Reinhart-Rogoff Response to Critique - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff-response-to-critique/ <comment><USER2> > _...these strong similarities are not what these authors choose to > emphasize._

This statement feels misleading, in that the similarities do not appear to be as significant as they are implying. The table they provide very clearly shows a significant difference between their 2010 findings and the HAP paper (-0.1 vs. 2.2 mean, a gap of over 2 percentage points).

> _These results are, in fact, of a similar order of magnitude to the detailed > country by country results we present in table 1 of the AER paper_

Taken literally, this makes no sense. No one has ever claimed the HAP results were of a differing _order of magnitude_ to their own.

Given that this is a rebuttal to a research paper where numerical values are in dispute, I would have thought they would use the term ("order of magnitude") precisely, and not colloquially.

> _It is utterly misleading to speak of a 1% growth differential that lasts > 10-25 years as small._

Perhaps, but if a 1% growth differential is significant (HAP), then a 2.9% differential is _massive_ (2010 RR), compounding the scale of their error.

After all, their original 2010 work implied a mean 2.9% drop in the growth rate once debt climbed above 90%. That paints a significantly different picture than a decrease of 1 percentage point, resulting net positive growth rate (2.2%) as opposed to negative (-0.1%).

While this is speculative on my part, I feel it's safe to say that had they originally reported these (allegedly) "very similar" numbers ( > 2% vs -0.1 %), their findings would not have gotten the same wide circulation in certain political circles that it did. Given that context, the whole " _...but the numbers are kinda close..._ " argument falls a little flat IMHO.

<comment><USER3> Could one even _be_ off by an order of magnitude with economic growth numbers? On a base of 2.2, that requires being off by 20%. You could never be off by an order of magnitude because economies don't grow or shrink by 20% pretty much ever.

<comment><USER4> But they're even wrong on that. Saying that -0.1 is like 2.2 is not correct. The difference between -0.1 and 2.2 _is an order of magnitude_ (e.g. a difference by a multiple of ten).

<comment><USER3> I guess no matter how you look at it, they are taking a totally wrong-headed approach to their mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (copied from my comment on the article)

The original paper concluded that debt overhang above 90% of GDP would result on growth of -0.1%. This was based on three serious flaws – 2 of methodology, one of spreadsheet programming. The corrected figure is 2.2%. To pretend that this is not a big deal is disingenuous considering how widely the 2010 paper was cited. It's true that the 2012 paper is more accurate and also that higher debt leads to lower growth, but to gloss over the severe flaws of the earlier paper is misleading. I would respect Reinhart and Rogoff a lot more for simply acknowledging the errors and repudiating their previous conclusion; instead they essentially argue their errors ought to have been caught earlier.

<comment><USER6> _and also that higher debt leads to lower growth_

Or that lower growth leads to higher debt. See Krugman's chart at [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/reinhart- rogoff-...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff- continued/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an unsatisfying response. It doesn't answer the question of why Reinhart and Rogoff chose to exclude certain high-debt years for certain countries or why they chose the particular weighting mechanism that the critics found problematic.

<comment><USER8> It is _a_ response and that is all that is needed. The target audience for this just needed _any_ rebuttal to paste into their streams to convince themselves that no adjustment of beliefs is required.

<comment><USER9> I agree. The damage is already done. It's going to take a response tenfold the magnitude of this publication to rebut it. Even then there's going to be people citing it.

All granted that it's true that RR was so far off to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dean Baker's critique of this response is typically incisive:

 _[Herndon, Ash, and Pollin] found growth was slower in periods with debt levels above 90 percent of GDP than below, but the gap was relatively small and nowhere close to statistically significant. Furthermore, they found a much bigger gap in growth rates around debt-to-GDP ratios of 30 percent. If we think that [Reinhart and Rogoff's] methodology is telling us something important about the world then the take-away should be that we want to keep debt-to-GDP ratios below 30 percent._

[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/quick- tho...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/quick-thoughts-on- reinhart-and-rogoffs-response)

<comment><USER10> You buried the lede!

 _Note there is no entry in a debt-to-GDP ratio for assets, just liabilities. So if we believe the R &R story, then we can increase the growth rate through [auctioning off the California coastline]._

People are fixated on the lurid detail of the story; do the Google search and see the "bad numbers! Excel spreadsheet! bad numbers!" roll by. The real issue, which Matt Yglesias pointed out last year, is that the purported result is hard to square with reality. Japan has the highest debt ratio in the world. If they disposed of it tomorrow, they would not suddenly be the fastest growing economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A Wolfe Simon worthy response.</comment>


Stem cells: The black box of reprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cells-the-black-box-of-reprogramming-1.16525

<comment><USER2> > "an international collaboration audaciously called Project Grandiose"

Nice to see audacity in hard science on in a while isn't it???!!

> "transcriptomic epigenomic and proteomic data sets"

So your 'big data' startup has a few petabytes? lel.

> "Early transcriptional events, driven by high levels of reprogramming > transcription factor expression, are associated with widespread loss of > histone H3 lysine 27 ( H3K27me) trimethylation, representing a general > opening of the chromatin state "

IANASCBC ( I am not a stem-cell biochemist ) but the state of chromatin corresponds with how readily certain genes are accessed, facilitating transcription ... and ultimately "what happens in the cell"

project website: [http://www.stemformatics.org/](http://www.stemformatics.org/)</comment>


Early access to GT Machine Learning course on Udacity  - <AUTHOR> I helped Dr. Charles Isbell (Georgia Tech) and Dr. Michael Littman (Brown) build this course as a part of the Georgia Tech online MS program. Charles and Michael have different views on how they think about various Machine Learning topics. This course will give you a unique learning experience to learn Machine Learning from both of their viewpoints.
I really enjoyed working on this class with Charles and Michael, and I would like to hear your feedback.
Udacity is releasing this course on 3/17, but wanted to give early access to a limited number of people on HN. If you are interested, sign up here: http://goo.gl/kCiYI9
This will let you view the free version of the course (includes everything except personal project support and certificate). If you miss the cut-off, don't worry, you can see the course for free beginning on 3/17!
Course page: https://www.udacity.com/course/ud675  (watch the trailer!) <comment><USER2> Dr. Isbell is one of the best instructors I've had the pleasure of being talked at by. It's like he has a cable dumping knowledge directly into your brain.

</comment><comment><USER3> You are awesome. I've been waiting for this course to start. I started a book on ML and found that given the quantity of new material for me that I would wait for the Udacity course since the format works better for me in instances when there are lots of known and unknown unknowns.

Thanks a ton both for helping build the course and sharing this!</comment>


Davos: Bitcoin is not a currency - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/technology/davos-bitcoin-currency-asset/index.html?iid=ob_article_footer_expansion <comment><USER2> At current market cap of 188 billion [https://www.coingecko.com/en/](https://www.coingecko.com/en/)

It's not currency then it becomes a tool of speculative future. It's no longer feasible as payment due to current block scale issue. Then it becomes protocol for building blocks</comment>


Ask HN: Describe deploy process at your work/project - <AUTHOR> Describe deploy process and technologies stack at your work/project. Maybe more about CI/CD and which technologies do you use.<p>Thanks :) <comment><USER2> For context, we have a different AWS account for each environment (production, staging, etc.) and have as much parity as possible between them (although resource sizes might vary - for example different RDS instance sizes for staging vs. production). All of our services run on AWS ECS and CI is done through CircleCI.

Our deployments start with a Github PR needing to have 2 approvals from peers and have all CI checks pass. Once the PR has been approved it can be merged into master which will trigger CI workflows again with the additional step of deploying the changes to staging and building a new release for production. The author of the changes can then verify they work as expected and promote the release in production or rollback their changes if things aren't working.

All of our AWS resources are created and tracked through Terraform but services are created through Convox[1]. We use Convox to create "releases" (ECS task definitions), manage their lifecycle (creation, promotion, releases, rollbacks, etc.) and it's CLI is pretty convenient (promoting a new release is as simple as running `convox releases promote <ID>`). That being said we've had some shortcomings with it and have outgrown it's flexibility. We'll be starting our migration into k8s early next year but it's worked great for us for the past 2 years.

[1] [https://convox.com](https://convox.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> I work on two machines - a 'dirty' one and a secure one.

The 'dirty' machine is used for day-to-day tasks. I write code, download libraries, research things on the internet, but the machine doesn't have access to any of my production systems. In other words, if the dirty machine were to be compromised, the attacker couldn't take over my website with it.

All code is pushed to a private fork of my website, which is the 'staging' branch. A separate GitLab account and SSH identity is used so that there is a clear separation of privileges.

Then, when I'm ready to deploy to production, I turn around and log on to my secure machine. I create a merge request to merge the dirty 'staging' branch with the clean production branch. Before accepting the merge request, I thoroughly review the diff of my own code in order to make sure that an attacker didn't sneak something in without me noticing.

