Osama bin Laden raid yields trove of (not encrypted?) computer data. - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54151.html <comment><USER2> There was talk that this information may expose deliberate ties to the financiers of Al Quida including Saudi royalty. Not that this is new information per se, but awfully damning evidence if its found on the hard drive of bin Laden.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

"Hundreds of people are going through it now," an official said, adding that intelligence operatives back in Washington are very excited to find out what they have.

This suggests data were not encrypted, I guess. Amazing.

<comment><USER3> Not all super villains have tech goons that read Hacker News

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even if they were using encryption, it was probably the kind the US government can very easily break.

<comment><USER5> News reports claim that the FBI has said that they can not crack TrueCrypt.

[http://news.techworld.com/security/3228701/fbi-hackers- fail-...](http://news.techworld.com/security/3228701/fbi-hackers-fail-to- crack-truecrypt/)

Some people argue that they _want to encourage the use of certain_ encryption products (e.g. Clipper chips) while others argue they are being honest about their capabilities being limited in the face of strong encryption.

<comment><USER6> What the FBI, and all security services are really interested in, is FUD.

This is the same reason why they've never issued a denial about aliens at area 51, the same reason that they make random comments about truecrypt out of the blue, the same reason they've never released all the CCTV footage from the pentagon on 9/11 even though they could, the non denials around ECHELON, HAARP, etc. etc. etc.

They'd much prefer people keep wasting energy guessing about the infinite space of "unknown unknowns" than spending time talking about the less titillating abuses that happen in plain sight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The amazing part to me is that the reports say there was no internet connectivity and no phone lines running into the compound. Did they have an internal network? Or, were these all just stand-alone computers where they kept notes?

<comment><USER7> This doesn't surprise me at all: the guy was notoriously paranoid and wouldn't have wanted any kind of electronic tether that Americans could have potentially used to trace back to him. Never mind how plausible such a scenario actually is, in his mind it was a threat.

I'd bet that he had a dedicated sneaker-net servicing his compound with high bandwidth and acceptable (to him) latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now we should call this usability problem "Why [even] Osammy Can't Encrypt"

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/5/8/114540/8364>

</comment><comment><USER9> "One of the choppers developed a mechanical problem that caused it to lose lift[...] When he couldn't get the bird airborne again, the SEALs blew it up and left in one of the reserves."

What the hell? Is this Battlefield 2 or a multi-million dollar piece of hardware?

<comment><USER10> Was that area considered hostile territory? (I honestly don't know.) Maybe the Pakistanis said they couldn't help, so they blew it up to keep anything from getting into foreign hands?

<comment><USER11> They landed in the compound where the fighting took place, and that's where the helo went down. There's no point in letting the enemy being able to strip down / repair one of your aircraft and use it against you.</comment></comment></comment>


Graphs in the Database: Rdbms In The Social Networks Age (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/quipo/rdbms-in-the-social-networks-age

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, two major models of social graphs (Lead/Follow/Mutual and Enforced Mutual):

[http://blog.rmdstudio.com/2009/01/19/social-graphing- models-...](http://blog.rmdstudio.com/2009/01/19/social-graphing-models-used- in-the-social-networks/)</comment>


eBay for Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.thejobauction.com/ <comment><USER2> You get what you pay for, and if you're looking for the lowest bidder...well...do the math.</comment>


What are the top ten email services by number of active users? - <AUTHOR> I managed to find only the following information:
Gmail: 1B Yahoo Mail: 1B Outlook.com: 400M
What are some other popular email services? <comment><USER2> Aol, mail.com, yandex, apple must be on the list...here are some numbers: [http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many- peo...](http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use- the-top-social-media/)</comment>


Ballmer Not appearing at WWDC - Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/14850981422 <comment><USER2> It's just a decoy!

That way, when Ballmer does show up and announce that Apple is ditching OS X, Cocoa, and XCode for Windows 7, .NET, and Visual Studio, you'll all be _really_ surprised.

<comment><USER3> yeah and the iPhone gets Windows Mobile 6.1 and the iPad Windows CE

<comment><USER4> And people will return them because they wanted XP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe my all-time favorite tweet; I bet the MS PR folks are having a good laugh today as well.

Is nobody else wondering at how news stories can dissect, at great length whether code-creation companies still have a business with the iPad but also Apple will suddenly allow MS to use its dev tools on their platform? Confusing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Paul, I beg of you, pleeeease implement a "merge stories" feature, before it's too late...

<comment><USER7> Sounds like extra complexity - maybe just have a textarea field when submitting/modifying a story to reference other stories (a list of links, one per line, which the HN engine translates into each link's title as a clickable link)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What a great way to deliver this news! I would have thought that they'd want to let the expectations build more, but if they're going to announce, they couldn't have chosen a more direct, humorous way of doing it.

</comment><comment><USER9> wait so you mean apple ISN'T going to let ballmer present and go against everything they've done in the last 2 months by allowing their top competitor to exactly what they've just taken a ton of shit from the dev community by not allowing? how shocking...

</comment><comment><USER10> The whole "just repost some speculation from someone with more speculation" was totally insane.

<comment><USER11> It's pretty much standard operating procedure for many sites that cover Apple news. Some of them even repost with a "we think this is bullshit, but we'll run it anyway" angle to try and cover themselves. When then thin shred of possibility the original rumor was based on vanishes, they more often than not then write posts about why it was clearly not in Apple's interests for said news to happen. Rinse and repeat.

9 to 5 Mac are the worst at this behavior, but to be honest I'm embarrassed for them all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      > Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor
      > appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding
      > in the Belmont. Just FYI.

That's just what 'they' _want_ you to think! Steve Ballmer is going to do his entire speech while demonstration the iPad's new text-to-voice feature! So he won't be _speaking_ at all!

<comment><USER13> They let a former politician on Dancing with the Stars, I would think Ballmer would have a better shot.

<comment><USER14> There is one problem with Ballmer being on Dancing with the Stars - he would have to dance with a partner...I think that's part of the rules. As we all know, Ballmer can only dance by himself (and yell "Developers, Developers, Developers").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's amazing how fast baseless information flies around!!

<comment><USER16> Even more amazing how fast it gets voted up here. You'd think this crowd would know better. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For a minute there, I was actually scared.

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems Microsoft's tweet has taken Twitter down. It's been unavailable for the past half-hour!

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure he was going to speak. Steve Jobs cancelled because Microsoft failed to keep it a secret.

<comment><USER20> > I'm pretty sure he was going to speak.

Why?

<comment><USER21> <http://twitter.com/jot/status/14898912505>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Highest rated comment on other post:

"Even if the rumour is false (I don't know) I don't find it unbelievable at all, because (a) it makes sense (b) this move would be both typically "Apple" and typically "Microsoft", if you look at the history of these companies. Hell, Microsoft started as a programming tool company."

Hate to say, "I told you so..."</comment>


Referential Accessibilty - <AUTHOR> https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility <comment><USER2> Sorry, I like my e-reader in part because at the end of a long day it can change font sizes to accommodate tired eyes with imperfect vision.

Yeah, this makes page numbers inconsistent.

BUT the reader also has a concept of a "location", which is basically a paragraph number. Why not just use those for reference instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ability to change font-size or scaling up content on a page has nothing to do with referential accessibility. They are orthogonal to each other in fact.

Location to paragraph is nice but not enough for referential accessibility requirement of a classroom. No one in my class uses an eReader, it's iPad mostly or Galaxy Tab.</comment></comment>


Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/474198/da9167a4023a2812/

<comment><USER2> Who is the distributor? Is it Google? Is it HTC/Samsung/Motorola? The FSF has had issues with defining this before, like with the iOS VLC application, where some of the developers felt that having a link to the source in the app as well as on the website was enough, but other devs and the FSF initially felt that the Apple app store _had_ to distribute the source, since they were the "distributor". They dropped this later on and went after Apple's terms.

So absent a clear definition, why is this Google's fault more than the manufacturers? More importantly, why isn't the FSF or GNU going after all the manufacturers for GPL violations? These are pretty cut and dry license violations, so why isn't anyone actually doing anything about it?

<comment><USER3> I don't think anyone dropped the claim that Apple was a distributor. I don't see any way to make any kind of rational argument under US copyright law that they are not a distributor.

The question was whether or not they needed permission of the copyright holder of the GPL code in order to distribute. Contrary to widespread believe, distribution does not always require permission.

For instance, if you buy from Best Buy or Amazon a router that contains Linux firmware, then Best Buy or Amazon has in fact distributed Linux to you. Yet they have no obligation whatsoever to provide you with source code, or point you to where you can get it.

That's because the copies they are distributing are copies they got from the router manufacturer. Amazon and Best Buy are not making copies of their own for distribution, or modifying the copies they receive form the router maker before selling the router. They are just passing the copies through.

That puts them squarely under a section of copyright law called the "First Sale Doctrine" which basically says that the copyright owner's right to control distribution does not extend to individual copies that were legitimately distributed with permission of the copyright owner.

So, if Amazon or Best Buy wanted to make you agree to GPL incompatible terms for items you bought from them, there would be no problem. They could continue to sell Linux routers.

Compare to the App Store. Apple receives one copy from the developer. When a sale is made, Apple makes a new copy from that and distributes that new copy. That's the first distribution of that particular copy, and so does not benefit from the First Sale Doctrine.

