New College Graduates Increasingly Forced to Settle for Internships-Many Unpaid - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31herbert.html?em <comment><USER2> I know much of HN is younger folk. If you find yourself without "traditional" employment, I'd suggest busying yourself creating lasting value for yourself rather than just doing passive search for a job.

The typical send-letters-and-wait-by-the-phone game is for suckers. For one, it doesn't really let you differentiate from the other 20% of your age group who don't have jobs. (Your resume theoretically lets you, but no one really cares what is written on it.) For another, everything that doesn't result in at least an interview is just wasted time. If you spend 6 months writing and then get a job interview, you've now got an interview and _six months you will never get back_ which did not add to your personal capital at all.

Instead, built something you can keep. If you're a techy, write software. (Heck, build an entire business. You've got more than enough time.) If you're not a techy, you have my sympathies, but at least get yourself a blog going and start writing like it is going out of style. Set yourself up as the expert on your little patch of whatever and own the daylights out of it. Then, use it to network. Even if you can't get a job directly related to your niche, you can use the blog as an example of writing skill, communication skill, ability to carry tasks to completion, etc etc.

[Edited to add: It kills me that a sizable fraction of the best writing I've done in my life was a) on subjects I didn't really care about and b) will never be seen by anyone again, because I graduated from college many years before I heard of Dropbox. Most intellectually engaged students produce vast, vast quantities of great writing on subjects of perhaps less-than-great importance because they're told to... and then stop writing after college. Don't be most people -- most people's competitive situation sucks, because they have to compete with most people.]

<comment><USER3> I agree completely with the spirit of what you write, but I wonder about something:

> If you're not a techy, you have my sympathies, but at least get yourself a > blog going and start writing like it is going out of style

That's really night and day from the techy option of hacking on stuff. I got my first job because while I was unemployed, I spent my time learning my way around Linux and Perl (this was in 1997) until I had enough experience to be employable at the relatively low rate I was more than happy to accept (and which subsequently went up pretty quickly when I proved myself).

My wife, on the other hand, has a doctorate in biochemistry. While she might get a little mileage out of writing a blog were she unemployed, the advantages would probably be minor compared to the disadvantage of being out of touch with a laboratory and not able to read expensive scientific publications.

Point being, I think that sometimes we forget just how easy it is to get involved with stuff in the tech world. With an internet connection, a $500 laptop, free tools and mostly free documentation, you can do world-class work, and communicate with pretty much anyone you want to about most anything. How many other fields are like that? Hopefully, the world will head in that direction, because it really is a wonderful thing.

<comment><USER4> > the disadvantage of being out of touch with a laboratory and not able to > read expensive scientific publications.

Not everyone can have a lab of their own, but is access to publications really that expensive? Here in Sweden, I just had to register for a course at the local university (which was free), and then get a computer account to have access to all the publications everyone else at the university have access to.

<comment><USER5> Registering for a single course in Canada will likely cost ~$800 for a single term. That's a lot to pay for access to publications. The other option is subscribe to publications directly, but that can cost much much more than 800.

<comment><USER3> I think liamk's experience is more typical. I think most countries charge money to attend the university in some way, and/or have a fair amount of bureaucracy associated with signing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are young, energetic, and college-educated with a solid background in an engineering discipline, there are jobs for the taking in the oil business.

The average age of an employee at an oil and gas E&P (exploration and production) company in 2009 is 55 years old. These are highly prized employees with experience and knowledge that is in short supply in the industry.

Over the next 25 years (through 2035), the global hydrocarbons industry is estimated to invest 22 TRILLION dollars of capital (2009 USD) to meet what is expected to be a doubling of world energy demand.

Do the math.

Computer scientists, chemical engineers, geophysicists, mechanical engineers, biologists, petroleum engineers, etc... It doesn't matter. You would be surprised at the voracious appetite of the global hydrocarbons industry for new technology and talent.

I'm obviously biased, being in the business myself. But, the next time you're at a college engineering job fair, spend a few minutes at the booths of the E&P companies. You may be intrigued.

There's no business like the oil business.

<comment> barry-cotter How do you think they'd react to (a) Economics (b) Econometrics? I'm going to guess (a) would be laughed at but that a quasi-statistician can always find work in a field with lots of data.

<comment><USER6> I can speak to the value of multivariate optimization in the oil and gas business.

Specifically, the U.S. onshore natural gas business is currently focused on what are called shale gas "resource plays". These are large contiguous blocks of acreage -- hundreds of thousands of acres -- over which thousands of wells are drilled one-after-another, in a manufacturing process. What makes this possible is a large, contiguous, underlying resource of natural gas reserves, trapped in tight rocks.

The key to profitably exploiting these resource plays is finding the right "formula" that can be repetitively applied to drilling and completing each well. There is no time to individually sit down and engineer each well. All you can do is analyze the data after the fact.

The profitability of each gas well is influenced by hundreds of variables. For instance, you have to "fracture stimulate" a gas well using a variable combination of hundreds of chemicals, each in a varying volume, with a variable pressure, to a variable depth. The well itself may have a variable number of frac stages, with a variable number of horizontal lateral wells connecting it to the reservoir, with a variable length for each lateral.

The question you have to answer is: given thousands of data points over thousands of individual wells, what is the most profitable "formula" for drilling a well in a particular resource play? Profitability is defined as the present value of the discounted future cash flow of the well using a discount rate of 10% -- you'll hear people talk about "the PV10". You know how each well has performed after it was drilled, you know what its profitability was, and you know what formula was applied to drill and to complete it. And you have this data for hundreds of wells -- each using a different combination of variables. And there's new data added every day.

There is a _lot_ of money riding on the right answer to this question.

There is a _massive_ amount of data in the oil and gas business. And every year there are entirely new classes of data being generated. 2D seismic, then 3D seismic, then microseismic, completion data, well logs, magnetic, gravity, surface linears, etc...

It's not surprising that one of the largest customers to the supercomputing industry -- after defense -- is the oil and gas business.

One trick here is that this data is usually locked up inside proprietary databases shared amongst companies in different industry consortia. So, you really have to be a player in the business to have access to the data -- that doesn't mean that you have any clue how to analyze it, however.

And there are big QA problems with this data, too. So, you have to deal with that as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My last internship I was miserable in. Because I was working for free I had to take a second "real" job to make ends meet. In the end it worked out. I busted my ass, networked and after a few months, found a real job.

The dearth of unemployed college students means it's a race to the bottom. If companies could pay less than minimum wage they would. So the next down is to relist the job as an unpaid internship.

<comment><USER8> Need to look up what "dearth" means.

<comment><USER9> Our education system is failing =(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't see mention of what the degrees these young people's degrees are in. Are these degrees in areas with little to no demand, "I'm majoring in Latin American Art history", or are these people getting degrees in highly in demand areas? My software shop is hiring developers and recent grads all the time - we hired 5 people in the last 2 months.

<comment><USER11> The kind of person who does Art History in the first place is the kind of person whose family has the money to support them to essentially pursue their hobby full-time for 4 years. So the internship thing is not actually a big deal in the grand scheme of things - their families can afford to continue supporting them, until they can find a lifestyle job.

People do science and engineering for the love of it, sure, but these kinds of people don't forget that someday they'll need to support themselves. It's not only the skills but the down-to-earth attitude that makes these people such prized commodities in the job market.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes people care more about what they love than they do about whether they can support themselves with it. Please don't assume every person passionate about the arts is spoiled and rich.

<comment><USER11> Depends what you mean. There's work around for graphic designers and musicians. The only job in art history is, umm, teaching art history.

<comment><USER12> As I said: Some people care more about the learning than they do about the job. I've got art history major friends. They know there's not much work to be found there, but they're in it anyway, finances be damned, because they love art history and that's what they want to learn.

College isn't about getting jobs. That's how it's used now, and that sorta sucks. College is about learning things you couldn't learn better elsewhere. So they're going to learn art history because they really want to know about art history, not because they're trying to make shitloads of money.

<comment><USER11> So what are these kids complaining about? They didn't want to make money, now they're not making money! By their own definition, they've got successful careers already!

<comment><USER12> The point the OP was making was: You can't lump together all college students when writing an article like this, because not all college students are going to college to get high-powered jobs. College has never been about merely finding employment. It would therefore be more interesting to look at only business-inclined majors when studying something like this, because art history majors, say, haven't ever had a long tradition of finding employment after college.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't call science and engineering "high powered jobs", but the truth is there are only two choices at college: learn to do something people will pay you for, or pursue your hobby full-time for a few years. Some people are able to combine the two successfully and of course that's the ideal. But the hobbyists have no grounds for complaining that they're unemployable. It was never a _secret_ that people without useful skills aren't in great demand.

<comment><USER12> You're missing what I'm saying, and what the point of the original post you replied to was saying. We know what you're saying right now, but that's why this article wasn't as interesting as it _could_ have been if it only surveyed people who were learning profitable trades.

I also dislike the snarky tone you take when referring to "people without useful skills", but that's secondary to the main argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting to see that this is now starting to happen in the US too. In the German speaking parts of Europe the age group of ~20 to ~30-year-olds is now often referred to as "Generation Praktikum" ("generation internship"). There seems to be an endless demand for programmers though.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is why I worked full-time through undergrad and graduate school. By the time I finished grad school (in computer science), I already had years of experience on my resume from full time employees and short term contracts. It's my solid work experience that got me my current position after graduation, not my MS in CS.

