Google gets start of Winter wrong by 3 weeks - <AUTHOR>

Today, on http://www.google.com.au/ the normal Google logo is replaced by a wintery looking one, with mouseover that reads 'first day of winter'. Thing is, in Australia Winter starts June 1st<p>Yes, not exactly HN material but amusing to see even places like Google get this wrong <comment><USER2> It's probably due to the start of the winter solstice — the shortest day in the southern hemisphere and the longest in the northern half of the world (where thousands will be celebrating the summer solstice): [http://www.theage.com.au/national/pagans-party-as-winter- sol...](http://www.theage.com.au/national/pagans-party-as-winter-solstice- brings-hope-20090620-crzk.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's Winter solstice; no argument there. It's not, as Google are suggesting, the first day of Winter. Big difference.

It looks like the assumption is that other places start their seasons the same date as the US does.

<comment><USER2> _In many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa the winter solstice starts on the 1st of June and the official day of winter starts on June 21._

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

<comment><USER3> That's not a quotation, and it's inaccurate. The Winter Solstice doesn't "start on the 1st of June". The Winter Solstice is a specific astonomical point in time. Wikipedia says:

        In many countries in the Southern Hemisphere,
        including Australia [3][4], New Zealand and
        South Africa, winter begins on 1 June and ends
        on 31 August.

"Winter" is a political construction and can be declared to start on different dates as appropriate.

Please, if you write something that looks like a quotation, make sure it is a quotation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Astrophysical winter, not political winter.</comment>


Node.js/Ember.js/Parse.com Website Jumpstart  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bwship/neptunejs

<comment><USER2> With our start-up, the right priority for development was simultaneous mobile and web development. This stack has proven to be the right answer for us. The Parse iOS and Javascript jumpstarted our client developers, ember.js gives us a wickedly responsive web app, and node.js allows us to late bind many of our architecture decisions by optionally hosting core JS on the server or browser. We're happy with the trade-offs that led us to choose this stack.</comment>


Two senators say a $5B fine isn't enough to punish Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/two-senators-say-a-5-billion-fine-isnt-enough-to-punish-facebook/ <comment><USER3> This is kind of alarming to me. A fine should scale with the the greater of the harm done and the amount needed to deter the behavior. But that's not what's happening here; instead, people are proposing that the fine scale with Facebook's total revenue. Even Facebook's most ardent critics probably don't believe they derive a majority (or really even a significant amount) of revenue from the lax API controls companies like Cambridge Analytica relied on. The fine should be sufficient to ensure that nobody at Facebook thinks that being lazy about access to user profiles in their APIs is a good business decision. It should not, in effect, be a litigation of whether Facebook is on the whole a good idea.

I don't think Facebook (as constituted) is a good idea! But that doesn't mean I think the FTC should be able to fine it existentially, unless an existential fine is really what it takes to defer the specific thing they did that was unlawful. There's no evidence that $5B --- a record high fine equivalent to the entire cost of several well-known startups Facebook could have otherwise acquired rather than lighting that money on fire --- is insufficient to the task.

<comment><USER4> I mean first fines pretty much have to scale with total revenue to deter behavior

second 5 billion won't even lead to an unprofitable _quarter_ at 2018's numbers so there's a loooot of room between 5B and an existential fine, we aren't any where near the slippery part of the slope.

<comment><USER5> > I mean first fines pretty much have to scale with total revenue to deter > behavior

That's only an effective approach if your goal is to cripple many of the companies that you fine. Almost no large companies on the planet have the extreme profit margins of Facebook. Alternatively to avoid that kind of damage you have to adjust the percentage scale to each individual company's profit margins (25% revenue fine for Facebook, N% for a retailer with microscopic 3% profit margins), which instantly makes the revenue approach absurd.

Slap 3M, Walmart, Caterpillar or Costco with the equivalent of a ~25% quarterly revenue fine, and you'll do severe damage to the company. A 25% quarterly fine on Walmart's revenue would nearly bankrupt them. As opposed to Facebook which has profit margins 15-20x greater than eg Costco and can more or less absorb the fine directly out of its quarterly profit.

I don't see the argument behind using fines as a means to intentionally severely damage companies, which is what huge revenue-based fines accomplish.

<comment><USER6> > That's only an effective approach if your goal is to cripple many of the > companies that you fine

Yes, some companies should be crippled. With criminal sentencing, the first goal is to isolate that person from society as a punishment with reform being a second consideration. With criminals, judges or magistrates would level higher-end sentences as an example and you won't hear many people arguing against a criminal's 15 year sentence by saying it would cripple their economic output.

Society owes nothing to corporations and this "too big to fail" mentality creates a system where corporations are above ethics.

Seeing Facebook fined into to a point where they are seriously crippled as a company will make _a lot_ of other companies change their tune, internationally, for the better.

<comment><USER3> TBTF has nothing to do with this. What's being proposed is basically _the exact opposite of TBTF_ \--- that Facebook is too big _not_ to fine unusually.

If you believe there should be a notion of SITCs --- Systemically Important Tech Companies --- lobby to pass that law in such a way that it survives judicial review. But it can't simply be up to the FTC to make that rule up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meanwhile Boeing actively subverted government regulation leading to mass casualties. What should their punishment be?

<comment><USER8>
        1. Execute the company (dissolve the charter)
        2. throw the board collectively in jail for a time for inaction of illegal actions leading to death
        3. charge all who conspired to subvert laws as a co-conspirators to premeditated murder
        4. Liquidate the company and pay back shareholders not in C levels, the Board, family thereof, or people charged with aforementioned crimes

Strong enough?

<comment><USER9> How about just jail the programmers and engineers since they are the only ones who ever have a record of what went on.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't be the first time programmers were the only ones to do time for a company's crimes.

But when I'm asked to implement robosigning and push back now I'm the bad guy. I won't do it, but another dev did against my and the other developer's advice. He'll be fine I'm sure. No one will notice.

<comment><USER8> And it's not hard at all to see different pieces done, which individually do not make a crime. However these 10 pieces (read: Agile cards) do make illegal actions possible.

The management approved this, and the devs worked on it. The devs certainly didn't execute said code. Now, if they were discussing "this feature allows fraud but we're going to do it anyway" over jira or email, roast'em.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is the letter.

[https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Lette...](https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Facebook.pdf)

The proposal from these two senators seems reasonable:

"The FTC should propose long-term limits on Facebook's collection and use of personal information. It should consider setting rules of the road on what Facebook can do with consumers' private information, such as requiring the deletion of tracking data, restricting the collection of certain types of information, curbing advertising practices, and imposing a firewall on sharing private data between different products, including Facebook's ad platform."

Placing hard limits on data collection and usage seems clearer and more workable than requiring "user consent" as we saw in the last consent decree.

Sen. Blumenthal's office seems to be one of the few that is willing to call BS on the type of shenanigans often discussed here on HN.

[https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01.31.2018%2...](https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01.31.2018%20Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Devumi%20and%20Fake%20Followers.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> >While the Republicans could push through a relatively lenient offer along partisan lines, doing so could come with heavy political costs for the agency, since it would expose them to attacks that the Republican majority is soft on misbehaving technology companies.

One thing that has changed recently in politics is that a significant portion of Republican base now considers Silicon Valley tech companies as foes. I would guess that there would actually be a lot of grassroots support for a massive fine on Facebook.

In the past, tech companies could assume that the Republican affinity for big business would shield them. Now that has gone.

<comment><USER13> If you look at conservative opinion formers, like Tucker Carlson, they're talking about breaking up major firms and so on. I think the ideology that was pro-oligarchy died on both the left and right in 2008, and only the most diehard centrists are believers in it

<comment><USER14> Really? That really surprises me given the free market arguments that he and others bring. Do you happen to have a specific example of him arguing this?

<comment><USER15> The idea is that the large tech companies are overwhelmingly staffed and lead by people who qualify as the political left by American standards. As Breitbart said, "Politics is downstream from culture." \- so if you have the most important communications platforms the world has ever seen all privately owned and operated by "the left", that sounds like a bad thing if you're on "the right", because they can shape discourse however they want - <USER2> overtly by banning people for bad politics or covertly by shadowbanning and otherwise muting popular voices with undesirable opinions. Imagine if Google/Facebook/Twitter were owned by the Koch brothers and staffed by members of the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation - people on the left would be doing the same thing Tucker Carlson is doing.

<comment><USER13> >The idea is that the large tech companies are overwhelmingly staffed and lead by people who qualify as the political left by American standards.

they're certainly left of fox news, though i wouldn't call fox news "leftist"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> my cynical side says there is more to this.

I think FB is a major threat to the distribution of news that is mostly owned and controlled by the mainstream media owners.

I think this is all part of forcing FB to come to the negotiation table, and negotiate banning more independent information sources to make these fines go away.

<comment><USER17> I don't think Fox News really cares about Facebook

<comment><USER18> I think that of all the news companies, Fox is probably the one that would care most, since they have the largest proportion of the audience that's only there for the daily outrage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Original letter from the senators to the FTC chairman here [PDF]: [https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Lette...](https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Facebook.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've always wondered in cases like these what they actually DO with the money after they fine huge companies like this... As in, how would they remedy the damage? Would they use it to go after companies that made money off of people's personal data or make them develop better privacy features or what else?

<comment><USER21> Given that the money is a fiat system, without the backing of actual gold, this money effectively goes back into "the ether".

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's true. The money is not destroyed, it is instead transferred to the government and can be used for various purposes.

