How Can We Help the World's Poor? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/Kristof-t.html?ref=books <comment><USER2> "The new synthesis should embrace specific interventions that all sides agree have merit, while also borrowing from an important insight of the aid critics: trade is usually preferable to aid."

I am happy to see the above remark. I makes me feel like "There may be hope for the world yet." Having done a lot of volunteer work, therapy for my own personal issues....etc, ad nauseum... I have concluded that heroics and "saviors" typically cause more problems than they solve. For example, welfare and many other programs require recipients to psychologically identify themselves as pathetic enough to merit such help and actively encourage them to keep failing in some significant way so as to continue to qualify for aid. The harm to identity and self esteem and the bad habits they encourage are likely to cause long-term harm in the form of learned helplessness.

A couple of good books with relevant points:

 _Diet for a Small Planet_ \-- One of the points it makes is that foreign aid to prevent starvation often comes in the form of foreign foods which cannot be grown locally and therefore aren't locally sustainable or economically viable once the locals are hooked on them.

 _Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed_ \-- In essence, this explores some of the problems with top-down solutions and how unrealistic they so frequently are.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1 - see them good stuff for fair prices. cell phones especially

2 - hire assassins to kill their incredible corrupt crap leaders.</comment>


Building the infrastructure in Clojure for an electric-powered bikes scheme - <AUTHOR> http://blog.juxt.pro/posts/rideon.html <comment><USER2> The reasoning for the choice of Clojure is interesting, in terms of their design around immutable events.

The juxt guys have made a huge contribution to the Open Source and Clojure community.

[https://github.com/juxt](https://github.com/juxt)

[https://juxt.pro/](https://juxt.pro/)</comment>


Why Groupon is Overvalued - <AUTHOR> http://www.philmichaelson.com/monetizing-content/groupon-is-overvalued/ <comment><USER2> I was talking to a VC the other day about Groupon. According to him, every local business he's talked to that's used Groupon has universally had a bad experience with it. Groupon customers rarely turn into repeat customers, which is the main incentive for a business to use Groupon. This shouldn't be too surprising given that most Groupon customers are probably very price sensitive and in deal hunting mode.

</comment><comment><USER3> > As a result, people are more often looking for, and more socially > comfortable using, coupons.

I think the coupon argument is a red herring. The way I see it, there are two types of coupons: the price discrimination variety and the early-adopter- advantage variety. The former category includes things like grocery flyers and has a certain stigma associated with it -- which is why it works (if everyone clipped grocery coupons, the store would be making less money, not more). The latter category is where Groupon fits in, and I don't think it has the same stigma as the former, nor do I think the recession will affect it as much.

Flashing your iPhone to save 60% on surfing lessons sends different social- status signals than clipping newspaper coupons to save 25 cents on canned soup.

</comment><comment><USER4> Without the real financials at hand, it's hard to tell if they are overvalued or not. There are numbers being thrown everywhere... but I'd take them with a grain of salt unless backed by hard evidence (which is lacking).

Overvalued or not, everybody knows Groupon is working. Customers are crazy about it. My wife checks it as the first thing in the morning. And there's no sign of businesses giving up on offering deals.

As for the businesses who don't like it, if they are looking at making profit from the one-shot Groupon traffic, I think they are wrong. Think of what you spent on Groupon as part of your advertising expenditure. Using Groupon, you are putting your name out there in BIG'N'BOLD along with an opportunity to show them how awesome you are.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would think the biggest issue with Groupon is the type of customer they send to your business. Is the Groupon demographic likely to produce valuable long term customers? I am skeptical, because the trait being selected is price sensitivity.

</comment><comment><USER6> An article in Inc recently quotes a couple businesses that only ended up breaking even on their Groupon coupon. So the businesses are just hoping people come back for more with is less than guaranteed.

<comment><USER7> I would think that breaking even on a Groupon would be the desired result. The point of Groupon, just like advertising, is customer acquisition. It's really all about lifetime value of a Groupon acquired customer. Companies need to track that to really judge whether Groupon is a worthwhile investment, but if you break even on the initial Groupon, then the ROI has to be positive unless your product/service is super crappy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it has to be said that a successful business does not have to be a unique business. This is about how they don't have exclusive deals, who said they did?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree a successful business need not be unique. For example, many blogging platforms are and will be successful (e.g., tumblr, posterours, blogger, wordpress, etc).

However, if the consumer value proposition is built on providing exclusive deals, than to preserve your audience's trust, your deals need to be exclusive.

Please note, the article was also about how Groupon: -has no top not repeat local customers -has inside investors selling -benefits from a temporary trends towards coupon redemption

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Price is where supply meets demand. Not a comment just a reminder.

<comment><AUTHOR> overvaluation - too high a value or price assigned to something

overvalued - Describing a security trading at a higher price than it logically should.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+overvalued&ie=u...](http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+overvalued&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

<comment><USER9> yah, Value is by definition subjective. And here the security is not "trading". It is "one time, in band camp, I bought some stock". So, the buyer's value is "the value", until some other buyer (not blogger) steps in with their subjective "value". Discussion is sort of useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> fair. and we don't know terms (e.g., liquidation preferences).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On the quiet, the US is legalising marijuana - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6897958.ece <comment><USER3> > In an online press conference with his younger supporters, the first > question was about whether legalising and taxing pot would be a good thing > to help raise revenues.

That was Reddit.

It seems insane that our last three presidents admitted to smoking weed yet thousands upon thousands of people are languishing in jail for doing the same thing. Cognitive dissonance much?

<comment><USER4> The Release charity in the UK has a campaign called "Nice People Take Drugs", which aims to change drug policy to harm reduction and remove the stigma associated with drug use. One of their promotional tools is a deck of cards, each featuring a politician known to be tough on drugs, subtitled with a confessional quote of drug use from their youth:

<http://www.release.org.uk/nicepeopletakedrugs/deck-of-cards/>

(you can click on each card to see the quote)

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that's an effective argument.

Politicians occasionally break the speed limit also, but it's not a great argument for increasing the speed limit.

<comment><USER6> You don't go to jail for breaking the speed limit. And breaking the speed limit has quite a bit more potential of actually hurting other people.

<comment><USER5> Not particularly. Driving at 80mph on motorways, where the limit is 70, is not dangerous. Motorways are the safest roads about. Majority of deaths happen on the quieter windier roads near peoples houses.

There's a pretty clear evidence based case for raising the limit to 80, since everyone drives at it anyway, but doing so could be unpopular. So it's reasonably similar.

<comment><USER6> I'm from Germany. Our motorway has no limits :)

(Incidentally the refernce speed for German motorways is 130 km/h or pretty much 80 mph. Driving faster or slower is no misdemeanor or felony, but may increase liability.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny that The Times are running anti-prohibition articles during this whole furore about the sacking of David Nutt. They can't be a happy bunch at the Home Office this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER7> The war on drugs has always been a failure: there has been no measureable decline in usage. Legalization will eliminate a dangerous black market and free our law enforcement to focus on more serious crime. Most importantly - legalization will no longer label hundreds of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens "criminals" for enjoying a substance that humans have been using for as long as we can tell.

</comment><comment><USER8> I support legalization of pot in the U.S., but I don't think it's going to happen like the article's title predicts.

What will happen, and the article alludes to it, is a mish-mash of conflicting state and local laws that legalize or decriminalize pot to various degrees. The federal government will continue to be a wild card. Wholesale legalization is not in the cards.

That's because the way pot was made illegal was illegal to begin with. When alcohol was made illegal, it took a constitutional amendment. Ever wonder why? After all, they tried making alcohol illegal other ways and the courts threw it out. The government got tired of all that constitutional stuff and decided that in the future substances would be regulated by administrative fiat. The DEA maintains a list which it adds and subtracts items whenever it feels like it. No president is going to completely pull something like pot from the list -- too much political hassle what with getting into why the list exists in the first place. Instead pot will be ignored to some degree, leaving the same big constitutional problem we had to start with to fester for decades.

So the real news is that the people are tired of pot criminal laws, state and local governments are responding to them, and the federal government, having taken on itself to tell people what they can ingest or not, is stuck with a big bag of laws that don't meet the people's needs any more. That could take 50 years or more to work out (if ever).

</comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be basically a "legalize it!" bent to rehashing an earlier Fortune / CNN Money article:

[http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/11/magazines/fortune/medical_ma...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/11/magazines/fortune/medical_marijuana_legalizing.fortune/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> I was approached by a friend who wanted to do a dispensary locator app for the iPhone and my thoughts were: "No way Apple will EVER let that through!" - <USER2> called me the other day to tell me about an app that got through...

</comment><comment><USER11> The reality is that states are going to be asserting their rights against Federal ability.

This is happening in gun-related issues as well, with Montana and Ohio, at the least, considering the passage of laws that ignore the BATF if the gun is produced in and sold in the state. This gets around the interstate commerce clause used by the Feds to claim jurisdiction.

