Paramount Afraid Tweeted Stills of 'Top Gun' Compete With Actual Movie - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/paramount-afraid-tweeted-stills-of-top-gun-compete-with-actual-movie/ <comment><USER2> This situation sort of reminds me skateboarders who skate in "no skateboarding" areas. It might be cool when you do it and no one will really care, but when the cops come and tell you to break it up, it's pretty stupid to get into a fight about it.

It doesn't really matter the quality or the size of the frames, either. I'd be on Paramount's side if someone were distributing Top Gun Viewmaster reels, too. If you don't have distribution rights to something, you can't distribute it regardless of how innocuous it seems.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand: What kind of people enjoy looking at stills of TopGun? Well, their (Paramounts Topgun's) biggest fans of course. Instead of killing this they should be realising there is value in tweeted stills of (famous) movies and they could experiment with their own twitter-stills (and behind- the-scenes and what not). People apparently want to consumne stills of your product,give it to them! (Edit: and provide the iTunes link).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm more surprised there's a group of people who thought it wasn't illegal.

I don't see what the big deal is, either. If Paramount wanted it distributed that way, they'd do it themselves. Anybody else who wants to distribute a movie frame by frame on Twitter, why not make your own movie for it?

<comment><USER5> This being fair use or not is debatable (and hence the legality, which you find shockingly straightforward).

The big deal is that 'culture' and 'fandom' are wired in mysterious and awkward ways to 'property'. If it was a consensus between distribution companies that audiences wait for a fandom code of conduct, we wouldn't have fans of anything, and more devastatingly to the tech bubble, we wouldn't have Tumblr.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand why some people thing that it might be fair use. It doesn't even seem close to being debatable. Fair use revolves around commentary (and criticism) and parody. While fair use TENDS to be in small doses, it doesn't have to be. But I don't see how this falls under either commentary or parody. The guy tweeted the ENTIRE film. The fact that it doesn't compete with a dvd or itunes is not relevant.

<comment><USER5> Tweeting the entire film (24f * 60s * 110m) every half hour for a month (2f * 24h * 30d) would leave the film at the first minute of credits. Obviously that wasn't what was going on.

Now, if you will, try to define 'commentary' and 'parody' in ways that are culturally relevant to the audience. That's harder to manipulate than numbers. The definition of fair use relies heavily on the context. Is this any different from gifs on tumblr?

<comment><USER7> > Is this any different from gifs on tumblr?

Who says Tumblr gifs are legal fair use? Copyright infringement may be tolerated or overlooked, but that doesn't make it not infringement.

For comparison, the Premier League has recently been going after goal highlight GIFs on certain sites, which is unfortunate, but it seems entirely within their rights.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1ymeff/gfycat_removi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1ymeff/gfycat_removing_gifs_due_to_takedown_notices_from/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few things: When Twitter gets a DMCA they have to act immediately, even if they plan to fight it. It's part of the safe harbor laws.

Tweeting potentially copyright protected material is not illegal until it's been proven to be in court. Fair Use isn't valid before someone gets sued. You can claim that if sued you will defend yourself under Fair Use, but it's up to a judge to decide whether your claims are valid.

Basically, nobody wants to go to court, having the content taken down is unfortunate, but also necessary so that both sides of the law are represented (holders and users of copyright).

<comment><USER9> Nobody _wants_ to go to court, but a studio with a hundred million dollar legal budget _can_ (though they won't for something silly), and your average ramen-noodling, tweeting university student can't. There is no equal representation between someone who can make any ridiculous DMCA claim they want and someone who cannot afford a court battle to prove them wrong.

(By the way, this is a general rant, not a reference to this case.)

<comment><USER8> The catch here is that content providers don't want to give in to DMCA complaints. That's why chilling effects exists. Providers will often go a long way to be as permissive as possible and to cause as much pain for frivolous complaints as possible. Also give some credits to judges. They won't just give in because a company is rich and litigious, well at least not in most districts :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I built an app at the Launch hackathon last weekend that uses sound clips from movies. I'm concerned about fair use and the chilling effect that movie studios could have on using even tiny components of movies (sub 5-second audio clips, or, in this case, stills). Has anyone dealt with these kind of takedown requests first hand? Any war stories to share?

<comment><AUTHOR> No war stories here, just my two cents. It is unfortunate that the cost of defending against spurious suits can be substantial—even if the law is ultimately on your side. Basically, the movie studios are much better equipped to send out takedown notices than you are to respond to them. And as this article makes clear, movie studios may take action against many entities—even those that probably increase movie sales. After all, the twitter feed probably spurs interest in Top Gun (and the publicity around the takedown notice amplifies this effect even further). So tread carefully, and good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whether it's illegal or not, Paramount is going to get what's coming to them for punishing true fans who produce what amounts to free advertising.

<comment><USER12> This. Lawyers and ilk don't understand the amount of interest, persistence and MONEY that fans/fandoms generate for a body of work. Doing this is stupid shortsighted - goodwill is something hard to generate and easily lost. Paramount should have instead gifted that person a giant fan pack and made it a huge PR opportunity.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if there's something more complex. If they don't fight this, would they have less recourse if someone uploads the film to youtube?

<comment><USER14> No. You need to defend _trademarks_ or you lose them. You don't need to defend copyright.

But even if you had to, it's easily solved: They could have approached him, and said "look, we consider this infringement, and we want to ensure people don't think this is a free for all, but we like it, so why don't you write us a letter asking for permission, and we'll grant you a license as long as you acknowledge that in your twitter feed".

Instead they chose to demonstrate their total lack of understanding of the internet for everyone. It's not like the net is not full of Top Gun torrents to begin with, yet they opt to focus on ruining the marketing opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised no one has developed a way to upload all the frames of a film to various image hosting sites(imgur, flickr, etc) and written software to piece them all together to recreate them as a single movie file.

<comment><USER16> I'm not. Unless you also have a way to get the soundtrack and re-sync it with the reconstituted movie, it's kinda useless for anything but silent pictures (which tend to be old enough to be public domain anyway).

<comment><USER14> Encoding the soundtrack in image frames would be trivial. It's just data, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In one sense I think that any of the copyright (or IP generally) discussions on HN are superfluous. We've said what we have to say a dozen times.

OTOH, I kind of feel like these are deep issues that need time and repeated debate to fully digest. The idea of property is itself an manmade invention and it some self self evident truth that property should be defined one way or another. I think that example like this do go back to a crucial part of property's definition: control & exclusion.

Without exclusion rights, I think it's hard to call something a property right.

</comment><comment><USER18> Copyright fair use is ambiguously defined, really.

Here's a checklist from Columbia University which helps clarify what qualifies as fair use: [http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/fair-use- ch...](http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/fair-use-checklist/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I had forgotten that it was s silent movie, but then it has been almost thirty years since I saw it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Random question, if the guy had messaged Paramount pictures and informed them of this cool plan and asked their permission, would it have worked out? Or is that just too optimistic?

Btw remember that bot that tweeted gifs of movie quotes, that counts as fair use?

<comment><USER21> They almost certainly would have ignored him. If he were lucky, he might get a form letter that boiled down to _" No."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I prefer my movies in animated .gif format or ascii via telnet.</comment>


A review of the best robots of 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/22/a-review-of-the-best-robots-of-2009/

<comment><AUTHOR> This article's closing text also references the intriguing term describing our emotional/psychological response range to humanoid robots, the Uncanny Valley:

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

I'm now curious of my own reaction if had a life-life robot right in front of me. There's a great line from the movie A.I. where Gigolo Joe's character (a robot) asks rhetorically, "Do you know why they hate us? It's because they made us too smart, and immortal."

</comment><comment><USER2> > The dry adhesive technique uses micro-hairs and _intramolecular (van der > waals) forces_ to stick bot to wall.

It doesn't change the article much, but something went wrong there. Journalists, check what the keywords mean!

