Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky---its-an-easy-skill-to-learn.html <comment><USER2> I saw a TV version of this article quite a while ago, and like JacobAldridge I have used it a number of times in conversations about luck.

It certainly makes sense to me. You make your own luck by being more aware of things going on around you, so that you can spot opportunities that others might miss. Observing my own life, I feel that a lot of my "luck" has come from an ability to leap onto opportunities that others might have hesitated about for months - this despite the fact that I have a natural tendency to delay and be extremely conservative.

So my view is, if I can overcome this risk-averseness and take on opportunities that I'd normally be scared of, surely others can too. It's extremely hard to convince self-styled unlucky people of this, though. Perhaps I'm just bad at persuading them.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of a recent study in bird personalities. It turns out there are very big differences from bird to bird in terms of curiosity and risk taking and other things.

And there is a huge body of scientific work about bird behavior EXCEPT that now it turns out the birds studied, trapped, tagged, etc, would have been a self selecting group of atypical super curious risk takers.

And all of this science is now suspected to be skewed.

And the fact that there are BOTH lucky and unlucky birds and people tells us that there's more than one way to optimize fitness.

Curiosity, optimism, luck work some times, and other times get you killed.

Now in the modern industrialized world, you're probably better of being open and optimistic and all the rest. But then again we've had an unprecedented multi-decade period of peace stability and economic growth.

If we are heading into a new great depression this might change.

Or imagine you're in some kind of accident or disaster, perhaps a building fire, and being a pessimist and super focused you bail at the first hint of smoke and single mindedly make it down the stairs as fast as possible and you're out and alive. Still a worried unlucky pessimist but alive. The lucky optimist on the other hand might have tried the elevator, when the heat expended both the elevator and the shaft, it got stuck, and the lucky optimists got cooked.

Just saying.

<comment><USER4> I think in your search for a contrary example, you're looking at it in the wrong way. The focus of the unlucky pessimist will lead them unerringly to the stairs, whether or not that's the best option. The lucky optimist won't foolishly do what no one should ever do, but instead notice that the open elevator shaft has a ladder that someone else just safely used to escape. Being lucky doesn't mean you have to be stupid.

The unlucky pessimist will stand in line while the lucky optimist will notice that what she needs is easily obtained out of the line.

<comment><USER3> Take this thought experiment to its extreme and the unlucky should have gone extinct. The fact that both lucky and unlucky personality types persist, suggest both have advantages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unlucky people tend to be more focused on whatever they happen to be doing because they're worried about making a mistake. But there's quite a bit of evidence that this sort of conscious, focused thought uses up so many mental resources that it can actually become a hindrance. Professional athletes perform significantly worse when they actively contemplate their behavior, and focusing on something prevents the mindwandering that's necessary for creative, insightful solutions. Your subconscious is a HUGE part of your brain, but focusing too hard on something makes it harder to use it.

<comment><USER6> Agree entirely. Just today I was staring at some code that I intuitively knew could be rearchitected to be simpler, more maintainable, etc., but I couldn't put my finger on just how to do it. So I'd stare at it for half an hour, and then take a break, repeat throughout the day. Now I'm pretty sure exactly what I need to do, and I think it's entirely because I took my attention away from it every so often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always thought of myself as being very lucky. When I was younger, I attributed this to the fact that my parents were Christians and that 'God was watching over us.' But in truth, my mind seems overwhelmingly to ignore the bad and remember the good. This is partly due to my narcissism. I'm special!

Now as an atheist, I've come to accept and indeed appreciate the role of pure, random chance in our lives. What happens to is is not determined solely by us, but but rather by our response to our situations, over which we have not control.

Thought experiment: Let's say that there is someone with whom you would be a perfect romantic match-your values align, etc. But let's say that on the day you meet them, they happened not to eat breakfast. They were so hungry, that just a minute before you saw them, they had to eat a biscuit, leaving residue in their teeth. "Ewww!", you say, in ignorance.

Thing like this happen Every.Single.Day. There are probably thousands of Einsteins who will die in poverty and obscurity. That's life. Failure to realize this is part of what causes Fundamental Attribution Error.

<comment><USER8> I think the main thing to realize regarding the Fundamental Attribution Error is that when committing the error you are judging others and yourself on differing criteria.

For example, if you, when experiencing 'bad luck', tend to recognize its source as your environment rather than qualities of your person, it would be because of the Fundamental Attribution Error that you would incorrectly assume that the same 'bad luck' experienced by someone else is because of some qualities of that person rather than their environment. In many cases, especially with regard to 'good luck' it's just the opposite: For yourself you see the 'good-luck' as coming from YOU, for others you see the 'good-luck' as coming from their environment.

It's been helpful for me to remember these things especially when someone ticks me off or whatever... It's incorrect to assume that my neighbor being a douche is because deep down he is a douche-bag, rather than because of his crappy morning that I know nothing about. I would want to be given the same courtesy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember this article from when it first came out - in 2003 - and have used the newspaper / picture story as an example countless times.

If you don't believe you create the reality you experience, think again. Blaming external factors, like luck, just absolves us of our own responsibility to ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER10> Dammit, where's Eliezer Yudkowsky when you need him. I'm pretty sure he'll have an interesting take on this.

<comment><USER11> BEHOLD, I AM HERE!

MBlume posted the article to LW here: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1b9/do_the_unlucky_systematically_un...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1b9/do_the_unlucky_systematically_underestimate/)

If you want me to say something stunningly intelligent about it, um... ah... okay, how about this:

Since we know at the start of the problem that luck in the supernatural sense doesn't _really_ exist, we would expect people experiencing systematic exogenous runs of genuine good or bad luck to be rare in the population. But people who claim to be lucky or unlucky are much more common than that.

The next question you'd have to address is whether the people who claim to be "lucky" or "unlucky" actually seem to be experiencing more-than-chance proportions of good or bad life events, of a sort we would otherwise think of as exogenous (like falling down stairs) or partially randomness-based (like meeting a new girlfriend in a crowd). There would be a large problem of biased reporting at this point.

If so, then because we know luck doesn't _really_ exist, we should indeed look for hidden internal characteristics to explain these runs of good or bad luck. As the saying goes, "YOU are the only common denominator in all your failed relationships."

Trying to train people to be lucky was an interesting attempt at experimental manipulation, but it's hard to untangle from the "biased reporting" hypothesis - you may just be making people think they're lucky. Still a good thing to test, though. (Possible stronger test: Train people to be "lucky in love" (that's what you tell them you're doing) and see if they become luckier in other areas too.)

<comment><USER12> If the data is valid, I think the article establishes rather well that people who call themselves "lucky" are indeed measurably different from people who call themselves "unlucky." The latter group blew the photo-counting test, for instance.

It is at that point where I would inject your perspective. What other measurable differences are there? Are "lucky" people wealthier? Healthier? Laid more? Etc.

Then there's the matter of training people for greater "luck." I agree, the article is sketchy here, and I'm not sure of a reliable way to measure an increase in "luck" (unless we assume that the "unlucky" can be expected to flunk the photo count indefinitely).

In essence, I think the article is 1/3 of the way there. True, "lucky" people differ from "unlucky" people. So let's figure out if they differ in ways that we care about, and if we can make "unlucky" people become "lucky." Then we'll have something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> He has convolved luck with happiness.

If someone believes he is happy, he is happy.

If someone believes he is the lucky, he is not necessarily lucky.

Seeing the world rose colored glasses does not make you any luckier, it makes you happier. By only asking for those that self-identified as lucky or unlucky, he has failed to isolate the variable of happiness.

Here is an excerpt from the book which points out the author's faulty reasoning.

"On average both `lucky' and `unlucky' participants lost about £2.50. Wiseman's conclusion: `The results indicated that luck wasn't due to psychic ability'."

In this quote it is revealed that the people who "felt" lucky really weren't lucky. In fact, they were about as lucky as the people who felt unlucky. The people who were "lucky" also expected to win twice as much as people who felt "unlucky". So his whole experiment is flawed.

This is the type of optimism hawked by many self-help gurus. But then again, it doesn't really matter if your situation really has improved with these "tips" as the Romans found out with church and bread and circuses. Keep the plebs amused and fearful and they will willfully ignore everything else.

