PayPal suffering from a MAJOR subscription processing bug - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ArtBellCom/status/722878807934414848 <comment><AUTHOR> A lot of merchants including us are having the same issue. As usual paypal's support sucks. I notified them about this a few weeks ago when it first happened to us, and the "support" guy said something like:

"Sometimes things like this happen on websites"

I suggested he report it to the dev team, but I guess that didn't happen. It's hard to know if paypal even knows about it, as they don't seem to have a site status page. (There is paypal-notify.com, but you need to log in to even see the status, and I can't be bothered investigating to see if it is actually a legitimate paypal site rather than a scam site).

WTF paypal!

I was just looking at alternatives. It seems stripe is about the only alternative that supports subscriptions, but a lot of people are saying their support sucks balls as well.

<comment><USER2> Have you considered managing the subscriptions yourself? With Kill Bill[0], you can own the subscription piece while still delegating payments to PayPal and/or Stripe.

[0] [http://killbill.io/](http://killbill.io/) \- Open-Source Subscription Billing & Payment Platform.</comment></comment>


Why trying to be a sysadmin to save $20/month is a bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://kinsta.com/blog/sysadmin/ <comment><USER2> Well this starts off as a decent read and then turns into an advertisement real quick... Guess it worked as expected though as they made me aware of their service and curious about plans. Poster is the author of the article.</comment>


Slap: Terminal-based text editor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/slap-editor/slap

<comment><USER2> Requires node.js ...

EDIT: oops I'm getting downvoted, sorry for mentioning the platform. For the record, I think that JavaScript is the perfect choice of language for a terminal text editor. I can't think of a single better language and platform.

:|

<comment><USER3> I think that what's objectionable about your comment is its absolute lack of information or anything that could possibly contribute to a discussion in any obvious way.

What do we make of _Requires node.js..._? The sentiment doesn't reflect an opinion, an argument or anything that wasn't obvious from looking at the repo.

<comment><USER4> It's gonna seem REALLY obtuse to install node.js on a machine that doesn't need node.js, just so you can do some regular maintenance.

If there is any value in a terminal text editor at all, it's the ability to operate that editor remotely. Unless the machine has node.js on it already, this is just crufty.

salp's choice of dependencies for what it is, is _really_ oddball. I don't think there's any getting away from it.

I will agree that just dropping a "Requires node.js..." is kind-of a cheap trick. The idea being that people will read what they want and assume that's what the grandparent meant. But just because it's cheap, doesn't mean it's meritless.

<comment><USER3> _> But just because it's cheap, doesn't mean it's meritless._

It has no merit as a contribution to the discussion (except maybe in the sense that people actually replied to it). For all I care, he could have a very well-founded basis for his opinion, but the fact remains that we will never know that from the body of his comment.

As for your arguments, I mostly agree, but personally I use vim (as opposed to non-terminal equivalents like gvim or macvim) locally since a lot of the work I do happens in a terminal anyway. By using it in the terminal, I can completely avoid managing windows in OS X while I work and either just drop vim to the background or use tmux to do the command line work relatively seamlessly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I like about the project is that it is written in JavaScript and open source.

But this:

        a Sublime-like file sidebar

You could as well say, a VIM like sidebar if you install the proper plugin. There is nothing "Sublime-like" about a sidebar, TextMate had this earlier, other editors too.

What is with the proliferation of these "Sublime-like" editors lately ? Can't they just stand on their own ? This really looks like a nice project and I don't see the need to pitch it with "Sublime like" features.

Also, I assume that a "Sublime-like" editor has at least some of the Sublime Text plugin capabilities. I've seen no mention of plugins on the project page.

Love this quote too:

        ... many other features that will make you leave nano, vim, and emacs behind

<comment><USER6> > There is nothing "Sublime-like" about a sidebar, TextMate had this earlier, > other editors too.

I don't understand why every discussion like this devolves into a discussion over who did something first. It's completely irrelevant to the point. The quote you pulled says nothing about Sublime being the only editor to have a sidebar, or Sublime being the first editor to have a sidebar. It says that Sublime has a file sidebar, and this project has a file sidebar that is like Sublime. That is pretty basic statement of fact, your comments about other editors having sidebars is a complete non sequitur.

<comment><USER7> The "who did it first" stuff is always one of the most aggravating tangents in tech forum discussions. I truly just do not get it. Sometimes it's people reminiscing about computer history, which I usually enjoy, but most of the time it's someone who just wants to crap on whatever the thing being discussed is. It's a less downvotable way of saying, "I think this thing you just wrote is stupid, and my token excuse for saying this is because someone else did it before you, so nyah nyah nyah".

The canonical example IMO is the development of the modern GUI: in the '90s, people who liked to argue about dumb stuff would say that Windows is crap because it was "just a reimplementation" of Mac OS; this was usually followed up by some equally stupid argument from someone else about how the Mac was stupid because it was "just a reimplementation" of the Xerox Alto, and I'm sure that would be followed up by some primordial neckbeard claiming that the Xerox Alto was a steaming pile because it just a reimplementation of ENIAC with better graphics.

Also: GNU/Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Comments are harsh today, to me this is a very promising project.

Calling it The sublime Text text-based if it does not (yet?) have the features that defines Sublime (multiple cursors, split screen, fuzzy search/commands) might not be the best move.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think a good chunk of the reason why people use Sublime is because it looks so damn good. I was hoping this would too, but I guess that's difficult with a terminal-based editor.

Also, anyone know which (if any) of the patched Powerline fonts [0] have the hand unicode icon? (It's slap's icon, and it looks ugly without it.)

[0] [https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline- fonts](https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline-fonts)

</comment><comment><USER10> Leave Emacs? Never, ever. A fool who thinks he could beat the power of Lisp! :P

</comment><comment><USER11> Well it's interesting to see how to make a text editor in javascript (vs. one in C, for example my own: JOE). The top level libraries used seem to be: blessed, undo.js, cheerio (jQuery?), entities, lex, winston (logging), bluebird (promises), highlight.js, lazy.js (based on underscore), rc, fs, path, xtend, traverse, util, copy-paste.

I think I can see that there is heavy use of lazy.js to make string processing faster. Text buffer seems to be an array of lines...

The nearly complete lack of comments is amazing :-) The author should write some kind of hacking guide or similar documentation if he wants others to help with the project or at least to see how it works.

</comment><comment><USER12> I believe Lime Text that was mentioned here previously also has terminal support in addition to a couple different GUI front ends: [http://limetext.org/contribute.html](http://limetext.org/contribute.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is so freakin cool. I assume you will receive a lot of criticism from VIM die-hards for your key bindings. But I love it.

Good job!

<comment><USER14> Not only VIM but also UNIX people, because of ^C and ^Z.

<comment><USER15> I'm definitely hard-coded to not use ctrl+c or ctrl+z for copy/undo inside of a terminal, but I can see how this would make it easier for those just starting out to get used to terminal commands. Homogenizing our hotkeys with the ones used in GUIs isnt a bad thing, but it's certainly going to make things hairy for a while if more command line tools follow suit (how do I know which ones use which? Could lead to some very costly mistakes when I try to copy).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What options are out there for mouse integration on regular console vim? Or is it best to just run gVim/MacVim/etc?

<comment><USER17> :set mouse=a

<comment><USER18> Wow, life just got a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice! I've been waiting for a nice CUA terminal editor for a decade or more. So long that I wrote one in turbo vision about that long ago. The TV packages were removed however, so I've been using nano with sane key-bindings remotely, but they are always foobared when editing as root.

<comment><USER20> It exists since ages: ne ([http://ne.di.unimi.it/](http://ne.di.unimi.it/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very nice. But consider a lot terminal people are living in Linux. A fork uses a language that's commonly bundled with Linux distros will be awesome.

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure most distros have node.js (albeit an older version) in their repos. I know Ubuntu has it for years now.

<comment><USER23> Well, I just tried to install it on Debian squeezy, but I couldn't find a nodejs package.

<comment><USER24> Here is the binary for debian

[https://github.com/nodesource/distributions](https://github.com/nodesource/distributions)

Usually i install from source

wget [http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.31/node-v0.10.31.tar.gz](http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.31/node-v0.10.31.tar.gz)

tar -zxvf node-v0.10.31.tar.gz

cd node-v0.10.31

./configure

make ; sudo make install</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Xbox 360 Reset Glitch Hack - Unsigned Code on current Kernels incl. X360 SLIM - <AUTHOR> http://libxenon.org/index.php?topic=145.0 <comment><USER2> This seems to be a fairly complex hardware hack to pull off, and it only works 25% of the time. This will possibly satisfy the hardcore homebrew community, but I have doubts about whether they'll be able to refine the process into a single low-cost mod-chip.

This is definitely a good step forward though. At this rate by the time the 360 is retired from the marketplace we'll have a reliable boot method that allows everyone to turn their old 360s into media servers/toasters/whatever.

<comment><USER3> Well, it works 25% of the time you try it. And if it doesn't your modchip can full-reset and start over - statistically it already is "reliable", all it means is a longer (variable-length) boot cycle.

<comment><USER2> That's true, and you can probably assume that people who will be doing this will use their 360s as media/file servers which need minimal restarting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I have only the most elementary understanding of the concepts these exploits use (even more elementary in such a low-level hack as this), there's always an undeniable bit of adventure to reading them. It's espionage and subterfuge on a microscopic and high-frequency scale.

