Teach kids programming – A collection of resources - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/a2dc04ea9529 <comment><USER3> The age recommendations on this are way off

This article recommends Scratch for 12 and up. Scratch is good for kindergartners and up. The Snap fork is more appropriate for older students: [http://byob.berkeley.edu/](http://byob.berkeley.edu/)

This article recommends Lego Mindstorms for ages 9-12 (and python and ruby). The average age of people who used to buy Lego Mindstorms was 28. The box recommends it for kids over 10. Lego has a robotics kit for younger kids called WeDo. I would not introduce python or ruby to a 9 year old, unless you want them to hate programming. Teaching programming for its own sake is a recipe for disaster.

And again it's missing so much. For coding robots to do things see sites like [http://fightcodegame.com/](http://fightcodegame.com/) [http://robocode.sourceforge.net/](http://robocode.sourceforge.net/) [http://www.nessbots.com/](http://www.nessbots.com/)

For making games, I'd start with Scratch for < 13 kids, but for older kids see sites like [http://www.playmycode.com/](http://www.playmycode.com/) [http://pixieengine.com/](http://pixieengine.com/) [https://www.scirra.com/construct2](https://www.scirra.com/construct2)

<comment><USER4> The author didn't do his homework. Alice [http://www.alice.org/](http://www.alice.org/) is missing from the list. Also Logo is not explicitly there.

The most important issue with this kind of lists is taking programming literally. I think "pre-programming" approaches like [http://mydoodlegame.com/](http://mydoodlegame.com/) can be very useful before jumping to code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> CODE is an amazing book and I rarely see people mention it. I've yet to come across a resource that is so good at joining electrical engineering and computer science.

It starts with an abacus and 400 pages later of flip-flops, memory gates, and microprocessors it leaves you with a fully built modern computer.

That said, I would not put it in a beginner category. I read it after 4 years of ASM programming and building electrical gadgets and I still had to stop and reread chapters quite a few times until I got all the concepts out of it.

If you're at all interested in how all the parts in your computer interact and work together at the lowest level, READ THIS BOOK.

</comment><comment><USER6> I continue to be excited about the current Kickstarter for "Robot Turtles", a board game targeting 3-8 year olds that's based on programming concepts. It sounds like a lot of fun. There are about two weeks left to get a copy.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot- turtles...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot-turtles-the- board-game-for-little-programmer)

</comment><comment><USER7> Probably needs robot turtles: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot- turtles...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot-turtles-the- board-game-for-little-programmer)

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://csunplugged.org/](http://csunplugged.org/)

"Computer Science Unplugged is a collection of free learning activities that teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around."

Definitely worth a mention.

</comment><comment><USER9> You might also want to check out my 3D game-making platform [http://craftstud.io/](http://craftstud.io/) which has drag'n'drop scripting, easy-to-use tools for making your own animated models & maps plus real-time cooperation over the Internet.

I've taken a slightly different approach to most of the tools in the list in that my aim is to provide a platform that can actually be used for real game production. It's used to make all kinds of games by anyone ranging from 8-years-old to adults.

Some games made with it: [http://play.craftstud.io/games/](http://play.craftstud.io/games/)

</comment><comment><USER10> One more addition for the list - the Khan Academy programming tutorials - [https://www.khanacademy.org/cs](https://www.khanacademy.org/cs) Very hands- on, kid-friendly (but good for adults too) - I'd recommend them for middle school and up.

Also, there's Berkeley's Snap!, which is a browser-based version of MIT's Scratch, with some advanced additions like first class procedures. ([http://snap.berkeley.edu/](http://snap.berkeley.edu/))

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an awesome list. I have a daughter turning 5 this december. I've been planning and making a list of to-do to introduce her to computers by next year.

Like most other kids of her generation, she is comfortable with touch devices (phones, tablets) since her 2nd birthday (I saved and gifted her an iPad-1). Now, she navigates Youtube with ease on the Mac's Trackpad and can type her name on the Keyboard. It's time to get on to real computers, and eventually programming. I'm excited.

</comment><comment><USER12> Programmable toys are also a nice way to introduce kids to programming. I wrote my first programs (without even knowing it) on this bad boy: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak) (well, not exactly this one, but it's Soviet counterpart called "Elektronika IM 11" or "Lunokhod")

</comment><comment><USER13> The list misses one of the most important projects designed from ground up for pedagogy -- DrRacket environment[1].

It also missed the book built around Racket for first time programmers - <USER2> of Racket[2].

[1]: [http://racket-lang.org](http://racket-lang.org) [2]: [http://nostarch.com/realmofracket](http://nostarch.com/realmofracket)

</comment><comment><USER14> At the bottom of the list is CodeHS[1]. I've not had much experience with many of the others but speaking from experience my son who is 8 has enjoyed the courses on there.

[1] [http://codehs.com/](http://codehs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Surprised not to see KidsRuby on the list. It's Ruby, packaged up with a kid- friendly interface and turtle graphics support. [http://www.kidsruby.com/](http://www.kidsruby.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://code.google.com/p/rur-ple/](http://code.google.com/p/rur-ple/), a Karel-the-robot adaptation, has been used to teach Python to young kids (age 8+) in school all the way to first-year university students (some examples of these can be found on youtube) in a number of human language. Its successor [http://reeborg.ca](http://reeborg.ca) teaches Javascript (and will eventually teach Python) on the web; free with no login required.

</comment><comment><USER17> Microsoft Small BASIC:

[http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=2296...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=22961)

</comment><comment><USER18> I recommend HTDPv2[0] together with the beginner-friendly IDE Dr. Racket. It let you get started quickly and give you a good foundation to learn your next language. The choice of Scheme is also excellent from a beginners perspective since there's no syntax to learn really.

0\. [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Thank you for the list. I've found the Arduino to be a great platform for learning. Less abstraction … A little code gets a lot of real world wow.

</comment><comment><USER20> For kindergarten-2nd grade (5-8) I'd also recommend Kodable if you have an iPad. It simplifies programming concepts into a fun and interactive world where you have to guide a little fuzz ball through colored mazes. It teaches sequence, conditions, loops, functions, and even makes debugging fun!

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

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Kudos on recommending Petzold's CODE.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've always liked Robot Odyssey (or modern clone [http://www.droidquest.com/](http://www.droidquest.com/)) as an early introduction to concepts of programming and digital logic

</comment><comment><USER22> Thank you for sharing! I want to (and will) upvote the OP and all the comments. Great discussion!</comment>


Viktor Orban Takes Sole Command of Hungary with Pandemic Emergency Law - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/orban-takes-sole-command-of-hungary-with-pandemic-emergency-law <comment><USER2> The creation of a dictatorship is happening live. If the majority simply sits quietly by once the corona threat is over and he doesn't hand back power, they won't have anybody to blame but themselves.

I can already hear the "but we couldn't have known" excuses.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hungarian here, some of the hungarians are very aware, that this is one of the last step to became an actual dictatorship.

I hope there is a way for the EU to stop this, because I'm sure, the residents will not, however all they've done yet is some press release: [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press- room/20200324IP...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press- room/20200324IPR75702/ep-stands-up-for-democracy-in-hungary-during-covid-19)</comment></comment>


ARC: Publishing Android Apps to Chrome Web Store - <AUTHOR> http://intohand.com/blog/post/arc-publishing-android-apps-to-chrome-web-store

<comment><USER2> thats great</comment>


How Differential Gear works - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F40ZBDAG8-o&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> Now I _know_ I've seen this recently ...

(searches)

Yup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2377458>

Submitted by pg, no less.

ADDED IN EDIT: Really? A down-vote? For pointing out something is a duplicate? OK ...</comment>


The Colorado Genebank That Keeps Foods from Going Extinct - <AUTHOR> https://newfoodeconomy.org/seed-banks-biodiversity-preservation/ <comment><USER2> I wish this article provided more context. Apart from the Svalbard facility, there are more than a 1,000 seed banks [1] around the world. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the world's first, and for a long time largest seed collection isn't mentioned in either article. A heroic story [2] associated with that collection is worth knowing.

[1] [https://www.agprofessional.com/article/update- worlds-15-larg...](https://www.agprofessional.com/article/update- worlds-15-largest-seed-banks)

[2] [https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/05/12/the_men_who_starved_to...](https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/05/12/the_men_who_starved_to_death_to_save_the_worlds_seeds_35135)

</comment><comment><USER3> URL changed from [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/inside- colorad...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/inside-colorado- vault-keeping-your-favorite-foods-going-extinct-180968430/?no-ist), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if they can sell me some Pepsi Blue.

<comment><USER5> Though this comment alone may not add much to the discussion, I'd like to use it to point out how ridiculous and subtly manipulative headlines are getting -- using second person pronouns, tenuous emotional connections, faux mystery, etc. When does it end? And no mention of the phrase "seed bank"?

 _Edit: the original headline was "The Colorado vault that keeps your favorite foods from going extinct"_

<comment><USER4> Yeah, puts you in kind of a dumb state of mind where you click in and go "honeybee semen? Not one of my favorites, you don't know me."

The headline substantially waters down the mission of the program.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: SaaS builder community - <AUTHOR> Is there any such thing? <comment><USER2> I'd say the laravel/php and Ruby on Rails communities are the closest thing there is to that. Many of the people involved in those communities run sass businesses or build sass business tools.</comment>


If you like this beer, chances are you also like... - <AUTHOR> http://seekshreyas.github.io/beerviz/#

<comment><USER2> The relationships seem a bit off...

