Toyota Wants Cars to React to the Unexpected, and Then Explain Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545186/toyota-wants-its-cars-to-expect-the-unexpected/ <comment><USER2> "I'm sorry we're falling off a mountain right now, but it was us or that family."

<comment><USER3> I think that self-driving cars should act in the self interest of the owners. It will encourage people to use self-driving cars and decrease road deaths.

Also, if you are at a rail yard and see something hurtling toward 5 workmen and can push a fat man in front to protect them, you should refrain. The workmen had the opportunity and duty to take actions to prepare for and prevent rogue train cars. The fat man should not have a duty to be constantly on guard against assault.

<comment><USER2> > I think that self-driving cars should act in the self interest of the > owners.

To what extent? At some point, we're going to have to decide as a society what call a self-driving car has to make in situations like "I can run down this family in the cross-walk or get rear-ended by that oncoming vehicle".

<comment><USER4> I'd rather see a focus on smarter and faster braking then on solving contrived moral dilemmas.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand why this keeps coming up. I have never seen or even heard of a driver getting into a situation where there's any sort of moral dilemma in how they react. There's always an obvious best answer or a bunch of equivalently good answers.

For the one-in-a-trillion cases where this is not true, it's OK if the car reacts sub-optimally. It will still be _vastly_ better than human drivers, who frequently react sub-optimally in unambiguous situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Customers Want Cars to Not Kill Them

FTFY

<comment><USER7> Pedestrians on the sidewalk want the car not run them over to avoid killing the Customer.

<comment><USER8> Fair point, but if the alternative is hitting something that has an as high or higher likelihood of killing the occupants, I'm not sure what the alternative is (don't say "avoid the situation in the first place," that's obvious).

Nobody's going to buy an automated vehicle that might intentionally kill them to save a pedestrian.

<comment><USER7> I think the alternative is pretty much a no go. If some poor pedestrian that was on a side gets hit by a car to preserve the owner then the lawsuits will be huge. Killing bystanders is not going to be acceptable.

Let's look at a picture[1] from an article[2] that made it to HN[3]. If any program chose A as an acceptable solution, then they should be sued into oblivion. Killing the bystander will kill the driverless car.

1) [http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/styles/v...](http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/styles/view_body_embed/public/images/Ethical%20cars.png?itok=A_wye_WL)

2) [http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self- driving...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving-cars- must-be-programmed-to-kill/)

3) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10439106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10439106)

<comment><USER9> People drive SUV's, which have a much higher likelihood than ordinary cars of killing the occupants of other vehicles or pedestrians. No lawsuits. Just for perspective, the lawsuit you are talking about is the family of one dead pedestrian involved in a freak accident suing a car company. I mean, how long could a car company hide the effects of proprietary closed software engineered specifically for flouting the law.

..also from your picture and as I have learned from TWD, if you see a herd of zombies on the road your self driving car should probably be programmed to drive straight through them.

<comment><USER7> That's not equivalent. We are talking about a vehicle that is programmed from the manufacture to do something. The SUV driver is responsible for his/her actions. When we are talking about a self driving car, we now have machines that decide what to do and killing the bystander tends not to be a sympathetic item in from of the jury.

As to the second part... I'm not sure how the software will judge the depth of the hoard to see if avoidance is a better answer than just pushing through. Also, a couple of zombies could really mess up a Tesla versus a SUV or Jeep. Zombie Apocalypse mode would be a much hard problem.

<comment><USER9> "The SUV driver is responsible for his/her actions."

Hey, that is what ford said about the Bronco II.

Anyway, I agree with you in principle that if presented with the clear evidence in court it would be as you say. My contention is it would take many years and a whistle-blower before anything like that would ever come to light. And there is much greater likelihood of deaths occurring accidentally due to the code, than by design.

Depth of herd is an issue, to be sure, and this even assumes the car could tell the difference between zombies and humans.. perhaps we need a waze for herd avoidance.

<comment><USER7> > Hey, that is what ford said about the Bronco II.

Programming is treated a bit different from a tire specs

I get the feeling a lot of programmers are going to be put on witness stands pretty early in the roll out. Lawyers already like to interview Sys Admins.

> Depth of herd is an issue, to be sure, and this even assumes the car could > tell the difference between zombies and humans.. perhaps we need a waze for > herd avoidance.

Classically, an IR sensor should tell the car the difference between zombies and humans. Herd avoidance is probably a better tactic because of resource depletion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Self-driving cars are going to make people even lazier then they already are. And as for those cars that automatically park themselves - whats going to happen when 5 cars see only one spot, and they all try and go for that same spot?

<comment><USER4> > whats going to happen when 5 cars see only one spot, and they all try and go > for that same spot?

What happens when 5 human drivers see only one spot, and they all try and go for that same spot?</comment></comment>


Neovim 0.3 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/neovim/neovim/commit/44c6deb91ac917703c157d564eb3accbff4d37af <comment><USER2> ActualVim (a plugin for Sublime Text 3) implemented support for the Nvim 0.3 "buffer updates" feature in less than 24 hours:

[https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim/commit/414e8d4c3feb4...](https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim/commit/414e8d4c3feb4c798a611c14ef47741e8b952146)

Oni[1] is also expected to use the feature soon.

Other features worth noting are

\- <Cmd> key [https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/4419](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/4419)

\- stdpath() function [https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/6272](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/6272)

[https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/7679](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/7679) and [https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/8226](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/8226) are small but nice quality-of-life improvements.

There's also many new API features and defaults tweaks listed in the release notes.

Oh, and a built-in AST-producing VimL expression parser:

[https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/7234](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/7234)

That's a big one.

[1] [https://github.com/onivim/oni](https://github.com/onivim/oni)

<comment><USER3> You have any experience with ActualVim? Does it hold up for actual work or is it still in an experimental phase?

<comment><USER4> I'm the author. ActualVim feels pretty slick out of the box. The main issue is in parts of the Vim UI that aren't integrated yet (I'm praying for more UI customization options from Sublime Text, though the recent command palette improvements should be a great start for replacing the command line).

The actual editing should be really solid, even if you use Sublime Text features to manipulate text. It's typically very fast too, I try to beat 16ms handle time per keystroke on all platforms (so updates land within a frame).

<comment><USER3> That sounds awesome. I'm currently working with Emacs + Evil mode, but there's a couple of things I'm not thrilled with. Sublime with a NeoVim backend sounds like it could work great. I'll check it out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Neovim is a breath of fresh air compared to Vim

A lot of things "just work". Still, it still uses vim plumbing so it's quirky.

<comment><USER6> As someone who uses regular Vim as a (fairly modified) daily driver, can you explain what NeoVim brings to the table? My main gripe with Vim is that system clipboard support on my copy doesn't work, and without custom compilation, the only version it really works in is GVim, which I find kind of distracting.

<comment><USER7> My pet favorite: opening a terminal in a vim split.

Having an interactive bash/ipython/repl session where you can use vim keys to navigate and yank lines from your scrollback is pure bliss.

I like to run builds and be able to see, yank, open files from the errors all inside vim.

<comment><USER8> Why did it take VIM so long to get this? Emacs has this feature for 30 years or so.

<comment><USER9> It's a very emacsy idea. I think, for better or worse, vim is centered around the goal of making a better editor. Emacs is centered around making a portable universe.

To be honest, I don't really like having a 'terminal' in vim. It makes more sense to just use the terminal, which is like, right there, one ctrl-z away.

<comment><USER7> I don't like Neovim's terminal mode because I need a terminal. I'm also a religious ctrl-z user. I use it when I want to be able to yy stuff out of the scrollback to use in the split with my code like parts of a live repl session or the output from curl.

<comment><USER10> Have you tried setting syntax=sh and turning on syntax colouring in the terminal, yet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a serious question: If Emacs has a lot of the features people seek in Neovim, why not just use Emacs in evil mode? I watched this earlier today so it seemed relevant: [https://youtu.be/JWD1Fpdd4Pc](https://youtu.be/JWD1Fpdd4Pc)

Side note: I've been using Neovim for months now and I've not tried Emacs. Not because I don't want to but because Vim with the plugins i have works really really well.

<comment><USER12> Evil mode doesn't support most ex mode commands. Can be jarring for someone used to doing things the vim way. Eg :help is just a thin wrapper around emacs' native help system, no :sets work, :u isn't implemented, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish there was a good GUI for nvim/vim. I've tried them all and they all lag, either just a cursor lag when there is syntax-highlight (gvim) or when using snippets/auto-complete (nvim-qt for example).

I haven't found a single good GUI for nvim/vim. If you have, please let me know.

<comment><USER14> Evil or Spacemacs in Emacs? 26.1 with pixel-level scrolling out now!

<comment><USER15> Not really a frontend on Vim or NeoVim though are they? They're emulations which are very nice but not the real thing.

It's the uncanny valley situation again. For example, in Vim, like all terminals by default you can use C-h as backspace. In Emacs though that's bound to help.

So now I have to rebind that and make a decision on what should now be help. That's just the start on the thread pulling and tweaky just to get back to my expected behaviour.

Emacs is great but it's not Vim. You could argue thatonce configured you have all the new power of Emacs but ome of just want a better Vim. Not Emacs. Even if it's brilliant.

<comment><USER14> NeoVim is not quiet Vim which isn't vi either and all are terminal editors first so GUIs may never be as good for them. When I started with Emacs I thought I might use it in the terminal after Vim vs GVim but it's GUI is worth it.