<comment><USER4> Well, or possibly not if the routers were made outside the US, then first sale may not apply at all (e.g., the 9th Circuit in Costco Wholesale Corporation v. Omega, S.A.).

See also the EFF's blog at [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/eff-asks- supreme-court...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/eff-asks-supreme- court-tackle-important-first-sale-questions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author refers to a recent discussion about the GPL termination clauses. Does anyone have a link to that?

I'm curious what would happen if a Linux copyright holder (e.g. any contributor?) would actually terminate a manufacturer's license and file an injunction.

<comment><AUTHOR> See <http://lwn.net/Articles/455013/>, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the author of said article fails to understand the differences pertaining to FOSS licensing when we consider and compare items in the user space and the kenel space. And that gets more complicated when you add the RTOS dependency and its modules to the mix.

Its a shame, the author could have chosen to educate rather than hyperbole which would have made afar greater impression on those groups the author wants to change the minds of..

<comment><USER7> Do you understand you're totally off-topic? Distributors of Android also distribute the Linux Kernel, which is GPL. So they must comply with the GPL parts. That's it.</comment></comment>


Telephone Terrorist - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0803091pranknet1.html <comment><USER2> So are they pranksters or terrorists? The most damage these guys did was trick some morons into breaking some TV sets, and The Smoking Gun is raging against them the way Perverted Justice attacks pedophiles. Overreaction?</comment>


Best online CSS tutorial/class? - <AUTHOR>

My CSS kung-foo is relatively weak, and I'd like to work on that. Any favorite CSS tutorials out there I should take a look at? <comment><USER2> CSS is simple, until it's not.

Then it's like clawing your eyes out with a rusty spork. Underwater. With your hands tied behind your back.

It's best learned when you have a goal in mind, as tutorials are too idealized; you're not going to learn all that much by reading yet another "holy grail layout" article, you're going to learn by getting your hands bloody and finding out how stuff _really_ works in the browser.

My advice? Have a layout in mind; for a challenge, try and replicate something you have a mockup of in Photoshop. Take a copy of Firefox. Install Firebug. Inspect elements at other websites that have done what you're trying to do: keep in mind how the <div>s are nested and laid out, and what CSS styles are applied to those <divs>. Read lots of alistapart.com and quirksmode.org, and Google as much as you can. Try and replicate styles yourself, ideally with an editor that's going to show you your CSS changes live as-you-go (ideally by- the-character) so you can experiment and iterate rapidly. Check your stuff in IE6 to discover exactly how many man-hours have collectively been wasted coding around MS's shit. And let me reiterate: Don't be afraid to Google for answers to problems, and to learn from how other pages have solved your problems.

Oh, and one book you absolutely _must_ read: Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design. You may or may not need to design your pages that way, but it will expand your mind as to how you can get things done.

</comment><comment><USER3> I learned directly from <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/> and loved it. Familiarize yourself with the content, read the chapters that look interesting, and then use CSS in your projects, reading on the relevant material as you go. And then a bit of reading on the more advanced chapters and you'll be pretty expert.

<comment><USER4> I second that. I think the best/easiest way to learn CSS is just to have a project that needs to be accomplished and get started. You'll be really slow, but you'll learn what you need as you go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> CSS, the language, is relatively simple. CSS, the kung fu, is a matter of learning how tons of edge cases and tricks come together.

It's best to treat it like other programming languages: go find some websites that you respect the look of and ask yourself _how did they make that effect?_

Then skim through this stuff: <http://alistapart.com/topics/code/css/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I started looking at the free resources at Sitepoint with some success (see <http://reference.sitepoint.com/css/css>), but I haven't delved deep enough to give it a full-on recommendation. Still, it seems elaborate, and you have the benefit of switching to the HTML and the (forthcoming) Javascript references when you want to color your studies with some context.

</comment><comment><USER7> I asked the same question on HN earlier: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=73284>

I ended up buying the book CSS Mastery by Andy Budd and I'm quite satisfied with it ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Try this: CSS: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition (<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527334/index.html>)

and this: CSS Cookbook, Second Edition (<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527419/index.html>)

These books are a pleasure to read and they are really cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're a total beginner, the Head First HTML is pretty good. I know some people don't like the style of these books, but for HTML & CSS, I think it worked well.

[http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML-CSS- XHTML/dp/059610197...](http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML-CSS- XHTML/dp/059610197X)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here are some links suggested by a friend/ great designer.

<http://senthil.homelinux.com/2008/06/08/six-cool-css-links/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Eric Meyer's books.

</comment><comment><USER12> Apress books on CSS are good. Go from beginner -> expert.</comment>


Ask HN: What free video conference tools are you using for daily standups? - <AUTHOR> Hey,
we are a small distributed team and do daily standups in the morning through video calls.
Honestly, relevant tools like Skype or Google Hangout are a real pain. What we want is a really SIMPLE way of sharing a link and then joining a video call on either desktop or mobile.
Isn't there any free alternatives based on HTML5 for example?
Thanks <comment><USER2> appear.in</comment>


R.I.P. Chatroulette, 2009-2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/06/29/requiem_for_chatroulette <comment><USER3> I wish I could understand the mentality behind this. "Wait, there's a site where you can go video chat with random strangers? I've gotta go on there and show off my johnson!"

Followed by 10x as many people who thought "I heard on the Daily Show there's a site where a bunch of people go show off their cocks to random strangers. I've gotta go do that too!"

On second thought, perhaps ignorance is bliss.

<comment><USER4> _I wish I could understand the mentality behind this._

The formula is simple:

        User-produced visual content + Internet + Social
          = Penises

This is true for every single example I can think of. That Flash-based multiplayer platformer where users could edit the level? Spore. Forums where people can post images. Image sharing sites. Either you have male genitalia running rampant, or the site wages a never-ending active program of preventing it.

<comment><USER5> It is also related to The "Greater Internet F$#%wad Theory"

Normal Person + anonymity + audience = Total F$#%wad

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/>

<comment><USER4> I was thinking of Gabe's persona and that equation as well when I formulated this one. Gabe's distribution of photographs of his own genitalia through the social infrastructure of online games is a recurring comic theme on Penny Arcade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dear Salon, welcome to the gutter press! Not only does your site have a stupid interstital ad (which I can't see as I have Flash disabled) but you write insipid and, frankly, untrue BS like this. News has not "broken" about anything and ChatRoulette is not "dead." I was interested to read it as I thought the site had actually shut down and was wondering what the backstory was.. instead, I get a 1000 word whine about penises.

<comment><USER7> I read the tone as not literally meaning news has broken, but rather an attempt at summoning the spirit of the 1920s newscasts. The rest of the article seems to support that interpretation, with the references to more innocent times and so on.

<comment><USER6> I guess it is Salon. They're very opinion/editorial that you love or hate rather than actual, interesting news, like most of the sources of HN links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I read an article about him not wanting to sell out ([http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/one-on-one- andrey-t...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/one-on-one-andrey- ternovskiy-creator-of-chatroulette/)), I was inwardly sad because I believed this to be a fad and that he should have cashed out - fast.

While the title is link bait, I do believe it's probably dead or at most very niche.

<comment><USER9> He seems sincere--maybe he'll be another Grigori Perelman.

Check out his nudity policy: Naked twice, in the clear; naked thrice, outta here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chatroulette is far from dead, it's still a top 3000 website (or thereabouts), which makes it larger than 99.99% of all the websites in the world. Not too shabby, and many people calling themselves 'entrepreneurs' and 'start-up' people would give an arm and a leg to be in that position.

Chatroulette suffers from the exact same problem that ww.com suffers from, which is that it takes only a very small percentage of 'jerks' (how appropriate) to spoil it for the rest. On ww.com I've managed to somewhat mitigate the problem by making labeling of your content mandatory.

I've spent an awful lot of time on trying to automate the detection of inappropriate content but there are many reasons why that is a lot harder than it seems.

A chatroulette based on a 'real-names' log-in procedure that would then connect users anonymously would be one possible way to combat the problem.

<comment><USER11> Chatroulette could allow users to flag the perverts, and also give users the ability to request "Please don't show me perverts". I don't see this as a difficult problem for them to solve if they wanted to.

<comment><USER10> It's harder than it seems. Flagging also opens the door to 'pranksters' that will false-flag everybody just to clog the system. Most of these things seem to be 'obvious' until you actually start to implement them in real life and then it seems that old saw about 'theory and practice' holds very true.

<comment><USER12> _Flagging also opens the door to 'pranksters' that will false-flag everybody just to clog the system._ Seems to me this could be mostly avoided by having the flagging mechanism repsond to some # > 1 of flags from unique users. Issues could still come up if there were > 1 people engaged in this practice simultaneously, though it doesn't seem like an activity holding much long term appeal. So, this solution seems while perhaps not optimal at least functional.

Please share some other hard type problems from such sites if you feel like it. Then we can talk through/theorize about what might work in practice.

<comment><USER13> Also, is someone keeps flagging people, then there flags don't count. This has been solved before.

However, someone who uses chatroulette may have good reasons to flag every person they see as a pervert.

<comment><USER10> That's exactly the key, abuse patterns and real use patterns are so similar that it is very hard to automate the analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Chatroulette is fun. Chatroulette is silly. Chatroulette as a cultural mainstay? Nah.

