Review my site: Recipenom.com - Easy recipe storing and sharing - <AUTHOR>

http://www.recipenom.com
I just made a new site called Recipenom.com that is like a mix between Instapaper/delicious and Hype Machine, but for recipes.  If you find a recipe you want to save, simply click the button easily accessible within your toolbar.  There's also sharing/tagging of recipes, easy printing, and we built in a universal feed that also pulls from popular food blogs.
I'd really appreciate any opinions/suggestions/comments/etc. <comment><USER2> The concept is good, but I believe it needs more work. IMHO the website's 'purpose' does not come out very well on the front page. (It does after you read a bit, but not in the critical first 10 seconds).

The call to action (simply to drag a bookmark), needs to be moved to the left, as people can have the browser window reduced.

I am not sure about the color scheme, it is unusual, but I would have given it a bit more of a 'food look'.

Some of the buttons (i.e add your own comments do not work).

A ratings button could bring some more interaction as well as some form of categorization.

Good luck with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a fan of the name.... but great concept.</comment>


Is making mistakes a necessity for success? - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/2373483439/mistakes-success <comment><USER2> I think that there is a confusion here: making mistakes is not a necessity for success. Making mistakes is necessary for learning, but not for success. Any lottery winner can confirm that.

It is all down to this philosophy that says that success comes from hard work and recovering from failure, and that if you try hard enough you eventually reach your goals. But you also need sheer luck.

And please, don't translate luck as "being at the right place at the right time" because that amounts to trying hard enough, but is not. You can be at the right place at the right time because of... sheer luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think you have to MAKE mistakes to succeed, but you have to be willing to RISK making mistakes to succeed. Anyone who isn't willing to make some mistakes probably never left the proverbial 'cube farm' in the first place, since that in and of itself is a potential mistake. After all if you fail in that you are probably going to end up in a great deal of financial trouble, assuming you never got VC funding.</comment>


A Gene Called 'Sonic Hedgehog' Is Behind the Weirdest Coronavirus Symptoms - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/sonic-hedgehog-gene-coronavirus-symptoms <comment><USER2> No-one here could possibly fall for that April fools (aka Fake News Day) headline right?, unless it is widely shared on Twitter since everyone gets their news from there?

<comment><USER3> It's true, though. The drosophila community has a long history of coming up with creative gene names.</comment></comment>


Former Tesla employee admits uploading Autopilot source code to his iCloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20689468/tesla-autopilot-trade-secret-theft-guangzhi-cao-xpeng-xiaopeng-motors-lawsuit-filing <comment><USER2> Regardless of the intent in this case. Don't connect your personal iCloud account to your work computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> All I can say is....Yikes.</comment>


The Economy Got Off to a Historically Bad Start in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-economy-got-off-to-a-historically-bad-start-in-2014/ <comment><USER2> I'm starting to wonder if the Federal Reserve is no longer an effective tool for job creation.

After years of propping up the economy and expanding the supply of money, we have very little to show for it on "main street." We have booming real-estate prices in some cities, a growing stock market, and lots of cheap money flowing into the hands of the wealthy -- but most regular folks have been completely shut out of this recovery.

Imagine if in 2009, instead of using the traditional means to expand monetary supply, we just started sending checks to all citizens. It seems we're still waiting for the trickle down effect to kick in from the Fed's stimulus. Why are we waiting for banks to lend and businesses to hire? If the goal is to prime the economic pump with an influx of new money, put that money in the hands of people who will actually go out and buy something.

<comment><USER3> Just sending checks to all citizens is politically difficult, because it starts conversations about "class warfare" and "socialism", and implies that the federal government should have a policy of explicit wealth redistribution, rather than the current hodge-podge of means tested welfare programs and monetary policy tools.

But to answer your question: yes, we'd increase liquidity, reduce unemployment and dramatically improve the lives of basically everyone in the society if we taxed capital gains as income, restored inheritance taxes to historical levels, raised the top marginal income tax rates, and closed various corporate tax loopholes, and then just took the resulting pool of cash and distributed it equally among citizens.

In the long term, the great-great grandchildren of today's billionaires would probably end up richer, too, since the whole society would be richer.

<comment><USER2> Let's put aside the Federal Government (and taxes and spending) for a moment and focus on the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve printed a large amount of money in response to the crisis. (That was a silent tax on anyone holding cash.) To inject this money into the economy, they bought a bunch of securities. My question is simply: why use asset buying as a vehicle for injecting money into the economy and not cash to citizens? Cash to citizens seems more fair than picking winners and losers and propping up assets that would otherwise be worth much less. It seems the Federal Reserve's strategy of the past 5 years has done very little to reboot the economy, and has worsened wealth inequality dramatically.

<comment><USER4> > The Federal Reserve printed a large amount of money in response to the > crisis. (That was a silent tax on anyone holding cash.) To inject this money > into the economy, they bought a bunch of securities. My question is simply: > why use asset buying as a vehicle for injecting money into the economy and > not cash to citizens?

Because that's all that the Federal Reserve can do. If you want someone to do something else, you'll need to talk to the government, not the Fed (even if that is just talking to the government about changing the rules on what the Fed can do.)

Of course, the more you give flexibility to the Fed to do more of the things that otherwise would be within the domain of the government, the more you undercut the whole point of an independent central bank (while simultaneously undercutting democratic accountability.)

> It seems the Federal Reserve's strategy of the past 5 years has done very > little to reboot the economy, and has worsened wealth inequality > dramatically.

The Federal Reserve, by design, does not have a general set of tools for dealing with the economy, but a very limited set of tools for managing the money supply.

<comment><USER5> _Because that 's all that the Federal Reserve can do._

Yes. Pretty much.

Problem is "unemployment" is such a fake number the entire mandate of the fed has been based on flawed stats. The fed is happy to lower the "unemployment" rate by forcing people onto "disability" (permanent welfare) and un-paid leave of the workforce.

That's not reducing unemployment in any meaningful sense. Its just statistical arbitrage/3-card-monty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The chart in the articles below paints the picture. I've never really been overly involved in economics up until last year. When I started reading and exploring I was shocked at what I found. I kept struggling, because I knew something wasn't right, I just couldn't put my finger on it. I still can't.

All indicators that I can find show the economy slipping into another recession (or simply continuing the previously interrupted "Great Recession")

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-25/unforgettable- winte...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-25/unforgettable-winter-bank- americas-explanation-17th-worst-gdp-print-us-history)

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-25/gdp-disaster- final-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-25/gdp-disaster-final-q1-gdp- crashes-29-worst-2009-far-below-worst-expectations)

<comment><USER7> I sincerely hope Zerohedge isn't your source for economics information, they are desperately alarmist and wrong nearly constantly. The source of your unease might just be your source of news. The world isn't falling apart, there is no 'great lie', poor homebuyers in Topeka aren't to blame for the GFC, and you shouldn't be stockpiling bullets and gold.

The world entered a debt-driven recession and we're still climbing out of the aftermath. Everyone tried to deleverage at once, which left nobody to drive the economy toward previous growth levels. Monetary policy is ineffective since the Western World is bouncing off the Zero Lower Bound, and fiscal policy is ineffective since politicians don't have the will to take on new debt to stimulate their respective economies. The historically low interest rates combined with new capital requirements are preventing financial institutions from lending money. Inflation will eventually return but not before many Western countries see several quarters of strong (4%+) growth.

Hopefully the following will help brighten your outlook;

* There are more Americans working today than at any point in US history: [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=E...](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Ef0)

* There are 9 million more Americans working today than at the bottom of the recession -- even with nearly 800k fewer government employees: [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=E...](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Ef1)

* Americans are now spending the lowest percentage of their disposable income on debt payments in the 40-year history of the data series: [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=D...](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=DS6)

* US government debt interest payments as a percentage of federal outlays are as low as they've ever been: [http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2013/10/debt_interest2.png](http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2013/10/debt_interest2.png)

<comment><USER8> Those numbers do brighten my outlook, but while our economy has added 9 million more workers our population has grown by almost 12 million.

Isn't it appropriate to be looking at the employment-population ratios instead of the number of workers? This chart (of the employment-population ratio) doesn't paint such a rosy picture:

[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000)

<comment><USER7> Of course population matters, but as more people are attending college ([https://www.nacs.org/research/industrystatistics/higheredfac...](https://www.nacs.org/research/industrystatistics/higheredfactsfigures.aspx)) and as the baby boomers retire ([http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/icpGraph.html](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/icpGraph.html)), the employment ratio would naturally decrease.

I like U4 as a good measure of unemployment since it also includes discouraged workers who gave up looking for jobs:

[http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Ehe](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Ehe)

Obviously not a completely healthy economy, but a rate that's dropped 40% from the peak of the recession, and is back to levels comparable to 2003/2004 is a good start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two of my consulting clients have seen this show up in their Q2 sales to date; one is missing their Q2 revenue goal by a whopping 50%. Admittedly, they are a small business, but they have a great B2B recurring revenue model. The goal miss is driven completely by customers who had missed their own goals in Q1, and tightened their belts as a reaction.</comment>


Internet Archive responds to publishers' lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2020/07/29/internet-archive-responds-to-publishers-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> > These publishers call for the destruction of the 1.5 million digital books > that Internet Archive makes available to our patrons. This form of digital > book burning is unprecedented and unfairly disadvantages people with print > disabilities.

