Only Working When You Feel Like It? - <AUTHOR> http://thintz.com/essays/work-when-you-feel-like-it

<comment><USER2> The big lesson here that might be more pragmatic is to avoid quasi-working, the state of half-working that feels like full-bore work without actually getting much done.

<comment><USER3> I recently came across PJ Eby's work on thinkingthingsdone.com and find his insights very useful.

He's made a study of what mental habits cause us to be either "naturally successful" or "naturally struggling".

I personally have not been making headway on my goals for a while now, so I would say I've been struggling.

One key idea is whether one chooses to focus on what one can gain or on what one might lose as you pursue a goal.

A focus on potential losses makes one fearful, more likely to be paralyzed and ultimately fail.

If you ignore the potential losses and focus on what you can gain, you more naturally just take the actions required to get what you want. Flow is the way to go.

<comment><USER4> Just watched his video and tried the method, all I know is: now my desk is finally clean!

Thanks for pointing the blog out :)

<comment><USER3> my pleasure :-) mine too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally, when I'm completely unmotivated I do have to step away from my work for a while. But, the times when I'm on the edge of calling it a day but not too tired, and push myself to code for another hour or two, I have the most breakthroughs.

<comment><USER6> "know thy self"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Steve Pavlina wrote a post about his one week on, one week off workflow. It's similar to the post that's discussed here. It doesn't really matter how long your on and off days are.

He uses his on days to get as much done as is possible and his off days to just do what he wants. In the off days he gets the inspiration and motivation for another round of high productive on days.

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/02/one-week-on-one- wee...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/02/one-week-on-one-week-off/)

I also noticed similar effects in my own life. It's like creating little deadlines for yourself where you have to get something done within a couple of days, and you make everything work to do just that. Within the 9-to-5, monday through friday mentallity it always seems if there will be another day to get it done. There's no pressure.

Also, the long days off indeed help to think creativly about your work and have idea's and solutions just 'pop up' at random.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have confidence in this model for certain people who have a drive to achieve things.

I feel it's mostly incompatible with having a partner / spouse (and would love any disagreement or contrary evidence). Especially if the partner works 9-5, working when I feel like it will often eat into relationship time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would agree on with you on having a drive to achieve things makes it easier. Then again what model works for someone that doesn't have a drive to achieve things?

<comment><USER8> True, there's no model that works. They need to receive very clear expectations, be held constantly accountable, and appreciate that they will probably transfer through a lot of jobs (or roles within a government department or large corporation) and never earn more than an average salary.

For plenty of people, that's actually OK. For others, insert the occasional 'the world owes me' or 'life isn't fair' discussions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I pretty much do this myself now, and although I find myself working more than ever (in terms of both hours and productivity), I also feel better about my work life than I ever have.

One caveat, though - 'only working when you feel like it' works best for me if I 'always work when I feel like it'. Which is to say, staying late when I'm in flow, and picking up my laptop when I get a good idea on the weekend, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> On the tv show Mad Men, Don Draper described it as "we let our people be unproductive until they're productive". I think this applies to any kind of creative work. If I know exactly what needs to be done and how to do it, I'll just do it. If I have to come up with a solution to a difficult problem, I do whatever until I solve it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've actually been able to work "when I feel like it" for the past 1.5 months.

Honestly. I've not really been anywhere near as productive as I should have been -- because I've had no reason to set goals/objectives/milestones.

Maybe this doesn't work for everyone.

<comment><USER6> "should have" ? maybe you needed some time to unwind

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of 37signals ideology a good bit. It works for them, but not everyone. But props to you for doing what they don't - not shoving it down our throats, opening it up for conversation, and accepting potential barriers to success.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been starting to do this over the last week or so as an experiment. It's too short a time span to give me any useful data, but so far my impressions are positive. I've gotten less work done than usual but feel considerably less stressed, which is a net win in my view.

If anyone is interested in this sort of thing, read through the articles in the study hacks blog - <http://www.calnewport.com/blog/>. It's aimed at students but I've found it interesting and somewhat inspiring nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have experienced the same thing. I can't figure out why it is this way though from a biological/neural perspective. When I'm getting tired of work I usually just step back for a few days and just do fun stuff like watching movies, playing video games, and in general just doing stuff completely unrelated to work. Magically, after a few days of routine that's unrelated to work, when I get back to it everything just seems more manageable.

</comment><comment><USER15> At happy hour nearby, chatting with a new coworker.

"So, why do _you_ get to come to work so late?"

What do you say to that?

<comment><USER8> Define "come to work". Am I considered at work if I'm going through that annoying bug during my morning shower, or spending my weekends networking online with technical colleagues?

<comment><USER16> I doubt this is a good comeback as the other person might very well also be thinking about some company related stuff and talking to colleagues on weekends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This work habit won't work if you have an employer otherwise your employer will also "Pay You When He Feels Like It".

<comment><USER18> Depends how enlightened your employer is. We've got a HarborMaster high score whiteboard in my cube, and one of the guys in the next cube over was showing us his Starcraft 2 Beta skillz today. Nobody bats an eyelash when I get into work at 1 PM and leave at 10 PM.

It's an issue if you aren't working _at all_ , but as long as you're getting your work done and your job function doesn't require client contact, why should your employer care?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good strategy, but there's a catch:

when you expect that taking off will boost your productivity afterwards, it won't work.

This is general rule in life: if you stick to expectations you loose.

</comment><comment><USER20> I didn't see this so much as "working when I feel it" but more as "wow I sure am productive after a nice relaxing break".

I agree that a nice break from the daily grind can be very good for you. I as well find myself quite productive after being away from the grind for a day or two. But that doesn't mean I despise what I do!

</comment><comment><USER21> Sitting in front of the computer sometimes isn't the most productive use of time. All the greatest ideas have come from people who were thinking while on the shitter. You can't avoid thinking about the problem whether you're working on it or not. Forcing yourself to work obviously by definition means you don't want to think about the problem while you ADHD tab switch between hacker news reddit, digg,IM and your email anyway. If at any point working entails anxiety it's not being managed correctly. The sitting in front of the computer part is reserved for when you know how you're going to implement/structure the problem. Starting at it while what's next seems fuzzy only leads to distractions.

Also if you 'try an experiment for a month' hoping to your hypothesis is correct, you're easily setting yourself up for a logical fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER22> I read it. But in my head I heard Peter Gibbons saying it. Strange.

Edit: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax2Dpr6r98Q> Sorry. Had to.

</comment><comment><USER23> Working long hours on pointless stuff just to cover your 9 to 5 makes you exhausted, demotivated and brunt out? Spontaneous, fun activities and just taking some time off for yourself recharges your cells and makes you feel fresh, focused and energetic the next day? Please do tell more of your crazy, new ideas!!

In other breaking news, a sack of rice has tipped over in China!</comment>


How to Make Plutonium - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a27359/how-to-make-plutonium/ <comment><AUTHOR> NASA requires plutonium-238 for radioisotope power systems for spacecrafts. Plutonium-238 was a by-product of now defunct Cold War–era nuclear weapon factories.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory produced a 50-gram sample in late 2015—the first since 1988. This year, having refined the process, the lab expects 300 grams. They want to ramp up to 1.5 kilograms per year.</comment>


Landlords in Seattle Can't Force Renters to Pay for Parking Anymore (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/04/03/landlords-in-seattle-cant-force-renters-to-pay-for-parking-anymore/ <comment><USER2> Making the cost of parking obvious sounds like a good thing.

If it's a good thing for parking, why not public transit and other services the government provides? These should all be unbundled, and the full cost borne by the users.</comment>


See what Hacker News looked like on the day you joined - <AUTHOR> http://bemmu.github.io/hncakeday/ <comment><USER2> View page source.

      <script>
      $(function () {
      	var 火 = new Firebase("https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/");
      	var ໆ = "http://news.ycombinator.com/";
      	$("#誤").hide();
      	$("form").submit(function () {
      		火.child("v0/user/" + $("#username").val()).on("value", function(結果) {
      			var 人 = 結果.val();
      			if (人 && 人.created) {
      				var 時 = new Date(人.created * 1e3);
      				var YYYYMMDDhhmmss = 時.toISOString().slice(0,19).replace(/[-T:]/g,"");
      				var ꜛ = "https://web.archive.org/web/".concat(YYYYMMDDhhmmss, "/", ໆ);
      				$('body').fadeOut();
      				location = ꜛ;
      			} else {
      				$("#誤").show();
      			}
      		});
      		return false;
      	});
      });

      /* ASCII art omitted to save space */
      </script>

Wow, non-latin characters for variable names.

And if you'd like to learn some Chinese, here is the definition of all Chinese characters appeared above.

