Digital Psychology - <AUTHOR> https://digitalpsychology.io <comment><USER2> "A free library of psychological principles and examples for inspiration to enhance the customer experience and connect with your users."

Translation: use pop psychology to manipulate your customers into spending money and giving you personal information.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is literally hacking of the mind. These people should be thrown in jail like blackhat hackers.

<comment><USER4> logic applied abstractly leads to maths, maths applied to our surroundings leads to physics, physics applied to our ideas leads to engineering. now let's repeat the process for psychology and enjoy our new engineering discipline, manipulation for everyone. unsurprising. at some point it becomes easier to hack human responses than improve the products. we used to call this scamming. now it's business 101. please join, like and subscribe.

sorry for the cynical take, can't help it once a day

<comment><USER5> Reading this comment is an experiment in self-hacking. I'm the only human I know who even considers giving informed consent like the previous statement, much less currently does it. People probably don't because it's true for everything in the world; we're all programming each other and ourselves all the time.

It's time to mainstream discussions of what white-/grey-hat human hacking looks like.

For me, it looks like changing my name to Peacefully Revoking Consent To Be Governed For You And For All, establishing a party & Super PAC for dismantling the United States of America, and running for president as the first openly genderfluid, pansexual, and polyamorous candidate on a platform of recognizing as individual nations all persons who want to be recognized as one, dynamically redesigning governance at the point of interaction with any person/nation (when they want to revoke consent to be governed), creating continuous elections and removing all voting restrictions (especially based on age or felonies), and promising to veto any legislation not applying category theory to prove the law meets all needs while denying none.

I hope the campaign helps to usher in a new era of people more intentionally hacking themselves and others for the creation of sustainable cultures. And for people to start learning how to protect against dark patterns.

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind, anyone who seriously took this idea and ran with it...

Was swiftly put to death.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. I'm inviting BIPOC to come forward and run with the platform. I'll drop out of they ask. Until then, I'm working on an "In case of death/martyrdom" set of instructions.

<comment><USER6> You previous comment tickled the hell out of me, btw.

I've been saying, for at least a decade:

I'll move to whichever country has the first _poor transgendered pregnant black wrongly incarcerated, death-row female Scottish heroin addict meth dealer pedophile priest insect from another planet_ as its leader.

Until then, I can't take politics seriously as it's run my normal people _right across the board, all the way up and down_.

<comment><USER5> My partner and I have a 20-month old. I promote psychedelic therapy (and all other forms of self-hacking). I'm a priest/abbottess of a design-your-own- religion religion I've defined based on neuroscience such that we're all practicing it, supposedly have Scottish heritage somewhere back in my blood (but am mostly Cajun French). I'm recovering from many addictions. I've developed the platform, in part, by envisioning a future I want to live in, identifying what I'd be like there, and adopting aspects of that being, so I'm from the future. I was raised in toxic cultures that led to drunken hookups and violating sexual boundaries in ways that don't seem to be illegal and if I get any kind of attention I'm prepared for my own #MeToo moment. And I'm promoting a new currency you create by painting $1 bills black, asking for a need to be met, documenting the story of the ask & gift on the bill, and giving it to the person who met your needs...I call it the "nuff" and I think it may be a felony to make one.

So the time for you to take politics seriously (which I consider to the old way of relating to politics) may be upon you soon...and I hope you'll join me in this big political practical (as in useful) joke.

I'm Peacefully Revoking Consent To Be Governed For You And For All, I'm programming my mind by asking WWJD (What would Jokratesus [Joker + Socrates + Jesus] do?), and I approve this message.

%?

(That's an abstract emoticon that has at least 3 "faces" depending on the angle viewed from)

I propose we keep tickling each other like this and see what other ideas emerge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another page discussing the concepts without touching on the fact the old studies that showed them were deeply flawed and not reproduced...

<comment><USER8> I think this is should be said, and people should never take these as dogmas, or "the wires to be pulled to manipulate people".

That's not how it works, and that's not how WE work.

It was one of the things when I switched from CS to Marketing degree, was that there's nothing set in stone with regards to psychology, and that's why you have people that follow some "thinkers" and why there's no human psychology manual to program us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if/how AI personal agents would be able to help in this regard, trained to spot when attention is being manipulated in a certain way and inform you of that. Like the sunk cost fallacy, which is also in that list, it can offer you a warning like: _" You are entering a step by step procedure, this can trick your mind into finalizing the purchase even if you are not very committed yet."_ \- or something like: _" Prices and quantities in this list seem to be manipulated in a way that tricks your mind into buying more than you actually need."_ and similar like these.

<comment><USER6> > _I wonder if /how AI personal agents would be able to help in this regard, > trained to spot when attention is being manipulated_

Yeah that gave me a chuckle.

Vastly more likely outcome will be any more advanced technology we create will be used to identify that we could be manipulated _more_.

Given that is all we have thus far done with any advanced technology we have created, it seems reasonable that we will continue on this same path.

Unless we are acted upon by some significant force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks like this site got digi tech'd.

I was reading a nice refresher on anchoring, the page refreshed and it was gone.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/anchoring-and- adjustmen...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/anchoring-and- adjustment.asp)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an explosion of red flags that should be viewed with extreme skepticism.</comment>


Ask HN: Kanban – which tools with success? - <AUTHOR>

We are using Jira for development planning (an unfortunately not current version - no upgrade plan in sight) and need something better to manage the herd of development priorities. In my past, a Kanban like approach (LeanKit) worked well, both to slot activities, and and highlight the effects of context switching.<p>What are HN'ers using in this area and have found success with? I would prefer to use a premise hosted system, but it seems like they are few and far between, with the majority being hosted. <comment><USER2> I don't really follow any dogmatic Agile[0] practices such as Scrum or Kanban, but for the last two or so years I've exclusively used Trello[1]. It is lightweight enough that it isn't in my way. I more or less treat it as an online persisted post-it note wall.

0 - [http://rubiquity.com/2014/03/12/agile-is-dead-angry- develope...](http://rubiquity.com/2014/03/12/agile-is-dead-angry- developer.html)

1 - [https://trello.com/](https://trello.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For my team Pivotal [[http://www.pivotaltracker.com/](http://www.pivotaltracker.com/)] was the solution. After first iteration 'he' know how much we can do in another (fixed period). Our responsibility is set difficult level to each task. They have tags which help us collect issues and epics. I'm not connected with them different than payment for service. I'm just happy user.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been developing a tool called Catalist that has Kanban-like functionality built right into all our checklists since each item has states of to do, doing, and done. If you need more states (i.e. more steps beyond 3 like Trello), we offer pipelines that do just that. We believe having both these systems in our product allows our customers to speak a common language when it comes to priorities. We would definitely be open to allowing you to host Catalist directly on premises. Happy to give a demo, all you need to do is sign up and I'll contact you.

Catalist [[http://www.catalist.me](http://www.catalist.me)]

</comment><comment><USER5> We use JIRA at my current company with all the agile plugins to run both scrum and kanban projects.

To be honest, I've still found the most successful tools to be a big wall/window/whiteboard with physical cards. I'd still go down this route if my team wasn't globally distributed as it's just easier to work planning backlogs, sprints as well as doing daily standups.

<comment><USER6> We at day5labs.com are believers of physical kanban board as well so much that we've made product: [http://bit.ly/1uPOtlE](http://bit.ly/1uPOtlE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We use our own product FeatureMap [[https://www.featuremap.co](https://www.featuremap.co)] to define the scope and track the progress of, well, FeatureMap. :) It's more oriented towards Story Mapping than towards Kanban but you certainly can manage Scrum/Kanban boards with it.</comment>


Raymond Chen patches MS Money executable to fix bug - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/11/13/10367904.aspx <comment><USER2> Reading this makes me miss the early days of learning to program. I would reverse engineer games that I enjoyed and write hacks for them. I spent hours and hours every night staring at ASM and network data. Man, how I'd love to somehow be able to get paid to reverse engineer games all days.

Edited to include funny sample. It was literally a hack to make the chat client better. How nerdy was/am I? Hah: [https://github.com/ryancole/broodwar- chat-enhancements/blob/...](https://github.com/ryancole/broodwar-chat- enhancements/blob/master/asm.cpp)

<comment><USER3> Interested in joining a fast growing venture + industry titan(s) backed Information Security startup that is changing cyber security and information privacy the world over?

Although there may not be games to reverse engineer (where I got my start 14 years ago as well) there are plenty of other equally fun applications of this skill set. :)

I'm the founder and currently on a plane but if you email adam (a t) socialfortress com we will get back promptly.