It's a stretch to call this a book burning. It is not a politically motivated campaign to destroy books, or a witch hunt to root out deviant social or religious teachings. It's a dispute over copyright law.

In addition, I thought the justification for expanding controlled digital lending was around COVID-19, not rights for people who have low vision. Was this issue a central part of the the IA's reasoning before the lawsuit?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.org/details/internet-archive- answer](https://archive.org/details/internet-archive-answer) \- Defense Filing

I'm seeing more and more "503 Service unavailable" on the waybackmachine.</comment>


870,000 Bitcoins stolen from Mt. Gox - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=492104.0

<comment><USER2> Ah well, the man has already apologized. What's an extra one or two hundred thousand bitcoins between friends.</comment>


Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition - <AUTHOR> http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-myth-of-capitalism-monopolies-and.html <comment><USER2> Trust-busting was a thing in the past, Teddy Roosevelt was known as the trust- buster, and ran against Taft with the Bull Moose party, splitting the R vote. Taft actually was more prolific with trust-busting than Teddy, it may be his biggest presidential legacy.

Gary Kasparov pointed this Taft fact out as well, so people are thinking about the need to break up monops.

I sort of worry with a global system, you break up a local monopoly, will a foreign monopoly take over the vacuum?

<comment><USER3> > I sort of worry with a global system, you break up a local monopoly, will a > foreign monopoly take over the vacuum?

I share your concern, but I perceive it slightly differently: state-sponsored corporations of very uncapitalist regimes such as China are free to throw their weight around to derail and manipulate capitalist economies to their favour. How can a free and democratic nation ensure that their capitalist system can function if a super-power is dedicated to sabotage it to help further their agenda?

<comment><USER4> Limit free trade. This isn't even restricted uncapitalist uncountrys [0]. With absolute free trade, you end up undermining the laws of every juristiction unless you have some authority who can set common rules.

This is great when we are undermining laws of nature, much more case dependent when we are undermining explicit policy decisions.

[0] And frankly, what country is entirely capitalistic in all of its industries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Firstly - and somewhat controversially - the authors assert that low levels > of competition lead to low levels of innovation (and hence lower levels of > economic growth). This is controversial because Silicon Valley produces > companies with very little competition (Google for example) that are clearly > innovative

and they have eaten alive older companies that forgot how to innovate.

> Tepper and Hearn have written an angry book. It is angry at the regulators > that have allowed non-competitive mergers to happen. It is angry at > politicians and lobbyists in the pocket of supernormally profitable > corporations.

What's wrong with an angry book? Those examples are things worth getting angry about.

> They endorse measures against tech companies that stop them leveraging > monopolies on one sector into monopolies in another sector. They would have > endorsed the break-up of Microsoft into an operating system company and an > applications company.

Wouldn't have been the end of the world. Imagine if MS had split. Parts of it would have failed. But office on Linux would probably be a thing.

</comment><comment> scott-smith_us I don't agree with this writer's take on the AA incident.

Any airline has a right to ask you to exit their plane, just like a taxi driver can ask you to leave his taxi. They owe you a refund, and maybe compensation, but they don't OWE you transportation.

If you were getting into a taxi, and the driver (for some reason) determined that s/he couldn't take you to your destination, they have every right to ask you to exit the vehicle.

Other than some kind of life-threatening emergency, there is no scenario I can imagine where you could be in the right by refusing to exit the vehicle and insisting they take you anyway. If you did refuse, force-able removal is the logical next step.

Writer went on to suggest that racism was somehow involved, which is where I gave up on reading the article.

<comment><USER6> You miss the point. To make your analogy right imagine there is must be single taxi company operating in your area and it decides not to take your order anymore because they don't make much profit from your trip. You need to wait several hours until their queue clears out and then you have to pray not to be outbid by someone else.

Of course the company decides what orders to take but you have to ask yourself why your government allows this kind of monopolies. After all capitalism promised to fix the worst flaws of commusims(i.e lack of competition/choices).

<comment><USER7> 'After all capitalism promised ..'.

Nope, capitalism does not promise anything. It is not a political system as the same as communism.

 _Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit._ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism)

<comment><USER8> The promoters of capitalism do most definitely promise that. And what is your position on the issue?

<comment><USER3> > The promoters of capitalism do most definitely promise that.

No, they don't. That's just a poorly made up strawman.

At best what capitalism proponents defend is that it provides a system where products and services are provides efficiently to the public due to a combination of free enterprise, private ownership of the means of production, and competition.

<comment><USER8> And a large part of their argument is that this all works vastly better than socialism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Health insurance is consolidated to the point where in most states there is > only one or two realistic choices

This. I'd love to see more work on smashing monopolies in the health industry than I would on working out ways to fund them.

</comment><comment><USER10> The synthesis of the indigo color wiped out an entire monopoly. Before the German chemist Adolf von Baeyer the market relied heavily upon the import of natural indigo from India whom basically got wiped off the market in one season. In yet another David vs. Goliath display of how the balancing of the market works in action a monopoly fell. Simultaneously a new market got born; namely the blue (indigo) jeans market. If you ever doubt that the market can handle the advent of monopolies - look no further than the pants you're wearing!

<comment><USER11> We used to say that monopolies were wrong and bad for capitalism.

Now we're saying that monopolies are ok?

<comment><USER10> Well, Adam Smith certainly thought they were bad and he is probably most correct about that as well. But they aren't the end of the free market as some people want to have you believe!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> IMO, Laizzes-Faire capitalism is the sort that, as of today, favors the larger players over the smaller fish in the sea.

Practically, that system is going to become worse than ever.</comment>


Why "next-gen games" went gray, brown, and grey. - <AUTHOR> http://www.allegory-of-the-game.com/archives/99

<comment><USER2> It's long been the case that we invent tools, and then tend to do the things that the tools make easy.

You can see that the distribution of furniture varieties changed a lot when machine tools were introduced. Furniture got a lot cheaper, but because table saws make straight cuts a lot easier than curved cuts, even in higher end furniture, we ended up get a lot more style choices that utilized what was easier.

I'm looking forward to seeing what stylistic changes happen in clothes, furniture and more with the rise of small-lot production, CNC, and other technologies. I expect that we'll see big changes.

<comment><USER3> This is something the industrial designer Ross Lovegrove has been exploring for a while, here's the obligatory TED link: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ross_lovegrove_shares_org...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ross_lovegrove_shares_organic_designs.html)

He talks about early modernist design being dictated by the machining processes of the time, lathes and extrusion etc. producing the characteristic geometric work.

Tangentially linked to the OP...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This photorealism makes new games very boring artistic-wise.

Old games with hand-drawn graphic had some artistic value in them, they made pepole imagine other worlds etc. Now it's just photorealism everywhere.

I wonder, when game graphic dadaism and cubism will appear.

Art is not about making more realistic copies.

<comment><USER5> I think it's not that games are becoming more realistic, it's just that the range of possibilities for art in games is getting closer to realistic.

There are still many games that have a distinct art style that is not at all realistic (off-hand, Castle Crashers and Braid on XBLA come to mind).

Will we have non-realistic FPS games? Maybe, but unlikely, as one of the points of FPS games is to immerse people in a world, and making that world look as real as possible is part of that goal. Right now, I'm having a hard time thinking of an FPS game that is non-realistic (Madworld on Wii?)

<comment><USER6> Team Fortress 2 is cartoony and not realistic at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great article. I've always wondered why so many games this gen are boring brown and gray. Playing through Fallout 3 makes this readily apparent.

The other thing I'd like to see change is the complete overuse of bloom shader effects.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like that the article mentions the game _Mirror's Edge_. It immediately popped into my head as a counter-example when I read the article title. I hadn't known that the game's more sophisticated lighting solution was what allowed it to have the clean colorful look!

I've always preferred colorful games at the expense of photorealism. High quality consistent art direction can overcome a lot of the drawbacks which can be fudged by using the drab color palette so common currently.

I look forward to seeing the next generation of colorful titles enabled by more powerful lighting engines.

</comment><comment><USER9> Saw this on reddit the other day and the link was to:

[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PhilippeRinguetteAngrignon/20...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PhilippeRinguetteAngrignon/20090606/1708/Why_quotNextGen_Gamesquot_Went_Gray_Brown_And_Grey.php)

I can't tell if the link posted here is to the gamasutra article author's personal blog, or if it's just ripped off content.

<comment><USER10> Note the [Originally posted at <http://www.allegory-of-the-game.com/>] at the bottom of that post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So he says that games are becoming more realistic in most aspects, but not in the lighting. That is probably true, but there is no reason why that should cause the game to become grey and washed-out.

Most CG movies and effects (from Pixar, Dreamworks, ILM, ...) also do not have anything close to photorealistic lighting (i.e. correct global illumination), but they do not look grey.