I wasn't long enough using Vim to depend on C-h but if you've the time for all the config it's great to have the options. That reminds me I must still make so changes to Vim Vixen to be more like Vimperator was. It's great having the basic vim commands in Emacs as well, maybe not in org-agenda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And there were recently some fixes for Konsole to work with DECSCUSR, so neovim won't need special hacks for it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ubuntu launchpad repo is still on 0.2,</comment>


Show HN: Karma.link – Lets your app interface with Ethereum contracts using JSON - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/karmarun/karma.link <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, we're the team behind karma.link. We love Ethereum and think it's a great technology. However, integrating conventional applications with Ethereum dapps is hard. This is why we created karma.link, a small RPC server for applications that bridges this gap. We aim to demystify the technology and enable companies to take advantage of it in everyday business. It's still VERY early stages but we've taken the leap and open sourced our MVP. Any and all feedback, here or as Github-issue is much appreciated. If you want to show your support, go ahead and give our repo a star. Thank you.</comment>


HD Cam on a weather balloon fell to earth after balloon pops - <AUTHOR> http://www.doobybrain.com/2010/06/08/gopro-hd-camera-attached-to-a-weather-balloon

<comment><USER2> what was the altitude when it started falling? without research i will guess 50,000ft.</comment>


What's the Secret Success of Groupon? - <AUTHOR> http://primitus.com/blog/whats-the-secret-success-of-groupon/

<comment><USER3> "Negative working capital: They first charge users upfront, take a cut and pay merchants back later. These businesses basically are financed by their customers."

This way they basically can't lose money. If they sell something , they make a profit. If not, they don't make a loss. Ignoring fixed costs, this looks like a good idea to follow for a business, if feasible.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd be interested to hear how the deals actually end up working out for the businesses in the long term. Sure, they get people in the door, but at a 50% discount plus the significant cut Groupon takes, they're not left with much. Plus it seems like most purchases are one off visits, as there are plenty of random acupuncture/restaurant/massage/etc deals to never have to repeat a place.

Also, the collective buying power part doesn't really exist as far as I can tell -- I can't say I've seen any deals not get the minimum amount of buyers in the past year or so.

<comment><USER5> It is basically another form of advertising for the business. This is an alternative to putting a blah coupon in some magazine and hoping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Success? Being first to execute the idea in a strong fashion first. However, there are now a considerable number of competitors, and I don't see many potential barriers to entry.

<comment><USER7> His analysis is valid, altho as you say they are no doubt riding the wave of FMA. However, conceptually simple as it is, there are barriers to entry: 1) reaching out to and signing up sufficient numbers of retailers to make the service worthwhile. 2) Capturing mindshare away from Groupons lead 3) the infrastructure required to run a service like this. Ok basically it just comes down to cash, but I reckon you would need a lot to take on Groupon, and then well - suddenly it's something of a risk.

<comment><USER6> Here's the problem with saying that a.) retailers as barrier to entry - <USER2> don't buy retailers alone as a barrier, given retailers are likely to only do one or two promotions at great cost to themselves, other articles have talked about this issue.

b.) Mindshare as barrier to entry -- I don't buy the mindshare argument when the a strength, as noted in the article is the urgency, the deal (the store is the brand that matters -- probably as much as the conduit if not more). Beyond that, mindshare is primiarly money invested into viral loop on facebook/myspace and brand ads.

c.) Infrastructure? Um, it's just lead generation -- I see the larger infrastructure as outward bound direct sales to merchants. (sites like leapfish.com have sustainable conversion rates on outward bound telephone sales to merchants -- online are they important ? well...)

There are already huge investors knocking off the idea, and as for the cash issue, the article talks about the "negative working capital" needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the barrier to entry is lower now.

However, I think one of the reasons for their success is due to their roots - The Point, the startup using collective power to help people deal with local issues. Groupon's founder once said, "None of us would work here if it were only about selling stuff at a discount—ultimately, we're trying to give people an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy life."

I think a successful company needs to have a corporate mission that is bigger than making a profit. I believe their roots help them build a strong brand and user base, which is a very strong barrier to entry.

<comment><USER6> possibly, but I think wanting to "win" and "make money," while providing a decent service is often a decent enough goal. After all, we are talking about group coupons, deals and lead generation -- not a cure for cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The #1 reason as he states is their crystal clear value proposition. Expanding on that - because it's so clear you can see how effective their advertising campaigns are.

They built a huge following just sticking "Get 50% off Sushi in [your city]" ads all over facebook, and have continued with that level of simplicity.

When an advertising campaign delivers that message on the banner ad, it's shooting fish in a barrel to convert those users through the lead form, backend process.</comment>


Notes on computer science, math, research, programming, and industry - <AUTHOR> http://yz.mit.edu/notes/ <comment><USER2> Yang's notes are awesome! I considered their strength a positive signal when he recruited me to Infer, a startup which he left MIT ABD to cofound ([https://www.infer.com/about.html](https://www.infer.com/about.html)).

We're hiring, so if you're impressed by these notes, check out our careers page: [https://www.infer.com/careers.html](https://www.infer.com/careers.html) or email me directly jh<lastname>@infer.com

<comment><USER3> Excellent I loved your product and the direction its moving.

We are working on a similar concept.

We aim to predict - Customer behaviors based on a function of their Geography, previous CRM notes, tags, liking and tastes. We call that as Interest-Graph and store them as nodes. We identify patterns.

We don't focus on leads; as we don't have much data. Rather repeat buyers, these are previous customers. We try to predict buying-behaviors from data in structured, unstructured sources, papers, CRM's and ERP.

So far we are able to predict: what campaigns might work on a group of customers, based on our graph data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really confused. This looks like someone's private notes on various tech subjects. Kind of like the notes I might keep in my notebook. Very little context, and hard for me to make anything out of this. Am I approaching this wrong?

<comment><USER5> Hello, author here. It's just a set of reference notes I mainly keep for myself, but it's not really private - I share it as-is in case others can extract value from it (I'm surprised that this made HN front page). I do think it would be neat to make what's there more accessible/useful to a broader set of folks. If you have any ideas on how to improve the content, drop me a pull request! [https://github.com/yang/notes](https://github.com/yang/notes)

<comment><USER6> The couple of pages I looked at looked useful, and I can state one thing immediately:

Look at the Compilers page, and all the real estate at the top devoted to parsing. Then look at Lisp ^_^. (You did do SICP under Brian Harvey, right?)

More seriously, at the very least I expect some of those pages to help me not overlook something important in the future in a project or two I'm thinking about. Those are of course fields where I have a grounding; if someone else looks at a page and feels completely lost, that's probably a signal to learn the foundations, which the notes can help in, as topics to search on, for judging books and other guides for their coverage (again touching on the completeness idea), etc.

<comment><USER5> Hah, surprised the Lisp section even exists! Yeah I took SICP with Harvey (though long before starting these notes). This is probably an artifact of me filling in notes opportunistically/as I come across things. But thanks for the comment, glad these are (potentially) helpful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any thoughts on using a Wiki system like this to organize notes, thoughts, etc.? I've always used EverNote but it isn't as organized as I would prefer.

<comment><USER5> Author here. "Organized" isn't exactly the word I would use to describe my notes either, but I guess it's all relative!

I started using gitit since I had already kept my notes in a bunch of git- versioned text files (formatted in Markdown/Pandoc), so it was a convenient way for me to publish them for others to consume. It features feeds, TeX math, various output format generators, etc. I actually don't leverage much of the other wiki functionality (cross-ref linking, multiple users).

Markdown's a great format for most of the notes I keep (text, outlined text, quoted text, code snippets, links, etc.), but I have yet to find a system that beats LyX for writing TeX math. And of course both are useless if you want to just draw/scribble a diagram (Xournal covers that) or clip images you find (I use EverNote). Such is the scattered state of note-taking as I know it.</comment></comment>


Most frequently checked-out books in the history of the New York Public Library - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-are-the-most-frequently-checked-out-books-in-the-history-of-the-new-york-public-library-11578891661 <comment><USER2> 1\. The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats)

2\. The Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss)

3\. 1984 (George Orwell)

4\. Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak)

5\. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

6\. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)

7\. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

8\. How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)

9\. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling)

10\. The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle)

<comment><USER3> Weird that I've heard of all of them except #1. In fact I've read 8 of them.

<comment><USER4> FWIW The Snowy Day at #1 is a kids' book where the protagonist is a positively portrayed black child, which was quite unique and controversial when it was written in 1962. If you grew up long after that era it makes more sense to never have heard of it.

<comment><USER5> It became my 2-year-old's favorite book for about a month — he asks to read it again and again and again... It definitely has something wonderful in its voice and pacing, the social history aside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My theory is that we're just looking at the list of books most frequently assigned by english teachers. Excluding children books, most of these can be found in the new york state education department's literature suggestions: [http://www.p12.nysed.gov/guides/ela/part1b.pdf](http://www.p12.nysed.gov/guides/ela/part1b.pdf).

The exceptions were "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (rank 8) and "Harry Potter" (rank 9).

I am actually pretty shocked by this. I didn't expect a self-help book (15 million copies sold) to beat harry potter (120 million copies sold, 500 million if you include the entire series, making it the best-selling series in history). I guess people who love the franchise would rather own the book?

<comment><USER7> One was first published before World War II, the other was first published in the 1990s.

<comment><USER6> Ah I didn't realize they were talking about over the history of the library. That makes much more sense.

