Ask HN: Can software qa skills translate to telecommuting gigs? - <AUTHOR>

Say if somebody had 6+ years of QA experience, primarily on the automation side of it including unit test experience with things like JUnit, what if they wanted to transition into some kind of telecommuting gig? Is this doable? Are there websites specific to finding telecommuting gigs? Say somebody loved testing software, writing scripts for it, and so forth, but just was not crazy about office b.s. like "tps reports" and so forth and wanted to kind of do the work from home on a consultant kind of basis. How might one go about that? Appreciate any thoughts you guys might have. <comment><USER2> James Bach turned QA into an independent gig. There are a few others who have significant public personae. I haven't checked in on his blog, lately; it's here:

<http://www.satisfice.com/blog/>

<http://www.satisfice.com/recommends.shtml>

I don't know whether this will be any use to you. Hope it helps, though.</comment>


Copy - Like Dropbox with reasonable pricing and free space - <AUTHOR> https://copy.com?r=O4uuKh

<comment> workhere-io [https://www.copy.com/about/tos](https://www.copy.com/about/tos) : _if a Free Account is inactive for a significant period of time, then Copy may delete any or all of Your Files._

Should be a bit more transparent (i.e., should name an exact number of months or days before the account is deleted). I realize that Copy will warn you 30 days before account deletion, but still...

Also, an inactivity clause like that is a dealbreaker for me - unless we're talking about a _really_ long inactivity period such as two years or more.

<comment><USER2> Do you think you get a warning?

<comment> workhere-io From the TOS: _At least 30 days notice will be provided to the associated email address(es) on a Copy account in the event of [...] deletion of data due to inactivity._</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you use resume books to hire from colleges? - <AUTHOR>

If yes how do you filter candidates for further interviews ? <comment><USER2> Whats a resume book?</comment>


Our security auditor is an idiot. How do I give him the information he wants? - <AUTHOR> http://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-auditor-is-an-idiot-how-do-i-give-him-the-information-he-wants <comment><USER2> Definitely seems less like a auditor (I believe asking for some of that is flat out illegal) and more like a hacker posing as a auditor, trying to get passwords/creditcard #'s.

<comment><USER3> Bang on. Most likely social engineering. If this were actually an employee, they should be fired/told to fuck off.

<comment><USER4> A social engineer wouldn't try for this much data. One SSH key or password would be enough. I'm going with the fucking-retarded-auditor theory.

<comment><USER5> Then again, it could be a social engineer trying to play off the commonly-held belief that an actual social engineer wouldn't ask for something so blatantly illegal.

<comment><USER6> You think too much. Usually, the simplest explanation is also the correct one. I put my money on retarded auditor who thinks he's more clever and powerful than he is.

<comment><USER5> It never hurts to be careful. When it comes to security, defense requires closing all possible holes, while offense requires finding only one. It would be irresponsible for the employee not to at least be cautious when dealing with this auditor. It's worth taking a few minutes to call the company performing the audits and verify that the auditor is who he says he is.

<comment><USER7> IMO, that should actually be part of the process of passing a security audit. Which suggests someone who is doing an audit will ask for information that if given to him will cause you to fail the audit.

<comment><USER8> Confirming that he is an auditor is insufficient. A sufficiently clever legitimate auditor might attempt social engineering attacks and fail you if they succeed.

In fact, this seems like a more effective way to sniff out plaintext password storage than saying "show me everywhere you touch passwords and how they're encrypted".

<comment><USER7> Sorry, if I was unclear. Confirming that he is an auditor should be a checkbox in an audit as should be limiting the information provided to an auditor. While I like your idea that it would show if they could get access to users passwords even handing out the salted password list is a bad idea.

One of the more interesting government audits I have heard about was the auditor did a basic internal audit and said he was part of physical secuity ect so people knew he was part of the audit team. He then showed up late, turning off the power supply to the building and then pointing at people who show up at the generator and saying "bang your dead" this is part of an audit etc. If they failed to call security before everyone was "dead" they where considered to have failed that part of the audit. He also attempted to get into the building without showing up on camera's ect. All of which sounds like a fun job and a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a case of social engineering, not of a security auditor, but of the poster. The poster wants to know an easy way to collect public and private SSH keys and fake 6 months of inbound traffic. There is no auditor.

Maybe the poster is writing a book on cracking systems? Who knows. But it smells like a hoax.

<comment><USER10> What is 'hard' about harvesting public and private keys? Especially if you are the sysadmin.

What purpose would faking 6 months of inbound traffic serve? If he just wanted to cover his tracks, wouldn't he just erase logs rather than trying to make them look legit? That would seem like doing things the hard way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is suspicious:

      *The "new security policies" were introduced two weeks
       before our audit, and the six months historical logging
       was not required before the policy changes.

These "policies" were introduced by whom? His payment processor or by his company on the advice of this "auditor"? Or did the OP make this up?

      In short, I need;

        A way to 'fake' six months worth of password changes
        and make it look valid

        A way to 'fake' six months of inbound file transfers

Why is the poster requesting help generating plausible fake data? Is he naive? Afraid of losing his job? Unaware of the legal implications?

<comment><USER12> Yes, I wondered the same thing! Aside from the legal implications, the OP seems to have some questionable ethics as well.

<comment><USER13> What's unethical about that? If politics have required him to do provide information he can't legally provide, falsifying the information seems like the only reasonable course of action.

Of course, quitting is the other out, but I do think he has a moral obligation to prevent his company from handing any of this information over to the auditor.

<comment><USER14> The only ethical course of action is to stop the circus and explain to your manager:

\- what this guy is asking for

\- how that is in violation of the PCI data security standard

\- explain that you are not able, and not allowed to provide this information

\- explain that this likely means the auditor is a hack and steps need to be taken to get a proper auditor

<comment><USER15> I suspect either his manager knows, or he is in a position where he doesn't have a manager.

To quote: _if I don't provide this information we loose access to our payments platform_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who thinks the story is a little too perfect and ridiculous? It is much more likely that the author simply fabricated the story.

He did manage to start a very popular thread, and get a ton of people with really high rep to respond AND get a link on HN. He just threw out some bait, and the community swarmed like starving fish.

<comment><USER6> And he gains what, exactly, from doing this? Posting anonymously, he doesn't get any credit from posting the story.

<comment><USER17> It's called trolling. It's been done since there were bangs in people's email addresses.

The modern currency for trolls is "lulz".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everyone so far has focused on the auditor, but I want to know why the OP thinks faking the requested data is an acceptable response. That disturbs me and nobody else commented on it!

<comment><USER8> Handing over the data is certainly not an acceptable response. If it's the sort of organization that makes saying no very hard, and leaving looks impractical, this may be the best option. Sometimes all you can do with a prestigious idiot is work around him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps the auditor is smarter than everyone thinks and is expecting the sysadmin to come to him empty handed and with an explanation as to why the requirements aren't reasonable.

<comment><USER19> The poster has already tried that, which is when the "auditor" replied with the "10 years experience" rant. If this actually is his tactic, then he should be fired simply on the principle that his modus operandi _will_ cost the company clients, as it seems to be in this case. If he just has his head up his ass, then he needs to be fired for gross incompetence and the company may need to notify anyone that he's previously certified that they need to be recertified or at least notify them that there's a potential problem.

The "social engineering" idea is definitely worth considering, and the poster definitely needs to run this up the flag pole to his senior management. Preferably, this email would also have the words "contact our legal counsel" prominently displayed.

<comment><USER20> Allegedly ten years of experience is more than anyone on Stack Overflow. I had no idea the site was populated by only teenagers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I flagged this. The likely explanation is that this is just a troll -- 2-day- old account, this is the only question that's been asked on it. There's no way that somebody that's been doing audits for 10 years would ask for this stuff, and there's no way any server admin would even consider providing the information. ...At least, any server admin that shouldn't be yoinked back down to making patch cables.

