Anyone noticed that almost no YC companies are purely B2C software anymore? - <AUTHOR> Almost all are either B2B (which includes marketplaces) or B2C hardware products. Almost no B2C software:
http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator-companies
Did this shift happen a long time ago and I never noticed? <comment><USER53> Though definitely not a YC company, we're [1] doing alright for ourselves in the B2C disaster recovery market; there are certain niches that have not yet been fully taken over by the "this should be free" movement. Not that a day goes by that we don't have a comment left on our site or sent to our customer support department about why our software that has literally cost countless hundreds thousands of dollars and man hours to develop isn't free, but such is life.

I was previously in both the B2C and B2B backup market, but "cloud" has completely taken over that market segment. Our focus on (disaster) recovery solutions has proven profitable - it seems when their data is gone, customers will then do anything to get it back. Good luck convincing them to shell out for backup software before disaster strikes, however.

People always ask me why I'm in the recovery niche, and the answer is easy: when their data is safe, you have to beg them to buy your software to protect their information and their data. When their data is gone, they'll come to you begging and pleading to get it back.

A big problem with B2C these days is honestly piracy. We have our hands beyond full keeping the very first page of Google free of piracy links. Even the best-meaning of customers will turn when simply searching for the product name + "download" turns up "Download now, free activated and serial XXXX" as the 3rd or 4th result on Google or Bing. SaaS is much easier to police for piracy (or pre-empt entirely) in that respect.

B2C also isn't as "sexy" for investors and founders who've heard so much about and drank much of the "recurring revenue" koolaid. We try to sell licenses for updates as recurring charges, but that gets almost no traction whatsoever. This current startup cycle is very much recurring-revenue-focused, B2C has a much harder time with that than SaaS or B2B enterprise software.

1: [http://neosmart.net/EasyRE/](http://neosmart.net/EasyRE/)

<comment><USER54> My favorite "this should be free" has to do with when Qt was released under the GPL. It always bothered me when people selling software would complain that they couldn't use the GPL version of Qt. At some level understood that software costs money to make which was why they were not giving away their software, but at the same time they didn't want to pay for software. And then when it was put under the LGPL people still complained. Having lived through Qt being released under the QPL/GPL/LGPL I understand that when selling pure software there will always be people who want more and they should just be ignored because they are not your customer and never will be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why? Google, Facebook, and others convinced consumers that software, storage, etc. should be free.

Try to sell better email than Google email to consumers? Good luck - you will get so much hate email "this should be free" that you can write a book from them.

Anyway I'm not aware of any new B2C software company which is hot right now. But please correct me - I would love to know (and learn how they get over 99% users who think it should be free).

<comment><USER56> It's not free. It's supported by surveillance. But people don't care.

If people started caring about that kind of thing, new niches could open up for alternatives that were more secure and under user control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> It is called a gold rush 2.0.

The second .com bubble is about making tools for startup to be efficient and then advertise how much these business models are successful to attract more startup to make tools for startups.

The same way during gold rush, the hardware reseller made the most money and were sending ads abouts the gold rush everywhere.

This time, there is just no gold.

<comment><USER55> I do not know if this is about bubble. I think the cause for this is actually worse than a bubble - it is shift of consumer perception that everything on internet should be free. With exception of games - of course.

However, there is also an opportunity here: as bubble bursts (or deflates) all these money losing (and free) B2C solutions provided by large companies might become neglected to the level that people will be willing to pay a little - just to get something working.

<comment><USER56> "as bubble bursts (or deflates) all these money losing (and free) B2C solutions provided by large companies might become neglected to the level that people will be willing to pay a little - just to get something working."

We can hope.

Right now these pseudo-free services are supported by surveillance. I wonder sometimes if that's a bit of a bubble, and if the value of user data and data mining of that sort of hugely overestimated. If that turns out to be the case, you'll see exactly that: these bait-and-spy services will be relegated to neglectware status and niches will open for quality alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Predictable customers with real, financially motivated needs? The downsides are that you'll probably need to invest more into your first product to do proper learning and face longer sales cycles.

B2B has got to be way easier to predict and value as a company. You can also get a big leg up if a founder comes from the industry and is therefore pre- baked with a lot of customer knowledge and a good rolodex.

</comment><comment><USER59> Cool observation -- pretty clear people don't like buying software. I can think of a handful of reasonably-new software security companies (agile bits, dashlane) that sell software to people.

And worth mentioning, plenty of people expect bitcoin will make a difference here. It (or some centralized system that makes it easier to buy things online, like iTunes) certainly has/will continue to make people more willing to purchase other kinds of ones and zeros.

</comment><comment><USER60> financial services and payment processing - <USER2>

web-based business productivity and collaboration - <USER3>

devices/hardware/components (manufactured goods) - <USER4>

search tech and messaging (contacts/email/sms/text) - <USER6>

travel-related services - <USER6>

employment resources - <USER8>

games and game features - <USER8>

analytics tools/data visualization/and big data - <USER9>

video technology - <USER10>

online music - <USER11>

daily deals/coupons/and price comparison - <USER15>

food discovery/catering/and restaurant technology - <USER15>

photo sharing and social networks - <USER15>

visual design - <USER15>

fashion and clothing - <USER16>

platform as a service - <USER17>

e-tail infrastructure - <USER19>

medical industry - <USER19>

advertising/seo technology - <USER23>

education - <USER23>

event planning (real world) - <USER23>

real estate infrastructure - <USER23>

cloud storage - <USER27>

database technology - <USER27>

logistics/shipping/and warehousing - <USER27>

nonprofit organization - <USER27>

mobile-specific platforms and development tools - <USER30>

parenting resources - <USER30>

screen-sharing and collaborative real-time editors - <USER30>

business communication infrastructure - <USER36>

charity and philanthropy - <USER36>

education/programming - <USER36>

legal services - <USER36>

news/reading/and publishing - <USER36>

scientific research tools - <USER36>

electronics design - <USER39>

physical fitness - <USER39>

programming tools - <USER39>

business human resources - <USER45>

gift card technology - <USER45>

printing solutions - <USER45>

psychometric tools - <USER45>

surveys and forms - <USER45>

user interfaces - <USER45>

agriculture and farming - <USER51>

biotechnology - <USER51>

green energy technology - <USER51>

home improvement - <USER51>

memes and jokes - <USER51>

proximity-based mobile apps - <USER51>

food products - <USER52>

</comment><comment><USER61> How would you characterize: Doordash, Instacart, HomeJoy, 7CupsofTea...

<comment><USER62> Not much social software though. Social used to be a big percentage of YC startups, and a lot of the most successful YC startups have been social -- reddit, loopt, twitch, airbnb, etc.

<comment><USER63> That is well spotted, but at least reddit and loopt has not been very successful economically. I don't know what twitch sold for, but it seems to me that it would be an exception.

Airbnb is doing very well too, but it seems to be more a marketplace than social.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> > free social websites

Online advertisements generate less and less money (CPC and CPM earnings) for websites.

There is a need for advertisement-networks that offer less intrusive ads so that not half of the visitors use an ad-blocker. (Ads that follow me around and show me products I just bought on Amazon isn't very helpful and often just creepy.) Idea: What about ads that are related to the page/article-content? The ads network would have to crawl the page after the first visit of a user and analyze & categorize it. For the second visitor it can already show an ad that is related to the content.

</comment><comment><USER65> Pushbullet from a yeah ago is a purely B2C software product. I haven't checked the list but this one came pretty much on top of my head since I use the product a lot.

<comment><USER66> That is so last yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> The ostensibly B2C companies that are ad-supported are actually B2B. The advertiser not the consumer is the one buying. As they say, the user is not the customer but the product.

Or perhaps we should call them B2A, since it's not fair to lump straightup B2B businesses with them.

</comment><comment><USER68> Please provide stats.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator- companies](http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator-companies)

Scroll down past the header section and you'll see the lists.

<comment><USER69> That's a list, not a stat. If you come up with some actual stats to back up the assertion/impression you have, that'll make it more interesting and harder for people to dismiss it as just your (mis)impression.</comment></comment></comment>


Duck Duck Go Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-architecture.html <comment><USER2> I've seen Duck Duck Go when you posted before and didn't think much of the idea (hey, I can use Wikipedia!)

Just had a look again and I now think it's pretty awesome. Just for a really speedy "what the hell is this?" type of query it looks absolutely amazing. I love the AJAX extra search links, makes it all feel really snappy.

Works great on the iPhone as well, I've added an icon to my home screen. You might want to consider making an app for the app store (you could pretty much just make an app that loads the site as it is).

Have you considered adding an API? I currently have my Emacs set up to do a dictionary lookup (using the dictd protocol) on a word when I hit C-cl. I'd love to add Duck Duck Go results to the buffer this displays!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, we've gotten a lot better since then. On the zero-click info (what is x?) we use lots of sources now beyond Wikipedia (e.g. Crunchbase) as well as have a bunch of new features (<http://duckduckgo.com/about.html>). We also have both an iPhone app and an API :)

iPhone App: [http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301375111&mt=8)

API info: <http://duckduckgo.com/api.html>

<comment><USER2> Whoops, should have spotted both of those :p

Both look good though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not exactly a search connoisseur or even pay much attention to startups but wow. This is one of the first search innovations I've found that was any good, in fact it's great.