        火 = fire
        誤 = error / mistake
        時 = time
        結果 = result (a term / expression with figurative meaning)
        果 = fruit
        人 = human / person

\---

My pick: 'HNSearch – old HN search engine – will be shut down later today'.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404972)

<comment><USER3> Native english speaker, math major.

This seems really awesome! I feel like descriptive, long variable names have both an advantage and a disadvantage: advantage, obviously, that they're clear, but disadvantage that simply having all that filler text everywhere begins to make the code harder to follow in a serious way. So there's always this tug-of-war between short variable names that make flow easy to follow but require a lot of context or guessing to decipher and long variable names that obscure flow.

Math (and languages like APL, K) are extreme examples of this: as an aid to thinking really hard, they go to extremes of dense notation requiring lots of context/previous to even begin to understand what's going on.

Using Chinese characters in normal code seems like it could fairly painlessly (once you knew Chinese!) get you a lot of the advantages of small-space characters while still encoding a lot more helpful context than a single latin letter.

<comment><USER4> I use long variable names all the time and it's never actually made the code harder to follow. You generally parse a whole word as a shape rather than one letter at a time anyway once you know the word, so effectively the only difference is a bit more horizontal space. If someone grew up using whole words as variables in math I doubt they'd find single characters easier to work with.

For programming, using characters not available on a standard QWERTY keyboard is bad international code shareability.

<comment><USER5> I doubt anyone can really parse grails.plugin.searchable.internal.compass.mapping.SearchableGrailsDomainClassCompassClassMapperFactory [1] as a shape.

[1] [https://github.com/gpc/searchable/blob/master/src/java/grail...](https://github.com/gpc/searchable/blob/master/src/java/grails/plugin/searchable/internal/compass/mapping/SearchableGrailsDomainClassCompassClassMapperFactory.java)

<comment><USER6> It does say a lot about what it is

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 8 years! It was still called "Startup News" back then. The front page when I joined looks very much like it does today -- a few articles about Google (6!), some startup-y articles, some politics, some business-y articles, some pure programming articles, etc. A good mix, but things are still pretty good today.

I remember exactly why I joined, incidentally. With increasing regularity, /r/programming was making me very mad. I would post a detailed correct answer to someone's question, only for some troll to immediately reply with some insult and "proof" that I was totally wrong, even though the proof was totally wrong. It happens once, fine. It happens every single time I comment, I'm out. I have not been back in 8 years.

I will admit this happens from time to time on HN, which is unfortunate because I like to comment and really only know what I'm talking about when it's programming-related. But it hasn't made me mad enough to leave, only to nostalgically think back to the good-old days.

(I did start using Reddit again, too, but I only read unpopular subreddits. I can handle /r/AskReddit for some time killing, but things like /r/flying and /r/amateurradio are very pleasant communities with enough activity to be interesting a couple times a week. /r/anime is infuriatingly stupid, /r/awwnime is much more tolerable.)

<comment><USER8> What anime community do you use now? r/anime was always terrible. I've "outgrown" 4chan, but /a/ is still the best community I know of. I mostly just do my own thing and talk to my few friends who also watch.

<comment><USER7> I use a (private) G+ community now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ha! This is really cool. A few interesting things on mine:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110716015547/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110716015547/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

"Code.Google.com now supports git"

Google code got the axe earlier this year.

"Michael Arrington reportedly to launch "CrunchFund" to invest in startups"

The rumours turned out to be true.

"Court OKs Airport Body Scanners, Rejects Constitutional Challenge"

They're everywhere now!

"Italy and the euro: On the edge"

Good guess, but turns out Greece is a bigger problem.

<comment><USER10> I joined on April 1, apparently, so none of my rumors turned out to be true. Oh well.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090401065245/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090401065245/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It only approximates the date you first joined. It uses [https://archive.org/](https://archive.org/) (the Internet Archive) to load the archived page nearest to (or nearest before?) the date you joined. Since the Internet Archive does not mirror HN every day, the page it will show you may differ by a few days from your exact signup date. It so happens that I joined on March 11, 2009 but I was shown the page for March 10, 2009 instead. You can use [http://www.waybackhn.com/](http://www.waybackhn.com/) to get a list of the top stories on the exact date you joined HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> I joined 8 years ago, and the topic selection is not markedly different in nature, which I find remarkable. Then again, there's a reason I'm still here and not e.g. Slashdot, which I started following even earlier.

<comment><USER13> That's one of the things that struck me. Of the headlines that came up for me for March 2010, there were only a couple that would seem out of place today. (One related to Flash on an iPhone and one to the network at PyCon 2010.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" The reason I chose today to drop out was because of a conversation I had with pg last week. He said bluntly that Octopart's chances of getting funding were worse if I stayed in grad school."_

Classic. Top story the day I started, _" I Dropped Out of Grad School Today"_ @sam (octopart) [0],[1]

[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sam)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20070223035643/http://octopart.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070223035643/http://octopart.com/html/blog.html)

<comment><USER15> You started Feb 22, technically that's a different date. :)

The Archive.org page nearest my join date leads with the "Show HN" post for Dropbox, though I actually joined a month earlier in March 2007.

Another top story from that day asks if people realized the up and down arrows were clickable and used for voting purposes.

<comment><USER14> _" You started Feb 22, technically that's a different date. :)"_

correct @vlad, though the Archive.org capture isn't hi-rez enough, I'm only reading what the app shows. Great idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Clever idea. Top item on mine:

My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive (getdropbox.com)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

Edit: Look at the stats! 27 points kept it at the top after 8 hours. How things have changed.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't work for me:

 _Sorry, your username was not found. Maybe you have never submitted or commented anything._

      user: edw519
      created: 3070 days ago
      karma: 72254
      about: Free ebook, "The Best of edw519": hn.my/edw519
      twitter: @edw519 http://twitter.com/edw519
                               e d w 5 1 9
                                   a t
                                g m a i l

      https://hn.algolia.com/?query=edw519&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment
      5,008 results

<comment><USER18> Besides what DanBC suggested, it doesn't work (gives username not found error) if you're blocking JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apparently I joined the day PG and Jessica got married:

[https://twitter.com/kn0thing/statuses/824631187](https://twitter.com/kn0thing/statuses/824631187)

I wasn't at the wedding! ;-)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think a cool derivative work would be to see today's HN but filtered to only see activity of people who joined before you.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool, top story for me was "Experiment: No Comment Scores"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090929084547/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090929084547/http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979)

<comment><USER22> ah, I remember that - that's when I more or less stopped commenting. I still think it was a really bad move.

<comment><USER23> "ah, I remember that - that's when I more or less stopped commenting. I still think it was a really bad move."

Why would that cause you to stop posting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is great! Reminds one of just how fast time flies. Melancholy aside, this[0] was #1 on the day I finally created an account.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220353)

</comment><comment><USER25> Plus ça change.

This was top story for me. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211630)

</comment><comment><USER26> Awesome. One of the first posts was "Google Removes [http://](http://) from Chrome". I remember that!

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow. I knew it's been a long time, I didn't realize I joined so near the beginning. Mine has "Why we made this site" submitted by pg.

<comment><USER28> Also the day I joined. I think it was the day PG posted it on reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://web.archive.org/web/20080610175916/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080610175916/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

Some interesting things on mine:

Does Apple's Steve Jobs have cancer again? (alleyinsider.com)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080610175916/http://www.alleyi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080610175916/http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/does_apple_s_steve_jobs_have_cancer_again_)

Toyota Announces New 516-Mile Range Fuel-Cell/Electric Hybrid

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080611123133/http://gas2.org/2...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080611123133/http://gas2.org/2008/06/10/toyota- announces-new-516-mile-range-fuel-cellelectric-hybrid/)

Interesting to note how HN has grown since then. Much more people on, though content has stayed similar.

In retrospect Jobs did still have cancer, and the Toyota hybrid was not much of a game changer.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is neat. Good job.

I'm a pretty big fan of one that got posted here about a month ago, waybackhn. It chooses random day/months/years and shows the front page for either. I've spent a lot of time reading through old stories and comments from years before I got into this field. It's opened up my mind a bit to see what people were talking about years back.

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting! Meteor.js, which I've been using on my latest project, was debuted the same day I joined :-)

</comment><comment><USER32> Oddly enough on my first day the OP of this post (bemmu) first posted (I assume) about his Candy Japan business ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745694)). Funny how that works out.

</comment><comment><USER33> One of the links from my page:

"MySpace v. Facebook: It's Not a Decision. It's an IQ Test"

Yeah, I joined a while ago.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, I guess I showed up pretty early. I still remember going to Startup School in 2007 and being so excited and inspired that I quit my job a few months later.

Note: I probably should have stopped following startup news after the first year or so, I don't think anything I've read after that has been that beneficial, it's just an addiction at this point. I went to Startup School for a second time in 2008 and realized that I didn't need to be there, I was trying to recapture a feeling -- but after the initial inspiration I just needed to get busy.