I don't expect the entitled American youth to sacrifice like that though. Now I understand why H1's are so popular, they have experience, work them to death for less pay, and the joy of not dealing with entitled American youth.

Even outside of tech, for example in the medical field, hospitals are paying for massive amounts of SE Asians to move here for nursing positions. The hospitals can't find people for these good paying jobs, so they have to go outside of the US for people to fill these positions.

</comment><comment><USER15> For as long as I can remember kids with college degrees have always felt entitled to a job. And I have never understood why.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a college dropout and business owner at 23, I believe that its the personal responsibility of every American to have a marketable skill that they can get paid for. American Universities no longer provide this--they're playpens for the 18-22 year old set, most of whom are there simply out of obligation to their parents wishes.

If college in American isn't dead, it's certainly dying.

I didn't land a dream job in the tech community immediately after dropping out. I worked in retail for 2 years, while freelancing on the side and keeping a blog which I updated daily. When I did finally get hired, all of those things were evidence that I had a work ethic outside the context of a classroom.

Anyone can be smart in high school, anyone can do well in college, but if you're unable to hustle to get your foot in the door, don't expect me to feel bad for you.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh this is so true. And all I can say is: ha-ha-ha, sucks to be them. I graduated from college this June with a degree in PSYCHOLOGY, and I have a lucrative job. My secret? I started applying for jobs in the October _before I graduated_. I targeted three metro areas, and posted my resume every few weeks on the respective craigslist; I repeatedly sent in resumes for every position on craigslist/monster that I was remotely qualified for; I networked. And eventually, someone emailed me from one of my craigslist postings and I landed a job.

I don't pity anybody in my graduating class who doesn't have a job. Obviously they aren't smart enough to deserve one.

<comment><USER18> I think your indictment of your peers is neither realistic nor fair, if for no other reason than from a bare quantitative perspective.

For every person who is "not smart enough" to get a job, there are several for whom jobs are not available, but whom you can rationalise as "not smart enough" in order to make yourself feel better about your own luck.

<comment><USER17> I explicitly described how I made my own luck. I doubt any of my whiny unemployed peers undertook similar efforts, applying for 300+ jobs. I would mention my gpa but I don't want to add insult to injury.</comment></comment></comment>


CL21 – Common Lisp in the 21st Century - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cl21/cl21 <comment><USER2> As someone who writes CL for fun, I think all "let's get the core language (any language) API right _this_ time" efforts are ultimately doomed to perdition and entropy.

I'd rather have an API that's not quite perfect, but has had much thought and wisdom put into it, and is as stable as continents, than an API that's always iterating towards some unreachable Platonic idea of perfection.

As an aside, the author has also created a -- likely more agreeable -- spin off library that's a simpler interface to cl-ppcre: [https://github.com/fukamachi/re21](https://github.com/fukamachi/re21)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am currently learning common lisp. The only thing I've really found lacking is support for basic string operations. I'm sure there is a solid library out there for things like replace(), but it seems silly for everyone to possibly be using separate libraries, or in-house implementations for standard string operations. It creates an unnecessary barrier to code readability. From what I've heard around the grape vine, this is a result of the ANSI standard being released prior to the popularization of these functions in other languages. If the CL specification is ever updated, I am sure that this problem will be solved. I am surprised this github project didn't acknowledge this.

P.S. Changing the name of 'Remove-if-not' makes absolutely no sense to me. Remove-if and Remove-if-not make perfect sense together. Adding a whole new word to memorize "Keep" just makes code less readable. Especially since Keep isn't seen anywhere else in the language. Further-more the redundancy in the names 'remove-if' and 'remove-if-not' make you think about how these functions are actually the same, with only a small caveat. 'remove-if' and 'keep-if' make you think of these functions as different things, as different ideas, very unlispy.

edit: just checked cl-ppcre's documentation and learned that split and replace are covered by that lib. Seeing as cl-ppcre seems to be used so widely, I take back what I said. Lisp is perfect once again.

<comment><USER4> > The only thing I've really found lacking is support for basic string > operations. I'm sure there is a solid library out there for things like > replace(), but it seems silly for everyone to possibly be using separate > libraries

It's not that bad, there are other languages which have this problem - you can see exactly the same situation in JS-land, for example. It would be much worse if not for quicklisp. I think quicklisp and asdf are among the best package distribution tools: I feel it's better than pip and gem and similar to npm. Installing a library is literally a single line in your code. There's the problem with finding the package you need and it's harder than with JS and npm, but doable.

BTW: what do you do to learn CL? I'm using StumpWM as my window manager and I think it's one of the best ways of learning CL. With SLIME, then, you get almost Lisp-only environment, especially if you use Emacs for your other editing too. I wrote a couple of blog posts[1] about StumpWM and posted my config on GitHub[2].

[1] [https://klibert.pl/posts/stumpwm.html](https://klibert.pl/posts/stumpwm.html) [https://klibert.pl/output/stumpwm-better- modeline.html](https://klibert.pl/output/stumpwm-better-modeline.html)

[2] [https://github.com/piotrklibert/stumpwm- config/](https://github.com/piotrklibert/stumpwm-config/)

<comment><USER5> If you already know another programming language, you can try PCL[1]; it's a decent introduction. If you get stuck on something feel free to ask on IRC (#lisp on freenode).

There is a library called alexandria[2] that covers a lot of obvious missing- features from the standard library (e.g. emptyp to test for an empty sequence).

Lastly the hyperspec[3] is actually quite useful as a library reference.

1: [http://gigamonkeys.com/book/](http://gigamonkeys.com/book/)

2: [https://common- lisp.net/project/alexandria/draft/alexandria....](https://common- lisp.net/project/alexandria/draft/alexandria.html)

3: [http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Conte...](http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Contents.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Currently there is an effort in GNU Emacs project to move a subset of Common Lisp in Emacs Lisp under the _cl_ prefix, so one would say cl-let or cl- values, etc.

It seems like a cool idea. If you disagree with some of CL's design or stylistic choices, which people familiar with Arc or Scheme would do, moving it out of the way is a good idea.

BTW, a long ago in order or incorporate CL into Symbolics Zeta Lisp they used _cl:_ prefix for some functions. Nothing is new under the Moon.)

<comment><USER7> > BTW, a long ago in order or incorporate CL into Symbolics Zeta Lisp they > used cl: prefix for some functions. Nothing is new under the Moon.)

'cl:' is no prefix in Zetalisp. Zetalisp uses packages (namespaces for symbols) just like Common Lisp, and 'cl' is the name of a package and ':' is the separator from package name and symbol name. A single colon shows that the symbol is exported - some part of an external interface.

Thus cl:let is the 'let' exported from the 'cl' package.

Emacs Lisp has no packages, no namespaces, no exports, imports, ... So 'cl-' is a part of the symbol name. It's just a prefix.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, sorry. Having separate namespaces for packages is much better and prefixing is just naming conventions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What on earth happened to this project? It looked really promising. Is it all left to racket now?

<comment><USER8> For me personally, I'm already used to the ugly CL syntax that it's working around (hashes), already familiar and comfortable with the underlying libraries it's using (cl-ppcre, etc.), or don't find the features particularly useful (laziness, etc.).

TBH, if I found those things annoying enough to seek out this library, I would probably just use Clojure or some other language.

<comment><USER9> That's the problem with any CL cleanup project: it's mostly going to appeal to newcomers to CL, who don't already have a large code base in the language, full of their own macros that address at least a few of the same issues.

Not that CL couldn't use cleaning up. But to really make the new dialect popular, you'd have to focus on attracting new users, which would require things like writing books, or at least updating some of the existing books (e.g. Peter Seibel's). In short, defining and implementing the new dialect is only the first step of a long slog.

<comment><USER10> > mostly going to appeal to newcomers to CL ... you'd have to focus on > attracting new users

It's my observation that CL regularly attracts new users, who grumble a bit at first and then fall in love. Then they drift away to other langs, keeping an affection for sexps, macros, and the numerous elegant aspects of CL. But drift away they do. IMO, if CL could keep more of the people who learn it well enough to love it, then it would be thriving. I have some opinions on _why_ people drift away and how that could be addressed but they're not especially well formed at this time.

<comment><USER9> > I have some opinions on why people drift away and how that could be > addressed but they're not especially well formed at this time.

I would like to hear them nonetheless.

<comment><USER10> I would rather not say until I've thought it out some more. A bag of mushy thoughts with a grain of truth in them would probably be provocative and wouldn't provide much utility for the CL community.

Instead, here's one of the things that started me thinking about this... Some years back, Xach created the library manager Quicklisp, filling a huge hole in the lisp ecosystem. It's nice work and quickly became the defacto standard. Lots good to say about it and nothing bad, really. The thing that got me thinking was that this actually needed to be done at the time Xach did it. CL had been around a long time officially and even longer unofficially, and this really important piece of infrastructure had not been done. How could that be?

"How could that be?" leads to more questions, and possible answers, and some loose ideas about moving forward. That's where I'm at, and I don't want to say more until I have something concrete and constructive. I wouldn't mind having a speculative conversation (that would help _me_ greatly), but I think throwing out half baked ideas would do nothing more than the existing corpus of "why lisp isn't successful" blog posts, so I don't want to have that conversation somewhere like HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised all of the modern attempts at Lisp don't provide some kind of docstrings (i.e., JavaDoc-like documentation as a first class object available in the REPL). Why isn't that something that everyone expects in a modern language?

