RMS lifestyle - <AUTHOR> http://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html <comment><USER2> It annoys me how willing he is to push the externalities of his decisions onto other people. ("I won't carry a cell phone, but fortunately everyone else does and I can just mooch off of them"). It's like that friend who won't own a car but sure as hell will mooch a ride.

This reminds me of a story my friend told me. Back in the early 90's(?) my friend had his lunch eaten by RMS, several times. I don't think it was malicious--it was more like if RMS was hungry, would just be happy that someone was kind enough to leave him something to eat in the AI lab fridge.

It was kind of considered an honor--after all, what were you going to do, complain, get him angry, and delay the release of Hurd?

<comment><USER3> Huh. I thought he had a free-libre cell phone at some point.

Anyway, one can buy a throwaway cell phone in cash, and power it down when not in use, I thought. Like drug dealers do.

Still surveillable, but no more than any borrowed phone.

<comment><USER4> I discovered a couple of years ago (when my phone, er, met with a nasty firmware accident) that you cannot buy a phone in the UK over the counter without also buying a Pay-As-You-Go SIM with a traceable means of payment (ie. card). They simply refused to sell the phone to me unless I forked over £10 for a SIM I didn't want. Apparently the French are to blame for this little piece of legislation.

I politely told them that the only reason I was in their shop was because it was an emergency, and I hoped that they enjoyed their future career packing boxes for internet retail, at least until they were replaced by robots. Harsh, but I never said I was a nice person.

<comment><USER5> > but I never said I was a nice person

No, apparently you're a dick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's Stallman's own title, but a much more accurate title would be "RMS Opinions"

I think it's interesting for that reason though, because it doesn't say as much about his actual lifestyle as it does what he thinks about other people. For instance:

> As a matter of principle, I refuse to own a tie.

Tells us more about an opinion he's made about other people. If he wanted to be more descriptive of his lifestyle, he could have said that he was aesthetically minimalist (or minimalist with accessories in general). Instead ties become a value judgement, and he sees tie-wearers as "victims" at best.

In fact, though many would describe him as minimalist in lifestyle if they had to sum it up in a sentence, he doesn't use the term. This piece is really exclusively opinions.

> When I wait for my baggage in an airport, I always do one of these two. And > I notice the people around me, feeling anxious and getting nothing done. > What a waste.

His reasoning in general here seems arbitrary and condescending. If I didn't know who we were reading about beforehand I'd gander they were prone to being capricious. I wonder if we should tell him that trains run non-free software, just like phones.

In general the biggest takeaway I got from this is that he seems to have a _very_ negative view of almost all other people.

<comment><USER3> "I refuse to own a tie" is a fact, not an opinion. Much of the following discussion is an opinion.

He's not a "minimalist", he is a freedom activist. He believes ties impinge on freedom.

The passenger does not run the train software. The train owner can choose what kind of software they want to use. RMS's trains (of which he has none) do not run non-free software.

RMS has thought deeply through these issues for _decades_ , you aren't going to discredit him with 5 minutes of snark.

> he seems to have a very negative view of almost all other people.

And yet he dedicates his life to improving theirs, even though he could easily accumulate a few million dollars and retire. I'll take enemies like him over friends to make an effort to personally attack strangers for having a principled lifestlye, any day.

<comment><USER7> > RMS has thought deeply through these issues for decades, you aren't going to > discredit him with 5 minutes of snark.

OTOH, religion has been pondered well longer than RMS has been alive. RMS is not going to discredit the Church with 20 years of heresy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While his eccentricities mirror those of a mad scientist (or really just an institutionalized person, depending on whom you ask), you cannot deny that RMS is a genius. His work in free software has enabled much recursive work in the computer science fields that wouldn't be possible without his contributions. gcc is without a doubt still the most advanced compiler available today. The GNU coreutils are nowhere near the simplicity of the old UNIX and BSD userland utilities, but they improve upon them exponentially, and offer far more ease of use and efficiency bar perhaps the Plan 9 userland. While I don't use emacs (VIM junkie), I think emacs is still brilliant operating system, and the editor is actually finally good enough for daily usage.

While his strict insistence on accurate semantics, such as GNU+Linux versus Linux and "free software" vs "open source," seems annoying, pushy, and generally weird, he has valid reasons to back the insistence up.

What reasons do you have to back your criticism of him up?

<comment><USER9> I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

<comment><USER10> Just FYI: the text of the parent's post is taken verbatim from a comment RMS once made but this text is probably best known as the most popular "copypasta" (reposted text) on 4chan's technology board (called "/g/" from the Japanese word for "technology"). You shouldn't reply to the poster in earnest.

Interestingly enough, /g/ is obsessed with RMS and the regulars' attitude towards him is the epitome of a love-hate relationship. The sheer number of images they've produced featuring him is quite impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see a lot of shock at the negative comments about RMS here. Those who are appalled at the lack of respect here need to understand that there are a lot of people within the tech world that have developed very complicated feelings about RMS over the course of the past 20-30 years.

I mean, sure, a lot of people who don't know a whole lot about him or haven't had to deal with him over the course of decades might have shallow knee-jerk opinions on him: they hate him, they love him, or they barely know who he is. But I suspect a lot of the anti-RMS sentiment that you might see on someplace like HN comes from a much deeper place than that.

I don't hate the guy, personally, and I do think that the good he's done has outweighed the bad. I also agree with him on quite a few fronts, to a degree. However, he has alienated a LOT of people over the years for no good reason other than his own personality issues and a seeming complete lack of a reflective nature or an innate sense of perspective or empathy.

I feel sorry for him more than anything else, because I think he's a deeply troubled guy who unfortunately ended up in a life path that sort of rewarded him for staying in his deeply troubled state. He's always had lots of admirers and supporters, not to mention grants and speaking gigs. As a result, he never had any external forces that might compel him to grow up beyond a certain point, intellectually or emotionally.

I think a lot of the more nuanced, deep, and well-fermented RMS hate you might see stems not so much from total disagreement, but rather disappointment from wasted potential. He's somebody who's had a lot of great ideas from which so many great things have sprouted, but he's a terrible steward for those ideas. He ends up making it about him somehow, or takes so many things to such ridiculous extremes, or justifies his ideas for all the wrong reasons, or intentionally alienates the people that he should be trying to build bridges to, that he ends up discrediting the kernels of brilliant truth that are at the heart of much of his philosophy.

So, there are a ton of people who at one time or another were inspired by RMS in their larval stages to value freedom and sharing and openness, but grew to see him as an impediment to those very ideals. I'm one of those people and I so wish that it didn't have to be this way. I don't think you're seeing people criticizing his views on ties, so much as you're seeing disillusionment at a much deeper level with RMS' personal and intellectual failings, which are pretty broadly on display even when he's writing about trivial things like ties or hobbies or cell phones.

<comment><USER12> An excellent summation.

I'd add a few more things, at least from the 70s/80s (I left the relevant social circle in the 90s when I left the Boston area):

A near complete lack of personal security and safety awareness and savvy, which wouldn't matter so much to others except:

No respect for others' relationships with SOs; the ham-handed way he'd hit on your girlfriend was mostly a bit annoying, best avoided by having your girlfriend's other SO on the other side of her and you both going into "alpha male don't fsck with us" physical projection mode ^_^ ... BUT: it put him and some fellow diners in jeopardy when he hit on a gangster's moll in the late night Boston Chinatown restaurant the circle frequented (as related to me by a reliable 1st hand witness).

It was said, albeit denied, that RMS took a technical disagreement with Dan Weinreb to the point of purging MIT-AI backup tapes, and this was why Dan left for LLL and the S-1 project. Now, as I note Dan denied this, but the very fact it was credible during the period Dan was absent tells you how abrasive he can be in technical matters.

Somewhat troubled, yes (it doesn't make my deeply troubled threshold, at _worst_ we're talking the personality disorder level of mental illness and to my knowledge and observation it didn't rise to that level though the '80s), and note most of these observations are from before he became really famous.

(See my disclaimers here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5804156>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The comments here, are for the most part, incredibly disappointing. I don't understand the point of bashing a guy, however public, for merely stating his preferences: I'm sure people could find some of everyone's preferences equally curious.

Whatever the intent in submitting this to Hacker News was, it's turning into pointless bullying and should probably just be killed.

<comment><USER14> That's a stretch. If he's allowed to post his opinions, we're allowed to post ours. The strength of HN is in the dialectic.

He has some clearly _strange_ habits - I wouldn't call him extreme, radical or militant per se, but he obviously doesn't carry himself like most people.

I don't think the majority of us are trying to diminish his contributions to the internet community. Rather, we're commenting on how odd he is. That's _okay_ , it's just humorous in a nutty way.

RMS takes the cynical beliefs people often think when they hear Christmas music and hate it, and takes it to actually _doing it_ (to provide one example).

"Ugh, _fuck_ the holidays. I hate always having to spend money on people I pretend to like."

