The Galilean Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://inference-review.com/article/the-galilean-challenge <comment><USER2> Much of what is written here is reasonable, but there seems to be places where the argument is overstated - for example, this statement is repeatedly used as a justification for the claim that the so-called Basic Property must be simple:

"That leads us to expect that the faculty of language emerged along with modern humans or not long after, a very brief moment in evolutionary time. It follows, then, that the Basic Property should indeed be very simple."

This argument does not take into account the possibility (a very strong one, IMHO, FWIW) that the facility for language is an emergent property of the human brain, in which case language may have become possible as a result of one or more factors crossing a threshold, in a manner analogous to how a smoothly varying physical property can lead to discontinuous phase changes in matter. While there might have been one last change that took us across that threshold, it does not follow that language would be explained by that last step. In fact, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the final step was not directly related to language: for example, that an improvement in nutrition alone had the side-effect that properties already present became powerful enough for language to emerge.

I feel that Chomsky is arguing for the necessity of some basic properties, while seemingly suggesting that the reasonableness of these arguments extends to the proposition that these properties alone will provide a full explanation of language, once the details have been worked out.

<comment><USER3> These comments are why I love HNews. Thank you for your reasoned refutation of Noam Chomsky :)

I especially appreciate your example of phase changes in matter which I think perfectly illuminates the limits of Chomsky's logic.

<comment><USER4> His arguments are generally not hard to refute, they are infrequently grounded in empiricism. But when they are he is usually correct and insightful.

<comment><USER3> That's fair. I wasn't attempting to discredit Chomsky, just appreciating the quality of comments here. </meta>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The use of a bow and arrows is also unique to humans (as far as I know) but I don't see that as a compelling argument that humans have an innate, unique and specific bow n' arrow faculty.

Neither is the complexity of human language alone an argument for a specific and innate human faculty to support language - no more than the complexity of the human body is enough to support the theory of intelligent design.

In fact the whole debate reminds of the intelligent design argument. The theory itself is hardly falsifiable (or at least it keeps getting modified to avoid new found inconvenient facts - compare the original strong claims of a universal grammar with the vagueness of the current version of Chomsky's theory of language). It provides little or no predictive value as a theory; for example, you'd imagine it would explain the patterns of language acquisition in children but it doesn't[1]. And it seems it's difficult to debate the subject without the discussion becoming heated and politically charged.

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence- rebuts-c...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts- chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/)

</comment><comment><USER6> _The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and unique to them._

As far as I'm aware, this is not necessarily true. We know that dolphins have rich vocal patterns for communicating, and I recall recently seeing an article hear about lexical structure in bird calls.

<comment><USER7> There are properties completely unique to human language, recursion for example. It's more than just a difference in scale.

<comment><USER8> What is the evidence that recursion is unique to human language?

<comment><USER4> There isn't any, because its one of those evidence of absence things.

Until we understand Dolphins, parrots Uncommon ants and other communicators as well as we understand common ants we won't know if they do or do not grok recursion.

<comment><USER7> We very strongly believe they don't grok recursion because they don't use it.

We have countless hours of recordings of dolphins, parrots, whales etc... communicating and none of the vocal patterns are complex enough to indicate recursion.

Recursion implies the ability to create infinitely complex language constructs --if animals have this capability they are communicating via some method that we aren't capable of recording, or they've just decided not to do it when we're listening.

You might as well say that mice are more intelligent than humans, they just do a good job of hiding--sure I can't prove that you're wrong, but I wouldn't bet much money on it.

<comment><USER9> That's not how it works. "is not" is a stronger proposition than might or not", thus the onus of proof is on the grand parent comment arguing for uniquenes of recursion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel SGX - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/en-us/isa-extensions/intel-sgx <comment><AUTHOR> I'm wondering if this will be good enough to make a NIST FIPS-140-2 certified "soft" HSM.

It's supposedly available on some skylake SKUs now: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9687/software-guard- extensions...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9687/software-guard-extensions- on-specific-skylake-cpus-only)</comment>


[meta] – Generative Clojure/Script Applications - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/degree9/meta-generative-applications-9ece513e212e <comment><USER2> Without links to the repositories in the blog post, it is less clear what this project does.

<comment><USER3> There is a link at the bottom, maybe it was added later: [https://github.com/degree9/meta](https://github.com/degree9/meta)</comment></comment>


Why Microsoft is buying GitHub: It's all about developer relationships - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-github-acquisition-its-all-about-developer-relationships-influence/ <comment><USER2> It's all about developer tie-in. It's far too easy to move your stuff between azure and aws. Microsoft needs to create differentiation and barriers to migration and since github is heavily used by developers who use both azure and aws, it is the obvious attackpoint. "Well I use azure because the github admin interface makes it easy to deploy, you can't do that to aws from github..." etc.

Now depending on how evil(tm) Microsoft intends to be, they will either just only focus future development on integrations towards their own stuff, or they will actively degrade github when you aren't going Microsoft across the board.

<comment><USER3> I feel like if it is the latter, Github will quickly lose market share to non- Microsoft competitors. Developers on the whole seem to care a lot more about those kinds of tactics than computer users in general. Surely Microsoft understands this and doesn't try this kind of fuckery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Switzerland of code" \- citation needed.

The removal of the C+= (C Plus Equality) repo and FSF* from GitHub is still fresh in my mind. Oh sure, some have brought the repo back, but the removal of the repo essentially killed the nascent feminist programming language, which could have encouraged more womyn in STEM. Some have found the language as ideal for firmware programming in automated dishwashers, but they never went past the prototype stage before the death of the project.

*FSF - Feminist Software Foundation

</comment><comment><USER5> There goes another great product, killed by Microsoft. M$ doesn't understand open source. They infuse their products with too much politicking and marketing, trying to lead clients when open source is functionally the inversion of this. It is product defined by user needs, not top-down high- priests deigning what we should have. They always get it wrong. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER6> "developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers!"

\- Steve Balmer(1)

And folks said that microsoft is different now.

1) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33grif58qO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33grif58qO8)</comment>


Human Rights Groups Tell Google to Cancel Its China Censorship Plan - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/08/28/google-china-censorship-plan-human-rights/ <comment><USER2> This is absurd. Why apply morals selectively to Google? Where were these organizations when Apple handed over Chinese iCloud operations to a government backed shell company, or recently removed hundreds of apps that facilitated bypassing the great firewall. There are scores of American companies operating in China, Microsoft even offered censorsed search, so why bully Google alone here?

It's almost as if internal Google employees have lobbied their favorite charities to take a stance, or else ...

<comment><USER3> If you want to make a change, you have to start somewhere. There is nothing absurd about that.

<comment><USER2> Of course it's absurd to ignore American companies of similar stature (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft,...) who set shop in China much much earlier, and selectively target Google.

Provide one logical reason that can back such hypocrisy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Google-China human-rights narrative feels more like human-rights activists know they will get headlines with Google+Human Rights+China right now. The US heavily depends on China for raw materials and manufactured goods which arguably contributes more to China's financial well being than a new search engine. If anything HR activist should be stoking the trade war flame to nerf China even though IMHO free trade does more to spread freedom than isolationism.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am genuinely frightened by how little respect a coalition statement from 14 human rights organizations is being given. Please at least read their arguments.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of shills paid to dismiss these articles, and plenty of apologists who have dismissed morality and ethics for a variety of reasons.

Do not ever take internet comments as good representations of humanity's opinions. Most people don't have the framework to realize how bad these things are, but thankfully we have such Human Rights Groups around to help inform people.

These internet discussions are the first line of defense for the shills, they sow FUD which suppresses a lot of action because at the least people think "what's the point, no one else seems to care."

<comment><USER5> Thank you. I needed that.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Hipmunk offers dazzling new view of flight search - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/19/technology/hipmunk/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps during query you might want to show "Searching..." instead of "Loading..."? The word "loading" gives me the impression that the site is struggling to process the information and is currently on heavy load. While "Searching" gives me the impression of whats its actually doing, looking up the flights you are searching for.

I guess I am nitpicking. :)

<comment><USER3> Favorite feedback of the day! Something that both makes sense AND is easy to do.

<comment><USER2> Hey, thats the least I could do for giving us reddit. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you do not mind sharing a shop secret, how did you make CNN? Did you use a publicist? Do you know someone? Or did they just call you out of the blue?

