otto, but I must admit I'm a wee bit disappointed for purely selfish reasons.

</comment><comment><USER36> The first few flaming wrecks with self-driving trucks involving particularly ugly (complete crushing, burn-out, etc.) passenger car deaths are going to trigger a massive backlash. I don't think at that point that any arguments about how the overall accident rates are being cut, etc., will hold much water for most people.

</comment><comment><USER37> Logistics and transport, human or material, isn't a good job. It is a good paying job. One of the last good paying jobs you could obtain without any higher education.

Nobody really wants to do these jobs, except maybe a bike messenger, and that only last so long.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm surprised this started as autonomous trucking. It's a HUGE industry with a massive and unionized workforce that isn't going to go quietly. I wonder why the Uber approach of starting with human drivers wasn't chosen. There are lots of trucks out there with dedicated career drivers who make a life out of it. They often return home without a trailer or load and having an uber-for-cargo would be a great way to take advantage of those empty legs (this term is from the airplane industry but I think it applies here)

Going from zero to self-driving seems a little advantageous.

</comment><comment><USER39> OK but do they use MySql or PostgreSql ?

</comment><comment><USER40> That was quick. Otto is a few months old?

<comment><USER41> It's a great Acquihire. Uber immediately gets all this self-driving expertise.

<comment><USER31> Uber already has plenty with its ATC in Pittsburgh (the core engineers were hired from CMU's robotics lab). I'm guessing Otto has expertise specific to the trucking domain. At supposedly $680M, it seems like a high price.

<comment><USER42> It's former Google self-driving car engineers so they have a lot more than a few months of knowledge about the domain.

<comment><USER43> The Bloomberg article claims that they left Google to bring their product to market more quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I interviewed last year for a company called Walkboard Technologies[1] that billed themselves as "Uber for truck drivers." Their goal was the "new way to connect drivers and shippers" part of Otto's business model.

Looks like they got beat to the punch big time here.

1\. [http://www.walkboard.com/](http://www.walkboard.com/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Easiest money ever made. What the fuck am I doing with my life?

</comment><comment><USER46> is otto using LIDAR or camera tech to for vehicle automation?

<comment><USER27> I'm familiar with RADAR and LIDAR, what is the camera-based alternative to these?

<comment><USER19> There's not a fancy acronym for it, but it's what most current lane centering tech uses (e.g. Tesla Autopilot). It's actually pretty off the shelf kit from Mobileye.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> c-slice Is this a plan for uber to enter the trucking logistics market?

<comment><USER47> Yup

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Simpsons did it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Fuck. Such a shame that Uber didn't snatch up Waze before Google did. This is such a fucking great idea!

</comment><comment><USER49> Fuck. Such a shame that Uber didn't snatch up Waze before Goog. So much extra info gained for so many uses</comment>


Silicon Valley VCs Help Crypto Hedge Fund Reach Quarter Billion Target - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkwebguide.net/silicon-valley-help-crypto/ <comment><USER2> Referring to Buffett sounds like a plain fraud.</comment>


Seeking Technology Co-Founder (NYC) - <AUTHOR> I am seeking a technology co-founder for a web startup in the wedding or niche travel space. Ideally this person would be located in or near New York City.
I will be upfront. I am not a programmer but I do have what I consider to be strong ideas and have done extensive research on my ideas/web startups. I know what you are thinking. Business person who overestimates their value to company. No. I will divide equity equally with the right person and am not only looking for someone to develop the site but for a true business partner. Additionally, I would like to, if possible, apply to ycombinator for the summer.
If you are interested in discussing my ideas further, feel free to email me (address below). Also, I am interested in hearing about people's experiences working on teams where one person was a technologist and the other person was not or advice regarding my search for a technology co-founder.
Thanks.
email@example.com <comment><USER2> "I am not a programmer" - "I will divide equity equally"

Aren't these 2 statements a little inconsistent?

"I do have what I consider to be strong ideas"

Don't we all?

I have a feeling that you need to get used to the idea that a web startup is all about building the product (at least at this stage).

2 non-programmers = bad

1 non-programmer + 1 hacker = better

2 hackers = best

I really don't mean to pick and I certainly don't want to rain on your parade. Just a quick reality check from a seasoned hacker.