^Most of us get over it. RMS has the anti-social (I don't mean that in a DSM or pejorative sense) solidarity to actually stop celebrating holidays. It's admirable, just weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Genius or not, is he a misanthrope? Yes, he has a splendid list of cool things he's done, and he's a luminary.

But why compile a list of things that basically says, "I generally don't like people, the things _most_ people do or have, _or_ the silly rituals most people enjoy."

I can respect his opinions, but he comes across as very condescending...

That said, I do admire how much of a diehard he is about his beliefs. Not many people actually "walk the walk" when it comes to not owning a _cell phone_ in today's age...

<comment><USER15> I try reading this while assuming the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he's doing it on purpose (it feels like he isn't even aware that he's doing it). It makes the entire thing easier to read.

<comment><USER16> This kind of thinking did happen to me when I tried to generate a consistent world view.

At this point, there are just too many contradictions, I'd rather forget and simply accept the _absurd_.

For example, being an atheist, I don't particularly believe in holidays myself. I do enjoy myself with my family even if it mean a few capitalists make a little more money during the season. On the whole, a meaningless event makes the whole world happy.

I'm of a fairly open religion (Hinduism). So, there aren't ardent rules you need to waste time with.

<comment><USER17> I don't see the absurdity. You like having holidays because you find them fun. You're happy to go along with religious and/or relentlessly capitalistic holidays for the sake of expediency, because (as mentioned in the previous sentence) holidays are fun for you. There's not a single part of this that doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER16> I was referring to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism#cite_ref-6>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _"...I do use airline frequent flier numbers because the airlines demand to know my identity anyway."_

 _"...However, I absolutely refuse to take Amtrak trains because they check passengers ID (sometimes, not all the time)."_

Are these two statements contradictory, or is there something special about what Amtrak do that threatens privacy more than the disclosure of identity to an airline? This is a genuine question, I have never visited the US.

(In the UK, you can still walk into a railway station and buy a ticket for cash without showing ID anywhere within the mainland. You will not be asked for anything other than the ticket on the train unless you are using a Student or Senior Citizen's railcard to claim the discount.)

The more I think about the nature of software, the more I find Stallman's views about software freedom compelling.

<comment><USER19> It's hard to get overseas by train.

<comment><USER18> True, although we did manage it in the UK. Hard to see how that casts any light on the (apparent) contradiction.

<comment><USER19> You managed it over a pretty small hop, compared to what you'd have to do to get anywhere from the US.

Anyway, it casts light on the apparent contradiction simply because life is made of trade-offs. The choice to prefer (say) Greyhound (or a personal vehicle) to Amtrak is a wholly different thing than the choice to visit or not visit (say) Indonesia. The same concern may merit the former but not the latter.

<comment><USER18> So it _is_ a contradiction, but one forced by circumstance.

<comment><USER19> That's certainly one way to look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you're curious to know more about RMS for some reason this is fun to browse through: [https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer...](https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers- public/2011-October/007647.html)

"I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up."

I really want to know what horrific experience RMS had with breakfast in the past such that you can't even mention it to him!!

<comment><USER21> RMS is legendary for not getting up before the crack of noon. "Breakfast" is for "mornings". he has neither.

<comment><USER22> Is that really what he means though? Most people use the word "breakfast" to refer to the first meal of the day (or lack thereof) eaten within a few hours of waking up.

Also the type of food. If you sleep in on a Saturday until noon, you'll probably tend to want breakfast food when you first wake up.

The time of day is far behind those two factors for what constitutes breakfast in popular usage.

<comment><USER23> > If you sleep in on a Saturday until noon, you'll probably tend to want > breakfast food when you first wake up.

It's 9am on a Saturday here and I just ate two slices of cold pizza. Not everyone desires "breakfast food" first thing in the moring. :)

<comment><USER22> Of course I wasn't saying that applies in every single case. I even double- qualified that part ("probably tend to"), but you still responded with "not everyone." I give up. :)

<comment><USER20> "Among English speakers, "breakfast" can be used to refer to [the first meal of the day] or to refer to a meal composed of traditional breakfast foods (such as eggs, oatmeal and sausage) served at any time of day." [1]

Even Wikipedia doesn't have a strict definition. I propose a standards committee meet to disambiguate this once and for all.

[1.] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sounds a lot like Dwight Shrute from 'The Office'. At least, I found myself reading this in Dwight's voice.

</comment><comment><USER25> I get the impression that this lifestyle is a very solitary one although it does seem to be by choice. Which is fine but he seems to make quite a few assumptions about the way other people live their life and why.

For example:

"However, there is an absurd social pressure on men to wear ties. They do this as a form of sucking up to the boss."

Perhaps they just like the way they look in tie?

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Edited to add more context to quote.

<comment><USER26> I think the post might be old (though post 1998). Tie wearers haven't been the majority in any tech setting I can think of post dot-com boom (although I have no experience of academia where they may well remain hot.) I'm a frequent tie wearer and tend to be the odd one out nowadays even in management-heavy situations! :-)

<comment><USER12> In the relevant Boston area business and social circles in the '80s, a techie wearing a tie, even to interviews, was pretty much unheard of, so I'm pretty sure that goes way back further.

If you'd been in those circles in the '80s, you clearly would have been viewed as eccentric as RMS for being a "frequent tie wearer", but all else being equal, we would have loved you as much as we loved him ^_^.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This thread reflects how little HN has to do with hacker culture those days. I read the article and enjoyed very much his description of the process by which he learns foreign languages and how he tries to make maximum use of every bit of free time. Then I went to the comments and saw the batshit comments about ties.

Time to rename the site to "Hater News".

<comment><USER28> Hacker News is too much about becoming rich to have much love for Stallman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >I first started actually speaking French during my first visit to France. I decided on arrival in the airport that I would speak only French for the whole 6 weeks. This was frustrating to colleagues whose English was much better than my French. But it enabled me to learn.

I admire the man for being willing to do that. Best way to learn a language is to actually use it. I'd say it'd require courage, but I don't know if courage is a quantity in RMS, he seems to just do what he wants.

I am not aware of _how_ bad his French was at the time though. I guess majorly inconveniencing those around him is not as important to him (something that seems to be recurring in these sorts of discussions about RMS).

<comment><USER29> Somewhat reminds me of Eddie Izzard doing a standup tour of France in rudimentary schoolboy French. (I guess murdering the language to the French of all people was rather part of the joke.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Stallman on Harry Potter:

> I don't say you shouldn't read these books. That I leave to the author. I > only urge you not to pay for them.

Quite the upstanding citizen.

His justification for this is even more bizarre, he accuses JK Rowling of something hypothetical:

> Suppose that the mistakenly sold Harry Potter books had been ebooks: then > instead of ordering her fans not to read her books, Rowling could have > ordered them erased.

and then demanding she apologizes for something she never did:

> I think we should forgive Rowling (or her publisher) when she (or it) > > Recognizes that this injunction was wrong. > Promises not to do anything > like it again.

<comment><USER31> "Quite the upstanding citizen."

In the very next sentence, Stallman suggests that you borrow one from someone, and in the sentence after that that you use a public library. I think your out-of-context quote is a dishonest attempt to portray Stallman as suggesting something he did not. Dishonest, childish, and thoroughly contemptible. I'm not a Stallman fan by any means [0], but I doubt he would stoop to this level of dishonesty to attempt to discredit anyone.

The rest of your comment is also wrong and confused, but I can't tell if it's also from dishonesty or simply stupidity. (If I must: he is suggesting an apology would be appropriate for a real injunction that her lawyers actually got, not for "something she never did". For example.)

[0] <http://lee-phillips.org/StallmanOnFinkelstein.html>

<comment><USER30> Fair enough, but I still find the philosophy behind it repulsive. "Don't pay for it, just use the one that somebody else paid for". He follows the same idea with cell phones, and with food (I've also interacted with him at bars after conferences and he hardly pays for his drinks either).

If a friend of yours starts showing such behavior, you will quickly cut them off and think they are jerks. And rightfully so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32>
      I refuse to have a cell phone because they are tracking and
      surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to
      record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be
      remotely converted into listening devices.

I find this hard to believe. Wouldn't the extra battery usage make it obvious, especially on Android devices that can track this as well as network usage at a very low level? Or is there some kind of hardware-level surveillance mechanism built in to cellphones?

<comment><USER33> For phones to function they have to talk to cellular towers continuously. You can triangulate a location based on the chatter. Phone companies also keep detailed logs.

<comment><USER32> What about being made into listening devices? That would require turning on the microphone and transmitting the signal without the user noticing. Is that possible?

<comment><USER34> I don't think it would be that difficult to do without the user noticing. Even taking a photo or video wouldn't be noticed by a lot of people... I'm reminded of [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders- meet...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men- who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams/)

The question is can they do it to everyone frequently, including the handful of super-nerds out there who love tracing every operation their devices do and can be certain they don't have some sort of malware? While I don't see the capability as technologically infeasible, I do think it would be noticed sooner or later if it was always-on.

