100 Days of Meditation - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1umv8MDX3ahdybOV0iis31t34Nw0weoAOnMJ8Fqogy5o/edit <comment><USER3> If you don't have access to meditation center book "Mindfulness in plain english" seems like not newagey introduction to the subject. It describes Vipassana. It's almost like Zazen, but slightly different. In my understanding Zazen is Mahayana buddhism version of Vipassana, which comes from Theravada buddhism, but I am just a begginer so I can be horribly wrong.

I started meditating recently after reading MIPE. I'll try to find a teacher as soon as I can. What got hooked me up was some research that it improves cognitive performance: [http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-zeidan.pdf](http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-zeidan.pdf) . There's some evidence that long term meditation changes structure of the brain and improves mood and attention outside of meditation practice: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation#C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation#Changes_in_brain_due_to_prolonged_practice_of_meditation) . This post seems like good encouragement as well: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38947/is- prac...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38947/is-practicing- meditation-a-good-or-bad-thing-for-programmers) .

One thing which I notice the most is increased ability to deal with distractions and staying focused on boring subjects . It is essentially what one practices during meditation. Dealing with distractions is very important skill for programmer: [http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer- interrupted/](http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/) . What's more it's kind of skill, that is hard to develop without active practice. I can't think of better way of developing it than meditation.

<comment><USER4> "Mindfulness in Plain English" is available on-line here:

[http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html](http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html)

(Scroll down for the on-line version.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good stuff. Sitting still for 60-90 minutes has the purpose of eliminating the distractions from paying attention to your body. This practice also has the benefit of hopefully allowing the ego to settle some, and perhaps even allowing the baseline level that the ego is engaged to be less - or start towards that path anyhow. As you said, stress still maintains the same - <USER2> actually will feel potentially even more vivid, though that is likely counter- acted with the ability to process things easier. Learning other things, and doing deeper guided meditations and breath work, like yoga nidra - is a good way to lessen that. Physical movement, asanas - or yoga as a whole, meditation being a part of yoga - is a good way to help physically-caused stress and baseline stress reduce; There's a biofeedback mechanism: tight muscles tells your mind you're stressed, you being stressed tells your muscles to be tight. "Nice" little loop there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks--I will try out Yoga; other people have also told me that it has a similar effect.

<comment><USER6> my thoughts as a yoga practitioner: Yoga is, first and foremost, a meditative practice. What separates it from sitting meditation is that the "hack" it employs not only combines breath awareness, but an ACTIVE breath/body/mind awareness. By moving through asanas, still using the breath as the "guide", one's awareness becomes on breath, on muscle, on bone, on gravity, balance, and all the subtleties of the mind and body's reactions. For example, one begins to "feel" what it is like for the subconscious to instinctively tighten muscles under slight distress, and learn how to gain increasing control over these subconscious processes as one's awareness becomes ever more focused and relaxed. Another example is one learns to feel "losing their breath" when they have lost attention to it and their body, and are stressing themselves out.

An interesting TED talk describes the seat of awareness as a primitive network of neurons in the brainstem and body, the network that gives one a sense of "I am" and experiences the rest of the neurological processes. [http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70236306?strkid=1954165956...](http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70236306?strkid=1954165956_0_0&trkid=222336&movieid=70236306)

If true, meditation and yoga can be thought of as techniques that progressively still the later evolved "higher" thought processes, and turns one's awareness back into the experiential parts of the mind. Yoga is simply a very active and tactile meditation hack, that provides strong stimulation responses through the nerve network that one is training to become more actively connected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Su-Shee For those interested in the science/medical side of things:

* "Zen and the Brain" (written by a meditation practising neurologist)

* "The Buddha Brain" (about the neurological/physiological background of a couple of buddhist principles)

</comment><comment><USER7> In keeping with others who are mentioning / linking to books about non-new-age meditation, try the book by the Psychologists in the mindfulness movement:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide- finding-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide-finding- frantic/dp/074995308X) (Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world, Prof Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman)

It's a great book that leads you through the first 8 weeks of meditating, and contains meditation aid audio clips for various scenarios. The most useful I've found is the 3 minute "breathing space" meditation, particularly for that noisy bus - you need good noise excluding ear buds though.

If you don't like the speaking audio, and/or you've practiced enough not to need the prompts, you should check out Simply Noise:

[http://simplynoise.com/](http://simplynoise.com/) << they also have apps for phones.

I've found it equally helpful for rendering words unintelligible, which makes mindful awareness much easier.

</comment><comment><USER8> It certainly seems like you got a lot out of meditation. My own practice is similar (20 mins most days for a few years and 130 days consecutively now), but I think in a different Zen tradition.

I've found in practice that I have most success when I treated emotional highs and lows as irrelevant. The books I've read all suggest that the point is to focus on ordinary life, not search for ever deeper trance states, and my experience has been that trance states are transient while ordinary life goes on always. Taking my meditation in that direction has tended to make it gentler, lower-impact, but longer-lasting. At least it feels that way.

If you ever meditate differently, it would be interesting to see you contrast any new effects with the ones you've already experienced.

I found your essay fascinating, by the way, particularly your precision in analysis. It's what I might call first-person science :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been meditating 45 minutes per day for 4 years now, happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER10> 2 questions if you don't mind.

Firstly, why do you think it's worth it and do you notice a substantial difference in your life when you stop for whatever reason?

Secondly every time I read something like this, or talk to people that meditate, it seems extremely unscientific and filled with subjective analysis. Can you point me to something that would convince me that it has real world benefits, past that of taking a nap, or stopping for 45 minutes to think about your day/life.

<comment><USER6> try doing your own experiment and just do it, I'm pretty sure you can find 20 minutes a day to set aside for it. The first thing that you will notice is that it is TOUGH, but after several weeks you'll start to gain moments of clarity and eventually it will "click" and you'll get it. Or it wont, and you can just move on

<comment><USER10> Actually since this thread I've been doing 30-45 minutes a day as an experiment. I have done meditation before alone and with a group, but never to this extent. While it's far too early to comment on how it's going without bias, I can say I have noticed several personal improvements that I believe I can attribute to the meditation. These mostly stem from applying mindfulness to my everyday life, which seems to be different to your experiences, but then again it has only been 2 weeks.

So far I find it more than worth the time investment, and at this point the 45 minutes flys by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank you for putting this together and sharing it. I've been flirting with the idea of meditating more seriously for the last few years, and I always find myself making excuses not to continue with it. A 50 or 100 day challenge seems like a manageable experiment, and a better way of deciding if it's worthwhile to continue.

I have a question. Could you explain "The Deep" in a little bit more detail? What happens to your body and your mind? What is going through your head?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks; feel free to join the group and start posting.

The Deep is sort of a 2nd plateau, the first being basically just an awareness of your mind being (very) noticeably stiller, ie "Hey, my thoughts have stopped--cool." The 1st plateau would occur usually at the 30 minute mark.

The Deep would occur a bit after that, usually at the 45-60 minute mark, occasionally sooner, and it is like the 1st plateau, only much more so--almost like if you were actually scuba diving and you had gone deep enough into the water that you could just barely see the light of the sun above you. The first plateau is characterized by stillness, but The Deep is a profound stillness, stillness to the 2nd power. It struck me, because I realized I had never experienced a stillness like this before in my life.

Body and mind are secondary and not thought of--in fact nothing whatsoever is going through my head, except the awareness of the stillness and calm. Breathing is barely perceptible, heartbeat not felt. It is a significantly refreshing experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> when i see the words 'challenge' and 'meditation' being used in the same sentence, an alarm goes of in my head. i'm too tired to go into details right now, but if you're interested in where i'm coming from, or in meditation in general, i highly recommend giving this book a read:

[http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Without-Gurus-Clark- Strand/...](http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Without-Gurus-Clark- Strand/dp/1893361934)

the first review sums things up nicely:

 _Clark Strand cuts right to the heart of meditation, without dogma, gurus, religion, beliefs, or any of the other gunk that gets in the way of sincere and honest practice. In a beautiful style reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh, Strand has created the ideal meditation companion and guide. While Strand is probably among the few teachers who would never invite a following, he most certainly deserves one. If you read no other book on meditation, read this one. If you have other books on meditation, put them on the back shelf and read this one. If you have never meditated before and want a book to teach you how, read this one. This is the only meditation guide you will ever need. It is superb!_

<comment><AUTHOR> I know what you mean. I probably should have called it a "personal challenge."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was in SE-Asia and went to a few temples to meditate. One time I reached that deep state very quickly. I suppose it had to do with the sound of falling water nearby.. If you ever go to a Buddhist country I suggest you visit a course. It's quite cool. There was one teacher that has shown us how to meditate while walking. It was surprisingly good and I didn't walk into any walls or pillars while doing it.. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting that the environment you're in could have an effect on how long it takes to get to The Deep; I believe it.

Meditating while walking sounds interesting but it also seems like it could be quite hard to control heart rate. Of course, maybe that's not as big of an issue as I make it out to be. In any case I'll have to try it sometime. Do you have a link to any further source of information about it?

<comment><USER14> Why would you want to control heart rate?

If you are so out of shape that the walking causes you discomfort, then walk slower. Same if you feel your heart rate is too quick to allow you to stay calm.