<comment><USER12> If I'm understanding your question correctly, that's been in there from ANSI CL. For example, when defining a function, after the lambda list, a string will be interpreted as a docstring and stored with the function definition.

[http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_docu...](http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_docume.htm)

        (defun test ()
          "A test function"
          (+ 1 1))
        => TEST

        (documentation 'test 'function)
        => "A test function"

You can statically analyze source code to pull them out, or ask the Lisp image for them, etc. Is there something missing?

<comment><USER11> Ah. I see. It wasn't obvious in either the examples or the source code.

I would like to see more structure: expected arguments, return type, etc.

<comment><USER13> Why would you do that in a doc-string? If you just `declare` the types with `declare` instead of putting them in the docstring, the compiler can also take advantage of them. Then the system can automatically tell you that information back. It will also infer the return type for you automatically.

A trivial example (your editor can do this for you):

        (defun add-string (a b)
          (declare (number a) (string b))
          "Parses b and adds to a"
          (+ a (parse-integer b)))

        CL-USER> (describe #'add-string)
        #<FUNCTION ADD-STRING>
          [compiled function]

        Lambda-list: (A B)
        Derived type: (FUNCTION (NUMBER STRING) (VALUES NUMBER &OPTIONAL))
        Documentation:
          Parses b and adds to a
        Source file: /home/bja/foo.lisp

<comment><USER11> Ah. That's nice. Thanks for pointing that out. That's something I've not seen in any introductions to Common Lisp.

Are all of the standard functions documented this way?

<comment><USER14> Why not check your favourite implementation's source?

<comment><USER11> I have perused the source for Steel Bank Common Lisp, but it's far from clear if everything in the standard is documented this way or if one must keep a tab open to the Common Lisp specification for such references.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Matt Mireles: How My Blog Made Me Famous Overnight & I Decided to Leave NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/66941/founder-matt-mireles-on-becoming-famous-overnight-getting-funding-and-why-hes-ditching-new-york-for-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> FTA: "We didn't have any cash, but we said, "How about if we give you an iPhone and pay your bills for a couple of months?" They're amazing."

Really!? For some reason, the "Shenanigans Meter" in my head hit a 9.5 after reading this line. Does a tactic like this actually garner good results?

<comment><USER3> Sounds crazy, but YES and I'm not surprised and it was a brilliant move.

(now please understand that I am writing this without editing and putting extensive time into thoroughly fleshing out the arguments to support my point as if I were writing an article, but will do so if asked.)

Would you like me to explain? NO? Well here it is anyway--my hypothesis. I am going to keep it relative to this blog post, although you will find much of what I say below very well can apply to most:

Here is what you are quoting from the article with a bit more context "Later, we went to an engineering job fair at Columbia, and hired a couple of college kids. We didn't have any cash, but we said, 'How about if we give you an iPhone and pay your bills for a couple of months?' They're amazing."

SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS/ENGINEERS - let's stereotype \- I see a similarity among many software developers/engineers who comment and get blog posts on HN. Simply, I find them to be a group where an unprecedented percentage of them do it for the love of it, passion, to achieve the ever elusive mastery, and so on. They feel it is in their DNA. They remind me of veterinarians who also are a group that you will find mostly comprised of people who do it foremost because of their love of animals.

\- They do what they do because they love it. \- They spend an absorbent amount of free time on personal projects because it is (I) doing what they love to do (II) honing their skills (III) solving a need for them or others-- mind you, normally without any upfront monetary incentive (IV) and so on and so forth... \- You will always find a blog post or possibly know a developer/engineer where opinion about their ability vs. income are skewed NOT in their favor, just the opposite of other professions where opinion about ability vs. income is typically about the person being overpaid.

Psychologically, you could deduce that software developers/engineers are mainly a bunch that is motivated by INTRINSIC value. (intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation -- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation) )

"COLLEGE KIDS" Matt didn't say what academic year or program these students were part, but let's make the assumption these students he "hired" were developers/engineers and were still not too far from the "nest" (parents or guardians still provide support for basic needs).

If these assumptions about the students are true, then this becomes almost a perfect storm for Matt Mireles and company's situation. The students he found at this job fair all most certainly were seeking EXPERIENCE over INCOME (intrinsic value).

\---

So you have software developers/engineers that as a group most seem inherently intrinsic + Matt offering a job that has much more intrinsic value and motivation (get experience, do what they love, etc.) than extrinsic (he was offering to cover the expense of something that has arguably become a need/necessity) + students who were motivated to find an opportunity most- likely for intrinsic value (experience) over extrinsic (income) = WIN/WIN.

On top of all this, the position Matt and company were in made working for him and his "cause" more of an altruistic act, or an intrinsic desire to do something good.

Very interesting situation that makes me want to deepen my assessment, argument, and theory as to how this worked for Matt.

And by the way, I bet these "college kids"--because of all this intrinsic"ness"-- were the best hires and decision he could have made, and not because of his situation.

<comment><USER2> I would say all that is worth a full-on article. Lots of info - would love to see it done up with 'proper treatment' :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, having a few blog posts picked up by big news sources is hardly "getting famous". Most people in the world (hell, even most people in the start-up niche) have no idea who he is.

(note: same applies to me, despite being OMG-featured-in-TechCrunch... Fame ain't this)</comment>


Wolfram Alpha: Watch the launch live @ 7pm CDT (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/wolframalpha/

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose this could be like watching Nascar... you hope for the best but if there is a terrible accident it's sort of what you were expecting?

<comment><USER2> Heh, maybe it won't get taken out by tornadoes before they get it launched. That would REALLY be a terrible accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So they launch on _Friday_. Uhm.

What about the biggest no-no of the PR business - no important activity on Thursday or Friday since you can make a way better bang in the beginning of the week ?

(edit) Oh .. nevermind, they are going live _during next 48 hours_ , so it should in fact get to a fully up and running state Monday morning.

<comment><USER4> It already has quite a bit of hype out in the wild so I don't think launching on Friday will hurt them too much.

If anything I think a Friday launch will help since hopefully traffic will be lower on sat/sun and they can maintain the service and prepare it for massive traffic during the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> so, this is live now: <http://www.justin.tv/wolframalpha>

but the video stream keeps dying after 10 seconds, for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Friday launch in the mid-evening. Are they trying to downplay any service failures?</comment>


Samsung faces sanctions over leak of confidential Apple documents - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/10/03/apple-samsung-sanctions-grewal/

<comment><USER2> Samsung shouldn't violate court orders.

Still, these documents are licensing agreements that implement and define the extent of a state granted monopoly. There is no plausible non-corrupt reason to allow them to be kept secret. Any serious effort at open government would require private companies invested with the power of law to make these documents public as soon as they're written.

The patent office should require all contracts that involve patent assignment, licensing, and revenue sharing to be deposited at the patent office for public access. These companies have been granted a privilege by the state at a cost to the freedom of every citizen and are responsible for how they use that privilege. The public has a right to know whether those privileges are really being used in the public interest as we are so often told.

In every case, the public is better off if competitors know what sort of value and advantage companies are getting from patents. The whole point of the system is supposed to depend on public disclosure of inventions and their use and value compensating the public. Hiding the terms of contracts is an abuse of the very supposed nature of the patent bargain.

The continued sealing of documents in patent cases offends justice and integrity. Even the judge in this case agrees and has tried to make more of these documents in question public. So far the corrupt Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit hasn't been cooperative in reducing secrecy and opening up evidence to the public in patent cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> This issue has nothing to do with whether patent law is correct or not. It's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally.

<comment><USER3> _It 's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally._

Perhaps the parent poster should note that and clarify the fact they're speaking about patent law broadly. Maybe by prefacing the post with something along the lines of "Samsung shouldn't violate court orders. Still, "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So essentially apple's confidential patent agreements with Nokia, Sharp, Philips, and Ericsson are now compromised and known to Samsung through their external attorney. And allegedly, they were using them as a leverage against Nokia. Fantastic company right there. Fine the violators incredibly heavily, and stem this unethical behavior.

[http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large- sams...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-samsung- execs-were.html)

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure which is worse -- FOSS Patents or Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Both add such narrative noise and partisan detritus to the commentary that neither are worthwhile sources of information on this.

Apple sent confidential information to an outside attorney, marking it as confidential. The attorney then used that confidential material in making other material, not rightly redacting or not including the material only they were to see, then sending it to many people at Samsung.

Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you trying to minimize the seriousness of what had been done here?

Samsung illegally distributed information that was only disclosed under court protection for the purpose of a trial to it's executives, who used it to gain an advantage in negotiation.

They did precisely what the court did not permit them to do.

> Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.

Either you don't understand what Samsung have done, or you don't understand what discovery is, because obtaining trade secrets is clearly not the reason for it.

<comment><USER5> Discovery for _this_ issue, gibwell (a 3-day old account that already has pages upon pages of attacks on Samsung, Google, and Amazon. Such a mystery who you imagine your team is).