<comment><USER8> Harry Potter checkouts may also have been heavily bottlenecked by the number of available copies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Periodic protip reminder every time the NYPL comes up on HN:

You can get a library card for free as a visitor to the city by walking into any branch. It's valid for 90 days, but can be renewed anytime you come back again. This provides full access to normal book borrowing as well as access to Libby/Overdrive ebook loans (which you don't have to be in the city to use!).

</comment><comment><USER10> ranked by check outs p.a.:

rank, title, total check outs, date of publication, check outs p.a.

1 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 231,022 1998 10501

2 The Snowy Day 485,583 1962 8372

3 Where the Wild Things Are 436,016 1963 7649

4 The Cat in the Hat 469,650 1957 7455

5 To Kill a Mockingbird 422,912 1962 7292

6 1984 441,770 1949 6222

7 Charlotte's Web 337,948 1952 4970

8 Fahrenheit 451 316,404 1953 4722

9 The Very Hungry Caterpillar 189,550 1969 3717

10 How to Win Friends and Influence People 284,524 1936 3387

Data from [https://125.nypl.org/125/topcheckouts](https://125.nypl.org/125/topcheckouts) which mentions other factors, such as shorter books having higher turnover.

<comment><USER11> How is 10,000 checkouts a year possible? Do they have 50 copies or something?

<comment><USER12> Exactly. Remember the days of Blockbuster, they'd have an entire shelf dedicated to 50 copies of a single movie.

Partly to handle actual demand, but, perhaps unlike the library, I imagine it was also partly to generate _artificial_ demand by signaling: "Hey, you, undecided wanderer, look here, this is an important movie that everyone else is renting, you should too."

<comment><USER13> I remember reading/hearing that blockbuster did that as their competitive advantage over other video stores- they'd build customer loyalty by definitely having the latest thing in stock, even if it was a loss leader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new- york-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-york-public- librarys-most-checked-out-books-say-a-lot-about-what-we-read-and- why/2020/01/11/c8578174-33d9-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html)

<comment><USER14> Doesn't work, fully paywalled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Better late than never: [http://archive.is/NAhmY](http://archive.is/NAhmY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.md/Iu1lO](http://archive.md/Iu1lO)

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that Keats is at the top. I'm currently reading (and almost at the end of) Hyperion, and Keats plays a significant part of the story. One character proclaims Keats to be the _purest_ poet to have lived.

<comment><USER16> I really enjoyed Hyperion! I think it's referring to John Keats though. Also: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44473/hyperion](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44473/hyperion)

<comment><USER15> Oop, you are absolutely correct. I assumed they were the same person. Interesting that there are two prolific poets named Keats.

<comment><USER17> Ezra Jack Keats isn't a poet, he wrote children's books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would love to see what the top ten would be if you filtered out children's books and YA fiction. Or, even better, if they made a separate top-ten list for each demographic.

<comment><USER19> Or why not release the data so that we can run queries on it ourselves? I doubt the entire dataset would be larger than a gig. Then we can run queries on top 10 by genres, by authors, by decades, by age group, gender, etc. Whatever we want.

<comment><USER18> Librarians are almost-universally hardline privacy advocates. They would be very unlikely to release a dataset that could be deanonymized.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if they computerized check out history from pre-computer era. i.e. using paper cards for check outs

<comment><USER21> Im not certain, but I vaguely remember a punch-card type checkout in the Brooklyn Public Library when I was a child in the 80s. That would suggest the data is hopefully around and ingestable into a modern system (prob already done)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1984 in top 3 yet our world is spiraling deeper and deeper into it

<comment><USER23> The only reason people like to claim we are spiraling into 1984 is _because_ of its popularity. When it comes down to it the resemblance to today is superficial at best.

<comment><USER22> We live in a world where Julian Assange is put in prison and tortured for refusing to confess to his thoughtcrimes and for revealing the thoughts of others to the public, much to the dismay of the Party, which is all seeing and all knowing.

For those of us who have read 1984, it will sound more than superficial.

<comment><USER24> Julian Assange he is the example you choose to bring up in this double speak world

<comment><USER22> If you aren't careful, the next example will someday be yourself!

Abstract it if you don't like Assange: anyone who is in prison for telling the truth... it's not a good thing... history is full of thousands if not millions who have died for such crimes, some high profile and some unknown</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LimeSDR funded, some hours left to still get a discounted SDR - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limesdr/updates/weve-made-it <comment><USER2> This is new kid on the block of Software Defined Radio.

More to be read about technology: [http://rtlsdr.org/](http://rtlsdr.org/)

One of the SDR portals: [http://www.rtl-sdr.com/](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/)

You can buy cheapest SDR for 20USD these days. Great to play, and there is even a marvelous GNU Radio available ([http://gnuradio.org/](http://gnuradio.org/)) - Yikes :)

<comment><USER3> Where can I get a $20 SDR?

<comment><USER4> The rtl-sdr dongle is available for around $25 on Amazon.

<comment><USER5> $8.66, and I'm sure you can go lower. [https://www.amazon.com/DVB-T- RTL2832U-RTL-SDR-Receiver-Compa...](https://www.amazon.com/DVB-T-RTL2832U-RTL- SDR-Receiver-Compatible/dp/B00PDM76ZW)

Anything with RTL2832U + R820T will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some recent discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610521)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931072)

</comment><comment><USER7> What's the motivator for EE's backing? Assuming it's not just a random crowdfunding campaign they were feeling charitable to. Do they want their own SDR to e.g. do network/ frequency analysis? Or advanced radio R&D?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/flying-mobile-base- stations-o...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/flying-mobile-base-stations- other-telecom-innovations-maarten-ectors?trk=mp-author-card)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "some hours left to still get a discounted SDR"

Some hours and then several months.</comment>


Show HN: RoomPoll.com – Location based surveys - <AUTHOR>

RoomPoll is a location based survey website.
Think SurveyMonkey meets Google maps.
If you go to RoomPoll.com on any device and allow your location, you will see polls posted within 50 miles of your location. (we don't have many posted yet so you may not see some depending where you are...)
Polls can also be accessed via a direct link like this:  http://www.roompoll.com/polls/3625/vote
You can post up to 7 questions for people to answer.  The question options are: multiple choice, Text, Name, Email.
You must create an account in order to post a poll but you do not have to have an account to respond to a poll unless the person posting the poll requires it.
We'd love feedback on all aspects of the site and functionality.  Since it's an open platform, you can essentially use it as location based webforms to collect whatever you want from people at a location.
Thanks for any and all feedback. <comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to add that the site is free to use and if we did charge it would be a flat monthly subscription like $10.</comment>


32 Referral Tactics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/referral-tactics/?hvid=4AXxpn <comment><AUTHOR> 4200 words!

If you'd rather watch a video than read, this is an updated version of this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMGnOU3lwQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMGnOU3lwQg)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment>


Why wouldn't you use it? - <AUTHOR> http://remember.themalk.com/SkCb16004

<comment><USER2> Because, from the front page it's not clear what "it" is and why it would be of value to me.

<comment><USER3> It's a Todo list, there should probably be something on every page that explains this and some kind of help.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looking for feedback on what features to add and other improvements. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some way to share this with a group of people</comment>


The wait for 184.108.40.206 with WARP is over - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1-1-1-1-faster-internet/id1423538627 <comment><AUTHOR> This is the Cloudflare VPN they announced back in April.

Apologies for the title. I noticed the app update, couldn't find a blog post or a news article to post instead so I used the first line of the update description.</comment>


Increase Leads by A/B testing your live chat software (with Math explanation) - <AUTHOR> http://gaglers.com/blog/2013/05/26/increase-sales-leads/

<comment><USER2> Instead of boring A/B testing, let's discuss these "live chat widgets". Does anyone here actually use these? I consider them annoying popups and rather send an email if I have any questions.

<comment><USER3> Categorically, yes.

Many people prefer getting immediate answers than waiting for an email.</comment></comment>


How Climeworks Remove CO2 from the Atmosphere - <AUTHOR> https://climeworks.shop/how-it-works/ <comment><AUTHOR> I received an email via their newsletter today. They are offering a monthly subscription fee to contribute towards removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Very interesting, indeed. I plan to subscribe.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you consume news? - <AUTHOR> Do you check just one website, flip through a few, or use an aggregator?<p>Where does it fit into your daily routine? <comment><USER2> CNN and Fox news on the treadmill three times a week.</comment>


Peter Molyneux: 'It's over, I will not speak to the press again' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-molyneux-game-designer-interview-godus <comment><USER2> While he has a point about expectations and mismanaged time/budget... I tried Godus lately and just cannot see how could it have any relation to what the original games provided. It was a typical time-wasting wait-or-pay-to-play app. At least on the phone it was free. On the PC you had to first pay for the app, then you still had the microtransactions on top of that.

So people wanted something greater than Populus and instead got something that actually had the mechanics of: another 2k belief will be available from this building in 25 minutes, you need ~100k for your next bigger action - and you better come back in the next 24h otherwise your civilisation will get worse every day of not playing.

I can completely understand people who got pissed off after spending money on that kickstarter and I'm slightly disappointed with the spin they put on this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this happens with a lot of kickstarter projects but the project owners are less well know and more likely to be able to just dissappear than someone like Molyneux.

Although Molyneux's history of over-promising and under-delivering should probably have been taken into account by backers. I don't think he was being dishonest I just think he is passionate, optimistic and idealistic and doesn't reign that in for pitches.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, he messed up the kickstarter, albeit not by purpose. That said, I'm surprised by how idealistic and passionate is Molyneux yet, despite knowing too well the ungrateful target of his products. I may sound harsh, but I really find the average gamer such a bad costumer.

