Compress data more densely with Zopfli - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2013/02/compress-data-more-densely-with-zopfli.html <comment><USER2> A quick summary of the difference between this and existing implementations of deflate such as gzip or zlib:

Deflate combines two compression techniques: Huffman coding to replace each value with a string of bits whose length depends on the frequency of that value, and backreferences of the form "go back N bytes and repeat M bytes from there". (Glossing over a pile of fun interactions between those two, such as Huffman-coding both literals and backreferences, and Huffman-coding the Huffman tables. Not to mention the ability to have M > N, repeating the earlier parts of the thing you backreferenced. See RFC1951, <https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1951> , for the full details.)

Existing deflate implementations use various heuristics to guess when they should encode the next bit of data as a literal symbol or a backreference, such as a hash table of possible strings to backreference; the compression level (-1 through -9) tunes those heuristics to take more or less time, most notably by changing the lengths of strings stored and searched for for in the hash table.

Zopfil says it uses "more exhaustive compression techniques" based on "iterating entropy modeling and a shortest path search algorithm to find a low bit cost path through the graph of all possible deflate representations." The entropy modeling allows Zopfil to estimate the effectiveness of a given approach to deflate. The path-search algorithm effectively treats the space of all possible deflate representations as a single-player game, with "moves" that change the representation in some incremental way, and then uses standard search algorithms to find a near-optimal representation.

(Without reading the source in detail, I don't know whether the search space includes the choice of Huffman tables, the set of possible backreferences, or both. I can see how either one could map onto a search space, though.)

</comment><comment><USER3> In case you're wondering how to try it, the site lacks a simple getting started guide. Sure it only takes a few minutes to get to this, but for others looking to try this with <30 seconds of work, do this:

      git clone https://code.google.com/p/zopfli/
      cd zopfli
      make
      chmod +x zopfli
      ./zopfli <FILENAME>
      Optional: Copy it to /usr/local/bin (or your favorite path location)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not a scientific experiment or something like that, just tried it on uncompressed jQuery for fun;

Original file: 268381 bytes

Zopfli (with -i1000) 75730 bytes in 950ms

Gzip (with -9) 79388 bytes in 30ms

It's really slow but the difference seems significant enough. (They have more data here: [https://zopfli.googlecode.com/files/Data_compression_using_Z...](https://zopfli.googlecode.com/files/Data_compression_using_Zopfli.pdf))

<comment><USER5> As I suspected, XZ performs better at least for jquery. I was disappointed it was missing from benchmarks.

For comparison on my machine:

zopfli -i1000 takes [real, sys]=[1069ms, 21ms], 75730 bytes.

xz -9 takes [148ms, 15ms], 69476 bytes.

(Though as mentioned as a pro of zopfli, xz would lose on decompression speed for a larger file.)

<comment><USER6> Yeah but the point here is to produce a .gz file which is compatible with standard tools like gunzip, PNG decoders, your browser's handling of "Content- Encoding: gzip", etc.

If you control the compressor and decompressor then applying new tricks to producing a Deflate stream is far less interesting, just use a better compressor.

<comment><USER5> Can we get browsers to support LZMA? :) (Hey, a bug report! <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559>) But yeah, zopfli does seem like an excellent fit when you can't force a particular decompressor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Zopfli can be used with nginx without code changes with the static gzip module [1].

[1] <http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpGzipStaticModule>

<comment><USER8> Absolutely love this Nginx module - use it all the time in production. For me, dropping in Zopfli into the "pre compress asset phase" will be trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can already get 3% more compression out of zlib by giving it a bigger dictionary like 7zip can optionally do.

code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.js

      original  268381

      gzip       76070      (32KB dictionary, 128 word size)

      Zopfli     75730

340 bytes is not worth a 20x time increase for compression.

<comment><USER10> 340 bytes is not worth 20x time increase. 0.4% decrease in file size IS worth the time. If you can measure the amount of time it takes to download those last 340 bytes, then you can start to count how many downloads it takes before its worth it. (If download speed was constant, it would be about 224 downloads).

PNG seems like a good candidate for this style compression. A constant time initial cost for recurring savings in bytes transmitted seems like an excellent use of CPU time to me.

As an aside, I ran the Zopfli program with 10000 iterations on jquery-1.9.1.js:

      268381 jquery-1.9.1.js
       75622 jquery-1.9.1.js.gz

<comment><USER11> A fairer (in my opinion) comparison, with minimised jquery:

        92629 jquery-1.9.1.min.js
        32666 (35.26%) gzip -9
        31691 (34.22%) zopfli with standard compress
        31688 (34.20%) zopfli with max compress

<comment><USER9>
         31783 gzip with 32KB dictionary and 128 word size
         31764 above with filename stripped

I am too lazy to strip out the filename so there is a few bytes penalty, so it's more like 31764

So in this case it's

        31688
          vs
        31764

76 bytes

I guess the real question is what is the decode penalty time if any?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apparently only gzip and zlib compatibility is included in the code.

Does anyone know if there are programs out there that allow recompressing zip or png format files with this library?

<comment><USER6> The "PNG crunch" programs out there - eg OptiPNG - actually do a bit more work. They'll try palette-ising a truecolor image, applying all the PNG filters (<http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG-Filters.html>), etc.

They also tend to use forked versions of zlib, often to expose some more internal knobs to trial-and-error on, so a zlib-compatible wrapper around zopfli wouldn't necessarily just drop in.

But I'm sure support for zopfli will appear sooner rather than later :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be good to see some comparison with bzip2, which typically has better compression ratio than gzip.

<comment><USER14> FYI, bzip2 has been obsoleted by xz which is both faster and gives better compression. But as others have said, Google doesn't care because browsers do gzip.

<comment><USER15> In the future, browsers could also do xz; they'd just need to advertise it in their Accept-Encoding header. Google could put this in Chrome any time they like, and nothing would break.

<comment><USER16> As Jach points out above, Mozilla has had a bug[1] open about it for 6 years.

[1]: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a Swiss I'm curious how the name has come to be. Is the team related to ETH Zurich?

<comment><USER18> Lode Vandevenne wrote the blog post and the code. LinkedIn says he works at Google Zürich.

<comment><USER17> Thanks a lot. I'm still reluctant to use LinkedIn since much of it feels like extortion to me.

Btw. I'm surprised that you've found the ü character. Not even US customs/border protection let me enter my German name in the ESTA form.

<comment><USER19> It's actually right in the post that he's based in Zurich.

<comment><USER17> I could be wrong, but I think it was edited in. Otherwise scaevolus would probably have pointed it out instead of going to hunt LinkedIn.

<comment><USER20> I guess, Zopfli might be Zöpfli, which is a kind of braided Swiss bread. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zopf>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Zopfli sounds like a pharmaceutical drug.</comment>


Bug in HN or my browser acted funny? - <AUTHOR>

Just now for a few minutes I saw dupes.
http://pasteboard.co/2xaUjWkK.png
I am using Chrome 44 in Windows 7 <comment><USER2> That was me making a mistake. Still not sure what I did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh! :) Thanks for making it more awesome, cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ohh I noticed points are different.</comment>


Justices Approve Strip-Searches for Any Offense - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/us/justices-approve-strip-searches-for-any-offense.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto <comment><USER2> I was driving my car two weeks ago, when I was pulled over for failure to pay a ticket (the officer and their db was in error.) That night before heading out on the road, I shoved some rock cocaine in a balloon up my ass, so I was okay with going to jail because I could make some money. I was thrown into the hoosegow, (I'd asked for the clink) but not until I was strip searched.

Last week, the cops came by for failure to pay child support (I had paid, in fact it's automatically deducted but my ex was playing games again.) As I saw the black and white pull up to the curb, I quickly shoved some spoons up my ass, damn, cops found those during the strip search.

Last night, my dog and I were playing in the park when I saw some cops wander by, yep, I got nabbed for walking the dog off the leash. Luckily before going out with the dog I had shoved a cell phone up my ass, but damn, the cops found that too.

 _Some potential examples cited by dissenting judges in the lower courts and by Justice Breyer on Monday included violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support._

<comment><USER3> I don't really know where you're going with this..

<comment><USER2> It's a response to arguments that the government has a legitimate need to strip search everyone, regardless of what the charges are against them.

The notion some guy pulled over for failure to pay a speeding ticket, or arrested for failure to pay child support, or arrested for having a dog off leash (really?) has paraphernalia shoved up his ass should seem terribly questionable. The argument the government has a need to strip search everyone, should give way to a realization that probably is not true.

As I point out, these are not my wild examples, but examples specifically mentioned by Justice Breyer in dissent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> IANAL, I'm a libertarian and against all forms of ad-hoc searches, but I think the government has a point here. As I understand this the goal is to control contraband and weapons entering the prison system. I don't see any way you could get around having to to search all those entering.

But that's a different situation than being searched for a crime. If I understood this correctly, this is simply an administrative search, not a search in search of evidence. Or put another way, if you get arrested for a joint and during the search the cops find cocaine, I'm not sure that would mean much of anything. (except you lose your cocaine)

But I'm probably completely off-base.

<comment><USER5> Sure, let's see what happens when you get strip searched for mundane things like being too noisy.

<comment><USER6> Isn't the issue, then, that you shouldn't be put in jail for such offences, rather than making arguments concerning strip searching?

<comment><USER5> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

This applies especially and probably mostly to the police and government.

Police indirectly get more money for more arrests. Therefore, arrest more people.

