Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (113 Models Explained) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fs.blog/mental-models/ <comment><USER2> Vaguely related I've found Yuval Harari's stuff interesting ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249))

The

>You told the Guardian that without meditation, you'd still be researching medieval military history — but not the Neanderthals or cyborgs. What changes has meditation brought to your work as a historian?

> ... the entire exercise ... is to learn the difference between fiction and > reality, what is real and what is just stories that we invent and construct > in our own minds. Almost 99 percent you realize is just stories in our > minds. This is also true of history. Most people, they just get overwhelmed > by the religious stories, by the nationalist stories, by the economic > stories of the day, and they take these stories to be the reality.

bit

<comment><USER3> To understand meditation, one has to understand how our brain works. Once you fully understand the brain, it's a no-brainer to meditate regularly. If you are game, I recommend everyone read the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.

<comment><USER4> > To understand meditation, one has to understand how our brain works.

I'm fairly sure we're still decades if not centuries away from this. We barely understand the broadest strokes of the brain, and can only really treat its deficiencies by bathing the entire thing in chemicals.

<comment><USER3> I did not mean from a comprehensive understanding but there are things we can understand such as left vs. right brain, role of our limbic system, role of emotion when it comes to reason and decision making, etc. These concepts will give us a window into how our brains work and the need to train it using techniques such as meditation. Sorry, I was cryptic in my earlier comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good list. A few other good concepts to know:

      + minority rule
      + signalling theory
      + hypergamy
      + purity spirals
      + sexual selection
      + iceberg principle
      + principal component
      + emperor has no clothes (shared vs common knowledge)
      + Hajnal line
      + trapdoor function
      + invisible hand
      + information hiding (encapsulation)
      + loose coupling
      + iatrogenics
      + ergodicity
      + entropy
      + unbundling (see pmarca's tweets)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like to read more on the subject, I can recommend this article put together by Slava Akhmechet at Stripe, creator of RethinkDB.

[https://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html](https://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html)

<comment><USER7> I recommend my book, "ReModel: Create mental models to improve your life and lead simply and effectively" [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F2RS1G6](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F2RS1G6), which gives you an exercise to write out your mental models so you can both learn from experience about models and how they work, and identify the main models you use in your life. There's a free excerpt here: [http://joshuaspodek.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ReModel_b...](http://joshuaspodek.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ReModel_by_Joshua_Spodek_excerpt.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what could be added to this list from models explained in Eliezer Yudkowsky's Rationality: From AI to Zombies book (which is available online: [https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai- zombies/](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/))

PS: Created an OPML file for 113 models with explanations:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba4zvf626zpqz57/mental%20models.op...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba4zvf626zpqz57/mental%20models.opml?dl=0)

<comment><USER9> Do you (or anyone else) have recommendations for applications to view OPML files on macOS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of those are simply wrong.

For example, the section on power law says "The central limit theorem does not apply and there is thus no 'average' earthquake. This is true of all power-law distributions." But power laws with power -k have a well-defined mean if k>2, and finite variance if k>3.

The section on feedback loops implies that runaway is only possible with positive feedback, and that loops with negative feedback are stable.

Others are mutually exclusive. Tendency to stereotype is bad, but Bayesian method is good. Clearly both can't be right, and no rule is given to differentiate between those cases.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Most rational people.. one of the finest thinkers in the world..

Is this advice coming from a professor/scientist/philosopher? No, they are the investors who make the most money. In a neo-liberal society, the richest people get the intellectual authority to tell us how to make intelligent decisions. Incredible! /s

<comment><USER12> This is basically an ad hominem attack.

<comment><USER11> Allow me to change your view. What irks me are sentences like these

> The great investor and teacher Benjamin Graham..

> Smart people like Charlie Munger..

> Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the finest thinkers in the > world..

There is no mention in the article as to why I should believe they are as smart as the author believes them to be. (Hint: They made a lot of money and their advice seems rational, so they should be smart?). No doubt they are great investors (they made a lot of money), and I would follow their advice in money matters. But I question their credibility as extraordinary thinkers.

Notice how this type of content is marketed and perceived. Specifically, any advice by investors/CEO/Entrepreneur (or other individuals whose primary experience has been in making money/increasing market value) being touted as general success mantras (including in your personal life). Principles by Ray Dalio being a recent example. And as I mentioned, I believe this is a product of the neo-liberal ideology that has taken over our society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone follow the mental model way of thinking? I am curious how do people apply so many models in their daily life. It is possible to add couple of models like Hanlon's razor etc but 100+ seems too many.

<comment><USER14> I doubt event the author incorporates all 100+ models in their every day life, but I don't believe that is the point.

These models provide some kind of an insight into some of the underlying concepts of different domains. Some of models are generic enough to have a very wide range of applications (ex: Hanlon's razor). While others are a bit too specific (ex: Fat-Tailed Processes).

The common thread across all models is that once you understand them, you have an access to a new vocabulary which can be used in almost any domain (ex: The military mental model of Asymmetric Warfare in the domain of business. In general, if you are a business person I suspect you are going to find almost all of Military/War mental models extremely useful).

The important point is to understand this metaphorical method of thinking, of how different things can be connected through abstractions, and then generate insights based on that. Once you start doing that, you'll accumulate a lot of different mental models without even realizing it. Almost everyone already uses mental models. Doing it consciously makes you that much better at it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A related course on the topic: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/model- thinking](https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking)

I found it very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Love this. But am irked by how incomplete these models seem. "First Principles", "Probabilistic Thinking". Both seek to formalize causality in events.

Would speculate Buffet, Munger, et al don't actually bother much with cause and effect when entering large positions. They look at trends, price-action, cash flow and other mathematical micro-economic indicators. As well as a bias on the long term survivability of betting on America as a macro whole.

Michael Abrash, now Oculus Chief Scientist, has this great definition of "Zen Optimizations" in his famous graphics programming black books. There is the way a thing is advertised to work. There is the way you believe it to work. And then there is the way it actually works!

</comment><comment><USER17> In psychology there's this concept called _body mirroring_. Monkeys do it, as does humans. It's the idea that the subordinate ape tends to mirror the posture of the dominant one. Mental models are obviously a useful tool, but I always found it funny that people who write posts about it keep reusing the phrase "latticework", as if it has any useful meaning, instead of just removing it to make the content more concise. I think of it as a linguistic version of body mirroring.

<comment><USER18> I disagree with the idea that 'latticework' has no useful meaning. Here's the way Munger uses the term:

 _You 've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head._

To me, 'latticework of models' onto which one hooks examples and personal experience is a rather neat analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't recall a joke about a President looking for an economist with only one hand. In economic forecasting there are mental models of the type: On the one hand, ... On the other hand. Polya how to solve list many ways to develop useful math analogies, but it seems that end result is not very satisfactory. I think that to make an intelligent decision you have to feel deeply involved in the subject, then some kind of unconcious force do wonders, it seems you can benefit learning or focussing in certain patterns, but I think that deep is better than breast. Also there is the theory of the hedgehog versus the fox [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox)

<comment><USER20> Which is a model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not enough mathematics. A substantial chunk of these are derived by analogy from analytical domains which are kind of on the fringe between pure math and applied math, like game theory and financial theory. There, the models and their primitives being described are part of a more coherent body of knowledge that lets you apply the concept precisely.

I'm going to get a reply that "oh but reading this Farnam Street stuff helps build intuition" and you might very well be right, but this knowledge is only developed to its fullest extent when it's precise and considered deductively. Taking a microecon course made it difficult for me to stop seeing microecon for at least a year. Freakonomics wouldn't have been technical enough.

<comment><USER21> I don't think I agree. At least in most cases. It might be important to learn the math in order for the models to make sense, but once you learn the model you don't need the math. For example, most circuit designers don't use any math (other than simple arithmetic and algebra) when designing circuits because they have heuristics that allow them not to think about the math. In that case, thinking about the math just gets you bogged down in the details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is great! I try to keep track of such lists, and this is the best I've seen so far.

