Open-Source Data Explorer by Keen IO - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/keen/explorer

<comment><USER2> We've been using kibana setup with logstash for allowing us to easily track things we want to track/graph for a project I'm working on. Took a while to get setup, but now anytime we need to "check the numbers" it's fairly easy. Toss a JSON object into redis with a rpush then logstash shoves it in elasticsearch and we can query very similarly to keens solution with kibana. It's been great.

</comment><comment><USER3> We have something like this built in-house on top of Keen already. Great to know that we can now use this to put it in our analytics dashboards to help w/ ad-hoc analysis.

Are you going to be maintaining this with the one you have in your web-app? Seems like it would make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER4> That's awesome, and I'm super glad this will be useful! This repo is a fork of our of private Explorer in order to move quickly and provide a good experience for Keen IO users. The private Explorer will be for internal bug fixes, new features, and design changes. Some of those changes may rely on specific items in Keen's infrastructure, and need to go through a migration phase to work properly in the open source version.

Good news is those migrations will happen frequently (it is likely that the two versions will usually be in sync). There may be periods of lag after new larger features come out that this open source repo will behind what Keen shows on its website.</comment></comment>


Slackers - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/slackers-1bae2d344e5f?source=rss----d16afa0ae7c---4 <comment><USER2> The idea of slack versus high efficiency reminds me of this short piece about queuing theory:

[http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/10/21/what-happens- when-y...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/10/21/what-happens-when-you-add- a-new-teller/)</comment>


Exclusive Interview: Microsoft Admits What Went Wrong with Vista, and How They Fixed It - <AUTHOR> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/shattered_dreams_and_broken_promises_vistas_failure_launch <comment><USER2> While the Microsoft representative makes some accurate statements, some of them are a bit misleading and deflect blame, and some of them indicate that Microsoft may not really understand its competitors.

For instance:

\- "bad drivers from GPU companies and printer companies for the majority of Vista's early stability problems"

Even if technically true, bad drivers are never completely a 3rd party's fault. Microsoft should have had a keen interest in helping hardware vendors write good drivers. Microsoft also designed the driver interfaces!

\- "assailed OEM system builders for including bad, buggy, or just plain useless apps on their machines in exchange for a few bucks on the back end"

Again, probably true, but this isn't new to Vista. It may even have been made worse by Vista; if machine sales were lousy due to Vista, OEMs had to make a buck any way they could.

\- "he conceded that Apple appeals to more and more consumers because the hardware is slick, the price is OK, and Apple doesn't annoy its customers (or allow third parties to)"

Somewhat true statements about Apple, though Apple _has_ annoyed its customers, and 3rd parties such as Adobe have incredibly obnoxious customer- annoying things even in their Mac software.

But I think Microsoft needs to identify more significant reasons for Apple's appeal. What about Apple being "cool", or offering integrated solutions that Just Work, or having an OS that is far more compelling (so much so that people hack hardware just to use it)?

</comment><comment><USER3> When is this "fixed" Vista going to be available?

I ask because my Sony Vaio doesn't like USB devices. And, it's slower than my previous XP laptop even though it has over 2x as much DRAM, said DRAM is faster, and each of its processors is faster than the single processor in the XP laptop that it replaced.

In the past, replacing an old machine running a previous microsoft os with a new machine running a new microsoft OS left you with a faster system. Sure, the old OS may have run even faster on the new hardware, but new on new was faster than old on old.

Vista broke that. Even with hardware that is arguably 2x more powerful, vista is slower than XP. (And yes, I killed the background indexing job that never went into background and never finished.)</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity should I ask for? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys.  I will be joining a startup that has received some funding already.  There are 2 co-founders so, I will be the third employee and the first technical one/programmer.  This is my first time working for a startup so I'm not how much equity I should receive/ask for.  I will be compensated in a combination of stock and salary.  What do you think would be fair? <comment><USER3> Here are a few things you need to think about:

1) How much do the founders need you? This will be helpful in negotiations. 2) How will your role in the company effect its success? 3) How important is salary to you?

All the above will give you an idea of how much equity you can get (or are worth). Use the answers to these questions to help you negotiate.

If salary is really important to you then expect less equity. If you really believe in the company and are willing to work to make it successful then maybe you should go towards more equity and take less salary. This will pay off (much more) in the long run.

I would recommend that you let them make you an offer first. This will give you a baseline on what their expectations are. They might say.. 60K/year and 20,000 options. You need to ask them about the options:

1) What percentage of the company is the employee options pool? This might be 10 or 20%. 2) How many shares are in the option pool, or...what percentage of the option pool is 20,000 options. This will help you determine what _actual_ percentage of the company you may be entitled to. 3) What is the vesting schedule?

Remember one thing when negotiating: You need to ask or you will not receive :).

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> The point that fishcakes raises is one important element. Make sure to understand the picture fully (not just the % of common shares currently outstanding, but the % of the company if all preferred shares were fully converted to common stock, etc).

There is something of a red flag in how you've phrased your question. It's curious that you say that you will be joining the company, but then your post is all about the fact that you haven't yet negotiated the equity you will be receiving. This makes the most sense when you only are _considering_ joining the company. If you already have an agreement to join, then this agreement most likely stipulates what equity you are owed, and on what schedule it will vest.

Part of the overall package that is required to convince you to work for this company should include a specific % of the company's equity. Surely your bargaining position would be stronger if you hadn't already agreed to work for the company when making an ask for equity.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a non founder think of it in terms of what your (worth to the market - <USER2> they actually pay you) * risk your willing to take. So if you can get a job at Microsoft for 110k + 25k in benefits, and the start wants you for 70k + 15k in benefits then your giving up 50K in salary per year and you need to get enough shares (which are probably worthless) to make up for that * the number of years it takes you to vest.

As a yardstick I would aim for 1.5x the rate of whatever the last round of investment was. AKA if they got 5 million and your giving up 50k then look for 10% of whatever the investor got vested over 3 years. (Also, the further from your market rate the shorter your vesting schedule needs to be.)

PS: Don't forget the idea is paying you in stock needs to be more expensive than paying you in cash or they are going to want to pay you in as much worthless stock as possible.

</comment><comment><USER6> Key thing is to ensure you understand the equity in terms of its percentage of company. Ie not just how many shares, but also how many shares are outstanding. I have seem lots of very talented engineers make this mistake.

<comment><USER7> I just made this mistake last year when I joined a startup that offered me a below-market-rate salary + % shares to "cover" for the lowered salary.

Sounded like a good deal as I was naive and this is my first time joining a startup and having to deal with all these equity thingy. Turns out after converting all preferred shares to common stock, there's virtually nothing much left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're actually employee number 1 - as in theory, the co-founders are only taking home enough money to keep a roof over their heads.

You're also the first technical member, which means that you'll be building the entire product. You are responsible for the execution, which means you are critical to the success of the company.

Start negotiating at 20%.</comment>


The Fallacy of Premature Optimization (sometimes it's good) - <AUTHOR> http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i24_fallacy.html

<comment><USER2> I conjecture that the more low-level the language, the more premature optimization is necessary.

As an example, an assembly language programmer has to make very early decisions about whether to use a WORD (valuing speed), or a long (valuing extensibility) to model a quantity. If he chooses wrong, he will have to modify hundreds of lines of code. A C programmer, instead, can use a typedef and then switch between the two representations at any time, but he might have to choose between long and big-integer. Lisp programmers don't have that choice to make.

In the perfect HLL (by that metric), every parameter or constraint of the program is specified in just one place. Premature optimization is then always a mistake.

(Lisp still has a way to go to get there)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seemed wordy and off-base. Are there really people out there who think all optimization is evil?

