A Raspberry Pi dashcam with two cameras and a GPS - <AUTHOR> http://pidashcam.blogspot.com <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing.

Little bit off-topic question for HN: is there any encrypted Linux filesystem which can be mounted in write-only mode using only the public key, and read- write mode using the private/public key-pair?

I think that kind of filesystems would be very useful for dashcams and security cameras owners for their privacy.

<comment><USER3> For the pretty limited usecase of a "record only" dashcam, you might consider recording in chunks.

Create an ephemeral key for a symmetric encryption in advance, encrypt this ephemeral key with the public-key method of your choice and store somewhere. Then encrypt one minute of recording using this ephemeral key. I don't know if gnupg is performing good enough on all architectures, but in principle it can handle everything in one go, and it works exactly as described just above.

          ~ dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=50 | gpg -e -r 0x6AC3E4EC >encrypted.dat
        50+0 records in
        50+0 records out
        52428800 bytes (52 MB, 50 MiB) copied, 0.486881 s, 108 MB/s

        (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 450  @ 2.40GHz)

If you use mpeg transport streams, you can even cut at arbitrary positions (to make, say, each file exactly 50 MiB large). When you play back, decoders will catch up as soon as they find the proper markers. So your encryption pipeline doesn't even have to know much about video...

<comment><USER3> Just pondered... there might be everything already be installed in a typical linux system, "split" does the right thing and can pipe into a command. Probably not the most efficient (making several copies of the data), but certainly enough for a proof-of-concept.

        $ dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1M | \
            split -b5000000 -d -a4  --verbose \
            --filter="gpg -e -r 0x6AC3E4EC >\$FILE" \
            - recording_
        executing with FILE=recording_0000
        executing with FILE=recording_0001
        executing with FILE=recording_0002
        (...)

• -b500000 split at 50 megabyte input file size.

• -d decimal suffixes (0001, ... else aa..az..zz)

• -a4 : suffixes of length 4 (0000)

• --filter="" : filter through pgp, intended output file is in variable $FILE

• - : read stdin

• recording_ : prefix output files with this string

        $ file *recor*
        recording_0000: PGP RSA encrypted session key - keyid: 8F74FAFF 29C8C7C2 RSA (Encrypt or Sign) 2048b .
        recording_0001: PGP RSA encrypted session key - keyid: 8F74FAFF 29C8C7C2 RSA (Encrypt or Sign) 2048b .
        recording_0002: PGP RSA encrypted session key - keyid: 8F74FAFF 29C8C7C2 RSA (Encrypt or Sign) 2048b .
        (....)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If possible, I'd use _two_ flash drives, mirrored with soft-raid, for storage. One clearly visible in the dashcam, the other hidden somewhere deeeep inside the car with an USB extender.

Why? Because if a cop/other driver ever gets mad at you and forces you to hand over the flash drive, you still have a copy.

Also, I'd add two microphones to the project, one for exterior sound, one for interior (e.g. to prove what exactly has been said, or in case of a crash if other drivers have honked, or if an ambulance had its sirens on).

And, I wouldn't use a Pi, but rather something supporting SATA, because USB flash drives tend to have low lifecycles when constantly overwritten.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're going to have multiple cameras, the next step is to combine them into one spherical image. Fujitsu has been doing this since 2010.[1] With four cameras, you can get the full vehicle perimeter. Other companies now offer such a capability.[2]

[1] [http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/devices/semiconductor/gdc...](http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/devices/semiconductor/gdc/products/omni.html) [2] [http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/devices/semiconductor/gdc...](http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/devices/semiconductor/gdc/products/omni.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is neat, but I would worry that something which is intended to be "set and forget", without the usual screen, would fail silently - especially with such a custom build. How are you assuring that it is functional and recording?

<comment><USER7> By verifying the contents of the hard drive once in a while?

<comment><USER8> If it's not done automatically it won't routinely happen though. I wonder about this with some sensors at home. Some of them routinely ping me with status but other commercial ones are pretty much fire and forget. I can certainly set calendar entries to run tests but you're better off with things are self-testing in some manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I missed it in the instructions, but how does the system handle the shutdowns? Does he manually shut it off each time, before USB power is turned off, or does it just handle the power cut-off gracefully? I worry that the file system will get corrupted after a while.

There was some discussion about this on a pi board a while back; it seems that the only safe way to handle power-off is to (1) have a battery on the pi, and (2) catch the USB power-off signal and then shutdown gracefully.

At least, that's how the Chinese dash cams seem to work. They all have rudimentary batteries that last about one minute unplugged from the power outlet.

<comment><USER10> He wrote about handling shutdowns in another post on his blog.[1]

> For the automatic shutdown I have used a 12V programmable timer in > combination with an optocoupler.

> When the car is powered the the timer gets triggered and is starting the > power supply for the Raspberry pi, Dashcam pi will get started and will do > its job. When the car is turned off the optocoupler triggers the GPIO pin of > the raspberry and starts a shutdown. After 15 seconds the timer is shutting > down and the raspberry pi is powerless.

1: [http://pidashcam.blogspot.com/2016/03/cheap-solution-for- aut...](http://pidashcam.blogspot.com/2016/03/cheap-solution-for-automatic- shutdown.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice! Love it that he uses Arch, I also used to use Arch for everything, and I also run a RPi tutorials website.

I switched though, because the only questions I'd get was of people using my commands on Raspbian and getting confused. I think the RPi audience is full of beginners that don't understand the difference between distro's and the kernel. Of course one should do as one pleases and Arch is the nicest distro if you known what you are doing, imho.

<comment><USER12> I'm a solid Debian user but I still keep the Arch wiki around since so much of the information is completely transferable.

>I switched though, because the only questions I'd get was of people using my commands on Raspbian and getting confused.

Not to attack your blog but was everything that Arch specific?

<comment><USER11> Well, there's Pacman, Yaourt, no sudo by default, no Python-GPIO package by default, no Gui by default, no raspi-config... etc.

<comment><USER12> No sudo by default! I forgot that was even a difference between Debian and Raspbian.

I'm probably just not the beginner I used to be anymore, I can look at a Pacman package name and figure out if it's going to work for Apt, and I'm used to my GUI breaking every few months because I like to run proprietary Nvidia drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a really cool project, and I'm always thinking about doing something similar with RPi or other small computer. In the past, I had built my own x86-based CarPC for music/media/GPS/automation/etc.

However, the rise of dash cams are better solution for video as they are much cheaper, easier to install and run, and video is much higher quality. The cheap $45 dashcam has 1080p with 30fps, no need to buy 12v relay timer and deal with other power issues. Also the video on dashcams outperform the webcam attached to the RPi due to RPi's slow USB2 (we're talking 15fps at best).

