Parrondo's Paradox: How two ugly parents can make a beautiful baby - <AUTHOR> http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/august22012/index.html <comment><USER2> Isn't it a little sketchy to have one of the "games" be a game that takes into account outside information like your balanace?

Here's another "paradox":

Game A: You lose a dollar every time.

Game B: If the last game you played was game A, you win a million dollars. Otherwise, you lose a dollar.

AAAAAAA... loses, BBBBBBB... loses, but ABABABABA... makes you rich!

Suddenly it doesn't seem so paradoxical to me.

<comment><USER3> Your balance isn't really outside information. In a game like Texas Holdem Poker, your balance is a key factor in how much you bet.

But if we change the game so that "if you flip more than two heads in a row, your chances of flipping a third head are only 10%; if you flip two tails in a row, your chances of flipping a third tail are 90%", the result is the same, the odds turn more negative over time than Game A and you should switch to A after two consecutive flips.

<comment><USER4> It's not your balance that matters there, it's the amount of money you _choose_ to bring into the game at the start. If I could boost my odds by bringing in only $498 dollars of my five hundred then I would do so every time.

Your actual balance is ridiculous to include in a game's calculations.

<comment><USER5> In texas hold'em your actual balance is a very significant factor in your optimal behaviour in a particular hand. Short-stack tactics are different to big stack tactics.

<comment><USER4> Okay, I didn't make myself clear enough. Let's say you have a thousand dollar bill in your hand. You decide to convert $600 into chips because that's a multiple of three, and then you put $400 into your room safe. Your _real_ balance is 1000, but your balance _for the game_ is 600. Your stack tactics are based on the 600. Your chance of winning is based on the 600 you chose to bring. Anything that counted the 400 in your room vault would be ridiculous. Yet the game in the blog would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting something more along the lines of actual genetics, in which case two ugly parents make stunning children all the time. It is called hybrid vigor. The overwhelming amount of our produce is bred this way. They will inbreed corn like made so that it is 100% homozygous, but do it in five different pools. The resulting offspring of any two inbreds from two different pools is amazing. Inbred corn plants are about 4-5 feet tall and ugly as sin, but their offspring are 8 feet tall and near perfect.

<comment><USER7> And if the parents aren't homozygous it could be attributed to recessive genes. Same reason why two brown-haired parents can have a blond child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It didn't seem like much of a paradox to me, since game B is really two different games, and interleaving plays of game A changes the likelihood of playing B1 vs. B2. Interesting, perhaps, but not terribly unintuitive.

<comment><USER9> Right. When I got to the part about Game B, my first thought was, "Wait, this isn't what you described in the story above..."

What a crock. I think the Monty Hall Problem (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem>) is far more vexxing and interesting.

<comment><USER10> I think the Monty Hall Problem is also extremely misleading in its formulation.

Take Wikipedia's formulation for example: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

What's not being explicitly said here is that the host knows what's behind the doors (this part is said) but that he also always chooses the goat. With that information, it's pretty clear that when the contestant first made the choice of a door, the probability of getting the right one was 1/3. The probability that the right door is among the other two is 2/3. NOW however, the host removes the one of (or the only) wrong option among those two doors. The thing to realize is that the host opening one of those doors does not give us ANY new information that would change the distribution. Therefore, the other door that the contestant didn't pick must have the probability 2/3.

<comment><USER9> It's true that that's the crux of the Monty Hall problem, but it's also the understood nature of it. You just don't realize how much impact that would have on the outcome unless you actually start delving into the outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the other examples at the bottom tucked in there is a great example of how seemingly negative things can actually turn out to be a positive thing, this example is talking about the board game chutes and ladders.

      I explained the seemingly paradoxical situation where it is
      possible to add additional chutes to a game board and
      reduce the average length of a game! How come? Well, if you
      have a long ladder in the game (such that landing on one
      will propel you far up the board for a strong advantage),
      and you miss it; If the added additional chutes on the
      board send you back to before this long ladder, then you
      have a second attempt to hit the long ladder!

wow- I love this, it supports the notion to 'fail early' in business

</comment><comment><USER12> As much as I like coin-flipping examples, I think the Brownian ratchet (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet>) is a much clearer explanation of this phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER13> Uh... Something's fishy with the first graph of the 'drunken man's walk'. It's well known that the random walk veers away from the zero-line at a rate sqrt(N), where N is number of flips. Normalized by the number of flips, the random walk converges to the zero-line at the rate 1/sqrt(N). The graph does neither, so I'm not quite sure how it was generated...

<comment><USER13> Oops, I misinterpreted how the graph was generated... but the complaint still holds. The averaging of a million trials will cut the amplitude of the fluctuations by a factor of 1000, but the sqrt(N) effect should still be visible. (Note that if you multiply the Y-axis by sqrt(million) = 1000, then you get a scale of about 20, which is approx sqrt(500))

<comment><USER14> I'm not very good at this stuff, but I don't see anything wrong with the graph. It hovers around 0. A Brownian motion starting which starts at 0, will, at time T be normally distributed with mean 0 and variance T.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Random_Walk_example.svg>

Some of them go up, some go down, but all will cross 0 infinitely many times, and all the paths averaged will equal 0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone explain the uptown / downtown train story to me?

If the downtown train arrives and departs a few minutes after the uptown train arrives and departs, respectively, why would he take the downtown train more? It seems to me that if he missed both trains, then he would take the uptown train, as it would arrive earlier.

<comment><USER16> He is saying the opposite. The downtown train arrives on the hour and the uptown train arrives at 5 minutes after the hour.

<comment><USER17> No, he does not say the opposite:

>even though the trains arrive with the same frequency, the downtown train departs just a few minutes after the uptown train has departed. Because of this, there is only a narrow time window in which the man is able to get on the uptown train.

He _should_ say it like you suggested though.

<comment><USER16> You're right. I was looking at the diagram. Clearly the author accidentally swapped the two names in that sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Babies are made through love, love is beautiful, ergo babies are beautiful. Q.E.D. (I read the whole post, it was an interesting read)

<comment><USER19> Extending your discussion, love is nothing but chemicals firing in our brain. Maybe human beings are evolved to trigger release chemicals in the brain when certain conditions are met, which could possibly be deterministic? I agree that each person is different, but we're all same in the same way. Think of the attraction to the opposite sex as a seeded random number. Sure, we don't know the seed but if you know a person well enough you're able to make fair judgement and confidently claim that "X isn't Y's type".

I'd love to continue discussion on this philosophical point. "Love" is afterall nothing but an abstract construct which has proven beneficial in furthering the species when we were being chased by lions and bears.

<comment><USER20> Love is "just chemicals" in the same way that anger is "just chemicals". The chemicals are the substrate, but to say that is not very informative. Analogously you also wouldn't say computer software is "just electrons". Beware of "nothing buttery"; reduction is a great thing, but only if we truly understand the reduction (as in, heat is movement of molecules).

Re: determinism, I expect the whole process to be non-deterministic through and through, such that say what you had for breakfast might as well have some amount of influence on your social interactions.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. Chemicals are the implementation. That doesn't mean they are the essence.

In fact, I think the design of a thing is closer to its essence than the implementation. _Moonlight Sonata_ is neither just bits, nor just vinyl, nor just vibrating strings. In any implementation, it is _Moonlight Sonata_. The essence of it is the music, the information, Beethoven's intent and insight.

Love is the same way. Of course consciousness and will are implemented in chemicals. They have to be implemented in _something_. That does not make them less real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm unable to reproduce the results. Balance is always negative. What's wrong with my code?

      // for a graph
      var balances = [];

      // constants
      var winnings =  1,
          losses   = -1,
          epsilon  = 0.05;

      function play(probOfWinning) {
          return Math.random() < probOfWinning ? winnings : losses;
      }

      for (var experiment = 0; experiment < 100; experiment++) {
          var balance = 0;
          for (var flip = 0; flip < 1000000; flip++) {
              if (flip % 3 == 0) { // game A
                  balance += play(0.5 - epsilon);
              } else { // game B
                  balance += Math.round(balance) % 3 == 0 ? play(1/10 - epsilon)
                                                          : play(3/4  - epsilon)
              }
          }
          balances.push(balance);
      }

<comment><USER23> The problem is you are using a rounding of the balance across the million tries to decide on game B. The choice of which game B to use need to not be dependent on the other experiments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > (I think I've probably lost a good number of people in this post already, so > if you're still reading this, I assume you're familiar with Eigenvectors).

Actually, no! I was kind of hoping that by reading this section, I might find out about them. Why write a blog post section specifically targeted at those readers for whom it holds no new information? The responsible thing to do here, if you really didn't feel like explaining some key component of your discussion, would have been to provide a reference to someone else's explanation. Now it feels like you were wasting my time -- 'oh, hey kid, wasn't talking to you!'

Also, as others above have mentioned, the generalized introduction (a way to make 2 losing games into a winner!) does not lead intuitively into the extremely case-specific exposition.

</comment><comment><USER3> Imagine if instead of Game B being dependent on your cash balance, let's say Game B is blackjack and your chances of winning depend on the number of 10s/face cards that have already been played.

If the collective number of 10s/face cards already played is <= 25%, you have a positive chance of winning and you play blackjack.

