The U.S Just Beat China to develop the world's fastest supercomputer - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/technology/supercomputer-china-us.html <comment><USER2> How did this make it to the top 30... This "race" has been a global endeavour since the 50's, and no one keeps the title because that's not how progress works.

<comment><USER3> The rankings come out every June and November. They're _always_ talked about here because big computers are really cool.

<comment><USER4> I don't think we ever talk about them here. The rankings are fairly irrelevant to what most of us do, and the benchmarks used to derive them are too narrow anyways.

<comment><USER3> I mean I don't really want to argue about it because it seems like a silly thing to argue about, but just because you aren't interested doesn't mean nobody else is. Here's a thread from the November list: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15707800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15707800)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> POWER9 CPUs! It's nice to see some competition in the area. If anything it at least has a better security / firmware story if you don't feel like running an embedded OS with backdoors in it [https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- tec...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- technology/intel-amt-vulnerability-announcement.html) that give attacker remote access

And it's almost affordable [https://raptorcs.com/TALOSIILITE/](https://raptorcs.com/TALOSIILITE/) you might think it's a joke but $1k does seem cheap compared to the prices for motherboards in their main product.

</comment><comment><USER6> For some context, the U.S. foremost supercomputer up to now was Titan, which had a theoretical peak of 27 petaflops at 8.2 MW.

Summit has significant higher peak performance at slightly higher power. It also has significantly fewer nodes, with higher performance per node.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, was looking for this info in both the article and the HN comments. It's not in the article, had to scroll halfway of the way down the comments to find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _...is made up of rows of black refrigerator-size units that weigh a total of 340 tons._

A least _some_ things never change.

<comment><USER9> Form factors exist because they are local optima for non-computational concerns (ergonomics, cooling, electric, hardware maintenance, etc). Computers get better within the chosen form factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This "race" is starting to look like speed records for airplanes. There was a time when this was interesting technologically but now it seems more about the willingness to spend the money to get the record.

<comment><USER6> I sort of understand this sentiment, but Summit in particular is fascinating technologically.

Half as many nodes as Titan, way higher power efficiency, NVLink2 interconnect between CPU and GPU, ATS unified memory between all GPUs plus CPU, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Calling it a "race" is really strange. They're not trying to build the _first_ supercomputer, they're trying to build the _fastest_ / _most powerful_ supercomputer.

For instance, let's say China gets theirs out first, but the US releases one several months later that is substantially more powerful. Did China win the "race"? Or did the US?

<comment><USER12> I don't think calling it a race is all that strange. It's perhaps more strange to talk about _winning_ the race or _beating_ another country though, as that implies some finality/conclusion to the endeavor.

This can be looked at as a _continuous_ race to see who can build the highest- throughput computer, where the competitors' positions in the race are decided based on a well-defined set of benchmarks. The periodic updates don't indicate who's _won_ \-- they're just a snapshot of what everyone's positions are in the race around the time of publication. So it's more apt to say one competitor is _ahead_ of another in the race, but talking about _winning_ or _beating_ someone maybe gets more clicks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What kind of cores do machines of this caliber use?

I seem to recall that some years ago they used some Xeons and other "consumer- level" processors, just with special interconnects and maybe even using special versions, but they seemed like pretty close cousins to the regular processors of a desktop.

Is this still the case? I see in the Top500 list that the Sunway TaihuLight uses the Sunway SW26010 260C processors.

Are they fundamentally different than consumer-level processors? any special architectures or other interesting parts? or are they pretty similar, just built for massive interconnection and such?

<comment><USER14> Most of the time they care more about perf/watt than raw power. The problems that run on these have to be so embarrassingly parallel that individual node perf isn't that important. Sometimes those two line up well, but not always. For instance Blue Gene used more or less off the shelf PowerPC 4xx cores that were designed for embedded use cases. The neat stuff tends to be in the supporting chipset, particularly around the interconnect.

In this case it's using more or less off the shelf POWER9s and Nvidia GPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems that we are not that far away from exascale supercomputers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, we GOT that China. _Dab._

But seriously though. Why does the news media seem to always feel the need to push this narrative of nations being in competition with each other? It seems so 20th century.

<comment><USER17> The narrative sucks but nations being competitive with each other is a pretty powerful driving force for people.

I'm not sure about the U.S., but from my personal experience working in a multi-national industry, and also being East Asian myself, patriotism is a huge motivational factor, especially when it comes to beating "rival" countries. (Prime example: Korea vs Japan).

<comment><USER16> Yeah but it seems so artificial tho. What about doing things just for the sake of doing them and because they're intrinsically cool and interesting? All the nationalistic stuff is just made up and we've gotta let go of it eventually. Why not now?

<comment><USER18> > _What about doing things just for the sake of doing them and because they > 're intrinsically cool and interesting?_

This is how you get your budget cut. Competition forces tough decisions and turns long-term strategic aims into near-term threats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The fact that this is news is the real story

<comment><USER6> What? Summit had been in development for years, and is ridiculously efficient for a machine with so much performance. It's a major milestone on the path to exascale computing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> An archaic premise these days.

Either Google or Amazon has the world's fastest supercomputer. The notion that China ever led that, was beligerently fraudulent (only good for selling sensationalism), it intentionally ignored that the nature of supercomputing has completely changed over the last 20 years.

<comment><USER21> In what sense? The ranking is still based on LINPACK scores, and it's intended to represent the fastest machines for _scientific_ computing.

We can argue about whether modern simulation codes look like LINPACK (they don't) but neither Google's nor Amazon's cloud is competitive for that type of workload. Even if the clouds are physically bigger, nobody at Google or Amazon is running really big _numerical_ jobs of the sort that DOE does. Many are running smaller scale HPC and ML jobs, but it's expensive, and for latency- bound physics simulations (most of what we run at LLNL, ORNL, etc.), cloud networks will not perform at scale.

The question of whether China's machines ever performed well for big multi- physics applications is up in the air, but they were certainly beating us on LINPACK. The Chinese set out to show that they're serious about HPC, and I think they accomplished at least that. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw this race go back and forth a few times in the coming years.

<comment><USER22> The problem with dense linear algebra as a metric of supercomputer performance is that linear algebra tends to have relatively little communication compared to the computation. This means that the architecture you can use to really optimize linear algebra don't necessarily generalize well to different kinds of HPC code. China's architectures have definitely been accused of this in the past, but it looks like some of their newer stuff at least works fairly well on more HPC code.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Discontinues the MacBook - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/20/the-macbook-drops-from-apples-store/

<comment><USER2> Back when Apple dropped the black MacBook from it's line I was sad to see it go. It makes sense that Apple should drop the white MacBook. Why would they want a computer that's slightly below their top selling 13in. MacBook Pro's and their iPad's / MacBook Air's.</comment>


QuickCheck: Automatic Specification-Based Testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~rjmh/QuickCheck/

<comment><AUTHOR> See also [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction_to_QuickChec...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction_to_QuickCheck)

And for a use case: [http://blog.moertel.com/pages/seven-lessons-from-the- icfp-pr...](http://blog.moertel.com/pages/seven-lessons-from-the-icfp- programming-contest)</comment>


The Secret Life of Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/the-secret-life-of-robots.php

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately the "compressiontest" folder mentioned in the article has been taken down. Does anyone have any insight into its contents?

 _Edit:_ nevermind, answered my own question: <http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022125.html></comment>


Want to Read the Law? It'll Cost You - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/112871/carl-malamud-lawsuit-fight-make-building-regulations-truly-fee <comment><USER2> (2013)

<comment><USER3> There should be flavors of HN flags, including "old news".

<comment><USER4> Old news from New Republic</comment></comment></comment>


Antimatter ring found around the Earth could fuel interstellar missions - <AUTHOR> http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/confirmation-of-geomagnetically-trapped.html

<comment><USER2> Discussion from 3 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2850191></comment>


Stochastic rain generator from the author of myNoise.net - <AUTHOR> http://rain.today/? <comment><USER2> Dev here! What a surprise - and honour - to find my website featured here, this morning.

I just want to add a comment: because the sounds are drawn randomly, everyone hears something different! So, comments like "it does sounds more like a brook" may be right, but just for one particular user, and particular occurence.

Today, the average visit duration time is about 30s... and it takes my engine about that same time to evolve from one sound to another. If you think that you are not hearing something that does sound like rain to you, either reload the page (it will start all over again with a new draw) or give the generator a longer listen, like two minutes (I know, this is a lot of time, on the Internet). Then, you will understand why this rain noise generator is different from others. It really shines over longer listening sessions.

How it works? Basically, I have sounds in four categories: Light Rain, Heavy Rain, Thunder, and Water sounds (like those occurring once the rain has stopped). The generator starts by choosing one of these categories (with higher probabilities for the rain, but sometimes, it can start with the water sounds - hence that user comment). For each category, there are dozens of different recordings. So, even if you keep playing rain from the same category, it will keep changing. Staying in the same category or switching to another is governed by a very simple transition probabilities matrix.

