Seventh RISC-V Workshop: Day Two - <AUTHOR> http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2017/11/seventh-risc-v-workshop-day-two/ <comment><USER2> What bothers me, is that all the Digital Design tools are freaking expensive and closed source. For example, building RISC-V is possible on FPGA board, but you have to have Xilinx tools (or some other brand).

<comment><USER3> Both Xilinx and Altera^H^H^H^H^H^HIntel provides gratis tools for their lower end FPGAs, but those are plenty to implement an SoC, even one that can boot Linux. In particular Cyclone V A9 is a pretty impressive FPGA. Sadly, Intel decided to _not_ provide gratis support for their Cyclone 10 GX :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am amazed to see so many activities for open hardware. If the idea of collaboration is really taken up, this can be a success and realistic way out of the current IP misery with only closed hardware.

<comment><USER5> I don't think we should overstate (or understate) the significance of RISC-V. Without a doubt, industry is putting lots of time and effort towards RISC-V.

Everyone who manufactures electronic devices that includes some kind of CPU (hard drive manufacturers, cell phone manufacturers, GPU manufacturers, etc) -- they're all paying some royalty to someone for that CPU, even if they designed it themselves. Eliminating those royalties is a great way to get ahead because you can take $1 out of your bottom line -- if you're shipping 100k or 10 mil devices this year, that's definitely worth the design effort. It's this marketplace that is fueling RISC-V.

> ... this can be a success ...

I have no doubt that RISC-V will succeed in the microcontroller/embedded device space.

> ... realistic way out of the current IP misery with only closed hardware ...

I wonder, are you referring more to frustrations with things like Intel's ME or frustrations with devices that ship without documentation/open source software details? I fear that RISC-V will likely not change much in either space. Yes, it will lower the bar for new devices that can be fully open. And with fully open devices we could hopefully audit and trust them more. But I think change here will be very slow. The ultimate consumer of these devices just doesn't care much about fully open devices and it's extra work to shepherd open source software/hardware. I hope I'm just being too pessimistic.

It's true that there's folks like SiFive who are making boards that integrate RISC-V cores. They seem like they are ramping up to make general computer boards that would be pretty useful. But I doubt we'll see them end up in mass market desktop/laptop/server/tablet/etc devices any time soon.

<comment><USER6> That $1 you pay to other IP companies, like Arm, gives you access to a fully verified design with support from the best engineers in the field. And those companies want you to succeed because they will only those royalties if your device reaches the market.

By saving that $1 and by not buying IP from other, you will need to invest it in time, in engineers, in know-how, in support, in verification and so on, all by yourself.

It might not necessarily be a good cost-benefit situation.

<comment><USER7> The IP academics keep making on the cheap is always compared to ARM cores in similar class to prove them out. They always come out superior. So, Im doubting best engineers or product. Since they do have good engineers, ARM must be intentionally underdoing their designs to maximize their cash or something. Maybe make a lot of them. Idk how much IP they actually have.

I agree it's beneficial that it's already silicon-proven by time most customers get it. The biggest selling point, though, was what ARM themselves said when open ISA topic first came up: the massive ecosystem, esp software and dev tools, makes the licensing worth the money. Im not sure how true that is. Probably varies a lot depending on who is using it but might be true for many. RISC-V needs to get its ecosystem super-strong to challenge ARM in general sense on top of pre-proven IP customers can trust. Ecosystem is the bigger issue, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some discussion about day 2 in yesterday's thread about day one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15811229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15811229)

To cross-pollinate further, I found yesterdays presentation about Esperanto particularly fascinating (or to be fair, close my own interests, not that it's objectively better or worse than something else). So let me speculate a bit.

It'll be at least a year or so before they have something out in the market. Given that NVidia Volta claims 7 TFlops/s DP, lets say Esperanto is targeting 16 TFlops/s in order to have a competitive product at launch. Further, lets guess a target clock of 2 GHz. To reach that performance they would thus need 16e12/2e9/2 = 4000 DP FP execution units (the extra divisor of 2 due to FMA being counted as 2 flops). So that would match pretty well with their 4096 minion cores having 1 DP FP unit each. Now, they also say the minion cores have the RISC-V vector extension rather than being scalar cores. And the V extension says that the minimum vector length is 4. Implying that executing an vector arithmetic instruction takes up at least 4 (consecutive) issue slots, a bit like old-school pipelined vector supercomputers (think: Cray 1). Meaning that the primary purpose of the vectors is not to get wider execution width, but to amortize instruction execution overhead (fetch, decode, etc.) and to drive memory level parallelism, like in old-school vector supercomputers.

Further, it is mentioned that each minion core has several hw threads. For the sake of argument, lets make that 4. Now, lets look at the aggregate size of the vector register files. So each VRF has 32 registers. Since they claim to be targeting HPC as well, and not only ML/AI, lets assume that means they support double precision FP. Meaning that the maximum vector element size is 64 bits (8 bytes). And as mentioned before, the maximum vector length must be at least 4. Thus, at a minimum, each VRF is 32 * 4 * 8 = 1kB. So the total size of the register file with 4096 minions and 4 hw threads/minion is at least 4096 * 4 * 1kB = 16 MB. Or if the vector length is 8, 32 MB. Or 8 hw threads/minion, also 32 MB. Or vector length 8, 8 hw threads => 64 MB. Which already starts to be a pretty huge number, even on 7 nm. So I wouldn't be surprised if the vector units bypass the caches and go directly to memory? Oh, and you'll need absolutely gargantuan memory BW to feed this thing.

And how is this thing supposed to be programmed? Vectorizing compilers, obviously, but what then? OpenMP? Message passing between the 16 fat cores, and each fat core running the main thread, farming out to OpenMP threads running on 4096/16=256 minion cores?

Anyone care to confirm, deny, or at least poke holes in the argument above?</comment>


Builders who will thrive in the new world - <AUTHOR> https://wfh.substack.com/p/the-6-builders-who-will-thrive-in <comment><USER2> > As the global pandemic leaves us frozen in place, it's impossible to imagine > a future that resembles the past.

What if we never imagined the future? Is a future that is no more than the past any more than an eternal present?

> There will be no return to normalcy. Instead, we'll need to create a new > reality that's resilient, anti-fragile and grounded in flexible, empathetic > values as we re-enter the physical world with a new perspective.

Having re-watched The Perverts Guide to Ideology recently (having been given the time to do so by this mess most of us are currently in) I keep recalling the quote:

"We should draw a line of distinction within the very field of our dreams. Between those who are the right dreams pointing towards a dimension effectively beyond our existing society and the wrong dreams: the dreams which are just an idealized consumerist reflection, mirror image of our society."

Like so much else, is anything presented in articles such as this really change, or is it merely the reallocation of the now?

"How come it is easier for us to imagine the end of all life on earth – an asteroid hitting the planet – than a modest change in our economic order?"

Even within the heart of the current situation, has this idea really fractured, or been proved utterly correct?

"And, of course, we have a perfect name for fantasy realized. It's called "nightmare". Fantasy realized."

But if our fantasies are essentially the present moment, do we just have nightmare circling nightmare?

<comment><USER3> Reading this has reminded me of the vice video on the UNICULT, love it.

I've watched "The Perverts Guide to Ideology" three times, each time I get 5-10-15 minutes in and the next thing I know I open my eyes and the credits are rolling. I love Žižek's work, but this documentary has a way of slipping me into an unknowing coma each time I've attempted a watching.

You know the word Fantasy is not that far of from sounding very similar to Phantasm, theay have the same etymological root, so it's not that far fetched:

>From φᾰ́ντᾰσῐς (phántasis) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā), from φᾰντᾰ́ζω (phantázō, "I make visible"), from φαίνω (phaínō, "I shine"). >From φᾰντός (phantós, "visible") + -ᾰ́ζω (-ázō), verbal adjective of φαίνω (phaínō, "I cause to appear, bring to light"). >From Proto-Hellenic _pʰáňňō, from Proto-Indo-European_ bʰh₂nyéti, from *bʰeh₂- ("to shine").

> But if our fantasies are essentially the present moment, do we just have > nightmare circling nightmare?

Sounds like your ouroboros nightmare hasn't had it's line drawn and isn't the right dream to take you beyond... people love nightmares, they're really easy to market and buy, it doesn't take a "whole hell of a lot" to imagine the end of awl life on earth, you can practically do it with your I's closed, even if you are Aphantasic like me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As usual for substack, this is maybe one reasonable point at the start followed by a lot of low value padding. The founder of Canva, although amazing, is hardly an example of an 'Industry Academic'?

<comment><USER5> Brianne is a pretty active investor and shes found an edge. Its worth reading but its mostly her longform twitter. Dont be too dismissive of her first hand investor experience. Right now the "future" really will end up being built by industry professionals in narrow slices of the economy. Usually using software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I would like to think this article is correct I strongly suspect we'll be back to the status quo a few months after lockdown, especially for people who work outside of the tech industry. Lockdown has given some people a new perspective and an opportunity to learn new skills, but for most people it's been like treading water until life can resume again. There's little impetus to change anything, and a strong desire to get back to 'normal'.</comment>


Zeros in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://zero.milosz.ca

<comment><USER2> Wait, am I reading this right?