<comment><USER3> CNN contacted us, but we launched with a fair amount of press from people we had relationships with (e.g. techcrunch, reddit), which is probably what led them to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I predict that it's only a matter of (short) time before one or more of the larger airfare search engines start to clone the output visualization. I understood it the first moment I looked at it.. just made sense, really. Great job, Hipmunk.. logo is cuddly adorable, too. :)

<comment><USER6> They should clone the visualization, but if other large companies are any indication, the process will take months. They can't clone the hipmunk, though ;) thanks for validating my doodle-work.

<comment><AUTHOR> The hipmunk is a stroke of brilliance.

In the article it says:

> Hipmunk's flight-goggled chipmunk mascot has the same "awww" factor as > Twitter's iconic bluebird. With that, Hipmunk was born.

But I think it goes far beyond the Twitter bird, which to me looks very sterile and artificial. This little guy is cool, like the Scrat character from ice-age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think "dazzling" may be overkill. They have slightly modified output already available (grouping it). It's incredibly nice, but I'm not sure it's dazzling -- yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> It did make CNN though, which I think is pretty damn good publicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some minor feedback: When search results are loading, I get confused by that general information image you have there showing a trip from San Francisco to JFK. For a split second, I think my search got messed up before realizing my actual search is in the background up top. So maybe make it clearer that you're showing me a sample search.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's exactly identical to this [1], which is quite good also!

[1]: <http://matrix.itasoftware.com/>

<comment><USER3> Similar visualization, but totally different products.

I think the most important feature we have is that we remove about 80% of results from listings because they're totally redundant.

We also have draggable time sliders, instant sorting, and multiple searches in tabs, all of which are things we added to make finding flights less tedious.

Also, you can't book tickets on matrix...

<comment><USER10> The draggable time sliders seal the deal for me. Finally I can choose between the for flights that are actually relevant to me and not the 200 that aren't.

Find a way to get Southwest in your output and I'll never use another site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Server: HipmunkServer/0.1

what's a hipmunkserver? Is that a changed server id or is it really something custom?

<comment><USER3> It's just a custom Server header.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mind revealing what it is built in? Or is that part of the secret sauce?

<comment><USER3> It's built entirely of secret sauce, incidentally. And Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll take that for an answer :) Good luck with it, it looks like you have a winner on your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who is the target market for this? Most of the comments here are targeted towards the visualization aspect. Isn't the real value in providing people with cheaper fares from the carriers they like?

<comment><USER12> Personally, flight times and layovers are quite important to me. I'm a ferry ride away from the airport, so leaving early, or arriving late really sucks. Either a night in the car at the dock, or an extra hotel stay.

I put in a search for a flight that I recently booked, and the two top choices were the ones that we had pulled out of tens of kayak searches. They were right there. Not the cheapest, but the most sane. Kayak had a couple of flights in the early results with a 12 hour layover in Pdx followed by a 30 min flight to Seatac. They were way down in the agony listing on hipmonk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried searching from Sweden, and it assumes I want to fly from Sundsvall. Not likely. Either implement searching from all airports in a country, or require me to enter a city.

Also, any chance it will be possible to search for date ranges rather than exact departure and return dates?

Third, a mouseover for airport codes and airline names would be great.

Perhaps you are aiming for frequent business travelers that have fixed dates and know all the airport codes by heart, but I thought I'd share my thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER14> Love this. A true "why hasn't anyone done this?" moment for me. If they can expand the range of providers to be competitive with Kayak and Skyscanner I'd make this my first and only stop.

Speaking of travel visualizations... a shameless plug for my own "Hotels.com hotels on Google Maps" site: <http://www.roomatlas.com>. Live prices in the markers, Street View and Wikipedia placemarks.

</comment><comment><USER15> The UI is reminiscent of the hypothetical Southwest Airlines redesign from "Magic Ink" ([http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#demonstration_trip_planning_...](http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#demonstration_trip_planning_redux)).

This is a good thing. It's sad how few of the great ideas in that essay have been realized.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hmmmm... "Agony sort" doesn't seem to take into account whether one airline is better or worse than another, which definitely influences the amount of agony I experience while traveling. Sometimes people are willing to pay a little extra or be flexible on price in order to fly their preferred airline, or at least avoid one they dislike.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't have the depth of information (airports and airlines) that Matrix has, but I'm a big fan of the UI.

Also, props for the great customer service (had a very helpful chat with someone) and for the continuous deployment while launching (was told "reload your page, and check out this new feature we just pushed").

</comment><comment><USER18> Tried to search from NYC to Panama city in Feb: "sorry, no results could be found"

Do I need real airport codes?

</comment><comment><USER19> Really good. But I need an "open jaws" option, i.e. fly from A to B and then C to A. Usually (at least on the routes I use) this gets priced at 1/2 the price of a round trip A-B plus 1/2 the price of a round trip A-C. Buying two one-way tickets is no substitute because it usually costs far more.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, awesome press right after launch for @spez and gang. While the HN first reaction may have been "oh, ITA already did that", the mainstream reaction is apparently quite different. Good on them for commercializing this idea and bringing it to a wide audience.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can see you are using Amazon EC2.

Any other comment on the technology used?

</comment><comment><USER22> Display of results is nice.

What's especially commendable is the fact that the search works quite nicely over intercontinental flights with many connections and also far into the future (2011).</comment>


Change Your Name - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/name.html <comment><USER3> If the .com name you want is already registered, you can always buy it later once you business is successful enough to justify the investment (much like betali.st and getdropbox.com).

There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage.

Note: a large swath of web users don't even understand the concept of a domain name or address bar...instead they google terms like "Gmail" and "YouTube" thinking this is how they are supposed to visit web sites.

What's more, tech-savvy users wouldn't think twice about visiting domain name ending in ".io", ".ly" and so on. (Hence their proliferation.)

 __*

I can't help but wonder if this article is some kind of prank--it's far too ill-considered compared to Graham's usual standards.

<comment><USER4> "There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage."

This is exactly why the .com domain wins. They do not have this attitude. Their attitude is to be in it to win it and do what it necessary to be successful. That's the .com signal.

<comment><USER3> Not everybody finances a startup with a mountain of cash. If you're funding your business with your life savings and credit cards, it's difficult to place a premium on a domain name while contemplating how long you can pay your mortgage and put food on the table.

Also, blind optimism is not required for success. And no domain name is an antidote for a shitty idea that nobody cares about.

<comment><USER5> You are right about the chitty idea, but decent .com names are dropped every day. (You need to scout for names every day though, but will become a nasty habit in no time.) I have found that people, outside of tech, will remember weird, odd .com domains. I got people to remember physibles(and how to spell it.), and these were senior citizens. (I guarantee these people have never been on the mother site either!)

I tried a different domain with a .io domain; and it just wasen't worth it the effort.(they knew about .net. ,org, but that's it.). There's almost a anger that comes up when a domain ext. gets to specific, like .photography?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great names are made not found.

I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around.

If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers.

If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name.

But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you become big and you can become big without .com name. Whether you can stay big is another discussion.

Far too often we fool ourselves thinking the wrong things are important.

But just as you most probably can easily find another name because your current one isn't as great as you might think, you can probably also wait a little until it becomes an actual issue.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't agree more.

Google, Yahoo, Twitter.

Three global brands that aren't dictionary names, and don't have to be. You don't need a dictionary word .com to survive either.

<comment><USER8> All combinations of 6 letters .com are taken. All 16k words of the dictionary are taken in English. It wasn't even the case 2 years ago. I wonder whether pg's impression that if is possible to get a .com is outdated.

<comment><USER9> > All combinations of 6 letters .com are taken.

Do you mean this literally for any 6 random characters? It rings true for 4, but I believe you can easily find a 5 character domain name even now. In fact, I just registered three five character and a six character domains without much trouble.

<comment><USER10> we registered a new 6 letter .com 8 months ago for 20 dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. > 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have > the .com of their name.

That's not a straight comparison. A better stat would be, what percentage of the top 20 YC companies had the .com while they were in the active YC batch?

<comment><USER12> I think a lot of the comments here are missing the point.

If somebody is already using the <yourname>.com domain, then that name is already being used for something and creating a new business with the same name is a bad idea. I guess in the worst case scenario they could file a lawsuit claiming that you're infringing their trademark.

People can try to justify it by saying everybody just searches anyway, but if the .com name is already established it'll be a never-ending battle to keep your name in the top search results.

I mean, nobody would try to use ford.io or yahoo.tk for their startup, doing the same thing but with a smaller company is an equally bad idea.