Why we made this site

34 points by pg 5 hours ago | 7 comments

Odeo up for sale (so they could focus on this Twitter thing)

17 points by beau 11 hours ago | discuss

Web 2.0 is a bubble for 3 reasons

12 points by xyzzy 16 hours ago | discuss

Startup School 2007: 3/24 at Stanford

26 points by phyllis 1 day ago | discuss

<comment><USER35> Why we made this site 117 points by pg 5 days ago | 46 comments Startup School 2007: 3/24 at Stanford 32 points by phyllis 6 days ago | discuss

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm amused that a top post when I joined was "How long did it take you to figure out that the up/down arrows next to the links are for voting?"

FYI this was 8.3 years ago, which was about 200 days in, but very close to the public launch I think.

</comment><comment><USER37> These throwbacks have a way of being very topical. 12th item on Hacker News that day for me is "The Next SourceForge": "SourceForge has been rethought, reimplemented, and rejuvenated."

</comment><comment><USER38> Four front page stories about why the lucky stiff's abrupt reclusion.

</comment><comment><USER39> Startup News new | comments | jobs | leaders | submit login

1.

Your bank has a REST API now (wesabe.com) 14 points by dawie 5 hours ago | 3 comments

2.

Facebook: $6 Billion? Nah. [John Battelle] (battellemedia.com) 10 points by aston 4 hours ago | 5 comments

</comment><comment><USER40> Turns out this enduringly useful text was on the front page when I joined: [http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/be- consultant.html](http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html)

Bonus, also interesting: [http://www.forbes.com/special- report/2011/migration.html](http://www.forbes.com/special- report/2011/migration.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> I just get "Unknown" with this name. Are they mis-formatting the request or something?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090314171151/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090314171151/http://news.ycombinator.com//)

ETA: Nevermind, archive.org just has a bad snapshot or something for that day.

</comment><comment><USER42> Nice one. Seems the day I joined was just 4 days after the big Tohoku Earthquake. Things were quite strange in Tokyo those days..

</comment><comment><USER43> First link of mine seemed interesting at the time, but I guess it was one of those YC duds: [https://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

</comment><comment><USER44> 11\. What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior #2/3 (llvm.org)

LOL, some things change, some things stay the same

</comment><comment><USER45> Bitcoin hit $4!

</comment><comment><USER46> Story with most votes for me was about terrible Google customer service in 2009. Some good discussion that's relevant today. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=790800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=790800)

</comment><comment><USER47> December 1, 2011. The frontpage was filled with the Carrier IQ thing unfolding.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_IQ#Rootkit_discovery_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_IQ#Rootkit_discovery_and_media_attention)

</comment><comment><USER48> Wow..."AWS Startup challenge!"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20081222024222/http://aws.amazon...](https://web.archive.org/web/20081222024222/http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge)

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice. But you need to sanitize the username case-sensitivity.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/16u7pjmpno685u0/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/16u7pjmpno685u0/Screenshot%202015-07-19%2014.20.01.png)

</comment><comment><USER50> See what Github looked like on the day you joined [http://djyde.github.io/github-cakeday](http://djyde.github.io/github-cakeday)

</comment><comment><USER51> Funny how the day that I joined so many years ago, people were debating whether or not Google would buy Twitter, and today that debate has been resurrected again so recently.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Tesla Says It Is Now Profitable, Ships 109 Roadsters In July"

Heh.

</comment><comment><USER53> Show HN: thefacebook.com

Just joking :)

</comment><comment><USER54> What a day. Highlights:

\- what happened to pownce

\- Amazon Dynamo white paper announced

\- justin tv got funded

\- Microsoft to open source .net framework

Thanks for making this. It appears the search is case sensitive, might be worth fixing.

</comment><comment><USER55> Neat, exactly the same :P

It's wrong by one day. The page with my first comment didn't exist until the next day and I registered to write that comment.

<comment><USER56> Timezone issue perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> So I haven't commented or submitted anything

</comment><comment><USER58> Huh, I joined the day MegaUpload went down. I don't remember, but I expect that those are probably related.

</comment><comment><USER59> A lot of SOPA stuff was going on which explains why I made the Stop SOPA awareness banner browser plugins!

</comment><comment><USER60> The day I did join I was stupid and did use my memory for the password.

Latter I did create another account, yes.

</comment><comment><USER61> Apparently I joined (after lurking for ages!) on or close to the day Steve Jobs passed away.

</comment><comment><USER62> Thanks for this!

The quality of the front page was either much better back then or that was just a lucky day!

</comment><comment><USER63> I joined the day Stripe launched. I was a lurker for a long time, though.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is cool and simple. :)

</comment><comment><USER65> Obligatory "I joined on the first day" comment, w00t

</comment><comment><USER66> "browser stats: IE8 passes IE7 (arstechnica.com)"

 _shudders_

</comment><comment><USER67> This is very nice!

</comment><comment><USER68> I haven't commented on anything :( :D

</comment><comment><USER69> _" Google reader is dead"_

<comment><USER70> On my front page was: "Is Google Reader next on the chopping block?". Also, JQuery 1.3 was released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Does anyone else get a 404?

</comment><comment><USER72> NEIL ARMSTRONG DIED!?</comment>


We haven't failed, but successfully shown it doesn't work - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/06/10/we-havent-failed-but-successfully-shown-it-doesnt-work/?awesm=tnw.to_192fc&utm_content=spreadus_master&utm_medium=tnw.to-other&utm_source=direct-tnw.to

<comment><USER2> This whole 'we didn't fail' thing is just feel-good nonsense.

While they did indeed 'show that it doesn't work', they failed to create a company, and they failed to produce money for their investors. Those investors aren't saying 'Well, that was money well spent.' They are saying 'That was a failure.'

The fact that they are willing to invest again is a tribute to the company's handling of the situation and apparently technical know-how, not a sign that the investors are happy with the outcome.

<comment><USER3> As mentioned in the post "Of course we would have preferred it if the solution would have been perfect, but at least we had the chance to give it a try"...

<comment><USER4> And how is that not failing?

<comment><USER3> When you fall you've failed at walking. But we all know that this is part of learning to walk. We can focus on the fail or on the process or learning. You obviously only see the fail.

<comment><USER5> Failure is not just a setback. A doctor has no problem saying if a child failed to learn X by Y age there may be a problem. That said there are ranges of failure, and handing money back to investors before you completely run out is a better option than running a company into the ground with nothing to show for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it a little bit strange that they didn't realize their solution didn't work _before_ lauching and getting funding.

A business idea, or a consumer product can fail or succeed depending on many parameters. But a spam filter is a technical part. There are metrics that can clearly tell you whether it works or not.

</comment><comment><USER7> Failure with some positive spin is still failure. The word failure shouldn't be something to hide from. Embrace the fact that you tried and failed in a not so horrible way. It's still failure. And failure can be good.

</comment><comment><USER8> The way in which the failed product was handled is impressive, but I'm left wondering if there are any more details on the approach that failed?

Sharing why a given approach doesn't work could save others with the same technical idea from wasting time and money trying to turn the same idea into a product.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry, but you've failed and it's much more productive to accept that.

</comment><comment><USER10> This post is a fail</comment>


Lost Ancestors of ASCII Art - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/the-lost-ancestors-of-ascii-art/283445/

<comment><USER2> Look down at the picture of the Siamese cat. There is and example of Run Length Encoding. I expect that some of the other source materials will also show Run Length Encoding early enough that it would have invalidated a number of patents as prior art. But unfortunately, at the time these patents were being enforced, we didn't have such a rich Internet to use to find this info. Hopefully people will keep up the task of digitizing the past so that these ideas are not lost. The people of the past were more like us than we imagine.</comment>


Focusing on Focus: Why We Sold AppMakr - <AUTHOR> http://danielodio.com/focusing-on-focus-why-we-sold-appmakr

<comment><USER2> Why? Good thing I saw this I normally just delete all those we want to acquire your company emails.</comment>


Exploit to detect which Social Networks you are logged into - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/blog/detect-visitor-social-networks/

<comment><USER2> The technique exploits the redirection mechanism of most login pages. Consider the url "foo.com/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fimages%2Fspinner.gif". If you put that url as the src of an img tag, and the user is logged in, some sites will 302 you to the image. If you are not logged in, the src will be the login page, and you can detect the difference with javascript.

Quote from the site:

 _What happens if you visit the login page with a 'redirect on login' parameter and you are already logged in? When implemented in a naive fashion you are simply immediately redirected to the page specified in the parameter. Some sites limit that parameter to being another page on the same domain, but we'll see that doesn't help for this trick.

