Cloud computing, cloud services, and the stuff in between - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2010/12/8/cloud-computing-services

<comment><USER2> There should be some cheatsheet i can hand out every manager and sales person that get all those buzz words totally wrong.. Especially "cloud" seems to be the word that is labeled on everything "non-cloud" just for marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> If only it was just managers. I remember attending a presentation by people who introduced themselves as cloud computing specialists, who made the grand declaration that "cloud computing is not a technology, it's a business model". That presentation was so full of hot air that the entire building seemed to float above London for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, not even a mention of Azure. Microsoft has a lot of work to do marketing their technologies. Ironically I'm reading this as I sit here in Redmond at an Azure seminar.

<comment><USER4> I saw an Azure book in a local bookstore yesterday and the content seems to be directed at CIOs, IT Manager and the like. I don't think Microsoft's marketing effort is weak though.

[http://www.amazon.com/Applications-Microsoft-Platform- Patter...](http://www.amazon.com/Applications-Microsoft-Platform-Patterns- Practices/dp/0735649677/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291836209&sr=8-1)

As a side note, I wish Google would've done the same thing too: write a book that explains a scenario in a typical business environment (billing, invoicing, time tracking/vacation/time-off tracking) of what AppEngine can do for business users.

PS: I upvoted you though.</comment></comment>


What hosting provider are you using for your startup ? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Why not just co-locate a box of your own?

What I did:

Assemble random crap box from parts (Athlon 2100+, 512 MB RAM, 80GB HDD) This was free for me, and should be cheap or free for you. It was also two years ago, so you can probably find better hardware now.

Leave box at parents' house using cable modem for 2 months (free, but slow)

Co-locate box at Sprocket Data in Dallas for 6 months ($60/mo for 100 GB traffic, 100 mbps burst)

Then things changed a lot, but my startup has always owned all the equipment.

I like being able to fix problems myself when needed.

<comment><USER3> "Why not just co-locate a box of your own?" "Co-locate box at Sprocket Data in Dallas for 6 months ($60/mo for 100 GB traffic, 100 mbps burst)"

Because it's too expensive when you're just starting out. I could afford $60/mo, for instance (because I'm older and have lots of kizzash) but I'm hosted for $8/mo with 1.5TB of throughput.

If your site gets much traffic, you'll be over 60GB before you know it. :-o

<comment><USER4> problem with the $8/mo-type services is that you're limited as to what sort of tech you can use

<comment><USER3> True, although some providers are more liberal than others. Dreamhost lets you run your own stuff, like ruby, php, rails, etc. But yeah, it's a limited environment, and you're sharing. When you're first starting out, you may not care about that. But eventually ...

<comment><USER5> The other big downside is that you can't just go in and kill an errant process if your alpha version does something weird.

And you're also in the dark about what those _other_ processes (those not owned by you) might be doing at any given time.

Controlling the entire server as root is just better.

<comment><USER6> well, to be honest, you get a shell account. I'm hosting stuff on dreamhost, and it's entirely possible to killall my-errant-script when you need to. Just realize that you're a pretty low-priveledge user.

It's a great deal for static file hosting though, if you're a data intensive site as opposed to CPU-intensive site (or even a data-intensive site in addition to cpu-intensive)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use SoftLayer <http://www.softlayer.com/> .. I used to use EV1 but since they merged with The Planet they've not been as good. SoftLayer is made up of many of the "old" The Planet guys and offer some amazing stuff like free private LAN between your servers.

Of course you're going to start at no less than $150 per month, and I spend almost $1000 a month, but.. this is business and you have to pay to get the goods. People who run their businesses on naff shared hosting are crazy unless they think the odd hour of downtime here or there is acceptable.

Of course, shared hosting or a VPS (my personal recommendation if your budget is small) is a good way to start, but once you make revenue, it's time to upgrade :)

<comment><USER8> SoftLayer is indeed very good. The virtual LAN is awesome - you can even setup a PPTP VPN connection and access your virtual LAN from it.

VPN in your gateway box at home and it is almost like having the servers in the other room. They don't charge you anything for data that goes over the VPN, so you can upload/download from your server without using your bandwidth quota - it is a great for pulling off site backups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You have some pretty strict requirements there - I am curious as to why. Is your app really that complex where you require these services or are you planning ahead for scaling issues?

Personally, I go with Dreamhost. The price is right, their service is awesome, and customer support is willing to help you with whatever you need. If scaling becomes an issue - then go looking for a dedicated host.

For 90% of the startups that launch, scaling will never become an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a scaling issue, I just prefer to be in control of the server.

<comment><USER3> Virtual hosting is always an option, then -- cheaper than having to pay for a physical server (or its rental).

And eventually we'll have Amazon E2 ... eventually ... and with that, you can control the (virtual) server _and_ deal with scaling issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try a Xen VPS, you get full control of your own OS image with no hardware to worry about. Amazon EC2 is Xen-based but you can find much better prices. I recommend serveraxis.com where you can get a VPS with 1GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth @ 10mbit/s for $130/m (or $45 for 200GB/m).

<comment><AUTHOR> Another interesting option and cheap too, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for a hosting provider who offers a full server package with root access. The server should run Fedora or Red Hat Linux with at least 1Gb ram.

Any suggestions ?

The cheapest provider I can find offers the above for about $120 per month (with unlimited bandwidth).

<comment><USER5> We use Server Beach -- <http://serverbeach.com/> \-- and have had few problems.

They have a wide range of options, with several servers under $100 per month, but they limit bandwidth to 2,000 gb of transfer per month.

We find the 2,000 is a lot, though, (we've come close, but yet to go over), and you can control it further by using AWS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's great :-)

Theye're very good value for maoney and the bandwidth limits are reasonable too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just found <http://www.linode.com> and it looks like a winner. $20/month you get a virtual server (so w/ root access.)

256mb ram, 8Gib disk, 100Gib/month $20

1gb ram, 32 gib disk, 400gib/month $80

</comment><comment><USER12> I went with MediaTemple. They are cheap and seem to offer scaling possibilities. Some people have warned me about them here on YC. I haven't launched yet, so I can't really give you feeback on them

<comment><USER13> Just wondering...what's wrong with MediaTemple?

<comment><USER14> I'm on a (dv) 3.0 rage and it's great. With plesk and root ssh I can do anything, even install another OS. default is RHEL.

<comment><USER15> So you control the entire server as root, you get 1 TB of bandwidth, and it's $50 a month?

Wow, that's the best combination so far... they do skimp on RAM and HD size, compared to some of the others.

Is it too good to be true? What disadvantages or problems have other people seen?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> LayeredTech.com. You get a big bang for your buck.

Service? It's ok.

Totally unmanaged, so don't expect much on that front.

</comment><comment><USER17> Primarily Serverbeach. Have one server with Layered Tech and one with Linode for internal

</comment><comment><USER18> Glorb. Great Value, Great Service

<http://glorb.com>

</comment><comment><USER19> Future Hosting at <http://futurehosting.biz>

<comment><USER8> I have to advise against these guys. Hate to do it, because the support is good, they seem like nice guys, and they are reselling SoftLayer servers, so the network is amazing.

But I've had VPS's on three different physical servers with them and they were all starved for disk IO. They take quad core servers with 16-32GB of RAM but only put two 7200 RPM IDE drives in them. A 7200 RPM IDE drive is good for about 120 I/Os per second, so if the server has 20 users you get a whopping 6 I/Os per second.

Check it out:

$ time ls -l /etc /dev/null

real 0m12.530s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.046s

12.5 seconds to list a directory with ~150 files. This is from a VPS account I have with them with nothing running on it.

To be fair, most VPS hosting probably sucks just as bad.

<comment><USER19> Hmm, never noticed poor disk performance. I'm not doing much with the server besides web and SVN right now, but it's something to keep in mind. Thanks.

Good guys though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you looking for a Rails host or...?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do TextDrive do Lamp ?

<comment><USER21> Yes. They do it better than most.</comment></comment></comment>


How Do We Measure the Distance to a Star? - yaseen-rob https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/how-do-we-measure-the-distance-to-stars/ <comment><AUTHOR> Parallax is barely the first rung of the cosmic distance ladder:

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

</comment><comment><USER2> It's a huge pet peeve of mine when the science part of this kind of edutainment media is either wrong, or (as in this case) dumbed down to the point of uselessness. The triangle diagram here is completely wrong, and yeah, it uses high-school trig, but c'mon--if it's something we all supposedly learned in high-school and your audience is high-school educated... Show the actual diagram and the actual math!

<comment><USER3> Scientific American isn't aimed at professional scientists or STEM majors. Think bright middle class high school kids.

<comment><USER4> Back in the 1960's my grandfather, who didn't have a high school education (farm raised, 1903-1994) had a subscription to Scientific American and would read them cover to cover.

Starting when I was 7 or 8 he would talk about the articles with me while we were working on things, either in his shop or cutting timber or repairing things around the farm. He would ask probing questions about the subjects, look for implications, make connections to other things he knew, all the kinds of things you want a scientific mind to do. Despite a lack of formal education and wearing a pair of blue jean overalls and muddy wellington boots, with tools in his hands, he was a smart and erudite for his circumstances.

He gave me his entire library when I was in my early teens. The first program I ever wrote, Conway's Life, was taken after a Martin Gardner article I read there. I credit those talks with my grandfather, and the articles I read, with a large portion of my being drawn to STEM and seeing it as "something for me".

