Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703632304575451414209658940.html?mod=ITP_TEST

<comment><USER2> I think I would start a cultural movement to allow polyandry before resorting to a digital relationship. I know I've heard of fraternal polyandry. Any reason such relationships would be taboo in eastern cultures? Seems like it would be advantageous and automatically beneficial to all parties involved. Particularly in Japan where I understand the marital restrictions are more relaxed.</comment>


Watercoolr, Pubsub using WebHooks - <AUTHOR> http://watercoolr.nuklei.com

<comment><USER2> Very cool, simple implementation of pubsub with webhooks. The DoS issue is something to consider, but keep in mind there are plenty of other ways to DoS, probably more efficient ways. Auth is a big topic in webhooks right now.

The allow file idea is interesting, but we've been talking about it on the webhooks list (as well as the GetPingd list). The pubsubhubbub guys are also thinking about it (since they haven't addressed it either yet).

<comment><AUTHOR> Concerning the DoS issue: the system only allows one subscriber url per channel, so it really can't be used to DoS. And as for auth, this was designed for more internal use where it isn't that much of a concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you checked out PubSubHubbub project?

<http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/>

It looks like there's a lot of overlap with the feature set you need, as well as the advantage of some extra documentation + testing. It's a Python WSGI app, instead of Sinatra/Rack, and the data over the wire is encoded as Atom, but there could be some useful lessons to work from at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I haven't, but I am now, thanks. (This is a particularly hard problem domain to google for)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens if some the subscriber can't be reached? What if delivering takes to long? Why should the server do the distribution? A "post message" could return a list of subscribers, instead. More work for the client, but more transparency, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is this interesting? I'm obviously missing something...

Any context/description/commentary?

From what I can understand, it could be useful in launching a DoS :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I wrote it because I needed a way for programs to announce what they were doing and have other subscribing programs react accordingly. The closest solution I found to this was <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html>, but that didn't seem implemented yet so I wrote the simplest thing that could work.

<comment><USER5> Cool. Seems like there should be some security to prevent abuse though, otherwise surely I could just add a ton of subscriptions to pages on a target site, and start getting your server to DoS them?

Perhaps have it look for an 'allow' file on the destination first, and if it's not there, don't send any further messages?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting way to handle the auth problem, I'll look into it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> +1 vote for pubsubhubbub</comment>


An html sanitizer for C# - <AUTHOR> http://roberto.open-lab.com/2010/03/04/a-html-sanitizer-for-c/

<comment><USER2> What exactly does it do?

<comment><USER3> Supposedly prevents XSS attacks via submitted HTML.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> exactly! it try to remove "risky" tags from user inputs</comment>


Hands on with Ubuntu 14.04 - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/hands-on-with-ubuntu-14-04-the-best-ubuntu-desktop-ever-7000028578/ <comment><USER2> I'm very impressed with ubuntu lately. Despite all the drama in the blog space about their technical decisions, from a user's perspective it's a very stable and mature OS. Every upgrade fixes a few little things, makes things a little bit better, and most importantly doesn't break anything. There's very little to get excited about and very little to get annoyed about. It really does just work. On windows or even mac I would wait until a day when I don't have a lot of work that needs to get done to install a new version of the OS, on ubuntu i feel confident clicking okay on the upgrade notification, even if i'm in the middle of something important.

<comment><USER3> excluding the printing fiasco, you described Debian.

ubuntu is just fast in moving debian unstable packages to their own stable branch, and screwing usability just so they make the experience more apple- like.

<comment><USER4> Choices are better, no?

No one is preventing anyone from giving Debian a spin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using Xubuntu 14.04 for a couple of days.

With the exception of a different theme (out the box, which lasted about 10 seconds anyway) it feels exactly like Mint XFCE 16 (which is great).

Install was a breeze (I'd have been surprised if it wasn't these days), everything worked out the box, the ati open source driver with arandr works really well (on the 7750 at work and the 6950 at home) though there was some tearing when dragging windows on the 6950 (tried the usual suspects) so I installed the binary driver which took care of that.

All the software I use day to day installed with zero issues (vagrant, phpstorm, pycharm, oracle-java7, chromium, firefox etc).

I also upgraded by vagrant configs to Ubuntu server LTS 14.04 (it's nice not to have to monkey patch in newer versions of PHP and Postgres with a bootstrap.sh) also with no drama.

For me at least the days of "oh now, new release it's going to take 2 days to put everything back" are long gone, I'm back up and running in < 2 hours.

<comment><USER6> You can enable vsync at the foss driver level by doing the inverse of this:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Turn_vsync_off](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Turn_vsync_off)

if your dri default had it off.

<comment><USER5> Sorry when I said "(tried the usual suspects)" I should have pointed out that meant exactly what you posted.

Thanks anyway though :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or have the open source graphics drivers improved by miles. A couple of games running through Wine are getting similar frame rates with Gallium3D and Catalyst.

<comment><USER8> It isn't you. The AMD opensource team has been doing a terrific work lately, especially considering the small size (IIRC 4 people). DPM is the big thing, as it means that the gpu can raise the clock under load as it does on Windows, but they've done lots of work everywhere else as well.

Say thanks to Intel as well for driving the work on Mesa (It's thanks to Intel that Mesa got OpenGL 3.3 compatibility so fast).

Also Wine got some speedups as well (and an huge one should be coming soon with the stream patches).

Overall, I'd say that the Linux graphic stack has never been in a better state. We got official opensource drivers for Intel, official opensource drivers from AMD that are 50-80% as good as the closed one depending on your card, and unofficial opensource drivers for Nvidia that are usually good enough for non-gaming.

<comment><USER9> For some older Radeon cards (such as my 6630HD Mobile) I would recommend the open-source driver instead of Catalyst, as the performance is noticeably greater.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I've been testing it in a VirtualBox virtual machine (VM)"

Then how much was he really using it? Surely one of the first things Ubuntu did was make sure the OS runs in a VM. But how well does it run on real hardware? Does it detect the hardware properly? Does the video work? Does the suspend and resume work? Anything wonky about the ACPI? How about bootup--does it work on your Windows 8-certified hardware that has Secure Boot and UEFI? Did it install a bootloader properly? Does said bootloader properly handle other OSes on the system or does it hide them away, which is just as good as nuking them as far as inexperienced users are concerned?

Since it's in a VM, I doubt you have many files in there. How does it handle desktop search and indexing? What about connecting to your printer? Do the control panel-like gizmos work properly?

These "I installed it in a VM" style drive-by "reviews" are worthless. Everything he says is pure pablum. Wake me up when someone posts a real review that actually puts this system through its paces.

<comment><USER11> Fully agree. It should not be named "hands-on" if it's in the VM.

Fortunately, for me, it runs really great in real install. I even managed to make a dual-boot Win7 + Ubuntu 1404 and then inside Ubuntu tweaked a Win7 machine, that allows me to run my "physical" Win7 by booting and in a VirtualBox VM from Linux. Now I will boot Win7 very rarely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even though I haven't worked with this update much yet, I'm so inordinately happy about them bringing back local menus, I honestly hated the global menus and the update is worth it for local menus alone.

<comment><USER11> I fully agree, this is for me the "best" feature of 14.04 LTS (coming from a 12.04 LTS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > At the same time, it's kept one controversial feature: Built-in search > scopes for such commercial sites as Amazon and eBay

Wow, they really did it.

I searched for "web browser" and am presented with two web browsers "Firefox Web Browser" and "Browser" (?), followed by nine pictures of mens' shoes. A search for "Terminal" suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a gun, and a goth metal singer dressed in a Nazi uniform sticking his tongue out at me.

What a ghastly misfeature. Is a cryptic terminal command really the only way to disable this noise? The linked article couldn't even get it right (it's gsettings, not settings).

<comment><USER14> They used to have a disable option for the search stuff in the privacy settings, did they take it out?

<comment><USER11> You can disable the "search stuff" in System Settings -> Security & Privacy -> Search (tab).

This is what I immediately did. So, this is a shame that the article only mentions a command line method to switch it off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did the upgrade but I noticed no difference whatsoever to the 13.x that I had been using before.

I actually wasn't hoping for any changes other than being able to run 'skype' again (I broke the 32 bit libraries that skype 'needs').

Had it not been for skype working again and a small change in how the folders are rendered in the 'save file' dialog box, I don't think I would have guessed that my OS had been upgraded.

Maybe that is the future of upgrades - no perceptible difference whatsoever.

<comment><USER2> there's a few user-visible changes, but for the most part they are hidden behind a setting so you won't see them unless you enable them. personally, this one is my favourite: [http://imgur.com/lTncRkz](http://imgur.com/lTncRkz)

<comment><USER16> From 13.10 to 14.04 there are also an incredible amount of polish and small touches around Unity. If you aren't a consistent non-LTS user, you might miss them, but there are a lot of them and they _really_ add to the experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> anyone tried it native on a macbook pro retina yet?

and/or : best laptop for running it? I'm guessing a thinkpad or maybe one of the dell xps13 developer edition?

<comment><USER3> avoid dell. even if that ONE model was any good, which it is not, their entire line sucks for linux support.

get an asus. it was the first company to try shipping linux for real (not dev beta scams) and still pick the most linux friendly components (last time i checked)

<comment><USER18> Asus is also the company that ran an advertisement campaign titled "It's better with Windows".

No, thanks.

<comment><USER3> after they offered eeepc with linux snce 2006 and nobody bought :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes, xubuntu 14.04 is the best xubuntu I've ever used. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Been using linux distros and ubuntu 12.04 for about 2 years now. Linux is the shit but ubuntu sucks IMO. Very poor customization possibilites. Heavily reliant on python 2.7. Very bad support for other window managers than unity, dont ever try to mess with multiple window managers on ubuntu, it will ruin your week. With WAY FASTER alternative systems such as arch, funtoo, gentoo, knoppix and even debian. I have a hard time understanding how ubuntu could have gained the traction it has among developers.