<comment><USER14> I disagree; I think he is just using a slightly different definition of luck than you are. Luck is not simply a matter of "defying the odds" or getting the better end of coinflips more often. It's also about opportunities. I think the article did a nice job of examining how "lucky" people are often more fortunate largely because they give themselves more chances to be lucky.

The point about perception of luck being self-perpetuating is good as well. If you view yourself as unlucky, you will tend to be more timid in situations where you might need a little luck to succeed, while a lucky individual will be willing to take more chances.

This dynamic is very visible in poker... After a run of bad luck, it's very easy to miss an opportunity to do something like play a drawing hand aggressively to make a player fold ( _I don't want to get the money in and lose, again!_ ), instead taking a more passive, less successful route ( _I'll call the flop... of course, I missed again and don't have odds to continue, now I have to fold._ ).

<comment><USER13> Again, being willing to take risks for greater gain doesn't make you luckier.

In the case of poker, it might be smarter to pretend to play aggressively after a losing streak, but at this point, you are using reverse psychology and you are playing smarter, NOT luckier.

Ever heard of the overaggressive guy that failed a business or died in a stunt? No, of course not. You only hear the success stories which make it seem like the answer to life is aggressiveness.

<comment><USER15> Re-read the article. The people who considered themselves "lucky" turned out to be more observant, and therefore would encounter unexpected opportunities. The people who considered themselves "unlucky" would miss glaring opportunities that should have been staring them in the face. If opportunities keep on dropping in your lap but not in others, after a while you're likely to feel lucky. If opportunities keep on _not_ dropping in your lap while they do in others, after a while you're likely to feel unlucky. Objectively you just don't understand the source of your consistent fortune. But that is how it will feel.

It isn't about risks or risk-taking at all. It is about better observation leading to noticing and taking advantage of opportunities. What is the risk in being given an offer to easily make 250 British pounds? The unlucky people didn't even see it! (The lucky people presumably would have noticed that, but didn't because they noticed that the second page gave them the answer they were looking for so they didn't read the rest of the paper.)

He then figured out some of the factors that lead to the improved observation rate, and found that he could teach "luckiness" as a skill. Of course you aren't going to actually be lucky if you learn that skill. But if you have it you'll have more opportunities to take advantage of. And that's pretty worthwhile.

<comment><USER13> That is easily an artifact of verification bias.

There was no effort in trying to introduce events that would be negative if aggressively pursued such as a Nigerian 411 or lottery scam. You certainly aren't lucky if you noticed one of these and decided it was a nice opportunity.

<comment><USER15> The perception is definitely verification bias. However there was an effort to train "unlucky" people to be more "lucky", and there was evidence that this really improved their lives. So while there are cases that it will cause them to fall for scams, on the whole it seems to be a good change.

<comment><USER13> The "training" wasn't actually luck, it was a training of attitude.

Sure it may have improved their lives, but attributing this to luck is as much of a mistake as saying that learning to prospect for gold is increasing my luck at getting rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tunnel vision is caused by stress. It also represents the worldview that all- you-see is all-there-is. It's a kind of solipsism. What makes what _you_ see so significant? Literally, it is true that you can only observe from your point of view; and that you are always at the center of your horizons. So it's an understandable mistake to make.

But to appreciate the unknown requires humility - it's not just that you don't know the answers, but that you do not know the question; cannot even conceive of the question. It's a door being unlocked, where you didn't even know there was a doorway.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It's not that the teacher arrives, but that we are surrounded by teachers at all times, and we can only see them when we are ready. That's when they appear.

</comment><comment><USER17> _They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety_

This may be tangential to the discussion at hand, but for many, like myself, who tend to be shy and hesitant to reach out to others, this seems like one good way to overcome that. If you make it into a game, it can become less stressful. Anyone else have any other ideas like this?

[Edit - Formatting]

<comment><USER18> Do what I did to make it happen---just do it. Do it everyday. Talk to random strangers. Go live in a hostel in a foreign country (by far the easiest way ever to meet people). Make it natural

<comment><USER19> Agreed on hostels being the easiest way to meet people. You don't even need to try, which is why it actually might not improve your skills at home all that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Parcel this up as a message about making your own luck or being determined, taking advantage of opportunities or consciously priming your selection bias in your favour, and some kinds of people are all over it.

Parcel up the same message as positive thinking, cosmic ordering, the law of attraction or subjective reality, and the same types trip over themselves to be the first to ridicule it.

And it does seem to be the same core message.

<comment><USER11> Yeah? Let's train people in the law of attraction and compare them to people trained to be _non_ -supernaturally lucky, and see who gets luckier.

<comment><USER20> Given that the supernatural doesn't exist, if the training teaches a similarly useful change in behaviour, they should get a similar increase in luck as defined by Prof. Wiseman in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21>
      >  'For fun, I placed a second large message
      >  halfway through the newspaper: "Stop
      >  counting. Tell the experimenter you have
      >  seen this and win £250." Again, the unlucky
      >  people missed the opportunity because they
      >  were still too busy...

Uh huh. Was this 'study' financed to the tune of thousands of pounds? Or were the offers rescinded from all those light-hearted, open-minded, happy, lucky people who are good and deserving in every way, especially when compared to bad, sick-hearted unlucky people who probably molest their pets and deserve to be poor because they're actually inferior in deep spiritual ways when you think about it, especially when you think about the matter 'scientifically', with like, stats and everything?

Or, was the offer of £250 not actually ever made?

The article reaks of a kind of manufacturable 'luck' that it nevertheless did not mention.

</comment><comment><USER22> For an alternate (and more rigorous) view on the feedback between positive outlook and positive experience, see Martin Seligman's _Learned Optimism_.

In it, he describes a number of experiments to show that how optimistic we are depends on how we choose to interpret past events. He also shows that increased optimism has measurable positive effects in many occupations and that a person's seemingly inherent level of optimism can usually be changed through a set of behavioral exercises. (However, he also points out that optimism can be a detriment in some circumstances.)

</comment><comment><USER23> The world is what _you_ make of it.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you ever want an interesting look into the psyche of a person / have them reveal themselves, ask them to describe to you situations in which they were 'lucky' (from a book "On Flirting")

</comment><comment><USER25> I am thinking of the words _opters_ and _non-opters_ to describe such people. Lucky/unlucky would mean they have better odds at games with random elements such as roulette, or better chance of walking over money on the street or so on.

[Edit] As jodrellblank replied that would mean a person for which the laws of probability/statistics do not apply. [/Edit]

 _opter_ \- n. A person(or agent) who is good at seeking opportunities and is able to take advantage of them.

<comment><USER20> _Lucky/unlucky would mean they have better odds at games with random elements such as roulette_

If you define 'lucky' as someone for whom physics/statistics do not apply then you make it a pretty meaningless term for the real world.

 _or better chance of finding money on the street or so on._

This is what the article is talking about - the chance of money being on the street stays the same, the 'lucky' person is more likely to spot it.

<comment><USER25> _...chance of finding money on the street or so on..._

Sorry, I was not clear. I meant that the there will be money in the street. Not that they will find them. I will edit my post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> luck, by its meaning of definition, cannot be determined or manupilated.You can either define the situation as your luck or your willingness, it just depends on how you see the context. Luck, fate and willingness.How all those are related to each other is best examined in the Kieslowski's movie Blind Chance.

I was just thinking about this issue today because the house that i wanted to rent was just rented to someone else. It was depressing & important for several reasons. I keep asking myself: "what if i called the broker earlier, just a day before? Could i have the chance to rent the house?" Well, i might be act earlier but i didn't know about the house earlier, the reason that i didn't know, well i had to do something that day..and this goes and goes and goes...Its like the Feyman video that i watched from here, some very simple things can branches into very complicated and sophisticated manners. This also partly mentioned in the funeral monologue from Synecdoche, NY <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0>

<comment><USER19> Yes, but if you take that attitude too far you'll never learn from your mistakes. It's quite possible that if you had stopped procrastinating and called earlier, you really would have had the chance the rent the house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Don't take luck personally; there isn't enough luck out there for everyone to be as lucky as Bill Gates.