You should be glad when you get a driving ticket. It's a proxy for an arrest or two that could have happened instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Idealistically this is something that I would support, because anyone who has been arrested and will be put into the general population of a jail carries several risks with them inside (the article mentions some of these: weapons, drugs, other contraband). But, that entire thought is predicated on a thought that I would argue is counter to reality: that people are only arrested when there is good cause to detain that individual.

Basically, if the entirety of the law enforcement and judicial system worked, then I wouldn't have a problem with this, but if I have to fear being arrested for taking a photograph of a police officer, then I feel that the strip- searching would apply to those who shouldn't necessarily be in jail in the first place...

</comment><comment><USER8> The title is misleading; IANAL, but according to the article text, the Supreme Court approved that officials can search people _before putting them into prison_ , only for offences that _can put you into prison_! I'm quite astonished that this wasn't the case already, i.e. they take your freedom, but they don't check what you're carrying with you?!?

<comment><USER9> It applies to general population of a jail too.

Let's say you are arrested in NYC. You can be taken to a holding cell at a local precinct. Then you are shuttled to downtown, to a holding cell in the court building. You go from being one person in a precinct cell to going into the "general population" of other people waiting to see a judge. Before being put in that larger holding cell, you will be subjected to a strip search now thanks to the Supreme Court. And if your offense is something as minor as not cleaning up your dog's poop? Is that fair?

<comment><USER8> I think the real question is why do you get jailed for not cleaning your dog's poop. That would never happen in Europe (I hope).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I may play the devil's advocate here:

Can you be against this decision if you're not against the 'nude scanner' thing the TSA uses to inspect you closely, while virtually undressed?

And turned around, if the TSA can do it and no public outcry stops them, is this decision surprising? It seems this is just the slope letting gravity do most of the work here..?

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if in NYC all the people arrested from now on at Occupy Wall Street will be strip searched. I do not like this decision.

</comment><comment><USER11> _[In his concurrence] Chief Justice Roberts, quoting from an earlier decision, said that exceptions to Monday's ruling were still possible "to ensure that we 'not embarrass the future.'"_

It's a bit late for that. The facts of this case speak for themselves:

 _Petitioner was arrested during a traffic stop by a New Jersey state trooper who checked a statewide computer database and found a bench warrant issued for petitioner's arrest after he failed to appear at a hearing to enforce a fine. He was initially detained in the Burlington County Detention Center and later in the Essex County Correctional Facility, but was released once it was determined that the fine had been paid. At the first jail, petitioner, like every incoming detainee, had to shower with a delousing agent and was checked for scars, marks, gang tattoos, and contraband as he disrobed. Petitioner claims that he also had to open his mouth, lift his tongue, hold out his arms, turn around, and lift his genitals. At the second jail, petitioner, like other arriving detainees, had to remove his clothing while an officer looked for body markings, wounds, and contraband; had an officer look at his ears, nose, mouth, hair, scalp, fingers, hands, armpits, and other body openings; had a mandatory shower; and had his clothes examined. Petitioner claims that he was also required to lift his genitals, turn around, and cough while squatting. He filed a 42 U. S. C. §1983 action in the Federal District Court against the government entities that ran the jails and other defendants, alleging Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations, and arguing that persons arrested for minor offenses cannot be subjected to invasive searches unless prison officials have reason to suspect concealment of weapons, drugs, or other contraband. The court granted him summary judgment, ruling that "strip- searching" on indictable offenders without reasonable suspicion violates the Fourth Amendment. The Third Circuit reversed.

Held: The judgment is affirmed._

I have visited jails, as part of a film crew. they are grim places, and a lot of the people who inhabit them are, frankly, villains. I've also seen collections of confiscated weapons manufactured from scrap materials whose creativity and effectiveness would put most hackers to shame. I can see the pragmatic reasoning that led the court to err on the side of law enforcement officer safety, and indeed inmate safety.

To my mind, the problem is that the nature of Florence's treatment amounted to cruel and unusual punishment for a minor administrative violation. But legally speaking it wasn't cruel because it had a practical rather than a punitive basis; and it wasn't unusual because everyone is subjected to the same degree of inspection at those facilities; and he hadn't been punished, because he hadn't been convicted; and it wasn't relevant because his counsel (correctly) focused on on other constitutional protections. And this is the problem: our constitutional rights are embedded in a procedural framework so inflexible that innocent persons can be mistakenly subjected to the most degrading treatment, and find themselves without a legal remedy because of the legal equivalent of incorrectly scoped variable (not been convicted, therefore he hasn't been punished). this ruling is civil rights disaster, and the problem will get worse before it gets better.

Regular HNers will know that I'm usually on the side of precedent even in cases where I don't like the decision. I am still not sure what Mr Florence's attorney could or should have done differently, and it would hardly have been appropriate to argue that all detainess should be held in solitary confinement pending the disposition of their case, for example - some cases need time to resolve, and jails exist in the first place because society has an interest in detaining some kinds of possible criminals in advance of trial. I haven't read the full opinion or the briefs, nor have I read enough criminal procedure or constitutional law to come up with a good alternative; so I'm speaking from my gut instead of my head, which I don't like to do. But it seems to me that this exposes a weakness in our constitution's tendency to define procedures rather than interests. The reasoning is sound, but the outcome is unconscionable in a free society. I am deeply disappointed.

<comment><USER4> Like I said, I'm a libertarian. One of the reasons why is that we live in a society where there are so many laws that the police can and do arrest people for whatever they feel like. It's been this way probably forever, but recently it has gotten much, much worse.

Having said that, the question in front of the court begins with the man arriving at jail, not with the arrest. Perhaps there's another case that could be made about using arrests in a harassing manner, but I doubt it.

So the justices have to ask themselves a question: which is more important, keeping the system consistent or having compassion for this poor guy?

I'm an analytical person. My money is on keeping the system consistent, even if it's broken and this case is a bad example of what we aspire to be.

The system is screwed up enough as it is without SCOTUS running off and chasing every sob story that comes their way. If the courts start leading with their hearts, then the entire criminal justice system becomes a matter of who can make the best emotional case instead of what the law is. The chaos and harm just moves up to another level of dysfunction. A mostly self-consistent bad system is still better than a mostly inconsistent bad system.

I'm saddened the guy got treated like this. I wish there was some recourse. But in my unlearned, guesswork opinion the outcome is the only one the court had available, no matter how much you and I are disappointed with the larger state of society.

<comment><USER11> I think you've made an error here. Florence's arrest was reasonable as far as it went. He had pled guilty 2 years earlier to obstruction of justice and use of a deadly weapon, and been fined, the fine being payable in installments. One of his payments was late, and an arrest warrant was issued. He made the payment soon afterwards, but the warrant was never cancelled. So the arresting officer checked his identity, found priors involving deadly weapons and an outstanding arrest warrant, and enforced the warrant.

My issues with this are that a) someone gets thrown into general population while an administrative issue is being resolved, and b) the nature of his apparent offense (unpaid fine, rather than an act of commission).

<comment><USER9> >>>But legally speaking it wasn't cruel because it had a practical rather than a punitive basis; and it wasn't unusual because everyone is subjected to the same degree of inspection at those facilities; and he hadn't been punished, because he hadn't been convicted; and it wasn't relevant because his counsel (correctly) focused on on other constitutional protections.

Wow. So a cop who brings you in because he had a bad day or doesn't like your skin tone and has you subjected to a strip search _isn't_ punishment? Nor is it cruel? And because everyone is equally degraded, it isn't unusual? Look, you can spout whatever "The law says..." all you want, but this is not what I want my country to become.

<comment><USER11> If you try following my train of thought, which is only a few paragraphs long, you'll see that I'm saying the law is deeply flawed.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I see that. But that middle part irked me too much.

<comment><USER11> Well, there's a difference between a positive (descriptive) statement of how things _are_ , and a normative statement of how they _should be_. It's hard to have a constructive discussion of the latter when every statement of the former results in a derailment of the conversation.

<comment><USER9> Well, you're taking it personally rather than my being cranky about the wording that clearly described their point of view.

<comment><USER11> When you wrote _Look,_ you _can spout whatever "The law says..." all_ you _want [...]_ then I assumed that your remarks were addressed to me, not to someone else. This exchange is becoming increasingly pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm confident that the vast majority of those who agree with this decision are white, and therefore believe (probably correctly) that it will never happen to them.

But if you're a darker-hued, equally law-abiding citizen ...</comment>


Show HN: A basic paint app for web - <AUTHOR> http://simplysanad.com/html5Paint/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm a student and this is my first web project. Your inputs/suggestions are most welcome.</comment>


Crate raises $4M seed round for its next-gen SQL database - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/15/crate-raises-4m-seed-round-for-its-next-gen-sql-database/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know if Crate is a drop-in replacement for any existing RDBMS?</comment>


Building Great APIs: The Gold Standard - <AUTHOR> http://www.3scale.net/2012/11/building-great-apis-the-api-gold-standard-part-i/

<comment><USER2> Basically, if you don't have a business plan your condemning yourself to chase your own tail. Have an idea, get a business plan made, start working. That's great advice in almost any field.

Looking forward to the following posts.

<comment><USER3> Don't waste time writing a business plan. Find out first if your idea can result in a value proposition which is accepted by the market. Build a mimimum viable product and start testing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> John' Mussers slide deck on the same topic is here: [http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/what-makes-a-great-open- ap...](http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/what-makes-a-great-open-api)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great article!</comment>


A Connection Between Prime Numbers and Quantum Mechanics - <AUTHOR> http://www.ias.edu/about/publications/ias-letter/articles/2013-spring/primes-random-matrices

<comment><USER2> I found a similar article not too long ago which dragged me off into reading about the Rienman Zeta function. Given quantum mechanics is governed by prime pairs and this universe is a hologram, it makes one wonder about how all this information in our universe is secured from tampering.