SciAm was once a great institution trying to spread knowledge of the explosion of scientific understanding that was happening at the time. I miss those days.

<comment><USER3> I used to read the Connections column by James Burke regularly but he quit writing it shortly after my family actually sprung for a subscription :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surprised it wasn't mentioned in the video, but this is where the term 'parsec' come from. A parallax angle of 1 arc second means the object is 1 parsec away (3.26 light years).

</comment><comment><USER6> They have some beautiful animations, but can any astronomers confirm if people actually do it this way?

From class I remember that you can also determine the distance by measuring the coherence of the light coming from the star at two distant points on the order of 100m. In theory this would require more equipment, but has the obvious advantage of taking less than 6 months to get the results.

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder) \- "At the base of the ladder are fundamental distance measurements, in which distances are determined directly, with no physical assumptions about the nature of the object in question. ... The most important fundamental distance measurements come from trigonometric parallax."

<comment><USER8> Also highly recommend Terry Tao's talk on the cosmic distance ladder:

[https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/the-cosmic- distanc...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/the-cosmic-distance- ladder-ver-4-1/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Parallax is not the only way. Cepheid variables are also used, I think more so than parallax, since parallax is only accurate for somewhat nearby stars.

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

<comment><USER10> Yes, but Cepheids are calibrated, fundamentally, by parallax. (I believe that no Cepheids were actually close enough to be calibrated directly by parallax, at least until Gaia, so they had to be calibrated by other techniques which were, in turn, calibrated by parallax.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is a 9 videos playlist (that I find helpful) about the methods astronomers use to measure the cosmic distances: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEE8A6CB118FADED4](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEE8A6CB118FADED4)

</comment><comment><USER3> The author was my undergrad classmate. She did biology or biological engineering IIRC, glad to see she's hitting the big time.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax)

</comment><comment><USER13> How accurate is parallax, given that stars bend light?

<comment><USER14> It's accurate to within 100 light years. See [https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/par...](https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/parallax.html).

<comment><USER15> "Accurate _to_ within 100 light years" isn't really a meaningful statement. The page you linked to is a simplified explanation that says the method is only accurate enough to be used _for stars within_ 100 light-years of Earth, which is approximately true. We have measurements of more distant stars, but they become increasingly inaccurate with distance.

To be more precise, the relative error of a parallax distance measurement is proportional to both the measurement error and the distance. For example, the Hipparcos mission measured parallax with an accuract of roughly 0.001 arc- seconds. That corresponds to a 0.1% error at a distance of 1pc (~3 ly), or 1% error at a distance of 10pc, or 10% error at a distance of 100pc, and so on.

Note also that the page you linked was written sometime around 2002; since then, more sensitive measurements have been done, e.g. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.0484v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.0484v1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Understanding this is not a high priority for me. Just sayin'. :)

<comment><USER17> Glad you could still find the time to tell us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The simplest method would be to send a spaceship there and back and calculate distance based on fuel usage.</comment>


Covid-19: Investment Strategy for Automation in Logistics - <AUTHOR> https://www.lotsofbots.com/en/magazine/automation-investment-strategy-under-uncertainty-in-transport-and-logistics/ <comment><USER2> good stuff</comment>


Amazon: The implosion is near - <AUTHOR> https://onlinestuffblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/amazon-the-implosion-is-near-now-customers-are-disposable-just-like-everything-else/ <comment><USER2> Well too click-baity a title for what you're describing as the last straw here.

Amazon takes a no-questions-asked approach to most customer service issues, which results in a fair amount of exposure to abuse.

I wrote up a piece about a scammer using social engineering to sniff my order history and request a re-order of a recent product, posing as me and claiming I never received it. They were able to do this without gaining access to my account.

See here: [http://www.htmlist.com/rants/two-for-one-amazon-coms- sociall...](http://www.htmlist.com/rants/two-for-one-amazon-coms-socially- engineered-replacement-order-scam/)

(They just needed my email, name, and billing address for the live chat reps to get them other details.)

I fought this so that I wouldn't be wrongfully at risk of an account closure, as I've had to return items or request refunds in the past and recognized this.

But understand that it's a complicated balancing act for them, and that what happened here almost certainly is that you ended up on the wrong end of their fraud analysis algorithm.

There isn't going to be anything but incremental improvements on their side, either: in order to maintain the insanely high level of "we'll take care of it" support they do, they have to defend against those bad actors willing to take advantage of the system as best as they can. Sometimes there are false positives. There should definitely be a process for redress or further discussion, and it should never move to straight banning of the account, except in extremely obvious examples, but there's still going to be an anti- fraud system in place, and it's still going to have false positives.

Much ado about nothing, except to say that they have a whole significantly sized team of people working on fine-tuning this process and trying to not cause these problems for legitimate customers while limiting their downside risk for such a generous CS policy.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on all points. The title has little or nothing to do with the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like this system is in place to prevent people who abuse Amazon's lenient refund and return policy from costing them thousands of dollars. In this particular case, it seems that several subsequent order problems in a short time period triggered the alert. I'd hope that once someone looked at the account in detail, they'd quickly realize what happened and remove the flag on the account, but OP doesn't actually explain what happened after this.

I get that a lot of people are on the anti-Amazon karma train today, but I'm not seeing anything particularly objectionable here.

<comment><USER5> Why can Amazon not build a comprehensive import restrictions database and use Mechanical Turk (or something) to cross-reference all products?

Or just all products with ingredient labels (with OCR)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want to share an experience that I had a few months ago, to see if anyone had something similar.

I have an AWS account that I use to upload stuff to Glacier and leave it there. My monthly fee comes to about $0.20/mo and that's been going since around 5 years (previously it was just on S3). The data I store there is not encrypted (not that they would be looking at it, right?), nor is anything sensitive/illegal at all. Aside from that, I ocasionally spin a cheap EC2 instance to test some new binary before installing it or things like that.

Anyway, around March I received three emails (they were spaced like 6 hours or so apart so I've read them all at once) and the subject was something like "Important Notice regarding your AWS Account, Urgent! Open Now!". The first thing I thought was sh __*t, my account was hacked and now I owe a million dollars to AWS.

To my relief that wasn't the case, but they wanted me to send them many documents that I consider personal and for no reason at all. I replied something like "Is something wrong?" and they said it was standard procedure, which is weird because I've never knew of anything like that. Things eventually went to "send us a scan of your passport or we will terminate your account", passport because that's the only ID I told them I had. I eventually told them to piss off, I figured that $0.20/mo and the things I had there are not worth the worry of sending that data to someone hiding behind an email. They didn't reply anything and then... nothing happened. It's been half a year since and everything is business as usual.

It was weird, and I never could make sense of what they really wanted, but anyway, just thought of sharing that when I read this guy's experience.

<comment><USER7> And you're certain those emails were legitimate because...?

<comment><USER6> Awww, come on...

Edit: Just checked them, I have them right here, most of them are from email@example.com, they wanted ID to verify the card details or something like that. Which I found it really weird because the account has been running for years and card's haven't expired or been changed.

<comment><USER7> Okay then. It just is exactly what I would expect from someone phishing, too, so figured it'd be worth checking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would termination of a shopping account also affect AWS as a "related account", even though there are no returns associated with AWS? Public info on the review/appeal process would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had a miserable near account cancelation experience with Amazon recently and wrote about it here:

[https://gist.github.com/softwaredoug/6f74748822bf52728545](https://gist.github.com/softwaredoug/6f74748822bf52728545)

What makes the minor threat of account cancelation so scary is all the DRM they sucker you into. Movies, books, etc just deleted by canceling your account. And there's about 4-5 major companies now that sell e-books, movies, etc all with this model. Why should I trust any of them? Why can't there be a different model. Instead of the Internet destroying the old distribution models, its only created stronger more consolidated control over the distribution of media. Time to visit my local book store.

</comment><comment><USER10> This piece is 99% hot air.

A bunch of backhanded attacks on Amazon before we hear the real problem, which is obviously that some automated system mis-classified the customer. Even the author acknowledges this.

I would assume a quick email or phone call with Amazon would have cleared this up.

It was a waste of time to write this and a waste of time to read it.

Non-disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Amazon except as a normal customer.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you but there's no "quick email or phone call" with Amazon, and that's an issue for many people.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/contact- us/188-57379...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/contact- us/188-5737937-3983334)

You can sign in or click the skip sign in button. From there, you can live chat, email, or have them call you.

I found that within about 10 seconds of clicking around on their site. Admittedly, it required multiple clicks, because it's a bit buried, but it -is- there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Terminating problem customers seems like reasonable and smart company policy. Maybe frustrating for the customer being terminated, but to me it doesn't signal 'implosion is near' for the company.</comment>


Sal Khan is Rice's Commencement Speaker Too  - <AUTHOR> http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=16359&SnID=919846179

<comment><USER2> Rice has been supporting democratized higher education for a long time, for instance with the Connexions project (<http://cnx.org>). They also have a history of getting interesting speakers, such as John Doerr (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zi-ThMfM4I>). Not so surprising that they picked up Salman Khan this year.

<comment><USER3> I got to see Kurt Vonnegut speak at Rice in '98. That would be hard to top. <http://www.vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/commencement/rice.html> if you care to read it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You asked for it, you will see the power of Facebook unleashed now...jo jo jo jo

</comment><comment><USER4> Ouch... 137 upvotes for Sal speaking at MIT and only 15 points for the same speech at Rice?