<comment><USER4> FYI - it looks like some of your wufoo scripts on the Enterprise signup page are loading insecurely. Wufoo has https endpoints as well, so it should be a quick fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone unfamiliar with Mr. Chen might enjoy Joel's article. The first time I read it the bits from/about Chen definitely left a lasting impression:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html>

<comment><USER6> From the same article, although not related to this subject, I found this gem:

"Here are a few examples of things you can't really do well in a web application:

1\. Create a fast drawing program

2\. Build a real-time spell checker with wavy red underlines

3\. Warn users that they are going to lose their work if they hit the close box of the browser

4\. Update a small part of the display based on a change that the user makes without a full roundtrip to the server

5\. Create a fast keyboard-driven interface that doesn't require the mouse

6\. Let people continue working when they are not connected to the Internet"

It makes me smile that all of these are now incredibly trivial to implement in web apps :-)

<comment><USER7> How do you do #4 and #6?

<comment><USER8> For #4, I assume he means something like "click-to-expand" which now can be done entirely client-side in Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Genuinely hard to express how seeing this made me feel -- particularly on a day of coincidental turmoil for Windows & MS. (I was a developer & dev lead on MS Money long ago, and clearly remember dragging him over for extended nighttime in-person kd stack-unwinding sessions.) He was so generous to our efforts to make that product a good one, and his electric, unstoppably curious, just-get-it-right combination of deep skill, energy, & attention to customers still totally inspires.

Be as much like him as possible. Necktie optional.

<comment><USER10> I have to say, MS Money might be the only product from MS that I genuinely _loved_. I was a big fan of MS for years, but in the mid-2000's the security stuff on XP got to be too much. After leaving Windows for the Mac in 2005, Money was the only product I actually missed (and still miss).

Your team did a seriously great job. I had never used Quicken before switching to the Mac. When I did, I couldn't believe what a steaming pile of user experience pain it was compared to Money. There were so many little details that were right in Money and head-slappingly wrong in Quicken. So often my experience with a lot of other MS products has been that if you wander the little dark corners, edge cases are lurking to bite you. I just never got that feeling when using Money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MS Money is a great product for simple home use. THough it seems with some new features the program went a little cock-eyed and some of the nice simple tasks became harder, but it was still a great tool (i have no money these days, so no longer have a need to use it)..

For all interested, here is the link to download the latest version for free. [http://www.microsoft.com/en- au/download/details.aspx?id=2073...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- au/download/details.aspx?id=20738)

</comment><comment><USER12> This pretty much makes me want to dust off my Treo 650 and go back to the Palm OS, because no smartphone since has been as productivity enabling.

</comment><comment><USER13> this should be forwarded to all the douches that call themselves hackers ... this is what hacking is. P.S. I am nowhere near this level but again I don't call myself a hacker just a coder.

</comment><comment><USER14> I still use MSMoney. For my relatively simple home finances, its absolutely perfect.

<comment><USER15> Likewise. It does the job, has a nice interface, and still works with direct connect to my bank.

Though the Quicken that just came out with mobile app support is tempting the hell out of me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone who works at MSFT explain why Raymond Chen wouldn't have access to the source of MS Money? Code doesn't compile on modern compilers? Written in an obscure language? They've lost the code? Company is so siloed that no one from another dept is allowed to see the code?

<comment><USER17> In general not everyone has access to all code. Microsoft has over 90k employees not counting contractors. To get access to various projects/depts source depots you have to request access. Some access is auto-approved, for instance I am auto approved for devdiv and windows source access. Others require someone approving your access request. For instance, a few months back I was seeing a really, really annoying bug in Lync, I wanted to troubleshoot it since the repro was sporadic and I wanted to include an analysis in the bug I filed. It was the I found even getting access to non-stripped Office pdbs requires special permission, I applied for it and was denied :( Sometimes the bureaucracy baffles me.

<comment><USER18> MS Money was end of life'd at the end of January 2011(<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2118008> ).

It's possible that MS has archived the source off of their development repositories, since nobody should be doing anything with that code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For the extra challenge put the code in the data fed to the program, causing a stack overflow and make it run the code that makes everything nice again!</comment>


Logged out - <AUTHOR> https://patwalls.com/logged-out <comment><USER2> Youtube's recommendation algorithm is one of the wonders of the modern world. I discovered so many incredible videos that I would never have searched for and that no one would have recommended to me, thanks to it.

<comment><USER3> Nice anecdote. YouTube constantly recommends _me_ stuff I have 0 interest in.

<comment><USER4> Did you give it any useful information? I mean for example, I am subscribed to a bunch of channels about music theory, and Youtube will put other videos about music theory and analysis in my feed. They are highly relevant and at least somewhat popular, so usually reasonable quality. Sometimes it will start recommending videos from a channel that is not so good, and you can tell it to never show you that channel again.

If you only watch random Youtube videos linked from other sites with no particular theme, or generic news and political videos, or don't subscribe to any channels, I can imagine the recommendations would be pretty useless. But the algorithm does seem pretty good at recommending things related to your interests if those are clear from what you watch and subscribe to. It's probably the only recommendation engine I find useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point is less about the content being useful/interesting and more about being mindful of our information diet.

How many videos do you need to watch about music theory? Does it ever feel like the same content but regurgitated in different ways? Do you watch this to genuinely learn? Or is it more enjoyment/infotainment? (honest questions)

I don't study music theory, but this is how I feel about productivity/self- help/business videos, which dominate my feed. Although these videos were life changing at one point, I'm not sure how much more value I'm getting by continuing to watch these anymore. When I get to the end of these videos, nowadays, I just feel a bit 'bleh'.

It feels nice to find new, refreshing content that is completely outside of what the youtube algo would give me, and sometimes that happens by talking to friends (esp in different industries), reading books, old blog posts, etc. I want to stay curious and proactive in finding discovering new things and hobbies and interests.

<comment><USER4> I appreciate the general point of being careful about one's information diet. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking what you're consuming is bettering you, when it's really just entertainment (I consider HN to be a good example of this!)

Regarding Youtube and music education, I feel like it's a pretty healthy stream of content.

>Does it ever feel like the same content but regurgitated in different ways?

Learning an instrument is such a challenging and broad topic, there's no shortage of things to learn. One thing I like about Youtube is that the better content can surface for everyone to access. Finding a good teacher in real life can be tricky, but with Youtube I can watch 10 different people's takes on a topic and see which explanation clicks for me.

>Do you watch this to genuinely learn? Or is it more enjoyment/infotainment?

It's both. Staying motivated, interested and enthusiastic is just as important as the learning itself. Often watching a good performance or explanation of some musical idea is what makes me want to pick up my guitar in the first place. Of course there's a balance to be found - just watching videos about things you would do if you weren't so busy watching videos isn't much use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a curated list of subreddits I follow on reddit without any of the large default meme-spam ones. Without that reddit is basically useless to me as I don't need even more meme-spam in my life. Same with twitter, I use it to follow some engineers and artists while avoiding the mainstream accounts that have no relevance to me. I honestly want to know what these people are up so as it's usually either beautiful or interesting or insightful.

<comment><USER6> I use Multireddits for that. They let you view a custom feed by concatenating subreddit names in the URL. No need for login or subscriptions.

E.g. [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux+privacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux+privacy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty easy to do with firefox, just use the multi account containers and the temporary containers extension. During normal browsing you use temporary containers, which keeps you logged out and avoids anonymous session tracking. If you need to log in all you need to do is right click the tab and reopen in your dedicated "logged in" container

<comment><USER8> Can't you just use a private window?

<comment> noman-land Private windows are all linked to each other. Different private windows are not in different private sessions. They all share the same private session, so It's not really the same.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, I didn't know that. Seems clear from the language in the initial view of the private window, but I hadn't really paid attention before.

This isn't how I think private windows should work. They should be fully isolated (tabs within the same private window could share a session, though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because I find video recommendations useful, because I want to upvote good content on the internet just like I do here on HN and because I actually have a nice timeline with curated content. The points of the article are rather weak to me, specially considering you are supposed to have good security for your accounts so even if you decide to actively log out yourself the next time you'd like to interact with any of these networks you will at least have to go through a manual login, 2FA using your phone and an authenticator app etc, it's a bummer so convenience wins there. If this is a problem then, I believe convincing people to never save login passwords in their browsers is more compelling than suggesting to log out. That said, if I could log in with Face ID in like 2 seconds everywhere I'd probably stay logged out until I wanted to interact in SOME networks.

<comment><USER10> With a MacBook Air and iPhone it's not too much hassle.

I use Touch ID on the MacBook Air to fill in the username and password, and then I open the 2FA app on my iPhone and tap the code to copy it. The clipboard is synchronised between the MacBook Air and the iPhone in their out- of-box configuration, so I can immediately paste the 2FA code on the MacBook Air by just pressing ⌘+V.

Thanks to this, I log out a lot of the time.

However, to make it even more friction-less I am also going to make a simple little 2FA app myself for the MacBook Air, where I just glue together a couple of libraries and make it more effortless than having to touch the phone at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Why do we need to be constantly logged in to YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, and > Twitter?...These apps all work fine anonymously

Instagram most certainly does not work without logging in. I don't have an account, and it only lets you see at max 1 or 2 posts before prompting (and mandating) a login. Also, I don't know how Twitter is useful without being logged in - you're just seeing the "trending", very little of which is statistically likely to be interesting to you.

