Loon's Balloons Will Fly Over Kenya in First Commercial Telecom Tryout - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/loons-balloons-will-fly-over-kenya-in-first-commercial-telecom-tryout <comment><USER2> " To realize this goal in Kenya, Loon has already begun constructing ground stations in Nairobi and Nakuru."

Well of all of the "Loon coming to <country> first!" announcements of the last 5 years I think this is the first time they've actually started to work on really doing it.</comment>


My Favorite Strange Number: Ω - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/12/my_favorite_strange_number_cla.php

<comment><USER2> Fine,

let it be true that everything is not computable and we have an equation for omega. Now, if we ignore all omegas from the inputs what is computable? My hunch is that pretty much is.</comment>


Steve Ballmer Now Owns More Microsoft Stock Than Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/02/steve-ballmer-now-owns-more-microsoft-stock-than-bill-gates/ <comment><USER3> > What will be interesting to watch will be how quickly Microsoft's new CEO, > Satya Nadella, can accumulate stock in the company. Various performance > bands that comprise a large portion of his compensation could net him nearly > nine-figure equity in his first half decade in charge,

That's not a bad compensation package...

<comment><USER4> Not at all. Is he worth it?

<comment><USER5> So far, yes, apparently.

<comment><USER6> You have to give credit to both MS's board and Steve Ballmer that they clearly held back on announcements until the new guy took over, so he could hit the ground running, but clearly a lot of the things he's been credited with were done under Ballmer (and I am not one to give credit to Ballmer lightly).

Still, he's clearly been a good pick (so far) simply based on perception.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. One doesn't simply wizard up Office for iPad in a couple of months (weeks?) or however long it was between SteveB's departure and the announcement. That said, almost all of them could have come out a year earlier or could have achieved a higher priority while under Ballmer's tenure. Perhaps Ballmer leaving gave a freer hand to those projects.

Either way, the people running Microsoft clearly want Nadella to succeed as an individual and they apparently want Microsoft to succeed as a company, given the business shift over the past few months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A better way to phrase it maybe: Gates is deep into the next new thing. It seems weird now, but maybe for future generations Gates will be remembered more for his post MSFT era.

<comment><USER6> If he wipes out or seriously reduces malaria (which is what he's been openly pursuing for ten years or more) then that alone will establish his place in the pantheon of philanthropists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's because Ballmer couldn't sell much while he was CEO (that would look very bad).

<comment><USER9> If I recall rightly, I recall Ballmer mentioning he was actively buying shares...But my recollection may be fuzzy (it was a year or two ago when I recall hearing it).

<comment><USER10> Actually, unless Ballmer has some grand plan that needs a lot of capital, holding MSFT is not a bad idea at all. With more than 300M shares, he gets a yearly dividend of roughly 350M USD which is only taxed at most 20% as qualified dividend.

Well, even if he needs capital, I am sure he can get debt at much more favorable rate than the tax he would have to pay if he sold the shares. The only argument for selling is if he wants to diversify.

Another example is the Walton family: they still keep >50% ownership of Walmart and live off the dividend.

<comment><USER9> Right or wrong decision making, Ballmer was all in with MSFT.

<comment><USER11> Well... he loves that company.

<comment><USER8> Especially the... DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article doesn't go there, but many before it have made a big deal about Gates' endless selling of Microsoft stock. The fact that it's still a headline, points to the sensationalism that has surrounded this topic for years.

Gates no doubt cares a lot about Microsoft's well being, but much like Jobs, he doesn't need stock to exercise his influence. His #1 task financially these days (the last decade plus), is to protect his $80 billion in wealth. Articles like to sensationalize the selling for clicks, but it's strictly logical to diversify out of his formerly concentrated MSFT position, and to ultimately balance risk vs returns, with the goal in mind to maximize how much wealth he can give away through the foundation.

Given his priorities, having $13 billion (16% of his net worth) tied up in Microsoft is still a sizable concentration. I would suspect he'll sell that down to $4 to $8 billion before eventually holding a token position (for him). I also expect Ballmer will shortly begin a modestly aggressive plan to reduce his Microsoft position.

<comment><USER13> Nobody knows what Bill Gates did with all of the money he got selling his MSFT shares over time, just that he put them into Cascade Investments - <USER2> investment vehicle. Very odd that you never read about him buying stock or companies or real estate. If he's invested that money well, he could be worth a hell of a lot more than Forbes estimates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what Ballmer does now.

<comment><USER15> At Oxford, a couple of months ago, he gave his first public talk since retiring as CEO. There he mentioned he's currently not doing much, but he's researching a few problems to do with governance, healthcare and the environment. He said he doesn't want to try to do anything like Microsoft again, because anything like that would inevitably pale in comparison. He seemed more interested in charity/politics/similar.

<comment><USER6> Sounds good. Sounds a _lot_ better than setting up a patent trolling empire or building a company around a half-assed Hypercard clone.

<comment><USER16> ...or investing in Monsanto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This statement only proves that Bill Gates is the smarter guy :)

</comment><comment><USER18> There is just plain something screwed up with a system that rewards someone like Steve Ballmer with any kind of stocks whatsoever, let alone fire him before he has a chance to ruin all kinds of sure things.</comment>


11 reasons we didn't invest in your company - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/05/11-reasons-we-didnt-invest-in-your-company/ <comment><USER2> Don't you just love venture capitalists.

"We didn't invest because you don't have a rip roaring, cash making, totally de-risked, global, giant market opportunity with an awesome team".

The exact same reasons that I wouldn't go to a venture capitalist if I did have a company with all those attributes:

"We didn't bring our company to venture capitalists because we have a global opportunity, we are making money, we have an awesome team, we've taken out the risk and we're making cash."</comment>


Creating a Virtual jQuery Keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://designshack.co.uk/tutorials/creating-a-virtual-jquery-keyboard

<comment><USER2> Ugh. Sure it stops keyloggers, but it's awful for over-the-shoulder security. I hate it when banks use these things for password entry because then I have to get all paranoid about who is watching me just then.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool. TradeKing.com uses a browser-based keyboard for sign-in now.</comment>


Show HN: package.json.is - <AUTHOR> http://package.json.is/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you didn't happen to notice this is a live editor (you can make any changes you'd like), with live documentation. You can paste an existing file to get help information, or write a new one live in the editor.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is going to be very useful. Finding substantive documentation for package.json has always been a bit of a struggle (there's a page on npmjs.org, but it takes longer to find than it should).

</comment><comment><USER3> Great reference! Would be nifty if documentation on properties (e.g. `scripts` in `package.json`) were linkable for sharing and bookmarking.</comment>


An Open Letter to my Two Mortgage Companies - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stealthmode.com/2009/02/06/an-open-letter-to-my-two-mortgage-companies/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry but this woman makes me angry. A lot of it is my background. I grew up living in Government funded housing and eating thanks only to the welfare system. That, combined with working my way up to the point that I now have money as an adult, makes me see financial matters differently than others around here.

I accept that.

But give me a break. Boo Hoo, her house is only worth $700,000 now. She spent nearly $50,000 upgrading it and now its worth less. Oh the Horror.

I get that it hurts when you have to go down a step in your standard of living. I'm not entirely unsympathetic. But there are millions working to have a place to live at all. So I can't spare much sympathy for this woman.

Short sell the house, find a place you can afford and shut the hell up. Getting kicked out of your $700,000 house is not the end of the world

<comment><USER3> What infuriates me most about this situation is the implicit presumption that she deserves the home because she got there first. She took out the biggest loan, therefore she deserves the property now, and we should forgive her debts so that she can stay.

I'm sure that Half Moon Bay would be a nice place to live. Personally, I'd like a bit of land on the Colorado front range -- maybe something next to a creek, with a view of a beautiful valley. The difference between this woman and myself, is that I _know_ that I can't afford it. So I think of my dream property, and work a little harder, save a little more, and hope that someday I'll be able to buy something that approximates what I desire.

Apparently, this woman missed that memo. She went out, took a series of ridiculous loans, and now she's the "owner" of a bit of property that she never had any reasonable ability to afford. And now that it's all gone pear shaped, she thinks that she should be allowed to stay.

Well, that's nonsense. There are thousands of other people just like me, who have been saving and living responsibly for years to afford the things that these lunatics bid up into the stratosphere by taking out massive debts. Now is the time for irresponsible people to suffer, and for the things that they "purchased" to come down in value to levels that the market of reasonable people can support. We shouldn't rescue this woman simply because she was willing to take out the biggest loan in 2006 -- and right now, that's her only argument.

<comment><USER4> I'm not exactly sure that's what she's saying. What she's saying is that she is, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked, and that if the banks foreclose they're likely to lose more money than if they try and work with her to render her situations less fucked.

Not so long back, a client of ours ran into major trouble. They were left with two options - pay suppliers a percentage and then sell what was left, or put the company into bankruptcy and let the creditors work out who to pay what.

We decided that a guaranteed percentage now and the continued goodwill of the people we'd worked with was a better deal than an undetermined amount at an undetermined later date - so we dealt (more accurately, our MD did; I don't really get involved in that side of things).