If I need to make minor corrections before merging (e.g. if I notice a spelling mistake at the last minute), I can commit this straight to master from the secure machine and then pull the change back down to staging afterwards.

Doing it this way does take slightly longer, but if you have both of the machines physically next to each other (but with separate peripherals and isolated network connections of course), then the security benefit massively outweighs the extra time requirement.

<comment><USER4> Do you do this from home?

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is for my personal projects at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For work, we use Concourse-CI self-hosted on EC2 using this script[0]. We have blue-green deploys to Pivotal Web Services (PWS) which is hosted CloudFoundary in AWS. We've written our own blue-green deployment scripts for Spring Boot, Node.js/React/Vue, and Python. We also have a pipeline for deploying directly to EC2 Autoscaling groups.

We have a Go service that is deployed directly to EC2 with a Makefile from its source repo. We deploy it so rarely that we haven't made a pipeline.

The deployment script is used to deploy first to a 'staging' environment and if all is well, a manual trigger to continue deploying the service to production. These deployments run from the 'master' branch from Github repos. We also have 'dev' branches that deploy to a separate dev environment for ad- hoc use for dev/integration.

Databases are PostgreSQL in AWS RDS with Liquibase used for migrations.

When performing a blue-green deployment to each environment, the test suite is run against the 'new' blue/green deployment. After passing this suite it becomes the current version in the environment and an additional 'Journey Test' sequence is run which verifies that the top 10 actions work as designed. We also run a 'Health Check' of the current production environment using the journey tests every 10 minutes.

[0] [https://github.com/karmakaze/concourse- ec2](https://github.com/karmakaze/concourse-ec2)

For personal projects, I've used Netlify for static sites, or webhooks/polling of Github/Gitlab repos to update prod deployments as well as a Makefile 'deploy-prod' target from the project repo.

</comment><comment><USER6> ftp some php scripts, written in notepad++</comment>


Ask HN: What's the biggest risk you took in your career that paid off? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Quit my "dream job", sold/gave away everything I owned, just hopped on a plane to a new continent (Wednesday last day at work, Thursday morning flight went) and see how it goes. First week I sat mostly alone around at some beach, contemplating about what I had done and whether it was the stupidest thing ever. It was a personal challenge. Best decision of my life. That was nearly 3 years ago now.

One can only grow if faced with challenges. I learned a lot about myself and life.

<comment><USER3> Where did you go? Would you mind sharing what you have learned?

<comment><USER2> I learned to be grateful and enjoy the small things in life, to worry less, to calm my mind (which is still a challenge) and to not overthink everything.

It sounds very generic, but putting in words how your character changed is not so easy, I figure I'd have to ask family/old friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Deciding to finally start demanding bigger raises from my employers by firing them and joining new companies.

<comment> Pirate-of-SV How do you do this exactly? Do you threaten to leave if you dont get X in salary or is it more implicit that you quit and the next company give you a salary that is closer to X than the previous?

<comment><USER4> No, I just leave. In the last 4 years I have tripled my salary.

At a lot of companies there is a a max promotion of like 10-15% - often times companies will only give 3-5% increases, I deal with that once and then move on.

I've gotten 30% increases each time I leave.

My mantra has become, "The only way up is out"

That said, I have a "remote only" policy, I don't entertain relocating (I have two houses in my town) and I have already tried and left both of the local industries in close proximity after getting "stuck".

Reference: [http://russell.ballestrini.net/career-development-is-a- game-...](http://russell.ballestrini.net/career-development-is-a-game-of- chutes-and-ladders/)

<comment><USER5> I am guessing your plan presumbly works when either

1\. Engineer is early in their career so lot of scope of raises in early years by moving. 2\. Market moves and suddenly you are paid below market rates so you move to level up 3\. You are upskilling or taking on more responsibility in the move each time.

<comment><USER6> I work at a well recognized soft company. First year SDE's get paid more than me with a fat signing bonus because they come from Stanford. I've been working for 3 years now. 5 years prior experience. As a L1 you don't have much negotiation leverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Raising my rates.

I was too timid to rais rates on old clients, so I gave new clients a higher rate. After a year or so, about 20% of our customers were paying the higher rate and that gave me the courage to up the rate on the old clients.

Nobody cared - a few customers told me it was about time I raised my rates.

<comment><USER8> Listen up people, that's exactly how you should raise rates: Test with new customers, then align older ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> (In reverse chronological order)

1) Quitting ZenPayroll. Ended up leaving what are now millions of dollars of (paper money and unsellable) shares on the table, at a time when the company was clearly taking off. Now building a values-focused, mission driven company the right way and loving every minute of it.

2) Quitting LivingSocial after 11 months when I realized that they weren't what they sold me on. The pitch was building back-office tools for SMBs, but in the end they never did the right thing for SMBs if it wasn't also in their interest.

3) Dropping out of college as a philosophy major, believing I could learn to program. Joined LivingSocial as an aspiring engineer, which turned out to be a great place to start. Great exposure to the Ruby community, experience with hard things (scale, caching, business problems creeping into the product.)

As you may notice, my biggest fear is regretting wasted time. While I tried to change each one of those places to be what I knew they could be, until you start your own company you must (rightfully) defer to what others decide is "right". I've realized I have an incredibly high bar for making difficult decisions, which isn't realistic to "manage up."

</comment><comment><USER10> Right out of college I made the huge mistake of joining one of the big consulting companies. Six months in I hated it so I just quit.

At the time I was living in Houston, where I didn't have much of a network, so I packed up my stuff and moved back to San Antonio. I attended college in San Antonio and at least had some contacts there, mostly revolving around the coworking center Geekdom.

No job but I had enough savings to float myself for a few months.

A friend of mine from there put me in touch with a startup he had invested in—they were still in Techstars and he knew they needed an engineer. I contracted with them for a bit and joined up full time after they graduated and raised a seed round. Arguably they risk was theirs as their first engineering hire was a fresh dev who'd never had a full time programming job. They moved to Boulder after the program and six months later I followed.

Now I'm at Twitter, because I quit a job I hated and bet that my contacts would pay off.

<comment><USER11> what is was a huge mistake joining big consulting companies, I am working now at a "big consulting company", I just want to know your point of view.

<comment><USER10> I realized that it was going to take me 5+ years to get to the point with consulting where I had any control over my own destiny. Jumping to a startup let me accelerate that timetable and build far more experience far faster than would be possible within the Capgemini behemoth.

<comment><USER11> I feel the same way as you did, I have 2 years in a big consulting company (Atos) , and I really want to get out of here

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Taking dive into fullstack javascript 2 years before!

I picked express, react (v0.9) and sequelize. Webpack for bundling (it was undocumented that time) It was my first experience with backend JS and react. For service I used docker and fig (now it's docker-compose)

Of course, I failed this project after 1.5 years of dev (it was pretty huge, but this technical debt destroyed all that I have coded). Then I created this project from scratch on Magento (it was just online shop) in about 4 months.

What I learned? A BUNCH of things related to TDD (system tests, unit tests, mocking), JS ES6, program architecture at overall, SQL (things like assotiations, migrations, SQL performance optimizing), about caching technique... This list is pretty huge, I learned in that time 80% of all I know!

That was about positive moments. Now about negative. I experienced impostor syndrome (by the way, I'm feeling it right now and this feeling is not leaving me). Also I experienced burnout 3 times (apathy, lack of appetite, insomnia). This thing was really destroying....

I'm happy I've failed this project! I learned a lot of things. Now I really become full-stack JS engineer. I've got the power :)

And First of all, I started to value my time, my energy and my mental and physical health. Now I place this things in first place, they really matter! I'm 21 years old, don't take me like I'm sick or something (Like all people on 20s, I'm filled with energy). I just found the price... the price of myself.

</comment><comment><USER13> Took the plunge and left a captive position to freelance. A year into freelancing (in 2006), I developed my own SaaS service and grew it to $80k monthly revenue. Did really well until the market crashed in 2008. Built a few other SaaS services since then with moderate success.

Also started a small advertising agency in 2013 and grew that to $50k monthly revenue. After 3 years of doing that, I realized that scaling an ad agency was really hard. There is a lot of over-head, high churn and I didn't enjoy it.

I am now back to developing a mobile app SaaS service and an educational SaaS service.

To sum it up - my biggest risk that paid off was starting my own business.

<comment><USER14> Software as a service service.

<comment><USER15> I know a lot of people like poke fun at "RAS syndrome" but how would you write this phrase without using a redundant acronym?

"Built a few other SaaS services since then"

Would it be "Built a few other SaaSes since then"? "Built a few other Software as a Services since then"? "Built a few other SaaServices since then"? "Built a few other services following the SaaS model since then"?