Of course you could argue that the government could theoretically decide to arbitraly print money so any money that goes to the government is actually not worth anything but since the fed operates independently this is just not true.

<comment><USER10> The US treasury loans the cash at zero interest to the Fed (which is actually a coalition of corporate banks, not a federal government entity).

The Fed then loans _that_ money out with interest and backed by the good faith in the us government.

This means the banks which as major holders of stock in Facebook, most of whom want Zuckerberg out as ceo, are also incentivized to pursue a bigger fine.

<comment><USER22> Sorry to be a bit harsh but those are a lot of strange claims.

The Fed comes very close to a government entity in that its board is nominated by the government and confirmed by the Senate. It is not made up of corporate banks and is definitely not a coalition of corporate banks.

I'm not sure how you get the idea that the US Treasury loans the fine to the Fed? Do you have a source for that?

And if those big banks are major stock holders of Facebook they definitely do not want fines imposed on Facebook. Loosing money is the one thing that businesses need to avoid and fines are a pretty direct way of hurting business while not being useful in any way. Just because those banks might want to see Zuckerberg go (which is not necessarily right) they do definitely not want to loose money to make that happen. Fines are also not very effective in that regard.

<comment><USER10> They want that to happen if it means they can accelerate profits plus interest on the loans faster than new fine minus $5 billion.

Fed is a corporation source, there are plenty. It's common knowledge, " the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: "The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act], but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations." "

Loans to the banks: "By the end of 2008, Goldman had snarfed up $34 billion in federal loans – and it was paying an interest rate of as low as just 0.01 percent for the huge cash infusion. "

[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics- news/secrets-...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/secrets- and-lies-of-the-bailout-113270/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why not require all their profit for the next 10 years be put into an escrow account, such that any violations in those 10 years would result in a forfeiture of those funds? Seems to be a reasonable deterrent and it drives the action in the public's best interest.

<comment><USER24> You will see them distributing dividends, or spending money on new initiatives. It is relatively easier for a corporation to show no profit.

And i dislike the idea personally, punishing a company to inexistence is very unamerican.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not sure why the fine must go to government. It creates perverse incentives here.

</comment><comment><USER26> can governments force people to be fired? That might bring things closer to home.

<comment><USER14> Only if a criminal investigation turns up chargeable offenses, sure.

The government can't just tell Zuckerberg to pack up and go home, but felony charges are about the only way he can be forced out at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> When we first heard that Facebook was putting $5bn aside for this, wasn't it clearly a deliberate tactic to steer the inevitable fine, to _suggest_ a range?

$5bn isn't pocket money, but it's hardly a serious expense for Facebook. They've [clearly] already accounted for it. It's not punitive.

Add a couple of zeros. Facebook is repeatedly at the bleeding edge of privacy invasion, acting too late to obvious evils, letting advertisers [essentially] identify people by offering such exact filters, illegally siphoning off data... Any action needs to hit Facebook hard enough that their engineers _feel it_ and start to consider things in what they should be doing, not what they're technically able to do to churn out more cash.

</comment><comment> trey-jones Talk about throwing stones in a glass house...

</comment><comment><USER28> $5B is enough if you also fine them $5B for all other infractions... it should add up to at least $100B.

</comment><comment><USER29> The government is building a case against itself for the time when they are going to f __k up with all the data they have been collecting about the citizens.

$5B for FB for the leaked emails and likes? How about $50B for the leaked tax records.

[1] [https://www.atr.org/irs-data-breach-allows-hackers- steal-30-...](https://www.atr.org/irs-data-breach-allows-hackers- steal-30-million-taxpayers)

</comment><comment><USER30> These two are former state AGs and IMHO their kind should be barred from being part of any important deliberative body, they are prosecutors with strictly punitive mindset in a legislative body that is also supposed to encourage entrepreneurship and look after national interests, and at any rate everyone should be wary of grandstanding and populist pronouncements by elected officials.

P.S

State AG should not be an elected position.

<comment><USER31> > their kind should be barred from being part of any important deliberative > body

It is hard for me to not agree with that (at least emotionally) but I would then argue further to also limit the number of attorneys that are legislatures since as a very general rule they are trained to think a certain way. Of course this idea (your idea and my idea) is not practical and will never happen. But the truth is like with any profession if you are in it long enough you tend to think in a certain way.

I remember Obama (a trained Harvard Lawyer) thinking he could just sit down the two parties in the middle east conflict and just have them talk things out. Like it was going to be some kind of binding arbitration where both sides were reasonable and not impacted by past biases (or other influences). A totally ridiculous idea. (Not saying by the way that had anything to do with the fact that he was trained as an attorney but more that to your point a person's past can determine greatly how they think things should be handled).

Prosecutors are reinforced by winning even in the face of evidence of innocence to the contrary just like sports teams win that is the name of the game not being nice to your opponents.</comment></comment>


Efficient Graph Algorithms in Neo4j - <AUTHOR> https://neo4j.com/blog/efficient-graph-algorithms-neo4j/ <comment><USER2> Coincidentally, I just tried this out earlier today. `pageRank` yielded a stack overflow, and `pageRank.stream` yielded an OOM error. The graph it was run on was large, but not unreasonably so. Haven't dug into the cause of the errors yet.

<comment><USER3> This is likely a query issue; I've had many queries go wild & OOM, once fixed they work as you'd expect. There's also a config setting you can use to limit in seconds the amount of time a query can run before it's killed, very useful if you plan on running hand built queries on anything production (which you shouldn't be anyways ;-))

<comment><USER4> Can you share more info about the queries that "went wild" on GitHub, so that we can reproduce? Thx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neo4j is awesome, after using at my last startup I'm super meh on table based schemas.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does the pagerank algorithm include the personalized variant? The docs don't seem to indicate that this is the case (i.e. no way to specify an alpha vector).</comment>


Needed: Infrastructure to Make the Web Personal - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/02/05/needed-infrastructure-to-make-the-web-personal/ <comment><USER2> I think personalization needs to happen in the browser so that silos of personal data (like Facebook, Gmail) can be used without compromising privacy.

There are not enough incentives for those services to integrate server-side - it's a lose for the individual sites themselves if, by providing contextual information and actions from another service on your page, you drive the user away from your site.

Use case for a personalized web: I'm searching on Yelp trying to find a good restaurant to go to this evening. Something tells me that a friend recommended a place in San Francisco several months ago (over Gmail when he learnt I was going) and I had completely forgotten about it.

(Disclosure: I'm a co-founder of WebMynd)</comment>


Strikingly (YC W13) Begins Marketing Its Mobile Site Builder in Southeast Asia - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/24/y-combinator-alum-strikingly-begins-marketing-its-mobile-site-builder-in-southeast-asia/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that this has popped up on here. I have been recommending it to a few friends in Europe, very aesthetically pleasing design.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot! Where are you in Europe? We'll be in Paris in Dec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a techcrunch hater and have little problem with pr-driven articles but...slow news day?

</comment><comment><USER5> Will HK or Taiwan for Strikingly soon?

<comment><USER3> You can already use the English version, and we definitely have plans for a Chinese version for the near future as well.

<comment><USER6> Are you guys the first YC graduates to get in Asian markets?

Can you say a little about what you plan to do differently for the Asian audience vs. the Western audience?

It seems the Chinese have a very different sensibility of what constitutes a good webpage design, are you sure Strikingly models and aesthetics will be accepted by them? And, do you expect any resistance _because_ you guys are not Chinese-based?

Best of luck though! I personally love Strikingly-made sites, I just wish there was an easy way I could download them (I would pay for this if you guys would be willing to offer this service).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> love strikingly.. their sites are beautiful..

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot! Definitely let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions!

<comment><USER8> Support for tables would be nice.</comment></comment></comment>


Von 4 bis 17 Euro: So teuer ist Wohnen in Deutschland wirklich - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-11/mietpreise-steigerung-mietspiegel-wohnungsnot-gemeinden <comment><USER2> I live in Berlin. While a lot of press revolves around the rent costs, owning an apartment or home is getting extremely expensive and out of reach for many. Rents are kept somewhat in check but the buying market is insane. I can rent for less than 1000€ something that would cost more than 350-400k€ to buy, especially when you add the usury 7.14% commission tacked on by the real estate agent and 8% closing fees.

<comment><USER3> average rent has gone up 42% since 2012. that is ridiculous.

berlin is closing in on hamburg which is notoriously expensive..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Autotranslation of the title "From 4 to 17 euros: So expensive is living in Germany really"

<comment><USER5> It is not entirely clear to me, from the article - is the rent figure specified on a per month basis?

<comment><USER6> Germans pay rent on a per month basis. The prices mentioned are in €/sqm/month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone translating this, try using Deepl instead of Google Translate.</comment>


'Self-Proclaimed Leader' of LulzSec Hackers Arrested - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/04/24/lulzsec-arrested-australia/

<comment><USER2> I used to work with Matt a few years ago, he was doing network admin work for an ISP and I was doing client installs. He wasn't really the brightest guy but he was nice to me. He also told me he did weekend jail because he bashed his brother and that he was part of some internet hacking group. I kind of ignored what he had to say but looks like he was telling the truth.