I put up a Mediawiki instance five years ago (wikilogic.org) to publish my own list, but didn't follow through. Interestingly I put a FS link in the bottom right : )

A couple of tweaks I would make:

\- Putting 'Inversion' at the top--I think it #1 in terms of underuse.

\- Aside from Occam, Bayes, Pareto, Dunbar, and Pavlov, I would drop all models named after people. The chances of someone remembering something are much better if they don't need to learn a name in conjunction! (e.g. see the other comment about the difficulty of learning "Hanlon's Razor")

To take this material to the next level, I imagine the next step is to build case studies.

<comment><USER23> Naming things is hard. To drop the person's name from the model you'd ideally have a replacement that is both concise and expressive; a concise name allows us to effectively talk about the model itself, which is also important. Often, where such a phrase exists it's already used as an alternative:

* Occam's Razor: Law of Parsimony

* Pareto Principle: 80/20 Rule

* Hanlon's Razor: arguably an extension of the Principle of Charity

I do agree that moving away from the people names would be a benefit if (and maybe only if) we can find a similarly concise replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a good little book on a selection of decision models to have with you sometimes for inspiration and remembering: [https://www.worldofbooks.com/en- au/books/mikael-krogerus/the...](https://www.worldofbooks.com/en- au/books/mikael-krogerus/the-decision-book-fifty-models-for-strategic- thinking-the-tschappeler-and- kroger/GOR002766082?gclid=Cj0KCQjw3InYBRCLARIsAG6bfMTvLOFT- clQM1OXcO4ikBYazFyTd09BhWoqAZM1eoYKG-dyTsLGvokaAiHyEALw_wcB)

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the idea that mental models are the most condensed form of knowledge. But I don't quite agree with the premise that there is some universal list that will be equally useful for everyone. Investors like Charlie Munger need to have a very broad knowledge - because they need to analyse all kinds of businesses - but for other peoples a list concentrating more on their field of work would be more useful.

</comment><comment><USER26> One of the best blogs on learning and life wisdom.

<comment><USER27> His newsletter is actually the only newsletter that I get weekly and skim it regularly.

I agree with other commenters that sometimes the material is weak and more like "Do these 5 things that successful people (bankers, investors, entrepreneurs) do and be also succesful" but generally there is quality content on this blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I write a biweekly newsletter about mental models in case anyone is interested: [https://alexpetralia.github.io/newsletters](https://alexpetralia.github.io/newsletters)

</comment><comment><USER29> more structure [http://conceptspace.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Lists_of_Concepts...](http://conceptspace.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Lists_of_Concepts?li_source=LI&li_medium=wikia- footer-wiki-rec)</comment>


How many jobs do robots really replace? - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2020/how-many-jobs-robots-replace-0504 <comment><USER2> Is automation happening in the USA? Yes, at breakneck speed the last 15 years. My niece is an automation engineer (as is her husband). She's had all the work she could handle since graduating 8 years ago. Been all over the country but mostly in lonely cornfields far from big cities, changing some factory over to total automation at the cost of every job in whatever small town is nearby.

During lockdown, it's been totally hectic. Everybody wants to go full speed ahead on automation.

You want a guaranteed job and interesting work? Do the automation engineer thing. Some physics, some materials science, some computers, some pneumatics and electronics, a lot of controls, a little bit of everything.

Her husband is not in batch processing; he's in continuous processing. Read that: oil refineries. He's been totally overbooked shutting down lines that haven't shut down since they were built. Sometime soon he'll go back and start them all up again. But it takes 2-4 weeks to start just one. Stage by stage, bringing up pressure and temperature and monitoring for problems, thru 100 of stages. Nothing is going to come back quickly after this is over.

<comment><USER3> I spent the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine wondering what I could do now that I couldn't do before. Instead of focusing on the negative, what opportunities could come out of this?

Then I realized it was already happening, but not obvious. The big redesign of an automation product for a customer at the day job? Going full bore when we expected that COVID would slow it down. They're breathing down our neck asking when it'll be done.

My side project work that helps with machine tool retrofit? Same thing: my customer says by the time I'm done with the latest design change and have prototypes ready, they'll have sold more systems already.

I'm counting my blessings, but this is not what I expected :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The study does suggest, however, that robots have a direct influence on > income inequality. The manufacturing jobs they replace come from parts of > the workforce without many other good employment options; as a result, there > is a direct connection between automation in robot-using industries and > sagging incomes among blue-collar workers.

Jobs will never fully disappear, but at some point, the vast majority of the human race will be classed out of work. Net wealth will continue to increase but will be increasingly concentrated into a smaller group of people (i.e. the people who own the automation and the people with PhDs who make the automation). I believe at a certain point, some kind of universal basic income will become necessary to support the people that will fall outside this small group.

<comment><USER5> Automation eliminated 90% of farm jobs over the last 200 years, and the American middle class became immensely wealthier directly because of this.

Automation creates better jobs and it's benefits lifts up everyone over time.

<comment><USER6> Contrasting 200 years with the 4th industrial revolution(s) seems erroneous.

<comment><USER5> It's not 200 years, it's the entire history of the human race. Automation produces wealthier societies by improving their productivity.

Every single time automation has done this it's eliminated jobs, yet replaced them with better ones. If you demonstrated the personal computer with a spreadsheet to bankers and accountants in the late 70s, they could easily see the jobs that these terrible new automation tools would destroy, but few could predict the jobs they'd create.

When plows, combines, tractors came to farming, each time it was easy to see what jobs were no longer necessary. But it was impossible to know what jobs would be created. Each of these tools made food cheaper and more plentiful, freeing more disposable income to be spent on new products and inventions that created better jobs than the ones we lost.

It's arrogant to think that after this has happened thousands of times, that our time is any different. Or to pretend that the clarity we see the jobs we will lose to robots is something new, and that our inability to forsee new jobs to replace them somehow means that this time there won't be any. We've never been able to foresee them but they always will come.

If robots make things cheaper and better, those savings will create new products, markets and jobs. And if they don't, robots won't steal anyone's job.

<comment><USER4> First, our muscles were replaced. But that was alright because we could still use our minds.

What happens though when our minds become obsolete as well? There's nothing left to transition to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands This feels like the second technological revolution. I remember my Dad in the 1970's working with some of the largest companies to update all their old analog stuff with the new shiny computer databases. The stories he told me for years just blew my mind.

I figure the 70-90's were the first wave, this is easily going to be the second wave. It will have all the disruptions and human job loss, frantic movement of people to other industries and a ton of other misery just as the first one did.

Full disclosure: I'm also in automation. I'm currently doing RPA (Robotic Process Automation) development and our team is swamped with requests from teams who are trying to cut the fat out of their departments and reduce head count to try and save the company billions over the next five years.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd recommend looking into Acemoglu's full body of work[0], the papers are quite readable and investigate some hypothesis that others had only spoke about in generalities, including the impacts of demographic shifts, automation, regulatory impact, and more.

[0] [https://economics.mit.edu/faculty/acemoglu/paper](https://economics.mit.edu/faculty/acemoglu/paper)</comment>


Ask HN: What blogging engine do you use at your startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking towards starting a blog as an offshot of some business ideas I've been having. To that end I need some recommendations and thought I would pick your mind.
What blogging engine do you use at your startup? What advantages does it have? I'd be hosting the blog myself.  I considered rolling my own, would you recommend/discourage trying that?
Thanks for any advice, I'll keep HN posted as things progress. <comment><USER2> I rolled my own with Django, which I kind of regret now. A blog is really about the content (in this case, news about your product) and not the technology you use.

If you're going to host your own, I'd recommend WordPress. If you don't mind someone else hosting it, try out Tumblr + Disqus.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yahoo Store! Bet I'm the only one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you typically recommend the use of a blog to YC applicants? I suppose I'm seeing it as a simple — but effective and fulfilling — way to build some visibility for the project.

