Bitcoin could cost us our clean-energy future - <AUTHOR> https://grist.org/article/bitcoin-could-cost-us-our-clean-energy-future/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people defending bitcoin here are _aren't_ bitcoin holders. I suspect very few, as I suspect that if you're holding an asset that's appreciated 1000% in the last year you're going to have a hard time being very objective about any criticism that seems to undermine that asset.

The amount of power bitcoin is sucking up is truly astounding. There will eventually come a point where states are motivated to act against the network, and I'd consider it wishful thinking on the part of bitcoin investors/true believers that states have no real recourse. All that power comes from very large physical sources, which can be controlled with violence. Short of that, China could nationalize the miners and run a 51% attack, driving the price to zero. TLA's have sufficient resources to deanonymize transactions and enforce civil or criminal penalties.

People keep viewing bitcoin as this abstract cryptographic thing, but it exists in the physical world, and in this world sovereign states hold ultimate power. When major powers decide that bitcoin is not in their interest, they will end the experiment. The truest believers will be left holding the bag.

<comment><USER3> «is truly astounding»

Would you say that the worldwide electricity consumption of Christmas _decorative_ lights (2.3 GW assuming it's 3× the US) is "astounding"? Well, Bitcoin miners consume less than that: I estimate 1.7 GW based on my previous research bounding it to 0.6-1.2 GW as of July.

[http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity- consumption](http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption)

Why do miners receive such a disproportionate amount of criticism considering that so many other energy uses are vastly more wasteful by multiple orders of magnitudes... Cars alone waste 95% of their fuel energy. The US wastes 61-86% of its energy: [https://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/26/us-wastes-61-86-of- its-...](https://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/26/us-wastes-61-86-of-its-energy/) But, no, the average HN reader seems more concerned by these miners using 0.01% of the world's energy.

In the future, we _may_ eventually reach a point where the energy use starts becoming worrying, but we are currently very far from that point.

<comment><USER4> Cryptocurrencies consume a miniscule fraction of the energy that the legacy financial system wastes on office buildings, data centers, air travel and commuting employees.

Why doesn't anyone complain that JPMorgan will "cost us our clean-energy future"?

The great thing about a financial system defined by open-source software is that true innovation happens every day. Already we see testing with proof-of- stake, lightning network, etc. that are vastly more energy efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bitcoin's energy usage is getting a lot of press of late. Deservedly, I think - it is a bit ludicrous. None of the articles I've seen really manage to get at the economics of mining, or what's likely to happen in the future, though. A Big Think article projected that by 2020, at the current growth rate, Bitcoin will use as much power as is generated globally today. Obviously that's not going to happen, something will give and that something is likely to be Bitcoin's price.

But even though the articles I've seen are pretty fluffy, they probably stem from an underlying issue that makes Bitcoin different from traditional, energy-heavy industry: The value produced is not directly connected to the energy expended in production. Bitcoin would work just as well with a small fraction of the hashpower it has today. Security is an issue, but surely it must be over-secured many times over at the moment.

Unfortunately no mechanism seems to exist to balance security vs cost, except for the crash-boom market cycle Bitcoin constantly goes through. How much hashpower is needed? The question is moot as there is no way to moderate it, and I'm starting to think that may be Bitcoin's biggest design flaw. (Market forces will certainly bring the energy cost of mining down one way or the other, but it's not clear how much damage will be done to Bitcoin in the process.)

<comment><USER6> > Unfortunately no mechanism seems to exist to balance security vs cost

Bitcoin _does_ include a perfectly good mechanism to balance security vs cost: the transaction fee market. Users decide how much they want to pay in transaction fees.

The reason for the high electricity use today is the _temporary_ block reward for mining each block. The block reward halves every three years. Once it goes away, the only thing funding Bitcoin's electricity consumption will be the transaction fees users pay. Obviously if Bitcoin does not provide enough value to users, they will not pay high fees. Electricity consumption will naturally go down to a level that matches the value people get out of the network.

Remember this next time you see an article complaining about Bitcoin's electricity use. I haven't seen a single article about this written by somebody who understands the difference between the block reward and the transaction fee market.

<comment><USER5> Users are not paying for security, they are paying for having their transaction processed. In fact, I don't see that users have any way to measure the security of the network granularly: if secure, everything works. If not, systemwide chaos ensues.

<comment><USER6> The security of the network can be measured by any user. Multiply the mining difficulty by the efficiency of mining hardware and the price of electricity and divide by 2; this is the cost of running a 51% attack.

The beauty of the mining mechanism is that having transactions processed provides security at the same time. As long as users see value in having transactions processed they will be willing to fund miners with transaction fees.

However, you're right that users aren't paying for security directly. The fee market may not actually give miners enough revenue to ensure network security. When the block reward goes away electricity consumption will certainly drop (relative to transaction volume), but it may even drop _too far_ to the point where the network is no longer secure from 51% attacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am sure this topic will be full of whataboutism - what about x, y, z industry's emissions?

Here's the thing - Bitcoin hung the energy albatross around it's neck long back - First by choosing SHA based PoW, then the one of the early transactions in US being calculated using the energy required to mine those and then most of the sold equipment focusing on hashes per watts consumed.

No other industry other than automotive has tied itself to energy so strongly. So, it is quite disingenuous to not answer this criticism without devolving into whataboutism.

There has been a solution in form of Proof of Stake but that has it's own issue.

I am sure there will be more energy efficient PoW in the future, so let's wait and see if Bitcoin is going to cost the future or not.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I'm over-interpreting "work", in the physics sense, but won't any proof- of-work scheme have the same problem? To get more coins, miners need to do more work, and that takes more energy.

I can't see that it matters what the hashing scheme is, the work will always expand to use the available energy.

<comment><USER9> > Maybe I'm over-interpreting "work", in the physics sense, but won't any > proof-of-work scheme have the same problem? To get more coins, miners need > to do more work, and that takes more energy.

Only if we assume mining, in it's current BTC implementation, is the only acceptable PoW.

I think there are other PoW alternatives that could be used. And they'll be identified and implemented soon, in the next couple years, as people realize we can swap out SHA hashing for an algorithm that does something productive, and use the output of that algorithm to be the proof of work.

The amount of computing power in ASIC miners running today is quite large, and has grown quickly. If we think of those computing resources running something else, and verifying work across nodes, then this is quite possible.

<comment><USER8> I'm very skeptical that some task can be found that's really useful in itself _and_ is predictable and cheat-proof enough to be usable for something like Bitcoin.

I mean, are you thinking of something like SETI or Folding@home? Those are arguably useful, but there's a ton of scope for playing around with the problem scope and developing new variants that might require far fewer resources but remain useful -- and that's a good thing! But it surely makes them less usable as PoW systems.

<comment><USER9> Yes, exactly. I don't think requiring fewer computing resources is a bad thing, having multiple nodes in the blockchain come to the same conclusion could provide a level of trust similar to the existing mining algorithm. That's wasteful as well, but not as wasteful.

<comment><USER8> But how do you address the fundamental problem of an arms race between miners? They could end up burning 90% of the world's energy production madly calculating protein folds. Is that a good return on investment?

<comment><USER9> In my opinion, it's a better return than calculating SHA hashes with no aim other than to do work.

We could prioritize computing problems by increasing the reward for working "more important" problems (find asteroids that are going to hit us?).

<comment><USER8> It's better but not much better. How do you avoid an arms race? Who gets to decide what problems are important?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> B.S. -- if we replace all electric grids with solar, it doesn't matter how many miners spin up, they'll all be on solar thus renewable.

If anything -- it'd even make more sense for BTC companies to use solar since costs are a LOT cheaper.

<comment><USER5> More power usage = greater overall cost of energy production. That's true regardless of method of production. We are not now, and never will be (barring radical changes in our economic system) living in a world with abundant energy. Bitcoin miners compete for energy with other industries, driving total energy usage up. Ultimately, there's a cap to how much energy we can produce on Earth, and you'd be surprised how close we are to that limit, assuming production growth similar to the historical average.

Edit: To expand on the last claim a little, I was thinking of this: [https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale- energy/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/)

The graph of Earth's surface temperature assuming 2.3% yearly growth in energy consumption is... illuminating. Basically, in a bit over 400 years, the surface temperature on Earth would reach the boiling point of water, not due to the complex effects of climate change, but simply because the amount of waste heat generated by energy production and usage will exceed the Earth's capacity to dissipate into space. Obviously disastrous temperatures would occur rather sooner. Unfortunately our societies hinge on constant economic growth, which, in turn, seems to hinge on growing energy usage.