</comment><comment><USER12> Even if you log out don't they still know who you are based on IP or other fingerprints to serve relevant content? Anecdotally I've been on online shopping sites that will email me my cart to ask if I want to check out even when I'm not logged in, so it seems unlikely that you'll be any more anonymous by signing out.

<comment><USER7> IP: use commercial VPN so you blend in with thousands of other users

fingerprinting: use firefox and turn on resistfingerprinting

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having a browsable & searchable history of "every youtube video ever watched on any device" is something pretty valuable to me.

<comment><USER7> Just use your local browsing history?

<comment><USER14> That doesn't cover the 'on any device' requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Today being logged out might equate to choosing the "default" view of the world (as far as the internet is concerned) while the AI creates a view for every "logged in" person that distorts the world to fit their biases almost completely

</comment><comment><USER16> I am subscribed to a lot of small subreddit I would not see content from if I wasn't logged in.

I follow people on Twitter.

But most importantly, I _really_ started using youtube about a year ago. I replaced my TV watching at 90% (everything except movies at night). Not only I am subscribed to enough channels that there are at least 2-3 new videos per day I would want to watch, the recommendations algorithm is very good and I can literally go on Youtube multiple times a day and be recommended new videos that I like and introduce me to new channels I will subscribe to.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reddit is a pointless stream of memes if you are not logged in to see your subscribed subreddits.

</comment><comment><USER18> YouTube still recommends content when you're logged out. In fact, I used YouTube for years logged out, and when I started having to log in because I got YouTube Premium, I was unhappy to find all my recommendations reset! I'm starting over from the generic recommendations (which are quite frankly a little terrifying). I wish there was a way to move the recommendation data between accounts.

<comment><USER19> I wish Reddit would implement a recommendation engine like YouTube. I don't want to ever log into Reddit and I just treat it as my funny pages, but every single day without fail I am subjected to all sorts of abhorrent, deviant content that is essentially forced onto their "popular" timeline despite the fact that it's not really popular.

Many times when you read the comments on these types of posts, if you sort by controversial, you can see people asking "Why is this on the front page?" or, just by counting the number of deleted comments you can see how unpopular that content really is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> But what is the benefit of logging out? It's not like these websites can't track you and your interests anyway.

</comment><comment><USER21> Question for anyone working on ranking at Youtube:

Recommendation quality got way worse ~March of this year, presumably due to capacity restrictions after a surge in post-shutdown usage. Anecdotally, the quality has not recovered and is still worse than pre-COVID. Is my experience widespread? What's going on?

I ask as somebody working on a similar product, where capacity caused recommendation quality degradation in March/April but recovered soon after.

<comment><USER22> Maybe you just run out of interesting content to watch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Golly.

I almost never log in to any of those services. Am I missing out? Yikes. Self doubt starts, gnawing at me....

<comment><USER24> Presuming you "browse" the service (e.g. look at whatever equivalent it has to a front page), you're seeing only the "mainstream" of its content, without any "niche" content.

For many of these services, most of the reason that people even use/recommend them is that they allow each person to conveniently "browse" within the set of long-tail niches that interest them. Reddit, for one, is certainly not popular _because_ of its mainstream/default subreddits. It's popular in spite of them.

On the other hand, presuming you do no "browsing" of the service, but just get linked to specific content on the service from elsewhere, you're pretty much getting the full experience either way. (I think one difference is that some services won't show you all the comments unless you log in; and sometimes the comments themselves are what was interesting-enough to link to.)

Also, some particular services (e.g. YouTube) track you and build a viewer profile of you even if you never create an account there, and so "browsing" them will still result in niche content if that's what you've previously visited there. But most services don't do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like apple solution for that, logging using a randomized apple account ID per service

</comment><comment><USER26> My tweetdeck layout is by far the most effective way to use twitter. My youtube subscription page is my first port of call. Reddit.... its just highly vexing if you aren't logged in.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's invidio.us to avoid YouTube as much as possible.

Also, strongly disagrees with

      >> While logged in, my YouTube recommended feed is doing a great job of serving me interesting content - but is that a good thing?

I see one related item and then a barrage of the worst of humanity.</comment>


How I make $70,000/month by building an add-on? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/yet-another-mail-merge <comment><USER2> Why do the reviews look like bot spam?

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yet-another- mail-m...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yet-another-mail- merge/mgmgmhkohaenhokbdnlpcljckbhpbmef)

<comment><USER3> They are our real users. But some of them copy pasted comments, when we asked to leave a review :P</comment></comment>


Coldfusion is making a huge comeback in the London Tech-Scene - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@louisror/coldfusion-is-making-a-huge-comeback-in-the-london-tech-scene-1-4-2015-60a646a6860d

<comment><USER2> Coldfusion was actually pretty good, alot better than many so called modern stacks. In fact the whole react + flux takes alot of pointers from coldfusion by putting data access in the view layer

</comment><comment><USER3> April Fools Day

</comment><comment><USER4> Ahaha, you got me!</comment>


CSS tips and tricks #10 – Auto-hidding navigation in CSS tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://alexsblog.org/2014/10/14/css-tips-and-tricks-10-auto-hidding-navigation-in-css-tutorial/

<comment><USER2> the + attribute is not supported everywhere so please for the love of god stop giving out your bad in fact terrible tutorials and polluting the internet with bad code</comment>


MetaLab's Andrew Wilkinson: "I'm a porn profiteer" - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/14/metalab-updates-ballpark-to-help-small-businesses-but-dont-call-it-a-revolution/

<comment><USER2> The more interesting part of this article is the part about "Design Capital".

> Calling the initiative "design capital," MetaLab will help startups with > development, design, strategy and development in exchange for equity.

I particularly like their list of rules in the sidebar of their Design Capital page: <http://metalabdesign.com/design-capital></comment>


Why aren't we doing the math? - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2012/10/why-arent-we-doing-the-maths/ <comment><USER2> Cached text-only version (apparently his server can't handle the traffic): [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:timharf...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:timharford.com/2012/10/why- arent-we-doing-the-maths/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

Key point: _"It seems that doctors may need a good deal of help interpreting the evidence they are likely to be exposed to on clinical effectiveness, while epidemiologists and statisticians need to think hard about how they present their discoveries."_ This is based on the observation that improving "five- year survival rates" may not actually mean the screening is helpful, it may just mean that you're learning about an untreatable disease 6 years before it kills you instead of 4 years before it kills you, but doctors don't seem to understand this.

<comment><USER3> (Also at: [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/118169b6-1d74-11e2-869b-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/118169b6-1d74-11e2-869b-00144feabdc0.html))

I have a thesis that the kind of thinking required to survive med school is diametrically opposed to the kind of thinking required to do statistics well. It's the "rote pattern matching" versus "mathetic language fluency" issue that's at the heart of things like Papert's Constructivist learning theory[1] and it really causes me to have little surprise at an article like this. Doctors are (usually) viciously smart people who have to make a wide array of difficult decisions daily, but to operate at that level requires an intuition around a lot of cached knowledge, something I feel to be basically the opposite of statistical thought.

I don't think this is unique, either. It's the heart of Fisher's program to provide statistical tests as tools to decision-makers[2]. It's an undoubted success in providing general defense against coincidences to a wide audience, but it casts the deductive process needed in a pale light.

I think a principle component of the computer revolution is to provide more people with better insight into mathetic thought. Papert focuses on combinatorial examples in children in Mindstorms[3] but I think the next level is understand information theory, distributions, and correlation on an intuitive level. MCMC sampling went an incredible way to helping me to understand these ideas and probabilistic programming languages are a great step toward making these ideas more available to the common public, but we also need great visualization (something far removed from today's often lazy "data viz").

Ideally, things like means and variances will be concepts that are stronger than just parameters of the normal distribution---which I feel is about as far as a good student in a typical college curriculum statistics class in a science or engineering major can go---but instead be tightly connected to using distributions accurately when thinking of complex systems of many interacting parts and using concentration inequalities to guide intuition.

I think the biggest driver of the recent popularization of Bayesian statistics is that distributions as a mode of thought is something quite natural to the human brain, but also something rather unrefined. People can roughly understand uncertainty about an outcome, but have a harder time with conjunctions or risk. How can we build tools that will teach people greater refinement of these intuitions?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_\(learning_theory\)) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_Methods_for_Researc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_Methods_for_Research_Workers) [3] <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465046746>

<comment><USER4> Impossible. The whole lesson of statistics is that computing probabilities is an intricate process. It will never be intuitive. I learn to throw a ball at a target on intuition, but I will never learn to launch a rocket at Mars on intution.

At best, it can become intuitive to ask the right skeptical questions when being shown a claim.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting viewpoint that I'd love to discuss more. I disagree, obviously, but want to know why you feel so strongly that statistical thought is intuitively impossible?