<comment><USER4> Seems like a very longwinded attack on a "optimization is evil"-strawman. However, he has one valid point: You should consider performance issues when you design the overall architecture of a system, even though this is prematurely in the sense that it is too early to actually measure where the problems might be.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ritza: quality articles for your company's technical blog or community - <AUTHOR> http://ritza.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I'm Gareth. I've been writing technical tutorials for years and next month I am going to start focusing on it full time.

My hope is that I can solve the "readers don't want to pay for content any more but content is expensive to produce" problem by getting companies to pay for it instead. Unbiased technical articles are hugely valuable to companies who are looking to attract technical people to their product.

I have already taken on one client using this model and I am working with two others in slightly different ways but which still tie into this.

I'd love any feedback on the concept. The website is deliberately super minimalist, and it will never evolve to look like a "standard"[0][1] startup website

I also have ambitious goals for the company structure as I take on more writers. All Ritza employees will be treated as permanent "full time" employees, but will only be expected to work ca. 20h/week. More details coming soon.

[0] [https://www.dagusa.com/](https://www.dagusa.com/) [1] [http://www.novolume.co.uk/blog/all-websites-look-the- same/](http://www.novolume.co.uk/blog/all-websites-look-the-same/)

<comment><USER2> I endorse your effort! The trick in any new enterprise, is figuring out who has the money, and getting them to pay. Going to the company (with far deeper pockets than any individual reader) is a fair notion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Yes exactly, and so far the people with the deepest pockets are the marketing people who buy millions of dollars worth of targeted advertising.

I hope that I can find several companies who would "experiment" by putting 1-3% of their adspend budget towards something that actually benefits the world.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Offers to Help Yahoo Fight Off Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120206856800138831.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news <comment><USER2> But why bother? Isn't the best thing for google to let these two companies merge and screw up?

</comment><comment><USER3> From what I understand, they wouldn't only screw _themselves_ up...

Some open-source Yahoo projects could be screwed also.</comment>


After 24 months, we just made our first hire - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@toddg777/after-24-months-we-just-made-our-first-hire-272e27a95bc4

<comment><USER2> [https://www.eventjoy.com/aboutus](https://www.eventjoy.com/aboutus)

"We're backed by Ticketmaster and Y Combinator"

or "owned by Ticketmaster"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the company is now owned by Ticketmaster, but we still received some of our initial investment from YC.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Rainbowstream – Twitter the geek way - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DTVD/rainbowstream

<comment><USER2> This is a great way to stealth tweet at work, especially when combined with a 2nd monitor and a 4-way terminal split :)

<comment><USER3> If you are that worried about being caught Tweeting at work wouldn't you be more concerned about generating a public tweet with a timestamp showing you posted it at work?

<comment><USER4> Most people consume Twitter a lot more than they produce tweets.

I almost never tweet from work, but I have the OS X app open most of the time (without any need to hide it where I work).

<comment><USER3> Ah sorry "tweeting" is an action to post a tweet. I thought that's what they meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm using [https://github.com/sferik/t](https://github.com/sferik/t) is this better

<comment><AUTHOR> I think t is rather like a Linux command, while Rainbow Stream is an app and focus on display and custom hashtag following with streaming API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fantastic, I've been looking for a way to stop using Janetter for some time, and my love of TUIs means this is right up my alley!

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had almost exactly this on my back-burner of "things that would be nice to write if nobody else does". Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER8> I think I'll actually give Twitter a shot now. This looks much more convenient than the web interface.

</comment><comment><USER9> Feature request! Instead of a link to photos, there could be ASCII converted images, like with [http://picascii.com/](http://picascii.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean when we type a "show image x" ? Would be an awesome feature :) If I can I will try to do the ascii magic directly on terminal first :)

<comment><USER9> Sounds good! This is really neat and elegant by the way :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> thank you! I've been looking for something like this for a while now, been trying to mess with the API myself but a tad over my head.

</comment><comment><USER11> wow, that is awesome</comment>


A newly updated 'Rock paper scissors' game using socket.io – request feedback - <AUTHOR>

The game: http://coolfriends.me
This is a follow up post from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7101615
I made some additions to the game like: chat functionality, time limit of 5 sec for the games, see who played what after the game, rankings of the current players and matches history.
What do you think I should do next? <comment><USER2> replay button? or "best of 5" type of scenario?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Rematch button done.</comment>


Startup CRM Solutions - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to know what solutions are out there for a lean startup that has quickly outgrown spreadsheets.<p>What do you use? What is your sales process like? How do you take in leads? How big are you? <comment><USER2> I use Highrise (<http://www.highrisehq.com>) along with Tout (<http://www.toutapp.com>).

</comment><comment><USER3> I use <http://capsulecrm.com>. If you have less than 250 contacts and you need only two users, it's free, otherwise $12/mo/user.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just started working with rule.fm (<http://www.rule.fm>), since they announced yesterday that you can have over 25 users, and unlimited storage for free. I think it is a neat concept since it allows you to do everything for your startup in one panel. I hate doing admin/org tasks in multiple software, and this sort of brings everything together which is nice.

</comment><comment><USER5> fatfreecrm sugarcrm vtiger

Of the three, my preference is fatfreecrm - light weight, well written, ROR based. Sugar might have richer capabilities if you need it. All of the above are open source, or have open source versions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Highrise is great.</comment>


Disco: mapReduce in Erlang, submit jobs in Python - <AUTHOR> http://discoproject.org/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they're getting enough value from Erlang to justify the complexity of the hybrid Erlang/Python implementation. IOW, why not write it completely in Python?

<comment><USER3> Probably looks strange, but it's a perfect match. To implement the core in Erlang is way easier while Python is better suited for the client code. There is no interoperatibilty from the user point of view, Erlang is just a service here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dupe</comment>


Marvel Comics 80th anniversary limited-edition posters - <AUTHOR> https://greymatterart.com/collections/posters <comment><AUTHOR> On sale 1 p.m. today</comment>


Now 0-for-3, SpaceX's Elon Musk Vows to Make Orbit (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa <comment><USER2> Can someone edit the title of this to correctly reflect that the linked article is from 2008? Without a close look it gives the impression all this happened last weekend.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."

If you need a thesis for why, 4 year later, SpaceX and Tesla are seeing the succes they are, this attitude might be at its' core.

<comment><USER4> That's Magic Thinking. Just because you want something doesn't mean it's going to come true. There are thousands of other entrepreneurs you've never heard of, who were also highly motivated but it didn't work out for them. (That's why you've never heard of them.)

To explain the relative success of SpaceX and Tesla by Elon Musk "wanting success" is a fallacy. You should instead reason by first principles (as Musk himself recommends for entrepreneurs to do) and analyze what they did in the past couple of years, what worked and didn't work, what factors were involved, and how that led to where they are today.

<comment><USER5> I read that as 'I'm throwing all that I've got, time, resources, anything towards achieving my goal'. That's no guarantee for success but it works a lot better than doing nothing at all.

In order to win you have to first enter the games. Most people that are claiming this is 'magic thinking', survivor bias or generally down on achievement have never actually done any of this, let alone entered the game.

<comment><USER4> > have never actually done any of this

I spent 3+ years on my startup without being able to secure funding, getting by, fully commited [1]. I wanted to succeed really bad, but made too many mistakes from the get go and ran out of time/money eventually. To reflect on the topic of discussion, when evaluating why my startup failed (or another one succeeded), whether the founders wanted it bad enough is not a good core metric, which is what the grandparent claims.

[1] <http://github.com/scalien/scaliendb>

<comment><USER5> Heal your wounds, save some dough and same player shoots again.

You have to play a lot of chess games before you start winning. Start-ups are no different, the learning curve is quite steep but if you persevere at some point it will start to pay off. If your first start-up takes off in a couple of weeks or months that's the exception not the rule.

Establishing any kind of business normally takes about three years so you have to plan for that.

<comment><USER4> I'm fine, thanks, but this thread is not about me. I was just responding to your ad hominem attack.