I hate to bring business into this, but Chatroulette never really scored that high on a net promoter score — even if people recommended that I play with Chatroulette, it was under the guise of something illicit and/or taboo. Most reports of Chatroulette were negative, and it was only taboo feeding the fire of people looking at it. Once. And then fading away.

Once you're there, Alexey's Law kicks in: your probability of seeing a penis is almost 100% after three or so "Next"s.

As much as I loved the concept, Chatroulette was ruined by the typical scourge of the Internet: male sexual frustration.

</comment><comment><USER15> When will FaceTime Roulette be coming out, so you can randomly connect to a stranger's iPhone?

<comment><USER16> I know two separate groups of people who are both already working on such a project.

<comment><USER17> Only two? I can only imagine that there must literally be at least 100 of these in development, and it will likely meet the same outcome as CR.

<comment><USER18> I'd imagine that one with more karma built into the system would have more <ahem> staying power.

I think a dating service built on top of Facetime (again, with karma) would be pretty neat. Sort of like virtual speed-dating. Meet random people that meet your "requirements" and get to know them. Upsell: Give out the app for free, but limit connection times and all connections are anonymous (but reporting is not). Paid app lets you maintain an address book and unrestricted connection times.

Alternatively, those with the "free" version of the app are branded as such (i.e., your connecting partner is told that you are a cheapskate), providing social pressure to show that you're willing to spend money to meet interesting people.

Policing the system is probably the hardest part - setting up the social conditions such that fraudulent claims are kept to a minimum (and require little to no input from the service owner) is a challenging task.

<comment><USER19> The anonymity feature (assuming you want to connect people together with FaceTime) will be difficult as your phone number is shared with the person you FaceTime call. I suppose it's possible that a proxy could be used, but I have yet to take a look at the protocol specs (if they're even available).

<comment><USER18> Yeah, having never used an iPhone 4 or FaceTime I was unsure of how it all worked. Given that it's going to be a standardized protocol, a FaceTime server would be necessary even if phone numbers weren't exposed, as you'd want to manage who can connect to who (and possibly for how long).

You could even monetize by interspersing ads into the video stream.

In fact that could be a better solution - that way you could avoid building an application and locking yourself to iPhone 4 users, opening your web service to other FaceTime clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It could have been a huge potential, but what the founder lacked IMHO was he did not heed the advice of experienced pundits who'd like to further develop this space.

<comment><USER21> The founder lacked _experience_. It was purely luck that brought this about. He has no clue what he's doing, or he would have already done something to make the site better. He's done virtually nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why hasn't anyone built a Chatroulette competitor yet? Every post about chatroulette on HN has at least a dozen plausible sounding suggestions for fixing chatroulette (and probably twice as many implausible ones). Why hasn't anyone implemented any of them?

<comment><USER23> I've seen a ton of them- one that comes to mind is Chatville (ChatVille.com, made by the Digsby team).

I think it's the same answer to the question, "Why hasn't anyone built a Craigslist competitor yet?" The answer is that they have. However, nobody cares.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. I can see why Craigslists competitors haven't caught on. The incentive for both buyers and sellers is to go to the site with the most users. But I wouldn't have thought the network effect would be nearly as strong for a ChatRoulette competitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't care if it's gone or not, but those Piano Improv videos were fucking money!

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think I saw any part that indicated some sort of death, death of a site usually being when nobody uses it anymore or the site shuts down.

If the excess of penis is its "death", then I'm pretty sure that isn't something recent.

</comment><comment><USER26> Dead so soon?

The article concurs quite well with my own attempt to use Chatroulette. Some of it was quite funny - people staring with bemused expressions - but at least half of it was porn, and it was the porn element which put me off.

However, like the Monty Python sketch this genre may not be dead yet. If they could separate out the porn into its own category, so that it's not appearing unexpectedly on screen, then this kind of random chat via webcam might actually be a fun experience. Social networking sites might want to consider including some similar component, as a way of making new friends.

</comment><comment><USER27> My feeling is that the increased prevalence of single-sign-on services like facebook connect, OpenID, google connect, etc. will help to mitigate baddies and pervs -- if you're putting your reputation on the line, anonymity is decreased. People will still make dummy accounts, but if single-sign-on is coupled with a karmic or whuffie type system it will be another tool to identify and discourage trolls.

Granted, we're a long ways away, but we're getting there.

</comment><comment><USER28> Tangentially related: Despite the 2009 season being a bit of a rough one (what with a new ball park and all), I don't know if calling the New York Yankees of any team in the game of baseball 'scrappy underdogs' is accurate. It's not at all the Yankees (or any sports team, for that matter) have started their season off uncharacteristically poor, and ended up winning it all.

End completely unrelated tangent relevant to only one sentence.

<comment><USER29> That particular comment was as tongue-in-cheek as the rest of the article - <USER2> don't think it was meant to be taken even slightly literally.

(edit) Sorry, that can't be right. Of course the Yankees did win the World Series, so that factual portion of it needs to be taken literally :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would AI algorithms to detect and flag a penis in an image be any easier or less error-prone than other similar image recognition problems?

<comment><USER31> I think there's sort of a sub-field within image recognition which just focuses on the techniques to automatically detect nudity.

Can you imagine having something on your resume like: "Awarded patent for the 1st algorithm to reliably detect penis."

<comment><USER32> Testdata: Lady Gaga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Relevant

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/13/chatroulette-enlists- shawn-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/13/chatroulette-enlists-shawn- fanning-in-the-fight-against-the-masturbators/)

</comment><comment><USER34> You know, there _is_ penis-detection technology.

</comment><comment><USER35> link bait!

<comment><AUTHOR> which, the original Headline, or me keeping the original headline?

<comment><USER36> Since you gave the link, I presume he meant the original was the bait.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can edit it if you have suggestions...

<comment><USER36> I personally don't have any. Imo, the article doesn't add very much to anything and its title is misleading. If I would suggest a change it would be not submitting in the first place. This is hardly an article that I would flag though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't like the Headline either, but I feel it is a good read and does overall make a good point (as the Comment activity indicates). Could have been said in one paragraph though

<comment><USER35> I meant the original article. Chatroulette hasn't been dead-pooled. The title was inaccurate and sensationalist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> video (flash-based) 4chan? It should be expected.</comment>


Android Development Purely in Vim Possible? - <AUTHOR> http://reversiblean-reversiblean.rhcloud.com/android-development-using-vim/

<comment><USER2> I love vim but why would anyone ever want to replace it as an IDE? Many advanced features (especially refactoring) are not available or require hours of fiddling around with plugins. I usually prefer the approach presented in the article (IDEs with vim plugins instead of having it the other way round)</comment>


Saga of fake female gamer and her encounter with misogynistic world of e-sports - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/opinion/sunday/overwatch-ellie-gaming-women.html <comment><USER2> misogyny is not limited to e-sports. its probably less than 20 feet away from you.</comment>


How to raise over $1million dollars in crowdfunding - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenordicweb.com/2014/03/11/how-to-raise-over-1million-in-crowdfunding/

<comment><USER2> I backed it!</comment>


A website to log you out of the mot popular websites - <AUTHOR> http://superlogout.com

<comment><USER2> I flagged this because clicking on the link appears to immediately log you out with no other confirmation.</comment>


The Insider's Guide to Python Interviewing - <AUTHOR> http://www.toptal.com/python

<comment><AUTHOR> Either I'm a really excellent Python dev or those aren't top 1% questions. Most were basic gotcha's. Any full-time Pythonista should know that stuff after 6mo/year of experience. Top 50%.

> Q: How can you swap the values of two variables with a single line of Python > code?

Is poor question for multiple assignment. Limited use, widely quoted on every "learn you python" list ever. Better would be "How to return multiple values?" "Diff between func(args) and func(*args)?" Also, candidate should express knowledge that "(a, b)" is same as "a, b" and that in most cases comma make the tuple. Parens are (mostly) for grouping/precedence.</comment>


Swapfiles by default in Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://blog.surgut.co.uk/2016/12/swapfiles-by-default-in-ubuntu.html <comment><USER2> Eh, I remember years ago on the LKML that Linus gave a few reason why you should run a swap file. Those were much older kernels then we are using now, so the question is, have the reasons changed for wanting swap in the first place.

First, swap wasn't about 'extra' memory in modern large memory devices, it was about being able to evict some pages from running memory that rarely need to get used, leaving more space for filesystem cache. Memory defragmentation was another reason why some swap should exist. OOM handling works differently on systems with and without swap.

Myself, depending on the amount of disk space I have, I tend to only give the system 1 to 2GB of swap space. This allows a temporary overcommit to occur in smaller programs without OOM killer. If a service trys to allocate many gigabytes of memory it gets killed without ruining system performance, and it probably should be killed anyway as something has gone terribly wrong at that point.</comment>


Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Some interesting stuff and stats in there. For example:

Now let's look at an e-book. Under the agreements with Apple, the publishers will set the consumer price and the retailer will act as an agent, earning a 30 percent commission on each sale. So on a $12.99 e-book, the publisher takes in $9.09. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about 50 cents to convert the text to a digital file, typeset it in digital form and copy-edit it. Marketing is about 78 cents.