Looking at you Bitcoin!</comment>


Traditional VCs and first-time entrepreneurs are not aligned - <AUTHOR> http://diegobasch.com/traditional-vcs-and-first-time-entrepreneurs-are-not-aligned

<comment><USER2> I agree with the generalization - the odds are higher that a first-time, somewhat-poor founder will be tempted by a 7-figure exit that doesn't help the VC, than someone with 5M in the bank.

On the other hand, I think start-up founders are, as a group, more risk- tolerant than almost any white collar worker in America, and there are plenty of us who will never give up on a good company as long as it's growing.

As for me, I've never wanted the money to play with, I just wanted into the bigger game. Give me 5M, and I'm just going to put it back into play. I want to make spaceships and robot cars and other wonders I can't afford to try right now.

<comment><USER3> "..I just wanted into the bigger game. Give me 5M, and I'm just going to put it back into play."

Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone I know runs a startup which just got an acquisition offer which would have given him $5-7m, a few years out of college with the acquirer was paying 1.1x their current valuation. He chose to turn it down since he thought his investors (one of the top few firms around) would find him unfundable for future startups. Instead he's choosing to 'swing for the fences', something which may or may not work given their current momentum.

Several lessons in there, including not raising at too high a valuation that limits your exit options.

</comment><comment><USER5> Generally a good post, though it's funny that Diego used a Fred Wilson quote right before his point about bi-modal returns, when Fred's one of the (few) VCs that's spoken out against such:

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/10/the-fallacy-of-bimodal- retur...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/10/the-fallacy-of-bimodal-returns.html)

<comment><USER6> Dan Shapiro also explained this seemly irrational behavior that VCs have: [http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity- economics...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems there is logically a space for properly salaried startup founders with significant bonuses for hitting the mega-heights. If there are people you have sufficient confidence in (2% chance of getting to $100M) then give them get rich slowly salaries with bonuses for hitting the VC friendly valuations (bonus on valuation/investment rather than exit). Obviously in this scenario the founders would have little equity - more first employee level.

This model could make more willing to try and bring more big payouts in (VCs would have more equity) although it would cost them more on the ones that don't get there.

The downsides are if the founders need to make it work is what gets startups off the ground in the first place or if the VCs feel more need to meddle.

An alternative is to stick to the current model but for the VCs to be ready to buy out the founder with the early exit option and then employ them from that point with MUCH smaller equity for the founder.

</comment><comment><USER8> VCs should expect and build in at least two "money problem" liquidation events. The first, smallest is to give the founders enough to buy a house. The second, if they really believe a billion dollar exit is on the cards is to hand founders millionaire status, and all their early employees a house.

People aren't fools. At twenty years old anyone can live on Ramen and dreams. At thirty ensuring your wife and baby have a roof puts stress on a founder that will easily out weigh almost anything competitors can do.

If VCs want big returns, pony up halfway through, or lose.

Call it mid-air refuelling.

<comment><USER9> What, in general, would prevent a VC from buying-out the founder? If the VC aims for a bigger potential payout than the founder, wouldn't they want a bigger portion of that payout?

<comment><USER8> Presumably the same thing that prevents them starting the start up in the first place. Which is either they aren't capable (call that the nasty hypothesis), or they know to spread their bets over many founders.

VCs commonly do oust founders, rather than buy outs (presumably it's cheaper)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> VC's are money managers, playing the odds. VC's also want to build long term businesses and sometimes the founders are not the right people for that: they had the idea and the drive, but 2 years down the line, their attention is on the next thing. So in that case its beneficial for all involved to "solve their money problems" and get the right person for the day to day job at hand.

I've financed PE's for years (a further stage to VC's) who tend to either buy fast growing companies direct from VC's or once listed and you rarely see the original founder by that stage (c. 5-7 years down the line).

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow if I had 100k in the bank as that article assumes I would invest every penny of that in to my new venture and aim for becoming profitable as soon as possible before even considering a VC investment.

I would rather approach them in a position of being a sustainable, profitable business than to ask them to invest in my idea before I had committed all my own available assets.

<comment><USER12> It's not really that simple though. $100k doesn't last as long as you'd like...especially if you're a first time entrepreneur. You really need time to make mistakes.

If you're able to be sustainable without funding then that's awesome but it's less about the $100k than it is about focusing on the right things. That comes with experience, usually.

I'm on my second startup. First one raised $500k and we blew it. Focused on all the wrong things.

This second one I approached much differently. I did invest about $100k (not including lost wages) into it and still wasn't successful at the end. Again, in hindsight I focused on many of the wrong things. That's why I go back to needing time to make mistakes.

I did wind up getting a grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation within about 8 weeks of not having a single penny (minus what was in 401k).

I'm not advocating raising funding. I would have done it since I knew I needed the extended runway. But it was my last option. And getting a grant from the foundation was a happy medium between the two.

Basically, starting up is not for the feint of heart and you will make mistakes and you won't anticipate making them...which leaves you in really tough spots.

<comment><USER11> I see where you're coming from, however I really do believe it is possible to build a great business on a shoestring.

I think there is a lot of comfort to be had in having more cash in the bank but not having much sure does focus you on making sure you are delivering a great product that your customers are willing to pay for from day 1.

I started my current project on practically nothing, with an idea and cheap rackspace cloud account. A year on we have 5 people, sure it would be great to have the luxury of a large amount of funding but I think running on a budget does have an upside in that it forces you to always focus on customer satisfaction and profitability.

Growth is just slower on the organic route and that is the main thing that concerns me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "[…] VCs have a different vision than founders. Founders are like parents, saying "keep my baby alive!" VCs swing for the fences, and hit alot of outs along with the homers. To the VC it's not a baby, it's just another baseball." — Lee Campbell, <http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Decent VCs will let entrepreneurs cash out partially in order to have their incentives more aligned. Not all VCs are decent, though. It is pretty ridiculous when people who make $1-million salaries working 9-to-5 object to a founder taking out enough to buy a house.

It reflects really badly on our society how much pitching and pain an entrepreneur has to endure just for a sliver of a chance at basic autonomy. Four decades ago, it was slightly harder to get extremely rich and solve "the money problem" outright (note: there is no such thing; when people get $5 million, most start wanting to compete with the $50-million crowd) but if you were smart you could get an R&D job with complete autonomy over what you worked on, how and when. That's gone now.

I think that if VC-istan is where you want to be, however, starting as an entrepreneur is the wrong way to go (although it's better than being a non- founder employee). You're better off doing everything you can to become a VC, getting established enough that you always have a VC job as a backup, and building enough connections that you can raise money, and _then_ starting a business if that's your inclination.</comment>


Cinnamon can reverse changes in the brains of mice with Parkinsons - <AUTHOR> http://www.rush.edu/webapps/MEDREL/servlet/NewsRelease?id=1768 <comment><USER2> Because it's clear there isn't a lot of expertise in this thread, I'd like to make clear that nobody should be doing the cinnamon challenge based on these results, or the results of the authors' previous study on the topic. So far, the authors have some interesting data from cell lines and now a mouse model of PD. Specifically, the mouse model is generated by chemical intoxication with a molecule called MPTP, which results in damage to dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra, the region of the brain whose degeneration is predominantly implicated in the etiology of PD. There is good reason to be skeptical about whether this animal model of the disease is clinically relevant to sporadic PD seen in patients. Furthermore, dramatic results seen in a very obscure journal (i.e. not a mainline journal for neurodegenerative research) should generally result in knee-jerk skepticism until others repeat the work and a more significant review process has taken place. It should go without saying that there have been many compounds in the past two decades to show some interesting results at a preclinical stage that have not passed muster when moving to real patients.

<comment><USER3> i dont care what you say, i see this as a green light to eat more cinnabuns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sort of gimmicky to say that Cinnamon does this, because it's known to be sodium benzoate that causes this effect.

In 2012 they discovered that sodium benzoate has an effect on Parkinson's disease proteins: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21701815](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21701815).

This new study is, at least, a confirmation of the older study, and is also an attempt to use it to treat the disease.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I didn't realize cinnamon metabolized to sodium benzoate. I've actually been trying to avoid sodium benzoate, especially in soft drinks because of worry what that preservative could possibly be doing to us (especially in the presence of vitamin c) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate) But I've been purposefully eating a bunch of Cinnamon.

It's hard to reconcile sometimes what might be good for me or if it's killing me - Nicotine may have helped a young girl with epilepsy. [http://www.clickorlando.com/news/central-florida-doctor- find...](http://www.clickorlando.com/news/central-florida-doctor-finds- uncommon-remedy-for-epilepsy/26761650)

<comment><USER6> Nicotine is sort of a mixed bag, but it isn't really the bad part of tobacco products. Cigarettes are generally bad for you because of all of the other things in them _besides_ nicotine. The bad part of nicotine is that it is so highly addictive, but it's health benefits for things like ulcerative colitis and other afflictions are becoming better studied.

<comment><USER7> The ingredients in cigarettes are what actually make nicotine addictive...alone, it can actually be beneficial to the brain

<comment><USER8> >> The ingredients in cigarettes are what actually make nicotine addictive

Uh, that sounds wrong.