So far as I'm concerned, the interesting question here is not whether or not she's an idiot, it's whether or not she's correct that providing the financing she needs would be a net win for her banks over foreclosing on the mortgage. I don't know enough myself to have any basis to make that call, but what's currently infuriating -me- is the fact most of the comments seem more interested in attacking the OP rather than discussing the financials :)

<comment><USER3> I think it would be perfectly acceptable for the banks to allow her to continue to rent the house, until a new buyer can be found at a lower price. But yes, that's about all the charity I'm willing to extend to someone who made bad decisions, and now wants to profit from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one utterly shocked by the fact that this woman is supposed to be some sort of small business mentor?

From the front page of their site: "Companies that are accepted into the Stealthmode Partners portfolio receive coaching, consulting, and connections to the people and resources they need to reach success."

I really don't think this person is in a position to be handing out advice and counseling.

My wife and I have 2 properties, our regular house and a lake house in a nice community on Winnipesaukee. In both cases when we purchased these properties we "qualified" for far larger loans than what we actually took out. We did some "worst case scenario" math to make sure if one of us lost an income we wouldn't end up crying on the Interwebs about the unfairness of the world. We also made sure to put enough down that if we had to we could unload the properties fairly quickly (yeah, it would be a huge loss, but we wouldn't get backed into a financial corner).

Personally, I have no sympathy for this person or the majority of other people in this situation. ESPECIALLY when you consider that, like many of us, she should have lived through the whole .com boom/bust and had some inkling of how things can turn on a dime.

I'd like to ask for the government to magically remortgage my properties for what they're now worth, except that through some logical forethought and planning my properties are worth much more than the loan amount.

</comment><comment><USER6> She's looking for a handout. The sense of entitlement of some people in this country is sickening.

"I want to ask you to re-finance my mortgage at the current value of my house at a 4.2% rate, like everyone in Congress is suggesting."

Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. Basically, everyone that didn't go out and upgrade or buy a big house gets shafted because those that bought big houses would get bailed out to the tune of the current market value and at a rate way below market value for their loan? That's just foolish and sends the wrong message.

I bought a house in the San Francisco Bay Area in the east bay for about 450k in 2001. The house is still pretty well above water but I have that thing on a fixed rate loan at 5.5%. I've managed to pay off a decent chunk of the house as well because I stayed conservative. And because I decided to stay put and not upgrade even though money was cheap I would basically be told to piss off because I did the right thing. No, no, no.

Luckily she has it wrong anyways. The law being tossed around would only be for people in bankruptcy if I read it correctly but then again it changes every day.

I really hope none of what she is hoping for comes to pass. And if, for some reason there was a relief bill passed, there should be some sort of payback clause in it where they government would be entitled to a portion of any "profit" on the house when values start to rise again and the person sells it. Think of the way affordable housing works where the buyer can't sell it at "market rate" - they are only entitled to a certain amount of appreciation each year. They can even add in credits for capital improvements so the owner still has incentive to maintain the house vs. letting it go into disrepair.

</comment><comment><USER7> I, at first, wanted to join in the bashing.

I scrimped and saved and paid off my home mortgage in about 6 years. I do coding/teaching/projects on the side and used it to pay off all my student loans and mortgages.

I think, much like the rest of you, that this person is a fool.

However, I have another angle. I used to work at a large bank. I have many friends who still work at the same large bank. Loans were set to fall below 5% (mostly commercial, mortgages are a different story).

However, this bank will not loan below 5%. Why? Because that what's the bank was forced to take from the government.

Yes, the government forced the 10 largest banks to take money at 5%. This in turn caused the banks (at least the one I have inside info on) to set their lowest rates of 5%. This caused major problems with their computer loan systems b/c their were set to follow prime/LIBOR etc. My friends had to tell a lot of upset customers that their loans would not be falling below 5%.

So the banks will not/cannot loan at below 5%, like this person is asking, b/c the gov't has gotten involved.

Now loans (commercial) and mortgages don't have the some source of funding (yet) but gov't intervention is pending in the mortgage market.

Now the new president/congress has promised to do something about it. How will they screw up the mortgage market? We will find out in the next few months.

</comment><comment><USER8> I understand the longing to be close to family, but unless her yearly income is somewhere around 200K, she shouldn't have bought the house. I'm basing that on 20% down, and a mortgage of about 3x income ((730 * 0.8) / 3). I'm not sure where it comes from, but this has been the historical guideline for affordability.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure where you're getting your 3x income numbers from, but they're simply ludicrous. With a mortgage of 3x your income, your mortgage will be less than 20% of your salary. For example, with an $85000/yr income, you earn about $5300 post-tax per month, and your mortgage payment is only $1350. If you consider home owning to be important to you, surely you can afford paying more than that for your mortgage.

Furthermore, it is impossible to find a home in the bay area for under $600,000. I'm certain that those starter homes are not being occupied by high net-worth individuals with $200,000/yr salaries.

I have been told that your monthly payments should not be more than 45% of your monthly household post-tax income. That comes out to a mortgage that can be about 5x your income. With those numbers, the lady in the article should've had a household (her + her husband) income of about $150,000/yr.

I'm a recent buyer of a $625,000 home with a $85,000/yr salary and I have no problems keeping up with my payments and establishing an emergency fund.

<comment><USER3> He's right. The traditional guideline is that you should pay about 30% of your net income on housing. You're right that the bay area is "different", but that doesn't mean it's different in a reasonable way. Most people really can't afford to own property here, by traditional standards.

Also, I'd like to point out that this woman took out an _interest-only_ loan for the bulk of her debt, skimped on the deposit, and secured with another loan. Even if we use your standard (45% of net income), there's no way that she could afford the property.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do hope that in the event that banks start renegotiating mortgages at current market values (i.e. in the event government forces/pays them to) that the borrower does get their credit wiped out. They deserve it.

"I put 10% down and got a 5-year interest-only mortgage for about $576,000 and a HELOC at prime +2 for the remainder, about $154,000."

AKA, I'm a financial moron and don't deserve credit.

</comment><comment><USER11> 68 and only able to put 10% down on a house and now about to face foreclosure? What have you been doing with your money all your life?

This is ripe to be picked up on burbed.com.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why are you people being such pricks?

This has nothing to do with how much the house costs, or where it is. Would you feel diffferently if it were a $80k house and she had worked for 10 years for the downpayment? There's nothing special about an 80/20 mortgage except that it's "traditional" and a lot of people get hung up on tradition.

The bottom line is that she could afford the house when she bought it and she had a goal of paying it off completely when her deals went through. Then the bottom dropped out of the economy and now she's screwed. This affects high net work individuals just as it affects those struggling to get by. You can live within your means for decades and still be wiped out in weeks. Short selling it solves nothing since she will still owe the bank the original amount. In her situation, if the bank won't negotiate and she can't come up with the money the only solution that makes sense is foreclosure. The bank would truly be stupid to let this happen: it's basically cutting off their nose to spite their face.

The level of smugness around here is incomprehensible!

<comment><USER13> I'm sure the fact her house is so expensive brought a bias to many of the comments. But the main flaw everyone is pointing out is that she believes she _deserves_ to be helped out, instead of taking personal responsibility in order to solve the problem.

She believes its not her fault she can't afford to maintain her lifestyle, so the banks and government (and ultimately the tax payers) should be helping her. There's nothing smug about attacking her lack of justification of why she deserves to be helped at other peoples expense.

<comment><USER12> Notice that she only believes that she deserves to be helped simply because the banks are being helped. I can understand her frustration: if I couldn't pay my mortgage because I lost my job and couldn't find work and at the same time I saw banks being bailed out with my tax dollars, I'd sure expect some help too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Hold on a second, are you implying that TARP money, i.e. the cash I had earned and paid in taxes, should be used to rescue "unhappy and frustrated" credit- loving consumers like yourself, who just happen to love his $750K Arizona (!) house so-o-o-o much that I'm supposed to feel sympathetic for you?

Since apparently I am paying for this mess along with millions of other young working professionals, foreclosures is what we want. Yes, foreclosures and 3x reduction in real estate prices, because our economy doesn't pay salaries that let us save up $750K for a house in the middle of nowhere.

Your "investment" should be up for sale for $350K and you should be rebuilding your credit while living in an apartment.

And please leave banks out of it. They only gave you what you asked them for.

</comment><comment><USER14> If she's waiting for Congress to help her, then she's really in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER15> What would happen if she stopped paying on the HELOC for now until her personal business conditions improve.

It is in second position, certainly would not help her credit score, but might offer some short term relief without worry of losing the house?

</comment><comment><USER16> If you don't need to sell your house, and you're happily living in it, does it really matter how much someone would be willing to pay you for it?

(I know, I know, you can take equity out of the house, but still, am I missing something?)

<comment><USER17> It sounds like he's no longer able to pay the mortgage because his business has fallen off a cliff. Customers that were willing to part with their money in good economic times have disappeared in bad economic times.

It'd be really easy to blame him for taking out a mortgage he can't afford, but this is what happens in recessions. While the money supply is being inflated, some investments that are marginal (like his business, apparently) seem pretty attractive. When the money supply starts contracting, they suddenly get squeezed out of existence - which forces them to default on their debts, which further contracts the money supply. Financially, the right thing for this guy to do is to let the bank foreclose, but in the short run that'll make things worse for everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Francine has spent thousands of hours volunteering and building up the community around her (most likely above some higher paid contracts).