I can't think of a way that doesn't sound more contrived than the original.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you on this. I sometimes describe it as SaaS products but even that doesn't really feel right. I guess because when I think of a product I think of something physical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Changing jobs often. Working at the same place for more than 2 years rarely pays off, even you get glowing reviews and everyone loves you - it doesn't convert to the dollars. You might get a 10% raise, but you will not get +40%. Getting comfortable costs you tens of thousands of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER17> Two big risks. One, I left middle school teaching career to work as an admissions counselor at my wife's university so we could score free tuition. When I got fired from that, I applied for a programming job at the same university. I shouldn't have gotten that job, I was completely unskilled. Instead they hired me, and so began the most rewarding work of my life!

<comment><USER18> Also genuine question...

How does one get a job when they're completely unskilled?

<comment><USER19> Not OP, but I can answer this one.

1\. Many jobs are acquired based on things other than one's skill set. Some that I've seen: friend, family, lives in the area, internal candidate (so less process), spouse of current employee, minimally viable candidate that avoids a public job announcement, need a butt in the seat ASAP or the seat is lost, no skilled candidate will actually apply for the job (e.g., lower salary, bad reputation, etc.)... the list could go on and on.

2\. The people doing the hiring might not have had the skill set required to know that he was unqualified.

3\. He may be sandbagging his own skills. A lot of times the hard part of a job is problem solving. The tech part, even if he did not know it at the time, is learnable. The problem-solving part is less easy to teach.

4\. Due to various unofficial policies that exist at places like universities, there may have been a requirement to find a new place for him when he was "fired". This could be for a number of reasons. Maybe he was actually laid off (e.g., reduced budget for that department and he was junior). Maybe he fits a certain profile that they want to keep at the university (e.g., he's connected to someone important). Maybe they wanted to avoid a potential lawsuit for wrongful dismissal.

Having seen a lot of odd stuff happen at well-known universities, I have to say that my curiosity has been piqued. I hope more of the story is told...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Leaving a stable job and many friendships and moving to a new city without knowing more than one person.

I did this when I moved to London (from Scotland) and then to Seattle and then the the Bay area.

It was worth it every time but it's scary too, especially when there was no backup plan - if things didn't work out in London, I had no ability to get back to Scotland.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not the biggest risk (as I didn't have much to lose), but right after my undergrad I took a job in China with a young, 3rd party Quality Control service company, getting paid about $1200/month + food/housing. I learned the ins and outs of factory work in China, over a vast number of industries. The owner invested in his foreign employees learning Mandarin. This year and half experience paid off since my work now involves buying from China heavily, and I have insight into this process.

<comment><USER22> Did you graduate from an non-Chinese university, and then move to China? Or always had an in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Quit my job as an accountant at a big firm with no next job or prospects lined up. Ended up creating a successful iPhone Bible app.

<comment><USER24> Now you have to deliver on the "accounting for freelancers" course you said you were going to deliver last year

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Graduating law school at peak of last recession - worst employment prospects in generations, not even close to top of class, only had one summer's worth experience with public sector (1 month each w/ state DOJ and legislature).

Spent last year in school designing something akin to Casetext, then they came out of Summer '13 batch while I was studying for the bar. Decided to cheer them on rather than continue to build my application since I just recently began self-teaching JS (they're currently like 85/90% parity with my idea, was closer to 60% when they first came out - go Casetext!)

Joined up with AmeriCorps for 12k/year providing free legal assistance to homeless/disabled vets (VA bens, discharge upgrades, clearing criminal records). Had applied to legislature job paying 60k. Fell in love with my vet work. Legislature job calls me up 4 months later into my AmeriCorps service to interview (I'm 90% sure I had this in the bag based on the previous summer's final evaluation).

Turned down interview, stuck it out with low pay for another 6 months and then got hired on for (still lower than Legislature) salaried position.

1.5 years later - for my org, I'm in charge of all vet work for the whole state (4th largest vet population in US), I supervise the veteran law program at a top 15 lawschool. I'm "unofficially" in charge of whole state bar association of vet law attorneys (we just recently formed as an entity with 100+ members).

I get to work my own hours, I get to choose my own cases. I didn't even know this was an area of the law I could make a career out of - not a vet myself.

Job satisfaction > pay (plus it'll come in due time)

</comment><comment><USER26> Quitting a stable job seems to be a recurring theme here.

I, too, quit a cushy and stable engineering job with the Government to join a marketing agency. Then I quit that a year later, with nothing else lined up.

My only plan was to "consult," but I didn't know exactly what I would consult on and how I would find clients.

I went through all of my savings and maxed out a credit card (0% introductory rate) when, in the nick of time, things started falling into place.

It's three years later now. I'm very happy with my career and the lifestyle I'm able to afford thanks to my income, which is 2x greater than my Gov't and agency salaries _combined_.

Wasn't easy, though. I wrote about this at greater length here: [http://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting- le...](http://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting-leads/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Just after my undergrad college I joined a startup hoping to learn and grow exponentially as a developer. The first day of work my girlfriend came to drop me off and she said, "you are changing your job in next 6 months". And 2 months working in I realized she was right, it was a dying startup with no future. I kept working hoping I would induce a change and inspire the team. Six months in I hated it so much and I got so frustrated that I quit.

The first week after quiting I just spent time questioning my decision. But next couple of weeks I spent time with myself and gained a better perspective about life and career.

Its been 2.5 months now since I quit. I have saved enough to keep me floating. And now I am preparing to get into Amazon. Let's see if I nail it.

It was a rightful decision that I took. One thing I did learn is "How not to run a startup".

<comment><USER22> If you don't mind commenting, what factors made you realize that you hated it 2 months in?

I'm in a similar boat, going to a startup (50~ people, 2.5 years), so this would be useful :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> my biggest by far was my first job out of college. I had a lot of Linux experience and applied for a giant ISP. This was in 2001 so after the dotcom bust.

I interviewed there on a Friday. The manager comes in last and tells me everyone liked me and he was going to offer me a role as a mid-level Solaris admin. I'd skip over the whole route of help desk->jr admin route and go right into a mid-level role. The only catch was he told me the company was filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday.

I took the job hoping I could last there a year. I somehow made it through 2 rounds of layoffs and was there a year where I moved to another small company as like the whole IT shop that took me to the next level.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have two: quitting college at the height of the recession (08') and switching jobs a couple of times in a few years to increase my paycheck 4x.

I hustled my ass off, worked super manual jobs during the day, focused on networking and skill building at night. Landed a job in tech and continued to study anything and everything I could. Few years later, in a upper management role. Best decision ever. I'm learning so much, getting to work on bleeding edge tech, and getting compensated well. That said, a couple sentences explaining this path doesn't due justice to how hard it was to get where I'm at. I didn't get lucky and this path isn't for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER30> Quit a highly paid job with a big company (my decision). Joined a smaller company (my decision). Found great people to work with (luck) who are humble, smart and willing to teach - these days I tap dance to work.

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Quit my job in a company I was co-owner of, which wasn't going anywhere interesting. Moved country. Took a sabbatical. Studied environmental science at the university. Met a great person at a conference. Started an open source organisation together. Now running open source based data services in more than a dozen African and Asian countries tracking critical infrastructure, among other things.

<comment><USER31> Really interesting project. Mind if I contact you?

<comment> bjelkeman-again Please feel free to contact me. Mention this post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've quit a promising career in embedded systems (senior engineer at one of the biggest companies with all perks), rented my flat and travelled across the globe to work in a startup as a junior web dev with python 2 years ago.

Changed my life in all aspects. Today I am in yet another country and enjoying my career so much more.

</comment><comment><USER33> One morning, I woke up with the realization I hated everything about what I was doing with my life. I tossed on a pair of jeans, a white t-shirt, and flip flops, then went into work to quit (I had been in sales for 3.5 years). As soon as my boss saw me, he knew what was up. We sat and talked for a bit, but it was mostly a formality.

I had no plan. I had no replacement job lined up. I had little in savings. I struggled for the next year. I fucked up and lost a lot. But I forcibly put myself on a path to do something I loved, and invest the time necessary be good at it. This opened up a world in which I don't hate my work or life, rarely have a bad day, and typically work no more than half the year.

It was the best decision I ever made, and I've never been happier.

</comment><comment><USER34> Dropped out of college in order to pursue my own company.

<comment><USER35> same here, tho' I failed 2 times, closing 2 companies, with the accumulated experience and knowledge the 3rd one is a success so far

<comment><USER36> how come you didn't end up with a staggering amount of dept?

I know a few people who had failed companies and all of them hadnt enough money left to do anything afterwards...

<comment><USER35> All companies were making money, but at some point, because of bad management, operational costs were too high and we started to lose profits so I decided to close early to minimise losses.

For example you build a car wash, first year is doing good, then you start to patch broken things not reinvest in new equipment, clients are not happy, they leave, you don't care, second year operational costs are almost the same as income, so you decide you don't want to own a car wash and you close.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Leaving a job I liked in DC and a lot of friends in the area for the world of Bay Area startups and moving to the Valley. Two years later, I am now a much better developer, and happier person with a lot more control over my future.