The author's royalty — a subject of fierce debate between literary agents and publishing executives — is calculated among some of the large trade publishers as 25 percent of the gross revenue, while others are calculating it off the consumer price. So on a $12.99 e-book, the royalty could be anywhere from $2.27 to $3.25.

All that leaves the publisher with something ranging from $4.56 to $5.54, before paying overhead costs or writing off unearned advances.

At a glance, it appears the e-book is more profitable.

</comment><comment><USER2> Dear HN Readers, Do you think there is an opportunity for a new style of publishing house that focuses on just producing and marketing ebooks?</comment>


When to join a startup - <AUTHOR> http://tomblomfield.com/post/136759441870/when-to-join-a-startup <comment><USER2> I seem to learn the same lesson again and again from all the press about startups and my own experience (both as an employee in many and CEO/Founder in another). If you join the startup for the money (doesn't matter if you mean salary or equity), you're going to have a bad time. But if you expect to get experience, career and professional growth out of it, you can get pretty awesome results regardless of how successful startup turns out to be.

<comment><USER3> Reading Hacker News, I get the impression that tech startups are the only sector of our capitalist economy that has transcended the profit motive and is apparently serving a higher cause.

<comment><USER4> I love this, but at the same time I have to be wary.

I'm torn between thinking of Hacker News as benevolent or delusional and self- righteous.

I get the benevolent vibes when I see comments like golergka's. I get the delusional, self-righteous vibes when I see founders and VCs comparing themselves to JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller, saying "Hey! Look! I'm just as important as those guys!" "Silicon Valley is important!"

That said, Silicon Valley may very well be an important part of history. But the self-centeredness makes me wary.

<comment><USER5> I don't see golergka's comment as falling into some sort of SV "VC-istan" delusional thinking. Joining a small, expanding company _is_ an excellent way to build experience and career growth. It's just in SV we call those small businesses "startups" and accord them some sort of inherent moral superiority.

<comment><USER4> I said

>I get the benevolent vibes when I see comments like golergka's

I think his comment is benevolent, not delusional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first day (actual founder) or the day before the papers are for the A round are officially signed. These are the actual and only correct answers.

If you are the founder you get the best deal overall on expected value.

If your offer is generated before the A Round closes, you can negotiate equity at a pre-A-round valuation, but you are never exposed to any pre-A-round risk, and you can negotiate a post-A round salary that is contingent on the round closing.

<comment><USER7> What would you say is a good amount of equity for being an early engineer (effectively technical lead) at a seed-stage startup? I'm at my first and don't know if I'm being compensated fairly, though I do enjoy the work greatly.

<comment><USER8> Depending on your skill level relative to everybody else, probably 2-5% would be a good range, though it also would depend on what your salary is. Less than 2% and either you are being paid a lot or you aren't that important to the team (or you are important and are underpaid).

<comment><USER9> I think 1% to even 0.5% is pretty likely - at which price maybe you might have to accept something maybe 15-20% below market. I would love to see early developers at this stage get 2-5%, though I think that would be hard for some to push all the way through (past the CEO if applicable, board who has to sign off on the cap table and doesn't want the option pool to be too low too soon, etc).

But would it be fair if you are good and putting in that much work? Hell yes. But likely you're good, and hopefully the work/life balance isn't that lopsided either. Are you going to get it? Unlikely.

<comment><USER6> I joined Milo.com about a month after the A round was closed, everyone post-A was given between 0.1 and 0.3%. If you are joining early seed round, you would probably expect around 30k in salary and between 1% and 5%. The question is how much do they want you to join, and can you sell yourself a little bit. Find out what their pain points are that you think you can honestly attack on day #1 of joining, and make sure they know you intend to fix those problems ASAP. Then tell them what you think is fair, and let them agree to that (or don't join). As an engineer you shouldn't try to negotiate too much with a founder because: If they are bad at negotiating, the startup is going to fail, and if they are good at negotiating they are going to convince you to take a really bad deal (and you will be happy about it).

If you are an engineer that is good negotiating, you shouldn't be joining someone else's startup (you should be working on your startup, even if you are 15).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coding jobs have about a 2 year half-life. If they have enough funding to pay you for 2 years, regardless of whether or not they succeed, then it is as stable as any job, so just take the paycheck and do the work.

Any job that doesn't have 2 years of reasonable stability need to be evaluated by your passion for the project. Do you want to take on personal risk because you believe in the project? Are you willing to lose money over it? Are you willing to lose time over it, and be broke at the end? Does this project improve the world, and do you want the work to be done even if you do not personally gain from it? Positive answers to those questions may lead you to join up.

But if you join a startup because you hope to get rich from it, you are gambling. There is nothing wrong with that choice, but you should see it for what it is - gambling your time for a small chance at future money.

<comment><USER11> There are a ton of programming jobs that have a much longer lifetime. There's plenty of "lifers" in the business software or infrastructure software worlds for example.

<comment><USER10> Yes, there are, which is why i used the term "half-life".

But if you are the type to be a lifer at a job, you don't need advice on when to join a startup in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This should be titled 'When to join an externally funded startup'.

It's a whole different ballgame if you join one that's actually making a profit and doesn't need someone else's cash. Get in as early as you can, if you like the idea and can see it's got longevity.

<comment><USER13> I think you're referring to a business, not a startup. The definition of "startup" has been tranformed into basically "a business that is primarily based on a website or mobile app," which it is not.

Startups rely on fast growth. If you have a very narrow market or your end goal is $200k/yr in profit, you are by definition not a startup.

If you're actually a startup, you should not have any profit in the beginning. You should be pumping that money back into the company _and_ seeking external funding in order to pour gasoline on the fire.

There's nothing wrong with having a business instead of a startup (personally I prefer the bootstrapped business route) but to say that it's a startup is not accurate.

<comment><USER14> >The definition of "startup" has been tranformed into basically "a business that is primarily based on a website or mobile app," which it is not.

Only in the Hacker News / Silicon Valley echo chamber.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with "a new fast-growing company that primarily sells, or deals with, technology"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a really great article. I've been asked several times about the right moment to join a startup, but truth to be told, it really depends a lot on your expectations. Do you want to join a super early stage company and do whatever is needed or do you prefer to join a funded and work on a very specific role. Important questions here:

1\. What are your expectations? 2\. Are you a generalist or a specialist? 3\. Do you want to work in a small room with two or three guys with a pay check? 4\. Do you want to join a more established startup, but have less impact?

Make sure you understand the pros and cons of each option!

<comment><USER17> Here's another overlooked tidbit: There's a good chance your skill set that was so valued in a 3-person early-stage startup will be significantly diminished when it turns into a 10-person, funded machine. Generalists are awesome when you're scraping your way through experiments and the "do whatever you can think of to increase sales this week before our investor meeting next Thursday" type stages. But I've seen those generalists left out in the cold when it comes time to focus and scale.

<comment><USER18> _I 've seen those generalists left out in the cold when it comes time to focus and scale._

A particular subclass of this problem: the person who heads up your (pick a department randomly) Marketing from e.g. your seed round through your Series B is a) likely to be young and on-paper unprepared to run a Marketing department with 10 direct reports, b) likely to have a perceived lack of gravitas, c) likely to lack industry connections. Your VC fund and/or senior management may decide to bring in someone More Appropriate For The Role when you need a Director of Marketing.

This presents a dilemma: what happens to the person who built your entire marketing strategy when someone has just been brought in to own the entire marketing department going forward? Is new person going to report to them? No, that's an obvious non-starter. Are they going to report to new person? A surprising number of people would prefer to not have perceived issues with the existing team (most of whom were, after all, hired by the existing employee) deferring to that person rather than their new titular boss.

This is a time at which you either pray you are listed as a founder of the company or the founders are willing to go to the mattress for you, because otherwise the outcome is "Thanks for your service; best of luck in your next job."

<comment><USER19> This is one of the things I find so pernicious about startup options. One of the literal, best outcomes for all parties in that case (which I agree with you is surprisingly common) is for that young early career person to happily make room for the new regime, often by leaving to work at another startup or something new.

But the way options work they are incentivized to stick around when it doesn't make sense and penalized if they do want to move on. That same early person probably does not have the capital to exercise their options when they leave.

<comment><USER18> Yep. Not representative of an individual who might have motivated my comment, but:

Seed round: "Marketing Bob, you'll be employee #2. 1% -- 4 year vesting, 1 year cliff. You'll do everything from writing blog posts to attending conferences to talking to every single customer."

B round (2.5 years later): "Marketing Bob! Great news: we're now worth a billion dollars! That owes an incredible amount to your heroic efforts! You have excellent ability to become a co-founder at your next gig! Which starts whenever you want it to! We strongly recommend you start planning for it right now, and we'll even clear your calendar for the next two weeks to allow you to devote all of your efforts to planning! We hope you are socially aware enough to understand what we are saying here!"

Marketing Bob may well be CEO Bob at his next gig, but he'll be entering it being a) fired and b) having had ~$3.75 million stolen from him. (One would hope that the co-founders would go to the mattress with their VCs when the VCs say "Come on, vesting, we all know how it works. _Of course_ the employee stock pool gets the 37.5 basis points back. That's like twenty engineers -- we need every point now!")

<comment><USER20> This was a good example for finance noobs like myself -- what does the last sentence mean, though?