<comment><USER21> Developer here. I simply prefer satisfying defaults over crazy customization possibilities. Also dash and being able to call any file menu item through it is super fast and mostly mouse-less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's such a shame they insisted on their timing schedule for this release. It means the biggest Linux distro is committed to running X applications natively for the 6 years to come.

Imagine how good it would have been for the Linux community as a whole if they would have been able to exclude X from this release. We came so close to finally shaking up the Linux user interface stack.

I wonder if they've had a discussion about moving the LTS down half a year or perhaps a year, just for Mir.

edit: To help a bit with the imagination part, if we'd have Mir in this release, then a whole bunch of big UI products could say in ~3 years that about 80% of their users are running Mir enabled desktops. That could aid them to consider moving to a native Mir stack, the increase of work on this layer would not only benefit Mir but also Wayland as a side effect. An even more beneficial side effect would the assistance of big companies like NVidia and AMD and perhaps Valve be to this process, if things go according to plan their drivers on Linux could benefit a lot from more well defined/thought out interfaces, something which again could benefit Wayland also.

<comment><USER2> LTS is supported for 6 years, but they release a new LTS every two years. pushing LTS back a year to wait for Mir doesn't really make sense when the next LTS is due only a year after that. And from what i've seen of Mir/Wayland, i suspect that one year is a pretty optimistic timeframe for actually moving away from X in a stable, production quality OS.

<comment><USER23> LTS is supported for 5 years

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really want to use Ubuntu for personal use, but still really miss it not having MS Office natively available.

I know this comment may seem lame here on HN but I just don't have the time to master OpenOffice or figure out the best way to manage compatibility when sending documents around the place.

<comment><USER25> Have you tried Office 365 online? I was surprised at how well it worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They should make the dock act exactly like Windows 7, put it in the bottom, remove the top panel.

<comment><USER27> I always customize my Win installs by moving dock to the left, same as Ubuntu. It makes sense on laptop with limited vertical space

<comment><USER11> I do the same on Windows 7 ;) I am wondering if it would be possible to get rid of the top panel altogether and put the information in the vertically aligned left panel, just like I have it on Win7. For maximized windows it would not gain anything, but for 2 side-by-side terminals it makes a (small) change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wonder how easy it is to install on a MacBook Air? My current one runs 12.04 perfectly - but I'm not sure I want to risk an update.

More importantly - does it still have wobbly-windows? :-)

<comment><USER29> 13.10 is fine here, but I haven't tried 14.04 yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Used to be on Ubuntu, but ever since I've started using Elementary OS I have had no use for anything else.

</comment><comment><USER31> Even a review on Linux can't help but mention some cryptic terminal command.

<comment><USER32> I hope you can sleep this night not worrying about the "Terminal" monster below your bed.

<comment><USER31> When I started programming, the computer didn't have a GUI, so I'm fairly comfortable with Terminal.

I also hear, year after year, how Linux is going to finally reach out of nerddom, and it always fails to do that, and it always will if the community keeps this mindset "you don't need to be scared of a little terminal, you will LEARN more about your computer".

Well, only us geeks want to learn more about our computers, others just want to do stuff, and they are right, that's why iPads are everywhere.

The old saying is still going strong: "Linux is only free is your time is worth nothing"

<comment><USER33> I disagree. I recently installed Linux Mint 16 (with Cinnamon as the DE) on my laptop and the experience was basically hiccup free:

\- Install was smooth (since I was installing on a separate drive, no fiddling with manual partitioning etc.)

\- Everything that a typical user wants worked post install without any extra steps - Music/Videos/Wifi connectivity/Internet/Hibernate/Suspend etc. all worked

I didn't have to launch the terminal for any of the above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is the best course of action for people that have been using 12.04? Upgrade straight way? Or wait (how long?) for this LTS to smooth out any potential edges? Other than the outdated packages (which seems to be a Debian thing, but that I've been able to work around by finding ppa's and building from source), I am decently happy with 12.04.

<comment><USER35> Is 12.04 the previous LTS release? I think I'm using the same one. To be honest, I'm sticking with it. I still have a few more years of support so I might as well just wait until kinks (if any) are ironed out.

<comment><USER36> Yes it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "the best ever".

This kind of expression is getting on my nerves, as it is used as a catchphrase for an obvious expectation about the product: "great news, no regression about it". Apple uses it too ("the best iPhone we've ever built") and it is losing all the little meaning it had thanks to the usual marketing hammering ; people probably still use it because it features the product name + best.

<comment><USER38> These titles annoy me too, it's kind of expected that the new release is better than than the previous one.</comment></comment>


David Cameron says Europe must get better at sending migrants home - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-david-cameron-says-europe-must-get-better-at-sending-migrants-home-10513581.html <comment><USER2> Isn't that the guy that fucked the pig?</comment>


How to Choose Between Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing Methods - <AUTHOR> https://www.fictiv.com/resources/starter/additive-vs-subtractive-methods

<comment><USER2> How to carve an elephant out of a large block of stone:

(Additive) Obtain a large block of stone.

(Subtractive) Remove all the parts of the stone that do not look like an elephant.</comment>


Expanding our global infrastructure with new regions and subsea cables - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/topics/google-cloud/expanding-our-global-infrastructure-new-regions-and-subsea-cables/ <comment><USER2> Africa has been left out in this great investment. Doesn't google have confidence with the potential of Africa?

</comment><comment><USER2> Very disapointing that with all that investment African has been left out.</comment>


App Previews Are the New Screenshots - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robjama/how-app-preview-videos-are-looking-with-ios-8-31b1f77ae26f

<comment><USER2> I almost never watch the videos in the Google Play Store. I know the Google Play Store lets you use longer videos, but even if they were only 30 seconds, I'd still probably browse screenshots</comment>


One-Step, Three-Factor Pass-Thought Authentication with Custom-Fit, In-Ear EEG - <AUTHOR> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00354/full <comment><AUTHOR> > "In-ear EEG offers a promising path toward usable, discreet brain-computer > interfaces (BCIs) for both healthy individuals and persons with > disabilities..."

</comment><comment><USER2> N = 7</comment>


Do you love or hate Google Now? - <AUTHOR>

I've alternately heard that Google Now is "creepy," and that it's super slick. What do you think of Google Now? Why? <comment> D-Train I think it's great. With social media, mobile tech, and the like, we've been going crazy with data. In many ways, I've been inundated. So to have something that is more relevant to me, I can appreciate that.

Though, I did have to turn it off on my S3 because it was killing my battery from 16 hours to 3 hours.</comment>


Cracking Security Misconceptions - <AUTHOR> https://labs.signalsciences.com/cracking-security-misconceptions-book-is-now-out-bdc2659fc87b#.1ckqf48dj <comment><AUTHOR> After founding an infosec company Signal Sciences in 2014, I've spent a number of years learning about and explaining many myths that exist on security and hacking. I just published a book with O'Reilly that is designed to provide some baseline information for people who don't have direct experience working in security debunking many of those myths.

It's called Cracking Security Misconceptions and it's available as a free ebook here: [http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/cracking-security- mi...](http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/cracking-security- misconceptions.csp)

It's only 35 pages so as to not require a huge investment of time to ingest by design. My goal in creating the content is that it can help you, or someone you know, understand the realities facing modern information security professionals.

~ Andrew, CEO Signal Sciences</comment>


China to lead world scientific research by 2020  - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7075698/China-to-lead-world-scientific-research-by-2020.html <comment><USER2> Slashdot discussion [http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/01/26/0231205/China- Will-L...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/01/26/0231205/China-Will-Lead- World-Scientific-Research-By-2020) where at least early on many were pointing out quantity vs. quality problems, some which go very deep (e.g. plagiarism). When I checked, no one was claiming China's _impact_ (something that has long been measured by citations) is significant.

ADDED: if you don't know what Cargo Cult Science is, check out e.g.: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science>

Just because you call it science and appear to be doing things scientists do doesn't mean you're doing real science.</comment>


Black truffles are similar to cannabis - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2884787/Black-truffles-similar-CANNABIS-Bliss-molecule-delicacy-creates-marijuana-like-high-humans-animals.html

<comment><USER2> This is an article about an article: [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141221-truffles-contain- bli...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141221-truffles-contain-bliss- molecule)</comment>


Johnny's Algorithms Homework - <AUTHOR> http://compgeom.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/teaching/pikachu.html

<comment><USER2> This wasn't particularly funny, and I don't think it's Hacker News.

Belongs on Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be funny if it were clever enough that the drawings actually answered the questions. That doesn't seem to be the case with any of them.

<comment><USER4> This is a case of "You had to be there." The assignment was pretty brutal, meant to weed out those who really shouldn't be in the class. In the aftermath those that were left got a pretty good laugh from Johnny. I still smile every time I see it, but it really is an inside joke.

If you ever get the opportunity to take a class with Jeff Erickson teaching you should take it, regardless of subject matter.</comment></comment>


MIT no longer owns 184.108.40.206/8 - <AUTHOR> https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-18-0-0-0-0.html <comment><USER2> That's too bad. I think universities should make these resources that they've been granted available to students and researchers.

Last time I was at the MIT media lab for a conference, I was able to get an unfirewalled external ip address from their wireless network. It was amazing. I briefly streamed live audio of a talk via shoutcast, but of course, nobody uses that stuff anymore. It really makes you ponder what a cloudless internet would be like.