Come on Rice hackers, where are you?

<comment><USER5> The MIT article was submitted earlier. The Rice submission even emphasizes that by ending with "too".

So by the time I scroll down far enough to see the Sal@Rice article I am thinking, yeah I already know he's giving a commencement address soon, and having him deliver it twice doesn't make it much more interesting.

Basically, Sal@Rice could have been the top comment on the Sal@MIT article, instead of a separate submission.

Edit: Sal@Rice currently represents comments 2, 4, and 5 on the Sal@MIT submission. Also, Sal was an undergraduate at MIT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> what a boss.</comment>


Ask HN: Moving from tech leader to operations/product management? - <AUTHOR>

My careers is taking an interesting turn. I am the most senior tech manager (Director of Technology) at the company I work with and one of the more skilled hackers. However I've had an interest in how companies get things done. I've recently been put in a position to work on the company's overall process for working projects and building products and to effectively product management a couple of those products. It makes sense since I have some human skills and know the company inside and out. My questions, is this wise? Is someone without an MBA going to make it far down the road to Director of Operations/COO? Have you ever been in a similar situation and what did you do? <comment><USER2> I'd say go ahead. Besides other things, it will give you a perspective on profit vs cost centers (Peter Drucker). You will be asked to control the burn rate and make choices about what produces enough value to the company.

Being a techie, I have a bias towards calling tech chops as must have for any senior role. It just get you to make much better decisions when you are in a technology business.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't been in a similar situation, but from my experience jumping jobs quite a few times in the tech space, degrees don't matter as much as experience.

If you've been at the company for a long while like it sounds and you know what would be good for the company as far as product development goes, I'd say moving into a role where you can actually optimize those processes is a great position for you to be in! Good luck in your new role..</comment>


Employees of digital media outlets worry stock options are worthless - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-of-digital-media-outlets-worry-stock-options-are-worthless-2019-10 <comment><USER2> Rule of thumb: stock options are always worthless unless they're in a public company. If you're relying on them for financial goals, you're doing it wrong.</comment>


Using RubyMotion to Build JavaScript Based iOS Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.willprater.me/blog/2012/08/21/using-rubymotion-to-build-javaScript-based-ios-apps <comment><USER2> Sorry, Ruby fans. There is absolutely nothing special about this. It's a basic iOS app that just bootstraps Cordova.

There are no Ruby idioms in use that save code over the Objective-C implementation. There are no blocks, map, inject, hash or array literals, etc.. Sure, you don't have to write a .h file.

The Ruby code here could be translated line-for-line into Objective-C and built with the standard toolchain, without _another_ $200 toolchain. And guess what? You _still_ need to know the Objective-C API to write the app delegate and view controllers.

RubyMotion makes no sense here.

<comment><USER3> There was no attempt made to use Ruby idioms in the article. I think you're missing the point. It was merely an example how one can use alternate build tools, while extending their JavaScript or Cordova based app using Ruby over Objective-C. Not everyone is a fan of Xcode nor Obj-C. Lots of education about the tools was included to help one get on their way; the intention was not to be craft a reason as to why Ruby idioms can make a developer more productive.

RubyMotion does make sense here, if your goals are as described in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like PhoneGap, but I am not really sure why you would do this with RubyMotion when for most PhoneGap apps, you really don't need to go much outside of what there are already plugins for. In my experience, getting a plugin working in Obj-C is not terrible.

<comment><USER3> A few reasons:

There is no build system in PhoneGap, just instructions on how to get it build with Xcode. Using the RubyMotion build tools will allow you to work around this, all you'd really need is the Rakefile in this case, no extra Ruby files.

It's agreed, that most may not need to write (or alter) Plugins for PhoneGap, but if you did, and if you'd prefer to write in Ruby, this article may be helpful!

Or maybe you just want to tinker around.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, I thought that v.2 shipped with some build scripts, so theoretically you wouldn't have to open Xcode, just do everything via command line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't seen many articles mention Titanium (appcelerator) as an alternative to RubyMotion; you could skip the ruby step and just start in Javascript. Also, their documentation and tutorial videos are substantial and well done.

<comment><USER7> Titanium is a noble effort but you're still beholden to Appcelerator in terms of what API functionality is exposed, unless you want to write your own plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really thought this was something like writing everything in JS instead of Ruby and/or Objective-C. The title is kind of misleading. This is just Cordova but with RubyMotion. Bummer.</comment>


Awesome person wanted. Startup in social / news space. Paid contract - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for someone awesome to help with some market research. The aim is to validate / invalidate a range of assumptions for a new consumer mobile / social news app.
Fully paid part-time contract, with possibility for much more in the future.
The ideal person has experience:
- using the lean startup approach - conducting customer interviews - identifying and working with influencers - performing A/B testing of messaging - building online communities
Extra bonus points if you have worked with news publishers.
Email me chris (a) mozzler dot com dot au if you're interested to learn more. I'm moving quick, so if you're interested get in touch promptly. I'm based in Australia, so remote is fine.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> There's a monthly who is hiring freelancers thread. You can check previous thread or post in the one in the next few days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thank you :)</comment></comment>


The WWII planes of the D.C. flyover - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/flyover/

<comment><USER2> Here are the P-51s from the flyover today. [https://www.flickr.com/photos/52736032@N00/17438682725/in/da...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/52736032@N00/17438682725/in/dateposted- public/)

</comment><comment><USER3> No P-47 Thunderbolt!?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_P-47_Thunderbolt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_P-47_Thunderbolt)

One of the most effective planes of the entire war.

</comment><comment><USER4> It was well worth seeing: I only wish that my binoculars (or eyes) had been somewhat stronger.</comment>


How Do Hitmen Operate? - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/how-hitmen-operate-73430/

<comment><USER2> This article was trying its hardest to reinterpret "we have almost no data, and what we have looks boring" into a sensationalist story of master killers. 1/10 would not read again.</comment>


Show HN: CollabFinder, find developers and designers for your next great project - <AUTHOR> http://collabfinder.com

<comment><USER2> I don't think Facebook logins are a good way to handle user registration for something like this, perhaps I'm in the minority but I don't even have a Facebook account anymore (on purpose).

I don't think it's a good idea to pull Facebook friends from their API for this purpose either, are you actually processing those or is it client side?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are processing the connections so we can show you friends of friends on the site. The thought being that it's much easier to start chatting with someone if you know you have friends in common. If you do signup you can sort everyone on the site by how many mutual friends you have, which is pretty amazing.

Using Facebook also allows us to protect against spammers, recruiters, etc., and we can make filling out your profile easier (though we still have work to do there).

What alternative site would you want to be able to sign up with? Github? Twitter?

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to chime in by saying I'm interested in using the service, but recently quit Facebook like a bad habit and have no intentions of ever going back.

By making registration as Facebook only, you may be excluding some of the best people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> CollabFinder is a network of geeks like you looking for collaborators. No recruiters. No MBAs.

It's the place to go when you're looking for someone to help you with your next big idea. Browse developers, designers, illustrators and writers by skill, interest, location and how many friends you have in common. Then chat with anyone with one click.

And if you're looking to do a new startup tag yourself with "Y Combinator" or "Summer Camp" or "TechStars" to get pitched by people like you. Want to see Python developers in San Francisco who want to do a Y Combinator company related to education? No problem.

Try it out now at CollabFinder.com and let us know what you think.

Saha, Gil and Simon.

<comment><USER4> I love the idea of making it easier for people to find one another to collab on things. How will you keep out recruiters, though? Seems like they always end up on these things and start increasing the noise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stopping recruiters from messing with people on the site is one of the big reasons we use Facebook - we can block anyone who abuses the system easily, and potentially block the companies using those recruiters. If we make the stakes high for companies abusing people through reckless recruiters hopefully we can change how companies think twice about hiring them. We also built in some simple triggers to make reporting abuse super easy, and we monitor how people are using the system closely. Hopefully in the future we can watch for suspicious behavior patterns based on what we learn.

Thanks for asking :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The join forms on this site are abysmal. I hate to say it, but as a designer/developer, I couldn't even get my profile on the site. You gotta fix this if you want to get enough users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out - can you tell me what issues you came across in the signup form? We're working on making it easier, but wanted to get the site out there and get some feedback.

<comment><USER5> It was completely unstyled, validation was unclear, and if I filled something in wrong, it wiped my form data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea, seems similar to BuildItWithMe.

However, requiring Facebook for sign up kills it for me. As a dev, I'd rather use email/password.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't access the website, It's saying Database Error...

And the only way to sign up is via Facebook?

I am a Developer, But i am not a Facebook user, Having different/normal way to signup will be good.

<comment><USER7> I guess i am the only one who can't Login and i see the database error only when i am logged in..

Can you check it out, It's on line number 150 (/ap...../..ls../facebook_member.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be working fine now :)

<comment><USER7> Nope, Still can't update my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tried to get in touch with some people on the site but it says "Join CollabFinder by creating your public profile" every time I try to "add to my profile"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying out the site - can you be a bit more specific about what happens when you try to sign up? Did you get a facebook dialog popup? Would love to help you get it sorted out - just launched and we probably have a few bugs lurking that we're not aware of. Also, refreshing the page might do the trick...