<comment><USER13> Yea, I would agree that this is really the key point. If it's a fallow .com name (that you can't afford), then maybe you'll be lucky with an alternative TLD. But it's probably a poorer choice than changing your name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best advice I've ever seen on naming a business is from this old Seth Godin gem:

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/06/naming_a_bus...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/06/naming_a_busine.html)

I read that in 2003, and have never forgotten the "Lemon Pie" example since.

<comment><USER15> I've done some scuba and I don't get the Lemon Pie name in that context. Care to explain?

<comment><USER16> It's the whole point of the linked article.

> The LESS it has to do with your category, the better.

<comment><USER15> Apparently I'm still really, really bad at this.

<comment><USER17> :). Just think to yourself what apples have to do with computers and phones.

<comment><USER18> The Apple name did have a somewhat contrived connection with computers when the company was first started.

Back in 1976, Steve Jobs explained the name to me: "Take a byte of the Apple, get it?" And that's where the famous shape of the logo came from.

(I almost ended up working for him at the time - but that is a whole other story!)

<comment> rebekah-aimee That's cute! I didn't know that, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Don't believe a domain is for sale unless the owner has already told you an asking price.

One of my favorite examples: [http://nissan.com](http://nissan.com)

<comment><USER20> or tesla.com

<comment><USER21> I've always wondered how long will domain squatters wait before they negotiate. Surely Tesla Motors has approached tesla.com and apparently been turned down. Telsa Motors has shown they don't _need_ that domain name to succeed. So when will the squatter, if ever, cave to Tesla Motors' offer?

<comment><USER22> Maybe never. The Homo Economicus model of human behavior as optimizing for expected economic return is only a first approximation. In some cases, human behavior is more accurately modeled as "Mine! My precious!"

<comment><USER23> Even if Tesla is not willing to pay the amount the squatter wants, he may be hoping that Tesla's competitor will.

By the way, the coolest thing Tesla could do, that would buy them a lot of love and good press, would be to buy tesla.com and donate it to Nicola Tesla Science Center.

<comment><USER24> Shouldn't that be tesla.edu rather than .com? Their current .org would also be more appropriate than a .com...

<comment><USER25> It can't be, unless time travel...

From Wikipedia: "Since 2001, new registrants to the [.edu top level] domain have been required to be United States-affiliated institutions of higher education, though before then non-U.S.-affiliated—and even non-educational institutions—registered, with some retaining their registrations to the present."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To anyone naming their company and moving on when the Whois comes back as registered -- if you're really like the name, you should follow up with whoever owns it!

I was recently trying to come up with names for a website / app I've been working on and wanted to finalize a name. The couple of ideas I had were already registered, including the name I really wanted. I ended up sending out emails to the contact on record for the domains I was interested in and ended up buying the exact name I wanted for around $100, which was far less than I was expecting them to settle for. The name had been registered for 13 years and nobody who owned it ever did anything with it.

</comment><comment><USER27> "It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name is a sufficiently good one, and the number of such domains is so large that you can find plenty that are cheap or even untaken."

So, after reading this advice, I decided I'd actually try it out - it's easy enough to download a word list and write a script that pings a WHOIS API to check every single word or word pair. Turns out most such APIs are rate- limited, so I couldn't get as far as I wanted, but in a random spot check of 30 or so words off the word list, _every single one of them was taken_ (as was the word-pair that I'm actually using for my startup). Even things as out- there as absurder.com or tektites.com.

I think it's a good bet that somebody has already done this and registered every single English word and many word pair in the .com TLD.

The good news is that by shitting all over .com, there will be no more startups founded with .com domain names. Either companies will buy them as they get bigger, creating a big transfer of wealth from startups to domain squatters, or more likely they'll just give up and we'll get more .ly, .io, or other gTLD domains in the future.

<comment><USER28> There are still a few one-word domains left in the .com TLD (e.g. naziisms.com, regularizing.com, castigators.com). I myself registered one earlier this summer.

[http://www.randomdotcom.com/](http://www.randomdotcom.com/)

<comment><USER29> I can just see it now.

"Certainly there are some unfortunate connotations with our name, but we feel that the advantage of having a memorable, one-word dot-com domain name is worth it." \- Bob Q. Startup, Founder and CEO of Naziisms, Inc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant > _The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals > weakness._

Note to anyone who disagrees with Paul Graham on this one: he's not talking about the genuine importance of the domain name. He's talking about its _perceived_ importance by important people —namely the investor community. That's the way it is with most status signals: they're not very important by themselves, but how they influence the people who have power over you _is_ important.

Simply put, if the investor community believes that lacking the relevant .com name is a sign of weakness, then lacking such a name signals that weakness. As such, they will be less likely to invest, making your company weaker. It doesn't matter if they're right in the first place. Their belief is sufficient.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy: if investors believe you're weak, that belief can _make_ you weak.

<comment><USER23> It also suggests that any investor willing not to believe in such signals can stand to make a lot of money.

I sometimes wonder how much bullshit do people at the top of the foodchain believe and act on, given the material targeted towards executives (like magazine articles or presentations of software development methodologies) are so full of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> this is telling

Just take a look at all these successful startups which either had a temporary domain name, or which still have a different domain name to their name:

Square was squareup.com, DropBox was getdropbox.com, Facebook was thefacebook.com, Instagram was instagr.am, Twitter was twttr.com, Foursquare was playfoursquare.com, Basecamp is basecamphq.com, Pocket is getpocket.com, Bitly was/is bit.ly, Delicious was del.icio.us, Freckle is letsfreckle.com

[https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-name-your- startup](https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-name-your-startup)

<comment><USER31> I only know the backstory of Dropbox, but I'm certain Drew Houston would tell you that it was a painfully distracting process to obtain dropbox.com. I suspect if he could have done it all over again, he would have spent the 30 minutes and few hundred dollars to buy something different. Of course, there were a lot more options back in 2007.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you're struggling to find a solid available .com for your startup, I'd encourage you to check out my free service, Lean Domain Search [1]. The site asks you for a keyword then pairs your keyword with 5,000 other words and instantly shows you which are available. For example, if you search for "food" [2], it will pair it with "free" and check "FreeFood.com", "hub" and check "FoodHub.com", and so on, and it also allows you to sort the results by length or popularity of that additional word. With a few searches you should be able to find a great domain, saving you a lot of time and potentially a lot of money.

[1] [http://www.leandomainsearch.com](http://www.leandomainsearch.com)

[2] [http://www.leandomainsearch.com/search?q=food](http://www.leandomainsearch.com/search?q=food)

<comment><USER33> Another favorite tool: [http://impossibility.org](http://impossibility.org)

You feed it a word and it will prefix/suffix it with random verbs/nouns/adjectives + '.com'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> 100% of the top 20 by valuation have their .com

What proportion had it at their founding or shortly after? Surely a well funded and successful company had the means and motivation to purchase their .com

<comment><USER35> A great example: how long did it take Square to get their hands on square.com? Even now it's just a redirect to squareup.com.

<comment><USER36> Another example: Dropbox originally had getdropbox.com, and didn't obtain dropbox.com until more than 2 years after founding.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)#2007-2011](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_\(service\)#2007-2011)

<comment><USER37> And another: Box launched as box.net, and spent about $1 million to buy box.com. [0]

For earlier companies, you can buy a lot of engineers, product, and marketing for $1 million.

[0] [http://www.cnet.com/news/how-box-net-became-box-com-for- just...](http://www.cnet.com/news/how-box-net-became-box-com-for-just-shy-of- a-million-bucks/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have some personal experience with this. Our company is Direct Match. We used to use the directmatchx.com website. Adding an X on the end isn't that odd in the trading world, but we would get comments on it all the time. directmatch.com ended up costing us $8k and well worth the purchase.

For me it came down to, how can I tell customers, recruits, or investors that I'm going to be this huge impactful startup if I didn't even own the .com of my name? I couldn't. And now I never get a question about if my company's name is "Direct Match X" or why there's an X at the end of the domain name.

</comment><comment><USER39> _> "Whereas (as Stripe shows) having x.com signals strength even if it has no relation to what you do."_

I would contest that it has no relation, I could be wrong since I have no knowledge. That said I always saw it as a relation to the cards themselves and the magnetic-strip on the back of the card.

<comment><USER40> I thought the exact same thing. I was really surprised by this comment coming from PG.