For instance, Burton Baton is a relatively unique beer yet it has a surprising amount of recommendations associated with it while many other beers have few or none.

Also, how were the beers picked out? Its a relatively small set and its not based on popularity - which would give people a better reference point. And if its based on rating, I'm surprised at some of the beers not on the list.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting! The "Choose your preferred beer strength..." by lightness to darkness doesn't make much sense to me. Stouts (not including doubles and imperials) are usually much lower ABV (4%-6%) than IPAs and imperial IPA (6%-12%). I suggest changing to something like "Choose your preferred beer style...".

</comment><comment><USER4> I expected something else. I expected to be able to pick a beer I like (e.g. Deschutes Red Chair, Pliny the Elder, etc.) and see recommendations based on that. I guess something more like Pandora.

What's here is interesting, but more of a "show me beers based on the category".

</comment><comment><USER5> I second the comment about not having heard of any of these beers. Where's the Budweiser?

Also, the site looks awful on my iPad. I didn't even stick around long enough to figure out the point of the site because the elements overlaying each other was really annoying.

<comment> shock-value I'd say it's to the site's credit that it doesn't include Budweiser and other cheap mass-produced domestic beers. The site is clearly designed with beer enthusiasts (or at least budding beer enthusiasts) in mind.

<comment><USER4> Many budding beer enthusiasts start with cheap mass-produced domestics. My first Belgian style was Blue Moon which is made by Coors.

I can think of no better way to grow someone's beer knowledge than to direct individuals to better quality versions of beer they are currently enjoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's really strange how Oatmeal Stouts apparently have absolutely nothing in common with other beers, even other types of Stouts. I suspect there's something wrong with the underlying data...

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like it could be good but the author needs to check his/her markup on a mobile. Looks terrible on my iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would order lots of beer in a heartbeat if there was a way to buy from your site!

</comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, I can't find any beer I've ever heard of.

I'm not very exotic.

</comment><comment><USER10> nice idea!

if i choose "light" i get WarsteinerPremiumDunkel, SpatenDunkel, HofbräuDunkel, etc. "Dunkel" means "dark", so they are no light beers. And the camelCase should be with spaces instead.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just as I always suspected: Stone IPA is like no other!</comment>


Airbnb Is Soaring Into 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://jmarbach.com/airbnb-is-soaring-into-2011 <comment><USER2> The model works but sometimes the listings are a bit too grounded.

<http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/67624?price=15>

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried to use AirBNB a couple times in NYC but my experience boiled down to (a) people not replying when I contacted them about their property, and (b) people trying to get me to pay them cash directly instead of via AirBNB. Glad to hear they're doing well, but I haven't had any luck with them.

<comment><USER4> NYC may be an anomaly - I've had some people not reply promptly (that's pretty much to be expected and their loss), but never yet seen an attempt to cut out AirBnB. My experience has been pretty uniformly positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I met this Lisa Gansky woman, after she spoke at PopTech this year, who wrote a book on this "business of sharing" type of model. I think she's dead on.

I've owned houses, cars, lots of things, and now that I rent almost everything, I feel so much freer from things...

[http://www.amazon.com/Mesh-Why-Future-Business- Sharing/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Mesh-Why-Future-Business- Sharing/dp/1591843715)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. In the past 6 months alone, companies with expansive networks are truly attracting the critical mass of people with all different ages and interests (these "sharing" businesses are no longer have user-bases consisting of early tech adopters). This is proving itself with the enormous valuations for companies such as Groupon for shared buying power, Facebook for shared social news, Zynga, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone else misread this headline as "Snoring" into 2011? #justme?</comment>


Make - A Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/Make/index.html

<comment><USER2> Here's the canonical reference on BSD make: <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/pmake/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> And if you really want to do cool things with make: <http://www.lulu.com/content/2584447>

<comment><AUTHOR> This book seems to be exactly what I was looking for when I found this article, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perfect timing! I'm taking a C programming class and this short tutorial on Make is exactly what I needed. Thanks!</comment>


Congressional Reps Ask Bruce Schneier To Explain To Them What The NSA Is Doing,  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140116/13152525907/congressional-reps-ask-bruce-schneier-to-explain-to-them-what-nsa-is-doing-because-nsa-wont-tell-them.shtml <comment><USER2> Current frontpage discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071480)</comment>


Micron Technology shines on Q4 earnings beat, record revenues - <AUTHOR> https://news.alphastreet.com/micron-shines-on-q4-earnings-beat-record-revenues/ <comment><USER2> Made more profit than Amazon this year. Down 3% after hours. Yet some shitty Canadian weed stock with $20M in revenue is worth $20B.

The market is full of literal retards.</comment>


Free Open Source VPN – AES 256 – WireGuard and OpenVPN - <AUTHOR> https://openinternetaccess.com/vpn.html <comment><USER2> The OpenVPN configuration uses AES-128-GCM as the cipher, which itself is fine but the website claims it is using AES-256.

More concerning is the 'Tor VPN' and bridge being offered. The Tor bridge here is not a proper bridge, instead the SOCKS port is being exposed on a public IP rather than the usual 127.0.0.1. SOCKS is an unencrypted protocol so everything being sent to the bridge is exposed on the wire, and your ISP can trivially see that you are connecting to a VPN over it. This is dangerous and misleading - Tor even warns you that the protocol is not encrypted when you expose the SOCKS port publicly. _Real_ Tor bridges are simply relays not listed in the consensus file. Connections using them are still encrypted using TLS. The website incorrectly claims that by using the VPN over Tor configuration files, you are masking your VPN connection from your ISP.

This free VPN is so misleading that I felt the need to make a HN account just to write about it.

<comment><USER3> Also only available cipher for wireguard is Chacha20Poly1305. I wonder how comes technical information presented by this VPN service is such inaccurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some googling finds the following:

\- OpenInternetAccess domain name registration is privacy enabled (who isn't)

\- VanwaTech runs this VPN, according to their website

\- The phone number listed for VanwaTech is (315) 754-4728

\- This number is also the contact for Northwest Hydropower ([https://nwhydropower.com/](https://nwhydropower.com/))

\- Northwest Hydropower hosts asic crypto currency miners

\- u/Nick-Lim has posted advertising OpenInternetAccess VPN, Northwest Hydropower, and VanwaTech

Just so you know who runs this VPN.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's as if everyone here suddenly forgot all free VPNs are honeypots.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a VPN you do recommend?

<comment><USER7> Not OP, but I've used Mullvad for a couple years and have 0 complaints.

<comment><USER8> I'll second Mullvad. Their interface is dead simple and the list of supported platforms/protocols is great. Quite permissive with 5 connections and port forwarding options. They actually detail how they attempt to never log the payment -> account link for most payment methods on their site. The account has no authentication, it's just an account number with no other identifying information.

They also list all their servers so you can modify your config to have any combination of servers/locations to use and fall back to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to allocate 16GB of memory in Go? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10050888/how-to-allocate-16gb-of-memory-in-go

<comment><USER2> That's 32 gigs of memory, not 16.</comment>


MH17 – Forensic Analysis of Satellite Images Released by the Russian MoD - <AUTHOR> https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/05/31/mh17-forensic-analysis-of-satellite-images-released-by-the-russian-ministry-of-defence/

<comment><USER2> From TFA: _These claims, representing the majority of information publicly presented by the Russian government since the downing of Flight MH17, are a clear attempt by the Russian government to deceive the public, global community, and the families of the Flight MH17 victims, only days after Flight MH17 was shot down._

Basically, the Russian government is being accused of faking images to deflect blame.</comment>


Ask HN: Help, Investor wants money back in 7 days "Or else" - <AUTHOR> We recently sold a total of 22% share of our established company to an investor that also wanted to work for us as director of Sales. The person had a large rolodex in a segment of our market that we had not been able to tap and felt they could bring a lot to the table as an employee. So we put together some additional vesting based on rev targets all tied to being employed. The investment granted preferred shares and a seat on the board, voting is with ownership % and it takes 67% to pass.
So here we are 8 weeks after the deal, and things could not have gone worse. From day 1 the employee made it clear they did not intend to do sales, but instead had a "vision" for the company and wanted to run it. They first tried to buy out the CEO and president to do so, but we refused. After that they refused to work the sales plan we had developed, refused to be accountable to any touches/sales goals, hired staff without budget approval, purchased equipment/services without approval (sometimes express disapproval), took 20% vacation days, worked 10-4, and walked out of 3 meetings. The person basically would take no direction or training from the CEO (their agreed upon boss) and eventually moved out of the office to setup an office in another location. When called out on this behavior the person threatened to suit for all sorts of things, hostile work environment being #1 - they also threatened to pull their investment 3 times, including 3 working days in!
So here we are now, we have made it very clear that the employment will not continue like this, and have started the process of removing the job with cause. Seeing that coming they have requested to reverse the deal and demand we return the full investment in 1 week, or they can "do it the hard way".  They would like to reverse everything so that it is like it never happened. There is nothing in our agreement that covers this, besides them selling their shares, the employment is not guaranteed on paper. We too would like them out of the company for obvious reasons but there are issues with this demand:
1. 7 days it a short amount of time to come up with 400k 2. a lot of the investment has been committed (in good faith) to salaries and equipment, included the salary paid to the investor for "working" in the sales role (which yielded 0 sales, 1 presentation, and 0 estimates) 3. Some of the investment bought personal stock from one of the owners. So that money is taxed, been used to delete debt,  and not in the company. 4. They know all our IP from having access to literally everything from basecamp to 3yrs of client sales data, our staff and to how we do what we do. They have made it very clear they want to turn around and open a directly competing company as soon as they leave.
Anytime we push back on these issues they again threaten to suit, and they remind us they have a huge pile of cash for that and we don't.
We have offered to buy back 185K of their stock immediately, and the rest by the end of the year from accounts receivable. We think this would be more realistic, doing the buy back much faster would starve the company of cash, and very well put us negative on cash-flow. We are also asking that the existing non-compete, non-disparagement, and NDA they signed still stand. I also feel like the 30K spent on their salaries should be deducted from the buyback.
Of course we think this is all total BS, and the "right" thing to do is to suit them, but that is not our DNA, and would jeopardize the company we have now (growing revenues at 125% a year for the past 3 years).
I know what we did wrong, trust me, but what do you think we should do now to finish this? <comment><USER3> Things seem past repair. Get a good lawyer, and do what they advise.