</comment><comment><USER38> Learned Python in a country where it's not very popular at all. Now I get good salary for the same reason :) and I have literally no competition when applying for a job.

<comment><USER39> Interesting, which company it is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I left from Europe to Australia because I drank before going to work (Java dev). Came back 3 years later not only with 7x savings because the startup had a successful exit, but also with a lifetime more of experience, I've learnt how startups worked (and Scala and product marketing and open source and HN, Howdy HN!) and I came back to successfully create mine, and I now own my job. Oh and it's a good step towards product management which I love.

<comment><USER11> I am interested in hearing more about your story if you don't mind, from where did you go ? why did you left ? what your startup is about ?

<comment><USER8> I can't speak much. My Australian startup had this kind of sweeping confidential agreement (for example customers aren't allowed to talk about the performance of the products, and I can't tell for employees). Not very clever on their part in any case, but I prefer not to develop, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I relocated to a tech centric part of the country. The cost of living is higher, but so are salaries and also the quality of life.

<comment><USER41> Very true, my biggest regret is not doing this sooner!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would also like to know what was the biggest risk you took in your career that you ended up regretting?

<comment><USER43> I dropped out of the workforce in 2003 for about a year, after I got laid off from a startup while I was working remotely from Austin. It was a tough time to be a somewhat junior developer in Austin, and after a couple of really bad experiences freelancing (I was pretty bad at a number of important skills you need to be freelance at the time) I decided to go back to school and pursue med school. I got a few worthwhile experiences out of going back to school, but a degree wasn't one them; I took a "break" to help a friend out with a short term contract for programming project which turned into full time work, and I never went back. I'm probably making pretty close to what I would have as a GP (assuming I would have been accepted to med school, which is hardly a foregone conclusion) with a lot more self direction.

It's not like my life would be drastically different had I stuck out the recession, but I would have no student loans to pay off and would have probably gotten my career on track five or six years sooner than I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wrote this a while ago answering the exact same question:

[http://scottpatten.ca/2012/04/no- excuses.html](http://scottpatten.ca/2012/04/no-excuses.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> While it hasn't 'paid off', yet. I'm much happier working on a startup than I was consulting. Don't underestimate fulfilment over money.

</comment><comment><USER45> Saying no to joining an arms and weapons producer.

2 months later I got hired by a AAA firm.</comment>


Show HN: Dr-provision, a single binary system provisioning solution - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/digitalrebar/provision <comment><USER2> Hi, I am one of the lead engineers developing dr-provision. We have a few interesting features:

* Written in Go, for that single binary install goodness.

* Stackable read-only content layers, to make change control of your provisioning infrastructure easy. We also provide several content layers that include common provisioning tasks such as installing Ubuntu, Centos and Debian, performining initial system discovery and inventory, and a bunch of other stuff.

* Full REST API. All aspects of dr-provision are managed via our REST API, and we also provide a CLI interface and a React-based Web UI.

* Integrated DHCP, TFTP, static HTTP and BINL servers. No need for dnsmasq, tftpd, or nginx.

* Tasks and Workflows: You can define provisioning workflows to manage all aspects of provisioning a system, from initial system discovery through installing your OS to handing control of the system off to Ansible/Chef/Puppet.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this compare / play with the existing K8S ecosystem for bare metals?

<comment><USER2> One of our demo workloads deploys Kubernetes via kubeadm on bare metal nodes -- we have a video of the process here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMm6Oz1NF6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMm6Oz1NF6I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> provisioning -> as in netboot, PXE & IPXE? Oh! This is for bare metal machine provisioning.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing! This is great</comment>


Hello, World! Russia Here! - <AUTHOR> https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/hello-world-russia-here/ <comment><USER2> What is up with these kind of meandering blog posts that skyrocket to the front of hacker news so often?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you read the blog post? I think it gives a much needed context to whats going on with Russia at the moment.

<comment><USER2> I think it gives a sort of jr. high school spat / just gathering of info bits context that is not the least bit insightful or accurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> > jr. high school spat / just gathering of info bits context that is not the > least bit insightful or accurate.

Sure. [https://foreignpolicy.com/author/cheryl- rofer/](https://foreignpolicy.com/author/cheryl-rofer/)

<comment><USER2> Doesn't really change the content, and I'm not sure that link really lends much credibility on the topic.... do you feel it does?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NeoVGA: Neo Geo Line Doubler in VHDL - <AUTHOR> http://mikejmoffitt.com/wp/?p=270

<comment><USER2> Very good work.

PLLs can be a little scary if you're instantiating them by hand for the first time, but as long as you know the incantation to do it on each platform, it's not too bad. Both platforms (Altera and Xilinx) have 'megafunction' wizards that can generate the PLLs for you; alternatively, if you have a library of stuff around to copy and paste, that works too.

If you need something to copy and paste a very basic PLL from (i.e., none of the advanced features, like variable feedback or chained PLLs), my Xilinx basecode[1] has an example, as does my Altera basecode[1].

Cool to see more people experimenting with FPGAs!

[1] [https://github.com/jwise/vterm/blob/master/VTerm.v#L1](https://github.com/jwise/vterm/blob/master/VTerm.v#L1) [2] [https://github.com/jwise/c5g-basecode/blob/master/demo.v#L2](https://github.com/jwise/c5g-basecode/blob/master/demo.v#L2)</comment>


The Real Cause of Obesity: It's not gluttony. It's genetics. - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/215115/output/print <comment><USER2> What really irks me about this article is that the author uses anecdotes and vague references to science to strengthen his stance. Not only is this shoddy reporting, but it commits a much worse crime. It commits the crime of giving the obese an easy out, a way to say, "Hey, it's not really my fault so I shouldn't even bother to try to lose weight." No. Wrong.

I've personally seen dozens of people go from being very overweight to being healthy and fit. How'd they do it? Through lots of very dedicated, smart work in their diets and exercise. Now, maybe those experiences were simply aberrations that somehow converged on my life--but I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> Those people are definitely aberrations, especially if they have managed to keep the weight off for 5 or more years. Also, isn't the second paragraph of your comment doing the exact thing you were criticizing in the first (using "anecdotes and vague references" to strengthen your stance)?

I don't think the obese are looking for an easy way out. I think they are looking for a way to lose weight. How many obese people do you know that haven't even tried to lose weight?

It is certainly true that it is physically possible for most people to lose weight (I personally took off 110 lbs and kept it off for 2 years now), the fact remains that most people who want to lose weight and try to lose weight fail. This suggests to me that it requires some trait that the average person simply doesn't have enough of.

I view the situation as very similar to drug addiction. Everyone who suffers from one knows what they need to do, and most of them try, but very few are successful. The difference is kids aren't provided drugs like they are crap foods, and you don't need to take drugs every day to stay alive. So in some ways obesity is even thornier (although I think the brain chemistry a dieter is up against isn't as strong as that of a drug addict).

Ultimately it is easy for a non-obese person to say "this is what obese people need to do and they are choosing not to", and maybe that feels good to you, but it accomplishes nothing.

<comment><USER2> But I'm able to use anecdotes because I'm not a MD/PhD writing an article in a major US publication

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally guarantee that if you eat less, eat higher quality fresh produce, less sugar, less meat, and less processed food you will lose weight and live longer. If this revolutionary new diet does not work, please contact me.

<comment><USER5> I think you miss the point of the article. The article doesn't say that this won't work. It says that obese people have genes which tell them to eat more than they should. For example: You need 2200 kcal a day. Your genes tell you to be hungry until you've eaten 2300 kcal a day. The consequence is obvious: You will gain weight.

That is the statement of the article, nothing else. It doesn't say "obese people cannot be lean" or "diets won't work on obese people." It simple states that obese people are obese 'cause their genes tell them to eat more than they should eat. And that we shouldn't prejudice people because they have 'bad' genes.

<comment><USER6> And yet somehow we have entire continents full of thin people living outside the McDonalds belt, many of whom must have this same genetic disorder. How are they managing to keep the pounds off?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to compare this article to the earlier one on Turing.

For the Turing article, the gist was that Gordon Brown forgave the harsh and inhumane treatment of Turing that happened a long time ago. Nobody around today was directly involved and this -- like it or not - is more symbolism than substance.

For this article, the gist is that fat people are fat because of genetics. There are lots of fat people around today. Billions are spent on trying to make fat people thin, and millions die from the results of being fat. It's a current and immanent threat to our fellow citizens.

For the Turing article, most of the comments were along the lines of "way to go!" and "it's about time!" -- very encouraging that something was being done.

For the fatso article, most of the comments (so far) are along the lines of "Those damn fat people, they should just stop eating so much!" -- very discouraging that anything besides blaming behavior (which amounts to blaming the fat person) amounted to much. I believe one commenter said it was "just giving fat people an excuse to stay fat" (it was subsequently deleted)

I'm sure you guys will tell me that my comparison is all wrong, but I find some interesting parallels nonetheless.

