Introducing FBLearner Flow: Facebook's AI Backbone - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/1072626246134461/introducing-fblearner-flow-facebook-s-ai-backbone/ <comment><USER2> "When you log in to Facebook, we use the power of machine learning to provide you with unique, personalized experiences. Machine learning models are part of ranking and personalizing News Feed stories, filtering out offensive content, highlighting trending topics, ranking search results, and much more."

So, everything that i hate about FB is related to the AI.

Ranking and Personalizing: Horrible ranking results and the "personalized" results that they push into my feed have nothing to do with me, my interests and is not something i would ever want in my social feed. Its almost as bad as their advertising results (which im guessing is based on the same AI).

Offensive Content: I could not give 2 f@@@@ about this, but i guess some people don't like strong language or pictures (only point that i see as acceptable use of the AI for now).

Trending Topics: FB, you are not Twitter, please stop trying to copy them. If i want trending topics I'll go to Twitter. My Facebook is a way to contact people i have not talked to in months.

Search results etc: What search??? Facebook as a search engine now? Or are you talking about the BS do you know John? You should know john! - FB: If I have not added John, it might mean i dont want to talk to John cause he is an a@@. Until your AI learns to detect a __holes then please switch off this crap.

I know its a rant, but Im so tired of services trying to fill my feeds with crap, and also the crap BS about AI saving / ending the world. It might create nice cool articles for the news, and buzzwords in the bubble out west. We can only hope that Winter will not come this time, and we can advance far enough that AI becomes an actual useful product for more then spam filters, and detecting if John went to the same school as me.

* John is an invented person based on people i know. * Swearing is blocked as I'm not sure what people prefer on here. * Yes, I know AI is advancing a lot, and I'm a big supporter. I just don't like how its used, and how the PR makes it look like its the 7th wonder of the world.

<comment><USER3> You are probably a person who has been online for a long time, and seen a lot. You have expectations that are not similar to the majority of FB users. They are mostly young people, or poor, or from poor countries who only have a cheap Android phone, no laptop, don't know what Twitter is and they discover Facebook for the first time. They find uses for it without having any expectations (like, "If i want trending topics I'll go to Twitter").

You probably use FB for one hour per month because it's the most convenient way to catch up with your friends and family and they spend 4 hours per day because for them the internet is Facebook. FB uses statistics to become better for them, not for you.

<comment><USER4> I must be in his same bucket. All I see our either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump posts. It all seems very polarized to me. Back when I first got on the internet, it was through dial-up modems. I would browse around on gopher and everyone chatted on IRC. It felt more like a community. I think there are still pockets of that out there, its just buried in all the noise.

<comment><USER5> Exactly! I am sick of seeing posts related to only Hillary/Trump even when they were not the presumptive leading candidates. Also missed some important updates of friends because FB thinks it's not relevant to me.

<comment><USER6> Have you tried hiding the Hillary/Trump posts and interacting with the friends whose updates you want to see?

Or you could just install Social Fixer, and control your feed that way. However, in my experience, it's quite hard to produce a better feed than Facebook's AI...

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

<comment><USER7> Seriously - just hide posts. Facebook's AI is pretty good at allowing you to properly prune your news feed.

You can also game this system by getting others to interact with your posts more often, which will push your posts into their feed at a higher rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While FB has released some excellent open source software in the past, I don't really find blog posts about closed source software to be that interesting.

The optimist in me says that the reason this hasn't been open sourced is because a lot of the distributed code is tied specifically to FB's infrastructure - but I guess we'll wait and see.

<comment><USER9> Some of my most popular blog posts have been explanations as to how closed source video game engines work. Some of the most popular conference talks are on closed source solutions to encountered problems.

Dismissing a blog post simply because it describes closed source software is silly.

<comment><USER10> I'm thinking he's dismissing the tool not the post?

<comment><USER11> > _I don 't really find blog posts about closed source software to be that > interesting._

seems to be mostly about the post

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a key statement here that most will either miss or never reach. The second last paragraph

> Machine Learning Automation

Tuning models is a pain, and if you don't understand the model and all its parameters (like most software engineers who's job is the write software and not build models!) it takes time and can be immensely frustrating. Randal Olson[1] just announced TPOT[2], a Python tool that "automatically creates and optimized machine learning pipelines using genetic programming". This is going to be a huge lever for engineers wanting to experiment/implement with ML algorithms.

[1] [http://www.randalolson.com/2016/05/08/tpot-a-python-tool- for...](http://www.randalolson.com/2016/05/08/tpot-a-python-tool-for- automating-data-science/) [2] [https://github.com/rhiever/tpot](https://github.com/rhiever/tpot)

<comment><USER13> Yes, but does it work? I cannot tell from reading the introductory materials whether it will actually search efficiently over large space (where it is computationally expensive to evaluate the fitness of any individual point).

I know that folks are having some success with Gaussian process optimisation for hyper parameter tuning (eg [https://github.com/Yelp/MOE](https://github.com/Yelp/MOE)), but I would be sceptical about the application of genetic programming to this area, particularly as broadly defined a search space as TPOT seems to set up (genetic programming either doesn't make assumptions about the objective function being optimised which can be used to search more efficiently, like Gaussian optimisation does - or uses implicit assumptions that may be unsuitable, depending on how you want to think about it); has anyone seen benchmarks against other search methods? The workflow does look great though - integrating it into scikit looks really clever.

<comment><USER12> I agree and I think it's clear TPOT and similar tools, are the first generation. Genetic algorithms might be slow/costly but the concept is there with an integrated, implementable solution. If it's as useful as I think it could be, there will be a flood of modules, libraries and packages developed with efficiency, UI and domain specific improvements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder whether the "Flow" moniker was chosen based on Google's TensorFlow. It is hard not to notice for me.

<comment><USER15> A flow is a common term for pieces of an execution dag. See eg cascading or azkaban.

[http://docs.cascading.org/cascading/2.0/javadoc/cascading/fl...](http://docs.cascading.org/cascading/2.0/javadoc/cascading/flow/Flow.html)

[http://submitteddenied.github.io/azkaban2/documents/2.1/crea...](http://submitteddenied.github.io/azkaban2/documents/2.1/creatingflows.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It isn't Open Source. Interesting since it written in Python rather than Lua/Torch, PHP or JS.

<comment><USER17> I'm not particularly surprised that it's written in Python.

\- Lua/Torch appears to not be designed for distributed systems as much, and looks less mature in terms of the scientific computing side. \- PHP is clearly the wrong tool for this job - it's only really the right tool for websites (debatable). \- Could do Node.js, but has little/no data-science/scientific computing side.

C++ would be the only reasonable competitor to Python here I think. Python is a pretty good combination of great for science, good for servers and easy to pick up and use for all the engineers who will need to interact with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the article they mentioned they implemented custom type system for building UI and for the input/output. Interesting, but I don't understand what that means. Are we talking about data type? Custom compiler? Very very elegant ideas I supposed, but I am just not familiar with the concepts...

> The body of the workflow looks like a normal Python function with calls to > several operators, which do the real machine learning work. Despite its > normal appearances, FBLearner Flow employs a system of futures to provide > parallelization within the workflow, allowing steps that do not share a data > dependency to run simultaneously.

"Futures" did they implement this with concurrent.futures (which also has a backport prior to Ptyhon 3.2)?

<comment><USER19> Relevant part:

> Operators: Operators are the building blocks of workflows. Conceptually, you > can think of an operator like a function within a program. In FBLearner > Flow, operators are the smallest unit of execution and run on a single > machine.

> Channels: Channels represent inputs and outputs, which flow between > operators within a workflow. All channels are typed using a custom type > system that we have defined.

I think this is related to the thoughts in the following essay: [https://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-NN-Types- FP/](https://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-NN-Types-FP/)

When you think about it. What do NNs fundamentally do (once trained)? Map inputs to outputs, right? So they behave like functions. In type theory functions are intensional and we explicitly construct them. With NNs we have our ML algorithm and construct them based on training data and feedback. With regular functions we have explicitly constructed A -> B. Let's represent NNs as A ~> B. Let's represent channels as A||B. Say we have two operators: E ~> F and G ~> H then to join them,

So E ~> F||G ~> H we'd have to construct a channel F||G.

At least this is how I imagine they mean things! Corrections from FB most welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They should consider a better name.. Flow is already taken by a different FB team - [https://github.com/facebook/flow](https://github.com/facebook/flow)

<comment><USER21> It's FBLearner Flow, not Flow

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice! This is a product that I have contributed to while at fb, and it's cool to see it getting some attention.</comment>


The Internet We Know Is Built on Hacks - <AUTHOR> https://una.im/internet-is-hacks/ <comment><USER2> Evolution is built on hacks. Society is built on hacks. Mathematics was not built on hacks. Since Gödel mathematics is built on hacks too. Aint nobody has time build sg right instead of to be working. Hack the hacking world.