You probably don't need to worry about the guy starting a competing company. If he does it will fail.

<comment><USER4> Further specifying "good": you really need a lawyer who's seriously experienced in these kinds of matters, not just any lawyer. It makes all the difference.

Also remember that there's _a lot_ a lawyer can do for you in a situation like this, way before a lawsuit is even on the horizon.

<comment><USER5> Along with get a lawyer's opinion before doing anything i would stress that you can talk to multiple lawyers or firms to get different prices and opinions. Also I have found that people are usually happier if they find their lawyers through a connection rather than just searching Google or the yellow pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am sorry, but this is so convoluted and there is so much money is at stake that if you haven't hired a lawyer by now you are certifiably insane. A couple of things are for sure, you and your business partners were a) not equipped to detect/vet a loony b) were not able to handle them c) did an ask HN in a situation that obviously calls for a lawyer. I am sorry but you are seriously lacking business skills. After this is finished you need to either learn from your mistakes or better yet put out for, and vet very very carefully from multiple references and past performance, a serious business oriented partner because this rambling post with tens of thousands of dollars at stake just screams clueless.

<comment><USER7> I see your points but I think this is overly harsh. You aren't experiencing this first hand - you are reading a summation after the fact and making a quick judgement. This possibly is all happening like a slow motion car wreck.

There are a number of dynamics at play in a situation like this and it can get very confusing, very quickly. The new guy is both an investor whose money they are currently spending and also an employee which blurs the lines on how to manage a relationship like this.

I have seen these kinds of relationships blow up before and when you are a young and inexperienced entrepreneur you don't know whether to engage him, disengage and get attorneys involved or just go crazy. Sometimes it looks like the other guy is holding all the cards.

This doesn't scream clueless, it screams confused and not sure whether to spend scarce resources on attorneys. Next time they will have an attorney standing by.

<comment><USER6> No, look at the figures they are talking about, 400k and 185k; plus the other side has already been threatening legal action. Not taking definitive action by now, given how long this has been festering, and going to a web forum for advice is not simple confusion and is very well worth condemning. They came here for advice but they should function as a cautionary tale to all reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Time to become a bit Machiavellian - even if its not in your DNA. What are this persons weak points?

1\. Hire a good lawyer and get good advice. The best defense is a good offense and all that.

Make sure he has no ability to use company funds. Cancel his company debit / credit card if he received one as a director of sales. Send an official letter by registered post letting him know that he does not have the ability to authorize expenses above $100 or so.

Then follow your lawyer's advice on firing him from the sales position.

Make sure your lawyer communicates the non-compete part with him properly - <USER2> that he realizes that if he leaves now, he won't be able to profit from the idea at all - and its better to stay with you and earn 22% of the pie than go for 100% and get a big fight on his hands that he will most likely lose.

2\. > The person had a large rolodex in a segment of our market.

This tells us that the person's reputation can be adversely affected. Threat of bad press could maybe get him in line.

Also, it would be a good idea to find at least one or two common connections and try making them mediators.

3\. This is the stick. You need to offer him a carrot too.

Make him an offer: he does not work with you. He retains his shares and plays a role as an investor. He gives up the board seat - and remains a silent investor. He gives you a connection / letter of referral for all the contacts he is sitting on - for a flat fee. No vesting of shares.

Position this "getting a fee for writing a letter of introduction to his connections" - as the carrot. A lot depends on how you phrase it.

4\. Start contacting other investors who could maybe buy this person's share out. I doubt if you can find and close someone in 7 days, but the sooner you start looking, the better.

<comment><USER9> "This tells us that the person's reputation can be adversely affected. Threat of bad press could maybe get him in line."

Under no circumstances should you make threats like this without talking to a lawyer.

<comment><USER10> More, please?

<comment><USER11> The guy could add a defamation claim to whatever else he pled in a lawsuit -- or it could just give him something to make gorilla dust [1] over.

[1] 2001: A Space Odyssey

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Anytime we push back on these issues they again threaten to suit_

Sometimes threats are just threats. When I was starting Tarsnap, I spoke to an "angel" investor who, when it became clear that we wouldn't reach a deal, threatened to sue me to recover his "expenses" associated with considering an investment. A few months ago I got an email from an "inventor" threatening to sue me for infringing on his patent application.

In both cases, I responded that I thought they'd be laughed out of court; and I haven't heard from either since.

<comment><USER13> Generally speaking you can only do yourself harm by responding to this kind of threat. Just ignore it.

The first thing a lawyer will probably tell you is say nothing.

<comment><USER14> The first thing my lawyer (in the UK) tells me is to __always __respond to any correspondence that contains false claims etc. The response should be a short 'I categorically disagree with everything you claim'.

Not responding/objecting, I am told, will be interpreted as a kind of silent agreement by the judge, if the case ever lands in court.

<comment><USER13> I guess I should elaborate.

When someone starts threatening you with a lawsuit sometimes what they're doing is going on a fishing expedition. They're baiting you into either settling or making a damaging admission. For example, "I know I was meant to pay you but...". You've just stipulated that you owe the sender money. Woops.

There is other kind of correspondence that you should respond to. Either direct them to your lawyer or forward the correspondence to your lawyer and have them draft a response, if it's reached that point.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: avoid saying anything unnecessary. Don't volunteer any information you don't have to. Don't accept the premise of the question (eg when someone says "Are you going to pay me or stiff me?" and you answer "Stiff you" it can be argued you've accepted the premise of the question by admitting that you do owe them money).

Also, many make the mistake of assuming that verbal contracts are worth the paper they're printed on. HUGE mistake. If you tell someone "I'll pay you $100 a day to do my gardening" hoping that if it comes to court it's your word against his, consider: if that person shows up and does your gardening and goes home and then does it the day after, any court will come to the conclusion that some agreement was in place as it isn't reasonable for someone to simply start doing that, particularly when you didn't correct them of any alleged misunderstanding.

You'll get similar advice when giving depositions and evidence in court: answer the question but only the question asked. Don't volunteer anything else. It'll just get you into trouble. The same applies to any kind of correspondence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one of those "Ask HN's" where the ONLY helpful + useful answer is: "get a lawyer" and nothing more.

HN'ers all mean well, but few-to-none of us are lawyers. I've seen examples where many well-meaning geeks (I'm one too) have up-voted an answer to a legal question that is actually _incorrect_ or not the best course of action.

Always take legal advice from a lawyer over the advice of 100 geeks. If the amount of money we're talking about here is $400k then you must have had a lawyer involved to do the deal so go back to them seeing as they are familiar (and should have put provisions in for this kind of outcome).

<comment><USER16> I disagree slightly on the "nothing more". Yes, get a lawyer, but also don't lose too much sleep over the threat to start a competing business. If this guy wasn't bothering to do any sales for OP, then I doubt they'll have the perseverance to follow through on doing it for themselves. They'll have grand plans and talk it up, but I don't think they will see it through. YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I cringe every time I see something like this posted here. I know you're probably freaking out (I would be in your spot) and desperate, but asking an internet community what to do in a situation like this is like asking a guy on Chatroullette "I have a stabbing pain in my chest, what should I do?"

Do yourself a favor and ignore every piece of advice that isn't "talk to a good lawyer". Except the piece of advice that says you should ignore every piece of advice and talk to a lawyer. Or that second one.

Now my head hurts. What should I do?

<comment><USER18> Talk to a lawyer

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Casually start giving "guy" the impression you have been always been talking to lawyers since the beginning even if you haven't. You need to start methodically slipping in mysterious phrases like "me and original cofounder Y's attornies", even if you are talking about how everything will work out without lawyers, you have to convey to him that you've secretly been talking to lawyers about him since the beginning and are actually a few steps ahead of him in a secret master plan in which he is the loser. He is gaming you.

Also, humor is life's great defuser. If you can figure out how to make him _laugh_ at least a couple times in the next few weeks, it will be a surprisingly _huge_ aid.

[ Even though this is at the unavoidably _SERIOUS BUSINESS_ aka lawyer point, you need to get meta, make light of the situation, don't jump through the hoops he creates for you. His train of thought is carrying you and your business and it's headed to bye-bye camp. DERAIL this train in anyway possible, even if it involves providing framed motivational posters of LOLcats for his new office. Also, consider getting him drunk at some point if possible. ]

<comment><USER20> Simply speaking, make them lose focus, relax

<comment><USER19> Hmmm maybe I was thinking of an analogy to foreign relations.

