How much damage could a bad internal actor at Coinbase cause? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to work out how much risk I'm willing to accept by using Coinbase. If one of their programmers intentionally wanted to become a bad actor (say for example they catch wind that they are going to be fired), could a Coinbase developer easily cause billions of dollars in damage by somehow transferring coins out of the client accounts? <comment><USER2> Any money/btc you have in coinbase should be money you are happy to lose. It is an IOU note from coinbase to you, but without the strong guarantees you'd get with a bank. With bitcoin especially it is possiblef or someone (State, Criminal, Software Bug) to run off with all their money and leave them bankrupt in a matter of seconds. It could happen in the next 10 seconds. This is unlike conventional business!

So I'd think of it like this. Say you want to buy $10000 of BTC. You are only 'happy' to lose $1000.

Transfer $1000 in to Coinbase. Get BTC. Transfer that to your own offline wallet. Once confirmed, transfer the next $1000 in to Coinbase.

I say this as someone who has lost some Etherium in BTC-e, which I transferred 6 hours before they were seized. Luckily I got the lions share of it back (about 80%) from Wex but that was just lucky. If it is in an exchange it can be lost.

Finally only keep in Bitcoin money you are happy to lose. I won't go into why but it should be obvious you cannot guarantee 100% you will remain in "control" of your address (due to hackers, amnesia, tech failure and untrustworthy friends/family), although you could get to 99.999% by taking precautions.

<comment><USER3> One of the posters below pointed out that coinbase is FDIC insured (fiat) and insured in general (crypto). What's your take?

<comment><USER2> I don't know how good those insurances are. I assume FDIC is good. Although you'd have less of a 'reason' to keep fiat on an exchange unless you are trading.

For the crypto - well it depends on the insurance I can't really say how effective it would be. I'd worry it would pay out in fiat what the coin was worth at the time, which could be disappointing during a rally, plus you have to wait for the payout, plus it might be a taxable event? And of course the insurance may just not pay out. What if they decide it was your fault your coins were lost?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coinbase fully insures all digital currency against losses resulting from a breach of Coinbase's physical security, cyber security, or by employee theft.

If you're in the US, fiat deposits are covered by the FDIC just like bank deposits up to $250k:

[https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/166237...](https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1662379-how- is-coinbase-insured-)

<comment><USER5> The link you posted says that all digital currency coinbase stores online is insured. They also say that it is less than 2% of customers funds.

Also, to be clear, the FDIC insurance is on any cash balance in coinbase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depends on how good their security protocols are at the point of attack.

If their security is really really really good they should be able to publish (and advertise) the details of every step and still be secure.

Unless I completely misunderstand the essentials of security, which I might. Can someone school me?

In the end though their security is only ONE point of detail to concern yourself with when investing. The really really really important detail though is your belief in the rock stead control of your emotions. That should be 60% (or more) of your calculated risk. Because, as we know, humans are always the weakest link in any system.

</comment><comment><USER7> No competent technical person should ever EVER keep bitcoins on an exchange wallet, Coinbase included. Bad actors are inevitable.

<comment><USER8> Where should I keep bitcoins if not an exchange wallet? Hardware wallet?

<comment><USER9> Deterministic wallet that is fully restorable from password phrase.

electrum.org and alike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes.

Coinbase keeps your private keys.

There are exactly zero reasons why you should keep your cryptocurrency in Coinbase account and not transferring it to your own deterministic wallet.

<comment><USER4> I've heard this over and over, and I totally understand your concern.

But I think there's at least one reason to stay on Coinbase though, and it's their insurance against security breaches, including employee theft (note my comment above).

I'm not individually insured against bitcoin theft, and I also think there's a non-zero risk of making an irreversible mistake with my own offline storage. I'm not incompetent, but I can't claim mastery of the bitcoin protocol either, therefore I assume I can mess things up.

So yeah, you don't get your private keys, but insurance on your full balance is worth something to some people, in some cases far more than the assumption that nothing will ever go wrong with your own wallet (if you feel comfortable with that assumption, great).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't this logic apply to putting your money in a bank as well? That's why I have multiple bank accounts and buy gold.

<comment><USER11> Bank deposits are federally insured

<comment><USER12> Unless you're in Cyprus[0].

[0]: [https://www.rt.com/business/cyprus-crisis-bailout- deposit-63...](https://www.rt.com/business/cyprus-crisis-bailout-deposit-631/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tiny kanban board to track your job applications in single place - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hirehunt/cjgkbdcbpfnicilgkeaibkgmbabmdige

<comment><AUTHOR> From the beginning of my remote job search I've faced the huge problem for me - lots of places where you try to submit your CV and cover letters. Mail, some site forms, Jobvite, Stackoverflow careers, HN and so on and so on. Every new job site offers its own way to submit applications, so where is on any single place to get info about how many applications you already sended, to what companies, when. It was really absurdly when I've sended my CV third time to same company only because didn't find old email about this.

That's why I decide to go with simple Chrome app where I can, at least, track progress of every try and keep all the things in one place.

Well, guys, i need your feedback and some improvement notes about my quick attempt to organize things related to my job search.

Feel free to ask and suggest, I will be very thankful for any feedback.</comment>


10 ways to hack Facebook account - <AUTHOR> http://www.7xter.com/2016/08/10-ways-to-hack-facebook-account-prevention-and-safety-measures.html <comment><USER2> Laxman Muthiyah's Facebook zero day from a couple of years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040090)</comment>


She was the "queen of the mommy bloggers" - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/25/18512620/dooce-heather-armstrong-depression-valedictorian-of-being-dead <comment><USER2> It's tough because you have to acknowledge that the hate comes from other women, in part because the mommy bloggers are selling an idealized identity of women; the charmingly neurotic upper class woman with a loving but quirky husband, a picture-perfect house, beautiful kids, and plenty of instagrammable emotional moments and experiences.

I don't think us guys generally have that same pressure about being males, because we know a lot of it is just impossible. You can admire Elon Musk, but we know its near impossible to be him. But the mommy blogger is a lot closer to women, yet in many ways is as unrealistic to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dooce aka Heather Armstrong - has been down quite a long path and it's hard to believe she's been at it over 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> The law of large numbers stipulates that given sufficient volume of data points, there is always a mean value that generaly gets converged upon, with a standard deviation of course.

I fear that public online presence is subject to a similar law of social interaction wear the audience is more prone to malicious tone and judgement in an online environment.

Every forum i know has a favorite hate child to harp on, from the safety of ones chair. Any one willing to let their online presence affect their mental health is in for a bad time

</comment><comment><USER5> "Armstrong no doubt had privilege — she was white, straight, wealthy, beautiful" Yeah check your privilege. Reading this makes me feel nauseous.

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with pointing out that someone is wealthy and beautiful, and that this might make them more likely to succeed? Halo-effect is a thing.

<comment><USER7> Would you feel the same if 'white' was replaced with 'Jewish'? It correlates even more with success, e.g. they are over-represented at Harvard by a factor of ~5 [1].

[1] [https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/harvard- uni...](https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/harvard-university)

<comment><USER8> I hear people say that being Christian gives you an advantage with American authorities, like with police or immigration. Is that true? Jews have a long history of being marginalized by majority powers, which is why this kind of discussion is viewed in a different light than saying that wealthy people have privilege.

Would you respond to a discussion about Christian privilege with a counter about the privileged Muslim people you've met in your life? Do you feel like that's a fitting response?

<comment><USER7> I think it is appropriate to point out that we are only allowed to notice some forms of privilege and not others, yes.

<comment><USER8> That article doesn't try to force such constraints, and should be in line with your thinking then.

And what forms of privilege vs others are we talking about? The article mentioned (1) race (2) sexuality (3) beauty.

So are you bothered the article discusses white privilege without discussing latino, black, or asian privilege? Are you bothered the article didn't mention enough about bisexual or gay privilege? Or that the article didn't mention privilege of ugly people?

Or was it the Jews, since you brought them up, and it looks like you want to engage seriously on Jewish privilege. Did you really just want to talk about Jewish privilege?

<comment><USER7> If you think we shouldn't talk about ethnic privilege, why did you only take issue with my post, and not 0815test's, who first defended it?

Only allowing talk of it when it concerns white people is hypocritical - it's either all fair game, or none of it.

You asked what I wanted to talk about - that's pretty much it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why in the hell is this posted--and _upvoted_ \--on HN? Come on, people.

<comment><USER10> A coder broke into a new genre of website and very successfully monetized it. Yes, why indeed would HN be interested in this /female/ part of Internet culture and commerce?

<comment><USER11> Please don't start a gender flamewar, or any flamewar. Also, be kind and not snarky. These are important parts of the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

HN readers are interested in lots of different things. That's actually the point of this site. Not everyone is interested in the same things, though, and sometimes people complain about what appears here, even though the guidelines ask them not to. Even if someone does that, please don't respond by breaking the guidelines worse yourself.