[1] == [1] is false, but [1] == 1 and 1 == [1]?

[0] == [0] is false, but [0] == '0' and '0' == [0]?

[] == [] is false but [] == 0 and 0 == []?

NaN === NaN is false?

[0] + [0] = '00', but [0] * [0] = 0?

Who designed this crazy language? It seems to take every quirk of every other language and combine them in the weirdest way possible.

[] == [] is false, so it must be comparing pointers, right? Common gotcha of Java, etc.

...Wait, NaN === NaN is false.

<comment><USER3> Another fun thing about NaN is that typeof NaN === 'number'. Which, you know... seems counterintuitive based on the fact that NaN means " _Not_ a number".

<comment><USER4> Eh. 'number' means 'IEEE 754 floating point value' and NaN is certainly one of those. Abbreviations are tricky.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I understand _why_. I was just pointing out that on the surface, it seems kind of weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a Pythonista Javascript is really strange. Let's combine two arrays with a + b. Wait, why is it now a string? Why did it just create a undefined.jpg when I run filename + '.jpg'? Ah damn, I named it filepath. I guess I check if this object is empty by comparing it to false, works for arrays right? Except it doesn't and it doesn't work for arrays either because they might contain a 0.

The lesson is, always look for a method that does what you want.

<comment><USER6> The undefined.jpg thing won't happen for variables in strict mode, it'll error.

[].length is what you want for the second. IIRC [] isn't false in Python either.

<comment><USER7> [] is false in Python; so are other empty aggregates like () and {}; collection types implemented in Python typically follow the same pattern. Thus:

      >>> if (): print "tuple"
      >>> if []: print "list"
      >>> if {}: print "dict"
      >>> if set(): print "set"
      >>> if "": print "string"
      >>> import collections
      >>> if collections.Counter(): print "counter"
      >>> if collections.deque(): print "deque"
      >>>

(Observe that none of these prints anything.)

<comment><USER6> Huh, I recall [] not working. Interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chrome: "This page is in Haitian. Would you like to translate it?"

It might as well be.

<comment><USER9> You can submit the error, with the option of declaring what language the page is really in.

Unfortunately, "JavaScript" isn't in the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I honestly have no idea what's so confusing. I've been working with javascript for over a decade and have NONE of this memorized, and I never look it up or check it in the repl. It's simply not an issue if you're using jshint and unit testing your code.

If you come from a static language background and you keep expecting a type- checker will save you from doing silly things like adding arrays to strings, you're always going to hate Javascript. It's a dynamically typed language, and so you have to learn the quality-control tools and practices for dynamically typed languages.

<comment><USER11> > If you come from a static language background and you keep expecting a type- > checker will save you from doing silly things like adding arrays to strings, > you're always going to hate Javascript.

Hmm funny I come from a dynamic language background and never had a problem with the language telling me adding an empty list to an empty list should somehow be empty string. That is batshit crazy. Those are not silly things those are basic 101 strong type system checks that very dynamics languages like Ruby and Python can do.

<comment><USER10> "Strong-typing vs weak-typing" is actually irrelevant. It's still an error at run-time, and unless your quality control tools and practices actually run the code (like unit tests do), you're not going to know about them.

As you move beyond native types, duck-typing (like in python) completely subverts the strong type-checks anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, use triple-equals when you don't want type coercion?

<comment><USER13> My favorite bit is where all of these are true:

        '1' == 1
        '1' == [1]
        '1' == true
        1 == [1]
        1 == true
        [1] == true

But this is false:

        [1] == [1]

<comment><USER6> Why would it be true? Two different instances of an object don't equal in JS. It compares identity, not value, when dealing with non-value types.

<comment><USER14> > Why would it be true?

It is funny that you are asking why would [1] == [1] possibly considered to be true.

Let's see in a language with a sane and consistent typing system like Python:

           In [1]: [1]==[1]
           Out[1]: True

Ok, let's do a crazy language from Sweden also with dynamic types but which are sane and consistent, like Erlang:

           1> [1] == [1].
           true

Surely it will be broken in Ruby:

             irb(main):001:0> [1] == [1]
             => true

Nah clearly it should be false, these crazy languages just haven't heard about objects and identities and such.

<comment><USER15> Why are you being a dick? He explained the difference accurately - JS compares objects as individual objects. Arrays are objects. The other languages you cited do not work that way.

Here's another example:

        4 == 4 // true
        a = new Number(4);
        b = new Number(4);
        a == b // false
        a == a // true
        a.valueOf() // 4
        b.valueOf() // 4
        a.valueOf() == b.valueOf() // true

And if this isn't clear yet:

        a = {}
        b = {}
        a == a // true
        a == b // false

<comment><USER14> Rather his tone of "Why would it be true?" sounded dick-ish. As in "How could possibly one consider [1] == [1] be true, are you crazy? It should obviously be false".

So I gave a couple of examples from other dynamic languages where the the sane behavior is "obvious".

I am not being a dick I am saying the language is broken. Explaining the historical context or the internal implementation of it doesn't make it unbroken. Like one can explain why COBOL uses this construct or that and how it came to be, doesn't make COBOL better or more appealing. One of course might not have a choice and be stuck using it but lying to oneself about how awesome it is, is not necessary.

> The other languages you cited do not work that way.

The don't, and I like how they work better.

Now whether one has a choice to use or not use JS is a different topic. Usually there is no choice on the client side. But somehow extolling Javascript typing rules as being sane, making sense, or as someone below put it "brilliant" is a bit silly.

<comment><USER15> No, he didn't ask it like that at all. You're putting words in his mouth instead of reading the sentence in the context of the two sentences that followed it, which made it a completely reasonable question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A lot of this is sort of strange or unexpected, and that's obviously not a good thing. But 99% of the operations in that table are ones that I would never be doing in the first place.

`[null] + {} == 'null[object Object]'`? Okay, fine. I might not have known that off the top of my head, but I also make it a habit not to add/concat arrays and objects.

Unexpected type coercion is probably responsible for about 1% of the bugs I write. It's just not that big of a deal once you learn the common cases (`'1' == 1`, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Ugh. Many parts of javascript are nice but things like this (''==0?) make me wish for a browser-supported language that was clean.

<comment><USER17> like what? php? visual basic? c? java?

define "clean" and name one language in the history of computing that actually fits that definition.

<comment><USER14> Python, Ruby, Dart just to name a few from the top of my head.

EDIT: removed Java, Rust and Go

<comment><USER17> You forgot to define "clean". Also, java is in your list. Java had its chance. it failed. did you forget that? So has Dart. how's dart doing? Rust as a web scripting language doesn't even make sense.

<comment><USER14> Ok good point, removed Java, Rust and Go.

> So has Dart. how's dart doing?

Very well. It has a sane type system. Its VM is about twice as fast as V8, has a nice IDE that comes with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> ...and that's why no one but brand new beginners use "==". If it was up to me, "use strict" would turn "===" into "==" and there would be no "===".

It's too late now because it would break a lot of applications, so a new mode might be required, like "use not-completely-broken-comparisons-by-default".

<comment><USER19> CoffeeScript does that.

<comment><USER18> Yup, but CoffeeScript introduces 99 other ways for beginners to create awful code, it's way easier to shoot yourself in the foot than with just JavaScript. I still prefer CoffeeScript, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You know you're on HN when people are defending this broken aspect of JavaScript, yet hate on the same broken aspect of PHP.

</comment><comment><USER21> I had to laugh when I saw this. It made me think of the Joshua Bloch interview in _Coders at Work_ :

> Seibel: I was reading _Java Puzzlers_ and _Effective Java_ and it struck me > that there are a lot of little weird corners for a language that started out > so simple.

> Bloch: There are weird corners, yes, but that's just a fact of life; all > languages have them. You haven't seen a book called _C Puzzlers_. Why not?

> Seibel: Because it's _all_ puzzlers.

> Bloch: Yep. It would take up a shelf. In Java, the puzzlers are worth > collecting precisely because you think of it as a simple language. Every > language has its corner cases and Java has few enough that they're for the > most part fun and interesting.

Interesting, maybe. But I hope people are not using all of these. [0]

[0] [http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exit- status.html](http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exit-status.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of my favourite Javascript trivia question: What two values for a & b meet the following?

> a === b

true

> Number(a) === a

true

> Number(b) === b

true

> a + b === a

true

> (1 / a) === (1 / b)

false

<comment><USER3> Edit: SPOILER ALERT

0 and -0.

I never knew about this until I read a shim someone wrote for Object.is().

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this is brilliant. Most programmers prefer code to be more readable for computers than for humans. I think the problem is that we grow up with the notion that computer programs have to be very strict, in syntax, types, comparisons etc. Is there really such a need?

It was for a similar reason that many people used to like XHTML over HTML. Not always because they needed to validate it, but to please the computer.

<comment><USER14> > Is there really such a need?

Yes.

