Traits Needed In Your First 5 Engineering Startup Hires - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/02/hiring-first-5-engineers-what-sort-of.html

<comment><USER2> "Have the candidate come in to work with you for a day. "

I'd only agree to this if I got paid for it. Interviewing is one thing, but actively contributing to a company's codebase is another. I don't think it's asking too much to get paid for what I do.

Plus, it would be difficult for me to shake the impression that such a company is cheap and is trying to get free labor. If they're not going to pay me a day's pay, how can I trust them to pay me a yearly salary or provide me the tools I need? How likely are they to be in business a year from now?

<comment><USER3> _"actively contributing to a company's codebase"_

You think you will provide value which exceed the knowledge you might gain from learning about their systems and working/talking with their other employees, etc.?

It is a great chance to get to work with new people if the domain is exciting. I would welcome such opportunity w/o demanding money for my "services" which probably consists of asking _a lot_ of questions :)

<comment><USER4> Such "opportunities" to donate work for free quickly get old.

<comment><USER3> If I were seeking a job, the primary motivator would be having peers/assignments from which I can learn, I will gladly invest a day of my time to ensure the place I am going to spend the next many months/years of my life, is actually an interesting place — even if the other party might (also) get something out of it.

Though if I know in advance that the "trial day" will consist of me _"donating work for free"_ then I doubt it is a place for me.

This might sound like a cliché, but money is the last thing on my mind when selecting a job or employee (I am presently an employer), and I am somewhat surprised by the point assignments given to the parent and grand parent comments.

<comment><USER2> "Though if I know in advance that the "trial day" will consist of me "donating work for free" then I doubt it is a place for me."

It sounds like you and I actually agree for the most part. Both the hirer and the hiree have the same problem: hiring is almost like extracting War & Peace from a newspaper. Is it necessarily fair for me to turn somebody down for wanting me to do a "trial day"? Of course not. But I have to go on what I have to go on. Just like it's not fair for an employer to hire me using a cover letter, a resume, and a couple of hour-long interviews.

So if a company asks me to work for free for a day, should I draw the conclusion that they're really wanting to evaluate me well or that they're cheapskates who won't pay people for doing work? Just like you'd probably rather turn away a superstar than hire a dud, I'd rather turn down a kickass company than work for a crappy one. So I'm probably going to go with the latter.

Don't get me wrong, money _isn't_ what I'm in this for either. But that doesn't mean I should let people take advantage of me.

<comment><USER3> Presumably we have different views of what was originally meant with _"come in to work with you for a day"_ , seeing as this has now turned into _"work for free for a day"_ ;)

Of course the intent was not to just get someone in to work for free, but more like when you take a first meeting with a new accountant or similar, you may ask him lots of questions related to your situation, and he will answer you based on his knowledge and experience. Most will not charge for the first meeting, presumably under the assumption that providing the client with useful information only increase the chance of having the client pay for future services.

Similarly if you come work with me for a day, and I am impressed with your abilities, you can be rather sure I will hire you. If I am not impressed by your abilities, I am almost certain that you will have learned something from the experience (either about your own skills or the tech. we work with), so for the client I would say this is win/win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me or does the misuse of the label "Engineer" bother anybody else?

Do people who work in software startups generally take Physics, Chemistry, Calc 1-4, Diff Eq, Statics, Dynamics and so on while at University?

I was a little squeamish calling myself an engineer since I never took the certification exam to become a Professional Engineer after graduating with a BS in Aerospace Engineering...

<comment><USER6> _Do people who work in software startups generally take Physics, Chemistry, Calc 1-4, Diff Eq, Statics, Dynamics and so on while at University?_

As a Ph.D. in EE, who did indeed take all of these things before becoming a software engineer [1], I feel eminently qualified to say:

Engineering is a thing you do. It is not the name of a course, a piece of paper, or a certification exam. Don't let the maturity and professionalization of other forms of engineering blind you to the real meaning of the word. I believe there was a time, in the 18th and 19th centuries, when there were significant numbers of engineers who were "practical men" and didn't go to college. They were engineers, and so are we.

An engineer is someone who designs and builds machines that do work. [2] And software engineers design and build machines -- some of the most complex machines ever built by conscious mind. We count.

\---

[1] I highly recommend studying all of these things, by the way. They are not just useful subjects, but very beautiful ones. Don't neglect biology, either.

[2] People who build machines that look pretty are artists. People who understand _why_ the computing machines work are computer scientists. Nothing stops one from being all of these things at the same time -- indeed, many people, including myself, think that it helps a lot -- but neither art nor science are synonymous with engineering.

<comment><USER7> "Engineering is a thing you do. It is not the name of a course, a piece of paper, or a certification exam."

Actually it is a piece of paper. In every state in the United States you have licensed by the state to call yourself and engineer and sell engineering services. The same as doctors, nurses, lawyers, barbers, and whatever other professions states deem required to have licenses.

<comment><USER8> "In every state in the United States you have licensed by the state to call yourself and engineer and sell engineering services."

And those laws almost universally ignored.

The trouble is that the laws are so overbearing that they choked off the supply of new licensees. The first people to get licensed, because that was the entire industry at the time, were things like boiler and power engineers. Suppose you were a young engineer and you wanted your PE license to design metal detectors "properly". You'd have had to specialize in something like power systems, sign up with whoever had a PE on staff, spend 6-12 months sizing transformer windings and designing 50 kV relays (because most PEs worked at places like that). Then you have to jump ship to work with a different PE, because you need to accumulate an apprenticeship under four PEs before you can get a license. Only then can you get your license and go back to school to specialize in what you actually want to do. Finally, in your late 20s, with no job longer than a year, and just starting work on your passion, you can _try_ to get a job in metal detection.

Most new engineers sensibly decided to just break the law. Even if the engineering board were certain to catch up with you, it would be easier to quietly move to another state in the middle of the night and start over. And the actual odds are more like one in 10,000.

P.S. IIRC Texas scrapped a lot of their silly PE laws.

<comment><USER9> For a PE in KS, you complete an engineering curriculum. Take the FE test. Then you study under any PE for four years. (Not four different ones for one year, but I suppose that would work.) Finally, you have to pass another test. It's not really too much to ask for the guy signing the blueprint that says the power lines or building being put up won't kill anybody.

<comment><USER8> That's a step in the right direction, and many jurisdictions seem to be doing it lately. However it is still too much. They need more gradations, like how medicine has a spectrum from phlebotomists (people who draw blood) to board certified neurosurgeons. As it is, a handyman who uses Ohm's law to choose the size of a wire has committed illegal engineering.

<comment><USER9> Generally, Electricians can do things similar to that if they follow the local electric code. I've watched them work--they don't consult the building drawings or whatever, and they can make some pretty extensive changes.

The PE license gets you the ability to sign off on drawings, so if there isn't a drawing change involved, there isn't any engineering to sign off on.

<comment><USER8> Read the actual laws. They generally require a licensed PE for any task that (1) requires engineering or technical knowledge to complete correctly, and (2) has an influence on life, health, or property, no matter how trivial. It's like requiring personal trainers to be board-certified cardiologists. Naturally everybody ignores this, and compliance consists of not drawing the attention of the state engineering board.

Electricians follow a handbook rather than derive results from general knowledge, so the PE laws don't apply. As long as the electrical code handbook allows it, they can do it. Possibly at enormous expense, which is why you want a power engineer to plan your factory wiring.

<comment><USER9> The laws vary from state to state. I'm not going to read them all. Here are the laws in my state: <http://www.kansas.gov/ksbtp/statutes.html> Specifically pertaining specifically to who does or doesn't need a license: <http://www.kansas.gov/ksbtp/74-7035.pdf>

I've always thought a phlebotomist is similar to a licensed electrician. (Assuming an MD is similar to a PE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Not religious about technology (or anything really). This is useful at any size company, but at a startup you really don't want to waste time debating the merits of Python versus Java._

The take-away should be that start-ups prioritize completeness over correctness. I think everyone agrees with that. Getting a feature out the door is more important than whether that feature was built in Python or Java.

The question is, how do you get tons of features out the door at a sustainable rate? I think the answer lies in finding passionate people-- hackers who some people might call "religious about technology."