If the collective number of 10s/face cards already played is >= 35%, you have a negative chance of winning. You switch to roulette until the balance of 10s/faces works back in your favor.

I think that could be a winning strategy when playing blackjack and roulette together. LOL

Edited to add: I think the author's point is that there are games where you can calculate your chances of winning "this hand" even though your chances over time are negative, and you should avoid playing (switch to something where your chances are better) when your chances are low. Which is a bit of an obvious point for such a long article filled with graphs.

<comment><USER4> _I think that could be a winning strategy when playing blackjack and roulette together._

Or you can get even more money by s/roulette/taking a nap/. You're just changing your bet size (including $0) in blackjack based on the current odds. No fancy 'combining two losing strategies'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "The key to understanding this paradox is that the two games are not independent."

Well... can it really be called a paradox then? It's more of a classical failure at defining the problem since the probability distribution of B definitely depends on A - the description is just more convoluted, but it's not a contradiction.

</comment><comment><USER26> I read the article and understood what he's saying - but how exactly do two ugly parents make a beautiful baby?

<comment><USER3> They don't. But two losing games (the parents) can be combined to make a winning strategy (the beautiful baby).

(I read the whole article til the end waiting to see what this had to do with genetics. It doesn't.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What does the "mixed nuts" example at the bottom have to do with this phenomenon?

</comment><comment><USER28> I am not sure whether the conclusion is right. But the explanation is lame since the second game depends on the your cash status which could be affected in a favored way to make the second game a winning one.

</comment><comment><USER29> Struggling with this one. Help me out: If I play roulette and bet black, red, red, black, red, red, etc., I'm going to win?

<comment><USER30> One way to think about it is that there are really three games: game A (a slight loser), and games which I'll call BL (losing) and BW (winning). If you win a couple rounds of BW, the casino changes you to playing BL for a round. But if you don't play BL and instead go play A for a round, then when you come back to the table you'll be back to game BW. So you use game A, a slight loser, to avoid BL, a bad loser.

Playing only A is a slightly losing strategy. Playing a mix of BW and BL is a losing strategy, because BL is so harsh. But if you play BW mixed with A, _you combine big wins with small losses_ , and therefore come out ahead.

This doesn't work in roulette because, no matter what color you play, it's a slight loser. Black and red are both examples of game A, so no matter how you mix them you're just playing AAAAAAAA.

<comment><USER31> But you don't loose on two tables equaly, so what if you play on two tables A and B, play ABBABB... and chose colors randomly?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: UK government software experience? Help an OSS project - <AUTHOR>

I am running a campaign (www.oss4gov.org) to get OSS into local government.  A pilot project will need to interface with CRM solutions like Northgate, and workflow like eBase and systems like UNIFORM.
If you have experience of these systems, please shout (my contact details: firstname.lastname@example.com and rest in profile)
I am looking to put together enough knowledge that the OSS pilot stands a chance of success, and works nicely in the eco-system.
Thank you <comment><USER2> I fully support this idea - but you might be best approaching the GDS and working out ways to apply pressure to local government. Indeed, check out the alphagov github at [https://github.com/alphagov](https://github.com/alphagov) \- much of the groundwork for digital government services has been laid-out, and we should build on this where possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Occassional tweets with @liammax tell me that central gov is heading _that way_ and local gov is obliged to follow. The pressure is there, don't worry. What is not there is easy, default choices for councils to make that leap to OSS.

I am writing up an interesting interview today with Dev Manager of my local borough council about the problems faced getting OSS apps out there. That chat instigated this Ask btw.

<comment><USER2> Cool, I'll look forward to reading it - the disparity between QoS with local councils is embarrassing, and as these are public services, the software exposing these services should be open source simply out of principle.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any coders that don't type fast? - <AUTHOR>

Non-hackers are sometimes impressed with my typing speed.  When I was in high school, I had to take a typing class.  I intentionally scheduled it at as my final class of the day so I could finish all the assignments fast and leave school early.
My typing skills come from having to learn to type in the dark in the middle of the night when I was a kid.  I had to sneak my computer use late at night because I had school the next day and was supposed to be sleeping.  That experience is probably common for many nerds.  I also got the original Microsoft Natural Keyboard when that was released ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Natural_keyboard ).  That also improved my typing.
Are there any coders in this world that don't type fast? <comment><USER2> Yes. I probably peaked on typing speed (at something like 40 or so wpm corrected) long ago when I actually took a typing class using manual typewriters.

(And for me, these days, TypeMatrix is the way to go.)

<comment><USER3> I just looked at the TypeMatrix site. Looks cool 'n all, but I'm wary of their keyboard configuration (grid of even rows and columns of keys) that's so physically different from most very other keyboard you might encounter (standard staggered key arrangement).

I'm not saying that standard staggered is inherently superior, but it is what most people learn on and use.

Comments?

<comment><USER2> After a short period of confusion, I can now switch back and forth with no hassle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes.

<comment><USER5> slowders they're called.</comment></comment>


KNOVVI: A Game-Changing Platform for Knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/knovvi/kdeocipnddjdlgglcdcfppfoanknhcnn

<comment><USER2> This actually looks like something that could be useful if it gets enough users. Can't wait to give it a try.</comment>


Check out the new Startup Genome app - <AUTHOR> http://startupgenome.cc/navigate-your-startup-to-success-with-the-sta

<comment><USER2> We're going to use this and put results into the Habit Labs Axioms. Great job Max, Bjoern, et al.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Startup Genome is a phenomenal tool and feedback mechanism for startups in any phase. I've been very impressed by what I've seen in this project. Keep up the work guys, you're off to an amazing start!!!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great work guys! Definitely a really interesting field to continue to dig deep into. Start ups come in all shapes and sizes, but the underlying patterns are extremely interesting and important!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is so awesome, congratulations guys, keep up the great job, you are definitely discovering the fundamentals behind great entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Startup Genome team: Thanks so much for your contributions and for helping the startup ecosystem evolve. We appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fantastic! Startup Genome is gonna help everyone who is into entrepreneurship. Keep up the good work guys.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great! I'm glad I can be a part of it. Congrats!!

</comment><comment><USER9> Great! Finally there's method to the madness of startups.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting indeed</comment>


SIMD, SIMT, SMT - parallelism in NVIDIA GPUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/simd-simt-smt-parallelism-in-nvidia-gpus.html <comment><USER2> A very good and reasonably approachable discussion of the pros and cons of how CUDA programming actually is realized in hardware. The explanation of how the GPU's handle context switching is particularly thoughtful and enlightening. It took me a long time to figure this out a couple months ago, a guide like this would have saved me a few nights.

I was surprised that the author didn't once use the term CUDA though, they even discuss actual syntax from it, but don't mention the language (extension) once.

<comment><USER3> Probably because the hardware is language agnostic. You would consider how the hardware works no matter if you were using GLSL (GL's shader language), HLSL (D3D's shader language), OpenCL (Compute sister language to GL/GLSL), DirectCompute (Compute sister language to D3D/HLSL), or CUDA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really doubt you could use CUDA on AMD or Intel GPUs, after my knowledge CUDA runs only on NVIDIA platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice article. In my limited experience with OpenCL programming, the most difficult thing is understanding how memory access patterns affect performance. It's not made easier by the fact that it may be different on different platforms.

I wonder if what's needed is a higher-level representation that can compile to the best access patterns for the given hardware. (And something that can try several access patterns for your problem and choose the most efficient one.) GPU programming is still quite new, so I guess it's bound to show up eventually.

If it can't handle _all_ possible situations, such a tool would be still be useful, even if you end up having to go down to the CUDA/OpenCL level for certain problems that are too difficult to express declaratively.</comment>


The Official Guide to Tokenized Securities - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@apompliano/the-official-guide-to-tokenized-securities-44e8342bb24f <comment><USER2> good overview of how tokenized securities could disrupt the finance industry</comment>


Not Safe for Not Working On - <AUTHOR> http://dankaminsky.com/2014/09/03/not-safe-for-not-working-on/

<comment><USER2> Surprisingly long-winded article that suggests that phone camera apps have a "privacy mode" for creating adult images similar to browsers' "incognito mode" for browsing said images.

Is this not the premise that Snapchat was built upon (except for the part where people could use curl or wget on the photos instead of using the app to view them)?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a site for consultants / mentors "as a service"? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a side project and learning a new programming language at the same time. Sometimes I get stuck with questions that seem like they would take an experienced person a few minutes of time to answer to steer me into the right direction.
Usually I hop onto IRC, ask friends, open GitHub issues, ask on StackOverflow etc. but answers there usually take a while to trickle in and also I don't want to burden open source maintainers with "usage" questions if it's not strictly a bug.
I guess what I'm asking is kind of a money-based bounty system coupled with a platform like StackOverflow. Is there such a thing?
PS: I'm not an impatient person, just sometimes it would be nice to get the opinion of a professional on a question like "what would be the Rails way of solving that issue?". <comment><USER2> I have always wanted to build that service even though never got a chance yet. I even have the domain registered for it (experthours.com). There is the generic clarity.fm and then there is sites like codementor.io. But I am not quite happy with both. The idea is that you will be able to connect with someone who is really good at 1-2 things and then give you tips as a consultant. They won't do the project for you but guide you. Something like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had generally positive experiences on [https://www.codementor.io/](https://www.codementor.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds pretty interesting, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was a mentor on codementor.io for a bit. My experience was that there is a significant overhead in understanding the problem for not much gain.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure the financial incentive of such a site would be significant enough to generate a faster response time than the channels you already mention.

