Question the Current Dogma: Is Kubernetes Hyper-Scale Necessary for Everyone? - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/question-the-current-dogma-is-kubernetes-hyper-scale-necessary-for-everyone/ <comment><USER2> I don't think scaling is the primary driver for k8s anymore. It's all the other features that make it far superior to the alternative orchestration systems. Also the ecosystem

</comment><comment><USER3> It is less about hyperscale. More about building agile applications that can have independent discrete ship'able components.

Also fear of missing out is another factor.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using MailChimp with Salesforce? How's that going? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They have a new AppExchange integration that is free. It works perfect for me. Syncs our Salesforce contacts with our Mailchimp lists every hour.</comment>


Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist <comment><USER2> That makes at least 28 journalists murdered this year _that we know about._ Others are likely disappeared or not popular enough to get news items.

[https://cpj.org/killed/2017/](https://cpj.org/killed/2017/)

EDIT: I already sent CPJ an anonymous message mentioning the list sadly needs updating as it's currently at 27. :'(

</comment><comment><USER3> As a sidenote, her son is a developer, and part of the ICJ project for safely transferring and processing the Panama Papers data: [https://lovinmalta.com/feature/maltese-data-journalist- works...](https://lovinmalta.com/feature/maltese-data-journalist-works-on- panama-papers)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not exactly a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but this looks like some suspicious shit to me. I can only hope it's investigated to a suitably sound set of conclusions, anything less will merely deepen the cries of modern conspiracy types.

<comment><USER5> I'm on Malta at the moment, (I'm not Maltese). From what I've heard this will mostly be related to local politics in Malta rather than some international coverup.

<comment><USER6> If she released those papers, she ruined a lot of people. Yeah, she was doing her job as a journo but the guy who will lose $500 mil to taxes /fines and go to jail for 20 years doesn't care much about semantics.

Princes, Prime Ministers, royal families, mafia bosses, banking execs, spies, ministers...you name it, Panama papers had them. It doesn't take much to kill an average person, they know who to call.

<comment><USER7> She didn't release the Panama Papers, that was an anonymous source to the German reporter Bastian Obermayer. She read the papers and connected them to some local figures in Malta, so presumably whoever murdered her was Maltese or had some business dealings there.

Edit: I think it's important to keep in mind too that Malta has an organized crime presence. In fact it looks like there were three car bombings in Malta last year. [http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/71110/explosion_h...](http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/71110/explosion_hits_st_pauls_bay#.WeUfMFtSxaQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Headline is a little misleading. She had nothing to do with the release of the Panama Papers. She read them once they were posted online, looking to see if there were people of interest to her community, and blogging about that.

<comment><USER9> She's a journalist whose reporting on the Panama Papers led to significant impact in Malta:

[http://www.politico.eu/list/politico-28-class- of-2017-rankin...](http://www.politico.eu/list/politico-28-class- of-2017-ranking/daphne-caruana-galizia/)

> The best way to think of Daphne Caruana Galizia is as a one-woman WikiLeaks, > crusading against untransparency and corruption in Malta, an island nation > famous for both..."She single-handedly brought the government to the verge > of collapse," says one MP.*

If it were straightforward to report on Malta in the Panama Papers, the original investigation would have targeted Malta's government. A lot of important journalism is examining released material and connecting the dots within a context.

<comment><USER8> Sure, I was not saying anything one way or another about her impact. The headline just made it sound like it was the person who broke the Panama Papers story. Or maybe it was just me who read it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And I thought movies exaggerated. I hate it when reality overcomes fiction.

</comment><comment><USER11> One interesting statement from the article: _Muscat announced later in parliament that FBI officers were on their way to Malta to assist with the investigation, following his request for outside help from the US government._

It's interesting that the prime minister of Malta has asked the US FBI for help. The EU is a "federation" of sorts and could (perhaps already does?) have their own EU-wide equivalent of our USA-wide FBI?

The FBI is quite often useful in US cases like this. It can act as an independent agency that can and does investigate local corruption. But it seems inappropriate to have them investigate a murder in Malta? Isn't there a lot of "local knowledge" that the FBI wouldn't have?

There are other nuances involved in the USA. Local murders aren't, without other circumstances, "federal" crimes. So the FBI doesn't generally get involved. But there are other laws available here for situations like this. E.g. it is a US federal offense to violate someone's "civil rights".

<comment><USER6> They can also decline to fully cooperate with the FBI later on, if it gets too close. Right now it's great: who doesn't trust the FBI...we have nothing to hide, call them in to find the truth. In reality, unless local police guide and allow them, they can do jack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maltese person here who has been following this journalist for a long time. The international reporting of this omits a lot of important information. It is far from certain that her assassination had a political motive. While I admired her for uncovering cases of corruption, she also had a very nasty streak, resorting to things like publishing revenge porn [1][2] and mocking women for the way the dressed [3]. A revenge motive completely unconnected to politics cannot be excluded.

I don't deny that the circumstances of the assassination are suspicious, and I also think a political motive is possible, but people are jumping to conclusions without waiting for evidence.

[1]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos- here-m...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-here-mr- starkers-appointment-to-the-chair-of-the-pharmacy-council-is-announced-in-the- government-gazette-today/))

[2]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the- barre...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barrel-the- labour-mayor-of-hal-qormi/))

[3]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style- wroug...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-wrought-iron- patterns/))

</comment><comment><USER13> Darkly humorous that it's hard to figure out whether her car was trapped, or whether someone used a separate vehicular bomb and caught her in the blast radius.

The idea that this is a thing that the general public might routinely have to distinguish is pretty sad.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can make up your mind of what kind of person she was by reading her blog:

[https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/)

She was hated by many, both because she was very biased (think more Breitbart than Fox News) and also because she had no reservations about punching below the belt. It is hard to write this without sounding biased, but I never thought of her as a good person nor as a good journalist.

The perpetrator could be anyone, but personally I do not think it was politically motivated since she supported a faction of the opposition that is currently, completely in shambles and she was therefore no threat to anyone. Moreover, most of the Maltese population did not respect her as a journalist because of her overt bias. All the people jumping to conclusions are just doing a disservice to her by possibly misleading the investigations.

There is also no reason to believe that she was killed by some "international bankers" or some such conspiracy theories. Her "investigative journalism" was limited to attacking the PL, one of our two main political parties. She never really ventured past that.

I will not speculate further.

<comment><USER15> > Her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which > blew the vehicle into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby > field.

> A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined > circulation of the country's newspapers, Caruana Galizia was recently > described by the Politico website as a "one-woman WikiLeaks". Her blogs were > a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures that > hold sway in Europe's smallest member state.

The article contradicts pretty much everything you just said.

<comment><USER16> Her blog was popular. I read it too. Not because I agreed with her. Go read the blog, yourself to see what kind of person she was.

Most people hated her because she was mean and her pastime, when not professionally attacking politicians on the other side of the aisle, was to dig up dirt on their spouses and acquaintances and attacking them on a personal level. [5]

For example of the kind of shit that she would engage in: Here she is reposting revenge porn. The victim is an acquaintance of some random major of some random town that leans towards the other political party. The major did nothing wrong nor was she politically relevant in anyway. This was her bread and butter "journalism". [1]

With regards to the car bomb, I'm not sure what you are saying here. I am not denying that she was murdered using a car bomb. Are you saying that this implies a high level actor? Far from it. Low level thugs and organized crime members kill each other with car bomb frequently. [2] [3] [4]

One last thing. With regards to the whole Panama thing, that was potentially her only work that could be see as real journalism. But also that situation is being misrepresented. The entire picture is more complicated. The thing is that she was part of a faction of the opposition who had previously been in power for 25 years and where themselves corrupt. So much so that despite the whole Panama scandal thing, the recent election saw the newly in power PL government widen the gap by a very huge margin of 40000 votes out of a few hundred thousand. Basically the statement by the electorate was, "we do not care that the PL are corrupt, you guys were equally corrupt and for much longer, at least the PL as improving things elsewhere". This resulted in the her party basically disintegrating and is currently fragmented and disorganized. This is why I said that a political motive does not make sense. Because there is no reason for it. The electorate wants the PL to lead the country for a few more years despite the corruption because they are so fed up with the PN.

[1] NSFW Link: [https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the- barre...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barrel-the- labour-mayor-of-hal-qormi/)

[2] [https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20160116/local/ma...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20160116/local/man- killed-as-car-goes-up-in-flames-in-marsascala.598955)

[3] [https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121003/local/Po...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121003/local/Police- hunting-three-men-over-car-bomb.439376)

[4] [https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130607/world/bo...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130607/world/bomb- explodes-under-car-of-prison-director.472930)

[5] There were reports of people celebrating her death at the university and elsewhere. That's how much they hated her.</comment></comment></comment>


The alternative game system for truly hands-on play - <AUTHOR> https://www.sifteo.com/

<comment><USER2> I've been waiting for these to come out since the TED video ([http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_s...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html)).