I hope your idea is fantastic and you find the perfect match. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew I would probably get attacked on this post in some way. I am not naive and I do realize my limitations. Additionally, in a business you are looking ideally for individuals who complement yourself in skills (i.e. one business person, one technology person).

What is wrong with 1 non-programmer + 1 hacker sharing equity equally? I realize product development is paramount. I do not expect to be twiddling my thumbs while my partner hacks away. As a user of the internet and sites like the one I would like to build, I have many ideas concrete ideas about features/functionality I would like on the site and would hope to function as a team in developing the product.

Beyond that, down the road much of the focus would be on user acquisition strategies (for a user generated content site such as the one I would like to do). I cannot imagine I would not be able to contribute equally to the overall process of building a sustainable company.

<comment><USER2> I did not mean to attack, sorry if you took it that way. Just trying to give you honest feedback.

"What is wrong with 1 non-programmer + 1 hacker sharing equity equally?"

Nothing if you can find someone to do it. Great deal for you.

No one is accusing you of "twiddling my thumbs". Your mere presence here suggests otherwise.

I'm only suggesting that in the earliest stages, 90% (or more) of the work that has to be done is hacking, pure and simple. This would be like me opening a hair salon and splitting equity with someone who knows how to cut hair. Sure, there's lots of other stuff to do, but the main thing that needs to get done is hair cutting.

Maybe with advanced tools, outsourcing, and some quick learning, you can prove me wrong. I sense from your posts you're the kind of person you can.

Again, I hope you find your match and find great success. Keep us posted. (And someday, come back and let me know how wrong I was.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) Didn't mean to sound defensive. I posted expecting responses similar to yours. Initially I was naive but a little networking in the tech community solved that pretty quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't let anyone tell you can't do it, where there is a will there is way. I do have to say that if you don't find someone if you are serious about this you should build a prototype yourself. I think even if doesn't become the actual site , the experience you will learn will be invaluable. Also if I was a person who you were recruiting it would impress me that you cared that much to learn. Plus you ability to communicate with a technical co-founder will be that much better. I also think don't underestimate the power of prototype to get you funding.

</comment><comment><USER4> Although not having a programmer on your team as a founder will hurt your chances if you're applying to YC, if your idea is sound and you are flexible you could always hire someone (even contract someone or outsource it) to build your idea, just make sure that person is pretty invested in making a good product, not just "doing a job". In addition to regular pay, you should still offer a good amount of equity (non-controlling) in the company that he's building for.

Put another way: A good way to find a programmer who could turn into a business partner is to start on your own and hire contractors. Eventually you'll find one who really gets along well with you and has a similar vision as you do. At this point (and after you've experienced "working" with him) you could bring him on as a partner and viola, you've got a programming co- founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I would not apply to ycombinator without a programming co-founder (I am going to apply to launchboxdigital though).

Definately have considered "hiring" someone, but I wanted to exhaust trying to find a co-founder first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.projectwedding.com/>

a YC related company

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. Know Y combinator funded them. Actually, brings up another point. Curious what people think about applying to ycombinator if they have funded a potential competitor of your company in the past??

<comment><USER6> PG answered this in a post that I cannot find, but they don't share info between companies and they generally don't fund companies that do EXACTLY what someone else before did (e.g. Weebly again).

Applying is okay though.

<comment><USER7> I don't think I said we wouldn't fund a co that did exactly the same thing as a previous one. The real answer is that we rarely (never, so far) get two companies doing exactly the same thing. They may be in the same general business, but they tend to each have their own approach to it, and any good market has room for multiple companies approaching it from different directions.

E.g. Snipshot and Splashup. Both are web-based imaged editors, but the similarity ends there. Snipshot is an easy editor for end users. Splashup is Photoshop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think 1 business geek + 1 hacker has better chance of success than 2 business hacker. Paypal was founded on a similar model. However, what often happens is one partner tends to underestimate the hacker - either the business geek finds the hacker useless or vice versa. I guess some level of understanding and respect is an important element in any partnership.

