Myths about Patents and Trademarks in startups - <AUTHOR> https://hitstartup.com/myths-about-patents-and-trademarks-in-startups/ <comment><USER2> Very software focused. In biotech, patent protection of composition of matter (and less so process) is important to ensure the ability to capture economic value of your research.

But keep in mind the safe harbor clause (Safe Harbor provision of 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(10)) allows any other company/lab to use your compound/process "in support of submissions to the FDA". This is taken very broadly in the field to mean if you are pre-commercial you can basically use anything you want, no one will sue you because if you're starting-up, everything can be claimed to support an eventual filing. Plus, if you have no revenue a patent fight has no value to the other party.

Obviously every marketed drug has IP around it preventing generics until the patents expire. A lot of inventions that lead to commercial products are actually derived from academic institutions. The Bayh–Dole Act did absolute wonders for the US in terms of biotech innovation. Pre-Bayh-Dole, any research using federal grant money had to go through a Byzantine process to determine IP ownership with a lot typically residing with the US federal government. Post-Bayh-Dole, it simply stayed with the inventor/inventing institution. Some people now consider this bad because evil drug companies are "privatizing the gains", but without that economic payout, they wouldn't have invested to bring the invention to market to begin with.

You could argue it moved the large biopharma companies to become development/networking/marketing companies, which is a fair point, but it simply moved the innovation to universities and nimble start-ups--which is better anyway for actual disruption and more equitably spreading economic gain.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

I agree that it's more software focussed and I would be adding the role of IP in other industries in my upcoming updates.

But, the main reason I explicitly didn't go into Biotech/Pharma is because living in India which has been at the receiving end of the US Pharma's patent protections and on the other hand witness generic medicines save lives everyday; I didn't want my biases to affect the content.

<comment><USER2> Totally understandable. There is a minority of non-CS commenters on HN, so I always try to expand the conversation. Wasn't meant as pejorative.

Re your comment on generics saving lives, yea, this is a pickle question between sovereigns in negotiating trade agreements. The US pharmaceutical behemoths make too much money in my opinion. The inability of Medicare to negotiate on drug pricing was an insane give away from Bush that effectively allows drug companies the ability to set their desired profit targets. But with other nations catching up in terms of Quality and manufacturing tech transfers, most small molecules will be easily riffed. The era of blockbuster small molecules is coming to an end with a lot of the space/targets explored. More complicated biological and gene/cell therapies are the next frontier and it's going to be a lot harder to riff these technologies because "the product is the process" a lot of time. It's a lot harder to steal process without hiring know-how.

<comment><USER3> W.r.t India, it has mostly accepted the patent obligations of US Pharma as it gets to export generic medications to US and I think 50% of Indian generic medications get through FDA approval.

But this was pre-COVID, not sure how new found gold rush in Pharma industry worldwide would affect the future of Generic medications and patentability of pharma products. It could go either way of improving manufacturing and availability of generic medications (or) Pharma behemoths could take advantage of current situation and derail generic medicine development indefinitely.

<comment><USER4> Generics ARPU is still above $300 / year. New generic only requires 24 people to get FDA approval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the contrary, the question I had while building my product was - "Am I infringing someone else's patent?"

That was years ago. Now, I focus on value creation first and let the product succeed before venturing into patent research.

Hardware might be much tougher though. Would be interesting to see someone with hardware experience to share their real life experiences.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

Even patent trolls wait till you are able to pay if you infringe their 'supposed invention' i.e. In other words focussing upon growth is a rational decision, when you get big you'll know if you are in the radar of trolls or genuine inventors.

This applies only when you truly don't know whether you're infringing IP, if you're explicitly copying an invention; unless you are in a country which has no regard to international laws and actively encourages its citizens to copy inventions of other countries, you are at the risk of patent litigations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Trademarks help in domain name disputes. Your registered business name only applies to that state. It's not dumb to setup a trademark for your company name after it's used in commerce. For small business it's affordable as well based on the fee structure at the USPTO.