<comment><USER10> Couldn't we beam energy from outerspace/moon as lasers to cooled facilities that absorb/store the energy? How else would a dyson sphere work to get energy to the planet without obliterating it?

<comment><USER5> Presumably when you have a Dyson sphere, you're not planetbound any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People seem to have some misconceptions. If we assume the cost of the mining hardware becomes negligible over time, then the cost of mining bitcoin is the cost of the energy. The amount earned by miners is: mining reward + transaction costs. The mining reward will decrease over time, so in the end it should be the transaction costs.

Now, we then get that as t --> big transaction costs = cost of energy because spending more energy than you make on Bitcoin loses money. People should be incentivized to reduce their transaction costs by going off-chain, using a POS chain, or other means.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd say its the opposite. Bitcoin has the practical capacity for its generation to happen in a place where you can put all solar panels. Maybe the future of miners is a cave in the saudi desert.

</comment><comment><USER13> 13 TWH globally? The US alone produces 4000 TWH of electricity [0].

This isn't a problem. It shouldn't be an article.

edit: global energy consumption is 110,000 TWH [1]

0\. [https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_01_01.html](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_01_01.html)

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)

<comment><USER2> That's 1% of global energy usage, and you say it isn't worth writing about?

*edit yep math's wrong. It's still a shitload of power and worth writing about.

<comment><USER13> Check your math. 13 / 110,000 = 0.00012. Or 0.012%. That's 1/80th of 1%.

If it gets to 1% -- 1100 TWH -- then sure, it'll definitely be worth discussing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Proof of stake will solve this for Ethereum by not burning processing power to secure the network. We'll likely end up with several of these methods and even if proof of work is still part of this it's likely much more specialized and just a small part of the system we'll end up with. So for the future this really is no problem at all.

<comment> etr-strike There's no evidence Proof of Stake is a viable replacement for Proof of Work.

<comment><USER15> I honestly had deja-vu when I saw this comment but then realized I guess it's just a shill-bot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's easy to conclude the inefficiencies brought on by the abuses of the financial sector have done leagues more damage to our "clean energy future." Poverty cuts environmental concern clearly out of the picture.

-typed in the mid-winter warmth of x3 GTX 980 Tis running NiceHash

</comment><comment><USER17> Talking about clean-energy yet failing to compare CO2 emissions but merely refer to GWhrs is totally missing the point.

Several big Bitcoin miners are setup near or just being powered by hydroelectric dams or other renewable energy sources. And all of them of course target low costs, which a lot of times means that there's an oversupply of power in essence helping in some cases use energy that would go to waste otherwise.

You have to compare the gold or bank industry's to Bitcoin's mining emissions. Gold is constrained by the gold mines positions, uses oil a lot, unless someone does a proper study, all this articles are just sensationalistic articles by clueless journos hunting pageviews and likes.

Sidenote, funny how this is filled under "Currency Manipulation"

<comment><USER18> Which do you think uses more computing hardware, every Bitcoin miner in the world, or the VISA payment network? Even today, the answer is quite clearly the total Bitcoin mining network--now consider expanding the scale of Bitcoin transactions to the VISA network, a 1000× scale increase.

Almost by definition, cryptocurrency requires spending useless energy. In electronic transactions as they exist today, you essentially only have to update the tables in two institution's databases (plus all the replication and backups that entails). A cryptocurrency requires everybody to record their transaction--and do a bunch of useless cryptography to to ensure that they do so.

Asking how much emissions it costs to mine the gold or grow the cotton to satisfy my paycheck is misleading. Exactly 0 joules were spent: no gold needed to be mined, nor coins minted, nor dollar bills printed to satisfy the electronic transactions to decrement a number at my employer's bank and increment the number at my personal bank appropriately.

<comment><USER19> It uses more energy, but means you don't have to trust anyone to transact. It remains to be seen just how much that property is worth. (Quite alot, I suspect).

<comment><USER18> You don't have to trust anyone to carry out the financial part of the transaction. You still have to trust that the business side of the transaction goes through.

<comment><USER19> True, and a useful clarification

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would love to see a comparison of what current financial institutions greenhouse emissions look like.

Think of all the banks, branches, employees, servers, dirty investments, the works. I'm pretty sure BTC would pale in comparison.

On a side note, I've heard similar wild claims be made about the electricity used per Google search.

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't you then have to compare the entire Bitcoin ecosystem, not just mining?

<comment><USER22> Because bitcoin has a striking lack of middle men, unlike banking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sometimes I wonder if Bitcoin was a plot to destroy the world through exponentially increasing energy consumption that leads to accelerated global warming that ends the human race. Whoever created such a thing would have reason to hide.

<comment><USER24> Sometimes I wonder if Bitcoin was a plot to transfer wealth from cynics to optimists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Same with the Military Industrial Complex, Big Agriculture, & mass prescriptions of Pharmaceuticals. Funny there aren't any complaints there from this outlet. I suppose it's not in their priorities to notice...

<comment><USER26> Those outfits often actually produce something of value.

<comment><USER25> Each of the topics provide different value to different parties. The crux of the matter is noticing this type of distinction.

For example, Bitcoin seems to provide independence from the Banking Establishment, which alters what sorts of activities are funded.

Industries such as the Military Industrial Complex, Big Agriculture, & Big Pharma has largely been co-opted by established interests. Public Relations is utilized to convince people to adopt philosophies that are friendly to these industries while not looking out for their own interests.

On the surface, there seems to be a dialectic between decentralized (Bitcoin) & centralized (the Establishment) forms of control.

It's easy to see the possibility for media outlets or NGO's are nothing more than fronts using the "greater good" as an argument to advocate for the interests of their benefactors. Edward Bernays describes this technique in some of his books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just like burning coal fueled industrial revolution proof of work fuels bitcoin revolution. This is a stepping stone. Alternatives to proof of work are coming but slowly and that's fine. But we'll get there.

Bitcoin is not "Money 2.0" but is a necessary stepping stone.</comment>


The data of the dark web - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/07/daily-chart-8 <comment><USER2> > The data of the dark web

I hate when they do this.

Thats "The data of some, not even existing anymore, "dark web" drug markets".</comment>


Why early-stage VCs are greedy bastards - <AUTHOR> http://www.crashdev.com/2012/08/by-numbers-why-early-stage-vcs-are.html?utm_campaign=5037cd570688ff000200039b&utm_content=5037e4c93b0cb800020004cf&utm_medium=linksy&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> Link to the spreadsheet to run the numbers yourself: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvugcL9yC5-DdHR...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvugcL9yC5-DdHRPeG1xMGhrajVwYWFRazR3b253Vmc#gid=0)</comment>


Ask HN: Should I stay on my personal GitHub account or move it to an org? - <AUTHOR> I have a relatively popular site where the code is stored on github and it has > 100 stars.  I'm the primary contributor.  While I'm not looking for jobs at the moment... down the line I feel like keeping the project on my personal github account is more beneficial (to me) than moving it to an organization... but I don't know if that's important or not.<p>I'd like to get people more involved in contributing code, but I don't want to limit my future job prospects... does it matter?  Am I overthinking it? <comment><USER2> It is better to stick to your personal account instead of creating bogus organizations. You can start an org once you gathered dedicated contributors to the project.

~ Khayri R.R. Woulfe</comment>


Bangor Savings Bank moving to a new campus - <AUTHOR> http://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/26/business/bangor-savings-bank-moving-to-new-headquarters-on-bangor-waterfront/ <comment><USER2> Why is a local bank of general interest to HN readers? Am I missing something?</comment>


Ask HN: Subscription-billing management service for startups? - <AUTHOR>

We're weighing options for how to handle customer billing and management for a subscription service. The options range from rolling our own with Stripe and Devise, to using an enterprise-level service such as Zuora.
Not having much hands-on experience in this field,  it'd be interesting to know what's worked for other startups. Basically, the idea is to have accounts management separated from the main app/service in question, so that the accounts system can be hooked into future subscription services we might build.
In terms of features, this is what I'm thinking:
* Handles billing information
* Handles payment processing
* Handles user authentication
* Provides the framework for customer online interaction (i.e. account activation, cancellation, email blasts for system-related announcements) <comment><USER2> [http://www.spreedly.com](http://www.spreedly.com) provides credit card vaulting as a service. You can build your own billing system on top of it with minimal PCIDSS compliance burden. They support 53 different gateways for using that information once you've stored it, all with a single unified API.