Because programs, unless they deal with machine learning, statistics or other intentional approximations, deal with _strict_ things.

If you put $0.5 in an account you don't expect to find $0.2 there when you read it back or find "Hi Jim" there. You expect to find $0.5, when you seek to byte offset 19553 in the file you expect to read starting with byte 19553 on next read not "something in the vicinity of byte 19553".

[] + [] should not be '', never, it never makes sense, it is not brilliant it is rather profoundly stupid.

Ok, language is broken, we established it, let's take a look at the library functions. At least there cooler heads prevailed:

            $ node
            > [1,10,9,-3,-4].sort()
            [ -3, -4, 1, 10, 9 ]

Nope, they didn't.

<comment><USER24> My favorite library strangeness is:

        > [1, 4, 9].map(sqrt)
        [1, 2, 3]
        > ['1', '2', '3'].map(parseInt)
        [1, NaN, NaN]

cf. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/262427/javascript- arrayma...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/262427/javascript-arraymap-and- parseint)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's almost depressing. It must have taken significantly more work to embed these ludicrous rules when designing the language!

<comment><USER6> It didn't. The coercing rules are fairly predictable.

<comment><USER26> The coercing rules are fairly predictable, but oftentimes incomprehensible until you understand what's happening behind the scenes.

It's one of the biggest weaknesses of JavaScript. Much bigger than callback hell, garbage collection cycles etc.

My preferred style uses Array.prototype.join('') for string concatenation, non-coercive equality operations, and only using the + operator when doing math. It's a little cumbersome, but avoids ambiguity upon reading (and in the case of string concatenation, can be faster).

<comment><USER19> > and in the case of string concatenation, can be faster

myth: [http://jsperf.com/array-join-vs-string- connect/37](http://jsperf.com/array-join-vs-string-connect/37)

<comment><USER27> In Firefox 25 on Linux, Array Join Nocopy seems to perform the fastest.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. I rarely build up an array within a loop and then join it. That kind of thing just seems dirty - use a buffer!

It's usually, e.g.,

['some string ', someVar, ' some rest of string'].join('');

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's the underlying rules of how "x == y" works: [http://ecma- international.org/ecma-262/5.1/#sec-11.9.3](http://ecma- international.org/ecma-262/5.1/#sec-11.9.3)

Weak typing and automatic coercions lead to some confusing results, but JS fares better than PHP.

</comment><comment><USER29> Everybody who writes JS should use something like jslint or jshint. JS has ugly parts, but most can be avoided easily.

</comment><comment><USER30> what does mean 0[object Object]?

</comment><comment><USER31> goofy plz</comment>


Last Airworthy MiG-17 Is Up for Sale - <AUTHOR> https://www.flyingmag.com/story/aircraft/last-airworthy-mig-17-for-sale/ <comment><USER2> The question I really wanted answered was "how much is he asking for it?" I did a lot of searches on various search engines but couldn't find the answer. I guess it falls into that "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" category.

I did find a classified ad for the plane. The owner's phone number is there.

[1] [https://www.trade-a- plane.com/search?category_level1=Jets&ma...](https://www.trade-a- plane.com/search?category_level1=Jets&make=MIKOYAN&model=MIG+17&listing_id=2382482&s-type=aircraft)

<comment><USER3> Last time I checked MiG 15 was $5M.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure you aren't thinking of a different Mig?? Mig 15s go for pretty cheap, like in the $100,000 range. I heard one was for sale in Brazil for $60,000. (good luck getting it home!)

[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1987-02-13-me-2216-s...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1987-02-13-me-2216-story.html)

[https://www.trade-a- plane.com/search?category_level1=Jets&ma...](https://www.trade-a- plane.com/search?category_level1=Jets&make=MIKOYAN&s-type=aircraft)

<comment><USER3> I won't do research right now, but as I recall airworthy MiG 15 modified to be legal in the US costs much more than museum-grade technically operational unmodified MiG 15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this is the last airworthy Mig-17. Bill Culberson flies N1713P and I believe I saw it fly as recently as 2019 in Alabama. Here is the FlightAware page, and you can see photos in the 2nd link:

[https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N1713P](https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N1713P)

[https://flightaware.com/photos/aircraft/N1713P](https://flightaware.com/photos/aircraft/N1713P)

<comment><USER4> Here's an article about Bill's Mig 17, with photos:

[https://planeschemer.com/plane-schemer- blog/mig-17-n1713](https://planeschemer.com/plane-schemer-blog/mig-17-n1713)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the listing as shared by another poster, it's striking how little the thing weighs:

 _The empty weight is 8640 lb (3919 kg) and the maximum takeoff weight is 13375 lb (6069 kg)._

It's maximum takeoff weight is still well below the empty weight (18,900 lbs) of an F-16.

<comment><USER6> You're comparing a light, subsonic interceptor with no search radar and primitive missile capabilities (only available on the last versions) to a relatively modern multi-role fighter.

<comment><USER7> > relatively modern multi-role fighter

F-16 first flight was 45 years ago. Or put other way, F-16 first flight was significantly closer to MiG-17 first flight than F-35 (which gets to represent modern aircraft) first flight (24 years vs 32 years)

And F-16 was explicitly designed to pretty light-weight aircraft for its time, compared to e.g. its contemporary F-15:

> Boyd's design called for a light-weight fighter with a high thrust-to-weight > ratio, high maneuverability, and a gross weight of less than 20,000 lb > (9,100 kg), half that of its counterpart, the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle

(it did end up bit fatter than that though..)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This may be a silly question, but: how would an average American be able to afford the parts required to restore a fighter jet? It can't be cheap? Am I correct to assume the person who did this is probably a person "of means"?

<comment><USER9> That model jet started production in 1952, so probably doesn't have much electronics or fancy materials.

Modern machinist tools are widely available and not totally unaffordable. I'd guess the current owner probably made a lot of their own replacement parts.

<comment><USER10> Who knows what the regulations are for a Soviet warplane brought into the US but for most planes the owners are not able to just machine new parts unless the plane is under an experimental certification. A lot of home built planes are under experimental certification. Civilian factory built planes and US warbirds are not and so they can't just machine new parts freely or the airworthiness certificate is at risk.

The regulations go on forever. If you make new parts you risk having to re- certify the plane which makes an expensive and difficult project get much harder.

<comment><USER11> Per the FAA's N-number lookup, it's experimental. I'm guessing Soviet aircraft built to destroy the US didn't bother with FAA certification.

[https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?N...](https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=620PF)

<comment><USER12> Probably not, but it would've been hilarious if they'd gotten one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple comments at the bottom of the article make it sound like there are a few more airworthy ones out there.

<comment><USER14> There's quite a few MIG-17 with FAA registrations. [https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/AcftRef_Results.asp...](https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/AcftRef_Results.aspx?Mfrtxt=&Modeltxt=MIG-17&PageNo=1)

The original article says it's the last airworthy MIG-17PF, while this site just says MIG-17. I suspect the PF is critical to the last airworthy claim. There were a number of variants of the MIG-17.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> He should hang on to it until Top Gun 2 arrives. Could be money-making schemes will become available then.

</comment><comment><USER16> What is the purpose of those spike things on the leading edge of the wings?

<comment><USER17> They are Pitot tubes[1], part of the system that calculates the aircraft's altitude and speed.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot- static_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot-static_system)

<comment><USER10> The large ones on the ends of the wings seem way too long to be pitot tubes.

<comment><USER18> Those are the two pitot tubes. The other tubes on the fuselage forward of the canopy are cannons. Aft of the canopy are radio aerials. This [1] only mentions the right-hand pitot tube, but since they appear to be identical, I assume it was just an oversight on the document's author.

[1][https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP80T00246...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP80T00246A001300090001-7.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Actually reading your document the long spikes at the end of the wingtips are not mentioned as the Pitot tubes.. that document says the pitot tube is mounted on the right wing 1/4 of the distance in from the tip.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I think that has to be a mistake, either in translation or just an error. They're obviously both pitot tubes, and there's nothing mount 1/4 of the distance from the wingtip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why do people venerate war machines? I understand the interest, but putting money into it? Surely there are better places that money can go.

<comment><USER20> You can ask that about pretty much every luxury good and hobby. The simple answer is that people do what interests them, not what is "better" (according to whatever your biased perspective is) for the world.

<comment><USER19> There's no way you can pass off a fighter jet as a "hobby". That's intentional neglect of society at that point, and again to venerate a weapon.

<comment><USER21> It gets gray real fast. The Internet as we know it grew out of military research to maintain communication channels during nuclear war.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure what your point is—the internet always had wider applicability than war.

Anyway, that neglects the point that both a MiG and military investment have piss-poor returns and you might as well burn the cash. Like how hard is it to invest in the people around you? What goes wrong in your life where you spend on a fucking MiG rather than feeding people? It's sociopathic behavior.

<comment><USER22> Why are you here instead of out volunteering. Why are you using a computer when it could be sold to feed people.

I have a feeling you're starting to break the rules of this site. I'm not going to bother replying anymore.

<comment><USER19> I have no issues actually doing the things you're mocking. I'm very secure in my own ability to contribute to society.