Other than than that, there's no reason to worry about heart rate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only because it seemed to be closely tied to entering The Deep. But of course, it's possible that reduced heartrate is an effect rather than a cause of the meditative state, so I'll certainly try it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, for anyone who's interested, we'll be doing a second "100-day challenge" over in /r/meditation beginning January 1: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/1swxn2/the_secon...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/1swxn2/the_second_annual_rmeditation_100day_meditation/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting read. I practiced meditation for a couple of months, but only for 15-30 minutes a day. I haven't researched too much, but the idea of "The Deep" as you describe makes the challenge seem worthy. Side question: how did your wife feel about you taking on a lengthy challenge that forced celibacy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Getting to The Deep made a big difference, but it took around 30 days before I got there.

My wife was remarkably cool about it, but of course, if you read the end of the article, you can see that I didn't quite make it all the way. =) What she didn't like so much, was that between 6-7pm I was not available to help out with making dinner.

<comment><USER14> "The Deep" sounds to me like the first or second Jhana from your description. But note that there are also a number of blissfull states that are generally seen as you being "sidetracked". If your goal is the bliss, then that is of course fine. If your goal is continuing to deeper meditation states, it is not a given that focusing on re-entering that state is a good idea.

As for your "forehead catching fire" that sounds like it could be related to concept of the acquired sign or counter sign (basically "images", though they need not be visual, that come to signal certain mental states), though for it to persist outside of meditation sounds odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bliss seemed like a side-effect; it was nice but I wasn't trying to elicit it as much as it was generated by the calm.

Yeah, the forehead-flame was/is really bizarre. I did some Google searches for it and didn't find much of anything that didn't seem like pseudo-science (look up "Ajna chakra" and you'll see what I mean...)

It's always hard to convey to people that it was very different from a mental image / thought / feeling in that it actually feels tactile, in the same way that if you had a rock in your shoe, you wouldn't confuse it for anything else --I just don't know what this "rock" is made of; it could certainly be a creation of my mind, but it doesn't present itself that way. It's easy to ignore, so I ignore it.

<comment><USER16> In certain forms of Theravadin practice, the bliss is the "engine" which motivates the concentration on the target object. Fostering the bliss does tend to make it much easier to settle down, particularly when the mind is disturbed.

[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/painhe...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/painhelp.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting read. Based on the author's findings, I'm not sure if I could justify it. I feel like there's probably something better I could do, especially if the effects of meditation aren't as noticeable outside of your meditation period as the author suggests. Still worth a shot at some point I guess.

<comment><USER18> _I feel like there 's probably something better I could do, especially if the effects of meditation aren't as noticeable outside of your meditation period as the author suggests._

Not to diminish the OP's accomplishment, but he only meditated for 100 days. Even if you're as disciplined as he was, you're only scratching the surface at 3 months. If you want the perennial peace of a monk or a master, that takes years. But it's about the process and the work as much as the result.

Most of us have decades of conditioning in a high-stress, competitive society (and, if you believe in karma, possibly eons of difficult karma). We're also evolved to survive in a much harsher environment than the one we're in now. You're not going to undo all of that in 3 months, but you can make a surprising amount of progress.

<comment><USER19> To me, meditation seems like an entirely self serving activity. As an analogy (and probably not a very good one) what if electrons began to meditate 60 minutes per day? They lose their charge and basically do nothing? Or what if birds and bees began to meditate? I think the result of all that would be pretty obvious.

<comment><USER18> Your first error is assuming that meditation is "doing nothing". Meditation is an attempt to get past the shallow chatter of mostly negative thoughts that drains us, and closer to the deeper nature of mind.

Perhaps the electron, which fulfills its physical contract perfectly, is already in a state of pure meditation. Who knows?

As for whether animals meditate and what would happen if they did, I have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Meditation is best learned with a good teacher. I highly recommend Bhante Vimalaramsi at [http://www.dhammasukha.net/](http://www.dhammasukha.net/) I recently did a 5 day retreat and it was life changing. He makes meditation practical, fun and rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting read, thanks. I'm curious about meditation not helping with everyday stress, outside of your "force field" time. Do you have any thoughts on why there wasn't a halo effect?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to say--I definitely expected there to be more of an after-effect, so it was a little disappointing to realize that that wasn't going to happen. I think a lot of it has to do with the setting in which I live and work--big cities simply have a lot of stressors in them: noise, crowds, cars, etc., that are all triggers for me. At the time I was also managing a group of co- workers, and the responsibilities that came with it also were stressful.

I think I would have been able to persist the state longer if I lived in a suburb where I could avoid those things more readily.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Pardon the fact that it's a Google Doc; I haven't had time to write it into HTML yet and the Export function is not quite cutting it.)

<comment><USER22> I've been practicing meditation for a long time off and on. I've gone months with sitting every day. I've had stretches where I sat an hour a day. I've participated in mediation retreats. One new concept that I'm trying to put in place relates directly to the point about how just sitting every day doesn't change the stress level at work. It's the idea of trying to break away the practice of awareness from the cushion and spread it out during the day. It's really simple, but I've found it very difficult to practice. It's 5 "moments" a day you remember to "meditate." Basically this moments should lass from 15 seconds to a minute, and you just try and gain awareness of whatever is present in that moment.

To me this could promise some powerful benefits, beyond just sitting every day. But thus far, I've found it very hard to do this 5 times a day. Anyone ever try this?

<comment><USER18> _To me this could promise some powerful benefits, beyond just sitting every day. But thus far, I 've found it very hard to do this 5 times a day. Anyone ever try this?_

This sounds really interesting.

Something I'd like to strive for is more purity in experiences. What I mean is that when I go swimming, I shouldn't be thinking about work. When I'm at work, I shouldn't be thinking about my next swim.

I'm far from qualified to opine on this topic, but it seems to me that the "most meditative" practice is to do whatever you're doing well, with intent, and free of pollution from other influences, i.e. "when I sleep, I sleep; when I eat, I eat".

The Deep (to me) is a lot like being in a coding flow, or that blissed-out feeling you get an hour or two into a long bike ride or a swim.

<comment><USER22> Now to bounce off this. I think that there may actually be a difference between what this practice can do for you and the experience of being in the flow. However, I think they are closely related. My idea of what it means to be the flow, you are, in a sense, not acting from your conscious "I" mind, but just kind of acting without acting. This is the whole Taoist Wu-Wei concept. But really, you are coming from the space from which thought arises, rather than the thought itself.

So when you are in the flow with coding, swim, or bike ride, you are in the midst of an action that granted you access to this state. But you did not actually consciously enter this directly state by choice.

But the I think the trap can be that you can only access this when you are doing things that lead to being in the flow. What about being able to enter this state when you are really upset about something or when things are going badly, or when you are bored, or when you are doing something compulsively.

The practice I believe is trying to access this state at random times of the day, and especially in those times when you are not engaged in an activity that lends itself to this awareness, but actually engaged in activities that do the opposite (such as being annoyed at someone).

The idea is that you are building this muscle that allows you to access the "flow" more and more and eventually maybe realize that in some way can always access the space from which thought arises, because that space must always exist.

But again, this is theory. Practice is hard. I'll take a moment now.

The concept for this came from this ebook. I've only skimmed it.

[http://www.greatfreedom.org/Gallery/ShortMoments.pdf](http://www.greatfreedom.org/Gallery/ShortMoments.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I believe the flow state is essentially an active meditation. One accesses it by stilling the blah blah thought mind and ego enough to allow the subconscious to freely flow into action. There are plenty of ways to do this, in fact I've found boring repetition is great for it (I play piano). Above all else though, meditation is probably the best practice, since that trains one to be still enough to allow deeper parts of the mind to "flow" freer whilst maintaining enough focus that one isn't derailed by every possible distraction that could arise. And I also agree with you on the "muscle" training throughout the day. This state is always available, and the trick to being a baddass at life is to be able to find it NO MATTER WHAT else is going on. The only way to train that is to do in distracting situations. This is why I like yoga, because there's a bunch of other crap going on that I have to "overcome" with focus and stillness of mind. Only then will the asana make sense and I'll access that state, and that same training makes me better at it for rest of my daily activities. Kind like how doing math also makes you good a solving problems in general, or reading/writing literature makes you more emotionally intelligent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for the inspiration Duncan! - I've added this to my goals for 2014!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks James! Maybe an Om-themed Top Coat is in order? =D

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why did you stop meditating from April through December of 2013?

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably got a sit or two per month in after that, so I didn't stop completely, but I slowed down mainly because I got a new job that I liked and so I let myself get completely sucked into it and ended up working later hours.

I also wanted to continue to be social and that meant going out and having a beer every once in a while. Those two things really crowded out the 6-7pm time slot that I had for sitting.

I wish it were easier for me to sit in the morning, but alas. I'm hoping to restart the practice with the 2nd Annual /r/meditation sit this coming January.

<comment><USER25> Have you considered using a daylight lamp in the morning (with about 10k lux)? Looking into it should stop melatonin production and give you nice caffeine- free mental kickstart. I use mine for 10-20 minutes every morning and I think it has helped me staying off the caffeine (it even seems to increase my blood pressure which is quite low without caffeine).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I'd never heard of that--that sounds really intriguing, I'll definitely give it a try. Thanks for the reccommendation!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bit mobile device are a pretty stupid idea - <AUTHOR> https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/64-bit-mobile-devices/ <comment><USER2> Actual title is "64 bit mobile device are actually a pretty stupid idea".

