How Liberal Professors Are Ruining College (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2016/12/20/liberal-professors/ <comment><USER2> I feel like the main issue is that the Republican party has stood as against LGBT rights, women's rights and against global warming. If a professor is Republican, they have to find some way to reconcile the attack on science that so many right leaning politicians support. Also, science as a field has issues with gender disparity so to not be pro women's rights would also make them look like part of the problem. Additionally, a lot of the platform consists of biblical thought which is very unscientific.

<comment><AUTHOR> If anything, I think you corroborate the article. The crude, unsophisticated caricature of conservatism you've presented is precisely the kind of caricature you are likely to come across at universities. It appears you assume there can be no sophisticated conservative position on the issues you've mentioned and that's precisely the problem. It isn't even a question of whether a student agrees with these other views. It's that students are never exposed to them in the first place.

You might find this article illuminating: [http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-some-of-your- pro...](http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-some-of-your-professors- see-you.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Conservative professors weren't always so heavily outnumbered here.

May be the republican party just moved on and it became hard for critical thinkers to follow up.

Speaking for my self, after 8 year of obstructionism and 50+ attempts to repeal the ACA, and it turns out the republicans don't even have a plan. It is not merely and ideological divide about economic or social policy any more. Made up facts are now the rule.

</comment><comment><USER4> I live in New England and this doesn't ring true for me. I think New England is very _tolerant_ (even in the rural bits, which there are plenty of), and has a long history of tolerance, but I wouldn't confuse that with "liberalism". There's a ton of die-hard Democrat Catholics in New England, for example. I grew up Catholic, and I hardly associate it with liberalism, but I don't think I've ever met a Republican Catholic

Charlie Baker is exceptionally popular, fiscal conservatism is clearly not frowned upon. Reading the WSJ does not make you a pariah, _but even the Republicans here don 't like the national Republicans_.</comment>


Show HN: Sales for Founders - <AUTHOR> https://salesforfounders.com <comment><USER3> Definitely a skill founders (CEOs) should optimize for. Reminds me of another free resource [https://www.foundingsales.com/](https://www.foundingsales.com/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, +1 for Founding Sales. It's super useful and comprehensive. Pete Kazanjy (the author) is a great guy and is very knowledgeable and helpful.

(I am the CEO of Sourcegraph, an enterprise software company, and Pete's advice has been directly helpful to us.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "... you can't find your first customers"

I think the biggest problem for most of us is not being exposed to actual burning problems which can be solved with a small budget, and not solved already by dozens of other startups or even free software. Even though I am a quite shy person, and need to learn a lot about sales, my biggest problem is not that I cannot do sales if I really have to, but that i donát have good business ideas which are within reach. (I am a developer.)

<comment><USER6> > and not solved already by dozens of other startups or even free software

That used to deter me as well. My line of thinking was: if the problem X is already solved by N companies, why should I launch yet another competitor? Now that I'm wiser, my answer is "because people are familiar with the problem, are already paying for the solution, which means _there 's a market for that_". I can't stress the last point enough. The market that you choose to serve will determine most of your growth (some markets are harder to get into than others, though).

In essence, you swap an _idea validation challenge_ with a _sales and marketing challenge_. If all you're looking for is building a small, independent, and sustainable business, I believe this is the most optimal approach to take.

For the context: I run a B2B SaaS in a competitive market.

<comment><USER7> I completely agree with this. Just because an idea already exist doesn't mean you shouldn't build a product for it. But you should try and build it in some better way. A lot of products exist but aren't very good or have not been "modernised". It's then A LOT easier to get that product off the ground because of the hardest things is idea validation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly tangential: Does anyone get fed up by sales people? Especially aggresive and pushy sales reps? When a car dealership a fun thing to go to?

As a consumer, sales people bother me to no end. I was in Delhi last year, went to buy a silk saree and people were going around left and right trying to sell this and that. I prefer going to a store in Paris and skip this noise.

IMO - I could be completely and utterly wrong/naive in terms of the actual effectiveness of hiring sales people, but personally & emotionally want to rally the world to end the traditional sales model. Sell to me in the right context and without intervention and attention seeking. Sales representatives are pop-up ads for the real world - I want an adblock and block all these people.

So, we wanted to buy Solidworks CAD license for our company. I go on their website: [https://www.solidworks.com/how-to- buy](https://www.solidworks.com/how-to-buy) -> I fill out the stupid form, then some asshole calls my cell, tells me to schedule a meeting to "understand my needs", we setup a meeting in person at our company. Got a conference room booked and he starts his dog and pony show. I wish I can get rid of him. He was probably a nice person but the situation is getting in my way of the goal - As a consumer, I am _willing_ to pay for this software but I can't without these hurdles. That makes it painful. We decided to go with Autodesk's Inventor license because it does everything we want it to do - and their prices are transparent. No need to call any one. Just click, buy and we're done in about 10 mins: [https://www.autodesk.com/products/inventor/overview](https://www.autodesk.com/products/inventor/overview)

Fuck sales, I am sorry but that's how I feel. Sell your products in a "pull" model than "push" model. Don't piss off your customers. Ofcourse, I am ignoring the other side - what would I do if I were running a business. Not sure, and not the consumer's problem.

<comment><USER9> I use to think like that because I was always thinking about software the same way as I think about buying things as a consumer. Basically thinking about products the way I buy them from Amazon. Or buying a car as you mentioned.

But the reality of software sales is different. There are people at companies that get paid to hear software vendors pitch their solutions. Those are decision-makers who need to execute a budget and improve processes. They are dependent on finding the right vendors.

It's way different when you think about that way. If you're a decision-maker and have the power to buy software (and it's part of your job) you want to hear from salespeople. It's part of your duties.

If you have a problem in your organization and someone comes offering software that somehow solves it and you have the budget to buy this kind of software it would be irresponsible of you to not hear what they have to offer.

<comment><USER8> Sure when stakes are high, the sales people are of different caliber. It becomes a big team that's trying to find the best solution for the company - there are written project proposals, reviews and decision meetings. They don't use sleezy techniques and unruly ways to "get them". Or aggressively piss people off.

But that's not what this website appears to targetting: [https://salesforfounders.com/](https://salesforfounders.com/)

My perception is that 90% of the sales people I meet are unpleasant just like 90% of the ads I see are bad. Then you come across a cool Hermes advertisment that you want to sit through because its beautiful.

<comment><AUTHOR> > They don't use sleezy techniques and unruly ways to "get them". Or > aggressively piss people off.

That's definitely __NOT __what S4F is about.

One of the main reasons I made this course is that most founders - <USER2> technical founders - still have this impression of sales as being sleazy or aggressive.

I'm sure that is still out there today - in the used car industry, for example.

But - in SaaS at least - sales has moved on.

Why?

Because it had to.

Simply put, when you are selling a SaaS product (with free trials, money-back guarantees, monthly billing...) _it isn 't worth making the sale_ if it's a bad fit.

Lying, pressuring people into buying something they don't need, being aggressive just doesn't pay anymore. Yes - they might sign up for one month - but then they'll churn and you'll have spent more acquiring them than they paid you.

Instead, S4F teaches you how to move to a 'team' mindset...

\- how to understand your customer \- how to align your goals with theirs \- how to create a shared success plan (so they don't just buy, they actually get value from your product and don't churn) \- how to nudge them along that path to success

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have just got the MVP ready for my 'analytics in a specific niche' SaaS product - I'd love to just pay someone cash to sell it for me and help me get from zero to one. I'd happily give recurring referral commission on top of cash. I can then work on refining the product with the first few customers.

What are my options? This looks promising but sadly I seem to fall under one of the "This course isn't a good fit for you, if..." points (last one). If anyone could direct me to other options I would be very grateful!

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'd love to just pay someone cash to sell it for me and help me get from > zero to one.

I've seen quite a few founders try this, and it normally ends badly.

There are two main drawbacks...

1\. The salesperson effectively becomes the CEO. They understand the customers better, have the relationships, and may not get all of this across to you - especially in the event they leave suddenly.

2\. If you hire a salesperson without knowing how to sell your product (and some results already), you'll never know if it's your salesperson or your product that is underperforming. And you'll have no idea how to fix it.

I don't know what the best solution for you is, but consider looking into the Mom Test book to help you learn how to get from zero to one by talking to customers. It's a great book, and required (included) reading as part of my S4F course.

Good luck!

<comment><USER10> Sometimes the advice you don't want to hear is the best advice, so thank you for giving me hard truths!

I'll check out the book for sure. Good luck with the course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems that so many of these resources focus on getting from "hello" to "yes". But I'm having major difficulties getting from a "yes" to paid invoices.

Anybody has good resources that would help with getting through legal, it, procurement, privacy reviews? How to help my customers get that new budget approved? How to efficiently find out what is the next problem that needs to be solved?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really common problem!

The easiest way to overcome it is to reframe the problem.

Instead of asking "how do I go from yes to paid invoices", ask yourself "how do I change the default outcome from _they don 't buy my product_ to _they buy my product_ ".

This involves setting up a shared success plan with the customer.