</comment><comment><USER5> This might be a bit of a leap, but I really hope this ends up in Xbox Media Center / Boxee for the 360. I'm not sure how difficult porting x86 code to PowerPC is (aside from endianness), but a guy can dream.

<comment><USER6> I was a huge fan of XBMC on the original Xbox, but I don't really see much practical use in achieving the same thing on the Xbox 360 given that you can buy or build dedicated HTPC boxes (including ones that run modern XBMC) for as much or less than the 360 hardware these days.

<comment><USER7> I agree, Acer makes the Revo and Zotac has a few for example that between $200-300 get you up and running with nvidia ion for native gpu rendering of HD.

Xbmc doesn't really need to run on 360.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What would be very interesting is getting MinGW for Xbox 360 working, and then getting an OpenSSH server working as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here come the aimbots...

:(

<comment><USER10> Try playing some of the older CoD games (4/WaW), they're full of various types of cheaters.

<comment><USER9> WaW and MW2 were full of them during their respective year of glory. BO has had a lot less glitches than previous installments.

<comment><USER6> Black Ops has had its share of glitches, but it is updated far more often than MW2 ever was so they are patched out quickly. MW2 was basically abandoned due to the implosion of Infinity Ward/Activision, which is why there was hardly any DLC for it (relative to being such a huge selling title) and very few updates to fix known glitches.

Didn't play WaW, so I can't speak to that one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Good introductions to concurrent programming? - <AUTHOR> I've done a small amount of occasional threading work in C#/Java/Python at various times, but not a huge amount or anything really significant. I keep coming across languages that take a new approach to concurrency - Go, Elixir and even Pony look really interesting. But I'm struggling to really understand what the motivating examples are for their approaches to concurrency/what the tradeoffs are without a solid understanding of the sorts of concurrent programs that are written.<p>It seems like there's a huge amount of work going on that it'd be useful career-wise to understand and be able to engage with, but I'm not really sure where to start. Does anybody have any recommendations? I think material that approached Go or Elixir from a very practical application-first perspective would probably be really useful, but I'm open to other suggestions too! <comment><USER2> Communicating Sequential Processes, by CAR Hoare.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rob Pike's golang talks</comment>


Space Invaders 404 - <AUTHOR> http://www.masswerk.at/404 <comment><USER2> No, no it doesn't. It needs more _useful_ 404 pages:

[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93641)

<comment><USER3> That article doesn't really say that 404 pages should be useful. Their use is to tell the user that the page doesn't exist. As long as it communicates that in a way that users can understand (and returned a HTTP 404) it has done it's job.

There was a fad for a little while around 2000 where people tried to make 404 pages which would "guess" which page you wanted to visit, search it, or make suggestions.

Not only did these projects leave gaping security holes in many sites but they also seem to confuse many users more than if they had just been a roadblock (often resulting in users going around in circles).

Plus, as another comment said, even Google doesn't follow Google's advice.

<comment><USER4> I usually perform a search using the data I can get from the URL. I usually get a category and some keyword (from the clean title URLs) so I can indicate that there's a 404 and then offer some related results doing a search.

Angel

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The 404 page on scri.ch (drawing tool I made with a friend) is a drawing like any other on the website (you can draw on it, save it again, etc.), except the HTTP status: [http://scri.ch/-](http://scri.ch/-)

<comment><USER6> This is cool, but it badly needs an erase feature. Also, setting a title/permalink for the finished drawing would be nice. Any plans to develop it more?

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Feel free to submit an issue [1], everything can be discussed, but the absence of an erasing tool (or any other tool) is a strong feature for us and our users.

[1] [https://github.com/lisezmoi/scri.ch/issues](https://github.com/lisezmoi/scri.ch/issues)

<comment><USER6> Ah, it's intentionally minimalist. That's cool too. Perhaps a small, unobtrusive link to about.scri.ch to explain the philosophy would be in order then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my sites has something similar!! (No one sees it though :( )

[http://www.designedbyfd.com/404](http://www.designedbyfd.com/404)

<comment><USER3> You forgot to tell users that it is a 404 page...

Kind of 50% of the point of a 404 page (the other 50% being the status code which you do deliver).

<comment><USER8> Unless it's been fixed in the 8 minutes since you posted, it does say 404 error in the graphic (in a thin font, though, so it's hard to see).

I agree that it should be in the page title, be more visible, and explain what "404 error" means, though.

<comment><USER3> I cannot see it. Might be an issue this side then. I see the asteroids floating around, and if I hit it I see a ship and can play an asteroids-like game.

<comment> bink-lynch It's just before you hit the space bar to begin playing the game, "404 Error! Press space to start," then it goes away. I missed it too until I saw your comment, then I went back and checked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You might end up getting more traffic to your 404 pages than your site. I just spent 5 minutes on the 404 page, haven't seen the contents of the actual site yet.

<comment><USER10> It sure would ruin any chance of error reporting based on hits to your 404 page

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yup the web seems to be full of those. [http://thefiletree.com/404](http://thefiletree.com/404)

<comment><USER12> Whoa, that game is a blast!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a weakness for hexagons: [https://floobits.com/404](https://floobits.com/404)

The 403 and 500 pages are a little more aggressive: [https://floobits.com/static/403.html](https://floobits.com/static/403.html) [https://floobits.com/static/500.html](https://floobits.com/static/500.html)

I think I've picked a nice combination of utility and aesthetics. The game on masswerk.at's 404 page is pretty cool, but I could see it being a little distracting or confusing for some users.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure if it's deliberate, or if my memory is accurate, but that reminds me a lot of the 'access denied' bit at the end of 'Lawnmower Man'.

<comment><USER13> Actually, I was inspired by Evangelion. I've never seen The Lawnmower Man.

<comment><USER15> If the internet was Evangelion, there wouldn't be many humans left to page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems to be done with divs and dom manipulation. Anyone know why they didn't use HTML5 canvas for this? I'm curious because I'm currently making an HTML5 canvas game.

<comment><USER17> Is it compatible with pre-canvas browsers (legacy IE and so forth)? That could be a valid reason particularly if it was written a while ago.

<comment><USER16> Sure, that's a valid reason. I guess I should have stated the intent of my question: Am I going down a bad path by trying to make my game with canvas when I could be doing it with a bunch of divs like this page?

<comment><USER17> For writing a new game I'd go Canvas generally. It will perform far better in many cases, will often be easier to develop/maintain, and supporting legacy IE and older mobile browsers is just going to drain your time for little gain.

Of course your target audience, if you have a more specific market in mind, may make another decision for you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://hakim.se/experiments/html5/404/netmag.html](http://hakim.se/experiments/html5/404/netmag.html)

<comment><USER15> I'm always amazed by Hakim's stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Meh, it's novel for about 10 seconds... But seriously, did you complete the level? I dabbled with it for about 10 seconds and then realized how long it would take and lost interest.

<comment><USER20> I completed the level.

You too young for the old arcades then?

<comment><USER21> It's really easy to complete when the invaders never drop down at the end of each line. Nice tribute to the game but fatally flawed.

<comment><USER22> They do drop down but not every pass.

<comment><USER23> In fact they drop down a row after some time and every time a row of invaders has been cleared. But they are to stay above the error code by design (the code always being the center of the action).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> :D

Another one: [http://snowpool.org/tgescg](http://snowpool.org/tgescg)

Disclaimer: It's a fork of a game I made.

</comment><comment><USER25> You bastard, I have a deadline and you post me this?

</comment><comment><USER26> Problem is that when you get a 404, you're typically expecting something else. A game isn't going to change your entire plan and distract you for 10 minutes. Wait.. this is the internet, that is what will happen! Genius!

</comment><comment><USER27> I amused myself with a grumpy cat 404 [http://heyes- jones.com/404](http://heyes-jones.com/404)

</comment><comment><USER28> How to win. Get in the middle of the 0 and drill a small hole with your own missiles up through the 0. From now on you will be safe and most of your shots initially will hit an invader. Once you get down to the last one it is a matter of timing.

If they break through the 0 and you are in danger, move under another safer part and drill a hole again.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here is another HTML5 space invaders game [http://www.webdigi.co.uk/fun/space&#x2F](http://www.webdigi.co.uk/fun/space&#x2F); You can also control this with your iPhone! (Socket.io/nodejs)

</comment><comment><USER30> How familiar!

[https://appneta.tv.appneta.com/nathoeusntaheous](https://appneta.tv.appneta.com/nathoeusntaheous)

OK, fine, not interactive, but still familiar.

<comment><USER23> Don't forget that this page isn't exactly new. Around since March 2012. (See: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/113952620110664554186/posts/bak1...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/113952620110664554186/posts/bak12igQ969) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Further sass: you can click the title to change the error code, and it talks down to you a bit if you enter 666. There might be other fun ones too.

<comment><USER23> To get a list of all known codes see: [http://masswerk.at/status](http://masswerk.at/status)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting when you change shotSpeed var to 50, only the middle row registers being hit, and when it's 100, none of the invaders register hits.

Pretty fun :}

<comment><USER23> bad boy hacker! ;-)

<comment><USER32> I was just frustrated at the low fire rate :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Awesome 404!