Besides, isn't part of the beauty of side projects that you get to go down rabbit-holes figuring how something really works without economical pressure?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Besides, isn't part of the beauty of side projects that you get to go down > rabbit-holes figuring how something really works without economical > pressure?

Definitely, that's the whole reason I'm doing it (Learning Rails in this case). Part of what is fun for _me_ is also to see what's the "right" way of doing it so getting some professional input sometimes would be nice.

I do also have a bunch of other projects with different objectives where I just want to ship something even if it's held together by some duct-tape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not for technical stuff, but for managerial stuff: [http://leadingup.co](http://leadingup.co)

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://clarity.fm/](https://clarity.fm/) for business advice, less technical questions.</comment>


How Math and Computational Geometry Influence Digital Art - <AUTHOR> https://blog.filestack.com/thoughts-and-knowledge/image-triangulation-algorithm/ <comment><USER2> Are there machine learning ways of achieving the same result? I have seen many articles about enhancing images using machine learning. Any pointers would be great.

<comment><USER3> Check out this: [https://medium.com/artists-and-machine- intelligence/neural-a...](https://medium.com/artists-and-machine- intelligence/neural-artistic-style-transfer-a-comprehensive- look-f54d8649c199). It's the tech that powers apps like Prisma.</comment></comment>


NeverBlock, much faster IO for Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://oldmoe.blogspot.com/2008/08/neverblock-much-faster-io-for-ruby.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks like a really impressive boost. The usage seems like it could be simplified, but the performance is definitely there.</comment>


Inkless and tonerless rewritable printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQiXONfGwDc&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> The price will go down of course; but note that grayscale and high-res is out of the question. Looks like about 250dpi resolution based on the closeups I saw in the video.

<comment><USER3> If history of tech tough us anything, is that both the price will go down and the res will go up with time.

Given the amount of prints done at our offices (and costs of replacing the toner) this can become cost effective very fast.

I wonder how/if they can add color

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> eek <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300+yen+to+us+dollars> per sheet and must be bought in lots of 1000

<comment><USER5> $3.30 per sheet, but assuming you get 1000 uses that's $0.0033 per use.

Staples has InkJet paper online for $8.79 (500 sheets per ream). That's $0.0156 per use (single sided print).

If my assumptions are correct, that sounds cost effective to me.

I'd be more worried about the paper getting damaged before you can get all 1000 prints out of it. I'd hope the paper is sturdy.</comment></comment>


NYU startup CrashDwell helps students sublet safely in NYC w/o craigslist scams - <AUTHOR> https://crashdwell.com

<comment><USER2> It's a great website! easy to use and the listings look very nice!</comment>


Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-create-fact-checking-exemptions-for-opinion-and-satire-11569875314?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Most of the misinformation and propaganda out there is presented as "opinion" on all networks. The very little actual news on Fox, for example, is always accurate (and actually pretty good), so not being able to call them out on that takes away from the entire effort.

<comment><USER3> Most reporting is based on opinions, or is at least misleading in the sense that it tends to be reported from well defined perspective. The editorial decisions about what to report, what to not report, what to report as important or credible, and what to report as irrelevant or non-credible, can all be used to mislead the audience and misrepresent events. I can't think of one mainstream news outlet that doesn't do this, and I think all of them do it quite excessively.

The problem with trying to moderate this is that you can only do so from what your idea of which is the orthodox truth, and "propaganda" simply becomes any political speech that you disagree with.

We've seen plenty of attempts to regulate the truth throughout history. It was one of the most corrupt elements of the soviet system, and it quite literally Orwellian. The only person who can discern the truth is the individual, and any attempt to take that responsibility away from them can only ever end disastrously. This isn't something we should be happy with Facebook doing.

<comment><USER4> > Most reporting is based on opinions, or is at least misleading in the sense > that it tends to be reported from well defined perspective.

What do you mean by this? Most new organizations have a separate, opinion section.

Does your statement include the news department, too?

<comment><USER5> Even beyond editorializing as the sibling comments point out, there is considerable opinion in what is reported vs brushed aside.

On August 3, 46 people were shot in El Paso, Texas. [1]

That same weekend, 51 people were shot in Chicago, Illinois. [2] [3]

One statistic gets hours and hours of national press cycles, Wikipedia page, etc.

The other statistic gets a passing mention in local channel and papers.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_El_Paso_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_El_Paso_shooting)

[2] [https://abc7chicago.com/49-shot-6-fatally-in-chicago- weekend...](https://abc7chicago.com/49-shot-6-fatally-in-chicago-weekend- shootings/5443785/)

[3] Later updated to 68, if you read Breibart [https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2019/08/05/many-el-pasos- day...](https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2019/08/05/many-el-pasos-daytons- chicago-every-weekend-50-shot-6-killed-windy-city/)

<comment><USER4> > On August 3, 46 people were shot in El Paso, Texas. > That same weekend, 51 > people were shot in Chicago, Illinois.

One is not like the other.

The El Paso shooting was the result of one person, armed with semi-assault weapon, going into a Walmart and killing more than 20 people within a couple minutes.

The Chicago shootings resulted in seven deaths but were spread out among multiple cases and days.

Both are tragic obviously.

But the El Paso got wall-to-wall coverage because, in essence, it was a domestic terrorist attack.

<comment><USER5> > semi-assault

?

> The Chicago shootings resulted in seven deaths but were spread out among > multiple cases and days.

Naturally, smaller events have less coverage. But even totaling up the coverages for each Chicago event in less coverage than El Paso.

Most new outlets bias their reporting disproportionately. IDK what the relationship is. Cubic, probably. An event that is 2 as big gets 8 times the coverage. Three times as big gets 27 times the coverage.

\---

In any case, media frequently shows an unrepresentative perspective on reality. It is very easy -- indeed expected -- to change report reality based on the opinion of what should and should not be reported.

<comment><USER4> > ?

The El Paso shooter used a semi-automatic rifle: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASR- series_rifles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASR-series_rifles)

> Naturally, smaller events have less coverage. But even totaling up the > coverages for each Chicago event in less coverage than El Paso.

Huh? The El Paso shooting was a big deal. Hence, the wall-to-wall coverage.

> Most new outlets bias their reporting disproportionately. IDK what the > relationship is. Cubic, probably. An event that is 2 as big gets 8 times the > coverage. Three times as big gets 27 times the coverage.

You don't seem to understand how reporting works. Journalists reporting on breaking news situations do not inject their opinions into the situation. They report what happened in a digestible and comprehensive way. Go and read the first coverage of the El Paso shooting and let me know if you see any opinions injected into the pieces.

> In any case, media frequently shows an unrepresentative perspective on > reality. It is very easy -- indeed expected -- to change report reality > based on the opinion of what should and should not be reported.

Again. You don't seem to understand how reporting works. I'd love for you to message the Texas reporters who covered the El Paso shooting your statement above and see how they'd response to your accusation that they, as well as other people who on the ground when shit hits the fans, shape their coverage based on opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting times, and a slippery slope. These fairly square rules will surely cause other uproars as it invites back the alt-right with their tongue-in- cheek fascism. And the Facebook algorithms seem embarrassingly incapable of nuance, like this Tommy Robinson debacle: the mere mention of the name "Tommy Robinson" in a post (in Sweden) renders your profile inactive for several days or indefinitely. In other countries the post is simply deleted. In other words, any other person called Tommy Robinson would not be able to have a FB presence.

I'm no fan of Tommy Robinson but this is worrying as FB has become more of a utility for online discussion and publishing. The problem is partly technical, but ultimately it is caused by the fact that Facebook doesn't have a value system of it's own. They need to follow the bidding of the powers that squeeze them the most.

<comment><USER7> What is tongue-in-cheek fascism? Example.

<comment><USER6> Sure. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt- right...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt-right-online- humor-as-a-weapon-facism)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An exemption for satire makes sense. There's even an existing legal framework for it, as it's an exception to defamation. Opinion, however, seems much more difficult. How do you handle an opinion that relies substantially on a provably false assertion?

The example in the article seems like it could be handled:

> That op-ed argued that global-warming climate models have been inaccurate > and that the risks of climate change is overblown.

Included in that sentence are an assertion of fact (yes, climate models have been inaccurate. This is not controversial, and it's also not really as useful to the argument as the author thinks it is) and an opinion that, while I disagree with it, is still an opinion. For purposes of discussion, assume the article contains no other information. There shouldn't be any kind of "false" designation assigned to it, because nothing in it is provably false.

However, imagine the article said something like "Atmospheric CO2 has declined since 1978, global-warming climate models have been inaccurate, and the risks of climate change is overblown." The first statement in that sentence is _provably false_ , yet the article would still constitute an opinion piece. Is there a framework for handling that?

<comment><USER8> The way things have been trending, I'd anticipate something like a label for satire and a label for "opinion, was not not fact checked" (which would apply to any piece that could be considered an op-ed), and fact checks applying to anything purporting to be news.

