Human-powered helicopter - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_helicopter <comment><USER2> Better have the sugar juices hooked up into your blood, you cannot breathe and drink at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Taking on hydration/nutrition drinks without breaking effort or position is a triathlete specialty. So, coincidentally, is pedalling for hours and hours.

Almost calls for an HPV triathlon: bike, copter, hydroplane...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've often wondered what the efficiency of these fully mechanical systems is, and whether a completely electric system (without a battery or other energy storage) would be more compact, lightweight and efficient at allowing human powered hovering.

<comment><USER5> Here is an Olympic cyclist making toast [https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2016/10/07/olympic- cyclis...](https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2016/10/07/olympic-cyclist-vs- toaster-can-power/)

A Toaster like any other resistive heater is about as efficient as it gets in terms of power efficiency.

<comment><USER6> This guy won't make any copter fly, unless loosing 50kg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> human powered helicopters were an obsession of Leonardo Da Vinci. He spent so long trying to solve this problem and never could figure it out, amd here we are 500 years later, a little closer, but still a far way off</comment>


Show HN: A quick, unbloated way to listen to a song - <AUTHOR> http://www.tunecrawl.com/

<comment> olog-hai There needs to be a way to close the YouTube player, not just hide it. I keep getting "video player is too small" errors after hiding the player so I can scroll down and select another song.

Incidentally, if the songs you want are available on the iTunes Store, <http://preview.fm/> is a lot cleaner and easier to deal with, at least if 30-90 second samples will suffice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment! I am working on the "video player is too small" error. I hope to have a fix shortly, as well as an ability to close instead of just hiding.

Thanks for introducing me to preview.fm as well! I am working on incorporating iTunes to the "Buy" portion of the music results soon, so hopefully that will help out in case you prefer iTunes over Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I was not expecting much form this other than 'yet another aggregator'...but _damn_ , this thing is amazingly fast. I'm impressed!

</comment><comment><USER3> Mind revealing to us how you made it so fast? Your site feels faster than even YouTube search...

<comment><AUTHOR> I worked hard to reduce the bloat that comes with a lot of the websites. I decided to leave all of the source within the home page, so feel free to dig around :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> love it! I used to search each of these sites manually.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, can it be faster, if suppose you reduce the size of cover art below the player? Plus, when I switched from spotify to youtube, it gave me a 'player is too small' error. Also, you can't switch to a new link, until you hide the player again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have had reports that this occurs when a browser window isn't in the maximized state. I am working on the solution at the moment. Fore the time being, a workaround is to simply click the play button twice on the same song. Thank you for the report :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: DAW Forum – A community of music producers regardless of DAW - <AUTHOR> https://www.dawforum.com/ <comment><USER2> ..where's the forum tho

<comment><AUTHOR> A landing page for now. I am building up a list of people before launching the site. Would love to have you on it...</comment></comment>


A guide to set up your own round-robin DNS-over-HTTPS proxy for privacy - <AUTHOR> https://dohproxy.com/ <comment> mike-cardwell This setup does the opposite of what they're hoping to do, and is the exact reason that Tor implemented "Entry Guards".

If there is any pattern in the DNS queries you perform (e.g you visit certain sites regularly), then all of a sudden there are now going to be four additional organisations that know your browsing habbits, on top of your existing one (your ISP).

Imagine you go to pornhub.com every day. Your ISP knows that you're doing that today because of your DNS lookups, and they will still know that after the deployment of DOH and ESNI, because like millions of other websites, pornhub doesn't share their IP addresses. But now all of a sudden, you'll be telling cloudflare one day that you go to pornhub, google the next day, opendns the next day, and 42l the next day.

Why do people insist on increasing the number of organisations with access to their browsing history, in the name of privacy?

Don't set up or use this system.

<comment><USER2> I agree that there is little gain in hiding DNS traffic from your ISP. And like you I'm wondering what the benefit of spreading around one's DNS profile should be. I think it's better to just pick the DNS provider one distrusts the least.

But once you use DoH using a private DNS proxy does in fact provide (some) protection because it detaches one's client address from the requests. Breaking this requires timing correlation or individual domain names for tracking.

<comment> mike-cardwell Why set up a private DNS proxy when you can (arguable more easily) set up a private VPN, which protects _all_ of your traffic instead? A quick "apt install unbound" on the VPN server will give you a private recursive DNS resolver which supports DNSSEC, and you'll be communicating with that over the VPN, so DoH gives you nothing...

<comment><USER3> When you set up a private VPN to tunnel your traffic through, doesn't your VPN server just become your client? Or am I missing something here?

<comment> mike-cardwell It does yes. And I think you must be missing something yes.

<comment><USER3> So, what is the benefit of a private tunnel that maps uniquely to you?

Addendum: If it's about distrusting your ISP you gotta consider that you're just moving trust to another ISP or service provider (or worst case both, if they're separate entities).

<comment> mike-cardwell You should take my response in context to the preceeding conversation.

When somebody says that using a VPN would be better. You need to consider what they are saying it is better than.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think if you go for privacy it is best to resolve queries recursively. You can do QNAME minimization with unbound for example and whatever network you are trying to reach will likely see your address anyways some way or another. I mean i for one am more worried about a centralized service like offered by cloudflare then i am worried that individual nameservers tracking me. And if you are worried about people being able to sniff on your traffic protecting only dns from that wont help you much.

</comment><comment><USER5> Today's Guardian has a piece [1] on Firefox's DNS over HTTP and how Mozilla has no plans yet to make it the default in the UK. Most of the article is about how it breaks centralised web filtering, and has concerned-sounding quotes from child protection organisations. Probably a predictable slant for a general readership publication to take, but it is concerning that use of DoH might be being framed solely as enabling criminality. As someone who lives in the UK and who enabled it several months ago for privacy (anti-tracking) reasons, I'm going to have to keep an eye on this.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/24/firefox-n...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/24/firefox- no-uk-plans-to-make-encrypted-browser-tool-its-default)

<comment><USER3> Couldn't the UK just work together with popular DoH providers to implement filtering in a clean way?

<comment><USER5> I'd be ok with that. The problem would be the emergence of unscrupulous DoH providers.

Presumably the fear is that having DoH built into the browser lowers the bar to entry for people who want to use it as part of engaging in criminality.

<comment><USER3> DoH compared to plain old DNS is about as much as a crime-enabler as HTTPS compared to HTTP (probably even less)

<comment><USER5> I was referring to people accessing illegal material, with DoH being used to bypass ISP-level content filtering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Round-robin and privacy do not dwell well together. Like mike-cardwell pointed out in another comment, it just distributes the same information to more parties.

As there has to be at least party which will know the request, some information will be leaked. But what can be prevented, is giving "unrelated" requests in the hands of the same resolver. Few of the request per se are interesting, the combinations of them allow to build user profiles.

The policy should not be round robin, but somehow based on the domain itself, so that all requests about the same domain go to the same resolver, but to nobody else.

An even better mechanism would take into account who is the owner and the controller of the domain. So that requests about, let say, facebook.com and fbsbx.com land at the same resolver, but github.com and microsoft.com by another.

<comment><USER4> this is more or less what happens if you have an recursive resolver. in most cases your queries will be seen by the same network that will see your traffic afterwards anyways. only the TLD nameservers will somewhat occasionally depending on the TTL know which network you are about to enter and they are arguably more trustworthy. I think about this way: i already trust whichever infrastructure provider my endpoint uses and the choice of nameservers is an extension to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought that regardless of dns provider, you can't stop the ip destination. No doubt there's real-time recording of what domain points to what ip. It's harder for your local syaadmin probably, but not much further.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, that and SNI[1] make this whole DoH thing pretty pointless for privacy IMHO --- if you are seriously concerned about your ISP monitoring your traffic, tunnel everything through a VPN that exits into the Internet somewhere else. It seems more like an effort to frustrate host-based adblocking more than anything.

[1] Looking at SNI is even more accurate, since DNS lookups don't necessarily (but often) mean a connection to that host will be made; a TLS handshake, on the other hand, means a connection _is_ being made.

<comment><USER9> Encrypted SNI exists.

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted- sni/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-sni/)

I doubt DoH is a ploy to break adblocking; if you don't control the device making the requests they could already do plenty of things to break crude adblocking techniques like that. (Nevermind the fact that one of its biggest supporters is Mozilla.)

Stating that this is pointless for privacy seems like an exaggeration. Sure its not a panacea, but for probably 80% of sites, the destination IP tells you you are headed to Amazon or Cloudflare. Besides that, why reveal more information than less, and why not remove unencrypted, easily manipulated network traffic? Personally, I aim to eliminate unencrypted traffic on my networks.

<comment><USER10> Yep. Encrypted SNI is still a work-in-progress in terms of browser support – like DoH itself – but they're both being pushed by Cloudflare, and intended to complement each other. No conspiracy theory needed to explain the motivation.

Edit: And Cloudflare's own service mitigates the use of IP addresses to identify sites, since (AFAIK) all Cloudflare-wrapped sites are accessed via the same IP. Of course, this is only an improvement if you trust Cloudflare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought this was someone else providing an anonymized dns proxy at first, but it's just how to set up your own proxy. Not sure this saves anything over just using DoH to one of the listed providers directly (the requests still come from something you own and can technically be traced back to you, albeit with more effort?)

edit: I'm wondering what the ideal setup actually is. Would the root servers need to provide DoH endpoints?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "more effort" part was what I was going for -- no nation state or warrant- holding organization is going to be stymied by this, but as a personal/home user, I'd rather DoH resolvers not be able to tie my lookups to my personal IP which is doubtless held in many other cross-referencable locations (in my case, home-network wide proxying or Tor isn't feasible).