I put in my pre-order and can't wait for them. I've been trying to think about what I would do with a Siftables API, just for fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Who's next to be assassinated (in next .NET)? - <AUTHOR> WF 4? WPF? Silverlight? F#? An OSS ecosystem evolves based on needs (wrong or right) and those fulfill a promise, prevail. In .NET our lives(money) as developers(stockholders) is being spent for .NET evolution so we deserve a bit more respect from Microsoft. In WF 4 you can use just VB for expression. What does that mean? That means WF 4 is developed by those parts of Microsoft that produce bulky things to pretend something important is going on (Like this Vista thing that was installed on my Studio XPS 16 when I bought it to do my job - and don't advocate me to blow up my whole dev-life to be an OSS developer; not now). So what do you think? Extensions for parallel programming? MVC? And why F# is a maimed creature? To be dead for granted? Who is using VB.NET anyway? Implementors of those stupid standards developed by lawyers and physicians for software engineers? Is HTML5/Microsoft just a bad joke? Like MS-Java? J#? I actually like .NET; but it happen's to behave a bit provocative. <comment><USER2> Sorry that is a little too flow of consciousness for me. Has anything been killed off in .net? From the outside it seems like it just keeps swelling. Sure WPF came out to replace WinForms, but WinForms were never removed etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> WF 3.5 is dead. WF 4 is a from-scratch developed workflow engine. WPF and Silverlight has many incompatibilities that lead to some work-arounds for developing an application runs or both and Silverlight has much better control set than WPF (In WPF you can not give the Media element a byte stream as source!). J# is dead. IronRuby and IronPython have not a decided fate. F# is in an ambiguous situation. And Microsoft's claims for supporting HTML5 just remembers me of IE6! If you had a ruined code-set (Like our team (Some in J# and some WF 3.5) you would react differently (IMHO).</comment></comment>


S Korea says recovered Covid-19 patients who retested positive didn't relapse - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-south-korean-reactivated-cases-not-reinfected-experts-2020-4 <comment><USER2> Reinfection has been seen before with other viruses like H1N1. It happens when a person is exposed again to the virus too soon after the initial primary infection. They still become immune but their immune system just didn't get a chance to build the element necessary.

I think this may be what we're seeing in these cases.

<comment><USER3> The full headline and article itself says something totally different than this. It's pretty interesting if you ever get around to reading it.

> South Korea says recovered coronavirus patients who tested positive again > did not relapse: Tests picked up 'dead virus fragments'</comment></comment>


Awesome dotfiles - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/webpro/awesome-dotfiles <comment><USER2> It's not very known but I also made a little script for managing dotfiles.

[https://github.com/ProfOak/dotstribute](https://github.com/ProfOak/dotstribute)</comment>


When Misogynist Trolls Make Journalism Miserable for Women - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/when-misogynist-trolls-make-journalism-miserable-for-women/282862/

<comment><USER2> I have a hypothesis. This phenomenon is similar to spam, i.e. an overwhelming amount of traffic from a busy minority. If that's the case, the solution may be the same: blacklists. I've attempted to implement a primitive Spamhaus for social media, to test this hypothesis, but it's not something that can be done in one's free time.

<comment><USER3> That would be well worth testing, so I hope you or someone else does find time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if public shaming is a viable option here. Get e-mail threatening rape? Publish said e-mail. Something tells me that a lot of these morons aren't taking great care to anonymize their threats.

<comment><USER5> I'm not against that, but it only treats one symptom of misogyny, not the disease. Granted, it's one symptom that has many consequences of its own, so maybe it's ok.

I also wonder, given how widespread the phenomenon appears to be, whether shaming individual trolls will have any non-trivial impact on the total volume. Snowflakes in an avalanche, and all that.</comment></comment>


Understanding Real-World Concurrency Bugs in Go [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://golangweekly.com/link/59972/b208593eda <comment><USER2> The two key takeaways for me are:

(1) "Contrary to the common belief that message passing is less error-prone, more blocking bugs in our studied Go applications are caused by wrong message passing than by wrong shared memory protection."

(2) "Shared memory synchronization operations are used more often than message passing, ..."

So basically, (1) people have more trouble writing correct multithreaded routines using message passing, and (2) in large production applications people tend to fall back to using shared-memory primitives rather than message-passing anyway.

It seems the intention of the Go language designers was to make a language that would be simple and easy for programmers to pick up. Given that most programmers are already accustomed to multithreaded programming using shared memory and that this is conceptually simpler, I think the language designers made a mistake by throwing channels, a relatively new and experimental approach (yes, I know CSP is from 1978, but I'm talking about widely-adopted industrial languages), into the language. I think it was the single biggest mistake in the design of Go.

<comment><USER3> I feel like Golang is turning out to be like C++ with all of it's gotchas. It's not that it didn't have good intentions, it's just they didn't nail the corner cases for the end coder.

There's a lot of features of C++ that would have been awesome, had it not been for those corner cases.

<comment><USER4> The ratio of gotchas in Go compared to C++ has to be on the order of 1:10,000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty good and deserves more attention. Github makes bug studies so much more approachable. Hopefully the study will make people more cautious about Go's concurrency model, which is as error prone as shared memory multithreading, if not more.

<comment><USER6> What concurrency model do you prefer? Seems like it's easy enough to opt into a share-nothing model in Go, and this is generally what I do unless I have performance concerns (and as a consequence, I very rarely see concurrency bugs). I'm also not sure how much static analysis a la Rust could help the problem without accepting Rust levels of productivity.

<comment><USER7> The only foolproof way to opt into shared nothing in Go is not to spawn any goroutines. Global variables (which are all mutable, because there aren't any other kinds of variables in Go) are used all over the place in Go, including in the standard library.

<comment><USER8> How many of the concurrency bugs in this paper trace to the combination of "share-nothing" designs (channels) with mutable global variables in the standard library? If the answer is "none", what evidence does this paper present that mutable globals in the standard library are a practical impediment to "share-nothing" designs in real programs?

<comment><USER7> I mean, standard library global variables not being thread-safe would generally be treated as bugs in the standard library, so I wouldn't expect to see bugs there.

The point is that shared-nothing designs are just not how Go typically works. You can see that in functions like http.HandleFunc() (and everything else that uses the DefaultServeMux), which registers a global handler across all threads of the program.

<comment><USER8> Is that a good example of impediments to correctness in shared-nothing designs in Go? Using the default mux makes it hard for two different services to share the same Go program, and reduces the flexibility of libraries, but it doesn't appear to harm correctness or drag programs into shared memory designs. It seems like more of a purity test than a practical critique.

<comment><USER7> But the default serve mux _is_ shared memory (it's literally a mutable global variable in net/http). If it isn't shared memory, what is?

I mean, Go doesn't force you to use shared memory; no language with threads does. It encourages it through library design (e.g. the default serve mux) and language design (e.g. package init() functions) though.

<comment><USER8> Right, I'm not disagreeing with you that the Go standard library and a few idiomatic Go standard library transactions use shared memory. I'm disputing that these are real impediments to building programs that benefit from shared- nothing designs. Obviously, Go does a better job of _minimizing_ shared memory than _eliminating_ it. I'm asking: does this distinction matter in practice?

<comment><USER7> There's Go functionality such as pprof that requires the use of the default serve mux and therefore you can't use pprof with a true shared nothing design. The log module is similar.

Does that lead to more bugs in programs? I don't know. It's quite possible it doesn't matter in terms of defect count. It's not shared nothing, though, is all I'm saying.

<comment><USER8> Right, thus the distinction I'm making between purity test concerns and practical concerns. Go is not, and has never claimed to be, a pure share- nothing design. It's pretty up front about not being that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, yes. Go's shared memory model is essentially the same as that of C and C++. You have locks, and you have data objects, and the language has no idea which lock covers what data. That's the big thing Rust got right.

Go's message passing model is somewhat error prone. It lets you pass references. So you can create shared data through the channels. It's easy to do this accidentally by passing slices, which are references to the underlying array, across a channel.

More generally, Go channels are one-way. Since you often want an answer back, you have to create some two-way mechanism from the raw one-way channels. It seems to be common to do this at the raw channel level, rather than using some "object" like encapsulation. Creating a mechanism which shuts down cleanly is somewhat tricky, too.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Surprisingly, our study shows that it is as easy to make concurrency bugs with message passing as with shared memory, sometimes even more. For example, around 58% of blocking bugs are caused by message passing. In addition to the violation of Go's channel usage rules (e.g., waiting on a channel that no one sends data to or close), many concurrency bugs are caused by the mixed usage of message passing and other new semantics and new libraries in Go, which can easily be overlooked but hard to detect."

<comment><USER11> On the one hand, they're absolutely right.

On the other hand, statistical methods don't give quality it's due.

I'd rather fight a blocking bug than a data-updated-via-race-condition bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> confirms some of my suspicions to claims on how sexy and easy go is when it comes to concurrency. if anything it will give you a false a sense of security but god help you in case things go south and you've abused these features.

<comment><USER12> reminded me of: [https://twitter.com/pasiphae_goals/status/923835427995508741...](https://twitter.com/pasiphae_goals/status/923835427995508741?s=20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> is there a html version?

</comment><comment><USER10> As much as I don't like javascript, there is a whole swathe of concurrency bugs that exists in golang and not in nodejs.

<comment><USER14> Makes sense since Nodejs has no parallelism features.

<comment><USER7> Go doesn't really have parallelism features either. A language designed for parallelism needs to have data-parallel features like parallel iterators, good support for SIMD, and concurrent data structures, neither of which Go has. (In fact, due to lack of generics, you can't even build your own generic concurrent data structures!)