One common mistake that leads to washed-out images is to apply gamma correction (which is the right thing to do) but not apply inverse gamma correction to your textures. That way your surfaces are essentially gamma- corrected twice, which is clearly wrong. I don't know if they're really making such a simple mistake, but who knows...

<comment><USER11> Downvoting because of disagreement is really getting out of control at HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent article. Good insights into the tech that has influenced the art direction of recent games.

I do think though, that art directors should pull themselves out of that rut and strive for more variety in upcoming titles.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if art directors purposefully choose darkness, or maybe they simply stumbled upon it by experimenting? "We this game to look realistic, and out of all of our mock-ups, darkness wins."

Many Sega games have a very specific look to them that's colorful. Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox) was an extremely vibrant game. Most Nintendo games are too. Though some of those types of games tend to be more cartoonist-looking than realistic-looking.

How about special effects in movies? They use similar technology that's used in video games. Is there a trend here that's more into dark/brown/gray?

<comment><USER11> Exactly,movie studios use pretty much the same lighting tricks as games - direct illumination with some ambient occlusion and color bleeding hacks here and there. Yet they do not look brown/gray. I think it might be because they have armies of artists (they call them "technical directors") that tweak the materials and lighting for thousands of man-hours until it looks good. Game companies probably invest much less in this kind of tweaking.

<comment><USER14> And aren't not limited by "must work in realtime" and can use all the computationally expensive visual effects?

<comment><USER11> Oh yes, absolutely, but there's no reason why real-time would imply brown/gray color hues...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Immersion-wise, I find that realistic sound, a la EAX5 with accurate direction, occlusion, reflections, etc, are much more important than the quality of the graphics. Something about the fact that I look at a monitor makes it clear that I'm not in the environment, but sound does not have that limitation. (Relatedly, if you've ever seen the effect of using Fresnel lenses to project the monitor at infinity, that makes the immersion much more deep. Then you're essentially looking through a window, into another reality.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting that the palette of the original Quake game was browns and reds, also for technical reasons, but different ones.

<comment><USER17> What technical reasons are those? I remember hearing this when I was 15 or so, as part of a "Unreal Sux"/"No Quake Sux" debate. (I was observing) It didn't make any sense to me then, nor does it now, how a 3d graphics engine could be limited in color palette to just, say, brown. And I distinctly remember the color blue showing up in that game anyway...

<comment><USER18> I could be mis-remembering, but I think Quake started out with a software renderer that operated in VGA mode. So the game has a 256 color palette.

<comment><USER6> You are correct. Quake was before mainstream 3d accelerators and only had a 256 color palette.

Original quake palette: <http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/images/quakepal.gif>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I get "brown", but what's the difference between "gray" and "grey"?

<comment><USER20> One means that you've got a President and the other means you have a Queen.

<comment><USER19> ...and the author's point in using both? That he lives in Iceland, and is trying to straddle the fence?

<comment><USER21> He probably doesn't have a point in doing so. Do you?

<comment><USER19> My point was that it was odd to repeat a word in two different spellings in the same sentence, unless you have a point in doing so. Different strokes, I suppose: some favor "favor"; others favour "favour".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this complaint really specific to the ps3/xbox360/wii generation? I seem to remember people whining about this back when Quake 1 came out...

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not a blog person, but I'll keep an eye on this one, very interesting...</comment>


Zed Shaw: The Petrichor Protocol Primitives - <AUTHOR> http://petrichor-protocol.org/

<comment><USER2> So this addresses problems with ZeroMQ?

<comment><USER3> tl;dr: It's a poor man's Protocol Buffers, XDR, JSON, XML... It doesn't attempt to solve any of the problems 0MQ tries to solve.

Heerreee we go! I'm surprised this ticked me off enough to post about it.

The only problem it tackles is one 0MQ intentionally and wisely avoided by delving into the data you're trying to send and dictating an encoding scheme.

Quoth the 0MQ Guide: "On the wire, ØMQ messages are blobs of any size from zero upwards, fitting in memory. You do your own serialization using Google Protocol Buffers, XDR, JSON, or whatever else your applications need to speak. It's wise to choose a data representation that is portable and fast, but you can make your own decisions about trade-offs."

Let's examine the claims made about this protocol's relation to 0MQ.

1\. It's transparent and you can actually understand it.

Response: 0MQ isn't? There's ample documentation, the wire protocol is exceedingly simple and the code is right there.

2\. It could be implemented in any language, not just C++.

Response: ... what? There are bindings for 0MQ for 20+ languages and there's nothing stopping you from implementing everything 0MQ offers from scratch in your favorite language. See Response#1.

3\. It doesn't blow up your server with random asserts.

Response: Any external input that causes 0MQ to assert is considered a bug and will rightfully be tracked down and obliterated.

4\. You can put it on the internet without worrying about it.

Response: see above -^

5\. It can transmit actual data structures or raw binary data.

Response: Here's the similarity to 0MQ, we found it! They both use fancied up P-strings!

6\. You can put it in an SSL socket or any other crypto protocol.

Response: True but you can do that with any serializing scheme.

7\. It will work with any socket system, events, or threads.

Response: True but you can do that with any... \--

Between this and his PyCon presentation it seems like this "Zed Shaw" guy doesn't understand why 0MQ has caused such a stir. :(

<comment><USER4> For the record, at dotCloud we are big fans of 0mq but a lot of these comments are legitimate. The doc is not always clear or up-to-date, the code is extremely opaque to outsiders, and as a result a lot of the "20+" bindings are in fact wrappers around the reference C++ implementation - which is a problem for asynchronous runtimes such as NodeJS.

This doesn't necessarily justify an incompatible fork - but seeing these issues addressed in such a dismissive fashion is a little worrying.

<comment><USER3> I can count the number of active projects that have absolutely up-to-date documentation on one hand. Opaque to outsiders who don't understand C++. What do you think "binding" means?

This doesn't approach a fork. This is just a plea for a rewrite of 0MQ in Python with EXTRA BONUS FEATURES. Very much not the Unix way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peer-To-Patent Quietly Shuts Down - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20090709/1907055504.shtml <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of Stallman's argument that holding prior art in reserve is a more useful tactic. Judges generally won't reconsider prior art the patent office was already aware of, even if they had failed to weigh it appropriately.</comment>


Scavenging Free Green Power From Radio Waves - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/scavenging-free-green-power-from-radio-waves-35622 <comment><USER2> Output is inconsistent over time and typically in the microwatt to low milliwatt range. This can be quite limiting.

Sensors with a low update frequency are a good example of things that can work.</comment>


The sum of all the positive integers is not -1/12 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/01/no-sum-of-all-positive-integers-is-not.html <comment><USER2> Ahhhh.... this is one of my biggest pet peeves. We're using the same words to mean wildly different things, and then arguing past each other about meaning. Every discussion thread I have seen on the matter has quickly brought up the relevant actual semantics, but people still want to argue.

It's a shame that ColinWright's post, linked by him below, got nuked by the moderators because it contains the most relevant information on the matter directly from an accredited mathematics professor, Terry Tao [0]. This is what should gratifies one's intellectual curiosity, not a series of posts that argue about the boring parts.

[0] [http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler- maclaurin...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin- formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-function-and-real-variable-analytic- continuation/)

<comment><USER3> The really interesting point, or at least what struck me when I first heard about this, is that there are alternative, useful, counterintuitive notions of ideas things that folks might think they have some intuitive grasp of. There's more to math (and not only the parts you _know_ you don't know about) than is dreamt of in one's philosophy.

<comment><USER4> Math is mostly about exploring the consequences of alternative definitions for notions we take for granted. In this case, it is the equality notion that is used in a different fashion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Step 1: Let S1 = 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...

Because it's not so clearly stated in the article, step 1 is already flawed.

> the algebraic rules that apply to regular numbers do not apply to non- > converging infinite sums

I'm sure the author knows this but they don't even apply to all converging infinite sums. (Only absolutely converging ones.) E.g. 1 - 1/2 + 1/3 - 1/4 ... converges to a value, but you can also re-arrange the terms to get any value you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I didn't know that. And it surprises me, actually. Intuitively I would have guessed that converging infinite sums would be well-behaved under normal algebraic manipulations. But you learn something new every day :-)

Can you point me to a reference?

<comment><USER6> The basic idea is pretty simple. If Σa_i is conditionally convergent — that is, Σa_i converges but Σ|a_i| does not — then there are an infinite number of both positive and negative a_i. See [1] below for a hint on how to prove this; it's straightforward.

Given that, let's say we want to rearrange the a_i in Σa_i to converge to some arbitrary real number M. Take all the positive a_i in order and call that set A_+ and take all the negative a_i in order and call that set A_-. From [1] we know that both A_+ and A_- have an infinite number of elements.

You then construct a new series like so. Take the fewest elements from A_+ (in the order they appear in the original series) such that their sum is greater than M. Next, add to that sum the fewest number of elements from A_- (also in order) such that this new sum is smaller than M. Go back to taking elements from A_+ until you're _just_ larger M and then back to taking elements from A_- until you're _just_ under M. Repeat this ping-pong maneuver _ad infinitum_ to construct a new series.

