Doug Crockford Talk on JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.felixcrux.com/posts/douglas-crockford-talk-waterloo/

<comment><USER2> I didn't see any links to videos - here is one from his Google tech talk in February: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook>. He also has a number of videos on YUI Theater (<http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/>).

I also recommend checking out the javascript page on his website, plenty of javascript related material to keep you busy for hours: <http://www.crockford.com/javascript/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to hear an argument FOR "semicolon insertion" for a change. I only ever hear arguments against it. Personally I would prefer to avoid unnecessary line noise if the interpreter can figure it out for me given the context.

<comment><USER4> There is no good argument for semicolon insertion except to be newbie friendly. And, as pointed out in the article, semicolons can be inserted in unexpected places causing hard to find bugs. In the end, that isn't friendly to anyone including newbies.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I consider an interpreter that can figure things out on your behalf to be a more intelligent interpreter. It requires me to type less. The "hard to find bugs" pointed out in the article are a (acceptable imo) trade- off for a terser syntax.

<comment><USER4> You have to be precise when programming; A statement needs to have one and only one meaning. It's possible to design a language that doesn't require semicolons (Basic, for example) or just be more terse than JavaScript. But a language who's grammar changes based on very subtle context is not acceptable.

When it comes to JavaScript, you'll find most people put the semicolons in even when they don't have to. It's just a highly ineffective feature. Now if they didn't have semicolons at all and designed the language appropriately, that would be different.

<comment><USER3> You speak as if your words are law but really it is just your opinion. Modern languages are still being designed this way. For example semicolons are optional in Scala.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and Scala doesn't have the same problems as JavaScript. There's nothing wrong with having a language where semicolons are optional (as I already said). But in JavaScript, semicolons aren't optional in the same sense as Scala. They're essentially required but the interpreter "helpfully" inserts them for you if you "miss one" and potentially changes the meaning of your program. That's a huge difference.

I actually agree with your statement "I consider an interpreter that can figure things out on your behalf to be a more intelligent interpreter" -- I'm not arguing against smart interpreters. I'm merely arguing against semicolon insertion which is actually an incredibly _dumb_ way of handling this situation.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. I just fail to see the distinction between "semicolon insertion" and optional semicolons. Sounds to me like semicolon insertion is just a stupid way to implement an interpreter where semicolons are optional -- something that can be changed without affecting client code

<comment><USER4> A language has to be designed around optional line terminators -- you just can't take a language like JavaScript or C and remove the semicolons, they convey meaning to the program. Something like Scala doesn't have the ambiguity that a C or JavaScript program has without line terminators.

So semicolon insertion is just a hack that happens before parsing. It's not that the semicolons are optional, they aren't, but it puts them in automatically according to a set of rules. Unfortunately that means you can't just put a return on a line by itself -- a semicolon will always be inserted.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Scribbit – A tiny web app for notes/thoughts/stuff - <AUTHOR>

nemex.io got a decent response when it was announced on HN, but the biggest criticism of it was the state of the code. Scribbit is a rewrite of nemex, built using Slim.
https://github.com/justindisney/scribbit
http://scribbit.website/ <comment><USER2> You might want to escape HTML code in the comment section:

[http://scribbit.website/scribbit/foo_- _bar](http://scribbit.website/scribbit/foo_-_bar)

</comment><comment><USER3> hey - welcome to HN. Some comments:

* editor is mega tiny

* the plane isn't exactly a well known logout icon, if you want to keep it I'd recommend some kind of tooltip.

* pressing the down arrow leads to a name 'undefined', not sure what that means.

Looks nice though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look.

* Editor is now full width, with preview panel underneath. (probably still pretty small on a phone screen though)

* The plane (I couldn't find a unicode character for logout) has been replaced with a glyphicon

* Down arrow is to download something (either an entire collection or an individual item); should be working in all cases now

<comment><USER3> Cool to see the changes pushed out already. Looks better now.

Some additional feedback:

* the dl button gave me an html file with this error:

Message: filesize() [function.filesize]: stat failed for /var/tmp//hey.zip File: /usr/www/users/jibsheet/scribbit.website/lib/Models/ScribbitModel.php

* I think the markdown help sheet should be open the page in a new tab. Rather than display an image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's cool! But I think you should add editor in main page.</comment>


"When we win,it is with small things,& the victory itself makes us small"Slides - <AUTHOR> http://thinkst.com/stuff/44Con_2013/talk_about_talks.pdf

<comment><USER2> This talk completely described why I stopped attending security conferences.

As a practitioner trying to build well defended pragmatic systems and organisations they provided nothing for me but entertainment. I got that in the bar much more than listening to the talks.</comment>


Airport biometric scanners 'failing to protect Britain's borders' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/8090820/Airport-biometric-scanners-failing-to-protect-Britains-borders-whistleblower-claims.html <comment><AUTHOR> Security is hard. Biometrics are hard. Doing biometric security even harder. While there's always going to be a failure rate for any biometric authentication, I'm surprised that there's no fallback mechanism to spot it occuring.

Does HN know of anywhere else these scanners are being used? What are your thoughts?</comment>


Linux and FOSS Are Not Selfish - <AUTHOR> http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/168555/index.html

<comment><USER2> .. Are you kidding?

In what possible sense is it insulting? Linux explained pretty succinctly why he described it as selfish and backed up the argument. What possible point is she trying to make?

EDIT: What I'm driving at is who is she to decide whether or not "selfish" is a pejorative in this context?</comment>


Amiga A2000/A3000 Sum USB Adapter Prototype - <AUTHOR> http://retro.7-bit.pl/?lang=en&go=aktualnosci

<comment><USER2> its a usb hid keyboard to Amiga keyboard converter. Microcontroller used is _over_ 16 times faster than A500 CPU making this pretty ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER3> very cool</comment>


Breaking the 1000ms Time to Glass Mobile Barrier - B-Con http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il4swGfTOSM

<comment> B-Con The slides from the talk: [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qbqqcfjz3YwocRZu2led...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qbqqcfjz3YwocRZu2led3CzhjHjcTvvQVSYET0QYyL4/edit?pli=1#slide=id.gd101c179_2_51)

Slide 31 should be extracted and made into a cheat-sheet.</comment>


Ask YC: A twitter idea - any thoughts? - <AUTHOR>

I had a twitter idea this morning while on the subway and decided run with it. Let me know if this makes sense to anyone.
While I was waiting for the subway, I wished there was an easy way to determine where the train was, this way I could time when I left for work or take a different route. I thought that maybe twitter can help in solving this problem.
If people were waiting on the subway and twitted every time a train went by or they got on the train, it would be pretty easy to set up a system to combine these tweets and create a "train network."
Now if there was some general way to aggregate this data one would be able to create real time systems for almost anything that has a time/location variable. You can potentially use this to track traffic on roads as well as some other more general things I haven't really thought of yet so if anyone has any ideas, respond.
The difficulty lies in getting people to send the twitter messages but if it's an overall social good maybe they will. Another one is standardizing the responses so they are easy to translate into data. There must also be a mechanism to avoid fake tweets that are just there to screw the data but given enough correct responses and a way to ban, it should be easy to handle.
Disclaimer (probably a big one): I don't use twitter but in the case of a societal good I may start - once I get a smart phone. <comment><USER2> There are sites that do this for traffic and such already, <http://commuterfeed.com/>. Also if you wanted to do this for the subway you could just create a hashtag for your rail system. Then when ever they see a train tweet #<hashtag> train just left <station>. This would only require getting the community behind you since the infrastructure is in place. You could then use Summize to track the hashtag and populate a website so not twitter users could use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might want to wait until there is internet access underground in subway stations before spending some time on this. Not to be Debbie Downer like or anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha yep. This is more an exercise of thinking what's possible although I think some networks do have access in the NYC subway system.

In any case, you can scale it to non-subway and see what you get.

I wish I had the time to pursue this but I'm busy with a couple of other things so this just gets added on to my ever increasing to do list.</comment></comment>


The best Unicorns started out as Underdogs - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-unicorns-ones-started-out-underdogs-adarsh-pallian <comment><USER2> Underdogs? hmm, aren't 90% of all startups underdogs? That's why Adarsh can point to AirBnb, Apple, and Uber. How many companies can't at one point in their history be described as underdogs?</comment>


Why are more than 10M homes vacant in India? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-32644293 <comment><USER2> For a working class person with no black income (unaccounted/un-taxed), home buying experience has deteriorated in this housing boom. Builders often don't sell you directly. They forward you to a middleman/broker. You are shown the least desirable units as "available" & the rest all sold out (a lie). You are expected to pay a sizable portion of the price as black money (could be as high as 60%). The promised completion date drags on for years. The whole real estate boom is targeted & fueled by black money owners.

Edit: And there are umpteen number of violations of regulations for earthquake, fire safety, building laws. Almost all builders double sell you the common land in the name of "reserved parking", clearly considered illegal by the court.