<comment><USER21> It's a throwaway account. It has "throwaway" in its name. The question ends with the asker explaining that he's posting it from a throwaway account because he doesn't want his real name associated with it. How many questions would you expect a throwaway account to have?

<comment><USER17> I know what throwaway accounts are, and I read his username.

It's still a troll.

<comment><USER22> If there's a kind of person on the internet that I dislike more than trolls, it is people who see trolls in everyone.

<comment><USER23> The Internet is a great opportunity for everyone to form relationships and build bridges with one another. Every bridge has a troll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Please post the name of the company that the security auditor works for.

<comment><USER25> Please post the name of the security auditor. This is completely unprofessional and insecure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if, when confronted about how ridiculous the requests were, the auditor will claim to have been testing how well the admins resisted social engineering?

<comment><USER27> I was in exactly that situation myself recently. However I was hungry and the auditor was cute and I told her I would give her the root password in exchange for a donut. Which she dutifully wrote down on her clipboard. Now the whole company has to go on training. I don't even know the root password!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That "auditor" is an idiot as some of the posters have mentioned already. I was like "No" and then I got to the "both private and public keys" and I was like "Hell no!".</comment>


PageRank for shipping - <AUTHOR> http://www.tompinckney.com/2010/02/pagerank-for-shipping.html <comment><USER2>
         Instead of looking at a supplier to decide how they
         should rank, Panjiva looks at the people buying from
         those suppliers. The network amongst suppliers and
         buyers gives a much more truthful representation of what
         a supplier is really good at building than purely
         analyzing the suppliers themselves.

Data is better than Marketing-speak.

<comment><USER3> The idea is that you'd probably trust the guy who actually sold 1,000 dresses to Macys more than the guy who just says they're a great dress manufacturer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Brilliant idea, but how are they going to harvest the shipping data - I don't believe b2b trading is publicly available.

Like Apple for instance, I'm sure they have NDA's for all their suppliers. Companies probably treat this as trade secrets so competitors can't source from the same factory they are buying from.

<comment><USER5> It looks like they're using the following data sources:

U.S. Customs Import Data

Hong Kong Trade Development Council Data

DP Information Group Reports

EDDI Red Flag Database

China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (SINOSURE) Reports

Social Accountability International Compliance Data

TriVista Sourcing Data

Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) Compliance Data

CUSTOMS Info Reports</comment></comment>


MDN celebrates 10 years of documenting Your Web - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/07/23/mdn-celebrates-10-years-of-documenting-your-web/ <comment><USER2> MDN always has the most relevant and easy to read documentation for me, but it's a shame it doesn't get ranked more highly in search engines. Whenever I forget the syntax for a JS or CSS property, I'll always type it into Google and append MDN to make sure I get what I want quickly.

<comment><USER3> It is a shame. I'm constantly astounded and frustrated at how effective w3school's SEO is. Their content is not terrible by any means but it's simply not nearly as comprehensive or authoritative as MDN and others. And because of the name, quite often they even outrank w3.org when I'm trying to find the actual specifications themselves!</comment></comment>


Don't lose your mail: a tale of horror - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/07/31/mail-loss/ <comment><USER2> Not an article; just an advert.</comment>


Boulder Will Host the First National 'YIMBY' Conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/boulder-will-host-the-first-national-yimby-conference/481548/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29 <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPm54nXMX7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPm54nXMX7E)</comment>


An artist-mathematician illuminates a world of infinite beauty - <AUTHOR> http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2009/features/mapping.html <comment><USER2> An easily understood proof of Cantor's Theorem: [http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/cantor_theorem/...](http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/cantor_theorem/index.asp)

"Take a minute to ponder what this means. Cantor's Theorem shows that given any set, there is another set which is 'larger' in the special sense of being a bigger kind of infinity. Hence, there can be no 'largest infinity' either! The kinds of infinity are therefore 'infinite!"

<comment><USER3> Infinity is thus far the most violent idea humanity has come up with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the first paragraph of this article, but at this point:

"Art starts to happen when we project these personal maps back out on the world. Each of us has an impulse to express his or her experience of reality."

He lost me. This is the kind of formulaic definition of art you hear all too often. The reason art isn't math is that there is no such formula. Art is contradicts itself. It's messy and evades attempts to pin it down.

<comment><USER5> Self-expression, pursuit of aesthetic ideal and refinement of craft are three distinct though frequently overlapping pursuits all called 'art'. The problem with definitions of art is that they usually fail to address the polysemy of the word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is kinda cool but the pictures are the standard interpretations of what mathematicians imagine. I would have liked to see some non-standard approach with a bit more abstraction.

<comment><USER7> I don't know about the "standard interpretation"... the first picture is usually expressed with all of the "squares" of equal size (it's a matrix), and an "x" through each digit at (x_n, y_n), n being positive integers.</comment></comment>


How Vera Rubin changed science - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/12/27/how-vera-rubin-changed-science/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty sad how the work of Kent Ford that carried out the experiment that gave observational confirmation of Dark Matter with Vera Rubin is being totally forgotten by history.

As the work of people like Jacobus Kapteyn, half a century before that actually had the courage to propose to the astronomical community something as abstract at the time as Dark Matter.

Sexism has these problems unfortunately...</comment>


Google can be forced to pull results globally, Canada supreme court rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/28/canada-google-results-supreme-court <comment><USER2> This needs to be rejected whole sale. One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The censorship issues that have been cropping up lately in these regards are appalling. The "hate speech" legislature of many EU nations comes to mind. If that insanity were to be enforced "world wide" it's seriously time for new service providers to step up that aren't so money hungry for those markets to capitulate.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Google should have subsidiaries in each nation it operates and obey the local law - nothing more and nothing less. Canadia courts should not have an effect on Mexico, and Iranian courts should not have an effect on the US.

Google can sell/offer it's services anywhere as long as it's legal.

<comment><USER4> So if Google operates a subsidiary in China, they should be completely immune from a lawsuit in the US, if say, they sell your private personal info to the highest bidder in that nation?

I don't see how that could be abused...

<comment><USER5> Your question at the moment is ill-defined. Carefully expand out the nationalities of the "you" who is buying the info, the nationalities of the person whom the info is about, the nationality of the subsidiary from which the information is being purchased, and the nationality under which you believe they should be suable. ("Jurisdiction", if you prefer, may replace "nationality".)

There's a lot of combinations in there, and I don't think conversation can be profitable had without being clear. It's fine to fill it in with variables, too, I'm not asking for a concrete binding, but at the very least your question as I read it now is missing whose information is being sold.

(Also note the ONLY thing I'm saying here is that you need to be more clear. I am not making any claims of my own at this time, because before I can have an opinion about an answer to a question, there needs to be a question.)

<comment><USER4> Chinese subsidiary, Chinese buyer, US citizen.

<comment><USER6> Logically, for China Google to sell your data to Chinese Buyer, then US Google must have sold your data to China Google. If it is illegal for US Google to sell data to third parties, then US Google could be sued for selling that data to China Google. However, since the USA is all about "Freedom meaning we can do what the fuck we like with your data", and not "Freedom from persecution", there's no reason that US Google couldn't do what you describe. If you were a European citizen, and it was German Google selling your data to China Google (or US Google), then that'd be a very different story.

It seems odd that you're worried about China, when you live in a nation that has been proven to wiretap you by the government, and where private transactions are authorized based on information which three credit score companies store completely insecurely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This has already been blocked by a US court [https://www.zdnet.com/article/us- court-sides-with-google-aga...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides- with-google-against-canadian-de-indexing-order/) so it's in the BC court to get modified.

<comment><USER8> > threatens free speech on the global internet," wrote Judge Edward Davila of > the US District Court for Northern California. Really, pulling listings for > a counterfeit product is a free speech issue?

That's dumb.

<comment><USER9> _Google initially de-indexed 345 specific webpages associated with Datalink on google.ca.