To be honest, setting a rule that anything that purports to be "BREAKING" will be fact checked at least to the extent of "the contents of this article cannot be proven entirely factually correct" would be a pretty big step forward and potentially reduce the virality of outright disinformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fact checkers would have me believe that we are constantly victims of Russian disinformation campaigns. I think the worth of fact checkers has already been concluded.

The truth is that you should be aware of the general bias a publication has. Also how they can be linked together via parent companies. If you have multiple sources with different bias, you should be fine.

The WSJ for example belongs to the Murdoch conglomerate. There are a lot more of those. Of course it is unknown how much influence there is on their editorial board. But still important to keep that in mind.

<comment><USER10> This is the thing - while there does appear to be a foreign covert disinformation campaign, it's dwarfed by the domestic "legitimate" disinformation put out by Murdoch and other press outlets. Or people like Alex Jones.

<comment><USER9> True. I am not disputing there aren't any efforts to manipulate voters. I would be surprised if there were not. But the relevancy that the media tried to transport just wasn't adequate.

I genuinely believe that many just have been played, but that could have been mitigated by providing at least a somewhat believable perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In India lots of fascist facebook groups post under the cover of satire to escape scrutiny. They'll be like "kill all muslims :D" \- the smiley at the end supposedly means its 'satire'. This is gonna be a godsend for them!

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't help wondering if this was triggered by the whole Babylon Bee vs Snopes situation:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon- bee.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.html)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fact-checker-declares-war- on-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fact-checker-declares-war-on- satire-11566428259)

<comment><USER13> Speaking of opinion pieces, that second one could really use some scrutiny.

<comment><USER12> Well, it's written by the boss of the Babylon Bee so it's not likely to be impartial...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Welp, that's a shame. That will make their fact-checking stuff completely useless, as the majority of "news" shared that tends to get people riled up seem to be opinion pieces.

</comment><comment><USER15> And here we go.. Funfortunately, most of the misinformation I hear is presented as entertainment. I am fine with it, if like SNL it is clearly labelled as satire, and not done as if it was news (as one network it seems to me often does). Sadly, there are many who watch that network, and shows like its shows, who believe what they are hearing to be the gospel truth. This is to the point of a man arming himself with an assault rifle (another problem, but I won't digress more than that) and shooting up an innocent pizza parlor that the entertainment show in question accused of some of the most heinous crimes in our judicial system.

We put labels at the bottom of cigarettes to warn people. Why can't we put a header at the bottom of such programs: "Satire, Not News, Not Factual".

Btw, I would love to see that banner on the bottom of The Daily Show as much as I would on The Rush Limbaugh Show, as both sides of the Red/Blue divide are guilty of this to some extent.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't the responsibility ultimately lay on consumer of said entertainment to ascertain this? Seems like the bigger problem we're facing here is a mental health problem.

<comment><USER17> I'd find that more reasonable if Facebook said "we're not fact-checking anything, work it out yourselves", or tagged these articles as "exempted from fact-checking". Offering to flag false stories creates an expectation which is violated when you fail to distinguish "true" from "unchecked".

Separately I don't think we should equate mental health with mental hygiene here. Mental health might make the difference between "believing untrue things" and "showing up somewhere with a gun and no particular plan", but it's hardly a precondition for accepting wildly improbable and untrue claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces their convictions.

If it is true, and I think he may have a point, there would be some value in labelling humour or satire as such. It sounds ridiculous, but like it is ridiculous to have a label "not suitable for your pets" on a microwave!

<comment><USER19> > Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get > humour / satire

Satire, snark, and sarcasm have to be least effective way you could possibly choose to communicate. You are absolutely _begging_ to be misunderstood and misquoted, either genuinely or maliciously, and then it's nigh on impossible to explain yourself as all your excuses just sound like like _it-was-a-prank- bro_.

Another huge problem is that satire is often used as cover for telling not- quite-truths. I listen to satirical radio programmes (we have a lot of those in the UK) and sometimes I think they're really bending the truth quite a bit to get the joke and their criticism isn't really fair. That'd be fine if these people weren't simultaneously actual political activists who the next night are saying they're making genuine political arguments, and if people didn't think it's-funny-because-it's-true. I'm pretty sure some of them do satire just to get away with attacking without having to back any of it up, and so they can absolve themselves from responsibility when challenged.

Quite often, I think really I'm just listening to some nasty bullies.

All-in-all, I think satire is a bit toxic for everyone involved.

<comment><USER20> Were you intending to demonstrate self-satire, or was it an accident? _A Modest Proposal_ alone should make the case for the effectiveness of satire, which is closely related to the even more time-honored reductio ad absurdum. The problem is that there's a lot of bad satire, and false satire, but that's a problem with almost every form of speech/writing that's not completely dry, flat, and colorless. It's true of analogy, allegory, metaphor, hyperbole (like yours when you say "least effective way possible"), poetry, etc. They're all abused. They're all prone to misunderstanding. Effective communication is hard. Don't mistake personal preference for a general rule, or present it as such.

<comment><USER19> I think satire is different from just being ineffective, in that it actively opens yourself up to malicious mis-interpretation. Its failure mode isn't just your audience being confused or missing the point.

Like the comedian in the UK who said she wanted to throw battery acid at politicians. It was (probably 90%) satire. But when challenged if she said she thought you should throw battery acid all she can say is yes with a weak- sounding defence of 'but it was just a prank.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see a lot of misinformation and disturbing amount of bigoted content posted as humor, presumably to sort of normalize that bigotry by slipping it into various online communities as humor.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a domain "madeup.world" that I was thinking on putting up a fake news site called "Real World News Today" given the domain, I was wanting to try to make it obvious. However, there are times where even the Onion feels a bit real, and I don't think I have any faith in actual media.

Maybe I'll put up genuine commentary, I just don't have the time or inclination to deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if a huge downside of achieving a monopoly position is the ability of politicians to extort you with threat of anti-trust action?

</comment><comment><USER24> Not gonna lie, I read the title as

Facebook to Exempt The Onion and Satire from Fact-Checking

</comment><comment><USER25> Add this to the disclaimers:

I'm not a doctor, this is not medical advice, just my opinion. Now onto how to heal cancer with a crystal.

I'm not a financial advisor, this is not investment advice, just my opinion. Now onto how to make millions with this one simple chart pattern.

</comment><comment><USER26> Facebooks innocent mistake was the presupposition that its capable of defining truth.

</comment><comment><USER27> Labeling satire as satire defeats the intention though. The critique lies in its ambiguity, and the greater the ambiguity the stronger the critique.

And that's a fact! ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> I like Snopes for fact checking but they lost a lot of credibility when they tried to "fact check" a Babylon Bee article that was obviously satire. (Babylon Bee is clearly labeled as satire and humor, sort of like The Onion or Duffel Blog.) Later Snopes tried to partially walk it back, but unfortunately the whole incident gave justification to those who claim that fact checkers are biased and pushing a left-wing agenda on Facebook.

[https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think- satire-...](https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think-satire-is- real/)

</comment><comment><USER29> yeeeaaaaahhhh. 'its just a joke' is already a thing...

</comment><comment><USER22> What happens when _I_ make a post with satirical content? (guessing: ban- hammer)

</comment><comment><USER30> User created content is a toxic asset - this is a mess that has no resolution

</comment><comment><USER31> My opinion is that the Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.

<comment><USER32> > Prove me wrong

Well, there's really nothing to prove. You didn't make the claim that 'the earth is flat'. Instead you made the claim that 'My [papito's] opinion is that the Earth is flat'. There is no reason to disbelieve the latter. It is clear from your own statement that your opinion is that the Earth is flat. There is no reason to counter that statement.

This is why facebook has no obligation to do anything. Facebook's entire platform is to allow various entities to self-publish their opinions. If it is clear that this is your opinion on hacker news (where the anonymous username is actually relatively obscured compared to facebook's real name policy and name placement), then it is extremely clear on Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Aticle is paywalled (for me anyway)

</comment><comment><USER34> As long as Snopes keeps fact-checking the Babylon Bee, I will be content.</comment>


Scientists develop atomic-scale hardware to implement natural computing - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-05-scientists-atomic-scale-hardware-natural.html <comment> j-pb I think the author means "neural computing" when speaking of "natural computing"...

The rest is equally bad.

> Unfortunately, conventional fabrication methods used for today's computers > cannot be used to realize complex systems to their full potential due to > scaling limits—the methods simply cannot make small enough interconnected > units.

That thing they build is huge compared to an IC, 1500 micrometers in width.</comment>


Show HN: A website to pitch your new startup ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.gopitch.me/ <comment><USER3> Thumbs down for the twitter login.

Recent ideas should be more prominent. Probably show the latest ten on the main page, then a link for more.

Plus a huge (red) button to pitch a new idea in the front page.

<comment><USER4> I didn't terribly mind having to use Twitter for signup.

As soon as you asked for my email AS WELL, I could no longer be bothered to click through - the only value of 3rd-party login is _not_ having to give you my email address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a couple of thoughts.

1\. I don't have a twitter account.

2\. I found it strange that the landing page didn't have any pitched ideas. To see an idea, I had to read the bottom text, and click on one of the countries. I didn't know those were links at first either.

3\. Can ppl only pitch the title of their idea? Is there a description or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. That's unfortunate. I will probably make the pitches accessible to not- logged in visitors in a near future.