> "People get so frustrated with me, so much so that they've threatened me, > they've threatened my family and it just cannot go on, it really can't."

Seriously, who does suffer from such backlash outside of the videogame industry?

<comment><USER4> I think it happens in every single mass consumer industry, not just video games. If you have a crowdsourced backing of half a million dollars, then that is a lot of people backing you. If you don't meet your goals it only takes a couple of angry nuts to get these threats.

<comment><USER5> Not sure about this. Maybe in other industries the threats are distributed across customer service personnel and don't make it to the top. The only case I can think of is animal rights activists vs. Huntingdon Life Sciences ( [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/animal-rights- gro...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/animal-rights-group- ends-15year-campaign-against-experiments-at-huntingdon-9687843.html) ) and that isn't even customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Peter Molyneux's biggest issue is this: he's extremely smart and has a wonderful imagination, but still, to this day, hasn't figured out that it is extremely difficult to get great ideas from your gray matter into code, especially if you're not the one coding.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would of loved to pay it as a premium game not a POS IAP money grab.

Thats why it failed.

Played it until it required me to log into Facebook at which point i deleted it.</comment>


India to Attempt Moon Landing at the Lunar South Pole Today - <AUTHOR> https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-2-moon-landing-webcast.html <comment><USER2> NYTimes: "India Loses Contact With Chandrayaan-2 Mission During Moon Landing Attempt"

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/science/india-moon- landin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/science/india-moon-landing- chandrayaan-2.html)

Edit:

NYTimes subtitle says "The country will likely have to wait for a future mission to join the elite club of nations that have landed on the moon."

Wikipedia for Chandrayaan-1 says "On 14 November 2008, the [Chandrayaan-1 probe] struck the south pole in a controlled manner, making India the fourth country to place its flag insignia on the Moon"

.. huh?

Edit 2: Ah, impact landing vs soft landing.

<comment><USER3> NYT seems to have taken BBC's place in throwing shade towards the Indian space program. From the article:

"...The outcomes of the Indian and Israeli missions highlight that lower costs can mean higher risk of failure, which NASA will need to adjust to as it pursues a lower-cost approach...."

<comment><USER4> Sites like NYT or BBC are highly inept at reporting anything remotely technical in nature. They are good for general political coverage to an extent, but that's where it stops. This is more apparent when the subject matter is closer to our areas of expertise, but even otherwise, it is not too hard to tell that they are out of their depth.

<comment><USER5> I'm not even sure they do political coverage too well. From the outside it appears the editors live in an insular world that doesn't feel anything like the one outside. They do cover a lot of things, I feel they'd do better if they focused on fewer things but more depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The official news announced by the ISRO chairman on the live broadcast was "the last signal received from the lander was 2.1 KM from the lunar surface. Data is being analyzed as of now".

In all probability indicates a crash landing.

<comment><USER7> This is a dumb question but are telemetry intervals that far apart ? No data was sent in the last 2.1 KMs ? Or something at that level caused systems to fail immediately. Space is hard.

<comment><USER8> Spacecraft move very, _very_ fast, and 2.1km is quite a tiny distance in the context of space.

<comment><USER9> Spacecraft definitely do not move "very, very fast" in the terminal stages of landing, especially not on a low gravity object like the Moon. Apollo 11, for instance, spent several minutes below 2.1km altitude prior to touchdown. Soft landings on the Moon are slow events, and given that telemetry is essentially continuous, something must have gone wrong at around 2.1km.

Although the something going wrong could be as innocuous as losing antenna alignment, which happens often during landings even when nothing is really wrong, because the spacecraft is changing pitch to effect the landing.

So my best guess would be loss of telemetry due to loss of antenna alignment, followed by a bad trajectory for some reason, followed by unintentional lithobraking.

<comment><USER9> Update:

Per Twitter, it seems like something went wrong during the braking burn. The spacecraft was left tumbling (which certainly wouldn't help antenna alignment), and was thus unable to effect its landing burn.

No idea yet exactly what caused the tumbling; there's a variety of potential causes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On this livestream [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcJwjuo8pBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcJwjuo8pBo) a commentator explains that the probe had some autonomy in choosing exactly where to land. So the deviation from the expected course was not necessarily something going wrong.

Edit: Apparently it can hover at 400m for up to 90 seconds to image the potential landing site. The loss of communication actually happened before the hovering phase started.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately it could not have been hovering though. The velocity was almost certainly too high for the spacecraft to handle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Radio Telescope tracking data show moment signals disappeared [https://twitter.com/cgbassa](https://twitter.com/cgbassa)

</comment><comment><USER13> Lost comms after landing, suggesting maybe a crash landing. But not all is lost there is still an orbiter where most experiments are supposedly going to run. See [https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1170072433115762688?s=...](https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1170072433115762688?s=19)

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow what horrible ad laden site with tons of useless videos and JavaScript.

Official site:

[https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-latest- updates](https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-latest-updates)

<comment><USER15> ISRO live streaming </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>= Watch Live : Landing of Chandrayaan-2 on Lunar Surface

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iqNTeZAq-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iqNTeZAq-c)

</comment><comment><USER16> Everyone in the room looks so worried and sad. No comms since the 1km mark.

Damn it Moon! Stop eating our drones!

</comment><comment><USER17> IMO something like this is a true measure of technological advancement of a nation. This means India is roughly as technologically advanced as the US was 60 years ago, which is impressive by any measure, since space-related things haven't progressed all that much since then. They got super close this time. In a couple more attempts they'll figure it out if they don't run out of money. I hope Modi sees the potential to inspire the nation. For 10 cents per person, inspiring people to take up science is a no-brainer.

<comment><USER18> > this is a true measure of technological advancement of a nation

That's an interesting point and worth further analysis. But, just to probe a little, that would imply that US and USSR were technically equally advanced in the 60s.

Is that true?

Moreover, what about nations that have not invested much in space at all, but otherwise are probably doing well from technical advancement standpoint.

This is certainly a measure, but is it _the_ measure?

Modi is definitely investing in space, with the manned mission in a couple of years. I just hope this doesn't impact that.

<comment><USER17> The USSR was the first to land on the moon and send images back (in 1966), but ever since the US landed people there, they were technologically behind, albeit not very far behind. They could have done it, but with Americans flying there twice a year, the race was already lost. So they sent some large robotic landers instead (Lunokhod 1 and 2), the kind that are the size of a VW beetle and are designed to survive the night. Unlike manned missions, which lasted at most 3 days, Lunokhod 2 was active on the surface of the moon for 4 months, traveled 42km, and sent back 80000 pictures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 4:42 EST - Some communication between lander and orbiter

4:47 - Official statement => Communication between lander and ground station was lost at 2.1 km altitude. There was no mention of earlier communication between lander and orbiter.

Edit: Source: Parroting the Youtube stream ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6VmPU6Us00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6VmPU6Us00))

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://youtu.be/7iqNTeZAq-c?t=3000](https://youtu.be/7iqNTeZAq-c?t=3000) deep link to the point where things went wrong.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for that. Wow.

There appears to be conflict between the theater of mission control and the actuality. Or?

<comment><USER22> Everyone as happy as long as everything was going well, and the mood fell when the lander stopped reporting. What conflict?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious why MacOS doesn't ship with a clock app for timers and alarms for this type of stuff. Seems like an obvious choice for an iOS port.

<comment><USER24> You should build one! And then make it so good that Apple will finally copy it for a future version of MacOS :D

<comment><USER23> I'm only complaining because the ones in the App Store are awful. I just want the native iOS one.

But yeah I dont need a 50th side project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No telemetry data since about 10 minutes starting just as it was about to land. Looks like it didn't make it.

<comment><USER10> This is what they've been showing since then: [https://imgur.com/a/aYgyGLi](https://imgur.com/a/aYgyGLi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone know how cost effective this is? As in can NASA start outsourcing moon missions?

<comment><USER27> The mission has been executed on a shoe string budget. More than outsourcing, a partnership will be more beneficial. NASA's advanced Technology and ISRO's low costs could be explored.

<comment><USER28> NASA and ISRO are already partners, including for this very mission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The orbiter is still working fine. So not a complete failure. Better luck next time!

</comment><comment><USER30> rapid unscheduled disassembly, looks like.

<comment><USER31> If you write your schedules in pencil, there's no such thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Whenever I see India running a space program I always think that its money would be better spent raising the level of society there.

<comment><USER33> how can one spend money to raise the level of society?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hope is a wonderful thing............. With You ISRO.

</comment><comment><USER35> Silence at the command center? What's happening?

<comment><USER36> Seems like they lost contact with the lander. (I think - I heard them say they lost contact with "station".) Fucking hair-raising...

<comment><USER23> At 400m is was 1km off from the landing site, which you can see on the descent map it's off centre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> details of Rover video [https://youtu.be/V9LFnEycVcg](https://youtu.be/V9LFnEycVcg)

</comment><comment><USER37> Is the landing site on the near side or far side?

<comment><USER38> Near side[1]. Specifically south polar region of the moon.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2#cite_ref- Rishito...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2#cite_ref- Rishitosh_2019_23-0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Looks like it crashed during the final slowdown.

<comment><USER40> I've been watching for a few minutes. It appeared to do a weird roll during braking, and then the line of descent greatly varied from the anticipated line. The room was jubilant prior to this, and now very somber.