Let me guess, Hacker News has decided that a numeral at the beginning of a title is always clickbait, so it was automatically removed.</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for learning Ada? - <AUTHOR> I've got an interest in obscure programming languages; recently Ada caught my eye due to its origins in the U.S. D.o.D. Does anyone know of any good resources for learning Ada? <comment><USER2> [https://learn.adacore.com/](https://learn.adacore.com/)

[http://docs.adacore.com/live/wave/gps/html/gps_tutorial/inde...](http://docs.adacore.com/live/wave/gps/html/gps_tutorial/index.html)

[http://getadanow.com/](http://getadanow.com/) ([http://www.adalog.fr/en/freeada.html](http://www.adalog.fr/en/freeada.html))

[https://www.adacore.com/press/make-with-ada- competition-2018](https://www.adacore.com/press/make-with-ada- competition-2018)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://learnadanow.com](http://learnadanow.com) is done by the same guy that does GetAdaNow.com

The Ada Information Clearinghouse has a section for learning Ada: [http://www.adaic.org/learn/](http://www.adaic.org/learn/)

There's a toy LISP I did as/for a tutorial, though this is the final product: [https://github.com/OneWingedShark/Ada_Tutorial](https://github.com/OneWingedShark/Ada_Tutorial)

And here's the home of the ARG, Ada's design group: [http://ada- auth.org/](http://ada-auth.org/)</comment>


Why Craigslist Is the Worst Site on the Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbVSomQinic

<comment><USER2> I have always had good luck buying and sellling items on craigslist.

Looking for IT clients/jobs/gigs is a different story all together. I would like to see THAT video.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. "I need a clone of Amazon.com and my budget is an auspicious $500. Now, I'm going out of my way to give you this opportunity instead of sending it to India because you're a nice guy..."

<comment><USER2> Wow. An actual offer of payment and not simply an offer of 30% ownership of the company?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its not really the site though, its the community behind it

</comment><comment><USER5> Why on earth does this belong on HN?</comment>


Start Coding in Pyret - <AUTHOR> https://code.pyret.org/

<comment><USER2>
      "Pyret has numbers, because we believe an 8GB machine should not limit students to using just 32 bits."

      Java                   Pyret
      // this is not true    # this is true
      ((1 / 3) * 3) == 1     ((1 / 3) * 3) == 1

wat

How about ((1.0 / 3) * 3) == 1? Not sure what point they are trying to make here. Did somebody change the definition of "number" to mean "floating point type?"

<comment><USER3> In Pyret, (1 / 3) resolves to (1 / 3), not 0.3333333333333333 or some equivalent, like it does in many other languages. (0.3333333333333333 * 3) is 0.999999999999999, not 1.

<comment><USER2> That makes sense, but unfortunately the Pyret page says nothing to indicate that arithmetic is done in the rational field.

For the record, 1.0 compares equal to (1.0 / 3) * 3 in IEEE 754 32-bit floating point arithmetic. You may want to consider a more compelling example, ie

      float x = 1.0;
      for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
         x += 1.0 / 10;
      }
      x == 1.0 // False

<comment><USER4> Sure. In general there are lots of examples that illustrate the ugliness of using floating points _unnecessarily_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, this looks like a language I would design if I ever got around to it. If they have a good distribution system, could be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why are all "learning to program" languages these days duck typed / dynamically typed? Has it always been this way? Has SML, for example, been a first language of choice in Programming 101 in earlier decades?

Personal bias : I think there is a definite loss in not teaching about the power of static typing in a first language.

<comment><USER7> Beginners have very incomplete mental models of programming languages (if they didn't, they wouldn't be beginners...) I believe the experience of the PLT group, who have been teaching introductory programming for some 20 years and definitely understand type systems, is that static types can get in the way of learning. There are two reasons:

\- Type errors for most type systems are very difficult to diagnose for beginners. They often aren't, for example, located on the actual error location in Hindley-Milner style type inference.

\- Allowing students to run their code helps build a correct mental model. In particular it allows them to locate the errors in their code.

Note that Pyret does have a facility for dynamic checks that serves a similar purpose to static types.

<comment><USER6> > located on the actual error location in Hindley-Milner style type inference

Very interesting, thanks for the insight + reference to the PLT group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this looks really interesting

love the _where_ blocks and

the _data declarations_ (remind me of scala's case classes) and

the "progressive" type annotation (which mimics the way i use cython + python)

(less appealing, and this is purely subjective of course, is your logo, which seems to have been inspired by malware or perhaps by labels required for toxic chemicals)

<comment><USER9> >...your logo, which seems to have been inspired by malware and perhaps labels required for industrial chemicals

Or maybe "pyret" is pronounced like "pirate" and the logo was inspired by the skull-and-crossbones pirate flag. I especially like how the crossbones look like the letter lambda.

<comment><USER10> And the color scheme is paying homage to Scheme's logo.

<comment><USER4> To _Racket's_ logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> See previous HN discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6701688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6701688) and GitHub repository at [https://github.com/brownplt/pyret- lang](https://github.com/brownplt/pyret-lang) .

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks more or less like a reskinned Standard ML. Which is cool, because SML is awesome :-)

<comment><USER13> it's dynamically typed, though!

<comment><USER4> The static type system is under development, but it will never be _required_.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will YC discriminate against founders who support Trump? - <AUTHOR> While Sam Altman has said that he will not cut ties to his grandma and Peter Thiel for supporting Donald Trump, one surely must wonder if the situation would be different if Thiel were not a billionaire, already part of YC, and have a profile that would mean his disavowal could cause negative headlines. Also, while Sam has made his views clear, it is not clear whether Sam's stance is held by everyone at Y Combinator, especially those involved in selecting companies to join YC. Can we have a definitive statement from YC that anyone who applies will not be discriminated against based on their political opinions?<p>Note: Submitted anonymously for fear of discrimination. <comment><USER2> I can we can reasonably assume they believe politics and business ought to be partitioned from one another.

My opinion has always been that right brains and left brains really do think differently and comparing and contrasting is very important for metacognition.

As an Enlightenment scholar I often have trouble with with once said:

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... does not even understand that very well".

That quote is commonly known, but I find the next part most interesting.

"Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form."

J.S. Mill would have liked Scott Alexander.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope not. I always assumed (I still do) YC to be a beacon of reason and tolerance. Like it or not, a solid percentage of US voters endorses Trump. Professionalism means working together with people of diverging opinions. In the past I failed to stand by this principle and I am ashamed of it. It was _childish_ behaviour on my part.

I'm looking forward to Election Day. The propaganda war has been poisoning foreign media too. I read and watch identity baiting on daily basis. It's an American act of radicalization for the sake of votes.

Both candidates' slogans are deeply ironic ( _Stronger Together_ and _Make America Great Again_ ) in light of their divisive and alienating actions. After debates and rallies are over, in the real world left and right wingers live and work together. No bridge bears the inscription " _Proudly built by democrats only_ ".

<comment><USER4> Well, it's interesting to read the words "Trump" and "tolerance" in the same sentence.</comment></comment>


Goodbye Gowalla - "How Wrong They Got It" - <AUTHOR> http://bendodson.com/weblog/2011/12/03/goodbye-gowalla/

<comment><USER2> Honestly, this mostly feels like someone who's miffed they were snubbed by Gowallans.</comment>


Modal Logic Playground - <AUTHOR> http://rkirsling.github.io/modallogic/ <comment><USER2> Modal logic was always a bit of a puzzle to me, but it does have importance in CS because of temporal logic, see [0], a kind of modal logic. I was introduced to it while doing research on the verification of total correctness of CSP style concurrent programs in the 1970's.

Verifying the correctness of concurrent systems is very difficult. My research was in a slightly different direction, but important progress in verification was being made in the 1970's by David Gries and Susan Owicki (see [1], an ACM award winning paper), and Leslie Lamport (see [2]) that made use of temporal logic. Temporal logic is used by Lamport's TLA+ today, see [3].

Further developments in temporal logic were made by Amir Pnueli as described in books and papers, see [4].

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

[1] [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=360051.360224](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=360051.360224)

[2] [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=357178](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=357178)

[3] [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport- actions.pdf](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport-actions.pdf)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> _It is possible that you are studying modal logic._

[https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/i-deduce-you- are-...](https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/i-deduce-you-are-studying- logic/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Please consider the UX of your state toggles. The red/green states will be difficult for color-blind users to discern and, color aside, it's tough to tell which is the active state.</comment>


Free book: The Medici Effect. Including how to find ideas and how to take risks - <AUTHOR> http://www.themedicigroup.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Press books and download it in pdf</comment>


The Blockchain Might Scare the Gig Economy to Death - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-20/the-blockchain-might-scare-the-gig-economy-to-death <comment><USER2> Just project out:

1\. Amazon, Google, etc. control more and more transactions

2\. If they determine at their discretion your out of the whole network.

3\. Not sure I see them getting less powerful</comment>


Where Is Our "Package Manager for the Cloud?" - <AUTHOR> https://segment.com/blog/where-is-our-package-manager-for-the-cloud/ <comment><USER2> The answer is called Helm. [https://github.com/kubernetes/helm](https://github.com/kubernetes/helm)

PS: ? and " are on the wrong order in the headline.