<comment><USER12> I wonder if it'd be feasible to proxy _only_ the DNS requests over Tor. Maybe set up your network-level DNS proxy to route upstream queries through a Tor tunnel to a different DNS-over-HTTPS resolver. Perhaps even have the DNS proxy cache DNS records and proactively revalidate commonly used ones to avoid most of the latency overhead of Tor.

<comment><USER13> Unbound does prefetch [0]. Not sure abt the tor split tunnel, but is easy to setup one over WireGuard.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbound_(DNS_server)#Feature...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbound_\(DNS_server\)#Features)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A quick bug report: you do not need to set up renewals in cron. In the certbot ppa (and Debian, and thus Ubuntu), they're automatically set up for you at the time of install using both cron and systemd timers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, and thank you for the PR! The instructions have been updated

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The privacy noted here appears to essentially boil down to "from Cloudflare" right now, and comes at the risk of leaking DNS queries to other third-parties who are often more inclined to act maliciously towards your privacy and are not committed against doing so.

Be sure that you trust your "over the wire" connection to not sniff and uniquely tag all of your DNS requests with your specific identifying information, such as Verizon and many other service provides often do.

<comment><USER16> You only get privacy from Cloudflare 3/4 of the time, as their resolver is one of the four requests are proxied to.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that resolvers just know it's coming from the EC2 instance/etc rather than knowing your personal IP.

<comment><USER17> They know the personal IP as well since it's being passed in the "X-Forwarded- For" header by nginx.

Having a local recursive resolver with the Client Subnet in DNS Queries turned off would be better for privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> DoH and DoT are not really providing privacy unless ESNI is fully developed and deployed by most websites. DoT and DoH do provide security since with plain old DNS, literally anyone in your network path can spoof responses.

Round robin providers is really bad idea. Its like leaving your foot print in literally all places.

Best is to use Tor Browser if you really need privacy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't wait to get me RRDNSOHTTPS going</comment>


SpaceX First Stage Landing as Seen from the Barge - <AUTHOR> https://vid.me/i6o5

<comment><USER2> Why is this not on SpaceX' youtube, vine, twitter, or elon musk's twitter, and instead anonymous and with no details on that site?

<comment><USER3> Probably because it's a leak and they didn't intend to release it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow were they ever close to landing! Completely amazing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did one of the legs break on landing, causing the rocket to fall over? Or did the leg break while the rocket was falling?

<comment> Alain-lf The stage had lateral velocity when it landed plus it came down at an angle, so one or two legs took all the energy of the impact and collapsed.

They are not designed to support a beating like that.</comment></comment>


WANNAFIX WCry interim mitigation scripts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/HIBC2017/WANNAFIX/ <comment><AUTHOR> WANNAFIX.exe and WANNAFIX.dll both disable SMBv1 (requires reboot), adds the kill switch URLs to system32\drivers\etc\hosts, and creates a process using the same mutex as the Malware.

WANNAFIX.exe is an interactive execitable that can implement the fixes you want. WANNAFIX.dll is a silent DLL that can be loaded from anywhere using the command rundll32 \\\path\to\WANNAFIX.dll,0

Might be useful to some sysadmins if there is a delay on applying the patches.

NB - this is a temporary fix, and is _no substitute_ for the proper patch!!

Cheers.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone know if there's some kind of Docker Orchestrator out there? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> CenturyLink released this in August, I don't know how well it works: [http://panamax.io](http://panamax.io)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't mean something like Terraform or Fig, but a SaaS which deploy, manage and monitor docker containers wherever you want.

</comment><comment><USER3> Https://www.Tutum.co lets you deploy, manage, and orchestrate your containers

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Panamax is really interesting and I think it's a good start, something else?</comment>


Keeping multiple programming languages straight — The Endeavour - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/07/27/multiple-programming-languages/ <comment><USER2> I've never had trouble keeping multiple programming languages straight in my head. To me, its really just a matter of "context switching" much in the same way that a multilingual person can switch between various languages on the spot. If the context calls for a specific language, then its that language that naturally arises.

It goes even further than that. When I code I instinctively take on the "mannerisms" of the surrounding code. Brace style, indentation, alignment, etc. This is all part of the same mechanism that helps one use the appropriate idioms in the right context.

<comment><USER3> The more similar the languages (which he addresses in the article), the more small issues I run into. The biggest issue I've be running into lately is that I do a lot of Go code in my free time but mostly C#/C/C++/Java for job stuff and I find myself pretty frequently not adding semi-colons to the end of lines even when not in Go.

Generally no big deal, the compiler picks this up easily enough, but in some languages (eg. Javascript) this could be an issue due to optional semicolons but with sometimes unexpected side-effects. Though when forced to write JavaScript I religiously JSLint for my own sanity, so I'd still be okay there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keeping languages of different paradigms or whitespace conventions straight is pretty easy.

I echo the article, though, on the perils of using similar languages in the same niche. I love using regular expressions; I hate that every language's regex engine has slightly different syntax and features. So a bell went off in my head when I saw that was one of the topics he found appropriate to take notes on.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the point about similar languages is important. After using a Java- like language where == can compare Strings, chances are you will use == instead of .equals() when working in Java.

Also, when switching between languages like JS, Ruby,and C#, I can't automatically type semicolons and the process involves a quick delay when I have to think about whether there should be a semicolon or not.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is something I can't really relate to. Sure you have a small "switching" period when you're jumping between languages but that's it basically.

> 1\. Try not to use similar languages in the same niche.

On the other hand I find it really simple to use similar languages, you don't even need to change how you think! It's just a change of syntax very similar to how I can switch between English and Swedish. The problem is when you want to use a language you haven't used in a while, but that too will mostly be a case of syntax issues ('How do I do X in Y').

> 2\. Try to use one language at a time.

I partially agree with this - it's easier to only use one language than switching and this is certainly the thing you should be focusing on if you're having problem with 'too many languages'.

With that said I have never had a problem wih switching from say Perl to Javascript to SQL and back again in a short period of time. I find it easy to look at the surrounding code and just do the same.

> 3\. Keep notes and save sample code.

I have yet to keep any notes for a specific language - I tried but never used it - but I do agree that cookbooks can be very useful. Otherwise reading code is always a _great_ thing to do regardless.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a shameless polyglot, I've found editor snippets to be very helpful for this kind of thing, particularly if your editor lets you put in helpful placeholder text in fields.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a slightly weird method for doing it, for each specific language I'm working in I use a slightly different theme for my text editor, it provides a small cognitive differentiator that seems to trigger the right parts of my memory.</comment>


Peepeth: Unstoppable Microblogging - <AUTHOR> https://peepeth.com/about <comment><USER2> Hi all, Peepeth creator here. Would appreciate your thoughts.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/87k9iz/presenting...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/87k9iz/presenting_peepeth_a_decentralized_alternative_to/)

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/peepeth](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/peepeth)

<comment><USER3> 1) The word "microblogging" threw me off -- for some reason, I hear "blogging", and don't realize it's meant to be a twitter clone.

2) Maybe it's just me, but the full page image of the woman on your landing page makes me want to close out rather than engage and find out what the product is. I'd rather see top peeps immediately, with a partial landing banner for new users.

3) I think the most critical task for a product like yours is curating a good community. With twitter already existing, how do you intend to avoid turning into a boring graveyard of crypto shills (like Steem) or a Gab-like place filled with only people offensive enough to have been banned elsewhere?

4) Otherwise -- it looks great! I'm on the waitlist...how long before you send out more invite? :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

1) Yeah, it's a weird word. Other suggestions appreciated. 2) Good feedback. 3) Branding is a top priority. This front-end is meant to polarize for a certain type of user. That becomes more clear during on-ramp and usage. Copy/messaging needs work. Suggestions appreciated. 4) Thank you. Best way is to DM me on Twitter at @bevanbarton with the email address you signed up with and I'll approve you ASAP.

<comment><USER4> On the word "microblogging": I think this may actually be the fundamental problem with all Twitter clones (so I'm not singling out your project; you just happen to be here).

For a mass-market tool, it should be possible to describe the purpose your tool using words that have existed for more than a couple of decades. At the moment, the shorthand is always "like Twitter, except not quite".

So is it public chat? personal status updates? a public short-form diary? crap poetry? a personal news feed? a way to contact companies with short messages?

All of these are valid, and maybe it's several, but perhaps choosing one use- case to focus on will lead to a clearer offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me, the biggest roadblock is actually owning ETH. You may thing that's trivial, but I'm not so sure. Apparently 10m people in the world own SOME form of crypto[1] - so, there's your upper bound on number of users. For a mass- market product, 10m is really not that much .... you don't just need "traction", you need traction that is so significant that it pushes up the entire crypto market! I'm skeptical, but who knows? Good luck.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-own-at-least-some- cryp...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-own-at-least-some- cryptocurrency-as-of-January-2018)

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Not just that but the overview suggests:

* I have to be using Firefox.

* And I have to install a firefox extension.

* And I have to have ETH.