Also, you can change the spectrum of the rain (white/pink/brown) by means of the pencil (this setting affects the next draws, so its effect is not instantaneous). Being able to change the color of a natural noise, is an interesting feature, IMHO.

Cheers,

Stéphane

<comment><USER3> Big fan of your work, as it's currently hammering it down with rain here (I'm in the North of England, it's the default state) rain.today is particularly ironic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The sound of rain is very familiar to us living west of the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest. When it rains more days than not in a given season, for many locals the sound of rain is often not exactly "soothing".

As a qualified "rain sound critic", to my ears the generated rainfall didn't sound convincingly natural. Real rain is somewhat less "white" (lets call it "gray"), with a steadier, if muffled "thud" as drops hit land.

Of course there are many variables, like wind speed, rate of rain accumulation, soil conditions, urban vs. rural location among others, that alter rain's sound qualities. Accounting for these factors would probably be quite difficult. Too bad the website didn't provide more info about the sound generation algorithms, I think HN readers would appreciate that.

As far as applications of generated sounds go, I think it's a very individual matter. In respect to tinnitus, a condition I've had for a long time, it's not a problem only when things are quiet.

In my case the internally generated high-pitched squeal is constant, loud enough to interfere with normal conversation. Adding external noise doesn't decrease or "mask" the tinnitus, just makes it harder to distinguish sounds in the environment.

One more thing, having known hundreds of adults with ADHD, mileage varies considerably re: benefit or decrement of background sounds on concentration. Offhand I don't know of studies documenting effects, but it would be an interesting study to conduct. My guess is most would do better in a quiet, but not too quiet environment. The issue is precisely what is "quiet" or "too quiet" for these individuals.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, there's too much white noise. Rain doesn't sound like that.

A slider to adjust the level of white noise (and maybe some other spectral properties) could be just the ticket.

<comment><USER2> I have just reduced the level of the underlying white noise that plays along the rain samples. Please try again. Hit the television icon to increase the level of that white noise.

But please understand this is a white noise machine too. The rain sounds that have been selected - especially the heavier rain sounds - do include a high level of white noise, naturally.

<comment><USER5> Sounds better now, thanks! How do I get rid of the bird tweets?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using mynoise.net regularly at home and at work to help me relax or concentrate. It's surprisingly effective, especially after you've calibrated it to your hearing/headphones.

The basic concept is surprisingly simple: each generator is actually a collection of 10 looping sounds, each ostensibly covering a given frequency range. You can achieve really different resulting sounds my adjusting each channel. See for example the different presets (on the middle right of the page) for the Crystal Stream generator. [1]

I'm impressed by the quality of work that Stephane Pigeon put into each of these, and I'm glad he's marketing it well with rain.today :)

[1] [http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/waterSpringStreamNoiseGener...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/waterSpringStreamNoiseGenerator.php)

<comment><USER7> *20 sounds ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there command-line apps for these rain and white noise generators? I'd love to use them without internet access and outside a browser.

Edit: I see discardorama asked the same question.

<comment><USER9> install the sox package and then you can generate some white noise. For example white noise with Star Trek theme:

      play -c2 -n synth whitenoise band -n 100 24 band -n 300 100 gain +20

<comment><USER10> Cool. For the curious, this sounds like the background hum of a starship, or perhaps a server room with the volume turned down. Not particularly relaxing to me (I prefer the birds outside!) but each to their own.

<comment><USER11> For white noise: `play -n synth whitenoise`

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anecdote time. Our cat has gotten into the annoying habit of moaning whenever things aren't to her liking; even if its 3AM. If she hears other cats playing outside, she wants to go out. If she thinks we are awake, moan again to demand breakfast. Heck, if I'm sleeping on the side and she wants to sleep on top of me, she'll whine about it till I'm on my back. And so on.

It became so bad that I could barely get an hour or two of continuous sleep a night.

Finally, I found a bunch of videos: [https://www.google.com/search?q=rain+white+noise&tbm=vid](https://www.google.com/search?q=rain+white+noise&tbm=vid) and started playing them at night. Boy, what a difference it made. Now, I wake up at most once a night; I'm sleeping better than ever, and not a zombie during the day.

I'm wondering if there are any command-line rain generators for Linux? And is there some research on how to generate the 'best' (most realistic?) rain sounds.

<comment><USER13> Why don't you lock the cat into another room or just put him out of the house? Who is the boss at home? You or the cat?

<comment><USER3> I trained mine from kittens to sleep in the living room, when it gets to bed time they run in and jump onto their favourite sleeping spots and bed down for the night.

I think if you don't do this early getting them to accept it later will result in them singing you the song of their people at 3am.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This really helps me to concentrate. Not sure if it helps others, but I think ADHD brains find some background white noise helpful to focus.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17683456](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17683456)

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool app. I've never really been able to listen to anything while working though. If it is too noisy, I'll put in a set of good ear plugs. I'd be more interested in how they are generating the rain and other sounds, I couldn't hear them though... have my ear plugs in ..

</comment><comment><USER16> Running Firefox 38 on Slackware Linux, I hear frequent painful sharp loud clicks, like an audio buffer full of garbage because a of callback not running in time. Seems to happen when firefox hits 100% cpu usage for a moment. I guess this site is just too CPU intensive for my oldish CPU.

</comment><comment><USER17> It'd be nice to be able to add a muffle to the rain noise - so it sounded like it was "outside" or on a rooftop. Hearing it sound too natural tends to make me feel cold.

</comment><comment><USER18> It maxes out my cpu, firefox 39.0+build5-0ubuntu0.14.04.1

</comment><comment><USER19> Have tinnitus and used to listen to mynoise (now rain.today) every night to sleep properly. A big thanks to Stéphane.

</comment><comment><USER20> would work well with [1]

[1] [https://maroslaw.github.io/rainyday.js/demo012_3.html](https://maroslaw.github.io/rainyday.js/demo012_3.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> myNoise.net has the best rain I've ever heard. I've paid for rain recordings and nothing even comes close to how good myNoise is. This is great!

</comment><comment><USER22> Doesn't seem to work on my nexus 6 :(

</comment><comment><USER23> Any chance of open sourcing this?

</comment><comment><USER24> strange, the thunder sounded like a train rolling in... was very cyclical.</comment>


Show HN: Face Analyzer: 84 landmarks, gender, age, race, eyeglass recognition - <AUTHOR> https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/add-ons/machinelearning/faceanalyzer-84-landmarks-pose-gender-age-race-eyeglass-bald-blo-163114 <comment><USER2> On your document, we noted that because of database imbalance, bald and blond hair recognition shows some error.

Could you explain to me the bald and blond hair label population in your dataset?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your interest on us. On our dataset, the bald true label is less than 3% and the blond hair true label is less than 10%.

But, using some technique, we can augment the dataset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a indie game developer and got a voucher program from the publisher and tried it. It analyzed my face quite well!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, thanks for your contact us and thanks for your usage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's very light-weight! Most light-weight facial analysis library I've ever seen!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we've focused on the light-weight plugin for a real environment usage case. Thanks for your interest on us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very useful:) It can be used on a game to know it's player! Great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think that could be one possible usage. You don't need to collect user's face image on your service side. Just using this plug-in in player's client device, and just collect the output label. : )

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've just tried it and it works well. Thanks! That what i need!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thanks for your download!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haha really all in one. Please add more facial attributes.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a plan to add more facial attributes such eye-color, gaze, facial emotion in the future update version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting! I can make avartar using this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, we made this asset to make avatar system. That's the reason why we add numerous facial attributes in one deep learning model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow That's cool, All in one!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


The very brief history of Computer Science - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/history-of-computer-science/brief-history-of-the-computer-science-a13c6fbe5873

<comment><USER2> That anything happened in the 800's and 1300's is new/s to me. The title background's (src) image is readable. Don't recognize very many names.</comment>


Investors Flock To Boston To See TechStars' 12 Cool New Startups (Here's A Peek) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/investors-flock-to-boston-to-see-techstars%e2%80%99-12-cool-new-startups-here%e2%80%99s-a-peek/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> I'm hugely impressed by Spill. Many Universities spend plenty of money on emotional and psychological support for students (mine employs many full-time counselors and a variety of other in-person services) and still have dramatic suicide and drop-out rates. This system can unify those services and targets them through a familiar social network-style channel. I hope this is implemented as widely as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> All awesome!!</comment>


HN Kansai this Friday (Osaka): Raspberry Pi, ContextPower and Side Projects - <AUTHOR> http://hnkansai.doorkeeper.jp/events/1897

<comment><AUTHOR> A longer description on the planned presentations:

* "A closer look at the Raspberry Pi" (including live demo) - by Raphael Guyot

* "An overview of ContextPower, an English vocab study system" - by Russell Mull

* "Side Projects" - by Sacha Greif (one of the top 10 bloggers on HN)

If you are in the area or just passing by, please register and join the event! There are already more than 30 participants registered and there is still space.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wish I could go, most likely going to be great!