2\. You can access the ideas list here: [http://www.gopitch.me/ideas/all](http://www.gopitch.me/ideas/all)

3\. You can see a pitch here: [http://www.gopitch.me/idea/4769741570834432](http://www.gopitch.me/idea/4769741570834432)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't mean to alarm you, but I think [http://medium.com](http://medium.com) stole your design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahah good artists copy, great artists steal! :-) As a non-designer, I acknowledge that medium.com was a strong inspiration for my website

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alas for all those twitter permissions it needs. Does it really need to read my tweets and post tweets for me? No thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I ask for the Twitter connect just to make tweeting from the app easier. Tweets are like this one: [https://twitter.com/spolu/status/443117201621413888](https://twitter.com/spolu/status/443117201621413888) Nothing spammy.

<comment><USER8> Ok then why not just ask to post tweets on my behalf? why ask for Update your profile., Read my tweets, etc. Not letting any unknown app update my profile. Sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> @lbr @palakchokshi

That's right. I totally understand. The thing is... Twitter permissions aren't very precise.

I just wanted to ask for the permission to write tweets from my app, not to edit your profile. But they don't allow you to do that...

Anyway thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER8> I thought it might be something like that. Twitter needs to fix this or developers like you will be facing the consequences of their actions. Facebook's permissions are much more granular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been playing with a similar idea - [http://appworthy.co](http://appworthy.co)

One thing I've done on my site is abandon passwords. Authentication is by email (if you can receive a link you can "sign in" once with it - <USER2> cookies).

This avoids the need to ask for permission (to tweet for me? really?) up front. Users can start reading and posting without giving up anything but their email.

This is not a new idea, but I think it works well to minimise barriers for potential contributors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats for appworthy. I didn't know about it.

Your auth is pretty clever to minimize the barrier to entry.

Yet, I thought Twitter could be an interesting channel for my app and decided to build my website on top of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My 2 cents: I've thought about doing this exact thing before...then I realized it's like giving other people free ideas. Isn't this just the perfect place for others to steal your stuff? What're you gonna do if that happens? I would never post a good idea publicly, just asking for competition you probably can't afford to have.

<comment><USER11> This point has been discussed into the ground before, but in general, ideas mean nothing. I've had many million dollar ideas: I know because I've seen them in the marketplace. No execution, no value. Also, most people aren't the precious little butterfly they think they are: someone has had their idea before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seriously, why would any one sign in without even knowing what it would contain. Put some samples atleast.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can view examples by clicking the links at the bottom of the page like here: [http://www.gopitch.me/ideas/all](http://www.gopitch.me/ideas/all)

<comment><USER13> I also hadn't realized that this was possible.

Again, there are reasons for the things you are doing - I understand this. And there are ways to get around your block - but take the feedback.

If one person says it here, it means that dozens had the same reaction and just decided not to voice it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can you tell me where and how did you host your site?

I really want to host one but cannot find any cheap way

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically: Google App Engine

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well too invasive. i have registered either way but yet to see the upside.

</comment><comment><USER16> quit the twitter login.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. I don't have Twitter nor Facebook. Stop making those the only way to log in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> sounds a heck of a lot like LaunchSky.com :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I had never heard of this website... Indeed, very similar!

<comment><USER19> Cool sites - I like this idea of sharing concepts and getting feedbacks. One other larger one is producthunt.co. I'd be curious to see a full list if you happen to do some more competitive research!

<comment><USER9> There are many sites like this, here's a list I started: [http://appworthy.co/alternatives](http://appworthy.co/alternatives)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spending 100K USD in 4.5 Days on Amazon Web Services - <AUTHOR> https://www.olindata.com/en/blog/2017/04/spending-100k-usd-45-days-amazon-web-services?utm_source=webopsweekly&utm_medium=email <comment><USER2> Kudos for admitting the mistake. One of our engineers did something similar and AWS actually contacted us shortly after with a warning that the creds could be viewed publically. Bummer they didn't catch it for OlinData but they are somewhat on top of this issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember someone posting something like this:

[https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets](https://github.com/awslabs/git- secrets)</comment>


RejectedByYc.com - For those of us who didn't make the cut. - <AUTHOR> http://www.rejectedbyyc.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> As you might have guessed from the name, this site grew out of our yCombinator rejection. Like about 375 other applicants, we didn't even make it to the interview stage.

I sat around feeling bummed for about an hour, read some of the forum posts, and then decided that there was something I could do about the situation. As I see it, there are 5 main reasons to go to yCombinator:

1\. Money. The $15k or so that yCombinator gives can be useful for some people.

2\. Connections. They're very good at making introductions to investors, and give you instant credibility.

3\. Advice. They've been through the startup experience before, and have seen numerous startups succeed or fail.

4\. Marketing. "A yCombinator startup" seems to get instant attention on certain venues, particularly with the influential early-adopter market.

5\. Camaraderie. I suspect that a large amount of the success of yCombinator startups is simply due to having a bright, passionate peer group, all going through the same experience. Some of PG's comments have suggested this too: when groups have worked off-site they "looked like the plant that just didn't get the miracle gro".

I can't do anything about #1 or #2. I'm hungry for #3, but there are other sources of information out there. Get a few dozen people that are starting or have started companies together, and a few are bound to know the answer you're looking for. I _can_ do something about #4 and 5, and that's what inspired this site.

This is basically a place for startup founders to show off their work, get quality feedback, and then release it for the world. When you register your startup, you're randomly assigned to a group. It tries to put startups in the same city together, though there's a random factor so you don't end up with 7 startups in one city and 1 by itself. (In the future, I'd also like to add the ability to pick your group.) If you have not launched yet, all your feature announcements - and the existence of your startup at all - will only be visible to your demo group. Once you have launched, they become public for everyone to view, letting you gain some publicity.

I was inspired by organizations such as the Grameen Bank and the Harry Potter fandom. The Grameen Bank lends money to _groups_ of people, never to individuals themselves. This produces strong peer pressure to repay the loan. Similarly, it's much more difficult to give up on the startup dream when you'll be letting down the 7 other startups in your group. When I add karma, there'll be both a group component and an individual component, fostering a sort of "coopetition" between and within groups.

As for Harry Potter - in fandom, there's a "social price" to membership. You have to write fics. When you join, people want to know what you've written, and they want you to comment on the stuff they've written. Similarly, the hope is that the social price here will be that you keep pumping out features and gaining users. The site is open to anyone actively involved in starting a startup: the one requirement is that you _do_ things and don't just talk about them.

There's a lot more I'd like to add to this site: karma and stats are high on my priority list, as is Markdown for comments and announcements, and it could use a bit of a UI makeover. I'll try to keep up on feature requests and bugfixes, but I do have a day job, and this is a side-project aside from our main startup. Please bear with us; this was done on a very tight timetable (2 weeks from rejection to site launch), and hasn't had too much testing.

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept. I believe there are more than a handful of regulars on this site that feel the need for better organization, and given how busy pg is (and he admits it), it makes sense to just take a stab. But do differentiate. Your project is in the right direction, but I agree it doesn't need to cater specifically towards YC rejects. "YC rejects" is probably the most exclusive group after "YC teams" (jk, well, you get me). Also see <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16211> I dunno the overlap or similarity in vision, but it just seemed logical to ref it here.

The 5 points you list above sum to something greater than just those points. It's like a huge funded, connected marketing machine of experienced hackers. Camaraderie is an interesting point; in YC it's very easy to get everybody "on the same boat." YC invests in you, you deliver. They work for you, their investments, you work for them, your vision. The guys next door are also in the same situation. It's actually like a moderately sized company running parallel production pipelines. This setup is difficult to replicate because not only do you need the right people, you need the right money, and the right money and the right people.

Which means to do something similar, you cannot lack _any_ of the points (wonders how Techstars and Highland are planning). Consider holding events (remember mydreamapp.com?); gathering a dozen or so beta-stage teams from here should be enough to throw something noticeable. A gallery kind of function, or project profile sorting by category and such, might also be good high-priority tasks. After all, your hosted teams are looking for investors/buyers.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean the "4 main reasons to go with yCombinator" and then listing 5, or was there something more substantive?

<comment><USER2> haha, yes, that; it's a silly mistake to make in writing, which is why I didn't want to point it out. While trivial, that alone got me wondering how much you planned out your analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote it at 3:00 AM. And there initially _were_ only 4 points: I had put advice & connections together, but realized that advice was important enough to list separately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a GENIUS site and a great idea because there were 50 votes to the poll I made "I was rejected by YC but will continue anyway." So, the market is there.

Since most rejects don't have the contacts and the money or the know-how to get publicity, but you're going to do the startup anyway, you're missing those things. So, this is a great way to get publicity and compete on equal ground.

In fact, part of the publicity that YC gets is because "they have 400 applicants and they select the best 10." So, the rejected applicants are already "being used" for publicity. Why not use YC for publicity? There would also be no YC without applicants, but there would still be startups. And, I knew about Paul Graham from Slashdot many years ago, but how many did not until the YCombinator came about? Again, that wouldn't have happened without startups.

In other words, if a YC company is getting publicity and you create a similar product and don't because you're not in YC, is that fair to your product?