Mark Fershteyn talks about how to do this in depth on a podcast episode we recorded last year: [https://anchor.fm/sales-for-founders/episodes/How-to- close-y...](https://anchor.fm/sales-for-founders/episodes/How-to-close-your- first-deals-and-do-follow-ups-properly---with-Mark-Fershteyn-of-Recapped- io-e3rf8a)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, this is interesting (although Mark was pushing his startup a bit too hard), making a plan for them sounds like a good idea, I'm actually already doing that, I'll start calling it shared success plan.

My problem is that my customers don't know themselves what the process for buying is (oh yeah it's probably over our budget so we have to talk to someone from procurement... last time we talked to Joe but that was 3 years ago and he doesn't work here anymore, I'll have to check with the procurement head). They just don't buy SaaS very often. So, I have to tell them you'll probably need this review and that agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How would you modify these techniques to reach out to the press instead of selling B2B? I actually considered buying this course a week or two ago but I was not sure if i could apply it to non B2B scenarios

<comment><AUTHOR> I focus less on techniques and more on strategy and mindset.

There are thousands of 'successful' cold email templates and guides out there for free, for example. You don't need another one.

But they probably won't work _for you_ \- any more than downloading the Uber app onto your phone will teach you how to build your own ride-sharing app.

Instead, I focus on the fundamentals of sales - how to approach finding potential customers, understanding them, and creating a shared success plan that results in them 'default buying'.

A lot of that will be _very_ useful outside of B2B sales...

\- consulting \- hiring \- applying for jobs \- press outreach \- pitching investors

I assume someone has already created a great resource on press outreach which would be higher impact for you than taking this course, but it would definitely help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you want me to read this book, why isn't there a prominent download link on the front page?

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you want someone to marry you, why don't you just tell me that the first time you meet them?"

Same reasons apply here...

\- I want to give you time to see bits of the course and learn about whether it's a good fit for you before making a (nontrivial for some people) purchase

\- I want to make sure you're the right fit for the course too

\- You're more likely to purchase after getting to know me and the course content, understanding the value, and overcoming your objections

Asking for your email address is the happy middle ground of "can I buy you a drink" between "saying nothing" and "asking someone to marry you".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I miss sales sooo much. I really wish there were more technical roles that involved sales.

Nice work @louisswiss... been following on twitter and appreciate what you're doing... keep going!

<comment><USER15> I think there are a ton, especially at consulting agencies and startups. Or, start your own agency and go sell. :)</comment></comment>


Anyone using DB_DataObject with PHP? - <AUTHOR>

I'm doing some PHP hacking for some experimental projects and seeking a lightweight database framework to simply the usual CRUD stuff.<p>Database is MySQL and am using MDB2 for the lower-level stuff. <comment><USER2> I used DB_Table with mysql and mdb2 a few weeks ago. Wasn't bad. Using it with the Table Generator class was useful. I'd also like to know what the best db framework is for php (I'm not a huge fan of the mvc frameworks--oftentimes I think they're overkill).</comment>


The weird world of fossil worm cocoons (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1047133/FULLTEXT02.pdf <comment><USER2> Abstract for [http://www.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1047133/FULLTEXT0...](http://www.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1047133/FULLTEXT02.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Since that loads for me but [http://nrm.diva- portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:104713...](http://nrm.diva- portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1047133) doesn't, we've updated the link. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


D-Wave announces first commercial quantum computer - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/05/17/d-wave-announces-commerically-available-quantum-computer/

<comment><USER2> I love the fact that they're located on the University of Phoenix campus <http://goo.gl/maps/DGWF>

</comment><comment><USER3> "sketchy" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems>

</comment><comment><USER4> So is this a real quantum computer? Seems like if this were legit there would be more noise about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yesterday's discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2555580></comment>


Show HN: OSQP: a new first-order solver for large-scale quadratic programs - <AUTHOR> https://osqp.readthedocs.io/ <comment><USER2> Darn, no benchmark against Ipopt, which in my experience still gives the best black-box performance on large, sparse quadratic problems. In my experience the commercial solvers (Gurobi, Mosek) are actually quite slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am happy to compare IPOPT as well. There was a github issue for this: [https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks/issues/1](https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks/issues/1)

As I said there, the current IPOPT Python interfaces do not report the timings. If you are aware of any fair way to time it from Python, I would be happy to add it. In my opinion using the Python "time" module can cause lags due to the Python interpreter.

<comment><USER3> If you can write your models in AMPL or GAMS or some modeling language, you would be able to test IPOPT's raw speed.

I used IPOPT from AMPL for years and it is a formidable solver for general large-sparse NLPs. It would be nice to see benchmarks against it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> arXiv paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.08013](https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.08013)

benchmarks: [https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks](https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks)

It is the default LP/QP solver in cvxpy 1.0: [https://github.com/cvxgrp/cvxpy](https://github.com/cvxgrp/cvxpy)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty cool; Boyd had mentioned to me something about there being a good method for solving QPs that was nicer than the usual SOCP reduction (that's horrible and pretty slow in the general case). I think this was the case he was referring to.

Anyways, the results here are quite impressive; I wonder what would happen if Anderson acceleration[0] was used to speed this up further? IIRC, someone from the lab was doing some work on that, but for general splitting-cone methods rather than just QP solving.

\---

[0] C.f. [https://users.wpi.edu/~walker/Papers/Walker- Ni,SINUM,V49,171...](https://users.wpi.edu/~walker/Papers/Walker- Ni,SINUM,V49,1715-1735.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Cvxpy 1.0 now detects QPs and avoids the slow SOCP reduction. Also, it exploits OSQP to perform factorization caching and warm starting. If you solve parametric QPs in a sequence (e.g., lasso pareto frontier) the speedups are even bigger.

It would be very interesting to try the Anderson acceleration for QPs! We tried other line search methods but they did not bring consistent improvements for different problems. I think Anderson acceleration could be more useful (also from the theoretical point of view).

Could you put me in touch with the person working on that in the lab? I would be happy to try it. We have a prototype Python implementation that could be used for that.

<comment><USER4> Yay! That's awesome, I'm glad (this was a bit of a problem with last year's EE364A exam, actually, since the solver for a problem was too slow, so we decided to not include it). The benchmarks are quite impressive as well!

Anyways, one of the TAs for 364 was working on it---I believe under Boyd, but unsure; I can ask if it was specifically SOCPs, which is what I recall---and I'm also applying it to certain other large-scale (but non-convex) cases. I'll ask him and get back to you on that. My profile has my email, if you'd like to not dox yourself as well, and I can put you two in touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What sort of QP problems are you hoping to solve using OSQP? When I tried OSQP on stock LP problems (i.e. the P = 0 special case; instances were afiro, adlittle, fit1p, dfl001, maros-r7, wood1p), I didn't get encouraging results. Apart from afiro, I got a lot of pretty wrong answers after relatively long periods of computation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which version of OSQP did you try for? 0.2 has improved a lot compared to previous versions (much better convergence behavior with adaptive rho).

Even though OSQP can solve also LPs, it is optimized to solve QPs. You can find some benchmarks here: [https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks](https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks) They include:

\- Randomly generated QPs from several classes such as control, portfolio, lasso, svm, Huber fitting

\- The hard QP problems from the Maros-Meszaros test class (the reference benchmark testset for convex QPs)

<comment><USER5> > Which version of OSQP did you try for? 0.2 has improved a lot compared to > previous versions (much better convergence behavior with adaptive rho).

I did a 'git clone' of your repository this morning; I have 0edd758. (I learned about your project this morning.)

> Even though OSQP can solve also LPs, it is optimized to solve QPs.

I understand that, but (apart from dfl001) these aren't especially difficult LPs.

> \- Randomly generated QPs from several classes such as control, portfolio, > lasso, svm, Huber fitting

OK, but you wouldn't normally use a general-purpose IPM like Gurobi or Mosek for lasso or SVM problems, would you?

Separately, why randomly-generated QPs? Randomly-generated LPs tend to be very easy to solve, and I'd imagine a convex quadratic term in the objective only makes it easier. For SVMs, there's a bunch of available, fairly standard data associated with Chih-Jen Lin's libsvm.

> \- The hard QP problems from the Maros-Meszaros test class (the reference > benchmark testset for convex QPs)

How did you convert the Maros-Meszaros problems? The results output by your solver don't line up with the numbers in "00README.QP" on Maros's site. For example, Maros has:

      aug3d       1000    3873    6546    2673        0    5.5406773e+02
      aug3dc      1000    3873    6546    3873        0    7.7126244e+02
      aug3dcqp    1000    3873    6546    3873        0    9.9336215e+02
      aug3dqp     1000    3873    6546    2673        0    6.7523767e+02

while you get:

      13092,25,4873,3873,AUG3D,-782.432274207,0.012742196,OSQP_polish,optimal,1
      14292,25,4873,3873,AUG3DC,-1165.23756131,0.012990161,OSQP_polish,optimal,1
      14292,75,4873,3873,AUG3DCQP,-943.137853475,0.023050472,OSQP_polish,optimal,1
      13092,75,4873,3873,AUG3DQP,-661.262328725,0.023125477,OSQP_polish,optimal,1

When polishing succeeds, you get a different objective value from Maros (in this case by about 1e4, so a relative 1e-2):

      aug2d      10000   20200   40000   19800        0    1.6874118e+06
      aug2dc     10000   20200   40000   20200        0    1.8183681e+06
      aug2dcqp   10000   20200   40000   20200        0    6.4981348e+06
      aug2dqp    10000   20200   40000   19800        0    6.2370121e+06

      80000,25,30200,20200,AUG2D,1677511.7529,0.074053448,OSQP_polish,optimal,1
      80400,25,30200,20200,AUG2DC,1808268.06557,0.073366168,OSQP_polish,optimal,1
      80400,775,30200,20200,AUG2DCQP,6488034.73924,0.866898539,OSQP_polish,optimal,1
      80000,775,30200,20200,AUG2DQP,6227112.02536,0.8685775,OSQP_polish,optimal,1

<comment><AUTHOR> We compared our OSQP solver to other general-purpose solvers. That's why we chose GUROBI and Mosek. There are also examples of control problems for which it is possible to design very efficient tailored methods. However our point is not to compare our solver to specific methods for certain classes (like libsvm).