This mechanism is open to abuse in exactly the way I needed; I could set the 'redirect on login' page to be an image file on the same domain. For example:

<img src="[https://twitter.com/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fimages%2Fs...](https://twitter.com/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fimages%2Fspinner.gif) /> In this example, if I am logged in Twitter is kind enough to 302 redirect me to the image file I specified, but if I am not logged in I am show the login page. It turns out that both Twitter and Google's login mechanisms are susceptible to exactly this trick. It seems LinkedIn and Tumblr are currently immune to this, though I didn't dig too deep so there might be another redirect URL for them._

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this. Annoyingly the site was offline a bit after making HN for scheduled maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to detect logins if third-party cookies are blocked. I had all third-party cookies blocked, and it didn't detect me logged into any of the sites. Disabled blocking, and it detected me logged into Google and G+.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems to be overloaded still, anyone have any luck and can comment on how well and what method it uses to work?

<comment><USER5> Check the cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/blog/detect- visitor-social-networks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm logged into all except Facebook and it told me I'm only logged into Twitter.

<comment><USER7> Are you referring to the image on that page? If so, go here:

[http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/tools/detect-social-network- logi...](http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/tools/detect-social-network-logins/)

It's accurate for me.

<comment><USER6> Ah, hell, I'm a smart one. In this case, yes, it works as advertised for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence It didn't work, I am logged into all four yet it told me I was only logged into Twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an image in the post to demonstrate the idea which records only logged into Twitter, are you going to the actual demo page: [http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/tools/detect-social-network- logi...](http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/tools/detect-social-network-logins/)

In hindsight - a bit confusing. :)</comment></comment>


How Space and Time Could Be a Quantum Error-Correcting Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-space-and-time-could-be-a-quantum-error-correcting-code-20190103/ <comment><USER4> Wow that was a tough read for a layman like me.

> [...] after the renowned physicist Juan Maldacena discovered that the bendy > space-time fabric in its interior is "holographically dual" to a quantum > theory of particles living on the lower-dimensional, gravity-free boundary.

What does "holographically dual" mean?

What boundary are we talking about here?

> The bendy fabric of space-time in the interior of the universe is a > projection that emerges from entangled quantum particles living on its outer > boundary

What is the "interior" of the universe? What is the "outer boundary"?

<comment><USER5> anti-de Sitter universes are bounded by a horizon. The example given in the article is an Escher print with an infinite number of tiles bounded by a circle. They get smaller as they get closer to the edge, but there's an infinitude of them, so you have a universe that is infinite from "inside", but "from the outside", there's an outer boundary. As far as occupants of a hyperbolic universe go, they can't see the horizon directly because there's an infinite number of tiles between them and the edge.

That boundary has lower dimensionality than the universe itself (the Escher universe boundary is 1D and the interior is 2D).

Holographic duality is where you can describe the entire interior of the universe by characterizing "stuff happening" on the boundary- that the stuff happening inside the universe looks 2D, but is fundamentally one dimensional. Real-world holograms work like this- they encode a 3D scene onto a 2D substrate.

Our universe is not anti-de Sitter- it appears to be flat and does not pack away nicely into a bounded area like the Escher universe does, so it's as yet unclear how to apply the stuff they've found in their model universe to our own.

<comment><USER6> > They get smaller as they get closer to the edge, but there's an infinitude > of them, so you have a universe that is infinite from "inside",

> Our universe is not anti-de Sitter- it appears to be flat and does not pack > away nicely into a bounded area like the Escher universe

How do you tell from the "infinite inside" whether it packs away nicely into a bounded area? Or is figuring that out the trick?

<comment><USER7> > How do you tell from the "infinite inside" whether it packs away nicely into > a bounded area?

Roughly speaking, you measure how fast the volume of a ball grows with its radius [1]. If it grows faster than you'd expect in Euclidean space, you know you're in a hyperbolic space.

You can also draw a big triangle and see whether the interior angles add up to less than 180 degrees [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalar_curvature#Direct_geomet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalar_curvature#Direct_geometric_interpretation)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_triangle#Properties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_triangle#Properties)

<comment><USER5> And we've done exactly that using our cosmological models of the Big Bang:

[https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/sgoals_parameters_geom.htm...](https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/sgoals_parameters_geom.html)

One side of the triangle is the width of Cosmic Microwave Background variations (calculated from models of the early universe); the other two sides are known from how far away the CMB appears to be, which is known from independent measures of the expansion of the universe. Some trigonometry will tell you what the interior angle that should make with the Earth, which you'll see as the angular width of the variations in the sky. You can compare those two numbers (the one by trigonometry and the one observed), and determine whether they are different enough to exclude a flat universe.

In other words, if someone holds an 1 foot ruler at a distance, you can use trigonometry to work out how far away it is by using the apparent size. But if you know how far away it is, and the apparent size disagrees with the trigonometry, then the shape of the universe must not be flat. The longer the ruler and the further away it is, the greater the deviation will appear (if there is one). The CMB is very far away indeed so it makes for a good ruler.

<comment><USER8> > And we've done exactly that using our cosmological models of the Big Bang

What's the result- flat or not?

<comment><USER5> Flat, as far as WMAP can tell!

[https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html](https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html)

Of course the curvature could maybe be arbitrarily small, but... it's definitely very close to flat.

<comment><USER9> Hold up, so the flat-earthers just need to think a little bigger?

(Legit tho I've been trying to understand the 'shape' of the universe for a while now -- in the sense of, when I look at stars and galaxies in the sky above me, what direction am I looking as it relates to where things are in the universe relative to each other? As a kid I took Bill Nyes word for it: everything is on the surface of a balloon, expanding from the center. But do I ever see the far side of the balloon? Or is everywhere I look somehow constrained to the surface in every direction away from me, such that the 'other side of the balloon' is infinitely far away... but if I could see far enough, my own spot on the surface of this sphere would be visible to me, minus a few billion years... I want to understand this but I am very confused! This looks like an informative website so I'll keep reading ... thank you)

<comment><USER5> The balloon-surface model works if the universe is actually positively curved. It bends around in on itself and comes back. So you would be able to see yourself (eventually) after light made its way around the surface and back to you.

As far as anyone can tell, though, the universe is flat. So photons traveling outwards from you will never come back around- they'll just keep going.

I'm partial to the raisin bread model of the universe:

[https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/universe.html](https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/universe.html)

It's a tad misleading: the raisin bread is, probably, infinite in extent. As a practical matter, we can only see a finite portion of the raisin bread. As we gaze more deeply into the sky, we're looking further into the raisin bread. Because light only travels at a finite speed, the further something is away, the older the image we see of it is. At a certain point, all we can see is the goopy bread batter that the raisin bread used to be: that's (sort of, kinda) the Cosmic Microwave Background: it's the oldest light in the universe, and we can't see anything older than it.

So the universe looks like a bunch of galaxies, with us at the center, and a sphere of microwave radiation at the edge. But every single observer sees a similar sphere around their exact location, so it's a kind of illusion.

<comment><USER10> Does the expansion of the universe mean that galaxies that are too far away from us are seemingly moving faster than the speed of light, and this is why we can't see any galaxies past a given point (because that's where they "accelerate" faster than light)?

<comment><USER5> A lot of the visible universe actually appears to be receding faster than the speed of light:

[https://phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies- faster.html](https://phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html)

It's because the space inbetween is getting bigger. But light keeps moving towards us from those galaxies, so we see those photons eventually anyway. You can still hear things that are going above the speed of sound, as long as they're headed away from you- if they're headed toward you, you'll not hear them (probably?). But the waves they throw off will expand behind them just fine.

<comment><USER11> > if they're headed toward you, you'll not hear them (probably?)

Actually, you would not have much time to hear, but what you would hear (among the other effects) would be the sound "in reverse"(!)

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14880/hearing-a-...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14880/hearing- a-sound-backwards-because-of-doppler-effect)

<comment><USER12> For a practical (if dangerous!) example, see supersonic rounds: if one is shot towards you, you hear the bullet whizzing by before you hear the gunshot.

<comment><USER13> Well, a supersonic round wouldn't whizz until it drops down to subsonic speeds.

You'd hear the crack of the round then the crack from the original shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel I don't have enough background information to understand this article.

>...space-time in the interior of the [anti-de Sitter] universe is a projection that emerges from entangled quantum particles living on its outer boundary

A projection? How would this differ if the quantum particles on the outside were not entangled?

>holographic "emergence" of space-time works like a quantum error-correcting code.

holographic in what way? and how is this similar to error correcting code?

>quantum error correction explains how space-time achieves its "intrinsic robustness,"

what is an example of this robustness in space-time?

>...error-correcting codes can recover the information from slightly more than half of your physical qubits, even if the rest are corrupted. This fact that hinted quantum error correction might be related to the way anti-de Sitter space-time arises from quantum entanglement.

how does the effectiveness of error correcting codes, being able to recover information despite 50% corruption, explain space-time?

if anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. I find this interesting and important but am not smart enough to comprehend it.