<comment><USER3> It's worthwhile if you're a good writer, but if writing comes hard to you I wouldn't bother. If blogging is forced it's painful for both parties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Posterous. Easy to blog, they host it, pity you cannot theme it (yet)

</comment><comment><USER5> I personally use Django with disqus for comments. It takes less than an hour to create a decent blog engine in Django if you know the framework, although it took me significantly more than that the first time I did it. With disqus, you can easily add a comment system in seconds.

For me, Django was the best choice because I use it for everything else and I really like Python. If you are currently using a more typical LAMP stack, then something like WordPress may be the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER6> I usually roll my own, I dont care for most of the features that come with... and its easier to add my own features (like this one: [http://codeachrome.com/blog/post/2-add-ruby-code-to-blog- com...](http://codeachrome.com/blog/post/2-add-ruby-code-to-blog-comments))

My problem is that the blog tends to be the afterthought for me, so building a site around the blog is not a features I want or need.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wrote my own shell script -- given my minimalist needs that was much easier than figuring out how to use someone else's blog code.

</comment><comment><USER8> I used my own simply because I had already written it and polished it for release before needing it for a business site.

If I was starting from scratch and needed something, I would use wordpress and spend my time elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> We'll probably be designing our own. If we don't, it'll be Tumblr-based.

</comment><comment><USER10> BLOGENGINE.NET OR Tumblr.com

Tumblr is damn easy, but blogengine.net is damn fun.

For Example blog.drinkingfor.com

</comment><comment><USER11> drupal.

Though I have to say that their policy towards upgrades leaves me underwhelmed.

</comment><comment><USER12> wordpress and posterous, both rock. wp for general day to day blogging, posterous for mobile blogging, sneak peaks, and other little bits of content I capture on iphone and want to post. twitter as well if that counts.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook for dev? What is your toolchain? - <AUTHOR>

I am thinking about getting a Chromebook to use on the go to thinker with. I like that it is light weight and inexpensive. I've also read some positive reviews about using crouton but was curious if anyone has been successful with it more than just as a proof of concept. <comment><USER2> I had been using a C720 with crouton up until a week ago. I usually just close the lid to hibernate it, but that particular day I turned it off. When I turned it back on, I couldn't restart crouton ("Cannot open /dev/tty0 (No such file or directory")

I suspect that's the result of an update in the underlying ChromeOS, but I can't say for sure. Regardless, I think I'll wipe ChrOS off anyway and just put Debian Jessie on it. I don't like to think my setup can be broken by an underlying OS update.

I mostly like the hardware. My biggest gripe is the lack of a delete key on the keyboard, and the placement of the power button just above the backspace key makes it easy to hit inadvertently,

</comment><comment><USER3> I was thinking about one. I bought a used ThinkPad X201 off EBay for significantly less money...including a replacement battery.

I avoided to jumping through hoops to get Linux installed, avoided managing scarce local storage, gained a copy of Windows 7, and got glorious hardware with a robust secondary support market.

Oh, and the keyboard. What I gave up was spending an extra $100 to get something new. For me it was worth it. YMMV. If I didn't want Linux (or Windows) The calculus might be different.

</comment><comment><USER4> I run Ubuntu Trusty with kernal 3.19 on HP Chromebook 14 4GBRAM on which I upgraded the SSD to 64GB as my personal dev machine.I mostly work with Go, JS which work very well & Android Studio - the last is a bit slow but bearable - battery life is excellent. The most important enablers were buying a Haswell processor based model with support for Legacy boot and upgrading the ssd without which it's not really feasible to use it as a dev machine. [http://chromebook-falco.blogspot.in/?m=1](http://chromebook- falco.blogspot.in/?m=1)

Look up the ChrUbubuntu script for pointers on partitioning but it's not really needed as newer Linux kernals have most of the patches it applies. [http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.in/2013/10/chrubuntu-for- new-c...](http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.in/2013/10/chrubuntu-for-new- chromebooks-now-with.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never owned one but have a friend who uses one (although I don't recall his model). He observed that it works reasonably well for stuff that's primarily going to happen server-side (shocking, I know) but that he prefers a conventional OS X / Linux / Windows system because he often finds himself wanting to do things locally that should be easy (i.e. scripting, little GUIs) but actually turn out to be hard. It's 90% there but that last 10% makes it not really worth it for him.

He also observed that modern MacBooks and good Linux machines, like that 13" Dell, can be bought for $1000 – $1500 and last for years. For those prices he'd rather buy, either new or refurbished, and have less hassle.

</comment><comment><USER6> Asus x205ta is a better, lighter, cheaper alternative to chromebooks. Install vagrant and use linux. This works perfectly fine for me, have been using this setup for months now, and did i tell you the screen quality and battery life are excellent! All i needed was a browser and command line. I got both with this tiny little machine :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I use one daily, I replaced my macbook pro with the pixel 2. I also use a Toshiba Chromebook 2.

I use node, ruby, postgres, redis, rvm, nvm, terminator, atom, and smartgit.

I have tried sublime and visual studio code also and both work, I just prefer atom.

All programs I have open in their own window or tab and use chromeos native browser for web browsing and dev tools. One exception is smartgit. It spins up multiple processes and I haven't figured out how to run it without running a full Ubuntu desktop.

If you plan to try it out install crouton with xiwi,extension targets and use xiwi to open the programs.

</comment><comment><USER8> My only dev computer anymore is an HP Chromebook 14 with 4GB ram. I run linux on it only(antergos at the moment, but ubuntu installs fine too), no dual booting or traces of ChromeOS left behind. This is not just a proof of concept, it is my daily driver and I can answer any questions about it.

Pros -

Lightweight

~8 hours battery life

Great keyboard

Boots and shuts down very fast

Extremely durable for what it is. My 90 lb bloodhound steps on it constantly, and has never harmed it despite my freaking out.

Cons -

Suspend/hibernate is flaky - I disable them

The touchpad was hard to get used to

Hard drive space can be limited (16 GB in my case).

Overall, I much prefer it to a fullsize laptop. If you have any questions, let me know.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have an Acer C200 (low-end Chromebook) running Crouton. I use it for all my day-to-day programming because it has great battery life (about 10 hours).

There are occasional slowdowns, mainly when using Firefox. The 16Gb of SSD are quite limiting, but it's usable.

I mainly develop using Emacs with various extensions. I've tried Eclipse and it wasn't even remotely powerful enough. I do Python, C++, Web dev and a bit of Common Lisp.

Be aware that dual-booting Linux isn't yet possible on BayTrail-powered Chromebooks because of compatibility issues with SeaBIOS.

</comment><comment><USER10> Used one travelling Xmas 2013, its pretty good value theres no denying that. I did have some problems with some binaries, I'm sure someone else could better explain it but I think it was something to do with the processor it runs on, mySQL (I think it was) was a nuisance to get up and running because of it. Must have worked, though, because I worked on it for a month or so.

Obviously it doesn't compare to something like a Macbook Air - which I have with me this time round.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using a Samsung Series 5 XE55 for quite a while - about 2 years now.

I've installed crouton and the extension that lets it run in a browser tab. It works pretty well for development tasks. I also use a couple of cloud dev environments (nitrous.io and codeanywhere) and of course just straight up ssh into a server if I feel like it.

I tend to work in any of ruby, python, c#, go, php, general front end javascript, html, css and lots of database stuff - so essentially various forms of web dev. I've never really had any trouble getting things up and running in croutaon - even managed to get mono and c# working and the latest visual studio code on it.

Which of the three options I use (crouton, cloud, ssh) is really down to whim. I'm comfortable using different dev environments, which I think helps - I'm not fanatical about any particular editor or tool chain - so I'm happy in vim, sublime text, visual studio, online editors etc and climb in and out of languages as I need to. The key for me is to have a disciplined git workflow with my repositories stashed nicely online. The only thing I miss now and then, is some easy image optimisation in the chromeos itself.