In the benchmarks we are comparing examples with randomly generated data because we were interested in ~1400 problems in a range from 100 to 10 million nonzeros. The examples are not just random QPs, but data are generated in a reasonable manner and they have the same structure as problems people would actually solve in practice. In the arXiv paper we described in detail how we generated and checked optimality for the examples.

As mentioned in the README of the repository that you checked out ([https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks](https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks)) we used the conversion scripts from here: [https://github.com/YimingYAN/QP- Test-Problems](https://github.com/YimingYAN/QP-Test-Problems)

If you know better ways to convert the Maros problems (or other QP/LP benchmarks) to mat files or other formats compatible with Python, please let me know. I would be happy to try them.

<comment><USER5> > We compared our OSQP solver to other general-purpose solvers. That's why we > chose GUROBI and Mosek.

Your computational results don't support calling OSQP general-purpose. OSQP does okay on the easy problems you randomly generate, but this doesn't seem to generalise---OSQP gives results on a bunch of the Maros-Meszaros problems that markedly disagree with previously published work.

> However our point is not to compare our solver to specific methods for > certain classes (like libsvm).

You may not want to compare against libsvm's solver (though I imagine you look pretty good on the problems you're generating) but there is also a lot of _data_ available at the libsvm webpage. This data might serve as a more representative SVM testbed than the random easy instances you're creating.

> In the benchmarks we are comparing examples with randomly generated data > because we were interested in ~1400 problems in a range from 100 to 10 > million nonzeros. The examples are not just random QPs, but data are > generated in a reasonable manner and they have the same structure as > problems people would actually solve in practice.

The "random QPs" and "random equality QPs" do seem to be "just random QPs."

I get cond(A^T A) ranging between 1.3 to 1.7 with your Lasso problem generator. These instances are going to be incredibly easy to solve, even with very naive algorithms. (Separately, why not eliminate the 'y' variable from your formulation? You get a formulation that's about 100 times smaller, and you should see a corresponding speedup.)

> In the arXiv paper we described in detail how we generated and checked > optimality for the examples.

Yes, you check for a bunch of residuals' infinity-norms being smaller than 1e-3. But you get results that differ markedly from the other solvers' results. To me, that raises the question of whether the 1e-3 test is appropriate.

> As mentioned in the README of the repository that you checked out > ([https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks](https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/osqp_benchmarks)) > we used the conversion scripts from here: [https://github.com/YimingYAN/QP- > Test-Problems](https://github.com/YimingYAN/QP-Test-Problems) > > If you > know better ways to convert the Maros problems (or other QP/LP benchmarks) > to mat files or other formats compatible with Python, please let me know. I > would be happy to try them.

Well, QPS is a punch-card style input format like MPS. Like MPS, I imagine you can write a parser for it in a couple of highly unfulfilling hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it possible to define whether the x's are real numbers or integers?

<comment><AUTHOR> OSQP solves only continuous QPs. For integer variables you need an MIQP solver.

We wrote a Python branch-and-bound wrapper around OSQP to solve MIQPs: [https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/miosqp](https://github.com/oxfordcontrol/miosqp)

However, there are more advanced MIQP algorithms out there such as GUROBI or CPLEX.

<comment><USER5> Did you test miosqp against standard MIQPs? For example, in QPLIB, there is a handful of convex mixed-integer QPs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't tried the MIQP extension against the QPLIB yet. It is just a prototype and it is written in Python. We first need to implement it in C to compare the timings.

<comment><USER5> You could compare number of nodes explored rather than absolute timings to see how inaccuracy solving the relaxations affects branch-and-bound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm better than mosek?

<comment><AUTHOR> For QPs it looks like. Mosek works really well for SDPs. However, it converts QPs to SOCPs before solving them. This slows down a lot the timings.</comment></comment>


Prosper.com + Kiva.org = myc4.com (I just loaned €15) - <AUTHOR> http://myc4.com/Portal/Default.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't see detailed information about the loan listings until I upload €15... annoying, but I wanted to see the loan listings enough that I uploaded €15.

My money is going to Faith Masaba who wants to buy more equipment for her restaurant/catering business, like a microwave. I get 13%. Faith is borrowing €700.00. Faith says her TV, refrigerator, and furniture are collateral. So this is really like a more exploitative version of Kiva that has done away with the pretension of being a non-profit and instead is copying Prosper's model. Go capitalism.

My prosper investments all bombed when the credit markets collapsed, Africa is (bizarrely) probably a more stable place for p2p lending than Prosper. You also get the advantage of working in the Euro.

      Faith Masaba
      Local Restaurant
      [Uganda] Uganda
      Faith owns a local restaurant and offers catering services as well. She
      would like to purchase more equipment like food warmers and a
      microwave. This will enable her to serve a wider client base.

      Total Amount: 	€700 (Issued in: Local Currency)
      Wanted Interest Rate: 	13.00% p.a.
      Current Interest Rate: 	13.42% p.a.
      Transaction Cost: 	36.77%
      Total cost for Business: 	50.20% (APR) / €117.38
      Payback Period: 	9 months
      Provided by: 	FED
      Lender: 	CMC
      Entrepreneur: 	N/A
      Bidding ends: 	02.08.2008 10:37 CET *
      * The Provider reserves the right to close fully funded Businesses with
      24 hours notice.
      Investment Status:
      Multiple Investors
      16% has been bid. You can still bid up to €585.00
      Provider Statistics
      MyC4 Partner Since: 	31.05.2007 12:16 CET
      Businesses Funded: 	€1,475,691.00 in 1169 Businesses
      Repayments Received: 	€361,285.99
      Defaults: 	0.02% of repayments until today
      €356.85 in 1 loan(s) defaulted

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting concept... I wonder if they let you do blanket investments, similar to investing in index funds?</comment>


Ask HN: What are good investing books for total beginners? - <AUTHOR>

I've no idea what the stock market is. Take me as a total idiot. Suggestions away! <comment><USER2> The Intelligent Investor. Written by Warren Buffetts mentor: Benjamin Graham.

The book appears more intimidating (bigger) than it actually is. In reality it is a very enjoyable read. I suggest reading the commentaries that go with each chapter before reading the chapter. They explain Grahams theories with more up to date examples.

Chapter 8 is also an excellent commentary on why markets move. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the stock market.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to forget about market timing, concentrate on asset allocation:

The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read (Canadian audience) The Intelligent Asset Allocator (a more statistical approach)</comment>


Tell me your name... - <AUTHOR> http://tellmeyourname.com

<comment><USER2> What a compelling way to demonstrate an argument I've been having with people over the years!</comment>


Ask HN: Do you people really like Microsoft that much? - sudo-i There seems to be an increase of stories about Microsoft on the front page.<p>Is this some direct targeting by Microsoft to make it to the front page of HN? Or are these stories really legit and worthy of their popularity? <comment><AUTHOR> The big tech cos all do announcement extravaganzas at their annual conference day. MS just had theirs, which is why so many of their stories have appeared here recently.

I wish they wouldn't, because every time, people complain about MS/Apple/Amazon/Google/whoever using evil powers to stack HN. It polarizes the community: the fans upvote and comment while the anti-fans flag and grouse. But it's the way these companies do things, and some of the announcements are major ones, which it's not in HN's interest to suppress.

We raise the moderation bar when there is a flurry of submissions on any theme, so you're actually seeing fewer Apple/Google/Amazon/MS/whoever stories than you would if they doled them out over time—but the impression is just the opposite because they're so concentrated.

Edit: if you look at the following you'll see examples of how this comes up every time and how it rotates through the different BigCos:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20big%20tech%20announcements)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20conference%20days)

</comment><comment><USER2> I dislike microsoft.</comment>


Leaky database of SMS text messages exposed password resets and two-factor codes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/15/millions-sms-text-messages-leaked-two-factor-codes/ <comment><USER2> > tens of millions of text messages, including password reset links, two- > factor codes

Many, or very nearly all?, of the places implementing this expire the tokens in minutes. I'm not defending 2FA over SMS, but merely pointing out this 'feature' of the 'leaky database' is probably not all that impactful.