The real traits needed in your first hires are all related to aligning peoples' passions:

1\. Hire people who passionately believe in the product. Make sure they are well-aligned with the founder's vision. This reduces the chance of needing to argue about completeness vs correctness.

2\. Hire a group of hackers who share the same vector of programming language and programming culture. For hacker-entrepreneurs, this is easy: hire hackers who share your values in technology choices. This reduces the chance of arguing over the definition of correctness.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good points in the article, but my favorite advice on this topic comes from here: The Interview Question You Should Always Ask ( [http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/01/the_interview_question_you_s...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/01/the_interview_question_you_sho.html) ).

In short, here's the article's main argument:

 _After you have narrowed the pool of applicants down to those with the skills, experience, and knowledge to do the job, ask each candidate one question:

What do you do in your spare time? _

Would this conflict with point #7 (Do "just enough"), or can a passionate candidate be taught to accept less than perfect results? Regardless, I have trouble seeing how you can accurately measure a persons ability to accept "just enough" without input from a trusted third-party.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm going to go out on a limb here and disagree.

What most startups need is not _another_ engineer. What most startups need is a business person who understands engineering. We can quantify value.

After attending the Hacker Fair 0 (Mtn View) . . . flying out there especially for it, having my demos ready and talking to way too many "recruiter" types who understand nothing about code, this really rang true. Technically-oriented business people are not recruiters any more than engineers are recruiters. Recruiters are people who read articles like this (parent) and manipulate people to work, solving a company's problems for free. They're usually the last ones a company must resort to to find talent.

I've yet to find a company intelligent enough to hire me.

<comment><USER2> "I've yet to find a company intelligent enough to hire me."

Not to be rude, but do you think this attitude might have something to do with it? I'm asking this because sometimes us geeks really don't know when we come off as condescending.

Bear in mind that I say this as someone who has put my foot in my mouth and said more stupid things than I would admit to publicly.

<comment><USER13> I don't think he's being particularly condescending. I know I'm not very bright, but I've walked away from recruiters simply because they were clueless and condescending.

You can pitch me to work for peanuts, but if you're a slimeball, it's probably not going to work.

<comment><USER2> He could be absolutely _right_ , but whether or not he's right, statements like that are likely to be interpreted as being about attitude than circumstance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


To prevent suicide, scientists propose adding psychoactive drug to water supply - <AUTHOR> https://www.futurism.com/neoscope/adding-psychoactive-drug-water <comment> non-entity Probably not super relevant, but lithium can interact dangerously with other psychoactive substances, particularly lysergamides. Would suck to end up hospitalized behind you had a glass of tap water during a trip.

Of course the number of psychedelic users probably isn't enough to care, I wonder if there are other, perhaps prescription drugs that could interact poorly with lithium.

<comment><USER2> If lithium is dangerous in those amounts, we should be removing it from tap water. Given that every study shows public health benefits (significant) and that it can vary 10x naturally occuring between high and low content areas, either what you're saying in those doses is false or we should be removing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I suggest to add some crack into the water supply of said scientists.</comment>


NASA - Global Hawk - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1766.html# <comment><USER2> Will they be able to do satellite deployments and research in such a vehicle? Are we really advanced enough to be sending something that big and fast into the air that is under automated control? They better guard the guidance controls on that thing like a hawk (no pun intended). It would be a heck of a thing if it fell into the wrong hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure, but I do know that it would be really hard to steal :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Appearances can be deceiving, but it looks like a NASA branded edition of... what's the military surveillance/fighter drone that sits more or less "above" the Predator in the U.S. military's current inventory?</comment>


The Economist dissolves the conspiracy theories on the undersea Internet cables - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10653963

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say The Economist dissolved anything. They showed a great deal of disdain for the conspiracy theories, but they said absolutely nothing to debunk the suspicion that at least one of these cables was cut on purpose. Unexpectedly weak and biased writing from a magazine I rather respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you. But it might not be as weak as you say.

Their argument lies in the last paragraph: "Global Marine Systems [...] says more than 50 cables were cut or damaged in the Atlantic last year; big oceans are criss-crossed by so many cables that a single break has little impact. What was unusual about the damage in the Suez canal was that it took place at a point where two continents' traffic is borne along only three cables."

Although they (indeed) do not point to the cause/s of the cables breakage (which could have effectively dismissed any conspiracy theories), they certainly show that the room for conspiracy is considerably reduced.

Plus, they duly remind us of the network's vulnerability in certain locations, the Suez canal in particular.

Thus, I would say those 2 points were interesting enough to be highlighted. As for their editorial/biased style, that's The Economist's trademark, like it or not :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> * crickets * _</comment>


Does Quid Have The Most Pretentious Website of Any Startup Ever? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/17/quid-futuere/

<comment><USER2> The section of the website in question is basically a colophon. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing)>.

Including a colophon is a fairly common practice, especially in the world of print design, when a publication has been artfully assembled and polished by a professional designer. I hardly think it's fair to use this as a point of criticism; it just means they have a designer on staff who: a) might have a history in print design b) knows his typography c) was thinking about the culture of the business when making design decisions

It's no mistake that all the typefaces they've chosen have long, strong histories firmly rooted in England. They are Bulmer, Baskerville, and Underground (of London underground fame - most of us have seen the old signs from the subway).

Furthermore, wccrawford's earlier assertion that their name and typeface choice has nothing to do with the business is obtuse; if you check out <http://quid.com/team.html>, you'll notice that most of the hackers involved are either from, or studied in, England, which makes their branding choices eminently appropriate in the context of their shared history.

<comment><USER3> Mmm, no, it's not a colophon.

The page is titled "the quid story". If the best you can do there is some branding drivel, then that's a huge red flag. The quid story should tell us something about the company, what it's goals are, why it was started. Not why some branding consultant chose a god damn font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CTO Sean Gourley gave a TED talk on the "Mathematics of War":

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_war.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like it's founded by one of the founders of YouNoodle, which had similar foundations in big data crunching. Is this a rebrand? A new company based on similar technology?

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it is. Never before have I seen a company's website with so much pomp and so little substance. Going on and on about your name and typefaces, things which appear to have absolutely nothing at all to do with the main business, tops it off.

<comment><USER7> Going on about the typeface is probably overkill, but I think we can assume there must be a serious typography geek involved.

There isn't much substance there, but the company appears to be in a pseudo- stealth mode where they don't especially want to tell you exactly what they do or to sell it to you. They do, however, want you to know that they're all very clever, and that's exactly the impression which their site manages to convey. They use the word "lacuna" on their front page, for crying out loud! Who uses the word "lacuna"?

Actually, I thought that this:

 _Oh, and I almost forgot, good news for those who have recently finished their Rhodes Scholarships in Classics/Particle Physics and are looking for a gig in between singing in an Art Rock band, learning their 16th language and joining the French Foreign Legion! Quid is hiring._

sounded sufficiently enticing that I thought about applying, but turns out you also need to know Javascript and Rails.

<comment><USER8> Aside from the word "lacuna" there is also an actual lacuna on the front page: it's missing a specified referent for the word "lacuna."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So many cliche words in one page: "Innovative, disruptive, explosive impact, novel uses, proprietary algorithms, etc."

When I visited the site a few days ago, I wasn't quite sure if it's real.

The team's record is impressive but I hope they get it why people think their site is pretentious.

</comment><comment><USER10> It doesn't seem like all hot air. Problem is, how to actually apply? Their jobs page doesn't have any links or email addresses.

<comment><USER11> I'd want to know where the company is located before applying, but I cannot find any mention of the location the website. Perhaps that's a test and I failed.

<comment><USER12> Good point. We're in SF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> their requirements for data engineer make no sense. why would you need to know html, css, javascript, and web frameworks to do data mining?

</comment><comment><USER14> What a cute little slideshow...</comment>


ZooKeeper: Wait-free coordination for Internet-scale systems - <AUTHOR> http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2014/09/paper-summary-zookeeper-wait-free.html <comment><USER3> Obligatory shout-out to Apache Curator: [http://curator.apache.org/](http://curator.apache.org/)

Curator implements a bunch of algorithms often implemented on top of ZooKeeper. I like to think of ZooKeeper as the distributed systems equivalent of peer-reviewed implementations of cryptographic primitives. Curator is a like a whole cryptographic protocol / cryptosystem. In both cases: don't implement your own!