Edit: I also feel like someone should defend the HN community against the implied slight in what you posted here. It isn't good to make such misleading insinuations, because (a) they worsen the problem you're complaining about, and (b) they're not true. To see the latter, look no further than [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19822123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19822123), which has a similar topic to this one and is currently at #3 on HN's front page. This quite interesting thread, which spent most of yesterday on the front page, is another example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19804772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19804772). Edit: and now we have Ethiopian midwives at #10: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837216).</comment></comment></comment>


A mistake is a moment in time - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3347-a-mistake-is-a-moment-in-time

<comment><USER2> Nice story. This point resonates with me: "If you climb a mountain you are sure to have a few missteps along the way. But you keep going. You don't stop and start over if you trip here or take the wrong path there. You keep going."</comment>


Anybody can learn to code - <AUTHOR> http://code.org/

<comment><USER2> to code yes, to write real good software, no</comment>


Great reminder that none of us own land in the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/08/08/great-reminder-that-none-of-us-own-land-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> Some (very few) individuals, institutions, and groups in the US do in fact come quite close to true land ownership: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Limited_allodia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Limited_allodial_title)

<comment><USER3> They still don't actually own it, and in all honestly no one ever truly owns anything. The only thing backing up ownership is that society is stronger than a random someone who wants to take your property. The rule of law is extremely important for any society because otherwise it's might makes right and that can change from moment to moment

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course. Ownership, like justice or nationhood, is a human convention, not some manifestation of an underlying physical reality.

I would argue that squatting is a better example that we don't "really" own the land.</comment>


LogicJS adds logic programming to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mcsoto/LogicJS <comment><USER2> A quick read of the comments here gives me the impression a lot of people are unfamiliar with what logic programming is, how it works, and what it might be used for.

I am among them. Really appreciate the post just for inspiring me to learn more about it. Anyone have a favorite go to resource?

<comment><USER3> Well, the classic logic programming language is Prolog, so learning it would be a good start. Here is something fairly lightweight on the subject:

[http://www.amzi.com/AdventureInProlog/advtop.php](http://www.amzi.com/AdventureInProlog/advtop.php)

There was a great PDF that explained how unification and substitution of symbols worked in a concise and readable fashion, but I can't find it right now. Hm, maybe this one:

[http://www.cs.ubbcluj.ro/~gabis/plf/Doc/SWI- Prolog/AnIntrodu...](http://www.cs.ubbcluj.ro/~gabis/plf/Doc/SWI- Prolog/AnIntroductionToProlog.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Could you describe a classic use case? I'm also interested in learning some logic programming, but it's hard for me to conceptualize a use case that isn't already covered by the languages I regularly use.

<comment><USER3> Back in the day the two common use cases were expert systems and natural language processing (which are somewhat related). In this day and age I would most likely use Prolog for rule-based simulations or high-level game AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the issues with standard logic programming is that sooner or later you want to be controlling the search strategies. Mozart/Oz has the notion of "computational spaces" as a primitive on which to build custom strategies. Quite a while back, I wrote tan implementation of this in JS called FD.js[1] for finite domain constraint programming. Might be useful for those interested in such in JS.

[1] [https://github.com/srikumarks/FD.js](https://github.com/srikumarks/FD.js)

</comment><comment><USER6> To solve the readability issue, why not use Babel to transpile JS expressions into the equivalent syntax?

To generate the first example in the readme:

      import {solve} from 'logic'

      function father(x,y) {
          return x =='mcbob' && y == 'bob' ||
              x =='bob' && y == 'bill';
      }

      solve(father) // a noop function used as a marker by babel

<comment><USER7> If you're going ES6, why not just:

      import {solve} from 'logic'

      solve((x,y) => x === "mcbob" && y === "bob" || x === "bob" && y === "bill");

<comment><USER8> Just because you can use the shorthand syntax, doesn't mean you always should.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't say it's that bad. A curly brace would make it a bit clearer though.

<comment><USER10> I prefer my code to be more than "it's not that bad" when it comes to readability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How easy would it be to encode and solve "Einstein's Riddle" [https://udel.edu/~os/riddle.html](https://udel.edu/~os/riddle.html) in LogicJS? I looked into starting it but there's things like this:

> _the Norwegian lives next to the blue house_

Which I'm not sure how encode without a huge decision tree, or some sort of dynamic logic encoding.

<comment><USER12> For reference, Clojure's core.logic: [https://gist.github.com/rm- hull/6952960](https://gist.github.com/rm-hull/6952960) Or, from Norvig, presumably as an update to the solution he made with Lisp and Prolog, here's a Python version that doesn't use any fancy logic engine: [https://gist.github.com/joyrexus/5301901](https://gist.github.com/joyrexus/5301901)

<comment><USER13> Jesus, Norvig's version is so dauntingly short...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A bit off topic, I like his JS style [1], almost doesn't look JS..

[1] [https://github.com/mcsoto/LogicJS/blob/master/logic.js](https://github.com/mcsoto/LogicJS/blob/master/logic.js)

<comment><USER15> Actually, this is the canonical JS with prototypes. The more common style nowadays is to (ab)use the module pattern.

<comment><USER16> I think the parent is referring to the particular stylistic decisions that differ from what's most common in the JS community. The author uses tabs to indent (instead of spaces), snake case (instead of camel), no semicolons, etc.

<comment><USER15> Wow, didn't even notice that. Now that I look at it, it does seem more airy and spacious. The style is also a bit eclectic and unsound. Dropping the curly braces on that else on L698 irks me to no end.

<comment><USER14> This style could be called 'No fear JS' :)

<comment><USER17> Not even using a linter. See the bug?

[https://github.com/mcsoto/LogicJS/blob/master/logic.js#L32](https://github.com/mcsoto/LogicJS/blob/master/logic.js#L32)

<comment><USER18> Ha, good get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nifty, but having "and", "or" and the rest _before_ both of the arguments instead of in the middle is incredibly confusing to read. Very unintuitive. Why not restructure it to be chainable with something like:

      firstVar.or(secondVar.eq('Bob').and(thirdVar.eq(41)));

<comment><USER20> Which style is more readable depends on whether in practice you end up with more sequence-like structures, or more tree-like structures. Chaining makes sense for sequences. For tree-like structures, they get confusing because the nesting levels aren't apparent.

For example: In your code sample, it's a bit unclear what nesting level the .and() call is occurring at. It could be a method call from the chain that starts at secondVar, or the chain that starts at firstFar. Distinguishing which one requires counting all the intervening parentheses. This okay for the given example, but gets out of hand as the conditions get complicated.

Ergonomics aside, I don't think the prefix notation is unintuitive. It's a bit verbose, since JavaScript doesn't have operator overloading, but to me it seems the most sensible and straightforward way of structuring the relationships.

<comment><USER19> Good point, and I agree that the code in my example wasn't perfectly clear, though I think some formatting could help it go a long way.

I don't think the prefix notation is much more readable than what I suggested, if it is more readable at all... But without any hands on experience with the library, I am in no position to make that argument.

In the spirit of excessive, needless suggestions: Maybe they can make it like the testing libraries, where you can import different packages for different syntaxes... (not serious)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very cool. The syntax is a bit verbose though.

What about expressing it as a tree based data structure?

<comment><USER22> Prefix notation already makes it a tree. Why would an explicit data structure tree instead of the AST make it better? Outside of being able to manipulate logic program structure at runtime.

<comment><USER23> Not only is being able to manipulate logic program structure at runtime super cool, but it would be great to be able to pass around logic as data more easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks similar to a business rule engine (like nools [http://c2fo.io/nools](http://c2fo.io/nools)).

<comment><USER24> Business rules systems and logic programming are definitely similar. Most business rules are based on "Forward Chaining" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining)), basically using what we know to satisfy the left hand side condition and then using the right hand side to assert new facts. Logic programming is usually based on "Backward Chaining" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chaining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chaining)), where the system attempts to work backwards from a goal to what facts are needed to satisfy the goal.

<comment><USER25> What would be the use case for using something like nools? Compared to just writing it in JS or Java or whatever the rest of your business logic is written in.

<comment><USER15> Any business rules that need to be changed easily later, that is almost anything and everything. Examples include discount rates, loyalty points, insurance premiums and so on. Especially when you have domain experts creating and updating the rules.

Take a look here at the drools (the java equivalent to nools) documentation: [https://docs.jboss.org/drools/release/5.4.0.CR1/drools- exper...](https://docs.jboss.org/drools/release/5.4.0.CR1/drools-expert- docs/html/ch01.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How does this compare with constraintJS[1]

[1]: [http://cjs.from.so](http://cjs.from.so)

<comment><USER27> It's an entirely different concept; this is logic based programming and constraint solving, nothing to do with DOM elements or user input.

<comment><USER26> Maybe the example of the front page is misleading, but fwir ConstraintJS is a JS library adding constraints to JS, the DOM/CSS are use cases but the library is not limited to those use cases

<comment><USER28> From [0] and [1], it seems that ConstraintJS does not try to solve constraints, it propagates changes among variables when they change. In particular, variables are not tied to domains.

[0] [https://github.com/soney/ConstraintJS/wiki/Constraint- Variab...](https://github.com/soney/ConstraintJS/wiki/Constraint-Variables)

[1] [https://github.com/soney/constraintjs/wiki/Introduction](https://github.com/soney/constraintjs/wiki/Introduction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting. Took a bit to even understand what logic programming was.

</comment><comment><USER30> is it necessary with ES6 Array methods?

</comment><comment><USER31> Why is this at 44 points? I respect this is trying to hit a nitch but the nitch looks more like a step backwards than forwards. This does not seem more reasonable than what we have available. Maybe when it handles promises will it have a more obvious use case.