<comment><USER3> Whether punctuation belongs inside or outside quotations is (1) different depending on British vs American usage, (2) currently in a state of flux on both sides of the Atlantic. Best not to correct others on that unless you're sure you're using the same style guide.

<comment><USER2> Grammar rules are for ambiguous situations. This one is very clear. If you compare the following there isn't much to discuss here:

A1) Where is our "[...]"? (makes sense)

A2) Where is our "[...]" (something is missing)

B1) "Package Manager for the Cloud" (makes sense)

B2) "Package Manager for the Cloud?" (What's the question?)

<comment><USER3> Be careful not to conflate grammar and orthography. The former is tied to the spoken language as understood and mentally represented by native learners, the latter is tied to convention and style guides. Grammar has nothing to do with punctuation or any other characteristics that are purely of the written language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, so, the only difference between packaged and managed is that the first one doesn't have an additional piece of software that manages running software in a distributed environment, kind of like ops. If we isolate that piece of software and try to come up with an architecture that provides flexibility to manage absolutely anything - we get supervision trees. Combining that idea with nix-like package management should bring us towards self-healing self- managing services the article has in mind. However, it will not be a package manager for the cloud, but a package manager for arbitrary servers in datacenters that replaces the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope NixOps will be in that list in future: [https://nixos.org/nixops/](https://nixos.org/nixops/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to say "inside a dozen or more discrete pitch decks currently oscillating between a variety of investment sources".

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how DCOS is not mentioned. Its principal selling point is exactly this.</comment>


Historical Thesaurus is a masterpiece worth waiting 40 years for - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/6413166/Historical-Thesaurus-is-a-masterpiece-worth-waiting-40-years-for.html

<comment><USER2> A tangent from normal HN news, but fascinating for the dedication from those involved and the awesome thoroughness of the data compiled.</comment>


A Good Way to Grant Equity to Your Employees - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/The-Right-Way-to-Grant-Equity-to-Your-Employees/ <comment><USER2> A good, but insufficient way to grant equity to employees. The fact is in 2016, startup founders take considerably less risk than they did a decade ago. You can go from idea to revenue in _days_ , with essentially no cost upfront. If you hire me weeks or months later as employee 1, and I'm delivering 20% of the revenue, but as a first employee I get 2-5%, this will piss me off, and it should piss off every early-stage employee who works for _tenths or hundreds of one percent_. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how we can make institutional changes to ensure that the wealth is spread out a bit more, but it's something I will consider when I start my own company some day.

<comment><USER3> Man, you've got an absurd sense of entitlement and self-worth.

You honestly believe that a first-hire, in addition to receiving a competitive salary + benefits, is also owed >5% equity? No founder of a company with any traction is going to go for that, and no investor of any VC-backed company is going to agree to that either.

<comment><USER4> > You honestly believe that a first-hire, in addition to receiving a > competitive salary + benefits, is also owed >5% equity?

Competitive salary for top devs at big companies is reaching $250-350k/year.

If your startup is paying that well then sure it doesn't need to offer a lot of equity.

Most of the startups ive interviewed at over the last year don't even come close so they damn well should be offering a lot more equity to make up for it.

<comment><USER3> Engineers making $300k/yr aren't interested in first-hire jobs over at the latest "Uber for X" YC-backed company. There will be exceptions, certainly, but that's going to be incredibly rare.

First hires tend to be mid-level aspiring engineers looking for make a name for themselves and get in early but for whatever risk-adverse reason aren't looking for a cofounder type role. They usually need a steady paycheck.

Obviously there's always going to be a balance between equity and salary, but the hypothetical scenario we're talking about here is "first employee" which tends to mean a salaried position with benefits.

<comment><USER4> > the hypothetical scenario we're talking about here is "first employee" which > tends to mean a salaried position with benefits.

Agreed. Which is why they aren't getting co-founder levels of equity. 5% for a key position sounds about right.

But if you want them to go all-in on your startup then you are mad not to compensate them for it.

If you want mis-aligned incentives for a very key position then go right ahead but don't call someone entitled for wanting to be compensated fairly for the risk and responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > 4\. Evergreen: These grants, which are appropriate for all employees, start > at an employee's 2½-year anniversary and continue every year thereafter. The > idea is you don't want to wait until the employee's initial grant has been > fully vested to give a new grant because by that time the employee will > evaluate new opportunities.

This is doubly true for RSUs, which are liquid the day you get them, not forcing you to stick around waiting for them to be exercisable. As someone approaching such a cliff, I have to say this "continual refresh" practice makes a lot of sense. Wish more companies would think of this. The day all your equity vests (and your total comp now drops, perhaps by a substantial amount) seems like a designed-in "last day".

</comment><comment><USER6> Granting number of shares instead of percentages gaurantees that employees will get screwed by dilution. Vesting shares over 4 years means most employees won't get much, since employees often last only one or two years. Options mean most employees lose their equity before a liquidity event, or otherwise pay thousands of dollars for a lottery ticket. In general, employee equity is a joke.

Here's a "Good Way":

\- Lock-in percentages instead of number of shares. Real dilution protection - not handwavy vague reassurances.

\- Vest shares over quarters not years.

\- ISOs that convert to NSOs after employee leaves OR RSU's with the company paying the tax bill.

\- Termination protection

Anything less is scraps of a lottery ticket.

</comment><comment><USER7> I find options confusing. How about this instead - a contract with the employee saying they get disbursed a % of the annual profits. If company does well they get a % of the profit. If it does badly (loses money) that year they get 0. Is that stupid? Seems simple so probably is stupid... But it would seem to incentivize the employee to make the company more profitable.

I'd trade a reasonable % every year over a mythical pie in the sky exit one day. Yeah, I understand it is nice to dream owning a yacht and sail the world one day, and that is worth some something (in other words the ability to dream about it is important and people will get into situation to be able to do it). But I am more of a boring pragmatist and would rather have a bit less but more predictable reward every year or month instead.

<comment><USER8> Most startups make very little or no profit while they grow. They're often sold long before they turn a profit. In those cases a % of profit would be worth 0 while equity could be worth quite a lot.

Profit sharing does have a long history in more traditional industries though.

<comment><USER7> > Most startups make very little or no profit while they grow.

Ok agree, that was the obvious bit I missed. I never really worked for startup, so wasn't familiar. So idea was silly, makes sense now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> IMO this should mention that trading salary for equity will not be met with a cliff. Imagine accepting a lower salary for equity, only to have the founders "pivot" months later leaving one without salary OR equity (thanks to the cliff) .

</comment><comment><USER10> Does HN have a strong opinion on RSUs vs. stock options? The article makes a peripheral mention of this but otherwise does not address it.

<comment><USER11> It depends on the maturity of the company. If you want everyone going for broke, options are better because there's no downside if the company goes under. If you want people to be more conservative, RSUs are better because they balance downside and upside. So companies aiming for home runs are better serviced by options, while companies looking for predictable quarterly earnings are better served by RSUs.

<comment><USER12> Could you clarify your point about no downside if the company goes under? If the options are underwater then you get nothing, yet if you have RSUs, they'd be worth whatever a share of the company is worth (liquidity because of public/ private notwithstanding)

<comment><USER11> When you get options, your starting point is effectively zero because the strike price usually is zero. So if the stock goes down, you are still at zero - you just don't exercise the option. You have upside but no downside. If you have an RSU, you have the same upside and downside - 1 for 1 with the price.

Note - this isn't 100% accurate as options that are not in the money still have some value but the idea is more upside than downside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> " _Wealthfront Equity Plan should result in approximately 3.5% to 5% annual dilution.. ..most public technology companies increase their option pools by 4% to 5% per year, so the proposed dilution is well within the reasonable range._ "

Is this true? Dilution of this magnitude, on average?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not just be a co-operative and really be meritocratic and fair?

<comment><USER15> In the US at least, you can do that if you want. Go for it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Until companies start having longer exercise periods after employment ends, options have close to no value.

</comment><comment><USER17> > The only reason not to implement the Wealthfront Equity Plan is greed, and > greed seldom leads to a good outcome.

Is there a more diplomatic way of saying that? Employees aren't in a position to question the "generous privileges" or "large equity stake" they are being offered.

<comment><USER18> Without arguing the merits of the Wealthfront plan, "greed" is about as diplomatic as it gets in this scenario. It applies to both sides. However there is an information and cultural bias asymmetry that puts the company in a much superior position. As a result the equity and compensation issue is ultimately seen as the company taking advantage of employees in an unfair way.</comment></comment>


Unit testing in the enterprise: Five common myths dispelled - <AUTHOR> http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid92_gci1312005,00.html

<comment><USER2> "The few organizations that enjoy long-term success are those that make unit testing part of their daily workflow."

I wish the author would elaborate on that statement. I want supporting evidence, even if it's anecdotal.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd rather spend the effort generating code (UPDATE: and I do mean generating, not writing) than writing tests (presumably I could be generating tests at the same time). But there are enough people on the TDD train that there must be something of value there. Plus it's politically incorrect to say you don't like testing your code.

When people claim to be dispelling myths, I'd really wish they would do so with fact/numbers (ever see myth busters, they don't just dispel by telling you). I'd really like to see some numbers from the TDD folks on number of bugs found via TDD and it's effectiveness. And I don't want the story about the one bug found that saved them (just like that friend that lived because they were ejected from their car in an accident (fortunately they weren't wearing their seat belt)).

