Ask HN: What are good sources of food while staying ramen profitable? - <AUTHOR> I take it ramen profitabiliy shouldn't be interpreted literally. Disregarding taste, what are the cheapest sources of food that is still considered healthy? <comment><USER2> Eggs are probably the cheapest natural form of animal protein you can find. Add a couple to your ramen. If you buy good quality eggs, eat the yolk too.

Chicken legs are also often priced under 99 cents a pound, even in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER3> You don't eat the yolks from cheap eggs?

<comment><USER2> I don't think there is harm too, but there is a distinct quality difference in taste and nutrition, which would be a terrible thing to waste from good eggs. Overall I think it is beneficial, but since some people are against eating yolks, I hedge my advice by stating yolk from good eggs.

<comment><USER3> I eat the yolk from all hen eggs, makes no difference to me. Don't notice any difference in quality from cheap/expensive or caged/free-range.

<comment><USER2> Cheap Costco eggs taste like rubber and have pale yellow yolks. Real free range eggs have a fattier taste with a deep almost red orange hue.

Likewise, real free range chickens have really deep flavor in comparison.

When I say real, I don't mean a chicken that has pasture time but eats the same vegetarian feed as other factory farm chickens. They need to eat insects, get exercise, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can buy bags of dried beans at the grocery store for around a dollar each. The bagged beans actually taste better than the canned beans, and they are much cheaper. Just remember, some beans need to be soaked overnight before being cooked!

For example, you can make a giant pot of lentil soup that will have 10 servings for maybe $4 worth of ingredients. And it's healthy.

Split pea soup is another good one.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never had Ramen, so I had to look it up, but... let's take Ramen literally, using Amazon's Ramen pricing as a baseline, and try to inject health concerns! At $17.49 for a 36 pack of Ramen, we're talking ~$0.49/meal. Check!

Two kilograms (4.4 lbs) of Lentils costs me $2.49 at my local supermarket. According to the fine people at Wolfram Alpha, 1 cup of lentils (cooked) weighs 99grams and costs $0.125. Bags of frozen vegetables cost ~$2. I can get ~8 meals from one bag of such veggies, making each portion cost $0.25. That's a total cost of $0.374, which means we still have ~$0.12 to go.

One package of dried soup (with beans) costs $1.99 regular price - but can be on sale for $0.99. Taking the regular price into count, and getting 12 (small) bowls of soup brings the per-bowl price to $0.125.

So, you can eat (unfortunately, high salt) soup, beans, lentils, and veggies for ~$0.49/meal. You'll actually need less than a cup of lentils if you do this, which should bring the cost down a bit.

<comment><USER6> Is this anywhere near enough calories to survive on?

You found pricy ramen, by the way. The ramen I get (Maruchan, I think) is ~$0.20 per package, which has ~380 calories.

Your meal seems to be about 150 calories by my extremely rough estimation.

<comment><USER5> Wow... 380 calroeis is crazy. I fully admit that was the first ramen I saw ;). The caloric intake of the meal would be ~200-250 calories - as I assume some oil would be used.

But humans can survive on ~1200 calories. It's just not awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Invest in a good pressure cooker (for speed) or crockpot and a dozen 1 quart canning jars. I have a 21-qt at home. It's an investment that pays off once you figure out all the things you can cook and freeze for later.

With this you can make tons of beans in bulk, freeze them and defrost as necessary. I would serve the beans with fresh rice. The base for most of my beans (about 12 quarts) was a pint of bacon fat and like 3-4 full sized onions and a bunch of garlic.

I got my meals down to about 50 cents each. You can get beans in bulk (25lb bags) from hispanic markets.

Lentils with a mirepoix base are another great option.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's pretty high sodium in ramen and I tend to find that ramen isn't really filling when eaten alone (and poor in nutritional value) and that means extra $$$ to make it more filling (spam, eggs, proteins, etc.).

My go to for a cheap filling meal has always been a stew or soup. Bulk quantity canned tomatoes, beans or rice, some protein, onions, carrots, and a ton of herbs means a single pot meal that can last for a long time - especially in the freezer.

</comment><comment><USER9> You can survive pretty much indefinitely off of rice and beans and more than eat your fill of them for about $1 or so a day if you buy in bulk.

</comment><comment><USER10> Get a gigantic bag of brown rice(15), gigantic bag of beans(10), cumin/spices from an Indian/middle eastern store(5-10), 2x gigantic bag frozen vegetables(10) some garlic (4), olive oil(10), Siracha(5), and optionally coffee(10). That is enough food to feed a few people for a month for $74.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can grow a lot of your own vegetables for next to nothing, if you have space, dirt, good weather/sunlight, and a rain barrel.

Tomato and peppers, for example, are both very easy to grow. There are also spices that grow like weeds. All of these can be added to your ramen bowl. :)

<comment><USER12> I can't imagine that being very practical as you're likely to die of starvation before the veggies grow big enough to feed you.

This would take months to set up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One vegetable option, that is also quick / low effort to prepare: Microwave a sweet potato.

Be sure to pierce it to let steam escape.

They can cook a bit unevenly. Letting it rest for a few minutes afterward can allow it to finish cooking and "even out".

</comment><comment><USER14> Rice, beans, frozen veggies.

</comment><comment><USER15> Chicken thighs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Go with the yin yang diet- black coffee and white rice.

</comment><comment><USER17> Frozen veggies, brown rice and greek yogurt.

</comment><comment><USER18> Snap peas were cited in an eating on 1 £ a day site I saw.

</comment><comment><USER19> beans and rice + vegetables. Beans and Rice until your required calorie count is reached and then add veggies until you hit your budget allowance.

<comment><USER20> pg's "Ramen Profitable" essay contains an excellent Rice and Beans recipe: [http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n](http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> sprouts

<comment><USER22> consider using a rice cooker to cook all the cheap stuff that you buy - [http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/38399141597/using-a- rice-c...](http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/38399141597/using-a-rice-cooker- to-replace-your-whole-kitchen)</comment></comment>


ASUS Z390 Motherboards Automatically Push Software into Your Windows Install - <AUTHOR> https://www.techpowerup.com/248827/asus-z390-motherboards-automatically-push-software-into-your-windows-installation <comment><USER2> If you don't trust ASUS then don't buy their motherboard. Their code is already loading microcode onto your CPU and booting with UEFI.

Given you have to trust them anyways why not just put the drivers right on the motherboard FLASH.</comment>


Airbnb's new safety page - <AUTHOR> http://www.airbnb.com/home/safety

<comment><USER2> The way many people here jumped to conclusions after the initial AirBnB story based on almost no information is really disheartening. Insulting the founders of the company, the victim, and concocting conspiracy theories based on a few paragraphs of information with barely any evidence is a really poor way to conduct oneself. Most decent people wouldn't do it in face-to-face conversations without getting to know a person at least slightly, and it's unfortunate that our psychology is built in a way that an extra layer of anonymity afforded by the internet enables a large number of people to drop all sense of tact and respect, and jump into personal attacks with very little information about the actual incident. If you're one of the people that engaged in this type of behavior, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You're doing real damage to real people, while knowing almost nothing about what's actually going on, but more importantly, you're damaging your own reputation.

I had the opportunity to hear the founders speak a number of times. They're one of the _very_ few founders that are incredibly genuine about bringing a positive change into the lives of their customers. They live and breathe positive change they bring to the world, to the point where they carry letters from customers that thanked them for saving their lives because the bank would have repossessed their home if not for AirBnB. Jumping on them because they didn't have a chance to give a complete response _while handling a crisis_ is really uncalled for.

I don't know the victim but it's easy to misinterpret events after going through an emotional trauma. Most likely it's a misunderstanding, but even if it isn't, it's really inappropriate to insult people given the information currently available. In fact, it's _never_ appropriate to insult people, and it's best to hold back criticism until more information is available, lest you do some real damage to real people.

There are some valid concerns about where personal responsibility ends and liability begins (legally and ethically), and how AirBnB's service will evolve to address these issues, but there are different ways to discuss these concerns, and discussions here so far have been nothing but poisonous.

<comment><USER3> > Jumping on them because they didn't have a chance to give a complete > response while handling a crisis is really uncalled for.

The main issue I've seen is that a co-founder is quoted as asking EJ to censor herself (remove or restrict access to the blog) to protect AirBnB, even mentioning their rounds of funding as a motivation. A co-founder is also quoted as asking her to add a positive spin to the article after a couple weeks (despite there being no positive spin to add). Those quotes haven't been refuted at all and we don't have any reason, especially given the careful writing by EJ, to doubt them.

Those quotes, if accurate, are disheartening. They reflect the worst of entrepreneurialism. So it's not surprising that that's what I've seen the most outrage about.

<comment><USER4> The irrational exuberance has come to an end as airbnb and hopefully many of these startups that while facilitating many great things also mask an exposure to danger.

I remember when anyone on Craigslist was in the top %5 of nice humans. Of course that is gone now, but airbnb seemed like it was living in the early craigslist bubble.

I am saying those bubbles shouldn't exist. They are naive. And most American humans don't have the street smarts to build their own trust metrics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am under the feeling they believe they can crowdsource the security. I understand security and safety will hurt their business scalability, but they will eventually have to offer insurance, escrowing, legal support and authentication to their customers.

Failure to do so will probably end up in the service collapsing under its own weight.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, at least the part about "Will someone steal my grand piano?" is gone.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean?

<comment><USER8> This used to be in their FAQ:

Will someone steal my grand piano?

Highly unlikely. Grand pianos weigh thousands of pounds and do not fit through doors.