I'd recommend anyone to go, if possible. Knowing from the Tokyo Events, it's a great gathering :)!</comment>


TempleOS Unified Document Format – DolDoc - <AUTHOR> http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/DolDocOverview.html <comment><USER2> TempleOS is a masterpiece. I wouldn't use it for anything, but many of the ideas in it are really interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with 1,000 free EC2 hours on AWS? 1,000,0000? - <AUTHOR>

Thinking about batch jobs. <comment><USER2> Amazon gave me the equivalent of 10,000 free hours on a small EC2 instance when I was working on my last book. I used a few hours of this to prepare a custom AMI with all of the examples in my book set up with Ubuntu and all required infrastructure. I'll be able to keep updated book example AMIs in S3 _forever_ now without it costing me any money out of pocket.

I also used some of this free time to do a 4 day machine learning run on all current English Wikipedia articles.

I will always create an AMI for all of my future books - awesome for readers to be able to have everything all set up. Also, they can clone my AMI, and have a fast start to deploying anything in my book that they want to use for their own projects.

For Amazon, this seems like viral marketing at its best :-)

I think that it was very savvy of Amazon to do this because I ended up writing a lot of material in the book on using Amazon AWS (Elastic MapReduce, S3, etc.). I now spend lots of time experimenting and blogging about AWS, and I ask my customers to host on AWS because I am now so used to using it.

I used to host customer work on VPSs or cheap dedicated servers, but now Amazon is definitely my deployment platform first choice and recommendation. (BTW, I host some of my own stuff on AppEngine because it is even cheaper, but the extra effort of dealing with AppEngine makes it not as attractive for customer projects.)

<comment><USER3> Seems like that was a very small cost for Amazon to pay to get your support :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is what I would do, but you'd need some prerequisite software and information:

1\. Get a genome for the simplest bacteria you can find. 2\. You'd need molecular simulation software, specifically DNA and cells

After you've gotten this, I would strip out pieces of the genome using the genetic algorithm (oh the irony) and see if you can slim the genome down to a bare-bones replicating cellular machine.

After that, just a little trial and error and you could be making designer organisms.

(Sorry if you wanted something realistic. My brain doesn't work like that =)

<comment><AUTHOR> ".. slim the genome down to a bare-bones replicating cellular machine .."

That sounds interesting from a computational perspective. Any good papers to read? "Designer organisms" also sounds interesting...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Set up a cloud hosting company. 2. ??? 3. Profit!

Seriously, though, probably build a Web indexer/search engine. I seem to keep coming back to the idea every few years and EC2 makes it possible - a million free hours would get me 114 instances for a year, long enough to prove whether any of several new approaches is worthwhile or not.

<comment><USER6> You may find 80Legs worth checking out.

<comment><USER7> 1M free hours on EC2 = 2.67M free hours on 80legs!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what I'd do with 10^3 hours, but with 10^6 hours I'd calculate 5 trillion digits of Pi -- until now this sort of computation has always been done on supercomputers, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to do it on EC2.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would donate it to the open source community. I mean asking this question here suggest that you got nothing better to do with it, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't actually have free hours on EC2 or ~$100,000 for 1,000,000 hours. With EC2 lots of computational tasks become accessible to the average person, and I posted here on HN to get an interesting conversation going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would work on my dream/future project of creating software that functions like the human brain!

</comment><comment><USER11> A thousand hours is just above 10 days (assuming you run on a single CPU), so I guess most of us have a spare computer lying about which means that it should be able to handle this data.

As for the 1,000,000 hours? A genetic algorithm that runs through all the publically available data on deals made by the government looking for anything out of the ordinary to flesh out corruption.

<comment><USER12> Am I missing something? 1000 hrs /(24 hrs/day) = 41.67 days

And I don't think 'genetic algorithm' means what you think it means. All a GA does is try to find the max/min of some function. It is basically just hill climbing with a bit of randomness and a catchy name.

To find 'fishy' transactions you would use some sort of unsupervised machine learning algorithm to identify patterns/clusters in data (and that's starting an entirely different discussion).

<comment><USER11> You are right on both counts. I mentally misplaced the comma somewhere, but the point that that machine is no more powerful that what I guess most people here have stacked around somewhere.

As for the generic algorithm, you are _also_ right.</comment></comment></comment>


USCIS makes it easier for immigrants to build startups in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20110802-napolitano-startup-job-creation-initiatives.shtm

<comment><AUTHOR> This, in particular, is a huge win

> In response to stakeholder feedback, USCIS has also updated existing FAQs to > clarify that an H-1B beneficiary who is the sole owner of the petitioning > company may establish a valid employer-employee relationship for the > purposes of qualifying for an H-1B nonimmigrant visa – which is used by U.S. > businesses to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require > theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields, such as science, > engineering, and computer programming.

<comment><USER2> Is it?

> beneficiary who is the _sole_ owner

<comment><USER3> I think if you read the FAQ it seems like you previously could establish an employer-employee relationship (required for H1B) if you were part-owner. This just clarifies that its also possible even if you're the sole owner.

I don't think its a huge win though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very positive development. Not the same as stapling a Green Card to your PhD diploma, but certainly a step in the right direction.

CS people keep getting the shaft when it comes to govt definitions of occupation. For instance, there is no software engineer category in the TN visa for Canadians. When the release says startups, I assume tech startups. They say they will also train their employees to understand the peculiarities of this segment. Again, extremely positive news.

<comment><USER5> There is an 'engineer' category, so if you have a degree that says 'software engineer' (which are about 5-10 classes shy of a CS degree usually) you can use it. They have this artificial distinction between programmer and software engineer where you make or design new code or just modify existing code so lawyers are still required and there is the 'Computer Systems Analyst' that seems to always imply a need for a degree that says Computers in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Note, that there are no actual changes in law here, just making the process easier to navigate. And a good lawyer would have helped with that previously anyway.

Still, given my experiences with USCIS employees, anything that clarifies things for them is wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER6> Since the document isn't accessible (for me) at this time, can anyone please TL;DR; this?

I am an alien entrepreneur - in what circumstances can I found a startup, and legally immigrate to the US while working it?

<comment><USER7> I'm not a lawyer, but I am an H-1B holder, so filter my interpretation accordingly.

Mostly this document is a declaration of intent. It says "if you are a legitimate entrepreneur, we are on your side". It doesn't actually change any laws or regulations.

Instead it clarifies the circumstances under which you can apply for existing types of visas. Since applying for a visa is expensive and lengthy, people tend to avoid applying for them if their qualifications are ambiguous, so saying "yes, you will definitely qualify" is a valuable thing.

In particular, they are saying they are making it easier to get an EB2 visa, which is a very nice one that lets you stay permanently and apply for a green card. The official requirements for an EB2 are quite strict:

[http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=816a83453d4a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=816a83453d4a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD)

Specifically it requires documentation of 10+ years of experience and you have to be a "professional" (e.g. doctor, laywer). However, these requirements can be waived under an existing exception for "national interest", and this document is basically saying that entrepreneurship can be considered as being in the national interest. That's a huge step!

In addition, H1B visas are usually oversubscribed, so they become a lottery. But there have historically been lots of EB2 visas left over every year. So not only does it make an EB2 easier to get, but if significant numbers of H1Bs applicants decide to apply for an EB2 instead, it will increase the total number of visas issued every year (anti-immigration campaigners should note that the numbers we're talking about are still laughably small: there are only ~13,000 EB2 visas available every year, and ~65,000 H1Bs).

In answer to your specific question: if you can prove to the USCIS that you are really an entrepreneur and are trying to start a business, you may be able to get an EB visa under the waiver. However, it remains much easier to join an existing business an American has started and then apply for an EB2 or H1B to the existing business.

In short: America still doesn't seem to like it when foreigners come over and try to create jobs, but they have agreed to make it slightly less difficult if you do.

<comment><USER8> EB2 is badly crowded for India and China and currently stuck in 2007, so this is not going to change anything for them but might make it worse for people already waiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this mean that I can establish my own business on a H1B and then have that business sponsor my visa so I can work for it?

<comment><USER10> Yes, but you have to prove that there is a separate Board of Directors which has the ability to hire, fire, pay and supervise you. If you get funded, i think its easy to prove

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did you get that from?

The new rules seem to say that you can do this as a sole proprietor.

<comment><USER11> The updated memorandum still talks about the control issue of having an employer-employee relationship. If you can't demonstrate that you can be fired (amongst other things), it doesn't pass the employer-employee relationship. You can be the sole stockholder, but you still need an entity within the company that has control over you - the example they give is a Board of Directors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hogwash. Looks like it changes nothing.

At [1], see Q4 onwards.

In other words, it seems like the same old thing. What has changed is that you can be the sole owner of a company instead of a partner earlier but you already must be in the US on a valid non-tourist visa to start a company here right? Will this help students? But you need an advanced degree or 10+ years exp! How does one show their company is in the national interest? It's not easy, not to mention that this is useless for people of India and China because EB2 dates are back in 2007 for them.

[1] [http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=93da6b814ba81310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=6abe6d26d17df110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD)</comment>


Why you should contribute to open source projects - <AUTHOR> http://blog.coreyballou.com/blog/why-contribute-to-open-source-projects/

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on a post from last week, I created a static Jekyll blog on github and CNAME'd my personal website over to it. I love the outcome. I got the idea via a post the other week and cloned the repository to build my own blog. It uses Twitter Bootstrap under the hood and you can clone my repo to make your own as well!