 _Samsung_ , it seems (again, this is why the judge is demanding discovery) didn't actually leak the information -- an outside law firm did. It is entirely possible Samsung (meaning specific executives) was simply ignorant about their right to have that information when it dropped in their FTP folder, as openly stating it and flaunting it in the face of a competitor virtually guaranteed that what is happening now would happen.

<comment><USER6> Uh, the "outside law firm" is Samsung's council. They're the ones representing Samsung in court. If you seriously think that Samsung is an innocent third party in this, you're completely mistaken. The lawyers going to face sanctions, as will Samsung.

EDIT: clarification.

<comment><USER5> How you came to the conclusions that led you to write your comment absolutely baffles me.

EDIT: Okay, you edited your bizarre comment to something that can be replied to. You understand the concept of an outside council, right? The outside council works for a client but they are beholden to the law and restrictions of the court, with their entire firm lying in the balance. If you think Samsung just whispered kindly do them and they broke the law and professional credibility (again, if it was them), you don't understand law firms.

<comment><USER7> It could have easily been a simple error in redaction. Knowing how information is disseminated in large companies, it's also easily possible that the actual source of the information to the Samsung execs had been obscured.

Quinn Emmanuel is a reputable firm. I find it hard to believe that this was an intentional error.

 _EDIT_ : In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a card-carrying salary- drawing member of Team AAPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Samsung has always come across as a company really willing to cheat without hesitation. Even then I am surprised with this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Explain to me like I'm 5 years old. What happened here? I understand data was leaked, but I don't know why the author is "shocked" or "disappointed"(in who?). Why is this such a big deal and "extremely" illegal? How does this impact the companies involved?

<comment><USER10> as part of the apple-samsung lawsuit, apple produced apparently incredibly business sensitive licensing agreements, some of which where with Nokia. In order to avoid samsung using this to their advantage/letting samsung go on a fishing expedition, the agreement was apple's documents would only go to apple's lawyers and samsung's external legal firm. Samsung's external lawyers had a duty to avoid giving this knowledge to their employers.

Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent benchmarking results), Samsung of course got their hands on a copy of this agreements in order to help negotiate negotiate their own deals with Nokia. Nokia told the court.

Samsung and their firm and busy lying to the court and hiding. However, the court has subpoena powers. At minimum Samsung's external legal firm stands to be censured.

<comment><USER11> > Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent > benchmarking results)

Oh come on, this is silly.

You don't think Apple manipulate benchmarks and statistics?

Or deny product faults and quietly settle years later e.g. iPhone 4 Antenna?

Or how about e-book price fixing?!!

It's ridiculous that people always assume foreign companies lie, cheat and steal, whereas homegrown companies are more kosher than a rabbi. The same thing happens in sport and politics of course. I guess humans just can't lose that tribal mentality.

<comment><USER12> > deny product faults and quietly settle years later e.g. iPhone 4 Antenna

Didn't they hold an entire press conference, invite everyone and say (essentially) "we don't think there's a problem; most phones have similar issues; to anyone complaining, we're offering free iPhone cases" ?

That doesn't sound like "quietly settling" to me.

<comment><USER13> The very same iPhone 4 has been sold for 28 months, up until two weeks ago.

I'm sure there are dozens of millions of users that can't make a phone call because of the antenna problem. I wonder why they don't complain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When will Samsung already invalidate those patents for good? They have prior art.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is that relevant to the linked article?

<comment><USER14> It would simply make such articles irrelevant :) Since in essence those patents were never valid to begin with. Samsung is of course wrong with sneaky tactics. But so is Apple with using fake patents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if Apple's patents were invalidated it would do nothing to excuse what you are calling 'sneaky tactics' by Samsung.

What they are accused of is deeply illegal, and that isn't going to change.

Apple hasn't done anything illegal and their patents aren't 'fake'. If they were fake, why wouldn't Samsung have had them reviewed?

It seems as though you are trying to defend Samsung by smearing Apple.

<comment><USER14> In this case, Apple's patents are fake, because there is clear prior art. Samsung tried to use that defense, but the jury was really weird on that one. No idea why they aren't proceeding with invalidating them further.

I'm not defending Samsung. They both are worth each other here. Apple started this idiocy first though - no one asked them to be patent jerks to begin with. When one crook is being bitten by another crook in a crooked fashion, because the first did something crooked to the second first, then the first one should look in a mirror, before pointing fingers to the second.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the jury didn't agree that the prior art was clear, then the prior art obviously was not clear. So really you're just saying that you don't agree with the jury.

You also seem to be saying that Samsung should be allowed to abuse the court process as a way to steal secrets because Apple sued them, even though Apple won the case.

I'm sorry, but you _are_ defending Samsung.

<comment><USER14> The jury was incompetent. Prior art is there. Jury dismissed it with completely invalid arguments which demonstrated that they had no clue what they were dealing with (patent law). And jury didn't even follow guidelines set for them for this case (which were intended to make them understand application of patent law better).

Allowed? I didn't say anything about allowed.

<comment><AUTHOR> You seem to claim to understand the law better than the judge.

<comment><USER14> The judge pointed out that jury didn't follow the guidelines. It seems that you didn't really follow the case.

Anyway, Samsung should invalidate these patents for good. Otherwise Apple will use them against someone else next time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


One Billion Hands: Bringing Big Data to Poker Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.onebillionhands.com/

<comment><USER2> Really interesting idea for a project, but is this just a blog about analysis of different hands from the WSOP? Or is there some sort of API / product behind all of this glorious poker data that is coming soon or is simply not so easy to find on the website?

</comment><comment><USER3> The have one billion hands to draw inspiration from, and talk about completely standard hands in mundane ways from WSOP.

The only value anonymised data has is to train a bot.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it possible to get the raw data?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds interesting, wish my work firewall would let me read it...

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of ways out there to get around Big Brother.</comment></comment>


What Makes Us Happy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness

<comment><USER2> Very long article but I still found it valuable. It identifies a few factors as being better predictors of happiness in later life, not just having say factor #1 or #3 but a combination of them simultaneously, the more--of course --the better.

It does seem to put more weight on how we deal with adversity as being probably more important, having a range of "strategies" from the more immature to the more advanced, which suggests that they are learned or one can eventually make the leap to the better ways. Also it mentions how physical health as a young adult is a better predictor of mental health later in life, but not so much of physical health. And of course, that warm, deep personal relationships are very important too, not so much quantity, but quality.

Have not watched the TED video suggested by badger7, but I believe there is value in this article too. Do not dismiss it for being too "narrative" or simply long.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's an interesting passage from the article:

"But what does it mean, really, to be happier? For 30 years, Denmark has topped international happiness surveys. But Danes are hardly a sanguine bunch. Ask an American how it's going, and you will usually hear 'Really good.' Ask a Dane, and you will hear 'Det kunne være værre (It could be worse).'

"'Danes have consistently low (and indubitably realistic) expectations for the year to come,' a team of Danish scholars concluded. 'Year after year they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.'"

"Of course, happiness scientists have come up with all kinds of straightforward, and actionable, findings: that money does little to make us happier once our basic needs are met; that marriage and faith lead to happiness (or it could be that happy people are more likely to be married and spiritual); that temperamental "set points" for happiness—a predisposition to stay at a certain level of happiness—account for a large, but not overwhelming, percentage of our well-being. (Fifty percent, says Sonja Lyubomirsky in The How of Happiness. Circumstances account for 10 percent, and the other 40 percent is within our control.) But why do countries with the highest self-reports of subjective well-being also yield the most suicides? How is it that children are often found to be a source of "negative affect" (sadness, anger)—yet people identify children as their greatest source of pleasure?"

<comment><USER4> _Danes have consistently low (and indubitably realistic) expectations..._

Life consistently sucks, but if you accept that, you can be pleasantly surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The answer would tend to be "not what you think." I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness (see more about it here: [http://jseliger.com/2009/04/23/stumbling-on- happiness-—-dani...](http://jseliger.com/2009/04/23/stumbling-on- happiness-—-daniel-gilbert) ), which discusses the role of income, perception, consumption, and more.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting bits from the article:

In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant's response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

"What we do," Vaillant concluded, "affects how we feel just as much as how we feel affects what we do."

</comment><comment><USER7> For a completely different take on happiness (24x7 happiness, not the typical affective pleasure), see:

<http://actualfreedom.com.au/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Happiness? Quite Simple. Practice Altruism.

<comment><USER9> Happiness? Not that simple. Where does happiness come from? Most rationals would answers evolution. If that's the case, then it should have a function. Figure that one out and you will also learn how to become happy.

<comment><USER10> "Happiness" is a vague emotion, like love, not an objective, short-term, measurable one, like calm, contentment, or excitation. However, all states of happiness usually share in common a factor of endorphin release.

Endorphins are basically one of two basic mechanisms for "fitting" data in the brain-as-neural-net, with the other being pain: pain is the reinforcement mechanism that trains your neurons to _not do that again_ , while endorphins tell your brain to _do_ please do that again. People are "happy" (have endorphins) when they're doing things that their body encourages them to do. To be happy is simply to be one with your body's material desires (though note that your brain is _part_ of your body, and it has material desires of its own, for things like friendship.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The following talk is required viewing before any discussion on happiness can take place. It's absolutely and completely vital to understand the points demonstrated in this talk to have an informed opinion on the subject.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html)

Long story short: Choice makes us unhappy, yet we believe that it's what will make us happy and so we strive for it. We actively seek out that which will make us unhappy in the search for happiness.