</comment><comment><USER3> At the risk of beating a dead horse,

I think we could be making much more advances in robotics if we dispense of the notion that robots should be bipedal and look like humans.

<comment><USER4> Almost all robots doing work today look nothing like humans. The neat thing about humanoidness is that it provides a benchmark for robotic technology that any technically-minded person can understand.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The video of the Quattro s650, claimed as the world's fastest packing/sorting robot, is particularly impressive as it handles a surprisingly large variety of objects.</comment>


Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170620-the-delicious-flavour-with-a-toxic-secret <comment><USER2> >"I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste," says Raquel. "I was like 'If I want to use tonka bean, I'll use tonka bean.'"

One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and pork, chocolate and flavored vegetable oil.

<comment><USER3> > scallops and stingray

Ray and skate is nothing like scallops.

> calamari and pork

Again, nothing alike.

> chocolate and flavored vegetable oil

Chocolate contains more elements than just cocoa butter, so you can't just replace it with vegetable oil. I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

<comment><USER4> > Ray and skate is nothing like scallops.

They are frequently substituted, cut out in little circles, and sold as "scallops". It is legal to do so (in the US.) The poster is complaining about mislabeling.

<comment><USER5> Frequently where? I believe this is yet another urban legend. The meat looks different.

<comment><USER6> Here in Australia. A lot of people just aren't familiar enough with the real thing to know the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was surprised the article didn't mention nutmeg, which is widely used despite its toxicity, so I tried to figure out how their LD50 compares (i.e. how much tonka nut you need to eat to have a 50% chance of death, and how nutmeg stacks up).

I couldn't find any clear answers for tonka beans and the exact dose of course depends on body weight but the lethal doses for nutmeg were an order of magnitude higher: for nutmeg the doses are given in thousands of milligrammes per kg body weight, for tonka beans they're in the hundreds.

So I guess it could be said that tonka beans are 10 times as deadly as nutmeg.

EDIT: g -> mg, sorry about mixing up the units

<comment><USER8> > for nutmeg the doses are given in thousands of grammes per kg body weight

Is it really fair to call something toxic if the LD50 is more than your bodyweight? I suspect you might have your LD50 value off.

<comment><USER7> Oops, you're right. I meant to say milligrammes. I haven't had much sleep lately and my brain's not working right. I'll edit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Although banning might be excessive, products containing coumarin should be labelled appropriately. If what the article says is true, such as that a teaspoon of cassia cinnamon can put you over the safe limits, then consuming coumarin is dangerous for those with liver problems, recovering from mononucleosis, or when consumed in conjunction with other liver-damaging compounds (i.e. alcohol).

<comment><USER10> Probably also consider caution when taking some analgesics, like acetaminophen/paracetamol.

<comment><USER11> Yea, but those are already properly labeled. I'm not sure what you are getting at?

<comment><USER12> I believe pavement means consuming coumarin while taking analgesics.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, I was thinking that it's probably one more detail a person could neglect, unwittingly nickel-and-diming their way to further liver damage. For a perfect storm, add them altogether on top of a case of undiagnosed hepatitis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another food also banned from the US because of its coumarin content is the herb Hierochloe odorata, also known as bison grass or sweet grass. It's an important ingredient in Żubrówka vodka. For this reason, the Żubrówka you can purchase in the US is essentially fake, containing ingredients meant to simulate or approximate coumarin.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tonka beans are quite popular in Europe and there are a lot of deserts or even jam using them. The thing though is that it tastes awful in large dose, so you're unlikely to encounter a large dose of it...

It's a bit like nutmeg which is also quite toxic in large doses but is not banned in the US (which shows that sometimes those decisions are rather arbitrary)

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone who's a better cook than this author tell us their opinion of the taste?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that part about his cooking experiment was rather ridiculous. It marries very well with vanilla and chocolate. By itself it has a bit of a sweet nutty flavor that is rather complex.

To be slighlty flippant, it's kind of the shitake (or msg) of desert, it enhances the rest of the flavors.

<comment><USER16> The writer is a woman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had the pleasure of tasting a Tonka Bean IPA I brought back from Brazil a couple years ago. Immediately ordered some of the beans (thanks to my freedom as a Canadian (-: ). They're really great in crème brûlée.

<comment><USER18> do you just dust the top of the creme brulee with tonka shavings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tonka (Tonquin) beans traditionally were stored with [nasal] snuff tobacco as a flavor agent.

See page 42: [http://www.top25snuff.com/images/dokumenty/snuff- yesterday-a...](http://www.top25snuff.com/images/dokumenty/snuff-yesterday- and-today,-c.w.-shepherd,-1963.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://www.amazon.com/Tonka-Beans-Wishes-Ravenz- Special/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Tonka-Beans-Wishes-Ravenz- Special/dp/B00JV3G64Q)

But it's illegal?

<comment><USER21> The article says it's illegal to sell the bean _to eat_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> TL;DR with the important stuff bumped (I hate, hate, hate clickbait and burying the lede):

Tonka beans, containing the toxic-to-the-liver chemical Coumarin, are banned for use in food in the US but still used in some high-end restaurants and bakeries, leading to occasional FDA raids. The beans impart flavors akin to vanilla, lavender, cherries, and grass, due to their sharing some chemical components. They're probably safe in small amounts, making the ban controversial. If you have certain rare enzyme disorders or (obviously) existing liver damage, however, the risk of harm is higher. The chemical is present in smaller but still-large amounts in certain other foods and spices, notably common cassia "cinnamon"—the less-common true cinnamon contains only trace amounts. The use of Tonka/Coumarin in non-food products is unregulated, and it is in fact used in cigarettes, e-cigs, and cosmetics. It can be absorbed through the lungs and skin.

Tonka bean: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipteryx_odorata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipteryx_odorata)

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

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

<comment><USER23> "Tonka beans have an intense flavour that chefs and food manufacturers have enthusiastically embraced. There's just one problem – it contains a chemical that could, in large enough doses, kill you."

This is the _first thing in the article_. How is the lede buried?

<comment><USER22> Ah, yeah, I looked past the subtitle and started reading the article itself, which is definitely _not_ ideal inverted-pyramid reporting, as it starts with:

"It's led to raids by law enforcement agencies and mass deaths in animals; in the United States, chefs have 'dealers' who smuggle it into the country."

So: lede's not buried, but the rest of the article's garbage.

I'm fine with nonstandard, creative news writing, gonzo, whatever, when it's justified and done well, but this article's just a rambling eyeball trap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I adopted a pitbull whose shelter name was "Beans". Immediately upon adopting, I dropped the name "Beans" and gave him the moniker Tatanka. My wife occasionally calls him Tonka Beans for short...

He's my best friend.

<comment><USER25> tatanka like buffalo from dancing with wolves? we use that reference for the thundering footsteps of our hairy family members wrestling, playing tag, playing...

<comment><USER24> exactly...we were watching dances with wolves the night before we got him :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am somewhat appalled but not at all surprised to see click bait headlines leaking into the BBC's vernacular.

<comment><USER20> It could be worse, I seen far more clickbaity articles about this topic

>This flavour is so good its illegal

>If your food tastes this good it could kill you

>This flavour caused a drug raid

<comment><USER26> Oh it totally could be worse in an absolute sense. But for the BBC...this seems quite bad. Its one thing to get that language from an ad or distractify. Quite another from the Beeb

</comment></comment></comment><comment> torrent-of-ions Bitter almonds contain cyanide and are used in loads of traditional desserts.