<comment><USER27> There's absolutely nothing about this that would benefit from having promises - none of the operations performed are blocking. It's constraint solving, not I/O.

<comment><USER32> Promises can be helpful in a pure CPU bound workload as well: they help to avoid blocking the main thread, by yielding more often. This is typically done by breaking a long running computation into a series of sub-computations that are scheduled on a timer, and the top level API returns a Promise that completes when all computations are over.

The same goal could also be achieved with multiple threads (webworkers for example). But the promises and async/await syntax is more convenient.</comment></comment></comment>


Refuting the "sixteen concerned scientists" about global warming - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/?1

<comment><AUTHOR> The WSJ op-ed got quite a bit of play here a month ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523554>

This refutation is particularly noteworthy because it is authored by Yale economist William Nordhaus, whose work the sixteen cited in one of their main arguments. He takes them to task for a misconstruing his research and bungling basic cost/benefit analysis.</comment>


Ask HN: Does my company with $140,000 annual revenue have any value? - <AUTHOR>

I am a 21-year-old web developer who operates a company (incorporated) with a couple unique web apps relating to website management and ecommerce.  The software is downloaded and hosted by customers (not SaaS) but uses licensing and encoding technology so that sharing the code has not been a problem.
Licenses for the software bring in around $35,000 per year, while related custom development by myself brings in around $110,000 a year at a $150-$250 per hour rate.  I work part-time, take vacations, etc.  Bottom line: It's a great job with great clients and I couldn't ask for much more at 21-years-old.
However, I have just graduated with a degree in a field of research that I want to pursue with grad school.  My plan is to sell the business in a year and move on to graduate school.
But is there any value in this business?  Will other web development companies see value in acquiring my clients, products, and websites?  There's little money to be made without work: I would predict $25,000 per year could be made without answering any emails or doing anything.  However, if a company or person kept up with sales/support and doing custom development, they could easily make $200,000 in a year.
What do you think?  Am I just trying to sell a full-time job or is there value in this business? <comment><USER2> So you are billing out 110k a year which is 733 or less hours per work a year.

Somewhere between 110k and 733 hours of labor is an asset you are just looking to throw away.

If you look at subbing it out to someone else(though they get full source, i mean they have to) and if you pay this/these guys 60/hr, you are looking at paying out around 44k-ish a year plus lazy bloat so probably 60k a year.

You should hopefully realize you have built something pretty awesome, you are just missing the steps covered by: [http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited- Small-Businesses-Abou...](http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small- Businesses-About/dp/0887307280)

which basically means that you need to put processes into your system where you can sub yourself out as needed and someone else can handle this. Support requests and RFQs going to your personal email aren't conducive to this. Using things like zendesk, some other support app etc would be really beneficial.

So really you have 25k a year + a hose of consulting money you can divvy up/spray around as you see fit.

You really have something cool here, you should value it correctly. People buy jobs all the time, isn't that what college is all about?

<comment><USER3> Excellent point and I hope webdev2010 pursues it. I'd just like to add a cautionary note that shifting a business to this footing takes time and that in all likelihood there will be bumps in the road. But having a relatively large relatively passive income while at grad school would be totally worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first business was incredibly similar to yours in terms of success. A partner and I share about $75K/year in profit, and at this point we only answer occasional technical support (no custom development or contracting).

Neither of us were looking for the additional contracting work that you take on, we instead regarded this as passive income, and took the liberty to travel and relax.

I've now moved onto a new (bigger/riskier) project full time (with another partner), with my month-to-month financial burden still being taken care of by this first business.

From my experience, what I'd suggest is that, if you haven't already, build out incredible demonstrations, tutorials, how-tos, videos, etc for your customers, in an attempt to render yourself as useless as possible (on the contracting side). Then I suspect (based on the particulars of your business), that you could just maintain the project for some amount of time, only fixing problems, enhancing support materials and answering technical support, while earning significantly more than the $25k you suggest.

I say some amount of time because these things don't last forever, especially if you aren't growing it. But to me this doesn't sound like a killer business - it sounds like some passive income that you can use as a stepping stone to the next big thing in your career.

So don't sell it. Round it out with a last big push, turn it into a solid source of passive income, and let it fuel your future endeavors.

If you want to talk about this more in private shoot me an email, it's in my account info.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's my off-the-cuff analysis based on the limited information you've provided:

Keep it. The consulting business is worth very little, I think you're right to view it as "selling a job". Take it out of the equation for now. You have $25k - $35k in passive product-based income. That's your sellable asset.

So what's it worth? Three years of demonstrated profit would probably be a fair selling price. Based on that you're looking at about $75k pretax. Why do that when you can just sit on it for three years, realize the profit, and still have a business that generates income?

If you don't want to do any more consulting work but have recurring business coming in, consider finding a trusted developer who can assume your clients and will pay you a commission on future billings.

</comment><comment><USER6> Keeping the business may be to your advantage. Stipends at graduate schools are often around $25k/year, so your business would allow you to make the same amount of money with almost no effort. Since they are often funded out of professors' grants, you're limited to working with professors who have funding and have to do their research. If you keep the business and fund yourself, you'd basically be able to go to grad school almost anywhere you wanted and do research in whatever area you wanted with almost anyone.

<comment><USER7> As well as paying your (meagre) salary, the funding usually also covers your tuition. So while $25k / year will cover your salary, it won't also cover your tuition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I would predict $25,000 per year could be made without answering any emails or doing anything_

Then it might be a better value for you to keep the business (while putting little to no effort into it) and consider the $25k/yr an annuity of sorts. In four years you've got a hundred grand, which should offset the grad school expenses nicely.

<comment><USER9> I agree - perhaps take on some outsourced employees that can handle the repetitive stuff when it does occur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Idea: Don't sell it. You are profitable. Hire a geek, let him learn the framework and do custom development for you. Take a part, for example, if he bills $120/hour you take $20/hour. You'll also make passive money selling licenses. Hire a customer support person if you don't have time to do it yourself. You can hire it remotely; but I prefer that the developer is hired locally.

HN, please comment on my idea, as I don't have any real-life experience.

</comment><comment><USER11> The value in your business is you, with the exception of the license fees. So any buyer will want you as a part of the deal, expect to have to stay on for 2 to 5 years depending on how specialized your knowledge is.

Also, if you are selling a business that small consider building it our yourself first and train your replacement while you're at it. That way an exit becomes both more likely and much more profitable.

</comment><comment><USER12> You realize there are highly skilled, entrepreneurial people willing to work for $100-200/hr, right ? Especially part time.

I'm your inverse in the sense that I'm done w/ grad school and now doing freelancing/consulting to fund my own web-based projects.

Hell, go get your degree and I'll grow your business while you're gone, all the while kicking back 20-25% of consulting income. So you'll make a passive $60k+ a year while continuing to own your operation. And I won't have to spend time looking for clients.

Trust is a real issue, of course, but there are genuine hard-working people out there. If you want to talk more, my email's in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're billing at 150 to 250, I'm sure you could hire someone at 50 to 75 to do all the support work full time.

</comment><comment><USER14> While we're discussing this: I've written some software that generates approximately $200k/year in passive income (and growing), with almost no ongoing maintenance or support required. Anyone working on it full time could double it quite quickly, I think. (I'm working on some other projects.) At that level, how should I go about selling it?

<comment><USER15> $200k/year is probably pushing the amount that would be worth trying somewhere like flippa.com, but I have seen a few businesses in that range there.

Bizbuysell.com has a lot of businesses more in that ballpark, and if you want to be a little more proactive in selling it you could talk to a business broker about selling it.

<comment><USER11> Better read the fine print really good, business brokers worth their money are very hard to find and it's easy to get locked in with some shyster that will bank on you selling your business eventually and him pocketing a part of the sale. They're worse than real estate agents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do you want to go to grad school if you have successful business on your hands? It looks not only a successful business, but also such a business that allows you to do your own research part time. That kind of research should be more efficient that what you would get in academia.

</comment><comment><USER17> There surely is value in the business there. One basic formula for business valuation is 110% of annual gross revenue + the value of any hard assets.

The recurring license revenue is nice. The billable hours are a little difficult to value though since they are very dependent on you skill set. If you are doing something fairly unique, and the buyer can't be trained easily or successfully than it might be hard to honestly justify that revenue when negotiating a business value and price.

What are you marketing and advertising costs now? If you say "basically zero" then you might have a lot of untapped potential value.

Since you are not interested in running a business and hiring people, I'd suggest selling now. It'll take a few months to find a buyer and a few months to close a deal so might as well start now.

To paraphrase Warren Buffet "no one ever lost any money by taking a profit".

On the other hand, $2k per month of passive income while in grad school is a great way to live and study and work without a lot of added stress.

I wouldn't take less than $125k for it, cash (don't carry a note for the buyer). And offer the buyer 40-80 hours of training over the first 2 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Marketing costs are around $350/month for some simple BuySellAds spots.

I think the ideal purchaser would be a web development company or enterprising web developer (PHP programmer with frontend skills too) who is willing to pay ~$100,000 up front for a growing and proven business, the client leads, etc. However, I'm not sure if this is possible to find.

