The Future of Startup Funding - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/future.html <comment><USER2> This is a really superb and thoughtful piece on the funding process. The only issue I would take is with the idea that funding terms will become standardized and the process routine. While, even as a lawyer, I would actually love to see this happen (we prosper right along with our startup clients and no one benefits from the waste that occurs with funding games), I have not seen this happen even as all sorts of standardized documents are now widely available to facilitate it. It can and does occur if the investors want to settle for terms protecting their basic interests but giving them no special advantages (what I call vanilla terms). That said, only the friendliest of investors will do this, and by "friendly," I mean in relation to the founders, and this usually means only friends and family or perhaps an individual angel or two that has a long history with one or more of the founders and wants above all other things to help promote the founders' interests. The rest of the angels, and most certainly the institutional ones (so-called "super angels") continue routinely to press for special advantages of one type or other. With special advantages come special terms and with this comes lawyer review, back-and-forth negotiations, and the like. In this sense, absent a _huge_ shift in the balance of power toward founders, I don't see purely standardized documentation and routine processing becoming the order of the day anytime soon. Others may differ, and I may be wrong, but that's how I see this based on considerable day-to-day experience in this field. That said (for what it is worth), this is a brilliant essay that concisely encapsulates the important trends one will encounter in early-stage startup funding, and it should be widely disseminated to all who might have an interest in this field.

<comment><USER3> How valuable are these non-vanilla terms to investors? Presumably you can get anyone to commit to vanilla terms for the right price. Then it's just a question of making big investors care less about these terms (e.g. by repeatedly demonstrating that investments can succeed without them), or taking more investments from people who put a lower premium on the terms (e.g. super angels).

<comment><USER2> A thoughtful analysis by a knowledgeable lawyer (Yokum Taku of WSGR) of various seed-stage terms and their use in standardized sets of financing documents appears here: [http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2010/03/14/how- do-the-sa...](http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2010/03/14/how-do-the- sample-series-seed-financing-documents-differ-from-typical-series-a-financing- documents/). As appears from his useful chart comparing the various standard sets, investors (and lawyers) just have different ideas of what they regard as important for different types of investments.

Jason Mendelson, a well-known lawyer-turned-VC, took this further in a piece entitled "Why There Will Never Be a Standard Set of Seed Documents" ([http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2010/03/why- there-...](http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2010/03/why-there-will- never-be-a-standard-set-of-seed-documents-a-k-a-why-brad-feld-will-fail.php)), in which he gets into more details about how people differ on what protections and terms to seek when making early-stage investments.

<comment><USER4> With respect to this this article, what would be helpful would be some links to actual convertible notes with caps and other provisions mentioned in his piece. Anybody have anything to share with the community?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Fundraising is still terribly distracting for startups. If you're a founder in the middle of raising a round, the round is the top idea in your mind, which means working on the company isn't. If a round takes 2 months to close, which is reasonably fast by present standards, that means 2 months during which the company is basically treading water. That's the worst thing a startup could do.

So if investors want to get the best deals, the way to do it will be to close faster. Investors don't need weeks to make up their minds anyway. We decide based on about 10 minutes of reading an application plus 10 minutes of in person interview, and we only regret about 10% of our decisions. If we can decide in 20 minutes, surely the next round of investors can decide in a couple days._

This 20 minute figure is missing the point. What matters here -- to founders at least -- isn't how much time YC spends on the startup. What matters is how long the startup spends on YC. I don't know how long the average group spends filling out the YC application form, but I'm sure it's quite a bit longer than 20 minutes.

(Back of the envelope calculation: Suppose a typical group spends 3 hours filling out investment-application paperwork per investor they're pitching; investors take 1 out of every 20 applicants; and a startup wants to take money from 5 investors. Then they've just spent 300 hours -- over a month -- filling out application forms, and it's probably going to be 2 months before they can focus on something other than raising money again.)

<comment><USER6> We thought about that, and we made a point of making the YC application something that would be to the advantage of startups to complete even if they never submitted it.

And conveniently for founders, there is a certain practice that's common among YC-like organizations that makes the cost of multiple applications low (e.g. <http://www.ventures.io/apply>).

<comment><USER5> I agree that the YC application is useful per se and not just as a route to funding -- in that respect it was a bad choice of example, but it was the example of funding application paperwork which people here are most familiar with.

But I still think that investors will need to compete not only on how quickly they can decide to fund a startup but also based on how much effort it takes to apply -- with the important difference that in the first case investors will notice if they lose ("sorry, you took too long to get back to us, and we've already got all the investors we need for this round") and in the second case investors will simply never see the deals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this will go down as one of PG's best and most predictive essays. It feels as if these changes are all just before the tipping point but close enough that they're going to happen; if they do, it'll be a huge positive for founders and the investors that adapt.

<comment><USER8> Can we Martin Luther this essay across Sand Hill Road?

Be more lenient on terms, let us raise less money at once but accumulate it over a few mini-rounds, and leave us to do what we do best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As always, PG's done a good job of writing a thought-provoking and highly readable essay. I'm hardly qualified to comment one way or another about the ins and outs of startup financing- I'm willing to assume that he's got the facts right on those aspects of the essay- but one part of the essay stuck out at me like a sore thumb: (talking about YCombinator's "competition" with employers)

 Nearly all customers choose the competing product, a job. Why? Well, let's look at the product we're offering. An unbiased review would go something like this:

Starting a startup gives you more freedom and the opportunity to make a lot more money than a job, but it's also hard work and at times very stressful.

I'd say that this represents about 80% of an "unbiased review". The missing 20%? "... it's also hard work, and at times very stressful, and the odds are very much against all of that hard work and stress paying off for you in any kind of direct, financial way."

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't put that in the product review because it's more a feature of the user than the product.

E.g. it wouldn't be accurate to say in a product review of running shoes "you are going to run slow in these shoes" even if on average that's what people did.

<comment><USER10> In case I'm reading too much into this, am I right in think that you believe startups are _not_ risky?

If so, then that changes nearly everything that people understand about startups.

<comment><USER6> I'm saying that while there is a large random multiplier in everyone's outcome, the risk of total failure varies enormously with the founders. Some founders have a near 0% chance of total failure. Others (a larger number) have a near 100% chance. So while this means on average the change of a startup succeeding is 1/n, quoting that stat as part of the description of a startup would be misleading, because for a small number of people it's just not true, just as for a small number of fast runners it would not be true that they'd run slow in the shoes, whatever the average person did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _One of our axioms at Y Combinator is not to think of deal flow as a zero-sum game. Our main focus is to encourage more startups to happen, not to win a larger share of the existing stream._

When I read this it reminded me of the good things that Google does to make the internet easier and faster. It's self-interested -- the better the internet gets, the more people click on their ads -- but in an inclusive way: there are auxiliary benefits that accrue to a lot of third parties (like me, using Chrome right now). In YC's case, that would be the population of startup founders and anyone who benefits from the startups they found.

I like it when companies behave this way. Maybe there are degrees of self- interest and this is a more enlightened one. It's too much to expect companies to do good things irrespective of their self-interest, but not too much to expect the above, especially if it turns out that they end up making more money this way. Then others will have a narrow and greedy reason to go down a broader and more generous path.

Lest this seem like nothing much, it wasn't so long ago that people in this position thought primarily in terms of controlling and crushing. The difference may be one of degree, but it's not just rhetorical.

</comment><comment><USER12> _Using that heuristic, I'll predict a couple more things. One is that investors will increasingly be unable to wait for startups to have "traction" before they put in significant money._

To an outsider, this sounds like a small-scale version of the events that caused the Dot-com bubble: Investors race to fund ever-shorter rounds of companies that might someday be valuable, but have nothing right now but a sales pitch and a website. This arrangement would benefit a company like YCombinator, who seem to successfully fund companies based on little more than gut feel. But taking away "success as a predictor of success" from the VCs' playbook, would they have another strategy that beats random guessing? The Dot-com bubble suggests "no." Hopefully the small average investment really does turn the math on its head!

<comment><USER13> This is why it will be important as an investor to actually _understand_ the business area that the startup is getting into. The problem with the dotcom bubble wasn't that there was pressure for investors to make a decision; the problem was that many investors put in their money without any clue as to even what the companies they were investing in actually did.