Hopefully there will be good news. But I think it crashed.

<comment><USER10> That's the problem with simply losing communication. It's not positive evidence of a crash, it's just a lack of information. Possibly the landing jostled antennas or power relays causing a communications glitch... but you can't rule out that it just crashed :(

<comment><USER41> Has a loss of communication with an unmanned probe on landing ever been resolved?

<comment><USER10> It happened before landing, so while the probe may have crashed, a crash did not cause the communications loss. Here are the most similar conditions I could find that recovered: Beresheet regained communications before landing but not in time to save the mission. Rosetta's Philae lander ended up in a bad spot and couldn't communicate much because of low solar power. Hayabusa had comms trouble when it was supposed to launch from its asteroid, but recovered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The look on the faces is not so optimistic

</comment><comment><USER23> Confirmed on the feed the signal was lost at 2.1km from surface. "The data is being analyzed".

</comment><comment><USER37> Any idea what's the name of the area in which it is going to touch down?

<comment><USER36> As of yet unnamed, according to an article linked within the article. [0]

> It doesn't have a name, at least not yet. But in just a few days, if all > goes well, it could become one of the most important places on the moon's > surface.

> That spot is a highland that rises between two craters dubbed Manzinus C and > Simpelius N. On a grid of the moon's surface, it would fall at 70.9 degrees > south latitude and 22.7 degrees east longitude. It's about 375 miles (600 > kilometers) from the south pole.

[0] [https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-2-moon-south-pole- la...](https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-2-moon-south-pole-landing- site.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "To continue using TechCrunch and other Oath sites and apps, we need you to let us set cookies to collect your data."

No, dear TechCrunch, for you to publish in EU markets _you_ need to obey the fine law. Otherwise, feel free to withdraw, the sooner the better.

</comment><comment><USER43> Welcome to the Moon, India!

<comment><USER44> They had landed one before, Chandrayaan 1.

Edit: but not a soft landing, my mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> They should have open sourced their navigation control codebase, so we can see and fix whatever bugs there are.

</comment><comment><USER46> It started tumbling with thrusters on. So when it flipped the probe accelerated towards the ground rather than decellerate.

</comment><comment><USER47> > The mission entered orbit just under a month later, with the Chandrayaan-2 > orbiter placed into orbit 62 (100 meters) above the lunar surface.

Uh, I think you might be missing some correct units there…

<comment><USER48> It says "62 miles (100 kilometers)" at the moment.

<comment><USER49> Interestingly, the lander separated from the orbiter on Sep 2 into its own orbit. Its main descent begins from around 30 km.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I love India and its people, having spent five years there managing a dev team for our US operations. I'm American, parents were born in India.

And I gotta say, landing on the moon is by far the last thing India's people need right now.

The amount of suffering, pollution, corruption, water shortages, is simply overwhelming. If you haven't actually lived there it's easy to say that India should still shoot for the stars while solving problems at home. From someone who lived there, let me tell you that they should focus on immediate problems first.

<comment><USER51> Yeah immediate problems are being resolved by some people. But not all of our billion+ population needs to be so myopic.. there's a few that are rightly pushing the boundaries for the global scientific research.

<comment><USER50> The people that push for Indian space exploration are either (1) not living in India, or (2) they are living in India and doing well economically.

If you ask people living in the slums about this, they'll give you a very different perspective than what you read on HN. And they vastly outnumber the people in India who are doing well.

<comment><USER52> I find it interesting that you try to answer for the millions who are "living in the slums".

There is enthusiasm for space in general (many are glued to their TVs or radios because the landing is going to start soon; one could say it's a point of national pride). I can say that because I live here, see the poverty in front of my eyes every day and talk to some of the people facing it. Sure, quite a few have opinions similar to yours, but they are across the economic spectrum, not just amongst the poor.

This is an argument which pops out frequently when there's a scientific success coming out of a developing country, and especially when India tries to do high-end science. The development in India has been insane, and many have moved out of poverty in a relatively short span of time, mainly because of multiple efforts by the people, the government and with the help of other countries, and this is going to continue happening. Meanwhile, space exploration will continue, whether some people like it or not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


StartupAddict Launches Crowdfunding Platform for Startups & Entrepreneurs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupaddict.com/

<comment><USER2> I like the concept. It gives normal people a chance to invest in start up companies that might not justify angel or VC investment.

My only concern is that your typical person cannot properly evaluate the risk of a start up company (which is why the "accredited investor" classification exists with the SEC). There is risk of people investing in things they don't understand.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you think this is the same concept as Angels List?

<comment><USER4> As somebody having tried both Angel List and kickstarter, this seems unlike either of those. Angel List is about finding investors, not donations. Investors want a return on investment. Kickstarter is about projects that have a definite ending. You can't fund a business using Kickstarter because a "business", by definition, runs in perpetuity without end. This seems to be Kickstarter for businesses.

Incidentally, I'm seriously looking for some immediate funding for my start- up. Please contact me if you have any extra money burning a hole in your pocket. No legitimate offer will be refused.</comment></comment>


The Privilege of Buying 36 Rolls of Toilet Paper at Once - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/privilege-of-buying-in-bulk/482361/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Being poor is very expensive. Always has been.</comment>


The Ageing Gamer - <AUTHOR> http://drewrobey.com/articles/bydatepublished/2014-12-17

<comment><USER2> COD was big on the consoles. You just cannot have the precise input to have proper twitch deathmatch of the likes of Quake 3, UT 2003, Painkiller or Serious Sam. Or low ping since the servers move out of the lan and into the cloud.</comment>


Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1159385858715324416 <comment><AUTHOR> Past discussions referenced in the thread :

The Lifespan of a Lie – Why can't we escape the Stanford Prison Experiment? : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319)

Zimbardo's Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17387601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17387601)</comment>


Things Android Does Better Than iPhone OS - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5554293/10-things-android-does-better-than-iphone-os

<comment><USER2> They forgot cloud syncing - get a new Android device, sign in, and have access to all your contacts.</comment>


Distraction-Free GMail-ing - <AUTHOR> http://davidseah.com/blog/comments/distraction-free-gmailing <comment><USER2> There's nothing special about Gmail here. If you have a half-decent mail client, just create a bookmark/shortcut to "mailto:" and your OS/browser will open a new compose window in your email client of choice.

This even works for me when typing it into Safari's address bar.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are 2 Problems here:

a) Opening gmail to compose an email

b) Opening gmail to look up an email

In either case I don't want to be seeing any new email. This solution works somewhat well for problem a), but what I'd love to see is this:

A gmail labs feature that puts gmail in a "fake" offline mode by default and gives me a "Fetch mail" button as if it was a desktop app. New mail would only be displayed after pressing this button.

Any ideas on how I could achieve this?

</comment><comment><USER4> Uh, OK? I compose mail with M-x compose-mail and read mail with M-x gnus. No Google required.

<comment><USER5> What are you saying?

<comment><USER6> I believe he's saying he uses Emacs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the features I like most about GMail is the keyboard shortcuts. Anytime I can keep my hands on the keyboard rather than clicking is time saved. Safari's bookmark bar shortcuts plus GMails shortcuts really cut down on mouse switching for me.

With GMail as my first bookmark in the browser bar Control+1 and then C is all it takes to start a new message. And I like not having a dedicated bookmark for composing messages and another one for reading them.</comment>


Ask HN: Where would one go to get professional tech career advice? - <AUTHOR>

Many "coaches" or career counselors don't have the technical knowledge to offer accurate career feedback. I would be really interested in employing a career coach to help me get to where I want to be. <comment><USER2> First you should ask yourself why is it you want to be in the tech industry? Second you should be self aware and better understand what you really enjoy doing and if there is something you have natural knack for.

Most successful people in tech didn't come up with a career plan and path-and as trite as it sounds-they just did what they loved doing.

Lastly, tech career could mean anything, from hardware to software to product management, etc. and each have a slight different trajectory to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm an IT auditor. Looking at what my career path could look like. I'm particularly interested in product management.</comment></comment>


Scientists say America is too dumb for democracy to thrive - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/03/09/scientists-say-america-is-too-dumb-for-democracy-to-thrive/

<comment><USER2> "Let's say a politician comes up with an ingenious plan that would ensure universal health care while decreasing health care costs.

According to Dunning-Kruger, no matter how much information is provided, the unsophisticated would 1) be incapable of recognizing the wisdom of such a plan; 2) assume they know better; and 3) have no idea of the extent of their inadequacy."

Jesus..biased much? I stopped reading here.

<comment><USER3> On the flip side, you could argue that if we do actually democratically(-ish) elect representatives, Dunning-Kruger would indicate that our currently- elected leaders are the product of a stupid voting base, and therefore can be assumed to not be the hypothetical "politician with genius healthcare" presented in the article, since the population is too dumb to elect the right guy in the first place.

(I track with you, though; the article seems to be a thinly-veiled jab at "those stupid rednecks who can't see the genius of Obama's healthcare proposals", and is rather offputting for what is allegedly scientific reporting.)

Since we're talking about gimmick phrasing already, let's just remember that half of all voters are of below-average intelligence. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Maybe we should only let Ph.D.'s, Mensa members and Jeopardy! champions vote? At least require a passing an IQ test before you get to cast a ballot?_

This is where these type of ideas invariably fail. The author and everyone else has a different metric in which the gauge intelligence. Someone can be very strategic and have an average IQ as such the have a specific form of intelligence. Secondly just by the mention of a PHD as a requirement shows that little care was taken in such a flippant comment. Amount of schooling is not an indicator of intelligence, is any PHD good enough to qualify? from any school? The whole idea of requiring intelligence before and individual can cast their lot is absolutely backwards to the idea of freedom. Part of freedom is the freedom to be stupid. The solution is education, we should educate people on the issues and incentivize people for getting that education. The problem is there is no incentive for politicians to incentivize the education of the population.