<comment><USER3> It is completely true. Actually, most of the problems in India can be traced back to previous generation (current old generation). They:

1) Did the most corruption. It wasn't that bad before it.

2) Created all the draconian laws to 'correct' Indian culture.

3) Put pressure on current generation to 'own a house' at the age of 25-30, while they themselves like all the people before them got their house at the ripe age of 50-60.

4) Themselves a product and participant of socialist government with anti- private business attitude, they increased the age of retirement for government jobs. You meet one government employee and tell him/her that you work for some IT company and they will mock you for 'getting undeserved salaries' and 'being ignorant of bureaucracy', whether it is for getting a passport or driving license.

<comment><USER4> Do you think there are meetings and secret societies where the older generation coordinates to plot the down fall of the newer generation?

<comment><USER5> Maybe BJP and Congress are the groups you label "secret societies". It is not unheard of for parties to cater to the political views of their most active constituencies.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. It should be understandable that young people do not have enough patience to get what they want by way of voting or talking to MLA/MPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This level of reporting is really silly. I'm always surprised how common it is to print a bunch of facts and/or speculations/opinions loosely wrangled together with two-bit economics. It's really insulting to the reader.

Even psychology doesn't get this kind of abuse. Can you imagine an article that lists off divorce rate, some happiness survey, psychiatric drug statistics and ties it all together narratively with a single-sentence theory about 21st century loneliness, stressful work lives, the trouble with living online social lives or anything else that an average tabloid reader might suggest as a reason.

Here we have some suggestion that tax evasion is involved, some stats about housing shortages, slum housing and no information relevant to the obvious question: why do people buy flats and them leave them empty?

Come on BBC.

<comment><USER7> >Can you imagine an article that lists off divorce rate, some happiness survey, psychiatric drug statistics and ties it all together narratively with a single-sentence theory about 21st century loneliness, stressful work lives, the trouble with living online social lives or anything else that an average tabloid reader might suggest as a reason.

Yes, that's pretty normal actually. People even think it's quite intellectual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was curious and looked at vacant homes across the world.

So the US has about 13 Million vacant homes (with 1/4th the population of India). [1]

China has anywhere from 69 to 85 million vacant homes (approx. same population as India)

EU has about 11 Million vacant homes (with 40% of the population of India). [3]

I would say a lot more fine grained analysis is required to say if this is a problem or not.

[1] [http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr113/q113press.pdf](http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr113/q113press.pdf)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-em...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty- properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice)

<comment><USER9> >>China has anywhere from 69 to 85 million vacant homes (approx. same population as India)

I am not sure I understand this calculation. India's population is more than a billion

<comment><USER8> I meant China has approx. the same population as India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Why are more than 10M homes vacant in India?

So why? BBC basically answers with the following: because some people earn more money this way. Tell me something new BBC.

Let me posit another reason: because squatting these empty houses is not allowed.

If squatting these long-term empty places was allowed they would be:

1\. sold/rented at a more fair market price,

2\. squatted (in which case they are also not empty anymore).

<comment><USER11> Well, let's just throw out the whole private property concept while we're at it, why not?

<comment><USER12> Is squatting totally incompatible with property rights? Until several years ago, I believe the Netherlands had quite strong squatting rights in addition to basic property rights.

Property rights in most countries are mitigated by a variety of competing communal rights such as eminent domain, zoning, and environmental laws. I think squatting rights could potentially protect communal rights in a similar way.

<comment><USER13> Squatting definitely _limits_ your property rights. Imagine that if your backpack is vacant for some time, and someone put tacitly someting into it, you'd be legally obliged to carry it around.

I suspect that squatting rights only affect obviously neglected property. I suppose the empty houses and apartments are reasonably guarded and are not as neglected as a closed and half-dismantled building. Also, squatting does damage the property, hopefully in minor ways. Imagine that your empty backpack was loaded with pizza slices: totally benign, but you'll have to clean the backpack thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The main reason is that renting out these houses is not safe at all. Many middle class people fear that the renter will occupy the house and not move out. It happens all too often apparently and given the entirely corrupt law enforcement officials and idiotic laws home owners would rather lock it up than renting.

<comment><USER6> Why would you buy it then?

<comment><USER3> Land is a boom waiting to go bust. Unfortunately, most naysayers are currently basking in seriously ridiculous amount of cash :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> the major issue not mentioned as to why these homes are vacant is the problem of eviction of tenants.

The laws are so lax that folks often buy property with clean money, and just keep it locked up rather than realizing the rent potential.

The growth in prices has so far ensure that even then, buying and locking up property is lucrative.

<comment><USER16> This is very true. I have known tenants who adversely possess the property and make owners fight for decades before they are evicted. Generally as long as the tenant is paying rent there are very few grounds on which he can get evicted.

Most of laws favour the tenants(in one sense it is right) but it is not uncommon for them to take undue advantage. And people who rent without a contract of some sorts usually pay the price. Most of them though would rather prefer to keep it vacant than put it in any danger of dispute.

<comment><USER17> >>Generally as long as the tenant is paying rent there are very few grounds on which he can get evicted.

Not exactly, Most people make the tenants sign a 12-18 months rental agreements these days, with a very heavy deposit amount in cities in Bangalore. Those agreements are pretty serious legal documents.

<comment><USER16> >Those agreements are pretty serious legal documents.

I agree :) what I am saying is, my observation has been that many people don't do agreements. If you have an agreement with an express expiry date (12-18 months as you say) it is all good. Most people don't. For many people the problem is lack of knowledge. For something as ordinary as renting they don't even consider the need for going to a lawyer/agent and getting a contract done.

What you say about Banglore is opposite to my observation and it makes me happy that people there are smart enough to enter into a contract before renting their house. It is good both for the tenant as well as the landlord.

Noida is also a pretty popular IT city and people renting out their homes make no contract. Even in my own city (gurgaon) letting without a contract is pretty common. Mostly there are no disputes. But when there are they are long and bitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Investments in property is booming in India . Don't know if it's a bubble or not . But I cannot afford one right now (not even as investment ) , reason its too expensive and loan is not my cup of tea and I think investing same money in your own startup will be worth more ( as experience)

<comment><USER19> "I think investing same money in ... startup will be worth more"

You are correct on a micro-level but there are also macro-level issues when capital and rent (rent of money) are tied up in non-productive assets. An individual who buys a $1M house cannot put that $1M into a startup, but also on a societal level a bank that loans $100M of mortgages cannot loan that $100M to build infrastructure or a new manufacturing plant or a (large) school. So high price of non-productive assets hurt the macro scale as much or more than it hurts micro scale. Its very bad for the economy when the best thing to do with a pile of money is buy something that doesn't produce anything or grow anything. Its as bad economically as stuffing the money into a mattress.

<comment><USER20> > on a societal level a bank that loans $100M of mortgages cannot loan that > $100M to build infrastructure or a new manufacturing plant or a (large) > school

As a technicality, the whole point of modern banking is that banks can loan out the same money over, and over, and over again.

So in fact you can eat your cake and have it too.

<comment><USER19> There are limits to that of course. Aside from that, I don't think it changes the bigger pix that "everything" involved in making a non-productive capital investment is unavailable for productive investments. Can't build a rail line thru there, can't that wood and stone into an office building. All that energy and labor invested, you're never going to get a return on that.

I'm not saying a world devoid of art and fun is a good goal, but am saying that going way overboard to one extreme is going to result in blowback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It helps to think of these "vessels" that conduit black money not as Houses in the strict sense. From a policy planning perspective it helps to remove the errant variable (in this case excess of homes).

</comment><comment><USER22> same situation in US or other "First World" countries - nobody bats an eye, and if in India : "Everyone loses their minds!" Just Saying

<comment><USER23> I would suggest that:

1) It isn't the same situation. The level of corruption and absolute poverty levels are not comparable.

2) Where there are similarities in "first world" countries (e.g. empty housing stock), eyes are very definitely batted. At least in the UK.

3) I would argue that 10 million empty homes in India, where there is significant slum situation, which is basically accepted and regarded as "normal", even in the capital city, is more eyebrow-raising than an empty home situation a "first world" country. I don't actually see anyone losing their minds though.

<comment><USER24> Similar situation (apart from the corruption and poverty) in Vancouver. Average detached 2-storey home price is $1.27M, average condo is $506k. It's completely unaffordable by the average working person. Lots of condos are purchased by overseas investors and left empty.

Also, I'm not entirely sure why 10 million empty homes in a country with 1 billion people is a big deal. That's just 4% of the housing stock (assuming average of 4 people per home). There seems to be an assumption that you can just put the slum dwellers into the empty condos, which doesn't necessarily seem realistic. (I'm not saying that they shouldn't get decent housing, but I think it will need to be done in a different way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This largely because these are high rising apartments on the outskirts of cities, purchased with an intent of renting them out for side income. The net result is there are too many of them. And since they are far away from schools/hospitals/markets and other amenities, nobody really opts for rent in these places. Eventually as the cities grow this may change, but note as time goes your apartment ages too(and so does its value). There is a huge debate whether as to buying an apartment is a better idea or a buying a plot given these circumstances. Every one wants a rent income, very few want the struggle of buying the land, protecting it from encroachers and build it later[which is an circus in itself], most want a ready made flat. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Like in all cases good investments are a lot of hardwork and stressful.