People like him don't hack for fun or to prove a point, he hacks because he is someone worried about his own privacy. If he can break into a system then who else is doing the same? Its the victims fault if they get hacked, there is absolutely no excuse for poor internet security these days, especially when we have so much information invested into them.</comment>


An exclusive first look at Windows 8 Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/virtualization/203199/windows-server-8-highlights-upcoming-server-os

<comment><USER2> >Bill Laing made it clear that they've tried hard to listen to customers this time

So interesting in contrast to Steve Jobs' thoughts... "If you ask customers what they want, you will never get anything revolutionary, just the same stuff" (rough quote from memory)</comment>


Must-read programming books? - <AUTHOR>

Other than classics such as "Design Patterns", "Art of Computer Programming", and "SICP" what are some modern gems? <comment><USER2> I see this question constantly on HN. Maybe off topic, but do people read books to learn programming? There are a lot of great sources online for learning even the most obscure concepts. Online sources also have the benefit of not being old information. When one begins writing a book, it could be years before it's in the hands of readers. Just seems like a weird way to learn something (especially programming) these days.

<comment><USER3> I get my recommendations from stackoverflow mostly, so I know the books I read are good. My brain knows the information is legit and takes it all in.

On the internet I spend too long reading short pieces, reviews, articles... A book is nice and LONG :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anytime I'm going to poke into a topic I like to nab one of the Head First books. They're a fast, easy way to learn a topic and after I'm done with it and into it deeply I'll find a dry reference.

The Pragmatic Programmer Meta-programming at it's finest. Be a better programmer.

Joel on software blog: Here's an example post. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html>

There's quite a bit to learn in there.

Many other books available free online. Primarily I suggest you read to an end, and as you get to a stagnation point you alternate between reading to learn new technologies or languages and reading to improve yourself as a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER5> Even if you have no real interest in C, check out K&R if you haven't. It's a near flawless (imo) example of technical writing and language introduction.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would recommend "The Art of Readable Code" by Boswell. It is very well- written and enjoyable.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Readable-Code-Dustin- Boswell/dp/05...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Readable-Code-Dustin- Boswell/dp/0596802293)</comment>


CoinStarter launched yesterday and is going viral - <AUTHOR> https://coinstarter.com?ref=dt3ndxx3j <comment><AUTHOR> Create your account to get started!

<comment><USER2> does the about us page work? or contact us? or press?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet. Some of the smaller pages like those will be up and running very soon! CoinStarter was just launched yesterday. Some features might not work yet, but for a limited time they are giving 100 free tokens when you join and 25 tokens for each referral.</comment></comment></comment>


Interview with Haiku developer Paweł Dziepak - <AUTHOR> https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2014-05-10_extensive_interview_haiku_developer_pawe%C5%82_dziepak

<comment><USER2> Ah Haiku, my true OS love. How I miss you (and wish I could use you for production work). One of these days I'll get back into your warm, nostalgic embrace once more.

Are there many here that were BeOS lovers? I'm too young for that, unfortunately, but found Haiku when it was alpha 3, and have fond memories of playing with it for months. Having a true desktop operating system with a great architecture and quite an amazing SDK... now I use OS X and elementary OS, but I still fire up a VM now and then.

In the interview, he talks about attributes, which are basically meta-data at the file-system level. Such an amazing but simple idea, that works wonders. Having a mail client that literally works with files on the file-system is quite a different experience!

<comment><USER3> > Are there many here that were BeOS lovers?

I used it on the desktop for about six months to a year (1999? 2000?). R4.5. Switched away when they sold to Palm.

I still have a copy of Giampalo's "Practical Filesystem Design" somewhere in the house. It looks like he's published it online: [http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system- design.pdf](http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf).

I remember at the time being upset that Apple had gone with NeXT instead of BeOS ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History)), but in retrospect it was obviously the right call, even from a technical point of view. It's really crazy that OS X 10.0 was such a pig on the systems of the time, but now fits in a phone...

PS: Does anyone know if Be's developer notes/articles are archived anywhere? I remember there being some really great articles from the OS developers about stuff like how the app_server worked, etc.

EDIT: Ah yes, the Be Newsletters: [http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy- docs/benewsletter/index.html](http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy- docs/benewsletter/index.html). These are fricking great. I strongly recommend reading them for anyone interested in OS internals.

<comment><USER4> "It's really crazy that OS X 10.0 was such a pig on the systems of the time"

I was so ticked because OpenStep and NeXTSTEP were so responsive and I couldn't figure out what the people at Apple had done to it. Plus, changing how the menu[1] worked and moving the vertical scrollbar were and are grave sins as far as I'm concerned.

1) The UI rule that is used to justify using the Mac menu bar doesn't make any sense for touch, big monitors, or multi-monitors.

<comment><USER5> Isn't the Mac menu bar designed to keep Fitts' law in mind? I can see how that isn't relevant for touch, but why does it not apply for big monitors or multiple monitors?

<comment><USER4> leave what I'm working on -> scroll -> scroll -> scroll -> click menu -> run mouse back to window via a lot of scrolling

NeXTSTEP had nice menu that could be detached - it was so easy

<comment><USER6> That's not what "scrolling" generally means. And if your cursor has a decent acceleration curve applied to it, the potentially long distance to the menu won't matter unless the menu is at least one large monitor away.

<comment><USER4> and what word would you use?

well, its a tad bit longer than the NeXTSTEP menu near the window and OS X doesn't allow tear-offs. I find it irritating and stupid compared to what NeXT had. There are quite a few things they dropped in the conversion from NeXTSTEP / OpenStep to OS X that I miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> BeOS with its database-like BFS filesystem ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeFS) ) were forerunners for its time. The BFS developer Dominic Giampaolo was later responsible for Apple's Spotlight desktop search in OSX 10.4 and iOS: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_\(software\))

Similar to Bill Gates vision of _Information at Your Fingertips_ with the later Microsoft's _Cairo_ project and even later _WinFS_ (both vamporware) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_operating_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_operating_system), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS)

Microsoft's NTFS and especially its newer ReFS ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS) ) are conceptually similar to BFS. The missing piece is a layer above the kernel driver that would have been _WinFS_ \- a shell integration and search API.

<comment><USER8> I might grant that NTFS is conceptually similar to BFS (though its alternate data streams lack types, IIRC; been awhile since I dove into that). I am optimistic that the new commandlets introduced in PowerShell 3, along with better tooling, might mean that Windows 9 starts using them more heavily, much like OS X ~10.7 started to.

But I don't agree ReFS is in the same boat. ReFS, at least as it exists today, has more in common with Plan 9's Fossil/Venti than anything else. Most notably, it explicitly doesn't support alternate streams, which is the exact piece of NTFS that is most like BFS, nor does it support extended attributes (the vestigial HPFS-era predecessor to alternate data streams). Given that it also lacks things like hard links, file system transactions (N.B., this is database-like transactions for a collection of file system operations, not traditional file system journaling), and a bunch of other things that I associate with BFS-like everything-is-a-database file systems, I don't think that comparison is apt.

<comment><USER7>
      Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 add additional
      features when using ReFS, including alternate data
      streams [...]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS) (bottom) and [http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh831724.aspx](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh831724.aspx)

ReFS features are still evolving and like NTFS is designed to be extendable (as has happened with NTFS).

It is of course NTFS that was involved in all the history of WinNT, Cairo and WinFS and still is the major FS. (I just mentioned ReFS for completeness)

Neither NTFS ADS nor Apple'S Resource fork and HFS+ ADS are something new: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28ADS.29), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)#Apple](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_\(file_system\)#Apple) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork)

And neither the Explorer shell nor OSX Finder expose it as GUI - what a shame.

dotNet API's lags behind WinAPI, so dotNet/PowerShell just catches up a bit - nothing special.

Windows 9 will be interesting indeed. But I have my doubts... given that Win Vista had the advanced search dialog in Explorer shell. The newer Win 7 had no such dialog and generally the whole metadata idea was buried away in the slightly changed UI (removed list-group bar, changed metadata bar, folder doesn't remember state, custom added columns not saved, etc.) Even the great "Photo gallery" application has a optional download as part of their LIVE apps and Media player hides the playlist with its star-rating by default, etc. I don't comment Win 8.x.

<comment><USER8> I didn't realize that ReFS in Win 8.1 had had a meaningful revision, but that's great to hear. And I wasn't saying that ADS or HFS+ ADS were new, but rather that they're barely used, and that the relative increase in usage in recent editions of OS X indicates a comparative uptick. I don't honestly know any common use of ADS on NTFS, although I think that the AppleShare implementation on WinNT 4 used them to preserve Mac OS resource forks, but I haven't looked too hard, either.

I disagree with you blowing off the significance of ADS support showing up in PowerShell. You could already access ADS in .NET, but PowerShell it's interesting to see native cmdlets in PowerShell for working with ADS because _it 's the shell_. To me, this indicates that Microsoft is anticipating developers will want to directly work with ADS from PowerShell, and that is interesting to me.

<comment><USER7> Can you give me a link related to the OSX "relative increase in usage in recent editions"? Has Finder gained some new features or are there new applications that take advantage of ADS/resource fork? I like to read up more and learn more about this.

OSX Finder "information window" with its metadata feature stayed almost the same since OSX 10.4 Tiger which also marked the introduction of Spotlight desktop search.

The command line shell of WinNT, the Win32 console implementation is a bit complex ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console) ). Win 7+ ships with at least 3 _shells_ : cmd.exe and PowerShell as well as the GUI shell explorer.exe (+ shell32.dll).

ADS (called Zone.Identifier) are added by Internet Explorer and recently by other browsers to mark files downloaded from external sites as possibly unsafe to run.