A little over a year ago, my university gave up their generous range of IP addresses. You could plug in ethernet, and not just get an internet routable IP (albeit firewalled from incoming traffic from the internet), you would even be assigned a subdomain off of the school's .edu domain. It was great. Students ran servers in their dorms. Clubs ran servers. Some professors ran servers. Even though you couldn't listen on a socket for incoming traffic from the internet by default, it was unfirewalled internally. I had to briefly live in student housing, and I was able to connect to my server via the school's http proxy via corkscrew. There were so many cool uses for it. Students were encouraged to run web servers if they needed hosting. It was also much faster[1]

I think CMU still provides fairly decent network services.

It was an insanely useful utility provided to students, and any serious engineering school should do it.

[1] [http://www.speedtest.net/result/4339921583.png](http://www.speedtest.net/result/4339921583.png)

<comment><USER3> IPV6 solves this, plus even without you don't need anything close to this amount of IPs to do what you're describing. It's a fairly niche case to need that many public IPs and it seems a little crazy to hold that many just in case some researcher might want to use them.

Even your comment about streaming, seems like mainly nostalgia vs reality as you kind of admit. Any modern streaming infrastructure works from behind a NAT since most people are behind one these days.

<comment><USER4> I've tried to run IPv6 on my Comcast connection. Unsurprisingly, Comcast doesn't get the point of IPv6. They allocate one single IPv6 address to my router. That's right, ONE. LOUSY. ADDRESS.

This seems to be a "feature" of owning your own modem rather than renting one of theirs. I hesitate to even try to get this fixed via their tech support.

I guess if I want IPv6 connectivity, I'm either going to have to get a tunnel from Hurricane Electric (SIXXS is shutting down), or carve out some IPv6 space from my Linode and tunnel it to my home network.

<comment><USER5> Actually, Comcast supports DHCP prefix delegation (I'm led to believe everywhere, but it works at my home anyway), which is pretty much the Right Thing in this space. Your default DHCPv6 request is from a single client and it returns a single IP, as expected. And you can then do NAT across that if you want, which is what their default routers do.

But if you want a subnet, you can make a second DHCPv6 request with prefix delegation metadata, and the server will establish a route for a full /64 subnet to your existing IP and return it to you. Then you can hand these out however you want (though they won't give you bigger than a /64 so you can do internal subnet routing).

The only annoyance is that none of the existing Linux distros support this yet as part of their network client integration, so you have to script it yourself around dhclient (see the -P argument), which is a little hairy if you want to get the hooks right (I punted and just did it once manually and left dhclient running).

<comment><USER6> Linux doesn't support it? My Comcast router has a /64 given to it by Comcast and all my linux boxes connected to it work like a charm.. although I haven't been able to get my dd-wrt router to pass them on yet.

<comment><USER5> Linux supports it just fine, you have to do the integration on your own. If you want to use the distro-provided DHCP setup, you need to work out the NetworkManager hooks on your own to add the PD client at the right spots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My how things change. At one point in the late 90s, I had an entire MIT Class C subnet at my house.

Now, I've got 5 static IPs from Verizon FiOS on some ancient grandfathered plan. Years ago, they "changed" the addresses, prompting me to ask, "what part of 'static' is not clear?"

<comment><USER8> If you can find an ISP that supports IPv6 quite a few of them (maybe all?) support prefix delegation. A /64 isn't uncommon from ISPs in Seattle.

<comment><USER9> No friend of mine is on ipv6. No mobile phone I've seen supports ipv6.

Having an ipv6 prefix is useless to me (as someone that is behind the abomination called CGNAT / 'Dual Stack Lite').

<comment><USER10> > No mobile phone I've seen supports ipv6.

T-Mobile LTE has been exclusively IPv6 on most phones for some time now. I'm pretty sure other mobile providers have done the same or are in the process of doing so.

All my Android devices have supported IPv6 as long as I've had it running on my network. I don't have an iOS device but since T-Mobile sells them I assume they work with IPv6.

<comment><USER11> > I don't have an iOS device but since T-Mobile sells them I assume they work > with IPv6.

My iphone works perfectly with T-Mobile's ipv6 network -- it gets a v6 address of its own and also anyone who tethers to it also gets v6 address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Letter to MIT community: [https://gist.github.com/simonster/e22e50cd52b7dffcf5a4db2b8e...](https://gist.github.com/simonster/e22e50cd52b7dffcf5a4db2b8ea4cce0)

tl;dr MIT is selling off half of 184.108.40.206/8 (8 million IPs)

<comment><USER13> heh, so they got the 18/8 for free, refused to replace /8 with /16 like other universities did to help relieve IP shortage, but then they simply sold the 8 millions of the addresses for profit, while still hugging to remaining 8 million, even though that their student body size is only ~11,200.

I guess that's good for them, but it's still a dick behavior.

<comment><USER14> AFAIK, Stanford was the only other university with a /8 though I may be wrong. In any case, I'm not sure what the issue is with extracting money from Amazon for something they own. There are plenty of companies that were in early on that got /8s for relative pennies. Some even have two today by way of acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Off-topic: When broadband came to my hometown around 2003 it was build out by a local guy so I managed to ask him to provide us a static IP address. I am always amused when I visit my parents that their IP address is still the same.

Off-offtopic: The cable modem broke down once. We called the guy, he picked it up 20 minutes later, soldered the broken capacitor and we had our internet back in 2 hours. It was on a Saturday.

He didn't have to do any of that, he had monopoly on broadband on the entire area. Small ISPs are the best.

<comment><USER16> > He didn't have to do any of that, he had monopoly on broadband on the entire > area. Small ISPs are the best.

I'm guessing part of it is because they only preside over a small area that there's a human element to it, they must feel responsible for the internet of these people, and they're close enough to them (in the hierarchy) that that actually matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like they SWIP'ed out the subnets of 18/8, transferred that object to ARIN allocation, and transferred 18.145/16 to Amazon.

[https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-18-145-0-0-1.html](https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-18-145-0-0-1.html)

edit: Looks like a lot more than just 18.145/16, based on [https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/AT-88-Z/nets](https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/AT-88-Z/nets)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An updated list of MIT's IPv4 address ownership:

[https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/MIT-2/nets](https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/MIT-2/nets)

<comment><USER18> [https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-18-0-0-0-1.html](https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-18-0-0-0-1.html)

So they don't have 184.108.40.206/8, but they do have 18.104.22.168/9?

<comment><USER19> That's up to 8388608 addresses lost...

<comment><USER20> Sold, probably. Looking at [https://www.leadertelecom.biz/ips/transfer](https://www.leadertelecom.biz/ips/transfer), that could have brought in a nice sum of money (they ask #unicode code points in dollars per 65,536 addresses)

<comment><USER21> > "(they ask #unicode code points in dollars per 65,536 addresses)"

Could someone explain this? I feel like I'm missing something (not the 2^16 addresses, the "#unicode code points")

<comment><USER22> There are 1,114,112 Unicode code points (17 times 64k), and that particular site happens to charge $17/IP, so for 64k IPs they happen to charge $1,114,112. Same idea as "number of libraries of Congress" or "number of Empire State Buildings", but nerdier.

<comment><USER21> Thanks! That was very helpful.

edit: From wikipedia:

"Unicode comprises 1,114,112 code points in the range 0x0 to 0x10FFFF. The Unicode code space is divided into seventeen planes (the basic multilingual plane, and 16 supplementary planes), each with 65,536 (= 216) code points."

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wasn't it purchased by Amazon? I don't have a source unfortunately, except this reddit thread: [https://redd.it/668ffg](https://redd.it/668ffg)

<comment><USER24> [https://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=188.8.131.52?showDetails=tr...](https://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=184.108.40.206?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&showNonArinTopLevelNet=false&ext=netref2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really glad to see this happen. I (MIT alum) think this was a legacy of the past that had to change - MIT was just hoarding too many IP addresses. Not blaming MIT - it was a historical artifact, but most other universities had released theirs over the years and MIT hadn't.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does HP still own 15/8 and 16/8? I remember visiting there once and everyone had public internet addresses.

<comment><USER27> "public" in the sense of theoretically routable, yes, but most of them were firewalled off, so they might as well have been RFC1918 addresses for all the good it did you.

The worst part about getting 16/8 from Compaq was that it wasn't contiguous address space, so you couldn't use a single netmask for both. :(

<comment><USER28> It was contiguous, but didn't aggregate under a single bitmask. For example if it had been 14/8 and 15/8 (instead of 15/8 and 16/8) then they would have held the world's only /7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b For the uninitiated, can someone give a brief explanation of what that means?

<comment><USER29> Computers on the internet are pointed to by special numbers. Usually the special numbers look like 4 numbers with '.' like 188.8.131.52 Each of those 4 numbers can be between 0 and 255 so (to be more simple) the lowest special number would be 0.0.0.0 and the highest would be 255.255.255.255.

Back when the internet was still young, you would go to ARIN (the American Registry of Internet Numbers) and say "I think I need 256 special numbers" and they would give you a block of 256 of them. Something like 220.127.116.11 - 220.127.116.11. If you asked for about 65,000 special they might give you 22.214.171.124 through 126.96.36.199.

MIT (the Massachusettes Institute of Technology in Boston, MA, USA) was one of the first people to ask for special numbers and so asked for over 16,000,000 of them (this was 1/256 of all of them) and so MIT was given 22.214.171.124-126.96.36.199.

Now today, all of the special numbers have given to people and companies. This makes each special number extra special and large groups of special numbers very extra special. Since MIT had 16,000,000 of the special numbers all next to each other, they decided to sell half of their special numbers for a lot of money.

Edit: Simple English: [https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/](https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/)

<comment><USER30> I'm so old that I predate CIDR and in the old days before netmasks the netmask was essentially implied by the first couple bits of an ip address so all msb zero ip addrs were class A aka /8 allocations. All MSB 00 or whatever it was were class B implying a netmask of 255.255.0.0 aka a /16 allocation.