<comment><USER14> I think you miss the point, there's a massive gap between understanding a market and successfully capturing it.

Regardless of a VCs understanding of it, if the founders can't capitalize on it, but can talk the talk, it's gonna fail.

Some successful sales actually prove a basic level of competence. It also shows the founders have a whole host of other skills, they can run a basic company, have some sort of idea how to market let alone gain traction, there really is a market for the product rather than vague projections, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this not an echo chamber of 'we're doing this so everyone should'?

Has YC actually made a lot of money yet? I ask because the web does not provide a definitive answer. I see a few YC companies doing well, but there's no 100 million dollar companies there, let alone billion dollar companies.

Given that YC had to raise money last round to fund companies, one wonders.

I have a lot of respect for pg and read everything he writes, but I'm asking out interest in the actual reality of the situation, it's hard to tell.

<comment><USER6> Our stock in the startups we've funded is worth a lot on paper. I've never tried to calculate how much. But I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. the Dropbox stock alone is worth more than we've invested to date.

The reason we raised money is that we've only been doing YC for 5 years (during the first of which we only funded 8 companies), and big exits usually take longer than that.

<comment><USER15> If you got a huge return from an early investment would you decline to raise another round and continue with your own funds?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think it's fair to say the invaders usually win. In hindsight they appear to, because you don't remember the 10,000 startups that tried and failed for each one that succeeded. Broadcast.com was an invader in the same space as YouTube.

A big business would die of schizophrenia if they tried to fend off everything that attempted to disrupt them.

That's tangential to the point of the article though I suppose.

<comment><USER17> "Invaders" here is plural, and that's important. broadcast.com and youtube were on the same "side" of that particular battle. The invaders won, broadcast.com just doesn't benefit from that.

<comment><USER16> a) no because Yahoo shareholders sure don't feel like they've been on the winning side of that battle. Their investment in broadcast.com netted them -$3 billion.

b) that doesn't change the hindsight bias at all, it just shifts it from individual companies to individual industries. For instance the invaders in grocery retail have done very little.

<comment><USER18> a) The point here is not that _all_ the invaders win, just that the companies that do win tend to be invaders rather than incumbents. If Hulu loses to YouTube, the fact that broadcast.com didn't amount to much is scant consolation.

b) Grocery retail is an established market. PG was talking about new markets: "The pattern here seems the same one we see when startups and established companies enter a new market."

<comment><USER16> a) no, once again, that's just an observational bias. You are thinking of the industries where the invaders win because you don't hear about the others. Invaders usually lose and are forgotten, but occasionally win and are remembered.

b) you're not an invader if it's in a new market. you're more of a pioneer then.

<comment><USER18> a) Yeah, that could be. Even if we limit discussion to the software/internet space, we could be ignoring all the small companies that created a new market then got crushed by Microsoft.

b) <shrug> PG chose the term, not me. The point is that you have a startup and an established company competing in a market that recently didn't exist. PG's point was that very often the startup wins. He may be wrong, but grocery retail is not a counter example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you take PG's essay one step further, it would seem there might also be a need for micro-investing in the same style that Kiva does micro-loans. Something that lets small fish invest in startups that need less than, say, $250k. Investments could have a lower limit of $5k for example, and most software startups might only need 10 or 20 investors at $5k a piece.

Diaspora received a great deal of funding on Kickstart, but Kickstart specifically says it is not meant for investing. I think there might be a niche between well-connected, wealthy angels and simply asking family and friends for seed money. This would also alleviate the choice between risking your relationships with all your friends and family just to generate seed money. If you have a business idea, there should be an option to raise money in an open market at any scale.

<comment><USER20> I think that's illegal--offering equity investment in small amounts to members of the public is legally a public offering of stock, which falls under the jurisdiction of lots of ugly federal regulations.

Angels exist because there's a big legal distinction between offering stock to ordinary people and offering stock to millionaires.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for pointing that out Phil. I'm not a lawyer, but I wouldn't call it illegal outright, as you say it may just require a fair amount of upfront legwork to arrange the structure of the service in a legal way. There do seem to be some exceptions the SEC offers, such as the below from their site. I agree it may be impossible to make it work after jumping through all the hoops, but if you succeeded all that red tape would make a decent barrier to entry for others.

From <http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/qasbsec.htm#eod6>

"Section 3(b) of the Securities Act authorizes the SEC to exempt from registration small securities offerings. By this authority, we created Regulation A, an exemption for public offerings not exceeding $5 million in any 12-month period. If you choose to rely on this exemption, your company must file an offering statement, consisting of a notification, offering circular, and exhibits, with the SEC for review. Regulation A offerings share many characteristics with registered offerings. For example, you must provide purchasers with an offering circular that is similar in content to a prospectus. Like registered offerings, the securities can be offered publicly and are not "restricted," meaning they are freely tradeable in the secondary market after the offering."

Also: <http://www.sec.gov/answers/regd.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Much of the stress comes from dealing with investors."

Disagree here. Dealing with investors is a source of stress, but there are many reasons why startups are stressful. A friend put it this way: "As a startup founder, every day you're eating glass and staring into the abyss."

There is the stress of product-market fit, dealing with the fact that no one knows who you are or cares, endless hours, etc.

But the best startup founders, I think, do it because they simply can't do anything else.

While I hope that fundraising becoming more efficient will help create more great startups - I think the battle against cushy jobs at established companies is at the very, very beginning.

<comment><USER22> When you need the money, the stress from investors rises to the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oops. I was supposed to review this but ended up being too busy fundraising.

</comment><comment><USER24> _Investors don't like trying to predict which startups will succeed, but increasingly they'll have to._

I'm puzzled because I thought investing successfully was all about doing exactly this.

<comment><USER6> I used to think that too when I was a founder, but currently, at least, most VCs and many angels tend to wait till they see a startup starting to take off, if they can. This works just as well as predicting, so long as they jump in before other investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Business has traditionally not needed outside funding. Funding has mostly come from revenue or from family. This angel/small scale investment is only neccessary because technology is changing so quickly and there are many opportunities at the moment. But this will end soon enough and the market will stabilize.

The few new things that startup then will not be worth having a lot of angels for.

<comment><USER6> That's false. Medieval trading voyages, which comprised a large part of economic activity at the time, were frequently paid for with investor money. Since the industrial revolution most new industries have been.

More things surely would have before, but there was no way for investors to ensure they weren't cheated by the managers skimming the profits. The reason venture funding worked for trading voyages was that when the ship returned, it was very hard to conceal what was in it.

The way railroads ensured that investors got paid was to fund themselves with bonds that paid a fixed rate. Managers were free to do what they wanted with the cash flow, but if they failed to make their bond payments they'd be in default.

<comment><USER25> Big and risky business has always been paid for by big money. Trading voyages were big business and were limited in the number available. There were not millions of ships setting sail everyday.

The risk and cost factor in websites is rapidly reducing. As the risk reduces, so will the need to go to people dedicated towards giving money. It will be easier to raise money locally and in your environment, as has been done for a long time.

In human society, it's my observation that there are two types of capital being raised:

\-- Risky and big money: These is the type of money that gets raised from venture capitalists nowadays and from rich dudes back in the shipping days

\-- Less risky and smaller money: This type of money is raised from savings, bank loans and borrowed from family.

Websites and many of these simple technology things are rapidly moving out of the first category and into the second category. Cost is dropping and risk is dropping. Things like robots or electric cars are now in the first category.

<comment><USER6> The volume of shipping varied at different times, but it was always a huge component of European economies. There were points in the preindustrial period when several percent of English workers were on ships at any given time. The percentage would have been higher in the Netherlands. And investing in shipping was definitely not limited to the high and mighty; ships were rarely owned outright, but were divided into shares, and I've read of shares as small as 1/64 of a ship.

<comment><USER26> That makes sense.

The first companies issuing tradable stock were shipping/trading companies. 1/64th shares seems to be about the size that would start to require some more sophistication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What are people's thoughts on peer-to-peer startup funding? Is it ever going to happen?

By that I mean raising money with a larger number of smaller inputs from a marketplace or similar. Potentially still in exchange for equity though also possibly for debt or just belief, as with Kickstarter.