This Forbes/Quora article explains how the name was chosen: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/02/how-did- stripe-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/02/how-did-stripe-come- up-with-its-name/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The latest "new TLD" thing was a money-making scheme for domain registrars. Nobody goes to those domains. Even the previous round of TLDs (".museum", ".aero") are not used much; ".aero" has entries for all the major airport codes, but they're redirects.

Amusingly, even if you have your very own TLD, it doesn't help you. Most browsers send single-word lookups to a search engine before they send them to DNS. Try "ca" in a browser. There is a web site at "ca". But to get there, you'll have to use "ca.", to force a DNS lookup from the root. Nobody knows to do that unless they're into how DNS works. There are some low-level bugs embedded in very common C libraries which cause problems with single-word domains, and they probably won't be fixed.

As for the original poster's advice, the price of the domain you want in .com is probably more than YCombinator's initial funding. With all of today's domain hoarding, the ".com" domain usually comes later. Facebook started as "thefacebook.com".

<comment><USER42> There is no website at "ca". Did you mean www.ca? That redirects to circa.ca

<comment><USER41> For a clearer example, try "[http://ai."](http://ai.") No redirection; there's a web site there.

<comment><USER43> There's no DNS record for "ai.". It's actually the browser prepending www in search for a site and "www.ai." happens to exist.

<comment><USER41> No, there is a DNS record for "ai":

        $ nslookup ai
        Server:	127.0.1.1
        Address:	127.0.1.1#53

        Non-authoritative answer:
        Name: ai
        Address: 188.8.131.52

Rechecking using Google's DNS server:

        $ nslookup
        > server 126.96.36.199
        Default server: 188.8.131.52
        Address: 184.108.40.206#53
        > ai
        Server:	184.108.40.206
        Address:	22.214.171.124#53

        Non-authoritative answer:
        Name: ai
        Address: 22.214.171.124

It's pingable:

        $ ping ai
        PING ai (22.214.171.124) 56(84) bytes of data.
        64 bytes from offshore.ai (188.8.131.52): icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=133 ms
        64 bytes from offshore.ai (22.214.171.124): icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=132 ms
        64 bytes from offshore.ai (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=132 ms
        ...

And it speaks HTTP:

       $ wget ai
       --2015-08-09 14:26:26--  http://ai/
       Resolving ai (ai)... 220.127.116.11
       Connecting to ai (ai)|220.127.116.11|:80... connected.
       HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
       Length: 1257 (1.2K) [text/html]
       Saving to: 'index.html'
       100%[</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==>] 1,257       --.-K/s   in 0.001s
       2015-08-09 14:26:26 (842 KB/s) - 'index.html' saved [1257/1257]

It doesn't respond to HTTPS, though. So we don't get to see a cert issued for a TLD.

A base level TLD site is rare; most TLDs don't have one. But it's supported in DNS.

</comment><comment><USER44> Is this signaling as simple as having a .com ?

Or are there other considerations such as SEO uniqueness, easy-to-pronounce (especially critical for enterprise software), length of url.

Is kuickkoder.com a better domain than quickcoder.io ?

<comment><USER45> It's a sliding scale.

If the .com is kuicksuperkodderdudes.com, then quickcoder.io is superior. Yes to length of url - if your only option is a .com that is 25 letters long, or a .io domain that is six letters, then the .io wins.

For most of the cases in which a .com ends up being inferior to a .io, it's due to a naming exploration failure. You can still easily find good two word .com addresses today. Unless you've got coder.io or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm not sure.

I'd rather have a memorable name with a sub-par TLD, than I would have a confusing / hard to remember name with a .com.

Obviously, the ideal is memorable + .com, but most of those will cost 50-100k+, which is not feasible for seed-stage budget.

Sounds like a series A problem.

<comment><USER47> According to the article, there's a third option:

> It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name > is a sufficiently good one, and the number of such domains is so large that > you can find plenty that are cheap or even untaken. So make a list and try > to buy some. That's what Stripe did. (Their search also turned up parse.com, > which their friends at Parse took.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> If your numbers are going up and to the right, what does it mean to "signal weakness" with your name?

<comment><USER49> I think the essay is missing crucial elaboration on the central point. That is, the idea that .com is associated with strength, and lack of .com with weakness.

<comment><USER50> .com is supreme

.com is love

.com is life

Surrender your soul unto VeriSign

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Evan Williams of Blogger/Twitter fame disagree with it.

[http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less- impo...](http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less- important.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> >100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another.

How much of that is due to the pressure that he admittedly puts on them to change names? (And that higher valued ones are likely to be older and have had this pressure for longer?)

<comment><USER53> In addition to having had the pressure for longer, they have the money from having raised multiple rounds of financing.

<comment><USER52> Well, yeah, that's what "higher valued ones are likely to be older" implies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Hypothetical:

Let's say you are a founder and VC tell you that you need to pay off someone to get a certain domain name that matches your startup name.

Let's say that someone knows how badly you need this name, and they charge you an absurd price.[1]

Finally, let's say your startup fails.

Question:

Who gets the domain name?

Considering the money that has been spent to get it, the domain name could be your startup's most valuable and liquid asset?

[1] "Absurd" because the cost of creating and maintaining a domain name (editing a zone file and running a DNS server) is quite low. In the early days of the www, domain names were registered for free. These days some people pay thousands of dollars for "domain names". Funnily enough, in some cases the names being "sold" for thousands of dollars are the same ones that were once given away for free. After one has paid a one-time, exorbitant "price" for a domain name, then they must pay the annual fee each year to keep the domain name registered. Usually this fee is under $100. Even the annual fee charged is far above the cost of creating and maintaining a domain name.

Maybe I should start a new TLD, e.g., ".startup".

I could distribute a copy of root.zone with .startup added.

I could give away a free, preconfigured localhost DNS cache, freeing users from ISP provided DNS, open resolvers like Google and Cisco (OpenDNS), and most importantly freeing them from the ICANN racket.

Then I could give away domain names for free, upon a proper showing of need. No hoarding.

Nah, it would never work. No one wants "alternative" TLD's.

(I wonder how much pure profit .io has made in recent years.)

</comment><comment><USER55> I have a related question. When you have one product, which name is different from the company's name, is it better to use comapany.com or product.com?

<comment><USER56> Perhaps both? Company.com can describe the company, show your products, etc. Product.com could be either a landing page advertising your product or, if it's a service, perhaps that's the login / primary access for your product.

Just my thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Someone from Google, er, Alphabet didn't read PG's essay: [https://abc.xyz](https://abc.xyz)

<comment><USER58> The timing is exquisite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> We'll buy it when we raise series A. We'll use our hipster version until then. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER60> My sense of Graham's thesis - and I'm reading this really loosely here - <USER2> that he's saying a name's not worth sticking with if obvious metrics suggest it's a bad choice. The most obvious metric of whether you have a good name or not is whether it's already been taken, especially by someone else with their own idea and access to 6 or 10 or 20 dollars per year or whatever the annual registration fee is. The space for available names (the "name space", if you will ;) is still large enough that being very stubborn about your startup's names is probably hazardous, and certainly not a sign of health.

Ignoring the minutiae of the rest of the post (and you can argue I'm really doing this quite intently), I think I agree with the principle. The name's not that important. If you're processing financial transactions you could be named _Pay_ Pal, sure, but you could also be named Stripe or Square or BrainTree[0] or any of dozens of weird names that make no sense at face value (if these names are in fact deeply meaningful, I'd be curious to hear the stories... privately, or on Twitter, not necessarily here/now).

There are reasonable things to get stuck on - if you're committed to being a B2C product or service, and others are telling you your startup is more of a B2B idea, then you should wrestle with that. But you shouldn't be wrestling over the name for such a great deal of time. If Paul Graham tells you to change your name when you're pitching to him so you can get a .com, you probably shouldn't (he argues) protest all that much.

I don't think I hold his view as strongly as he does, but I'm neither a successful VC nor widely respected in Silicon Valley, so his argument about perception is admittedly a little self-fulfilling and it seems impossible to reject.

[0] the irony is not lost on me, now that I check, that BrainTree doesn't own braintree.com - although first glance suggests Square only has squareup.com, square.com redirects to it; I'd be interested to hear Graham's thoughts on that, and I think it would signal strongly whether I understood his argument correctly.

</comment><comment><USER61> Before startup founders disregarding PG's advice about prefering .com domains if feasiable, consider 2015 RSA Conference cyber security speaker Paul Vixie recommendation for corporate sysadmins to filter out new TLD's to cut down on cyberthreats. Startups considering sexy new cheap TLD's may want to reconsider cost / benefit metrics of such path.