<comment><USER5> I was not aware I was attacking you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love how he doesn't consider himself an optimist. There's an important distinction between knowing that something is possible and going for it and hoping to accomplish something that may not be possible. I think many people confuse one for the other.

<comment><USER7> "All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren't more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so much so that they think what they're embarking on isn't really that risky."

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/>

[http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-01-31/ego-makes- ent...](http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-01-31/ego-makes- entrepreneurs)

<comment><USER8> According to some guy who writes for _Wired_. Yeah, that's definitive.

<comment><USER9> Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired. The other interview is with "Wharton doctoral student Brian Wu." Both would seem to be highly credible sources on the subject of successful entrepreneurs (not successful entrepreneur _ship_ , which seems to be the source of your dismissal)

<comment><USER8> Eh, editor in chief? That means he can write well. That's all. The idea that a guy like Elon Musk is successful because he's somehow delusional is idiotic.

<comment><USER9> You're being downvoted because your argument is "other people are wrong," and if you forward such an argument you are implicitly forwarding a character comparison: don't listen to that guy he's a dumbass, listen to me (because I'm not.)

It can work if you're some well-known personality. As far as you've told us, you are an unknown, unaccomplished person who expects us to believe he knows more about the successful entrepreneur's mindset than two people who have interviewed several extensively. Again, with no reason provided.

EDIT: And also, one of those people (Anderson) is an entrepreneur himself. So who, exactly are you? Sounds like you're just some guy who likes calling other people idiots because he doesn't like what they write.

<comment><USER8> I'm being downvoted because other people are wrong :)

My point is that sentence is wrong and thrown in to get page views. _The fact that you can write well doesn't mean you know anything_. It's no qualification at all when it comes to making an argument.

 _And also, one of those people (Anderson) is an entrepreneur himself. So who, exactly are you?_

Me? Oh, I'm a professional poker player. I'm not very good at it, you see, so I'm currently writing articles about poker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am visiting my dad here in the Space Coast of Florida (Cape Canaveral) and the old retired people here I've spoken to are almost universally "angry at Obama" for "ending the space program".

I mention SpaceX and how they're advancing rocket technologies and doing things far cheaper than NASA ever could but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

I know it's pointless to argue, but I can't help myself. What else can I use in my argument?

</comment><comment><USER11> This was an interview from 2008.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good example of relentlessly resourceful: <http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess this was posted as look back to before they were successful? They've launched the Falcon 9 heavy to the ISS now, so no one would consider them not. Maybe all those failures with the F1 light model are part of why the Falcon 9 was designed to and managed to do its job even with one of the engines failing...

<comment><USER14> They've been launching Falcon 9's to the ISS. So far they haven't flown a Falcon 9 Heavy (which they have actually renamed to "Falcon Heavy", no "9" (maybe because the first stage will actually have 27 merlin engines)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure they'll make it. They've already accomplished so much no one else though possible. They've built technology no one else has. Even if they didn't Elon would still be a legend for even trying.

<comment><USER16> (2008)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pre-Built Desktop for Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> I am seriously considering buying a pre-built desktop to get into Deep Learning. List of the important components is in my comment below. The GPU in the pre-built desktop is a regular 11GB 1080 Ti, not the FE, but the FE was the only NVIDIA 1080 Ti I found on pcpartpicker.
Q1: Are there any reasons you would think this is NOT a good system for a beginner?
Q2: I plan on ordering it without an OS and installing Ubuntu myself. Is it reasonable to expect this process to go smoothly, or is a Windows/Ubuntu dual boot setup better?
Thank you! <comment><AUTHOR> And I'm pretty sure adding a second GPU later shouldn't be a problem.

Link to list: [https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yrHxYT](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yrHxYT)</comment>


Scraping TechCrunch Articles to Excel Report - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/scraping-techcrunch-articles-to-excel-report-c50b305cf4d7 <comment><USER2> There is a ton of scraping jobs on Upwork</comment>


Introducing a Faster Hall.com - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hall.com/post/27135072151/introducing-a-faster-hall-com

<comment><USER2> RealTime and SinglePage apps are not the future, They are the present, too bad the "Giants" are dragging their feet.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've made account for Hall and the desktop app, but I'm not sure how to find contacts with details.

<comment><AUTHOR> malkia, by signing up with your work domain (ex: @intuit.com) we auto-connect you to everyone is in your company. To then add contact, you can click "Contacts" in the left nav, and then "Add Contact" just like Skype. Any suggestions on how we could have made this easier?</comment></comment>


Quote for Entrepreneurs--December 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2014/12/31/quotes-for-entrepreneurs-december-2014/

<comment><USER2> "One has to make a decision when a condition is likely to degenerate if nothing is done." Peter Drucker in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices

My father's take: "Do something, even if it's stupid!" \-- Charles Russell Crawford

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are my top six from the December 2014 list:

"Entrepreneurs depend entirely on their own abilities for their financial security, because they realize that the only security is the security they create themselves." Dan Sullivan in "The Great Crossover"

"The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask." Thomas Kuhn

Scale back your long hopes to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have already fled: seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow. Horace in "Ode XI: To Leuconoe"

"No one can truly understand the life of an entrepreneur but another entrepreneur." Philadelphia Startup Leaders Manifesto

"We're all self-made men, but not very many of us have stayed on the job." Kin Hubbard

"You're competing against people in a state of flow, people who are truly committed, people who care deeply about the outcome." Seth Godin in "Texting While Working"</comment>


Control Docker-compose startup flow with readiness probe - <AUTHOR> https://pcholko.com/posts/2020-05-23/control-docker-compose-startup/ <comment><AUTHOR> How to use readiness probe to control execution in docker-compose?

Docker-compose is a powerful tool to run an isolated environment for the application. However, it doesn't provide one important feature right out of the box which is startup control.

What if the containerised application requires a database to be up and ready and fully provisioned?

How to check if a certain process is finished in another container?

If you encounter such issues lets dive into the solution:</comment>


Context Menus With jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://www.coderslexicon.com/context-menus-with-jquery/

<comment><USER2> Context menu is an old topic now. There is no point writing about it again and again.</comment>


Facebook Announces Data Portability - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17689832 <comment><AUTHOR> This new Facebook functionality could allow an enterprising young startup to create a tool that would allow people to copy all their Facebook content over to Google+ or some other social network. The actual Facebook announcement on this can be found at

<https://www.facebook.com/fbprivacy></comment>


Notices have already been issued under Australia's new encryption laws - <AUTHOR> https://www.innovationaus.com/2019/02/AA-bill-notices-already-issued <comment><USER2> If the idea was for Australia to lead by example on all the ways to NOT regulate an increasingly digital world, we're doing a bloody good job.

I worked for Atlassian in Sydney. I know there's a pretty decent tech culture that is thriving in Sydney + Melbourne (and elsewhere, I'm sure). I really hope more of my colleagues find a passion for politics and get to a position where they can steer our clearly incompetent government in governance issues pertaining to technology.

In the meantime, does anyone have a clear idea of how this Act will even work? Lets talk in specific terms for something like Signal. I'm assuming Signal has no legal footprint in Australia. How/can Australia compel Signal to allow Australian enforcement agencies to snoop on conversations?

If they can't, won't one of the worst outcomes of this legislation be that any kind of technology company that needs to deal with encryption (which these days should be basically 100% of them) be forced to move overseas? How could a single Australian-based tech company have even the slightest scrap of credibility for data security when a law like this exists?

Final note - is anyone from Fastmail around here? I'm a Fastmail customer and this has me extremely concerned.

<comment><USER3> Signal: The employee is required to intentionally alter the app to no longer provide security, such that some communication may be intercepted. They are not permitted to publicly disclose that they have done this.

Unfortunately, this goes deeper. The law may be capable of compelling Google or Apple of Australia to force deploy to your phone a malicious version of the Signal app with the "technical assistance notice".