I kind of love the fact that the chromebook has great battery life, a pretty comfortable keyboard and that it's basically disposable (I got a factory second for less than £100). It's also pretty sturdy. I've travelled a fair bit with it, dropped it and banged it around, it's been splashed, had coffee poured on it, children's grubby fingers poking the screen - I just don't care...I wipe it down and carry on. It's kind of nice to not be precious about my equipment and the discipline a small hard drive forces on me means everything is properly stashed and backed up so if the machine dies...well c'est la vie.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been using a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (4GB, full-HD display version) that I got on sale at Best Buy for ~$280 during their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales and it's really done good for me so far. Crouton took no time at all to set up, and I only use it when I can't do something in the cloud or SSH'd to one of my servers. Since most of my time, including most development time, is spent "in the cloud" then the only thing I really need my Chromebook for is basic web browsing and an SSH client. I also occasionally use Koding for development, and I'm looking into Cloud9 just for the added ability of being able to hook it up to my own server(s). Most of my work is web development (Go, JavaScript/Node.js, HTML stuff, python, ruby, etc.), software development (Go, Linux stuff, etc.), and security auditing/light pentesting (which I can do with a small set of tool using crouton or other tools that live on my servers).

Overall, if you have something that's nearly always on - like a server or VM - then the Chromebook will treat you really well. Even if you don't have one, you can easily use free services such as Koding and Cloud9 for development systems, all without even touching crouton. The only thing you'd really need crouton for is if you want more fine grain control of the software living on your machine, install other program (e.g. firefox, tor browser, atom, or any linux programs).

As far as hardware, the Chromebook has just what I need to survive. The speakers on the Toshiba Chromebook 2 are awesomely loud, and made by SkullCandy which explains that. The battery life at 100% can easily last 10-12 hours of full use. The display is a gorgeous 1080P IPS display, and it has HDMI out just in case. The 4GB full-HD model also has a 2.58 GHz intel celeron processor, so I don't have to worry about ARM compatibilities and it just runs very well, plus it has 4GB of RAM to help with that processing. One factor I was very surprised about was the weight: it's barely there. Seriously though, I didn't expect it to be that light. But it doesn't have a fan, so that could explain why it's so light - not enough thickness to pack heavier componentry into. And it doesn't get too hot at all either, unless you're using it from 100% to dead constantly with heavier processing then it gets just a bit warm.

Overall, if you can shell out the couple hundred dollars for a Chromebook, I'd go for it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I use a Samsung Chromebook 2 running XFCE via crouton. I use it as my main machine for work and play. Because I do web development, the only real drawback with this setup is the ARM processor (not all software has builds for ARM) but in return I get incredible battery life. Like, really outstanding battery life.

Some software that won't run on ARM:

\- Skype (use Google Hangouts instead)

\- SVN (why aren't you using Git already?)

\- Sublime Text (I begrudgingly use Geany or Ninja IDE)

<comment><USER14> I use the same setup XFCE on my Samsung chromebook. I code python on my machine but for things that won't run ARM I have a Mac Mini that has virtual box where I run headless virtual machines. I can reach my server from anywhere using OpenVPN as it is hooked to my home router and use dynamic DNS to reach the OpenVPN server. I am testing lots of projects with that setup. I use Docker, Ansible, Cloudier Hadoop and other projects :) my own private cloud server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a acer c720p. I run a CLI only linux (crouton) that I run and then access via the chrome secure shell plugin through localhost. From there it's just zsh + tmux + vim. I mostly do python web dev with postgres and am learning some C and Haskell on the side. No problems so far.

I like it like this because I really just need a browser and a terminal. ChromeOS _is_ a browser so no need for a full DE.

</comment><comment><USER16> I did for awhile for Python development. I use the NumPy/SciPy stack, and only used Chromebooks with the 2955u chip, so it ran pretty snappy for me. Bad screen got to me, and rather than drop money on a Pixel I bought an HP x360 Spectre and haven't looked back. The Chromebook is still nice for travel/coffeeshop where damage/loss/theft is a concern as they are priced so cheap. I spilled a beer on one, shrugged, went out and bought a replacement. And how can you knock an all day battery?

Right now the Chromebook is being used as a chrome cast station that I leave by the couch. Today it was streaming classical music youtube videos for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't personally develop on a Chromebook but I teach kids who do and they'll use a cloud based IDE like Cloud9 or Nitrous.</comment>


How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=36&Issue=2&ArticleID=6 <comment><USER3> Fyi, the animation showing evolution of Latin alphabet: [http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/latin.html](http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/latin.html)

<comment><USER4> That was neat. Thanks for posting it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Egyptian hieroglyphs included a group of 24 signs that were read phonetically, representing single letters (specifically, consonants) matching the first sound of the word symbolised by the pictogram (the "rebus" principle) [1].

In fact, most Egyptian hieroglyphs had multiple readings, the same sign standing alternatively for a single sound (letter or syllable), a single word, or some more or less broad concept. Other cultures also had similar systems, or used syllabaries or partial alphabets (abjads [2] and abugidas [3]), or a liberal mix of several systems.

In other words, the idea of alphabetic writing (representing atomic sounds rather than entire words or phrases) did occur more than once. It's only a very small hop from a syllabary to a full alphabet, anyway.

What is unique to the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet discussed in the OP then, is probably the fact that it used the phonetic reading as its sole system, probably for the reasons detailed in the OP: it was used by officially "illiterate" people who didn't have the opportunity to learn (or use!) a more complex script.

So, I guess, their big innovation was not phonetic writing per se, but the fact that they distilled it down to the cheapest, dirtiest, fastest-to-learn bits that could be used by people with very few resources.

________________

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egyptian#Uniliteral_signs)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure what the author means by "THE alphabet". We have substantial evidence now that the Vedas were written in 2500 BC or earlier, using Devanagari - <USER2> advanced script / alphabet system used even today. So surely, "THE" alphabet was invented much before that - somewhere around 3500 BC I would surmise.

<comment><USER7> The Vedas and the oldest, the Rig Veda, were composed as oral poetry and memorized. We don't have the first evidence of writing in India until inscriptions using the Brahmi script from the edicts of Ashoka around 300 BC. Even then, it would be centuries before large bodies of spoken word such as the Vedas and the Pali Canon were committed to writing.

Of course there's the the Indus Valley script, but theres no real evidence to suggest that it was used to write significant and lengthy works. Especially since the IVC collapse would have predated the migration of the Aryans. But there actually doesn't need to be a common writing system, since we know for a fact it originated independently in two places, the Sumerians and the Maya. It's less clear cut (no ocean separating) but it's likely the Oracle Bone script in China was independent too.

<comment><USER6> Few people in this day & age believe in the "migration of the Aryans" theory! I think it has been thoroughly debunked and has been recognized as a dishonest attempt by Christian / British historians to distort history & show that nothing original was ever developed in the Indian subcontinent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reason we cannot see these concepts in today's Hebrew letters is because the modern Hebrew script has been adopted from Aramaic script used in Persia. Most learned Jews were taken into captivity by Babylon, which was then captured by Persia. And the schools which Jews established in Babylon thrived, and most likely adopted the Persian script when writing.

If you want to see the original script, look at a Samaritan Pentateuch.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_alphabet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_alphabet)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that he thinks the people who invented the canaanite alphabet were illiterate. There was at least one alphabet invented in the modern era by an illiterate:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary)

(Although that someone who invents an alphabet can be considered to be illiterate is interesting)

I also wonder how many of the people who adapted the Chinese hanzi to their local languages were actually literate in Chinese.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ironically, we're reverting to hieroglyphs (icons and emoji).

<comment><USER11> My favorite example:

The Rosetta mission as told in emojis

[https://twitter.com/paulcoxon/status/781785896513314816](https://twitter.com/paulcoxon/status/781785896513314816)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related: Animation about the history of writing (47 minutes) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8)

</comment><comment><USER13> It makes sense symbols inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics but use your own pictures for objects you know of in your own language.

The lack of written vowels would also held simplify learning.</comment>


The Two Big Bangs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-two-big-bangs-1493194f5cd9

<comment><USER2> This is probably a rather simplistic question to answer, but I've been confused how we go from "on average, the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it's moving away from us" to "the expanding Universe".

If every galaxy was observed in its present day state, then that conclusion would seem to be valid. However, when we're looking at a galaxy 5 billion light years from us, we're looking at it as it was 5 billion years ago (including the light shift).