You're also not locking yourself into a payment processor, which you are if you choose to build on top of Stripe or anyone else. By not using any processor's storage solution, you're free to bill your customers with one processor one day, and another the next. You might like Stripe now, and they might lock your account for suspected fraud tomorrow, or some new shiny payment startup called Polkadot might be who you want to use in 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I rolled up my own using [https://www.braintreepayments.com/](https://www.braintreepayments.com/)

but you should also check out

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

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://recurly.com/](https://recurly.com/) handles some of that I believe, but I would always roll my own system using something like Stripe

</comment><comment><USER5> Try all-inclusive SaaSy.com</comment>


Performing Google Search Using Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/performing-google-search-using-python-code/ <comment><USER2> I still can't understand how this made to frontpage and received this much upvotes. How it was difficult to perform a Google search and what golden key did this tutorial share?

<comment><USER3> Previously, one of the problems I've seen is Google obfuscates the source on the results page. You can't just grep for what you want since it's not there. They did this in a push to get you to use their search api, but for some odd reason, their search API returns different results than a browser. I find this very useful in that regard.

<comment><USER4> I tried this a couple of months ago. I could easily extract the url of the result using regex. However, this url was a redirect url with the domain google.com. At this point, I made one more request to this redirect url, followed the redirect chain and easily obtained the actual url of the result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And google marks your ip as a bot. I did this three years ago in one of my DO proxies. Google still asks me to confirm a captcha when I do a search.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. If you're looking for programmatic web search, I'd suggest you go the Bing API route.

<comment><USER7> I commented earlier on this post about it being impossible for a bot to do search on Google. Turns out I turned to the same resource you're recommending. I'd also recommend sending a python bot to your favorite news sites once a day for updates instead. Same deal, Beautiful Soup. On the other hand, Google has Custom Search, which is $100 a year for 20k queries. I use that as well.

<comment><USER8> Google CSE seems like the most fitting solution, which appears to do pretty much the same thing as the article, but without all the hackery nonsense:

Step 1 - Setup a CSE to search entire web: [https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/2631040?hl=en](https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/2631040?hl=en)

Step 2 - Use the CSE API: [https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json- api/v1/over...](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json- api/v1/overview)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky

        Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "0a51cb60301828feeaf66cbc908297ae.py", line 9, in <module>
            for j in search(query, tld="co.in", num=10, stop=1, pause=2):
        NameError: name 'search' is not defined

Edit: Maybe imports don't work.

<comment><USER9> You missed the

      Output:
        No module named 'google' found

below.

If they cut out this nonsense:

      try:
        from google import search
      except ImportError:
        print("No module named 'google' found")

and just used

      from google import search

One would have gotten a sane error message:

      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "00359ada2bfcd6dbabd1fa0207e683b8.py", line 1, in <module>
          from google import search
      ImportError: No module named google

catching ImportError when you have no fallback is a pointless thing to do.

<comment><USER10> First thing that jumped at me when I was reading the code.

Why would you wrap an import in a try catch unless you want to import something else when the first one fails.

And if you don't, you should exit ones the import fails rather than let it continue and hit inevitable failure.

<comment><USER11> Maybe it was written by programmers trained on compiled languages with no interpreter to automatically catch all exceptions and print a traceback for you, so now they're cargo culting onto "Every exception must get caught to avoid undefined behavior."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is also this[1]. Used it around a year ago. Not sure if it still works though.

[1][https://github.com/rnikhil275/pygoogle](https://github.com/rnikhil275/pygoogle)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is good work. I thought there was no way to do this since Google Search blocks bots.

<comment><USER13> They let some obvious bots through if you go slow enough. A lot of SEO and AdWords tracking companies still do unofficially tolerated automated google search.

I assume allowing some low amount of obvious botting prevents people from developing really sneaky bots that are much harder to block. It's probably to prevent an arms race that google may not be able to win.

<comment><USER14> What an incredibly good point.

That gives me hope, as someone who wants to do low-frequency data analysis that's only possible via multiple queries.

<comment><USER7> I redundantly made the following comment upon referring to this comment later in this thread:

Try Google Custom Search as well, $100 a year for 20k queries; I'm a client.

<comment><USER13> Good evening, I regret to inform you that Google custom search is dead.

[http://fortune.com/2017/02/21/google-site-search- discontinue...](http://fortune.com/2017/02/21/google-site-search- discontinued/)

The good news it's that it's reborn as an ad support version. Google doesn't want your dirty cash when your competitors are willing to pay much more for ad placement on your site.

<comment><USER15> Google Site Search is dead, but Google Custom Search is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If this was a post on the best practices to bot google I would understand it being frontpage material. Does anyone have any insight into this kind of botting?</comment>


Ask HN: How did you generate income during college? - <AUTHOR>

What entrepreneurial pursuits did you maneuver during college? <comment><USER2> None to speak of personally (I quit my campus job writing C++ for the college's scheduling system at $10/hr to go wait tables at a fine dining restaurant for $50/hr), but if you're looking for a classic story there's always Josh and Ricky and Zach, the guys behind College Humor and Busted Tees (profiled at [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/fashion/sundaystyles/24COL...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/fashion/sundaystyles/24COLLEGE.html) and <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/24/050124fa_fact2>)

</comment><comment><USER3> Bought and resold used textbooks, undercutting the campus bookstore. Bought electronics parts and test gear at hamfests, dead freight sales, and from profs; resold what I didn't need to local surplus dealers (really have to know what stuff will sell). Had a total blast as an experimental subject (economics and biology). Teaching/lab assistant during the school term, research assistant during summer. Repaired, upgraded, modified, and installed home and car audio systems for classmates and profs.

A classmate cut hair (which was almost certainly illegal, in retrospect...). Easy gig, and he had all the business he wanted right there in the dorms.

Heard rumors that someone would buy a car at each break, drive it out to school, and flip for a profit. His angle was that the cars were salvage titled imports that had been rebuilt, and his home state allowed title washing, or something like that. I think the DOT closed the loophole that he was exploiting.

</comment><comment><USER4> I worked a tech support job on campus, which eventually paid enough that I nearly dropped out of school. Many of my coworkers did.

I did put out three pieces of shareware, but never saw a dime from them.

The biggest move I saw were my Pakistani roommates. They and all their friends brought back one duty-free "prayer" rug every time they went home. They could make about $2,000 on each rug.

I did know one student who used a cash-back credit card to pay other student's tuitions. He'd split the cash-back with you, but his real benefit was bumping up his credit rating.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was employed as a monitor helping people with the computers in the lab and keeping the line printer running smoothly. On the side, I sold 5 inch floppy disks for $4 each which was a dollar less than the college store. On summer break, I made money coding Apple II software on contract.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was too clueless about such things during college to do my own business. Most of my income during college came from working at a grocery store, and as a computer tape librarian.</comment>


Service is not a dirty word - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/1259cf7f097e

<comment><USER2> "I thought I had escaped the service industry for the 'freedom' of freelance work. But — I never left the service industry."

So true. I don't care what business you're in. You're still in the service business. And the people who do the best (for the most part) are those who actually care about their customers. Period.</comment>


Noita – roguelite where every pixel is simulated - <AUTHOR> https://noitagame.com/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the game Clonk, a german Indie game before there even was the term "Indie game". It also had a pixel based engine, explosions, liquid etc. You could dig tunnels, mine for ressources and have you (or your enemies) tunnels flodded by rain or oil (which in turn could be ignited).

Sadly the developers never had a real breaktrhrough and stopped working on new versions some time before the whole indie game craze (Minecraft, Terraria, Steam Greenlight, etc.) started.

If you want to have a look: [http://clonk.de/?lng=en](http://clonk.de/?lng=en)

<comment><USER3> Some further development happened on it in the project called OpenClonk.

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

<comment><USER4> There is also LegacyClonk project which improves the original Clonk Rage. I myself don't enjoy OpenClonk at all even though I've spent probably over thousand hours with clonk starting from Clonk Planet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've definitely got my money's worth from this one, there are a lot of interesting emergent qualities in the game and the map has a lot of secrets scattered around it for you to discover. This game took up my evening for a few weeks when I first got it, so well worth the money in my book. I still come back to it from time to time as it's under pretty active development.

I really enjoyed testing the limits of the engine and using the wand system to craft interesting physics things.