<comment><USER27> It gets deactivated by the heat

<comment><USER28> Yes, but you do not heat it in all desserts.</comment></comment></comment>


Dear HN, I'm worried about us - <AUTHOR> I ran a little experiment... in a popular story, I said basically the same thing three ways:
Angry sarcasm: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465422 (current score: -5)
Definition of my scope of knowledge, followed by the same opinion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465428 (current score: -4)
One-sentence witty sarcasm: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465436 (current score: 9)
Now, I really value our relationship, and it's meant to me more than any other coder/news-community relationship I could have imagined, but this isn't the Hacker News I feel in love with.
We all know "karma doesn't matter", but it definitely shapes the discussion that takes place. So let's reiterate some social guidelines which always helped this relationship flourish. I'll start:
- don't downvote things you disagree with, only things which are egregiously offtopic or seriously detract from the conversation <comment><USER2> McKinsey suggests and practices a rule about growth: don't grow more than 25% per year if you want to preserve your culture. I think once HN started having self-reflective posts it passed into "Shirky Completeness", a stage in communities where the old hats become preoccupied with preserving the culture and cannot keep up with training new users to fit their mould. Sub groups fork off to the point that the several concurrent streams stop interacting. My friend and I realized we were reading completely different aspects of HN.

Karma is (or should be) a proxy for quality. But there are no mechanisms except social ones.

I also suspect that there are certain commercial "reputation" companies that have HN in their sights now. Not spammers per se, but father along the continuum to PR. There have been quite a lot of activity geared toward "whipping the froth" and post-storms around specific topics.

It may be time to fork HN. I actually also suspect PG has already forked HN for private YCombinator use. I haven't seen a post from RTM or TLB for over a year.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if calculating a user's karma as a weighted average of the scores of their last N comments, rather than a sum, would help. Inasmuch as karma scores affect anything, it might gently encourage fewer, more insightful comments.

<comment><USER4> I've been working on something very much like this for the last couple days. Stay tuned.

<comment><USER5> Hey Paul, just putting down a quick observation as why this could potentially penalise some users based on geography (That is if you have it so features are enabled/disabled based on your average karma instead of total)

One of the things I've noticed is that us on the other side of the world have trouble generating the same kind of karma that other's can generate which is really a function of being too late to discussions.

For example, east coast USA is often around 14 hours behind my timezone, so I typically get to conversations about 6-8 hours after they've started and when people are usually heading to bed.

Generally I find my comments down the bottom of threads with 1 or 2 karma.

However, if I post in the middle of the night (usually as I'm heading to bed) or really early in the morning (essentially as I get up) I am in the peak hours of HN, my comments on average do very well for Karma, simply because more people are available to read them and as such vote them up or down accordingly.

Just a thought - you might want to have thresholds based on a person's "prime time" instead of a predefined average.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I know about this problem. I hope to cook up some kind of solution eventually.

<comment><USER5> ok cool - just highlighting it ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People vote their emotion. Can't change it.

You can _pretend_ that people vote based on value of the article, whether it should appear lower or higher on the page, etc. But you're just fooling yourself.

So the karma system rewards people who make the most people feel the best. You can call that cleverness, schmoozing, politics, or bullshit. Because of this, it promotes people thinking of like mind, not necessarily interesting things. It's "let's say happy, slightly interesting things to each other about information that doesn't challenge our worldview"

Known bug.

<comment><USER7> This site has taught me not to downvote with emotion.

I pretty much think "how many votes should this have? how great is the comment?" and I upvote or downvote it based on how incorrect their current rating is.

Lately I find myself upvoting a lot of comments I don't agree with simply because people have downvoted them into oblivion just for having a different opinion.

<comment><USER8> I'll do that too. I'm much more lenient towards people with good opinions here than I am anywhere else.

Even so, sometimes I'm tired and in a bad mood and I'll read somebody making a long, utterly wrong point and I'll downvote it instead of responding. Nobody's entirely innocent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how these scores were affected by their placement on the thread.

I've observed that many good HN comments that are added relatively late often fail to get any additional positive votes -- my guess is that people can't be bothered to scroll down, and/or assume that anything with a low score is not worth reading especially when there are other comments in the same thread with high ratings.

<comment><USER10> I think you're right here. Also depends on the timing.

If you're the first commenter, and you're 'kinda' right, you'll get far more upvotes than if you're late to the party and very right.

I think the reason the 3rd comment got upvoted was that it wasn't a direct comment, but a response to someone else.

Having said that, I think we're reading _way_ too much into this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Each of your comments detracted from the conversation, so I downmodded them all, if that makes you feel better.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Each of your comments detracted from the conversation_

Clever, but not true. The sarcastic ones did, I agree. But the second one started a thread of sum karma ~100. That's the opposite of detracting ;)

<comment><USER12> Your comment suggests an interesting way of rewarding people who further the conversation. Give the user their upmod points of the entire thread that responds.

1 - This makes the witty comeback a lesser strategy for obtaining karma.

2 - People who are aware of this will stop responding to trolls. Even if they publish a well-reasoned response to a troll, they will be giving them karma points. Since this is not a common feature of internet forums, this might be worth spelling out above an active comment form.

3 - The best strategy for karma is to advance the discussion somehow. Even if your point ends up exposing the point of view of people on the other side.

<comment><USER13> _Give the user their upmod points of the entire thread that responds._

That sounds like a surefire way to encourage provocation (a.k.a trolling). If you make a deliberately provocative and clueless statement and _n_ people take the time to exhaustively tell you why you're wrong (for which they get karma), I don't think you deserve any of the karma given to the comments you provoked.

<comment><USER14> Only give people the upmod points of responders if the original comment has positive karma. Or let's say your original comment has karma +4; you get karma of responders up to +4 per response, but not more than that.

<comment><USER15> The more complicated the system, the easier it is to game.

Presumably at some point that ceases to be true for a sufficiently complicated and _good_ system, but my guess is that we're up into AI-complete territory there.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the extra five karma, sucker!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You have chosen a very elaborate way to ignore the Hacker News guideline that suggests "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.".

Your first comment had no context; it could have been applied to any story.

Your second comment suggested that you were wading into a debate about Agile Methods and XP without knowing who Kent Beck is.

Your third comment actually appeared to pertain to the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER4> The magnitudes of the scores seem different than they might have a year ago, but the directions don't.

<comment><USER7> A year ago, comments that weren't blatantly offensive/crummy/rude/jerkish usually didn't fall below 0 points. The restraint of the community is what encouraged me to get so involved.

I'm all for downvoting a bad troll or uninvited meme/rickroll-speak much lower, but it kind of hurts to see real comments being modded into unreadably gray negatives for disagreement purposes.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm probably going to limit negative scores. It's nasty to see people piling on. And seeing nasty things tends to make people nastier.

<comment><USER17> Maybe give people a downmod quota

<comment><USER8> I've seen that work in some cases. In other cases it encourages trolls to post enough times that they can't be downvoted more.

HN has the flagging system in place, though, so this might be worth a try. The Achewood community gives you more downvotes ('lames') the more upvotes you've received, though that might encourage groupthink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure I understand your experiment. You expressed the same thing three ways, so people clearly aren't voting differently according to whether they agree or disagree. They're voting on how you expressed yourself.

Personally, I don't disagree with the votes much. The witty sarcasm has been up-modded too much, which is a problem on all sites, but it was the most concise and least agressive post.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have been on HN for almost 700 days now and read it almost daily, I rarely post, comment, or login but I think the content & community here is best in class.

While there seems to be some discussion about the quality of the community lately, I think the quality of the submissions is still extremely high, and that the comments are still for the most part insightful and valuable.

</comment><comment> mark-t I upvote things that I think are more important for other people to read -- that is, if I think it should be displayed higher on the page.

I downvote things that I don't think other people should bother reading -- that is, if they're uninsightful, irrelevant, or somehow distasteful.

The vast majority of things I just leave alone.

I think the word karma itself is partly to blame. It makes you think you're rating whether the comment is good or bad, but the effect of the up/down arrows is merely to sort comments based on relative quality/value for people who view the thread after you. For a while, I've toyed with the idea of suggesting a new interface that asks users to sort comments, rather than upvote or downvote, but I haven't thoroughly thought about it.

<comment><USER20> I was thinking about two sets of up/down buttons.