Equustek then sought an injunction to stop Google from displaying any part of the Datalink websites on any of its search results worldwide._

Google already agreed to pull the listings. It's when they wanted the whole website removed that they pushed back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, the Canadian courts understand precisely how the internet works... through Canadian ISPs who can be forced block traffic from some companies and not others.

The point of the ruling could be summarized this way: "If you wish to do business in Canada, with a web business that's visible in Canada, then there are certain practices you can't be guilty of elsewhere or in general."

This isn't new. For example, it is commonplace for governments to forbid domestic contracts with businesses who, elsewhere in the world, employ bribery in their ordinary course of business. Same general concept here. Don't be too surprised if tactics like this emerge elsewhere to combat online gambling, for example, since gamblers and online gambling companies have been adept at getting around superficial blocks.

It's also commonplace to allow lawsuits in the U.S. that seek to penalize governments and other institutions for conduct that happened outside the U.S., but affected people in the U.S.

A previous parallel issue in Canada concerns the publication of Federal Election results; I don't know how energetic Canada has been in enforcing it lately, but the idea was to not allow Canadian media or ISPs to facilitate publishing any election results outside a given Province until the whole country had voted, since voters in the West might not even go to the polls if they knew that the election had already been decided by votes in the East. (Canada spans a lot of time zones.)

Given the difficulty of limiting information exchange over the internet there aren't many alternatives to rulings that take into consideration a company's conduct elsewhere before allowing them to freely communicate in one's own country.

Whether you like the specific reason (trigger) for this principle being invoked is an entirely different question I don't address here; but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable.

It's also interesting to think about the controversial Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in the U.S. in this regard.

<comment><USER11> >but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable.

sounds great and all until oppressive regimes use this to do censor content they don't like. how long until russia/china/iran sends a rubberstampped a court order to censor a politcal candidate's advertisements because [made up reason]?.

<comment><USER12> They're going to do that anyway. Why should Canada abandon its own national sovereignty because of the actions of dictators on the other side of the world that would happen regardless?

<comment><USER13> It's going to be a lot harder for Google to refuse global censorship orders from countries you don't like when it's routinely taking global censorship orders from countries you like.

<comment><USER10> I agree, so I think there's at least room for a treaty between free countries as to what they could do to restrict internet traffic across borders, but won't. The European right to forget legislation, which I should have mentioned, makes any such agreement very tough, however, I suspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Terrible ruling, do they even understand how the internet works?

Oh well, when you're a global company, this is the BS you have to deal with.

<comment><USER15> Are you saying it's _impossible_ for Google to block some results globally?

Because even if I may agree with the sentiment, I don't see how technology is the problem here–differences in law are.

And if technology were the problem, that'd be the weakest possible argument. Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with.

<comment><USER16> > _" Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society > (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific > decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than > whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with._"

 _Freedom_ , to the greatest extent possible, is what matters. Invoking 'the legitimacy of process' really makes me cringe here as it's undoubtedly the exact sort of logic that led people to let religious institutions hold back the world for centuries. And that rule was not authoritarian in practice, even if it may have been in law. Poll the masses of the time and you'd see a democratic consensus for most of these incredibly backwards decisions that held society back.

So to me the question is does a court in country A have a right to demand that a company in country B behave differently in country C? Is this a reasonable restriction of _freedom_? To me that seems to be a resounding no. Perhaps you can argue there are good reasons for this, but please do so in means other than invoking some appeal to 'legitimacy', whatever that's supposed to mean.

<comment><USER15> > Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters

What a useless platitude...

Any government anywhere reduces someone's freedom in some way. Yet not no society has decided to forgo this mechanisms in the pursuit of pure "freedom".

If you actually believe in anarchistic utopias...fine. You're wrong, but many people are. But otherwise simply screaming _freedom, freedom_ just isn't an argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? What do they do then? I assume that since the US/other court wouldn't be forcing them, they would default to pulling it since Canada can apparently force them to do so, so pulling the data is mandatory in Canada but "voluntary" for the rest of the world.

Far more importantly, a single country is now censoring the speech of companies globally. That's a truly astounding verdict to issue in a court of law. What about the sovereignty of all other nations?

<comment><USER18> > So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other > jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a > court cannot legally force them to pull results globally?

More interesting is when one sovereignty prohibits and imposes sanctions on behavior mandated with sanctions for non-compliance by another sovereignty. With various states adopting broad mandates for data retention while others are adopting mandates for removal, there are likely going to be circumstances where those conflict.

<comment><USER19> that seems pretty simple, really: the company chooses one jurisdiction to operate in

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, Company A sues Company B. The Canadian courts enjoin Company B from selling the products in question. Company B ignores the injunction. The Canadian courts, because they can't think of anything better to do, request Google to remove all evidence of Company B from their results.

One wonders if Bing/DDG/etc. also received such requests?

(Apparently not ([https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.co...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.com\);) the datatechgateways link doesn't seem to be in Google's results.)

</comment><comment><USER21> OMG, no. This is ridiculous and I love Canada.

</comment><comment><USER22> "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" \-- Andrew Jackson (apocryphal)

</comment><comment><USER23> Its interesting that Google is making a 'freedom of expression' argument when they themselves heavily censor YouTube content. Google controls the platform their users use, and the Government controls the 'platform' that both companies and users use. I suppose nobody cares about the users in both cases.

<comment><USER24> Google is allowed to host or not whatever they want. They can do it wherever they want. They are not a government.

A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? That's scary/stupid.

<comment><USER23> Actually, they are not allowed to do whatever they want. Nobody is, but okay, believe that if you may.

>A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally?

If Google had individual companies in individual countries, with no data (Google's property) being shared, you might have a point. Its a bit more complicated than you make it sound.

> That's scary/stupid

I believe that things seem less scary or stupid if you take the time to understand them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this even enforceable?

<comment><USER26> Google sells over $2B worth of advertising to Canadians every year, plus a bunch of phones and other services. If they're not willing to abandon that revenue, it's certainly very enforceable.

<comment><USER20> Depends. What happens to Google's worldwide revenue when they set the precedent of removing information based on one country's legal findings. They have previously shut down most of their services in _China_ , which seems like it would be a bigger market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Let's break the Internet, one law at a time....</comment>


V.gd – The ethical URL shortener - <AUTHOR> https://v.gd/

<comment><USER2> I was wondering how a service could claim to be "ethical," but they use a carbon neutral hosting provider which I think fits the mould better than some of the other claims. "Ethical" walks a fine line between socially good and personal ideology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some other good things I like about them are that they do not enable logging for shortened links by default (which means less wastage of resources) and they clearly show the destination a shortened link points to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> See [https://v.gd/ethics.php](https://v.gd/ethics.php) for why they're 'ethical'.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the most important business metrics for your startup?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a business dashboard for small startups and mISVs, and could use some expert input.
What are the important business metrics you monitor every day? How do you monitor them?
Which are the most actionable vs. time consuming? <comment><USER2> I sell iPhone apps.

Revenue is a poor metric - lag between actions and outcome is measured in weeks if not months. It's good to track over months, but does nothing in short term, so is not actionable.

I want to know what is the expected "time to stop using the app" at any given day. If this time is getting longer my app is getting better, so this gives me a metric that's better than revenue. However, this metric can only be accurately computed in retrospect, so I need to mine for correlations with something that's available sooner.

Something like "people who use the app on the first day 5 minutes are likely to drop out in two months, but people who use it on the first day for 20 minutes are likely to stay for 6 months".

</comment><comment><USER3> On a social site: active users (defined as having visited the site in the past week).

ps: we are building a business dashboard soon, looked around and couldn't find anything. We'd want (for multiple products), on one page:

\- traffic

\- revenue

\- new subscribers/members

with some kind of historic info, data coming in from analtyics and custom rss feeds or something

</comment><comment><USER4> The two major ones that matter are:

Cost Per Acquisition and Average Revenue Per User.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ideally the same metrics any small business uses:

-Revenue -Conversion Rate -Ad CTR -Time on site -Clickthroughs to order page -CPC/CPA -CLV

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't mind sharing, how do you get revenue numbers - analytics or payment processor?