Diaspora and Kickstarter are a recent successful example, though that was something of a black swan event in my opinion.

I do think this type of exchange could solve some of the things founders dislike about raising money, but it certainly raises other problems.

I heard a while ago of a company called Sprowtt planning to do something like this, but researching again just now, they appear to have "hit the deadpool" <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/sprowtt-marketplace>

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a question for pg and anyone else who can chip in:

I love the idea of a startup-controlled round and would definitely love to do my first round (coming soon hopefully) this way but... how exactly do I go about setting something like this up? Is there somewhere that explains how to do this or do I have no recourse but retaining a lawyer who has experience with this sort of deal (which I don't have the money for right now).

I'd love a nuts and bolts type answer if possible.

Or is this process even possible (yet) for a startup founder to lead?

<comment><USER29> This recently-posted article has a lot of details:

<http://venturehacks.com/articles/no-lead>

If you're going to take 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars from private investors, there's no getting around having a lawyer with experience in such deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a great article, Paul. I have one question, if you do not mind setting off on a tangent. You said that start-up investing is a seller's market now. Why is that? In general "a sellers market" would indicate that there a lot of investor money in comparison with startup opportunities.

Is it because there profitable exists which are bringing more money in? I have been following the news and while the number of buyouts seem to be increasing, many of them are at valuations which would not indicate much profit for the investors.

Also VCs keep telling me that they have trouble getting funds as their traditional institutional investors have soured on the VC investment class. So that would indicate something other than a seller's market.

Or do you think that because there is so much activity with start-ups, investors have already decided that some companies that have not yet reached an exit (e.g., Twitter, Foursquare) are defacto winners, so that there is an assumption of high profitability even without the exits.

Or do you think it is a sellers market because more money is going to silicon valley now that many of the wall street profit making schemes have stopped working.

Or is it possible that it only seems like a seller's market to you because Y-combinator is so successful and popular that investing in Y-combinator startups is indeed a seller's market, while this may not be the case overall.

<comment><USER31> Running Hackers and Founders, I've come aross a ton of young founders that have gotten seed rounds. And, a ton of them are hiring.

I think one reason for the trend is that a number of rich people have soured on the idea of paying someone at BigCo finance to manage their money for them in the stock market. A lot of portfolio's have recovered most of the losses from the past 2 years of stock market craziness, and a lot of them are seeing the benefit of diversifying their investments with angel investing.

Multiply that trend times 500 to 5000 millionaires in Silicon Valley, and you have a sellers market in angel investing. That is, there are a lot of angel investors looking for startups to invest in early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So question: in a rolling close with convertible notes, what happens if the startup neither gets a buy out offer nor raises another round of capital?

<comment><USER6> In any startup, if there's never an exit, the investors lose their money.

<comment><USER32> Thanks. It could also happen that the startup doesn't require more capital and is self sustaining. But doesn't get a buy out offer until after the convertible notes expire. In which case, the investor doesn't get to enjoy in the returns - he just gets his money back with some interest.

YC companies get a lot of publicity. And so their chances of raising another round of capital or getting bought out are very good. This is not the case with most startups. So a rolling close with convertible notes may not be the best option from investor point of view - no?

(With an equity deal, the startup can get an exit until it goes out of business. With a convertible notes deal, you have a fixed timeframe and you (as an early stage investor) lose out if the exit happens beyond that time period...

...So I thought one never did a convertible notes deal unless they knew there was a very very good chance of an exit within the specified time frame... am I missing something?

My point is - I don't see rolling closes with convertible notes getting too popular with most angels.)

<comment><USER33> The convertible note doesn't disappear. In the worst case it merely converts to stock at a pre-configured valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In a rolling round, is each investment negotiated at a different price? Or does the company sell X shares at Y price, first-come, first-served? The former sounds like a lot of work; the latter gives people an incentive to delay even more (they'll have made an investment with more information than the prior investors. And, of course, they'll have cash on hand in the interim.)

<comment><USER32> Rolling round is done with convertible notes. No valuation talks take place.

Convertible notes are loans that can be converted into equity if some predetermined event takes place (usually you raise another round of money or you get a buy out offer.)

You're not selling X shares at Y price. You're issuing a loan that may get converted into X shares. Every investor who gets these convertible notes usually will end up getting the same valuation in the future if the note converts to equity.

So with rolling round, you're just taking on debt. And you can take as much debt as you want to (unless you've added a clause in any of the notes that determines that you can't go over a certain amount of debt.)

<comment><USER35> _Rolling round is done with convertible notes. No valuation talks take place._

that's not true, most of the convertible notes we're seeing include a valuation cap in them i.e. the investor never converts their debt at a valuation higher than the cap. the cap addresses the main criticism of convertible notes, namely they misalign the incentives of the founders (who want a high valuation for their next funding event) and investors (who want a lower valuation for the next round so they get more stock).

<comment><USER36> I think it'd be great if YC published a standard note that has the cap (with both a dollar and percentage) that accommodated rolling closes like y'all did for the Series AA docs. Given that this is now the new hotness, it'd make seed investing even more efficient, especially for startups outside the Valley who may not have relationships with up-to-the-minute legal help.

<comment><USER6> You're right; we'll do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> OT: That's weird, I didn't see this and just posted a dup - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579024> \- but it didn't get caught. The only difference seems to be in the www in the url.

<comment><USER38> The dupe detection is a simple string comparison. Any character differences will allow the dupe to be posted - even differences like trailing slashes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Some angel groups have some steep fees just to pitch and luckily there is counter movement to that. I hope with the shift towards more angel investment in the long run that this attitude of paying a high fee for presenting is not getting to a norm.

<comment><USER6> Don't worry, that custom is already so dead that I forgot to even mention it. I don't think any YC-funded startup has ever paid to pitch one of these groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Could someone please guide me towards a "startup funding 101" resource that explains what all this means? Ideally something that walks you through the process instead of just defining the vocabulary. I've searched but I haven't found anything good.

series A rounds, additional rounds of funding, fixed size rounds, convertible notes, changes in valuation, stock dilution, etc.

<comment><USER37> <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "it's usually the invaders who win." Let's aim, launch & invade!

</comment><comment><USER42> May I suggest the use of the word archangel instead of super-angel?

</comment><comment><USER43> I think there's a missing word in this sentence: "What I'm saying is that the kind of help that matters, you may not have to be a board member to give."

</comment><comment><USER44> The essay makes sense as far as it goes, but if it's true, there's going to be a change in both board of directors and advisors as well.

</comment><comment><USER45> This sounds wonderful, but a bit too much wistful thinking.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think that adding more VCs and Angels to the ecosystem would actually make me less likely to consider raising money.

The first year of a startup can be incredibly cheap. Cheap enough that you simply don't need _any_ outside cash to make it happen. For me, the only reason I'd ever consider taking VC if for the side benefits that come along with the money.

When you have an entity like YCombinator backing your thing, you get a huge boost from their connections (and the fact that they're inclined to _use_ those connections for your benefit). That's orders of magnitude more valuable than the lousy six grand they give you, and if I could get that help without the money attached or the requirement to move to the bay area, I'd jump at it for my latest project.

Now imagine the scenario with Random No-Name Angel with $100k to give you. All you get out of that deal is money. No influence. No guaranteed TechCrunching, no introductions to Important People, no Inc Magazine cover story about you and the latest crop of young entrepreneurs. Unless you actually _need_ money (which if you're smart, you shouldn't), there's just no advantage there.</comment>


Vegas Tech, We Need To Talk - <AUTHOR> https://www.evernote.com/shard/s10/sh/cb5049c0-54e7-477a-92a8-2f49e1fffbf2/96832700c99f170c665364a3414cf92a <comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings about articles like these. On the one hand, I can see how a more broadly integrated community yields benefits for everyone. On the other, you can't help but feel that the author has a very recriminatory tone. One wonders if he didn't have it out for the Downtown Project from the beginning.

The use of self-deprecation and the "I'm no better than the people I'm criticizing" apologism seems to justify the use of a broad range of ad-hominem attacks. There is a lot of condemning the current approach of the Downtown Project, but I'm not sure how it should be better run. The people that the author suggests be consulted are by his own admission, "human scum." Should Hsieh and co, build more affordances for poorer people? Should they also build charitable social housing? Is merely being transparent enough?