<comment><USER12> I couldn't get halfway through the article, as it's filled with pointless details.

This TED talk, on the other hand, is straight to the point.

Watch it instead.

<comment><USER13> The article truly has nothing to do with the role of choice on happiness, its about the study of entire lives with depth.

<comment><USER14> I thought this was a good capsule summary, actually:

Yet, even as he takes pleasure in poking holes in an innocent idealism, Vaillant says his hopeful temperament is best summed up by the story of a father who on Christmas Eve puts into one son's stocking a fine gold watch, and into another son's, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first boy comes to his father and says glumly, "Dad, I just don't know what I'll do with this watch. It's so fragile. It could break." The other boy runs to him and says, "Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!"

His study seems to support the idea that the way people react to problems in their lives affects their overall happiness more than the problems themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Drat, I was hoping for a link to a Hannah Montana website, because that would make <i>me</i> happy.

<comment><USER15> "Hacker News" doesn't support HTML tags? Are you f __*ing kidding me?

<comment><USER16> <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup – MD in your pocket - <AUTHOR> Hello!
We've just launched our landing page (http://aidlab.com) and would appreciate any feedback.
Idea:
Aidlab is a health tracker that will help in recognizing heart illness or overtraining thanks to regular, easy to take, short monitoring sessions.
Why?
Traditional heart disease can lead to a heart attack during a race, even in apparently healthy middle-aged runners, and many young runners train and race with undetected congenital heart conditions. The same goes with temperature. No matter what the temperature is outside, your core body temperature will increase over time with exercise. When you run hard – your body generates a large amount of heat, and if you can't get rid of it effectively, this could result in a heat stroke.
Example of use:
1. Stay Active as usual: Do your favorite workouts, including gym sessions or biking
2. Monitor Your Health: See the response of your body based on the everyday activity
3. Adjust Intensity: React to abnormal ECG signal or increased body temperature
We'll try to answer every question.
Thanks!
Aidlab Team <comment><USER2> To me, the message seems directed at a niche where people are concerned enough about their pulmonary function to drop a hundred bucks on a non-medical gadget; carry that gadget and a cell phone along on their workouts; and constantly monitor it's output during their workouts while not being concerned enough to consult a physician.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> Consulting a physician is not always possible (or impossible in some conditions). Anyway, we are wondering why our message is for those "concerned enough about their >pulmonary function<".

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you should have all this on your website, and then just submit a link with "Show HN" prefix in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a matter of copywriting. We believe that copy on aidlab.com is much better than here (scary/technical).

Thanks for your comment!</comment></comment>


Bitcoin and the Byzantine Generals Problem - <AUTHOR> http://nonchalantrepreneur.com/post/70130104170/bitcoin-and-the-byzantine-generals-problem <comment><USER3> To the uninitiated, bitcoin solves the byzantine general's problem by having each "general" work on a mathematical problem that is known to take a certain average amount of time; and, when they solve the problem pass their solution onto the other generals who will then incorporate the answer to the previous problem into a new problem.

The "consensus" is intrinsically linked to the "math problem" so that the generals will always "trust" the chain-of-answers which is the longest; as it would be impractical / impossible for an attacker to counterfeit the long- chain-of-answers.

Bitcoin uses sha256(sha256( x )) < `target` as its "math problem" where X contains the a hash of the previous "consensus" and new transactions which should become part of the new "consensus". `target` is adjusted over time

<comment><USER4> Bitcoin doesn't really solve the Byzantine General's Problem, as demonstrated by the March 2012 network split [1], which was later resolved by consensus between users (lead developers and biggest miners) using communication channels outside of the Bitcoin network.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#The_fork_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#The_fork_of_March_2013)

<comment><USER5> A cursory look at your link reveals that it was caused by an incompatibility between different versions of the bitcoin client; the older client wouldn't accept blocks as large as the later one. People downgraded to the older version, and then "The network reached consensus and continued to operate as normal a few hours after the split."

So I guess you could say it only solves the problem when everybody's software implements the same protocol.

<comment><USER6> So we could say, the newest version of the bitcoin software correctly solves the Byzantine General problem, though older versions faltered.

And this could be the case ad infinitum if the protocol needs to be changed due to newly discovered flaws.

In summary, unless there are no bugs in your p2p software, it's very hard to solve the Byzantine General problem without outside consensus.

<comment><USER7> I still don't understand how it solves it. I get that you can agree a time, but how does it solve the problem that each general needs to be certain that all the other generals are also certain? I may have seen a completed block chain for the attack and time, but how do I know all the other generals have also seen it? I know they signed part of it, but how do I know the completed chain then got back to them? If it didn't they're not going to attack and my army will be destroyed.

<comment><USER8> The time delay introduced by the proof of work is the key to all your questions.

Imagine 10 generals in the network all trying to agree on a time of attack. Each simultaneously sends 9 couriers to the other generals suggesting an attack time. That's 90 couriers with 10 different messages all pinging around the system simultaneously. Each general receives 9 messages at roughly the same time, and either has to choose one to sign and rebroadcast, or cheat and sign multiple and rebroadcast them. There are too many options available at any given time, and odds of reaching consensus aren't good.

However, by introducing a time delay you slow the rate of message passing enough to be manageable - now's there's only 9 couriers and 1 message pinging around the system at the same time. All nodes in the network work the same problem, but only one will find a solution first and broadcast it, and with the time delay there's enough time for that solution to disseminate through most of the network before another node discovers another solution and broadcasts it. By the time the second and subsequent solutions are found, the the first has disseminated to enough nodes that they've already incorporated it into the next proof-of-work, and reject subsequent solutions to the prior PoW.

<comment><USER7> I still don't see the solution - doesn't any solution have to solve the problem of messages being lost?

Say that after some time a block that is long enough is made by some general A and is distributed to generals B and C. General D doesn't get it though - <USER2> messenger is killed in transit. He helped make an earlier block, but has never seen the fully completed block.

How do the other generals know that he hasn't got the final block that is long enough?

Or is it just the case that a majority of generals know when to attack? I thought it had to be all of them, but maybe that's the two-general problem and Byzantine-general's is an easier problem. I was pretty sure there were multiple good proofs of the impossibility of a solution.

<comment><USER4> The basic idea is (based on Satoshi's explanation linked from a nearby comment) that each general _i_ proposes some time _T_i_ , where _T_i - now > 2 hours_ and starts solving the problem using the value _T_i_. If it finds a block, it broadcasts it. After some time (e.g. after 2 hours if each block is expected to be mined in 10 minutes) there is an overwhelming probability that all generals have synchronized and are working on the problem with the same initial value _T_n_ for some _n_ (they synchronize by always working on the longest chain).

The key point is that after 2 hours, all of the generals can _independently_ assess, by examining the previously mined blocks in the chain they are working on, how much CPU was spent working on the solution, and can "see" how many nodes are in the network, and hence can see if all the nodes have worked on this solution (if yes, they all know of the arranged time of attack).

This doesn't fully solve the problem (one general could be rouge, or one might be killed just before the attack, ...) but it at least raises the chances :)

<comment><USER7> Well if it doesn't fully solve the problem, does it solve it at all?

That's the thing about BG; you can keep increasing the chances, but if your requirement is that you must be certain that all the other generals will attack, and at the same time, then we know of no solution. We also have more than one good proof that this is impossible.

<comment><USER4> Right, but the assumptions of the BG problem are also a bit harsh for the real world; network exhibits latency and/or splits, which are followed by joins. If two servers cannot communicate (ever again), then you have bigger problems than simply "synchronizing attacks". For the usual problems of varying latency and some dropped messages, the proof-of-work, coupled with a cryptographic authentication, will suffice for eventual consistency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would like to warn those who don't know that the author of this post has vested interest in bitcoin. It doesn't mean anything per se, but you might want to take those articles with a grain of salt.

So this is how it goes. a16z invests in Coinbase, so cdixon posts supportive posts regarding bitcoin.

We can now safely expect more and more HN readers to buy bitcoins because of the fear of missing the bitcoin train, and bitcoin detractors will soon look like iPhone detractors in 2007. That means that no matter what the value of bitcoin is, you should buy some, because the whole SV is soon going to be on it.

For the fist time on HN, a significant part of what hits the front page are posts about an asset that you can buy simply, and will likely make you a millionaire in a couple of years without creating any value. This is as great as it is sad. Enjoy it.

Make us long time holders rich.

<comment><USER10> Yes, our investment was very publicly disclosed on my blog, Coinbase's blog, and multiple news sites. Also, I was posting positive things on my blog about Bitcoin long before I (or a16z) had a financial interest.

I am interested in Bitcoin as a new payment system / economic protocol for the Internet. I don't think people should buy Bitcoins for speculative purposes. On the other hand I'd love to see more developers build things on top of the Bitcoin protocol. My job is to invest in new technologies and I believe Bitcoin is one of the most interesting new technologies in the past 20 years.

<comment><USER11> > I don't think people should buy Bitcoins for speculative purposes.

Why not, if you suppose that its price will go up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We have noticed, and It lets you do a lot a previously impossible things in decentralized computing. Give folks a few more months to polish proof of concepts.

<comment><USER10> We (a16z) would love to see more innovation along these lines and would be excited to try to help.

