What Nike's $720 self-lacing sneaker signals about Nike's future - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/850433/what-nikes-720-self-lacing-sneaker-releasing-today-signals-about-nikes-future/ <comment><USER2> When it comes to fashion and tech, if you see a charger, they blew it.</comment>


IBM and the Holocaust (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/glencora/2017/11/27/ibm-holocaust/ <comment><USER2> There is some prior work on this book that talks about how the 1938 census was used, the Hollerith punchcard machines (now IBM) tech, and the details of how the tech worked and why. It's called "the nazi census." Should be required reading at social media companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not mentioned in the article - but I've read in the book and heard directly that the Aushwitz prisoner number tattoo was directly matched to a punchcard.

My mother helped interview Jewish survivors so that their stories were recorded and archived.

<comment><USER4> Where are the records? I've done some cursory searches for things like that before and haven't found anything easily accessible

<comment><USER5> The punch card records?

The were in many cases ment to store only for further processing, and were probably mostly destroyed when the nazies tried to destroy all evidence at the end of the war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IBM is possibly the most famous, but several other American companies employed the gambit of supplying both sides - notably Ford[1] and GM. This[2] article is a wrenching overview. A particularly shocking extract:

"In fact, our government paid Ford Motor Company and GM millions of dollars for damages done by our bombers to their plants in Germany and France, and they were permitted to retain the same managers who had operated their factories under the Nazis."

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany#Use_of_forced_lab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany#Use_of_forced_labor_during_World_War_II)

[2][https://www.texasobserver.org/598-lets-talk-treason-how- corp...](https://www.texasobserver.org/598-lets-talk-treason-how-corporate- america-cashed-in-on-nazi-connections/)

<comment><USER7> Also Standard Oil (have since changed their name) supplying $20MM oil to nazis prior to the bombing of England.

<comment><USER8> S O -> Esso -> Exxon

<comment><USER9> Standard Oil was broken up into lots of pieces. Esso -> Exxon and Standard Oil of New York -> Mobil were just two pieces.

[https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard- oi...](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oil/)

<comment><USER7> Something I was pondering, since companies are treated as "people" as it pertains to law, free speech, political contributions, etc... then wouldn't that mean a company is guilty of war crimes? AFAIK there is no statute of limitations on war crimes. If a Nazi commander changed their name, that would not exclude them from being put on trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good thing tech companies no longer create technologies to help authoritarian regimes! </sarcasm>

<comment><USER11> any technology or manufactured good can be put to improper use, so why not just be up front.

mankind is the problem.

<comment><USER12> Not just humans: [https://listverse.com/2017/03/19/10-facts-about- chimpanzees-...](https://listverse.com/2017/03/19/10-facts-about-chimpanzees- that-hold-a-dark-mirror-to-humanity/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> " _So money is one of the great threats to democracy. A second threat is what Roman law called persona ficta, fictitious persons — corporations, labor unions, and similar organizations which have the legal status of persons in the sense that they can buy and sell property, they can sue and be sued in the courts, they are generally anonymous, they are certainly irresponsible, and they are increasingly powerful. The 15th amendment and various court rulings have given corporations all the rights of living persons. This is dangerous because they already have certain rights that real persons don't have, principally immortality. That's the saving grace about even the worst scoundrel: someday he will die, and maybe we can wait that long. We felt that way about, Hitler, and Stalin. Maybe Mao is different; we'll see. But a corporation never dies. It has the first quality of divinity, as the ancient Greeks defined it. They called their gods the immortals, because the only quality they had that set them apart from men was that they never died.

Besides setting limits to corporate immortality, we must put other restraints upon all fictitious persons, including foundations, universities, and all such entities. From 1890 there was competition among the States to lower the restraints on corporations. Originally, when a corporation was set up, its charter specified what it was entitled to do, sell hamburgers to the public or whatever. Today there are no restrictions, no restraints, no reporting._"

\- Carrol Quigley, LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS, p. 203

</comment><comment><USER14> "History doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes"

Soon after supporting Jewish oppression, IBM decided to switch tracks to supporting black oppression[1]. They were one of the biggest tech providers to the White Apartheid government in South Africa to enforce their brutality.

[1][http://www-cs- students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.co...](http://www-cs- students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.comp.html)

<comment><USER15> A successful bookseller in California chose to sell wholesale books to the Apartheid Govt of South Africa, even into the height of the media outcry, Nelson Mandela etc. When almost all the employees complained, the response was "we sell books to all people" .. which was clever, but probably not sincere. The objective was to make money, and the willingness of the govt and business in South Africa to buy went _up_ when the political pressure was increasing, because trade partners were getting scarcer.. In short, it became easier and more profitable to sell to the besieged state. This scenario has probably repeated itself throughout history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They had their sequel in Apartheid South Africa.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think it's instructive to note that they also manufactured rifles: [http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticle...](http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=1494)

</comment><comment><USER18> After the war, they handed all the machines back to IBM.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, excellent article.

> We should be talking about cases like IBM and the Holocaust with our > students and with ourselves. A majority of our students will go on to work > for companies just like IBM. And if they aren't taught that tragedies like > the Holocaust happen because everyone was just doing their job, we are > liable for the continued abuse of computer science.

</comment><comment><USER20> All these are quite well known but I wonder whether the contradictory progressive moves of IBM are also as known [https://www.eweek.com/it- management/ibm-and-black-history-in...](https://www.eweek.com/it- management/ibm-and-black-history-innovation-through-diversity)

Not sure that there is much ideology behind one or the other side though. I'd find it easier to believe that some execs then, now and ever, are trying to be in sync with the general wind direction (today it mostly comes under names such as "social responsibility" and "ecologic footprint") and not miss a good business opportunity in parallel. Of course that whole thing is hilarious when seen from outside and seems like the company is schizoid. In many ways that might not be a totally wrong outlook. These are huge multifaceted organizations and seen as a whole they don't make sense. Ideological or not though they all have to make profit or they'll die. Simple as that. It would be _very_ hard to any of them to say no to good business even if they knew it was trading with the devil. Collateral damage -such as negative publicity and potential future losses- would keep them back but only if the total net was really negative.

For what is worth though I think that IBM is one of the most inclusive companies atm (based on what I hear from LGBT/minorities people working there).

Regardless - the point of the post is valid IMO.

<comment><USER21> How is that contra-evidence? Are you saying the claims about IBM's involvement in the holocaust is disproved by these slides?

<comment><USER20> Would you expect the same organization/person/entity doing both of these things? They are contradictory. That's what I'm saying.

<comment><USER21> So how is this "contra-evidence"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Related, IBM sought for and received permission to use JSLint for evil. See [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cbcrz/i_give_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cbcrz/i_give_permission_for_ibm_its_customers_partners/) for proof.

It turns out that authoritarian regimes still like to buy IBM products including mainframes, and IBM is happy to sell to them. IBM lawyers are very aware of this.

<comment><USER23> No, they did not. JSlint has a license that says "may not be used for evil." which is ill-defined. What's evil? Is what you consider evil what I consider evil? So they asked for a well-specified license. In return they were granted a license to use JSlint for evil purposes, which is obviously a good joke at their expense, but combined with the original license encompasses all uses, and, as such, is well-defined.

<comment><USER24> You said "no they didn't" then described how they did exactly what the parent said, just with a gloss describing why they wanted to be allowed to "use it for evil".

<comment><USER23> No. They want clarity on what's considered evil. Or alternatively clarification what the license allows and disallows under which circumstances.

<comment><USER24> Yes, but this was, apparently achieve by getting included the option to do E AND the previously allowed ~E (according to the thread here).

<comment><USER23> No, the JSlint author responded to their request by granting them E in addition to ~E. It's not what they initially asked for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >why wasn't this on my radar?

You must be very new or very young.

<comment><USER26> The article implied that it be taught in CS education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is important context in which to examine Salesforce and Amazon's complicity in the gross injustices perpetrated by ICE/CBP.

<comment><USER27> > In the past year, many major tech companies such as Amazon, Palantir, > Salesforce, and Microsoft have come under scrutiny for selling software to > US federal immigration agencies. That's because those agencies have been > responsible for enforcing some of the controversial immigration policies > that separate families at the border, detain children, and deport people > seeking refuge back to dangerous places.

[https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18660531/tech- companies...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18660531/tech-companies- enabling-machine-deportation-immigrant-advocates-erika-andiola-trump-jonathan- ryan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No ethics education? A prof. ethics class is required for a bachelor's in CS at most schools.