If such a feature does exist, then it would have to be used sparingly on targeted individuals, and even then if it was used to incriminate them such evidence would have to come up in court (unless they all get the s/Gitmo/secret prison/ treatment, a big assumption!) and then the world would know such features exist. Presently I think traditional manners of evidence- gathering are probably sufficient and people publicly leak all sorts of data (or have a lot of data logged that can be subpena'd) -- plus every now and again we hear about some nerd (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5194489>) reporting they have been bugged. Some people think the CPUs of Intel et al. have backdoors in them, but if so, there'd be no need to bug computers.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence... so I don't really take the government backdoors in everything by default too seriously. I'd need some sort of evidence showing their existence to change my mind.

<comment><USER35> > I'd need some sort of evidence showing their existence to change my mind.

Here you go, seems pretty well sourced: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device#Remotel...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device#Remotely_activated_mobile_phone_microphones)

Also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A>

<comment><USER34> Thanks for those, updated. It's also nice to see that it works as I would expect: the software isn't there by default but if the government wants you in particular, they can legally coerce the phone companies to install the software without you knowing and use that evidence in a trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "The Free Software Foundation's dress code says that a propeller beanie is required, but other clothing is optional. However, we don't enforce it."

Thank goodness for that.

</comment><comment><USER37> Despite his controversial figure, I very much respect RMS. I may not agree with his life choices, but his integrity and resolve of the pursuit of his ideals are at the least inspiring.

It is sad to see the "tieless" generation of beards and freedom slowly fading and having not found understanding in our time of rockstars and ninjas.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's sad how people here nit-pick on this. He have done so damn much, and still you guys critize some silly behavior of his. I think it's mostly beacuase the frequent readers, contributors and commenters here on HN are software developers, business people and designers, not hackers...

</comment><comment><USER39> Is RMS the proto-hipster? He only likes music until it becomes popular.

I wonder if he tries to be different so he can be different and unique, and that all his bluster and quirks come from this desire for uniqueness rather than his fight for "freedom."

</comment><comment><USER40> This reminds me of this important video, in which RMS can be seen taking advantage of down time to use his computer: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pube5Aynsls>

<comment><USER41> Of course, it can't possible be a video on that computer that shows the dance so someone who isn't familiar with it can look at it at the same time as performing it.

Or he just have it in his hand as someone else is carrying a ball cap on his head. The real question is if it takes away the fun of watching MIT do the Soulja Boy dance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> You can learn a lot about a man from his CSS :

<http://stallman.org/stallman.css>

</comment><comment><USER43> Since this is a thread about his personal preferences, I will add my personal commentary of them.

He seems to hold very strong opinions about certain things, but it appears (at least to me) that not a lot of thought went into forming these. Some are just arbitrary ("Not all my shirts are red or purple, but many are. I like those colors.") and some are just wrong ("I am an Atheist, for scientific reasons").

He's a very interesting fellow though (obviously a genius in his work) and has contributed a lot to the free software movement. It's nice to see what he's up to lately.

 _[gonvaled replied to me below; and my reply here]_

I'm not commenting on his belief (or lack thereof), simply from whence it came. I make that comment regardless of the fact that I am either a theist or an atheist. My research consists of developing QFT/QM numerically for simulation, so I can say there is no law of nature that supports his statement that atheism stems from any scientific reason. Dirac's equation? Nope. Creation-annihilation operators? Nope. Did I miss an equation somewhere? Science explains how nature works and provides predictive capacity; that's it. Do you disagree with that?

Furthermore, I didn't list any criticism of Richard (as I have none); in fact I gave him two compliments: "genius" and "he's interesting and I like following what he's up to".

<comment><USER41> > no law of nature that supports his statement that atheism stems from any > scientific reason.

when people talk about scientific reasoning, I assume it also includes the scientific method. As such, atheist and it tend to agree that any prevailing theory should be abandon as soon as a better theory is suggested. This however is strictly contrary to faith, in that faith is the constant belief no matter what other theories exist. (also see The God Delusion for an expanded version, and other arguments of scientific reasoning and atheism.)

<comment><USER44> It is more fundamental than that: religion does not offer any falsifiable claims. It is not that we do not apply the scientific method to it. It is that, _by design_ , religion is out of bounds of the scientific method.

<comment><USER45> > It is more fundamental than that: religion does not offer any falsifiable > claims

Most religions offer plenty. In the Bible for example, age and creation of the world, the great flood, praying can cure you, God punishes bad people, etc. The claims that have been falsified are nowadays interpreted as "metaphorical" stories.

<comment><USER46> The claims are not really falsifiable, because when you're dealing with a literal _deus_ †, any premise of the scientific method - such as, floods affect the ecosystems and leave evidence - is invalidated.

†As in _deus ex machina_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> rms is probably the first, original troll. His very life is the punchline to the joke of annoying mainstream people.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think he makes a good point about ties.

<comment><USER49> I disagree with him on ties. I think a lot of people enjoy wearing ties because they think they look good. It's mens style. Just like how he likes plain t-shirts. This from someone who almost never wears them, but thinks they look good in general.

<comment><USER50> Aside from fashion, I think a tie generally reminds people of their own posture. I'm prone to some heavy slouching day in and day out but a tie quite literally keeps me straight (a bent tie feels... displeasing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I found his linked article on why he has not had a family to be rather sad. A very bleak outlook on the attainability of love and happiness.

</comment><comment><USER52> "If I had a family..."

This is sad. Stallman is one of my favorite people (among people I've never met), and everyone deserves a family of some sort. Not necessarily kids, but simply a small group of people who he loves, who love him back, and who would spend his free time with him.

<comment><USER12> Sigh, that would be very difficult.

Without going into the personal details, based on my interactions with him in the '80s I'd say that's not going to happen, especially since he's old enough it's unlikely he'll "mellow out" until possibly when he gets a lot older.

Maybe, someday, but that's not the way to bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> With all due respect, and acknowledging many other bright people with a similar situation (i.e Bill Gates), he comes across as being on the autism/aspergers spectrum.

<comment><USER17> That's hardly disrespectful -- and Stallman himself has agreed with you, describing himself as "borderline autistic". The label certainly seems to fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Like many brilliant and pure souls, Mr. Stallman can be naive. Here he is uncritically regurgitating other people's political propaganda:

<http://lee-phillips.org/StallmanOnFinkelstein.html>

</comment><comment><USER53> "I refuse to have a cell phone because they are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices."

[citation needed]

<comment><USER41> [1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device>

[2]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking>

There, sources for you, through a indirect layer that is Wikipedia. The actually sources are at the bottom under "References".

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Can someone explain to me his rationale for having websites mailed to himself?

<comment><USER55> Ads, tracking cookies, annoying JavaScript, Facebook like buttons (tracking), inane comments just to name a few. Modern websites are pretty horrible.

<comment><USER54> Everything but the inane comments I can understand. If you want to avoid those, you might as well just move to a Tibetan monastery.

It just seems like an odd, circuitous route to take. I would have expected him to just use Lynx or something.

<comment><USER56> I think the "inane comments" one is a joke about /g/, they sent him a mail asking him to come and visit the site and he responded with something akin to "I did but there was only inane comments".

<comment><USER55> Ah, somebody picked up on that. Although, I should point out I generally cringe when I see a Facebook thread or something similar at the bottom of every damn page on every site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > In general, in any area of art or sensation, there are many ways for > something to be good, and they cannot be compared and ordered

>Indian classical music (I tend to enjoy Carnatic more than Hindustani)

what

<comment><USER46> _Good_ and _enjoyable_ and not the same. I enjoy plenty of music that I don't consider good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Am I the only one who was reminded of Julian Assange?

<comment><USER59> No; I've thought in the past that Assange and RMS fit into an interesting category of 'movement leaders who hold back the movement by personal dramaz', except to be fair, RMS has never sabotaged FLOSS to anywhere near the extent that Assange seems to have sabotaged Wikileaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Is this page a substitute for a facebook profile? :-)

</comment><comment><USER61> I had not previously heard of Grav-mass. Now to go find Newton ornaments. It doesn't really matter if they fall off.

</comment><comment><USER62> How does he reconcile using somebody else's cell phone to make a call if he's not willing to use one himself?

<comment><USER46> He doesn't say that owning a cellphone is wrong; he says he doesn't want to be tracked by using one. Using someone else's doesn't help track that person (they're being tracked regardless), so why would it be contradictory?

<comment><USER62> He seems to have an issue with using any device -- borrowed or owned -- if it features non free software, like most phones have today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> God bless RMS!

</comment><comment><USER64> Given the title, I was hoping this was narrated by Psy.

</comment><comment><USER65> I wish I could add some _gentle_ CSS3 to his page

</comment><comment><USER66> Stallman's honors and awards for just some of the great work he's done (like launching the GNU Project, founding the Free Software Foundation, developing the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs):

1986: Honorary lifetime membership of the Chalmers University of Technology Computer Society

1990: Exceptional merit award MacArthur Fellowship ("genius grant")

1990: The Association for Computing Machinery's Grace Murray Hopper Award "For pioneering work in the development of the extensible editor EMACS (Editing Macros)."