On Thursday, April 23 at 9:10am, there is a session called "Domain Name Abuse: How Cheap New Domain Names Fuel the eCrime Economy." The panel will be led by Paul Vixie, CEO of a company called Farsight Security, Inc.

[http://www.rsaconference.com/](http://www.rsaconference.com/)

<comment><USER62> We found that out the hard way. We were getting tons of reports of our product not working. After a lot of investigation, we found out they were all coming from people at Starbucks locations, because Starbuck was blocking .me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Not sure the domain name really matters much now. Reasons:

(1) Do users really pay attention to the extension, COM or anything else?

(2) IMHO, now users mostly just click on links while paying little or no attention to the actual URL or domain name. Of course, the HTML link _element_ ( _tag_ ) doesn't have to expose anything about the extension.

So, why do 1+ billion users know or care about COM?

For PG's point about the most successful YC companies use COM, that was then, when COM didn't cost so much, not now.

</comment><comment> martin-adams So it feels like this is a prejudice against startups who aren't using the .com TLD and I suspect would come more from investors and partners than users.

Maybe the point is that for startups that do get traction and funding, finding a .com is an inevitable task, one that could save a lot of money/energy by addressing it in the early stages. That inevitable task may be borne out of the CEO being tired of answering why they didn't go for a .com.

There has actually been no justification as to why a .com is required. Simply saying non .com is "marginal" and "it signals weakness" is not a root reason. All it shows is that some people have a differing opinion on the value of a .com and not agreeing with 'them' means you're weak.

I personally do feel more comfortable having a good sounding .com, but if I'm going to do it, it has to be for the right reasons. That I don't think has been clearly expressed in this essay.

My reasons are that it's a global identity, globally indexable by search engines, the most common global LTD and therefore the most memorable by end users, and more stable from a root server point of view. Would I think a startup with another name is weak? No. I would assume that they understand the implications of a non-.com TLD.

</comment><comment> rebekah-aimee If you're better at coming up with different names, as PG apparently is (he mentions in the article), then yeah, this would be a net win to just change your name.

For most of us who are pretty awful at naming, it may not be a great idea to focus on the name when there are other TLDs out there like .io, .co, or most recently, .tech. And there's also the highly acceptable alternative of using a derivative of your name, such as (name)app.com, get(name).com, and that sort of thing.

It's also notable that a startup registering its domain name is probably early stages and their name may change anyway, because their idea may change. You don't want to spend hundreds or more on lavalamps.com and then later decide you're actually going to sell those puzzle/IQ lights. Doing that might even make you hesitate to change your idea.* But if you spend $12 on lavalamps.net, the cost of heading for greener pastures is epsilon.

If you've got another name stashed on a scrap of paper in a drawer, dig it up and check whether its .com is available. But if figuring out a new name is going to take you a week, just take what you can get for now.

Probably you don't want to use (name).ru, though. ;)

\---

*Although if you were that foolish and then that inflexible, you probably weren't going to get anywhere anyway.

</comment><comment><USER64> Man, this advice may be tough to hear, (especially for someone like myself who currently only owns sellervision.net for the app I've been working on for ten months) but if the 'Godfather Of Startups' PG believes it's vital to have a dot com, then I'd change the name of my app in a heartbeat. Now I'm just waiting for YC to take me on to their Fellowship or main intake so I can have some budget to buy a cracking new name...ha ha!

</comment><comment><USER65> It's a hard choice to make, but especially when building a B2C brand & product and a large enough SEO channel (where a domain change might hurt your rankings), I'd definitely stick with PG here.

Lots of good examples and counterexamples in the comments, but if you want something memorable AND searchable, sometimes it's best to just churn out the money early on if you know very well what you're doing.

For justwatch.com we paid a small fortune - almost a tenth of the seed investment - to a shady squatter that just wouldn't give in, but in retrospect I'd still say it was definitely worth it.

Even in 2015, it still makes you come across a tad more serious, determined and professional to outsiders and the brand searches and direct openings of the domain are significant.

When you've built a brand already, squatters will be happy to charge you for the work you did (which might or might not be a better deal overall than burning the valuable money in the beginning). YMMV.

If you're shooting for a B2B SAAS business that's more sales or SEM driven, I guess you're off just fine with an .io or temp domain, but your main focus should be a clean search neigbourhood then where you have the chance to make the Google front page eventually.

</comment><comment><USER66> PG is recommending you get the X.com, but that doesn't mean you need to pay $50,000 for X.com on Day 1 of your startup. I see people making this mistake all the time, buying expensive domains before validating their startup in the first place.

Think about what Dropbox, Stripe, and AirBnB did!

      getdropbox.com          -> dropbox.com
      devpayments.com         -> stripe.com
      airbedandbreakfast.com  -> airbnb.com

<comment><USER60> Graham mentions this in a footnote, essentially not to assume such a thing unless the domain squatter has actually given an ask price. I'll extend on his argument by pointing out that Nissan and Tesla still don't own their .com names, and evidently Houston (of Dropbox) went through a lot of pain to get dropbox.com well after it'd been validated.

If your idea seems worthless, a squatter might figure this is the time to shed a worthless domain for a few hundred or thousand bucks. If you're at the helm of a runaway multi-million-dollar success, I imagine the squatter is going to try and squeeze you for significantly more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I agree with some other commentators here - I am surprised at this article and it doesn't appear to be up to PG's usual standards. There are trends I believe PG is missing.

Today, we consider the .COM to be the true, authentic, creme dela creme. However, available .COM domains are becoming harder and harder to find, while there has been an explosion in new TLDs such as .ly, .io, .pro, .guru, .camp, .rentals, .pub, .management etc.

More and more, we will be seeing startups and large companies with alternative domain names which they will promote online, in magazines, on TV, etc. It will be common to see alternative TLDs. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Super Bowl had a couple ads which included an alternative TLD. Marketing is about rising above the noise and right now a .PRO is much more noticeable than a .COM.

Many commenters and PG acknowledge that while .COM names are less valuable today than they were just a few years ago, they are still _perceived_ to be very valuable. However, that is less and less true for the younger generation (which is the trend I believe PG is missing). As they grow up seeing ly, .io, .pro, .guru, etc., a .COM will have no more inherent authenticity than any other TLD. Would they really be more attracted to a magazine/tv/online ad with sportsshoe.com than to sportsshoe.pro? More willing to eat lunch at goodfood.com over goodfood.pub? More likely to attend bestsummercamp.com over bestsummer.camp? More likely to download a fun app from puzzle.com over puzzle.app?

As a potential investor, does spending time and money securing a .COM really signal someone's dedication and company strength? Should a startup founder really spend a lot of money to secure a .COM so the company appears stronger? Seems like a false metric.

</comment><comment><USER68> Exactly! This why I commended Casey Neistat for waiting to announce his startup name to the public _until_ he secured the domain name.

</comment><comment><USER69> I think that changing your name is almost always the wrong thing to do. It's a sort of 'reputation bankruptcy' that only makes sense when your "credit" has been damaged beyond repair.

I imagine it would be different if you are primarily concerned about your reputation with your investors rather than your reputation with your users; but I think that big companies regularly undervalue the customer familiarity with their brand.

Sure, when choosing a name, choose a name that has an available .com. Why not? Before you've invested anything in a name, it is all but valueless, so the cost to getting a .com is very low.

The value in a name is in how many people recognize and remember it; if nobody knows your name, it's worthless. If people do remember it, it doesn't matter how awkward or weird the name is; the value is in that recognition. Once you have that, don't fuck with it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Actually, paypal owns x.com, not Stripe. :)

<comment><USER71> True, but x is a variable in this case.

<comment><USER50> Should've use ^([^\\.]+)\\.com$ for clarity.

<comment><USER72> Or just example.com :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> The advice seems like a bit of an anachronism in the mobile world.

Nice, short .com domain names were probably more important for desktop web browsing -- and I suspect are less relevant to startups that are focused on the iOS App Store, Google Play Store, third-party app stores, Twitter, Facebook, etc. for discovery.

<comment><USER74> exactly ..people go to the app store. Few ever go to snapchat.com They hear about it on Facebook, on twitter, the press, through word of mouth

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I read through all the comments, hoping for someone to match the irony of this Paul Graham article.

ycombinator is not exactly memorable like a "stripe" or "parse", yet they are presumably one of the most successful accelerators in the world.