"Snus" users get addicted. That _is_ tobacco, even if it isn't burned. But afaik, users of e-cigarettes also get dependent -- that isn't tobacco.

<comment><USER9> > But as laboratory scientists know, getting mice or other animals hooked on > nicotine all by its lonesome is dauntingly difficult. As a 2007 paper in the > journal Neuropharmacology put it, "Tobacco use has one of the highest rates > of addiction of any abused drug. Paradoxically, in animal models, nicotine > appears to be a weak reinforcer."

[http://www.salon.com/2013/12/29/sciences_obsession_the_searc...](http://www.salon.com/2013/12/29/sciences_obsession_the_search_for_a_smart_pill/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For US HN'ers, "cinnamon" that is commonly used as a flavorant in the US is Cassia; Ceylon cinnamon has a milder taste that is slightly different and may be a little bit unusual for American tongues.

<comment><USER11> If you want the really good stuff try Vietnamese cinnamon (also known as Saigon). It has the highest essential oil content and is very aromatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Naive comment: Indian food is loaded with cinnamon. Especially sweets. So why is India host to second largest population of Parkinsons afflicted[1]? Or maybe people are not served cinnamon rich food as they grow older because they are also rich in fat and sugar? I guess orthogonal studies like these don't have much value. There are obviously several other factors at work here.

1\. [http://www.epda.eu.com/en/parkinsons/life-with- parkinsons/pa...](http://www.epda.eu.com/en/parkinsons/life-with- parkinsons/part-3/the-number-of-people-with-parkinsons-in-the-most-populous- nations-2005-through-2030/)

Edit: Explicit naivety Edit 2: Hold on. Just glossed over the fact that we also have the second largest population on earth. In that case, there might be a correlation after all.

<comment><USER13> The real question is why is the US so high? Our rates are almost as high as India's, with 1/3 the population. I have a feeling it is likely diet related, and possibly due to either the "low fat" craze not providing building blocks in the brain or the industrial fats (in particular trans fats but maybe the massive quantities of n-6 fats) causing structures to be built incorrectly or causing excess inflammation.

So, that's my hypothesis based on having done a lot of nutrition research but no Parkinson's research. Does anybody have any real info about why the US rates are so high?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Original article [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11481-014-9552-2](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11481-014-9552-2) (paywalled)

<comment><USER15> [http://scitr.com/a14](http://scitr.com/a14)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dammit, I first understood this as the Desktop Manager and awkwardly asked "How can a software change the... oh!"

Need to take a vacation it seems XD

</comment><comment><USER17> To get a better perspective here, I wish there was discussion around ... I dunno ... the full text of the actual study discussing dosage levels, etc. Also some knowledge of gram-per-gram conversion of cinnamon to sodium benzoate through its hepatic metabolism might be informative. But, sigh, let's just rant and call each other names.

</comment><comment><USER18> My mom was kind of a health nut when we were a kid, she was getting organic food way before it was in vogue to do so, and I remember when she got us Cinnamon capsules to take in the morning with our other vitamins. I always thought it was silly to take a caplet full of cinammon, but I guess maybe there was something to it

<comment><USER19> Are you seriously suggesting that people should go buy a bunch of junk from the organic food shops just in case one of them turns out to be good for you in the future?

Adversely, what happens if one of them turns out to be a carcinogen or otherwise something that adversely affects health?

Your mom isn't wise, she just threw enough unproven stuff down her kid's throats so that it was inevitable that one of them one day might prove useful. I wonder how many damaging things (or potentially damaging) you also consumed?

<comment><USER7> This is a really offensive comment... Plants create compounds to battle pests and radiation from the sun. A lot of these compounds such as anthocyanins and phenols are extremely beneficial to healthy humans. Definitive science is actually still catching up.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocyanin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocyanin) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol)

<comment><USER20> What he said isn't offensive at all. The mothers that make their kids eat all sorts of unproven remedies, trying to stay ahead of proven science, are just as bad as the ones that refuse injections, trying to stay behind proven science.

Down vote me all you want, but there is a reason why science exists and has rigorous testing methodologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Once they figure out the dosing, etc, it'd be amusing if the effect size of the human trial is better than Azilect, which gets trumpeted a lot by marketing, but doesn't do that much and has a $400-$700/month copay for patients...

</comment><comment><USER22> Mice don't even get Parkinson's. The misleading title is not even in the university's press release of the mouse model study: "Cinnamon May Be Used to Halt the Progression of Parkinson's disease"

</comment><comment><USER23> You can read up all of this science and keep adjusting your diet - or you can just shift to Indian food - recent medical research is ceiling its place as the healthiest diets on plant earth.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've read cinnamon might help with diabetes too? Would that be the same mechanism?

<comment><USER26> The mechanism here appears to be the metabolism of compounds in cinnamon into sodium benzoate, which we already knew was helpful with Parkinson's.

The mechanism behind cinnamon's effects on blood glucose, OTOH, seems not to be terribly well-studied, given a few minutes' searching. One paper I found says, "cinnamon enhances glucose uptake by activating the insulin receptor kinase activity, auto-phosphorylation of the insulin receptor, and glycogen synthase activity." [1] Otherwise, the literature seems all to be, "We observed this effect..."

EDIT: Pointers to better sources welcome.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326760/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326760/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good grief, maybe I'm getting old, but is up with that font size?

<comment><USER28> I'm 23 and I agree, it's tiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Cinnamon can also reverse changes in the brains of people with Unity.

</comment><comment><USER30> Glozell is never getting Parkinsons!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyk7utV_D2I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyk7utV_D2I)

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm starting to think I should munch a mix of powders every morning. Cinnamon, tummeric, garlic etc.

<comment><USER32> The bioavailability of curcumin (found in turmeric) is much better when taken along with piperine (found in black pepper).

Also, welcome to the club: [http://www.reddit.com/r/supplements](http://www.reddit.com/r/supplements)

<comment><USER33> I was just going to comment on this, then saw your post.

When we cook, our muscle memory is to add black ground pepper when adding turmeric.

We also favor cinnamon because it is anecdotally supposed to be a good anti- inflammatory agent - if this is not true, at least it tastes good with many foods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Natural products rules!

</comment><comment><USER35> best window manager ever ;-)

<comment><USER36> Cool, I wonder if I can try it on OpenSuSE (although I'm pretty well married to KDE).

Who knew that an article on Parkinson's would lead to learning about another window manager!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> YOLO

<comment><USER37> haters gon' hate

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The spice must flow

<comment><USER39> Downvotes make me sad. HN has no sense of humor.

<comment><USER40> Sure we do. Plenty of top comments are funny, but they're just topical, relevant, and - most importantly - include some actual original thought. Posting the same old tired references just isn't funny to this crowd.

<comment><USER41> HN comments include tons of interesting, original thoughts; However in all the time I have been lurking here, there has been no top comment that has elicited nary a chortle from me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I knew that using Linux Mint was good for my health!</comment>


Ask HN: What are your side projects? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> I just launched my first web app/side project/potential startup today called PillHQ(<http://www.pillhq.com>). It helps people remember to take their medications.

</comment><comment><USER4> I made a small and simple web app to complement wikitravel.org - <http://www.picitravel.com>. Motivation for this site was that I wanted to use it as a complementary tool for wikitravel.org site. Wikitravel has tons of useful data but not too many good pictures. My site would get the best pictures from Flickr and display it in a meaningful fashion. This would allow you to view all the pics from a destination in one page rather than googling for individual place. I am still working on making the site faster and adding more features.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://comparerc.com> \- Search Engine for the Remote Controlled hobby (quadrocopters, helicopters, planes, fpv, etc).

It's been a lot of fun because I get to play with ElasticSearch and responsive JS UIs. Still a long way to go before it is really useful - <USER2> categorical browsing and parametric serach.

I've also writing a weekly "In the Trenches" journal about the project: <http://euphonious-intuition.com/category/comparerc/>

<comment><USER5> I'm curious why this was downvoted...the OP asked for side projects so I posted mine. Did I miss something here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://wshoppr.com/about> \- Window Shopper: It's a chrome extension that lets you save products you like by simply dragging and dropping the product image to a bar that pops up when you start dragging. It's a shopping bag for the entire internet. So far the people that have used it love the way the dragging works unlike the traditional bookmarklet approach. I built it with a good friend and great UX designer @jesseddy.

</comment><comment><USER7> I made a little development tool for Chrome that does live reload and lets you save directly from the devtools. <http://tin.cr>

</comment><comment><USER8> Aardwolf MUD, has been my side project since 1996 and not stopping any time soon. <http://www.aardwolf.com>

<comment><USER9> Hey! I spent lots of time there the few years around 2000. Have you finally rewrote it in Java yet? :)

<comment><USER8> Java couldn't keep up as we grew. It was rewritten and finally finished in 2007, the main core is still pure 'C' with the rest in Lua. Using Lua was probably the best single decision we ever made in terms of flexibility and what we've been able to do with mob AI. Still going strong, drop by some time, or join the FB Page...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://status2k.com> \- Server dashboard script.

<https://www.strongcoin.com> \- Bitcoin e-wallet.

<https://www.bitcoinary.com> \- Bitcoin market place.

<http://servermonitoringhq.com> \- Server monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Speed up Twitter reading <http://nimblegecko.com>

2\. Automated transactions export from my bank(s) <https://github.com/ArtS/nab-export> <https://github.com/ArtS/28degrees- export> (adding YNAB support at the moment)

</comment><comment><USER12> <https://forgetfail.com> \- I had some clients request database backups. So I built a service for it.