</comment><comment><USER29> The premise given previously that counting machines were culpable seems a stretch. Given IBM made firearms for the US.

</comment><comment><USER30> IIRC, the full extent of what was actually going on in Germany didn't become apparent until near the end of the war, as Allied troops started liberating the concentration camps. Even Germans who lived near those camps claimed to not know what was going on there, although nobody was in any particular mood to believe them at the time. Many of them may have been telling the truth, though.

Taking a census is a perfectly normal thing, although the questions asked on that census and how the information obtained from it may ultimately be used can be controversial. (Take, for example, the current kerfuffle over the possibility of a "citizenship" question being included on the upcoming 2020 U.S. census.) For the German census, it would be useful to know whether they were asking very pointed questions like "Are you a Jew?", or was it more general questions related to ethnicity and religion and so on.

<comment><USER31> I feel like you maybe didn't read the post? For example:

> _tabulating machines were housed at the concentration camps. Each prisoner > had a card that detailed their health, skills and location as prisoners of > good health were transported according to labor needs. Finally, the card > also indicated the way the prisoner died: by natural causes (which would > include being worked or tortured to death), execution, suicide, and special > treatment (including gas chamber)._

The first part of the post details how the cards and machines had to be coded or prepared by IBM itself (or its subsidiary). It wasn't possible to just add "fields" to a card.

The machines weren't general purpose like the computers of today. Everything had to be setup specifically for the precise problem being solved by the manufacturer.

The post also goes into more detail about how the Nazis wanted to know if a person was even _partially_ Jewish by ethnicity. Regardless of whether or not they were practising Judaism.

<comment><USER32> > It wasn't possible to just add "fields" to a card. > Everything had to be > setup specifically for the precise problem

I've studied and written about tabulators a lot, and this is overstating the difficulty of using a tabulator. Adding a new field is trivial, just type the data into that field on a card. (Unless you want nice custom-printed cards.) And configuring a tabulator is a lot easier than writing a program. You plugged wires into a plugboard connecting fields on the card to columns on the printer, or to counters to compute totals. To sort cards on a field, you set the sorter to sort on that column and ran the cards through. Tabulators could do some extremely complex things (such as differential equations), but normal tasks were pretty straightforward.

If you want to learn more about tabulators, there are lots of manuals on Bitsavers. This one is a good place to start: [http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/22-6275-0_...](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/22-6275-0_Functional_Wiring_Principles.pdf)

(Obviously I'm not supporting IBM's actions; I just want people to understand better how tabulators work.)

<comment><USER31> Thanks for your input. I'm not familiar with these machines so I look forward to reading that link.

The researcher does say:

>IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps

Source [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm- holocaust_b_1301691](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691)

Though it's not clear in this passage whether he is referring to IBM itself or its German subsidiary.

<comment><USER33> The discussed book provides evidence that the German subsidiary was micromanaged by Watson.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google publishes post-tornado satellite imagery of Moore, Oklahoma - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+GoogleMaps/posts/dcDW25obv6N

<comment><USER2> Wow! This is really impressive. I had no idea about the scale of the destruction.</comment>


Ask HN: List of SaaS with number of users? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know any sources that list web software and include an estimation of the number of users? <comment><USER2> You may also want to check out <http://compete.com>.

If you can find a site that released their numbers, you can compare that site (your baseline) with other sites to get an idea of how popular they are, relative to your baseline.

While you won't be able to actually find out how many users each app has (unless they release their numbers), this can at least give you an idea of popularity. Hopefully.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking I could use twitter followers or alexa rank as a proxy for number of users. Anyone know where I could find a list of SaaS offerings?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And to also answer my own query, programmableweb.com seems to be the best resource.</comment>


Is the United Nations racist? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/is-the-united-nations-racist/article4928624.ece?homepage=true

<comment><USER2> I would quickly admit there is a Euro-centricity of the UN that is hard to deny. But I don't think it's so much about race these days as it is about economic status. Poor nations have to face the same bias that poor people do in society in order to be represented. Basically they have to become a thorn in the side of the wealthy. The wealthier nations feel that they have more on the line and should in turn have more control. Does this sound like a familiar debate? It's the same one raging throughout all societies right now.</comment>


Spinach and Cheese for Yia Yia - <AUTHOR> https://abbey.silvrback.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> My girlfriend is a great writer (her literature teacher said she was his best student of his entire career as a teacher) but she doesn't yet have the confidence to post anything. I think if she gets a good response from HN - <USER2> often talk to her about how I highly regard the HN audience - it might just encourage her to write more.</comment>


Google did what I suggested in 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://oguzbilgic.com/signing-into-chrome.html <comment><USER2> Does this mean I get to say Apple did what I suggested in March of 2009? <http://karmcity.com/post/457611779/os-x-app-store>

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't belong on HN. I'm not smarter for having read this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Inroads to cloud settings were being made well before 2010. Xmarks was pretty close to that ideal as early as 2008 IIRC, and I'm not a 100% certain that cloud-based settings weren't present in Google Chrome in 2010 (in dev builds, if at all.)

On the one hand, it's somewhat inevitable, really, and it's that thought that keeps me from carping too loudly about having built (and launched) a carbon copy of Digg about three weeks before Kevin Rose did. Sure, it was a novel idea, but it was also inevitable, in the sense that automating a human-curated process almost always is.

<comment><AUTHOR> At that time, they were all about syncing data between 2 of Your browsers, that was somewhat different from my suggestion which is being able sign in you friends browser and sign out when you are done.

Btw, I am not saying that I am the first one though who this, I am sure someone else(Google?) did before me. But that was just my pure prediction and It happened, I am quite happy with that.

Also, thanks for your insights.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't trying to diminish the idea, as it was clearly a good one.

The point though, that even if they were there even partially is that things were trending that way already, and would have likely gotten there with or without anyone steering it.

Still though, always good to be thinking of things before they happen, and trend-prediction is essential for engineers / developers / designers / web workers, so kudos.</comment></comment></comment>


Playdar: Linux For Music - <AUTHOR> http://playgrub.posterous.com/playdar-linux-for-music <comment><USER2> I love Playdar. I can't wait to fix up our network over at the coworking space I run. We're going to have soooo much fun with this thing there.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. Can anyone describe a few cool things you would do with this that you can't do otherwise?</comment>


A Fast, Minimal Memory, Consistent Hash Algorithm [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.2294v1.pdf

<comment><USER2> repost [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207999)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote an article around it [http://www.creapptives.com/post/113786047187/improving- shard...](http://www.creapptives.com/post/113786047187/improving-shard-re- balancing-with-jump-consistent)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a third repost. How many more are we going to see?

<comment><USER5> First time I saw it, I'm glad it got reposted. This is really cool.</comment></comment>


Always Go Home with the Lady Who Brought you to the Dance - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/03/03/always-go-home-with-the-lady-who-brought-you-to-the-dance/ <comment><USER2> I used to think negotiations were simple - just come in with a reasonable, middle of the way set of terms, treat the counter-party as a reasonable, benevolent entity, and everything will work out all right. I quickly discovered that while there are _some_ people who work this way, for the most part if you adopt this approach people will eat you alive. You won't even know what hit you.

I'd use the "reasonable terms" principle with friends I worked with for some time, or with people who have an immensely strong reputation for being reasonable (YC, etc.) But if you met someone two weeks ago, and they bring up the concept of an emotional bond into what ought to be a commodity transaction, alarms would go off in my head. (Note that it's easier to talk about an emotional bond when you're on the better end of the deal).

Mark probably is one of the very few people who work in a reasonable manner, but unfortunately for every person who works this way there are dozens of impostors who'll pretend they're reasonable and then eat you alive the moment you let your guard down.

So my advice would be the opposite. Unless you've worked with the person for a while, or have _really_ strong evidence that they put insanely strong ethics before profits (and believe me, gut feeling is _not_ strong evidence), or you've already indicated commitment, take the better deal.

<comment><USER3> I don't know Mark Suster, and maybe I'm completely misreading this, but the whole story seems rather self-serving to me. His "ethical dilemma" was whether to agree to a deal changing in such a way that he would be paying 50% more... and when he said that no, he wasn't going to pay 50% more, we're supposed to accept this as a great triumph for ethics?

I'm a great believer in behaving ethically, but this is not the sort of example I'd give.