Will the name have to change eventually? Of course! But right now, it's a great idea to ride the YC train and get publicity from the many news outlets who think YC-funded startups are the only ones worth writing about. There is no shame in being rejected, and this is going to be great marketing in the short-term. I think everybody should sign up and participate!

Saying you were "rejected from YC" in the next 6 months will mean a lot to the blogs and news outlets because it flows with their current articles. Now, 2 years from now, they may not care, but right now, it would be a big deal.

If this is done in a good natured, tongue-in-cheek fashion, this would be a great hit and a great COMPETITION between YC companies and YC rejects.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the general concept of the site is great, but I do think people are perhaps dwelling on the fact that they got rejected by YC, and are often talking about the success of their startup with/without YC.

I got rejected like many of you did, but YC and anything YC related isn't going to influence my success/failure. I'm sure there are myriad of venues to launch your startup.

YC is one of many many gates that can either close or open, meaning there are still other doors out there that need to be picked and broken into.

Not everything is so YC influenced.

Good idea, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I got rejected like many of you did, but YC and anything YC related isn't going to influence my success/failure. I'm sure there are myriad of venues to launch your startup."

That was sort of the point of this site - to provide yet another alternative for launch _and development_ of your startup. The name and logo was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, taking a rejection and making something good out of it. After all, it could be read as "NOT rejected from YC"...

Anyways, I'm looking for a new name & positioning. Ideas?

<comment><USER5> Yup. It didn't go to YC, and I'm not sure it's a startup, but I should have a website to show people in a day or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's silly to focus on your rejection like that. Create a self-assembled group of startup founders if you will, but don't define it in a negative way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Response here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16316>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope you didn't use this idea in your yc application.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, this was a side-project inspired after the rejection. I figured that with at least 50 or so startups continuing their original plans after being turned down (including us), there might as well be a place where the rest of us can get the same sort of hacker atmosphere as the yCombinator companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Rejected" is a bit harsh; you might want to re-position it along the lines of "startups not in the YC mold" -- which is all that rejection by YC means (you don't fit their profile, but that doesn't mean you won't succeed).

Also, lose that red "no"/"anti" logo -- you're not going to get people in the right mood when they visit (that logo is really for sites looking to rip YC, which, from what I gather is _not_ your intention).

<comment><AUTHOR> I likely will re-brand/re-position it based on feedback here. Different domain too. Unfortunately, my graphic design skills kinda suck (as I'm sure you noticed) - my cofounders usually handle that, but this was a bit of a pet project, and they've been working on our main idea while I tried to get this out without spending too much time on it.

<comment><USER8> Maybe it should be called "WhyCombinator?" -- position it as an open community of startups which compete (in a serious but friendly manner) to the official YCombinator companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's probably better, but I'm thinking it may be better off with a name that doesn't derive from yCombinator at all. After all, there's YEurope too, which got similarly panned for ripping off the name.

Unless it were a name with an obscure wordplay in it. For example, we could call it Ackermen.com because the Y-combinator is a function that lets you bootstrap recursive functions, while the Ackermann function is one of the simplest examples of a function that is not primitive recursive. ;-)

<comment><USER8> But unlike YEurope, which is just a copy-cat, your source of members (at least initially) are those whom YC didn't accept.

And in terms of fostering a (again, friendly) rivalry with YC, it's a neat conceit (especially if any of the YC rejects outshine those that got accepted).

<comment><AUTHOR> So, I was talking with my cofounder, and we came up with Bootstrapacitor.com. It has "bootstrap" in the name and also has the capacitor connotations of storing energy and letting it build up until it escapes like a lightning bolt. Also, there're tons of flux-capacitor jokes we could include (we - meaning the site users - are collectively inventing the future, after all), and the flux capacitor is even shaped like a Y!

What do you think?

<comment><USER8> Sounds good; remember to announce when it's up and running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, don't forget that it does not really matter anyways: <http://www.maximusklein.com/2007/04/20/why-ycombinator-is-a-waste-of-time/></comment>


Uber's HR chief steps down following racial discrimination probe - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/11/uber-hr-chief-liane-hornsey-resigns-racial-discrimination-probe <comment><USER2> duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17504349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17504349)

</comment><comment><USER3> "By now you'll have seen the news that I've decided to leave Uber. I know this comes a little out of the blue for some of you, but I have been thinking about this for a while"

"[she] resigned after a third-party firm investigated allegations that she routinely dismissed internal racial discrimination complaints"

I don't really think failing a racial discrimination probe is "the straw that breaks the camel's back" here

</comment><comment><USER4> I think we need more positive stories about humanity.</comment>


Tesla: Third Model S fire in past two months - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57611321-76/tesla-third-model-s-fire-in-past-two-months/ <comment><USER2> Regardless of how you feel about Tesla, or whether you believe these articles are PR pieces written by oil shills, this is just bad journalism.

Good journalism would give us _any piece_ of the following information:

      - The number of fires in Tesla vehicles compared to:
        - other gas-powered cars in the same vehicle class
        - other electric cars in the same vehicle class
        - overall vehicle fire statistics in the country
      - A possible explanation as to what mechanism in Tesla vehicles causes fires like
      this.
      - Some brief exploration of how concerns about Tesla's safety standards might affect
      its broader offering, brand, and stock price.

Instead, we get:

 _Whether the latest news will have any lasting effect on public perceptions is doubtful. But it offered more fodder for bears who have been dumping Tesla shares since the company reported third-quarter earnings earlier this week. Tesla 's stock has been on a tear most of the year but in the last month has lost more than 20 percent of its value._

Wait, sorry, was I trying to be impartial at the beginning of this comment? This is pure shill journalism. The big three are scared. Ignore them.

<comment><USER3> If you do the math you suggest, it looks like this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111)

Musk argued that TSLA was 5x less likely than a petrol car to catch fire on the freeway. That math does not hold up. At the time, TSLA was approximately equally (1x) likely to catch fire under these circumstances. Given two more datapoints, that data is now TSLA is 3x more likely to catch fire, not 5x less likely than a standard car in a fwy accident.

That actually seems like news.

<comment><USER3> Wow, thought police flagged this off the front page?

________

82\. Tesla: Third Model S fire ...(cnet.com)

32 points by .... 1 hour ago | flag | 68 comments

<comment><USER4> Criticisms of Tesla are quickly flagged off the front page

<comment><USER5> The real reason for flagging is not the supposed criticism, but the level of bias and falsehood in the article.

<comment><USER3> _The real reason for flagging is not the supposed criticism, but the level of bias and falsehood in the article._

^^^That has to be a joke.

__________

 _" For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid," Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on a company blog in early October._

The greates example of "the level of bias and falsehood in the article" seems to be this gem. The rest of the posted article is just a news report on the existence of a fire with a link to a picture.[1]

[1] compare: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/tesla-says- model-s-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/tesla-says-model-s- driver-unhurt-in-mexico-crash.html) The CNET guy is not guilty of selectively reading safety reports and pushing misleading stats to the public. That language was a quote from Tesla...

<comment><USER5> ^^^That has to be a joke.

Ditto.

I was not talking about this particulate article( i should have added suffix s to article ), but just my opinion why some articles are quickly flagged of the site.

While I may be wrong on this one, it is still my honest opinion, and I would prefer less aggressive approach in my replyers.

<comment><USER3> Just to point out, the analysis I did above is the same anlaysis the Elon Musk did. It is using the same data. I just read his data source slightly more carefully. Then, the next step was just to reflect the news in this article. Nothing in what i just described contradicts your "opinion why some articles are quickly flagged of the site." The issue at hand is your premise is false. The article is a simple news story with a singular data point: what was (1) is now (3). We don't need to do any hand-wavy analysis. We just stick in these numbers and we have a pretty glaring inconsistency. Its not "a bias and falshood" because it uses the same framework (so no bias is added) with a single observed data point that nobody is debating (so no falshood).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are about 150,000 car fires in the US per year [1]. Tesla is on pace for about 12 fires per year (1 per month, as one of these three fires happened in Mexico). There are probably ~15,000 total Teslas on the Road in the US, out of about 200 million cars.

On the surface, Tesla has .8 fires per 1000 vehicles, where as .75 fires per 1000 vehicles is the US average.

[1] [http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for- consumers/vehicle...](http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for- consumers/vehicles)

<comment><USER7> Great link. I was looking for some actual figures, but hadn't found anything yet.

The best measure of fire 'likelihood' is probably the incidence per vehicle mile driven, because it captures actual utilization. Right now, the total number for 2003-2007 was 90 highway vehicle fires per billion miles driven. ([http://www.nfpa.org/research/statistical- reports/vehicles/ve...](http://www.nfpa.org/research/statistical- reports/vehicles/vehicle-fire-trends-and-patterns))

The question remains: what is that number for the Tesla Model S? So far we know of 3 fires. The last piece of the puzzle is how many miles have the Model S cars driven?

The average annual miles driven for all vehicles is about 13,000 ([http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm)). Assuming driving habits are identical between Tesla owners and non-Tesla owners, we can get a rough upper limit of 195 million miles driven (the actual number is less because most model S owners have had their vehicle for less than one year). Back of the envelope calculations show that comes out to 65 million miles per fire (rough upper limit), without additional fires. Given the above data on all vehicles, similar reporting shows that the average vehicle goes about 11.1 million miles per fire.