</comment><comment><USER3> The internet is built on hacks, it's just that what's listed here aren't the hacks: Mostly, they are deliberate design decisions that made sense when they were made, but don't now.

Well, except the CSS stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> Being able to listen to a blog post is a nice hack for keeping my attention. It's actually an additional feature that adds value to a blog.</comment>


Show HN: Target almost all platforms at once with react native - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amoghbanta/reactNativeEverywhere <comment><USER2> I really like React for the web, but after trying React Native it reminded me a lot of Cordova/Phonegap. You'll quickly run into requirements for which you need to install a plugin, and another plugin, and another... of questionable quality and low maintenance activity. So currently I'll stick to just building separate native apps, which also means no cross platform concessions have to be made.

<comment><USER3> I've actually had the opposite experience. I've built roughly a half dozen cross platforms mobile apps with React Native now and it has been a really fantastic experience. For the most part, most of the native modules I have consumed from the community have been high quality and are maintained sufficiently (merging PRs, responding to issues within a day or two). Conveniently the surface area of native modules is small, so it becomes trivial to fix or extend them should you run into issues. Building cross platform UI is trivial- between fixed and flex layouts with absolute and relative positioning there hasn't been anything yet I could not build. Apps ranged from brochure-style marketing "apps" with forms and wizards to a application that had augmented reality features using only React Native and without having to create a native module myself (although I have contributed to quite a few now). Recently I have been using `react-native-web` as this repository shows for mobile applications that don't have native module requirements to build cross platform native mobile and web applications that are responsive to all devices (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, 4k). It's become so easy to do this that I'd probably hesitate to write a standard web application again (given the requirements aligned); doubly so if there was even a remote possibility that the client would want a native mobile version eventually.

EDIT: If you're interested in React Native but don't necessarily want to go through the (very short) motions of getting set up with a local environment, give the web player[1] a shot or take a moment to play with the interactive documentation[2].

[1]: [http://dabbott.github.io/react-native-web- player/](http://dabbott.github.io/react-native-web-player/)

[2]: [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/flexbox.html](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/flexbox.html)

<comment><USER4> Can you recommend any tutorials/components for making Android UIs with minimal effort? I'm pretty comfortable with JS as a language, but have very little UI experience and my previous attempt to make a simple Android messaging UI was quite painful.

<comment><USER3> Either of these[1][2] will get you a good distance. Also, check out Awesome React Native[3] for a curated list.

Even if you use one of these component libraries though you will just be deferring learning the basics of React Native layout and decorative styles until later on. It's an unavoidable tax you will have to pay one way or another. Thankfully it's not too hard- the documentation is explicit about what style properties apply to which components (example: `View`[4]) and the `StyleSheet`[5] helper will bark at you if you use invalid styles.

[1]: [http://nativebase.io/](http://nativebase.io/)

[2]: [https://github.com/xotahal/react-native-material- ui](https://github.com/xotahal/react-native-material-ui)

[3]: [https://github.com/jondot/awesome-react- native](https://github.com/jondot/awesome-react-native)

[4]: [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/view.html#style](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/view.html#style)

[5]: [https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/stylesheet.html](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/stylesheet.html)

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, each of those libraries are just 100% JavaScript, not utilising the native Material Design components within Android, and thus end up being _really_ slow, particularly when remote debugging and rendering lots of those components on screen at once.

There really needs to be a library which bridges the native Android (and iOS) modules and React Native, in order for React Native to be more useful and used more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> to be clear, CURRENTLY "almost all platforms" is android, ios, and web...

The TODO list includes

* support for macOS(react-native-macOS) * support for Windows (react-native-windows) * improve webpack config and add media queries for web * Add example projects for each branch

</comment><comment><USER7> How are the arguments against React Native today? A few months back we still had a lot of people saying that it underperforms with super complex stuff (ie. Enterprise Grade stuff). Has it improved?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad to see more projects like this popping up.

React-as-paradigm is more powerful than any one particularly implementation; it's a wonderful way to describe user interfaces, and using cross-platform primitives is a perfect way to abstract design systems.

~= full disclosure - coworker is working on [https://github.com/lelandrichardson/react- primitives](https://github.com/lelandrichardson/react-primitives), which I've used a bunch

<comment><USER3> While I can see what the author is attempting to do (define a common set of root components that all platforms can use with some preference libs thrown in such as from the `Animated` project), it seems like this has already been done (`react-native-web` aims to match what is present in `react-native` already) and as such this is really more of a personal micro-framework. Or is the goal to have this set of components be the base that all platforms rest on? Am I missing something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very basic question: am I thinking of these the right way?

React.js is the view layer of a web app/page. ReactNative is a whole framework for making an app (that you could call back to a database, do some logic on the data and display it to the user.)

Is that right?

<comment><USER10> React.js is the view layer for a website, ReactNative is the view layer for a native app. In both instances you could call back to a database, but React doesn't provide any of those abstractions. Neither is really a full featured framework, and both focus on the View.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. My point of reference was Appcelerator Titanium: which is a js, cross-platform framework. Is ReactNative a "view" for something like that? Or are they pretty similar.

<comment><USER10> Someone else may be better at explaining the differences than me, as neither are my area of expertise. My understanding is that they both provide a view layer, and Titanium provides more of an everything-included framework so you don't have to touch any native code. With React, it provides an easy to use view layer that helps you create compositions of components and layouts, but it's expected at some point you'll want/need to build things in native code. It's also expected that the overall architecture of the app to be provided by the developer. This gives more flexibility to break out of React or add it to existing projects where its helpful.

Without having more experience with Titanium, its hard for me to say if you can use ReactNative along side it, but my gut says they probably have a different way of doing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ironically, you can target all platforms instantly already. With nothing but a text editor. It's called the web.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks good! For the clojurescript ecossystem, it would be a great base project for something like re-natal with broader platforms support: [https://github.com/drapanjanas/re-natal](https://github.com/drapanjanas/re- natal)

I was thinking yesterday about fork it and add more platforms for my own use, now I try your project first and create a thin clojurescript layer over it, tks :)

</comment><comment><USER13> React Native has been moving to give common modules common names across iOS and Android. That seems great, because it's easier to share code. I wonder why there isn't a simple set of wrappers for HTML widgets, using the React Native names, so you can also share code with web. Does this project do that?

<comment><USER3> It's the opposite - instead of React Native mapping HTML elements into appropriate native components, websites are just another platform target. You write your components using normal React Native components (Views, Text, ScrollView, etc.) and the `react-native-web` platform converts that into structurally (but not semantically) compatible HTML.

The nice thing is, this is how all platform targets work. It's the platform extension's responsibility to map React Native to their platform. In the case of layout mapping, this typically involves mapping to the `Yoga`[1] layout engine on that platform.

[1]: [https://github.com/facebook/yoga](https://github.com/facebook/yoga)

<comment><USER13> Excellent, yes, that's exactly what I want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks cool, although it appears a bit young still.

I'm looking for a cross platform (>= iOS+Android) mobile solution, so I can write a web app once, and deploy it easily as a mobile app on multiple platforms. The app will be very simple, almost proof-of-concept-like; I basically just need something not ugly that can connect to the RESTful app backend.

I've been Googling for the past couple of weeks, and so far [https://coronalabs.com/](https://coronalabs.com/) and [https://dropsource.com/](https://dropsource.com/) look interesting, but I would love to hear from someone with experience.

<comment><USER15> I looked at those as well (plus options like Ionic) and decided to go for React Native.

Coronalabs is all about graphics and therefore well suited for games. They do offer some very basic widgets, which are not native (which is ok, but you probably have to create some yourself, for example they no lists if I remember correctly).

Dropsource focuses on offering the same dev experience for both iOS and Android. But you still have to build each platform separately. Its a bit like React Native without the cross-platform option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, I've been considering learning React recently, and this is a reason for it. How native is react native? Does it use the platform's look and feel or essentially feel like a clunky web browser, more similar to NW.js or electron apps.

<comment><USER17> [https://facebook.github.io/react-native/](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/)

 _> With React Native, you don't build a "mobile web app", an "HTML5 app", or a "hybrid app". You build a real mobile app that's indistinguishable from an app built using Objective-C or Java. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps. You just put those building blocks together using JavaScript and React._

You can use native code, the JS components render to native things -- there's a lot to it, and I'm sure I can't explain it properly, better to just check out their guide.

Also, React Native was not built to be used on all the platforms -- I remember when RN for android (I believe IOS support was out first?), people started asking (of course) whether they could write code that would run on both platforms and the tools team said something to the effect of "the code will look similar, but will not be the same".