<comment><USER21> 37.5 basis points is 0.375%, the percent of his stock that had not yet vested and this is returned to the stock option pool to be given out to future hires

<comment><USER22> Bob has 1%, so it's 37.5% of his stock that is not vested after 2.5 years. (0.375% of the company's stock)

It's 25%/year with 4 year vesting (so 25 + 12.5 for the 1.5 years left)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york Great article. Best time to join: either as a founder, or post the Oracle acquisition!

If you're going to take a risk, may as well maximise the risk/reward and be (co) founder. In the mean time enjoy a well-paying job you enjoy in a space that you'd like to disrupt; learn on the job, build your network, then leave to found the startup that will disrupt your previous employer...

</comment><comment><USER9> Generally, fairly accurate.

One word of warning - It would be nice if most startups became happy "CEO-on- Forbes" unicorns at round C, but not all do. I've seen a startup take a handfull of millions into Round F.

Which is of course, rather much the flunk round. And a lot of very health companies continuing to raise many small series rounds.

I think most people know this - but don't equate funding stage _or_ amount of money raised with startup success. A better gauge would be paying customers and while you can't often get a feel for burn rate, find out as much as you can.

All being said, I've had some good educational times on slowly sinking ships too.

Sometimes the product is a little bit ahead of it's time.

</comment><comment><USER23> > one two-hundredth, or 0.005% of the company

I'll take the former, please.

<comment><USER24> full quote: "one two-hundredth of a percent", which is indeed 0.005%.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was an early typo - fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes, I'm missing the point (and I did enjoy the post!) but this: _After 5 years, the company has raised £100m at a £1bn valuation._

Has any recent British tech company/startup ever had such a raise? (Boo.com did but that was 99.)

<comment><USER26> Anaplan just reached $1bn

<comment><USER27> Not a UK company, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > part of me imagines a group of MBAs sitting around watching Justin > Timberlake play Sean Parker, thinking that actually a billion dollars would > be pretty cool.

My experience is that MBAs looking for money go into corporate roles, not startups. Around me it have been the more idealistic ones that join or start a startup, and for very different reasons than getting rich. e.g. feeling that they can be more valuable here than in corporate, wanting to create something new, etc. (all the normal reasons for start-ups, MBAs are no different)

disclaimer: I have an MBA, and I did apply to Mondo (did not work out, but no hard feelings), and I usually don't daydream about making a billion dollars

</comment><comment><USER29> This is more like "what it's like to join a startup at various stages". Perhaps the implicit lesson is to match what you're looking for to different stages?

In any case, this is changing all the time. The seed-stage startup in 2016 might be three or four people from all over the world, working over Slack.

</comment><comment><USER30> I joined as second employee after angel funding (seed stage) and a few months before the first VC funding and got about 0.5% equity. After a series C this went down to less than 0.3%... I didn't know anything about stock options before joining, don't you think I should have negotiated for more? This article says I should have got about 3% when I joined

</comment><comment><USER31> Great read, I especially liked the mum references.

</comment><comment><USER32> The decision of joining a startup should not be money return. It is a gamble. You use your stable salaries in return of dream and success. Pursue a dream is always expensive but when you get old, you will have a story to tell.

</comment><comment><USER33> Could it be more precise!? :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Join if they give you what you want. Same as with every company...

Want to work from home? Ask them. Most normal/bigger corps won't let you do this. A Startup probably will.

It's also good if you like green field projects, haha.

</comment><comment><USER35> These are great definitions of the stages of a "startup" but I'm missing the point here?

Also, at some point, does a startup not become a company?

<comment><USER12> A startup is always a company, but not really a 'business' until it's making a profit.

<comment><USER36> >A startup is always a company, but not really a 'business' until it's making a profit.

So is a newly-opened mom & pop grocery store, then, I guess. But that kind of business isn't likely to generate blog write-ups.

<comment><USER37> PG describes a startup as a company 'designed to grow quickly.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Spot on our trajectory for the last two years</comment>


How Yahoo derailed Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/06/15/how-yahoo-derailed-tumblr/ <comment><USER2> I personally don't think Yahoo did anything much to Tumblr. Before the acquisition, Tumblr as running out of money and needed to either raise more, or get acquired. They hadn't generated much revenue or profit before that.

Tumblr's failure to generate revenue was its own. And the only person responsible for its flailing product and declining growth is its CEO David Karp, who has been leading since the beginning.</comment>


Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Unveils Giant Plane for Private Space Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/13915-paul-allen-giant-plane-stratolaunch-systems-private-space.html

<comment><USER2> Launching at a higher altitude allows the rocket engines to be optimized for low atmospheric pressure increasing their efficiency. In addition, the trajectory can be turned to a more horizontal angle earlier without having to fight drag too much.

Another benefit of air launch is the ability to launch at a location and time of one's choosing. This is useful to avoid weather, avoid flying over land when launching in certain directions, and not having to share a range with other launchers.

<comment><USER2> A negative is that it is a lot harder to check-out the vehicle when it is attached to an airplane than when it is on the ground. Also, on the ground the successful start-up of all the engines can be verified before the vehicle is released. If one engine fails to start, the rest can be shutdown with the vehicle still intact on the ground. But, when an air-launching, there is no going back once the vehicle is dropped.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you can start the engines before dropping? If only a second or so before? Or is the force that instantaneous, that strong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish we invested more into space exploration. Like, serious resources from every country in the world. To think that we squabble over silly things on this planet every day when there's a whole universe of stuff we can't even comprehend out there. Things always seem so trivial when you imagine the bigger picture, yet we worry about them anyway and I don't know why.

There's a saying that struck a note with me... "We've been born too late to explore the earth, but too early to explore the universe".

</comment><comment><USER5> The companies involved are like a supergroup of cutting edge aerospace. Scaled and SpaceX collaborating!

It's a nice concept, and it obviously works on a smaller scale for the pegasus guys as well as Virgin Galactic (although they're not putting anything into orbit). Hopefully this is successful!

</comment><comment><USER6> Space bums... littering used fuel cans everywhere ("any orbit, any time"). How sustainable is it to keep leaving half of every vehicle somewhere on the way to your destination?

UPDATE: At first I was bemused that this was my reaction to their concept video. But then I realized that all the other concepts we have seen like SpaceX and Bezo's project actually don't litter. Isn't that correct? Other modern commercial space programs build for returning the entire vehicle home for reuse?

<comment><USER7> Not exactly what you're looking for, but the Space Shuttle didn't leave any debris in orbit. The external tank was the only part that got dumped in the ocean, and it would shatter on impact because it's just a thin shell of aluminum. Solid boosters were much more robust, so they were salvaged and reused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A 385 feet wingspan! amazing. It's about time someone beat the Spruce Goose.

<comment><USER9> The Spruce Goose was my first thought when I saw this (and not in a good way.) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suck at physics and the article is light on details. Help me out.

What is the gain here? You're still launching a rocket, but now at 30000m/9000ft? A rocket that is supposed to be similar to what exists today?

I mean - smart people have this idea, so the benefit must be huge. Can someone explain in slow speech (How'd you explain the novelty of this to your kid) the incentive to me?

<comment><USER11> I'll dupe the comment I wrote on another thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3349294> ) on this topic....

I hadn't realized that there already is an air-launch-to-orbit system called "Pegasus" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)> ).

It comments that air launches reduce the costs to orbit not (as ColinWright rightly points out) through energy savings but because it 1) doesn't have as many weather-related launch delays, 2) it can insert into almost arbitrary orbits, 3) there's no need for a blast-proof pad and related ground equipment, 4) launches over an ocean save on insurance costs, and reduce collateral damage should an explosion occur, and 5) the higher altitude means the first stage engine bell doesn't need to optimized for higher pressures, and the lack of high cross-winds means there's no need for gimbals; lighter fins suffice.

On the other hand, it also says that Pegasus is "one of the most expensive "launch-to-orbit" vehicles" (I assume per-kilogram to orbit), but that the flexibility in choosing the orbit makes up for it for small payloads which otherwise must piggyback.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention that this dramatically reduces MaxQ (the maximum dynamic pressure on the airframe), which reduces design constraints on the spacecraft/upper stages of the rocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought Burt Rutan was working with Virgin Galactic on their venture.

<comment><USER14> He is/was. However, Paul Allen was a partner when Rutan was going after (and won) the X-prize. So really, they're just getting back together to work on something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder why the fuselages are only joined by the wing and not at the tail? Won't that subject the wing boxes to a lot of twisting stress?

<comment><USER9> If it's a fly-by wire system, you may be able to avoid twisting stress by varying the angles of the elevators on each tail so that you add force to oppose that twist. Also, I don't think it's expected to undertake any really drastic maneuvers. You'd fly it in decent weather on a relatively short ascent, and use a very gently take-off and landing profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So ... what's the re-entry plan? Splash down? Call a Russian taxi?

<comment><USER17> Assuming that this ends up using a variant of the SpaceX dragon capsule the re-entry plan would be a powered descent onto a targeted landing site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could someone help me understand the space thing? Specifically the phenomenon of rich engineers and businessmen like Allen, Carmack, Branson, Bezos, Shuttleworth, etc spending huge amounts of money on space-travel-related projects.