<comment><USER15> In quantum physics and cosmology, "holographic" (and "projection", in this context) are related to the holographic principle, which is kind of like a Stokes' theorem for information-- it says that specifying the state of the universe on the boundary of a manifold is sufficient to completely specify the state inside.

If someone's read the full paper, maybe they can explain the other things-- this article is a bit too vague.

<comment><USER9> " the universe on the boundary of a manifold is sufficient to completely specify the state inside " made it click for me if I understood you right. Makes me think of cellular automata: the state of the whole grid can be specified by the information contained in the first row + the laws of physics on the grid (game of life, etc) - is that kind of like the "boundary" we're talking about here?

<comment><USER15> Yes, that's a good analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only reason I have any vague understanding of this article is all thanks to PBS Space Time on Youtube.

It's an amazing series. Must watch if you want to know how much we humans understand about our universe.

<comment><USER17> Or equally fairly, how much we _dont_ understand.

One of the reasons I like that series is they seem intent to do some justice to competing theories and the fact that we still don't really have a working model of the universe, or know answers as to _why_ theories work the way they do.

Anyways this article was a really hard read for me. It's like the relatively- readable paragraphs are laughing at me--written like I should be understanding them, but I don't, ie:

>The best error-correcting codes can typically recover all of the encoded information from slightly more than half of your physical qubits, even if the rest are corrupted. This fact is what hinted to Almheiri, Dong and Harlow in 2014 that quantum error correction might be related to the way anti-de Sitter space-time arises from quantum entanglement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How I understand it: The world around us is some sort of "projection" of stuff at the very edges of our universe, and that stuff is inherently fragile and unstable. Yet our world/reality/spacetime is not fragile and unstable - <USER2> the opposite, despite being dependent on that fragile stuff in the first place.

Thus it must somehow be "correcting" for the intrinsic instability of the stuff on the outer edges that gives rise to our reality. Therefore it is in some sense an error correcting code.

Happy to be corrected by those with a deeper understanding!

<comment><USER19> The world science festival has a good video about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnETCBOlzJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnETCBOlzJs) \- The "correction" could very well be reconciliation, the output of what plays out in the program + the program is procedurally generated based on the outputs. Another good talk is this one by John Preskill from 2015: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW2rlQVfnK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW2rlQVfnK0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just came to say it makes me happy to see the term "discovered" used in a what is essentially an engineering/software context, instead of the term "invented." The more that people in our industry speak clearly about that fact that many of the constraints in our problem space are universal, and thus much of our solution space is discovered, not invented, the more we shift the culture to understand e.g. the absurdity of software patents, etc.

<comment><USER21> Do they use a similar terminology in mathematics when talking about proofs? Software solutions don't seem that much different in regards to solving specific problems.

<comment><USER22> This question — is maths discovered or invented? — was discussed at length in a recent BBC series: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bn9dth](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bn9dth)

<comment><USER23> I wonder if there are languages where there is no real dichotomy between these two terms

<comment><USER24> "Invent" comes from Latin and simply means "find". If you think about it, no matter what language, there is no fine line. An invention is just a discovery, but we typically use the word to describe a very _specific_ discovery.

<comment><USER23> The English language often has multiple synonyms with a difference in connotation. Discover and invent may be synonyms (although many would disagree), but everybody would agree at least the connotation is different.

My hypothesis above was that there may be languages where that connotation does not exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The study of Black Holes with the lens of Quantum information has been an exciting sub-field of Physics for the past couple of years. If you are curious about it, I recommend Patrick Hayden's "The Quantum Computational Universe" lectures [0][1]. The first one is an introduction to Quantum computation and the second one is more in line with what this Quantamagazine article is about.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqWuyeh0SxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqWuyeh0SxQ)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6vGAiMz5kQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6vGAiMz5kQ)

</comment><comment><USER26> It reminds me of old quote "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once" [1] and similar "Space is what keeps everything from happening in the same place".

[1] [https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/30402](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/30402)

</comment><comment><USER27> Could someone explain to me why we should look into this, because we do not live in an anti-deSitter universe. So what is the relevance (beyond the obvious mathematical curiosity and elegance)?.

<comment><USER5> It's a toy model, but the hope is that the insights gained by playing with it will apply to ours: "On the physics side, it remains to be seen whether de Sitter universes like ours can be described holographically, in terms of qubits and codes. "The whole connection is known for a world that is manifestly not our world," Aaronson said. In a paper last summer, Dong, who is now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his co-authors Eva Silverstein and Gonzalo Torroba took a step in the de Sitter direction, with an attempt at a primitive holographic description. Researchers are still studying that particular proposal, but Preskill thinks the language of quantum error correction will ultimately carry over to actual space-time."

Also, black holes at least superficially have a spatial boundary (the event horizon) so perhaps you can model what happens inside using the holographic principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome idea, but is there any way to test the hypothesis? Or will it be forever locked in the box of "extremely elegant but untestable" along with string theory?

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm wondering how many physicists roll their eyes each time they see similar extraordinary headlines like this one

edit: I am a physicist.

<comment><USER30> Well, I think a lot of folks here find the description strange and opaque - <USER3> studied a bit differential geometry for my math degree and this seems way up there.

I'd love to hear why a physicist would roll their eyes at this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> >So, how do quantum error-correcting codes work? The trick to protecting information in jittery qubits is to store it not in individual qubits, but in patterns of entanglement among many.

So are quantum encoding patterns the Proof Of Work of multidimensional holgraphic blockchains?

Edit: accidentally pasted entire article

</comment><comment><USER32> > But a fundamental problem stood in the way of actually building quantum > computers: the innate frailty of their physical components.

It's entirely possible that there is some sort of physically limiting factor that makes it nearly impossible to entangle more than X qbits. Something akin to Amdahl's law for quantum computing. It wouldn't be a very sexy result.

<comment><USER33> I'm thinking of the infeasibility of building a rocket to get off a large planet (compared to earth).

The intuition of a layperson is a bad guide, but I've always had the gut feeling that quantum error correction would prove to be exponentially difficult to scale. If smart people think otherwise, I can hope they're right, but I wouldn't bet money on it until I find an explanation I can grasp. It just sounds like a free lunch, or cold fusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Ahmed Almheiri, Xi Dong and Daniel Harlow did calculations ...

It's pretty cool to see a Westerner, Middle Easterner and an East Asian dude (at least based on names ...) collaborate to push the frontiers of science like this!

<comment><USER35> This happens literally all the time. This is probably more common than uncommon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This makes error-correcting the foundation of the universe, but I would prefer to have causality be fundamental, such as with the causal sets program. This is interesting though, especially for quantum computing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Gee, sounds like a theory seeking facts. Isn't it supposed to work the other way around?

You know, math is really great and all, and you can transform a sphere into a torus, but meat doesn't transform into flies.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have a feeling I would get a brain aneurysm if I tried to read this.

</comment><comment><USER39> Curious what are the logic gates made of? What kind of engineering does it take to build the gates?

</comment><comment><USER40> > The bendy fabric of space-time in the interior of the universe is a > projection that emerges from entangled quantum particles living on its outer > boundary.

Guess we are living in a simulation, after all. A quantum one, to be precise.

</comment><comment><USER41> Nice, feels like we are getting closer.

</comment><comment><USER42> does this mean that out of all the possibilities space and time brings about order and chaos?

</comment><comment><USER23> > That year — 2014 — three young quantum gravity researchers came to an > astonishing realization. They were working in physicists' theoretical > playground of choice: a toy universe called "anti-de Sitter space" that > works like a hologram.

Wow, so we truly are in a simulation

Edit: Sorry, I thought this was a funny play on ambiguous words, but apparently HN disagrees!

<comment><USER33> You will often get downvoted for humor on HN. On the other hand, I have at times gotten double digits worth of karma for a humorous post. I guess you have to appeal to a certain type of person.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I've definitely noticed. Guess I can't help taking a gamble on occasion.

On this particular occasion, I truly couldn't tell if my joke was a whoosh, or just not funny! I made myself laugh, but that's not difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm not sure I really understand the article, as it is, but space-time seemed preternaturally a macrocosm of the quantum universe, a way to smooth out the infinitely possible subspace into a predictable and understandable macro space, the collapsing of all possible realities at the atomic level into a definite reality. In other words, this seems too obvious to be this obvious, so what am I missing here?

<comment><USER25> >What am I missing here?

It's not obvious how to reconcile the laws quantum mechanics with gravity and vice-versa as they seem to make incompatible descriptions of reality.