Inside the cities houses are always in epic demand. The situation there is totally different.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a logic experiment for people in well off countries have a think about what would happen if people built 10 million mansions and left them empty.

Firstly it wouldn't happen even with black money. There's no point having assets you can't use. You're better off just paying the tax and collecting rent.

There'd be a lot of jobs building them.

And the housing market would become cheaper since they have to be sold at some point.

This is a pretty awful BBC, quoting some sort of site, that quotes a Managing Director of a large property constant.

The firm doesn't seem to have produced a report, it seems to be based off an interview, or just a comment of some sort.

[https://twitter.com/cbreasia/status/593669907172237312](https://twitter.com/cbreasia/status/593669907172237312)

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me that both India and China are building a huge number of cities all wired up to collect data on everything, so that they can be micromanaged and studied.

Modi promised to build 100 "Smart Cities" \- a lot of it with foreign and private investment dollars.

<comment><USER27> yeah, its called system science

<comment><USER26> It was my understanding that Smart Cities were a new and exciting concept. But yeah, systems science is going to play an important role.

<comment><USER28> I interviewed once at a company helping to build "smart cities" in India and in Malaysia. The idea sounded really cool, and I'd love to do statistics for something other than making people buy stuff online.

They actually just wanted a white guy with a Ph.D. to schmooze with clients, and were willing to pay 8 lac/month for it. It was unclear what "smart city" meant to them - the best I could tell it was just spinning up a hadoop cluster to big data the traffic light control systems. (Smart traffic light controls already exist and run perfectly fine on a laptop.)

<comment><USER19> "It was unclear what "smart city" meant to them"

Maximize tax/fee revenue while minimizing operating expenses to reduce the standard of living of all residents as low as possible in an individualized detailed manner just barely above rebellion or property abandonment, at least in practice. Then sell it to the rubes as being a social or cultural change where you can ignore all the tech its going to be the first city on the planet where human nature took a day off and we'll all live together in perfect peace and harmony. Sell the financial benefits "rich get richer" and all that to the leaders, sell a line of BS about human nature changing to the rubes. Its basically an atheist cult in the sense that it operates as a traditional cult WRT somewhat extreme exploitation of the participants, but subtract the higher metaphysical beings marketing message that cults have, or insert big data / big government itself as the higher metaphysical being.

Its like the dichotomy of internet of things. What you ship is a fridge where corporate sends a special packet to make the compressor burn out when quarterly sales are below their target while selling all formerly private personal data gathered to every corporation on the planet for whatever you can get. What you sell to the rubes is fuzzy bunnies of the corporation caring about your organic nutritional needs by ordering orange juice from peapod automatically when it detects a low level or monitoring for expired food or the "wrong" beverages stored inside.

The similarity is the message has nothing to do with the purpose or operation, at a level of dissonance never before seen on the consumer markets.

<comment><USER28> If it were anything like what you describe, I'd probably have given a lot more consideration to joining. Your proposed policy is likely to be superior to democracy - democracies like Detroit can't even maintain standard of living high enough to avoid abandonment. Plus you can avoid a lot of rent seeking - if consumer surplus can be created by a massive increase in housing (ala SF, Mumbai), locals don't get to vote for rent seeking policies.

In reality they didn't have anything remotely so coherent. It was just a variant of "lets hadoop all 200mb of our big data into the NoSQL for business intelligence insights".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are they counting the vacant half-built chawls in neighborhoods like Chinchpokli or the dockyards? I'd never seen so many half-completed and abandoned housing projects until I moved to Mumbai.

<comment><USER30> Come to Noida. Advise is you better do not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> An article without much substance, just couple of figures and speculations but no deeper study.</comment>


I made the switch to Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruchirablog.com/switch-to-ubuntu/

<comment><USER2> It's very good and all, and I'm glad more people are switching to Linux for their desktops (I mean, THIS is the year of Linux on the desktop, isn't it?).

But seriously, the rambling about printers and Word... You are not supposed to use Word files as a platform-independent Portable Document Format. I mean, for that we have, you know, the Portable Document Format (euh... PDF), for example. Just export to PDF and you can print it wherever, and it will look just fine.

Also, running Wine for Notepad++ seems... excessive.

<comment><USER3> > Also, running Wine for Notepad++ seems... excessive.

Especially when you can run something like Sublime Text.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, but bear in mind that the author is already having to learn a bunch of new software packages to replace many other things from his previous experience.

Being able to delay a few new learning experiences for later makes for smoother switching.

By the time he's ready to tackle that one, he might be ready to skip past ST and go straight to Vim. ;)

<comment><USER5> Having to deal with the weirdness that is the simulated 'windows file system' every time you open when running a Wine app is much harder than just learning how to use gEdit with all the plugins you'll ever need. Or Kate.

<comment><USER4> And yet, there he goes, using it, happy as a clam.

<comment><USER5> Haha, after all these years of knowing the expression "happy as a clam", it still cracks me up. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you like working with LibreOffice but you hate printing a LibreOffice document from MS Office just save your document as pdf and you will be able to print this from any Windows/Mac/Linux computer.

A good alternative to Notepad++ is SublimeText 2.

<comment><USER7> Or Gedit, which has a very good amount of plug-ins that allow you to configure it the way you want. He might even want to start using Vim right in the terminal.

<comment><USER6> Gedit is a good and free alternative, also multiplatform. I doubt a guy that goes all the way to install Wine just to use his favorite (mouse driven) text editor will be comfortable in VIM (I know you can use the mouse in VIM, but it was designed for extensive keyboard usage).

<comment><USER7> Good point. Though writing code goes smoother when you don't need to use the mouse (IMO).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> But you told me Linux sucks...

<http://www.ruchirablog.com/love-windows-linux-sucks-2/>

Also, this is just my opinion but I feel like notepad++/wine is a wasted combination when there are so many better multi-platform text editors that are available for Linux.

<comment><USER6> The "Linux sucks" article is from 2010 and the OP switched to Linux in ... 2013. One can change his mind over time.

<comment><USER8> I know, it's just funny to see how passionately against Linux he was just a bit ago.

<comment><USER6> Well, it happens :). I was a passionate XP user, Vista made me switch to Ubuntu. 7 and 8 are good alternatives to Ubuntu (from my point of view). Currently I use mostly OS X.

I think a programmer should be OS agnostic, he can have a preferred OS, of course, but he should be able to do his work on all major OSes.

<comment><USER9> I use Ubuntu for everything and I've worked on OS X and got along with it.

Unfortunately Windows is the only OS that doesn't have good integration with Unix-specific developer tools (like the GNU userland) or automation for installing said tools from a central and well maintained repository (coincidently the Debian repository is also the reason why I prefer Linux over OS X too). Cygwin is the only option and it's just awful.

Working on top of Windows makes me want to shoot myself. I don't understand how developers that deploy on other platforms (like the web) can stand Windows at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate blogs with Google ads at the top after the title and/or in the middle of the content and this particular blog is guilty of both.

I understand the need to earn some money, but seriously, this shit is awful.

(btw, I'm not using AdBlock because I want annoying websites to annoy me)

</comment><comment><USER10> So making the switch to Ubuntu is worth HN front page ?

Dont want to hate, but this article has so little useful information and mostly consists of rambling about some personal computing edge cases that i dont see the value.

</comment><comment><USER11> "need" and "notebook++" are two words I don't believe I've ever seen in the same sentence. :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've tried to use Gimp as a Photoshop replacement for some years now. Each attempt results with me getting frustrated with the interface or I eventually come across a feature it lacks. I'm sure Gimp is fine for basic photo editing but I really don't see it as a viable replacement for someone who depends on Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER13> My windows xp runs smoothly ib the vm, and boots in seconds. So whenever I need PhotoShop i fire up the vm. Ubuntu has evolved so much that my mom has no problem using it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't get why you want Notepad++. Gedit should be good enough, but if you want something more powerful and beautiful — Sublime Text it is!

</comment><comment><USER15> "... way back in 2006 but it wasn't exciting to me on those times. Those were the days people were rocking dial up connections"

Really? Pretty sure almost everyone I know had at least a basic DSL connection by then.

<comment><USER6> Well, it depends on where you were situated I guess, in 2004/2005 I was stil on dial up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who is Ruchira Sahan?