<comment><USER18> whats the language/platform of the software? how many customers/users are there currently?

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP. ~200 active clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hire an intern, teach them how to do the tech support, collect a check. I think you'd be foolish to get rid of it.

I'd happily support it for you and pass on a cut of the earnings. ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> To assess the value of the business you would have to look into finacial statements. You are incorporated, after all, but I suppose you don't have many assets and liabilities (I might be wrong though).

Revenues do not say much, you must subtract costs of running the business. To do that, you must also decide, what is your wage (or what would cost to hire someone to do your job) and what will be left as the profit.

To simplify, the value of your business is present value of future profits.

</comment><comment><USER21> Keep it; a decent income would've made grad school significantly less painful. 500 hours a year is not a full time job; I think your odds of selling it at the price it's worth to you are very low.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you are interested in selling - send me an email firstname.lastname@example.com

That hopefully answers your question around value vs job.

</comment><comment><USER23> apologies for the throw away account.

Am guessing you've probably made your mind up by now which way your going to go so if your selling it on, I may have some buyers for you, contact me off list on:

email@example.com

happy to sign NDA before code review/discussion starts.

firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not interested in selling right now. I am running and growing it over the next 6 months, at which point I will look for a buyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm also interested in helping you out as a skilled developer - please contact me on gmail at ansari.daniel.

</comment><comment><USER25> How can I contact you if I'm interested? My gmail account is mattmarksmail.

</comment><comment><USER26> Any way to contact you?

</comment><comment><USER27> I learned this the hard way 2 years ago while going through my divorce with my wife. We had both built up our web app development business over 8 years. Income was 120-150K. But without "both" of us working the hours....it soon wasn't worth anything.

I was able to liquidate the clients for 5K.

This was due to poor planning, documentation of process and of course a divorce. (so communication was somewhat an issue).

You would really need to define the business...every nut and bolt...and module that drives it. Then the processes that go with it.

Then if you could quantify that to someone, and show how it makes money when operated correctly you might be able to get some money squeezed out of it for grad school.

The likelihood you will get lump sum is small...but more like you could get a residual with maybe a balloon.

Let me know if you need help packaging it up. I'm helping my current employer with this now....email@example.com

<comment><USER28> I really hope you didn't get screwed in the divorce by taking the business. Valuing a small business in a divorce is tricky.</comment></comment>


KatieConf - <AUTHOR> https://katieconf.xyz/ <comment><USER2> In case anyone was wondering as to the point of the parody:

> If you are looking for speakers for your conference, why not ask one of the > wonderful people featured here? They are all listed with their Twitter > accounts, and a link to some of their prior talks.

> Do you really need another conference lineup of all men? Or as many female > speakers as speakers called Steve?

I suspect it is a direct rebuttal to the argument that it's difficult to find female speakers for conferences, which is one I've heard a few times before.

<comment><USER3> > "Do you really need another conference lineup of all men?"

If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are all present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux diversity.

When the subject is one's technical knowledge, the actual genetic makeup of the person making the presentation doesn't matter. It's strange that, to some, this is somehow a controversial statement.

<comment><USER4> Implying there are no female subject matter experts.

The problem isn't that people choose expertise and skill over gender. The problem is that men greatly outnumber women for no discernible good reason, despite the availability of qualified women speakers.

It's not _faux_ diversity. The fact that you just assume any change from the all-male status quo must be a step down is amazingly sexist and insulting.

<comment><USER3> > "The fact that you just assume any change from the all-male status quo must > be a step down is amazingly sexist and insulting."

I never said anything of the sort and it's quite interesting that you read that into what I wrote. It's very clear what I meant: I don't consider the gender makeup of the people presenting to have any value, as long as the people presenting are the best people available.

> "The problem is that men greatly outnumber women for no discernible good > reason"

The reason is simple: there's a lot more men in tech. For instance, StackOverflow found that 92% of devs are male. So one would expect that ~90% of presenters on software dev topics would be male. [http://fusion.net/story/115998/survey-says-92-percent-of- sof...](http://fusion.net/story/115998/survey-says-92-percent-of-software- developers-are-men/)

Even today, women only receive ~20% of engineering and CompSci degrees. So, unless things change dramatically, you're still going to be looking at a pool of candidates that's significantly more male than female.

<comment><USER4> In response to the idea of an all-male speaker lineup, you said:

> If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are > all present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux > diversity.

I assumed that hypothetical was meant to be plausible, because otherwise what's the point? So yes, you're strongly implying that an all-male lineup is likely to be because of qualifications, and that including women would make it worse.

I stand by my "no reason." The StackOverflow survey is obviously flawed (women often get treated badly online, so tend to be discouraged from participating in communities like SO) and if 20% of relevant degrees go to women, why do conferences typically have far less than 20% women?

<comment><USER5> He's saying that if the top 3 people in the field happen to be male, then yes, he'd prefer them over 2 of them and 1 random women added for the sake of diversity.

Also, all of you are acting like children. This is getting pretty ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Conferences usually have way more than three speakers, and the context is clearly talking about actual real-world conferences, where indeed the lineup is often 100% male. And they're implying that this typically happens because they're the most qualified.

Agreed that this is ridiculous. This is a pretty mild bit of satire, but a ton of people here are going out of their way to be offended by it. It's a great example of how many men are completely oblivious to the advantages they receive.

<comment><USER5> I had a panel in mind, not an entire conference (we had a similar discussion in Germany a year or two ago about all-male panels). I got them mixed up for some reason.

\-- edit --

I just remembered something; wasn't there a post going around the web some time ago about a woman (in Britain?) who got her talk accepted (in some sort of academic setting?) because she's a woman and not because of her talk and she didn't know that this kind of thing was going on and got really upset about it when she found out? Might be interesting to look at the situation from her angle as well. (Interesting to those of you who didn't read her story back then.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Limiting this conference to the name Kate is extremely Eurocentric. and I don't see a single black attendee.

<comment><USER7> Can't we just have fun some of the time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People here are saying that this page is trying to create awareness that there are enough females in technology to ensure greater numbers of female speakers at conferences, and that conferences should try harder to achieve that.

Why is that the responsibility of the conference? As far as I'm aware most conferences call for proposals to be submitted. Whether or not anyone of a particular group applies to speak at that conference is not necessarily a fault of the conference organisers? Are there conferences that actively seek out the majority of their speakers?

I am in favour of a wide variety of speakers at a conference (the more viewpoints the better), but this seems unnecessary. I would have liked for this to be a real conference though, the topics are great.

<comment><USER9> Everytime we try blind auditions we see more women being picked. It's the responsibility of the conference to guard against bias.

<comment><USER8> Don't conferences already use a blind process to determine speakers?

<comment><USER4> I thought conferences typically wanted to know who was proposing talks so they could look up people's backgrounds and such. Many have speakers in mind and reach out to them, rather than waiting for proposals to come in. I don't recall seeing any that talked about blinding proposals so they could be chosen without knowledge of who was doing the proposing. I'm sure it's been done, but I don't think it's common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lots of genuinely interesting speakers. Full of puns. I wish it was real.

</comment><comment><USER11> While I wouldn't have traveled to Australia for this, I find the concept of an idiosyncratic conference like this very cool conceptually in addition to supporting the political statement.

EDIT: I initially wrote Canada instead of Australia. Not that this changes the sentiment. Thanks for catching the error tedmiston.

<comment><USER12> > Katherine is a town in Northern Territory, Australia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The WHOIS points to the 2nd Katie down on the left speakers column. I was half expecting it to be a guy.

<comment><USER14> You didn't need to do a WHOIS to figure that out. The information you 'found' is right there on the page. Just scroll...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The .xyz TLD was a red flag, if for no other reason than Namecheap is practically giving them away.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's the joke?

<comment><USER16> If there are enough women named Katie to fill a compelling conference schedule, anyone running a conference who can't find women named _anything at all_ is clearly not even trying.

<comment><USER15> Oh, I see. Is it really true that organizers filter out some part of the demographic, or are women due to bad experience not trying to present? I didn't organize a conference, so this is a serious question.

I mean, encouraging everyone to attend, submit talks, and ensure they all feel welcome and safe is more useful than making it seem like women (or some_x) are only at a conference due to maybe a diversity quota.

<comment><USER12> I think part of the problem is that for (most) tech conferences the current attendee base is skewed highly male. Current attendees become confident of the conference style and then go on to present in following years.

It's like the argument, and I'm forgetting which well known tech figurehead made this, but... "We don't need more girls in CS majors, we need more girls playing around on laptops in the summers of elementary school [to put them on a more level playing field with male counterparts 10–15 years later]."

<comment><USER15> The same problem exists in some societies' failure to accept male teachers in elementary school or kindergarten. The diversification experience of armed forces might provide valuable insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _Or as many female speakers as speakers called Steve?_

Three is enough for a coven. After that, things get hairy very quickly. Disappointed this turned out to be a parody, it would be a marvellous and amusing thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Katie Conforti

Straight-up super-setting the conference name.

</comment><comment><USER19> June 31, 2016 ?

> KatieConf is a parody

<comment><USER3> It's a parody. About the lack of female speakers at tech conferences or something.

The bit: Here's all these female tech people with the name "Katie", thus you shouldn't have problems filling your tech conference with female speakers.