Oh god not the rules! How will this produce complacent founders?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why not more transparency (says the guy who was just laid off)? - <AUTHOR>

Last Friday I was told I wouldn't have a job on Monday. It was a bit of a shock (I was unaware of the funding difficulties until the day I was let go. You'll also have to take my word for it, that it wasn't for performance reasons).
I know that some startups practice openness / transparency with regards to their financial situation and metrics (I don't know them personally, but Buffer seems to be a great example of this).
It just seems to me that transparency (to various degrees) is a far superior way of running a startup, and shows respect for all stakeholders (employees, investors, customers).
Perhaps I'm naive (and I know that there are reasons not to be transparent: competition, fear that your customer/employees will jump ship), but I really would've loved to have had the benefit of transparency, and I've always been respectful to my employers (I once stayed on two extra months until we could find my replacement at a prior position).
I guess I'm just curious why more startup founders don't emulate (perhaps not to the same degree) the Buffer model?
Note: I'm a software programmer, and the recruiting market isn't bad, so I hopefully won't be out of the game too long. <comment><USER2> There are three reasons: fear of losing people, outright greed, and ignorance.

Fear of losing people is simply that people will jump ship before the company sinks if there's a strong chance that it'll fail; losing key employees then sinks the company. Pretending everything is awesome up until the last day can actually save the company if you come up with a last second investment, which does happen occasionally.

Greed is obvious - founders don't want you to know how much money there is so they can lie about how much they can afford to pay in order to keep your salary low.

Finally, and I suspect most commonly, a lot of startup founders are so bad at keeping track of their cashflow that they _can 't_ be transparent about it. They literally don't know what money is available, and they're just as shocked as you are when the business runs out.

<comment><USER3> Ignorance is likely a bigger cause when the company is not funded.

Funded companies have people they have to report to with milestones, financial status etc. So they should not have an ignorance problem when it comes to cash flow etc. But I totally agree that most small businesses/startups without funding or outside assistance will likely not really know where they stand day to day which can cause the big uh oh.

Funded companies that let it get to this point, know they let it go to far. If they can't meet the milestones or get more funding etc, then they should really have the wind down plan available and the cash on hand to pay for it.

<comment><USER2> My startup was funded. During the 18 month runway when we were spending the investment money we had a grand total of 2 meetings with the investors. We did _a lot_ wrong, but so did the VCs in my opinion - we were a 'boring' business tools company from an accelerator full of exciting B2C, 3rd sector, big data and social media companies. They ignored us. If I did it again I'd absolutely insist on more oversight and input from the VCs but that's something you only learn with hindsight. We were definitely one of the ones that let it go too far.

<comment><USER3> Ouch, sorry to hear that, but I believe everyone does a lot wrong, just hopefully we can outweigh the screw ups with enough successes to make it work.

To me the support from an institutional type investor (VC) is to help you dodge preventable mistakes and open doors, which is the bigger attraction than just cash (not that cash can be dismissed). It sucks to hear you didn't get that. Do you think your experience is more normal from what you know or that it was more an anomaly?

I ask because I have raised money for a couple of my own companies in the past, mostly from high net worth individuals and every time I was required to provide monthly/quarterly financial reports and projections. And they were reviewed and if stuff didn't line up or they saw something I didn't I would get a call to discuss it. I sometimes resented it right at the moment because I was knee deep in a customer issue or feature, but I learned a lot and it continues to help me now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, I don't think you were treated fairly. No one should find out at the last second that the company is out of funds and unable to keep you. It should be a dialog that is on-going for a little bit to give you options and time to prepare etc. Their method and motive was selfish, or inexperienced (myself having done this in the past and having learned my lesson).

Speaking from running my own company (and from a bootstrapping perspective), it is hard to be 100% transparent. Likely it is easier if you start that way, but it is hard either way. I also think it is likely easier when you are well funded because Cash on Hand goes a long way to keeping people comfortable. But there are so many close calls when you are starting out as a company that a lot of employees would likely have a really hard time with full transparency unless they also knew there was 12-18 months of runway in front of them.

Bootstrapping there are months that start and you don't know where the entire payroll will come from, your job is to keep people focused and find the funds. Many times that means not taking much or any money yourself, to make sure employees are paid. Other times it means having to find another small contract or signup another X people etc by a certain date to cover everything. Partners accept this risk, but employees many times are employees because they fairly don't want that risk. So that is why I think more small businesses and startups don't practice a Buffer level of transparency. BTW -- IMO if a company is constantly having this issue then its time to talk to employees and cut back some. And not wait until the last second as what happened to you.

Most other aspects of the transparency is pretty easy to do IMO. Publishing the burn rate, churn, revenue stats etc isn't really that difficult. Publishing peoples actual salaries is a little extreme but publishing the bands and cost of living variances is fair game anywhere. I think when you get into cash flow and cash on hand is where things get harder for a bootstrapped business and is the primary reason most don't publish those numbers to employees until they are quite profitable (if ever).

</comment><comment><USER4> Actually, there's a competitive advantage to being dishonest if you're close to insolvency.

If you admit that you only have 2 months of runway left, your employees will start shopping around. You'll lose your best employees first.

If you keep it a secret, two things can happen:

1\. You raise more money, problem solved! (or market conditions change)

2\. In 2 months, you lay off everyone. Sucks to be them, but you got 2 more months to try and raise money.

In a nearly insolvent business, dishonesty is a better strategy, because that maximizes the value of the implied call option if you do turn things around.

There's usually no social penalty for being dishonest. You can always find new employees.

<comment><AUTHOR> fsk, thanks for voicing what may be an "unpopular" opinion. for the sake of debate, let me provide rebuttal.

in game theory terms, I think you're arguing that the founder's assume all parties will act only in their self interests, and if they disclose their financial difficulties, the result will be "Option A", as a result, they choose to go the "Option B" route, where the founder gets off "free" and the employees get screwed.

However, I would argue that "Option C" is possible too, where all parties work together to try to save the ship. I've heard stories of employee's willingly reducing their salaries to extend runway. I personally am in a financial situation to do such a thing and would have. For other reasons, I also could have helped out in a meaningful way with fundraising but wasn't even aware that such a thing was needed until the day I was fired.

Again, this might be naive, but I do think it's possible in situations where there is mutual trust and respect amongst employees. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many stories out there where founders and employees all make sacrifices to extend runway.

\--

Option A: If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison

Option B: If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)

Option C: If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)

<comment><USER4> This isn't really a prisoner's dilemma scenario. Why does everyone try to match a scenario to Prisoner's Dilemma when it doesn't fit.

Consider the payoff matrix for the employee:

Employee finds a new job, old employer fails: +5

Employee finds a new job, old employer succeeds: +5

Employee stays, old employer fails: +0

Employee stays, old employer succeeds: +6 (+10?, +20?)

I wouldn't say finding a new job is equivalent to "defecting".

A better analogy is if the employer really put together an awesome team, and he hopes to work with them again in the future. In that case, honesty is better. But that's iterated game theory rather than a single game.

If you play Prisoner's Dilemma once with a complete stranger, you could argue that the Nash equilibrium is to defect. When you play with the same people over and over again, then defectors can be punished.

Unfortunately, the modern economy is more like a group of strangers playing with each other for one game. If you defect, you can always find someone else gullible to play with next time.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. shouldn't you be looking at the founder's payoff matrix, since they're the decision maker (wrt to disclose or not to disclose)?

2\. I think you focused on the employee payoff matrix to argue that they'll always pick to defect. but I would argue that humans have "emotions" and sometimes even loyalty. like i said, I personally would have stayed the course and sacrificed some of my "payoff matrix" but never got the chance.

disclaimer: i may have again butchered the theory of prisoner's dilemma, but i think you get my point so hopefully we can avoid arguing the technicalities of prisoner's dilemma.

Lastly, I would argue that in startups, this is a game you do want to play over and over. if you're only hiring expendable, replaceable employees, then you're probably playing the wrong game, with the disclaimer that I definitely don't have all the answers and reserve the right to be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sucks. Hopefully you will land on your feet. I went through a similar situation. The founder at least let us know the approximate runway length before our series A funding would run out. It was clear to everyone as employees that we were still struggling to get meaningful revenue growth. Still in the end it was a bit of surprise because it sounded like he had verbal commitments to do series B funding - and then it all seemed to fade away over the course of a week and all 12 of us employees got the call on the same day -- "can't make payroll at regular rate - you will get the minimum wage required by law and everyone is laid off as of today."

So I would say my boss at the time tried to do the middle road - it was enough transparency that we weren't surprised at any fundamental level. We had a last straw hope that then went away. I think that level of transparency helped me to not to be bitter toward to the founder.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they can retroactively change your payroll to minimum wage, even over a single period. I think I would have lawyered up under those circumstances.

<comment><USER7> You can't collect money that doesn't exist. It is normal and legal for businesses to go out of business while owing people money, and for them to never get that money. This company couldn't make payroll and laid off all employees: it's broke and folding. They'll declare bankruptcy, liquidate the furniture and other assets, distribute whatever they get for it (probably entirely to secured creditors, not employees), and cease to exist. All the remaining debt just disappears, and there's nothing a lawyer can do to change that.