If you don't have time to make a game, then you can always RickRoll ur users... totally kidding :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Thanks for helping me wasting 10 mins of my life :)

<comment><USER35> most likely that was best 10 minutes of your day :-)

<comment><USER34> Probably true haha!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: 2-factor auth bug of Facebook, any recourse or advice? - <AUTHOR> After a series of actions, my mom's account has been put in a state where 2-factor are enable, but there is no available method to do so (ie. An empty list of available 2-factor methods). SMS was the only enable method, and it has been removed (by a hacky method). Just to be clear, the phone number are still useable by us, facebook just list an empty list of 2-factor method on login and refuse to proceed.
There is no luck from their help page. There is no form available for this case, even the one where they ask you to submit government-issued id doesn't work (it is only used for disabled account). Although weirdly, we can no longer view the profile of said account, and it turned into "Facebook user" on messenger, with all messages deleted.
The account has a lot of sentimental value to my mom, and I would really appreciate if there is anyway to recover it. Or if by luck an engineer passes by and escalate the bug. <comment><AUTHOR> As to how it happened: FB declined to send sms for login for a week straight. So I tried adding the phone number to a different account. After doing so and verified the number, it was removed as a method of 2-factor on the first account, causing the bug.</comment>


Scarcity of smartphone app developers stifles a growing industry in Michigan - <AUTHOR> http://www.freep.com/article/20110830/COL41/108300342/Mark-W-Smith-Scarcity-app-developers-stifles-growing-industry <comment><AUTHOR> Another article to toss in the gloom and doom pile of Michigan software industry.

Since when have rates, which are competitive in the industry, become a bad thing? Shouldn't we be praising the fact that our industry is competing with firms across the globe?

And which industry is this "stifling"? The developers, or the idea-man?</comment>


It's time to rethink startup equity - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/11/13/its-time-to-rethink-startup-equity/ <comment><USER2> The problem with this model is that the company at liquidity event often rarely resembles the company during the early phases. As such, the employees which benefit the company the most during the early phases, and whose skills are most aligned to those phases will not be fairly rewarded if they make the (IMO, correct) decision to leave the company to make room for the right people at those later stages.

The assumption here seems to be that the primary value of an employee is their future effort, not their past. While there are certainly problems with poor employees leaving with some options vested, I fail to see this as an endemic issue where tons of bad employees are leaving companies one day after the initial vesting cliff (which should only result in the first tranche of options, not their full amount). If you have a big problem with this - I'd say the problem is not the vesting of stock options, but your failure to accurately create the right ISO plan and the failure to accurately identify which employees are likely to leave before you've attained the value you need from them.

<comment><USER3> >> The problem with this model is that the company at liquidity event often rarely resembles the company during the early phases. As such, the employees which benefit the company the most during the early phases, and whose skills are most aligned to those phases will not be fairly rewarded if they make the (IMO, correct) decision to leave the company to make room for the right people at those later stages.

Your concerns make sense, but can't you mitigate this with larger or better equity grants to those employees? Valuing their past effort is easily achieved with bonuses (I realize this requires the company to actually do it, but the concept works).

<comment><USER2> > but can't you mitigate this with larger or better equity grants to those > employees

In a perfect world, yes, however, most companies are reticent to offer additional equity to existing employees. Not that it doesn't happen, but it usually requires the employee to ask for it.

One of the big issues, which I presume they expect this plan to help resolve, is how do you pre-judge a prospective employee's value? The employee wants a maximal initial grant, and the employer typically wants a minimal grant. The more they favor the grant desire of the employee, the longer the vesting period becomes - such that the employer is able to cut their losses if the employee doesn't pan out.

Simply knowing that if you leave, some other guy that comes after you is going to get your 1% entices you to stay around long after your usefulness has ended. Either way, the company is already out of their 1%, but now they have an additional payroll drag. Much better to accept the 1% if you're going to give it, and be done with it.

I'm also unaware of what the sourcing is by the article's author, wherein lies this huge problem that non-employees hold a bunch of stock in a company is making it difficult for companies to grow into their full potential. To be fair, if a company takes outside investment, it typically gives more stock to non-employees than employees, additionally giving them preferred upside and rights the employees as common stock option holders do not have. Again, if they feel the outside investors have much better aligned interests with the company than the current employees, they have a different problem than option grants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The DSP pool is egalitarian, shared equally amongst the first fifteen > employees we hire. So it's a rich incentive at 1 percent of the company > (before any future dilution).

The fact that the author considers 1% of a startup's illiquid equity pre- dilution to be a "rich incentive" highlights just how much rethinking is required.

For argument's sake, lets assume an early-stage startup has no future dilution and five of the first 15 employees leave before a liquidity event. In 2012, over half of startups exits were $50 million or less. With a $50 million exit, the 10 early employees would each receive $750,000 pre-tax from the DSP pool. Even with a $100 million exit, each employee's DSP pool share is not likely to net $1 million after taxes.

Of course, at a typical venture-backed startup, dilution is likely to be meaningful, liquidity preferences can prevent employees from receiving _anything_ at all and the odds are against a $50 to $100 million exit ever occurring. Experienced and/or savvy employees know this, and they can do basic math. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that early-stage startup equity is generally a poor retention tool. It's like using a screwdriver with a nail instead of a hammer.

Retention requires a sustained effort to keep employees happy on a daily basis. This is usually best accomplished with financial tools that provide for near-term, recurring rewards such as bonus and profit sharing packages, as well as non-financial tools (pre-tax benefits, flexible schedules, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER5> It's also an incentive for the company to fire all of those 15 employees.

<comment><USER6> There could easily be a trigger for this where if the company cancels their end of the at-will agreement, the equity is deemed to vest at a certain rate.

<comment><USER7> That just turns it into what we were getting away from: vested option grants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading this lead me to a tangentially related question:

Is there a recommended forum, website, subreddit, whatever, that discusses issues revolving around startup equity?

I'm new to the Bay Area, and working at my first funded startup. There are a lot of, for lack of a better word, things that strike me as strange about our current equity situation... and I'd like to know where I can discuss things like what is fair and equitable, and how worried I should be that certain fancy titles are being handed out like candy to non-developers.

I do, by the way, like the ideas suggested in the post - but I wonder about the company that achieves moderate success, but never achieves a clear-cut liquidity event. Instead it continues on for years, perhaps a decade, who knows, without being sold or IPOing. It would put an initial employee in an awkward position; they'd leave most of their equity on the table if they left, giving them no value for many years of contributions.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't this lead to ever increasing office politics among the first 15 hires?

When an acquisition is in the air the by far most profitable move would be to start bullying others out. If the finances aren't transparent to at least those 15, I'd expect false rumors about the company's profitability going around to make other people quit.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can't give 15 people 15% each, that comes out to 225% of the equity. Or is he saying that the 15 people will split the 15%? Because 1% that doesn't vest until a liquidity event isn't that special, it seems to me.

I would not work for this company.

<comment><USER11> You wouldn't work for a company that gives you an extra 1% of equity on top of your normal grant? Why not?

<comment><USER12> there's no indication that your normal grant would not be made in light of the additional 1% grant on the table if you stay thru IPO. The article even says that "the majority of Opsmatic's employee stock — 15 percent of the company — is allocated to the DSP" so there's not particularly much employee stock outside of the DSP available for your "normal grant"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This really only makes sense for companies that are looking to exit or IPO, though stock options for any other kind of company aren't that compelling.

For other companies that are interested in playing the long game, I think it makes more sense to explore alternative compensation structures like profit sharing, etc.

As an employee looking to work with the typical exit-seeking startup, I would probably not be interested in the deal.

<comment><USER2> > For other companies that are interested in playing the long game, I think it > makes more sense to explore alternative compensation structures like profit > sharing, etc.

IMO, for non-growth oriented companies, I believe this is the best way to align employee and company interests. I can imagine that there are more effective means of doing so, but I can't imagine what they would look like. The devil's in the details, of course, but a properly-implemented profit- sharing plan seems to be well-received by the employees whom I've witnessed partake.

<comment><USER13> Growth and long term vision or lack of interest in an exit are not mutually exclusive. At any rate, I'd be curious to hear how companies like Mailchimp are doing these types of compensation.

<comment><USER2> By "growth-oriented," I'm referring to those companies who eschew any profit in deference to further growth (even if they could show reasonable profit at a slighter lower rate of growth). For these companies, they lack the immediate value to works of a profit-sharing plan, which, IMO, is one of the most valuable aspects of it.

<comment><USER13> Sure, good point. I'd rather not be on a profit sharing plan in one of those companies :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This devalues that grant considerably by making the vesting cliff equal to the date of the liquidity event. I would not take this deal as an employee. I want less cliff, not more.

<comment><USER15> > in addition to a traditional stock option grant, we're offering our first > fifteen employees, or however fewer it takes to get to the next financing, > an equal share of 15 percent of the company

This is additional to a standard stock option grant. Though I'm not sure what is meant by "traditional" here I assume there is some other amount of options with a standard cliff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Joining startups right now is generally a very bad idea unless you join as founder or director level +

<comment><USER17> That's only true if you are doing it purely for the equity (which is a terribly idea).

Many startups will pay salaries that match (or almost-match) those of larger companies, but the work at a startup is likely to be much more interesting - you'll usually move faster and learn more than at a larger organisation.