I'm not really talking about the situation (which sucks, and is happening more than we think, and yes, is bringing down major pillars in tech communities) but am thinking about how this impacts us all.</comment>


Former MCC Inmate: There's 'No Way' Jeffrey Epstein Killed Himself - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/08/10/former-mcc-inmate-theres-no-way-jeffrey-epstein-killed-himself/ <comment><USER2> _My youngest son was forced to leave this country because of this Solozzo business._

 _All right. I have to make arrangements to bring him back here safely, cleared of all these false charges._

 _But I 'm a superstitious man. And if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he should get shot in the head by a police officer. Or if he should hang himself in his jail cell. Or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning. Then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. And that I do not forgive._</comment>


Ask HN: Is ol good LAMP stack finally dead? - <AUTHOR> I haven't seen much job ads for PHP devs recently. Where did they all go? Did nodejs stack finally displaced PHP as the best way to do a quick and quirky backend? <comment><USER2> A good place to start is the Stackoverflow Developer Survey ([http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016](http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016)). The 2016 results show PHP as the 5th most popular technology (25.9%) compared to Node.js (17.2%). PHP has dropped and Node.js risen by 5%~ since the 2015 results.

However, their "most dreaded" list has LAMP at 68.7%. Being that nearly three quarters of all people using a LAMP stack do not want to be doing so. Conversely, Node.js is loved, with 59.6% of respondents who develop with it wanting to continue to develop with it.

Whilst PHP represents 3x the volume of Node.js topics, Node.js topics has risen 26.8% since last year, and PHP dropping 3.8%. Import to note though is that whilst PHP declined, WordPress also increased 18.5%. MySQL's results still fairs better than SQL Server.

The survey results note:

> The average developer regularly uses between 4 and 5 major programming > languages, frameworks and technologies. The most common 2-technology > combination is JavaScript & SQL. The most common 3-tech combination is > JavaScript, PHP, and SQL.

I would argue that PHP is completely alive and kicking but people aren't interested in it as much. Given the age of PHP compared to Node.js, and the way trends work, I think it is far early to crown a new LAMP king.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can find YC companies that use PHP by going to [https://triplebyte.com/ycombinator- startups](https://triplebyte.com/ycombinator-startups) and looking at PhP for technologies used. (linking is broken, so I can't send you the actual link). That said, when I do it, 19 show up that are _currently_ hiring. Given that YC companies are a very small amount of total possible tech companies hiring, I would say that LAMP is not dead.

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually think something better is happening: it's possible to write backends in a lot more languages. Go, Swift, Rust, and Elixir come to mind as becoming usable for web backends in the last 5 years or so. People just seem to write their backend in the language they like the best.

Then you have BaaS and things like Postgraphql that mean that writing a backend by hand is becoming a thing of the past. Lots of good developments, but not necessarily a "new PHP" that's replacing PHP.</comment>


Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/media/music-world-bands-together-against-youtube-seeking-change-to-law.html <comment><USER2> It amazes me that the music industry has the _audacity_ to complain that the DMCA makes things _too hard_. If anything, the DMCA makes it _too easy_ to take down content. And YouTube then makes it even easier than the DMCA, and harder to restore content after faulty takedowns.

This time around, I hope the computing industry and the user-generated content industry are big enough to just say "no, go away and don't ask again".

<comment><USER3> The major labels try to frame the discussion around piracy, which confuses everyone else because YouTube bends over backwards when it comes to copyright law.

If you dig deeper, its not about piracy - its about control. What do the majors get from Spotify/Apple music that they don't get from YouTube? If the majors don't like their deal with Spotify (whether its 80% of the revenue, or no free listeners), the majors can walk, and if any of their music appears on Spotify, the majors can sue them out of existence.

With YouTube it's different -

1.) YouTube is the largest streaming site so users will always look for music there

2.) Anyone can upload music to YouTube

3.) YouTube isn't financially responsible when someone uploads infringing material.

These 3 factors mean, if the majors decide they want 80% of YouTube's revenue rather than 50% and YouTube walks, there is a chance (more like a given) that someone will upload Taylor Swift's new album on there pitch shifted by 13% (to evade content id), and will go on to generate millions of views. And since YouTube is protected by the DMCA, the majors can't sue them out of existence. _That 's_ why the majors hate the DMCA, as it applies to YouTube. There effectively isn't a "scorch-earth" policy for music on YouTube, and the majors can't leverage their army of lawyers to force YouTube to submit to them if "scorch-earth" fails.

Now I doubt "we need to kill the DMCA so we can sue YouTube for billions" is very PR-friendly, but "muh piracy" always is.

<comment><USER4> Paying someone to be an artist is like paying someone to be an alcoholic, and the more I hear Artists collectively complain about the lifestyle I'm failing to enable, while I sit lashed to a desk all day, the more I want to destroy their every dream and aspiration.

<comment><USER5> You seem to be lambasting what you see as entitled behavior, while making it very clear that you are simply bitter that they live a life you either don't agree with or perhaps, are envious of.

Either way it isn't up to you to decide who will pay for what, and your assumption that every artist is a drunken freeloader is clearly false. Most working artists also have to hold down a job and will get very little in return for their efforts.

They aren't providing nothing, and very clearly people want what they are providing. It takes time, effort and opportunity costs to produce music and to expect that it be given to you for nothing because you think it's frivolous is ridiculous.

Do you pay for DVDs? Pay to see movies? What about the artwork on your clothing, or the design of your car? You pay for all of those things directly or indirectly and they could all be considered frivolous in one way or another, yet someone worked hard to make it happen and people are willing to pay for that.

<comment><USER6> Recorded music is the advertising for the musician. I don't understand why I should pay for that advertising. What they are advertising is their ability to perform music and they will receive my money when I pay to watch them perform or purchase their merchandise.

EDIT: Let me elaborate in regards to ehnto's argument. DVDs, clothing and cars are all physical items I am paying for and therefore I am happy to pay for that. I am also happy to pay to see a movie because movies could not exist prior to being able to film. Movies are the end product that I want to see.

All of these are different to music. Music existed well before the ability to record it did. All that recording did was make it more accessible. Back when you had to purchase a record or CD there was a physical item you ended up with to listen to that music. Therefore something that was worth paying for. I bought a lot of CDs. The music is not the end product. The live show where I go to see the musician perform is.

I don't get paid for people to use my work without any involvement from me past the fact I created something. Why should a musician be paid for you listening to the music they created. They aren't putting in any hours for me to hear that past the original creation. What are they getting paid for?

This is why I love artists like Hoodie Allen and Chance the Rapper. They release the majority of their music for free. Hoodie Allen was unable to release one of his albums for free on iTunes, so he charged the minimum. He was constantly on social media telling people they can download his album for free from multiple locations and that they didn't have to buy it on iTunes. People still paid for that album like crazy.

On that note... fuck the music industry.

<comment><USER7> I think your view of records is a bit unfair.

> I am also happy to pay to see a movie because movies could not exist prior > to being able to film.

I am happy listening to records, because records could not exist prior to being able to record. See, some album music is really unique in its own right and could not be easily reproduced live. The same as some movies could not easily be translated to a theater play.

> I don't get paid for people to use my work without any involvement from me > past the fact I created something. Why should a musician be paid for you > listening to the music they created.

Isn't it a bit the same as with software? When I buy some software, the developers also aren't putting any hours for me at the moment I'm using it. Still, most people are ok with paying for software.

<comment><USER8> You can get plenty of software for free. Most people I know seem to have dodgy or OEM installed versions of software, and use free products on top of that. The ones who do pay for software usually have it paid for by their work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The self-proclaimed* music world, aka mainstream leftovers and special interest mouthpieces. What about all the artists who would be nowhere without YouTube? Like Justin Bieber, for example.

<comment><USER10> Their videos will probably get taken down by someone else claiming to own them, if history is any guide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> what if they banded together and competed. i don't want to trvialize it but youtube is annoying as fuck.

* pointless comment system

* inability/difficult to just get audio, especially mobile

* horrible search experience

* weird channel/user ui

* many features/services that come and go. youtube red, other premium services, i actually saw a new one today

* mobile app

i am not saying baseline piracy should be allowed, but as other saas and consumer services become much cheaper, it becomes easier to buy than steal. finding and curating an entire music library is simple and 9.99 on apple and spotify. netflix and prime provide video media more consistently and with less of a hassle than torrenting it due to integration, speed and lack of adware. just roll out the fucking content and let people buy it. if you sue google and take it down, and it can't be immeadiately torrented, that artists music immeadiately won't exist to 60% (prob greater) of the people listening.

also, DMCA makes no fucking sense. i cant find the link but random 3rd parties just issue takedowns and get and keep advert revenue. i am against google and youtube being essentially sole purveyors of search and media, but I feel for the people running these services. how do you verify and moderate millions of request? this might even be per hour at this point. last thing this needs is to be changed. either scrap it or keep it, i'd be too scared to see what would happen if this got amnended even with good intentions

<comment><USER12> The comment system apparently appeals to a lot of people, just not you or I. It's probably better for the artists to have that than not.

If you pay for Youtube Red / Google Play Music, you can get audio only easily on mobile. That's actually why I started subscribing, though now I use it mostly on my laptop. It's essentially 100% covered my music needs since I started.

The search actually seems pretty good to me. I generally find what I want very quickly even with typos, etc. Do you have specific thoughts about it?