You can prove that this new series converges (conditionally) to M.

[1]: Here's a hint. What can we say about Σ|a_i| if we know that Σa_i converges but has only a finite number of negative terms?

<comment><USER7> > If Σa_i is conditionally convergent then there are an infinite number of > both positive and negative a_i.

That's true, but that's not enough for your proof -- e.g. \sum (-1)^n/n^2 also has infinitely many positive and negative terms, but converges absolutely.

What you need is that sum of all elements in at least one of A_+, A_- (thus also the sum of all elements in the second one) diverges (the order you take the sum in doesn't matter here, as you surely know).

<comment><USER6> I left out lots of other details, too, because it was meant to be an outline for the original commenter, not a proof. In any case,

      \sum_{i=1}^{\infty} \frac{(-1)^i}{i^2}

is not conditionally convergent, so it is not a counterexample to my original statement. Here I take _conditionally convergent_ to mean "the series converges, but it does not converge absolutely." :)

What's more, if Σa_i is conditionally convergent then the sums of both A_+ and A_- diverge. You're right that one has to use this fact in the full proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh for the love of - does this _really_ need to be said?

Really?

I mean, of _course_ it's false! It's an instructive example of how apparently reasonable things go wrong, and why you sometimes really, really need to pay attention to the details.

Do we really need to be told that the sum of all the positive integers is a negative fraction? Of _course_ we don't.

I despair sometimes, I really do. I need to go away and spend some time in my happy place.

<comment><USER9> Well... I don't understand the mindset of "of _course_ it's false!" The first question that comes to my mind is "can I use normal-seeming algebra to make 1 + 2 + 3 + ... sum to a number other than -1/12"? If it's trivial to make it come out to anything at all, we can chalk it up to apparently reasonable things going wrong; if it seems to be mysteriously easier to add it all up to -1/12, it's worth investigating why that might be.

I mean, we can apply the good old formula for the geometric series,

        1 + x + x^2 + x^3 + ... = 1/(1-x)

to x=2, and we learn that

        1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + ... = -1

And before rejecting that as obviously absurd, maybe we should take a minute to reflect on how the computers we're using right now represent the quantity -1?

<comment><USER10> Ha, what a coincidence.

It won't work for decimal 10s complement numbers:

For x=10 we get

      1 + 10 + 100 + 1000 + 10000 + ... = -1/9

And -1 in a decimal computer is

      9 + 90 + 900 + 9000 + 90000 + …

so … OMG!

      9*(1 + 10 + 100 + 1000 + 10000 + ...) = 9*(-1/9) = -1

<comment><USER9> > Ha, what a coincidence.

> It won't work for decimal 10s complement numbers:

I don't get why you say this -- you go on to demonstrate the opposite?

This is just the other-side-of-the-decimal-point inverse of the well known 0.9999999... = 1 equality.

One of my favorite proofs for 0.9999... being equal to 1 goes like so: imagine subtracting it from 1. You'll get a number which has a 0 at every decimal place: 0.0000000.... Obviously, the number with a 0 in every decimal place is 0 itself.

Similarly, if you have your integer represented decimally as a bunch of coefficients (0 <= c < 10) of powers of 10, and all of the coefficients are 9, it's fairly straightforward to see that adding 1 will get you a new number for which all of the coefficients are 0. Since adding 1 to the original number gave us 0, we can treat the original number as -1.

<comment><USER10> _I don 't get why you say this_

Just a narrative of my own experience thinking this through :-)

I thought "OMG" would tell you that, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't watch the numberphile video and just read this.

Can someone explain to me why I am allowed to add a padding zero at the start without taking it out at the end?

By adding it, I am giving the sum an offset, and I can kind of understand why adding zero is not a big deal, but they reasoned:

Then S1 + S1 = (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (0 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 + 0) + (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) ....

= 1 + 0 + 0 ... = 1

But I might as well leave the leading Zero out and argue that:

Then S1 + S1 = (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

= (1 + 1) + ( -1 - 1) + (1 + 1) ....

= (2 - 2) + (2 - 2) + (2 - 2)... = 0

<comment><USER12> That's the point! Using the algebra from the article:

(1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) = 0 + (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

and therefore:

(1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) = (0 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

And as they're mathematically the same (again, in the article's algebra), why not replace one with the other?

The problem is that when you do, and you sum the two infinite series using the "zipping" method (as in the numberphile video) the two equations equate to different results.

<comment><USER11> Alright, got it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The answer is clearly 42. Monkeying with infinity allows you to derive any answer you like and I like 42.

</comment><comment><USER14> I didn't feel like signing up for a Blogger account, but I still wanted to drop this here:

> My friend, Ray Sidney, with a PhD in mathematics from MIT explained away > this nonsense rather succinctly.

> infinity + 7 = infinity

> If you minus infinity from both sides, you can tell the world 7 = 0!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere#Arithmetic_opera...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere#Arithmetic_operations)

infinity - infinity (along with a few others) is very often left undefined for this very reason--not to mention it lets you divide by zero without breaking math.

</comment><comment><USER15> For the love of math, this!

</comment><comment><USER16>
      = (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...) +
         (0 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...)

      = (1 + 0) + (1 - 1) + (1 - 1) ....

I can't _get_ this part.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're just adding the elements of the two series pair-wise (which "works" because addition is commutative and associative).

Here are a few additional intermediate steps:

        =  (1 + -1 +  1 + -1 ...)
         + (0 +  1 + -1 +  1 ...)

        = (1 + 0) + (-1 + 1) + (1 + -1) + (-1 + 1) ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a non-proof based only off of notational styles.

Let s be a series , with s_n = sum (1 to n, 1) = n _if_ S3 exists (i.e. lim n->infinity s_n exists), then the series (s-s) (where (s-s)_n = s_n - s_n) converges , and it converges towards S3 - S3 (=0).

> = (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 ...) - (0 + 1 + 1 + 1 ...) the series whose sum he's > describing here is _not_ (s-s), but another one entirely : u where u_1 = > s_1, u_n+1= s_n+1-s_n

These are different series, so it is entirely reasonable for them to converge at different values, 1 doesn't equal 0.

The "real" reason this result isn't what we think it is(apart from "infinite sums are different" argument, which is a non-answer):

>Step 1: Let S = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ... What you're doing here firstly, is saying that "I assume that this sum converges, let S be the value it converges to".

So you end up proving (if the other steps weren't also flawed) that S = -1/12, all you're saying is that _if the sum exists_ , then it is -1/12.

The issue here depends on what sort of thing you're working on. The "classic" definition of a limit (convergence of a series) does not work here, because you can prove that for all n, the sum of n numbers will always be at least -1/12 away from -1/12 (on account of it being positive), so it can't converge to -1/12 (hence S not existing).

However, there are techniques for assigning limits to divergent sums. these summability methods will give the same result as the classic analysis for convergent series, but will also give values for some divergent series.

It is similar to analytic continuation( f(x) doesn't exist, but a limit exists in x both from the left and to the right (named y), so we sometimes say that f(x)=y ), in that it allows us to extend the resolution domain slightly. But the classic definition no longer works.

The one used here is zeta function regularization, which consists in the following:

you have a series a , and a function Za(s) = (1/a1^s)+(1/a2^s)+(1/a3^s)+(1/a4^s)+.....

Za is only defined for certain values of s depending on the series. But for a serie representing a convergent sum, we know that Za(-1)= a1+a2+a3+... exists. So this method will give the same limit for convergent sums as the classical method.

For a series with a diverging sum (a_n)=n, Za(-1) doesn't exist, but the limit in -1 exists from both ends (by analytic continuation), so we extend the domain of Za to -1 by the value of this "limit" : -1/12

The article mentions Ramanujan summation, but Zeta regularization is actually a much more useful tool. In

</comment><comment><USER18> Ugh. First, the title of this article is wrong because in the article itself the author says it IS -1/12, just not the way the video proved it.

And, yes, I know in math that HOW you get the answer is somehow seen as being more important than the answer itself, but really? You consider this attention damaging? This is like the people who complain about Mythbusters because it's not "real science".

Look, anything that gets people more interested in math is great, especially when it's a video as harmless as this one (it's not as if this video could actually impact someone's life or well-being).

So drop this "I was the cool form of uncool before uncool became a thing" attitude and just be happy that people are interested in math for a change.

<comment><USER19> No, the title is right. The sum is not -1/12, there is no sum because it diverges. The Ramanujan summation is not the real summation, its a way to assign a sum to divergent series which can be useful in some cases.</comment></comment>


Diamonds Are A Man's Best Friend - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/off-the-cuff/diamonds-man-best-friend-013935199.html

<comment><USER2> Diamonds as an investment? Only probably as the worst investment one can make in their entire life.

Don't believe me? Try to sell one.