<comment><USER18> _Many startups will pay salaries that match (or almost-match) those of larger companies_

Is this really true? I've heard of larger companies justifying lower salaries through the value of stability.

<comment><USER19> This is anecdotal - but the salaries quoted to me by big companies ("AAA", well-known companies even) have always been lower than what startups have offered. I've always perceived this as an extra upside for the risk of being on the sidewalk in a year's time.

<comment><USER16> You are doing something wrong, make sure to anchor a high salary early on.

<comment><USER19> I have. The problem has always been the onerous approval chain in big companies, or crappy recruiters who fill the offer with discretionary bonuses that _add up_ to my asking price.

With startups I can actually negotiate and get results. With big companies every major hike in the offer needs to go through a long approval chain. In a few instances I've been off the market by the time they came back to me.

I've also had less jerking around with the aforementioned bonus structures from startups. With big companies I've consistently gotten "$Y base plus up to $Z discretionary", where Y + Z adds up to my asking. I've taken one such offer before and gotten completely shafted (i.e., highly positive performance review, bonus nowhere to be found). Startups are much, much more willing to simply pay my asking salary as base.

My impression with big companies is that their recruiters are their greatest liability. I've had recruiters ask for my salary be lowered because they're paying for my move. No thanks, I know exactly how much a move costs and it's nowhere near the (permanent! not one time!) reduction in salary. Things like that make a negotiation go south quickly. When it comes to smaller companies I've never been treated by HR/recruitment like I was born yesterday, whereas that experience is the norm with big companies.

<comment><USER16> Ah, ios/mobile. That is the one place where the big companies are underpaying because most of them don't need mobile apps.

I heard of 200/300k for iOS devs though, so keep looking :)

<comment><USER19> At the time I was still working in backend.

I also have no complaints about my pay ;) But my experiences with big companies have left with me little desire to talk to them. It's always been a frustrating experience full of low-ball offers and treating me like an idiot.

Every time I've dealt with big-company salary negotiations it's felt like buying a used car. "Oh, we absolutely cannot go higher than that ceiling" "Welp, sorry then" "No wait, we talked to our VP..." \- startups (or really, just smaller companies) have always been much more transparent and much more direct in their dealings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I generally like the sound of this, although really what it amounts to is a single trigger on a liquidity event. The dynamic pool part is the interesting bit.

 _Things I like_

\- Aligns employee incentives strongly with founders/investors in terms of seeking an exit. Some people now just jump from company to company collecting equity.

\- When a company can expect an employee to be around for awhile and vice- versa, both invest more in each other.

 _Some questions and concerns_

\- Not all companies are going to reach a liquidity event and thus it may disadvantage employees if they feel more locked in to staying onboard in a situation with limited upside.

\- This may prompt more job candidates to only join companies which are sure- bets, and hurt companies with that crazy idea.

\- Such a deal would probably even out with current offers of equity because time is equal to money, but the increased amount of equity will be used as leverage to reduce salary.

\- Acquiring companies are going to hate this with a passion as they rely on there being some vesting time left in order to keep acquired employees.

\- Although perverse, the dynamic pool aspect might make the first 15 employees try to get the others to leave since the upside of doing so is high. Likewise, if the pool is a certain size, there might be some resentment if the company hires more people and reduces equity for everybody else.

\- What is preventing the company from simply adding more people to this coveted pool once one leaves, reducing the advantages the first few had?

<comment><USER20> _> it may disadvantage employees if they feel more locked in to staying onboard in a situation with limited upside._

It also would encourage the company to reduce financial transparency if things weren't going well

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just want vested stock options to not expire soon after leaving the company, with no company call options on said stock. Those simple properties alone would help a lot.

It removes a lot of tax brain damage and risk for the employee when they are dealing with non-liquid company stock that they can't sell to anybody. Companies don't like it, since it doesn't let them take back a lot of stock left on the floor by many leaving employees, but so be it, they already have vested by one year at that point.

</comment><comment><USER7> _On the other side of the equation, founders and investors are increasingly tight-fisted with company ownership, allocating smaller stock pools to employees_

Founders and investors are in a position of power, which means there is an easier solution to the quoted problem: create more shares (dilute) when necessary. In the mean time, just give out more stock.

</comment><comment><USER22> If they want to get rid of the cliff...why not get rid of the cliff?

They could have the options vest linearly (maybe with a gap at the start). That way no day is better than any other for quitting to cash out

<comment><USER23> The cliff is a failsafe against granting any equity to employees that should not have been hired at all. It is employee unfriendly in the sense that it is a concession employees make to the firm, but it's a "market" concession; it's part of the deal at most startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about option grants at public companies? It seems like a way for top- level executives to loot the company while the rank and file get enough kicked down to them keep them quiet.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised that most of the comments here ("I want less cliff, not more"... "why don't we just get rid of the cliff"...) are really employee-centric -- and not the kind of employee I want to hire as a founder/CEO.

Hey guys, we are on Hacker News, we're supposed to be entrepreneur-minded.

<comment><USER26> Most entrepreneurs start as employees somewhere and they don't want to feel locked in to staying for who knows how many more years than they would have otherwise, waiting (hoping) for a liquidity event so they can realize their equity and finally start their own company.

Thus for would be entrepreneurs, this structure would be a pretty big negative.</comment></comment>


Hackers: can you impersonate other users using javascript? - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking about authentication with third-party services lately. You know how a website uses facebook connect to authenticate a user? Well, what is to prevent you from going into the javascript and searching for your uid and changing it to e.g. #4, mark zuckerberg, or that of Mike Arrington, before posting something to the server?
Is there protection against this on the websites?
Today, I fooled around with DISQUS and used the javascript console to try and fool it into thinking I was someone else. But I think that with DISQUS, they rely on the cookie (not the uid in javascript) when you post the comment, so you can't impersonate other users. However, if we go back to my original question -- how do websites which implement authentication with facebook, google, etc. protect against such impersonations? <comment><USER2> <https://github.com/codebutler/firesheep>

<comment><AUTHOR> no no, I don't mean stealing someone's cookie through some kind of Man-In-The- Middle attack.

I mean impersonating someone else simply by logging in and then changing some javascript variables before posting to the server.

<comment><USER3> If the service is well implemented this should be very hard. Basically when you login you receive a session/ticket (usually by cookie), using that session you post as yourself.

To post as somebody else you would need to get their session which is difficult since it expires after some time and it should very hard to guess (usually an hash with 32 characters or more).

What firesheep does is steal those sessions during transaction. No guessing there.

<comment><AUTHOR> fine, but if I am making a third-party authentication service, how do I prevent the users of that service from being bamboozled by simple javascript? How does facebook prevent a website from being bamboozled?

Is there any technique that facebook can recommend (such as signing the uid and sending the signature along with the id on all server requests) so that the website isn't fooled?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand your question.

If you mean: I have an authentication service, Auth.com, and I would like the users to be able to enter their user name and password on AnotherSite.com, how do I stop javascript on AnotherSite.com hijacking their submission to Auth.com?

Then the short answer is, you can't. That is why all services redirect you to their own login page, where they control the HTML (and can audit to be sure that no one has injected code into their site).

What Facebook does is usually in an iFrame, which accesses the user information relatively securely. Any interaction more complex than a "like" is generally redirected via facebook.com (e.g. any permission grants). iFrame's used to be riddled with flaws, but I believe they are considered fairly safe these days.

Go educate yourself on the protection of XSS and CSRF/XSRF, and you'll be able to answer all of your own questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, that's not what I am asking. And I am very familiar with how to combat XSS and CSRF, having written a PHP framework that does it for you out of the box, among other things (<http://phponpie.com>)

I am asking another question.

If I am operating an OpenID provider, say Auth.com, and CoolStuff.com uses me to authenticate a user, then they can use that session. Great. But now let's say I operate an OAuth provider, and it releases this user's uid, first_name and last_name. What measures does facebook and other OAuth providers take to prevent the uid, first_name, last_name and other data from just being changed by the user in javascript, before being posted to the CoolStuff.com servers, after they have been obtained using Javascript ... such as FB.api('fql.query', ...)

<comment><USER5> If I understand the question correctly, you are asking what's to stop someone from changing the UID, etc when the user is redirected from auth.com to coolstuff.com?

From my understanding of OAuth, when the uid, first_name and last_name are sent by auth.com it also sends a cryptographic hash of everything. So if you change the uid, you would also have to change the hash and you can't change the hash without knowing the shared secret that the auth.com and coolstuff.com have decided on prior to your request.

<comment><AUTHOR> so what you are saying is that coolstuff.com's servers must always look for a signature from auth.com when they are accepting user data, they cannot trust the user input. That makes sense. So does facebook connect, google, etc. have this? I assume not.

<comment><USER4> Well if you protect against CSRF you should be checking a nonce for all form submissions anyway. This doesn't appear to be all that different to me.

I'm intrigued now, I hope someone can give details!

<comment><USER6> OAuth 2.0 login providers use an access token that is user specific for all subsequent interaction.

For example, with Facebook, once a user has logged in and given Application X permission to access their details, FB will send the user's id, name, etc. (whatever data the user has granted access to) along with a unique access token. The next time, and every subsequent time Application X wants to access the FB API on the user's behalf it is required to send that access token. From javascript you might be able to change the token, however, Application X's next interaction with the FB API will fail if the token is invalid and there is no way to derive a token value from a FB user's id.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's it? That sucks.