<comment><USER4> Will your phone accept an app upgrade which has been signed by Google or Apple instead of by Signal?

If not, is the law capable of compelling your telephone vendor to ship you an upgrade that weakens its upgrade testing enough that Apple/Google can ship you such an upgrade?

<comment><USER5> Apple controls the root CA on iOS devices. I guess that Google controls the root CA on Android too. Therefore it is within their technical ability to issue a certificate that bears the name of Signal and is trusted by almost all devices. They wouldn't need to ship any OS upgrades to forge the signature of Signal, as they are already the ultimate authority of who is Signal. I won't speculate on whether they or their Australian employees will actually do so in the future.

<comment><USER6> AFAIK, that's not how Android works. Each apk is signed by a standalone certificate (which does not have to be signed by any CA), and the operating system will only allow an upgrade if the same certificate is used. Which means a developer must carefully guard the certificate's private key; if it's lost, the application can no longer be updated, but it must instead be released as a new application with a separate name. And since AFAIK this mechanism is part of the operating system (not the constantly-updated Google Play store), to bypass it would require a full OS update.

(This has other consequences: if a developer releases the same apk to several stores, but it's signed by different certificates on each store, a user who installed the apk from one store will not be able to upgrade it using the other store.)

<comment><USER7> I don't know, but I presume Google cross-signs APKs that are approved through the Play Store?

<comment><USER4> No.

Easily checked, run jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs some.apk on an APK of your choice. I ran it on 31 just now, no cross-signing visible anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a brief of companies that could/might be impacted. I don't agree that server location is sufficient enough protection. Correct me if wrong, but can't the authorities compel the Aussie company's directors to hand over foreign server credentials?

Xero

Atlassian

Canva

Fastmail

99 Designs

<comment><USER3> Good angle.

But we're not just talking about headquartered companies.

Cloudflare has datacenters in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney and an office in Sydney. Could they be compelled to hand over your website's certificate that they have because they're the front end load balancing proxy for your website?? That way the police can man in the middle your website. Cloudflare would be gagged from telling you they gave away your private TLS certificate you entrusted them with.

<comment><USER9> By this logic, there is no need to compel Cloudflare to handover the private TLS key. They can just compel any CA based in Australia to sign a fake cert. Or directly compelling OS vendors (Google, Apple, Microsoft,etc) to make government cert as a root CA.

<comment><USER3> A fraudulently issued cert compelled by government might be detected by CA reporting. This was already done to watch for direct government controlled CAs issuing bad certs.

Stealing your own existing cert is less likely to be detected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The hotel room analogy is almost correct.

Hotel rooms usually provide a small safe for which guests can pick the combination. There is also a secret backdoor combination or master key that lets hotel staff open the safe.

This creates an obvious security hole : if the backdoor combination is easy to guess, or a copy of the master key falls into the hands of unscrupulous employees or ex-employees, then the contents of the safe can be stolen. As a guest, there is nothing you can do to reduce this risk.

Now, imagine that a hotel found a solution where locked safes are destroyed and replaced at almost no cost to them, and could give up on the backdoor. Burglaries involving the backdoor would vanish, and although this slightly increases the risk of losing your belongings by forgetting your combination (since the hotel can no longer open the safes of forgetful guests), it's a net improvement in security.

Ten years later, the hotel community has reached a consensus that safes- without-backdoors are the Right Thing to Do. The state then mandates that all hotels should be able to give access to the contents of those safes to the police. But they're not saying that hotels have to use a backdoor combination or master key, so they're not really asking anyone to reduce the security of their safes...

</comment><comment> mark-r "The legislation in no way compromises the security of any Australians' digital communications."

Reminds me of the time someone tried to legislate pi=3. There's absolutely no way to give police a back door into encryption without giving criminals the same back door.

<comment><USER11> > There's absolutely no way to give police a back door into encryption without > giving criminals the same back door.

This feels disingenuous to me. It would be fairly trivial, for example, to store a copy of all keys, encrypted with the government's public key. Of course, there's a million eats to go wrong, but that's different from "mathematically impossible."

<comment><USER12> But the million ways to go wrong IS the problem. I may be appealing to authority here, but is it disingenuous when an overwhelming majority of encryption and security experts agree?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- cyb...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- cybersecurity-202/2018/06/11/the-cybersecurity-202-we-surveyed-100-experts-a- majority-rejected-the-fbi-s-push-for-encryption-back- doors/5b1d39eb1b326b6391af094a/?utm_term=.cebc72f7c3b1)

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/05/ray_ozzies_en...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/05/ray_ozzies_encr.html)

[https://www.justsecurity.org/53316/criminalize-security- crim...](https://www.justsecurity.org/53316/criminalize-security-criminals- secure/)

<comment><USER13> Note that he was replying to a comment that was saying that a back door that is not wide open to criminals is comparable to thinking pi = 3.

As is pointed out in the Schneier article, the problems with a key escrow scheme are on the law enforcement side of things. They could lose access to their keys, especially if a lot of different agencies have keys.

Those are difficulties that can in theory be overcome, although it may not be practical to do so. That's a far cry from a pi = 3 issue.

<comment><USER14> The original argument was "The legislation in no way compromises the security of any Australians' digital communications."

This is approaching a pi = 3 level falsehood because of the "in no way compromises" clause. There are many schemes that are outright illegal (in my not a lawyer interpretation of this law), and it nakedly makes the other schemes harder with state actors as additional points of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We already in process of ending our Atlassian contracts, currently moving all our data out.

<comment><USER16> This is short sighted.

1\. The law applies to all tech companies who have users in Australia, regardless of where the company is incorporated.

2\. Atlassian offers primarily self hosted products, to which this law does not apply.

<comment><USER17> How can Australia exert legal authority over a company that has no legal presence in the country and one Australian user?

<comment><USER18> I'm not informed on the subject, but narrow-mindedly, GDPR and serving EU customers?

<comment><USER19> Yeah, that has exactly the same problem with respect to jurisdiction.

The only difference is that it's easier to write off Australia than the entire EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, is it time to distrust every ssl cert issued by Australian cert provider? Is there a list?

<comment><USER3> You would also need to distrust any ssl cert a multinational company's australians can access, as the law can compel and gag them to steal your ssl cert. All Australian residents and citizens, including potentially abroad, are now legislated to be untrustworthy when it comes to holding any cryptographic secrets or access to systems of your customers.

<comment><USER21> > _including potentially abroad_

On my reading of the A&A bill there was no extra-territoriality clauses, so I think it only applies within Australia.

However, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

<comment><USER22> It also appears to apply to Australian citizens living abroad, potentially making dual-citizens into covert actors.

<comment><USER21> Do you know which clause gives it extra-territoriality? I didn't see one in my pass over it.

<comment><USER22> The devil is in the details. 317c, defining "communications provider".

> 5\. the person provides a service that facilitates, or is ancillary or > incidental to, the provision of an electronic service that has one or more > end‑users in Australia

> 6\. the person develops, supplies or updates software used, for use, or > likely to be used, in connection with:

> (a) a listed carriage service; or

> (b) an electronic service that has one or more end‑users in Australia

> 8\. the person manufactures or supplies components for use, or likely to be > used, in the manufacture of a facility for use, or likely to be used, in > Australia

There's several more.

A communications provider, under the given definitions is not bound to be on Australian soil, but rather interacting with Australia as a nation.

Applying this law to those of different nationality is difficult, and unlikely to succeed, however those of dual-citizenship can be held accountable.

This opinion I have, that the law does apply to those internationally, is one I have seen supported by several law firms I have occasional contact with.

Probably aided by:

> 317F. This Part extends to every external Territory.

> 317ZC.4 Part 4 of the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014, as > it applies in relation to section 317ZB of this Act, extends to:

> (a) every external Territory; and

> (b) acts, omissions, matters and things outside Australia.