Thanks.

<comment><USER8> I reset my browser cache/cookies and that reset the Oauth token but once I login with Facebook it redirects me back to the "add to my profile" page where I choose that I'm a developer and it either kicks me to the same page as above or a page with a few bullets on it that appears like an unfinished/unstyled page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a developer/designer looking for a marketing/business person I feel left out.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be adding more skillsets in the future - thanks for the feedback. Anything else you like / don't like?

<comment><USER9> I would like to see design samples in the same way that you show code samples. And the "see who you both know" functionality might work better with linkedin than facebook. What would be really nice is if you could tap into meetup.com so you could see the backgrounds of people you're about to be at an event with. Other than that I love the idea and your execution of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love the simplicity of this one. Awesome work Saha & co.

</comment><comment><USER11> Simple interface, I like, looking forward to seeing it grow</comment>


Introducing Live for RubyMotion - <AUTHOR> http://irrationalfab.github.com/blog/2012/05/22/introducing-live-for-rubymotion/

<comment><USER2> We had something similar quite a while ago at Naughty Dog, when working on the Jak and Daxter PS2 games. Our development environment was Emacs, and as well as having a REPL console in one of the buffers, you could position your cursor inside any function/method, hit CTRL/T, and have just that function compiled and updated on the target hardware, on the fly, with no restart required.

Iterative programming is especially suited for game development, where you want to rapidly experiment with tweaking parameters and behaviors without waiting for a full compile/link/download/restart.

<comment><USER3> Was this using GOAL? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp>

<comment><USER2> Yep. GOAL was built from the ground up to support hot relinking, as well as a number of other nice features. Very cool for the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool!

I wonder if people are working on autocomplete packages for different IDEs/editors to help make RubyMotion smoother with those long method names (didn't see much googling it). IMO in combination with this, autocompletion would make RubyMotion a tremendously compelling option for iOS development.

<comment><USER5> Have you guys seen this? Textmate bundle for auto-completion. <https://github.com/libin/RubyMotion.tmbundle>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The build, check, tweak, rebuild is certainly the most time consuming part of any iOS development. This is a really great enhancement.

<comment><USER7> If you use unit tests and Interface Builder, that time should largely disappear.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't if you use alot of custom views and animations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bret Victor's reach never stops amazing me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another step in the right direction!

</comment><comment><USER11> this is insanely cool!</comment>


Ask HN: Is Antirez's HN account flagged/blocked? - <AUTHOR> Antrize twitted:
"Theory: years ago my HN account was flagged or something internally: now no matter how many upvotes something I post takes, it will not "unblock" to the home page if not manually approved. Or at least those are the observable behaviors."
Link: https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032268223994056705
Can someone in the HN admin team please check and fix this? <comment><USER2> How about you or antirez contact the HN admins about this instead of complaining and hoping someone notices?

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a Contact link at the bottom of the page here. Just email them.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I'll do.</comment></comment>


Music streaming in 2016? - <AUTHOR> What do you guys think about music streaming in 2016? what would you improve on Spotify or Pandora? Any way it could get better? <comment><USER2> I've paid for Spotify, Rdio, Google Play All Access, and Apple Music. I've used Amazon Prime music, Pandora, and a bunch of others I've completely forgotten.

I love Apple Music. I can upload my library of obscure & old stuff to the cloud. There's a good selection. And, most importantly, Apple Music has Trent Reznor, which means I get hand-curated industrial playlists suggested with themes like "Intro to Front 242". It just suits me well.

Spotify was ok. I paid for it for most of a year. But take the industrial group My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. They changed labels as often as most people change their underwear. So Spotify, Rdio, and the rest only have their newest albums in their catalogs. I have all their older stuff ripped, and I want to listen to it. Apple & Google have me covered there.

I almost feel like there needs to be some laser-focused streaming services. I might pay $5/month for a service that just negotiated the rights to 80s & 90s industrial groups' _complete_ catalogs. And another $5 on top of that for hand-picked ambient playlists and an expansive catalog, including early albums from the genre.

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally don't use any of them, but I found this bit about Spotify from a survey of 60 teenagers [http://www.businessinsider.com/what-teens-are-like- in-2016-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-teens-are-like- in-2016-2016-1):

"Teenagers almost universally named Spotify as their preferred music-streaming service — and some teenagers said it was the best app on their phone overall."

Granted, it is not a large-scale study, but I am surprised there isn't a "Snapchat of music" or more contemporary app gaining steam. I expected music would be one of the first categories to be redesigned for today's teens/digital natives. Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Apple Music are all big incumbents now.</comment>


How to write in Gallifreyan - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/gallery/m8edJ <comment><USER2> I always liked the mathy symbols used in The Five Doctors (for more see: [http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/67524/can- gallifrey...](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/67524/can-gallifreyan- be-translated) )</comment>


Someone Is Sending Sex Toys to Strangers. Amazon Has No Idea How to Stop It - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/someone-is-sending-amazon-sex-toys-to-strangers-amazon-has-no-idea-how-to-stop-it <comment><USER2> It seems like there's not much of a mystery here in that companies hire promoters to review a product. Promoters buy a few hundred products and send them to random people from various accounts and then post verified purchases.

Amazon should be able to easily identify this behavior through data analysis. It's curious that they don't comment to confirm it and say what they did (remove reviews, require verified purchases shipped to reviewer, punish products with large number of fake reviews) or rule this likely reason out.

I think this is a low priority for amazon as the churn of new products is likely profitable and gets few complaints except when the item is scary or offensive when received by random amazon user.

This is more of a story about Amazon's worsening customer support.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could it be to manipulate buyer reviews such as in this case?

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/02/06/these- people...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/02/06/these-people-keep- getting-mystery-packages-from-amazon-they-didn- order/BkAq4hcXroCNLVRqUq4rtL/story.html)

</comment><comment><USER4>
      Over time, calling the customer service line back
      over and over, she would piece together information.
      The name on the account that shipped the product was
      different from the one used on the credit card, she
      discovered, all of which were different from her name
      and address.

How do you think they got your information?

</comment><comment><USER5> s/idea/incentive/</comment>


Case Study: Customer Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.liffft.com/2013/09/11/case-study-customer-interview-questions/

<comment><USER2> Another way to ask the pricing question is to phrase it as follows:

"What do you feel is a fair and reasonable price for this product?"

For some reason using the terms "fair" and "reasonable" in the question helps eliminate the lowball offers you'll get with a generic "what would you pay" question.

(source: have done well over a thousand customer interviews in the past ten years and seen this work very well)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great point about asking pricing questions to customers:

They're going to lowball you. Also, they have no idea. Instead, infer what they'd pay based on what they're already paying for. Or try to get them to put a dollar amount on the value it would add to their life (could they make an additional $5k/year with their new job? $20k/year? Now you have something to base your price off of.

Having been on both sides - I couldn't agree more.

Keep rocking guys!

Jason

</comment><comment><USER4> People use radio-button questions to reduce the effort required by the mass to take the survey, thereby increasing the number of responses. In my own experiences, lesser people fill in text boxes. I find that asking open ended, non loaded questions works when talking to them face to face or over a call, but not over an online survey. I'd like to know how text based online surveys fare.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anecdotally, awful. Especially at the very early stages of customer discovery, you lose so much resolution in the answers.

I didn't go into it in this article because it was out of scope, but stories are much better than simple facts. I always tell Startup Weekend teams I'd rather they talk to 10 people than get 10,000 survey results.</comment></comment>


Airbnb asks SEC to let it give hosts equity - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/airbnb-asks-sec-to-let-it-give-hosts-equity-a7d99495-0782-4bce-92bb-4c692ef1b621.html <comment><USER2> I mean it's nothing short of shrewd. Hosts are a critical resource to Airbnb - so how do you bind that asset to your platform so that it doesn't leave? You put it on a vesting schedule.</comment>


Just learned of InnoCentive, cool freelance projects, not strictly programming. - <AUTHOR> https://www2.innocentive.com/

<comment><USER2> My wife and I submitted a proposal for an Innocentive challenge sponsored by the local science museum a while back. The task was to design the next great traveling exhibit for science museums, and we had fun writing our proposal. A few months later we received an email announcing the names of the winning teams, and that's all - no details on the winning proposals, no feedback on our submission. I understand that they can't give everyone customized feedback, but I was still left feeling like I got absolutely nothing from the experience - I have no idea what parts of my proposal needed improvement, no idea how to make my next proposal better. For a different kind of challenge (say I found a successful way to "convert lactic acid to acrylic acid" but my solution still wasn't chosen), I'd probably be angry about the lack of transparency. So yeah, that was probably the first and last time I'll try to solve one of their challenges.

</comment><comment><USER3> All of the projects make me sigh with wonder and fill me with desire to dust off the secret biochemical lab that I have in my basement.

<comment><USER4> Don't, the 'rewards' are ridiculously low for both the effort they demand and the money you could make out of it if you actually solved these problems.