<comment><USER15> Yikes. It's impossible to do parallel processing on my old pentium pro because it lacks MMX?

<comment><USER7> I didn't say it was impossible to do parallel work in Go. You can get parallelism in Node, too, by using workers, or by just forking processes and having them communicate with pipes. Rather, what I was trying to emphasize is that Go—and Node—aren't _designed_ for parallelism. Go has good support for concurrency, not parallelism. Parallel languages have feature sets more like CUDA, C++ with OpenMP, OpenCL, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The terminology could use some refinement. Not sure "message passing" is the right phrase to describe Go channels.

Most encounters I've had with "message passing"\--whether it was AJAX, Win32 PostMessage, or grade school--have been non-blocking. Go channels block.

edit: Here's a pretty good write-up from 2016 on why channels are an anti- pattern:

[https://www.jtolio.com/2016/03/go-channels-are-bad-and- you-s...](https://www.jtolio.com/2016/03/go-channels-are-bad-and-you-should- feel-bad/)

<comment><USER16> I don't see why blocking is an issue given that goroutines are light weight threads. They are really cheap and can be created as needed, eliminating much of the need for async patterns. It's one of the nicest things about Go given that async is just manually implemented lightweight threading.

I would say though that go channels have not turned out to be as useful as I thought they would be. I dont find myself using them that much. But maybe it's just my style or the type of stuff I am writing.

<comment><USER7> > It's one of the nicest things about Go given that async is just manually > implemented lightweight threading.

No, async/await is typically stackless, while goroutines have stacks. That's a significant difference.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft UNIX - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XENIX <comment><USER2> Wow talk about a blast from the past...

I remember working on Xenix for a programming project back in my college days (early 90's). Back then my only work on Unix had been on AIX and Solaris, and PC's for me were equivalent to DOS. Seeing a PC do Unix was... weird. You had multiple consoles, if I remember correctly, and of course the C compiler, yacc and lex, /usr/bin, the standard library, man pages -- man this thing is _deep_.

A couple years later Linux came out and the rest is history.

</comment><comment><USER3> is there anything new to see here? yes M$ had a unix and yes it became SCO.

<comment><USER4> And yes, both SCO and Xenix are dead now.</comment></comment>


Simple Design Tips for Non-Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.lauradhamilton.com/ten-design-tips-for-non-designers

<comment><USER2> As a non-designer, I don't have the insight to understand why black text makes a site look outdated and trashy. As a user of web pages, I think that black text makes a site look professional. It also makes it possible to read without hurting my eyes. The light gray suggested in the article is very difficult to read and gives me the impression of a badly designed site. Just my opinion as a non-designer.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Whatever, you do, never use black text. It will make your site look > outdated and trashy._

So on my screen, those light grey hyperlinks are just completely washed out.

Also, why should people avoid using photos of people looking directly at the camera? I'm sure you're right, but I just don't know why.

(Your remaining suggestions seem reasonable and helpful.)</comment>


Linux Popularity Sparks Salary Jump - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/10/linux-popularity-sparks-salary-jump

<comment><USER2> Linux expert "technologists" are making $84K/year. With that kind of Jack, they could afford an efficiency apartment in Palo Alto. There must be a "shortage".</comment>


Actually launching - <AUTHOR>

I'm great at starting projects but terrible at getting as far as launching them.  I've developed a couple of SAAS applications as far as getting beta testers but then not launched.  Something always seems to come up but I think it's really fear:  What if it's not good enough?  What if it has (or causes users) problems?<p>Has anyone else had this problem?  How do you get past it?  I'm a solo developer - is working with a partner the way to go? <comment><USER2> It's natural to have this problem at one point or another. Solution: call launching an experiment.

It's incredibly hard to tell if something will work or not. So hard in fact, that you are better off assuming it won't. Because that removes the expectation it has to do well, which is what's really holding you back, not fear. You believe launching will be a success only if it yields a specific type of outcome.

If you call it an experiment, it will allow you to not take yourself seriously, or to turn the project into something else, and even to ditch it if you realize you find something else more interesting. Don't let premature commitment limit your options. Just play.

Brian Eno might have said it best:

      Artists who don't censor their own work: Picasso, Miles
      Davis, Prince. They're all people who just put it out,
      and have almost no critical self-censorship. They say,
      "Let the market decide; let the world decide." You might
      not be the best person to judge it.

      That's a kind of humility, actually: it's a mixture of
      arrogance, which says, "I know I'm fucking good." But a
      humility, which says, "I'm not the person to decide."

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea in principle but I struggle with the idea of charging someone to use an experiment. My personal feeling is that once you take someone's money you have an obligation but, until you hit some level of scale, you may not be able to commit the time and effort to meet that obligation. With creative endeavours there is really a once-off transaction whereas for a SAAS application the customer expects an ongoing service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> After you launched a few products, you will realise something: people don't really care. It took a healthy amount of money, time and effort to promote my products (all of which have failed), before realizing that there is no valuable/actionable market for them (a number of the products I launched had tens of thousands of users, but no money could be generated from them).

Don't worry about not being good enough. Just launch it. I'm free to chat - email's in my profile.

<comment><USER4> Funny, I am reading this comment at the right time for me. I "launched" my startup recently - I put in on HN and reddit but didnt get feedback, then I got some feedback on a forum specialized in maths (my startup is in maths education).

Definitely, it's hard to get people to pay attention, and I can't blame them; I myself don't go checking all the "Show HN".

I'll send you an email.

</comment></comment><comment> Mumm-Ra For me this one's simple.

Are people aware of it and buying it - then it's ready.

If they're aware of it but not buying it - it's not ready.

If they're not aware of it - you'll never know.

</comment><comment><USER5> I picked a very narrow problem, set myself a tiny budget ($50), forced myself into a tiny schedule (7 days) and am blogging about the process on reddit - [http://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/2nbvc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/2nbvcc/dotcom_startup_day_1_of_7/)

I suspect that having very tight, formalized and public deadlines will force me to put something out. Even putting out something "not good" would be preferable to me not releasing anything while people are watching.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have the exact same issue with my projects, but recently I read something which seems to have helped over the last few weeks;

"Never got to bed satisfied."

It means, don't stay up all night fixing that issue, leave it till the next day when you will really want to start fixing the issue.

It seems to be a great way to maintain focus and motivation.

<comment><USER7> Got a link to that?

<comment><USER6> I did have a look, unfortunately it was one of the many different 'Starting a Start-up' posts.</comment></comment></comment>


Shocked by San Francisco, on my very first day - <AUTHOR> http://www.genesx.com/2012/09/shocked-by-san-francisco-on-my-very-first-day-need-you-help-asap/ <comment><USER2> I understand the idea, but I still don't think this is the right way to go about it.... There are many well organized and already established charities that help out the homeless. If you feel the need to help less fortunate people out, I believe it would be better to donate to one of these charities. It also helps circumvent the potential for the beggar to go use it for alcohol/drugs/unnecessary purchases and it makes sure that only the people that truly are trying to get help out of their situation get the money....

Edit: Playing devil's advocate here, but couldn't this be a way for some "pranksters" to harass the homeless easily as well? I certainly don't have enough faith in our fellow humans to expect this never to happen, especially since homeless already deal with enough assaults... Between 1999-2010, 312 homeless people were reported dead from these assaults and over 800 injured [1].

[1]<http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/hatecrimes.html>

<comment><USER3> I'm always curious when otherwise intelligent people think that homeless people shouldn't have alcohol. I can only think of several reasons why a person thinks the homeless shouldn't have it:

A) They enjoy alcohol, but feel that someone without a home doesn't deserve to enjoy it. B) They don't drink alcohol which they believe is the reason they are not homeless. C) They think that if that person stops drinking, they will end up with a job quickly and get their life back together.

Only in rare cases is C going to work out and those cases it will probably have nothing to do with whether you decide alcohol is right for them.

If you want to help homeless people, give them some money, not some old, half eaten sandwich. Every time I've watched a friend try to give away some old food, they are always turned down by homeless people.

I could be off here, but overtime I have got the sense that the homeless people I see every day are not feeling bad for themselves at all. They view themselves as hustlers, not saving, but just getting by everyday by raising a few dollars here, a few dollars there etc. I view them as capitalists who are making a choice every day to live the way they do.

<comment><USER2> Because I consider alcohol something that is an unnecessary expense and when you are spending money on alcohol when you are homeless, I can't help but think that there are more important things that you could be spending that same money on. Also if I give money to a homeless person, I personally don't want my money going to drugs/alcohol because that is doing nothing to help the homeless person out. I'd rather it go to food or even something like a gym membership for a month so that they can shower and get cleaned up to maybe get a job. That's my view anyway.

<comment><USER4> This is an interesting discussion. So what's the goal? Is the goal making the homeless person happy/ier? Are you sure that by not allowing that person to have alcohol, or by making him get a job, he's going to be happy/ier? If being happy is not the goal, then what is it? And how do you achieve it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please understand that San Francisco has some of the most _extensive_ programs for the homeless/poor in the country. There are homeless prenatal services, clinics, shelters, food programs, healthcare, job training programs, low income housing, mail services, free blankets, clothing, etc. Heck, there is a program to give puppies from animal control to panhandlers and pay them a stipend for watching them.