<comment><USER4> Fair comment. I could see why it might come across that way.

The impression I meant to leave was that I risked losing out on the deal all together because the CEO could have simply done the deal with the other investor.

I would rather that have happened than to screw over the VC who convinced me to look at the deal in the first place.

<comment><USER5> I agree with what you did and it's what I would have done no question. But I have to say that loyalty and that type of behavior has definitely hurt me business wise over the years.

I wonder how much of that is "doing the right thing" vs. protecting one's reputation so you can continue to do deals. (And you clearly referred to protecting reputation ..)

If you are just interested in "doing the right thing" then the issue of protecting one's reputation wouldn't even come up in the discussion, right? (And nothing wrong with sounding "pollyannish"?)

I wouldn't have done what your friend did at the dance. Not because I'd be worried about reputation but because it would make me feel bad to do it. I wouldn't want it to happen to me (empathy). I can tell you have empathy just by the way you wrote the post. I'm wondering if you feel a need to cloak it in "reputation" and are you sure that's as big a motive as you make it out to be? As if it won't be manly or something.

<comment><USER6> I suppose it depends on what you value more - maxing your business potential or maintaining your integrity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This account is vague about the most critical point: was there a handshake deal? The phrase "the company agreed on a price" suggests there might have been. But not necessarily; they might have been talking about what the price would be if they did a deal.

If there was a handshake deal, the company should certainly have stuck with the original VC. Not because of any complicated rules about who introed whom to whom, but simply because you have to honor handshake deals.

If there was not a handshake deal, it's less clear. The company seems to have been fairly eager to raise money. Which implies they'd have taken a sufficiently good deal if one was offered. Which implies it had been in the investors' power to get a handshake deal if they wanted one, and if they didn't have one, they essentially blew it by negotiating too hard. If so then I don't think the company would be obliged to stick with the original investor. But I'm just speculating; it's impossible to say for sure without knowing more.

<comment><USER8> No way. A VC will not honor a handshake deal. They probably won't renege simply because they can get a better deal elsewhere (that's not how they operate - if a deal is good they take it, as they have the luxury of being able to participate in lots of deals), but if your market segment starts looking less favorable then they'll probably dump you.

<comment><USER7> They will honor a handshake deal with a company we fund.

<comment><USER9> The YC Mafia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact of the matter we are all professionals and everyone's job is to protect their interests.

The CEO's job is to get the best deal for existing shareholders and optimize the growth. The investor's job is to buy in at the lowest price / strictest terms they can get away with. When a better deal comes along for the company and the investors cannot match it they start coming up with all sorts of phony excuses to buy in at the original lowball offer. If you feel strongly enough about the company don't be a cheapo and match the new offer. If "it does not fit the structure of your fund" then move on to the next deal.

Jeff Bezos walked away on the offer by Olympic Venture Partners (OVP) when Kleiner jumped in and outbid them big. I heard this in a talk by OVP partner who complained that John Doerr could make what he believed to be an "outrageous" offer because the fund already had Netscape IPO exit and could take much greater risk. Guess what, Jeff Bezos did the right thing for himself and his existing investors and employees.

VCs walk away on term sheets all the time and typical deal structures favor them anyways. The deal is done when the legal papers are signed and the check clears. Nobody should act as though they are entitled to anything, whether they are VCs or CEOs.

</comment><comment><USER11> To be clear, this article isn't telling CEOs not to negotiate or seek competitive deals. It is about not backstabbing business partners.

<comment><USER4> Thank you. I wish more people saw it that way. I always believe in negotiating / seeking competitive deals. But once you agree a deal with people you honor it.

<comment><USER12> How would you react in this situation:

1\. You negotiate and have a handshake deal with a company for a round of funding.

2\. The company gets an offer for a higher valuation from someone who wants in on the round.

3\. The CEO asks you whether to take them or not, but basically leaves it up to you?

In other words, assuming the CEO didn't "backstab" you but rather sought your advice, would you be upset that he's even considering a different deal? Would you tell him he should take it, assuming the deal is still worthwhile for you? How would you react?

<comment><USER4> that is EXACTLY what happened in the situation I described. We hadn't yet signed the term sheet. So I told the CEO that I would understand if he went with the other firm. But that I personally couldn't be involved with the deal for reasons I described. Until a CEO has signed the term sheet (or gives you an email saying they will) I assume they are still negotiating with others.

<comment><USER12> I'm mostly interested in whether you would hold it against the CEO for asking your opinion on the matter. It sounds like you might be implying that the CEO shouldn't even be considering the decision, whereas I would assume a CEO working with you would want to feel like he can be open with you about his/her dilemmas.

Of course I might be really misreading here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sounds way too much to me like a VC trying to teach startup founders a brand of ethics that mostly benefits VCs.

<comment><USER4> Nope. I was an entrepreneur for 10 years first. I always employed this mentality. Reputation matters.

<comment><USER14> I have been self employed for 22 years. I have always worked this way, and it has always paid far more in benefits than I ever could expect. People will talk about the type of business person you are and the word always gets around. It is amazing how fast and far your reputation can spread (for better or worse).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Business negotiations (in which VCs benefit from founders not shopping around, negotiating for better deals, or building interest) are not at all comparable to a social situation involving actual humans. The goal is to get readers thinking morally instead of in the cold business terms that the VC is.

<comment><USER16> This applies to a business negotiation. Not a series of them and much less to a career made out of busines negotiations. Business is life as usual: sometimes you must decline of something but generally you have to play the bigger game where it matters how you treat other people, even at the expense of optimal business or a short-term gain.

I would say that playing these social games IS what constitutes business and while it's important to bond to allow for future business sometimes, actually, the right thing is rather to not to play along if your gut says no, even if it was good for business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Remember that VCs are motivated by returning a big return to their LPs first.

It's nice to say that they'll stick with you but that could change in an instant. Plenty of stories out there where people have gotten screwed over by unscrupulous VCs.

PS. obviously, there are exceptions to the norm but I'm a big believer in understanding people's primary motivations.

<comment><USER4> I definitely have never argued that all VCs are good or even that good VCs always act appropriately. That's for sure.

I think the key is knowing the parties with whom you're dealing and knowing their past behavior. I advocate reference checking portfolio companies that failed: see [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/08/how-do-you- ref...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/08/how-do-you-reference- check-a-vc/)

<comment><USER18> > _and knowing their [VCs'] past behavior_

So given the complicated web of legal documents from the exits of folks that have been screwed over, how would you find the worst cases?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought the catchphrase was "Dance with the lady who brought you to the dance". I guess that's quaint and old fashioned nowaways, so it's been updated to don't "hook-up" (a euphemism for something more intimate) with someone else!

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it is "dance with one that brought you" (or "what brung ya", or similar).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very valid points. People will forgive all kinds of mistakes and failures - except for ethical ones. There are always reasons to take the short cut in prisonner's dilemma but work and life is a repeated game where trustworthiness pays.

In the first example (staying loyal to a lower valuation) financial incentives are on the aide of ethics. The later example (tossing out a signed term sheet to get a better investor) is where it's a real test. It's not an ethics decision until there is downside.

</comment><comment><USER9> IIRC Zuckerberg reneged/begged his way out of a deal in similar circumstances. The Washington Post had a deal to invest and then Accel came in with a huge valuation -- which Zuck took.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is an experienced VC writing total bullshit. He should know better. In love and war, everything is fair.

<comment><USER22> In the phrase "all's fair in love and war", love and war aren't (or at least _shouldn't_ ) be meant metaphorically. This isn't war and it sure isn't love. (Which also isn't referring to the full set of the million things "love" can mean but specifically to romance.)

<comment><USER11> Not really.

[http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=Alls+fa...](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=Alls+fair+in+love+and+war)

The point is, though, it is an excuse, not an ethical argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Ethics if for those who can afford it" - And obviously a VC can (having someone bring good dealflow is worth more than one deal).

Sounds like the poor CEO got 'guilt'ed into taking a worse deal.

</comment><comment><USER24> What about ethical behaviour of the new VC in the last case? It's like the old VC did due diligence and the new VC "used" all that work without a shred of decency.

<comment><USER11> Almost as those their was "social proof" or "a validated market".

NDA or no way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Truthfully, I fucking hate this sort of shit. VC's and entrepreneurs are at opposite sides of the table. You can pretend it's a friendship, but it's not. Now, I don't extend this to angels. They are making a personal investment, or at least that's how I perceive it.