<comment><USER9> I...actually think that's pretty good. It's funny, while bringing up the fact that [if you bring strangers into your house] they could steal something. Still, I see why they would remove it at this time.

<comment><USER10> Because it makes it seem as if they are taking this issue very lightly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not an active Airbnb user, but I've read in comment threads here that if you decline a guest, your search rankings go down. Is this true or FUD? If so, how does that reconcile with "If for some reason it just doesn't feel right, feel free to say the booking won't work for you. If it's not right for you, it's okay to walk away."

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm looks like a lot of work for relatively little in savings [1]. As a guest I'd rather avoid it and pay the premium for the convenience of a traditional hotel [2]: you just walk in and book a room. I recognize that making friends is claimed as the other benefit of using Airbnb, but I doubt that ever had as much broad appeal as the promise of saving money.

[1] - And even with this much work, there are still substantial risks, for both the host and the guest.

[2] - The only exception might be extended stays of weeks/months.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks great -- definitely much more informative than the previous answer, and pretty honest about the (small) risks of using airbnb.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this still Hacker News, or have I traveled to a strange and horrifying dimension where we've become Reddit? Enough Airbnb posts already!

<comment><USER14> Airbnb is a YC startup, Hacker News is YC-focused and Airbnb are in the news and being criticized for their safety and security. What's the problem, now?</comment></comment>


Abiding by Rajeev's Rule - <AUTHOR> http://bradoneill.com/abiding-by-rajeevs-rule

<comment><USER2> "When any sincere individual or group of people asks for my assistance in pursuit of their [...] dream, I will strive to help them in any way that I can, be it small or large."

I'm not familiar with Rajeev, but it's a good rule.

I think it's even better with the one small edit I made above.

</comment><comment><USER3> It'd be nice if academics had a rule like this as well.</comment>


SDF – Public Access Unix System - <AUTHOR> https://sdf.org/ <comment><USER3> I received this email from them in January. HN might find it interesting:

SDF Celebrates 30 years of service in 2017!

On June 16th, 1987 Ted Uhlemann (handle: charmin, later iczer) connected his Apple ][e's 300 baud modem to the phone line his mother had just given him for his birthday. He had published the number the night before on as many BBSes around the Dallas Ft. Worth area that he could and he waited for the first caller. He had a copy of Magic Micro BBS which was written in Applesoft BASIC and he named the BBS "SDF-1" after his favorite Japanimation series ROBOTECH (Macross). He hoped to draw users who were interested in anime, industrial music and the Church of the Subgenius.

Slowly, SDF has grown over all these years, never forgetting our past and unlike many sites on the internet, we actually have a past. Some people today may come here and see us as outdated and "retro". But if you get involved, you'll see it is quite alive with new ideas and a platform for opportunity to try many new things. The machines are often refreshed, the quotas are gone, the disk space is expanding as are the features (and user driven features at that) and our cabinets have plenty of space for expansion here in the USA and in Europe (Germany).

Think about ways you'd like to celebrate SDF's 30th and join us on the 'bboard' to discuss what we could do.

I realize many of you have likely moved on yourselves, but I just wanted you to know we're still here and we'll keep doing new and exciting things with a foundation in the UNIX shell.

Sincerely,

Stephen Jones (SMJ)

[https://sdf.org](https://sdf.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> SDF and its "long-running public multitenant shell server" kin are all pretty old, and not one of them has been spared from slowdowns due to oversubscription.

It's sort of like an MMO: it's only fun when you're on a heavily-populated "shard", but that also means that you're all putting strain on the same server.

I'm surprised that there's no more modern implementation of the same multitenant "shell system" as a scale-free distributed architecture—like Mesos, z/OS, or any other "multi-tenant scheduler of interactive container- jobs with access to a common GlusterFS volume" kind of approach. A PaaS you can hang out in like a BBS.

Come to think, you could put one of these up on AWS, using EC2 autoscaling + K8s/Docker Swarm + Amazon EFS for storage, quite easily. Has anyone done this yet?

<comment><USER5> There /is/ a modern, well-managed open-registration shell and IRC service, similar to what you're talking about, called Hashbang. You can join via [https://hashbang.sh](https://hashbang.sh).

We're reasonably active, and we have almost 1400 registered users [edited: i was corrected by a hashbang admin as to the amount].

The _ultimate purpose_ of hashbang is to expose more users to a traditional remote UNIX server and command line, as well as teaching people how to use it. We've created a slight barrier to entry with the intentionally obtuse signup flow, as we don't want completely non-technical users flooding the service.

I promise we won't bite :D

<comment><USER6> To join would require me to run code from the website.. or initiate a call to their API via curl?

<comment><USER5> Yep. You can download/verify that script by hand, or hit the endpoints yourself. They just run stuff to provision your user and files and add you to our LDAP directory.

<comment><USER7> Can confirm hitting the endpoint with curl works. Thanks for the account! :) Going to go poke around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _This page is anonymous_ | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5638988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5638988) (4 years ago)

[http://voidnull.sdf.org/](http://voidnull.sdf.org/)

"there is one place where you can still host your content anonymously. That place is the Super Dimension Fortress or SDF. SDF lets you register an anonymous user over ssh (which is accessible via the Tor network) and takes cash over mail in order to validate the user."

"I challenge you to send me a postcard to my mailing address with the content that says "I see you voidnull" and a self-addressed postage-paid envelope. I will then send you a $10 bill back as a prize."

</comment><comment><USER9> For those wondering what exactly is SDF, a summary loading quickly:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160828065530/http://sdf.org/?f...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160828065530/http://sdf.org/?faq?BASICS?01)

<comment><USER10> Interesting. Anyone know what they mean by

 _We are using a 'swamp' class C 192.94.73..._?

Edit: Found [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4632](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4632) (CIDR: The Internet Address Assignment and Aggregation Plan), which says this. Still not quite sure what they mean.

       Note that, as defined, this plan neither requires nor assumes the
       re-assignment of those parts of the legacy "Class C" space that are
       not amenable to aggregation (sometimes called "the swamp").

<comment><USER11> Good question. Some quick googling turned up: [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/bgp/978059600...](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/bgp/9780596002541/ch04.html)

> Since more than half the global routing table consists of /24 announcements, > those are the first candidates for being filtered. More aggressive filters > may even filter out everything smaller than the smallest assigned PA blocks, > possibly with some exceptions for "the swamp," the part of the Class C space > assigned in pre-CIDR days(192.x.x.x and part of 193.x.x.x). The currently > allocated smallest PA blocks are /20, but much of the Class C space is > allocated to ISPs in /19 and larger blocks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember learning how to use telnet into SDF when I was in middle school, around 2001, looking for something more interesting to do in computer lab while everyone else was doing typing assignments, and I _seem_ to remember playing a MUD on their server as well. I also have a distinct memory of copying the source code of their site's index when I was learning to edit HTML, probably within a month of that, because their site was very legible and easy to tinker with. How time flies!

<comment><USER12> Another memory -- I also ordered a Red Martian CD from them! I need to see if I can dig it up at my mom's house sometime

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would be some reasons to use SDF or Hashbang? Running my own system on Digital Ocean or a similar service seems quite straightforward.

<comment><USER13> I have a lifetime account at SDF, and I've set it up as an emergency email address of last resort. If I ever let my domains and all other freemail accounts expire (perhaps I'll get hit by a bus and stay in a coma for 10 years), I'll try to use my SDF account to regain control of my online presence.

Well, I'll actually have to do a few more things in order to make that possible, but at least I think SDF will last longer than most other services of its kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know you were wondering: SDF stands for Super Dimension Fortress, or at least that's what they tell a noob.

"a networked community of free software authors, teachers, students, researchers, hobbyists, enthusiasts and the blind. It is operated as a federally recognised non-profit 501c7 and is supported by its members."

...

"Our mission is to provide remotely accessible computing facilities for the advancement of public education, cultural enrichment, scientific research and recreation. Members can interact electronically with each other regardless of their location using passive or interactive forums. Further purposes include the recreational exchange of information concerning the Liberal and Fine Arts."

...

"Members have access to games, email, usenet, chat, bboard, gopherspace, webspace, programming utilities, archivers, browsers, and more. The SDF community is made up of caring, highly skilled people who operate behind the scenes and in the underground to maintain a non-commercial INTERNET."

<comment><USER15> SDF is a bizarre part of the internet / well-kept gem of a secret. Bob Odenkirk hosts his website there, which is something I wouldn't have expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been on SDF for over 18 years, absolutely love it. And the fact that they run a pdp-10 emulator is so cool! These guys rock and I consider myself lucky for finding them so many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> How does SDF keep itself funded? What kind of bandwidth do they have to the outside world?

I can see hardware not being an issue - with the right contacts you can be swimming in older x86 and Alpha gear, storage and networking, etc, with enough spares to last until the apocalypse.

<comment><USER18> to actually execute any commands or do anything you need to get "validated" which costs $3 by paypal or $1 + postage by us mail

<comment><USER19> If you know a MetaARPA user, they can validate you for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a European subsidiary of SDF as well: [https://sdfeu.org/](https://sdfeu.org/) . So the latency is much better than accessing US servers.

I've been using this for IRC and it works satisfactorily.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pub400: free *PGMR user profile on IBM i 7.3 mainframe

[http://pub400.com/](http://pub400.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely getting hugged by HN right now. When changing my password I get "passwd: The passwd file is busy, waiting..." until it finally gives up and times out :)

</comment><comment><USER21> SDF is awesome. It's just nice to have an account on a cluster that is straight on the internet and lets you play with whatever unix and web things you want.