I've just replaced my google FF keyword, 'g', with duckduckgo link. I'll try it out for a week or so and see if I still think it's as awesome as I do now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Please email me your thoughts after the week--always looking for real feedback from real users. Also note we have a FF extension: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10536>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool article. Couple of queries :-)

It mentions that static content is served from nginx, but then mentions S3 later on as well. Why not just Amazon for all the static content?

Mentions nginx being more stable than Apache - you mean no-crash stable, or more consistent under load?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I use S3 to serve images that are loaded after the initial page load (incidentally, using YUI's ImageLoader: <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/imageloader/>). I use nginx to serve static files, e.g. HTML, as well as images that get loaded on page load, e.g. logo. Why not S3 for the latter? Too slow. Amazon's (relatively) new content network may be faster, though I haven't tried it yet.

Wrt nginx being more stable, both. I've crashed Apache as well as pseudo- crashed it (process still running, but not serving right). nginx hasn't crashed yet. It's also more consistent (and faster) under load. However, in Apache's defense, it does a lot more, e.g. mod_perl vs nginx proxy to FastCGI.

<comment><USER4> Cool - well I'm on Apache now, on a very undersized server - so I guess I'll have to give nginx a shot.

Not sure how you'd extract more speed from your current setup. The natural next step would be doing work in parallel - this something you do/have considered?

If you do try the Amazon CDN, let us know how you go :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I use multiple worker processes in nginx (2 x # of cores), which work in parallel. Then FCGI::Engine is configured to run multiple processes as well. Finally, I use the external JS and image files (in part) to speed up the client-side via parallel processing of requests. (Note that IE7 and below limit concurrent connections per host by default often to 2: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc304129(VS.85).aspx>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This passed my "does this not suck?" test. Good work. A search engine that does not suck and is not named Google.

<comment><USER6> gigablast finds stuff for me that others miss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question: why are you going with FastCGI over mod_perl? Issues with mod_perl debugging/memory leaks? Desire to use nginx over Apache for higher throughput? The big advantage -- to me -- of mod_perl is the power of having your code live within Apache's process space.

I wonder if mod_perl works with event_mpm, yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> d) All of the above.

Initially I didn't think anything could beat mod_perl speed, but after benchmarking, this setup is just as fast. It's also more stable, and uses less memory. And yes, also it is easier to debug and I was getting memory leaks on mod_perl.

Don't get me wrong, I love mod_perl. I used it at my last company and on many other projects before this one. And I still use it for other stuff.

Last I looked I think you can run mod_perl with event_mpm but I didn't like this: "The current Apache::DBI should be usable under threaded mpm, though it doesn't share connections across threads. Each Perl interpreter has its own cache, just like in the prefork mpm." (<http://perl.apache.org/docs/2.0/user/performance/mpm.html>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> complete side note - but your favicon has a lot of aliasing when it's on a dark background (i.e. as it is when you have ddg in an inactive chrome tab). the circle looks nice on white, but you may want to adjust it so it reads a little better against other mattes.

aside from that tiny-minor issue, ddg seems cool & the overview of the architecture is very clear. i'm going to give it a try as my default chrome search engine & figure out just how behaviorally indoctrinated google has me and how your architecture holds up as more people use the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I will look into the favicon issue. Please send me an email after you try it for a while with your thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I must have missed something - what technologies are behind the actual search? Lucene/Nutch/Xapian?? thx, Dave

<comment><AUTHOR> All proprietary Perl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> do you make money?

<comment><AUTHOR> No ads on the site yet, but in general, search ads make money.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A SaaS idea that you are too busy to execute? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Some, yes. I'm doing a few though.</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't domain squatting illegal? - <AUTHOR> Getting good domains gets harder and harder, for new companies it gets difficult to find a good domain and so to find a good name for their company (matching their domain name). Almost every short domain name is already taken by big companies like godaddy, just to be sold by some thousands of dollars.<p>Why is this not illegal? <comment><USER2> Why can investors buy land and leave it undeveloped until there is an opportunity for profit? It is the same concept. The land is unproductive until somebody wants to live on it, or build their business on it.

It is true that many communities in the US have property taxes, which has an interesting effect. It makes it so only wealthy people can own and hold un- used land, because most middle and lower income folks could not afford to pay property taxes on land just to hold it.

<comment><AUTHOR> you are right its the same thing, only that land is much more expensive in more sought areas.

domains are always at the same value when you register it (for each tld). this makes it easy for squatting-companies to register a huge amount and stop other business from using this names for their company.

<comment><USER2> Arbitrage is a foundational aspect of capitalism there is no legal argument to be made against squatters unless laws are changed. I agree it would be more fair if the domain registry could predict the future value of domains and charge more for them to the investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How much government control would you need to make you happy? Where is the line that determines who has right to the domain? I think if you add any level of enforcement it would lead to too much chaos.

In either case it would not help startups. Lets say you decide to open a company named "Banana". How do you envision taking ownership of banana.com? :)

New companies have a luxury of picking ANY name, and a name for which domain is not taken. There are lots of practices on name picking.

<comment><AUTHOR> you are right, it wont work to make any rules about who has which rights for any domain. but i think just making it illegal to make a business about reselling domains (which includes the squatting just for selling them later), the domain market would be much better to a find a real domain matching your business case. i think companies their business case is just to buy and resell domains for higher value, do not give any value to the domain market and just make it worse.

<comment><USER3> You know that TLDs are not owned by any single government. Even if some countries introduce domain reselling laws, its just enough to have one country to not to have the same law.

It is sometimes frustrating, but we can live with that. As I said before, you just have to improvise a little bit more with naming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could say the same about every single object you can purchase though, it's a business and a way for people to make money.

Why is it not illegal to sell diamonds for a unreasonably high price?

<comment><AUTHOR> i dont think selling diamonds is a good example in this case. they need to be mined an processed to be sold. companies do just automate the buy-process for domains only to resell them for a much higher value.

ticket squatting for example is illegal.

<comment><USER4> Okay how about bitcoin and all currencies then? people buy them to just up- sell at a higher price. Or stocks, i don't think there is anything wrong with it. Just another way to make money.

And ticket re-selling is a thing, happens in the UK

<comment><AUTHOR> currencies are in general not a "limited" resource. domains are. also each domain is unique. their use is to register an internet site and not to buy it just to make use of their name which people maybe later will need. i think that is just an abuse of the domain registry

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The whole economy works based on "scarcity." Anything is scarce is valuable, like our time

So like gold, like domain names, like food, like workforce, ...

However, I can understand your feeling. I waited for months to be able to register a domain which was taken And it's about 8 months waited for another domain which has taken and should wait another 2 months again, and hope they don't be able to sell that domain</comment>


GitHub made paid user PRO. So, I guess i'm NOT PRO - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CovenantSQL/notpro <comment><USER2> If there are two broad classifications, professional and amateur, pay them money and they will stop implying that you are an amateur. Hooray, money from insecure people!

<comment><AUTHOR> I really don't know the "PRO" label implies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Github PRO label is stupid. This repo is stupid, but i like it. loooool</comment>


The four golden rules to be a better software developer. - <AUTHOR> http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/11/09/the-four-golden-rules-to-be-a-better-software-developer/

<comment><USER2> All 4 rules are exactly the opposite of what they should be...

 _Rule number 1: My code is crap._

What we need is great code. Everywhere. And we need programmers to produce great code. How can we expect anyone to aspire to produce great code by thinking that their code is "crap".

We are all learning and we are all at a different place in our journey, but one thing is certain: we are all capable of doing better and aspiring to greatness. Self degradation may work for OP but not for most people.

Excellence comes from learning and inspiration. Inspiration comes from passion, excitement, and seeing the possibilities, not dwelling on crappiness.

 _Rule number 2: I care about my code._

Care about your code while you're writing it. Then let it go.

The moment you stop caring about your code is the moment you give yourself permission to be free of the bonds of what you already know. What worked worked. Now let's do better.

(I'm embarassed by what I wrote a year ago. But I don't care. Move on.)

 _Rule number 3: My opinion about my own code is wrong._

It better not be. Your code may not be perfect, but it better be ready to do the job now. And you better stand behind it.

 _Rule number 4: My manager doesn't care about my code, and he pays me._

Your code is all your manager _does_ care about. When it performs, he loves you. When it doesn't, he doesn't.

Make your code do it's job. It's really that simple.

<comment><USER3> 1\. if you think you code is good, you wont strive to improve if it defaults as crap and has to prove itself that its good, then you should end up with better code

2\. I think your putting a different emphashis on "care"

3\. same as 1.

4\. no, your higherup only cares about the final product, thats very different from caring about the code, if a bunch of hacks gets the job done quicker than the elegantly carved solution, they dont care (unless your hacks part of the core and delay the next part)

<comment><USER4> 1\. Good is not perfect. Good code can still be improved, though, it doesn't have to be crap for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All this disagreement! Look, both sides can probably agree:

 _Rule number 1: My code is crap._

The worst kind of incompetence is believing you're better than you actually are. Even the best make mistakes. Have an accurate idea of where the problem lies. Often, it is more likely that a bug is the result of your code than "a compiler bug" or some such thing. Every once in a while, you actually do run across that mythical "compiler bug", so you gotta keep your mind open. You don't solve bugs by restricting the search space _before_ you prove the bug's not there.