<comment><USER5> Check your bank account?</comment></comment></comment>


Finnish phoenix: The startups rising from Nokia's ashes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31044810

<comment><USER2> As the person who provided the soundbite about the Elopcalypse, I am still somewhat surprised to see it was quoted in full.

Various people came up with the term independently. I happened to be one. But I sure as hell do not claim to have been the first one. My early use of the term may have contributed to its spread among my friends and co-workers, but that's just how any meme or rumour gains its wings.

To provide some context, I _am_ still a bit sour about the Elopcalypse. I was effectively deprived of a project we had been building towards for nearly five years. I stand by the quoted comment: the resulting destruction and turmoil were the best thing to happen to the Finnish ICT space. Best, but extremely painful.

<comment><USER3> Former Nokia employee - lived in Helsinki in the early 2000s for a bit, current MSFT borg (TED/DX) (many, many years in between) -- the stories coming out of friends dealing with Elop appointment, HUT being merged with Aalto, and then the cascading fall out was always an interest.

Nokia always had (and through the legacy/current hardware (up to Icon), amazing hardware. The pivot the iPhone required and the software for such, takes time and resources -- apple ended up having the jump + resources. It was never clear to me if Nokia actually put the resources behind it.

<comment><USER4> > HUT being merged with Aalto

That happened in 2010, before the Elopcalypse got going, and you could quite well argue that it's HUT (15k students) that ate up Kauppis & TaiK (<5k combined).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The headline would be more accurate - though not as punchy - if it spoke of ashes of Nokia's device business, not Nokia as a whole. Microsoft took over the devices but the rest of the company is still there and very much alive. Net sales last year 12 732 M€, profit of continuing operations 1 171 M€. It's not as huge as in 2007, but not doing badly at all.

But indeed there is a lot of startup activity by people who've left Nokia; I joined one that failed, but I'm glad we tried. It would have gnawed my soul if I hadn't joined an attempt when there was the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sometimes it's good for one large company to either fold or be reduced so that all the innovative or productive employees can move on to set up new companies.

A similar analogy is happening in Rochester NY with the Kodak's bankruptcy proceedings. Now there are many smaller companies specializing in various types of imaging business.

But the transition can be really painful if the area is not already diversified or have a strong social safety net.

</comment><comment><USER7> I live in Tampere, and I honestly can't tell yet whether I picked the best or the worst time to decide to retrain as a programmer.

<comment><USER8> I'm doing the same in Oulu and I am optimistic. Things will change and there's reason to believe it'll get better:

[http://teknologiateollisuus.fi/sites/default/files/file_atta...](http://teknologiateollisuus.fi/sites/default/files/file_attachments/pohjola_tuottavuusraportti2014_web_0.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an American who grew up looking across the pond at the Finnish demoscene, I have no doubt that there's enough talent and smarts in Finland to come back stronger than before.

</comment><comment><USER10> They should just make old Nokias again [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8975623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8975623) There is a demand.

<comment><USER11> I'd buy one. My current one is doing ok but at 3+ years it's starting to get a little rough around the edges. But since I can't buy a new one I'm just nursing this one along for as long as I can and then I'll buy a couple of them second hand and refurbish. If you don't need a smartphone an old Nokia featurephone is as good as it gets.

Ultra reliable, super good battery life and made to take a beating.

And I'm not even a drug dealer :)</comment></comment>


Launching the first art school MBA - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/launching-the-first-art-school-mba-1 <comment><AUTHOR> Just in case anyone doesn't know, Birkbeck is a London university focussed on part-time study. Central Saint Martins is probably the most famous / prestigous art university in the UK [0]

[0]: [https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/rankings/2016](https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/rankings/2016)</comment>


Will There Be a DDR5? - <AUTHOR> http://semiengineering.com/will-there-be-a-ddr5/

<comment><USER2> One begs the question, can companies like Apple with complete vertical integration leap other companies by taking advantages of these newer technologies, even if it is more expensive?

Also, are HBM and HCM available to be used now or are they still in development? The article suggests they are available now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thankyou for the link, an ibteresting read. Ill have todo a lot of follow up reading now :-)</comment>


Show HN: Progress Bar OS X. How much % of a year/month/day has passed in menubar - <AUTHOR> http://progressbarosx.com <comment><USER2> This can easily be done using the program BitBar. [https://github.com/matryer/bitbar](https://github.com/matryer/bitbar)

<comment><USER3> Here is my rendition :)

[https://gist.github.com/aurorabbit/7fa0e4d76c97a85f7b0a7318f...](https://gist.github.com/aurorabbit/7fa0e4d76c97a85f7b0a7318f870ce64#gistcomment-2566203)

<comment><USER4> I love this. This is what I'm using now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Intersting idea, but I feel you'll have a difficult time with that price tag.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I'm not against selling software, but $5 for something I could probably whip up in an hour and post as open source is really not the best way to get people to use your app. This app just doesn't provide enough value to be $5– _maybe_ if it was a dollar.

<comment><USER7> But wouldn't saving an hour of time for $5 be a good deal?

<comment><USER6> No, because in doing so I can help a hundred _other_ people save an hour of their life as well.

<comment><USER8> If he sells this to people whose hourly rate is $50, and hypothetically it would take each an hour to write, then he just created an economic surplus of $45 for each of those people, while he only took $5 for each sale.

If he sells enough the income could allow him to create even more useful things for other people.

There is nothing wrong with selling something you created.

I'm an open source enthusiast. I run Linux on my MacBook Pro. Still, people should be able to sell what they created if they want to.

<comment><USER6> See my other comment on why I don't believe in the "economic surplus" argument: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16899924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16899924)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice! I made a website like this years ago inspired by a thing I saw on HN called the memento mori (remember, you are dying!) :)

[http://moriclock.com/](http://moriclock.com/)

<comment><USER10> thanks, i find this much more useful. any chance to create an addon for firefox as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As if I needed more induced anxiety worrying about the passage of time.

"time isn't holding up. time isn't after us."

</comment><comment><USER12> I never thought I'd get to see someone advertising software with a fight club quote. That certainly scores some sympathy points in my book! :)

<comment><USER13> WhatsApp (pre-FB) back in 2012: [https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont- sell-ads](https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads)

<comment><USER12> I haven't read this one yet, thanks for the link!

In retrospective, the history of WhatsApp gives this quote an interesting hint of irony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> why don't developers publish small apps like this in the app store?

<comment><USER6> As another comment has mentioned, this developer doesn't seem to have a valid certificate from Apple. They can't be on the App Store unless their software is signed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why the marketing line "this is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time"? I don't mean to be rude, but it's kind of an aphorism, and a morbid one at that. But I see people whom I respect making this observation. I'm sincerely wondering why pointing out the obvious is important

<comment><USER16> Our bodies have a finite number of breaths. We don't always prioritize our time that way when it seems like that.

Maybe it's also a mindful presence the most of one's day/week/month/year is important.

I recall another post about a graph that is generated for the # of your weeks that are used up. It's powerful, and as positive, or not, as I guess as one wants to make it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't hear the naysayers, $5 is a good price for it, frankly $4 would be even better not because it's cheaper in so much as it's less than a round number that could be used as a mental barrier.

I can imagine a lot of non techie creatives using this to keep focused on long projects.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't get why you'd reference 'OS X' in the title when that name was retired years ago. I assumed this was an app that had been around for a while yet the domain was registered just yesterday.

Also, I don't know about anyone else but I find 'Progress Bar' as an app name to be really vague. I wouldn't know it was a year progress widget without visiting the site.

P.s. you're welcome to my genius naming idea 'Year Progress macOS'.