<https://github.com/cballou/cballou.github.com></comment>


Multi-Armed Bandits, Conjugate Models and Bayesian Reinforcement Learning - <AUTHOR> https://eigenfoo.xyz/bayesian-bandits/ <comment><USER2> I spent two years[0] designing, building and maintaining a system which used contextual multi-armed bandits at large scale. A couple pieces of advice relating to this post and this subject:

1\. Thompson sampling is great. It's intuitive and computationally tractable. The literature is full of other strategies, specifically semi-uniform strategies, but I strongly recommend using Thompson sampling if it works for your problem.

2\. This is broadly true about ML, but for contextual bandits, most of the engineering work will probably be the feature engineering, not algorithm implementation. Plan accordingly. Choosing the right inputs in the first place makes a big difference. The hashing trick (a la sklearn's dictvectorizer) can make a huge difference.

3\. It can be difficult to obtain organizational alignment on the intention of using reinforcement learning. Tell stakeholders early and often that you're using bandit algos to produce some kind of outcome — say, clicks or conversions — and not to do science which will uncover deep truths.

[0] along with an excellent data scientist and a team of excellent engineers, of course :)

<comment><USER3> _The hashing trick (a la sklearn 's dictvectorizer) can make a huge difference._

I'm not a huge fan of that. Hash collisions can lead to unexpected behaviors in production and make feature attribution for debugging harder.

It's slightly more effort to implement, but with a trie data structure you can store even the biggest feature mapping in memory.

<comment><USER4> How are you compressing the feature space in that case, by truncating the trie?

<comment><USER3> You could use clustering, dimensionality reduce or feature selection.

However, the way I have seen the hashing trick being used is not to compress the feature space. For most problems it would be a bad idea to just lump your most discriminative features together with some other random ones. Instead people just choose a very large feature space which makes collisions unlikely. For model implementations using sparse matrices it doesn't matter if the feature space is very large. The main advantage of this is that you don't have to keep an expensive hash map of your vocabulary in memory (hence my suggestion to use a trie).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though mentioned it the article, I'll add it here for posterity: [https://web.stanford.edu/~bvr/pubs/TS_Tutorial.pdf](https://web.stanford.edu/~bvr/pubs/TS_Tutorial.pdf)

Great tutorial on Thompson sampling.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would strongly recommend the post he cited. It is the same style but features interactive visualizations: [https://dataorigami.net/blogs/napkin- folding/79031811-multi-...](https://dataorigami.net/blogs/napkin- folding/79031811-multi-armed-bandits)

I implemented something like this for my company and found the latter article quite helpful in explaining the concept to people who understood the basics of probability but not programming.

</comment><comment><USER7> I want to recommend the book [http://camdavidsonpilon.github.io/Probabilistic- Programming-...](http://camdavidsonpilon.github.io/Probabilistic-Programming- and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers/) a nice little book about probabilistic programming in Python.

</comment><comment><USER8> There was a free Bandits algorithm book discussed on HN about a month ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17642564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17642564)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I haven't read all of it yet, but from what I've seen so far, the book spends a lot of time rigorously proving mathematical properties/bounds of various bandit algorithms. I love rigor as much as the next guy, but I also like seeing code :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The math isn't rendering for me...

<comment><AUTHOR> Right! Sorry about that, forgot to add mathjax. Should be fixed soon...

<comment><USER5> I was about to send you an email! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an excellent well written post. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: What's it like working at Google London? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious about what teams are based out of Google's London office and what is it like to work there. Anything different than Google Mountain View?<p>Is it mostly software engineering, account managers, etc? <comment><USER2> Meeting rooms in London at 1700 London time are difficult to come by. :-) (demand is great due to timezone differences, obv.)

<comment><AUTHOR> With the open office concept, meeting rooms are impossible for us as well no matter what time it is :)</comment></comment>


Generators in Node.js: Common Misconceptions and Three Good Use Cases - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/strongblog/how-to-generators-node-js-yield-use-cases/

<comment><USER2> Is is reasonable to expect generator based flow control to catch up to vanilla callbacks on performance eventually? Even under ideal circumstances we'd be looking at the overhead of the indirection, but I wonder if the mechanics of yield would make that necessarily higher than indirection not using yield.</comment>


A Survey of RTS Game AI Research and Competition in StarCraft (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/pdf/starcraft_survey.pdf

<comment><USER2> Glad to see the scene is still alive and well. Back when it was picking up I made a Ruby client to one of the server based BWAPI clients, I built a really neat Ruby API to it too. Unfortunately I invested so much time at that point the actual 'AI' I made just 6-pooled the opponent, in just 44 lines though[1]!

Lately the release of mruby made me think maybe I should try again :) (mruby seriously reduces the amount of effort required in getting Ruby to talk to BWAPI.)

1] [https://github.com/d-snp/RProxyBot/blob/master/basic_ai.rb](https://github.com/d-snp/RProxyBot/blob/master/basic_ai.rb)

<comment><USER3> I used the python BWAPI client. I recently tried to get back into it but it seemed a lot more buggy and BWAPI wouldn't run on my newer Windows PC. :/

It was a lot of fun. Figuring out a base layout was the most difficult part for me. I ended up using the random function and placing buildings around my main base at random offsets. Didn't get too far with that, haha.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, silly problems like that really made being competitive with established AI's or even players hard. Just an AI that sets up a base properly and manages to build a proper army at the right timings but without any strategic insight into the opponent or even micro-decision making (which unit targets which opponent) will still do very decently, just because all the boiler plate is so much work not many AI's get to the actually being 'intelligent' part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I played the sh*t out of Broodwar (and nowadays, SC2 HOTS) but i never heard about this Bot league. Thank you, this was a very interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a human vs bot comparison?

<comment> 2Pacalypse- Yes. Here's a video[0] of the winner in 2014 StarCraft AI Competition against one of the better human player.

More can be found at their official website[1] under Media/Files tab.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQI1wyRmeUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQI1wyRmeUQ)

[1] [http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/starcraftaicomp/](http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/starcraftaicomp/)

<comment><USER5> AI tries to defend with siege tanks against airborne mutalisks??

<comment><USER2> Building these AI's is actually a _lot_ of work. They're usually built by a single or a few persons, in their spare time or perhaps as a college course. Most time is spent making sure your bot actually plays the game. Very little if any at all time is spent making the bot smart enough to deal with situations like this. In this case, obviously there's a bug where the bot is not dealing property with aerial attacks. A human player would have given up or made a suicide attack the second those mutas landed as he realized he missed a turret at his main.

<comment><USER6> Very well said. I've started a few month ago on an AI/Bot for 0AD an open source game. Scripting language is JavaScript running on SpiderMonkey. So far I've accumulated thousands of locs, learned a lot about writing fast code against a specific engine and have barely more than a framework. But I still remember the moment the bot did it's first baby steps and actually build a structure to train some scouts and started exploring the map.

Also it became a decent exercise in dealing with abstraction. The code base just explodes if you do not follow DRY - strictly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know any games besides chess and tic tac toe where a bot have been able to beat a good player ...

<comment><USER8> Your research is out of date, then. :) Even the game of Go, thought to be the hardest for computers, now has bots at the 6-dan (stronger than >99% of humans will ever be) level.</comment></comment>


Pakistan to ban encryption software - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/30/pakistan-bans-encryption-software

<comment><USER2> That helped keep the water out</comment>


En.mobile.wikipedia.org isn't blocked? - <AUTHOR> http://en.mobile.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News

<comment><USER2> Read and Learn [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's so that English Wikipedia is still accessible in some way.</comment>


The Importance of Lawyers - <AUTHOR> http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/12/the-importance-of-lawyers.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think these issues go so much to the point of needing a "startup lawyer" with a presence in the Valley, but more to getting high quality service, which probably means paying $$.

A first year associate knows next to nothing about practicing law, and shouldn't be let anywhere near your business. While it's possible that Wilson Sonsini does a better job of handholding their first year class, I doubt that the quality of work you'd get from a first year at X top firm differs significantly in quality from that of a first year at top firm Y.

Likewise, a partner in the corporate practice group at any major law firm would probably not have made these mistakes, regardless of the firms profile in the Valley.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is common for people on the outside to think everyone on the inside is the same. This article makes the very helpful point that it is not enough to be a "lawyer." You must get a "lawyer who understands startups." Otherwise it's like an iPhone app developer hiring a programmer whose only experience is pushing COBOL punch cards through an insurance company's circa 1976 DEC mainframe. Sure, he's a programmer, but he's not likely to be of much use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. And while I think in the startup community there's a general acceptance of the idea that not all devs are created equal, I'm not so sure the same has been realized about other service providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very good illustration of needing an experienced startup lawyer. It's true. And really interesting story in its own right :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Did he pitch his idea to someone who's mother just passed away?</comment>


Public Stats: Twitter and YouTube make me care - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/03/24/twitter-and-youtube-make-me-care/

<comment><USER2> There is a psychological factor to this that is used by games as well. People get addicted to collecting things whether they be tweets, comments, etc. I highly recommend Amy Jo Kim's video where she shows examples of this across several social apps:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUt-163gZI>

</comment><comment><USER3> Checking stats on something (how many followers someone has, or how many views a video has) is definitely a useful heuristic for deciding if something is worthy of your ever-more-precious attention. They call this "social proof."