<comment><USER9> Underestimating "the other's value" is a sign of immaturity and lack of experience. The more I learn about life, the more I appreciate everyone around me more. I'm sure lots of people underestimate civil engineers, car designers, pilots, surgeons, micro-biologists, etc. because life is complex and we have no idea how challenging people's contributions are and how they affect us. Having said that, IMHO it's usually hackers who underestimate everyone else's contributions ... until they get to the point where nobody's signing up for their "thing" or they have people sign up, but nobody's willing to pay them for it. THEN the value of business models, marketing expertise, sales techniques, etc. come into perspective, when they realize all the tweaking in the world doesn't necessarily translate into the handing over of the cash from paying customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm just curious how you came about this site? This doesn't seem the most general entrepreneurial site out there.

sidenote: seems googling "news yc" no longer asks if I meant "news NYC"

</comment><comment><USER11> Anybody else read that as "wedding" or "niche space travel"? Talk about an unfocused startup...

<comment><USER9> You do realize that people have weddings in exotic locations, which = travel ... and then right AFTER the wedding they go on these things called "Honeymoons" which involve travel, right? So then, yeh, weddings and niche travel would tend to complement each other perfectly for a business like this.

<comment><USER9> Right. Downgrade my post. I made a perfectly valid, succint point, insulted nobody, pointed to a flaw in the logic, supported the original logic, and just because you disagree and can't defend your own logic you click off a point. Feel powerful, do you? You showed me!</comment></comment></comment>


FreeBSD 10 to use Clang, GCC will be deprecated - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEwMjI <comment><USER2> I have been working on getting a quite complex C++ code base (3M+ LOC) with heavy template use to compile on clang. Along the way, I have found many violations of the C++ standard that GCC silently accepts, several obscure GCC features that clang does not support, and up to now filed three clang bug reports.

The project compiles now, but the resulting executable is still not passing basic regression tests :)

I think our codebase has been depending for too long on just one compiler, and clang C++ support isn't perfect yet. (FreeBSD has mostly C code which is very stable). I will keep pushing to get it all working :)

<comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat. A large code base relying on GCC and Boost heavily.

The code builds with Clang, but the runtime crashes deep inside Boost.

It's been very frustrating because we're well past the point where refactoring-out Boost would be cost effective.

<comment><USER4> > _It's been very frustrating because we're well past the point where > refactoring-out Boost would be cost effective._

I'm curious: What was the motivation for switching in the first place? And why is staying with the proven tool not the better option?

My own case: It makes no sense to migrate our (relatively small by the sound of it) codebase. It is in production, generating money, and anything that interferes with that is simply not going to be considered. Our largest dependencies are wxWidgets, ffmpeg, libcurl: It has performed well, though not without some hiccups.

<comment><USER3> iOS.

Apple won't allow us to submit apps built with Xcode 4.1 forever. (4.1 was the last to include GCC.)

<comment><USER4> _headslap_ Right. I live in a windoze-centric place at the moment (at least for compile) and forgot the world is bigger.

Thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have been using clang on Apple, Linus, and FreeBSD. It's a lot nicer to work with and compiles faster than GCC, including 4.7. As people point out, the generated code is on average a little slower.

<comment><USER6> _We have been using clang on ...Linus..._

clang, now with a compile-to-DNA backend.

<comment><USER7> No, I think he's saying Linus is a robot. A robot whose software is compiled with clang.

That implications are disturbing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I haven't been following C much in recent years, though I knew that Apple had switched.

Someone want to give (or link to) a brief rundown of the advantages/disadvantages?

<comment><USER9> There is a little bit on the Clang site:

<http://clang.llvm.org/comparison.html#gcc>

Outside the license, the main benefit seems to be that in Clang the different stages are less intertwined than GCC. This is supposed to make developing Clang easier (since you don't have to understand so much), allowing optimizations to be tested and added easier.

On the user side, Clang is well known for providing much better error messages. Some error messages will even suggest possible fixes (you might get something like "Can't assign a pointer to a something, did you mean *pointer?").

The GCC guys have been improving their compiler for a long time, and over the last few years they have been working hard to make GCC easier to work on and optimize. I believe that GCC is usually faster or the binaries are smaller by a few percent, but it's not generally a drastic difference.

<comment><USER10> GCC speedup is actually quite substantial in math/numerical code (which, in turn, is not as fast as Intel's ICC). Moreover, GCC supports OpenMP, whereas Clang does not. This alone make building several scientific software packages not possible with Clang.

It's important to note though that it has only been recently (starting with GCC 4.4) that I've started to see some _improvement_ over previous GCC versions. GCC 3.x was known to be bloated, buggy and emit poor code for almost every architecture. Open64 was superior in _all_ regargs up to GCC 4.2/4.3 in my opinion.