</comment><comment><USER22> SDF also has some fairly active Gopher holes: gopher://sdf.org

(or via the floodgap[1] http<->gopher proxy: [http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://sdf.org:70/1](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://sdf.org:70/1) )

\--

[1] [http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/)

</comment><comment><USER14> For those interested, Panix in NY offers Unix shell access (and much more).

[http://www.panix.com/](http://www.panix.com/)

<comment><USER23> "Access to a Panix Web server where you can keep your Web pages (even your own CGIs), with 1 GB (1024 MB) of transfers per month included. (Transfers in excess of this allocation are $1/GB.) We will even install WordPress in your web space if you wish."

That could result in a nasty surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've had an account with SDF for so long... If only I could remember my password!

<comment><USER25> Same. I appreciated the offer when I found about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh, this is beautiful!

Should have signed up some time ago. Had a free few minutes and took the plunge.

I got online in early 91, dialup PPP on some cobbled together PC. Prior to that time, I was online with Apple //e using various BBS gateways.

This brings back some great memories. I'll lifetime this and get to know a few people ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER27> The first of their three nameservers is non-responsive for at least some users. There is no round-robin.

ns-a.sdf.org 18.104.22.168

This will obviously slow down lookups for those users. If this is intentional, I would be curious why they are doing this.

<comment><USER28> There is the concept of a "hidden master", where the public nameservers are slaves to the real authoritative server, which is kept hidden. Some people put their hidden masters in their public NS records, which I've always found odd.

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I remember sending in the mail the money and verification info for my SDF account. God I wish I remembered my account's password, it might still be there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems that the SDF website is suffering from the HN hug of death and the webservers aren't liking it that much.

</comment><comment><USER29> When I got on SDF years ago I was very enthusiastic. It's old and it has a legacy and a story with it which, to be honest, I never could connect to and I don't blame SDF, people, or myself for that. It just didn't click. I got my account validated using paypal, back in 06 from India, where I used my cousin's card to pay $5. Then I got the ARPA account spending $36 one time fee which was a decent sum considering my country's currency and my pocket money at the time. I tried to hang out on IRC, COM and even tried the boards but I just didn't quite get the appeal of it. It was not like I didn't fit in. More like I didn't try to fit in or belong because I couldn't connect to the culture or the environments. As in it was bad? No, not at all. Whoever I communciacated to, and got a response or so, it was always supportive and positive. It was just, how do I put it, too USA oriented. The chatter, the matter and it was fine because that was where it was from and it's cool. I am just talking about my experience. I realise, kinda realised then too, SDF's appeal might have gone by the time I went there. People gush over it (sometimes) or talk about it is the nostalgia, maybe. What it was - not even what it could be, let alone what it is. Or maybe I still don't get the very idea of SDF.

After I got a job, one day I thought of going for MetaARPA. It was again some kind of curiosity and and a sense of giving back - because in all honesty it was SDF where I had first accessed a remote shell and sent a file via FTP to a remote server. I checked around on the net and SDF how is this, what do I get with it and I sent a short mail to support asking few questions. I never got a reply. Tried asking on IRC and COM too didn't really receive much in info. Docs are really insufficient. Maybe I was not patient enough - having been accustomed to StackOverflow and tutorials.

Fare enough, it was nothihng that anyone owe me. Then at the same time email started to act strange and many other problems. Yes, I was using <my-user- name>@sdf.org really at many important places (except my bank and all). It would sometimes bounce back and then would act funny. The delay in fetching email of course. Didn't receive any communication regarding any of these. I read a blog post by someome who gave up and has started to change his email everywhere because of SDF's unreliability. He mentioned he had used the sdf.org email for close to 20 years. Recently the link where one could access roundcube webmail (and no, IMAP never never really worked - for me; I guess it might be because of my membership level but then I did want to upgrade) stopped working and there was no communication regarding it, no response. And on IRC I figured I am not the only one wondering about it. It was not the first time mail/webmail had a problem. The link still doesn't work ([https://wm.sdf.org/rc](https://wm.sdf.org/rc)) and there still hasn't been any communication or response regarding that (at least I didn't get one - <USER2> I am owed one). Amyway that's how it was. I also think it's pretty much one person setup (not sure) - maybe not full time and how such roles at non- profits can be a thankless job especially when people start expecting services as they expect from commercial entities. Anyway, I never proceeded much further than that. I kinda realised me and SDF are not a match, or a fit so to speak.

I am really not complaining (really really not; it may sound like one) I am just sharing my experience. I think my connection with SDF is just all about curiosity and maybe I never really had the real SDF experience. Either I didn't try enough or maybe the relevance was lost to time by the time I got on SDF (around 2006-07). Or maybe I tried to treat SDF as a service provider (a commodity?) and it is/was supposed to be more of an experience, an anecdotal memory collected over time.

</comment><comment><USER3> sdf.org also runs a Minecraft server, if anyone here plays.</comment>


Ask HN: Starting your day at office - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I am kind of curious to know how long do you spend on HN, Twitter, TechCrunch, FB, LinkedIn, Gmail and Quora before actually starting your work each day?
I spend about an hour going through these sites and reading. I want to check if I am spending too much or less. <comment><USER2> If I'm working an early shift, then chances are I won't have time before I have to leave, but if I'm starting later then I can waste a good hour or two just clicking about while I wake up. I don't spend much time using a computer once I'm at work but that's definitely for the best considering how little work I get done at home when I'm sat in front of one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have realized how productive I can be if I unplug my internet connection and focus on "just" the work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I spend maybe half an hour in the morning, and then a portion of my lunch break typically.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love having a solid hour for this, but can't always make it happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> May be appearing at office before an hour !</comment></comment>


Google Forms $100 Million Venture Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2009/03/reuters_us_google_fund

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of people will be scared to pitch to Google in the seed stage.

Google has pretty much established itself as "anything goes" company. So no matter what you pitch, you'd worry about them stealing your idea.

And why should Google back someone like you with no connections/traction etc, if they have plenty of resources to implement your idea on their own.

<comment><USER4> I certainly would be hesitant to just email them a business plan...While Google itself might not "steal ideas"; What's to prevent an engineer at Google from culling through great ideas and starting up his/her own company?

<comment><USER5> These concerns are overblown. Reminder: Ideas are worthless. Implementation matters. Business plans are dime a dozen.

Furthermore google knows that such an event would kill their credibility as a VC instantly _and_ hurt the Google brand as a whole due to the motto violation.

I can't think of an idea or business-plan that could possibly be worth that risk, therefor I assume google will take proper care of confidentiality.

<comment><USER6> I agree with this comment completely.

I've been reading comments on the Google Ventures launch on HN, TechCrunch, CNet and others........the general tone is ugly. Why is it that Google was beloved as a young, underdog company but after it achieves what we all strive for....true global impact....people become skeptics and, almost, root for their demise? Human nature or something more?

<comment><USER7> Simple answer: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We all like the cool kids from Google. What is starting to scare some (and soon more) is the power that Google has. With no counter-powers. Google needs to think about a better, more sustainable, implementation of their do-no-evil brand.

Having an ombudsman, at the VP level, to which any "citizen" can go and object, would be a start. Think of it as the supreme court of Googlers. With transparent complaints and answers from humans.

It would cost a little bit of money, but it would go a long way to building long-term trust in the company. If Google doesn't come up with their own counter-power, someone else eventually will and Google won't like it!

<comment><USER5> Well, in theory we already have the counterweight, it's called government and it's supposed to protect us from evildoers.

In practice our governments are unfortunately struggling to adapt to this whole "globalization" thing where multi-national corporations are alarmingly ahead in most regards.

So far not many of the corps have abused their power in truly damaging ways (apart from evading taxes and the occassional uncomfortable law) but I do agree that this is a worrying tendency. It might even be part of the cause for the current meltdown.

But in the longterm I'm actually less worried about google here. Not because of their motto but simply because they're a rather small fish when you compare them to some of the energy-multis who operate at petrodollar scales.

An Ombudsman at every large corp is not the solution either way. That would just become another sock puppet on their salary-list.

The only cure seems to be global regulation of the financial sector - <USER2> subject that you don't hear much about in the middle of all these bailout discussions...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> VCs are competing with YC the same way that bachelors programs are competing with PhD programs.

Edit: Title originally mentioned Google competing with YC.

<comment><USER9> Seconded.

YC provide the capital they do to cover only the most necessary expenses. For many people there are other ways to raise that amount of cash if you really needed to. (Probably not glamorous ways, but you could likely get there).

It's not exactly apples and oranges, but to focus on the cash kind of misses the point of what YC is about, and what it really offers.

I'd like to believe that Google entering the space is a good thing, and I do, but I believe the focus in the article on the $100m is kind of irrelevant.

How much of that is Google really going to invest at seed stage? And with what ventures?

I'd be eager to find out.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the article :

 _The fund will focus primarily on companies seeking seed funding and early stage funding, and Google Ventures will have the ability to make investments ranging from tens of thousands to "several tens of millions" of dollars, Maris said._

The seed part in the "tens of thousands" sounds a lot like YC.

<comment><USER10> It would make sense for google to make sure that companies it buys are doing it the google way. I think they have learned from jotspot and jaiku that it is probably better to get in earlier rather than rewrite the entire system to fit on their infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had both feelings of initial excitement and concern. My concept might be 'perfect' for a Google property, but that becomes a double-edged sword. Sure, GVentures will not want to get a rep for stealing ideas from submissions, but it's not about intent. It's always been the main reason I wouldn't be concerned so much about NDAs with VCs is that they're really not in the position to implement at the drop of a dime, or effectively weave key parts into an existing project. Google on the other hand... Hmmm.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google is slowly morphing from technology company to tech focused private equity firm.