Therefore, it seems at least plausible that expansion is slowing rather than accelerating, since galaxies were moving away faster the further back you go in time.

I'm sure the above can be explained, although it may require a lot more time/effort to refute than it took for me to make the argument, but could somebody with more training in the subject point out the flaw in my logic or explain why the expansionist interpretation fits better with observation?

<comment><USER3> The history of astronomy is filled with people figuring out how to measure apparently-impossible-to-measure things. For example, how would you go about measuring the distance to the sun? (Keep in mind that you're not allowed to use things we derived _from_ that measurement and take for granted now.)

When you look at a galaxy from 5 billion years ago, you're _not_ looking at it as it was including the light shift. The red-shift they're talking about is not from the initial difference in velocity, it's from the wave length being stretched by the expansion of space as the light travels.

For example, the wikipedia article about the accelerating expansion [1] mentions things like:

> the distance-redshift relation deviates from linearity, and this deviation > depends on how the expansion rate has changed over time

If the universe decided to suddenly increase in size by 1% over the next hour, all the already-travelling light would arrive with a 1% larger wavelength. If it had suddenly increased in size by 1% a billion years ago, the already- travelling light would get just that 1% larger wavelength but also 1% more travel time for stretching out to occur over. So if you have an independent way of determining distance... a lot of information falls out of that red- shift-vs-distance plot.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_universe)

<comment><USER4> _For example, how would you go about measuring the distance to the sun?_

So, what's the answer? Where can I read more about that?

<comment><USER5> A clever chap figured out a method a couple of thousand years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this result that there was no singularity true for all theories of inflation or just a subset of them.

<comment><USER7> What the article is referring to is that de Sitter spacetime, which is an idealized universe that only contains vacuum energy, has no initial singularity; it extends infinitely far back in time (and infinitely far forward as well). This is the basic model (at the classical level--see below) used to describe inflation, so in that sense I think the answer is that the "no singularity" result applies to all inflation theories.

That's not quite the end of the story, because the idealized model I just referred to is a classical model; it doesn't include quantum effects. I think the general opinion among physicists is that, if we extrapolate inflation back far enough, we reach a point where quantum effects become important, and the classical model above no longer applies. I don't think anyone expects a quantum model with an initial singularity to replace the classical model in this regime; but at this point we don't know what the correct quantum model is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since the very earliest days of Big Bang cosmology there has been a debate over the initial singularity, because nobody likes singularities.

There was a debate about black holes for the same reason. The original Thorne- Hawking bet (scroll down past the more recent one on black hole information: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%E2%80%93Hawking%E2%80%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%E2%80%93Hawking%E2%80%93Preskill_bet)) was driven in part by discomfort with singularities. There was and is a feeling that _something_ ought to make them go away, but we remain unsure if they really will, and until we have a genuine theory of quantum gravity our accounts of what happens at very high densities is going to be a bit hand- wavy.

So this article's suggestion that the current situation is particularly new or different isn't all that accurate. There have always been two senses of the meaning of "the Big Bang" and the degree of comfort people have had with singularities has varied over time (lower in the '60's and '70's, higher in the '80's and '90's, lower again today.)

Nor is it accurate to say that inflationary cosmology is completely uncontroversial and so well understood that we have no choice but to discard the initial singularity. Inflationary cosmologies are popular for good reasons, but they are not the only game in town--we recently saw a thing on Bohmian mechanics go by on HN that suggested an alternative to inflation, for example (I'm far from sold on the work, but use it simply as a way of pointing out that alternatives to inflation exist and can't quite be discarded completely just yet.)</comment>


Show HN: Laravel 5.8 JWT Package - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/babicaja/jwt-4laravel <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

My first ever:

open source project laravel package HN submit</comment>


The Closest Habitable Exoplanets [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK6owRTFz0Q <comment><USER2> The only thing reliable on this is the names of the planets, the distance away, the mass and the possibly the elements it possesses. We don't know much about how the planet looks at all or if its atmosphere is a death trap. I think its pretty misleading to show a beautiful earth-like terrain.

</comment><comment><USER3> 5\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luyten_b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luyten_b)

4\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teegarden_b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teegarden_b)

3\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1061](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1061)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti_b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti_b)

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b)

All are 12 light years away, except for Proxima Centauri at 4 light years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty sure nothing is correct in this video. It displays a bunch of globes/maps which cannot be representative of anything beyond imaginary fantasy lands, and maybe that's artistic license.

But the video mentions sending radio waves in 1986, even though the first suspects weren't claimed until 1988. We really didn't start "discovering" exoplanets until after 2000.

Better off reading wikipedia articles. This video is _highly_ suspicious.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanet_firsts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanet_firsts)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet)

</comment><comment><USER5> *That we've found so far.

<comment><USER6> Yes, in fact Kepler only has a limited area of the sky it's observing. There might be exoplanets much much closer that are outside of that area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The audio was really bad but the information was really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do we know for sure that any of them is more habitable than Venus? (Can't quite watch a video now, if the answer is in it I'll definitely do.)

<comment><USER9> With our current or even predicted technology (i.e. no FTL), we basically would have solved the "living in space indefinitively" problem first.

So even a Venus like planet would be an very interesting target, flush with easily extractible resources.</comment></comment>


DropBox client defected and lost my files - <AUTHOR> http://omarabid.com/dropbox-lost-my-files-for-good/?hn

<comment><USER2> Surely an alternative and equally plausible story here is that the files were corrupted locally and Dropbox gave a 60-day window for them to be recovered.

However, having spent some time with people debugging a WebDAV client I suspect that this may be a remnant of Excel doing one of those complicated series of saving temporary and 0-byte files that MS & Adobe insist on doing. Perhaps it somehow hit a Dropbox sync at just the wrong moment and the 0-byte file was saved for posterity. This of-course would be a _DropBox_ problem, but tricky time-centric syncing bugs like that are hellish to find and fix. The fact we don't see more is a testament to the brilliance of DropBox.

<comment><USER3> If you read the article carefully, not only the Excel file is affected. Also, the files are synced from the CentOs machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's fairly unreasonable to expect DropBox to keep historical versions of your files for some arbitrary amount of time when you're not paying for the service...

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, it is not at all unreasonable to expect Dropbox to not sync 0-byte-files (if there was content in it before), which could also lead to the expectation that in those cases Dropbox would store an additional backup/send a message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think its unfair to blame Dropbox that they never mentioned 'Packrat'. Its clearly noted in their pricing page <https://www.dropbox.com/upgrade>

Also, one should always periodically backup their files, so in the event of data corruption its possible to recover them. Corruption might happen elsewhere, not only defective dropbox client.

Never assume your data will be safe. There are always a million things that might go wrong. Just be prepared.

</comment><comment><USER7> I recently accidentally removed my Dropbox folder and the client assumed I wanted to delete everything. I managed to pause it after only a couple dozen files were lost.

Navigating through the folders in Dropbox and figuring out which files i want to undelete was not at all obvious, since I didn't want to undelete anything not deleted in that accident. Having a simple "undo" button next to the event that nicely said "X files deleted" would've been a big time saver.

Packrat is nice, but if I have to manually fish out the important stuff instead of having an easy restore functionality, it's not much of a backup solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Author here: I'm not using DropBox for backups. I have a relatively slow connection to do that. I'm using DropBox for files that I need to be available on different computers/tablets...

I'm not blaming DropBox for not keeping an unlimited history (it's obviously my fault), I just believe that they should have taken the Client bug more seriously.

Someone else appearantly had this issue: [http://konklone.com/post/dropbox- bug-can-permanently-lose-yo...](http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-bug-can- permanently-lose-your-files)

</comment><comment><USER8> Should have paid for Packrat then? They're not a charity.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. 2013 and backup is still hard.

What I do: I have one partition for all my important stuff. I rdiff-backup it regularely to different devices like harddisks, usb-sticks and servers all around the globe. Feels pretty safe to me. Of course, if rdiff-backup has a bug or im using it wrongly, im toast.