<comment><USER20> Assuming there was a speaker expert in the subject of the tech conference, who was as qualified as any non-Katie speaker.

<comment><USER2> > speaker expert

chicken/egg, though. You don't become a speaker expert without having plenty of practise at being a speaker. Irrespective of any demographic quality, we should be open to bringing new speakers to conferences.

<comment><USER20> If there's evidence that conferences are deliberately excluding women speakers, then that is a bad thing. Not just because of sexism but because the conference would be deliberately narrowing its field of potential speakers.

But why would we favour new speakers who are called Katie (or only new speakers who are women?). We should choose speakers who are experts, and new speakers from all possible candidates.

<comment><USER2> > If there's evidence that conferences are deliberately excluding women > speakers, then that is a bad thing.

The thing is, it's rarely deliberate. It's a subconscious bias thing. Which is why people use blind talk submissions - they're evaluated solely on the basis of the content of the talk.

<comment><USER20> Just to be clear, blind evaluation of talk submissions is how it should be.

BUT if at the end of that you find out that your conference has all male speakers (or all female speakers, or all speakers under 25, or whatever) what should you do about it? I would say you should try your hardest to encourage more people to apply next time. There are loads of great projects for that like Outreachy.

What you shouldn't do is decide to fill it up with some "quota people" to make it look diverse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Malkovich.

Malkovich, Malkovich.</comment>


My new web marketing strategy: Begging - <AUTHOR> http://www.peterbe.com/plog/new-web-marketing-strategy-begging <comment><USER2> I can totally relate to the author of this post. People say that ideas are the easy bit and that it's the implementation that is the hard part. Well, it's actually slightly different than that. Ideas are easy, implementation is hard, getting people the use it is nearly impossible.

You'd say; "then just make something that people want". It's not only the word "just" that's thrown around lightly. Even making something that people want is incredibly difficult. I'm slowly starting to believe that most successful websites are mere flukes, coincidences, being at the right place at the right time. That sort of thing.

I'd like to open a discussion here. You've made a side project, say it's a website, and you're interested in driving traffic to it. Other than relaying on posting a "Show HN", what strategies would you apply? Also, does someone has experience with paid strategies and is willing to share some pitfalls and do & don'ts?

<comment><USER3> I run a music website on the side that I'm now completely rebuilding with a tweaked a concept (a pivot, if you will) that will be geared towards creatives and maintain by userbase -- I've had about 13,000 signups over a long period of time. When I relaunch I'll have to go through the same thought process as you, but first let me tell you what I've seen so far.

At my day job, I've run millions of dollars in paid user acquisition and lead gen. What you have to realize is that when you're paying for users, you're normally not going to get more dedicated users (simply interested people). Organic users are usually higher quality leads than users from paid user acquisition because they came to you as interested potential customers rather than you convincing them through marketing messages and a well thought-out and optimized landing page.

Paid acquisition can work really well for companies that have a high lifetime value for a customer (LTV). That's why you see ecommerce companies, for-profit colleges, insurance companies, and other similar high-priced products spending millions in the display, social, and SEM space.

Then you see the Groupons and Living Socials of the world going for a landgrab of users quickly (paying millions to acquire users at a moderate price). But that moderate price still might not back out as the category gets less sexy. You barely see ads on Facebook for these companies anymore because the cost of acquisition is simply too high.

If you're going to do paid marketing, you have to really know your business and how you will monetize your site/app to make some decent margin at the end (selling data, premium subscription, advertising, etc.). I would only use paid marketing to validate interest on a very small scale or as a small push at the beginning to gain awareness.

If you're an app that requires a lot of users who will each monetize at a small amount, you need to have a stellar product with some other distribution mechanism (partnerships, viral coefficient greater than 1, unbelievable PR machine, etc.).

<comment><AUTHOR> They say, a successful product must be either First, Best or Free. But that's really really hard!

It's no excuse to give up and do nothing but a lot of stories of success starts with a product that doesn't immediately "sell". Some things just take to mature in peoples heads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to build a business and not side projects you need business development and marketing.

There is a bias(extremely wrong in my opinion) in HN against this and that product is everything but real world business doesn't work like that. Unless you have a viral product(which still needs marketing to reach critical mass) it is marketing that will make or brake it.

Also .io and other extensions might be trendy and fun to use but real businesses use .com . If you target end users they will hardly remember the tld of your website. How many services that end up in .io or other similar ones do you use?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know I know but why should one not try?

Remember a side-project is, at least in my case, something you work on OUTSIDE of regular work. I work on weekends, early mornings and late nights. When you only have about 5-10 hours per week you have to cut corners and do what little you can.

Also, in my case, I do everything myself. The client-side code, the server- side code, the optimization, the system administration, and last but not least, the marketing. It's not easy but I'll be damned if at least one of these can't become a success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll be the one who says it... There are too many typos in this piece (including the first paragraph) to take it seriously.

<comment><USER6> As far as the blog article goes, IMHO the typos are irrelevant to the expression of the idea of "begging"/being more transparent about marketing.

But with regard to the marketing effectiveness of the /yourhelp/ page, the typos are problematic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'll take another closer look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to say _thank you_ for implementing Mozilla Persona. Enough with crap login forms or a hundred OAuth providers.

Hugepic is something I've looked for in the past, congrats on launching. One little bug I found: the login button is misaligned (and is being affected by the link hover style) <http://cl.ly/image/442S1B1E3A3R>

</comment><comment><USER8> I personally have a fear of making things nobody will use. I know that the act of working on something is not a waste of time since you learn from the process of building but I can't ignore the feeling that I wasted my time anyway.

The way I do my projects now is that I try to get a core group of influential people in their niche to get excited about the project I'm building and I leave it to them to tell their friends about it. I've never spent a dime on marketing. A lot of traffic to one of my sites comes from FB, for example, and mainly from fan-created pages.

With the new project I'm currently working on, I noticed a group of users trying to shoehorn their activities into an existing platform that didn't exactly fit them. The first thing I did was to contact a lot of these people personally and asked them questions about what they were doing. After getting a fairly good idea, I then asked them if they were interested in testing something that I'll make for them in the next few weeks which got a positive response.

I spent a week building the core features that I thought were the most useful for them. All the core features worked but since I ported a lot of existing code from my old projects to speed things up, a lot of the other stuff was broken but that's okay. I hate building useless stuff so I needed to know right away if I was on the right track.

I invited the people I contacted to test it out. They didn't like it. Discouraging but expected. After a weekend of tweaks and discussions, they started getting more and more excited about the project as they started to see things progress. I made sure I involved them in all of the design discussions and tried to make them feel that this was their project as much as it is mine. Basically, tons of buy-in which also works wonders for my morale to keep going. They're excited, I'm excited, and now we're at the point where they've decided that they're going to bring all of their activities over to the new site.

It's a lot of upfront work to be sure, but this way, I can approach it more from a systems analysis standpoint now than a marketing exercise later.

TL;DR Find a key group of prospective users and involve them in your project from the beginning. Let them be a part of its creation, generate excitement, then let the marketing take care of itself from there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Around the World is great! It just needs a flashier UI and introduction. It's seriously addictive. Please don't give up on it.

If you want to explore it further next year hit me up for some graphic design advice/help.</comment>


Bruteforcing the Devil - <AUTHOR> https://blog.passcod.name/2014/jun/05/bruteforcing-the-devil

<comment><USER2> I came up with a mutation-based solution to this. Supply any string and it finds a valid hash in as few edits as possible.

Example: [http://bochs.info/img/mutation-20140606-024906.png](http://bochs.info/img/mutation-20140606-024906.png)

One could definitely optimize this to be less destructive and produce more pronounceable results. It's basically two pieces: an engine for suggesting mutations, and a simple algorithm to score and pick mutations. Changes to either half (vowel distribution, ngrams, etc) could result in better strings.

(fyi, this kind of attack is a big reason to use cryptographic hashes: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function))

<comment><USER3> When Pfiffer told me peh would post that on HN, my reaction was something like "Fine by me, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get schooled." Looks like I was right.

I got schooled, I'm learning, next time I'll be more clever about it, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aw guys, don't go start posting on their site (which I won't link) with devil names. Everyone knows communities turn to shit when they get too big and 300 different users posting all with blank icons is going to kill the fun for them.

I'm not even a member of Merveilles but that makes me sad for them.

<comment><USER5> Well; for what ostensibly is a secretive, millenial "circle of artists and wizards"; that is an awfully non-cryptographic, weak hash function. Apparently (variants thereof) are commonly used in some JavaScript circles to mimic a popular implementation of Java's String.hashCode() method [1,2,3].

[1] [http://werxltd.com/wp/2010/05/13/javascript- implementation-o...](http://werxltd.com/wp/2010/05/13/javascript- implementation-of-javas-string-hashcode-method/)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6122571/simple-non- secure...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6122571/simple-non-secure-hash- function-for-javascript/8831937#8831937)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_hashCode()](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_hashCode\(\))

<comment><USER6> You expected something more esoteric? I think it's a matter of perspective. Sure, as a crypto challenge, it's weak. But if you think of it as our standard UI for configuring one's user icon...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This hash is very weak. You can actually find many preimages of a given hash value in seconds with a meet-in-the-middle attack: [https://gist.github.com/pedrox/eb8d674bf2b8be63da0f](https://gist.github.com/pedrox/eb8d674bf2b8be63da0f)

<comment><USER2> You can brute force it insanely fast by iterating from the rightmost character and caching the entire hash prefix.