I, like many nerds, grew up with a powerful fascination with space, cosmology, and the myriad science fiction novels based around the various problems and possibilities of space travel. I understand the allure. I am also a capitalist, and therefore don't begrudge these guys the opportunity to do with their money as they see fit.

What I _don't_ get is why we never hear of wealthy engineers spending their money on technology projects that would have a much much larger benefit to humanity, and arguably cooler than spaceflight. Things like nanotech, robotics, and hell, even cold fusion come to mind.

Why space?

<comment><USER19> Could someone help me understand the Atlantic Ocean thing? Specifically the phenomenon of rich royalty and businessmen like Columbus, Queen Isabella, etc spending huge amounts of money on ocean-travel-related projects.

I, like many nerds, grew up with a powerful fascination with oceans, foreign lands, and the myriad mythology stories based around the various problems and possibilities of ocean travel. I understand the allure. I am also a capitalist, and therefore don't begrudge these guys the opportunity to do with their money as they see fit.

What I don't get is why we never hear of wealthy royalty spending their money on technology projects that would have a much much larger benefit to humanity, and arguably cooler than ocean travel. Things like medicine, farming, and hell, even waterwheel-powered machinery come to mind.

Why cross the Atlantic?

<comment> T-hawk Profit was the motive for funding Columbus to cross the Atlantic, by finding a faster or easier trading route to the Oriental sources of spices and silk. Profit was still the motive for later explorers of the Americas, in mining or stealing Aztec gold and silver, then tobacco and cotton and sugar plantations.

It's unclear yet where feasible profit opportunities exist for development in space. (Also, we can _see_ space with telescopes, there isn't a Pacific Ocean on the other side of space that we have to send someone to discover.) If you want to see some real space industry, hope that somebody discovers a gold asteroid.

Finally, remember that from Columbus to Jamestown elapsed over a hundred years. Less than half of that timespan has yet elapsed since Yuri Gagarin. These things take time.

<comment><USER20> >> If you want to see some real space industry, hope that somebody discovers a gold asteroid.

They already have [1]. And a platinum asteroid. And a palladium asteroid. And an Iron, Nickel, whatever-mineral-you-want asteroid.

"At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals."

"A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore, or two to three times the annual production for 2004."

Supposedly the asteroid '433 Eros' contains more gold than has ever been mined from the Earth in the history of mankind (I can't find a source for this apart from an earlier HN comment though, the paper I found on it was behind a paywall).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unix Client-Server Program Interface (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://cr.yp.to/proto/ucspi.txt <comment><USER2> _CSPI applications don 't even have to be recompiled as the Internet upgrades from IPv4 to IPv6._

This being from '96, it's downright sad that two decades on we don't have IPv6 rolled out.

<comment><USER3> djb agrees: [http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html](http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's a Debian package for an implementation of the "tcpclient" program: `apt-get install ucspi-tcp-ipv6`. You can also find TLS-enabled versions of the client here: [https://github.com/SuperScript/ucspi- ssl](https://github.com/SuperScript/ucspi-ssl) (see the links).</comment>


Dear Al-Jazeera: thank you for doing the right thing - <AUTHOR> https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-jazeera-all-good.html <comment><USER2> This seems way more embarrassing to storytelling.io. The only take aways I have are how easy it is to switch to a free, open source alternative, and how loudly and publicly storytelling will complain about you. They should have handled this matter in private instead of blogging about it.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. They handled it like they took joy in catching someone out publicly, and really tried to rub their nose in it.

The end result is, I now know there is an open source alternative, and if the need were to arise would use it.

<comment><USER4> This felt like a completely pyrrhic victory. Not only did they expose how unnecessary their own product was, but they exposed how unprofessional of a shop they were by leveling accusations over Twitter [0].

I'll take scrollytelling at their word that they were doing this to take a stand for software copyright. Sure, I can respect that. But if you're fighting for a world where SaaS/PaaS developers are properly paid and valued, the most convincing victories are when developers (particularly ones that depend on open-source) and such platforms attract loyal, deep-pocketed clients who show everyone else that such a business can be viable.

This isn't like the case when The Oatmeal burned the HuffPo [1] for hotlinking. The Oatmeal presumably doesn't survive by syndicating to places like Huffpo. But clients who are somewhat unskilled at web production/hosting are the sole source of potential customers for ScrollyTelling, and ScrollyTelling demonstrated that it would rather burn them than mediate technical fuckups.

[0] [https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971459263459328](https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971459263459328)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist- the...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist-the-oatmeal- trolls-huffpo-over-images-published-sans-permission)

edit: fixed typo in Oatmeal/Huffpo

<comment><USER5> > ScrollyTelling demonstrated that it would rather burn them than mediate > technical fuckups.

From what I understand, they tried contacting them directly, but were given lots of promised callbacks / actions that never materialized. Is your opinion that the "professional" way to handle that just to ignore it and move on?

<comment><USER4> I asked them on Twitter what the timeline was for the DMCA and they never replied. Their original post is vague on the timeline of when they attempted friendly contact and to whom:

[https://twitter.com/dancow/status/777702314475819009](https://twitter.com/dancow/status/777702314475819009)

The earliest public Tweet I see about the issue is this, on Aug. 28, just a few weeks ago:

[https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971299317911552](https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971299317911552)

So it looks like they've been emailing them at least before Aug. 28. But I disagree with the idea that there's nothing in between polite private emailing and then hostile subtweeting. Did Scrollytelling try the kind of gentle public shaming where they direct mention a few AJ editors about the matter? I don't see it.

Don't get me wrong, no matter what their intentions, AJ was in the wrong to host copyrighted frontend code, and in an ideal world, the wronged party shouldn't have to Google for Twitter contacts to get them to comply. But we don't live in an ideal world of instant feedback and retribution. Scrollytelling has the right, of course, to blow it up as they did. I'm just pointing out that it was not just limited to surrender vs. going nuclear on the blogosphere. And in the media world, media people are very quick to act on Twitter, even when they don't respond to emails. I once complained on Twitter about WSJ's paywall and immediately got a response from the executive editor of the WSJ. It ended up with him blocking me for probably being snarky, but the point is that media people up the chain can be reachable without Herculean effort.

And if you are a company whose customer base is completely reliant on media clients, it seems prudent to go for the constructive public outreach way rather than jumping right into "FUCK YOU PAY ME" discourse, especially when it seems that incompetence and not malice is the cause.

<comment><USER6> This is a good summary. Their market is not very big and they really need to face what the market realities are, however unfair they may be. Which means acting in a constructive way. Snark is very much the last thing that comes to mind when I see "professionalism".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With all the kerfuffle, I would not have imagined it would be so easy to replace.

So, after poking around, it looks like pageflow is the actual creators of this stuff, and scrollytelling, has built a business around supporting it and hosting it?

While concurrently, it appears pageflow can also be paid to support and host their own product?

Weirdly, pageflow appears cheaper too!

Am I missing something? Would this be equivalent of someone opening up a competitor to wordpress.com, powered by wordpress?

<comment><USER8> There was quite a common scam a while ago about selling open office.

It actually was completely legal because they were (in the fine print) selling support - the software was free, of course.

A lot of bigger companies sell support for OSS products they don't build. This can be legitimate. It just depends on how forthright you are with who built what.

<comment><USER9> You sound like selling an open source software someone else made is inappropriate. Apparently nothing is wrong with that as long as the license is applied.

<comment><USER10> It is inappropriate to imply that the value you provide is both development and support, when you only provide support.

Especially in a consumer context, where support is usually a small fraction of the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They downplay it, but this situation was exactly what I said it was the other day: AJ syndicated a piece from another outlet with whom they had an agreement, and they understandably thought that the layout was part of the deal.

Ultimately, it sounds like someone screwed up and used a tool they shouldn't have to build the layout. (That tool being Scrollytelling.)

The lesson here, apparently, is that if you're syndicating content, open- source tools are best.

<comment><USER12> Yeah this outcome should ensure that no outlet will publish with the proprietary platform again, and that there are controls in place to ensure that it is not available for that to happen.

The "guilty" party in this scenario also seems to be EJC for not properly licensing the original content.

Edit: It also seem very reasonable to think that AJ thought scrollytelling was simply a host of the opensource resource, and removed all links backs except the CDN file that was obfuscated.

<comment><USER12> After looking at scrollytelling.io, I am now even more confused about their claim. Their pricing model is based on hosting, with bandwidth and upload limits. Along side that monthly hosting service they offer a one off service for "in-house production" of a story. So. Their model is to collect the production fee for a one off or let the user "produce" the story and profit from the volume savings on hosting.

I can not determine how in either model having the story that has already been paid for hosted remotely would be not a good thing, unless there is a license were somehow scrollytelling retains the ownership of the product they were paid to produce.

I am not sure why they would want to bare the cost of an AJ level distributed, if they are a hosting company. But, if they are a content creation firm maybe they are not actually creating content for the purchaser, but allowing the purchaser to use scrollytelling content, which the purchaser already owned?

Edit: In short I don't understand why the purchaser would not be able to redistribute.

Anyways, I have no idea how the model works inside its industry context, and if I am confused even with the current context provided by the OP, I can not imagine that a journalist would not be.

<comment><USER4> As far as I can see, ScrollyTelling offers as a base service, an editor for creating content and hosting of said content. This template and editor allows a non-web-dev to create scrolly-format multimedia stories fairly easily with the additional convenience of online hosting.