Clearly, the whole project greatly benefited from Clang's competition.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Competition is GREAT, and seeing these two excellent open source compiler offerings engaging in friendly competition means we as end users all benefit, no matter which solution we prefer (or use both, as I assume I'm not the only one doing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm excited about this change. I was working on a C++ project last summer that had a lot of templates. Clang was a _lot_ faster, and a lot easier to use.

</comment><comment><USER13> Would be interesting to see benchmarks with GCC vs Clang in FreeBSD

</comment><comment><USER14> Aren't they pretty much doing anything these days to make it easier for Apple to "steal" their code, considering that most consumers of BSD code are Apple users?

<comment><USER15> As someone who tends to release on more-permissive licenses, I just want to clarify the causal model here.

It's not "doing something extra" to release with BSD; the "doing something extra" comes when you want to properly release with GNU.

After a long random walk over the licensing attitudes graph, I have found myself for the last several years stably located at one node. This node is, "licensing is about lawsuits." People often release with the GNU GPL because licensing, for them, is not about lawsuits but has some other import and use -- perhaps moral. But for me, a license is strictly about defining what sorts of lawsuits are possible.

Copyleft is a threat to sue. More precisely, it is the threat "I may sue you if you don't threaten to sue others." And that just sounds crazy. Why would you do that? Well, the stated goal of copyleft is to eliminate all fears of lawsuits by using legal threats.

Let me hasten to add that this is a very pretty idea. If you know the religions of India, this idea is called _tantra_ \-- that sometimes the most precise tool for removing a thorn is other thorns, or sometimes the best way to remove dirt from your clothes is with an abrasive substance -- like other (cleaner) dirt. The reason that Stallman is sometimes described as religious may come back to the attendant mysticism that tantric approaches usually bring with them.

My point is, this sort of thinking is an active choice and requires you to enforce the threat, at least in principle. The BSD license is much simpler: it says "I won't sue you, and you're not allowed to sue me." It is a Buddhist- nonviolence approach to eliminating lawsuits: "I have stopped causing suffering in this world, Angulimala -- now why don't you stop?"

It is nothing extra to release this way: you simply promise to not sue anyone, and you only give permission conditional on the fact that they will not sue you, you write it once and then it is done. It's clean and elegant. If you want to actually be a productive GPL licenser, you have to either hope that the threat in the docs is enough, or else find everybody who is "conveying" your software, and slap them with a lawsuit so that they learn how much lawsuits suck.

<comment><USER16> An upvote wasn't quite enough here:

This is a lovely way of explaining the difference, and it'll be what I link people to in future when explaining why I opt for BSD-style licensing. Thank you.

<comment><USER17> As lovely as the explanation may be, it focuses on a single issue. The whole point of the GPL is granting and protecting end-user rights - protecting the developer from lawsuits is a secondary concern.

<comment><USER16> What end-user rights does the GPL grant or protect that the BSD license doesn't?

The right to do whatever the hell they want with the code is granted by the BSD license. I wouldn't say the same for the GPL.

<comment><USER17> The end-user is not the developer who re-uses GPL'd code, but the guy who uses the final program.

By licensing code under the GPL, you grant the end-user the right to use and modify any program using your code as he sees fit (as long as he adheres to the rules of the GPL on re-distribution), and no intermediate developer can legally take that right away.

Of course this restricts the freedom of indermediate developers, but the GPL is intentionally -Ouser, not -Odeveloper. It just so happens that some users are also developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> WAT.

<comment><USER19> Wheres the "WHAT?!". The BSD guys have gone on record multiple times saying that they think that RMS and GNU are a joke. It seems natural that they would try and phase out GNU when possible in light of this belief.

An example: <http://openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43>

You can even download an MP3 or Ogg of it being sung (With backing.) by Nikkos Diochnos.

<comment><USER20> That's a pretty scathing critique.

<comment><USER19> For bonus points, in the actual recording they note that Hypocrites "Smells like thousand year old goat cheese.". which no doubt refers to Stallmans's legendary hygienic practices. [0]

Needless to say, the BSD guys aren't really fans.

[0]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ>

<comment><USER21> Yea, most BSD guys I know are also fans of Apple; iOS and Macs on desktop rather than GNU or Linux and Clang is supported by Apple for license reasons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>