<comment><USER3> They go into that. The database was queryable in (near) realtime.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is HN better as an anonymous user, or with your identity public? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I love using HN as an anon. I would be horrified if I were forced to reveal my identity because a simple google search would give years worth of controversial statements to any potential employer.

I don't have many skills so I can't expect employers to just "let it slide".

</comment><comment><USER3> Anonymous with the same reason as usual.

What are the pros of stating things under your identity? The only I can really think of is that you receive a certain amount of 'credit' by default, yet on the other hand do you really want the reaction to things you say to be based not on what you say, but who you are? It's the reason e.g. getting critical advice from friends can be difficult. So I'm not sure this can even be considered a pro.

What are the cons? Everything you say, ever, can now be tied back to you. If you change your view, you can be portrayed as whimsical or inconsistent. Things you say can be spun or taken out of context to impugn your character or misrepresent your views. Imagine if everything you would have said when you were a teenager or young adult would have followed you around for the rest of your life. That's the stuff nightmares are made off! Yet that's precisely what posting on the internet under your real name will now entail.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it's better as a pseudononymous user. That's for the same reason I think the internet in general is better when people use pseudonyms rather than tying their 'real' identity to everything:

1\. It means we can say what we really think about something rather than purely what's acceptable to the court of social media/public opinion. Having your 'real' identity public online now seems like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off at the worst possible moment.

2\. And it forces people to judge you based on your words rather than your personal characteristics/backstory/appearance. That's a huge benefit that people seem to take for granted now, and one that'd probably make the offline world better if it was the norm there.

Of course, I'm also personally rather paranoid and try to avoid posting personal information online in general (eh, I took the whole 'don't give out too much information online' thing from the 80s/90s pretty seriously), so take it as you will.</comment>


Signals Directorate's Sigint and Offensive Cyber Mission on UK Huawei Decision - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1222409553536606208 <comment><AUTHOR> see also: Former head of Australia's Signals Directorate weighs in on U.K.'s choice to stick with Huawei: [https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/5g-choices-a- pivotal-momen...](https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/5g-choices-a-pivotal- moment-in-world-affairs/)</comment>


Computer Programming Using GNU Smalltalk (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.canol.info/books/computer_programming_using_gnu_smalltalk/ <comment><USER2> Wow, seeing this on hackernews made me shed a year.

I picked up maintenance of GNU Smalltalk when I was 19 and kept it going for about 11 years. In the meanwhile I wrote thousands and thousands of lines of C and Smalltalk code, a generational and incremental GC, a debugger, a documentation generator, a JIT compiler and whatever else. Maintaining GNU Smalltalk taught me so much about testing, release engineering, C programming, mentoring and almost everything else I learnt about programming during those 11 years.

<comment><USER3> My friend told me about this topic, wanted to say hi, nice to see familiar names again :) Thank you for your work. I kinda wish I released a revised edition of the book with typos fixed and some parts improved --canol

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looked at a number of Smalltalk books yesterday after reading a discussion here, but all of the ones I read of the following list were terrible books:

[http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html](http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html)

I didn't try all of the books.

I also tried to read the Wikipedia article on Smalltalk. I consider trying to read a Wikipedia article about anything an act of desperation.

Is this book any better than the ones I found yesterday?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since it is on the list, it cannot be better.

Probably the best book on Smalltalk is _Smalltalk 80: the language_ (for some definition of 'best'). It is very readable despite serving as a specification for Smalltalk 80 version 2. It is a revision of the similarly titled: _Smalltalk 80: the language and its implementation_ linked on the list.

The text is clear and professionally edited to a level consistent with the commercial sale of printed books by a reputable technical publisher (Addison Wesley). Used printed copies are widely available and often inexpensive. With the caveat that I vastly prefer dead tree books to PDF's, the physical book is a thing of beauty with the code for the running example printed on the backface of the front cover and the parser state machines printed on the last few pages.

On the other hand, what I appreciate about GNU Smalltalk is:

1\. It is text based and while I consider the Smalltalk IDE to be historically interesting, it is the least interesting part of the language _for me, today._

2\. GNU Smalltalk integrates with Emacs (in Debian it is a separate package _gnu-smalltalk-el_ ).

3\. I prefer tiling windows to overlapping windows and the keyboard to the mouse and other Smalltalk implementations follow the WIMP paradigm.

4\. Though in fairness, I am just goofing around with Smalltalk and if I had production grade concerns, I might have a different attitude.

<comment><USER5> > 4\. Though in fairness, I am just goofing around with Smalltalk and if I had > production grade concerns, I might have a different attitude.

I'm curious, is Smalltalk especially good for any particular task? Or especially easy to use for something?

I'm always on the look out for something better as all the languages I use and know well seem inadequate or tedious in one way or another and a lot of those that I don't use seem intimidatingly difficult to get started with (often because ecosystem in which they live is difficult to handle).

<comment><USER6> It's worth spending a few hours to get an idea of what Smalltalk looks and feels like, but I wouldn't spend any more time than that on it.

First of all, it's dynamically typed, which is not something we should seriously be using in the 21st century.

Second, the tool ecosystem surrounding Smalltalk is abysmal and antiquated compared to modern IDE's.

<comment><USER7> > _First of all, it 's dynamically typed, which is not something we should > seriously be using in the 21st century._

Citation needed.

> _Second, the tool ecosystem surrounding Smalltalk is abysmal and antiquated > compared to modern IDE 's._

Actually modern IDE's are abysmal compared to what Smalltalk offered even back in 1995.

<comment><USER6> > Citation needed

Math. Look up the Curry Howard isomorphism and why it cannot be leveraged with dynamically typed languages.

> Actually modern IDE's are abysmal compared to what Smalltalk offered even > back in 1995

I think you should spend some time with some of these modern IDE's to understand what true, guaranteed correct refactoring means, something Smalltalk can never hope to achieve because the language doesn't have type annotations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious what tools you consider suitable?

<comment><USER6> IDEA, Eclipse, Visual Studio, XCode.

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious about languages as well -- I think of languages as tools, too.

<comment><USER6> That becomes a little bit more subjective so I won't name specific languages, but to me, the language being statically typed is a requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know it's Windows only, but Dolphin Smalltalk is really much more impressive than GNU Smalltalk or Pharo.

<comment><USER9> For a long time, Dolphin Smalltalk was a very good Windows development tool, and probably the best Smalltalk.

Fast and native UI, wonderful refactoring support, builds to exe, great community.

<comment><USER8> It is now fully open source and on GitHub, too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This site would not render until JavaScript was enabled.

EDIT:

It seems that NoScript plugin has stopped Firefox from rendering this page where no script is embedded/referred. Probably NoScript blocked XSLT in Firefox.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, the page doesn't claim to be HTML or even XHTML --- it's served with "application/xml" content type, and is pure XML with an XSL that transforms it into HTML in the browser. I don't see that very often.

<comment><USER12> I also use pure XML/XSLT for one of my production sites. In theory, XSLT is th nicest templating language I've ever used (even the 1.0 version). But, in practice, there are too many inconsistencies among browsers (e.g. in-page JavaScript is difficult because IE's CDATA handles escaping "<" and ">" differently than Chrome, Firefox, and Safari).

Sadly, Google is planning to deprecate and remove the feature[1].

[1] [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/bli...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/blink- dev/6MOMhQaX3N8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Because XSLT is Turing Complete, Chromium may be removing it to reduce the browser's attack surface...at least in part.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Problem of Artificial Willpower - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-of-artificial-willpower/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone recommend a good text on sociopharmacology? Something like Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws except about the differences between national / regional cultures based on their differing diets of psychoactive substances? I recently heard (in that anti-American al Jazeera 4th of July video) that USA consumes 80% of the world's painkillers — what is unique about American behavior due to that?</comment>


Measuring UX with Google HEART Framework - <AUTHOR> https://uxplanet.org/how-to-effectively-measure-ux-with-google-heart-framework-4a497631d224 <comment><USER2> There is this disturbing trend of mixing the service/product and the interface and calling it "the experience". This is good for marketing maybe (of UX designers probably), but when designing a product, you're actually making the problem incredibly difficult. You're merging different problems into one, then trying to find silver bullets. Hence, everyone reinvents the UI for a "unique" UX. But that's the exact thing users do not want, and that makes everything harder for everybody.

The UI needs to disappear. No one should even "see" it. The perfect interface is still an invisible one. If you go with this principle, then once the UI task is done, we've eliminated UI from UX. Your first task is to eliminate UI from the UX problem.

What is left is the product/service in it's finest, purest, most concise form. And now, as this is adjusted, the UI may need adjustment. But this is the proper order of business.

Take the missing audio jack. Everybody notices it. Hence, this is an obvious UX failure. The designer's "opinion" or "gut" is not more accurate or more important than the user. UX is not about forcing experience. And the UI itself is about non-experience. Just follow this principle, and the best UX will follow.

Of course, even the data driven UX designers won't put the audio jack back despite the "unhappiness". And that is what is most disturbing for me, at least. It seems these UX designers have no principles. I sense arrogance and apathy. But this makes sense if you consider a UI that wants to be noticed as being self important, and a UI that is data driven to lack any personal or emotional touch.