<comment><USER44> Mandelbrot cosmology offers some interesting potential resolutions, but more research definitely needs to be done.</comment></comment></comment>


Please add a security page on your site - <AUTHOR> https://zenincognito.com/please-add-a-security-page-at-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> Most companies don't have the resources or time to address security issue. If you are startup and focussed on growth then security is not on the top of your to-do things.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, if you are a startup and focused on growth, you're one step away from losing your current customers. What if your payment app gets compromised? Or the whole users database gets leaked and someone spams them with targeted messages about your company? (this happened to mtgox for example)

There has to be a balance. If you don't care about security, you'll fail. If you don't care about new features, you'll fail. If you don't care about retaining current users, you'll fail. etc.

One thing you don't want when you're focused on growth is your company in the news because someone dropped your whole database on pastebin.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: SEC Regs on Solicitation & Raising Seed Funding - <AUTHOR>

I am raising seed funding for my next venture and want to reach out to people to try to find an investor but am concerned about doing the right thing regarding SEC Regulation D, which requires you to be careful not to cross the line from "private" to "public solicitation". This article from the American Bar Association makes it sound like it's a very easy line to cross. Does anyone have any advice -- is it wrong, say, to email a number of your contacts and ask for help finding an investor? (If it is, how in the world can you raise money?)<p>http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/newsletter/lawtrends/0807/business_batman.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here's clickable link: [http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/newsletter/lawtrends/0807/...](http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/newsletter/lawtrends/0807/business_batman.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This ABA article would seem to suggest that most angel groups, and popular sites like VentureHacks' AngelList, are a bit questionable! Or am I missing something?</comment>


How to test if a child is interested in programming? - <AUTHOR>

Assuming a child (10) has no knowledge of programming, is there any fun way of giving him a go at it and seeing if he wants to go on? I myself started with programmable calculator and continued onto zx spectrum. I had different motivation of doing so - no internet, just pure fun of messing with what you have. Nowadays computer is not something you need to make do things, it just does them all. <comment><USER2> My son (13) only gets interested when I hack something quick, simple, AND fun!

Last thing we hack was connecting a raspberry running espeak so we can send audible texts to each other around the house.. by the end, he was really hooked with the project, but at the start he really didn't care.

I learned to teach him without pushing him. I usually start working on the thing myself, and during the project he will show interest, but never worked the other way around.

He shows interest for other things, like maths, game theory, and books.. specially books! so I think we are from a different breed of hackers, and not all of us learn the same way.

Try to find what's you child's learning type, and what are the things that motivates and are fun to him

</comment><comment><USER3> Scratch works real well for teaching kids to code. There is a bunch of fun programs for them to do that doesn't even feel like programming.

</comment><comment><USER4> I learned python at 14 (12 years ago) to get it to do my rote math homework for me. Seemed like decent motivation at the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Modding Minecraft might be a good place to start, assuming like so many kids that age he is into it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I started in my early teens with GameMaker. It was fairly straightforward to use, had lots of tutorials available on YouTube, and games were super relatable to me and really got me motivated to learn more.</comment>


The Local Innovator's Dilemma (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.muckercapital.com/the-local-innovators-dilemma/

<comment><USER2> _It is not impossible to crack the nut (and I've came across a few companies in the last month or so that are almost there)._

As this is from 2011 (and the early success examples Groupon and Living Social are now, at least, doubtful); I would like to know which were these _almost there_ companies.

And here is the next post about the _solution_... [http://www.muckercapital.com/the-local-innovators- solution-3...](http://www.muckercapital.com/the-local-innovators-solution-3/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really interesting - the view from two or three years ago that Local was where it was at I felt even over here, and it is still a dream for many. It's just not something that fits with the one big server farm and the whole world connects to it.

Local will be solved not by one company winning it all, but by mesh networks redefining how we talk to each other - from hubs to meshes. Reflecting reality again.

</comment><comment><USER4> Needs a [2011]. Evidence here: [http://www.muckercapital.com/blog/page/4/](http://www.muckercapital.com/blog/page/4/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks; added.

<comment><USER4> You're welcome. Also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868016) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870360)</comment></comment></comment>


Challenge HN: Inspired by greplin's third problem - <AUTHOR>

Let P = {2, 3, 5, ... 1009, 1013, 1019, 1021} be the set of 172 prime integers less than 2^10.  How many subsets S does P have such that the sum of the least |S|-1 elements of S is equal to the largest element of S?<p>Please list the language used, number of lines of code, and running time (if measurably greater than zero). <comment><USER2> <http://codepad.org/5TyD9Jqy> \-- C++ solution with running time of ~0.004s. 30 lines not counting empty lines/comments/braces, half of the code is generating P.

<comment><USER3> how does it work ?

<comment><USER2> The solution is by dynamic programming.

Let p_1 = 2, p_2 = 3, ..., p_172 = 1021 be the first 172 primes. We will denote the number of subsets of {p_1, p_2, ..., p_k} that sum to n by D(k, n).

We know that D(0, 0) = 1 and D(0, n) = 0 if n > 0.

Also note that D(k, n) = D(k-1, n) + D(k-1, n-p_k). This comes from the fact that each subset S of {p_1, ..., p_k} can either contain p_k or not. If p_k is in S then S\\{p_k} sums to n-p_k and there are D(k-1, n-p_k) such S\\{p_k}. If p_k is not in S then S is made entirely of elements from {p_1, ..., p_{k-1}}, obviously there are D(k-1, n) such S.

We can use the base case and this recurrence to fill our dynamic programming table D(k, n). The answer to the original problem is D(0, p_1) + D(1, p_2) + ... + D(171, p_172).

My program implements this approach except that it fills D(k, n) by rows and doesn't keep the whole table in memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.fzort.org/mpr/junk/greplin-3.pl.txt>

Perl, 7s. Looks like I arrived at the same recurrence that madars used, but I swear I didn't look at his solution...

Memoize magically turns it from exponential to polynomial.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://codepad.org/1dImO2j0> \-- 26 lines of ruby will keep running throughout the year :P

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://pastebin.com/wBrkKEyk> ... this is still running :)

</comment><comment><USER5> is 14521794174 the answer by any chance? It took 12 hrs</comment>


Ask HN: Keeping a research/work log - <AUTHOR>

I see a lot of discussion about to-do lists, but less about keeping a record of your work.
Sometimes at the end of the day I will sit and write up a few short paragraphs summarising what I've done and what I've learned. -  technical notes and general thoughts about my work and study. I want to start doing this more frequently, but I want a nice searchable format rather than scattered text files. I already carry around a small notepad to scribble down thoughts and work through problems on paper.
What methods do you use? My current best idea is to keep this all on a local installation of Wordpress. <comment><USER2> What is the intent of your research/work log? Do you just want to capture your ideas so you are able to review important TODO items, insights, and the rationale for decisions you've made later, if needed? Or is the purpose to document your work so that if you develop an important, patentable invention you have adequate documentation for a legally defensible patent? If legal defense of a patent is the intent, then consulting with an attorney about your documentation methods long before you've invented anything is the wise thing to do. My guess is that old-fashioned signed, dated, & witnessed dead-tree paper records are probably still preferred.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out TiddlyWiki [<http://www.tiddlywiki.com/>] or some other wiki software?

There was a pretty good discussion about this kind of think on StackOverflow a while back: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78756/what-do-you-use- to-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78756/what-do-you-use-to-keep- notes-as-a-developer/78762)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use org-mode to keep notes while I'm working. It's really helpful to be able to create todo lists very easily and then clock in to specific tasks. If I get stuck on something, I start a heading to write about what I know/don't know and what I need to do next.

For me, org-mode is the way to go - plain text, integrated into my editor, easy outlining, time tracking, and to do lists. Check it out.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use google sheets and doc. Doc for more detailed notes about a topic, tools, etc. Sheets for 1-liner per day journal -- 3 columns: 1 for summary of main work/proj , 1 for eurekas (this column is 80%+ empty, by design so they stand out) 1 for non-work, more of a diary.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just use a notebook to keep track of stuff. Evernote is one of the options you can check out.

</comment><comment><USER7> Backpack + Journal app for Mac: <http://transmissionapps.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm using just a google doc.. toying with the idea of throwing a small app online for this

</comment><comment><USER9> i blogged especially those that deals with programming stuffs.. i just want to keep stuffs online at the same time share it to the community.. two birds in one stone..</comment>


Create RSS from ANY web page - <AUTHOR> http://www.feedity.com/ Feedity is an RSS generator for web pages without a web syndication format. A true web service (Web 3.0 / SaaS) <comment><USER2> This idea strikes me as a classic hacker's toy: technically good, but not sold well at all to the average consumer (aka "the world").

Why not repackage it as a way to find out when and how your favorite sites update? Like a really simplified RSS reader (either a desktop app or web app) that uses the current technology to let you know when things have changed on arbitrary websites. I could see a lot of people being interested in something like that who have no clue what RSS is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can it do homestarrunner.com? I'd love to get an RSS feed of that. Well I guess I'll try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which page on homestarrunner.com? All I can see is non-HTML Flash.