Of course, that doesn't stop someone from writing components that compile to other components or something or writing some sort of cross-platform group of components on top.

<comment><USER16> Huh, cool, I'll definitely check this out more then. Hopefully something like this will catch on and replace the browser based, non-native UIs that seem far too popular these days.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, this tech is definitely pretty amazing. I'm not the biggest fan of facebook so I'll bash them a little bit here -- their biggest success with this was envisioning it (or bolting on) the fact that the react model wasn't built only for the DOM. Originally React & ReactDOM were the same (maybe it was temporary), but when they started to target more platforms, they split them out and that's been a changer as you can see now.

Honestly I think companies that opt for a browser-based non-native UI do those for reasons that won't change just due to RN existing. Once developers get comfortable with RN, and start offering themselves as "we do native apps in half the time, give your users better-than-mobile-browser-site performance", I think the companies that were content to jam a webpage into an app will start improving.

Also note this article with a pretty good criticism of React (I find those are lacking these days): [https://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things- change/](https://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things-change/)

tldr; Turns out react is a little bit similar to a thing called COM, but maybe we're better at this pattern now and things won't become spaghetti

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Emoji in the commit messages. I've seen a few projects doing this now and I don't know what to think.

What _should_ I think?

Is this best practice?

<comment><USER19> Emojis are an effective way to communicate something in a small space. Ideal for commit messages.

<comment><USER20> Premature optimization in commit messages?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really don't understand why nativescript is not getting more coverage.

I guess many people on HN are working at FB....

<comment><USER3> NativeScript is pretty neat, for sure. I'm guessing the reason it does not get nearly as much exposure on HN is because it's quite a bit less mature with a community at best an order of magnitude smaller than React Native. Or it could be that everyone here is working at Facebook...

For those interested, NativeScript is Telerik's answer to React Native and tends to leverage Angular JS as the front end framework. One of the fundamental differences between the two are in how they give you access to device/platform functionality. React Native forces you to drop down to native code when you need access to device or platform functionality not exposed through their framework API. Conversely, NativeScript attempts to expose the device and platform APIs to your JS code. This difference has a very real convenience/performance trade-off.

<comment><USER3> I should mention that developer ergonomics is another key differentiator. NativeScript exists for Telerik's bottom line. For example, instead of providing a nice HMR facility, they invested thousands of hours into building a pay-for cloud offering (AppBuilder LiveSync). They are a company and I don't fault them for monetizing a significant investment they made in this platform, but when looking at the available options this is a negative.

<comment><USER15> I had exactly the same thought: Telerik is a tool company so must make money from nativescript (no problem with that) while Facebook can affort to make RN into something really good without it ever hurting its bottomline. For them its an investment to attract new devs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Few questions:

Status of this project. Can I use it for production?

What are the differences from other starter kits like Este, which also could be used for building react-native and react apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> hi yatsyk, The project is in a early stage, I've been using it in my recent production project, depends on your requirements and complexity if it'd be suitable for you in production. I also wrote a blog about it, hope this helps you: [https://medium.com/@amoghbanta/write-once-use-everywhere- wit...](https://medium.com/@amoghbanta/write-once-use-everywhere-with-react- native-d6e575efe58e#.mdgwy05q6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why would you post something thats not even done? React-native was built to be a better alternative to Cordova, it's not like you wrote it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Demo apps or screenshots can help

<comment><AUTHOR> working on it, will soon be having some demos :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> no ty!</comment>


Show HN: tld-list.com – 818 Top Level Domains and Their Cheapest Registrars - <AUTHOR> http://tld-list.com

<comment><USER2> Listing is not accurate, prices for some domains are way too high (even twice the price I've seen elsewhere). I would guess someone is making bucks from advertising Hover and Gandi...

<comment><AUTHOR> > I would guess someone is making bucks from advertising Hover and Gandi...

That'd be nice :)

Feel free to suggest more registrars to add, right now it's limited to 7 major registrars that have transparent/up-front pricing.

<comment><USER3> AJ from Gandi here.

For the record, we found out about tld-list.com via this thread. We don't pay for advertising as a matter of principle. We don't even have an affiliate program (though we get so many requests for it that we're considering it).

@timbowhite: Nice work on the site. Feel free to contact us, we'd love to send you some swag! Is the code open source, by the way?

<comment><USER4> Unrelated to the topic, but has Gandi decided to stop hijacking users domains and holding them hostage? I had Gandi seize a fairly decent domain of mine for "abuse" (Which is funny because the domain wasn't even in use) and communicating with the support was just a truly horrible experience, they wouldn't even tell me what the domain was actually suspended for.

<comment><USER3> Not sure what you mean by "holding them hostage," but we don't take down domains without a good reason. In the rare case that we do suspend a domain, we always tell you why. If that's not what happened in your case, please contact us or reply here with your ticket number so we can look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure how accurate this list is. For example, .al is sold for $16.49/year by dot.al vs what they have listed for which is $395/year with gandi.net

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice! I see you even included your sources. However, unless I'm mistaken, for the "cheapest" part, you get info from a few big names (uniteddomains, gandi, etc), compare between them and then return which is the cheap of these?

So it means a cheaper, albeit less known, registrar might exist for any given domain, correct?

Edit: Replying to myself, I think I'm right because for some domains, you list no registrar.

For instance, .alsace [1] has a "No results found :(" for registrars, while a quick google search gives 1and1 [2] as a registrar for this tld

2nd edit: it appears Gandi also registers .alsace so I don't really know...

I found this list of accrited registrars [3] that you could probably use, but it doesn't seem to be up to date since .alsace is not included in it.

For those curious enough, registry for .alsace is [4]

[1] [http://tld-list.com/tld/alsace](http://tld-list.com/tld/alsace)

[2] [http://www.1and1.fr/alsace-domaine](http://www.1and1.fr/alsace-domaine)

[3] [https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accredited- list.html](https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accredited-list.html)

[4][http://www.mondomaine.alsace/](http://www.mondomaine.alsace/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. Prices for the first iteration of this project is limited to a handful of major registrars[1]. I'll be adding more over the upcoming weeks (suggestions welcome).

[1] [http://tld-list.com/registrars](http://tld-list.com/registrars)

<comment><USER7> NameCheap is awesome.

<comment><USER8> I second NameCheap

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this one of the [https://domcomp.com](https://domcomp.com) affiliates or do you actually scrape the data yourself from the registrars? DomComp has been running since September and monitizes itself through affiliate links to the registrars but also allows other sites to use their system for a cut of the affiliate dollars.

Just a note, your affiliate link to NameCheap returns a 404 error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, 404 fixed.

Site isn't associated with domcomp, sources for data is provided at [http://tld-list.com/sources](http://tld-list.com/sources)

</comment></comment><comment> ryan-c I'm not sure what "no restrictions" is supposed to mean here - I see TLDs that have local presence requirements listed as "no restrictions". For example .eu[1]

has "no restrictions" and "Restricted to legal and natural persons in European Union member states. Previously unofficially used for sites in the Basque language, but now .eus is in official use."

Some clarification would be nice. Otherwise, great site.

It would also be nice if you cataloged providers/pricing for "local contact" and "local presence" services. I got a domain under an obscure ccTLD that was restricted to residents/local businesses a few years ago and it took me several hours to find a company that would take care of that for me.

1\. [http://tld-list.com/tld/eu](http://tld-list.com/tld/eu)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll fix the "no restrictions" label for the .eu TLD.

But in general, "no restrictions" means there are no rules as to who can register the TLD, or how the registered domain has to be used.

<comment><USER10> Actually, most ccTLDs are location restricted. Google keeps a list of what they call "Generic ccTLDs" which are ccTLDs that anyone can (and usually does) purchase for sites outside of the geographical area associated with that ccTLD. This includes most popular domain hack TLDs like .io .fm .ly etc

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hello! Nice site. I'm the developer of www.domcomp.com - we present similar data of domain prices. Some people here have already mentioned us.

I guess we are 'competing', but genuinely wish you good luck with your site!

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really neat, thanks for doing this. My only wish would be to not cap it at 20 per page. I'd love to scroll through all of them, but i'm not gonna click on the next arrow 41 times. :-(

<comment><AUTHOR> Added a "results per page" option, goes up to 500.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Similar service which I find a bit easier to use (and faster, although it might just be HN load right now): [https://www.domcomp.com/](https://www.domcomp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Simple but useful idea, surprised it has not been done before.

I especially like the sunrise feature.

Obviously you have your work cut out (a) finding all the registrars and (b) keeping the prices up to date. You can make money as an affiliate for some of the registrars so maybe it would be worth your time.

The next step is a feature to check a name for registration against all of those domains.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a really cool concept and solves a need, but I don't think the listings are super accurate.