<comment><USER8> OS X uses HFS+ resource forks for a variety of things, beginning around 10.4. Prior to Mavericks, they were used to handle ACLs, to track Time Machine metadata, to track whether a file was downloaded or native to the file system (which in turn shows up as a Finder warning when launching applications you downloaded from the Internet) and where it was downloaded from, and some other minor things. Beginning with Mavericks, they were also used to support giving files arbitrary tags, which is what I had in mind. You can read more about the implementation at [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/) .

Notably, while all of the above use resource forks, they're not exposed to the user directly as resource forks, but rather as additional Finder widgets and behaviors.

<comment><USER7> System wide metadata and tag support is great. Sadly, both Win and Mac are lacking in this discipline.

It's ironic that Windows XP exposed the ADS in the file property dialog "summary" tab: [http://www.infosecwriters.com/texts.php?op=display&id=53](http://www.infosecwriters.com/texts.php?op=display&id=53)

Vista onwards one can only view (also in XP) and edit metadata for supported file formats like jpg, doc, docx, mp3, etc. Such formats have its own metadata format like ID3 for mp3 and EXIF/IPTC/XMP for jpeg that explorer.exe and windows media player support.

OSX uses ADS or sidecar files (on FAT/NTFS/network) but only supports 7 colors that can be mapped to tags (mean on every PC different things; similar to MS Outlook tags). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidecar_file](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidecar_file)

Seeing the OSX sidecar files is really annoying (beginning with a dot and have otherwise the same name as the original file) on Windows. (a bit similar to the thumbs.db) The same goes for WinNT6+ that creates multi GB preview cache- database files in the users directory instead of one "thumbs.db" per directory - ultra annoying :(

It would be great, if Microsoft and Apple could agree on a new metadata sidecar standard (like XMP from Adobe, now ISO standard: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform) ).

 _My proposal:_ One zip file containing all XMP metadata sidecar files and file preview pictures of the current directory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Haiku OS developer is 22!!!! I loved BeOS and had such high hopes for it. Once again superior technology losses to Apple and Microsoft.

Amazing Technology that loss (By pain factor.

1) Amiga (1985- ?) (It was light year ahead of everyone especially Apple (Toaster anyone) Drama from Commodore CEO was the cause of death.

2) BeOS (1992-2001) BeOS was to be OSX but Apple refused to pay more then $125 mill and BeOS wanted $200 mill.

3) Dvorak keyboard (1936) lost to QWERTY which was designed so poorly to slow down people's typing so that mechanical typewriters wouldn't jam. Dvorak keyboard was designed for typing speed.

<comment><USER10> 1\. While the Amiga was ahead of Apple in some ways, there was a reason people bought the Macintosh. It was a better user experience for most people.

2\. NeXT would have been considered the "Fantastic technology that was never appreciated" if everyone would have went with BeOS. And do you really think that the Be experience would have been the one that survived to OSX?

3\. QWERTY being designed to slow people down is a myth long since debunked. Further, as i understand it, Colemak is the way to go today. Why is everyone sticking with Dvorak? :)

<comment><USER11> Does querty not make a bit of sense again, with the advent of touchscreens? If it was designed to minimize key jams, then I would assume that it leads to less ambiguity in what words are being typed.

(And the Amiga was a far superior experience to a Mac. It had colour for starters. )

<comment><USER10> QWERTY doesn't really make sense from today's standpoint -- however, most of us still use it because switching costs are high. (I think about switching every once in a while...)

But however much I prefered the Amiga due to my love for Commodore and the technical advantages, the Macintosh has a friendlier design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> BeOS was great.

All the hard work put on the icons and the GUI. It was truly remarkable.

If i'm not mistaken, I compiled my first C program on that OS.

Reading the SDK documentation was also a great source of ideas for a newbie in C++. I remember that the idea of flattenable objects blow my mind :D

To this day I still wonder why it hasn't gained more adoption.

Mad respect at all those folks working on Haiku!

</comment><comment><USER13> Just tried out the virtual machine. Seems pretty slick! It's a very fast OS, just like I remember BeOS being back in 1998. Still suffers the same problem that I have no real reason to use it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember that one of BeOS's primary shortcomings compared to current mainstream systems is that it's essentially single-user.

Has this been tackled in Haiku?

<comment><USER2> No, still single user. Though as a straight desktop system that's never really worried me personally... I do remember someone saying they had begun tackling it, but I could be making that up.

<comment><USER8> I don't think anyone's really begun tackling it. There's widespread agreement that Haiku should eventually support it, but I don't know that anyone's done any effort to really move in that direction (with one pseudo-exception: Haiku does a better job than BeOS properly arranging the file system into user- specific v. machine-specific folders, which will help when they get there).</comment></comment></comment>


ASK HN : Suggestions for ML/DL projects to solve business problems - <AUTHOR> Can someone give me some suggestions for projects that use machine learning/deep learning to solve business problems?<p>Background: I am a student in Operations Research (aka optimization) and I am learning ML/DL on my own, I will graduate next year. My idea is to convince recruiters of my abilities by building a small portfolio with 2 or 3 projects that solve real-world business problems. I will deploy the models by making web/mobile apps. <comment><USER2> I work with granite/marble slabs. Currently only people who are intimately familiar with the industry and have seen many many slabs can differentiate and remember the names of colors.

But there's no way for a consumer to know the name of the color. They often come to us with a picture of a granite color wanting something similar.

An ML project would be to correctly identify a granite/marble color based on a picture.

You can check out some colors here: [https://www.stonelandinc.com/inventory/](https://www.stonelandinc.com/inventory/)

Note that there are 100s (1000s?) of granite/marble colors.

<comment><USER3> I have experience developing ML and DL applications. This sounds interesting.

Can you share more info or share email? Also, I can collaborate with Op to ensure efforts are synchronized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main thing with making small demo apps while still a student is the data. You need to have a source of data you can use and apply whatever techniques too.

Novel business problems are often still unsolved not because making a ML is hard but because getting the data is hard.

So for your problems either use easy to get data and apply a new angle on it, or spend some money on mechanical Turk etc to generate the data you need.

</comment><comment><USER5> Optimizing marketing spend - you can show how a ML model will beat a conventional past performance regression algorithm by increasing sales, reducing cost, etc.</comment>


Is Go better than Node.js? - <AUTHOR> I have backend experience in Python (Django / Flask) and willing to try a new language and framework for my next project. I know its a stupid question to ask between 2 completely different language but I am lost.
It seems like the more I google there are more people who supports Go more than Node for mainly these reasons: simplicity and no callback mess.
Just to let you know I read these links: http://www.quora.com/Node-js/Why-did-Koding-switch-from-Node-js-to-Go http://jordanorelli.com/post/31533769172/why-i-went-from-python-to-go-and-not-node-js
I understand that every language have their own usage so here are my condition. 1) I'm willing to use async to solve the callback nightmare in node. 2) Frontend is iOS so no advantage of having a same language in JS.
What's your 2 cents? <comment><USER2> If you have experience with python, Go or Haskell will be a much better "new tool to learn". Of the two, Go will be a more comfortable jump, but either tool will help you engineer in fun new ways that have no callbacks :)

Both have great optimizing compilers, vibrant friendly communities, and can build static linked binaries that are easy to deploy in whatever your target environment is.

If you want something you can get comfy hacking in next week, I'd say go with Go, but if you are looking for "what can I build amazing things with a year from now after getting comfy with", I'd push for Haskell.

NB: I'm a very active member of the Haskell community at this point, so I'm a bit biased. I will be the first to say Haskell and its tools aren't perfect, but I and others work hard every week to make them ever more awesomer. (I also spend a lot of time helping get people started contributing to core haskell tools). Also I've a wee business i'm building using Haskell as my stack :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! I will try out haskell too. Although I usually stay away from functional programming. It somehow look intense to me :P

<comment><USER2> if by intense you mean "strange because it uses ideas I've yet to learn, but will really enjoy once i've mastered", sure :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Go language certainly is, but with Node I can do things like "npm install passport-google" and have OAuth in 5 minutes. The Node ecosystem is full of incredibly useful components for getting up and running quickly.

Unfortunately computer language quality seems slightly inversely correlated with the vitality of its ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks api! I did some googling and it seems like Go have goauth. Although npm is nice, I don't mind searching for 3rd party frameworks. I read that node can be a headache if the project becomes big. Is this true?

<comment><USER4> In my experience if you start off properly you'll be fine.

i.e. serve static assets with CSS, properly organize and modularize your components (especially your own that you wrote just for the project!) and you'll be fine.

I do love Go but I always go back to Node just because of the rapid development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have learned Node.js from scratch over the last 6 months or so (I was introduced to it by the Startup Engineering MOOC on coursera). Before that my experience was with backend languages - C++, C#, python.

Initially it was a steep learning curve and coming from a "synchronous" way of writing code, I managed to get myself in all sorts of mess. But with time as I have become more comfortable, discovered new patterns (async, promises) I can say I am liking node.js more and more.

Also, the ability to code in a single language for your entire stack (Angular, node, mongo) is not to be overlooked for productivity gains.

So far I haven't really gotten the change to try Go but if your fears are just regarding the async patterns in node.js, I can assure that its NOT that bad and in return it makes you a better programmer.

</comment><comment><USER6> With Python experience, you might find Go a bit closer to what you are used to. However, if you do any appreciable amount of browser-side JS, then Node.js might also be comfortable.