I assume that Hshieh aims to build, essentially, a community that he himself would be happy living in. If such a community is antithetical to the needs of the current tenants of that area (which seems almost tautologically true, sugarcoating by all parties involved notwithstanding), how should this conflict be resolved? I think the core of the author's complaint is that Hsieh and his compatriots are able to do what they like because of their wealth. I submit that this is at least no worse than our other standard approaches to solving conflicts at this scale - complaining or cajoling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't have it out for the DTP from the beginning, honestly. I was excited as anybody to see something new. But as I say in my piece, I'm disillusioned by the inability to work with the existing community -- not just the super- poor people in Downtown, but even the local cultural scene, whose input has largely been ignored.

My anger comes from this: I don't believe that any community built upon going in and tearing out an old one is a good community. I believe the key is integration, not disintegration. Don't tear out the only local mini-grocery and replace it with an expensive gourmet market. Consider everyone in the community, not just the VCs and startup kids you're trying to attract. Especially if you're ambitiously tearing down much of what was there long before you arbitrarily decided to move into the area and start playing Sim City.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for responding, I appreciate the sincerity.

I think most communities that have undergone significant change have done so with some asymmetry in power. If Hsieh deigns to consult with the locals, it will necessarily take the form of charity. How is he to run these negotiations? The local mini-grocery wants to stay, and Hsieh wants it to go. The decision is binary and rests entirely on him. Asking Hsieh to consider everyone's needs is difficult, especially given that he has all the bargaining power. I was surprised your article did not more concretely enumerate the community's concerns. I would hazard a guess that they are not nearly as organized.

As for dis/integrating as a viable strategy for improving neighborhoods - <USER2> think a lot of us here in SF would be mighty happy with a major, ground-up overhaul to a lot of the city structure. You can't cross a chasm in two leaps, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is basically the same conversation that circulates around any neighborhood improvement project; it doesn't really have much to do with Tony Hsieh or tech except in the particulars.

Where is the line between improvement and gentrification? How can you maintain the unique flavor of a neighborhood if that rents, prices, and property taxes go up by multiples? How can you maintain "affordable housing" and clean up urban blight at the same time? Etc.

<comment><USER5> True enough, but just because it comes up often doesn't make it a solved problem. In fact, I think it comes up so often because it's so damn hard to get right. To the extent that the author is advocating for better communication and transparency, I think that's probably a good step in the right direction.

Of course there's a whole OTHER discussion here: private vs public city planning. Is it really a good thing for a single investor to drive so much of the development? Where is the local government? It seems that a city council of some kind should be able to weigh in on behalf of the larger "community"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's part of the problem. There's zero accountability. And in Vegas, local government is only concerned with economic improvement -- everything else takes a backseat.

We're talking about a city where the former mayor (whose wife is now the current mayor) made it illegal to give food to homeless people. Swear to God.

<comment><USER5> Really? That's.. pretty bad. Sounds like China during the Olympics.

My first reaction was "vote the bastards out," but then: casinos. Maybe you can get a tech company to help crowdfund a new mayor who will constrain tech investment? Wait...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, every "bad" thing being ascribed to Tony Hsieh here seems _awesome_. Turning the utter wasteland that was LV Downtown into something amazing is worth some inconvenience to renters in the neighborhood.

I wish he'd do the same thing in the Tenderloin, Bayview/HP, or EPA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha, hey Ryan, I don't know if you remember me or not. But we also worked for MedWeb at the same time a while back!

I think you're completely wrong, though. It's not convenience, it's survival. But I also know you and I are on total opposite ends of the economic belief system, too. :-)

<comment><USER6> Wow, small world!

You're right -- I'm fine with destroying marginal communities or cultures as long as the individuals are somehow taken care of. I think it's individuals who have rights, not cultures or communities. My experiences with Downtown and North Vegas were...not pleasant, although I've pretty much avoided the area entirely for ~8 years, so maybe it has improved, and DTV seems likely to be a continuing part of that.

<comment><USER7> For many people, culture and community are a major part of their identity and well-being. Destroy that and you've destroyed a part of them. What does "taking care of" individuals mean when you posit that their entire community should be destroyed, just because you had some unpleasant experiences in their neighborhood?

Also, there aren't many people bothering to somehow take care of the individuals, which says a lot about the self-declared DTV majority culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article shares emotions and themes that come with criticism of most big redevelopment efforts. That standard operation is to kick all the poor people out. I'm not saying it's right, but it is common. The emotions expressed in this article are not unique.

That being said, on to my real comment. When I read _Delivering Happiness_ , I honestly could not feel that I would ever want to work at Zappos. It seemed that you would have to spend 100% of your life with fellow Zappos co-workers, or else you would just not fit in. It really did feel like I was reading the operations manual for a politically correct cult. Obviously that's fine for Zappos. They don't want people like me. They want people with whom they can party outside of work, seemingly _all the time_. But I wonder how many people in the world are really like that.

</comment><comment><USER9> They need to improve the local schools. This is by far the largest barrier to recruiting real, stable, sustainable talent to the area.

</comment><comment><USER10> As a resident of one of this continent's many bombed-out post-industrial hellholes, if you don't want Hsieh, we'll take him.

I'd rather the local gals be selling $12 lattes than $12 handjobs, thanks very much. And as for the bums and druggies being displaced, maybe with money flooding into the community the government and local community groups will actually be in a position to _help_ them rather than preserving their habitat like some kind of exotic wildlife. "We must protect the population of the mid- town doorway-pissers!"

</comment><comment><USER11> Meta-comment: there needs to be a Wikipedia alternative that has an entry for something like "Vegas Tech".

<comment><USER5> Just copy/paste this in and watch the edit war

edit: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_cre...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Vegastech)

<comment><USER11> right, the process is stacked against anything not "noted" by the MSM. Major open source initiatives have no page. It's just dumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish someone would buy up the old Gemco building at the intersection of Boulder Highway and Sahara and do something useful with it. The last time I someone made a run at it the owners were apparently "waiting for a big hotel" to come around and buy them out for millions. What a waste.

</comment><comment><USER13> [born and raised in vegas; now a software developer in the bay area] watching downtown transform into what it currently is has been both inspiring and discouraging. thank you for your thoughts on this issue; i hope open discussion ensues

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm old enough that I saw the original screenings of "The Jungle Book" and "The Shakiest Gun in the West" at the Huntridge. I was born in Vegas, my father was born in Vegas, his father moved here to work on the dam during the depression.

After helping Danny Greenspun start several local tech things in the early 80s, I made a break for Texas.

So, no, I'm not "local", even though as I type this I _am_ in Vegas, helping my father deal with a bunch of crooked Mormons in Southern Utah.

Vegas could do worse than Hsieh, and people here should be happy that anyone is interested in rebuilding the unnatural act that is Las Vegas.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a background: I'm a Las Vegas native who lived there for 18 years but moved to California to go to school and find a job as an electrical engineer. My parents both moved to Las Vegas when they were young, ended up going to school at UNLV, and they are still working and living in Las Vegas to this day.

\---

The reason states like California attract the worlds best and brightest engineers is because of its institutions of higher learning. Would Silicon Valley exist as it does today without the Stanfords and the Berkleys, I don't think so. Much of the rest of California benefits in the same way:

       * San Jose      - 5.8% employed are engineers (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#17-0000)
       * San Diego     - 3.0% employed are engineers (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41740.htm#17-0000)
       * Los Angeles   - 1.9% employed are engineers (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_31100.htm#17-0000)
       * Reno, NV      - 1.3% employed are engineers (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_39900.htm#17-0000)
       * Las Vegas, NV - 0.9% employed are engineers (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_39900.htm#17-0000)

At UNLV, less than 5% of all students are engineering majors ([https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university- search...](https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university- search/university-of-nevada-las-vegas)). Compared to the major California schools (and the University of Nevada: Reno) that is a pitifully small amount of students and it mirrors pretty closely the percentage of the population as a whole:

       * UCSD        - 14% engineering majors (https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/university-of-california-san-diego)
       * UC Berkeley - 12% engineering majors (https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/university-of-california-berkeley)
       * UCLA        -  8% engineering majors (https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/university-of-california-los-angeles)
       * UNR         -  8% engineering majors (https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/university-of-nevada-reno)

For Las Vegas to compete as a technological powerhouse we need to work on retaining local talent from the high schools because as someone who has seen many friends (including myself) leave Las Vegas for a better education (and a better overall experience), I think this is one thing that cannot and should not be ignored.