VC's represent a corporation with a corporate interest. I do not extend ethics to corporate entities. I will feel bad if something bad happens to a person, but not to a corporation. I will never allow myself pretend that corporations deserve anything close to a personal bond. And fucking shame on you for trying to make people think of that.

You are business partners. At the end of the day, it is money. You want to put a guilt trip on me? GTFO.

</comment><comment><USER26> Always sell your house to the first bidder.

Always accuse the seller of having bad ethics, and turn it into a moral dilemma for them so you can take advantage.

Always threaten their reputation.

Always avoid using sexist analogies.</comment>


Graphene circuit's wireless promise - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25944824

<comment><USER2> It'll be interesting to see how they go about scaling this. Link to full article is here: [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140130/ncomms4086/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140130/ncomms4086/full/ncomms4086.html)

<comment><USER3> they've also posted on their blog: [http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/graphene- circu...](http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/graphene-circuit- ready-for-wireless.html#fbid=Ch-k7aVO16F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> pretty amazing, how fast this is becoming industrialized...

</comment><comment><USER5> Can this work for CPUs, too?

<comment><USER6> In theory I think so, but it seems that they can only integrate a relatively small number of transistors on a chip at the moment. If each transistor only has a 90% chance of working, then you'll have to do a lot of to even get a single 3000 gate 8-bit micro controller that works. But the process will probably improve with time.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Engineers Predicted the Failure of DRM Back in 2002 - <AUTHOR> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/microsoft_engineers_predicted_failure_drm_back_2002

<comment><USER2> mp3.com engineers in San Diego were breaking any and all DRM in 2000 (using virtual sound cards).</comment>


Ask HN: What is technologically possible today that wasn't possible 3 years ago? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Moving an airplane on its own without moving parts.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/21/first- ever-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/21/first-ever-plane- with-no-moving-parts-takes-flight)

That is the future of aerospace right there.

<comment><USER3> Turbulence on a bad boy that light would not be fun.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Still it is the beginning in either case.

With this propulsion technique you potentially break free from the traditional designs and can fly into any given direction.

<comment><USER4> what?

today's planes can fly in any direction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Technology is incremental these days, even with the flood of news and development it's hard to see actual _technological_ changes in the past few years.

For everything you can suggest, someone will have an example of how it was _technologically_ possible 3 years ago...

I guess it's obvious but from 3 years ago; hardware is faster, cheaper, and software is easier to develop...

</comment><comment><USER6> Using optics to detect radio signals, perhaps? [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611977/get-ready-for- atom...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611977/get-ready-for-atomic- radio/)

Also, a tongue in cheek answer, being able to get a company into big trouble for mishandling data via the GDPR ;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Real time raytracing? [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics- cards/rtx-2080...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics- cards/rtx-2080-ti/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Getting scammed by an "ICO", perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER9> The use of the immune system to target cancer for clinical use.

</comment><comment><USER10> Buying a mobile phone with a large notch at the top of the screen?

</comment><comment><USER11> \- Crispr gene editing. \- responsive computer brain interface \- building a value layer in top of tcp/ip \- AR/VR taking off \- today.

</comment><comment><USER12> Deep learning for the masses, thanks to cheap GPUs?

</comment><comment><USER13> What would technologically be possible in 3 years from now? :) Sounds more like a million dollar question.

</comment><comment><USER14> Fully mobile banking solutions? Revolut, N26, Monzo...

<comment><USER15> Technologically this was possible a decade ago or more.

This was an issue with mindset (the old banks don't want to invest in user experience) and the huge barrier to enter the banking market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Presidents can tweet about grabbing pussies.

<comment><USER17> No they can't! That alleged incident was over a private chat, not a public tweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Malicious Attacks by JavaScript

</comment><comment><USER19> quantum computing, maybe?

<comment><USER20> I still haven't seen any applications of qc, one day...

<comment><USER21> Breaking common encryption is the usually cited use case.

<comment><USER22> Maybe, but it doesn't look like quantum computers are yet able to break any form of encryption.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


20000 5G Satellites to send beams of Microwave Radiation over entire earth - <AUTHOR> http://healthimpactnews.com/2019/20000-satellites-for-5g-to-be-launched-sending-focused-beams-of-intense-microwave-radiation-over-entire-earth/ <comment> pickle-wizard Since it is non-ionizing radiation I'm not worried.

<comment><USER2> Biological damage from weak non-ionizing radiation is on par with ionizing. The fact that most commenters on HN can't seem to get their heads around, or even bother to research, is that this damage happens via two different mechanisms. One is simple and direct (ionizing) and the other is indirect and quite complex. In short, it happens via upregulation of ROS with oxidative tissue damage as result - also DNA damage. For more info, see: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378.2015.10...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378.2015.1043557)</comment></comment>


Brittle starfish are second known example of vision in an organism without eyes - <AUTHOR> https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(19)31512-X <comment><AUTHOR> >Only one species of sea urchin has 'passed' the same tests for vision, and it also, independently, changes color in response to light levels. Future work will probe whether this sea urchin, the only other animal in the world known to see without eyes, might be using a similar trick to Ophiocoma.

Source: [https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-just-showed-that- color-c...](https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-just-showed-that-color- changing-brittle-stars-can-see-even-though-they-dont-have-eyes/)

<comment><USER2> The term they use to describe this phenomena is "extraocular vision". Defined as the ability to see without eyes.

More info: [https://aspirantworld.in/extraocular- vision/](https://aspirantworld.in/extraocular-vision/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Couldn't you say that any plant that orients itself towards the sun (e.g. sunflower) can detect light without eyes?

<comment><USER4> Sensing light is distinguished from seeing in the first sentence of the abstract:

>>Almost all animals can sense light, but only those with spatial vision can ''see.''

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This amazing type of sensory perception reminded me of another animal w/ a star shaped apparatus [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star- nosed_mole](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star-nosed_mole).

My favorite quote from the Wikipedia entry, "evolution has repeatedly come to the same solution for constructing a high-acuity sensory system: subdivide the sensory surface into a large, lower-resolution periphery for scanning a wide range of stimuli, and a small, high-resolution area that can be focused on objects of importance" -Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Kenneth Catania

</comment><comment><USER6> Cuttlefish probably have some sort of vision on their skin; they are able to make camouflage which matches the color of their environment, but their eyes only have black and white vision. Note, this is still evolving science, see [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/how-colorblind- cuttl...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/how-colorblind-cuttlefish- may-see-living-color) for one explanation.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a (fairly stupid) question after reading this...

Is the human brain hard-coded for vision through eyes or is it possible to a (at least similar) form of vision without eyes, or like a much less exaggerated form of sonar like Daredevil, is the human brain REALLY that adaptable?

In an attempt to restore vision to those that lost it, is their a way to mentally rehab someone to "see" in a different way?

<comment><USER8> I read about a blind guy who had a camera hooked up to an array of electrodes on his back and eventually was able to 'see' using it. That was a long time ago, but it looks like it's still a thing nowadays, see 'Brainport' [1] and 'Visual Prosthesis' [2] (aka 'bionic eye'). It's amazing how plastic brains and nervous systems seem to be!

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets- blind...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-blind-see- with-tongues/)

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

<comment><USER9> That's amazing and actually reminds me of a book I read about young Merlin. As a child Merlin was blinded but learned to "see" by sensing objects with magic. Eventually he became so good at it that even though he didn't use his eyes, it was just as good as normal sight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This should be tagged as PDF.

<comment><USER11> Although HN can't really do anything about it, it's also worth noting the PDF linked is named "mmc3.pdf", which greatly confused me for a moment because I happened to also have the MMC-3 spec[1] opened in my PDF reader, and it's also roughly the same size.

[1] [http://www.13thmonkey.org/documentation/SCSI/mmc3r10g.pdf](http://www.13thmonkey.org/documentation/SCSI/mmc3r10g.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I suppose it depends on what you consider "eyes" \-- these starfish could be said to have many effectively single-pixel "eyes" instead of two high- resolution ones.