For more complete and capable product, I'd suggest using something with USB 3.0 port, or possibly a used laptop, which provides enough processing power to record multiple videos at higher quality, and at the same time, has built-in battery, provide power management (using serial port/other hack to handle automatic shutdown and WOL for reboot).

Note: A lot of the functionality of CarPC has been deprecated due to mobile device/phone/tablets, but it's still fun to have a PC running in a car.

<comment><USER13> Actually, I think if you have all the parts already (i.e. RPi, webcams), this makes a lot of sense. Creating a Frankenstein system out of existing components would be interesting, and cost would be zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Link to "original" video if you have Flash disabled: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCbZsu68zZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCbZsu68zZU)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have played around with this a little, using the camera pi module gives good results, but means you must mount the pi close to the camera. I wanted to use USB cameras but the USB bus on the pi is too slow. From a single USB webcam I was getting around 15fps. The newer pi's may have a faster USB bus.

</comment><comment><USER16> My raspberry pi is great fun but a bit prone to failing randomly and very sensitive to input power levels, not sure I'd trust it if it was hooked up to car electrics.

<comment><USER17> That's not a problem. It isn't that hard to design (or buy) a circuit to provide clean power from an automotive power source. The "carPC" community has been doing this for ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a good idea. The costs from getting a pulled over for no reason is a big deal. I gave been pulled over for no reason, so many times, you'd think I wasn't in America.

I bought two $15 Chinese dash cams. The same ones that are being peddled for 40 bucks plus S&H on t.v.

I bought the second one just in case the first one goes down.

I haven't been pulled over since.

<comment><USER19> So you intentionally mount these things front/rear and plainly visible to police? Interesting. Also, what model camera did you buy?

<comment> nommm-nommm Not GP but I own this camera [http://ebay.com/itm/310752336819?_mwBanner=1](http://ebay.com/itm/310752336819?_mwBanner=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Side question: Is it customary to drive across the dotted lane?

<comment><USER21> Yes, you can change lanes across a dotted line as you like. You do have to signal first though.

What does a dotted line mean in your country?

<comment><USER22> Did you watch the video in the article? He is driving with the middle of the car over the dotted line. If I had to guess, I'd say it's a two-way one-lane road with bike-lanes on either side that you can enter when cars are coming towards you.

<comment><USER21> No, I did not watch the video. Driving over the dotted line is not customary, I thought he meant crossing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would love to see a camera like the Dyson 360, that you mount on the top of your car.

[http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/93697564cc7197a3e35979...](http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/93697564cc7197a3e35979bfa0133153/200691826/ysondyson3.jpg)

I guess it probably wouldnt work though as close objects would be obstructed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cool project, although I would not advise using dashcams if you are involved in an accident the police can subpoena the footage which could potentially be used against you (in both criminal and civil suits).

If you do run a dashcam I would suggest having one that does not record audio and only keeps the last 5-10min of footage on record because GL explaining to the cops why you have been driving like a jackass just before the accident even if it had nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER25> Conversely, if you're a responsible driver then it prove that you are in the right.

<comment><USER24> I haven't met a single person who doesn't go above the speed limit (to a reasonable amount) or misses a give way or stop sign once in a while.

<comment><USER26> Speed, okay... and sometimes it's safer going faster than the posted limit (IE with the flow of traffic). However, if you're missing stop signs, you're definitely doing something wrong - either driving too fast or not paying attention.

<comment><USER27> > However, if you're missing stop signs, you're definitely doing something > wrong - either driving too fast or not paying attention.

Lots of people will slow down significantly (say to <10mph), but not stop completely, if no one seems to be there.

<comment><USER26> Sounds different from "missing" stop signs. Sadly, I see people come to rolling stops at _most_ stop signs... so much so that it makes me feel like I'm the only one wasting my time doing it right.

It's one of the many things that make me wild about the idea of letting computers do the driving. Zipper-merging, slowing to time lights instead of stopping, and no rubbernecking are wonders of the future I can't wait to enjoy.

<comment><USER28> You might not be doing it 'right'. Most stop signs just mean _slow down_. If there is no traffic, you should not come to a full stop.

<comment><USER29> In what country or state? In California they definitely mean you must make a full stop. Also people seem to have forgotten any of the rules of priority at stop lights. (Straight and right always come before left. Right on red is below everything else.)

<comment><USER30> > In California they definitely mean you must make a full stop.

I guess they couldn't call it a "California stop" / "California roll" if that wasn't the law.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath Masters Contest - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/03/04/are-you-smarter-than-a-quant-here-are-5-questions-from-the-momath-masters-contest/ <comment><USER2> Not a fan of the questions.

1) is trivia/trick question (obviously designed to catch those who learned the squeeze theorem as the sandwich theorem), 2) is hilariously simple, 3) is trivial, 4) is trivia, 5) is interesting.

Anyone have access to the harder, non-trivia(l) questions please?

[edit] found a few more from 2013, which I think are more interesting: [http://digitaleditions.walsworthprintgroup.com/display_artic...](http://digitaleditions.walsworthprintgroup.com/display_article.php?id=1461361)

<comment><USER3> Hilariously simple and trivial are insulting terms to use for problems that challenge many others. There is no absolute difficulty scale on which problems can be judged. The problems you personally find difficult can be called trivial and hilariously simple by someone much smarter than yourself. Unless of course you're the smartest person alive, in which case in a few hundred years someone will call those problems trivial and hilariously simple, and you will be shamed posthumously for finding them so difficult.

<comment><USER4> (2) and (3) really are easy though. Both can be solved by deriving counterexamples for the options until one is left.

For (2), imagine if there were only two teachers in the convention and they shook hands with each other once - that invalidates option C. If they shake again, that invalidates option B and E. A and D both talk about an even number of teachers, so let's imagine there were three teachers. If each teacher shakes hands with the other two once, that invalidates D. So A is the answer. I guess some form of graph theory is involved with solving it properly.

(3) can be reasoned in the same way by imagining quadrilaterals for each option. A quad with two adjacent tiny edges and two long edges symmetric along one axis (like a square with one vertice pulled away) gives a rectangle, which invalidates A, B and E. Making it asymmetric by moving the far vertex invalidates C. So only D is left.

<comment><USER5> > (2) and (3) really are easy though. Both can be solved by deriving > counterexamples for the options until one is left.

Who says there's that exactly one of the answers is right? For (2) the formulation of the question even suggests that any number could be right or wrong.

<comment><USER4> Nobody, and I didn't assume it until I'd found counter-examples for four of the choices and couldn't find any for the fifth.