This hash doesn't scramble input very well, so you can fiddle with individual characters to converge on any desired hash value.

Record the "closest" hash value to your target generated by this loop, apply (only) that character change, repeat. If the hash value stops converging, add a character. This naive version pretty often does the job in 5 full iterations or so, which means (5 * len(s) * len(alphabet)) = maybe ~3000 total hashes to get a solution.

        for i in xrange(len(s)):
            copy = s
            for c in alphabet:
                copy[i] = c
                diff = abs(hash(copy) - 666)
                best = min(diff, best)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it supposed to be obvious where this #Merveilles community with its icons is on the web? Am I unaware of a whole type of communities like this?

<comment><USER9> Wasn't too hard to find. If it were obvious it'd kinda take the fun out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      I'm half tempted to buy a few hours of highcpu AWS compute power and get
      it done nowish instead ... I set myself a $50 spending limit, which
      gave me about 24 hours of compute on an instance with 32 virtual cores

The price of a c3.8xlarge with 32 cores and 60 GB is currently $0.28 in us- west-2.

You could get 178 hours of compute for your $50 budget.

<comment><USER3> This is for a spot instance, which could get stopped at any moment if the spot price increases, and that would be pretty bad for that task as I could lose computation results. The on-demand price is about $1.60 an hour. But wait! I'm not using the same dollar, I live in New Zealand, which makes that about NZ$1.90 an hour, or NZ$45 for 24 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think shoruzorhorheugogeuzudeazaeon actually sounds a bit more like a demon than the other candidates.

<comment><USER12> Damn. HN usernames have to be 15 characters or less. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> i was intrigued by this, so i done it in C.

on my 4-core MBP (2.6ghz ivy bridge) i can manage ~1.8 _billion_ hashes per second.

i could parallelize with OpenCL, but i think this is enough. after a few minutes, i get ARbyhlf as a valid name (although i don't know if this is actually valid.. but it definitely might be)

(removed)

edit: just realised that my nonce calculation was wrong.. [http://pastebin.com/bcHcECPJ](http://pastebin.com/bcHcECPJ)

<comment><USER3> Most of the time is spent on generating the random string, which was because I very quickly realised looking through the entire possibility space in order would be unproductive. Granted, my entire approach was unproductive, as shown by linuxbochs, pedrox, and others below :)

I actually did some micro-benchmarking in the midst of all that and found that hashing a single, static, string took something of the order of 20ns. That's half a billion hashes per second, or 2 billion on four cores. Add a little overhead for string generation, and yeah, we get the same number.

<comment><USER13> > Most of the time is spent on generating the random string

when i took out string generation, i went from 1.2 GH/s to 1.8GH/s (although, i'm assuming my string generation was much simpler)

> I very quickly realised looking through the entire possibility space in > order would be unproductive

you say that, but it's not as unproductive as you might think. assuming the hash function is uniformly distributed (hah), there are 4 billion hash values that could result from a string. if we can check 2 billion a second, we should see a result every few seconds. maybe my search space pruning was particularly bad, because i see on average ~4-10 a minute, and they are usually quite clustered together. this suggests the hash is not uniformly distributed (although a cursory glance at the function should make it obvious to people with a maths background).

anyways, it was good fun to poke around :) cheers for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> WOW my C++ solution is horrible. It's as though I'd just ignored everything I've learned about Doing Things Right in C++ Post 2010. Such is hacking, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER14> Woah, if you zoom in onto this site, the letters slowly shift apart over time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Or you can write it OpenCL and get a result near instantly.

<comment><USER2> OpenCL would be way overkill for casual brute force. I get several solutions a second using a C hasher on a single CPU core of my laptop.

Maybe there's an OpenCL use for finding extremely optimal usernames, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh, the joys of generating a recognizable tripcode.</comment>


Ask HN: What is wrong with my bookmarking tool? - <AUTHOR> Hello! A couple of years ago, I wrote a bookmarking tool to scratch my own itch. However, nobody wants to use it. My question is: why?
The tool is this: https://www.homepagr.com/
I ask because I've tried to create this as a small business using "textbook" techniques, but without much user feedback or traction. I'm interested to see where the formula is breaking down!
- I built a tool that I myself wanted
- Started with an MVP a couple of years ago, with a simple UX, and then iterated to where it is today
- Put together a landing page, try to explain value proposition and collect email addresses (nobody signed up)
- Currently giving away the product for free - but even people who use it tend to stop after a week
There is clearly a market: pinboard.io, lots of positive feedback for raindrop.io, and I see bookmarking tool threads on HN very frequently.
Often, people ask me "why should I use this instead of x product?" I don't have a good answer: except that I like mine better because it has the features that I care about (an uncomplicated UX), and none of the features that, to me, are a distraction.
Could it be that this is, essentially, a tool which is too specific to my own preferences? Am I marketing or positioning this poorly? What am I doing wrong?
(Incidentally! This is not a complaint - the tool is something that I built for myself, and have been using for a few years, and will continue to use! But, I am very much interested in help debugging why this is lacking traction compared to others!) <comment><USER3> > There is clearly a market: pinboard.io, lots of positive feedback for > raindrop.io, and I see bookmarking tool threads on HN very frequently.

> Often, people ask me "why should I use this instead of x product?" I don't > have a good answer: except that I like mine better

I think that sums it up. If your product doesn't offer anything unique, I might as well take one of the 100 bookmarking tools out there. Yeah, the market is there, so is the tooling. Just have a look at this list [1] - <USER2> makes your bookmark manager special?

I have written my own bookmark manager [2], and it provides a unique feature that I haven't seen anywhere else (a single HTML file is being generated, with the whole app included, so it can be easily shared without hosting it anywhere). I'm dog-fooding this project at my job and many people find it useful. Still, I've noticed early that it will be very difficult to market, so it remains an open-source project.

I'm closely following bookmarking discussions (hence also seeing your post :) ). One trend I've noticed is that most people like a "dumpster"-like pinboard solution more than any folder-like tool like yours or mine. So that's another factor that makes our approach more difficult to market.

> Put together a landing page

One point I recommend changing is the headline/subheadline. The main benefit, "essential bookmarking for teams", is 14px light gray. Make it _much_ more prominent. Make it even part of the main headline. The light gray doesn't pass accessibility contrast ratio by the way - this applies to all the heavy light gray usage. It makes it difficult to read.

Is it possible to provide a live demo for your app? Maybe a demo/demo account?

BTW - the "take the tour" link in the footer scrolls the page to the top, not the "tour" part.

I hope your project takes off :)

[1] [https://serafin.io/bookmark-managers/](https://serafin.io/bookmark- managers/)

[2] [https://darekkay.com/static-marks/](https://darekkay.com/static-marks/)</comment>


PR wars: Palm Pre could go on sale 24 hours before next gen iPhone unveiled - <AUTHOR> http://www.last100.com/2009/04/29/palm-pre-hype/ <comment><USER2> I would advise them to go on sale at least a week ahead of WWDC. If they are too close and Apple launches an überphone, Apple would steal the attention Palm is aiming to get

<comment><USER3> I think both parties have a good understanding of the other's product well before hand. "Competitive intelligence" (aka industrial espionage) is business as usual in the technology and pharmaceutical industries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like a horrible idea. I wouldn't buy the Pre knowing a better phone might be released the next day.

<comment><USER5> I doubt anyone would buy it on both the notion that the new iPhone might be released the next day, and the fact that you already know what to expect with a new version of the iPhone OS and Hardware wide. The Palm Pre is unknown to most people, so why would they waste their money if Apple is going to come out with something they know is going to be awesome.

<comment><USER4> Is there any info on new iphone hardware?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Palm is irrelevant. It doesn't matter when they schedule their launch: who's eagerly awaiting the next alternative-platform phone programmable only through javascript ?

<comment><USER7> I am.

Javascript (along with HTML and CSS) is the lingua franca of web UIs, and the browser is becoming the platform. Pushing that deeper into devices is a natural move.</comment></comment>


World's tiniest steam engine using lasers instead of coal - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5867886/the-worlds-tiniest-steam-engine-uses-lasers-instead-of-coal <comment><USER2> The article probably should be titled "World's tiniest steam engine uses a laser as a piston".

That's the part that's interesting. The source of the energy - the laser's ultimate power source might be a coal burning power plant - is not at issue. Otherwise we'd have to hope it's "lasers all the way down".</comment>


Why is our country so divided? - <AUTHOR> http://politicswithoutpolitics.com/ <comment><USER2> Was this written by a Google employee? I doubt Google wants their brand being associated with politics of any kind, no matter how bipartisan. Someone should send this to Google's legal department or to an employee that can forward it on.</comment>


Twenty years ago today, Windows 95 was released. Here's the ad that was used - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0AJM6HMYjM

<comment><USER2> Microsoft Windows 95 Video Guide with Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry from Friends:

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

</comment><comment><USER3> The sad thing is that probably got less coverage then some random crap today. 300 articles about the gmail icon changing it's red to a different red.