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. It is pretty much equivalent to Customer Testimonials.</comment></comment>


How Norway spends its $882B global fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21707435-norways-global-fund-its-tough-small-democracy-run-worlds-biggest <comment><USER2> "It is run frugally and transparently" is a dubious claim, at least according to claims made on NRKs Folkeopplysningen (a show like Penn and Teller: Bullshit, just better).

The fund spends a lot on being actively managed, one manager received ~$60 million in bonuses in 2010. However, they won't reply when people ask if bonuses are actually financially beneficial.

[https://tv.nrk.no/serie/folkeopplysningen/KMTE50009215/seson...](https://tv.nrk.no/serie/folkeopplysningen/KMTE50009215/sesong-3/episode-2) @ 28:30

<comment><USER3> $60m isn't exactly the real cost to the government, though? Assuming this asset manager is a Norwegian resident, he'll pay a ton of tax (income or corporate tax, VAT, stamp duty on property purchases, capital gains, etc etc) on that money, and eventually given enough time, most will just flow back to the government. The house always wins..

Also, it depends on how much he brings in. For example, there are US based asset managers with private funds that generate 20-30-40% per annum, for over 20 years. If the performance is there, they should get compensated well for that. Otherwise, why put up with the stress of managing billions of dollars?

<comment><USER4> _> 20-30-40% per annum, for over 20 years_

It is impossible, at least continuously. Nobody has ever managed to do that. You'd be lucky if you could beat the market by a few points on average over a 20 years time period. Compensation well for good performance does not make sense when you aren't penalized for losses.

<comment><USER5> >> "...impossible..."

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

"...famed for one of the best records in investing history, returning more than 35 percent annualized over a 20-year span..."

<comment><USER6> People have done it before. It has always turned out to be luck. Fantastic track record until they cease being lucky.

So, cynicism and economic orthodoxy aside, that sounds like a really cool company. Has anyone tried just tossing a big dumb neural network on stock data and investigated whether it can make money? It sounds very obvious, but a quick googling returns little. But I guess the investment industry is pretty secretive by nature.

<comment><USER7> > Has anyone tried just tossing a big dumb neural network on stock data and > investigated whether it can make money?

... yes.

<comment><USER8> One of our Solutions Architects wrote this up for amusement: [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/03/TensorFlow- mach...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/03/TensorFlow-machine- learning-with-financial-data-on-Google-Cloud-Platform.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A little over decade ago, when Norway's fund was called "the Petroleum Fund" and had "only" $147B, an article in Slate magazine explained what was special about it:

 _" Norway has pursued a classically Scandinavian solution. It has viewed oil revenues as a temporary, collectively owned windfall that, instead of spurring consumption today, can be used to insulate the country from the storms of the global economy and provide a thick, goose-down cushion for the distant day when the oil wells run dry."_[1]

Since then, the fund has grown _six_ -fold.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2004/10/avoi...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2004/10/avoiding_the_oil_curse.html)

<comment><USER10> It's kind of funny that the classically Scandinavian solution was mostly the work of an Iraqi geologist [http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the- public-god-foru...](http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-public-god- forum-farouk-al-kasim-the-man-behind-norway-s-oil-wealth-listener-mail- documentary-the-tracks-1.2905028/farouk-al-kasim-the-man-behind-norway-s-oil- wealth-1.2905029)

<comment><USER11> I think similar ideas are found all over the world, but few countries outside of Northern Europe have the necessary political responsibility and lack of corruption to actually execute successfully on these ideas.

<comment><USER12> In Ireland we had a sovereign wealth fund for pensions, called the National Pensions Reserve Fund.

The government raided it to pay for budget shortfalls caused by offering a blanket, virtually unconditional guarantee to (private sector) bank debts, even unsecured bank debts, caused by the collapse in the Irish property market in 2008. The insane loans issued were made whole by the taxpayer at enormous cost to the wider economy. Of course, very little of those involved actually went to prison, although some higher ups in Anglo Irish (described as the worst bank in the world, even worse than Icelandic banks) were eventually, after many years, sent to prison [2]. The CEO of Anglo was even acquitted by a jury!

 _" The NPRF's asset base had increased to over €22 billion in 2009. However, following the economic and banking collapse, its assets have been diverted as successive governments raided it to fund programmes or help meet the State's fiscal commitments during the crisis."_

This is a long way of saying that even in Northern Europe incompetence and fraud is possible. I wish we had the competence and level of societal trust the Norwegians have.

[1] [http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/national-pension- res...](http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/national-pension-reserve-fund- should-now-be-revived-says-brian-hayes-1.2119297)

[2] [http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial- services/anglo-...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial- services/anglo-trial-three-ex-bankers-jailed-over-7bn-fraud-1.2738637)

<comment><USER10> The Norwegians also had a very sensible approach to their banking crisis compared to the US and Ireland:

>There are five features of the Norwegian resolution I would like to highlight:

>Private solutions were explored before the government intervened.

>Share capital was written down to zero before committing public funds.

>The government acted swiftly to limit contagion, but did not provide a blanket guarantee. Liquidity support was given to illiquid, but solvent institutions.

>The government did not use an asset management company - as the other Nordic countries did later on.

The "Share capital was written down to zero before committing public funds." seems smart. At least if you wipe out the shareholders it's an incentive to behave better the next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a Canadian I feel so cheated learning about Norway's Oil Fund.

Our government hasn't hardly saved a dime of our Oil Income.

We have been taking a small cut of the hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil we have been producing daily for the past 100+ years and spending it as fast as we possibly can.

>Most of the oil companies exploring for oil in Alberta were of U.S. origin, and at its peak in 1973, over 78 per cent of Canadian oil and gas production was under foreign ownership and over 90 per cent of oil and gas production companies were under foreign control, mostly American. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_production_in_Canada...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_production_in_Canada#History)

<comment><USER14> _We have been taking a small cut of the hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil we have been producing daily for the past 100+ years and spending it as fast as we possibly can._

Right, but the money was spent on _something_ tho'. So the question - and I don't know the answer - is whether having that thing, at the time, was worth more than having something else, in the future.

<comment><USER13> It just seems like if we had of kept the money and re-invested it... like Norway did... that we would have been much better off in the long run.

<comment><USER14> We could ask the same question in the UK. Successive governments believed in using the money to lower taxes instead. Whether that was right or wrong no-one can really say - but consider that around the time the North Sea came online, income tax was as high as 83% and tax on income from investments was 98%.

[http://www.spectator.co.uk/2008/04/why-hasnt-britain-got- a-s...](http://www.spectator.co.uk/2008/04/why-hasnt-britain-got-a-sovereign- wealth-fund/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 882 B / 5.2 Million ~= $170k for every citizen of Norway.

At 4% a year that's $6,800 each in annual income. Not bad!

<comment><USER16> Not bad, but not enough to cover the current levels of household debt in Norway, while a large portion of the debt is tied to mortgages the mortgage debt in the Norway have been increasing faster than income for quite a few years now. [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/norway/households-debt-to- gd...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/norway/households-debt-to-gdp)

This isn't a problem unique to Norway, Norway is just one of the biggest offenders, even in the Nordic countries there is a trend of creating a new generation or class of indentured citizens.

Many EU countries need to look at germany and start reducing housing prices, one of the main contributors to Germany's low household debt is a 10 year cap on mortgages.

Countries like Sweden and Norway just now starting to cap it, Sweden capped the mortgage term to 105 years (no this isn't a typo) this year and the current average mortgage term in Sweden is still over 140 years, and Norway isn't much better off (It was slightly higher than Sweden IIRC I just can't find a source atm).

While the Nordic countries take pride in their model the current economics are pretty bad under the surface, you have a combination of inflated housing prices, extreme housing shortages, and mortgages that can span over 3 generations.

To some extent the Nordic model isn't a choice it's an outcome of the economic policy to the point where a lot of people that appear to be wealthy are actually in dire debt and dependant on the state.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal- banking/mortgages/sweden...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal- banking/mortgages/sweden-cuts-maximum-mortgage-term-to-105-years-the-average- is-14/)

<comment> semi-extrinsic When you say "140 year mortgage term", what exactly are you talking about? Effective term or something? Because the banks only offer a choice between 20, 25 and 30 year mortgage terms usually.

<comment><USER17> (a) in the 1990's, many banks did offer 50 year terms.