<comment><USER4> That is a fantastic analogy (and a great library), in my experience it's works well but takes effort in ongoing maintenance (log cleaning, etc). Also, it acts as a canary in the coal mine for other networking problems.

I've also used it in a WAN setup for low throughput, transactional data that I needed solid exactly-once semantics. Some of the docs related to WAN settings were non-existent but eventually it worked as intended, thanks to the help of the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use ZooKeeper in production for snitch.io.

There are some interesting new alternatives such as etcd / serf/consul - <USER2> at the time ZooKeeper had the best track record (under Jepsen analysis). Things might have changed since then.

Aphyr has done a bunch of analysis of these systems part of his Jepsen tool: [http://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen](http://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen) and [http://aphyr.com/posts/291-call-me-maybe- zookeepe](http://aphyr.com/posts/291-call-me-maybe-zookeepe)

If you are going to use ZooKeeper I strongly suggest looking at both Apache Curator and Netflix Exhibitor (they are complimentary).

The examples bundled with ZK don't handle all errors/edge cases...

Curator is a library of common patterns available to use mostly out of the box.

Exhibitor is a ZooKeeper "aware" supervisor system: [https://github.com/Netflix/exhibitor](https://github.com/Netflix/exhibitor)

Also always remember your ensemble should have an odd number of nodes (3,5,7)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend Mikito Takada's "Distributed systems for fun and profit" [http://book.mixu.net/distsys](http://book.mixu.net/distsys)

The "Partition-tolerant consensus algorithms: Paxos, Raft, ZAB" section is relevant, along with the "Further Reading" which follows it.

</comment><comment><USER7> You may also be interested in [http://aphyr.com/posts/291-call-me-maybe- zookeeper](http://aphyr.com/posts/291-call-me-maybe-zookeeper)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've used ZooKeeper not only as a service registry but also as a fairly small message queue - I wanted to be sure that my message will be delivered at least once, and thanks to Kazoo's (Python ZK library) LockingQueue recipe I was able to get what I want really easily with all the benefits from ZK's clustering nature.

</comment><comment><USER9> The article doesn't give any background: ZK is a some of Chubby, Google's distributed lock manager. Locks are small files.

</comment><comment><USER10> has anyone had real-world experience comparing ZooKeeper with consul? Is consul considered production-ready yet?

<comment><USER11> I can't speak for zookeeper, but I've been using consul in production since 1.0. I've never had an issue with it - it works great for me! I've written a ruby gem to interface with it's API called Diplomat (here: [https://github.com/WeAreFarmGeek/diplomat](https://github.com/WeAreFarmGeek/diplomat)) and a whole bunch of ansible scripts to setup checks for postgres, nginx, etc.</comment></comment>


Open Source Communities - <AUTHOR> http://push.cx/2009/open-source-communities

<comment><USER2> Just another case of a Rails fan boy finding excuses to start a flame war.

Django, however successful it may be in web dev and within python webdev , there exists a larger py-webdev/python developer community which does not care how many rails books are being written and sold.

Python developers have seen successes and failures elsewhere in their community enough times not to go overboard with the hype.

perhaps a related post: [http://www.martinaspeli.net/articles/come-hither- hordes-of-f...](http://www.martinaspeli.net/articles/come-hither-hordes-of- fan-boys)

</comment><comment><USER3> The nice thing is that each community (or at least core dev-teams) is super happy with its place. Django has always been positioned as having very clear boundaries: DVCS, webdesign and javascript toolkits are explicitly outside of their scope. Rails embraces the whole ecosystem.

What would be interesting would be a framework on top of Django that pulls in these external dependencies and creates something new.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences> ? And by the way this is why TIMTOWTDI is brilliant - it is not really about the technical - it is about taming the fighting instincts.</comment>


MLISP (1968) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/68/92/CS-TR-68-92.pdf <comment><USER2> Funny how much complexity you have to introduce by just getting rid of the parentheses.

I later learned that MLISP functioned as a preprosessor for a normal lisp. Don't know about the macro facilities, perhaps someone can chime in with details?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that I remember MLISP. I find Lisp languages to be very easy to read, MLISP is more difficult.

In retirement, my recreational deep learning development is now done in the Hy (hylang for web searches) Lisp language that simply converts Lisp (looks like Clojure) to Python AST. Anyway, because of my background I find Hy to be easier to read and write than Python. So, interesting to see MLISP perform the reverse, a non-sexpr version of Lisp.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> MLISP is really fascinating because it's one of the few LISPs to implement M-Expressions, which are something that McCarthy didn't pursue.

</comment><comment><USER4> So this is where MuLISP/MuSIMP - dual language system came from in 1978. It worked quite well. You could easily switch from LISP to "Algol" at anytime without losing much anything.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate my startup: Utopic, a site showing what your friends like - <AUTHOR>

http://utopic.me/ Utopic shows the hottest daily topics and content among your friends and people you follow on Twitter and Facebook (more sites to be added soon). Utopic is the fastest way to see what's popular right now, breaking it up by categories like videos, music, links, events, photos etc. Utopic gives a personalized real-time view of what's trending today among people who matter to you the most. Instead of going through long linear feeds and tens of external websites, see hot content from friends all immediately in one place, in a prioritized order. Other data sources like Google Reader, music services and others will be added shortly.
Utopic solves the problems of: - Curiosity: everyone wants to know what's trending or hot among their friends. - Information overload: there's too much content on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc, even among people you're following. Utopic brings out just the important stuff. - Too many sites to go through: Utopic aggregates everything popular into one site.
Technically what we do is a pretty complex issue. Even for a few hundred users, we have indexed a few million links and hundreds of thousands of people sharing/liking/retweeting stuff in our databases. Adds up to gigabytes of data already early on. Big data & processing it rocks - something our team loves :) A bad side to it is that importing Facebook & Twitter data for a new user can take hours (yeah, their API's are slow, especially FB) so you see full advantage of the service may be only on your second login.
Any suggestions on how to improve the service? Anything you like or dont like? How to make it more social & viral, for it not to be a single-user tool?
You can also e-mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER3> It's an attractive way of laying images and vidoes out you've got there - <USER2> prettier than vanilla Facebook. My gut feeling is you need more flexibility over the way you can sort them (by number of likes, particular groups of friends etc.) to be truly useful.

Side note: I don't like apps requesting permission to post on my wall unless they have a very clear reason for doing so, and I suspect I'm not the only person here that thinks like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We're thinking hard about sorting, filtering, personalization etc. From one side some people require that, at the same time it adds to the clutter on the page. We don't want to add features that only small % of users would use.

Regarding FB permissions, you are absolutely correct. In our case, we need the FB wall posting right only if a user wants to like/share via an API from Utopic to FB. Will think if it would be a good idea to move asking for that permission to the point when a user wants to share something on their wall the first time. We ourselves never initiate any wall postings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually I would need exact the opposite - a tool that would get rid of all "hot and trendy", simply because I have no problem whatsoever of finding them. For example right now I would really appreciate if I somehow could clean my twitter feed enirely of Japan news. I'm not at all interested what happens there, and if I am, then it is not difficult at all to find relevant news. As you said - Information overload: there's too much content on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc, even among people you're following - get rid of the "trends" and I'll start using utopic.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, different target groups want different services. Some want more automated approach, some more manual personalization. Some need to know top news and see top videos, others want very specific niche stuff. There are markets for both, we believe.

<comment><USER4> But you already have that what I want. You collect everything (?) and then filter out the trendy ones. Now do the opposite - show me everything minus trendy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm seeing a lot of sites now with a landing page that requires immediate registration or facebook connection to do anything. Are people seeing this as a successful way to get people registered, is it because there's not much to see other wise so they want you to register first?

Just seems like a terrible way to encourage registration, by making you "pay" in the form of a registration before really hooking you in.

I could be wrong, though. Would love to hear if other people have good or bad experiences with this type of flow.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should approach this on a case to case basis, depending what your site does and what is actually needed. Having built many services before, I've always chosen what is right in that case. If there is data & content to show before registration, go for it. A public photo/video site like Youtube would be very different from a hosted e-mail provider like Gmail.

In Utopic case, there is very little to show the user otherwise, as a lot of what we have built is based on Facebook API data. We could have longer about pages, screenshots etc, but that would be it.