There are a lot of things out there that guarantee success. Low risk, and time consuming. Most people are too scared of high risk endeavors to attempt anything high risk more than a few times in their entire lives.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am someone who seems to often have phenomenal "good luck". My subjective experience is that it also relates to how you treat other people. Just being consistently polite and having good boundaries opens up opportunities in a big way -- often to a degree that astonishes me.

<comment><USER29> I do all of this, and my personal life has had lots of good luck in the last five years, but at the utter expense of my professional luck. I have had an astounding series of bad luck, especially recently. I do all the things you mention, the article mentions, etc. And still, it seems as if my luck as gone from bad to worse. It's shocking to me. Certainly a large part of this is my fault; I had too much hubris and self-confidence, and was sure if things had been going a certain way, they would continue that way even to some extent. But bad luck happens, just as good luck happens, with no priming for the condition at all.

<comment><USER28> It's not like my life is ALL cherries and no pits. But because of the personal challenges I have had, I simply couldn't make it if I didn't have some serious "saving graces" going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well, lucky people could just be more naturally observant. It seems that would be a useful trait.

<comment><USER31> This is more about anxiety than luck. It seems the 'unlucky' volunteers had a higher level of anxiety and thus a decreased ability to detect opportunities.

Anxiety and stress can interfere in many activities.

<comment><USER32> Totally true. Anxiety saps all kinds of brain power.

<comment><USER33> I'm not so sure. I've found a certain level of anxiety can make me perform better at things. Complacency can be dangerous too in my experience.

<comment><USER32> True but anxiety tends to narrow focus and depending on what you are trying to accomplish it can either help or hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Didn't the Pierson's Puppeteers breed for luck? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers#Foreign_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers#Foreign_policy)

</comment><comment><USER35> The moral is that luck is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's just a mindset.

</comment><comment><USER36> This article highlights a reason that 12-hour work days could be a bad idea for startups. Perhaps you'll be working so hard on your Odeo that you won't get "lucky" and find your Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish I could know how the luckies and unluckies would have done on the "marshmallow test" as 4-year-olds.

(Then I'd make the "luckies" be guards and the "unluckies" be prisoners...)

<comment><USER38> I think the unluckies would resist the marshmallows better. The hight degree of worry strikes me as mind over emotion. Then again the variables might be independent and there would be no correlation between EQ and luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The moral of the story is to not be so tightly procedural in your tasks as to miss opportunities when they naturally arise.

</comment><comment><USER40> Those that get lucky more often identify more opportunities to get lucky from.

</comment><comment><USER41> Surely there are anxious people that have won the lottery?

</comment><comment><USER42> 1) Be more adventurous 2) Don't be afraid to fail 3) Relax 4) Think out of the box 5) Think Positive

</comment><comment><USER43> Yay! I was right there's nothing called luck.

</comment><comment><USER44> I read an article about this once. Here's the gist of it: if you want to be lucky, you should gamble, etc. only when the entropy levels are higher than usual.

<comment><USER45> What? No. Maybe you should read this article. Perhaps you can interchange "Luck" with "Fortune", but it contains a few principles that could benefit you in the future.

<comment><USER44> I'm sorry, I meant "lower", not "higher" (less chaos).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Anybody else annoyed by what a blatant advertisement this is for a self-help program?

"My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. ... After graduating from "luck school", she has passed her driving test after three years of trying, was no longer accident-prone and became more confident. ... The Luck Factor (Century), is available for £9.99 + £1.99 p&p. To order, please call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222."

To me the news here is, "Publishing company uses newspaper it owns to promote one of its books."</comment>


Ask HN: Why US companies want to use cheques? - <AUTHOR> Often US companies want to pay me with cheques that they will mail to the other side of the world and I'll have a lot of trouble cashing. Why's that? They tell me cheques are super common and they can't understand the trouble I have with them.<p>Where I live all transactions are electronic between banks. I haven't used a paper cheque in 15 years. <comment><USER2> Well, it's because it's because checks are super common in the US! They can't understand the trouble you have with them because paying via check is normal business practice in the US; nobody in the US has trouble cashing them.

Electronic bank transfers are not common. Most people would probably have to look up instructions for how to do it, and most people's banks would charge a fee for the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that a cultural thing? Getting a piece of paper, driving to the bank to cash it? Or accepting a cheque from an account with no funds?

If that's the case, then I can let it go. However, it's puzzling that the mecca of capitalism is living on antiquated methods like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> International wire transfers usually cost the sender 25 bucks. Checks don't.

Edit: But yes, the situation is redicoulous.

<comment><AUTHOR> They usually say something about the cost yeah. What is weird is that they also seem to be using cheques for local transactions (or so they tell me, I find it hard to believe).

<comment><USER4> Checks as local transactions frequently get converted into electronic ones on deposit, and many businesses now have you sign a waiver that says any checks you send them will get converted into an ACH draft from your bank account.

But for business transactions, checks are still the default.</comment></comment></comment>


Morphic: The Self User Interface Framework - vezzy-fnord http://handbook.selflanguage.org/current/morphic.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Also in Pharo[1] and Squeak[2], but shoehorning it into a class based system turned out to have drawbacks. Juan Vuletich is doing some nice stuff with his Cuis[3] version.

The linked description is a little out of date but all the basics are still correct. It's quite a flexible system.

[1]: [http://pharo.org/](http://pharo.org/) [2]: [http://squeak.org/](http://squeak.org/) [3]: [http://www.jvuletich.org/Cuis/Index.html](http://www.jvuletich.org/Cuis/Index.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I have some short screencasts showing using the Self user interface here if interested: [http://bluishcoder.co.nz/tags/self/](http://bluishcoder.co.nz/tags/self/)

Also a short animated gif of a Self VNC morph I worked on: [http://bluishcoder.co.nz/self/self_vnc2.gif](http://bluishcoder.co.nz/self/self_vnc2.gif)

I like the 'live soup of objects' feel of Self.</comment>


React.js Basics for Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ReactForBeginners/course-overview/tree/master/lecture1

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very interested in feedback on the tutorial. It's under development and will be the basis of a lecture on the subject in next week.

Find anything that you don't think is explained well enough, or in the wrong way? Please notify me in the comments here or simply raise an issue. Thanks!</comment>


Groundbreaking carbon capture project in Squamish, B.C - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/carbon-capture-squamish-1.3263855 <comment><USER2> The "win" here is that if you have a source of "carbon free" energy (on their web site they mention solar, wind, and nuclear) you can pull CO2 out of the air and make it available for other processes (like Fischer-Tropsch) which can combine it with Hydrogen and turn it back into long chain organics.

As far as relevance goes, this is an interesting bridge technology. One could imagine a massive solar plan in the Sahara that was using its output to produce diesel fuel. Transporting diesel long distances is more feasible than transporting electricity and you can use it when you need it and store it when you don't.

If one of the several fusion efforts start generating excess energy this is one way to use that energy productively. You reduce airborne CO2 (good for the climate) and you produce fuel for later.[1]

Compressed CO2 is also used in a number of industrial processes so you can just sell the stuff if you want to make back money.

[1] And yes that re-releases CO2 into the air but if you're pulling it out to make it the result is a net-zero impact on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER3> A high-level description of functionality: [http://carbonengineering.com/our- technology/](http://carbonengineering.com/our-technology/)

Essentially running an alkaline solution through a structure and simultaneously forcing air through the same structure. Air contact with alkaline solution results in CO2 absorption into the alkaline solution.

<comment><USER4> Key passage:

"In CE's lowest-technical risk 'baseline' design, all the input energy required onsite is supplied by natural gas. The carbon dioxide from gas combustion is also captured along with the CO2 extracted from the atmosphere, so that no new CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere by our technology. In the longer term, we expect that carbon-free power will drive air capture. CE is building collaborations to conduct full-scale studies on using solar thermal or nuclear energy as the source of energy for its air capture system."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This makes no thermodynamic sense. CO2 is about the worst "fuel" possible, because it is the end product of combustion.

Then, the call it a "capture project", with the goal of burning what they create.