No single user is a general statistic. Basing design on statistics is not design; it's giving up on designing; it's anti-design.

Anyway, I know HN is hardly the place to push POVs but I will keep trying.

<comment><USER3> Hear hear on anti-design! It is avoidance of design. Designing well is hard. Easy escape route: metrics!

By the time you ship a design with these metrics, much like usability testing, it is too late. You have just spent a bunch of time building and QAing something to a shippable state, only to find out some major usability issue. But the team thought they were almost done.

No single user is another great point. Complex software has multiple personas (types of users) using it. They have different needs and sometimes they are not served well. This HEART score needs to be at least segmented by persona to start being useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article explains "what" the HEART framework is not "how" to measure it as the title says

</comment><comment><USER5> Google should use it for Google Analytics. That dashboard is terrible. A beautiful, polished turd is how I often describe it.

Just as an example: try to add a new property to an analytics account. The whole ABCD naming of the menus also bugs me, like really?

<comment><USER6> Why anyone would take UX advice from Google (or Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft) is beyond me. I have this rule that I don't take UX advice from companies that have shitty/dark/manipulative UX.

<comment><USER7> Well..Facebook originally was utilitarian data dense UI..which didnt win in all categories but appealed to me as the prickles person I am. The rest of those names are terrible UI that say "Im unique and wizzy!!" far too unsubtley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where do qualitative methods come into the conversation?

Data-driven UX is better than gut feeling alone, but it's certainly not a replacement for qualitative studies. They complement each other very well. In fact, when gut feeling is reinforced or produced by both qualitative and quantitative studies, you're in a good spot.

If your (or better: the team's) intuition, deep interviews and data all point in one direction, then it's very likely to be the right one. By my experience, if you have support from two of the three sources (intuition—quantitative—qualitative), it's often good enough to pick a direction.

However, picking a direction based on the _same two_ sources for every decision you make is not a good idea. The larger framework you employ should include all of them, even if smaller decisions are based on an "incomplete" perspective based on fewer information sources.

Processes based solely on quantitative measures lean towards being reactive. You're viewing the future in the light of data from the past. Often, the past is a reliable predictor of the future. Sometimes, crucially, it's not. And sometimes, key behaviour is captured, but buried in the cheer volume of data.

Qualitative studies add a predictive element since you are able to capture elements that you didn't think to measure for beforehand, or didn't think to look for in the data. Once captured, those elements can sometimes be measured quantitatively, possibly even retroactively.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would love to apply this simple yet effective framework for a Non-Enterprise application. The EAR of this hEARt has no significance in this equation. Engagement for Enterprise Application is Forced, Enterprise execs Buy Products and make the people under them live with it. Adoption: on similar lines to Engagement. Retention: Enterprise, the retention is not to be questions, users are locked-in till the time the application is paid for.

<comment><USER7> Well considering it spells out a pretty word, it was most likely contrived. Yeah...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is only one way to measure UX IMO and that is conversion. Everything else is just attempting at adding pseudo-certainty where none exist.

<comment><USER11> I don't know, that's like saying that the one way to measure quality of journalism is by number of clicks.

Good UX should help conversion rate, but so might dark patterns, obnoxious popups, lies, etc.

<comment><USER10> You can't measure the quality of journalism in any quantifiable way if not to some quantifiable output.

Otherwise, it just becomes an art discussion which can be amusing but hardly something you can build a business on.

<comment><USER11> I don't think you're talking about measuring UX. You're talking about quantifying the business value of UX.

<comment><USER10> No I am talking about not being able to measure UX unless you can quantify it. Otherwise it just becomes "what is art" discussion.

<comment><USER12> Yes but conversion isn't the only metric.

For a newspaper, you could also have whether users feel more informed, whether they are more informed, etc.

<comment><USER10> Conversion is exactly the metric there and btw have little to do with UX in this specific situation and everything to do with the quality of the content.

<comment><USER12> No it is not. You haven't provided supporting arguments, but I will anyway: you can sell newspapers with sensation and lies. Look at PCC vs Guardian on the Mark Duggan case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker defaces some Iranian gov sites and puts victims names there as memorial - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/iran/comments/enbsz9/i_avenged_the_ukrainian_plane_crash_by_html/ <comment><USER2> Clicked for curiosity.

Does it count as hacking ?

// Solution Partner's ASP.NET Hierarchical Menu Control // Copyright (c) 2002-2005

\+ very old Dot Net Nuke running probably (assumption, not been digging more) unpatched IIS

<comment><USER3> People reported similarly lame takeovers of minor US govt sites last week as a wartime cyberattack, so sure.</comment></comment>


Misfit Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2010/07/misfit-entrepreneurs.html

<comment><USER2> Beautiful paragraph:

"To embrace the misfit in oneself is to be vulnerable. It is to forsake the easy acceptance that comes with fitting in and to instead be fortified by a kind of love, really. A love of life, a love of wonder, and, ultimately, a sustaining love for oneself. Far from egoism, that love for oneself is a measure of one's love for others, for humanity. And it is only from love that great ideas can be born."

<comment><USER3> That paragraph alone made me vote up the original article and shed a few empathizing tears inside.

Unfortunately, then I go read about how we've killed the Gulf of Mexico <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1536572>, and my blood boils and hatred for this world grows.

Such is the life of an entrepreneur, I suppose. Full of love and hatred. Full of contradictions.

<comment><USER4> full of passion for gaining and keeping values

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This really struck a chord with me. As I walk into work everyday, I always think, why can't I be happy like every other guy walking into work.

All I want to do in the crowded elevator at work is to bleat out, like sheep, "Baaa baaa baaa". I always think how funny that would be. :)

Infact I would say I've lost a good chunk of income - (40,000 a year?) just paying for my "individuality". I've done this by telling bosses what I thought about their ideas and that (and yes I've used these words in verbatim) "I can only do things that _I_ feel are right. You can give me advice, but I might not follow it.". So I've lost out on a few promotions and money.

I've received scorn, been laughed at and sometimes even received "pity" from some of my friends who do whatever their bosses tell them to do and are getting compensated well for it.

And the whole reason I've done this is because I've always felt that:

1\. The only thing that will help me to be independent in the future as an entrepreneur is to be independent right now.

2\. If I lose this ability to be myself, I lose everything - ie the ability to ever hope to start my own thing.

Now I might be completely wrong about this and I might have gone to extremes at time, but this concept of "being a misfit" is something I've cherished. Hopefully in the near future, when I have my own venture again, we'll see if I was right and whether this is as valuable as I've always thought :).

At the very least, I can say that its never been boring :).

(Background: The reason I've not been able to start my own thing fulltime has been because of a green card. But now I finally have it and have given myself a 5 month window to start with my side project hopefully being my second venture.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Vulnerability is the ultimate test of confidence. It is the willingness to let others judge you and subject yourself to their mis-belief. To make yourself vulnerable requires a solid grounding that isn't dependent on other's approval.

Inevitably, great entrepreneurs live in a world of vision that is beyond what their peers will allow themselves to believe. Th author of this article is right on in describing great ideas as an expression of love. It is the same as athleticism. Great athletes push the boundaries of what human beings are capable of, and anyone who has pursued an athletic endeavor knows that when we reach the brink of our ability the motivation is primal and pure.

So much of what we do is in an effort to protect ourselves, maybe it would be worth it to spend more time exposing our weakness to the world and becoming more sensitive to honesty and integrity.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm having a hard time figuring out what the author means by "vulnerable" here. Seems like a mellifluous but semantically empty use of the word.

<comment><USER8> I read sensitive when he says vulnerable. and direct vulnerability: "This kind of love cannot be taught in business school. It has to be felt. It has to be given sanctuary away from the noise and relentless assault of information. And then it has to be nurtured. It must be embraced, in the light of day, for all to see, for people to ridicule, to criticize, to laugh at. And the entrepreneur has to be willing to feel the pain of that ridicule and suffer the risk of the dream being stolen, or crushed by the meanness of this world."

<comment><USER7> Mmm, I think I'm getting it. So it's the idea that they actually _have_ something to lose, instead of just doing the "normal" things and thereby not having to incur this risk of pain?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article. I disagree though with the notion that being vulnerable is the common trait. Definitely being a misfit is. As the article says "the great entrepreneur in 2010 is the one who goes to Disneyland and asks: is this all there is?"

Always question what everyone takes for granted.

</comment><comment><USER10> I do not find anything new in this article. A very hideous way of saying entrepreneurs need to chanllege the status quo.

<comment><USER11> I agree for the most part, it was a very poetic, feel-good way of saying that entrepreneurs look at the world differently.</comment></comment>


On Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/04/08/Mobile-Privacy <comment><USER2> My big burning question, the thing that keeps me up at night:

How do the heck do we get users to read and care about these things?

Can we put virtual cotton candy in the middle? And if we do, won't we be the only honest developers doing so while the snake-oil salesmen put the candy in the preface?

IME, Android users care about privacy more than other smartphone users--but that still doesn't keep them from downloading invasive data-mining apps that don't allow them to control/delete their information, malware they side-load, etc.

How do we get people to care about protecting their own privacy?

