Aaron Swartz: How To Launch Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/howtolaunch <comment><USER2> I find this to be excellent advice. This is exactly the approach we took at GitHub almost down to the letter. It took about 2 months until the site was good enough to use to host the GitHub source, another month until we started private beta with invites, and three more months until public launch.

Artificial scarcity is a great technique to generate excitement for a product while also limiting growth to a rate that won't melt your servers. We worked through a huge number of problems and early users gave us some of the ideas that have defined GitHub. By doing a Hollywood launch, things would have been very different and I am convinced, very much worse.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT underestimate how much your users will help you to define your product. If you launch without having significant user feedback time, you've essentially thrown away a massive (and free) focus group study.

Let me also say that when we finally did our public launch, there was plenty of buzz, and all of it was the RIGHT kind of buzz. The buzz that attracts real, lasting customers (and no, we weren't on TechCrunch, that traffic is garbage).

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. There is just so much value to be gained from early users suggestions, and going through a few iterations.

Those early users are amazingly important. The overly passionate verging on stalker types that IM you asking if you just changed the color of a link and then tell you exactly what they think about it.

It was a similar story with Mibbit, although I didn't bother with beta, just threw the site up there and started iterating. The growth isn't quite a hockey stick, but it's extremely consistent which means I can grow the product along with the userbase.

Also I agree about techcrunch type traffic. Early on with Mibbit it got to the top on proggit. It was sort of fun, got a reasonable number of people in that night who looked around, said this is cool, then went... never to be seen again. Next day it was pretty dead. I think that's pretty typical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 37Signals has launched four (4) commercial products, and takes in (by my guess, from headcount and subscription numbers) mid-high 7 figures from them.

Aaron Swartz has launched, by my count, _no_ successful products (unless I'm wrong and Reddit wasn't already a success story when he got there).

From Aaron's own web page, here's what I get when I click on his "my day job" link:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/29804691@N02/2786744327/>

Why am I being such a dick about this? Because the argument he's making is disingenuous. Aaron advocates for an extended friends-and-family beta before launch. Aaron has no idea what 37signals does to beta and dogfood their product before the "Hollywood Launch". From what I can tell, everything 37signals does happens just before "step 5" in his master plan.

The difference between 37signals and Aaron Swartz isn't methodology. Methodology is a band-aid. The difference between Aaron Swartz and 37signals is _ability to execute_.

Here's a much better writeup from a much more credible source on the same topic:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html>

<comment><USER5> When you're finished with the ad hominem part of your attack, I'd just like to weigh in and say that Aaron got this exactly right.

<comment><USER4> Aaron advocates avoiding the "Hollywood Launch", marketing your product only after you've verified that "random people" are satisfied with the offering.

I'm asking you: are you saying that after Fog Creek spends 9 months building and testing a product, dogfooding it with internal users, and running closed beta testing, that you would _avoid publicity_ for it until random paying customers started liking it?

Because I feel like I remember you making _an actual movie_ about the last product you launched.

<comment><USER5> again, with the ad hominems!

<comment><USER6> Looked more like a question to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We actually did the same thing for Kongregate. Except we gave out an invite code to everyone who asked - usually same day. So the artificial scarcity was... artificial. But if we'd had a big problem we could have stopped the invites.

We did that for about two months and then took the invite barrier down. Worked for us.

edit: I forgot the second half of this story. A few months after we took the invite barrier down, we decided to do a "Hollywood" launch - really all we were doing was changing the "alpha" to "beta" and releasing some new features (earning cards by playing games). It worked, we got lots of press. Fox News even called and asked if I could go on their afternoon cable show. I did (here's the video - <http://tinyurl.com/2gpz7x>). Our site immediately cratered - it was a much, much bigger surge than Digg. We got it back up in about 20 minutes and the follow on traffic was good as well.

So I guess we did a hybrid Gmail/Hollywood.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can people _please_ stop using "software" and "webapp" interchangeably?

I realize most members here are founders of startups that deal with webapps, but there _are_ some startups that deal with traditional desktop applications - true "software," who share similar interests.

That said - I wonder which of these two approaches is better for desktop software development. I'd imagine the fact that a user has installed your software is a "hook" of sorts - they're easier to reel in than website visitors which can escape rather more easily.

<comment><USER8> -3? Looks like I'm the only desktop developer here then. My bad.

<comment><USER9> _Looks like I'm the only desktop developer here then._

I'm sure it's because you imply that the only installable software is on the desktop. You insensitive clod. (I'm kidding, of course, but I also build non- web-apps and also found this advice only marginally useful, though I do find that having users from very early in the process is vital.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The big elephant in the room that nobody here seems to be taking into consideration: 37Signals charges their users to use their product.

The Hollywood launch allows for such a case, whereas this example makes that much more difficult. Do you force beta users to pay? Do they pay the same amount as others? Etc etc.

Hollywood launches allow you to broadcast a product as "finished". The issues Aaron cites seem to arise from broadcasting the "finished" announcement when the product is clearly not in that state.

<comment><USER11> I think GitHub did a free beta launch, followed by a few iterations with feedback, and then they started charging users.

That's reasonable for beta users, especially if they get a discount for their feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you guess which method cuil chose. If you remember what cuil is of course.

Perhaps they should have read this first.

<comment><USER12> Cuil, the company that announced it was beta 10 months prior, refined its crawler multiple times when people start complaining, and the one that did the traditional massive PR push a couple weeks back but failed because their marketing team are just inept?

That one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> But does the Hollywood launch hurt? It seems like the reasonable way to go is to get a big bump when you open doors, iterate using the feedback of people that stay, and get more coverage whenever you release a big new feature set.

Certain sites don't really make sense with invite codes too.

<comment><USER14> You're right. I think web apps get a huge benefit from soft launches, beta testing and user feedback. Its just invaluable information to have before you really present yourself.

On the other hand, if you're launching the next ValleyWag site, the Hollywood launch might be the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it boils down to how comfortable you are with your product.

If your stuff feels iffy and has less-than-ideal engineering practices, the slow and steady launch might work great. Expose enough of your idea to keep people idling around and begin free beta testing.

This isn't bad, per se. Everything is a trade off, and if engineering skill or time is not something you have an excess of, the slow and gradual launch can work.

On the other hand, if you have experience building and scaling and are confident that: a) the core of your idea is apparent in your product, and b) you did enough testing that things won't break on launch, by all means, build the hype and open the flood gates on launch day.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of Fleaflicker's biggest advantages was having a smaller userbase than other sites.

This meant I could mess up in spectacular fashion and still fix things before anybody noticed. "Fixing things" involved computationally intensive tasks and the bigger sites just couldn't do that quickly.

[http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?id=2832...](http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?id=2832928)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think that both can work. It depends on the goals of the company and type of software they are launching. I do think that gmail is a terrible example though. Google can launch anything, slowly or Hollywood style and it will get attention.Granted not everything they do succeeds, but Google has an advantage with any new product launches. A better example might be the original launch of Google.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think both of them are important.</comment>


A Gas Heist Gone Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-26/a-gas-heist-gone-wrong-an-explosion-and-137-deaths-in-mexico <comment><USER2> This is primarily about the poverty of the victims. Most of the adults must have known about the extreme danger of being close to gasoline fumes. If we can't blame their innocence, what's left besides an overwhelming need for the gas or the profit from it?

Maybe the answer is herd following behavior. A few oblivious people go into the danger zone, and the less oblivious think maybe they know a reason why it isn't dangerous and I shouldn't miss out. It's a human variation of the myth of lemmings jumping off cliffs, but less mythical.

<comment> crooked-v "The profit from it" is underselling the effects of extreme poverty.

> Many of the survivors say they're among the 43% of Mexicans living below the > poverty line—about $1,940 a year in the city, $1,260 in the country—and > can't afford to ignore free money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A great podcast episode on this is Planet Money's 'Mexico Fights The Fuel Pirates'; they explain how it all led up to this

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/08/701613540/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/08/701613540/episode-899-mexico- fights-the-fuel-pirates)

<comment><USER4> Wow... that was a lot better than your average Planet Money segment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the Zoolander gasoline fight: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTrxEQnPtAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTrxEQnPtAg)

<comment><USER6> That's exactly what I was thinking when I read:

 _"People were fighting, others laughing, and most were drunk on the fumes. They were throwing gas at each other."_

It's amazing (and tragic) that people would do this in real life.