I registered [http://three.do](http://three.do), my to-do list app that helps you get your top three priorities done for the day, for $150 on 101domain.com, which is $100 cheaper than the $250 registration from Gandi.net.

Is there a way to alert the site of cheaper alternatives?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. For now, you can either post here or message me of other registrars you'd like to see listed.

There's a list of registrars and features[1] that I'm working on, I've added 101domain.com to it.

[1] [http://tld-list.com/devlog](http://tld-list.com/devlog)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great idea! How do you plan to keep the data current?

It would be nice to be able to display more than 20 TLDs per page. Maybe more like 100-200?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll add custom result count per page to my TODO list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like it, i would like to be able to order the data by price, Cheapest Registrar etc. Very good job.

</comment><comment><USER18> Namecheap is not the cheapest .ca registrar, there are several Canadian providers in the under $10 range/$10. Such as paylessdomains.ca ($9.95) and netfirms ($9.95) and canspace ($9.75)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll look into adding those registrars' pricing. Right now the site is limited to a handful of major registrars[1].

[1] [http://tld-list.com/registrars](http://tld-list.com/registrars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there seriously going to be a ".google" TLD?

[http://tld-list.com/tld/google](http://tld-list.com/tld/google)

Or are some of the entries just proposals?

<comment><AUTHOR> All the listed TLD's have been delegated and are in the DNS root zone db[1].

[1] [https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db](https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db)

<comment><USER19> Ahhh, I see, "Charleston Road Registry Inc" must be Google's registrar child company. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Feature requests:

\- Order by price

\- Filter by limit the number of characters in domain (I.e. only show domains with 2 chars)

\- The prices at all the registrars selling the domain, for comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like em, on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> These features have now been added.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice, it's interesting to see how wildly the prices vary. Out of interest, it would be nice to be able to sort the various columns.

<comment><USER22> Why do the prices vary so much? I can understand trends like _.io_ , but why does _.iq_ cost $660?

<comment><USER23> .iq is the ccTLD of Iraq. I suspect the price is mainly the result of the organizations involved in the country having an unrealistic idea of what prices are appropriate.

<comment><USER18> Or maybe because they don't sell a lot of domains and need to provide a whole array of staff to service the registry and stuff. So they charge a little more then your average .com which sells millions a day.

Not everything is because people are unrealistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I upvoted this assuming you could sort by price-- the only reason anybody would use a gTLD is because it's cheaper, after all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - just added sorting for the price and TLD columns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very cool, I've been looking around for something like this. I have a feeling i'll be using this frequently. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER26> Can I sort all tlds for a cheapest registrar?

</comment><comment><USER27> I hate most of these TLDs. All it does is allow more domains to be registered by spammers and scammers. It was enough that a company had to buy a .com, .net, .org and maybe a few country specific domains to protect their name, now we need to register almost a thousand or some scammer will sit on company- name.ninja just because they can?

Biggest money grab scam to date by icann, et el.

<comment><USER28> To some extent, the existence of all these TLDs makes it _more_ reasonable to just buy the one domain name you want and ignore the rest. If anyone actually tries to register your business name as a domain for the purposes of confusion, you can challenge the registration. But it no longer necessarily makes sense to proactively buy multiple domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've also seen better prices for .ae and .at

</comment><comment><USER30> local registers often have very cheap prices for local TLDs for example for .it, gidinet.it has a way lower price than $14.99</comment>


Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Field Upended by Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/02/28/geographic-information-systems-gis-field-upended-neural-networks/ <comment><USER2> Is there any way to get a transcript of the talk instead of having to listen to it?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a beautifully done commenting system out there? - <AUTHOR>

I was thinking long and hard about this for the last week - there are 2 main systems out there 1. Reddit - Tree where indentation determines where you are in the visibility of a new user based on your "score" 2. Yelp - Flat wall of text which is not very usable 3. The rest - Disqus, forums et al which have some variation of this but are not very usable.<p>Is there anything better out there for documenting comments in a usable way? <comment><USER2> I have been thinking about more participatory/active comments and discussion chains, on more general audience sites, a lot of comments are no more than quick validations of comments and the sort.

How about have a vote on comments; so if someone puts up something really witty readers can signify applause or some other positive. Likewise for troll comments it could have boo votes.

Might be able to do comment filtering, where only titles or less are shown on downvoted participants based on commenter's popularity track record, be able to review your votes to find comments you liked in the past, etc. Maybe discover you are a fan of a popular commenter.

I was thinking of this for a mobile based discussion to reduce noise... Always there's the issue of folks gaming the system.

</comment><comment><USER3> It may help you if you explained what your definition of usable means in terms of feature design or comment display.</comment>


Street pastors calm down drunken aggro after closing time - <AUTHOR> http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/what-do-you-do-when-theres-drunken-aggro-after-closing-time-send-in-the-street-pastors/ <comment><USER2> > Street pastors calm down drunken aggros after closing time

At the risk of opening a Lego-built can of worms, the word aggro should not be pluralised to aggros, as it refers to the activity, not its practitioners.

<comment><USER3> It's a British colloquialism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting point about the difficulty police have in being a "friendly, neutral presence". Is it possible to replicate the "street pastors'" success through police presence, or does the uniform elicit a response that antagonizes potential troublemakers?

<comment><USER5> I think a uniform is fine, but they have to really be a certain kind of people who see you doing something illegal and be friendly. Otherwise people will treat them with the same suspicion.

<comment><USER6> I believe dkokelley meant could the police achieve the same result or does their _police_ uniform cause a response among the drinking public that the street pastor uniform does not. In my experience working in the ambulance service, there is a threshold of aggro above which the police struggle to de- escalate (but can still overpower). I can't say if street pastors can do any better as I haven't worked alongside them.</comment></comment></comment>


HTML 5 gets forked up - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/23/html_5_fork/

<comment><USER2> «All of which leaves just one question: what has the W3C ever done for us?»

It has given us good specs fixed in stone you could develop against and be sure that your code could still work in the next decade, thing XML or XSLT. Stable specs are also good for legislators and regulators, for they have the ability to pinpoint names and versions like "The minimum accessibility level for public websites is WCAG 2.0 level AA" instead of "all public websites must have a minimum level of accessibility".

We can debate whether the W3C model is good for a spec like HTML that is subject to so many business interests, but what standardisation model has been good for many other specs.

<comment><USER3> "It has given us good specs fixed in stone you could develop against and be sure that your code could still work in the next decade"

A lot of the W3C specs are actually so poorly specified that none of the browsers can even figure out how to implement them. E.g. in CSS the width of a pixel is defined relative to the length of each user's arm.

<comment><USER4> > CSS the width of a pixel is defined relative to the length of each user's > arm.

I had to see this for myself to believe it.

"The reference pixel is the visual angle of one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 96dpi and a distance from the reader of an arm's length. For a nominal arm's length of 28 inches, the visual angle is therefore about 0.0213 degrees. For reading at arm's length, 1px thus corresponds to about 0.26 mm (1/96 inch)."

Source: <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/>

<comment><USER3> Seriously, it's pretty messed up. Maybe IE6 didn't actually have a float drop error, it's just that my arms were too fucking long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The actual mailing list post is much more informative in my opinion: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg- archive/20...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg- archive/2012Jul/0119.html)

The "living standard" model is explained here: [https://plus.google.com/107429617152575897589/posts/NZBJe6Jj...](https://plus.google.com/107429617152575897589/posts/NZBJe6Jjt1f)

<comment><USER6> It lacks the great Monty Python references, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be sure, this isn't a perfect result. Having specifications that can change is A Bad Thing. But having a standards body that is utterly unable to keep up with the times is arguably worse, as they end up being totally irrelevant. Look at HTML5- no-one is going to wait until 2014, when the standard is finally ratified. "The Standard" is what we're all using.

</comment><comment><USER8> As long as chrome, safari, firefox and opera stick together, the web will move foreward.

<comment><USER9> Webkit is already a dominant rendering engine (36% plurality share) used on multiple platforms. Ignoring IE, which has historical problems of its own, Firefox is the only popular browser that doesn't rely on Webkit.

Take a look at this graph, and mentally add Chrome, Safari, and 'Mobile': [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browser...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_\(Source_StatCounter\).svg)

While Webkit has advantages, and while I happily use Chrome for most purposes, I dislike the idea that a single implementation can become the _de facto_ standard for proper rendering, perhaps even more so than the official spec.

1995 was almost twenty years ago. Not ten minutes ago, I tried to use a website which told me it required IE 6.0+ or Firefox. Do we really want to move to the days where websites will boast a 'Best viewed with Webkit' button?

<comment><USER10> Why would you ignore IE in this context? There are four engines in use, each with millions of users. WebKit is only way ahead in mobile, but it's only going to lose share from now on.