<comment><USER17> Politically correct way to put it is "well.. it's a slow news day on HN"</comment></comment>


Negotiated Out of a Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/13/lost-faculty-job-offer-raises-questions-about-negotiation-strategy <comment><USER2> >> This candidate really has no idea what s/he was considering stepping into at a [small liberal arts college]. While s/he could have done the job just fine, working at a [small liberal arts college] is, above all, about collegiality and teaching ability, and this candidate basically offered [several] counterpoints to her being able to fulfill that part of the college's mission.

It wasn't that the candidate was negotiating, it was that the candidate showed herself to be a bad fit for the hiring college. The salary she asked for may have been "market" but probably not for a small college. The other points were mainly about limiting the amount of time she would be teaching -- which is not what a small college wants to hear.

The fact that they probably had trouble deciding between a few candidates meant it was easy to toss her out of the pile and go with candidate #2.

If I got an offer from a scrappy young startup I wouldn't counter with a list of perks someone might expect at Google and/or a bygone era.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's signalling. An employer that refuses to negotiate is looking for employees that are easily bullied. If they have lots of candidates to choose from who allowed themselves to be bullied, they can get away with this. Do you really want to work for them? I would consider it good luck to be able to get out of a bad situation before you potentially put yourself in a situation you cannot get out of (because of leases/house purchases, loss of time and money moving for the new job, contracts, etc)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, to be fair, she was asking for a _LOT_ of time off above and beyond what was already policy.

That's not going to go over well, ever.

In addition, while they will never mention it, I guarantee that maternity leave question is what killed the deal. Someone thought: "If she doesn't get that, is she just going to quit when she has a child? Crap. We'll have to go hiring again in 2-3 years. Um, no. Let's go to the next person--preferably male."

</comment><comment><USER5> so i list a camera on ebay for $500. bids come in. someone leaves a message that says, "i'm willing to pay $540 for this over 6mths, with payments starting 3mths from now". if i'm bored i might actually respond to that saying no thanks i'll wait for the auction to close. that someone is also free to make similiar offers to other auctioneers. and take the rejections as insults or something..

</comment><comment><USER6> "One reader said it was simply a "buyers' market,""....

It still seems in poor taste and I'm glad it is public.</comment>


Did Watson and Crick Really Steal Rosalind Franklin's Data? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/23/sexism-in-science-did-watson-and-crick-really-steal-rosalind-franklins-data

<comment><USER2> Fascinating article. Though one expects better of The Guardian - from their misunderstanding of the proper use of the word protagonist, through to the bewildering closing comment:

"As the Tim Hunt affair showed, sexist attitudes are ingrained in science, as in the rest of our culture."

There seems to be an abundance of these kinds of stories about science that eschew scientific method in their own interpretation and conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I apologize for my ignorance, but this article seems to forget to mention what exactly Watson's contribution was. From reading this one gets the impression he rather delayed than accelerated the important discoveries. Surely this wasn't the case. Can anyone comment on this?

<comment><USER4> Read "The Eighth Day of Creation", it covers this in exhaustively cited detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regardless of the answer to the question in the headline, Rosalind Franklin not receiving the Nobel Prize was and always will be a disgusting travesty.

<comment> barry-cotter She was dead. You have to be alive to receive the Nobel Prize, any of them.

<comment><USER5> I am well aware of the rule, I simply disagree with it because of cases like this.

<comment><USER6> That makes no sense. _Every single time_ the rule is applied, somebody is posthumously denied this greatest of scientific distinctions. The existence of the rule guarantees that every year, someone will be denied their due credit in the history books, while the lucky-living take the prize.

<comment><USER7> Dead people can't use the funds to further their work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Twitter the newest data security threat? - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2008/10/16/is-twitter-the-newest-data-security-threat.aspx

<comment><USER2> I love a good piece of satire. Almost makes you think the author's serious, but with just enough bs thrown in to let you know he's not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Twitter is more a threat to productivity than to security.</comment>


Helvetica New - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@charliedeets/helvetica-new-f5c4d69485d1#.wrlk47lj8 <comment><USER2> Are they allowed to use the name "Helvetica" in their font name?

I suspect not.</comment>


Twitter Chirp live broadcast on Justin.tv - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/twitterchirp

<comment><USER2> I'm streaming this on my 27" iMac and I must say, the video quality is absolutely gorgeous, with no stuttering. Great job guys.

<comment><USER3> I'm also impressed by the quality. I hope live streaming like this becomes the standard for tech events/conferences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All I see is a giant Chirp logo on a blue background. Are they in intermission or something?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, you just missed it. They'll be back at 11:00.

<comment><USER6> Looks like I missed it as well. Anything noteworthy so far? Something that even non-devs would get excited about?

<comment><USER7> Library of Congress announced that they're archiving every tweet since Twitters inception. Not sure if they said anything at Chirp about it yet.

[http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how- tw...](http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how-tweet-it-is- library-acquires-entire-twitter-archive/110775778955250)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Application defined annotations is the most interesting thing I've heard about so far.

</comment><comment><USER9> does anyone know if this can be replayed again afterwards? i missed the early part

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, all the video is archived and clips will be made for each talk. We'll post the clips here later.

<comment><USER9> Thank you, we'll be looking forward to those!

<comment><USER10> <http://www.justin.tv/twitterchirp/all#r=QcLevkA~></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Tells Senators That Censored Search Engine Could Provide "Broad Benefits" - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/10/12/google-search-engine-china-censorship/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is Google's CEO's behavior and take on things over the last year or so turning out pretty negative for the company? Maybe time to find a replacement?

<comment><USER3> I'd be surprised if the problem was isolated to Pichai and didn't extent throughout the management teams of Google and Alphabet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Be Evil. But try and hide it."

</comment><comment> village-idiot Yes, they would say that, they stand to profit from it.

<comment><USER5> Google or senators? Oh wait, both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Broad benefits ... to shareholders

<comment><USER7> Not even so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find that it's ok for censoring to happen since the impact would be that the search engine exists. It's a long term plan I assume and since it's a private company it will do whatever it wants to make money regardless of local policy.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about Google censoring so called alt-right videos, closing the accounts of vloggers, restricting ad revenue, and suppressing other politically charged content because it doesn't sit well with their company political views, or that of some their employees, eg cancelling the domain name sevice of the Daily Stormer?

It seems that so described liberals are happy with Google censorship if it is in line with their views, but are not if it is in alignment with the Chinese states policies.

To those Google staff members who object to Google's reentering of China's search engine market, charity begins at home.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Broad Benefits", but for whom?

<comment><USER7> Certainly not our consumers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some open source Python Projects I can learn from? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'd recommend the Plone CMS as a starting point into learning Python. You get a full-featured CMS that you can use from day one for lots of common use cases. With Plone, you have an application that you can take apart to see examples of mature Python development processes. You can also learn just the aspects that are useful to you at a given point in time. Plone has a community that is very friendly, mature, and open to newbies. This makes it a lot easier to get your bearings and get help when you need it. It's also welcome community if you're looking to make your first contributions to Open Source.

Personally, Plone was my first experience in programming with Python. In 2003 I was working as an environmental consultant and started experimenting with Zope and Plone to build knowledge management apps for my clients. In 2004, I made the jump to being a Plone developer full-time and have never looked back. I've found it to be an outstanding platform and have landed clients including US federal agencies, EU government ministries, Fortune 500 companies, and major universities.

Since learning Plone, I've worked with a number of other Python frameworks including Twisted, Pyramid, and Django as well as a couple of Rails projects. Much of what I've learned via Plone gave me a good foundation for working with these other tools. Somehow, I always keep coming back to Plone. It's a great platform for secure, large-scale content-intensive sites and the market for skilled developers is very favorable relative to other frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=327710>

I'd recommend reading the Django source. I use the framework every day and it seems well put together :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link and the recommendation. Since the previous post is almost 3 years old I will to learn about more recently started open source python projects, specifically anything with social sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mercurial is well-written Python project:

<http://selenic.com/hg></comment>


NBA Finals 2017: Warriors could lose more than $22M by sweeping Cavaliers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nba-finals-2017-warriors-could-lose-more-than-22-million-by-sweeping-cavaliers/ <comment><USER2> The _team_ (players and coaches) haven't been motivated by home attendance profits at any point, given that they've played the fewest possible home games in all rounds.

Players and coaches don't have incentives to extend series to manufacture additional games... and that's a _good_ thing for the integrity of the game.

Given that the team has gained about a half- _billion_ dollars in valuation in just a few years, shed no tears for ownership.

<comment><AUTHOR> The players and coaches almost certainly have more to gain by becoming the first team to fulfill Moses Malone's promise of "Fo, Fo, Fo" and becoming the first ever team to sweep the entire playoffs, in endorsement deals, future contracts, and reduced wear-and-tear on their bodies. I believe at one point, NBA players did earn additional per-game salary for the post-season, but the league has now switched to a system where the teams are awarded fixed performance bonuses based on various milestones[1] (which, before they are sliced up amongst the various players, are on the order of a bench-riding veteran's salary), so there is no incentive for them to drag it out.