It can be carbon capture, or it can create fuel, but not both.

<comment><USER6> Right now people are getting fuel by pulling stored carbon out of the ground and burning it, increasing the net CO2 in the atmosphere.

If a system like this worked, the level of CO2 would stay constant rather than increasing because you're recirculating carbon which was already in the atmosphere.

That's still not as good as actually pulling carbon out but if they can make the numbers work, it's to see how that's not a noteworthy improvement.

<comment><USER7> I'm by no means an expert in the subject, but what you say sounds suspiciously similar to a perpetual motion machine.

<comment><USER6> Seconding what ac29 said – this obviously only makes sense if you have a power source which doesn't generate new carbon. Solar in particular could make a ton of sense if you had a viable process which could happen out in relatively cheap desert spaces, but I have no idea whether that could work with the water requirements that the article described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Side topic, how much carbon capture could we achieve by burying crop plants after harvesting? It seems like only a small amount of biomass is harvested. Think of corn. I'm assuming the rest is turned back into co2 by decomposition?

<comment><USER9> It's sometimes used:

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

It's also probably not sufficient to just bury it:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool stuff, certainly. But why take C02 from the air, when there are large stationary sources of CO2 readily available, like _any bloody thermal power plant_? It... seems very wasteful to me.

EDIT: also, one tonne per day, very wow.

<comment><USER11> I could imagine that, when you take the CO2 from the air, you could build those plants in remote locations, where it is difficult to get fuel right now. Like, in the desert.

But I guess that would work only in theory, because those plants would probably need quite a lot of infrastructure - right?

<comment><USER10> It requires a lot of energy to do this, obviously. I don't know the exact details, but my naive assumption is that they require hydrogen as an intermediate, which would also imply they need relatively pure water as a source. Altogether I just don't know why they decided to take this from the air rather than build a plant in any major port with a refinery installed, which would seem to be much cheaper.</comment></comment></comment>


What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ? - <AUTHOR>

It would be interesting to know what influenced the choice of name of your company ? What other names were amongst the candidates and why they weren't chosen ? Is there a story behind your company's name ? <comment><USER2> I was finishing up my last project and looking for something new to work on. I wanted a good name for it so I hit up ajaxwhois.com, where I spent a good ten hours over the course of two or three weeks looking for a good domain name for one of the projects I was considering (How crazy is that: I was letting the domain name availability decide which project I would pursue).

Frustrated, I wrote some software to scan for available domain names. Surprise suprise: some of them were not half bad. "Hey, I thought, some people might find this useful." I dropped the other ideas and started working on a new project:

<http://www.domainpigeon.com>

The name -- Domain Pigeon -- was discovered using the software I originally wrote to find available domain names. That same software found the 90,000+ domain and Twitter names that are currently listed on the site.

On an unrelated note, a decent percentage of people that search for Domain Pigeon on Google misspell it: 'Domain Pidgeon' (like fridge or ridge)--stupid French etymology. I also own and redirect people from domainpidgeon.com because of that hiccup. I admit its a little ironic that its a somewhat difficult domain name... :)

<comment><USER3> +1 for domainpigeon, its awesome.

<comment><USER2> +1 for pclark for his neverending kind words

<comment><USER3> (domainpigeon appears to be down?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ours is a tale of the sunk cost fallacy. Back in 2006, we started working on a social network aggregator called BlueSwarm that was very similar to FriendFeed or SocialThing. We originally called it BlueSwarm.org, because the .com was taken, but just before we launched in Summer 2007, we bought the .com, paying way way more than we should have. Stupid. Anyway, the launch went OK, but after awhile, we realized that the space was crowding fast and it was a difficult idea to monetize, so we put it on the back-burner.

Meanwhile, we launched a little side blog called MightyBrand that covered personal branding through social media. We posted there occasionally, but not much. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas you do on a weekend that gradually lose steam over the next few months.

In early 2008, we decided to take the codebase from BlueSwarm and re-purpose it to be a social media monitoring platform for brands. This is where the sunk cost fallacy comes in: because we paid so much for the BlueSwarm.com domain, we really wanted to use it, so our social media monitoring platform for brands and companies was also called BlueSwarm. We went through these mental marketing gymnastics trying to relate it to what we were doing: "Who's swarming around your brand?" We launched an alpha prototype under BlueSwarm and applied to YC as BlueSwarm.

Finally, about six months later, we realized that it probably wasn't the best fit, and it suddenly dawned on us that MightyBrand was actually a pretty good name for what we were attempting to do, and would grow with us as we expand because just monitoring. So when we launched our public beta in Jan 2009, we had completely re-branded as MightyBrand.

PS - If anyone wants to buy BlueSwarm.com, .net, and .org, email me. :)

<comment><USER5> You should try to sell BlueSwarm.com to the Columbus Blue Jackets :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some angel investor who wanted to cut a check couldn't spell the name of the company right, so we had to change the name of the company to the misspelled version and live with it forever. It was a disaster! Watch out for bad company names!

<comment><USER7> That's a real bummer. Maybe your company should save up cash to buy googol.com and fix the situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> names are mostly irrelevant. domains however, are not.

Make sure you get the .com, make sure you get _all_ the typos (if you haven't bought ~10 domains you're doing it wrong).

Avoid stuff like "getx" (getdropbox) no one remembers the get and that'll piss users off, you'll also have to deal with dropbox.com being a competitor/spammer/something bad down the line.

If you can get a name that vaguely tells what you do, awesome. If its clever, awesome. Be wary of long names - we love _Broadersheet_ , but it is rather long. We'll see.

Don't do the d.o.t thing, its lame, annoying, hinders your audience, maybe even hurts your SEO. Yahoo bought delicious.com, and note the techy audience initially.

I have this belief, you know you've found a great name (eg "how about z?") when you then type z into a domain checker and the .com is available -- I take that as a sign of _yes!_

<comment><USER8> Isn't DropBox's success evidence that domains don't matter that much?

I suppose they are mainly download software, and not a destination site. Also, the site can be reached from the desktop with a direct link.

<comment><USER3> how many users were put off by the domain (eg, couldnt find it / signed up to wrong service)? Answer: you don't know, but you can guarantee at least 1 was.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure you're right, that users like it less. But you can't say a good domain is requires for success, given theirs.

<comment><USER3> certainly not, but a bad name can _restrict_ success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My criteria:

1\. Acceptable

2\. Trivial to spell and pronounce for target audience (and from lacker's comment, I suppose investors too)

3\. Unique enough to be the top result when searched by name

4\. No existing trademarks

5\. An intelligent answer for how the name is associated with the product

6\. Unregistered .com

I try not to spend more than a few hours brainstorming names because it's an endless process. The product should define the name, not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER10> From my post here: [http://www.greaterscope.com/blog/2008/11/11/intentional- soft...](http://www.greaterscope.com/blog/2008/11/11/intentional-software/)

Back in 2002 I thought of "Intentional Software" as a company name. It was supposed to imply that we wouldn't be creating haphazardly designed products. But then again, I'd only been coding for a year or two at the time, which doesn't seem like enough time to be doing anything other than haphazard development.

All of that is beside the point, because Charles Simonyi came along a few years later and started a company of the same name. He was born well before me so he had a killer head-start. Plus, as the originator of "hungarian notation", he knew how to not program all willy-nilly.

My ideas for a company name progressed, especially once I stopped using the space bar. Out came "Greaterscope" as a possibility. The encapsulation of optimistic, forward-looking, expansive ... a chord was struck. Or rather, a saw was wobbled to make a sound. But don't worry, the saw's teeth are clean. (Yeah, that was a stretch, but I had to reference Scope mouthwash somewhere, since you probably thought of it upon seeing our company name)

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently went through the process of choosing a name for my current project (<http://www.webalon.com/gamemanager/>). The site is aimed at the casual gaming market. This is a pretty crowded area, and most of the good names - game.com, player.com... - have long since been taken and even average names like - playfire, casualgames, gameking, playhub etc, etc - have been snuffled up. Choosing a name was always therefore going to have to be a big compromise, determined to a large part by what was available.