> 317ZD (Enforceable Undertakings).

> Part 6 of the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014, as it > applies in relation to section 317ZB of this Act, extends to:

> (a) every external Territory; and

> (b) acts, omissions, matters and things outside Australia.

There's a few more - but as the Act is stating it is enforceable to both external Territories and acts, omissions, matters and things outside Australia, I do think the most likely reading is that 'acts' can be enforced upon Australians living outside the borders.

<comment><USER21> "External Territories" here means Christmas Island, the Australian Antarctic Territory etc etc. When I say "extra-territoriality" I mean the application of law outside of Australia's borders.

The "acts, ommissions, matters and things" appears to give extra- territoriality to subject matter but not to legal personalities (ie companies and people).

The "communications provider" part is very broad, and while in Australia I am _definitely_ covered by it. But the courts will not generally interpret legislation as having extra-territorial effect unless it explicitly says so. Otherwise every Act would need a stuff like "ps. the _Fisheries Amendments (Rex Hunt Is A Wanker) Act_ is non-territorial".

My question is not about whether a legal personality (ie, a company) is affected if they have a physical-legal presence in Australia, because of course they are affected. My question is whether someone like me, who is outside Australia's boundaries, can be served a notice while I am out of the country. On my reading it's still a "no".

But I am still not a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel like I must be misreading, because my first-pass interpretation is that companies would terminate all of their Australian citizen employees, and add terms to the remaining contracts saying that employees must notify them if they become an Australian citizen.

<comment><USER24> As an Australian, I dearly hope all international companies actually do this.

We are a testing ground for this insanity, the time to fight it is now.

Australian citizens did not ask for this. All the "consultation" letters were ignored in favour of creating a police state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Australian tech companies need to release a program called UltraDecrypt that simply brute-force decrypts any message on their platforms given billions of years and sell it for $10M per license.

Then when law enforcement claims they are not being cooperative, they can say they have a tool that meets their needs if they're patient.

<comment><USER26> You'd probably be charged with something and punished.

Courts don't take to kindly to people trying to be cute with their demands. It's not like they are going to say "well they are technically right" and give up, they are going to just up the consequences or clarify the request until you comply in the way that everyone knows they want you to.

<comment><USER27> This. The biggest weakness to encryption systems isn't the math, it's the guy in the uniform who has tied you to a chair and keeps strapping your feet with a rubber hose.

<comment><USER28> Thus once again revealing -- to those who believed otherwise -- that the police do not exist to "protect" the citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am not a cryptologist, not a lawyer, and only a marginally capable software engineer.

But I think we've had the option to send personally encrypted end-to-end messages for a while now. (Open)PGP anyone?

So instead of using Signal, or Whatsapp, or whatever and depending on their client-side-encryption (and possible server-side-decryption) of private messages, how about plain email using standalone user-encryption.

Two things may come of this: Google will stop "interpreting" my email messages, and laws like these stop mattering very much.

Of course, 5th amendment (and its siblings in other countries) still apply...

</comment><comment> m-p-3 This is where a political problem needs to be fought back where it hurts the government the most, threaten to get the hell out and see their corporate taxes income dwindle.

</comment><comment><USER24> The general point that I disagree with is the premise that there can be no such thing as a private conversation.

Do you want a police state? Because secret surveillance of all citizens is how you end up with a police state.

</comment><comment><USER30> Would letsencrypt be compelled to issue certs for your domain to the Australian Gman?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you Rally want to "Change the World"? - <AUTHOR>

I often read comments suggesting that a certain thing, although might be making a lot of money, is not adding any value, hence the commenter does not want to have anything to do with it. This is also related to some commenter's who suggest that
building a business allows someone to 'change the world' or contribute to it's advancement, even if in a small, almost unnoticeable way.
I was just wondering whether such 'ideals', noble as they are, are really a motivator, to such extent that one ignores say easier way to making money but without adding value, such as some bankers for example.
Does this altruism, this selflessness really come before the selfish interests and perhaps 'greed' of actually making money, whatever way - legally of course? <comment><USER2> 'rally' ? :)

That's a very tough question, to which I'm afraid there are no valid short answers, unless they're in the negative.

Everybody that wants to change 'the world' has a different definition of 'world'. For some it means their personal environment, for some it means those below the poverty line. Almost always there is some 'demographic' limitation to what the world really means.

I think plenty of people genuinely want to improve the world, but because they realize their limitations they're forced to scale down their ambitions a bit and then they do their best within that framework.

And some get lucky and make a bundle, then spend it to materially improve the lives of as many others as they can manage. But that's rare.

For some people who made a lot of money in not-so-nice ways doing good is a way of atoning, or even PR. For others it is what comes most natural to them. Altruism doesn't have to come in competition with greed, it can come after it, or before, gathering money as a tool. There are all kids of scenarios here.

Over the years I've found that my teen-age idealism ("change the world for good on a large scale") has bit by bit been whittled away by reality. Right now I'd settle for my definition of 'world' to be those people that I'm in daily contact with.

And yes, I really do want to do that, but I'm not sure if I will succeed, for any definition of world.

But I'll keep trying :)

<comment><AUTHOR> _'rally' ? :)_

oops. It seems that I am unable to actually edit it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do I really want to change the world? Yes, I would rather make some improvement in my community and ideally the whole world than make maximum personal income and leave the world just as it now is.

</comment><comment><USER4> money here</comment>


What Killed The Linux Desktop: An Outsider's Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://sparkledog.net/2012/09/11/linux-desktop.html

<comment><USER2> Gnome 3 gets a ton of hate, but I'm using it now and it's quite nice.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite methods/tools to measure employees performance? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20838166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20838166)</comment>


Los Gatos, 1980 – What Is a Pyramid Party? - <AUTHOR> https://lgartbridge.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/los-gatos-1980-what-is-a-pyramid-party/ <comment><USER2> As with any Ponzi scheme, real people lost real money -- a proverbial "tax on the math-impaired".

I had friends who went to one, though as I had advised them, they merely observed rather than participated. It was frighteningly cultish. Those who started the groups tended to end up with the money, with the late arrivals losing their shirts.</comment>


The drab stupidity of Soylent - <AUTHOR> http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/4264/the-drab-stupidity-of-soylent/ <comment><USER2> This kind of article seems to ignore the fact that almost everyone eats poorly.

In other words, the proposition "Soylent will not provide close to optimum nutrition for everyone" is extremely different from the proposition "Switching to Soylent will improve the diet of most people".

Most people get most of their calories from sugar, refined starches, and refined vegetable oils. They do not finely-tune their nutritional intake based on their gender, weight, age, activity level, stress level or time of year. I'm interested in the pros and cons of Soylent for this type of typical person.

I'm extremely skeptical of Soylent, but this vector of attack seems incorrect to me, applicable only to people who already have extremely health diets.

<comment><USER3> You say people don't tune their nutritional intake, but the human body _does_ have ways of telling you if you're missing essential nutrients. There are lots of various cues caused by people's diets that they adapt to, either by going out and eating something different, taking supplements, etc.

I don't think the OP is arguing that everyone needs a nutritionist to regulate their diet; rather, he's arguing that a drink like Soylent is inferior to even the basic amount of dietary adjustment that normally happens in a person's life.

If all you care about is calories, sure, Soylent is probably fine. I'd be concerned that if you get used to how it feels to mostly subsist on Soylent, you might be intentionally tuning out important cues from your body.

<comment><USER4> This bears repeating, over and over and over again if necessary, in every HN thread related to Soylent: most people who purchase Soylent will not exclusively eat Soylent. They will instead supplement their diet with it for times when they don't want to be bothered to make a meal.