</comment><comment><USER5> What a bad article. Here's the original one: [http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2187-incompetent- people-...](http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2187-incompetent-people- ignorant.html)

The original article basically claims that people who are incompetent at something will have a hard time recognising people who are competent and their own level of incompetence. Fine, that makes sense. But how on earth did this get turned into "Americans too dumb for democracy"? This is just taking some of the claims from the original article and blowing them out of proportion.

<comment><USER6> It is as if the author wants to use himself to prove his point.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. This is a big problem with the self-styled _intelligentsia_ ; they point to others who are not as smart as they are, and cite them as evidence that they cannot possibly be ignorant, because they aren't as ignorant as those they look down on.

Wisdom begins with recognizing that you don't know everything, can't know everything, and generally assuming that you're wrong or uninformed until you can prove otherwise. The immediate presumption that you're right, and arrogance or indignation when it's suggested otherwise is a huge indicator that you're probably suffering the Dunning-Kruger effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it requires decades of study to tell you that. It's not enough to say that something is broken. What you end up having to answer is how to fix it. So far consistent mediocrity seems to beat the other forms of government that came before it. (Disclosure: I haven't done a full study of human history, but so far thats the vibe I'm getting.) So a new form of government should provide consistent high-quality leaders if it wants to beat the democratic-republic model.

And I personally have _no idea_ how to do that.

<comment><USER3> "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill</comment></comment>


Stdio or iostreams? – A Modest Alternative for C++ - <AUTHOR> http://steved-imaginaryreal.blogspot.com/2016/04/stdio-or-iostreams-modest-alternative.html <comment><USER2> If you find yourself using formatted strings often, e.g. for logging, then it's also worth considering another approach: just dump your message and arguments to some lightly structured format, like JSON, instead. In my testing, rapidjson can produce structured JSON more quickly than even the good formatting libraries, like CppFormat, can produce a string.

<comment><USER3> That's quite a claim, can you back it up with data?

<comment><USER2> I could, but you should try it. It wasn't an interesting enough result for me to document

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep string formatting separate from IO.

The simple POSIX write/read works nicely enough for IO. Very versatile and damn simple. No "oop" necessary.

For string parsing, people use all kinds of things from regex to deserializers. Sometimes we even use simple string tokenisation function. No one ever uses scanf or cin.

<comment><USER5> _The simple POSIX write /read works nicely enough for IO_ – where _simple_ includes the loop to check the return code and then errno for cases that should be retried, ( EINTR, EAGAIN, EWOULDBLOCK, depending on what you are doing and your OS), adjust your arguments for how much data actually got sent or read, and then retry. Also be aware that depending on your file descriptor you might be making storms of tiny context switches, interrupts, and IOs.

Old Unix programmers handle that with about as much thought as breathing, but only because they were young unix programmers once.

Copying the bytes one more time isn't the worst thing that you will ever make a computer do. The stdio.h level is pretty nice from the standpoint of keeping your foot un-blown-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > print("hello",who,"answer",answer,'\n'); -- This is cute, ... but what if > you need an integer in hex, or a floating-point number to a particular > precision, and so forth?

Then you can use a helper function to convert them to string objects first.

        print("A:", hex(r.a, 4), " X:", hex(r.x, 4), " C:", integer(c, -10, ' '), "\n");

If your string class is smart enough to do small-string optimization (SSO), then this won't even need heap allocation, so the overhead is really very minimal.

This is basically what I do for my string library. But I also have a special format mode for things like UI localization:

        print(tr("{1} is the value of {0}\n"), format{name, value});
        //tr returns "{0}の値は{1}です\n" for Japanese locale

This goes further than printf by allowing you to very easily reorder the arguments. (omitting the indexes and using just {} makes them sequential.) [I've heard printf can do this too, but I don't know if that's standardized. I've never seen anyone do it in the wild.]

The format{} builds a list of values [I convert them to strings but you could use an any type if you wanted), and when print() gets a const format& as a type, it applies the list to the current string before it. It would be a trivial exercise to extend the token syntax to support formatting rules, eg "{0,-4h}" or what not.

Further, adapters can be added outside the library. So for SQL, one can have bindings via:

        database.execute("select * from user where name=? and age >= ?",
          escape{name, minimumAge});

Still, I'll freely confess that this isn't in the spirit of the C++ standard library: you pay a tiny bit of performance overhead in return for niceness. But unless your application is I/O bound to string formatting, I strongly believe it's worth the (minimal) cost.

String interpolation would make C++ print statements even nicer, but that's unlikely to ever arrive.

<comment><USER7> How the implementation of tr() looks like?

It's another time when I see translating functions indexing text by... text itself, instead of some kind of numeric ID. Since we're talking about performance, I wonder why people write it this way.

<comment><USER6> Just a simple hash table, or if you prefer, a red-black tree. The index where the string was found would be the same between the native list and locale string file.

I like this style because a) if the locale file is deleted you don't end up with no text in your app, b) you don't need a gigantic pool of cryptic IDs, c) it's more intuitive what you're trying to print in the source code.

        print(tr("Warning: changing the video driver requires a restart to take effect"));
        //vs
        print(tr(TR_WARN_VIDEO_DRIVER_CHANGE_RESTART));

You'll create the English locale file anyway for others to translate for you, and you can even use that. The two major downsides are a) sometimes the same sentence is used in two areas and has the same translation in one language, but different translations in another (very rare), and b) if you change the text wording later, you have to edit it in the source code instead of in a separate English locale file.

> Since we're talking about performance, I wonder why people write it this > way.

You're doing something _horrendously wrong_ if your application spends even 0.1% of its time looking up strings to put into GUI windows.

<comment><USER7> > _a) sometimes the same sentence is used in two areas and has the same > translation in one language_

I suspect it's not that rare of a thing, it would explain at least some of the bad translation cases I've seen, that are the reason I _never_ use software in my native language if I can avoid it.

> _b) if you change the text wording later, you have to edit it in the source > code instead of in a separate English locale file._

And, if I understand correctly, in every other locale file too. This tingles my DRY sense in a bad way.

> _You 're doing something horrendously wrong if your application spends even > 0.1% of its time looking up strings to put into GUI windows._

True. Though you can use this reasoning for pretty much every single thing in the source code, and this way lies Java and XML. Premature optimization may be bad, but I still try to always pick the faster option when it doesn't require _too_ much work :).

<comment><USER6> > And, if I understand correctly, in every other locale file too. This tingles > my DRY sense in a bad way.

Not as long as your locale file is ordered the same for each region. Then the index match on the English string tells you which line to read from.

> Premature optimization may be bad, but I still try to always pick the faster > option when it doesn't require too much work :)

Certainly. It's definitely a balancing act. But I think I give up maybe ~5% total performance for a ~500% improvement in code clarity. Moving to Java and things like that would increase the overhead by an order of magnitude while probably not helping readability at all (maybe just a little.)

Of course, if I were trying to parse a 20GiB text file, I'd probably be working on it via mmap() over a char* array :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like it. There's definitely an opportunity here. `iostreams` is stateful and using it for formatted I/O has a faint masochistic flavor. `printf()` is fine, but recall that the compiler writers had to learn to critique the comparison between formatting characters and remaining arguments for a reason. What you want is to smack things together into an output pattern that's good enough. The leverage of callability is clearly a point in favor.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is very nice library with very good and simple concepts.

One thing still bugs me. Chaining adds space in between the tokens. This is not always desirable. Adding another function out would solve this (outs would read then outs(pace)).

Edit: I noticed while readying the test cases that it is possible to change the separator using outs.sep(' ');

I am now wondering how nice it would play with multi threading.

<comment><USER10> Usually people put a mutex around their print statements to avoid scramble, so perhaps not a problem. But I do use static buffers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I prefer `spdlog` which comes with the `fmt` library which is a (type safe) implementation of python/C# style string formatters.

However I do like the ability to provide arbitrary additional operators provided by this system.

</comment><comment><USER12> gcc at least also had a major issue with streams and multithreading because of some global locale locks. Not sure if it was fixed. More than once it caused writing some alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like his update about using () for newline, i won't use this library probably though.</comment>


Stochastic Program Optimization - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/03/30/stochastic-program-optimization/ <comment><USER2> The saxpy example is very strange. They clearly show that the left side (gcc -O3) doesn't generate any SIMD code and that their "STOKE" optimizer does. This isn't a fair comparison. All they need to do is add an -march flag (and apparently the restrict keyword):

[https://goo.gl/7Ll4dp](https://goo.gl/7Ll4dp)

Now the GCC results look pretty much exactly like the "STOKE" results...

<comment><USER3> On a related note, as far as I can tell the STOKE code seems to be incorrect w.r.t. aliasing between y and x, i.e. if x == y + 1. Makes me wonder what SMT solver claims are worth in the literature.

<comment><USER4> I've worked with SMT solvers, Z3 in particular, before and it's definitely doable to prove two pieces of code equivalent, but that depends on the implementation used. Unfortunately, most academics, even when publishing at very influential conferences, rarely present their code for audit.