I don't have to change the token. I just have to change the data given by facebook (including the uid) before the website's dumb javascript uses it in a post back to the server. Since it's not signed by Facebook, how can the website's server trust the uid? Never trust your user input.

<comment><USER6> The user logs in on Facebook's server, there is no opportunity to change a uid. Facebook might return the logged in user's id, however that's not useful, the only way to interact with their API will be with the access token (which only grants you access to the logged in user's scope).

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not talking about interacting with their API.

Facebook returns a uid. When the user takes an action, this uid is sent to the server. The server trusts the uid, and saves this action as taken by the user identified by this uid.

And let's say it's not the uid. Let's say it's the user's name.

It trusts the user input basically. But it should probably be getting it directly from facebook, or in a signed structure, right?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the NBA's Age Limit Helps Colleges but Hurts Players - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3649028/nba-draft-age-limit-kentucky-wildcats-one-and-done/ <comment><USER2> It also helps the NBA by giving evaluators another year to watch players in higher pressure situations, and to see maturity issues they may have transitioning from youth to adult hood. It hurts the players, yes, but probably greatly benefits the NBA owners as well, because they can gain a better evaluation of players than if they were not required to play a year in college. Hard to see the age limit dropping without massive systemic changes.</comment>


Swedish Academy Won't Award Nobel Prize in Literature This Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/swedish-academy-wont-award-nobel-prize-in-literature-this-year-1525419104 <comment><USER2> Off-topic:

I've been hoping for Cormac McCarthy to win the Nobel Prize in literature for a number of years. I still think he deserves it, but I'm starting to lose hope.

<comment><USER3> Someone that also deserves is Lobo Antunes [1]. Also a Portuguese like José Saramago, but IMHO, is way more interesting: a psychiatrist that served in Colonial War.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Lobo_Antunes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Lobo_Antunes)

<comment><USER4> Strange, I though that Saramago had already won it. Yeah, he certainly deserves it.

<comment><USER5> He did win, in 1998. Even if he hadn't, he's dead now, so he wouldn't be eligible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They expect to award two recipients in 2019.

</comment><comment><USER7> The correct decision, following all the turmoil surrounding Svensk Akademin, any prize given this year would be a lesser one.

</comment><comment><USER8> Press Release from Swedish Academy : [http://www.svenskaakademien.se/en/press/the-swedish- academy-...](http://www.svenskaakademien.se/en/press/the-swedish-academy- postpones-the-2018-nobel-prize-in-literature)

Non Paywall Coverage

BBC : [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-43999240](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43999240)

Guardian : [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/04/nobel-prize- fo...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/04/nobel-prize-for- literature-2018-cancelled-after-sexual-assault-scandal)

CNN: [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/04/europe/nobel-prize-for- li...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/04/europe/nobel-prize-for-literature- swedish-academy-postponed-intl/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand why the Nobel prize is so prestigious. It's the same with the Oscars: it's just some arbitrary committee of people somewhere that decide who wins it. It's not like your peers decide if you win. So why does anyone actually care about the award? It's prestigious because we all agree it's prestigious.

<comment><USER10> It's spelled "prestigious" because we all agree it's spelled "prestigious."

The word has meaning because we all agree it has meaning.

Corporations exist because we all agree that corporations exist.

Money has value because we all agree that it has value.

The United States of America exists because we all agree that it exists.

Yes, there is a difference between objective reality and intersubjective reality. But I think you're making too much of that difference.

A huge amount of our everyday world is based entirely off broad mass agreement. The vast majority of the things we interact with in modern life would immediately cease to exist if all the people who believed in them just vanished one day - if an extraterrestrial species arrived on Earth the day after, they would not be able to observe almost anything about our lives. That doesn't mean our reality is fake or that our interaction with it is arbitrary. It just means that it is geopolitically and/or culturally defined.

Bottom line: Yes, social science is hard, but lighten up.

<comment><USER11> Your comparison with corporations and nations is not entirely fitting. Money and words work out fine.

In the case of nations, we don't have to agree for them to be real. For example, China (the Peoples Republic of China) does not agree that Taiwan (the Republic of China) exists or vice versa, yet both are undeniably real. The same with Serbia and Kosovo.

Some things exist only because of convention or an agreement between people, like the value of a Nobel prize or money.

Other things exist because we can empirically prove that they exist, like protons and gravity. If we all agree that they don't exist, it doesn't make it so.

<comment><USER12> I think you're just splitting hairs here. You didn't invalidate the parent's point by finding a few counterexamples; on the contrary I think you just reinforced it by showing when it does and doesn't apply. The parent never claimed that _all_ things in the world are subject to mass agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And I was sure they would give it to Archimboldi this time!

</comment><comment><USER14> This episode from the freakonomics podcast is apt as it shows some of the inner workings of the Nobel prize selection.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-win-a-nobel-prize- a-n...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-win-a-nobel-prize-a-new- freakonomics-radio-episode/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Non-paywalled coverage: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/04/nobel- prize-fo...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/04/nobel-prize-for- literature-2018-cancelled-after-sexual-assault-scandal)

<comment><USER16> Alternatively, here's a tiny firefox extension that replaces your referrer with "Facebook" whenever you try and access the WSJ or the Financial Times:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft- wsj/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/)

<comment><USER17> Or under the submission you can click the "web" link which sends you to a google search and through that you'll have non-paywalled access. (JFYI, since that link is there on HN, and it's periodically forgotten)

<comment><USER18> The web link no longer works with the Wall Street Journal.

<comment><USER19> It did for me just now. Android phone, _web_ link into Incognito Mode, open AMP link. Full text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 'Accused' \- whatever happened to not guilty unless proven otherwise?

<comment><USER21> There is a difference between the actions of the criminal justice system and of civil society. People routinely lose jobs and experience other consequences without being convicted of a crime or even without committing a crime. Indeed, the vast majority of job firings, for example, do not even involve criminal behavior.

<comment><USER20> Agree, but when firing is because supposed criminal behaviour, then it's only fair to mention that he was fired because of involvement in such case against him, that it puts commitee in bad light etc. Otherwise it's just passing sentence without tribunal.

<comment><USER21> No, that's not how this works. Firing is for behavior, and an org can decide on its own what standards it wants to set on proof, evidence, etc. of that behavior, and this is completely independent of whether that behavior is legal as well as the outcome of any prosecution for that behavior. There are legal remedies for "injustices" such as being expelled from a school, being excluded from an organization, being fired from a job, being libeled/slandered or defamed, and so on. This is the way society works and has always worked for thousands of years. The idea that this is "passing sentence without a tribunal" is bunk, these people are not serving sentences, society is choosing how it wants to interact with these individuals, just as it does in countless of other examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> they give it next year to beyonce

</comment><comment><USER23> Paywall. Altough I am from Sweden and I already know why. Here is a free version: [https://www.thelocal.se/20180504/no-nobel-literature- prize-i...](https://www.thelocal.se/20180504/no-nobel-literature-prize- in-2018-swedish-academy)

</comment><comment><USER24> Fools! Failing to fulfill their most important duty because one member brought a lecherous boor to some of their events and may not have been impartial in the vote on some awards.

 _Now_ it's _really_ a scandal.

<comment><USER25> At this point the number of Academy members that have resigned has has left the Academy with fewer members than what is required to make an Nobel prize decision. Currently there are 10 members, and 11 members is the minimum required.

So it isn't really about choice at this point.

Secondly the reasons for the resignations and turmoil is the unwillingness of some, the majority, of the Academy members to recognize and properly handle the _alleged_ sexual harassment by Jean-Claude Arnault.

To make this matter worse Jean-Claude Arnault is married to an Academy member and the two of them together run a 'culture' organization which is funded and closely related to the Academy.

<comment><USER26> if it is alleged then how should you handle it?

everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

<comment><USER25> In terms of being sentenced yes.

But this guy was given money to run an organization in which I think 14 counts of alleged sexual harassment has been reported.

It would be grossly negligent to continue to sponsor this.

<comment><USER27> If it hasn't been proven then there's nothing to talk about. They could've made it up just so he they can kick him out.

<comment><USER28> Continuing to give funding to someone credibly accused to sexual harassment is a very bad look. Especially when that person is also married to a committee member. That is absolutely something to talk about.

 _They could 've made it up just so he they can kick him out._

Kick him out of what?

<comment><USER27> Of the committee. Maybe they just want to ruin his life. Credible? If it's credible, why hasn't he been convicted.

<comment><USER28> _Of the committee._

He's not and never has been on the committee. His wife is. And no one has been kicked off the committee.

 _If it 's credible, why hasn't he been convicted._

Because building a case strong enough to stand up in court in situations like these is really hard and the police/prosecutors have decided not to priorities it.

But the core of the matter isn't really the sexual harassment, it's the fact that the Academy apparently knew about several cases of both sexual harassment and, more importantly, possible financial fraud/corruption involving this individual and instead of dealing with it, decided to protect him. The sexual harassment charges are just the events that brought these more serious charges to light.

<comment><USER27> I was under the impression that he was in the committee. Why should his wife leave? I don't understand.

<comment><USER28> _Why should his wife leave?_

Primarily because he is accused of improperly getting funding from the Academy and she was accused of enabling and profiting from this as well as blocking any further investigation into the matter.