<comment><USER4> I've seen a lot of programmers go from writing no tests at all, to TDD (and pair programming, etc.). This extreme shift in behavior makes it seem more like a fad; I prefer a balanced approach. Use what works for you and your team, and if it stops working, do something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone here ever been in a situation where they thought, "Wow, a unit test would have saved me" or "Man, thank god for our unit tests?"

I don't think I've personally encountered that. Plenty of bugs at compile time or during regressions, but nothing where I could even imagine a unit test saving me.

I think the true value of unit tests is documentation. Instead of writing documentation that says, "Hey, this function should do this", you're writing code to do that, which is usually a pretty good idea. Executable documentation is the way to go. It's a very lisp-y idea.

That said, I'm not fond of the author's implication that unit testing will save you from cascading failures and make you a better programmer. He even says it's not a silver bullet, only to turn around and say it's the most magical thing to happen to software productivity since the invention of the keyboard.

It seems to me that the productivity gains are from forcing your developers to actually understand the code they're writing and interfacing with, but personally, I don't think I'd trust or hire someone who wasn't proud enough of their work to do that on their own.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone else here dislike automated unit testing?

Where I work, we have unit tests that are all hand-coded. Even with that, it takes half an hour to run through the full suite - too long to do on any minor change, but still manageable when preparing a sandbox for checkin.

If we added in automated tests, we would have many times the number of tests, with a corresponding increase in the time taken to make them run. If you can't run unit tests quickly, their value is reduced.

I personally feel that a well-designed test framework should test all of the common use cases, some obvious edge cases, and should be easily adaptable so that when bugs are found, you can readily create a unit test that reproduces the bug, preventing regression.

I'm curious as to how others here decide which unit tests to write.

<comment><USER2> How about splitting your tests into a fast smoke test and a long test suite? You could run the smoke test before checking in. You could set up a continuous build system that would build with your latest changes, launch the long- running test suite, and email you the results.

<comment><USER6> In practice we run a subset of tests during development, but the current rule is that we should never checkin code that hasn't passed ALL of the unit tests. The idea being that each person is responsable for their own modifications passing all tests. If you check-in, and then get shifted onto another high priority task, and a later run of the unit tests discovers that a funky side effect from your changes breaks the unit tests, you are no longer available to fix the problem. Someone else has to do it, allowing you to escape responsability for your error. At least, that's the theory management here ascribes to...</comment></comment></comment>


Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/12/10/someone-stole-my-startup-idea-–-part-3-the-best-defense-is-a-good-strategy/ <comment><USER2> A nice overview of the range of intellectual property protections available to a startup.

As someone who deals with early-stage startups all the time, the number one mistake I see concerns "do-it-yourself" founders who fail to take proper steps to transfer their IP into their startup at inception. In other words, they will form their entity themselves, use some online kit to do as simple a setup as possible, and ignore the IP issues altogether, which means that whatever IP they had developed prior to formation, or that they continue to develop even after formation, will continue to belong to them individually or to other third parties such as contractors, and will not belong to the company.

This is usually a harmless error in that it can later be corrected once it is discovered, but only if all the founders (and other third parties such as contractors) are cooperative about it. If they are not, this situation can lead to serious problems, especially if the problems are first unearthed during due diligence in the course of a funding or acquisition.

The article mentions this problem in summing up the most frequent mistakes in this area and otherwise has intelligent insights and observations throughout.

<comment><USER3> And what is the correct way to transfer IP from the founders to the startup?

<comment><USER2> There are two pieces to this: first, for all IP-related work done prior to formation, the founders will typically assign their IP to the company for a nominal valuation, usually in connection with paying a token dollar amount for their stock; second, if the founders continue to do IP-related work following formation and issuance of their initial stock to them, they need either to be employees or contractors in relation to their company and, in either case, need to have in place some mechanism that ensures capture of their continuing IP-related work product for the company (this is usually a work-for-hire agreement if they are contractors or an employee invention assignment agreement if they are employees).

Those are the basics. Beyond this, you need to ensure that proper "consideration" is given to the founders to make the IP transfers legally binding. For the pre-formation IP transferred in connection with the stock grants, this is not an issue. For post-formation work, this takes the form of continued vesting of stock (if vesting is in place), often coupled with some form of very modest deferred compensation that is needed to minimize tax risks to the founders.

Some of the technical rules are explained in more detail here: <http://grellas.com/faq_business_startup_015a.html>.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth reading the link about the patent he won $150m on: <http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202425204868>

They sued because Sony and Microsoft's controllers vibrated. I'm not sure this patent is the poster child for why the IP system is awesome. I love Steve's work, but I'd like to see some acknowledgement that there might be a wider cost to society from chasing patents like these.

<comment><USER5> My interpretation is that IP is something that you have to deal with, even if you don't think it matters. The ways that he suggests you deal with it are to (a) explicitly assign IP early, (b) document external communications of novel ideas and file provisional patents before one year is up, (c) be aware of IP when negotiating with contractors and customers. Those sound reasonable even for startups, and will hopefully keep you out of trouble (or provide unexpected value) later on. IP is unlikely to pay out, but so is your startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny, this article reminded me to check, and one of my Arbor patents just got published.

From 2002.

That's about all you need to know about patents for startups. From the time you file to 6-9 years afterwards, the expense and effort of a filing buys you _nothing_. Meanwhile, the world continues to turn on its axis.

Is your company even going to be around for 9 years?

Of course, having the patent published doesn't really change much either. That's because you can safely add several _more_ years to reach the date at which you'll actually see the inside of a courtroom if you decide to exploit the patent. It takes _forever_. With your counsel's meter running the whole time.</comment>


OwnPhones: 3D printed wireless earbuds perfectly fitted to your ear shape - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv05p-ueHEI <comment><USER2> Someone saw the movie 'Her', hehe</comment>


Ask HN: Whats the Best Advertising Program to Use With my Sites? - <AUTHOR>

Hey All,
I am not new to HN, but wanted to ask a question.  I currently own a few websites that generate a few amount of views.  More than a Million Page views Daily combined.  Currently, Im only making about $5.00 a day on the ads for my websites.  I don't know if more can be had, but I wanted to ask before I took the time to change some code and went researching my self.
The Websites Vary, but the demographics are all type of people.  More guys than girls by about 80%/20%.
One Website is used by a very popular game which generates the most traffic, but the least amount of clicks. http://utopiapimp.com
The other few websites generate about 1000 page views daily combined.  But a few clicks as well. http://demotivatedposters.com http://drinkingfor.com http://itfeelslike.com
The bottom three websites are still in somewhat active development, so try not to criticize.  Thanks All. <comment><USER2> For high traffic sites that aren't targeting a specific niche, CPC ads aren't the way to go. Look for CPV ads, for companies looking for branding rather than selling a specific product. When I worked for Internet Brands, www.modelmayhem.com was our highest traffic site (for the scantily clad girls) but it didn't bring in much revenue. Compare that to something like www.steves-digicams.com where people are actively reading digital camera reviews. For the former, you would sell ads to someone like Groupon or Living Social on a cost per 1000 impressions basis, for the latter you would put CPC or affiliate links direct to Canon or Nikon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you point me to a company that does this already? Someone to go through?

<comment><USER2> You can direct sell your ads and get much better rates, but it is a hassle to manage. Lots of sites have a page that says "advertise here" usually with an email address to contact them. There are ad networks like buysellads that will take care of it for you too. For affiliate networks, look at commission junction, linkshare and google affiliate network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> google.com/adsense should be a first step. With 1m pageviews, you should be making much more than $5/day.

chitika has some potential. I used them on another site, it didn't outperform google adsense even though I was passing terms that were somewhat related to campaigns they had. It was good, they do have ads that would work for a game site better than it worked for my sites.

adbrite perhaps. With games, hit or miss, but, worth a try.

ad4game. I haven't worked with them personally.

Have heard good things about tribalfusion, have no experience with them.

If you can convert those games over to Facebook, you open yourself up to SuperRewards/Offerpal, though, your game needs to have the hooks that require a virtual currency.

As for your demotivatedposters.com, connectcommerce (google's affiliate arm) has quite a few business related advertisers like Daytimers, etc. and despair.com has an affiliate program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. A lot of good information in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sell stuff on your most popular websites. Sell other games for a cut (Minecraft?). If you contact a 100 game owners, you are bound to get some on board. Ask your visitors which games they like and sell those.

Don't be lazy and go with low paying ads. Be more proactive, you will create lots more value for game makers, gamers and yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> for a site like <http://demotivatedposters.com> have you looked into an affiliate program where you sell real posters? or maybe selling other funny stuff... like an affiliate program for busted tees or some site like that... <http://www.bustedtees.com/affiliates>

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you worked with Busted Tees? How do they pay out? Do they pay out after each purchase or each shirt or once a month?

<comment><USER5> not really... i worked on a comedy/social site for a while and that was the plan, but it never really got traction :-(

it just always seemed like that was going to be the way to make money... put other funny material in that was for sale. obviously comedy stuff is terrible for adsense... the keywords are not relevant to the material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> have you tried google adsense?</comment>


Context and Navigation - <AUTHOR> http://orderedlist.com/our-writing/blog/articles/context-and-navigation/

<comment><USER2> I think the main concern which groups both concepts is 'usability'. I really don't know the reason why, but many sites seem to forget that concept. Whatever the intention behind your site is, you need to think about usability. If your site is not really usable, you will pay for it in the future; it doesn't really matter that you have a really cool design. If your site is not usable you are in big trouble.