How do you guys do backups?

<comment><USER10> > _2013 and backup is still hard._

It really isn't.

OS X actively invites you to turn an external HDD into a Time Machine backup target with one click.

Windows 7 grew a less-prominent backup utility that works almost as well. I assume it or something like it remains in 8.

Linux has a plethora of attempts at similar solutions but none has become a de facto standard. I just use duplicity on my servers.

<comment><USER9> > OS X actively invites you to turn an external HDD into a Time Machine backup > target with one click.

They dont offer it as a web service? Making people dabble with hardware sounds archaic.

<comment><USER10> Is this sarcasm, or are you truly expecting people to keep their only backups of critical documents on third-party servers?

Not to mention the time and difficulty of a multi-hundred-gigabyte full system restore at typical American internet speed/reliability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rule number one: back up things you don't want to lose.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why is this the top story in my HN feed at the moment?

<comment><USER13> Because people upvoted it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Turns out DropBox saves a history of all deleted and earlier versions of > files for 30 days only._

I've found most people aren't even aware DropBox has this functionality at all. This is the first I've encountered someone who apparently knows about it, but does not know its limit.

Packrat, by the way, is available directly on the "Upgrade to Pro" page, and I think it has been the entire time it has existed.

> _OTHER DEVICES AS BACKUP_

> _That didn't help either. The other devices were already synced with this > defected version._

Then that's not a backup, and never was.</comment>


Stripe Gallery - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/gallery <comment><USER2> > _Thounsands of sites across the web use Stripe to accept payments online._

You mean, thousands of sites across the United States.

The day one of these great payment processing services begins offering worldwide coverage will be the day that we finally get rid of PayPal.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Please Stripe, we need you in Australia!

<comment><USER4> Definitely, I constantly see people (myself included) want Stripe here.

I would appreciate more updates though from Stripe about the progress of entering the Australian market.

For all I know, they haven't even started talking to anyone yet, but knowing some progress information would be appreciated, instead of them saying they won't talk about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like that the by product of stripe creating a service, that smart startups want, is a great curated list of interesting web apps for me to check out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Glad to have my company on there (<http://codiqa.com/>). Stripe has been great so far, I can't believe I ever used PayPal before.

My one desire for Stripe is more recurring subscription features, like notifying users of expired cards, sending invoices, receipts, etc. Initially I did that by hand but we've since paired it with Spreedly (<http://spreedly.com/>) which does all of that and it's a nice combo.

<comment><USER7> You can use webhooks to do some of this: <https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks>

We did an implementation of this for StartupThreads and it has worked fairly well so far.

<comment><USER6> Ah good point, thanks. I still think there's room to reduce the amount of work required to polish Stripe billing/payment data and make a nice user experience.

<comment><USER8> I agree. We're using Recurly and a traditional merchant account instead of Stripe specifically for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A great example of the YC mafia at work. Over 1/3 of the companies I saw listed are YC alums

<comment><USER10> Or a great example of YC companies being smart about who they choose to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> After Apple gave us the run around and rejected us using In-App Payment for our premium insurance services, we tried switching to PayPal.

After countless headaches with PayPal, we switched to Stripe in 1 working day. Huge fan of their service, great API design and documentation. Keep it up, gents!

<https://www.plerts.com>

<comment><USER12> I am baffled as to what your service does. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER13> It's a SOS button. From the webpage itself:

"Emergency Alerts

One touch of a button can alert your friends and family to your whereabouts via text, email, phone call, and even Facebook."

<comment><USER11> Yes, that's our standalone app. We also offer developers a SDK so an app can have the full functionality in a small SOS button with 3 lines of code. Developers don't pay for data storage, sms, or ivr fees. For customers, it's free to use with friends and family as your "response team".

Our premium services are global-reaching, they go so far as to coordinate with private search and rescue teams if you were traveling abroad and something serious happened.

One area of research is around passive alerts such as "impact detection". We are working with fitness apps for detecting if a bike rider may have crashed. This is a very exciting project.

Thanks for the feedback, I will work on the messaging. We are definitely trying to avoid the ambulance-chaser feel of other sites like LifeAlert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a shame they haven't launched in the UK yet. I've been trying to keep up to date with how things are progressing but they only ever say that they are looking to expand, with no indication of a time frame etc. I might look into developing a little competition for them at this rate.

<comment><USER15> would have thought the collisons would have opened up ireland saying they are from there..

<comment><USER16> Only 4 million people though - not exactly an internet commerce hotspot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All the praise I've heard about Stripe has been from a developer's perspective. But, as a user, I find logging in to PayPal(/Google Wallet/Amazon Payments) and clicking a couple buttons much more convenient than having to enter (+ look up) all my information every time. I find it great that Stripe makes the developers' lives easier, but should we be excited about making things harder for customers in the process?

<comment><USER18> Perhaps Stripe would consider a login service. Create a Stripe account and rather than it be a full blown Payment service ala Paypal, it would simply store your CC details.

<comment><USER19> Stripe can already store CC details. You can create users for each of your customers through the API and then build out your own "easy payments" system without having your users ever leave your site.

<comment><USER20> It's more than just payments within any given app though. The issue (/proposed issue) is that every time you join a new site or pay for a product on a new site you need to look up your details again. This isn't the case for sites using paypal, assuming the user has a paypal account which it seems most people do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are you confident enough to give your competitors a huge list of your customers. That's what impresses me most about this.

<comment><USER22> At the risk of hyperbole, there are no competitors.

<comment><USER23> That's probably the takeaway here. Stripe is probably the first contender PayPal actually has to worry about, at least in the United States. People hate PayPal because their TOS are restrictive, but so far they're the only payment handler that works everywhere. If Stripe goes global, then we will see some serious changes at PayPal as people begin to flee from their services en masse.

<comment><USER24> Globalization is something they claim to have been working on for a very long time now. Paypal has done it, so it is possible. I wonder what the roadblocks are for Stripe that Paypal doesn't have to deal with.

<comment><USER25> Globalization is very complicated and almost every country is different... PayPal hasn't even finished yet themselves.

They only last year enabled payments into South Africa and even that is through some strange bank interface for tracking/tax reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What are the chances of Stripe offering micropayments like Paypal? For charges of $1 or less. There are so many areas waiting for this, and Paypal just isn't friendly enough of a platform to try this direction.

<comment><USER27> I believe Amazon Payments allows for sub-dollar charges.

<comment><USER28> The Stripe minimum charge is currently $0.50.

<comment><USER26> According to their pricing at 2.9% + 30c per charge that leaves you with 18.55c. Paypal is 5% + $0.05, a massive 47.45c. If Stripe could even partially match that I'd be delighted. I'm currently looking into Amazon's aggregated option and haven't come up with numbers yet.

<comment><USER29> One point: the Paypal micropayments tariff level makes sense for stuff under about $12 or thereabouts. For prices above that, it is actually worse.

But yes, Stripe matching the micropayments levels would be kinda neat.

<comment><USER30> You are allowed to have two accounts (this is even officially recommended by PayPal), one with micropayments and the other with normal payments; as you know the amount of money being requested before transferring the user to PayPal, you can use the two accounts to get the best possible rate in all cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very well done visually speaking. Seems to be done using only javascript and CSS3 animations. Also, easy to read code:

javascript: <https://stripe.com/javascripts/showcase.js>

css: <https://stripe.com/css/style.css> (search for the 'animation' comment)

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone else think that this is an awesome page to view a bunch of great landing pages?

<comment><USER33> Yes, I was just thinking the same thing. I don't see one site there that doesn't look amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those using Stripe to ship physical goods, can you please comment on how you're handling the fact that Stripe does not validate the billing address prior to the charge going through?

I'd love to implement Stripe on my website but very worried that this could lead to fraudulent charges.

<comment><USER35> Stripe returns address verification (AVS) results when you add a card, so you can reject mismatched addresses if you so choose.