<comment><USER5> Jaime from the Mythbusters does this; he explains it in an episode where they are testing fuel consumption of cars over a long distance and can't stop to eat. Adam brought snack foods, Jaime brought what he calls "444". 4 fruits, 4 vegetables, and 4 beans ground up in a blender for him to drink. He put his recipe in an email that someone posted to reddit at one point.

Jaime claims it's healthy and full nutrition, but he only eats/drinks it when he can't be bothered to actually eat something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There seem to be two main points of criticism in this article, neither of which holds up:

1\. "Rhinehart does not know much about nutrition and he cannot learn everything he needs to know from Wikipedia and textbooks."

True, but irrelevant. Soylent's basic proposition is that you can make a food substitute like this one work and they are iterating on a promising candidate. Who is to say they cannot or will not partner with various nutritional specialist in the future to improve the recipe and mitigate risks? You get the best of both worlds: Enthusiastic creativity powered by some necessary naivety combined with extensive domain knowledge. This formula can work amazingly well. Case in point: Elon Musk/SpaceX.

2\. Nutritional needs are specific to each person and change over time.

Again, true - but if anything, this is an argument in favour of Soylent. In the future, it could easily and automatically be tweaked to everyone's individual habits, biomedical indicators or even genetic tests. As others have pointed out, most people currently eat extremely sub-optimal and are typically not keeping track of their nutritional intake. Soylent in its current form will give a well-rounded base level that is surely more healthy than the average food intake in developed countries. With an individualised formula it has the potential to among others thing be a convenient to consume a more healthy and balanced diet.

<comment><USER7> The problem with people is that they tend to have the thought process of "that's how it is today so that's how it will always be."

Like you said, when he mentioned that everyone's nutritional needs were unique, my mind also went immediately to bio-feedback devices that would not only indicate what you needed but also create a meal plan and order the food for you. There's no reason this also couldn't be done with Soylent. But because these things don't exist today people assume that they'll never exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This whole line of argument presupposes that there is some sort of magic ratio of nutrients for each person and that if they don't hit exactly those numbers they will suffer some vague disastrous consequences (coughing a lot from eating too much pizza and mac-and-cheese?).

Our metabolisms are way more adaptable than that. Generally if you're even in the right ballpark you are fine. There's clearly no exact optimal diet (even at an individualized level). If it were this way people would be keeling over left and right.

<comment><USER9> I thought the author had made it clear that the coughing bouts were caused by the marijuana.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Metabolic needs are also dynamic, and change over time based on factors ranging from the season to how much sleep a person got the previous night. So there literally is no such thing as "the perfect mix of vitamins, minerals and nutrients" for all human beings. A mix that is optimized for a 20-something inactive underweight male could quite easily kill a 60-year-old woman or a 30-year-old athlete._

So in my family, everyone from the 4-year-old girl to the 33-year-old man (me) eats the same food 90+% of the time, just in different amounts... and we all seem to be doing fine. Should we be dropping dead at any moment now?

<comment><USER3> The ~10% is what matters.

<comment><USER11> That 10% probably consists of candy for the kids and alcohol for the adults.

<comment><USER3> So they fed their baby candy instead of breastfeeding it?

<comment><USER12> Most experts generally agree that it's OK to stop breastfeeding your kid when they're 4 years old

<comment><USER3> Yes, my point is that people's dietary needs change. Breastfeeding is the most obvious example that nobody would deny, but there are others.

You simply can't rely on a one-size-fits-all diet without some risks. One person might be lactose intolerant, another might have nutritional deficiency, and a third might be at risk of overdose due to genetic or medical factors preventing them from offloading excess amounts of Sodium, Potassium, etc.

<comment><USER11> I don't think anyone is arguing that Soylent could replace breastfeeding (though there are plenty of people who use something similar: formula).

But for everybody else, Soylent sounds a lot easier to customize to personal needs. You can avoid allergens without losing the required nutrients, you can tune the amount of sodium and potassium to whatever you can deal with, etc. With normal food, you don't get that kind of fine-grained control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is a bit of two-way extremism going on here. On one side, Rob says this can replace food. On the other, this guy, Greg, says you can't replace food because of metabolism differences in humans.

Whatever, it doesn't matter. Soylent will probably still succeed. It's the power-bar of a modern era. You won't eat it all the time, but it will be nice to have around as an alternative when you don't want to cook a meal. I'm actually quite looking forward to having this around to take with me each day as lunch. Probably better for me than the crap they sell in some of my local cafeterias.

<comment><USER14> "It's the power-bar of a modern era."

Let's not go overboard. Soylent is non-dairy Slim Fast that some guy mixes the chemicals for in his basement which at the moment offers no cost savings to the customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sadly I think most of this could have been avoided if the Soylent team thought a bit more about their marketing.

If they had of come out and said, its a meal replacement then I think more people would be open to trying it.

However they came out and stated that you will never need to eat again and this can replace all your meals.

<comment><USER16> For one, the choice of name, is quite unfortunate given Soylent Green. At first, I thought the name choice was intentional, a play on the concept from the movie, but alas, it was unintentional and therefore just adds to the perception that the research into Soylent is amateurish. Whether or not this is the case is not something I'm saying, just saying that from a marketing perspective, Soylent (not the Green version) is in need of improvement.

<comment><USER17> How could it possibly be unintentional?! Did they actually say this, or have they just been coy about the naming process?

<comment><USER16> He named the product based on the Soylent from the book Make Room! Make Room!, which was a Soya / Lentil product meant to feed the masses, but the movie version Soylent Green had turned that into a mix consisting of human parts. While I understand he references the original book, the majority of folks familiar with Soylent from the movie context associate it with the human- composed product. This is what makes it unfortunate and unintentional -- I don't think they wanted / intended this association. And that's what marketing is -- it's creating a market perception and demand for a product.

It would be as if someone came up with a new, super-high end car and called it a Yugo. No matter what you do, you could never completely erase the pre- existing market perception even though the new product might be totally different.

<comment><USER11> He can't possibly have been unaware of the fact that the movie is far better known than the book. Even if he meant it as a reference to the book, he must have been aware of the movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Greg Stevens, a lifelong diet and work-out enthusiast, is unimpressed by Silicon Valley's attempts to re-engineer – or completely do away with – food. It's all part of the cult of the amateur enthusiast."

Is it ironic that his position of expertise here is as a amateur diet and workout enthusiast as he berates amateur enthusiasm everywhere? This article is definitely part of the cult of amateur enthusiast...

</comment><comment><USER19> soylent strikes me as yet another meal-replacement shake (slimfast, ensure, etc), only with clever and up-to-date guerilla marketing, targeted at tech- savvy 20-somethings who often don't put a lot of thought into food. since meal replacements are a proven, decades old, multi-billion dollar market, i am sure they will find at least a reasonable sized customer base.

<comment><USER20> Pretty much this. I've been drinking a concoction of Spirulina, Hemp fiber+protein, Rice milk, and MCT oil, for a couple of months now, and not only is it cheaper than most commercial MRPs (including soylent), I've found it to be much more satisfying and about as nutritious as well. That being said, I haven't exactly ever tried to live off any MRP for any prolonged period of time, which I guess is the 'novel' claim this product is being pitched under. At least they seem to be open-sourcing the recipe and keeping it relatively simple (as far as MRPs go).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> most amusing watching people getting trolled. The paragraph towards the end is particularly cutting:

> Rhinehart might not realise it, but he is a classic symptom of a generation > and, even, a cultural movement within the United States that appears to > believe you don't actually need to know facts: all you need to do is be > creative and enthusiastic.

which particularly made me think of that tech journalist Virginia Heffernan, a creationist, who refuted the big bang in place of her own story because essentially she preferred it and found it more appealing.

</comment><comment><USER22> > So there literally is no such thing as "the perfect mix of vitamins, > minerals and nutrients" for all human beings. A mix that is optimized for a > 20-something inactive underweight male could quite easily kill a 60-year-old > woman or a 30-year-old athlete.