"comment adds to/detracts from the thread" and "agree/disagree with the comment"

The idea being to have fewer controversial yet contributing comments downvoted to unreadability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> " _don't downvote things you disagree with, only things which detract from the conversation_ "

Maybe it's time to make the functionality different, make the mechanisms easier to not get wrong with respect to the guidelines.

Perhaps you hit the downvote button and you are given two choices "off topic / detracts" or "I disagree" and the latter is a no-op with respect to karma.

<comment><USER22> downvote <\- disagree

flag <\- detract

how about using it that way? May be PG can have some logic to screen all flagged conversation on flag score than a semantic scan or abusive content.

<comment><USER23> Why should anyone be penalized in any way for disagreeing? Is well thought out disagreement any less valuable than the opinion of someone who agrees with you?

Why would we as a community even want people to know which opinion is more popular (provided both opinions are intelligent and well thought out)?

<comment><USER24> As you implicitly point out, jyothi's suggestion is not how things are normally done here.

Upvoting is generally for agreement or promoting something well written. Downvoting is usually for things that are outright false or trollish. Disagreement is expressed by... well... disagreeing (yes, that means via reply) OR voting up another comment that already expresses your disagreement (no point having many people say the same thing).

I hadn't considered it until you pointed it out, but in the case of trolls, flagging is functionally the same as downvoting, so I really only downvote things that are blatantly false.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All this experiment demonstrates is the extreme importance of style and presentation. If you say something negative in a joyful, entertaining way as opposed to a bitchy way people value your contribution more (enough more that the negative comment is all of a sudden considered a positive contribution to the discussion rather than a low-quality dig at someone).

</comment><comment><USER26> I have noticed that high-quality comments are still voted up pretty well, and while some witty banter gets a rocket ride too it's not unbearable.

This community has been over variations of this topic quite a few times. The conclusion I drew from reading those discussions was that telling people how you think they should behave, and expecting it to actually happen, is not going to work (regardless of the quality of your argument and/or the population).

I've wondered for a while about the effectiveness of two different 'scoring' ideas. One is to make downvoting beyond some threshold (-1, perhaps) cost one or more point of karma for each downvote -- so if you really feel the need to drive something into the dirt, you have to give up some of your own karma as pennance for your obvious lack of self control and inability to follow the site guidelines. The other is to give up on global karma, and split the voting mechanism into categories such as 'agree/disagree', 'signal/noise', etc., so there are mechanisms to express a handful of the different reasons people have for voting.

Just thinking out loud...

</comment><comment><USER27> I tried to think of a one-sentence witty sarcasm that would fit perfectly here, but couldn't. So, instead, I will point out that sometimes one line is all you need. I would much prefer a short reply that contains something new to a longer, very thoughtful, reply that adds nothing to the conversation. If it's even a little bit funny, all the better. In other words, "Omit needless words."

</comment><comment><USER28> 1\. Joel makes disparaging remarks about Beck and his ideas without understanding those ideas well. If you're familiar with XP, you can see that Joel's argument is with more of a strawman than the substance of Beck's ideas. If not, Joel admits he doesn't really know what he's talking about right there in the podcast.

2\. Beck responds, saying that Joel is uninformed and wrong. He doesn't give a lot of specific detail. He's written and said quite a lot already, and Joel's superficial caricature doesn't merit a detailed response.

3\. You accuse Beck of ad-hominem.

It's not a question of agreeing or disagreeing with Beck's ideas, and it's not even precisely about agreeing or disagreeing with your accusation. It's that the whole affair is based on a misapprehension, and you're steering the conversation down a sidetrack.

Between your three distractions, the short and simple one-sentence witticism is less damaging than the emotionally charged and loquacious rants. Maybe that explains the votes. $0.02.

</comment><comment><USER29> i tend to agree, and i follow the mantra of only dishing out karma for things that are either particularly helpful/insightful/interesting, and only downvoting things that are actually detracting from the topic at hand.

everything else is neutral, which would, to me, include something that i don't agree with but doesn't actually detract from anything.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm fairly new here, I think I've been around for 3 months or so now. I try not to down vote anything.

A little bit of self control needs to be had to do so. I may disagree about user x's stance on programming language y - but he's adding to the conversation so I have to back away.

However if we're having a discussion and someone decides to randomly throw in a lolcat reference that has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about, I don't have a problem down voting them, dousing them with gasoline and just watching them burn.

<comment><USER31> That's both a little harsh and by your own standards asks for a downvote...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been here for some time now. HN has changed, but so far the change is not very bad. In fact i think that we were able to steer the change in the community in a good way. HN is a living system, we see imperfections, good, that means we're still alive. Living organisms change all the time, we only have to do it right, so far we've done it well. Discussions like this one are a good sign, were not slacking off and leaving the site to just go downhill.

</comment><comment><USER33> I feel that this is a function of the size of the community plus the type of people in that community. As it gets larger, it gets filled with more of the type you don't want.

Compare the Joel on Software discussion forum with the Business of Software discussion forum. Same site. Same format. Completely different quality of discussion.

We've done experiments to help raise the quality of discussion by limiting the number of posts, having active moderators, deleting rude and obnoxious posts...

But I expect asking your community to shape up doesn't work too well.

The comment about PG forking the discussion probably seems like the only solution. Start over every couple of months or years.

</comment><comment><USER34> Agreed. Perhaps it would help stem the groupthink if points on individual comments were hidden? That way, one would need to judge the comment based on its own merit, rather than going with the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER35> Insight #0: We're not all in the same room; instead of broadcasting a post, use our previous voting preferences to route posts to us.

#1: We read what other people like us read; spread the workload of evaluating new posts amongst the people clusters. As posts gain traction in one group, show to other nearby groups.

Anything wrong with this other than compute time and assuming that the solution costs less than our current social costs (say this was done secretly, is it pareto optimal if the troll doesn't know others don't read their posts?)?

</comment><comment><USER36> If you want to tell people how to use a self-moderating site, you are likely setting yourself up for failure. Either hire moderators, go to Slashdot's system of rewarding certain behaviors with moderator points, or live with the digg/reddit consequences.

Also, controlling how people downvote things is going to be really tough. Many people think comments that they disagree with do detract from conversation. I think one obvious rule should be you can't downvote comments on stories you comment on yourself.

</comment><comment><USER37> PG what about reducing new sign ups?

</comment><comment><USER38> Your post is on the front page. This means we are still actively introspecting as a community. That's a very healthy sign in my opinion, so I wouldn't worry so much.

<comment><USER8> It could also be signs of vanity. Reddit went downhill after a month of a ton of people writing Ask Reddit posts.

I'm not saying we have that problem, but usually, the presence of a topic like this is just taking away from an external news story.

<comment><USER4> I already penalize Ask HN posts (or more precisely, url-less ones) significantly in the ranking algorithm. That seems to keep them from taking over the front page.

<comment><USER38> So 'pgrank' is much more advanced than we think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It really all boils down to each of us continuing to make an effort to maintain a level of discourse here that we all desire. Karma tweaks and algorithms are tools but they absolve very little of the actual hard work it takes from every member of a community.

</comment><comment><USER40> Well don't you think its good the "angry sarcasm" was -5? I think it is very out of place here. the -4 and +9 difference is worrying though (although the points have changed since then... damn timezones !).

</comment><comment><USER41> i like when users can customize the results. eg, categories rather than a single popular ranking. there are some technical/performance issues to consider, but in an ideal world, my ranking could be customizable on:

* submitter karma or username

* number of comments, links in comments (and links should be shown in a toolbox so i don't have to scroll for them)

* max/mean comment karma

* submission domain

* submission key words or category

* popularity-newness continuum position

(edit: i keep forgetting how to make bullet lists, and help only tells me how to make new paragraphs. eit)

</comment><comment><USER42> groupthink is an inherent problem with sites like this...nothing you can do about it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Nice experiment; are you a scientist?

( one sentence witty sarcasm )

</comment><comment><USER44> Invite only?