Projects like the _Downtown Project_ will only help retain smart young people in Las Vegas, it then becomes a process that keeps building on itself.

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome read. This guy seems like he'd be fun to have a beer with.

That said: he reveals his hand at the end. His startup ideas have been rejected, he's been told he has no chance of being funded in the future and is generally disliked by the Vegas Tech community. So this is his butthurt revenge (whether he realizes it or not).

That doesn't mean anything he said is untrue, but it means it's a certainty there is another side to this story that would paint a much different picture of the nature of the interactions between "Vegas Tech" and the downtown "locals".

Having lived in Vegas for awhile, one key element he didn't mention which could by itself explain why they keep to themselves, is safety. There have probably been naive startup kids who have been mugged, conned, attacked, hustled and worse. The easiest defense to this is to stick together and not get involved with outsiders.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly? I've never sought money from the DTP, nor do I plan to. I have lots of other contacts for VC if I seek it. :-)

My point was that I don't need them, which is why I'm okay with saying this stuff where others in the community aren't.

But you're right: there are other sides to the story. If it interests you, seek them out!

[Edit: actually, I spoke informally to some of them very briefly, very early on in the timeline of all of this, about investing in my startup. I'd forgotten that. But it never went anywhere and after a bit I realized it would have been a bad fit anyway.]

<comment><USER17> Nevada seems to rank pretty well as a business-friendly state.

Is Las Vegas/Nevada a good place to start a tech company?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't relate much to this article but "I'd like to suggest that you find a nice, quiet sofa in the Beat upon which to curl up on and go fuck yourself" is a pretty funny insult when you think aboutt it...

</comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr: Waaaah, the people with the money are making the rules and instead of doing it better myself I'll just write some clever insults from my corner.

This is no different than dropping a Walmart in the middle of a small town and crushing all the family businesses. It's not utopian but it is how nature works. Those with the biggest teeth control the ecosystem. The only difference is the modern world has decided to use a point system to measure power. Don't like it? Strap on your entrepreneur hat and do it how you think it should be done.

Oh, and teaching the "locals" who in the "ghetto" how to write HTML is not going to change anything.

<comment><USER17> "Oh, and teaching the "locals" who in the "ghetto" how to write HTML is not going to change anything."

This argument is dumb. They are not going door to door asking people if they want to learn HTML. Code School, Code Academy, Khan Academy do not expect the local community to learn to code. Those who are interested will go seek them out. It's more like - if you build it, they will come.

The people in the "ghetto" are kind of trouble in the short term. But they are in trouble everywhere. If these mogul(s) can pull it off, they can help create a more viable jobs pool. There needs to be more influx of money into the ecosystem, improvement in quality of education, and a shift away from the casino business.

Basically, Las Vegas needs to be more family-friendly if it expects to be like a tech hub like San Francisco.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, and we're actually going off of the Codecademy/Khan Academy course tracks for what we're teaching.

But I don't think the moguls are creating more jobs here. They're importing people from elsewhere -- I'd say literally 75% of better of the Vegas Tech crowd hasn't been in town for more than six months. And they've shown zero interest in improving local education, either within the school system or independently. Unless you count Ruby meetup groups as education, which I don't. ;-)

<comment><USER17> I recently saw a PBS documentary on the birth of Silicon Valley. At one time, it was place that had nothing except cheap land and lots of farms. Las Vegas is kind of like this.

The key is to attract smart people. The problem with Las Vegas (or Nevada) is that the amount of engineers per capita is very low (about half of that in California).

Also, business does have an impact on higher education. If you look at Stanford or Cal, they have a strong program in computer engineering. UCLA, USC both are strong in medical sciences. UCSD strong in biopharma. It could be a chicken and egg thing - at some point businesses will demand skilled technical people from the universities and will adapt their programs accordingly.

Meetups allow me to learn from my peers. I would call that an educational tool. I suppose it depends what kind of meetups you go to...I like the powerpoint kind.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Walter Cronkite Tours the Home of 2001 (1967) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2013/01/3d-tv-automated-cooking-and-robot-housemaids-walter-cronkite-tours-the-home-of-2001/

<comment><USER2> The main way in which these predictions were off the mark is that media distribution in Cronkite's 2001 is still a one-way street, from news organization to individual news consumer. His future world missed the extent to which arguably the most important content generation is done by the consumers themselves -- Twitter, YouTube, blogs, forums, etc. (Okay, there was no Twitter or YouTube in 2001. But you know what I mean.)

</comment><comment><USER3> The delivery methods might be slightly different (hardware devices rather than printed paper- although <http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/>) but most of this isn't too far from the truth.

The main issues though that aren't covered are the dividing lines of wealth that allow people to have these - and the density of living space.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's one of the 25-min shows <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__MGYrcapdk></comment>


Show HN: "Nim in Action" is now available - <AUTHOR> http://nim-lang.org/news.html?r=1#Z2016-01-27-nim-in-action-is-now-available <comment><USER4> Great to see Nim getting an official book, (Dominick is almost like a co- author of Nim at this point :-).

My impression of Nim is that it is what Go should have been, if language developments of the past 40 years were taken into account, so if you like the simplicity of Go's syntax, but want modern features, seriously consider Nim.

I personally couldn't get over the significant whitespace, (relying on invisible characters doesn't sit well with me) [1], but apart from that I like the language a lot!

@dom96 Do you think that the focus on web development is good to have? I realise that it is what a ton of people do these days, but since web developers already have so many technologies to pick from, perhaps selling the book as aimed more at system/game even native desktop developers could spring up more interest.

Also, how exactly is the garbage collector tied to the standard library and the language itself? For example, if I opt out of the GC completely, would I end up in a situation similar to D, where I'm not using GC but everything around me still is, so I have to carefully program around it, or is it handled differently? (And can you possibly compare Nim and D as the languages seem to be covering similar territory.)

Lastly, what major work still needs to be done before we see a 1.0 release and how best can we help Nim to move towards that goal right now?

Thanks, back to the book now...

1 - Maybe a gofmt style tool would help somewhat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words! I'm happy that you can see the positives in Nim even though you dislike one of its most prominent features.

Personally I love significant whitespace and have started using Nim because of this feature, basically back in the day I just wanted a Python alternative that was compiled. If you really dislike it that much, you may be able to convince Araq to bring back his old time idea of allowing different syntaxes in Nim. As for a gofmt tool: `nim pretty` exists but may need to mature a bit.

I believe that a focus on web development is good. One of the reasons why the book has such a strong focus on it is because I have spent most of my time implementing stuff which is necessary for web dev in Nim, and I want to show it off. The fact that I have a lot of experience with it helps too.

I would love to show off as many things as I can, and I might look into including some examples of SDL, SFML, and more as well as ways to utilise Nim's real-time GC for games. But I must be careful, the book is already becoming rather large :)

As for systems, there is a whole chapter dedicated to Direct Hardware Control in the book. But I will make a note of maybe including something for native desktop developers.

In terms of the GC, I don't have as much experience using Nim with no GC as I would like. So I can't really comment as to the current situation.

In terms of a comparison to D, I've already received feedback to add D to the language comparison table in Chapter 1. To compare these properly I will need to do some research first.

Nim is very close to 1.0 now. We are planning on looking at the standard library and ensuring that it is in tip top shape before 1.0 is finally released. There is also work currently happening to make asynchronous IO multithreaded.

Thanks for the feedback and hope this answers your questions!

<comment><USER5> In your Direct Hardware Control chapter, please include a bit on targeting embedded systems like ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. For instance, how to get started and problems/gotchas to watch out for. I'm going to try this out myself over the next few months so let me know if you need me to try something out or for a chapter review.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do!