So, when making a website or an app, you should ask yourself: is this the most logical and the easier way to do this? If the answer is no you should probably keep thinking and searching for a solution.</comment>


Streamline: 1,640 icons for developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.streamlineicons.com/

<comment><USER2> I have to say I'd prefer if you mentioned the license in the title.</comment>


Why we no longer use fixed price contracts, and our clients love it - <AUTHOR> https://blog.grillwork.io/why-we-no-longer-use-fixed-price-contracts-and-our-clients-love-it-20a4d871efc9 <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to get others opinions on this format of billing and insights into how you do things at your studios.</comment>


Home Renovation: What Tech Do I Need? - <AUTHOR> http://www.livedigitally.com/2008/08/08/home-renovation-what-tech-do-i-need/ <comment><USER2> \- Don't bother wiring coax and cat5 into places you're not sure you'll need it. What you really want is Smurf Tube ( <http://www.avsforum.com/avs- vb/showthread.php?t=901909> ) dropped to places where you think you might want something someday but don't know how much of what you'll actually use. This is probably less extravagant now than it was before copper went sky-high

\- The real reason you want cat-5 in every room is so that you can have PoE VoIP phones instead of crappy analog handsets. This is particularly useful if you install a linux host running the Asterisk PBX. Don't want your mother in law calling before 10AM on weekends? Filter her caller ID to voicemail while you sleep -- Asterisk is a huge geek enabling technology.

\- I'd probably smurf tube the doorbell location and consider putting a door phone there - a speaker and mic with a button. Sometimes you don't know who it is, and you don't know if you want to answer or not. This is particularly valuable for people in the household who aren't the alpha male and might not have the ability to stop someone from entering the house if the door was unlocked. You can also tie it into your asterisk host and have it call your cell phone, telling the delivery man to leave the packages at the door or telling the unsolicited guest during the day that you _are_ home, you're _not_ interested, and they should find someone else to rob.

\- I'd skip the whole house smart lighting thing. Having your home lighting at the mercy of something that will fail when lightning strikes it is a non- starter to me. I'd consider hand-rolling a DMX system for any media rooms, but you can do this on the low-4-figure cheap, instead of mid 5s.

\- Speaking of lightning, there are whole house surge surpressors, and they're a good idea in my opinion.

\- In my next home I intend to install a generator. To enable this I'd ideally have at least two breaker panels -- one with the non-critical services (dryer), one with the critical services (refrigerator, house lights) that is connected to the generator transfer switch, and possibly a third with super- critical services that is fed off of a generator panel circuit and through a UPS.

\- A while back I saw some kind of inductive AC current sensing devices that could be installed around Romex. This, combined with a server doing other stuff would be a neat way to track key (or all) circuits in your house to watch power consumption.

\- Security: there's open source camera server software out now that is pretty cool. If you run cat5 to the corners of your house you can elect to install cameras with IR blasters, and track people and things coming and going. Makes the video doorbell thing seem kind of silly.

This is all I can think of at the moment. I love this topic and could geek about it for hours... :)</comment>


Show HN: Building a basic AI-powered security camera - <AUTHOR> https://ruairidh.dev/ai-powered-security-camera/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was a small project for me to solidify my own learning. It's very basic and essentially recognises my face, and tells anyone else to 'go away' using my computer's text-to-speech engine.

Although it's a silly side-project, it was fun to make and gave me a bit of insight into how facial-recognition works :)</comment>


UberPitch: Google Ventures Investors are On-Demand Wednesday, April 9 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/UberPITCH

<comment><USER2> Uber does a great job of marketing by using its product in creative ways (e.g. valentine's day quartet and send a cat). I can't think of another company that has done as good a job at tying its core product in with random offerings (see also Uber to order skywriting) in order to maintain mind share.

I probably go for the Uber app more than Lyft just because I successfully summoned the valentine's day quartet last year.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having raised our seed round in part by giving Dave McClure a ride to his mechanic, I think this is a great idea!

<comment><USER4> Sounds like an awesome story, care to share?

<comment><USER3> Of course! It's one of my favorite parts of the company story! [http://baydin.com/blog/2010/10/the-100k-taxi- ride/](http://baydin.com/blog/2010/10/the-100k-taxi-ride/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let me see if I understand. So I'm suppose to wait on a corner and hope an investor does a drive by of my idea? Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll stay home (East Bay) and code.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting idea, wish it was in the city as well.</comment>


Announcing The PyCharm 3.4 Release - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/2014/05/announcing-the-pycharm-3-4-release/

<comment><USER2> It's really awesome to see the enhanced Vagrant support, as well as the Angular support. What I am really looking forward to/hoping for, though, is IPython notebook file integration.</comment>


Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7e18b044-51c3-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html <comment><USER2> I am always amazed that people can't figure out why Google is doing this.

Google is rolling out fiber to neuter Comcast. Period.

Comcast basically blackmailed Google several years back and thought they won. Google, rightfully, now saw Comcast as an existential threat to their business.

Google will keep rolling out until they have Comcast by the balls. Only then will they stop.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I think it's pretty clear that Google fiber is an attempt to create demand for faster residential connections and provide a model for ISPs to do it.

If Google wanted to come at Comcast, they'd be gearing up a lot faster than they are. At this point Google Fiber is mostly FttPR-Fiber to the Press Release. And also, I don't think any of the first several Google Fiber locations were even in Comcast territory. So far AT&T and TWC have been their competitors.

They want to create demand because Google loves remote computing and loves internet consumption.

Google is providing a model for the ISPs by forcing local communities to deregulate their ISP franchising system. Before Google Fiber, each town or state would take a pound of flesh from the new company trying to lay down a network. Google made the cities bend over backwards.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly it, and it was their stated intention from the beginning.

[https://gigaom.com/2010/02/10/google-doesnt-want-to-be-an- is...](https://gigaom.com/2010/02/10/google-doesnt-want-to-be-an-isp-it-wants- to-be-a-rabble-rouser/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate?

 _" Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches."_

That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic disparity in the race of students in public school relative to the overall population?

<comment><USER6> There was a recent This American Life episodes about this. Apparently the best way to raise poor black children's scores is to remove segregation, but white communities don't want it:

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/562/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with)

I'm from the UK and was genuinely shocked. While there are disparities and issues over here, they're on a different scale compared to the US.

<comment><USER7> Depends where you are. London is deeply racially divided. There are effectively black-only schools and white-only schools. There are also schools almost completely dominated by various other ethnic groups too. The divide includes both the teachers and the students.

<comment><USER8> Not just London.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Romania, and parts of Poland where new Fiber networks are laid out have ~$35-40 1Gbit unlimited internet. Meanwhile people in US wonder how much Google is losing on $100 per 1Gb clients? :)

<comment><USER10> According to Akamai's State of the Internet report for Q1, the US has an average broadband speed of 11.9mbps. Romania is 12.8mbps, Poland is 9.8mbps. By comparison France is 7.5mbps, and Germany is 10.2mbps.

Based on the median household income in Romania being 16% that of the US, if 1gbps Internet access there costs $35-$40, you're paying the US equivalent of $210-$240.

<comment><USER11> It's actually 14$/mo. with VAT in Romania for 1000mbps. I'm not sure if Akamai's state of the Internet also takes into account mobile connections, because those would certainly drop the average speed down.

Edit: the speed itself is also not limited to just inside the country, although ISPs in Europe use public peerings a lot more than those in the US.

[http://www.speedtest.net/result/4647615600.png](http://www.speedtest.net/result/4647615600.png) [http://www.speedtest.net/result/4647608031.png](http://www.speedtest.net/result/4647608031.png)

<comment><USER12> With an unlimited gigabit port? How much is a server there with that speed, is there a Romanian Hetzner equivalent?

<comment><USER11> This price is for residential users only. You can't really beat hetzner on price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "In February, local Congressman Emanuel Cleaver sent a letter to Larry Page, co-founder of Google, warning that "preliminary statistics [for Google Fiber] suggest the beginning of a 'digital redlining' in our city""

But this Congressman couldn't find the funds to subsidize the poor people's signup fees, which are just $10 each?

<comment><USER14> Subsidy is one way of handling the signup fees. And it might work. But I can't tell if you're saying subsidy is the right answer here, or if you're saying the congressman's complaint to Google is out of line.

<comment><USER13> I'm saying that throwing about words like "redlining" is just an attempt to browbeat Google. If the Congressman was so concerned, he could get the $10/family subsidy from somewhere; which, I think, is the proper use of funds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Liimatta tried to convince Google to install connections in community buildings, to power a cheap WiFi service in low-income areas. The company refused, saying it violated its terms of service. "It's our biggest disappointment. We would have loved to have taken Google Fiber to the worst places, where it could have really made a difference."

<comment><USER16> >where it could have really made a difference.

Is there a study that shows that the low income population makes better use of high speed bandwidth? Right now it's mainly just a luxury product for HD video streams and the majority of the educational gains of an Internet connection can be had with 5-10mbps.

<comment><USER17> The quote was "cheap WiFi" \- he meant getting net access for people who don't currently have it.