(b) sweden has a lot of interest-only mortgages. If you look at the rate they are being repaid, it represents a repayment period of 148 years.[1]

[1] [http://www.fi.se/upload/43_Utredningar/20_Rapporter/2013/bol...](http://www.fi.se/upload/43_Utredningar/20_Rapporter/2013/bolan_2013eng_2.pdf)

<comment> semi-extrinsic Norway's been tightening the mortgage belt for years now. You can only borrow less than 85% of the purchase price of the house, excluding fees. That was set in 2012 IIRC. And now (from January 2017) there will be a complete ban on interest-only mortgages (even just for limited time periods), and a hard cap at total loan amount (including also student/car loan etc.) for each family not exceeding 5x total gross income.

Source: am planning to buy a new house, had a meeting with my bank man two weeks ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Norway's oil money story is one of the weirdest. Are there any examples in history where a country has saved up such a big stash? Are they planning to retire young, as a nation?

<comment><USER19> I live in Calgary, Alberta which is pretty much the exact counterpoint to Norway with a very similar historical starting point (size, population, dynamics). It doesn't matter who's in power, all our governments spend like drunken sailors on shore-leave, no sales tax to even out the boom/bust (and counter low-ish taxes), A savings fund that is now empty going into an incredibly rough period.

I'm not says one is better than the other - Norway looks great right now, but didn't when I visited ~10 years ago and my Subway "value" meal cost over $25 CDN - just an interesting counterpoint.

I keep waiting for that manufacturing "bump" from Eastern Canada we were promised from a sinking dollar...

<comment><USER20> > I'm not says one is better than the other - Norway looks great right now, > but didn't when I visited ~10 years ago and my Subway "value" meal cost over > $25 CDN - just an interesting counterpoint.

Careful with such examples. Local prices are first of all adjusted for local wages, and second of all the NOK exchange rate is just nasty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there an index or ETF which follows this pension fund's investments?

<comment><USER22> No. The up-to-date composition of the fund is not public nor should it be due to the very real possibility of moving the markets in unintended ways. However, they do publish annual reports of investments which you can access on their website. Here's a 2015 one: [https://www.nbim.no/contentassets/70de238e3f6747228b76a99ec2...](https://www.nbim.no/contentassets/70de238e3f6747228b76a99ec24c53ed/annual_report_2015_web2.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Visiting Norway, I always thought it is kind of a weird country. On one hand it's one of the richest countries in the world. On the other hand, I've seen so many young Norwegian women work hard cleaning toilets and hotel rooms. Such jobs would be considered "low rung" at in the US but in Norway they treat their low rung jobs as something to be proud of.

<comment><USER24> Someone has to clean the toilets. You're expressing shock that Norway doesn't have a racial underclass like latinos or blacks in the US? Kind of a weird thing to comment on, Norway is a very homogenous country.

<comment><USER25> Did the OP edit the original comment? I don't see any mention of race and the OP is just stating he is impressed by how Norwegian women take pride in doing even the most menial of jobs (which is something I noted too when I was there).

Just found it strange how did you come to the conclusion of a "racial underclass" when there was no mention of it so i was wondering if it is an american thing.

Note: While not as multi-cultural as the US of course, Norway is not exclusively a "homogeneous" society and in fact, I just noted that almost 1/3 of my Norwegian friends are not "Nordic born". You obviously haven't been there if you made that conclusion yourself.

<comment><USER26> Who else would work those jobs if not Norwegians? It's implied if they didn't another group would do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Related to a lot of discussion comments, I highly recommend "A Random Walk Down Wallstreet" by Burton Malkiel. [https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down- Wall-Street/dp/03933...](https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall- Street/dp/0393330338)

</comment><comment><USER28> You can't beat [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the- untold...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story- behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret)

</comment><comment><USER29> In the "Top of the World" graph in the article, there's a dip for Saudi Arabia. Does anyone know why?

<comment><USER30> Saudi Arabia significantly cut the oil price (which caused the global dip), and is since making up the difference by withdrawing from the oil fund.

The long term goal here is not entirely clear, but it mostly seems like a way to hurt the Russian economy and the fracking industry.

<comment><USER31> > _Saudi Arabia significantly cut the oil price (which caused the global dip)_

Saudi Arabia can't cut the price of oil. They can increase or decrease their own (albeit large proportional) supply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I see lots of comments talking about the return on investment (~4% YoY) and the ~$60M in bonuses, etc. But I don't see anyone questioning why there is so much money invested in other companies outside Norway.

I'm curious to know: 1) Why do we have a savings Fund with double of the annual GDP? Should we have a limit? Why the excess is not invested locally? 2) Is there an existing plan to define when the money will be directed to the Norway economy? The current GDP per capita is around $68K which doesn't seem that much compared to the amount of money in the country's saving account. Why not invest in education and/or technology? 3) Why there are a few people earning so much money (e.g. ~$60M bonus) to manage the country's assets? Is the real purpose to make money or save the money for future generations?</comment>


Why Clocks Run Clockwise? - <AUTHOR> https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/why-clocks-run-clockwise <comment><USER2> I believe because that's the direction that the shadow moves in a (Northern Hemisphere) sundial.

People would have been used to the idea that 'time' moves in that direction. Mechanical hands would have been designed to move that way to mimic the sun'd shadows that people were used to.</comment>


Ban Bossy. Encourage Girls to Lead. - <AUTHOR> http://banbossy.com/

<comment><USER2> I'd rather boys and girls were both encouraged to lead in a non-bullying fashion.

Most of the abusive bosses and co-workers I've seen have been men. Maybe it's harder for women to engage in that behavior but the ideal I'd like to see is to just have no one engage in "leadership by screaming at people" and related bad behavior.</comment>


AstraZeneca exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vaccine-liability/astrazeneca-to-be-exempt-from-coronavirus-vaccine-liability-claims-in-most-countries-idUKKCN24V2EN <comment><USER2> That raises a huge red flag in my mind over its safety.

Big pharmaceutical companies have a history of marketing drugs that aren't quite as good or harmless as they are made out to be.

<comment><USER3> Not that it's relevant in this particular case, but I don't take anything that's only approved in the US, because the FDA really doesn't care, and especially doesn't care right now.

Most drug companies actually view the US as the beta test country in a lot of ways.

If something makes it to Australia (who are very strict on pharmaceuticals) then it's usually pretty safe.

<comment><USER4> As someone who has worked directly with the FDA, this is an absurd position. If anything, the FDA errs on the side of causing no harm versus getting a much needed treatment approved.

And it might be good to know that most countries approve drugs based on the same data - global clinical trials. Australia is looking at the same data as the US when making an approval decision. Some countries require local trials (China and India, I believe).

In addition, there is plenty of collaboration across drug approval bodies when developing or changing regulations. They are all talking to each other to determine the best approach.

Here is a good example of the FDA and TGA (Australia) and Canada approving a new cancer drug together[1]

[1] [https://www.fdanews.com/articles/192766-fda-approves- first-c...](https://www.fdanews.com/articles/192766-fda-approves-first-cancer- drugs-in-collaboration-with-tga-and-health-canada?v=preview)

<comment><USER5> Several aspects of FDA regulation are widely regarded as inadequate, in particular the 510(k) process for medical devices and Section 901 of the FDASIA.

FDA approval is slow and expensive, but the political pressure to change that situation has created myriad alternative routes to market authorisation rather than a fundamental reform of the process. Far too many drugs and devices have sneaked onto the market with lower standards of scrutiny and the FDA's post- marketing surveillance isn't up to the task.

The FDA knew about rofecoxib's cardiovascular risks for years and did nothing; they've known about rosiglitazone for years and they've done very little. It's just too easy for bad products to get on the market and stay on the market under the FDA's less-than-vigilant gaze.

<comment><USER4> _Several aspects of FDA regulation are widely regarded as inadequate_

I think that's a matter of opinion, rather than a purely factual statement. It intersects with your comment "Far too many drugs and devices have sneaked onto the market with lower standards of scrutiny", because it begs the question "how many is too many?".

It's all a trade-off. The higher level of scrutiny requires more time and more money and can result in people being denied drugs that could have prevented harm or death.

It's my own personal opinion, but I think the FDA does a pretty good job considering the judgements they are asked to make.

And rofecoxib was eventually pulled, but only after careful scrutiny of the risk. It's not hard to do a retrospective analysis and see a safety signal. Pulling a product based on limited data means you may be doing harm by denying people a drug that helps them. Before the COX2s existed, perforated ulcers due to NSAID use weren't exactly rare.

And I'll just end with one final comment - overseeing a safe and effective drug supply _is really damn hard_. So I try and take that into consideration when evaluating the FDA's (or any countries drug agency) actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's probably... fine?

these vaccines are developed in a process far more open than any typical pharmaceutical research. The risks at issue here are unlikely to be of the bad-faith variety that can be discouraged with liability.

Instead, these will be genuine known and unknown unknowns. There will be a lot of scrutiny, which will allow governments and the public at large to make these decisions under uncertainty with the benefit of the best possible information at the time.

With the company not enjoying a significant informational advantage, the moral and practical case for liability just doesn't make any sense.

That is a standard approach for the otherwise intractable collision of a legal system that apportions the damages of anything that goes wrong on the party mostly responsible for it, and the medical reality of almost all interventions coming with _some_ potential for grievous harm: by default, your surgeon would always be "responsible", in sense of civil law, not morality or criminal law. Because the general principle allocates responsibility with those making decisions.