Please do try it out and report the results on the Nim forums (or via blog post). This is one of the chapters where I will need to do some research first, as I don't have much experience with this kind of stuff. So any ideas for this chapter are very much appreciated!

I thought it would be a nice chapter to end the book with though. Plus I am excited to play with this sort of stuff.

My current plan for this chapter is to try replicating some of the projects in the Arduino starter kit and to see where I can go from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here!

Even if you don't intend to purchase the book I would love to hear feedback from you about the first chapter (which is free!)[1]. Really excited about this book and am looking forward to any feedback at all from the HN community.

1 - [https://manning- content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-...](https://manning- content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/6/df42fc6-bff6-453b-9482-641468038572/Picheta_Nim_MEAP_V01_ch1.pdf)

<comment><USER6> well, i dont know if nim have a free book yet, but i would suggest making the ebook free

this will encourage students and casuals to look into nim

<comment><USER7> There is a free manual, free tutorials, core source is free, all Nimble packages are free, free tutorials in blog posts, free first chapter, many free projects..

<comment><USER8> Plus the book's source code examples will be free. (And, if we're honest, the book itself will be free too on various book-download sites...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Based on my surface-level understanding of Nim, Go is much more comparable to Nim than it is Rust. I never understood the Rust-Go comparisons, since Rust is a serious systems programming language. I would never use Go or Nim to replace C or C++ usage as I would Rust, but I might use Nim in place of Go or Java.

Does anyone with significant Nim experience care to lend some opinions? I don't want to start a flame war--I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER10> Nim compiles to very efficient C or C++ (or js) and most benchmarks shows Nim programs performance being almost the exact same as C/C++ - and often better than Rust.

So... why not using it to replace C and C++? Since I have worked with Nim (and I use it to implement my own language) I would say "hell yes"! It is such an immensely better language and it integrates perfectly with those eco systems. The GC is a good one (or well, there are 5 to choose from) and it is for many, many applications not an issue.

And __before __pcwalton drops in with his endless spamming about Nim not being safe, Nim being undefined etc etc (it 's getting quite annoying), please spare us this time.

<comment><USER11>
       > And before pcwalton drops in with his endless spamming
       about Nim not being safe, Nim being undefined

Well, it is, isn't it? Is he wrong about Nim not being safe when not using Boehm GC? Does it not segfault when sending GC pointers between threads?

He only jumps in, when someone claims Nim is safe or the sweet spot, or something equally wrong. Nim's pretty syntax comes with a price, just like Rust's safety comes with a different kind of price.

<comment><USER10> About safe/undefined etc I think it has been answered before (there are probably more places): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643690)

Personally I am quite sick and tired of that particular "take" on Nim - <USER3> not for once criticize other parts of the language? :)

<comment><USER12> > Personally I am quite sick and tired of that particular "take" on Nim - <USER3> > not for once criticize other parts of the language? :)

Because I'm not interested in criticizing languages as a whole—that would be language warring for no reason. Claims of memory safety are what are important to me, just as, for example, claims of correct crypto constructions are important to crypto people.

Anyway, I see no reason to go further here, given that nobody has claimed anything is memory safe.

<comment><USER10> Great! Thing is, Rust and Nim are very different. Just as I wouldn't put Rust down for not having GC (I love languages moving the art forward) I just wish we could look at Nim as a language with different design goals than Rust. I know several things in Nim worth discussing, it doesn't have to be warring.

<comment><USER13> > I just wish we could look at Nim as a language with different design goals > than Rust.

Claims that Nim is memory-safe when it's not is not a difference of design goal though.

<comment><USER10> See my comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10992077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10992077)

It seems to me that a) Nim is (or at least is meant to be, but bugs can sidestep it) memory safe if you stay within the rules for it, and b) _Nim_ is not throwing around vague claims of safety that are not documented in the language manual.

<comment><USER13> > It seems to me that a) Nim is (or at least is meant to be, but bugs can > sidestep it) memory safe if you stay within the rules for it

That's completely worthless. C is also memory-safe if you stay within the rules for memory safety.

> Nim is not throwing around vague claims of safety that are not documented in > the language manual.

Of course not since nim is not posting on HN (as it's not a sentient being prone to procrastination) it's obviously nim supporters making claims about nim's safety.

<comment><USER14> > That's completely worthless. C is also memory-safe if you stay within the > rules for memory safety.

It's really not any weaker of a guarantee than Rust makes, being memory-safe if you stay within the rules of not saying `unsafe`. Or opening /proc/self/mem for writing, anyway.

I'd also feel a lot better about Rust's moral highground of memory safety if its undefined behavior was actually spelled out a bit more rather than just punting the hard parts to llvm docs. I don't think every Rust user knows how to avoid aliasing problems between `&mut` and `*mut` either.

<comment><USER12> Well, I think there's a very big practical difference between being unsafe in general and unsafe only within clearly delimited boundaries (that you can forbid with a lint). The latter is pretty much necessary for any language other than strictly sandboxed ones like JavaScript, while the former is something I think _all_ languages in 2016 should take as sacrosanct from the get-go. (We've been trying and failing for about 45 years to prove that programmers will avoid making the same basic memory management mistakes if they're just trained better; I think it's well past time to give up and delegate these checks to the machine.)

That said, I don't agree with the claim that Nim is less safe than Rust because Nim uses "ptr" types and Rust uses "unsafe" blocks to mark unsafe regions. I prefer Rust's approach, but it's pretty much just a question of UI, not anything substantive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The main problem with languages that generate C or some other language is debugging.

Does Nim have a good answer to this?

<comment><USER16> Nim works quite well with GDB. I've tried it. It can generate metadata that GDB can use.

It's not perfect, but for my uses it has been alright (but then I'm ususally the kind of person who prefers to use debug printing and just studying the code)

Nim also shows very nice stack traces on uncaught exceptions so that also reduces the need to fire up GDB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I should like to know if Nim can be used for machine learning or for deep learning. How could be located Nim in comparison to Julia, numpy, Torch7 and the tools for deep learning and AI that many big companies are open sourcing.

<comment><USER18> I think Nim would be ideal for that kind of applications, in particular neural networks stuff. But definitely we are not there yet. I try to explain my reasons in this blog post: [http://rnduja.github.io/2015/10/21/scientific- nim/](http://rnduja.github.io/2015/10/21/scientific-nim/)

To get to a point where we have something good to use, though, there are a few libraries to develop. I started working out a basic layer for linear algebra, that is needed in many applications - see [http://unicredit.github.io/linear- algebra/](http://unicredit.github.io/linear-algebra/)

I hoped I would be able to start working on some neural network stuff based on that, but I did not find the time yet...

<comment><USER17> Interesting post. I also enjoyed the posts about Torch but when installing in ubuntu 15.10 there were some problems. Libraries are necessary to avoid reinventing the wheel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We added "Show HN" to the title (the convention for sharing your own work on HN) because the post is by the author and, when the project is a book, a free chapter is a nice way to let people try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I was wondering whether this was eligible for "Show HN".

<comment><USER19> Considering how much work a book is, it would be cruel to say anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My questions! I have never written a line of Nim but am enticed:

>Nim allows you to use snake_case even if the identifier has been defined using camelCase, and vice versa.

Can you also just write it all lowercase, and same synonym effect? i.e. snakecase

> The default garbage collector is real-time so it allows you to specify the > amount of time it should spend on collecting memory.

Since Nim compiles to C, which is not garbage collected, does Nim just automatically add its own C-based GC library behind the scenes (no small task), or is it actually just adding calls to free for you?

> This applies to languages such as C++, Pascal and Ada. But these languages > still require platform specific code when dealing with more specialised > features of the operating system, such as creating new threads ...

Not true any more for C++, since the new C++ standard 5 years ago, which contains cross-platform standard library tools for multithreading.

>The speed of a programming language is one characteristic that is often used to compare multiple programming languages

Since this statement is in the book, it would be nice to see Nim programs participating in the online benchmarks game.

>Table 1.2 Common programming language features

A little misleading or perhaps just incorrect to place a No in C++'s box for metaprogramming. Entire books have been written on C++ metaprogramming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, thank you for the questions and feedback!