 _Rule number 2: I care about my code._

I shouldn't have to write this--making something better is hardly arguable. Note that a shipping product is in fact the original killer feature; sometimes the best move is to stop development. But that doesn't mean you should stop finding and executing the best moves.

 _Rule number 3: My opinion about my own code is wrong._

This could have been written better. Your code is not right because you wrote it. It is very likely that there is an alternate approach. Sometimes, the alternate approach has enough advantages to recommend it over your approach. Sometimes it doesn't. Keep your mind open.

 _Rule number 4: My manager doesn't care about my code, and he pays me._

Again, a bit of hyperbole. Better said by bad_user: the manager cares about the project. That's his _job_.</comment>


Excel for iPhone now lets you take a picture of a spreadsheet and import it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644396/microsoft-excel-iphone-spreadsheet-import-camera-picture-tables <comment><USER2> I'd die for this being a part of the Azure Vision API, sadly it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not impressed. Shouldn't this be one of the basic features of OCR?

<comment><USER4> OCR is a broken promise from my experience. It either works ok or not at all. I also wonder what the image quality has to be for optimal use.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Initially extremely happy for this. Then suddenly freaked out for security concerns.

<comment><USER5> Why? It doesn't do anything you couldn't do by taking a photo and spending the time to type it in manually.

<comment><USER6> Of course it does. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be dismissing _time_ as a security factor, when it is, in fact, the only security factor that counts.

We don't (can't) rely on an encrypted volume being perfectly secure. We rely on it taking an infeasibly long time to crack.

We don't (can't) rely on a weapons vault to be perfectly secure. We rely on it taking enough time to breach that authorities will show up.

And companies don't (can't) rely on their data being perfectly secure. They rely on it taking an infeasibly long time to collect.

Technology like this is useful. I will likely end up using it. But technology like CSLI is useful too, especially when integrated into E911 and the like. And yet, when sensitive "information is detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled," it poses other risks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an implementation of the .NORM file format? [https://xkcd.com/2116/](https://xkcd.com/2116/)</comment>


Kvm_intel fails to load on Conroe CPUs running Linux 4.12 - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/5/145 <comment><AUTHOR> The fun thing is that fixing this might not be as simple as a CPU swap. I believe that the B2 stepping Core 2 Duos are 1066 MT/s FSB, while the G0 stepping ones are 1333 MT/s.</comment>


True&Co Takes $2M Seed Funding To Shake Up The Bra Industry - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/30/trueco-takes-2m-seed-funding-from-first-round-softtech-others-to-shake-up-the-bra-industry/ <comment><USER2> I am not a woman, but I've purchased plenty of bras in my time.

How are they going to make such a complicated process simple, and online? Women have different preferences, and in my opinion spend far too little time when choosing a bra (probably because bra shopping is such an uncomfortable experience).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Huge congrats to arithmetic (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=arithmetic>) on this!</comment>


Pauli Chess - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plover.com/games/double-chess.html <comment><USER2> "The main idea is: two pieces can be on the same square... Pierre-Françoys says he wishes that more than two pieces could share a square... The name "Pauli Chess", is inspired by the Pauli exclusion principle, which says that no more than two electrons can occupy the same atomic orbital."

Pierre-Françoys' variant would be Bose chess, I suppose?

<comment><USER3> Also, shouldn't true Pauli chess allow an arbitrary number of pieces in the same square, but no two of the same kind and color?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back in 1980 or so, my family invented a game that has an interesting mechanic. Sort of like chess, but also like battleship, with two boards, and each player can only see his own board. When a player moves, they announce the piece and which square the piece is departing from, but not which square the piece is landing on. You track your opponents pieces one move behind. Collision resolution happens the next time you move the piece, and find out you did or didn't make it. You're allowed to guess where you're opponent might be moving and attempt to intercept. There's quite a bit of luck in the game since you're largely playing blind, but it's the kind of luck that feels more natural than injecting randomness with dice.

Rules, 3D-printable parts, etc. are here: [http://smcameron.github.io/dueling- masters-of-space-time/](http://smcameron.github.io/dueling-masters-of-space- time/)

<comment><USER5> Like Kriegspiel but with half the information and you're in space. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_\(chess\))

An improvement to your pieces design is to copy the idea behind the internationalized shogi where generals icon is describing its movement [https://images.app.goo.gl/preLM7N1sb3taqor7](https://images.app.goo.gl/preLM7N1sb3taqor7) or the duke board game if feeling adventurous

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone have links to play online?

Some sites I can think of that support other variants:

[https://lichess.org/](https://lichess.org/) ( [https://github.com/ornicar/lila/](https://github.com/ornicar/lila/) )

And some crazier variants:

[https://www.pychess.org/](https://www.pychess.org/) ( [https://github.com/gbtami/pychess- variants](https://github.com/gbtami/pychess-variants) )

[https://chessvariants.training/](https://chessvariants.training/)

<comment><USER7> I bet a superhero from lichess would be happy to bust this out in a weekend

<comment><USER8> Lichess's policy is generally not to implement tons of variants, even those that would play nicely with PGN (this wouldn't).

You could definitely hack this together on a fork of lichess, but don't expect to see it on the main site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Other chess variants beyond the common: 1) friendly fire is on. You can capture your own pieces if you want.

2) You can move yourself into check, but only if you checkmate your opponent simultaneously, in which case the game is a tie

<comment><USER10> One of my favorite variants is suicide chess. The goal is to be the first to lose all your pieces. All rules are the same with one addition: if you can take a piece, you must.

<comment><USER11> It's really fun! You can play it on Lichess under "Antichess."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > 5\. Pieces of opposite colors sharing a square do not threaten one another.

This is going to be strange with kings. You could capture a piece in a square with a king and the king would require two moves to capture it, and if it was a queen the king couldn't move. Then just have to check the square for mate.

<comment><USER13> I don't think that could happen, if an opposing king shares a square with another piece, you would choose to take the king to win the game.

<comment><USER3> You don't capture kings in chess, and I don't think that changes in this variant (at least the article doesn't suggest that). If you attack the square with the king on it, the king is in check. If there's no legal move that puts the king out of check, that's checkmate.

Perhaps interestingly, you can create a discovered check with two pieces on the same square, say two rooks. Like a double check in regular chess, you can't remove the check by capturing, because you would only capture one of the rooks.

<comment><USER14> > Perhaps interestingly, you can create a discovered check with two pieces on > the same square, say two rooks. Like a double check in regular chess, you > can't remove the check by capturing, because you would only capture one of > the rooks.

That wouldn't work. The king would have been in check because of the first rook already, so either the king had to move away, the first rook would have been captured on the previous move, something would have been placed between the king and the rook, or it would have been checkmate.

Unless of course the two rooks would have been in place but you create the check by removing an obstacle, that would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Alphazero mastered chess by already-implemented self-play.

A slight change in the game rules can have a significant effect on the game and strategy, as anyone that delves into chess variants knows. Is the same true for their implementations?

What is the limitation for state of the art AI in adapting in such a way to rule changes?

<comment><USER15> Turns out DeepMind has already been working on exploring variants with Vladimir Kramnik!

[https://www.chess.com/article/view/no-castling-chess- kramnik...](https://www.chess.com/article/view/no-castling-chess-kramnik- alphazero)

Currently they have to train from scratch, but adapting to new tasks is an active area of research for RL broadly.

<comment><USER8> No-castling chess didn't need to be trained from scratch. Starting with a trained or partly-trained AlphaZero would certainly have worked, since no- castling chess is a strict subset of chess. The only reason not to is if you are DeepMind and training resources are really cheap.

For more esoteric variants like this, it makes sense to start from scratch, though eventually you could imagine an AI that is good at adapting to all perfect-information two-player games, or even others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just switch the knights with the bishops, and you're in a different universe.

</comment><comment><USER17> I dreamt about playing chess last night because of this... very very strange.

</comment><comment><USER18> Either two pieces can be on same square this would definitely mess with tactics. But strategically speaking is just like normal chess but with more squares

<comment><USER19> Not at all. As the page says, you can't block pawns, which entirely changes the game. You also don't need to move pawns to develop pieces.

<comment><USER7> Super leaky chess? Looking forward to an implementation so I can try and wrap my mind around how it works. What's to prevent both players from pushing all pawns through the leaky sieve and promoting everything to Queens right off?

<comment><USER5> Captures</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Code-Wise, Cloud-Foolish - <AUTHOR> https://forrestbrazeal.com/2020/01/05/code-wise-cloud-foolish-avoiding-bad-technology-choices/ <comment><USER2> This makes a ton of sense. I can so totally relate to the emotional attachment to code you write vs stuff you buy. And also how yaml declarative stuff is a pain compared to the relative joys of imperative code that does "your thing", but it's better to stick to it.

... but having started reading the good parts of AWS and also in parallel playing around with cloud66, I have to say, kubernetes (at least the wrapped- up cloud66 variation) felt compelling. And codeploy and IAM roles and all that sticky glue? Not really.

Am I falling into a trap?

<comment><USER3> The problem with the "clouds" is that there are two types of locks : code lock and data lock.

The author only talk about code lock. Again, as Kubernetes mature it would become easier and easier to configure (think of it as unix/linux at its early days), and hence less and less code locked.