<comment><USER5> I can think of examples of "mass" misbehavior when I was younger:

\- Camp councilors eating the freeze pops in the lunch freezer that were for the kids

\- High schoolers eating all the candy in the vending machine when someone broke the glass

\- A very large group of us went to a local restaurant. The next day we heard of a lot of people leaving without paying. (I left a lot of money before leaving, and told everyone I sat with to do the same too. Now that I'm older I'd at least track down our server and hand them money personally.)

In all cases, there's this weird thing that seemed to turn off in other peoples' heads. It's like all reason just goes away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Version of story without a paywall: [https://1stamendmentnews.org/2019/06/26/a-gas-heist-gone- wro...](https://1stamendmentnews.org/2019/06/26/a-gas-heist-gone-wrong-an- explosion-and-137-deaths-in-mexico/)

<comment><USER7> You mean a stolen repost of the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Greed breeds corruption, corruption breeds poverty, poverty breeds lack of education, lack of education breeds stupidity.

It is the same if you replace the lack of education with despair..

</comment><comment><USER9> LiveLeak has the footage of it exploding and before and after.

It's worth watching if your up to it but the footage of people escaping on fire is hard to handle.

But like all such things it is both informative and might help you handle similar situations such as a small gas fire.

[https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=sLpTO_1547875958](https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=sLpTO_1547875958)

</comment><comment><USER10> There was an article recently about how the drug cartels in Mexico pivoted into stealing gas. Much easier and less risky than drug trafficking.

This is why ending the war on drugs in US will not improve the Mexico violence problem much.

<comment><USER11> the war on drugs should have been aborted years ago. If that had been done, there would not be any gangs blowing up pipelines today.

<comment><USER12> We haven't fought any drug wars in Venezuela, and they have routine gas theft, including tanker truck hijackings. It sounds more like economic causes than "the US did it!"

<comment><USER13> And we certainly have never interfered in any economic sense in Venezuela ... hold on, my producer is telling me that this is incorrect.

<comment><USER14> Elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did a kid get shot for seeing too much ?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is what happens when you take a story, in this case gangs and cartels stealing gasoline from pipelines, and add a human interest element that has _nothing_ to do with the story. In this case, that is a group of locals taking gas spewing from a broken pipeline and being killed or injured by the explosion.

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure the story here is how 137 people died in a gas explosion in Mexico (plus probably hundreds injured for life), including some backstory as to why that explosion happened.

> The Mendoza sisters, however, say seeking out a guilty party is a low > priority for them, at least for now. They're trying to survive the > consequences of the fire and get used to the idea of being alone in Hidalgo.

<comment><USER18> Fortunately, that is the story. But the headline makes it sound like the accident in particular was due to a heist. This implying an organized effort to steal gas. But as the precious poster mentioned, this was a broken line that locals just started showing up to in order to take advantage of the free money.

<comment><USER19> It wasn't a broken line, it was a botched tap job. I don't see a lot of moral difference between an organized heist and an impromptu opportunistic criminal mob, except that the former has the decency to not get children involved.

<comment><USER16> " _The scene in the green alfalfa field abutting the pipeline appeared to be a free-for-all, roughly 80 villagers swarming a leak inside a 100-foot-long, 5-foot-deep irrigation trench that bisected the field. There seemed to be no organization, no tap, no hose—only two holes in the pipe, which made the fuel spurt as if from a wonky fountain. It seemed possible a local huachicol gang had screwed up the extraction, but the holes had none of the typical hallmarks._ "

There's no description or picture of the pipe, other than that and the photo captioned, "Survivors have erected a memorial at the site of the fire." Similar pipes get punctured by farm equipment fairly routinely; there's no reason to believe this was a criminal tap rather than an accident that the local people tried to take advantage of.

What I suspect Bloomberg wants is an article about the evils of gasoline thieves and they're sticking the human interest story to that to get attention.

<comment><USER19> The article seemed very sympathetic to the people killed and injured to me, giving multiple accounts from their perspective and that of their families, etc. But this is the equivalent, at best, of a crowd descending on a crashed Brinks truck to snatch up spilled cash and then having the armored car's fuel tank explode on them. They subjected themselves to extraordinary danger to take what didn't belong to them and paid the price for it. I'd consider the moral ledger to be balanced.

<comment><USER20> Except the gas that was spilling out of the pipe was never going to be recovered and used for anything else - nothing of value was being stolen. For people in extreme poverty, the money they gain from gas could significantly affect their lives, I don't blame them for trying to take it.

<comment><USER19> Oh I don't blame them for trying either. I do blame them for bringing children and getting them killed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Worth remembering Mexico nationalized gas, leading to gas shortages, rationing - and higher prices.

<comment><USER22> That seems like a un-nuanced generalization of Mexico and it's politics. Saudi Arabia has nationalized gas and has no shortage and low prices.

<comment><USER23> Saudi Arabia's subsidy of gas prices likely results in either unsustainable economic performance without oil revenue and/or a total lack of value for fuel efficiency = environment impact.

They are having some actual success reforming in this area - [http://www.arabnews.com/node/1353116](http://www.arabnews.com/node/1353116)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Accepting Payments Over SMS with Stripe - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sendsonar.com/2015/06/24/sonar-stripe-for-an-amazing-sms-based-customer-experience/

<comment><USER2> +1 for a thorough walkthough.

I'm not quite ready to +1 the idea though. It's intriguing, but seems to open a user up to abuse. Unsolicited messages (email, SMS, IM, DM, Facebook, etc.) are a popular way of phishing (tricking individuals into giving away private information). One tip security pros repeat over and over is not to click on unsolicited links.

While you say customers will only provide payment information to a company they trust, what is to keep a crook from impersonating a trusted vendor and tricking a customer into paying them instead of the actual company?

I'm all for convenience when done safely, and perhaps your business model accounts for this - I'm just curious what you have done to prevent SMS-based payments from turning into a source of fraud.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. We believe the potential for abuse on SMS is the same as any channel.

If a crook spoofed a phone number (pretending to be a company), the customer would still need to initiate the order. Meaning, if they received a text out of the blue from a company saying "thanks for ordering pizza now put your credit card in" without having actually asked for pizza, it would be quite weird for them to put their CC info in.

If a user's phone was lost/stolen, there's a chance someone could text in an order and at that point it is up to the company to do things like verifying information for orders over a certain price point (along with other security hurdles).

As for unsolicited messages, it is illegal for a company to do that (it still happens, I get spam phone calls on a daily basis) and we give an easy way to opt-out (simply reply back any of our unsubscribe keywords like "stop") and they wont' be able to message you anymore through Sonar.

Hope that helps! Would love to hear your thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This example reminds me of that Push for Pizza app that made waves awhile ago. Therefore, I love it! But seriously, this was a really solid walkthrough

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey all! I wrote this article. Please feel free to ask me any questions.

<comment><USER5> how do you prevent scam?

<comment><USER4> Customers will only provide payment information to a company that they trust.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Use an Oracle in a Smart Contract - <AUTHOR> http://126.96.36.199/2018/07/17/oracles-in-solidity/ <comment><USER2> Not at all related to the article: I wish I could own an IP address. I realize why this isn't a reality, but seeing the URL piqued my interest.

I looked into it once and it seemed very, very expensive.</comment>


Pay With Facebook Is In The Wild - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/29/its-heeerrre-pay-with-facebook-is-in-the-wild/

<comment><USER2> This was tried a couple times in the 90s and didn't last very long. Hopefully Facebook can make it work; micropayments might create some new business models for content producers.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com>

<comment><USER3> On the other hand: [http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/19/the-worlds-most- lucrative-...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/19/the-worlds-most-lucrative- social-network-chinas-tencent-beats-1-billion-revenue-mark/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> They should have just used dollars instead of this credits crap. Or if they wanted to stick to credits, should have made it 1 credit = 1 dollar.

<comment><USER4> There are many engineering, legal, financial, and other benefits to using surrogate currencies. Rather than go in to those, I'd like to agree with you: it sucks for users.

I think that Microsoft can get away with the points on Xbox Live simply because they do have a large enough store. I think that a virtual world game could get away with it for the same reason. But a PayPal like system? That's crazy! I hope it is just a temporary solution for micropayments and they are working out the other problems and will eventually support proper currency.</comment></comment>


25ft Tsunami of Foam Invades Streets of India - <AUTHOR> http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/614905/India-flaming-lake-tsunami-of-foam-foam-flames <comment><USER2> Stopped reading when I saw this sidebar:

"PICTURED: Does eerie photo snapped HALLOWEEN finally prove ghosts exist?"

It is hard to take anything a news organization prints when those are the headlines they choose to promote.