<comment><USER5> It does have a hint of 99designs about it - basically competing with others for a prize which is less than the minimum fee they'd expect to pay a competent contractor for time spent _trying_ to achieve a solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikinomics talks about Innocentive, saying at the time there were "ninety thousand scientists from 175 countries" registered there, and that "firms will build their R&D organizations around a core of question askers and outsource most of the problem solving" Actually, I think they mention Innocentive over two dozen times in the book and how it was supposed to revolutionize the world. Meh. There is the book on Amazon if you haven't seen it: [http://amzn.com/1591843677?itag=nowarlab-20&linkCode=as2](http://amzn.com/1591843677?itag=nowarlab-20&linkCode=as2)

</comment><comment><USER7> The blurb says they have "thousands" of challenges, but the actual list contains twenty-four. And who owns the winning solution? The solver, or whichever $BIGMULTINATIONAL just paid chump change for something that will earn them billions?</comment>


Google aims to take on Facebook with new social feature called 'Buzz' - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/02/google-facebook-social-networking.html

<comment><USER2> "You will automatically follow the people you e-mail and chat with on a regular basis."

I strongly dislike this. I regularly email business associates whom I would not interact with outside of our professional connections. I do not want those people automatically following me. I predict that privacy issues will have an even greater stake on a Google social platform than they already do on Facebook.

<comment><USER3> I agree, I'd experience the exact same problems. I'm regularly emailing people who are complete strangers to me outside work, and many are complete strangers even when I'm at work. I don't want to be friends with these people, I've actively chosen not to be.

My personal life is where I have friends, my professional life is where I have colleagues. There's a line between the two that I don't cross, I've worked with family all my life and I don't let personal and professional cross.

<comment><USER4> Well don't you have the same split in the form of a private email address and a personal one? If not then you should...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're also going to take on yammer.com

<comment><USER6> That would be a good move, it would enrich the office apps they already have. Its not hard to create the features that yammer offers and google will whoop them on distribution alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yawn</comment>


Selected patents from 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/12/13/magazine/13endpaper.html?ref=magazine <comment><USER2> For all the doom and gloom around old media. the NYT is doing a great job with the web. Other publications should be looking to them for inspiration.

The NYT hasn't forgotten who they are. They are conveyors of information. It is their job to tell complex stories to the public. The Internet doesn't interfere with that, it enables it. The NYT used to be confined to a static 2d black and white paper to communicate a message. Now they don't have those limits.

And the graphic should be an image map with links to the patents.

<comment><USER3> This page is simply good graphic design.

A much better example of NYT's use of interactive media was their unemployment graphic: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/econo...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/economy/unemployment- lines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually quite like this presentation of the patents. Though I agree the background lines are confusing if they are actually meaningful. And it would be great if you could click on the titles and be sent to the actual patent description.

EDIT: re. "Device and Method for Preventing Unwanted Oral Activity" I call prior art on ball gags.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone figure out what the lines in the background are for?

<comment><USER6> it's art.

<comment><USER7> "chartjunk"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favorite patent: [http://www.google.com/patents?id=6AoYAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=6AoYAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER9> If you ever want me to not read or understand something make a poster like this.</comment>


Yahoo Stock Highest Since May, 2008 - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1368711000000&chddm=977805&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ%3AYHOO&ntsp=0&fct=big&ei=xriaUYC7FqaelgOsWw <comment><USER3> Its amazing to see such steady growth almost immediately after Marissa Mayer was announced CEO. Marissa, FTW!

[https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1368711000000&chddm=78198&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:YHOO&&fct=big&ei=N7-aUajFKoj9iQLSiQE)

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, check out what happened to Google's stock starting on the day she became CEO of Yahoo. Maybe greater market forces are also at work here.

<comment><USER5> Or it's two great CEO's at work. Larry Page has been doing quite well with Google and it's unfair to conclude market forces are the reason.

<comment><USER6> At this moment not really because the whole market is rallying, for example look at the S&P 500:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EGSPC+Interactive#symbo...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EGSPC+Interactive#symbol=^gspc;range=ytd;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined);

<comment><USER5> Apple dropped from $600 to $440 during the same time period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I recall correctly, Yahoo!, under Mayer's watch, sold out half of its Alibaba stake at a valuation of $40bn. That sale is looking like a colossally bad decision (that is, a $12b loss).

The 70% rise that Yahoo has had since she started is about $12bn in market cap. Yahoo's remaining 20% stake in Alibaba went from 40bn to a projected 100bn, netting $12bn. So, do you think Mayer's management is responsible, or is it that a legacy asset increased in price?

[http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/why-alibaba-could- be-...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/why-alibaba-could-be-chinas- next-100-billion-i-p-o/)

<comment><USER8> Whatever. It is easy to make a single decision that is right or wrong. Or, a decision can be right given limited information ("this thing has low odds of paying off"), but "wrong" given what actually happens ("what do you know, against odds, it paid off!") Anyone who plays Poker knows this.

You can't look at one decision and use it as a barometer to know whether a CEO is good or bad. That is just silly. It makes more sense to look at the body of decisions.

<comment><USER7> That's all fine to say, but unfortunately for this decision, it cost shareholders _12 billion dollars_. Her poker hand _may_ have been good, but it lost, and it lost HUGE. And in all fairness, I don't know how much of that decision was hers, per se. But the risk that a good decision has a bad outsome it kind of the risk that CEOs take. People are lazy, and they tend to just look at outcomes. Hedge fund managers don't get paid for good losses. And they get their funds closed when they bet the house on a good decision that goes bad.

I wish her the best, but she's going to have a very difficult time making a body of good decisions that will make up for that one, if it was her doing.

Either way, my point is to say that hiring Mayer has neither hurt nor helped Yahoo's enterprise value. The entire company, just as was was under Jerry Yang, is just moving around with the value of its assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yahoo's stock is indeed at the highest point since 2008, but so is the NASDAQ. While part of the growth may be from Meyer, a huge portion of the growth is simply because the market as a whole is on a major upswing:

[https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1368734400000&chddm=491487&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC;NASDAQ:GOOG;NASDAQ:MSFT&cmptdms=0;0;0&q=NASDAQ:YHOO&&fct=big&ei=8smaUei5GZDlqAGcoQE)

<comment><USER10> YHOO was flat until Meyer was hired last July.

<comment><USER4> And GOOG rocketed to all time highs starting the day she quit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kind of ironic, wouldn't this be a bit more apropos:

<http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO>

</comment><comment><USER12> It's funny you posted this using Google Finance and not Yahoo Finance - <USER2> price versus mind share.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason is because on Google Finance, I can _link_ to a specific time frame. I don't think I can do that on Yahoo.

<comment><USER10> [http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive#symbol=Y...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive#symbol=YHOO;range=5y)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, most tech stocks are at their highest in 13 years or so, so this isn't anything special.

</comment><comment><USER13> No love for Yahoo? I'm not an employee there, but even I find it annoying that even when there is solid good news there's a heap of people on HN trying to tear them down at every decision/move they make (let's not forget about the "forbidding working remotely will be the death of Yahoo..." tirades)

On one hand there were people trying to say that Apple deserved every bit of its stock drop, but when Yahoo gets a boost it deserves no credit?

These (Yahoo team) are your fellow tech community members who are passionate (hopefully) about what they do and have life savings and paychecks riding on this -- let's cheer them on and offer some constructive feedback.

</comment><comment><USER14> Up 1.4% at the most, day close of up .23%, given tech stock, would prefer to say that it has little relation to tumblr acquisition today

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't really trade much, but I thought this was an interesting data point: my one share of GOOG has made ~2x more profit in ~6 months relative to the amount of profit obtained by the 10 shares of YHOO I bought one year ago.

<comment><USER16> My $1,200 in Google Stock made x2 more profit than my $100 in Yahoo.

\- Hopefuly you don't trade much.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Best way to digest Book- and Video- learnings for entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/founder-notes-tab/jjiadehbnchidnkkkfnjbpljladpdibi <comment><AUTHOR> I built a tool to fix my own issue. I like reading a lot of startup / leadership / improvement books (and watch youtube videos and hear podcasts on those topics as well).

I really enjoy doing that, but to learn something out of these books I have to take notes on some key elements. Every time I review my notes I feel amazed (because I remember again those learnings) -- but at the same time I feel sad because I forgot those in the first place. I would need to review those notes much more often.

That's what I do now with "Founder Notes Tab" and make publicly available for everyone. It's still very much MVP but I would love your thoughts on this.

I created a chrome extension that shows a short "random" book note on books that are potentially very inspiring for every entrepreneur (or those who want to aspire being one). Also, it links to the book incase someone wants to know more about the book in general.

-> [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/founder-notes-tab/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/founder-notes-tab/jjiadehbnchidnkkkfnjbpljladpdibi)

I will add much more notes in the next days. But I also will add video notes (and linking the youtube videos) and podcast episodes.

It would be amazing if you can share your thoughts on this. Is this interesting for you? Do you have the same issue I described in the beginning?</comment>


Third-party iPhone applications to arrive Monday - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9958320-37.html <comment><USER2> A deceiving headline. They imply that they have inside information, but when you drill down, it is a series of sourceless "shoulds."

I still don't know how Apple could possibly ship a phone on Monday when it has yet to show up on the FCC database --unless they have somehow arranged a Monday approval date with the FCC.

<comment><USER3> First paragraph: "A source at a software company that has been working on a native iPhone application tells us the company is getting ready to launch that application on Monday"

That sounds pretty definite to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The SDK is not quite out of the beta yet.

The devleopers have not had a chance to test their apps on new iphones or any real devices (not the developer devices with custom firmware).