<comment><USER5> STOKE is on github here: [https://github.com/StanfordPL/stoke](https://github.com/StanfordPL/stoke).

Most CS conferences are making a big push towards "artifact evaluation," which means that many papers now come with peer-reviewed implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recall reading about this from the same guys a few years ago (I'm not from this field so I can't really figure out what's actually different):

[http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/asplos...](http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/asplos13.pdf)

I thought it was really cool that they managed to find improvements on hand- optimized bit tricks from "Hacker's Delight" this way.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know what "fixed-point" in "fixed-point x86_64 assembly code sequence" in the article means? I can think of three things (function combinator, fixed point of a real-valued function, fixed point arithmetic), none of which make sense to me in the context.

<comment><USER5> It means fixed-point arithmetic. Floating point in SMT doesn't work very well, so that's why they have this restriction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A friend wondered how they can make their improvements to SAXPY and claim they're correct w/o using the restrict keyword.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a bit more low-level than I comprehend. Would some one mind explaining the significance and use of this?

<comment><USER7> This is extending Massalin's idea of superoptimization ([https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~collberg/Teaching/553/2011/Reso...](https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~collberg/Teaching/553/2011/Resources/superoptimizer- massalin.pdf)), which is a practical application of Gregory Chaitin's work on applying information theory to algorithms ([https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/acm75.pdf](https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/acm75.pdf)) with better search methods than exhaustive search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Weird that they mention using MCMC and Metropolis Hastings but don't mention simulated annealing, which would be the logical next step.</comment>


Ask HN: Mid 20s, reached goals and still unhappy - <AUTHOR> (throwaway for obvious reasons)
Hey crowd!
I'm writing as I need advice. I am mid 20s and thought I already reached my career goals only to find out I am still unhappy with the need for a change.
I am coding since I'm 10. I love(d) it. I was working in tech ever since. This year I had the chance to co-found a company with very nice conditions for me. I always wanted to have a team of good engineers to "make it better than all the other guys doing so much stuff wrong". This I got now and after only a few months I realized this doesn't make me happy at all.
I have a decent apartment, a good working relationship with my SO and a way above-average salary and freedom at work for being CTO of that company. Basically everything I always thought are my career goals. Still, unhappy, thinking every morning to skip going to work today. It should be the other way around: being excited and love going to work to manage my team and do a bit of coding.
I always loved being around with friends, engineers and people I really respect due to their cleverness, loyalty and intelligence. I probably thought I will get this situation by hiring great people to have an environment I like 24/7. Reality is that I quickly realized that employees are not friends and that only because they are good engineers this does not mean at the same time that they have the characteristics I love to be around with all day long. To even make the situation worse I continuously lost my drive to code. It got boring for some reason. I cannot motivate myself to start a new project or getting a module done way quicker as I do currently.
How can I even motivate a team when I'm not even self motivated?
I really think I'm just a stupid idiot not realizing what I have here or could it be that my goals are actually different to what I originally thought they are?
Can someone recommend ways to actually find out about these? Is someone in a similar situation and can give advice?
Thank you! <comment><USER3> Our circumstances are different, but I'm going through a similar phase, and the last few weeks I've thought mostly on the idea of self-motivation. I'm asking myself what does this really mean and what makes it sustainable? Seeing that you're doing this too reassures me, and it shows me that you've also identified the issue.

The question I'm asking today is: how do I define my purpose in life?

It may be that your true goals in life are different than the ones you set when you were 20. You're not a stupid idiot by any means, and it seems like if wanted to coast the rest of your life you're setup to do so. Be proud of getting to this point because most never will. But if you're looking for deeper fulfillment, you'll need to either set new goals or redefine the purpose for the next phase of your life.

My hypothesis is that when I resolve my purpose, I'll have stronger incentives for self-motivation.

Defining purpose is hard and it's interwoven with your world view, thoughts on religion, death, etc., but you have to start somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "purpose of life" question is maybe a bit too deep for me, but in general I agree with this kind of questions. It's like I do not have a challenge anymore because, for whatever reason, everything I'm doing seems to turn out well even without me putting much effort into it. I'm just lucky in this regard I think which caused me to lose my self motivation very deeply.

I can also observe this very often in other aspects of life: I find a new technology, buy stuff for it and when the stuff arrives at home to start playing around with it, I do not even open the package because in the end I'm thinking "not worth it to waste time on"... which actually ends up in really wasting time by just sitting on the couch and doing nothing. This exact same feeling I have when I have an idea for a new project but then I don't even start it.

It goes that far that even start to watch a new good movie, which was one of my biggest hobbies once, seems to be a too big barrier for me.

My life goals once were to have a family, a nice house and a healthy life. They are still there too, but somehow the "I need to do new things all the time" added up to the list, and this is contrary to the family and house goal. Maybe this confuses me, driving myself into two different directions at the same time?

The "start somewhere" is probably actually the question. Where?

<comment><USER3> I don't have a good answer, but if I were to restart the internal dialogue now, it would be: if I were to die tomorrow, would I be ok with this? I remind myself that every human is statistically insignificant, meaning, I could achieve the highest success and still be forgotten within a few years, decades, or centuries later: life has been around for billions of years, humans for a couple hundred thousand (still debatable). In short, my purpose could end tomorrow, or I can fulfill my purpose and never get recognized for it. If this is the case, why set goals and be ambitious?

What's been motivating me recently is the thought of all the people who ever cared about me. Would making all these people proud when I achieve my goals be enough to push me further?

I haven't figured out the personal part, but learning more about the potential of computers has been inspiring. To be able to understand and contribute to their advancement has made me excited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is what agency tastes like to just about everyone who is being honest. Power through it. Everything else is McDonalds in comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for your comment. As I am no native speaker, I don't understand your comment. Can you explain a bit better?

<comment><USER4> This is what most people feel when confronted with a new blank canvas.

If you retreat, embark on a different journey, and _succeed_ , you will end up staring into the same abyss--just from a different angle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (just adding as a comment because the original text was too long)

Maybe I reached my goals too quick and without much hassle at all and therefore can't really value what I have.

Changing my life circumstances again would probably not solve it. I always loved and needed to do new things. If I would quit now, I feel like I would lose all credibility. I mean, who wants to hire someone who even leaves his own company only because he is not happy? If there would be at least a reason... But there isn't. Even financials are working fine.

Sorry. Just spitting out what is in my head, unsorted and unstructured. I'm not even sure what I'm asking for with this post.

What's wrong with me?

<comment><USER5> There's nothing wrong with you. People often feel terribly depressed when they meet their decade long goals. This is because striving is so satisfying and full of novelty.

Basically, the top of the mountain is beautiful but it's also lonely. It also means you have to start walking down the mountain or find another goal in life. I assure you, there are aspects of your life that you could improve and refine still, but you focused on other aspects for so long.

Try to find something that you want to achieve that's not work related - <USER2> run a marathon. That might help refresh yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Feel free to reach out to me, all my contact info is in my profile. I've had a similar experience recently, I'm a software engineer, plus I have experience in counseling/life coaching.

</comment><comment><USER7> Being a CTO (and doing it right) is extremely hard and draining work. I think only a specific kind of personality can stomach it, let alone enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER8> What do you do except write code?

</comment><comment><USER9> > It should be the other way around

> I really think I'm just a stupid idiot

> I cannot motivate myself

> If there would be at least a reason... but there isn't

I very recently had to pass through a similar ordeal. Mine lasted for a very long time and eventually evolved into full-on self-sabotage. I would go through cycles where I would work very hard to establish an easy status-quo, just to suddenly become completely uninterested and let everything fall apart. It was really hard for me to figure out how to get out of the rut-cycle, and the path I took was very specific to who I am and where I came from. I can't give you step-by-step instructions, but I can outline the general idea and approach that got me started down the right path.

I'm about to get really psuedo-scientifical. Buckle up.

You should forget all this business about what you think you should be feeling. Here is how (I believe) human experiences work:

        Step 1: you experience real-world stimuli (the touch of a significant other; the sound of waves crashing)
        Step 2: you have feelings
        Step 3: you have thoughts

You cannot control your feelings by simply thinking "I ought to feel happy" or "Stuff makes me happy and I have stuff; therefore I am happy." If your feelings are truly a barrier to your work, then you need to examine them. Most importantly you need to acknowledge them without shame or judgement. If you're having some emotional response which does not line up with how you think you should feel, you need to let go of how you think you should feel and just accept your feeling. Don't call it "good" or "bad", just let it happen.

Observe your feelings in a neutral manner. That means you shouldn't wish to dispel or possess any emotions which you may or may not have. Just pay attention to them when they pop-up. Try to understand what real-world stimuli is triggering your emotions. Very often our emotional triggers stem from childhood. If you pay attention, you'll notice that a lot of people seek to mate with men or women who resemble their parents; recreating childhood memories is a very common pattern of unconscious behavior.

The key thing is to allow your mind to be a safe space. Your thoughts and feelings are completely private. No one is going to judge or hurt you for having them, so it's completely safe to just notice each and every one - especially the unwanted ones. I assure you, acknowledging your unwanted thoughts and feelings will not cause you to act on them. Based on what I've seen, I'd say the opposite is true: If you try to suppress unwanted thoughts or feelings you will unconsciously fulfill them in your real life.</comment>


Why We're Not Raising Funds - <AUTHOR> http://blog.omnicalculator.com/not-raising/ <comment><USER2> Genuinely non-snarky question.

It looks like a standard calculator and conversion app, and it looks like most of the implementation I could imagine being in a calculator app is already done.