> Can you also just write it all lowercase, and same synonym effect? i.e. > snakecase

Yes, the first character is case sensitive, but the rest is not. foobar == fooBar == foo_bar == foo_Bar but FooBar != fooBar.

> Since Nim compiles to C, which is not garbage collected, does Nim just > automatically add its own C-based GC library behind the scenes (no small > task), or is it actually just adding calls to free for you?

Nim adds its own Nim-based GC library behind the scenes. In fact, it supports multiple GCs (which can be changed via the --gc flag).

> Not true any more for C++, since the new C++ standard 5 years ago, which > contains cross-platform standard library tools for multithreading.

Is this standard well supported by now? I'll change it to 'C' in any case.

> Since this statement is in the book, it would be nice to see Nim programs > participating in the online benchmarks game.

I agree, maybe you can convince them to include it: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.html#languagex](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.html#languagex) :)

> A little misleading or perhaps just incorrect to place a No in C++'s box for > metaprogramming. Entire books have been written on C++ metaprogramming.

Somebody else raised this point. Will correct.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER20> >> Not true any more for C++, since the new C++ standard 5 years ago, which contains cross-platform standard library tools for multithreading.

>Is this standard well supported by now? I'll change it to 'C' in any case.

The standard is 5 years old this year and nearly every major compiler has supported it for years, and the big ones supported it before the standard was officially in place. So changing it to C would be much more accurate.

That's not to say that each platform's unique tools, i.e. Apple's own GCD for multithreading, are not still available and widely-used. But C++ lets you not worry about platform-specific multithreading any more, and it's quite nice! In addition to multithreading primitives in the standard, there are also higher- level task-based tools like futures and promises that are cross-platform also.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! C++'s standards committee did a good job of making sure C++ stayed current :)

<comment><USER20> And it continues, major enhancements are abounding. C++17 introduces cross- platform network and socket interactions as part of the standard, among other goodies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Suggestion: It may be a good idea to show line numbers in the code samples, since the compiler error messages, discussed in the text, refer to them quite extensibly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Will make a note to add that, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note: the title is misleading.

The book is _not_ available yet, only the first three chapters.

<comment><USER21> Yes, and the first is free. I was considering a purchase, but there's not really much to read at this point. FYI, "mlpichetatw" code will give you 50% off this book on checkout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I test drove Nim when it was "Nimrod" quite some time ago, sounds like 1.0 is coming soon. Looking forward to it! It's really good to see Pythonesque languages pop up.

</comment><comment><USER23> Could be of interest if the creator didn't self-promote the language through an aggressive tone "after a few beers" [https://hero.handmadedev.org/forum/code- discussion/937-i-wou...](https://hero.handmadedev.org/forum/code- discussion/937-i-would-like-to-recommend-the-language-nim)

<comment><USER10> The creator? I may be daft but that is someone saying he/she has been using Nim for one year?

<comment><USER24> You are right, that is just some random drunk person on an internet forum recommending Nim (who has apparently picked it up recently, and says they are going to write their next project in it). It's not creator Andreas Rumpf or anybody central to the Nim project.</comment></comment></comment>


Dolphins appear to do nonlinear mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/id/48218696/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/dolphins-appear-do-nonlinear-mathematics/#.UZt0ruJI47w <comment><USER2> There is a large difference between understanding mathematical concepts, e.g. ordinal numbers, and using effects that we describe using such mathematical concepts.

For example, you wouldn't say that a human 'understands' how signals propagate from the brain to the hand to then do some calculations and hence decide when to tell his hand to let go of a ball he is trying to throw. What happens instead is that by repetition and exercise, we develop experience that lets us match the current requirements to previous ones and then repeat what we did previously.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am currently studying this behaviour anyway. I am certain that humans do use fractal search algorithms too. Predators use Levy based algorithms.

        Remembering things that you hear can cause a phonetic fractal search.
        Remembering things you see can cause a holographic fractal search.

4 dimensions: time, x,y,z where x,y,z aren't just positions. They can be neurons connected with a firing pattern or more.

Do your research, have to stop myself.. this is truly fantastic. I enjoy it too much :)</comment>


U.S. Patent Office Cancels Redskins Trademark Registration - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/sports/football/us-patent-office-cancels-redskins-trademark-registration.html

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7910168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7910168)</comment>


Google's driverless car is brilliant but so boring - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34423292 <comment><USER2> Partly because Google has zero style... They need to stick to software. There is no sexiness at Google. They don't invest in Graphic or Industrial designers, just engineers. Google Glass is a prime example... I would never be caught wearing something so ugly, even if it was my life support system... Speaking of life support systems, Darth Vader is a prime example of stylish, yet functional wearable tech lol!</comment>


Announcing etcd 3.1 - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/etcd-3-1-announcement.html <comment><AUTHOR> Much of the focus on this release is continuing to support Kubernetes with the best possible consistency database. Xiang Li, one of the leads of etcd, included a couple of notes in his email to Kubernetes dev:

etcd v3.1 improves the read performance by a factor of 10 for Kuberentes use cases (unless quorum read is disabled).

etcd's v3 API will be the default backend in Kubernetes 1.6 release. But now you can also run Kuberentes 1.5 with etcd3 by providing `--storage- backend=etcd3` to the API server.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/kubernetes- dev/wgYXb...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/kubernetes- dev/wgYXbyHKLEw)</comment>


Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/29/jetpack/index.html <comment><USER2> I don't think the future really has fizzled. Did anyone predict that I could be talking with people around the globe who share my interests, instantaneously, without leaving my bedroom? Or that I could find information on nearly any topic just by typing a couple words into a search box?

Heck, I'd much rather have cars, with their noise and pollution and gas- guzzling, than horses with their shit.

I think the problem is that we quickly become habituated to any real increases in standard of living and think they're no longer remarkable anymore. It's more a problem with human brains than with technology. I'd be pretty pissed off if I lost my computer, Internet, cell phone, car, dishwasher, and cushy job where I type code into a computer all day instead of having to do actual physical labor. They don't really register as amazing achievements on a day- to-day basis, but when you look at 1964 and what you'd have to give up to live back then, they look pretty darn good.

<comment><USER3> "Did anyone predict that I could be talking with people around the globe who share my interests, instantaneously, without leaving my bedroom?"

They had tablet PC's and the equivalent of internet blogs and forums in "Ender's Game," so I assume other authors had similar ideas.

<comment><USER4> Writers began "predicting" this sort of thing about the same time they started signing up for online services in the early 80s.

<comment><USER5> See, I'd credit Heinlein with predicting the internet back in the fifties and sixties.

<comment><USER4> What works are you thinking of? When I think of Heinlein in that period, I remember a protagonist talking with a trucker about the truck's antigrav propulsion, then whipping out a slip-stick to figure out how far down it would be pushed under load. ( _Citizen of the Galaxy_ , I think.)

<comment><USER5> Stranger in a Strange Land had some "news nets" or somesuch that seemed pretty close to me. That's sixty-one. I poked through though, and everything that I was thinking of specifically turned out to be much later.

<comment><USER4> Well, "network" had a different meaning back in 1961. :)

 _Stranger_ is one of the few (only?) Heinlein things I haven't read, mind. Need to get around to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with some of the authors points but not with others. For example, I don't think you can say "people weren't interested in the Jetpack because it only had enough fuel for half a minute." But the future that was promised had Jetpacks that lasted longer than half a minute so that answer's kind of a cop out.

That said I do agree that a lot of the "future" that these visionaries put out there was impractical. Whenever anyone talks to me about a flying car I ask them if they've ever seen someone driving around in a broken down car that obviously needs maintenance. Then I ask them to imagine what the world would be like if that unmaintained car could fall out of the sky onto their house.

That alone is why I think flying cars will never be an option. Because even if you make a law that requires people to keep their flying cars maintained there will be those that will ignore it (see smog laws).

<comment><USER7> Forget maintenance, what about flying drunk, or tired, or without years of training? You say "flying cars" and people think "driving in the sky," but it's not like that at all.

Basically, there are many different reasons why flying cars would be unlikely to be as common as normal ones.