<comment><USER19> OS X was rebranded in June 2016, less than 2 years ago. The old name is still used pretty often colloquially. In error, sure, but it's not like using Phoenix instead of Firefox. You're right about the name, and yours is a good replacement. It would likely be better received if you suggested it with less snark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't mind the 'business model' (I think it's a bit rich to be asking $5 for this, but then you're asking $5 from people who spent $2000-4000 on a laptop). What I do mind a bit is how depressing it seems - I guess I don't want to be reminded about impending death all the time...

</comment><comment><USER21> I really love this idea and greatly appreciate the brevity in implementation, the sales pitch, and the landing page. If I had one suggestion it would be a slightly different visual treatment so as to not conflate it with battery percentage so easily. Maybe small clock icon in the middle of the bar or something.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just found this little gem for Android that allows you to have progress bars like these as a launcher widget.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.donationco...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.donationcoder.pbol)

<comment><USER22> Found another Android widget alternative: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davee44.da...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davee44.dayprogress)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Those that find this interesting might also want to check out Mortality, a chrome extension.

It replaces the default new tab window with a count down and has the ability to set it based on your expected death date based on your stats.

I've got 19494 days 14 hours and 53 minutes to go.

I find it motivating.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice, now do it with life expectancy based on your blood work results and current age :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1 point by andreyazimov 5 hours ago [-]

Hi HN, I am a big fan of Year Progress tweets but I want to see not only year I want to see month and day progress as well in minimal OS X menu bar with a cool progress bar.

Demo: [https://www.progressbarosx.com/1.jpg](https://www.progressbarosx.com/1.jpg), [https://www.progressbarosx.com/2.jpg](https://www.progressbarosx.com/2.jpg), [https://www.progressbarosx.com/3.jpg](https://www.progressbarosx.com/3.jpg), [https://www.progressbarosx.com/4.jpg](https://www.progressbarosx.com/4.jpg), [https://www.progressbarosx.com/demo.mp4](https://www.progressbarosx.com/demo.mp4)

<comment><USER25> Maybe wait longer than 5 hours before trying to repost the same thing?

Honest feedback: when I land on a site that asks me to watch a video to understand the thing, I almost always just close the tab. Put in enough info for me to understand why I'd want this without having to watch the video.

<comment><USER26> That's interesting, I always feel the opposite -- when I open a page about some software that doesn't have a video I often close the page immediately because I want to see how something works in practice not just in description.

<comment><USER25> If the description / pictures sell me on the thing being valuable, I pretty immediately download it to try out. In my experience, the time/value tradeoff of watching a video (which in a lot of cases has either extra fluff or has been cleaned up) vs just trying the app/service/etc is not worth it. Which makes it critical that the static contents of the page have enough detail to convince me there's a chance the app could fill a use case for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool. Reminds me of [https://twitter.com/progressbar201x](https://twitter.com/progressbar201x)

<comment><USER28> Look at [https://twitter.com/year_progress](https://twitter.com/year_progress) for some ASCII goodness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I get an security error when I open this on my mac. Is it hard to become an identified developer?

<comment><USER29> 99/year to not get the security warning. Maybe not worth it for free/open source/hobby projects. Can bypass it by right clicking and choosing 'Open' but then you have to make your users aware of that.

Totally an Apple racketeering.

<comment><USER30> Also, not having the certificate can make it more likely the app will continue to work in future. Apple had an incident where App Store apps stopped working when the App Store certificate was replaced. I lost a few apps that I'd purchased that way (though some developers graciously gave me a non App Store version to work around it):

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/all-mac-store-apps- stopped...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/all-mac-store-apps-stopped- working-due-to-expired-security-certificate/)

<comment><USER6> That's an App Store issue, not a developer certificate one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Both a simple and very interesting idea... Could get one to stop procrastinating.

</comment><comment><USER32> Life isn't short it's the longest thing you'll ever do

</comment><comment><USER33> I was hoping that this would patch in with the OSX system progress bars and sum up the total amount of time waiting for something to happen on your computer. I always thought that progress bars were just a waste of life.

</comment><comment><USER34> Should be free, with no annoyware and offer a $5 purchase for some extra features, or simply ask for donations</comment>


Postcards from the post-XSS world - <AUTHOR> http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/postxss/

<comment><USER2> "For any type of a tag, a new node with a name matching the id parameter of the tag is inserted into the default object scope. In other words, <div id=test> will create a global variable test (of type HTMLDivElement), pointing to the DOM object associated with the tag." Did not know this.</comment>


At last, US banks are introducing contactless cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/445a308c-02f3-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3 <comment><USER2> Paywall workaround: [https://outline.com/zt33Rz](https://outline.com/zt33Rz)</comment>


How to end al-Qaida and ISIS – An idea: - <AUTHOR> How to end al-Qaida and ISIS - An idea: Making all money a combination of hard cash and digital currency, where every transaction can be traceable (if possible?). When the money is transferred to a terror organization (they will at some time) they could be deleted by a central system and traced back to the donor. <comment><USER2> Like many ideas in the "War on Terror", this idea also reduces freedom, in this case by making it possible for the government to trace _everyone 's_ financial transactions. For example, you would no longer be able to buy drugs, like pot, that the government considers illegal without the police knowing about it. (Even in states that have legalized pot, it's still in violation of Federal law.)

As Snowden's leaks have revealed, our government isn't so trustworthy that we should be making it easier for it to amass ever more information about our personal lives. All of that warrantless NSA mass-surveillance was also purportedly done to "protect us from terrorism".

Also, unless you can convince all countries in the world to adopt this traceable currency system, terrorists will always be able to launder money by setting up legal-looking front operations (e.g., fake charities or businesses) in countries that have freer money systems. And since this system makes it harder for politicians to accept bribes, I'm guessing that it would have a hard time getting enacted in any country.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would enough people participate in such a system?

In the absence of a usable currency, I think people would barter, until the point at which a good that is commonly used in bartering becomes a currency.

Would you propose making bartering illegal?

</comment><comment><USER4> Concerning al-Qaida and ISIS, give the Adam Curtis documentary, "The Power of Nightmares" a watch.

</comment><comment><USER5> They would just start using dishwasher detergent.</comment>


What Comes After the Information Age? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/what_comes_afte.html

<comment><USER2> This is pretty useless without a definition of the term 'information age' and the notion of 'value'.

The only way this could be more vauge and lacking in meaning is if it was the wikipedia article on the Information Age: [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_age>]

<comment><USER3> I agree, from my read, his 'information age' refers to laying out the communication shell, to have the ability to share documentation, which i consider just the beginning.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get started with developing an app from scratch? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to try my hand at building a basic shopping list app on the side, to familiarize myself with the platforms used, so that I can better understand the experience firsthand. I've currently decided to get started with Android Studio and App Inventor, and I've got a reasonable level of beginner experience from both in the past evening. Are there any good tutorials out there that can help me learn further? Also, are there any better tools than these two out there? Cheers <comment><USER2> I try to get anything going as quick as possible so I'm not just looking at code without any reward for a long time:

I start by listing the data I will need to track, wire-frame sketch some screens for entry and management. This will get me a picture of what data I will need, I want to do with it, and what tools I need to look for. (Since you are aiming for mobile, it might be good to imagine with a phone in your hand and think _how would I get X entered on this device and then do Y?_ )

Next, I would get an initial database up and running sorting out my data elements into relatable tables as needed, then get a few sample records input as a test (maybe even straight from the DB command line - if the entry is going to be complex, at least you will have _something_ to work with as you jump around getting stuff figured out.)

Next start work on better entry (if entry is cumbersome), also reporting, etc...

That's the start, you know what you want as the result... how to get the data where you need it and how to make value from it, one bit at a time, don't be afraid to re-do/refactor as you get things figured out.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are just starting out, I have found Expo + React Native to be a really nice development environment. What little I have used of Android Studio, it seems overly complicated for a beginner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I checked out Expo, but I'm having a hard time getting started. What exactly should I do to install it on my PC and get it running?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To learn android development, I've used Google codelabs and I like them.