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's not forget about Hemp: [http://books.google.com/books?id=pkMEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA15&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think "decriminalize" really means what the article is trying to suggest it means. It can still be a misdemeanor.

</comment><comment><USER14> Too bad Carl Sagan did not live enough to see it happen.

</comment><comment><USER15> This rot always annoys me :(

<comment><USER16> rot?

<comment><USER15> All the guff about having legit medical purposes makes it safe for legalisation :) (how many other drugs are used for medical purposes that are not legal generally; pain medication for example)

And the other thing about it being less harmful than alcohol (which is more of a case for banning alcohol really ;)).

Round and round we go :)

It's important to remember that by that Alcohol and Tobacco is NOT at all safe - it causes society and individuals no end of problems. Do we want to add another drug to that mess :P

It's important to consider everything in perspective rather than just go with either the govt. line or the supposed experts line (for example we have one here in the UK on record saying ecstasy is no more dangerous than horse riding - which might be statistically true but, as most here will appreciate, is just sensationalism that ignores the obvious problems :D)

EDIT: I should point out I am biased; one of my friends was killed after smoking marijuana and driving and another friend is now a dribbling wreck after 10 years regular smoking (one of the smartest people I know now has the intelligence of a 15 year old). I dont see how these problems wont be multiplied :)

<comment><USER14> Add another drug? Millions of people _already_ smoke pot in America today, and legalising it will only make it _safer_.

EDIT: Also, I feel sorry about your friends, but it is my view that this is not what happens with the majority of the users, and the laws should adapt to that reality.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately no it wont. The 2 places it has been tried the experiment failed reasonably badly (portugal and amsterdam). There certainly wasnt an outbreak of drug deaths - but the situation didnt improve as much as people tend to claim.

(sorry this is no place to have the discussion :) Ill shaddup)

EDIT: thanks for the condolences. Unfortunately I disgree; through them I explored (but never joined thankfully) the drugs sub culture in Leeds (UK). If that is in anyway representative, and I see no reason to suspect otherwise, this is the norm.

I also have a friend in his 40's who grows his own drugs and is fairly well adjusted (if a little air headed and often stoned). From my experience, though, _he_ is the exception not the rule.

<comment><USER14> How did it fail, exactly? According to Wikipedia, drug use in the Netherlands is lower than America's in every possible category. The number of drug-related deaths in the Netherlands is lower than the EU average. The Dutch Government is able to help 90% of the drug users that seek help. Sorry, can't see that as 'failure'.

Legalization makes marijuana (and other drugs) safer for a lot of reasons:

1\. You could buy pot from government-controlled places, where quality of the drug is guaranteed (no fillers!).

2\. Users whom drug intake become problematic can legitimately seek help, which is more unlikely if your drug of choice is illegal and stigmatized in your society.

3\. You don't have to get into illegal, dangerous drug trade in order to get your drug of choice. You can buy pot in the nearest coffee shop, safely (for example).

 _That_ surely happened in the Netherlands. I fail to see it as failure. What I see as failure is the growth of a culture that condemns drug use, as if it is something absurd and immoral, when in fact it _isn't_. People has been smoking pot world-wide, for thousands of years, without causing harm to others.

I could go on and on about the immorality and degenerating effects on society caused by the _drug war_, which is much more damaging than drug use itself, but I think I'll stop here.

EDIT: I'd like to make clear that, although a pot smoker myself, I don't think using drugs is inherently good or bad. In fact, in most cases, it can be (very) bad. But the fact is that people do drugs and will always do drugs, most without major bad consequences for themselves and others. Drug use is a fact in most societies (if not all), and that being so, it would be better that we manage it the best way we can. Criminalizing it certainly is not the best way (probably the worse).

<comment><USER15> Yes the drug use is lower; what they never say is that it was lower anyway. And is still comparable to other EU countries with much much stricter drugs laws. Also they are not the _lowest_ in the EU.

I do feel like points 2 and 3 could be fixed without legalising.

Point 1 is something I dont feel would happen anyway; it would have to be opened up to companies (and taxed). Which potentially ends up legitimising the drugs gangs :)

 _could go on and on about the immorality and degenerating effects on society caused by the _drug war_, which is much more damaging than drug use itself, but I think I'll stop here._

This is a dangerous argument; Im not sure legalising drugs would stop all that. Firstly because there are plenty of other drugs. And secondly because there is no way they would let the drugs be legalised without a fight.

These are serious, organised and very rich gangs.

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

I should also ask if you've been to Amsterdam; they are very strict about smoking on the street. And possibly stricter on drinking in the street. A large number of the coffee shops have been closed down too (and they are by no means "safe" in the way you suggest).

<comment><USER14> About Dutch and American drug policy:

Yes, of course there are countries with a lot lower drug use rate. But I bet this is a cultural thing. It is a fact that the drug war has negligible effects on controlling drug use. It failed completely in the US, for example: drug use didn't go down in general just because it's illegal. In the Netherlands, when pot was decriminalized, the percentage of people doing it didn't fluctuate much, as you pointed out. That makes me believe that making drugs legal or illegal won't do much for controlling drug use.

I'm sorry for not citing any sources for the info I provided here, but one can always Google it.

About point 1:

People have distorted views about marijuana traffic in the US: a lot of it is made by middle-class citizens, who grow their own pot and sell to friends (specially in California). This is absolutely non-violent.

Unfortunately, _because_ of current drug laws, the great majority of the drugs still come from violent, armed drug cartels. Unfortunately, that violent nature of drug trade is unlikely to change for some drugs (like cocaine), since so much dirty money is made from it.

Yes, there are very serious, very rich, very organized drug cartels. Many politicians and other powerful people _are_ involved with drug money, and the drug cartels' influence in world politics is _enormous_. That is the main reason why drugs are still illegal. Legalizing drugs is not appreciable by the giant, violent drug cartels. It is only appreciable by the users themselves, and should be appreciable by the whole society (which unfortunately is not the case, since the big media successfully makes it's case for keeping drugs illegal).

If drugs were legal from the start, today it would be probably be taxed and opened up to companies like any other business. No problems with that!

This is a good read: <http://www.drugwar.com/howmoneyworks.shtm>

Well, about points 2 and 3, I very strongly feel that they are inherently associated with drug legalization.

I _do_ agree that legalizing drugs is very hard to legalize. That is so because of the big cartels influence in the world. I strongly feel, however, that it should be our goal.

<comment><USER15> > I strongly feel, however, that it should be our goal.

The key issue to get sorted first is whether the aim is to help lower drug use (the camp I am personally in) or just to relieve some of the issues.

If it is the former then I think Sweden's example is the best; they have a very strong anti-drugs policy and there's is amongst the _lowest_ rates of drug use in the EU. That's quite strong evidence for tougher laws.

If the aim is the latter (alleviate issues) then we need to discuss legalization or decriminalization. Decriminalization is much more likely but doesn't really alleviate the drugs gangs problems and the worries about control.

The other issue with drugs is control: if you limit the THC content in Weed how do you control that? And how do you stop a trade springing up (like in Holland) of stronger cannabis strains outside of the restricted THC limits?

It's a vicious cycle; the best way to stop the gang problems is stamp out drug use. THEN talk about proper legalisation. IMO. There is no other way to start with a clean slate.

Speaking personally I am _for_ the relaxing of personal possession laws. I think a lot should be replaced with counselling and support (optional). But conversely I am behind much much stricter laws for drug distribution and supplying. Stuff like instant deportation, asset freezes / seizures, longer stricter jail terms.</comment></comment></comment>


Porn deemed a public health crisis by Arizona politicians - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/US/porn-deemed-public-health-crisis-arizona-politicians/story?id=62874408 <comment><USER2> I think politicians are also a health crisis.

<comment><USER3> Probably passed this bill to convince their spouses not to go digging into their browser history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wonder if some politicians over there have been reading our news

[https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/mar/16/uk-online- po...](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/mar/16/uk-online-porn-age- verification-launch)

</comment><comment><USER5> That makes no sense. Self esteem(etc) is affected by instagram not porn lol

<comment><USER6> How so?

<comment><USER5> "low self-esteem, eating disorders and an increase in problematic sexual activity" <\- by adding eating disorders they basically saying it's girls (young boys with eating disorders to improve body shape are statistical error), this implies that girls want to look like pornstars which is false since none of them look up to pornstars but they do look up to and follow thousands of girls on instagram etc with fake happy lives and slimming filters etc</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What AWS topics would you like more information on? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently writing a book about AWS best practices. With Amazon's re:invent conference going on, this seemed like a good time to ask for feedback on content. What AWS topics are you interested in learning more about? Are there any areas that have particularly painful learning curves you would like to see addressed in a book? <comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback on topics will be awesome. Also, there's a free 30 day course on AWS best practices at the book launch site ([http://awsarchitecture.com](http://awsarchitecture.com)) if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm interested in hearing more about Amazon beanstalk. Haven't personally used it. But does having my ec2 under beanstalk take care of securing my instances?