Personally, I would evaluate what frameworks, etc you need for a new project and then choose the language that better supports the project. Keeping in mind, that Google don't use Go for all their systems, only where it provides advantages over the alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a good tip. I will evaluate what framework i need. When does Go advantages?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suggest you to read all comments on the link you pointed at Quora.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm its funny how you site the link that I posted...lol I will assume you recommend Go over Node.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I don't understand what you said. But I recommend Node, specially after reading Devrim (the CEO) reply.

If you want a mature answer, read Sandro Pasquali reply.</comment></comment></comment>


How Blizzard stayed focused on quality games - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/08/how-blizzard-stayed-laser-focused-on-quality-games-for-25-years/ <comment><USER2> How can they fail to even mention Warcraft III, an epic multiyear development effort and one of the most commercially successful video games of all time?

Its debut was an epic win for Blizzard. It made more money the year it came out than any Hollywood movie. WC3 also set the stage for World of Warcraft, which would not have experienced nearly the same uptake without it.

Truly a glaring omission in an otherwise interesting article.

<comment><USER3> Really the last Blizzard game that I enjoyed.

I'm not really into the cartoony look that WoW has gone for, particularly compared to the old Metzen concept art that was included in the Warcraft 1/2/Starcraft manuals

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/3914674/Warcraft-Orcs-Humans- Manua...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/3914674/Warcraft-Orcs-Humans- Manual#scribd)

[http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/StarCraft.PDF](http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/StarCraft.PDF)

[http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/Warcraft%202%20Battlenet%20...](http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/Warcraft%202%20Battlenet%20edition.PDF)

Those were some beautiful manuals. Once upon a time, kids would spend the entire afternoon reading the manual of a game, waiting in the car while their mothers finished up the grocery shopping, before they could get home and pop the massive pile of floppies or CD in and try to get the game installed/get autoexec.bat tuned right...

<comment><USER4> You didn't think Warcraft III was cartoony?

<comment><USER3> It was, but aside from the awful character portraits, it's not much worse than other low-poly 3D games of that era. That's right around the cusp of where 3D engines started to overtake the older 2D/isometric engines for RTSs and strategy games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> J0-onas From my perspective the quality of their games is declining. Rapidly.

I don't know the author and his gaming background but he certainly hasn't spent much time playing blizzard games. At least he isn't a 'hardcore' gamer. Truth is, if you are a casual gamer you probably won't notice how dumb their current development is.

In short: WoW: Numbers don't lie. People would still play mmos if there werent any worth playing. [http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5063-WoW-Down- to-5-6-Mil...](http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5063-WoW-Down- to-5-6-Million-Subscribers)

Diablo: Current content is shit, multiple design failes that needed to be corrected. Both D3 and the addon weren't ready on release, needed patches to correct the bad quality.

Hots/Hearthstone/Overwatch: Knockoffs of Dota/LoL, Magic, Team Fortress. I don't think a knockoff should be called a quality game. Also, both Hots and Hearthstone have/has horrible balancing issues => bad quality considering being balanced is the core content of the game. Not to mention that Hots was really shitty from a technical pov (after beta).

<comment><USER5> Regardless of your personal opinion on the design of their games, one thing they retain is their quality. Blizzard games are some of the most polished bug free experiences available (especially given their scope/size). You are never going to have a poor experience with a Blizzard game.

You might not enjoy the game, but it will not be because of game breaking bugs, poorly translated ports, low art quality, or unpolished game systems. Blizzard takes these things very seriously. If something is broken they often fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "On graduating from UCLA in December 1990 with a computer science degree, Adham received $10,000 from his parents to go to Europe. But he loved video games, and he wanted to make a living making them. He used the money instead to start a video game company, Silicon & Synapse–the predecessor of Chaos."

<comment><USER7> I always hear about how american college students, upon graduating, take a year off to travel around. How common is this? 10k should be around 20k by now, how common is it in the US for parents to give 20 thousand in free travel money to a son who graduates?

<comment><USER8> A lot of fresh college graduates travel for a bit before starting their job. Anecdotally, all of friends used money from past internships/summer jobs and signing bonuses to pay for their trips. It really is not that expensive to travel if you choose the right places and purchase tickets well in advance.

<comment><USER9> A bunch of people I went to school with teaveled independently through Asia on the cheap. Signing bonuses were enough to move and live in SF for 3-6 months prior to starting work, instead they traveled. I suspect it was roughly the same price

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't say I've enjoyed much of Blizzard's work to be honest. They're style has always turned me off somewhat. I really liked the Warcraft I, II and III games but beyond that there's nothing that ever really grabbed me.

I gave World of Warcraft a go for around two weeks because my friends were playing it religiously but I just couldn't get into it. MMOs in general don't do it for me though.

I mean I loved Diablo 1 and 2 but they were developed by Condor (later became Blizzard North), Diablo 3 became something other than what I wanted from a sequel to that series. It was full of World of Warcraft's cartoonish art style, complete with huge shoulder pads on armour and massively oversaturated colours and terrible Blizzard-standard writing. They even managed to make Diablo himself completely unintimidating as a character due to how shitty his lines of dialogue were. They should have kept him a silent antagonist as in previous games and stuck with the dark gothic-horror aesthetic that made D1 and D2 so memorable.

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the few other companies that made games of similar quality for me was Bioware. The critically acclaimed Star Wars RPGs, the Mass Effect and DragonAge franchises started as something new and special, with MassEffects focusing on epic interactive storytelling and DA on complex yet accessible RPG. Sadly, after EA (the dev killer) bought them, DA turned into a hack n slay, and ME into a CoD in space. With a VERY bad ending.

</comment><comment><USER12> Misleading title, should read "How Blizzard stayed focused on quality games for 17 years" It's been all downhill since the Activision purchase...

<comment><USER13> HOTS is good. Just hasn't taken off.

Hearthstone is an amazing success and very fun.

Overwatch looks very promising.

WoW is just old now, and it's still an alright game, but it's been out for too long. I believe TBC and WOTLK came out after Activision purchase and those expansions were great.

Starcraft 2 is okay. They messed up a lot with trying to be social allstars with bnet2.0.

Diablo 3 kind of missed the mark, can maybe blame Activision here. As the real money auction house wasn't that great of a success, and it seems Activisiony to me.

<comment><USER14> D3 is a completely different game than on release. On release it was all about maxing a few stats (main stat, attack speed, crit chance, crit hit). The differences between one piece of the gear and the next was just a few points. Also gear was almost 100% random drops. This made the AH better, as you could never be expected to find a full set of top tier gear.

Now it's much more based around set bonuses and builds. No more AH, so all gear is self found. But now you have random drops, rift drops, blood shards, cube upgrades, rerolls. So multiple ways to acquire and improve existing gear.

<comment><USER15> I'm fairly certain that D3 was originally built around the auction house. They started with a solid stream of monetization and then built a game around that.

<comment><USER16> The thing about D3 though is that Blizzard continued to take feedback from the community and iterate through the game by adjusting and introducing new game mechanics with each update. The current 2.4 is so far different from the original release that its shocking. I played at the start and quickly got tired of the horrible drops and Auction House. Now the variety of entertaining builds that are possible is huge. I'm playing Season 5 and my friends have started again too. It's great for both short (<10min) sessions as well as long ones.

<comment><USER15> That is certainly a good sign. I played in the beta and decided it wasn't for me, so maybe I owe it another chance!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Guide to Pricing Plans - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/Article/3169972/The-Definitive-Guide-to-Pricing-Plans <comment><USER4> Having a price crossed out to give the impression of a sale is just straight up lying. It's illegal here in Norway at least. The product must have been sold a certain number of times for the crossed out price in order for it to be legally presented as a "before" price.

[https://www.forbrukertilsynet.no/lov-og-rett/veiledninger- og...](https://www.forbrukertilsynet.no/lov-og-rett/veiledninger-og- retningslinjer/forbrukertilsynets-veiledning-prismarkedsforing#chapter-3-2)

<comment><USER5> All the mind manipulation traps presented in the article are deceptive and fraudulent. They all should be made illegal if they are not already.

<comment><USER6> I wont agree to it. I would call them hacks, are hacks fraudulent?

<comment><USER5> This post is precisely why sites like shithnsays and ngate exist.

I pity the sociopathic state of your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is all about tricking people, and nothing about designing pricing to match the value provided.

Pricing, especially for software products, is one of the biggest levers for increasing revenue through new and even current customers. It's very important to get it right, and to experiment occasionally. (I know because I've done it for companies.) It involves a lot more than growth-hacking the pricing page.

<comment><USER8> Why would you design a price for "value provided"? That's highly subjective to the user. Users also generally only pay for what they expect to pay, not the value they're getting.

For instance, some utility might save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars over the course of its usage, which is tremendous _value_. Yet if the average user expects that it should cost no more than, say, twenty dollars, that's what they'll be ready to pay.

This is why anchoring is beneficial, it gives you the opportunity to tilt that expectation a little bit.

Is that "tricking the user"? Arguably, but since you can't know the value users will actually get out of your product, any claims in that regard will fall under "marketing BS" as well. Pick your bullshit wisely.

<comment><USER9> I'm not Greg Kogan, of course, but...

It is indeed highly subjective to the user. So, part of the job of marketing is, segment your market, decide which one is most lucrative, target them with pricing that optimizes the outcome for that segment, and then adjust the product packaging to give yourself the most flexibility to attempt to repeat the process with the next segment of customers.

You learn the value your users get from your offerings by talking to them.