1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology

1998: Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award

1999: Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award

2001: The Takeda Techno-Entrepreneurship Award for Social/Economic Well-Being (武田研究奨励賞)

2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow

2002: United States National Academy of Engineering membership

2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel

2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta.

2004: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería del Perú.

2007: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.

2007: First Premio Internacional Extremadura al Conocimiento Libre

2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote.

2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia

2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru

2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University

2011: Honorary doctorate, from National University of Córdoba.

2012: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad César Vallejo de Trujillo, in Peru

2012: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Latinoamericana Cima de Tacna, in Peru

2012: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad José Faustino Sanchez Carrió, in Peru.

Source: Wikipedia

But here on _Hacker_ News (of all places), let's instead criticize his personal preferences on _fucking ties_.

<comment><USER67> Surely several of these are possible, by any individual, at once.

You can admire and benefit from Stallman's work and achievements, without necessarily agreeing with all of his positions.

And if someone essentially judges you _morally_ deficient for as much as using a cellphone or MS Windows, it's kind of open season to judge him on superficial things like his choice of ties or personal habits, in return.

<comment><USER68> "And if someone essentially judges you morally deficient for as much as using a cellphone or MS Windows, it's kind of open season to judge him on superficial things like his choice of ties or personal habits, in return."

No. It's really not.

<comment><USER67> I think it is. If you make such a tremendous claim (and it is one), you're likely to hear some counterclaims. Even if they are 'your singing totally sucks'

[http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-with-rms-is- impossi...](http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-with-rms-is- impossible.mp3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I hesitate to add to this conversation if thats what this is. I've seen alot of comments saying that "if RMS can post his opinions then we can post ours"

Thats completely true, its also completely juvenile and unnecessary.

RMS is a controversial figure, but I dont think this debate over something as (by comparison) trivial as "What madonna requires backstage before a concert", has any productive value.

You can justify your own judgements of him based on what you perceive his value judgements of others to be all you want.

At least he's willing to be honest about who he is.

20-30 years of baggage or not, leave the guy be and go do something to make the world a better place.

</comment><comment><USER70> Dude is so strange. I mean seriously, who knows that much about that many kinds of esoteric music? It's like he wants to be contrary to the rest of the population on purpose.

<comment><USER70> Edit: Fuck you HN. RMS is an extremist. I should hope that most of you have the critical thinking skills to realize that his extremism is just as dangerous as Timothy McVeigh's.

Edit 2: Honest question, how can I delete my account on HN? I've come to realize (sadly) how many hours I've wasted on this bullshit. PG, please ban this account.

<comment><USER71> Until he parks a truck full of explosives outside a federal building and kills 168 innocents (including 19 children under 6), I think not.

Now, pipe down and let the adults speak.

<comment><USER70> Yeah, because body count is the only comparator that matters. Extremism is extremism. RMS is an extremist. I want nothing to do with someone who is incapable of empathizing with the other side.

<comment><USER72> Oh, I get it, you're an anti-extremism extremist. You should try to empathize with RMS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Franklin an open source DNA sequence annotation tool in React - <AUTHOR> https://tailordev.fr/blog/2016/06/09/le-lab-3-franklin-dna-sequence-annotation-tool/ <comment><USER2> Demo: [https://franklin.lelab.tailordev.fr/](https://franklin.lelab.tailordev.fr/)

Repository: [https://github.com/TailorDev/franklin/](https://github.com/TailorDev/franklin/)

If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN". Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your support!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you share your OPML file with me (anonymously)? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm working on an app that heavily relies on RSS/Atom feeds and since there's so much  variation in feed formats, a bigger sample of URLs would really help me cover more use cases.
I'd really appreciate your help with this. If you're willing to share your OPML file with me, you can upload it here anonymously: https://www.dropbox.com/request/ZVFCqbJQH93dNvnXiEdR
(Dropbox will ask you for name & email - feel free to put fake info there)
Thanks a lot!
BTW: Which apps do you use to read RSS feeds? Do you still use RSS at all? <comment><USER2> poke around here to get some more feeds: [http://this.how/feedBase/](http://this.how/feedBase/)</comment>


Ask HN: Should I join a startup just because its backed by a famous VC? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently in "advanced discussions" with regard to joining a dot com startup. While I do not see anything new in their product, their founder told me that they've been backed by a famous VC and this information is not public yet.
Should I trust the founder and join the company, just because its backed by this renowned VC ?
Also more importantly what questions should I ask the co-founders to make sure that I'm joining the right company ? <comment><USER2> Just because a famous VC backs a company, doesn't mean that the company is set for success. Join a company because you believe in their product and their mission.

Most of all VCs invest in companies that end up going under, they are making just as much of a risk as you are in joining the company.

In terms of questions to ask: \- What are your company goals and missions? \- Where do you see the company in 2 years / 5 years / 10 years? \- What was your motivation to start the company? (you want to understand their passions and individual goals)

At the end of the day it's your decision. Go with what you believe in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, ask for proof if you are uncertain of their claims.

Also, don't just join a startup due to it being backed by a famous VC. If you can't get behind their product, goals, atmosphere etc then you will have a miserable time regardless.

To really get a feel for the co-founders, you need to spend some time in non- interview situations to fully understand their character and traits. Maybe try and get them to sit down for a coffee and put your concerns on the table. Good co-founders should appreciate the transparency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'd have loved to do that. But the company is located across the country from where I'm located right now and its not feasible for me to talk to the founders face to face.

I've had a couple of non interview talks with them and they sound like really good people. On the other hand, in absence of a long term growth plan which they've failed to present me with, its a bit risky on my side.

The VC investment seems like a reasonable explanation to believe that they have a long term plan. But should I trust this explanation ?

<comment><USER4> You should go in with the assumption that the company will fail. So if you're looking to relocate to a new city consider what will happen in that case, i.e. are there other employers in that city who you'd want to work for, etc.

It also depends on the stage of the investment, the later stage an investment the safer it's likely to be. If it's a seed investment of 500k then it's going to be a high-risk startup, if it's a Series B of $20m then it's likely to be a safer bet.

A better question to ask in terms of growth plans is what sort of metrics does their VC need them to hit in the next 12 months for them to be willing to make a follow-on investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the comments here. Join the startup if you believe in the 'team' and the problem they are solving.

Look at the teams track record, is this their first startup? What experience do they have? How committed are they? What do they require from you? Do they have a clear way to acquire customers? Are you dealing with a chicken egg problem? Do they have a clear goal to monetize their site? How long have they spent on validation? Have they found customers that would pay for their service before launching it? What's the time frame, as in, how long do they expect you to be working on this project?

I read an article, I think it might of been on Sam Altman's site, that said, you need a leader, a manager and a techie. Each having very distinctively roles to play.

Having a reputable investor is a good sign, but doesn't mean it's going to work. It all comes down to the team executing it. Focus on skill set of the team, rather than the investors big name.

Do some background checks on the Founders, if anything seems fishy, get out of there. On the other hand, if it looks like you have found an awesome team - sign yourself up.

I'm on my second startup now, it's a side project. I'm interviewing people for my team. I got hustler from Rutgers, who went out and got the sign ups for a social network, she has connections to TechStars and Y Combinator. Her previously startup, she was working with a growth hacker (which is what I do). So we are a good match. Have 5 interviews with programmers over the next two weeks, and I've found people that will help out with marketing and programming for free. I focussed on 'specific sets of skills' I want my team to have.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> The famous VC commits funds to multiple startups, some of them with a much more apparent route to success than others; it's also a lot easier to take a punt on impressive founders with a fairly weak plan if they're not committing to build the product or (especially) bring in users or revenue for it.

On the other hand "not seeing anything new" in a product doesn't mean it's can't succeed; if there are other companies in that market doing pretty well it's probably a data point in favour of the startup's survival chances.

</comment><comment><USER7> A company isn't going to succeed just because a "famous VC" invested in them. I don't see any reason that should be a particularly large factor in your decision. I think you should decide based on what you think of the product, the team, their culture, etc.</comment>


Making sense of messy bank data - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plaid.com/making-sense-of-messy-data/ <comment><USER2> Amazing to think it takes an "outsider" like Plaid.com to push banks to improve their services. They have been sleeping behind the wheel for years, with antiquated payment systems. The more users can find use for "classified" data, the more banks will improve quality of text about each transaction.