<comment><USER36> Is there any documentation for this process? Our non-profit had to shut down our Stripe-based donation page because it was being used by credit card thieves to validate stolen credit cards. Stripe told us addresses are only validated when a charge is executed, meaning we would then have to issue a refund if address validation failed (and eat the transaction cost).

<comment><USER37> We'll return the validation data when you attach a card to a customer as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Glad to see our site made it (<http://teapeat.com>).

We honestly could not have launched so soon without Stripe. We spent over a month haggling with Authorize.net and immediately jumped ship to Stripe as soon as it was available.

It makes accepting payments (and subscriptions!) so easy.

<comment><USER39> Couldn't agree more, the subscriptions API is so well designed...and surprisingly complete. Every time I think of something I need to add, the API already has a simple, logical method for dealing with it. Top-notch work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Stripe has managed to break into a lucrative market.

The guys at Techzing interviewed the Co-Founder of Stripe a few months ago... [http://techzinglive.com/page/939/168-tz-interview-patrick- co...](http://techzinglive.com/page/939/168-tz-interview-patrick-collison- stripe)

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome design work here! Love that they featured some awesome companies including mine Startup Threads (<http://StartupThreads.com>). The fact that the order isn't fixed is also a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER41> Woo! Glad to have my shop featured on there!

Stripe is far and away the easiest to use processor out there.

<http://purefixcycles.com> for those that are curious

</comment><comment><USER42> There's a fade at the bottom, but it's only affecting the right half of the screen. Using firefox 11.0 on windows xp.

</comment><comment><USER43> They have a project of mine on there (eMusicTheory.com), and I admittedly didn't ask to be removed, but the paranoid side of me worried... if there's a particular security flaw in Stripe (or websites' common implementations of Stripe for payments) that turns up in the future, I'm on the cracking shortlist.

</comment><comment><USER44> less stripe gallery, more stripe canada.

</comment><comment><USER45> Pinterest for stripe users. It's really interesting to scroll through them all.. Actually let me get back to that now I only stopped to post this :)

</comment><comment><USER46> Are pretty sites necessary? I ask because most sites I go to on a daily basis, like HN, Google properties, Amazon, etc are relatively bland.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is cool. How does one get on this list?

<comment><USER41> They reached out to us on Monday asking if it was OK to be featured. I'm sure they'll be contacting more sites soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This page makes mobile safari on my ipad crash!!

Go to bottom of the page, then go back towards top of the page.

</comment><comment><USER49> Stripe is awesome. Nuff said.

</comment><comment><USER50> Great advertisement for their clients

</comment><comment><USER51> My start-up did not make the cut. :(

</comment><comment><USER52> Why was this submitted and to what greater end? Who gives a shit about stripe's user section?

<comment><USER10> I do. I'm not alone either.

This is an amazing company, making amazing progress in a field that deeply affects all web companies, from start-ups to multi-nationals.

It's a joy to watch them succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Love Stripe!</comment>


.swf for JavaScript cross-domain flash cookies - <AUTHOR> http://nfriedly.com/techblog/2010/07/swf-for-javascript-cross-domain-flash-cookies/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this is a method mostly associated with advertisers, but there are legitimate uses for flash cookies.

I wanted to make life a little easier for people who just need to get something working reliably without worrying about cross-browser quirkiness. (I'm looking at you, Safari.)</comment>


YouTube Wins Viacom Case - Big Victory for UGC Sites - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/23/youtube-declares-victory-in-viacom-case/

<comment><USER2> They can appeal.... see dicussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1456216></comment>


FDA Clears 23andMe for All Health and Carrier Traits Testing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/20/fda-clears-23andme-for-all-health-and-carrier-traits-reports/ <comment><USER2> Buying the 23andme kit several years ago was the best $99 I ever spent. I originally did it for the ancestry information which I found very interesting. But I have to say I was blown away by the health information. The information is simply presented perfectly.

As for most people, it wasn't all good news but it gave me a roadmap to prepare or prevent things I am genetically predisposed to.

<comment><USER3> I really want to do it, but it is really hard to believe they can guarantee the safety of the data. What if they get hacked or forced to give the data to one of the three letter agencies? It would be nice if they offer to completely destroy the results once it is sent to the customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great... but why did they double the price?!

<comment><USER5> Because they more than doubled the value they can now deliver?

<comment><USER4> The price was $99 with health reports before plus a $20 discount on each person after the first. Also, now they monetize our DNA data as well [0].

It looks like best strategy now is to use AncestryDNA ($99) [1] and then run Promethease for $5 or for free [2] to get what 23andMe gives you plus a lot more!

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/01/06/surpris...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/01/06/surprise- with-60-million-genentech-deal-23andme-has-a-business-plan/)

[1] [https://dna.ancestry.com/](https://dna.ancestry.com/)

[2] [http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease](http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease)</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Panda Jobs Board - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@usepanda/introducing-panda-jobs-board-3a13964cf61a <comment><USER2> Awesome job board for finding talent. Already using it and by far the easiest and cleanest to use.

</comment><comment><USER3> The design and the focus on perks are two of the best features compared to other job boards!</comment>


Ask HN: Best commits you remember? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious what are some best commits you know - funny, beautiful or just very good. It's always good to read good code, as well as share it, so if you know some great commits please share it with us here! <comment><USER2> "Sit back and I'll tell you a story of intrigue and corruption, deceit and murder."

[https://github.com/pyca/pyopenssl/commit/0beed1c968ea4511cbe...](https://github.com/pyca/pyopenssl/commit/0beed1c968ea4511cbe8515effed7acd2a715b48#diff-280bed5a810b327b274fde15d2a9d84dR429)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Initial revision of "git", bootstrap commit from hell_

[https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23...](https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290)</comment>


Facebook is convinced this man is his mother - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/10/6126027/facebook-is-convinced-this-man-is-his-mother-deep-face <comment><USER2> We had this exact same thing happen when we bought funeral services for my (late) older brother. They asked us for a bunch of pictures of him and some of his favorite music to use in a slideshow they were preparing as part of the funeral package.

We have everyone at the service, in the pews and settled in. The lights dim, a projector screen rolls down and music starts to play. His music. Their slideshow was not exactly a slideshow, but an automatically generated remembrance DVD. It started with a flyover of some nature/rambling rivers and then rose into the air into parting clouds.

So far so good.

The DVD was an interspersing of stock nature footage and pictures of my brother. Face recognition algorithms were used to find where he was in each picture and slowly 'zoom' into them, or pan over to center on him. I think basically so that there was some sort of movement to the pictures.

But their software (or more likely the software they had licensed) hadn't gotten his face right. Instead it kept zooming in on family members and (tragically) cutting him out. Instead it zoomed in constantly on my sister. It was obvious that either the software didn't have a way to correct such errors, or that the funeral home hadn't bothered to preview the DVD before making it a part of the service.

<comment><USER3> I work on slideshow creation software for funeral homes. Stories like yours are something I worry quite a bit about, since we've found that once users trust our software, they stop bothering with the preview.

We let the user choose custom zoom points but don't yet incorporate face recognition. As far as I am aware, none of our competitors have face recognition or even face detection.

Some funeral homes hire or outsource to a local videographer instead of using purpose-built software. It's possible that the videographer could have used a slideshow plugin with that feature and then combined it with the stock footage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facebook is racist against fat bald guys with beards and assumes we all look the same, because it's always suggesting I'm one of the other random fat bald guy with a beard I know.

(Actually, after going through a lot of bogus suggestions over the course of a few months and correcting them, it's a lot better. But the joke doesn't work as well this way.)

<comment><USER5> What does being fat, bald and bearded have to do with race?

<comment><USER6> Semantics; clearly he meant "discriminatory towards". But you know, "being racist against" has kind of been accepted to have essentially the same meaning colloquially.

You know what he meant :)

<comment><USER7> >> You know what he meant :)

How can you say this? I certainly didn't; colloquialisms are often geographical in nature.[0]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquialism#Examples](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquialism#Examples)

<comment><USER6> If you want to argue, way to cite a flagged Wikipedia section, for not having any citations and "possible original research," and also being exactly just that one sentence long with no added explanation.