Diamonds are a total scam. They are not rare. They are not special. Only a fool would ever buy one.</comment>


Loading iOS fonts dynamically - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/12/21/ios-dynamic-font-loading <comment><USER2> Probably the most important point of this article is to read the licenses on fonts you buy. Here's the popular Pictos icon font license: <http://pictos.cc/font-license>

> Use, or allowing anyone else to use any of the Assets to create > pornographic, fraudulent, obscene, immoral, infringing, illegal, blasphemous > or defamatory material.

Can't use Pictos on a porn site, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER3> You have to store the key with the data. These contracts are silly. :(

<comment><USER4> It only prevents casual piracy, where someone fairly non-technical opens the bundle and copies the original file out.

Reverse-engineering the encryption is of course possible but much harder.

<comment><USER5> Opening an iOS app bundle and copying a file out is already out of reach of a non-technical person.

<comment><USER4> True. But I am certainly technical enough to do it, while I have no chance of breaking a coded decryption routine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ouch. We implemented a JS font loader a-la Google Web Fonts because we thought we can't load fonts in UIWebView other than via @font-face.

</comment><comment><USER7> We need to keep repeating this basic fact to people who think this kind of thing serves a purpose:

"Reducing the number of people" who can access your precious content without your permission is stupid, because it only takes ONE person. He will readily share it with the rest of the world -- and probably already has.

<comment><USER4> OTOH, if people have to go through a trained technical person to pirate something, that's a weak spot that can be attacked via DMCA or lawsuits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of loading fonts dynamically- the site looks absolutely atrocious while loading (on Chrome, anyway). I reloaded the page multiple times before it finished loading because I thought there was a rendering bug.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good iPhone app developer blogs or forums - <AUTHOR>

Mostly I'm just curious how I get into the program and what the ETA is to get a an app in the store.  It looks like they haven't added any new apps since the launch which is kind of discouraging. <comment><USER2> How to get in to the program? You go to Apple's website and sign up. Its a two step process, first you sign up, and then sign up again for the developer program. When they accept you, you pay $99 and can submit applications to the app store. No word on how long those are taking to get approved. And they have added a few hundred apps since launching. There are RSS feeds of new applications, updated applications, and the top applications. See <http://www.pinchmedia.com/your-view-into-the-app-store/>

I'm not sure of where to go for the developer side, but apple's forums would be a good start. I run a blog about the business side (in sig.), and there are many other resources out there as well.

<comment><USER3> Nice. I subscribed to that and to your blog. (FTW It might be nice to but some dates on your blog posts if you get a chance.)

I signed up for the developer program yesterday. Any idea how long it takes to get accepted?

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I added dates, not sure how those got lost. I don't know how long it takes to get accepted, but I know people were starting to get accepted quicker since the App Store opened. It took a little over a month for me. Plenty of time to write an application. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> For the business side or the coding side?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually both in equal portions :-)</comment></comment>


Cloudflare's CTO Wants to Shake Up How We Think About VPNs - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/news/367881/cloudflares-cto-wants-to-shake-up-how-we-think-about-vpns <comment><USER2> Is this an entire story about Warp, which is what I understand Cloud Flare to have named their Rust fork of WireGuard, that does not once mention WireGuard or Jason Donenfeld? Jason is the hardest working person in show business. A "thank you" might be nice, even if Cloud Flare can't work up the class to contribute directly to Jason's projects. Even if they're not using his code, they're using his design and formal verification work, which, in a cryptosystem, is at least as important.

<comment><USER3> I don't control what parts of an hour long interview a journalist publishes. I told the journalist about WireGuard and talked about its modern crypto, good performance and nice roaming capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This headline reminded me to check my position on the waiting list. On April 1st, I was at #166319. Now I'm at #166208.

If they keep adding capacity at the same rate, I should get access about 100 years from now :(

<comment><USER5> My wait-list number has dropped by half since I signed on. There is hope.

<comment><USER4> Did the number drop by more than 211 in the last 25 days?

If so, the wait list isn't a simple FIFO queue.

<comment><USER6> It should not be a FIFO. They probably want diversity of countries, ISPs, devices, etc. According to your profile you're located in China so they're surely not short of Chinese test subjects for a VPN ;)

<comment><USER7> It's either a FIFO or the message you are #xxxxx on the waiting list is bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cloudflare is a MiTM on the internet at large.

<comment><USER9> What about Akamai or Cloudfront?

Cloudfront certainly aren't the first CDN, and I highly doubt they're the largest.

<comment><USER10> Cloudflare uses a reverse proxy design for its CDN features.

<comment><USER11> As do Akamai and CloudFront. It's not a MITM when it's a contracted service sites choose to use rather than an attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _But it would definitely be good for the public to understand, at least to > dismiss this notion that the internet is a free-for-all. It 's not, in > itself, resilient against interference._

> _And would you want that freedom? I wonder if the individual ultimately > would. Maybe there are things governments should be protecting us from. That > 's a valid discussion that should be had._

Governments, of the past, of the present, have left us with plenty evidence that they are perfectly incapable of _protecting_ their citizens when it doesn't serve either their collective self-interest or the interest of whoever they happen to _serve_ at the time. Imo, there is literally no alternate reality where handing the governments unabated control ends well.

\- For starters, the govts don't even _get_ technology.

\- As a parallel to the Internet, look no further than the regulations, the standardisation processes that plague the telecommunications industry (who are under influence of the governments world-wide and are actively trying to wrestle the control of the internet away from traditional bodies). It's clear who wins (hint: not the end consumer, and occasionally the governments sneak in backdoors).

There's a reason BigTelco is what it is today (a no-escape surveillance dragnet). It'd be sad if the Internet plunges to such depths.

I'm glad initiatives like tor, i2p, ipfs, datproject, freedombox, nyc-mesh, community-broadband, matrix.org are trying to solve the problems in a myriad of ways. The threat of govts meddling with the Internet irrevocably is real though, esp since a functioning Internet requires quite an expensive yet co- operative infrastructure which is, for all intents and purposes, in control of the BigTech... but I don't see why individuals world-wide should go down without a fight to keep the Internet as neutral as they can, while they can.

\--

That aside, I'm interested to know if anyone has seen any huge latency difference between using Cloudflare Warp and using Wireguard behind Google's GlobalLoadBalancer or AWS' GlobalAccelerator (or equivalent StackPath/Cloudflare offering)?

<comment><USER13> > _Imo, there is literally no alternate reality where handing the governments > unabated control ends well._

IANA, which controls domain names, is in the US, which means it's technically under the complete control of the US government. That means the civilian- facing Internet and World Wide Web are under the complete control of the US (and always have been, as far as I know).

> _For starters, the govts don 't even get technology._

The US govt did all the research that led to the current Internet. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, another governmental organization.

Many of the major advances of the 20th century were funded, organized, and run by governments.

If you meant to say that _legislators_ don't even get technology, that would be a lot more valid. But legislators (in the US) provide funding to people who are at the forefront of their fields.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Valid points but when I said governments I didn't just mean the US government. Besides, if history is any indicator, the governments (including democratic ones) are happy to turn a blind-eye to any and all important legislations when it make sense for whosoever is at the helm or in power at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Do you really want that? What if you can't take down the website? Daily Stormer is really interesting; we shut off service for it, but you can go to Google and read it."

I don't even know what type of content is on Daily Stormer but I presume it is controversial. I find this quote just a tad disingenuous. I understand Cloudflare is well within its rights to decide there are certain companies they won't work with, but to say this causes no harm whatsoever isn't entirely true.

There are very few CDNs that can withstand a DDOS attack, and certainly very rare for a small publishing company to have that capability in-house. If the content you want is under a DDOS attack and unavailable because no CDN will carry it, then yeah, that would kind of suck.

One can always publish to various P2P platforms that are highly DDOS- resistant, but now the audience has some more work to get to it; it's a barrier. Not an impassable one, but a barrier nonetheless.

For the record, I like Cloudflare, but I also really love free speech. The quote struck me as overly minimizing.

<comment><USER15> It's a neo-nazi/white nationalist forum. It's still active I believe behind Tor, but not nearly as accessible, far fewer people actually participating. We're in an era where young men radicalize each other on message boards like these until one of the truly unhinged members heads to a synagogue to murder people worshiping. As we've seen so many times in the past year, they'll often post before they do it, leaving behind a manifesto and a crowd egging them on to get a "high score."

I wish this was actually an outlier and not very common, but unfortunately if you monitor these forums you'll see men working up the courage to commit a mass murder of their own every single day.

In my opinion we should try to put as many barriers we can in front of these types of communities, and it sucks that cloudflare is still working with some of them.

<comment><USER14> yeah that is pretty controversial stuff! I guess for me this falls into that fringe category of stuff that really should best be only found by those truly seeking it, so I'm morally OK with barriers without total censorship. But I'd also like to think more about how to help those people who get sucked into such things. The more private it becomes, maybe the harder it is to see & help?