</comment><comment><USER2> Clean and consistent data for APIs is the future !</comment>


Contest: recreate Mondrian painting in code, win exposition in museum - <AUTHOR> http://www.elegant.setup.nl <comment><AUTHOR> Rules are in Dutch, so I did a quick translation of the most important parts

Generate Mondriaan's Victory Boogie Woogie in code

Everyone who can make squares appear on a screen can join until March 7th 2013

Submit your code to email@example.com

      Rules

      * Any programming language can be used
      * Please do try to document your code as good as possible and add a little description how it works, as the judges will not speak all programming languages
      * Please add a little manual on how to run your program on the judges' machine
      * Code will remain secret until the deadline of March 7th 2013
      * After the deadline all code will be published on Github, licensed under MIT license and with proper attribution to the author
      * Your submission must consist of the following:
        * Sourcecode
        * Output of your program (image)
        * Short description of the algorithm used
        * Contact details

<comment><USER2> Thank you!

Wikipedia says Victory Boogie Woogie is unfinished. Should submissions produce a finished version of the painting?

<comment><USER3> "It is a kind of demoscene contest, where beauty come first. You do not have to produce a one-on-one copy of the painting. The jury rates on quality and creativity of the used algorithms."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The winner is a foregone conclusion, it's the person who submits the solution in Piet: <http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html>

It'll be a worthy victory, though.

<comment><USER5> I think Mondriaan would dislike almost all Piet programs. Green? Cyan? Magenta? Light and dark? No gray?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a famous 1965 experiment to generate synthetic Mondrians by computer. Most people couldn't tell which was real, and people actually liked the fake better. This was some of the earliest computer art, done on an IBM 7090. (Just a historical note, not a comment on the current contest.)

[http://www.newmediacaucus.org/wp/routing-mondrian-the-a- mich...](http://www.newmediacaucus.org/wp/routing-mondrian-the-a-michael-noll- experiment/)

[http://www.dam.org/mix/noll-all-artworks-4-computer- patterns...](http://www.dam.org/mix/noll-all-artworks-4-computer-patterns- with-lines--dam-11493-gUmmn-de-2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER7> More-or-less off-topic, but if you live in SF you should check out the house near Ocean Beach that's painted like a Mondrian:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlbeanlarson/6184099446/>

I forget the exact cross street -- somewhere between Judah and Taravel, overlooking the beach. A good excuse for a walk on the beach, if nothing else!

<comment><USER8> I ran down the street real quick in Google Maps, it's 2140 Great Highway: <http://goo.gl/maps/NZNAO>

<comment><USER4> I just had another _holy shit, it's the 21st century_ moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those with xscreensaver installed can use something along the lines of:

        /usr/lib/xscreensaver/deco -mondrian

Temper your expectations by the `man deco` intro that suggests it draws "tacky 70s basement wall panelling".

</comment><comment><USER10> Evidently there's some interestingness in the precise choice of the colors in Boogie Woogie: <http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/mondrian2.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> I wrote some code a little while ago to do something like this (although I wasn't trying to produce Victory Boogie Woogie in particular)[1]. It generates samples from a probability distribution over kd-trees called the Mondrian Process [2]

[1] [http://whatididonthetrain.blogspot.com/2011/02/mondrian- was-...](http://whatididonthetrain.blogspot.com/2011/02/mondrian-was- mathematician.html)

[2] [http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~teh/research/npbayes/RoyTeh2009a....](http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~teh/research/npbayes/RoyTeh2009a.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> Years ago I wrote a toy to make Mondrian style pics using PHP+GD2 ... <http://ooer.com/automondrian/> ... It just makes silly random pics. Fun.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a little bit sad that such awesomeness can be reduced to an algorithm. As my graphic designer friends used to joke, "There's a Photoshop filter for that!"

I'd be really impressed if a computer program simulated the -tactile- texture and gamut as well.

Mondrian's New York period paintings are deceptively simple. I've read a teacher's writeup of his student's efforts to recreate Mondrian's Composition (I think). Not easy.

Matching the palette, precise layering, bevels and edges. Mondrian's New York paintings were precise and subtle.

Here's a similar description (can't find the article I vaguely remember):

Two-year study of Mondrian's Victory Boogie Woogie in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag to be rounded off by symposium Thursday, 28 August 2008 <http://www.codart.nl/news/338/>

<comment><USER14> _"I've read a teacher's writeup of his student's efforts to recreate Mondrian's Composition (I think). Not easy."_

Here you go:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james- elkins/post_1036_b_75666...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james- elkins/post_1036_b_756669.html)

<comment><USER15> such a cool analysis. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of an installation by Mine Control: <http://www.mine- control.com/mondrian.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> Bonus points for who ever can structure your code with whitespace to appear in a layout very similar to the resulting painting.</comment>


Optimizing Ray Tracing in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/optimizing-ray-tracing-in-haskell-3dc412fff20a <comment><USER2> Optimizing Haskell for performance can be tricky. When I wrote a functional image library (updated at [0]) I tried to get the frame draw rate down by using strictness, unpacked records, and so on, but one of the changes that made the biggest difference came from changing round to truncate[1], I went from 120 ms/frame to 65 ms/frame! The reason why is because round has quite a bit of logic associated with it[2] in Haskell's standard library, versus a simple one-liner for truncate.

It sort of shows that in even simple functions such as this, underlying implementation details can have an impact on performance.

Also, for some reason filling a C array in Haskell was faster than doing it in C, probably due to the switching between RTS.

[0] [https://github.com/siraben/functional- images](https://github.com/siraben/functional-images)

[1] [https://github.com/sbond75/OpenGLTesting/commit/116384edd6a3...](https://github.com/sbond75/OpenGLTesting/commit/116384edd6a36d7cb828310fcc8bfbf6327cc47d)

[2] [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-18.104.22.168/docs/src/G...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-18.104.22.168/docs/src/GHC.Real.html#truncate)

<comment><USER3> I just watched a video on branchless programming, and it blew my mind that the guy got a 3.36s function to return in .48s by using _more_ code. The idea of trying to outsmart a compiler or runtime is motivating me to pick back up coding after 8 years away.

<comment><USER4> I think it's a sign our chipsets and tooling have become too complicated. We're at this weird point where both sides are trying to guess what the other one is doing.

<comment><USER5> The Mill (seems to be chugging along if any one is looking for an update) is an interesting take on the problem.

If you're not familiar its a (in development) exposed pipeline (static scheduling) VLIW ISA - not unheard of in DSP land but genuinely alien compared to a CISC scalar processor a la X86 or ARM. I'm not particularly optimistic about their chances of making into the shops but they haven't failed yet.

<comment><USER6> > seems to be chugging along if any one is looking for an update

Cite? I've been looking for _recent_ updates and haven't found any.

<comment><USER5> [https://millcomputing.com/topic/news/#post-3534](https://millcomputing.com/topic/news/#post-3534)

Not exactly busy but there you are

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find this article a nice counterpoint to "it is difficult to reason about performance in Haskell". A person who had never programmed in the language, found all the tools and resources to implement an algorithm from a reference and make it fast.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, the main problem is that many of these beliefs are based in cargo cult or urban myths, most people that take the effort to actually dive into new areas with open mind instead of looking for reasons to displace it, come out with new perspectives in software development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I certainly didn't expect it to be faster than the Rust implementation. Quite a surprise there.

<comment> rainbow-road To be fair, the first sentence on the Rust implementation's GitHub repo is

> A _straightforward_ Rust implementation

(emphasis mine) and the implementation in the article is heavily optimized.

<comment><USER9> I don't think this Haskell implementation is _heavily_ optimised per se. The only places where readability is sacrificed for performance is the use of INLINE and the custom tail-recursive function, which is not where most of the performance improvement comes from. The other improvements (an efficient RNG, an efficient vector representation, and extract strictness) are something you get by default in Rust.

I would say that if an experienced Haskell programmer set out to write this program with the intent of making it fast, they'd never use lists in the first place, and not consider their absence an optimisation. Haskell lists are designed for lazily-generated arbitrary-length sequences, and are a bad fit for representing small finite-length sequences, such as vectors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> GHC has to walk a tight line between A) applying enough optimization passes to reliably remove abstraction overhead and B) compiling fast enough that people won't complain about it.

It's pretty awesome what GHC can pull off in terms of reducing complex programs to a minimal normal form (you can see this with e.g. [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc- proofs-0.1.1/docs/GH...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc- proofs-0.1.1/docs/GHC-Proof.html) ), but often times you do have to convince the optimizer to be more aggressive than it wants to be.

<comment><USER11> B is "compile fast enough that people will tolerate it".

"Fast enough to not be worth complaining about" is nowhere near anyone's TODO list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure it was his first Haskell program, if it was it's pretty impressive that he used INLINE, understood minute differences between Random libraries, profiling, threadscope, etc..

<comment><USER13> It was indeed my first Haskell program. So I'd take your comment as compliment. I have been a long time C++ programmer ([https://stackoverflow.com/users/415784/nawaz](https://stackoverflow.com/users/415784/nawaz)), so I know what kind of tools one should look for in another language when it comes to making the code performant. So that helped me.

<comment><USER14> Pretty amazing how you were able to use the appropriate tooling to a great effect right off the bat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love how the author provides each optimising commit diff – that really helped me understand the improvements.