A good number of panhandlers aren't homeless. Many suffer from mental illness and California hasn't done forced mental treatment since Reagan. A large minority are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Very few are actually hungry (in SF, food stamps come on a debit card that can be used not only at grocery stores, but at many restaurants and even farmer's markets). On top of that the San Francisco Food Bank distributes 100,000 meals a day worth of food.

What I'm trying to get at here is that even with all this stuff, the problem basically isn't going away. It is really complicated and giving someone your leftover food might make you feel better, but I doubt it'll solve the underlying problem.

<comment><USER6> The city, in my opinion, does provide above average (compared to other US cities) care to homeless via many city and non-profit programs. Part of how they fund those programs is a problem. The problem is that the non-profits are not subject to sunshine laws so that we may not know how effective those monies have been.

For example, over the years the city in its wisdom has seen it fit to divert over 600million from the Hetch Hetchy system into the general fund (which is where police, parks and non-profits can apply for funding). so now the city is asking for a prop to raise 3.6 billion to fix the Hetch Hetchy water system --which they'd been neglecting.

In any event, the homeless and mental illness problem cannot be a city or state issue. It needs to become a national issue so that the problem can be addressed nationally but delivered locally. Otherwise people with these issues are attracted by places which treat them nicely (and thus over tax the locality) while migrating away from places which provide little treatment --i.e the 'nice' places get penalized for trying to be nice.

[http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/A-CHRONICLE-SPECIAL- REPO...](http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/A-CHRONICLE-SPECIAL-REPORT-S-F- looted-region-s-2796611.php) <http://www.sfbg.com/39/23/cover_foi_nonprofits.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't help but chuckle a bit after reading this blog post. I am not sure if I should be cheerful about this app concept or hang my head in shame.

>> Find/geo-locate the closest beggar near you

How? Homeless people are not static points-of-interest and to even consider them like that is a bit distasteful.

>> Know how safe it is to walk close to that beggar.

Again, how? People adding reviews for an individual homeless person?

<comment><USER8> There's usually groups who go to the homeless to offer food, medicine and clothing, they probably have the ins and outs of finding the homeless on their city.

<comment><USER7> IMHO, the groups who to that, are doing a very noble thing. But dipping this in the silicon valley startup sauce is quite insulting to the homeless individual. What OP should be doing is working hard and contributing to these groups/organizations who know the best way to render help and assistance. Making this into a treasure hunt does not make sense to me. Why would you want a random homeless already-struggling down-on-his-luck guy be disturbed by every smartphone wielding person? Peace and solace must mean something, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First off, a close friend of mine did this a few years back. He called it hoboreview.com. He ended up shutting it down to to lack of public interest.

Secondly, the title of this post is "shocked by San Francisco" and yet the article fails to explain what was so shocking. Was it the fact that the hobo gave you a weird look? Or that there were hobos at all? I can't imagine Miami being a whole lot different.

And finally, he needs our help with what? Seems to me he's so excited about starting some sort of online collaboration / movement that he forgot to take the time to figure out what the movement actually is.

Plus, the dude is in San Francisco for a week and decides to spend his time at an ING Coffee shop? That's in poor taste.

</comment><comment><USER10> An application targeting a vulnerable demographic, that encourages people to put other people's personal information online, and offers a platform that is ripe for misuse and abuse.

What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER11> The guy noticed a problem and instead of being pessimistic, he decided to do something about it and affect change. Whether you agree with him or not, you should recognize that he is only trying to help. Instead of being snarky and sarcastic, perhaps you could contribute to the conversation.

<comment><USER10> Consider the sarcasm as my playful contribution, as we both know there is nothing to contribute here because the goal is unrealistic.

The idea that homeless people, a demographic known for crime and drug abuse, can be tracked reliably by volunteers so that other people can give them food is laughable.

Not to mention if such a system did exist, it would be exploited by the people who would benefit by it, bored kids, possibly law enforcement, etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suspect SF is far more progressive but in my city the police would use this to round-up and arrest them.

I am not exaggerating, it's illegal to feed the homeless in my city.

This is what we've become.

<comment><USER13> What were we before? Elves living in blissful harmony?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> am i the only one that finds this app idea a little... distasteful?

<comment><USER15> If it can help, no.

I certainly do see your point though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your piece makes a lot of assumptions.

Instead of writing the grossly and insensitively named "beggarmap" I'd like to suggest you find a charity that needs volunteers and work with them for three days.

Feed the homeless for three days, get to know them, then maybe you can decide what their needs are and what the best way to meet them is.

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one who laughed at this? Everyone else in the comments so far seem to think its serious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to point out that the beggar I fed yesterday was very excited to get some food. If I can repeat this every day, then the app is priceless.

<comment><USER18> If you do it every day, you should totally get a badge in the app. People love badges.

<comment><USER19> Ten straight days and get a GOLD badge!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't see how you were shocked.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've lived in San Francisco for 20 years. You might be interested in knowing where your General Tso's will end up:

 _When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team._

 _While the sheer volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not. Once the stations close, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a private place to relieve themselves._

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts- down...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART- escalators-3735981.php)</comment>


Words to ban from your dev team - <AUTHOR> http://jeremyphelps.com/blog/words-to-ban-from-your-dev-team.html <comment><USER2> Good Lord, yes. "Just" is a cuss word coming from a programmer. "Just" include this gem? "Just" use this new database? "Just" rewrite in new trendy language? How about "just" understand the legacy code, "just" reach 90% code coverage, "just" create a proof of concept first?

</comment><comment><USER3> No.</comment>


You know a site has its shit together when… - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/you-know-a-site-has-its-shit-together-when-8ee21040d0bc#.kfqcjq5qu <comment><USER2> > I'm sure there's some historical reason for valuing short variable names. > ... Maybe in the past our ancestors had to pay by the letter

Yes that's it.</comment>


Students innovate the digital page flip - <AUTHOR> http://www.macgasm.net/2012/01/23/students-innovate-digital-page-flip-blow-ibooks-water/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome. The _only_ complaint I have with my Kindle is that it is difficult to flip between pages easily/quickly. Makes skimming hard.</comment>


The Eastland disaster killed more passengers than the Titanic and the Lusitania - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/eastland-disaster-killed-more-passengers-titanic-and-lusitania-why-has-it-been-forgotten-180953146/ <comment><USER2> I will see your Eastland and raise you the even more obscure sinking of Mississippi steamboat Sultana in 1865. Loss of life between 1168 and 1547. It's the worst maritime disaster in US history (the Titanic was an British ship in international waters with an international passenger list).

The reason you've never heard of it is because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated the day before, an event that sucked up all the nations newsprint and popular attention.

There is a pretty good documentary on it on one of the big streaming services.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_the_19th_century)

<comment><USER3> Fair one but rather a lot of that list of maritime disasters has white and red ensigns (UK) next to them. We obviously haven't quite got the hang of the big blue wobbly stuff.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_\(steamboat\)) is well worth a read. It is well written in my opinion and the Talk page only has the usual nonsense "controversy" on it. This time it's whether to worry about SS as a naming prefix!

<comment><USER4> That's just what you'd expect, as in the 19th century Britain probably had more ocean going vessels than the rest of the world COMBINED.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Titanic is famous because of the hubris involved; it was the biggest, fastest, most luxurious ocean liner ever, that sunk basically just because its captain was trying for the Blue Riband on its maiden voyage (also, a lot of rich and famous people died). The Lusitania is famous because it was a hospital ship attacked during wartime and was used to drum up support for allies entering the war (it was a major factor in the US entering).

For whatever reason we don't really care about normal civilians dying en masse during peacetime accidents. So many people died in the General Slocum disaster that it wiped out the Little Germany neighborhood of New York:

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

<comment><USER6> Pretty much this — there's a large mindshare bias towards the more dramatic and relatable incidents.

My favorite party question is what the most deadly power plant accident in history was. And the predictable answer "Chernobyl" is wrong by a whole order of magnitude, which seems to surprise many: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam)

For even more extreme examples for drama & negativity bias, feel free to have a look at actual death causes vs. news exposure: Terrorism is overrepresented by more than three orders of magnitude, while almost nobody gets killed by a bad guy but rather by heart disease: [https://ourworldindata.org/does-the- news-reflect-what-we-die...](https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect- what-we-die-from)

All in all, humans are pretty pathetic at objectiveness.

<comment><USER7> It's a bit of a stretch to refer to Banqiao Dam as a "power plant accident". It was a dam failure. Sure, it was part of "a project to control flooding and provide electrical power generation" (from the wikipedia article), but AIUI the failure was nothing to do with the power plant; it was simply the dam.

<comment><USER8> That seems overly pedantic, like saying Chernobyl was a "reactor failure" that has nothing to do with the power plant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And, of course, compared to the sinkings with the largest loss of lives, neither the Eastland nor the Titanic seems particularly -hm, for want of a better word - impressive.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, sunk in the Baltic Sea in the closing months of WW2 - 10,000 lives lost. The Goya, sunk in the same waters in April 1945, cost approx. 7,000 lives.

The worst peacetime accident was in the mid-eighties, when the Philippine ferry Doña Paz capsized, killing more than 4,000 people.