Foam would be better than what I saw when last in India: Bombay knee-deep in sewage during a monsoon. (Yes, that was many years ago.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the site is a bit silly. But this news piece is genuine; I saw the same article elsewhere a week or so ago.</comment></comment>


ICE agents make arrests on first day of California coronavirus lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/gallery/with-masks-at-the-ready-ice-agents-make-arrests-on-first-day-of-california-coronavirus-lockdown <comment><USER2> > please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't > editorialize.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Is there any evidence ICE is "using state of emergency to arrest people obeying the shelter in place order", or are they just continuing to do what they were doing before the shelter in place order?

<comment><USER3> Sixth slide: "We just have to continue to go with the same game plan that we've been doing"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How long until those ICE agents themselves contract COVID-19?

I don't see gloves, or masks or any protection at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it smart to pick a lot of random people off the street and put them in crowded spaces? That's surely a perfect breeding ground for covid -19.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the physical and mental health of people in detention is not well-regarded.

<comment><USER7> Unsure why this was downvoted as the inspector general's findings in 2018 concurred:

"The Department of Homeland Security inspector general found expired food and dilapidated bathrooms during unannounced visits to four immigrant detention facilities in 2018, according to a report released Thursday."

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/06/politics/ice-detention- center...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/06/politics/ice-detention-center-ig- report/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Assuming this is true, it's a terrible idea. Regardless of what you think of the politics of deportation, doing it in such a way as to encourage the spread of disease is wrong. Coronavirus doesn't care about citizenship. It reminds me of the CIA's fake vaccination program:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups- cia...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups-cia-osama- bin-laden-polio-crisis)

</comment><comment><USER9> Jails are going to become death camps. This is beyond stupid, forget inhumane because they really don't care.

Joe Biden is no prize but at least he can be shamed into behaving better. Hopefully we'll get vote by mail and end this.

<comment><USER10> It's well documented that Joe Biden's administration deported far more than the current.

[https://www.axios.com/immigration-ice-deportation-trump- obam...](https://www.axios.com/immigration-ice-deportation-trump- obama-a72a0a44-540d-46bc-a671-cd65cf72f4b1.html)

[https://thehill.com/latino/470900-deportations-lower- under-t...](https://thehill.com/latino/470900-deportations-lower-under-trump- than-obama-report)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-trump-has-deported-fewer- im...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-trump-has-deported-fewer-immigrants- than-obama-11564824601)

[https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical- persp...](https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective)

<comment><USER9> So do you think the current administration statistics are actually true or do you think it's like the USA has very few Covid-19 cases right now because there are no tests/statistics?

What if the current number is actually ten times higher, how would you know?

He's reached into so many agencies and tampered with them. Why would ICE be any different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did I read this right?

<cut>

Edited: seems not, but juries out, looks like I might have read the intended but un-evidenced subtext. Apologies.

<comment><USER12> I'm really tired of being called a fascist for wanting to live in a country with boarders.

You certainly didn't misapprehend the narrative this article is trying to push. I don't think immigration enforcement should stop as a result of the pandemic, if anything we should be even more determined to discourage illegal entry.

<comment><USER11> >You certainly didn't misapprehend the narrative this article is trying to push. //

Were the arrests made in any way affected by the state of emergency?

One photo says "David A. Marin, a director of enforcement and removal operations with ICE. ICE officers are being joined by U.S. Customs & Border Protection agents in the last few weeks, as more resources are deployed in sanctuary cities. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)".

Was this normal operation, or have the activities against "sanctuary cities" been stepped up; and is that related to State of Emergency powers?

<comment><USER12> See the reply by masonic. The article makes no mention of this being different other than the added protection for the officers, but like I said the tone is clearly attempting to give that impression without actually saying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone else find it interesting how well taken and high quality these photos are? It seems to contradict the article's agenda. Photos from within police vehicles, showcasing weapons, and some where the person "under arrest" has hands behind their backs but no cuffs.

<comment><USER14> Agencies with bad PR hop at the opportunity for ride-longs from reputable journalists - I assume the LAT journos buttered them up and led them to believe they would write a flattering article, then dropped this.

...so they're probably excluded from doing ride-alongs with ICE now.</comment></comment>


A walkthrough of the SSL certificate signature process - <AUTHOR> http://commandlinefanatic.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.cgi?article=art012 <comment><USER2> The detail in here is great. If you just want to generate and sign certs with a minimum of hassle though, I recommend easy-rsa from OpenVPN:

[http://openvpn.net/index.php/open- source/documentation/misce...](http://openvpn.net/index.php/open- source/documentation/miscellaneous/77-rsa-key-management.html)

I'm also curious to hear about what others use to automate this stuff.</comment>


Craig Barrett: Carly Fiorina positioned HP for success - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconvalley.com/opinion/ci_14819426?nclick_check=1

<comment><USER2> Considering she's currently in a high-profile Senate race, it's hard for me to take positive or negative assessments of her time at HP at face value; I tend to assume they're all written with a political goal in mind.

This article is positioned as just a tech guy straightening out politically- motivated mischaracterization of Fiorina's time at HP, but it's perhaps not coincidental that Barrett is an active Republican and generous donor to Republican political campaigns.</comment>


How do I value a domain name? - <AUTHOR>

I had big plans to create an eco-portal about 5 years ago. Unfortunately, I only got as far as registering the domain name :)
So someone has approached me to buy the domain name. I'm not a domain-squatting fan and would like to see it go to a good home. At the same time, I don't want to give it away then find it was sold on for more...
So here's what I have: domybit.co.uk domybit.com domybit.info domybit.net domybit.org
and I'm asking for £450 to cover the cost of the 4 years I've renewed them and a bit of time to sort out the transfer. What do you think they are worth? How do I value them? thanks hn. <comment><USER2> You value them based on what somebody is willing to pay.

So, you ask these folks to make you an offer. If it is more than the £450 you're looking for, you can take it, or hold out for more, if you think they have deeper pockets and desire.

If they turn around and sell it on for more, that's no loss to you; you got what you thought was a fair price, and weren't willing to put in any additional sales effort.

</comment><comment><USER3> Put it up on Sedo or another service with a reserve price of £450, and invite the guy who approached you to bid there. A buy it now price might also make sense. I'd go for £2-4k for the whole set.

Remember you're not selling it to cover your costs, you're selling it because they're valuing it at more than you value it.</comment>


ASK PG/HN: Questions before interview for S11 batch - <AUTHOR>

1. How much time to accept if we get an offer? If PG calls does the answer have to be on the spot or do we have some time to discuss the terms internally?
2. Is DST investing in all the start-ups again? I know that DST has nothing to do with YC but YC has a link on the home page to the techcrunch article from a few months ago and I was wondering if they know what DST is upto. Knowing this is very important for us to be able to make a decision.
3. Has anybody negotiated different terms than what were offered by PG?:)
I think that this thread can useful to others as well who want to ask questions anon.
ps: Anon only because we avoid all publicity abt funding and alerting competition abt status of such things. <comment><USER2> 1\. Since we show you all the paperwork in advance, the only thing you don't know before I call is how much stock we'll ask for. Usually groups can decide about that on the fly, or even in advance. So most people either tell me yes or no when I call them, or call back a few minutes later. But we don't have any deadline for replying, so if groups have some reason they need more time to decide, we always give it to them. E.g. there was once a startup that we offered to fund that got an acquisition offer that weekend. They needed weeks to see if the acquisition was going to happen. (It did.)

2\. It wasn't DST but the Start Fund, which is a separate thing. I believe those guys are going to invest again, but I can't promise anything, because it's not for me to promise. A lot of people don't realize this, but YC was not a party to that deal. It was just between Start Fund and the individual startups. (We were in favor of it, certainly, but we didn't have any agreements with anyone.)

3\. In years past I caved a few times when people tried to negotiate with me, but I haven't recently. I realized I was just doing it out of fatigue at the end of a long day of interviews. I've also learned from experience that there is near zero correlation between groups' tendency to negotiate and how well they end up doing. In fact come to think of it, possibly an inverse correlation. So it's easy to say no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. 1 more question. How do you decide how much equity you would expect for YC's investment? I was on wompt and conovore the other day when all of this was going down and people were sharing their startups and many seemed very far along.

They way I see it YC adds the following value:

1\. Operational Help (incorporation, UX, UI etc)

2\. Strategic Advise (PG/JL/HT and others)

3\. Cohort Batch (fun,fun,fun, we we we so excited)

4\. Alumni Network

5\. Demo Day and Access to Investors

Anything else? Thanks.

