Siftnet. The World's Time Network - <AUTHOR> https://www.siftnet.com

<comment><USER2> Please don't put "Show HN" in titles before the work is ready for everyone to try out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

Also, please don't solicit upvotes. This is called a voting ring and usually causes your submission to get penalized by HN's software.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. CC'ing Sift seems scary for a user. What if it completely misunderstands the message and shows wrong info? That would look bad for the user. Is there a way to preview the message it sends to the other party?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Actually, your Sift responds back in 3-5 seconds telling you what it thinks you meant and let's you simply confirm when it gets it right or edit any details it missed. Natural language processing is hard so our approach is to do the best job we can and make sure the user agrees; after all the customer/user is always right, not the algorithm.

<comment><USER3> Nice. I'm curious to see how the UI looks for the other person. I'm imagining some sort of grid where they can select available time slots?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, basically let's them pick from a bunch of suggestions. Care to try it out?

www.siftnet.com/alpha code: 8800

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I sent you some feedback using the form on your website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the time saved by using Sift really that much better than just doing this myself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Try it out and let us know? We're in closed alpha but I can share an invite link.

Of course with Siftnet you cut down on the back and forth but more importantly you've given the other person an opportunity to find a time with you as soon as you send your first e-mail to them. You don't have to deal with the delay of back and forth emails or people going on vacation half-way through the meeting negotiation process.

<comment><USER4> Sure. I'd love one!

Does this work for only gmail or does it work with exchange?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on a mobile version that will support Exchange on Android and iOS devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just used this and it works really well. Keep up the good work! Emailing back and forth trying to figure out a time to meet is super annoying for me.</comment>


Ask HN: Software community requests your product be open source.. thoughts? - <AUTHOR> Say you come up with nice software which people like.  It uses the freemium model so the core functionality is free but some features are paid.
But there's a section of users who think it should be open source. They suggest they'll only use it if its open source.
What do you think about this scenario? Should you make it open source? <comment><USER2> Maybe? It's hard to tell without more detail. Some of the question is how are you factoring your paid features versus your free features. A lot of it is how you yourselves feel about open source and how comfortable you are with the prospect.

If the paid features have been built as "extensions" or "plugins" or "services" on top of the free app, then it may be the case you could easily open source the all of the existing "free" stuff without impacting your bottom line or changing your business model.

If things are less cleanly split, then of course you'd have many problems to solve even before contemplating making your software open source.

Open Source is great. We should all be doing more open source. It's a balancing act to make that fit our business models.

A few question to ask yourselves, too, is although you clearly have vocal potential users that want an open source option, how many users is that? How much potential revenue? Arguably most such vocal groups can be surprisingly tiny minorities in your user base and there's no guarantee that if the Open Source proponents become users they will become customers. (In fact, if they are so vocally adamant on Open Source it _might_ , albeit not always, be a sign they don't intend to be customers, merely free users for life.)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you make it open source those people will invent new hoops for you to jump through. IMO you should killfile them and increase prices.</comment>


If you have failed to grok vim, ditch the arrow keys - <AUTHOR> http://h6o6.com/2013/03/start-groking-vim-ditch-the-arrow-keys/

<comment><USER2> I always liked the way this answer was presented as vim via vi.

> Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your- most...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most- productive-shortcut-with-vim/1220118#1220118)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have failed to grok vi[m], you need two things. First, to understand just a little of two other editors, ed and TECO. Second, to know that vi's _real_ modes are not what the naïve user, and sadly most documentation, call 'modes'; they are line mode (ed mode) and visual mode (TECO mode).

ed is a line editor based on search-and-replace using regular expressions. To edit existing text, you typically locate it with a search and change it with a replace. Sometimes you refer to nearby lines with .±n addressing, and sometimes by absolute line number (having printed a few lines with the 'n' command); and sometimes you change entire lines (with 'c') rather than doing a replacement; but really, search-and-replace is where it's at. vi's line mode, which you enter with 'Q' or more commonly one-off with ':', is just ed on steroids.

TECO is a character stream oriented editor, or, if you prefer, a programming language for manipulating streams of text. [http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2010/11/30/the- glorious...](http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2010/11/30/the-glorious- horror-of-teco/) is a decent short introduction. TECO text manipulation functions have an optional count, a function name (one or two characters), and an optional argument terminated by ESC. That should already look familiar; vi's visual mode is watered-down TECO. Sure, many of the functions have different names — vim's 'h' and 'l' are TECO's 'r' and 'c' — but some are the same: 'i' followed by an argument (i.e. some text) terminated by ESC is the function that inserts its argument before the current editing point. It's counterproductive to think of vi as having an 'insert mode' and 'append mode' and 'replace mode' and 'substitute mode' and whatnot, just as it would be conterproductive to think of the _x_ in _sin(x)² + cos(x)²_ as being in 'sine mode' or 'cosine mode'.

Spend an hour with ed and an hour with TECO, and you'll begin to grok vi.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not just use jikl instead if you don't want to lift your hand to move to the arrow keys. I am kind of tired of seeing this obsession with trying to get everyone to use hjkl which just doesn't make any actual sense. I totally get the point about the arrow keys requiring you to lift your hand but you can accomplish the same arrow key logic while keeping your hand in the same place.

<comment><USER5> 'i' already has a function in vim - one of the most frequently used ones.

<comment><USER6> He makes a good point though. You could switch insert to the h key and do it this way.

Upsides: \- ijkl is easier for users learning vim. \- don't have to shift your fingers over to h key

Downsides \- rebind insert to h (not really a big deal) \- middle finger is now responsible for up and down (I honestly don't see this having much effect on efficiency)

I'm tempted to try this, but I hate the feeling of not being familiar with a vanilla config. What if I have to use somebody else's machine?

<comment><USER5> The issue with rebinding is that you'll only encounter your bindings on your machine. If you're frequently on machines that don't have your custom profile, that's an issue.

I'm having trouble getting off the arrow keys myself - because they work regardless of whether you're in insert mode or not...

<comment><USER6> > The issue with rebinding is that you'll only encounter your bindings on your > machine. If you're frequently on machines that don't have your custom > profile, that's an issue.

I mentioned that at the end of my post.

<comment><USER5> Weird, not sure how I missed it. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My #1 trick/recommendation? Use Control-[ instead of the Esc key. It's less hand travel and keeps your fingers on the home keys. It's all about minimizing your arm movements.

The same goes for hkjl. The arrow keys are too far away, that's why you use hkjl. Embrace the lazy and you'll grok vim.

<comment><USER8> False!

The #1 trick is to swap control and caps lock. The #2 trick is to use control-[

<comment><USER9> Have you considered swapping Esc and Caps Lock instead? Caps Lock is not very useful so tossing it into the corner makes sense to me.

<comment><USER10> You can do both, actually. Using KeyRemap4Macbook, my esc is now capslock, and my capslock is ctrl if I use it with another key, such as ctrl-s, and esc when I use it on its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who uses a custom variant of the Dvorak layout, one thing about Vim that I find annoying is the that the navigation keys only make sense for a Qwerty keyboard. I know that it is easy to do a custom remap but nevertheless I find that it is harder to learn the commands when the keyboard shortcuts are no longer intuitive (e.g not using d for delete, etc.)

<comment><USER12> I'm in the same boat. I don't use hjkl for this very reason. I haven't remapped my keyboard because I'm constantly having to use a coworker's keyboard (most of which use Qwerty), and it's just easier to remember keys instead of positions on the keyboard. Everything works except HJKL...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google's cache: (the site is down as I am typing this.)

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:h6o6.co...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:h6o6.com/2013/03/start- groking-vim-ditch-the-arrow-keys/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I got an unexpected amount of traffic from this one and I am trying to fix it, thanks for the cache link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're spending a significant amount of time navigating with with arrows keys or hjkl, maybe you should switch on incremental search and start using /[FOO], ?[FOO], t[FOO], b, w, %, ^ and $ more. It's highly unlikely that character-by-character movement will be the fastest way to navigate.

Alt+character is the same as Esc followed by character if you want to speed up your escaping without using a non-standard keyboard layout.

<http://i.stack.imgur.com/uq2M1.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't use vim effectively because I constantly try to navigate using WASD.

I know I can bind it, but the thought of rebinding every command and then being dependent on towing the configuration to every computer I'd ever use scares me.

So I use it on occasion with the same artfulness as someone on crutches trying to dance.

Maybe someday someone will default an 'FPS' control layout.

<comment><USER16> The best way to learn to use vim's hjkl movement keys it to play nethack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have probably tried 3 times to ditch the arrows and use hjkl and I've failed each time. What is the trick to overcoming this? Perhaps it's that I've done it while at work that has caused the issue (ie. I need to be productive now!). Pick a weekend and force the switch?

<comment><USER18> www.vim-adventures.com :)

<comment><USER8> Or play nethack!