Before CIDR you couldn't route or advertise rando netmasks like a /9 or a /20\. There were no steps between a /16 and a /8 so if you convinced (someone, forget who) that you "need" more than 65K ip addresses (and MIT is big enough to need more, theoretically) then you got a /8.

A lot of noobs think ipv4 rolled out with CIDR; not so. For "a long time" people had to make due with classful routing.

From memory, isn't RIP v1 only classful routing compatible? Been awhile since I used something that old.

<comment><USER31> One of my friends took a CCNA class and had her mind blown by Class C != /24\. I was shocked they're still teaching anything about classful networking in 2017. I think the last time I saw RIPv1 was 1998.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> University of Michigan has a few /16s that they still lease to all devices on their network - wireless and wired.

</comment><comment><USER33> xkcd explained what a mess the allocations were ages ago: [https://xkcd.com/195/](https://xkcd.com/195/)

<comment><USER13> I guess that's just human nature, we are doing similar with IPv6 right now. The smallest allocation for IPv6 is /64 that's 1.84467440737096E19 addresses.

<comment><USER28> Only similar if you ignore that there are 2^64 available /64s. We're never going to be in danger of running out, so the use of /64s allows potentially interesting application of the host part of the address (uses so far include stateless autoconfiguration and privacy addresses).

<comment><USER34> > We're never going to be in danger of running out.

Just wait until every cell in your body has its own IP.

<comment><USER35> An estimate for the number of cells in an adult human being is ~37.2 trillion [1]. Let's be conservative and round that up to 40, and then assume that everyone on earth is an adult, too.

There are currently 7.49 billion people in the world [2]. Let's be conservative again and round that up to 8.

Multiplying these numbers gives us 3.2x10^23 cells. The IPv6 Global Unicast address space (2000::/3) is 125 bits wide, for 2^125 = 4.3x10^37 combinations. This gives us 1.33x10^14 addresses per cell.

Ofcourse, thinking about IPv6 in terms of number of addresses is wrong, because you should be thinking in terms of number of networks (/64). That gives us 2^(125-64) = 2.3x10^18 networks, or 0.000007 networks per cell, which is 268054250 networks per person.

I think we're okay.

[1] [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there- are-372-trill...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there- are-372-trillion-cells-in-your-body-4941473/) [2] [http://www.worldometers.info/world- population/](http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/)

EDIT: Fixed formatting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> LSC

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish all of those who own a /8 would release it unless they actually needed it, that + cgnat would really help with the ipv4 shortage.</comment>


TechCrunch & The Dark Side Of Communities - <AUTHOR> http://outspokenmedia.com/online-marketing/techcrunch-community/

<comment><USER2> _Arrington offers a fake mea culpa while erasing evidence as to who the guilty company could be and offering readers no insight into where exactly they were mislead. To me, that's dishonest. That's Arrington deciding that his connections are more important than his readers._

Arrington is a lawyer by trade, so he knows it's dangerous to post unfounded allegations and hearsay that directly relate to people under his employ (publishing hearsay about _other people's_ businesses, however, is journalistic privilege ;-)). Removing the actual posts shows more integrity than shuffling it all under the carpet.

 _[..] because Michael Arrington won't tell us which it was, every company on that list is now called into question. They are all potentially guilty_

Any company mentioned anywhere has "potentially" bribed someone to be mentioned. Lisa Barone, the author of this article, is _potentially_ a hermaphrodite (statistically), but that doesn't mean I should publish an entire article about my wacky suspicion (which isn't really valid - other than this weird article, she seems an entirely lovely person).

<comment><AUTHOR> Leaving existing stories in place isn't in any way dangerous to Arrington. They aren't either "unfounded allegations" nor hearsay. They may cause others to make unfounded allegations or rely on them as hearsay, but those are mistakes for others to make.

On the second point, Arrington said that the person in question had accepted gifts for publishing stories in the past. So that's not "potential" - at least one of the companies mentioned actually bribed him.

<comment><USER2> I was referring to his vague commenting on the issue, rather than the removal of stories - so I've amended my post to be a little clearer. But still.. surely pulling all of the stories off was a good move if, as you say, one/all/any of the stories posted by Daniel was payola of sorts.

TechCrunch stories are woefully ephemeral, so pulling old stories off is just too easy. 99% of their value has been extracted, so it's easier for him, I guess, to just make it all go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title of the article is misleading. The post is about TechCrunch firing an intern for being paid to write a biased article about a company.

The issue the author has is Tech Crunch didn't single out the company that bribed the intern instead they just pulled all the intern's article leaving 26 companies as possible bribers.

Any credible journalism/news organization will take these measures to protect itself from the damage to it's readership and lawsuits. I don't know if I can agree with the author.

<comment><USER4> I completely disagree. Credible news organizations would certainly name the guilty party and provide whatever evidence they have that something unethical took place.

They would also generally investigate each of the past articles by the author to check for problems. See, for example, Wired.com's handling of a reporter who fudged sources: <http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/05/67428> They hired a well- known investigative reporter for the sole purpose of checking the facts in all her past articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Storm, meet teacup.

Drama on the interwebs.

<comment><AUTHOR> One wonders if you had been around in 1972 and heard about some arrests at the Watergate hotel if you'd have said the same thing.

Perhaps it's a minor incident with no relation to anything. Or it could be the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER5> Hah, perhaps... Yet, I don't think that corruption at TechCrunch is quite as important as corruption at the very top of the US government... as much as it might seem to matter more to us :-)

Then again, I guess an argument could be made both ways. Touché.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I don't think it's as important as Watergate, just that the analogy (that a minor transgression may be isolated or indicating an endemic problem) works. Hyperbole is a useful rhetorical device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone who thinks that _some_ of the TC post are not paid post are delusional. It just happens that the kid was doing it on his own (and got called out) without going through the TC heads.</comment>


Shen more strongly typed than Haskell? - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/qilang/LsGvPTtVN9k

<comment><USER2> In short, no, because you can use the same method as discussed of defining a non-empty list type in Haskell, but that data type is not as useful as the regular list type, so it isn't what APIs expect or generate. To have functions which know (in their type signatures) when they'll return empty lists, you need some form of dependent types.

In fact, Haskell, in particular GHC with the right set of language extensions, is increasingly capable of implementing various strengths of dependent typing. See [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Dependent_type](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Dependent_type) for a discussion of various approaches and a very useful set of links to other resources, some of which discuss this exact use-case.

<comment><USER3> As you seem familiar with the topic, can you give me a concrete example of when dependent types would be necessary or useful?

If we look at Haskell's Maybe or Swift's option type we have a clear case: There is no ambiguity between an unset variable and a variable set to a null or zero value, i.e., we can clearly express that something isn't there. That allows us to avoid magic numbers as a (horrible) workaround.

What do dependent types gain us?

[Edit]

Rather than clutter up the thread, I'll thank everyone here for the detailed responses below. Really, really interesting stuff.

> All of the functions above depend crucially upon the compile time invariant > of having a fixed size list. They therefore work for any type-homogenous > tuple, for instance, but we'd have to define the functions for each tuple > independently. Using `Vect` we can classify the entire family of fixed-sized > type-homogenous vectors all at once and dispatch functionality across the > whole family.

That's pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again.

<comment><USER4> A tremendous amount.

Everybody's favorite example is fixed-size Vectors. You'd write them like

        data Vect : (n : Nat) -> (a : Type) where
          []    : Vect 0 a
          _::_  : a -> Vect n a -> Vect (n+1) a

and then we could statically ensure things like being incapable of taking the head of an empty Vect

        head : Vect (succ n) a -> a   -- even if n = 0, succ n = 1

Or, more cleverly, ensuring that two Vect append to their summed length

        (++) : Vect n a -> Vect m a -> Vect (n+m) a

But the real fun begins with things like "unsequencing"

        seq   : Vect n (a -> b) -> (a -> Vect n b)
        unseq : (a -> Vect n b) -> Vect n (a -> b)

Try to write that with plain lists [0] and you'll find that you are missing certain information about the inputs which make it impossible to do such that seq and unseq are mutual inverses.

You can define "zippy" `Applicative` instances for Vect which are not necessarily infinite (unlike List's ZipList instance). Also notice that the following definition of (<star>) is complete despite missing some "obvious" pattern matches... they can never arise and the types ensure it.

        instance Applicative (Vect n) where
          pure a = {- elided, but notice that this is tricky -}
          [] <*> [] = []
          (f :: fs) <*> (x :: xs) = f x :: (fs <*> xs)

We can also write a Traversable instance

        instance Traversable (Vect n) where
          traverse inj [] = pure []
          traverse (a :: as) = (::) <$> inj a <*> traverse as

and then we can get an "obvious" matrix transposition function

        type Matrix n m a = Vect n (Vect m a)

        transpose : Matrix n m a -> Matrix m n a
        transpose = traverse id

All of the functions above depend crucially upon the compile time invariant of having a fixed size list. They therefore work for any type-homogenous tuple, for instance, but we'd have to define the functions for each tuple independently. Using `Vect` we can classify the entire family of fixed-sized type-homogenous vectors all at once and dispatch functionality across the whole family.