I feel like it's closely related to combinatorial thought. To again steal an example from Papert, he often talks about asking children to count the numbers of possible pairs of colors of marbles given to them. With some formal training it's easy to visualize and pare down to the right information, and it's also easy to visualize the process. Given a variety of colored marbles, I imagine you could easily estimate the magnitude of colored pairs possible. Children cannot and must learn to think that way at a certain point.

In the same way, conceptualizing uncertain events in the larger space of things that could happen and becoming familiar with the extents and limitations of the casual models we all use is a way of thinking that takes a great deal of effort (today) to come to have, but feels intuitive once you do have it. I believe that there's nothing inherently impossible about teaching it if the appropriate tools are available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you read Ben goldacre and then Tim Harford you take the view the doctors are acting rationally.

Pharm companies withold negative trials, bribe doctors to use their latest expensive treatments, lie, cheat and steal.

So a new treatment you have never heard of and are asked to evaluate, in- between appointments, will get shoved into the mental bin of "all new treatments look good till the real world results start coming in" let's keep doing the things I know do "only" kill 2/1000.

In fact things are so bad that one MP in England asking, yes just asking, the government what they intend to do to stop pharma companies lying, is front page news. <http://www.drsarah.org.uk/sarahs-blog/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a resident in Internal Medicine and actually it is not surprising that a lot physicians tested got this wrong. The good news is that this topic, also known as "lead time bias", is actually being taught pretty regularly now (in at least my experience). So when I read this I knew exactly what the catch was going to be with screening "A". So there is hope.

</comment><comment><USER7> Expecting a doctor to know statistics and evaluate information like this is like expecting a master computer hacker to perform surgery on you.

<comment><USER8> Except that doctors actually _do_ have to evaluate information like this all the time, and how they evaluate it determines what type of treatment they choose.

<comment><USER9> Same goes for diagnosis, which is basically finding the maximum likelihood culprit, given the evidence (symptoms, patient history, age, gender).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the more asinine articles I've read lately. It draws a false distinction between "saving lives" and "N-year survival rates", and then lambasts doctors for not understanding this fanciful distinction.

It's a false distinction because we all eventually die. If we look at 100-year survival rates for test B, everyone's dead, so the survival rate is 0. So there is no such thing as "saving lives". There _only are_ N-year survival rates.

Generally speaking, it takes a lot more than random musings of a random journalist to up-end an incredibly wide-spread metric of effectiveness of diagnostics and treatments...

<comment><USER11> Tim Harford is hardly a 'random journalist'; he's a well respected economic journalist, and a fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford (which is notable within the university for its focus on social sciences).

Besides which, it doesn't draw a false distinction between the two, at all - you've misread the article if you think that it does. The point it makes is that if a new screen improves five year survival rates it is very possible that it _has not actually extended anyone's life_ , and that this is problematic because many doctors are unable to realise this (or to appreciate how significant the claims of other treatments are).

In fact, your claim that there's no such thing as "saving lives" is a true case of asininity. Of course we die eventually - but some treatments can _extend_ life, and that's why we use them.

Moreover, this is actually a very important topic in the UK at the moment (note that this article was published in the Financial Times), because current NHS reforms are putting much more commissioning power in the hands of consortiums of GPs ('family doctors' in the US parlance) - so the ability of doctors to evaluate the claims of efficacy made for different treatments and screens is very important (and by the evidence of the research he cites, somewhat lacking). It's hardly lambasting - it is now important that GPs can understand these subtleties, whether they're happy about being in this situation or not.</comment></comment>


Python is exposed as main webdevelopment tool as it deserves - <AUTHOR>

Did anyone notice that lately Python got a very strong stack of solutions that can be used in web development?
Frameworks and tools like Pylons, repoze.bfg, werkzeug, django reached maturity that allows to do virtually anything without any roadblocks. There is set of good template systems, awesome ORM - sqlalchemy + good standard lib and a pypi for all modules you can ever want. I'm a bit surprised that python is not mentioned often here as a solution to many problems (web)applications face in general - it's wonderfully all purpose.
Is it just because people are more used to ruby/php or python folks don't do good enough job in advertising their solutions? <comment><USER2> Include tornado framework in consideration if you are starting out. I just love it - lightweight yet powerful. I just love how helpful Ben Darnell and folks who are maintaining the framework.

The latest YC fav kid, hipmunk.com is built using tornado.

<comment><USER3> Seconded. Its as minimal as web.py to get started but has all the templating, realtime events, and more waiting when you need them. Docs are great and sample code is shipped with it so you know it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have any tangible metrics to prove this wide acclaim/adoption of Python relative to other languages? To me this screams of tunnel-vision; whatever language specific media and news-outlets you follow would impact your perception of the larger IT landscape.

"Allows to do virtually anything", "there is a set of good .." and "awesome .." are not facts or measurable quantities. I would like to see the underlying assumptions proven first, otherwise you're begging the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well this has nothing to do with media or anything else. Before I decided to start my own company I was looking for a job. Moved to few places, and at least in my country I had a pretty decent overview of what is used in where. And the fact is that vast majority was php,rails,net.

"Allows to do virtually anything" {SNAP} are not facts or measurable quantities" Indeed, they are not - but the amount of programs in your favourite linux distribution based on python is measurable :] I assumed that I don't have to prove my assumptions because it's common knowledge in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not much into web development, but my impression is that there's nothing very much innovative in the Python's tools. It seems a lot of the path was already laid by rails and friends, and they did so well that Pythonist implemented similar ideas. That is not to say they are bad frameworks, just that catching up is not a good reason to drop what you know and move to Python.

On the other hand, there are people who don't like to be on the cutting edge. That is true. But then those same people will probably be more comfortable with PHP: it's been around a lot longer (and they probably already know it), and there's a lot more support and web tools around.

So Python for web development neither attracts those on the cutting edge nor the conservative people. I imagine that people who are in the middle may like it, but it's not something you can advertise much about.

Of course I can be completely off track: as I said I am not much into web development.

(incidentally: I am sad Ruby doesn't seem to have much adoption in the scientific community which seem to be mostly behind Python... sigh... ^_^)

<comment><USER6> I believe twisted was somewhat innovative in its space a few years ago, if you are willing to put it in the web development category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm PHP all the way usually and I get a LOT of flak for that, but it works out fine for me and, given the exodus to Ruby/Python over the past few years, I'm picking up a load of work that people are finally realising they can't hand off to that schoolkid for $50. It would take a lot more than comparable or merely better tools for me to make the jump.

If you want a bad analogy (and I KNOW you do!), I want a VHS->DVD jump rather than DVD->Blu ray else it's just not worth my while.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the biggest issue facing Python as a web development tool is deployment. Among the people I've spoken with, they like Python and the frameworks but often fall back to PHP because the deployment is so simple (possibly to a fault). Doesn't stop me from using it, but i would gather it's a significant factor for a lot of newcomers.

<comment><USER9> This couldn't be more true. If you haven't already, you should check out Ian Bicking's Silver Lining. Its not an immediate solution, but its certainly an exciting development in this space for Python.

<http://cloudsilverlining.org/>

<comment><USER10> I haven't played with Silver Lining yet due to its infancy, but I personally considered the problem solved with virtualenv and fabric, though my deployments aren't exactly complicated anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A strong stack doesn't mean quality. Django for example lacks on quality and maturity. There are great tools like cucumber, rspec and rails who delivery a dynamic and productive environment, they are ages ahead python based solutions.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious why you think Django lacks quality and maturity. Your specific examples seem to be about testing, but Django emphasizes unit tests quite a bit. If you're looking for BDD specifically, there is lettuce (<http://lettuce.it>), freshen (<http://github.com/rlisagor/freshen>), and pyccuracy (<http://wiki.github.com/heynemann/pyccuracy/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> Unit testing... I think you missed what the real problem with django is about, or just your projects don't demand to use that kind of features etc.

How about something simple like pretending there we have django 1.0 (not 1.2 which is quite new), and let us try to connect to 3 databases at once with django's ORM?

Oh, we are screwed it can't do that. Ok, then lets try to swap out our ORM to sqlalchemy.... crap all nice plugins broke, admin panel doesn't work etc. This is why REALLY django lack quality and maturity - it's components are not versatile enough - and in my book this is a very serious issue because if my requirements are diffrent from what django makers assumed then I'm doomed. This is why people mention other (in my opinion superior, but not that easy to use), solutions to the problem. My point is - majority of people fail to notice such serious flaws like unability to use more than 1DB at once (yes i know it got finally fixed after few years). I'd rather use one tool that should cover my needs than be forced to switch them because they don't fit the needs of project.

<comment><USER10> Wow, stack the deck much?

If your application required connection to three databases concurrently, then you almost certainly wouldn't have chosen Django 1.0 as your application development platform.

If connecting to multiple databases is a new requirement, then you're likely going to have to change much of your code / environment anyway, no matter whether or not you're using Django 1.0, 1.2, or Rails.