However, Kubernetes does not have data lock. I.e. when you go to the public cloud, you are locked both in term of compute and in term of data. I.e. the egress prices are 10x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice cost graph, but you could just as well draw one where the R&D + development cost ends up being much cheaper in the long run, since the custom built software engineered to your specific needs ends up being a lot more efficient.

And there's certainly cases where using some off-the-shelf cloudy thing pays off in the long run.

And then there's the other cases where you find yourself facing a sudden massive application rewrite because you've hit a wall where Elastic Lambda Magic Beanstalk can't do something you need and you have to do that custom solution anyway.

So it's a nice graph where you put your own favourite solution at the top of the wisdom curve, but reality is more complex than that. A good engineer will have to carefully weigh the pros and cons before deciding that Farquaad Simple Amplified Borealis Service is the right choice. Because while it might be the right choice today, it may not be tomorrow, and if you've built your whole application around it, you're going to have a bad time.

Just today I find myself having to scramble to disable a site feature, because a cloud provider decided to change their pricing model so we would have to get the extra special gold plan to continue using said feature, and to get gold, we just had to sign up for a full year contract of 3x our current resource usage.

If you use a vendor-specific solution like Elastic Lambda Magic Beanstalk, then you're basically making a long term bet that the vendor will continue to support what you're doing for the lifetime of your app, at a price you can afford, while continuing to scale it as far as you'll need. You'll need to factor in the risk of that bet into your decisions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those graphs looks like confirmation bias. First of all pay as you go model is not a simple equation. Most of the time you will cross multiple boundaries and cost will raise in exponentially way (multiple stories how 30$ changed to 3k$). Secondly there is another bias when CTO has totally different point of view here are the pain points are. Thirdly, business guy loves to buy product of the shell to optimize development time where most of software development methodologies present this period as 20% cost of whole project (most of cost is located in maintenance (bugfix, alternations, new features). So after quick release this off shell product most of the times it will limit further grow by some limitation/cost of usage or missing feature.</comment>


Kodi 15.0 – Isengard – One Release to Rule Them All - <AUTHOR> http://kodi.tv/kodi-15-0-isengard-one-release-to-rule-them-all/

<comment><USER2> The OpenELEC set top box Linux distro has the new Isengard version of Kodi:

[http://openelec.tv/news](http://openelec.tv/news)

It works great on my Raspberry Pi 2</comment>


Still Doing the Math, But for 100K A Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/fashion/01generationb.html

<comment><USER2> What a farce. It's disgusting that they pay new teachers so little, and very few of the older teachers are worth $100k. This is nothing but two things.

First, senior teachers control the unions and take care of themselves at the expense of younger teachers -- it's disgusting. A salary spread of $50k to $100k is too much for the same job, and I never noticed older teachers being much more effective than teachers with five years of experience.

Second, the unions have convinced teachers that any measurement of quality will be inaccurate, arbitrary, and a front for administrators' political and personal animosity. Hey, welcome to the real world! Most professionals work in jobs where performance is subjective and difficult to measure. It isn't as bad as you imagine, except when it is, and then you get a different job. It wouldn't ruin education any more than it has ruined law, medicine, engineering, or any other profession where objective measurements of performance are problematic.

<comment><USER3> >Second, the unions have convinced teachers that any measurement of quality will be inaccurate, arbitrary, and a front for administrators' political and personal animosity.

But this is true. How do you suggest measuring performance? Standardized testing is not an acceptable answer.

<comment><USER2> The same as in any other job: we rely on the honesty, skill, and self-interest of their bosses and peers. Honest and accurate evalution of performance is the signal, stupidity and bias is the noise. Somehow, though it's pretty frickin' amazing when you think about it, people who are chosen, guided, and evaluated by biased, flawed, mostly stupid human beings manage to treat disease, build bridges, publish newspapers, maintain sewage systems, and do everything else required to keep society going.

I mean, I work in a vast and faceless corporate bureaucracy driven by the most idiotic politics imaginable, but when I think back to my favorite teachers from high school, they got a raw deal compared to me. Even though I got laid off my first job because of the dot-com bust. Even though I left my last job because of an abusive boss. Even though my review process is cookie-cutter and somewhat divorced from reality. It would have been better than having no opportunity to differentiate themselves from the stupid, lazy, coasting teachers who climbed right up the pay scale with them. Heroic, good, average, bad, and sleepwalking, they all have the same job title and same pay all the way to retirement -- it's no wonder teaching isn't respected as a profession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 100K for 30 years, is not as much as you would think. The problem with teaching right now, is that there is not a concrete way to have really great teachers shine.

In enterprise, employees that would perform really well would be accordingly compensated (theoretically) with a higher salary/bonus. This doesn't happen with teachers though. You could be a terrible teachers, with terrible results, but have tenure and still reach that 100,000k mark without a hitch.

I believe unions are important to ensure some job security and fair practice, but not at the expense of our children's education. There should be competitive practices in public education, that allow teachers to earn way more than 100,000k, but also does not guarantee that a teacher will rise on a pay scale when they just babysit in a classroom.

I speak from experience as I was formerly a teacher in NYC, where I encountered many teachers that were not competent to teach, but yet continued to exist in their role. There are schools that are trying experimental means to increase the quality of teaching - [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?ex...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?ex=1362632400&en=c61f5ddd3e93fa42&ei=5124) \- but ultimately we need to think of a new system of rewarding the best teachers and getting rid of the worst.

<comment><USER5> It would of course be protested as outrageous, and would also be hard to implement, _but_ I bet if you allowed someone to pay for their education partly by selling a stake in their future income (capped at a certain point, or possibly with a buyback clause of some kind). This would actually lead great teachers to seek out great students, too -- instead of retiring on their teaching pension, they'd retire on .1% of the incomes of each of a few hundred students; if those students are making six figures...

<comment><USER6> So, no great teacher would choose to work in poor school districts. We already have to give incentives to experienced teachers to work there.

Good teachers would concentrate in wealthy districts, because the best teachers would have an amplification effect, and those kids are going to end up in college and most will end up in good jobs because of their family connections.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't seem to apply here at all. If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish.

<comment><USER6> Education certainly can make a difference. However, let's consider the problems that you have in lower income school districts.

* Increased child abuse * Poorer nutrition. * Lower chance of a safety net. My parents helped me out with college expenses and I stayed at home, so I only had to work every other semester, taking challenging semesters off. I contrast that to friends who were working full time jobs making very little and taking as many hours as they could. It was a lot easier path for me, and it was still easier for families who sent their children off to school fully paid with spending money.

Great people will overcome these barriers, but there's a reason that middle class parents raise middle class children. Let's say that a series of median teachers would pass on students that make 1.2 million over their lifetimes, graduating high school on average. * Let's say that median teacher in a wealthy school district passes on students that averages college degrees because their parents have them, and those who don't are balanced out by those who get doctorates or MBAs or are handed their parents' businesses. As such, their studends make 2.1 million dollars in their lifetimes on average.

That's 75% more for being an average teacher.

Now, let's say that you are able to increase the average student's lifetime salary by 40% by being a great teacher. You've raised the lower income up to 1.68 million in their lifetimes, but you've raised that student from wealthier parents to nearly 3 million dollars! You have to actively decide not to pursue money in this system, even if that 40% means a world more to the lower income student than the higher income student.

* [http://www.earnmydegree.com/online-education/learning-center...](http://www.earnmydegree.com/online-education/learning-center/education-value.html)

<comment><USER7> _Let's say that [...] students that averages college degrees [...] make 2.1 million dollars in their lifetimes on average._

Does having a college degree increase earning power/potential? Do you have a source for that?

<comment><USER6> That was what the star was for. Look at the end of my comment for the link. That's one of many that I could have chosen.

<comment><USER7> Your link says, "a college degree correlates [...] to [...] salary". It is well-known that education level correlates to income. A claim that weak does not need a reference. Correlation is not causation. My question was: "Does having a college degree increase earning power/potential?" Do you know of any education/income studies that control for IQ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my view, a good teacher is still underpaid at 100K per year.

In the ideal world, the best teachers would be celebrities and their lectures/lessons would be high demand items.

Wait... Maybe it's coming... with YouTube, HubPages, and Google's 10^100 contest. Who knows.

<comment><USER9> I completely disagree. The best teachers should be compensated, but there is no reason to spend 100k on high elementary school & high school teachers... Hell you could have a grad student teaching the course -- the material isn't hard. The trick is getting the kids to work and be motivated, and that's primarily caused by setting high standards and having parents emphasize the importance of education.

<comment><USER10> Bill Gates disagrees.

"It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school." Bill Gates

[http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/01/it-is-amazing-how-big- a-d...](http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/01/it-is-amazing-how-big-a-difference- a-great-teacher-makes-versus-an-ineffective-one.html)

<comment><USER11> While I believe its true, I still don't think good teachers are worth 100k/year. That's way too high. That's higher than any other basic profession except doctor/lawyer, and there are certainly some doctors and lawyers that don't make that much, e.g., public defenders.

<comment><USER10> But you're comparing exceptional teachers to average doctors/lawyers. The people that could be great teachers have a lot of good alternatives, so if you want good teachers to teach, you need to reduce their opportunity cost by paying more.