<comment><AUTHOR> Securing your instances in what way? Elastic Beanstalk should initially provide you with instances that one would expect to be reasonably secure, but I wouldn't rely on that level of presumed security for anything important. It definitely does not provide a fully managed environment on an ongoing basis. One glaring example is that it does not handle things like OS-level security updates/patches, or provide you with instances running updated AMIs unless you re-setup your EB environment.

</comment></comment><comment> josh-wrale HIPAA compliance, multi-region deployments, VPC outbound proxies, encryption at rest, cfndsl (CloudFormation DSL)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions, thanks! I'm sure a whole book could be written about HIPAA compliance and AWS, but a lot of general AWS security best practices will end up being useful towards a goal of HIPAA compliance. I'll definitely be covering encryption at rest, VPC, and multi-region deployments. CloudFormation DSL also seems like it could be a separate book (or even a series of books, like you see with Puppet/Chef), but I'll try to include what I can when it is relevant to architectural decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Auto scaling.

Fault tolerance specifically in regards to AWS

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely! Fault tolerance is one of the biggest goals people have with moving to "The Cloud", but one of the least well-understood AWS topics when it really comes down to the implementation details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Optimize cost structure and monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER5> Opsworks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! Can you expand on what you're interested in specifically, if anything? (Or is it just top to bottom/ basics to advanced OpsWorks that you're looking for?)</comment></comment>


Boost VC closes $40M fund as revamped 'sci-fi' accelerator - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/boostvc-closes-40m-fund-as-revamped-sci-fi-accelerator-preps-for-digital-demo-day/ <comment><USER2> I'm gonna start by saying I know I'll be downvoted to hell because this probably sounds too markety, but this is an honest review. It's amazing to see how far Boost VC has come from tiny investments in crypto companies to larger deals, towards futuristic technology, and that too in the middle of a pandemic.

I went through the Boost program in 2016 and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. I met some of my best friends there, and their motto (be the cockroach) drilled survival into me at a time when another incubation program had left me confused about business priorities. Whenever I feel like I'm slowing down or confused, I still use their Wednesday dinner format and find a group of peers to bring myself back on track and up to speed.

<comment><USER3> Can you share about that Wednesday dinner format?

<comment><USER2> I don't know if they still use that, but every Wednesday, Boost would host us for dinner and talk about what we'd done, the challenges we'd faced, how far we'd come and discuss how we could help each other out.

It was very informal, and Boost would barely moderate it. But it was always incredibly helpful to talk about our problems, and we'd always want to share better metrics the next week. Getting peer-feedback was great too! The sessions would never last very long, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My opinion has been that the real SciFi are extremely unpopular work. For example:

Packet switching was a very unpopular idea by Paul Baran [1], which was invented to be survivable under nuclear attack. Similarly, the theory foundation, queueing theory by people like Leonard Kleinrock [2].

And for anything people imagine to be futuristic or Sci-Fi, it's almost always a clever usage of some foundational tech that has been unnoticed for a long time.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Kleinrock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Kleinrock)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the "revamp" or "sci-fi" terms here.

Does "revamp" mean they do demo day via zoom now?

Does "sci-fi accelerator" just refer to their pre-pandemic willingness to fund blockchain and AR/VR?

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't choose the title :) "Boost VC closes $40M fund to continue the same Sci-Fi accelerator for the last 7 years" doesn't have the same appeal.

Revamp: We have been a Sci-Fi accelerator for awhile. But new terms are $500k for 15%.

Sci-Fi: What do you imagine the future to be? Current Tribe 13 include crypto, VR, quantum & biotech.

Sci-Fi - Whatever you imagine that to be

<comment><USER6> Well glad this got posted here. We just got rejected from Y comb, our tech is sci fi indeed. Alex Garlands made some sci fi that we've built (are building)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow this is so cool. I went through Boost's first class.

In 2012, my friends and I were throwing around startup ideas because we disliked our full-time jobs out of college. We applied to Boost and it changed our lives. Within a week, we quit our jobs, moved to San Mateo, and lived in the startup hotel they provided. We had no clue what we were doing but Adam and Brayton always had our backs and we learned a lot real fast.

</comment><comment><USER8> How does a $40mm fund w/ a 2% management fee support ~20 employees ($80,000/head)?

<comment><USER9> I don't know anything about Boost's structure in particular but there are a few ways to make this work:

1) Management fees stack from one fund to the next and can add up. The article says their last fund was $38M and that this is their 4th fund. So assuming their first two funds were $20M each (no idea if this is the case), you'd get stacked fees of $20M * 2% + $20M * 2% + $38M * 2% + $40M * 2% = $2.36M / year

2) Often VCs will taper their management fee over time. For instance, they might charge 3% the first two years, and then reduce over time, so the average is 2%. A 3% management fee on just the $40M fund would be $1.2M / year.

3) Sometimes VCs will sell a stake in the management company to fund operations. So if you expect a $40M fund to 3x, and the carry was 20%, then the management company would expect a windfall of ($40M * 3 - $40M) * 20% = $16M. The VC might sell a 10% stake in the management company that's due to received this carry for $1M now, in order to hire staff and fund operations.

Hope this helps!

[edited for formatting clarity]

<comment><AUTHOR> Or the easiest way. We are only a team of 5 :)

That picture is our team with Tribe 13!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huge congrats to the Boost Team. Brayton and Adam are two of the most grounded and helpful people I've met in the VC space. I'm personally involved in a few of their companies they've introduced me to and love what they're building + the community aspect. Rooting for you guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> Takes a village. Thanks for being a part of ours!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work at Hero City, upstairs from Boost. The Boost team is awesome, I often hear them doing wacky chants and yells downstairs, their team is weird and hard working. Makes the whole office more fun.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks like a cool accelerator. We plan to apply to it.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on improving my sign-up page - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mightycv.com/sign-up-page-improvements

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the great advice so far, I've removed the centred text as suggested which I think is an improvement.

Instead of running a time limited offer of one year free service I've decided not to make the offer time limited and instead just track if the referring URL is from HN, so if you click on this link:

<http://www.mightycv.com>

and decide you'd like to sign up then I'll make sure your email is matched up and that your account is free for one year after Mighty CV launches. You'll just have to take this offer on trust, but I promise I'll honor it. Thanks again for all the feedback so far.</comment>


No More Pink Mustache - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/ <comment><USER2> What's the story behind this? The author is Rachel Kroll who was a production engineer at Facebook. Based on the post it's clear she left Facebook for another opportunity and has been there just over a year (just enough to vest) and left because the company's culture is irreparably broken. The only hint about what company it may be is the title, which suggests she's referring to Lyft. That said, I couldn't find any LinkedIn or other reference via Google to suggest that that is where she went after Facebook.

<comment><USER3> According to this post on Blind [0], she left Facebook to become a Principal Engineer at Lyft.

[0] [https://www.teamblind.com/post/Successful-career-stories- of-...](https://www.teamblind.com/post/Successful-career-stories-of-people- who-left-Google-dSMQ4ikQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i strongly suspect that nearly every time i've gone to the ceo with a clearly articulated case about how engineering is a mess and it needs radical rethought...

after assuring me how much they value my opinion, and apologizing for not having more time to go into it right now, they immediately contact the vpe or d-engineering and say..

cant you keep a muzzle on your people - i had to sit through 30 minutes of bitching about a bunch of stuff i really dont care about...and customer y is really getting pretty on edge about feature x .. just get me that damn thing

<comment><USER5> I had this happen early on in my career.

My _entire department_ was unified and clearly articulated the problems we were facing and how we could improve things. The only result was that our manager was told to get us under control or we would all be fired.

Management knows what is going on. They just don't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find this writing style completely unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Lyft's reputation is nowhere near as well known as Uber's. I'm curious to hear if they've fallen into the same trap of "just hire smart people and see what they do" without clear direction.</comment>


Show HN: CV Compiler for PMs – Fine-tune your PM resume in no time - <AUTHOR> https://cvcompiler.com/pm <comment><AUTHOR> Unlike software engineers or designers who have numerous resources, (GitHub, Dribble, Behance, etc.), at their disposal to showcase their skills and expertise, product managers, in most cases, must rely on their resumes.

That's what inspired our team to build CV Compiler, PM version. The app finds weak spots in resumes, and suggests immediate personalized improvements, with examples.