</comment><comment><USER3> The first comment "What's the penalty for publishing an inaccurate privacy policy? Who enforces it?", is a very interesting question…</comment>


x86 is Turing-complete with no registers - <AUTHOR> http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2014/02/x86-is-turing-complete-with-no-registers.html <comment><USER2> This was cool, almost as much as for showing weird magic you can do with Linux' ptrace() as for the actual thing done.

Also, you know you're reading the page of a True Language ... Person when you get gems like:

 _Brainfuck isn 't the simplest language out there (try Subleq) but it's pretty familiar as an imperative, structured-control language. So I think compiling from Brainfuck makes this feel "more real" than compiling from something super weird._

Not sure how many people consider Brainfuck "pretty familiar" (especially at this level) or "real", even _with_ quotes. :)

<comment><USER3> Numbers? Memory addresses? Subleq is rather baroque compared to the ascetic world of combinators... ;-)

NB: As a final year project on my CS course in the 80s I did benchmarking on the efficiency of different sets of combinators for executing a toy functional programming language - the simplest set of combinators I used was SK and that was quite impressively awful to do something like multiplication. Quite interested to see how bad a single combinator scheme would be....

<comment><USER4> Here's the simplest one I can find, the Binary Lambda Calculus:

BLC Syntax

        <term> ::= 00 | 01 | 1 <term> <term>

BLC Semantics (as string-rewriting rules for any terms x, y, z)

        1100xy --> x
        11101xyz --> 11xz1yz

[http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/cl/cl.html](http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/cl/cl.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Forget registers; modern x86 is turing-complete without any _instructions_ : [https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc](https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another good example of a Turing tarpit

My favorite is the OISC(One instruction set computer) [http://esolangs.org/wiki/OISC](http://esolangs.org/wiki/OISC)

(Esolang is probably the best timewaster for language nerds)

<comment><USER3> Or for the functionally inclined - S & K combinators:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus)

I just found this document which describes a Q combinator that can be used to define S & K:

[http://www.cs.uu.nl/research/techreps/repo/CS-1989/1989-14.p...](http://www.cs.uu.nl/research/techreps/repo/CS-1989/1989-14.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand the definition of Q from that paper. Q = \xyz.x right? But that requires assuming lambda calculus, which is small I guess but not what I would call minimal.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can express it formally in terms of a rewrite rule: If Δ is a derivation ending in an expression of the form α(((Qβ)γ)δ)ι, then Δ followed by the term αβι is a derivation.

Writing it as \xyz.x is just a less noisy way of saying that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > These systems are Turing-complete when you add an external tape using I/O, > but so is a finite-state machine!

There is a related concept called Bounded-Storage Machine for memory-bounded TM-like abstractions. This computation model is very common with esoteric programming languages. [http://esolangs.org/wiki/Bounded- storage_machine](http://esolangs.org/wiki/Bounded-storage_machine)

</comment><comment><USER8> I still have difficulty understanding exactly what a Turing machine is.

<comment><USER9> I suggest reading Turing's paper in the form of Charles Petzold's book _The Annotated Turing_ [0].

0\. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0470229055](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0470229055)

<comment><USER10> Fantastic book, I thought Turing machines were just some abstract concept just exploring computer science until Petzold opened my eyes.

<comment><USER11> You'll love this video then if you haven't already seen it: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3keLeMwfHY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3keLeMwfHY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Similar vein:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5261598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5261598)

</comment><comment><USER13> > But x86 itself also has a limit on addressable memory. So does C, because > sizeof(void *) is finite. These systems are Turing-complete when you add an > external tape using I/O, but so is a finite-state machine!

You could argue that I/O operations (which can emulate an unbounded tape) are defined in the C standard library, which is of course not the case of finite state machines.

So in absence of instantiation bounds C together with the C standard library IS Turing complete.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the other extreme, there was the _Unlimited Register Machine (URM)_ [1] specified on Nigel J. Cutland's book: _Computability, An introduction to recursive function theory_.

[1] [http://faculty.oxy.edu/rnaimi/home/URMsim.htm](http://faculty.oxy.edu/rnaimi/home/URMsim.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought MOV alone was turing complete.

<comment><USER16> MOV is only Turing-complete if you also add in a looping mechanism (which is to say, MOV alone is not Turing-complete). This uses unconditional jumps to "constant" addresses (as opposed to conditional branches or jumps to the address held in some register) and dynamically overwrites their target addresses, so that includes its own looping mechanism.

<comment><USER17> Page fault handling in itself is Turing complete. No instructions needed.

> [https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop- > program/pr...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop- > program/presentation/bangert)</comment></comment></comment>


9 yo girl RPG kickstarter update show she has no interest of making the game - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWY5iPQ9fno

<comment><AUTHOR> And I can say this is a great way to prove you are a good fund raiser, by getting 20k from losers that donate to a already rich person, that promised to do something that the person won't do.

</comment><comment><USER2> Poor girl.</comment>


Ask HN: Your thoughts on new Google's AI assistant? - <AUTHOR> Will this become an ubiquitous equipment at home ? <comment><USER2> It looks like an evolution of what they've already got and I've found Google Now to be very useful. Getting bookings placed into my calendar automatically when emailed plus notifications telling me when to leave to get to a location on time are fantastic.

But I think maybe at I'm already too old to be fully comfortable with talking to a device in my home or phone conversationally.

I'm sure kids will grow up with it and be normalised to asking their assistant to do things for them, whilst I'll always think of it as bit of a novelty in the same way that some people view smartphones.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking other way around - my Dad could rely on voice to make calls from skype /google hangout. Sometime he gets confused if interface gets changed and he rarely uses it.</comment></comment>


Proposed server purchase for GitLab.com - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/11/proposed-server-purchase-for-gitlab-com/? <comment><AUTHOR> I'll be here all day to learn from suggestions. I'm hoping for much feedback so please reference questions with the letter and number: 'Regarding R1'.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13153031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13153031)</comment>


Show HN: chalkflow.com - Version control for design - <AUTHOR> http://chalkflow.com/

<comment><USER2> "This demo only works in Google Chrome"

That's an instant bounce for me, and probably quite a large portion of their audience. With no idea what the product does, I've no reason to bookmark this for later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We've added a slideshow so that visitors without Chrome can at least get an idea of what we're doing: <http://chalkflow.com/slideshow></comment></comment>


Mikrotik router as OpenVPN Client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/missinglink/mikrotik-openvpn-client <comment><USER2> Mikrotik's support for OpenVPN/IPsec is a joke. They should just allow to specify plain openvpn configuration instead. I would not recommend these routers with original firmware.

<comment><USER3> No UDP support after all these years is really quite shameful. Tunneling TCP over TCP is insanely bad, the slightest packet loss and your connections are toast.

<comment><USER4> still not? I was moaning about this in 2006. I can't imagine why Mikrotik can't be bothered to implement UDP for OpenVPN when they have added so many other features.

This is my #1 gripe with mikrotik, you can't figure out if the feature you want to use is half-baked or not without testing it. And then once it works you had better not upgrade versions or it may very well break.

Finding a version which has all the features you need working used to be a nightmare.

<comment><USER5> Yea...this is a problem with them.

I recently spent several hours trying to implement BFD...only to find out it's broken on CCR, known to be broken, and won't be fixed any time soon [1]

But to be fair, I've run across similar things in Cisco land. Spend hours trying to get something to work, when I finally run across an single line somewhere on their site that says what I'm trying to do doesn't work with CEF and I have to disable CEF if I want it to work. Which cuts my throughput by 10x.

[1] [http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=108280](http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=108280)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At one point I was kind of excited about Mikrotik routers. They seemed pretty beefy, a bit pricey, but cool as a device support OpenWRT and having an OS that they said was "even better" than OpenWRT.

However everything I looked at was somewhat disappointing. One router I was looking at had an unpowered USB port, that was a low speed (USB 1), which just seemed to be a weird caveat when consumer routers of the time were all USB-2 and capable of running at least a small pocket hard drive or at least mount a USB key.

At this point there seems to be a lot of good commercial routers which are strong, cheap, and don't require much blob code etc and are easy to find (sometimes it was vague what kind of chips you'd get with different commercial hardware).

<comment><USER7> I guess I'm too used to Cisco and Juniper pricing, but "pricey" is the last thing that comes to mind when I think of Microtik... When you say "good commercial routers" that are cheaper, are you talking about consumer hardware? I'm curious what you prefer.

I don't have any Microtik hardware at all, so I don't have any vested interest here - I am just curious what people are liking these days. The vast majority of the consumer networking gear I've tried has been terrible, even with alternate firmware (e.g. OpenWRT doesn't keep crappy Linksys routers from overheating).

<comment><USER8> I'm using a $50 Mikrotik hAP AC Lite (RB952Ui-5ac2nD-US) as a home router. It's not the most high-powered router — it only has a single 5GHz radio, no antenna, and the Ethernet port is 10/100 only — but it's stunningly solid.

Previously I had, over the span of 18 months, an ASUS "Dark Knight" (whose 5GHz network slowly faded and then _disappeared_, apparently a known issue), an ASUS RT-AC66U (frequently just choked, requiring a reboot), an a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (same, and also issues with unstable wifi).