From 10+ years of watching this conversation recur on HN and talking to people running businesses, it seems like probably one of the most common mistakes business owners here make is trying to target an overly broad group of customers, and setting a very low ceiling on their prices to make sure everyone in that group can afford the product. That never seems to work well. On the other hand: setting a price for your product that only works for customers who can put it to extremely lucrative use? That's a strategy I've seen succeed a _bunch_.

It all depends on your product and your company; you can win big with fixed (maybe low) prices and a huge, undifferentiated customer base, if the stars align. They seem not to most of the time.

<comment><USER8> I don't disagree with you at all. Segment your market. Focus on the most lucrative group first. When you have done all that, apply the usual tricks.

That all implies that there is such a lucrative group that has the expectation to pay a handsome sum for your product. It implies that there is no competition that has already driven the price into the ground.

If your product is truly novel and there is no competition, better set a higher price. You can always go lower and see how much more revenue you can get. Over time however, competition will show up and put the price closer to cost, or even below cost. Users will no longer expect to pay the older prices, so they _won 't_ \- no matter how much value they get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Yes, Product C is slightly cheaper than the most expensive option, but it > offers less storage than any of the options.

Why would a business want wrong looking pricing on their pricing page, "decoy"s aside? Seems that would deter people more. Makes the business seem like it doesn't have its stuff together. Would you trust a company that seems like it can't do simple math? I think the author may be getting at something here--perhaps adding a third, unrelated or irrelevant option drives more conversions, but nonsensical pricing doesn't seem like the way to do that.

<comment><USER11> It would make more sense to have prices $40, $50, $60, where the $50 plan is always on sale for $30. Then, you effectively have a $30 and $60 plan, and the $40 is a decoy to make $30 seem like great value.

I designed a quick example below. That being said, I have no experience with pricing strategies, and I feel like this example is missing out on users and businesses that would be willing to spend $100.

[https://i.imgur.com/vzaoy8q.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vzaoy8q.jpg)

<comment><USER12> $29 would likely work a whole lot better than $30

<comment><USER13> $28 would work better than $29... the main point still holds.

<comment><USER12> you have no evidence for that claim... the '9' effect has been studied extensively

<comment><USER14> So, $39 would work better than $28?

<comment><USER12> Was this comment really worth exposing the fact that you don't understand why nearly every store in America prices with 9's?

But since you asked... lowering the price by $11 will require 28% more unit sales to cover the difference. Normally 28% more units would increase COGS, resulting in less profit on equivalent sales, requiring even larger unit growth, but we're talking about software here so let's ignore that. Regardless, I couldn't tell you which works better without some more data.

I will bet you, however, that $39 will outperform $40 in total revenue and profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honestly, this just feels like marketing bull. What conversion effects are realistic to expect after implementing any of these? My experience after trying a couple is zero change in conversion and zero change in any customer satisfaction metric. It might work if you have product market fit and need to optimise the last 3% in conversions.

<comment><USER13> 1\. Yes, you do need product market fit. While there can be some benefit in overall conversion rate, the larger improvement will usually be in people being willing to pay a higher price and/or selecting a more expensive plan. These up sells are basically free money.

2\. In most cases, a 3% improvement from a pricing page that previously did not implement any of these ideas would be a _very_ low rate of improvement.

3\. If you think that this is marketing bull, then I am guessing you simply haven't tried to run any experiments like this or read about folks who diligently did. All of these ideas are rock solid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is pretty bad advice: the more imp thing is figuring out pricing plans that increases consumption and scale. These are games you play after you figure that out. 10% boost is cool, expontential and magnitudes growth is your real business.

Ex: can you get a tier for light users that converts when they're ready, goes up as they get addicted and happier, and then again as they go pro? Are the numbers aligned with their constraints/need/journey? Playing with color order matters way less and wastes your time from figuring this kind of stuff out.

In contrast, for this hack stuff, the a/b testing people have realized for most co's, a lot of work to maintain for only limited benefits, so only do when you make enough money to layer on the maintenance $ for the limited lift.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a consumer I'm really not a fan of these techniques. I'm biased but our SaaS just has one price, no annual discount, no messing. It seems to be working out. I think people appreciate the straightforward approach when everything these days seems to have a pricing table.

<comment><USER18> > I'm biased but our SaaS just has one price, no annual discount, no messing.

I offer an annual discount for a product of mine, primarily because for a one year plan it only costs me a single transaction cost from my payment processor instead of x12 transaction costs.

<comment><USER17> Nothing at all wrong with it. It's just something we haven't done yet. Priorities, features and bugs all battle for our limited resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This nugget from 2012 [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and- patrick...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick- mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/)

</comment><comment><USER20> That website looks (and reads) like one of those single-page secret ebook sales web pages from the 90s.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on the look and feel but there is lots of great content.

What do you think of these mockups:

[https://theconversionwizards- my.sharepoint.com/:i:/p/jasper/...](https://theconversionwizards- my.sharepoint.com/:i:/p/jasper/EeSqcKq53LJMt5dsYTeOldABKOG49X0WP4Smgfws8sqDyA?e=PpQCCi)

[https://theconversionwizards- my.sharepoint.com/:i:/p/jasper/...](https://theconversionwizards- my.sharepoint.com/:i:/p/jasper/EROp2SosfyVJjNXCXJlxL80BGZjOVKJ1esadLMGMw3PUeQ?e=PnVhHT)

<comment><USER21> I'll try to give some subjective constructive criticisim.

Honestly, it feels "clickbaity". I guess it's due to the topics typically being found in content aggregating websites, or the question format.

Take for example the top post right now on HN: "It's Time to Build" by Marc Andreessen - it would've been a completely different vibe if he called it "What are the Top Countries in the World Not Doing Right?" or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _...Yet, this formula has never before been stated. That is, until now._

...page goes on to detail things that have been widely published and discussed all over the place.

<comment><AUTHOR> The independent findings have been published but no one had put them into a cohesive whole "formula".

All the technologies Tesla uses existed but no one had created a Tesla :)

<comment><USER13> All of these ideas were discussed in a pricing seminar I had in the early 90s.

For anyone who has studied pricing the least bit, these ideas, even put all into one page, are not particularly novel.

The hard part, imho, is to get people to actually believe these ideas work. As replies on this thread show, there are doubters even though these ideas are just pricing fundamentals.

<comment><USER23> Yeah I was surprised by how this article tried to oversell itself as if it was revealing some fundamental secret. This stuff is marketing and pricing 101. Reading that the author thinks presenting it in this way is somehow novel is a red flag for me that they aren't experts or qualified to be presenting this material, since experts and practitioners should be more than familiar enough with these tactics to know that this is like the most basic set of pricing tactics anyone would learn.

What would be more powerful is a "formula" for figuring out the exact willingness to pay for a product to know what number to anchor/distract around as your target number. Figuring out willingness to pay is one of the actually hardest problems out there that a never before seen formula would be interesting for. But like, the anchoring effect? That's not even marketing 101, that's covered in AP psychology

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like the Golden Ratio approach (b+a : b as b:a). So you get a simple 5-3-2-1 approach

49 - 29 - <USER2>

for your pricing plans. Or I guess

125 - 74 - <USER3>

It's just easier to remember a fibonacci sequence than worry about marketing research.

What surprises me however is the reverse ordering

'''Reordering the pricing table in descending order from fastest/most expensive to lowest/cheapest resulted in a 14.9% increase in overall orders.'''

I am not sure this carries from pricing - I recently bought a new ISP connection at home (lockdown, plus fibre to house suddenly became available). I went for the most expensive- partly because the _feature set_ was easily rankable. I could get 300, 600 or 1Gb - so going for the top level seemed easy (plus lockdown panic).

But with features that don't rank (a book, a book with video course, a book with two hour consult with author), suddenly I am not comparing the same feature (download speed) but more of it, I am having to ask do I want this extra feature at all - i am in effect not making a pricing decision but making a feature choice decision, proxied by price.

So I am not sure the research carries over. And that leads me back to the easy version of use the fib.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can someone send this to dropbox please? Their pricing plans make absolutely no sense. Maybe they can get some ideas

</comment><comment><USER13> This article does a very good job of explaining (with examples) some of the fundamentals of pricing plans. It describes the basics of the "blocking and tackling" if pricing that so many businesses get wrong.

If you own a business, especially in the current environment, I would strongly suggest exploring the ideas in this article.

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps relevant: What makes a good subscription billing system? [https://dev.to/shoplytics/what-makes-a-good-subscription- bil...](https://dev.to/shoplytics/what-makes-a-good-subscription-billing- system-3id6)

</comment><comment><USER27> FTA:

>And, unless you're an old Grandpa, you probably don't care about reading a paper copy.

Maybe I just have a strange peer group but I and most of my friends prefer hard copies. I pay for a paper subscription to The Economist, for example.

In my experience it's the boomers that are buying phone-based magazine or newspaper subscriptions. I can't think of a worse reading experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great read. Pricing products was always not clear to me. I think the article makes a lot of sense for Saas products. But, the only thing I am not so clear about is how can there be such a huge difference between 3 price options and 4 options.

</comment><comment><USER28> The key points and references were good, but the examples failed to make an impact for me. Some of the examples look meaningless, like the one for decoy pricing.

</comment><comment><USER29> On tablet the share widget on the left covers the content and follows you down the page, making it near unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've mixed my plans over time and features recently.

LMK what you think.

Basic: 10.99/mo

PRO: 24.99/mo

PRO Semi-annual:$99/6 mo.

<comment><USER13> Without knowing what your product is or what your market is, my default comment is that you could probably change it to 38, 98, and 198 and increase total revenue while ridding yourself of a small number of customers that eat up a lot of customer service time.