Many have asked us for other registration/login methods (e-mail registration, Twitter etc) but for us what you would end up with would be an empty site, resulting in disappointment.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://utopic.me/></comment>


Misfortune teller: predicting criminal recidivism - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/misfortune-teller/8846/

<comment><AUTHOR> "Drawing from criminal databases dating to the 1960s, Berk initially modeled the Philadelphia algorithm on more than 100,000 old cases, relying on three dozen predictors, including the perpetrator's age, gender, neighborhood, and number of prior crimes. To develop an algorithm that forecasts a particular outcome—someone committing murder, for example—Berk applied a subset of the data to train the computer on which qualities are associated with that outcome.

[...]

Philadelphia's parole officers were surprised to learn, for example, that the crime for which an offender was sentenced—whether it was murder or simple drug possession—does not predict whether he or she will commit a violent crime in the future. Far more predictive is the age at which he (yes, gender matters) committed his first crime, and the amount of time between other offenses and the latest one—the earlier the first crime and the more recent the last, the greater the chance for another offense."

</comment><comment><USER2> Correlation might be useful, but how about causation?

The most likely "cause" of criminal recidivism is sending millions of people to prison for minor crimes, where they spend months learning from other criminals, and then are released, upon which they find it impossible to find a job (because they're marked as a felon) and are forced to return to crime.</comment>


PostgreSQL Feature Matrix - <AUTHOR> https://www.postgresql.org/about/featurematrix/ <comment> ayush--s this will be great for choosing postgres version for pet projects.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Simply TL;DR for the release notes</comment>


How many apple products you own? - <AUTHOR>

me:
1 - ipad 2,
1 - iphone 3GS 16GB,
1 - ipod touch 8GB,
1 - ipod nano,
1 - mac mini,
1 - Apple TV,
Will you sell any old one to get new one?
1 - ipod nano,
1 - apple TV,
1 - ipad 2,
1 - iphone 3GS,
What would you buy:
1 - new iPad,
1 - iPhone 4S <comment><USER2> Zero.

Phone -- I don't have a smart phone

Desktop -- I prefer to build my own computers since it's far cheaper. The fact that I run linux is even less incentive to buy Apple.

Laptop -- I have a Lenovo Thinkpad that I love and was quite inexpensive.

Tablet -- I have a Kindle Fire that I primarily use when travelling. It's no iPad but cost a fraction of the price.

I just don't see the appeal, but then again, I'm not the target audience (grad student with limited disposable income and no desire to use Apple's OS).

</comment><comment><USER3> I just have a 1st generation iPod Touch which i bought a month after release because I thought it was really cool and didn't want to commit to ATT.

</comment><comment><USER4> Zero. I'm sure they're great products, but I am invested in the Google and Android ecosystem. I have 4 active android devices and a chromebook.</comment>


Why Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ubuntu on phones will outclass Android - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/why-mark-shuttleworth-thinks-ubuntu-on-phones-will-outclass-android/ <comment><USER2> Android (and I think iOS?) both reserve the right to purge paused apps from memory if memory is needed (a paused app being an app that the user is not currently looking at). This seems well suited to phones, but leads to a totally different programming model whereby apps must be ready to persist their state and be deflated/reinflated/stopped without warning.

Will Ubuntu for Phones struggle to make good use of the phone memory if it doesn't use this technique? (I assume it just uses the desktop-PC model of 'a thing is running until its stopped, page to disk if necessary?')

edit: also, as people have pointed out, there are battery life implications

<comment><USER3> While this is important for memory, it is also really important for battery usage.

My experience with Android is that waking every second is enough to kill a phone's battery noticeably faster. I suspect most existing linux apps and frameworks are not good at saving CPU and battery enough to be on a phone. I would be happy to be proved wrong.

<comment><USER4> > While this is important for memory, it is also really important for memory > usage.

I think you meant _battery_ usage.

(I'll delete this comment to reduce clutter after you edit...)

<comment><USER4> Forgive the added clutter, but I came back to delete my comment as promised and HN wouldn't let me. Ah well... :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, where did all the 20 million new Ubuntu PCs sold in 2012 go? [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/20-million-new- ubuntu-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/20-million-new-ubuntu-linux- pcs-in-2012/10770)

How many Ubuntu TVs were sold?

This guy lives in a reality distortion field beyond belief.

<comment><USER6> 1\. In May of 2012 they announced 2011 numbers. So, it's about 3 days in to 2013... might want to give them a little more time.

2\. In 2011, they sold 8-10 million, and in May said they were on track to reach 20 million in 2012. [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship- on-5-of-al...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-all- pcs-sold-next-year)

3\. In October of 2011, Dell started featuring Ubuntu in over 200 retail stores in China. <http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/27/retail-stores-in- china/>

So it's entirely possible they could meet the 20m number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not nearly as excited for dockable PC/phone hybrids as I am for a phone running GNU free software.

In fact I'm already looking to replace my perfectly usable HTC phone for a Nexus so I can install the image Ubuntu is supposed to release in a few weeks.

I stopped using Ubuntu on my laptop because there are better alternatives out there. But I think Ubuntu can really shine as a mobile OS, and it will almost certainly be better than Android or iOS for my purposes.

<comment><USER8> _it will almost certainly be better than Android or iOS for my purposes_

Can you give specific examples? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER7> For one thing, we've got Unix "apps" that have been maintained for 30 years, like vim and emacs. So in my mind, the software ecosystem is much better, even before launch.

Configurability is a huge plus for me. Could you imagine recompiling your phone's kernel? Configuring your phone with dotfiles? Serving webpages and email? Not everyone's cup of tea, and I hope there are more user-friendly options available, but having that power is enticing.

I'm looking forward to better multitasking, and multiple user accounts. Also a more open hardware ecosystem, such as USB and HDMI ports, docks, chargers, USB keyboards, maybe a laptop "shell" I can insert my phone into?

If we look at the "dockable PC" side of things, the developer tools are unparalleled.

And of course free software. CyanogenMod is pretty great already, and Busybox too, but I think a GNU presence will only help. Maybe I drank too much of RMS's koolaid.

<comment><USER9> Recompiling your phone's kernel is nice, but what happens when you fuck something up and are unable to call 911?

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it seems unlikely. What are the odds that I'd need to call 911 and:

1) I'm alone 2) I'm not near my car (I carry an old flip phone in the glove compartment for emergencies) 3) I've messed up my phone sufficiently enough that 911 doesn't work but most other things work fine

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been excited about this ever since they announced it a year ago, the thought of having "just a phone" instead of a phone, laptop and tablet is so awesome it's going to outclass _everything_.

The one thing I'm afraid of is how resource-intensive certain classes of software are. I tried a netbook over a year ago and wouldn't want that kind of performance except in emergencies, even today every single IDE I run is a slow piece of crap on last year's maxed out macbook air.

<comment><USER12> If the resource requirements of your IDE are out-pacing high-end hardware manufacturing, it sounds like you need a different IDE.

<comment><USER13> My ideal IDE should need a whole datacenter and use AI to help me work better.

If your IDE isn't using your whole hardware, it's probably not doing enough.

<comment><USER14> Some IDE's are just better at doing similar things than others. VS2k10 intellisense is orders of magnitude faster/stable/* than implementations in other IDE's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Canonical's secret sauce in selling carriers on Ubuntu might lie in helping > them sell their own services to end users. Carriers "care about brand and we > know how to accommodate that," Shuttleworth said. "They care about their own > content and we've essentially put their content on an equal footing with > content from the ecosystem. The handset manufacturer or operator that has > music, films, or other types of content can promote their content to their > users or other users directly in a way that doesn't feel like a bolt-on or a > sideshow."

I do not want any content from my phone manufacturer, much less operator. From experience, this is almost exclusively overpriced crap, useless apps or branding.

<comment><USER16> Shouldn't it be about what "the consumer" wants and not what "the carrier" wants? I think Apple has this right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As long as we have some honest to god, native-C support I'll be pleasantly pleased. I'd rather be an android consumer rather than an android programmer, Dalvik just doesn't interest me at all.

<comment><USER8> Why? Because you don't like having to program in Java (I'm with you there) or for other reasons?

<comment><USER17> Java. I'm not passionate about it at all and if I can't find the motivation to learn it then I'm not going to use it. The great thing about C is it's practically universal.