<comment><USER7> There is not Firefox requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I appreciate all of these distributed social networks (Mastodon, Peepeth, Diaspora, etc.) getting some buzz right now. I think distributed hosting of social networks is an important step forward.

However, they're all lacking one major thing that needs to happen in order for a true Facebook Exodus to take place - distributed discovery and consumption. Facebook has a HUGE network effect, and simply put there is no way any of my acquaintances are going to leave Facebook just because of the recent news. I can start a Mastodon node, but I would be shouting into a void - there's no one there to see my content, and no incentive for someone to move over. If I _did_ convince anyone to move, they'd be shouting into the same void, and get bored. There needs to be a way for us early adopters to post content, but let it still reach people that haven't jumped yet.

Right now the best solution I have for this is something pull-based like RSS. Even that's not a great solution, though - my average acquaintance no longer uses RSS. I might be able to get my mom to install Feedly, but no way is my old friend from High School going to install it. Open to hear ideas around this.

<comment><USER9> I understand that concern. There are some compromise solutions already available, at least specifically for Mastodon, and certainly space to communally explore further solutions.

A Mastodon feed has built in ATOM (RSS) support so you could encourage someone to subscribe to you in Feedly if you wished and they were already a happy RSS user.

You can use tools like IFTTT or Zapier to cross-post from Mastodon to Facebook (or Twitter or whatever else).

There's a Mastodon to Twitter bridge [1] where Twitter users can volunteer a primary Mastodon account (on any instance) for people to follow and in turn see all of the people on Twitter they follow that have posted a Mastodon address to follow them on Mastodon. A similar bridge should be easy to set up for Facebook as well, I just don't think it has been done yet.

In a way that bridge is the closest to a public directory of Mastodon users, and there's certainly room for other sorts of public directories (Mastodon "yellow pages"/"Yahoo listings") or Mastodon-tuned search engines. (Of course, existing search engines often already return Mastodon results; Mastodon feeds are already web pages.)

[1] [https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/](https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What do you do when somebody posts death threats or child porn on your immutable social network?

<comment><USER2> Front-ends like peepeth.com are censorable. Illegal content will be removed from the peepeth.com front-end.

I think its criminal appeal is limited compared to alternatives. Use of a known and traceable payment+communications channel reveals more info about the perpetrators and their networks than non-crypto communication channels + crypto payments. Pairing communication and money removes a level of anonymity because of the traceable nature of blockchain transactions.

<comment><USER11> > _Front-ends like peepeth.com are censorable._

To make sure I understand, are you saying, "Every client developer has to handle this on their own, if they choose to at all"?

> _I think its criminal appeal is limited compared to alternatives. […]_

It seems like you're suggesting that anonymity is not possible with Ethereum, but searches suggests that it's possible now, and will become easier thanks to projects like Project Alchemy. (I don't know much about Ethereum, though, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!)

<comment><USER12> Kindof an interesting legal question - what would make peepeth more liable for such data more-so than etherscan.io for example? If both sites have the feature to hide or prevent download of the data, whereas etherscan may not even bother?

It kinda makes you wonder if the Ether wallet itself that can sync and download such data is also at risk of being called illegal.

Are FBI raids now going to focus on targeting people that have a copy of the block chain to put them away?

<comment><USER13> Freenet has been around for almost twenty years, it's known to contain illegal content (including CP), and as far as I know its users haven't been systematically raided.

On a different note, Sone - microblogging over Freenet - has been around for quite a while, and it's under active development.

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

[https://github.com/Bombe/Sone](https://github.com/Bombe/Sone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like it, really! I believe this to be a good use-case for decentralization as opposed to anonimity - if paired with a good verification mechanism (so leaving behind the crypto-anonimity mantra) this would also guarantee integrity of timelines (tampering/algorithmic curation of news and what not). Good luck to you Sir!

<comment><USER2> Thank you.

Currently there's Twitter account verification (through a blockchain oracle contract). More verification options are on the way (incl. domain ownership).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm genuinely curious how this compares to something like, say, Mastodon. It seems to me like Mastodon actually offers a lot of the same advantages.

<comment><USER2> Good question. With Mastodon, there is no central data store. So if your chosen front-end goes down (which hosts your content), you're out of luck. I think they're working on that problem though.

<comment><USER15> Alternatively: Mastodon lets you run your own node on your own hardware, have it exist as an equal peer, and if you want to delete your own data you have that option.

It's weird to me how the no-retractions thing is a benefit. Seems like a feature deficit. I can't imagine using twitter without the delete function, if only just to delete botched tweets.

<comment><USER16> It looks like you're able to do a similar thing with their batching method to make using it cheaper. Re-read your peep before it gets pushed to the chain and you'll be able to delete them there.

<comment><USER15> That's fair, but I think the criticism still stands. Why is it good that you can't delete things?

I can think of lots of situations where that's not a good thing. I can't really think of any situations where it's a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel like this Jack Dorsey profile is fake, because he hasn't mentioned Peepeth on his Twitter account or anything.

[https://twitter.com/jack](https://twitter.com/jack)

However, it seems to have fooled the real(?) Fred Wilson.

[https://peepeth.com/fredwilson?id=QmNVmVaUiUHKq1B19deSoThkHs...](https://peepeth.com/fredwilson?id=QmNVmVaUiUHKq1B19deSoThkHsW8YquMvyaVbxNJP98BPL)

Not that I think this says something bad about Peepeth... the situation is obviously not much better on Twitter, even with verification. Just a point about how easy it to be fooled online when you're not expect it...

<comment><USER2> Haha, good eye. Don't tell Fred! :)

Yes, Peepeth users are aware that unless an account is Twitter-verified (with a Twitter icon next to their name), the user is not guaranteed to be the "real" user. Other verifications like domain ownership are coming soon.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, having multiple ways to verify identity will be so much better than Twitter's manual situation that can't scale...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd seriously reconsider the name. I understand it's a combo of peep+eth but combining them is really not gonna resonate with anyone.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like it's about Shakespearean Peepers, that's the reason I clicked: to find out what the hell could have that kind of name.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like peepee

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Big fan of Peepeth.

<comment><USER2> Thank you! All suggestions appreciated.

<comment><USER22> Heads up: my username @twitter seems to trigger a bug, as I expected it would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love this. Is the notion that users will be able to monetize their own data?

<comment><USER2> Thanks Grace. Yes, that's part of it. Also, content isn't controlled by a company (it's immutable on the blockchain).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well done.

The ui/design seems a just a little hard around the edges.

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't forget to Like and Repeep my Peeps on Peepeth

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it's an unfortunate name :\\. This is how I imagine any conversation about it going:

"Hey friends, you all should try this app I'm using Peepeth"

"Pee-what?"

"Peepeth."

"How do I spell that?"

<comment><USER2> The name jokes are many and hilarious, making a page on the site for that :)

<comment><USER17> I'm glad you find humor in it :). I sincerely hope it doesn't hurt adoption! I really want there to be alternatives to Twitter (I use Mastadon).

<comment><USER25> You should check Peepeth out. It is a way better alternative to Twitter. It has more of a community feel without the garbage heckling, etc.

<comment><USER26> It seems to be great if your goal is to see many copies of the dickbutt meme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Methinks thou peepeth falsely, good sir!</comment>


Rhode Island searching for New Yorkers fleeing the virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20200327/not-rsquoall-that-neighborlyrsquo-police-national-guard-out-in-westerly-looking-for-new-yorkers <comment><USER2> I live in NYC. It is entirely reasonable for those of us fleeing here to rigorously quarantine for two-three weeks (I am still here). It is entirely reasonable for law enforcement to get involved with making sure this happens. If there are any moves to actually seal off NY then its a declaration of Civil War.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe Rhode Island taxes vehicles and residents must pay the NADA market value tax every year. It's common for people who move to RI from NY to NOT change their registration and keep the NY registration simply to avoid this tax.

<comment><USER4> It's upon purchase, not yearly. Annual property tax varies by town, but there may be benefits to not being a resident in this sense. Many towns charge an higher property tax on housing for non-residents for this reason.

<comment><USER3> You're incorrect. See the following for 1 county (all but few counties tax cars annually based on how many days of the year the car was registered): [https://www.westwarwickri.org/index.asp?SEC=30FC8E02-8C49-44...](https://www.westwarwickri.org/index.asp?SEC=30FC8E02-8C49-4469-AEB3-3CA664DFC701&DE=F4B777FF-3AC0-4448-8CA0-0B04ABB7A5C1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://archive.md/VqAar](https://archive.md/VqAar)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Error code 16

> This request was blocked by the security rules

> Please Note: We are temporarily unavailable to users from certain countries > while we upgrade our site to implement new methods for data processing as > required by applicable laws.

Interesting.

<comment><USER7> You can use outline to read it:

[https://outline.com/xmDFJS](https://outline.com/xmDFJS)</comment></comment>


MPC-HC v1.7.13 is released and farewell - <AUTHOR> https://mpc-hc.org/2017/07/16/1.7.13-released-and-farewell/ <comment><USER2> MPC-HC is a superb media player but it is not surprising to see this happen. Interest in maintaining open source Windows applications written in C/Win32/C++/MFC is going to keep dropping as there are not as many people with the skills or motivation to do it. Especially for something as complex as a media player.

Even on the Linux side I have seen a drop in the number of full blown media players being developed, they are mostly front ends to things like mpv and mplayer.