In cases like this, when most of the best names have already been taken, I find that a thesaurus is invaluable in coming up with a half decent name. My project is a rich interent style app for creating and managing a library of online games. Think iTunes for online games. So I was looking for a name that would capture the ideas of both collecting and playing. Scouring the thesaurus, I came up with a few different words for collections, and eventually drew up a list of potentual urls. This was then whittled down significantly to remove names that had already been taken.

This left me with the following:

playheap.com playhoard.com plather.com (play and gather) plhub.com

To be honest, none of these got me particularly excited. I could live with one of them, if I had to. But ideally I would like something a bit more interesting. So back to the thesaurus, this time looking at alternative words for playing or gaming. This eventually led me to the word: gambol, which means 'to leap about playfully'. That's quite a nice word. It has a pretty cool meaning, and even better it starts with the first three letters of 'game'. On the downside, most people probably won't know what the word means and it also sounds a bit like gamble.

But as I said at the start, choosing a name was always going to be a big compromise. I was never going to get my ideal name. Unfortunately, gambol.com was taken. Back to the thesaurus, then. Wait a sec. Why not stick an "io" on the end. It worked for "tr", after all!

So there you have it, my chosen name for my new project: gambolio.com

</comment><comment><USER12> Use a name that doesn't mean anything.

It will violate the branding law that a name should impart some sense of what the product/service does, but I think it's worth sacrificing that dogma in favor of having a name that: 1\. Will derive a decent Google search without having to fool with any SEO stuff. 2\. Work internationally. 3\. Will be distinctive. 4\. Will provide the flexibility you'll need as your product/service evolves over time.

After wasting a ton of time trying to come up with a name, we took the first letter of four key words that were relevant to our software, stuck them in to scrabble dot com, got some suggested words, one of which was pithy and sounded OK, and then stuck a 'x' on the end to make it unique.

The dot com is easy if it's made up.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some of our customers at FreshBooks remember use from the days the product was named after the company name: 2ndSite. That name has all sorts of problems, not least the website (<http://www.secondsite.biz/>) so at the top of 2006 they decided to rebrand.

Well, that's putting it lightly. They actually murdered the brand:

<http://www.brandmurder.com/>

For those of you curious about how we chose FreshBooks as the new brand, Mike wrote all about it in ThinkVitamin:

[http://thinkvitamin.com/single/features/how-to-name-your- com...](http://thinkvitamin.com/single/features/how-to-name-your-company/)

P.S. Pro tip: .biz is not .hip. ;)

\-- Sunir, Chief Handshaker, FreshBooks

</comment><comment><USER14> Our (Leah and Dylan Higginbotham) company is called HugaMonkey. We make and sell baby slings! When we decided to start the company we knew that it would start out online and have a strong ninternet presence. We brought my buddy (Clint Eagar) along because he had created and sold an internet business before. Clint and I spent several days coming up with different names that might convey a baby sling in use. As we came up with the names, we'd check to see if the domain was available. One after another, our clever names (wraparoo, cuddlebug, etc...) were shot down. We got on a "huga" kick with hugakid, hugabug until we came to hugamonkey. It was funny and memorable. Luckily the domain was available, so we snagged it. It's a great name because people laugh when they hear it and rarely forget it!

</comment><comment><USER15> Ours is "Tjetter" (<http://www.tjetter.com>), which is "Chatter" spelled phonetically in Dutch.

We really wondered whether this would be a good idea, because I'm guessing it's practically impossible to pronounce 'tjetter' in English (is it not?).

<comment><USER16> Now that you've explained it I can see how its pronounced. But honestly I would have thought it was "tee jetter".

I like the local flavor though.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for informing me about how americans (you are, right?) interpret the name.

We'll see whether this will hinder growth in any way. I hope not ofcourse :)

<comment><USER16> Yes, I am American. I suppose by assuming you'd know I highlighted that quite well :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Our company is named Illuminati Karate, which arose from an MF Doom (as King Ghedorah) song, "No Snakes Alive."

We wanted something memorable, rhyming, and catchy that we could own in Google and get the dotcom. We also liked the themes of higher knowledge and discipline the name implies.

We've been in business for a few years, and if I had it to do over I would probably choose a different name. That said, I started my business with one of my best friends, and a big part of the spark that got it off the ground was our desire to do something different. So in that sense, a ridiculous name like Illuminati Karate captures the spirit that started the enterprise.

Regarding domains, Google my company's name. There's a pretty good story that will come up.

<comment><USER17> He 'wrote the book on Rhymes, a Note from the Author.'

Good choice!

<comment><USER16> Thanks, I appreciate it. Madvillainy is a classic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My company's name is a play on words and also deliberately begins with A to be near the front of alphabetical listings, but this has also backfired in that I had to go first on two recent pitching sessions.

My product's name, I'm not sure about. It seems to stick in people's heads, and is a combination of a term that describes what the product does and a number, so we could get the .com. (The number's relevant to the product as well, but I don't really like the complicated name that results.)

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://www.workpost.com>

Bought workpost.com in 2003, intending to turn it into some kind of work / labor-related site (a place to find and post work etc.). Years later, we're finally doing something with it.

Even back then, it was not particularly easy to find a good domain name..

</comment><comment><USER20> My new company is called Monkey Wrench Games.

We liked the idea of "mixing up the games industry", and my co-founder had a cool idea for a logo. Oh, and we'd tried 100 other names, and they were either all taken or not-quite-right.

<http://www.monkeywrenchgames.com>

<comment><USER11> Cool logo!

<comment><USER20> HAHAH Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> LeraoSoft. Lerao is an alternate name for Yggdrasil or the Norse World Tree. We chose this based off of philosophy and it sounds not too bad. Also gave us some excelent project names, including Mimir. Too bad that Mimir is a Database... wish i knew that before o-well.

</comment><comment><USER22> patternWare - 1990s company, Smalltalk Application Frameworks. The name is in "camel-case" as any cool Smalltalk company should be. Later we rewrote the frameworks for Java and the name continued to fit.

eunum - 1999 dot-com start-up. Name came from the latin "e" and "unum". I got the words off a dollar bill sitting next to my PC after a late nite of searching for a domain name that wasn't taken. eunum was about convergence between client/sevrer and web-centric interaction. This would later be called "rich internet applications".

ShellShadow - current company. I like the alliteration and thus far I've never had to spell the name for anyone. I'm still quite amazed that my first choice was available.

</comment><comment><USER23> [perhaps nsfw link (adult novelties, etc)]

We wanted to sound racy and to be non-graphic and originally had racytoys.com before we obtained <http://racy.com> last year.

</comment><comment><USER24> when creating a brand i'm always inventing a new word, a new name.

it's the best part of the whole venture, it takes time, lot of dreaming and skipping to the real word but the final feeling is fantastic: cathaia, smuff, kobi, mushka ...

all names have the story of the business behind them + made to be remembered immediately in their context:

cathaia was an ai r&d company, smuff is a gadget & gizmo webshop, kobi is personal finances and mushka is a private fashion store

</comment><comment><USER25> Talldude Networks, LLC. - I'm 6' 10", and really am a "tall dude". After hearing this for years from other people - "man your a tall dude", I thought it was appropriate ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> I normally pick the names of my projects randomly. But the names in some sense describe the essence of the project. If its an outstanding name it will definitely stick.

</comment><comment><USER27> After watching the movie Sunshine, I got the name for my company IcarusONE

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a palindrome and I'm going to use it as a document mirroring service, not finished yet so not posting the name.

</comment><comment><USER29> One Black Bear We drank lots and somehow a name came from the session. I Highly recommend it, it seems to be well liked.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wiggio.com - we strive to provide the simplest platform for people to Work In Groups (hence the W.I.G.)... the G.I.O. was added to make it sticky</comment>


Chicago starts warning citizens about crimes they might commit.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140220/09312226296/minority-report-chicagos-new-police-computer-predicts-crimes.shtml

<comment><USER2> When I watched "Minority Report", I enjoyed it but said, "There's no way sane people will allow this." I'm wrong again.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_\(film\))

<comment><USER3> I think it's a bit different when they're using it to discourage, rather than for enforcement.