<comment><USER6> The secrets were my favorite part, it made it me feel like a kid again. There are parts of the game that you'll never see if you don't explore off the easy path. I kind of wish they told you ahead of time that those areas exist, though, even if they don't tell you how to get to them. I'm so accustomed to modern games having one path from start to finish, that I didn't bother exploring until I happened to read a comment talking about the secret areas. I probably doubled my amount of play time after I started exploring, and trying to access all the optional areas. Unfortunately, some areas seem to only be reachable if you are lucky enough to get certain wands, or the procedurally generated terrain is in a favorable layout.

<comment><USER7> What would be an example of such an area?

<comment><USER8> One I remember: Going off to the far right of the map of the first level, you'll hit a lava lake, followed by a deep pit. If you jump down the pit, it's a shortcut to the second level. There's also a bunch of rewards for exploring to overworld (you start at a cave entrance and are generally expected to go underground immediately)

<comment><USER9> No, it is a shortcut to the third level, and generally I'd not recommend it as you need better wands to survive. It is more a way back _up_ if you get good enough gear to get to the overworld.

Also I'd recommend going _over_ the pit instead of down it.

<comment><USER10> I think these days shortcuts are often for experienced players who are happy with the difficulty ramp being a cliff.

e.g. in Bloodborne you can rush the Cleric Beast, spend the echoes to open the gate and go straight to Amelia. Something that using the standard progression route you'll do much, much, later. If you're good enough, this is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When the trailers to this came out, I was impressed, but remembered that I'd played a small game, maybe even a prototype, of similar tech about a decade beforehand called Bloody Zombies[1] by Petri Purho. Turns out, Nolla Games has Petri on the team, and they must've been as impressed by Bloody Zombies as I was at the time.

[1][https://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/bloody](https://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/bloody)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, he talks about the progression from Bloody Zombies to Noita in the GDC talk linked in the sibling comment.

It's a true indie studio btw with just three guys who all had some independent success with their previous solo efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested the dev had a cool GDC talk going over the design : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXuyMCgbTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXuyMCgbTc)

<comment><USER14> Appreciate it! As a backend engineer _(not game dev)_ but lacking in math and proper computer science backgrounds, what areas might i want to focus on learning to implement a simulation game similar to this?

<comment><USER15> The quickest path is to just start writing real time simulations of stuff and reference how other similar simulations went about implementation; terrains and erosion, cloth, fluid, etc.

It's easier if you have a bunch of random linear algebra and calculus knowledge lying around in your head, but trying to study that stuff isn't the most direct route.

<comment><USER16> I don't have a good reference to share, but also read up on game tick loops and clock time. Processor speeds vary and thread scheduling is nondeterministic, so a stimulation code must be written carefully to produce a deterministic result.

<comment><USER17> I don't think that you even need to produce deterministic result in game

<comment><USER18> Same-machine determinism is probably not too bad, and would greatly aid debugging; cross-machine determinism is mainly really useful for lockstep multiplayer I think.

But yeah it wouldn't really matter in-game unless you're trying roll time backwards/forwards as a game mechanic.

Also of note, all games can be considered simulations, with varying complexity and rules (and players given a way to interact with the system) -- from that perspective, the only requirements to implementing a game simulation is whatever is required to implement any game.

<comment><USER19> This is correct. If you want to create a multiplayer game, you can go about it by running the simulation on everyone's computer, and sending only the inputs to the simulation across machines (Lockstep networking). This requires the simulations to be deterministic which can be tricky to get right due to differences across architectures / compilers.

This is the approach used in a lot of RTS games. Starcraft 1 and 2 both work this way. I believe the original doom used this method as well.

You can get away with not having deterministic simulations via having the server run the simulation, and sending the data required for clients to render the state of the world that they can see. This requires a lot more bandwidth and complicates the network code quite a bit (or at least demands a certain architecture for the code). You still need to run some of the simulation on the client just for having acceptable visuals due to how long it takes for data to travel from server to client (level collision might also be simulated on client for example), but this client side simulation is just for visuals. Still though it's perhaps easier to get a reliable solution working like this due to how hard it is to get deterministic simulations.

The big downside to lockstep, beside it being hard to get deterministic simulations running across machines, is that it opens you up to certain types of hacks. Because the simulation is running on everyone's machine, this allows malicious players to hack the code to do things like let them see through walls or reveal the entire map.

Some games like (some) fighting games use an approach where they just let the simulation run on the client, predicting what they think the inputs will be, and if they get data from the server which doesn't agree with the predicted inputs, the game will revert to the last known good state, and just re-run the simulation with the correct inputs. This sounds insane but if for example a player is holding down W to move forward, it's more likely that W will continue to be held down rather than being released on any given frame.

<comment><USER20> Regarding the fighting game approach, that would be an interesting application of machine learning. Given a player's previous performance in a fight, predict what they will do and use that as a better heuristic in the absence of additional input. The downside is that lag would be much less identifiable as such, because things that require volition (e.g. an attack) might be predicted and shown to an opponent even if they never happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a wonderful video game to play a quick few minutes or hours!

It has mod support, excellent music, and is still an early-access labor of love by the developers with new things added often (I just discovered a 'Moon Stone' for the first time which is a little moon with a gravitational field that you can throw and see how it affects the environment!)

Here is a stream of a recent version played last week: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geRWwycLCO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geRWwycLCO8)

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks really neat, shame it's windows only though, hopefully a macOS, Linux or PS release at some point?

<comment><USER23> Consoles seems likely after early access.

macOS and Linux represent less that 1% of lifetime revenue most games. They unfortunately aren't worth the opportunity cost or support tickets.

<comment><USER24> Maybe iPad? The premium game market seems viable on iPads.

<comment><USER23> Premium iOS for mobile-first / mobile-only titles is deader than dead.

Some really good games do get ported. I think premium mobile is probably a distant 5th after PC / PS4 / Switch / Xbox for most games. But it's probably a nice revenue bonus for multi-million unit sellers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I bought it on steam, played it a while, it is fun to play around with the system/environment, in the way powdergame is, but the actual game part is lacking.. I hope it is developed further it make it more of an acual fun game, rather than a tech demo(perhaps not the right term)

<comment><USER26> It does appear to be early access, so it looks like they plan on taking it further

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was pretty disappointment by Noita

I had been looking forward to this game for years before it was released, but it ended up being quite a different game then I had intuited from the trailers. I expected an environmental sandbox where you would have to combine quick thinking with the manipulation of interacting environmental elements (water + electricity, or fire + coal) to survive, similar to my favorite roguelike Brogue. When the game came out, I realized it was designed more in the style of Binding of Isaac or Risk of Rain, emphasizing combining slotmachine-esque random weapon modifiers into hideously overpowered weapons that for the most part did not meaningfully interact with the environmental simulation in a meaningful way.

It is still an interesting experience, the weapon combination system is a strong source of emergent play, but that emergent weapon design does not meaningfully influence the player's strategy in how he/she approaches the game across runs.

I think there is a better game trapped inside of the pixel simulation of Noita, waiting to be unearthed.

<comment><USER28> It's incredibly hard to design a game around an emergent physical system where that system not only allows the gameplay to remain fun, but actually contributes to the fun in a meaningful way. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild did an astoundingly good job of this, but it's one of the only examples I can think of where it really worked at all. Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts is the other, though most people probably haven't heard of that one.

<comment><USER29> Nuts and Bolts is a tragically underrated game.

The physics simulation is on just the right side of fun/realism, insane contraptions work but the system is flexible enough that players jury rigged turrets.

Lots of games in a similar vein have followed, but I haven't found any to be as easy to play and as fun.

<comment><USER28> It still blows my mind the kinds of things I was able to make, and the kind of ingenuity that was sometimes (successfully!) required of me to solve the problems presented.

My favorite creation was the "wall-driving car". You could just make a car, and put a propeller on top pointed upward, and it would press you against whatever surface you were on so you could drive on walls or even the ceiling. That _worked_. And I'm almost certain the devs never imagined it.

I also made a working pod-racer by putting tiny propellers underneath a pair of jet engines (and under the seat), and connecting them to the seat using those flexible coupling-beams. And it _drove like a pod-racer_. It looked exactly like something out of the film, the way it moved. It was amazing.

Maybe I need to boot that game back up :)

<comment><USER30> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46#Brabham_BT46B_%...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46#Brabham_BT46B_%E2%80%93_the_fan_car)

<comment><USER31> the 2J did it first...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This game seems really awesome, I've had a few looks at it at Steam so far. I am a bit curious what does it mean that each and every pixel is 'simulated'? They use the statement many times, but I'm really not sure what that statement implies.