<comment><USER13> Just a suggestion - You may want to change You're to Your in the line - "Don't fail to forget to back up you're databases."

<comment><USER14> Actually, that's true but you need to change this to "Don't fail to _remember_ to backup your databases" or something similar, right now you're telling me to make sure to forget it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://brightswipe.com> \- Brightswipe: It's a fast, open-source, and better looking version of the Pirate Bay, with more features coming soon (SSL, connect to swarm and get new torrents, node-to-node communication, etc). The design right now is godawful (since I designed it) but we have a new design coming out in a few days. It'll be gorgeous.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm developing an OpenPGP keyserver in Golang. <http://launchpad.net/hockeypuck>

</comment><comment><USER17> Will soon be launching site with information on products releasing in the future and to gauge level of anticipation of people. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379664> Wish you the best of luck with your app! <http://www.hypejar.com>

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://beta.minecraftsaver.com/> \- Backup/displays for Minecraft worlds

<http://steamxl.com> \- Chrome extension, coming along slowly, but haven't spent too much time on it. Still learned a lot from it.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://localbeer.me> \- find locally brewed beer (only has partial data right now, don't panic if it doesn't find any beer near you).

This has basically been my playground for cool things - geolocation, facebook actions, rich snippets and more.

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://icecoder.net/> open source web based IDE

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://NeedNumbers.me> \- a weekend project I did before school starts. It solves one simple problem of having to manually type in names and numbers after you asked for contacts on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER22> <http://easyretirementplanning.ca> \- Not only is this a side project, it's also my first foray into web development! (I am a chemical engineer).

</comment><comment><USER23> I created a web design tool and micro-webhost that allows you to create websites using just your browser. <https://www.taigen.us/demo>

</comment><comment><USER24> We just launched an ebook on this very topic:

<http://www.sideprojects.com>

37 side projects, many of which are from Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER25> I just launched my week-end side project called Chatsoul.com. A chat application powered by Websync Comet Server: <http://chatsoul.com>

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm working on <https://github.com/wazari972/WebAlbums3/> , a website + FUSE- based Filesystem to organize photos

</comment><comment> adam-_- I'm working on <http://twitcherhq.com> \- social media analytics and monitoring for startups and small businesses.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm working on Crowd - It's a music service that offers free music streaming powered by Youtube - <http://crowd.im>

</comment><comment><USER28> <http://heynico.com> is a tiny UI design agency focused on startups, mobile and landinge pages design.

</comment><comment><USER29> I just started my first side project a few weeks ago:

<http://www.social-permissions.com> \- Unified way to manage the privacy and permssion settings of social sites!

It was quite interesting to learn how to develop plugins for Firefox, Chrome & Safari using HTML & JS

<http://www.nowiam.at> \- HTML5 Based Location Sharing

A proof of concept how good the HTML5 geolocation feature works among different browsers

</comment><comment><USER30> I am working on a real estate listings management platform. <http://www.realtywarp.com>

<comment><USER31> what a great idea! I've been working on a place where potential landlords and renters could connect, as using craigslist is just a hellish experience: <http://github.com/griffindy/Rently>. is this just for landlords?

<comment><USER32> a friend of mine cofounded a project that sounds similar. www.rentobo.com

<comment><USER30> Looks well polished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> <http://toutday.com> \- Simpler iPhone mood tracking. My first _real_ iOS app.

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://widgetthemes.be/> \- premium jQuery UI themes that don't suck.

</comment><comment><USER35> A venture capital lecture series for my campus:

<http://wute.vc>

</comment><comment><USER36> <http://www.heystartup.com> \- online pitching platform

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm making an Internet protocol for sending money. It is like SMTP for payments.

</comment><comment><USER38> Share What You Make - <http://swym.me>

</comment><comment><USER39> publishing platform for coders/builders: <http://ruhoh.com>

<comment><USER15> Damn, this is so cool! I love it. I think I'm going to switch from Wordpress, actually.</comment></comment>


Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison - <AUTHOR> https://steveblank.com/2014/09/25/watching-larry-ellison-become-larry-ellison-the-dna-of-a-winner/ <comment><USER2> For anyone interested in learning more about Larry Ellison and Oracle, I'd highly suggest "The difference between god and Larry Ellison (god doesn't think he's Larry Ellison)."

Oracle is a 150 billion dollar company, similar in market cap to Intel. Once you've read histories on these people, it suddenly makes sense that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates hang out, while Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were BFFs. Like with Jobs and Apple, Ellison and Oracle are aggressively polarizing.

I see a future of declines for Oracle; Salesforce.com is redefining and taking their market (corporate IT budgets). There is simply _no way_ other than lock- in and being dicks that they'll be able to see the profitability they once had, let alone sales growth (unless by acquisition). You can see it already with their patent suits; they're out of ideas. But if you work in the business of software, Oracle's history is worth knowing.

<comment><USER3> Every enterprise I have worked at/with had Salesforce, but I've never seen or heard about anyone use it. (What do they even do?) I feel like it's one of those companies that's good at selling but not really building product(s) people actually use. Not sure same can be said about Oracle, I worked at many corporations where the tech teams were using Oracle DBs for simple 1-page microsites.

<comment><USER2> Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, started out at Oracle. Larry Ellison was his mentor. I think he was even at Larry Ellison's (3rd?) wedding. He left Oracle to start Salesforce.

Salesforce is a software layer on top of databases, often called CRM. It's the answer for "how do you sell a relational database to a guy that just needs a rolodex?" Salesforce actually uses Oracle databases to power their infrastructure, to this day.

Over the past 10 years, Salesforce has built out its own platform that basically turns Salesforce into a web-based version of visual fox pro. Which sounds bad, but consider that many "Salesforce.com administrators" are NOT programmers. Then to be taken more seriously as a custom development platform, to be able to add more advanced logic, they built their own scripting language (Apex) and bought Heroku.

So it started as (pretty much) a fancy rolodex but has evolved into a platform through which you can develop certain types of software and workflows that would be difficult with alternatives. "Difficult with alternatives" becomes less true every day (which is why I got away from pitching businesses on custom development with Salesforce and into pitching businesses on custom development with python and purely open solutions.) Despite having legitimate competition from open source, their sales and marketing has done a very good job at convincing their users that those don't exist, or that Salesforce invented them ( _cough_ heroku).

Maybe you've heard of Oracle or SAP consultants in the 90s making a very good living advising businesses how to set up and use these products? Salesforce.com is now that. And despite being "enterprise" they actually have very talented engineers. Also, critical mass. They have managed to build this ecosystem and everyone working in Corporate IT is drinking the kool aid. Google "Dreamforce 2016" if you want to see just how cult like it's all become. Like I say, they are going to replace Oracle. It's funny how much shared DNA they have though.

<comment><USER4> ApEx (Application Express) is an Oracle product, more like a visual RAD tool for the web. Did Salesforce really call their scripting language the same thing??

<comment><USER5> Yep. That's one of the reasons why searching for "ApEx" on Stack Overflow isn't fruitful.

The other is that nobody, if they can help it, uses ApEx.

<comment><USER6> > The other is that nobody, if they can help it, uses ApEx.

Oh oh. I worked for more than two years with a team that continued to expand their investment in Oracle and Apex.

When everything you know is Oracle, everything looks like a task for Oracle ;-)

<comment><USER5> That was my experience too, I worked on ApEx stuff for around 2 years.

It came free with the database license, so it got used.

I don't miss it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was expecting to see a lot of Oracle hate here, and looks like the train's already started. Regardless of your perspective of Oracle today, it's hard to dispute that Larry Ellison was a successful entrepreneur and businessman. He co-founded a $150B company, remained in the senior leadership position for decades, and guided the company towards extremely profitable outcomes for shareholders. You may not like him personally, you may not like his products, you may not like his company's work environment, but I'm sure any aspiring entrepreneur can learn a lot from Larry Ellison's example.

<comment><USER8> Completely agree. Oracle's success did not happen by chance. They have a great track record of navigating successive technology waves. Their strategy is often "bring a gun to a knife fight" like when they bought InnoDB out from under MySQL AB. Not to everyone's taste but they have outmaneuvered an amazing number of competitors over the years.

Ellison in the flesh is quite personable.

<comment><USER9> > Ellison in the flesh is quite personable.

Sounds oddly familiar...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> cha-cho A good book about Larry Ellison is "Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle" from 2004. It looks like Larry himself proofread the book as he offers comments and corrections at the bottom of some of the pages.

Oracle is unlike any other technology company in the world. The majority of their software offerings are not aimed at consumers, so many people (including programmers and IT-savvy folks) have a hard time understanding the company unless they've spent weeks studying one piece of their product stack.

I started working for Oracle in 1998. I thought I would be able to get up to speed quickly on everything Oracle. I was wrong. It took a long time to get a feeling of confidence. The main product, the Oracle database, is a vast monolith of technology and features that is constantly being updated. It has a documentation set that could easily fill a bookshelf. Taker a look: [http://docs.oracle.com](http://docs.oracle.com)

Every so often someone takes at shot at Larry at a press conference or online, implying that Oracle's time has passed, that some new hotshot company was going to overtake them in some way.

Spend some time studying Oracle and Larry Ellison, and you'll understand why Larry always smiles at these questions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find myself thinking that recent years of change in the Linux world is partially to blame on Oracle and Red Hat having a falling out.

Those two used to have a fruitful partnership where RH suppiled the distro, and Oracle supplied the software that ran on top.