You need to show this would-be invader that you DO have a military (lawyer) of your own and are capable of defending yourself. To discourage invasion. Once you have discouraged someone from invading outright, then you can hopefully work towards an "Obama beer summit" over a few pints [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32210408/ns/politics- white_house...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32210408/ns/politics-white_house/) Lighten the mood, initiate diplomacy, avoid seeing who has more nuclear missiles than the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Stop contact.

Like others have said you need to get a lawyer pronto.

Direct all communication through you new lawyer, or with your lawyer present.

Some things to discuss with your lawyer:

1.Nature of the investment?

2.What terms did you and the investor agree to in writing?

3.Termination of employment, don't just fire him w/o talking with your lawyer.

4.His unauthorized hires, purchases.

</comment><comment><USER22> Who provided the agreements this person signed, and structured the company for you? You have been in existence 3 years, you say, and going by the numbers you mention the company is capitalized to the tune of about $2 million. I find it hard to believe you don't already have an attorney, and that said attorney would not have given you a professional referral if some unforeseen circumstance made it impossible to advise you. Or that you have run the company for this long, and had serious problems over the last 2 months, without being aware that this is the sort of stuff lawyers do for a living.

It can't be a cash question, you could get an hour of excellent legal advice for $1000 even in a big city.

Also (and this applies to all legal 411 queries on HN), where is the firm incorporated/located? Rules vary across different US states, and there are lots of HN folk who are not in the USA at all. I'm only guessing you're American when I mention 4 numbers, for all I know you could be in Uzbekistan. Even if I was a lawyer, how would I know which rules govern your case, or whether I was close enough to offer assistance?

And why don't you have a throwaway email address in case someone can give you an exact answer or refer you to a report of an identical case? Depending on the nature of your business, it might even be appropriate to involve the police based on the story you tell.

 _the "right" thing to do is to suit them, but that is not our DNA, and would jeopardize the company we have now_

I'm having trouble taking this seriously.

</comment><comment><USER23> Get the most reputable lawyer you can find and afford (firm with known name) and force the other part into structured negotiations. Don't go to Hacker News for advice. Advice is worth nothing, proper procedure is everything. At this point you can easily make a mistake and become accountable.

</comment><comment><USER24> Talk to a lawyer immediately. Now, this doesn't mean you need to go out and hire the most expensive firm you can find; be reasonable and talk to a few different firms and really utilize any free initial consultations. Stop communicating with this person about anything legal until you have gotten counsel. I mean, if this person brings up legal matters, just tell them you can't talk about it. Don't offer any more deals. Definitely, do not do anything at all to make it seem as if you admit wrongdoing. Again, talk to some lawyers and do not have any more conversations with the person about possible resolutions, deals, etc without getting consultation. Don't let the other party know anything about what you are planning. Perhaps you can file some sort of suit, at least file a complaint that may make the person give up and go away, which is what I think you really want. He can't force you to come up with 400K in 7 days. He'd have to file a complaint, you would need to get served, and then you'd have time to respond. From that point, you can file all kinds of things. Don't be scared or emotional, get off HN and get to the calling law firms. Cheer up, people like this usually lose. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone maintain a blacklist of "nightmare" people to do startup business with?

Seems like this guy is a surefire candidate to be included in such a list.

<comment><USER26> <http://www.thefunded.com/funds/banned>

It's a list of VCs to avoid.

I wish there was a place to submit "clients from hell" (I know a few), but I can see how this could be abused too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "I also feel like the 30K spent on their salaries should be deducted from the buyback."

IANAL.

They have no right to ask for their investement back. They have offered to sell you all their shares for 400k within a week. You have made a counter offer, which they rejected.

You can give them a lower offer (370k, by the end of the year), but they can refuse.

Realistically, you might have to offer a bit more, as their investement has grown.

You can hit them with a suit if you want - they acted with apparent, but not actual authority. From wikipedia: "If the agent has acted without actual authority, but the principal is nevertheless bound because the agent had apparent authority, the agent is liable to indemnify the principal for any resulting loss or damage."

So you can ask them to pay you damages for anything they did without the right approval. You'll need a lawyer to do this.

You might want to ask them what charges they are thinking about making. There might be some minority investor rights they can sue over? But I'd ask a lawyer before doing this - I suspect this could force their hand, which you might not want to do.

Whatever the case, you want to buy them out, and make sure all the documentation for this is in good order.

<comment><USER27> IANAL, but it sounds like his threats are just piss and wind. I can't see how he has any rights, other than those of a minority shareholder and as a (former) sales manager.

On the other hand, you can sue him for acting as an agent without actual authority. Those hires and purchases he made that you explicitly vetoed? Invoice him, and watch him squirm. Tell him he can pay for them with some of his shares. But ask a lawyer first.

If he keeps making noise, ask him if you can speak to his lawyer. He doesn't have one. No lawyer would advise him to make such stupid decisions (trying to roll a CEO with just 20% of shares, vague threats, etc).

You have to buy him out eventually, or he'll be a recurring headache. It might cost more than 400k, as his investement has matured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You might want to talk to your company attorney about the possibility of the company buying back his shares by executing a note for the balance, rather than all cash. Maybe talk about the possibility of having the note come due upon some particular event, such as replacing the investor with another investor of equal or greater value. If the investor is hesitant to go for that option, you could talk to your attorney about the possibility of having the company make payments towards the note balance on some other future event as laid out on a timetable.

If you look in the Attorney engagement letter it probably has language about their duty is to represent the interests of the company only, and not the founders, shareholders, officers or other individuals or entities associated with the Company.

It seems like he wants to willingly pull out as employee and investor/board member, as long as he gets his investment back. So working out a solution for the payment for the shares (with the help of the company Attorney) might get the ball rolling on a solution for you guys.

Good luck with this.

</comment><comment><USER29> As others have advised, I would contact a good lawyer asap. And then consider deleting this post if that's possible. Your adversary may find it and use what you've said here against you. If not the details, he may use the fact that you've said it in this forum. Again, a lawyer would be a better advisor on that too.

</comment><comment><USER30> Having been in a similar situation in the past, albeit without the stock all I can say is lawyer up. Nobody on HN is going to be in a position to give you valid advice. You need to see a real lawyer, not Internet bush-lawyers.

It does look to me like you need to determine what your objectives are for the situation. From my point of view, if you can stomach it, kicking them out of the board is a top priority. I wouldn't worry too much about the shares as long as you can live with them being a silent (albeit voting) investor. If you're going to buy them out, make sure it's on your terms and doesn't put too much strain on the company.

</comment><comment><USER31> 1\. Keep the investment, assuming the shareholders agreement provides for this. Do not jeopardise your cash position for the emotional convenience. 2\. Instruct a lawyer to commence filing suit for breach of employment contract. This usually sobers up aggressive types. 3\. Tenaciously and repeatedly communicate this persons breaches to them whenever they accuse you. Do not admit wrongdoing.

<comment><USER31> NB: not sure why I got down votes on this post - if an investor has put $ into a company, then he can't just pull it out at short notice unless the shareholders agreement allows for this. If you put cash in, you put it in. It won't come out unless there are either a) dividends or b) a liquidity event of some kind. An investment company is not a bank holding deposits and investors shouldn't put money in and then create waves by expecting it out again outside of a) or b) - unless they have a redeemable convertible note of some kind.... But maybe I missed something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Food for thought, they signed a Non-Compete and NDA agreement. They can't directly compete with you and if they do you better sue them like your life depends on it. Also, as it was said by another poster, you are agreeing that you did something wrong, not legally I presume, but it certainly makes you look bad.

In any case. Get A Laywer

<comment><USER15> How do you know they signed an NDA and non-compete, or are you just speculating? If so, not sure speculation is helpful here.

As it happens, non-competes tend not to be enforceable in most states, although granted it doesn't say what jurisdiction (or even country) this is occurring in.

<comment><USER32> Because the original poster said so?

 _We are also asking that the existing non-compete, non-disparagement, and NDA they signed still stand_

<comment><USER15> My bad, didn't see OP said there was a non-compete, etc.

However, my point still stands that non-competes are rarely enforceable.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps they are not, but when you have those three agreements signed it becomes hell to try to compete. You shouldn't compete (even if it's not enforceable), you can't talk in any way that reflect wrongly on the other business, and off course you can't share any intellectual property obtained while in the company. I think they are pretty safe regarding competition from the snafu investor.

<comment><USER15> Investors fund rival businesses all the time.

Most investors won't sign NDAs, let alone non-competes. It's further example of how weird this situation is - on both sides of the table.

 _You shouldn't compete (even if it's not enforceable)_

I would never sign a non-compete because it's not enforcable (I'm in California). If I _really_ wanted to work on a project and the founders said I had to sign the non-compete with no other option I would tell them in writing that I know it is not enforceable and have no interest in adhering to it, and sign it anyway. If the opportunity later came up to compete, I would. Nothing illegal about it.

People go work at rival companies all the time - right now there are loads of good folks leaving Zynga to work for rival companies in exactly the same space - and vice-versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Like most of the others have said, "get a lawyer" though I'd actually get two -- first, an employment lawyer to handle the termination as Director of Sales and -- second, an investment lawyer, to explain your options there. Don't assume one lawyer is going to be able to be great at both.

<comment><USER13> If he's in at at will employment state he doesn't need a reason to get rid of him.

The OP said he was terminating the guy with cause which is interesting. If the investment is contractually tied to the position it could of course be much more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> After you get a lawyer, stop stressing out about it. These ordeals may seem like the end of the world the first time you go through them, but they always resolve themselves eventually, and the end result is rarely dire.