<comment><USER17> Dude, that's a fantastic suggestion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Go one step further. Try to stop using hjkl

I am not even close to being able to do this yet, but I keep reminding myself to use other movement commands and search instead. Eventually it will be faster.</comment>


Streak (YC S11) raises $1.9M and launches API - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/15/streak-raises-1-9-million-for-gmail-based-crm-app

<comment><AUTHOR> Know a lot of HN'ers have asked us for an API to access their Streak data. We just launched it and the docs are here: www.streak.com/api

<comment><USER2> The docs don't mention, but are your list endpoints capped or paginated? Also is there an implicit order applied to the list endpoints?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't guarantee an order just yet but its currently ordered by last updated timestamp. We're working on making this a guarantee ordered. Wil updated the docs once we do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google purchase in 5…4…3…

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI we use Streak and were beta-testers on the API at Buyer's Best Friend (bbfdirect.com) for managing 1000s of customers, both buyers and sellers. It's been amazing, and after adopting it company-wide, I decided to join this round of financing.

<comment><USER5> Who is we? I tried looking in your profile but you don't have it listed.

<comment><USER6> The poster mentions their company name and URL in the parent post...</comment></comment></comment>


What kind of traffic is driven by a single mention of a domain on network TV? - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2010/11/22/what-kind-of-traffic-is-driven-by-a-single-mention-of-a-domain-on-network-tv/

<comment><USER2> We had a brief mention of <http://gri.pe> on The View a little while ago and we saw an impressive spike (short capture at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsfuBeSLUCM>). This particular show is on at least three times: once in the eastern time zone, once in mountain or central time and once on the pacific.

During the east-coast showing, our traffic spiked. The req/s graph had a 90˚ bend:

<http://yfrog.com/755dmmp>

We saw a spike about half as big for the west-coast showing and the central showings were half as big again. The traffic from these spikes took a long time to decay: something on the order of days. Our base level of traffic has stayed much higher that it was before.

FWIW, our app is built on Appengine and it scaled us flawlessly. Once the traffic started, AppEngine automatically spun up instances. We peaked at 22 instances, which were automatically started and expired by AppEngine to keep us running:

[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_CqFM7LbtCbY/TNrJSS4B5qI/A...](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_CqFM7LbtCbY/TNrJSS4B5qI/AAAAAAAAAvc/JXt_EgollaY/Screen%20shot%202010-11-10%20at%209.33.02%20AM.png)

Another interesting factoid: we paid around US$0.55 to handle the traffic from that spike.

<comment><USER3> Wow, huge difference between your numbers and the beard guy. I wonder what you can learn from the difference. What was different between the mentions?

<comment><USER2> A few differences off the top of my head:

\- We had the domain <http://gri.pe> during the initial showing. From our data, a significant number of people watch The View live, and most watch during its first showing in the US.

\- The URL is short and it was written on-screen (we always make sure to tell people to spell it out so they don't go to gripe.com).

\- People likely watch "The View" for some form of education. They likely watch "The Middle" for passive entertainment. I imagine they would be more likely to explore something seen in the former than the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hard data from a real client:

On a TV show with 10 million engaged viewers, _each 1 second a URL is mentioned and shown on the screen translates into roughly 100,000 more visitors to that URL_. Ten seconds of times translates into one million viewers.

After that, it tapers off, though additional mentions and showings of the URL will get incremental traffic, and will spike if discussion says the URL offers something exclusive.

Audience is roughly 1/4 per segment, <18, 18-34, 35-49, and 50+, with 3/4 at least some college.

A TV driven audience teaches a lot about scalability.

<comment><USER5> That's amazing data. I'm writing this comment so I can effectively bookmark this in my profile and reference it again at some later point in time. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER6> Please just use your browser's bookmarking feature in the future. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I put up www.ibrokemypenis.com for a friend of a friend back in 2008.

On January 22, 2009, Grey's Anatomy aired an episode called Stairway to Heaven .." in which consultant Mark Sloan - otherwise known as McSteamy - suffered a fractured penis after indulging in sex in the on-call room with Lexie Grey."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4322...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4322523/Broken- penis-episode-in-Greys-Anatomy-sparks-frantic-internet-search-among-men.html)

Initially the resulting traffic brought down our Apache server and we had no idea why so many people were searching for "penile fracture" on Google.

Here's the Google Analytics report for January 2009: [http://www.ibrokemypenis.com/Analytics_ibrokemypenis.com_200...](http://www.ibrokemypenis.com/Analytics_ibrokemypenis.com_200901_\(TrafficSourcesReport\).pdf)

\- Jan 22: 3269 visits

\- Jan 23: 4520 visits

\- Jan 24: 2523 visits

\- Jan 25: 1540 visits

\- Jan 26: 933 visits

\- Jan 27: 909 visits

</comment><comment><USER8> This is actually pretty interesting as I've been testing this for the last 2 years. I've been on The Today Show, ABC News (once/week), G4TV, PBS, CBS Early Show, etc. Most of the time, the anchors/screen will say my domain, <http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com>.

In general, you will not get nearly as much direct traffic as you would think. For example, if I showed you the traffic from the week where I was on a national morning show, you likely wouldn't be able to pick out which day I was on.

However, media works in very interesting ways. It does affect book sales, particularly in retail stores. And media begets more media, since producers watch other TV shows.

But it's very mysterious and much more of a black art than direct traffic/measurable media.

<comment><USER9> My first thought was "WOW, they pitch scam sites like that on TV?". Then I visited your site, and noticed three things.

1) It's obviously not a scam.

2) I'm actually familiar with your name and have even used PBwiki.

3) I own a copy of your book, and it's in my reading queue.

Obviously a domain name can give the wrong impression. ;-)

<comment><USER10> I hate the title of Ramit's book, because I have to add an explanatory sentence every single time I recommend it to a friend. "You should really check out this book... it's called _I Will Teach You To Be Rich_. I know, it really really _really_ sounds like a scam, but it's actually the exact opposite. Just trust me. No seriously, really. Please just trust me and get the book. Come on."

<comment><USER11> Yup, that seems familiar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Though I haven't been in charge of a site that's gotten network coverage, one site I put together was featured pretty heavily on cable news around this time last year. It all happened really quickly, so I can't separate who came from the Fox News mention and who came from the 5-minute Rachel Maddow feature, but <http://www.gonzalescantata.com> was featured on Thursday night, yielding 4,600 visitors, followed by 9,000 visitors on Friday, then 3,900 visitors on Saturday, 2000 on Sunday. Our average daily traffic leading up to that mention was about 20 visitors. It took about three weeks for the traffic to taper back down to 20-30 daily visitors.

For a few hours on Friday night, "Gonzales Cantata" was the #1 search in Google Trends. Not bad for a concert opera about Senate Judiciary hearings (it's actually much more interesting than that might sound)

I realize the topic is about a network television appearance, but I figure it can't hurt to add some related information into the pile :)

</comment><comment><USER13> I have an artist on Oprah today, so I'll post a snapshot of the MRTG and Cacti graphs after. The "Oprah Effect" is very strange, as its three timezones with differing behavior.

<comment><USER13> MRTG was thrown because of activity on other sites, but here's the online user count during Oprah, relative values:

This is east coast feed. Central feed and PST feeds are often more.

<http://imgur.com/lrgcs>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Worth pointing out that many people use Google for even the most trivial of site visits. Many may have skipped the .com and entered "beard guru" into Google, where at the moment I don't see beardguru.com on the first page of results.

I wonder: for those who have experienced traffic spikes based on domain mentions -- how much of the traffic was direct?

</comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, beardguru.com will get 10x the amount of traffic from being on the HNews front page. Moral of the story, HNews more influential than ABC?

<comment><USER16> IMO, the comparison would be valid if beardguru.com was running an ad on HN (or if ABC's episode was all about beardguru.com, instead of a offhand comment by a character).

Also, most of the traffic from HN would probably stop at chrisfinke.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1) the site was not live when the domain was mentioned.

2) DNS needs to propagate or it will still not be live for people for a period of time (not sure what real delays for that are nowadays, but surely minutes to hours.

<comment><USER17> Depending on the isp (since most people don't change dns servers) it can even take days.

DNS resolution sadly isn't very realtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did anyone else get a bad feeling in the pit of their stomach when "The Office" plot revolved around everyone getting rich by investing in wuphf.com

When something reaches pop culture can the bubble popping be far behind?

<comment><USER19> I thought the same thing. Very hilarious episode, nevertheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My client had mentions on major networks in Canada. It's a local business and mentions on CTV, GlobalTV and CityTV each produced a spike in site views.

Without posting any screen caps, the initial waves began within hours after TV posts and sustained above than average number for 7-14 days after.

After the three mentions, one on each network, the average about doubled and I know that it affected the business substantially. Walk in customer numbers have increased and almost doubled over 6 months.