<comment><USER3> yeah, it's all flash. But couldn't an RSS generator at least check the date the page was updated from the headers?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not about updation date. It's about content. The RSS generator will "scrape" indexable content, viz HTML. It cannot read Flash content (because its embedded in a non-standard format), just like a search engine bot (Google) can't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adobe Responds to Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/moving_forward.html <comment><USER3> Adobe is basically saying that Flash will be available on competitor's phones and the market will decide; which is exactly the right response. I wish most tech bloggers would take this view and just shut up with the endless "analysis" of Flash and Apple. Flamewars don't decide anything, the market does.

<comment><USER4> Go back through the history of Apple's (and its many, many sycophantic fans) proclamations - such as apps on the phone, push notifications, multitasking - and there is a disturbing trend of Apple (and its followeres) making moral pontifications, stamping their feet, and then quietly and shamelessly backtracking when proven wrong.

Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made the wrong choice.

<comment><USER5> > Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made > the wrong choice.

You think so?

Smart-phones have been around a long time. The iPhone was announced over three years ago, yet here we are in the middle of 2010 and mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found on _any_ mobile device. How is that not Adobe's fault? Is Adobe just not very interested in mobile Flash, or are there very serious technical challenges that Adobe has been unable to overcome?

Instead of waiting around for Adobe to get their act together, Apple delivered HTML video and interactive web content for their mobile devices, they delivered it years ago, and they did it using open standards and open source development that their competitors are not only taking advantage of, but are utterly embracing.

It is the tale of one company that's able to get things done, and another company that isn't. And it shows how foolish it is for companies like Apple, Google, Palm, and RIM to depend on a company like Adobe to deliver the "full web".

There was no choice to be made. Mobile Flash didn't exist in 2007, it still doesn't exist today, and any dependence on Adobe is foolish.

<comment><USER6> Isn't one of the reasons that mobile flash doesn't exist today that Apple, y'know, expressly disallowed Adobe's flash-to-iPhone compiler? Isn't that the issue at hand here?

If Adobe had simply failed to deliver a product, no one would care. Instead, they _did_ deliver it (or were just about to deliver it), and Apple freaked out.

<comment><USER7> The topic was Flash running in a mobile browser. Like Android, which Adobe originally said would ship Flash for over a year ago. I think Adobe's utter engineering incompetence is one of the obvious points everyone seems too polite to make.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, it's technologically nearly impossible. The incompetence is coming from whomever is promising it. The engineers are fucked...

<comment><USER9> Why? There's no qualitative computational difference between a smartphone and a desktop computer; further, the quantitative difference between today's smartphones and older Flash-capable machines of a decade ago is probably not that huge.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely not true that there's no difference. The speed of your desktop comes from using POWER. Today's desktop CPUs alone pull up to 130 WATTS. My desktop CPU bought in 2000 used 30 W. Now even notebook CPUs use more when they're not idle! Now I can come to a lot of web pages where only Flash ads use 100% of a modern CPU! That translates in 60-70 Watts. Then compare all this with the goals for device which should work with battery for hours.

<comment><USER9> >My desktop CPU bought in 2000 used 30 W.

And didn't it support Flash?

>Now I can come to a lot of web pages where only Flash ads use 100% of a modern CPU!

Okay, so show a placeholder for Flash content and only load and play the things the user double taps.

<comment><USER11> Running flash content on a PC bought around 2003 is actually pretty choppy. I installed Windows 7 on an old Athlon 1.6 ghz machine a month ago and tried to watch youtube with it -- the videos looked like they were going around 8 fps. I can watch old divx movies on it, but I can't watch youtube full screen... it's pretty sad.

This machine was fast enough to play Quake 3 and a dozen other gaming titles, but is too slow to play youtube videos. I just don't get it, is the flash vm really that processor intensive?

I can't see how flash could run well on the upcoming android devices if it runs so poorly on the Athlon 1.6ghz.

<comment><USER12> Newer Flash Videos codecs like H.264 probably are that intensive. Codecs have changed over the years, giving us better quality, but also requiring hardware support or lots of go juice to run well.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video#Codec_support>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad that Adobe decided to take the mature route. Further lashing out against Apple would have only exacerbated the situation.

In the end, Jobs provided a very rational argument and the brevity of Adobe's response lends itself well to that conclusion.

<comment><USER14> > In the end, Jobs provided a very hypocritical argument

FTFY

<comment><USER15> I can't really see how apple is hypocritical with this issue. I quote the text below from my last comment.

"Apple is not telling Adobe, Microsoft or any other corporation to open up their platform. They are only stating that they believe web standards should be open and not controlled by a single party."

If someone got a different impression from Steve's letter I think you should read it again. If you think I got the wrong impression I beg you to point me towards the parts of Steve's letter that will help me see my error.

<comment><USER16> Actually, while you are that he states that the web should be based on open standard you obviously missed the big pile of lies and false facts in his letter. Basically i'd say that at least every second "fact" in his letter is plainly not true.

<http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfw9fng6_2cscxq6hq>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is going to be interesting, because if they do manage to put flash and Air on a broad range of other platforms then we will see Jobs's assertion about cross platform frameworks slowing down progress be put to the test.

<comment><USER18> It already has been put to the test, in countless other situations. For example, look at video game consoles -- crossplatform libraries ensure that really high quality games can be ported to every major platform. Do they lack some features of some consoles? Yes. Regardless, are they still hella fun to play? Of course!

<comment><USER19> Well see even there it's Job's contention that crossplatform frameworks should have displaced native frameworks and limited the hardware manufacturers to effectively just supporting the crossplatform frameworks.

Surely the best argument against Job's position is the iPhone itself. The most important and dominant crossplatform framework in the world is HTML+JS and Apple actually wanted it to take the place of native frameworks. But we all know how that ended and now we have the App Store.

To support his fears on crossplatform frameworks they would have to supplant native apps and I just don't think it happens. OSX's problems with inferior crossplatform titles stem from a comparative lack of native applications - <USER2> from the crossplatform software itself.

<comment><USER10> > Surely the best argument against Job's position is the iPhone itself. The > most important and dominant crossplatform framework in the world is HTML+JS > and Apple actually wanted it to take the place of native frameworks. But we > all know how that ended and now we have the App Store.

And with this paragraph you exactly proved why Flash doesn't have sense on the iPhone.

<comment><USER19> I don't get what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Apple could buy Adobe. They have more than double Adobe's market cap sitting around in _cash_. Forgetting Flash, Adobe is a cash cow, has a lot of great engineers, and some amazing software I'm sure Apple would love to brand as their own.

<comment><USER21> I've also been thinking about this lately. Flash and related products are only a small part of a not very large company, relatively speaking. Why can't Google or Apple just make a deal for Flash/Flex? It's clear that the web (and mobile web) is critical for both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You and me as consumers decide what to buy or not to buy.

<comment><USER23> When it comes to products with strong network effects, you really don't. Sometimes an inferior product (i should say platform) can take over a market simply because it was there first. You can find any number of examples of this in the tech world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's going to be very interesting to see how Adobe handles Flash on all these different platforms. There's a lot to consider: Various screen resolutions, CPU/GPU speeds, memory capacities, browsers, touch vs. non-touch devices, etc. This covers about half a dozen major platforms and probably hundreds of different handset models. It seems like a monumental task to take on. Can they keep up with frequent platform updates?

<comment><USER25> Devil's advocate, I'm not a big fan of Flash, but: with the exception of touch, this is exactly the diverse situation Flash has dealt with -- and partially derived its popularity from -- on the desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _"Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and our technologies."_

Ha. I haven't met many people who are "passionate" about Adobe technologies. I don't see Flash stickers on cars or people lining up around the block to buy Photoshop CS5.

I don't think the people taking Adobe's side on this do it out of passion–they do it because they don't like how Apple is handling the situation.

<comment><USER27> the only reason i have a mac is to run photoshop and after effects. otherwise ubuntu is a fine replacement for mac os x.

<comment><USER28> You bought a Mac to run Photoshop and After Effects, instead of just installing Windows on your PC that's running Ubuntu if I understand things right here? Nice.

<comment><USER27> windows is not a fine replacement for either :)

in fact i run ubuntu on a mac mini (in addition to lots of generic pc hardware). i like mac hardware. some of it is overpriced, but some of it is fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As somebody said in another post, Flash great distribution it's because it was something that designers could do with little programming (if not none at all). What Adobe should really focus is to create a valid equivalent for HTML5 and try to become the standard editor for HTML5 for all those people who don't know how to code.

</comment><comment><USER30> A good strategy might be to go ahead and make flash work on the Apple devices. Being able to demonstrate that the limitation is purely political and not technological would be helpful for people that don't understand what's going on. Plus _when_ Apple reverses this silly nonsense, they'll be ready to roll.