Curious to hear your feedback on it.</comment>


Angela Nagle on Internet Purges - <AUTHOR> https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/06/28/1561722124000/Alphachat--Angela-Nagle-on-identity-politics-and-puritanical-internet-purges/ <comment><AUTHOR> Defer to moderators on this, but because it's an FT article and podcast, this represents the level of understanding that policymakers will use.</comment>


The bank of the future will be a marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://getmondo.co.uk/blog/2016/02/04/marketplace-banking/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a particularly poor article. The title is an unsubstantiated claim based on the author's passion project, rather than any sort of real analysis. Ok, so banks do loss-leaders and cross sell. SO does your supermarket, payroll provider, and many, many other businesses. Yes, that means that the things they cross sell will be more expensive because they have to subsidize other parts of the business - but without that entry point to the customer, they'd be paying google and all sort of other marketing companies to deliver customers for each segment of the business - and they'd have to overcharge to fund that marketing as well.

Or if the argument is that he plans to charge fairly for each bit of the ecosystem, he's about to learn some hard lessons in strategy.

To the author: I hope everything works out for you - but do some research first; you're underestimating your competition.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I'd class Mondo as a "passion Project" they're a company with a product in alpha (payment card) and in the process of getting FCA accreditation, which requires quite a bit of work to get started on...

As to whether their vision of financial services takes off, I think that remains to be seen, but it's very interesting to see the large number of new banks starting up in the UK market which has previously been dominated by a few large players.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aside from Mondo and Atom Bank who else is there?

<comment><USER3> There's quite a crop, some of the ones I've seen so far

\- Starling [http://starlingbank.co.uk/](http://starlingbank.co.uk/) \- Tandem [https://tandem.co.uk/](https://tandem.co.uk/) \- Loot [https://loot.io/](https://loot.io/) \- Fidor [https://www.fidorbank.uk/](https://www.fidorbank.uk/) \- Metro (been around a bit longer but still relatively new) [https://www.metrobankonline.co.uk/](https://www.metrobankonline.co.uk/) \- Aldermore [http://www.aldermore.co.uk/](http://www.aldermore.co.uk/)

<comment><USER4> I have been a client of MetroBank since a few years ago and just love it. My recent experience with Aldermore has also been nice.

Anyone tried any of the others?

<comment><USER5> I was very happy with MetroBank until I moved away from London; they don't have a branch in Manchester yet. Also, their debit card now charges for purchases outside of Europe so they would charge me for AWS purchases.

Now I'm with Halifax; the customer service is no where near as good, but at least I have a Mastercard with free foreign currency transactions.

<comment><USER6> My Halifax branch staff have always been wonderful; fortunately for me, said branch is five minutes' walk from my office so I can basically go via there when walking into town to scavenge lunch. Otherwise, yeah, YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only, Mondo isn't even a bank, yet. From the FAQ [1], "your money will be held in a separate, protected account by Wirecard, our issuing bank".

As Matt Levine keeps pointing out [2], "Tech businesses trying to disrupt finance tend to think that they are solving a technical or data or customer service problem, but the problems of finance are always and everywhere regulatory problems."

[1] [https://getmondo.co.uk/faq/](https://getmondo.co.uk/faq/) [2] [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/bitcoin- buc...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/bitcoin-bucket-shop- kicks-bucket)

</comment><comment><USER8> "If you have some money left over at the end of the month, imagine being able to move it into a P2P lending platform with one click."

The last time people in the UK went looking for better interest rate on their savings they found online Icelandic banks. They put large sums of money into them (even local governments!). They apparently didn't consider that there was a reason these banks were paying higher rates than their local banks. When the banks went under and the resulting shortfall was greater than the entire GDP of Iceland, they were furious and demanded their own government "do something about it". The resulting bailout of speculators ended up costing the Treasury billions of pounds.

So I don't think the taxpayers of the UK should be all that thrilled by the brave new world of being able to move money into P2P lending schemes with one click.

<comment><USER5> It's not that far off one click already. I can set up Zopa to lend out money, then just transfer money with `1 click` from my current account.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, transferring money to lending accounts is pretty easy anyway going by direct to the P2P provider.

The wider issue here is that high street banks (or "challenger banks" marketing themselves as equivalent to high street banks) are subject to an awful lot more scrutiny around how they advise customers to handle their finances[1]. If your differentiator from other banks is encouraging your depositors to buy into a wider range of somewhat riskier alternative lending products outside your own control, then the same people that made a fortune from arguing consumers were missold PPI and mortgages are lining up to take shots at you if and when things go wrong...

[1]considering the special privileges they get, that's the way it should be

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "If you have some money left over at the end of the month, imagine being able to move it into a P2P lending platform with one click. Or being able to choose a mortgage from any one of a number of providers based on your previous spending habits and income."

Keep imagining. I've been working on UK mortgage software for the last few months, and it's stone age. I'm talking interfacing with a Fujitsu VME mainframe stoneage.

<comment><USER11> Why do you think that's happening? Didn't anyone bother to build something decent or is the market hostile towards change?

<comment><USER10> A lot of banks & building societies built mainframe systems to run mortgage businesses in 70s. They're still running on them, and don't want to bear the cost of transition. When the housing market is buoyant they transact and make money, so a system overhaul isn't a priority. And when times are bad, there's no money for that kind of project. As for the software vendors serving this sector, that's another story...

<comment><USER12> This has been my experience after 7 years on the IT side of the financial services industry. I worked at one of the top 10 commercial banks in the US and within the last 3 years they abandoned a multi-year migration project to a real time infrastructure. Many huge banks still run Tandem systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> so if Mondo's going to only provide a current account: what are they going to do with their customer's deposits? just leave them sit as cash doing nothing?

a bank that cross sells will use the revenue from lending to ruthlessly undercut this newcomer.

banks are big as the size of the balance sheet allows mind boggling economies of scale.

existing banks are probably also able to hire a team of 10 good app developers to put together a high quality app, if they thought the demand was there...

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone recently asked on the Mondo Community forums

"If I put my money into Mondo, how will it be invested?"

Hugo Cornejo an employee answered with the following:

"Very good question. During the first year a very small proportion of your money will be lent to private individuals in the form of unsecured overdrafts. That's all the lending we're doing. The rest sits in cash at the Bank of England. In future, we will do more personal lending and invest some of the money in UK government bonds."

Unfortunately the link to this reply is only available to Mondo testers:

[https://community.getmondo.co.uk/t/after-6-weeks-of- use/337/...](https://community.getmondo.co.uk/t/after-6-weeks-of-use/337/2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought it was going to be an article about how p2p lending was going to take over everything: car loans, mortgages, payday, equipment finance, small business loans, merchant cash advance, factoring, debt collection, credit cards, pawn shops.

</comment><comment><USER15> The title is right.

PSD2 / XS2A are forcing the big UK banks to offer APIs. This is good, but will mean a current account will essentially stay the same, and startups will build the services around this.

Mondo is already setup perfectly for this and has the early advantage, but startups build for users, and the users are with the big banks. I expect challenger banks to challenge, but in 10 years the big banks will have some incredible integrations which have been gifted to their customers , making them stay.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is like saying "the battery of the future will be a transistor."

</comment><comment><USER17> The only real alternative to a UK bank that has actually launched and actually works is Monese. 20,000+ app installs in under 4 months since launch and an active community of users [http://www.facebook.com/mymonese](http://www.facebook.com/mymonese) [http://www.twitter.com/mymonese](http://www.twitter.com/mymonese) with plenty of reviews to read here [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monese.mon...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monese.monese.live&hl=en_GB) Euro accounts will also be landing this year, and transfers to a range of European currencies are supported at just 0.5% !! Plus the account is currently free !!!!

</comment><comment><USER18> Free loss leader with upsell describes the Freemium model - what is wrong with that?

</comment><comment><USER19> He mentions TransferWise and Azimo. Does anyone have experience with Azimo, maybe to compare to TransferWise?

I'm very happy with the rates and transparency of TransferWise [1], and Azimo seems to do something similar but it isn't very clear how they work or what their vague claim of "best rates" means (it's not like they're the only ones that claim that).

[1] If you want to try it, with an invitation link you get your first transfer of up to £3000 for free, here's mine: [https://transferwise.com/u/5d78](https://transferwise.com/u/5d78)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been proudly using my Mondo account/card for a week now. So pleased with it so far. Definitely worth checking out.

<comment><USER5> What are the advantages of it over a current account from a big bank?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting...</comment>


Tesla in fatal California crash was on Autopilot - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43604440 <comment><USER2> Duplicate [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721197)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am surprised that proponents of Tesla and autopilot fail to see that the statistics presented are just not good enough. How is 85000 successful test runs of autopilot on that road good enough? Ask any engineer dealing with mass manufacturing and that number will seem shallow from a six sigma process perspective.

 _Any_ accidents involving autopilot are far more significant that human caused accidents not only because of the drastically fewer number of cars running autopilot compared to normal cars but also because the system is meant to be much more superior if it is allowed to run on a public road.