<comment><USER9> Then you have to ask yourself should these great teachers be teaching average students, or should they only be teaching the best? Or should they be incentivised into going into science or engineering? These are tough questions, I honestly think the best scenario would be for top engineers and scientists (practicing) to mentor students, and help them see the big picture/inspire them while their teachers train them in the skills necessary.

<comment><USER12> You just described a top Collage like MIT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In a system in which learners could shop for the most suitable schools, the best teachers would make much more than $100K, while other current teachers would change careers, all to the good of learners.

<http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html>

<comment><USER14> I worry that the criteria for successful teachers will instead be teachers that are easy or social instead of effective teachers.

I have definitely taken languages classes where I hated the teachers (the class was hard!) but I learned a great deal and actually have pretty good recall years later. If I had been able to bail out and go join my friends in the class taught by the easy teacher I would have, but I certainly would not have learned anything.

In fact, now that I think about it, I think such a system would probably encourage a trend toward treating schooling as a sort of nationalized childcare program, as the money and rewards would go to teachers (and schools) where students are allowed to float through. You can argue all you want about how much _you_ enjoy learning, but I imagine that the vast majority of the people in my high school could have cared less. (There are similar arguments for why private schools do better than public schools: private schools are primarily composed of the kids/families that actually care about what said student is learning.)

<comment><USER13> _trend toward treating schooling as a sort of nationalized childcare program_

You don't think that trend is already here? The parents I know who are shopping for more academics in their children's school programs have very limited scope of choice to look for something better, as something better has little incentive currently even to be offered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FTA: you get $100k/yr as a teacher after working at the same job for ~30 years. A sweet pension is also possible -- although who knows whether this is still the case or will last.

<comment><USER16> This isn't terribly uncommon, particularly for senior teachers in well-to-do suburban school districts. The "teachers are one step away from starvation" meme is, well, suffice it to say it was never universal and that we have excellent PR in a lot of ways.

As to whether this will last or not: well, that pension has been available for thirty of the last thirty years. One of the two political parties in the United States would rather scrape out its belly with a rusty fork before seriously taking a whack at teachers unions, and the other is the Democrats[1]. I'm not predicting rapid change with respect to the employment market for teachers in the US.

Do you want to be the political candidate cutting education funding and then facing, quite literally, a NEA warchest and a small army of very popular people in your district who you just made enemies of for life? Who will mention, in a totally non-partisan and objectively true manner, that you are cutting funding for the school Little Davey attends? To Little Davey's dotting parents?

[1]: Edited to add -- in deference to readers from outside the US, I should add the common knowledge that makes the joke work (at the expense of killing the funny): there are two major political parties in the United States, Republicans and Democrats. Organized labor and, in particular, the national teachers unions are inseparable from the Democratic Party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wouldnt be surprised if there's a few kids at that very same school making 100k a year. I was hacking for 30/hr in my spare time in high school (10 years ago), and these days, all a kid needs is a bit of motivation to learn all the web development stack and start consulting.

<comment><USER18> Downmodded because 100k is quite a stretch. 30$/hr in your spare time != 100k. And most _college graduates_ aren't even making that much.</comment></comment>


Facebook Still Risks Having To Reveal Its Entire Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/facebook-still-risks-having-to-reveal-its-entire-source-code-to-leader-technologies/ <comment><USER2> Slightly misleading / sensational headline from TechCrunch. A better one might be: "Plaintiff in patent lawsuit may get to inspect Facebook's code."

That is to say, this seems largely like a non-issue / non-story.

<comment><USER3> You are right. They will have to reveal the source code to a couple of experts that are under confidentiality agreement. Oh and the experts will only be allowed to look at the code in a closed room with no Internet connections. No big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having worked at Facebook...

... do they _really_ want to see that code?

</comment><comment><USER5> Does it matter? The value of Facebook is in its users; not code.

<comment><USER6> It's the code that leverages user participation for added value.

<comment><USER7> The code will reveal nothing useful. Facebook doesn't use many algorithms that are important. Its friend recommendations are standard, and that's the only algorithm off the top of my head.

What makes Facebook so effective is its existing userbase, its cutting-edge design, and its constant push for usability. I still haven't seen a company that would stand a chance against Facebook in those categories, and Facebook's tricks there are open for all to see.</comment></comment></comment>


How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/upshot/how-did-marriage-become-a-mark-of-privilege.html <comment><USER2> The answer they don't want to touch? The media, NYT included, has been attacking the very concept of marriage for decades. It's not a matter of "privilege", it's a matter of those that are more capable of ignoring poor advice from channels like TV, or the New York Times, or your dumb roommate in college, are more likely to be successful in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a lot of people, they want to be financially secure before they marry (historically men would often marry later than women - after 'making their fortune' or establishing their career). With todays casualised workforce, houseprices, etc, that sort of security is more elusive.</comment>


Soylent now available on Amazon Launchpad - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.com/post/145547071142/soylent-now-available-on-amazon-launchpad <comment><AUTHOR> Still only available in the US. I'm eagerly waiting to get my hands on some Soylent over here in Germany.</comment>


Crazy cool nginx.conf scripting and modules. - <AUTHOR> http://agentzh.org/misc/slides/nginx-conf-scripting/nginx-conf-scripting.html <comment><USER2> Well worth navigating through - it just gets nuttier and nuttier. I certainly didn't know you could execute SQL queries against Drizzle from within your nginx.conf, parameterise them based on the query string, hash them to different backend shards and format the results as JSON...

<comment><USER3> Agreed, that's the point where my mind was blown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case it isn't clear to some folks (like me), this is a slideshow: left and right arrows to navigate.

<comment><USER5> If you put your mouse exactly at the top of the page, a toolbar pops up. But this took me a long time to discover, and I kept using the arrow keys.

<comment><USER6> Sorry for the confusion...I should have added a tip in my tweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whoa, nginx can do a hell of a lot via conf scripting. You could build a semi- decent REST interface to a data source using the modules in this presentation...

<comment><USER6> One can do a full-decent REST interface when ngx_lua is ready ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually tried putting a website together in a similar fashion a while back. All the hacks quickly got difficult to maintain, and the code was ugly. I was too ashamed of what I've created to share it with the world. Now I see someone actually built up that courage :)

<comment><USER6> I do understand the risk. And we've been trying pretty hard to keep things clean :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This site design is totally unusable on android devices, I cannot workout how to change slides.

<comment><USER6> Sorry about that...but arrow keys on your keyboard doesn't work for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not to nitpick, but I feel the need to point out that the "REST interface to memcache server" isn't really REST, since it's issuing non-idempotent commands using GET requests, with the command type and resource specified in the query string.

Also, "Native support for cross-site scripting (XSS) in an nginx" (<http://github.com/agentzh/xss-nginx-module>)... I don't think XSS means what they think it means. Hint: it's not a feature. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting>

Still pretty cool though :)

<comment><USER10> XSS seems as good a definition as any - everyone's calling it lots of things, JSONP or AJAST or whatever - but setting up data feeds inside javascript function calls specifically to do ajax-Y stuff but getting around the cross- site security model built into xmlhttprequest.

<comment><USER9> But XSS already has a different specific meaning. Granted it's a confusing definition for exactly this reason, but it's well established to mean a security vulnerability where an attacker can inject JavaScript into users pages thereby stealing their session cookies, etc. It has nothing to do with cross-domain requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OH NO! Register Globals comes back! <http://php.net/manual/security.globals.php>

</comment><comment><USER12> I've worked with agentzh before, and he is extremely knowledgeable and friendly. He's an amazing asset to the Nginx project!

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how vulnerable this setup is to sql-injection attacks and similar stuff.

<comment><USER6> Haven't you seen the set_quote_sql_str directive used in my slides?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why would you do this? Use a proper web framework!

<comment><USER12> The examples are there to show you what you can do from a flexible piece of software like Nginx. It could have nothing to do with the web tier.

<comment><USER15> Still, it would be interesting with connections to real-life applications. I was hoping to figure out a few practical ways of using more of my nginx spare cycles. I'm sure there's a ton of cool stuff one could actually use this for, but I'm none the wiser after the presentation.

<comment><USER6> I must add that, the stuffs shown in these slides are just our "level 1 scripting". There will be level 2 and level 3, so as to support more sophisticated business logic in our data platform.

Level 2 will be ngx_lua scripting which provides Erlang-style transparent non- blocking I/O support and access to the whole nginx infrastructure and all the level 1 scripting goodies.

Level 3 will be...well...Perl 6, JavaScript, and PHP scripting atop the ngx_lua VM (by the corresponding X -> Lua compiler). _grin_ We'll eventually get there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should the government know less than Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/surveillance-0?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/should_the_government_know_less_than_google_

<comment><USER2> I think the answer is yes, absolutely. I have wanted Google to know less about me to, so I use DDG instead, and have been for about 2 years now. I don't miss Google and I'm actually more productive since DDG seems to give me better results and fewer ads.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Absolutely. I can opt not to use Google services; I cannot opt out of government surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can we rephrase that as "Should Google know as much as the government"?