There are also accusations that she prevented the Academy from looking into earlier accusation of sexual harassment against her husband, but that is secondary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Trump will be really upset, having expected to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in honor of his tweets.

</comment><comment><USER30> What about Justin Bieber ?</comment>


Why African millennials can't get enough of Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42582343 <comment><AUTHOR> > Finding a job here is almost like a lottery for graduates so Ugandans often > have so-called side hustles. Peace has sold clothes and even got into money > lending. Both failed. But buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin appeals to > her because it requires less of her time and there are no upfront costs.

Why bother with a job, Bitcoin is so much simpler - just buy and make money!</comment>


Show HN: Study of British place names: locations and frequencies of n-grams - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DanielJohnBenton/TownsAndVillages#contents <comment><AUTHOR> Interested to know what folks think - if there are any obvious mistakes, if you have any requests for strings to map, or any cool ideas we could try with the data.

</comment><comment><USER2> This would be awesome as an interactive map - mousing over the places would be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's a pretty good idea - I'll see if I can find a way to make this. I think I'd need some kind of map API that lets me plot coordinates and define mouse-over text for each pin.

<comment><USER2> You can likely base a map on this: [http://bl.ocks.org/michellechandra/0b2ce4923dc9b5809922](http://bl.ocks.org/michellechandra/0b2ce4923dc9b5809922) \- the UK GeoJSON data is here: [https://github.com/martinjc/UK- GeoJSON](https://github.com/martinjc/UK-GeoJSON)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. It looks like I can use d3-geo to get a map of the world and then clip it down from there. I'll have a play with it after work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/health/research/21brain.html?hp=&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> "For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready."

That's just crazy. I've seen four counterexamples in my own family.

One example: my oldest son received a present from his uncle and aunt for his first birthday, a toy that allowed putting plastic balls into a chamber, were they couldn't be seen, and then dumping out the balls again. So my son began playing with the toy, and after a moment of experimenting with it he put in three balls, and then inverted the toy to dump out the balls, but only two came out. (Apparently, as we adults surmised, one ball was still stuck inside.) He looked at the toy, very puzzled, and moved the toy around some more until the third ball came out. This was definitely before I made any formal effort to teach him mathematics. Already at age one he knew that 3-2>0, so he knew that there was still a ball inside the toy after the first attempt to dump out the balls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminded me of this Feynman story with dominos: [http://books.google.com/books?id=1HxzLaPYo2IC&pg=PA20...](http://books.google.com/books?id=1HxzLaPYo2IC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=feynman+domino+pattern&source=bl&ots=qUuf6MMMwy&sig=pMuPy8SJjKnV- inMpFlTyoiE9O0&hl=en&ei=P4EvS8KcD42vtgfXmsSGCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone else bothered by the subtle social underclass undertones made in the article? Like:

"Most live in this city's poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve."

"..two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a headscarf."

"..a 4-year-old boy in a FUBU jersey and long dreadlocks..."

It's almost like the point being made is that, even dummies like these can benefit from our program.</comment>


Blame it on HN - <AUTHOR>

Every time I convince myself to start working on that awesome idea, I end up wasting time on HN. Is it just me ? <comment><USER2> Try setting the noprocrast setting in your profile. The maxvisit and minaway fields are in minutes.

<comment><USER3> I have actually blocked HN in my hosts file on my work computer. I am noticeably more productive now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ./get-shit-done fixes that for me. Google it, it'll improve your life!</comment>


Safari link tracking can no longer be disabled - <AUTHOR> https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/Safari-link-tracking.html <comment><USER2> I commend that he filed a bug report with Apple. But I must say his summary is way too detailed to get a quick understanding of the issue when seeing the report for the first time. To get attention, the summary should start with something like "Safari allows websites to track user behavior with <a ping="tracker.example.com"> HTML elements".

</comment><comment><USER3> Disappointing to hear that this is even a thing that's enabled by default. Sure, by removing it sites will just replace it with JavaScript, but that's still blockable at least.

Is there any use of this feature OTHER than tracking?

<comment><USER4> It may be used in a pre-loading technique but I doubt it generally is and JS could be used just as effectively.

As a maker of a popular Safari ad and content blocker, I was looking to implement a quick fix rule that would strip ping attributes from 'a' elements.

Unfortunately the Safari content blocking rule syntax is not sophisticated enough to allow stripping of attributes from a HTML element. The best that I could do with the current syntax would be to hide all links that include ping attributes.

This technique would stop tracking but it would also stop users from being able to click such links!

A bit of a difficult usability choice – would users prefer functional links that are tracked and breach their privacy or broken links that don't track them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It says Firefox disables this anti feature by default but chrome does not. Does Brave?

</comment><comment><USER6> What an obnoxious anti-feature! Can we fix this and disable it permanently across all browsers, please, and then remove it from HTML?

</comment><comment><USER7> I have been completely unaware this existed.

Thank you for sharing this!

<comment><USER8> I didn't know about it either but turns out it doesn't matter for me because "Firefox disables hyperlink auditing by default".

I hate that this is even became a thing. Can we fork the standards bodies? 100% user oriented. No for-profit companies allowed on the board, no more features that make advertising and tracking easier, and deprecation of the ones that already exist as soon as possible, starting with the blocking of third-party content of any kind and killing off EME.

<comment><USER2> If the companies that develop web browsers ignore your new standards body and keep doing their own thing, you gain nothing. What you have to do is fork a browser. But this won't help if Google et al. are pushing their own browser at every opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article claims that the request only shows up with a packet trace. Is that true? Not in the network inspector?

<comment><USER10> The request happens before navigation and the inspector is cleared during the navigation so it makes sense for the request being difficult to see.</comment></comment>


Are Hirst's paintings good? They're not worth looking at. But he is famous. - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/are-hirsts-paintings-any-good-no-theyre-not-worth-looking-at-1802080.html

<comment><USER2> I can't believe Tom Lubbock - a long time art critic - could sound like such an art debutante. Hirst is one of the most significant artists of the last two decades regardless of his technical prowess.

Being a good artist doesn't demand technical prowess any more than being a good Web developer demands you have a strong knowledge of computer science.

I'd dread to imagine how this reviewer would have approached the works of Rothko or Picasso in their respective times. This reviewer is just another modern day naysayer and we've had too many of them throughout history.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tom Lubbock. Says so right up top. He also writes the Great Works series.

My opinion is separate from Lubbock's, but I'll chip in and say that "significance" is a crock of shit in the art world, up there with "important". Art is either good or it's bad. In my opinion, Hirst's is bad, and I've never seen a good argument explaining otherwise. He sells controversy. He's like Warhol but less inspired, less attractive, and less witty.

Picasso was controversial, but it was never doubted that he produced bad artwork. He was a master of realism in his before he attempted anything more. Rothko I don't understand myself, but I saw a gallery of his work over the weekend and it looks impressive hanging on walls. It doesn't speak to me, because I don't get what makes his work impressive, but I see it and can imagine there's something I'm missing.

Hirst's paintings here look like paintings by my friends. That's the point of the article. Whether or not his other work is good, these paintings are bad, and they're shown here only because he is "significant". Lubbock isn't necessarily saying Hirst is talentless. He's saying his _paintings_ lack merit. No amount of significance detracts from a bad painting.</comment></comment>


The burst-height compensating super-fuze - <AUTHOR> http://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-undermining-strategic-stability-burst-height-compensating-super10578 <comment><USER2> According to these people's clock, it is always the same time.

For instance, they don't mention that the Russians not only have silo-based missiles, but also truck-based missiles that are mobile and can't be targeted as effectively with Minuteman and Trident, "super fuse" or not. No mention that the Russians are doing a major upgrade of their silo-based and truck- based ICBMs that is far more threatening than improved fusing.

<comment><USER3> And submarines.</comment></comment>


Khronos Group Launches the Neural Network Exchange Format - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12176/khronos-group-launches-nnef-provisional-spec <comment><USER2> Sounds cool, but I wonder if we really need both this and Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX). And not to mention PMML.</comment>


Ask HN: What tech podcast do you listen to? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I enjoy software engineering daily. I think that the questions asked in this pod are far beyond other tech podcasts. I get the most value out of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> .NET Rocks

The Elixir Fountain</comment>


Enhancing Qubes with Rumprun unikernels - <AUTHOR> http://northox.github.io/qubes-rumprun/ <comment><USER2> What makes a bunch of VMs running on a hypervisor inherently more secure than a bunch of processes running on a conventional OS kernel? Is the trusted computing base really any smaller in practice, particularly when the hypervisor in question is KVM on Linux, or even Xen with a Linux dom0? ANd when the VMs are unikernels, it seems to me that they're really just reinvented, heavier processes with a much-hyped new name.

<comment><USER3> > What makes a bunch of VMs running on a hypervisor inherently more secure > than a bunch of processes running on a conventional OS kernel?

There's nothing _inherently_ safer about it. I wouldn't trust a VirtualBox setup any more than I would the host OS running it. But it can be done in a way that isolates interfaces that are hard to audit, and that's what the Qubes project is. See the Qubes Architecture document[0] for more information on the various ways this is achieved.

> Is the trusted computing base really any smaller in practice, particularly > when the hypervisor in question is KVM on Linux, or even Xen with a Linux > dom0?