The writer seems to be making two assumptions:

(1) if everyone eats the same food, it will cause health problem, including death, for many

(2) if people individually choose what to eat, they'll mostly eat healthier than if they all have the same diet chosen for them.

Are these assumptions true? To find out, we'd need to do an experiment. However, the experiment has already been done: during WW2 in Britain food was rationed and everyone ate what bureaucrats in Whitehall decided they should, not what they wanted to. The result? The nation's health improved.

So Stevens appears to be wrong.

<comment><USER23> You may have noticed that WW2 rationing was of _food_.

<comment><USER22> Soylent is food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They probably could have worded this better:

"Greg Stevens, a lifelong diet and work-out enthusiast, is unimpressed..."

"...It's all part of the cult of the amateur enthusiast."

<comment><USER11> I don't know how they could have worded it better. More detail about the author:

"Greg Stevens is an ex-academic and corporate mathematician who writes about science, philosophy, history, fitness, politics and the intersections between them."

So he's every bit as unqualified as Rhinehart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is drivel. It is nothing but anecdote and conjecture.

> When I was in college, I had a room-mate who lived on nothing but pizza, mac > and cheese and marijuana for a year. Aside from being thin, pale, and > subject to periodic, inexplicable bouts of coughing, he "felt fine", too.

There are people in the third world who would kill for a daily diet of pizza and macaroni-n-cheese. The author fails to address that his roommate ("stupid pothead! lolz") was eating _food_ and that Soylent is not _food_ , rather being synthesized raw nutrients. That is the key issue at hand, not the question of variety in a diet.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if you can just claim that variety in diet is unimportant. The body's needs change on a regular basis; do you really think dietary needs don't change? I thought his point with the anecdote was not 'this anecdote proves x', but rather 'we all do stupid things and get away with them when we're young'. He's trying to discourage the kind of one-size-fits-all thinking that leads a guy to leap from 'this meal replacement works good for me' to 'this meal replacement will work good for everyone'.

<comment><USER26> The body's needs only change because you're not getting everything you need with every meal. Soylent gives you everything you need all at once. I don't see why people in the 21st century still believe there's something magic about the food we eat.

<comment><USER3> That's blatantly ignorant. To give a few obvious examples: Changes in metabolism, bigger life changes like puberty and menopause, obviously pregnancy - these all change your dietary needs.

<comment><USER26> _> The body's needs change on a regular basis

> Changes in metabolism, bigger life changes like puberty and menopause, > obviously pregnancy_

I do not think these things happen on a regular basis.

<comment><USER3> They happen to _everyone_ at least twice in their life! Some people dozens of times! How common do they need to be for you to believe that messing up nutrition is problematic? It can literally kill people!

If you're going to argue that all the nutritional changes can be accounted for, I won't disagree with you. But to argue that people's dietary needs don't change is just uninformed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just think of Soylent as an alternative and not the only way to go. Soylent could help bring food to areas where people starve to death. It could be a good alternative to take when camping and hiking for days. And many others... People already eat a lot of crap food (like McDonald's), Soylent could be a better crap food. I wouldn't take it unless really necessary. I think it's a really good idea, but I wouldn't recommend to anyone who have good food available.

<comment><USER23> > _Soylent could help bring food to areas where people starve to death._

I think most people would prefer _food_ if they're starving. And for genuine medical emergencies there are _already_ genuine medical food substitutes intended to be used on a temporary basis.

> _It could be a good alternative to take when camping and hiking for days._

Google "trail mix".

<comment><USER28> I think most people would prefer to _live_ if they're starving. Soylent potentially solves a lot of logistical issues in feeding starving populations.

Also, trail mix doesn't negate Soylent being a good alternative.

<comment><USER29> If you're hiking significant distances carrying light, dry trail mix is much better than carrying heavy liquid Soylent.

<comment><USER28> You're not supposed to carry it as a liquid; in fact, I believe it doesn't keep well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Collectively we are not even in the infancy of nutritional understanding and Soylent claims to have the answer to nutrition.. good luck with that.

<comment><USER11> Wait, is your argument that because we don't know, we shouldn't try to figure out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think people enjoy eating, but the tradeoff (cooking, having a good recipe, etc) is too big for them so they go for fast food, skip meal, etc.

Could I be wrong?

<comment><USER32> There are already products available to satiate hunger/nutrition without having to cook and aren't fast food and have been around for decades.

I'm not going to knock Soylent as being dangerous or stupid. Quite frankly, I don't know enough about nutrition to make such a judgement, but I don't think it's design is anything revolutionary, either.

Soylent's angle on this isn't really positioning itself as a "meal replacement", but rather a full "diet replacement". When I eat a protein bar in the morning instead of eggs and veggies, I have no expectation or desire to live the rest of my life eating nothing but those protein bars. Soylent is specifically saying "you can live your life eating nothing but this". That's a ridiculous, if not dangerous, claim to make without having substantial data to back that claim up.

<comment><USER33> While I agree with you, I think you may have missed his point. Enjoying eating is different than satiating hunger/nutrition.

People enjoy eating food that tastes good. Fast junk food tastes good to a lot of people (including me, even knowing the health risks).

The only thing that has a chance of replacing this is food that still tastes good, or that you can convince them is good for them (Subway has been pretty successful with this tact).

I'm definitely skeptical that something mildly sweet tasting (like watery cake batter) is going to get the masses on board with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what long term effect this would have on say your digestion / absorption / urinary systems as well as your teeth and gums. I do think that this could be a way to elevate hunger, being able to drop supplies to places where it's needed quickly. But as a long term diet, I think it's dangerous (most of the points are outlined in that article).

</comment><comment><USER35> Alternate title: _" Shooting Ducks In A Pond - It Is So Much Easier To Snipe From The Weeds Than To Actually Create Something Valuable"_

What is this guy's argument? That doctors and nutritionists had to study hard, and if none of them decided to do it then it must be a bad idea? Rhinehart's idea isn't even new, he just managed to get it in front of the right audience.

>Unfortunately, such idealism doesn't survive contact with reality.

Maybe Rhinehart _will_ fail. So what? It is a pretty low-risk project. I don't think anybody is going to drop dead, and if anyone does manage to hurt themselves, they will probably only do so after ignoring some warning signs. OTOH, if he is in some way successful, he will have advanced nutritional science where domain experts failed to do so.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can't help but wonder what makes the idea of a meal replacer so special? Ensure, Boost, Nutrilite, etc. There is a plethora of products exactly like this available on the market. The only thing that seems to make this one 'original' is it's name.

<comment><USER37> Nursing home patients, some seniors, and those who cannot eat regular food (i.e. those with advanced MS) depend on them to survive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone comment on if there is a serious downside to not using our teeth at all?

</comment><comment><USER39> The real question seems easy:

Why should one start to "eat" in a way that our body was never made for?

For how long has humanity been eating natural and solid things again?

<comment><USER40> What do you mean, "to eat in a way that our body was never made for"?

You real question is non-sensical. Pre-humans and humans have eaten in many different ways throughout, and will continue to do so.

<comment><USER39> Just one more point: the colon depends on solid material in order to push things through (it's how it works). Get rid of solid food in there and its muscles won't create any real transit.

<comment><USER41> How about that one guy recently on HN that didn't eat anything for over a year and lived off his body fat? He defecated once in a month or so.

<comment><USER42> The vast majority of "person doesn't eat and still lives" stories are fakes or the person in question actually does eat and drink, sometimes secretly.

<comment><USER43> If you start out weighing ~450 pounds, the math on living without eating is pretty straightforward. The person in question did a medically supervised fast. He consumed water, a multivitamin and a small amount of yeast. (Also potassium tablets for a few months) His weight went from 456 to 180 pounds over the period of the fast; he regained about 15 pounds in the following 5 years.

He apparently defecated every 40-50 days.