If I have my kids in the car with me then I try to be as far away as I can from a Tesla on the road. The lack of regulation in their case is appalling. The statistics have to be far stronger than what is being stated currently for allowing their systems to be run on public roads.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's an outrage that people keep dying and Tesla is allowed to keep using its customers as guinea pigs calling their experimental set of driver assist features "Autopilot". It doesn't matter how many disclaimers you provide, an example should be made out of this and all the bro companies (yes looking at you Uber) with complete disregard for proper testing and safety. Testing such early technology on public roads using regular people tricked into thinking they are using mature technology should really be illegal and I hope they get punished harshly.

<comment><USER5> Meanwhile, just _today_ an average of 101 non-autopilot deaths occurred.

Not sure how their technology is really the issue here.

<comment><USER6> There's a very high chance that the driver would have been fine if they had been actively driving. How would you think about this if the brakes failed? The steering system? Just because there are other accidents it doesn't mean that Tesla can't potentially be blamed for killing this person because of the low maturity of their system.

<comment><USER7> Blamed yes! Absolutely! Put to the fires to figure out the fault and fix it forever, definitely! Insurance should be paying out and checks for criminal intent followed as it would normally be for a human

Should it stop all progress though, no. No way. Not by a long shot.

Here's another difference - The fix to this issue, unless it's a standard mechanical failure that any other car might have, will fix this issue in _all of their cars_. A human driver may still right this second lock their wheels in a skid and t-bone another car. The ability for the car to pump the brakes to slow more rapidly had to be a hardware fix rolled out over decades in the form of ABS. With autonomous cars for this to (hopefully) never be an issue again it's tomorrow's software patch

<comment><USER6> I'm all for progress as long as it's achieved responsibility and as safely as possible</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Conversion Optimization - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
New to this site but wanted to offer help (free) if anyone needs it with signing up more users via optimizing their landing pages and sign up forms. I specialize in product development that uses multivariate testing to improve a variety of factors that affect conversion.
Planning on moving to SF this year and would love to meet up with some interesting people in the startup sphere.
Thanks Al <comment><AUTHOR> FYI also able to help with SEO for people using the rails or similar framework to build their apps</comment>


Apple Says Goodbye to the Startup Chime with the New MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://pingie.com/2016/10/28/apple-says-goodbye-to-the-startup-chime-with-the-new-macbook-pro/?q <comment><USER2> I guess future viewers of Wall-E won't get the joke now. (for those who didn't see the film, the robot main character made the Mac startup chime when he finished charging)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good.

Article doesn't seem to load for me but it served nearly no purpose but a nostalgic one. Maybe someone somewhere debugged a hardware problem with it? Have no idea. Given that the touch bar has it's own hardware and software, it can serve as a better hardware debugging tool anyway.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I wish it also didn't have the "MacBook Pro" text on the bezel of the screen.

It serves no useful purpose of making the laptop better, but it can be slightly distracting from the work you're doing on screen, just because it's always in your field of view.

There's already an Apple logo on the back of the screen, which is perfect. Why the need to bring back this text? iMac doesn't say iMac on the bezel...

<comment><USER5> > There's already an Apple logo on the back of the screen, which is perfect.

Except for those of us giving presentations to a roomful of glowing Apples wherein it becomes intensely annoying. To the extent that it's difficult not to direct my attention to the Mr Joe Boring with the Anonymous Black Laptop. He's the only one thinking differently...

I'm not sure why people voluntarily advertise for the World's most valuable company without any form of compensation and futhermore feel _proud_ to do so.

<comment><USER6> The logo on the new macbook doesn't glow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The startup chime doesn't bother me (and I rarely reboot my MacBook Pro, usually only after required security updates). The Finder logo, on the other hand, looks like something one would find in a student union at a small midwestern college that hasn't been updated since 1986, and it is _always_ there, creepily staring me down day after day...

<comment><USER8> > The Finder logo, on the other hand, looks like something one would find in a > student union at a small midwestern college that hasn't been updated since > 1986

I've always loved the Finder logo, each to their own. It was possibly inspired by a slightly better artist than what you suggest :)

[http://www.cultofmac.com/75608/did-picasso-influence-the- mac...](http://www.cultofmac.com/75608/did-picasso-influence-the-mac-finder- icon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good. A loud sound that I can't predict or control is pretty bad. I've tried every command line trick I can find to disable this rudeness. It always randomly re-enables at some point.

<comment><USER10> In my experience, it obeys system volume. If I had the system muted before I shut down, it comes up silently. I keep my work laptop muted most times. On the weekend, I might actually need the sound for Skype. Monday morning is a rude start if I forget to mute the sound the last time I used it.

<comment><USER11> > In my experience, it obeys system volume

...if you're using OSX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A bit off topic, but 99 percent invisible did an interesting episode on sound with a bit about the creation of the apple start-up chime. The relevant part starts at 04:30.

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the- sizzle/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-sizzle/)

</comment><comment><USER13> This seems to be what I've been using to disable it most recently:

        sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=%80

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3208783?start=120&tstar...](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3208783?start=120&tstart=0)

<comment><USER14> Hasn't worked since Yosemite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good riddance, along with the even tackier glowing logo.

</comment><comment><USER16> Blind folks are going to be very annoyed about this.

<comment><USER17> Yeah it would be nice to make this configurable for that reason. But they have this problem with many devices, they get no indication on the iPhone, right?

<comment><USER18> The iPhone buzzes when it turns on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a technical reason for this? e.g. maybe they were having issues with audio in the EFI and decided to not bother?

</comment><comment><USER20> Along with the glowing logo.

</comment><comment><USER21> i never really enjoyed that noise personally... i could see the nostalgia element, but it always seemed out of place coming out of a modern, slick looking piece of hardware. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, this is sacrilege, added to the 'ESC' key blasphemy. MBPs could be banned in Ireland, they consider blasphemy the first class crime.

<comment><USER23> With macOS Sierra you can natively remap Esc to Caps Lock (or CMD, Alt, Ctrl). I think a lot of people already did this before. I just tried it out yesterday with Vim, and I find it way more convenient than Esc.

<comment><USER24> I use a ThinkPad but I was curious about this solution that people were discussing yesterday: do they also have something mapped as Compose? On my machine I have Caps Lock mapped as Compose so that I can type foreign characters quickly, especially when writing Portuguese.

If my Esc key disappeared, I'd still want a Compose key; is there a convenient option for that on the new MBP keyboard? Is there something other than Compose that macOS users like for non-ASCII text entry?

Edit: for example, I just saw the Icelandic Pirate Party's banner "A rettri leið" in a New York Times video about their electoral success, and I wanted to use Google Translate to find out what it meant. Of course, it wasn't copyable text, so I just typed "a rettri lei[Compose]dh" and I had my translation in moments. :-)

<comment><USER25> I never heard of a Compose key before. "Because Microsoft Windows and OS X do not support a compose key by default, the key does not exist on most keyboards designed for modern PC hardware." [0]

How did you know to type [Compose]dh to get the desired character?

Guess what? Google Translate gives the same translation for "A rettri leid" even though 'ð' is apparently not a 'd' with a diacritic but its own letter, "eth." [1]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth)

<comment><USER24> > How did you know to type [Compose]dh to get the desired character?

I went to Iceland a few years ago and looked into how to type ð and þ in order to be able to send e-mail about people, signs, and place names, even though I didn't learn the language. It's also useful for linguistics

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental_fricative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental_fricative)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best books you read in 2017? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> 1\. The power of a positive no 2\. Black box thinking 3\. Difficult conversations 4\. Transcending loss 5\. Braving the wilderness 6\. Motherless daughters 7\. The happy medium 8\. Deep work 9\. The golden sayings of Epictetus 10\. The best interface is no interface 11\. 101 essays that will change the way you think 12\. Leaders eat last

Will keep adding more as I remember. Hope this helps :)

</comment><comment><USER4> The best book published in 2017 for me is this one:

"A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market" by Edward O. Thorp

[http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all- markets/](http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/)

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) The Stories of Ibis by Hiroshi Yamamoto (my almost-annual re-reading)

2) The Collapsing Empire - John Scalzi

3) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

I have a feeling the book I am reading now - Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith might have been on this list if I had finished it (and might still be tomorrow).

<comment><USER6> If you read most of it in 2017 I say it still counts. Nice to see some fiction on here, these lists are almost always non fiction and make me feel uneducated because I read almost exclusively fiction

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1) De Vita Beata ("On the Happy Life") - <USER2>

2) Shoe Dog - Phil Knight

3) Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! - Richard Feynman

No. 1 is a bit of a tricky read but completely worth it in my opinion, never have I read anything that has changed my everyday mindset so much.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1) Shoe Dog - Phil Knight

2) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson

3) Start with Why - Simon Sinek

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand 2\. Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan 3\. Idea Factory - Jon Gertner 4\. Why I am an atheist - Bhagat Singh

</comment><comment><USER10> Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley, founder of ideo. Changed my definition of and relationship with creativity.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan

It was magical for me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin.