<comment><USER33> Each in-game particle ('pixel') has its own physics and interactions with other particles. There are other games which did this before Noita, but none of them have the same depth or gameplay. The other major "falling sand" games are just sandboxes.

One of the earliest games (a Java applet) was somehow made to work in HTML5: [https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust2/](https://dan- ball.jp/en/javagame/dust2/)

This is the most feature-rich falling sand sandbox game with built-in Lua scripting: [https://powdertoy.co.uk](https://powdertoy.co.uk) (their website appears to be down)

<comment><USER34> There was actually a whole genre of action games in the Finnish indie game scene in the 90's, cave flying games (luolalentelypelit) that usually had similar physics from which Noita (Finnish for witch) clearly draws inspiration from.

Although most of the cave flying games were from the dos era, probably the most famous one, wings, had a "new" version [1] made that runs on windows and linux.

[1] [http://www.wings2.net/](http://www.wings2.net/)

<comment><USER35> And now akumusa is playing in my head, kiitti vaan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Noita was yet another tech-demo/game-engine looking for a gameplay idea. The outcome is usually a good-enough but unremarkable game.

<comment><USER37> That may be true for you, but every game like this goes down with me as one of my favorite games ever.

Cortex Command is another perfect example of this kind of effect.

Any game that makes cool physics possible is a win for me.

Others interested in this topic should check out Teardown

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfeWtv7Iww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfeWtv7Iww)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> From the brief gameplay footage I saw, this seems a lot like Lemmings/Worms in that every pixel on the screen can be destroyed (but more advanced).

<comment><USER39> More like liero

<comment><USER40> That's what I had in mind as well! There's an online version now: [https://www.webliero.com/](https://www.webliero.com/)

Official site with a few options including an open source version [https://www.liero.be/](https://www.liero.be/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is a really fun, totally crazy and chaotic game. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER31> This review is, if anything, understated.

<comment><USER42> Very true. I had to stop playing b/c it's such a time-sink.

I'd also mention that development is pretty fast, new stuff is added all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I had a lot of fun modding this game. The files were in LUA (I think) and you could easily give your character whatever starting equipment you want. Oil wand + fire was a good time.

<comment><USER44> This editing extended my gameplay by weeks.

Can't remember how, but I went through and manually found all the variables for powerups using the default mods so I could have a mega wand on game start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> A side-scrolling game with accurate physics simulation where you fly around in a cave system fighting alien monsters, finding secrets and solving puzzles? Reminds me of Exile ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6rbjU8sCP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6rbjU8sCP0)), a sadly overlooked Amiga classic which I enjoyed very much back in the day. Of course, Exile didn't have every pixel simulated (not doable at the time) and had more of a science fiction look, but I think I'll still try Noita out when I have some time... one big difference however is that while in Noita "death is permanent", in Exile death simply was not possible - each time your energy got low enough, you were simply teleported to a spot you had marked previously or, if you forgot to do that, back to your spaceship. Which did make things less frustrating, because the game was pretty tough...

</comment><comment><USER46> Windows-only.

<comment><USER47> But works on Linux too: [https://www.protondb.com/app/881100](https://www.protondb.com/app/881100)

<comment><USER39> Unfortunately I have none of these platforms. I'm hopping it comes out on the switch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have written two effects that does "pixel simulation".

        https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fireEffect
        https://github.com/victorqribeiro/rippleEffect

I know of a sandbox game that does something similar, a different rule for every "element", but never see this being used as an actual game. Seems very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER49> This game is everything. I played about 90 minutes during 'lunch' (yay WFH), and it's so good. That soundtrack is so much better than it needs to be, the art looks insane. One slight thing is the combat is a little clunky (it feels like the same blind panic of Terraria), anyone else suffered? Maybe I just need to get in the game more.

</comment><comment><USER50> This game is fun but more table flipping and swear inducing than almost anything I can think of, including Nethack.

<comment><USER51> I love the game, but mods are a hard requirement. The base game has some balancing issues that unquestionably needs ironing out. Like health regeneration (vampirism), health refresh and a playthrough without the ability to edit wands on the fly is a recipe for failure.

<comment><USER50> Which mods do you suggest?

I figured that editing wands outside of the Holy Mountain was what the game designer intended. I can agree that maybe the game designers conception of an acceptable difficultly level doesn't mesh with what many (including myself) think is acceptable difficulty.

<comment><USER51> "Vampirism+" to buff regen rate from drinking blood and "Hearts Heal You" to start with anyway.

If in the first section, for example, you get hit with a shotgun blast, taking the health damage is fine. But there should be an opportunity to heal and get back up to a safe level, even if it requires careful, patient searching and back tracing to do so. At the moment, a few early game missteps spells probable disaster for that entire playthrough way more than midgame mistakes. Difficulty should ramp up rather than down in my book

I also made myself a custom mod that enables a few extra quality of life tweaks such as editing wands everywhere, starting with vampirism enabled, poly-morph potion immunity (in mid to late game it's basically the most deadly thing and frustratingly uncounterable in events where if you're holding an electric charged item in my book) and an extra flask of water starting off to deal with early game toxicity and fire but I haven't figured how to get it up to the workshop yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Really love the game, i did have to install a respawn mod to get anywhere however.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm not a gamer. Can someone take the trouble to tl;dr me the significance of this?

</comment><comment><USER54> You know I'm old cuz it still annoys me that (almost) all game nowadays come via Steam.

<comment><USER55> It's also available at several other stores

<comment><USER54> You're right. My rant was about the fact that I need to use a 3rd party store in order to have a game.

<comment><USER50> As opposed to buying directly from the developer?

<comment><USER54> Yes, or an Internet store that would let me download the game instead of installing a piece of software on my computer.

I'm super spoiled:-)

<comment><USER56> You can purchase the game on [https://www.gog.com/game/noita](https://www.gog.com/game/noita), and download a DRM free installer for Noita. Their own launcher (GOG Galaxy) is purely optional. All games purchased on GOG can be downloaded that way.

<comment><USER54> Thanks! I didn't know that! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Honestly, I get really tired of seeing games that aren't like Rogue calling themselves Roguelikes in the effort to make money

That word was well defined long before the people who will soon inevitably whine at me were born

<comment><USER58> Roguelite, not roguelike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> > every pixel is simulated

That statement, on its own, is meaningless buzzzwords to me. What would it mean for it not to be true: where does one find _unsimulated_ pixels? Surely all pixels are digital simulations by their nature?

What is seems to mean is that the pixels are the output of some physics engine rather than being hand-drawn art.

<comment><USER60> I understood from the get-go what they meant.

> What is seems to mean is that the pixels are the output of some physics > engine rather than being hand-drawn art.

... whereas I wouldn't understand your description if I didn't knew what you were trying to say already.

<comment><USER59> Ok, so what to you differentiates, in general, a "real" pixel from a "simulated" pixel? It's not clear.

Is this a term of art that games industry insiders know?

I understand what weather forecasters mean when they talk about "hurricanes" vs. "simulated hurricanes" . So how does that apply to pixels?

I apologize if I came across as dismissive of the headline, but there is a genuine comprehension gap here. OK, you understand it just fine, but that reply doesn't help me close the gap.

<comment><USER61> In regular 2D games most pixels are simply drawn, based on a sprite or texture. Think Super Mario, each block of ground is a sprite, each coin box is a sprite.

The sprites might be drawn based on more or less involved simulation, think the mushrooms that move and change direction when they hit an obstacle. But the pixels making up the mushroom is just drawn based on the mushrooms location, same as always.

In Noita you can think of each pixel on screen as being a 1x1 sprite. Each one simulated.

<comment><USER59> > In Noita you can think of each pixel on screen as being a 1x1 sprite. Each > one simulated.

So we're talking about "every pixel is _individually_ simulated", as opposed to "pixels simulated in groups"?

<comment><USER61> Well in say Super Mario, most of the sprites aren't simulated at all. They're sitting at fixed locations in the world. The viewpoint changes, but the sprites (tiles) stay where they are.

In this respect Noita is like Minecraft, in that each pixel (block) can change. However in Minecraft the state of each block in the world changes while its position is fixed. In Noita each 1x1 sprite (pixel) can move around on its own.