Or would that be rude?</comment>


WhatsApp voice calls used to inject Israeli spyware on phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/4da1117e-756c-11e9-be7d-6d846537acabhttps://www.ft.com/content/4da1117e-756c-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19904581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19904581)</comment>


Ask HN: How much to charge? - <AUTHOR>

I learnt programming, web development and all IT things myself. Lately, I have started to work as a freelance. I'm 19 years old, I started programming since 12, I was and I still an amateur developer.
So my question is "How much to charge?" (the hour), right now I did few jobs (only 2) ($30/hour for a small job at Odesk and $120 for a 2 hours task). Last week, I got a request from a company to review and rewrite (some technical papers) for them. I told them my rate is $25 and they were happy with it!
I have stumbled upon few websites discussing it. M.I.T students are getting an average $20/hour for programming (http://web.mit.edu/sfs/jobs/wage_guide.html); so I thought $25 will be good considering my age and qualifications (no qualification rather than a small portfolio and apps I made). Also average freelance workers (freelance sites like Odesk) is $10.
So am I underestimating my capabilities? How can I measure my rate? If age doesn't matter, how can I evaluate my experience and charge accordingly to the market rates.
I fixed my rate for that job; but it seems that another startup may be interested on some JavaScript debugging (as I have similar experience to their issue, some event bubbling). This is why I posted this question. It seems that some freelancers are charing $100 the hour and even more. Why? Is it portfolio related? How do you set your rates?
Thanks for the advice. <comment><USER2> IMO, it's largely based around the following highly subjective calculation:

((value you will add to client's bottom line) + (your relevant experience & portfolio) + (speed and accuracy of delivery) + (kudos)) * (budget & urgency of project delivery) * (industry) = rate per hour

You can't really get to a figure from what i've said above, but i just wanted to illustrate a number of factors that can go into a rate that's attractive and workable to both parties.

Age doesn't matter, but (relevant) experience does.

</comment><comment><USER3> Freelance Switch has a collection of good articles on this:

<http://freelanceswitch.com/blog/explore/#2>

</comment><comment><USER4> Those are on-campus jobs, which are often part of federal work-study program. They are meant to pay less than regular jobs.</comment>


GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/GDPR-Transparency-and-Consent-Framework <comment><USER2> I did some poking around as to what this actually is (and it's probably not for the average site).

It's the specifications for how the IAB (Internet Advertising Board), which consists of of every organization blocked by your ad blocker, would like publishers to gather consent from people landing on their site.

It's a very optimized setup as who they are targeting using this are the big sites that do Real Time Bidding (RTB) for ad slots on their pages. You land on a site and the js for ads loads, calls out to a real time ad marketplace with your info (IP, cookies) and then preset bids ("I'll pay 20c to serve this person an ad for cheese!") all are evaluated and the highest paying gets served on the site (and the marketplace takes a tiny cut).

What this framework does is help add user consent and GDPR readiness into the criteria that can be used in this process. So as a publisher if you're trying to meet GDPR requirements you can say: "Only give me ads from places that respect this".

As a consumer, this kind of paves the way to just consent to these things once and then use them all over the web (good for UX). If you're just trying to get to grips with GDPR try this Plain English Guide

[https://blog.varonis.com/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain- eng...](https://blog.varonis.com/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain-english/)

<comment> forgot-my-pw Thanks for the link, it's very easy to read. I still have some questions about data deletion request:

\- How will this affect invoices that have to be kept for accounting purposes? Even if a customer wishes their data to be removed, we should not remove accounting information.

\- How will this affect Internet archives and caches?

It seems removing all traces of a customer can be a very hard thing to do.

<comment><USER3> IANAL

If other laws exist that clash with GDPR, those laws take precedence. This question most often comes up specifically with regards to payments and finance. If a law requires you to retain payment/accounting information for three years, you must keep that info for three years, because this is addressed by a more specific law than GDPR.

<comment> forgot-my-pw Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whole GDPR is an interesting phenomenon. Where I live we had this

[https://www.cnil.fr/fr/loi-78-17-du-6-janvier-1978-modifiee](https://www.cnil.fr/fr/loi-78-17-du-6-janvier-1978-modifiee)

since 1978 and I didn't see anybody on HN panicking at the thought of doing business with french citizens, although these laws are tougher than GDPR. Remember than the latter is enforced at the country level, it's not Europe who is going to fine your business. Which means maybe Czechia will let you fly with whatever you are doing with personal data, and maybe Spain won't because they have tougher user data protection laws. My point is GDPR didn't create a new legal risk that wasn't there before. It's just that people here didn't care before for some reasons.

Now I see all these "GRPR compliant"(whatever that means) seals on different products, but where they even "CNIL compliant" before? Is that framework "CNIL compliant"? How many of you did a declaration to the CNIL before harvesting data from french citizens?

<comment><USER5> Maybe nobody cares because nobody got any fines maybe. This could be different with GDPR. Time will tell how hard they will enforce these rules, but it could be very harsh and very expensive for some people.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. GDPR replaces the current Directive and the various member state laws implementing it. GDPR's requirements are (making up a number) 80% or 90% already required by current laws. It's just that the fines were small. GDPR allows fines of up to 4% of annual revenue for the corporate group. So that's why it's getting so much attention. Large multinationals can't afford to ignore such a fine. The reality is probably that the enforcement authorities would only be able to hand out so many mult-million dollar fines (and fight the ensuing battle) at a time. We'll see what enforcement really looks like over time and that'll indicate how serious this is all taken.

<comment><USER7> It is companies like Cambridge Analytica, Google and others that caused this law change. In general the EU countries tries to leave the market to develop on it's own without interfering. However when there are a feeling that the market is doing the wrong thing, someone feels there needs to be a correction of ways and then we end up with things like this.

I'm sure someone once said "This is why we can't have nice things".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just in case anyone else is similarly confused and had to check, this is the work of the IAB, which stands in this case for the Interactive Advertising Bureau - not the Internet Architecture Board

<comment><USER9> I'm still confused as to what exactly this is.

<comment><USER10> iab is the "thing" that somehow standardized banner dimensions and file sizes in the 90s.

they do have some good standards, that focused on user privacy, which are abandoned by now. mostly they spend the 2000s trying to standardise hit-the- monkey rich media banners and were widely ignored while google stole all Ad money by dictating the direction they wanted instead (and thanks to that period every site in the world snitch you to google analytics)

now iab is trying to lead how Ads will confirm the publisher secured gdpr consent. but again google is already on their own thing.

<comment><USER11> Google's SVP of Ads & Commerce is on the board of IAB. [https://www.iab.com/our-story/#board-of-directors](https://www.iab.com/our- story/#board-of-directors)

<comment><USER10> not trying to sound like an ass, but that means nothing. Every company selling ad is on that list.

If the company follows standards or not, is another history.

On the other hand, one of my clients dropped the membership (cutting all expenses on the quarters pre-IPO/Sale so the numbers looked better) and was still leading one of the standards even without the name on this list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like an explanation of what this is about, check out the IAPP's Privacy Advisor Podcast - March 29 episode interviewing Matthias Matthieson, who heads the IAB. Basically, they realize that tracking things like user consent in the programmatic online advertising space with all the uses and participants accessing and pooling the data will be pretty much impossible unless an agreed protocol is used for doing so within the advertising ecosystem. For a perspective that says GDPR and programmatic advertising as it currently exists using personal data are not compatible, see Johnny Ryan's two earlier interviews on the same podcast.</comment>


Study casts doubts on the concept of 'active' procrastination - <AUTHOR> https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-active-procrastination-purposeful-delay/ <comment><USER2> I prefer the term incubation.

But a study of students may not directly relate to the general population. Coursework is very specific and intended to be rigorous to finish within a semester.

I cant count the number of non-school projects that have pivoted where I've benefited from incubating or wished I'd incubated more - frustrating to throw away work.

It's why incubating is better. Solve the easy, generic problems first on a schedule and leave the hard parts for last. Tends to help clarity and focus.</comment>


Fighting Fires with Fire Grenades - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/article/stop-drop-roll-throw-fighting-fires-fire-grenades/ <comment><USER2> There's a firefighting documentary on Netflix and it's shocking how manual and inefficient the firefighting process seems.

A dozen guys load up in a helicopter and drop in next to a brush fire with rakes and shovels and start digging a trench. That's the grand plan, digging a barrier by hand with hand tools.

Or, pay thousands to fly and operate firefighting planes that sometimes miss the target and other times the fire is so huge their payload doesn't make a dent.

And the price tag for the California fire season runs in the billions. Seems like an area ripe for disruption.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that traditional heavy equipment takes too long to get into position due to its bulk and weight. Basically, someone needs to make a backhoe that is better than 4-20 people with Pulaskis. In addition, it would need to take up less room, weight less, and cost less than the number of people it replaces.

There are a bunch of other things that can help control fires, but most of them are not very flashy and some run into problems of NIMBYs torpedoing the control measure.

Some measures that can help:

      1. Mandate under eave water sprayers in higher risk areas (a fair amount of houses destroyed are caused by embers from main fire). This is probably the easiest to disrupt.
      2. Do more controlled burns (especially in areas that have not burned in decades. Huge NIMBY objection to this as they claim it will damage property values or harm children)
      3. Require more fire-resistant vegetation or ground cover around residential areas (bare ground is bad as well as lots of trees and large bushes)
      4. Require more fire resistant building materials and techniques for roofs, decks, outdoor furniture, etc.