The journalist has to come up with the content and multimedia assets themselves, unless they hire ScrollyTelling to do it. I'm assuming that's not the case here as most independent journalists who cover these kind of stories are capable of collecting video/photos and writing text themselves (I mean, that's the whole damn appeal of being such a journalist).

So this journalist "sold" the story to one outlet who already had a hosting deal with scrollytelling. Then the journalist sent the story over to Al- Jazeera -- I'm not sure if anything was really "sold", per se, as Al-Jazeera has a syndication relationship with the original outlet. Either way, someone at AJ thought this meant that the assets that the original newspaper paid for was fair game, and then apparently decided to copy some and hotlink other assets from the newspaper's site.

Neither the newspaper nor the journalist nor Al-Jazeera realized that the CSS design (like the little dots used to navigate) and cloud storage was meant to be redistributed. Sure, that's on them, and AJ and the other parties are definitely at fault for not acting sooner. But I could easily see this as being a case of each stakeholder thinking that it's the other parties' job to deal with what seems like a confusing technicality. And this is a case where the stakeholders are a freelancer, a Dutch newspaper, and a global news network, three entities that normally have communication problems.

<comment><USER12> I agree that ignorance of scrollytelling existence was the most likely cause for the situation.

If you put the CDN bandwidth tester file aside.

Wouldn't a paying client of scrollytelling be able to distribute that product (CSS included) if they wanted to? If their platform is a content creator/editor then the purchaser should be able to redistribute, and if they are a production shop then the same would be true. If not wouldn't it be similar to photoshop or sublime claiming copyright on something created with those tools, and if they are a production shop something similar to a commercial studio claiming copyright to something they produced and then sold to someone after they resold it.

I understand they are providing a service and a value add, but wouldn't the output belong to the purchaser? I assume scrollytelling could have a very onerous license that prohibits this, but it seems if their customers knew those limitation they would probably be hesitant to purchase.

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming that scrollytelling has this as part of their terms. I mean, that's the only way to get customers to pay the €399/month subscription fee [0], which seems to be the minimum offering, i.e. there's no plan for just using the editor and then exporting it as flat files that can be uploaded to any file server.

[0] [https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing](https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't really understand the negativity towards scrolytelling in other comments here.

They are providing a hosting service and product, based on Pageflow. Which is mentioned right on it's homepage!

They contacted Al Jazeera directly and were brushed off (can easily happen in a large company, doesn't imply malice).

The page would probably never have been taken down without the media coverage. And said coverage might have informed some devs about Pageflow, but it's also good publicity.

People often forget that one actually has to make money too. If you do that based on an open source product without violating any licenses, and even contribute back, why not?

They have every right to shame companies using their product without paying for it.

<comment><USER14> When I read their original story about AJ stealing their code, I thought they basically custom built the entire thing.

Now I learned it was actually open source, and in my head I'm like .. lol that must be embarrassing!

<comment><USER15> We're not embarrassed, and the_duke's comment is spot on. It's not a secret we're built on Pageflow and I am the #5 overall contributor to it. We exist thanks to Pageflow and will do everything to promote it. We've referred many leads to pageflow.io. There's plenty of room for both models to happily exist!

<comment><USER16> For anyone else that doesn't know what it means to come in fifth place: 786 commits by the lead developer, then 58, 46, 34, and finally 24 by yours truly.

[https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/graphs/contributors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > We did notice you took some creative license and manually removed our > copyright notices and replaced them with your own

looking at the story that was copied[1] I don't see a copyright notice anywhere. What gives?

[1] [https://verhalen.volkskrant.nl/anti-armoe- aubergine#2220](https://verhalen.volkskrant.nl/anti-armoe-aubergine#2220)

</comment><comment><USER18> Open Source Version referenced by AJ: [https://github.com/codevise/pageflow](https://github.com/codevise/pageflow)

Given this is in fact the source code that the developer in question has admitted was the basis for their code, it would be interesting to know if they were correctly using the MIT License here: [https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/blob/master/MIT- LICENSE](https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/blob/master/MIT-LICENSE)

</comment><comment><USER19> i dont think its fair to accuse and scold scrollytelling. On their homepage they have a tech section where they state: "Our software is built on top of the Open Source version of Pageflow. We are committed to giving back to the community, which is why we are active contributors, and have open sourced our software too." and they have put a lot of their software up on github.

Yes, this is very similar to Wordpress companies. However it is still their source code, and scrollytelling's webpages are better... dare i say.

<comment><USER15> Thank you! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> oh well thanks for telling me about pageflow

</comment><comment><USER21> I would _never_ use this company's services after this.

</comment><comment><USER22> They even took the motto.

Pageflow - Interactive Storytelling

</comment><comment><USER23> > rewrote the publication in record time using the regular open source > Pageflow (on which Scrollytelling is built).

I'm lost. Why wouldn't they then take this chance to tell me why I should pay for them if I was in the market for heavy, non-free javascript?

</comment><comment><USER24> Al-Jazeera along with the Guardian are the most honest mainstream news outlets on the planet. Put American journalism to shame.

</comment><comment><USER25> Was this a marketing win? Scroll telling got their name out there, but al Jazeera response was that they apologized and switched over to the free/open source equivalent to their product.

<comment><USER26> "Al Jazeera used our code without permission, so we made them switch over to a competitor, showing everyone how trivially interchangeable we are, and we're telling you about it!"

<comment><USER27> It's marketing pushed so far it becomes its own opposite. Bizarro Marketing. Anti-marketing.

<comment><USER28> Streisand Marketing (TM).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> maybe all of this was planned in advance ...maybe just a big PR stunt that worked brilliantly. I hope the NYT steals the code from my website. I could use the pR

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe next time just email them before issuing a DMCA request, and assume charitable behaviour before evidence dictates otherwise? _edit_ I was wrong, see below.

<comment><USER31> Per the previous article linked at the top, they tried that: [https://www.scrollytelling.io/al- jazeera.html](https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-jazeera.html)

"In addition we contacted you directly too. After waiting patiently we received no response. After many tries through your editorial office we got hold of an editor who promised to return our call. This never happened either. As a final measure we sent you a DMCA takedown request and waited patiently. No response."

<comment><USER32> The original version of the article said

"Initially we were taken aback and confused. We knew there must be some mistake, so we quickly sent you a DMCA takedown requests and waited patiently."

They "clarified" it after a while, but if someone read the original version of the article and did not see the update, it could be easy to miss.

<comment><USER33> > [W]e quickly sent you a DMCA takedown requests and waited patiently

That makes it sound like the DMCA takedown was the first response -- I'm surprised that a gently worded e-mail wasn't tried first. "Hey guys, it looks like you are using this ... I'm sure it was unintentional, but .... "

<comment><USER32> The updated version does claim that they reached out before DMCA, but something still feels wrong... That is why I put quotes on "clarified" \-- I don't think it really qualifies as clarification. I'm more of the belief that one of the two versions is factually wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Speak Startup - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/15/how-to-speak-startup/ <comment><USER2> Another meaningless and overused adjective that could be added to this list is "curated".

Curated means that the company chose to sell certain things, and not sell other things. How novel. Walmart curates its product offerings.

There are some days where every third listing on ProductHunt is "A curated collection of ______".

<comment><USER3> To me I read "curated" as "picked by a human, not an algorithm". I guess it could also be "picked by a sufficiently advanced algorithm that is as good as a human".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope tech crunch did this purely tongue in cheek, if it weren't for the likes of them, the terms they are fileting are the argot they and their industry, tech 'journalism,' pick up, amplify, popularize and abuse wouldn't become ubiquitous. Then they have the audacity to ridicule the industry.

<comment><USER5> As one of the co-authors of the piece, I just want you to know that it was done 98% tongue-in-cheek and maybe 2% self-loathing. It wasn't meant to be a serious at all, despite the fact that some "definitions" are more biting than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably the best article I've read on TechCrunch for a while. Even if they missed 'disrupt' because TechCrunch wouldn't make fun of themselves.

<comment><USER7> So is a startup company that hasn't disrupted yet said be be "preruptive"?

<comment><USER6> Yes and postruptive for when the company runs out of ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Disrupt" is suspiciously absent from this list.

<comment><USER9> I have been looking for a chance to use this assertion for a while, so thank you: Disrupt is broken

<comment><USER10> We need to disrupt "disrupt".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That was a lot funnier and more accurate than I would've expected from Techcrunch.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anybody care to reverse engineer the meaning of "Serial Hackerpreneur"?

[https://angel.co/jawad-ansari](https://angel.co/jawad-ansari)

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, I clicked on a techcrunch dot com link, so I guess I got what I asked for.

</comment><comment><USER12> I always use the Startup Guys as a reference this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4)

<comment><USER13> LOL, brogrammers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here we go again [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak)

</comment><comment><USER15> _" Cashflow Positive – Someone gave us a dollar."_

Funny -- even more funny when you consider that many startups never make it that far!

</comment><comment><USER16> last time my boss asked me how was my side project for the team going (I am from enterprise world), i replied i haven't reached MVP yet. he paused a while and puzzled saying I will buy you a ring then

</comment><comment><USER17> :) this was pretty hilarious

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm actually fairly disappointed since I was hoping this would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER19> TechCrunch doesn't even make money and what they produce is shoddy journalism at best. How are they going to go around criticizing others who try to do something?