UI can definitely be a little wonky for say, browsing a channel I frequently can't find what I want without searching. And the damn auto-playing video on the channel page! I end up having to stop it playing four or five times in short succession the way I use the page.

Anyway, opinions differ.

<comment><USER13> YouTube Red is not available everywhere (or even US-only at the moment, I think?) and Google Play Music is a completely unrelated (though excellent) service.

Also, YouTubers complain more about the comment system than the people commenting do. There's a reason many videos these days have comments disabled. There was also a lot of negativity when the comment system was changed as part of the Google+ rollout. The commenting system is really only useful for the channels when considered in aggregates -- there's barely any point in trying to hold individual conversations -- it's worse than Twitter. Maybe NLP and sentiment analysis could be used to build moderation/analytics tools to improve that use case.

The UI is nice but wonky. As a web developer myself I frequently look at YouTube as an example for what kind of sloppy UX you can get away with in a billion dollar flagship product. It's also gone through several even worse iterations (e.g. the dreaded keep-video-playing-when-you-navigate-away "feature" that was supposed to emulate the behaviour of the mobile app).

As an example for a current mis-feature of YouTube (i.e. something intentional they had to actually go out of their way to develop): volume and speed are saved (less or more reliably) and persisted globally and indefinitely if you change them. Listened to a couple of talks on 1.5x or 2x yesterday? Now all the music videos you're watching are sped up too. Had to turn the volume way up on that video podcast? Better turn it back down before the next video's incredibly loud conference jingle comes up.

These features as they are only make sense if you use YouTube for precisely one thing and one thing only. The second you approach it with different use cases the features become annoying and distracting.

<comment><USER12> Google Play Music and Youtube Red aren't unrelated, at least in the US: you buy one you get the other. For all practical purposes for me, they're just different features of the same product and are actually integrated (you can play songs from Youtube in Google Play Music). I'd never have bought Youtube Red, but getting it in a bundle of features is nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I opened the article expecting the music industry to have caught wind of youtube-dl.

I was wrong.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is strange. It seems like all of the artist mentioned have Official Youtube Pages where they post their own videos and music - if they don't want to be on youtube why not take those videos off the site?

<comment><USER16> If they don't do, people will upload the full albums and people will listen to those copies. So better put there their songs.

Also, YouTube is a monopoly. It's the Microsoft Windows of online media distribution. Developers cannot afford to not release their software for Windows, now imagine if Microsoft decided to build an AppStore like iOS where they decided unilaterally the price of software and their cut, and it were dirty cheap! Damned if you didn't develop for Windows, damned if you did.

<comment><USER2> > If they don't do, people will upload the full albums and people will listen > to those copies. So better put there their songs.

And the world's smallest violin will play a royalty-free sad song for them.

YouTube already has a huge pile of mechanisms above and beyond the DMCA to automatically identify and take down content. If you don't want your music anywhere on YouTube, you can use those tools, which YouTube doesn't _have_ to provide at all, but which they provide because they want to make business deals with major labels.

Personally, I'd love to see YouTube just drop all access to those tools for anyone not on their platform, and labels can go back to filing individual DMCA requests by registered letter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By "music world" do they mean record labels and musicians signed to record labels?

<comment><USER17> I thought it was a store like Guitar Center. It's just the massive media conglomerates that own us all speaking under a few of their brands. They're fighting the tech companies that make all their money from getting between every communication and collecting rents, and blaming everything that goes wrong on one of the endpoints.

"Mommy, the capitalists are fighting again!"

"Don't worry baby, we'll just send our check to whoever wins..."

Vivendi was started as a municipal water company by Napoleon's nephew, also Napoleon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The comparison of vinyl vs YouTube I suspect is deliberately misleading. Since vinyl has manufacturing costs, if their $471m figure was revenue, it was the incorrect value to use. The gross margins are typically 50% or in that area +- 10%.

Whereas the YouTube revenue has a gross margin of 100%.

So very apples and oranges.

<comment><USER19> Hosting is free now?

<comment><USER20> Certainly orders of magnitude less than producing vinyl and selling it in brick-and-mortar stores. The size of YouTube videos is in the singles-to-tens- of-MB. [http://www.cdncalc.com](http://www.cdncalc.com) suggests delivery costs for commercial for-profit General-purpose CDNs are on the order of 5 cents per GB. YouTube has absolutely massive scale and their own CDN POPs deployed, so I wouldn't be surprised if their costs are a small fraction of this price. However, even at a generous 10MB per video and retail CDN bandwidth cost of 5 cents per GB, delivery of one play of one song is about would cost one twentieth of one cent. I'm sure they're making much more than this for the ad which plays before the video. YouTube also has employees and infrastructure and other costs, but they don't disclose their financials, so it's hard to know exactly how much they spend on hosting: [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-cfo-doesnt-disclose- yo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-cfo-doesnt-disclose-youtube- financial-results-2015-7)

All that said, digital distribution tends to be drastically cheaper than physical distribution to the point where it's essential free, and a negative cost once ad revenue is factored in.

For a vinyl analogy, imagine Starbucks was paying 1000x the cost of distributing a record if someone went to Starbucks after seeing the ad which was slipped inside the record cover.

Another consideration: YouTube makes so much on ads that they're _giving some of that money back to content producers_ because they know that the service they provide is so readily available for free elsewhere that producers need additional incentives to use YouTube specifically.

I'm fairly confident that their ad share payouts exceed their bandwidth costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> YouTube is not so honest I guess tbh, instead on forcing artists for contentID sign up, they can as well at first DCMA request calculate contentID, and block all current and future violations automatically, and artists don't have to send DCMA for every violation</comment>


JQuery 1.3.2 Released. - <AUTHOR> http://docs.jquery.com/Release:jQuery_1.3.2 <comment><USER2> _The test suite has broken 1500 tests (1504, to be precise)._

Maybe "surpassed" would be a better verb here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those are some _very_ substantial speed improvements. Great to see, especially since this was just a point release.

<comment><USER4> We want to make sure there's some nice candy for those who upgrade. Getting people to upgrade can be tricky - we do our best to reduce any outstanding bugs (1.3.1 and 1.3.2 have helped here) but having a carrot on the end of the stick helps a lot, as well.

<comment><USER5> I love jQuery so much... it's exactly what a JS framework should be: easy ways to select and modify DOM elements. The new visibility stuff is great! I've always dreaded having to deal with "...but are its parents visible?"

There are some things jQuery isn't too great at (event normalization is slow in IE, for example, and .remove() kills events and data), but I've never not been able to easily extend jQuery to use my own implementation.

Thanks again for jQuery.

<comment><USER4> Glad you're enjoying it so much!

As to the points you mention: "event normalization is slow in IE" Do you have any information on this? This should've gotten faster in 1.3 - but it's definitely something that we would want to improve, if that's not the case.

".remove() kills events and data" I agree that's lame. I have a new method penciled in on the roadmap: .extract() - it removes an element from the DOM but keeps all the data intact. I think this is what you're looking for!

<comment><USER5> As per the IE performance... I usually feel the inclination to dig deeper and figure out what the cause is, but not this time. It only reared its head because it was on mousemove, which obviously gets fired a lot. I have a hunch it's in computing the source element in certain cases, like floats or absolutely positioned things.

To get around this, I use my own event normalization that seems to work across all browsers and only normalizes what I need in any given project, for example:

      var e = e || window.event;
      var fixed_e = {};
      fixed_e.pageX = document.all ? e.clientX + truebody.scrollLeft : e.pageX;
      fixed_e.pageY = document.all ? e.clientY + truebody.scrollTop : e.pageY;
      fixed_e.X = (e.offsetX ? e.offsetX : e.layerX) || 0;
      fixed_e.Y = (e.offsetY ? e.offsetY : e.layerY) || 0;
      fixed_e.source = e.target ? e.target : e.srcElement;

Another problem with jQuery events is unbinding is tricky.. I don't like how I have to have a reference to the bound function laying around somewhere so that I can unbind it. In my event system, adding an event returns a handle, which allows you to simple call ".detach()" or ".attach()" or ".trigger()" .. it's worked out very well for me.

As per the remove, I added a simple extension that's worked perfectly:

      $.fn.rm = function(){
        return this.each(
          function(){
            if (!this.parentNode) return;	//already removed.
            this.parentNode.removeChild(this);
          }
        );
      }

<comment><USER4> You can take a look at the event fixing code here: <http://dev.jquery.com/browser/trunk/jquery/src/event.js#L285>

There's really not much to it - and it's really not much different from the code that you show above. A lot has changed since 1.3 so if you're still having problems, perhaps its not here and with some other aspect of the event handling code. Any more input would definitely be appreciated.

"I don't like how I have to have a reference to the bound function laying around somewhere so that I can unbind it."

Here are a couple ways to unbind an event handler without needing the original function.

      $("div").bind("click", function(){});

      // Unbind all bound events
      $("div").unbind();

      // Unbind all click events
      $("div").unbind("click");

      $("div").bind("click.tmp", function(){});

      // Unbind all click events with the name 'tmp'
      $("div").unbind("click.tmp");

The last one is probably what you want.

<comment><USER5> Sometime today I'll try to reproduce the conditions. It was definitely event fixing (or something in jQuery) that did it, because even if I cleared out the mousemove function, it would still be laggy. But if I didn't bind it, the lag would go away.

You're right, the event namespacing was exactly what I was looking for.