</comment><comment><USER16> The hardest thing about optimizing is knowing whether something is fast. It helps if you have the another of the same thing that is already fast, or seems so. When you match it, are you now fast?

You are until somebody makes one faster. Then, you're slow again. That is our deal with the Devil: our machines are filled with dodgy gimcracks that often make our program faster, but we can hardly ever know whether it as as fast as it could be, or if some gimcrack that would make it faster hasn't engaged yet; or, often, even how to go about engaging it.

Usually we stop optimizing when it seems fast enough, usually because something else is (still) slower.

It turns out to be pretty simple to make quicksort go twice as fast on current hardware. Standard libraries and compilers generally don't do those things, often out of fear of making a few programs slower than before. People complain a lot more about a slower program than they thank you for making a hundred others faster--if they even notice the latter.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting that half way through the optimizations haskell is doing 3.3 terabytes of total heap allocation.

When it gets to 93 seconds it is doing 208 GB of heap allocation and in the final version it is still doing over 20 GB of heap allocations. This seems like quite a bit for a 384x216 image.

<comment><USER13> That is puzzling to me as well, particularly because `top` and `htop` on my machine don't even touch `50 MB`. That means, the first figure must be something else and I don't find a good explanation for that. I came across people who suggested to ignore that, e.g [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61666819/haskell-how- to-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61666819/haskell-how-to-detect- lazy-memory-leaks)

If anyone knows the exact reason for that, then please enlighten me as well. Even this otherwise awesome tutorial ignores that value: [https://youtu.be/R47959rD2yw?t=1306](https://youtu.be/R47959rD2yw?t=1306)

<comment><USER11> The runtime allocates and frees heap memory while performing local calculations.

<comment><USER13> > The runtime allocates and frees heap memory while performing local > calculations.

1) If it allocates, why does `top` not show it?

2) Why does it allocate SO MUCH when it uses only a fraction? Looks like a very bad strategy to allocate 2800 times more memory than actually used?

<comment><USER17> You are looking at the current amount of memory that the process is using in top, but your profiling is probably showing the total allocated while the process ran. This means there are probably LOTS of memory allocations that get freed immediately instead of the program allocating memory once and reusing that heap memory. In the case of an image of this size you could probably just put everything on the stack.

When optimizing, excess heap allocations are the first thing to look at, since they are usually inside inner loops, which almost always means they are not necessary. It definitely should not be ignored by someone looking for speed.

<comment><USER13> > In the case of an image of this size you could probably just put everything > on the stack.

That sounds interesting and will probably make it more efficient. But how do I put things on the stack? As per this answer on Stackoverflow, the runtime allocates memory on the heap to call functions (and probably programmers don't have any control over that?):

[https://stackoverflow.com/a/5132862/415784](https://stackoverflow.com/a/5132862/415784)

<comment><USER17> I don't know how to avoid heap memory allocations in haskell or make sure memory is on the stack, but both are very easy to do in C++.

<comment><USER13> >I don't know how to avoid heap memory allocations in haskell or make sure memory is on the stack, but both are very easy to do in C++.

Yup. I know it's easy and the default behavior in C++.

This Haskell page says, it is pretty common to allocate and deallocate memory immediately, and that GHC handles this pretty efficiently, which probably explains why Haskellers dont seem to care about this (though it seems weird to me).

[https://wiki.haskell.org/GHC/Memory_Management](https://wiki.haskell.org/GHC/Memory_Management)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if the author would have achieved similar results just by enabling the -XStrict language extension from the start.

<comment><USER13> I didn't know that. I'll try that. Thanks for mentioning it.

<comment><USER14> -XStrict is almost never optimal in Haskell as a lot of the optimizations ultimately rely on lazy evaluation. I think more appropriate would be to try out -XStrictData instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's really cool. The next step would be using explicit SIMD instructions. Is there a SIMD library for Haskell? Or a library for automatically doing AoS->SoA transformation on some compute code?</comment>


Darpa's Night Vision Contact Lenses - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/04/night-vision-contact-lenses/

<comment><USER2> More Super Soldier stuff. I was reading in a book by a Green Beret who served in Vietnam, where he mentioned a new type of grenade launcher they received that had a faster rate of fire than the standard one. I thought, "oh this is going to be exciting, he's leading up to something here" but what the author lead up to was a description of the extreme strain on the guy who was lugging the thing around through the hot jungle. First he begged to be allowed to bury the extra grenades and then after doing that asked (IIRC) if he could just leave the weapon behind--they were being pursued by Viet Cong. Ever since I read that, I look at the Super Soldier stories in a different light. These guys are alpha-testing stuff that could just as easily get them killed. Having worn contacts I can only imagine the type of reaction this might get from someone who has served in dusty or polluted areas.

Edit: Didn't mean to sound grouchy :D

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the military did learn the weight / strain lesson fairly well in the 50s and 60s. A lot of current research is to decrease "operating strain". This includes like auto-adapting auditory / visual restrainers, exo-skeletons, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article never mentions DARPA. The research discussed was actually funded by NSF, and the researchers appear to be thinking of broader applications than night vision.

</comment><comment><USER5> I get a phishing alert on this site, why?</comment>


The Gift of Death - <AUTHOR> https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/ <comment><AUTHOR> Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it.</comment>


Frictionless: read Facebook social news stories without installing apps - <AUTHOR> http://nikcub.appspot.com/frictionless-browser-plugin

<comment><USER2> The guardian is one of the very few of these apps which, when you click on one of the stories, will still redirect you to their site if you click "no" when asked to install the app. From then on you will go straight to the story upon clicking them and are never asked about the app again. They deserve kudos for this.

All the other news outlets I've seen keep you on facebook if you don't install the app, which is where this plugin comes in.

Unlike others I haven't blocked these stories because my list is small enough that I actually care what the people on it are reading. This plugin will be useful.

<comment><USER3> this plugin began life a few days ago as a single line of javascript that would auto-click those close dialogs. we went from there and got it working with the other apps.

when the new API is released to all developers there will be a lot more of these apps. we wrote this in a pretty generic way, so it should continue to work when the new frictionless sharing apps are released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too bad I already blocked all of these social news readers a while ago, for all of same reasons this extension hopes to solve.

<comment><USER5> I did the same, but with just hiding them from the timeline. It was becoming obvious that Facebook was trying to shove these new apps down our throats since even with only a friend or two using them, they would stay at the top of the timeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love that I'm finally old enough to read an article about the Internet and have absolutely no idea what it's talking about.

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome. I hate installing Facebook apps - and talk about satisfying a need!</comment>


An End to Sarbanes-Oxley? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.channelinsider.com/secure_channel/content/governance_and_regulatory_compliance/an_end_to_sarbanes-oxley.html

<comment><USER2> Get rid of it. It's ridiculous and a cash cow for accounting and audit firms.

Enron et al would not have been prevented with these programs. The crooks who want to break the law will find a way. Meanwhile everyone else has to pay, and pay, and pay, and the laws don't stop or catch anyone.

The IPO market is the most visible casualty. But it is a drag on businesses of all sizes : there is no extra productivity gained in employing an army of people to go around and check everything ever done. You're paying people to do effectively nothing, just like Keynes' desire to pay one worker to dig a hole, and another to fill it up as way of making the economy work. All these people could be working in productive areas of the economy and increasing wealth for companies and nations as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be a good thing too. Sarbanes-Oxley is so onerous that it has killed the IPO market for small firms. IIRC $3-5M in legal and accounting fees for the IPO and yearly 7 figure amounts for compliance.

<comment><USER4> Thoroughly agree.

The costs of compliance are only so high because practitioners are supposedly scarce. The opportunity costs to industry have been much, much higher than the direct costs, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Among other things, SarbOx has become a boogey man to scare IT rank-and-file with. IT managers use SarbOx to deskill IT work.

<comment><USER6> Can you elaborate? I have no idea why IT rank-and-file, specifically, would be scared of SarbOx.

<comment><USER5> Why, specifically? Because they don't know what SarbOx really and truly demands of them. They only know what the consultant said long ago, and they know when the PM says they would be "out of compliance" with SarbOx if they did so-and-so instead of such-and-such.

That's why SarbOx is a boogey man: it's huge, it's legal (rather than technical) and That Enron Dude Went To Jail because of it.

The nature of boogey men is never made clear, now is it? From Lenin to Mao to bin Laden, the DoD has its boogey men used to scare Congress into funding more and better toys. SarbOx is a boogey man in exactly the same way.</comment></comment></comment>


When Is Hacking Illegal and Legal? - <AUTHOR> https://secureblitz.com/when-is-hacking-illegal-and-legal/ <comment><USER2> "The White Hat Hackers are those hackers who look for backdoors in the software when they are legally permitted to do so."

The job of a hacker isn't to look for backdoors in software. There maybe cases where they have specifically been hired to look for "backdoors" but this is not the general terminology you should be using.

"The Grey Hat Hackers are those hackers who are like Black Hat hackers but do not hack to cause any damage to any organization or people's personal information or data. They are hired by companies or organizations to hack into their computer system and notify the administration if their order has any vulnerabilities. This is done so that these organizations can further secure their networks. Software companies make use of such hackers and hacking processes."