</comment><comment><USER13> Foundation series by Isaac Asimov

</comment><comment><USER14> In 2017, I discovered that books are becoming increasingly obsolete as a medium of sharing knowledge. I've found that more condensed and/or interactive forms are much more useful to me and enable me to learn at an increased pace.

<comment><USER15> I think this generally applies to self-help style books, where the majority of the book is fluff with very little useful content. Those books can definitely be condensed into short blogs posts. However blogs and random tutorials don't do technical topics justice. If I'm learning how to reverse engineer a piece of malware or how to create a blockchain application, textbooks are the best resource to guide me.

<comment><USER11> To be fair a vast amount of technical books have the same problems, going over the same things again and again.

A couple of years ago, here o HN, an author shared his experience about collaborating with a publishing house. Apparently the publishers have very specific requirements about the required number of pages and the author has to conform.</comment></comment></comment>


Crisis in Cosmology - <AUTHOR> http://www.marxist.com/crisis-in-cosmology241105.htm

<comment><USER2> "This group of scientists are fighting to establish what is essentially a materialist and dialectical approach to the ideas of time and space and the origin of the universe."

Now there is a Marxist Cosmology" The big bang theory is a construct of faith just like Christian creationism; the dialectical approach gives us Plasma Cosmology, which needs nothing fancier than Maxwell's Equations. Astrophysicists dont get it because they dont understand electromagnetism.</sarcasm>

I am not an astrophysicist, so this article could be straight as an arrow and blow by me, but I don't think so. Contrary to what was said in the article, these are exciting times because there are starting to be observations which can discriminate among theories. Dark mater was proposed because galaxies dont rotate the way Newton said they should. Now the LHC is in a position to create dark matter candidates or disprove Super Symmetry.</comment>


Your Next Home Could Run on Batteries - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-next-home-could-run-on-batteries-1508065205 <comment><USER2> I really love the idea of those batteries. There needs to be collective effort to think about the recycling, but nonetheless, it's a good, fine-grained, sun- powered source of energy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pehaps add a [Paywall] suffix to the title?

<comment><USER4> It makes no sense to me that HN allows paywalled content. I'm fine with publishers wanting to earn money, but for those without a WSJ subscription, how do we converse meaningfully about the topic without being able to read it?</comment></comment>


The Death of the Artist and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/2/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> >So "art" itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

I think this essay would have been a lot more worthwhile if some effort was spent discussing why we may need a 'vessel for our inner life' and how art used to fill this role but is no longer as able. As a sociohistorical narrative, it seems too pointed and filled with unsubstantiated statements to be useful or interesting in and of itself.

Also, when critics discuss the democratization of "Art" like it's a new and threatening phenomenon, I can't help but think about all of the wonderful art that came out of folk music (of various traditions). There was a time, not so different than the time when Picasso and Joyce were making their Art, when a large percentage of the population played music in their small groups. This lead to an incredible flowering of music as the 20th century progressed, initially quite rooted in the folk traditions (including gospel music, vessels of our inner life indeed). People being people and having a wide range of talent, opportunity and motivation, it seems to me at least that democratization definitely did not prevent geniuses from creating their Art.

I suspect that what these writers are really lamenting is not the fall of Art or of Man but of Critic, as social media ratings threaten their revenue stream.

edit: forgot a 'not'

<comment><USER3> Those "folk musicians" were professionals.

Harry Smith's folk anthologies were just compilations of commercial music from the 20s and 30s made by a professional record industry.

Sure, Alan Lomax went out and did some field recordings, but the really great gospel and country blues musicians were definitely getting paid.

The songsters of the 19th century were professionals who toured with medicine shows.

All those geniuses? They had the raw talent, yes, but also the opportunity given by societal structures to hone their skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay. So great, because capitalism has absorbed artistic practice in some way into its structure, now artistic practice is capitalistic.

This makes little sense. It's funny to see that capitalist aping of artistic practice is now being regarded as a new era in artistic practice by this guy though.

Art has had a fascinating relationship to capital well before capitalism, but to confuse its continuing ability to survive with some kind of fundamental transformation of the practice is kinda silly.

Yes, okay: what is art?

The answer isn't: commerce. No need to go so far back, but just look to cave paintings to discover that these ideas of economy and capital are only sidelines and contextual footnotes to the practice of art.

<comment><USER3> Art has no utility but it exists in a world where the people that make it need food, water, warmth and shelter and those have always had a cost.

I think his thesis stands up pretty well. Artists gotta fucking eat and that's going to have a big impact on what and how things are made.

<comment><USER4> Does the fact that engineers have to eat change the nature of engineering fundamentally if the way they are able to eat changes?

<comment><USER4> Can't reply to your comment williamcotton, but what you suggest doesn't change the nature of the practice, just its practical focus.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really sure what you mean by "the nature of the practice" and "practical focus" and how these ideas are separate from each other.

That nature of engineering is practical application.

What engineers are focusing on is what they will build. If they're at work building iOS apps for commercial purposes they aren't going to be building and publishing as many open-source libraries or tools. This affects the entire ecosystem of engineering. It affects what kinds of tools and libraries get built. Tools and libraries are "the nature of the practice". You don't program in an object-oriented manner without having an object-oriented programming environment.

As for art, if you're not getting anyone to pay you for what you're making, you're gonna have to get another job. This is gonna have a big affect on what and how you make things. You might respond by working as little as possible and using cheaper materials. You might work a bit more but have a less time consuming process. You might be able to find commercial work that utilizes and promotes your artistic skills. No matter what, your process and therefor the kind of art that you make is gonna change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People may have a vision of a solitary genius, but that's not how many successful artists work. Going back at least as far as the Renaissance many artists were managing studios of other painters, sculptors, etc who would produce the actual work. A lot of the most famous artists today still work that way. Successful artists are, and have been for centuries, creative entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is _very_ link-bait-y.

Declaring the death of anything is usually link-bait, but the death of the artist is absurd. I get the argument, which is basically - the economics have changed a bit.

But this idea that genius is gone and in its place is entrepreneurship, is just so, _so_ silly. All artists are in marketing, sales, and so on, and always have been. Dali was as much a self-promotion genius as he was an artist. Not much has changed except the ability to view the past through the curved lens of history.

Geniuses still exist in all of the arts. Nothing has changed. Nothing is dead.

<comment><USER3> _All artists are in marketing, sales, and so on, and always have been._

Let's take The Beatles. Sure, they captured the zeitgeist and handled the songwriting and performance duties, but they had an incredibly skilled support network that produced and engineered their records, made sure that people knew who they were and got the best deals for live gigs, distribution, etc, etc.

Dali relied on an entire ecosystem of galleries, museums, critics, curators and collectors.

Whatever concept of "lone genius" you're envisioning is pure fantasy.</comment></comment>


"This isn't the Brexit I voted for" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/colinbrowning14/status/1227906931450425344 <comment><USER2> This has nothing to do with Brexit. Just another person stuck at immigration control and has to wait like everyone else at the airport. This happens at all airports if everyone gets there at once.

Just get to the airport earlier rather than blaming it on something else.

<comment><USER3> That's the _immigration_ queue, to get into the country. Are you suggesting that, after deboarding the plane, they should sprint to customs control, and, by winning that race, hope to be first in the queue?

This likely is just bad capacity planning at customs control, a few really difficult passengers, or (most likely) a few delayed planes messing up with capacity planning.</comment></comment>


Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/KeziyahL/status/1170896866805977088 <comment><USER3> This isn't a comment about Holberton (which I can't speak for), and sure an $85k cap for a school with no instructors is high, but I'd just like to point out that the methodology of "I'm going to find 3-4 students who want to complain about their school off the record" is not a good way to consider the quality of schools.

Imagine what would happen if someone went after... any school you've ever attended with such an approach. Think they could find a half dozen students to rant and rave about how the school was awful? Certainly.

Of course, I'm biased - she has another thread about Lambda School (where I'm CEO), and reading the criticisms I know exactly who the students are. It says something that of the 6,000+ Lambda School students of all-time I can pick out the 3 or 4 complaining from the complaints, and if you dug into those students' complaints you would find there's much more at play than what is mentioned.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I still think it is valuable information based on the discussions it can drive.

I appreciate your willingness to participate in these threads, be transparent, and show how hands-on you are with your school/students. However, I'm going to put you on the spotlight for a bit if that is ok.

Right now, Lambda School is young enough that the amount of collected outlier feedback can be easily remembered. Doubly so since you can still interact with this outlier population at the scale you operate at. However...

1\. Instead of the bottom 0.1%, what about the bottom 1% or 10%? Will you be able to remember/account for all of these students as you grow in scale over a long period of time? What's your strategy for this?