<comment><USER12> Eye is fairly well defined in biology. Think of it as the difference between 'light sensor' and 'camera'. A fully-formed eye will incorporate some form of lens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Echinoderms form the focus of extraocular vision research

Very droll.</comment>


Ask HN: Kickstarter for Startups? - <AUTHOR>

What would you think if a site existed that was basicaly a kickstarter but for startups/for-profit businesses.
So a startup or concept would come on and post their idea and the community would then buy shares/equity into the company?
I was thinking that because actual profit can be skewed so much, in exchange for buying equity/shares, the startup would payout a percent of revenue back to the investors.  That way it couldn't be up for debate what that number is.  Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Here are the kickstarter guidelines:

<http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines>

I don't think those read as though they rule out startups/for profit businesses, but they do rule out some of the destinations of the money (payroll, business expenses), so I'm guess you'd be limited to spending the money on the creative part.

In the case of diaspora for instance, they claim the money should go towards their 'living expenses while they work on the project', but that's pretty broad.

I'm curious what their motivation is to limit what the money can be spent on, after all that's hardly relevant as long as the project succeeds.

<comment><USER3> I believe it's to encourage the projects Kickstarter funds to have a specific focus, and to decrease the likelihood of fraud. If the money just goes into a slush fund, it's easy to lose track of it.

For instance, the Syzygryd Kickstarter is to fund our flame effects. Our money is earmarked for prototyping and fabricating our flame effects, and any money left over goes to buying more propane for more flamey goodness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is actually tricky from a legal perspective because startups are illiquid investments, and the SEC has rules that prevent you from selling shares in a non-public company to so-called non-qualified investors.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have worked with these guys before. Its a tough spot to be in. I think they are doing good overall.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.profounder.com/></comment>


Ask HN: Why should I use Mac to develop Rails apps? - <AUTHOR>

I always have a question, why should I use Mac to develop my Rails apps. I used Macbook Pro for several years. Than I move to Ubuntu. I don't see much difference.<p>What do you think? <comment><USER2> There's no reason; its a personal choice.

I use a Mac for development because its closer to our production environment then a PC would be, and because, for me personally, using *nix on the desktop is painful.

If you prefer to work on Ubuntu, then more power to you. If it didn't bother me, I'd do the same as it would be even closer dev <-> production.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Develop on Mac, deploy on Linux and have 99% of your users on Windows ? As if not enough things can go wrong already :)</comment>


Show HN: I wrote a book about learning ReactJS - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I wrote a book about making web application using React. It's called React Distilled, and it explores the fundamental principles of React systematically in 7 days.
Website: https://sebhastian.com/react-distilled/
The book distills the most important topic to learn about React, so you don't have to painstakingly browse the web, looking for pieces of React knowledge to build a fully working application.
The 7 parts will have the following content:
Day 1 - React 101, a practical introduction of React fundamentals
Day 2 - Routing, how to make navigation works and in sync with Browser URL
Day 3 - Form and Input Controls, to learn about accepting, validating, and submitting user inputs
Day 4 - React lifecycle functions, to learn the lifecycle of components and their uses
Day 5 - Using Firebase as React backend service, to learn how React can interact with backend services
Day 6 - Adding Firebase Authentication, to secure your application from anauthorized access
Day 7 - Optimizing and deploying, where you will deploy DGBook into Netlify
React Distilled considers your time important, and will actually make you understand how to create a React application from start to finish in one week, not months!
If you have any friends who are getting into React but are overwhelmed with so many stuff to learn, You can share this news, or tell me and I will reach out to them :)
Thanks for reading! Nathan <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool Nathan, you should try to get it on Goodreads!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources for learning software design? - <AUTHOR> Last week, a colleague came to me to ask for advice. He's a senior systems administrator who's now in a developer role. He's competent in writing and editing code in general, but feels like he's lacking experience in software design.<p>He's eager to learn about the subject, but I couldn't quite help him. I consider myself reasonably competent in designing software, but that's the result of 15 years trial-and-error-based learning, so I cannot point him to any resource. Can you recommend a book, webpage or other material (or maybe just some advice) that might help him build this skill? <comment><USER2> Tough question. I'm not aware of any books that are substitutes for reading and writing large projects, some books I've found useful: TCP/IP Illustrated: The Implementation (goes through the implementation of the 4.4BSD-Lite network stack), Lion's Commentary on UNIX (or xv6 book), Network Algorithmics (amazing book), Linux Kernel Development by Love, Large Scale C++ Software Design, Design Patterns. A lot of people like the Architecture of Open Source Applications books. I also think learning more computer architecture as the beginning of computer systems engineering is good for everyone, but that's just me.

Lampson's classic on hints for computer system design:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/acrobat-17.pdf)

Here is a previous HN post on the subject: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8000811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8000811)

The Clean Code author has a Clean Architecture book but I don't think it is out yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just study resources on MVC and some of the patterns that get lumped together with it (Adapter, Facade, etc). There are books available, but they all tend to lack in certain areas (since software design is a super broad topic). Best just to read up on some of the patterns and work on some projects. (Yes, I know that's the usual comeback for this sort of post. But practice really does make perfect for this sort of thing.)

And, if someone recommends a book called Code Complete, quietly begin to question some of their life choices.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think Code Complete is inadequate for learning about software design?

<comment><USER5> Not the user you replied to but, according to my experience, Code Complete is useful in that, as many other well-written books, it gives advice that comes from common sense and gives it a name. Much like Martin Fowler did with Refactoring, after all: breaking down long methods into smaller, well-named ones is common sense, but calling it Extract Method gives everybody a handle to use for further research.

Saying that whoever recommends Code Complete made some wrong life choices is a bit rude and uncalled for. Books are just tools, the benefits they bring depend on whether the reader goes through them in a smart way or not.

Then again, but this is a matter of taste, I would suggest The Pragmatic Programmer as a first read. It's shorter, well-written and with laser-like focus on the topic at hand.

Lastly, since designing and writing software is as much of an art as it is science, what's really important is to avoid reading passively and blindly applying anything the knowledge one finds in a book, and instead strive to understand why, and going against the grain and see why certain practices are called "best".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask NH: MacOS / XCode 4 Guides, Books, Tutorials? - <AUTHOR>

I'm on the search for a good XCode 4 and MacOS development book and tutorial.
Everything I've found either concentrates on Xcode 3, which is significantly different or iOS development, not MacOS.
If you have a good resource for MacOS development, can you please share? <comment><USER2> There are loads of great resources out there for learning Cocoa for Mac development but because Xcode 4 is so new you aren't going to find much aside from Apple's own documentation.

But I strongly recommend you check out Programming iOS 4: <http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010258>

It's still in development and has just been updated to cover Xcode 4. I've been reading the previous edition and it's brilliant: great writing and the first half of the book is applicable to both iOS and desktop Cocoa development. As a relatively new Mac developer (1-2 years) this really consolidated my knowledge of Apple's frameworks and Objective-C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your help. I'll definitely check out the book. For others who may be looking, I found these excellent Xcode4 screencasts: <http://pragmaticstudio.com/screencasts>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The mechanics of using XCode 4 are somewhat different, but all the fundamentals are identical. As far as documentation goes, Apple's online docs are a surprisingly good starting point.</comment>


Remembering Richard Feynman: Devia ser em portugues [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.tsijournals.com/articles/remembering-richard-p-feynman-devia-ser-em-portugues.pdf <comment><USER2> Feynman says in _Surely You 're Joking_ that he started learning Portuguese because he was attracted to a fellow student, then switched to Spanish because he felt guilty about his motivation, and then had to switch back to Portuguese upon receiving an invitation to teach in Brazil.

In this article he's reported as "saying sometimes he confused Portuguese with Spanish" and the inscription unexpectedly gives an example of that: Feynman has actually written "Portugués", the name of the language in Spanish, rather than the Brazilian norm "português".</comment>


China triumphs in space and sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-18575550

<comment><USER2> Why did you post two links to what's effectively the same story, within a minute of each other?

(the other: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4156153>)

And both of them with gratuitously editorialised titles, at that.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

 _Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like ... adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is.

You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it._

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, it was front page news - in China. I think internationally there are equally (if not more) important stories happening right now. Manned space- flight isn't a new concept...readers may not be that interested in it.

There were a multitude of important stories happening on Sunday outside of China: Egypt democratically electing its first president, for example. Editors make a call on which stories readers will find most interesting. The front- page is what sells the newspaper.

It is not as if the story was _ignored_ \- I think most Western news sources gave it coverage (certainly the ones I read did). But I also think in many countries right now other domestic and international issues (the Arab Spring, the Eurozone Crisis, the US election, etc etc) are of far greater interest to the public. And that's what sells newspapers / gets hits.