Naming is secondary, marketing that name is primary. Of course, you can't have a shitty name like ookabugiedandwig, but ask yourself why English-speaking people know words like: Samsung, Nissan, Ubuntu, Volkswagen and you can even apply that in reverse and find out why people who may not even use English to write, know words like: Apple, Mercedes Benz, Windows.

Also, I don't mean this in a bad light, but I am glad to see people disagreeing with Paul Graham. This shows that HN is healthy and even a YC members opinion can be wrangled down to reality.

</comment><comment><USER76> So having the .com of your name is the equivalent to, in earlier times, banks, churches and police basing themselves in large, impressive stone buildings.

Of course, signalling architecture has become less important over time, and probably the same will become true of the domain name equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm skeptical to see that PG wrote this article. There is no doubt that owning a snazzy .com domain is good but saying this

        If you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name.

doesn't make sense. Sorry.

<comment><USER78> It makes plenty of sense. Try finding the ford modeling agency by typing Ford into google. (without longtail modifiers) Guess what... ford.com is your first hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I have a doubt about names - sorry to stray away from the topic but it would help me giving away the domain i have for the future.

I have a domain name which is registered as trademark by one of the organizations, can the organization claim the domain name since they own the trademark ?

<comment><USER80> Did you register the domain name before their trademark ? There are several ways under the Uniform Domain Resolution Policy whereby they can come after the domain name. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute- Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute- Resolution_Policy)

To answer the other question posted to your question. Registering a trademark in an attempt to take a domain name from someone else is know as Reverse Domain Name Hijacking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking)

<comment><USER79> thank you that really helped learn more about the topic..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> This makes me so tempted to write up the name history of BigCo where I used to work. I have searched before and cannot find a good write up on line. But it would basically require me to out myself because much of what I know is from having worked there for over five years. I can't find online sources with some of this information. But, previously, I have just stated I worked at BigCo and not named the company.

I was actually considering doing such a write up a day or two ago. So it really hits a nerve to see this here today.

Short version of the story: Even really big, wildly successful companies do name changes and most folks founding a company are waaaay over-attached to whatever they first decided to name their baby.

</comment><comment><USER82> After reading this, I'm a bit perplexed and sad at the same time. My current strategy was to not use a .com since it was up for sale more than I'm willing to pay. Instead, I decided to go with something similar but different and hopefully change it once the idea/company got traction.

Whether or not I agree with this, PG is a source of authority, which makes me think about my current strategy. Sort of sucks, do I listen to my gut and what many others here are saying, or fork over the money into a domain that could be used for other areas in the business?

I'm going with option#1 btw, just sucks to hear this from someone I respect, because it makes me believe it's true.

<comment><USER83> Anybody remembers getdropbox.com before dropbox.com?! :-) Or... thefacebook.com before facebook.com?!

Name, logo, domain name, are all important things, and - like for all things - their importance changes over time. You go in a circle of executing to "good enough" for the stage you are at (keeping in mind that you do not want to create problems for yourself in the future with the choices you make today) and then move on to the next item on the execution priority list.

If you wait to have the perfect logo before launching, you will never launch... Then 6 or 12 months later you might find yourself analyzing the perfect palette of Pantone colors to go with your brand...

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I couldn't agree more. We see more and more startups end up with the wrong name for their business. That's why we created and launched the "Unused Domains" index a couple of weeks ago.

We index all(+50M so far) domains that are unused and give you access to them here: undeveloped.com/search

At least now you know which options you have and which alternatives are out there. The search and acquisition of the right name for your startup doesn't have to be that painful anymore.

PS: we help/advice/consult startups for free with finding and picking the right name in the right extension. So feel free to reach out to us if you're struggling with your name.

</comment><comment><USER85> My startup's name is Purple. This is what we have to deal with : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple.com)

<comment><USER86> Didn't you know that before you named your company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I knew I needed to change our company's name but this article really sealed the deal. The problem is I don't have the skill of naming. If you do, I'd love your help (email me at lalalee at hotmail.com).

<comment><USER88> Try sites like these:

* Namium - [http://www.naminum.com](http://www.naminum.com)

* The Name App - [http://thenameapp.com](http://thenameapp.com)

* Wordoid - [http://wordoid.com/](http://wordoid.com/)

There are some more sites like these but more focused on domain names, all from here - [https://blog.growth.supply/300-awesome-free- things-e07b3cd5f...](https://blog.growth.supply/300-awesome-free- things-e07b3cd5fd5b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Nowadays, it seems that if your startup is primarily a web application, then choosing the right domain is a little more important than if you make an app like Snapchat. Is there really a big difference if you type in "snapchat.com" vs "snapchatapp.com"?

However, if you can avoid more obscure and complicated URLs, then by all means do it. I think its best practice to have something straight forward so the user doesn't have to search first to come on your site. You never know what kind of distraction can present itself in those few seconds leading a user away from your site.

</comment><comment><USER90> There is another problem with Paul's suggestion, which is that it only really works for very young startups that don't have many customers or other business relationships yet.

Once you sell product and have established partnerships changing your name just doesn't make sense any longer and becomes a measure of last resort, e.g. if your brand is so damaged that continuing business under the old name becomes very complicated. But then again, if you're in that kind of a situation you probably have a lot more things to care about which are at least as important.

</comment><comment><USER91> We started working in our startup one week ago. I'm signaling weakness because I don't want to spend 5 grands in a .com domain? This post is so confusing.

<comment><USER92> No, you're signaling weakness because you don't change the name to something that doesn't cost 5 grand to get the .com for.

That's what the article says at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> If you search for a .com domain and it's already taken, you're not being creative enough. You're looking where someone has already looked in the world of ideas, you're not expanding the world of ideas.

Whereas if you force yourself to buy an untaken .com domain, you are pushing yourself to think creatively. You might even get so lucky to come up with a fantastic name such as Airbnb or Zenefits.

</comment><comment><USER94> PG

        a) Thanks for writing new posts. I have been missing your
           writings for quite long.

        b) IIRC, Dropbox started as getdropbox.com, just later on,
           when money "was not an issue", they purchased the more
           expensive one - dropbox.com.

           same applies to uber.com, square (which started as
           squareapp.com) and many others.

<comment><USER95> Best case I can think of is facebook, who started with "thefacebook.com", and later bought facebook.com. Also, didn't AirBNB start with airbedandbreakfast.com? (which now redirects to airbnb.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Yea, this article would have been applicable in 1998, but not so much today. Even domain names are becoming antiquated, with everything moving to apps and cloud. The most popular blogs I read are still hosted on blogspot and wordpress...Having a good domain won't save your business if the execution and other aspects are flawed.

</comment><comment><USER96> This can help if you're looking:

[http://www.dopename.com](http://www.dopename.com)

New names coming soon

</comment><comment><USER97> > How do you find them? One answer is the default way to solve problems you're > bad at: find someone else who can think of names.

Imagine a website where startups could describe what they do and users could propose and vote on ideas for names. It's been on my list of potentially decent project ideas.

<comment><USER52> Already done, see [http://www.pickydomains.com/](http://www.pickydomains.com/)

<comment><USER98> Oh, wow, that's a throwback to the past! I remember when Dmitry Davydov first announced it, kinda surprised that it's still around :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Buying a credible domain like stripe.com usually requires funding. Should bootstrappers be stripepay.com?

</comment><comment><USER100> The best way to think of names, in an environment where nearly every intelligible verbal particle is trademarked, copyrighted, or domain-squatted, is unquestionably Erlich-style:

[https://youtu.be/hsr-QfgFRh8](https://youtu.be/hsr-QfgFRh8)

</comment><comment><USER101> I wonder, however, if one wanted to convey a sense of underdog or grass roots if it's better to choose a non dot-com domain?

For example, sometimes the .com domain just seems too corporate sounding -- but your audience is not. Isn't it more strategic to get a newer extension?

</comment><comment><USER102> Pretty ironic that hours after posting this, Google announced it split up under a new umbrella company called Alphabet, _and it doesn 't own alphabet.com ._

Although I guess Google is above the rules that startups have to play by. _Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi._

</comment><comment><USER103> I think there should a distinction made between consumer startups and b2b.

If you are a database or developer tools company, .io actually makes more sense. .io is the standard, and it has become de facto.

However, if your startup is a food rating service, or Uber for X, you gotta have the .com.

</comment><comment><USER104> Is there a way to start a name consultancy?

I'm fairly good at coming up with names, and wouldn't mind offering my services, but I'm not sure how to secure my idea before selling it.

I would also be open to testing my skills for anyone looking for a company name.