Initially, the TV spots didn't produce paying/inside the door customers. Before doing any publicity work to initiate the spots, we made sure to traceback any new customer on how they heard about the business. Word of mouth from those that seen the spots was the biggest marker. I presume that once someone sees something on TV, it adds validation to their suggestions and we were recommended more often.

</comment><comment><USER21> Back in 2006 I was running Google AdWords for a mortgage company on keywords around self-certification mortgages (yes, sorry, I was one of the people responsible for the crash :-)

These (at that time) sold for about £5 per click for a top 1 or 2 position, and the mathematics of it was that you could just about make a profit at that price as long as your website was very efficient at converting people to calls. Because of the high price and sensitivity, my pager was set to go off if we had a sudden "run" on particular keywords.

To cut a long story short, we got something like 10 clickthroughs within a short period, around 10 minutes, causing my alarms to go off.

We tracked it back to a brief mention of self-certification mortgages by Sarah Beeny on a Channel 4 property program at exactly that time (this was before TV on demand).

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmmm, I thought the TV networks had a policy of buying domain names mentioned on the air. Didn't NBC have to buy a bunch of unregistered domains that Conan mentioned a few years back?

<comment><USER23> I remember the HornyManatee.com thing :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Late_Night_with_Conan_O...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Late_Night_with_Conan_O%27Brien_sketches#Horny_Manatee)

"Conan, in an ad-libbed statement, mentioned that the character appeared on the, at the time fictitious, web site "HornyManatee.com". The next night, Conan told viewers that if he mentions a web site which doesn't exist the NBC corporate policy is to buy the domain name lest someone else use it and potentially make NBC liable for the site's content. Conan said Late Night decided to use the domain name to create an actual web site, giving it the appearance of a fake porn site. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a friend who is a political blogger and sometimes a talking head on CNN/MS-NBC. They show his URL under his head while he's commenting on stuff. He claims that the traffic spikes are within the noise. Granted, he might have high enough traffic, so that these mentions can't generate enough extra.

</comment><comment><USER25> HN users contributed some interesting datapoints to a discussion about scaling in preparation for a mention on Oprah:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767637>

</comment><comment><USER26> Good for you! I saw that mention and thought the exact same thing. Even said to my girlfriend "You know what, I should go over and buy beardguru.com right now just for fun"

I'm really glad that someone did and that we all get to hear about it.

Based on the performance of the rest of my projects, 500 visitors would be a dream! On the road to easy street baby :D

</comment><comment><USER27> It depends who mentions it. Oprah gave a shout out to Groupon and that brought enough traffic to take the site down.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/19/oprah-ups- groupons-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/19/oprah-ups-groupons- kiva-d_n_786043.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> How many viewers does this show have? I'm guessing it's about 5 million. That means about 0.01% went to the site. Makes you wonder how many people go to a web site after seeing a commercial.

<comment><AUTHOR> This site: [http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/11/18/wednesday- final-...](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/11/18/wednesday-final- ratings-modern-family-criminal-minds-adjusted-up/72722) shows 9.2MM viewers for that night's episode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apple's Download page (when it was on the front page) was good for 9,000 hits on the first day it appeared for a non-staff pick.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nitpick alert!

 _Competetive bearding is not a sport... yet._

It's spelled "competitive."

<comment><USER30> The funny thing is that competitive bearding _is_ a sport: <http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nobody followed @beardguru on Twitter :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you mean :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The TV show Shark Tank wanted to feature me and my company <http://www.AwesomenessReminders.com>. However, in addition to whatever the "shark" investors on the show demanded, ABC/Mark Burnett Productions wanted 2% equity in my company or 5% of annual profits (their choice, to be exercised whenever) in exchange for featuring me on ABC. I declined.

(I spoke with the guys from another company featured on the show; they said traffic doubled with the on-air mention, and then reverted to normal the next day. Totally not worth it...)

<comment><USER33> It's almost never worth paying for this kind of television. Both at VA Linux and every company I've worked at since has had bottom feeders trying to get us to buy access to such gems as 'buntings window' for ridiculous sums of money.

You're always better off just buying text ads. (disclaimer: work at google, loves text ads)</comment></comment>


Startup Ideas: A Simple But Powerful Heuristic - <AUTHOR> http://statspotting.com/2012/11/startup-ideas-a-simple-but-powerful-heuristic/

<comment><USER3> Simple, maybe too simple of a generalization of certain market dynamics. For one thing, all businesses can be broken down to two or more sub-processes, and the flip seems to indicate the fact that there are overlaps between the role of the buyer and seller, or between the supply and demand sides of the market.

What matters is how might one might apply the heuristic to one's business - <USER2> it helps you, then power to you. God speed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. If you think about it, it is just about supply and demand and how they overlap.</comment></comment>


SpotQA picks up $3.25M seed funding for its automated software testing - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/20/spotqa/ <comment><USER2> has any one used this tool?</comment>


Company gives non-smokers six days holiday to compensate for cigarette breaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japanese-firm-piala-inc-tokyo-non-smokers-extra-six-days-holiday-cigarette-break-a8028541.html <comment><USER2> As a non-smoker I used to go on the smoke breaks with coworkers. Not as an excuse for time away from work but rather to get up and brainstorm things. That turned out to be more productive than stay seated and let my wheels spin in my brain.

Nowadays we use the coffee/watercooler break but it's not quite the same as getting out of the building, feeling the outside air against the skin (hot or cold) and getting a change of scenery. We've tries the walk around the parking lot thing, but most office buildings are really not set up for walking spaces...

<comment><USER3> You know about the dangers of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking) ?

<comment><USER4> It's indicative of the hysteria around secondhand smoke that someone on HN could seriously think that occasionally standing _near_ people smoking _outside_ is a serious health risk.

<comment><USER5> I take it seriously enough that I hold my breath while walking past someone smoking.

<comment><USER6> That's honestly ridiculous. I'd understand if you just don't like the smell, but there's no real health risk involved in walking past someone smoking

<comment><USER5> I agree. It is ridiculous. But it's also ridiculous for someone to polute the air in a public space (it's different if they are off somewhere I can easily avoid by walking a different way). And yes, I also do not like the smell, but it's both. I also have minor breathing problems that I don't want aggravated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the company have a culture of encouraging people to actually take those holidays? Based on my experience in Japan, nobody actually uses their holiday time, to avoid losing face at work. The only holidays people actually take are the public holidays. Luckily, they have a good number of them, including a whole week at the beginning of May.

<comment><USER8> UK's nothing like Japan, most people use all of their holiday.

<comment><USER9> FTA: "Company based on 29th floor of Tokyo.."

<comment><USER8> Whoops, the co.uk threw me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've never understood this. Don't everyone get the same breaks? Are smokers considered as having a health condition and thus granted extra breaks?

It's not as if the boss came in one day and told people "Everyone gets 2 x 15 minutes of breaks a day. Except for smokers, you guys can take all the breaks you want."

If my employer gives me 2 x 15 minutes of breaks a day, I'll take those even if I don't smoke.

<comment><USER11> Well, smokers randomly leave for smoke breaks several times daily. Non smokers don't do that. So smokers get more breaks, even if non smokers could step outside for 15 minutes at a time theoretically. Also it's socially acceptable for smokers to do this, less so for non smokers to randomly leave for breaks. Can you explain what you're not getting?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps some difference between countries or companies.

Everywhere I have worked the breaks were defined in the work contract. Right under my salaries, benefits, etc. I have a clause that more or less says: "You are entitled to take a 30-minute break after working five consecutive hours. This 30 minutes can be split through the day but not used to leave early or lengthen your lunch break."

Anyone taking more breaks than that will simply be fired.

The only exception being bathroom breaks because let's face it, we are all adult enough not to need to ask a supervisor to take a leak. I use this time to brew and enjoy a coffee in the lounge in the morning and to take a walk around the office during the afternoon. A smoker would probably split those 30 minutes into 6 cigarette breaks and that's fine.

Nobody gets extra breaks because they smoke. Is this different elsewhere?

<comment><USER12> It's insanity. If I found myself working for such an employer I would immediately label them as my enemy and nope the hell out of there as soon as possible. I wouldn't talk with my friends or family, I wouldn't watch youtube or TV series, I wouldn't even walk - I would always run, as a character in a videogame, and I would chew my food very fast looking nowhere but the dish I'm eating. All of that just to squeeze out as much time as possible to getting out. You can't have positive relationships with someone who monitors your breaks.

<comment><USER10> (Quebec, Canada) I've never seen it done any other ways.

As a developer, I get to work for some pretty relax workplaces. At those places, the breaks are not monitored but you are expected to respect the limit. 30 minutes of paid lunch (and 30 more minutes of unpaid lunch if you choose to) and 15 minutes of paid break in the morning along with 15 minutes of paid break in the evening. Note that by law, employers here are only required to give you an unpaid 30-minute break for every 5 hours of work. What I am describing here is living the good life as a developer.