By contrast, the Mikrotik has been rock stable for the time I've had it (6 months). I also love the WebFig UI. It's a lot more technical than consumer routers, but it's responsive, consistent and doesn't hide any technical details from me. I don't need 90% of the RouterOS features, but I know that if I needed something obscure, I could set it up. You basically get an industrial-quality Linux-based router/switch OS for almost nothing.

(I do like the fine-grained metrics, though. You can get bandwith and connection data not just per interface, but also per NAT rule, for example.)

<comment><USER5> I cut my teeth at an "ISP" that would order a business DSL line at a MDU/Apartment complex, run it through a Linksys router, then over the phone wiring using 2-wire "HomePNA" devices and charge each person $30/month for the service.

The routers locked up so much they had one of those plug-in timers [1] set to reboot the router each night during their 'daily maintenance period'. They wouldn't even dispatch someone to do it when they started getting calls.

[1] [http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-15153-GE- Mechanical-24-Hour-1-O...](http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-15153-GE- Mechanical-24-Hour-1-Outlet-Plug-In-Timer/25524763)

<comment><USER8> That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on HN.

<comment><USER5> I left after about 6 months. This was around 2001.

They also got in trouble with the LEC(and law enforcement) for using the LEC copper to interconnect their equipment between buildings. It was a common practice for them to tone out pairs in a neighborhood and patch their own wires in using the LEC's boxes and wiring.

They are no longer in business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mikrotik was pre-Ubnt and had excellent hardware lineups. These days Ubnt is miles ahead in the router/wireless-board field, which puzzled me.

While Mikrotick sells its RouterOS, it's not that hard to install Openwrt on it. Ubnt was quite Openwrt friendly at the start, not so any more.

These days I'm just assembling my own x86 routers. PCengines and Soekris do not have the best performance/price ratio nowadays, and they somehow just feel a bit out of date.

<comment><USER5> I have personally deployed about 100 Mikrotik routers and can say they work well for what they do.

They're not designed to be a home router and the learning curve if you want to use one like that would be similar to someone without Cisco IOS knowledge trying to configure a Cisco IOS device as a home router.

Not many routers can do 5-10gb/s+ throughput for the price. Their most recent model has 8x10Gb ports, costs USD $2,500 and will route the full 80gb/s [1]

They have come a long way since the RB433 and running on Soekris/PCEngines boards. UBNT is just getting started in the real router field(Not their Radio- with-a-router, those are quite mature now but very limited in features) and I do not care for their current EdgeRouter UI. It's a mess. For example: You need local access just to add the interface you're accessing it from to a bridge. (Because you can't add an interface WITH an IP on it to a bridge, and you can't remove the IP from the interface without losing access. You can apply multiple commands at once, but the command validation doesn't honor the order that you enter them, thus tosses an error because it tries to add the interface to the bridge before removing the IP)

Sure you can put something x86 together and run one of the many many firewall/routing OSes, or even roll your own with (pick your flavor)Linux, Zebra and IPTables, but I don't have time to make something work and prefer something that just works and isn't priced at the Cisco/Juniper level.

I wouldn't recommend either for mission-critical ENTERPRISE grade routing, without significant planning into redundancy, but, if you are doing things at that level, then you probably have the funds to purchase enterprise grade gear.

[1] [http://www.stubarea51.net/2015/10/09/mikrotik- ccr1072-1g-8s-...](http://www.stubarea51.net/2015/10/09/mikrotik- ccr1072-1g-8s-review-part-3-80-gbps-throughput-testing/)

<comment><USER10> "Their most recent model has 8x10Gb ports, costs USD $2,500 and will route the full 80gb/s"

No, it won't route 80Gbps, because any single flow on a CCR uses a single core on their multi core Tilera CPUs. The CCRs struggle to really do 10Gbps of real world IP transit traffic.

If you're pushing 5Gbps+ of your customers' IP traffic in a daily sine wave pattern to/from upstream and adjacent BGP peers (paid IP transit and peering at a local IX), and have $2,500 to spend, you will be MUCH better off buying a proper routing platform that has things like hotswap fan trays, hotswap 1+1 or N+1 power supplies, redundant hotswap routing engines, etc. You can do this with a used/refurb Cisco or Juniper for the same price as the higher end Mikrotiks. I can build a Cisco 7604 or 7606 with dual RSP720 for less than $2000.

The CCRs have a single motherboard in them that is about the same quality as a $85 PC motherboard. If you're running an ISP that is moving multi-Gbps of customer traffic and have potentially thousands of singlehomed customers downstream of you, do you want to rely on a 'core' router that has absolutely zero hardware redundancy?

Mikrotiks have their place at edge and small aggregation but when you start talking about things that are $2,000+, please, buy a real router.

<comment><USER5> What ISP needs a single flow to exceed 1gb? I would venture to say _most_ non- storage networks don't have single flow requirements in the Gb/s.

I can buy 3 CCR routers and run OSPF/BGP/etc... on them to provide redundancy. The likelyhood of all 3 failing at once is slim and I'm still an order of magnitude cheaper than an equivalent Cisco/Juniper setup. Yes, dynamic routing takes a few seconds to converge, so an unplanned failure will result in a short disruption in connectivity, but planned maintenance can be done seamlessly, including power supply replacement(since only one model has hot- swappable power supplies). I do not deploy any single-power models and have not had a single router fail in the 2 years I have been deploying them. I have had a $6500 Cisco ASA fail, twice.

I am a fan of all 3. Cisco and Juniper make great equipment. So does Mikrotik. Each one is a tool that must be used properly and the right one needs to be selected for the job and requirements.

<comment><USER10> Thing is, it's not an 'order of magnitude' different in price... Three $2500 CCRs vs, what? I know somebody who recently bought a whole Juniper MX960 for around $10,000. For a serious ISP that is a big jump in capability and resiliency.

If looking at used/refurb core routing platforms these days, anything that is not capable of being upgraded to a reasonable density of 100GbE is selling for very affordable prices now. Even systems that are fully modular and redundant and capable of more than 60 10GbE interfaces in one chassis, such as the MX480 or MX960. Or an ASR9006/ASR9010 with first generation linecards.

<comment><USER5> I'm seeing used, empty, MX480s in the range of $13k on ebay[1]. Plus $3k for add in 10g cards[2]

And I have to pay for support if I want to get updates, security patches, etc... [3]

And I need 2+ of them if I want to multi-home.

So I'm buying a used device of unknown history, that someone is selling for unknown reasons(could be a working pull, could be something with an obscure problem that will surface 3 months later), without a hardware warranty or support, with outdated software, and going to trust my entire network with it and it's internal redundancy. If I could get 3 for that price I might consider it.

I like the SpaceX approach. Don't trust one big expensive engine to get you where you're going. It probably won't fail, but if it does, you're toast. Trust 9 cheaper ones and have enough redundancy that if/when one does fail, you shrug and keep going and just replace it before the next launch.

[1] [http://www.ebay.com/itm/221776643106](http://www.ebay.com/itm/221776643106)

[2] [http://www.ebay.com/itm/122004198861](http://www.ebay.com/itm/122004198861)

[3] [http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/release- independent/ju...](http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/release- independent/junos/topics/task/installation/software-packages-downloading.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I bought a Mikrotik a month or two ago, expressly so I could install OpenWRT on it, and use it to get around the Chinese firewall with Shadowsocks. The OpenWRT install never worked, so now I just have a (pretty nice) router, doing what routers are supposed to do. It's long since that OpenVPN didn't work in China, but this should provide a good learning experience, and who knows, maybe it will lead me to something that works.

<comment><USER12> To get around GFW, use openconnect instead. That is as or more secure than OpenVPN, and not current filtered.

<comment><USER13> > That is as or more secure than OpenVPN

How does it achieve that? They both use TLS, in both, you can pick your ciphers.

Additionaly, they both use OpenSSL, which is often found buggy and the ciphers are not hw accelerated.

<comment><USER14> OpenVPN uses its own non-TLS UDP protocol to carry traffic (with an optional TCP fallback), and only uses TLS for connection setup. ref: [https://wiki.wireshark.org/OpenVPN](https://wiki.wireshark.org/OpenVPN)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can run OpenWRT as a virtual router (MetaRouter) on top of Mikrotik. That would allow you to get around the TCP limit. Does anyone have any experience with running OpenWRT as a MetaRouter?

<comment><USER16> I've done it. It works fine. You just have to keep in mind that most of the Routerboard products have limited RAM, like any other embedded device.

The only catch is that anything done inside of OpenWRT has to be configured by hand from a terminal (obviously), instead of through Mikrotik's admin console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Quite handy. If anyone has OpenWrt hardware like me, OpenVpn clients and servers work good enough and the setup is well documented: [https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/vpn.openvpn](https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/vpn.openvpn)

<comment><USER18> For a beginner - I would suggest DD-wrt as its more beginner friendly as compared to Open-Wrt; OPENVPN documentation is pretty good - [https://www.dd- wrt.com/wiki/index.php/OpenVPN](https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/OpenVPN)

As for Router support - the best one would be the Archer C7 from TPLink ([http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#TP- Li...](http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#TP-Link))

<comment><USER13> Just make sure, what batch of C7s are you buying from.