As a side note, Minority Report film was changed in some... interesting ways from the short story. Like, most ways. I recommend reading it. Not that either should serve any sort of evidential purpose...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What calendar app do you use? - <AUTHOR>

What's missing from your current calendar app? Does anyone else think a good calendar API is missing to build stuff on top of? I've been thinking about building a hackable/customizable calendar. <comment><USER2> I personally utilize the default calendar on iPhone, works perfect for myself and coworkers.</comment>


Mailsploit – effective sender spoofing - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailsploit.com/index <comment><USER2> Their sheet[1] of affected clients shows Thunderbird as WONTFIX, but that label is on only one of five bugs in bugzilla relating to mailsploit[2], specifically 1423440[3] for which I think the WONTFIX rationale is correct:

> There is nothing wrong with having: "Men @ Work" <email@example.com>

> People use this and complain if it doesn't work, see bug 1359774.

1\. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jkb_ZybbAoUA43K902lL...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jkb_ZybbAoUA43K902lL- sB7c1HMQ78-fhQ8nowJCQk/htmlview)

2\. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1423430](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1423430)

3\. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1423440](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1423440)</comment>


The Hardest Shot in Bowling - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/02/hardest_shot_in_bowling_it_s_not_the_7_10_split_it_s_the_greek_church.html

<comment><USER2> Nice article, but the nitpicker/mathematician (is there a difference?) in me spots a flaw in its logic. Maybe, the reason for the low success rate on the 4-6-7-9-10 split is because the really good pros rarely end up with it.

Also, I would like to see a comparison using mirror images for left-handen players.

<comment><USER3> Admittedly, maybe pro bowlers aren't familiar with this one configuration. However, they are incredibly familiar with every aspect of bowling, so if the great majority of them cannot (or will not attempt to) make this shot, it's probably pretty telling regarding degree of difficulty.

<comment><USER2> Of course they will attempt to make that shot, if they get it, and the game calls for it (extreme example: if they need only 3 pins to win a match, no sane pro would attempt to get a difficult spare of 4 pins that has an easy 3 pin subset)

On the other hand, if you are behind with only a few turns to go, taking the risk of taking on the more difficult throw will be the right choice.

The issue is that the distribution of plays that good players get on their second throw is different from that that bad players get. Let's exaggerate to show why:

Collect all throws on a random bowling alley for a year. I predict that the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 configuration as the first throw has a higher success rate than as a second throw.

Reason? Players who end up with that second shot must have completely missed the first shot. Good players will occasionally get there (if you wait long enough you will even find a pro throwing it, maybe because he suffers a stroke during play), but bad players will get there disproportionally more often. Of all such second shots, 90+% may be played by the bottom 50% of players.

Similarly, I think the 7-8-9-10 that isn't in this dataset isn't impossible. I would guess children who are barely strong enough to throw the ball will occasionally throw it.

Thinking of it, bowling would get way more interesting if one could get more points for difficult combinations. Let's say you announce "I'll leave the 7 and 10 pins standing and take them out with my second ball", and go on to do that. Surely, that's worth more than a dull strike?

<comment><USER4> I have seen a 7-8-9-10 both left, and amazingly, picked up. Weird stuff happens when people don't throw the ball hard. This particular feat was by a friend's wife. If you throw directly in the middle of the 8-9 they will fall sideways and get the 7 and 10.

No pro will ever leave this though. Not possible throwing at normal speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not a good bowler but I have made the 6,7,10. I think the problem with the "Greek Church" is that you've got the 6,9,10 setup and you're trying to just nick the 6 to send it to the opposite side to hit the 4,7. If you do that, the ball probably sends the 10 to the right of the 9 and you just don't get all 3 on the right side. The mirror image setup is completed far more often because a right handed bowler is aiming at the set of 2 pins (6,10) and the 6 can take out all the ones on the other side while the ball gets the 10. I wonder if the data included which pins were left standing after the failures.

</comment><comment><USER6> The hardest shot in our local bowling alley is the two lane bounce (onto someone else's game) followed by the car park sprint to avoid the beating that follows such an audacious shot.

Very few make it.

</comment><comment><USER7> How common are cases like this "Greek Church"? Part of the reason the 7-10 split is iconic is that it's something a beginner sees pretty often.

<comment><USER8> The rectangle that says "The Spare Success Machine" is interactive. Select the pins and it will give you statistics on that configuration. "Out of 149 times this occurred in the sample of PBA competitions it was converted to a spare 2 times." From a collection of 180,000 non-strike frames.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am really interested in seeing the rate at which all of those combinations occur in some sort of chart rather than just small text under the calculator.

The 7-10 split occurred 3069 times in comparison to the 785 times of 4-6-7-9-10. The mirrored one only occurred 149 times but was converted the same number of times.

Is there really enough occurrences of these to determine which is hardest?

</comment><comment><USER10> The numbers aren't good enough to say that any of the five hardest shots is significantly more difficult than the others.

</comment><comment><USER4> Part of the problem with these stats is that depending on the state of the game the person might not even be trying to pick it up. If you need 2 pins to win, get the 2 easy pins instead of trying to pick up the hard spare where you might miss.

The other thing is that pros don't leave something like the greek church very often. It was left 785 times in 447k frames. The data on picking it up just isn't that significant. It also means it isn't going to get practiced nearly as much as something more common.

Also, there are more right handed people than left, and it shows in the data. mirror image shots aren't "easier," they are just easier for a certain handed player. As most are right handed, the shots that are easier for them will show up as easier in the stats.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that the mirror-image Greek Church is converted 1.6% of the time, some eight times more often. One has to wonder, if the stats could be distinguished by left and right-handed players, would the numbers be opposite.</comment>


Yahoo's 10 patents that it claims Facebook infringed - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57395856-93/yahoos-10-patents-that-it-claims-facebook-infringed/ <comment><USER3> I mentioned this on another thread, I and I think its worth repeating here: what a disappointing step for Y!'s new CEO to take. I have to think that Yahoo is looking to lever an early settlement because of Facebook's pending IPO - <USER2> quick way to make some gains. Regardless, I think it is a wasteful way to do business.

Yahoo! is a media company, Facebook is a networking/platform company. They should be looking for ways to work together and build value instead of attacking each other and destroying it.

This smells more like an ego-driven decision more than anything else. What an incredible waste of time for Yahoo. Yahoo has so many problems on so many other fronts and the last thing they need to do is draw themselves into another battle.

<comment><USER4> > what a disappointing step for Y!'s new CEO to take

Given the timeframe, I don't think the new CEO had the time to pull that off.

<comment><USER3> It happened on his watch - something this big definitely had his stamp on it.

<comment><USER4> It sure had his signature because after all he is the executive but it doesn't mean he had any power to pull it off nor to shut it down.

I think that at those levels and in such companies, investors are really pulling the strings. In other words, CEO is the first level of management. Disposable and convenient for all matters.

Edit: but ok, perhaps that's just my point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The USPTO hands out patents like a kindergarten teacher hands out stickers. You made a system for ad placement? Good for you!! Here's a patent!!

</comment><comment><USER6> > Investors will be placing their bets on who they believe has the better > legal standing and lawyers in this new patent war

Surely investors will be placing their bets on what the minimum amount of money that Yahoo! will take to go away and get out of the way of the IPO.

Or have people been living under a rock and actually think that legal standing and lawyers make the slightest difference in resolving patent battles of this sort?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think both of these companies have lost sight of why these websites even exist in the first place. A trait that is not limited to these two companies alone... I'm looking forward to new innovation the future brings, because IP battles like this are starting to looking like crackheads fighting over the last rock.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      U.S. Patent No.7,406,501
      System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail
      protocol

      Abstract
      Systems and methods allowing an instant messaging user to exchange messages with an e-mail user.
      To the instant messaging user, the experience is a seamless exchange of instant messages; to the
      e-mail user, the experience is a seamless exchange of e-mail messages. Conversion of an instant
      message to an e-mail message includes insertion of a token into the e-mail message, and conversion
      of an e-mail message to an instant message includes validating a token extracted from the e-mail
      message.

It looks like GMail is also infringing that patent.