<comment><USER6> Missing payroll is one of the few items that can pierce the corporate veil. Laying off employees is one thing; saying that the work they've done over the last two weeks will now be paid at minimum wage is quite another.

<comment><USER7> Actually, so long as you pay minimum wage before folding, there is virtually no chance a state or federal court would pierce the corporate veil and impose personal liability. This has been upheld in both California's supreme court and federal courts. FSLA for example is written broadly enough that a company officer may be considered an employer and personally liable for FLSA violations, but only liable to pay _minimum wage_ , not contractual wages and benefits.

What mswen's employer did would shield them from any personal liability in California and most every other state.

Here's a good review of the relevant case law on this: [http://www.latham.com/thoughtLeadership/officers-and- directo...](http://www.latham.com/thoughtLeadership/officers-and-directors- personal-liability-for-wages) [PDF]

<comment><USER8> But if you retroactively reduce someone's salary to minimum wage, don't they cease to be "exempt" employees, at which point they're retroactively entitled to overtime pay?

The Department of Labor says:

 _" Exempt computer employees may be paid at least $455 on a salary basis or on an hourly basis at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour."_[1]

So the minimum salary to be exempt from overtime is a lot higher than the federal minimum wage.

[1] [http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17g_salary....](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17g_salary.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because most startup founders don't care about their employees. Just like any other business owners, they have this mentality that developers are tools. It's the common management mentality that you'll find in any business, most startup founders learn the same management skills and are no different.

</comment><comment><USER10> Getting laid off sucks. And though it in no way lessens the suck for you, it also sucks for the people doing the layoffs...and since having to lay people off can be an admission of potential failure of the company, laying people off can profoundly suck. There's no "they had to do it to me" for an owner laying off staff. The owner is the doer-it-toer.

Imagine Friday morning, the Owner got the financials, made a decision, and laid people off in the afternoon. Or maybe they got the financials on Monday, couldn't close a deal all week, wrote paychecks and on Friday did what they had been dreading and trying to prevent all week [or month or year].

It's hard enough to be transparent with oneself, we all know that most startups fail. Sorry to hear about your misfortune.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> _" Last Friday I was told I wouldn't have a job on Monday."_

I suspect that the same business owner who'd fire all their employees without notice would be hugely offended if one of their employees would walk into their office on Friday and announce they were quitting, and would be working somewhere else as of Monday.

</comment><comment><USER11> I agree with the thoughts others have written about fear of losing the best employees. In addition, I think a lot of managers keep things secret because they hope to avoid difficult conversations. Also, if there is one person who you really don't want to share something with for whatever reason, it's tough to let everyone else in. Those things don't excuse a lack of transparency, but I think they contribute.

Regardless, absent of some extenuating factor related to performance, no way should you have been given no notice and no severance. I'm sure they would have taken it poorly had you (when things were going well) have given them no notice.

Good luck getting back into the game.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've found that transparency comes with strength. When you have nothing to hide, it takes a lot of extra unnecessary effort to be opaque, so you might tend to lean towards openness.

When you're weak, you lean towards opaqueness and even deception (think Sun Tzu).

I think it's natural human behavior. So rather than asking "Why not be transparent?" I'd ask "Why align with a company that is opaque? Isn't that there way of saying they have something to hide?"

<comment><AUTHOR> good point malcolm. i definitely agree with your point on choosing who to align with -- this process has been a good learning experience on picking the company you keep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have slowly been more and more transparent to my employees during the last three to four years. Through this opening up process I have realised that the main reason for not being transparent was my fear of other seeing me as a failure and my fear of how other judge what I did and how I ran my business.

As my self confidence has grown so has my openess!

</comment><comment><USER14> startup i was part of was one of these transparent ones. founder told this he is doing for the first time and this is his 4th or may be 6th company (don't remember exactly.) Not sure about employee morale - some stayed, some were hit and left when financial problems came in. But most importantly found told he will never will do it again, because it cause way more stress than keeping everything closed..

So... there might be also personal stress management involved.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bidness is bidness, no matter how small.

I hope you had a nice weekend. :)</comment>


Searching Hacker News for a Slideshow Tool - <AUTHOR> I am trying to search Hacker News about an article I've read a couple of weeks (or months) ago about a web slide show tool that is sort of branded as replacement for powerpoint. It was not RevealJS but something similar. Can't recall the name hence, hoping someone can provide me the link back to that article. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Was it Spectacle? [http://stack.formidable.com/spectacle](http://stack.formidable.com/spectacle)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really this one, but I think I would find this useful. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the most tedious task in Data Science? - <AUTHOR> I've done my share of Data Science projects in the past and have my opinions about which parts are interesting and which parts 'just have to be done' to get there. Generally the tedium is concentrated on cleaning/joining/figuring out irritating issues in the data. What specifically is the lowest common denominator of this problem in your opinion? <comment><USER2> My biggest pain is that with a lack of documentation it is often difficult to discern data structure, something that could highlight potential fields which are common across multiple data sources might make it easier to join two data sources.</comment>


Snowflake data sharing - <AUTHOR> https://www.snowflake.net/news-items/snowflake-announces-another-world-first-data-sharehouse/ <comment><USER2> Congrats Snowflake, this is a nice feature that takes advantage of pure separation of storage and compute.

Google BigQuery has had this feature since 2012, and to see this in action take a look at Google's Public Datasets [0]. Only difference, you don't need to "stand up a BigQuery" cluster to leverage the data yourself since BigQuery is serverless. BigQuery also has a nice perpetual storage tier, 10GB of storage and 1TB of analysis for free.

(work at G)

[0] [https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public- data/](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/)</comment>


Rethinking artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/ai-overview-1207.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a brief overview of reconfigurable asynchronous logic automata <http://phm.cba.mit.edu/papers/09.11.POPL.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER2> This certainly sounds nice. It's easy to be a cynic though. There was a _lot_ of theoretical and conceptual work on AI back in the day, but it didn't really lead to anything very effective. The problem of intelligent behavior was much, much more complex than anyone had realized.

This article is a very good statement that the problems are hard and complex, but just because you get a bunch of people together who want to solve a hard problem, doesn't mean they will.

</comment><comment><USER3> I still think there is much more work to be done on isolated systems and making them more adaptable than larger metasystems. I work on text classification problems and while the problem is still mostly implementation, I would like to solve the problem more robustly w/o having hand-analyze problems, construct models that are really hacks, etc. Basically work higher up the abstraction level in classification. What I am arguing is a bottom up view of AI.

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the major problems IMHO with AI systems is that marginally working hacks work nearly as well for the most part. AI doesn't offer nearly the order of magnitude improvement over _dumber_ systems that's been promised.

</comment><comment><USER5> Big news: money thrown at vague problem because of famous names.</comment>


Ask HN: Good book about statistics and probability? - <AUTHOR> I just finsihed "How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking" by Jordan Ellenberg. It's an amazing book. Now I'm looking for a book to read next. I was thinking about "The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't" by Nate Silver. Any better suggestions? <comment><USER3> Based on the books mentioned in your post, I assume you are looking for light readings on statistics and probability. You might enjoy following books.

* Darrell Huff, Irving Geis How to Lie With Statistics

* Ian Ayres Super Crunchers Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

* David Salsburg The Lady Tasting Tea How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century

* Emanuel Deman, Models Behaving Badly

* Benoit Mandelbrot, Richard L. Hudson The Misbehavior of Markets A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence

* Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness

</comment><comment><USER4> "How To Lie With Statistics" by Darrell Huff. It's a pretty old book (1954). But it talks about the most common uses of statistics in everyday life (marketing reasearch and infographics showing extrapolating trends inaccurately) and how the results are often gathered carelessly. Here's a short review by Bill Gates: [http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/How-to-Lie-with- Statistics](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/How-to-Lie-with-Statistics)

</comment><comment><USER5> Get "Introduction to Probability" by Dmitri Bertsekas. The solutions are available on the web also, so it makes it easy to work through the problems until you get it.

There's other good books out there, but I still keep the Bertsekas book on my desk, along with Kutner's Applied Linear Regression Models.

<comment><USER6> Very good choice.I have read "Introduction to Probability" for a course on my EE school.Gives pretty solid intuition for the fundamental concepts and going through the exercises gives you a more than working knowledge on the subject.They range from simple applications to stimulating puzzles.Definitely give it a try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Nate Silver book is outstanding. Read it. I would then think about one of Nassim Taleb's books, either "The Black Swan" or "Antifragile".

</comment><comment><USER8> I would like to add 'Introduction of Probability' by Joseph K. Blitzstein, Jessica Hwang. I actually have not used the textbook yet but I have taken Prof. Blitzstein's Harvard Stat 110 and it has been the best of all online courses I have taken for statistics. I have also heard very good things about the book. Worth checking out.

The problem sets for the course are available free online. So you can have a look at them to decide.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well I was going to suggest several textbooks but they are all $250 now. Are you interested in just popular math?