<comment><USER59> > in say Super Mario, most of the sprites aren't simulated at all

That's not a statement that I find a lot of meaning in. The sprites are not imitation sprites? The sprites are not fake? ( [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/simulated](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/simulated) ) Do you use a different definition? What words would you use as synonyms of "simulated" here? "Animated" ? "Interactive" ? "run through the physics engine" ? it does seem to be a term of art here.

<comment><USER61> I think the key behind simulation is that it's dynamic. The way the coin box bounces up and down in Super Mario doesn't change in a dynamic way. Once triggered it goes through a predetermined motion.

This is unlike say the turtle shells which bounce around depending on what it hits. Its motion is dynamic and dictated by what the player did and the environment it's in.

The distinction between animation and simulation can be a bit fuzzy, but for me an animation is typically a predetermined motion while simulation is dynamic and reactive. However, especially in modern games, animation is blended with simulation to increase realism making this distinction less clear, see for example [https://youtu.be/yTniZCOCY7o](https://youtu.be/yTniZCOCY7o)

So coming back to Noita, think of every 1x1 sprite in the game world as a Super Mario turtle. They can change state and motion in a dynamic and reactive way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Open source project to group website content by keyword - <AUTHOR>

A couple of weeks ago there was a post here on HN regarding an open-source tool that was parsing the content of a website and then grouping the content by keyword and count of keyword.
I forgot the name the project, and cannot find either the HN post or the corresponding github page in my browser history.
Can anybody point me in the right direction where to find an open-source project for python that can parse website content and output all keywords and the count of each keyword per site?
Hopefully somebody else read that previous HN post as well and can post the URL. Thanks in advance! <comment><AUTHOR> Found it. In case anybody has the same problem, here it is: [https://textblob.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://textblob.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)</comment>


Git is already federated and decentralized - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distributed.html <comment><USER2> Hey Drew, long time no see.

Good posts. I see your point and I don't disagree with it. It's been a clear trend though that more and more people are moving away from email though.

I think with some people starting to get overwhelmed with Slack, especialling software engineerings, perhaps email will trend back up again and this can be feasible.

Personally, my favorite thing about GitHub isn't any single feature. It's the social aspect that's developed around it for open-source projects.

GitLab, Bitbucket, will struggle to take over without the social aspect. Email has it, in it's own way I guess.</comment>


What If Zuckerberg Stepped Down as Facebook CEO? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/08/21/zuckerberg-quit-facebook-ceo/

<comment><AUTHOR> Will that save Facebook stock?</comment>


"Please, as an advice to general HN posters…" - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/davidpayne

<comment><USER2> Breaking: jerk posts something stupid and mean on the Internet.

Maybe he's using a pseudonym, and it's actually this guy: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/local-idiot-to-post- comment...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/local-idiot-to-post-comment-on- internet,2500/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't see any proof of a general HN issue here? One comment is bad?

And currently the comment you didn't like is pretty much down voted to hell.

And since you admit HN is not even a site for you, the issue is.......

<comment><USER4> I think the title is a reference to the comment he didn't like, not an admonition to all HN posters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That [1] is a bad comment but I'm not sure you can generalize about all of HN from it.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377591></comment>


Heatmaps, contours, and 2D histograms in Plot.ly - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/plotly/python-user-guide/blob/master/s5_heatmaps/s5_heatmaps.ipynb

<comment><USER2> Those color scales are pretty incredible. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER3> yet another interesting project from libya..</comment>


Ask HN: Is there demand for a "White-label Zapier"? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
We all know that most SaaS apps need integrations. Usually an app will start with a Zapier integration, and then over time develop custom direct integrations with the most used 3rd party apps.
Why? Because it would take too much work to connect to several 3rd party apps from day one.
Right, so my question is:
Would there be demand for a service like Zapier, but transparent and white label that works from inside your SaaS dashboard?
I mean, instead of having to send your users to Zapier, tell them to create an account, set up a Zap, pay membership fees, wouldn't it be easier if all of your users could directly integrate with other apps as if you had a native integration?
Instead of the end-user paying for Zapier, the SaaS company would pay a small $ fee per each 1000 actions on the integration platform.
Because the alternative (as far as I know) is to spend several engineering hours integrating with many apps, and this process is repeated across thousands of SaaS companies. Then you also have to maintain all those integrations.
Does any SaaS entrepreneurs here feel this pain? <comment><USER2> It seems there's definitely demand for this as a lot of companies are starting to have a strategy which involves a lot of external integrations, the duration and cost of building + maintaining all of these is quite painful to handle in house.

If anyone is looking for an enterprise solution for this we've already built one at [https://tray.io/solutions/embedded](https://tray.io/solutions/embedded), which allows you to expose whitelabelled Tray workflows to your own end users.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. I think this is a really good idea. When compared to Zapier, it will reduce lot of work for the end users - single sign on and pre-configured source or target, which will be my application.

</comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't IFTTT use this model?</comment>


"Online" marketing = "Color" TV - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/tv

<comment><USER2> This is way off. Color tv is the same thing as black and white tv, only improved. Online marketing and traditional marketing are very different things. Online marketing is not a replacement for tv/print/radio advertising, and it never will be.</comment>


How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility - <AUTHOR> https://www.sapiens.org/culture/globalization-downfall-gladstone-australia/ <comment><USER2> The article's central point seems to be that it's more difficult to track accountability and causality in an increasingly "overheated" and complicated world. True.

But the major system for addressing that currently seems to be People Getting Upset, and the article proposes more organizations for People Getting Upset. But this isn't very efficient; sometimes the global economy DOES need to make Gladstone a bit less pretty. And people have only a limited amount of Upset within them, not nearly enough to make the system work well.

We need better tools of addressing externalities as a society.

Or maybe just the ability to actually implement those we have. Property rights work pretty well where they can apply. Carbon taxes seem decent, but they usually go straight to government coffers and don't pay out to citizens (that seems like a flaw to me). I'm not an economist, but I'd be interested in better ideas.

<comment><USER3> Carbon taxes change the profit math for companies, which affects their decisions, that's the biggest change. They have to be high enough to change the decision though.

<comment><USER4> > They have to be high enough to change the decision though.

This is why I've stopped listening to people attempting to make externality- based policy arguments. If you believe that a carbon tax needs to be high enough to change companies' decisions, you're not actually making an externality argument. You've already decided that the world should change, and how it should change, and you're just trying to find some magic words that you think will get other people to agree with you.

A real externality argument would try to determine the value of the externality, and set the tax to equal that value. It's not relevant at all whether that changes anyone's decision -- if there's no change, and you see just as much pollution as before, that's fine, because the cost of that pollution is now being accounted for correctly, and it's been decided that the pollution was better than the alternative.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying the jury is somehow out on greenhouse gases? Because we definitely know it's affecting the planet. And we definitely know we need to cut back on carbon emissions. And we even know by how much. The externality is not hypothetical, we're living it, in real time, and so have a pretty damn good idea what we have to do to bring things to neutral.

Anyone claiming otherwise simply would rather not lose their profits, or is being payed/brainwashed by those people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.

<comment><USER6> > Nationalism feeds into that

How?

<comment><USER7> I assume he means because nationalism stokes tensions between citizens while companies quietly extract value from society.

<comment><USER8> Why would nationalism stoke tensions between citizens? The point of nationalism is to unite the society around the nation.

It seems to me that multiculturalism if anything leads to more tensions as it seeks to add more groups that don't have as much in common as the people already there.

<comment><USER9> Contemporary history suggests nationalism is almost always a reactionary movement. Reactionary movements are by definition in reaction to some other political entity. Thus the tension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The corporation takes away personal responsibility. For a corporation profit is usually number one priority far more than caring for the environmen.

I think globalisation under mines union, to some extent labour laws. I you don't do the job there is often someone cheaper who don't care about work hours, vacation who will.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash And environmental protection laws, and human rights laws, and civil rights laws, you name it, globalization has effectively undermined.

The best lie that America ever told the world (best exemplified by the 1939 World's Fair[1]) was that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand. But when the U.S. blinked after the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre and kept on buying cheap goods from China, it became clear that the Western world - the only long term bastion of democracy - cared more about capitalism than democracy, and China showed the world that you don't need democracy for capitalism. Democracy has been in decline ever since, along with human rights.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_New_York_World's_Fair](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_New_York_World's_Fair)

<comment><USER11> > _when the U.S. blinked after the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre and kept on > buying cheap goods from China_

The US did very little trade with China in 1989, though more than a few years earlier. I don't think Tiananmen Square or its response says much about US internationalism or commitment to whatever abstract principles. You can draw much stronger conclusions from them about internal Chinese politics.