Here is a list of android codelabs [https://codelabs.developers.google.com/?cat=Android](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/?cat=Android)

You can start with android fundamentals which will give you the necessary knowledge in building a shopping list app.

[https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/android- trai...](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/android-training- welcome/index.html?index=..%2F..index#0)

For shopping list app, you probably need a database, so you could try this code lab

[https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/android- room...](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/android-room-with-a- view/index.html?index=..%2F..index#0) (Link for Java, they've a Kotlin version as well)

If you are looking for cross platform development, you may want to try out flutter. [https://flutter.dev/](https://flutter.dev/)

There is a tutorial on using flutter on HN frontpage, I haven't tried it though. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22454115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22454115)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This list is quite the read, but it's helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a fan of learning enough to know how to get going, then just start building. In the process of building you'll get stuck and have to look for answers.

As for are there better tools, I don't know what your needs are. Is this for fun? Do you have a budget? Are you doing this for resume building? It's not a question of what's "best", but rather what's best for your needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually just to get a relatively shallow level of understanding of how the basic development of an app is carried out. I've had past coding experience in C++, Python and R, but somehow the intricacies involved with building an app, launching it and getting it to speed escape me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are looking to build a web application, create-react-app is a great way to get started if you're willing to learn React. It's an open source project from facebook. Here is the link the github: [https://github.com/facebook/create-react- app](https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app). It's good quick start to building the front end of an application.</comment>


China's Market Rout Is a Double Threat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/business/international/chinas-market-rout-is-a-double-threat.html <comment><USER2> China is in deep trouble; it has a total debt to GDP ratio of 282%, the highest compared to the other big gdp countries. ([http://bloom.bg/1evYSQ5](http://bloom.bg/1evYSQ5)). The housing bubble has already burst in the 3rd and 2nd tier cities in China, and the 1st tier cities are close to bursting. And the shanghai stock market is close to retracing back to 2000, since the current stock market has a p/e ratio that's 41% higher than that of US's 2000 dot com market. ([http://bloom.bg/1HNgqA4](http://bloom.bg/1HNgqA4))

When (not if) the china's stock market collapses, and the capital flight from China accelerates (estimated 600 Billion a year currently [http://bit.ly/1NJQuIX](http://bit.ly/1NJQuIX)), then China is going to be permanent decline for the next 10-20 years. It would be anyone's guess what China will do then, since it will inevitably suffer massive internal unrest, due to the fact that it's ruled by a bunch of dictators.

EDIT: China seems to be following the same path as Japan in 1990, except China has really screwed up their environment and rich people really want to leave the country.

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of hyperbole in this post. The graph you link to of debt-to-GDP is actually very similar in China (282), South Korea (286), Australia (274), USA (269), Germany (258), and Canada (247). And for the record, South Korea's is higher than China's according to that graph. China's is more heavily weighted in "non-financial corporate" which is interesting.

And the shanghai stock market is not "close to retracing back to 2000." This graph shows, it's well above that: [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/china-stock- market.pn...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/china-stock- market.png?s=ssecomposite&d1=20000101&d2=20151231)

You're assuming both a continued free-fall at the same rates and also that p/e ratios in China mean the same thing as they did for .com companies in 2000 in USA. Any market newbie will tell you that what a "normal" p/e ratio is will differ greatly by sector even within the same economy. China's may be out of whack, but it's not fair to make an arbitrary comparison.

I'm no China apologist, but making predictions of 10-20 years of decline with an authoritative tone is wrong given the facts you presented.

<comment><USER4> I think hysteria would be warranted if the Chinese government were to take a Schumpeter/Hayek/Mellon liquidationist response to the collapse of the market bubble (see the US/Europe circa 1929). Why yes then you would have contagion spreading out into the real economy and a long depression.

I'm thinking not. Instead I the Chinese central bank will inject liquidity again, much to the horror of the WSJ Editorial board who will again sternly warn that such actions, mark their words! come to an bad end!

 _snort_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Economist predicted this crash in May, and has a series of good articles about it: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/05/chinas-s...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/05/chinas- stockmarket)

China's stockmarket is sufficiently weird to defy most normal analysis though: there are heavy restrictions on who can list and who can invest, plus China in general has lots of money sloshing around looking for a decent place to invest, because the usual mainstays like bank deposits have zero to negative returns. So the bubbles and pops there (and this is far from the first) don't have a lot of correlation to the health of the overall economy.

<comment><USER6> >there are heavy restrictions And don't forget the fact that short selling was illegal until earlier this year, and even now only a limited number of stocks are allowed to be shorted.

<comment><USER7> "And don't forget the fact that short selling was illegal until earlier this year, and even now only a limited number of stocks are allowed to be shorted"

... which means the crash will be even faster and more brutal.

Remember, short positions close by _buying_ the shorted security. This means that in a healthy (albeit declining) market there is always buying at every level down as shorts cover.

Limiting short selling is a misguided feel-good move ... a PR stunt that only serves to make the pain worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The chart in that article is grossly deceptive. It shows only the last six months of the Shanghai index. Here are the past ten years.[1] That tells you a lot more. For one thing, that index hasn't come back to its 2008 high. That's more significant than the current correction.

[1] [http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=000001.SS+Interactive#{"r...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=000001.SS+Interactive#{"range":"10y","allowChartStacking":true})

<comment><USER9> The other interpretation (that I stole from ZeroHedge) is that a collapse of the Shanghai index will again correlate with the collapse of the US markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ignored is the fact that market was up 150% in the preceeding 12 months of its top. It's an extremely volatile market and a large selloff would be expected, probably inevitable. It's still up for 2015. Not exactly a crisis.

<comment><USER11> It's lost 30% of its value, was that to be expected? Are you saying it won't fall any further? To me, it seems that you are glossing over a large stock market crash.

Talking about it being 'to be expected' is a nonsense. If the market is so predictable, kindly enlighten us about what happens next, rather than being wise in hindsight.

<comment><USER10> They call them corrections for a reason. Extreme moves in one direction increase the likelihood of extreme moves in the opposite direction. You can chart volatility just like you can chart the price. Volatility is high right now.

Corrections are not the same as crashes that wipe out 20 or 30 years of gains. The index is still up for the year. It is very disturbing that the govt. rushes in to attack short sellers and prop up the market artifically, funneling money into it. They show no enthusiasm to attempt to curb the bubble as its growing as the mkt is on the way up. In that way they are the same as the western world.

<comment><USER11> They are called corrections some time after the event, once we've all had our fill of hindsight. Are you trying to predict the market by claiming that it won't fall any further? If you aren't, then how can you be sure that this is a correction and not a crash?

Even by your extreme measures of what a crash is, you have to realise that they don't happen instantly... who knows how long the market might sink for... Or rebound?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is the latest reporting from Reuters on the opening of the stock markets in China, where it is already Monday 6 July 2015: "Chinese stocks jump after Beijing unleashes emergency support"

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/06/us-china- markets-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/06/us-china-markets- idUSKCN0PG06B20150706)

The article notes, "Oliver Barron, China policy research analyst at NSBO, said it wasn't just faith in the markets at stake.

"'After the market continued to fall despite myriad support measures, the government reached peak panic mode and must have worried that investors would not only lose confidence in the markets, but in the government itself,' he said." This is the new issue in China, that now any weakening in the market is seen as a vote of no confidence in the central government. We'll see how the next week or so of trading goes.

</comment><comment><USER13> From what I understood, the biggest problem is that lots unsophisticated investors (families) invested when the prices were already up, as it usually happens with bubbles, and now they are in deep trouble. This in turn could create big troubles in the "real economy".

<comment><USER14> That was intentional on the part of the Chinese government. They haven't been subtle about it.