<comment><USER4> Off topic, but how do i put things in list format in an HN comment? If there is a guide feel free to link. You make some excellent points. One of your points (3) could be accomplished in a small way by people just going Johnny Appleseed 2.0 and seeding fire prone areas with the proper vegetation without asking.

<comment><USER5>
      Leading spaces induce
      this style of formatting.

It is difficult to read on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The use of carbon tet as a fire suppressant was actually the start of a pretty long history of halocarbons as fire suppressants in general:

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

The pyrolysis byproducts were still quite toxic, but they were very effective at putting out fires since they chemically inhibit the oxidation reaction.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is also the inverse. Helicopter mounted guns that throw out fire starting balls. At fire fighting trade shows you get both ends of the spectrum.</comment>


Pressflip Founder Quits: "I'm Tired Of The Fight" - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/18/pressflip-founder-quits-im-tired-of-the-fight/

<comment><USER2> ... and promptly takes up spewing trash again, which is being gobbled up by the whiny masses on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/77sl1/paul_grah...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/77sl1/paul_graham_just_shut_your_face_already/)

What a nasty individual.

<comment><USER3> He does have the virtue of being entertaining.

And the 'speaking truth to power' schtick is an evergreen.

<comment><USER4> "Speaking truth to power"? More like, flinging feces at productive people.

<comment><USER3> That's the pose he adopts; that said if any of the people he writes about have such fragile egos that they can be hurt by what some random programmer says on his blog...

then they may be deserving of ridicule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the maxim: Be nice to people on the way up, because they're the same ones you're going to meet on the way back down again.

</comment><comment><USER6> I usually don't take pleasure in the misfortune of others, but I'm having a real hard time not pulling a Nelson, "Ha ha!"

<comment><USER7> _"... mostly because I'm going to be a father in March and need some stability, but also because I'm tired of the fight ... "Ha ha!" ..."_

Apt.

Failing fast though is probably a good idea. Ted reminds me of the difference between Engineers and Entrepreneurs. The former is a subset of the later and playing Engineer is not enough to succeed. Part Engineer, part schmooze, play- acting business type and full time dogs body. I'm beginning to think founders of successful Startups are more chameleon than person.

      This is the problem with Pressflip,
      it doesn't turn up anything interesting
      ~ http://uncov.com/node/245

When Pressflip fails to deliver the goods instead of writing better software, changing the idea or looking for alternatives. Ted bails. Is it the realisation the idea was less than stellar? the market has turned? Or did he get the hard word from the misses who's looking at the lean years ahead? I'm making a conscious effort to avoid feelings of schaedenfraude to Startup founders who fail like this.

Then Ted writes articles like this ~ <http://uncov.com/paul-graham-shut-your- face>

Ha ha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What we should all learn from this is that when you want to mock the masses, it's best to do so from the balcony of a mansion. Not from within the crowd. It's a fine line between a crowd and a mob.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The original blog post: <http://teddziuba.com/2008/10/moving-on-out.html>

Kind of brings to light where all of his anger comes from. Maybe he will ease up for a while and enjoy life.

<comment><USER9> I don't get this: "As is Michael Arrington's usual style, he is showing his personal vendetta against me to mischaracterize what I've said."

I didn't see anything vindictive or horrible in what Arrington wrote. Maybe it's slightly critical, but it's nothing compared to the stuff on uncov

<comment><USER10> On that topic of breaking down what he wrote .. this is a cross-comment I also left on TC.

Ted writes: "As is Michael Arrington's usual style, he is showing his personal vendetta against me to mischaracterize what I've said."

Uhh, let's see. Ted's usual style is to write cruel things to mischaracterize other startups, largely writing nasty things to make them look bad, feel bad. And yes, mostly all that he wrote was personal. Careful analysis my ass.

Ted writes: "My priorities have changed. I am now facing fatherhood, and I want to do what is best for my family."

And these guys whose startups you delightfully enjoyed tearing into pieces, did they not have their own families that they have to support? Some of them may not have children of their own, but do they not have an aging father and mother who just needs some financial support? Perhaps a sibling that they are trying to help put through college?

EVERYONE has their priorities. If you think you're the only one who faces shifting priorities in life, you're just plain dumb.

Ted writes: "This is horrifically irresponsible on Michael's part, but that sort of thing is to be expected. Michael, you should be ashamed of yourself."

Ted, you're known for not exactly being that friendly to startups. Your notoriety is infamous, such that your ill intent is more that "sort of" to be expected - it's pretty much ALL that anyone can expect from you when you open your mouth. It is you, who should be ashamed of yourself.

Last but not least, Arrington's contribution to startups is at best, _a lot_ , and at worse, greater than zero. This is an unbiased FACT. Ted's contribution to startups is at best, approaching zero - but largely, negative. A large negative number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> from Anton Ego:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

</comment><comment><USER12> uncov should mock PressFlip.

<comment><USER13> This guy does: <http://www.startupfail.com/fail/pressflop-our-first-fail/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't throw with stones if you live in a glass house ;-)

</comment><comment><USER15> Google Alerts + Backtype Alerts > Pressflip.

</comment><comment><USER16> This could just be a ruse for attention and troll for traffic.

If so good job ... everyone is fooled! Are you that smart though?

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not clear that there's a vast business opportunity for RSS readers right now. Or is it a search engine? I can't tell.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cynics are dangerous not only to others but also to themselves.</comment>


Quora: What is the nerdiest joke? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Humor/What-is-the-nerdiest-joke/answers/1372015?ref=fb

<comment><USER2> I recently deleted my account with Quora. I asked them in the email to delete the account and all data with the account.

They replied via email and stated they would be happy to delete my account and help me out - and they were sorry to see me go.

Now I see that the only thing they deleted was my name and picture from my profile.

My account appears as "account"

My profile still states my Location and company affiliations.

"account" is still receiving upvotes and notifications in my feed.

Posts, questions, edits, all still viewable (albeit maybe to me only) (I am using the transparent chrome extension)

I sent another email stating I noticed they have not complied with my request and asked for a confirmation by EOB tomorrow.</comment>


Why is x86 ugly? Why is it considered inferior when compared to others? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2679882/why-is-x86-ugly-why-is-it-considered-inferior-when-compared-to-others <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpts:

"The DEC Alpha AXP chip, a MIPS style RISC design, was painfully spartan in the instructions available, but the instruction set was designed to avoid inter-instruction implicit register dependencies. There was no hardware- defined stack register. There was no hardware-defined flags register. Even the instruction pointer was OS defined - if you wanted to return to the caller, you had to work out how the caller was going to let you know what address to return to. This was usually defined by the OS calling convention. On the x86, though, it's defined by the chip hardware."

[...]

"You don't see those kinds of bursts of performance boosting things in the x86 family tree largely because the x86 instruction set's complexity makes many kinds of execution optimizations prohibitively expensive if not impossible. Intel's stroke of genius was in giving up on implementing the x86 instruction set in hardware anymore - all modern x86 chips are actually RISC cores that to a certain degree interpret the x86 instructions, translating them into internal microcode which preserves all the semantics of the original x86 instruction, but allows for a little bit of that RISC out-of-order and other optimizations over the microcode."

"I've written a lot of x86 assembler and can fully appreciate the convenience of its CISC roots. But I didn't fully appreciate just how complicated x86 was until I spent some time writing Alpha AXP assembler. I was gobsmacked by AXP's simplicity and uniformity. The differences are enormous, and profound."

</comment><comment><USER2> IIRC, some of the people thought the dislike of x86 was from RISC-loving academics, but I don't think that's the case. IIRC, the CISC Motorola 68k ISA was much better regarded than x86.

</comment><comment><USER3> The question and most of the answers are from 2010.</comment>


Tips and tricks about JavaScript from Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelstech.cn/article/1361941842_Tips_and_tricks_about_JavaScript_from_Google

<comment><USER2> Actual guide here: [http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascript...](http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascriptguide.xml)</comment>


Ask HN: How to sustain project with steadily increasing active users? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Hacker News,
I launched the private beta of http://handpick.me about 2 weeks ago on Hacker news:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949117
After being covered by 3 blogs, the number of users has grown steadily, with a good handful of active daily users.
In the event that the copy on http://handpick.me is unclear, Handpick offers you a bookmarklet or Chrome extension where you select which groups of folks you'd like to send a link to. Handpick will compile the links and send them in a single email digest at the time of the day you specify.
I think Handpick has a chance of making a dent in the universe and I love to wake up to emails from users who tell me how much they love Handpick when they suggest a feature or find a bug.
The app's running on a free Heroku plan with a free Sendgrid addon for sending daily email digests on links collected.
Right now, I'm uncertain how to proceed. I've been using Handpick myself with my friends for the past year and it seems like there are others who like this too.
I haven't started promoting Handpick at all as I'm worried that I wouldn't be able to support a sudden growth of users. I'd prefer not to pay for resources out of my own pocket yet.
Is there a way to monetize Handpick and yet maintain a high amount of respect for my users' time, attention, and happiness? <comment><USER2> You could email those people who've emailed you, and ask them if there's anything missing that they'd be willing to pay for.

I have this vague idea of companies using your service to keep their customers informed and/or engaged in some way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I'll do that.</comment></comment>


Norway Has Advice For Libya - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/26/139972557/the-friday-podcast-norways-got-advice-for-libya <comment><USER2> I think its pretty obvious that one of Libya's biggest challenges with their oil money is going to be corruption. The Sovereign Wealth Fund works well at limiting corruption by drastically reducing the amount of money available, but ONLY if the level of corruption was low to begin with, and a high level of transparency maintained.