As a final, much more sophisticated trick, we can look into why that seq/unseq bit worked. Essentially, what we have is that Vect n a is isomorphic with the function

        Vect n a ~ (Fin n -> a)

In other words, it's a function from the finite set of size `n` to values `a`. If we assume some isos and `flip`

        up : Vect n a -> Fin n -> a
        dn : (Fin n -> a) -> Vect n a

        flip : (a -> b -> c) -> (b -> a -> c)

then we can write seq/unseq trivially

        seq   : Vect n (a -> b) -> (a -> Vect n b)
        seq v a = dn (flip (up v) a)

        unseq : (a -> Vect n b) -> Vect n (a -> b)
        unseq f = dn (flip (up . f))

In a dependently typed language you can not only create types with these kinds of properties, express the isomorphism above, work generally over these kinds of structures, but you can even generalize the notion of "container" types, types which are functions from a particular shape to their values, in a way that is _far_ more expressive than Haskell would allow.

\---

And to be honest, all of the above are sort of silly examples. Far more sophisticated type invariants are routinely encoded in DT languages. It's hard to even begin talking about what's going on there.

[0] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25654641/is-it- possible-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25654641/is-it-possible-to- write-a-function-in-haskell-r-a-r-a/25655429#25655429)

<comment><USER5> I really like your examples with the vector whose size is controlled by the type. However, is that useful in practice? I suppose that your vector would be read from a file or a database (especially if you do data analysis), in which case you can't know in advance - at compile time - what size the vectors will have.

I suppose it can still work if you want to do things with the covariance/correlation matrix: you may not know the number of rows before hand, but you know the number of columns, or know that two data sets will have the same number of columns.

<comment><USER6> The n can come from the database, a file, or even user input from a text box. That's the point of dependent types: types can depend on run-time values.

<comment><USER4> Well, the n _must_ "come from" the actual data. You could not construct a vector of any other size n. It'll just be typed so as to be realized at runtime and then maintained. The functions by-and-large do not ensure that the vector is sized for a particular n, but instead that they respect whatever n ends up being true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haskell and similar languages are pretty hard to read for the beginners, so let me give some background:

As I understand it, the idea behind dependent typing is to safely separate a runtime check from the code that relies on the check. A runtime check can be done early in the dataflow and only done once (or at compile time for a constant), rather than repeatedly re-checked each time a function uses a value, and the compiler proves this is safe. For this to work, we must encode what we've proven (for example, the length of a list) into the return type at the time we do the runtime check. (Or for a constant, the compiler can calculate the type and we can remove the runtime check altogether.)

A very simple sort of check is just to make a NonEmptyList type and ensure that it can only be constructed if the list is non-empty. Everything downstream can rely on this with no runtime check at all. But I'm not sure this even counts; it seems like you need to encode more than one bit of data to make it a dependent type.

A more interesting example might be an unzip function that returns two lists that are proven to be the same length. In a regular programming language, the unzip function could return an EqualLenghtListPair type and then you could pass both lists around together, never having to check if their lengths are equal again. But the number of special-purpose types you need gets awkward fast so this isn't really practical without language support.

<comment><USER4> That's not really dependent typing. All of your examples are attainable without dependent types.

        data NEL a = NEL a [a]

        nel :: [a] -> Maybe (NEL a)
        nel []     = Nothing
        nel (a:as) = Just (NEL a as)

        data EqLen a b = EqLen [a] [b]

        unzip :: [(a,b)] -> EqLen a b
        unzip []          = EqLen [] []
        unzip [(a, b):rs] =
          let EqLen as     bs     = unzip rs
          in  EqLen (a:as) (b:bs)

A dependently typed language can of course _do_ these things (the most popular of them are strict supersets of HM languages after all) but generally they would use dependent types to construct richer and more flexible typing invariants.

<comment><USER7> Well sure, that was my point. It seems like, even without dependent types, you could do a runtime check to prove anything you like in a type's constructor, and then other code can rely on it being true. But that doesn't mean it's practical to introduce a new type for every possible assertion, nor is the compiler assisting you very much with your proof.

<comment><USER4> It's obviously a tradeoff, but dependent types can make the space of these assertion types more rich and also ensure that they are true by construction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not totally familiar with Shen's syntax, but it looks like something interesting is going on here. In particular, the judgement `pop` is being automatically inferred and shown as impossible on the empty list. This is somewhat significantly more powerful than the similar Haskell technique. I'm not sure how Shen's type system works---perhaps some kind of subtyping is at play?

Note, that power is a tradeoff in type systems. Typically, greater power can be beneficial for encoding more sophisticated predicates into the type system... but it'll almost certainly have consequences. Normally, power leads to a loss of inference, a need to pass around more type information to prove your claimed types, and/or loss of totality.

Whether the power is worth it depends upon your domain.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate upon in which domains that power is worth it? And when it is not?

<comment><USER4> As a polarizing example—proof assistants use dependent typing. Their goal is to express interesting mathematical theorems as types and then finding typechecking programs constitutes as proof of those theorems. They absolutely want power and richness over inference---you probably wouldn't want to write a program with an inferable type anyway. It would be too boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The comparison of Shen and Haskell caught my eye since Shen was mentioned in HN a few days ago, and I was looking into it. Since I've used Scheme and a port of Shen runs under Chibi Scheme, I wondered what error would show up in Scheme. If I manage to get Shen working (under Chibi) it will be even more interesting to see what it does.

Translating, the original problem was:

        (if (null? xs) (cdr xs) xs)

So:

        (define (mytl xs) (if (null? xs) (cdr xs) xs))

And:

        (mytl '())
        Error: (cdr) bad argument type: ()

It appears (mytl) emits a type error in this instance.

This is obviously a run-time error, and without specific effort I don't think it would be known at compile-time in the Scheme implementations I'm familiar with.

Since the Scheme expression appears to embody the semantics of the original problem, I'm inclined to think it shows an underlying difference in the handling of the null list between CL and Scheme implementation I used.

If I'm completely wrong, and I can't rule out that possibility, I hope someone will point in the right direction.

<comment><USER10> In Scheme asking for the car or cdr of an empty list is an error, and in Common Lisp it isn't (the result is the empty list itself).

In Shen you have "hd" and "tl" which use whatever the platform provides (in Scheme it is going to fail, in Common Lisp it is going to return the empty list), and "head" and "tail" which work the same on all platforms (it is an error to pass an empty list to them, just like in Scheme).

> If I manage to get Shen working (under Chibi) it will be even more > interesting to see what it does.

What problems are you experiencing? Please submit an issue on Github and I will look into it.</comment></comment>


I made a question and answer community for anyone going abroad - <AUTHOR> http://journeyfoxx.com <comment><AUTHOR> Founder here. I have been living and working abroad for 13 years and have made some bad location choices due to lack of anecdotal information on the internet, like the time I moved to a Thai island to be a geography teacher. I want to solve that problem with a simple Q&A hub for people traveling or working abroad to get informed. Any comments or questions welcome. Some background here: [https://medium.com/@gotmyrockpantson/why-how-we-travel-is- to...](https://medium.com/@gotmyrockpantson/why-how-we-travel-is-totally- wrong-an-934e707f2c3a)</comment>


How to Install Node.js on Windows 8 in 5 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://enbeeone3.com/install-node-js-windows-8-5-minutes/

<comment><USER2> cool !</comment>


Java API Lookup on iPhone/iPod touch - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301342772&mt=8

<comment><USER2> Booo. iTunes link. :(</comment>


How to hibernate a company - <AUTHOR>

I want to hibernate my company (s-corp, delaware) for a year and revive it back; what steps can 'take? Pls give me some perspective
Definitely will talk to cpa/attorney. Did any one do this? Appreciate sharing your exp thanks <comment><USER2> 1\. Keep filing your annual stuff in Delaware.

2\. Don't forget to keep paying your resident agent in Delaware.

3\. You undoubtedly registered your Delaware corporation in your home State because you're doing business there. Keep up to date with the annual filings there.

4\. Very important: keep filing tax returns. Even if you have zero income. Two reasons. (1) It is required. Corporations file even with zero income, unlike humans. (2) Your corporation is spending money (see items 1 - 3 above) so you might as well make a little tax loss that you can use to shelter future profits.

5\. Talk to your CPA about other peculiarities specific to you. E.g., sales tax returns if you've been filing them. E.g., payroll tax returns. E.g., local business license. In all of these cases, if you are just hibernating for a year it is easier to keep filing stuff with zero written on it than to log out of the system for a year then log back in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm assuming there is no revenue...

Just let it sit for a year doing nothing. The Delaware franchise taxes are minimal - much less than the fees and headaches you'll experience shutting down and restarting a company. I'm not aware of any "hibernate" option.</comment>


Veertu: OS X virtualization using Hypervisor.framework - <AUTHOR> http://veertu.com <comment><AUTHOR> Note: I'm not affiliated with Veertu, but I recently came across the product and found it very interesting. If you're interested in OS X's Hypervisor.framework, it was added as part of OS X Yosemite: [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/MacOSX/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/MacOSX/WhatsNewInOSX/Articles/MacOSX10_10.html)</comment>


How AI Could Help Reduce the Cost of Drug Discovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.leafscience.org/ai-and-research/ <comment><USER2> I did my AI project for uni on drug discovery. It's a really cool but super complex topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, indeed it is an interesting AI project. Initially we can train system to check redundant tasks and help in reducing total drug discovery time.</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Feature request, remove yourself from the leaderboard - <AUTHOR>

I know that the top entry on the leaderboard, pg's is invisible. I've had one too many 'you're a karma whore' messages and wouldn't mind a checkbox in my profile so I can remove myself from the leaderboard.<p>Maybe others would like that option too? <comment><USER2> Why do you think that removing your name from the leaderboard will matter? Will the name-callers even notice?

Rude people are rude people. If they can't complain about your karma they will complain about your socks.

My advice is to ignore them and carry on. Don't take criticism seriously unless it's serious criticism.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why do you think that removing your name from the leaderboard will matter?

Because the leaderboard has positive and negative sides to it.

The negative sides have to do with the people that think that HN is all about 'being in the top 100'.