<comment><USER8> It's been discussed before, and rejected.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373789>

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > don't downvote things you disagree with, only things which detract from the > conversation

True, we shouldn't downvote something just because we disagree with it, but it's more difficult to define what's detracting from the conversation.

Some may disagree with a comment, but since they "can't" just downvote because of that, they deem it "detracting" and maybe even say so. I think we should only downvote comments that are clearly inappropriate, not those that are somewhat off-topic. Everyone has their way of trying to contribute to conversations, and the conversations don't have to fall strictly under whatever topic is in the headline.

</comment><comment><USER46> design flaw.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think the problem boils down to the presence of non-hackers in here. It's mostly the non-hackers that abuse the downmodding (anyone who throws a hissy fit like a little girl and starts the abusive downmodding by accusing someone of trolling over that someone expressing a negative opinion of an MSFT product, IS.NOT.A.HACKER . . . that is only an example, but I think it is clear that 99% of hackers are not the delicate, emotional creatures that are into the abusive downmodding)

The solution would be to simply reject submissions that are obviously not hacker discussion material from being posted (yes, hackers are wont to talk about anything in the universe, but please, straight up MBA/Suit garbage HERE? . . . c'mon - a hacker interested in that can go somewhere else to discuss those topics if he/she wants)

The nearly effeminate debate submissions about css vs tables, for example

The MBA/Suit news

Those go, and most of the undesirables around here go. The obvious problem with this is that censoring is both distasteful and can be counterproductive . . . I don't envy the position PG is in.

I say readers protesting abusive downmodding in the threads themselves would be one positive step.

<comment><USER47> THIS PROVES MY POINT

Hackers would have engaged me in discussion of what I wrote.

Effeminate MBA candidate WANNABE HACKERS would downmod me.

Thank you, you have proven my point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> There's discussion? I just read the links.

</comment><comment><USER49> I agree. I thought the vagina hacking story last week was out of place. Maybe we should discust this story too <http://is.gd/ilUX> Breast Hacking. All of these shoule net the person like myself a lower karma some how preferable with some kind of number system

Like this tweet

lelafin Yay! 105% on my first math test of the semester! ...and where is today's snow??? Wed, Feb 04 09:46:23 from web

Snow!</comment>


Ask HN: Is it reasonable to ask for money for writing a demo app? - <AUTHOR> Every time I apply to some company for a programming position, the company is always asking me to write an application as a test/challenge.
I already have a GitHub account with some examples of my work, and they can very easily check that I'm able to write code.
The challenges they often want me to write aren't that difficult (sometimes they can be), and it's often something I can do in a week or so.
After the fact and when I'm done with the work (usually a week later), I send them links to both: the git repo (hosted on github) and the app that I've deployed to Heroku (because sometimes they ask for that too), and they send me their feedback, which is usually positive and sometimes negative.
There are times I find their feedback can be valid, in that case I learn from it and move on, but often times the reasons can be unreasonable/absurd (or plain wrong) and it feels that they nitpicked a lot on my work, which can be very frustrating.
So, given that most companies don't have any respect for workers' time, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask for proof-of-payment when they ask for proof-of-work?
I understand many companies would be rejecting me for asking to be paid "so early" and maybe I will miss some good opportunities but at least I wouldn't be wasting my time.
Have you ever went through the same thing?
What did you do?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Do you have companies asking you to do something that they expect will take a week? I've never heard of that in a job interview. That said, I have interviewed hundreds of candidates over the years, and my typical take-home request is something like "write this subset of checkers, spend at most 4 hours on it". I've seen other take-home tests where it seems like the expectation is 8-16 hours of work. But never 40 hours of work.

For you to be able to charge for your time, it needs to be that you're writing something useful to them, that they can use - e.g. temp work, spec work, whatever you call it. I've often toyed with that idea to see what the results would be, but never did that.

You should not expect to be paid for work that's not useful to the other party. If they have unreasonable expectations about the time you should spend on proving yourself to them, politely inform them of this; and if they don't change, move on.

It would be interesting to survey hiring companies and get a better idea of what the common and accepted practices are. It's on my to-do list.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah, yeah, its more than reasonable to tell them you expect to be paid for a weeks work. Now the question becomes whether its actually a week's work or its a couple of hours worth of work that just takes you a week to wrap it up.

For the latter case, I put a time limit on it. If I look at it and I think its about an hours worth of work, I'll just do it. If it looks like a day's worth of work, I let them know that and tell them I'm happy to give them a day rate on contracting and either work on that project or pair on something else, and if they push back I politely decline to continue the process. IME good companies know at the outset that their filter projects are substantial enough that their process includes automatic payment for the day.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't entertain the idea of working for free. Your time is valuable. You don't need to work for a company that does not respect your time.

If they want a demo of your work have them look at your Github. If they want more give them an estimate of the time required to write it and what your rate is. Don't let them get away with getting your work for free.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never been tasked with programming assignments, but I'd assumed such things would be aimed at a few hours at most. Asking a potential employee to work a whole week seems way out of line.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it is reasonable to ask for that. I think there is also a question of whether or not you would want to work at a company that doesn't respect your time.

</comment><comment><USER7> In this competitive world, is'nt this too much to ask? If you study your competitors, things might get really tough. Certainly, if you want to put an escrow in place, there are loads of options available. But I really doubt the world is gonna welcome a paid test drive system, unless you are selling a Tesla!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm selling more than just a Tesla, my time is as valuable.</comment></comment>


New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf   - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/ap_on_sc/us_sci_gulf_oil_eating_bugs

<comment><USER2> This is one of the reasons I find microbes so incredibly fascinating. If you can find a niche, there is likely to be some sort of bacterium setting up shop there. Furthermore, practically any carbon source has some oddball microbe who sees it as "dinner".</comment>


Songkick (YC S07) raises $4m series A - <AUTHOR> http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/songkick-raises-4m-million-series-a-from-index/

<comment><USER2> Is there actually a technical distinction between a Series A and a seed round? (I've always assumed it was just size and order of progression.) Their last funding was already $1 million, so wouldn't this be more like a small Series B?

<comment><USER3> It's arbitrary. A lot of people call the first small equity round a Series AA. My guess is that their first round was either a convertible or a Series AA that was mislabeled as a Series A in Crunchbase. Or this one was a Series B that was mislabed a Series A.

Either way, it doesn't really mean much. And "seed round" is more of a general term. Your Series A could be your seed round. It doesn't have any specific meaning, though in their case I'd assume they would consider the YC funds the seed round.

<comment><USER4> A series A means that you're issuing class A stock. An angel round means your issuing a note that will eventually convert to class A stock, aka a convertible note.

The threshold between an angel round and a series A is determined by your articles of incorporation. It's usually between 2 and 5 million. Before your series A you have no valuation b/c it would be a waste of money to determine it. Once you have matured and you raise enough money to go past the 2 to 5 million "convertible threshold," you get a valuation and issue class A stock to your investors and angels. Your angels convert from a convertible note to class A stock at the pre-money valuation and they get to ride the "valuation bump" the series A investors put in for free.

Ok, I reread this explanation and I hated it. This is how I actually understand it:

// globals

double classAThreashold = callLaywers( "Halp!" );

double outstandingShares = callLawyers( "Oh noes!" );

double amountInvested = 0;

void enterNewInvestment( double newInvestment )

{

        if( newInvestment + amountInvested >= classAThreshold ) {

            double preMoneyValuation = getValuation();

            vector< double > percentagePerInvestor;

            for( int i = 0; i < angelInvestments.size(); ++i ) {

                // convertible notes convert here:

                percentagePerInvestor.push_back( angelInvestments[ i ] / preMoneyValuation );

           }

           percentagePerInvestor.push_back( newInvestment / preMoneyValuation );

           for( int i = 0; i < percentagePerInvestor.size(); ++i ) {

               cout << "Shares for investor # " << i << " " << percentagePerInvestor[ i ] * outstandingShares;

           }

           cout << "the company is now worth :"  << preMoneyValuation + newInvestment;

        } else {

           angelInvestments.push_back( newInvestment );

        }

        amountInvested += newInvestment;

}

This is how I understand the whole process. It took my lawyers a long time to explain it all to me and I'm probably still screwing something up. Go easy on C++ :)

[updated a few bug fixes]

<comment><USER5> I love the code explanation. _grin_

<comment><USER3> It needs serious debugging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> they are good citizens too - running hacker events from their office

<comment><USER6> Agreed. The one I attended back in April was a great experience and really useful.