On a hunch, I have a feeling that Libya does not have suitable conditions. However which way they decide to spend the money, I predict that large amounts will not be used as 'intended'. The difficulty of keeping corruption at a low level, even for such a 'benevolent' task of rebuilding a country should be clear from how badly Iraqi reconstruction went. Why worry about rebuilding the rest of your country when you can get a cut of money from a source NOT LINKED to the well being of your country.

<comment><USER3> I have a feeling that the Iraqi situation (the US flying in pallets of cash to pay off Iraqis in support of an occupation aimed at outsider political objectives) is different from the Libyan one (not occupied at all).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's occurred to me the same basic advice might work well for lottery winners(1). Invest the money and live off the interest.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_(lottery_winner...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_\(lottery_winner\))

<comment><USER5> And don't tell anybody about your new riches, either.

<comment><USER6> That only works in some locales. I know some states in the US require that the winners names are disclosed for marketing purposes. Other places may allow anonymity.

<comment><USER7> Yep. Here in Canada, I believe that a winner's name is published or at least known publicly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article of interest is this (which is linked at the end of the submitted article):

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz24qMDRL00)

<comment><USER9> Yes, but as someone else said, this article is behind a paywall. Which is too bad, I think, as I think the article that was posted was only scratching the surface. There are several things I was wondering after reading this article:

\- what are the structural differences between Libya and Norway that would make Libya succumb more easily to the temptation of oil? I suppose Libya is in a direr situation than Norway, but is that all?

\- exactly, what are the cons of investing _some_ money from the oil in infrastructure of education?

<comment><USER10> Education is only useful up to a point. A PHD in Aerospace Engineering sounds great, but even in the US there is little demand for such people so they often waste most of that education. The worse the economy / infrastructure / social infrastructure the lower the benefit from high levels of education.

PS: It's been suggested that a balance of subsidizing government services and giving everyone an equal rebate like Alaska may be the best overall approach. However, doing so in a corrupt society often simply breeds government waste so a pure refund is probably the best long term option.

<comment><USER9> Well, that is true if you are talking about higher education, but people still need to learn some basic skills (writing, reading, counting, etc.). Learning English is often useful as well (note that before replying to your comment, I expected Libya to have a low rate of alphabetization, but it turns out their alphabetization rate is rather high (source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya#Education)>).

On top of that, they probably need some skills in the fields of medicine, or petrol engineering.

<comment><USER11> They have the trade off between paying for that with oil money directly now, or being able to continue to pay for less of it, but being able to continue "forever" by investing the oil money, while the principal grows rapidly as long as their oil revenue keeps coming.

It's the age-old tradeoff between saving vs. immediate gratification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is one thing to save or reinvest all the money coming from your oil when you're already a developed nation, and your population has other means to sustain itself. That's not true for Lybia.

<comment><USER11> That's true. But while Libya isn't in a great spot, it is nowhere near being one of the poorest countries, and its inflation adjusted GDP per capita in 2009 was about 50% of where Norway was when oil was discovered. That's about 4 times as high as Egypt in 2009, and higher than some European countries like Estonia.

Presumably the civil war might have set them back somewhat, but they're still in a position where it at least ought to be possible to start building a long term revenue stream from this.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but I presume that for the reconstruction they'll have to use all the money they can get from oil and gas, for some years...</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla puts Firefox on a memory diet - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/102815-mozilla-puts-firefox-on-a-memory-diet

<comment><USER2> As a bunch of other people in the comments have noted, Firefox can take a huge amount of memory, the one thing they also have in common.... is the Firebug extension. It should come as no surprise to them then that Firefox is not actually leaking the memory... Firebug is. A quick Google search for "Firebug memory leak" will lead to multiple examples of _massive_ Firebug memory leaks.

It's a bummer that Firefox gets the blame for Firebug's memory leaks. If people would like to avoid that, the best thing would be to use Firefox's multiple profile feature so that they activate/install Firebug in a Developer profile, and keep their general browsing profile without Firebug. It's rather amazing just how much, and how fast Firebug can leak memory as using a separate profile will make abundantly clear.

[http://lifehacker.com/5481213/master-multiple-firefox- profil...](http://lifehacker.com/5481213/master-multiple-firefox-profiles-for- more-productive-browsing)

<comment><USER3> Browsers are platforms, wouldn't be the same to blame Firefox lack of developer environment?

<comment><USER2> Good point, I forgot to mention that Firefox is expanding the developer tools it comes with:

[http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/08/16/new-tools-in- mozilla...](http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/08/16/new-tools-in-mozilla- firefox-help-developers-drive-the-web-forward/)

Also, it hasn't landed in Nightly yet, but there's some really slick dev tools that are being built into Firefox:

[http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/07/tilt-visualize-your-web- pag...](http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/07/tilt-visualize-your-web-page-in-3d/)

There's some nice CSS and Javascript tools coming too, but I can't seem to find any URL's on them at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Already discussed and with more information:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3183270>

</comment><comment><USER5> They should have done this three years ago, before Google's better, faster, less leaky browser started to gain traction.

<comment><USER6> You know, I wish I could see that. But I can use Firefox regularly with 80+ tabs without any hitch. Chromium starts getting unresponsive somewhere between 10 and 30 depending on the content.

<comment><USER5> You're not the first person that's said that; what's your setup?

I've had consistent memory problems on WinXP, Win7, and OSX, all of them muscled up machines, especially when using JS intensive apps or leveraging Krumo (yes, I'm a PHP programmer, but I promise I can code, breathe and drool at the same time).

Edit: I do use Firebug, so I'm loading up JS resource usage.

<comment><USER6> It's a 2GHz Core Duo laptop, 2GB memory. Currently running Ubuntu 11.10. I just restarted yesterday and am already back at 45 tabs. The only thing that can bring it down is the Twitter UI, but that doesn't seem to need many tabs to get there. Extension-wise it's not too much, Adblock, NoScript, Tab Mix Plus, InstantFox, QuickRestart, and Firebug as well.

I can see Firefox eating more Memory than I'd like, but it's not much of an issue. Chromium seemed to be more clogging the CPU, which I find worse since this is a laptop and thus Firefox keeps the whole thing cooler.

I think the answer to the question of whether to use Chrome or Firefox is heavily dependent on use-cases.

<comment><USER7> <http://mobile.twitter.com/> saved me from having to quit using Twitter. The main UI can't even scroll smoothly on my i5 cpu with gigs of free RAM running Chrome.

<comment><USER6> That's brilliant, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to say it, but everybody is LEAVING firefox already because of this. Closing it and restarting every hour got old. Even with the latest versions it does this.

The fact that they keep claiming "it's a feature!!" is what made me the most angry. Firefox is now useless to me as a web browser, I use it only in limited cases for web development. Chrome has completely replaced it.

"Oh but it's your add-ons." No, it's not. Even disabling my add-ons and starting with a new profile Firefox eventually consumes more and more memory. "Well that's what happens because it's saving history." Ok, force restart it. It will open all the same tabs, each with the same amount of history for that tab...5% of the memory usage of before restarting it.

The thing is a bloated beast. I really do hope they fix it. I loved firefox when I used to use it, but it's not very useful to me as it is (firebug or not).

</comment><comment><USER9> They said the same thing when 7 came out... I'm on 8 and it still eats 1.2GB+ of RAM out of 4 at the end of the day. I'm still using it only because of Firebug.

<comment><USER10> I've got a dozen addons, and I keep gmail, to-do list etc. open all day long. I've had it open for several days now with at least 10 tabs open and it's using less than 0.5 GB out of 8. What's your usage that gets it over 1 GB?

Also, what can you do with Firebug that you can't do with Chrome's "inspector"?

<comment><USER9> Usually I keep in tabs Google Reader, Facebook (not always on), Gmail, sometimes Groove Shark plus many random sites (maybe ~25 tabs).

...as with extensions: AdBlock Plus, Download Statusbar, Flashblock, iReader, Live Http Headers and TinEye.

I just took this screenshot of the task manager: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2311018/temp/shot.jpg>

I honestly don't remember what I don't like about web inspector, I've tried it a while ago and I couldn't do all the things I wanted. Maybe I'll give it another shot sometimes.

edit: my biggest issue with chrome was that for few years you couldn't see the source code of a page sent through a post request: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=523> They say it's fixed now, maybe it is...

<comment><USER11> I find flash sites seem to be the big problem, if I have flash block on then the same sites don't cause the same slow down.

This on Kubuntu 11.10 with FF7 (which FF I'm finding more responsive than previous versions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Massive Happy Dance

</comment><comment><USER13> Too little, too late. I switched to Chrome a year ago.</comment>


In American Towns, Private Profits from Public Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/business/dealbook/private-equity-water.html <comment><USER2> For some reason Americans have bought into the idea that government is always inefficient, taxes are bad, and private industry is better. One way or the other the water isn't free and it has to be paid for. This comes in the form of taxes or higher bills. You can pay local government or a corporation. It seems obvious to me that locally controlled waterworks without a profit incentive is the way to go but my countrymen don't seem to agree.</comment>