But right around the time RH released RHEL 6.0, Oracle up and forked RHEL into Oracle Linux and started offering support contracts for the whole stack. Since then RH seems to be on the warpath, tightening their control over the various sub-projects that RHEL is made of.

<comment><USER10> But didn't RedHat enter middleware first, snatching jboss under Oracle's nose?

<comment><USER9> Well neither was established in that market at the time, afaik. But Oracle Linux was not only Oracle entering onto RH turf, but using the very FOSS that was RH life blood against them.

Oracle was basically offering existing RH customers to consolidate their support contracts with Oracle rather than have the OS with RH and the database with Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a policy when assessing opportunities. Use of Oracle products is a deal breaker.

<comment><USER8> Why? Is it the money?

The DBMS technology is excellent. I worked at Sybase from 1990 on and much as I _loved_ the company Oracle beat us fair and square with features like Row Level Locking and Multi-version Concurrency Control. Oracle also had a healthier attitude about data corruption. Oracle fixed the bugs or didn't let them get in in the first place. Sybase on the other hand developed DBCC, which repaired the problems on live databases. I lost numerous tables on Sybase while developing products. This never happened after switching to Oracle in the late 90s.

One of the things I still like about Oracle is that no matter what data management problem you are solving there is generally some feature that helps you do it.

VPD (virtual private database) is a great example. I was working at a SaaS in the late 90s and we ran into a problem where we absolutely needed data from multiple tenants in a single database but still fully isolated between each tenant. Oracle had a feature called VPD that did exactly that. It saved our bacon on that project.

I have dealt with the Oracle license police and yes they can be jerks. But you can't fault their technology. The company deserves respect for what they have accomplished.

Edit: fixed typo.

<comment><USER12> Really? I sure as hell can fault them - getting them to even _acknowledge_ bugs is a gigantic PITA. Unless you are huge, getting their support people to respond or even understand issues is impossible. The CBO is a gigantic black box and can be incredibly hard to troubleshoot.

They have a CSO who has publicly stated they don't want bug reports or anyone to give them security exploits, and who once gave a talk "How Joshua DoSed Jericho: Cybersecrets of the Bible". [1]

There's plenty more to make you stay away from them at all costs, not the least of which are completely unethical business practices.

1\. [https://www.rsaconference.com/videos/how-joshua-dosed- jerich...](https://www.rsaconference.com/videos/how-joshua-dosed-jericho- cybersecrets-of-the-bible)

<comment><USER8> Fair point on support and security. Mary Ann Davidson's rant about security on the Oracle blog was indefensible. [1]

While I'm impressed by some of the Oracle engineering there's no question they also know how to squeeze customers just up to the breaking point.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2015/08/oracle-deletes-csos-screed- hac...](https://www.wired.com/2015/08/oracle-deletes-csos-screed-hackers- report-bugs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think people forget that the Oracle database is just one of the many products that oracle has. I think Weblogic is the best application server around.

<comment><USER14> Why is it best? The only time I encountered it was in conversation of people that were using it and hated it, everywhere else it was either JBoss or just Tomcat (with new frameworks one doesn't need all the EJBs).

Are there any comparison chart with e.g. JBoss?

<comment><USER15> You don't need application servers. They just being bloat. Their ship has sailed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> (2014)

</comment><comment><USER17> I found this post completely uninspiring, though I'm biased as I thing Steve Blank often does more damage than good with his recipes for success. Would love to hear the broader HN community's sentiment towards Steve, and the broader entrepreneurial snake oil in a book/consultant movement.

<comment><USER18> Steve Blank's snake oil??? "The 4 steps to the epiphany" was a transforming book for me and other entrepreneurs and the popular "The Lean Startup" follow up from Eric Ries a direct result of working with Steve. He genuinely cares about entrepreneurs and the valley ecosystem go watch "The secret history of Silicon Valley"</comment></comment>


Amazon pulls its free game Crucible from circulation following negative reviews - blinding-streak https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/amazon-pulls-crucible-from-wide-release-weeks-after-game-launch <comment> blinding-streak [http://archive.vn/XDHJh](http://archive.vn/XDHJh)</comment>


This is what a hidden fee looks like - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lg/status/356859378999099393 <comment><USER2> I am not sure it is "hidden" as much as poorly defined.

I can see the point as the closer one cancels to their rental time the less likely it is they can turn around and rent it. Yet I would still want to be able to know ahead of time I would be charged $X if I had to cancel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interestingly the only info I could find about their change policy is here: [http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-i-hate- zipcar](http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-i-hate-zipcar)</comment>


Mobile Firefox: Measuring how a browser feels - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2012/06/26/mobile-firefox-measuring-how-a-browser-feels/

<comment><USER2> Speaking of Mozilla mobile, make sure you see this talk [1] on their recent product designs. Don't know if this article's android browser is the same as the ios browser in the talk, but the ios browser looks great.

[1] <https://air.mozilla.org/product-design-at-mozilla/>

<comment><USER3> Opera mobile works better. For example, neither Firefox nor Chrome work well when I try to submit an item on HN.

I am talking about the Android platform

<comment><USER3> Stupid downvote. I write a fact and someone prefers fallacies

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really good step forward, but it's disappointing to see the author using FPS to measure UI responsiveness (I've harped on this before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777058>).

While FPS is a decent measure of performance in constant-load applications such as the fishbowl, it's really, really bad for sporadic-load applications such as most UIs.

For measuring UI responsiveness, you should really use frame delay, which is the greatest elapsed time between any two concurrent frames during a UI event. If your swipe gesture has a frame delay above ~33ms, it will look bad, even if your measured framerate is ~30fps.

<comment><USER5> One of the big problems with frame delay is it tends to round up. On a 60FPS device 30.1FPS generally means you miss one out of every 2 refreshes. But a 35ms frame delay and you missed 2 refreshes and can even lose 3 which is ~100ms and rather noticeable.

<comment><USER4> True, but having 30.1FPS doesn't protect you from that phenomenon either. If you maintain 30.1FPS over a long period of time, it means that, yes, you generally get one out of every 2 refreshes.

The problem is that UI interaction events can take place over very short stretches -- say ~200ms. That's only a handful of frames, which reduces the quality of any metric that relies of averages (such as FPS). I don't really care if I get 1 out of every 2 refreshes as measured over 2 or 3 minutes, I care about the first 5 frames after I swipe the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if it's a good place to ask this question but what happend to Firefox for Android tablets? I hasn't been updated for some time. Can developers share any details about that?

<comment><USER7> According to [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/hands-on-firefox- for-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/hands-on-firefox-for-android- may-become-your-favorite-android-browser/) it's still in active development but isn't yet feature-complete.

<comment><USER8> Right.

We currently don't support tablets in this release as development did not finish in time for this '1.0' style release. Fortunately, you can test out Nightly (our developer oriented release channel) which has some tablet- optimized changes available for download at <http://nightly.mozilla.org> [I'm a Mozilla QA Engineer]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's hope they will do the same thing on Mac. Maybe they can get some tips from Camino team.</comment>


Reflections on Programming - <AUTHOR> http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2016/03/reflections-on-programming.html <comment><USER2> The thing that has changed most for me was recently discovering formal specifications and learning to think about how to model systems first before trying to code them. Seeing how wrong people can write _binary search_ was pretty astounding.

It took quite a lot of things to go right for me to finally try it out but I'm glad I took the plunge. Writing specifications in plain human language is a good start but formal methods have shown me how sloppy my thinking is. It forces you to be rigorous!

I've been having to "unlearn" quite a lot but it's starting to turn around and coming back to where I was is going to be amazing.

10 years ago I would have scoffed and said you didn't need math in order to be a good programmer. I couldn't have been more wrong. If I knew then what I do now!

<comment><USER3> Do you have any recommendations on how to write formal specifications?

<comment><USER2> Short answer: try starting with TLA+.

I'm working on this. My colleague, who is mentoring me, is the one who's finishing his PhD in software engineering. It's his guidance that has helped me so I don't have a good answer for how to teach yourself yet. We're working on a project to create specifications for Openstack and are learning a lot by working together on how formal specifications could be taught to hackers and developers with no formal mathematics training, etc.

If you want a brief introduction to the ideas try some of Leslie Lamports talks on TLA+:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqE59VXT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqE59VXT0)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Yp3j_jk8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Yp3j_jk8Q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I think snake_case is more readable than CamelCase...

It might actually _be_ more readable. See Sharif & Maletic (2010) [0]. Unfortunately, like many studies of its kind, it suffers from a tiny sample size and various experimental flaws. However, I still think it's interesting, and I think this kind of research is very important---if only it could draw more funding!

[0]: [http://www.cs.kent.edu/~jmaletic/papers/ICPC2010-CamelCaseUn...](http://www.cs.kent.edu/~jmaletic/papers/ICPC2010-CamelCaseUnderScoreClouds.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Nice article!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really think Hungarian notation makes code far more unreadable than any benefit it provides. You're assuming that the next maintenance developer also knows your flavour of notation. Do them a favour and just give your variables a human readable name that describes what it is.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm amazed that there aren't more discussions about code readability -- the judicious use of whitespace, the choice and conventions for variable naming (including plurals and uppercase vs lowercase to denote semantics other than classes), and the sundry other choices we routinely make. Like language choice (and hungarian notation), coding style has a big impact on code legibility and can greatly clarify the intended semantics.