<comment><USER8> The comparison is wrong because the gays didn't want to be "cured". Fat people spend billions to "cure" themselves. If fat people were content to be fat, there wouldn't be so many people saying "well just don't eat so much!".

<comment><USER7> So these commenters are being helpful?

I don't see where the motives of the people involved as the object of the story come into it. The point I was making was the motives of the people commenting right here on the article. We have two situations: one in the past where nothing can really be done and one in the present where we have this catastrophe. For the thing in the past, commenters are generally very happy and enthused that a symbolic step was taken. For the thing in the present, commenters are angry that fat people have brought this on themselves, and seem immune to any idea that there's anything involved except a morality play in which fat people are the guilty, ie, nothing should be done except shaming the people involved.

To put a fine point on it: people are very moral. Don't let anybody fool you. There are groups which are okay to trash and groups that are not. Distant, symbolic action is preferred over immediate threats. Modern righteousness generally consists of making yourself feel superior to other folks, whether it is tormentors of Turing or the fatso sitting in the cube next to you (and I speak as a fat person, for whatever that's worth)

Now I'm probably smoking crack, but that's my thesis, in case you missed it.

<comment><USER9> I agree that people are blind to contemporary stupidity and self- congratulatory about past stupidity they have overcome. People love visiting museums that make them appreciate how far we've come in overcoming racism, genocide, and medieval torture (well, scratch that last one, we have to fight the War on Terruh after all).

Nonetheless, I think the Turing spectacle is valuable because public shows of support will influence fence-sitters to emulate us in support of awesome gay people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not pure genetics alone, it's a combination of genetics and gluttony. It's really simple: if you intake more energy than you consume, then you will gain weight. Our energy utilization varies and is regulated by genes, to beat this problem means simply to eat less (intake less energy) or to exercise more (burn more energy).

<comment><USER11> No it's not really simple. If you eat more energy than you use you may not gain weight, and if you eat less energy than you use you may lose weight but gain fat at the expense of muscle and other tissues.

<comment><USER10> "If you eat more energy than you use you may not gain weight"

The normal body will convert excessive energy to fat, so if you intake more energy than you use you will gain fat. Care to explain your case?

"if you eat less energy than you use you may lose weight but gain fat at the expense of muscle and other tissues"

I didn't claim a person eating less will only lose fat.

<comment><USER11> _The normal body will convert excessive energy to fat, so if you intake more energy than you use you will gain fat. Care to explain your case?_

IANA(Biologist), and I can't remember the details of what I was reading about it, but it's not like filling a bath and if you put too much in the rest goes through the overflow and into your fat cells. Leptin signals fat cells to store energy as fat, and if it doesn't do that then you wont get fatter.

Where else could it go? Maybe you take in more energy and become more active to use it up? Maybe it goes straight through you - is sensed and less is digested, or is taken into the blood stream, then filtered out again. Maybe some of it is used in rebuilding and repair that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

I don't, for instance, binge on 3500 calories extra of junk food in a day and put on 1lb of fat that same day (I don't think).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _would also allow us to collectively focus on what is most important - one's health rather than one's weight_

You mean - one's health rather than one's _fat_ , yes?

<http://www.sff.net/people/DoyleMacdonald/l_pyecra.htm> (Short story - H.G. Wells - The Truth about Pyecraft)

<comment><USER12> Amusing story.

My girlfriend has two hindu grandmothers. I've always wondered why she didn't just use their recipes to lose that 5lb she always complains about. Now I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eh, then how come America has become more fat in the last 30 years? Do the genes degenerate that fast? The article is so bad that I suspect the author is trying to score with a fat chick and published this to make her feel better or something;-)

<comment><USER5> From the article:

"Although our high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle contributes to the approximately 10-pound average weight gain of Americans compared to the recent past, some people are more severely affected by this lifestyle than others. That's because they have inherited genes that increase their predisposition for accumulating body fat. Our modern lifestyle is thus a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the high prevalence of obesity in our population."

Which basically gives you the answer to your comment. You've read the article, haven't you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's both. Some people can eat like garbage and not get fat, others can't. If you can't, don't eat like garbage.

<comment><USER15> Well, even if you can, eating like garbage will probably catch up with you eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quote from the article:

"Our modern lifestyle is thus a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the high prevalence of obesity in our population. "

So some people cope better than others with the modern diet, presumably because of their genes. That doesn't imply that there is nothing they could do about obesity. But they presumably have it harder than the people with more favorable obesity-genes.

<comment><USER17> right. they gotta work harder to lose the fat. it's like slow metabolism vs. a fast metbolism. either way folks gotta take responsibility

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another thing about genetics is that it could probably affect appetite. You know how you feel if you haven't eaten for a day, no amount of will power is going to stop you from eating. Now what if your genetics made you feel like that all the time?

So sure you could lose weight if you ate less, but your genetics wouldn't make the motivation equation work out.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a question (an actual question, not meant to be a nudge towards any conclusion): is there any research that suggests your level of body fat may be set (i.e. almost like an annealing process) by your level of body fat in childhood? I know there has been research that suggests that body fat plays a very large role in your endocrine system -- therefore causing positive feedback -- but does it do the same for any other systems that might affect metabolism?

</comment><comment><USER9> There are two very unreasonable sides to this issue:

One is, as in this article:

> Be nice. There's nothing the obese can do; you're not superior to them in > any way other than fortunate genetics.

The other (and more common):

> Low body fat (with optional huge muscles for men) is and should be valued by > all, so my modest efforts at staying lean are just too heroic for those > weak-willed fatties.

The truth is that the majority of obese Americans could of their own initiative (without fat camp, medication, surgery, involuntary famine) become not-obese. Regardless of a "heritability" statistic shows (it's probably not what you think), people can significantly influence their weight and body fat in a way they never can for height.

The other truth is that it's incredibly more easy for some people to become lean (or muscular) than others; I'd say almost to the same extent as people vary in native intellectual or musical talent.

So, the main point: "be nice; don't assume superiority of moral fiber based on superior physique" is absolutely valid and needs widespread appreciation by smug bastards everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> Indeed. You're not fat through any fault of your own. Certainly not because of anything you ate. It's genetic. Now you can feel good about yourself and not have to try.

This is us, several miles down the road we started down in the '70s when we started teaching kids Self Esteem without any correlation to the things they need to do to actually _earn_ that self esteem. You're special just the way you are.

Combine that with the basic American right of "nothing is ever your fault", and here we are. A whole country full of people who refuse to take any responsibility for their own actions.

And we just got done doing this a month ago... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=751311>

</comment><comment><USER9> Noise, even at the level of 10%, in actual calorie content of food compared to nutritional labels, is irrelevant (there are other, more significant sources of variance in your own metabolism and activity in any case).

If, over the course of a week, you haven't lost any weight, decrease your target calorie count by 50. Eventually the odds of predicted vs. actual noise giving you an "over maintenance" intake for a given week fall to epsilon.

Counting calories is not even necessary.

</comment><comment><USER20> Whatever the "real cause" of the recent prevalence of obesity in the US may be, it isn't either gluttony or genetics, because those things don't change that much.

</comment><comment><USER21> bullshit. The cause of obesity is and always was gluttony. Quit trying to apologize for overeating. I don't care if "you have a low metabolism". Quit listening to the FDA's bullshit on what a "balanced" meal means. You need to figure it out for yourself.

<comment><USER22> Angry, much? :)

<comment><USER21> We should all be angry, because a culture of denying accountability is about to saddle us with the biggest paternalistic program of transfer payments ever. We're going to get to pay for Bubba's heart surgery because _he_ couldn't control how many cheeseburgers he ate in one sitting.

<comment><USER22> _We're going to get to pay for Bubba's heart surgery because he couldn't control how many cheeseburgers he ate in one sitting._

No, we're not being made to pay for Bubba's heart surgery _because_ of his overeating. Don't lose sight of who's making us pay for Bubba's surgery; direct your anger, should you feel it, at those who are making and enforcing this, rather than at the bystander whose issues are used as a pawn to justify it.

I'm also against public health care, but the solution isn't to outlaw and punish anyone who does something less than perfectly healthy, but to strike at the root of the problem. In this case, of course, the only way to do that may be to move to a cheaper jurisdiction; I don't think there's any way to stop the expanding juggernaut without collapse. All things considered, I'm staying for at least a while.

<comment><USER21> While I agree that we _shouldn't_ be paying for it, and that it _is_ the government's fault for making us pay for it, once the "system" is known, shouldn't the overeater be as much to blame? While an individual is still responsible for paying for their own healthcare, then how they abuse themselves is up to him. In a world were others are responsible for his healthcare, he has a social responsibility to not abuse himself, a social responsibility that I am all too sure will be ignored.

This is the fundamental issue with paternalistic programs. If you give the public responsibility over a person's well being, they will also require the means to control that person's activities.