"Informed consent" is about getting you into a position to make decisions, and thereby share in the responsibility.

<comment><USER7> > apportions the damages of anything that goes wrong on the party mostly > responsible for it

That is usually interpreted to mean the party with the money gets stuck with the damages. Nobody sues a penniless person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Stockholm about 20% of the population now have antibodies, despite a lot social distancing. We have plenty of hospital beds ready in the event the number of people with respiratory problems would rise. No one is using face masks and the official consensus is that it doesn't provide enough contamination protection to be currently worthwhile. We keep our gatherings small and avoid crowds or close interactions where possible. Our authorities in control of elderly homes really did screw up in the early parts of the outbreak though, and a lot of elderly people lost their lives because of that. But overall things are moving toward a more normal society each day. I'm far removed from the belief that we need a rushed vaccine to cope with this pandemic. I can't speak for other countries and their strategies though but this is a local correspondence from the ground sort of speak.

<comment><USER9> > In Stockholm about 20% of the population now have antibodies, despite a lot > social distancing.

Maybe ... it's because of this:

> No one is using face masks and the official consensus is that it doesn't > provide enough contamination protection to be currently worthwhile.

All the evidence I've seen is quite clear; masks are effective.

And let's consider that the U.S., seen by many to be the worst handler of this pandemic thus far, is currently only ~8% of the way done. Yet Stockholm has already _blown_ through 33%.

Sweden, on the whole, is at 9.4%; again surpassing the U.S. by a good chunk.

I feel like the point of your comment was to suggest that Stockholm is doing well. The data is clear that they are not. In fact, they are doing quite poorly. I would take a good hard look at anyone in your government not vehemently pushing for mask use.

> I'm far removed from the belief that we need a rushed vaccine to cope with > this pandemic.

I cannot for the life of me fathom why the impending death of 60,000 fellow citizens, and 600,000 disabled with chronic illness wouldn't convince someone that a vaccine is needed ASAP.

<comment><USER8> > I cannot for the life of me fathom why the impending death of 60,000 fellow > citizens, and 600,000 disabled with chronic illness wouldn't convince > someone that a vaccine is needed ASAP.

I deliberately wrote that a _rushed_ vaccine is not needed. All the side effects need to be carefully considered. Even some vaccines that weren't necessarily rushed proved to have really horrible side effects when deployed to the population at scale.

I'm simply saying Stockholm is probably approaching 50% immunity soon (T-cell + antibody). If you isolate the outlier event that is the very poor treatment at the elderly homes at the start of the outbreak, causing a huge part of our deaths numbers, you get a completely different picture.

<comment><USER10> It's not clear you get permanent COVID immunity, just like you don't get lifelong flu immunity. The Swedish gamble may become a cycle of unneeded deaths.

And people gave you solid evidence that Sewdish numbers are not the result of early elderly outlier events. You should stop claiming that in so many posts when it seems untrue.

<comment><USER11> If there is no permanent COVID immunity, a vaccine won't give it to you either and we might as well stop delaying the inevitable now.

<comment><USER10> That's just nuts.

Just like people get flu shots every year to prevent widespread outbreaks, a Covid vaccine that gives temp immunity would save millions of lives.

Why do you think there's such a big deal about people getting annual flu vaccine shots, especially the most vulnerable?

<comment><USER11> There are 7.8 billion people on Earth. A vaccine that saves a few million isn't worth making billions put their lives on hold plus all the collateral damage that causes.

<comment><USER10> Pandemics of this size in the past destroyed economies as people decided to hide, so you're going to get that damage no matter what. By getting it under control, the damage is minimized as many countries that followed best practices has shown.

Those countries that tried to do what you suggest are the ones with the longest economic downturns.

You should read about pandemics of the past.

And as very solid evidence from experts, the famous IGM economists poll of most of the world's top economists covered this exact question [1], which I'll repeat:

"Abandoning severe lockdowns at a time when the likelihood of a resurgence in infections remains high will lead to greater total economic damage than sustaining the lockdowns to eliminate the resurgence risk"

100% of them selected Strongly Agree (41%) or Agree (39%) or Uncertain (14%), not a single vote on any part of the Disagree spectrum, which is nearly unheard of for a question in economics, and these responses were also rated highly confident. Check other questions and polls to see how rare this strong of a response is.

Shortsighted action ignorant of the history of economics almost always makes things worse.

Have a good day.

[1] [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the- covid-19-cr...](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the- covid-19-crisis/)

<comment><USER11> Not everything is about the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the United States, an existing law from 2005 likely already covers these cases anyway:

> The United States, however, already has a law to exclude tort claims from > products that help control a public-health crises in the form of the 2005 > Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness, or PREP Act.

It's also important to note that AstraZeneca has also pledged to supply the doses with no profit:

> AstraZeneca, Britain's second-largest drugmaker, has pledged to supply a > total of more than 2 billion doses at no profit in agreements with the > United States, Britain and European countries, among other nations and > organisations.

The exemption from liability claims is a function of the massive scale, the rushed timeline, and the lack of profit to defend claims in court.

When you're supplying a vaccine at the scale of billions of people, it's inevitable that many people will convince themselves that the vaccine is the cause of unrelated medical issues. Even if the vaccine turns out to be just as benign as every other vaccine out there, having tens or hundreds of thousands of people attempt to sue these companies under the mistaken notion that the vaccine caused their problems could be extremely costly.

The alternative would be a much more expensive vaccine (profit margins to buffer against potential losses) delivered much later (additional _years_ of safety testing and R&D).

</comment><comment><USER13> The risk is very high that such agreements lead to long term harm by providing fuel to anti Vaxxers and reducing the effectiveness of vaccines. Wasn't this scary example enough for politicians to learn to forever kill these kind of deals? [https://www.buzzfeed.com/shaunlintern/these-nhs-staff- were-t...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/shaunlintern/these-nhs-staff-were-told- the-swine-flu-vaccine-was-safe)

<comment><USER14> It's amazing that the only danger you see is that it is fuel to anti-vaxxers. What if it is actually harmful at scale?

<comment><USER15> Read the link, they give an example of a vaccine (pandemrix) that was harmful at scale. 1 in about 50,000 people given pandemrix developed narcolepsy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects,"

It's going to be well known any of the vaccines available will be considered risky.

I'm not sure people are considering how society will react to that.

<comment><USER17> > _I 'm not sure people are considering how society will react to that._

There will be a decent chunk of people that will be very apprehensive and they will probably be relentlessly shamed for their apprehension. Look at the amount of shaming that goes on regarding masks. I don't think there would be any less for a vaccine that somebody doesn't want to take. It'll probably just deepen the divide between people even further.

It's also completely reasonable for the company to take the stance they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This should not surprise anyone. Giving an exemption from vaccine injury is pretty standard and there is a fund for payouts if children are injured by a vaccine. This isn't the only exemption.

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

</comment><comment><USER18> The US has nationalized liability for vaccines. It's a consequence of a number of mostly-bogus lawsuits. Vaccines are in general not very profitable. No repeat sales.

 _" Cures are nice, but the money is in chronic conditions."_ That's all too real. Look at the history of ulcer treatments.

</comment><comment><USER19> I understand why but on the other hand, there is a sense these vaccines are being rushed and the obvious question is what corners have been cut (if any).

The last thing we would need is for anti-vaxxers to have a genuine concern and this raises many red flags.

So many governments have failed at every turn to deal with this virus it hardly inspires confidence that we should trust them on this especially as they are all desperate to get economies back on track so their own control procedures may be softened. And if there are significant side-effects I doubt there's globally any 'compensation' fund large enough.

<comment><USER20> Dont worry, anyone that had a kid legitimately hurt by a vaccine is looking at the people cheering on a vaccine and thinks you are crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if any stats or math go into this decision, and what the thresholds/limits of risk are? Or perhaps they're programmed into the criteria for what is accepted as the eventual vaccine.

Because this decision is most definitely making a call about the value of saved lives / avoided sickness, versus the likelihood of unintentionally caused sickness due to vaccine side effects.

I wonder what the acceptable numbers / risk percentages are.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's probably because of the adjuvant. It's needed for the vaccine to be effective but people can have reactions to it. With so many people to get vaccinated it could lead to frivolous class actions.

</comment><comment><USER23> The scary thing is that anyone who takes the scientific approach and to wait and see if the drug has serious side-effects will be accused of being anti- vaxx and socially ostracized.

</comment><comment><USER24> So for a for-profit corporation to produce a vaccine it needs to be completely risk free? This is not the first time market forces are suspended as soon as something needs to be reliably done.

</comment><comment><USER25> with no liability it wont matter if the vaccine is saline or cyanide or safe. where is the motivation to get it right?

</comment><comment><USER26> The Zeneca part is formerly ICI of toxic chemicals fame. Some things never change.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am okay with this... mostly because I don't think even someone/organization with the best intentions could possibly ship this without establishing this sort of clause up front.

If anything, not doing so, would make me _more_ concerned because it seems like overconfidence, or refusing to acknowledge how long it normally takes to do clinical trials on something before releasing it the public.