The positive side is that you can see fairly easily who are the people that have spent a lot of time on the site, in other words who is here for the long haul and who is passing through.

On /. you get a similar feeling by looking at people uid#, here we don't have that so the leaderboard has some of that function.

> Rude people are rude people. If they can't complain about your karma they > will complain about your socks.

Ah, but they can't see my socks :)

> My advice is to ignore them and carry on. Don't take criticism seriously > unless it's serious criticism.

It gets a little tedious after a while and the negative returns from being on the leaderboard seem to outweigh the positive ones, hence the request.

<comment><USER3> Even if you remove yourself from the scoreboard, they can still see your karma by just going to your profile, I don't think the name calling would stop.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it would, otherwise I would not have asked. It seems a simple enough change to the code to me, but then again it isn't my call.

You know how YC always preaches that you should take your users feed back serious and all that ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a feature of pretty narrow appeal, so I don't think I'd want to clutter the source with it. (I'm not listed because no admins are, but the others don't have enough karma for it to matter.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's your call, I figured asking wouldn't harm. On my two bit websites adding that feature would take 10 minutes, and potentially the appeal is huge.

After all, for every person that removes themselves from the leaderboard another one gets the ability to make the decision.

Unless you think that the majority of the HNers is here to make it to the leaderboard, which is a possibility but I highly doubt that a majority here is taking the karma count as their reason for contributing.

edit: this is the third time in as many weeks that I get pretty negative email definitely caused by HN users, it's not at a level where I worry about it (that takes a lot more) but it is a nuisance and it spoils some of the pleasure of being here.

The biggest reason why I am here is because of the people, the second one is the ability to ask and answer 'Ask HN' style postings, the third is to learn and interact. None of that stands a chance of being harmed by a couple of idiotic emails.

I figure that by taking my name off the leaderboard I would make a statement about what I think HN is all about, which is _not_ the leaderboard, anything but.

The silly emails just made me think about it, and in that sense they served a purpose. The alternative, to make another account is also a possibility but then I'm still taking up that slot.

Even if the leaderboard does serve a purpose, which to me is simply to distinguish the frequent contributors from the rest (but for that the leaderboard is actually too small since HN has far more than 100 frequent contributors). I have gone through ever single profile on the leaderboard and visited the sites of the people listed there to see what they're up to.

<comment><USER5> Why don't you get a new username without the karma burden ;) You can keep yourself recognizable if you want, just use jacquesm2 and put a short comment in your profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not remove the leaderboard altogether ? I don't see what it brings, except competition because people want to get listed.

<comment><USER4> It rewards people for their contributions to the site.

<comment><USER7> the real reward would be if the top 100 people got the ability to add live dofollow links in their profiles. that way people would get a little bit of Google juice for their sites

<comment><USER8> That puts a horrible incentive on those who would do it just for the links.

The best incentives are non monetary. Real people are motivated by them.

<comment><USER7> Not really, the lowest # on the leaderboard right now is ~4.2K.

To get that you'd need to spend like 6-7 months on HN submitting quality stuff or making quality posts(need those votes). Noone is going to do all that for a single link, they'd rather spend that time adding their site to a bunch of directories or writing articles to submit to content farms.

<comment><USER8> I think you underestimate both the capability for automation and the motivation of the spammers.

<comment><AUTHOR> The motivation for the spammers would be the direct clickthrough from the new page that's what they're doing it for today, their accounts would never have a snowballs chance in hell to make it to the leaderboard.

Votingrings with sockpuppets would be detected long before they would get even near that level, presumably long before they'd reach even 10% of what it takes to get on the leaderboard.

There must be softer targets than the HN leaderboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's already a way to decouple your posts from the leaderboard: change your nick slightly.

<comment><AUTHOR> You suggest I create another account ?

That has other effects too, such as splitting the posting history / comment history across several accounts. And the 'sockpuppet' detector might not like that.

<comment><USER9> We can argue ad nauseam about the pros and cons of different approaches, but if you just posted as jacquesm_, the trolls who are under your skin about karma won't get their ammo, and the people that care to read your whole history can figure out how to get the rest of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, I can see one problem with that approach which will surface in a year or so, and I'll have to switch to jacquesm__ or something like that, but it's worth a try.

<comment><USER10> Unless you're getting seriously trolled via email, it sounds like a lot of work when you could just press the delete key and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> that's weird, I never had a single comment about my karma, and I have more than you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Must be my charming personality :)

<comment><USER7> do you get the hate mail via email or just in comments? Because if it's the former, that'd explain it, since I don't have mine in the profile

<comment><AUTHOR> Email.

And because the return is forged I haven't a clue who it could be. Not that that would matter much but it would at least give an indication why.

The only thing I can think of that could cause this in recent memory is this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1035080>

It generated a fair amount of email, not all of it positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Feature requests belong on the feature request thread.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363>

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought you were going to say that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe another way to achieve the same would be to allow optional anonymous posting. (With 2 caveats)

1\. There's a way to recognize the same user in a thread - maybe color, or some way to say "This is the same user that you just replied to".

2\. admins etc can see who you really are.

I think then you'd be able to truly let your comments win/die on their own.

</comment><comment><USER13> jacques, sorry to hear you're getting harassed enough to make this feature request. I don't pay any attention to the leader board (or my own karma), but I guess some do.

I think most of us can tell the difference between a great contributor such as yourself and a karma-whore.

</comment><comment><USER14> What, you mean HN isn't about karma-whoring one's way to the top of the leaderboard?

Damn, I've been had!</comment>


Show HN: Play tictactoe with your friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.tictactoe.io

<comment><USER2> Nice app. Wish there was someone to play!</comment>


Twitter May Be a Takeover Target, but Google Is Unlikely to Take It Over - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/08/04/twitter-may-be-a-takeover-target-but-google-is-unlikely-to-take-it-over/ <comment><USER2> I'm always in favor of microsoft blowing more of its cash reserves... I was so pissed when the yahoo deal fell through.

</comment><comment><USER3> Twitter is a hot potato. I don't see any potential buyers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would Google buying Twitter attract regulators?

</comment><comment><USER5> Yahoo should buy them.</comment>


Livetwittering of YC demo day going on now - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/davemcclure <comment><USER2> Do people normally twitter asynchronously, writing them down with pencil and paper, or jotting notes on their hands, saving them up until they get to a computer so they spend the proper amount of time composing rich, yet dense, prose taking those 140 characters beyond their regular limit?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> search twitter for #YC for more updates</comment>


An Interview with McKenzie Wark on the 10 Yr Anniversary of "A Hacker Manifesto" - <AUTHOR> http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/courting-vectoralists-interview-mckenzie-wark-10-year-anniversary-hacker-manifesto

<comment><USER2> Irritating author Mckenzie Wark rips off a culture he does not understand and does not participate in; produces lots of verbiage and attempts to colonize cyberspace with a sad mixture of rehashed postmodernist philosophy and tragic dreams of revolutions past and never-were.

Sorry, but Mckenzie Wark is not a "hacker" in any sense of the word. As near as I can tell he's a careerist whose main skill is a mastery of the politics of the echo chamber. His obscurantist style is a regression to the worst excesses of post-hegelian academic discourse. And no matter how technophilic it is, cannot mask the fact that the author does not know what he is talking about.

That academic philosophy provides a welcoming habitat for such authors is an indictment of the academy; not a valedictory for it's inhabitants.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "I think the possibilities for new futures come not from resisting but from accelerating technical development even under present conditions. There's no way back; we can only go forward."

Brilliantly summed up.</comment>


Microsoft's Hypocrisy on DACA - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2019/07/microsoft_s_hypocrisy_on_daca.htm <comment> Const-me The article looks like BS. The main source is this link:

[https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&commi...](https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00193342&contributor_name=C00227546&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020)

According to that web site, quite a few other companies did the same, at the same day. Some even donated exactly same amount.

[https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&commi...](https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00193342&contributor_name=C00075341&contributor_name=C00186288&contributor_name=C00428623&contributor_name=C00502906&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020)

I think it's either creative accounting, or donations matching. Probably in combination with lazy payments processing, e.g. all transactions from March are labelled "March 31"

<comment><USER2> You don't know what you're talking about, to be honest. If you're going to call me out on BS, then state your claim.

<comment> Const-me > If you're going to call me out on BS, then state your claim.

Sure. The title says "Microsoft's Hypocrisy on DACA", and the article focuses on Microsoft.

Meanwhile, many other companies did the same: Facebook, Google, Motorola, Verizon, Home Depot, UPS, Accenture, GE, Comcast, Siemens, and many others.

You ignored the rest of them. You have cherry picked a single data point from a large publicly available database, and based your article around that.

May I ask why?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, so I'm seeing a lot of these (googles pac as well), can someone confirm whether these are deliberate donations by the company, or whether they're corporate donation matching? (I don't know whether the donation matching that tech companies do restricts contributions to political orgs)

<comment><USER2> Corporations can't match donations to political candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I don't like what Microsoft's PAC is doing, and I agree that probably many employees don't really know where exactly the money goes to (OTOH, I'm sure some employees explicitly agree with its political aims!), I also consider it harassment to contact others about their donations.

These are co-workers, for god's sake! The people going around pestering donators aren't some randos on Twitter that you just block. They are people you can reasonably expect to meet in an "official setting" later. They are people some of which you can reasonably expect to be higher up in the hierarchy.

HR is totally right to shut that down, hard.

The activists should do what Maciej is doing here: create publicity. And certainly not contact any of their co-workers directly.

</comment><comment><USER5> From what I've read, Microsoft Corp. actually distances itself from its PAC. I've heard many times that employees aren't in line with the politics they are pushing. I'd be interested to hear more about how such a thing comes about.