For the teams, the league, and perhaps most importantly, the broadcast networks, extending series is a big potential for additional revenue. One estimate I've seen claims that ABC missed out on as much as $45 million because the 2015 Finals didn't go to seven games[2]. If David Stern, who was notorious for appearing to put his thumb on the scales, were still commissioner of the league, I'd be watching the officiating of the next two games very closely.

[1] [http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/06/02/nba- playoff-b...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/06/02/nba-playoff- bonuses-warriors-cavs-in-line-for-payday.html)

[2] [http://time.com/money/4373400/nba-finals-rigged-money-abc- ad...](http://time.com/money/4373400/nba-finals-rigged-money-abc-ad-revenues/)</comment></comment>


Study Finds No Correlation Between Unpaid Internships and Job Prospects - <AUTHOR> http://www.naceweb.org/job-market/internships/unpaid-internships-and-the-career-success-of-liberal-arts-graduates/ <comment><USER2> This title may be misleading.

Their summary:

"While having one or more paid internships had a significant impact on time to find a position and first-position salary above that of unpaid internships, internship compensation had no significant impact on measures of long-term career success."

It was a previous study that found no correlation. This summary found that internships in general helped with job prospects. Paid internships seem to result in better initial prospects but don't differ from unpaid internships in terms of long-term success.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is misleading - No Correlation Between Unpaid Internships and Job Prospects __Of Liberal Arts Graduates __</comment>


Ask HN: Career Advice Needed - <AUTHOR>

There are too many factors to fully explain here, so I'll try to boil it down to the "important" points..
I have a great job with great benefits, but the overall project has an end-of-life somewhere in the next several years. I also have an opportunity to join a company that is in the early stages of an explosion of business, and will likely be at the leading edge of what it does for the foreseeable future.
The new opportunity can basically match my current salary (no increase), but the overall benefits package is no comparison to my current package. The new opportunity also requires a relocation from a very comfortable living situation.
If I do the math, I'm definitely taking a hit in the short term. How do I weigh that against the fact that the current position isn't really going anywhere and the new company is likely to be very successful? I'm also concerned that the new offer did not include any mention of profit sharing or anything that makes me feel like more than another salary employee; is that cause for concern?
I'm happy to answer other questions to open the conversation. Thanks, <comment><USER2> Hi Ben,

The future success of the company, when they are at an early stage, is truly a non-factor. And whether or not your current project has a shelf life is only a factor if your company in unlikely to not repurpose you and you are staring down the barrel of a future layoff.

Now, what is a factor. Surely, as you are trying to tease out of us, compensation isn't everything. However, you seem to place some value on your 'very comfortable living situation'. I, on the other hand place no value on my living situation...but, my wife and son might disagree : )

You are dancing around something that a lot of other people already know and optimize for, when selecting a job. There is value on your personal interest in the project you are a part of. And there is value in learning new technology. It seems might be bored working on something that is stale and the idea of working on something cutting-edge with a startup is very tempting. That's perfectly fine, I'm that way too. So are many other folks on HN.

Now, there is no ultimate RIGHT and every decision has consequences. You have to look at the benefit / risk of less benefits vs work environment, interesting / cutting-edge work and finding a new living situation. Unfortunately, no one can answer that for you.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. I'm aware nobody can answer this for me, but like all problems, the more I talk through it, the clearer the answer appears. This is just another way to help myself get there.

My wife actually wants to move there, but I'm not convinced that's not just a grass-is-always-greener reaction. Either way, that is an important factor as well.

It's good to get grounded about the excitement of potential success; thanks for making that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does successful and about to explode include verifiable revenue, or is it founder and/or VC opinion?

I know the joy and pain of working on something innovative. I built out the NLP engine for an exchange that had angel funding to about $400K then series A of a $1m and won an award from MIT Sloan School.

It was fun and intellectually challenging and some customers loved the concept and our implementation so much that their executives joined as angels and served on board of advisers. However, despite all the accolades the business was having difficulty achieving significant revenue and one day we all (about a dozen of us) got a call from the founder. I am out of money, and over the last 2 weeks those who had verbally committed to a Series B have all backed away. He basically had to lay off 90% of staff in one day.

I loved the learning curve and the rush of building new products. I am doing it again on my own today, trying for organic bootstrapped growth. But I am more skeptical than ever of businesses that are about to explode.

Obviously some new businesses really do explode and dominate an emerging market. But many more seemed poised to dominate but ultimately fail to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> "About to explode" is obviously opinion, and that is coming from the inside. However, they have solid financial footing with years of history and cash on hand to weather some down times (I talked with the CEO about this).

It is technology that I am confident in for the future, so it would be exciting to put my eggs in that basket and go for it.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

<comment><USER3> That sounds reasonable then. If you know they have history as a company and cash then your risk is clearly diminished.

Also if the company is small enough that you are talking with the CEO you will likely be in a position to make a noticeable difference in the future success of the company. Making a difference and working on tech you like can be a great combo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Flip a coin. When it's in the air you'll know what side you're hoping for. What you're hoping for will usually make you happier than what the logistics tell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard of this before; as crazy as it sounds, I'll try it.</comment></comment>


Brex wants to replace startup bank accounts with Brex Cash - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/02/brex-cash/ <comment><USER2> [Brex co-founder]

We're incredibly excited to announce Brex Cash!

Since we started Brex, my co-founder Henrique and I had much bigger plans than only corporate credit cards. Business bank accounts are a pain for virtually every company for a long time, and for the last 18 months we embarked on a journey to build a banking experience that, coupled with the Brex credit card, is 10x better than anything out there.

Alan Kay used to say that if you're serious about software, you should make your own hardware. In fintech, I believe the equivalent analogy is: if you're serious about financial services, you should build your own infrastructure. At Brex, we have a strong belief that great financial products innovate at the core, and not only at the UI layer. So instead of relying on existing banking systems to build Brex Cash, we took the approach of building our core systems from scratch, building directly on top of the payment rails (NACHA and FedWire). This level of autonomy with the technology stack enables us to do amazing things like instant onboarding, making funds available instantly, charging no fees on wires/ACH (given our more efficient cost structure), and deeply integrating with the Brex card. And at the UI layer, we packed all of this into a user experience that is minimal, polished and designed to save companies time and get them back to running their business.

We also wanted to make business banking better in all aspects - not only on software. We noticed our customers raised millions of dollars and kept the money parked in their checking accounts, earning no interest. A 10x better experience meant offering the highest yield on their money and, to achieve that, Brex Cash became not only a complex technical challenge, but also a financial/regulatory one. The way most fintechs offer banking services without having to be regulated as banks is by "reselling" another bank's products and bolting a UI on top of the bank's checking/savings account. But because traditional banks separate checking and savings accounts, customers earn a lower yield on their money as a whole. Instead, we chose a different structure: customers put their cash into Brex Treasury LLC, a registered broker-dealer affiliate of Brex Inc., that invests the cash in low-risk securities, such as U.S. Treasuries.

The reactions of our early Brex Cash customers have been overwhelmingly positive, and we believe we're on the path to build the best bank account replacement, not only for startups but for any business in America. Personally, I've been dreaming about this product since I was 16 years old building my first company in Brazil, and I'm incredibly proud of the Brex team for their hard work to make this dream a reality :)

We'd love to hear your feedback!

<comment><USER3> I'm pleased to hear about the 1.6% return. I posted a while back asking HNers what they do with their business cash, and no one had a good recommendation. It kills me to have cash sitting in a bank account earning zilch (unlike my personal cash, which earns 2%).

I'll take a look at this new offering and likely move a bunch of cash over if everything checks out.

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

Thanks for the feedback! Let us know if you have any questions by emailing firstname.lastname@example.com or visiting [https://brex.com/cash](https://brex.com/cash)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So this is cool, and I hate my current business bank (Bank of America). I've been waiting for someone to tackle the "banks suck" problem.

But FTA:

\--

 _" It's not a bank, but in practice, it can replace a bank"...Brex now has many similarities to a bank...Brex Cash is backed by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), a nonprofit agency overseen by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that insures up to $500,000 and specializes in protecting customers of brokerage firms from the loss of cash and securities._

\--

Can you guys elaborate on this in non-marketing/PR speak? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...

Yes - I understand that legally a "bank" is a very specific and highly- regulated thing, so what this sounds like to me is that it's hard to expensive to launch a bank, but if you launch something that's basically a bank without calling it a bank (but in partnership with a bank) you can get around the regulations.

Do we want you to be getting around the regulations? Are those regulations in place to hurt or help us (the business owners)?

I'm genuinely curious here -- I am seriously excited about a real, digital- first, intelligent, non-physical business bank. But I'm immediately concerned that you're trying to "move fast and break things" and frankly I don't really want that when it comes to my business checking account.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I'd missed Pedro's post when I wrote this. To quote:

 _...because traditional banks separate checking and savings accounts, customers earn a lower yield on their money as a whole. Instead, we chose a different structure: customers put their cash into Brex Treasury LLC, a registered broker-dealer affiliate of Brex Inc., that invests the cash in low- risk securities, such as U.S. Treasuries._

This sounds..."clever". Do I want my corporate card to be clever? Totally! Be clever. Do your thing and put Amex into the ground.