<comment><USER8> NASA has been working for years on aviation-for-everybody concepts. The basic idea is that the vehicles will self-navigate. See "Highway in the Sky" (HITS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree entirely. Who would have thought that the blackberry or iPhone would ever be possible back in the late 70's... I can get traffic information overlayed on a route from anywhere to anywhere by foot, car, train, bus, I can instantly talk or type messages to anyone on the planet, I can look up any piece of the worlds collective knowledge instantly all while walking down the street with a cup of coffee in the other hand...

The present is pretty darn amazing to me.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Who knows what is ahead. I'm very hopeful Teleportation will be invented in our life time. If not that, thn hopefully at least a Hoverboard :)

<comment><USER11> Hoverboard. 2015.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The one thing I've noticed about comparing sci-fi future to the actual thing is the degree that humanity is changing, not technology.

It used to be you'd think of some future tech of a hundred years from now as being some normal guy, like you, except he'd have a jetpack, a phaser, or a cool flying car. But what really happened was that we didn't get all those cool external things, instead we got things that plugged into our minds and bodies more. So instead of flying around in a jetpack, you can _imagine_ flying around in a jetpack. Instead of using your phaser to fight Klingons, you can _imagine_ fighting all kinds of creatures. Instead of tooling around in your flying car, we're getting more and more realistic environments where you can pretend to pilot just about anything.

It's a rehash to say we're entertaining ourselves to death, but there's no doubt that as far as impact on everyday lives, technology is moving from big, cool, sleek external gadgets to small, integrated, multi-sensory ones.

That was unexpected.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps, too, there's an awareness that we're running out of land and (most) resources have already been claimed/ allocated, so it's harder and harder to suspend disbelief in muscular external technology, at least for the near future. I noticed the most recent Bond movies focus on villains' ability to manipulate the commercial and legal environment rather than building improbably powerful hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it interesting that no comments (as of writing this) touch on the other intersting issue the article brought up: that Americans "prefer technology, not radical politics, to propel social change." I think that's an interesting point, especially given the focus of the HN crowd. We often look to technology and innovation as the disruptive element in society, and one can find many examples in history of how it has been exactly that. But in these modern times, I'd be inclined to think that true change doesn't happen until the politics catch up to the technology and accept its disruption as the norm. Historically, it seems to me that change always flows from technology => social/cultural => political. When it reaches that last stage, that's when the change really takes hold.

</comment><comment><USER14> No, _this_ is why:

<http://yarchive.net/physics/effete.html>

<comment><USER12> Minus the political connotations, I'd agree. Clinton was indeed a lawyer, but then so was Nixon. Carter came from an engineering background; one could argue that Reagan's shift to personality politics was an elevation of style over substance. So my point is not that his politics are wrong, but that they were of the moment and plenty of competing or complementary interpretations exist.

We have painted ourselves into an unproductive corner with too much litigation and an over-emphasis on economic productivity where groundbreaking ideas which don't have meaningful analytics yet are considered too risky due to lack of quantifiability. One man's political effeteness is another's tyranny of the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Warning: it discusses the finale of Battlestar Galactica so I'd avoid reading it if you haven't finished watching the series yet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Even if flying cars were cheap and easy to make, would we want them? They're cool and amazing, but in real life they might be impractical.

So generally when talking about the future, maybe we predict inventions that make for cool easily understandable stories, instead useful or plausible inventions. That's why flying cars were predicted but the internet wasn't.

If you're not even going to be alive when the time of your prediction comes, why would you bother to think hard about it and make an odd, abstract, unfashionable prediction instead of a cool story about flying cars?</comment>


Six Degrees of YC Separation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kyle_mack/6-degrees-of-yc-separation-562be3a852c9 <comment><USER2> Probably more accurately titled "Bay Area Tech is a Small World After All"

TLDR: Chekr Director of Solutions, formerly Director of Strategic Sales (and first business hire), starts client on-boarding company (nice idea, streamline a lot to minimize hand-holding).

<comment><USER3> I find that the mechanisms that make the tech world small are interesting in themselves. Graphs are made small (in the graph-theory sense of the shortest distance between typical nodes) by adding connections.

This anecdote about how some particular connections were formed and later led to real opportunities seems like a good example of how things often happen in the Bay Area tech world.

Perhaps someday there'll be a general theory of how opportunities are created, but in the meantime if you want to learn how things happen, there are only anecdotes to learn from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Hiring people that have a track record of taking projects from inception to > delivery and who actively seek out projects to own is critical

Doesn't that regard the first few early hires (who'd take some form of senior/management positions later on)? For me a person who delivers projects means somebody who's very involved in the process; somebody that calls significant decisions about the product.

Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're assigned enough?

<comment><USER5> > Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're > assigned enough?

If you manage to build an org where everyone is a self-starter who takes on projects from ideation to delivery repeatedly you work in a crazy awesome env. There are some people that are really good at getting work done, but if you don't give them a clearly defined task, they will flounder.

When you are in startup land, most of what you are doing is undefined. You need someone who is really good at saying "is this working? Should I keep doing this? How do we do this better?" Over and over and over again until you find product market fit and aren't burning through cash.

If you are running an enterprise mature SaaS product a lot of those variables are solved (but possibly could be optimized). The majority of people don't need to be solving for profitability. In startupland of 10 employees or less, almost everyone should.

It's the same logic that a "startup founder" may not make the best "enterprise CEO". An "early hire" may not make the best "gear in a 300 person machine".

<comment><USER6> > You need someone who is really good at saying "is this working? Should I > keep doing this? How do we do this better?"

And sometimes you need someone who is really good at saying "let's just get this done." Diversity is a good thing on any team, even in a startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What exactly is meant by "commits" that you talk about in 1:1 and meetings? Is that more like "commitments" or "git commits". The former I agree, the latter I think is in many cases a terrible measure of productivity, because it discourages activities that don't directly lead to code, such as pairing with your junior, or helping a customer, or providing mentorship for others, etc. Remember you'll get what you measure.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Commitments", not "git commits". For revenue teams, this could be signing a contract, scheduling a certain number of meetings, drafting a blog post, etc. Similar parallels for any team within a company. The key is being able to break larger projects into manageable weekly commitments that are specific and measurable.

<comment><USER8> Did you use the word in error or is this another example of the trend of start-ups using verbs to replace nouns?

<comment><USER9> I so agree with the ridiculousness of this behavior. When people talk of an "ask" meaning "request" i cringe at the embarrassment of their need to be jargon-cool rather than individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice Kyle!

congrats and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought that since this author's startup is sorta a 'reddit for politics', I'll plug my own startup (currently self-funded) which is a 'chatroulette/duolingo for politics': [https://dinnertable.chat/](https://dinnertable.chat/)

<comment><USER12> Cool, seems like it'd attract exactly the people who don't need it though. ;- )

I'll sign up I think!

Edit: While I was signing up, I tried copying the verification code from the email, and it copied with the period from the email, so when I pasted it into the site it didn't work. Maybe put a zero-width space in there (U+200B) or ditch the period altogether. ;- )

Edit 2: The "start login" page didn't work the first time around. In the console I saw a 404 status on something. When I refreshed, it redirected me to the right page though.

Give that signup and sign in flow a good test, I was almost ready to call it quits after trying a couple times!

Edit 3: The countdown clock is jumping around a bit. Turns out the font for the numbers (Montserrat) is proportional, and does not support OpenType tabular number variants (in CSS you select these with: { font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums; }), so the countdown clock tends to jump each time a second passes and it is updated. Maybe nitpicky but it bothers me.

<comment><USER11> Update: thanks again for all the suggestions! Here's what I've done...

re Edit) removed the period, hopefully that helps

re Edit 2) fixed the 404 issue: was a rare bug

User flow) I've now added Guest Pass login which will improve user flow in areas. I'm curious what exactly are some of the flow issues you hit more specifically. __

re Edit 3) I switched to a monospaced font for the timer :)

 __EDIT #A: I 've made the "signup/login" banner button to navigate to the registration page (with option to see login) instead of the login page by default. This should a much better flow as most users clicking the button will be those registering. Thanks for the tip!

<comment><USER11> Another update: I've made the "signup/login" banner button to navigate to the registration page (with option to see login) instead of the login page by default. This should a much better flow as most users clicking the button will be those registering. Thanks for the tip!</comment></comment></comment></comment>