BTW, is there a list of "reserved" words in jQuery? For example, jQuery has to store this information somewhere... possibly it gets attached to the DOM element itself. Where does ".data()" live? I often directly access the DOM elements, and want to be sure I don't interfere with jQuery.

<comment><USER4> We maintain all of the element data (including events, etc.) in an internal data store. We attach a single expando to an element - whose name is randomly generated (this allows jQuery to, not only, co-exist with other libraries but also to coexist with other copies of jQuery, since there'll never be a collision with the name). I hope this helps to clear it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a perfect example of how you should release new versions of code.

A well written explanation and good visualizations and statistics of what changed (with the appropriate credit due).

It makes me want to upgrade instead of begrudgingly do so.

</comment><comment><USER7> Extremely important update if you care about your IE users. In 1.3.1, ready() was broke in IE so it only ran on window.load instead of DOM ready. I'd recommend upgrading asap.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't say enough good things about jQuery. I did a google search for "jQuery changed my life" but not much came back :-(

</comment><comment><USER9> truly the live callback has allowed me to do all sorts of crazy and creative stuff with my apps. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER10> While all these updates seems welcome, I'm a tad sceptical against changing API-behaviour in minor versions.

That way I can know an upgrade from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2 is safe across the board.</comment>


Leaving Microsoft: Software Giant's Key Employee Losses - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Leaving-Microsoft-Software-Giants-Key-Employee-Losses-725500/

<comment><AUTHOR> The mobile version may be easier to read: [http://mobile.eweek.com/c/a/IT- Management/Leaving-Microsoft-...](http://mobile.eweek.com/c/a/IT- Management/Leaving-Microsoft-Software-Giants-Key-Employee-Losses-725500/)</comment>


DeltaPy   – Tabular Data Augmentation - <AUTHOR> https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-uJqGeKZfJegX0TmovhsO90iasyxZYiT <comment><USER2> Very nice! For those who are just skimming the link, this is actually a demonstration of the capabilities of a python package that is available on github [1]. If I understand correctly, most of the transformations are aimed at time-series data.

I'm not sure that saying that augmenting tabular data is novel, as claimed in the packages readme, but some transformations definitely were new to me (e.g. the columnar Gan), and this should in no way diminish the fact that such a library is really very, very handy.

Thank you to the author for the hard work and sharing this code!

[1] [https://github.com/firmai/deltapy](https://github.com/firmai/deltapy)

</comment><comment><USER3> The URL is a little misleading here; when scanning the frontpage it appears the project is associated with Google, when it's really just a Colab notebook.

Maybe the Github repo would be a bit clearer to link to: [https://github.com/firmai/deltapy/](https://github.com/firmai/deltapy/)</comment>


Ask HN: This company links my home IP address to my employer. How? - <AUTHOR>

I've just had a spooky experience at http://wowanalytics.co.uk/ - I work remotely and was researching WOW Analytics website for a client. They have some buzzwordy technology that links IP addresses to companies.
Fair enough I thought... until they linked my home IP address to my company. Yes I'm a director of it but no domains point to my home IP address, this postal address etc...
So how the heck did they manage that? Short of having filled in a form on a website with the company name, and it saving name + IP address, I can't think how it could make that leap... <comment><USER2> Judging by the pixels on their site, they likely used Google AdWords remarketing: [http://www.google.com/analytics/features/remarketing.html](http://www.google.com/analytics/features/remarketing.html)

If you used the same computer from work that you used at home, you were cookied from work when you initially visited the site. Then when you were browsing the internet at home, the ad that was served recognized your cookie ID as the same visitor who visited the site and they can purchase that impression and serve their ad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there's actually analytics available where their pitch is "use us on your website, and we can help identify users."

They'll track you around multiple sites until you finally drop an email address in or fill out a form. Then all of the other sites you visited get the same information (that's the incentive to use their tracking system).

Can't remember the name of the analytics company and my google-fu is failing me right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, that's an interesting approach. I could see someone giving away a free product to get this data (as AddThis did with their, only I don't believe it got name/email/company details)</comment></comment>


Is Life Special Just Because It's Rare? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/is-life-special-just-because-its-rare <comment><USER2> Of course not.

Shuffle a deck of cards. If you did it properly, the new arrangement is unique. No deck of cards has ever been arranged like that before, and none will ever again, unless you deliberately preserve it.

I just drew a scribble on a post-it note. Nobody else has a scribble quite like it, or ever will again, after I throw it away.

Every time a snowflake melts, something beautiful and unique is lost forever.

None of these things are special, unless you're using a really weird meaning of "special".

You can say that they might be unique, but they're sufficiently similar to other things that they might as well not be - but what distance metric are you using? You're using one shaped by your own values, which say that one human is special even in the presence of another seven billion humans, but that one snowflake is unimportant in the presence of another seven billion.

It _might_ be that rareness is a prerequisite of specialness. It's not the only factor.

<comment><USER3> The order in a deck of cards is unique, but it's not _complex_. The nucleotide sequence in a chromosome is unique _and_ complex.

An analogy of your comparison would be comparing a single sentence to the sum of mankind's written works, with the latter being life. A complex, organized source of information like that is special.

<comment><USER2> If you shuffle a deck of 3 billion cards, the order is less compressible than the human genome. It's still not special. Is it complex, by your definition?

How about my scribble, or a snowflake?

<comment><USER3> It would be complex but no longer unique.

If you randomly generated 3 billion alphabet characters, would it be instructions for building a Saturn V rocket? The blueprints for building a single cell?

<comment><USER2> Why would a shuffle of 3 billion distinct cards be less unique than a shuffle of 52 distinct cards?

> If you randomly generated 3 billion alphabet characters, would it be > instructions for building a Saturn V rocket? The blueprints for building a > single cell?

No. It would be a unique string of worthless jibberish.

Meanwhile, the instructions for a Saturn V rocket have probably been written down in at least two places. So if you have a copy of them, they're less unique than my random string, yet more special.

<comment><USER3> Right, the _information_ is unique, not the medium.

There are multiple copies of the Saturn V blueprints, just as there are multiple copies of the human genome in your cells.

Is _Lord of the Rings_ not unique because it's stored on multiple mediums?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The trick lies in the fact that life forms have no obvious boundary. The fact that two creatures are two creatures, and not just a single creature is something that is just endowed to them by us humans. If one of the creatures dies, does it really die, or does the combination of the two creatures just loses half of its brain cells? That second view is just as valid. Hence, in that second view, nothing really ever dies; we (i.e., the universe) just lose brain cells. And, of course, we gain them as well.

<comment><USER5> This way we could say the entire universe is just a big chemical reaction. It wouldn't even be an incorrect view. It just wouldn't be useful for anything.

This is the real value of models and concepts we use - not their grand philosophical sense, but how useful they are. We set up boundaries between creatures, define concepts like life and death because they allow us to understand and predict the world better. It's usually more useful to treat two creatures as two creatures instead of one, but sometimes it's the reverse - for instance, it's often more useful to treat an entire colony of ants as a single being, individual ants becoming just cells / organelles.

<comment><USER6> _" It just wouldn't be useful for anything."_

It is useful for something. It's just not useful for problems that require a high degree of specificity. And not all problems do; in fact, some are hindered by it. (For instance, focussing on individual atoms won't really help you do politics.)

<comment><USER7> single atoms no, but splitting atoms.. maybe

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was in school, we knew of no extra-solar planets. Now that we know how to look, they seem to be everywhere. Similarly, I suspect life will turn out to be common once we can send probes to the places that could harbour them.

Intelligent life might well be an order-of-magnitude rarer, and life intelligent enough to be detectable by SETI rarer still. (And we could well be the most advanced civilization in our light cone -- someone has to be.)

<comment><USER3> I'm skeptical, if not for the sheer improbability of our own abiogenesis event on Earth.

I think that if we do find naturally occurring "life" elsewhere in the universe, it will be unlike anything that we have ever dreamed of and challenge our definition of the word. Or maybe it will be cellular just like ours and responsible for seeding Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Life is special because it's complex. Modern human society on Earth is the most complex thing in the history of the known universe. Complex things, though, tend to be very fragile.

(paraphrased from David Christian's "Big History" Great Courses lecture)

<comment><USER10> I would say there are much more complex phenomena than a few bajillion atoms and electricity bouncing flailing about on the surface of a mostly-water planet.

<comment><USER9> Such as? Here is David's Christian's ranking of complexity in the Universe:

[http://padlet.com/dpetersen/c6c8g49ynt19](http://padlet.com/dpetersen/c6c8g49ynt19)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History#Complexity.2C_ener...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History#Complexity.2C_energy.2C_thresholds)

<comment><USER10> LOL Christian presents a laughably human-centric view of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always find these type of questions specious and entirely dependent on frame of reference for both question and response.

Our language and conceptions evolved specifically to do important things like inform companions under which trees the most delicious nuts could be found and remember where the hidden tiger was sleeping.

"Special" and "Rare" in these primitive contexts (which is all we really have right now) don't mean anything objectively nor on a cosmic scale (of which we know very little incidentally). So the whole question is just.... off.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this statement nails it: "we are imprisoned within our own cosmos of meaning. We cannot imagine a universe without meaning. We are not talking necessarily about some grand cosmic meaning, or a divine meaning bestowed by God, or even a lasting, eternal meaning. "

"Special" is a human construct. If something is special, it's because we say it is. Life has no relevance to anything beyond that which we ascribe to it.