<comment><USER6> Then _why have the PAC at all_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the author is confused or biased. Corporations cannot use corporate funds to make donations to political candidates. That's why PACs exist; and they are entirely funded by employees.

I suspect that while a lot of its employees are left-leaning, (just like in the general population) there are some right-leaning as well, and the PAC cannot prevent those from making their donations to whomever they choose.

Microsoft doesn't donate any of its own money to anyone (they would be breaking the law if they did). Microsoft employees do.

<comment><USER2> I don't think you understand how a corporate PAC works. Employees pay in, and the money is allocated by a group of DC consultants chosen by company management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does an organization like MS gain when they "sue" the government like that? What can happen?

</comment><comment><USER9> If they cared that much about helping people they would focus on open sourcing their OS and making progress to benefit society as a whole, not backroom deals for government contracts.

<comment><USER10> God, why are you people like that? Article about a social issue, immediately jump back to foss. Is that all the politics the audience of HN is interested in? I could make a remark about the dominating demographic in here right now, but i'll leave it at this metacommentary. You know who you are, "foss is the most important issue" people.

<comment><USER11> The problem with discussing politics here is that if you aren't on the right side of history (as determined by groupthink) then you very quickly find yourself shadowbanned or outright banned.

So don't expect a nuanced discussion of politics here.

<comment><USER10> I'll be honest. With that comment I expected to find something between alt- right and neoliberal shit in your comment history.

Positively surprised.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud - <AUTHOR> http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/seth-godin-advocates-click-fraud/ <comment><USER2> Don't use a screwdriver to open bottles; use a bottle opener: <http://tipjoy.com>

<comment><USER3> I don't think the analogy fits perfectly though.

This sort of clickfraud is like using someone elses bottle opener to open the bottle vs buying your own bottle opener.

Clicking on adverts, you're using advertisers money to reward the website, instead of using your own.

Clearly it's not a good thing to advocate, but you can sort of see why some people may decide to do it.

A better suggestion IMHO would be for websites to use pay per lead/sale affiliate links, and just ask that if people were already going to buy something, that they use the websites links, thus giving the website a commission. That way no one is defrauded.

<comment><USER4> I had an idea for a browser extension that would rewrite all "sponsorable" links, whether they already were from a certain affiliate or not, to be from yours. You'd register at the extension's site and it would then automatically register you at all the sponsorable sites they supported. Best of all, the extension wouldn't be fixed to any individual donatee; rather, users would be able to click buttons on sites that read "sponsor me/us from now on", and switch the extension's target. There could also be a menu to select from previously used sponsors, obviously.

<comment><USER3> A more general idea for blogs/forums... When anyone points to a product that is recognized as having an affiliate program, modify the link to capture the commission and give it to the blog/forum owner.

Could quite easily be done just as a small javascript include and could work pretty well provided they get enough people posting links to products/websites with affiliate programs.

<comment><USER4> The last part of my idea, I figured, was essential to its success--if it wasn't the _consumer's_ choice that caused already-affiliated links to be repurposed, it might break those "common carrier" rules that allow a lot of more questionable forums to exist (would an ISP be allowed to embedd an ad- blocker in their traffic proxies without then doing "decency filtering" censorship?). Additionally, users might not like the idea of their own links being hijacked in this way, filtering the scripts out _with_ adblockers ;)

<comment><USER3> True, I agree it'd be best to be completely upfront about it with the users, and possibly give them a way to opt out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First, I think it's too easy to say "But only click on ads you like! It's not click fraud then!". The problem is that this argument is used both by people who are trying to make a valid point, and by people actually advocating click fraud ("Click on our ads or the site will shut down. But only click on ads you like, wink wink nudge nudge"), and it's pretty much impossible to tell the difference, especially from something as short as Seth's original post.

But mainly, I disagree with him on the form of tipping.

My form of tipping is to give a thumbs up on Stumbleupon, or even on Digg or Reddit. If it's not on Stumbleupon, even better, I submit it!

For ad-supported content, I think eyeballs is a fine currency. I tip with something that, in a way, belongs to me: a very tiny slice of my online "reputation" on social bookmarking services, exchanged for a chance for the author to get more eyeballs, which might click on ads they're genuinely interested in.

In Seth's scenario, I'm tipping with someone else's (the advertiser's) money. That doesn't feel right to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've always been surprised the CPC model works at all (and looking at Google it works like hell!), and this kind of reasoning (regardless of its ethical considerations) is one of the reasons.

<comment><USER7> It works well because Google has all kinds of algorithms for detecting fraudulent clicks and not charging advertisers for them.

<comment><USER8> But Google can't detect when someone makes a one-off ad click for content they like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No he doesn't.

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/beating- the-...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/beating-the-sta.html)

<comment><USER10> The gist of the original was 'click to say thanks, which all by itself is a nice deed for the author'.

The gist of the clarification is 'click _and pay attention to the pitch on the landing page_ to say thanks, which over time will change click-ads to work more like TV, which would be healthy for the ad environment'. (Um... yuck!)

The original formulation sounded authentic, albeit essentially advocating click fraud. The second sounds like backtracking, but has within it the core of an idea in the TipJoy mold:

What if _some_ contextual ads were explicitly of the form, "we'll tip the author X if you watch our Y second pitch", and their TOS allowed sites to encourage clickers?

Then you wouldn't be undermining the value of traditional cost-per-click ads, you'd be adding another variant to the attention-market that works like what Godin wants. It'd be a little like an interstitial (or TV ad), but appear only after you enjoy the content. (An 'afterstitial'?)

'TipWithAdvertisersMoneyJoy'?

<comment><USER11> Great idea: only requires a few advertisers to dedicate some fraction of their ad dollars to sites they like.

Does Google AdSense allow you to pick sites you want your ad to appear on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> GREAT point, the writer clearly read between the lines here. Though I think saying he advocates click-fraud is a bit much, this is a good point in stating that advertisers are losing ROI from people clicking ads to say 'thanks' when they really don't care about the marketed product, much less would even buy it. Fantastic article, brief it may be.

</comment><comment><USER13> Were this to become popular practice, surely:

(1) Overall advertising industry spend would remain constant. CPC would go down. Distribution of advertising revenue _may_ shift slightly towards sites with more "savvy" users.

(2) If, miraculously, distribution shifted significantly, advertisers would view this as damage and work to route around it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Better advice would be 'Take time to look at ads on sites you like'

<comment><USER15> Its actually the opposite, by natural instinct. Its all about finding what you want - irrespective of whether it is from the shop owner or offers or ads. If you don't find what you want. There is NO reason to sympathize whatsoever.

For blogs and content site, let them have a donate button which says on the face to show gratitude than promoting click fraud this way.

In the ideal case,

\- If you have a decent site (read business not arbitrage or lead gen sites), you must be making more money from serving the customer yourself than letting him/her navigate away from your site.

\- Ads are meant to only complete the user experience. Like say I am searching for a "black leather high heel sandal" and the site doesn't have the content relevant, their last attempt to serve the customer should be to show relevant ads as someone out there might serve me.

\- Ads are about monetizing a visit.

All adnetworks are aggressively behind click fraud for the very same reason.

However its a bad bad world! :) So to survive most are forced to shed away virtues and values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do this already. If I see something really good I see if there's an ad to click on.

</comment><comment><USER16> In addition to what others say, it also violates the terms of most ad networks. Inciting users to click will get you quickly booted from many ad networks.

</comment><comment><USER17> this certainly is a zone Google should be aiming for (but not via g. adsense) - hopefully (for them) pre-empting any widespread cultural adoption of this techinque for tipping a creator, which would be totally unsustainable</comment>


Show HN: Polypane, a cross-platform browser for responsive web development - <AUTHOR> https://polypane.rocks <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! I made Polypane to help me with designing and developing responsive websites.

Building responsive websites is difficult, and communication responsive designs is tricky too. Polypane addresses these issues in a way that makes it ideal for me to use as a main development browser, and I hope it does for others too.</comment>


Tell HN: Take my idea – PC keyboard you can put in the dishwasher - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Logitech already did, but I'm not sure it's available anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can put any keyboard in your dishwasher.</comment>


Facebook to Set I.P.O. Price Range at $28 to $35 - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/facebook-to-set-target-after-market-close/?hp&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> That would be approx. $94 per active user. I know there have been social networks which went over the counter at that price before, but looking at them now I would not touch this stock with a ten foot pole. I certainly can't think of any way to extract that much money from my account. Ads? I know that this reflects not the current status but future expectation, but I cannot imagine any way how Facebook can fulfill those expectations. They have nothing, which when taken away would make users hurt. Other social networks stand in line.

<comment><USER3> Put another way, Facebook is expecting to be able to create $94 of cash for each of its current active users over the future to eternity, discounted by an appropriate factor. That doesn't seem outlandish: it's $0.80/mo per user of value over 10 years. If they add users, it's less. If they add/extend their product offerings/partnerships/etc., the numbers seem a lot more achievable.

That said, I'm not buying the IPO because it seems fully valued already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a stock price of $31.50 would give facebook a P/E ratio of around 60. For comparison, GOOG is 18.5 and AAPL is 14.

More financials are available from the updated S-1: [http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/00011931251220819...](http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512208192/d287954ds1a.htm)

And it looks like Q1 2012 net income was actually lower than Q1 2011. Oops!

<comment><USER5> Oops misread OP

<comment><USER6> That's why its compared to the same quarter last year (Q1 2011) and not sequentially

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know why FB isn't doing something like Google's OpenIPO for their IPO?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIPO>

<comment><USER8> It's not at all clear that OpenIPO produces the best outcome for anyone. It was certainly sub-optimal for Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I suppose (judging by the comments here and in previous threads) everyone on HN w/ a brokerage account will be shorting FB's stock as soon as it comes out, then?