<comment><USER13> Some radical ideas: [http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of- mon...](http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-money/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bitcoin mining is wasteful compared to some of the alternatives, solving useful hard problems as proof of work (Primecoin) or using a proof of stake system to remove the need for relying so heavily on energy wasting mining (Peercoin).

<comment><USER15> From what I understand as a layman, it is overly generous to call the prime number sequences found by PrimeCoin "useful".

I do think that a hybrid proof-of-stake system is probably superior and more efficient. But bear in mind that capitalism involves lots of waste, from high- frequency trading, to plastic doodads that wind up in the trash, to the vast majority of advertising and marketing.

I'm absolutely in favor of a Star Trek / Buckminster Fuller neo-communism, if it can be achieved. In the meantime, we have to fail forward and innovate as best we can, and I think proof-of-work cryptocoins are far less wasteful in toto than the current global banking system. (What do you think it took in terms of energy and waste products to manufacture and distribute the dollars in your wallet?)

Note also that intentional wastefulness shows up frequently in nature: costly signals are honest signals. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory#Costly_signal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory#Costly_signalling_and_Fisherian_diploid_dynamics)

<comment><USER14> > I think proof-of-work cryptocoins are far less wasteful in toto than the > current global banking system.

Maybe, maybe not, I don't think anyone's crunched enough numbers to make a reasonable measure of that yet.

> (What do you think it took in terms of energy and waste products to > manufacture and distribute the dollars in your wallet?)

I doubt either of us know.

I'm a Bitcoin supporter, but one has to think there are useful hard problems to solve rather than just banging out SHA-256 hashes over and over. If that's true at all, then Bitcoin is wasteful.

<comment><USER15> > one has to think there are useful hard problems to solve rather than just > banging out SHA-256 hashes over and over.

I sincerely hope that a truly useful proof-of-work can be discovered. It would be a very big deal.

The problem is, the work has to be reliably verifiable, and easier to verify than just doing the work over again, which is why hashes are a good fit.

<comment><USER16> Unless I am mistaken, you can verify arbitrary computations[0].

[0] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.2003](http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.2003)

<comment><USER15> The abstract says that "a practical general-purpose protocol for verifiable computation may be significantly closer to reality than previously realized". This should be interesting though, thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER16> You have a fair point, but I claim for a proof-of-work computation it might be good for it to be a bit unpractical. (Depending on the parameters, this paper is on my reading list but I haven't gone through it yet.) I think it's incredibly interesting also, in any case I hope you enjoy the paper :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Before the Bitcoin protocol was invented, most computer scientists thought a system like Bitcoin was impossible because of a famous problem in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem." ... wait what?

<comment><USER18> Maybe you should explain specifically what you find difficult to understand in that quoted sentence?

<comment><USER17> To elaborate a little more, because there seems to be tons of discussion about this when there really shouldn't be.

Here is a probabilistic solution to the problem.

1) Each General sends n messages to all the other generals. 2) After a time period y all the generals count their messages and decide how to act.

3) This is not a "solution" to the original problem. If we lose sufficient messages we may "attack" at the wrong time. However it is a probabilistic solution because as n & y increase we are less likely to make the wrong decision.

There are lots of known probabilistic solutions and while I'm a fan of the Bitcoin Protocol the existence of another doesn't change anything for computer scientists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This section on the "costs" of mining bitcoin is well raised and relevant>Here is the passage:

 _< One thing I haven't seen emphasized, however, is the extent to which the whole concept of having to "mine" Bitcoins by expending real resources amounts to a drastic retrogression — a retrogression that Adam Smith would have scorned.>_

This he calls out as completely misplaced:

 _How much does the existing banking /payment infrastructure cost? One reasonable measure are the fees charged. Standard online payment fees are 2.5%, not including the added costs fraud (chargebacks plus transactions blocked out of fear of fraud)._

And he's right. but The real cost of running a market is not, however a bid- ask spread. And he gets at the point, but its not clear, here:

 _Bitcoin payment fees are close to zero and fraud is impossible since Bitcoin is a bearer instrument._

The [true costs] of running a market are thos that instill [trust] in the market system. That is, what is commonly called "transaction costs" in economics. But these are not literal costs, which tend to be rent-extraction wherein the transaction is merely instrumental to effect a scaling biz model.[1] The true transaction cost of "effective honesty" are to be found in "governance costs", that is...the cost of lawyers. And thus more generally, and indirectly, the primary purpose of government (eg schooling, police, courts, national defense). So, it is worth putting in context the "cost" of mining bitcoins here. The "innovation" that is provided is provided also at this seperate level of abstraction, far away from the "overhead" style transaction costs in a literal definition. And to the authors point, these are both measurable and _large_ ; such an innovation thus actualy saves wated resources that would otherwise be deployed (think of all the energy spent on anti-spam and anti fraud by CCs...that 2.X is ~mostly profits tho).

In any event, interesting topic and interesting post. And I think he intuits the right answer, but the exact words put forth sort of murky the point abit, IMHO.

[1] eg 7% of an IPO to a Bank, X% to your real estate broker, 1/8 of a point in a pre-decimalized stock market, 2.x% on a credit or paypal transaction.).

<comment><USER20> Bitcoin payment fees may be close to zero at the moment but that's only because miners get paid with newly-minted bitcoins.

As I write this, there are 12,130,075 bitcoins in existence[1]. Over the coming year, approximately 1,314,000 bitcoins will be "minted" (25 new bitcoins every ten minutes). If Bitcoin were a real currency, that would equate to an inflation rate in excess of 10%. So, in effect, every bitcoin owner would be paying 10% of their Bitcoin wealth for "free" payments, whether or not they actually make/receive any payments or not.

[1]: [http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc](http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc)

<comment><USER21> 1\. Those 10% are per year, not per transaction. 2\. This kind of inflation is one of many factors that is already incorporated into the market value of Bitcoins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These are exactly the sorts of reasons why the more energy efficient Proof of Stake (PoS) was envisioned and implemented into several cryptocurrencies, like Peercoin and Novacoin.

</comment><comment><USER23> here is a post talk about it [http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the- by...](http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the-byzantine- generals-problem/)

</comment><comment><USER24> You can't measure the bitcoin infrastructure cost by the fees the miners charge. Miners are mostly paid with newly generated coins. Credit card companies do no have the luxury to create new money, so of course they will charge higher fees.

<comment><USER10> I agree it's imprecise. But I'd argue the de facto fees in the existing system are much higher than 2.5%. The biggest cost are all the transactions that should happen but don't. Most merchants/payment companies block payments from dozens if not hundreds of countries due to fears of fraud.

<comment><USER25> That's only indirectly related to Bitcoin's use of proof of work, though. While Bitcoin's overall design has advantages and disadvantages w.r.t. security, I don't know why an irreversible version of the current system wouldn't similarly be able to reduce fees without needing to "waste" CPU power computing hashes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there a good explanation on how bitcoin addresses the problem out there? I haven't come across a simple explanation that validates the approach (in my mind at least).

<comment><USER27> This doesn't answer your question specifically, but:

For the Bitcoin network to properly operate, it requires at least 51% of the computing power of the network to be "good", well-behaving nodes. That 51% means 51% in terms of block-mining. So, computing power in this case means "ability to find plaintext that results in a certain double-SHA-256 digest".

Therefore, Bitcoin has not come across a completely rock-solid solution (as with many cryptographic protocols), because a determined attacker or group of attackers could theoretically achieve control of the network with sufficient computing power. At this stage though, it's difficult enough to basically be considered infeasible, unless a global superpower tried to tackle it.

See more here: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/658/what-can- an-a...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/658/what-can-an-attacker- with-51-of-hash-power-do)

<comment><USER28> I also wonder what impact Quantum Computing would have on Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure NSA uses it already.

<comment><USER29> There are algorithms out there that are resistant to QC attacks: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_digital_signature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_digital_signature)

<comment><USER28> Yup - algorithms not used by Bitcoin. :)

<comment><USER30> Yet they could be, if a consensus was reached among miners to implement the new algorithm :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> At first glance, mining appears to use a lot of energy. But it has a very important property:

      mining is "fair" in money generation.

And being fair may be much more important than the energy consumed.

<comment><USER32> Depends how you define fair, I guess. Many people complain about the effects of a fixed block reward with ever-increasing difficulty.</comment></comment>


Twilio Functions – Public Beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2017/05/introducing-twilio-functions.html <comment><USER2> It's definitely using AWS Lamba, I spun up a trial account and texted myself the output of JSON.stringify(process.env)...

Edit: adding linebreaks...