Grey Hat hackers are not hired by companies, or if they are they wouldn't advertise themselves as being grey hat.

"There are many ways in which the process of hacking could be explained. It could be described as a breach of the system or unauthorized access. Still, hacking is an unwarranted attempt to infiltrate a computer or any other electronic system to attain information about something or someone."

Hacking is not defined only as breaching a system via unauthorized access. There are many examples of legal hacking.</comment>


Ask HN: Am I Making a Mistake in Choosing Harvard over Stanford? - <AUTHOR>

I know I asked essentially this question a couple of weeks ago, but now I've visited Harvard, and I'm pretty close to making a decision.
I like Harvard because:
 - Smaller CS department is relatively intimate, good connections with professors
 - Good economics and cognitive sci (mind/brain/behavior) departments, which I'm almost as interested in as CS
 - Stronger ties to finance industry if I decide not to go straight into CS or change career paths
 - I've never lived in a big city, so being in Boston is pretty cool
 - Stronger exposure to non-tech areas and cofounders
 - Cross registering at MIT if I need to
However, I keep wondering if I'm making a mistake... Will I have any drop in starting salary by going to Harvard instead of Stanford (assuming I work/research equally hard)?
Thanks!
Edit: I should've been clearer: it's not all about the starting salary, but I loved the atmosphere/people/campus of both schools so much that I couldn't really decide based on that :P in a way, I'm really just looking for differences to make the decision easier haha <comment><USER2> Depends on what you want to do. Other factors might rebut the presumptions below, but I would offer the general piece of advice:

Go to Stanford if you want to be an engineer or would like to do a startup someday - your peers and the culture at Stanford will help you learn more.

Go to Harvard if you want to be a banker or go into finance. Plenty of folks from Stanford go into the financial industry, but again, your peers and the culture at Harvard will probably help you more.

Obviously, you have two great choices, so no matter which school you choose, you'll have plenty of opportunity to learn.

There's also a great Quora post that analogizes Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Caltech to the Hogwarts houses:

http://www.quora.com/Choosing-Colleges/How-does-a-star-engineering- high-school-senior-choose-among-MIT-Caltech-Stanford-and-Harvard);

Disclaimer: I went to Stanford and majored in a non-engineering discipline.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, still figuring out the details of HN. Clickable?

[http://www.quora.com/Choosing-Colleges/How-does-a-star- engin...](http://www.quora.com/Choosing-Colleges/How-does-a-star-engineering- high-school-senior-choose-among-MIT-Caltech-Stanford-and-Harvard)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, works now. Haha I may be reading into the Harry Potter metaphor a bit too much, but I've always thought about myself as a Slytherin. Sure, I _wanted_ to be Gryffindor, but I always felt like more of an impostor within Gryffindor than anything else

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's the dirty little secret: A sheepskin from either place will work.

The magic ingredient is you--what are your interests, goals? What is your personal culture like (SysV vs BSD)? Do you like snow, cold and nor'easters; or, warm, sunny and quakes?

Figure out yourself, and the school you want will be obvious.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think you can't go wrong with either choice, but I wouldn't make the decision based on potential starting salary. Choosing a college is about more than just what classes you'll take or you get when you graduate...remember you're also choosing your home for the next 4 years or potentially longer. I would look at the culture at the school and town more than anything else. Your major and career goals can change, but the fact that you still have to live there won't. A good test for picking a school is asking yourself: "would I move to this city just to live if I weren't picking a college?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point, and I actually should have thought about that a little more. I loved the culture and town of both - Stanford's campus is just amazing, but I could also see myself fitting in really well at Harvard, especially with all the stuff to do in Boston. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> p.s. I imagine any difference in salary will be negligible, especially at big companies. However, you will have different career opportunities depending on which school you attend, especially when it comes to startups and finding a co-founder among your peers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. But you are interested in banking so maybe not.</comment>


RoR Win: "Getting Things Done" with MongoDB Mongoid - <AUTHOR> http://code.dblock.org/ShowPost.aspx?id=210

<comment><USER2> Started using MongoDB + Mongoid a few weeks ago. I have no plans to ever use MySQL/PostgreSQL for any projects ever again (unless they have requirements MongoDB can't meet).

Prototyping without database migrations is amazing.

This video on MongoDB-style schema design was extremely helpful: <http://blip.tv/mongodb/schema-design-with-mongodb-3723187>

<comment><USER3> MongoDB is good, and Mongoid has a lot of features. However, I ran into a few Mongoid bugs that bothered me and I am transitioning my project to PostgreSQL.

Part of that is because my boss added a lot of features to the project that are easier to implement with normalized data. I could write JavaScript map/reduce functions to handle some of the cases, but using ActiveRecord 3.1 will be easier for me and easier for the next guy to maintain.

Everyone should try Mongoid out to learn its strengths. I agree with Ilya Grigorik when he says 90+% of the time SQL remains the most practical solution for the problem at hand (paraphrased).

<comment><USER4> I disagree

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> has anyone done a recent comparison of mongoid and mongo_mapper?

<comment><USER6> Nothing I've seen lately. MongoMapper 0.9 and on is shaping up rather well with its ActiveModel usage and whatnot.

<comment><USER5> I really like mongo mapper's plugin system, but mongoid tends to handle reflection (stuff like content_columns and reflect_on_association) better..</comment></comment></comment>


The Internet of Dangerous Auction Sites - <AUTHOR> https://iain.learmonth.me/post/2016/ebay/ <comment><AUTHOR> As a scary thought, all those databases kept by intelligence services that store connection "metadata" have the clear possibility of storing cookies, and being able to hijack eBay sessions on demand based on having the stored cookie.</comment>


Ask HN: Our iPad game hit top 30 in free games, how do we keep the momentum? - <AUTHOR> We are two MIT students who just published our physics-based puzzle game "Marble Drop" (http://www.marbledropgame.com) for iOS and Android (originally created for MakeGamesWithUs` MIT iOS games competition). The game has been a huge success in its first week, and we are now pushing the top of the App Store rankings in all of the relevant categories. At this point, we really have no idea what we should be doing as we try to grow our user base. We have been doing obvious things like talking to press, updating content, etc, but I suspect that there are a number of key strategies that are missing from our plan.<p>Do any HNers have advice on how we should spend our time and resources as we grow Marble Drop? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I developed a short-lived minor hit game several years ago which topped out at #3 on the U.S. App Store overall free chart, right behind the Facebook app. At the time that represented about 50-60,000 downloads a day; I assume it would be considerably more now.

That app was languishing in the nether regions of the App Store until we got press on some Gawker properties at which point it absolutely exploded. It was then picked up by other outlets which only helped.

There's a million apps out there and media outlets are not going to talk about all of them, so the way we got that press was by making writing an article about us more valuable to them: we gave them something to give their readers. This was a $0.99 app (these were the days before it was clear that charging money up front for apps is not a viable strategy). We scheduled a weekend giveaway about a week out, emailed media about it, and they got to offer their readers more than just pointing out an app they might like, they got to give them a deal on it.

So, in my limited experience, a good way to get traction is through some combination the media (they have the eyeballs) and a deal (people love deals). And the best way to get the media to talk about you is to make talking about you more valuable to them.

<comment> Alex-Galapagos bww, how did you get there initially? What app was it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations on the success! Getting a mobile game noticed isn't easy anymore.

I'd say your top priorities should be (in this order): 1\. Keeping your existing players as long as possible (Retention) 2\. Making money (Monetization) 3\. Getting new users in the door (User Acquisition)

It's a tough environment right now, and you can easily spend all your profits on marketing--so you have to make sure you're maximizing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of every install.

As a product manager with experience working on games for Zynga, Disney, and a few small gaming companies, I can tell you that free to play games are more like an on-going service than a make-it-and-ship-it console game.

Successful game developers generally follow the same pattern: 1\. Collect data to see what players like / don't like 2\. Analyze the data to decide what to do next 3\. Implement a change / new feature 4\. See if it worked 5\. Repeat

Data-driven decision making is key to making sure you're investing your engineering resources for the highest return.

I'd be happy to talk in more detail.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to talk to you in more detail, can I have your email ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > com.arbesfeld.marble_drop_test

The game's humble Android start are still evident in the link to the Google Play store.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi arbesfeld, This looks like a fun little game but could you please consider adding a colourblind mode. Your game is completely inaccessible to people such as myself with rod monochromatism - The second level features three different marbles, two of which appear the same.

Here is an edited screenshot to give you an idea of how I might see the game: [http://i.imgur.com/IFUkvKm.png](http://i.imgur.com/IFUkvKm.png)

Can you see how similar the second two marbles look?

One common way to address this is by assigning each marble and each bucket a letter or a number.

<comment><AUTHOR> @xmodem: thanks for the feedback - we have a color blind mode which uses letters that should be released in the next few days. We tried to choose colors that were as distinct as possible for a color blind player, but there is definitely a limit to how far colors can go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on releasing this great game!