Unfortunately, I think national healthcare is a foregone conclusion, and not just single-payer-health-insurance, I mean full the "doctors are government employees" thing. Too many people have conflated health care with a right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What an awful article. The salient fact about the obesity epidemic is that it has more than tripled in frequency (in America) since the 1970s. It can't be genetics. It's unlikely to be gluttony.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is also the asymmetry. You can gain in one day what you lost in a weak.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage taxes for your startup/consultancy business? - <AUTHOR>

Like many individuals that frequent HN, I work as a consultant full time and use the money I earn to support my family and work on an ambitious startup project on nights and weekends. After little consultation, I decided that a single member LLC is the way for me to go in as far as forming a corporate entity to protect my assets and maximize on my tax write offs.
Being someone who's worked as a W-2 employee his entire life - I am clueless with how to manage my taxes. I'm used to just getting a ton of money removed from each paycheck and paying someone $100 a year to just do my return for me.
Things I am doing to prepare myself as a 'business owner' is setting aside 35% of my gross into a savings account, assuming that's going to federal taxes. I opened a business checking and a business credit card that I use solely for organizing expenses that I think are businesses expenses. I also just started reading some highly recommended books (which I'll list upon request, but I don't want this thread to seem like a promotional one)
I plan to use my LLC not only as a consultancy but also to do business as my startup until/if the startup gains enough traction to open its own LLC, I can't justify the costs right now at this stage.
I do have a certified CPA that deals with corporate tax that is consulting me. I feel it's not enough. I wanted to reach out to the HN community to see how do you deal with your taxes? What tools/suggestions/tips and tricks can you suggest so I can maximize on my return? How do you track your expenses? How do you plan what you are doing for your startup/consulting shop in as far as spending goes?
The less time I have to spend thinking about and working on taxes, the more time I can spend on building great products.
I was naive in originally posting this - I should make note that this probably applies to those in the United States only as taxes are handled differently in other regions of the world. <comment><USER2> I am not an accountant, this info is presented for entertainment purposes only, take my advice at your own risk, blah blah blah.

I also run my business out of a single member LLC. Quickbooks for bookkeeping, Turbotax for taxes. All business income/expenses must go through the business bank account. Only business income/expenses must go through the business bank account. Keep all invoices/receipts in a folder, enter them into quickbooks at month end, reconcile with bank statement. Once you make a profit (and thus have a tax bill), you will have to start quarterly payments of your taxes. The amount is based on how much tax you paid in the previous year. Basically when you file your taxes, along with the tax return, Turbotax generates 4 payment slips for the quarterly estimates for the next year, which have to be mailed to the IRS (but payable to the US Treasury) approx every 3 months, there is a due date on each.

A single member LLC is a passthrough/nonexistent entity according to the IRS, meaning there is no "business tax return", everything shows up on your taxes with an attachment (schedule C I think?) for business income/expenses. You'll have to pay both the employee and employer portion of social security medicare, so your taxes will seem higher than an employee's would, but just because the employees don't see that extra portion doesn't mean they aren't paying it -- trust me, their employer considers it part of the cost of employing them and no different than their salary/benefits.

Depending on how many transactions you have, it may be worth it to you to pay for a bookkeeper and/or accountant (they are not the same thing). Most of the time I have less than 10 deposits/expenses per month (even though my business is my primary source of income, I am ramen-profitable and keep things simple) so I just do it all myself. 10 minutes once a month to keep quickbooks up to date, an hour once a year to do the tax return, and 4 trips to the post office per year to mail the quarterlies.

Regardless of who you hire or don't hire to help you with the bean counting, one thing you never ever do is let anyone but yourself sign checks. Unless, of course, you consider embezzlement to be philanthropic in which case go for it.

I am not an accountant, this info is presented for entertainment purposes only, take my advice at your own risk, blah blah blah.</comment>


Newly Launched Pad Grip: The All-Purpose iPad Mount. Rec's on Site Design? - <AUTHOR> http://www.padgrips.com

<comment><USER2> -Should be able to click on the scrolling pics which takes to product. -Perhaps a stronger tilt toward product vs. store feel; is this about the product or the company? -I feel green. -More application pics of product might help; arranged/presented appropriately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I like your idea of product vs. store. That's a delicate balance that we're working on right now. At this point, I think the product perspective makes more sense, so we'll see what we can do to make it more product-centric. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the general site layout is good overall format, but the design could use a lot more polish.

I would suggest maybe a subtle texture for the background, a tighter color scheme (see <http://colorschemedesigner.com/>) and sexier typography.

From an e-commerce perspective, I might suggest you put your main product more prominently on the front page with and add to cart button or view more button, instead of the slider.

also, the area below the slider is a bit cramped in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, thanks for the tip on color schemes. I agree with everything you pointed out. After we get it redone, I'll repost as a Before-After. Thanks for the help!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're looking for feedback on the site design. What do you like, what don't you like? What do you want more of?</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else going to the AWS S3 Conference in London next Thurs? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Myself and a few colleagues are going along, would be cool to meet up with some fellow HN members for a beer or two.</comment>


Revolutionary Enhancement of Visibility: Exploiting Active Light-Fields (REVEAL) - <AUTHOR> https://www.darpa.mil/program/revolutionary-enhancement-of-visibility-by-exploiting-active-light-fields <comment><USER2> An update on the program: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/non-l...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/non- line-of-sight-imaging-computers-see-through-walls/569113/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A slightly more in-depth PR about this program is also available on the DARPA web site:

[https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-05-22](https://www.darpa.mil/news- events/2015-05-22)

Presumably "active light" means "we flash some light source, possibly invisible to the naked eye, and see what comes back" and this enables some of that transit-time type of statistics that they are trying to collect? So assuming one color at a time, you would get a time-series of images, a sort of 3D model of your normally-2D image. By collecting both polarizations separately and flashing a polarized light source you would get two independent 3D models of the light's propagation through a room.

<comment><USER4> It seems to be a basic research program asking the question "what if we capture light properties in other ways than time-aggregated photon intensities on a pixel raster behind some color filter" and build both theory and lab experiments to find answers to that question.

So they're casting a wide net that could cover polarization, transit-time, hyperspectral imaging or phase information.

<comment><USER5> See these multiple independent MIT research results (which happen to be mentioned in an Atlantic article linked to by another commenter):

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/klbouman/cornercameras.html](http://people.csail.mit.edu/klbouman/cornercameras.html) [http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/](http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/) [http://openaccess.thecvf.com/content_cvpr_2018/papers/Barada...](http://openaccess.thecvf.com/content_cvpr_2018/papers/Baradad_Inferring_Light_Fields_CVPR_2018_paper.pdf) [http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/research/accidentalcame...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/research/accidentalcameras/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Part of that first paragraph seems like it contains a direct paraphrasing of what I once wrote at [https://hackaday.com/2015/01/25/hackaday-links- january-25-20...](https://hackaday.com/2015/01/25/hackaday-links- january-25-2015/#comment-2391920)</comment>


A Silicon Valley Dream Collapses in Allegations of Fraud - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/technology/a-silicon-valley-dream-collapses-in-allegations-of-fraud.html?action=click&contentCollection=Your%20Money&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> I'm so happy with the amount of coverage this has gotten.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also great to see the impact this community had in pushing this story forward. NYT seems to have pulled liberally from the HN comments related to the original Medium post.

<comment><USER3> My hope is that the stories like this one are more than just a sign-post along the way. Startups, by default, are hopeful places, they need to be. That makes them vulnerable to all sorts of people and forces (greed, fraudsters, etc.). I think there is a lesson here about confronting reality, personal responsibility and the potential to be complicit in the type of behavior we abhor. This isn't intended to be any sort of judgment, but I agree this community is influential, in a unique way, I think, so it's worth mentioning.</comment></comment></comment>


Polygon's PlayStation 4 Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/conclusion

<comment><USER2> So I've watched the video review and I can't help but notice how chaotic is the new PS4 user interface. I am not really a fan of the current PS3 store design, it looks like they have taken the same approach to the overall UI on PS4.

</comment><comment><USER3> By the way, are there good developer-level reviews of the hardware? I'm not a console developer (sadly), but it would be interesting to get a little insight about what's it like working for PS4 or the XBone.

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like the design of the Review, especially the animated SVGs.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a really obnoxious page for such a little amount of content.

<comment><USER6> This is just the conclusion, link should be [http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/](http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, didn't check the link before I submitted.</comment></comment></comment>


McCollough Effect – change your brain for a prolonged time - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col-McCollough/ <comment><USER2> Just FYI to anyone thinking of doing this: "prolonged time" can mean _years_. For me, the effect is still there even if very faint. I see the green and red, just initially whenever I view the checkerboard, and it goes away after a few seconds. I did the exercise I think probably sometime in 2010.

Although I am happy to report that the impact on other areas of my life has been zero, as far as I know.</comment>


Launch Emails Proven to Sell Digital Products - <AUTHOR> http://blog.usefedora.com/post/124830133713/launch-emails-proven-to-sell-digital-products

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, a lot of people I speak with imagine a "launch" as a single email you send to your audience. The effect of this is quite suboptimal–it doesn't build anticipation or give you data about what's resonating.