<comment><USER3> Making front-ends to existing back-ends makes a lot of sense to me. I don't really see the advantage of writing a monolithic media player from scratch as opposed to leveraging existing back-ends.

<comment><USER2> I knew I should have clarified that I don't think it is a bad thing they are "just" front ends to mpv :)

I agree with you that there isn't much (if any) advantage to doing it all again with a new media player core. I would rather all the expertise is put into mpv to be honest and then let others build front ends that do all the extra bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Farewell old friend. For those looking for an alternative: you should try MPV. It's a video player for the geeks/hackers [https://mpv.io/manual/stable/](https://mpv.io/manual/stable/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Does not have NGU

<comment><USER5> Holy shit those spam replies to this comment... what the hell was so special about this that it warranted like 5 spam replies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been using MPC-BE for many many years and it is being actively developed with developers feedback and response on Doom9.

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/)

<comment><USER7> Why has this version been forked off?

<comment><USER8> For the looks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Player_Classic#Black_Edi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Player_Classic#Black_Edition)

<comment><USER9> Not just the looks.

It says right there in the source you provided that MPC-BE "not only looks better than MPC, but also performs faster"

<comment><USER8> MPC-HC is already so fast, I doubt that claim is even true. I just double- clocked on a video file after a cold boot, the UI shows up almost instantly, and the playback starts after around a second.

<comment><USER6> To all those asking why BE? It really has NOTHING to do with speed. To simply put, BE was well maintained and continuous bug fixing. From my perspective HC has seen the writing on the wall ever since BE forked.

Not only does it look better, it plays files better then HC by default. Not sure HC has improved since then, back in the day BE would handle AVI, rmvb, WMV, much better without the need of fiddling around with settings and filters.

MPC-BE is the only thing I really miss on Mac.

<comment><USER10> The writing for MPC-HC was on the wall a lot longer than when MPC-BE was forked. There's no future for a player that's not cross-platform, case-in- point:

> MPC-BE is the only thing I really miss on Mac.

And HC definitely improved after BE was forked. While BE chose to keep maintaining their own decoding filters the HC team chose to completely switch to an internal build of LAV Filters. MPC-HC also had a lot of performance improvements to the internal subtitle renderer.

MPC-BE regularly backported these improvements though, so the fact that MPC-HC died also affects MPC-BE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> MPC-HC was always my go-to. Starts up instantly and the performance was always superb, much better than VLC in seeking. I don't know what it is, but more often than not, VLC pauses for a moment when seeking to a random part of the file, while MPC-HC has always been instant.

I suppose I'll try out MPV.

<comment><USER12> VLC in a nutshell: Rebuilding fonts...

Fortunately, I believe MPC-HC will still likely be updated if necessary, or forked and updated if need be. I know I haven't updated mine in years and haven't had any problems.

<comment><USER13> > _VLC in a nutshell: Rebuilding fonts..._

I wonder if this is still a problem (I haven't used VLC in a while.) That message box is shown when fontconfig rebuilds its font cache, but libass has been able to run without fontconfig since 0.13.0 (October 2015.) I guess it depends on whether the current release version of VLC still needs it.

<comment><USER14> It happened to me on the current Windows version just a few days ago. But it doesn't seem to happen as often as in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Damn. I remember all the debates on /a/ (4chan anime board) on what are the best options and presets... for watching anime. Looking back it was kind of silly but we were able to do that because the player was so well built.

On Linux/macOS I use mpv - I recommend it!

<comment><USER16> I really liked the interpolation stuff you could get in MPC-HC. Panning and such in anime was so much nicer.

Edit: Turns out this isn't unique to MPC-HC: [https://www.svp- team.com/](https://www.svp-team.com/)

<comment><USER5> In case anyone's seeing this using SVP3 and had no idea that 4 had released, 4 is _well worth_ paying for, it is far less hardware intensive (SVP3 would choke getting high bitrate 1080p videos to 60fps, SVP4 handles the same files like a dream - anecdotal but better than nothing), the interface of the main application has been... improved (kinda subjective, but it's definitely more idiot proof) and it even supports VLC now if you swing that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you are reading this, thank you for your hard work all these years

<comment><USER18> I want to second this. Been using it for years and appreciate all the work you guys have done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe it's time for mpc-qt: [https://github.com/cmdrkotori/mpc- qt](https://github.com/cmdrkotori/mpc-qt)

It reimplements mpc-hc UX using qt for the UI and libmpv for the heavy lifting. The issue with this one is that it doesn't have public builds yet, but it has been in active development for years.

<comment><USER20> Can you use external renderers like madVR in mpc-qt?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hopefully some people step forward, I'd hate to see MPC-HC come to an end. :(

</comment><comment><USER22> > K-Lite contains a custom build of MPC-HC that contains additional fixes and > improvements compared to the officials builds. This will continue in the > future. The internal codecs that MPC-HC uses are also still actively > maintained.

[http://codecs.forumotion.net/t2644-mpc-hc-is- dead#14216](http://codecs.forumotion.net/t2644-mpc-hc-is-dead#14216)

</comment><comment><USER23> Very unfortunate, MPC-HC was so simple to use, has a slick UI inspired by MS Media Player and to quickly review/seek videos it was the very best. (much faster than VLC for that task)

<comment><USER24> It still is ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really want to use mpdn because it uses WMF but I haven't gotten results with it like I have using MPC-HC and madvr. Anybody know any other program that's as advance as mpc, compatible with madvr and uses Windows media foundation over directshow?

</comment><comment><USER25> As a potential replacement, there's [https://github.com/cmdrkotori/mpc- qt](https://github.com/cmdrkotori/mpc-qt) which uses mpv backend, but has the MPC look and feel.

<comment><USER26> It's a media player. Frankly, it's pretty frickin "feature complete" as it is right now.

Maybe you want someone to update the ffmpeg it links to. Occasionally. But that's already well into "super power user" territory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How can this come to an end :( - I am not a C/C++ dev. But I would like to support this project money wise if it would help?

<comment><USER28> Or you could just use mpv? Is there anything that you find missing in it?

<comment><USER29> a GUI

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> An excellent player with a ton of great features. However I'm not sure if it ever caught up to VLC in terms of performance. Specifically it was around 10x slower at seeking in H.264 video compared to VLC. When used on low performance machine (Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz + 7200 rpm HDD), this resulted in a sub-second seek time in VLC compared to over 5 seconds in MPC-HC when viewing 10Mbit bitrate video. Especially annoying when I wanted to rewatch a single moment over and over again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt it. Mpc according to many on doom9 and other video player forums in combination with madvr filters provided objectively better quality frames. They post side by side comparison pictures in high resolution and mpc comes out as a better choice if you care about picture quality. Also about performance I don't think mpc is as bloated as vlc is and recall many having complaints of vlc using a lot of ram and cpu whereas mpc seems pretty lightweight. I can't stress enough how much vlc is losing out on not having madvr equivalent add on type to enhance picture quality though, the hardware utilization to push out the perfect pixel is nuts, not to mention built in smooth motion

</comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 Is it dead or done?

MPC-HC is just a DirectShow frontend, or at least, that's how I used it. Filters do most of the work. And no one seems to care about DirectShow anymore but that's mostly because everything works fine.

It will die eventually, because Microsoft is trying hard to kill DirectShow (to replace it with something inferior...) and the opensource guys mostly go to mplayer, but for now, updates are not really necessary.

<comment><USER31> Calling MPC-HC just a DirectShow frontend is almost as inaccurate as saying mplayer is just a UNIX frontend. Just as mplayer is using POSIX APIs, MPC-HC is using the DirectShow API to run its filter graphs, but it actually provides a lot of internal decoders and filters (mostly based on ffmpeg/libavcodec), and if memory serves me right it even has its own renderer, and pretty much customizes its graph building, so you don't get a default DirectShow graph. To be honest, the DirectShow code provided by Microsoft usually ends up providing very little besides the Renderer (unless you're using an external renderer like madVR or Haali) and the glue code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> RIP. Is VLC the best alternative at the moment?

<comment><USER33> I really like PotPlayer. mpv is great but requires a bit of tinkering, whereas PP comes with some ready to go defaults and as much flexibility as MPC-HC.

<comment><USER34> On Windows, I have not found a better alternative than PotPlayer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Long live the best player ever mpc!

</comment><comment><USER36> Those looking for a great alternative try using MPV.

[https://mpv.io/](https://mpv.io/)

        $ brew install mpv
        $ mpv ~/Media/my-movie.mp4

And you're off!

<comment><USER37> Isn't MPC-HC for Windows, and Brew for macOS?

MPV is indeed a good alternative, though.

<comment><USER38> EDIT: I just realized you said "Isn't MPC-HC for Windows, and Brew for macOS?" which threw me off.

I am currently on Windows and use MPV, I don't see why it should be exclusive in any way.

The dotfiles are compatible, and same goes for lua scripts. So there's no trade off at all that I've found. And it's nice to be able to just clone my dotfiles and have it work in OS X, and same for Windows.

<comment><USER37> I agree. MPV is very customisable, and it's great to have a video player that works just how you want it, regardless of the system you're using.

EDIT: Yeah, I was just pointing out the fact that, if you're using MPC-HC, then you're probably using Windows. In which case, whilst MPV is a good alternative, you wouldn't be installing it with (Home)brew, which is a package manager for macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've used MPC for quite a while in the past, but have since moved to [https://potplayer.daum.net/](https://potplayer.daum.net/)

It's super feature rich, with (in my opinion) a much nice interface than e.g. VLC.