<comment><USER10> Something that makes the Eastland quite horrifying is that it didn't take place far out at sea: it took place in the Chicago River. I don't know if you've spent any time in Chicago, but the river goes through the heart of the city. You're walking to the market and you hear some hubbub by the river. You turn the corner, and boom, suddenly you see a few thousand people get flipped into the water and start drowning. Even if "only" 800 of them actually drown, it's still a horrifying thing to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The headline is playing a trick for clicks. More people died on the Titanic, but the Eastland has more deaths if you only count passengers and now crew.

</comment><comment><USER12> As an engineer (ok software engineer but still) terrible engineering is always interesting: why would anyone build a ship like this without a keel, and why would anyone put 2000+ people into a ship designed for 500? Also why would anyone put massive top heavy weight on a ship with no keel and not do any calculations? And why did someone buy a ship like this because it was cheap and not ask why?

Engineering disasters always have lessons you hope someone learned before it's you in or on it.

I once won a cruise ship shipbuilding contest (use any materials you can find, it has to hold a two sixpacks of beer for 30 seconds) with a little raft that had both a tall keel and full water bottles for stability. I learned all this from engineering disaster shows.

<comment><USER13> > why would anyone build a ship like this without a keel

Because you want a shallow draft in a riverboat. [0]

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverboat#Design_differences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverboat#Design_differences)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article briefly mentions the writer/journalist Carl Sandburg, but doesn't mention that he wrote a particularly brutal poem about the event. Here's a link to a copy:

[https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/30232/...](https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/30232/sand- east.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Thank you, that's a fascinating read. Sandburg was right: we pay attention to flashy disasters, while slow-rolling ones are barely newsworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're interested in light retrospectives this is ok for a modern day ferry disaster -

What Went Wrong in the South Korean Ferry Disaster? (28 mins) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o)

The MS Estonia also has doco's on Youtube

</comment><comment><USER17> I learned about this recently at the Chicago Maritime Museum (a fascinating small museum that I hope will survive the pandemic).

One of the most interesting things they have on display is a dive suit that was used in search and rescue efforts for the Eastland disaster.

</comment><comment><USER18> It was sad, but not as sad as the similarly named Easthill mining disaster.

[http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/mining- disaster.html](http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/mining-disaster.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Hmm, designed for 500 people, modified several times to up the passengers to 2000+, modified again to add lifeboats and vests. Sounds a bit like the 737-Max.</comment>


Is anybody else having trouble with the upmod buttons? - <AUTHOR>

Just within the past week or so I've noticed something annoying when trying to upmod articles on the front page. Most of the time, instead of registering the request in the background and letting me get on with things, I get sent to a URL like http://news.ycombinator.com/vote?by=epall&for=383929&dir=up&whence=%6e%65%77%73 which just shows a blank page. I have to hit Back to get back to the articles. Is anybody else experiencing this bug? <comment><USER2> I've only noticed this happening when I have JavaScript turned off.</comment>


EC sends Statements of Objections to Valve and five publishers on "geo-blocking" - <AUTHOR> http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2010_en.htm <comment><USER2> Someone posted Valve's response to this on /r/steam. Basically, they don't agree with it, but stopped doing it years ago since they knew the EU was going to give them problems with it. They also said that it only applied to physical copies of games that included a code to redeem on steam, so they weren't making any money off of this, and it was only done at the request of some publishers.

<comment><USER3> X made me do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The information you are looking for has moved. You should find some or all of it at [http://europa.eu/european-union/index_en."](http://europa.eu/european- union/index_en.") Looks like it's been taken down, because [https://europa.eu/search/?queryText=geo- blocking&query_sourc...](https://europa.eu/search/?queryText=geo- blocking&query_source=EUNION&filterSource=EUNION&more_options_date=*&more_options_date_from=&more_options_date_to=&more_options_language=en&more_options_f_formats=*&swlang=en) doesn't return any results.

<comment><USER5> No problems here.. In any case, here's a mirror: [http://archive.is/EJrls](http://archive.is/EJrls)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good good.

Time for geoblocking to go away

<comment><USER7> But now think about the consequences of this: everybody in the EU has to pay the same price for the games. There's an income difference of 5-10 times between different EU countries. The poorest ones will have to now pay the same price as the richest ones. A game costing >€60 when you have less than €300 disposable income per month is crazy expensive.

<comment><USER8> Why would everyone have to pay the same price for games? Where does this logic come from?

Just because you can buy a car in Iowa and drive it to California, it doesn't mean people in Iowa have pay the exact same price for it than in Cali.

Same goes here - EU doesn't force you to price thing the same across all countries. But you are just not allowed to ban people from buying a thing in one EU country and take it to another - this is the CORE tenement of EU's single market and without this limitation, the EU single market cannot exist.

Banning customers from being able to shop around for lower price of a good they want is also an egregious voilation of core benefit of free market capitalism.

<comment><USER9> Imagine that based on local income a digital product that has virtually no marginal cost is $25 in one market and $50 in another for whatever currency you please.

If someone in market B can by clicking over to a different storefront for market A then logically the vendor will no longer offer the good at the lessor rate in market A.

They will have to figure out what price maximizes revenue in both and it will surely disadvantage buyers in market A because the vendor gains as much for one market B buyer as two market A buyers.

If 40% of your buyers are from poor land then losing every one of them is as costly as dropping richland users prices by 1/3.

What if the vendor offered coupons available only locally to make it more feasible to differentiate prices while keeping stuff portable?

<comment><USER10> Because this isn't what happens. Price discrimination, if done perfectly, minimises the value the consumer can get and maximises the value the seller can extract from them. Overall it is a negative for consumers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 4S to launch in India, world's No. 2 market - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/11/14/iphone_4s_to_launch_in_world_no_2_mobile_market_india.html <comment><USER2> Apple must reduce the price if they want to target Indian market.</comment>


How Much is Enough?: Comcast finds a new way to kill peer-to-peer - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080903_005406.html <comment><USER2> Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe that Comcast even offers a way to track your usage. How are you supposed to know when you get close to their cap?

<comment><USER3> They tell you to install a monitoring tool.</comment></comment>


Value Is Dead, Long Live Value - <AUTHOR> https://www.osam.com/Commentary/value-is-dead-long-live-value <comment><USER2> You can't go back and just say "Oh, this period and that period". That is hindsight bias. It is psychologically comforting but provides no guide to the future.

It is particularly foolhardy to place the ending point at 1941. If you didn't know, the period directly after this saw high equity returns because the savings of almost everyone was funnelled by the govt into govt bonds.

If you look at how companies were being priced, it is clear why value outperformed.You had profitable companies with $10 of cash trading for $5. You have companies buying back stock at $10 whilst earning $10. Is this comparable to today?

It is kind of surprising that someone taking the cycle view of history (this is the "hardcore" historian approach) appears to have not looked at any contemporaneous evidence. A theory has been created in hindsight, no evidence from the period has been produced. This is history at its worst, and investment research at its worst. This post should be called: all the things you don't learn in the CFA program.

<comment><USER3> Ford is hovering around a 1.0 price/book ratio and has dropped below that as early as 2018.

Value is still out there. Then as now there are many reasons why people won't pay more at the present time for these stocks.

<comment><USER2> If you are measuring value with price/book, you have no hope. The conceit of the "value factor" is wrong-headed: trying to measure value quantitatively is like trying to measure the aesthetic appeal of art quantitatively. It just makes no sense. Quant screens turn up the most uninvestable garbage. The only people who invest that way, haven't ever looked properly at the companies they are investing in (I use value quant screens for shorts now, the flow of money into quant means they are usually comically overpriced).

More to the point though: value is only determined in hindsight. A company trading on 30x earnings can be cheap. The only "value factor" that is closely correlated to returns is 5yr forward earnings. If you think a computer can predict earnings five years forward...great, but they can't.

Also, if you aren't managing $10bn+ you shouldn't be looking at Ford. Don't make it difficult.

<comment><USER3> Value investing as Graham and Dodd described it is a very specific strategy. Future earnings are hard to predict or calculate - but factories, land, and cash exist and have real value that is computable.

Right now the market is saying one of two things with a 1.0 price/book:

1) Ford's ongoing business is currently worth $0

OR

2) Ford's capital assets are currently worth $0

It's much easier to make a judgement call on those predicates which are based in the present rather than predict the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This overlooks the longterm impact of a new type of company that has been greatly enabled by technology: predatory revenue omnivores. These are companies that have figured out how to identify large revenue flows outside their current business or sector and systematically capture that revenue successfully, over and over (Amazon is a good example). In the past, revenue growth was _not_ sector-agnostic in this way because sector expertise created insurmountable advantages for incumbents such that revenue growth was more a function of sector growth and competition came from within that sector. Attempts to materially expand outside a company's native sector almost always ended in failure. Now it looks like a repeatable business model that a minority of companies have figured out.

More and more, you see alien companies successfully colonizing established sectors and stripping them of their revenue. Few value companies are prepared to handle the scenario when these alien companies show up because historically it has never been a realistic threat. I've seen this play out across several industrial sectors over the last decade and almost without exception, companies retreat to niches that the predator hasn't turned its eyes to yet. That's a strategy for being eaten last. The threat is so far outside their experience that they struggle to see a path forward.