A couple of thoughts.

Tracking: \- If you are not yet tracking your users, start doing that (Google Analytics, Flurry, etc.). The analytics will give you great insights into user behaviour, retention, churn rate, segmentation, etc. Use the data to decide what you should focus on next (e.g. if the user engagement is too low, try focusing on that).

ASO \- Optimize keywords to ensure that you are ranking in the top 10 for each of your keywords. I have written a series of blog posts about this topic ([http://blackboardmadness.com/blog/app-store-optimization- aso...](http://blackboardmadness.com/blog/app-store-optimization-aso- selecting-the-right-keywords-part-1/)) and also developed my own keyword selection/scoring model. I'd be happy to help with this (szilard at blackboardmadness.com).

\- Optimize file size: got a warning on the Android Play Store that the file size is very large (probably wouldn't prioritize this too high at the moment, though)

Review/ Rating: \- Allow users to rate your app from inside the game (e.g. use Appirater to prompt users to rate after X app sessions)

Social Integration: \- Deep FB integration (add an invite friends button, post achievements, FB leaderboard integration as in Dots)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> Just tried out the first few levels. Fun little game. The add ons for hints is an easy standard way to monetize a free game. I can't offer much advice graphics, but you might want to look at making the marbles look like marbles. Polish up the visuals just a bit. Feels like it's 95% of the way there.

Other ideas: Look into some way to compete with other people. Some way to share it.

Add the ability to text a link to the App Store to a friend. Only ask for the contacts permission when someone initiates that feature.

Just keep iterating on the game and polishing it. You guys will get more ideas as time goes by.

Expect the popularity to fall off at some point. That's normal.

Apple looks for apps that really show off the platform. Being in the top 30 is great. If the visuals and sounds were a little more polished there's a better chance your game might be featured. This can be really great for boosting you higher, though it's not a permanent bump.

Apps have life cycles. Do the best you can now and learn from it. Invaluable lessons for doing more apps in the future.

</comment><comment><USER9> My answer would be, it depends on your objectives. Are you hoping to build this into a large game company? Are you happy to try to craft a "lifestyle" game studio? Do you care about money? Are you just wanting to see lots of people play your game? Etc.

Your options include working with a large game publisher, which would be something to consider if you have limited resources on the marketing side and don't want to raise venture capital.

From a pure product strategy point of view, the best possible thing you could do is develop a viral loop, such that each of these installs you're currently getting for free could help you generate more installs.

Often this is done hand-in-hand with some key element of game-play (e.g. gifting) or hand-in-hand with some paid element, so people can either pay for something (generating you revenue) or avoid paying by completing viral actions (generating you new users).

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> Guys,

Thats incredible. Apple pushes new apps in the first week or 10 days. Usually it kind of drops after that. It might not be the case for your app. Wait a bit before you decide to change your life because of this game. If in one month its still getting 100 000 downloads per day... Then you got a winner

There's a few things you can do: \- focus on growing the userbase and sell the game in a few months or years. Make your game better and better... \- try to make money right now through ads. I would suggest to cut a direct deal with a big game developer like supercell (charboost is good for that) \- you're probably not making any money right now. I saw that you're not anywhere in the top grossing

I have a few apps that hit the top 1000 overall in the us. If you wanna talk, contact me : gabriel.louis.muller at gmail.com

Enjoy the ride,

Gab

</comment><comment><USER11> You might do nothing but celebrate. When we were quickly climbing the top ten did exactly that. The "snowball effect" is mostly what keeps the momentum going and if your app is a good one people are already recommending it and you will keep going. If that does not happen and your expectations are not met you can take it as a sign to improve the app.

That being said I would keep very close attention to reviews. (I use appfigures to keep track of that) and fix very quickly everything that should not be. Even though we were #2 there were a few bugs reported via the review system and there is a lot of people that are kind enough to let you know,

If you have a tool like crashalytics thats even better.

Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER12> Hey, congrats on the success ! I would suggest focusing on retention, social sharing and ratings to keep yourself in a good app store positon.

Retention : add push notifications, try to stay in touch with the users (with limited offers for example as mentioned below) and to make the user come back to the app

Social sharing : I would suggest creating a leaderboard, and connecting to FB to share your results and compete against others.

Ratings : Implement an incentive to let the user rate your app, to grow the number of reviews you have.

PS : I didn't have time to download the app, so maybe you already did this. I will download it in a couple of hours and will edit. If you want to chat more, alexei [dot] chemenda [at] gmail [dot] com !

</comment><comment><USER13> Several of the comments suggest a social leader board; I think that's a great idea. If you don't want to support Game Center on iOS, maybe a Facebook leader board. You could also set up your score board using Amazon's simpleDB. They support Facebook, Google, and Amazon logins. There's a basic article on that here: [http://aws.amazon.com/articles/SDKs/iOS/8829919029640036](http://aws.amazon.com/articles/SDKs/iOS/8829919029640036) Amazon's dynamoDB does more than that, but I can't seem to find the article on high score integration through dynamoDB. Hope it helps, and good luck!

<comment><USER13> Here's the quick walk through for posting scores using dynamoDB:

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developergu...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/WIF.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting name, there is already a game with the exact same one released in 1997 from Maxis [now EA]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Drop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Drop) . Good luck.

<comment><USER15> I would think that EA would probably exercise their copyright and any trademarks they have on the Marble Drop name. Anyone have possible insight to this?

<comment><USER13> Congrats on the game guys, it's pretty cool. The federal registration on the Marble Drop name was dropped by Maxis back in 2004 (do a Tess2 search on the uspto.gov website). That doesn't mean that they've abandoned all rights to use the name for a mobile game... before you panic and change the name, or just shrug and ignore the coincidence, I would say go talk to a Trademark attorney. I'm sure you can find plenty of them up around MIT (most firms that do patent work will have one or two trademark guys). If you're going to continue to grow with your game, it'll be well worth the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi Matt! Grats on the success of your game.

I would recommend making a subset of the levels free and having the rest be IAP or a separate purchase. Then, make it free for a limited time, and try to get some blogs to cover you and promote your app on social media at the same time. This type of model only really works if you have critical mass, but it seems like you're off to a good start.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER17> Your game has far too many ads. I played a few levels and was irritated that I had to close a fullscreen ad after every other level. I uninstalled the game when the first video ad was presented.

I don't pretend to know much about the iphone game market, but I can't imagine that these ads will help your position much.

</comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Your buttons doesn't work for me on Chrome 36 / Mac OSX:

[http://www.gfycat.com/OptimisticGrossAegeancat](http://www.gfycat.com/OptimisticGrossAegeancat)

<comment><USER18> Offtopic, but which tool do you use to capture videos like this? I've been meaning to find one.

EDIT: I'm getting the feeling there might be a niche market for a cross- platform program that does this. QuickCast is slick, but Mac-only. Simplescreenrecorder works, but it's Linux-only. Running ffmpeg console commands might work, but it's a bit esoteric. Nvidia has a tool, but only for Nvidia card owners. And QuickTime is, well, QuickTime. Interesting...

<comment><USER19> Open Broadcaster Software? [https://obsproject.com/](https://obsproject.com/)

<comment><USER18> Hmm, can OBS capture WebM to be uploaded to Gfycat?

Actually, it'd be nice to have a program that records WebM + uploads to Gfycat in one step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> take a minimal amount of funding from a high profile angel investor (Kevin Rose) or vc who can help market it with a tweet etc

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, the first question has to be what's your aim and ambition with this game?

</comment><comment><USER22> Get featured as an Ask HN.

</comment><comment><USER23> Btw Marble Drop is awesome game.

</comment><comment><USER24> Launch limited-time promos. People love these things. I don't know why. I think it caters to the hoarding instinct.

Give people exclusive levels or badges or other bonuses if they download within a time period. These don't have to be prepackaged with the installer, they can be delivered later, depending on the installation date.

</comment><comment><USER25> Scrolling down is fun, but I like to scroll up once in a while too.

</comment><comment><USER21> I use Ghostery in Firefox (17, that's what Debian Stable has). I click on the link to the Android play store and nothing happens. Ghostery is blocking it somehow, if I disable it it works. No idea why tho.</comment>


How many people & how long before you think your idea's worth pursuing? - <AUTHOR>

I am not looking for a right or wrong answer on this one. I have always the principle "Always be validating". So every idea of mine is shared with the intent of answering questions such as need, pricing, positioning etc.
How often (how many people do you talk to and how long) do folks here validate their ideas? <comment><USER2> I talk to a few close friends to get some ideas, but I don't rely on their excitement to give me an indication of how worthy an idea it is. Validation comes from actually getting it done and having people pay/use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are at the idea stage, do you actually build every one of our ideas out? Is it possible to test ideas without having to build every one of them?</comment></comment>


Excellent Twitter rant on the state of modern UIs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296 <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15643663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15643663)</comment>