The 6-month pricing seems unnecessarily manipulative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Curious to read this, but the images won't load

<comment><USER32> They started loading for me after reloading the page without Content Blockers.</comment></comment>


How to speed up the Rust compiler some more - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2016/11/23/how-to-speed-up-the-rust-compiler-some-more/ <comment><USER2> The post goes directly from _" heap allocations were frequent within rustc"_ to _" effort to minimize heap allocations"_, and proceeds to detailing speedups.

→ Systems programming newbie question: why are heap allocations bad for performance? Is it the additional level of indirection? The cost of calling your memory allocator? Something else?

My background, if that helps focusing answers: python/js programmer, did a tiny bit of C/C++, am ~approximately~ familiar with the stack (call frames, each with its context) vs. the heap (where to allocate memory for big/long- lived objects e.g. arrays and trees).

<comment><USER3>
        why are heap allocations bad for performance?

1\. You have to call to your allocator. Then do some type of search for free memory, of the approximate size. Then flag this memory as used. Then mark the remaining memory in that block as unused. Then mark the internal books to match the new layout.

This is done efficiently, but modifying these collections take time. AND IT STILL FASTER THEN:

2\. Calling the kernel to MMAP in new virtual memory, adding that to the pool, and well restarting this process all over again.

Allocation time is a big cost, and there is work to make allocation lazy by default in the Rust Compiler at the minute.

<comment><USER4> Also, make sure #1 is done atomically. Your request will either get in a queue, wait for a mutex, or create many more of #2 than needed because the pool isn't shared between threads.

<comment><USER3> Rust uses jemalloc which has per-thread-pooling (sort of). There is very little lock contention as there are multiple pools per-thread.

Also per thread pooling doesn't use more memory then not. In some cases it actually uses less. Citation: [https://people.freebsd.org/~jasone/jemalloc/bsdcan2006/jemal...](https://people.freebsd.org/~jasone/jemalloc/bsdcan2006/jemalloc.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's some thinking outside the box. Traditional compilers are focused on building an executable as fast as possible, throwing away an enormous amount of state each time. The new rustc incremental compilation attempts to re-use some of that computed state, although still early days. If however the compiler's state remains persistent (it is running as a daemon) then small code changes should usually be pretty fast - it's analogous to the code scanners of Eclipse. If the target of the compiler isn't a native executable, but a continuously updated image containing code, then the link gets pretty fast as well. The result will not be fast, but it will be _fast enough_ to test changes.

<comment><USER6> The Delphi compiler, when hosted in the IDE, has done this since 1996 or so.

The symbol table, generated code etc. for every compilation unit is kept in memory and only discarded if the source is modified. All imports across compilation units are done via a double indirection, so the symbols can be unlinked and relinked more easily.

(Sub-second recompiles in Delphi are the norm, not the exception. In large projects, most of the time during dev builds is linking, and that's usually only a few seconds.)

<comment><USER7> Which is why I kind of think that it is a bit sad when millennials think Go compilation speed is some kind of achievement.

Specially given Delphi features vs Go ones.

<comment><USER8> I've said a couple of times that new language designers should thank their lucky stars that C++ has set the bar for "fast compilation" so low. Coming out of the gate with a compiler that's "faster than C++!" is pretty doable even for a relatively compile-time heavy language. If you had to come out of the gate with something as fast as Delphi to be taken seriously, we wouldn't get very many new languages.

(I mention this in the context of my observation that the minimum bar to be taken seriously for a language is going steadily up. You certainly need a standard library that is powerful out of the gate, whether or not it is necessarily "part" of the language, and we're getting perilously close to the language being required to ship some heavy-duty HTTP stuff, possibly a server implemented in the language, before it stands a chance. Rust may have snuck in under the wire on that, though of course that stack is developing apace even so.)

<comment><USER5> Go (despite its faults) definitely raised that minimum bar; a language needs to arrive with a package manager and doc tools, as well as enough standard library to get non-trivial things going. Rust made the right decision on HTTP - let the ecosystem provide. Of course, the result of that is summarized in the quote by Grace Hopper: "The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."

<comment><USER4> There's always the Python way:

Let the ecosystem provide, then, once there's a few clean winners, pick one as the official (while keeping the others there, obviously).

<comment><USER9> C++/Boost does that

<comment><USER4> Yes (what is quite inline with the C tradition).

What is interesting is that I can't think of a lot languages that do it. It should be the default, as it's easy, safe, and gets good results. Somehow, it isn't.

And then there's the Haskell's way of: let the community informally choose the one best option, and when somebody uses any of the other ones, just get somebody near him telling "nobody goes there anymore, come to this other place". It works very well, but is a bit confusing for newbies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can rust capitalize on LTO/PGO? Even if that's not quite ready for primetime, if we're spending 50% or more time in the LLVM backend, that certainly can be built with LTO/PGO.

Seems like it might be worth the trouble/bootstrapping challenge if it yields another ~5%.

<comment><USER11> we should just make computers faster, intel is failing, moores law

<comment><USER12> We know how to make them faster. How to make faster CPUs viable & affordable to the public though, that's a hard problem to solve.

<comment><USER13> Intel essentially has a monopoly on the market for desktop cpus, which can't help.

<comment><USER12> Affordable air-cooled x86-CPUs at > 4GHz will disrupt that very quickly.

<comment><USER14> Is x86 still needed?

I mean the ARM stuff is getting more traction and maybe it will run around x86 in the next years.

<comment><USER15> POWER already did by sucking vast amounts of electricity and dumping heat. Getting a high IPC isn't easy and leads to lots of thermal dissapation. Odd arches might make a comeback but don't help much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice article, although I would have liked to see a before/after summary bar chart of the benchmarks for all PRs as a whole; I'm curious how all these incremental improvements add up together.

<comment><USER17> You can find roughly that here, unfortunately mixed in with everything else though:

[http://perf.rust-lang.org/](http://perf.rust-lang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is heap allocation actually unavoidable? PHP uses an arena allocator for its AST. I don't know how applicable that could be to Rust.

<comment><USER19> Not that applicable.

Rust memory model around strong ownership and borrow-checking differs from the GC languages that can use generational strategies and lots of heap allocation re-use.

All languages are doing allocations to the OS, rust just doesn't have a GC like PHP does to intermediate.

<comment><USER18> PHP's compiler is written in C, and its AST isn't garbage-collected. I think we just throw out the entire arena, actually.

<comment><USER20> Technically its a very limited form of garbage collection... Then again with this definition so is just not free-ing anything and letting the OS cleanup after process exit.

<comment><USER18> I believe it's manually freed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


X86 Proved: Coq Library for Modelling, Specification, Generation and Proof for X86 - <AUTHOR> https://x86proved.codeplex.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks very interesting (and I am interested) but the article seems like a stub. I can't really find any documentation or meaningful source there.

However, _X86 Proved_ is a thing and this is a presentation from 2014 I found:

[https://people.csail.mit.edu/jgross/personal- website/present...](https://people.csail.mit.edu/jgross/personal- website/presentations/msr-2014-final-talk/input-output-and-automation- in-x86proved.pptx)

<comment><USER3> Before I submitted it to Lobsters, I checked the "Source Code" part of the link, allowed a few scripts in NoScript, and got this page with .v files that at least _looked_ like the source code:

[https://x86proved.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#src/](https://x86proved.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#src/)

I'm a guy that tracks and reports on progress in this specialty but not a trained specialist. I don't know Coq well enough to tell you if this is the source code to the CoqASM paper with the quick skim I did before work. I do know it has a bunch of .v files going into detail about x86 and some other things with some overlap in aspects I thought I read about in the older paper. Hence, the submission claiming it was probably the same thing.

While we're at it, here's some other links on this sort of thing all of you might enjoy:

[http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/talc/)

[https://project-everest.github.io/assets/vale2017.pdf](https://project- everest.github.io/assets/vale2017.pdf)

[https://github.com/project-everest/vale](https://github.com/project- everest/vale)

<comment><USER4> > I don't know Coq well enough to tell you if this is the source code to the > CoqASM paper with the quick skim I did before work.

It is.

See also [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/high- le...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/high-level- separation-logic-low-level-code/) for details on the program logic (ie. "Hoare triples for x86").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> src: [https://lobste.rs/s/kewmce/x86_proved_coq_library_for_modell...](https://lobste.rs/s/kewmce/x86_proved_coq_library_for_modelling)</comment>


Ready to jump, how do I? - <AUTHOR>

I am completely burnt out working in big companies. I've been trying to get on with a startup here in San Francisco for the last couple of weeks but have had zero success.
I'm getting to the point where if nothing changes in a week, I will throw everything I am into trying  to build and launch a product I have had in mind for months.<p>I'm scared though. I only have enough personal runway for about 4 months. I don't have contacts with any VC/angel type people. I don't know anyone who can advise me on the crucial aspects of forming a company in California or anything dealing with the IRS. Where do I start? Am I just crazy even though I'm unhappy? <comment><USER2> In my opinion, 4 months is not enough of a stockpile if you don't have any contacts and don't know where to start.

If you have an idea and willpower, you need to be able to work on that idea for at least a year; either via investments or savings.

Of course, this is just my personal opinion; other people here may be less risk averse. But until we know the longer term health of the economy, a year of safety seems about the minimum to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a REALLY bad idea to start a business when you are desperate. Work on your business nights, and let your day job pay for it. Hire people, manage them and let them be working while you are in the office. Dedicate half your income to your startup, and you will get there without any risk. If you do what you are doing now, the fear will prevent your business from being a success.