There is no way apple will unleash thusly untested apps on the users. You can only make one first impression and it better be the good one.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recall Apple themselves saying late June for the App Store go-live. They could have pushed things forward however, but I doubt it.</comment>


Donald Sterling banned for life, fined $2.5 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-watch-live-nba-donald-sterling-20140429-dto,0,1366821.story

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, what was the context of his statement? Meaning was it made on a private, but taped, phone conversation?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!!

<comment><USER4> Right, because this is a problem with women?

<comment><USER3> Is isn't something to do with this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZef_VIoL5A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZef_VIoL5A) ?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Applying to YC as foreigners. Visa advice - <AUTHOR>

If you apply to YC as a foreigner and get accepted what are the best ways to handle Visa. What kind of Visa do you need to stay for at least 3 months (YC duration). <comment><USER2> The visa guide is available at

[http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.749cabd81f5f...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.749cabd81f5ffc8fba713d10526e0aa0/?vgnextoid=ef26d8f4a80a8310VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=ef26d8f4a80a8310VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD)

B1 visa may be enough. Check it out.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll need an invitation letter from YC before you apply for the visa. While the US visa process is quite unpredictable, it'll improve your chances if you've traveled abroad before. For most of the first timers to the US, they issue a 6 month multiple entry visa.

</comment><comment><USER4> Where are you coming from ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maldives. I was hoping to get more information on the visa process. How difficult it is, etc.</comment></comment>


How to test a random number generator (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/06/how-to-test-a-random-number-generator-2/ <comment><USER2> One of the most important things that came out of The PCG Paper[1] is that tests are stronger as you reduce the number of state bits, and measuring this continuum is _much_ more powerful than a single test. (see Figure 7)

It seems to me that any new non-cryptographic PRNG should be required to test itself in this manner, or else provide a very good excuse.

[1] [http://www.pcg-random.org/paper.html](http://www.pcg- random.org/paper.html)

<comment><USER3> PCG seems to be designed by intuition and experimentation, with practically no theory in its support. I'm not saying it's bad, and I certainly see some potential merit in the idea that a PRNG passing tests with fewer bits is likely more effective than one that needs more state.

The problem is that these test suites are not very comprehensive and while they're OK for discerning an obviously broken RNG, they're not good to vouch for an RNG in general. That is to say, it is fairly easy to write an RNG that passes these test suites despite having some very predictable and easily detectable patterns that you'd find if only you wrote a test that looks for that particular pattern. Kinda like these suites have hyperplane tests to detect LCGs.

There's an old saying about anyone being smart enough to invent crypto they are not smart enough to break themselves. As far as designing RNGs goes, doing one against existing test suites is pretty low bar. I think we can afford a little more theory backing non-cryptographic PRNGs too.

I wouldn't give these test suites so much credit; they're tools for detecting known flaws or broken implementations. That's all.

<comment><USER4> While the PCG paper does not contain such an impressive number of mathematical formula's that makes me instantly want to skip pages, I would not say it has 'practically no theory in its support'.

For the theory around periods, distribution and jumping it can just refer to these properties for LCG's, which are very well studied.

Testing an RNG design against the statistical test suites TestU01 and PractRand seems on first intuition the be the wrong way to go about it. First you should have a theory behind the RNG, and only then test it.

And to me it seems PCG does just that. The various output functions are carefully designed. Which bits are the best and which are the weakest for an LCG? The worst bits are dismissed. How can the best bits be used to pick permutations of the remaining bits? The output functions are well designed, but you will have to watch the video or look at the C++ source to see the theory behind them.

Then just about all known tests and theory to differentiate between true randomness and the results of an RNG are applied. Which are handily packed into test suites. That is the way to look at these tests. Not some sort of specific, arbitrarily chosen test. This is not the situation of Javascript engines that may get optimized to much for some arbitrary benchmark.

And those test where run against severely weakened versions of PCG, just to be sure the tests don't accidentally pass.

But you have a good point: designing solely against test suites is not a good idea. A result are Xorshift128+ and Xoroshiro128+. Even with some theory behind it, they are the result of varying constants until they do not fail any test on BigCrush too consistently. It may even sometimes pass, and that is what is claimed on for example Wikipedia. But along comes another test suite, PractRand, and it fails within a second of testing. It is optimized for BigCrush, but not really statistically good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you're better of reading the relevant chapter in TAOCP. It has more detail, and this doesn't add anything from past 1970 or so. For example, it doesn't even _mention_ the diehard and dieharder tests, let alone discuss their merits. (CORRECTION: it does. Thanks to marvy for pointing that out)

Also, I think the final line in this text ( _"Correct generators usually pass tests, and buggy generators usually fail."_ ) is at least dangerously misleading.

Firstly, I would use good/bad, not correct/buggy, but that is minor. My major issue is the idea that bad generators usually fail. Only really bad generators usually fail. Somewhat bad generators fail tests less often, and only slightly bad generators can pass many, many tests, only to show their weakness in some particular setting.

For example, if I take the output r1,r2,r3… of a good generator and swap r1 and r2 if r1>r2, r3 and r4 if r3>r4, etc. the result isn't truly random, but will pass many tests.

If you suspect your generator to have this problem, it is extremely easy to test for it, but if you don't, that may be hard.

A good array of tests will test subsequences, and find this easily (the average of the odd samples will typically be less than expected, and the average of the even samples will typically be larger)

<comment><USER6> You think a length two repeat in the most significant bits will hide from statistical tests? That doesn't sound plausible to me. Can you show a good RNG for which this mutation passes tests?

<comment><USER5> I don't claim that, but it will pass the tests described in the text being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was disappointing. Not a word about correlations between subsequent numbers, period length, all the things that matter if you're actually generating significant amounts of random numbers.

<comment><USER8> The chapter is not about writing and then testing new PRNGs. A uniform PRNG of sufficient quality for one's purpose is assumed. The key bit:

"Most testers will be concerned with the second step of the grand strategy: testing code that transforms uniform random sequences into sequences with other distributions. Although very few people develop their own uniform generators, many people have reasons to develop custom nonuniform generators."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since the discussion seems to have already degenerated into waxing poetic about this RNG or that I'd like to throw in: Do not use pseudo-random number generators. Use cryptographically secure random number generators.

From a performance perspective there are vanishingly few applications where the difference between MT or PCG and AES-CTR is going to make an ounce of difference. Once the question of performance is settled, there simply don't remain any arguments in favor of using PRNGs.

<comment><USER10> [https://github.com/mohae/bench-rng](https://github.com/mohae/bench-rng)

csprng: 909 ns/Op

Xorhift128+: 2 ns/Op

Xorhift128+ is what all major JS engines use for Math.random().

I don't think it's a good idea if you use a CSPRNG if there isn't any reason for that. Especially if you need a lot of random numbers. E.g. a game might drop some additional frames here and there and your particle effects won't look any better and your AI won't behave any smarter either.

Not to use PRNGs ever is bad advice.

<comment><USER9> > csprng: 909 ns/Op

OK, go ships a lousy csprng. I've been asking the team to replace it but no one has gotten around to it. AES-CTR, for example, is competitive with Xorshift and Xoroshiro.

> Xorshift128+ is what all major JS engines use for Math.random().

Only because two years ago Yang Guo noticed that MWC1616 was garbage. Up until that point engines were shipping a broken generator because someone had been clever. This failure mode happens again and again. java.util.Random, for example.

> I don't think it's a good idea if you use a CSPRNG if there isn't any reason > for that

Using insecure random sources opens you up to all sorts of attacks that CSPRNGs insulate you to.

> Especially if you need a lot of random numbers

Over the past year I profiled a huge number of binaries. I found exactly one where fetching random numbers was over 1% of CPU consumption.

> your particle effects won't look any better

Your particle effects are probably running in a shader. That's a whole other ball game.

<comment><USER11> Three comments:

> I found exactly one where fetching random numbers was over 1% of CPU > consumption.

Again, Monte Carlo simulation is the obvious exception, and it is a huge, important field and big consumer of random numbers. Stochastic algorithms (see Sebastian Thrun's _Probabilistic Robotics_ ) might be another example.

However, one big problem is that many benchmarks basically benchmark the PRN generation, and so incentivise vendors to default to fast PRNG. And I agree with you, the default should be a CSPRNG.

Lastly, on a side note, I seem to recall that some generators from Vigna's Xoroshiro family suffer a very low quality least significant bit. Not sure whether Xorshift128+ is among them.

EDIT to add more:

BTW, it's surprisingly hard to get researchers in PRNG to give clear, unequivocal recommendations for users. They'll often resort to some version of "it depends" (or plug their own).

Lastly, let me plug my related stackoverflow answer:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4720822/best-pseudo- rand...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4720822/best-pseudo-random- number-generator/38202922#38202922)

<comment><USER9> > Monte Carlo simulation is the obvious exception

It depends. :) Even then very few realistic simulations are going to be RNG bound. Even fewer of those are going to care about the difference between Xoroshiro and AES-CTR (with AESNI).

A common failure mode I've seen is programmers picking Mersenne Twister and then assuming initialization is cheap.

> suffer a very low quality least significant bit

IIRC, the LSB behaves like a LFSR.

> it's surprisingly hard to get researchers in PRNG to give clear, unequivocal > recommendations for users

There are about five PRNG researchers in the world and few (none?) of them are doing it full time. L'Ecuyer, the biggest name since Marsaglia died, seems to be dealing with PRNGs mostly as a means to doing operations research.