</comment><comment><USER13> where the fuck is the "dont be evil" thing? i dont think financial results as the first focus is ethical</comment>


Ask HN: Reddit tips? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I thought I would start trying to submit some of these hn-books reviews over on reddit, but I haven't had much luck over there.
I've been a member for a long time, but it seems like whenever I submit anything it tanks, so I really haven't visited that much. (Among other reasons)
So does anybody have any tips on how to get a favorable result over there? Should I ask somebody who is already well-known in the community to submit for me? Should I visit more often and make more friends? Is there a certain time of day that's best to submit? Are there certain kinds of material that just never do that well over there? What's the deal with this sub-reddit stuff? Looks like there are like ten thousand little tiny rooms over there now. Do I have to know all of them, and aren't I stuck submitting only to one at a time or something?
Any help is appreciated. <comment><USER3> It's all in the title, it has to be short, interesting and to the point - <USER2> course the content has to have value too.

Just look at the top submissions to get an idea of what catches the most attention.</comment>


A Swede Returns to Silicon Valley from China - <AUTHOR> http://blog.traintracks.io/a-swede-returns-to-silicon-valley-from-china-2/ <comment><USER2> I read through it (the whole thing) and felt truly moved!! To be honest, I can really feel what you mean, and Beijing is insanely vibrant in terms of start ups and CULTUREs, I feel it is more diversified than the bay area here...Proud of you sharing the what you truly believe!</comment>


The Dangerous Delays in U.S. Coronavirus Testing Continue - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-testing-numbers/607714/ <comment><USER2> This is a crucial article at a crucial time.

 _" Nearly two weeks after the new coronavirus was first found to be spreading among Americans, the United States remains dangerously limited in its capacity to test people for the illness, an ongoing investigation from The Atlantic has found."_

Now that community has been verified, widespread testing seem very warranted. Without widespread testing, neither health authorities nor average people know what to do.</comment>


SparkFun Free Day up to $100 of stuff - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkfun.com/free_day/

<comment><USER2> Tried this last year, couldn't get through to the site until it was all over. Or rather, couldn't get through the purchase part until it was all over.

</comment><comment><USER3> The website is down because it is handling too many requests :(</comment>


Ask YC: Suggestions for Loved One's Dementia/Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR>

This is slightly off topic, but not really, because it's still science.  This is one of the smartest groups I know, so maybe I can get help with a personal issue.  I am specifically NOT addressing this to a board that specializes on this topic, because I seek "out of the box" hacker-like thinking.
My mother is suffering from extreme dementia with a probable cause of Alzheimer's (her physician's words).  She has reached the point where she can no longer care for herself, so she is now in a skilled nursing facility.  She has stabilized and is receiving excellent personal and medical care.
She is 77 years old, ambulatory and active, lucid about 80% of the time, recognizes everyone, and interacts fairly well.  She has a lot of trouble verbalizing and gets confused quite often.  We are also starting to see classic memory loss.
My brothers and sisters and I intend to take full advantage of the expertise of her physicians whose specialty is "geriatric care".
Here is my concern.  Just like the blind men and the elephant, medical practitioners only have solutions to the problems they see all the time.  Like many other types of problems, in health care, sometimes you have to go "outside the box" to address things more effectively.  I know many people who have helped loved ones with many different health challenges by going outside the system.  But we know nothing about this condition.
In 2009, I don't want to say, "Gee, I wish I would have done something back in 2007."
Is there anything we should be aware of that our doctors don't know about (or won't tell us)?  I plan to email this link to my  brothers and sisters, so any comments, suggestions, or referrals would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> For what this is worth, I cared for both of my parents through the end of their lives and found something interesting and here's how I try to assemble it in my mind. There seems to be a core connection between people that doesn't change over time. For example, when I met several cousins when I was visiting my mother's country when I was six, there were a few that I had a terrific connection with. Turns out that many years later, when in my twenties, I went back and met up with the plethora of cousins I have there, those same ones I connected well with when I was six were the same ones I connected well with as an adult.

How this plays out with someone who has lost a lot of themselves to dementia came into play with my parents when they could no longer recognize me. It took a lot of mind games on my end to think my way around this, but you can still have fun with them. The connection is still there, but you may have to hunt a bit to find it. If they're hallucinating, think of them as being someone who has taken a lot of hallucinogens and play with them, or if they have no time continuity, love them like a beloved pet who won't remember what you're doing in five minutes (or whatever it takes) and find that connection and experience joy together.

"Hey Mum, do you know who I am?" "Sure I do." "Okay then, who am I?" "Ahhh, you got me on that one." [cue laugh track]

[Actually both parents tried to fake their way out of this one.]

The truth is that you can still enjoy each other throughout this time because the connection seems to still be there, even though all of the overlays the mind and personality provides is not. It might be a way for a child who has been having conflicts can reunite, and while there will never be any closure over conflicts, there still might be peace and they might find the love that they missed.

One of the good things that can happen is that old fears can disappear with dementia. Sourpusses become cheerful. Sedentary people start taking walks and their health improves. People lose their obsessions. They'll often remember lyrics.

My heart goes out to you, because there's no way that this can be easy. You can use this opportunity to forge deeper relationships with your siblings and invest in the dynamics of the family in the future. I wish you the very best.

</comment><comment><USER3> My day job is as an ER nurse, so I'm afraid that I'll only be able to give "inside the box" advice. Although, I don't think that you're going to hurt anything if you try herbal stuff. But, the problem is, with the brain, once the damage is done, it's done, because the hardware/software is broken. And, certainly, if you want a second or even third opinion, by all means, go ahead and get them. Be sure you've gotten an MRI at some point, and seen a Neurologist. There are a few diseases like heavy metal poisoning that can cause similar symptoms. But again, even with those, once the damage is done, it's done, and there isn't much you can do when it's rea

About the only good thing about Alzheimer's is that the person really doesn't suffer much, because they forget what they are going through. Although periods of agitation and frustration are common.

The worst thing about Alzheimer's is it's effect on the family. It's known as "The long goodbye" because it is such a slow, debilitating disease. The family slowly sees the loved one disappear week after week. It is heart wrenching.

Keeping the patient as mentally active as possible has been proven to delay the progression of the disease. Surrounding the patient with familiar objects that they've had around for years can be reassuring. Some of the best dementia units in skilled nursing facilities that I've seen have an "antique row" or a hallway filled with antiques" that the patients can wander back and forth in that often reassures them.

But, probably the best thing that can be done for the patient as well as the family, is to sit around and talk about memories. Talk about the good times, and tell stories about each other. It helps the family to grieve and because the long term memories are the last to go, it helps give the patient a sense of the familiar, and that's usually reassuring.

Hang in there, man. It's tough.

<comment><USER4> "About the only good thing about Alzheimer's is that the person really doesn't suffer much, because they forget what they are going through. Although periods of agitation and frustration are common."

In my experience, that is one of the new things they remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading some months back on reddit I think that exercise has been shown to promote neuron growth in rats. I searched google just now and found this: [http://www.paulspoerry.com/index.php/2007/09/14/excersize- ma...](http://www.paulspoerry.com/index.php/2007/09/14/excersize-makes-your- brain-grow/)

Also, from my experience and from what I've heard/read from others, periodic fasting helps renew the body and slows aging.

So here are my suggestions as a non-expert: 1) Exercise as much as possible: at least an hour per day, the longer and more strenuous the better. Exercise in the sun and the open air is preferable. 2) Eat a simple vegetarian diet with lots of colorful fruits and vegetables. 3) Restrict calories, eat slightly less than needed. 4) Fast once a week. 5) Use the mind: converse, read, write. 6) Find something useful to do, a reason to live. Victor Frankl's experience in the concentration camp comes to mind: a person with a strong purpose can endure much. 7) Play music, sing, or at least listen to good music. 8) Avoid contact with cats, because of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that gets into the brain of its hosts and affects it.

To me, these all seem like common sense measures for good physical and mental health, maybe to you too, but I've been to nursing homes and hospitals where the patients are treated in the opposite way: kept sedentary and indoors, overfed greasy processed foods, relieved of responsibilities that give purpose, and fed an intellectual diet of TV. This regime seems designed to make a healthy person sick, not vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to write a daily Alzheimer's newsletter for a small home-business based in Cummings, GA. Part of my job was to cover upcoming research studies, recent findings, and that sort of thing.

Music therapy seems to be developing as a respected treatment method. Anything that promotes a patient's creativity is highly recommended.

I can remember covering at least one positive story every week about Omega-3 and/or antioxidants.

Other than that keep your ear to the ground for upcoming research studies looking for participants.

I've been up for a couple days or something, so I'm losing my coherence here. E-mail me and I can put you in touch with some really good people who are more up-to-date on current progresses in the field than I am. They keep normal sleep hours, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> I recently read the book "Super Crunchers", which mentioned a medical database called Isabel. By googling I just found this link: <http://www.openclinical.org/aisp_isabel.html>

I think it is a kind of AI that seeks to extract medical knowledge from published medical research. So I think it is not just a search engine that would point you into the middle of incomprehensible scientific papers, it somehow helps you with diagnosis and treatments. (I haven't tried it myself)

Not sure how good it is, but as far as I have read, it is definitely a valid concern that individual doctors might not know about the latest research (where "latest" can actually be years and even decades). There was also recently another post on news.yc about the "Checklist", which might go into a similar vein: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87167>

</comment><comment><USER8> The bad news is that currently available meds are only mildly effective, and by "effective" I mean effective in prolonging disease progression.