<comment><USER12> What could the U.S. have done about Tiananmen? Serious question. Military intervention would have been absolutely out of the question. U.S.-China trade back then was very small, so the U.S. had no leverage. The U.S. could not have armed a guerilla either. There was really nothing the U.S. could do about China in 1989.

<comment><USER13> > What could the U.S. have done about Tiananmen?

Impose Cuba-style sanctions on China until they held free elections. It may not have changed their policy, but it would at least have shown we were serious about it. And knowing what we know now, it would obviously have had significant economic consequences over time.

<comment><USER11> That was basically US policy toward China in the 50s–60s. It was utterly ineffective.

US policy toward Cuba had much bigger impact because Cuba is a tiny island next to the North American continent, and being cut off from your obvious larger trading partner is more severe.

The US sanctions on Cuba didn't have anything to do with free elections though, and their primary effect was entrenching the Cuban government while impoverishing the Cuban people.

<comment><USER13> > US policy toward Cuba had much bigger impact because Cuba is a tiny island > next to the North American continent, and being cut off from your obvious > larger trading partner is more severe.

The US is China's largest trading partner and the relative size of China's economy was much smaller at the time. Moreover, other democratic countries could have adopted the same policy which would have given it real teeth.

And the sanctions did nothing to entrench the government. The government was already entrenched. If the people there don't like the policy then they know how to end it -- change their government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The answer lies in Politics. If a multinational is ruining your beaches / water supply / air quality / whatever, use the power of government to apply regulations and taxes. One common argument against that is that a company will simply go to another place which offers friendlier regulations. In that case, good riddance.

Now, if someone depends on those multinationals for a better living and have no options otherwise, then they gotta pay up one way or the other. Typical path we have seen is for societies to get rich first and then start demanding nicer things like clean air / water.

<comment><USER8> Which society stands to become richer? The country that sold it's beaches to a foreign company, or the foreign country which operates the business and owns the profits?

To the extent this is politics, I guess you could say it's a battle between liberalism which would see the situation as efficient and the result of free capitalistic action while a nationalist perspective would lead you to see the beaches are apart of the nation itself and cannot simply just be sold off.

<comment><USER14> When played smart, the answer can be both - the country willing to pollute its environment and the country which is outsourcing the "pollution". For example, China and the USA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm nowhere near Gladstone, but I have a lot of exposure to the planning & approval process for Australian mines.

Firstly, it is unlikely that the mine manger has less power in the modern era than they did in the days of old. Mine managers wield enormous power under law and in practice.

Secondly, the real issue here is likely that nobody cares about small limestone mines, but the economies of scale in Gladstone are such that the mines are projects of importance at the State and global level. Local groups with real power (enough influence to get council moving) can still sway mine operations quite convincingly, larger mining companies have had some experiences with fighting real local opposition and it is not a profitable exercise. But the flip side of that, once a mine operation gets large enough it can no longer please everyone, and when the State & local governments support your operation, the people who are not pleased feel very powerless. Nobody likes that situation, but there isn't a straightforward resolution.

The idea that globalisation is responsible is a bit tenuous. Make the case that councils are blinded by greed, that is an easy one. I will politically remind the reader that the State government, who takes the cut, is also the same group who needs more money to fund schools & hospitals. _EDIT_ And mining corporations usually spend lavishly on local projects to suppress organised opposition on council.

tl;dr; I have observed the process and don't believe that globalisation has broken the chain. Local government still has sufficient power to yea, nay or influence operations. State governments have absolute power to yea, nay and influence operations. They are responsible, not some shady globalist in Shenzhen, America or Japan.

<comment><USER16> Seems you haven't put international agreement such TPP and international arbitration into account.

Yes, local goverment still have power and no, the state goverment don't have absolute power when the contract has been deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Modernism. Cause and effect are separated. Or, as Flann O'Brien wrote: If one throws a stone up in the air, no one can tell where it will land.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like more governments around the world could use a dose of layer cake Federalism.

<comment><USER19> Could you explicit or ELI5 what you mean by this ? Worldwide federalism ? More intermeduary layer to better control centralized bodies ?

<comment><USER18> The idea behind layer cake federalism is you define specific scope that gets handled at different levels of Government; the point being that people in Estonia may not want the same policies as those in France and both should be free to choose independent of a globalized body (here, the UN).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe if we could buy shares of Earth there would be some economic value in preserving the well being and environment. How could one put economic value in preservation instead of exploration?

<comment><USER8> That sounds like a way to accelerate the lack of accountability. If i wanted to reduce accountability of american companies, I would make it so you could only by US stocks through unified stock.

You would just have 0 ability for anyone to apply market forces and accountability on a localized level and it would become giant scam for elites to siphon off.

The only way to add more accountability in the way you want it would be more selling off of public land to public companies that anyone could buy stocks in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One way to resolve this tension is to limit the corporate personhood. If CEOs of this multinational corporations earn tens and hundreds of millions maybe they should have a tiny bit more accountability.

</comment><comment><USER22> The problem is that people with power are getting more power and they are getting fewer in numbers so they have limited bandwidth for dealing with issues efficiently. So they delegate everything to people who are on their payroll and who themselves will delegate subtasks to other people also on the payroll, etc... In the end, what we have is no different from communism. There is no incentive for employees of big corporations to work harder because mobility is limited based on who joined the company first.</comment>


Number Spiral - When You Chart a Number System, Patterns Emerge - <AUTHOR> http://www.numberspiral.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> 12:45, restate my assumptions...

<comment><USER3> I don't understand ?

<comment><USER4> It's a line from Pi, the movie. (Hence my soundtrack comment.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have no idea what this means, but it's got to be like heroin to number theorists.

</comment><comment><USER6> They only provide a Windows binary for drawing them. If you want a start on doing it yourself, here's some postscript: <http://basecase.org/code/numberspiral.ps> .

<comment><USER7> Sage code:

      plot = point2d((0,0))
      for k in primes_first_n(500):
          r = sqrt(k)
          theta = sqrt(k) * 2*pi
          plot += point2d((r * cos(theta), r * sin(theta)))
      plot

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> He mentions the also interesting Ulam spiral; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral>

If you like this kind of stuff, you might try to understand the following pattern (F_n is Fibonacci, F_0 = 0, F_1 = 1).

F_n%2==0 whenever n%3==0.

F_n%3==0 whenever n%4==0.

F_n%4==0 whenever n%6==0.

F_n%5==0 whenever n%5==0, etc.

<comment><USER9> Those are easily understood if you consider F_n mod k.

Ex. F_n mod 2:

1, 1, 0 (as 1+ 1 = 2 == 0 in mod 2), 1, 1, 0, ...

So on and so forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I grokked this for the first time, I had an idea for generating all the prime numbers: use a number spiral that "wraps" in n dimensions.

<comment><USER11> A Russian blogger once described his dream of a music theory book with matrices of notes corresponding to chords in multidimensional time, e.g. the classic 3x3 magic square being the 2D-time counterpart to the major triad. Every perfect musical piece corresponded to a consonant n-dimensional hyperchord.

PS: just checked the Lo Shu, sure enough it has 4 5 6 on the main diagonal, proportional to the tones of a major triad. Want some of his weed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm getting chills as I read this. I wish that I could vote it up more than once.

To borrow a term from 4chan: _MOAR!!_

<comment><USER13> Generally a bad idea to quote 4chan on Hacker News...</comment></comment>


Finding Unity in the Math Wars - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/finding-unity-in-the-math-wars/

<comment><USER2> Some really nice suggestions in the article that for whatever reason are not often brought up while discussing maths education.

A good way to bootstrap the "math avengers" website would be to get people to write up running commentary to some classic maths texts, e.g. Silvanus Thompson (out of copyright), Halmos, Rudin etc.

Essentially all high school maths programs are less than great to put it politely and often created by people with rather limited appreciation of the subject. Better university textbooks are not readily accessible without an instructor. Running commentary from several authors giveing additional motivation, examples, clarifications or alternative derivations can be of great help to students and wikipedia style platform can be great for organising such a project.

Sites like wikipedia and mathoverflow / stackexchange are great for specific questions but lack structure - centering the efforts around certain "canonical" texts can help to organise the material which otherwise would be overwhelming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas. Exactly, something like running commentary / different approaches could work. I greatly prefer text to online videos [not sure why, I think I get impatient that I can't read at the exact speed I want?] and would go through those.