Also, for what it's worth, the OP doesn't mention just Django, it mentions Pylons, Repoze, etc. Django isn't the only Python tool in the arsenal.

Besides that, if you swap out your database abstraction layer in almost any language that I know of, you're going to have bigger problems than 'finding new plug-ins'. I can't think of a single ORM that is replaceable to another without significant retooling above the model layer. Most notably though, since you cite it as an example, losing the admin panel can hardly be considered as too big a deal, since the last time I looked at Rails, Symfony or Cake, none of them even offered that as a feature.

As for your last sentence: _I'd rather use one tool that should cover my needs than be forced to switch them because they don't fit the needs of project._

Can I safely assume that you're building everything in Java then? I mean, honestly, we pick the right tool for the job, don't we? We shouldn't be building things in Django because it's all we know, just as we shouldn't be building things in Ruby/Rails for that reason. Take a look at the challenges and figure out what makes sense.

If you don't know wha the challenges are before you start developing (they're often surprising), then just start iterating until you figure out what they are. In this case, whatever framework or development platform lets you iterate the most quickly is the winner, whatever language it happens to be written in.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about you read that again, I think you misunderstood my point - or I was uncler, since english is not my native language. And i'm the OP in case you didn't notice that;-)

"I'm curious why you think Django lacks quality and maturity." - This is what he wrote, so i gave him main reason why django is not the tool for me.

Which are perfectly valid in my opinion. And no - with sqlalchemys design, it DOES NOT require you to change your code if you just need to use few models with other databases - the change was about 20 lines of code in my case. Which i take would be not possible at all with django 1.0. You are right about "right tool for the job", for the kind of work I do, glue frameworks like pylons or bfg are a lot better choice - it's really way harder to corner me with some requirement that this stack can't handle.

And as for challenges, like I said - business conditions changed and I had to connect to 3 db's at once, no problems at all - if one chooses his tools very carefully in advance that can save a lot of headache later. Like I said, sorry for confusing you.

You can't predict everything that client could need/forgot to mention, so the more versatile your toolbox is the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> S P E E D</comment>


Ask HN: Which Is Better for You and Why, Amazon Echo Dot or Google Home Mini? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to get some last minute discount gifts for friennds. One is a couple and the other a single lady. I am wondering which one would be better for either.<p>What has been your experience with either of these products and what sort of personalities do either suit best? <comment><USER2> I don't have either but I wouldn't be discouraged by the typical HN complaints. These devices are extremely popular and will finally get us to Voice as a User Interface:

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user- inte...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user-interface-is- almost-here/)

For those who truly hate these corporate solutions, donating to Mozilla will help facilitate an open source solution:

[https://voice.mozilla.org](https://voice.mozilla.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've only used the Amazon Echo and the dot. I have the normal echo and the dot. The dot is not amazing. It can't hear me over the external speaker and doesn't catch what I am saying as much as the normal echo. I'm still happy I got it though because I have that in one room and the normal echo in my main room. The normal echo is great.

My main use cases are: "Alexa, ..."

Calculations: "What is 64.5 * 350?"

Factual questions: "What is the population of Ethiopia?", "What is 1 bitcoin in euro?"

Weather: "What's the weather tomorrow?", "Will it rain tomorrow?"

Reminders: "Remind me in 15 minutes about pizza"

Alarms: "Set alarm for 7.30am"

Current time: "What time is it?", "What time is it in New York?"

Music: "Play spotify"

News: "What's the news?" (Sky News skill set as the default)

I only have one smart plug so far and no smart lights but I plan on getting a good setup. "Turn on the living room lights", "Turn off all the lights"

</comment><comment><USER4> This is like asking: "Which is better for you, crack or smack?" Both are terrible devices whose primary purpose is to invade upon privacy so that they can sell your preferences to advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, i'd guess the personality they serve best is the type who desires submission to our corporate overlords.</comment>


Airbnb + Hipmunk? - <AUTHOR>

If a partnership ever made sense - it would be between these two companies.<p>Just used both to book our Europe/SF trip. So simple and painless. <comment><USER2> Someone should try living only off Y Combinator companies, like that guy who's living only off Groupons.

<comment><AUTHOR> I need to rent a car in SF. Any YC options?

<comment><USER3> getaround</comment></comment></comment>


Welcome Garry and Aaron - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-garry-and-aaron <comment><USER2> Garry has always been one of my favorite YC founders, and not only because he bought me a large quantity of gin shortly after Posterous got funded. Aaron made a huge impact on my life through his gutsy blog post on RSI [1]. Congratulations, guys, and thanks for being awesome.

[1] [http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi- pain.htm...](http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> What software does YC write for itself again? I've heard a bit about the software for collecting and analyzing applications to YC but I'd like to hear more. Is the HN software mostly written by pg and volunteers or do other hackers at YC do a significant amount of it? Is there anything else?

<comment><AUTHOR> HN is mostly written by me and Rtm, but Garry and Aaron have already started building new things. Garry made a sort of private Facebook for founders in the current batch, and Aaron has started in on the problem of doing statistical analysis of YC applications and has already made some interesting discoveries.

<comment><USER4> PG or Aaron: Could you de-identify YC applications data and make it publicly available for others to analyze?

[EDIT:] Or maybe you could make a prediction challenge using the YC application data? You could host the challenge on <http://www.kaggle.com/> or <http://tunedit.org>

Note to self: There is actually a very sparse body of literature that talks about data driven approach to VC, e.g., [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4621...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4621115), this one seems interesting (predicting exits): <http://www.springerlink.com/content/w024ku34221u3258/>

<comment><USER5> I would assume that it would be just about impossible to de-identify YC applications, as they are all fairly unique and there is generally a lot of information online about each startup. So if an app had a story about a previous product and then that story shows up again in their blog or when they are doing publicity it makes it pretty easy.

<comment><USER3> They could release it like this: pick a small number of fields like number of founders and age, and release each of them as separate arrays. Ex: {"founders": [3, 2, 2, ...], "ages": [31, 22, 27, ...]} (the size of the founders array and the ages array would be different because the first is per- startup and the second is per-founder) Just to get an idea of how vague de- identified data might be. And I'm not even sure that would be de-identified enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats! I knew Aaron at Google, and he was one of the smartest engineers around.

He also built one of the coolest pieces of software I've ever seen (Robocraft). It was a Starcraft clone where users had to code up AIs for each of the units (and then those AIs battle each other). MIT uses it as the foundation for a programming competition that they run every January. I think it was done by him and one other person.

<comment><USER7> (<https://www.battlecode.org/info/>)

([http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-370-robocraft-programming-competition-january-iap-2005/projects/))

Looks amazing. I'd be interested to see what HNers could do with this.

<comment><USER8> Trying to make a competitive AI for Battlecode is uncannily similar to trying to create a successful startup (and much, much less intimidating.) Aaron deserves a lot of credit for starting it (the other founder is David Greenspan, who also did Etherpad with Aaron.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the role of a venture partner at YC? For instance, are all partners present at interviews? Do different people do different stuff? Or does everyone kind of do a bit of everything?

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone does everything, though some people have specialties (e.g. Garry for design).

<comment><USER10> On a scale of 10, how much do you rate the default design of posterous?

I personally, (and many others) think tumblr has a far better design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sincere question: Will they be advising YC on how to invest the existing funds, or will they be joining YC and adding some of their money as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> They're not investing any money. They'll advise us how to invest existing funds in the sense that like all of us they read applications and participate in interviews. But the main thing they (and we) do is advise people we've funded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats, guys! I had an opportunity to meet Garry and Aaron on a few occasions, and I was blown away with how smart, driven, genuine, and kind they are. Of course real experience building successful products helps too.

Being able to grab office hours with these guys is a massive boost to YC companies. Keep on rockin'!

</comment><comment><USER13> Garry's an extremely helpful design and product guy, as well as a genuinely nice individual. YC is super lucky to have his full attention.

</comment><comment><USER14> Garry and Aaron are fantastic advisors and mentors. I'm so glad they're going to continue to work on and grow YC.

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats Garry and Aaron!! You guys were super helpful during our S11 batch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great to hear it! Garry and Aaron were fantastic advisors during our batch.

Looking forward to seeing what new tech they'll build.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have worked with Aaron a bunch on Etherpad and he is a top bloke! Glad he joined YC

</comment><comment><USER18> Both truly awesome! A fantastic addition to YC!

</comment><comment><USER19> Garry and Aaron are awesome and great additions to YC!

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats Garry and Aaron!

</comment><comment><USER21> Garry and Aaron are both awesome, excellent move. Congrats guys.

</comment><comment><USER22> congratulations Garry and Aaron!! YC gets stronger each year!