</comment><comment><USER35> Get a good lawyer from a major firm; you'll need a depth of skills not available in a small firm. Collect all relevant paperwork. Document everything. Write memos to "the file", keep notes. Don't delay.

</comment><comment><USER36> Off-topic, but congratulations on growing a business where you'll be able to pay back such a large amount of money on basically zero notice (and I mean raising over $200k... by the end of the year).

</comment><comment><USER37> His only way is to get a lawyer, however, I find this post helpful. This can show new comers the problems that they can face with investors and therefore take caution.

</comment><comment><USER38> Doing the right thing isn't in your DNA?

</comment><comment><USER39> OP, Get a lawyer and sue for damages.

<comment><USER11> Old joke: Filing a lawsuit is like making love to a gorilla; once you start, you're not done till the gorilla is.

<comment><USER39> I should have said, get a lawyer and threaten loudly to sue for damages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> IANAL, but AFAIK returning money means, legally, that you agree that you did something wrong, therefore if you return the money the investor might be able to sue you with further litigation.

<comment><USER40> Not trying to sound like I am "Mr. Lawyer", but I did take a class on evidence this semester. But, more to the point:

If (s)he were to try and settle the dispute, it cannot be used against the defendant in court to prove negligence or wrongdoing. Ironically, this is so that people will be willing to settle disputes out of court, instead of clogging the court system with tons of suits.

So, giving the money back, in an attempt to settle the dispute, does not enable further suit.

<comment><USER12> Is that a blanket rule for attempts-to-resolve-disputes, or does it only apply to negotiations after a lawsuit has been filed?

<comment><USER41> All attempts to negotiate or compromise cannot be offered in court as proof of liability.

Rule 408. Compromise and Offers to Compromise

(a) Prohibited uses.—Evidence of the following is not admissible on behalf of any party, when offered to prove liability for, invalidity of, or amount of a claim that was disputed as to validity or amount, or to impeach through a prior inconsistent statement or contradiction:

(1) furnishing or offering or promising to furnish or accepting or offering or promising to accept a valuable consideration in compromising or attempting to compromise the claim

Those are the Federal rules. They vary from state to state, but most are pretty close.

<comment><USER12> _furnishing or offering or promising to furnish or accepting or offering or promising to accept a valuable consideration in compromising or attempting to compromise the claim_

Does "the claim" here mean "anything people were arguing about", or does it specifically mean a lawsuit which had been filed?

<comment><USER41> A claim means any dispute for which one party believes it is entitled to a remedy. Its not necessary that a suit have been filed.

If you're worried about ways settlement offers can potentially be used against you, remember that the rule only bars using such evidence for the purpose of proving liability. As long as its offered for some other purpose, it can be allowed in. And once a jury hears the evidence, in practice it doesn't really matter for what purpose they were told to consider it.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! I doubt I'll ever need to know this stuff (I certainly hope I'll never need to know it!) but I always like learning about how such systems work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: VisualStudio 2010 - Have you upgraded yet? - <AUTHOR>

I have not upgraded yet, wondering how it's gone and what people think of the latest VS <comment><USER2> Yes, I've upgraded from 2008 to 2010. The ASP.NET MVC tooling is a bit better, intellisense is smarter and multi monitor support is better.

However I still design everything to be cross platform compatible and I deploy my asp.net mvc webapps on Linux with nginx and mono.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, I have.

I inherited a company (I'm their newish CTO) that is entirely Windows/.NET based.

Not only have I upgraded to 2010, I'm currently upgrading the whole shebang to Linux/Ruby/OSS mostly using Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes - I really like Asp.net MVC 2, .Net 4.0 and the new architect features. My job is about to switch everyone over... we'll see how it goes! We're also switching to TFS as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hoping to very soon but can't do it until viemu support arrives. Should be within a couple weeks.</comment>


Bill Gates's Concerned With Elizabeth Warren's Proposed Wealth Tax - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/6/20952392/bill-gates-wealth-tax-jeffrey-epstein-elizabeth-warren-philanthropy <comment><USER2> While he has a dislike for Trump, it sounds as if between Warren and Trump he'd support Trump over lower taxes on the rich.</comment>


The gentle art of cracking passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24519306

<comment><USER2> Similar to this, Ars Technica published a very interesting, and more in-depth, article earlier this year: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how- crackers-make-mi...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers- make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/)

</comment><comment><USER3> People are lazy. But on the other hand, there are far too many sites forcing people to have unique passwords. Ultimately, passwords have to be re-used.

I suppose the alternative might be a password manager, but given the NSA revelations I feel even less secure about putting my passwords onto a cloud- based list.</comment>


Chatbots will decimate the call centre - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/ms-call-centre-chatbot-ai/ <comment><USER2> So, it's an automated switchboard?

I have found the HMRC automated switchboard very accurate, "in your own words describe your query"</comment>


Bitcoin scaling problems, solved? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/josephzhou/status/499316458393178112 <comment><USER2> Don't link to your twitter stream. Submit the original article.</comment>


A link-aggregator for writing-related articles - <AUTHOR> https://write.narwhal.space/ <comment><USER2> ...Why the name narwhal.space?

<comment><USER3> It's a reference to space narwhals [1], a common meme in some circles.

[1] [https://www.google.co.kr/search?q=space+narwhal&source=lnms&...](https://www.google.co.kr/search?q=space+narwhal&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. There are many aspiring entrepreneurs on HN and writers are entrepreneurs, too, so there may be something for the other to learn from either side. Spotted this article about time management on the site which could be helpful to any hacker holding down a day job and a side project. [http://www.sfwa.org/2017/06/finding-elusive-writing- time/](http://www.sfwa.org/2017/06/finding-elusive-writing-time/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Whence you can find the sentence:

> In terms of speech act theory, his locutionary acts — the things he says — > are the same as his illocutionary acts — the meanings underlying what he > says

</comment><comment><USER6> It's more like Barnacl.es in that it's a highly-focused aggregator using the Lobsters engine. Upvoting it, though, in case any literature lovers would find it interesting.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always wanted to be a good writer and have been looking for another productive time waster. Thanks so much for posting this because I've already read about 3 things that really interested me.

<comment><USER8> My sentiments exactly, I've bookmarked this straight away, excellent resource!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting! Does anyone have an invite?

<comment><USER10> Agreed! An invite would really be helpful!

<comment><USER8> If either of you folks get one, I'd appreciate an invite too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you think the community has professional writers or only writing enthusiasts from the tech world? :)

<comment><USER12> Ouch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The real news here is Michael O. Church has moved into writing fiction.

[https://write.narwhal.space/u/michaelochurch](https://write.narwhal.space/u/michaelochurch)

<comment><USER14> Arguably, most of his contributions to Google's mailing lists were a very strange and very long form of fiction...

<comment><USER15> I don't know about that, but this synopsis beats 99% of book blurbs I've read:

[https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/farisas- cour...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/farisas-courage- novel-is-revision-complete/)

so fiction might well be his real calling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank you for this!

</comment><comment><USER17> Not sure why this is titled "A Hacker News For Literature". The site is very clearly writing focused and the about page says "This is a community based on lobste.rs. First and foremost, Write.Narwhal.Space is a link-aggregator for writing-related articles. If you're interested in learning more about the writing field, bettering your writing in general, or simply talking to other people interested in writing, definitely take a look around!"

I would suggest changing to "A Hacker News for Writing"

<comment><USER18> Right. The "Hacker News for Literature" would be something closer to Arts & Letters Daily, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No RSS feed....

<comment><USER20> [https://write.narwhal.space/rss](https://write.narwhal.space/rss)</comment></comment>


Put Up Your Hand If You Ever Lie - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/put-up-your-hand-if-you-ever-lie.html <comment><USER2> What's the biggest lie? That lies are somehow "evil".

<comment><USER3> Lies are a bad thing and a big deal. Reality is all we have; lying to people means taking that away from them. So in that sense, lying seems to be up there with depriving someone of their freedom, or physically harming them.

Fortunately, it's pretty hard to figure out what the exact damages are, so the combination of cultural norms against lying, plus penalties for fraud ("fraud" being, basically, "a lie whose cost you can quantify,") will have to do.

<comment><USER4> Not all lies are evil.

You lie to your kids when you tell them the tooth fairy and Santa Claus exist to make them happy.

You lie to the guy robbing you when he asks whether you've got more money on you

You lie to your cancer stricken grandmother when she asks you whether she'll survive.

If you don't I'd say you were a heartless bastard ;-) Life isn't as simple as you make it appear in your comment.

<comment><USER5> The only one not evil in that case is the lie to the guy robbing you.

<comment><USER4> According to you maybe. What if I have different values?

See what I'm getting at?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Since 1987 I have personally completed over 40,000 one-on-one, face-to-face sessions._

So that's at least 5 of these interviews every single day of the year for 22 years. I'm not really buying it.

<comment><USER6> It might be plausible. If the sessions were brief, the researcher could probably conduct 16 interviews per day. At that rate, it would only take 114 working days dedicated to that task per year to hit the 40,000 mark. That's roughly equivalent to a part-time job dedicated to interviewing subjects, which doesn't seem terribly unreasonable, especially when the author's states that a significant portion of his work is dedicated to just that: "In my job I listen to (and look at) a lot of people."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Put your hand back down if you require more than the statistics and conclusions of a so-called expert in his blog. A little supporting data sure would have been nice.

Then again, maybe OP's been lying all along.

<comment><USER8> What do you mean? Certainly you don't need supporting data to prove to you that people lie and lie a lot?</comment></comment>


This is how Apple rolls - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.html <comment><USER2> I was reading this, thinking, "wow, this guy sure seems to love Apple."

Then I read this: "As a pundit, I'm supposed to explain how the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. But I can't. The iPad really is The Big One: Apple's reconception of personal computing." To which I thought, "translation: 'my fanboyism gets in the way of rational thought.'"

THEN, I hit the bottom of the article, and realized what I was reading. John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Apple's unofficial mouthpiece, writing another fluff piece for Apple.

This is how Apple fanboys roll.

<comment><USER3> Pretty defensive response. It's hard to see how you could interpret the evolution of Apple's products since Jobs and OS X and the iPod and the iPhone and now the iPad have taken root as anything but extraordinary. You kind of sound like a hater.

<comment><USER2> Nah, I think the devices are great. Apple's got a solid OS platform on three different types of devices.

I see how it changes personal computing, in that it turns users into pure consumers of content. I mean, that's it. You can use a few apps to do this or that, but the iPad is primarily about consumption. I don't know that this is a "revolution," but it is certainly a step.

It doesn't change personal computing for me, but I don't passively consume content all that often (being a designer and developer).

So, maybe John Gruber pinned me right on thinking it's a glorified iPod Touch, and I'm not a hater; I just don't see what the big deal is. Maybe I've never found a device that made me breathlessly extol its virtues?

<comment><USER4> _I see how it changes personal computing, in that it turns users into pure consumers of content. I mean, that's it. You can use a few apps to do this or that, but the iPad is primarily about consumption._

Depending on how you count it, it's the 2nd computing platform where "pure consumption" is slick and worry free. The Web may have been the first. (Though popups were no picnic at first.) There is no reason that content creation isn't possible -- Apple's just not doing that right now.

Check out music related apps. There's a lot of possible use of the iPad for content creation there.

I bet that the mobile device landscape will have a _lot_ of parallels to the early web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: Apple is good at both innovation _and_ iteration. The iteration part is undervalued in understanding their success.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read the whole article and I just can't get rid of one big question: so what?

Seriously, this is just saying how Apple designers and engineers are doing a great job. Okay, but what's the point? Is that it?

<comment><USER7> I think the point he's making is that it's silly to make judgements on the long-term viability of the iPad platform based on problems with the first generation device. The iPad doesn't have to sell in huge numbers in the first couple of years. Eventually the platform will develop and mature, and perhaps in five years time or so, it might be powerful enough to replace a traditional computer for most people.

<comment><USER8> _Eventually the platform will develop and mature, and perhaps in five years time or so, it might be powerful enough to replace a traditional computer for most people._

The frustrating thing is that it _is_ powerful enough to _be_ a computer for most people, but for non-technical reasons, Apple insists on keeping it Not A Computer.

<comment><USER9> probably because Apple realizes that the computer is still too hard for the average joe to use. Macs might be easy, but my mom still has trouble getting the thing to find the printer -- and she's a chemistry professor at a top 20 university.

<comment><USER10> Well, she won't have problem finding the printer on the device, that can not print.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, we get it, Apple is god, Apple is the greatest, Apple can't fail, Apple is soooo great and fantastic. Apple is simply the best ever, there is nothing like it. Everything Apple does is absolutely perfect and magnificient. They'll never fail because they rule so much.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh, come on.. this site is becoming an Apple news site more and more.. does it have to be another apple praising blog post?

I really wish to see more non-apple news on the site. It's ok to have a (read: one) news link when apple releases new hardware. Last weeks have been links from everyones oppinion on Steve's thoughts or Apples actions, almost philosophical posts about where/when/why/if apple is great, yada yada yada...

<comment><USER13> Unless I totally misunderstand how this site works, then the story is on the first page because a bunch of people voted for it. That's the idea, to expose stories people might be interested in. One thing you _can't_ say here is that no one is interested in the topic.

If you don't want to read "another damn Apple story" then _don't click on the link_...

<comment><USER12> The key point is that the site is named "Hacker News" and not "Apple news". Of course i understand how the site works, but if you can't see the total disproportion of apple news vs. the rest of it world, then i don't know. In general, if Steve Jobs farts, there will be more then one link on the "New" page from which 1-2 are getting to the frontpage. The point is, that when Sony releases a new notebook or MP3 player of mobile phone, no story will be here. If it's from Apple, several stories will be here + Stories about the stories and blog posts with one persons feelings about the story.

I already figured that the most people on Hacker News use Macs (from the photo thread of peoples workplaces many had Macs).

When i compare the numbers of how much Apple is mentioned versus the rest... look for yourself (taken from google search results):

      Apple: 8070
      Steve Jobs: 1030
      iPhone: 5880
      iPad: 2730

      Microsoft: 4280
      Steve Ballmer: 150
      Bill Gates: 347
      Microsoft Courier: 181
      Nexus One: 326
      Motorola Droid: 271
      Vaio: 313
      Xperia: 5

Now look at the market: Most Computers are PCs with Windows, most phones are not iPhones. You don't see the disproportion, do you?

Also, if you take this story. This is not news, this is just one guy praising Apple, why is this posted here!? Is this some blog aggregator? This is just not news.

<comment><USER13> As someone who has worked in and out of the news business for over 30 years I can tell you that news is what people are interested in. Hacker News is news that hackers are interested in. If it's getting posted by hackers and getting upvoted by hackers then ...

If you are seeing a lot of Apple posts then maybe, just maybe, it's because there are events and commentary about Apple that the readership of this site are interested in. If Sony (or whatever) isn't getting enough upvotes then maybe, just maybe, no one really cares about that story.

For what it's worth, there are plenty of stories on HN that I'm not especially interested in. Rather than adding irrelevant discussion to a topic I'm not interested in, I simply don't read those articles. I move on and find stories that I _am_ interested in. If there's not enough news to catch my interest, or more possibly to the point, too much news that disagree's with my outlook, then I decide this site isn't for me and go looking for greener pastures...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> mvp?</comment>


Show HN: Memory Journey – My first game - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softwavegames.memoryjourney <comment><USER2> Sorry about some of the negative comments posted on here, apparently some people in this community don't understand the entire purpose of "Show HN". The game itself is very fun, congratulations on making it!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a problem, I get use to it everywhere is someone negative, I just want to share with all of you my first game, I'm glad that you like game, please rate it if you can, that would be very helpful :)

<comment><USER3> Really nice game...great job! Graphics are really nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much, please rate and share if you can, I need that because I dont have resources for marketing and want to many people see game :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious how much time it took to develop the game and what parts were the most difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thank you for respond, because I'm only developer on this game, that took me one year with two three pauses of about 1 months because I have other jobs to do, this is my personal work and I do it to the minimum details, game is not very complicate so most difficult is that to test on different phones and make to look nice on every phone, of course on some phone it's not possible to make to look good than just exclude that phone :D

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello friends, please download game if not a problem, I have slower downloads rate this days, and I don't marketing anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> The spanish translation is quite robotic yet understandable (I wouldn't recommend you this kind of translation for an app which you want to monetize).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for respond, I get professor on school to translate for me, I was think that translate is good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not what hacker news is for. Please don't advertise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, how I understand hacker news is good to publish your work or something good for people, game is free and also dont have ads so I dont get money at all, this is my personal work and first one, so I wish to share with you all

<comment><USER4> Your post is good and is exactly what "Show HN" is for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And the award for most obvious fake reviews goes to...

<comment><USER4> The comment is not consistent with the guidelines for "Show HN".</comment></comment>


Show HN: The Tygris – an automated feed of thoughtful essays and narratives - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetygris.com/week <comment><USER2> The design is clean and free of clutter. Please keep it this way.

Sadly, though not your fault, the rate of cumulative quantity of garbage output from news companies, and the general public is becoming a cesspool and the good stuff is getting harder to find.

Herr Einstein once said, "Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors [...] is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else."

Some really great essays and articles are not necessarily contemporary but are random citations and footnotes on Wiikiquote and GoodReads that I found out incidentally.

Some examples:

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priva...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html)

[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Poincare_Intu...](http://www- history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Poincare_Intuition.html)

[http://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html](http://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html)

Some of these articles are "heavy reading" but the kind of material that HN people might read as a bedtime story. :)

Hopefully, the premise here is to create a garbage filter for news and reading material. We need news but curating lesser known but significant writings is also imporant IMHO. We seriously need to apply ourselves to this problem so good luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This project is motivated by my desire to tailor a news feed that finds pieces I think are worth reading, those that prioritize storytelling and the weaving of ideas. No day-to-day breaking news or clickbait. I thought the HN community would find the article curation of interest.

On the technical side, I used this project to play around with scikit-learn for machine learning and NLTK for NLP. Also, BeautifulSoup is awesome.

I'm aware this site does not conform to the ideal of progressive enhancement -- I'm learning server-side rendering :) Please be kind.</comment>


Show HN: Advenjure – Interactive fiction on the terminal and in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://facundoolano.github.io/advenjure <comment><USER2> A quick explanation of what this is, because it took me a bit to figure it out: it appears to be an interactive fiction engine written in Clojure. The linked example game is running through ClojureScript in the browser, but the engine also works in the terminal.

Here's a quick link to the main code file defining the rooms and actions for the example game: [https://github.com/facundoolano/advenjure- example/blob/maste...](https://github.com/facundoolano/advenjure- example/blob/master/src/example/rooms.cljc). I doubt I'm the only one that likes looking at this type of example first when looking at an interactive fiction engine, and it may help some people confused by the game.

The history of interactive fiction and Lisp is surprisingly intertwined. To the best of my knowledge, all of the original Infocom games were written in ZIL [0], an idiosyncratic Lisp variant that was meant to be a more portable version of the programming language used to write the original mainframe Zork, MDL—which was apparently designed by some of the same people who worked on Scheme and Common Lisp [1].

There appears to be an active but still incomplete open source compiler for ZIL written in C# [2], and a few Common Lisp experiments, but not many mature projects combining interactive fiction and Lisp.

I hope projects like this one catch on more. I've had trouble grasping other interactive fiction engines, which I often feel are trying to please programmers and writers but hitting an awkward space in between. Lisp's "code is data" idea seems like it could be a more graceful way of hitting that balance.

[0] [http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ZIL](http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ZIL)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_\(programming_language\))

[2] [https://bitbucket.org/jmcgrew/zilf/overview](https://bitbucket.org/jmcgrew/zilf/overview)

<comment><USER3> I think that's an astute observation that the history of IF languages seems to be trying to find a balance between easy for programmers on one side and easy for writes on the other, and that Lisp is certainly as intertwined in the early history of IF as it is because it naturally hits an interesting place in that balance given the S-Expression "code is data"/"data is code" simplicity.

I still find Inform 7 a deeply fascinating example simply for trying a "Prose is code" approach that tries to favor writers first, somewhat at the expense of sometimes making programmers frustrated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      There was a small table there. The small table contained:
        A bottle. The bottle contained a amount of water

      @Bedroom [0] > get all
      I didn't see that.

      @Bedroom [1] > get bottle
      I couldn't take that.

      @Bedroom [2] > take bottle
      I couldn't take that.

      @Bedroom [3] > drink water
      I didn't know how to do that.

      @Bedroom [4] > open bottle
      I couldn't open that.

I just wanted a drink. :(

<comment><USER5> My experience too. Couldn't help but be disappointed in the parsing engine of this game. But I guess I am a little spoilt, having grown up on most of the Infocom adventure games...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think in this particular case, the game example script is more to blame than the parser. I don't even remember putting that bottle there, but I should've marked it to be take-able and drink-able.

I made it so it's fairly simple to extend the supported verbs (you can even add your own verbs as a lib user, without modifying the lib code). It's just that it hadn't been used much before today, so a lot of somewhat obvious verbs are probably missing.

(full disclosure: I had little experience with infocom games myself, I'm more used to graphic adventures, but this was a far more interesting programming project to learn Clojure).

<comment><USER5> One of the 'shortcuts' in the Infocom Z-parser based games when I entered a room that was rich in 'stuff' was to issue a 'take all' command. That would immediately give me an idea of what was an object that could be manipulated vs what wasn't. e.g.

> take all

bottle: taken

table: that's nailed to the floor

bed: that is too heavy to take

wallet: taken

rug: you can't take that!

This (a) automatically lets me pick up anything that I can (and drop the ones that I don't immediately need), but (b) it also tells me that there is no point in trying anything with the table & rug, but the BED might still be an actionable item because of the response. Perhaps I could 'move' instead of 'take' the bed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good, I didn't know about the "take all" feature, taking note.

In advenjure you can get a similar effect with the autocomplete. If you enter "take " and hit tab you will get suggestions for all the items available in the room.

Either case still requires the game scripter to try to guess what the players will attempt and write specific responses for that, otherwise they'll get the frustrating generic responses.

<comment><USER4> > _Good, I didn 't know about the "take all" feature, taking note._

If you're serious about making a viable interactive fiction engine, you should get really familiar with the Infocom games, the Z-machine engine and its various ports, and the Inform compiler that a latter-day fan made for the Z-machine (and the fan-made games that use it). That's the standard by which your work will be judged.

If you're just fooling around, then do whatever you like. :) Some of your ideas are pretty neat, like tab completion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really neat. I actually wrote something similar but far more primitive in Scheme (worse CL, primitive parser, minimal interactivity, and so on). I wouldn't reccomend either system for serious IF, though. Tads, Inform and the rest are far more capable.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this implementation isn't tackling the root of the problem here. Implementing this as a state machine that can load arbitrary node, status, and links would better model the problem.

Good work though on keeping this very simple.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious what you've identified as the root of the problem for making these sorts of parser-based games. It sounds to me that you'd rather it be a choose- your-own-adventure game, which your suggestion would make sense for, but parser-based games tend to model a virtual world of objects which your character interacts with. OO-style ontology tends to work somewhat better than state machines here (though I think rule-based dispatch has proved more successful in Inform 7, or in a Python-based text adventure engine I once made. Some complications are in expressing indirect objects for verbs and in rules which only apply to certain instances of objects in certain situations -- there is always a game which will complicate your simple world model).

Also, what is the harm in making it so that the data for the game is Clojure source rather than some other format? "Code is data" allows for data being code. It saves having to make a state machine interpreter which you have to extend with exceptions for particular games which will eventually become a poorly implemented lisp in Clojure in the JVM.

<comment><USER7> >I'm curious what you've identified as the root of the problem for making these sorts of parser-based games

It's not a parser based game. It's a _state_ based game. When you have to track complex interactions with massive sets of states, nodes, and interconnections you are writing a state machine.

To truely understand that this is the case you have to see an example. As such I recommend looking at the Fallout 1/2/3/New Vegas quest flow charts that have been generated. Here are a few:

Example of describing story with a state machine: [http://i.imgur.com/mAENC.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/mAENC.jpg)

Example of describing spacial directions with state machine: [http://i.imgur.com/qVnEH.png](http://i.imgur.com/qVnEH.png)

A Fallout NV mod as another example of story-as-state machine: [http://www.thumbsticks.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Fallou...](http://www.thumbsticks.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Fallout-New-Vegas-flowchart.png)

These should all demonstrate what I mean. All that would need to happen is for the state machine to interface with a player "inventory" and check the states of that before actions are completed. It turns most of the game logic into walking a tree and checking conditions.

> but parser-based games tend to model a virtual world of objects which your > character interacts with.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about modeling the game as a set of actions that can be taken but are blocked by sets of preconditions.

> Some complications are in expressing indirect objects for verbs and in rules > which only apply to certain instances of objects in certain situations -- > there is always a game which will complicate your simple world model

I'm not saying to create the human interface using a state machine. I'm saying to model the story as a state machine.

> Also, what is the harm in making it so that the data for the game is Clojure > source rather than some other format? "Code is data" allows for data being > code. It saves having to make a state machine interpreter which you have to > extend with exceptions for particular games which will eventually become a > poorly implemented lisp in Clojure in the JVM.

There are many reasons to do this. For one, it allows people who aren't programmers to create stories for your engine. To take a look at the interesting side effects of this I'd recommend watching this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnFKEWCzVCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnFKEWCzVCo)

It's again from one of the people involved with the fallout series but he goes into how the scripting side of things enabled story writers to create an entirely different experience. When you give non-programmers a safety-scissors equivalent of a programming environment they can create cool things without bothering you.

Another great side effect is that you've abstracted your problem. You could pull your state machine code out of your game, turn it into a module and interface with it there. Any other code that you need to use a state machine will be able to now interface with it.

This is, I'd say, the most fundamental idea possible in computer science. The idea of abstracting concepts to make the project being created simpler.

Finally, there is the problem of reusability. This game is pretty much locked to it's engine. It can't be reimplemented or updated by people who don't have knowledge of the code base.

On a side note this cannot be configured to run a story safely if it is clojure code that is executed.

Basically, you're removing reusability of this engine, you're not creating a solution to the root problem, and you're making it so the user cannot play other stories in this engine: it's entirely unsafe to redistribute alternative stories since the stories are executed at the same privileged level as the rest of the game.

<comment><USER8> By "parser-based" I was referring to terminology from the interactive fiction community. A parser-based game is one whose primary mode of interaction is a parser reading user commands.

I agree that there is an underlying state machine, but that's true of any program. I was saying that modeling the state transitions for these sorts of games tends to work out better for authors when using an OO-style model, since the game is simulating a player object interacting with other game objects. Making a system to help organize running certain logic on certain conditions is exactly one of the goals of blah-orientation, where "blah" is object, functional, state machine, or whatever.

I've seen state transition diagrams like the ones you mention for the design of interactive fiction, but only for high-level design. The interactions between objects in these games tends to be too complicated to completely describe that way. For instance, does the player character see anything in a room if they put their only light source inside an opaque closable container? What if the player is inside that container? Puzzles in IF quite often use emergent behaviors of simulated environments, and there are large standard libraries for them in, for instance, Inform 7 or TADS.

Ok, so what I'm gathering is that you have identified the root problem of these sorts of games as being organizing the story as a state machine, making it so that non-engine authors are able to make trusted content, and making it so the engine can be reused.

But I think an adventure game engine is more along the lines of the underlying game engine for Fallout 4 than the code inside Fallout 4 which helps drive the story. For instance, where is the crafting system implemented? Is it really thought of as a giant state transition diagram? I find that difficult to believe.

Again, I believe you are thinking choose-your-own-adventure rather than this genre of parser-based games. CYOA games tend to just disallow disallowed actions, but parser-based games with a modeled world tend to attempt reasonable responses to any (reasonable) action. Whether you agree games should support these sorts of interactions is a different question from whether these games should be implemented as state transition diagrams.

And sure, with this Clojure-based engine arbitrary code can be executed. There are a couple differences between this and Fallout 4. The first is that the cost of making interactive fiction is much less than a game like that, so one or two people can easily produce one, reducing the need to abstract game logic to a separate language. The second is that the engine can be compiled into the game for distribution, just like most other games.

Also, it's conceivable that the game could run in a locked-down virtual machine. The old Infocom games ran in a bytecode interpreter that their in- house Lisp-like language targeted. In the modern day, people still distribute interactive fiction in the same (but somewhat modernized) format.

> This is, I'd say, the most fundamental idea possible in computer science. > The idea of abstracting concepts to make the project being created simpler.

I agree that abstraction is powerful and can make things simpler. But it also requires the correct abstraction, and I'm just not convinced that modeling interactive fiction games using state machine diagrams is actually simpler. I found the discussion of ontology problems in the Inform 7 white paper interesting: [http://inform7.com/learn/documents/WhitePaper.pdf](http://inform7.com/learn/documents/WhitePaper.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Side note: if you are hungry for more interactive fiction, I highly recommend "Lost Pig" by Grunk[0]: [http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mirror.ifarchive.org/if-a...](http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mirror.ifarchive.org/if- archive/games/zcode/LostPig.zblorb)

[0] [http://grunk.org/lostpig/](http://grunk.org/lostpig/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Graham Nelson's "The Inform Designer's Manual, 4th Edition" [DM4] is an essential read for those wishing to implement an interactive fiction authoring system. Especially the chapters on Inform's world model and its flexibility.

[DM4]: [http://inform-fiction.org/manual/download_dm4.html](http://inform- fiction.org/manual/download_dm4.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else remember playing Zork?

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/29885/eaten-grue-brief- histor...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/29885/eaten-grue-brief-history-zork)

<comment><USER8> Yes, but not anytime near it came out (it was probably around 2000 C.E. for me).

Earlier this year I was playing around with recompilation (reading the Emscripten whitepaper) of z-code. The Infocom games used a virtual machine to get their games onto lots of contemporary computers, and also to reasonably implement a virtual memory system to fit the games into the small memory of those computers.

Anyway, it isn't too hard to make a z-machine interpreter (at least version 5 of z-code), so I made one which recompiles the code into javascript: [http://tmp.esoteri.casa/zmach/zmach.html](http://tmp.esoteri.casa/zmach/zmach.html)

The way z-code works makes it so you can't tell what is code and what is data ahead of time, so it decompiles as you play. "Dump routines" gives you the the code so far (as javascript). Part of the fun is making code which can pause execution to wait for player input. (Turns out the technique is already in some paper from some scheme workshop.)

[https://github.com/kmill/zmach](https://github.com/kmill/zmach) is the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Damn these text adventures are addictive...</comment>


Trade secrets of the oldest family firm in the US (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-18261045 <comment><USER2> Another secret within the Zildjian Family - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabian)

<comment><USER3> Care to elaborate, what is the "secret"?

<comment><USER4> Sabian is run by the same family from the look of it, albeit a different branch after a legal dispute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The comments here seem to be very focused on the "secret" alloy. What I took away was the success of keeping Zildjian a profitable family business is mostly due to smart processes in how to involve new members of the family. IE, no reporting to another family member, must work outside the company first to gain another perspective to bring back to the company, no hiring spouses. I'm not an expert on the matter but I'd imagine that nepotism and having limited outside insight are big problems for most multi-generational family businesses.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe I'm just ignorant, but isn't it easy to just smelt the metals down, put it through a centrifuge of some sort, and find out the alloy composition?

<comment><USER7> It may not be just the composition (which could easily be figured out with a mass spec or the like). How metal alloys are formed and treated can have vast effects on their properties.

For instance, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel)

<comment><USER8> There are machines [1] designed for this sort of thing, my father used to "own" a JEOL one that he used for research on all kinds of stuff from Iron Age artifacts to gas turbine blades.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Nearly 400 years ago, in 1623, Avedis Zildjian founded a cymbal- > manufacturing company in Istanbul.

That text next to a picture of "Avedis Zildjian" confused me for a while before I visited wikipedia. Did a time travelling photographer take that picture? No it's just Avedis Zildjian the third.

<comment><USER10> Yes, poor caption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little confused -- I thought identifying element proportions was a solved problem. Perhaps it's the contents of the mixture as well as the process?

<comment><USER12> I'm sure its composition could be determined by anyone who really wanted to know. But as a business owner you don't want to talk about that; being a one of a kind, 400 year old secret formula is way better business.

<comment><USER10> >But as a business owner you don't want to talk about that; being a one of a kind, 400 year old secret formula is way better business.

Pure speculation; presented as fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a longtime drummer, I respect Zildjian for being a market leader that still makes a quality product. The music industry can be fickle and might quickly transition to another brand if the quality dropped or if Zildjian just wasn't "cool" anymore, but that never seems to have happened.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't think of any tech company, other than Google that has a "secret sauce" (like a search engine algorithm) that they can hand down generation after generation.

<comment><USER15> MapReduce is largely described in books and papers from the 1950s.

<comment><USER16> There's a lot more to a search engine than MapReduce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Spoiler: they don't reveal the details of the alloy mix</comment>


PriceKnock: Got Some Lean In Our Cup (Lean Challenge) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priceknock.com/got-some-lean-in-our-cup

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be more than glad to answer any questions or comments!</comment>


Tips for rapid learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2009/12/23/9-tactics-for-rapid-learning-that-most-people-have-never-heard-of/ <comment><USER2> I don't buy speedreading. I tried different schools but if I really want to grasp a subject I need to read it carefully, often more than once. Unless, of course, I'm reading just for the sake of reading.

I believe that with speed reading you are naturally ported to skip parts and words that you don't understand, but that way you are learning nothing new.

I'm still able to read 50 books per year (1 book per week), with an average of 5 hours of reading per week (sometimes less), but definitely not by speed reading.

<comment><USER3> To me it really depends on the type of material. Obviously if I'm reading a math paper, I may re-read the same sentence half a dozen times, so it doesn't apply.

But there are clearly cases where I want to read as fast as possible, without necessarily skipping. E.g. scanning the news, or reading a novel in a shallow fashion.

(But yeah the blog post talks about learning techniques, so I don't know how relevant it is)

<comment><USER4> As a math grad student and professional DBA most of the reading I do is technical, and there I have to read it slowly, often stop and think, and often reread after stopping to think.

When I do read fiction or the news, I read much faster and I can skim for key words easily. I have never tried formal speed reading techniques, but I suspect I could apply them in a context like that.

So I agree, type of material makes all the difference in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would hardly describe these as "excellent", most of them are tricks to improve memorization.

Learning is about more than just rote data storage and retrieval. To use Bloom's taxonomy learning extends beyond that to understanding, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation.

The best tip I can give for learning anything is to get your feet wet. Figure out some tiny project that takes a small amount of time and actually do it. There is a lot of knowledge you can learn from books but most people won't be able to contextualize that information without hands on experience, and hands on experience is where you will get the most of your learning, whether you're learning how to cook, or climb a mountain, or play a guitar, or code in Ruby.

<comment><AUTHOR> wouldn't the word "rapid" somehow make that different from regular learning?

<comment><USER5> Given the context the article lays I'd say not. Different people are able to learn, naturally, at different speeds. The article describes some techniques to increase the speed of learning, but in actuality all of them merely increase the ability to memorize quickly, which is hardly learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To add to the list, for those who don't know about it, there's spaced repetition software. There are some situations where rote memorization is indeed useful, e.g. learning vocabulary (well _using_ the vocabulary is better, but memorizing is a good first step). I personally use Mnemosyne, but there are lots of such programs (the most well-known being Supermemo), many web apps too.

Here's a database of reviews of flashcard-type software: <http://learn.how.to/>

</comment><comment><USER6> On speed reading:

I read faster than anyone I've ever met, and I definitely disagree with 1+2. I don't read linearly- most words are superfluous to understanding the subject at hand, and you really only need to scan the whole paragraph for important nouns and verbs to understand its meaning. Reading while pointing my finger at the line would slow me down a whole lot.

And before people go off on me for not understanding what I'm reading, or not properly enjoying a good book, fine, it's possible. But it doesn't seem to have hurt me. I was always the best English student as a kid, got 99th percentile on both the SATs and GREs on the verbal section, did well on my exams, went to an Ivy League, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> it seems everyone is focusing on speed reading and the memorization items on the list. I personally find #2, #3, #4, #6, #7 are stuff i already do and very effective. Stuff like breaking down things to smaller pieces, reinterpreting concepts, comfortable environment, drawing complex relationships on paper, etc. DO speed up learning - learning in the true sense of the word.

<comment><USER7> The metaphor technique jumped out at me, because when someone is explaining something to me, I like to respond with an analogy to check my understanding. Most people seem to respond by "Yeah, I suppose, but not exactly." Some people respond by saying "No", and then repeating the original explanation (as distinct from "No; here are the differences"). A few people respond by discussing the analogy, which is easily the most productive way of explaining something I've ever encountered. It's certainly much more efficient than the popular "deluge of examples" method.

There's a very strong tendency for smarter people to tend toward discussion, though by no means is it black-and-white.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct, good teachers do that or offer a better analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "#6 – The 5-Year Old Method (Try explaining quantum physics to a first grader)"

I do this automatically. I can't help it. It is agonizing.</comment>