Do I want my bank to be clever? I'm not so sure...

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash here]

Thanks for the response, all great questions. Answers below:

> Can you guys elaborate on this in non-marketing/PR speak? If it looks like a > duck and walks like a duck…

Brex Cash functions like a checking account, but the structure behind it is different. Traditional banks separate checking and savings accounts, which means customers earn a lower yield on their money as a whole. To be able to offer yield in all of the funds, we use a different structure: customers put their cash into Brex Treasury LLC, a registered broker-dealer affiliate of Brex Inc., that invests the cash in U.S. Treasuries through a money market fund. This means that while we don't offer FDIC insurance, funds are held in low-risk securities backed by the U.S. government.

> Do we want you to be getting around the regulations? Are those regulations > in place to hurt or help us (the business owners)?

Brex Cash is regulated as a broker-dealer, by FINRA. This is a well known structure used by Fidelity and other large financial institutions to offer similar products offering higher yield cash accounts.

> I'm genuinely curious here — I am seriously excited about a real, digital- > first, intelligent, non-physical business bank. But I'm immediately > concerned that you're trying to "move fast and break things" and frankly I > don't really want that when it comes to my business checking account.

Totally understand the concern, and this is top of mind for us as well. We've spent over a year building the right technical, regulatory, and financial foundation to make sure we can scale this product. This is a product that we have built to be resilient and not to move fast and break things -- when it comes to customer's money, we simply don't do that. We've been working with customers for months to make sure the product functions well. Lastly, we're rolling it out __slowly __, starting with an early access program for existing customers. Our motto internally is: "The Brex Cash rollout should be boring" :).

<comment><AUTHOR> IIRC this is what Robinhood did when they tried to launch their 3% APY account. I guess where they went wrong was calling it a "checking and savings account"? I thought they also got in a bit of hot water with the SIPC because the insurance isn't meant to insure "checking account" like products, which is essentially what this is, no?

<comment><USER6> Based on what I read, the problem was not which magic words were used, but the nature of the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, so how is Brex different in this case? Both are effectively checking accounts, except one is for businesses and the other was for retail customers.

<comment><USER6> I don't know how Brex is different, that's pretty much the theme of my comments in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Brex tells us they've built the core banking infrastructure from scratch

Unless they're getting a bank charter and issuing cards without visa/mastercard I don't see this as anything but more lipstick on a pig.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like they're an American version of Monzo. Monzo started out by issuing Mastercard credit cards with a cool app but have since been granted a proper banking license and are now a proper bank. Monzo also wrote their own software.

In other words, Brex may not be a bank _yet_ but don't wrote them off as smoke and mirrors either.

<comment><USER7> Ok fair enough. I just want someone to break the stupid deathgrip Visa/Mastercard have.

Things I want:

* Require a password or OTP to withdrawl money from my bank account, or use my credit card/debit card

Things credit card issuers want:

* Reduce fraud

Things that confuse me:

* Why hasn't this option been offered to consumers

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

We require all users of Brex Cash to have 2FA enabled on their account. Adding 2FA checks to withdraw/send money is on our roadmap for Cash!

<comment><USER7> That sounds incredible! Please don't do this over SMS though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FYI, for Brex, the definition of "a startup" is a company with $500K cash in its checking account: [https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1179520756905955328](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1179520756905955328)

<comment><USER10> Basically it means you have runway, whether you're funded or bootstrapping w/ lots o' savings.

<comment><USER11> is that right? because FTA:

> Now, any startup, regardless of funding, can create a Brex account to store > cash, explains Dubugras, and all companies using Brex Cash will be > immediately issued a Brex corporate credit card

so is the article correct, or is the email correct? because to me "regardless of funding" reads "we don't care how much you have on hand" but that does not seem consistent with the gmail exchange.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. My email was from 2.5 months ago, so maybe this changed recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So you... have invented a ZBA with an automatic sweep to a money market/bond fund? A treasury management of every single regional and above bank can do it on balances above $10k. They can probably do it for less but the transaction costs are a killer (and if you tell me that you don't have those transaction costs I'm going to look at you really funny)

I mean the ultimate job of a CFO of a company with a pile of cash is to make sure that the pile of cash at the fed close is nearly the same (preferably exactly the same) at the fed open the next day, which is why treasury management is not popular below companies of a certain size with gigantic finance departments. One can make a respectable amount of money collecting customer's cash investing it for 10-30-90 days before redistributing it to some other customers a-la AirBnB but that requires people that otherwise would be working for Goldman to be on a payroll, and their total compensation makes all non-FAANG engineers cry.

So if my startup has $800k split between four banks because I know about coverage limits, what are you doing that's better?

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

It's true that banks are able to offer money market fund sweeps, however, they are incentivized to hold funds as deposits (better for their bottom line), which often results in limitations on account activity, and checking account interest rates near 0%.

We built Brex Cash to give startups their time back -- so customers can spend time building their businesses, instead of optimizing deposits and spending across multiple bank accounts. Within the Brex Cash account, our goal is to provide startups with a safe and liquid place for their funds, with benefits of yield that larger companies are offered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just received my Mercury.co debit card in the mail, and now I'm planning to move all my money from SVB into Mercury and close my SVB account. I already use Brex for corporate credit cards, and they've been awesome. It looks like I will need to "request early access" for Brex Cash (and I probably don't meet their requirements since I'm not VC funded), so I'm not going to wait around for that.

However, Stripe is the very core of my business. They already offers corporate credit cards, but I've never thought about switching or adding new cards, because I'm very happy with Brex. I use Brex virtual cards for everything now, and I recently received a physical card that I can use for flights and hotels.

However, if Stripe ever offers a bank account in the future, then I'll immediately close my Brex and Mercury accounts and just migrate everything into Stripe. Nothing would beat a single login where I have my bank account, debit cards, credit cards, and all of my customer payments. Also Stripe is much bigger and I have much more trust in their security and engineering teams.

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

Glad to hear that you're having a good experience with the Brex card! We would love to hear your feedback on the card, and what you would like to see in Brex Cash. We are doing a limited roll-out for Brex Cash, however, as YC alumni ourselves, we are prioritizing this community and would like the opportunity to show you the product and let you see for yourself if it's a strong fit for your business. Shoot me an email: ritik [at] brex.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What protections are in place to protect customers financial transaction information and will that information be sold, lent, or shared with any outside parties?

<comment><USER15> > What protections are in place to protect customers financial transaction > information and will that information be sold, lent, or shared with any > outside parties?

[I work at Brex]

Data privacy is something we're really passionate about. We've had strong stance internally since we launched the Brex card, and a few weeks ago we made that publicly available, in a very transparent way ([https://brex.com/privacy](https://brex.com/privacy)). Tl;dr: we do not and will not sell any personal information.

You can read more about it here: [https://brex.com/blog/privacy-policy- update/](https://brex.com/blog/privacy-policy-update/)

<comment><USER16> > Tl;dr: we do not and will not sell any personal information.

Ok, you won't _sell it_ ; but will you _give it to third parties_ (even without payment) without the consent of the subject beyond the extent required by law?

(BTW, this was the weasel-language used by Facebook. They didn't _sell_ information to Cambridge Analytica, but they conveyed it to them anyway, where it was misused.)

<comment><USER15> > Ok, you won't sell it; but will you give it to third parties (even without > payment) without the consent of the subject beyond the extent required by > law?

[I work at Brex, and I'm not a lawyer :)]

Yes, you're right in that we work with a small number of 3rd party systems which go through a rigorous screening, much of it focused on how they store and secure data. These systems are either for internal monitoring (e.g., system logging), or for running the business (e.g., KYC).

<comment><USER17> [I also work at Brex]

One more thing worth mentioning about 3rd parties: our contracts explicitly do not allow them to use your personal information for their own purposes or for marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> CBW Bank - founded by an-Ex google engineer and an ex-Wall Streeter has been doing this (created a bank from bottom Up - including purchasing an actual bank and creating the software) geared towards startups) since 2014. Don't know how well they are doing now.

But they wouldn't have had the in-built In go-to-market strategy, or the prestige/visibility in the funding community, of a YC Alum.

1\. 2016 - Why Fintech Startups Are Flocking to a 124-Year-Old Bank in Kansas [https://fortune.com/2016/08/24/fintech- bank/](https://fortune.com/2016/08/24/fintech-bank/)

2\. 2014 - Small Bank in Kansas Is a Financial Testing Ground

[https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/small-bank-in- kansas...](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/small-bank-in-kansas-is-a- financial-testing-ground/)

</comment><comment><USER19> On a related note, I just moved to the USA yesterday and am not sure where to open a bank account.