The good news is that there is a ton of research being done (I work in this area). Some people are a bit squeamish about getting involved in clinical trials, but if I were in your position, you can bet I would enroll my parent in a trial. The best resource for finding what's enrolling in your area is www.clinicaltrials.gov.

Elan is about to start a phase III trial on their Alzheimer's vaccine, Bapineuzumab, and it has generated quite a bit of buzz.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL2153046720070...](http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL2153046720070521?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true)

As I said, I work in this area and obviously carry a bias. However, I did not see anyone else suggest the possibility of clinical trials, so I thought I should throw it out there to consider among the other options.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is a recent research result suggesting a possible mechanism of action for DHA (a component of fish oil) lowering the risk of onset for Alzheimers. It's not clear that it would be useful in a case of extreme dementia but DHA increases the level of a brain protein, LR11 (also known as SorLA), that helps clear the brain of amyloid precursor protein(APP), essential for production of the brain-gumming beta-amyloid plaque that clogs the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

<http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/27/52/14299>

[http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20071226/fish-oil- preve...](http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20071226/fish-oil-prevents- alzheimers-plaques)

[http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/lr11_and_why...](http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/lr11_and_why_fish_oil_prevents_alzheimers)

</comment><comment><USER10> You might like to read this article which discusses the specialist/generalist issue: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/30/070430fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/30/070430fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all)

</comment><comment><USER9> Alzheimers is heartbreaking and I don't want to post anything that would give you false hope. These folks are running some clinical trials with curcumin / Turmeric & DHA <http://alzheimer.neurology.ucla.edu/trials.html>

these are also available over the counter, so in consultation with her doctor you might have her try one or both of these.

Another source for alternative medicine info is Life Extension Foundation, here is their page for Alzheimers

[http://www.lef.org/protocols/neurological/alzheimers_disease...](http://www.lef.org/protocols/neurological/alzheimers_disease_01.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> I see it has been mentioned, but I'd also like to recommend omega-3 supplementation. Seth Roberts has experimented a lot and recommends a dose of 2-3 tablespoons every day. You can look at his blog if you're interested: <http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/category/nutrition/omega-3/>.

</comment><comment><USER12> See:

<http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/kautz/ac/>

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=R...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=17140265)

This is based on computational modeling only and it is very early research, but there still might be something there.

</comment><comment><USER14> You should try the authors of hippocratech.org

They might be able to refer you to health websites or answer your questions. They only write about finding health resources and they're drug specialists themselves.

Doesn't hurt to try

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank all of you for your input! I will forward this link to my brothers and sisters and I'm sure we'll follow up on alot of this right away. Spending "quality time" with her and bringing her fresh fruit are no-brainers. I also thought about hiding a reefer in her pack of Marlboro's on the way to the all- you-can-eat buffet. I dunno about that one.

My instincts were right. In less than 24 hours, I got high quality feedback from this group that would have taken much longer googling. (Perhaps there's a business opportunity hidden here somewhere: Need Smart Answers? Ask the Hackers.)

</comment><comment><USER15> My father (a psychiatrist and researcher) believes nicotine is a prophylactic against alzheimer -- he now chews nicorette, though he never smoked. This probably won't help your mother, but if you're worried about coming down with alzheimer's yourself you might look into it.

A lot of people in my family unfortunately got this disease. I don't know of anything that can reverse its course and I've looked. There are some drugs that are supposed to help a bit but no silver bullet. Google is your friend here (can't recall what they're called, but there are ads for them in all the psychiatric trade journals.)

So much for the wonders of science.

I further suggest you might join an alzheimer's support network to see how other people cope with a loved one that has this. I'm sorry to say, in my experience, alzheimer's can almost be harder on the caregiver than on the afflicted. So your top priority should be taking care of yourself, so that when you are around your mom you can give her the love and affection she needs and be tolerant of her lapses.

</comment><comment><USER16> Speculatively, Quercetin (a bioflavonoid, available as a supplement) might help:

[https://www.alzinfo.org/newsarticle/templates/archivenewstem...](https://www.alzinfo.org/newsarticle/templates/archivenewstemplate.asp?articleid=113&zoneid=9)

Alzheimer's is also speculatively related to CJD, i.e. mad cow. That is, many cases of Alzheimer's may actually be undiagnosed CJD. New application of existing drugs may help:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1490177.stm>

Of course for prevention, and/or avoiding re-exposure, I'd avoid anything that came from a cow, or anything fed on cow parts (which pretty much means to avoid any animal product from a factory farm). U.S. food practices are exceedingly ill-advised.

Edit: I recall something about aluminum build-up in the brain, though I'm not sure of how well correlated it is.

<http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_216a.html>

Aluminum-free deodorants and baking powders are very easy considerations.</comment>


Freeciv 2.6.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/NEWS-2.6.0 <comment><USER2> You can also play freeciv in your browser here: [https://www.isotrident.com/](https://www.isotrident.com/)

The old online playing service was shut down some time ago but they found another host.

Thanks to all developers and anyone helping!

<comment><USER3> Any reason why they claim to be something else ? You say they "found another host" but this doesn't look like an official freeciv property.

Maybe it's them but the presentation is weird. I'm not sure if the license allows you to re-release as another name, it probably does, but then presenting it as "they found another host" sounds kind of disingenuous.

> Battle for Planet Isotrident is an epic empire-building strategy game > inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in > prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the Stone Age to the > Space Age. Isotrident can be played online in your web-browser for free.

<comment><USER2> The news on freeciv.org states:

> 9th Jul 2018 - A new Freeciv-web instance has been launched on > isotrident.com. This server has working 2D and 3D single and multiplayer > games, play-by-email and all other Freeciv-web features enabled.

That's all I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love strategy games, and unfortunately my startup life doesn't really allow me to play much anymore.

However, 1-2 weeks a year, I take a game and play. Sometimes it's an old game like Master of Orion 2.

It might be just me, but most games have a terrible "AI" (it's called AI, even though it just means the computer's ability to play against you), where the only way to get a real challenge is to give the computer unfair advantages.

A while ago a team a Google (open.ai) showed a very promising AI able to quickly learn DotA 2 and beat world-class players [0].

I wish they could do the same for many other strategy games. I would really enjoy playing then.

Perhaps gaming companies could charge a small extra for a "strong" AI, e.g. few cents per hour, and justify the investment.

Or, it could be an open source system, and you could use some extra computing power to let it calculate great strategies.

[0]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/25/17492918/openai- dota-2-bo...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/25/17492918/openai-dota-2-bot- ai-five-5v5-matches)

<comment><USER5> Obligatory mention of AI War:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_War:_Fleet_Command](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_War:_Fleet_Command)

<comment><USER4> Fantastic! I have never heard of it.

> In a quote from the developer, Chris Park, "'There are a ton of RTS games > out there that are fun to play...The key weakness that they almost all > share, in my opinion, is AI that falls apart in advanced play."

Exactly this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Too bad there aren't any official torrents, the download is very slow for me and I'd love to help out.

</comment><comment><USER7> Note that the stable Windows builds aren't available yet. Once they are, we'll also make it available for portable use: [https://portableapps.com/apps/games/freeciv_portable](https://portableapps.com/apps/games/freeciv_portable)

</comment><comment> ainar-g Sigh. If only FreeCol[1] had more activity. The last patch was in 2015, and IIRC it's still hosted on SourceForge.

[1] [http://www.freecol.org](http://www.freecol.org)

</comment><comment><USER8> Another interesting Civ clone is C-Evo: [http://c-evo.org/text.html](http://c-evo.org/text.html)

For a long time it was small enough to fit on a 1.44 floppy!

</comment><comment><USER9> Lots of rule changes in there. What is the story behind this? Does Freeciv emulate rules of Civilization 2 or 3 (which are fixed I suppose) or does it have its own rules?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has it's own default rules but it's quite easy to write your own ruleset. There are rulesets for civ2, civ3 and even alpha centauri iirc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A sad note is that all the GNAPATCH links go through archive.org. Just a sign of freeciv's slow (but awesome :) release cycle, they have migrated to a new place now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Still no Mac binaries any more, tho?

<comment><USER12> Looks like there might be, it's kinda hidden through digging from their download page, to the wiki, to a dropbox folder...

[http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Install- MacOSX](http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Install-MacOSX)

[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/buypyjprsbvq0hd/AABuisFfBn- WDJgAE...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/buypyjprsbvq0hd/AABuisFfBn- WDJgAEcXIZGrSa?dl=0)

<comment><USER13> > brew install freeciv</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get into $300k+ club? - <AUTHOR> Is it possible to get into  $300k+ club without joining Google? I know salaries at FB are good but not as good as what people get at Google. Salaries at Amazon are in bottom 20% for top 5 tech companies. I have around 10 years of experience by now and have strong command over architecture, design, and especially AWS. I have been leading teams for last 5 years. I am from India and live in US. I do have green card now. <comment><USER2> In any organization, the best way to hit an outsized compensation target is to align yourself with revenue.

Usually, this means an operational component where you can improve on efficiencies and save on costs, or a sales and marketing component where you can directly drive revenue.

The ability to straddle multiple disciplines and communicate effectively in each is valuable.

The other option is to start your own business, i.e. services, consulting, etc. $300K isn't that much in terms of annual net income. This is still doing what I mentioned above.

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook pays better than Google. Hell, they used to have $100k signing bonuses for new grads.