Congrats on the funding :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations are due for a company that helped tip me off to two rocking nights!

<comment><USER8> Glad to hear it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow - congrats guys. And great press following that knock off site covered on TC.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Songkick team is awesome. Many congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks very much guys for the kind words</comment>


Coronavirus: Why Everyone Was Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809 <comment><USER2> Don't USA stats at least somewhat disprove the points made?</comment>


Google, Facebook Reflect Tech Dismay on Trump Immigration Order - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-28/google-facebook-reflect-tech-dismay-on-trump-immigration-order?cmpid=linkedin.bbiz <comment><USER2> One thing I've been wondering with regards to this order is this: How is this possibly constitutional as an executive order?

<comment><USER3> Trump is citing a 1952 law (passed by Congress) that allows the president to suspend entry of aliens.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182)

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looks like someone at google has hacked the google news twitter feed so that it is prioritizing only trump's 2014 tweet asking if a president can be impeached for gross incompetence!!</comment>


Why the average millionaire's college GPA is 2.9 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P09dULFUs8 <comment><USER2> The average GPA of millionaires alone is obviously not enough information to make the conclusions that this video is making. An average GPA of 2.9 is not far off from the average college GPA of regular students, anyways (for, let's say, the ones that graduate). For all we know (from just this statistic), college GPA could be completely independent from who is a millionaire and who is not. We really need information about the shape of the distributions in order to really compare these two groups. For instance, we would, at least, need to know that valedictorians (for the sake of simplicity, just people with 4.0s) have a lower likelihood of becoming millionaires than other groups. The average alone does not help us enough here.

I have a few questions for the people who are really more knowledgeable about the topic:

Is there really a lower incidence of high GPA graduates (3.8-4.0s) becoming millionaires than those closer to the average? Is this distribution tighter around the mean or are there clusters in certain bands of GPAs?

<comment><USER3> Here's a study you might be interested in:

[http://time.com/money/4779223/valedictorian-success- research...](http://time.com/money/4779223/valedictorian-success-research- barking-up-wrong/)

<comment><USER4> Why must there ALWAYS be an auto playing video at the top of every article, that does nothing but play music, and show text.

<comment><USER5> Probably appeals to people with different learning styles than you. Doesn't take much effort for you to stop the video from playing.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't take much effort to start a video if you should so want it. This method has the added benefit of not annoying folks like me who seriously do not appreciate the noise pollution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the original student, Karen Arnold went to great lengths to highlight this counter-intuitive phenomenon as a gendered issue [0] in which women, who tended to get better grades then men [0], would still end up less successful. It's seriously regrettable that her point got lost in this rehashing.

On a side note, I don't have the data, but would expect a similar effect with Asian-Americans, who tend to excel academically, but through socialization and institutional barriers, may fail to hit the "highest levels of success metrics" mentioned in this video. [1]

[0] [https://archives.library.illinois.edu/erec/University%20Arch...](https://archives.library.illinois.edu/erec/University%20Archives/3901018/Topic%20Files/N-Z/Valedictorian%20Study.pdf) [1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2016/01/20/how- asian-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2016/01/20/how-asian- americans-can-break-through-the-bamboo-ceiling/#1022f1511e43)

<comment><USER8> "end up less successful"

If you mean end up less successful at being old millionaires with big houses and flashy cars, that's true. Is it important for males and females to become that in equal numbers? Do we need old millionaires driving around with flashy cars and big houses at all?

What about parents raising children who are upright, have morals, and contribute to wellbeing of society? Are they less successful?

<comment><USER9> Are you suggesting that there _isn 't_ something fundamentally inequitable about large segments of society having a harder time obtaining material wealth?

I agree with what I assume is your position that material wealth shouldn't be the sole metric of success, but I _also_ think the fact that women and minorities struggle relative to white men to obtain material wealth is a problem we should try to solve. Those positions are not contradictory.

<comment><USER8> Is that what we are? Biological-chemical constructions who accumulate metrics of successes? Will people become more fulfilled in their lives because we give them all material wealth?

Why not have a world where people don't think of excessive material wealth as a metric of success _at all_ , where people care about what fulfils their own and other's lives? In this world people don't accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating it in the first place, and the distribution of wealth will also be more equal.

Your position would work directly against this vision, as an example.

<comment><USER10> You're talking about changing human behavior, across the entire species. And if that's the end goal, there are many more critical issues to resolve than (material) wealth judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth noting that millionaires who inherited their wealth had much less of an incentive to care about their GPA since wealth was more or less guaranteed.

Also, children of millionaires will be able to attend top colleges even with substandard high school GPA/SATs [0], meaning they'll tend to underperform once there.

[0] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1047409881995483800](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1047409881995483800)

</comment><comment><USER11> Something to keep in mind when looking at that statistic: The average American millionaire is 62 years old. They went to college in the mid 1970s. Thanks to decades of grade inflation, that 2.9 average GPA is probably the equivalent of a 3.3 today.

<comment><USER12> My GPA when I dropped out was 3.3! Where are my millions!!??

<comment><USER13> You need to be 62 as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Valedictorians often go on to be the people who support the system they become a part of the system, they don't change or overthrow the system."

I really don't buy this explanation at all. Valedictorians might tend towards conformity, but you don't need to be a revolutionary to hit 1M. Anyone with a 20 year career in finance, consulting or tech and reasonable savings can hit a million dollars without doing anything crazy.

<comment><USER14> You're right that a more accurate term in this context would have been "financially successful disruptors and entrepreneurs". $1M technically qualifies you to be a "millionaire," even though you can get there by simply making your mortgage payments for 30 years. However, the title makes sense for YouTube, as most of the population views generally defines "millionaires" as self-made people with many millions of dollars - not just those with $1M tied up in a house or other assets earned over a long period of time.

<comment><USER15> I think the conventional definition of millionaire in the financial world is a person with a million dollars in investments or liquid assets. A home does not count. Of course you may downgrade to a cheaper home (at retirement for example) and take some of the difference in cash.

<comment><USER16> The home does count, as you can either put the money into rent, investment accounts, or a mortgage. I'd consider a house more liquid than retirement accounts.

I still owe $170k on my mortgage but have $1M in net worth. It's all in retirement accounts; all on paper and subject to markets. I surely don't feel wealthy. I'm 45 and hopefully I can get it to $2M - $4M by late 60's. I still don't consider that rich since people woefully underestimate retirement needs.

I'm stating the Dave Ramsey steps to see if I can get the mortgage payed off over 4 years, and get $160k saved for 2x kids college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rich guy here. 2.9 undergrad gpa from a mediocre school. Academics were never my thing. Grit gets you farther than anything else in life.

<comment><USER18> But poor grades indicate a lack of grit.

<comment><USER10> Only in the imposed system of judgement of academics, not your own pursuits.

Many people with poor school histories succeed fantastically when working on their own projects and passions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a millionaire with a 2.8 GPA through college. For me, I was fine trying hard at things I was good at and didn't spend much time on things that were hard. To get a good GPA, you either have to be great at everything or willing to work hard at everything. To start a successful business, you need to work hard at the small amount of things you're good at. And a little luck along the way helps too. I've always thought it would be nice if school's worked similar to businesses in that you could get a far more concentrated education if you wanted. Or, your grades could be the average of your top 5 classes.