<comment><USER9> Prior art: <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821> (Section 3.4) Yes, there were systems that implemented this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yahoo presently is an embarrassment. A huge one.

CEO's like this are looking fro quick wins (bonus certainly tied to revenue). What a shame.

<comment><USER11> I don't get you. It looks like they (FB) infringe on some Yahoo! patents. Its not a subject of dispute how frivolousness it is to patent system that sends IM message to email, but this patent is not from 2012.

If you were CEO and seen FB growing like this with $100B valuation and if you would truly believe they use your patents, please tell me what would you do?

<comment><USER10> Although I am not the CEO and not in this position, I am certain I will use my patents as a defensive weapon. I would certainly NOT strike Facebook at their weakest (the quiet period).

They knew of these patents since 2005 and obviously when they tried to buy them. but why now? it is shameful blackmail. Very sad and shameful.

I did not downvote you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ...but aren't Yahoo in bed with Microsoft... who are one of the largest share holders of Facebook?

<comment><USER13> Well, they hold under 2% as far as I know.

<comment><USER12> ah, thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is a great response to the news (sorry if already posted somewhere on HN):

<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/yahoo-crosses-the-line.html></comment>


What is the international arms trade and who are the major players? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/48362796795/the-business-of-blowing-people-up

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole first half of the post is kind of off-target, IMO, because it is dollar weighted, vs. type of weapon weighted.

The US predominately sells two things: big "weapons systems" (radars, aircraft, etc.) to middle tier countries, and a comprehensive range of small arms both domestically and to allied countries.

The weapons which primarily affect individuals and civilians in conflict are small arms, landmines, and certain ISR and ground attack resources. As a percentage of the total, it's about 1%. It doesn't hurt the life of a guy in Jordan that his neighbors have F-16s with top-end avionics. It does matter to a guy in the Congo that a box of cheap AK-47s has arrived.

Within the US, arms are both an economic issue (LockMart, etc. are huge employers, and wisely spread production/employment across congressional districts), and a civil rights issue (for small arms; no one really cares about F-16s for private ownership). Either issue is more than enough to keep the industry safe.

Russia, etc. are the same.

What I'd really like to see is a great analysis of the domestic small arms market -- who makes primers, who makes powder, brass, rifles, importation permits for foreign mil surplus, foreign current manufacture, etc. That is vastly more relevant to the 2A issues than who makes radars.

<comment><USER2> I think you're right - the post fails to address how big of a necessary / not necessarily negative component of our foreign policy/diplomacy is centered around arms trade. I'm no expert on the subject, but have worked with people with experience in this area. One thing I remember is hearing that the US has the distinction/disadvantage in the business of refusing to work with bribes.

My question to you - if you thought the article was off-target, why submit it? Seems pretty disingenuous to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> The foreign policy aspects are just that we give financial aid to countries who then are only allowed to buy our weapons -- in some cases we give aid to our enemies (Pakistan, Egypt) to turn them into dependent friends, or to "sterilize" our air to our actual allies (e.g. Israel). Outside of our top end weapons systems (many of which, like the F-22, we refuse to sell), no one is clamoring for US small arms or other weapons; if we weren't giving them money, they'd be just as happy with Russian or Chinese arms.

They addressed the issue in the second half. But, this is the world of TL;DR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Approximately $11.7 billion worth of guns are sold in the United States and > there are 30,000+ deaths in America each year tied to gun violence.

That first number is a more important than the second by more than an order of magnitude. Keep in mind George Will's statistic that the US spends more than $2 billion on Easter candy each year.

<comment><USER4> The 30,000 number is BS. They are likely including suicides. Here are the homicide numbers for 2011 - [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2011/c...](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20)

Actual total for 2011 is 8583.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how much money is in weapons and how the media reports it.

[http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21576445-kals- carto...](http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21576445-kals-cartoon)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this really appropriate for Hacker News?

<comment><AUTHOR> I blindly post any priceonomics blog entry because they tend to be awesome, not specific to the subject matter.

<comment><USER6> The numbers and analysis are interesting, but the article seems to me to have some anti-NRA, pro-gun/arms control bias. I think they're usually fairly neutral.

I predict we'll see another re-hashing of the gun control / second amendment debate here in the comments.

There have been a few submissions lately that make me wonder if Hacker News is headed in the direction of Reddit. I don't mean to pick on yours particularly, the timing was just convenient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I agree it wasn't the best priceonomics blog post. I'd be fine with a really strong/insightful analysis of the firearms or weapons industry (the way all their other posts have been in the past), but this one looks mostly political.

Interesting "priceonomics-worthy" aspects of the global arms trade would be:

1) Longevity of weapons -- I mean, I saw _maxim guns_ in Afghanistan. 2) The weird market in EUCs, embargoes, etc. 3) Stuff like Brown Moses/CJ Chivers where they analyze the weird origins of weapons used in current conflicts (e.g. Syria and Libya) -- weird low-volume US prototypes found in Libya, and Croatian knockoffs of other designs as part of some "elimination of stocks" by post-Balkan countries.

The NRA/domestic politics parts are the least interesting. Outside of small arms, the NRA has basically no relationship to the munitions industry, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too soon.

<comment><USER8> Too soon since what?</comment></comment>


X-Wing: book your seat. - <AUTHOR> https://sketchfab.com/show/uhuZnTJCksW96EYFa92KVZhMY2b

<comment><USER2> The background is great. Can I upload my own background together with my 3d objects?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but hopefully soon :)</comment></comment>


Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corp., died at 84 - <AUTHOR> http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2011/02/07/daily16-Ken-Olsen-co-founder-of-DEC-died-at-84.html <comment><USER2> When I was a Junior at MIT in 1975, working in the Large Systems Group (the PDP-10) in Marlboro as a summer co-op student, I asked some of the DEC old- timers what would happen if I invited Ken Olsen over to my little summer sublet in Marlboro. They said, "ask him".

I figured they were playing a trick on a lowly co-op, but I figured, what the heck. So I invited him to stop by that coming Sunday afternoon. And he accepted!

The ever-gracious Ken Olson came to my place, and chatted with about a dozen fellow MIT DEC co-op students, and another perhaps dozen regular employees at the Marlboro facility. We were all awe-struck, but somehow we managed to ask him about whether he thought IBM were our competition (he didn't think so, because DEC and IBM served different markets), and what he thought of these little microcomputers, like the Altair 8800 that was about to be announced (he didn't think they were very useful, poor h/w and non-existent software). What about putting one of our PDP-10s on a board, like the recently-introduced LSI-11 did for the PDP-11? (Contact Gordon Bell and ask him about that.) And much more like that.

I distinctly remember he sat in a chair while we accolites sat on the floor at his feet.

At the time, the PDP-11 and especially the PDP-11/45 was quite the machine - unix had recently been ported to it with great success, and I had used it in several of my courses. I of course had one of those "comic book" PDP-11/45 manuals that had been well-thumbed. Would Ken autograph it for me? And of course the ever-gracious Ken Olson signed it just below his signature on the front page of the manual.

What a tremendously giving, gracious, friendly, smart, helpful man. His influence on this industry is deep and wide. He remains my role model. He'll be sorely missed.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great story. Thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This news really hits me hard. Ken was a great entrepreneur and a friend to my family. He hired my father (Dick Hustvedt) out of Xerox to come join DEC in the early 70's. Ken tapped my dad for VMS.

To me Ken was always one of those grandpa mentor types quick to engage and share his business wit. I remember how the DEC hackers would always talk about how Ken inspired a culture of intrapreneurs within the company, pushing engineers to feel free to create new products and businesses from within rather than acquiring.

It was a different era, but the stories of the guys and gals that stayed up all night coding away at The Mill really made my love for tech. There was a passion for what they did, not for the payday.

DEC was also one of the first startups funded by the modern idea of VCs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Given the age survey posted a little while ago, most HN members have no particular reason to note this. But for me, one by one the pioneers that pulled me into the world of computers are dying--- I will miss them.