*Not a lawyer.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

Trademarks can also help to claim App names in Appstore[1]. But in several countries(even federal), registration/incorporating applies to all the states. Since, Appstore require DUNS which has company name, may be Apple would respect incorporation too especially if the app is country specific.

[1][https://hitstartup.com/when-to-register-our- startup/](https://hitstartup.com/when-to-register-our-startup/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent article, I'm bookmarking it to help my customers to realize most of the time they are loosing their time and money with patents

<comment><USER8> I strongly urge you to not take legal advice from any source other than your attorney.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Besides, in most countries just incorporating/registering our startup as a > company would prevent anyone else from using the same name for their > company.

So, the question is. Is it good/bad to incorporate using your product/service name as a corp. name? What are the pros and cons?

(Because even if you do, your product will probably end up being called something else in the end)

<comment><USER3> Author here.

>Is it good/bad to incorporate using your product/service name as a corp. name? What are the pros and cons?

Apart from intellectual property, Unless there is a specific reason not to name our startup with our product name, it's always a good idea to have the same name for our startup as our product in terms of basic branding etiquette.

In countries where duplicate company names for the same product are not allowed, this will serve as an added protection. But it doesn't prevent someone from brandjacking by typosquatting, neither does trademark prevent it, Facebook has enough trademarks as legally possible yet it goes to the length of decloaking domain names to prevent this[2](Not showcasing this as a positive practice).

I've written more about Incorporation & App names here[1].

[1][https://hitstartup.com/when-to-register-our- startup/](https://hitstartup.com/when-to-register-our-startup/)

[2][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23625977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23625977)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Patents are expenses that a startup should not spend. There are too few upsides. And if you need to defend yourself against a bigger player or patent troll, you are bancrupt anyways

<comment><USER11> Says person who never started a venture backed startup. Ignore this poster. VCs want to invest in companies with moats. Depending on the domain, you may require one or more patents and potentially a Freedom To Operate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article does not seem to address, should one patent a method or algorithm that defines your product as a startup before launching the product?

<comment><USER3> Author here.

From the content,

>Most countries don't allow patent for a software[1]. Economic theories, methods of doing business, mathematical methods or computer programs as such are not patentable inventions in several countries.

The hyperlinked content from WIPO details about patentability of softwares/algorithm(Link doesn't seem to be working now, so including archive)

In short, in USA -

"According to the US Supreme Court , the Congress intended the statutory patentable subject matter to include anything under the sun made by man," but the laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are three specific areas which are not patentable."

So, you can apply patent for the application of that algorithm.

[1][https://web.archive.org/web/20200213051434/https://www.wipo....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200213051434/https://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/software_patents_fulltext.html)

<comment><USER8> Truth is, it's really semantics. A patent attorney knows how to describe an invention to pass most eligibility requirements for stuff that most software- related inventions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A few comments:

The patent and trademark systems around the World differ.

USPTO is very open to business method patents, and software patents.

In EPO countries software has to have a real World effect, mostly, to be patentable.

Patent agents/attorneys do specialise.

Defensive publication is cheap, no need to get a patent to defend yourself. Though if you want to retain a "secret sauce" as part of your product they could probably help there.

Passing Off is a thing in lots of jurisdictions, like an unregistered trademark. Geography and company size matter in UK/EU trademarks (don't know about others), and you have to trade to retain trademark protection.

>This may help in getting the patent, but it also enables someone else to exploit the same loop holes to file a patent for the copy of our invention by just changing the grammar/vocabulary because our patent was too generic. //

That's not how that works.

I think the takeaway of "capital management might mean patents are a bad fit" is a good one.

In the UK one of the first questions asked of most companies in Dragons Den (equivalent to Shark Tank; an investor seeking "game" show on TV) is "do you have a patent" because they are seeking secure investments. Investor expectations is a big reason to get a patent.