<comment><USER20> What do you do for a living? Did you come from a wealthy family or did you earn your millions? I think your point makes a lot of sense but I also think that "a little luck along the way helps" more than most people think.

<comment><USER19> I ran a web agency, 2008-2014. Parents were middle class. I had a unique strength of being able to explain technical solutions in an easy way to CMOs/CEOs and give them ideas of what value the technology could provide that they hadn't thought of before. I also understood what would make my clients successful and how to design a tech project to align with those goals. Everything else I think I was pretty average at, but there seemed to be a lot of value in bridging the knowledge gap between C-level execs and programmers. I just kept doing that until the money wasn't fulfilling anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Question: given two distributions X_1 and X_2 with mean μ_1 and μ_2, standard deviations σ_1 and σ_2, and correlation r, what is the average value of X_1 among data points for which X_2 exceeds (μ_2 + 2σ_2)?

You would only expect millionaires to have very high GPAs if being a millionaire didn't require anything else.

<comment><USER22> _You would only expect millionaires to have very high GPAs if being a millionaire didn 't require anything else._

Slightly more accurately, you would only expect millionaires to have very high GPAs if being a millionaire involves no variables that are independent of GPA. For example, let's say that SAT scores and GPA are highly correlated. If the government runs a program whereby they give $1M to everyone who gets a perfect SAT score after they graduate from college, then the mean GPA of millionaires would skew much higher despite the dependent variable being SAT scores rather than GPA.

<comment><USER21> > If the government runs a program whereby they give $1M to everyone who gets > a perfect SAT score after they graduate from college, then the mean GPA of > millionaires would skew much higher

I don't know. It seems like the GPA of people with a perfect SAT score might fall if they knew about that program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of a T shirt I saw 25 years ago: limit ENGR_GPA -> 0 = Business Major

A 2.9 in STEM is not a 2.9 in non-STEM.

Ha ha, you can still get it:

[https://teespring.com/shop/engineeringlimitequation#pid=226&...](https://teespring.com/shop/engineeringlimitequation#pid=226&cid=5858&sid=front)

<comment><USER23> This fits nicely with my observation that people who major in Management Information Systems are the ones who couldn't cut it in Computer Science because of all the math.

<comment><USER24> Can confirm - failed 1st year university maths, concentrated mostly on nothing too "computer sciencey" for the rest of my undergrad IT degree.

<comment><USER23> Did you have the big colorful picture books about what computers are for and how they work?

<comment><USER24> Books? Didn't need them. And computers just work, no need to know their inner workings. /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is that even true? I have met some rich people and they, in general, do not like to talk about how much money they have or what their grades were.

I don't even know how anybody would conduct a study like this. How do you get a sample size that is representative of the average millionaire? I guarantee you will not be able to get all millionaires to complete your survey, and you won't even be able to get a list of all the millionaires in america.

So you will necessarily have a survey of only a subset of millionaires, most likely a very small subset, and how could you possibly know if this subset is average at all?

The youtube presenter does cite a scientific study, but that is a different study that surveyed valedictorians. Valedictorians are much easier to track down, as being a valedictorian is a public award that gets big mention in every yearbook.

So, no I am not sure this is true. I suspect this might be one of these completely made up factoids that become famous and travel widely because they seem true and people kind of just want them to be true. Something like Malcom Gladwells's 10 000 hours rule.

Of course it is possible that this is true, or the true average is another mediocre number. I would not be surprised, but even if this is the case there are many other possible explanations other than rule breaking.

As an aside I have to say that we must be a little careful about worshiping rule breaking rich people. Rule breaking can be very beneficial to society if it bring about more wealth. But it can also be very harmful to human beings and downright evil. The rules being broken may be the laws of the land or moral rules we all feel are important. In that case I do not think being a rule breaker is an excuse.</comment>


Docker Raises $95M Series D Round for Its Container Platform - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/docker-raises-95m-series-d-round-for-its-container-platform/ <comment><USER2> I don't mean to be overly dismissive or anything, but what does Docker make that customers will pay for? This is an awful lot of money to throw at a company that doesn't have a business plan, let alone technology that can't be readily replicated.

<comment><USER3> For me it seems to fall into the same sort of setup as Mongo or MySQL in the long term, and MySQL did alright ($1bn).

<comment><USER4> I fail to see how they are in any way comparable. MySQL and Mongo both have made a lot of money selling into the enterprise with the decades old per server licensing model. Now Mongo is starting to make inroads into the data warehouse space with their partnerships with Teradata, SAP etc. They aren't selling a PaaS or web application that will just be used by a development team here and there.

Docker seems to be much closer to Atlassian. Which could well be their biggest competitor one day.

<comment><USER5> It seems that Docker could follow a very similar path as MongoDB -- be the preeminent supporter for docker and supplier for turnkey + validated solutions. Building an ecosystem of add-ons (closed or open source) around the core product puts them in an even more central role

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems to me that Docker is heading down the same path as MySQL, whether knowingly or not. Perhaps they are trying to get everyone on board, then sell to a BigCo a la Oracle, telling them "here's the whole Docker ecosystem, go ahead and extract money from it." Who is Docker's actual customer? The user or BigCo?

<comment><USER7> I thought MySQL AB was already extracting money, and lots of it, when it sold? Like $100 million in revenue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazing news. Decided 6 months ago to go with Docker (both in dev and in production) for a financial application. It was a risk, and I got lots of resistance from the other devs and the security expert on the project.

Docker is simply amazing. I'm currently using Grunt to manage the images/containers, but Docker Compose will replace some of that in the future.

That being said, here are what you should expect:

1\. It's not a VM. What work in DEV will not work in PRODUCTION. Be ready for some nasty debugging.

2\. It's better to use the same OS (e.g. Centos) for both DEV and PRODUCTION.

3\. Image sizes are not really small. Docker is consuming around 4GB of space for 6 containers.

4\. Sometimes it breaks. I just need to destroy the whole thing and start clean. But that's _Grunt ReRerun_. And it works nicely.

5\. I can update the code base, data, the applications, the whole OSes structure with _Grunt ReRun_. Takes a couple minutes.

<comment><USER9> I have similar experiences to what you listed... and it's why I'm going to be moving away from docker in the mid-future. That 'nasty debugging' consumes a ton of time. I'm probably going to head back to .debs. I see a place for docker, but not on my production servers. It consumes gobs of disk space in practice and requires a lot of hand-holding; an extra layer of stuff to work around and to debug.

I was resistant to it at first as they'd just started using it in the company when I arrived, but the devs kept talking about how wow it was. Fast forward to today, and not a single dev has it installed on their machine. None of them are interested.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. What do they do now?

<comment><USER9> Generally what they were already doing, as only one or two actually installed docker in the first place. They use Gulp to manage their dev systems, but I'm not sure if they use any other tools.

<comment><USER10> Right, so it never really took. My experience is that it doesn't happen by itself, and needs focus from someone to make it work for you, much like you can't just install Jenkins and declare CI "done".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm really exited to see which business model will be chosen to get a ROI. Docker is very popular but since most existing enterprise vendors adopt or integrate it, I'm not yet convinced that Docker Inc has some unique assets to make money out of.

<comment><USER12> I went to a couple of events where Docker was a topic in Europe, the general feeling is that the solution looks great, but every single time a speaker/organizer asks to raise a hand if using it in production, nobody does. I mean, it's definitely a technology having a momentum, but I still have to find someone that heavily used it in production.

<comment><USER2> That's because it isn't ready for production yet, and certainly not at scale. You're in for a world of hurt if you try to deploy hundreds of containers at once from a central registry. And there's not yet a way to bind containers to physical interfaces that DHCP themselves at runtime.

Docker solves problems for developers, and soon it might solve problems in production. But for large deployments, that day is not today.

<comment><USER13> Well, we're currently running 80+ instances in my company using Docker to deploy every app. I'm the responsible for the push to this Docker-only approach, given that we had a bunch of legacy apps that were running in Chef- managed nodes (that I've also implemented), so I don't think that it's a developers-only tool, it's already pretty mature and I've not yet run into requiring to bind a container to some physical interface or whatever, the virtual interface has been great thus far.