Douchebag journalists are WAY worse because they believe the bullshit they spew. At least startup douchebags get a whiff of their own shit.

<comment><USER20> ^ A classic example of ad hominem.</comment></comment>


@lmklater - Easy Scheduled Reminders with Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://ryanfunduk.com/lmklater

<comment><USER2> I think the utility here is severely limited by it's being public.

Wouldn't DM work just as simply? Granted you'd have to follow every single signup but that can be automated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea that was a concern and a choice we made. It would indeed be completely trivial to follow people who tweet at the bot.

In the end there were a couple primary reasons I think we decided not to do that.

First: Nobody really uses direct messages. I don't think I've ever received or sent even one.

Second: The idea is for it to be trivial, little things. Things that would be meaningless if seen by someone else. Eg, not "colonoscopy ; tomorrow 3pm", but more mundane stuff like you know you're going shopping tomorrow so you ask it "don't forget to buy milk ; tomorrow at noon". I check twitter randomly throughout the day, so these sorts of jog-my-memory things are useful.

Lastly: We thought that perhaps if it gains any traction a direct message option could be something available to premium account holders, or something :)

Definitely don't think of it as a replacement for an alarm on your phone or something, it's about casual stuff.

"@lmklater check on lmklater post on hn ; in 3 days" :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the service: <http://lmklater.com></comment>


How to Convert a Digital Watch to a Negative Display - <AUTHOR> http://forums.watchuseek.com/f43/how-convert-plain-dw-5600-negative-display-129102.html <comment><USER2> Nice. I remember doing this to my scientific calculator at school.

Modern colour LCDs are still polarised, so I can only view my phone and tablet in one orientation when wearing my polarised sunglasses. On the plus side, they make for an excellent real life ad-block to those annoying video billboards (which are just portrait LCD TVs).

I wonder how practical it would be to make a private display by removing the polarising film from it and then viewing with polarised glasses.

<comment><USER3> > I wonder how practical it would be to make a private display by removing the > polarising film from it and then viewing with polarised glasses.

It's been done, pretty much how you'd expect:

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Privacy-monitor-made-from- an...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Privacy-monitor-made-from-an-old-LCD- Monitor/)

<comment><USER2> There are quite a few hacks around but I wondered if there was some reason these aren't more widespread or commercially available. Business idea?

You could also make something that filters all light but near infra-red so it could be seen by CCDs (on cameras or phones) but not with the human eye. Or do the reverse and flood the picture with near infra-red to prevent it being photographed.

<comment><USER4> I think you can buy this kind of thing, I've seen them in use in some offices where sensitive information is being viewed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is funny and strangely comforting that despite such a wide variety of topics, forum culture is still the same. There is always a large segment of the forum population that derive some level of pride in listing their collection of _X_ in their signature. Here we see posters list their "casios in rotation," on the spyderco it is lists of knives and ubuntu forums it is "rig specs" and version names. The puzzling thing is that--thankfully--this does not seem to happen on mailing lists.

<comment><USER6> This is can actually be quite useful on "help me!"-style forums, like car forums. People often forget to give enough info about eg. their car year model, for others to help specifically. But if this info is in your sig, it's hard to forget (but also you forget to update it when it changes)

> The puzzling thing

I'd guess that this is because forums have forum-specific profiles, whereas mailing list are replied to from the one inbox.

Also, people can probably manage to find the signature section of a forum profile, but not their (web)mail client!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Inkjet transparency sheets like you'd find at your local office supply store [0] are polarized; you may not have to order polarizing film.

I used to own a car that had an LCD display where the orientation of the polarization was perfectly set so if I was wearing my polarized sunglasses, the screen was blank. I cut out a little overlay made out of an overhead transparency and fixed the problem.

0: [http://www.officemax.com/office-supplies/presentation- equipm...](http://www.officemax.com/office-supplies/presentation-equipment- supplies/transparency-film)

<comment><USER8> An overlay of other polarizing material won't change the polarization unless your transparencies are somehow quarter wave plates? ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarizer#Circular_pol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarizer#Circular_polarizers))

<comment><USER9> If you have two perpendicular polarizers, no light will pass through both. But, if you insert a polarizer at a 45 degree angle to both of them inbetween, some light will pass through. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER10> You are exactly right.

<comment><USER11> This is why I trawl the comment section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember doing that to my calculator when I was a teenager. Thought my unique calculator was badass then, hehe.

<comment><USER13> Back then I hadn't access to the internet(1997-8?) and I was trying to figure out how this LCD screen thingy was working by dissecting the parts of my Casio clock and I found out about this "miracle" glass that looks just as normal one but inverts the screen colors(=b&w) when put in different position. I have to say, it made me a badass :)

Now-days kids could just look it up in minutes an move on. I am not sure if this is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know if the "cmoy" behind the howto mentioned in the OP is the same guy (Chu Moy) that designed the CMoy headphone amplifier circuit?

</comment><comment><USER15> Related to the Polarization subject, when you are shopping for Polarized sunglasses, then take two copies of the sunglasses and placed them so that you are looking through both lenses, but one in 90 degree and notice if it turns opaque-black.

Many times in the past when I was looking for some cheap polarized sunglasses, I found that some were actually falsely labeled.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was going to do it to my Casio GLX5600 but I realized it would reverse the moon phases :(

<comment><USER16> Cut a separate piece out and flip it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> According to the time difference in the before an after shots, it looks like this takes ~4 hours to do?

<comment><USER18> According to the post itself, 3 of those 4 hours were spent removing the glass and then replacing it after realising it never needed to be removed in the first place. If you skip that step it's probably a lot faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've owned a Casio G-Shock that was negative by default (G-5600KG) and I found that the viewing angle on a negative display was much more narrow than on a positive. Most of the reviews on Amazon state the same. Anyone have an explanation for this?

</comment><comment><USER20> In a similar vein with a TFT screen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUw3u9lh9rQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUw3u9lh9rQ)

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow! I remember doing this to my and my friends' 4-function calculators in 5th grade! This was actually how I learned how LCDs worked.

You can also remove the reflective sticker on the back of the black and white LCD, to make it transparent where it was previously reflective. That's how I made my calculator work with our classroom's overhead projector. (and some really interesting pranks)

<comment><USER22> That's a pretty neat hack. Reminds me of a DIY projector where an LCD screen was stripped down and placed on top of an overhead sheet projector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Phosphor makes watches with E-Ink displays, so you can toggle between white- on-black and black-on-white. I've been happy with mine, which I've had for a couple years now:

[http://www.phosphorwatches.com/E-Ink-Digital-Hour-Clock- Watc...](http://www.phosphorwatches.com/E-Ink-Digital-Hour-Clock-Watch- Stainless-Steel-p/705105652801.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> I did this to my JVC car radio. It made it so much easier to read in the sunlight.

<comment><USER25> I did this to my calculator, possibly a CASIO one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I did this a lot to LCD gaming handhelds back in the early 90s. Also using two polarising sheets to understand polarisation. Was very interesting, a pity nowadays taking apart stuff is not so easy.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm wearing a Newton Digital which is already negative in the default state, and it seems possible to convert it to a regular positive display. Wouldn't look as cool though.

</comment><comment><USER28> I remember discovering polarization and how LCDs worked in grade school when my calculator came apart and I accidentally flipped the polarizing film around.

</comment><comment><USER29> I remember changing a digital clock to anticlockwise.

BTW good work.

</comment><comment><USER30> but.. Who hasn't done this?

</comment><comment><USER31> LCD monitors all use the same technology...

<comment><USER32> Fun office prank?

<comment><USER27> Sounds more likely to shock the pranker than the prankee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The "magic" explanation doesn't satisfy me. Any physicists in the crowd who can explain why rotating the film 90 degrees creates a negative display?

<comment><USER34> It's actually really simple. The display works in a way that you control the polarization of outgoing light (but the intensity is constant). Then you filter whichever polarization you want. So a black dot on a white screen could be achieved with a small vertical polarization region on a horizontal pol. background, and filter out the vertical pol., with a polarizer horizontally aligned. Align it vertically, and you swap the intensities.

Note: In this case the light whose polarization is controlled is the reflected incoming ambient light, which isn't polarized; in a computer monitor it's the back light.</comment></comment>


Dominant Techniques in Social Media Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://fndrs.net/PEbLot <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has tips on how to effectively promote using Social Media Marketing WITHOUT spamming I am all ears!</comment>


Xbox One Used Games: Kickbacks for Microsoft and Publisher - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/publishers-to-receive-cut-of-xbox-one-pre-owned-sales-at-retail/0116137

<comment><USER2> I really hope this is a 11/10 troll that's just having a good time rustling jimmies. Because this sounds like a nightmare.</comment>


What technical reasons are there to have low maximum password lengths? - <AUTHOR> https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33470/what-technical-reasons-are-there-to-have-low-maximum-password-lengths/33471#33471 <comment><USER2> I like the ones where you can't use a slash or a quote in your password because (1) they are storing the password in plaintext, and (2) they don't know how to escape strings in SQL queries (or use placeholders.)

People at places like that will argue that they can't afford to do it right or something, so the one choice you have is to do business with someone else, particularly if it is a bank.</comment>