Even then, most developer at big agencies (100+ programmers) here work by the clock & timesheet and have to log their worktime to the minute and are unpaid the missed time.

Perhaps I should put emphasis on the fact that those are paid breaks I'm talking about.

I guess that you could "disappear" every hours but the culture would make it so that your coworkers would start to ask questions, your supervisor start to worry, you yearly evaluation suffer and your bonus or salary increase might be lower than the previous year.

I am lucky enough to work somewhere pretty relax with a "startup" culture. This allows me to start at the time I want and leave at the time I want. That being said, I'm expected to do 7.5 hours every day, to be present between 9h and 15h and to respect the allowed time when taking breaks.

> I wouldn't talk with my friends or family, I wouldn't watch youtube or TV > series, I wouldn't even walk

Are you doing those things on the clock? I'm confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This assumes people are working just because they aren't on a smoke break. If you work on a production line in a factory, it's fairly easy to see the output level of your work. If you work in an office, there is not a simple measure. The non-smoking worker could just as easily spend the same time chatting it up around the water cooler.

Physical presence does not equal working time. I wish more managers understood that motivated workers will work and non-motivated workers will always find the path of least resistance. Remote or in-office doesn't matter that much.

<comment><USER14> Not to mention the amount of problems that are solved over a cigarette. I don't know if it was placebo, or a mental jolt from the nicotine, but I've come up with many a solution on a cigarette break. I don't smoke any more (thankfully), but when I did it at work, I was usually thinking of a work problem, and thus working.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, this has nothing to do with the smoking. Just the fact that you allow your mind to wander. The same effect can be had from taking a shower.

<comment><USER16> Double the effect if you smoke outside in Britain.

<comment><USER15> I see what you did there. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good. I used to work a blue-collar, industrial job, and was really tempted to buy a cheap pack of cigs, as a dummy so I could tag along and take a non- smoking break with the smokers. By the time they hoofed from wherever they were working to the designated smoking area, burned one down, and walked back, 20-30 minutes of every hour could get chewed up.

<comment><USER18> Why not just go for a non-smoking break without any pretence?

<comment><USER19> A slacker hated by both the addicts and the non using? Nah... gotta have your social support structure in place

<comment><USER20> And you can always further leverage the situation by bumming smokes to the actual smokers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Based on what we know about staying seated for hours a day, it would be more beneficial to allow non-smokers stand up and walk around breaks every hour rather than 6 days off.

<comment><USER22> Is it? That may be true, but I read about new (to me) contradictory research in this area a lot. I feel the science should be more settled before we start designing specific policy proposals.

<comment><USER23> Research that contradicts benefits of frequent physical activity for office workers? Paint me surprised. Can you share some links?

<comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure I remember reading that the effects of sitting were not, they believe, offset by physical activity. I can't remember the source, but I'm sure there's stuff out there in Google.

<comment><USER25> Pretty sure I remember those same studies. More or less, I believe it was that the effects of sitting all day were not offset by physical activity after work or on weekends. The conclusions were not that taking breaks from sitting have no positive effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Years ago, the non-smokers in my group would go out to breakfast every Friday, to make up for smoke breaks. It was just two blocks down the street to a fast food joint, so it didn't make up for all the time someone might spend on a smoke break during the; but, it stopped people from complaining about time lost due to smoke breaks. (Maybe it wasn't healthier, either.)

</comment><comment><USER27> My grandfather started smoking (back in the 1920s?) because as a dock worker he was not allowed to take breaks but was also not allowed to smoke on the ship.

</comment><comment><USER28> Given the amount of walking needed to get outside the building and the sedentary nature of their job, it's worth considering whether, on balance, the smokers at this company are actually healthier and more productive than they would be if they kicked the habit.

<comment><USER29> This is the point I wanted to bring up. As a pack-a-day smoker for 10 years, I got up from my desk for 10 minutes every 1.5 hours to smoke a cigarette. Later, as a non-smoker, a health-conscious manager told me he wanted me to get up from my desk once an hour to take a five-minute walk around the building for my health. Regular breaks during the day are better for your health than vacation days; although, both are good for your health.

<comment><USER30> I walk to the water cooler or toilet every 2 hours, and take a longer break to watch the sunset in the evening if the weather's suitable. Perhaps I drink a lot of water compared to most, but the last I heard was that medical advice is to drink more water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> On the one hand this appears fair, on the other hand it implies a kind of Taylorist take on time and time management. This could make sense in a manual labor intensive job, but not much in most office jobs where it's harder to attribute productivity to discreet amounts of time.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cigarette break is not a break every time. You usually can't stop thinking about work for the 10 minutes you spend outside. It's quite the opposite.

Smoking break usually shifts you the direction of thinking and you solve a problem probably faster. Not because of the cigarettes itself, but because of the environment change.

This whole idea sounds like "People without social media accounts are allowed 1 more day off, because they don't spend time on checking their facebook messages."

<comment><USER33> For us developers this might be true, but I also know people who just smoke every hour, they stop doing what they are doing just to get their cig... and that's everything but effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wouldn't it be easier to just rename them "breaks"?

</comment><comment><USER35> Where I work, if the smoke break isn't solo, it's a meeting. We even take non- smokers that would be relevant to the conversation. Sometimes us smokers are the only single to non-smokers that maybe you should get up for a few minutes. I use to work in windows building, after my first few days my co-worker who doesn't smoke thanked me for being smoker, he worked there for about a year prior and never knew when he should get up and go outside, I gave him that guidance.

Every job I have worked that isn't hourly, break times are not monitored. If you have something during the work day, just go, if you want to walk around the park and clear your mind, have fun, need a smoke, shit have 2. So long your not screwing something up timing wise.

Also, it seems to me that the people who complain about such things have unimportant roles...

</comment><comment><USER36> I can see where this is coming from. Still, I don't think it's a good approach. For example, some people take 30min per day to take a shit during work time. Other people don't take a shit at all or shit very quickly (2-3 min). Some people pee 5 times during work, while others once. You get my point. Where to draw the line?

</comment><comment><USER37> It really depends on the company culture, but in a lot of cases, going for a cigarette break is not equivalent with taking time away from your work. There are a lot of brainstorming and work related discussion can happen, jut like in a tea or coffee break.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't know if it's like this in all companies in Australia, but we take coffee breaks and those happily make up for cigarette breaks. Some smokers come on the walk to the coffee place and smoke outside while we get coffee, two birds with one stone I guess.

Some context though, Australia has a fairly great coffee culture, we have even been described as coffee elitists. So while the frugal and indifferent will use the office coffee machine to get a fix, it seems to be pretty well understood that it's not great coffee and you have to venture out to get the good stuff.

<comment><USER3> What about the people who neither smoke nor drink coffee?

<comment><USER38> When they say, "Hey we're going for coffee, want to come?" you could reply "Sure, I'll come for the walk!".

I don't think anyone is going to call you out, it would be quite hypocritical of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I worked for a larger company people would routinely take gym breaks (the gym was right down the hallway) which took the place of smoking breaks. Sure you can't get a huge workout in in a 15 minute break but you can get the heart rate up.

In the US I'm not even sure it is legal to provide different benefits to individual employees than the rest of the company. But one thing I can say for sure is that if this was in the US most people wouldn't take the days. Most people I know don't even take the days they have :(

<comment><USER38> I feel like you would spend 10-15 minutes just getting changed, showering and all that. Or potentially smell the rest of the day. I guess it worked though.

<comment><USER39> Not all workouts build up a sweat. Specifically weight exercises. At the same time, I did say "get the heart rate up" which implied cardio which was perhaps a poor chose of words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a non-coffee drinker can I get ten days?????

</comment><comment><USER41> This stuff just strikes me as very petty. Something about smoking or smokers just drives people a bit crazy. Before she retired, my mom would regularly bitch to me about the smoke breaks her coworkers took. She'd say "maybe I'd like to just go outside for a little walk". So do it then!

The smoking is bad of course, but the specific focus on it, to me, feels pretty hinky.

How about taking breaks every once in a while because you work hard, and you're a human, not a robot? That should be ok without the passive-aggressive framing.

I dunno. Just seems a bit "off" to me.

<comment><USER42> The reason your mom was complaining is that if she just went outside for a little walk, she'd probably get written up and eventually fired because only smokers are allowed to take those breaks at most workplaces. If you have a boss who's more fair about it, that's great, but I don't think it's typical.

This is especially true for places on timeclocks, probably less if you're salaried.

<comment><USER41> Sorry, I don't buy it. I think people tell themselves that to justify why those evil smokers have hearted the system! Obviously it is ok to take a break if people are taking breaks to smoke.