<comment><USER18> "Cheap WiFi" implies to me that they would still be charging users for access. Reselling a connection is obviously against their terms of service. Community organizations will probably have better luck simply paying for connections, and then running open access points to provide _free_ access to the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Either something's missing from the report of Vogl's argument, or she's trying to do something purely destructive in shutting down the startup offices. This seems to be the entirety of her case:

\- The workers use up too many parking spaces.

\- They're richer than us.

\- They think we're poor.

\- They commute to work instead of living in the office.

\- They're untrustworthy because they're outsiders.

<comment><USER19> Did we read the same article? Vogl's argument seemed to rest on :

\- These houses are residential properties.

\- People are using them as commercial properties (offices, under the guise of 'live/work spaces')

\- No one is stopping it, Zoning is not enforced there (because 'it's a poor neighborhood'), but zoning is enforced in wealthier areas (Johnson County).

The rest of the stuff you mention is true too. But I don't think it's the "entirety of her case" \-- it's support for the case. "They commute to work instead of living in the office", for instance, is strong evidence that the property is commercial, not residential in nature.

This seems like a cut-and-dry zoning violation, that's being ignored because the area is "poor". I don't think she's being destructive, she's just asking for fair and equal treatment.

</comment></comment><comment> SG- Just curious, but realistically if I wanted to move to KC and rent a single or double bedroom apartment or small home that could get Google Fiber, what would I be looking at?

Seriously pondering moving out of Canada and back to the US and I'm not interested at all in paying for a place like Boston where I used to live.

<comment><USER20> Take a look on Craigslist but the prices vary quite a bit around here. We're in Overland Park, where Google Fiber isn't here for another year or two and a 1400sqft 2 bed with a garage will set you back between $1000-$1500 a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That looks an awful lot like a paid article.

<comment><USER5> Paid by whom, exactly? It's not particularly complimentary towards Google. It's not particularly complimentary towards any incumbents, either. Unless you're suggesting that the less well off population of Kansas City pooled their resources to lobby for an article in the Financial Times, nothing in the article suggests any kind of untoward influence.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: OpenAPI (v3), API Blueprint, RAML – what do you like and why? - <AUTHOR> I'm evaluating OpenAPI, Blueprint and RAML for primarily API documentation but code generation might be neat too. While there are lots of comparisons out there, I'm also curious on the pulse of usage - ie among this crowd, which is most used? Most used often means most tooling support and etc, so this isn't just a popularity contest.<p>So - if you have an opinion on the matter, what do you use and why? <comment><USER2>
      1. OpenAPI
           - more popular, more tooling
           - spec is partially defined by
             references to other specs,
             so you have to read at least
             three specs in parallel to
             understand it.
      2. API Blueprint
           - never heard of it
      3. RAML
           - less popular. unlike OpenAPI,
             you can reference external
             JSON schema documents to define
             types

I use OpenAPI (fka Swagger) as there's lots of it already in use at the the company I work at. I need to consume APIs produced by other teams, and those teams publish APIs using OpenAPI, so that's the end of the decision process.

I have had a reasonably positive experience using oas-raml-converter to mash OpenAPI specs into RAML, to use as an input to RAML-based tooling.

The more I look at all these ways of defining and structuring APIs, the more something like gRPC sounds like a good idea, but that may just be a "grass is greener" reaction, i've never worked on a serious project that's used gRPC or similar for integrating systems.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best ICO white-papers you read? - <AUTHOR> Looking to read some interesting ICO whitepapers (not to invest). Points to consider:<p>- easy to understand.<p>- in-depth details.<p>- good structure.<p>- disruptive technology.<p>- avoiding marketing buzzwords. <comment><AUTHOR> the originals are: ethereum - [https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White- Paper](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper) bitcoin - [https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)</comment>


Delicious drops the ball on their API - <AUTHOR>

I doubt we're unique - sites around the internet with heavy Delicious integrations are screaming to a halt.
If you check out their tools page (http://delicious.com/help/tools) you'll notice the developer documentation is "coming soon".  Yet basic functionality like the feeds.delicious.com URL are now returning a 404.
You can use the same API structure as previously http://delicious.com/v2/json/tbull001 and it will return a result that has the same structure as before (or at least the same elements I used in my code previously).
But what I've noticed about this is that instead of ALL of my links, the end point now only shows me the links that are new since I transitioned to Delicious.
In general Delicious seemed to do a pretty good job communicating with users - they've done a terrible job letting developers know changes are coming.  Or did I miss something?
Is anyone else having issues? How are you resolving them? <comment><AUTHOR> I've at least partially answered my question - it looks like all my old links were brought in as "private". That's why the public API won't return them.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you plan to learn in 2019? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm planning to learn the programming language R and read the book "Pandas Cookbook Recipes for Scientific Computing", improve my skills in Emacs and learn more english, because english it's not my primary language.</comment>


Peek - Simply Connected.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.getpeek.com/ <comment><USER2> You know, this started out as a terrible idea but the more I use my iPhone the more this seems reasonable. The lifetime service plan is an amazing sales tactic. All of a sudden wireless email and such becomes a known, predictable and sunk cost. I like that. Its a shame I'm locked into that enormous contract with AT&T. I'd love to give one of these things a try for a bit just to see how it works.

The Twitter Peek is pretty funny when you consider that it will probably sell. I use Twitter more like an IM client these days than anything else. Its immediate, public and private at the same time. All Peek had to do was build a new interface for their SMS tool and now there's a new use case.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was a terrible idea but then i came around a bit, too. Might end up with one of the email devices with "lifetime service" in the near future. I'm curious how the device feels, though.</comment></comment>


Detect credentials & secrets in code via machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@watchtowerai/introducing-radar-api-detect-credentials-secrets-in-code-via-machine-learning-fe402b818bf1 <comment><USER2> How many types of credentials it can cover?

</comment><comment><USER3> interesting use case of nlp and impressive results!

</comment><comment><USER4> nice</comment>


Welcome Harj - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-harj

<comment><USER2> Hi Harj,

Will you be engaging only promising groups, or all groups? Or will there be promising groups that aren't engaged at all until the deadline? Thanks

\- an anxious applicant :)

<comment><USER3> i simply don't have enough hours in the day to engage all groups :)

i'm engaging promising applications where i'd like to know more about the team but no doubt i won't be able to engage them all before deadline so if you don't hear from me, it's not an indication you've not made it to interview

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> awesome news! like pg said, anyone who has met him knows how smart, determined, and genuinely nice he is. certainly a very valuable and welcome addition to the yc camp and he's already helped our group a ton.

</comment><comment><USER5> No offense to anyone involved, but someone with an undergraduate degree from 2006, no matter how bright or congenial, seems a bit young to be a director of BD. It seems to me that YC would have been better served by an individual with more practical business experience, especially for one who will be passing judgment on prospective candidates for funding.

</comment><comment><USER6> how did Harj's time at liveCurrent go? Im very interested as I remember all the press that Harj/Auctomatic recieved when it was purchased. What was accomplished at liveCurrent?

<comment><USER3> it was probably a good example in how not to manage an acquisition. within a week of joining our team was split up, our product shut down and a lot of the resources we'd been promised weren't available. from other people I've spoken to who have been acquired, this isn't an atypical scenario.

still, I ended up working on cricket.com and enjoyed it, took it from a site of spam links to a community for cricket fans with 1m monthly uniques and $30k revenue a month. I left after just over a year there.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't be surprised if cricinfo made a big offer for that domain at some point. Where do you pull the scorecard data from?

<comment><USER8> That would be silly of cricinfo IMO. They have a well established decade old brand(in fact, one of the first websites on the Internet, I believe).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this mean he's moving down to Palo Alto, or telecommuting from Seattle?

<comment><AUTHOR> He lives in the Bay Area. He's flying up to Seattle for the meetup.</comment></comment>


Fixed price plans are coming to Assembla - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/9119/Fixed-price-plans-are-coming-to-Assembla-by-popular-demand.aspx <comment><USER2> I think the rationale behind this is important for all SAAS (and software) businesses to learn from:

a) Desirable customers really don't care about the difference between $4 and $9.

b) The user experience of consistent and predictable pricing is much more important than getting prices which are "rationally connected with costs" or "as cheap as possible". (Businesses in particular hate microtransactions. OKing a $20 a month transaction is trivial, OKing an ongoing variable cost is not -- I need to attach detailed projections and get the projections vetted by three people.)

c) If you prominently advertise Only Costs $2! and Use Us Because $10 Is Too Much To Pay For This Service! then your customer base is going to be primarily people who are looking to spend no more than $2 and you will have to write blog posts when you plan on doing major, disruptive changes like charging more for a business input than their morning latte costs.

Edit:

Prior blog post on pricing here:

[http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7870/S...](http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7870/SaaS- is-cheap-results-from-the-Assembla-subscription-campaign.aspx)

Factoids: Most popular plan costs $2.30. Average ticket size below $10. Company very, very proud that their average customer spends less than the cheapest plan at competitors. (This was, apparently, not a red flag at the time.)

</comment><comment><USER3> No, Assembla is not proud of having such a low selling price. We have seen that as a problem since the beginning. The original sin is not the current low selling price. The original sin was offering the "private" product for free during a time when it wasn't a serious business for us. We took an enormous amount of abuse when we discontinued this product, and to soften the blow, we worked to keep prices low. We did this even though it's clear that a customer who makes a decision based on a $2 price point isn't going to make much of a contribution to the company. It's now clear that our gesture wasn't fully appreciated, and it's dragging down the pricepoint for our serious customers - startups, corporate product developers, outsourcers, agencies, and consulting companies that need professsional management features.