I don't need anything fancy, but looking at Nerdwallet it seems the traditional banks each have different drawbacks (one or more of: monthly fees, high fees for ACH transfers to other people, fees for incoming wires, poor customer service etc.).

I see that N26 now offers a US bank account, but it's via a partner bank I've never heard of.

Where would you open your first US bank account in 2019?

<comment><USER20> Are a business or as an individual? As an individual, I always prefer a credit union which is like a not-for-profit bank. With a sufficient amount in your account, you shouldn't have to pay monthly fees. Credit unions tend to have lower fees than the big banks in general.

<comment><USER19> Individual. Any credit union to recommend for someone living in San Francisco?

<comment><USER12> Caution:

As a foreigner you may have a problem joining a credit union unless you have a green card. I know a few of credit unions that have these kinds of restrictions.

I say go to those that know how to deal with foreigners. (The last thing that you want is to have your account locked out because a small bank/credit union did not know what to do with you, opened an account and it was flagged down the line - maybe 6 months later).

Those would be:

1) Big national banks

2) Big international banks such as HSBC

3) If you are by Chinatown, look for banks servicing Asian population

After you open one account open a second account in a different bank. You do not want to keep all your eggs in one basket, especially as a non permanent resident. Dealing with an account lock out is especially annoying without a network in a country.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for that. I'm still waiting for my physical green card; apparently it can take up to 3 months for it to arrive. But SSN takes just a few weeks apparently.

Good tip about Chinatown. I don't live that close, but don't mind going there to open an account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is offering Brex's financial infrastructure as a service similar to the Bancorp Bank's offering on the roadmap (similar to Stripe considering itself financial infra)? As Pedro mentions in his top comment, "we took the approach of building our core systems from scratch, building directly on top of the payment rails (NACHA and FedWire)"; it would seem to me that this would be a superior foundation than fintech startups could acquire through traditional white label providers (ie Bancorp).

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

Great question -- not on the roadmap as we're laser focused on building a resilient and delightful Brex Cash product for our customers.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'd just like to note my interest in building a narrow bank type credit union for individuals on top of Brex if enough core functionality is exposed programatically. Might end up at Bancorp in the interim though.

<comment><USER4> Got it, good to know and will keep in mind for future planning. Thanks for the feedback here!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How is this different from the "it's not a checking account" Robinhood offered outside of regulatory compliance?

</comment><comment><USER23> Good job Brex and Radius Bank! This is a great product and a great user experience.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some questions:

\- checks are still a thing in business, what is remote deposit story?

\- ACH fraud a big thing - do you have ACH positive pay? Ie originator ID and limit?

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

> \- checks are still a thing in business, what is remote deposit story?

You're absolutely right - which is why are in the process of adding the capacity to send and receive checks. Remote deposit capture is what we're looking into for the "receive checks" piece.

> \- ACH fraud a big thing - do you have ACH positive pay? Ie originator ID > and limit?

Yes, we are able to offer ACH positive pay. Generally, per the payment network (NACHA) guidelines, if a fraudulent transaction is identified by Brex or by a customer, we are able to return it to the originating bank. This helps to prevent customers from ACH debit fraud, and allows us to keep track of potentially malicious activity for future transactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish this were available in Canada! I know it's never gonna happen, but one can wish.

<comment><USER4> [PM on Brex Cash]

This may not solve your problem, but if you have a company entity registered in the US, we can support you no matter where you live or have your headquarters domesticated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How do you plan on making money?

<comment><USER15> > How do you plan on making money?

[I work at Brex]

Brex earns fees, including distribution/referral fees (also known as 12b-1 fees) from money market mutual funds that are included in the Brex Cash sweep program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Congrats!! This looks great!

<comment><USER28> We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21141438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21141438) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Brex is starting to sound like WeWork

<comment><USER30> Please elaborate

<comment><USER31> Seems like this is just a money market fund, any decent CFO can have this set up in less than a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Poor choice of name because Brexit

<comment><USER33> I've read it twice now as "brexit crash".

<comment><USER34> It's one of those cases when you can't succeed due to a poor name.</comment></comment></comment>


Mobile Patent Suits - Graphic of the Day - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/mobile-patent-suits-graphic-of-the-day/ <comment><USER2> Looks like the more desirable and profitable your products are, the more arrows point at you.

Stagnating? Your arrows point away.</comment>


Bohemia Interactive (ARMA) employees arrested in Lemnos for espionage - <AUTHOR> http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?139877-Two-BI-employees-arrested-in-Lemnos&p=2221846

<comment><AUTHOR> another more detailed article

[http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/09/11/bohemia-interactive- devs-a...](http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/09/11/bohemia-interactive-devs- arrested-for-spying/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Huh, hopefully this won't lead to their convictions or anything. To be fair, though, _all_ camps here in Greece have signs posted on multiple places stating that photography is illegal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something about this doesn't sound right to me. Or is this just the Greeks being paranoid/BI employees being stupid?

If you're working on a game based around military facilities and want to get reference material of these facilities, Why wouldn't you seek cooperation before hand?

Doubly so if you're basing it on a country who are touchy about such things and convicted a planespotters of espionage.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hope they'll be ok. Espionage is a big word, it implies malice, which I am sure was not the case. ArmA players know what I'm talking about.

</comment><comment><USER5> Taking pictures of military bases sounds fishy, but not if you've ever played Armed Assault. Reality is their biggest selling point.

</comment><comment><USER6> Something similar happened a few years ago with a bunch of UK planespotters. The Greeks are very touchy about military matters.</comment>


Bjarne Stroustrup: "I did it for you all" (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/I_did_it_for_you_all <comment><USER2> The "interview" is an old fake/slander, but I still love it.

<comment><USER3> When I was around 13 I learned some Visual Basic and started toying around with boxes bouncing around screens. At some point I decided I should better hop on to Visual C++, don't remember what I read to convince me in that direction. I tried really hard to grasp it, the Object Orientation and all, but whether I wasn't determined enough or my brain still wasn't quite up to the complexity I don't know--it ended up turning me away from programming for around 5 years until I came back to tame OO through Visual C#. Moving to JavaScript thereafter was so freeing (and Unix), and then I was fast on my track to functional programming in JS and eventually lisp (through Clojure.) I could believe this interview's every word was true, though I'm not sure what could have been instead of C++ for fast native applications (Scheme?)</comment></comment>


Using BBCP to copy files over the network real fast (faster than rsync) - <AUTHOR> http://pcbunn.cithep.caltech.edu/bbcp/using_bbcp.htm

<comment><USER2> I believe it was written at Stanford. That caltech site describes how to use it.

[http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~abh/bbcp](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~abh/bbcp)

<comment><AUTHOR> Aye, I've linked to the blog article as it does a mildly better job of describing what bbcp does.</comment></comment>


Modified virus used to kill cancer cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-11-20-modified-virus-used-kill-cancer-cells <comment><USER2> This is actually far cooler than the headline suggests.

There's already a fair bit of work into engineering a virus to kill cancer. This research is about getting that virus to also induce an immune response to kill other cells that have been recruited to support the cancer in the body.

<comment><USER3> Does this have anything to do with genetic modification? If so, this is really cool! But even if it's not, I hope they be successful with this because this will definitely save a lot of lives. I just hope the modified virus won't turn things around and make the person's condition worst.

<comment><USER2> The virus described here was first engineered by directed evolution, and then genetically modified with additional functions. The virus doesn't attempt to modify the genome of the human patient.

The clever trick is that these viruses are programmed to target cancer by engineering them to not be able to survive in non-cancer cells. In the case of ColoAd1, the virus will be destroyed by the p53 found in normal cells, but missing from cancer cells.

Engineered viruses might also be evolved or engineered specifically with a kill switch mechanism or be selected to be highly sensitive to a particular antiviral medication.

<comment><USER4> This is a fantastic development in the fight against cancer and an encouraging result, of course the question becomes how do we insure, kill switches and all, that we've not designed a better "cancer."

The current literature is bleak on the subject of controlling nature.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this. If they succeed in this, like I said, it could potentially save a lot of lives, especially those who have a family history with cancer. But I also agree with what you said, I hope that this modified virus won't kill "good cancer cells" or turn them into something way worse than existing types of cancers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good friend of mine is just starting what looks like will be a hard and long battle with cancer. Seeing the breakthroughs give me hope- but I also know they may not be ready in time.

It really does feel like in 20 years, we'll have cancer knocked out. But that's just too far away...

<comment><USER6> There are more than 100 types of cancer. Quite a lot of those types are very well treatable now, and others are far more difficult to treat. New discoveries like these move some more types from the "difficult" to "treatable" list, but I suspect that the last few on the "difficult" list will take a very long time to fully crack.