Unless, of course, you believe that life was designed according to some kind of grand design. But even that presupposes that we mortals have a chance of understanding an intelligence that can shape reality. I'm sceptical any human interpretation of 'special' in that context is useful.

Reality just _is_. It has no moral weight.

</comment><comment><USER13> If 1) we are part of the universe, and 2) we generate meaning, then 3) we are the meaning generators of the universe. The universe is meaningless only when we look out and ignore life, and ignore ourselves. But the universe has us, and has life. We are significant, not because we are more important, but simply for being a part of it all. We exist. We're here. That say's it all.

The moment we tied the emergence of what we perceived as metaphysical to something physical, it all became physical and the ghosts disappeared along with the word metaphysics from our sciences. The mind-body duality was non- scientific.

The same can be done with the exceptional view on life. The moment we tie the emergence of what we perceive as special to everything mundane, it all becomes mundane, and life is no longer special. Special is subjective. If we concede to the emergence of life from non-life, then it's either all non-life, or it's all life -- or we could decide to call it something else.

Much of the awe we express through pieces like this can be attributed to the fact that sheer scale still never fails to baffle us. Distance, complexity, time, and probability all become "dramatic" once they become intuitively disproportionate. But the universe as a whole is just as complex as it is, and pointing to two places and comparing their complexity says nothing about the capacity of the universe. The universe is huge, it's old, it's chaotic, and everything in it is rare. But baffled it is not. Or rather, it is, just through us.

</comment><comment><USER14> In this universe, for whatever its nature happens to be, where laws of entropy realize themselves relentlessly and indefinitely to increase chaos forever, bit by bit; where everything left to rot will eventually turn into pieces, shards, and break apart into dust there is―I might say―a force, or at least a mechanism―again, whether guided or scientifically spontaneous―that is working its way on the same river as this destructive chaos but to the exactly opposite direction of the downstream where, as shattered pieces of existence and remnants of structure, chaos is slowly but endlessly flowing down.

This force is what we call life and this force is of the nature that it just keeps pushing itself against all the natural destruction that is inherently prevalent in this world. This force constructs and maintains growth, structure, and produces organisms that are enough in some balance―chemical, physical, maybe spiritual, who knows―to survive further.

The force will push through the slightest openings in this river which is chaos, and just keeps growing and growing despite being forever torn down, consumed, and worn by the elements of entropy at the same time. This force, when put down and extinquished in one place will again and again remanifest itself in another place, and continues to create and grow against all the odds and the universal tendency for any space and matter to cool down and energy to return to the lowest possible potential.

Life is nothing but rare. If we blew up this planet into smithereens, I wonder, why would that force that is life stop swimming upstream at the very once? Why would it not reappear elsewhere? Some might say that the live organisms would just die with the Earth, but what started it here? Why wouldn't it emerge again elsewhere just like it did here?

If the force is divine it will exist somewhere regardless of the physical circumstances, merely waiting for a new opening in the physical world; if the force is not divine, then maybe it's some internal counter stream, an energy flow, in the the universe itself, where one part of the energy flows towards chaotic stillness but where the other part flows back into motion and higher potential: while entropy reduces the energy in action the potential must increase somewhere else, as energy cannot disappear. Or maybe you might choose consider the divine to be the universe itself―about that I cannot say a word. But there is something that makes this thing called life opt-in to this world where everything else keeps crumbling to pieces.

If that force is not special in itself, given the setting, then I don't know what is.

<comment><USER15> Fire does all of that too. Is it alive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of a quote from Six Feet Under:

Widow: "Why do people have to die?"

Nate Fischer: "To make life important. None of us know how long we've got, which is why we have to make each day matter."

</comment><comment><USER17> Are we looking for non-carbon based life? Is it possible that we fail to recognize life simply because it is so far apart from our idea of life?

</comment><comment><USER18> Is life special?</comment>


Why are doctors still outperforming surgical robots? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-robots-of-medicine-do-the-benefits-outweigh-the-costs/253654/

<comment><USER2> Although I like the article, simply comparing the outcomes in few specific surgeries might not give you the whole picture about things like recovery times. Also there is a general misconception about 'robotic' surgery which causes high expectations and making statements like 'we're still outperforming them' pointless, none of current surgical robots are autonomous and they probably won't be for a long time. Currently what they do mostly is increase precision and stability, enable remote access etc. So the last quote will stand, if you have a bad surgeon controlling a good robot it won't help much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article. Love the Atlantic. But please, why change the title on HN?

<comment><USER4> A/B testing headlines for upvotes?</comment></comment>


Show HN: News.me for iPhone (We want your feedback) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.news.me/post/17680613654/introducing-news-me-for-iphone

<comment><USER2> How do you differentiate yourself from other popular news apps like pulse, flipboard etc...?</comment>


I've got 10 btc for the best CoffeeScript/JavaScript Nodewar bot - <AUTHOR> http://nodewar.com <comment><USER3> I am really excited about this. Here's some feedback from my first impressions:

1\. Offline support: I'd love to work on this offline, write unit tests, use vim, all those nice things. You mentioned elsewhere that you're running the server-side simulation in Node—would be great if that was open sourced. :)

2\. Better auto-saving: If offline support isn't available, editing online needs to be improved. I was messing around with my AI while on a shuttle with flaky WiFi. I saved my progress and navigated away. Later I came back, and turned out my progress was not saved. (a) Let me know if saving failed? (b) Maybe use LocalStorage as a fallback?

3\. Better built-in library for common operations: o.lib.physics is a great start, but I'd love to not have to implement things like: "orbit around TARGET at distance X", "maintain distance X from TARGET", "orient towards (or away from) TARGET", etc. Sounds like these kinds of libraries could sprout organically from the community, but it's not obvious where to find them.

<comment><USER4> To implement point #3 would go against the spirit of the competition, I think. Part of the challenge is to implement a good core of navigation code.

Unit testing a physics simulation could be quite tricky too.

<comment><USER5> Unit testing a deterministic one is not too bad. Unit testing a stochastic physical system is a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In the unlikely case something very bad happens to bitcoins between now and > then (or ours are stolen or become unavailable for reasons outside our > control), we reserve the right to pay $2,000USD instead.

Does this go both ways? What if Bitcoins are worth $500 USD at come award time? Will you still be paying in BTC, or will you just pay $2,000 USD instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, I will pay in bitcoins. I fully intend to pay in bitcoins (which I have set aside), regardless of the value, but reserve the right to pay in cash in case something happens to mine AND they become ridiculously expensive. I would pay $500/coin to buy them back in the case you describe. I would not pay $10,000/coin, however, if my 10 were stolen. Just protecting myself and my family from a crazy event.

<comment><USER7> Might I suggest transferring the 10 btc to a custom wallet with a single address in it, encrypting the wallet and simply putting it online for everyone to see/download. The winner gets the password to the wallet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great game! However, I would suggest changing the behaviour of the moons.

Right now the moons are such a big threat that the best way to win is to simply devote all resources to avoiding them, and hope the enemy collides with them before you do (as all the top bots in the ladder clearly demonstrate). This not a very fun strategy and makes for quite boring matches.

One way to avoid this problem is to make the moons harmless. They still pull you in and push you around, but when you collide with them nothing happens. Thus they would no longer be the biggest threat on the field, but rather a nonfatal annoyance. The biggest threat on the field would instead be your enemy, and to increase your chances of winning you have no choice but to actively try to kill him.

The moons will still have to be dealt with accordingly by the ships if they want to be effective, but a majority of the resources will now go towards battling enemy ships. Much more fun to code and to watch.

<comment><USER9> Not really true. A quick hack that does two things (evade moons and kill queen) provides already some interesting chaos. Look at my Ripoffs (only 1 match in ladder right now, but wins with the #6 pretty consistently). As people develop some better bots, evading moons will be less and less noticeable part of their behavior. Especially if some of those will be open sourced too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Nature of Code [1] has some nice examples on how to calculate steering/acceleration behavior for targeting.

<http://natureofcode.com/book/chapter-6-autonomous-agents/>

</comment><comment><USER11> What's up with the sign up form? What the hell does @name mean?

A twitter username? Does it have to be twitter? Is it just a regular username? Then why does it have an @ sign? Do I need to enter an @ sign or are you going to prepend it after I submit the form?

Edit: okay, so it prepends the @ as you type. Now I'm even more confused about whether or not it's supposed to be my twitter username or not.

Edit 2: Signed up, seems to be just a username. The website refers to usernames in the same way as twitter? The top bar says '@<username>' and links to the account settings. On the home page it links two @usernames to twitter, not a website profile. On the ladder, it shows more @usernames but don't link to twitter and look like they will link to user profiles.

Please don't mix twitter usernames with your site's usernames, it's confusing, especially when some are internal links and some are twitter links.

Anyways, awesome site, reminds me of the google ai challenges. I hope you keep this open perpetually though, or keep running different challenges. Sucks that the google ai challenges only run once a year.

<comment><USER12> Seriously? You guys will nitpick about anything.

I typed in a username in the field and pressed enter. It worked fine. Mystery solved.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I signed up too, I never said the sign up form was difficult. Doesn't solve the mystery of whether this has anything to do with your twitter account, since there's no reason why that @ sign should be there.