<comment><USER11> Gonna have to bite; why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting to see Google described as a "text ad giant".

</comment><comment><USER13> This is more like a branch than a fork.</comment>


Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/28/435583328/episode-647-hard-work-is-irrelevant <comment><USER2> One thing where the Netflix system breaks down is for some reason managers are never found to be useless or relevant. It becomes a small number of individual contributors trying to support a larger and larger management base. The real reason is political. The people at the top fear people rising through the ranks so they execute people like a dictatorship. At my previous job everyone with more than 15 years of experience was pushed out and people with no experience at all were brought in. Now, no one can make the case that people with no experience were not useless. They had no skills. If it were a pro sports team, it would be like bringing in little league players. The idea is the little league-ers are so excited about being in the big leagues they don't complain about the inept coaches.

It makes perfect political sense to have high turnover. What managers will typically do is turn over the workforce, but also scale down the thing they are trying to accomplish to meet the capabilities of their little league-ers. All they want is to be able to claim a 'success' so they can get promoted. They cut the workforce down, cut the work down, but when they build the n-millionth + 1 music service or chat app they claim it is a revolution. Executive management says, "wow you created a music service, here have $500k" and the process starts again. No one has the cojones to point out that the company has inadvertently started to play little league because the executives are trying to ride successes as well.

<comment><USER3> >>The real reason is political. The people at the top fear people rising through the ranks so they execute people like a dictatorship. At my previous job everyone with more than 15 years of experience was pushed out and people with no experience at all were brought in.

Actually, the real reason is usually financial. People with 15 years of experience tend to cost a lot more than new hires fresh out of college.

<comment><USER4> Assuming that both groups are competent for their level of experience: If you can't make more profit out of someone with 15 years experience than you can out of someone who is fresh out of college, then I really question how good you are at running a team. Sure, they're more expensive, but they can get a lot more done a lot faster.

<comment><USER5> Many companies are inefficient at evaluating people right. Someone could be very experienced, but in very wrong ways (e.g. playing politics); not all, or maybe even most, ICs aspire to get better and better at their craft over time. There is plenty of dead weight.

So in a sense you are right; it's just management is not very sure which experienced persons are worth it or not. Whereas that new grad is all potential: it's an opportunity to start over again and do it right this time (but they never do of course....).

<comment><USER4> I think we'd mostly agree. Though, I'd note that it's not just a consequence of some people having limited aspirations. If you're interested in working with good people, you should be coaching your staff to develop their skills. That process makes it fairly apparent to you who's a good performer and who isn't, and who wants to improve and who doesn't.

If someone's getting to fifteen years, for example, and only then discovering that they've got to make cuts and don't _know_ who to keep. Jesus Christ. That almost implies that they've made no investment, beyond money, in that relationship whatsoever. Which, considering people are expensive, is a bit like saying they've spent fifteen years burning the company's money.

<comment><USER5> Most big corps are exactly like that though: they don't really invest in their people beyond the paycheck, they sort of go with the flow until something traumatic happens and they need to cut people. What is even worse is that the high performers get tired of the flow and will simply leave, leaving behind what is more likely to be dead weight. Much of the performance management regimes that come from HR are to avoid these problems, but it really takes good people managers with continuous clear goals from above...and good luck with that!

Frankly, it's amazing that the system works at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually found this.. disturbing.

I get that sometimes you have to fire people because you are running out of money. What I can't agree with is that you can just fire people and it's fine because people's careers are long and this is just another spot in their "journey". Sure, maybe a person will work at many companies over their life.

On the other hand, people work to make a living, sometimes for an entire family, and suddenly not having work can affect someone's livelihood very negatively for obvious reasons. Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes as a boss/manager you have to make difficult decisions for the sake of the company. But, you're just lying to yourself if you think it's not a big deal to fire someone.

<comment><USER7> I'd agree if we weren't talking about a company renowned for having among the highest base salaries in the business. Engineers who go to Netflix have a lot of other options and should know what culture they're joining.

<comment><USER8> I knew that Netflix paid well, but I didn't know that they operated like this. After hearing the story about laying off the tech team to move to AWS...well, let's just say that the salaries I've heard wouldn't be enough. They recruit engineers like crazy, but they still couldn't find a use for their existing, high-performing team? That seems insane.

The whole time I was listening to this, I was thinking: if a company is going to treat me like a _de facto_ contractor, shouldn't I just ask for the (much higher) hourly risk-adjusted rate I'd demand as a contractor? Why bother with the charade of full-time employment at all?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely, ask for the rate you'd demand as a contractor. Netflix might actually be willing to pay it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Netflix' long term view is "Look at the bigger picture" and yet their turnover rate is an abysmal 20%-25%. I fail to see how this is looking at the bigger picture.

I also fail to see how you can feel _passion for Netflix_ (one of their company values) when, as an employee, you are basically treated like a commodity.

I guess this kind of culture must be great for C-level execs like Ms. McCord, but not so great for run of the mill engineers or salespeople that favor stability for themselves and their families over a 2% increase in Netflix' bottom line.

<comment><USER11> When you work for a company with an HR attitude like Netflix, you don't go in expecting to stay there for the next 15 years. It gives you as an employee the chance to make a pretty good living and more importantly sharpen your skills so that when you're finished there it's easy to move on. And if then you want to have a nice stable job which you can expect to stay in for the next decade, you can.

Investment banking and high-end consulting have worked on a simpler principle for a long time. When you're young you work crazy hours and get really at your job. Once you're no longer able to do that, you leave for a calmer environment.

<comment> UK-AL Having worked with a lot of consultants from the big consultantancy companies I would not say they're good at they're job.

It's essentially salesman and confidence skills. They're generally no better than in house people.

<comment><USER3> >>It's essentially salesman and confidence skills. They're generally no better than in house people.

Sorry, but this is a very ignorant thing to say. The fact of the matter is that there's different types of consulting at different points along the problem-complexity spectrum.

At the low end, a consultant is no different than a contractor, and the point is not to hire those who are _better_ than in-house people, but _more efficient_. For example, your in-house IT guy may have the skills to configure Kerberos, but maybe you'd rather have him work on a more important project (or maybe he is busy fighting fires, as helpdesk people usually are, and doesn't have the time), so you hire an outside contractor to do it, and he or she can get it done a lot faster (and with fewer errors) because they have done it many times before.

At the high end (which you don't sound like you have experience with), consultants are highly specialized and they are hired to solve very difficult technical problems that are of great importance to the firm. These problems tend to be well outside the competency of in-house people. For example, imagine a scenario where the firm is the target of a lawsuit and they need to perform e-discovery to gather each and every business record pertaining to the subject matter from a large variety of sources and office locations across the country. There are consulting companies that specialize in this type of complex service, and they charge very high fees for that reason.

So yeah, it's not "essentially salesman and confidence skills". It may look like that from the outside, but it just isn't.

<comment> UK-AL I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc

They essentially run dedicated tools against computers and report and summarize?

The real technical skills are the people who wrote those tools.

I was thinking of applying but the recruitment process says they look for social skills, and not hard core techies. That put me off.

I.e they rather get history graduates , with social skills and teach them how to use the tools than say super skilled computer science graduate without salesmanship skills.

That says to me that technical skills arnt that important, its the sales part that is is important.

I know people that did apply, and after talking to them, its mostly writing SQL scripts, bash/powershell scripts, running dedicated forensics tools I.e not 'really' hard technical skills

Most of the value added for them comes from proposals, reports(templates) and presenting it.

<comment><USER3> >>I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc

The big 4 accounting firms work in the middle of the complexity spectrum, and sometimes even towards the lower end. There's two ways this is apparent:

1\. They are able to use dedicated tools other people have written. Those tools exist because the problems they solve have been faced with many other companies before, and someone sat down and developed a product for it.

2\. They employ a lot of juniors (which is why they are big), and are able to offload a lot of the routine tasks in a project to those juniors (called "leverage" in professional services). Unless you're very high up in your organization yourself (e.g. C-level), it's likely that those juniors are the "consultants" you see. The types of tasks you describe (writing simple scripts and creating PowerPoint presentations) are exactly the types of things a junior would be charged with.

In contrast, high-end consultancies tend to be small, and they consist almost entirely of highly skilled and experienced people, who are often times partners or equivalent. They often have to write their own tools and develop their own processes and best practices due to the relatively unique nature of the issues they tackle.

Don't get me wrong: all good consultants are also very good salespeople. They have to be, since consulting is a very people-oriented business. But to say that consulting is about sales and confidence is a gross oversimplification.

<comment> UK-AL Boutique consultancies and the big consultancies tend be very different things.