<comment><USER10> Could you share your suggestions.

<comment><USER9> Yeah just the books I used in school: Ross - A First Course in Probability Rice - Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis Casella - <USER2> Inference

<comment><USER10> Thank you.

Are you a data scientist? BTW, which school did you graduate from?

I am currently learning statistics and machine learning and want to find a better way to do so, i.e. better. I have a good mathematical background, but mostly outside of statistics though I had a good course in probability theory.

<comment><USER9> I'm a software engineer, currently unemployed. I graduated from a smaller engineering school in the US in Math. Yeah, 15 weeks or so of probability and 15 weeks of statistics. Hardcore professors were a good way to learn. I almost want to do another program to see if other schools have the same type of sadistic professors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Statistics without Tears is a good read. It makes use of very simple examples to explain the concepts.</comment>


The Essence of Founding a Company Is This - <AUTHOR> http://matthewpaulmoore.com/post/55804088958/the-essence-of-founding-a-company-is-this

<comment><USER2> That's a very polarizing view of the term "founder" you have going there... For example, my plumber is an entrepreneur and a very successful one. By the definition you've provided, he shouldn't have started his own company.

"But Scott - he has a product that sells itself." Not true - he has tons of competition in a narrow niche. Sure, we all need a plumber from time to time but we also may have as many as 1,000 options (depending on problem + geo location).

I like pithy sayings and nice, tight analogies as much as the next guy but this one - it just misses the mark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I'm specifically talking about founders who are shooting for 100mm in revenue companies (the kinds VCs would invest in). Sorry -- I thought everyone in the silicon valley defined entrepreneurs in the same way? ;-)</comment></comment>


Show HN: I created Buyerbot, a Slack app for managing Amazon purchasing - <AUTHOR> https://buyerbot.co?ref=2&utm_source=HN <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, happy to take feedback and answer questions here. Buyerbot is a Slack app to search Amazon and then request approval for purchases. Approved purchases then go into a shared shopping cart for the whole team. Managers can report on who requested what and who approved what.

I have a couple of features in the hopper but would love to get your feedback first to see if my planned improvements are on the right track.

<comment><USER2> Great FAQ, well explained, clear action buttons. And you don't have 'amazon' in the bot name which makes it more generic for the future.

It took me a bit to realize the voice in the video imitates Milton from the movie, I found it a bit hard to understand.

Our office uses [https://www.amazon.com/gp/pantry/info](https://www.amazon.com/gp/pantry/info) to restock the kitchen cleaning utensils regularly for example, not sure if Amazon has special API calls for that or if regular orders/reminders are on your roadmap.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like that may be possible to do, but Prime Pantry appears to be a slightly modified search on Amazon. I will add that to potential features to support in the future.

Does your team use a single Amazon login to add items to your group pantry cart?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wtfstarter.com – A Crowdfunding campaign parody generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.wtfstarter.com

<comment><AUTHOR> An easy way to share those ridiculous crowdfunding ideas you have without having to spam kickstarter.com / indiegogo.com with yet another fake kickstarter campaign.

</comment><comment><USER2> I absolutely love the "About this project" section text. Great idea. I agree with what drcursor said so I hope this would help to remove a couple of fake campaigns on kickstarter.</comment>


Stack Overflow is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.stackoverflow.com

<comment><USER2> I just had a small panick attack when I realized what a mediocre (not productive) programmer I would be without SO. Then I had bigger panick attack thinking about that small panick attack I just had. What do we do if SO disappears today ? Is there some kind of mirror somewhere on the Internet?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an offline version / dump data you can download and browse.

[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/cc-wiki- dump/](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/cc-wiki-dump/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> shame its not a weekday, its a legitimate excuse to bunk off (barely).

[http://xkcd.com/303/](http://xkcd.com/303/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Google cache to the rescue!</comment>


Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans' personal debt - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt <comment><USER2> Random idea: If a creditor is about to sell your debt to a debt collector for pennies on the dollar, what if they were forced, by law, to give you right of first refusal?

For example: I owe a credit card company $20k, but I have defaulted on the loan. The credit card company is about to sell this debt to a collector for $1k, who will proceed to make my life miserable. If there were such a law, the credit card company would first have to offer the debt to me for $1k. In this scenario, I could indeed buy my own debt and we all could go on our merry way (except the debt collector).

Crazy?

<comment><USER3> It is better for yourself and the creditor to just bypass the horrible and at times abusive debt collectors, but this would create a perverse incentive to ALWAYS default on loans.

Creditors asses your potential for default and base the rate of lending on that risk. In your scenario the rate of default would always be high therefore the rate that you borrow at would be extremely high, think loan shark high. Or you would find that no one is willing to lend money and this would cripple an important part of the financial system. Think student loans never existing.

<comment><USER4> "but this would create a perverse incentive to ALWAYS default on loans."

Statically, yes. However I'm having a harder time mentally analyzing what this would do _dynamically_ , which is a much more interesting problem, since the real world is not static.

My first approximation is that because "everyone" would know this is something they can do with their debt, that lending would consequently become much more rare, and lenders would be _much_ more careful about securing their loans. The initial impact on the economy would probably be sharply negative; what happens after that is probably a "your guess is as good as mine" situation, even amongst economists. Attitudes about debt have varied widely throughout time and space. Some will say tightened lending will wreck the economy longterm, others would suggest that loose lending has _already_ wrecked the economy and the initial shock would simply be paying down damage already done, after which the economy would be much healthier. Which side you fall down on probably has more to do with ideology than education; given how much trouble economists have explaining even our _current_ economy I'm not willing to give even experts much credence for explaining how such a different one would work.

<comment><USER3> You're right on that dynamically it is a very interesting problem and something that from my exposure to economics, economists seem to spend very little time analyzing.

Changes beget other changes and so on. Finding the steady state level of change would be challenging yet interesting to model.

<comment><USER5> I have a PhD in economics and that is the first thing that an economist would think of (in my case it wasn't, but I did eventually realize it...).

One reason why many of the the "crazy" ideas posted on HN don't make it to policy, is that there are people trained in economics who are able to see the flaws in such policies.

EDIT: and in case you were curious, this wouldn't generally be considered a dynamic problem in economics. Once the policy was announced, interest rates would immediately change to a new equilibrium, which accounted for people's higher tendency to default. So the problem is simply to calculate the new static equilibrium.

<comment><USER4> Yes, in this case I merely mean to bring in the idea that changes are reacted to. I was using static vs. dynamic more in the physics sense, where "static" can be looked at as a snapshot of the system you're looking at, whereas dynamic brings in the concept of time. I agree that all else being equal, there's every reason to believe that this sort of change would produce a new static equilibrium, at least in terms of debt itself. (My doubt is more about the net effect on the economy as a whole, as debt seems to be a matter of some debate even today. The dominant economic thought seems to be pretty comfortable with it, I have to admit I'm coming around to more of a "Black Swan" sort view where I think the dominant consensus is overvaluing it, which interestingly also accords with a lot of historical thinking on the topic albeit not with that amount of mathematical backing.)

<comment><USER5> We usually call the immediate effect (in this case on interest rates) partial equilibrium, and the "full" effect including all flow on effects, "general equilibrium". And there are models which include dynamic and random effects (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium - DSGE - models). Can't tell you much about them apart from the name :-)

Anyway it seems like messing with debt contracts is a bad way to change the interest rate, if that's all you want to do, since that is precisely the lever that the Federal Reserve controls anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This demonstrates an interesting thing about medical debt in particular. They seem to be operating it almost like a market segmentation tool. The richest people simply pay the stated rate, everyone else pays the maximum rate that they are able as it travels down the debt staircase.

A more cynical way to look at it? When you get (really) sick, the price for care is everything you have, whatever that happens to be.

<comment><USER7> > the price for care is everything you have, whatever that happens to be.

Still seems preferable to dying.

<comment><USER8> Wait until you have dependents to care for - then suddenly the choice is between paying for your medical care and feeding your family.

<comment><USER7> That choice doesn't match my understanding of how the bankruptcy system works.

<comment><USER9> Don't worry, the bankruptcy system will catch up and find a way to make medical debts non-discharge-able just like it did for student debts.

<comment><USER10> > Don't worry, the bankruptcy system will catch up and find a way to make > medical debts non-discharge-able just like it did for student debts.

Inheritable, too, what with all the old people dying with medical debts their whole estate can't cover.

(The way it works now is this: When someone dies, their estate is responsible for paying their debts. Once their estate is gone, however, that's it. The creditors can try to convince the heirs to pay the debts, but they have no legal leverage to _force_ them to. Lying about having such leverage is apparently fair game, however.)

<comment><USER11> This is why I simply will never inherit my parents estate when they die, I don't want to risk inheriting their debts no matter what I'm told. My mother inherited her fathers estate with all of her brothers and sisters only to find out that because Grandpa had a huge expensive operation that the estate actually owed money. Luckily she was able to somehow get her name off of the inheritance after the fact.