<comment><USER105> You could do an Offer HN I'll help you come up with a name?

The other thing to do would be just to have a gentleman's agreement where they sign something (TBH I wouldn't worry with a legal contract initially, if you work with honest customers the gentleman's agreement is OK, and worst case if it was a big deal you could take to court and likely win)

So the agreement would be something like: I'll come up with a name for you, I won't make you pay upfront, but if I come up with one you like and you haven't already thought of it [make them list all the ones they are currently considering upfront], then you'll pay me $500. Reply to this email with your full name if you agree. And then just make sure you follow them on twitter and connect on linkedin or such so that they feel that you would notice if they screwed you over, but like I say I think most people are nice and worrying about getting screwed over is likely premature optimization :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> If Whois returns a private registration and the site doesn't provide contact information, try the Wayback Machine [http://archive.org/web/](http://archive.org/web/)

</comment><comment><USER107> Why should Coke own "coke.com" when they could own ".coke" one day?

</comment><comment><USER108> .com is dominant. Even domai.nr changed their name to domainr.com. Over 90% of users at [https://instantdomainsearch.com/](https://instantdomainsearch.com/) buy .com names.

</comment><comment><USER109> Much of the comments mention that you should buy the .com until your startup is well funded (stronger). And that exactly the whole point of this post is make it stronger since the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER56> I couldn't disagree more with this article and am kinda surprised Paul wrote about this.

Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as meaningful today as it was 5 years ago.

What I think will happen is ICANN will continue adding more, useless TLDs as quick cash grabs and the next 10 years you're going to see people stop referring to their domain name at all. I mean, why would you? You're Uber, you look for "Uber" in the app stores, you open your browser and type in "Uber". All of these take you exactly where you need to go.

> 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. > 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have > the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of > the rest, one way or another.

Correlation is not necessarily causation; this statistic should be compared with general domain name availability with the time periods mentioned because an incredible amount are purchased every year making it impossible to even compare in this way.

<comment><USER110> You completely ignored PG's argument about it signaling weakness. This is one of those perception versus reality things, where people's perceptions (those who are judging a startup) ARE the reality, whether those perceptions are theoretically refutable or not.

In other words, let's say you're right, and owning the .com domain name is becoming less meaningful (an argument that PG already addressed, by the way). That doesn't mean that .com domains are becoming significantly less meaningful to people's perceptions. And perceptions matter, when going after customers, funders, employees, business partners, etc.

I wouldn't say that the perception that having the .com domain name is important is an incorrect one. Maybe you would disagree and say it is an incorrect perception. But even if you think the perception is incorrect, the perception is still part of the reality that the startup lives in.

This classic "perception IS reality" pattern is something that a lot of people miss.

<comment><USER6> signaling weakness is an important factor for a fraction of companies for most others that is the very least of their worries.

PG talks from a perspective that does not apply to most companies in this world.

Again if you get a .com name that is great. But whether it's worth the effort of finding one it if you don't have it already is another discussion all together.

<comment><USER111> > But whether it's worth the effort of finding one it if you don't have it > already is another discussion all together.

Whether or not you agree with pg, finding a decent .com is pretty cheap in terms of time and money when you have free domain name checking services that give you available .com variants of desired keywords. Even though I know this, I'm still always surprised when I see the 2-3 syllable .com domain names that I wanted, being available without auction or private seller inquiries.

<comment><USER6> Thats just not true. It's not some universal law you can apply. You have to take into considering the amount of time and what kind of name you have access to.

<comment><USER111> > You have to take into considering the amount of time and what kind of name > you have access to.

I'm not sure I understand. Free name checking services do take into account what names are available to you and they give you variants of your desired keywords. Results are returned in seconds. It takes a few hours at most to go through a bunch of keywords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Well bad names which own their .com are far more worse. bvckup2.com? seriously? too bad for a great product. There are other examples out there it baffles me.

</comment><comment><USER113> "Nearly all your attachment to it comes from it being attached to you".Interesting.Very interesting as this is truth in the real sense.

</comment><comment><USER114> Are you all seriously arguing with Paul Graham about something in his realm of expertise that only someone with a vast experience in multiple startups can form an informed opinion of, or someone that has undertaken a serious research study thereof? If you are not one of those two, just smile, nod, and change your name. If pg suggests something, he thinks it's important, if he thinks it's important enough to write an article on, he's pretty sure he's right and it's important.

<comment><USER115> You might want to read up on this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)

<comment><USER114> But I one disagreeing with him is using logic or proof, they're throwing out a few counter examples to "prove" their intuition and disregarding someone with enough experience to have an actual informed intuition about the topic. Given the choice on an issue you are not that informed on will you trust your own intuition or one of the leading experts in the field?

If there had been logic, data, or some other proof besides a couple of counter examples, I may need to do more than appeal "argue from authority." They aren't, so I'm sticking with the authority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> I like how esoterically, the footnotes imply you may want to consider changing your nationality or religion, as well.

</comment><comment><USER117> Would have loved to see any form of actual experience to back up the odd claim he makes (which, coincidentally, stinks of low confidence, to me at least). Any surveys out there or even anecdotal evidence re: a consumer's perception of your company as "weak" sans-.com??

</comment><comment><USER118> > _100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. > 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have > the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of > the rest, one way or another._

I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that landscape has changed in past 8 years and top 20 YC companies are all at least a few years (5-ish?) old. I appreciate the rest of the sentiment of the post, but I don't think the numbers he chose to share clearly support the assertions. Correlation isn't causation.

<comment><USER119> yes, didn't dropbox used to be trydropbox.com? And, tho non-YC, delicious.com was del.icio.us (or something). Successful companies can buy their domain.

But I agree with pg; a startup by any other name would succeed as sweet, so why not choose one you can get.

<comment><USER120> del.icio.us is an awesome domain. I'd be inclined to believe someone came up with the domain before the name.

<comment><USER121> I couldn't always remember where the dots went. Not a great property for a domain name.

<comment><USER98> Which is why I had it on the bookmarks bar. A single bookmark to all of my bookmarks :-). I haven't used them in a long time, what are they up to these days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> These days an alternative is to just not have a (public) domain at all.

</comment><comment><USER123> This is why "Zigurd" is a very advantageous name.

</comment><comment><USER124> I remember hearing a couple stories about Octopop.

</comment><comment><USER4> And if you're Elon Musk you get x.com.

</comment><comment><USER125> Gross. What if I don't want to signal strength? What if I don't want every aspect of my business to be a dick wagging contest?

</comment><comment> bra-ket this is all kind of secondary

</comment><comment><USER126> steam.com is NOT for sale.

</comment><comment><USER127> If you don't have .com, it looks lame, with few exceptions. Also domains that are impossible to spell correctly if you just hear the name.

</comment><comment><USER128> majority of people just enter the name in their address bar and click the search result. domain name is not as important as it was.

</comment><comment><USER129> At the time of my comment, there are dozens of comments disagreeing with Paul and only 2 agreeing.

And this goes to show you - most people will not accept an advice from someone who knows better. If a conclusion must be reached, it must be reached under your own power, and at your own speed. This just can't be helped, it seems. Or can it?

<comment><USER22> That is one possible conclusion.

Another possible conclusion, however, is that the world has changed in the years since last time Paul was actually doing this, and people with current experience are pointing out that his advice in this case is actually out of date.

<comment><USER129> Paul is drawing his conclusion from seeing through hundreds of startups and still being involved in YC to this day. His opponents draw their conclusion mostly from seeing through zero startups, that is being in the middle of their first. Then a much smaller number of people have between 1 and 3. This vast discrepancy in experience is strike one.

Strike two is that pretty much everyone has an unhealthy attachments both to their own creations and to their own "identity". It gets even worse when the two are combined. Even Paul himself, one of few wise men of our times, gets very defensive when _his_ creations are under fire. It's just how people are. Yet in this case Paul is a more objective observer, he doesn't have a stake in the game of naming _your_ company.

The insidious part of strike two is that it's nearly impossible to recognize while you're in the grip of it. It's like being drunk - most people who are severely drunk think they are "ok to drive". They aren't.