And the fact that you had no UI library in the NDK (this might have changed since 2.3) meant I was going nowhere with that on that front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the biggest criticisms levelled at android has been that the UI feels a little clunky and slow and that changes made by carriers and manufacturers usually make the experience worse.

If they can make this phone feel like an iPhone in terms of smoothness and keep a nice consistent feel then this might have a chance of being a premium choice over android.

<comment> SG- The Verge played with the Ubuntu phone and while it's a dev release at this point, you can see from the video it's painfully slow on the latest hardware for UI things:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828266/ubuntu-phone-os- han...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828266/ubuntu-phone-os-hands-on)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I Think if somebody can make a phone os better than android, and more intuitive (easy for non-tech people).. not only that but have the capacity to enchant the mobile hardware players(good lobby push)

Android can be beaten away.. but not the same can be said about to IOS.. its all about brand.. its a tough fight..

But android market share, is not much about the consumers that want it because they need..(theres no sentimental decision about it) its about the device makers, making the decision for this share of the market..

if ubuntu can convince device makers to put that in their phones.. (with the help of some good apps, so theres no cultural shock).. i think people will not care much..

and for developer comunity, i think is better.. we need to get free from the centralized app market model from apple.. whoever delivers that is my friend :)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Shuttleworth believes that Ubuntu will be more user-friendly for people who barely know how to use a smartphone."

An experience that is more user friendly than iOS and more user friendly than Windows Phone will be hard to do. Beating Android might be easier. Furthermore, very few people with money haven't already used a smartphone, so they'll be aiming for the market of people who have no money. Not exactly lucrative, and Android has distinct advantages there. Android can be cheaper than Ubuntu because they can monetize mobile advertising better.

In short, this effort will totally fail. There is no compelling reason to have a 5th player in the smartphone market, and given Ubuntu's track record with desktop UI, I don't think their effort in mobile will be terribly inspired.

</comment><comment><USER21> Too bad they aren't big like Microsoft, who can flat out pay people to port apps and run constant developer events, etc.. Heck, even BlackBerry has been constantly giving out phones and prizes and benefits to developers. Ubuntu just doesn't have the infrastructure to get the apps on to the platform, and the users want good apps. Even if you can port something from a Linux desktop version easily, it's still going to lack software.

</comment><comment><USER22> A system should have evolved, not being pushed.

Unity and accompanied py-qt based stuff is crap being pushed.

I don't see why to expect something different form a repetition of the same "strategy" - pushing half-baking crap in a rush.

</comment><comment><USER23> Canonical should just do the world a favor and disappear.

</comment><comment><USER24> I cannot wait for this!</comment>


Ask HN: How to monetize my site after Amazon cancellation of affiliate account? - <AUTHOR> I built jeviz.com which is a Amazon Advanced Search Web Tool in 2016 and few months later Amazon canceled my affiliate account and I have closed the site because Amazon was only way that I was using to monetize my site. 2 weeks ago I have reopened the site with a new domain junglesearch.net and today I have commented on hackernews about fake Amazon reviews and recommended a way to find most reviewed products by using junglesearch.net and few hours later Amazon closed affiliate account again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18272128 How can I monetize the site beside Amazon? I don't like much Ads.Will donation work? Anyone interested or have an idea with the site can contact from the junglesearch.net contact menu. <comment><USER2> Wow, Amazon must be scared of you! That's crazy.

Donations will be one avenue for you to explore. Become a personality through social media.

All it takes is just 100 users donating $5 a month to be ramen profitable!

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that Amazon do not like a site which provide better search experience.

<comment><USER2> There's a site that does video game pricing charts for physical cds and cartridges. I think Amazon blocks their integration too, I can't remember. But Ebay doesn't.

Try to get in touch with the site owner and talk strategy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's new in Magit 2.x - <AUTHOR> https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/what-new-in-magit-2x

<comment><USER2> Even if you don't use Emacs, I believe you _have_ to try magit. It will quickly become an essential part of your git workflow. You could zoom out to grasp the overall state of your project, dive into specific details and perform intricate surgery of your git history, all with single-key presses. It is pure genius.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love magit. One gripe with the upgrade is 2.x requires a recent version of git. I use magit at work and we have to all use the same git version. It's not a recent version so I can't use the latest magit.

This is unfortunate. I wonder if the maintainers could simply disable some of the newer features if the git version is say 1.8 which would allow git luddites to benefit from the other enhancements.

<comment><USER4> Time for a magit-legacy I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know this will be considered un-gracious and get me the "learn emacs NOOB" award (an editor I have been using for 20 years, just not a huge fan of the package environment).

But, I notice emacs packages don't give the specific steps to follow. For instance [http://magit.vc/manual/magit/Updating-from-an-older- release....](http://magit.vc/manual/magit/Updating-from-an-older-release.html) says "So please uninstall the packages magit, git-commit-mode, and git-rebase- mode." No mention of what specific command will do that, what environment variable may tell you the directory location or so on. I know writing documentation is unpleasant, but it is really frustrating when you don't connect that last inch with the exact commands.

Even the linked article instructions are a problem. For me the command "M-x magit-version" is not defined until after I run "M-x magit-status". Even then the version reported is "Magit 21050722.2133". Care to hazard a guess if this is a 2.X version of Magit? Is it 2.133?

<comment><USER3> Assuming you are using the built-in package manager.

list-packages

Then press "h" for key-binding info such as "d" for delete.

<comment><USER5> Thank you, that seemed to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Besides Emacs itself, Magit is the greatest tool in my arsenal for making clean patches and making me a more productive programmer in general. It's made doing more advanced git tasks so much easier, interactive rebasing and staging/unstaging hunks in particular. Can't live without it.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. It's always nice to hear from satisfied users.

This is for the benefit of other users (since you have probably already found these resources):

\- Release notes: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/magit/magit/master/Documen...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/magit/magit/master/Documentation/RelNotes/2.1.0.txt)

\- Update instructions: [http://magit.vc/manual/magit/Installation.html](http://magit.vc/manual/magit/Installation.html)

\- Homepage: [http://magit.vc](http://magit.vc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very very minor nitpick, magit-status theme (gray, brown, black) is not very welcoming. I don't use themes so I guess these are defaults magit values. You need to put some rainbow in there :)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's a bit boring. Personally I use the solarized theme, and have invested more time on that, than the default themes. That's also what we use for the screenshots ([http://magit.vc/screenshots](http://magit.vc/screenshots)).

Another reason why the default theme (both in it's light and dark variant) are a bit ugly is that they should work even for users who have customized individual faces. Sticking with gray backgrounds seems like a safe bet.

<comment><USER4> I don't know but in the end I stopped caring about themes, vanilla emacs (light) is good 99% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's some less great new stuff in 2.x, too, sadly: [https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2076](https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2076)

<comment><USER7> I am not very happy about it, but I have just installed a change that forces everybody to opt-in to the new push behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kind of OT, but has anybody read this book? How good is it? Seems very interesting and the articles on the site are good too, but since it's not on Amazon I haven't seen any reviews.

<comment><USER10> I read it and it helped me switched to emacs after using vim for 10 years. It's great, as it teaches you the emacs 'mindset' instead of just being a dry procedural manual.

<comment><USER11> That's very interesting. What did Emcas offer you that Vim could not?

<comment><USER10> TL;DR: Watch this video: the stated reasons for switching are very similar to my own. It wasn't until I watched this video and read the book that I took the plunge to switch to emacs. It was the fact that with emacs I could have vim _plus_ much more and better functionality. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWD1Fpdd4Pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWD1Fpdd4Pc)

I'll have to write a blog post about it sometime, but basically while I absolutely _love_ the vim 'editing interface', that is, not the GUI, but the modal editing, the bindings, motions, objects, relative line numbers, and so on, everything else aside from that, primarily plugins, always felt like ad- hoc hacks to me. I've contributed to a couple of vim plugins so I've seen it first hand, to the point where plugin authors I've worked with have expressed feelings of wanting to switch to emacs to just make things easier. Indeed, some have, such as the vim-airline author [ [http://bling.github.io/blog/2013/10/27/emacs-as-my-leader- vi...](http://bling.github.io/blog/2013/10/27/emacs-as-my-leader-vim-survival- guide/) ].