</comment><comment><USER4> Netflix pays reasonably well. You can also get that at some of the bigger name SF companies, or as a consultant.

<comment><USER5> +1 for consulting. Start by building a personal brand.

<comment><USER6> Personal brand? like getting people to know you as en expert in x field?

<comment><USER5> That would be great, as would having a successful open source project, but I think the bar is somewhat lower.

Speak at conferences, publish a whitepaper, write a book... depending on your personality, merely having a public presence can be enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Depending on background, quant at hf will get you there.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're doing it for the money, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER9> I am sick of this sort of privileged comments. You probably have never been poor in your life (not US poor but india poor). It is nothing wrong to be financially motivated. It is software development. Why do you inherently assume that a 300k+ job is more soul-sucking than a 100k job? Lastly, most things most people do, they do it for the money. For some, it may not be 1 priority but it definitely should be among the top priorities.

<comment><USER10> I upvote you because I too dont get why people take the view that money is not important. I go to work for the money; not because I like hanging out with a bunch of random people for 9+ hours a day.</comment></comment></comment>


Huffington: SEO Is Just A Tool, Not A Way To Produce Great Journalism (video) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/11/arianna-huffington/

<comment><USER2> Which is why this great gem was created: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/what-time- superbowl...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/what-time-superbowl- start_n_819173.html)

Don't create SEO-ified crap and pretend that it doesn't get in the way of great journalism. Jeez.</comment>


Why I developed an entire system for the government and then gave it away - <AUTHOR> I build an alert system to the national meteorological office of my country for free, here is why.<p>https://medium.com/@erikmejias/bootstrapping-my-developer-career-5a71b69914e1 <comment><USER2> Why is this in Ask?

<comment><USER3> _"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."_ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

In all seriousness, I'm wondering the same thing. My only guess might be some automated filtering picked up on "Why" and miscategorized it. Another possibility is the title was edited.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Stacks – a puzzle game - <AUTHOR> http://stacks.amizrahi.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting concept. 2 Pieces of feedback. 1) it takes forever to spawn new blocks and the movement animation to run. 2) Ability to kick off multiple block movements at once. rather than waiting for it to complete animation.

<comment><USER3> Fun concept.

I'd second the multiple block movements. One critical element of game design for most games that become fast paced is that the user must always feel like a failure of death was their fault. Example are pixel perfect collision detection in bullet hell games or the very precise mid-air controls of your character in super meat boy.

Without being able to move multiple blocks at the same time I got into a situation multiple times where while waiting for my next move opportunity another block spawned ending the game. While it may well be "by design" it still _feels_ crummy because the loss wasn't due to my inability to reason quickly enough, it was because the game can't keep up with the actions that I want to complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool game. I really liked it :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Got some fun, thank you</comment>


Flashback - <AUTHOR> http://beust.com/weblog/2011/06/13/flashback/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beust%2FOtakuXml+%28Otaku%2C+Cedric%27s+weblog%29 <comment><USER2> So, the article argues that since Flash now runs mildly acceptably, we need it to watch video again? I've been watching video on my phone for almost 4 years without Flash; why do I need it now?</comment>


Oracle puts its 11g database in Amazon's cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/22/Oracle_puts_its_11g_database_in_Amazons_cloud_1.html

<comment><USER2> This does compete somewhat with Amazon's SimpleDB offering.

This is getting interesting for Amazon and Google - with their offerings do they want to offer foundation compute/storage services, or services higher up the value chain (i.e. databases, whole apps)? If they push down the path of offering both, then they are potentially competing with their own customers (at the two ends).

(As an aside) Amazon use Oracle in their own infrastructure: [http://www.oracle.com/customers/snapshots/amazon-oracle- berk...](http://www.oracle.com/customers/snapshots/amazon-oracle-berkeley-db- casestudy.pdf)

<comment><USER3> 1\. SimpleDB doesn't really compete with Oracle. SimpleDB it isn't ACID, Oracle is ACID before it is anything else. Oracle has its own programming language, XML features, a very advanced SQL dialect, and many other features that SimpleDB lacks. Similarly, SimpleDB has a distributed replication feature that Oracle doesn't have.

It is interesting that Amazon uses Oracle AND Oracle BerkeleyDB. I wonder how Oracle TimesTen compares to BerkeleyDB for this use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the docs: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=728072011>

Any ideas as to cost? It'd be neat if you could pay via Amazon's infrastructure rather than talking to salespeople.

<comment><USER5> Yes. This really isn't aimed at startups. (pdf) [http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/technology-price- lis...](http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list.pdf)

There's a reason my Larry Ellison owns a Mig fighter jet, one of the largest yachts in the world, and has his own 747. He occasionally has the San Jose Airport stay open late, just so he can fly in after hours. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison>

<comment><USER6> Well, nobody pays Oracle list prices. Well some people might, but Oracle will _always_ cut you a deal. They would much rather sell you a site license for a price you can (just about) afford than have you go somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> huge</comment>


Ask HN: Help? Breaking into the App Store top 100. - <AUTHOR>

I thought I would never do this. But here I am so I'm just going to get it out there.
Last year I had a baby and quit my awesome job as a graphic designer for the Blizzard web team largely because I wasn't making enough money to keep living in Southern California if my wife was going to be able to stay at home with our newborn. We moved to Las Vegas and now live with my wife's father. I spent most of the past year starting Falcon Empire and making my first iPhone game, Beat Boxes, which I finally released late last year.
Of course, nobody noticed.
Despite what you're reading here, I'm terrible at self promotion. In desperation and ready to give up on my dream and go apply for a job at McDonald's for a while, I started giving my game away for free. I figured that way at least some people would get to play it and I won't simply have wasted the last year of my life. I thought maybe a couple hundred people would find it and download it. Well, things have gone a little differently. And now I have a chance for things to go very differently, and I need all the help I can get, and that's the only reason I'm here now.
I know I'm essentially a nobody here, but I'm begging you to help me become somebody.
I'm asking for three huge favors.
First, please upvote this post.
Second, if you have an iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch or even if you just have iTunes downloaded on your computer, please download my game, Beat Boxes, for free.
There's no catch or anything, there aren't even ads in the game or in-app purchases. It's completely free, and hopefully also kind of fun. But even if you do nothing but download it and never play it and delete it right away, I think that would still help me so much.
Lastly, and this is asking a lot more, I know, please help me spread the word. Even if all you do is post, "check out this game by this one guy," on Twitter or Facebook and include the link to the game (in the comments, below), that would be a HUGE help.
You see, I thought I'd get a couple hundred downloads but it turns out that I'm getting many thousands of downloads. I'm getting enough downloads that I actually just barely poked into the top 100 free games on the App Store, which to me is a very big deal. I'm freaking out a little bit about it. But I also know that this is my one chance to get Beat Boxes noticed by a wider audience, and maybe even Apple itself if I'm extremely lucky. And I'm going to do what I can and what I have to in order to try to help make a little luck.
Right now I've obviously made negative money on the game between all the license fees I've paid and the music I commissioned, and that's completely ignoring the year I spent not having a paycheck. But if I can break into the top 50 or maybe even top 10 free games with Beat Boxes, then maybe I'll have momentum. When the promotion ends and Beat Boxes isn't free anymore, maybe people will actually drop 99 cents my way to play it if they hear about it from a friend who tried it and liked it. Maybe I can put off applying at McDonald's for another month while I try to finish up my next game, a game that I've been too depressed to put any work into for the past several weeks. I won't know unless I do everything I can to try to help myself, and that means coming here with this completely self-serving post and begging you. I don't want to do it, but I had to try.
Thanks, and if nothing else then please wish me luck. I'll gladly and happily do follow up posts about numbers and graphs and lessons and I'll answer any and all questions you guys have. You can e-mail me at email@example.com or post them here (though I have pretty strict noprocrast settings that I'm too afraid to disable so it could take a bit for me to have a chance to answer here). If you want to see any follow-up posts, check out my blog at syncingdreams.com - I'm going to head over and write up a post there right now. <comment><USER2> You may not want to hear this advice, but attack lower hanging fruit. As an indie dev, you don't have the time or resources to try and build a hit. Your biggest concern is money to eat tomorrow, so build apps that take less than a month to launch. Don't build mass market games, build niche stuff (educational, for kids, business utilities, etc.).

App distribution is a bitch; if you're not ranked at launch, you won't be successful. Look at re-launching your app in the next month if its unsuccessful. Try in-app purchases to allow unlocks rather than selling it for 99c outright (people download free, but rarely download 99c apps when its unknown and there's so much competition out there). The timing of your release is key too. Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point I want and value all advice, so thanks very much. Good points, all of them. I also need to work on figuring out how long an app idea will take for me to implement, or maybe just build the smallest possible app idea I can conceive of having any potential market and try my best to finish it in under a month?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Immediate feedback: it's really hard to time jumps due to the ball bouncing along on the ground automatically. If I tap the screen in the middle of an auto-jump, the ball then has to fall down to the floor before my jump action is triggered.

Makes it feel as if there's always a lag between when I tap the screen and when the jump occurs. Sometimes it doesn't jump at all. Lag is a major problem in a reflex game like this.

You should consider always jumping immediately, even if the ball is already in the air due to an auto-jump (physics be damned). Or having the ball roll on the floor rather than jump along.