2nd edit: Realized there were AWS access tokens in there. It's probably not a good idea for those to be exposed to the environment they're running this user generated code in. They should probably be wrapping these in vm.runInNewContext()

      {
      "PATH":"/var/lang/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/:/bin",
      "LANG":"en_US.UTF-8",
      "TZ":":/etc/localtime",
      "LD_LIBRARY_PATH":"/var/lang/lib:/lib64:/usr/lib64:/var/runtime:/var/runtime/lib:/var/task:/var/task/lib",
      "LAMBDA_TASK_ROOT":"/var/task",
      "LAMBDA_RUNTIME_DIR":"/var/runtime",
      "AWS_REGION":"us-east-1",
      "AWS_DEFAULT_REGION":"us-east-1",
      "AWS_LAMBDA_LOG_GROUP_NAME":"/aws/lambda/ZDfb2ab7cd7ac1734d9a1a06a018a1c522",
      "AWS_LAMBDA_LOG_STREAM_NAME":"2017/05/25/[$LATEST]2d7b70d5a6914e3980f081ba96c9d4ab",
      "AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_NAME":"ZDfb2ab7cd7ac1734d9a1a06a018a1c522",
      "AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_MEMORY_SIZE":"512",
      "AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_VERSION":"$LATEST",
      "_AWS_XRAY_DAEMON_ADDRESS":"169.254.79.2",
      "_AWS_XRAY_DAEMON_PORT":"2000",
      "AWS_XRAY_DAEMON_ADDRESS":"169.254.79.2:2000",
      "AWS_XRAY_CONTEXT_MISSING":"LOG_ERROR",
      "_X_AMZN_TRACE_ID":"Root=1-59274f44-71756c3273bfaf4895cd5610;Parent=4126596e259f5d9f;Sampled=0",
      "AWS_EXECUTION_ENV":"AWS_Lambda_nodejs6.10",
      "_HANDLER":"enigma.handler",
      "NODE_PATH":"/var/runtime:/var/task:/var/runtime/node_modules",
      "AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID":"REMOVINGTHIS",
      "AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY":"ALSOREMOVINGTHIS",
      "AWS_SESSION_TOKEN":"REMOVINGTHISTOO"
      }

<comment><USER3> ... Are those actually Twilio's keys, or are they creating a new Lambda instance (with its own private access keys) for each customer?

Maybe they actually intend for people to be able to use all the functionality of Lambda, some of which (I guess) requires using the AWS access key?

Or are people naively assuming their own Lambda container is a reasonable sandbox for third-party code? If so, yikes.

<comment><USER4> It's likely using an IAM role with no permissions other than writing logs to CloudWatch.

<comment><USER3> OK, so they're effectively reselling Lambda, and creating a new Lambda account for each Twilio customer under the hood?

<comment><USER5> > they're effectively reselling Lambda

Another take on this is that they're creating value for customers by shifting the reliability requirements from the customers themselves to AWS / lambda

... which I think is brilliant.

<comment><USER6> I hacked together a quick demo using Ruby, Sinatra, and Heroku with Twilio this last weekend and the whole time I was thinking "Heroku makes this easy, but having to host a server makes this harder to debug".

I feel like this new feature will make it super easy to work with Twilio. It's almost a no brainer.

<comment><USER7> Or you can keep the Ruby stack and just use ngrok in dev. :-)

<comment><USER6> Trust me, I love Ruby and ngrok works well, but I think a serverless setup is a lot simpler (at least in my mind). I was actually using Twilio to test a Ruby library of mine and set up a text service for product registrations for a CRM. It works freakishly well.

But despite all that, I feel like setting everything up in one place would be a lot simpler.

Now if Twilio had a way to deploy serverless functions via git... that would be a clincher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome play by Twilio. We've been working on StdLib [1] and an open specification for FaaS execution [2] for a while now, and demos with Twilio (sending text messages after automatically validating parameters, hooking into other functions in our ecosystem) have really helped developers grok what's possible. (We have a built-in SMS utility that actually uses Twilio behind the scenes [3]).

Happy to see we've come to the same conclusions about utility independently :).

[1] [https://stdlib.com/](https://stdlib.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/faaslang/faaslang/](https://github.com/faaslang/faaslang/)

[3] [https://stdlib.com/utils/sms](https://stdlib.com/utils/sms)

<comment><USER9> Just checked out stdlib.com. Looks awesome. Much appreciate you using Twilio to demo it. Would you drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com? Would love to send you something.

<comment><USER8> Gladly. We're big fans!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. Thinking out loud here, are Functions a new opening for Saas businesses? (tldr no).

If you have a big enough user base/set of use cases, the next step after opening an API to your service might be adding a Baas/Faas, so people with small use cases or prototypes can get started easily without using a server.

But it's not like Linkedin or Zenefits users would get more value out of "Linkedin Functions". It probably makes more sense if you can "eat" what would have been a separate (micro)service.

The one thing I don't see though, is if somebody is sold enough on Faas, why would they use your siloed Twilio Faas instead of AWS Lambda/whatever where you can interact with Twilio _and_ eg Shopify, Instagram, other APIs...

Maybe then an interesting idea for the big FaaS providers duking it out for market share right now might be an ability for SaaS providers to build "$YOUR_SAAS Functions" on top of their offering. The end-user would see Lambda/Function/whatever templates pre-filled with the right API calls an a UI for choosing the different API-related triggers. This could be like the AWS marketplace, but for Faas.

So I guess the answer to my clickbait-ey question at the top is mostly likely no, but maybe, let's see it play out. It definitely feels like a good way to sell more API usage.

<comment><USER8> ;) The answer to your "clickbait-y" question is definitely "we'll see," and it's already playing out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am a (happy) twilio customer and I do not understand this:

"Today, we're excited to announce Twilio Functions, a serverless environment to build and run Twilio applications so you can get to production faster."

I did just that ... I signed up for twilio, wrote a simple twiML[1] inside their web editor, and attached it to a phone number.

No servers were involved (I am not sure how I _could_ involve a server) and I "got to production" very fast.

What would I do differently now ?

[1] "Ring Forever"

<comment><USER12> Is there not functionality that can't be expressed in a twiML?

Like communicating to separate service or database within a given request from an SMS or Voice callback, etc... functionality that until today would have required web-hooks running on some other server (or cloud function)?

<comment><USER13> Yes, we pull data from our database to make dynamic responses. But I'm not sure if this services model helps that. You would have to create an API to interface with your own DB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is very similar to what we've done to bootstrap the Zapier CLI and developer platform -- especially relative to repurposing AWS Lambda.

Wrote a bit of behind the scenes just the other day [https://zapier.com/engineering/behind-the- cli/](https://zapier.com/engineering/behind-the-cli/) if this sort of stuff tickles your fancy.

</comment><comment><USER15> good amount of comments here missing how hard it is for "normal" people to use twilio. the article is clear: twilio's many interface to your code is a callback URL. think about what it takes to have a callback URL you can input to the twilio website.

could they really set up an AWS account, lambda function, IAM role, API gateway, with cloud watch logs? ive done this in AWS. you have to use 5+ AWS services that have funny names and look nothing alike, and make them all work together.

or lets say you wanted to buy a domain, hosting for it, and put your code on there for twilio to hit with a callback URL. thats hard too.

if you are going to do either of the 2 approaches above, how many hours are you going to spend getting the callback URL foundation set up (and working) before you even get to use a twilio product?

<comment><USER16> Can the callback URL use an IP address, or does it need to be a proper DNS name? Can it have a self-signed certificate? Does it even need to be secured?

If the callback URL can use an IP address and doesn't require https, you could set up a Digital Ocean droplet for it in a couple of minutes. Or you could set up a port-forward on your router and run an HTTP server on your machine, but I think the Digital Ocean route might be quicker.

<comment><USER15> who are you expecting to understand this? there's tons of people out there who have no idea what these terms mean. DNS? Self Signed? IP address maybe... droplet? they are going to say "too hard, close tab"

<comment><USER16> At a quick glance, it seems like anything beyond a fire-and-forget SMS/fax done with Twilio requires a callback. My guess is that Twilio is expecting their customers to be able to write a callback and is willing to accept the associated barriers for entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've loved being able to hack away on projects with Twilio for a while now. They're relatively easy to get started with, and this is going to make it even easier. 10,000 invocations free, with subsequent invocations priced at 10,000/$1 seems like a great model. No idea about how this scales financially, compared to other similar services. But as someone making relatively limited use tools, most without a business model, their pricing certainly keeps me feeling great about using them.

<comment><USER8> Well, to be honest, compute is becoming a commodity very quickly. We offer 100,000 invocations free and offer 50,000 per $1 [1] with a paid account. There are some pretty smart people who have talked at length about startups historically underpricing, but I think we're making a bet on the raw value of compute trending to zero. (This is a weird thing to say outright, our goal, generally, is to change the way people think about service composition and building things on the internet.)

Twilio is interesting because they're offering this as a _business-specific offering_ i.e., integrate with Twilio directly (SMS, voice), which on its face is actually _more valuable_ than, say, a "generalized compute platform" (which we've referred to ourselves as, at times). I think it'll be really interesting to see how Twilio markets + plays with this model --- theoretically if it sells their other services they could get away with this being a loss-leader, which is an intriguing concept.

[1] [https://stdlib.com/pricing/](https://stdlib.com/pricing/)

<comment><USER18> > _I think we 're making a bet on the raw value of compute trending to zero._

I'm thinking you mean the COST of compute here. If that's the case, I actually disagree on cost trend direction. I think the raw cost of compute will slowly increase. Long story but most of it borders on the economics of cloud computing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was already doing this with their API on Lambda. If anybody is interested: [https://github.com/nathanjsweet/narthan](https://github.com/nathanjsweet/narthan)

Good on them for integrating it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there some way to create an SMS based service using Twilio, and charge users? Like, the user gets charged on their phone bill and I, the service owner, get paid by Twilio or something.

Or is that just not a thing and it has to be done OOB?