<comment><USER5> Many of the recent breakthroughs seem to apply quite widely. Cancer may be 100 types, but they carry similarities, namely that human cells stop following the "multicellular organism rules" and go wild, while also tricking the rest of the body into letting them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My HS AP Bio teacher (2008) told me one of his college professors did this to cure his wife's cancer back in the mid-2000s. While very effective, this method depends on a customized approach unique to each patient, which is why this isn't standard practice ten years later.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds a lot like what people at Rigvir are doing ([https://www.rigvir.com/our-company/about- rigvir.php](https://www.rigvir.com/our-company/about-rigvir.php))

</comment><comment><USER9> how many hazardous variants do they produce before they find one that has some form of use? (viruses)

I think personally people should stop inventing new guns and bombs, and try to prevent instead of fight. but i suppose i don't have a medical degree :'D

<comment> martin-adams I think both are equally important in this type of scenario. It's also like climate change. We should absolutely prevent climate change, but we shouldn't stop relief and support for those affected by it.

The reality is, it's a hard problem to fix, so any option is better than no option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While probably true that headline feels _waaaaaayyyyyy_ to simple.

1\. There are a lot of viruses.

2\. There are a lot of different forms of cancer.

I nowhere near understanding the complexity of this (it's not my field), but this headline just feels way to simple.

</comment><comment><USER11> Finally! Someone made a relevant patentable change to a natural cancer fighter. Now it can be brought to market!

<comment><USER2> The oncolytic virus ColoAd1 is hardly a 'natural cancer fighter' — it was very much engineered.</comment></comment>


US Officer Involved Shootings, Mapped - <AUTHOR> http://hiddentao.github.io/ois-incidents-map/

<comment><USER2> Clicking through randomly, it seems that the armed victims were less likely to be killed than the unarmed victims. I wonder if the underlying data refutes that observation.

<comment><USER3>
               Killed   Not Killed

Armed________729______300

Not Armed_____211_____114

The Chi-square statistic is 4.0812. The P value is 0.043363. This result is significant at p < 0.05

<comment><USER4> Yes, armed vs unarmed were different, question is in what direction. IOW were those armed more likely to be killed than the unarmed?

For armed "shootees", killed/not-killed == 2.43, whereas unarmed == 1.85.

Looking at it the other way, for those killed, ratio of armed/unarmed was 3.45, but only 2.63 for shooting survivors.

Since the categorical data was shown to differ significantly, the difference ratios are also significant. We can conclude one is more likely to be shot dead if armed when confronted by police.

Edit: grammar

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If only the data underlying this visualization were complete.

<comment><USER6> The data is useless. My home city has had >0 OIS during the date range, but the data reports zero.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, not useless. at least it exposes the complete lack of transparency. it's crazy that we have to cobble together stats from news reports, rather than official reports. that's the point. [http://www.danham.me/r/2015/01/02/ois- api.html](http://www.danham.me/r/2015/01/02/ois-api.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Suggestion: try semi-transparent bubbles for each data point. It will create a heat map which is faster to read and understand than summaries per region.

</comment><comment><USER8> See Framingham Massachusetts. Same victim listed 3 times.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what the data source(s) are?

<comment><AUTHOR> philadelphia and dallas report official stats, other than that, we use the deadspin project [http://www.danham.me/r/2015/01/02/ois- api.html](http://www.danham.me/r/2015/01/02/ois-api.html)</comment></comment>


Eureqa  - <AUTHOR> http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/eureqa <comment><USER2> Every installation of this program needs to come with a statistician to stand over your shoulder and hit you with a ruler and shout "That's data mining, not a controlled experiment! No causality for you!"

<comment><USER3> Not sure why you're being voted down, as this was the first thing I thought. Admittedly, I'm not a statistician, so perhaps someone else can explain why this kind of thing is valuable?

<comment><USER4> Two big advantages as I can see (there are undoubtedly more):

1- As experimentalists do experiments they often arrive at these same conjectures, but after years of trial and error. Throughout history there were probably mountains of data that were recorded but discarded after they were hypothesized to have no scientific value. Having a program like this can essentially narrow the search for you. It can let you get back to doing science and do less data processing, which for the majority of scientists is a godsend.

2- You can now take historical sets of data and see if you can recover new aspects of structure. Perhaps there were important features in the data that were overlooked that can now be statistically analyzed. This can lead to new research avenues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool. It'd be fun to throw stock price data into this.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget to throw in general market data, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The windows installer seems to work well in Wine.

(But open source would be nicer.)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, besides the Linux binary is only for 32-bit x86 machines :S

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this different from Bacon? [http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5862)

<comment><USER10> I have only a limited understanding of the details of BACON, but from what I remember it was what is called a "production system" and somewhat akin to an evolving expert system. Something like BACON starts out with a set of rules and then tweaks them looking for patterns that can be generalized into new rules. Novel for the early 80s, but in practice these systems seemed to be limited to very specific domains.

Eureqa is a genetic programming system (running over a graph encoding, bonus points for that one :) that evolves a set of rules from basic components to fit a set of data and hopefully be able to make future predictions. The general concept is not really new -- some of Koza's early examples of the power of GP were evolving Kepler's third law using astronomical data points as the input and evolving Ohm's law in a similar fashion[1] -- but developing a general toolkit and packaging it as a useful tool is somewhat novel. One thing that probably distinguishes Eureqa is that I would expect the output to be more parsimonious than that developed by a production system like BACON. A system like BACON is also more complex, involving various layers of detectors and rule emitters, while a GP system can be very simple once you have figured out the best set of operators for a problem domain.

[1] It should be noted that BACON did these tasks as well, so they are more of a general rule-building yardstick and put GP at a similar level to the well- developed (and well-funded) production systems research of the era.

<comment><USER9> > Novel for the early 80s, but in practice these systems seemed to be limited > to very specific domains.

IIRC, Bacon's domain was discovery of certain kinds of relationshps, not lung disease or something like that.

I agree that something that is packaged for general use is more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have anyone tried to fit something more complicated such as solution of some nasty PDE or just Bessel function?

</comment><comment><USER12> What about the choice of symbolic forms? It'd be cool if some of the data analysis suggests other possible blocks to use in the modelling process.

<comment><USER13> There is a report generator that suggests experiments based on the data. Don't take that as a recommendation for the product however. I'm still test driving.</comment></comment>


"Killing It" Isn't Worth It - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/17/killing-it-isnt-worth-it/

<comment><USER2> _"No matter how dark it gets, you should never, ever take your own life._

I'm sure this will be an unpopular position, but I question this. If an individual reaches a point where the pain and misery they are experiences outweighs the joy, or even the hope for joy, in their life then maybe the rationally correct thing to do _is_ to take your own life.

I mean, if you reach a point where you can look forward and reasonably say "I'm never going to achieve my dreams and accomplish what I want to accomplish, and being here hurts" then why is one obligated to keep suffering until chance claims you?

I'm not saying this is a decision one should make lightly, and obviously one of the negatives is that it's an irreversible decision. But I can see circumstances where it is a reasonable choice.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that death is permanent, or irreversible, as you said. And that things change.

If there exists an omniscience being that can factually answer the question of "Will I ever achieve my dreams?" (or "Will I ever be happy again?", but that's for an even broader discussion), then yes, the only rationally correct thing to do is to take your own life for a "no" answer.

In reality, the best we can answer such question is "There would be x% chance thing will get better". At what value of x will the decision of taking one's life becomes rational?

And then, most of the time, depressed people aren't really in their best state of mind. Hence this is one of the cases where the advice should stay on the risk-adverse side, rather than the perfectly rational one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _I posted this on the techcrunch article, but thought it might be useful to post it here as well_

Perhaps one thing that the "startup world" could adopt is the practice of postmortems. The game industry, which many have pointed out have many parallels between a new game venture and a startup, embraces failure in the sense that they talk truthfully about "what went right, and what went wrong". There are postmortems at industry events (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLqk4aqpXlQ>), and the industry's media publishes them (<http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/>). Of course, in many cases the postmortems are of popular/successful games, but at least they speak freely about things that went wrong ... and there are even some small failures that work up the courage to post about it (<http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1289>).

The point is that the culture in the game industry does not look down on failure, even while celebrating successes. And yes, I do realize the irony of me using the game industry as an example of healthy culture (ea_spouse, etc.) :P

<comment><USER5> I'd like to see more of these as well. Not only does it put the chances of success into perspective, but there is a ton to be gained from mistakes. Failing is a fact of life, the least we can do is learn and help others learn from our failures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article, but horrible headline. The headline should be: 'How Techcrunch, tech media, and investors contribute to startup depression.'

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it me or is this the best post I've ever read on Techcrunch?

YES, I say write about startups that struggle and are failing. That can be instructive and interesting too. And of course not in a mocking way like Color, but to chronicle the journey of the underdog, the journeyman fighter, the also-ran.

Why aren't journalists doing more of this? Is it a lack of good writers? No money in it?

<comment><USER8> The sane reason why there are no ugly people in Hollywood, no one wants to see that shit</comment></comment>