Accepting advice takes one of the two: either blind deference to authority, or wisdom to recognize the limits of your own understanding and selective deference to those who could know better. Not perfect, mind you, just better. Alas, wisdom is hard to come by, and blind deference has significant downsides. And so it goes. Most useful advice goes unheeded.</comment></comment></comment>


Tony Brooker Has Died - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Small discussions of las week:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719760) (33 points, 7 days ago, 5 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714015) (7 points, 8 days, 1 comment)

In particular, he invented Autocode for the Mark 1 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocode), (perhaps) the first high level programming language.</comment>


Ask HN: when does your bullshit filter turn on? - <AUTHOR>

After working in an enterprise software development house for a while, I found that I have developed a so called "bullshit filter". Once somebody mentions "enterprise", "workflow", "service oriented architecture", or similar phrases, my brain switches to the mode where I ignore rest of what's said. Any similar experiences? What words turn you into that mode? <comment><USER2> \- when something is touted as an anything"-killer"; \- the standard issue 'web 2.0' look of a webapp that has a shallow reason to exist; \- Blog posts that have a list of N (1 <= N <= 10) things of interesting factoids that makes it easy for people to vote up on social news sites

</comment><comment><USER3> It's the glassy eyed, far off, hungry look. When you're trying to geek out with someone about web stuff, and it seems like they're just looking through you and throwing out buzz words... it's time to exit stage left.

</comment><comment><USER4> web 2.0, web 3.0

</comment><comment><USER5> "the next facebook"

</comment><comment><USER6> paradigm shift

best of breed

core competency

ready, fire, aim

<x> is the new <y>

any noun used as a verb, such as: to leverage or to architect

</comment><comment><USER7> I just read an article with the word "freemium" and my bullshit filter blew a fuse.</comment>


Stuff that every programmer should know: Data Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2014/06/stuff-that-every-programmer-should-know.html? <comment><USER2> Fun reading. As an aside, I've grown wary of data visualization tools tied too closely to a particular language. Each one is a little different, and while cranking out simple plots never takes much effort, making them look just so for presentation always involvers learning yet another low-level syntax. I've come back full circle to Gnuplot ([http://www.gnuplot.info/](http://www.gnuplot.info/)), which I originally learned nearly twenty years ago while working on my Ph.D. It forces you to learn a shitty DSL, but you can get at Gnuplot from any environment that supports writing to text files and calling a sub-process. Plots are tweakable to your heart's content, and it does a fair job with 3-D graphics. I've reused a surprising amount of code originally written to plot error-control code statistics from Octave into a Ruby project that analyzes wireless network performance. Pretty cool!

But if you need interactive 3-D plots (e.g., a wire frame that you can rotate), look elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> gnuplot is fine but one of the best features of visualization is interactivity imho, without interactivity you lose a lot of the power that comes from visualization...

That's why unfortunately I still recommend something like processing, then you can write your own small IPC to send data to your visualization code from any host

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice overview. I am just in the final stages of a Masters thesis in data visualization, and this article gives a really good bird's eye view of the field. The visualization field is really too broad that most programmers could be expected to know more than some key points, but given that vision is the highest-bandwidth sense, visual techniques are often given less credit than they deserve. As long as there needs to be a human in the loop, you need good visualizations if your data is more than trivial. D3 is probably good for its domain, but intuition tells me you'll have a problem if you mainly use Javascript to handle a 20GB dataset. (I'm not dismissing this categorically; I am not very familiar with these tools).

Unfortunately, to my knowledge there aren't any comprehensive textbooks that cover visualization from the ground up. We didn't use a single textbook in my 2-year degree; all lectures were heavily based on research papers. Central topics if you want to read up on this is perception (which color scales should you use? how many parameters can you plausibly put in one plot?), different visualization techniques for different data (scatterplots, histograms, treemaps, horizon graphs, volume rendering, graph drawing with edge bundling, +++), interactivity and applications of basic techniques (Visual Analytics, Interactive Visual Analysis).

A multitude of scientific fields use different visualization tools, so it can be tricky to find the relevant material for whatever it is you're working with. But in general, I think the data mining/big data/analytics fields could do very well with a bigger focus on visual techniques. If you get the right visualizations for your data, the truth often just jumps out of the screen. GPUs can let you work with multi-gigabyte datasets at interactive framerates, although I haven't seen a lot of practical applications of this yet. Can also be used for non-spatial data, if you're clever with CUDA or just use the shader data structures creatively. Would be interesting to hear if anyone in the industry uses this yet.

<comment><USER5> > D3 is probably good for its domain, but intuition tells me you'll have a > problem if you mainly use Javascript to handle a 20GB dataset. (I'm not > dismissing this categorically; I am not very familiar with these tools).

I use d3 on the client with a 80GB (currently) dataset, by putting the dataset in elasticsearch. It's a pretty fantastic combination. You can do multi-value aggregation from unstructured data, or geo-spacial searches, or lightning- quick full text search.

The server has 8GB of ram and 2 cores, and with about 1.2 million new documents every hour, barely breaks a sweat.

<comment><USER6> What type of queries do you run on elasticsearch to pull into D3? I'm doing a very similar project (elasticsearch + web data vis) so I'm legitimately curious.

<comment><USER5> Basically I'm importing logs and system events. I run queries like show me the top 10 events over the last 24 hours from this source that were marked critical. Or for each farm shipping web logs, aggregate on the hosts, and then aggregate on the status code, and then give me the number of documents in each summed for each hour of the day.

At the moment I roll up daily stats and store them in a separate database for longitudinal analysis, but eventually I'd like to ship data that is more than a couple of weeks old to hadoop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish this article focused on how to apply these techniques to actual problems a typical developer would have as opposed to, "Here are some ways of visualizing data".

It felt like my typical high school class. They'd teach us how to calculate the circumference of a circle, but they never told us what we'd use it for. "Programming" is not specific enough.

<comment><USER8> You know that friction between programmers and management in getting managers to understand what you're wanting to do? That's a visualisation problem. The ability to sell your ideas usually boils down to how you present your case to management.

One of the things I've picked up more recently is to take a presentation or whatnot and mentally block all but the top 10-20%. If I can't get the bird's eye summary of what each slide needs to say there, then my manager won't understand the story. They're {busy|lazy} and don't care to read the entire slide - that's all chaff for the underlings to digest so they know the finer details.

So for a programmer, one of the biggest uses of good visualisation skills is the selling of ideas. A good plot goes a long way in convincing someone of something.

<comment><USER9> I've succumbed to this way of thinking too (permit the manager to underperform) but I feel it's a lowering of standards and the manager is not doing her job. I wish there was push back against this, like there is push back against developers not writing unit tests or fixing bugs, rather than acceptance with a sigh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Data visualization looks intuitive and nice in D3 examples thus be something 'every programmer should know'. It's so simple, just pick it up.

Any production environment data visualization is going to run into a plethora of sticky problems. How do ensure your queries aren't going to overload and crash your visualization client. How do you handle time series and gaps in data? How do you evict data from a vis?

<comment><USER10> Can you recommend a book or project idea for building intuition on messy data? When it comes up in my hobby projects I compromise on the fly, and a professional approach would be much better.

<comment><USER11> I have heard good things about the "Bad Data Handbook", though I can't vouch for it personally. Recommended by a co-worker I will get to read it eventually

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024422.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024422.do)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, it's even focused on web data. Just got it for Kindle.

Some nice irony too: There's a typo in Jonathan Schwabish's bio with visualizaing.org instead of visualizing.org

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OMG - the first actual photo is a guy standing in front of laser lines and curves and had a tag line "soon to be replaced by the Oculus Rift"

And yes ... I can easily imagine flogging exploratory gloves and goggles to impress the Board and let them surf through data looking for insights

<comment><USER3> Well that wasn't really to present to a board, but really a quite straightforward application of the rift. VR is used today for scientific visualization ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment)) but it's veeery expensive. The rift and companies that will make rift-based products for scientific, medical etc... visualization are going to make money

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also worth mentioning: [http://dadaviz.com](http://dadaviz.com)

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's cool, but this like most sites doesn't have many examples of scientific vis (large dimensional continuous functions). I think scientific visualization is more important for programmers in their job, for debugging/profiling.</comment></comment>


IDC: PC Shipments Post the Steepest Decline Ever in a Single Quarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24065413

<comment><USER2> I am not really sure what's driving this slowdown - Obviously desktops are being replaced at a much slower rate - they are good for four to five years (easily) for almost everyone nowadays. I wonder if laptops are also seeing longer than their traditional 24-30 month lifespans.

Are tablets/smartphone really impacting desktop sales? I don't see too many people out there who've replaced their laptop/desktop with a tablet, but maybe they are holding off buying a new laptop as quickly, and spending that money on a tablet? Maybe some people are getting by with a smartphone in place of a laptop every two-three years?</comment>