Yes, it is significantly smaller. If you're interested, you should read the Qubes Architecture document[0]. Chapter 8.2 specifically explores the Xen attack surface.

KVM on linux is not used in Qubes, so it's irrelevant here.

Most of the attacks on Xen have been attacks on device emulation, which is minimised in Qubes and what little there is is moved into stub domains (not run in dom0). There was a really serious Xen bug recently that did not fit that model, and it caused some panic - but it's telling that it's really the only such bug to be uncovered since Qubes started.

[0] [https://www.qubes- os.org/attachment/wiki/QubesArchitecture/a...](https://www.qubes- os.org/attachment/wiki/QubesArchitecture/arch-spec-0.3.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If they're waiting 8.5 seconds for the VM to boot, then they're doing it wrong. On average x86 hardware, libguestfs boots its VM in about 2.5 seconds. We could easily get that down to 1 second if we were "allowed" to use a custom non-distro kernel. When we get all the changes in for Intel clear containers, I expect that to drop to a fraction of a second.

<comment><USER3> It does not take 8.5 seconds on my machine, the author must have a slow machine (no SSD?). I just tested and I can launch a full qubes VM in about 3.5 seconds. This is for a pretty-much-default qubes fedora template.

Disposable VMs are much faster, because they are essentially hibernated, and the hibernation image is stored in RAM. So there I can boot and launch firefox in about 2 seconds (really doesn't feel any slower than launching firefox on any other system).

Qubes is trying to provide a pretty bog-standard linux machine in the VMs, so as to be the most useful. They do have their own kernel, but I haven't looked at how stripped down it is.</comment></comment>


Paying Developers Like Sales People - <AUTHOR> http://dev.hubspot.com/bid/35159/Paying-Developers-Like-Sales-People <comment><USER3> This is a well intentioned idea with horrible consequences.

Suppose 3 UI changes go out. How do you decide how much each increased users? Remember that money and ego are on the line.

Perhaps one was trying to drop support calls and the other increased users. Users went up, support calls stayed the same, and the team trying to drop support calls claims that they would have succeeded had the number of users not gone up. How do you resolve that?

You thought that developers saw QA as a roadblock before? Wait until they see QA keeping them from the check they think they are going to get!

And what about the developer with a half-baked UI change to improve conversion which is going to suck. How do you gently break the news that you're not even going to let the developer _try_ to get that dangled reward?

I see no end of the potential for conflict. If I worked in an organization that announced a policy like this, I'd start shopping my resume around. Because I can see the pain coming and would like to avoid it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Suppose 3 UI changes go out. How do you decide how much each increased users?_

Measure the change in usage for each screen or section of the app that each team worked on.

 _Perhaps one was trying to drop support calls and the other increased users._

Measure support calls per user (which is the right way to measure it).

 _You thought that developers saw QA as a roadblock before? Wait until they see QA keeping them from the check they think they are going to get_

This has never been a problem for us.

 _How do you gently break the news that you're not even going to let the developer try to get that dangled reward._

These kind of tests can be easily randomized. If product management really thought the UI was a bad idea, they could keep the first test size really small and then only increase the sample if the design proved itself.

 _If I worked in an organization that announced a policy like this, I'd start shopping my resume around._

We would definitely only do it for one small part of the team that volunteered for the experiment.

Overall, any kind of performance based pay depends on the metric. If the metric is robust, the scheme can succeed. If the metric is not robust, the whole thing fails. Will the metrics I proposed be robust? I can answer your concerns and attempt to make them more robust, but I don't know if they would be robust enough. I think it would be interesting to run the experiment, and find out for real.

<comment><USER3> Let's see. Your response to the 3 UI changes question is _Measure the change in usage for each screen or section of the app that each team worked on._ From that I conclude that you've probably never done A/B testing and discovered how difficult those deltas are to accurately measure, or discovered how changes upstream waterfall down through your site. The amount of data you need to narrow down performance changes to within, say, 5% is much more than most people realize. And from a business view you don't want to do that for the simple reason that once you have a demonstrated improvement, continuing the measurement to figure out the exact win is costing you real money.

If, as with several of my employers, people take a long time from engaging with your website to making money for you, the tracking problems get MUCH more challenging. When you add complex social dynamics on top of it (such as person A getting person B to make a purchase), you're in for a world of fun. (Yes, I've worked on a site that had to solve exactly this problem.)

Measuring support calls per user is also not as simple as it looks. Different parts of your site generate support calls at different rates. And it isn't always obvious what part of the site generated the call. This gets worse if you have the long lead time issue that I've faced multiple times.

As for whether QA is viewed as a roadblock, that depends strongly on team dynamics. But in places I've seen that had that bad mindset, things can get very, very bad.

On the randomizing tests, sure you can limit how many users are shown the option. But when someone makes changes that introduce technical debt on the back end, that debt and resulting bugs can't be segregated out so easily. Sometimes you really just need to say no to features. Anything that limits your freedom to do that is a Bad Thing.

Now don't get me wrong. I like the idea of performance based pay. My current employer (Google) is all about performance pay. But you have to structure the incentives right. Giving people pay after the fact based on feedback from people around you creates incentives to not just optimize a flawed metric, but to work together as a team and get stuff done.

This is important enough that while I'd read with interest what the experience of this experiment was like, I'd personally not want to be involved in anything like it until I'd been convinced that it really works like you hope it will.

<comment><AUTHOR> _From that I conclude that you've probably never done A/B testing and discovered how difficult those deltas are to accurately measure, or discovered how changes upstream waterfall down through your site_

We've done it before. We've launched new screens, measured the usage, then done a bunch of changes to the screen and seen usage go up. We also have a lot of good data on which screens generate the support call, data on the conversions of all the different screens, etc.

But again, your points are all good. We have pretty good data. But it's nowhere near as simple and clear as the same type of measurement for a sales person. Would the data be good enough to base pay on? I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly, developers also have a history of being able to game the system a lot better than sales as well, partially because of the measurement problems pointed out in the article, and such a system usually ends in failure.

Also, the bounty scheme has largely failed in the open source world, perhaps because they bounties never saw $450,000, and I personally doubt the model could be effectively applied to an even smaller team.

Sure, many people would like to have more money, but sadly there is a lot of devwork that is of little 'financial value' that has to be done and that would surely suffer with such a system in place, driving the overall quality lower as it doesn't create a sense of improving the product, instead pushing for being awarded the largest or best bounty.

<comment><USER5> It would be very easy to accumulate a lot of technical debt (hacked up code) very quickly.

Also, it would be frustrating for developers being paid performance pay but not totally in control of their environment. Bitter infighting might occur about language and technology choices, server designs, even dev machine quality or working hours.

However, I do like the idea of proposing a general goal and asking developers to come up with their own ways to meet those goals.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps you could solve the technical debt issue with delayed payment. 50% now, 50% 2 months later - 10% per bug still in the original code that has not yet been fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a _lot_ of complexity. Pay structures for sales people tend to be reducible to a couple tables or a formula.

There's also a more subtle difference: a sale is a discrete event, so there is a known point at which we can determine the goals have been fulfilled. Software is a living thing -- its quality can only be inferred with time. What about bugs? Flexibility to adapt to _changing_ business requirements. Ie: if I anticipate that we will need to change out component x so i don't tightly bind to it, how do I get compensated for my foresight, when this adds a minimal amount of overhead to my development practice?

By incentivizing the completion of objectives, you are asking for the buildup of technical debt. The objectives of a salesperson (not customer relationship manager or marketer) are necessarily short-term. The objective of a healthy development organization (as I see it) is to consistently produce high-quality software that meets business objectives in a predictable and transparent way.

Programmer productivity structures almost always have or create the development goal of "meet short term objectives quickly", which is a kiss of death for long-term growth and programmer satisfaction once you have to deal with the organic mess all of the shortcuts have created.

</comment><comment><USER7> What problem is this trying to solve?

I know it's not perfect, but doesn't the market end up doing this pretty well, especially when you throw contractors and consultants into the mix? It's perhaps not as scientific and certainly not optimal for each individual case, but in the aggregate, it would seem that the rate that developers and salespeople get paid is probably pretty fair.

The big problem is a lack of pricing transparency in the labor market.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Management and the product team often have some idea of how valuable a certain task is. The dev team is responsible for how long it will take. Often we will invest too much time in something that's not that valuable, since management is not aware of just how long it will take. Or we will under invest in something very valuable because management doesn't realize how easy it is to knock off. If management can just put a price on the stuff it wants done, then I think developers will be able to pick off the stuff that gives the most bang for the buck, which is what we want.

2) Paying for performance makes a big difference in developer productivity. That why startups get so much done - they live or die based on how hard and more importantly, how effectively they work. As we've grown from a couple developers to over twenty developers, I think our pace has slowed. I'd like to see it more like the early days.

3) The best sales people can make 2X what a developer makes. As a developer, it would be nice to be able to make that much money. But the company cannot do that right now, because it cannot accurately measure my performance.

<comment><USER3> 20 developers has lower productivity for a lot more reasons than individual incentives. This has been widely recognized since _The Mythical Man-Month_.

Concrete data point for you that I ran across in _Software Estimation_ by Steve McConnell. The average team of 5-8 programmers can get a medium sized project done in the same calendar time as a team of 20 programmers. As teams grow beyond 20 programmers, total throughput improves. This is from a study with project side measured in lines of code. There is every reason to believe that the larger team has more reinvention within their project, and therefore their project of equivalent size has less functionality.