<comment><USER4> I just played and I can second that a hundred percent. It's very pronounced and a big detriment to the experience. Otherwise the game is very engaging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the confirmation. Would a visual signal that you have tapped and that the ball is "primed" for a high bounce be helpful? Or is that still not really enough?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, it's hard to predict. I am guessing that yes, it would probably help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'll have some new testers try it out, and ask them some specific questions about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey Alan - I know your spirits are down a bit right now, but this post has a very depressing and desperate undertone. You've gone through a lot and times are rough. I completely understand. While that may urge me (and others) to help you, I'm sure you don't want feelings of pity and desperation to be associated with your game.

You used so many words telling us how we can help you that you neglected to share the most important thing (and biggest selling point): how awesome your game is and how much enjoyment we will derive from playing it. In fact, you mentioned almost nothing about the game itself. You went on and on about the importance of moving up in a list and gaining momentum, but most of us have not the slightest clue of what your game is about.

Just some food for thought. Best of luck and I look forward to some followup posts.

<comment><USER6> I agree. The attitude in the post turned me off. There are lots of people who have worked hard with nothing to show for it in this world... so your story isn't unique. I'm an app developer too and can't feel sympathy. Heck, at least you're even in the fringe of the top 100 apps - mine aren't even there.

Tell us why the app will help us. How it will entertain us or delight us. Why it's different from other apps. Why we should even recommend it to friends. What will wow us?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to Beat Boxes on the App Store: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beat-boxes/id460798042>

<comment><USER7> Added a couple more downloads from the UK.

Whilst I like endless games so this does appeal, I do echo the comments above that it seems to be iOS users would prefer levels to complete, the game and concept itself work great on the 4s</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you do when you get bored from a "successful" side project? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working on a (hobby-)side project that I started last March; It's already functional (since several versions back actually) and even deployed to our company's server where some of my colleagues are  using it, since it solves some real world problems. (The legal part is all sorted out, no worries about that part.)
The product is 95% finished (some logging and error handling to do), and thought about turning it into a SaaS product, just to see how it would fare.
The problem is that I got bored. What's supposed to be done in a day, still unfinished a week later. Not because of some nasty bugs, or technical problems. It's just that I no longer that excited.
In such circumstances, what do you do? <comment><USER2> If you are so close to finished, partner with someone to bring it to market. That will add some urgency.

</comment><comment><USER3> Start another one and move one. It must be a challenge and giving you satisfaction. For me, every day i have to go to work with a smile, if not, i quickly move on. Life is to short.

</comment><comment><USER4> sell it</comment>


What happens if you mistakenly apply for citizenship instead of leave to remain? - <AUTHOR> https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-happens-if-you-mistakenly-apply-for-british-citizenship-instead-of-indefinite-leave-to-remain <comment><AUTHOR> To clarify - the original title is 'What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship instead of indefinite leave to remain?' but this had to be shortened due to title length rules.

The answer to the question is "In this particular case, your application gets ignored until your visa runs out, at which point you get arrested and detained pending deportation."</comment>


Offer HN: Free Tax Help from a CPA - <AUTHOR>

I'm offering free monthly office hours for anyone that needs tax advice.  Also, I'll be around nwc (new work city) coworking space if you want to meet me in person.<p>You can ask me anything accounting, partnership, corporate or individual related. <comment><USER2> I'd like to ask a couple of individual freelancer questions. Do I need to go through HNOfficehours or could I contact you directly somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can email me directly at email@example.com</comment></comment>


Crank up your Productivity with these 11 Mac apps - <AUTHOR> http://rickdronkers.com/post/40338237583/crank-up-your-productivity-with-these-11-mac-apps

<comment><USER2> > Internet marketing blahblah, (Web)technology blahblah, Lifehacking & > Productivity blahblah, Entrepreneurship & Business blahblah.

I love how this literally is distilled down to <buzzword> blah blah blah.

Seriously though, couple of decent suggestions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you have to be honest right ;). I'm a internet marketeer that rolled into the entrepreneur-role at a web-tech startup. In my spare time i like to read about lifehacking and productivity.

Could put drinking beer and barbecuing on there as well, but I like to just exercise those activities, not blog about them.</comment></comment>


Holograms That You Can Touch and Feel - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/holograms-you-can-actually-touch

<comment><USER2> It looks as though the "pressure" field is created from the bottom - notice in the video he repeatedly taps the piece of paper from above and no other angles.

Once they show that same demo but being able to tap from above, side, bottom, and even "poke" the ball and watch the paper crumble under the resistance - well then that would just wreak of awesomeness!

</comment><comment><USER3> All that intelligence, and he can't create a YouTube video with sound :)</comment>


Ask HN: Books to Learn Clojure Properly? - <AUTHOR> What books should I invest my time in if I want to learn Clojure (+ LISP, Java)?
I come from a Python & Javascript background.
I have a 2-months time span for getting into it, alongside 3 others who want to do that too. <comment><USER2> Start with Brave Clojure [0]. Then continue your journey with Joy of Clojure [1]. Keep on going with Elements of Clojure [2].

[0] [https://www.braveclojure.com/](https://www.braveclojure.com/)

[1] [http://www.joyofclojure.com/](http://www.joyofclojure.com/)

[2] [https://elementsofclojure.com/](https://elementsofclojure.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have added all the links posted here on LearnAwesome's Clojure topic: [https://github.com/learn-awesome/learn- awesome/blob/master/p...](https://github.com/learn-awesome/learn- awesome/blob/master/programming-languages/clojure.md)

If you do come across other useful resources, please do send a pull request.

</comment><comment><USER4> For Book, I would recommend: [https://www.braveclojure.com/](https://www.braveclojure.com/)

Additionally, you can learn from this: \- [http://clojure- doc.org/articles/tutorials/introduction.html](http://clojure- doc.org/articles/tutorials/introduction.html) \- [http://app.klipse.tech/](http://app.klipse.tech/) \- [http://www.4clojure.com/](http://www.4clojure.com/) \- [https://kimh.github.io/clojure-by-example](https://kimh.github.io/clojure-by- example)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Live with is quite good.

</comment><comment><USER6> +1 for Brave Clojure. Also, it's not a book but I really enjoyed the Clojure koans as a starting point.

www.clojurescriptkoans.com</comment>


Martin Odersky (Scala creator) launches company to commercialize scala and akka - <AUTHOR> http://typesafe.com/

<comment><USER2> And the 'integrated stack' of Akka and Scala might be getting a lot more integrated:

 _"Over the next versions, we plan to gradually merge Akka with scala.actors"_

Martin Odersky - [http://groups.google.com/group/scala- user/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/scala- user/browse_thread/thread/63fbf1de8c20fb13)

<comment><USER3> This is a good thing. The Akka versions of Futures and Actors seems a lot more solid to me than the existing Scala ones, and also seem to perform better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome. We're using Scala and Akka, and are hiring, by the way. <http://blog.getgush.com>

<comment><USER5> Us too! <http://www.connexity.com/jobs-software-engineer.php> Really excited about seeing this stack thrive.

<comment><USER6> uh, what do you guys do exactly ? Folks on TC are asking the same question btw. Are you building a fastclick 2.0 ? fastclick++ ? fasterclick ? fastclickclick ?? Heh. Seriously would like to know what it is you use scala for. "next-generation online media technology" is just too vague.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't much about Scala, but looking at the examples on <http://www.simplyscala.com/>, it looks like the language has a lot of syntactic sugar. Scala users, is that an accurate assessment or I am misjudging it?

<comment><USER8> No. On the contrary, Scala has a very minimal syntax. Syntactic sugar are rare in Scala.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I'll have to check it out, I love learning new languages. Can you recommend a good Scala book?

<comment><USER9> Definitely Programming in Scala - <http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala>. You might find some parts of the book a little boring if you already have experience with functional programming, but it is one of the best books about programming languages I've read (I've only read the second edition, not the one that is available online, but I guess, the first one will be OK as an introduction too).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Scala. So much so that I've wrung my brain trying to find places where it'd really make sense in my toolkit. I keep coming up empty though. I work primarily in Rails on the front end and if I need some "boom-boom" on the backend, generally that's going to involve services written in node.js, Java (rarely), or C. There are excellent Java libraries that I can exploit for heavy lifting by using JRuby. I've never had issues "scaling" business logic from either a human or a technical perspective in Ruby.

Is there a "killer app" for the Scala/Akka stack that I'm missing?

<comment><USER11> _Is there a "killer app" for the Scala/Akka stack that I'm missing?_

Many people don't like to maintain polyglots. Scala is expressive enough to write your frontend code in, but fast enough to also handle your backend code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it incredibly ironic that they have called the company Typesafe when type-safety is something Scala definitely does not have.

<comment><USER13> Tony? This has got to be Tony....

<comment><USER3> I laughed. Hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like how BankSimple is a world leading company. :)

A world leading company which hasn't launched...

<comment><USER15> Where does it say that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks very promising, best of luck to Prof. Odersky in this new venture.

</comment><comment><USER17> The springsource of scala?

<comment><USER18> That does seem to be the business model they are applying here. Will be interesting to see how long they go before they are acquired, just as SpringSource was by VMWare.

Red Hat & VMWare would seem to be the most obvious bidders for Typesafe as they both offer Java-based stacks with enterprise support that Scala & Akka would fit in very well with.

<comment><USER17> I imagine it will take several years, but thats probably the path. CTOs look for this kind of (enterprise) support ecosystem before investing in new technologies. Given Scala's documented easy transition for Java developers, and the fact that Java is getting really old, I'd wager this is the next big (non-MS) enterprise language. The training/support/tools company is the inflection point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great news. I like Scala and I like how you can mix it with old Java code. Doing so you have an easy migration path and you can gain productivity at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome news... well done! Also, there's a related story on Forbes: <http://onforb.es/leOr7s> from this morning.