Whereas plugins in vim oftentimes gave me the impression that they were stopgaps and hacky workarounds to get vim to do something it wasn't meant to do, emacs packages feel very natural, comprehensive, and well designed. Just take this article for example. As awesome as vim-fugitive is for vim, I feel that it's good _for being a vim plugin_, but it has _nothing_ on the equivalent on emacs: magit. Take a look at it's comprehensive documentation: [http://magit.vc/](http://magit.vc/) Or flycheck's [ [http://www.flycheck.org/](http://www.flycheck.org/) ] documentation here [ [http://www.flycheck.org/manual/latest/index.html](http://www.flycheck.org/manual/latest/index.html) ]

It seems like everyone puts up with everything else about vim just to have the good parts of vim that are generally very poorly emulated by other editors. The evil package for emacs changed that for me, as it's the most faithful vim emulator I've seen. Now I have a superset of vim; the vim that I love in an environment that is _much_ more suitable for my development workflow: magit, error checking, tags, searching, and more.

If you're just a vim user, you probably don't really think about or realize what you're missing out on by not using emacs. One of my favorite things about emacs that the book really emphasizes is that it is completely self- documenting. Every function, every key binding, every command, every variable, everything is documented and easy to find. Vim of course has `:help` as well, but emac's documentation is on an entirely different level. I can press `C-h k` for example, then press a binding on my keyboard, and it'll tell me what command I have it bound to, what that command does, and it'll have a link to the source code for that command that opens in emacs with syntax highlighting and everything. Of course I can also do the reverse: find what key a command is bound to; in fact I can search my bindings as I type using helm-descbinds. I can search emacs documentation easily with the `apropos` command and its variants. Oftentimes in vim I generally only looked things up only after I already knew _what_ to look up, whereas in emacs I can easily explore things on my own and figure things out.

Emacs has much better extensibility features in general. In vim sometimes I would find something a plugin did that I wanted to work differently, and I pretty much only had two options: 1) file PR and hope the author agrees with my changes or adds them in optionally or 2) fork the plugin. 2 was out of the question because I didn't want the maintenance burden of maintaining a fork, and 1 was too much trouble sometimes for simple modifications or were simply too opinionated to realistically be accepted by the author. So pragmatically I just treated plugins as set-in-stone. With emacs I have much more options at my disposal ranging from advising [ [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Adv...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Advising- Functions.html) ], hooks, and in the worst case just redefining symbols with emacs lisp.

I was and still am hopeful for Neovim, but it'll take ages for it to catch up to emacs in terms of robustness and ecosystem, let alone similar feature set of emacs (which is probably a non-goal of neovim anyways). It's just an entirely different 'environment' in the sense of features and packages available to you.

I wonder if in the future we could leverage neovim's API functionality to have completely true vim bindings/editing within emacs. That would be the absolute best case scenario that I could imagine.

That said, I definitely believe that the default emacs bindings are horrible. I at first wanted to try to go cold turkey, 100% emacs, but the editing in emacs is just horrible to someone like me familiar with the speed and precision of vim editing, so I gave in and used evil, which is amazing. That saying about emacs being "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor" rings very true to my ears, and with evil I have both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> moving from magit 1.x to this magit made me accidentally push some commits to the master branch. This is because my fingers still want to exercise the magit 1.X key combo's. I'm sure I'm not the only one. So what's the canonical way to: create branch X, switch to branch X, and make it so my next push will go to origin/X ?

<comment><USER13> Meta-answer: type 'b' in the magit status buffer and take a look at the help. Or ? for a list of commands, including 'b'. Set-upstream is how you make it so pushes go to a specific place. Can't be more specific right now, but this should get you where you need.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did Microsoft develop their own tablet? - <AUTHOR>

What do you think, why Microsoft will produce their own tablet? Because they think the other hardware manufacturers will not support windows or because they think the other manufacturers will not produce a good tablet? Or because they think the hardware itself will be the profitmaker? <comment> simba-hiiipower I think it all comes down to demand generation for Windows 8/RT and the broader Microsoft ecosystem.

Case in point, Apple.. People don't queue up for a launch waiting to get their hands on iOS, they want the iPad! It's the device that interests people and gets them invested in an ecosystem, not the other way around. What Apple has always had, and what seemingly all its competitors have lacked, is a focus on developing and marketing products that people really, really want (and the ability to actually do it). Doing so gives ultimate mindshare.. You may not have an iPhone and may not even want one, but I'd bet you know more about it and all its iOS goodness, than any other phone out there (bar the one in your pocket, maybe); the average consumer certainly does and that alone provides for a significant lift to Apple's ecosystem.

That's what Microsoft wants, and why we have Surface. Windows Phone is awesome (my opinion), but no one knows about it; the launch of the Nokia's Lumia phones are helping, but not really in a big enough way. Microsoft can't let that happen with Windows 8/RT tablets going up against the iPad; because, and I think rightly so, they see that the market is heading towards convergence between what we traditionally think of as PC's and tablets/smartphones.

And I'd add that it's certainly not about increased profitability here.. Microsoft's margins are the highest in the industry and one of the highest of any Fortune 500 company (Apple ranks 24th on the list by this measure) [1]. I don't think Microsoft wants to be in the hardware business, it wants to be in the platform/ecosystem business, and part of that business is having devices that drive adoption. Simply put, it's about getting people to want a device, a device that runs Windows.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/perfo...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/performers/companies/profits/revenues.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about. :)

To go into full bombastic and Cassandra mode: the PC market is vaporizing. People are now fully expecting to have a 24/7 connection to YouTube/Google (Maps)/Wikipedia/Facebook/Hulu/What-have-you. They want media- consumption/entertainment devices (Google's Chromebooks: just an internet browsing device). Before, the only way to access those things was through the home-kitchen-garden PC most people had: a bulky big thing sitting in some corner of the living room or their bedroom. Then laptops became more popular because you can move around with those (though they're still somewhat bulky and cable-y). Then came smartphones and tablets and suddenly you have a light, more portable entertainment device you can carry with you anywhere! Then of course comes the question: why still have a computer in the first place if all you're doing is easily replacable by shaking/tapping the screen? (Yes, for gamers and workers alike, PC's are more than internet-devices and require keyboard/mice-input that's better than a touchscreen, but they're a minority.)

The problem for Microsoft is, of course, that they're missing the boat. Ever since that holy(?) union many aeons ago between the IBM PC and Microsoft, they have been in 90%+ control of the market. That golden era is now at an end since, in the coming years, most people will stop buying a PC and just go for a tablet/smartphone option instead. Apple and Android (and a lot of others with their own OS) have already colonized vast swaths of land in that New World, and Microsoft is now in trouble: if the PC market is going to shrink that means their total domination of that market (and all the benefits that brings when developers want to build things) means less and less. While they're sure to be in total control of heavy-duty-use-computers (that is, computers intended for office work and gaming) for quite a while to come, that means nothing if the future (kids who are growing up and will eventually join the workforce) is being made in a non-Microsoft land. (The main reason why Microsoft is so eager with its academic licenses and so little interested in combatting OS piracy: if people are used to working with X, they'll want to work with X. If the New World becomes the biggest (most profitable) World, whoever's in control of that might one day launch a reverse-colonization of the Old World of said heavy-duty-use-computers...)

None of what I'm saying is really new or shocking (or even correct?). So what does this mean? It means that Microsoft has to focus on a future tablet- dominated market, which means it has to bring out a new OS built/ready for that (Windows 8). But there is no IBM with a PC (tablet) this time Microsoft can hook on to and get a free ride to market domination, so they have to build their own (which they now have) and pray that they can reverse the coming tide that threatens to sweep them as it did IBM so long ago: into being just a huge (but no longer dominating) software company that focuses on work applications. Hopefully the market will stay shattered and no one can establish a quasi- monopoly, since it seems to lead to lack of competition and thus lack of innovation. In the Game of Software, you either innovate or you die. :)

(And now I'm going to click that button and see that in the time it took me to write all that five other people have written the same in a more succinct and funnier way, ah well!)

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem with writing Operating Systems for general purpose hardware (such as the PC) is that it is expected to work with just about any components - <USER2> matter where they are sourced. Sure there are "reference" specs but at the end of the day the OS has to make up for a lot and still try and shine.