<comment><USER42> I agree with you, but just because it's obvious to you or me doesn't mean it's obvious to anyone else.

Have you never had a manager who enjoyed micromanaging and enforcing rules pointlessly?

If you haven't personally, have you never even _heard_ of someone else having such a manager?

If a company wants to have breaks for smokers only, there's nothing stopping them: [http://www.hrhero.com/hl/articles/2015/07/31/are-for- smokers...](http://www.hrhero.com/hl/articles/2015/07/31/are-for-smokers-only- breaks-unfair-maybe-but-usually-not-illegal/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Encoding of a digital movie into the genomes of a population of living bacteria - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23017.html <comment> gene-h There are number of problems with this, the big one being the difficulty of reading and writing DNA. In addition, while storage may be very dense, it is somewhat environmentally sensitive. IE a single cosmic ray can cause DNA breaks. This principle has been proposed to make a dark matter detector using sheets of synthetic DNA on gold[0]. It's also been determined that DNA has a half life of about 521 years[1]. Of course DNA's overlap does help with this in addition to the fact we can massively replicate DNA. Being able to massively replicate DNA can let us copy the same data an inconceivably huge amount of times so that we have a huge amount of redundancy. In addition, this ability has let us sequence DNA from neanderthal bones from ~50,000 years ago.

But we might be able to do better using more stable molecules than DNA. Peptide nucleic acid or PNA is an interesting option for this. It binds together stronger than DNA while maintaining a lot of the benefits of DNA. Now if we're willing to throw away complementarity we could potentially store information with peptide sequences(proteins). We have recovered peptide sequences, albeit short fragments that were repeated numerous times, from dinosaur bones[3](although there are some worries with contamination here). Peptide sequences might get tangled up and will almost certainly be more difficult to read.

We could potentially use a similar chemistry to that used in plastics for even more stability, although synthesis of large amounts of long sequences will be extremely difficult.

[0][https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428391/revolutionary- dna-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428391/revolutionary-dna-tracking- chamber-could-detect-dark-matter/) [1][http://www.nature.com/news/dna- has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11...](http://www.nature.com/news/dna- has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555) [2][http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7481/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7481/full/nature12886.html) [3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide_nucleic_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide_nucleic_acid) [4][http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070409/full/news070409-11.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070409/full/news070409-11.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> So, the Matrix was wrong we won't be batteries. We'll be data storage.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough, humans were never supposed to be used for batteries in the original script of the Matrix. Humans were supposed to be CPUs for the machines.

[https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was- executiv...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was-executive- meddling-the-cause-of-humans-as-batteries-in-the-matrix)

<comment><USER4> Most of that idea comes straight out of the book Neuromancer.

<comment><USER5> I don't recall any reference on using brains as CPUs on the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a side tangent but loosely related to the mutation subject, does anyone remember songs that were deliberately designed to destroy music players? I ask because this would be an interesting attack vector. You could deliberately design a file that when compressed and stored in DNA would code for anything in the biosphere. Just an initial thought.

<comment><USER7> [http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/ryoji_ikeda](http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/ryoji_ikeda)

He iirc has made music that is intentionally damaged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So if I encode Metallica into my dog's cells will the RIAA come after me?

<comment><USER9> Only if you let your dog breed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still can't get the paper: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754321)

<comment><USER11> always try sci-hub: [http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nature23017](http://sci- hub.cc/10.1038/nature23017)

<comment><USER10> Does sci-hub give you the supplements? Most of the info is in the supplements for papers like this. That link is to the supplement.

<comment><USER12> Most publishers dont put supplements behind thier paywall. Scroll down for the supplement.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I go here: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23017.html#supplementary- information)

The I click on "Supplementary Information (324 KB)", which leads here (which is dead for me): [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/na...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nature23017-s1.pdf)

So it is impossible to see the real methods for this paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Free to Read Albeit Horrible Interface Version: [http://rdcu.be/t9oS](http://rdcu.be/t9oS)

</comment><comment><USER13> Oops honey, by screwing with these genomes I've accidentally created a unstoppable flesh eating bacterium.

</comment><comment><USER14> Obligatory Dresden Codak: [http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous- prizes/](http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/)

edit: Sheesh, tough crowd.

<comment><USER15> I love Dresden Codak and this one is spot-on. I don't get the downvotes.

<comment><USER16> The site hijacks scroll which is pretty upsetting.

<comment><USER17> Does that warrant downvotes, though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That you can store large amounts of data in DNA, and recover it, should be surprising to nobody. It should also be surprising that no matter how well it works, it won't ever become a viable product.

<comment><USER19> why not? what if it is programmed to replicate itself to provide redundancy?

<comment><USER20> Mutations would occur, yeah? Mutant files, lol.

<comment><USER16> Every medium decays; if you don't estimate longevity and perform error correction/migration/etc. accordingly, you won't be immune to data loss, just blindsided by it.

<comment><USER18> People who do this use erasure codes.

Also, DNA kept in a dry, cold environment has an effectively infinite lifespan. Now, the interesting question becomes "what fraction of the the lifespan of the universe can I maintain my data with arbitrary accuracy?"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's a better site for financial news and research? - <AUTHOR>

Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance are the top two sites for financial news and research, but they haven't really improved at all over the past several years. They still rely on Adobe Flash for charts. They perform poorly on mobile and tablet browsers. They don't really improve trading or investment outcomes. They remind me of the big portal websites from the early days of the web.<p>What are some better sites for financial news and research? <comment><USER2> Zero Hedge is the HN of finance, from high level macro to Nanex graphs of HFT, also see the Zero Hedge Reads on the left hand side for other sites -

[http://www.zerohedge.com/](http://www.zerohedge.com/)

Market Ticker, Karl also has a show on Blog Talk Radio -

[http://market-ticker.denninger.net/](http://market-ticker.denninger.net/)

Sadly RTs excellent Capital Account is no more but they have a different, though not quite as good show called Prime Interest-

[https://www.youtube.com/user/theprimeinterest](https://www.youtube.com/user/theprimeinterest)

</comment><comment><USER3> For general reading, I use a combination of:

\- Bloomberg News \- NY Times Dealbook section \- RealClearMarkets.com \- Bloggers like Felix Salmon / Matt Yglesias \- Seeking Alpha to some extent

</comment><comment><USER4> Seeking Alpha and Fortune.

Dan Primack's daily VC column is also a great way to get a more broad pulse of things.

</comment><comment><USER5> Finviz

[http://finviz.com/news.ashx](http://finviz.com/news.ashx)

</comment><comment><USER6> how about bloomberg ?

</comment><comment><USER7> FT.COM?</comment>


Healthcare.gov site certificate is not trusted - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/7hXKpi5.png

<comment><USER2> This isn't occurring for me.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you care about the Super Bowl? (I don't) - <AUTHOR> I wasn't raised to enjoy sports of any type even though I am quite into personal exercise. I feel that even though I might have lost something (camaraderie of people who follow sports) I have gained a tremendous amount of free time which has led to being able to pursue other more enjoyable and beneficial things. <comment><USER2> The way I see the superbowl is entertainment. It's an opportunity for my family to get together once a year kind of like a holiday or going to the theaters with your family. I don't care about who wins or loses, but the event has brought my family together so I like it just like sports. My question is why are you asking if people care about the superbowl? It's obvious many do just like watching the olympics. Entertainment is subjective, I'd rather watch the game with my family and eat, than an art museum, but like I said it's subjective.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I don't care about who wins or loses

So this more or less confirms what I am thinking which is people who do watch do for other reasons not because they care about the game in particular. So essentially it's a manufactured event similar to what we call in the US "A Hallmark Holiday". [1]

[1] After the greeting card company that pushed certain holidays so they would sell more greeting cards.

<comment><USER3> Just watch the Superbowl commercials and what they sell. Beer, soft drinks, snack foods, cars, wireless headphones, etc. Then remember that the Superbowl is broadcasted all over the world.</comment></comment></comment>


Few Allergies in Unstressed Babies - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111212092747.htm

<comment><USER2> Actual study: [http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2811%2901159-6/...](http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2811%2901159-6/abstract)

</comment><comment><USER3> Again the correlation vs causation question? May be higher stress levels are caused by allergies?

<comment><USER4> Notice that they never said _caused_. Finding correlation is the first step towards establishing causation. I don't see any problems with this research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "And now we've found the same link in infants from families that follow anthroposophic lifestyles, and that they have relatively low levels of cortisol"

anthroposophic apparently means religious.

<comment><USER6> Actually, antroposophy is a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner. To bring that into perspective, Steiner and Hermann Hesse shared many ideas, and Michael Ende (author of Neverending Story and Momo) was raised in a Waldorf school (based on Steiner's philosophy).