It's a pretty safe bet that it's being overvalued, but I fear the hype of FB stock amongst the common man is going to keep the price artificially high for a little longer than it would normally. Might not be until the release of the first or second quarter results that people see what a farce it is.

<comment><USER10> I believe that FB is way overpriced, but as Keynes said:

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

...so shorting it is still risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case anyone else as confused about what an IPO road show entails, here is a description I found: [http://moneycentral.hoovers.com/business- information/--pagei...](http://moneycentral.hoovers.com/business- information/--pageid__1960--/global-msn-index.xhtml)

<comment><USER12> Here is the road show preso: <http://facebook.retailroadshow.com/launch.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So how can us normals get in on this?

<comment><USER14> If you mean "How can I buy stock at $25 and sell it right away to the general public for $35 to $50 on the same day?" Then the answer is, "Sorry, you can't."

If you mean "How can I create a company that will allow me to sell a future interest in the company for way more than I put into it?" Well that answer is "Play the tech startup game."

During the Dot-Com bubble a company often had a 'friends and family' plan where if you had a family member working there or knew someone you could participate in some small way in the IPO. I know families that no longer talk to each other (even now over a decade later) because of that 'opportunity' so I'd approach it with caution if offered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why oh Why is the headline about the stock price? Apple's price is $585ish right now. Apple is not 10 times more expensive than Facebook would be-- only a bit more than 5 times as expensive. Facebook's price range is around $86B.

It seems a lot of people want to buy a car for a "monthly payment they can afford" and car dealers have long sold people terrible terms and terribly overpriced cars by structuring the "monthly payment" lower so the person thinks the car is cheaper. Its amazing people fall for this.

Yet people react the same way to stock prices and NYT is putting the stock price in the headline?

How about "Rather than the $100B expected, Facebook is set to IPO at around $86B".

And more importantly-- and relevant to anyone who might want to buy the stock-- what's that work out to as a PE[1]? Doesn't appear anywhere in the NYT article that I could see.

So, is $86B expensive? Cheap? We don't know.

[1] On a trailing twelve months basis. I'm sure its in the prospectus, and anybody with financial literacy will look it up before buying the stock, but I still bet that a lot of people will say "$35? I can afford $35!" or "I've got $3,500 in my brokerage, I'll buy 100 shares! Can you imagine what those 100 shares will be worth when Facebook catches up to google and is priced at $350 a share?!" I don't think Facebook will be worth $860B+ in the next decade.

<comment><USER16> As the phrase goes, a fool and his money are soon parted. Along the same mindset are people who want to wait for a split to get in. I always chuckle a little inside when I hear that and then try to educate on why that's not necessarily a good thing.

Back to Facebook. I haven't looked at the financials, but regardless of what they are it's safe to say the share price will rise quickly due to the reason you stated, and that's of course why they did it.

A lot casual investors will see this as a way to fund their child's college education and jump in as soon as they can, no matter what the mark-up. Who knows, maybe this is the next MSFT or AAPL. We'll see where everything settles after the irrational exuberance of the IPO hits. I don't think this will be another GRPN or ZNGA. Even though they were both rather popular, neither of them had the number of eyes on them that Facebook does. This is set to be the most oversubscribed IPO in as long as I can remember.

<comment><USER17> > Who knows, maybe this is the next MSFT or AAPL.

Or the next bubble?

Seriously, if you are young enough there is nothing easier and more compelling than leaving Facebook, and Facebook cares a lot about having young people. Why is it so easy to leave? Because youngster do not like their past, they do not like to see themselves as kids. It took a very long time for me to be able to look at a picture of my younger self without instinctive rejection. Only when you are on the "other side" of life that you value past pictures of your life.

Why was Instagram so successful? Some other may hvae said it but still, what strikes me the most is why so many people did use Instagram app to share pics instead of Facebook app. It can't be solely based on UI diffs. It is more because Facebook is perceived as an archive where everything goes if anyone is interested, a trashcan if you will.

I'll not bet a cent on FB. Moreover, we HN readers should not put all our eggs in the same bag, our work, interests, knowledge, passions are anchored to technologies, let's anchor our bank accounts to some other place.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Scientific 7 Minute Workout App - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jhdigitalsolutions.freesevenminuteworkout

<comment><AUTHOR> The Scientific Proven Seven Minute Workout for Android - Workout for the "I do not have enough time" people :)</comment>


Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000) - <AUTHOR> http://ask.slashdot.org/story/00/08/09/1858219/what-did-objective-c-do-wrong

<comment><USER2> Is Objective-C really popular now? I mean would people volunteer to use it, if they weren't forced by Apple?

One indicator would be that there would be ports of Objective-C to many platforms, is that the case?

<comment><USER3> We've been using it for over a decade (small part of a major defense company). We do not (and have never) targeted any Apple operating systems.

<comment><USER4> Could you give some background on how that decision was made? I've only seen objC used in only a few situations. Usually academic and businesses that bought into NEXT computers. I've met a few neck beards who used it in Linux on GNUStep projects.

Outside of Apple and the few examples I haven't met anyone who has decided that objC was an obvious choice.

<comment><USER5> objC was common for a time in the NYC financial industry, because of in-house use of NeXT computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another datapoint for my theory for how Slashdot worked: the usual mob made enough actual experts mad enough to comment and other annoyed clueful people moderated those comments up.

From what I have seen, Apple succeeds in part because they have a corporate culture that fosters good OO and good software architecture. Most companies through the early 2000's didn't have enough BS filtering capability to accomplish this. (Only the top 10% to 25% of shops had that, I would guess.)

Add to that technical capability, the actual ability to market and an understanding of UX/design, and you start to understand how they can execute so well.

<comment><USER7> "Another datapoint for my theory for how Slashdot worked: the usual mob made enough actual experts mad enough to comment and other annoyed clueful people moderated those comments up."

This made my day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I heard about Objective-C before C++. The big complaint I remember about Objective-C was that it had a very different syntax for the O-O parts. When C++ came along, it was seen as having O-O more integrated into the C language. Also, I think Borland's Turbo C++ was a big boost for the language, which probably led to Microsoft adopting C++ rather than Objective-C. Also, I think the strong type checking and fast polymorphic dispatch were attractive features.

Another thing to remember is that compilers were expensive back then. You couldn't just download a language from the web and try it out. Trying a new language mean an investment of several hundred dollars, and so you tended to just stick with your first choice. Turbo C++ was probably the first O-O language available for less than $100, so that became many people's introduction to O-O.

I found C++ to be complex and difficult, but I thought that was just the price to pay for O-O. Later, when I learned Smalltalk, I realized that was not necessarily the case.

</comment><comment><USER9> Stats on popularity from TIOBE:

[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html) (Obj-C now the 5th most popular and quickly rising)

<comment><USER10> I always wondered if that popularity is tied to Apple devices. I mean... are there projects using Obj-C out of an Apple context?

Other sources:

<http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/> <https://github.com/languages>

<comment><USER11> > are there projects using Obj-C out of an Apple context?

It's the same as 12 years ago: just GNUStep and things in the GNUStep halo like Étoilé. Sony started a project to put GNUStep on mobile (SNAP) a few years ago and promptly dropped it.

> I always wondered if that popularity is tied to Apple devices.

There's no doubt about that.

<comment><USER12> SNAP was a very strange story. I tried to google what happened and on 25 Nov 2010 all reported "big news: Sony is using Obj-C with GNUstep!" and two days later on the 27th "Sony killed SNAP!"

[http://blog.deliciousrobots.com/2010/11/27/sonys-changes- to-...](http://blog.deliciousrobots.com/2010/11/27/sonys-changes-to-gnustep- gui-library-adding-touch/)

<comment><USER11> The word on the street was that they got skittish about stepping on Apple's IP. Which is a shame, because GNUStep doesn't get nearly enough attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The (non)-success of GNUStep speaks volumes about how popular the ObjC library would be if it weren't for the monetary incentive provided by Apple.

<comment><USER14> I think the non-success of GNUStep is rooted in another problem: it is a beast to get running. I tried to get a GNUStep toolchain on my Mac when I started ObjC. No dice. Its really _hard_ to start. If GNUStep was as easy to start with like, say, QT, it would be much better.

<comment><USER13> You can look at that from another angle: Nobody cared enough to make decent tools for GNUStep, while many care about other languages (c, c++, java, python, ruby etc). Linux programmers are keen to copy UI effects from Apple, but so far they seem to keep away from its programming language

<comment><USER14> Considering the work that ran into GNUStep, its window management, the libraries, etc., I think its the typical programmers oversight: it runs for me, why should I care to run it elsewhere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool link and a flashback to 12 years ago. Who would have known?

</comment><comment><USER15> Bah, I've used Obj-C for a couple of multi-month stints just because I _wanted_ to like it. I tried my hardest to get into the groove of it, but I just find it to be a really weak way to add objects on top of C.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does the story really have just 15 comments or is /. just bugged? Too bad that threading of legacy stories seems borked.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unlike most of you Hacker News readers may think, Apple devices are not common out there (yes, I know, there are iPhones - yet they're too expensive and most of their applications are NOT being coded in Obj-C), so Obj-C didn't catch on yet.

<comment><USER18> 6 months ago, there were 250 million iOS devices had been sold - that's iOS only, no Macs. I make that one for every 28 human beings on this planet. What number would tip this so that you considered Apple devices to be common?

<comment><USER19> To be fair, many people own multiple iOS devices.

<comment><USER20> A small number of geeks and a fair number of _households_ own more than one iOS device. Most people don't.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps, but equally most iPad owners seem to also own an iPhone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>