</comment><comment><USER23> Congrats Aaron and Garry

</comment><comment><USER24> Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER25> Congrats!!!</comment>


Camera Flipping at Justin.TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/camera-flipping-at-justin.tv <comment><USER2> Absolutely nothing interesting about webcams I agree. I want to see justin.tv turn into youtube live. The greatest thing they've developed is a live portable broadcasting for the masses. Actually they should probably keep justin.tv and just startup a live event broadcasting site because the focus wouldnt be around single 24/7 channels but lots of different intermittent broadcasts.

I think the difference between live and prerecorded seems small but is really important. I guess if they did make the switch to broadcast style they'd have make some hardware changes to the sorts of cameras used because it'd mostly need to be tripod stabilized zoom lens stuff.

<comment><USER3> We don't supply the hardware; we don't run any very many of the streams on our site at all. So really, if people want to use our site for doing things with tripods and zoom lenses, that's up to them, not us.

<comment><USER2> Oh ok, my bad, that was just the impression I got when you guys first launched. While webcams are pretty standard these days I'm not sure many people are familiar with EVDO. Also I don't think the site is really set up for pre-scheduled events which was really my point. Of course thats not a problem if you have no intention of doing a live event site.

<comment><USER3> You're right we don't have a central place to view upcoming events yet. That will be changing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like some automated rating of video feeds. Write some software to rate how 'interesting' a feed is currently. Start with the easy - is much changing? is there any audio? Then move onto harder things - how many people are viewable in the video.

Then maybe you could display the feeds in order of current 'interestingness'.

Otherwise trawling through them gets a bit tedious.

<comment><USER3> Simple video activity isn't enough to establish interestingness in our experience. We'd like to screen "dead" live streams out of lists, but I think there's an easier, social, solution to that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't have named the service after one of the founders.

The company? Sure, call it "Justin Enterprises". Works as well as "Ford Motor". But it doesn't work when you name a product after a person. Ask Edsel.

</comment><comment><USER6> hmm...you guys are probably more ethical than I am...but why not license this to the pr0n industry? Then, it wouldn't be boring at all...

I can just see the spam: now live porn, on demand, 200+ amatuer channels! Free preview(9.95/mo subscription)!

<comment><USER7> It already exists (probably since webcams appeared).

<comment><USER3> You're right about that - and we have no desire to enter the porn industry in any case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about equipping stars with the camera? Can you just go today and rent a justin cam for a day easily? There should be enough events in the world to find something interesting to broadcast all the time.</comment>


Transactions: myths, surprises and opportunities [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZjhNTM8XU8 <comment><USER2> This talk is super relevant to anybody writing a traditional monolithic web app. Eventually bugs creep in and you learn that your initial assumptions about transactions are basically all wrong. I really enjoyed that the talk extended to micro-services -- it gave a lot of insight into what you take for granted in your monolithic architecture when you start breaking things down.

One tiny improvement I think could benefit the talk would be if the speaker commented about the usage of "SELECT FOR UPDATE" and maybe gap-locking.</comment>


Nest Announces Developer API Program - <AUTHOR> http://nest.com/blog/2013/09/25/calling-all-developers/

<comment><USER2> I just want csv output of my usage, when is that coming?

Also integration with ifttt would be nice.</comment>


Ask HN: Was Elizabeth Holmes just a face controlled by people in the background? - <AUTHOR> The more I read about Elizabeth Holmes, the more implausible the whole thing seems.
She drops out of Stanford to start a blood-testing start-up. Plot-twist, she has no background in blood or testing.
Her company makes various blood testing prototypes. Plot-twist, they're actually glue-guns bought off Amazon.
Her company gets a contract from US's largest pharmacy chain to do blood-tests. Plot-twist, her company doesn't use its own machines to do this, but uses off-the-shelf machines that are already standard.
Her team files over 200 patents. Plot-twist, she's a co-inventor in 98% of them.
There are a lot of recordings of her talking. Plot-twist, they all consist of word-salad talking points, about using technology to change the world, without anything substantive.
She dressed like Steve Jobs, lowered her voice artificially to a baritone to sound more "deep", and used cool-sounding branding like "Edison", "nanotainer", "Theranos", "Balto". Plot-twist, her head-scientist committed suicide.
When she was 10, she wrote in a school year book that she wanted to become a billionaire. Plot-twist, she became one.
I have 2 hypotheses:
1) She was a face (a front) for a group of shadowy fraudsters (VC's?), who almost managed to pull of one of the biggest heists in history.
2) This is very common. Any "media hyped" startup out there fronted by an attractive founder with an implausible origin story is suspect. <comment><USER2> 'When she was 10, she wrote in a school year book that she wanted to become a billionaire. Plot-twist, she became one.'

That is not a plot twist, that is the plot.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't make sense. Plot twist: Silicon Valley is an interesting place.</comment>


How to Greet the Dalai Lama - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/428727270/how-to-greet-the-dalai-lama <comment><AUTHOR> This reminded me of the _If Nerds Can Learn Linux, Why Can't They Learn Not To Interrupt People?_ story that went around yesterday (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169875>)</comment>


Ask HN: How would I get started with this project? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone!
So I am in a dev bootcamp and I am in my last few weeks which means final project time.
I have always been a big gamer so my idea was to build a mini-game where you simulate a hacker. Think the movie Hackers type hacker.
I am thinking a simplified front end with a few buttons as actions you can do. I think it's best to keep it in the style of a mobile game meaning stamina type counter and time management.
I am reaching out on Reddit to see if anyone can help me in getting started and going in the right direction.
I haven't done a full scale project yet we have just dealt with small projects.
Can anyone help me in putting together my next steps and what type of planning I need to do?
For reference I know the following in a junior level capacity: > JavaScript > jQuery > HTML/CSS (I was thinking of using picnic.css) > Ruby > Ruby on Rails
My idea was to start it in Ruby only and make it a command line game but I think that is a bit counter-productive since I want to use all my skills so I can push my skillset.
Any help is appreciated!! <comment><USER2> You could do a web game using js and html5 canvas, and use some libraries to help make it work on mobile. If you wanted to include your ruby skills, develop a simple API and send requests back to the server (high scores, simple saved games through serializing state, # of games played, etc).

If you need help on the web side of things, I'm happy to offer some pointers and the occasional code review. Email me: jtfairbank+hn /at/ gmail /dot/ com</comment>


Ask HN: What are the most helpful resources you've found for being a CTO/VPE? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://moderncto.io/](https://moderncto.io/) \- the book is pretty good</comment>


Command Line Interface for Fantasy Premier League - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/janerikcarlsen/fpl-cli <comment><USER2> This is great!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Best-Ever Algorithm Found for Huge Streams of Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/best-ever-algorithm-found-for-huge-streams-of-data-20171024/ <comment><USER2> Clickbait title. Should be something like: efficiently find the most frequent items in a stream of data.

TL;DR: split your items by chunck of 8 bits. Store for each chunck A the number of time you saw it before the chunck B followed by C. Then you keep track of only 2^24 counters instead of one counter by possible item. Then using some graph algorithm (the interesting part, which is not explained in the article) you can use those weighted edges to reconstruct the most frequent items with a high confidence.

<comment><USER3> The original paper ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01357](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01357)) from 2016 goes in to more detail.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the link. Interesting, they used the graph resampling and r-tree approaches already in use for certain kinds of machine learning. (Esp. approximate eigenvalue based classifiers)

Very well written too. Unfortunately the approach described only works for dense countable data that is linearly separable (eta spectral clusters, in fact even stronger assumption) - which still makes it quite useful as a database index.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please change the title to something more descriptive and less click-baity.

Also, the original paper is worth a read: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01357](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01357)

<comment><USER6> Upvoted your comment, but I worry this trend will only get stronger if we endorse and reinforce such behaviour. Why provide eyeballs, via the HackerNews front page?

The OP is truly disgusting clickbait and crossed the line for me.

I flagged it for this reason.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Netflix for audiobooks? - <AUTHOR>

I own only a few movies since there are only a handful I'm even interested in seeing again. I usually watch movies and TV shows (once!) on various streaming services, including iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu.
Where are similarly priced streaming services for audio books? Here are the closest ones I've found after a brief search, which use the old 'mail me a disc' model, along with their comparatively astronomical prices:
http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com/rentals ($18/month)
http://www.booksfree.com/available_plans.shtml ($24/month)
Audible.com and Audiobooks.com are selling books for $15/month (or at least that's how Audible markets their 'credit' system). I'm definitely going to check out what's available at the local library! <comment><USER2> I love audio books and would certainly use a Netflix for audiobooks, but I have found that the best deal in town is Audible's credit system.

I buy the Platinum plan at the beginning of each year and run out around October / November, then re-buy.

Strongly recommend it.

<comment><USER3> Me too, I've been an Audible subscriber since 2002.