<comment><USER21> It depends on the country. In the UK it's very common, and relatively easy to do the 'premium sms' that you describe.

It's not at all common in the US, and Twilio doesn't seem to support it anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if this is an independent effort or if it's built on top of AWS Lambda.

Also, anyone know why all these serverless environments that are coming out focus on Node.js?

<comment><USER8> Fastest growing runtime, largest module ecosystem. That's it. The goal is to encourage adoption and validate a product quickly, so you ride the biggest wave.

AWS has the resources to grow teams around different languages / runtimes, smaller players (or recent IPOs) do not in the same capacity. Targeting anything other than Node would be "the largest" disservice to your customer base in the case of Twilio, and would artificially slow any other player.

<comment><USER12> In addition, Node seems to have beneficial performance characteristics when it comes to cold startup time, compared to say Java, which probably helps when it comes to pay-only-for-requests functions as a service that aren't always running.

[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=679050](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=679050)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Other providers like Tropo have had this hosted scripting for years. Nice to see Twilio catching up.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure why this comment was downvoted.

I worked for Tropo four years ago. You could write your code in JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, or Groovy; upload it to our servers; and we'd run it on your behalf. It was literally zero infrastructure on your part and one line of code to answer a phone call.

Tropo certainly lacked some things compared to Twilio while I was there, but this is undoubtedly an area where Twilio is playing catch up.

[https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/overview](https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/overview)

<comment><USER25> Pointing out "Company X already does this" when someone launches something new is a pretty douchey move...

<comment><USER26> Why? It's certainly useful to see what other companies are offering and what the differences between these offerings are. If just mentioning a competitor is bad then maybe the product is bad.

<comment><USER25> Whether it's a company launching a product or a developer showing off something they built in their spare time, it's really depressing to launch something you've been working on for months or years and to get back "well, X already does this."

I'd add that "X already does this" comments like this are a _routine_ feature of Twilio HN threads, as long as the company's been alive. [https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/six-years-of-hacker-news- comme...](https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/six-years-of-hacker-news-comments- about-twilio/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Who are these people writing SMS apps? Why is Twilio so proeminent when no one uses SMS anymore?

<comment><USER28> Our customers at Dolly love receiving SMS. Also helps with low data connectivity locations. Not sure "no one uses SMS anymore" is accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love the new popularity of lambda/functions as a service. each provider can now give you a custom code to do whatever you like, stripping away the needs for servers and that what i can really see as a full "micro-service"

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish Twilio had free offerings for their other services. I didnt even dare playing around testing Twilio because I would be getting charged 2 cents per SMS sent

<comment><USER8> The truth of the matter is if you have a hard time paying 2 cents to send a text message for a few beta / trial runs, you're probably not contributing to Twilio's bottom line in any reasonable fashion, and unfortunately, they don't care. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't afford to.

If every engineer with a six-figure salary decided they would pay the couple bucks it costs to test drive a product, the customer long-tail for dev products would add up to something appreciable and as a result you might actually see a lot more innovation around dev tools. As it stands, one of the best developer products of our generation, Heroku, even had a hard time pricing / selling to their long tail and we saw shutdowns of great products like Parse.

Twilio actually has a very reasonable model. $20 deposit, non-recurring, is way less than you'd spend on a Thursday night date, for example, and you get to build something with it. Hell, speaking of building, you've probably spent more on a Lego set. (I have. As an adult... for myself.)

(What actually ends up happening is developer companies go full OSS, give everything away for free for massive adoption, then AWS figures out how to productize it and sell to Enterprise. You can trace the points from Docker's inception to AWS Lambda processing trillions of trades per day.)

<comment><USER31> Over 95% of Twilio's users don't meaningfully contribute to their bottom-line. Their revenue is a fat long-tail dominated by outliers. I'd say Twilio does care about every developer because they have no idea which customers will become outliers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The success of this product is dependent on torpedoing aws lambda from a usability and reliability perspective imo (not hard). After using twilio to build the sms side off of an app I've been quietly rooting for them (and betting on them actively)

If they built this ON lambda then I'd bet against it very strongly, but I can't imagine smart engineers doing that in 2017 (ha...)

<comment><USER33> You are thinking about this wrong.

Serverless functions on Twilio (or any other platform for that matter) is not competing with Lambda.

The point of serverless functions is to take your Twilio app that you were already creating and to completely eliminate the back-end.

Now you can make a fully functioning Twilio app without messing around with heroku.

<comment><USER32> That's like suggesting that heroku isn't competing with aws on things like database management. It is.

<comment><USER33> Does the mattress industry compete with the hotel industry?

In a vague roundabout way both industries are used for sleeping.

But the connection is so remote that the answer is no.

So Lambda and Twilio functions are similarly "competing". But in reality there is less than 1% of situations where someone would seriously be deciding between the two.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


8 mistakes we made building EasyCal - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reemer.com/mistakes-we-made-building-easycal <comment><USER2> "We tried four tactics to get customers:"

Interesting that all the tactics were online. I wonder if visiting solo practitioners in the developers' neighborhood would have done any better, both for finding such and for getting feedback.

In any case, as a solo practitioner who charges more than $100/hour for my time, I would balk at $19/month because I'm not time limited. I might have paying work for 20% of the year (>40K/year), but the other 80% time doesn't pay at all. I'm not going to pay $228/year to get more time to read Hacker News.</comment>


Most images of black holes are illustrations - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/8/16822272/black-hole-looks-like-what/ <comment><USER2> Yea...not in the visible spectrum, so you have to be imaginative. Famous theoretical physicist kip Thorne (expert on black holes) uses Mathematica to take an image of space and use the equations for black holes to warp the images used for things like the Interstellar movie.</comment>


Ask HN: Now that Flickr keeps scrolling, how do I reach the footer content? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Just add at the end of url /#foot .</comment>


Interactive Universe Scale Explorer - <AUTHOR> http://htwins.net/scale2 <comment><USER2> Nice but it's been done before: <http://www.powersof10.com/> and by Charles and Ray Eames, no less.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I spent a good 30 minutes here, and it was awesome. Thanks!!

</comment><comment><USER4> the haunting music did it for me</comment>


Would you use PHP in a new project in 2018? - <AUTHOR> https://crew.co/blog/is-php-still-relevant-in-2017/ <comment><USER2> PHP as "the only major server-side scripting language"? Coldfusion? RoR as a fancy new alternative? Python and PHP being highly similar?

This is not _even_ wrong, this is just recycled clickbait; only the "new PHP version" was bumped from 5.3 to 7 in the article (it is now 7.2, newsflash!).

</comment><comment><USER3> _Filed Under: Design Science_

Sounds about right.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Lessons learned from making Blood Frontier game - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloodfrontier.com/

<comment><USER2> Thats a shame, I really liked that game. I hope that the developers continue to make games.</comment>


12 Seed Funds You Should Know in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.kartme.com/phil/seed-funds-nyc

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to let me know if I'm missing any funds here.

The criteria was: -must actively invest $250,000 to $500,000 in startups -must have dedicated resources in NYC to review details -must have dedicated capital</comment>


Coding is not all about business - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It depends. Free software (Free as in free speech, not free beer) can still be sold and used to make a profit.</comment>


10 Powerful Tips to Leverage Content Theft - <AUTHOR> http://seohimanshu.com/2010/10/19/10-powerful-tips-to-leverage-content-theft/

<comment><USER2> You lost me at user javascript to prevent 'scrapers' from lifting content.

No, you're just preventing -users- from spreading the word. Scrapers don't even run the javascript.

</comment><comment><USER3> 11\. Don't publish if you don't want others to copy it?</comment>


What is the best and easiest way to host a node app? - <AUTHOR>

I am developing it from my own computer, and would like now to put it online. What is the best hosting/service for that at the moment ? <comment><USER2> If you haven't looked at Heroku I would reccomend it [https://www.heroku.com/](https://www.heroku.com/)

You can quickly deploy a Node app with little to no system knowledge, just push a git repo to their domain and you are ready to roll

</comment><comment><USER3> You can use nodejitsu.com or modulus.io which specialise in node apps.

Alternatively you can use AWS with Elastic Beanstalk to quickly bring up a node app.</comment>


The Value of Y Combinator and Accelerators - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mattangriffel/the-value-of-y-combinator-accelerators-cdbeada1e2b9

<comment><AUTHOR> Mattan from One Month here, happy to discuss and answer people's questions candidly if you've got any.

</comment><comment><USER2> if you apply to yc and get accepted into their program and your startup happens to be physically located in another part of the country, how difficult is it to find a place to work out of and/or a house to rent? or does yc or the yc alumni network help with finding accommodations too.

<comment><USER3> Finding space to rent is 1/1000th as hard as the rest of starting a startup. Sublets are sometimes announced on the alumni mailing list, and some companies get together to share a big house, but most just use Craigslist.</comment></comment>


InventHub – Visual version control for electronics design - <AUTHOR> https://inventhub.io/ <comment><USER2> Hi, I am the founder of InventHub. We just came out of private beta and we need your feedback on the product to help us improve.

Just a bit of intro about InventHub: InventHub is a git based visual version control enabling real-time collaboration on electronics design projects.

The goal is to provide engineering teams with an efficient development process and build a connected community for open hardware.

Please visit inventhub.io, try the product and share your thoughts.

Looking forward!</comment>