TPLink started to lock down the firmware, due to the new regulation about locking down wifi devices. So if you get an unlocked C7, you are fine, if locked, you get to keep their firmware on the device.

Currently, the only safe choices for OpenWRT are Linksys WRT1900ACS and Turris Omnia. Both are a bit pricier.

<comment><USER18> They are selling the C7 v2's as of now from amazon - dd-wrt has the firmware for it..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a friend who's part of a startup here in the UK that makes routers for gamers called NetDuma[1]. The routers they sell have a VPN client like this ready to go, I've got one and it works well.

1\. [http://www.netduma.com/](http://www.netduma.com/)

<comment><USER3> These are actually Mikrotik devices too, just with OpenWRT pre-installed instead of their proprietary RouterOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Be aware that very few routers actually have enough power to do openvpn encryption with higher bandwith (20Mbit+) links and 256CBC encryption. You may get better results by downgrading your cipher (not every vpn provider supports that) To achieve good performance you are looking for hardware with Intel QuickAssist, I would recommend putting pfsense on something like [http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC- VE-2440.aspx](http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-2440.aspx)

<comment><USER21> I actually just built one with a C2758 (8 core atom) supermicro board. I put PFsense on it and it's been running great. I have gigabit internet at home, so I opted for the more powerful box. A lot of people on the pfsense forums seem to use one form of these boards.

2 core: [http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SR...](http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2358F.cfm)

4 core: [http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SR...](http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2558F.cfm)

8 core: [http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SR...](http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2758F.cfm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I started using pfSense on itx Intel-based hardware and have been quite happy with the results, though using it with modern hardware (recommended with today's faster broadband speeds) means it's usually a little pricier than most consumer devices. Now there's news that the pfSense team is working on a small, ARM-based device which sounds like it'd give Miktotik devices competition. If you can hold out a bit, it might be worth the wait.

</comment><comment><USER18> just want to suggest this script for OPENVPN setup - much easier to setup for multiple clients - [https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn- install](https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm a network engineer for an ISP (5 years now; ~8 years in the same role at a .edu before this) and I am very much in the Cisco/Juniper camp.

When I started at the ISP, I had never even heard of Mikrotik. Having been using high-end Cisco/Juniper gear for years, I was quite skeptical that those cheap little Mikrotiks were worth a damn.

I've actually been quite surprised. While all of my "critical" infrastructure runs on Cisco, I've got several Mikrotik routers running in production, almost exclusively as access concentrators (for PPPoE sessions). I really use very little of their features, but they handle PPPoE and OSPF just fine.

We also have an MSP side, which is mostly our ISP customers whom we also handle managing their local networks for. Our guys have deployed a handful of Mikrotiks at the edge of these customer networks as well but, again, this is just basic office router functionality (DHCP, NAT, firewalling, etc.).

For the price point, they're actually pretty decent devices. I don't own any myself (excluding a couple in my "networking test lab" here at home, but those belong to $work) and wouldn't personally use one. This is mostly on principle -- I disagree with their beliefs when it comes to the GPL and compliance.

Also, I wouldn't recommend using them for anything you deem "critical" or even "really important". Just read through the Changelogs for their firmware releases -- some of the bugs/fixes do not instill confidence in their software engineering.

FWIW, my router at home (on a fiber connection) is (was?) designed and sold as a RouterOS device [0], although I removed the Mikrotik CF card and replaced it with another one that I installed an OpenBSD image onto [1]. It's mounted read-only (except when I want to modify things, of course) to preserve the lifetime but lately, I've been considering installing an SSD into it. It's actually a pretty powerful (albeit low-end) PC disguised as a router. It can easily provided all the basic network services one might need at home (DHCP, DNS, NAT, firewalling, TFTP, etc.). It wasn't cheap, though -- $600, IIRC, but it's a few years old now. I wrote a bit more about it [2] a few months ago.

[0]: [http://www.balticnetworks.com/docs/routermaxx%206%20port.pdf](http://www.balticnetworks.com/docs/routermaxx%206%20port.pdf) (PDF)

[1]: [http://www.nmedia.net/flashrd/](http://www.nmedia.net/flashrd/)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796573)

</comment><comment><USER24> good site</comment>


TechCrunch redesign is terrible - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/13/welcome-to-the-new-techcrunch/ <comment><USER2> It doesn't appeal to me particularly on a first glance but I have a rule I call the "Slate.com Rule of Web Site Redesign".

A few years ago I found that every time Slate did a redesign I absolutely despised it and felt they'd ruined everything. Then in a few weeks I'd get used to the new layouts and feel happy again. Then they'd redesign and I'd hate the new design and wish for the old (new) one back.

So the rule is: "All redesigns will be hated in the short term and accepted in the long term."

I have a feeling this one will be no different :)

<comment><USER3> I would generally agree, but this business of scrolling to the bottom and being navigated away I'm in no way going to get used to. I would modify your principle to cover aesthetics, but not key browser functionality. I'm going to get used to a new UI, new colors and design philosophies, but I never get used to scrolljacking, and some other anti-functional "features" on sites.

<comment><USER4> "scrolljacking"

I couldn't agree more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Worst parts:

* Scrolling to the end of an article jolts you back into the main feed.

* Reading progress meter is too small and out of view. Should be able to feel the progress from peripheral vision.

* Titles in list view are squished and difficult to read quickly.

* Article preview text is almost always useless. If you insist on having something here, consider 3 highlight bullets.

* Top-level navigation is now even more prominent on desktop when I venture a guess that less than 5% of users ever touch it.

<comment><USER5> > * Scrolling to the end of an article jolts you back into the main feed.

Yeah seriously, what on earth is this. What if I want to scroll back up and read some tidbit earlier in the article? Well, it actually _navigates_ you away, so you have to hit the back button - can't just scroll back to where you were, even though it doesn't seem like you navigated at all. It's fucking confusing and it takes control away from me that I have on literally every other website. And there's no indication that it's going to navigate you away besides a little check mark.

Who the heck thought this was a good idea?

<comment><USER6> This is the first time I've ever been upset that a page loaded _too fast_ , because a slow redirect at least would have showed me what happened. Instead, I spent several seconds absolutely baffled and unsure how to get to the article. Since no sane person would ever put a page redirect on a scroll event, I figured it had to be some kind of overlay!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ng-user Viewing on a vertical browser is awful... there's two columns - one on the left-hand side about 60% of the view port which contains every little piece of content and the 40% remainder on the right-hand side is completely blank white space.

I've got an adblocker enabled so perhaps the right-hand side is supposed to be littered with ads? Either way the readability factor has been thrown out the window, thankfully FireFox's reader view comes in handy again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't scroll down too far or the article will disappear, FYI (yikes).

<comment><USER8> I can see that meeting:

       - Stats show readers leave the site after reading an article... those dumb readers...
       - Ey! Let's give them more articles before they leave!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Woa, that's some title editorializing.

</comment><comment><USER9> The joys of RSS readers: I basically don't know that a site has redesigned itself until they make a blog post about it or i have to click through because the RSS post is truncated.

<comment><USER10> Their rss posts used to include images, now it's just text, cut in the middle of the word.

<comment><USER9> the lack of images doesn't really bother me; trimming the text is a serious nuisance.

<comment><USER11> I think we fixed this. Try again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone care to list things that they find terrible?

( Not trolling, really curious about bad UI design that aren't readily apparent to me. )

</comment><comment><USER13> Reading this on a mobile device at first I thought: "Why? It's not that bad."

Then I scrolled down to the bottom and now I agree.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mystery meat navigation all over the place. Inconsistent scrolling behavior on mobile. I do like that the articles are mostly uninterrupted text and legible.

Edit: also don't like the variable pop-in from the top that goes away at some point while you're scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER15> It really is a shame, I don't understand who this appeals to. Maybe it looks good on a mobile phone screen?

</comment><comment><USER16> Can you elaborate a bit on why you think it's terrible?

<comment><USER6> My first-glance reaction was "eh, they cleaned it up, looks fine". I'd like a slightly wider text column, but it's not a big deal.

But the page interactivity is poisonously bad.

\- There's a share bar at the bottom which collapses distractingly on first scroll.

\- The share bar is hover-sensitive, and 'expands' by changing what's under your cursor from a menu icon to a Facebook share link. I'd call "change under cursor" a dark pattern, especially for a social share link.

\- The share menu icon looks like a "go to top of page" button, which lead me to click it accidentally. Even if you notice the hover event and scroll over to its new location, it animates as a button but does nothing!

\- There's an in-page 'X' to close back to the TechCrunch homepage, which is odd. And it's an overlay that scrolls downpage with you, which is annoying - especially since it sits on top of images.

\- It's got an animation on the X to show how far you've read, which is distracting and pointless. When you hit the article bottom, it does a dramatic and annoying transition to a checkmark.

\- If you scroll down too far, _the page closes_. It takes you back to the homepage. Scrolling moves within a page, and should always be reversible by scrolling back. Instead, they put a damn redirect on a scroll event!

\- And in 'dark patterns' territory, there's content below the bottom of the scroll event! You're actively baited into triggering a terrible mechanic I've never seen anywhere else.</comment></comment>