The next generation of Windows is crucial to the success of MS long term. Their OS must be seen to be not just relevant to the next generation of hardware - but seen to shine in that role.

I think it is entirely sensible for MS to produce a new product that show the world how they think things should be done - with complete control over every aspect of the design. [has risk of course]

Other manufacturers (the traditional PC companies I suppose) will be free to offer their hardware vision alongside the one from Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I'm asked to spec out a new windows based PC, my users compare the price to the Acer at Costco for $349. Then they compare it's performance to a $2200 MacBook Pro. Much of Apple's success is based on forcing good (if expensive) choices. This is Microsoft trying to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I were Microsoft, here might be some possible justifications that I would use:

1\. Windows Phones - while competent, and people who use them like them, never managed to make any impact in terms of marketshare or market buzz. This is because Windows Phones is just one of many OSes handset makers - Samsung, HTC etc - support. Therefore, there is not dedicated marketing to push it. Nokia, who is now exclusively on WP, did a lot of marketing but still couldn't cut through the noise. Microsoft has use use its clout to generate the necessary buzz and excitement on Windows tablets or risk a 1% market share once again. With Ballmer on stage, they are effectively signalling they are "all-in" with the plan.

2\. Google has successfully kick started interest in Android through developing Google Phone as a reference design for other phones to follow. Otherwise, there will be an inevitable fragmentation of screen sizes, capabilities and price points. By setting an "aspirational" target, other manufacturers will be able to build Surface clones that customers can compare against.

3\. The Surface is big on product bundling. It is no longer a pure tablet, and the magnetic snap on keyboard is not an option, but rather part of the product. This makes it easier to sell at a slightly higher price-point than an iPad.

4\. The reference magnetic dock, and placement of USB points etc sets the stage for all third party manufacturer of cases, speakers, etc in such a way that kick starts the ecosystem.

5\. In the worst case where OEMs abandon manufacturing Windows slates, Microsoft is able to ensure that their investment in Windows 8 isn't entirely lost. They might turn this into a long term play just as they have with XBox. Unit cost of slates are around the $250-mark at present. Microsoft could take the ball home and do it all themselves if OEM find Windows slates difficult to push into the market.

</comment><comment><USER8> Honestly? Probably because they can't trust their hardware manufacturers on quality, they can't innovate as fast as they want to with third party manufacturers, and Steve Jobs taught them that hardware matters (more than well engineered mice).

<comment><USER9> I think you're dead-on. Windows 8 would get a bad rap because some vendor installed it on crap hardware. I think MS releasing their own hardware is wise -- it basically sets the bar for what a Windows 8 tablet should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Microsoft has had an interest in producing tablets since they were working on the Courier in the run-up to the iPad's release (and of course Surface itself is related).

In the current market, tablets appear to be similar to game consoles - consumers are willing to accept a closed ecosystem (e.g. iPad, Chromium, Kindle). So Microsoft may be assuming that a branded tablet is a reasonably sound strategy, particularly given the lackluster interest among consumers in Android and Linux based tablets from mainline electronics manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe they're taking a page from Apple's playbook in realizing that best user experiences come from harmony between hardware and software?

I'd still peg Microsoft as a software company, although now they seem much more willing to praise the hardware side of their business. It's likely the hardware division's primary goal is not profit, rather to maximize potential software sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> > realizing that best user experiences come from harmony between hardware and > software

You mean there are some Windows specific features in their tablet? Which? And why couldnt they have asked the other manufacturers to implement them?

<comment><USER11> Microsoft has not announced any Windows features that would be specific to their own hardware. And there are other manufacturers gearing up their own Win8 tablets (Acer comes to mind). As a consumer we'll have a choice as to what we feel is the best Win8 tablet. Microsoft doesn't care as long as we're buying Win8 in some form and ensuring their long-term survival.

Microsoft likely wants to ensure Metro app functionality, inking, etc are all available on great hardware. Microsoft is entering the realm of the iPad, and to quickly gain traction in this space they will need to ensure they have a fantastic hardware experience to go along with (what they believe) will be a fantastic software experience. They _could_ leave that to 3rd party manufacturers - and they are certainly giving those manufacturers a chance - but they must feel it's necessary to create something themselves to help lead the way.

I'm intrigued. Let's hope this works out better for them than the Zune did :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm willing to bet that despite what they said in the announcement, that the Surface models are based off of reference designs from Acer or Samsung. I think that'll come out at some point.

If Microsoft was really designing their own hardware and engineering prototypes, we would've already heard about it through the rumor mills.

</comment><comment><USER13> If the Surface comes out at an attractive price point (subsidized?) then how long before somebody cracks it and runs Android or Linux on it? It was done with the HP TouchPad and Apples iPad/iPod/iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER14> Windows 8 is a big risk for MS - they are being sidelined by Apple and Android and running out of time. They couldn't take the risk of other companies designing and manufacturing Win8 tablets not coming up with the goods for the product design/hardware.

That's not to say Nokia or Samsung etc won't be putting out an exceptional Win 8 tablet, they may well do - but then again, they may not.

In terms of profit - I think MS will price the hardware as low as they can, to fight off Apple. Their profit will come elsewhere

<comment><USER15> > In terms of profit - I think MS will price the hardware as low as they can, > to fight off Apple. Their profit will come elsewhere

From where? They do not have a successful media store and they are bundling Office. Aside from Windows and Office, the only things they sell at profit are from 'Server and Tools'.

Internet and Devices/entertainment have been money-sinks. The idea they will start turning Apple/Google-sized profits is wishful thinking

<comment><USER14> only the ARM version of the tablet will come with a free (Metro) Office, with the x86 version you have to buy Office.

Microsoft has multiple revenue streams- [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/press/2012/apr12/04-19fy...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/press/2012/apr12/04-19fy12Q3earningsPR.aspx)

They are going after tablet market share - especially for business use - <USER3> this reference design, and will try to keep the price down.</comment></comment></comment>


Can we put an end to this 'Estimate' game of fools? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frankel.ch/can-we-put-an-end-to-this-estimate-game-of-fools <comment><USER2> The true value of an estimate is not about what you thought the project would initially cost, but rather, the true value of an estimate is as a tool to estimate the final cost of the project once the project is underway.

Trying not to get into too much detail here, but, when you devise your initial estimate you should have a list of deliverables and you should determine what you think those deliverables will cost to implement. Your initial estimate will then become your baseline, and is mainly used to keep track of what you initially agreed upon (scope) and as a way to measure your progress.

Imagine that based upon your original estimate you have a deliverable that to implement will cost $50,000, but you have already spent $30,000 to implement it and are only 10% done. Well then your new estimate would now balloon out to $300,000 and it will take 10x as long. If you replicate this process out across all of your deliverables based on their progress you will have a new estimate, as the project continues your estimate will become more and more accurate.

Beyond having a better understanding of what your project will actually cost, you will also have a tool to handle scope changes by management and/or the client. You will automatically have an idea of based upon your prior performance on this project the feature that they ask will cost them $X additional dollars and increase the duration of the project by Y Days, or, as a way to negotiate a reduction in scope in order to stay within your budget.

There are certain mega engineering firms that make all their money solely off of defining the estimate and scope at a very detailed level up front and then renegotiating the (hell out of the) price as new scope is introduced.

Here's a link for more information:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management)

</comment><comment><USER3> The reality is very few projects will ever be approved in every field with "I don't know?" as the answer to "How much will it cost?"

Estimation is by far the trickiest project management tool. 2 identical projects with identical caliber teams will come up with very different results. All you can do is use the estimate for a very imprecise first guess to get things started.

Of course very little is known for sure early on. The scope isn't final. The tolerated risks aren't final. The project team isn't final. The target quality level isn't final.

So what can you do? Admit that these are in flux, and be proactive about managing them. "Ok, now that we know more, it looks like things are more expensive. Do we fix the cost and reduce the scope, or fix the scope to reduce the cost? If hitting the budget is the most important thing, should we preemptively cut scope?" These are the way discussions have to be managed.

</comment><comment><USER4> A team of 4 was told to move 7 tons of bricks 100 yards. Dutifully, they loaded a wagon by hand, moved the wagon 100 yards and dumped the bricks out. Again and again. After about 1 ton, Management wanted to know how long it would take to move all the bricks. The team multiplied their time spent so far by 7. Management wasn't happy.