<comment><USER22> If you don't mind sending telemetry data to their HQ in Korea then sure it's a nice media player.

Article 5 (Collection and Use of Data and Other Information)

(1) Daum may collect and use data from the computer of Users as a part of its product support services that are provided to Users in connection with the Software. Data that may be collected solely include the type of computer and type of operating system used on the computer, memory capacity, type of graphic card, Directx version, media player version, type of webcam and TV reception card.

(2) Daum will use the above collected data only for the purpose of improving the Software or providing service or technology that is suitable to the user environment of the User and will not use such data for any other purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well, nuts. I really liked MPC-HC as part of the CCCP. I'll check out some of the alternatives offered in this thread. Hopefully one follows the slim design and flexibility of MPC.

</comment><comment><USER41> I like how MPC-HC uses proper hardware codecs for h.264 and doesn't try to do it programmatically on its own like some other players do.

</comment><comment><USER42> sad, but things change, eventually

</comment><comment><USER43> Used MPC for a long time. After switched to Daum Pot Player.

</comment><comment><USER44> The fate of C++ projects.

</comment><comment><USER45> A more verbose title would've been useful. I shouldn't have to click through to the linked site to find out what the acronym MPC-HC means.

<comment><USER46> I don't think it really matters what the acronym means. It's a project name, like VLC (which is VideoLAN Client, to save you the trip ;) ) and its known BY the acronym.</comment></comment>


HackerPit: challenge your inner hacker - <AUTHOR> http://hackerpit.com/ <comment><USER2> You need to change "In this picture, I see _____" to "In this picture, I think you see ____".

I see nothing but static, and have never been able to see the images in those old-fashioned "3D" pictures. Thus, when I say "In this picture, _I_ see static", that is absolutely correct.

Why should I waste another second on your page after you've pulled such a bait-and-switch? What does the page have to do with hacking?

<comment><USER3> It's not a 3D picture. There's a code hidden in the image.

I found it by opening in gimp and randomly messing with colours/brightness/levels/etc

Level 2 appears to require that I download iTunes to reverse engineer an itunes twitter app... I gave up on that

<comment><USER4> You can also do this in Chrome/webkit by inspecting the element and messing with -webkit-filter, I used: -webkit-filter: brightness(50%) contrast(5000%) sepia(0%); To reveal the code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't why this application will need all these permissions:

      + Read Tweets from your timeline.
      + See who you follow.

Why's that?

Are these standard twitter permissions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless you have locked your account (missing the whole point of Twitter IMHO) this is public information…

And yes, this is just the default settings :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like level 4 doesn't take [http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods- programmers-believe-ab...](http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-addresses/) into account.

Also, the question on level 4, "The only gramatically correct address in that file is", grammatically is spelled incorrectly. Since it wouldn't make a good hint, I assume it's a typo.

</comment><comment><USER6> I definitely see shapes when I back up and focus in the middle of the picture. Reminds me of those awesome hidden picture games as a kid.

I swear I saw Santa.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't get yourself a pink eye tough! Hint: I'd be very surprised if you could see "it" with your naked eyes. You'd better fire up your favorite image editor ;-)

<comment><USER6> Nice, I got the first one. This is fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It didn't like "polar bear in a snow storm" so I had play with an image editor and then gave up because of the Twitter requirement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? Is requiring Twitter _that_ bad? I thought it was a convenient way for most people to signup!

<comment><USER3> You know what's a convenient way for people to sign up? Having them enter an email/password.

What are you gaining from Twitter authentication? What are users gaining from it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hm... nice, but I managed to get to level 4 with just using some Google fu (for #2) and the online <http://pixlr.com> (was lazy enough to download GIMP). And I didn't need to write a line of code so far (yep, not even for #3, took me 5 minutes manually). Is that the intention?

<comment><USER4> I hope that it gets harder, but so far it doesn't appear it will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Viewed source, found hint. When I get home I'm going to try searching for all colours that aren't FFFFFF or 000000.

The file name looks like a code.

</comment><comment><USER10> Got to level 2 and gave up on the Twitter app one, since I'm running Linux and I don't have an Apple computer handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, but that's not the only way to solve this level!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I got to level 3. Then there's talk of writing code about Rainman, and now I'm fully stumped.

<comment><USER3> Well... either you can do image processing to count the number of blobs...or do a vague count, get a ballpark figure and brute force it

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed! Again, that's part of the game. The server is having a bit of a hard time though, as you weren't the only one having this idea :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remembering why I don't like OAuth

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's more to do with white box crypto ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The hint in the source is a little strange...it's not really a hint at all.

<comment><USER14> Well... it _is_ a hint. It does look like that, but it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why sign in with twitter? I have no twitter account so they lost me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here.

Restricting login to Twitter was initially an experiment. Turns out it's also very convenient for people who are on Twitter, as you signup in a single click!

And since this website is far from being important for anyone, I thought it made more sense to lose a few users here and there rather than forcing everyone through the tedious tunnel of picking an email, picking a password, checking your email, etc…

Still I'm really sorry to have lost you. Good job on getting to level 2 though!

<comment><USER9> Level 2? The sign in button is on the first page.

<comment><USER16> Once you pass level 1 you are asked to login with Twitter to continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> \+ Drag image to desktop

\+ Open photoshop

\+ Reduce brightness 2-4 times

\+ Punch in code

\+ Get to level 2

\+ Give up

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? Level 2 isn't good?

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, you're supposed to download iTunes on mac and reverse engineer the oauth secret key from the twitter app.

I just got it by googling twitter oauth key leaks...

Definitely wasn't a fun or interesting challenge.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Rather lame, just found the solution on pastebin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's one of the ways. The fun one involves GDB :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> reminds me of : <http://www.ouverture-facile.com/riddles/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ouverture facile definitely was an inspiration. This is more developper/hacker oriented though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Level 4 hint:

Streets:

1\. rue du Temple

2\. boulevard Montmartre

3\. boulevard du Temple

4\. impasse du chat

5\. rue des blancs-manteaux

6\. avenue des champs-elysees</comment>


Warren Buffett: Buying Berkshire Hathaway Was $200 Billion Blunder - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Warren-Buffett-Buying-cnbc-1784378699.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode= <comment><USER2> Once I heard a story about Disney buying ABC (quotes not exact).

DreamWorks had hired some of Eisner's top guys producing TV animation and had a deal lined up to produce a slate of shows for ABC's Saturday morning lineup, which was a big deal in the mid-90s for a just-starting studio like DreamWorks. Of course, when Disney bought ABC, that deal quietly came to a end, and eventually so did DreamWorks' TV animation department.

Jeffrey Katzenberg was asked by one of his staff why he thought Disney bought ABC. He was convinced that what Eisner most wanted was to take the ABC Saturday morning lineup away from DreamWorks -- to torpedo one of Jeffrey's first deals at his new company.

The staff member said, "But come on, this is business, this is a nineteen billion dollar deal! Nobody pays billions of dollars in order to personally screw someone over." Jeffrey laughed and replied, "No, when it's that much money, it's _always_ personal."

<comment><USER3> Your story is a little hard to follow because you have both ABC buying Disney and Disney buying ABC.

<comment><USER2> Wow, you're right. Fixed it, thanks.

<comment><USER4> He was right about the error, but wrong about it being hard to follow.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I heard it from the person involved fifteen years ago and hadn't told the story before, so I'm glad it still came out well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or maybe he wouldn't have learned necessary and important lessons if he hadn't bought the textile business.

<comment><USER6> Learning lessons is good, but it's preferable to not blow a significant fraction of your net worth learning something you'd probably have learned anyway.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes the lesson isn't really learned any other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> His comment about if you come back in ten years he might have another...

Is that a reference to his puts on S&P and other indexes?

<comment><USER9> No, it is his usual humbleness. If you read his letters to the shareholders he is always willing to admit a mistake and is always tries to dispel all of the myths that he is some kind of an "oracle" that can see the future.

<comment><USER8> Right, but his puts run for another ten years, or thereabouts.

So when that time rolls around, we'll see if his big bet on derivatives was a mistake or not.

So I was wondering if he was alluding to that in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's nice to know that the Sage of Omaha is/was just as prone to irrational behavior as every other CEO.

<comment><USER11> How is that nice to know? It'd be much more edifying if he were rich precisely because he _doesn't_ make this kind of mistake.

<comment><USER12> Because it makes you feel that it's possible for you too to make it and still make mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Success like Buffet's is so adventitious, you can't make much of counter- factuals like that. For instance, it has probably been helpful to have his biggest-ever emotion-driven mistake staring him in the face, day after day.

</comment><comment><USER14> The link initially redirected me to the Yahoo search page (maybe because I'm in Uruguay)

I was able to navigate to the news from there, but it's still odd (now the link here at HN works for me).</comment>


Departing Space Station Commander Provides Tour of Orbital Laboratory [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k

<comment><AUTHOR> Seeing how life unfolds in a space station was absolutely mind blowing!</comment>


Uber imposes engineer hiring freeze as losses mount - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-imposes-engineer-hiring-freeze-as-losses-mount-exclusive-202234064.html <comment><USER2> The clock is ticking and they seem to have no plan at all. So weird to see such a massive company go public with no ideas or serious attempts at becoming profitable, ever.