My edits make the comment a bit dramatic, but that wasn't my intention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Been playing with this for a few hours. Very interesting stuff!

I'll second what shazow said about auto-saving and resiliancy to internet/browser issues. The page has crashed multiple (7-10) times in Chrome. Fortunately I didn't lose too much, but even losing a couple obscure changes is rather annoying.

The UI for reloading your own species was rather confusing at first. I thought when I reloaded the page I would have my species there already and freaked out when it wasn't! Eventually I figured out I had to Add Team with my existing team.

I'd love to have a bit more robust vector libraries, such as doing vector dot product (vector projection) and vector rejection, in additional to just speedTowards.

It would be particularly helpful during testing & debugging to have a mode with no moons, or perhaps just a single static moon in the center. Continue having the three moons for ladder and competition, but it'd be super to have the more basic map to make it easier while training my geometries how to move and maneuver. Maybe limit the option to when only one team is loaded.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this supposed to happen? <http://youtu.be/vndQFnesPT8>

edit: specifically, the part at the end when the moons fly off the screen, the world shrinks to nothing, and the counter on the right expands wildly.

<comment><USER15> yes, you haven't loaded any species so there are only moons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I created a typescript declaration file for the environment of nodewar, if someone wants to try writing it in TS. <https://github.com/JacekLach/NodeWarTyped>

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool. I've played with a few of these over the past several years but the problem was typically few participants and no incentive to win. This one shouldn't have either problem, plus it's not C++! (I hope they get ClojureScript working in the next few days, but JS is so much better for this sort of thing than C++...) How often do ladder matches get scheduled and played?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! If you want to use ClojureScript, maybe just work in an editor of your choice and paste into the site for now. I do that anyway when I play with it, as I prefer Sublime to Ace.

Right now it starts a game 1 minute after the previous one ends. I will likely speed that up as the number of submissions increases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No undo in the editor makes things a bit painful. It just eats CTRL+Z, so If you accidentally delete a line, you pretty much have to exit (remembering not to save), remove your team, re-add it, and click edit again.

Other than that, I forsee thousands of dollars in otherwise billable hours evaporating before my eyes. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks amazing. It bothered me that I had to sign up to watch the replays though, it's a pretty big threshold and I almost didn't. You might want to have a demo because watching a replay really is quite convincing. I don't know any JavaScript, but this seems like an amazing way to learn.

<comment><USER20> I wish the ladder and replays were available publicly, I have a few friends that are interested but are put off from the signup form. I think if I could send them a link to a replay without signing in, they would get a kick out of it and potentially join in on the fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> crud, I've been nerd-sniped... guess I know what I'll be doing at nights now.

</comment><comment><USER22> It looks like the API doesn't give access to the whole shape of a ship - <USER2> its centroid position and the direction of the sharpest vertex. Do the other vertices not matter? In any case, we should probably be able to compute which edge we would be splitting and stuff like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> They matter in that they might ram you :-). You also have another ship's moment of inertia, which tells you something about it. But no, you're not provided other ships' geometries. I could change this, but likely not during the contest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have ported a programming game <http://terrariumjs.wiselabs.net> a while ago (javascript).

You can write the AI of a herbivor or carnivor, and try to invade other people's terrariums :) The documentation is a bit lacking though.

</comment><comment><USER24> i would love to be able to use machine learning with this. for example, if you released the "universe simulator" in a binary/open source would be more than enough to start.

any thoughts on this from the creators of the project?

<comment><USER25> Seconded! Being able to run tons of reliable automated testing is essential to get beyond the "alchemy" phase of AI development.

<comment><USER26> It'd also be nice to be able to use the same gravity engine to project orbits and collisions within the AI code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there no way to get the direction vector of the ship? You have rotation in radians, but no way to convert that.. not even cos/sin to roll it yourself. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER28> It's just Javascript, so you should have all the usual array of built-in functions.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Referenc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Math)

<comment><USER27> Hmm, I thought I tried using a Math function without success, but I must have done something wrong. Thanks for steering me off the wrong path.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > vectors are 2-item arrays (for example, a velocity might be [2.3, -1.2])

Would be nice if they mentioned what each item was. Is it magnitude + direction or deltaX, deltaY?

</comment><comment><USER30> I like the idea, never participated in this kind of competition. However I had to write an AI for a same kind of game in college. It was a 2d football simulater and we had to write the AI in haskell. The tactics however had nothing to do with real life football (rushing was the best strategy). Does anybody here know if this is an evolution of an existing game, or did the creators invented this game by their self's?

</comment><comment><USER31> Can I remove my node from the ladder? I am so ashamed.

</comment><comment><USER32> Haven't received a verification email, can't create species, can't edit profile to check my email was correct ... want to play ...

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems that the ladder updates are slow. Is it intentional that each bot gets one match per hour? Is it processing power determined? If the latter, can we somehow contribute cycles to it?

I've got a piece of iron sitting mostly idly, so I could spare a VPS. I guess many people here could pledge something similar for a fun project like this.

</comment><comment><USER33> Put this together (quickly) so I can dev locally and upload new code with a single command: <https://github.com/mikeycgto/nodewar-tools>

My "species" code then uses grunt for all sorts of awesomeness (basic tests, concatenation of files and autoupload on save).

</comment><comment><USER34> Can I just see some matches without signing up? Juts a video if you must.

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome. I would love to participate, but I think my exams will get in the way. :(

Downloading a replay is taking a very long time. Also, is there an easy way to plot things like projection vectors?

<comment><USER36> I am unable to load even the shortest replays.

Edit: This appears to be a chrome specific issue.

<comment><USER35> Same here.

Firefox Nightly v23.0a1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A thing I would love is deploy via git push.

Simply activate a post-push hook that runs a specifically named js/coffee file!

This would both accomodate for offline editing and any compile-to-js language.

</comment><comment><USER38> Sweet.

Now, is there any way to code in ones editor of choice and deploy from the command line? Chrome tab crashed on me while I was editing my species and I lost all of my changes.

</comment><comment><USER39> This looks ace. I haven't looked into it much, but is not knowing either of the languages going to be an issue? Or should I be able to pick up what I need easily?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say the programming skills requirement for the game is just beginner level. At least that was my hope making it. If those languages are new to you it will take a little overhead but not much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Do any beginners want to team up? Going to give this a try to learn more JS and learn how to build an autonomous agent, I don't have any intention on winning.

<comment><USER41> I want to! See my comment regarding infrec's offer to help.

<comment><USER40> Hey, I couldn't find any contact info in your HN profile. Have you and infrec started already? If not, I'll go ahead and create a repo on GitHub.

<comment><USER41> Sorry about that, I should have given you some point of contact here.

I've sent you an email (found on your GH).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It would be great for debugging purposes if all ships could return an array of color coded vectors (or even just a single vector) to display every step.

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks pretty awesome! I'm going to try my hand at a species today. FYI, the confirmation email went to my junk mail box on Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER44> IBM offered games like this through their academic initiative when I was in school.

Cool idea moving it into modern JS environment.

</comment><comment><USER45> The amount of effort I put into this is directly proportional to how much Mt. Gox is being hacked or DDOS'd. Lol.

<comment><USER6> Mt. Gox was not being hacked or DDOS'd, it had a legit influx of users opening accounts.

<comment><USER46> Um, there was definitely DDOS'ing going on. I witnessed it myself with a bunch of other sites (bitcointalk, bitstamp, bitcoincharts etc). Mt Gox was trying to do damage control and spin it positively. That failed and now they are reporting DDOS again.[1][2]

 _"@MtGox Maintenance Over however we are now under a DDoS attack."_ [1]

Mt Gox has taken a credibility knock, which has a ripple effect on the BTC pricing right now.

Overall it probably a temporary setback, but does bring to light irrational exuberance voices ignoring others that were calling for a more decentralized ingress/egress between USD and BTC. IOW bitcoin needs more exchanges to drive competition, and perhaps even meta-exchanges too.

[1] <https://twitter.com/MtGox/status/322281690309468160>

[2] <https://www.facebook.com/MtGox/posts/456123227805423>

<comment><USER47> What evidence do you have that each of these sites weren't going down just because of real high traffic?

I don't think it's at all unreasonable to think that each of those sites would have naturally seen their greatest traffic surge with the events of yesterday. For example, over 20% of all subscribers were present on /r/bitcoin (for comparison, (eg) /r/android is currently at about 0.5%, /r/bitcoin is around 10% now).

<comment><USER38> There have been large sequences of micro-transactions of 0.01 BTC, all on the heels of one another. That points to market manipulation/DDOS.

I'll see if I can dig up sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome fun! Just spent my whole evening toying around with it. GOGOGO Prima Polys and Totally Turtle!

</comment><comment><USER48> Is it possible to send positions/result to an outside server to use some kind of genetic algorithm ?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are free to analyze existing recordings, if you like. So you could make entries and study their recordings. I don't intend to document them during the contest, though. As for sending info out during the battle, probably not. Although - you are free to do that with the sandbox, of course. It all runs in your browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Great way to short sell BTC!

</comment><comment><USER50> This has potential to be really fun! But how to select others to compete?

<comment><USER51> When you click "Add team" you can add other species, but I think only the open-source ones and you get no ladder points (but it's very useful to test your design). To compete against everyone you'd have to "submit to ladder", I think.