Boutique consultancies tend to be a few skilled people who have known each other for years who decide start their own thing togother. They probably used to be in-house people who specialised in ERP, security, databases or whatever then started their own company. They have probably have doing it for years, and have geniune interest in the subject. I have respect for that.

In fact I've worked for companies like that. But as programmer writing those tools you talk about, and for deep technical problems the consultants can't solve. The consultants would then try sell and use those tools along with consutlancy services.

However when people think of consultancies they usually think of mckinseys, accentures, PWCs of the world.

They grab prestigious graduates, teach them how do routine work on training courses, then hire them out for a lot of money. I don't get that. I highly doubt these guys could compete with an in-house guy who has been doing that stuff for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oooh, how I love it when out of shape tech industry people use professional sports metaphors without understanding the difference between 1) a professional sports tournament system and 2) employment in a growing industry.

In 1) there is an artificially limited number of slots (and money) in the "big leagues" that little leaguers are clamoring for. In 2) there is generally a shortage of people relative to the available jobs.

Applying the professional sports metaphor to category 2 merely demonstrates that as a manager you are a f---t--d, which is probably why they have ridiculously bad turnover (a HQ location that might as well be in Siberia being another).

</comment><comment><USER13> The slideshow referred to in the podcast: [http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664](http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664)

<comment><USER14> Definitely worth flipping thru. I found stuff I agreed with, stuff I disagreed with. Much to think about. One of my favorites:

       Great workplace is not espresso, lush benefits,
       sushi lunches, grand parties, or nice offices

And the not-so-subtle dig against stack ranking:

       We avoid "top 30%" and "bottom 10%"
       rankings amongst employees

       We want employees to help each other,
       and they do

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to get some insights from Netflix engineers instead of their PR machine. How do you like working at Netflix?

<comment><USER15> This has been asked/answered before. check this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8919343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8919343)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for posting that - adds some context and color to what is essentially a PR story.

<comment><USER17> What about the story seemed like PR?

<comment><USER6> I thought it was bizarre how one of the hosts of the show just kept defending their behavior and kept making excuses for them. It's like they tried to spin it in a positive light even when the female host remarked and how cruel their practices are.

Just my opinion of course, but I found it a bit strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is difficult to listen to, but that is how it is. We can see this as a meat-grinder or you can see as living organism shunning its weak-cells either way, this is how world works and there are people who went bankrupt because they have run companies like their families, and their workers could not help them to survive beyond a point. Netflix adds value, to its customers but for what ever weird reason or hypocrisy of me, I have cancelled my Netflix subscription. Well, I used their rule of thumb, Is Netflix really critical for my well being? No. Sayonara Netflix. I have moved one.

</comment><comment><USER19> hmm isn't this what people were mad at Amazon about? and now a story praising this type of work culture?

..unless i'm missing something

e: nevermind, they talk about a case of someone getting sick from overworking

<comment><USER20> It's not because you are not getting sick you are not suffering. Stress can have an invisible impact on your life.</comment></comment>


How to code a markdown blogging system in Go - <AUTHOR> http://blog.will3942.com/creating-blog-go

<comment><USER2> Would love to see something similar perhaps a part 2 on deploying this in the wild as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it, I'll try and do that at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The syntax highlighting in this article is nearly unreadable (light grey and yellow on bluish white).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed this I think!</comment></comment>


Why TLS 1.3 isn't ready yet - <AUTHOR> https://www.feistyduck.com/bulletproof-tls-newsletter/issue_33_why_tls_13_isnt_there_yet <comment><USER2> > However, it seems that changing TLS 1.3 in slight ways that make it look > more like TLS 1.2 may make it possible to bring the failure rate down to an > acceptable level. How these changes look is unclear, as it hasn't been > discussed in public.

Or they could name and shame the makers of such devices?

More than anything I worry that this could lead to some weakness being discovered in 1.3 later on because they're making these compromises to cater to lazy middle-box providers.

<comment><USER3> > lazy middle-box providers

It's not just the box providers, it's the customers doing in-house testing, scheduling CRs, and deploying the upgrades to dozens or even hundreds of devices that are inherently A) complex in their operation and B) cause outages if they're not perfectly stable.

On the vendor side of things, it can take a while to integrate such a substantial change to a complex device codebase in a stable way, and roll those changes in to a long-term support version that customers are willing to deploy.

There's also a significant risk for hardware vendors to build support for protocols before the spec is finalized - making customers upgrade inline hardware _twice_ is twice as difficult.</comment></comment>


Study finds work gender quotas weed out incompetent workers and inefficiencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/workplace-gender-quotas-incompetence-efficiency-business-organisations-london-school-economics-lse-a7797061.html <comment><USER2> According to the comments, income is used to represent income?</comment>


Jepsen: TiDB 2.1.7 - <AUTHOR> https://jepsen.io/analyses/tidb-2.1.7 <comment><USER2> PingCAP CTO here, I really enjoy the cooperation with Kyle this two months. I want to talk a little bit about my feelings. Before the "official" Jepsen test, TiDB has already written its own Jepsen test cases for a long time. Our past Jepsen test code has become a good starting point in this test. In addition, as a result, the test case written by the database developer will inevitably have some blind spots. This is even if you have your own Jepsen test passed, I still recommend you to do the official test by Kyle's team.

In the process of testing, we have no way to influence what Kyle tests. Usually, only Kyle will tell us when abnormal behaviour occurs. Our main job is to analyze the cause and then fix it. Here are some tips for recommending friends who want to do Jepsen test in the future:

1\. Carefully check your documentation before testing to make sure it is consistent with your database implementation.

2\. It is best for someone on the team to understand and build your own Jepsen test environment internally and test parallelly with the Kyle team.

3\. Simplified deployment process is very helpful

4\. Be sure the version of your DB before testing. Usually, you can select one when starting the test and select one before the end.

I really enjoy working with Kyle. I would say Kyle has a good sense of humor :), and I hopes to have another chance to cooperate Kyle and his team in the future! Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER3> @aphyr I love reading these discussions about Jepsen! How would an individual contributor get involved with Jepsen and contribute during free time? Is most of the work related to adding public Jepsen tests for each database or is there work available with the framework as well? I'd love to learn more about Jepsen and distributed systems testing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! There's work to do on both, and I encourage you to contribute to core if you like! We could really use performance improvements on the checkers --Knossos and set-full are great, but much more expensive than they need to be. It'd be nice to have a robust mechanism for adjusting CLOCK_MONOTONIC & friends. I don't have a good way to inject filesystem level faults, like simulated node crashes where non-fsynced data is lost. jepsen.control is plagued by what I think are race conditions in Jsch, which I've never had the chance to dig in and fix.

Writing tests is also great! Pick a system you like and dive in. There's a full tutorial ([https://github.com/jepsen- io/jepsen/tree/master/doc/tutorial](https://github.com/jepsen- io/jepsen/tree/master/doc/tutorial)) that walks you through designing and running a test from scratch.

<comment><USER4> Database hacker here. I have dreamed of a filesystem fault injection system like this: a fuse filesystem that just passes through to a real filesystem, but also writes a log of syscalls. Then a test mode that can simulate crashes at various points in the log history, with pages (of some size) flushed at random (or other settings) until fsync is issued and completes. This could be used for recovery testing, to looking for missing fsyncs and torn page resilience.

<comment><USER5> I'm currently working on a "scriptable strace" in Haskell that you can use to inject arbitrary faults via syscall modification.

[https://github.com/nh2/hatrace](https://github.com/nh2/hatrace)

I've used it so far to find and deterministically reproduce situations where the Haskell compiler and build tools wrote files in non-atomic/non-durable ways that would lead to failures when the machine was hard-rebooted at the wrong time.

An example test is [https://github.com/nh2/hatrace/blob/7300dbf2c/test/HatraceSp...](https://github.com/nh2/hatrace/blob/7300dbf2c/test/HatraceSpec.hs#L182-L229), and the compiler test is just below.

<comment><USER4> Nice! Yeah, syscall interception may be a better way to do this than fuse.

So, the thing I want is the ability to take a log (which probably also has checkpoints in it, I dunno) captured by normal operation of a database, and then run a super long slow test that puts the (fake) filesystem into a state as of various points along that log where some not-yet-fsync'd changes are lost, on a sector-by-sector basis (most systems rely on at least 512 sector pages being atomic, so you'd probably do it at that size). Then you'd test if the database can recover successfully and pass some sanity test at all those points along the log.

People do this kind of testing by pulling the power on busy databases. This would simulate pulling the power at a huge number of times, on a maximally non-forgiving filesystem/hardware (= 512 byte sector atomicity, flushed in random order).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great, I've been evaluating CockroachDB for a high-write data situation, and TiDB came up as an alternative. CRDB having a Jepsen test and TiDB not having one made the decision pretty favored to CRDB. Looks like I can really give both a look now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Most Jepsen reports seem to find glaring flaws, including subsystems that add complexity while reducing correctness, like the "auto-retry" features here, or novel consensus schemes that just aren't airtight and therefore technically don't work.