<comment><USER2> How large are your images? How long does it take you to fetch them from the registry?

Binding to a physical interface is required if any of your apps will share port numbers on a host. If you don't have network ACLs that control traffic between VLANs, and you have a discovery service to manage rendezvous, then maybe you can get away without it. But many of us cannot.

<comment><USER13> Our images range from 600MiB to 2GiB in general. When you say share port numbers what exactly are you referring to? App X listening to port M in eth0 and app Y listening to port M in eth1? We don't really have this use case so for us it has been pretty simple.

I think that your use case is a lot more complex than ours or I'm misunderstanding some part, are you using bare metal servers in your own data center? I'm trying to grasp what's your architecture like so I can see what parallel can I make to ours.

<comment><USER2> You didn't mention how long deploys take. 2GiB x 80 servers = 160GiB; assuming a 1Gb/s interface on the repository, it'll take a minimum of 22 minutes for all the servers to get their new bits.

<comment><USER14> The nice part about Docker is the images are composed of layers, so you only have to re-download a layer when it changes. In practice, we pull all of our base layers when we bake our AMIs, so spinning up a new instance is pretty quick and each new deploy only has to update the top layer that contains our code.

Honestly, the only issue when it comes to image size is the initial developer pull either when they onboard to a team or when they bork their boot2docker install (which, disturbingly, happens way too often).

<comment><USER2> Many applications are very large (consider a Rails app with all of its prerequisite Gems). Granted, this isn't Docker's problem, but it presents practical distribution bandwidth constraints that Docker doesn't currently solve well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      he told me that the company still hasn't spent most of its Series B funding yet

They raised a $15M Series B that they haven't even burned through, and yet they've raised a $40M Series C and another $95M D round? That is crazy.

<comment><USER16> Docker is either going to find a way to be a major player in the VM/Container market or its going to crash and burn.

Raising money when the VCs are willing to throw it at you is a good strategy when you know you'll burn through alot.

<comment><USER17> > Raising money when the VCs are willing to throw it at you is a good strategy > when you know you'll burn through alot.

Yes. Doesn't it also indicate that you are giving a lot of the company up at the current valuation? ie: you are betting that a (near-term) future valuation is lower, so you want to lock in the money now.

<comment><USER18> > ie: you are betting that a (near-term) future valuation is lower, so you > want to lock in the money now.

Or, you know, you think the money now effects the long-term valuation such that, if the current owners are giving up _x_ proportion of the company in the proposed round, with _v0_ as the anticipated future value of the company if the round doesn't happen and _v1_ as the anticipated future value if it does, the owners think that _v0_ < _v1_ ×(1- _x_ )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> OK. I'm calling market top. Love docker, but to date I've given them zero dollars and do not anticipate that changing. The Microsoft strategy looks cloudy at best.

<comment><USER20> For that to be more relevant, you might want to tell us what role you're speaking as, what you know about Docker's paid services and why you're uninterested, what other similar services you do pay for, etc.

<comment><USER19> My role is data scientist for a venture backed marketing startup, but I also wrote/designed all the tech used for ETL and reporting. I use docker in production to sandbox models that are called by the client via a web app. I admin a private registry that is used by other groups at the company.

All of this was free. Setting up a private registry takes about thirty minutes. Orchestration via ansible is also free.

I'm "calling top" in the most cheeky way possible, so be need to get your back up. I love docker and use it heavily. It is a brilliant product, but the brilliance to me is also in the fact that you really don't need much else beyond the basics. And I realize that they are moving incredibly fast and there is potential to see something that will blow my mind and cause me to open my wallet.

If you're an enterprise user coming from Microsoft world, maybe paying for docker services makes sense. I prefer to just take an hour and do it myself for the cost of infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Since Docker is not ready to officially be used in production:

\- Those of you using it in production, how are you handling security?

\- How secure has Docker proven to be in general?

<comment><USER22> Containers per se do not reduce security. Most of the security issues are related to other changes, eg if you switch from VMs to Docker you are removing the VMs that may have been providing security, thats not really a Docker issue per se. If you run stuff with increased privileges in containers (ie root, or some capabilities) then you may decrease security too, but your applications should not be doing this.

You can argue that the docker daemon itself (which is a big monolithic process running as root) is a security issue (RedHat certainly do). You can also argue that it makes security processes harder, as you dont have workflows in place to audit containers, make sure they are updated etc, but thats a different issue.

<comment><USER23> Eeehhh, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Docker containers, as of 1.6, do reduce security. Without user namespaces, container root is system root, and the number of images that run as container root is incredibly high (where they might otherwise be running as system non-root). 1.7 should change this, as we'll finally get user namespaces, though I don't know how many people will end up using them; let's hope they're on by default, I guess.

<comment><USER22> But if you run stuff as root you already lost, container or not. Why are so many people running containers as root? Is it because they are running whole distros that expect that?

User namespaces are going to be really complicated to work with not really convinced they are the panacea people expect. Not running as root is much easier!

<comment><USER23> Sure. I'm just saying that running stuff as root is the de-facto standard in the container world; it isn't outside of the docker ecosystem. Take, for example, the docker registry image[0]. Runs as root. In what world, other than the docker world, would that be considered acceptable?

[0] [https://github.com/docker/docker- registry/blob/0.9.1/Dockerf...](https://github.com/docker/docker- registry/blob/0.9.1/Dockerfile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I dont think people will put private application docker file on hub even with paid plan

</comment><comment><USER25> Please explain to me the value of these articles, I understand that hacker news is run by capital venturous but I still feel that we got minimal value from just ogling at the absurd amount of money that the startups are getting.

<comment><USER26> Docker is a YC graduate so it makes sense for there to be extra interest here.</comment></comment>


F#k Boring Job Boards - <AUTHOR> http://delavisjobs.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> F#k I only clicked on this link because I thought it's about F#</comment>


I'm terrified I'm not cut out for this - <AUTHOR> I understand you guys get these posts daily, but I'm still gonna write this. I think I mostly need to vent and if someone cares enough to reply then great, if not, no worries.
I'm in an apprenticeship for this large company in the Bay Area. Me and another apprentice are building an app over the next couple of months. I know that they hired us and expect us to not know anything but I can't help but freak out right now. I'm waaaay overwhelmed by what we're building. There's so much shit I have 0 clue about and this weekend I spent it all in my room reading docs and doing tutorials hoping I can somewhat understand how i'm gonna do xyz feature.
I don't know how I'm gonna manage this, after this app we're gonna be working with a team and i'm so nervous I won't be able to complete tickets and of being incompetent.
Someone tell me they've been through this before and made it out. This weekend was so rough for me mentally and emotionally. <comment><USER2> It's gonna be alright man. Just keep doing your best and don't be afraid to ask for help.</comment>


Show HN: We've made sample apps that show how to work with iOS14's SKAdNetwork - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/singular-labs/Singular-SKAdnetwork-App <comment><AUTHOR> Let us know if you have any questions on the topic

</comment><comment><USER2> amazing!</comment>


Growing a bamboo bicycle - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1771226/for-bamboo-bicycles-sustainability-is-growing

<comment><AUTHOR> Does any one know of other application that this can be applied to?

<comment><USER2> For inspiration, visit <http://arborsmith.com></comment></comment>


Censoring Myself for Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2015/03/25/censoring-myself-for-apple

<comment><USER2> Really poor title, because the tldr is that he says he is _not_ censoring himself for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> cry about it.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want people to stop talking about it, don't keep writing articles about how you wish people would stop talking about it. The original post about Apple software falling short of the hardware seems unremarkable, I've heard that same sentiment from many Apple users. So it got blown way out of proportion for a day to fill the Internet News Hole and many people made silly extrapolations or inferences...what of it?</comment>