<comment><USER50> Oh, I just meant to compete against specific species.

Seeing that they use a Glicko rating system makes more sense; not having the option to compete against a specific species means that top ranked players won't have to worry about tradeoffs between game activity and game rankings. Well maybe they'll still worry, but they won't be able to do anything about it except build stronger AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Create a species" doesn't seem to work, even with all fields filled out.

<comment><USER53> Did you verify your email address?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> for luddites, 10 Btc = $300-2000 depending on the exchange rates of the past two months, or even possibly $5000 by the time you win. Possibly a quite uncertain prize!

<comment><USER51> The certain prize for me is having fun and learning CoffeeScript and physics. That's really more than I'd expect from any game :) The 10 BTC would be nice, but meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I want to play, my JS is good, my geometry/math is not :(

<comment><USER56> I'd be willing to give it a shot if you would like to partner up. I have reasonable (for some value) math chops. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you are interested.

Time-wise I can commit only a couple of hours a week so I don't expect much but it seems like it could be fun.

<comment><USER41> Any chance I could join in? ;)

I know a bit of JavaScript, but my math intuition is somewhat poor as well, so it'd be more so I can learn than anything else.

<comment><USER56> Sure, feel free to send me an email! It's all about learning and having fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be handy to expose the AI step delta in the API.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is uncertain. The game steps at a specific rate (the physics is deterministic) but does not wait for callbacks from your AI to proceed with the game. If a specific ship hasn't replied to the last request for instructions, the game won't call it the next round. I was thinking that rather than providing the game step in the API, the simplest thing is for an AI to study the gametime and draw its own conclusions.

<comment><USER4> After playing around with it for a while, it hasn't actually made that much difference to me. I perhaps shouldn't have made the suggestion so hastily ;)

Really great fun to play. I love it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Where can I find what 'speed_to_nearest_moon' does?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a function in one of the sample codes I wrote, so it should be in the same file you encountered it. It likely uses some of the lib functions defined on the documentation page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> how do i compete against others in the ladder?

i have a team that seems to beat anyone i test against, but i can't figure out how to rank up.

<comment><USER20> There is a "Submit to Ladder" link under the title of your species. From what I can tell, after clicking that link, the ladder takes over and sets up matches automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm having way too much fun with this.

<comment><USER20> I kinda wish there was a dedicated forum/community of some sort for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> not worth quite as much as 14 hours ago hah</comment>


Tell HN: css is the devil's work - <AUTHOR>

single startup founder. I can't afford a designer so I'm doing my own design work and what an experience it's been - eye opening and watering in equal measure.
sass and compass bring a little programming familiarity but the overall experience is on a par with getting a root canal (without the  reassurance from a man in a white coat).  I haven't even got to cross-browser issues yet.
Hats off to all you nuts and bolts web designers. The unsung heroes of the software industry. <comment><USER2> I felt similarly but I realized that in my case it was because I didn't properly understand selectors. Fwiw, I found this site particularly helpful: <http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/>

</comment><comment><USER3> "Hats off to all you nuts and bolts web designers. The unsung heroes of the software industry."

That's right, nobody can sing about them because they won't shut up about themselves.

There's more to software than the web, and even then, the unsung heroes would be the guys who wrote the DNS servers, etc. Web designers get plenty of recognition, especially around here.</comment>


Those who use E-Mail clients, do you mind the harddrive space it takes up? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious...I was wondering if it was worth using something like Sparrow for email as opposed to just the Gmail client or if there is some real benefit to having email stored locally.
I was wondering if you all felt that if there could be a similar experience if I just used sparrow to only view email but not store it locally.
I primarily use gmail but I don't know if worth even trying to honestly keep local access to emails on my computer. <comment><USER2> Having a local copy is good insurance. Google could sometimes lose your data, or sometimes lock you out of your account for a number of reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> guess I need a bigger HDD...ha

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No.

just use fetchmail and mailindex(?), otherwise hd access speed will be a pain

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about using sparrow just to access the mail but not save it locally...is that what you mean?

<comment><USER3> Noidea what's sparrow.

Fetchmail will download it

procmail will organize it

Mailindex will make it searchable

Then any client that supports mbox format will display it</comment></comment></comment>


Twenty states bar cities from building their own Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/03/twenty-states-bar-cities-from-building-their-own-internet-netflix-wants-the-fcc-to-change-that/

<comment><USER2> Which twenty states?

1\. North Carolina

2\. Tennessee

...And 18 others, according to the Netflix comments document. But, I don't see a list or a description of the laws.

For context: my goal is to find out if such laws exist in either Nebraska or Illinois (Chicago) and if they do, what are the specific restrictions. I want to find out what legal hurdles I might face if I attempt to build large router<\-->router mesh networks.</comment>


Ask HN: What book/paper/link keeps you motivated? - <AUTHOR> What keeps me motivated is this link[0] which in is about the journey of developing a startup.<p>I'm really interested what resources people here fallback on when looking for motivation.<p>[0]: http://statspotting.com/a-lesson-from-the-shawshank-redemption/ <comment><USER2> I don't believe a book or anything similar can keep me "motivated" (that depends on one's will and outlook), but some can definitely help. A very influential text that helped me advance quite a bit in shaping my world view was the Anarchist Banker of Pessoa. It gives an interesting answer to the question of "existing in a world as a single individual that can hardly ameliorate the world on his own". Combining that with a reading of "Existentialism is a Humanism", and general free thinking, do help to build a strong defence mechanism to the facts of the outer world that can demotivate you. I'm quite an outlier in this community of mostly engineers and entrepreneurs, groups with which my thoughts usually conflict (especially the latter ones), but reading philosophy and philosophically-charged literature can furnish a sort of critical thinking, skepticism and/or quasi-nihilism that can actually boost one's confidence in pursuing some ends.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paul Graham - How Not To Die - [http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html)

2002 NCAA wrestling finals - Josh Lambrecht (Oklahoma) vs Rob Rohn (Lehigh) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRB6m4VdeJQ&t=270s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRB6m4VdeJQ&t=270s)

Whitesnake - Here I Go Again - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg)

Mötley Crüe - Keep Your Eye On The Money \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkRnRs_8Mx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkRnRs_8Mx8)

Any Given Sunday - Al Pacino Pregame Speech - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSDhhZtRwFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSDhhZtRwFU)

Eric Thomas (E.T. the "Hip Hop Preacher") - How Bad Do You Want It - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vuetQSwFW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vuetQSwFW8)

Glengarry Glen Ross - the "Alec Baldwin Speech" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk)

Boiler Room - the "Ben Affleck Speech" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIKzReNDF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIKzReNDF4)

Grant Cardone - _Be Obsessed Or Be Average_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Be- Obsessed-Average-Grant-Cardone/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Be-Obsessed- Average-Grant-Cardone/dp/1101981059)

Grant Cardone - _The 10X Rule_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/10X-Rule-Difference- Between-Success/d...](https://www.amazon.com/10X-Rule-Difference-Between- Success/dp/0470627603)

Grant Cardone - _If You 're Not First, You're Last_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Not-First-Last- Competition/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Not-First-Last- Competition/dp/0470624353)

Grant Cardone - _Sell Or Be Sold_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Be-Sold- Your-Business/dp/1608322...](https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Be-Sold-Your- Business/dp/1608322564)

<comment><USER3> FWIW, that wrestling match is there because it's one of the greatest examples I know of, that illustrates the importance of not quitting until (the final whistle | the fat lady sings | you die | etc).

In this match, Rohn is down by somewhere around 12 points, and is _very_ close to a "technical fall"[1] loss, and late in the match has shown almost no offense at all. The announcers have already declared Lambrecht the winner and are basically waiting for time to run out. _#_ spoilers follow _#_ With just over a minute remaining Rohn pulls out an improbable takedown and ultimately pins Lambrecht with only a few seconds left on the clock. The crowd goes wild (well, as wild as an amateur wrestling crowd goes).

Along with the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey match between the USA and USSR teams, this is probably the most exciting / inspirational sporting moment I can think of. And as a former wrestler with little interest in hockey, the Lambrecht/Rohn match is the one that really gets me fired up.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This interview[0] from James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem on failure always gets me out of a rut.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYCz06bS380](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYCz06bS380)

</comment><comment><USER5> Whenever I need motivation I take a little trip to r/GetMotivated

[https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/](https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Art of Peace by Morihei Ueshiba (translated by Stevens).</comment>


(Books|Resources) on (LLC|Inc)ing - <AUTHOR>

So, I'm nearly done with my first product.  I'd like to form an LLC and do things right from the start.  Like most people reading hacker news, I admint I'm not too good with the business/legal side of a business.  Can anyone recommend some useful resources or books? <comment><USER2> Yeah, the Nolo books are really good. They're available at torrent sites and emule also, if you prefer to illegally acquire your information.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have "Form Your Own LLC" from Nolo. They also sell one about ongoing operations that I need to order sometime soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> This might help ...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79626></comment>


What Kind of Seed Round Should You Raise? - <AUTHOR> https://bettereveryday.vc/what-kind-of-seed-round-should-your-raise-39d78ce68bac <comment><USER2> You want investors who support you and understand this. They won't force you to artificially chase after a local maximum around your initial thesis or bang your head against a brick wall for several years if you think a different path is better.

Is there an app for that?</comment>