<comment><USER2> We usually ask for 7%. If a startup is unusually far along, sometimes less. We might ask for more if the group seems super risky (e.g. undergrads, and we suggest the idea).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not PG but I remember some of these answered last year:

1\. You should be ready to accept/decline when you receive the call. You're not going to get any new information at that point, so your mind should be made up. (Unless you're under special circumstances that require more time, but you should let them know about that.)

2\. I don't know.

3\. Terms are not negotiable. (I remember this being written somewhere but I can't find it right now.)

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I figure unofficial answers are better than no answers in case the real thing doesn't come along.</comment>


Go Daddy: new office in Toronto, will offer .ca domains - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/godaddycom-sets-up-shop-in-toronto/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not leaving easydns (who are just 2 blocks from here) but it is good to see some new competition especially in overpriced(?) .ca domains.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've always been curious as to how ubiquitous domains like .ca are in country.</comment>


Solo founder or small team? Fix your life with a real-life non-virtual assistant - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestartuptoolkit.com/2011/10/small-team-fix-your-life-with-a-non-virtual-assistant/ <comment><USER2> Completely agreed.

A few years ago, I tried a virtual assistant and it never worked out. The types of tasks that I needed a hand with were not easily breakable without detailed explanations.

Then I was at an event last month and a flock of friends recommended one assistant in particular. I emailed her about availability and listed out the problems and roadblocks that I've hit recently. A few days later, we met over coffee and she pitched me on solving _one_ of those problems for now with a hook to work on a few others as time goes on.

Three weeks in and it's working beautifully. Everything I've handed her just gets done. It's not a huge amount at this point, but it's a start.

If you're in Austin and looking for an assistant, drop me a note and I'll pass along contact info.

<comment><USER3> Any hints as to what kind of work you're able to pass over to the assistant? I just can't see myself working something like that into my life.. but it could be interesting.

<comment><USER2> My particular task was logging business cards, collecting my notes into my CRM, and then flagging each one for follow up.

Life changing? Probably not.. but immensely helpful. And now I don't have that growing stack of business cards staring at me.

<comment><USER3> No that sounds like a great use of an assistant.. I guess all those litle things that just build up over time can be unloaded fairly easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Getting an assistant makes a lot of sense in most cases, but there is one area that you should never use an assistant.

Never let an assistant mediate meetings or contacts with clients, partners, investors, or anyone else. If you're at a start up, book your own meetings. Everyone else can do it, so can you.

Why?

1\. It's rude. They wanted to talk to you but you've punted them to an assistant. For a tiny company, you aren't that important.

2\. It cools the relationship before it started. Relationships are the core asset of any business. Prioritize them.

3\. It distances you from the market. As a startup, you should be as close to the market as possible. Actively disintermediating from people around you is a bad sign of how out of touch you likely are.

<comment><USER5> As a minor nit-pick, you have confused intermediating and disintermediating. Disintermediating is removing intermediaries, which is good for being in touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, this is only tangentially related to the post, but this is the second article I've read on that site, and I keep running into an issue on Chrome in Linux:

<http://www.larrikj.com/media/images/ss.png>

I have the text not staying in the designated areas, and text overlaying other text. This happens on quite a few blogs I read on HN, so it's probably me and not them, but it doesn't seem to happen on most other sites.

Does anyone else see these issues? Did I break something in my install or settings (or extensions)?

<comment><USER7> I've been seeing it as well, but have never spent any time digging to find out why.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My privacy focussed SoundCloud alternative - <AUTHOR> I built SongBox to solve some problems I had when I used to be in a band. I thought the people who would use the platform would be unsigned bands / musicians. I was wrong.
check it out:
https://songbox.rocks <comment><USER2> Your website doesn't actually appear to be privacy-focused. Your homepage mentions passwords, view limits, and expiry dates for privacy control of songs. But that concerns the privacy of songs, not your users.

For example, your website does not have a privacy policy or terms of service. These are both red flags, and how can you call something privacy focused if it doesn't even have a privacy policy? Not to mention the fact that this is likely illegal (violating several laws depending on your location).

Additionally, your website contains trackers from Google's advertising platform - not something that is "privacy focused".</comment>


Discount Code for my Hacker News Friends -- Perq - <AUTHOR>

HACKERNEWS50
Use this discount code and receive 50% off Perq for six months.
What is Perq? Perq is my startup's application for small business and HR folks to track and manage employee Paid Time Off (PTO).
Our Business Plan: First, through our research and personal experience, we have learned that small companies are often overlooked when it comes to business software. Employee benefits management, like PTO, is often bundled into large, expense payroll services from ADP and the like. For us who do not want to sink our fledgling capital into overpriced payroll services, there is a need for HR tools.
Second, by tracking PTO, saving one day of employee's time by preventing vacation 'overages' recoups the cost of our software instantly. Companies can save thousands of dollars by making sure employees comply with their company policies.
Our Goal: To save business owners money, by giving them control over attendance policies and paid time off.
Our Invitation: If you are a small business owner or manage groups of people, we may be a great tool for you. We invite you to check our Perq, and save with the discount code.
If you do not fall into the group above, take a look anyway, and any feedback on our application is welcomed. We are looking for ways to improve our product and our offer.
Happy Holidays, Team Perq <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.perqworks.com></comment>


The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-research-funding-peer-review-process <comment><USER2> If you want to know what's ailing science, research, academia, publishing, research, the career-gateway control of publishers, and access to research, read this article. I'm put off by "<number> things..." articles, but this really does hit the marks, hit them well, and cites some good folks. John Ioannidis, Tim Gowers, Michael Eisen, and Marion Nestle, are all names I've come to know and respect. Alexandra Elbakyan I owe personal thanks to daily for the access she's provided me to 92 years of paywalled articles.

Brad Plumer is a reporter whose work's caught my eye before, I'll be adding Julia Belluz and Brian Resnick to the clueful list.</comment>


InfoQ: Justin Sheehy on Riak - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/sheehy-riak

<comment><USER2> I've played with riak a bit (just in development, no deployment yet) and I have to say it's wonderful.

The Riak Fast Track tutorial (<https://wiki.basho.com/display/RIAK/The+Riak+Fast+Track>) is phenomenal. I wish more tools had this.

MapReduce interface is nice, links are great, status info is mighty, the distributed setup you get out of the box is fantastic, etc. etc.

Folks who need any kind of key/value store should definitely check it out.

<comment><USER3> If you're in SF and still wondering why people are excited, they're having a pretty cool meetup next week: [http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Riak- Meetup/calendar/141...](http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Riak- Meetup/calendar/14146663/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is my Riak-influenced Dynamo-clone (implemented in Python):

<http://bitbucket.org/rogueops/vinzclortho/wiki/Home></comment>


Amazon Net Income Plunges 96%, Shares Follow - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/26/amazon-q2-2012/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, the AMZN after hours trading shows them to be UP after this news. This headline seems to be verifiably false.

<comment><USER3> Net revenue is gross (total) revenue minus returns and any other negative revenue. (Expenses have nothing to do with Net Revenue. Net Revenue is NOT the same as profit.)

Just because net revenue is down, does not mean that the market didn't already account for this change. The real thing to look at is EPS and expectations. Additionally, after hours should not be used as any indicator since the volume is basically insignificant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I wrong to think that considering their razor thin margins, such dramatic reductions aren't really surprising?

They have over $10B in revenue but only about $100MM in profits. Fluctuations in their costs would easily wipe out those profits.

<comment><USER5> Correct. This is something mildly interesting blown far out of proportion by linkbait title, some fun with statistics and apparently after many years of killing profits to focus on growth people still buy Amazon's stock because they're hoping for blowout quarters. Better luck next time I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Of that 96 percent drop, Amazon estimated that $65 million of the net loss was due to its acquisition and integration of Kiva."</comment>


My Motivation Bible (7000 words of killing things that suck motivation) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/14q8zj/the_ultimate_guide_for_getting_motivated/

<comment><USER2> Great Post! I've definitely thought of some of these strategies but never had them all together.</comment>


Dozens in Russia imprisoned for social media likes, reposts - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0274242811894097a9d79f789002aab0/dozens-russia-imprisoned-social-media-likes-reposts <comment><USER2> 54 in a year? Is less than people arrested in USA for the same reason, with the pretext of terrorism. I'm probably profiles just for saying this.

<comment><USER3> Let's just pretend for the moment that what you wrote isn't totally fabricated, and let me ask you this: how is that relevant? Does US misbehaviour make Russian misbehaviour suddenly acceptable? Are we now to be impressed if our leaders manage to be no worse than their peers?

<comment><USER4> Not, but it is relevant that there are so many Russian bashing reports in the media, while your system is probably as much crooked as theirs is.