All that said I still stand by my original comment, there is a chilling effect on free speech, not to be so glibly dismissed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps off topic but this was very difficult to read because PC Mag's advertising was constantly changing sizes. Thank God for Reader View or I'd have abandoned it early

<comment><USER12> Often I find myself using outline.com as a mirror: [https://outline.com/TSWvsv](https://outline.com/TSWvsv) (I realise, the same reason you do not use an ad-blocker might stop you from using mirrors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Not looking to get around country-blocks" \- yep, as found it does not work in China

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not very familiar with this topic. Would this be considered a competitor to perimeterless security like Google BeyondCorp?

<comment><USER12> Something like zscaler's ZIA [0] is in the same ballpark as BeyondCorp, or so I think. Cloudflare Warp is basically a CDN turned on its head: Security and privacy are a huge bonus, whilst low latency and high bandwidth remain its salient features. It is more like the Silk Browser [1], the Opera Turbo/Mini [2], or the Chrome FlyWheel [3] but operating at the network layer, and across all apps.

[0] [https://www.zscaler.com/products/zscaler-internet- access](https://www.zscaler.com/products/zscaler-internet-access)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3215778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3215778)

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#Functionality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#Functionality)

[3] [https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub43447](https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub43447)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm just waiting for them to clarify if they're ok with torrenting over their VPN.

</comment><comment><USER20> I will stick with a couple VM's in a couple countries and tinc vpn + ssh client for remote access. I can destroy and recreate them periodically to change out IP addresses.

</comment><comment><USER21> I installed 126.96.36.199/warp+ a day or two after April 1st. My waitlist number has stayed at 243635-something for a couple of weeks now.

Anyone know at what pace they're letting new users in?

</comment><comment><USER22> "We're not looking to compete with the free" \- this seems garbled. Any guess what he meant?

<comment><USER3> I agree but I don't recall what I was saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> (All of the comments on this post say they are from 10-15 minutes ago, but I remember reading them hours ago, and Algolia shows they were made days ago. <\- For potential future reference, my/this comment was posted at 3:42pm US/Pacific on April 28th of 2019.)

<comment><USER24> View the same comments from the profile page of their authors and they're days old. This feels like some zombie post resurrection trickery with the time stamps.

dang?

<comment><USER25> "Zombie post resurrection trickery with timestamps" is on the nose.

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380) and my answer to saurik above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> VPNs for everyone - literally the worst idea of all time

<comment><USER12> ISPs/Carriers are MiTMing all kinds of traffic [0]. A VPN that promises to protect you from this, in addition to offering low latency due to their superior network and routing tech, might be a big plus, too [1][2]. I think its too early to dismiss VPN-for-all as an idea dead in the water. Time will tell. From what I know and what I've read so far, Warp might indeed be the VPN that you've wanted all along but never knew.

[0] [https://techscience.org/a/2015103003/](https://techscience.org/a/2015103003/)

[1] [https://patents.justia.com/patent/9736710](https://patents.justia.com/patent/9736710)

[2] [https://patents.justia.com/patent/20170086092](https://patents.justia.com/patent/20170086092)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cloudflare just wants access to your traffic info to resell it.

<comment><USER28> Source?</comment></comment>


PyCon UK 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://pyuk2012.pyconuk.org/

<comment><USER2> Coventry??? Really? I mean .. it's fine for me ... I'm in Birmingham .. but still.. Coventry? I really don't want to hear about python devs getting stabbed by chavs!

</comment><comment><USER3> Coventry? Fuck that. Travel in the UK is really expensive and thus it's better to do events centrally.

<comment><USER4> Really? The UK's centre of population [0] is apparently Appleby Parva in Leicestershire [1], which is less than 25 miles from Coventry [2].

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_population> [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleby_Parva> [2] [https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=Appleby+Parva&daddr...](https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=Appleby+Parva&daddr=Coventry&hl=en&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=14.95462,39.418945&geocode=FbfJIwMdUHbo_ynDNkNudlV3SDHQfEdYqxwOCg%3BFSaqHwMds8_o_ym3Im5lUbFwSDGJBk9W9WD2BA&mra=ls&t=m&z=10)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, well it's only a 3 hour train journey, perhaps there will be some advance fares available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will pricing be (roughly) the same as last year?

<comment><USER6> Yes, the pricing will be very similar to 2011.

<comment><USER5> Awesome, it's great to see such a reasonable priced conference. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend; the UCL term starts on the 26th of September. Hope it goes swimmingly anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't remember there being a Tech centre there. Is this new(ish)? Coventry isn't all bad. There's some beautiful countryside around there. And it used to be fortified - an independent! It's just a shame they went all concrete jungle on the place.</comment>


Let's mug a startup founder - <AUTHOR> http://thinkvitamin.com/business/lets-mug-a-startup-founder/ <comment><USER4> Hi – I'm Mark Hales from Oxygen Accelerator. I just wanted to say we're following all the discussions on here and it's helpful to hear your opinions and advice based on your experiences. I just wanted to make a couple of points to clarify a few things. We intend to provide a fuller response once we've spent some time considering all the feedback.

First of all the loan we are talking about is a 'soft' loan to the businesses taking part – with no personal guarantees and will be interest free.

As part of the application process we'll sit down with each team to understand their funding needs and will only ask for the loan to be repaid once / if this level of funding or more has been achieved, or they reach a level of profitability to support loan repayments, again we will agree this in advance but the key point here is that we will build in an agreed level of headroom with the founders.

This will not be a complicated loan agreement, we only want to have the money back to reinvest in the next round of entrepreneurs when its right for the business, i.e., there wont be any clever call options. Teams will be given full sight of this and we will encourage them to get advice before they sign up to anything.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for jumping in to explain. I appreciate it's not always easy to take part in a discussion that's mostly focused on ripping you to bits (justifiably or not). I for one look forward to see how this evolves, rather than judging everything on the basis of what it looks like on day one. Actions speak louder than words.

<comment><USER4> Thanks swombat, I welcome constructive feedback, but have been a bit taken aback by the nature of some feedback, the best way to engage Entrepreneurs and investors outside of the tech community is to work with them and provide constructive feedback, I'll keep listening

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So that's around $33k USD.

They're only looking to be paid back if you reach profitability.

6% equity to get a $33k loan and some sort of training/advising for 13 weeks at their facility, and office space afterwards? Could be a good deal, especially if you have a new business that requires medium amounts of capital costs to get started. If you're getting something manufactured and your first run/prototyping/etc is going to run you $15k, it might be good to do that on their dime. If it works out and you get profitable, you pay them back and they've got their equity. If it fails, they're out the money.

Could be good, depending on your circumstance and the specific terms on it. I could see lots of cases where that'd add far more than 6% chance of success and value to the business.

Edit: Gosh, a lot of reply comments. To clarify:

-You should always, always read the terms carefully in any important contract you're going to sign, and strongly consider hiring a lawyer to give it a once-over.

-In this particular deal, you'd want to make sure the loan isn't personally guaranteed and what the terms of calling it are.

-I could see times where I'd be ecstatic to take this. Lots of brand new companies would have a much higher success chance and EV with 94% equity, $33k cash in the bank, and $33k in debt with flexible repayment terms than 100% equity, $0 cash, and $0 debt.

-Money's worth a lot, and people often underestimate how much it's worth. Especially for an unproven, speculative venture.

-It might or might not be a good deal depending on your specific circumstances, and the exact terms of the loan. Again, read contracts carefully and strongly consider hiring a lawyer to look it over.

-As always, consider not making flippant comments on Hacker News? It's kind of tiresome to get ignorant and flippant replies when you're trying to do a neutral, factual analysis.

<comment><USER7> The whole reason I wrote the post is because they're acting as if it's normal to ask for equity for a loan (and a tiny loan at that). YC, TechStars, Seedcamp, etc all invest in their companies - not loan them money.

The whole thing smacks of a rich guy who just thinks he can throw around his money, call it an 'accelerator' and take candy from babies.

I'm doubly angry because here in the UK, we're struggling to get support for new startups and entrepreneurs. Shady deals like this only make it harder for people who genuinely want to support startups (like Seedcamp) to gain traction in the mainstream media.

<comment><USER8> Slightly OT: You may want to remove hyper-linking to them in the article. You do not intent to promote them, right?

<comment><USER7> I can't make a valid argument without linking to the service I'm calling in to question.

<comment><USER9> You can use a rel:nofollow link. Then search engines won't take it into account.

<comment><USER7> Good point. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone in the comments on the article pointed out, oxygenaccelerator.com is scraping the top link on Hacker News, so they're actually linking to this article on their homepage. Hilarious.

Screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/GCYCG.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER11> Almost all incubators aren't worth the time/equity given up.

My startup applied for YC and (having not made it) will not be pursuing any others. We may apply for YC again, not for the money but the experience and the alumni.

Experience and Alumni.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ryan, I assure you that in the US, a typical startup founder cannot walk into the bank and leave with an unsecured $163,000 loan. Businesses with many multiples of that in top-line revenue can't get that loan without personal liability.

I probably agree that 6% PLUS a $32k (zero-interest) loan is not a good deal.

But I don't even think 6% for ~$20k is a good deal for funding.