I'm from south India/grew up in the middle east/studied on the east coast/worked on the west coast of the US, lived in Singapore and Thailand briefly. And there are definitely some colloquial usages that are fairly universal. In my experience this is one of them.

Please also note appended smiley face. Obviously not everyone is familiar with every colloquialism. It's too bad if you were confused by the implied meaning of "racist against", and if my clarification of its colloquial usage was insufficient for you, but i find your comment adding very little value here.

<comment><USER8> You're just being racist against him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is also related to one of my greatest fears, when such algorithmic results are (mis)used for prosecution or other legal stuff.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is likely caused by the age difference, and the fact that they probably have some overlapping friends, even if it's not just one another. I'd have to guess the way it works is that Facebook looks at the poster, the poster's friends, and maybe the poster's friends of friends for a decent match among them when it encounters an untagged person. He probably scored higher because he does look like her, and those pictures are quite old and lack features that his mother currently has, such as wrinkles.

</comment><comment><USER11> The same thing happens with my daughter: periodically Facebook thinks she is my wife or myself.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Same here. But then again, my wife and I do sometimes tag photos of our children with each others name to draw attention to a picture posted when the other is not there. (I'm not sure I explained that clearly but I see people do this a lot so I assume everyone knows what I'm talking about.) I would imagine that confuses FB's algorithm a bit as well.

<comment><USER12> Yeah definitely. I get tagged in photos of my son, because he's my son and it's normally one of the grandparents taking the picture when we left him with them for the night. Our family Christmas party must destroy the algorithm when everyone who attended (50+ people normally) get group tagged into every picture.

I do not doubt Facebook is running into problems because humans have a 3-dimensional perspective of time and events. It's the classic "why isn't mommy in any photos with us dad?" because she took them! Dad remembers, he was there. He's not seeing the photographs perspective, he's seeing his own perspective standing with his kids looking at his wife. To him his wife is in that photo even though she is visibly absent.

<comment><USER13> Facebooks algorithm is spooky. Early on my son labeled his cousin as "Dad's brother's daughter". Later that week it had changed magically to 'cousin'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd be more intrigued if a service like 23andMe made such a claim...

<comment> jack-r-abbit Just yesterday there was a story on HN about 23andMe where a guy discovered he had a half brother but 23andMe tagged him has potentially his grandfather.

<comment><USER15> Both of those pairs would share one-fourth of their genes; how would 23andMe be able to tell them apart, other than looking at their ages?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's going to be interesting how all this technology finds an use and abuse in the long term</comment>


Grati.fi: Bitcoin FOSS funding embedded in Linux package managers - <AUTHOR> http://grati.fi/dokuwiki/doku.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Apart of the wiki the author has in its page, there also exists [https://github.com/gratifi/grati.fi](https://github.com/gratifi/grati.fi) , if you want to share ideas on it.</comment>


Largest Neuronal Network to Date Achieved Using Japanese Supercomputer - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130802080237.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Original source: [http://www.riken.jp/en/pr/press/2013/20130802_1/](http://www.riken.jp/en/pr/press/2013/20130802_1/)</comment>


Handcalcs: Write calculations in Python, rendered automatically as Latex - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/connorferster/handcalcs <comment><AUTHOR> This is a library that I use daily in my work as a design engineer for quickly writing and printing calculations. My company has agreed that I may publish it as free and open source.

In the engineering world, often times Excel is king. However, it is not transparent: you type a formula in a cell and 1) the formula only contains cell references (unless you define cell names) and 2) the formula is hidden. For accountability, you have to separately type the formula in an adjacent cell so you can print your sheet out as a report or calc sheet. However, the formula you typed is just text: the resulting value has no relationship with the formatted formula you typed out and you have to change both to update. This makes maintenance cumbersome.

I wanted the formula I typed to be the same as the formatted representation of the formula I typed -- change the representation and the result changes. SMathStudio and MathCAD do this but you still have to layout formulas on the sheet and, most importantly, none of these software packages show the numerical substitution, critical for quickly checking correctness of calculations. I wrote handcalcs to address this problem.

To use: run Jupyter and use the cell magic, %%render, then just type in your calculations. Run the cell to see them all rendered out in Mathjax or Katex.

While it is designed to work in Jupyter, it also has a decorator interface for use in other environments that render Latex (e.g. Streamlit).

The intended audience for handcalcs is engineers, estimators, teachers, students, or anyone else that tends to need to perform documented calculations. However, I am guessing that this may be useful to many others in ways I do not know.

Open to feedback and suggestions for enhancement!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! I re-posted it here on the Streamlit forum as well, hopefully you'll get more feedback there as well:

[https://discuss.streamlit.io/t/dynamically-rendering- latex-i...](https://discuss.streamlit.io/t/dynamically-rendering-latex-in- streamlit/4047/2)</comment></comment>


Startups Worth Risking Your Career For - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/16-startups-worth-risking-your-career-for-2013-1?op=1

<comment><USER2> Any company past series A is not really a risk anymore. IIRC they have about a ~60% of having an exit that is not a loss once they reach series A. That's 4-6x better than for seed funded companies. Most of the companies on that list are in fact the opposite of risk. Most will actually add pedigree to your résumé because they probably already have stringent hiring practices that make sure they only hire the best talent, so if you join them you are likely to be identified as talented by others.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think most of those are past the "Risk your career over" stage. Most of those names are well known and past the we are going out of business tomorrow if we don't get outside funding stage.

However if you do find a company its _always_ worth risking your career for. Don't let anyone tell you differently If your in a big safe corporation your missing out on both life and potential profit.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the photo for snapchat. It accurately describes what I think about online photo/video apps - its all about the lulz. Kinda makes me want to work there.</comment>


Show HN: Supycache – Simple yet capable caching decorator for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lonetwin/supycache <comment><USER2> This is neat. Kind of reminds me of the built-in LRU cache decorator[1] (as the author points out). I'd be interested to know what kind of policies there were to control the cache size (will it just expand to fill up Redis / memcached?), as well as how cache TTL is handled.

Being able to determine which parameters "matter" is an interesting feature. It doesn't immediately seem useful (if the value of the parameter won't change the return value of a function, why does it matter?). It'd be interesting to see some kind of dynamic support for the keys. For example, having a cached value for if parameter `a` is larger than parameter `b`, or for if the first argument of a function is "None".

Great work, and thanks for making it open source! Further props for making it Python3.

[1] [https://docs.python.org/3.3/library/functools.html#functools...](https://docs.python.org/3.3/library/functools.html#functools.lru_cache)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment @RMarcus.

      > I'd be interested to know what kind of policies there were to control the
      > cache size (will it just expand to fill up Redis / memcached?), as well as
      > how cache TTL is handled.

Currently, there are no policies. Yes, the cache size will expand to as much data you put into it (without expiring). The nice thing about the way I wrote this is that any options passed to the decorator that are not handled by supycache itself are handed over to the `backend` (ie: your memcached or redis connection object), so that is one way to pass on configuribles to the backend.

      > Being able to determine which parameters "matter" is an interesting feature.
      > It doesn't immediately seem useful (if the value of the parameter won't
      > change the return value of a function, why does it matter?).

So, the thing is that it is not the 'parameter' that 'matters' it is the _value_ of the parameter that makes this interesting. Actually, this use case came out of necessity -- I felt the need to add an `lru_cache` for a method that operated on some parameters but instead of caching the return value to a key created by the hash of all the parameters, I needed to create a new key on just one parameter (actually, one attribute of one parameter -- kinda similar to the ^user^ object example in the readme).

      > It'd be interesting to see some kind of dynamic support for the keys. For
      > example, having a cached value for if parameter `a` is larger than parameter
      > `b`, or for if the first argument of a function is "None".

Sorry, the docs have not been clear about it but the 'cache_key' can _also_ be a callable which is only called at run_time (with the args/kwargs) passed to the decorated function. That'll allow you to define your own cache-key- creation rule ! I'll update the docs to mention this.

Thanks for your comments ! Glad you like it.</comment></comment>