Which is of course just a confirmation of how completely rotted your system is, how much you think your system is superior without any real proof, and how much you have fallen to western propaganda.

Did that get me flagged for the NSA already, or do I need to try harder?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are we using the final numeral system? - <AUTHOR> In the earliest days of mankind, 13 was written as "............." The number of dots represented the number. Later the Egyptians had a different hieroglyph for 10, so 13 could be written as "#..." where "#" means 10 and "." means 1. Much shorter. 33 was written as "###...". Nice. Then the 0 was invented. And nowadays, we have "hieroglyphs" for all numbers up to 9 and we have this notion that every number is multiplied by 10^its position. Is that the end? Or will this look as ancient as counting dots in a million years from now? <comment><USER2> I think everyone is misinterpreting the question. This isn't about the fact that we're using base-10. This is about the fact that we're using the Arabic "symbol-valued cardinal exponential" notation:

        ABC = (val[A] × base^2) + (val[B] × base^1) + (val[C] × base^0).

Examples of other systems, as the OP said, are tally-marks (uniform-valued ordinal additive) and Roman numerals (symbol-valued ordinal additive). The question is, is arabic notation optimal for doing simple math quickly? It might not be, given that e.g. mathematical savants seem to be doing something involving geometric/visual computation.

<comment><USER3> The Babylonians used a base 60 [sexagesimal] floating point system with the exponent implied by the context. Knuth discusses in in TAoCP volume 2, some of it referenced from _The Exact Sciences in Antiquity._

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

[http://store.doverpublications.com/0486223329.html](http://store.doverpublications.com/0486223329.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to take the contrarian view: yes. Inertia is very powerful. We'll stay with base-10.

Scientific notation is, not, btw, fundamentally a different number system; it only provides for approximation of (most) very large or very small numbers, unless you want to spell out all the digits before the exponent, which of course would defeat the purpose. It's still really base-10.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are already other notations, like scientific notation which only needs a few digits to represent e.g. 2.3 * 10^8. Not to mention hexadecimal or even base-32 which is used in Bittorrent magnet links [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme#URN.2C_conta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme#URN.2C_containing_hash_.28xt.29)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea to mention the scientific notation. As it really _is_ different from the positional notation. You can express _some_ numbers in a shorter way then in the positional notation. Thats pretty nice. A variable length encoding with compression.

As for different bases: I consider these very similar to base 10. Maybe we will use base X in a million years, but that wouldnt be a big surprise. I was more thinking about a revolution like from "............." to "13".

<comment><USER5> Well the notation lets you tell how specific you are being about a number. Instead of saying "about 1,000" you can say 1 * 10^3 or 1.00 * 10^3 which give different amounts of information. So it's not exactly the same as base-10. And if you're talking about really big numbers, it's nice not to drag all those 0's around. It's just as big a step from .......... to 10 as from 10000000000 to 10^10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your question contains a very teleological narrative, in that you assume/recognize a natural evolution from the first to the last, with cause and result. Partially because you take all of mankind as one group.

Then, to look at your question: who's your "we"? The Chinese already use another system (in many contexts). African cultures use their own systems. And who knows what might happen in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do chinese and africans use?

<comment><USER7> Chinese:

零一二三四五六七八九

Africans are a diverse group so I expect that they have many different systems.

<comment><USER8> Well, those are the numerals 0–9. You're missing 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 1000000… Chinese has a lot of number characters.

They use a system where a power-of-10 number is potentially preceded by a smaller count and followed by a smaller number. So, for example, 241 is represented as [2][100][4][10][1].

<comment><USER7> Right, they also have:

十 = 10 白 = 10^2 千 = 10^3 万 = 10^4 亿 = 10^8

This leads to the non-Western-like feature that the word for a million is 一白万 (1 10^2 10^4) whereas ten million is 一千万 (1 10^3 10^4) instead of 十白万 (10 10^2 10^4) which you might expect if you think using Western number systems and just internalize the rule that "白万 = million".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can vaguely imagine a more advanced numeral system based on geometric visualizations in 2 or 3 dimensions (rather than the existing 1-dimensional digit string), that is also more suited to probabilistic representations than fractions or decimals.

Relational reasoning is a key use case to be considered for any popular numeral system (How many do I have? How do I signal that amount to others? Do I have more or less?). For small, whole quantities (<100), alternate numeral systems could likely reach a similar learning curve as Arabic numerals. Very large and complex quantities, and things of a number theoretic nature are probably areas where a future numeral system will be differentiated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Base-10 isn't the only thing cultures around the world came up with. I vaguely recollect that a handful used base-5, base-6 (spaces between knuckles plus each side), base-12 (with two hands) and base 20 (two hands, two feet; or two sides for each finger) -- and probably others I forgot. We still use base 60 (which we inherited from babylonians, and are still using to count time and angles). As well as base-2, base-8 and base-16 in computer science.

Whether we stick to base-10 or collectively decide to use something saner in the future (base-12? base-60?) is anyone's guess, but methinks inertia will spell doom to efforts to part from it, much like efforts to bring sanity to the calendar never took off in the 19th century.

This much is probably sure, though: we won't go back to colorful subdivisions. Nobody except the US (and Liberia) uses anything but the metric system nowadays.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't say we use base-60 for time or angles. We still use just 10 digits to write them down, so it's still in base-10.

<comment><USER5> It's definitely base-60. Carrying from one place to the next happens on powers of 60, even if you write the value of each place with base-10 numbers. And if you have an analog clock, you don't need base 10 at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think we, i.e. those who already use base 10 and neglecting the possibility of us getting invaded in some way, will continue to use base 10 unless our civilisations fall apart. When we handed off the basics of our system to machines so that the low level tasks could be done quickly, the need for a more efficient system decreased. Out to a ridiculously large number, the basic components of our system are, when coupled with machines, essentially instantaneous.

What's 395847593874382754238754987 * 389756987476347629845 ?

1.5428437e+47

What could any system of numbers give me that would make that operation faster than typing it in?

My old math teacher's objection to this was:

"But what if you don't have a calculator?"

And I was not smart enough at the time to realise there'd be more serious problems in a world where I didn't have a calculator and wanted to multiply large numbers (hey, I was only six.)

But what she ought to have said, when I was objecting to learning the tables, was that it makes sense to be reasonably fast with the basics of a system, so that you can do things beyond linear algebra quickly. If you need to stop and work out the very basics of a system every time you do algebra you're probably not going to get very far. The low level tools you have available influence what you can build on top of them.

However, the faster you are at the low level the less the practical gains are. The value of reducing an operation that takes a minute to one that takes seconds is likely to be enormous - but the value of reducing that second to a half second is not likely to be as significant.

It's similar to handwriting. We had a superior system of handwriting that we used to teach: Shorthand. It was more efficient even than most people's typing. But the additional value of that speed over typing was not sufficient for it to remain.

Unless there's an argument that, say, our being a half second or so faster at the low level will allow us access to some new high-level concepts, I think we're likely to stick with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> If the metric of the relevance is the % of numbers represented or the amount of calculations done with it, base 10 has effectively been dead for many years. It's only used to occasionally communicate numbers over extremely narrow bandwidth channels to or between organics.

<comment><AUTHOR> What base are numbers represented inside a computer? Are there really little "things" holding 0s and 1s in DRAM for example? Or is it technically a different base?

<comment><USER14> "Are there really little "things" holding 0s and 1s in DRAM for example?"

At the moment, close enough to yes to make no difference. There's various ways of trying to score internet pedant points by fiddling around the _very_ edges of that statement, but they're not relevant to a casual question. Yes, there is somewhere where you can find a physical thing that we might call a "one" and a "zero", even if it's not quite the same exact 1 or 0 you might get in your CPU due to parity or forward error correction or whatever other crazy thing you may have.

I mention those fiddly details to get them out of the way so I can bring up the bare handful of devices that actually functioned on true, no-kidding ternary: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer) Per Knuth's note in that article, as we continue to optimize the heck out of our silicon and as we start running out of ability to simply shrink, it's not inconceivable that ternary computing could make a comeback in the future. It is often casually assumed in current sci-fi and such that binary is the true "final" base of the future, but ternary is not out of the running.

On that note, see also: [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/issue.aspx?id=3268&y...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/issue.aspx?id=3268&y=0&no=&content=true&page=5&css=print)

This would have next to no impact on anything else, though... in fact the first ternary computers would certainly simply run current programs, possibly recompiled and certainly at an efficiency penalty, but with no other end-user- visible effect.