I know there are predatory pharmaceutical companies who would put their own profits way ahead of others... I just don't think in a global pandemic its going to be easy to intentionally lie about, or misrepresent, the effects of a cure to said pandemic. No amount of signed contracts would protect the company from the sheer volume of people marching to take their heads.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you prefer to run background jobs for a website/service? - <AUTHOR>

Just about any sizable web-available service generally needs to run background jobs. This almost always includes some interaction with inbound or outbound mail services which tend to be slow (even with my man Exim on the case). Kinda curious what solutions HN readers prefer for handling this. E.g. a lot of Rubyists use BackgrounDRb, but I prefer my little Looper.rb. <comment><USER2> cron. Should exist on every UNIX system, the most common syntax is standardized (you can even call it a DSL if you want), there are multiple implementations, it supports complex command lines, its jobs can be written in any language, it is well documented, and its limitations and security are well understood.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know all about cron, I was looking to see if people choose to just queue up all their jobs in a scheduler, if they fire up stand alone scripts, daemons, etc.

<comment><USER2> If you want a job queue, then a scheduler won't help much. I've found that stand alone scripts are usually better because then you write them so they can be "restarted" and maintain state outside of their address space, so you reduce the amount of lost work if you have to kill it. Not necessarily the case with long running deamons.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Job Posting From Late 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fraserharris.com/post/10648355074/facebook-job-posting-from-late-2012

<comment><USER2> If this future is true, facebook wouldn't need to post job openings, they would know who they want to hire and what it would take to bring them on board.

<comment><USER3> Oh, that is so creepy - and true.

<comment><USER4> Facebook = SkyNet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That time line might be a bit aggressive.

But what's undoubtedly true is that Facebook is laying the infrastructure for predictive analysis of pretty much everything.

</comment><comment><USER6> Obviously the present ideal use of face book rather than keeping in touch with friends is the hiring process. Facebook is good for those who inteligently sell their capabilities by exposing them as easily in a resume. So from Late 2012 it is going to be official!! Nice idea.</comment>


Why the Lack of a Jeff Bezos Dooms Mainstream Publishing - <AUTHOR> http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/08/why-the-lack-of-a-jeff-bezos-dooms-mainstream-publishing/

<comment><USER2> The title misleads: a Bezos is "not applicable" to mainstream publishing processes. As much as I like how well Amz meets my needs for a major discount off cover prices of books, it does scare me. I don't want to see publishing dominated by one company the way PC operating systems have been dominated by MSFT (or AV media begins to be dominated by Apple).

I don't know about solutions to any of these things, but the www, that great leveler of digital communications, seems to be getting carved up into a few huge chunks by the likes of GOOG, AMZ, Face, Twit, etc.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this "likes me not."

</comment><comment><USER3> I fail to see the point or message behind this piece, it's all pure speculation and fantasy. Disgustingly so.

> Mainstream publishing is focused more on creating the market through one hit > wonders. Mainstream publishing spends millions on trying to find the next > Brown, Rowling, Meyer, or Roberts...

Erm, no it actually doesn't. It doesn't spend a penny on trying to find anyone, because you can't. It's not like music where you can scour a few 'battle of the bands' and maybe find some kids with talent.

Writers arrive at random and unpredictably when an agent takes on their manuscript. Mayer had a dream, wrote a book about it, got an agent (who realized it was good) and someone at Little, Brown and Company recognized that the 4 book series was worth an advance of $750,000 dollars so she wouldn't go elsewhere with it.

I'm sorry, but suggesting a single anything will kill mainstream publishing is preposterous. There's three things that could do it: #1 lack of new talent (doubtful, if anything there's more talent now than ever before), #2 lack of readers (again currently doubtful due to the fact that global book sales is increasing, even in the UK which currently authors more new titles per year than the US, despite having 1/5 the population) and #3 they fail to adapt to new technology (again doubtful, many publishers seem to be well involved with eBooks, which seems to be led credence by the fact that virtually every agent on planet Earth is walking around with a Kindle, Sony Reader or equivalent). The only thing currently affecting book publishers is the economic recession, which just like any industry is putting poor performers out of business and in a couple of months will reward good performers richly.

The suggestion that self-publishing is ever going to do anything is stupid, which tells me a lot about the blog. Anyone who knows anything about publishing, is that you should avoid self-publishing like cancer, because that's what it is. When a company will offer $750,000 to a new author with a great story, why would anyone want to _pay thousands_ to a company that just hands you a giant pile of unedited books?

This blog article honestly disgusts me, as does the blog. Their knowledge is sub par, their criticism and judgment is equally so.

For Amazon to get anywhere in publishing it would be by offering bigger advances, bigger percentages and offering more money to the authors. Amazon can't do a thing without authors, and Amazon isn't going to get anywhere without being able to draw masses of talented authors, which they cannot possibly do without offering crazy percentages and advances to authors... which will only make the amazons 'publishing' _more_ likely to fail. Bluh, it's just stupid faulty logic and it hurts my brain.</comment>


Ask HN: how does one monetize a facebook app? - <AUTHOR>

Theoretically speaking, say you have a free facebook app with 1 million users.  How would you monetize it? <comment><USER2> "Sell them virtual goods" seems to be the hot answer at the moment. It depends on what your app does, though -- if they're sticky users who care about their avatar, then sell them stuff. If they're transients taking a viral quiz, well, you're not going to get nearly so much money. (Though I heard of one guy who, for viral quizzes, would award people with a prize: a free trial signup to $AFFILIATE_OFFER. That apparently converted very, very well.)

<comment><USER3> I think he's referring to Jeremy Schoemaker (a.k.a Mr. Shoemoney) who awarded Netflix trials as part of a Nebraska Cornhuskers (a college football team) trivia quiz.

This was mentioned in Jeremy's Mixergy interview (<http://mixergy.com/shoemoney-ads/>), and probably other places as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think there are two kinds of people:

(a) people with a lot of time and little money, and (b) people with a lot of money and little time

(Ok, there are two other quadrants, but no money, no time people are useless to use, and lots of money/lots of time is a rare and unstable situation.)

Facebook is really full of the type (a) sort of people. Maybe things are better for them now, but as of a year ago, Facebook's overall eCPM was about 10% of the eCPM of the sites that I run... And my sites don't have astronomical eCPM numbers.

It's not say that people can't make money off Facebook, because you can, but the real gold mine in Facebook is that you've got a community of people who will spend unlimited amounts of time on online activities. Personally, I'd prefer to suck them in and get them to create content for me that I can market (by other channels) to the type (b) people.

Another nice thing about FB is that you don't have as much trouble with griefers as you do if you're running your own auth system. People care about their FB accounts and they don't want to look like complete jerks in front of their friends.

I really wish I could pay people Facebook credits for doing work for me. My guess is that you could probably get $25 worth of work for $10 worth of Facebook credits, undercutting Mechanical Turk.

They won't make it easy for you to pay out credits, unfortunately, because people would discover that gambling would be just as profitable on Facebook as it is in most other places.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> and lo and behold I find this:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230477280457555...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html)

Wow!!

<comment><USER5> Yeah - but I wonder how long this kind of thing (I was just thinking "unethical goldmine") will last because it puts two parts of the business model of Facebook at risk.

1) the (laughable) idea that Facebook is a trustworthy place to put all your drunken photos to share with your future employers, parents-in-law etc, which drives up adoption rates amongst the public

2) the likelihood that Facebook is doing very similar (but probably marginally more privacy-sensitive) deals with the same privacy-infringing companies as RapLeaf, and that they don't want their rates to decrease per naked identity sold on the basis of increased competition and a comparatively worse infoset compared with what the apps are providing to RapLeaf and friends

A profit share probably isn't interesting for FB if you agree with the analysis above, so my bet is that they're going to try to come down hard on the apps that are doing this.</comment></comment>


Thinking of joining App.net? Read this - <AUTHOR> http://rowntree.me/a-week-on-app-net/

<comment><USER2> Nothing to be found here that Hacker News users don't already know.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have read, still thinking.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, to be honest I'm not even sure what App.net is supposed to be after reading the article. Is this like a paid Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its like Twitter but with a close knit community and a great background. Think Twitter pre-2007 before it was commercialised and business ads started jumping on board.</comment></comment></comment>


Eye Opening Summary of What It Will Take to Uphold Paris Climate Agreement - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/23/15028480/roadmap-paris-climate-goals <comment><AUTHOR> I find the reference to Moore's Law interesting - particularly in light of Carver Mead's acknowledgement that it was principally a way to push collective action:

"I always had to—especially in the early days—explain that this is not a law of physics. This is a law [of] the way that humans are. In order for anything to evolve like our semiconductor technology has evolved, it takes an enormous amount of creative effort by a large number of smart people. They have to believe that effort is going to result in a successful thing or they won't put the effort in. That belief that it's possible to do this thing is what causes the thing to happen.

The Moore's Law thing is really about people's belief in the future and their willingness to put energy into causing that thing to come about. It's a marvelous statement about humanity."

Source: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/qa-carver- me...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/qa-carver-mead)</comment>