Chinese households are the only sector with a healthy balance sheet. Their corporations are carrying epic amounts of debt in relation to GDP. The premise was to transfer wealth from households to corporations, to improve the corporate balance sheets (via share issuance).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> To be honest, I spend much more energy studying the economy of my country (USA) than China.

In the USA, we will probably have a major market corection to current "bubble- ism" soon, and in my opinion a 20 to 25% drop in prices would deflate bubbles and probably make things more stable. A good thing in the long term, I think.

The other good thing about the current problems like we see in China, Greece, etc. is that it will hopefully slow down the trend of the elites making massive amounts of money with financial transactions instead of BUILDING THINGS and other productive activities. When the elites make money by pulling it from the lower classes that is a bad thing; they need to go back to building infrastructure and becoming more decent world citizens who care about the world that their children and grandchildren will be living in.

The problems that China is facing are bad, but they do have high savings rates and an increasingly better educated population in their favor.

It will be really interesting to see how things shake out in the next few years. I am fairly optimistic, but we will see what happens.

<comment><USER16> > hopefully slow down the trend of the elites making massive amounts of money > with financial transactions instead of BUILDING THINGS and other productive > activities

The Chinese already do this, but many of the projects are white elephants, or infrastructure that isn't useful (as opposed to useful infrastructure, which it still needs in many areas). How many steel plants do you need?

What China really needs is to get consumers consuming. People have to save lots of money to buy an overpriced house or to prepare for health emergencies, they can't afford to buy many things beyond that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> BREAKING: CHINA'S NATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY FUND (PENSION FUND) ORDERS ALL ITS ASSET MANAGERS "NOT TO SELL A SINGLE STOCK" \- CAIJING MAGAZINE

[https://twitter.com/george_chen/status/617903802201411584](https://twitter.com/george_chen/status/617903802201411584)

</comment><comment><USER18> Western media has a tendency to see China through a pair of gloomy glasses, and thus often are so certain that next Tuesday is China's doomsday.

Here are ALL the headlines (contains the word "China" ) from Yahoo News in the last 3 days. 12 out of 13 have negative words in the headline:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Xi Jinping has run into the one thing in China he __can't control__

China's Boom Has World Bank __Worried__

The South China Sea is now a 'core interest' of Beijing — and that's a __problem__ for its neighbors

China's __aggressive__ posture toward the South China Sea has been __stirring tensions__ in the...

China hunts for "manipulators" as stocks __tumble__

Is 'China in Africa' something to __fear__?

China __angered__ by new U.S. military strategy report

China says tourists __attacked__ in Turkey during __anti-China protests__

China Has World's Fastest Trains, U.S. Lags

China's __insatiable appetite__ for power

Zeroing in on __empty homes__, China throws developers a lifeline

S. Korean official falls to __death__ in China

China's __Unsettling Stock Market __Collapse__

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

I wanted to record the headlines for a month, produce a fancy chart and demonstrate how extreme and rampant the bias is, but I keep forgetting about doing it. Besides, it's probably well known that most media outlets from any country (including the USA) are shit, so why beat a dead horse? Before you shout "foul", I agree we can debate all day on whether a particular word really has negative connotation. Oh, China's media outlets are shit too, even shittier.

As long as we get information from as many diverse sources as possible, we should be fine. The problem is majority of folks has been fed biased information since childhood, and once a system of beliefs and images is established it's nearly impossible to shake it off.

<comment><USER19> This is only insightful if you do the same thing for other countries as headline subjects and then compare the _relative_ rates of negativity to see if China is an outlier.

News headlines tend toward the negative in general, because it's not newsworthy when things work like everyone expects them to.

<comment><USER18> my original plan was to pick 5 news outlets from each of the top 20 powerful countries, grab headlines for a consecutive 30 or 60 days, and come up with a negativity value from country N towards country M, so the final result would be a 20X20 matrix. Too much work, so it's not done yet.

But based on my years of experience in consumption of news from major media outlets in the world, the relative rates of negativity towards China is in the vicinity of 12/13, i.e., extremely high and very much an outlier. Of course it's just my guesstimate and gut feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could the headline here just as easily be "Chinese stock market drops down to March 2015 levels"?

</comment><comment><USER21> Anti-China hyperbole.

Every pseudo-economist-nerve of mine tells me that one day China inevitably will crash and when it happens it will hurt us all.

But please, enough with the nitpicking in search of ideology affirmation.

Why this is not the crash everybody's waiting for? It's a stock market that is about to crash-out it's volume that was gathered just months prior. Not enough time for most of the worlds shareholders to incorporate Chinese prices into their portfolios.

The Chinese stockmarket's prior boom was mainly driven by the HK-SH stock- market link, allowing foreign investors to buy Chinese stock. Combine that with

\- the assumption of risk-takers that the world would flock in gazillions to buy Chinese stock

\- and the lack of investment options the ordinary Chinese people have to put their savings in

and you got your self a little bubble going.

But that bust (which is not close to eliminate the prior gains yet, btw) is not the bust we're rightly fearing. Not every economic accomplishment of China can be discredited just by the immorality of its leadership.

<comment><USER16> That bust could set off a domino chain reaction, which is why the leadership is so desperately and shamelessly trying to prop it up. There aren't many other signs of optimism for the "new normal", and I'm a bit worried about what will happen next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the future, the big news that will move American markets will increasingly come from China. I wonder what this does to American indexes tomorrow.

<comment><USER23> Hard to tell with the noise out the Eurozone. Together, the next week will be a bit of a bumpy ride.

Definitely agree with your first statement; maybe you should look towards Australia as an example country that over the past 5 years has been increasingly following Chinese financial markets (Commodities and now property).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> vast majority of Chinese firms trading on the Chinese stock exchange offer no transparency, and with the recent scandals involving phantom companies valued at billions and "anti-corruption" moves is causing sell offs and capital flight.

But this is hardly the concerning part, what is apparent is a loss of market trust in the system from the public and abroad. If China is to become a superpower, it cannot play by it's own rules.

<comment><USER25> "China is to become a superpower, it cannot play by it's own rules."

A superpower by definition is it plays by its own rule.

<comment><USER26> Yes, and no.

Yes in that a superpower does bend the rules to suit themselves.

No in that a superpower is suddenly held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. You'd need to resort to expansionism if you wanted to continue the way that China is right now.

<comment><USER25> Which superpower is being held to a higher standard right now?

<comment><USER26> USA. Whether or not they're living up to it is another thing altogether though.

<comment><USER25> See! Your "No" is really a "Yes".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What innovations can be brought to the Commercial Real Estate industry? - <AUTHOR> I currently work in CRE and am curious as to what applications can be brought to the market? Its consistently been mentioned that CRE is constantly in the stone age in regards to technological innovations. <comment><USER2> A few areas - Data, Analysis, and Reporting. I work in institutional real estate and we still heavily rely on legacy data providers (Costar and Brokerages), do most of our analysis in Excel, and Reporting in Word and Powerpoint. Financial instruments have been largely unchanged for the past 20 years, and perhaps new ways to fund debt and equity could be areas for change. By and large though, new ways to get data that is meaningful and ways to analyse it could be winners. Also, CRE has changed a lot in the last couple of years. First movers like VTS, Hightower, the crowdfunding companies, and even brokerage companies are starting to embrace technology beyond email and phone calls.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use Costar almost exclusively. When you discuss new ways of getting data, how would that be something materially different from Costar? What about innovations for a contact management system?</comment></comment>


Kyrgyzstan cannot find its constitution - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/kyrgyzstan-constitution-lost-cannot-find-central-asia-a7373171.html <comment><USER2> Always make a backup. Probably wasn't written on legal pad in black ink anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a whole house electricity monitor? - <AUTHOR> There are plenty of commercial and open source electrical main-feed monitoring solutions out there. Do you use one? What do you like about it? <comment><USER2> My home has a radio-connected "smart meter" that also has Zigbee capabilities.