(And let me warn you away from various speculations that ternary computers could somehow compute something binary computers can't. Turing Completeness, along with frankly obvious common (programmer) sense, precludes that. We already never truly work with bits... if we want bits we actually have to go out of our way to extract them from things at least the size of bytes, if not larger. Arguably modern computers are already in many ways Base256, as it is effectively impossible to manipulate anything smaller than an octet, which also obviously encompasses anything Base3 can do.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apart from a different base, how about something _completely_ new? Nobody seems to expect that. Do we really have reached the be all and end all with the positional notation? Or will something come up that we cannot imagine by now?

<comment><USER5> How about quarter-imaginary? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quater- imaginary_base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quater-imaginary_base)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think Knuth's up-arrow notation (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up- arrow_notation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation)) can be considered a newer way of representing numbers, and it continues the progression you describe in that each the older notations are usable for small numbers, but the newer notations are better for large ones: Knuth's up-arrow notation is only really required for truly gigantic numbers and as a result I don't think it would be generally useful. (As generally useful numbers aren't that huge.)

<comment><USER16> I thought Knuth's up-arrow notation was actually an operator rather than a numeral system. Just in the same way that multiplication is a short for sums, the arrow operator would be a short for exponentiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bases are more energy efficient to compute with as they get closer to _e_ , so in the future trinary numbers might be the way to count.

<comment><USER18> Interesting! I dint understand why, though. Do you have a reference for this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> probably not.

also, your description is incomplete: we also use binary, hexadecimal, octal and other numbering systems on a regular basis.

</comment><comment><USER20> Probably, until our descendants are genetically engineered to have more/fewer than 10 digits...

<comment><USER21> That statement seems to imply that base 10 is a good system because we have ten fingers. That is probably the reason why it was created, but we don't use it because it's the best – we use it because everybody does.

Base 12 is actually a way more useful system since it is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (vs. 2 and 5 for base 10), so 1/3 is not 0.3333, but 0.4.

<comment><USER22> 1/3 is 0.333 in base 10 and base 12. 10/3=4 in base 12.

<comment><USER23> Wouldn't 1/3 be 0.4 in base 12?

4 _12^-1 4 /12 1/3

Whereas .33333... In base 12 would be 3_.111... In base 12, =3*1/B =3/B

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A bit late to the party, but here's what I wrote in my JavaScript book:

        Asides: Number Encoding
        This may be a bit of a strange concept to discuss in a book about JavaScript,
        but the numbers that we're all familiar with is only one of many different
        kinds of encoding that exsits in the world.

        The numerical system that we encode our numbers with today came from ancient
        India, and was popularized by the Persians, hence the name Arabic-Hindu numbers.
        It is a positional system. For example, the number 15 represents 1 unit in
        the tens position, and 5 in the singular position - essentially 1 × 10 + 5 × 1.
        Likewise, 314 is 3 × 100 + 1 × 10 + 4 × 1. This is read as 3 units in hundreds
        position, 1 unit in the tens  position, and 4 units in the singular position
        There also exists numerical systems which are non-positoinal. Perhaps
        the most famous example are Roman numerals. It's also positional-ish, since
        the position of the numerals are somewhat important for specific cases -
        VI and IV mean very different things. The Mayan numeral system is another
        example of a non-positional system, intermixed with a unary-ish system.

        Most positional numerical systems have somewhat evolved into the same state,
        despite having different runes and conventions to represent the same thing.
        But perhaps the greatest innovation to numerical systems is the representation
        of fractional numbers in a positional numerical system. It allowed us
        to do really much fancier mathematics. However, as can be seen in the example
        with 1/3 above, representing a fraction in a positional numerical system is
        somewhat difficult.

        The reason why this section is even here is to function as a reminder to the
        reader that binary numerical systems used by modern computers are also
        just another system - imagine it to be from another civilization, if you will
         - and not be intimidated by it.

         Speaking of fractions, the ancient Egyptians were one of the first civilizations
        to use a fraction system (the Chinese were the other). Especially by modern day
        standards, it was a very interesting fraction system. The fractions used by ancient
        Egyptians are expressed only in terms of unit fractions
        - i.e. fractions with 1 as the numerator.

There was quite a lot of junk cut out from my book too about ancient chinese numerical systems - they had different numerical systems for different classes of people, and different numerical systems for different bases. And even had negative numbers!

Your question is actually a question of positional and nonpositional notation. I'm quite sure we'll stick with positional notations for some time to come, but uh, you never know about the future. For all we know, there could be a superior nonpositional system out there.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think anyone knows what the world will look like in a million years. Will we be around as a species? Given the tendency toward exponential progress in all things we do, I tend to think that within 10,000 years, we'll either be off the planet or extinct. (That's not to say that we're destined to make the Earth uninhabitable, although that could happen. I just think we're "up or out" as a species. We'll either end economic scarcity or kill ourselves off within _500_ years, I'd say, and the former means we're mining asteroids and, over the millennia, moving to other planets.)

If we get off the planet, it's unclear what we'll "look like" in many ways. We could be cyborgs. We could have enormous lifespans (millions of years). Unless we achieve such an immortality, we _will_ continue to evolve (physically and culturally) and after a million years on different planets, we'll probably see all sorts of variation in terms of number of digits, representation of knowledge, and language.

So, looking a million years out, the answer is probably "no". Our system may still be alive, but if we're alive in a million years, I'd bet that we're off the planet and human culture will have forked, making the question of what is "final" unclear.

For the next 500 years (even 2500) I don't think we'll see another numeral system. Arabic Base-10 works, and there isn't much ti be gained in changing it . The glyphs themselves may evolve (our "Arabic" numbers look nothing like the original Arabic digits) but the concept will be the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> > human culture will have forked

We have that situation already. The Pirahã have only 2 numers in their languge. Roughly translatable as "few" and "many".

And scientists use different bases and scientific notation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Probably not.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an HN for finance? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone know a good community site for financial news (stocks, ETFs, Mutuals etc)? Years ago I used a site called clearstation and it was a good little community focused on investing in the open markets. Then it was bought by Etrade and turned to shit. Is there a good community out there? <comment><USER2> Go ahead and make one! Grab the HN clone source code in Arc (google it), and run it on a free EC2 instance.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as Q&A forums, looks like the SE isn't going to make it

[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/117/quantitative-f...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/117/quantitative- finance)

I don't read much, but you could check out [http://www.wilmott.com/index.cfm](http://www.wilmott.com/index.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER4> Market ticker forums-

[http://tickerforum.org/](http://tickerforum.org/)

Zerohedge-

[http://zerohedge.com](http://zerohedge.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Though it is not exactly the same, it is a closer substitute than you might imagine; [http://Counterparties.com](http://Counterparties.com).

</comment><comment><USER6> The finance subreddit is probably as close as you'll get. There are some rather intelligent people that post there, however there is not much traffic.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback all. Checked them out, looks like seeking alpha is close to what I want.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seeking Alpha

<comment><USER8> Without a doubt, SA is the go to resource</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should the full software stack look like in 2029? - <AUTHOR>

What should these things look like in 15 years? From the kernel to OS to userland utils to the low-level and high-level programming languages to the "web" and "browsers" (or whatever replaces them). <comment><USER2> People still trying to get grsecurity included in the main kernel? (as in: still no security minded development...)</comment>


Live A Better Life In Exactly 100 Ways - <AUTHOR> http://www.dragosroua.com/100-ways-to-live-a-better-life/#comment-62670

<comment><USER2> From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a bit puzzled but I suppose there is some solid logic behind this guideline. I'll edit the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the share.

You may also want to edit out the "#comment-62670" from the URL (unless pointing to the comment was on purpose).</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a product that can randomly surface Kindle highlights? - <AUTHOR> I have a lot of Kindle highlights, inspirational/motivational/instructional book passages I like to live by and continually remind myself of.
I would like something that randomly surfaces these things to me daily, maybe via push message.
Is there a product that does this? <comment><USER2> Anki is sort of designed for this. You would have to manually add the highlights, though.</comment>


From Toilet Seats to $1 Billion: Lessons from Brian Chesky - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/30/from-toilet-seats-to-1-billion-lessons-from-brian-chesky/

<comment><USER2> Ok....I would just like to say....dude...your marketing approach for this book is brilliant. I won't even lie. You have this treasure trove of interviews and every time they come up in news, you release some snippets from the book.

I think this is one of the most effective uses of 'new media' to promote a book or any product I have seen in ages.

After reading the Wufoo interview you released, I had to go and buy the book. Got it for the Kindle, am only 20% through, just read the AirBnB one last night and am loving it so far.