I'm only halfway through Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom book (it's pretty fucking heavy, to use the technical term), but by my best guess it appears to be an (impressive) attempt to derive eastern philosophies' conclusions from western premises. While there's certainly a strong sense of respect for the abstract and the mind (as you'd expect from any philosopher), I wouldn't call it "religious" in the typical sense of the word.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call it "philosophy" in the typical sense of the word. It's esoteric gobbledygook.

<comment><USER6> Are you making an informed judgement? (you may be, I'm just checking)

As I said, I'm halfway through that book, and although its direct usefulness is not clear, I wouldn't call it gobbledygook. Steiner is directly opposing some philosophical movements which were popular or beginning to get popular at the time (like nihilism), and making a pretty strong case for why they're nonsensical. As far as I've read, he seems to be drawing towards a practical, human-centric approach to life which seems pretty healthy and balanced on the whole.

One thing is abundantly clear from reading it, too: Steiner is a very smart guy.

<comment><USER7> I'm judging it from a rationalist perspective.

<comment><USER6> That's not saying much (and it sounds like you are indeed _not_ making an informed judgement). I'm judging it from a rationalist perspective too. ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism> : "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification")

In fact, if you bother to actually read the guy's books instead of dismissing him based on a wikipedia entry (hardly a rationalist behaviour), you'll see he's very much a rationalist too.

He arrives at conclusions with "spiritual" consequences by starting from the perspective that the only thing we can know directly is our thoughts, and building a model of the world from that, piece by piece, using reason and thinking. I'd argue that compared to Steiner, you and I are mostly irrational.

So, explaining your dismissal of anthroposophism (literally translated as "love of man") as being "from a rationalist point of view" is a completely empty statement.

<comment><USER4> _instead of dismissing him based on a wikipedia entry (hardly a rationalist behaviour)_

I see no problem with it if the Wikipedia entry is accurate. Is it?

<comment><USER6> It's hard for an intelligent expert in the domain to accurately summarise a philosophy, let alone for a wikipedia editor to do so. Complex arguments tend to require a fair amount of patience and understanding on the reader's side.

Anyway, that being said, the entry is not terrible (at least if you know a bit about what it's talking about). Quoting:

> Anthroposophy postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually > comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner > development. More specifically, it aims to develop faculties of perceptive > imagination, inspiration and intuition through cultivating a form of > thinking independent of sensory experience, and to present the results thus > derived in a manner subject to rational verification. In its investigations > of the spiritual world, anthroposophy aims to attain the precision and > clarity attained by the natural sciences in their investigations of the > physical world.

Considering this description, I hardly think you can call it anti-rationalist. On the contrary, anthroposophy is an attempt to apply rationalism to spirituality. It is only dismissed as irrational gobbledygook by those who (irrationally) dismiss all of spirituality and anything connected to it as gobbledygook.

<comment><USER4> Then we need to agree on a definition of "spirituality", since by my definition, any assumption of spirituality is irrational. I consider "spirituality" to be the assumption of the super-natural, and an individual's personal connection to the super-natural. How do you define it?

<comment><USER6> On a fundamental level, I define it as the stuff in the world that's beyond the purely material, that transcends physicality. Things like Mathematics, Love, Beauty, etc. Things that I believe will continue to "exist" (in some sense) beyond the existence of the universe around us.

As Steiner puts it, "science, religion and art" all try to bridge this dichotomy of the physical vs the spiritual.

So, no, it's nothing to do with ghosts and stuff.

<comment><USER4> I think of those as consequences of the universe existing, not things that transcend the existence of the universe.

<comment><USER6> You can choose to think of those however you want - and so can others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So anthroposophic lifestyles are less stressful than "normal lifestyles"? That seems to be an interesting result in itself.

<comment><USER9> Be careful there, they have done a study where they have concluded that lower stress levels are related to fewer allergies. And in a different study they have shown that kids following an antroposophic lifestyle also have fewer allergies than regular kids. Both results are correlation, which don't mean causation. And there is also no specific reason (yet) to say that low stress and antroposophy are correlated.

<comment><USER8> I thought at the end of the article it said that they did the allergy study on anthroposophic kids, that is, again they compared anthroposophic kids to other kids.

Otherwise of course combining the two studies into that conclusion would be invalid.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Data URI Generator - <AUTHOR> http://icanhazdata.com <comment><USER2> It's a bit unclear how to paste the URL of a resource and get the content-type & contents transloaded from the net. Ditto for drag&drop from a browser window instead of from the local filesystem.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made this because I was getting upset with the lack of a solid solution that did everything.

It locally stores the files as well, click on the hamburger menu to see them.

\- drag & drop

\- manual upload

\- paste

\- custom file creation

\- local storage</comment>


Deadlines, delays, and departures dog Tesla Model 3 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/05/opinion-teslas-self-induced-jet-wash/ <comment><USER2> Having listened to the earnings call, this article makes me facepalm. When explaining the internal July 1 target date, Elon repeatedly said he would explain it at the risk of it being misinterpreted by the media, and then this article misinterprets it. That date was never meant to _actually_ be the production start date, only a date that they are aiming for with all suppliers so that they can hold their feet to the fire when an inevitable few of the thousands of needed parts have delays. Also, about the complexity of building Tesla cars, he points out that the Model 3 is vastly easier to produce than any of the other models, since it was designed expressly for being simple and very easy to manufacture. Go listen to the actual earnings call.

<comment><USER3> > _That date was never meant to actually be the production start date_

I listen to or read the transcripts of nearly all of them. They're full of ambiguous information and half-truths, and I take them with a grain of salt. This is a classic example; we have a deadline that's not really a deadline. Tesla _wants_ this stuff to be news.

> _an inevitable few of the thousands of needed parts have delays._

Is this inevitable? Does it happen to other manufacturers, who, according to critics, are building far more complex vehicles?

> _this article makes me facepalm._

You don't facepalm at gems like this:

UBS Analyst: "And any color when you think about the $190 per kilowatt hour, how much like a CAGR of decline until the Gigafactory is open, another 30% once that's on line?"

Elon Musk: "Yeah, next question."

So the guy wanted to know how Tesla plans on benefitting from the scale and battery efficiency of the Gigafactory production (originally planned for 2020) if they're moving up the production timetable. In other words, how much is that going to affect the cost of Model 3 production? You don't think that's a valid question?

<comment><USER4> Re: the UBS analyst question - I thought this was a totally fair response by Elon. In his previous question, the UBS guy asked Elon where their battery costs would be by the time the Model 3 launches, and Elon said he felt was proprietary.

Then the guy basically asks the EXACT same thing, but rather than asking for the final price, he asked for the pace of reduction (CAGR) in price, over a given amount of time (until the Gigafactory is open, and once it is online)... which would allow him to calculate cost/kwh when Model 3 launches.

Musk politely answered a whole series of questions from this and other analysts, only cutting them off if they asked something stupid - like this guy. You're not gonna trick Elon Musk into giving you more data by asking the question a different way.

<comment><USER3> > _the UBS guy asked Elon where their battery costs would be by the time the > Model 3 launches, and Elon said he felt was proprietary._

What is "proprietary" about it? Previous plans and costing were based on the Gigafactory being able to achieve scale by 2020. That production is being bumped forward two years, so what effect will it have on costs? Why would we assume they can suddenly get the same savings in less time? It's a good question from an investor's perspective.

> _Musk politely answered a whole series of questions from this and other > analysts_

Yeah, he loves answering Adam Jonas. Many of these guys are practically shills. Some of their questions are embarrassing.

> _You 're not gonna trick Elon Musk into giving you more data by asking the > question a different way._

Here's the thing HN doesn't seem to get: this is a _public_ company. People have the right to ask questions. In fact, _more_ questions should be asked of companies like this, that are losing vast sums of money yet have sky-high valuations. That's the difference between genuinely curious people and those who are willing to take what the CEO says at his word, for everything.

Watch for an equity offering soon, something else that we were told wouldn't happen.

<comment><USER5> > this is a public company. People have the right to ask questions.

He did ask the question. You have the right to ask questions of a private company too. And both private and public companies have the right not to answer. Everything they're required to make public is already in the filings. You seem to be indicating that they're required to say more, but they're not.

<comment><USER3> > _Everything they 're required to make public is already in the filings_

We never really know that, ex ante. Everyone looks like they're reporting what they need to, until we find out they aren't. That's the point of asking questions.

But it isn't about requirements. It's a _valid_ question, that was sidestepped by Musk (and here, apparently). Here it is for posterity: the pricing for the Model 3 was based on achieving scale and efficiency in battery production from the Gigafactory. With production bumped up two years, what effect will that have on pricing? If it's none, how is that achieved?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find articles like this, and the subsequent discussion about them, interesting. Tesla is a very aggressive auto company, and they have made a lot of huge bets. If more of their bets pay off than don't, they come out ahead. That is very hard for investors to understand but some get it and some don't.