I'd love to see a range of rigorous experiments that explore which conventions are more comprehensible and maintainable. It's curious that after 30+ years of software development, such practices seem to have been minimally explored, much less clinically assessed. I'm puzzled that we programming pros are satisfied with groupthink (like OOP), apocrapha, and unending religious debates.

So where's the 'engineering' in software engineering?

<comment><USER8> In the last 6 months I have inherited two codebases. What bothers me more than any of this is the unnecessary complexity people have introduced. Complex code for doing very simple stuff. Way more database calls than are needed. Joins in the app. Python written in the style of Java. Loads of loops that could be eliminated with a bit of thought up front and a marginally different design.

Instead everyone gets caught up worrying about small stuff like this. Sure it makes a difference, but in the grander scheme of things the architecture makes a far bigger difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I mostly agree with the thoughts on testing, and agree with the principle that unit test overkill is not constructive.

I don't think 100% control path coverage is hard to achieve though. If done correctly, it should not require an excessive number of tests. If your methods are so convoluted that covering every path is complicated, you probably need to split up your code further.

I name my test methods like this: test<MethodUnderTest><Assumption><Expectation>, e.g:

      void testCalculateWithIncorrectFooIsNotValid()

Writing lots of tests that have ridiculous names is a code smell that I've overdone it on testing. Although this doesn't happen as much with statically typed languages, since the compiler does a lot of the work for you.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the hardest things for me is (or was) consistent styles, because I'd change something with every new project, and several projects down the line, everything was different.

Somehow I was too hard on myself (or should I say perfectionistic?)

But,... I found a cure :) Developing JavaScript (ES6) means I have access to all sort of tools and one of the best out there is Eslint. On top of that, I use AirBnbs rules and no more issues - all I have to do is take someone else's directions and be happy with them. No more styling OCD :)

<comment><USER11> hah -- i found the same result with gofmt, golint, and go vet

<comment><USER12> Agree 100%. JetBrains tooling is fantastic for enforcing consistent style. The little squiggles and red and orange marks compel people to fix their shit, the way spellcheckers do. To the point that I almost want to pay out of my pocket for subscriptions for my coworkers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find that you should but basic tests in place, but you beef up tests where you find bugs.

You have to build tests to debug things, anyway, so you might as well put them in your test suite afterwards.</comment>


Gates Derangement Syndrome - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2019/11/15/gates-derangement-syndrome/ <comment><USER2> I can't speak highly enough of the Netflix documentary on Gates. While I have problems with his business past (linux fans are obligated to say that :)), what he's done with his fortune in eradicating malaria, cleaning up water/sewage, etc. cannot be underscored and celebrated enough. And I daresay that he's done it more effectively and efficiently than any government could have.</comment>


NoSQL, Erlang, and Technology's Effect On Economics and Culture  - <AUTHOR> http://orchestrate.io/blog/2014/03/21/voices-tristan-sloughter-on-erlang-nosql-and-technologys-effect-on-economics-and-culture/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps surprisingly in an interview that's mostly about technical issues, Tristan Sloughter makes some very smart points about labor:

global labor issues: _With high unemployment, and high under-employment, it is said you should feel lucky simply to have a job and to not ask for more._

effect of the two-tier labor market for engineers: _I 've spoken to many developers who think golden jobs exist all over easily to grab by anyone who will work hard enough. This is not the case at all and the programmers in the companies with slides and free lunches must learn this and unite with the real world or risk finding themselves on the wrong side of labor battle in the future._

creation of a 'reserve army': _I think the push for everyone to learn to code shows what the future holds. More and more companies in all fields are having uses for programmers, and the easier it is to replace them with cheaper labor the better for their profits._

anti-labor bias in U.S. culture: _More likely the mass of developers are on the "Right" but not because of libertarian ideology but simply being in the United States._

social context of technology use: _Simply developing a technology doesn 't change the world, but the social battles around it, either directly or indirectly, do._

social progress requires socialism: _There is enough food and housing, it simply isn 't being properly distributed, and this shows that technology itself can not provide a solution._

<comment><USER3> Interesting interview. However, the notion of a "planned economy", even for a left-wing person such as yours truly, echoes of dreadful communist five-year plans. I remember, in Accelerando, the idea of algorithmically assigning resources, but it sounds very hard to do in practice, even though our current economic model is both unfair and headed for disaster in the not-so-long term.

<comment><USER4> Our current economic model is also very planned, just not by and for the right people and reasons.

The five-year plans were to bring a backward feudal country into the 20th century. That isn't to legitimize the abuses any more than it is legitimize the abuses the US and other countries (slavery and other labor abuses) committed to advance themselves to the level they are at.

<comment><USER3> If you mean that special interests influence government policy, I'll be forced to agree with you. However, this is widely different from what is commonly understood as a "planned economy". Nobody sits down and decides of the economic output necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great blog article! Good discussion, but there was one element I would like to see discussed more about these 'store your data as a service' is the hidden vendor lock-in!

I can understand that when you are pushing for a solution, you make the decision with what's at hand. But this can lock you in to long term decisions, for example people who decided to use Google's app engine. The pricing switcharoo is doubly painful because there is literally no option except rewriting everything!

For this reason, I strongly believe that iaas/paas needs to be fully open source. Don't like your provider? Outgrew a provider? Company perished? Fine, run your own.

We have somehow switched from open source and the freedom that entails, to open API, and a complete lack of freedom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Ryan, thanks for the comment. So, Orchestrate actually has an on-demand export tool so there is no lock-in. We backup your data into S3 and send you all your data in JSON format. We take zero lock-in very seriously :) [http://orchestrate.io/blog/2014/03/12/new-feature-data- expor...](http://orchestrate.io/blog/2014/03/12/new-feature-data-export-for- zero-lock-in/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the reply! I feel bad even pointing this stuff out, because I know that startups have to do what they have to do to make the bread as it were.

I am very glad there is a data export tool, I'm sure that will alleviate some people's concern. But the issue is that now someone has a bunch of code written to an API they have no implementation for. That is the nature of the lock in! Vendors discovered in the 90s that open APIs were very amenable to lock in - for example CORBA, SQL and more. It was really hard to port from CORBA implementation to another one, since non-functional requirements dominated at that point, even if at the API/code level it was compatible.

Good luck with your business!

<comment> dizzyd-oio Disclosure - I'm one of the engineering team at OiO. Now, that aside… :)

With the definition of "lock-in" that you're using, it's very difficult to find any service that doesn't cause the user to be "locked in". There is always a cost to migration from one service to another. That cost might be code changes to support a new API or it might be capital expenditures to spin up a cluster of a bunch of different databases to provide the same functionality, or it might be the cost of hiring a specialized team of ops engineers to run said cluster..or all of the above. :)

So, yes, there is a significant tradeoff if you choose to use OiO - you are trading off the cost of building and maintaining a large system of databases for the convenience and speed of development. Even if we open sourced all the code to run the IaaS portion of our system, you'd still have to find the hardware and manpower to run it...and keep it running over the long term. Once you've built up your own expertise, you would pay AGAIN if you chose to migrate to something else.

There is no free lunch. Every action entails choice and consequence, but Orchestrate is committed to ensuring data portability and freedom to our users as much as possible, with the hope that they will love it enough to stay and use for a long time to come.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Get Ready for HTML 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/get-ready-for-html-5/

<comment><USER2> "If you are like most designers, you probably don't write all your markup by hand."

...really?

<comment><USER3> Years ago, I called BS on that too, but the ALA convention of "by hand" means "we're not writing flat files full of markup anymore." And we aren't. We use templates now.

<comment><USER4> The implication in the article was that people were using pre-written code that didn't include 'HTML 5 features', so now they'll have to write the code 'by hand' instead. So at least in this case, the usage is different from what you're calling 'ALA convention'.

<comment><USER3> Er, I'm seeing that phrase the way I described it, and as it was described to me.

"If you are like most designers, you probably don't write all your markup by hand. But until the tools you use catch up to the new elements in (X)HTML 5, you will be doing some markup by hand while you learn."

Mind you, that speaks to templates like WordPress layouts, Django plugins, Rails gems that generate their own markup, Drupal modules. The list goes on.

What did you have in mind?

<comment><USER5> To me, he's talking about wysiwyg tools like Dreamweaver.

<comment><USER3> Okay, that's fine. And yes, he might be. My take on it was the following narrative:

"hey, ALA reader #21223, there's no Drupal modules that use HTML5 features."

 _(hand on cheek)_ "oh crap, I overcommitted!"

"you certainly did. that'll teach you to read oreilly's blog. wait until that module gets written, or write your own."

 _(reinserting finger into nose)_ "phew, now I can return to complacency."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I suggest that you write your markup in XHTML 5..."

Is this really as settled as the author makes it sound? I can't see any particular advantages to living in XMLland.

<comment><USER7> He even mentions the biggest reason not to do so, which is that any typos in XHTML (when served as XML) will result in the yellow-and-red screen of death in Firefox.

The failure case for XML on even a single typo being the total destruction of your web app is unacceptable. This is why at Yahoo, we're pretty firm about using plain HTML, from yahoo.com on down.

Being a purist about markup is great and all, but the robustness of browsers when given accidentally broken markup is one of the great strengths of the web. Serving as XML makes your apps less stable.

<comment><USER3> _a single typo [is] the total destruction of your web app_

Really? I mean, I know why my company's pages don't validate. I'm more than ready to execute a putsch to take care of that problem.

So why doesn't Yahoo, in its vastness of being, have the ability to clear pages through (automatable, standardized and fairly simplistic) validation? Is it a 5-bytes-on-the-wire savings problem like at Google? Or just PEBCAK as is par for the course?