Every single time I see you post one of these things around the news, I just smile and think how brilliant you are.

So I figured I would say something.

Keep it up.

Edit: Would love to see some stats on how that's working out for you. In terms of sales and traffic - if you are going to do another post-mortem.

<comment><USER3> Wow. Thanks. That strategy was coincidental; I only knew I'd have to promote the book once I finished it, but I didn't know how I'd do that. As about a week ago, I got ranked in the top 50 bestsellers in 3 different categories, so Amazon is basically promoting the book for me right now. I'm trying to understand how the Amazon ranking algorithm works--I reduced the Kindle price from $9.99 to $2.99, and I am still unsure whether they weight downloads or absolute revenue higher. If I had to guess, they look at number of downloads first to rank your book, and I also assume reviews and ratings play an important role so I've been encouraging people to write reviews if they like it. I'll bump the price back up to $9.99 tomorrow and see how it affects the rank.

As for other methods of promoting, I'm always experimenting. I've noticed that giving away more content is a good thing, for example. You mentioned after reading Wufoo's interview that you decided to buy, but that was not intuitive to me; someone else who is an expert in the publishing space advised me to give away more interviews. I wanted to give away one interview per day for a week, and then realized I'd have to get the founders' permission. The first person I asked said he didn't want his interview to be cached by Google because it's too personal. So I thought maybe I'd just open the interviews up after companies get acquired, for example.

I'm interviewing John Resig tomorrow, and I'll make all of that publicly open. If you have some questions you want me to ask, please let me know, my list of questions so far: <http://bit.ly/mHhA37>. Stuff like that helps promote the book to varying degrees. Still in an experimental phase with everything.

Someone is interviewing me for an article on Friday to talk about how I've made sales post-AppSumo. So I'll cover everything I've done to promote the book in that interview (will post a link on the blog when it's ready). I have a blog halfway written on the topic, so hopefully will finish that soon (this book is paying my rent while I'm trying to focus on doing my other startup, so I'm not giving the book 100% of my focus right now).

<comment><USER4> Looks good, there are a bunch of questions he answered in his reddit interview that you have up there that probably don't need to be there (e.g. Resig knows Alexis and briefly did a YCombinator startup in Cambridge).

Reddit link here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/related/h42ak/i_am_john_resig_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/related/h42ak/i_am_john_resig_creator_of_jquery_ama/)

<comment><USER3> I didn't realize until I read that IAMA yesterday that he was in YC. He didn't provide much detail on it, maybe I can get him to talk more about that--maybe other projects he would have liked to build instead.

People seem to be most interested in why he went to Khan Academy and how Javascript should be treated moving forward. He didn't talk much about Khan Academy, so will try to ask more questions about that since he has probably been there for a while now.

<comment><USER4> yeah, it sounded like he was interested in doing another YC startup in the future. Might ask him what kind of ideas he has poking around in his head.

The long-term vision of Khan academy is also most interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh, for those curious, the actual product Chesky designed that I reference in this article is called the PUREFLUSH. Here is the presentation on American Inventor: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAWB5wzSUb0>

<comment><USER5> Did the ever sell the IP for that? I wonder if a company like Brondell would want to buy the patents.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure on that. Brian would have to comment if he's lurking, although not sure he'd know either since the company is separate. They still operate a web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> love airbnb!</comment>


How I accidentally got access to the secret keys to NBC's websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bookingbug.com/blog/2014/05/accidentally-access-secret-keys-nbcs-web-sites?

<comment><USER2> Every time I add people to a github team I get nervous about making this mistake. It just takes a single mis-click and password confirmation to give the wrong person access to all your source code.

One way for github to improve this flow would be to show who you selected on the password confirmation screen. Still this wouldn't completely fix the issue.</comment>


Gawker offers a personalised news aggregator - <AUTHOR> http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2009/09/07/gawker-offers-a-personalised-news-experience/ <comment><AUTHOR> I know I'm biased [I'm the author] but I really think this is kind of a big deal - I think its a step in the right direction in terms of giving users _what they want_ for content.

what do you think? would you use it?</comment>


Germany wants a German Internet as spying scandal rankles - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/25/us-usa-spying-germany-idUSBRE99O09S20131025 <comment><USER2> Well, I read: Germany wants a German internet to be able to better spy on its citizens.

Germanys government really did absolutely nothing to protect the privacy of German people in the past and deserves the same amount of trust as the US government.

The mentioned encrypted mail-service is actually legally backdoored. If they were interested in enhancing privacy, they would support the development of open standards like GPG. Instead they are trying to force people to install closed source software for their tax declaration, which is probably spyware.

Sorry, nothing good to expect in Germany.

Edit: The german government seems to have supported GPG in 1999.

(second reference in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg))

<comment><USER3> The German government financially supports the gnupg project, but I guess that didn't fit into your agenda.

<comment><USER4> The US government also supports the Tor project, for instance. It's not as if they're one single-minded entity.

But as a German I have to say overall _lignuist_ is right: there is no reason to trust the German government (or the EU for that matter) any more than the US government.

This "German internet" idea seems familiar somehow, because here in Germany we're used to have a German or Germanized version of everything. You can forget about normal Germans ever using an English website, it has to be at least translated if not re-branded. German people by and large do not watch English TV or movies, they expect everything to be translated and somewhat culturally re-branded. Combine that with existing separatist and isolationist movements, which by the way have always played a part in the inofficial German mindset, I can see this exceedingly stupid idea seriously gaining ground.

On a meta level, I think you're overusing the word agenda here to create a polemic atmosphere where none was warranted. Agenda implies that someone wants to bring across a piece of propaganda, disregarding the facts if necessary. What _lignuist_ is doing is called having an opinion. You may disagree with it, but that does not make it an agenda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just snake oil marketing from the politicians and german ISPs. First they did not care at all when 82 million people were spied on (they literally said, that this debate was over and all question have been answered) and now they make a huge deal of it because it affects them personally.

Also the whole proposal does not make sense, because it is known that our own intelligence is sniffing traffic too and Telekom and others complied with them. Not to mention that our intelligence service and the NSA working together, hence the NSA even has spy equipment here which is tolerated by the government. Also implying that "national routing" is any kind of defence against spying. And all that wouldn't even affect people using Google, Facebook etc. just lol

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah, the irony.

It is funny to see these proposals coming out of Germany, the biggest proponent, together with France, for a EU-wide data exchange and wiretapping program codified in Schengen as article 40 [1] and SIS (Schengen Information System, police access to all national DBs). The latest update to the Schengen treaty (2005) allows the exchange of sensitive and biometric data such as DNA and fingerprints. [1]

Germany and France are also the biggest pushers for data retention laws that force ISPs and other business to retain and make available all the communication metadata and some of the data of all the information exchanged through them.

The governments of Germany, France and UK have also been the main shields against the pressures from the EU parliament to avoid data-sharing initiatives with the USA.

It must also be noted that there seems to be a schism in Germany between the acts of the governments (pushing EU-wide anti-privacy measures) and the acts of the parliament (pushing strict pro-privacy regulations inside the German territory).

[1] [http://www.hri.org/docs/Schengen90/body3.html](http://www.hri.org/docs/Schengen90/body3.html) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCm_Convention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCm_Convention)

</comment><comment><USER7> The amusing part about this is that Deutsche Telekom is partly responsible for German Internet traffic taking routes that pass through other countries by refusing to do peering. They instead leverage their large customer base and demand other companies pay them for the privilege of a direct connection to their network.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reuters has mucked this story up.

Germany does not want a German Internet, that's just plain silly. Deutsche Telekom just wants to rearrange its peering with other German ISPs so that requests that originate and end in Germany never leave Germany.

Seeing as DT's current peering costs are the reason that some packets take a round-about way in the first place, it's just a marketing move.

<comment><USER9> That makes sense and most countries should do it. Some routers support this feature, custom ones can be made though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does Germany produce routers? Firmware? Would it be "airgapped" with the U.S. internet?

Having Merkel's phone monitored must have been a blow.

That said, having a nationally routed Internet makes sense. (edit: article says 90% is already routed nationally)

The article itself says it's not practical, and mostly posturing.

"The only way to change this would be for Germany to require local hosting of websites, a drastic move according to experts that has not yet been pushed by German leaders. Deutsche Telekom declined to say whether it would lobby for such an approach.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, angered by reports that the U.S. spied on her and other Brazilians, is pushing legislation that would force Google, Facebook and other internet companies to store locally gathered or user- generated data inside the country."