If I was going to invest in "value" these days, I'd invest in the revenue predators. They are going to capture much of the best value revenue eventually but this will give them the appearance of "growth" companies in the short term due to the scale of organic revenue growth this business model creates for them.

<comment><USER5> Who are these predators? Among FAANG I'd guess only the acquisition of YouTube has been a success, and only modest at best.

<comment><USER6> Let's see...

\- Apple, Samsung, LG, and Google have supplanted a wide range of consumer products with modern cell phones. Point-and-shoot cameras, some prosumer cameras, low-end document scanners, household telephones, PDAs, small flashlights, small voice recorders, portable tape and CD players, car CD players (via wired or BT connectivity), portable DVD players, boom boxes (via Bluetooth speakers), car GPS navigation systems, compasses (to some extent), pocket notebooks, planners (to some extent), a large segment of the wristwatch and pocket watch market, pocket calculators, professional scientific and graphing calculators, walkie-talkies and handheld radios (not completely though), portable electronic games and some game consoles... those are a few of the big ones.

\- There is no type of brick-and-mortar store in any branch of retail or auction that hasn't been hit _hard_ by Amazon and eBay. Additionally, all the B2B businesses in the retail supply/service chain have been hit hard as either their clients suffer or they themselves lose business to Amazon.

I could go on. The world is a completely different place than what it was 20 years ago.

<comment><USER7> While you're not wrong, I don't think all (maybe any?) of these are examples of specifically targeted markets taken over by the companies you mentioned. Apple probably didn't target the flashlight market and decide to take market share from Maglite. I think you've just identified products that have naturally been supplanted by new technologies, many of them falling to the adoption of smartphones. A more appropriate example may be Amazon moving into the groceries market. But even that, one could perhaps argue that their broad market is general retail, with competitors like Walmart and Costco, in which case it wasn't really that far of an extension at all from their natural market. I guess Amazon and Apple moving into the realm of Hollywood and film studios may be a better example. I'd like to see a broader success like Apple taking market share from Automobile manufacturers, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are two rational justification for the (seemingly) persistent value factor:

1\. It's just a risk premium. The efficient market hypothesis says that all risk adjusted returns are the same. i.e there is only one Sharpe ratio. Or put another way, there is no excess return without commensurate risk. Using this model, value out performs because of the increased riskiness of the investment. Reward for bearing risk is absolutely persistent so if this first reason is true, it should be persistent forever.

2\. Behavioral bias. If this is true, people will wise up and the eventual equilibrium will price value fairly at some point.

Either way, value shouldn't be able to juice your Sharpe ratio forever. Either the first one is true and the Sharpe ratio is unaffected (just the mean returns, which don't really matter unless you are unable to access leverage), or value is in fact not persistent, because no behavioral bias can ever be persistent, a priori.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but value alone isn't worth very much. AQR and other funds usually pair it with factors that have a negative correlation, such as momentum. This allows them to capture significant excess returns, compared to value alone.

<comment><USER9> > no behavioral bias can ever be persistent, a priori

Of course it can. Tripping twice over the same stone, etc.

Casinos are full of people playing games with negative expected return after all. And if the stock market is like gambling, it's mostly on the side of "glamour" (as opposed to "boring") stocks.

<comment><USER8> Well, you would expect the markets to reward the people who didn't have these biases, and hurt the people who still had them. The people with the bias will get poorer and poorer, and the people without it will get richer and richer. Those who get poorer and poorer will increasingly have less influence on the world economy, and those getting richer and richer will have out-sized influence.

Eventually, the pool of suckers will disappear and the market will move onto some other bias to stamp out. You can see this very thing happening in capital markets. I work as a quant and many very simple strategies like value, momentum, quality, etc used to work _remarkably_ well, just 15-40 years ago. Nowadays, you need more sophisticated factors, or combine these simple factors together in unique and interesting ways.

There might be a sucker born every minute, but the sucker will never accumulate enough capital for anyone to ever care about him.

<comment><USER9> It's too early to declare that value is dead, a full market cycle will be needed at least.

Looking at the Fama/French HmL series value strongly underperformed growth in the late nineties (the HmL series had a 40% drawdown). The current drawdown is not as large yet (but it's true that it has been going on for over a decade).

"Are Growth and Value Dead?

"1999 was the sixth consecutive year in which the S&P BARRA Growth Index outperformed the Value Index. Some investors have questioned whether Value will ever again be a successful investment approach. Some of them believe this is a "New Era" in which technology stocks are revolutionizing the way business is done: "New Economy" stocks will survive while "Old Economy" stocks (mostly Value stocks) will become extinct."

[https://www.northinfo.com/documents/111.pdf](https://www.northinfo.com/documents/111.pdf)

Edit: see also pages 7/8 in [https://www.yardeni.com/pub/style.pdf](https://www.yardeni.com/pub/style.pdf) Those charts confirm what I wrote above, growth crushed value 20 years ago but didn't quite kill it...

<comment><USER8> Current research from AQR seems to suggest that HmL isn't actually a persistent factor, just a behavioral bias without any economic basis (anymore?). Also current research by AQR suggests that that value is more structural, and is a real risk premia.

I don't think anyone really knows whether value is a real risk premia, and if it's reason is structural or not. I think it's possible that many of the classic factors (value, momentum, carry, reversal, quality) are structural and do exist, but it's going to take a little bit more work than just creating a dollar neutral L/S portfolio exposed to E/P or whatever.

If I had to guess, I would say that value is a real risk premia. That's not to say I would have put my money in it for the last 10 years, though..

<comment><USER9> > Current research from AQR seems to suggest that HmL isn't actually a > persistent factor [...] Also current research by AQR suggests that that > value is more structural, and is a real risk premia.

I'm lost. HmL is the classic "value" factor (as in the 3-factor model of Fama and French: market, size and value). I don't say that's the best definition possible (clearly it's not) and I know other definitions exist (but HmL has the advantage of being available for a century). For what it's worth, I prefer cash-flow-based metrics and total shareholder yield (dividends + buybacks + debt reduction).

AQR use an improved definition (using data as current as possible) but I don't think it's terribly different: "The bottom line is that while the standard approach to value was a reasonable and conservative choice that has served the field well, it is not the best possible choice."

[https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Research/Journal-Article/The- De...](https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Research/Journal-Article/The-Devil-in- HMLs-Details)

In their latest publication ("Factor Premia and Factor Timing: A Century of Evidence", that I've not yet read) they say:

"We follow simple value measures used in the literature to capture "cheap" versus "expensive" securities within an asset class. For individual equities, we use the book-to-market ratio following Fama and French (1992, 2012) and Asness, Moskowitz, and Pedersen (2013). For global equity indices, we use the aggregate 10-year cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio CAPE (value- weighted average P/E ratio for all constituent firms in the index)."

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I mean Big minus Small. My bad! I guess I started associating high with big and low with small!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > As of June 30, 2019, the Russell 1000 Value has underperformed the Russell > 1000 Growth by a cumulative -136%,

This is some pretty fishy math right here

<comment><USER11> It depends on whether you divide the larger by the smaller, or vice versa. Say X went from 100 to 50, while Y went from 100 to 100. It can be seen as 50% reduction in X's value or 100% underperformance vs Y.

The 100% number is kind of more useful because it is the extra return on the decision to switch to Y back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For someone that is not an investor, would someone please explain the difference between growth and value stocks?

My initial guess is that value stocks are underpriced, while growth stocks are priced correctly for current value, but has significant growth potential How close is that?

<comment><USER8> Yeah that's a pretty good guess. Growth generally means a company is expensive relative to it's earnings, profits, or book value. Ratios like P/E (price to earnings), and P/B (price to book) can be used to identify/classify a growth company. Higher these ratios, the higher the stocks exposure to "growth".

A value company is the exact opposite, a stock with low ratios. As you might have suspected, value has been clobbered in the last 10 years, and a bunch of Chicago school economists are pissing their pants (Fama, French, etc).

V

<comment><USER13> Neither P/E or Book value are useful metrics for value investing. Please read security analysis...

<comment><USER8> Would you prefer book to market? That's what Fama and French used. All of these ratios are related to the value factor, I didn't say you need/should use on or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: "VALUE INVESTING: BRUISED BY 1000 CUTS"

[https://www.gmo.com/americas/research-library/value- investin...](https://www.gmo.com/americas/research-library/value-investing- bruised-by-1000-cuts/)

Direct link to PDF: [https://www.gmo.com/globalassets/articles/insights/asset- all...](https://www.gmo.com/globalassets/articles/insights/asset- allocation/2019/rf_value-bruised-by-1000-cuts_5-19.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> When it comes to value one thing that bugs me is the premium one has to pay for American equities. Like I get it, it's a good market, but it is consistently 30% to 100% more expensive across various metrics. American equities can't be this good.

CAPE is a good case in point here: [https://mebfaber.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/capeys.jpg](https://mebfaber.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/capeys.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> Very well written article from a reputable firm.

Patrick O'Shag's podcast is pretty good too: [http://investorfieldguide.com/podcast/](http://investorfieldguide.com/podcast/)

> One should not underestimate the role of regulation in how the Age of > Technology plays out.