<comment><USER8> I think Bryan Cantrill put it well in one of his more recent talks. Jepsen reports used to be a lot more fun because projects made grand claims first, and then Jepsen came to actually test than. Now projects run Jepsen ahead of time to qualify their claims so there's less big GOTCHA! moments.

So, less fun but better quality products. A few more years and maybe Jepson won't find many flaws at all as they'll be identified in development using the same tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, but I should also note that many of the recent analyses I've published were on systems which wrote their own tests and missed significant errors. Like, "database loses updates frequently in normal operation" significant!

I think a bunch of factors are in play here. Sometimes vendors discover bugs with Jepsen, then adjust the test so that it passes, rather than fixing the underlying bug. Consul, IIRC, found errors with Jepsen, and adjusted a timeout parameter to prevent the test from observing concurrent primary nodes, which meant the test passed. The underlying problem was still there--but no longer visible. Sometimes you'll see people turn a workload that does a read-modify- write transaction into a single-statement update transaction, in such a way that the database can execute it atomically. That's still a legal and sensible test, but may not measure the same type of transactional isolation.

Other times, vendors write a custom checker, but haven't tested to make sure that it can catch the anomaly that it's supposed to. Maybe a checker is copy- pasted from another test I wrote for a different system which used different names or data structures to represent histories, so it executes successfully, but in a trivial way--maybe it fails to realize any elements were added to a set, so it assumes every read is legal, since all 0 elements are present!

Other times tests are correctly written, but only run for a short time--maybe the nemesis schedule they designed doesn't actually cause leader elections to take place, so you never observe that phase change in the system. Or the test only performs a handful of operations and sits idle until the end of the test. Or every request fails, and the test passes trivially, since we never observed an illegal result. Some of these mistakes I can address with better analyzers and prompting users with guided error messages. Others you have to qualitatively infer by looking at the graphs and histories. That's something I work on training people to do in my classes, but I haven't written good guides for it online yet.

And of course, there's a familiarity problem: with Jepsen, I've been working on and with this tool for six years, so I'm intimately familiar with its behavior and testing philosophy. So much of that knowledge is implicit and intuitionistic for me, and users who are adopting that tool fresh don't have the benefit of that experience! It's something you can build with time, and I can help transfer with writing and teaching. Working on it! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a pretty disappointing result.

I've noted TiDB's weak transaction isolation guarantees before, which were not well documented. In particular, they claimed phantom reads were not possible, which this test shows isn't true.

That said, it looks like these issues aren't fundamental design problems and can be fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think these particular phantoms are likely to be fixed--they're legal under SI, and that's all TiDB is intended to provide, at least right now. They might do serializability later though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great news. The only blocker is lack of FK constraints. I know this is a performance issue, but it's a blocker for those expecting it to behave like MySQL. We have a lot of bad queries (unfortunately) that rely on constraints for correctness. It's too dangerous to do any migration that eliminates them without at least a reduced performance setting to warn about violations that we can run for a month or two before committing 100%.

It pains me to say this, but strong ties to China company-wide will likely mean my org never adopts this, fk constraints aside. A victim of the trade war? Yes. But many of our clients are strictly "no Chinese vendors for libraries or dependencies", even if the data is on our own servers.

I'm not sure if anything can be done at this point, but building an isolated US based org would help immensely with adoption. The cap table also being mostly Chinese investors is enough to stop most US companies at the DD phase

</comment><comment><USER11> @aphyr:

"We have not evaluated filesystem or disk faults with TiDB, and cannot speak to crash recovery. Nor have we tested dynamic membership changes. Both might be fruitful avenues of investigation for future research."

How do you choose what components to test once you get past obvious stuff like the highest claimed isolation level?

<comment><AUTHOR> I give suggestions to my clients, and ask them what they care about testing most, and we... pretty much always agree on what direction the research goes next. FS/disk faults I don't have good tooling for yet, so I'd have to invest some time into developing those tools--makes sense to defer that work. Membership changes are infrequent and surprisingly difficult to write automation for, so I think it makes more sense to focus on the static-cluster case first.

<comment><USER12> Regarding FS/Disk faults, here is some information about what TiDB does:

tl;dr: Chaos Engineering

Some links: [https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4466002/Using%20Chaos%20Engin...](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4466002/Using%20Chaos%20Engineering%20to%20Build%20a%20Reliable%20TiDB.pdf)

[https://www.pingcap.com/blog/chaos-practice-in- tidb/](https://www.pingcap.com/blog/chaos-practice-in-tidb/)

Regarding the Fault Injection tools we are using:

\- Kernel Fault Injection, the Fault Injection Framework included in Linux kernel, you can use to implement simple fault injections to test device drivers.

\- SystemTap, a scripting language and tool diagnose of a performance or functional problem.

\- Fail, gofail for go and fail-rs for Rust

\- Namazu: a programmable fuzzy scheduler to test a distributed system.

We also built our own Automatic Chaos platform, Schrodinger, to automate all these tests to improve both efficiency and coverage

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See the companion blog from PingCAP: [https://pingcap.com/blog/tidb-passes- jepsen-test-for-snapsho...](https://pingcap.com/blog/tidb-passes-jepsen-test- for-snapshot-isolation-and-single-key-linearizability/)

</comment><comment><USER13> As always, deeply insightful and merciless. :)

<comment><USER14> I don't see what's merciless about it. DB systems have various claims, he just goes about asserting if those claims are true. I think a serious take away from these is that all DB systems have issues, there are some faults that do happen, know them and design for it. Any DB that claims to have no fault is lying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hi @aphyr. I'm a great fan of your work with Jepsen although I know very little about the fault tolerance of distributed systems. Are there any resources you would recommend on the subject? I am an application developer so I don't see myself writing a database in the future. Still it would be great to learn about the concepts.

Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've written an outline that might be useful! [https://github.com/aphyr/distsys-class](https://github.com/aphyr/distsys- class)

<comment><USER16> This is fantastic - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for your excellent work!</comment>


Google's plan to make Chrome's Flash click-to-play - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/html5-by-default-googles-plan-to-make-chromes-flash-click-to-play/ <comment><USER2> I recently got a Windows 10 laptop and decided _not_ to install Flash, because this is 2016 and we should be over Flash by now.

Bad idea. Despite everyone's "death to flash" mantra, the same people banging the drum still rely on it.

I tried to load Google Play Music in Firefox. The site immediately tells me I need Flash. I tried going into my settings and enable the "Experimental HTML5 Player" in the labs section, but it was mysteriously greyed out.

I then tried Amazon Prime's music player to the same result: flash only.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most surprising thing is that YouTube is on the list of domains to be excluded from this. While they've put in considerable effort into migrating away from Flash, it seems unfair for Google to enforce this policy on their smaller competitors while exempting their own property.

<comment><USER4> I can sort of see that as defensible from a UX point of view -- a lot of people will be unhappy if YouTube doesn't work in their browser, regardless of whether YouTube is owned by their browser's manufacturer. (If e.g. Edge broke YouTube, people would be rightly upset.)

I suppose a more defensible argument would be that the Chrome team trusts YouTube not to serve malicious Flash, but that doesn't seem to be what they're going for, since they're unconditionally allowing the top 10 Flash-using websites regardless of security history.</comment></comment>


Feynman diagrams by Edward Tufte - <AUTHOR> http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003oo

<comment><USER2> What is the best book(s) to read if you want to understand a bit about QED?

(I understand a bit about quantum physics; the book that helped me the most was Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert)

edited to add: I want to emphasize that I understand a _tiny_ _tiny_ bit of qp. I posted this comment hoping that there exists some analogue of Herbert's book for QED; a book which guides the motivated but non-physicist reader through the basics of the theory.

<comment><USER3> I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

<comment><USER2> I'd appreciate an explanation of why it's nonsensical. (I don't doubt you, I'm honestly curious)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OF COURSE it was an Airstream owner...</comment>


Iter, a reactor in France, may deliver fusion power as early as 2045 - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/05/04/iter-a-reactor-in-france-may-deliver-fusion-power-as-early-as-2045 <comment><USER2> Call me skeptical, if you like.

Fusion Power has always been 'about 20 years away' for the last seventy years. I won't be around then, but I foresee somebody still saying "Fusion Power about 20 years away' in another seventy years' time.</comment>


All My Exes Live in Texts - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/07/texting-exes-social-media-generation.html

<comment><USER2> If your personal history includes memories of 36 events that make your "stomach churn," maybe you should investigate the cause for the events. You might trace all of them back to one origin. That's the root problem. So before you lament the impossibility of resolving your personal issues, try to fix them yourself. Don't excuse your behavior based on the presence of a controllably negative influence like Facebook. It doesn't make you do anything. Your decision of how to use it is entirely of your own volition. If you do not like how you handle that power, figure out why. Do not throw your arms up in the air and blame Facebook. Blame your own decisions and then address the cause. You're only avoiding the problem.