Assumptions and research issues:

Vehicle fire data for 2003-2007 has not significantly changed

There are 15,000 Model S's on the road ([http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/teslamotors- result...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/teslamotors-results- idUSL4N0BK65V20130220))

Tesla owners drive the national average of 13,000 miles per year in their Model S's, and have had their cars for an average of one year.

If the fire issue is systemic, the rate of fires will go up, and that is not captured here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how many gas-fueled car fires have there been in the last two months... just asking.

<comment><USER9> It appears that in two months, you can expect:

(152,300 fires per year) / (6 months) = 25,383 automobile fires based on data from 2006-2010

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.

Facts and Figures

\- Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths.

\- On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.

\- Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions were factors in roughly two-thirds of the automobile fires.

\- Collisions and overturns were factors in only 4% of highway vehicle fires, but these incidents accounted for three of every five (60%) automobile fire deaths.

\- Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.

Source: [http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for- consumers/vehicle...](http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for- consumers/vehicles)

<comment><USER3> about 80% involve cars in parking lots, at rest, in repair shops, etc. So, you need to adjust the data. of the 152k, only a subset [~26k] were on public highways. Once you do this, a tsla now has 3x (300%) the chance of a normal car in catching fire in a highway accident, when corrected for miles driven, etc.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111)

<comment><USER10> Care to share your calculations? They're quite the reverse of my back-of-the- envelope, which rounds to an egregious degree, and doesn't take into account the subset on public highways or not:

150,000 fires / 250mm total cars in america: ~ .0006

3 fires / 20,000 Teslas (their expectation for this year: ~.00015 (4x fewer fires)

I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways... it seems like a huge concern regardless.

<comment><USER3> You need to adjust your data down to 26k hwy fires and correct for milage driven. For a comparison even to how tesla cites the data, see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111)

 _I 'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways..._

These vehicles are typically not occupied. So from a driver and passenger safety perspective...you really should care.

<comment><USER10> Gotcha. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does the media have a frenzy when something bad happens to Tesla?

It seems like the media is trying to find anything to publicly put them down.

<comment><USER4> Far from it: Tesla was the one that came out and said they had the safest car on the road. Even when NHTSA said it wasn't appropriate, Tesla flaunted a 5.4 star rating. Tesla supporters came out and said the first fire was a fluke. They came out and said the second is a fluke. Now the third time is a conspiracy?

It's possible that there's an engineering flaw or issue with new components that underlies the problem. That is a possibility. To deny it is to be delusional. We don't know what's wrong yet, and denying the problem exists prolongs the discovery process

<comment><USER12> I think it's more like a case of selection bias, like after a plane crash when suddenly there seem to be a few more in quick succession.

In the time between these three Tesla fires, there have been hundreds of conventional car fires.

Even per capita, conventional vehicle fires are much higher.

The difference here is every single Tesla fire is newsworthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes I get a nagging suspicion that there's a secret cabal of short- investors hyping and egging on these stories through PR chains in the media. On the plus side, I missed out on buying TSLA when it was cheap, maybe I'll get the chance again!

</comment><comment><USER14> Just to put in perspective, Ferrari had 10 458's set on fire randomly in 3 months.

<comment><USER15> Uh, and didn't that lead to a global recall?

My point is that I don't think it's anti-electric bias that is causing to people to take their vehicle catching on fire pretty seriously.

<comment><USER14> It did indeed! But they recalled them as they were dangerous at fault, it was to do with some of the glue if I remember rightly.

It should definitely be taken seriously, but Tesla have put their cars through the NCAP testing which does check to see if they set on fire after an accident. I'd wager there's a specific defect that effects a number, but a lot of the articles have made it out as if you're driving a ticking time bomb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pic of 3rd fire: [http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3...](http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=34908&d=1383786543)

CNet is showing the first fire. Keep in mind the model s has a 12 volt battery right behind the nose. It is in a much more vulnerable spot then the main battery pack.

</comment><comment><USER17> Could you make money but lighting teslas on fire and shorting the stock?

<comment><USER9> That's probably what the fire department decided was the cause of fire #2 and fire #3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 150,000 gasoline car fires per year / three trillion miles driven per year = one fire per 20 million miles driven for ICEs.

three Model S car fires / 100 million miles of Model S driving = one fire per 33 million miles driven for the Model S.

I'm assuming someone was injured in a car fire last year, and so far no one has been injured in a Tesla fire. So far, then, Tesla Model S fires occur on average 50% less, and are some non-zero amount safer when they do occur.

Sounds pretty OK to me...

<comment><USER19> What's the age breakdown on those fires? That is, if you just look at cars of a similar age to the Model S, how does that affect the number of car fires? I wouldn't be surprised if most of those fires are in cars far older than any currently-existing Model S.

<comment><USER18> Fair, but lots of fires are from internal issues. I think only 60% of car fires are due to collisions. All three Tesla fires were from collisions. You'd have to have more data than my attention span will allow to calculate whether the collision-to-fire ratio is higher in a Tesla than a ICE vehicle.

You'd need the total number of collisions, and the percentage of those that resulted in a fire.

You'd likely have to do some analysis about driving habits too. Perhaps limit the data to comparable luxury cars. People bombing around in a luxury car likely have different collision rates than the average Joe. More because the car is faster? Fewer because the care more about the vehicle? I don't know...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Right now they sell very expensive, exclusive cars. Are they going to sell more commonly accessible models or production of such cars is prohibitively costly?

<comment><USER21> They have plans for a cheaper vehicle [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_BlueStar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_BlueStar)

But they'd be competing against the Nissan Leaf (The Model S costs about as much as two Leafs). I think the way car manufacturers see it, it's a little early for electric cars. The Leaf has the market more or less saturated (and they're not selling _that_ many cars). I'm sure Toyota and Honda had electric cars in the pipeline and will flood the market once it becomes viable (ie. when a good battery/range becomes affordable).

What Tesla has that the others don't (at the moment!) are the charging stations. That may make them more competitive.

<comment><USER22> I expect in the time between now and the BlueStar, Nissan will have a PHV priced in the same range as a subcompact. The Leaf is very cost-effective given its current charge range.

<comment><USER21> Plug in Hybrids? My gues is that they will not be around for long. The beauty of the Leaf is that it's so fundamentally simple. A battery, some electronics and an electric motor. It's fundamentally so much more reliable and simple than a combustion engine vehicle.

By the time the BlueStar will come out, Nissan will have better prices and ranges available.

<comment><USER22> Full-electric might have an audience, but I make regular road trips to Chattanooga and Birmingham. The charger station infrastructure is simply not there yet for 100+ mile commutes on the interstates. By the time the BlueStar comes out, I could be totally wrong. I'm completely expecting to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> With this small number of fires, you can't get meaningful comparative statistics between Tesla's and Petrol powered cars yet. Variance is too high with this small number of incidents/cars on the road.

</comment><comment><USER24> Between their earnings report and this, TSLA's down 20% from a couple days ago. Great time to buy if you're bullish on them in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if auto manufacturers are starting fires as a sort of false flag operation against the good name of Tesla. It absolutely makes no sense that a fender bender would engulf the car in flames.

The driver safely pulled over to the side of the road and yet the car is in the middle of an intersection with the hood engulfed in flames. Check for accelerant.

<comment><USER26> If you believe this, you might also believe the republicans are DDOSing the new gov health care website.

<comment><USER27> They just DoS'ed the entire Federal government and put the full faith and credit of the government in doubt by risking default.

It's not exactly a stretch of imagination that the same kinds of people or organizations might _also_ have the motivation, means and willingness to try it against one particular website: the website associated with the very same law, the ACA, which was their ostensible reason for DoS-ing the US government itself.

And note for those who can't make distinctions. There's a difference between whether parties were attempting to DoS the website, versus whether it was successful. Also it's entirely possible and reasonable that a DoS attack could result in being a partial contributor, though obviously not the sole cause of its woes. Distinctions. Shades of gray. Life. It's subtle that way.

<comment><USER28> The conspiracy theorist's typical argument; a lot of "well it makes sense, right?!" With absolutely no facts to back up the story.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources for advanced JS? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all, this is my first post the HN, but I was curious if any of you had some resources that would be useful to an individual hoping to learn some more advanced javascript.  I've already mastered the basics (control flow, loops, dom manipulation, etc) and use javascript and jquery quite a bit in my day job for prototyping and data transformations (etl sw w/ js scripting), but I often hear developers talking about the right way of doing things and I was curious as what some resources might be for a aspiring developer who doesn't have an engineering background.  I also have some experience with php, python, mysql so I am not completely technically illiterate but I still feel like there is a large jump that needs to be made before I would consider myself a full fledged developer.
Any advice or resources would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> 'JavaScript: The Good Parts' by Douglas Crockford is a great place to start[1].

        This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features
        to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable,
        readable, and maintainable than the language as a
        whole-a subset you can use to create truly extensible
        and efficient code.

The other thing that has had a huge impact on my coding style is learning to write tests for everything with Jasmine[2]. Forcing myself to write tests has basically forced me into better design practices, since it's nigh-on impossible to test javascript callback-spaghetti.