<comment><USER8> PEBKAC, actually.

Though it can be (sort of) argued that regular HTML files that don't validate are just as destructive to user experience as XHTML ones. If your file doesn't validate, the browser has to discard it's "pure" parsing mode and start again in quirks mode, which can really slow it down.

I don't have the figures to hand, but there have been some neat studies done that show that changing a website so that it validates appreciably increased conversions.

<comment><USER9> That's not true.

The browser doesn't validate the content and neither knows nor cares if it would. It does something called _doctype sniffing_ to choose whether it goes into one of a few different modes based entirely on the declaration (or lack of the same) at the top of the document.

 _"However, it is important to realize that the Quirks mode vs. Standards mode is predominantly about CSS layout and parsing—not HTML parsing. Some people misleadingly refer to the Standards mode as "strict parsing mode", which is misunderstood to imply that browsers enforced HTML syntax rules and that a browser could be used to assess the correctness of markup. This is not the case. The browsers do tag soup fix-ups even when the Standards mode layout is in effect. (In 2000 before Netscape 6 was released, Mozilla actually had parser modes that enforced HTML syntax rules. These modes were incompatible with existing Web content and were abandoned.)"_

Quoted from (and _far_ more details) here: <http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Nestor – Hosted Hubot for Slack - <AUTHOR> https://www.asknestor.me <comment><USER2> Does it follow the Three Laws?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there pricing information anywhere? I couldn't find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> there isn't a public pricing page yet (i need to get to it), but once you sign up, you can find it.

There's a free plan (limited to 5 powers that you can add to nestor). After that, plans start at 25$ monthly

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The tight-coupling with Heroku is a huge drawback.

<comment><AUTHOR> erm it's not coupled with Heroku at all? Where does it say that?

<comment><USER4> Well, that's the impression the homepage creates. Where is my custom code hosted?

<comment><AUTHOR> ah hmm, will see how that perception can be changed.

Your custom code is hosted on AWS in sandboxed environments that are only visible your team. But it has nothing to do with Heroku.

<comment><USER5> _> Your custom code is hosted on AWS in sandboxed environments that are only visible your team._

As an infrastructural developer who has an ear to the ground with regards to security concerns, I immediately don't trust unsubstantiated descriptions of "sandboxed environments", especially not ones with regard to tools that may become core to my business practices. Can you fully describe how you are isolating these systems?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's AWS Lambda in the background with proper IAM permissions set up so that powers you add to your team are only accessible from within your team. Happy to answer more questions or please email me at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Rich Chinese Use Visa Fixers to Move to the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-14/how-rich-chinese-use-visa-fixers-to-move-to-the-u-s <comment><USER2> The Chinese are innocent. It's the US that complicates their lives - [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/abacus/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/abacus/)</comment>


England to win World Cup, says JPM quant model - <AUTHOR> http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/05/18/233991/england-to-win-world-cup-says-jpm-quant-model/

<comment><USER2> Readers from non-soccer nations: every 4 years there's a soccer world cup. A few months before every soccer world cup, UK media is abuzz with predictions that, this time, England will really go all the way.

In the world cup itself, the English barely manages to graduate the group stage when, bruised and battered, it meets a Latin American or stronger European team that promptly wipes the floor with them in the next round.

A band of heros only few weeks ago, they then return to England to have the UK tabloids wipe the floor with them once again.

That's a soccer tradition many of us look forward to seeing again next month, in South Africa.

<comment><USER3> England has great players, possibly the strongest side altogether. However, they never manage to play together as a team, unlike a lot of other countries.

This result is good news, now I don't have to watch any of the world cup. Rather watch sports where cheating is not such an integral part of the game, and where the officiating body actually tried to discourage it rather than encourage. (from a bitter aussie)

<comment><USER4> Last World Cup England's "great players" like Frank Lampard and Stevie Gerrard never turned up. Their only consistently good players in that tournament were a guy who used to ply his trade in Germany (Owen Hargreaves) and Wayne Rooney of course (yes I'm a Man Utd. fan). Manchester United bought Hargreaves as a result of that showing.

The media has hyped a lot of England's "stars" into the stratosphere so that a lot of people believe the rubbish that's published about them. Every time the World Cup rolls around all England have to do is show up and they'll win it. And when they don't it's the end of the world. Just cos you invented the sport, doesn't mean you have a divine right to win it! In Europe, I would admire the likes of Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands a lot more than England as they have a lot of fine, natural footballers (not to mention they generally play better as a unit) and I'd suspect one or two of the should reach the semis at least.

ps. I hope France get annihilated in the group stages. Yes, I'm Irish. Those rotten cheaters should never have been permitted to get on a plane to South Africa. Even if you're French you shouldn't support your own country. C'mon Mexico!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My money is on Nate Silver's prediction of Brazil winning, with Spain in 2nd and England 3rd.

Full rankings (updated periodically): [http://soccernet.espn.go.com/spi/rankings/_/view/worldcup?cc...](http://soccernet.espn.go.com/spi/rankings/_/view/worldcup?cc=5901&ver=us)

Methodology: [http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world- cup/story/_/id/4447078/ce...](http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world- cup/story/_/id/4447078/ce/us/guide-espn-spi-ratings?cc=5901&ver=us)

<comment><USER6> I think rankings in general are pretty useless overall.

Every single World Cup in the past has turned up surprises in the weirdest kind of way.

My opinion is Spain 1st, Brazil 2nd, Ivory Coast 3rd

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every world cup we see predictions like that. Every world cup these predictions are wrong.

The beautiful thing about football (and maybe the reason it is not that popular in the US) is that stats don't matter nearly as much as they do in baseball, american football and basketball.

<comment><USER8> Just curious: what evidence is there that the stats matter less?

There are certainly fewer stats altogether and the stats that exist are more team-oriented stats, but I still don't really buy your conclusion.

For a counterpoint, baseball is pretty much the king of sports in terms of statistics and it's still pretty damn hard to predict a world series winner at the end of the regular season, much less at the beginning of the season.

<comment><USER9> Soccer should be much harder to quantify with stats because the game is basically a set of two continuous events.

As a contrast, baseball is easier to quantify with stats because it's a series of discrete events.

In most sports statistical analysis, you try and drill down to a discrete event. In baseball, it's something like at-bat or on-base. In basketball, it's per-possession (though this isn't enough). But in soccer, what can you do? Per-possession is difficult because it overlooks the 21 other players on the field. Everything is team-oriented.

<comment><USER10> Baseball is even _better_ than that. It's a bunch of discrete events that are built out of many, many nigh-identical repetitions of even _smaller_ discrete events.

The other point to make is that baseball controls the combinatorial explosion by either having the players act in relative isolation (when fielders handle the ball) or by grouping them in tiny groups of two or three (pitcher, batter, and to some extent the catcher), one of whom is generally a constant in any given game (the catcher), and one of whom only changes a few times per game (the pitcher). This is a fairly restricted set of possible matchups, and these are replayed over and over to get better stats. That's why baseball is the statistician's dream.

Similarly, in basketball there are fairly few players on the floor, and they tend to match up with each other fairly predictably. And while American football puts 22 players on the field, most of them never touch the ball, and most of the remaining players do the same sort of job over and over in the same relatively small part of the field, interacting with the same small subset of players on the other team.

But soccer is all over the place. ;)

<comment><USER4> In a top-class soccer match, you can't take your eyes off the action or you will miss something crucial. You could probably doze off for 20 minutes and miss little in a baseball game. Each to their own.

Just because you don't understand soccer isn't reason alone to describe it as "all over the place". It's a very exciting team sport (when played properly) and full of formations and tactics that coaches constantly try to innovate with:

The classic 4-4-2 formation

Beckenbauer's/Dutch football's 4-3-3

Jose Murinho's 4-5-1...Google em!

Also:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_(football)#Common_mod...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_\(football\)#Common_modern_formations)

<comment><USER10> You appear to have misinterpreted my sentence as some sort of insult. There's nothing wrong with being "all over the place"! No two minutes of soccer are exactly alike, but that is scarcely a bad thing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mortgage-backed securities to stay profitable, says Merill-Lynch quant model.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's not nearly enough data to make decent conclusions about national teams. They don't play often enough, and when they do the rosters are never the same. To make a decent prediction you have to use the final roster (submitted to FIFA) and factor in each player's condition.

</comment><comment><USER13> There was actually an analysis done a while back of the outcomes of every game in the last world-cup that showed statistically just how unpredictable soccer games are. The punchline is that soccer is very unpredictable, especially given the bracket setup of the World Cup.

I can't seem to track down the article now, but I sort of remember the logic...

If Team A beats Team B, then Team B beats Team C, then Team C beats Team A, then you've demonstrated at least a 33% probability of a fluke outcome in the soccer bracket. This is highly simplified of course, but repeat this analysis over a much larger sample size, and you get some pretty convincing results (and I really wish I could find that paper now).

</comment><comment><USER14> A fascinating book to read as the World Cup nears:

[http://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-Australia-Turkey-Iraq- Are...](http://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-Australia-Turkey-Iraq-Are- Destined/dp/1568584253)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Black swans" occur quite often in sports, so statistical modeling only goes so far. One torn ACL is all it takes and it can change models around.

</comment><comment><USER16> These guys predict Brazil vs Serbia in the final, w/ Brazil winning. Based on GDP, population, & other demographics.

[http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/infographical- mor...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/infographical-morsels-7/)</comment>