And the really interesting thing is that Elon speaks pretty clearly about the things they are doing that they don't know how they will come out, and this sets up an interesting cognitive dissonance in investors. When you tell someone "this date is the one we put out to get alignment of our suppliers, we assumed not all of them would be ready." Financial people's heads explode. They struggle with management not knowing exactly what is going to happen with events that are critical to the survival of the company. In their head a little dialogue goes "well if they don't know that, how do they even know they will _exist_ next year?" and I expect the truth is they don't. Operating without a net is something Elon seems to be able to pull off when others can't.

I do think the departures are a challenge though. Coming into an organization at a senior level and learning the strengths and weaknesses of the team is a hugely challenging thing to do. It takes time and if you don't have that time it can be really stressful. You find yourself counting on teams to deliver that you have no idea whether or not they have what it takes. So you are hyperfocused on everything and keeping your baloney detector set to max sensitivity to try quickly identify what is working and what isn't. It has to make replacing people at that level very difficult indeed.

<comment><USER7> _" If more of their bets pay off than don't, they come out ahead. That is very hard for investors to understand but some get it and some don't."_

If you are an investor and don't understand that, I strongly suggest you change jobs. Investing isn't a lottery with guaranteed wins.

Also, the article hints that Tesla doesn't have enough money in its pockets to withstand making few bad bets. They may have a strategy that is guaranteed to move them ahead after 20 bets, but if they have money for only 3 bets, they may run out of money before they can pay for those 20 bets.

But yes, from what I understand, the financial journalists aren't reporting what kind of deadline was talked about. If you have a zillion suppliers, you don't tell them "July 1, but if you don't make it, it is OK", but you also know that, statistically, something will go wrong. A fire in a factory, a strike, an earthquake, or a design change, all can lead to delays, and cannot be avoided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "And those were very simple cars to manufacture. Teslas are... well... not."

Why are Tesla Model 3 cars not simple to manufacture? I would estimate that they're simpler than regular gasoline-powered cars.

<comment><USER9> Is it really much simpler? This comment in a recent thread is interesting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11650966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11650966)

<comment><USER10> I think the commenter in your post is right but is forgetting about the outsourced complexity of the big autos.

Chassis assembly is only marginally simpler for an EV vs an ICE since the ICE relies on third party suppliers sending the highly complex parts to the line. The complexity of parts like the engine, transmission, exhaust system, fuel system, etc. is abstracted to the suppliers so that GM or whoever can just bolt it to the final car. Tesla has a big benefit here since if they were designing a brand new ICE, they'd be responsible for all those parts too.

It's not that they get the simplicity benefit from not installing an engine, it's that they don't have to wait for the most complex part of a car to be designed, engineered, constructed and delivered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does Tesla not manufacture the doors themselves? I would think such a special part unique to their cars would be first produced in house until all the bugs are worked out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Modern car doors are usually sheet metal with a large amount of forming to give a shape (close to) what the designer wanted. It's difficult, large, expensive, and the knowledge required already exists in outside suppliers. Maybe someday they'll do it in house.

I recommend the book "Car"[1] about the redesign of the Ford Taurus twenty years ago. One of the topics is how hard it was to actually manufacture the (at the time) very complex curves of the exterior.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Car-American-Workplace-Mary- Walton/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Car-American-Workplace-Mary- Walton/dp/0393318613)

<comment><USER12> > Maybe someday they'll do it in house.

I don't remember where I read it, so I can't provide a source, but I thought I read somewhere that after this issue with the doors it is a goal at Tesla to try to manufacture as many components as possible in-house as their resources grow.

<comment><USER13> And as their resources grow, they will likely move more of the production in- house.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that this involves acquisitions in some cases, rather than tooling up at Fremont.

Not an nvestor, but wishing I was rich enough to be one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Re: the part where Tesla only has $1.8B cash and needs more, Tesla recently announced a $500 million stock offering to help finance Model 3 production.

[http://ir.teslamotors.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=927533](http://ir.teslamotors.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=927533)

<comment><USER9> Even if we consider August 2015 as "recently", this money is already included in the $1.8bn (they actually raised $740mn in August 2015).

<comment><USER15> And 400million ish with the preorders.

Then they lost 280 million this most recent quarter. They have 1.4 billion in assets and 1.4 billion in short term liabilities. They need more cash for sure

<comment><USER10> From an accounting standpoint, all of that preorder cash is likely restricted and won't be available to fund general operations.

<comment><USER15> It's actually counted as a 'liability' on the balance sheet. So the money is already spent.

Read the terms. The funds are NOT held in Escrow

<comment><USER10> That's only one side of the transaction.. The cash is also held as an asset as cash on the balance sheet -- likely restricted cash. My only point is that their cash position to build out their production line is probably overstated if you only look at the cash/marketable securities line item.

<comment><USER15> I read the 8k published on May 4th.

[http://ir.teslamotors.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-16-...](http://ir.teslamotors.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-16-577582&CIK=1318605)

Restricted cash is only $47 Mil.

I think they're actually accounting the pre-order money as straight up Cash on hand.

> My only point is that their cash position to build out their production line > is probably overstated if you only look at the cash/marketable securities > line item.

I agree with this. I'm just surprised at how they're accounting for this. I'm fairly certain they consider the pre-order money to be 'cash / cash- equivalents', the $1.4 Billion line item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is there a sudden surge of articles pointing out delays, possible hickups for ramping up production etc recently? Is there an orchestration behind it? Sure, this is just an opinion piece, but still.

Genuinely interested.

<comment><USER17> No one notices when things go as planned/expected. Make media say you cannot do it, then do it.

You bet it will be noticed.

I am not saying that it is what is happening now. But just a thought.

I mean, if the guy is smart enough to do all the things he has done, isn't it too hard to imagine he will have a trick or two when it comes to PR?

I mean, every time, one of this article show up, it gets up voted to top, and people are talking and talking and talking, about it. For a couple of days, you see Tesla or SpaceX every where..It is like walking through a neighbourhood filled with Tesla/SpaceX billboards.

Point is, there articles are generating a lot of conversation involving these companies, which makes them very endearing to people involved. So after a while, people will take it as a personal insult, if you criticise these companies...

You know, all of those are good for the company, right?

<comment><USER18> +1

This negative press followed by positive press happened to Tesla so many times, I can't help but think that it is just some guys found a way to make a couple extra bucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is no point here. Yes this will be an issue, a totally new company is selling more units than the incumbents, obviously they are going to have problems. The point is that there is a huge demand for their vehicles, and they'll figure out a way to meet that demand. One way or another. In the end consumers will benefit from all this competition in 20 years we will be driving electric autonomous cars, all of us. Great news!</comment>


[It is official:] Russian math genius ignores $1 million Millennium Prize - <AUTHOR> http://en.rian.ru/strange/20100608/159350481.html <comment><USER2> They probably sent him an email with the subject, "You've won a million dollars!" and it was ignored as spam.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I can adopt it as a spam scam idea. I can target individuals in academia and hump their wet dreams of greatness.

<comment><USER4> Vernor Vinge wrote a story kinda like that: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v407/n6805/full/407679a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v407/n6805/full/407679a0.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think to a point, a lot of us want to believe that Perelman is truly noble and and dedicated to the purity of mathematics. It would serve as a great fable of the modern age. A man challenging the tripe and political aspects of society we have created.

If you've read "Perfect Rigor", the book by Masha Gessen, it shows as far as I can tell that some of that is true. He doesn't believe in profiting from mathematics. At the same time, some of the stories make you wonder what he wants from others:

When he was 17 he taught at a summer math camp for gifted math kids like himself, he would give 15 year-olds problems that were 2x the normal even for them without consideration to their actual skills and then attempt to deprive them of lunch if they couldn't finish half of it.

"A year later, when [the author] asked Rukshin [Perelman's childhood mentor] to get a copy of Morgan and Tian's new book to Perelman, Rukshin demurred; the last time he had tried to pass on a gift from a foreign admirer, he said, Perelman had lobbed the gift-a classical-music CD-at Rukshin's head."

Nevertheless, his brilliance at math is undeniable. I just don't think his reasoning is particularly honorable from what I've read of it.

Note: I realize the excerpts might be a bit tangential, but I thought it was of some value to mention some of his odd behavior.

<comment><USER6> And like you said, he was 17 at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the limited amount I've read about this, he seems to believe that academic mathematics is corrupt and unethical. Basically, he objects to the whole machinery that would award him this prize.

<comment><USER8> That and he feels slighted by other researchers, especially Shing-Tung Yau.

Edit: If you're interested about Yau, here's a NYT article (<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/science/17yau.html?_r=1>)

"But even his admirers say he has a political side. "As Shiing-Shen Chern's successor as emperor of Chinese mathematics," Deane Yang, a professor of mathematics at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn and an old family friend, wrote in a letter to The New Yorker, "Yau has an outsized ego and great ambition, and has done things that dismay his peers." But, Dr. Yang said, Dr. Yau has been a major force for good in mathematics and in China, a prodigious teacher who has trained 39 Ph.D.'s."