2\. There will come a point where one person cannot handle all of the outliers. There will also come a point where your priorities are pushed elsewhere. Do you feel that it's more important for you to be central in handling these issues or will this responsibility be handed off? How will quality be ensured?

I agree that you should not extrapolate from such a small sample size. However, I believe that to take ownership after a spotlight has been shone upon the worst instances would be to not discredit the feedback. Instead, offer up the insights on what actual patterns emerged from larger population findings, own any that correlated, and show how these were/are planned to be addressed.

Individual teachers have to deal with this all the time. Sometimes with additional metrics evaluating their every move. It would be nice to see someone at a higher institutional level be an example of how negative outliers are handled, not only from the bottom up, but from the top down.

Lastly, while Lambda School might be an exception, that doesn't mean all bootcamps operate the same.

<comment><USER3> We have an entire team called the "student success" team, and it's certainly not one person. We collect feedback at the end of every lesson, every day, every unit, every build week, etc. and we can see and resolve any issues (be they across the school or with an individual) virtually immediately. The student success team monitors feedback and looks into how students are doing every day, and that team grows as the school scales. Our full staff is 130+ people full-time, and and every single student is in a group of 8 students with one Team Lead who spends on on one time with them and reports on it every single day.

That's why it's odd to me that I know who all of those students are. I shouldn't. There's no way I should be able to identify them that easily, and if it were the 1% of 10% of students complaining there's no way I'd be able to map back from the complaints to individual students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to be a student at Holberton School, and I'm continually surprised by the support from alumni on this thread, both from those who succeeded and were able to find a job and those who are still struggling to find a job.

The criticism students have is not that we want the school to be ruined or shut down. The reason why a lot of students don't want to speak up is because they're still looking for jobs in the industry and are afraid of backlash or just "tainting" themselves before getting their foot in the door. Maybe it's irrational, but it's a real fear coming from someone just starting out in the industry.

The purpose is that we want them to be better, to be held accountable for the experiences that they're offering to students who pay that $85k. Everyone coming in to the program is aware of the peer-learning, ISA, etc. However, it's gotten this far because there were promises made that weren't fulfilled, and despite all effort to speak to staff and even the co-founders about the problems, none of them ever listen or do anything about it. One of the former students suggested a "Suggestion Box" and was told she didn't belong in the school. It's extremely frustrating.

They've held Town Halls where students have suggested very real, actionable criticisms but it gets waved off. What's the point of having a Town Hall? Sure, there are students who are successful, but there are a ton of other students who come out struggling to find a job with little to no support from the school. They accept anyone and forget those that graduated and need help. They spend money on PR and ads and parties instead of hiring real staff with legitimate education experience. Instead, they hire former students to build out the curriculum. The second year curriculum's all made by former students and is buggy and not particularly great so no one's interested in taking the second year.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but for $85k, it needs to be better. Much better.

<comment><USER6> I'm actually researching the efficacy of coding bootcamps and was wondering if you'd be open to a quick call. Doesn't have to be a long convo but I think your experience could be very helpful. Would love to chat about what you encountered and potential solutions - my email is lucas at timesuji dot com. Thanks in advance if you'd be open to sharing!

<comment><USER5> Sure!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm no fan of for profit boot camps, but also, we need to compare them to the alternative of 1/2 year CS or "data science" masters degrees from accredited universities:

\- Cost: $$$ (50-100K or more) \- No job guarantee or _any_ incentive for the school to help \- Lots of out of date material \- Faculty could care less (there to do research, teaching is a secondary job) \- Little career support (over worked job offices with 1-2 staff for 100s) \- Few connections in major tech hubs (typically)

I would claim these programs are _more_ predatory than these accelerators. And that's saying something!

The fact is, if you want to transition to tech after doing a non-technical undergraduate degree, it is going to be hard and there's really no shortcuts. But who has money to do a second undergraduate degree?

<comment><USER3> Completely shameless plug:

Lambda School (YC S17) is a 9 month full-time (or 18 month part-time) school that packs in the equivalent of two academic years, including Computer Science core and costs nothing until you're hired and making $50k+ in the field you studied (US only -international terms are different).

Once you're hired you pay 17% of salary for two years, capped at a maximum of $30k.

If you don't get a job in the field after five years the agreement disappears and you don't owe anything.

We not only have a team of a dozen full-time career coaches, but another team of 12+ people whose only job it is to reach out to companies and actually line up interviews for you. A real enterprise sales team working in your behalf.

[https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)

<comment><USER8> Would you care to respond about paying students to post reviews?

<comment><USER3> We've never paid students to post reviews.

We (along with the review sites) will hold a raffle or offer swag to anyone who leaves a review (positive or negative).

One of our students last year won a gift card _from the review site_ for leaving a review and tweeted "I just got a $50 Amazon gift card for leaving a review for Lambda School" and it turned into a whole thing. We literally weren't involved in that in any way.

Trying to twist that into "Lambda School pays students to leave reviews" is 100% incorrect.

<comment><USER9> I understand your position, but giving someone a reward to post a review will strongly bias them in your favor. This has been very well known, for a long time (there are many examples going back decades, Amazon Vine for one.)

The thing is, reviews (in general) are usually biased towards the positive. Even more strongly so when you consider that (in the case of a coding bootcamp) you've just spent an enormous amount of time, money and energy there - nobody's going to want to trash it.

I think we'd agree that in the case where someone had a great experience with your school, they'd post a great review, and when someone had a truly terrible experience, they'd probably post a terrible review. But what about when someone has a merely "meh" experience? In that case, someone will likely (with a bit of a push towards the positive) write a simple, positive review. Maybe they thought they'd have learned faster by themselves... but there's a gift card? And my friends will see the review? Hmm... I'll just write something short and positive.

In general, I think there are a lot of things that are a careful balance, easy to tip in one way or another - politics, public opinion, social issues - <USER2> reviews are certainly one of these things.

<comment><USER3> Again, it wasn't us offering the reward in this instance, it was the review site.

But generally I think it's fair that you should not take code school reviews very seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1170896866805977088.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1170896866805977088.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone else shocked at people's willingness to take on nearly six figures of debt with so little research? Accredited or not, there are a significant amount of educational institutions churning out unemployed and underemployed graduates like it's their job.

<comment><USER12> In almost all cases I recommend various free to inexpensive online options for people interested in learning to code. I taught myself web dev a few years ago and spent in total less than $200 on books, udemy/online courses and am now 5 years into my career.

I can see that a mentored, fine tuned curriculum would be beneficial to someone not sure where to start but it feels crazy to charge someone more than a couple grand for what is essentially freely available information. I think this type of school is preying on people's conditioning to think a traditional college-like environment is more serious or worth it somehow.

<comment><USER13> Surprised you're being downvoted. This is a good response to OP, and I completely agree with it. I'd also like to add, I don't understand how the "credentials" earned from these bootcamps are rated so highly in some peoples' minds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really think the only real criticism she has here is the price as even those she interviewed and were complaining had gotten jobs doing the thing the school trained them to do.

I read through her criticisms of lambda as well, I've been keeping tabs on them and they seem legit. Again the only real complaint I've seen people have has been related to price. Not in a "I won't pay it" kind of way but in a "wish it was less" kind of way. To me that's just grumbling and not a real critique.

This was interesting to read as I attend a school called 42, which functions very similarly to Holberton but free. I've not been to Holberton but I'm about 80% sure that their and our initial curriculum was both based off the work done by Epita and Epitech. I should note that ours has changed as there are teams working on it and many of our students and former students create some as well (I myself made a suite of projects for swift that is about to be rolled out). So it would make sense if they changed theirs too.

The no teacher thing works a lot better than you would think, it teaches you to figure things out, to ask questions, to collaborate and usually when you teach others it helps to solidify your understanding. I actually think if anyone studied this way for a few months it would improve them more than any degree. I'm not advocating against degrees, but this being able to figure things out for yourself skillset often feels like a superpower.

None of these schools are without their problems, everything in life is a tradeoff after all. But I'm insulted that she would imply that everyone who writes about their school in a positive way would be paid. I genuinely believe in building up a community and in strengthening my network, so when I write an optimistic piece on medium or twitter or HN or wherever it's not because I don't believe in it or am being paid, but an effort to pay it forward.

I'm not willing to shift through her tweets to find out what she said about Lambda, I have friends doing that program, and have considered it myself, I follow Austen and some of their staff on twitter, they seem genuine, people that have graduated from it have only good things to say. The only real criticism I've heard is that it's fast paced, which isn't even necessarily a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER15> How do you separate out the bad schools (or is there a list of good ones)? I have exactly one data point: my girlfriend did General Assembly in Austin and had a good experience. I don't know if that translates to other GA locations, and I certainly have no idea which other schools are and aren't legitimate. It seems more and more that she just got incredibly lucky signing up for one that _wasn 't_ a scam.

<comment><USER3> The best way is to take a sampling of students who attended that school and ask them directly.