I have to disagree with the guy that says the service doesn't have value over $20. Even on the face of it, he would replace it with a server costing $50/month, plus install and admin time costing at least that. So, he's already at $100. He's probably only using the subversion repository, which he could easily install on his own. However, if you are serious about getting the most from your team, you would be using the alerts, code browser, the ticketing system, which would cost you substantially more if you bought it from Atlassian or Fogbugz, and be well worth it. If you have a consulting operation, as many Assembla customers do, you will use the time tracking and reporting. In other words, if you manage your team professionally, you will get a lot of value out of this software. And, certainly we will work on charging appropriately.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think that the reason in "Users were very aggressive in reducing their user counts, and our average selling price became very small - less than $10/month" is that I think their average account (like mine) wouldn't benefit from using the service at any price above ~10-15 dollars. Most of software they provide is free, hosting is cheap, I don't see any value to upgrade/pay more at that point. At a price above 20 bucks with more than 10 users, I would switch to a VPS/dedicated server (30-70 bucks) or a internal server, which is also a good investment.</comment>


The memory models that underlie programming languages (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://canonical.org/~kragen/memory-models/ <comment><USER2> The older I become the more I realize how influential Lisp is/was. The Lisp memory model presented here looks like object oriented data structures, if you squint a little. Java dragged C++ programmers 'halfway to Lisp' [1]. I now do a lot of programming on Python, which is so obviously like Lisp that MIT teaches it instead of Scheme. We don't have continuations and macro yet in mainstream languages, but we'll get there.

[1] [http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/m...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/msg04045.html)

<comment><USER3> > Python, which is so obviously like Lisp

Hang on! Do you mean some similarity other than what is talked about in the article?

<comment><USER4> The main dissimilarity between python and lisp is that you can't use code as data in python, so there's no macros. In most other ways they're pretty similar.

<comment><USER5> Serious lambdas and closures? Sophisticated array handling? A full-featured numerical tower? Conditions? Python's namespaces seem primitive compared to Lisp. Etc.

<comment><USER6> >"A full-featured numerical tower"

What is a numerical tower?

<comment><USER7> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_tower](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_tower)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this article talking about data layout in memory, and not memory models at all?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_model_(programming)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_model_\(programming\))

Regardless, interesting to read about "old" languages, such as Cobol. The way data was laid out in Cobol programs made sense with old computing resource limitations.

<comment><USER9> There's a footnote for the first sentence of TFA that addresses this.

<comment><USER8> You mean this?

"² I'm calling these six conceptualizations "memory models", even though that term used to mean a specific thing that is related to 8086 addressing modes in C but not really related to this. (I'd love to have a better term for this.)"

I think that's even more wrong. The Wikipedia article gives a pretty good idea what the term means.

I think a good term for what he's talking about is "data [structure] memory layout".

<comment><USER10> He's just using the term archaically. Before caches were combined with SMP on consumer level systems (which is remarkably recent), the term 'memory model' did mean various forms of data layout decisions.

The 8086 thing was legitimately called a memory model, choosing how the distinction between the 64k segments would be treated logically by your program. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Memory_Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Memory_Model)

<comment><USER8> > The 8086 thing was legitimately called a memory model...

Damn, completely forgot about that despite using many of those segmentation rules like "tiny", "large" and so on a long long time ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the best way to categorize programming languages, but applying it only to relatively unpopular languages seems a strange choice.

I'd categorize the popular ones like this:

\- One sparse byte array: C, C++

\- GC heap with class instances with fields: Java, C#, etc.

\- Affine structs and enums on the stack, plus library support for heap and other models: Rust

\- Dictionaries and primitives: JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc.

\- Immutable structs and enums on the heap: (safe) Haskell

\- Textual/array/dictionary variables, global and local: bash and other shells

<comment><USER12> > One sparse byte array: C, C++

What does sparse mean in this context?

<comment><USER13> Thinly populated. The whole address space is the array and addresses/pointers are indices into it. This point of view might not necessarily be supported by the actual language specifications, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Really disappointed with the treatment of Forth, and other non conventional languages. Forth doesn't have anything really resembling von Neumann machine random access memory. Neither, for the record, does Turing machines. But the author dismissed these as oddities when in fact they are the most unique examples of something different.

<comment><USER15> Well, many Forths provide some form of access to heap[1] which is altogether that different from e.g. C malloc

[1] [https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs- html/Hea...](https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/Heap- Allocation.html)

[2] [http://www.mosaic-industries.com/embedded-systems/legacy- pro...](http://www.mosaic-industries.com/embedded-systems/legacy- products/qed2-68hc11-microcontroller/software/chapter_05_heap_memory_manager)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm interested in human-like storage layers and wondering if anything has been done here. Content-associative memory is one idea but doesn't go far enough. Neural nets are a lot closer but at the moment they seem limited to pattern matching rather than storage and exploration, although I guess you could say supervised training is equivalent to storage.

I'm thinking of a DSL on top of a pure associative memory, which will remember Things with weighted connections to other Things. Matching consists of not only showing the idea but also related ones more distant. Is there anything like this?

</comment><comment><USER17> The last time this is posted, the author had me at "Interlude: why is there no Lua, Erlang, or Forth memory model?" .. and .. a year later, it still holds true.

Lua doesn't get quite the cred it should, in the language wars. Its one of those "just going under the radar, getting things done" languages..

EDIT: like, isn't everything a _finite map_ eventually, or at least partially expressible, idktb......

</comment><comment><USER18> The LISP model is/was slightly different. Generally there were a lot of slightly different LISP models, but the first few LISPs were organized in cons cells and atoms. Actually the latter was 'atomic symbols'. An atomic symbol was kind of an object and some attributes in a property list: typical for symbols and functions. Even numbers were stored as kind of pseudo atomic symbol. See the Lisp 1.5 manual from 1962, section 7.3 - where the memory model is described.

Then LISP models evolved to still use cons cells, but there now are a bunch of primitive objects (which were not introduced by Java, but existed in LISP long before) like certain numbers and characters. LISP then also did not organize everything as atomic symbol. Atoms were not symbols and a bunch of other data types. For example numbers were no longer (pseudo) atomic symbols. There are atoms, but atom then only meant: all data types which are not cons cells. Where originally there were only cons cells and atomic symbols.

LISP tries to avoid to store pointers to primitive numbers/characters and can store them directly. Most objects are tagged and tags for primitive types are stored without added words. Thus a cons cell with two numbers can be two words and each word is some primitive number. The implementation may also avoid to tag cons cells. Instead the pointer to a cons cell will be tagged. Similar is true for vectors. vectors also may not only be vectors of pointers, but can store primitive objects directly and may be optimized for some primitive objects: for example a vector of bits is just a vector header and a one dimensional packed array of bits. The header can't be avoided, but the bits will be stored directly and not as array of pointers to bits. Some objects may be allocated on the stack or in registers - for example primitive numbers may exist multiple times in memory - but other data objects may only exist once - like a string, which is a vector of characters.

So for primitive data types (some numbers, characters, ...) LISP tries to avoid pointers to them, makes them as small as possible, has the tags integrated into the word representation (thus on a 64bit machine typically a fixnum integer will not be able to use all 64 bits, because the tags need to be represented) and integrates the bits in such a way that they can be efficiently set and checked, possibly even by processor instructions - like on a SPARC processor which has 'some' primitive support for that.

Other types of things in memory then are symbols, functions (also machine coded functions) and record-like objects: structures and instances of classes. Those records usually will use a vector to store their slots. Even more data types exist with a low-level representation like hashtables and multi- dimensional arrays. The organization of these objects in memory can be relatively simple (one big pool) or complex (multiple type sorted pools with generations).

<comment><USER18> > Atoms were not symbols and a bunch of other data types

I meant:

Atoms were now symbols and a bunch of other data types.</comment></comment>


Process Stripe Payments Through AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TaylorBriggs/stripe-lambda <comment><USER2> Note: AWS Lambda is not PCI compliant so using it for credit card purchases can get you in hot water.

Using Stripe doesn't exempt you from PCI-DSS 3.0/3.1: SAQ A-EP.

Note, Lambda is not listed here: [https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/pci-dss- level-1-faqs/](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/pci-dss-level-1-faqs/)

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm the developer of this AWS Lambda function. It is only intended to be used with the Stripe Checkout payment flow. There is no actual credit card data passed to AWS, simply a token (again, obtained from the Stripe Checkout widget). The use of AWS Lambda is for protecting one's secret key in a serverless environment, e.g., static website or mobile app. Thanks for your feedback!

<comment><USER2> Hi. Great work, I love too see people creating micro-services with Lambda. Lambda is an awesome tool.

We process credit card payments and ran into this issue so I just wanted to point it out to the community.

With that said, the "source" object can be a "dictionary containing the customer's credit card details" so it can be miss-used. You may want to put a disclaimer in the `README.md` or maybe a `console.log` with a warning if a credit card dictionary is passed.

<comment><USER3> I added a note in the README that this function is only intended for use with the Stripe Checkout widget, which hopefully clarifies that issue. Really appreciate the feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment>