YC 2010 startup needs journalists as early users - <AUTHOR> http://secretjournalismstartup.posterous.com/yc-startup-call-for-journalists

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

I have a few journalist friends (as no doubt do you guys) and pointed a couple of them at this.

Sure you've seen this already, but you'll probably find that a lot of your target market (well-trained but under-employed journalists) are quite bitter and resentful that they've been reduced to this. Despite the best intentions of startups like these, ultimately they just want someone who'll give them a honest day's pay on a stable basis to get on with what they love doing, writing well-crafted stories.

Not all journalists will necessarily be entrepreneurial sorts, and the ones that are will often be able to seek out geeky friends to help them out online anyway.

With that in mind, there are a lot of sites out there on the internet with too-good-to-be-true sounding propositions on how they can help you make money online, build an audience etc. Once burned twice shy with these sorts of operations - often it turns out they pay you peanuts to be a cog in the wheel of a SEO-spam factory which profits them more than anyone else. Even with the best intentions just to offer people better tools on a win-win basis, it's hard to avoid coming across as scammy or profiteering when dealing with people who're feeling unemployed and vulnerable career-wise.

So, I guess what I'm saying is you might really want to make sure you stand out from the crowd of "join our SEO-spam-factory and make pennies on the dollar for page impressions while we hoard pagerank" borderline-scams, both in the eyes of geeks and in the eyes of journalists who might not be able to tell the difference but just feel wary.

Would need branding and marketing that really speak to journalists in their own language, not in the language of the smug social media consultant telling them what they need to change about the way work THIS week in order to carry on making a pittance online :) (edit: not that you appear to be doing that at all)

(Also, speaking as a geek whose helped out journalists in the past, if the tools being offered lock you inextricably into some company's hosted ecosystem, I'd be a bit skeptical - I'd want tools I could use with an existing website where i have control - take google analytics for example - but I may not be your typical audience)

Anyway hope that didn't come across too negative, I'm glad more people are taking on what's such a tricky problem!

<comment><USER4> Problem is journalists looking for a stable income from a high quality operation won't jump on this because it's unproven but to prove this concept you need these quality journalists.

An area like this probably requires a large initial investment to give journalists who do join some job security while the site looks to build up readership.

<comment><USER5> I ran the numbers along with my regular publisher for doing something possibly similar (though only guessing based on what they are saying) here in the UK.

You could probably pick up solid but cheap freelancers to join in (one of the magazine the publisher owns encourages community generated content and quite a few tech writers got a start through it) simply because it would mean increased output for them (not being at capacity like super-pro writers generally are) and hence more money.

But it's so so hard to compete with what the print mags would pay. We talked to a few freelancers who said they wanted at least 50% of what they would get for print - but twice the uptake (i.e. twice as many articles). That's hundreds of dollars per article you have to shell out for a few months before advertising picks up to cover it.

I think it's going to be tough to do this.

I saw they were promising payments, elsewhere, of 30-70K. That is "serious writer" territory and they aren't going to get any of them.

It was the ultimate reason I haven't emailed what looks like an interesting idea - 70K is such a ludicrous promise it sounds like they barely know the talent pool :(

(though maybe US journalism works like that, I dont know)

<comment><AUTHOR> We are aiming to get journalists a fair wage. We aren't promising payments of 30K-70K, but we needed numbers to put in the box on the Poynter site, so we put in our targets.

Do email us, you sound interesting. I'm paul [at] newslabs.com or paul.biggar [at] gmail.com.

<comment><USER5> Sorry I sounded so negative - now you've clarified things it looks a lot better. Your right the low profile thing probably worked against you, unfairly I guess.

I'll drop an email when I get chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't find any info regarding your market. Are you launching worldwide right away? Journalism tends to be a fairly local thing, so targeting the right market is of some importance.

<comment><AUTHOR> There isn't anything about our market, because we're not specific to any of them. If you are a journalist, write about what you are interested in. So far, we've had interest from people who write about finance, about tech, about gaming, and lots and lots of local journalists.

<comment><USER3> So long as you don't plan on lumping them all together into one big amorphous news website that tries to cater to all tastes but has no real editorial focus or voice. Give them tools to find / understand / build their own audience.

Sounds like you're on the right track there though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Journalism: Based on bringing transparency. Secretjournalismstartup: Clouded in secrecy.

While this dichotomy has always been present in news media (some ink-stained retches, including yours truly, will protect scoops and anonymous sources to the grave), not knowing who is really behind this beyond people "funded and advised by YCombinator, the people behind Reddit, posterous, and Justin.tv" doesn't encourage faith. Maybe the mystique will make up for it.

<comment><USER8> Based on the submitter's username, stealthyc2010, it should be clear that the startup is still in "stealth mode". This is somewhat common in the tech startup world. The veil will almost assuredly be lifted before they launch.

<comment><USER7> I completely understand that, and tried to make my comment come as a critique rather than a criticism. Two of the most important factors in how much people trust news, however, is a) the source's reputation and b) who is paying for its generation, and how.

Asking journalists to potentially sign on without disclosing the latter can be a risky professional move for them, which could have a negative effect on the venture's success.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I write a reasonable amount of freelance print tech copy and have been looking for something interesting like this to move online.

But the secrecy is putting me right off :(. I guess they will give you more insight via email.

(getting into _serious_ online journalism is pretty hard btw)

<comment><AUTHOR> We were only trying to be secret to not build hype when the product isn't ready. Backfire! We hope you aren't put off. We are going to be as open and transparent as we can be.

(I should point out in that case that I'm only using this name for consistency. I'm pbiggar on HN.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> any reason to hide that you're <http://newslabs.com/>? same phone number on both pages.

<comment><USER10> Don't you think that this lacks courtesy to post a comment rather than just email them? I mean, if there were a reason (and I can think of at least 3) then you just ignored it.

<comment><USER11> FWIW I think most people would google for the phone number. I did.

Trying to be stealth is just an invitation for everyone to start googling to find out all they can.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but there is a difference between being curious and finding out whatever you can, and posting the results of that search to a public forum - <USER2> when the word "secret" is in the contact email address. It just seems a little unnecessarily unkind.

<comment><USER5> I suspect it never really occured the grandfather - because there wasnt really any secrecy, this is a community that generally scoffs on secrecy as "a bit silly really" and there appeared to be no harm in spreading possibly interesting knowledge.

Not deliberately malicious I am sure.

I was going to post it too but checked myself at the last minute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm no expert on this area, but from what I've seen ad revenues are nowhere near high enough to pay for decent journalism. If they were we wouldn't have the pay-wall debate.

Affiliate links tend to be a huge no-no because of conflicts of interest.

Publications generally only buy articles if they have first right of publication.

Suggesting someone can earn 30K-70K on the above basis seems over-optimistic to the point of being misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we'll be working on the ad revenues. They certainly aren't high enough to support a massive media organization. They should be high enough to support a low-overhead one-man journalism show.

There are other revenue streams, too. It remains to be seen which is the best for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <JOKE>

How nice of them: _you focus on the content. We handle making money_

</JOKE>

<comment><USER15> That's the bitterness that the top commenter here referred to. The journalists I know are largely resigned to being crapped on by whoever they work for. They create all the value (similar to a programmer at a startup run by biz-ev guys) while someone makes the money and then gives them a small piece of it. They're use to getting crapped on like this.

That said, they're really picky about who they let crap on them. Someone might let the HuffPo crap on them so they can share space with celebrities and get lots of hits on their story. Someone might let the NYTimes crap on them, because, it's the New York Times!

So if this startup's going to run the same game, they'll need to have a good reason for journalists to want to get crapped on by them.

<comment><AUTHOR> No-one is being crapped on here. I've updated the CFJ to hopefully make that a lot clearer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have founded a group called Hacks/Hackers at <http://hackshackers.com> bringing together journalists and technologists -- sounds like a good fit with what you're doing. Let's get in touch -- also glad to hear from anyone else here interested in this space!

</comment><comment><USER17> Can a centralized source provide all the specialized technical support and services a real web living news agency will need? Alternatively would Huffington Post and Techcrunch be willing to add to their tech team by paying for this service?

The only differentiators I can see are: "Lead generation: get tips from your readers automatically get sources for your stories find out what stories people want to hear about, before they know themselves! Collaborate with other journalists."

The other services (submit links, show ads) have questionable value. I have high hopes for a model like this though. I was looking for an open source model like a dedicated Wordpress though.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm really interested to see how they'll handle liability. If they want to make a lot of money, I'm going to guess the founders won't be vetting anything before it gets published. However, if they're pushing it on Reddit, writing the checks, selling the stuff to other publishers, I'd find it hard to see a DMCA claim holding up. At that point they're doing a lot more than for their content creators than Youtube or Scribd, making them accomplices in any libel lawsuit that might come up.

Will they go to the wall for one of their writers? Doubtful.

So do they have a new angle on the legal side of things?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting question. I'm guessing since you ask about the DCMA you're asking about copyright. Well, we'll vet all our writers, and it should be no problem at all. We'll also delay payment of new writers so that there is no way to do some kind of grab-and-dash.

Its also much much much easier to search for copyrighted material in text than in video or flash content. I can't imagine solving this will be a hard problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why limit the search to journalists? If my understanding is correct, Arrington didn't have any prior experience in the news industry before Techcrunch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its not strictly limited to journalists, but its focus will be news, and we're looking to restrict the authors to high quality writers.

While I expect to widen the platform to all comers in the long term, we'll be very careful how we do it. It'll be our equivalent of reddit's search for how to do subreddits well, and Facebook figuring out how to let everyone in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _The are too many sites which are generic content repositories trying to eek ad revenue from google searches. We are a place of quality journalism._

"Eke", you meant? Since you're "a place of _quality_ journalism", you may want to fix that.

P.S. As you can see, I'm not only a quality writer, but a quality proofreader as well. Feel free to get in touch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, thanks. Who needs spell checking when you have HN :)

<comment><USER19> I'd also capitalise "google". I know it can be a verb, but you're using it here as a noun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They're advertising for journalists on Poynter. That's definitely the place to do it! Well-played.

<http://careers.poynter.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=3311446>

<comment><USER20> "30 openings. ... while this isn't a paid position, we only earn money if you do. (So the 30K-70K is an estimate, not a concrete figure)."

Could be Mahalo or similar based on that text?

<comment><USER21> But the journalists here are doing more than copy and paste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks like you are addressing problem [3] as explained in "Startup ideas we did like to fund" (<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>). Excellent!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks, we're NewsLabs (pbiggar and nchong on HN). We never intended to use secrecy to hype stuff up, just to be a bit quiet until we had more built.

</comment><comment><USER15> So it's a YC version of TrueSlant.com? Could be cool! Good luck, guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, similar alright. We have different outlook. The writers for our site aren't "contributors". Rather, they are the stars and we are providing a service to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great area to work on =)

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool!</comment>


Java and SIMD - <AUTHOR> http://prestodb.rocks/code/simd/ <comment><USER2> Auto-vectorization is hard. Very hard. E.g. even in C/C++, the compiler (e.g. GCC C/C++ or MS VC/VC++) is unable to vectorize loops unless you help it _a lot_ , and in most cases, you end writing SIMD "intrinsics" (e.g. [1]) in order to get optimal results. From my experience, despite auto-vectorization being better than 10 years ago, still is very far for optimizing code properly without lots of tuning (e.g. you can try build any graphic processing library and see the vectorization warnings -i.e. why the vectorization was not possible-).

Ten years ago, in the SSE2/Altivec times, I thought that it would be matter of time having much smarter compilers making graphics/pixel processing code much faster, but not. So for JIT the case it can not be better, because is similar, as even taking runtime information, the auto-vectorization phase is equivalent. I would love to see smarter compilers, understanding the code, many steps over current hardwired pattern-matching based optimizations.

[1] [https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/IntrinsicsGuide...](https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/IntrinsicsGuide/)

<comment><USER3> A few years back I decided to entertain myself by testing how smart today's smart compilers really are when it comes to auto-vectorization.

I had this small and simple C application I'd written years earlier that tried to find inputs whose corresponding MD5 hashes started with certain bytes. It was a good base because it was obviously vectorizable.

At first enabling the vectorizer didn't result in any changes to the binaries. I then correctly guessed that (potentially) calling printf function inside a hot loop might confuse it. After slight refactoring I got the compiler to output SSE instructions, which resulted in a nice 2.5× testing speed over the original (incidentally even without auto-vectorizing the refactored code resulted in faster binaries, which is not all that surprising).

Anyway, I also rewrote the application to use intrinsics. I hadn't used them before myself, but it didn't really take much time at all familiarize myself with them and write the code, and it was indeed quite a bit faster than what the compiler was capable of with resulting binary having 14× speed compared to the original, or over 5× compared to what the compiler could achieve without explicit hints from intrinsics.

Edit: added back a few words I had accidentally removed when rearranging sentences, causing a confusing incomplete sentence. Corrected comparing figures like for like.

<comment><USER4> I've had similar experiences. If I want vectorised code, I just write it myself using intrinsics or assembly. It's fine if the compiler can autovectorise something I didn't feel like doing by hand, but I'm not going to rely on heuristic voodoo to get the machine code I want for a hot loop. I wouldn't mind a slightly nicer wrapper API for the intrinsics, though, something like glsl-sse2[1].

And that's more or less what I'm planning to do in a programming language I'm working on, actually—if you use a SIMD-compatible array type, the compiler will try to keep it in a vector register, and some operations will be faster (e.g., "+" on two Float32^4 values will compile to an addps) but it's up to the programmer to use the instructions they actually want, or _tell_ the compiler with a macro "please vectorise this loop or warn me about why you can't".

[1] [https://github.com/LiraNuna/glsl-sse2](https://github.com/LiraNuna/glsl- sse2)

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/t0rakka/mango](https://github.com/t0rakka/mango)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Be very careful about this in a shared environment. AVX512 slows down the CPU cores because of thermal, voltage throttling. The instructions "take more work". Intel CPUs take 1 MILLIsecond to return to normal speed.

If you're doing any kind of rapid context switching, or multiple workloads, depending on how your scheduler is setup, the OTHER workloads will show up as using more percentage of CPU time per work item. It's non-intuitive, and difficult to debug.

<comment><USER7> Now that major cloud vendors are selling VMs with guaranteed AVX512 support, how are they going to deal with the "noisy neighbor" problem?

<comment><USER6> For one, this is done on a core-by-core level. I believe Intel has the capability to monitor for this behaviour and do some dynamic throttling in certain models, which cloud vendors may have access to. I think they introduced some of this in Broadwell-E, where you can set the AVX offset per core, and the on-die PCU will throttle that core below the AVX base frequency, allowing the rest of the cores to remain at speed. These are typically controlled by BIOS, or MSRs.

We're currently trying to figure out how to do deal with this. Some ideas come from Google's CPI2 paper, and trying to dynamically schedule workloads with diversity if we think they interfere. Other thoughts have been simpler, like core pinning (knapsacking for latency, or throughput).

this is hard.

Disclaimer: These views represent my own, and not my employer's, or their vendor's views

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I asked James Gosling about SIMD (MMX and SSE) back in the year 2000 JavaOne conference. He said the answer is method calls, and that the compiler can use whatever instructions it likes. (I submitted the question online, and he answered it on stage, and I later saw the recording; I didn't attend, nor meet him in person. He seemed a bit annoyed that the question was too simple.)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's room for two approaches in Java really. The JIT can be smart and use SIMD instructions where it can see they are applicable, but there's also room for a small DSL like API that allows library authors and other very experienced users to express a suitable algorithm and have it easily translated into the SIMD instructions available at runtime. Anybody interested in the latter should take a look at the work being done under project Panama.

<comment><USER10> This presentation was posted recently on the general OpenJDK mailing list

      http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~vlivanov/talks/2017_Vectorization_in_HotSpot_JVM.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has got to be one of the best blog posts I've read in a while. It's clean, concise, has a clear use-case and is well benchmarked. Kudos to the author.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, I'm glad that you liked it

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My understanding is that once the Truffle/Graal language implementation framework lands with Java 9, you will be able to substitute method calls with platform-specific instructions. See page 62 of [http://lafo.ssw.uni- linz.ac.at/papers/2015_CGO_Graal.pdf](http://lafo.ssw.uni- linz.ac.at/papers/2015_CGO_Graal.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is not a Java question. If a C compiler can do it then a Java Virtual Machine can do it, provided that the C code of the JVM makes it so. There are many implementations of the JVM so you really should be asking which JVMs do this. Oracle is not the only game in town, not to mention at least two open source JVMs where you could add whatever capabilities that you need.

On the other hand, if you are asking whether or not some magic compiler optimization will take your crappy code and make it run fast on SIMD, not only is that the wrong question but you have already lost the race.

The winners of the race asked the question, "How can we add a capability to our Java application to run computations fast using SIMD?" and they found number of ways to do this without relying on magic. It might be a bit of work to code because you have to do it with intent, like the old timers who placed code and data carefully on their drum memory computers to make the code run much faster. You can code with intent in any language on any platform, but because your intent is stronger than the asthetic perfection of the platform, things can look a little grungy to an outsider. Comment your code and document it well.

And ask yourself whether offloading the computation to a GPU might not be cheaper and even faster than SIMD.

<comment><USER12> Often it is not that simple to change JVM, especially if your application is very fine tuned for a specific GC. In such case, is it always worth to spend hundreds of work hours for migration (and testing it afterwards)? Other aspect is the technical support or other legal/contract bindings.

Besides, I wasn't asking for "magic compiler optimizations". I would prefer to use intrinsics directly. Is there a way to do that in Java?

<comment><USER15> Kind of.

[https://www.slideshare.net/RednaxelaFX/green-teajug- hotspoti...](https://www.slideshare.net/RednaxelaFX/green-teajug- hotspotintrinsics02232013)

Here is also a presentation about them

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J0RELNadks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J0RELNadks)

Here is a list with some of them.

[https://gist.github.com/apangin/7a9b7062a4bd0cd41fcc](https://gist.github.com/apangin/7a9b7062a4bd0cd41fcc)

The Panama JVM has more related to SIMD.

Of course all of this is JVM specific and each one has its own set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been wondering what the best way to implement SIMD in a JITless language was. While I'm a big proponent of static compilation (coding mostly in Go), this runtime inflexibility is a bit painful. Sure, you could compile multiple version, check the CPU and deliver the correct methods on runtime... but, that's not quite right.

Another issue is how you code it up - both in terms of delivering multiple versions depending on CPU support and in terms of shielding the developer from low-level assembly. I'm all for high level APIs (think `sum(a vec, b vec)`) that get compiled down to whatever is supported, but I haven't seen many good examples of this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone knows how RyuJIT compares to Java8 and Java9 in a comparison like this?

<comment><USER18> ryujit does zero autovectorizing but net has a nifty simd library thst lets you do it by hand. big plus is you can write once run on sse or avx or avx512. big downside is only a tiny fraction of simd instructions are supported, though they are working on improving that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why not use some OpenCL in some form either raw or Aparapi?

<comment><USER20> Crossing the JNI barrier is expensive performance-wise. Unless it's a longer running, CPU heavy calculation its usually best to stay in pure Java. There are some things that going out to another high performance framework will speed things up, but the bar is a bit higher because of the JNI overhead.</comment></comment>


OVH down - <AUTHOR> http://status.ovh.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I can not reach the status page myself so here is a screenshot of the status page taken by a friend if unreachable for you: [http://i.imgur.com/osHgd7w.png](http://i.imgur.com/osHgd7w.png)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I called OVH dedicated server support and it seems the issue comes from the connection between french ISP Free and OVH networks.</comment>


Units of Measure in F#: Part One, Introducing Units - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewkennedy/archive/2008/08/29/units-of-measure-in-f-part-one-introducing-units.aspx

<comment><USER2> Units of measure has always struck me as a pet feature of F# that's only there because it happened to be what somebody's PhD dissertation was written on. Whether it is useful in practice is unclear.

I saw Don Syme give a presentation where he tried to add twice the variance to the mean of a variable. This is actually perfectly sensible to do -- it's some quantile point. But it gives a type error since variance has units squared in it. So he took the square root to solve the "problem." Obviously it was just a demo, but he claimed the the Microsoft Ad team had similar bugs confusing the variance and standard deviation. I can almost imagine some code maintenance guy adding units of measure and thinking there's a bug in some carefully constructed algorithm when in fact there is not.

All sorts of statistics have this issue.</comment>


What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-ever-happened-to-russian-revolution-180964768/?no-ist <comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: this is a super long read, but absolutely worth it. Together with Christian Neef's recent piece for Spiegel ([http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/understanding- mosc...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/understanding-moscow-the- mysteries-of-the-russian-mindset-a-1162072.html)), it covers just about everything you need to know about Russia today.</comment>


Ask HN: I've been given an exploding offer. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in college, and I've been applying around/searching for internships. I received an internship offer from a "big" company, but I'm not the best negotiator and was given a deadline of next week.<p>What should I do? I would prefer more time to go through the interviews with other companies. In http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html, Joel suggests to "accept the exploding offer at the last minute, but go to the other interviews anyway". Is this ethical? Is it reasonable? <comment><USER2> I'd ask them for more time, emphasizing that you won't be starting the internship for months anyhow, so a small delay in your acceptance won't hurt them. If they insist on knowing in the next week, then I'd recommend accepting but continuing to interview and using your original "offer" as leverage however you need to. If you find something more appealing, great - take it, and then tell the original company that you're sorry but you can no longer work for them. If you don't find anything better, then you're taken care of with the original acceptance.

As far as ethics are concerned, the company who issued the exploding offer is putting you in a bad spot and they know it. They're forfeiting their right to ethical treatment by not showing you the same.

<comment><USER3> Right on, the timeline seems aggressive for a internship that won't start for months. It is understandable that the company would want to get commitments and perhaps it will be a great internship but they should have been more reasonable about the offer.

There is NOTHING wrong with accepting the offer and continuing to interview for other positions. If you find something better just apologize and move on. It happens all the time and if somebody holds a grudge about it, they are being an asshole and you probably wouldn't want anything to do with them anyway. Seriously.

Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that big companies (and sometimes small ones) have no problem whatsoever with abruptly derailing the careers of good employees just for short-term financial considerations. Loyalty goes both ways and sadly big companies have burned that bridge first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of negotiation is just asking questions about the other side's needs and constraints, and articulating yours. Often you can find a creative way to solve everyone's needs.

For example, in your case you should find out why they need an answer next week.

If they have a rule that offers can only be open for 7 days, you could ask them to issue the offer later after you've gone through your interview process.

Or if they have backup candidates they might need to engage, let them engage those guys, and you sync up again once your interviews are done.

And you should articulate your constraint: you have an interview "process" that continues for the next xx weeks, after which you can make a well-informed decision. You can also tell them it's in _their_ interest for you to make a well-informed decision - they want someone who chose to work there for the right reasons and will be a long-term, productive employee. Turnover kills companies.

I wouldn't accept an offer unless you really intend to work there. One day you'll be a manager or director, and the karma will come back to bite you :) You always want to be a class act, even when confronted with someone less- than-classy.

If they're reasonable people and they want you, there's probably a good reason for their constraints, and they should be willing to find a solution that fits your constraints too.

If they're not reasonable people, or they don't want you, better to find out now.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't ask for more time; this company gave you a deadline for a reason, they want to pressure you.

Asking for more time only tells them that at this moment in time their offer doesn't interest you, and you'd like to shop around.

Every company believes they are the best place to work and what they offer is more desirable than other businesses and the ego of a large business is especially big, by asking for more time you might hurt their ego, they may only want people who desire to work for such a firm like themselves.

Do not ask for more time, interview as much as possible, and accept the job offer the day before or on the last day -- I think accepting the offer on the day before the last might convey that the clock didn't just run out for you.

If you get a much better offer later, take the new offer, it might not be the best move but this isn't so much a question of ethics so much as it's a question about burning bridges; nobody looks favourably on people who in hindsight only accepted because their ideal job wasn't yet available. These people will remember you and although they may understand the reason why you would do that, or they may do it or have done it themselves, it wont matter as you have wasted valuable time for everyone in the decision making and training processes.

Carefully choose whether you want to burn the bridge or not.

<comment><USER6> I think being in college you do have the position of staggered job interviews. At my college it was understood that there was almost always on campus interviews going on, so you could interview with 2 very good companies but two weeks apart. The second might not get back to you in time for the first, so what do you do? My first internship offer had 24 hour deadline, so I turned that down. The next one I had gave me a month knowing the campus recruiting schedule.

The other thing to do is check with your school's intern/co-op office and see if they have a minimum amount of time for a job offer. As I said before, my first job offer was 24 hours, but the school requires all employers operating through the school's listing service to give 2 weeks. If there's such a requirement you can use that as leverage to extend the date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There may be a real reason for the deadline - internal process, internship program schedules, the hiring manager just wants to get it over with, etc, so it's probably wise not to ignore it completely.

But never, ever, ever, ever give anything resembling loyalty to a big company. It is not a person, and cannot appreciate it, no matter how much you want it to. Until they're paying you, you are free to do as you please, ethically, legally and in every other sense of the word.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's only an internship! You're not being hired for the rest of your natural life. A Big company will look good on your CV. Of course, you should seek out even better options and as many of the other comments suggest, only accept a couple of hours before the deadline.

Assuming you accept, then stop going after other offers. You'll only upset yourself and/or burn bridges. Just chill out until you start.</comment>


Microsoft Uses US Women's Soccer Team to Explain Why It Doesn't Hire More Women - <AUTHOR> http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/07/18/1231227/microsoft-uses-us-womens-soccer-team-to-explain-why-it-doesnt-hire-more-women

<comment><USER2> Actual article [https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/07/15/changing-the- fac...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/07/15/changing-the-face-of- coding/)</comment>


How to instantly wipe an Android phone in case of arrest? - <AUTHOR> A  a Belarusian friend asked me this, but I can't find anything on my own.
The common pattern in Belarus is once you are arrested, you are beaten until you give up the pin code.
So, if they could give a pin code that would immediately trigger phone reset to factory settings or show a dummy profile, without Telegram and its opposition channels and groups, that would at least protect their family and contacts.
It would be nice to the phone to be usable afterwords. Protesters may be given their belongings back after detention, and having a working phone is an advantage if they land in a hospital or just outside the detention center with none to pick them up.
So far I suspect that to have this functionality one has to fork Android or LineageOS.
Why Android? Because back in Belarus, iPhone is much less popular than in the US or EU. <comment><USER2> Haven't used it personally but Guardian Project has something along these lines for Android:

[https://guardianproject.info/apps/info.guardianproject.rippl...](https://guardianproject.info/apps/info.guardianproject.ripple/)</comment>


DJI's newest 4K folding drone costs $799 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/23/16922928/dji-mavic-air-drone-price-specs-release <comment><USER2> I would rather see a redesigned Mavic Pro with a larger camera sensor. There is a blank space between the portability of the Mavic Pro and the video quality available in the Phantom 4 form factor.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you but I see how DJI is trying to maneuver. My guess is their goal is not to aim at serious hobbyists rather they want casual upper class tech gadget collectors like the Bose, Apple, Nikon non-pro with a $2k+ dslr customer. People with tons of money and scoping for the next hot tech trinket 799 is a pretty great price point for the package. No good for me because I don't like Chinese corporations and prefer to make and mod my own quads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow so this is basically just an ad? Am I missing something?</comment>


The Clockwise/Spiral Rule - <AUTHOR> http://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html

<comment><USER2> Needs repeating every time this comes up: the "spiral rule" is nonsense.

[https://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=5080096](https://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=5080096)

<comment><USER3> I always figured it was a joke anyway. I mean, how can you have "clockwise" in a single dimension?

<comment><USER2> I've always assumed that it's a joke as well, but that doesn't seem to stop the gullible from believing it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, Poe's Law in action I guess.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can you do in a startup hub that you can't do elsewhere? - <AUTHOR>

For web startups, what is the advantage of living in a startup hub vs living in a city like Philly or Orlando?<p>It seems like being in a startup hub matters most when your company grows to a certain size and you either need to hire a lot of people or need to raise money. How much does it matter for a company with 1 - 5 people who aren't looking to raise capital and aren't trying to become the next Facebook or Twitter? <comment><USER2> I run a software business out of a small town in central Japan which, despite having a local tech incubator (the original reason why I started living here -- long story), will not be confused with a startup hub any time soon.

My frustrations with living here:

1) Most events I want to go to are Way The Heck Over There. Going over to Tokyo for an HN meetup takes a total of six hours of train rides and $200. Going to the US for a conference takes, ugh, don't get me started.

2) To the limited extent that my life requires that someone who is not my customer understand what I do for a living, my life is needlessly complicated. My landlord, my bank manager, and the local tax office/city hall think my situation is very "exotic" relative to what they are used to. It is nothing that I haven't been able to finesse, but nuisances are nuisances. Similarly, the selection of lawyers/accountants/etc who are prepared to deal with me is more limited than it would be in e.g. San Francisco (or Tokyo or Chicago, for that matter).

3) There is _one_ programmer in this town I'd consider hiring.

Now, does that matter? Meh, not so much. I launched a multinational telephony company from here this week. _We are living in the future._ The Internet is the greatest geographical leveler ever, and the situation keeps getting better. APIs keep getting better, enabling you to do more and more sophisticated things with less and less investment. Hosting keeps getting better: in all probability, I'll never own a server, and that is a viable option now. Options for extracting money from paying customers keep getting better. The funding environment is even getting better, although that is slower (not too relevant for me at present, but nice to have options).

There are some compensating advantages:

1) This town is my home.

2) While Japan is not exact a low-price country, a modest apartment in San Francisco costs about what I need to live comfortably here.

3) Being ramen profitable here is _delicious_.</comment>


How Well Do We Know Our Conscious Experience? The Case of Echolocation (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Echo.htm

<comment><USER2> [http://books.google.de/books?id=fBGPBRX3JsQC&pg=PA165&redir_...](http://books.google.de/books?id=fBGPBRX3JsQC&pg=PA165&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind of boring discussion about detecting boards a distance away and not being able to once hearing is blocked. Why not just check YouTube or Oprah and check out the blind guy who can tell cars vs. trash cans vs. arm chairs apart by clicking at them, etc.. I guess it is good someone took the time to write it up formally, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not about human echolocation. It's about our awareness of the things that we are consciously doing.</comment></comment>


Snoop Dogg for CEO of Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/20/snoop-dogg-for-ceo-of-twitter/ <comment><USER2> >Nassim Taleb summed this up for me: "3,000 years ago people were doing math on tablets. Now…people are doing math on tablets."

>If something withstands the test of time, use it. Every leader learns from the past. Every leader uses the past as his filter to figure out what will succeed in the future.

I don't know if I can come up with a worse quote to prove that point even if I tried.

<comment><USER3> > Now…people are doing math on tablets

This just isn't true. Every once in a while you see a student trying one out, but the technology isn't there. People do math with notebooks and pencils.

<comment><USER4> Well, probably nobody actually did math on tablets in ancient times either...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And today from the How-To-Stealthily-Sell-A-Book department ...

</comment><comment><USER6> This would be a great publicity stunt for Snoop and then he would move on after 3 months. See the documentary Snooplion[1] where he used the Reggae community[2].

[1] [http://snooplion.com/](http://snooplion.com/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoop_Dogg#Personal_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoop_Dogg#Personal_life)

<comment><USER7> He used the Rastafarian community specifically (rastafarians != reggae). Snoop probably got involved with them and realized that it's a pretty fundamentalist mystic offshoot of Christianity. Sure, they smoke a lot of weed, but there's a dogma there as well that is harder to swallow.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Hell yeah Snoop should run Twitter. Honestly, what's the worst he could do? Twitter owns scale but their vision has been woefully lacking for years. And I bet with a figure like Snoop in charge people would be more engaged with the direction of the company than if it's just another wealthy tech bro nobody east of Sacramento's ever heard of.

</comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, it's not as crazy as it sounds. Twitter is a platform that people with a public profile use to send broadcast messages. Snoop has an enormous Internet IQ -- it's clear he understands how to use the Internet to get his message out (just look at his Reddit account). Snoop is not a dumb guy, and he has managed to remain relevant for his entire career -- no small feat considering the changes our society has undergone since he broke into the public eye in the early 90s. Even his copious marijuana usage is no longer as illegal as it once was (and let's be real, half the CEOs in the valley smoke on the regular anyway).

Your CEO's main job at a relatively mature company like Twitter is to set the tone for your brand, and Snoop is huge across the entire millennial set (aka Twitter's target demographic). I can actually see a scenario where this happens, and as long as Snoop is willing to learn the business (and from all accounts the guy is a great listener and fast learner), the board could ease him into the role and support him.

This would also be awesome on another level, because then two of the guys who produced "Fuck the Police" would be in senior-level executive positions at major tech companies (Dre is over at Apple).

</comment><comment><USER8> > And he works well with others, teaming up with Katy Perry to sell one of the > best tracks of all time, "California Gurls."

Interesting song choice considering all of the songs he has worked on with other artists. And saying one of the best tracks of all time is probably a stretch there. This author just sounds like he has a crush on Snoop.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is Twitter really in that bad a shape to pull a shark jump like this?

<comment><USER10> Yes.

1) Declining active user numbers. 2) They have not improved their product since it's inception. 3) They cannot increase the advertising load by much more, so do not expect a big jump in revenue. 4) Lots of engineering talent has left and more is in the process of leaving.

Meanwhile, the exodus to instagram and snapchat continues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not? We live in the Age of Absurdity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Snoop for CEO or GTFOT campaign commence.

</comment><comment><USER13> 5 days old.

</comment><comment><USER14> click bait

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoop_Dogg#Legal_incidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoop_Dogg#Legal_incidents)

What a fucking joke.

<comment><USER16> You say that, and yet this didn't really seem to matter for Apple: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dre#Violence_against_women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dre#Violence_against_women)

<comment><USER17> Dr. Dre didn't become the CEO of Apple... or Beats...</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Countersues Nokia - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/12/11countersue.html <comment><USER2> This is a really strange press release from Apple... to me it makes Apple sound bad.

First they make the Nokia quote stand out as the most, over their other points. Then Apple uses the word 'reinvent' in the first line of the third paragraph. This is exactly what Nokia are claiming they've done. Let us look at all the things they've reinvented:

* osx, unix clone.

* ipod, mp3 player clone.

* itunes, winamp clone.

* iphone, smart phone clone.

* ilife programs, each are a clone of many existing programs (movie editor, photo editor, sound editor, web page maker etc).

They do a lot of credit claiming for things they didn't invent. If you just listened to Apple PR, you'd expect they invented all of those things. It is really strange that they are proving what Nokia has said about them in their own press release!

<comment><USER3> The third paragraph is boiler plate applied to all press releases. Granted, in this case it is longer than the press release.

The actual press release, the first two sentences, is almost certainly crafted to match the Nokia press quotes from their suit:

 _"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for," said Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia's Vice President of legal and intellectual property, in a statement. "Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree [upon] appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation."_

Assuming each side can make a few patents stick then they are probably headed for a cross licensing deal.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I think a cross-licensing deal is precisely what Apple is trying to avoid.

There's no discernible reason for Apple to have not licensed Nokia's patents in the beginning, given what other licensees pay. So it seems likely that Nokia was looking for terms above and beyond what they ask from other licensees.

Which, in this case, would almost certainly have included licenses to use some Apple-patented technologies.

<comment><USER3> Having seen further Apple statements today I agree with you. Nokia is looking for a way in to the Apple patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," said Bruce Sewell, Apple's General Counsel and senior vice president.

And his boss once said

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal"

<comment><USER6> Did he steal that quote from Picasso?

<comment><USER7> Who clearly stole it himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what the Nokia's patents are but what I know is that about the time a company begins to sue other companies means they've fallen behind on the market. And this has indeed been true for Nokia for some time.

Had Gandhi lived in the late 20th centry, his quote would probably be: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they sue you. Then you win."

<comment><USER9> So according to your logic Apple sued Psystar because Apple was falling behind in the market. I don't think so..

Companies sue when they think that they have to defend their IP. (I'm not talking about patent trolls, I'm talking about genuine companies with real IP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like Apple's patent's are primarily UI/software related, which in the worst case are relatively easy to workaround.

Nokia's patent's on the other hand are related to wireless technology which are not easily workaround-able, so IMO if this goes towards settlement/cross- licensing Nokia has a much stronger hand.</comment>


Zen Camcorder has 13% of the market - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/technology/personaltech/20pogue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

<comment><USER2> Word of mouth.

My mom was showing me her Flip Video about three months ago. I'd never heard of it and she was like "what? You have to see it" She pulled out the unassuming little brick videocorder and with enthusiasm demonstrated it. It makes cute Tivo'esque sounds when you press a button. She is not very technically savvy yet she has used it to shoot video and share video (via USB copying, not YouTube) with friends and family (baby videos mostly). The video quality is decent and it fits in her purse (important). She has shipped at least one FlipVideo overseas.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm there is a Sony camcorder called Network Sharing Cam which is also a basic, really lightweight and cheap camcorder. Pretty similar to the Flip and priced at around $200. Video is at 640x480. I have one of these Sony cams. The Sony model predictably runs on a memory stick and can also shoot stills at 5 MP. There are 2 buttons : one for taking photo, press the another to take video. Its a nice pocketable design and now I keep it with me at all times. I was not too enthusiastic about videos b4 i used this easy to use cam. The Flip looks an even simpler design.

edit : The sony model has some additional controls like (digital) zoom etc. So slightly more features than the Flip which can either be a "feature" or a "put-off" depending on your perspective.

<comment><USER4> The Sony cam seems to have 14 buttons on it. I imagine that'll be a bit intimidating for a non-techie, whereas how to operate the Flip is very easy to understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ...maybe it's just the price and size. I'm sure people wouldn't stop buying it if it got more features.

<comment><USER6> I believe the lack of extraneous features is the appeal; the Flip is successful because the user accomplishes their goal with only the most minimal effort.

<comment><USER5> Just trying to speculate as to what the most important aspects were. History is too often rewritten later by writers who didn't understand why something was popular at the time that it was actually taking off. So they just pick whatever glamorous reason sounds the most revolutionary.

He may be right though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too bad they are not selling it outside the US.</comment>


Ask HN: People whose advice you value highly? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> To put it very simply: people around me who are competent, modest, and kind.</comment>


Ask HN: How will you pass on secrets when you're gone? - <AUTHOR> Problem: As a freelance developer I end up managing secrets for clients. Things like encryption keys or login credentials are pretty common. I've begun wondering recently what would happen if I were to be hit by a bus - a totally normal, non-existential thought-process.<p>How do fellow Hacker News readers deal with this situation? I'm not super keen on passing off administrative access to non-technical stakeholders if I can help it, but I'm also not keen on being the SPOF for accessing an encrypted drive in the case that it's necessary. Or granting a successor admin priveleges on a server. <comment><USER2> I hear you, I've been in the same situation.

I write very clear instructions in a Google Doc and share with multiple key people at a client that sum up a high level of: Here's where all of your stuff is. Here's what the next technical person would need to find and get access to everything.

Then a USB key with all of their keyfiles. And a Keepass file with all of their passwords. I keep a copy encrypted and saved for myself for the inevitable 2 year later email of 'we lost access to everything.'

I've also put all of this info on a box not publicly accessible to the internet, but in their VPC.

Basically, Dear Future Tech person - ssh in here and you can get all of the instructions and access that you need.

<comment><AUTHOR> > 2 year later email of 'we lost access to everything.'

This is my recurring fear. It's why I like the idea of making it difficult for the client to gain this access because I'm hoping that a misplaced access mechanism doesn't leave the system wide open.

<comment><USER2> An agency I worked with handled this liability via a support contract.

It was structured as, pay us for N hours a month of retainer, we will keep your servers patched and secured with updates and maintain all of your credentials.

Otherwise, we don't want the liability of having access to all of your systems, so we need to expire our access and hand it over to someone on your team.

Sometimes the company had an IT dept that had no idea what to do with the info, but would be in charge of keeping it. Or they would be happy to pay for us to stay on top of things.</comment></comment></comment>


/r/place shows how identity politics works (without all the human bullshit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQKUHb0a4hI <comment><USER2> No it doesn't. It's just a video trying to justify pre-judging others on bullshit ID labels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! Which "bullshit ID labels" am I using in this video that you object to?

<comment><USER2> I said you are justifying or trying to make it OK to be mentally lazy and pre- judge based on pre-conceived notions through labels. I never said you used a specific label, since the video talks about the concept of using ID labels and "how useful they are".</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Taps Its Inner Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070209_179924.htm?chan=search <comment><USER2> Yahoo has bigger problems than the lack of innovation. It's insanely bloated as a company now. Why Yahoo Photos and Flickr? Why My Yahoo and My Web and Delicious? Why can't I log in to Delicious with my Yahoo login? Why is their web page so cluttered? They really need to cut it down. Dump Yahoo Photos, dump My Web and Yahoo 360. Streamline into 5 areas: Media (News, TV, Commercial Video), Search (Panama), Social Media (Flickr, Delicious, My Yahoo, Music), Email (most critical) and Hosting (I'd drop hosting too but I don't have an MBA and 5 is a much nicer number than 4). Thats my opinion, but I don't have an MBA... just some common sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me a bit of the Bell Labs west-coast startup program. Back in the 1990s, they created their internal startup area.

While it did do was create a lot of hostility, and keeping of secrets from other divisions. It divided the company up, and most of the internal groups didn't end up doing well..

Check out "Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel", it's an interesting read on the history of the labs.

It seems that independent (external) funding sources can do much better- They can fund any group that shows promise, no matter where it originated.. They put the risk into the hands of the founders, and they have a wider market to choose from.

-C

</comment><comment><USER4> Great idea; it sounds like someone at Yahoo is taking Christensen's advice.

This will only work well if the division is given enough autonomy. If a small division is trying to help meet the massive revenue goals of mainstream Yahoo, it's just not going to work. They're not going to get the resources or motivation that they need.

That's the problem with Google's 20% time. You're not really encouraged to do little projects, something that a startup might do. Instead, you're encouraged to contribute to the bottom line of Google, which severely limits the kind of things you can work on (i.e., "do search or you're wasting your time"). This is compounded by the fact that your 20% time is inconsistently factored into your employee evaluation (for better or for worse).

</comment><comment><USER5> I have friends that work at Y! that are the most talented programmers I know-- however, when they recently had a startup idea, there was definitely a 'should we tell our parents?' consideration that wasn't shaken off until the startup had already been built (at least the beta).

That said, the code coming out of Y! lately has been excellent in quality and in pushing the web developer community forward (e.g. Yahoo! User Interface Libraries, Yahoo! Pipes) . . . but at such a massive company, that code is coming from a very small percentage of its employees, and features such as '360' seem very uninspired IMHO.

At the end of the day, there is a disturbing theme throughout this article: give some of our best talent the opportunity to leave the mill and work on something revolutionary, and maybe they won't leave in the first place or keep their ideas secret, and just maybe they won't mind if the compensation is rather dismal compared to what it could be--after all, we can protect them from what so many of them consider the greatest risk: jobless with an unsuccessful startup.

Maybe they should ask themselves why they are a mill in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems like a good move on the surface. Digging a little deeper, though, one notices a couple of quotes:

"But he compares what he and Fake are doing to what record label executives do, searching out the best talent."

Someone who compares himself favorably to a record label executive in today's world is out of touch with how the target demographic for Brickhouse products feels about such things. I don't know how much trust I could place in Horowitz's decisions regarding this new internal "startup".

"Horowitz...said the figure would be somewhere between a pat on the back and an acquisition-size bonus."

If I were a Yahoo employee, I don't think I'd feel too reassured that my hard work would get appropriately recognized. That "pat on a back" may be for an excellent idea, well executed, but unfortunately not able to be capitalized upon within Yahoo's current structure.

It seems to me that the idea of Brickhouse is good, but it may be a case of too little, too late. I don't get the feeling that it will be able to achieve its potential.

</comment><comment><USER7> So what's the consensus on how well this will work?

It definitely seems like a step in the right direction; Yahoo probably has a great deal of internal talent that they are not tapping into. Giving that talent freedom and incentive should make Yahoo more competitive.

But so many of the advantages of real startups are unlikely to apply. What strikes me as one of the biggest factors is that this seems unlikely to draw in too much external talent. The pool of people likely to start successful startups don't want to work for Yahoo until they're getting paid a lot to do so. As the yahoo vp said "It is generally cheaper to incubate these things than to buy them"

<comment><USER8> I agree, I have long thought that Yahoo was getting "blown out of the water" and they must to *something* to breathe a little life back into their once dominant company.

I have been battling myself over the issue of who to go to with my idea. I believe from my incredibly fortunate and diverse upbringing, lifelong experiences with computers, social networks, MMO interactions, I have come up with a web application that will organize the worlds information in a better way. As a result it will not only appeal to everyone, but help everyone in the world with a computer live more productive and "better" lives. Ambitious? yes. But in case you didn't know.. Facebook, Myspace, Wiki, and Reddit are represent the infant stage of how we will organize the worlds information.

The problem I face now is who to go to... Do I find team of great "Hackers" (not so easy to find in Madison but I will be graduating in May) and start working on a beta and focus on angel/seed/Ycom funding? Do i go to the Bill and Melinda gates foundation and go though probably years of red tape in order to get my idea noticed. Or do I go to a company like Yahoo and tell them "your whole web philosophy and yahoo pages are flawed and I can show you how you can regain the Internet power you once had" Or do I just apply to their "brickhouse" division and hope they give me stock if my idea is successful.

The dilemma as I see it is that because this will be my lifelong endeavor, I want to give it the best chance to succeed. It is not even about the money, even though the most powerful information browsing tool (google currently) will always be the most powerful and profitable company in the world. I just want to make sure Rupert's empire doesn't get a hold of these ideas because it could be used for real evil if all the worlds information was in his hands...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this essentially different from being an incubator? I thought those died out with the bubble.

</comment><comment><USER10> How does this compare to Google's 20% time for your own projects?

<comment><USER11> How does it compare?

Well, the objectives may be similar but Yahoo's execution is much more deliberate.

While Google's 20% time is a corporate policy that encourages side-projects (that may see see the light of day in the form of a beta product), Brickhouse is Yahoo's full-fledged effort to develop novel ideas in-house that it has been historically purchasing at premium prices.

It seems that Brickhouse, as a division, is able to pursue small, "startup- like" ideas that might stray from Yahoo's corporate vision.

<comment><USER10> What are the restrictions? I somehow doubt that you can do whatever you want.

<comment><USER11> I don't know; I don't work there. :)

It's still a company, after all. They pursue interesting, and even perhaps daring, ideas as a team. I didn't see any implications of a chaotic operation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


North Koreans Launch Ballistic Missle - <AUTHOR> Situation developing, please monitor here.<p><3 <comment><USER2> link to source please?</comment>


Ethereum smart contracts in a nutshell for hackers – Life Lottery - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/ethereum-smart-contracts-in-a-nutshell-for-hackers-64f357715791 <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting. Ethereum is going to fly!</comment>


Chinese local governments rush to admit fake data - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chinese-local-governments-rush-to-admit-fake-data <comment><USER2> China has a long history of doing this.

During Mao's reign, agriculture numbers were padded constantly. They were only padded by a few percent at each level, but as each reporting hierarchy added its own padding, eventually you got massive overestimates.

This is why 50 million people died in the famine under Map, more than the Holocaust and "gulag archipelago" combined. I don't think people realize just how bad it was, it was a time of absolutely insanity and deprivation.

40% of all building structures were torn down between between 1958-1963 if that gives you any idea of how detached from reality society under Mao was.

Also, China is lying about their pollution numbers, and just simply moving the factories farther west. Western China is one of the most rural parts of the world and its very hard to measure / prove who is using what / polluting what. No matter what the US does regarding global warming, it's very likely any gains will be "eaten" by a growing, data faking, Chinese government.

<comment><USER3> Citations needed.

<comment><USER4> You shouldn't be downvoted. Those are harsh accusations, they deserve sources. Because it fits what most of us expect the Chinese government could be doing makes it even more important to have sources, confirmation bias is the enemy of rational thinking.

<comment><USER5> Asking for references is one thing, but this "citation needed<EOF>" trope is growing old. It's dismissive , and as lazy as it accuses the poster of being. It's flippant and disrespectful.

Let me put it this way: if someone then _does_ provide citations, it suddenly sounds harsh, and could do with an apology. But in that case, why not be civil to begin with? Like you were, for example.

Or, if you're actually interested in the pursuit of truth, why not try and truly contribute by spending 30 seconds looking for references yourself, and adding those??

<comment><USER6> You had a comment here complaining about 'carpet bombing with [citation needed]' and you deleted it, but I agree with you on this.

Wikipedia posted a great article called "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat." [1] It describes the various ways special interest groups and fringe fanatics will fight to make their views recognized. One of the ways they called "gaming the system" where they frivolously request [citation needed].

The fact that China underwent a terrible famine shortly following the Communist Revolution is pretty common knowledge. Other than that, he wasn't clear what he was requesting citations for.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot_claim_the_earth_is_not_flat)

<comment><USER7> I occasionally post this way when I realize part way through the original article that I have wasted my time reading an unsubstantiated diatribe that starts out sort of stealth-ed as a reasonably objective article (I don't post this way about comments). My intention in such a case is to warn other readers who are not interested in that sort of thing not to waste their time. The last time I did this, I said:

"Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a fact well-known at least since the time of Marx." Citation needed?

The quote was taken from an article on environment problems in India. My problem with this is only that they said it without showing their work. If Marx said this, cite him. If it's "well-know" prove it. Since they don't bother to support this anywhere near the text of the claim, I don't trust them anymore. I'm out, even if I was inclined to agree with them.

I agree in general that we shouldn't be rude or dismissive, but I think we also need to retain the ability to call out unsubstantiated claims that purport to be common knowledge, or are poorly attributed, and to protect our time.

In the rare case that I regret reading something pretty long halfway through, I sometimes quickly post this way, get down voted, and hope I saved somebody some time. Anyone who wouldn't read the article knowing that statement was in it can then choose not too. I guess if this is more annoying than reading a bad article, I could stop doing it or at least rephrase.

<comment><USER8> Rather than pedant, I'll just state I'm not buying, or state when someone's rhetoric jumped the rails.

When I'm feeling especially snarky, I'll use lmgtfy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The unreliability of those figures will be no surprise to anyone who follows China's economy or politics closely, and I hope this bodes for better quality statistics in the future.

There's a small industry of people who try to measure Chinese growth in other ways that are harder to forge such as railway shipment tonnage and energy consumption; it'll be interesting to see to what extent those methods are vindicated if/when better quality data becomes available.

<comment><USER10> Chinese GDP is not a sum of locally reported GDPs. Locally reported GDPs have always exceeded the total GDP, sometimes by a large margin. Now they may lag.

A large motivation is how the taxes collected are shared between the central government and the local governments. A new tax sharing scheme introduced last year makes underreporting of the local GDPs profitable for the local governments, meaning they get to remit less taxes to the central government.

<comment><USER9> Oh, that makes sense. I'd hoped the trend was towards a higher level of reliability but perhaps it's just a change of direction in the manipulation.

<comment><USER10> If you look at large companies' accounts, they typically have inter segment reconciliations. Where intra-company trades are booked can be artificial. In the Chinese case, the city of Tianjin, e.g., which has a financial district, booked revenues from companies registered there but conducting no substantial business there in its own local GDP. This is akin to the state of Delaware including in its own GDP report (if there is such a thing) all companies registered there. But this inflation has no effect on the national GDP, which is aggregated over the businesses directly, so it does not matter how many provinces claim the businesses as their own. Hope this helps put things in context a little bit for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "In Liaoning Province tax receipts and income from various fees were padded by 20-30% according to counties and cities during the period of 2011-2014. Inner Mongolia has said that 25% of the fiscal revenue stated for 2016 were actually fake."

That actually validates some of the slowdown that I saw while I was in China. Business felt slow, and it seems that there wasn't the fast feel anymore compared to 2007. Very little small company activities, and alot of economic activities seem to involve state-owned companies (and we all know how slow they are).

If we assume 20-30% fake data across most of its local provinces the last couple of years, this would probably place China's GDP growth at around 1% a year (maybe even negative), way below 7% consistently claimed by the government. However, the 1% would be consistent with the drop in exports in recent year.

<comment><USER12> I just wanted to add, my view is while they are not moving as fast as say 2007 or 2010. They are still fast. Certain places may not be growing as quick, but other places like West China and Mid China are moving at super fast pace. ( That is where all the government money at the moment )

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eventually faking economic data has real consequences since economics inevitably happens anyway. At some point you just look like an idiot.

<comment><USER11> Exactly! Actually this should be more of a big deal. This is a MASSIVE accounting fraud, the kind that brought down Enron in 2000

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll be interested to see if this leads to a massive shakeup in local politics from Beijing. I can't imagine they're pleased with the amount of doctored data (unless they already knew and were using it to appear stronger on a global scale)

<comment><USER15> When I read the title, I immediately imagined China faking growth at a global scale and maximizing its importance. It's not the case at all:

Of the 31 provinces, direct-controlled municipalities and autonomous regions in China, three have already admitted falsifying certain economic data. Starting with the northeastern province of Liaoning in January 2017, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the city of Tianjin have said their statistics were wrong.

Of the three, only Tianjing has admitted doctoring the overall provincial gross domestic product figures. Liaoning and Inner Mongolia had padded something else: their fiscal revenues.

<comment><USER14> I had thought the same but I'm still wondering if it was a proxy to cover something else (ex. ability to pay debt obligations) that would have had ramifications in the global market

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Government bureaucrats were promoted based on GDP and tax revenue, and I for one am shocked, _shocked_ , that this led to inflated GDP and tax revenue figures!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is what happens when you trust but _don 't_ verify on a global scale.

</comment><comment><USER18> Should we continue to trust the Chinese government when they report improvements in other areas such as green energy and clean air? How can we know those numbers aren't doctored like these ones were?

<comment><USER11> actually you are correct; local governments in China have been known to fake air data

[https://medium.com/@shanghaiist/officials-use-mist-cannon- to...](https://medium.com/@shanghaiist/officials-use-mist-cannon-to-fake-air- quality-data-end-up-freezing-building-31f2404e2b70)

and this year, Shanghai's air pollution has been worse than Beijing. Some say due to the cold air pushing the pollution down this year.

[https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/02/12/shanghai-air- pol...](https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/02/12/shanghai-air-pollution- worse-beijing/)

<comment><USER19> Beijing actually made huge improvements using drastic methods to eliminate coal consumption in the rural regions surrounding Beijing. This has made heating a bit bothersome (some poorer or colder villagers, natural gas shortages), but has improved air quality substantially.

<comment><USER11> Beijing's air is better because that's where the emperor is ;). (Or what my Chinese friends call him, Xi baozi - xi dumpling)

<comment><USER19> That was not true for a really long time though, Beijing was still pretty bad even last year. Mr. 11 can always just go off to his villa somewhere else anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And what happens if people are actually faking (lying) about reporting fake data?

If these government official were lying, giving them incentives to admit they are lying is the worst outcome I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER21> If this works, then it's a great move by Xi. Pay down that fake data debt in a controlled way instead of waiting for an implosion.

</comment><comment><USER22> More details about their economic data

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp- econom...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp-economy- growth.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> that's why there is a solid case for government blockchain usage

</comment><comment><USER24> 实践是检验真理的唯一标准,自冷战结束以来,世界上只有中国在经济规模上,缩小了和美国的差距。

Practice is the only criterion for the test of truth, and since the end of the cold war, only china has been able to narrow the gap between the United States and the United States

<comment><USER25> According to GT that reads:

"Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. Since the end of the Cold War, only China has narrowed its gap with the United States in terms of economic scale."</comment></comment>