</comment><comment><USER4> First graphic OS I had the chance to use and I still remember how blown away I was.

</comment><comment><USER5> So many beige boxes and giant monitors. I remember it being news that Microsoft secured the rights to "start me up"

</comment><comment><USER6> look how slow the screen repaint was.

<comment><USER7> That would be an eye-candy feature these days. A slow transition mimicking some real-world effect (like page turning) or some completely fake transition (Alt-Tab being on some sort of 3D shape or items in a folder).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Video not available (at least on iPad)

</comment><comment><USER9> And still... with more privacy features than the new Windows 10.</comment>


Ask HN:  Honesty vs simplicity:  how honest should you be to your users? - <AUTHOR>

There is often a tradeoff between honesty and simplicity.
For example, in an iPhone puzzle app, you might tell the user that you are sending their score to the server.
But maybe you are doing more:  the server may not trust the app and require a solution -- not just the score.
Telling the user that you are sending the solution to the server is also misleading, as the server may not store the solution (other than temporarily in a log perhaps) -- but use it only to check the score.
Explaining all this to the user is probably too much.
So what would you do in a situation like this?
Just say something that is close to the truth that is easy to understand? <comment><USER2> in my opinion, i'd give them multiple levels of information. give them a simple notice that they're submitting score information, and provide an option to view more detailed information if they wish.

<comment><USER3> I agree, I'd suggest with Terms & Conditions there are: 1) people who don't read/skim them (the majority) 2) people who want _all_ the details (a vocal minority) So if your T&C's state something like 'we may send puzzle data to our server, where it might be stored' & you also have an FAQ on your website with the full details that should satisfy both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What does the user care about? In your example, I guess they care about bandwidth usage and personal data. So in that light, I would inform them that a small amount of game-specific, non-personal info needs to be sent to the website (server is jargon, so should be avoided) to record the score.

My point is that as much info as the user cares about should be provided in a clear, accessible manner.

Where personal data and/or legal disclosure laws apply, then more transparency and info is better.

Unfortunately, it is not unnecessary to point out that all information of all types at all times should always be rigorously honest. If you're going to tell your users something, be truthful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Couldn't you say "send the result to the server", and it could mean both things without sounding too scary?</comment>


Can oil prices bring India to economic collapse again? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.simplemoney.in/oilprices/ <comment><USER2> FTA : "This issue is an example of how complex the economic machine is."

I hate it when people conflate "complex" and "impossible to understand". By saying complex, you imply that at some point, you will understand it. But in this case, nobody will ever get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> True! I suppose we can hope that we'll understand it all one day.

Then again, there's enough people who would claim to understand it all.. they're probably the ones to be most afraid of!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Indian imports 2,159,000 bbl/day</comment>


Google+ shares numbers with NYTimes - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/google-defending-google-plus-shares-usage-numbers/

<comment><USER2> They're counting YouTube and the Android Marketplace as Google Plus-enhanced products? Well, then of course those numbers are high. I'd like to see how much direct traffic Google Plas receives.

<comment><USER3> That they would try such deceptive tactics to prop up G+ shows how truly desperate they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fear I may be a different kind of chap than Mr. Gundotra, but if my friends were posting on Google+ then I don't think they'd be sharing tips on the best microwave to buy.

I don't really understand why Google+ is so stagnant. I know I'm not attracted to it as no one I'm interested in posts there. I guess this is a classic (lack of) network effect. There's nothing much wrong with the interface, but with no reason for me to visit I can't see it going anywhere.

Most damningly I do not know a single person in the real world who is also on Google+ and has posted more than once. A few have signed up after I nagged them, posted once and then given up, but the majority have not even got that far.

Google need to find a feature that attracts users to Google+ in the first place. So far I can't name that.

</comment><comment><USER5> We all know G+ is struggling in traffic. It's no secret. Most moms don't use it. Most teens don't know what it is. Most grandmas haven't even heard of it.</comment>


A French Art collector bought an artwork created by an AI for 10k € - Obv-ious_com https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-made-by-artificial-intelligence-1258745 <comment><AUTHOR> The artwork, generated by a generative adversarial network (GAN), is titled "The Count of Belamy" as a tribute to Ian Goodfellow, the person who conceived GANs.

"Goodfellow" roughly translates into "Belamy" in French.

<comment> Obv-ious_com A good easter egg :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> One thing to take into account is that, by French law, buying artwork opens the way for fiscal deductions.

</comment><comment><USER3> With the recent advances in Machine Learning, this was bound to happen

<comment> Obv-ious_com Yes :) Do you like the visual? Do you think it's true art?

<comment><USER3> I am grave d'accord avec toi

<comment> Obv-ious_com Hum ok</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Model S battery reignited twice after Florida crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-ntsb-tesla-fatal-crash-report-model-s-battery-reignited-twice-after-florida-crash/ <comment><USER2> Just like you can get a patent on anything by adding "with a computer" you can get traction for any news story by adding "in a tesla" to it. A fire in any car would be horrifying, but it's not really that newsworthy. Gas cars catch on fire all the time.

Dubai - car catches on fire twice!

[https://www.thenational.ae/uae/transport/car-catches-fire- tw...](https://www.thenational.ae/uae/transport/car-catches-fire-twice-at- dubai-petrol-station-1.95799)

Didn't quite make the us news. Cars catch on fire at amusement park, Teslas apparently not involved [http://abc11.com/several-cars-catch-fire-in-parking- lot-of-c...](http://abc11.com/several-cars-catch-fire-in-parking-lot-of- carowinds-/3638472/)

<comment><USER3> Ok, so former reporter here.

There are several 'criteria for newsworthiness'. One of them is novelty. Another is general public interest. And there is substantial general public interest in Tesla as a whole, since it is doing new things. Additionally, many of the things Tesla is trying is also novel. So that is two things right off the bat that make basically anything that happens there newsworthy to some degree.

I get that people like to say "oh the media is just reporting on this failure because it's Tesla and they want them to fail," but to hold that view is to misunderstand the nature of news in general. Pieces like this aren't inherently "anti-Tesla", (which is what I am admittedly inferring you're getting at with your comment). But the fact that this is a new thing that humankind is experimenting with makes it newsworthy, and that includes its failures and successes.

I also admittedly didn't read the article yet :)

<comment><USER4> This is the clickbait approach to journalism.

Investigative and traditional news journalism will still focus on unusual deltas or events — and in this case, those deltas should be in Tesla's favor. A good example of newsworthiness might be if firefighters failed to put out a battery fire or if the NTSB (edited from NHTSA) focused on a particular incident for some reason, e.g. to learn and see how this event is being handled versus others.

"Tesla on fire" isn't newsworthy.

"NTSB monitoring emergency response to Tesla car fire" probably is. (edited from NHTSA. Source release: [https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press- releases/Pages/NR20180509.as...](https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press- releases/Pages/NR20180509.aspx))

"Tesla batteries catch on fire [more or less] frequently than gas cars" is newsworthy. It may even be worthy of further investigation in either event.

"Tesla on fire" isn't newsworthy.

<comment><USER5> Then would you call the NTSB investigation a "clickbait" investigation? They are the ones who initiated the investigation that is being reported on right now.

How unusual/newsworthy is a NTSB investigation? You can look at their list of major highway investigations right here:

[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/All- Investigations...](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/All- Investigations.aspx?office=Highway)

There are about 50 ongoing investigations since 2016. Of those, Tesla is the subject of 4 of them:

[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY18FH004.aspx](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY18FH004.aspx)

[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY18FH011.aspx](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY18FH011.aspx)

[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY18FH013.aspx](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY18FH013.aspx)

[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY17FH013.aspx](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/pages/HWY17FH013.aspx)

By my informal count, Tesla seems to have the most NTSB investigations of any individual automaker right now, given that many of the NTSB highway investigations involve bus and train accidents.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, I would expect the NTSB to investigate any kind of accident involving rare or new technology. I'd expect to see them investigate a higher percentage of accidents involving electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles until those technologies are safe enough and proven enough that you get diminishing returns from the investigations.

<comment><USER7> Tesla probably also has one of the higher counts of deployed electric vehicles out there too, so the absolute number of units involved in anything unusual should be expected to be high too. The interesting context would be relative numbers to number of units and miles travelled for both regular vehicles as well as other makers electrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A Chevrolet Volt battery from a car used in crash testing caught fire while in storage [1]

I know many are quick to dismiss battery fires "because petrol cars do it all the time" but that is not the issue. One key difference is a lithium battery fire produces toxic gases that are more dangerous [2] which are more dangerous to bystanders and first responders.

A key reason these stories are noteworthy is because the technology is new and exciting. Plus many don't associate fires with batteries though Hollywood will likely provide an abundance of such excitement. So expect more stories of battery fires, especially surrounding AP accidents which are even more noteworthy but don't dismiss the issue because of petrol cars

Now in that previously mentioned Volt fire there is mentioning of powering down a battery as one solution. Is that possible with the Tesla system, actually is that truly a solution? I suppose the real solution is special holding areas created to store battery packs and cars from wrecks. Probably will require manufacturer's to take ownership of them

[1] [https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid- electric/a11865...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid- electric/a11865/the-straight-story-on-the-chevy-volt-battery-fire-6601217/)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I would say that the fact this battery reignited is barely news. Its a well known "feature" of lithium batteries. Petrol is at least as dangerous from the perspective of a fire hazard. Diesel is probably the least likely to spontaneously combust.