As someone who runs a school, all the review sites are so easily gamed it's not even a data point you should consider. I've literally seen schools ask, "Did you have a good experience?" If yes -> go leave a review, if no -> submit this feedback form. Like it's the app store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What I found interesting was the fact that the VCs funding the schools are selling the ISAs. There's even an online ISA marketplace: [https://edly.info](https://edly.info)

Also, note that it's 17% of gross income, so before taxes and benefits...

<comment><USER3> VCs fund the schools.

The schools finance the ISAs. The same way a lending startup isn't lending out its VC dollars, it gets other dollars to finance the COGS.

Pretty basic finance, really, and shouldn't surprise anyone. Also doesn't change anything - if students don't get hired you go out of business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> ABET accreditation is still a very important thing to have. I am not terribly surprised.

Sounds like you'd learn more in a (non-ABET, even) community college for two years, at an absolute fraction of the cost, if you wanted to retool after undergrad.

</comment><comment><USER17> At what point does this start to fall under false advertising law? This space is just wildly unregulated and rife with fraud. Seems like the FTC should get involved.

<comment><USER3> They're busy with the accredited institutions backed by government dollars that are even worse

<comment><USER17> At least some of those institutions have widely-known reputations you can go off of. With these fly-by-night operations you never know what you're going to get.

<comment><USER3> There are 5,300 accredited universities and colleges in the United States.

How many do you think have a reputation that is widely known? 10%?

<comment><USER17> Probably. Still a better ratio than bootcamps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember someone posting her thread about Lambda School. I didn't find it very convincing. Definitely not convincing enough to justify her now calling it "trash".</comment>


Steve Jobs on "entrepreneurs" - <AUTHOR>

'I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They're unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That's how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now. That's what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That's what I want Apple to be.'<p>Excerpt from Isaacson's book <comment><USER2> I disagree. I think selling your company doesn't make you any less of an entrepreneur (btw jobs did sell his companies NeXT to Apple in 1997 and Pixar to Disney in 2006). The Paypal founders sold to Ebay for 1.5B and many of them went on to do other great and innovative things with that capital. I think being entrepreneurial means having the passion to start new things and sometimes that requires you to sell your old company/ies to fund it. I admire the courage to sell a successful/profitable company in order to built something from scratch again. Elon Musk said: I think it's better to try doing something which requires low capital as kind of your first company. With the success of that, then take capital from that and plow it into your second company. That's what I did, basically. [http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/elon- musk-starting-a-compan...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/elon-musk- starting-a-company-is-like-staring-into-the-face-of-death/)

<comment><USER3> Hmm...I have a feeling that his statement wasn't really directed at serial, game-changing entrepreneurs like Elon Musk (and himself, as you point out). But there are some people who start companies with the express intent of selling them and aren't necessary worried about them lasting for generations. Whether that makes them not true entrepreneurs, I don't know; I guess Steve Jobs would have said not. But I think they are a different breed than Musk et al.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _"You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or > two from now. That's what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the > people who built Intel"_

One could say the same thing applies to Bill Gates.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been thinking in similar terms for a long time, we've seen how some sold startups are later closed so if you care about the idea behind the startup don't sell it - develop it.

<comment><USER4> If you care about the idea behind your startup so much that you won't sell it, it's not really a startup [and there is nothing wrong with that].

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the case of Andrew Mason shutting out Google's 6 billion offer, is that what defines him as an entrepreneur or is that just blind vision?

</comment><comment><USER7> of course the irony to this quote is to look at the number of companies which were bought out by Walt Disney, HP, Intel, and Apple...

Not saying he's wrong.. just that those purchases helped make them those strong companies.

<comment><USER8> Especially when he was known for ruthlessly going after companies he thought would strengthen his own. Telling them he'd be coming after their market-share directly and pressuring them into selling.</comment></comment>


Ask Ars: Should you stop using the word "marijuana"? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/staff/2020/07/when-you-talk-about-weed-do-you-call-it-cannabis-or-marijuana/ <comment><USER2> I call it reefer, chuff, party smoke, weed, or less frequently rabbit basil.</comment>


George Clooney + Google launch satellite project to monitor Sudan - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/101228/sudan-hollywood-george-clooney <comment><USER2> I like the way the article is sponsored by Shell.</comment>


100% Compression Using Pi - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/philipl/pifs <comment><USER2> It's always wonderful to see solid implementations of really terrible ideas.

<comment><USER3> I hate to sound overly optimistic about these types of things, but this kind of fun and ridiculous stuff is what inspires real innovation as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That reminds me of the ending of the novel/movie "Contact" by Carl Sagan. When calculating pi in base 11, there was an implausibly long run of 0's and 1's, which made a pretty picture when you plotted it in two dimensions. So if you entered that picture as your file, the file system would make a major discovery :-).

Someone actually wrote a paper on the properties of these numbers: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2348](http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2348)

This is the second time in a week I'm mentioning Carl Sagan in a comment. I'll stop doing that now.

<comment><USER5> You can never mention Carl Sagan too much, only too little.

<comment><USER6> Try watching a Cosmos marathon. The hyperbolic introductions are inspiring until you watch them back to back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        > All possible finite files must exist within π.
        > The first record of this observation dates back to 2001.

I'm surprised to hear this, since I had a buddy in high school in the early 90s who insisted on the same thing. Even then I could see the problem was storing the offset & length of the desired sequence would be worse than storing the sequence itself. This friend was brilliant, but he had a history of crazy half-joking ideas. He insisted the natural numbers don't exist, since you have to cross an infinite range of real numbers to get from 0 to 1.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not a good compression algorithm because the offset into pi will require more digits to represent than the data you are trying to compress in the first place. Quite a lot more considering the law of big numbers. So ultimately this algorithm is going to expand the size of your data by some enormous factor.

<comment><USER9> No, you just have to store the offset as well. And the offset for the offset. Then you just have to keep track of the number of offset cycles you've gone through - and you can store this as well.

Keep doing this until you have a number that is smaller than your file...

might take a while, but it would be very elegant.

<comment><USER8> considering the first offset is much, much larger than the file you started with. the offset to the offset is just going to increase in size with each iteration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. There is no proof that pi is a normal number. 2\. The index of the position takes up space.

<comment><USER9> 1\. Well, here's to hoping.

2\. He addressed this - you store the index in pi as well. If the index of the index is too big, you can store that too... indices all the way down!

<comment><USER11> You then have to store how many levels down the real, as opposed to index, data is. If you have looped enough to have reached an index that is small, the depth count will on average be so large that it takes about as much space as your original data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.angio.net/pi/](http://www.angio.net/pi/)

In 100 millons of digits of pi there is less than 1% of chances of finding a given 10 character string. Probably mankind wasnt on earth enough time to have calculated yet the amounts of digits that would imply finding there something big with high chances.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very nice!

I think we should have more April Fools along the year. My favorite "project" so far is still RFC2549.

</comment><comment><USER14> Brilliant. But this is dangerous stuff in the wrong hands. If the NSA gets hold of it, BANG!, everything is metadata. Even you are coded in many codes many times along any expansion of pi... You can now be considered metadata.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's an idea for data storage inspired by this project: 1\. Encode the data into a floating number R 2\. Take a steel rod, assuming its length is L, make a mark on the rod at the distance of L*R from one end To read the data, just measure the location of the mark and back out R. Not as genius but isn't it still great? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> The article is obviously a joke, but it's worth mentioning that the square root of any non-perfect-square number would do as well as Pi. All of them contain infinite sequences of apparently perfect randomness.

Also, not only is it true that any imaginable sequence appears in Pi, but it appears there an infinite number of times.

</comment><comment><USER17> If anyone's interested, I wrote up a tangentially similar project last year. It was a fun use an afternoon ;)

[http://e1ven.github.io/HaShrink/](http://e1ven.github.io/HaShrink/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Does this mean Pi contains copyrighted material ? Good luck DMCA !

</comment><comment><USER19> I was wondering what this post could be about when I read the title and was pleasantly surprised when I clicked on it. It gave me a good laugh - we'll done OP.

</comment><comment><USER20> "In this implementation, to maximise performance, we consider each individual byte of the file separately, and look it up in π."...love it!

</comment><comment><USER21> You could go another level meta, and compress the location of the actual data in π by finding the location of the location in π.

<comment><USER22> Keep reading... he suggests just that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm willing to invest if you have patents.

<comment><USER24> The patent is already written, but I can't tell you the offset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> similarly, we could just store files as pointers to books in the Library of Babel ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel) ) - since there are books there that have the base64 encoded versions of your files as well

</comment><comment><USER26> The bigger the file, the lower the probability of finding an equivalent number (in pi) in this lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER27> When selecting a transcendental filesystem, I usually go with φfs. It just looks better.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's great. You can store the offset in terms of pi too

</comment><comment><USER29> Genious</comment>