<comment><USER10> > I don't want to risk inheriting their debts

You can't. Once the estate's gone, the creditors can pound sand because the person they contracted with is gone and all their assets are gone, too. They can't come after anyone else.

> Luckily she was able to somehow get her name off of the inheritance after > the fact.

I seriously doubt this is possible even in theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good for them. Markets are working. If the emotional and social value of forgiving debt is worth more than the expected value of collecting on that debt, then _capitalism is working_! Who could be opposed to this?

<comment><USER13> And how many people get this debt in the first place is true capitalism as well?

<comment><USER14> A systemic (political, not free-market) policy of inflation encourages people into debt by decreasing the cost of borrowing (minus the increase in risk- cost, which most people are bad at judging), and by squeezing people by decreasing their cost-of-life margin versus their earning power.

Not to mention politically motives to encourage debt, by incentivising things like mortgages, or creating educational debt systems, etc.

The very dollar itself is an instrument of debt, and it is self-perpetuating -- there has to be a way to pay off the interest on that debt that was the genesis block for that dollar, of course that's done by "printing" money (adding a zero on a digital ledger), which creates inflation, which encourages people into debt, which requires more money to be printed, which requires interest to be paid off on that dollar, which...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of things that I was always curious about is why the govt didn't restructure mortgage debt and re-value property back to pre-bubble levels

It would have cost the government $2 trillion to buy every sub-prime mortgage and retire it.

But that's Communism

Instead, the government (by way of the private bank known as "The Fed") gave $16 trillion - free and with no strings attached - to Wall Street, the very people who engineered the destruction of the American economy in 2008.

That's known as Capitalism

<comment><USER16> US GDP in 2012 was $15.68 trillion. You're saying the US government gave away more than a year's worth of productive output? You'll excuse me if I say citation fucking needed.

<comment><USER17> They lent the money, they didn't "give it" to the banks. The difference is that the Fed got the money back, whereas buying $2tn of debt would result in the Fed having to create $2tn.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the- feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/)

<comment><USER18> Loaning someone money without interest is the same as giving them the market rate of interest, which in the case of the banks after the housing bubble bust was somewhere around a billion percent a minute, because all of the banks were insolvent and completely uncreditworthy.

To make it even more obviously a gift, a good bit of it was used to buy treasuries. If I loan you $100 at 0% interest, and you loan it back to me for $5 a day, aren't I just giving you $5 a day?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From Plutarch's "Lucullus":

"Lucullus now turned his attention to the cities in Asia, in order that, while he was at leisure from military enterprises, he might do something for the furtherance of justice and law. Through long lack of these, unspeakable and incredible misfortunes were rife in the province. Its people were plundered and reduced to slavery by the tax-gatherers and money-lenders. Families were forced to sell their comely sons and virgin daughters, and cities their votive offerings, pictures, and sacred statues. At last men had to surrender to their creditors and serve them as slaves, but what preceded this was far worse, — tortures of rope, barrier, and horse; standing under the open sky in the blazing sun of summer, and in winter, being thrust into mud or ice. Slavery seemed, by comparison, to be disburdenment and peace. Such were the evils which Lucullus found in the cities, and in a short time he freed the oppressed from all of them."

"In the first place, he ordered that the monthly rate of interest should be reckoned at one per cent., and no more; in the second place, he cut off all interest that exceeded the principal; third, and most important of all, he ordained that the lender should receive not more than the fourth part of his debtor's income, and any lender who added interest to principal was deprived of the whole. Thus, in less than four years' time, the debts were all paid, and the properties restored to their owners unencumbered. This public debt had its origin in the twenty thousand talents which Sulla had laid upon Asia as a contribution, and twice this amount had been paid back to the money-lenders. Yet now, by reckoning usurious interest, they had brought the total debt up to a hundred and twenty thousand talents. These men, accordingly, considered themselves outraged, and raised a clamour against Lucullus at Rome. They also bribed some of the tribunes to proceed against him, being men of great influence, who had got many of the active politicians into their debt. Lucullus, however, was not only beloved by the peoples whom he had benefited, nay, other provinces also longed to have him set over them, and felicitated those whose good fortune it was to have such a governor."

[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/L...](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Lucullus*.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be interesting had they sent letters to those whose debt they bought and explained exactly what they were doing. Then offer them one of three options:

      1. Pay 10 cents on the dollar. This covers their family's
         debt and they pay it forward for two other families.

      2. Pay 5 cents on the dollar. This covers them and they pay
         it forward to one other family.

      3. Pay nothing. Their debt is forgiven thanks to another
         family having paid it forward.

If enough people opted for #1 or #2, the fund could be self-renewing and they could purchase ever-larger amounts of debt and keep it going.

<comment><USER21> This could never be self sustaining because it would increase the cost of debt (if the debtors could pay, it wouldn't have been sold).

<comment><USER22> If the debtors could pay 100% of what they owed it wouldn't have been sold. But the OP is suggesting that some of the debtors might be able and willing to pay 5 cents or even 10 cents on the dollar, which I think is a reasonable assumption.

<comment><USER23> Also, with the assumption that the project isn't for profit (ie, everyone choosing #3) -- someone choosing to pay more (donate) -- would help the project. Even if they only did that after a year or two (when the debt would've been defaulted under "normal" circumstances).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Did they ever figure out of the beneficiaries of this plan were going to have tax problems? When the idea was originally floated 6-12 months ago I remember that being a potentially large problem.

<comment><USER25> Their lawyers said it wouldn't be an issue, IIRC. I don't know the details.

<comment><USER26> [http://www.irs.gov/publications/p4681/index.html#en_US_2013_...](http://www.irs.gov/publications/p4681/index.html#en_US_2013_publink1000192015)

 _In most cases, you do not have income from canceled debt if the debt is canceled as a gift, bequest, devise, or inheritance._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> After my behavioral economics lecture this morning this is where my mind immediately went: [http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/papers/separability.pdf](http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/papers/separability.pdf)

As much as people would like this to refute capitalism and standard economic models, it really just confirms that the models are incomplete and can be updated with continuing research in to human behavior.

<comment><USER28> As someone who is being educated in the area, perhaps you can offer me some some answers to a few of questions I have:

1) What are the specific claims of capitalism that actually _could_ be refuted by evidence?

2) Is there any evidence that does seem to refute those claims in any way?

3) Where would we most likely find evidence that the claims were innacurate?

I think the main thing that confuses me is that, from a layman's perspective, we just seem to adapt our picture of what capitalism includes every time something new comes along.

Model refinement is great in principle, but where is the proof that the basic theory is actually _correct_? There are such a terrifying number of confounding variables...

To use an example from my own field: when ocean models get to a high enough resolution you start seeing a lot of mesoscale eddies. It turns out they are really important in all sorts of processes, and their effects can feed back to larger scales.

For us it's not too bad; running models at sufficient resolution is expensive, but we can use higher-resolution runs to parameterise lower-resolution ones (and better comprehend our ignorance when that doesn't work). My point is that without a pretty good understanding of those fine-scale dynamics you can miss important things in the bigger picture, and I suggest that the economy-society coupled system has many more horrible to understand feedbacks than the ocean- atmosphere system.

Thanks in advance to you, or anyone else who takes the time to answer.

<comment><USER27> To start off, the definition of capitalism is simply private ownership of goods, and the ability to trade those goods. A society in which even ONE good was tradable would be considered somewhat capitalistic.

Specifically you could refute the efficiency of a free market reaching an equilibrium price (one that maximizes total surplus for buyers and sellers). However the experimental data suggests precisely the opposite, even in monopoly markets (double auction, perfect information) when tested in laboratory experiments.

Many issues people think they have with capitalism are actually the result of a system that definitely does NOT inherently take in to account all hidden costs. This is often used by government officials to make policy decisions that add costs or incentives to a market to correctly account for all factors (environmental, public good preservation, etc.).

Hope this is helpful!

<comment><USER23> > To start off, the definition of capitalism is simply private ownership of > goods, and the ability to trade those goods. A society in which even ONE > good was tradable would be considered somewhat capitalistic.

Which definition of capitalism is this? I believe the core of capitalism is private ownership of means of production, not merely ownership of goods? Communism doesn't eschew all private ownership (this is a common misconception). Communal/worker ownership of factories, farms and housing are core tenets -- but not necessarily communal ownership of all goods (eg: clothing, computers, tvs and radios etc).

<comment><USER29> I think capitalism also needs the existence of capital markets (e.g., bonds, shares, commodities, speculative financing, reinsurance) that are dominant in financing business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Seems like a good idea...

How can I purchase my own debt? Rather than have someone else buy my debt at a reduced rate and abolish it, how about I buy my own?

<comment><USER31> Debt is priced based on the debtor's expected ability to repay. If you have the means to purchase your own debt, it's probably selling at very close to its face value.

<comment><USER32> > If you have the means to purchase your own debt, it's probably selling at > very close to its face value.

If you have the means to purchase your own debt _at its face value_ , its probably selling at very close to its face value.

But the market value of your debt should be approximately (the amount the pricing algorithms expect you to be able to pay) _minus_ (the amount the pricing algorithms expect to be expended in extracting payment from you).