<comment><USER4> The cargo mission to the ISS by SpaceX made more splash. At least online and at blogs or wired/reddit. I guess the commercial aspect and underdog status made it more reliable for readers than rooting for Chinas ambitions.

But I think you are right, the story of Chinas successful start was not ignored by mass media. It just was not front page material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be really nice if competition with China in these endeavours prompts a second space race (faster that just the SpaceX et al are going currently). Put some real life into plans to get humanity permanently into space, not just in Earth orbit.

Although, there is the risk that space becomes militarised, which would probably be worse that the current situation: scientific satellites would be at risk, especially Earth-observing ones, and we would have a second Cold War.

<comment><USER6> China could do the trick that USA used to defeat USSR. Namely - start a new space/technology/military race, and use its bigger industrial base to ensure USA defaults.

But USA would probably just accept it lost the race, and not bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Still can't workout how the Tiangong-1 managed to dock with Jiaolong. Those crazy Chinese :-)</comment>


Spotify Closes $3 Billion Funding Round - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20121114/spotify-closes-3-billion-funding-round/?mod=atdtweet

<comment><USER2> this is a terrible headline. Their valuation is $3 billion, they didn't raise $3 Billion</comment>


Highest results yet for machine reading comprehension on two benchmark tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11876760/maluuba-epireader-machine-learning-comprehension-reading-text <comment><USER2> Is this really reading comprehension, being able to fill in a template by finding facts in the story? I mean, I get that it's able to parse the query and find the best fact within the story to fit that slot, but this is more like a better search indexer/Google Factbook then true comprehension.

My daughter is in 3rd grade, and 3rd grade reading comprehension requires an ability to make inferences about the text and reasons behind people's acts even if the verbatim text isn't present.

How could a pure deep learning approach work here, when to be able to make inferences, you'd need knowledge about an enormous number of entities.

Would this systems be able to answer a question like "Where did Snow White's friends or housemates go" if the word "friend" or "housemate" weren't in the text? Or perhaps an easy question for a child: "How do you think Snow White felt after the dwarves left?"

<comment><USER3> _Would this systems be able to answer a question like "Where did Snow White's friends or housemates go" if the word "friend" or "housemate" weren't in the text?_

A compounded system would. This fill-in-the-blank neural net, combined with another neural net to do synonyms (match the word from text that would align with friend/housemate)... that's like Word Vectors: [https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.9/tutorials/word2vec/...](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.9/tutorials/word2vec/index.html).

I think your daughter has these sorts of learnings and more. Also, if we give a computer/robot a bunch of these neural nets (reading, word-veccing, etc), and it is also programmed as a chatbot, we're going to start having a lot more existential questions about consciousness.

This convergence of simple systems to form "consciousness" seems to match some recent evolutionary science too:([http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how- consc...](http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how- consciousness-evolved/485558/). Though maybe I'm not making a fair leap.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02270](http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02270)

"EpiReader does this using two neural networks, a type of AI inspired by how neurons work in the human brain. The first neural net picks a set of likely answers based on its understanding of the paragraph. The second evaluates the reasoning used by the first to come up with the right answer."

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, that's a nice tnetennba. Their results are actually more impressive than what's reported because the human baseline is in the 80% ish, so they're getting close (but only on this test so don't expect Her just yet).

On the flip side, the complete test includes different categories of word: principal noun ("named entity"), noun, verb and preposition. This team -like others- only report their results on the two noun categories because LSTM RNNs already get human-like results (that's in the paper). Facebook's original paper noted that nouns and principal nouns are hard for statistical methods. I say probably because there's not enough of them to go around in text, Facebook says it's because of local-only context.

The point is that this is a state of the art result only on named entities and nouns. If you want to process verbs and preposition, good old LSTM are your friend. If you want both, it's going to hurt.

Also, Facebook used Memory Networks and reported they do much better on nouns than LSTM. This paper uses... er, it's complicated. There's GRU and bidrectional RNNs, and Convnets, besides that it's a bit fuzzy. In any case it looks like the complex architectures have the edge now.

But, I don't want to see too much into this because this is not some competition, like ImageNet, the teams all have the entire data and there's nothing protecting them from overfitting to the test set.

<comment><USER5> AFAIK some split of the children's book test dataset are actually not that well-formed. For example the Verb split, about 1/4 of the correct answers are 'said', which means you can get ~25% accuracy by just choosing 'said'. Then it may make less sense to make too much effort on those ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, another research team published slightly better results across the board on the same data sets, on the same day [1]. Also, both teams are Canadian, I believe.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02245](http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02245)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct - both teams are Canadian and part of Maluuba Research Lab in Montreal. [www.maluuba.com]

Here is the difference between the two:

The EpiReader model uses a two-stage process to arrive at an answer. The first stage extracts a small set of candidate answers from the text passage and the second stage turns these into hypotheses and then tests them through neural inference. [[http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02270](http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02270)]

The Alternating Iterative Attention model goes through a dynamic procedure of focusing on different parts of the question and the document in turn. [[http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02245](http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02245)]

Both models achieve fairly similar accuracy averaged across the two datasets, both beat the existing state of the art results by Google DeepMind, Facebook, and IBM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> " Both corpora use Clozestyle questions (Taylor, 1953), which are formulated by replacing a word or phrase in a given sentence with a placeholder token."

Looks like it is more task of text search, not "reading comprehension"..

<comment><AUTHOR> Cloze-style is just the technical term for a fill-in-the-blanks question, and fill-in-the-blanks questions can be mapped to standard questions:

For example: _____ really missed the dwarfs -> Who really missed the dwarfs?</comment></comment>


Making money building Shopify micro-SaaS apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.preetamnath.com/blog/building-your-first-micro-saas-app-on-shopify <comment><USER2> Hmm... my company builds Shopify apps for large companies. We have had several in the app store that we maintain, that we're either moving to end-of-life or planning to.

Personally I believe the days of a solo engineer being able to build a viable Shopify app business are nearly over.

Shopify has instituted new process for assessment and approval of new apps in the app store, similar to Apple. We are finding the approvals can take weeks and sometimes require big rewrites to meet as-yet-undocumented business requirements.

Also Shopify stores can explode in bursts of traffic at a moments notice. And these apps sometimes are mission critical to the merchant's business. It is very challenging and expensive to scale an app rapidly when the folks who have installed it get large bursts of success without any forewarning. If a DTC brand launches their store with some cheap / free apps and their product goes viral, that means the indie solo app developer has to scale to meet the demand. These new DTC merchants often don't understand very much of the business of maintaining SaaS and aren't very forgiving when an app fails to keep up with the demand put on it.

The challenge is if an inexperienced developer offers the app for free or a nominal fee like $50/mo that means they have to scale up infrastructure and support and often re-write the app for a small number of merchants who are still only paying $50/mo. This happens to more Shopify app developers than I want to admit, and many many bootstrapped folks are operating at a substantial loss, looking for a way out without irking customers who depend on their app.

With that in mind, be very careful if you enter any type of SaaS marketplace. It seems tempting and low barrier to entry but you may be biting off much more than you can chew.

<comment><USER3> Any unofficial details on the business requirements Shopify looks for before approving apps? I'm working on an app and would like to avoid being blindsided.

<comment><USER2> My company has a partner relationship with Shopify so I can't go into too much detail but. My rules of thumb:

1) The value of the app to merchants in the app store is taken into account. They look at whether the app fits into the ecosystem and adds value for merchants.

2) Your monetization strategy should involve revenue share with Shopify from the get-go, in a way that scales with the success of your app.

3) The user should not leave Shopify for account registration or authentication.

4) As much functionality should be embedded in Shopify as possible.

5) Do not ever attempt to build something that side steps Shopify's checkout or order data in any way. Shopify payments and transaction fees is how they make money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before I quibble, let me first state that this is an excellent, well written and comprehensive guide that any aspiring Shopify app developer should read carefully.

Two Quibbles.

First, the API is very good but Shopify support will not answer developer questions about it and will push you to their developer forums. There if you are lucky you might get a useful answer within a day or two, if unlucky you won't.

It's shocking that a company whose entire business revolves around these APIs (its not just used by app developers but by merchants themselves) refuses to offer technical support.

Secondly, it's a tiny market. The best data have found indicates about $50M a year total to App developers, so if you want to build that $1M MRR app, look elsewhere. Author, please correct me if this is wrong, as I'm working on a Shopify app as my side project and it would really help my motivation if my estimate is way low.