I don't think the comparison you're making here is fair. Calling it a "mugging" is a bit over the top. The people who mug startups are consultants and do-nothing executive hires.

<comment><USER7> The typical lean web startup doesn't need £100,000 as seed funding. I mentioned our 0% equity loan because it demonstrates what a terrible deal this accelerator is offering.

<comment><USER12> Loans and lines of credit often don't require equity. They frequently do require you to put up your house. You cannot pull an interest-free loan, backed only by your corporation, off a tree. It is a real offering. It is not reasonable to call it a "mugging".

We agree on how valuable $32k of seed money (debt or equity) is worth. To wit: not much.

We agree on how expensive 6% of your company is worth. To wit: a deceptively large amount.

We agree that this seed program is probably not a good deal.

I just think there's a difference between "probably not worth it" and "bad virtually to the point of criminality", which is what the wording you used meant.

<comment><USER7> Mark, the guy behind this accelerator, sold his company for multiple millions. Are you suggesting he doesn't have the business experience to see this for the bad deal it is?

<comment><USER12> It is hard for me to argue this with you, because I agree that 6% is a steep price to pay for any favor, be it an interest-free unsecured loan or a $20k seed investment.

But that's a subjective point.

What's not subjective is that an interest-free unsecured loan for $32k USD IS a favor, not a mugging, and while I don't think it's worth 6%, or even 1%, it's not right for me to accuse the offerer of that loan of mendacity.

A question I'd put back to you:

Assume that there is no seed fund or accelerator program you can get to accept you, other than this one. Assume that you need the $32k; stipulate that you cannot, say, bootstrap or consult your way out of the first 6 months living expenses.

Would you advise someone _not to start a company_ instead of accepting this deal?

<comment><USER7> Your question highlights the fundamental problem. All the hype about acquisitions of young startups, funded by seed programs, has created some sort of widely held belief that you _have_ to participate in an accelerator to launch a startup.

It's also causing investors to be more aggressive in pushing their money on startups, whether they need it or not. Inexperienced startup founders will mistake their fervor as an indication that they should take the money, instead of an indication that maybe their startup has real potential and they should be slower to give part of it away.

"Would you advise someone not to start a company instead of accepting this deal?"

That's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of companies (ours, 37signals, etc) that started without any funding at all. Then when we decided to raise funding (debt in our case), it was easy to get because we had real revenue and clear growth. It made sense for the bank to loan money to us because it could see we that we were going to pay it back.

Let's all stop spreading this bizarre myth that you have to take part in an accelerator to start a company.

<comment><USER12> If you ask, you'll find that there are few on HN louder and more obnoxious about skipping external funding than me. We bootstrapped in 2005. Not getting funding: best thing that ever happened to us.

But it's one thing to have it in for _all seed funding programs_ (I'm with you on that!) and another to call one specific one "muggers" because you particularly don't like their terms. At least, not with terms like these.

Finally, just out of curiosity: is your $162k debt financing secured solely with your corporation? You didn't have to provide any collateral, or any personal guarantees? Obviously: I don't think you could pull that off in the US. Unless your revenues are _way_ higher than I assume they are (my current assumption is already pretty high).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From their FAQ (<http://oxygenaccelerator.com/accelerator/faqs/>):

When do I have to pay the pre-seed funding back?

Don't worry, we really don't want you to hand over the keys to your house or car – this is a soft loan. Our interest is in your success and therefore will only look for the loan to be repaid when it makes sense for your business. This will be done on a case-by-case basis.

<comment><USER14> This sounds a bit suspicious to me, i.e. I couldn't help but reading this in a fake Brooklyn/Jersey accent wise guy accent.

How are such loans handled in the UK regarding liability? I mean, if you have a limited company, does one of the founders have to vouch for it with his personal possessions (as it's often handled here in Germany, for obvious reasons)?

Yes, if you're doing good, they won't be hasty in getting the money back, but they just might kick you on your way down, possibly thus ruining your last shot of getting back up again.

<comment><USER15> Reason number seven million we are not registered in Germany.

Seriously, though, how difficult is it to get a limited liability going in Germany? Moving there next month.

<comment><USER14> Pretty easy nowadays. The traditional way is the GmbH, which required you to have a capital of 25k Euros. Now as we're in the EU, you could register your company everywhere and lots of countries provided you with easier access to limited liability. As an answer to this, there's a beginner's version, the "UG", where the lower limit of starting capital is 1 Euro and unless you have more than three founders, there are form letters that make the legalities very easy.

<comment><USER15> Good - sounds more competitive.

It cost us 100€ with min of 1€ capital in the Republic + 10€ legal swearing fee. I filled in the form myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm having a hard time understanding why they want the money back if they're taking so much equity. If the company is at all successful the 6% equity will be worth wayyy more than £20,000. If the company fails they get nothing, not even the loan repayment.

I suppose it protects them against so-called "lifestyle businesses" that never have a big exit.

<comment><USER16> Even with companies that have an exit, it might take years, during which the companies could well afford to pay back the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> fixed price of investment deals are inevitably doomed by the problem of average pricing. only startups that find it a good deal will take it and by rule of nature they are the ones with the least attractive prospects.

(ycombinator can defeat this by continuously manufacturing holy water - <USER2> like the old vcs did. the halo effect makes an investment from yc both more valuable and variable than the fixed price on offer)

</comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes I wonder if the guys who are providing the hosting, logo, font and design services are the ones making the money, not the startup founders. Web startups can depend on many paid services to make a web app work, yet not sure if their own web app can make money at all.

<comment><USER19> If you want to make a good living with little risk, be a dev, a designer or something like that. Given that most startups fail, and of the ones that don't, most are only modestly successful, you'll probably be better off (from a purely economic standpoint) as a paid employee (or service provider) to a startup than as an entrepreneur starting one up. I think there's something magical (insane?) about doing your own startup.

Note: I don't have the hard data about this, but this seems to be the consensus (although those people never presented their data) and my anecdotal experience. Please, tell me if I'm wrong :)

<comment><USER20> Except the founder gets paid either way, and paid more than anyone else usually. If the business goes bust nobody takes his house, or his things - <USER3> just finds another job or starts another business with VC welfare.

<comment><USER19> I don't know if that's always true (at least, not for founders I want to work for). I worked at a startup where the founder totally ruined his personal credit, and was paid a small portion of what everyone else was making until well into profitability. I bought a beautiful house in a good neighborhood while working for him. He _still_ lives in a tiny rented condo.

If things work out, I'll walk away with enough to pay down some of my mortgage, and he'll be set for a life of luxury. But if things don't work out, then I still have a great house, and plenty of savings. He'll have no credit, and no savings.

It seems like a poor use of funding to pay the founder a great salary (i.e. more than key employees) at an early stage startup: before profitability, or even early into profitability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am surprised they managed to get the loan via the Small Firms Enterprise Loan Guarentee scheme. I don't know any web based business that has succeeded yet, most bank managers authorise the loan as the guarantor provided you have enough equity yet in experience lack little web experience and equity in a property.

I am citing from previous experience, when pitching a travel startup to a Natwest 'business' manager his response when I expressed a point about Expedia was.. "who are they?". Enough said.

<comment><USER7> We had the same experience with Natwest. Our events business was doing over £1m in revenue with them, for over three years - and they still turned us down. They seemed completely aware of a recurring revenue model. Insanely frustrating.

I just hopped on the web and Googled 'small business loan' and came across Lloyds. I filled out a random contact form and amazingly they got in touch. I had to prepare a traditional biz plan and present it. Because we bootstrapped the startup and revenues showed constant growth, and I was confident in my pitch, they got back to me next day and said they'd do it. Wasn't easy but it worked.

<comment><USER21> Congrats!

It does irritate me that the UK government bleat on about making business finance readily available then you end up face to face with the likes of Natwest!.

Reading articles about the startup program in Chile and the building of a tech hub in Portugal I do wonder what happened to the innovation in the UK business sector, if the Startup UK website was anything to go by it's gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So let's say that the hit rate for follow-on investments for a TechStars company is somewhere close to 70% (that's fairly accurate). That doesn't necessarily represent success, but it's a start. Y Combinator is probably better than that. Now let's say that a "lesser" accelerator's hit rate is maybe half that. Still a 35% chance of some measure of success. Now maybe there's a 10% chance by going the pure bootstrap route, maybe less. So taking the money--and the guidance--in whatever form, makes you maybe three times more likely to be able to do what you love for a fairly extended period of time. Not to mention the fact that oftentimes the accelerator provides free or discounted services for being a cohort company. Good legal for a deep discount, legal office hours, design consults, dinners with VCs, etc.

I can't speak for what Oxygen is doing, or whether they're providing these services or not. But many accelerators that aren't called Y Combinator or TechStars are, and though there won't be as many successes to come out of those, there no doubt will be some. There may even be one or two who attend, learn a bit, fail, and then come back to apply at one of the big dogs later down the road.

</comment><comment><USER23> The loan clause is tucked away under FAQs instead of next to the 20k amount on homepage. How convenient... pickup that bat timmy.. hit him square on his head... :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Also, don't forget that if the company goes into liquidation, debt gets preference to equity holders when it comes to distributing assets. So for all the "trust me" rhetoric, it remains theoretically possible that the creditor (ie the "incubator") could call in the loan, and if the cash is not at hand, they could force the company into liquidation. They would then end up with title to any IP, contracts or any other company assets.

</comment><comment><USER25> In the Indian startup I hear of a new incubator/accelerator every few month. Of course, they don't give any money and yes they want equity. Its the hottest scam it seems these days.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is an european phenomenon. I remember reading about one seed fund in europe that took like 50% equity of your equity.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't get it, isn't the 6% basically the interest rate?

<comment><USER7> No, because if any of these startups make it big, it'll be 6% of a much larger amount (think $10,000,000+). $600,000 is a little more than the interest you'd pay on a $33,000 loan at 6% :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like we have raised some controversy and questions around the funding model we have chosen for Oxygen Accelerator. So this blog post is in response to some of the questions/points raised:

Q. We could just go get a bank loan and not have to give up any equity?

A. It is true there are alternative sources of funding including bank loans through the government supported Small Firms Loan Guarantee scheme; this loan is only available to companies that can prove the ability to repay it, however these loans charge a facility fee, are interest bearing, have fixed payment terms, and the founders are required to give personal guarantees. The 70% guarantee made to banks by the government only kicks in once the personal guarantees from the founders have been exhausted. Our loan is interest free, has no fixed term, is secured only against the business, does not have any personal guarantees and is only repayable if and when the business can afford it without jeopardy to the business. If the business fails (which inevitably some will) the loan is written off. It is made at a time when in most cases the founders have an idea; they may not have incorporated, may not have a business plan or even a well thought out strategy.

Lots of people have understood what we are offering – here is a comment on HN from 'lionhearted' which sums it up well.

"I could see circumstances that I'd take this deal in a heartbeat – starting a brand new company with 94% equity, $33k cash in the bank, and a $33k loan with very flexible repayment terms seems like it'd have a much higher chance of success than starting with 100% equity, $0 cash, and $0 debt."

Q. Isn't 6% equity for a 20K loan a ridiculous interest rate?

A. The 6% of equity is not directly related to the £20k. The 6% equity is in return for the full programme, including aftercare. We are enabling companies to reach an entirely new level, through the provision of facilities, mentor guidance, accommodation, investors, an evergreen loan and office space for 6-months – plus we will keep a vested interest, providing an open-door policy to the team in Birmingham. An important point is that it's a loan of UP to £20k – purely to enable the teams to get onto and through the programme. It is not seen as an investment to last them post-bootcamp, but allows them to reach 'investor day'. They don't have to take this loan if they don't require it.

Q. Why wouldn't I just bootstrap rather than taking a loan?

A. Bootstrapping is a great way for a startup to get off the ground, but often requires the founders to take on debt via credit cards or loans from friends and family which also have to be paid back. The difference here is we are offering a programme (facilities, mentor guidance, accommodation, investors and office space for 6-months) that includes an interest free loan to your business with no personal guarantees. Here is a HN comment from tptacek

"Loans and lines of credit often don't require equity. They frequently do require you to put up your house. You cannot pull an interest-free loan, backed only by your corporation, off a tree. It is a real offering. It is not reasonable to call it a "mugging"."

Q. I'm having a hard time understanding why they want the money back if they're taking so much equity.

A. Typically it takes 3 years + to get a return on an equity deal so if you are running an accelerator at least once a year you need to be able to fund it for at least 3 years before getting (3 * £200k = £600k + running costs = £1million) any return. By using an evergreen loan model we stand a chance of returning some (not all) money to the programme quicker than 3 years and allowing us to sustain the programme and support more entrepreneurs which has to be a good thing for the entire community.

Q. If we make it big it'll be 6% of a much larger amount (think $10,000,000+). $600,000 is a little more than the interest you'd pay on a $33,000 loan at 6%?

A. The type of high-growth tech businesses we are looking to support on the programme will need additional rounds of funding and therefore our 6% equity will be significantly diluted. It would be great to think that all businesses will exit for $10million + but the reality is very few will so the return is unlikely to be anything like that.

Q. Not all accelerators are equal

A. I agree and not all startups are equal and what works for one doesn't always work for another. I don't seek to compete with Tech Stars, Seedcamp, Y combinator or any other scheme. I applaud their efforts in what they do for aspiring entrepreneurs; any reference I make to them is around the fact that we are offering a 13-week bootcamp that is mentor intensive in order to assist companies in raising their next round of funding.

Q. This is a rip off for startup founders who don't know any better.

A. I think this does the tech community a dis-service. The vast majority have a very good understanding of these matters and are more than capable of weighing up what is the best programme for their startup. The fact that this is not an identical offering to other accelerators does not make it a rip off, it makes it different.

Q. The loan information is buried in the FAQ's

A. The FAQ's are hardly buried they are very clearly displayed on the Accelerator page. All the accelerator sites use the FAQ's to provide the detail around their programmes. However, to ensure its very clear we have added the words "soft loan" next to the £20k on the home page.

Q Why don't we just get Angel or VC investment?

A. There are a lucky few startups that turn up and pitch an idea to an Angel or VC and get funding but there are more that are not that lucky and have to actually prove traction, have a credible business plan or be revenue generating. What accelerator programmes like ours do is help your startup get to that stage quickly (13-weeks), which means you are much more likely to then find the investment you need to grow the business to the next stage. Of course this is not the only way to become investment-ready; there are plenty of others and only you can make the best choice for your business.

Q. There are lots of accelerators why do we need one that offers loans

A. My experience is that there aren't enough accelerators to support startups and many talented individuals with great ideas fail to get the support (financial and non-financial) to get their ideas off the ground. My programme is aimed to support those people that see the value of the programme; if they need neither the money or the support because they have all the skills and connections to go it alone then clearly they wouldn't benefit from the programme. The fact that hundreds of people applying to Tech stars, Y Combinator and other accelerators aren't successful suggests there is a need for more support to be provided (YC probably got 1000+ applications and selected 60 teams, so that's 940 teams who will not receive support this year alone).

The rationale for it being an evergreen loan is so that the ones that do repay the loan, at a time when arguably they no longer need it, is to allow other entrepreneurs the same opportunity for the long term. Other schemes such as Difference Engine were funded by regional grant type funding which, as government cash ran out, were closed and therefore no longer open to budding entrepreneurs, despite the fact that many of the companies that benefited from the programme have gone on to successfully raise further rounds of funding with the assistance of the programme and arguably don't need the original funding anymore. Our aim is to make the programme sustainable and not at the whim of investor sentiment. The evergreen loan model in theory returns money back to the programme quicker than an equity-only model and hence allows us to support more entrepreneurs.

Mark Hales <http://oxygenaccelerator.com/blog/2011/05/oh-no-its-a-loan/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Is it truly a loan or convertible debt?

<comment><USER29> Hard to image it being convertible debt if the amount he is asking for is a fixed 6%. "Yes Mr. founder sir, we'd like convertible debt with a cap of £333,333 and just to be nice guys we'll introduce a floor for you of £333,333."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is an interesting post from an unlikely source. I think carsonified Wil soon be the Arrington of bullshit startup advice. Just trying to peddle those CSS3 How To Videos...what a joke.

<comment><USER7> I guess the fact I've started four companies doesn't count :)

\- One acquired \- One failed \- One currently humming along profitably \- One currently growing at an insane pace (thankfully!)

<comment><USER5> Don't feed the trolls! :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Weekend Employees win Seattle without disclosing connection - <AUTHOR>

A team composed primarily of Startup Weekend employees won the event in Seattle (evidence below) without disclosing their connection to the SW organization.  While SW isn't intended to be a contest, the event concludes with celebrity judges awarding prizes. I believe the employees should have, at a minimum, announced who they were. Anyone else see this?
The team Red Ride came in 1st place at the Seattle event. For full disclosure, I worked on a different team that I thought could win. When we learned that Red Ride bested us, I congratulated them, accepted a friendly defeat, and genuinely was thankful to be part of the event. Last weekend I learned that one of the group members worked for SW. Curious, I started digging and discovered that 4 of the 6 Red Ride team members currently work for SW. Am I off base this is dishonest?
Red Ride homepage with demo: http://redride.squarespace.com/
SW blog post: http://seattle.startupweekend.org/2013/06/10/startup-weekend-seattle-was-awesome-heres-a-recap/
Redfin blog entry: http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2013/06/the-culmination-of-seattle-startup-weekend.html
Team:
Mohammed A - High School Student
Dan Cromer - Software Engineer at SW
Ben Gilbert - Global Facilitator at SW (and also Microsoft PM)
Chet Kittleson - NW Regional Manager at Up Global
Gabe Pelegrin - (Previous) Intern at SW and now contractor
Demi Wetzel - Culture Manager at Up Global
Note: Up Global is a SW subsidiary <comment><USER2> SW judges are not part of the organization, what kind of advantage would the team get by being members?</comment>