Congrats to all the investors and employees who were able to cash out before whenever. Everyone else is about to get very, very angry.

<comment><USER3> As someone who was doing projects for several companies when the dot-com bubble burst, companies like Uber and Wework seem like whatever we had then but at a far bigger scale. The fundamentals do not work so how does anyone think this will end well?

<comment><USER4> It won't, it's going to be another nuclear winter in Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think they've gotten "engineering" confused with "engineer"—plenty of people are in the engineering org that aren't engineers.

<comment><USER6> Really like who? There are only engineers in "engineering" at the company that I work at. Pretty sure it's always the case unless you're discounting EMs, which I don't think you should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of negative responses thus far. Happy to accommodate any insider views as to why this is not what it seems to be...

<comment><USER8> I work there (and conduct engineering interviews)

If that's really happening, nobody told me. I had two interviews this week and another one scheduled two weeks from now. And last I heard, my team got approval to increase headcount by 2.

<comment> t-writescode And Glassdoor is covered in Uber positions in my area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this seems reactionary. I mean if they didn't need to hire those engineers in the first place, why hire them?

<comment><USER10> So another company wouldn't. Spite hiring.</comment></comment>


Educational Code Reviews - <AUTHOR> https://rodrigohgpontes.github.io/#educational-code-reviews <comment><USER2> other view on CR problems [http://gbksoft.com/blog/so-do-you-need-a-code- review/](http://gbksoft.com/blog/so-do-you-need-a-code-review/)</comment>


Physics explains why time flies as we age - <AUTHOR> https://neurosciencenews.com/aging-time-10924/ <comment><USER2> English?</comment>


Firefox 75: Ambitions for April - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/04/firefox-75-ambitions-for-april/ <comment><USER2> firefox also removes 'www' and 'https' in _drop-down search results_ from the address bar[0]. it's a subtle change, but worth knowing. 'http' urls remain in long form apparently (haven't installed yet to check it out).

edit: min(), max(), and clamp() for css looks useful too.

edit 2: honoring 'nosniff' on mime types on page load is neat too [1]

[0] [https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/28/firefox-75-address-bar- res...](https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/28/firefox-75-address-bar-results/)

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/04/07/firefox-75-will...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/04/07/firefox-75-will- respect-nosniff-for-page-loads/)

<comment><USER3> Fenix is also now stripping [https://](https://) and [https://www](https://www). from the address bar, which I strongly approve of as it has none of the downsides that doing that would have on desktop (OK, OK, so www. stripping can be _theoretically_ significant), and I have a not-huge device so that that was taking up around half of the space allotted to text. Now if only I could do away with the padlock (only show it when it's problematic, not all the time) and shrink the remaining badge much smaller. And/or if you could scroll the text horizontally like you could in Firefox for Android.

<comment><USER4> Except in Chrome, say I'm on [https://www.google.com/chrome/](https://www.google.com/chrome/), which is shown as google.com/chrome/. Now for one reason or another I want to copy only part of the address, say only the domain name. So I grab "google.com" with my mouse and command+c to copy it. Congratulations, I just copied [https://www.google.com](https://www.google.com), although I explicitly selected only the "google.com" part. I can understand the behavior if I was copying the entire URL.

Now, I'm not sure how this is handled in the mobile Firefox Preview, but thankfully on desktop they only dim [https://[www.]](https://\[www.\]).

(Btw, it seems a sibling somehow has the exact opposite gripe.)

<comment><USER5> > it seems a sibling somehow has the exact opposite gripe

If you don't have two users complaining about the exact same issue but in opposite directions, your feedback channels aren't working. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "On Linux, the behavior when clicking on the Address Bar and the Search Bar now matches other desktop platforms" \- yay, I have found it annoying that you need to double-click in order to select all and start searching

<comment><USER7> When this change was made in FF Nightly I was annoyed enough to find out why it happened and file a bug report about the regression ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1619801](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1619801), and a dupe at [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621570](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621570)), but apparently it was an intended change. What's annoying is that instead of just changing the default for Linux to be in line with other platforms, the option to _not_ select the URL when clicking was completely removed.

Now I have to click on the URL, wait a second, and then click again to place the cursor instead of selecting all. Especially annoying if you accidentally move your mouse off by a character between the two clicks. This makes me quite mad the few times per day I run into it - the feature is quite useful for changing URLs, which it turns out I do quite often, even though I'm usually not a web developer.

I'm currently compiling Firefox with the patch reverted. EDIT: It worked!!! Compiling took about an hour with an AMD Ryzen 3800x (8x 3.9-4.5 GHz) and NVMe SSD and 32 GB RAM. I'll post a link in a followup comment here with instructions on the simplest way to do this on Arch Linux (uses the build infrastructure already setup to create Arch's regular Firefox package, just modified to also revert the patch which removed this preference). Of course there's no guarantee that this will continue to work in the future as the FF codebase is updated.

<comment><USER8> If you just care about changing part of the URL, you can click and drag to highlight and then type to replace.

<comment><USER7> Dang, I never thought of that. Thanks!

Still doesn't help for adding something onto the end, but good enough for 90% of cases.

<comment><USER9> > Still doesn't help for adding something onto the end

If I'm going to need to type anyway, I'd rather do that with the keyboard than the mouse: Ctrl-L End /xyz or Ctrl-L Right /xyz feels much faster to me than "move mouse to end of address bar, click, /xyz".

(I absolutely understand that relearning/retaining muscle memory takes time and feels frustrating, though.)

<comment><USER10> I do the same thing, but with Alt-D. I thought it was strange that there are duplicate hotkeys for the function, but looking at the shortcuts page shows that's not uncommon. It seems F6 does the same thing, but I can't remember the last time I used an F-key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A big one for me (covered in the release notes):

"Experimental support for using client certificates from the OS certificate store can be enabled on macOS by setting the preference security.osclientcerts.autoload to true."

This allows Firefox to work with my company's BeyondCorp implementation. I was forced to use Chrome before.

<comment><USER12> Could you not just copy the cert from keychain to firefox's cert store?

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily; it's possible for the certs to be copy protected.

<comment><USER12> No it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Built-in support for lazy image loading is pretty nice! No more annoying JS- based hacks to get it to work.

<comment><USER15> Do all the other popular browsers, like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge (the new one) and Brave, also support this?

<comment><USER16> It looks like the Blink based browsers do. [https://caniuse.com/#feat=loading- lazy-attr](https://caniuse.com/#feat=loading-lazy-attr)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And there are some minimal improvements to "Install Website as App": now app is not grouped with Firefox icon on Windows, displays correct icon. Little steps towards full PWA support.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just got the update on Ubuntu.

The address bar looks horrible when selected [0], it outgrows its container and invades the space of tabs. I thought it was a bug at first, but it's probably intentional. is there a way to go back to the normal address bar?

[0] [https://imagehost.imageupload.net/2020/04/08/Screenshot- from...](https://imagehost.imageupload.net/2020/04/08/Screenshot- from-2020-04-07-19-21-34.png)

<comment><USER19> It is similar on Mac OS. Seems like a reasonable method to shift focus. Doesn't break things but it different so might need a little settle time to get used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Two things I am looking forward to:

* Lazy loading images without JavaScript

* Static fields in JavaScript classes - I wanted to use this the other day and was disappointed that FF didn't support static fields yet.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wait, Am I the only one to notice right away that FF FINALLY added a "Default Zoom" option to its settings? Or has this been there before recently and I've missed it? If this is new then THANKS 1000x.

For YEARS this was my main annoyance with FF of not having a general zoom added to all webpages and was the only browser that didn't. FF would remember your set zoom for sites (provided you didn't check "site preferences" in clearing history) but it just became so tedious to have to manually zoom pages you haven't visited before.I even tried to resort to some clumsy add-ons that tried to makeup for lack of system wide zoom

{FF as default browser user since Opera died and went to being chrome. Although I do test others out once in while like Brave/Vivaldi/EdgeChrome I'm still loyal}

<comment><USER22> No, you weren't really missing anything, default zoom is very recent. I don't remember which version it was, but it was within the last 3. It's a big deal for accessibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's no mention of any of the promised Wayland improvements (which I'd been looking forward to).

It's a bit unclear if it hasn't made it to the final release, or if it's just a matter of the Linux userbase being too small for them to announce Linux- specific changes.

<comment><USER24> According to Phoronix it's in: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-75-Released)

<comment><USER25> plan to be on ff 76 [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-76-VA- API-Formats)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So... anyone knows how to restore old address bar look, instead of this weird popup thingy?

<comment><USER27> Searched for this myself this morning, about:config and search "urlbar.update1". Set it to False and completely restart FF.

<comment><USER26> Great! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> XPath search is a good one. I've used to scrape some data from the sites and missing search by XPath forced me to use chromium derivatives. Great to see this feature coming.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hardware video accelleration on Linux with Wayland! I've tested it on Youtube, it works alright, definitely less CPU usage, however on twitch.tv I still get some graphical glitches.

</comment><comment><USER17> How do I change search engine from search bar? Before update there were icons with my saved search engines, but now they are nowhere to be seen.

<comment><USER30> Once you start typing the same icons should show up again. You can click on them to perform just that search with the selected search engine, or right click on it to make it the default.

<comment><USER31> I hate this kind of UI.