(Side note: Pierre L'Ecuyer is very likely the strongest over-50 cyclist in Quebec.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 2/10 would not recommend for technical merit.

8/10 is nice if you want a handwavy human explanation of some rudimentary expectations in crypto

\- author spends a few pages thinking about randomness - we have formal definitions of a RNG/PRNG.

\- author does basic statistical tests, these seem very unconcerned with actual randomness - i'm not sure what the point is

\- author really shouldn't be writing about crypto randomness if they don't do crypto

+1 to higher comment saying reading TAOCP instead.

<comment><USER13> The author specifically mentions he doesn't write about cryptography.

> The idea of what constitutes a good RNG depends on how the RNG is applied. > That is why, for example, a generator may be considered high-quality for > simulation while being considered unacceptable for cryptography. This > chapter looks at tests of statistical quality and does not address tests for > cryptographical security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a great read. The principles are also applicable to other problems such as evaluating a constant time comparison function, symmetrical cypher, or hash.

</comment><comment><USER15> So is this a good PRNG?

        f(i) = SHA256(i + salt)

<comment><USER16> Random, sure. Uniformly distributed? Not sure.

<comment><USER17> My understanding is that to the extent it's not uniformly distributed, that's viewed as a cryptographic vulnerability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests)

<comment><USER11> Marsaglia's DieHard, DieHarder, and NIST 800-22 A are historically important, but outdated.

See my related stack overflow answer:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4720822/best-pseudo- rand...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4720822/best-pseudo-random- number-generator/38202922#38202922)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
        Software random number generators are technically
        pseudorandom number generators because the output
        of a deterministic program cannot really be random.

On the other hand, everything we build is made of quantum particles which exhibit truly random behavior. Including the computers that run those programs. So programs cannot really be deterministic.

<comment><USER8> That's an argument that's persuasive in very specialized regions of spacetime with particular chemistries. Like dorm rooms equipped with bongs.

<comment><USER20> Also, high in the Earth's atmosphere, where the air doesn't do such a good job of protecting RAM from cosmic ray impacts.

<comment><USER8> Right, but that's only slightly less silly than claiming programs are non- deterministic because of the quantum handwave equation. Similarly, programs behave non-deterministically because you might drop your phone or spill bongwater on your laptop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/aug/24/artist-peter-doig-landscape-painting-lawsuit <comment><USER2> First, let me say that this looks like mistaken identity or worse; and that I myself am an artist, and like most part-time artists I'm very sympathetic to the interests of full-time artists.

However, this sentiment is unrealistically simple:

"I feel a living artist should be the one who gets to say yea or nay and not be taken to task and forced to go back 40 years in time."

The way the art market works, attribution (and provenance) is a big part of valuation. If you're a famous artist and I bought one of your paintings without having you sign a bunch of paperwork -- and who does that with young artists and amateur collectors? -- then you have the power to give or withhold a lot of value.

I think the artist was in the right here. But you have to consider what his statement would mean if he had in fact painted that picture. By denying its authenticity he would be trying to destroy its value. You can choose what you acknowledge, but as an artist you don't get to choose your own history retroactively. Like anybody else you can tell your own story, but yours might not be the only version.

Of course, this is why real collectors document provenance, sometimes extensively; and why a lot of artists will by default include a "certificate of authenticity" of some kind with every sale.

<comment><USER3> What's interesting here is how the art isn't valued on its own artistic merits, but by its authorship. The artist's ability to control the value of a work by testimony is weird, but only because the underlying work's value is weird.

<comment><USER4> Many collectibles are like that.

Eg : Jimmy Hendrix's first guitar as a child would auction for quite a lot of money. But the same model and condition guitar instead owned by some random guy in Omaha would be worthless.

<comment><USER5> I feel like this analogy isn't quite right.

I would compare the guitar to a paintbrush. Both are tools which, in the right hands, can make beautiful things. So the value comes from the pairing of the tool to the wielder, and I would expect an artist's paintbrush to be valuable when tied to a specific artist just like Hendrix's guitar, and both mostly worthless otherwise.

But the art itself should have value mostly independently, and I think the analogue to that would be the music. If someone else produced exactly the same music as Hendrix, I think it should be almost as valuable.

<comment><USER4> Would you pay the same amount to see a famous band play a concert vs a very good cover band?

<comment><USER5> If the concert was purely music and the very good cover band played the music just as well, then sure.

Concerts are about more than just the music though. They are often about the stage presence, visual affects, and the nostalgia, in addition to the music.

That being said, if this cover band had just as good a show as the original band, and somehow the same amount of nostalgia (i.e. they've been covering the original band's songs since the start and have always been just as good in concert), then again I would say yes. I don't think that's likely though.

I mean, if you boil down what you are paying for to its essence, and provide an alternative with exactly the same quality in that essence, then you should be willing to pay the same. It's almost by-definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And just when will court punish people wrongly suing artists that denies you make money with counterfeits ? Even worse is the greediness of these art dealers that just want to make money whatever the cost to artists. Art market is sick.

<comment><USER7> The third to last paragraph

> The artist's lawyers said they identified the real Pete Doige, whose records > matched Fletcher's description. Doige died in 2012, but his sister, Marilyn > Doige Bovard, testified at the trial that the work was created by her late > brother.

Suggests that there was reason for the corrections officer to believe he had a genuine painting, and not a counterfeit. However as this made it to court it may be that the plaintiffs were in a little too deep.

<comment><USER8> Note spellings: Peter Doig vs Pete Doige.

<comment><USER7> Yep. Took me a while to find a copy of the signature [0]. I would happily follow the argument that the e character is embellishment from the end of the g. However all doubt is removed when presented with Doige's signature [1]. For comparison I also looked up Doig's signature [2], of course this could never be evidence that his signature at 16 wasn't the one presented.

[0] [http://i.cbc.ca/1.3675486.1468348236!/cpImage/httpImage/imag...](http://i.cbc.ca/1.3675486.1468348236!/cpImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_620/painting- dispute-20160710.jpg)

[1] [http://liverampup.com/uploads/images/362E348700000578-0-imag...](http://liverampup.com/uploads/images/362E348700000578-0-image-m-36_1468293263977.jpg)

[2] [https://www.wengcontemporary.com/cdn/uploads/default_site/ar...](https://www.wengcontemporary.com/cdn/uploads/default_site/artwork/Weng_Contemporary_Doig_Fisherman_Signature_Shot.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What if he really had painted it? What duty does he have to authenticate it?

<comment><USER10> Forget this case for a minute.

Imagine Alice is selling Bob a house. Carol comes along and says, "Don't buy that house. It's infested with termites." This is likely to cause Bob to reconsider his offer, and Alice will be somewhat pissed. If Carol is correct, there's nothing Alice can do, but if Carol is lying, Alice will likely sue for unlawful tortuous interference with business or somesuch, whatever the legal words are.

Now imagine that Alice is selling Bob a Monet painting. Carol says "That painting is fake." If Carol is some internet rando, probably doesn't matter. But if Carol is well known among Monet collectors, then her statement is likely to dissuade potential buyers. Alice will lose lots of money. If Carol is right, end of story, but if Carol is lying, perhaps to spite Alice, then hello lawsuit.

Now, getting closer to the case at hand, imagine Alice is selling Bob a Peter Doig painting. Carol says "That painting is a fake." Same story, if Carol is lying and that depresses the market price, Alice has a case against Carol.

In this particular case, it turns out that "Carol" is actually Peter Doig himself. But that's somewhat irrelevant to the legal framework. Actually, it just means he's considered an expert, and therefore his statements _will_ affect the price. But being an expert doesn't make his statements true.

Of course, with evidence presented, obvious he's not lying.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for writing this up, helped me clarify different interpretations. From my point of view, whether or not the painting is Doig's affects his brand and the value of his name, which I do think he has the right to control.

<comment><USER10> There's a number of things one can say to manage reputation. "That's a terrible work." "I disown that." "Better off burned." "Not part of my catalog." But "I didn't paint that" is a statement of fact, it had better be true. One might consider an author who writes a book that flops. They can ask the publisher to stop printing it, but they can't demand people pretend that they didn't write it. However, there is the case where a movie director demands their name be taken off a bad movie. Fuzzy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if the painting will actually be worth something now that it's been all over the media.

<comment><USER13> To be safe, I think the picture should be awarded to Peter Doig. Perhaps on the grounds that the owner admits it confusable with his brand..

<comment><USER14> So if I make art "in the style of artist <x>", then all my work belongs to that artist?

(I'm not talking about blatant copies.)

<comment><USER13> Normally no, but here the "owner" was claiming it is the artist's work, not a facsimile or reproduction. So this is an exact case of the normally theoretical ill that trademark and brand related law is supposed to protect against: something that is honestly confused with the work of a manufacturer with a substantial cost to that manufacturer.

Try doing this at the border with a "rolix" and that offended manufacturer has rights to protect their interests not a responsibility to show up to convince customs that your rolix is a real rolex from back when they had trouble spelling. So I'd say this is an example of different justice for different relative social status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what the auction price will be now that the notoriety of the trial is attached to the work.

<comment><USER16> A great observation and question. This is one of those things about art that really intrigues me - it gets to the heart of the big questions on human nature, culture, and economics. It's delightfully absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The facts of the case (as summarized in the article) makes this seem like an obvious case of mistaken identity. Not sure what's noteworthy here.