Edit: And yes, I know the inability to find counter-examples to something doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

<comment><USER6> I dont know about that. I found the answer through logic rather than exact example. If a teacher shook hands with an odd number, x, of other teachers. That means that we know there were at least x handshakes that werent his, by symmetry of handshakes. Now, we know that those x handshakes could be divided up into any such partitions between teachers. But whats really cool is that we know some basic properties of partitions of odd numbers. We know that an odd number always breaks into an odd number of odd partitions (carrying the oddness.. ie. The extra 1 mod 2, the bit) You may need a few examples to convince yourself. 9=3+3+3 7=2+5 and well any number 199=196+1+1+1

Now clearly if the main teacher having odd shakes x, implies that an odd number of other teachers have odd total shakes, then the total odd shakers is even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got all except 4, which is trivia. (Well 1 is sort of trivia as well, but I happened to know that Fermat proved that one).

<comment><USER8> I somehow dug Cindy out of the crypts of my brain. The squeeze theorem is sometimes also called the sandwich theorem, so that one threw me off.

It's also sometimes (in Italian and Russian, according to my professors) called the Theorem of The Two Policemen. Imagine the path of a drunk staggering down the street. Then imagine the path of the two cops who come to grab him by the shoulders.

Et voila! The Theorem of the Two Policemen.

<comment><USER9> > The squeeze theorem is sometimes also called the sandwich theorem, so that > one threw me off.

E is also the "ham sandwich theorem", so it looks like they were going for deliberately confusing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somehow I'm sure that some of the other problems must be a lot harder. Why else would heavy hitters like Poh Shen Lo and other past IMO competitors bother with this?

<comment><USER11> Because it's for charity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Smallest positive m such that 77 divides m^2+7m+89 is greatly simplified by realizing (mod 77) m^2+7m+89=m^2+7m+12=(m+3)(m+4).

<comment><USER13> That's precisely how the article explains it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's annoying me about the second question is the distinction I'm thinking about what constitutes a handshake:

are we determining that the number of hand shakes

\- grasping of the hands between two people constitutes a handshake; or

\- the number of times one moves their hands up and down is the hand shake

so I'm thinking the former, but still finding it difficult to see how the number of handshakes can ever be odd.

You need at least two people, the sum of their hand shakes is even, you add a third, and everyone shakes hands at least once, so the sum of all their handshakes is even.

I'm not sure the rest of the solution can involve any odd numbers.

i have a mental hurdle -- i'm not thinking about it in the right way

<comment><USER15> If there's only two teachers at the convention and they shake hands, that's just one handshake- an odd number. The count is an "objective" count of all handshake-events, not the sum of everyone's personal handshake counts.

Writing unambiguous math problems is a surprisingly hard thing to do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> But what if you prefer qualitative? Can you out-smart Warren Buffet [1]?

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2011/10/11/warren- buffe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2011/10/11/warren-buffetts- investing-formula-revealed/)

<comment><USER5> Warren Buffet does lots of quantitative reasoning as well: on balance sheets rather than fluctuation of market prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have to admit the factoring threw me for a bit. The last time I had to do something like this was over 20(!) years ago.

Although it was gratifying to have the solution drift into mind after a while. What is sad is that I'm acutely aware that I no longer think as quickly as I did in my 20s.

</comment><comment><USER18> For 5), 89 modulo 77 is 12 so we just solve for the least m such that (m + 3) * (m + 4) (= m _m + 7_ m + 12) is divisible by 77. Both 73 and 74 clearly satisfy the condition, but 18 + 3 = 21 divisible by 7 and 18 + 4 = 22 divisible by 11 is the least among the choices.

</comment><comment><USER19> And how does the ability to solve these puzzles make you a good quant?

<comment><USER20> because it takes years of training/experience/luck/success to be invited sitting to solve them while sipping champagne on the house. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe there's a subtle irony to reflect on here - which is that intelligence is something diverse and qualitative, not just a single quantitative scale from dumb to smart.

<comment><USER22> The way I heard it last time was that intelligence is like running a race to get to a place (the solution to a problem). It doesn't matter how fast you run if you're going the wrong direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very surprised to see Manjul at one of the tables

</comment><comment><USER24> Problem 5 was fun. My solution was less complex: if (((i * i) + 7 * i + 89) % 77 == 0) System.out.print(i);

<comment><USER25> That's cheating though - also it likely is faster to do it mentally than typing all that out for the brightest.

<comment><USER26> I think the real answer is that in the competition only pencil & paper is allowed. No computers.

<comment><USER27> They are using tablets on the pictures. Surely those have calculators.

<comment><USER28> The ipads are locked down to run the contest app.

Besides, calculators have rather poor programming support...

<comment><USER29> "Speak for your self" said the HP-48 owner, tapping into a decades-old bank of accumulated smug.

 _Mmmmmm... delicious, delicious RPN smug. I haven 't tasted this in years. Not as fresh as it used to be, but still sweet._</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who's in Tauranga, New Zealand? - <AUTHOR>

I've recently moved to Tauranga, NZ and I'm keen to find other like-minded web programmers in the area. Post a comment if you're keen to meet up! <comment><USER2> Tauranga? Did you get lost on your way elsewhere? ;)

(Says the guy who grew up in Palmerston North ...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, so far I like it here! Nicer weather than my hometown (Dunedin) :)

<comment><USER3> Hey I'm moving to Dunedin in a couple of weeks :D

<comment><USER4> Feel free to come along to our monthly software meetup CodeCraft when you get settled. <http://codecraft.org.nz/>

If you're interested in security, check out the Dunsec group which hosts reasonably regular workshops: <http://dunsec.org.nz/>

We also have a Makerspace if you're into 3d printing or hacking on hardware. <http://dspace.org.nz/>

For a small city, there's a reasonable amount of techy goings on down here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not in NZ yet, but am planning to emigrate there from the US in a couple of years. Do any of you mind if I ping you with ?'s about life in general over there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free

<comment><USER5> What's your e-mail address, boss? It's not visible by default in your HN profile - you have to explicitly mention it. Alternatively, you can ping me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Auckland</comment>


Write a Letter to the Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.futureme.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Today I just received email that I wrote to myself 2 years ago from FutureMe in my inbox,...and I think I should write about this classic service(they operate since 2002!)

I use FutureMe as tool to reflect on my (past)thought, idea, worldview, etc. or to catch up on some topic that interest me(say, new upcoming product)

Its simplicity is what appeal to me. You just write what's in your head, sent it and just forget about it. Time flies and one day you'll get a little surprise in your inbox. It's surprisingly good tool for brain dump and to 'resurface' your old thought...

I don't know if there is any alternative that did that same, maybe just any email client nowadays with schedule sending will do, but I use their service for several years and still happy about it.

Maybe the point is not about the service, but the importance of periodically reflect on yourself and your thought...something that's become harder to do in today's world of neverending information.</comment>


Barnes & Noble wants DOJ probe into Microsoft patent tactics - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57320800-75/barnes-noble-wants-doj-probe-into-microsoft-patent-tactics/ <comment><USER2> This is an odd request. Microsoft is asserting their legal right to enforce patents which give them the ability to license technology for which they have a government granted monopoly.

If the patents are trivial and outmoded then get them overturned. If not, be thankful that Microsoft is willing to license them to you. They have no obligation to license these with reasonable terms (which they seem to be), much less at all.

<comment><USER3> B&N's request sounds reasonable to me. It sounds like MS is being cagey about what the infringement actually is. From the article:

 _Another letter, from Barnes & Noble's general counsel, Eugene V. DeFelice, to James J. Tierney, chief of the Networks and Technology Enforcement Section in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, details Microsoft's method of pushing for a patent-licensing deal. DeFelice wrote that Microsoft accused Barnes & Noble of infringing on six patents at a July 2010 meeting.

"When Barnes & Noble asked Microsoft for more detailed information related to these patents, Microsoft refused, claiming that the information was confidential and could not be shared, unless Barnes & Noble first executed a nondisclosure agreement," DeFelice wrote._

This sound dangerously like a "I have a list of names" tactic. The patents have been filed and (I assume) granted. How B&N infringes on the publicly- known patents shouldn't be confidential - if we grant MS that, then what prevents a company from making it up?

<comment><AUTHOR> This kind of tactic is specifically designed to effectively prevent other companies in similar situation to organize a collective defense against the patents or to correct the alleged infringement by working around the patents and, instead, increases the likelihood of them being forced into agreements.

The patents are public and so should be the allegations of infringement.

<comment><USER2> Exactly, patents are public. BN can examine all patents held by MS. At any point MS can threaten BN with any patent in their portfolio. MS has no legal obligation to disclose to them ahead of time which patent they are violating in our current legal system.

If this goes to court then it will be public, but until then companies have a legal right to conduct business in private.

<comment><AUTHOR> > BN can examine all patents held by MS

You know how ludicrous this is. "You have done something wrong, but I won't tell you what".

This is how 6-year-olds do business. I expected Microsoft's legal to employ adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem isn't Microsoft tactics with patents. The problem is software patents.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is not entirely patents, but, given companies just aren't capable of behaving in civilized ways, the law has to be changed.</comment></comment>


Exact String Matching Algorithms (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www-igm.univ-mlv.fr/~lecroq/string/

<comment><USER2> It's a shame Java (TM) is required to use some elements of the page.</comment>


Nurturing Growth Mindsets: Six Tips from Carol Dweck - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rulesforengagement/2016/03/nurturing_growth_mindsets_six_tips_from_carol_dweck.html?cmp=RSS-FEED&google_editors_picks=true <comment><USER2> One thing that I realized after reading Carol Dweck's book (and Michael Mezernich's tech talk at Google, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyPrL0cmJRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyPrL0cmJRs)) is that confusion is just the mind hunting for the patterns.

Confusion is usually nothing to get upset about. Just start asking what things are. You're building a mental map of the terrain and all the details and connections will eventually get filled in if you persist. Its what babies are always doing and it doesn't bother them.

That's been enormously helpful, especially when starting something new.</comment>


Ken Silverman's Voxlap Engine - <AUTHOR> http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm <comment><USER2> I'm remembering how fun _Ace of Spades_ was, especially the zombie mode.</comment>


What is gimbal lock and why do we still have to worry about it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/03/15/what-is-gimbal-lock-and-why-do-we-still-have-to-worry-about-it/

<comment><USER2> Wow, a new-to-me way to make a site unreadable on my phone.</comment>


Ask HN: My work permit was just denied because I don't have a degree. Can I - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm a software developer with 5 years of experience. Recently I got a dream job offer from a Swiss company. Unfortunately the Swiss immigration agency denied issuing the work permit because I don't have an official degree. The company thinks I'm qualified enough and offers a good salary (by European standards) of ~$140 000.
Until now, the degree has never been required. I've worked in other European countries without any problems (I'm from one of the ex-Soviet states).
I've been programming for almost 10 years now, and I'm pretty comfortable with the theory, so I'd be able to complete all required courses within a couple of months. However I haven't been able to find a university that would allow me to get a quick degree.
For example, the Open University is a good accredited institution that allows you to get a degree remotely. But they don't have the so called "challenging" of the courses where you can pass the course by simply taking the exam.
I know that most of North American universities allow that. Do you know if there is a school that could help me obtain a degree within a couple of months?
Thanks <comment><USER2> From what I know about immigration systems(experience with Czech Republic and USA), having degree is fundamental piece of your visa application. For example in US, the 1 year of university is taken like 3 years of experience, so in order to be qualified like someone who has a bachelor degree, you would have to have 12 years of proven work experience.[1]

Based on my experience with immigration systems I've worked with, it never matters how stellar skills you think you have or how many great repos you have on Github. What matter is the quality of your particular case which means quality of paper work you are providing. Obtain highly valuable certificates(eg. a degree in the field you are applying for), recommendations from former employers(C lvl management+), get published(newspaper, etc), and others. These all documents help you to pass the minimum requirements to submit your visa petition.[2]

In addition to that, every country has several types of visas. Maybe if you are not approved for working visas, you might want to try different type of visas(intern)?[3]

[1] [https://www.quora.com/H-1B-Visa-Reform-Is-it-essential- for-a...](https://www.quora.com/H-1B-Visa-Reform-Is-it-essential-for- a-H1B-applicant-to-have-a-degree-Do-I-qualify-if-I-am-6-months-from- graduation-and-a-senior-Also-are-college-dropouts-disqualified)

[2] [https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty- occupati...](https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty- occupation/understanding-h-1b-requirements)

[3] [http://www.schengenvisainfo.com/switzerland- visa/](http://www.schengenvisainfo.com/switzerland-visa/)

<comment><USER3> Got my H1B this year exactly like you described: 12+ years of experience and some good paper work. No college whatsoever.

<comment><USER4> How to prove your working experience if you're an independent consultant/contractor/freelancer (for many years)? Do you need to reach to all your previous clients and ask for some letter?

<comment><USER3> Yes. That's what I had to do exactly because I was a consultant. In addition to that we got a US college to evaluate my work experience based on the letters and my resume and issue a "certificate" stating that I have the equivalent experience of a bachelor in computer science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Option 1: Talk to a immigration lawyer specialized in Swiss immigration system. Option 2: Talk to your future employer if they can arrange at least remote working for initial few months and if you are not able to gather paper works then revise the process. Meanwhile you will have breathing room to look for ways that you can travel and work. You can take short trip and work there for initial few weeks(though I am not sure about the other visa, these are my guesses) to know the system and team. As an experienced person then you can work from anywhere. So talk to company if remote work is a possibility even with a pay cut.

</comment><comment><USER6> My advice is that you should consult a lawyer qualified to give you advice.

The immigration agency are not your lawyer.

Immigration is super complicated. Everywhere, for everyone.

 _This is your livelihood_ we're talking about.

Go see a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER7> I suspect you overestimate the extent to which your programming experience would translate to formal studies. Unless you're some sort of genius (possible of course), you'd be extremely optimistic to embark on a degree hoping to finish it in a couple of months.

<comment><USER8> Oh, stop trying to stifle the confidence of others.

<comment><USER9> It's still a valid criticism. Unless you've had to do random things like write compilers and write/analyze algoritms every day there are going to be lots of things covered in school that most of us just don't do while programming day- to-day.

Add to that the issue that school work does require some amount of time to complete and I wonder how someone could really compress that volume of work into a few months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> US universities often will allow you to get credit for AP courses taken in high school, provided you get a 4 or 5 (depending on school) on the exam. Whether ETS allows you to take AP exams without the courses, I can't say. Some schools will give you credit for "life experience".

University of Maryland University College has been around for a long time. They offer remote courses, they offer the "life experience" credit, and so on. I don't know about the "challenge" stuff.

<comment><USER11> You absolutely can take AP courses at will. I did.

Just go to [http://international.collegeboard.org/programs/ap- recognitio...](http://international.collegeboard.org/programs/ap-recognition/) . Pick your country, you can then see a list of schools that administer it. Just contact whichever school you want and they should help you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> According to this: [https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/arbeit/nicht- eu_...](https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/arbeit/nicht-eu_efta- angehoerige/grundlagen_zur_arbeitsmarktzulassung.html) there may be a way for you to get in without a degree. I'm not a Swiss immigration lawyer though. A good one can save you a lot of time and headache (and a potential lost opportunity).

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't have a degree but have successfully acquired US visas before. Forget university, just get a decent lawyer. If the company wants to pay you, they will find a way. In the mean time, you can explore options like living in Germany or France and commuting: which I hear can be preferable anyway, as it's a lot cheaper than Swiss real estate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any skilled worker position, even in US or Canada requires a degree from an accredited university. You might be able to circumvent the process if the company offers you a managerial or executive position. IRC those positions usually require a separate visa application that may not have the same requirements.

<comment><USER15> This is not entirely correct, and I'm assuming you meant to say "skilled worker visa" not "skilled worker position".

In many cases, depending on the Visa you are applying for, work experience can count instead of degrees.

I don't have a University Degree, and I can go to the US on a TN Visa (as a Canadian) due to my work experience. I now live in Australia and am on a 457 Visa where my work experience was considered instead of a degree.

<comment><USER14> I am working in US under TN status and you definitely need a computer science or engineering degree for anything tech related.

<comment><USER16> I was hired by a fairly large tech company in the US for a software engineering position and we acquired a TN based off sporadic contracting experience and no degree. A good lawyer is all you need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Talk to a Swiss immigration lawyer. Unlike what some people seem to think, lawyers do actually have a purpose. This is one of them!

Also, good lawyers can more often than not find new ways to interpret existing laws to your advantage. There might be some obscure statute somewhere that exists that you don't know about.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you know enough to be offered ~$140 000 by a Swiss company, I'd say forget schooling or degrees.

Mighty waste of time and money. Just find another job. I'm sure there's at least one startup in the US or Canada that would consider you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response.

I really like Europe, especially Switzerland. That company is also very interesting, I could learn a lot there.

And as I understand, I still need a degree for the US H1-B visa.

<comment><USER19> > And as I understand, I still need a degree for the US H1-B visa

I got an H-1 for someone without a degree (a special kind of machinist in this case) but we had to demonstrate he had significant expertise equivalent or that exceeded a degree. It's doable but difficult -- we really needed him and couldn't find anyone local at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Piggybacking on the topic:

Are there any useful (as in useful content), online, non-full time IT/Compute degrees between 0 and $10k? The nice-looking ones from US are closer to $50k than $10k.

</comment><comment><USER21> > I've worked in other European countries without any problems (I'm from one > of the ex-Soviet states)

Immigration in Switzerland is much different than in EU-member states.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just curious: does Switzerland thing you need any college degree, or a computer science/software engineering degree specifically?

<comment><USER23> Its complicated, and depends very much on which country you are from, which permit class you are applying too etc... Which means the usual applies, if you are from a generally rich country then it's easy otherwise its hard and can be a lot of paperwork and worries.

See [http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/work- permits/29191706](http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/work-permits/29191706) for an introduction.</comment></comment>


Yahoo acquisition would be a mistake for Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/software/211207/even-big-discount-yahoo-acquisition-would-be-mistake-microsoft

<comment><USER2> An opinion piece with no meaningful analysis, all based on a rumor. Flagged.</comment>


Physical attractiveness as a phenotypic marker of good health (N ≈ 15,000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513814000749 <comment><USER2> Physical attractiveness causes better treatment in society, higher income, more friends, and other social advantages. These would also contribute to better health.

</comment><comment><USER3> well color me surprised. It's almost as if we are biologically attuned to attractiveness since it's a marker of fitness or something.</comment>


IE9 beta's HTML5 support isn't there yet: 3 big canvas gotchas - <AUTHOR> http://dt.deviantart.com/blog/37599369/

<comment><USER2> The lack of globalCompositeOperation in IE9's Canvas implementation is a pretty serious limitation.

It seems to come down to the limitations of Direct2D, which doesn't seem to support any other compositing operations except source-over, a.k.a. "normal alpha blending". This is fairly surprising when taking into account that Direct2D is a very new graphics API (it shipped in Windows 7)...

I think the root cause is that Microsoft's graphics APIs have long evolved in a different direction compared to everyone else. Make no mistake, Microsoft is a very important force in graphics because they control Direct3D, and that has placed them at the vanguard of high-performance accelerated 3D graphics.

Direct2D seems to mostly take design influence from Direct3D. One of its explicit goals is to provide 2D utility graphics for Direct3D games -- stuff like HUD displays for games. The traditional "Porter-Duff" compositing operators (i.e. the blending modes missing from Direct2D) are not very useful in this environment, so instead Direct2D concentrates on "game-like" stuff like high-level geometry objects.

In contrast, the other major browsers use graphics APIs that fundamentally derive from the Adobe school of print-oriented graphics, where an image is built from low-level immediate mode operators. Think PostScript and PDF.

The original Canvas JavaScript implementation shipped in Mac OS X 10.4 to support Dashboard widgets. Canvas was just a paper-thin wrapper over Apple's Quartz API, which in turn was essentially a royalty-free implementation of the PDF graphics model (before Quartz, Apple/NeXT were licensing Display PostScript from Adobe).

I think Mozilla's Canvas implementation uses Cairo, which is an open-source library heavily modelled after PDF and Quartz. Chrome uses their home-grown Skia, which is also very similar.

Poor Microsoft. If they had taken the opportunity in 2004, they could have easily dictated a simple web graphics standard that would have played to the strengths of the accelerated graphics API that they control. But instead they were busy building giant fortresses of proprietary APIs like the dead-end Windows Presentation Foundation, and now they're having trouble implementing something as superficially simple as Canvas.

<comment><USER3> Many globalCompositeOperation modes are also broken in WebKit based browsers: <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39177> But sadly nobody seems to care too much about that.

<comment><USER2> IMHO, most of the Porter-Duff compositing operations are fairly useless. There is a nice mathematical purity to the model from which these operations are derived, but that's also their weakness: they are based on an ultra-simplistic abstraction instead of real world use cases. Punching out alpha mattes in various ways just isn't very interesting in practice.

Porter and Duff can be forgiven because the "real world" didn't exist when they designed this model in the early '80s. At the time, a frame buffer add-on to a computer could cost as much as a car...!

When designing a modern graphics API, I think it would be more useful to look at the operations that people are actually familiar with, e.g. Photoshop blending modes, and design the interface to match those expectations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In all fairness to Microsoft, the last IE9 beta was released on 2010-09-15:

[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/downloads/Default.htm...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/downloads/Default.html)

I wonder if he has the same issues with the latest platform preview (which came out nearly two months ago).

Now, all this fairness aside, I'm extremely curious why MS isn't adopting the rapid release cycles that the Chrome team have used. As a (potential) consumer of the Internet Explorer line of products, I feel like I'm left out in the cold when I see that the last release was sometime last September. In the meantime, Chrome has added a major enhancement to their JavaScript engine, WebGL support, and more. More importantly, they've added this stuff incrementally so I, the (current) user of Chrome don't have to wait for months for the next major release.

Or perhaps more to the point, I'm curious why the IE9 marketing team don't see the promotional advantages of rapid releases as compared to the old major release model. As the Chrome team have said...market features, not releases.

<comment><USER5> I get that Chrome is fast, but do you hear what you're saying. They did a tech preview in October and it's only been three months, which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.

There's rumors that the RC is coming on the 28th. And RTW is probably a few months after that. Not Google like speed, which is ridiculously impressive, but a beta and 7 tech previews in this time isn't bad.

<comment><USER6> IE8 came out in March of 2008. By the time IE9 is out, it'll be close to _3 years_ between major browser releases from Microsoft. That is too slow. The Internet is moving much faster than Microsoft understands. (Or perhaps if they understand it, the Web is moving much faster than they can _handle_.)

Chrome went from a state of non-existing to very popular in the same time. Microsoft's web browser development speed is abysmal for such a powerful and large software company. They either don't care, or they want it to be slow and have poor performance. I can think of no other reason for such slow development of their web browser, especially in an era where _everyone_ knows how important the web is.

<comment><USER5> Actually it came out in March 200 _9_. So it's two years between major browser releases. In that 22 months they've dropped 7 tech previews and beta. So at about a clip of every 3 months they've released a new build.

But I do agree that it's too slow. They really do need a Chrome like schedule.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the release date correction. I even did my research and checked Wikipedia first! Turns out I read the wrong date. Oh well, thanks. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it just continues on. You implement something and it's going to work in all browsers but will require specific tweaks and workarounds for IE.

Business as usual.

The only thing that changed is the nature of the needed workarounds (fix broken canvas instead of fix missing canvas), so that IE9 just brings more frustrating work to the table. One more special case to handle.

In the application I'm maintaining, we have CSS and JS to make the thing work in real browsers and then one file for each version of IE to handle their specific bugs.

As it's looking now, IE9 won't improve on the situation, but just require two more files (CSS, JS) to fix the new, IE9 specific issues, thereby increasing the development time of any new feature because one more special case must be handled.

Why can't Microsoft just get their act together. This is so dammed frustrating

</comment><comment><USER8> There are lots of problems with the global composite operations in browsers.

Try your browser: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Canvas_tutorial/Compositing> WebKit still doesn't have all the -in or -atop working, despite bug reports going back very nearly a year now: <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34027>

</comment><comment><USER9> It is interesting to see the HTML 5 compatibility charts (including for canvas) according to w3.org here:

<http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm>

According to this no browser is currently following 100% the canvas spec.

<comment><USER10> While that is true, I think the chart is misleading in that it doesn't properly weight the tests. Failing to have any sort of globalCompositeOperation is a huge thing, but IE only lost one point for it. I would say that some of the things that the other browsers got dinged for are much smaller in comparison.

<comment><USER11> You could argue about the weightings all day though. Will people actually use every single one of those composite operations in real life? Shouldn't the important ones be weighed more? etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _In my defense, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari did an amazing job of coding to the HTML5 spec. I don't know why Microsoft couldn't as well._

I feel like this has been, and is, said about a lot of things that Microsoft should be kicking ass on. Why is Microsoft either unwilling or unable to lead the charge on these kinds of things? Can they say that it's not in their best marketing interest to have a crappy, slowly developed product?

</comment><comment><USER13> Anybody care to comment on how good the SVG implementation in IE9 is? I've found, somewhat counterintuitively, that you can get better rendering performance from SVG than Canvas if your application is a good fit for certain techniques, and I'm hoping that we can use them in IE9 too.

<comment><USER10> "If your application is a good fit" is the operative phrase here. SVG does some things very well, but lags in other ways. They really are different tools made for different purposes (though they do have a little bit of overlap). It is like Illustrator and Photoshop, which both can make pictures, but a good designer will use both depending on the circumstances.</comment></comment>


Did Google just kill PR agencies? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/did-google-just-kill-pr-agencies-7000019182/

<comment><USER2> Betteridge's law of headlines once again.

The article is a terrible piece of writing that doesn't make a cohesive case at all. I can see nothing terribly new in the linked Google page other than the usual mantra of "write content for human's and don't try and game the system".

Lot's of "google could do this" and "the rules could be interpreted like that" \- the truth is that Google has no interest in penalizing honest content. Obviously there is the chance of collateral damage but nothing appears to have changed to warrant the hyperbole herein.

</comment><comment><USER3> Two things:

1\. A bit, maybe, for now. And I'd like them to succeed: when I search for something I want to know what the general populous says about a thing, not what some PR company says, so if the effect of PR can be minimised I should get better results for some searches.

2\. Note the words "for now" above. the PR people will find other methods to give them the advantage. Google and their ilk can win as many battles as they like, but they'll never win the war.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author of this article does not seem to understand what good PR agencies do. He thinks PR means 'web spam'. A good PR agency is about human connections: they will get press interested in doing a story, they will get you live interviews, they will provide very helpful advice on how a message will be received.

Article is alarmist and weird. Not recommended.

<comment><USER5> Tend to agree with that analysis, reading it I had predicted it was going to slide into some sort of innuendo that the only way PR was going to work with Google was if they used Google+ or some other Google product to spread it.

I also wondered if the article was confusing "Public Relations" with "Search Engine Optimization" but its hard to tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Laughably bad headline and premise. I don't think this linkbait is worth your time. Headline writing like this should be discouraged.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish Google would focus some effort on curtailing searches for "cracks, serial key, activation code" and other nonsense that is killing my software sales.

<comment><USER7> Whoever down voted me obviously does not sell software online. I lose about 1,000 potential sales a month from entities linking license keys. I personally "feel" like Google could do "something" about it and spend a little less time worrying about known PR sites.

<comment><USER8> As someone who has sold software online and seen license cracks for my product: it is hard to know the impact of cracks on your profit.

Would the pirates have bought your software if the crack was not available? How many customers used a cracked version at one point before becoming a customer? How much profit do you lose by investing in making your licensing scheme harder to crack?

We ended up deciding that our license keys were there to keep honest people honest, not to thwart people intent on abusing our licensing terms. Whether or not that was the most profitable choice is anyone's guess, but it certainly was nice to look at cracks as lead-gen and a bit of a compliment, rather than trying to wage a distracting war against people who were probably not going to pay us anything anyways.

<comment><USER7> I'm still agonizing over what to do ... thanks for sharing your experience. My first thought is that if thousands of Google links to keys and cracks did not exist, our sales would increase. As you've noted, it's a time sink to fight it. That's why I want Google to at least "try" something to help us out. I mean, they want me to purchase ads from them, right?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Off-heap collections with speed comparable to Java Collections - <AUTHOR> http://www.mapdb.org/benchmarks.html

<comment><USER2> This looks awesome to me. My application has GB of read-only objects that I cache in virtual memory. Unfortunately, Java does not have a way to exclude certain objects from garbage collection, so large numbers of read-only long- lived objects get processed for GC anyway and slow down the application.

I recall that Smalltalk back in the day had a save-to-perm feature in which objects could get moved to a section of VM that was not subject to GC. I wish Java had that.</comment>


Buddybuild: Introducing Instant Replay - <AUTHOR> http://blog.buddybuild.com/introducing-instant-replay/ <comment><AUTHOR> Buddybuild's crash reporting functionality just got even better.

Instant Replay answers a common question amongst development teams - "how did that happen?" \- by showing devs a video replay of exactly what a user was doing in the moments leading up to a crash, which means the dev gets an exact set of steps needed to reproduce it.</comment>


Ask HN: Which city in Canada is the best for Internet startups? - <AUTHOR>

Which city in Canada is the best for internet startups, considering abundance of talent, a startup culture...?<p>Edit: Thanks to all those who gave in input. <comment><USER2> I am not from Canada but the majority of people I talk to online that are from the entrepreneur community are either from the Toronto area or the Vancouver BC area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Toronto is the best city in Canada for business, unless you are in mining or primarily targeting French canadians. There are incentives to locate manufacturing plants in more rural areas, and the cost of labour is cheaper elsewhere, but no other Canadian city compares when it comes to access to customers / size of labour pool.

It also has the largest Internet + startup community.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm running a startup from Edmonton, having just moved there from Calgary to be with my co-founder. I haven't been in the city long enough to say how it compares, but my gut is that it'll be a good location for our particular business.

</comment><comment><USER5> Vancouver seems like the best to me, it's very much like Seattle and SF, and while very west coast also distantly Canadian.</comment>


One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/

<comment><USER2> Salman Khan has done a wonderful job !!!!</comment>


DNS-over-HTTPS causes more problems than it solves, experts say - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/dns-over-https-causes-more-problems-than-it-solves-experts-say/ <comment><USER2> I repeatedly brought up all of these points here on HN when DoH was being developed. I suggested the developers of DoH reconsider the implementation and provide mechanisms for companies to manage this rather than bolting things on after the fact, which Mozilla have done. People only think about web browsers, but the internet is much more than that. API libraries must be considered, among many other ways that DNS is used inside a company between servers talking to servers, clients to servers, corporate VPN's, internal DNS names that may in some cases overlap with external and so many other cases. I still consider this to be a race for CDN's to centralize the monitoring of user behavior in the name of faux privacy. Like so many things, this was a good idea implemented poorly, in my humble opinion. The internet is not just Alice sitting at home browsing Youtube. Today, more than ever, people are having to work from home and DNS needs to work in a reliable and predictable manor.

</comment><comment><USER3> DoH also prevents my hosts file to be used, with Firefox on Ubuntu 20.04.

Without DoH, Firefox filters ad-networks and other content I don't want to see, so I have learned to never use DoH unless I want to see all the ads again.</comment>


Internet Archive's most recent tax filing (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/943242767_201712_990_2019020516064517.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> After donating (wrong order, perhaps :-) ) I was wondering where my money would actually go to. On the website, they give no figures or statistics, which I find weird. How much does running the site actually cost and how much is spent on development of new features? I have not been able to find that among the documentation. All it says[1] about the goal of your donation is:

\- Preserving and storing websites

\- Projects like archiving floppy disks and the Decentralized Web Summit

\- 150 staff members

But how much goes where is unknown. It's even unknown how many employees are essential for running and maintaining the archive (sysadmins, developers, administrative) and how many do other useful things.

So instead I turned to the only other public sources, as linked above. What I find there is that:

\- Of an $18M budget

\- $10M goes to salaries (11 volunteers, thus 10e6/(150-11)=72k gross on average, almost twice what I earn on my own and what I consider quite luxurious for a two-person household where both work)

\- The top ten people make 1.5 million (so 150k gross on average)

\- 6.5 million "expenses", of which a few million for scanning, 1.5 million for "computer expenses" of which only 500k is actual hardware (the rest is shipping, administrative, and other).

Are these good stats? It seems odd to me that more than half the income ends up in the pockets of employees, though I'm no guru on what a typical non- profit's margins are. I would like some insight.

I'm just picking a few things out that seem like the largest expenses, I'm not saying the money is all wasted (far from it!). I've donated in the past and plan to do so again. At the same time, I would be curious to hear from someone who knows more about this topic (for non-profits in general, though IA- specific info is also welcome).

[1] [https://help.archive.org/hc/en- us/articles/360002082351-Wher...](https://help.archive.org/hc/en- us/articles/360002082351-Where-does-my-donation-go-)</comment>


Google is promoting schema.org, but why are they not supporting it? - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.springest.com/google-recommends-schema-dot-org-microdata-but-only-supports-the-old-microformats

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what's going on, but Google clearly does support the new format on some sites. Try [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http...](http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fvegguide.org%2Fentry%2F37&view=)

I know it's the new schema.org format because I added support for it myself, and Google finds the data I'd expect it to find.</comment>


Protect yourself from spam, bots and phishing – disposable email - <AUTHOR> http://die.life?x=3 <comment><USER2> will try...

<comment><AUTHOR> have fun :)</comment></comment>


You Have to Be A Fool to Start a Company - <AUTHOR> http://babblingvc.typepad.com/pjozefak/2010/04/you-have-to-be-a-fool-to-start-a-company.html <comment><USER2> I dislike posts like this because they foster a mindset that you have to "go all in" to start a business, when in fact that's just how financiers _want_ you to do it.

You don't. Plenty of businesses start cautiously and grow organically.

What you have to be a fool to do is to bank 3-5 years of your life on a 1/20 shot at a 7 figure acquisition. Fortunately, only a tiny fraction of the people who try to do this get funded and shot out of that particular cannon, and they only lose ~1 year of their life to the idea.

<comment><USER3> Who are you to say that a year spent working on a startup is a lost year? Why is it foolish spend 3 to 5 years on something that might just change the world, especially if you enjoy the ride?

I bet that 20 teams shooting for a 7 figure exit will be on average much more successful than 20 teams building a cautious/lifestyle business.

You could even argue that shooting for a 7 figure exit is the selfless thing to do, because you're less likely to make a good living that way compared to a lifestyle business, but you are more likely to make a significant contribution to the economy (+ job creation).

<comment><USER2> First, stop kidding yourself. The year everyone loses trying to get funded doesn't teach them anything other than "getting funded is harder than all the blog posts make it sound". The 3-5 years the "lucky" few lose on ultimately unsuccessful shoot-the-moon startups don't teach them anything other than "it is possible to waste a spectacular amount of money without much revenue in return for it, and that's a great way to spend 60% of your work day in meetings".

Let me save 5 years of your life for you:

* Getting funded is harder than everything on Hacker News makes it sound.

* You can waste truly spectacular amounts of money without earning anything from customers in return from it, and when you do that, you wind up in meetings with salespeople, meetings with marketing people, meetings with PR people, meetings with engineers about the marketing people, meetings with the CEO, and, oops! Now it's time to go home.

Second: No. Shooting for a 7 figure exit is not a "selfless" thing to do. We didn't do that and we've created more jobs than a lot of funded YC companies have. The difference between companies that exit and companies that don't isn't headcount.

<comment><USER3> You're arguing against a straw-man version of my argument and you're making absurd claims in the process ("you don't learn anything from a startup" / "you spend 60% of your day in meetings"). When you write nonsense like this you can't possibly expect a constructive responsive.

<comment><USER2> See, you think I'm exaggerating or being hyperbolic, and I'm not. I might be wrong. But I'm not just making things up.

I am telling you that you probably don't learn more from failing in a startup than you could have in 3-5 years doing something else, and that yes, in fact, if you have the misfortune of getting funded, you can wind up in a job that you're handcuffed to that involves you spending most of your time in meetings.

It worries me a little that people think this claim is so outlandish that anyone making it must be trolling. I'm really not.

<comment><USER3> When you do a startup you have to learn about building a product, finding customers, managing a team efficiently, hiring the right people, building a brand for your company, determine a revenue model, basic bookkeeping, and so on. I'm just listing a couple of the many things you have to learn when doing a startup. None of these things you have to do when you're a software engineer in an established company. You can only spend a few hours a day on software, if you're lucky. The rest of the time you're building different skills. So that's why I can't take the claim "you don't learn anything" seriously.

If you're in meetings all day you're either not delegating enough or you like being in meetings all day. Either way nobody is forcing you to have meetings all day every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an article about how it's risky to start a business and all those percentages and chances at success. again.

Personally, when I had a J.O.B. 8 years ago, I felt it was far more risky. At any point, of any day, with or without notice, my boss could walk in and lay me off.

Done. No more money. No more job.

Being at the mercy of someone else has never felt safe or less risky to me. I was constantly stressed.

Working for myself means that if I need to get paid, I go out and get paid. I make it happen. I don't see how being in control of your OWN destiny is MORE risky. I rely on MYSELF, the person I trust and believe in most.

Sometimes I have to rely on others for contracts, but I'm in control of that relationship too.

I think the problem is that there are entrepreneurs and employees. I don't understand the employee mind-set, but it takes all kinds to make the world go around.

Maybe I'll write the article, "Entrepreneurship is for control freaks. Because I said so."

<comment><USER5> You replaced your boss with a customer. No real change there; You're still at the mercy of someone. I'd say you're a dumbass for not realizing this, but I'll decline to as we're supposed to keep a higher standard here on HN.

<comment><USER6> A boss can fire you even if you are bringing in a profit. All it takes is 1 bad day, or a mistaken belief that someone from India can do the same job for half the price.

If you are the owner, it doesn't matter if one or two customers are hard to deal with. All you do is stop selling to them, and you will most likely still be in business.

<comment><USER2> A board can fire you and your whole team even if you're profitable. All it takes is 1 bad day, or a mistaken belief that outsourcing to a team in India can solve the same problem for half the price.

<comment><USER6> If your company is happens to have a board that doesn't include you, you either

1\. Already sold your company.

2\. Didn't really contribute to its founding.

<comment><USER2> "Not worth more than being laid-off" would be hyperbolic, but I'd guess that your private company non-preferred shares are worth a lot less than you think they are. I have stories from real, "successful" companies that screwed over everyone not currently on staff on exit. It's not hard to do.

<comment><USER6> If shares of your company were undersold and you lose controlling interest in the process, that is your own fault. Founders usually have a different class of stock which has more voting rights per value.

This is like an employee accepting a $10/hour contract, and then complaining later that it was too low.

<comment><USER2> Founders don't usually get preferred stock.

<comment><USER6> You are correct. I meant to say that founders usually have a different class of stock that has more voting rights, rather than higher liquidation preference in case of bankruptcy.

<comment><USER2> Liquidation preferences aren't about bankruptcy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree on many counts.

If you asked my wife and me on our wedding day what our chances of success were, we would have probably said something like "Well, about half of all marriages end in divorce, but we're a little older and hopefully more mature than the average couple of newly-weds, and we talk pretty openly about difficult things. There are no guarantees, but we think we have a decent chance and we're going to do our best".

I have a similar approach to business - as Richard Branson is fond of saying, "Take big risks, but _always_ think about the potential downside".

</comment><comment><USER8> It's really not that risky if you're willing to fight to the death, so to speak. Many 'failures' are really just cases where people gave up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Failure rate at 5 years is about 50%. How many jobs are there where it's worth coming in to work after 5 years? A lot of people get pigeonholed or stagnate, if not laid off, before then.

On the divorce rate, that's across _all_ marriages, and it's closer to 40%. If you marry after 20, both are college-educated, and have known each other for 18 months before getting engaged, your odds are a _lot_ better.

</comment><comment><USER5> That must make this Paul Graham guy an idiot and this whole YCombinator thing must be idiocy in action.

<comment><USER10> While I don't agree with the Article's points, I invite you to read:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority></comment></comment>