<comment><USER5> > The best data have found indicates about $50M a year total to App developers

The Shopify Developers homepage [https://developers.shopify.com/](https://developers.shopify.com/) (scroll down one screen) claims $90M in 2018, unless you have some reason to doubt their claim?

<comment><USER6> Which might imply closer to $180-$200 million today, given their sales have doubled since 2018.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the best points the author hits on is the benefit of platforms for MicroSaaS companies. Having a reliable source of highly qualified prospects makes it much easier to build out a profitable SaaS business because you can spend most of your time building while still closing customers.

The tough thing about this is that the ease of building into the platform also attracts a lot of competition (which the author mentions in the post too). Getting in on a fast growing platform early is really beneficial because you can arbitrage the opportunity before others get into the platform. My startup was probably one of the first 50 apps in the Slack app store when it launched in December 2015.

Since then, there's been about 5 dozen startups who are in the space now, but that early Slack platform momentum gave us enough of a lead to build a real business closing in on $1M ARR with 5 people.

<comment><USER8> > Getting in on a fast growing platform early

This depends on good timing. As a small team or single developer you don't want to invest months into building a plugin or service for a platform that won't take off. And at the time the platform has great traction, chances are that someone already took the higher risk and implemented something close to your idea.

I would be interested in knowing more about the decision process that made you confident enough in 2015 to pour resources into a Slack plugin, if you would like to share that.

<comment><USER7> Agreed and happy to share because you asked.

At the time, the "company" was just my co-founder and me. We were essentially going to fail/give up by taking on consulting work. The decision to integrate with Slack was a bit of a bet-the-company move. We were building an internal wiki to compete with Confluence. Our early beta users told us they'd use our MVP, and when we gave it to them, no one actually did. When we asked, they just said, "We just keep forgetting. Still interested." We then asked about hooking up our wiki to Slack so you could search from Slack and get notifications for new content, and they wanted that desperately. Some teams even pre-paid us to build it for them. So we scrapped our whole MVP and three months of work, and rebuilt the entire product on top the Slack platform in two weeks over the holidays.

When I say, "on top of Slack", I mean we literally used Slack's APIs as our backend and just rebuilt a "wiki" front end serving up Slack files from the APIs. We even deep linked to their Post as the editor in our wiki. The goal was to validate demand so we did it as leanly as possible. Once we launched, we got about 200 sign ups in 48 hours. From there, we built a real product, which is now tettra.com.

I wrote an article about the pros and cons of building on another company's platform about a year after that which goes into more details if you're interested: [https://thinkgrowth.org/building-on-slack-saved-our- startup-...](https://thinkgrowth.org/building-on-slack-saved-our- startup-94953fdaf27a)

<comment><USER9> Were there any other wiki-like apps for Slack when you guys first launched? I know there are several now, but I'm curious what it was like in the beginning.

<comment><USER7> The only other one at the time that also built a Slack integration was Guru. Confluence didn't have a Slack integration and HipChat was still alive too, so our bet was that we could be the Confluence equivalent for the Slack/Github/Asana ecosystem. Things have wildly changed since then (e.g. Slack bought HipChat, dozens of new competitors, etc), but we've adapted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very nice write up. I too am a Shopify app developer with 4 apps in the App Store, currently doing around $56k/mo and growing ~$2k/mo for the last 2 years.

Biggest thing is that the ramp up time is very slow. You're not going to get a bombastic number of installs starting off, no matter how much marketing you purchase. It's a slow climb up and the best time to launch your app is yesterday. Plan on one to two years to see decent revenue, and then hopefully continue to grow it for the next few years after that.

Shopify Plus customers and traffic spikes are definitely a big concern, especially when it comes to your pricing model. Everytime I've come up with a "worst case" scenario it has happened so you need to always have built-in contingencies around that. Whether that means reaching out to the store to create a unique plan/pricing for them and possibly adding more value services. For example, one of our apps gets between 25k to 100k webhooks per hour and the spikes are unpredictable. Our app also has a queue system to process jobs in the background which can mean there are anywhere from a thousand tasks in queue, or 500k. (Shopify API is slow and limiting for big, heavy tasks).

If you are also an actual Shopify developer (theme or private app developer) there is a lot of opportunities for upsells depending on what your app does. It seems a lot of app developers in the App Store simply have apps out there to get leads for development (service) work.

Overall, developing on Shopify has been really good. There are some annoyances with their REST API vs. GraphQL API, their documentation, their support, etc... But generally it's been smooth sailing for the past few years. But we've had very, very slow growth and only in the past couple years have paid more attention on trying to maximize our business around Shopify apps.

<comment><USER11> You're very successful. There're too many copycats on shopify. Do copycats have significant impact on your business?

<comment><USER10> Our highest growing app was launched over 3 years ago so there wasn't much competition in that specific space. Lately we have had a lot of copy cats (even taking the exact same name).

Our goal is always to be improving the apps and adding features that the copy cats just can't do. We invest a _significant_ amount of time in improving the apps.

No doubt we have lost some market share to the competition but it only motivates us more to keep on improving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There seems to be quite a bit of shadiness going on in the Shopify App Store. A cursory review led to apps that give away the sun and the moon for _free_ , which begs the question; how are they actually making money?

For example, this recommendation engine is "100% free", [https://apps.shopify.com/orcinus-product- recommendation](https://apps.shopify.com/orcinus-product-recommendation)

Company page: [https://autocommerce.io](https://autocommerce.io) , and there isn't a pricing plan in sight.

How exactly do you pay for the servers and dev costs? ML experts aren't cheap. They seemed to be backed by an app studio, [https://www.innonic.com/en/](https://www.innonic.com/en/) . Is this a loss leader? Are they harvesting datasets and selling them to PE? Is it part of some master plan? Or, is it simply an influx of cheap capital in the wrong hands?

What's going on here?

This example is one of several I've found that seem to be data harvesting operations. Could someone trick non-technical folks into introducing severe vulnerabilities for all their customers via this? Tracking them across the internet for fraud or scummy marketing?

Edit: More examples,

[https://apps.shopify.com/zoorix](https://apps.shopify.com/zoorix)

[https://apps.shopify.com/upsell-funnel-engine- upsells](https://apps.shopify.com/upsell-funnel-engine-upsells)

Further cursory research shows that this isn't the only category with an impossible value : price ratio. _What in the name of Baphomet is going on?_

<comment><USER11> The recommendation engine may not require ML. The recommendation can be based on statistics of customers browsing history.

<comment><USER12> While that may be true, any such application requires dev costs and some non- zero amount of computation. How do you pay for it while giving it away in a B2B capacity?

<comment><USER11> Agree, those apps can be free for a short period time to attract customers and they have to introduce pay plans to pay for all the costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > You're likely to copy an existing app and make a slight improvement in terms > of product, pricing, or both. Guess what, the next smart person with the > same idea can do the same to you.

Yeah that's a game that personally I could never bother playing. It sounds to me like trying to be the alpha fish in a tiny aquarium... that is closely observed and experimented with.

Going indie is no small effort, so if I did it I'd try to play a bigger game, with more freedom, where I can give my best without fear of being outmarketed because someone beat my price by a couple dollars.

I reckon the same applies to most 'app store' ecosystems.

</comment><comment><USER14> So Shopify charges 2.9% + $0.30 to retailers for purchases in the store, but they charge _20%_ for developers to sell those retailers an app...

Hard not to compare this against Apple, where the total revenue generated by the Shopify App Store is perhaps around $50 million versus the Apple App Store which is more than $50 billion in digital goods & services ($500 billion including physical goods & services).

<comment><USER15> That's what happens when you have a monopoly on your own app store.

I have nothing against Shopify (I've even built an app for a customer once like 8 years ago), but the only reason they charge 2.9% + $0.30 and not 20% for transactions is because Stripe, Square and PayPal all charge 2.9% + $0.30. What's really interesting is I wonder how much price collusion is involved with the 2.9% + 30c price for payment merchants. If there were no price fixing surely one of them would drop to 2.8% + 30c to gain an edge in market share but they don't.

<comment><USER6> > hat's really interesting is I wonder how much price collusion is involved > with the 2.9% + 30c price for payment merchants.

Most likely none.