</comment><comment><USER31> Apple v. Adobe is like watching two drunk bus drivers take to the streets. You don't just want off the bus, you want off the road.

</comment><comment><USER32> Does this sentence make zero sense to anyone else?

We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

<comment><USER4> I makes total sense. Shall I reword it slightly for you?

Were Apple and Adobe to work together, as we are with a number of other partners, we feel confident that we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

<comment><USER33> The original statement is missing a comma after "that"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> mouse hovering will be funny on these platforms.

<comment><USER4> Always with the mouse hover. You know that the DOM/HTML(5) includes mouse hover, right? I guess the web just doesn't work.

<comment><USER35> There's a huge difference though.

With HTML/CSS/JavaScript, hover events (both the :hover and "onmouseover" event in JavaScript) are typically used for visual feedback (the :hover event being strictly presentation...)

There's a reason for this: Users can disable JavaScript.

A core fundamental of web development (graceful degradation or progressive enhancements) is the result of this. As a developer, you can't assume the "mouseover" event will be available.

Web developers write functional pages first. They then progressively enhance it with JavaScript. This is why the web does (or, theoretically) works (contrary to what you said...)

Flash, on the other hand, is different by nature. It doesn't permit users to disable mouse events (or any other events), from firing. As a Flash developer, you can write code that requires a hover event, with fair confidence that it won't hinder a visitors interaction with the site/project.

To be honest, it's what made Flash so tempting to develop for. You're given an equal playing field through the SWF player.

Unfortunately for Adobe, with Safari/Chrome/FireFox/Opera pushing web standards, HTML5/CSS3/JS are making things (quite) interesting for web developers.

<comment><USER36> _"Web developers write functional pages first."_

You're confusing best practices with common practices. The vast majority of sites are developed with the assumption that javascript will be enabled in the viewer's browser.

<comment><USER35> You're right. That's why I included, "This is why the web does (or, theoretically) works..."

To be honest, I know a few developers that develop with the assumption that JavaScript will be enabled. I've also worked at a few companies that assume clients should have JavaScript enabled...

Unfortunately, I see too many sites that completely fall apart if you disable JavaScript (some sites that are even selling a product!)

JavaScript still has a stigma as being a "toy" language and until developers understand/utilize it's full potential, a lot of crummy code will still be written. Thankfully, jQuery (and other great JS libraries) are opening the potential for JavaScript to developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This article looks crap on my iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER38> While I don't appreciate much of what Apple is doing these days, surely one has to also appreciate the draconian, closed nature of Flash? At least HTML5 is some kind of standard. Now, if we could just get Apple on the Ogg train...

<comment><USER39> You know what is draconian? removing a programming environment for children from the App store.

<comment><USER38> Haha. Touche, sir. Apple is certainly draconian, but Adobe is no saint I guess was my point. Flash and HTML5 are competing technologies, and one is an open format.

<comment><USER25> ... and the other, in Apple's implementation at least, uses H.264.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Designing Icons for the Apple Watch: Icon Size - <AUTHOR> http://www.chronicons.com/news/2015/1/11/designing-chronicons-icon-size

<comment><USER2> I'd say the recommended size looks like a better match. The adjusted icon is too big...

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I've heard 50/50 on that from other people. Some think the first size looked better, others agree the bigger version was better.

In the end it's likely best to just stick with the HIG.</comment></comment>


Microsoft "BUILD" begins tomorrow (9/13/11) - <AUTHOR> http://www.buildwindows.com/

<comment><USER2> I seriously doubt that Windows 8 will change everything again. That ship has sailed, Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> why the negativity? Windows phone 7 is late to the game, but it brings new ideas. Win 8 could do the same...

<comment><USER2> It's not negativity, it's highlighting empty marketing speak and ridiculous hyperbole.</comment></comment></comment>


Ars Technica Was Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/ <comment> Stefan-H In events like this it is a good idea to avoid sites that have apparently been compromised in case they start serving up malware.

<comment><USER2> Esp. if you were running Windows, I would assume. I haven't seen that kind of propagation on non-MS platforms (just my observation).. I'd like to know if a browser on an Ubuntu box would be equally vulnerable - correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, I don't actually think Windows is more vulnerable these days - it's just that the average user of Windows is more vulnerable because they're less informed. They'll see the elevated permissions prompt (whatever it's called) and just click yes anyway. Similarly, Windows installers will often come bundled with crapware, but if you read what you're doing you can avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Earliest tweet about it that I could find (with a screenshot): [https://twitter.com/eanlz/status/544585861421993984](https://twitter.com/eanlz/status/544585861421993984)

The overwritten page read:

        Arse security.
        @nidohax - @metapawd
        cue the music

It looks like Ars has the moonshark up for now. Maybe DNS-related?

<comment><USER5> Ars runs on WordPress, yet another WordPress exploit, or even more commonly, yet another WordPress plugin exploit would be even less surprising than DNS.

<comment><USER6> Ha, wordpress seems so anti ars u_u;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just saw this. Immediately, left and hoping for a quick recovery. More and more just keep on falling. Is it really that fun to bring down other people? I don't understand it. Truly.

</comment><comment><USER8> "We're aware of the issue with our site and are working on it. :)"

[https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/544587442305523712](https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/544587442305523712)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Year of Living Dangerously

I like the music linked up on autoplay: [http://www.youtube.com/embed/FoUWHfh733Y](http://www.youtube.com/embed/FoUWHfh733Y)

</comment><comment><USER10> google cached it just in time: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7SWNucH...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7SWNucHa9KMJ:arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2014/12/faa-gives-nod-to-more-commercial-use-of- drones/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER11> [https://archive.today/s6N9C](https://archive.today/s6N9C)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's already back online.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sure looks that way to me.</comment>


How to connect VB6 to Mysql - <AUTHOR> http://codereflex.net/how-to-connect-vb6-to-mysql/

<comment><USER2> VB6? Really?</comment>


Global Venture Capital Distribution - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2016/01/global-venture-capital-distribution <comment><USER2> The underlying data is from 2012, pretty sure it is wrong for 2015. Asia (China, India, SE Asia) have seen huge investments in the last few years (post 2012).

</comment><comment><USER3> part of this is definition -- what is "venture funding" \-- b/c if you simply count any type of private finance I think you'd find it is more of a continuous distribution (if still coastally-weighted). it's fair to say VC is mostly SV or NY, but I think that says more about how small the world of "venture capital" is compared to the larger world of private finance. this is not necessarily about where innovation happens, and certainly not about where economic output happens.

</comment><comment><USER4> That article is so arrogant sounding. Of course most of the funding is coming out of SV. Because most VC won't fund anything that isn't in SV or maybe NY. If your from SV they'll fund dog butt social flipper app but sorry I get that your company has revenue and makes a profit it just doesn't meet our funding criteria. I suppose the rest of the IT departments and universities around the world are run by a bunch of nose picking hill-billies. With out the sophisticat-un of them there city folk.

<comment><USER5> Start with the premise that the single most important factor that determines startup success is hiring quality talent, specifically engineers and scientists. High quality engineers and scientists are currently a small percentage of the entire world's population. They are attracted to areas where they can find jobs, and usually stick around universities.

Going with that premise, would you rather start your company in Oklahoma City or Boston? And if you are an investor, would you rather invest in a tech startup in Oklahoma City or Boston?

Finally, as an engineer, I highly value the quality of the area I live. There is literally nothing that could make me move to sprawling city like Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, Detroit, etc. Nothing short of an environmental or man made disaster that made all highly desirable, walkable, densely packed cities unlivable.

And so it is with many people, I'm sure.

<comment><USER6> > would you rather invest in a tech startup in Oklahoma City or Boston?

If I'm smart, Oklahoma. Lower valuation, rent, salaries and less competition.

True that the team wouldn't be competitive young engineers that only live in cities like NYC or SF, but that's probably a good thing.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever actually lived in OKC? It is an awful quality of life for many reasons. I highly recommend not living there. If investing is only about rent and salaries, you may as well hire in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lots of tech talent lives there, I'm sure.

<comment><USER6> I have never lived in OKC and simply used to make a point, as did the parent comment.

Take Iowa, South Dakota, Utah, Texas then. If you are a senior software engineer with a family, SF or NYC wouldn't be your top choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone in finance that is not ignorant or malicious can see how problematic this is.

American, SV and NYC "entrepreneurship" are mislead by the idea of American exceptionalism.

These are a consequence of EXTREME centralization of global investable capital in select networks. Had it been deployed evenly, you'd see unimaginably terrific ventures across the world.</comment>


The Soviet Children Who Survived World War II - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/17/the-soviet-children-who-survived-world-war-ii/ <comment><USER2> This is so sad. We in America need to appreciate what we have. I wonder what it's like for Syrian children.</comment>