<comment><USER10> They clean up petrol and other leaked fluids after car crashes, what is the correct procedure to "disarm" a punctured lithium ion battery?

<comment><USER9> I agree with you 100%- there should be a protocol for handling this situation. I have know idea what that should be, but seems like there needs to be a way to encapsulate the battery with an insulator and prevent any further shorts/fires.

<comment><USER11> Putting the car in a large, fire-proof steel container (specialty engineering, they exist) for a few weeks (so you are at least somewhat sure it won't start catching fire RFN). Then dismantling the battery by hand, inspecting each cell individually.

You can't really put anything around it (like a nitrogen atmosphere) that prevents fires, because the oxygen is already in there in the cathode. And so is the energy to ignite it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The report notes that Fort Lauderdale Fire and Rescue Department found the > Tesla "fully engulfed in flames" at the crash scene and extinguished it with > 200 to 300 gallons of water and foam.

Water + lithium fire, smart. I'm surprised it was put out successfully to begin with. Probably it died on its own, and got restarted with the water.

<comment><USER13> It's literally what Tesla recommends:

> USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, > is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts > of water to cool the battery. It can take approximately 3,000 gallons of > water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a > battery fire; always establish or request an additional water supply. If > water is not immediately available, use dry chemicals, CO2, foam, or another > typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.

[https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...](https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Model_S_Emergency_Response_Guide_en.pdf)

<comment><USER14> That much water is probably enough to react with all exposed lithium, while removing enough heat to prevent damage to other batteries or battery cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems from TFA that the speed limiter had been set to 85 mph, yet the data recorder showed the car traveling at 116 mph three seconds before the crash. Did the speed limiter fail too?

<comment><USER16> The father claims that he set his son's car to have a speed limiter. However we have no reason to believe that the son didn't try to remove the limiter. Given the son's previous behavior, there is every reason to believe that the son would have noticed the limiter and tried to turn it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's amazing that we allow a car to be sold that can go this fast. They bothered to pass a law limiting electric bicycles to 28 MPH but my car will go 155. Why?

<comment><USER18> Your point doesn't make sense. There's speed limits for cars too. My ebike does 45mph doesn't mean I'm allowed to go that fast.

<comment><USER17> If you own an e-bike that can exceed 28 MPH then it is unlawful in most jurisdictions to operate it on any bike lane or path, and you need a motorcycle license to operate it on a road. The equivalent law for cars would be if your car can exceed 45 MPH you're not allowed to drive it in a school zone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The main cause of this accident seems to be doing 116 mph in a 30 mph speed limit zone...

I can't really blame the design of the car for the fatalities in that case...

The secondary fire isn't really preventable either - electric cars, due to their nature, contain batteries, and when those batteries are ripped apart in an accident, they might short circuit and catch fire. Recorvery crews need to know this, and leave the car somewhere it won't matter if it re-ignites.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd be more surprised to learn they were able to put out a lithium battery fire before it completely burnt up.

<comment><USER21> Fire needs heat, fuel, and oxygen. Take away just one of those and no more fire.

Water has normally been used to absorb heat, and takes some oxygen away. But electrical fires you need something else like CO2, powder, or halon.

<comment><USER11> Lithium ion battery fires bring their own oxygen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Batteries provide oxygen, fuel and a way to get that fuel hot enough to ignite (electrical energy) in close proximity. The higher the energy density the easier they will light up and the harder it is to put them out. Unless there's a fundamental breakthrough that allows us to use different materials to store electrical energy this is always going to happen from time to time.

Only the most die-hard of fanboys ever claimed that having a bunch of lithium batteries on the floor of your vehicle was an improvement in safety over liquid fuels.

All forms of energy storage are going to have the potential to destroy things by releasing that energy. The big difference between a bomb and energy suitable for conversion into mechanical power is time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Talking about these self-driving cars, I think there are still so many aspects that need to be fixed by the automakers. Until then, these cars should not be allowed to be operated on public roads. I have read an article that talks about this matter at [https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car- accid...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident- injury-lawyers-attorneys/). Hopefully the automakers will think seriously about this.

</comment><comment><USER24> > his father had installed speed-control technology on his son's Model S to > limit its maximum speed to 85mph

Is there anywhere near Mountain View where it's legal to drive even 75mph, let alone 85mph?

<comment><USER25> Legal or not, 85 is the natural flow of traffic on Silicon Valley freeways when they're not congested.

<comment><USER26> There are plenty of times I've been on 280 and been uncomfortable doing 85; traffic was flowing at ~100 and I felt like an obstruction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > The Model S, which was being driven by Barrett Riley, was traveling at > 116mph three seconds before the collision

What do you expect to happen when a lithium ion battery hits a wall at high speeds?

</comment><comment><USER28> 116 mph in a 30 mph zone. Just wow.....

</comment><comment><USER29> Watch: Lithum is highly toxic. Total environmentally hazardous. How many more? Li Ion batteries = weak point, once ignited, won't stop burning: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYKTTCNUV3o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYKTTCNUV3o)

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash If every gasoline-powered automobile fire got the same coverage as every Tesla fire, there wouldn't be space for anything else.

<comment><USER30> Good thing then that it's not about "car caught on fire", but more specific than that.</comment></comment>


Windows Phone 7 Interface: Microsoft Has Out-Appled Apple - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5472010/windows-phone-7-interface-microsoft-has-out+appled-apple

<comment><USER2> I think Microsoft's interfaces have been improving gradually since the Zune came out. I know no one likes to admit it, but Vista, from a UI standpoint, was worlds better than XP, and Windows 7 even more so. The fact that Windows Phone 7 is clean and elegant is not a surprise to me.

What's interesting is that UI has finally broken down to its simplest aspects. Anyone who owns a Zune will verify this for you. The menus are just text, yet they're still beautiful. It's like navigating a work of art. The only direction now is for interfaces to become simple past the point of understandability. Basically, we'll have the exact opposite problem.</comment>


Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/us/skip-child-support-go-to-jail-lose-job-repeat.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I was thinking, "Why not just garnish his salary?" until I read this:

 _When parents fall short, the authorities escalate collection efforts, withholding up to 65 percent of a paycheck, seizing bank deposits and tax refunds, suspending driver's licenses and professional licenses, and then imposing jail time._

I don't see how this is legal. If they've seized 65% of your paycheck already and it's still not enough, isn't this basically amounting to debtors' prison?

<comment><USER3> Because when it comes to child support, you've been ordered by a judge to pay. Violating a court order is a criminal offense.

There are other ways to manage overburdening debt collections, even court- ordered ones. The situation escalating to incarceration is largely avoidable.

<comment><USER4> This is interesting. Could you explain how it is avoidable? I am genuinely asking, not looking for something to argue about (I may disagree, just want to make sure you know I'm not looking for something to disagree with, I am asking this because I really don't know).

My limited understanding is that people can be sent to jail for failure to pay even if they have turned over all existing assets (i.e., no concealing assets or fraud) and have made no effort to evade payment. For instance, if someone "loses" a job and the judge believes that the person is not making a sufficient effort to find one and resume payment, that can be sufficient to send someone to jail. Is that the case?

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that effort is irrelevant. Either the man pays or is imprisoned. I wonder how much of these debts not money paid by the state to the monther, but are fines or penalties that generate revenue for the state itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I legitimately don't understand America's obsession with sending so many people to jail.

If you fail to pay child support here, all they do is just garnish your wages both for payment and also for repayment of missed child support.

The employee actually never "sees" the money as it is taking directly from the employer.

<comment><USER7> Here's a BBC radio four programme that talks about some tiny cities in Missouri, and how they raise money from minor traffic violations, and how many people either can't pay the accumulating fines or can't get time off work for the court case and thus a bunch of people end up in prison.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm)

> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions > in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety > separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and > police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable > and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own > citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.

> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to > meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest > warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are > poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto > the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding > the law and promoting road safety.

> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson > where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead > last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice > concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good > reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.

> Claire Bolderson investigates how widespread the practice is and considers > the impact on relations between citizens and the authorities that govern > them.

It's weird. The consequence for driving at twelve MPH over the speed limit shouldn't be prison (unless you're drunk, or by a school, or some kind of speeding unrepentant criminal).

("Crossing Continents" is a generally good, interesting programme and it's well worth listening to it.)</comment></comment>


Free Vs Paid - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/free-vs-paid.html <comment><USER2> It's a complete and balanced ecosystem. If this particular VC starts funding only paid services (and started an industry wide trend), there will be an opening for free services to take on the funded/paid startups. This post really means nothing to the average startup founder, some services as tialys points out will never work with a paid model (Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I do think the days of "shit"-free-mium services are over, I.e. forums that are turned static and filled with ads.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also... some services wouldn't make sense to pay for. I wouldn't pay for Facebook or anything in that space.</comment>


Uber's San Francisco revenue alone is $500M / year - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-revenue-san-francisco-2015-1 <comment><USER2> Thats amazing, is that the amount after paying out the drivers?

<comment><USER3> No, that would be their profit. This is their generated revenue in total, so how much they brought in from each driver in SF.</comment></comment>