The very worst I've seen is in Krita (maybe they've changed it) where to make a new brush you had to select the name field of an existing brush and edit it, and only _then_ would the button for "Save a Copy as a New Brush" or whatever appear. Good luck hunting for the "New Brush" button, you're not going to find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Will lazy-loading images avoid viewport jumping? Because that's a constant headache on mobile Safari.

<comment><USER17> Now it is recommended to use width and height attributes on img elements. It will help to prevent viewport jumping and will support responsive aspect ratio resizing. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-d_SoCHeWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-d_SoCHeWE)

<comment><USER32> That's been recommended since about 1993. That doesn't mean more than 10% of sites have ever actually followed the guideline.

<comment><USER33> WordPress does this by default and that's the most common platform to date. I'd dare to say that most websites have those attributes, but most SPAs don't, because _that's too hard._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They should fix looking up for things such as "clipboard.js" attempting to look up the domain and giving not found page. Chrome is smarter in this regard.

<comment><USER35> Its being worked on: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1080682](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1080682)

<comment><USER34> Opened 6 years ago!

<comment><USER36> Progress: [https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D68796#2134810](https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D68796#2134810)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It would be great if the inspector supported dark mode.

<comment><USER38> It has for a while. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Settings](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Settings)

<comment><USER39> Kinda. It has a dark mode, but it doesn't seem to pick up the system preference.

<comment><USER38> That is one way to look at it. Personally, I don't regularly use any operating system that has such a preference. To me, FF supports dark mode, although not certain operating systems' implementations.

<comment><USER39> That preference exists on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, so it's not an unusual expectation for users to have. Supporting system dark mode means that you can do things like have all applications automatically switch themes based on the time of day.

Revising my opinion; Firefox dev tools has a dark theme, but it doesn't support dark mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> ah live console eval as comment, such a bliss

</comment><comment><USER41> Hopefully this fixes Firefox 74. First time in years I can say that I've had stability problems, frequent crashes, etc.

<comment><USER42> I definitely agree if you compare it to MS Edge. However, it appears you are being downvoted for disagreeing with the Mozillian crowd in this thread by critiquing their beloved Firefox which is somewhat seen as treasonous.

Try to play nice with the Mozillians here by praising their saviour Rust on each Firefox release since they will hunt us down if we complain about crashes, unsafety or any other bugs in Linux.

I'll go first: 𝔓𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔰𝔢 ℜ𝔳𝔰𝔱 MMXX

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > evnt breakpoints

Typo in the first paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER44> World runs on mobile, Mozilla focuses of desktop.

<comment><USER45> Firefox Mobile also has a _lot_ of improvements coming up. The previews are actually quite amazing

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Nice to see Mozilla keeping up. Don't really have much reason personally to use Firefox nowadays though due to the new Microsoft Edge being so good.

<comment><USER42> I have to agree here. If VSCode seems to be a widely accepted editor on HN using Electron, then I can't wait to see what Microsoft has done with MS Edge which so far is a breath of fresh air.

Time to go where the 'real' users are.</comment></comment>


Jack's Adventure in Japan - <AUTHOR> http://jack.ventures/japan-2014/

<comment><USER2> Thank you for that wonderful diorama of sights of Japan. Haven't looks at the other trips but if its anything like that one it will definitely be awesome.</comment>


Innovating Across the Atlantic Divide - <AUTHOR> http://ideasand.info/2015/11/23/innovating-across-the-atlantic-divide/ <comment><USER2> > The US represents the largest single language market in the Western world, > has a relatively unified legal landscape (especially as compared to the > European myth referred to as the "Single Market")

Coming from Europe and now living in California, I'm occasionally surprised by how in certain respects there is less regulatory conformity within the US than the EU. For instance California has its own, stricter car emissions standards:

> California's emissions standards are set by the California Air Resources > Board, known locally by its acronym "CARB". Given that California's > automotive market is one of the largest in the world, CARB wields enormous > influence over the emissions requirements that major automakers must meet if > they wish to sell into that market.

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_standard#United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_standard#United_States_of_America)

That this regulatory diversity can exist goes to show just how much more important the the cultural and linguistic conformity is to the single market in the US.</comment>


Windows Server hardening standards - <AUTHOR> I've been reading about CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs for Windows Server hardening.  Does anyone have any input on these or using a different standard? <comment><USER2> STIGs are probably too tight. Sometimes they assume that you aren't networked.

CIS Benchmarks are consensus-driven and are a good starting place.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's been my impressions so far too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: First startup / cold feet. Any advice ? - <AUTHOR> Hi fellow hackers,
I have been thinking about doing my own startup for a while and I've finally gotten to the point where being really bored at my job at one of the Big Internet Companies, I quit.
Now seems like the best time to start something on my own since I have some money saved up and don't have a lot of responsibilities in my personal life. However, although I do have an idea, albeit not the best one I could think of, I am getting cold feet thinking the following :
- No safety net - No income ... maybe higher expenses - What if the company fails ? I would have lost this time.
Did anyone else here feel the same way when starting their first company ? How did you convince yourself that you should go do your own thing and not go work for another BIG firm with the security and lavish perks etc ? <comment><USER2> What you're feeling is the reason even people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs needed cofounders. I'd recommend finding one. It will also greatly improve your chances of succeeding.

<comment><USER3> I'd add a slight caveat to that. This is why it's a good idea to either have a cofounder or have a guru like pg tell you that you won't succeed with a cofounder.

For me, the desire to prove pg wrong supplied all the motivation which is normally supplied by a cofounder. :-)

<comment><USER4> How do you single-handedly prove wrong a statement like "it helps a lot to have a cofounder"?

<comment><USER3> I'm not trying to prove that it doesn't help to have a cofounder. In fact, I'd agree that _in most cases_ having a cofounder helps.

It's more that I'd like to demonstrate that there are exceptions -- and so far I can't think of a single instance where having a cofounder would have helped me.

<comment><USER5> One of the most valuable things a cofounder does is shine light on your blind spots. By definition you can't see these problems, but someone else who's intimately involved can.

<comment><USER6> A common argument is that it's valuable to have a partner as a sounding board and as a source of moral support. These roles are vital, but they don't necessarily have to be filled by founders. Einstein needed the help of his friend Michele Besso to develop special relativity, but Besso wasn't a coauthor on _Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper_.

I don't see two as a natural lower bound on the number of founders. As the productivity of individual programmers continues to rise, I expect to see an increasing number of single-founder startups succeed.

<comment><USER7> I have also come to the same conclusion independently.

You need a sounding board and a source of moral support absolutely. This is best done by a co-founder. However, it CAN also be done by someone who is not a co-founder and more of an advisor.

Also, you do NOT absolutely need co-founders with complimentary skills. That is a myth. Larry and Segie did not have complimentary skills. Bill Gates and Paul Allen did NOT have ALL the skills required to build their business. They had or developed (read learned) a lot of skills on the way, for which they could not hire immidiately - which is the only thing that is required of a founding team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Random advice you'll need: Spend as much time as you possible can trying to get money.

Just start now. Get some money.

Do it. Get some money. Are you spending time getting money? No? Do it! Stop redesigning your website. Get some money.

Product's rough? Offer it for 20% of what you'll sell it for later, with free upgrades. Do it. Get some money.

Are you spending time getting some money? Spend more time getting money.

Man... get some money. Stop messing around with a logo. You don't need a logo. You need money.

Improving the product? I actually spend waaaay too much time historically doing product development. I understand. But STOP! And get some money.

Get some money, man. From customers or clients. Beg for money, barter for money, work for money, do way more than you'd ever reasonably do for some money.

Just get some f*ing money, man. Money means people value your things and you're on the right track. Get money. ASAP. Especially in your first business. Money means you can sell, money means you can get loans, money means the business banker takes you seriously, money means they break the rules and wipe off charges for you (or give you telephone wire-transfer access before you're qualified, which you need to pay people when you're outside the USA traveling, and trying to get money from some people in Berlin). Money means you get lines of credit, or net-30 terms instead of paid up front. Money means later, you can pay people to do the most horrible aspects of your business once you've fully mastered them. Money means you're doing something of value.

Mate - stop designing your logo and color scheme, and get some money. It's the only way.

<comment><USER9> Great job. While such a discussion really makes me miss Startup News, the more posts like this, the merrier, for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't think about the worst case scenario if you start a business. Think about the worst case scenario if you don't do a startup.

You are 40. Every day you work 9 - 6 at the BIG firm. Even after getting promoted several times, getting the corner cubicle in the process, you are a relative nobody amongst the other 1000 managers. You hate your job and you may be starting to hate your life. There have been 5 different economic slumps during your career, having you worry about your job and your family's survival every time.

The opposite case: You have started and sold two companies and are now working on the third one, after taking an year-long sabbatical in Egypt. True, your first startup failed and you had to eat ramen for a few months, but it only made you stronger, and no one remembers that now.

Of course, I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the idea. You will experience failures, but that's the small price everyone has to pay when they aim for the sky.

</comment><comment><USER11> _Did anyone else here feel the same way when starting their first company?_

Yes. I'd go on a limb and say that _everybody_ feels that way when starting their first company. I'm on it right now and feeling it most certainly.

I convince myself by reminding me that I believe in the business model and in my skills, I honestly think I can pull it off.