<comment><USER21> It's unfortunate that the Forbes article repeatedly calls the company "Typeface" instead of "Typesafe".

<comment><USER21> (The article has been fixed... The edit / delete window on my original comment has expired)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is great news.

While we're at it, what web framework are you guys using in your Scala webapps? Lift? Wicket? Play?

</comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely awesome. I've been rewriting most of my financial analytics code in Scala & its a genuine pleasure to see code sizes reduce 5-6 times & being a lot more expressive at the same time, not to mention speed improvements.

Just yesterday I had an interview for a developer position with a hedge fund where the partners used M$ Excel, M$ SQL Server, M$ VBA macros and a bunch of Bloomberg terminals for the datafeed. I had prepared a presentation that advocated Scala as the primary toolset, Hadoop on the backend & a couple of DCOM hooks ( JIntegra ) that got data in & out of the Bloomberg & the rest of M$ world without getting all tangled up in M$ land.

Must say I didn't get very far. "Seems too cutting edge, no commercial support, we only have few 1000 rows so why not just use a SQL Server, what about front-end solutions for this newfangled language, does Scala do reporting, does Scala talk to Bloomberg, do other IB's use Scala, we'll use Scala when an IB starts using Scala " were some of the concerns I got.

They haven't said no, but I have a feeling they'll end up hiring a dotNet veteran who'll happily code VBA macros till the end of time instead of taking a chance on a platform that'll genuinely change the nature of s/w development as we know it.

Its amazing to see people happily betting the farm on CDS defaults of XYZ company, where they stand to lose a couple hundred million dollars if the bet goes wrong. But the same folks won't bet on a promising new technology because its too new & has no commercial support, preferring instead to stick with 30 year old M$ tech due to comfort level. The chance of a loss here is several orders of magnitude lesser, yet they don't get it.

<comment><USER23> Your rant screams inexperience.

 _I've been rewriting most of my financial analytics code in Scala & its a genuine pleasure to see code sizes reduce 5-6 times..._

What did you write your analytics code in before?! Most quants use R, Matlab, q/kdb+, OCaml, Python, etc. I can't imagine an analyst would ever use a language like Java or C++ for research.

 _M$ Excel, M$ SQL Server, M$ VBA macros_

Also known as: what most of Wall Street uses. Are you sure you want a career in this industry?

 _what about front-end solutions for this newfangled language, does Scala do reporting, does Scala talk to Bloomberg, do other IB's use Scala_

All of which are legitimate concerns. Did you bother to address any of those?

As the others have mentioned, banks aren't looking for "fast" or even "productive"; they're looking for "reliable". Wall Street doesn't chase technology the same way Silicon Valley does. Remember the FourSquare outage (MongoDB) or the numerous issues with Twitter back in the day (Ruby on Rails)? Banks need to have better uptime than that.

<comment><USER24> We used to talk longingly about using strongly typed languages when I was at an IB. We mostly used perl for munging data and SAS for actual heavy lifting. It would have been great to have the compiler yell at me for adding a return to a dollar value or whatever.

<comment><USER23> Were you at ETL? The prop group I was in at Morgan used q/kdb+, which was great for a lot of things but did cause some trip-ups that static typing would have prevented. My group eventually shut down and I left the firm, but I had heard Morgan was looking into F# to use company-wide. (I used Ada in a previous life, so I know full-well the benefits of strong typing.)

<comment><USER24> Yup. Heard they were doing the F# thing too, but can't see them getting away from unix...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"I found a hard drive in my garage with the original Reddit Lisp code from 2005" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/8830oa/and_now_a_word_from_reddits_engineers/dwhg6vi/ <comment><USER2> Scraping the /popular page on del.icio.us: [https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit1.0/blob/master/scra...](https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit1.0/blob/master/scraper.lisp)

del.icio.us/popular used to be very similar to Hacker News as a source of fresh web-scene-relevant article flow.

Between /popular, and per-tag RSS feeds, in some ways del.icio.us used to be a better Reddit than current Reddit. Tags and tag feeds were a very flexible way to monitor interest topics. What is now a network of reposts between subreddits, used to just be the addition of tags.

Saving a bookmark to your own set of bookmarks also served as an "upvote". This created a nice incentive alignment; if something was interesting, you would want to keep track of it, and add it to your collection, with the tags relevant to you!

Because del.icio.us was not explicitly designed as a "hype machine" like reddit, it turned over a lot of really original content that would have been hard to discover otherwise. It helped that the peak of del.icio.us was during the rise of blogs and self-published websites.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the source code link given in the comment: [https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit1.0](https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit1.0)</comment>


Facebook Just Copied Google Wave and Reverse Marketed It - <AUTHOR> http://brandonk.com/?p=214

<comment><USER2> Let's hope it gets the same fate as the Wave did... death.

Although new exciting and innovative... it's too radical and rather little too open. Not to mention, when will you ever get your work done.

I was watching Mark Twain Award to Tina Fey last nite and they showed a little clip from the movie Mean Girls which she wrote. Basically that scene epitomizes what will happen if you try to maintain a massive multiple thread msgs. You'll eventually get to a point where you won't know what you're saying to whom.</comment>


Mysterious electric car maker Faraday Future will spend $1B on a US factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/5/9674314/faraday-future-electric-car-1-billion-factory <comment><AUTHOR> Reading this book about the history of EV's atm: The great race: the global quest for the car of the future ([http://amzn.to/1kxnT0c](http://amzn.to/1kxnT0c)). Ze Germans are really lagging behind so far.</comment>


Ask HN: What application do you use to take/store notes? - <AUTHOR>

I had lost hope in every kind of notes-taking app until Evernote came to the scene and made me hooked to it. I loved it. I recommended everyone to use it.
The latest version of Evernote however changed it all. It sucks hairy balls as they have gone the Microsoft Office/OneNote way and made it a bloatware. I have totally stopped using it.
What do you guys use to take simple notes which can be easily synchronized with a web version and have everything that Evernote once was. <comment><USER2> Notational Velocity <http://notational.net/>

From the description on the site:

The same area is used both for creating notes and searching. I.e., in the process of entering the title for a new note, related notes appear below, letting users file information there if they choose. Likewise, if a search reveals nothing, one need simply press return to create a note with the appropriate title.

If a note's title starts with the search term(s), that title will be "auto- completed". This selects the note and consequently displays it. Correspondingly, selecting a note places its title in the search area (De- selecting the note restores the search terms).

To create a new note, just type its title and press return. Edit the note as needed in the bottom pane.

To view or edit an existing note, type one or more words contained in its body or title. Reveal a note's content by using the up/down arrow keys to select it. To make good use of NV, try to maintain one detail/fact/item per note. Notational Velocity's strength, note-filtering, is diminished when only a few notes contain most of the content in the database.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've been working on a productivity app for researchers (currently only have a web dashboard). We're finding it great to organize notes/links/files within our own startup as well. Would be awesome if you guys could give it a try and give us some feedback!

Check it out here: <http://thinkpanda.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> OmniOutliner on the Mac is awesome for note taking.

Being able to take notes in an outline format allows me to order the information as it comes in. People often jump around and come back to a point or say they will speak more about something later, with an outliner I am able to keep topics organized better.

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried to write my own because i wasn't satisfied with all the different ones i tried. But as free time kept getting shorter and shorter, I abandoned the project and reverted to using Tomboy on my Ubuntu desktop.

Not exactly cutting edge, but I yet to overcome the information overflow that i suffer from.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you tried Google Notebook? It's no longer in development, but it does the job for me - it's fast, clean, shareable. [However, I suspect that if you haven't used it before, Google doesn't let you start using it... I might be wrong]

Good luck in your search, and let us know what you choose in the end!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I have used Google Notebook but I want some local app. There are already some very good ones as an extension on a web browser.

Zoho Notebook is also good enough now that Google Notebook is no longer in development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> org-mode. Nothing else even comes close.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. org-mode is simply perfect, and alone is worth knowing and sticking with emacs for - that is, if you already mostly use plain text in your life, for speed and simplicity. Be sure to get and use the cheat-sheet at <http://orgmode.org/orgcard.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using xPAD for a while. It's simple but very useful. My housemate swears by Evernote but I'm not convinced yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since I am using Windows 7 my options are rather limited. I think xPad might serve my purpose if only it had an alternative for Win 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh man - what's wrong with OneNote? I've used it for years and can't live without it. What is better on Windows?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing wrong with OneNote as such but I have to check my notes online quite often(from other systems) which is kinda hard with OneNote. As a matter of fact OneNote is an awesome app for windows but until they come up with synchronization and a web version like in Evernote, I'd rather not use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just picked out some wiki software (I use DokuWiki) and start logging everything on there.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use Tomboy. It has some sort of sync function, but I don't use it.

</comment><comment><USER13> a few options:

notepad.exe with DropBox

Google Docs

Etherpad

<comment><AUTHOR> Dropbox is awesome and it has single-handedly made me a backup freak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google Wave.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Wave? Really? Care to share how you do that.

<comment><USER14> Yes. I'm a big note jotter and have experimented with different apps; Wave is the best so far. Whenever I have a thought I need to record I just open a new wave, write it, and move it from my inbox to an appropriate folder within the Wave client. All wave contents are searchable, so finding stuff is easy. Plus, when the note/wave is business related, I just add a contact to the wave to get feedback on what I wrote or to start a fully treaded discussion. If you don't already have Wave apply for an account or ask for an invite--it's worth a try. Plus it's free.</comment></comment></comment>