Lately I've been grabbing a couple of the Great Courses (or Modern Scholar) series a month. Between 15-22 hours of classes per audiobook at $11 a piece is pretty good deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off topic, but still related: have you tried the mac os speech tool? I find the default voice, Alex, to be quite good. So good that I have completely stopped reading news stores and blog posts: I just let the computer read things out to me (unless there is code blocks).</comment>


The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet - <AUTHOR> http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-the-teen-hackers-who-transformed-th-1770977586 <comment><USER2> I found this quote pretty poignant: "When I went to Santa Monica to meet Bill, I was pretty sure I'd hear a story about how the FBI had ruined his life. But I left believing that it hadn't. The world ruined Bill's life—a world that couldn't quite find a place for his particular talents, faults, and petty mistakes." Makes you a little more sympathetic to homeless people, doesn't it? I mean, I could have easily ended up in his position with just little less luck or different choices. And I think it's totally true that there are some people that just don't fit in to our current social/economic system, and that really isn't their fault.</comment>


Incremental DOM from Google - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/incremental-dom

<comment><USER2> It's unclear how it handles event listening, but even so, they should fork React and replace the rendering target with their library, then use that to benchmark. It'd just be for the sake of benchmarking (e.g. not something they should maintain or encourage people to use).

It's one thing to say "this is better than virtual DOM". It's another thing to show it with numbers across common browsers.</comment>


Gitlab 13.2 Released with Planning Iterations and Load Performance Testing - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2020/07/22/gitlab-13-2-released/ <comment><USER2> Just want to take a second to point out the highlight post I added to the story about the release yesterday, for anyone who missed it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23917493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23917493)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Via [https://www.golem.de/news/versionsverwaltung- gitlab-13-2-mit...](https://www.golem.de/news/versionsverwaltung- gitlab-13-2-mit-optimierungen-fuer-scrum-und-jira-2007-149846.html)</comment>


Eight hard truths about online media - <AUTHOR> http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/11/eight-hard-truths-about-online-media/

<comment><USER2> Responses:

"All the good names are taken."

Then explain why digg.com has 3500 _times_ as much traffic as dig.com. All the single-real-word names are taken, but who says those are the good ones?

"Once you do find a name and launch a site, good luck getting the press to cover you."

Who expects the press to cover their website?

"Offline advertising won't help you with exposure."

Who, other than major companies like Microsoft, even tries to get offline advertisement?

"If you are an established media company, your offline brand probably won't translate into a large, ready-made online audience."

The offline brands _that have international acclaim_ DO translate into large, ready-made online audiences. nytimes.com is ranked 113 in the world.

"Stealing the competition's audience doesn't work online."

The reason they give for why this _doesn't_ work is why it _does_ work. They're right, product is the way to build an audience... online. In the real world, Budweiser sells more than microbreweries, even though their beer is infinitely better. Without the internet, I would never have heard of Ayinger beer (small brewery near Munich in Germany), but now it's one of my favorites. The internet helps the little guy and the new guy.

"If, in spite of all of these obstacles, you are successful in building an audience, here's your reward: low monetization rates."

Sure, because online you compute rates per view. No one is crazy enough to try to compute Walmart's profit per person who looked at a Walmart store or, better example, the New York Times profit per person who looked at an issue sitting on a newstand. If you did (if you could), I bet the rates would be quite similar.</comment>


A story about magic - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html

<comment><USER2> Isn't this one of the first things you usually read when you're 13 and you're just discovering real computing? Not trying to tear it down, but how many readers here haven't seen it? Admittedly it doesn't get posted as often as the story of Mel.</comment>


A Less Risky Path to Entrepreneurship in Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.almostpolished.com/blog/2013/7/2/a-less-riskier-path-to-entrepreneurship-in-software-development <comment><USER2> It usually proceeds like this:

Employee -> Contractor -> Your own agency and contractors -> Your own agency and employees -> Entrepreneurial ventures.

For example Joel Spolsky and others went through this. Sometimes you can skip steps if you have the connections beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I did the same thing, also unwittingly, with my company. In hindsight, starting my company was completely risk-less. I was keeping my day job, learning a ton, building my personal brand, and had a full salary from revenue when I was ready to transition.

The next company I run, I'll probably be a bit more antsy to get full time since I feel I've also become less risk-averse now that my company is doing well. I've learned a ton on how to make money from SaaS products, and I'm gaining confidence.

</comment><comment><USER4> Although not completely related to the article - the headline triggered a reaction in me:

Why do we need a less risky approach to entrepreneurship in software development? I believe that of all start-up opportunities, software development is already the least risky one. Why? Almost zero unvestment required. Absolutely flexible working ours. All value creation is through your mind work. No external milestones and so on and so on...

The fact that Software development has become synonymous with entrepreneurship is almost ridiculous. Just compare the risks you are taking with that of your mom-and-pop shop around the corner (or the one that was there 30 years ago)...

<comment><USER5> While there's practically zero capital risk, there is a lot of career risk involved if you fail. Many employers avoid failed entrepreneurs like the plague.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. When reviewing resumes, I'm always impressed when I see candidates starting their own company. It shows ambition, and the will to wear multiple hats... something that startups are always looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate to be _that_ guy but...if your justification/explanation for taking or not taking risk involves more words than numbers, you don't understand risk. References to popular science books scores double points. You're merely tricking yourself into thinking that you do so you can feel better when it goes to shit.

You must, must, must, do a) the research, and b) the math. Everything else is fluff.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hate taking risks, but wanted entrepreneurship badly, I have kids/family, do not care about fast growth. My less risky path was: \- Save 12 months of personal expenses/ regular salary before starting. Anyone in software can do it. \- nothing to lose if it fails after 12 months, just a nice line on my resume, lots of lessons learned, I can monetize later. \- my main goal was to keep a 12 months money window ahead of me, everything I bring in helps me extend that window for another month, hopefully every month. \- It helped me to plan long term, not to be in a rush, not to be afraid quoting higher prices, not feeling a gun on my head, sleep at night, stay married, see my kids. \- Going strong after 5 years. \- I think fewer people should raise money, give up equity, and more should start less risky businesses in software. \- Go outside the Valley, try to disconnect from the "startup" myth, and embrace the small business one. Be happy, and rich.

</comment><comment><USER9> Entrepreneurship is the least risky thing to do, when you have done so much in your field from the bottom up that it becomes your best option. At that point at a salaried job you'd risk earning little, learning less, being a subject to a bad manager, wasting too much productive time in bureaucracy, or sinking to irrelevance.

I started building for the web at 13, had a freelance business for 5years, paid for college by building fundraising videos for another 4, did non-profit for a year part time, UX consulting for two, front-end architecture at large scale sites for two more, product management with a lot of financial and metrics success in a senior role for a big brand for the last two years, and spent some time at a VC (by age 28). At that point nothing else made sense but building the start-up I've always wanted to use (for about $1000 in legal and server fees beyond my personal time).

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea, but it was very simple: choose the right point on the spectrum of startup vs. skill building. This could have been expanded on much better.

1) Startups vs. skill building aren't always independent. This could be discussed.

2) Examples/stories of points on the spectrum should be discussed.

3) The pros and cons of different points on the spectrum should have been discussed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused what the point of this is - is it that if your startup fails you have something to fall back on with a 'real' job? Makes it sound you can become a developer and magically your startup has much more of a chance to become spectacular - which is of course bunk.

</comment><comment><USER12> How does codepen make money? Was it generating revenue in the first 5 months before the leap. I really want to do a similar move. I would really like to know more about this strategy

<comment><USER13> PRO accounts:

[http://codepen.io/pro](http://codepen.io/pro)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice counterweight to that mythologized cowboism propagated by blogosphere.

</comment><comment><USER15> OT: Is it just me, or are Squarespace sites flaking out on Chrome today?

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the things that people need to understand is that there are various kinds of failure. Some ruin your life; others are mild annoyances whose negative consequences are paid back by what is learned. It's really important to know the difference before forming an opinion on failure (i.e. "fail fast") that is supposed to apply to everyone in all circumstances. What are the effects of the failure?

Losing a job is not a big deal, usually. Layoffs and business failures happen. Closing your venture because it didn't work out doesn't always ruin your life. But if you took out $80,000 in credit card loans, or took on personal liability to get a bank loan, or had a vindictive investor who decided to ruin your reputation, welcome to Fuckedville.

There are a lot of young people out there right now who are far too willing to risk their careers, reputations, resumes, and savings opportunities on terrible prospects and in business with some really unethical people. The fact is that if you don't gain a certain credibility quickly, you're going to be screwed. If you don't look out for your career and really think through what happens in the case of failure, you could very easily end up at a bad end. I've lost close to $200,000 on bad startups, but at least I _always_ made sure that I kept learning and building skills, no matter what. Now that I'm older, having kept my skills sharp is starting to pay major dividends.

We have these obscenely privileged people, who are so well-connected as to be tied in with what's essentially a private welfare system, who go out there and preach about how failure is no big deal and everyone should risk everything all the time, knowing that they're Stanford grads with partners at six different VC firms in their cell phones. That's not realistic; and people who don't have the social resources to take extreme risks (i.e. the 99%) shouldn't be decried as cowards because they do less risky things like, you know, take regular jobs.