For $45 I bought a USB/Zigbee dongle that spits out XML-formatted information from the meter. With no change to my wiring I can monitor whole-house usage with about 4 watt-hours of resolution.

But I don't really do much with it. I thought about putting together a little LCD panel that shows consumption vs grid price (I opted to pay real-time prices). But I still don't know what benefit it would have unless I _really_ wire the whole house to use that data (e.g. turn off lights, turn the A/C up, etc). When prices spike the utility already sends me phone/email notifications to reduce consumption.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't yet but I might set this up this summer.

[https://blog.kroy.io/monitoring-home-power-consumption- for-l...](https://blog.kroy.io/monitoring-home-power-consumption-for-less- than-25/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you give an example of what you mean? I assume you mean something other than the outdoor metering device used by the power company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Usually a device that clamps onto each phase of the main power feed and sends that info to a local/remote datastore for recall/analysis. Tells you as little as "I'm using X watts now" to sorting out usage using signatures into individual devices.

[https://guide.openenergymonitor.org/technical/resources/](https://guide.openenergymonitor.org/technical/resources/)

[https://sense.com/](https://sense.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Besides load/usage double-check, what benefits, if any, does this provide?</comment>


Chinese Google Translate Sabotage - <AUTHOR> https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=43229#more-43229 <comment><USER2> I'm glad the realities of the oppressive Chinese government are finally coming to light. 10 years ago, I remember having discussions with a friend about China (an American) and he was convinced that the oppression just wasn't happening and all a crackpot conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure it's the government, not some random Chinese though? I've know enough patriotic mainlanders who would do this. Brainwashed you may say, but still they would act like that genuinely.

<comment><USER2> This was an American and not ethnically Chinese.

I have also met a few extremely left-leaning/socialist Americans that were part of my meetup group a few years back that loved China's system and praised it as better than the US in every way. All concerns about brutality, taking away rights, and an authoritarian regime were waved off as something beneficial and required to maintain a good society.

About 20 years ago, I worked for a computer store that regularly hired Chinese immigrants, because the owner was himself Chinese. One woman would not even allow me to mention the Chinese government in front of her. She was afraid that they were somehow listening to her and that her family back home would be punished. She had been in the US for at least 8 or 9 years at this point.

<comment><USER3> Sure. Those Chinese exists, but ones from the other end too, living in north america no less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Calling this sabotage is jumping to conclusions really quickly. Google translate has many issues and can mess up lots of sentences. Sometimes completely inverting the meaning or returning wrong results because of the models it was trained on. It's not a word-for-word translation.

Also you can provide your own corrections for the translated sentences, so if you see something obviously wrong, you can try that. (maybe someone did it to this sentence on purpose as well)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think a conspiracy theory is needed for this case. It's just an unfortunate glitch of the machine learning. On the other hand, I acknowledge problems like these have serious consequences.

After Google Translate's 2016 algorithm update ([https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/computing/software/googl...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/computing/software/google-translate-gets-a-deep-learning-upgrade)), anecdotally, many people started seeing it having problems on distinguish between a positive sentence and a negative sentence (e.g. has/has not, with/without), even simple ones.

Also, when Google cannot "understand" a sentence, it simply gives an output that happens to have the best match of its training patterns, often the opposite meaning. For short sentences without context, it's especially problematic.

In 2018, Google Translate briefly became a Twitter meme when it made the following translation. I cannot find the original thread, but I quickly Googled some keywords and found related tweets.

* 谷歌手机很卡顿 (Google's mobile phone is very laggish) => Google mobile phone is very fast [https://twitter.com/abcdsxg/status/980985925894197248](https://twitter.com/abcdsxg/status/980985925894197248)

I tried to find a random Wikipedia article, and I was still able to reproduce a similar problem today.

* 考虑到庭审涉及信息的敏感性,法庭分别进行了两次独立的听证会,一次公开进行,另一次不公开 (Because of the sensitive nature of information at stake in the trial, two separate hearings were conducted, one in public, and the other in private) => Taking into account the sensitivity of the information involved in the trial, the court conducted two separate hearings, one in public and one _in the open_.</comment>


What are the 10 algorithms one must know - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-10-algorithms-one-must-know-in-order-to-solve-most-algorithm-challenges-puzzles?share=1

<comment><USER3> Top three answers for those who don't want to sign up with Quora:

Dynamic Programming appears to account for a plurality (some estimate up to a third) of contest problems. Of course, DP is also not a single algorithm that you can just learn once and retain, so maybe this doesn't answer your question.

I suppose it also depends on whether you consider data structures in the same category as algorithms. There are certainly some data structures that you should be familiar with if you want to do well in programming competitions. The most important ones are range trees (variously known as interval trees or segment trees) and binary indexed trees (BITs), also known as Fenwick trees. Additionally, many DP algorithms make use of a prefix sum array.

The most essential of the single algorithms I can think of are the following, in no particular order. However, you may be disappointed by how rarely some of these actually appear in contests. Most non-DP problems appear to be of the "ad hoc with data structures" variety, and you simply have to practice in order to get good at them.

(To be clear, again, I list below only algorithms that take a single input set, compute some function of it, and carry no state between inputs. This distinguishes them from data structures, which by definition hold state, and categories of algorithms and algorithmic techniques like DP, which don't have some specific function they compute.) · Sieve of Eratosthenes, or another prime number sieve · Depth-first search · Breadth-first search · Dijkstra's algorithm · Floyd--Warshall algorithm · Either Kruskal's or Prim's algorithm · Some implementation of topological sorting, such as by using DFS · Convex hull (I recommend the Monotone Chains algorithm) · Coordinate compression · Edmonds --Karp, or another implementation of the Ford--Fulkerson method; or a preflow- push algorithm; or, if you are preparing an ACM codebook, Dinic's algorithm. (Note: Max flow is not allowed to appear on the IOI, but may nevertheless appear on national team-selection contests)

<comment><USER3> Second answer:

If you want specific algorithms, my top 10 would be: · Dijkstra's - <USER2> on the type of contest, you might see basic pathfinding problems, or you might see problems with non-obvious reductions to pathfinding problems. Whenever you have a cost minimization problem with a (reasonably small) finite number of states, an initial state a target state, you can look at it as a pathfinding problem. · Bellman-Ford is useful for pathfinding when edges may have negative costs. For example if you're navigating a maze with potions which boost health and hazards which lower it, Bellman-Ford would be a great approach. · Floyd- Warshall is useful for computing all paths. It is sometimes used in problems where you don't need all paths, because it's so easy to implement. It is slower than other pathfinding algorithms though, so whether Floyd-Warshall is an option depends on the graph size. · Edmonds-Karp for max flow/min cut problems. One common application is bipartite matching problems. For example, given N people, M food items, and a list of each person's food allergies, how many people can you feed? · The Hungarian algorithm for assignment problems. Similar to the above, but in these problems the edges have weights, and we're maximizing the total weight rather than just the number of matchings. The sweep line "algorithm" (more of a general approach really) is useful for various geometric problems, like the nearest pair problem. Also useful for a variety of intersection-related problems, like finding intersecting line segments, or conflicting calendar events. · Graham scan or another convex hull algorithm, for problems such as building a minimal fence to enclose animals. · An algorithm for finding strongly connected components, such as Tarjan's. · Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning trees. · Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm for string searching.

Other concepts worth studying, which aren't in the above list because they aren't specific algorithms: · Memoization/dynamic programming is quite useful. Some problems have obvious DP solutions, while others have very non-obvious ones which take practice to recognize. · Binary search is useful in many optimization problems, so make sure you're very comfortable implementing it. · Combinatorial game theory comes up now and then. I recommend Thomas Ferguson's introduction. · Tries are useful in a variety of text-related problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any way to read this without wasting time clicking through things Quora wants you to click through?

I'm interested in this answer, but not in setting up accounts and interests just to read it.</comment>