In the beginning make sure you believe in your thing and try to be realistic about your planning. Base everything on pessimistic assumptions. How long will it take you to launch something, how long until you can realistically expect your first $1 of income? What unknowns are there and how will you deal with them? Write down your most important figures, juggle them around in excel, make sure to have a good feeling for what you're getting yourself into. If the figures say you can't do it then re-think your idea. If the figures say you can do it then try again with more pessimistic assumptions. A good business model looks promising even under most pessimistic assumptions. You definately want one that's robust enough to still work even when many factors turn out less than ideal.

Also make sure to realize that it will be much harder than you can possibly imagine. You definately need persistence. Easily more of that than you've ever needed before in your life. Stuff will go wrong, people will tell you that your idea sucks, work will overwhelm you. Be prepared to handle that without losing focus. Never panic. Don't torn yourself apart by trying to do everything at once.

If you think you have enough discipline to manage that then, by all means, do it. Remember you don't have much to lose. You can stop at any time and the expiriences you gained will help you either way.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Everybody feels that way when starting their first company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You will fail, especially if it's your first time. Many of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world failed 6-7 times before they figured it out.

The best thing about failing is learning why you failed. If you're afraid of failing, you should give up now because you're not cut out for this thing.

Depending where you are in life, you'll need to assess your risk. It's going to be hard if you have a wife and kids.

<comment><USER14> I didn't fail my first time. And you're not _guaranteed_ to fail by any means so please don't let anyone convince you of that.

I have never recommended a Paul Graham essay on this site (something that I'll never be able to claim again), but I highly recommend you read this one:

"How Not to Die" (August 2007) <http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>

<comment><USER13> heh, "failing" is subjective and is dependent on certain variables (e.g. connections, capital, experience, etc)

If he plans on becoming a multi-million dollar company and this is his first time, then I would say, yes he will fail and that's not a bad thing. You have to work at it a few times before it works out. Sure you can get lucky but I am trying to be a bit more pragmatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You won't lose anything, because you'll compress a lot of learning into that time. Just be quick to release, because you start learning after you release, not before.

Pre release is like building a boat. Post release is like sailing out in a storm.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the prompt replies, everyone ! I do understand the importance of a co-founder and am in talks with a couple of people I worked with before.

A couple of reasons why I am hesitating are :

1\. I feel like I should get some experience in a startup before I start my own.

2\. I know the idea has merit but I haven't done any market research yet so it might end up worth nothing.

Do you guys think one should work for a startup before starting one's own ? Is the experience VERY helpful ?

I thought about doing that but then I feel I wouldn't have as much control over the proceedings as I would like to have... to take the company in a particular direction.

<comment><USER11> I have worked in a startup before (in fact, I have worked only for startups in my life) but I don't think that's necessarily a prerequisite to starting your own.

When you enter a "classic", funded startup as an employee then you won't get in touch with the meaty details outside your area of expertise more than you would in a conventional company. Thus the "new" aspects about founding a company remain new, even if you went through one as an employee before.

<comment><USER9> Another great post. Wow, you guys are awesome today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At the end of Feb, I will have gone one year without a job. By choice. I spent that time finishing grad school and working to get some things off the ground.

I used to have cold feet and sometimes I really hated my own guts for throwing my savings away for what felt like "spinning my wheels". I was also afraid of losing my bargaining power/credibility in my old community the longer I spent time away from it (unfounded fear FYI). Oh and I had months where I felt like I wasn't making progress fast enough and I had many days full of questioning myself. I should note I launched two projects during this time that saw very little interest--finding this out early is a great argument for release early, release often.

Anyways, there is a happy stop gap in here somewhere. I launched a project in November and it gained interest and started making money. The profits are nothing huge but making that first $1 is huge to developing that entrepreneurial confidence. Its a small milestone but celebrate it anyways.

Now I'm getting close to ready with my big startup effort. Its based on one of the aforementioned failures but I'm using the lessons I learned and I'm really excited about it.

It took awhile but after a few breakthroughs I'm glad I took the jump. If I don't succeed now, I feel its certain I will later. Each effort I'm learning different things and starting to develop a mental model of what works and what doesn't.

Its one thing to read "write to bloggers to help market your product". Its another to write to them get zero response, refine your pitch, add a mediakit, and then try again and succeed.

My point is--you may have some growth to experience before you're ready to run a successful company. However, no matter how much growth you've got to go through, you may as well start now. It doesn't happen on its own.

Oh last point--to quit your job is a decision only you can make. I find when my personal needs are met its hard to force myself to do things that are painful but necessary for growth (i.e. get started). Even when I had significant savings left, I still felt too comfortable. Seeing my savings dwindle offered a great kick in the ass to move :)

I'm consulting now to meet my financial obligations but am nowhere near comfortable. This makes the whole thing feel like a "mission" and I love it. YMMV.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER17> Keep that feeling, it's your biggest asset. The moment you lose it is when you should be looking out real hard for trouble because it is bound to happen.

Insecurity at some level is one of the biggest drives to succeed, even if most successful entrepreneurs would never admit to it.

There is no such thing as a 'failed' startup, there are no such things as 'bad questions'. Even the worst startup experience will teach you more than years of business theory will ever do and even the most silly question deserves to be heard and answered in a serious way.

Don't let anything or anybody stand in your way of trying and give it your best, you'll probably be amazed how far that will get you on momentum alone.

For me the turning point came when I was out of a job and my gf was pregnant, it was all or nothing and it worked out pretty good, 15 years and counting. I'd never go back to a day job no matter what the compensation and 'perks', there is no better perk than to know that you are moving under your own power.

</comment><comment><USER18> When I was talking to one of the local luminaries in the startup scene he said something that seemed really "on":

"It's uncertain what the worth of your startup will be. However, you can be certain that your personal worth will grow enormously."

If you approach your first startup as one of the foundational personal education experiments that you'll go through it's a win-win. Before starting a company I _thought_ I knew something about business. A year in it's amazing how much I've had to learn just to keep things functioning. If you approach it with that mindset, and keep your cash-flow tight, I think you'll find that as a personal investment it's an extremely worthwhile experience -- even if it's just to realize that the startup game isn't for you.

</comment><comment><USER19> You don't have a safety net? You'll find you don't need much of one. If you have money saved up, reduce your expenses and figure out a time-frame for it to work. By the end of that time frame you can decide what you want to do. You would be surprised how well you can scrape by if you really want to.

What if the company fails? Who cares! You'll learn so much about what you are doing, yourself, and much more that you will benefit either way.

</comment><comment><USER20> "What if the company fails? I would have lost this time."

You're going to learn a lot while doing this - more than you would have at any corporate job - so regardless of what happens I wouldn't consider your experience a failure. The financial outcome isn't the only metric involved in success.

</comment><comment><USER21> Having a cofounder != an increased chance of success for your startup. Having the right cofounder that is as excited about your product and is as determined as you are to make something thats awesome will be the difference between failure and success.

</comment><comment><USER22> Whether you decide to quit your job or not, do the startup anyway.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the invaluable advice, everyone. Really appreciate you guys taking out the time to reply !!

I've made the decision ... it's going to be a startup. If nothing else, it will be one dandy adventure !

thanks again!

<comment><USER17> best of luck!

(and of course I'm really curious what it is that you're going to do).

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you!

I have a couple of ideas; not sure which one I'd work on (time to do some research). I'll stay on here and be in touch with the community and ofcourse, ask for feedback when I have something to show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> By "no safety net" do you mean no savings? That's how I read it at first. In which case, run, don't walk, away from the startup until you have some in the bank.

BTW, our "startup" is earning money after the first month we shipped. We made $1500 on the first round of 30 day trials. (Now we're up to about $2000, as we're rolling towards 60 days - and thus another wave of charges - but not there yet.)

That's not enough to live on, but you can make money right out of the gate if you:

1\. Solve a real business problem.

2\. Solve a REAL business PROBLEM. That doesn't mean inventing some new tech thing and then looking for a problem it can theoretically be applied to, & expecting people to eat it up like pigs eat slop.

3\. Solve a real BUSINESS problem. If it adds actual bottom-line value, people will pay for it.

And if you're not doing a service people will pay for, you're going to be freaked out until those savings are gone, because your only option will be a buy-out.

EDIT: I have grander plans too beyond this first money-making service, but I _do_ care about it itself, as well. I don't recommend doing something you're going to come to despise to pay the bills. Might as well have a job, at that point.

</comment><comment><USER24> Work on your project for a couple of months, and see how it feels then.

If you're feeling good about it, do continue, if not, think of something else.</comment>


AT&T CEO: State net neutrality and privacy laws are a "total disaster" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/att-ceo-urges-congress-to-block-state-net-neutrality-and-privacy-laws/ <comment><USER2> If they don't like something, they say change the law. If we don't like something, they say well, you have to pay more for better service. Really AT&T?

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course he would say this.

Att is one of/ if not the biggest beneficiary from these laws.

For a party that claims to be about small government and states rights the conservatives certainly seem to have a moral relativism about enforcing regulation where their big money donors are concerned.

<comment><USER4> Yup. I would expect nothing other than disinformation and propaganda from a company trying to enforce and secure the oligopoly.

EDIT: Also, it's really easy to navigate 50 different rules. Find the one that is the most restrictive in what it protects and make that your policy. ;)

<comment><USER5> > Find the one that is the most restrictive in what it protects and make that > your policy. ;)

Pretty much. As an example, see how car manufacturers follow California's emission standards nationwide, because it's easier to just do it for every car than to make compliant cars just for California.</comment></comment></comment>