We recently went through 100's of online course launch email sequences and pulled the best types in one place (I've seen data on hundreds in the past year). I'd argue a similar set of emails could apply to any online product you're launching. That said let me know what you think here.</comment>


HDR video accomplished using dual 5D Mark IIs - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/09/hdr-video-accomplished-using-dual-5d-mark-iis-is-exactly-what-i/ <comment><USER2> It's really disappointing to see even engadget disparaging HDR because they think it's the same thing as tone-mapping, and because they think tone-mapping always produces freaky results. All HDR really is is a technique for gathering more information that can be post-processed.

And, from what little we've seen of HDR+auto tone-mapping on the iPhone, it could be the harbinger not of rampant pyschedelic tone-mapping, but of more reserved and tasteful tone-mapping.

One thing I'm willing to bet on, though, is that this will elicit a lot of criticism from the people who've fallen in love with the limitations of current cinematographic techniques. They'll complain about how you can actually see stuff in shadows, and that the lens flare doesn't do enough to obscure the subject, all without realizing that this advance merely makes those things optional.

<comment><USER3> Using spatial dithering and the iphone 4's retina display, you could make an app that could display HDR and still have the resolution of the old iphone. Throw in temporal dithering if it was something like a static photo viewer, and you would have a pretty massive range.

<comment><USER4> That would just increase the resolution. The real problem is that the device is way too dark to display the levels of radiance you see on a bright day. Tone-mapping has to be used to bring those levels down, and there is no "correct" way to do that - one has to play with settings.

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't increase the resolution, it would increase the dynamic range; for two shots with different exposure you would do 4 pixels white if both were white, two pixels white if one was full white and the other full black, etc. (your flat panel probably already uses a similar approach to get roughly 8bits of overall color-depth out of 7bit elements)

<comment><USER4> I meant intensity resolution (or color depth, as you say). Dynamic range is something else - it is the interval [darkest, brightest], or their ratio if you prefer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ick... it's like looking at some of the earliest HDR photos, when people _using_ the tech had no idea how to use it _properly_.

If that's what people think when they think "HDR", it's no wonder there's been so much misguided animosity.

edit: Please to repeat after me:

Good HDR: [http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/images/ChristChurchCathed...](http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/images/ChristChurchCathedralHDR.jpg) (ironically, the same site links this and the video)

Bad HDR: [http://www.digitalcameratracker.com/wp- content/uploads/2006/...](http://www.digitalcameratracker.com/wp- content/uploads/2006/10/hdr-truck.jpg)

 _Good_ HDR: [http://ursispaltenstein.ch/blog/images/uploads_img/hdr_japan...](http://ursispaltenstein.ch/blog/images/uploads_img/hdr_japan_2.jpg)

 _Bad_ HDR: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/9147703@N03/2176897085/>

What have we learned?

<comment><USER6> Not entirely sure that it's good or bad, just differing points of view on how to get a certain look.

Sure, with time artists will turn the dial down and video HDR will be more subtle. All new tech goes over the top at first. Remember video morphing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first thought is that this video looks exactly like a video game, but that is because current video doesn't use these techniques whereas video games do. I think this actually looks better than traditional video, but whether it is actually adopted or not depends on what viewers think. There's an interesting parallel with the fact that TV broadcasts and digitally filmed movies aren't displayed in higher framerats: They look "fake" or "homemade".

What we really need to make our digital images more lifelike, of course, is cameras and monitors with higher dynamic range. There are efforts underway to creating actual HDR LCD monitors where there instead of a backlight there is an array of white LEDs that are selectively lit according to which parts of the monitor we want to be bright, resulting in a ridiculously high contrest ratio. But for the time being, data formats are designed for our current contrast ratio or dynamic range.

Don't remember who said this, but a researcher in this field said something along the lines of "you would never mistake your monitor for a window to the outside, but this is what we are trying to achieve". This actually seems plausible, apart from the depth perception side of things, with today's developments in super-high resolution displays. Think the new iPhone display scaled up to 50 inches, with a much higher contrast ratio. I'm very excited about this.

It's going to be interesting to see what amateurs do with the D5 camera. Equipment costs are no longer an excuse not to do cool things with video, and this demonstration is a perfect example.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm amazed at how much it looks like modern video game graphics, particularly the video of the man. If there was a way to go from the HDR to a "normal" image, perhaps that would let video games look slightly more realistic too.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://vimeo.com/11774969> \- similar setup, but with more advanced cameras.

<comment><USER10> Now this is what it is supposed to look like... But I think that it is down to technique rather than the cameras.

This guy lays out most of the obstacles with the process in a very short comment: 1\. Maintain consistent depth of field between two cameras by using separate Neutral Density filters for each camera 2\. Spend time tweaking your luma keys for each video stream.

People that work on lighting crews should be getting nervous right about now.

<comment><USER9> It's a 3D rig with zero inter-axial separation (well zero as far as compositing concerns, not actual physical zero, of course). So shooting this stuff bears same problems as shooting 3D in general. DOF is easy to solve, as well as controlled lighting (stabilized voltages are the norm anyways). Tricky part is shooting outside, as evident by strong flickering in OP video. Though that can be solved in post.

And you are right, this video (and the other one on that vimeo account) is better mostly due to process/skill and not due to equipment used. One could argue about HDR though, since it's only a technique to widen the range of possibilities within compositing. How one utilizes those can be viewed as artistic direction. I also dislike masks with visible feathering, as shown in most HDR stuff out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is HDR:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging>

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm still waiting a HDR display to actually view all this HDR material that is produced these days.

</comment><comment><USER13> My brain actually hurts during some of this. You can see some of the unfocusing, misalignment and artifacts that show up in individual frames. Not really sure how I feel about HDR in video.

</comment><comment><USER14> How much post processing is needed to combine the two video streams? Is it parallelable?

<comment><USER15> At first blush it seems embarrassingly parallel - with each matching frame (or block of several frames) from each camera being chunked off in parallel. But it can't be that straightforward, can it?

<comment><USER2> You would probably want to make sure that the tone mapping used from one frame to the next is relatively consistent.

What this means is that if you have a scene that is tone-mapped to just fit within the dynamic range of the monitor, and then the brightest lights in the scene are cut, you have a choice: either use a tone mapping that is similar to the previous frame, resulting in an apparently under-exposed frame that uses only a fraction of the dynamic range of the monitor, or use a radically different tone map, which would replace the sudden darkening effect with colors shifting all over the place.

A naive automated tone-mapper might take the latter approach in order to be embarrassingly parallel, but in order to look natural, the tone-map would have to shift gradually, just like pupils dilate gradually. These inter-frame data dependencies will make tone-mapping video comparable in complexity to video encoding. It also means that it is unlikely to be a task that can be fully automated, because there is a tradeoff between inter-frame contrast and intra- frame contrast that can only be resolved with knowledge of the artistic intent of the sequence.</comment></comment></comment>


Against Identity Politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2018-08-14/against-identity-politics?cid=int-now&pgtype=hpg&region=br1 <comment><USER2> All politics is identity politics. After the revolution only rich white land owners could vote, elections and governing were based on the wills of a single identity: rich, white, men. Not much has changed in America since then but as more enfranchisement came to the population it is OBVIOUS that other groups would focus their politics on what would help them over what would help others.

I'm sure that it's more likely that female voters would lobby for a sexual harassment bill than men; its already been shown that Asian voters gathering in opposition to affirmative action moves because they feel that their kids are targeted (see NYC specialized schools, Harvard). Even throughout the 2016 election and the postmortem most news outlets focused on the "identity" of the white, middle aged, "heartland" / rust belt voter who has been shafted by globalization.

It seems to me the term identity politics and everything that comes with it is simply a backlash against groups that have been traditionally marginalized but who are now entering the political arena and making demands.

<comment><USER3> _It seems to me the term identity politics and everything that comes with it is simply a backlash against groups that have been traditionally marginalized but who are now entering the political arena and making demands._

It would be one thing to make demands on the basis of unfair treatment with regards to universal principles. It's another thing to make demands _merely on the basis of identity._ People should be treated with fairly because of merit and the "content of their character." People should not be treated with because of their age, their sex, who they are attracted to, or their skin color.

What we should also recognize in 2018, is that tribalism itself is toxic. Tribalism can also be attached to life choices, political stances, and subculture, and those sorts of tribalism can be toxic to the same order of magnitude as older forms, such as those based on ethnicity. Tribalistic toxicity stemming from immutable characteristics is arguably worse, because people are trapped on a side. This is why identity politics should be avoided _in general_.

A politics that would be humane should be about principles and policy, not identity.

This is also why the association of principles like Free Speech with particular identities, even identities of choice, is also particularly corrosive.