<comment><USER17> What kind of "ruin your life" failure do you think people on HN are at risk of undertaking? It strikes me that such levels of failure are very rare, at least among the set who even knows about HN in the first place.

<comment><USER16> A lot of these startups are pretty ugly when they let people go. Banks and hedge funds and large companies lay people off, but they're honest about it. They say, "we had to cut jobs", and they usually pay a decent severance. Many of these startups make those look like performance-based firings in order to save face. Needless to say, that practice creates a lot of ugly behavior on all sides, and you don't want that stuff to follow you.

A "for cause" firing (which invariably comes with no severance, and can have reputation effects, because for those words to come up on a reference check is devastating) can really fuck up your career. Also, there are a lot of venture capitalists out there who have no problem breaking with common decency and doing a "back channel" reference check.

That's one risk. There's more variance in startups, so the good outcomes are a lot better, but the bad outcomes are really nasty. I know people who've had ex-employers throw frivolous lawsuits at them, just to be vindictive, years after the fact. That kind of nonsense doesn't happen nearly as much in big companies.

More relevantly, a lot of these startups don't do much for a person's career, as there's a lot of junk work to go around that you won't learn much from. If you get into your 30s and 40s and haven't worked on a couple of serious, meaty projects-- and a lot of people haven't-- then you start facing the age discrimination issues. I think those are probably mild for people with legitimate work experience, but the people who did lots of low-yield grunt work "because it was needed" and without appreciation are just screwed. You have to manage your career, and if the work available isn't benefitting your long-term employability, move after 12 months. But... that gets me to another risk: the job-hopper stigma. It's pretty typical in the VC-funded startup world to have more than one job per year, but it looks _really bad_ if you want to go to back to traditional companies, and you might not slide back in on the best terms.

Unfortunately, the reality in careerist America is that age matters a lot, so you have a lot less time than you think you've got. It shouldn't matter, because what really matters is how much time one has left, and a lot of us will live into our 90s (or later, if the most optimistic people are correct) and be sharp until the end. However, the sad truth is that age does matter, and you have to manage your career pretty aggressively to avoid looking like an underachiever amid the harsh age-grading of hyper-optimistic tech companies.

<comment><USER18> Your post is so correct, that I'm running short of words of praise for it.

The problem isn't just in the US. I'm from India, and the situation you describe matches the very situation we have here.

One thing that really pisses me off totally, is the industry seems to classify people into two separate categories. First, the kind of people who become managers quickly are automatically considered good. Its almost like if you are coding after 5 years into the industry, you are 'stuck'. That's how its described.

Second, is the kind of people you describe as in having worked for technically meaty projects before say 30. Unfortunately such work is exceedingly rare to find. I would be glad if you can write an essay on how to be finding such work. It would help me and nearly everyone else a lot.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Damore, Gudeman Plaint Against Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Google-Class-Action-Lawsuit#fullscreen <comment><USER2> On one hand, it's his right and I do think Google was wrong to terminate his employment (his memo was misguided, but IMO not malicious and talking honestly about what was wrong with it would've done much more good than "punishing the offender"). And he's still young - the same factors that justified (in my eyes) his actions only make it more likely that he'd do something like this.

On the other hand - I'm sad that he didn't take the moral upper ground. Yes Google was wrong to terminate him, but this is a textbook case where trying to get "justice" only makes it worse for everyone. Including for "other people like you". You can't hope to fix the world this way - the most he can achieve is some monetary compensation (at the cost of some really bad karma). And that compensation is very questionable (whereas the bad karma is not).</comment>


Inverting back the inversion of control (2003) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/PDF/www.pdf <comment><USER3> Am I misunderstanding, or would this require the server to hold state for every client that has been delivered a form, but not yet received a form submission?

That seems like a bad architecture for a web app.

A long time ago I wrote web apps in WebObjects (originally NeXT, then Apple). While it didn't use continuations, it _did_ rely on maintaining server state for every client, in order to try to make writing a web app transparently as much like writing a 'native' (we didn't call them native then) app as possible. That aspect of architecture -- persistent client-specific state on the server meant to be tracking what the client was doing -- was a fundamental mismatch for the web, and led to lots of complexity and problems. While it seems like it can/should be transparent/automatic (and that was the intent of the WebObjects archiecture), it ends up an abstraction with significant leaks, just because it's such a poor match for the mostly stateless web client-server architecture.

<comment><USER4> That was my first take too. There was a lot of awful middleware in the 1993-2007 or so period that were heavy in back-end state. Something close to the continuation style is binding a process or thread to the session id. For instance, the library management system Voyager had a telnet interface that they hacked a front end onto.

One trouble with that kind of system is each session requires a lot of memory so you have to implement a timeout and no matter how long you make the timeout, users are going to be mad if they got through 15 pages of forms, had to wait on hold on the phone to get the information for page 16 and then they lost it. People expect to be able to walk away from Microsoft Word on Friday and still be able to use it on Monday, etc.

Continuations are much more memory efficient but still have challenges. I am having a lot of fun with python asyncio, but you can't pickle tasks out of the box so you can't migrate tasks between servers on a cluster, reload them after a crash, flush them out of memory if memory is tight, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not immediately obvious what this has to do with Inversion of Control.

I didn't really know much about continuations, but from what I can gather it's not obvious they're a good idea ([http://okmij.org/ftp/continuations/against- callcc.html](http://okmij.org/ftp/continuations/against-callcc.html)) - <USER2> removed it's in-built support for it ([https://bugs.ruby- lang.org/issues/10548](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/10548)).

<comment><USER6> The concept of continuations is well-established and they have their uses. They have been part of the landscape for years. They can be confusing, and that's impossible to separate from their power.

The inversion of control that this paper is talking about is the way an application running on a webserver typically gets called by the browser rather than the other way around. Continuation-based webservers reverse this inversion and create an illusion of continuity of control flow on the server side. The application is suspended when a page is sent to the browser and resumed (via a continuation) when the response arrives. So this is about permitting server-side applications to be written in a nicer style as far as control flow is concerned.

I think you are getting downvoted because your comment more or less says that you don't know much about the background, and haven't read and understood the paper, but are inclined to dismiss it anyway.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't HN run on Arc which can use continuations for handling some web stuff?

[https://arclanguage.github.io/ref/srv.html](https://arclanguage.github.io/ref/srv.html)

NB I've never looked at the sources for HN</comment></comment></comment>


Impressions of SXSW (and how Australian startups stack up) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dinotalic.com/blog/impressions-from-sxsw-interactive-and-what-it-means-for-australian-startups/ An Australian product manager goes to SXSW for the first time and gives impressions. He also compares the US startup community to that in Australia. <comment><USER2> I agree with this to a certain extent but it doesn't help that the Australian governments only interest is digging crap from the ground. There are no incentives for tech companies to stay in Australia and the government seems to have no interest in providing them. Now you have this situation where the cost of living is also reaching insane levels so as a start up it is a bad place to be in my option (I am from Melbourne) .

<comment><USER3> The focus of the government there right now is to dig rocks up and sell them for profit, its going to work for the next 40-50+ years at least...which is more than I can say for social media, so i kind of get what they're up to.

While the startup life is great (i'm part of it, Australia, but in Toronto Canada), funding small companies is something that a government is more interested to do when unemployment is high, which in Australia it is not.

Australia tends to expect the government to solve the problems, i think the right thing to do is make it happen for yourself. Dont expect the government to fund your startup, make the rules startup friendly or even care that you exist. They have their priorities, and if your idea is good enough...you dont need them to help you.

<comment><USER4> A bigger problem is the brain drain government spending creates. Why risk your neck for a startup, when you could work on a fat government IT project?

And digging up rocks is _not_ a good long-term plan. The commodity market has a little thing called "mean reversion". Basically, nobody cares where the rocks come from. Australia has a _slight_ advantage over other countries, because our rocks are pretty good quality, we have reasonable governance and management, and we are close to Asia.

But, there's only a massive premium because China's demand has grown faster than supply. Once the resource companies pull their finger out and start digging faster, prices will drop right down. Rocks aren't iPads - nobody cares where they come from. If Brazil or South Africa or Nigeria or Russia can dig up similar rocks, or China funds a bunch of new resource companies in Australia, supply will start exceeding demand and the price will go back to around the cost of production.

It takes a long time to get the mines set up (there's something like a year's lead time on the _tyres_ of mining trucks), so there's a few years (maybe a decade or so) in which miners can charge as much as the market will bear. After a while, supply will increase and the market will start asking for big discounts.

That's how commodities work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like the link goes to a domain parking page. That seemed to download a trojan on my system. At least the file said giggedin_something.htm.

Be very careful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what you're seeing but I can't reproduce the problem. I've checked both the links to my site and giggedin (which I link out to from the blog post) and they both seem fine. Giggedin is just a Launchrock page.

Which browser and OS are you running?</comment></comment>