So, IOW, for the average debtor (assuming that the algorithms involved are correct on average), the market price of their debt should be significantly _less_ than they are able to pay.

<comment><USER31> You forgot the value of interest, which invalidates your calculation.

If the market price of consumer debt was, on average, lower than its face value, nobody would make loans to consumers.

<comment><USER33> Well, there was recently a negative real shock to debt value.

So the time sequence here is:

time 0 = Creditor A thinks that lending $10,000 to debtor B will create an asset worth $20,000

time 1 = Horrible things happen.

time 2 = Creditor A thinks that the asset thought to be worth $20,000 at time 0 is now worth only $100.

It is possible -- though perhaps not likely -- for it to be the case that the average value of all loans made at time 0 to be worth less than their face value at time 0, now that we are at time 2. That doesn't mean that consumer lending at time 2 would become impossible -- it means that lenders would set rates and choose debtors such that they think that new loans have values exceeding their costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Nice to see people organizing and doing charitable things of their own accord.

</comment><comment><USER35> That's all well and good until the IRS comes after these people for taxes on the value of the forgiven debt. Occupy essentially just indebted them to a much more formidable foe than a bill collector that must play by strict rules: the IRS.

</comment><comment><USER36> The Occupy Wall Street movement is frequently criticized as ineffectual, especially when compared to the Tea Party. (Here, ineffectual refers to their ability to induce legislative or regulatory change aligned with their respective movement; it is not a normative statement.) Adherents of OWS often state that it is a consequence of their movement's organic character or that it is intentional. (I find the later argument incredulous, kind of like saying, "I lost, but I wasn't really trying that hard.") In either case, this tactic could be highly persuasive.

Ross says,

       Our purpose in doing this, aside from helping some people along the way – there's certainly many, many people who are very thankful that their debts are abolished – our primary purpose was to spread information about the workings of this secondary debt market.

I suspect that spreading information about the "workings of the secondary debt market" is a very tall task. Certainly, they are getting a great deal of publicity, but I'm not convinced it will produce a lasting response. Yet, they have also purchased what I expect would be an atypically strong allegiance from almost 3,000 direct beneficiaries at about $5,000 each. They transmuted economic indebtedness for social obligation, by way of the rule of reciprocity. When you consider how vehemently, vocally, and persistently these individuals are likely to support OWS and their objectives, the influence purchased may be cheaper than traditional means (e.g. TV ads, direct mail, etc). And, it could be indirectly translated into more influence through votes.

</comment><comment><USER37> They still have to pay income tax on the abolished debt, but for someone in trouble like this that's probably at a pretty low marginal rate. The IRS doesn't want me paying for things by loaning the seller the price and then forgiving the debt as a way of getting around taxes, though that policy ends up being unfair in this situation.

<comment><USER38> If forgiven debt is counted as income, one can unexpectedly get into a much higher marginal rate bracket than usual. Not sure if IRS allows to amortize it over multiple years or something like that...

<comment><USER39> That is true. And no, much like income, it's reported in the current year. It's very much just income. No different than if they gave the guy a check to pay his own debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain where to go to buy debt like this?

<comment><USER40> [http://rollingjubilee.org/](http://rollingjubilee.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> way to put your money where your mouth is. My respect for the Occupy movement just went up by an order of magnitude.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here is an idea, to steal from their idea I guess. What if we kickstarted a campaign to raise $50-100M to buy off random people's debts this same way they did? Target areas where people are hardest hit financially, softening the burden in those places a teeny bit?

Could also be used for buying up grossly underwater properties and issuing new loans to help people? Just a thought.

<comment><USER43> Great idea. Why should people have to be held responsible for their actions?

<comment><USER44> Damn straight! If someone in the US gets sick or is in an accident[1] they should suck it up and be responsible for things they cannot control / were not their fault; even if it bankrupts them.

[1] RollingJubilee pays mainly medical debts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow, did you see that chart in their manual (page 32, PDF-wise or page 24 printed):

[http://strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations- Manual.p...](http://strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER46> The biggest problem with this is that they just generating a taxable event and these people now owe taxes on the "income" they received from being pardoned.

<comment><USER25> AFAIK, their lawyers checked to make sure this wouldn't happen beforehand. During the discussion of this when it started, I saw a mention that they had actually consulted the IRS directly on the matter and were told it would not do so.

A quick search yielded me these statements:

[http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2012/11/18/will-ows- rollin...](http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2012/11/18/will-ows-rolling- jubilee-cause-tax-issues-for-debtors-irs-says-no/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Where can an individual go to buy debt. I would love to buy some debt and forgive it for Christmas this year.

<comment><USER48> [http://rollingjubilee.org/](http://rollingjubilee.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The unintended consequence of this activity is that if people start negotiating their debt down, the collection firms will pay less for it. As a result, the least credit-worthy are going to have to pay even more for credit, or will be less likely to get credit at all.

</comment><comment><USER50> so can't I take out $36750 in loans, buy the debt for $1000, rinse and repeat?

<comment><USER51> No, you can't. Can you think of why this wouldn't be possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> what percentage of personal debt is medical related? That is typically the clearest case of "life threw them a curve-ball" situations where it was completely out of their control (usually).

</comment><comment><USER52> Why can't we scale this? Why aren't there nonforprofit's that allow people to donate and alleviate peoples debt?

</comment><comment><USER53> I wonder how long until we find out that this is actually being operated by the very banks that own the debt.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder what the legality of a consumer debt collective would be.

</comment><comment><USER55> There's a joke about bailouts in here somewhere.

<comment><USER56> Unfortunately, the bailout joke is on us.</comment></comment>


'Fast and Furious' actor Paul Walker dies in car crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/30/5161638/fast-and-furious-actor-paul-walker-dies-in-car-crash-tmz-reports <comment><USER2> This is eerie: [http://paulwalker.com/](http://paulwalker.com/)</comment>


Hallucinogenic Fish - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_fish <comment><USER2> Great, now I'm picturing wooks at a music festival passing around a bowl of tropical fish...</comment>


'The Internet Is Broken': Ev Is Trying to Salvage It - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-medium-twitter-internet.html <comment><USER2> Sometimes I think Ev Williams stumbled from success to success without hard work. Maybe I'm just bitter that he is doing the same thing (publishing text on the Internet) over and over again and gets hundreds of millions in funding. Maybe I just don't understand Silicon Valley.

If Ev wants to solve the problem of high quality content being drowned by low quality content, why does he work on a text publishing website? Why not work on the next Patreon? It is absolutely clear that people want to support their Internet darlings but simply cannot most of the time because there is no infrastructure for direct payments / subscriptions. Patreon is the only big general purpose subscription service where it is easy for content creators to get started.

<comment><USER3> If you suspect that Silicon Valley isn't a meritocracy, you're right. If you suspect that Silicon Valley rewards founders and companies who aren't profitable, you're also right.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Top 10 mentioned books from Hacker News in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@TopTalkedBooks/best-books-from-hacker-news-in-2017-5a05d85ad3 <comment><USER2> I'm assuming it means mentioned as a post. I know I've personally seen Cal Newport's, Deep Work mentioned in the comments at least a dozen times.

<comment><USER3> If you click through any of the links, you'll see the actual comments listed.

The thing all those comments have in common? They contain Amazon links.

I prefer this list: [https://hackernewsbooks.com/](https://hackernewsbooks.com/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for link. But the selection seemed very odd. I wondered how they got that list from HN. The site says

 _All links to Amazon, Safaribooks and O 'Reilly get extracted once a week from Hacker News posts, make sure they are indeed books and then rank them based on how often they are mentioned and the karma of the user._

Ahh. I guess that's it - people don't bother giving Amazon/other links for well-known books. Or sometimes the book has its own website.

Also, that site makes money by linking to Amazon. That seems a bit dodgy to me!

Hmm is it really _that_ hard to extract book titles that aren't links to Amazon/publishers? C'mon hackers! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most mentioned book all year was really only mentioned 7 times?

<comment><USER6> Probably not. Most likely, the algorithm used for determine a "mention" isn't very smart.

<comment><USER5> Sort of defeats the point, right? Why not just call it "Top 10 books on Amazon linked to from HN"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> According to HN search, SICP was mentioned >5000 times over the past year: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sicp&sort=byPopularity&prefix=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sicp&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastYear&type=comment)

So I'm guessing the number for 2017 was similar.</comment>


Show HN: Analysis of 9 months of food order data - <AUTHOR> https://ichait.github.io/oloviz/ <comment><AUTHOR> I live in Singapore and place online food orders regularly. I analyzed the data I have accumulated over time and compared food delivery services, cuisine and restaurants.

Here is the source code for scraping the data from foodpanda and deliveroo - [https://github.com/ichait/oloviz](https://github.com/ichait/oloviz)

Here is the Tableau Workbook -[https://public.tableau.com/profile/ichait#!/vizhome/oloviz/D...](https://public.tableau.com/profile/ichait#!/vizhome/oloviz/DayofWeekvsOrdersStats)

Feedback appreciated :)</comment>