Trying to be helpful, Management bought 6 more wagons.

The team said that with 4 team members, they couldn't productively use more than 4 wagons. Could we please have another team member? Management wasn't happy.

Trying to be helpful, Management set a deadline, and gave a speech about how important the deadline was to the company.

The deadline was completely unrealistic. The team worked to move bricks as fast as it could. After moving about 3 tons of bricks, they missed their first deadline. Management wasn't happy.

Trying to be helpful, Management set a deadline, and changed the goal to be to move the bricks 60 yards.

The team was pretty happy for a while... Until they realized that management wanted them to move those first 3 tons of bricks BACKWARDS 40 yards. They tried to explain that this was like moving 3 * 140 + 7 * 60 = 840 brick-ton- yards, rather than 7 * 100 = 700 brick-ton-yards, and was therefore an even harder goal! Management wasn't happy.

Trying to be helpful, Management hired a consultant.

The team was told to stop moving bricks for a while, and talk about everything with the consultant. The consultant gave some fun presentations, and coached the team through a lot of soul searching... They decided to have stand-up meetings every so often, to talk about their progress, and their plans for the day. The meetings took more time, and bricks weren't moving themselves. The team now had about 1 ton of bricks at the 100 yard line, 2 tons of bricks at the 60 yard line, and 4 tons of bricks at the 0 yard line. Management wasn't happy.

Trying to be helpful, Management bought 7 tons of gravel, and dropped it the 0 yard line, and said the new goal was to move the gravel 75 yards. They also hired an offshore team, but all they could really do was try to dial in to conference calls at weird hours of the day, and they really couldn't help move any of the gravel. Then one of the Managers was fired, and the new Manager said the goal was to move 1 ton of bricks and 2 tons of gravel 186 miles, in the back of an El Camino, that has no tires and no engine, and there's no budget for either...

...then some manager four levels up in the company decided to spend enough money to rent a few pieces of construction equipment, brought in an external team, and moved all 7 tons of bricks and all 7 tons of gravel the whole 186 miles in record time. With scorn, he talks to his peers about how awful his team is. No raises. No bonuses.</comment>


Will VCs and angels hang around here to get to know founders or will they set up their own competing sites? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They already hang around here. Not to get to know people so much as to see what's going on in the startup world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rather they might poach on valuable people</comment>


What's the deal with Facebook charging for posts? - <AUTHOR> http://futureastronauts.co.uk/2012/06/facebook-charging-pages-for-posts/ At our small-market media company (volumeone.org), we noticed that Facebook has started charging $30 per post in order to reach all of our 6,600 fans. We can't find much of an explanation for this (or if there's any way to get around it). What's goin' on here? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure about this. Moving away from being mostly reliant on advertisements is where they want to be, but they need to be careful. If they annoy too many high profile people, the people that are hurt by these charges will be vocal and lots of people will listen.

I think they need to use the money they have right now, from the IPO, to expand their business in a novel way. Perhaps milking the current system is not a good way to go.</comment>


Hacker builds tracking system to nab Tor pedophiles - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=114

<comment><USER3> In my opinion, downloading and looking at pictures of naked children shouldn't be a crime. Making child porn also shouldn't be a crime unless it falls under child abuse laws. For example, animated or CGI child porn should be legal because its production and consumption harms no one. (Currently it's illegal and people have gone to jail for it.) We stopped imprisoning and castrating homosexuals sometime ago, but apparently people can't internalize the too- abstract ideas of "victimless crime" and "private business". See that guy? He's a wacko, I tell you. He loves watching movies where people _kill_ other people with _guns_! One day he'll get a gun and attack our kids, our precious little darlings.

And about that hacker from the article, I wonder if his system can be used to catch copyright infringers? People who download offensive texts? People who visit blacklisted sites, where the blacklist depends on the country? Human inventions are beautiful that way - you never know how other people will repurpose them. I hear the guy who invented dynamite didn't intend it to be used for killing, either.

<comment><USER4> > Currently it's illegal and people have gone to jail for it

Actually it's something of a legal grey area in most places. If that's _all_ your caught with then you could well just get a slap on the wrists - <USER2> that's rarely the case.

I see where your coming from with the arguments; but it's, sadly, not in any way a victimless crime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great. He's breaking Tor.

I want to see pedophiles in jail too, but if Tor is broken for this purpose, Tor will become useless for any purpose. Governments and others will catch on and take advantage of the same techniques to detect whatever other activity they happen to be interested in.

If you're a supporter of the sort of privacy Tor provides, this is a Bad Thing.

<comment><USER6> > I want to see pedophiles in jail too, […]

So you're essentially pro-thought-crime persecution. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and guess that you meant "I want to see child rapists in jail too, […]". A pedophile does not harm children just by being a pedophile or by being attracted to them, they only harm them when they abuse them.

I agree, however, with the rest of you post.

<comment><USER5> You have a point. I don't really like the idea of thought crimes, however, to create child pornography, real children have to be sexually exploited. Consuming such content encourages its production.

For what it's worth, I don't think things like child pornography that don't involve actual children should be illegal. Stories, cartoons and photoshop jobs don't involve any actual victims.

<comment><USER6> You certainly also have a point.

I think it would be nice if child pornography could be produced by computer simulations and pedophiles thus would be able to feed their addiction without causing harm. Being able to focus the available resources on treating actual child abusers would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moore is headed to a massive government paycheck if he keeps it up. "Catching pedophiles" is the best business plan; the name practically funds itself.

<comment><USER8> Moore is former USAF Intelligence. He already had the 'govt paycheck'.

<comment><USER7> Officer pay != Contracting firm pay.

Every government on earth wants to tear Tor open; he stands to make it big, if he can lie hard enough :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We saw the same sorts of issues when freenet came about. The problem is that if you build a purely anonymous system in an environment that is not oppressed (like the US), mostly people look at child porn, or share photos of people being totured/murdered/whatever. There is little logic to going to all the trouble to anonymize if you are doing something that is perfectly legal.

<comment><USER10> Unjust laws, identity theft, embarassing but perfectly legal activities... there's plenty of logic to going anonymous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see several problems with this method.

1\. You need to run an exit node for unencrypted HTTP traffic to be able to inject html.

2\. Tor warns you when you are potentially leaking DNS requests when you are using an old protocol like socks4 instead of sock4a. Anyone who is using Tor is presumably smart enough to activate this option on Firefox or whatever browser they happen to use,

3\. The Java applet leaking DNS requests is a big hole which I believe is fixed by now. Even if it did work, it is entirely dependent on point 2 which is easily preventable.

</comment><comment><USER12> why would a tor user allow a java applet to be installed on his/her computer?

</comment><comment><USER13> Tor is being used for nefarious purposes? Who could have anticipated that?

Stuff like Tor is _made_ for purposes that at least somebody considers nefarious. The relevance of this is that he apparently found a vulnerability.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if I should be glad that someone exposed a problem with tor and that the government could be exploiting it already, or if I should be sad that someone just showed the government how to do it.

</comment><comment><USER15> If the alleged pedophile is savvy enough to use Tor, won't he be running his web traffic over SSL, rendering this sort of attack useless?

<comment><USER16> I'm not 100% certain of this, but I believe even SSL is vulnerable to certain man-in-the-middle attacks when routed through a single point like tor.

For example: [http://www.teamfurry.com/wordpress/2007/11/20/tor-exit- node-...](http://www.teamfurry.com/wordpress/2007/11/20/tor-exit-node-doing- mitm-attacks)

A google search returns lots of results, although I'm unsure if any are 'in the wild' exploits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note that this is an article from 2007.

<comment><AUTHOR> ugh. so it is (sorry). so what happened?

[edit: from <http://www.links.org/?p=205>

"the Tor folks have known about this attack. It's really hard to counter. It would be a lot more helpful for people to work on deeper browser integration to break the attack than to distribute attack code to demonstrate that a known, documented attack works."]

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11447?ref=rss></comment>


A Man Got High on 52 Different Drugs Then Drew These Trippy Self-Portraits - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-open-mind.com/a-man-got-high-on-52-different-drugs-then-drew-these-trippy-self-portraits/

<comment><USER2> Title makes it sound like he took 52 different kinds of drugs at once!

Still really cool seeing the effects of different drugs on the mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the bath saltz portrait</comment>