The fundamental reason has to do with lines of communication. As you add a person to a team, the number of lines of communication you add is the size of the team. At some point people take up more energy from others than they contribute useful work themselves. There are a myriad of organizational techniques which try to mitigate this problem, but all suffer from the defect that they force people to use less productive forms of communication (for instance writing documents that can be read by many others), and therefore lower individual productivity.

Therefore if you've got 20 developers you should seriously consider going back to a small team, find a way to partition them into groups with minimal interactions, or scale your organization up until you have a lot more developers than that. The first two try to solve organizational problems that lead to low throughput, the last accepts the issues but lets you tackle problems that the small team couldn't.

Another random suggestion. If you're interested in productivity, pick up a copy of _Peopleware_ and _Rapid Development_ , read them, and pick a set of best practices to try.

<comment><AUTHOR> We already have teams of 3-4 developers, working on separate projects with minimal interactions. If we didn't do that we would be thrashing. We're aware of the Peopleware/Mythical Man Month issue.

But still, I think we could do better. Working based on hitting external goals adds invaluable focus to a team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you thought it was hard now to get a developer who switched teams to help fix bugs in their last project, wait until you put $200,000 on the table.

<comment><AUTHOR> Developers have to fix their own bugs regardless, or they are quickly not be developers for our company any more. In this system they have a lot more incentive not to create bugs, because the time it takes to fix them will take away from earning their next bounty.

<comment><USER8> I hear what you're saying but I have also been in this situation before. There are no-fault bugs that happen (or, maybe not even bugs: maybe just someone's got the system configured badly, and the person who wrote the code is the best person to figure that out). You're not firing the developer who left a bug behind. You're just incentivizing them not to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A good read on this subject (which shows why it falls down) is von Mises "Bureaucracy". It's probably available on the web somewhere.

Also, Ronald Coase on the Theory of the Firm. Strangely enough, economists have a lot of useful things to say about business ideas.

It's all about transaction and information costs. The hassle of managing and measuring programmers in this way would outweigh the benefit of keeping them working hard.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a great way to make the software industry more like the sales industry; short-term gains at the expense of long-term relationships. (Has a sales person ever made you want to have a long-term relationship, or have they wanted you to buy something "right now"?)

There is only so much time in a day, and that time can be spent in certain ways. You can implement a new foobarbaz feature, or you can write some tests to ensure that the gorchquux you wrote yesterday works correctly. The tests don't really add any value, right, because the feature is already there. Just add the next feature, because the user can see that (and now you get $200,000!)

The problem comes after repeating this cycle a few times. With no design upfront and no ongoing effort to make the codebase maintainable, eventually there will come a feature that you just can't add. Moving something out of the way will knock the whole pile over. Changing one line in the config file will require your newly-hired team of 10 testers to work overtime. You will be so encumbered by your technical debt that you can't add new features, you can't fix bugs, and you can't get the codebase into a state where you can do those things.

The only solution then is to redo everything. (Remember Netscape after the big rewrite? Neither do I...)

Lately, I have been on an "overengineering" kick, and I don't regret it at all. As the requirements change, my software can quickly adapt, without becoming less clean or maintainable, and without taking much of my time. This means that my software has _lasting value_ instead of the usual "it solves my exact problem right now".

Before I type anything into the editor, the thought in my mind is, "how can I make this require less code and less developer attention _later_ ". Right now, I have plenty of time. Who knows what I'll be up to in a few years when the foo system needs that new feature. (Usually people plan the other way; I'll do this later, I'll have plenty of time tomorrow. Every time I've said that to myself, I've been wrong. So I've stopped planning like _next time_ , I _really will_ have time to do it right later. I won't, so I'm going to do it right _now_.)

The incentive structure outlined in the article encourages the opposite. It's already very difficult to "do things right". Paying someone money to not do things right is not going to make it any easier. The result will be software that is even worse than what we have now; and it's well-documented that most software is pretty bad. Shudder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, developers under an in-house bounty system have quite an incentive to make maintainable code. For it is very likely that the bounty for next month will be a feature added to the code they are already working on. If the developer makes the code a mess, then they will not be able to keep earning bounties and will start losing a lot of money. A developer just needs to think long term. And if you haven't hired developers that can think long term, you already have a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a worthy cause, but I am skeptical. For one thing author has neglected engineering debt - it's far too easy for me to add features by sacrificing code quality or worse yet design quality (even adhering to the coding standards). There should be a way to measure engineering debt and take into account. One idea I have here is that a piece of code should have an owner that has incentive to keep code in good order, and that owner would accept money from developer who is making changes to compensate for the damage - if a change requires two week to cleanup a smart code owner would charge 2.2 weeks, thus coming out ahead and providing incentive for the developer to do a better job. But then the problem is that each piece of code becomes a monopoly with extortionist prices. There are two ways to deal with monopolies - <USER2> their prices or introduce competition (by direct action if needed).

The other problem is that this may get quite expensive. Why should a business pay more when it could pay less?

Nevertheless it would be interesting if somebody tried this.

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_contract> _versus_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price>

</comment><comment><USER13> "The output of a sales person is easy to measure. " .. Spoken by somebody who was never actually employed a sales rep. I've closed deals that were worked on by sales reps who had been gone for a year or two. How exactly do you measure that value?</comment>


You can do anything at Zombo.com in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://html5zombo.com/ <comment><USER2> HTML5 is now officially ready for prime-time. _Anything_ is possible with HTML5.

<comment><USER3> Yes, _anything_ is possible with HTML5, but _only_ on html5Zombo.com.

<comment><USER4> This. is. HTML5.

<comment><USER5> You can do ANYTHING with HTML5.

The only limit... is YOURSELF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was on the fence about getting an iPad. Now that zombocom works, I'm all set.

<comment><USER7> HTML5 doesnt work on the iPad - at least not as its intended to be used: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Open it in 12 tabs. It gets freaky.

</comment><comment><USER9> The _only_ limit is your ... 5-10 MB localStorage database.

</comment><comment><USER10> What a fantastic blast from the past. Thank you!

<comment><USER11> See also <http://twitter.com/zombocom>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just tried some uh...questionable stuff...and yes, all possible at zombocom

</comment><comment><USER13> Welcome to Web 2.0 <http://media.odeo.com/files/d/9/y/draft_47039_out.mp3>

</comment><comment><USER14> Haha, I actually think the spinner looks better in HTML5, so thats a plus.

</comment><comment><USER15> Overkill. Should've used an animated gif.

<comment><USER16> If you're going to convert a completely pointless website to work on a specific device for absolutely no reason, you might as well go all out.

<comment><USER15> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thank you for doing this. Magnificent.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is hilarious. Can someone remind me how the original version was implemented?

<comment><USER19> (vist zombo.com, Inspect Element)

Flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It doesn't seem to repeat the sound track =\

</comment><comment><USER21> I can do _anything_ at Zombo.com!

</comment><comment><USER22> hahaha this is awesome :) I love the comments in the source...</comment>


Ziro – The Coolest Robotics Kit Ever - <AUTHOR> http://ziro.io/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I always wanted to have my own robot, this one looks quite familiar. I've joined the community to win a kit, hope for the best.</comment>


Spotting iPads in the wild. - <AUTHOR> http://percentmobile.com/page/446/spot-an-apple-ipad-in-the-wild-with-mobileanalytics-percentmobile

<comment><USER2> I've heckled countless people for saying what I'm about to say, so please know that I ask the following question in all sincerity:

How is this Hacker News?

What intellectual curiosity does this satisfy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi mcantor,

I thought the iPad map to be of interest here at HN, because it gives proof that the devices are in active use although not yet in the market.

Maybe not hugely surprising, but at least factual from our base of data, you can see that there is traffic coming in from SF, NYC and even India on different types of networks.

We (Being a co-founder of PercentMobile) regularly start seeing devices that are being used on the networks, of which some aren't even officially acknowledged to be in existence. (Obviously, the iPad has been confirmed at this point)

I think sharing this kind of data is a good idea, in hope that it creates and feeds curiosity and awareness of the mobile ecosystem. How intellectually valuable it is for everyone, I am not able to answer. I don't know.

What would you like to know (if anything) about the mobile ecosystem? What kind of perspectives on what's currently happening on the mobile web would be nurturing your intellectual curiosity?

<comment><USER2> Hmmm... okay, I'll buy that! Thank you for providing such a thorough explanation of your interest in this site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was expecting to find a listing a _which_ sites were being visited by iPads. (In addition to where the iPad requests came from.) Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, yeah, I agree, it was my first impression, too.

It would be interesting, but for some sites we can't disclose the destination domain. What we could do however is to show which _type_ of site was visited.</comment></comment>


Solving: Wordscapes with Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chrisfauerbach/solve_wordscapes <comment><AUTHOR> My wife got my hook on the game wordscapes on our iPhones.

I will continue to play without this program, but, I figured it would be really easy to 'beat' the game with a quick python program.

The key is two python libraries: PyEnchant (relies on the Enchant C library) and 'itertools' from the Python standard library.

[https://pyenchant.github.io/pyenchant/install.html](https://pyenchant.github.io/pyenchant/install.html)</comment>