Doing a couple of backbone.js[3] tutorials may be a bit of an eye-opener too.

[1] <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do>

[2] <http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/>

[3] <http://backbonejs.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, those all look great - looks like I have a busy weekend (or week) ahead of me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> JavaScript: The Good Parts is definitely a good book for what you want. But there are more:

* JavaScript Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov

* Learning JavaScript Design Patterns - Addy Osmani

* High Performance JavaScript - Nicholas Zakas

After you read these three books you might become apt to write great, efficient JS code and know the underpinnings of the language, which IMO has a particularly curious design and might make you confused sometimes.

P.S: Check out the WTFJS website for being introduced to some strange behaviour of the language <http://wtfjs.com/>

Have a nice and busy week!

</comment><comment><USER4> Grab a cup of coffee, and read the source of these libs till you know what's going on:

underscore - <http://underscorejs.org/> backbone - <http://backbonejs.org/> dojo - <http://dojotoolkit.org/>

They all have great comments in the dev versions and the code is very well written IMO. If you really want to become an advanced js programmer I think reading and understanding source code is basically the only way to go.

good luck :)

<comment><USER3> Yes and Backbone has its source annotated to make it easier for you to understand the code <http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As recurser mentioned, backbone.js tutorials might be a good idea. I'd also recommend reading the source of backbone.js to see how it works internally. It's around 1500 lines of well written and fully commented javascript, and will probably cover everything you're hoping to learn in a very concise and practical way.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, I appreciate the input

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was multiple discussions here on HN where you might find some answers. The most recent I found being: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4673106>

</comment><comment><USER3> For advanced performance testing and benchmarking you can use JSPerf <http://jsperf.com/></comment>


Why AWS access and secret keys should not be in the codebase - <AUTHOR> https://advancedweb.hu/2019/05/28/aws_config_credentials/ <comment><USER2> Up next: Why you shouldn't shoot yourself in the face

<comment><USER3> True but it doesn't help that most examples of "how to do $x in AWS" includes the secret key and access key in the constructor.

<comment><USER4> My credentials are still in the constructor, but are accessed through environment variables set in the CloudFormation file, like this:

      const client = new DocumentClient({
        region: process.env.REGION,
        accessKeyId: process.env.ACCESS_KEY_ID,
        secretAccessKey: process.env.SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
      });

Is this still a bad practice?

<comment><USER5> Well, it does mean I don't need any kind of privileged access to your container, just 'ps -auwwe' as any user.

<comment><USER3> If you are on the EC2 instance where you can do ps, you can already access the secret key and access key by just doing:

      curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials

But of course, you still shouldn't specify them in your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This might sound very obvious, and it is, but there are so many horror stories of people being charged tens of thousands of dollars because they accidentally pushed their secret keys to GitHub or any other public repository hubs, which are being scanned constantly for such credentials.

<comment><USER7> GitHub, for one, tries to stop them from being published by doing some scanning as well:

[https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-token- scanning](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-token-scanning)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rails style encrypted credentials needs to be way more common! For python people there's [https://pypi.org/project/django-encrypted- secrets/](https://pypi.org/project/django-encrypted-secrets/)

<comment><USER3> That's not the point. The point of the article is that you don't need to manage AWS secret keys and access keys in your code _at all_.

When you're developing locally they should be in your user directory and configured via the CLI (far away from your git repo) and when running on AWS, you should be using the attached profile. Either way, when you new up the client, the SDK will find them automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, obviously! Actually...

A coworker pushed my passport details to a (private) github repository. Still freaking out about it, considering there's some sort of garbage collection, which keeps deleted items around for an undefined amount of time :|

<comment><USER10> If you haven't yet, you can contact Github support to ask for help with scrubbing accidentally pushed secrets. They're responsive, and while there's no substitute for not having pushed it in the first place, it's better than nothing.

<comment><USER11> Does rewriting git history to remove any trace of the secret not completely wipe it out from GH's end? I know of a few secret-scrubbing tools that aid in this process.</comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox (YC S07) Expands Into The Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://ycuniverse.com/dropbox-expands-into-enterprise

<comment><USER2> Glad to see their marketing team caught up with the quality of their product.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you mean?

<comment><USER2> Enterprise document management is a $10billion+ market unto itself and Dropbox has not positioned themselves to approach this market well in the past. I love the Dropbox product and am happy to see them taking enterprise head on.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How quiet is your startup office? - <AUTHOR> We're 10 people or so and it's incredibly quiet here a lot of the time, just traffic sounds from outside, keyboard tapping and mouse clicking. <comment><USER2> 12 person startup, here. It's deadly quiet. Most people are in offices, they close their door for phone calls. Headphones for music is the norm. It makes me crazy, sometimes. I get a little break because I sit near the kitchen and there's a lot of chatter when people are preparing their lunches.

<comment><USER3> I've done at-home hobbyist development for five years with the neighbors from hell revving exhaust modded beater cars 20-50x/day. I'm drooling at the words "deadly quiet". (And yes I'm leaving here at some point in the next year).

<comment><USER4> Ugh. You have my sympathy. For one who "put up" with similar circumstances for far too long, I hope you won't mind my sincere advice: Get out! Staying is a downward spiral -- I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not at a startup, but we're frontend devs in Texas who behave like Big Kids. We make our best arguments in our Little Kid Voices.

Our air is filled with whistling, idle death-threats (or our individual personalities toward hypothetical homicide of evil villains), argumentation over life-extension research, astrophysics and metaphysics, joystick/button- mashing, showtunes, random bouts of poetry, fake British/Russian/German/Australian accents, looney Tunes character revivalism, and sometimes we take our functions out back to beat them into doin' the Right Thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> 3 people in our office. We have a speaker system in the office and take turns running our personal pandora or spotify stations on it. Sometimes we crank it up and other times we have softer mellow music playing. Heck, we will even put on NPR. We all have headphones and can plug in and listen to our own music if we want.

I can't stand mouse clicking and keyboard tapping, so a little music for background noise is nice. I can also open my window and listen to the cars on the freeway.

</comment><comment><USER7> 4 person startup here. Our founders decided to bring 2 concert-sized speakers from their college days to our office. It's hooked up to an airport express and we use spotify/soundrop. At first, it didn't seem like a good idea but now I think every office should have speakers to lighten the mood.

We keep the volume pretty reasonable during work hours so you can still pop on headphones and listen to your own stuff if you wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a big ad agency. Silence is impossible to find, unless you start working at 7PM. Everyone here uses headphones.

</comment><comment><USER9> We have about 50 people in our office. Desks are foldable tables. Seating groups are split between Product/Design, Devs, Sales and Content people. Constant chatter between product and content. Our CTO is very hands on and most people have meetings at their desks.

With that said, I have my headphones in much of the time.

</comment><comment><USER10> 6 people. Sales people are downstairs. Just me and one other developer up here. All I usually hear is the AC and the train. Come winter it'll probably get a lot quieter.

</comment><comment><USER11> I work on a 10 person team. We're in a coworking space that is incredibly loud

Nothing some noise-cancelling headphones and white noise can't fix :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty quiet in the mornings, but past 4pm or so we (10 of us) usually put on the speakers and start listening to Pandora.</comment>


This startup scans every Periscope video to help you find the best streams - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3045926/passion-to-profit/this-startups-side-project-scans-every-periscope-video-to-help-you-find-th

<comment><USER2> This is very cool! Real-time video recognition of live streams :-o</comment>


NudgePad: An Open Source Operating System for Building Websites - <AUTHOR> http://breckyunits.com/nudgepad-an-open-source-operating-system-for-building-websites.html

<comment><USER2> You're onto something here. WordPress + docker + koding.com + jetstrap.com.

I can see the problem this product would solve and the target market will definitely understand it. That being said, I think this looks like an early MVP and needs lots more work.

I look forward to seeing what this evolves into.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Completely agree.

It is definitely an early MVP :).

Lots more to do filling out the features, improving the UI, and stability improvements, but we hit the point where there are so many things we could do next we want to make sure we focus first on what people urgently need.

If you have any needs this could fill and want to see us prioritize any tools would love to hear them.

</comment></comment><comment> 97-109-107 Somehow after reading the linked site I found the term 'operating system' misleading. My first thoughts were, how would all these poor people manage to install a new OS on their machines in the first place?

<comment><AUTHOR> This was common feedback, thanks! I went with the operating system metaphor because the UI more closely resembles that of mobile operating systems. However it seems that was a point of confusion and calling it a Content Management System is probably the better decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Used this. Love it. Brilliantly conceived.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/nudgepad](https://github.com/nudgepad)

No affiliation; that was just the first thing I looked for before even reading the blog post or crowd-funding page.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a public timeline of important events in software? - <AUTHOR>

OSS, domain-specific, theory, whatever.. <comment><USER2> The Most Important Software Innovations 1837 - 2004 (scroll down to table in section 4):

[http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html](http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wikipedia has many "History of X" pages. Plug in X = Software Engineering and you get a general overview: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_software_engineering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_software_engineering)

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty good, but light on the last 15 years or so</comment></comment>


Data Enrichment, People Data Labs and Another 622M Email Addresses - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/data-enrichment-people-data-labs-and-another-622m-email-addresses/ <comment><USER2> I never heard of this company. How did they get that data?</comment>