<comment><USER5> Actually its funny you mention that. I have a feeling given the relative youth of the field of CS (and CE), even those of us who are relative newbies like myself (by which I mean when and under what circumstances I got into the field) still appreciate the work of such pioneers, even though it is as a result of reading up about them rather than actually working directly with them (or their contributions). Another name that comes to mind is Kildall! Every time I read about them, a certain nostalgic sadness fills me, even though I have never used a DEC or CP/M (respectively).

<comment><USER6> Small nitpick: CP/M came out of Digital Research (or, more accurately, DR formed around it), not Digital Equipment.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall>

<comment><USER5> Sorry about the confusion. I actually was referring to CP/M in reference to Gary, not DEC. Should have worded it better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A short video, produced by Gordon College, offers a short history of Ken Olsen's impact and legacy. If not for DEC, the world of computing as we know it would not exist. The video can be found here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6We6VDtyHY> More about Ken Olsen, and a quote from Bill Gates, can be found here: <http://www.gordon.edu/kenolsen>

<comment><USER7> Thank you for the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My first job was at DEC (software engineer in Germany). I remember we were a team of 20 (or so) time sharing single VAX, each of us on 40x25 DEC terminal using LSE (language sensitive editor).

In retrospect it is amazing how far ahead of its time DEC often was: The first 64 bit processor (DEC alpha), the first search engine (Altavista), etc; and how little came of it in the end.

That all is now over 20 years ago, and I still look fondly back to that time, and I am still in contact with my former colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a shame that every time I mention DEC to anyone, very few of them know what I am talking about...

I enjoyed using VAX/VMS and admire DEC's contributions to modern ComSci.

You will be missed!

<comment><USER10> I loved using VAX! RIT had one and I managed an account through a friend. I don't remember what shell environment it had on it, but there were plenty of scripts being passed down from one class to another.

We basically had foursquare on the VAX system, since you could keep track of your friends and the systems knew which lab you last logged into.

<comment><USER11> If it was VAX/VMS, then the shell environment was DCL-- DEC Control Language. Oh, the things I used to get up to in there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> American Research and Development, the grand-daddy of Venture Capital in the United States, invested $77,000 for 77% of DEC in 1957 (that's roughly $598K in 2010 dollars). When it went public in 1971, ARD's shares were valued at $355 million (about $1.9 billion in 2010 dollars). This one investment was responsible for over half the lifetime performance of ARD's portfolio over the decades before it was sold to Textron.

See: [http://books.google.com/books?id=tDOVY3ek-UEC&lpg=PA20&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER13> I grew up using a Intel 486-powered DEC workstation. DEC's legendary machines were behind them by that point, but I still have plenty of nostalgia for that computer. 16MB of RAM was a lot of memory in 1993.

<comment><USER14> Alpha workstations were pretty awesome just then - although we used to buy the cheap ones with NT and install linux.

<comment><USER13> Ah yes, forgot about the Alpha port of NT. It's a little-known fact that Windows NT ran on non-Intel architectures: besides the Alpha version, there were MIPS and PowerPC ports.

<comment><USER14> Due to some sort of internal Dec sales war you could buy the same hardware running VMS($$$$),Ultrix($$$),or NT($) - we bought NT and wiped the machines then installed Linux.

They gave you Sparc ultra performance for 1/2 the price.

<comment><USER15> The Alphas we had (lovely boxes - especially the mid range "server" we had) were running OSF/1 rather than Ultrix - was that yet another option?

<comment><USER6> OSF/1 morphed into Digital Unix and then into Tru64. I have seen Alpha boxes running NT, Linux and OpenVMS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Applied Micro shows 64-bit ARM server chip, ignites x86 debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230784/Applied_Micro_shows_64_bit_ARM_server_chip_ignites_x86_debate

<comment><USER2> They talk about servers with "128, 256 and 512 processor cores" but how effectively can that be leveraged given ARM's weakly consistent memory model? Wouldn't systems like the JVM which have the technology to utilize this many cores struggle on such a CPU?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the performance gap between ARMv8 and x86 Haswell are just far too great.</comment>


Ask HN: Did You Hack Something? - <AUTHOR> Hacker News leads to the assumption that we must be hackers.
Did you actually illegally hack something/somebody? Or did you ever stumble across some security failure? I have never done it myself, but im curious to hear some storys.
Pleas dont provide specific information for obvious reasons. <comment><USER2> Yes, doskey back when using DOS. I had to run multiple commands and found that doskey remembered what I typed. It was awesome. I could arrow up or down and get the long painful command that compiled my code or copied my files, etc. The problem was upon reboot doskey had no memory of what I did. I got curious and used disassembler to view the memory of doskey. Painfully I would add one simple command like dir to doskey and then inspect the memory looking for where that command lived in the memory and searching for the hex bytes. I found it rather quickly and wrote code to inject my own commands into doskey memory upon computer startup (us programmers are a lazy bunch!). Problem is it didn't work! I went back to the good old disassembler and kept trying more. Meaning I added one then two commands manually. I happened to notice that a certain memory area changed as I added more and more commands for doskey to remember. That was my ahah moment! It was a count of the number of items that doskey had in memory and I was loading tens of commands but never updating the count. I modified my program to add my items, modified the count and low and behold I had doskey functioning with my pre-loaded commands! My life was set! I used this method for over two years until I upgraded and by then I could use the IDE properly and not have to use the command line as much. Am I a hacker? Yes at heart but not in practice. Anyone with curiosity is a hacker. Did I do anything more? No. I saw the power and realized the potential for abuse and never hacked anything again.</comment>


Alloy: A Language and Tool for Relational Models - <AUTHOR> http://alloy.mit.edu/alloy/

<comment><USER2> As a language nerd I always want to see some sample code, even if I can't understand what is happening yet. Just to get some of the flavor of the language. That's pretty hard to find on the site. I did find one of the tutorial decks [pdf] to serve this purpose though: [http://alloy.mit.edu/alloy/tutorials/day- course/s2_language....](http://alloy.mit.edu/alloy/tutorials/day- course/s2_language.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I bought Daniel Jackson's book Software Abstractions: Logic, Language and Analysis. It thoroughly discusses all aspects of Alloy software and methodology. I have to say it is one of the best software book I've ever read. It covers relational modelling thoroughly and is very readable from cover to cover. Model checking is so much more pleasant to use than theorem proving. The Alloy software download jar file also includes both source and examples.</comment></comment>


Gui Hacker: Makes it seem like you are working - <AUTHOR> http://guihacker.com/ <comment><USER2> OMG, It scared me, Is everything alright with my PC? what's that coding for? Nice to make someone fool with this link.

</comment><comment><USER3> imma leave this on my desktop and go for a walk in the park. if anyone calls, "it's compiling"</comment>


Selficious: Manage your bookmarks and import your delicious ones - <AUTHOR> http://selficious.appspot.com/ This is _not_ a copy of delicious, but I wrote some hours ago in a hurry:
http://selficious.appspot.com - It imported my bookmarks and I use it to manage
them and my future ones (add, edit, delete). The code is of course
opensource https://github.com/initpy/selficious I just need to clean it a lil' bit :) - Sure, there is so much to improve/rewrite
in it, but I have already have some ideas and yours are more than welcome!<p>P.S. This if my first post ever on HN so like japanese say: Dôzo Yoroshiku :) <comment><AUTHOR> This is far from being "perfect". In fact, I wrote this in a hurry. This is not a copy of delicious, but It imported my bookmarks and I use it to manage them and my future ones (add, edit, delete). The code is of course opensource <https://github.com/initpy/selficious>. I just need to clean it a lil' bit :)

There is so much to improve/fix in it, but I have already have some ideas for it and yours are more than welcome!</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good "A-Z" resources for starting a company/managing a startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to know more about the ins and outs of running a business but where do I start?  Many will be rejected from incubators and the remaining choice is learning, accumulating resources, and networking yourself.  I have picked up bits and pieces of great advice here and there but I really need a comprehensive guide I can look at in my free time. <comment><USER2> The HN library is a strong reading list:

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Mark Davis' Blog has a collection of posts about Starting up

[http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/starting-your- compa...](http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/starting-your-company.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you much. That is perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Buy "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank and "A Good Hard Kick in the Ass" by Rob Adams. Before you do anything else, read them both cover to cover.</comment>