<comment><USER2> > It would be one thing to make demands on the basis of unfair treatment with > regards to universal principles. It's another thing to make demands * merely > on the basis of identity.*

I think the problem with the term identity politics is that people have a very limited view of identity. Being white in America is apart of your identify, being gay is part of your identity, living in a big city is a part of your identity, being college educated is a a part of your identity. Each of these things and dozens more help to drive your political viewpoint and what you lobby for.

I think for the most part the political groups that have been branded as "identity politics" are all about fair treatment for all, these groups arise usually when fair treatment is not given to _them_ specifically and so they lobby on their own behalf.

Look at Black Lives Matter, this is an organization / movement that sprung up after multiple killings of black men by police and is focused on police reform. You can call this identity politics if you want but then I would also say that Right to Life groups who protest abortion because of their Christian beliefs are also identity politics. So are PACs funded by wealthy individuals who would like to see their taxes cut. This is what I mean when I say all politics is identity politics.

<comment><USER4> I really wish I agreed with your characterization, but I don't. What I see as prototypical identity politics is something like the Why Can't We Hate Men article the Washington Post published ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate- men...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate- men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html?noredirect=on)).

The problem is that these people aren't arguing for fair treatment. They are arguing for unfair treatment, but just unfair treatment that now favors them, and this treatment is determined by group identity (i.e. men=bad so you can hate any man).

If that's the approach, then to me it reveals that any rhetoric about fair treatment is just that, rhetoric, and what is really wanted is power.

<comment><USER2> > I really wish I agreed with your characterization, but I don't. What I see > as prototypical identity politics is something like the Why Can't We Hate > Men article the Washington Post published > ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate- > men...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men...)).

The problem with this is that when you think of identity politics you think of the extreme end. Which is the main point of my original post. People equate identity politics with extremism -- my argument is that identity politics is actually at the core of all politics. You can utilize extreme rhetoric arguing any point. But if all you see is the extreme then well.. I can't help you.

<comment><USER3> _But if all you see is the extreme then well.. I can 't help you._

If you are indeed a part of a more moderate and nuanced politics, then I think you could help by calling out the extremists and speaking up for principles. Where people "on your side" are showing tacit approval to extremists, you should call them out.

If you can point out where the nuanced and more moderate politics are put forward from your side, then also point that out. From where I am sitting, it seems like the extreme part of "idpol" is the loudest and seemingly the most representative part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A critical take on Fukuyama's new book:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/francis- fukuya...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/francis-fukuyama- postpones-the-end-of-history)

<comment><USER6> _Fukuyama thinks he knows what that something is, and his answer is summed up in the title of his new book, "Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The demand for recognition, Fukuyama says, is the "master concept" that explains all the contemporary dissatisfactions with the global liberal order: Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Xi Jinping, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, gay marriage, ISIS, Brexit, resurgent European nationalisms, anti-immigration political movements, campus identity politics, and the election of Donald Trump. It also explains the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Chinese Communism, the civil-rights movement, the women's movement, multiculturalism, and the thought of Luther, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, and Simone de Beauvoir. Oh, and the whole business begins with Plato's Republic. Fukuyama covers all of this in less than two hundred pages. How does he do it?_

 _Not well. Some of the problem comes from misunderstanding figures like Beauvoir and Freud; some comes from reducing the work of complex writers like Rousseau and Nietzsche to a single philosophical bullet point. A lot comes from the astonishingly blasé assumption—which was also the astonishingly blasé assumption of "The End of History?"—that Western thought is universal thought. But the whole project, trying to fit Vladimir Putin into the same analytic paradigm as Black Lives Matter and tracing them both back to Martin Luther, is far-fetched. It's a case of Great Booksism: history as a chain of paper dolls cut out of books that only a tiny fraction of human beings have even heard of. Fukuyama is a smart man, but no one could have made this argument work._

Oof, no thanks. This article alone makes me want to subscribe to the New Yorker, if only in thanks for saving me the trouble of reading this book.

</comment></comment><comment> crooked-v I feel like I'd be more inclined to take critiques of identity politics seriously if those critiques didn't seem to only come up in opposition to historically mistreated minority groups.

<comment><USER7> It must be difficult to keep track of exactly which "critiques" arise from these third-party-opposers and which are just ideas from virtuous people.

<comment><USER8> It's honestly not that difficult

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i'm very left-wing, hell i'm an antifascist activist and im not a big fan of "idpol"

This is an essay with the same name from 2015: [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl- agai...](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against- identity-politics)

and this is a politically incorrect drama about identity politics written by, err, the unabomber: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ- Upb4Szms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ-Upb4Szms)

<comment><USER10> That 2015 article is great, thank you. I think this part sums up the problem in a nutshell: "[identity politicians] deny that people exist as unique individuals at all; people are simply instances of spectres".

In my experience at least this is true: anytime I've tried to engage in a discussion with someone who is into identity politics, I've been told that I may say one thing, but my actual intentions are nefarious, that I'm full of fear and hate, and that my view is meaningless since I'm a white hetero male. There is no need to talk to me because they already know everything about me and what a horrible (or at least very blind) person I am.

I think the Left would do well to try to minimize "idpol" if for no other reason than strategically it's a disaster - it chases away tons of potential allies.

<comment><USER11> One of the biggest markers of ideological blindness is when people lose their ability to do basic arithmetic.

The United States is 65% white. How you gonna get to 51% of the vote when your primary message to white people is "check your privilege"? Bonus points when it's coming from a 25yo making $200k a year.

<comment><USER12> I haven't cringed so much at a set of HN comments as I have today.

"Check your privilege" isn't a phrase that anyone seriously uses. Do you deny that privilege exists? Do you think that the only people who talk about privilege are non-white? Do you think that the concept of privilege makes all white people evil, or is a message that is un-hearable to all white people?

You just showed more about your own biases than you did anything to advance any conversation here. Then you double down further in the thread about "Social justice warriors" being a real thing (it's literally only ever used as a boogeyman by people with really broken, wrong thoughts about "privilege" as an abstract concept, so thanks for confirming that I guess.)

It's not even a "primary" message. What politician advanced that message recently? Which politically-affiliated political action group has "check your privilege" as a mantra? And here I am, again, pushing someone for evidence when it's painfully obvious that there's nothing there other than unsupported biases.

<comment><USER11> A year ago I would have made this exact same comment. But here we are. All depends on who you're exposed to, I guess.

Could you be a little more specific about what my thoughts are on privilege as an abstract concept? I've been wanting someone to tell me about that.

<comment><USER12> Your own comment where you brought up privilege do plenty to demonstrate how you think about it. The fact that you compare the percentage of white people and act like "check your privilege" is a perfect opposite of "whiteness", I mean, maybe you have another interpretation of what you meant...

<comment><USER11> No, no, you keep going. You're doing great.

How did my childhood impact these views?

<comment><USER12> _You_ made the comment that we can _all_ still read. _You_ could choose to justify it. Instead, like every single conservative troll on every social media platform ever, you've decided to just troll your way down to the bottom. Have fun, it'll be by yourself.

<comment><USER11> Real talk: I'm a lifelong progressive who's very willing to trade my own purity in order to WIN. You're being sanctimonious and not graceful about being called on it.

Assume good intentions.

I've been around a lot of younger people who actually unironically say this stuff lately. No joke. Ask others on the board working at SV-based companies hiring out of college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Discussions like this one, where in some cases opinions supplant primary facts, are not very productive. It may help some of the readers here to consider a deeper explanation of terms, while resisting the urge to select self-reinforcing parts.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity- politics/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/)

</comment><comment><USER14> i think this guy has better grasp on what is happening than 99.9% of the population. but he identifies as left wing (i think, since he talks about the direction of the left a lot).

With these views there will be no place at all for him on the left. He will just be picked apart by the dogs. because this is not a message they will wish to hear. must be hard to grow old and see the side you identify with betray its old cause and grow into something else and just not know where you belong anymore. we all need an identity, after all.

<comment><USER11> Fukuyama was an Iraq war cheerleader and one of the icons of the neocons.

Doesn't mean he's wrong for disliking both identity politics and presumably Trump but he's no liberal.

<comment><USER14> so you say the language he uses, talking about the left as if he is a part of it is a mere rhetorical trick? could be.

i'm more interested in how he sees himself than what he is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> paywall</comment>


Dwolla's SSL certificate has been revoked - <AUTHOR> https://www.dwolla.com

<comment><USER2> It still shows all green in Chrome (Mac) but when you click to view more details you see that it has been revoked. Here's a screenshot

<http://cl.ly/image/0f2p193g1r1Z>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.twitter.com/dwolla/status/226882115516653568>

"@dwolla: Working with our partners at @verisign and @symantec to look into a certificate issue some of our users are reporting. Still secure."

</comment><comment><USER4> Not a hiccup, apparently -- their Verisign-issued EV cert is still revoked. Things look ok to users because they're now using a GoDaddy wildcard domain cert.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cert looks valid on my phone. Or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER6> Works for me. Must have been a hiccup.</comment>