Wikipedia is self-described as a reference [not teaching tool], stackexchange is good for point-fixes [q&a], but some more "guided tour" could be useful. Especially to help appreciate math as an art/journey vs. pure problem solving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are no "Math Wars!"

There is only the Khan Academy, doing great stuff, and a group of disgruntled, jealous math teachers such as the author of this post, who have levied silly, petty, baseless criticisms against the Khan Academy.

After launching the silly criticisms and stirring up a little controversy (but by no means a "war"), they now want to cast the whole hullabaloo as a "war" because it glorifies their role in the whole thing.

It's like a flea trying to recast his battle against the St. Benard he rides on as a "war."

Khan Academy is doing great stuff, and getting great results right now. If you're a jealous math teacher who thinks you have better answers, then quit spewing a bunch of FUD-like rhetoric with no substance, and fucking DO SOMETHING to help some people learn math right now. If what you do is so much better than Khan Academy, then it will become obvious in short order.

P.S. And by "help some people learn math right now", I don't mean your day job as a teacher/professor. Do something that helps improve the effectiveness of math education on a grand scale ... as Khan Academy is doing.

P.P.S. The whole thing makes me grumpy as hell, and I'm sure that comes out. But the reason is this -- if the "math teachers" side of this "war" is so all- fired passionate about disrupting the status quo and raising the overall quality of math education in the world, then why on Earth would you take potshots at Khan Academy, who is doing so much towards that very goal??! If that truly was your goal, you'd celebrate and help. I think the potshots show that the greater motivation is jealousy that some outsider has gotten so much more traction on the problem so quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. I appreciate the comments and if you're open to it, I'd like to understand your point of view.

The "Math Wars" actually reference a longstanding struggle about math education in the US (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_wars>). That allusion is more apparent to people in the field however.

I thought I gave the debate a fair and nuanced treatment and I'm curious to see what _specific_ points are silly or baseless. If it helps, I actually ran the essay by an online buddy _at_ Khan Academy and he liked the tone and focus on solutions. So I'm very confused where your offense is coming from.

I totally agree Khan Academy is doing great stuff right now (I recommend them often). Other educators are as well. The problem is the entire movement is not cohesive, and the entire online learning movement is losing the attention battle against individual pop stars.

I don't believe quantity is a direct proxy for quality (see said pop stars), but if it helps: I've written among the most popular online tutorials for exponents, natural log, imaginary numbers, introduction to calculus, Bayes's theorem, Euler's theorem, radians, combinations and permutations... [just google for any of those topics]. They've collectively reached many millions of people and are used in dozens of courses.

<comment><USER3> OK, I appreciate your openness to understanding my point of view. I will articulate/respond respectfully.

First, some quick points:

1\. I must apologize for misinterpreting "Math Wars". I though it was referring to the recent little "skirmishes" between certain math professors and Khan Academy (as found here, for example: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer- sheet/post/khan-a...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer- sheet/post/khan-academy-readers-weigh-in/2012/08/02/gJQA83rW9W_blog.html))

2\. Your tutorials sound fantastic. I haven't had the pleasure of working through them, but they certainly sound like they are raising the level of worldwide math education.

So, before I go any further, let me ask -- are you at all entangled with (or even on the periphery of) the skirmish referred to by the link I posted above, between Mathalicious founder Karim Kai Ani and Khan Academy? Or the skirmish triggered by some of Frank Noschese's criticisms, as in [http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/you-khant- ignore-h...](http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/you-khant-ignore-how- students-learn/) ?

The reason I ask is because this is what I (perhaps mistakenly) though you were referring to, and it is many of these criticisms that I feel are baseless and petty.

If those criticisms really have nothing to do with your current post or even your current mental outlook, then all that's left for me to do is apologize for jumping to conclusions and getting overheated for something that has nothing to do with you.

If those criticism are relevant to your posting and current outlook, then perhaps it would make sense for me to continue onward by listing those criticisms that I feel are baseless. If so, I will proceed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Charlie,

Really appreciate you taking the time to explain. I strive to understand people's point of view, especially when they disagree, because there's probably some insight or viewpoint I'm missing.

Nope, I'm not personally involved in any of the current incidents but have been asked several times (privately) to comment. I see the current debate over Khan Academy as the latest unfortunate incident in the general Math Wars which have consumed much of the education community's attention [I'm not a formal teacher, just a programmer who likes math, and wants to explain things as I wish they were taught to me. I'd really appreciate any feedback if you get a chance to read any tutorials].

I agree that some silly arguments have been made (on both sides of the debate) and when egos get involved, tensions rise and it's hard to work towards a common understanding.

So, not personally involved, and that said -- I'd still be interested in hearing your thoughts if I've made unfair statements in the essay!

<comment><USER3> OK, then to sum this up quickly:

1\. I was wrong in lumping you in with the criticisms others have made of KA, and I apologize.

2\. My mistake came from the term "Math Wars" in the title, followed immediately by your link referencing the "skirmishes", which points to those criticisms that I find so baseless. Not knowing that "Math Wars" is actually a specific term, I concluded that the wars were the Khan Academy skirmishes you linked to. I think a decent percentage of your readers might make a similar mistake, so maybe this can help you clarify your post.

3\. I didn't see anything I'd call unfair in the essay. You don't explicitly say that Kahn is a "bad teacher", but you might be implying it. If so, I disagree and many others would too, but I don't know that the claim is unfair.

4\. I really can't wait to dig into some of your tutorials. The desire "to explain things as I wish they were taught to me" sounds very promising.

<comment><USER3> OMG! After ALL THIS, I flipped over to glance at some of your tutorials, and what do you know ...

I HAVE WORKED THROUGH SEVERAL OF THEM AFTER ALL!

lol

In particular, a few years ago on a snowy day I dug into the imaginary number tutorial, which I found to be fantastic. I had learned about them in school, of course, but never to the depth that you explained them.

I was actually doing some hobby reading on quantum physics, and needed a good review of imaginary numbers. Your tutorial was all that and more. I even tweeted "Imaginary numbers have the rotation rules baked in: it just works."

Small world. Pleased to have had a conversation with you, even if it did start with me misunderstanding you and harping at you for no reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, what a small world! Happy to have the conversation too -- in my years as a blogger, I've realized many disagreements just boil down to misunderstandings.

Glad if it was able to help you get into quantum, that topic has been on my to-study list for a while.

<comment><USER3> Do me a favor, and write a good intro to Category Theory! (I'm shutting down my laptop and going to bed, and I saw all the Category Theory tutorials I currently have open in other browser tabs).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion - that's been on my topic list for a while! So much math I want to learn :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, I'm not usually a pain with comparisons but comparing "Super Bass: 268M views in a year; Khan Academy: 175M views in 5 years" is illogical as Super Bass, from my quick Googling is around a song lasting 2m30s to Khan Academy which probably on average has around 10-20minute videos.

This doesn't even go into the fact that people could easily passively listen to Super Bass in a non-active window while Khan Academy requires much more active watching from the user.

(i.e. I could have super bass on my iPad in my car while I drive somewhere as background noise but Khan Academy requires me to be sitting in front of my PC focused on it).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's mostly a tongue-in-cheek comparison :). The meta-point is that the entire online learning space has a small fraction of society's collective attention, scraping by against the popularity of a rap artist who will be forgotten in a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curation isn't the answer. It's just cute and it has a pretty interface. But it's like ice cream against a nuclear holocaust. There is no silver bullet. The big issue is that just can't deny the role of parents in the education problem.</comment>


EtherDoggos Dapp Beta Release - <AUTHOR> https://etherdoggos.com <comment><USER2> Can I breed a dog that looks like the Metamask logo dog?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can get pretty close. Buy the right dogs from the marketplace and try your hand at selective breeding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would I play this instead of cryptokitties

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheaper, doggos are animated, this hasn't mooned yet, blockchain-based mini- games such as racing will be released very soon.

But let's be real here, doggos >>>> kitties</comment></comment>


Why Can't We Compute in the Cloud? Part 2
 - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/why-cant-we-compute-in-the-cloud-part-2/

<comment><USER2> That will be an Apple product, MacBook mini. It's already rumored -- Flash memory, no hard drive, least possible size and weight. :)

or maybe the Radio Shack Model 100 will come back: <http://flickr.com/photos/jowo/11052651/></comment>