Why would you even think of raising funds? You thought it was a good idea to write the blog post, so it obviously crossed your mind.

<comment><USER3> Because he went through an accelerator. He'll be told for months that the demo day and the pitch will be super-duper important, because investors.

I attended a different accelerator than him (but also corporate and in Berlin), and the idea that bootstrapping may be viable, or even that waiting for another 6 to 12 months when one has real feedback from the market, was never brought up. This is especially sad, because the situation in Berlin is basically inverted to the one in SV: Living costs are cheap, raising (seed) money is hard.

Our Demo Day... afaik no startup got an investment because they met an investor there :-) Afaik, some proceeded to later (>12 months) raise money, one did have success with crowd-funding. But we all wasted a serious amount of time training our pitch...

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with most things and that's been the general sentiment in our accelerator, too. However, I don't consider it a waste of time. Pitching is great in a way that it forces you to have a clear vision of what you want to do. And boy, I needed it. Every time I pitched, I got questions I knew I didn't have good answers to. These were the biggest holes in my business plan and pitching alone made me think harder about them.

As for the demo day, we were told early on that it's a big thing, but it's unlikely that we'll be discovered then. I got in touch with a pretty great investor who's kinda interested, but I think they're way out of our league now (series A/B level), so we'll wait. Also, on that day we initiated a B2B deal which just might turn out to be what we need at this stage (we're building a prototype now).

I love the Berlin-SV comparison and your conclusion!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It really resonated with me, at Coinkite.com we chose to bootstrap and have been turning away offers for 18 months now. I'm not fully opposed to taking money, It's just been great to focus 100% of our time on Product.

We've managed to get 160,000 active wallets (funded), 1000+ devs using the API, 8000 debit cards and terminals in over 30 countries with very little money.

it's amazing how far you can stretch your own money specially if your business has some revenue form day one.

I don't rule out eventually raising for accelerating growth.

_Note: I'm a terrible ESL writer._

<comment><USER5> Reading your comment is a huge inspiration to me. Do you plan to do any writeups/blog posts of your experience. I love to hear stories from successful bootstrapped companies. I too would love to start something in the bitcoin space :)

<comment><USER4> The main thing I can say is build something and charge for it, if people are willing to pay, you might have something :)

I'm a terrible writer, so unlikely, but happy to chat anytime. We are not "successful" yet, long road ahead. Look for @nvk on twitter, can give you my email there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear about your experiences, too. Hope you can change your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea that a couple kids that programmed a fairly trivial, albeit useful, calculator application feel like they _should_ be raising multiple millions of dollars is what's wrong with the present state of affairs. In my humble opinion only of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> CPLX, the whole point is I don't think I should. And yes, we want to make it a big thing, just wait and see :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the first reason "Because I can't afford to allocate the time needed". Soooo true. You have really high upfront cost if you start fundraising and it might be that you end up with no real good offer at the end.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of people believe that raising capital is completely necessary for your business to succeed. However, many do it and achieve great success. Not raising money slows growth in most cases but what you gain in control and complete ownership outweigh the the risk. It's not for everyone but I feel like raising money is the benchmark for success in people's minds. Which to me has always been silly. Raising funds is not for every business. Good read. Wish you guys all the luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. While I agree for the most part, I do think that raising money is an important validation. Often you hear about a project you wouldn't even consider interesting, but when it's accompanied by "raised X MM from Y", your perception changes.

Also, it's that head-turning thing. They say "we raised X" and you start listening. I had something similar with my downloads count. Honestly, I didn't think 1 million is all that special, but over time I learned I should start most of my pitches with. People just start to listen.

<comment><USER8> Yeah and I'm not saying it's a bad choice. I just think too many people put so much importance on whether or not a company raised money as a measurement of success. When the reality is many companies can do it on their own, control complete ownership, and still achieve a level of success that many companies that raise money see. It's really just based on where your company is headed and whether or not you're eyeing an exit for your company. If you are looking to sell, be acquired, or go IPO then raising funds makes complete sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My opinion is that you probably shouldn't raise money unless you need money to execute your business plan. Some business plans aren't capital intensive, so why give a big chunk of your company away if you don't need additional capital to execute your vision. I don't think mere "growth acceleration" is enough to warrant it. You need to be doing something with the money that you couldn't accomplish otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I'm thinking now. And what smart people have been advising me all along... it took me a while to hear them, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I also made a calculator and I'm not raising funds either:

[https://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/calcable-spreadsheet- calcula...](https://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/calcable-spreadsheet- calculator/id529571185?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER11> We're not raising money either. We took a small amount (< $6,000!) from an angel, and that's it.

I've been working for startups for 25 years, both as early stage employee and as founder.

I feel that the general sentiment really underestimates the cost of VCs.

There's several reasons I'm inclined to pass on VCs:

1\. In the early stages it is a huge distraction, and worse, while you're still figuring out what your company really is-- finding product/market fit, etc, having a VC in there pushing the flavor of the day is not a good thing. The VC is looking in the rearview mirror, not at the market and not forward, but chasing whatever's hitting right now.

Notice how many Video sites got funded when YouTube got bought? How many of them are around now? When the latest news means "you gotta have a video story!!@!!" thats just a distraction your startup doesn't need.

When you're at the point that you have a profitable engine and need to scale it, then VC money can be taken and poured into customer acquisition, capital needs to scale production, etc.

But when you're just figuring it out, an accelerator or angel money is the way to go. Or go without if you can, even better.

I'm concerned that Accelerators have been "demo day bootcamps" that focus too much on pitching and not enough on business development (or customer development) ... and slot you right into thaking a big VC round when your company is only a few months old and not ready to scale.

In fact, given my experience, I'd bet if you analyzed the failures of companies that came out of great accelerators, you'd find that a lot of them got VC money (and influence, distractions, etc.) too early.

2\. The cost of money from VCs is always too high. They have way too many "hostile" deal terms that they "need because they're taking such a huge risk", but this ignores the fact that you're taking even more risk. Their shares should not be more valuable than your shares that you put actual sweat into. They want special incentives because they are "early money", but you're even earlier money, and worse you spent TIME which is more valuable than money.

Thus the situations where taking VC money makes sense are the ones where you get a rather good deal from them, yet still can't get by with ploughing profits back in, or taking a loan from a bank or some other funding source.

In fact, now that there are angel.co syndicates, why should you take money from VCs? You can raise a couple million from a syndicate of angels, get better terms, and spend less time on angel.co than running around the bay area for half a year.

3\. VCs are always pitched as "it's not the money, it's the connections". I've seen very few anecdotes where this turned out to be true, but I've directly experienced many situations where the VCs killed the company. In fact, every VC backed company I've been involved with that failed, and a lot of the early (lower) exits, were caused by VCs. Sometimes these are seen as "fights between the founders" but even then it's because the VCs are trying to force the company to do the wrong thing ("What's your video story?!") and half the founders see it or want to just go along to minimize conflict and the other half of the founders realize it is a company-killing idea. Other times when a founder is too strong the VCs have worked to undermine him, push him out, etc.

VCs meddle too much, and I've seen very little actual productive help.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like this isn't connected with Omni Group (who are a long-established software company). Isn't the naming a bit confusing? [https://www.omnigroup.com/about/](https://www.omnigroup.com/about/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's more than a few companies and projects with "omni" in their names. It's a pretty generic word. If I called it "Awesome Calculator" or something like that we'd surely find a lot of similarl names, too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The decision is far from undisputable, I'd love to hear what you think.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why does your app ask for my location even when i'm not using the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a bit embarasing, but I'm not sure. I released it in June or July and didn't notice it for a long time (wasn't an iOS user). Then we've been working on a complete rewrite for a long time. The new release awaits App Store review.

<comment><USER13> You might find this useful: [http://mackuba.eu/2015/03/17/accessing-user- location-data-in...](http://mackuba.eu/2015/03/17/accessing-user-location- data-in-ios8/) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did you use any cross-platform frameworks for developing this?

<comment><AUTHOR> @zura: yes, it's running on Cordova, but we'll move to React Native as soon as we're comfortable with it (we're using React right now, although the iOS version is still on Angular).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very nice read, I can relate to everything you write.

</comment><comment><USER16> Good read but it may be nice to add the word "yet" to the end. The author clearly says at the end that 'So, if it's going to happen, it will be because they will have knocked on our door, not me knocking on 50 of their doors"

I have a very small web based business that has the potential to be a $50MM business as well but I am always worried about the same thing if investors even care to blink unless we promise a $1B return/exit ?

<comment><USER17> $50MM isn't big enough. It just doesn't support most funds' basic economics. It's nothing personal about you or your idea.

Furthermore, why would you want to raise money if your market cap is $50MM? If you were to raise, you'd likely have to exit for upwards of $300-500M to have the same exact returns as not raising. A bootstrapped, $50MM company is absolutely nothing to scoff at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18>
      9. Because it's just a freakin calculator</comment>


The Eyjafjallajoekull Art Project - <AUTHOR> http://eyjafjallajoekull.com/ Icelands second strike in less than 2 years <comment><AUTHOR> Please submit your art entries! Presumably Eyjafjallajoekul will stop flights for longer than people imagine...</comment>


Show HN: Drib, a nicer way to browse Dribbble's popular shots - <AUTHOR> http://jarqu.es/drib/

<comment><USER2> Nice, endless scrolling would be a nice perk

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Agreed, a few friends requested endless scrolling too.</comment></comment>