(Though the stories about this are pretty recent, the event being described happened in 1965.)

[http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A reactionary article that doesn't offer anything except vague criticism, based on the age old principle "it's always been like this, don't rock the boat". Nothing to see here, move along.

</comment><comment><USER44> One of his arguments is that people have varying needs and soylent fails to address that, but it is tweak-able... and let's be real most people just eat what they like not what they need.

</comment><comment><USER26> _I once heard a truck driver call in to a talk radio show to explain his theory that global warming is caused by a decay in the Earth's orbit. The planet is gradually falling into the sun, which is why things are getting hotter, he said. This man was too uneducated about physics, cosmology, and climate science to realise how comically ill-informed he sounded._

Actually, the writer is the one that's ill-informed. The Earth is constantly falling into the sun. We call that an orbit. Doesn't lead to the truck driver's conclusions, but the author of this should be ashamed.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is The Kernel paying their writers yet? They seem to have had a few good articles recently, perhaps they have.

</comment><comment><USER46> "It's bad because it's not tailored."

And still I buy pants at the Gap.

</comment><comment><USER47> This needs to be downvoted

</comment><comment><USER48> Several of the interesting comments on the blog post kindly submitted here suggest that a reason not to be so doubtful about Soylent is, in the words of one of those comments,

 _most people currently eat extremely sub-optimal_

Are we really sure about the EXTREMELY suboptimal for people in the developed world who are not morbidly obese or dangerously underweight? I have much doubt about this assertion, because for sure my diet, as a middle-class North American, is much more varied as to number of different foodstuffs eaten per week or number of foodstuffs available per season than the diet of, say, my grandparents, who lived to the ages of 48 (death in car crash), 82 (death in car crash), 87, and 99. General rates of morbidity (illness) and mortality (death) are decreasing at ALL ages throughout the world known to most Hacker News readers. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity- why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,

[http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...](http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf)

originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."

[http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

A comparison of period life expectancy tables and cohort life expectancy tables for men and women in Britain

[http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/period-and- cohort-l...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/period-and-cohort-life- expectancy-tables/2010-based/p-and-c-le.html)

helps make the picture more clear. ("Period life expectancy" is what is usually reported for a whole country. But cohort life expectancy provides a better estimate of future lifespans of young people today,

[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1963392_1963367,00.html)

and is still steadily on the rise around the world.) So if many people today are eating "suboptimal" diets, as claimed without particular evidence by some of the supporters of the Soylent startup, it would appear that the health effects of that suboptimality are, at least, swamped by more favorable trends.

</comment><comment><USER49> Finally!

<comment><USER49> Yeah, vote me down. How are you not getting that this guy is charging you $70 for a bag of powdered oatmeal and maltodextrin?

<comment><USER50> Feel free to market and produce your own cheaper alternative.</comment></comment></comment>


How to make your last name plural - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/11/25/how_to_make_your_last_name_plural_on_holiday_cards_and_avoid_apostrophe.html <comment><USER2> From this link:

> What if the end of my last name normally functions as an irregular noun?

> It is not irregular when it is part of a last name. _Happy holidays from the > Hoffmans_

From the Lord of the Rings, birthday party speech: [https://youtu.be/jkwu7b34YN4?t=84](https://youtu.be/jkwu7b34YN4?t=84)

> Bilbo: "My dear Bagginses and Boffins, Tooks and Brandybucks, Grubbs, > Chubbs, Hornblowers, Bolgers, Bracegirdles and Proudfoots." [cheers]

> Old Proudfoot Hobbit: "Proudfeet!"

From [http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Proudfoot](http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Proudfoot) :

> They insist that if there is more than one of them, they are known as > Proudfeet, not Proudfoots.

Yes, this is all irrelevant information.</comment>


Trouble of deciding what to do? - <AUTHOR>

Clockies is about having all future in one place. Discover & share interesting future happenings with friends to help them decide what to do.
Pls give me your thoughts and feedback about Clockies. We think that this app can change people in how they decide to do interesting thing with friends.
Clockies pitch:
https://clockies.viewscreencasts.com/7d531d265b004af6836a868747a57afc
http://www.clockies.com <comment><USER2> I have to agree with Slater. Having only FB log-in might have it's advantage to limited content (why limit yourself?).

And to some degree it's better not to use FB login at all when you start out (again I'm not sure what your site does). But why depend on someone else to make or brake you? First build up a core user base. And think about the following:

Describe Key points of the site. Will it be a community site? Do you have a how it works page? Or a short Demo that outlines the site in a nutshell?

At the very least allow visitors to get a taste of the site is all about. Good luck, hope to hear more.

<comment><AUTHOR> We tried to have a more thoroughly describing landing page. But believe me, this product you will get more with just a few sentence than if we described it with a 100 words. If you use the product, i.e. if you log in you will understand it immediately. That's also why we will make a demo video as you suggested, but we can't just afford it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) Doesn't tell me anything what it does

2) Facebook login as the only choice? No thanks. Quit being lazy devs and implement your own user login. It's not that hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had a regular sign up form before. But we thought that: Why shall user's create an another social graph, when you have facebook? it takes maybe months even years to get your 100 friends on a new app. That's why we choose to have facebook. Though we will consider other login alternatives in the future. Right now only choice to login is with facebook.

<comment><USER3> That's cool. I still think it's lazy, as you can tie in FB integration at a later point.

And I still have no idea what your app does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. we had made a pitch video:

[https://clockies.viewscreencasts.com/7d531d265b004af6836a868...](https://clockies.viewscreencasts.com/7d531d265b004af6836a868747a57afc)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Global Fossil Record - <AUTHOR> http://d2fn.com/2014/08/13/global-fossil-record.html

<comment><USER2> Very nice visualization, but the conditions necessary for fossilization should also be considered when weighting the types of species and drawing conclusions.

The conditions for fossilization occur with lower frequency in terrestrial ecosystems compared to aquatic systems for example, so even though complex life originated in marine ecosystems, if there had been more terrestrial species than aquatic species, we would not necessarily expect to find this in fossilization as far as I know.

Plant evolution is something that is extremely interesting to me, and I liked that part of the graphic. The arms race in ecosystems (With the classic example being rainforests) driving biodiversity, and the evolution of plants from gymnosperms to angiosperms in response to this (among other factors) is fascinating!

<comment><AUTHOR> "Paleontologists are sure that the fossil record is biased."...

"Land animals are probably very poorly represented as well. For example, most animals that are now alive, or ever have lived, are insects, but the fossil record of insects is poor."...

[http://www.k5geosource.org/1content/1sc/fossils/pg6.html](http://www.k5geosource.org/1content/1sc/fossils/pg6.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the wheel graphic could suggest (though not necessarily) that we evolved from a fresh water creature. Is there any theories on this that you guys know of?

it seems like it was always assumed to be a salt water creature, but it actually makes more sense in my head as a fresh water one, as it would pop into habitats conducive to terrestrial life

<comment><USER4> You're correct, the immediate ancestors of tetrapods almost certainly lived in freshwater, as known intermediate fossils like titaalik were found in fresh water stream deposits[1]. I believe all of the immediate ancestors of and early tetrapods have been found in fresh water deposits, although I can't confirm.

[1] [http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/searching4Tik3.html](http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/searching4Tik3.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That is a very cool visualization, one of the best I have seen.

</comment><comment><USER6> good jub dietrich</comment>


Snapshot of the new workplace: Karen Owen's PowerPoint - <AUTHOR> http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2010/10/09/snapshot-of-women-at-work-karen-owens-powerpoint/ <comment><USER2> "That Owen used this male tool to talk about what men are really like in bed turns our workplace preconceptions on their head."

Um, no. Not really.

It's sort of clever (albeit clumsy), but nothing new, nothing revolutionary, nothing is on its head.

For that, see this: <http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/eeei/></comment>