<comment><USER9> In my experience the best revenge is usually to live a happy life. If it was me, I'd use the $1M to do that. Even assuming he's completely non- materialistic, I find it hard to imagine there's _nothing_ Perelman could spend the money on that would make him even a little happier.

<comment><USER10> To a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money. Accepting tribute money from an organisation you believed to be fundamentally corrupt would be to become one of the very people you despise.

<comment><USER9> _To a mathematician, some things are far more important than mere money._

I know, my PhD is in pure mathematics - I've seen up-close that mathematicians can be an odd bunch ;)

Using the money to fund some kind of an _alternative_ to the organisation he believes is corrupt, surely wouldn't make him corrupt though, just to take one example?

<comment><USER11> In some ways, he's "spending" his million dollars to make a public statement about his view of the organization.

Had he just accepted the prize, there would probably be little mention of it in the main stream media.

<comment><USER9> That's very true - good point. I wonder what it would actually cost to make this much of a public statement if he spent the money directly that way - maybe it is comparable.

<comment><USER12> Oh, probably more. How much does human interest cost? This has captured quite a few people's attention, _especially_ considering it's catching people _not_ in mathematics.

<comment><USER9> _How much does human interest cost?_

I couldn't resist thinking about this a bit more. Something comparable would be firefox's double-page New York Times ad, which apparently cost about $200k (<http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007103.html>) and certainly reached a _lot_ of non-mathematicians.

Even though Perelman's action has generated quite a bit of press attention, my gut feeling is he could have _paid_ for even more attention if he chose to use the prize money to raise awareness directly.

That said, if he _really_ wanted to get maximum exposure, he could continue to ignore the prize for almost a year, but accept it at the last minute and _then_ spend it all on ads telling the world how corrupt academic mathematics is ;)

<comment><USER13> Just because someone is a genius mathematician doesn't mean he is good at numbers.

<comment><USER14> A point that non-mathematicians will never understand! I used to always correct people by saying, "No, you mean _arithmetic_ ," until I realized how hopelessly pedantic it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm guessing this fellow is just a little different, and very very stubborn. That might also be the reason he solved the problem.

<comment><USER16> and what would tesla have accomplished if he had just taken money seriously, rather than spending years digging ditches (literally)? If someone offers you a million dollars and you don't take it, you're acting totally insane (unless you already have several million laying about).

<comment><USER17> But have you thought about this: Why it is that no one with the mentality you are presenting here was able to solve that millenium problem? Maybe it was solvable only by someone you would call "insane".

Same with Tesla - if he had taken money seriously, it's probable that he would accomplish less, because everyone has only a limited capacity for things one can "take seriously". He just took other things seriously (and was quite successfull with those).

<comment><USER16> >Why it is that no one with the mentality you are presenting here was able to solve that millenium problem?

I obviously can't answer why this one guy got there first. Plenty of people with a sane attitude about money have solved significant problems, Edison for example.

>it's probable that he would accomplish less

There's no reason to believe this. There's a wide spectrum of how much energy you have to put into things. It's certainly true that there are only so many hours in a day, but why does handling the unpleasant necessities of life (proper nutrition, exercise, basic money management) sanely have to be a net loss? You don't have to be a dollar hungry millionaire in the making, just use basic common sense. Einstein for example lived a sane and competent life. So did Niels Bohr and Stephen Hawking and numerous other people that made enormous contributions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think a lot of people are missing the point. He has already decided that he has enough money. That's why he retired, because he saved up enough money to live the rest of his life.

It's a very russian mentality (I speak as someone who's parents moved from the USSR a year before I was born).

</comment><comment><USER19> Like many contented men, he probably just wants to go on doing what he's doing. He rightly intuits that there is no way he can be associated with this prize and have that happen, even if he immediately gave it all away. He's probably annoyed by the whole affair.

<comment><USER20> It's not just contented men, though. Very depressed people will also resist any sort of change to their routine since they assume it will only make matters worse.

I can't imagine what it feels like to spend years trying to prove something like the Poincare conjecture, then succeeding, then trying to find something else to do. I don't get the impression that Perelman is a happy man, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sylvia Nasar wrote a nice article about the Conjecture:

<http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2>

'Nevertheless, Perelman told Ball that he had no intention of accepting [the Fields Medal]. "I refuse," he said simply.'

I can't help but admire the guy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wrong title. He ignores the award ceremony. Still has one year to collect the money.

</comment><comment><USER23> On a tangential subject, if it's proven then why keep calling it the Poincare conjecture? It's now a theorem.

<comment><USER24> Likely for the same reason Fermat's Last Theorem was called a theorem for hundreds of years before it was proved. My guess is cultural inertia.

<comment><USER20> Ah, that's different: Fermat's Last Theorem was called a theorem because Fermat claimed to have proved it. Taking him at his word, it's been a theorem since 1637.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Probably the only man in the world who doesn't care about money (and not just saying that)

<comment><USER26> Or the only one you've heard of?

<comment><USER25> I've heard many people say the same thing, but I'm not sure I would necessarily believe them without proof. Him, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of Alexander Grothendieck (Fields Medal 1966), who resigned from one of the most prestigious French maths positions (IHES) on ethical grounds. He now lives on reclusion (or the exact opposite of it), as far as is known.

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

</comment><comment><USER28> Some call is poverty. Others call it something else. Maybe there is more to life than money.

<comment><USER29> Even if there really is more to life than X, that does not imply that X is not a useful part of life. (I guess I take issue with both the saying in general and this particular application of it.)

<comment><USER17> Depends. If he can now spend all his time doing what he likes to do, why he would want an additional burden of managing all those money? And even if sometimes in the future he will be in a serious need of money, many math institutions or universities will be more than happy to employ him. So even without accepting that money, he can still do what he loves to do all his time. Happy man :)

<comment><USER30> He could choose a way of managing the money that was optimized for simplicity. For example putting it all in a one low risk low return income generating instrument. It's hard for me to believe that the stress involved in picking up a decent cheque every month for the rest of his life wouldn't be outweighed by the benefits.

To me his actions are those of a "difficult" person. Very hard for a more relaxed (dare I say "normal") person to understand and rationalize. So I wouldn't bother. As others say, maybe that's part of what makes him different and special.

<comment><USER31> Where can I find a low risk investment that yields a decent monthly return on 1 million?

<comment><USER30> By decent I mean "worthwhile" or "significant". I specifically didn't say "enough to replace the income of a comfortably placed person in a first world country". 2% pa yields what, $1600 per month ? Don't you think that would be worthwhile to someone living in poverty in Russia ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wrote a cheque but the margin was too small.

</comment><comment><USER33> There was fascinating discussion about this already on HN (several times), anyone have links to those discussions?

<comment><USER34> Perhaps... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1213150>

<comment><USER35> That's it, which includes a link to a very detailed article that anyone interested in this subject should read: <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> clearly he didn't do it for the money

</comment><comment><USER37> Yessss!!!

</comment><comment><USER38> Assuming he doesn't care for the money, it seems like this waste of an opportunity to help some people - and rather selfish. Perhaps the Clay institute will do something good with the money (scholarships?)

<comment><USER39> "According to Carlson [Head of Clay], the money will be sent to a charity foundation if Perelman does not claim it within one year."

<comment><USER32> Anyone got a fake ID and a false beard?

<comment><USER40> No, but I've got a fake beard and a false ID. Will that do?

<comment><USER41> Can you count in Russian?

<comment><USER7> adeen dva tree chiteeriet piat shess sem vosem dyevit dyesit

I can has prize now?

<comment><USER42> Try: один, два, три, четыри, пять, шесть, семь, восемь, девять, десять.

<comment><USER7> That's what I said. Surely I get extra credit for transliterating it to what it sounds like to a native english speaker?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> _I don't use money...

and I'm of a mind that everyone who contents themself with trying to maintain a financial state is contenting themself with laziness... aka Nazis.

Stop using money.

There is nothing more important than knowing that 'predestiny' is real and absolute- in that is truly the end of fear.

Consider that a thing can only be a product of it's experience or be a useless goof.

Content yourself with pride and I call you out. Content yourself with pride and you are a flailing child without worthy opinion.

Pride is goofy. Proud is the last thing anyone of consciousness wants to be.

Pride is a lie. Give me my due by considering what I say, lest you be totally without honour... Predestiny is real and absolute. Free-will is not real. Whatever is perceived as a 'choice' can only ever be experience reacting to the now.

This is about everything.

Consider me. NOW. There is nothing more important than this. This is the truth that saves.

GIVE UNTIL YOU DIE

David_ <http://www.angelfire.com/apes/hatrackman/money.htm></comment>