<comment><USER18> Mostly that an artist had to pay legal fees to defend himself because he told the truth and someone didn't like it. The ridiculous litigiousness of the whole thing is disconcerting. The last name wasn't even spelled correctly, if an artist doesn't claim a painting, that should be good enough.

<comment><USER19> Nor were all of the mentioned facts in the pre-trial coverage. I don't remember the stuff about the other Doig's sister, and the prison records had not yet surfaced (the prison system had been unable to find them at the time).

<comment><USER20> > Nor were all of the mentioned facts in the pre-trial coverage.

Which actually should never have mattered, because the trial never should have happened. Doig said, no, that is not my painting. That should have been the end of it, but the other party didn't like that and tried to get the court to say otherwise because they thought they had basically won the lottery.

<comment><USER21> One can imagine scenarios where an artist disclaims that they created something out of spite (with family or whatever) and that disclaiming greatly decreases the value of some sold item. If that painting or whatever was fairly obviously the artist's work, would you still feel the same?

This case seems odd based on the news coverage though (based on the coverage in respectable publications like The New York Times and Guardian). I would have, perhaps naively, assumed that the plaintiffs would have been expected to have at least some evidence that Doig (with a different spelling) was the artist in question before it went to trial. Which doesn't seem to have been the case.

Of course, this was a civil suit and the reality is that you can sue anyone for just about any reason. For better or worse.

<comment><USER22> > an artist disclaims that they created something ... disclaiming greatly > decreases the value of some sold item

If this concerns you, you should not be as dependent on items whose value hangs so tightly on the word of a disinterested (or worse, interested) party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The idea that this had to be argued in a court of law is absolutely ridiculous.

<comment><USER24> That Doig had to prove a negative is really awful too. It's hard to prove a negative in a court of law, and usually judges stop that crap very early in a case. Amazed it took this long.

<comment><USER25> > That Doig had to prove a negative is really awful too. It's hard to prove a > negative in a court of law

Not really. All that it means to "prove a negative" in this kind of a case (a civil case where the standard is "preponderance of the evidence") is that you have to bring sufficient evidence that the trier of fact (jury or judge, as the case may be) finds that the claims that the other party is making are less likely true than the alternative claims that you are making. It isn't "proof" to a high degree of certainty.

<comment><USER24> True, but usually the onus is on plaintiff to demonstrate the affirmative. The prison guard's story was very weak in demonstrating that "famous artist" Peter Doig was the same as "unknown prison artist" Pete Doige, especially given that Peter Doig had no incentive for disavowing a work he had already sold. "Embarrassment" caused by imprisonment or drug use are hardly motivators for artists. Some use those kinds of things as career enhancers.

<comment><USER25> > True, but usually the onus is on plaintiff to demonstrate the affirmative.

As it was here. The thing is _any_ evidence (however weak) that a claim is true, if uncountered, can suffice for proof _by a preponderance of the evidence_ for the claim. So, it doesn't take _strong_ evidence to create some burden for the defense to disprove the plaintiffs claim, but the degree of proof necessary is set by the strength of the plaintiff's evidence, since the standard is preponderance of the evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been thinking about this since the first article was posted a while back. Something really bothered me about this case, and I finally put my finger on it. I realize this thread may not be read since it has long fallen off the front page, but that's ok.

The problem is that plaintiff's case is logically flawed at its very core. The argument is that Doig cost him $10 million by refusing to authenticate the painting.

Why is that authentication worth anything? Because Doig is in a position to confirm that it is part of his oeuvre. And any such authentication, if provided, assumes that Doig is telling the truth.

But Doig refused to authenticate the painting. Now plaintiff says he's a liar.

So, if he's a liar, his authentication is worthless.

If he's telling the truth, the painting is not by him.

In other words, plaintiff failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. There's no need to even gather further evidence. It's disturbing that it took a federal judge three years to decide this; but then again, they are political appointees, so the standard isn't really whether they are logical thinkers.

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't imagine what grounds the plaintiffs would have to appeal... if he didn't start painting until after the claimed meeting, Q.E.D., suit dismissed, money grubbing plaintiffs pay the defense's costs.

(I know it doesn't work that way, Doig is out of pocket to defend himself and that's the shitty way it turns out.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Art's a lot like real estate: an investment with a view. Sadly, the integrity of the view cannot be tolerated to outweigh the integrity of the market.

The really strange thing to me was how little resemblance the painting bore to Doig's work. The former looks like a bad Dali.

</comment><comment><USER28> Could such a case be made where the work is a piece of code? I'm not sure why someone would sue someone for claiming they are _not_ the author. May be for a coder to take responsibility for bad code?

At times like this I am happy to have a rare (non-English) last name.

</comment><comment><USER29> I kinda want that Pete Doige painting now...

</comment><comment><USER30> Amazing that there is no mention of what the painting looks like compared to Doig's paintings. Surely the style would be different?

</comment><comment><USER31> Verisart purports to prevent this with blockchain technology, somehow, take their word for it, handwave, jk

I'm not sure what they do actually.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why these things have to take 3 years is sad. Nobody should have to go through 3 years of this crap.</comment>


I Know You're Mad at United But… (Thoughts from a Pilot Wife About Flight 3411) - <AUTHOR> https://thepilotwifelife.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/i-know-youre-mad-at-united-but-thoughts-from-a-pilot-wife-about-flight-3411/ <comment><USER2> This "pilot wife" provided a better response than United's CEO. That's the _real_ story here: it's how United has handled this unfortunate event.</comment>


Steve Jobs' Personality is Integral to Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.crashplan.com/blog/misc-rambling/steve-jobs

<comment><USER2> Im just impressed that the guy who wrote the article is called "Mike Evangelist" and is the Chief Marketing Officer. It makes me wonder if he changed his name for the job like an actor. Or if it was just destiny to have this position...and if so, what about all his parents and grandparents? Were they in sales, marketing or religion?

<comment><USER3> Ahh, nominative determinism!

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I admire Steve deeply. But in this post you see what was probably the worst thing about him: people feared the guy. Maybe that's unavoidable if you have high standards - I'd really like to know. But I don't think this is a case of fearing his high standards, just fearing an ordinary "That's stupid" reaction.

I only mention this because I think a lot of us here want very much to be like Steve. We need to work to avoid imitating the wrong things.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://web.archive.org/web/20011203234543/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011203234543/http://www.apple.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've yet to run my own company, but I have been in many leadership rolls throughout my young life and one thing that I think all great leaders have is their ability to connect with people. Whether it be the the quite guy in the corner, the angry customer, or the hotshot who thinks he invented the wheel. Great leaders demand respect but they also understand the power of giving respect. Obviously Steve Jobs knew what his customers wanted even before they did, but after reading this post I realize that what made Steve such an incredible leader for Apple was the passion and dedication he brought to his job each day. Whether it be pushing innovation or connecting with his employees. My respect for Steve Jobs only grows.</comment>


The nuclear power dilemma - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power/retirements#.XGgXoXpKjOQ <comment><USER2> Reads like an advert.. for nuclear power

All this advert talks about is coal and gas being bad news for the environment.

Frankly if nuclear power is more expensive than renewables then it should go the way of coal and gas which it is more expensive than as well (ie gotten rid of)

<comment><USER3> The world is moving away from nuclear. The last nuke plant under construction in the US will likely be cancelled before it's completed and no new plants are being built. Several countries have agreed to phase out nuclear entirely. Even China isn't building them at the rate they claimed.

The industry promised a "nuclear renaissance" several years which never materialized and it kills them that they can't sell people new plants, so they commission puff pieces like that ignore the big reasons nuclear is going away: unsolved waste problem; risk of catastrophic accidents; costs out of control; uneconomic to operate; uninsurable; incredibly expensive to decommission.

<comment><USER4> pfft - you talk as if some kind of unforeseen natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami could... um... ahh... er... oh, yeah. Nevermind.</comment></comment></comment>


Enjoying the show, avoiding the flamethrower: life inside Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/02/apple-macworld-lookback <comment><USER2> He has a very calm & soothing tone of voice which, unfortunately, sets off all sorts of alarms in my head.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"... I never had Steve's flamethrower aimed at me, although I came close a couple of times; all in all, I was close to getting my butt fired three times – and all three times, I probably would have deserved it. I do know friends who did. It wasn't always pleasant ..."_

Even if the authenticity of the article ( _I put this down to the "Cult of Mac"_ ) is questioned you cannot deny the existence of the _"Reality Distortion Field"_ ~ [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt&topic=Reality%20Distortion&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium) You can read more here by Andy Hertzfeld & Co. ~ [http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&...](http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&topic=Reality%20Distortion&detail=medium)

</comment><comment><USER4> If I wanted to read another fluff piece about Apple I could've gone to wired.com

<comment><USER5> oh come on, it wasn't that bad. At least it wasn't as bad as that darth vader management secrets article that's also on the front page.

<comment><USER6> That was a parody. This appears to be real.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: LeadFinch – Find Anyone's Email Address - <AUTHOR> https://leadfinch.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi I'm Chris, cofounder of LeadFinch. I'd love to here what you think!</comment>


Root name server - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server <comment><USER2> I don't quite understand the need to share a random Wikipedia post as a Hackernews item...</comment>