ProdPad – Product Management Software - <AUTHOR> https://www.prodpad.com/ <comment><USER2> This sort of thing really needs a live demo. I don't want to sign up for 50 different Product Management sites to find the one I want to use, and have to deal with the other 49's spam once I choose one. Even once you delete your account do some of them spam you.

<comment><USER3> Good point @gherkin!

Want me to give you a quick demo of ProdPad? We don't yet have a full video walkthrough, though we're working hard on the product tour and the help guides. In the meantime, we're on hand to help out with any questions or even to jump on a call to walk you and your team through how to use it with your own processes and other tools in place.

Hope that helps!

Janna

Janna Bastow Co-founder

<comment><USER4> A lot of companies don't appreciate the competitive space they're in.

If you're building something that addresses a novel value proposition ("a machine that turns water into wine") you can say it like it is and expect at least some conversion from an audience which cares about your promised value.

When your value proposition is something like "better product management" you're competing with dozens of products which people already use and are happy with. Just saying "we're a better tool for product management" isn't going to fly. You'll need to communicate exactly why you're better.

I appreciate the friendly "talk to us anytime and we'll walk you through it", but I think as a strategy that suffers from a similar problem. It's not going to work with a muddy value proposition, most folks just won't bother.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback, @davidkatz - I definitely see your point on this one, and it's something we're often testing (as you might expect from a couple product managers!) and working out different ways to articulate our value prop.

Lately, we've been trying out different messages for different audiences - ProdPad is just as valuable to a development team (roadmap visibility, clearer specs) as it is to the customer support team (visibility of impact/progress following customer requests and feedback), but in completely different ways. Obviously product managers are our core user base, but by all means, not the only ones.

Yesterday, we used "Build product roadmaps, manage ideas, and make users happy" on Product Hunt, which seems to have gone over well. Might test a few variations of this and see if it sticks!

Thanks again for the feedback, really helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice site design. You may want to take a look at a mixed-mode error you have -- there is a call being made to [http://www.prodpad.com/wp- content/plugins/prettify-gc-syntax...](http://www.prodpad.com/wp- content/plugins/prettify-gc-syntax-highlighter/prettify.css?ver=3.9.1) \-- you can probably just change it to https and clear that right up.</comment>


Chrome T-Rex game playable with any modern browser - <AUTHOR> http://riccardo-forina.github.io/chromium-dyno-crossbrowser/

<comment><USER2> High score: 01233 Those Pterodactyls, hehe.

Best played after pressing ctrl + plus a few times.

Runs smooth.</comment>


Ask HN: Etiquette at conferences? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious if there are any good books or online resources or even coaches/tutors for etiquette and manners, particularly as it applies to academic and tech conferences...<p>I don't mean like where you put your fork and knife but more:<p>- how to get in and out of a conversation circle<p>- event invitations: when is it ok to go and not go<p>- what's the appropriate amount to talk about yourself and your idea<p>- how to identify this conversation is going nowhere<p>- how to approach FAMOUS GUY<p>- how to appropriately ask your friend to introduce you to his friend, FAMOUS GUY<p>- etc <comment><USER2> Do not awkwardly kiss and subsequently force your hand down female conference- goers underwear.

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875718> What the parent post is referring to if anyone missed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "how to appropriately ask your friend to introduce you to his friend, FAMOUS GUY"

Well, to turn this around: After attending the first few Ruby confs (though I missed #1) I was pleasantly surprised to find that matz not only recognize me when he saw me, but remembered my name.

At some point I was attending Ruby conferences with coworkers or friends who were going for their first time, and when I would run into matz I made a point of going over to say hello, and also introduce these conf newbies. And I would try to do this for anyone else I thought my cohorts would be interested in meeting.

For the longest time I had been a horribly shy person, and I still often have to force myself to do certain social things, so I figure if I can help someone else get over that initial hurdle by doing a few introductions then the world is a better place.

So, all you people who have already established assorted acquaintances, help broaden the circle.

BTW, most of the time FAMOUS PERSON is pretty nice and happy to meet people who say how great they are and how cool their work is. :) So in the absence of a formal introduction, just go over and introduce yourself. That's kind of the point of conferences.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dodgy title but good advice: How to win friends and influence people. <http://amzn.to/aEYc04>

For conferences: try to contact people that are going beforehand and talk about stuff over email. It's easier to follow up in person than to start from scratch in person.

</comment><comment><USER6> "working a room" is actually fairly difficult as there are probably not very many rules of thumb that you can follow that don't have exceptions. You have to be sensitive to social cues and have tact.

Getting in and out of conversation circles: hang out nearby and eavesdrop. If the conversation sounds like one that you have something to contribute, wait until you have something to say and there is an adequate lull in the conversation to jump in. It doesn't matter if what you have to say refers to earlier in the conversation "I overheard you said x a while ago,..."

What's appropriate amount to talk about yourself/idea: as little as possible unless you are trying to sell to the person listening (and even in that case, as little as possible, but more than otherwise). People like to talk about themselves. Good conversationalists mostly listen and interject with anecdotes of their own that are relevant and the other person can relate to.

How to approach FAMOUS GUY: just do it. Wait for your chance and then "Hello. I'm x. Big fan. ..." Most FAMOUS GUYs are used to being approached and know how to deal with unwanted attention. Just be polite.

How to ask your friend for an introduction: I assume you mean "how to ask someone you don't know too well for an introduction" -- if it were your friend, just ask bluntly. If it is not your friend, ask bluntly, but provide a little bit more context. Why do you want said introduction, what's the goal, etc.

The best advice: just be yourself. You look approachable when you are comfortable.

Another piece of advice: don't look busy/purposeful. When you are by yourself, just stand in one place, smile at everyone, and wait until you see people that are by themselves. Introduce yourself simply.

Edit: whoaz, I wrote a lot more than I thought I would -- I should disclose that while I think all of the above are good tips, I suck at many of them myself.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you are worrying about it too much. Just be yourself.

If you are doing interesting things, then other people will want to talk with you. If you aren't, they won't. You can be personable and likable, and they might talk with you, and maybe you'll get an in somewhere, but if you aren't aiming for anything in particular, what difference will it make?

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't had a chance to go to any academic conferences yet, but I was involved in a discussion regarding networking at conferences with one of my professors [1] earlier this year. Some of his suggestions were,

\- don't sit with people you already know. Make a point of sitting with people you don't know for seminars, workshops, meals etc.

\- same for queues. If you're with friends, queue up separately for a chance to talk to new people.

\- only fill your cup a little at those meet and greet events with food and drinks. This way, if you get stuck in a conversation that's not going anywhere, you've always got an excuse to leave - to re-fill your cup.

I realise these don't really address the questions the OP asked, but I thought I'd add them. Hopefully someone else will have some thoughts, because I'm interested too.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> _\- how to get in and out of a conversation circle_

What I usually do is approaching a 3-people circle. They usually welcome you. If it's a 2-people "circle" then it might be a somewhat private conversation. And if there are 4 people or more then it's starting to be crowded.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here are a few pointers:

1\. Find a way to help everyone. Tell them, "hey, give me your e-mail address and I'll e-mail you x" or "Hey, e-mail me and I'll send that website/book/pdf I was talking about." Don't even talk about your projects. When you send the e-mail put something about it in the signature. They'll check it out. Follow up 3 weeks later.

2.Why do you want to talk to the famous guy? Is it because if he just tweets or blogs or knows about your app you're going to be big? You won't be big because he knows about it, but you'll probably be big if 20 up and coming people know about it. Hit them up, and you actually stand a chance.

3.Think about your personal brand (I struggle with this!) before you get there. Are you the newbie with something to prove, the expert, the rags to riches b2b story. All your stories, interactions have to match this personal brand. It should be an extension of your online presence (HN comments, blog, twitter, etc)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here are a couple of things that I've learned specific to your questions. They're sure no book, but I don't think that a practical guide exists. Being good at conferences is as individual as writing code - it's an extension of yourself.

\- how to get in and out of a conversation circle

If people are heavily engaged, this is very difficult and you can easily step on the toes of the folks engaged in conversation. Generally, as long as the conversation doesn't "feel" private, stand near the circle and nod a lot. Then, when you have something truly intelligent to add, offer that up. Instantly, you will then be part of the conversation. If you don't have an intelligent part to add, don't. Use this opportunity to break into another group by saying "Bill over there was just talking about tktkt, what do you think of that?"

\- event invitations: when is it ok to go and not go

Private events are not ok. Don't show up at the bar or otherwise crash it. Get on the list and do it the right way. At some large, stupidly exclusive events such as Ted, it's ok to show up in the hotel bar and mingle with the folks who paid to be there.

\- what's the appropriate amount to talk about yourself and your idea

I use personal information to engage others to talk about themselves. I don't directly talk about myself. A natural part of conversation is to engage people personally in a back-and-forth manner. However, if someone talks about their office in San Francisco, exchange a fact about yourself that involves the area. Use tidbits of information about yourself to engage, not fill conversation. When asked, answer every single personal question honestly and deeply. This goes a long way to developing a relationship. It is however handy to have a few interesting, entertaining stories about yourself. This makes for great dinner conversation where back-and-forth often turns into somewhat of a round-robin of stories.

\- how to identify this conversation is going nowhere

I never assume that a conversation isn't going anywhere. One of my biggest pet peeves at conferences are folks who are only there to talk to the heavy hitters. I get wanting to maximize your time, but understand that no single group of people or individual is as valuable as the collection of people attending a conference. There are usually very large brain trusts at events and if you can get a feel for the entire crowd and even have a set of questions answered by a variety of people, this is the best case scenario. Remember that conversations have a natural arc. If you feel stuck in a conversation, you need to learn how to naturally arc the conversation earlier so that you can gracefully move without being noticed.

\- how to approach FAMOUS GUY

Remember that you likely won't actually have a discussion with famous people at events. Famous folks (no matter if they're on the bill or not) talk to a lot of people at events and the chance of you gaining any insight or that they will even remember you after you walk away is negligible. My best advice is that if you have some business with someone famous to walk up to him or her after he or she is done presenting, when you notice that they have a quite moment or if all else fails after they come out of the bathroom (never while in the bathroom). Quietly but confidently say something like "Hi Jimmy, my name is John, I know this isn't a great place to talk, but I've come here just to introduce myself in the hope that we can talk again. Here's my card with a note on the back about what I want to talk about. Could you give me a call when you have time or could I call you?"

\- how to appropriately ask your friend to introduce you to his friend, FAMOUS GUY

I wouldn't sweat famous people too much. Sure, they look cool and have cool people around them, but for the most part, they're just people with more money then you. The real question that you should be sweating over is, what are you going to do so that people want to be introduced to you? It doesn't matter if your friend knows a music legend or is dating a model, people are people. If you hang around the right people enough, you'll get to know famous people without trying. Specifically at conferences, I'd think carefully about how much value waiting in line (and there is always a line) to talk to someone famous is. Personally, I'd rather talk to everyone in that line and everyone else at the event and then, if need be, talk to the famous person outside of the busy event to connect some dots.

<comment><USER12> One thing to add: I learned at Startup School that if you really want to talk to FAMOUS GUY at a conference, do it _before_ he speaks.

At Startup School, every presenter was swamped with people after his talk, even the ones who really weren't that famous. But all of the presenters, even Ron Conway, had few enough people trying to talk to them before the spoke that they were quite approachable.

It also shows them that you knew who they were before the conference, which probably gives them a slightly better impression of you.

<comment><USER13> _One thing to add: I learned at Startup School that if you really want to talk to FAMOUS GUY at a conference, do it before he speaks._

Never been to Startup School, but, I've found this to be the case at pretty much every conference I've been to.

I usually just go "Hey, nice presentation," maybe adding something like "I really liked the bit about $foo," and then disappear from the group. There's usually a chance to catch up everyone later on - either after other people have presented and they're not as busy or over drinks later on in the evening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had the same curiosity when I started graduate studies. This book helped a lot, it goes through this and many other academic/technical issues, giving a good insight on the "non-spoken" rules of the game and how scientists actually think. It was some kind of an underground classic at the time I went through it (earlier edition) and a very light and entertaining read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Games-Scientists-Play- Sinderma...](http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Games-Scientists-Play- Sindermann/dp/0738204250/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Some conference tips from Colette Ballou (from BALLOU PR <http://BallouPr.com> ): [http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=Conference+tips...](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=Conference+tips%3A&phrase=&ors=&nots=&tag=&lang=all&from=coletteballou&to=&ref=&near=&within=15&units=mi&since=&until=&rpp=15)

</comment><comment><USER16> One approach I've found useful when trying to meet any of the speakers at a conference (which I assume includes the FAMOUS GUY you refer to): find the speaker in some other setting at the conference, such as when everyone picks up a boxed lunch and sits at random tables, or people are standing around outside the conference room. At that point, the speaker is just another person hanging out (unless the person is REALLY FAMOUS, and getting mobbed all the time). I once met the Fed CTO at a Starbucks just outside the conf center.

Right after a speech is the WORST time to try to strike up a conversation with a speaker, as some of the other commenters have pointed out - at that point, they're usually surrounded by a group of people handing them business cards and talking at them; yet that's when most people try to meet them.

Getting a friend to introduce you to someone he or she knows is usually the best way; most people will be happy to perform an introduction if you just ask. In the worst case, they can just tell you that they're not comfortable doing it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hi,

there is some advice out there for (successfully) attending academic conferences:

\- [http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mernst/advice/conference-...](http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mernst/advice/conference- attendance.html) (Michael Ernst's homepage has other excellent information, too)

\- [http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.community.html#confe...](http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.community.html#conferences)

All in all, I think this complements some of the already mentioned comments. However, some advice in here is clearly geared towards non-acacdemic venues (for example, I never saw anyone at an academic venue speaking about business ventures and/or monetary issues--aside of ill-fated research policies.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there a specific conference you are going to?

</comment><comment><USER19> Having been to several conferences my only advice would be do everything with confidence and a big smile.

As an undergraduate I approached many famous people in my field with nothing more than a smile and a hand out, they all understand where you are having been there themselves at some point.

Usually they will ask you what you're doing and show some kind of interest in your work or ideas.</comment>


Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare - <AUTHOR> http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015 <comment><AUTHOR> A 4 minute video abstract for those in a hurry: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmBVbqEPeC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmBVbqEPeC0)</comment>


Second Life-maker calls it quits on their VR follow-up – TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/24/second-life-maker-calls-it-quits-on-their-vr-follow-up-sansar/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because the timing seems unfortunate.

Given all that is happening (and is likely to continue happening) to restrict people's travel and participation in shared events, shouldn't social virtual reality platforms see increased adoption?</comment>


Why Google Dropped My Drake Review - <AUTHOR> http://therapup.net/2012/08/why-umg-took-down-my-drake-review/

<comment><USER2> The Hanlon's razor compatible explanation is that they just searched for 'drake take care' and reported the results.</comment>


Ask HN: What do startups do for internal tech support? - <AUTHOR>

I've been wondering this for a while.  It mostly interests me because tech support is what I've been doing for the past 5+ years; it's what I'm good at.
While there doesn't seem to be a shortage of desktop support / sys admin jobs for established companies in the San Francisco bay area, most startups seem to be hiring programmers (which makes sense).
So, what do startups do for internal tech support? Do they just do it themselves? Outsource / hire contractors?
I'd be interesting in hearing any insight, as I'm working on a 1-year (hopefully) plan to move to the San Francisco bay area and would love to work for a startup. <comment><USER2> Do it themselves. It's not exactly difficult to manage a few laptops and monitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> What happens when they grow beyond a few laptops and monitors?

<comment><USER3> It depends on your budget. If you have next to nothing, then you should also grow with the technical knowledge required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What kind of IT needs does a startup have? Usually whoever pays for or picks up or accepts delivery for the equipment ends up setting it up...

Email servers? Google Apps.

And the most important point - hackers are notorious for wanting control over their entire workstation. Admin rights for everything. I know I do.

Most startups have atleast one person who you can consider a hacker. They`ll do everything technical without a second thought - sometimes at the expense of their actual job...oh well

</comment><comment><USER5> At PBworks, when we had about 10 people, we added the position "Head of Operations & IT." 97% of that job is handling operations for our production cluster, keeping it up and running 24/7. The other 3% is typical internal office IT stuff -- networking, email, security, "the printer doesn't work," etc. The tasks aren't all that related, but at a small company, everyone wears many hats.

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out Freshbooks (<http://www.freshbooks.com>)

They have their support team in-house, and they get a lot of freedom to help their customers out and are generally the people who drive the culture you find within their offices.

Fantastic group of people, even better company because of them.

</comment><comment><USER7> The other comments are pretty much right on. Between the brainpower, google, tenacity it takes to be an early employee of a startup and everyones' personal networks, IT is going to be handled internally.

I'm sure during a big expansion stage, IT gets provisioned funds.</comment>


What Real-Time Gambling Data Reveals About Sports - <AUTHOR> http://www.gambletron2000.com/about

<comment><USER2> ESPN Magazine recently had a "conspiracy theories" issue, in which it explored (among other things) the long-held, popular theory that basketball is fixed. College basketball, in particular. IIRC, the preconditions for a fixed game tended to be:

\- Non-tournament, regular season play (b/c not as many bettors and media would be paying attention)

\- The favorite team is favored by 11 or more points

\- The favorite team is dominated by one or two very strong players

If one player controls his team's play, and he's favored by 11+ points, he has the incentive, the ability, and the margin to shave points without risking losing the game. With a smaller point spread, on the other hand, it's too risky. For reasons I can't recall, an 11-point spread was the magic number. It provided just enough cushion to cover shaving, without jeopardizing the nominal win.

When analysts looked at the history of games that met these criteria, they found consistently abnormal distributions of outcomes in favor of the winning team, but just south of the spread. They estimated that about 3-4% of games in the study sample are quite likely to have been fixed.

At any rate, it would be interesting to see bigger data sets plied for this sort of thing.

<comment> T-hawk An alternative explanation is simply that a lead of 11 points tends to dwindle because the good players relax at less than maximum effort while on the court when the win is in hand. That would be statistically indistinguishable from intentional point shaving. (In fact, it IS emergent point shaving, just without any sinister motive.) This also explains the postseason discrepancy, that players wouldn't let up in a tournament game.

The correct resolution would be for the pregame betting line to account for that tendency, taking into account the favorite's likelihood to coast during garbage time.

<comment><USER2> It's certainly plausible, but in theory, the point spread is supposed to account for that effect (among all other natural factors involved in play). As you suggest in your second paragraph.

Intellectually, of course, I tend to assume the Occam's Razor solution (i.e., natural variance and other effects over deliberate fixing) in most cases. I'm not one for conspiracy theories as a first line of thinking. And I think a bigger sample size is needed to begin with.

Another thing to keep in mind is that -- at least in theory -- players aren't supposed to be cognizant of a point spread when playing. If we wanted to detect _deliberate_ point shaving, we'd need to look at instances where the player behaved as if he was very aware of the spread and was actively trying to manage it. For example, he actively takes possession of the ball and runs out the clock, misses easy shots, passes into heavy coverage, and then reverses course to correct when/if he goes too far. Basically, the behavior of someone who's _trying hard in either direction_ , as opposed to someone who just tries hard to secure the win and then lets up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "On the other hand, all the leagues have significantly lower average hotness in the first half compared to the second half, so maybe it's not just the NBA that has a boring first half problem."

This seems to be a misconception. It stands to reason that the chart will grow jumpier as you near the end of the game. In options lingo, the implied volatility will be more stable the further you are from expiry (the end of the game). Theta decay and all that. The market is basically giving you an integrated forecast from each point in time until the final buzzer, and as that window shrinks you expect the odds to be jumping around more.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I'm not sure whether it's a misconception or not. What you say about applied volatility is true, but if your excitement is proportional to effect on the odds of the outcome then that is still what you're measuring. I have no idea whether that is actually the relationship, though (but hey, you could measure it!).

<comment><USER3> Heh, true. I guess what I was saying is that if you freeze a basketball score at 20-18 in the second quarter, and at that point the odds are 52-48 in favour of team leading by 2, and then neither team scores for the rest of the match, then the odds will asymptotically approach 100-0 as you approach the final buzzer. Even though no one is scoring. By the variance measure used here, the second half will appear more exciting, even though nobody scores. Reminiscent of football (soccer) perhaps. The fact that first halfs have less variance is just evidence that they are further from conclusion, not necessarily that they are less exciting, but then maybe the two are linked.

<comment><USER4> I'd really like to do that actual study - monitor people watching the games, see how heart rate and perspiration match up with odds-based measures of "excitement".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It strikes me as a shame that people can be addicted to gambling and we see it as a moral problem. For example, gambling data around elections seems highly likely to be more useful than opinion polls are. After all, this is simply another application of the ideas behind how we expect markets to function.

Gambling is one of the few ways you can incentivise someone to be honest with you about their opinion, and for that reason I think it's actually a mass of untapped potential.

<comment><USER6> I don't care if it makes people honest. If it's that easy to lose control and bet away your life savings, we shouldn't encourage it.

<comment><USER7> The same kind of arguments are used to argue against the Second Amendment: "I don't care if guns make people safer in their homes. If it's that easy to lose control and shoot your spouse, we shouldn't encourage it."

The fact that immoral men exist and occasionally do terrible things should not bias us against the vast majority of good men for whom such acts are unthinkable.

<comment><USER8> Comparing gambling to guns-in-USA is not a great example, because many other countries do not recognise the right of the people to guns.

<comment><USER7> Not every country loves freedom ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty interesting and fun data. The article talks a lot about what games are exciting and it basis this off of wild fluctuations in a team's chances of winning. This makes perfect sense, but there is more to it than that.

If there are two teams playing each other and the score is 43-36 with plenty of ups and downs along the way, is it an exciting game? Sure sounds like it. What if those two teams are the Browns and Dolphins playing in a meaningless game in December with two backup quarterbacks? Is that game still exciting?

These things are hard to quantify because the algorithm needs to put things into context that it may not be able to understand.

<comment><USER10> What data exactly is this site using?

<comment><USER11> at a guess - Betfair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Link to the site being explained: [http://www.gambletron2000.com/](http://www.gambletron2000.com/)

and the non-RapGenius about URL: [http://www.gambletron2000.com/about](http://www.gambletron2000.com/about)

This is unbelievably cool. I am blown away.

</comment><comment><USER13> Blatant blogspam? It's a single paragraph that links to [http://news.rapgenius.com/Atodd-what-real-time-gambling- data...](http://news.rapgenius.com/Atodd-what-real-time-gambling-data-reveals- about-sports-introducing-gambletron-2000-annotated)

Edit: I guess it's cross-promotion, which is fine just not what I expected.

<comment><USER14> There's a script on the page that embeds the Rap Genius article with annotations (a new feature they just debuted), which I'm assuming you're not seeing because you have javascript turned off. The content is on Rap Genius so anyone can add annotations to it. Notice that the linked website (gambletron2000.com) is also a side project of the Rap Genius Engineering team.

All of that aside, I'm not really a hundred percent sure you can call a website's "about" page blogspam...

<comment><USER13> Ah, I feel silly now! After the first paragraph (which is all that loads), there's a friendly link that says "Read this on NewsGenius." So I really thought that's all there was to the page. I'm using RequestPolicy so it blocked the content from the rapgenius domain from loading, but usually I'm better at noticing when that happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How do these betting sites handle real-time events? I believe there was a case recently where a man at the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne was arrested for transmitting point information outside the stadium before it could be broadcast on television (there is always broadcast delay), which obviously could give you a big advantage. I think European football ones go into a vol auction (pause betting) when a goal is scored? But you could have a guy sitting in the stadium, wired up with a buzzer to press when a striker goes one on one with a goalie, or a penalty is awarded, and then just go all-in on the market? The whole thing is a can of worms.

<comment><USER15> They handle real-time events exactly as your latter example stated: an external (licensed) company provides live data, and orders that were placed during a dangerous situation (e.g. one-on-one) are subsequently voided if a goal is scored.

<comment><USER3> Why did you edit away your claim that it is to the benefit of the customers? Being a market-maker and being able to void any trades that occur during volatile periods sounds like a dream to me. No need to worry about adverse selection eh? Just printing cash with fat bid-ask spreads and if anyone dares to get the jump on you, they get voided. I wish I could do that in the real markets.

<comment><USER16> I can't speak for all companies, but some companies I worked with with honour those bets (places just a second before the goal). They try to find a pattern and ban the users after they find them doing this (and it is getting harder since live feeds are faster and faster) but I never saw a company voiding a bet because of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great stuff. Very entertaining read.

This said, I am a bit skeptical about the asessment of "game hotness". Of course games that are tied or close near the end exhibit significant agitation at that stage (and "boring 1st halves") from a betting standpoint.

This might sound obvious, but great games are not just about the outcome. Think of something like soccer, where few points are scored in a given match. It would be very interesting to see what the data looks like for those, as there are fewer data points.

<comment><USER18> He computes "hotness" for soccer (football, to me) matches too: [http://www.gambletron2000.com/?sport=epl%2Cchampions](http://www.gambletron2000.com/?sport=epl%2Cchampions)

As you'd imagine, each goal brings about a massive spike in implied win/loss probability.

<comment><USER19> The hotness factor is only based on the outcome of the ongoing game. It should also consider the live impact on classification/awards.

Have a look at yesterday's CL game between Paris & Leverkusen : [http://www.gambletron2000.com/events/2276/paris-st-g-v- lever...](http://www.gambletron2000.com/events/2276/paris-st-g-v-leverkusen), which was the second of a 2-legs opposition, Paris having won 4-0 on the first one. Which means 99.9% chances of qualifying It has a _mildly hot_ 762 score, where it should have been between 0 and 10. As the game was almost meaningless, the fact that Leverkusen scored first before finally losing the game didn't bring any excitation.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, but that score is based on _in match_ betting, rather than "to qualify", no? So what I find most interesting there is that the odds continued to rise for PSG after the goal, even though people (like me) put money on when they went behind -better odds, and cheers for the £20. The crucial thing that's at issue with this system is that it's not just the weight of money that's at work here, but also the bookies adjusting the odds to ensure their book is still green, and to encourage/discourAge people putting further weight on particular outcomes.

Tl;dr - the method is really interesting, but imperfect because it's not a pure market, I think. Bet fair odds or similar would be interesting, but their API is horrendous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _" Maybe there's a slight tendency for teams in the 10-20% range to win at a slightly higher rate than expected (and consequently teams in the 80-90% range to lose more than expected), but the difference is pretty small, and given the number of observations and parameters, it would not be surprising if this deviation occurred completely randomly."_

This is a well known phenomena [1] that manifests in almost all prediction markets. People tend to overestimate the likelihood of likely events, and underestimate the chance of a rare events. If you're patient (and, importantly, trading fees are low enough) then it is usually possible to profit from these "sure thing" positions over many event

1\. Just one of the many links you find in google on the subject: [http://journal.sjdm.org/9729b/jdm9729b.html](http://journal.sjdm.org/9729b/jdm9729b.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> It will be interesting to compare the data and graphs presented here to historic win probability charts provided by Advanced NFL Stats[1] for the NFL and Fangraphs[2] for MLB. See how Vegas stacks up against models based on historical data.

[1] [http://live.advancednflstats.com/](http://live.advancednflstats.com/) [2] [http://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2013-10-30&team=Red%...](http://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2013-10-30&team=Red%20Sox&dh=0&season=2013)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the Recap functionality might be understated. If they can add more color data about event times, actual scores, player names, then I think they could be on to something in automating recaps of games.

<comment><USER12> Shameless plug for my very work-in-progress (read: lots of broken links) side- project: [http://recappd.com](http://recappd.com)

Any tips for taking the information there and turning it into a natural language sounding recap would be appreciated.

Also, one of the leaders in this field: [http://automatedinsights.com/](http://automatedinsights.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretty cool data, but doesn't reveal anything too insightful into peoples' gambling behaviors regarding sports. People are prone to a game's intangible momentum, who knew?

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder where they get their data, I feel that the community could come up with a better ranking algorithm than the square distance formula that they give

<comment><USER26> I'm wondering the same. They mention TradeSports, which is Intrade's prediction market for sports, but it hasn't launched yet afaik (I've been on their e-mail list since before Intrade shut down in March 2013, and I haven't received anything).

EDIT: nm. the reference to TradeSports was to 2007 (before it shut down in 2008). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TradeSports](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TradeSports)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how much better the prediction market does compared to a predictive model based on the score and time remaining. Given data on the games, it would be pretty easy to develop a model on the P(winning|scores,time_remaining). Would that do as well as humans in aggregate? Obviously it doesn't take into account momentum, how well the teams are playing, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> Another thought: Some indication of a "trade volume" equivalent might be useful as well (and probably a good input for a "hotness" score, as more popular games will probably get more bets). I don't know if that information is available though.

<comment><USER11> it definitely is available with betfair - it allows you to filter a huge amount of garbage data because people are always setting 1.01 / 1000.0 positions, and if you don't exclude them they skew actual implied probabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how this applies to other markets and domains. As well cod it be used to find irregularities and cheating?</comment>


Ask HN: Why/how do you choose to work on side projects? - <AUTHOR> I guess this is just my poor perspective on the whole thing, but I keep seeing people working on not-your-typical-stuff kind of projects such as compilers, computer graphics, low-level stuff in general, and I keep wandering whether those people do this as part of their line of work or just have enough time after work to learn about those fascinating things on their own, and what the reason is behind it.<p>This is also sort of dilemma for me because I can't find the best strategy as to how to approach self-learning. On one hand, I want to improve in my job, so I can do it better, but on the other hand I want to have a hobby or work on other skills to move on to another job. What is your reason for working on side projects and how do you select what to improve on next? <comment><USER2> This is oversimplifying a little bit, but I'd say I use a sort of informal weighting scheme like:

motivation_for_proj = w_1⋅X + w_2⋅Y + w_3⋅Z

where

X := The extent to which I find the project interesting in and of itself

Y := The potential to profit directly from building the project

Z := The extent to which I will learn useful/interesting things from building the project

The thing is, I can't tell you the exact values of weights w_1, w_2 and w_3, because I don't actually know myself. It's really just sort of an informal, gut-feeling thing, but I can say that these three factors are all involved. And those aren't necessarily the only factors. And the weights aren't necessarily constant.

Also, to borrow from @Findeton's answer... I would also say that "the extent to which I need $THING to exist" is another factor. So it may be more like:

motivation_for_proj = w_1⋅X + w_2⋅Y + w_3⋅Z + w_4⋅Q

where Q := "the extent to which I need $THING to exist"

But again, I don't actually sit down and do any math on this stuff for the most part. The only time I do would be if I'm working on something that I think has real commercial potential and I might sit down, do some basic market research, try to come up with a TAM number, put together some strawman pricing numbers, etc., and try to figure out just how much potential the thing has.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a few reasons:

1) It's what I'm used to. I don't remember a time since I got my first computer that I didn't have some hobby project on the side. If I didn't have a side project I don't know what I'd do with myself...I mean I have other hobbies, too, but my side project _is_ my main hobby.

2) To learn. I'm self-taught and the aforementioned always-having-a-side- project point is how I learned and keep learning. I've gotten (I believe) very good at retaining information I gain through tinkering and working on my projects, and I've become proficient at picking challenges that are the perfect difficulty for me to absorb more new knowledge in areas that are relevant both to my personal interests and (sometimes indirectly) my job. Sometimes if I am not understanding a certain concept or I read something I want to grasp better, making a small project out of it or incorporating it into an existing project and trying to actually implement something helps me digest and internalise the concept.

3) It's fun. I originally started learning to code in order to be able to bring the ideas in my head to life. Those ideas haven't slowed down, so neither has my desire to bring them to life through my side projects. It is fun to work on them and I feel a sense of accomplishment in being able to turn what's in my mind into something real.

4) It helps me de-stress. My day job can be stressful and demanding, with long hours around deliveries and cert deadlines. Even though my side projects and my day job both involve programming, working on my own thing helps me de- stress after a hard day of work. Having my own project on the side helps me avoid feeling like my entire life revolves around my job. I have something fulfilling that is just entirely mine.

This could be a longer list as there are other reasons, but I think the four I outlined above are the main reason I choose to work on side projects. Habit, learning, fun, and stress management.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always worked on side projects, even before being exposed computers at school. So for me, it's been and still is a hobby, which fortunately I can make a living doing.

Given that, I choose pretty much the same way. I'm always looking for new languages, frameworks, apps and try to come up with some app ideas myself. The best ones are the small ones you wish existed and would/do use yourself.

The only general pattern is novelty. I typically use things that I don't get to use at work. I learn different things that may not immediately improve my work but eventually the cross-training as much higher value bringing in wider views that might otherwise be missed in discussions.

One time, I tried to make an app idea using a new language, back-end framework, and front-end framework. I realized that I might not even make much of a dent, so switched to using what I use at work (Spring Boot I think it was) to save time so I could get to the visible parts of the app. That was a first-hand internalization of the 'faster beats better' startup mentality.

The opposite also happens. I ran a Chef server and recipes to create a master- master MySQL DB to host a Ghost blog on a third machine. I haven't blogged much afterward but obviously I enjoyed the process and learned a lot.

Another time, I set out to make an app and get it in the app store. I chose Android since I already know Java and had watched an online course that described the lifecycles and layouts/views. It was surprisingly straight forward googling and pasting.

As you can tell, I do a lot of back-end/devops, so I did take the time to try out Vue just to have a modern SPA default. I picked it because it looked simpler to me than React. I'm currently looking for something in between Java and Go, imagine Elixir with static types, fast compiles, and small/fast. I'm hoping Crystal might be it but can't decide between Lucky or Amber frameworks to try out.

Lastly, side projects keep me sane at work. I can try anything on a whim without the (valid) constraints of choices at work. It's interesting by definition so balances out periods of powering through work I already know but needs to get done.

One last tip if you don't feel motivated. Rather than doing the thing, just get started setting up an environment to do the thing. e.g. install software, pick a name, make a repo. (I usually lose a bit of time picking, registering, later abandoning a domain name, but it's fun = worth it). More often than not, it seems so ready to use that it's irresistible.

</comment><comment><USER5> I try to work on something I "need" to exist.

</comment><comment><USER6> What fascinates you? Start there.</comment>


Foursquare Adds Quick Glide Feature On iOS - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/06/the-checkin-is-dead-long-live-the-checkin-as-foursquare-adds-quick-glide-feature-on-ios/

<comment><USER3> I still cry "walled gardens" over these stories.

I don't want to actively tell someone where I am _because its important to their business model_

In the end I am ok with my phone tracking my every move, and I am ok sharing almost all that data openly - what I would like is a app that records everything, sends it to a "washing service" where I can specify and remove data I don't want to share (photos of my children in the bath, my third trip to the coffeehouse in one day) and then publish it for anonymised social benefits - oh and if four square wants it they pay me. And when my kids get an iPhone - scrub everything till they are old enough to choose their own settings.

So I can see a personal data curation cottage industry that keeps what I share, comment on, where I go on _my agents servers_ and releases it to others for a fee.

Two things I see as necessary :

legal frameworks that make my data mine (a bit like bbc must get my permission for my likeness to appear on tv), even if it is collected by a third party. Then I get the right to sell it on or not, pace socially beneficial uses

Honesty will be a default. I am old enough that the little white lie is common and undetectable. But it gets harder to lie about "I am in heavy traffic" while still at the desk /pub / bed. Our kids will make use of this data pollution - but it will make a lot of actions much more honest - <USER2> because the lie is so easily detectable.</comment>


Show HN: e-Geaux (beta) - Startup + Theater + Mobile Tech - <AUTHOR> http://pepysinc.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some compadres and I have put together a unique piece of theater that will be debuting at the Capital Fringe Festival (DC) on Thursday.

The premise? We're a mobile startup demonstrating e-Geaux, our breakthrough artificial intelligence app that uses enterprise cloud technology and social media data to optimize your life. Audience members attending the show opt into our custom-developed mobile app and loan us their real, live Facebook data. We use that data in a series of improv skits ("feature demos") to create the show from scratch every night.

It's terrifying to implement, but we hope it's amazing to watch.

It's a pretty groundbreaking show: one of the first pieces of theater to leverage mobile tech and definitely the first that incorporates the audience's personal Facebook data for a unique experience every night.

We've marketed the show to the tech/entrepreneurship community as much as we have to the performing arts world, and we've the show and website have been laced with jokes that appeal to both crowds. If you're in the DC area, we'd love to have you.</comment>


500 euro note - why criminals love it so - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8678979.stm

<comment><USER2> I worry that it won't be long before governments criminalize cash. They want to track everything (for a multitude of reasons ranging from taxes to criminal activity), and cash inhibits this.

<comment><USER3> Even if cash stays with us for another 100 years -- inflation will make it more and more inefficient over time.

Eg.: around 1970 when $100 became the largest bill, it was actually worth about $500 in today's value. So, it lost 4/5 of it's real value.

If you look another 40 years out, $100 will become the new $20, the government will probably not have introduced any new bills, and the amount of transactions you can actually transact in cash will be even smaller.

<comment><USER4> I can't remember the last time I bought something worth more than $100 by paying cash. If every bill with a denomination over $20 went away, or if inflation reduced the largest circulating bill to a value of twenty 2010-dollars, I wouldn't notice.

Not to say that the government _should_ eliminate the higher-denomination bills—just using myself as a data point to suggest there's not much consumer demand for them.

<comment><USER5> I've bought my last four computers in cash, not in the US, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love how forcing them to replace 2 bags of 500 with 5 bags of 200 is supposed to impact organized crime.

<comment><USER7> _Ian Cruxton of Soca says that's entirely what investigators expect the gangs to do - but there are reasons to be optimistic because they're trying to disrupt the "business practices" of organised crime and force gangs to make mistakes._

It makes life marginally harder for 'em. Instead of walking around with a briefcase you're suddenly walking around with a suitcase. Instead of having to get one guy you really trust to carry the money you have to get two guys you really trust to carry the money. It's twice as hard to hide your huge cash wad when you travel through customs. Mostly though, the main goal is probably just to annoy them.

<comment><USER6> _The main goal is probably just to annoy them._

The problem is it annoys everyone that deals with significant quantities of cash. I keep cash on hand just in case a bank glitch messes with my checking account. Forcing me to keep larger bills reduces my available hiding places and makes it easier to rob me.

PS: I suggest most people without significant debt keep 2 weeks living expences (food/fuel/etc) in cash just in case.

<comment><USER8> What about gold? or is too difficult to exchange? especially when the zombie apocalypse comes :P

<comment><USER9> Silver is probably better for day to day zombie apocalypse transactions.

<comment><USER10> Food, water, ammo, medical supplies: not only what you need to survive; also the only things worth trading.

...maybe booze and sex. Supposing anyone lasts long enough to let their guard down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So if the primary use of the €500 note in the UK is for money laundering... doesn't that make it easier for law enforcement, too? If they track down the movements of the notes, they should have few false positives.

</comment><comment><USER12> This exactly parallels Canada'a elimination of the $1000 note, except that the largest denomination now in circulation is the $100 note. Adding an order of magnitude to the weight, bulk and inconvenience of cash transactions (along with requiring paperwork concerning bank transactions involving $10000 or more in cash) may not have done much about large-scale organised crime, but it certainly did make it more difficult to skirt the goods and services tax.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see why they can't continue to do what they're doing and track big notes. If anything, reducing the size of the note would make it blend in with notes used for legitimate purposes.

Tracking 500 euro notes and finding criminal activity is a means of solving problems. Inconveniencing criminals isn't.

</comment><comment><USER14> There has got to be some moral boundary on taxes. Most government are perfectly willing to cross that boundary. So I actually think that cheating the government of tax revenue can be okay in certain circumstances, but the government, if they could, would do away will all cash, and make all transaction electronic and auditable. Just look at that new regulation in the U.S. where you technically now have to issue a 1099 to anyone who you do more than 600 worth of business with... gas stations, retailers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember another high profile case in which Japanese criminals smuggled billions of dollars worth of T-bills. If high denominations of cash are crippled enough, more organized criminals may go that route.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a62_...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a62_boqkurbI)

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like organized crime simply wants the largest note possible to reduce the raw size of their cash. Not sure how that translates to the fact that "Criminals love the 500 euro note."

</comment><comment><USER16> Will cash be illegal in 10 years?

<comment><USER16> It's always a pleasure to have a friendly debate.</comment></comment>


How to get your startup on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/1/13/how-to-get-your-startup-on-hacker-news <comment><USER2> The most critical words are _genuinely_ and _disingenuous_. You may be able to put something over on us every once in a while, but for the most part, this is a crowd that doesn't respond too well to posers and B.S. Be sincere and we'll tell you the truth. Be phony and we'll probably send you packing. Nice post, swombat.

</comment><comment><USER3> You should add one other point: don't do this if you're not already an established HN user. "Review my startup" posts from new accounts are usually killed. Otherwise anyone could use this format to promote any site, a fact spammers started to notice a few months ago.

<comment><USER4> What would be your definition of established? 3 months on HN? 6 months on HN? 1 year on HN? karma > 200? karma > 500? Some combination of the above? Something else?

Not trying to be facetious, I'm genuinely interested to know what your criteria for this would be.

Edit: I see that this whole issue received quite a bit of discussion a few months ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861577>

<comment><USER5> I don't think you can put hard definitions on it. HN is more like a village where people come and go, and some people of a certain mindset decide to settle. Anyone is welcome to move in, but acceptance into the village is based on your interactions. Being a nice neighbor, as it were. Lots of communication in the form of quality submissions and comments are principle. Karma score isn't as important.

<comment><USER4> Sure, and I should have said that I would only have expected a "ballpark range" answer. I think something like this is always going to have some fuzziness to it, especially if pg (or whoever else has power to kill posts) is making a kill/no-kill decision on a one off basis, as opposed to having it done by an algorithm.

Just curious to get a rough feel, that's all. I mean, take myself... my account is 1013 days old, and my karma is > 500, but subjectively, I still think of myself as being a newb around here. I'd probably post a "Rate my Startup" thread if I had something ready to go, but I'd probably say that I feel just barely qualified to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Forgot one. Once you've been on a while, you can write the meta-post: "How to get your startup on Hacker News" or "Best times to post an article on HN"

Nice post, swombat.

The only thing I would add is that I have noticed that we all like charts, graphs, and details about stuff. So if you post about your income and traffic for a startup, be sure to include a chart and a bunch of nice, juicy details. People seem adverse to anything that's high-level or conceptual, and more friendly towards concrete and numerical information. Sometimes I think even if the details are tangential and not a directly necessary part of your thesis, folks like seeing them. So if you're doing a post on "When to log into HN to read the best comments" be sure to have some kind of graph. Don't just say 14:00GMT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep your eyes peeled! Next month, "How to write an article about posting something to Hacker News"... ;-)

I just kept getting asked this in networking events, so I thought I'd rather have the answer written up. Glad everyone is finding it useful!

<comment><USER6> I'm looking forward to it! The more metas you can throw in there and still keep it coherent? Love it. I might do something like "How to comment on articles about how to write articles on posting on Hacker News"

But we must have a chart. Maybe two charts, for a nice two-level effect. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is good advice and HN would be better off if more people followed it. Besides, "Review my startup" posts are my favorite type of post and if this brings out more then I'm all for it.

<comment><USER8> I agree and click on a lot of them just to give feedback and see what others are working on.

In my Hacker Newsletter I collect and share a lot of them each week, but the odd thing is they tend to have very low click through rates - which I haven't been able to figure out why yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the article: _"..their feedback is valuable. It's often thorough, honest, qualified, and sometimes unpleasant."_

I think many people here will act upon "if you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing."

...which is a pity. Sometimes somebody posts a webapp with very crappy design or the 100th clone of a mediocre idea. Yet most people will tell him how great it is. This is _not_ helpful. Sometimes I wish people were a little bit more critical. Are they afraid about getting voted down? They shouldn't.

<comment><USER10> I doubt it's about downvotes. I think people want to be supportive, on the basis that making something mediocre is better than not making anything at all.

I think the number of comments and upvotes is a good enough indicator - as you said, people who think it's stupid or (more likely) just don't care won't post anything. When asking for feedback it helps to be able to read between the lines - true excitement will show through, indifference will show as mainly technical advice (make your message clearer, move that to the left, a link is broken, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great advice.

When I created <http://sleepyti.me>, the first place I posted it was here to HN for feedback. Using that feedback, I was able to make signficant improvements and bug fixes. Reddit's /r/web_design subreddit helped me out with the look of the page, and now my site--albeit not a startup--is earning almost enough money to pay my rent. It's not a $200M Heroku buyout, but it's not bad for a small, simple web app.

As others have said in this thread, the most important part is to genuinely want help, feedback and discussion. Don't post to HN to argue with participants, or to try to spam your link enough to get noticed. The value of the HN homepage isn't necessarily the traffic, but the feedback.

<comment><USER10> "Sleepyti.me is provided as a free service"

Curious about how it's earning money (unless you mean a different site)

<comment><USER12> Probably through the ads that are shown once you submit the form.

<comment><USER10> Ah, wasn't seeing any ads (disabled AdBlock, and I still don't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why do some people consider it "bad form" to include your link in the URL portion of the HN submission form? I've been wondering this for a while, since I am always annoyed when I have to cut-and-paste a URL.

<comment><USER14> Chrome at least has the right click "Go to URL" contextual option... I'm constantly annoyed when other web browsers don't offer this obvious feature.

<comment><USER15> There's always QuietURL for Firefox, which converts text to a link when you hover over it.

It's nice to have.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I certainly am aware of the technological solutions to this problem. Nevertheless, I am still baffled by the apparent stigma towards linking to your site in the URL field, which seems like the natural, obvious, and _right_ thing to do.

I would welcome an explanation!

<comment><USER14> Here's my (noobish) understanding: On Hacker News when you submit you have the option to include a clickable URL -or- text. The preferred thing to do is to include some text rather than the URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good post, but this "not allergic to commercial offerings like many other popular forums on the web" is changing rapidly. I'm seeing a large influx of people who don't seem to realize that profit is not a bad word.

</comment><comment><USER17> In the article: "Include the link in the body of your post. It won't be hotlinked, but don't worry about that. Do not include it as the "URL" part of your post, some people consider that bad form."

Is that true? It seems that there are as many posts utilizing the URL field as without and I've never seen any chastising about the practice. Posts w/o a URL move off the site faster (right?) so there would be a definitely advantage to linking to the new site in question.

<comment><USER18> Moves off the site faster at the expense of not having an easy path back to the comments page. And unless you do a quick "description in the first post" I like the extra HN-tailored info that we get in the description, rather than a blind link to something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> @swombat - really appreciate you addressing this subject. been wondering for a little while.

what's the consensus: post it outside of the standard work day? maybe ~6p EST? when EST people are basically done with work & PST are winding down?

when is HN most active in terms of content shared & comments? when is Ask HN most likely to get a look & response?

<comment><USER20> If the post is good (which is to say if your product is interesting), it will stay on the front page long enough that it doesn't matter when you post. One caveat, avoid the weekend since most popular news sites like HN slow down during that time period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Dear swombat, nice of you to post this now rather than three months earlier and letting me learn it on my own. :P

</comment><comment><USER22> Write a blog post on some link-bait subject, submit it, talk about the subject for a few paragraphs, then interject a "the company I started, XYZ, solves this problem in a novel way...." about halfway through and spend the rest of your time talking about your company?

</comment><comment><USER23> The one thing I really got out of this article is that HN has a IRC channel, that's awesome.

<http://webchat.freenode.net/> join #startups

I'm totally idling there from now on.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice post and update from Paul. Ill have to bookmark this for future reference.

</comment><comment><USER25> thank you.

I just realized I did it wrong earlier this morning with this post. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2099538>

Do you think it would be ok to resubmit in a proper way next week ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect you'll get a fair few more comments via this link, since it's at the top of HN. If I were you I'd wait a bit and improve the site some more before resubmitting, assuming you get at least 5 or so extra comments in the next few hours...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> And most importantly "Why get your startup on Hacker News"?

I don't know of any major (or medium) startup whose success had anything to do with appearing on Hacker News.</comment>


Coursera Model Thinking Course Now Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.modelthinking-class.org/

<comment><USER2> Only the preview videos are live. The course is subject to the same delays as the other Stanford courses.

<comment><USER3> You can sign up for a coursera account. Many more video lectures are up. Discussion forum is also open

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> saas-class.org is up as well.</comment>


Ask HN: HN meets Pay It Forward... - <AUTHOR> Here's the deal: there's been a whole bunch of posts lately from people offering their time pro bono. So, if there's sufficient interest in having a HN-cum-forum style site created specifically for this, I'll do it as a weekend project and launch it in a couple of weeks.
Therefore the question is, if this existed, would you use it, and what areas would you like to see? At the moment, I'm planning: Programming (with various areas for various languages), Design (with sections on usability, front-end design and so on), Marketing (SEO, PPC, CRO etc) and Content (creation, inspiration and the like).
Thoughts/suggestions welcome. <comment><USER2> If you change the format it's a real possibility that it will draw non-HN members into the mix and overload the volunteers. You could make karma requirements but perhaps what we have now works best.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about requiring a certain amount of karma, possibly also with having to have been registered a certain length of time?

As a secondary, I think it'd need to have an "hours I'm available for" field as well, to manage expectations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We have a jobs section on the top of the page, why not an offer HN section?</comment>


Plastic Injection Molding (2015) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMjtmsr3CqA <comment><USER3> I operated a line like this for seven years before becoming a programmer, except that we extruded continuous paper-thin sheets of plastic for people to print signs on. That was a more skilled process, I guess; injection molders I talked to often had one person monitoring multiple machines.

My plant was in Wisconsin but wasn't heated during the winter when the lines were running. Melting plastic takes so much heat that we were the main electricity consumer in my town.

Because there isn't a check ring in place while the screw is turning, plastic is always trying to slip backwards over the flights of the screw. You have not just heater bands around the barrel, but also cooling water, which makes the plastic less melty so the flights can push it forward without slipping back. The more recycled material you use, generally the cooler you need the barrel because those little flakes melt faster and slip more than virgin pellets.

The many challenges of fighting reality to get your plastic to come out correctly mixed and without bubbles build a lot more character than similar paying jobs like driving a forklift. Facing the same problems repeatedly helped me develop the quick-access note system I still use for debugging and syntax. I wouldn't be half the programmer I am without the life skills from manufacturing. The only problem with being a line operator was that most permanently solvable problems have been engineered out already, so being clever and organized about solving things didn't produce nearly as much value for the plastic factory as it does now that I'm a programmer.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to hear more about your quick-access note system.

<comment><USER3> In the plastic factory, which had zero wireless access because it had metal walls and was basically a Faraday cage, I kept paper notes in my shirt pocket. At first I just wrote down stuff as I learned it: "when the plastic pellets won't feed do this. Here are tips for feeding the trim grinder. Here's what this alarm code means."

The amount of helpful stuff grew fast and I had to keep erasing my notebook and reorganizing it to find things. Settings were organized by machine number, defects by symptom, job changes as a checklist, alarm responses as a flowchart. (You only had 3 minutes before your line would shut down when the 'out-of-pellets' alarm went off, so you had to consider only solutions that might work).

The machine produces a half-ton of plastic every hour so my lookups had to get more and more efficient. Every second you spend looking stuff up means more plastic you have to pick up and throw in the scrap box. I switched to a Word document I could print out and bring with me. I used Word's four levels of headings and the "Generate Table of Contents" feature so I could find the exact page with my issue in seconds. I kept the most important six pages folded up in my front pocket for immediate access. Things like the stacking table ceasing to lower so that the plastic would jam up within minutes.

Every day when you make plastic you fail and waste money, it's very challenging. The consequences are much more tangible than in programming -- orders don't get on trucks, people have to roll up hundreds of pounds of plastic off the floor, the line goes down and you have to spend an hour sweating to get it back up again. So every day I fixed my notebook so that day's timewasters would have been solved faster. Write down how to fix things without calling maintenance, record the solution that worked and not the five that didn't, add a step to a checklist.

So what this did that carries over to programming is it makes you start using your notes as an extension of your memory. There were fixes I wouldn't use for months but could instantly access by the situation (even though I didn't have Ctrl+F). Because of the speed of the lookup, I wouldn't even bother remembering these things at all, which gave me more working memory.

Now I have 280,000 words of notes about programming, but it's not like college note-taking where you'd have to skim pages and pages to find what you need. There's a Python.docx, Concurrency.docx, Testing.docx. It's all organized by headers like "Design patterns", "refactoring conditionals", "String.format expression syntax". That way if I can't remember exactly what I wrote to Ctrl+F, I can still get there very fast -- and see all the other related notes beside it.

They're all on AutoHotKeys so that I can just Ctrl+Alt+D to open "debugging.docx" and search "ConcurrentModificationException" and see exactly what the typical errors I make are that cause this exception and how I solved them last time.

In the end, just like I was able to move to any line in the factory and run it as familiarly as if I had been there for months, I can move from writing a context manager in Python to doing conditional inserts in SQL and recover all the expertise I ever had in under a minute. It's great at my job which is full stack from Bash to Javascript.

The same approach helped me revitalize our support wiki. Walls of text became "if this, click to expand. If that, go to page X". Related issues got stored together so you can go up the hierarchy a level if one approach fails and try others. Information got moved to right when you need it instead of buried on some other page.

I feel like people who use Confluence and text notes to expand their quick- access memory like this are kind of "digital-ready" \-- it's like our brain is expandable with an SD card slot that others don't have. Good notes let you crystallize a bit of knowledge every day so you have more room to learn something new the next day.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that great exposition. I tried a similar approach in a TiddlyWiki but when it got larger it was slow and required more and more fiddling. Then as an exercise in how to implement tagging using SQLite and TCL (then Python 2.7, then REBOL, then Python 3.5), a made a command-line thing that I've relied on for about 8 years now (REBOL FTW). I carry it around on a USB stick. Thought of porting it in a way I could use it from my phone but I'll never get around to it - I'm not a developer in the sense you guys are so it would take me months. As a further exercise I cloned that tool in an MS-Access form. I use that version at work. I put everything in it and it has been a huge help - I agree with your SD card slot analogy. Coincidentally I work at a compounder of plastic pellets for automotive use. We mold for testing tensile, etc, so I can appreciate what you were up against. I may steal from you and partition my tools topically (separate tables).

<comment><USER3> Android uses SQLite so you're partway there. The USB stick is a good idea because sometimes I read an article about Python at home and have been emailing it to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I once built a very simple one in my backyard using a shock absorber from a car as the barrel, which just worked like a syringe with no screw. It was driven by a threaded rod powered by an electric drill. The heater was a spiral stove element or a hot-air paint stripper or both - I forget which. The mold was a stack of aluminium plates that I'd cut with hand tools and bolted together. It was very fiddly to operate but worth the experience!

Driving a car without shock absorbers is also a real experience! With alternating braking and accelerating, you can build up an oscillation that's big enough to bounce the wheels off the ground with almost no forward speed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perfect for curious toddlers. My daughter is always asking to watch videos of how things are made, and this video has a great mix of very simple takeaways (chairs and legos are made out of plastic) and much more complicated concepts that she can be exposed to and grow to understand (the way screws work, how the runners attach).

And now she can run around the house finding the ejector pin witness marks on everything.

<comment><USER7> watch How It's Made[1], this one is probably not my favorite: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NzUm7UEEIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NzUm7UEEIY)

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWBkudOTaVbvkCBc0pyZFMA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWBkudOTaVbvkCBc0pyZFMA)

<comment><USER8> I would have How It's Made on constantly in the background if I could stream more than the 3 most recent seasons on hulu. I love that show, but 3 seasons isn't near enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is by far my favorite video of his:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw)

<comment><USER10> Here's the How It's Made version - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Y0zAzoggY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Y0zAzoggY)

Aluminum baseball bats have a similar manufacturing method - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=didmRLz4vfU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=didmRLz4vfU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The book, Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science, claims that some early plastic billiard balls were made of nitrocellulose and sometimes exploded. I suppose Hyatt's celluloid billiard balls were the nonexplosive kind. [https://www.amazon.com/Serendipity-Accidental-Discoveries- Ro...](https://www.amazon.com/Serendipity-Accidental-Discoveries-Royston- Roberts/dp/0471602035)

<comment><USER12> Fun history there and if you ever get a chance to watch it, there is a nice episode of Connections ('Countdown', [https://archive.org/details/james-burke- connections_s01e09](https://archive.org/details/james-burke- connections_s01e09)) that uses this as a key point for one of Burke's nice random walks through the history of technology. Nitrocellulose was initially a failure as an explosive, but when mixed with a few other things it was used to replace the ivory in billiard balls as hunters were decimating the elephant populations. Nitrocellulose ended up being the base for smokeless gunpowder that had a huge impact on guns and cannon later in history, but the other big thing it was used for was early film stock. One source of so many fires in theaters (and film storage vaults at studios) in the early 20th century was due to this particular type of film stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Those are incredibly well done videos. Without realizing it, I just spent 30 minutes watching engineering videos. They are done in a way that anyone could understand.

<comment><USER10> I wish he would Patreon up or something so this could be a full time job. He does an amazing job of making a variety of engineering disciplines accessible to the layman.

<comment><USER9> Admittedly I don't know for sure, but I suspect he enjoys his profession as a university professor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still can't believe some tool & die maker machined a die large enough to house an entire plastic lawn chair.

<comment><USER3> At my job, we extruded plastic sheets, so we had dies which were 84 inches wide with an opening of 0.020 inches. It's quite a challenge to get the plastic to spread evenly from the barrel opening all across that width like a river delta. There are two flexible lips inside, you can supply more heat to individual die zones to make it meltier, and at the very edges you stretch the plastic out a little so that several inches of the die end up contributing to one inch of the finished sheet.

<comment><USER15> The other option that is commonly used is using a mold with an internal manifold to heat the plastic, which is injected through heated tips or pneumatic/hydraulic valve gates. This shortens the space on the part such that the flow length of the plastic will be sufficient to fill the part, where with a single gate, it may not due to the part thickness and thermodynamic freeze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This looks super fun! What's the viability of doing this at an artisanal scale in the kitchen? E.g carving a mold out of something, melting plastic in the hob, and pouring it into the mold?

I remember as a kid my dad once got some sort of plastic that you made by mixing two liquids (they were very liquid, so not epoxy), and I made molds of things out of putty (or clay?) and then "copied" them with the plastic. Any idea of what this room-temperature binary-plastic could be?

<comment><USER17> Casting epoxy is a thing that exists, but the chemicals involved should most definitely be kept away from the skin until after they have cured.

<comment><USER16> So it's "casting epoxy", thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> le-mark I've had a project in mind for several years now that would be ideal for injection molding plastic parts, the only problem is a $10-20k in mold creation would take a long time to pay off and become profitable for a niche product (lego related for example). Does anyone have experience doing this?

<comment><USER18> I run a contract manufacturing service in China. We mostly work with US companies bringing new products to market. I'm a little uncertain what you're asking, but my email is in my profile. In general, I can say that individuals trying to start anything hardware related almost universally run into funding problems before they finish (or their idea was just not what the market wanted).

My usual recommendation to people trying to start something hardware related is to do as much as you can in the beginning to make "sales", with sales being defined as whatever you can get that proves someone would actually pay you money for your widget. Prove you have a market before you pay for expensive tooling. That process can vary, but crowdfunding is one example.

Some rough rules of thumb if all you are interested in is cash outlay:

need 2 parts: 3D print or CNC

need 10 parts: silicone mold or CNC

need 200+ parts: injection mold

If lead time to first part, part uniformity, or uncertainty about design changes are factors that might also swing you toward or away from injection molding.

For injection mold tools, assuming the part has a normal level of complexity:

2cm cube: ~$3k, 5 weeks to first shot

15cm x 5cm x 2cm: ~$4k, 5 weeks to first shot

25cm x 15cm x 5cm: ~$8k 8 weeks to first shot

First shot means the first time the tool is tested to make samples. Generally there is a sample approval and testing process you have to go through before any remaining tweaks are made + the final mold texture or polish is added. I find the total time has more to do with how organized and diligent the client is in responding, but assuming nobody drags their feet we generally can be production ready in another 2 weeks or so.

We only work with production tooling (hard steel, lasts a long time). From checking around, if you use aluminum tooling or other "cheap" fast turn prototyping stuff the price doesn't seem to be any less, and in many cases is more. Tooling made in America is usually significantly more... maybe 1.3 - <USER2> more.

<comment><USER15> As an engineering manager that does these types of projects for a living, I would be happy to chat with anyone who is interested in the actual process, design/manufacturing issues, or rough costs/timeline of this type of project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am an engineering manager for a plant that does contract manufacturing and specializes in injection molding. I'm happy to answer any questions someone might have about this process, plants that utilize it, or design/manufacturing limitations of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Likely the device you're watching this on has injection molded parts; you > should be able to find ejector pin witness marks and parting lines.

I'm not seeing these on my MacBook. Is that because the parts are not injection molded, or is it because these features have been sanded off or done in a clever way so that it's not easily visible?

<comment><USER20> The body of your MacBook is cnc machined, and bead-blast finished. There may be some markings from the original casting, but they'll be on the inside. All the ejector pin marks on the keyboard keys should be on the inside.

<comment><USER21> On top of that, Apple has some of _the_ most advanced manufacturing technology on the planet. They're continuously a couple years ahead of everyone else for anything similar to their product line, especially around molding processes. If a new, better process hits the market, Apple often snaps them up.

The original unibody aluminum Apple TV remote is a masterpiece.

A lifetime ago, we were working with Foxconn and a colleague managed to sneak onto an Apple floor and take a look at some of their tools -- he was gobsmacked at what they were capable of. The stuff of industrial design engineers' dreams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's a great talk and animation.

Amusingly, the cheap plastic resin chair shown prominently in the video probably isn't injection-molded. Those are usually formed from a flat sheet.

<comment><USER23> He literally shows tooling marks from the injection molding process on the chair...

<comment><USER22> Yes, that one's not from a sheet; it just looks similar to the cheaper ones that are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The visuals are good enough to watch this without sound... Always a high benchmark for visual aids.

</comment><comment><USER7> didnt injection molding startup the industrial revolution?

<comment><USER25> No, the steam engine started the industrial revolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's 2018 - ceeating a product from new plastic is probably morally indefensible.

This guy has open source plans for garage-scale plastic recycling machines. If you're interested in alternatives to new plastic from china [https://preciousplastic.com](https://preciousplastic.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Will privacy movement make AI processing to move client side? - sahin-boydas <comment><AUTHOR> It should. In my more whimsical moments I imagine antitrust requirement that vendors provide offer the server or client but are not allowed to do both.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's what iOS already does, and I think Android does some of it too (for latency reasons in the latter case, not privacy reasons).</comment>


Inquire.ly - form to mini-CRM in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://inquire.ly/

<comment><USER2> Just a point of feedback: I was scanning up and down the page looking for a full-size screenshot or tour before I randomly hovered over the thumbnails and saw that they're clickable. Looks cool though. Would this function as light weight customer service tool, i.e. replacing ZenDesk or Desk.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback I can see your point I'll get to work on getting something a little more visual to explain it.

And yes, it's very lightweight we already use it for bug tracking, beta signups, feedback and general contact. Other early beta customers are using it to manage job applications and competition entries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, let us know if you have any feedback once you've taken it for a spin.</comment></comment>


Running "n stable" removed bin, lib, share, include directories from /usr/local - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/visionmedia/n/issues/86 <comment><USER2> He merged a pull request from someone he probably didn't know (new to node.js, different country). Without looking at the rest of the file it looks OK to me. That's probably what happened - he didn't get all of the program's relevant structure in his mind when he read the code.

<https://github.com/visionmedia/n/pull/85/files#r1781158>

<comment><USER3> Which is slightly scary security wise. Over the large number of libs, programs, etc people often pull half-blind if the code looks "mostly ok and does what it says"

Except it can do also a lot of other bad things, and its too much to review. So in the end you trust the tree owner, and he blindly trust a zillion people.

I actually have zero good solution to this, but it'll be interesting when it is used for a large attack.

<comment><USER4> > I actually have zero good solution to this, but it'll > be interesting when > it is used for a large attack.

I don't know what this software is or anything about it aside from an estimating that it appears from comments here and on GH that it's serious as it deletes highly important directories and is possibly a widely used software package.

Whenever I install from source I run the installer as non root. It will error on higher than my user privilege deletes telling me I need to be root. In this case I believe I would have seen the attempt to remove important directories as an error alert.

If I have to be root, running as non root first has helped me as a purely investigative method to installations.

What if everyone adopted an 'rm -rfi' type command for any deletes. Then you are asked: "You are about to remove $dir are you sure you are okay with this? Y/N?

In this case, what I don't get is how it's now been three days and there hasn't been a rollback, pulling of the software, patch, notice, billboard, radio announcement, Emergency Broadcast Syatem alert, or otherwise some way to halt this problem dead in it's tracks right this very second.

It's almost like: README This software is 'use at your own risk', etc., etc., etc., see Hacker News for any potentially dangerous side-effects caused by installing this software.

<comment><USER5> everything in my /usr/local is owned by my user. isn't this typical in the case of a dev machine?

<comment><USER6> If it's going to be owned by your non-root account, shouldn't it be installed to ~/? It seems like a bad idea for a non-root user to have control over binaries that are in root's $PATH.

<comment><USER7> /usr/local on a normal, stock OS X install is completely unused. Homebrew's installer commandeers it by `chown`ing it to the current user and makes it group writable, as to cut down on the sudo noise. I think issues like this, and the fact that nearly all package managers, including aptitude, yum and ports require sudo should be catalysts for requiring sudo for updating and installation of packages. It's that whole security vs. convenience tradeoff again.

I've actually run into a similar issue with another installer via a Rakefile that lacked uninstalling capabilities and a confusing method of determining the $PREFIX which resulted in me shredding my /usr/local/bin directory for a couple seconds before my ^C spamming stopped the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the mods changed the title I gave. Just for those that don't know, "n" is a version manager for Node.JS that some use to handle multiple copies of Node.JS on their system.

<comment><USER8> Your original title was slightly linkbaity. I approve of the mod's change for clarity.

<comment><AUTHOR> They were probably right to do it. But it would have been useful to keep the reference to Node.JS in there as not everyone knows what "n" is.

<comment><USER9> I read it as:

"Running and stable with no bin, lib, share, include directories in /usr/local".

Which didn't seem all that exciting to me, so I clicked just to see what all the excitement was with not having a /usr/local.

PS. "n" is a terrible name for a program - it's impossible to google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a non-Node.js user, I'm more bewildered by how easily github issues turn into reddit threads.

<comment><AUTHOR> It only happens occasionally on bugs issues that get a lot of attention (by being posted to HN for example, sorry about that). Usually GitHub issues threads are sensible and helpful places.

<comment><USER10> That's what so scary to me. There's all that productive discussion that is only a step over some noteworthiness threshold away from being completely ruined. I wouldn't think of blaming HN or even reddit submitters for that, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to use n before I found out about nvm[1]. I used to have issues installing Node.js packages with n, but so far nvm just works.

The best advantage of nvm is that I can easily install global packages without being the root user, because it installs your Node.js files in a per-user ~/nvm/ folder (this is customizable to whatever folder you choose).

[1] <https://github.com/creationix/nvm>

<comment><USER12> _"The best advantage of nvm is that I can easily install global packages without being the root user"_

One of us is very confused (it easily could be me). I do not understand this statement at all. How is something global if its in a user directory?

<comment><USER11> When you install a package using npm with the flag -g, it means that the package is global, i.e. available from any current working directory. The default is to only search the current directory hierarchy for a folder called "node_modules". That way every project that you work on can have its own versions of every library, instead of sharing them for the entire system. You can learn more about "global" vs "local" packages by reading the npm manual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> <https://github.com/visionmedia/n/pull/85/files#r1781158>

      |  for d in bin lib share include; do
      |    rm -rf $N_PREFIX/$d

LGTM!

</comment><comment><USER14> Somewhat off-topic, but allowing people to post inline images-- especially animated ones, is such an awful idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> my bad, sorry about the limbo-merge guys, I'll read PRs closer and/or ignore them since I don't have time

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of [https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and- abbandoned/issue...](https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and- abbandoned/issues/123) (install script does rm -rf /usr for ubuntu) although I guess deleting /usr/local isn't nearly as bad.

<comment><USER17> Depends on platform. It is under FreeBSD. It wipes the entire userland that isn't part of the base system. That means every piece of software installed from the ports collection.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, but honestly that's FreeBSD's fault for installing system-managed software in a poor location for such.

(speaking as a FreeBSD user myself)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Makes me wish we had a transactional file system and the ability to force certain deletes to verify even if run as root with the -rf flags so we could roll back this type of thing.

<comment><USER18> My setup is pretty simple and could recover from this with few problems: I use ZFS and have zfSnap configured to take a snapshot every hour, saved for five days. So I'd lose potentially the last hour's worth of changes to /usr/local, but that's unlikely to be big.

<comment><USER20> bsd? linux? solaris?

<comment><USER18> FreeBSD; I didn't trust any of the ZFS implementations for linux (I'm not sure there is one that works for your root filesystem yet?) and Solaris didn't find all of my hard drives.

If you're thinking of switching there really isn't much difference between FreeBSD and Linux (at least if you're talking about a traditional Linux like Slackware); most of the admin commands work like Linux did up until 5 years ago, and obviously the UI is just KDE or whatever you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, just today I commented on the Anvil post about how to delete your system using this exact bug.</comment>