<comment><USER11> > _That said, having a nationally routed Internet makes sense._

In general, it probably does. But in the case of Germany, it's just plain ridiculous since they have US military and spy bases within their territory (and the politicians who run around like headless chicken currently have been defending those and limiting citizens' rights near them - the bases themselves are US territory, but just showing up nearby gets you in trouble).

<comment><USER12> I've lived near a US base in Germany all my life (I can actually see the "border" from my house) and I can't think of any way to "get in trouble" by showing up nearby. The only way to get in trouble here is to actually enter the base without permission.

<comment><USER11> > The only way to get in trouble here is to actually enter the base without > permission.

Try filming, protesting or flying RC drones nearby ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's incredible to me that the country that made the Internet possible, has changed so much in four or five decades that it is now in the process of destroying the Internet.

<comment><USER14> Why incredible? Don't anthropomorphize countries, there is absolutely no obligation for a country to behave in a way that's consistent with it's behavior a few years back; countries are not individuals, please stop attaching human values to countries.

<comment> workhere-io Countries are run by humans, and in a democracy we can and should expect politicians to do what's right for citizens and to behave ethically.

<comment><USER15> How is it that this democratic ideal has failed to deliver on many of these things, of late? To be sure, some are content with what government has brought to their lives in some areas, yet the complaints remain. Are our democratic systems failing to actually represent us, or are they delivering as- expected...or both?

<comment> workhere-io I'm not denying that the US democracy is broken; I'm countering ithkuil's argument that since countries aren't human they shouldn't exhibit moral behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The german government is supporting the development of gnupg. Yes, with money.

<comment><USER2> The only source I found for that is from 1999, which is a long time ago and especially pre-9/11.

Second reference in: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Concerned countries should work together to achieve same goal. Month ago, similar signals came from Brazil.

</comment><comment><USER18> I feel like this legislature would be a huge cost to startups wishing to do business in Germany, and would likewise be a huge cost to already established businesses.

Of course, I suppose there is the added benefit that many companies would now be legally required to have a physical presence in Germany, requiring the creation of many more local data centers. Presumably this would boost the already high performing German economy.

I wonder how this would effect IRC servers. Would you have to forbid connections from Germany if there already was a user connected from Germany?

In that same line of questioning, wow would a teleconference work? Two german companies and two american companies are communicating in a group call via skype or something. The server is located in the US. Does this mean that the two German companies are communicating with each other and therefore the server must be located in Germany? If the US had the same laws, does this mean it is impossible for the group call to be made at all?

How much more difficult would it make telecommuting if multiple telecommuters are located within Germany?

What if user A located in germany wants to send an email or instant message to user B in germany, but is VPNed to a server in another country. Maybe User A is on a business trip to germnay and is VPNed to their work, or something. How could such a message be routed completely within the German borders? Would the VPN have to detect the nature of the message and reject it?

Am I understanding everything correctly?

<comment><USER19> I don't think that you are understanding it correctly. First it helps to understand some history. In the ancient voice telecoms networks of the 20th century there was the principle that "he who dials the number pays the bill". Therefore, when a telecom provider (like DT) tried to connect a call with another telecom provider (such as BT in the UK), both telecoms companies knew that there was money flowing into DT's pockets. So the recipient's provider (in this case BT) wanted some of that money. This became a principle worldwide that interconnects between two networks had to be bought and paid for. Of course, calls went both directions over the interconnect so the concept of peering was born. What it meant was that the two companies would count up the calls at the end of the month, and the one with the most calls would pay the other company.

Then came US telecom deregulation, CLECS, the growth of the American-centric Internet, and a new way of making connections. On the Internet, one party opens a socket and superficially that seems to be similar to dialling a phone call. But the big difference is the the party opening a socket is not paying anyone a fee to do this. And they aren't paying a per-minute fee for using the socket. In fact, the party opening the socket is paying money for the use of the whole network, and the party whose socket is being opened is also paying a fee for the whole socket. Thust the concept was born that interconnects should be free because they are a cost of doing business as an ISP.

And then began much confusion and strange business dealings as telecom management wrestled with how to reconcile these two worlds. The result was that deregulated US providers charged a lot less for interconnects, and the international telephone calls of the world started to take a detour through the USA. And internet connections did the same thing.

So basically, there should be no extra cost if Germany implements this. Some companies might get into arm-twisting battles if significant traffic flows shift from one circuit to another because they will likely need to upgrade some interconnects, but that is just a one time hit. It should not increase fees at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's just a ploy for Telekom and some large companies make a buck.

Any sane person shouldn't trust the German government and Telcos more than foreign ones. I certainly don't.

<comment><USER21> So you're saying German citizens should trust their own government less than the US government? ;)

<comment><USER22> "Not more" doesn't mean "less", it means "less or equal".

<comment><USER21> I realized that after I posted but given that trust is hardly a discrete variable I'd say 'equal' is somewhat unlikely in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Deutsche Telekom is complicit in this spying. It is because of DT's policies on peering that Internet companies in Germany send traffice destined to another German company, via other countries. Germany could fix this by requiring all German ISPs to supply free bilateral peering to any other German ISP with more than X Mbps of traffic.

This is not actually free, but it means that no ISP can use peering as a profit centre. In fact, both parties to the bilateral peering have to pay for their own routers for the interconnect, and pay half the cost of the interconnect circuit if it is not done in the same building.

This would be an improvement in speed too because within the borders of Germany you should be able to get 10 ms round trip times to any other point. In fact, companies who want their VPN traffic to stay in Germany will often specify 10 ms RTT in their RFPs as a euphemism for "keep our traffic in Germany". I used to work for GTS, a competitor of DT and we had an extensive enough presence in Germany to meet that RTT which rather surprised DT because I think they invented the requirement hoping that it would mean "only DT can win this bid".

It would be better if all countries had laws/regulations about exchanging local traffic locally, because this would improve Internet performance for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems that they have an internet in mind where you consider packets that left the country to be less secure than ones which stayed in the country.

One way to implement that would be something like RFC 3514, except that the E bit gets set whenever a packet crosses a border, and never cleared.

</comment><comment><USER24> Whenever I hear a country calling for "national" internet I got a feeling that the policy makers have no idea what net stands for in internet.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish it was a sincere initiative to protect users, however, I suspect it's a political campaign in order to get some preferences out of the US.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wouldn't educating and deploying proper end-to-end encryption be a much better way of protection?</comment>


Linux IPv6 HOWTO - <AUTHOR> https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have an increasing interest in IPv6 for my own purposes and was searching for how to add my recently allocated IPv6 range from my hosting provider could be configured, and I found this excellent guide on The Linux Documentation Project.</comment>


IBM backs out of NCSA Blue Waters petaflop supercomputer project  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/08/ibm_kills_blue_waters_super/

<comment><USER2> heading there as a cs froshie in a week - this made me sad</comment>


Ask HN:  Has your startup succeeded without doing SWOT analysis? - <AUTHOR>

A MBA friend of mine said the we must do SWOT analysis before doing a startup. <comment><USER2> How many successful startups has your MBA friend founded?

<comment><AUTHOR> He is a Business Analyst in UHG.</comment></comment>


Free Speech in the Context of Digital Media - <AUTHOR> https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-material-sources-of-free-speech <comment><USER2> Very good read</comment>


Man hacked his Alexa to speak out of a singing fish, and it's horrifying - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/11/04/big-mouth-billy-bass-alexa-/#mrpCYng7piq4 <comment><USER2> AFIK, Alexa doesn't have an API the gives speech timing info. I assume this must monitor the sound and trigger a mouth movement whenever the wave amplitude goes over a certain threshold. Would be cool to make a reusable monitor/trigger component along with different swappable animatronic figures (cats, ardvarks, Trump's head, ...). I'd buy one for the office.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's not horrifying, that's awesome. But the clickbait title got me to look at it, so I shouldn't criticize.

</comment><comment><USER4> I watch it over and over just for the fish lifting its head and mouthing "blodoop". For some reason, this is infinitely entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an aside, I find Alexa's voice much better than either Google Now or Siri. It still sounds a bit robotic, but it feels quite soothing compared to the harsh Google Voice or the "too robotic" Siri.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's actually great user experience and I'm certain someone will make a product with a similar idea (physical movement that signifies the bot is listening and talking).

</comment><comment><USER7> Horrifying and/or hilarious video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBqiW1R5_JM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBqiW1R5_JM)

</comment><comment><USER8> Finally Billy the Big Mouth Bass has a purpose in life

</comment><comment><USER9> +1

</comment><comment><USER10> Would have been nice if the video wasn't in a walled garden.</comment>