<comment><USER3> That is rather harsh and rather tangential. Sure, ultimately every personal relationship being destroyed has two parties at fault; one of whom is yourself. Fixing yourself doesn't mean that you magically become a mormon missionary like grin and become at ease with everything life. The 'stomach churn' is a very human thing.

I feel like your rant places the blame solely on the user herself and not on the usability problems associated in the Facebook era.

E.g. blocking an ex would be easy. Yet, it also means that you cannot see if the other person is going to an event or not. This is an issue for certain people who don't really want to hang out at a certain event if their ex is going to it. The other alternative is to keep seeing them appear in your facebook interaction someway or the other: your chat box shows them as one of the most frequently messaged people; suggested events may be because they are going to a certain event.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, I feel that taking responsibility for your past makes things easier to deal with and easier to move on. Four out of six long term serious girlfriends cheated on me. While I feel that reflects badly on those girls personality, I also take responsibility for my behaviour in the relationship, I was a typical Beta male who didn't hold up my end of keeping the relationship stable. Accepting that has lead to me being a stronger happier person, in an excellent stable and above all, well adjusted long term relationship with a girl I'm desperately in love with.

What I'm saying, is the OP is blaming Social Media for her own issues,in my opinion anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm 22. I have 6 ex girlfriends, and a lot more girls that were not a proper relationship, but for the sake of argument here, we'll call them exes.

I deal with this problem simply. I delete them and remove them from my life. There have been no exceptions.

I've run into one or two of them around town, said hello, and went my own way.

It can be done, oddly enough. But then, I don't ascribe any meaning to deleting someone from Facebook. I have 100 people in my friends list, and I'd invite every one of them to a party.

<comment><USER5> That system breaks down if you start dating from within your social circle (friends of friends). I know you'll tell me it's a big no-no but you'd be surprised how much more common it becomes as you get older

<comment><USER3> Very true. It becomes harder especially if the breakup is messy. As a friend you are forced, like it or not, to choose sides. As a person in the relationship, you are in the awkward situation of knowing that some of your friends are going to side with the other person and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Damn, was hoping this was an article about how to encode Windows executables into text.

<comment><USER7> Ask and ye shall receive (in powershell form):

        $fName = "last.exe"

        $fContent = get-content $fName

        $fContentBytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($fContent)

        $fContentEncoded = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($fContentBytes)

        $fContentEncoded set-content ($fName + ".text")

Now you can at least say that all your .exes live in base64-encoded .texts.

<comment><USER8> I guess that should rather be

        Get-PSDrive -PSProvider Filesystem |
          Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path { $_.Root } -Filter *.exe |
          ForEach-Object {
            $bytes = Get-Content $_ -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0
            $text = [Convert]::ToBase64String($bytes)
            $text | Set-Content ($_.FullName + '.text')
          }

Reading the files as UTF-8 and converting them back into a byte array isn't such a great idea, I think ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a reason for the Reddit truism:

"Hire a lawyer, hit the gym, delete from Facebook."

Far be it from me to say how someone else should deal with their exes, but if their presence on social media makes you uncomfortable, there's a quick and dirty solution just a click of a button away.

</comment><comment><USER10> The comments on the site are a little brutal! I enjoyed the read, though I feel like at this moment in time I relate to it much more than I might otherwise.

I just graduated college this May and so the way I'm relating to the piece isn't so much with maintaining contact with exes, but maintaining contacts with college friends. There are certainly different 'levels' of friendship. Some I could see maintaining contact with frequently (but for how long??), others maybe just 3 or 4 times a year, and others still maybe just a few times every 5 years.

But even my closest friends - suppose I actually gave them a real phone call every month - how long does this keep going? This one comment on the OP site itself certainly hits the nail on the head...

"are you going to be dragging all these people along with you when you are 40? 50? 80? ... You can't take everyone with you."

I can see myself only speaking with my closest college friends maybe a couple times a year, 5 years from now. And that's kind of sad.

<comment><USER11> I can relate to this comment. I had some really close friends in high school (who I'm still close friends with), but after two years out of high school we've mostly lost touch. We talk to each other once every couple of months, and I see them maybe a few times over summer. It's definitely kind of sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> top image is a bit NSFW even though it's blurred, just FYI.

<comment><USER13> Yes I'd appreciate a warning "[NSFW-ish image]" in the title

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish I could send this article back in time 20 years. All the prophecies of how the internet would change the social dynamic, and now we see how it has all played out.</comment>


Y Combinator Inspires Imitators - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070926_620433.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_top+stories Paul Graham's intensive workshop permits investors and startups to check each other out with a minimum of risk and a maximum of potential <comment><USER2> That article didn't mention PARC's incubator program, although I think by contrast PARC's program shows what YC can do right. Before you even read much about PARC's deal you have to agree to a page of over-capitalized legalese: <http://www.parc.com/about/startup/startup-form.php>

Compare that with YC's entry point - read discussions without any barriers, then enter username, password, click create account - and start posting comments which will help YC get to know you.

YC's Reddit-style forum is much more enticing than Seedcamp's old-school forum (although Seedcamp's graphics are pretter.)

Is understanding of design and programming a predictor of good angel-ness?

<comment><USER3> <<Is understanding of design and programming a predictor of good angel-ness?>>

Yes, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's kind of funny seeing my name next to Paul Graham and Saul Klein. I'm a little out of my league, but I just so happened to say exactly what she wanted to publish. The only former Y Combinator startup founder I know that went on to work for Google was one of the guys from flagr. Yes, I know that most Y Combinator companies now are founded by college graduates.

My first mainstream media PR hit would've been a whole lot better if she would have said "Kevin Fischer, founder of www.hivgene.com." instead of Kevin Fischer, Y Combinator reject. Maybe next time.

(to anyone wondering, she saw some posts of mine on a thread comparing Y Combinator to Techstars on the Techcrunch forums and emailed me for an interview. 22 minutes on the phone.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For more info on this right from the reddit Guys, check out [http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/posterboys-for-yc- emphasi...](http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/posterboys-for-yc-emphasis-on- boys.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> The quote, "It's cheaper equity", seems like a bad p.r. move. I've never heard that as a stated reason for YC's investment model, regardless of whether it is one. I think it betrays one of the most significant differences between YC and the imitators - a certain level of class. But, I'm sure the other incubators provide great opportunities for young entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that wasn't a smart thing for David Cohen to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "There already is a Y Combinator in your town: Y Combinator."

Bullshit. I live in South America. Show me the Y Combinator in Bogota.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that anyone can apply to YC from anywhere. If you're accepted, you'll still be required to move to where ever YC is that session, but it's still open to you.

There's a reason they ask you to move to the bay area or Cambridge. You can't just duplicate the atmosphere in a non-startup epicenter. This is probably the best reason not to have YC programs everywhere. And what good would a YC franchise be without the 4 partners? Unless the franchise owner can attract the same kind of speakers, the experience would be significantly less worthwhile.

<comment><USER4> > Unless the franchise owner can attract the same kind of speakers, the > experience would be significantly less worthwhile.

But as long as the franchise owner is of better caliber than the Y Europe guy, it's a lot better than nothing. YC only funds 50 startups a year, there is a lot of unmet demand for similar services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it better? I read something from PG saying most people don't actually need to the money; they come to YC for the learning experience and the relationships develop. So if that portion can't be duplicated, having a second-rate franchise is only marginally better then just using angel investors.

<comment><USER7> Here's a list of what people get from yc, roughly in order of how important I think they are:

1) pg/yc's advice and connections

2) other smart hackers' advice and connections

3) a complex package I'll call moral support. This includes the validation of their plans, committment to working full-time, and some other less important factors.

4) being able to say "I am funded by yc"

5) publicity

6) money

1), 4), and 5) are hard to replicate well, but I don't think it'd be hard to do them better than an angel (depending on the angel). Angels are also useless at 2, and they take more equity. I think there's a lot of value in even mediocre yc knockoffs, and that we'll see a lot more of them in the coming years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> YCU

</comment><comment><USER9> Paul Graham should start thinking about franchising ... another business with pay-day almost everyday :-) and I would be the first to take franchise (I'm damm serious) ... anyway mushrooming clones will be good for new startups ...

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't be so quick to vote this down... pg has made comments in the past (sorry, too lazy to dig for them) about YC "scaling up". I'll respectfully disagree with him until I see it, but he seems to have some opinions on the matter.</comment></comment>