To be collusion they have to be actively working together to do it. Pricing to match or at least be competitive with your peers, isn't collusion. If you are competing with the other players and you look at their prices (in this case, entirely public prices), then match, it's not collusion. It's extremely unlikely they're secretly conspiring to hold that line. At this point the business margins are doing the work to provide resistance to compete on undercutting the 2.9% + $0.30.

It's nothing more than a: you move and we'll move stalemate; you don't move, we won't move. It's unspoken and very common in business. The cloud companies such as DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode do it as well. Their plans have been quite similar for many years now.

The processors are not aggressively undercutting to advantage for the same reason those cloud companies have stopped doing that frequently, the margin has gotten a lot tighter and nobody is eager to go further. Each notch they go lower becomes increasingly painful.

<comment><USER15> > It's nothing more than a: you move and we'll move stalemate; you don't move, > we won't move. It's unspoken and very common in business.

That sounds very much like the definition of collusion. An unspoken agreement that says "you don't move, we won't move".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From experience, Shopify's app store is great for developers who want to build something and don't want to involve themselves into thinking about distribution. It was one of my first forays into building a SAAS, and I was able to scale to 5-figure ARR.

Churn is incredibly high, unfortunately. And merchant reviews are ruthless. There's some consensus amongst Shopify devs (at least in a particular Facebook group) that Shopify isn't doing enough in weeding out unreasonable reviews and fake reviews. So it's quite possible you launch your app and get killed in your first week. I've experienced it (as well as others) where merchants take you (the dev) hostage by threatening to write a poor review (which will affect your ranking) if you don't create a feature just for them.

I no longer need to develop for their app store anymore, but it's still a good start if you're just breaking into side projects and want to monetize them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know if there's a need for better label printing integration? I noticed Shopify's docs specifically mention DYMO printers and they discontinued Zebra printer support. That seems crazy to me.

I'm a solo dev that's built a desktop label printing app. I'd love to integrate it with Shopify. Read more at [https://label.live](https://label.live)

Anyone want to help me better understand the need for product labels, shelf tags, or fulfillment labels? Also thinking a FSBA integration would be important, too.

<comment><USER18> The direct ZPL deprecation was dumb. Thankfully Shippo fixes that already.

Shipping is real, and the more carriers you can support seamlessly the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Please excuse my ignorance, but what is a Shopify micro-SaaS app? Is it just a SaaS product that uses Shopify as the payment processor?

<comment><USER20> Yeah I'm confused too, I thought Shopify was a platform like Wix where you could only customize the UI. Are these apps for hosted installations where you can run arbitrary code?

<comment><USER21> They are apps that use Shopify APIs to add features. They don't run on Shopify servers, but talk to them through the API, can embed UI in Shopify backend dashboards, ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do I understand it correctly? Basically, a developer would create new functionalities for the Shopify platform and Shopify will take 10/20% commission depending on the store plan from the developer?

I personally would suggest to start a business creating WooCommerce websites. At least you'll be owning the whole profit and would not depend from the whishes and decisions of a wannabe BigCorp. As an additional plus you help spreading open source software.

<comment><USER23> The true problem I see with these kind of integrations is that a company like Shopify can very easily figure out which third-party extensions are turning around the most revenue and then re-build those in house, only better since they have direct access to the folks building the platform.

<comment><USER24> Shopify doesn't seem to do this, and actually it's a bit of a problem because some of the apps have the craziest workaround for gaps in the backend.

Can't have multiple discounts in the cart? Splution: create custom discount codes on the fly for absolutely everyone in real-time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There is also Magento. Lots of the older web retailers are probably running Magento if not their own in house stuff.</comment>


SpaceProbes - <AUTHOR> http://spaceprob.es/ <comment><USER2> So proud to see MOM/Mangalayan there. People in India are very proud of achievements of our space agency ISRO. It' one govt owned org that is in the right hands and is doing wonders. Only yesterday, it took heaviest payload by Indian spacecraft and placed 5 UK satellites in Orbit. All this despite being on shoe string budget.

<comment><USER3> _> > Only yesterday, it took heaviest payload by Indian spacecraft and placed 5 UK satellites in Orbit._

Yesterday's launch was the heaviest _commercial_ payload launched by ISRO's PSLV. PSLV has been used earlier to launch more massive Indian payloads (ex: 1.8 tonne RISAT-1). Also, ISRO's GSLV Mk2 and GSLV Mk3 (X-mission) have launched 2 tonne and 3.7 tonne payloads respectively.

I am eagerly waiting for next GSLV Mk2 launch in August, and the reusable launch vehicle technology demonstrator (RLV-TD) in October :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's such a lovely website. What a great project!

Totally ignorant question – is that an exhaustive list? Wow, such mind bogglingly incredible machines.

<comment><USER5> Their site says it's a catalog of "the active human-made machines that freckle our solar system and dot our galaxy." Obviously it's not really the "galaxy," per se, considering we only have one probe that's actually left the solar system so far (Voyager 1). There are a number of inactive probes.

<comment><USER6> Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 might have left the solar system but we don't know where they are...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Check out the playlist linked in the Voyagers of the Golden Records sounds [http://web.mit.edu/lilybui/www/](http://web.mit.edu/lilybui/www/)

<comment><USER8> I like to fantasize about alien life playing the gold record and hearing Chuck Berry's classic, Johnny B. Goode. That guitar riff is so great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why aren't the Pioneer probes on this list?

<comment><USER10> The list only shows active spacecraft. We lost contact with Pioneer 10 and 11 in 2003 and 1995 respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Philae is alive again it seems [https://twitter.com/Philae2014](https://twitter.com/Philae2014)

Maybe add a box of its own? [http://spaceprob.es/rosetta/](http://spaceprob.es/rosetta/) does mention it but I think it did reactive slightly recently. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_%28spacecraft%29#Reawak...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_%28spacecraft%29#Reawakening)

</comment><comment><USER12> A video of Sun coronal ejections made of images from STEREO probes: [https://vimeo.com/3921306](https://vimeo.com/3921306)

</comment><comment><USER13> Really nice design. It invites people to read.

</comment><comment><USER14> Terrific site. A visualization of the relative locations of the probes would be a helpful addition.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space- images/charts/what...](http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space- images/charts/whats-up-in-the-solar-system-frohn.html)

Updated monthly

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice website. There are a lot of cool probes in active mode now like New Horizons and DAWN. For the future I think the probe I'm most excited about is Hayabusa 2, scheduled to grab a piece of an asteroid around 2018 and return in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish you could add the distance in light seconds, minutes and hours as well. After reading a lot of SciFi it has become a lot easier to think of the biiiig distances in space in light travel time like 1.25 light seconds vs. 374740 km.

Edit [fixed spelling]

</comment><comment><USER18> Did I miss the Hubble? Would it not qualify for some reason?

<comment><USER11> Hubble orbits the Earth. Spaceprob.es seems to be for all current man made probes/landers/etc sent beyond that.

Was going to put last weeks link that neatly showed all the hundreds, if not thousands, of man made objects orbiting Earth, but I can't find it just now (will edit if I do)

<comment><USER19> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9841831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9841831)

<comment><USER11> That is the one. Thanks :) Basically [http://stuffin.space/](http://stuffin.space/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Love this site. I saw it pop up somewhere a few months ago and bought the big poster for my room. Looks fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome job. One addition that would be cool is adding the current speed for each probe.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd buy a kid-sized t-shirt, if you had them!

</comment><comment><USER22> This made me smile! Thanks for the short summaries. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> "The golden record was curated by Carl Sagan and others in hopes of it one day reaching an extraterrestrial spacefaring civilization."

I'm fairly certain that extraterrestrial life is more aware of our planet than we are ourselves, and have been since the beginning of time. Then again, this is a strictly technology site and spiritual matter is seen as evil and unproven factor in the ecosystem of Earth.

<comment><USER24> I'm fairly certain it's not, but that's an equally unfalsifiable and worthless opinion, so agree to disagree?</comment></comment>


The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are not software engineers - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/766658/the-highest-paid-workers-in-silicon-valley-are-not-software-engineers/?utm_source=qzfbarchive <comment><USER2> Managers getting paid on average more than the regular engineer/employee at the same company, in other news water is wet.</comment>


Most amazing business card ever - <AUTHOR> http://blog.finette.com/2013/04/25/most-amazing-business-card-ever/

<comment><USER2> Beg to differ. I prefer bone background with Silian Rail font.</comment>