</comment><comment><USER4> Breathe deeply, relax. You're obviously bright and driven but don't let it drive you to desperation.

You need a partner, a co-founder to share your dream and workload. Start there.</comment>


New Red Programming Language Gets Syllable Backend - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/24798/New_Red_Programming_Language_Gets_Syllable_Backend

<comment><AUTHOR> More about Red here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603021></comment>


Ask HN: a website to make mockups of your site that was on here some time ago. - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a website that was, if I remember correctly, posted here for review about two weeks ago. It was a website for making mockups of your site. I tried to find it, but my Google-fu is weak today. Can anybody help me? <comment><USER2> <http://gomockingbird.com>

Try <http://searchyc.com> btw, if you can't find stuff on google :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the one I was looking for. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Was it <http://balsamiq.com/> ?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide when to turn down a job? - <AUTHOR>

I work with a small agency and I'm in the middle of negotiating a project with a very large client. It's an amazing project and I feel incredibly privileged to get to do this kind of work. Unfortunately their budget is pretty unreasonable and they don't seem to be willing to sacrifice features to get the project even close to their budget.
If I turn it down, it will quite likely close down a channel of our business that we love and get to create really cool work for.
If I accept it, it will set a precedent for what our time and skills are worth.
I'm leaning heavily towards walking away at this point, but I just wanted to know if anyone here has had similar experience and what the outcome was for them. <comment><USER2> "Unfortunately their budget is pretty unreasonable and they don't seem to be willing to sacrifice features to get the project even close to their budget."

Run fast. I've worked with too many companies like this and this problem will not end. No matter how much you try to rationalize or explain the situation, they will not listen.

In the end, you will most likely get blamed for not making the insane deadlines.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have dealt with the insane deadlines firsthand many times in the past with this particular client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is always the "non-turndown turndown." Tell them to engage with someone willing to do cutrate work, and come back when they aren't getting the results they want.

Either another group will be able to meet an unreasonable request, or they won't. Someone will try to overpromise, and when they underdeliver you will be there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, my thought is that the only people that would take this job for this price would be a smaller company than us, and if they take it, they will likely be crushed, or way under deliver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is what I do in those situations.

\- Break down into weekly sprints. Write down a weekly list of tasks that will be done by a given day.

\- Put a price on each weekly sprint. Don't just break down the original price in _n_ amount of weeks. No. Charge them what you would make in a week under normal circumstances.

\- Take half of the payment up front. The other half when you are done. This allows you to keep a good flow of cash while avoiding getting scammed.

\- Sell them on the fact that this is cheaper for them because _they can always get stuff done in weekly sprints._ There is no long-term commitment for either side.

If they don't play ball with this option, then fire them right on the spot. Doing so will show them that you mean business. Seems right now they think your team is weak and can be bullied.

</comment><comment><USER5> If they are cheap/unrealistic now they will only get worse. I think you already know that though don't you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... Sometimes its just challenging to turn down work as a smaller company that wants cool projects. I can't justify devaluing our services that much. Have you been in a situation where you had to turn down a project that you really would have loved to do and was being handed to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If I accept it, it will set a precedent for what our time and skills are worth"

You said it. Knowing what you have told us so far, I would say No Deal. Once you set a precedent, it is very hard to go back and tell the client "Hey I took that shitty pay because I love the project. I have been with you for a while now. Can you now give me what I am worth". Most likely, client will say No.

</comment><comment><USER7> Running a web dev shop for over a decade, as longs as you break down why it costs as much as it does then you are doing the right thing. If their budget is lower than what you need to be happy, cover costs, etc than walk away. The worse thing is working on a project knowing you got low balled. It affects productivity and can create tension.

</comment><comment><USER8> My phrasing would go something like this.

"I really would like to do this project. This is an amazing opportunity for me, and I feel incredibly privileged to be considered as a potential vendor.

"Unfortunately, I think we are at a fundamental disconnect regarding the amount of work to be done. This budget does not cover the amount of time that I believe I would need to spend to deliver a product to you at adequate quality, on time, with this feature list.

"I would love to have this project. Turning it down may, indeed, close down a channel of our business; we love this channel, and we get to do really cool work as a result.

"The problem is that I'm looking at having a precedent set for the price of my work which isn't actually something that I can survive; this budget would force me to deliver something shoddy, which would damage my reputation and possibly also yours.

"I think probably that you can find someone who's willing to do this work at this price. Still, I want to caution you: there's always someone willing to do work at basically any price; maybe they don't understand how much work it is, or maybe they expect to just add hours once you're dependant on them. I want you please to be careful while looking for another vendor at this price; I am very concerned that this budget is not in fact possible, which is why I'm walking away from an offer which means so much to me, both in business and in emotional terms. In the vernacular, you get what you pay for.

"But I'm not willing to do damage to you in order to accept a low-ball budget. Part of my responsibility as a contractor is to say no to impossible budgets, and with all due respect, this is an impossible budget.

"I have very much enjoyed working with and for you, and I don't want to lose this channel. But I must maintain my clients' safety, and at this price, I cannot.

"If you find another vendor, and if they don't work out for you, please consider my door wide open. I would love to retain your business and your relationship, even after a delay, and it is my belief that no contractor can succeed at this price.

"But, I apologize. I cannot accept this price sheet; it is unrealistic.

"Please be well, and understand that I remain available to you if you find that contractors willing to accept a rate like this are not able to deliver a quality with which you are satisfied. I look forward to the likelihood of doing business with you again soon, and I will make a rush rate available to you at a much lower cost than usual, to help you get back on schedule.

"Thank you for your consideration, and I hope the best for you. Please keep me in mind if you need a reliable contractor in the future."

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! That is an incredibly well thought out response. Thanks so much. I have already made my response and while it wasn't quite as eloquent and elaborate, it essentially said that we would love to prove to them that we are worth the extra budget but we can't commit to their current pricing expectations. I will surely reference this in the future as it shows an incredible amount of respect while being completely honest.</comment></comment>


Systemd-resolved remote DoS via a crafted DNS response - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/5998 <comment><USER2> I found the discussion about the CVE more interesting than the bug itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad they don't leave "off topic" comments alone...

</comment><comment><USER4> poettering continues to amuse/dismay. he and the projects that are synonymous with his personality might benefit greatly (if only in public perception) if he took a break from being their public face and staunchest defender.

<comment><USER5> Well, this is precisely why we shouldn't trust Poettering with anything infrastructure-related.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's a bit exaggerated: having a pr problem does not damage my confidence in someone's abilities ...

I'm more inclined to trust someone who takes a stand for what he believes in rather than someone who never goes beyond the limits of prudence. (Whether I agree or not)

It's "the pressure". The community is not heaven if you take things too seriously.

[ [http://happysomeone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Let- Go.pn...](http://happysomeone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Let-Go.png) ]</comment></comment></comment>


This Documentary Shows the Shocking Randomness of Gun Violence - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3058285/watch-this-documentary-shows-the-shocking-randomness-of-gun-violence <comment><USER2> I don't have anything insightful to add, but I wanted to thank you for sharing this.</comment>


I got 15,000 requests on my app in less than 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-i-got-15000-requests-on-my-learn-to-code-app-in-less-than-24-hours-e62x3e8s <comment><USER2> Presumably by spamming it to HN at least ten times in 24 hours.</comment>


Show HN: Server Hunter - <AUTHOR> https://www.serverhunter.com/ <comment><USER2> > _JavaScript is disabled._

> _Please note that our website requires JavaScript to operate correctly. For > more information, follow these instructions or contact your system > administrator._

Could you make it usable with disabled JavaScript?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid it's unlikely we'll spend the considerable amount of development time required to make this happen.

The vast majority of websites requires JavaScript nowadays, including the websites of the providers we feature on our website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great and covers so many different ways to filter, but I was looking for cheap vps and seen that most of them are nat, can you put in a filter for non-nat and non-ipv6-only.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the delay, this is possible now :) [https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=55B-99F-13A](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=55B-99F-13A)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Easily browse over 13,000+ virtual and dedicated servers offered by hundreds of hosting providers to find your perfect server at the lowest price available.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool to see LunaNode near the top. They're a great host. Cheap, responsive and reliable. Been using them for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to hear that! :)

<comment><USER4> Just a heads up, for the OS section you are capitalising CentOS like 'CentOs.' The S should be capital as well. Cheers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch! We've just fixed it and it should be showing 'CentOS' now. Thanks for noticing. Cheers. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Component Based Software Architecture Using Clojure - tomh- http://dublindan.posterous.com/component-software

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a suggestion: Use github gists for Clojure code if you want to embed in posterous.

For other languages, posterous has a code tag that automatically highlights/formats for you. They just don't support Clojure very well.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the suggestion! I didn't know posterous supported github gists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know scheme (r5rs), but I can't figure out how this code works. Are there any good introduction text for this lisp?

<comment><USER2> Stuart Halloway's Programming clojure book is exceptionally good[1]

The basic idea is to map (using Clojures parallel pmap) over each _component_ and call the event handler for the event being processed, if the component has one. The code is slightly complicated by wanting a non-global event queue and async event sending, so I use a dynamic binding to rebind the event function so that it can access the local event queue (which is the only mutable variable I use).

I'm sure theres better/simpler/more idiomatic ways of achieving this, but whatever.

[1] <http://pragprog.com/titles/shcloj></comment></comment>