Yes. The US government needs to step in and enhance privacy and the right to be forgotten... following in the footsteps of our EU brothers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Value has taken a beating for over a decade, and predictably there are pundits crawling out of the woodwork explaining how Warren Buffet's day is long past.

I imagine after the next economic cycle Buffet will again be lauded as a genius.

<comment><USER11> He's kind of a closet indexer these days:

[https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest- portfolio?s=y&t...](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest- portfolio?s=y&timePeriod=4&startYear=2003&firstMonth=1&endYear=2019&lastMonth=12&calendarAligned=true&initialAmount=10000&annualOperation=0&annualAdjustment=0&inflationAdjusted=true&annualPercentage=0.0&frequency=4&rebalanceType=1&absoluteDeviation=5.0&relativeDeviation=25.0&showYield=false&reinvestDividends=true&symbol1=BRK.A&allocation1_1=100&symbol2=SPY&allocation2_2=100&total1=100&total2=100&total3=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe much of the US economy is pointless jobs and pointless economic activity, but the system is viscous enough that the inequilibrium isn't readily apparent.

</comment><comment><USER17> OT: Is FAANG now used to refer to FAAMA (MS, Alphabet)? I never understood why Netflix was in there with such a small comparative market cap.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why would anyone think that value investing could ever work? Everyone can easily see the value of a company, because that's a statement about the present, not the future. It's guaranteed to be already priced in when you buy. You will definitely not be the first person to show up after a quarterly is released.

<comment><USER19> Its a risk-based idea. These companies are valued lower (which everyone sees) because they are thought to be riskier. Theoretically, because less people invest in them because of this, it should result in higher returns for those who stick with the value companies due to the higher risk they are taking on.

<comment><USER9> The reasoning often goes the other way, academics find a "factor" that outperforms empirically and try to come up with a risk-based explanation backing theoretically what does happen :-)

An alternative explanation is that they are simply mispriced.</comment></comment></comment>


ML for JavaScript Devs in 10 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ac052790/ml-for-js-devs-in-10-minutes-46794782762e <comment><AUTHOR> This article aims to introduce and teach machine learning under 10 minutes</comment>


CSS3 Font Smoothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.usabilitypost.com/2010/08/26/font-smoothing/

<comment><USER2> Explaining how subpixel rendering technically works seems like the worst possible argument against something that exists purely for aesthetics. Just because something is more technically complicated does not make it a better option.

There are plenty of situations in which things are far less readable using subpixel rendering. Examples:

WITH subpixel: [http://share.kyleneath.com/captures/Your_Dashboard_- _GitHub-...](http://share.kyleneath.com/captures/Your_Dashboard_- _GitHub-20100826-175340.png) WITHOUT subpixel: [http://share.kyleneath.com/captures/Your_Dashboard_- _GitHub-...](http://share.kyleneath.com/captures/Your_Dashboard_- _GitHub-20100826-175319.png)

Furthermore, so long as the fonts are ~14px+ and sans-serif I think non- subpixel rendering makes the design cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing. Since I started slowly rolling it out to GitHub, I've been getting nothing but compliments. Case in point: <http://github.com/training> — I've had several people email me to ask me how I got the fonts to look so good on this page. The answer? The majority of the text uses antialiased fonts instead of subpixel.

Do I use this effect everywhere? Of course not. That's what being a good designer/developer being is about — surveying your options and choosing the one you feel is the best fit.

Now, you want to talk about font-rendering? Let's talk about monospaced fonts and Ubuntu for a minute because I've got a few rants down that road. Ubuntu's font-smoothing is nearing a crime against humanity. -webkit-font-smoothing doesn't have jack on it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the whole point of subpixel rendering _is_ aesthetics. Its job is to make fonts look smoother and crisper, and in majority of cases it does just that. I'll accept that OS X's rendering of bold fonts on dark backgrounds is terrible, which is where the text-shadow trick comes in handy (or antialiasing, which I think is the same thing in that case), but I'm not sure that for body fonts this is the right way to go. I see this technique popping up here and there and in many cases the fonts end up looking worse. Sure, it's up to the designer to decide what's best--it always is--which is why it's good to have this discussion so that people can better understand which choices to make.

<comment><USER4> The text-shadow hack stopped working when Snow Leopard was released.

-webkit-font-smoothing seems to be a specific solution to the same problem.

via: [http://orderedlist.com/our-writing/resources/html- css/thinni...](http://orderedlist.com/our-writing/resources/html-css/thinning- text-in-webkit-safari/)

<comment><USER3> It hasn't stopped working, it just behaves differently. It stopped working on shadow blur amount of 0, but it works at 1px or more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This title is wrong. This is not a CSS3 feature.

Is it too much to ask that everyone stop calling any and every engine-specific CSS extension "CSS3"?

</comment><comment><USER6> Why is this feature even available in webkit? I can't imagine any situation where I'd want a particular website to override OS font smoothing settings.

<comment><USER7> No?

How about hand-made pixel-based fonts? Or how about some of the sub-pixel fonts out there: <http://typophile.com/node/61920>

<comment><USER8> How about just using the fonts that I told the system to use, the way I told it to use them? I installed and selected those fonts for a reason, thank you.

<comment><USER9> If you've configured your browser to override webpage-specified fonts with your choices, it seems to me that anti-aliasing is surely not going to be high on your list of concerns...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Right on. I'm glad someone with more gravitas than me came and said it. I already did in a slightly cruder way: [http://peterc.org/blog/2010/235-webkit- font-smoothing-antial...](http://peterc.org/blog/2010/235-webkit-font- smoothing-antialiased-is-shit.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> A few days ago I added the following rule to my Safari stylesheet:

        * {-webkit-font-smoothing:inherit!important;}

Frankly I think the whole idea is dangerous; antialiasing settings are not something that website authors should be able to change.

</comment><comment><USER12> Subpixel antialiasing can have more chroma aberrations at the horizontal edges, particularly at high frequencies. You night wish to stop it if that is a problem.

Personally, I cheer the day when we all have 300 dpi displays and the problems melt away.

</comment><comment><USER4> The recommendations from html5boilerplate.com actually include this:

      html { -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; }

My point being: be sure to read and understand resets/boilerplates before including them in your own code.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why do people write articles like this that depend on visuals without any visuals to prove their point?

For examples of how the three types of font-smoothing choices look, try this article: <http://maxvoltar.com/archive/-webkit-font-smoothing>

</comment><comment><USER14> While we're on the topic of font smoothing, does anyone know of a way to make the font smoothing on my PC look as nice as it does on my Macs? Its generally the first thing i notice when i go home at night and check my email on my mac: how much nicer the fonts look.

<comment><USER15> Use DirectWrite.

<comment><USER14> I mean for my applications, not just for things i want to write for myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > follows link through to the "good article"

Bleh. Why do people like non-subpixel-rendered fonts? There's so much less clarity. If you don't like the increased _weight_ , then lower the weight, not the AA. At least the main article gets the point.

</comment><comment><USER16> This setting gives control to the designer to affect perceived text weight (which for one, allows sites to render more consistently on Windows and OS X). You might not like it, but I have a hard time seeing it as so heinous that it is worth excoriating

</comment><comment><USER17> I used the "antialiased" setting a few days ago so that my finished HTML page would look more closely like my Photoshop mockup. The default setting looked too thick, and I was quite happy when I found "antialiased".

</comment><comment><USER18> Why? I know better what type of font smoothing works best on my hardware!</comment>


Show HN: Minutes Without app (Android) - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ionicframework.mw886492&hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, here's the description:

"This app lets you track how many minutes you've gone without doing a certain habit that you either want to build or remove. You simply enter a habit like "eating junk food," "smoking", or even positive things like "flossing". You'll be told how many minutes you've gone since doing the activity, so you can try to either minimize the time for good habits or maximize it for bad habits. See if you can beat your all-time best!"

I built it using Ionic, which is an amazing framework that lets you build an angular app that is compiled for Android/iOS. I don't have an iOS dev account but if there's enough demand then I'll upload it.</comment>


You Should Start a Blog - <AUTHOR> http://timkastelle.org/blog/2014/03/you-should-start-a-blog-right-now/

<comment><USER2> > Blogs were invented to teach. _The mission of blogging is to empower all of > us to go directly to each other with our expertise._

>Blogging helps you turn your flow of ideas into a stock of content.

>You create opportunities. I've met a ton of cool people through my blog.

>Finally, blogging helps you build your skills. Remember, the big gap is the one between doing nothing and doing something, not the one between lousy work and great work.

Although I recognize this very positive post is not intended in this way, this ends up seeming to me at heart a rather cynically narrow definition of blogging, one that has little to do with self-expression and sharing and a lot to do with making an investment in a work-related product that will make you more effective and marketable.

I don't disagree that you should start a blog right now. But starting it for the reasons listed in this post is only one way out of many, and if you ask me a sort of outlet for workaholism.

<comment><USER3> Deep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my an elective at my college, we had to create blogs for our projects. My professor insisted on that for one main reason - "You think once when you develop. You think twice before presenting it. But you think thrice when you put it down in a blog".

When I had to blog every week about my project, I didn't just verify what I had written, but was compelled to read a lot more because what I write can be viewed by anyone else! So we take that _extra_ care in putting down right content. And when we do that, the concepts sink down deep! I think that's one of the good parts of blogging I enjoy the most!

<comment><USER5> Which is why tumblr is a wealth of researched and thought through, informative posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to. What platform should I use? Requirements:

        * No Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal
        * Easy to configure and deploy
        * Internal comments subsystem preferable

I was looking at rigging up Dokuwiki. It obviously has the ability to publish data/articles, it has plugins to give a discussions page, user/ACL support and it's pretty simple to deploy. Drawback is it's not designed by default with the "reverse chrono" ordering, tagging of articles, etc...

I'm lookin at Jekyll for static content, which is pretty much what a simple blog can be, but I keep getting errors trying to use rubygems (not a rubyist, here).

<comment><USER7> Why not use WordPress? It's simple to install, configure, and deploy. Works on any web host. Internal comments. Auto-updates to keep you running on the latest version if you want.

<comment><USER8> wordpress as default does not handle lots of traffic without crashing. You need to use cache plugins to make it work well with lots of visitors. Not a "solid" solution out of the box.

<comment><USER9> If your blog crashes from too many hits, congratulations. Few people write that well. Their audiences tend to forgive them.

Most blogs die from loneliness- even more never launch because it's so much easier not to write.

<comment><USER10> I've seen default wordpress installations on simple vhosts crash at 50 daily visitors, basically every time two people visited at the same time. You do need caching, and you need to set it up manually, and that's probably Wordpress.com's sales pitch nowadays.

<comment><USER9> If your blog is getting 50 daily visitors, congratulations.

<comment><USER8> Really ? That's kind of low, though. I would have thought most blogs get at least a couple of hundred visits (and not bots) every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote a similar article 3 years ago, it's impressive how many arguments we have in common. [http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/analysis/start-a-technical- blog-i...](http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/analysis/start-a-technical-blog-its- worth-it.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Haha I think hacker news just sent me to the worst page in the Internet. Over- earnest, self-congratulatory guff about "blogging" and "innovation".

 _I think my friend Kris Marciniak (Rallynotes.com) first got me interested in blogging. Valeria Maltoni inspired me with the potential in conversation beyond the automotive forums where I'd experienced real world connectivity as a result of sharing ideas online. Now here I am, discussing blogging as it pertains to innovation on a blog about as geographically far away from me in phoenix as you can get, as someone who sees publishing as his life's work. And it all started with a blog.

Kinda makes me want to write more. Thanks, Tim._</comment>


Windows xp mode - <AUTHOR> https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-windows-xp-for-free-and-legally-straight-from-microsoft-si/ <comment><AUTHOR> it's not dead yet......and I still get some old equipment running window ce need to fix / code........</comment>


Japanese Waltzing Mouse (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://mouseinterrupted.wordpress.com/tag/japanese-waltzing-mouse/ <comment><AUTHOR> Had never heard of this before but saw it as a throwaway reference in an old story. In Japan they are apparently known as Komanezumi (spinning top mouse) or Mainezumi (dancing mouse) and said to come from China.

[https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E7%8B%AC%E6%A5%BD%E9%BC%A...](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E7%8B%AC%E6%A5%BD%E9%BC%A0/) [https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E8%88%9E%E9%BC%A0/](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E8%88%9E%E9%BC%A0/)

<comment><USER2> Hey Paul, nice to see on you HN. How likely do you think it is that China is the origin of the mice? Doubly so these mice being brought over during the closed country policy of Japan era.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, hey Dan!

The mice seem to have become popular around 1890, so that was after Japan had opened up. No idea if the mice actually came from Japan or China though, haven't been able to find much of anything about them that isn't in the linked article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember a genetics exercise in high school biology that involved "running mice" and "waltzing mice" with a recessive gene selecting for the "waltzing" trait.

Also, William H. Gates?! Billg's granddaddy?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately it might be a case of (no relation, just coincidence) since the article is marked as communicated in 1925 (from a LSU affiliation) while William H Gates II was born in Washington in 1925 according to his wiki page. There are further publications from "WH Gates" an LSU affiliation going into the 1930s.

<comment><AUTHOR> WHG II is Gates's father, so his grandfather would have the same name, and the date would be fine.

I can't find much info on WHG I, but it seems like maybe he was a banker, which would make it surprising if he was writing about mice.</comment></comment></comment>


Has anyone just completed an exit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.igeejo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you go about finding co-founders?

We've run a decent company in the past. We're going to start another. We're looking for 2 or 3 co-founders. We've tried different things, posting on startup blogs but the responses were generally from people with little experience or others who were fixed on a pet project they've been working on after hours. So we created a website with info and posted a link here hoping for some constructive feedback.

Do you have any other suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm amused that a lot of the comments here have missed the point that this is their wishlist, not some draconian HR checkbox exercise. They come off as fairly sane to me, so I doubt they'd go "No previous exits? Don't want you."

</comment><comment><USER3> What was the actual startup that they exited?

<comment><USER4> porchlight.ca - an ISP.

I don't think a 13-year business with under $3M in revenue is a startup, sounds more like a lifestyle business. It's also not something VCs would be interested in. This falls under super-laid back, and not something most people on HN would likely be attracted either. The serial entrepreneurs I admire have done 2-4 businesses in 10 years, all with exits well over $50M.

<comment><USER5> I don't think flipping businesses is a model to admire.

They aren't creating any more value than some guy selling a get rich quick scheme.

And given the amount of attention DHH receives for taking the counterpoint to your argument here, I'd disagree that "most people on HN" would not be interested in this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Generally a business goes through three stages: innovation (create and fine tune the product), growth (increase market share through marketing), and harvest (maintain large customer base). We experienced all three stages with our first company. Each stage is unique. Each requires a different mode of operation. They require different talents, different ways of thinking, and different filters for making decisions. Conventional wisdom says this is the desired course of a business. You start out small, innovate, grow a customer base into a huge corp and then harvest the rewards.

After reading Paul Graham's "How to Make Wealth" essay, we had an 'aha moment'. It's not necessary for a business to do all three stages. In fact it's not efficient and usually not desirable. Some people/companies are good at innovation, some are good at growth, and some are good are harvest. Each should focus on their strengths.

The model of creating startups and then exiting is about focusing on the innovation stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anybody understand what the post is about? Are they funding new startups from the money they got from exit or they are they want to talk to startups to know if the exit was in the right range? No offense, but I couldn't understand the motivation of the post.

<comment><USER7> We recently sold our company. Our goal now is to try and meet up with a group of two or three founders, people in a situation similar to ours, who have have worked together and founded a successful startup in the past. It's our hope to work together on a new startup.

</comment></comment><comment> Asa-Nisse They only work with other people that have exited a startup.

Funny stuff.

</comment><comment><USER8> Note: insisting that your co-founders have "completed an exit" is not going to make you any friends here, because you're suggesting that you're better than others less experienced or less fortunate who have not.

Success is obviously preferable to failure, and we all believe that we're talented to a degree that gives us a high enough likelihood of success for startups to be worth pursuing. However, this sort of extreme personalization of results is not attractive.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you pose a general question to a startup crowd "Are you interested in joining a startup" you get everyone and their grandmother responding. The "completed an exit" requirement acts as a filter. We're hoping it will improve the signal to noise ratio.

<comment><USER8> "Are you interested enough in a startup to be willing to work for X months for mostly equity, knowing full well that the project has a risk of failure?"

There's your filter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I know what you're saying. However, we often fool ourselves about what we're capable of. If someone has developed a startup and completed an exit and they're prepared to go at it again, that speaks much louder than someone who claims they are willing but has never done it.

<comment><USER8> Of course.

What's obnoxious about "completed an exit" is that talented people can fail to meet this for reasons that aren't their fault. Possibly the VC wanted to aim for an IPO, they failed because of the downturn, and now they haven't "completed an exit". I know of stories like this.

I wouldn't bat an eye if you said you were looking for people with substantial entrepreneurial experience. I just think the specific criterion of "completed an exit" is obnoxious. It sounds like you think you're too good to talk to people who are talented but haven't had their break yet.

<comment><USER9> It's not just about talent.

It's about (among other things, I assume):

\- Wealth (exit = cash = ability to work for equity for an indeterminate period) \- Availability (recent exit = not currently engaged with another project)

The first is the biggie. I'd say 99.9% of people on HN can't say "I will eschew all paying work for up to 2 years and can toss a few hundred grand of my own money in if we need a cash infusion".

Of course, the recent exit thing is a problem, too. Most buyers lock in the founders for 1-2 years, so recent exiteers will have golden handcuffs.

<comment><USER7> We had a six month earn out. It ended on July 15, 2009. We took slightly less money to get out sooner.

<comment><USER9> That's a great deal (makes sense for an ISP)! But if you're looking for software entrepreneurs who are coming free, it might mean people who sold 2 or 3 years ago, depending on the business.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Focus on The Product Not The Pivot - <AUTHOR> http://blog.voyurl.com/post/9269852430/focus-on-the-product-not-the-pivot

<comment><USER2> Hard to focus on either when no one focused on the page's text readability.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice zen approach. It is also important to note that _Your Product is NOT "The Product"_ [1]

[1] [http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/06/your-product-is-not-the- pro...](http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/06/your-product-is-not-the-product/)</comment>