[I'm imagining the author is not in a Western country based on the dropped indefinite articles?? Some idea of their experience would help give authority to the article.]

tl;dr it's a good attempt at an overview, but some things you can't broadbrush. At least seek an overview tailored to your target market.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

>>This may help in getting the patent, but it also enables someone else to exploit the same loop holes to file a patent for the copy of our invention by just changing the grammar/vocabulary because our patent was too generic. >That's not how that works.

I think, it's incomplete when the prior argument for that is not included.

This is the complete argument -

>Unfortunately, patent attorneys tend to force the inventor to not to be specific in describing their invention in the patent application in order to exploit the loop holes in patent examination; This may help in getting the patent, but it also enables someone else to exploit the same loop holes to file a patent for the copy of our invention by just changing the grammar/vocabulary because our patent was too generic.

That is, if you compromise while drafting patent someone else will exploit it the same way.

>Investor expectations is a big reason to get a patent.

I agree, especially if it's a 'proven' HW startup. Emphasis on 'proven', if the patent is not for a solution which solves a real problem with commercial viability, no investor is going to turn your side even if you get a patent i.e. in other words if you are not sure about the success of your product, patents are just a waste of time and wouldn't bring investors magically.

>I'm imagining the author is not in a Western country based on the dropped indefinite articles??

True.

>Some idea of their experience would help give authority to the article.

Close family member is a patent attorney with 20 years experience, having worked for largest multinational companies and current work being facilitating patent deals(usually worth several millions) in a foreign country (My arguments in this content was validated with that attorney). I have personally applied and later abandoned International patents for my products in my earlier startup (The said attorney was not involved in my patent application due to work clauses).

<comment><USER14> I appreciate what you are trying do here. Startups can always use more education about IP protection. But IP law is very country specific, and it is one of the most complex areas of law.

Some of your myths/truths are dangerous and may cause companies to irrevocably lose IP rights that they probably should protect.

<comment><USER3> >But IP law is very country specific

I think that's exactly what I state in explaining the myths, there are 13 occurrences of the word 'country/countries' in my reasoning, I have linked to WIPO and PCT source article where necessary. I don't see a place, where I state universal applicability of my reason; I would definitely correct if mentioned.

>Some of your myths/truths are dangerous and may cause companies to irrevocably lose IP rights that they probably should protect.

That could be dangerous, point me to a specific statement. Much of the criticism by the parent (Which I heartily welcome) comes from picking up a sentence at random but not the prior argument; so they're incomplete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1) Patents are assets. They are important for valuation. Investors care about them and they are important in acquisitions or pre-IPO audits. You don't have to have patents, but not having any will reduce your valuation.

If a tech company is successful, it will have patents. If they do not have enough, they will sprint to get more patents before exiting. Though, if a company waits until they get close to exiting before seeking patent protection, much of their interesting/valuable IP may barred from protection.

2) While expensive, patents are not that expensive considering the other costs of operating a startup. Passing on patents in the beginning means you will lose the right to protect your early inventions. Often this results in the loss of IP protection for your most important innovations -- the secret sauce that the company is based on. Trying to catch-up later is harder and more expensive because you have to patent around the edges of your secret-sauce because it is too late to patent the secret-sauce itself.

3) Plenty of so-called software patents are issued in the UK, EU, and Asia. You can search the EPO patent database for patents assigned to Google, et al. to find plenty.

4) PCTs are placeholders that defer (for 18-30 months) having to decide if you want to file in a covered country. They are cheap so we often recommend them to clients that intend to sell into UK/EU/JP. If you file in the US first and then use the same US application for the PCT there should be no legal fees for filing a PCT, just filing and administrative fees.

Note, non-US countries do not have a 1-year public disclosure grace-period. So if your inventions are disclosed to the public before filing your US patent application, forget about PCT applications.

5) Patent Attorneys. They are like any profession. At least half are average or worse. I think finding a good patent attorney is the hardest part of the patent journey.

A good patent attorney will have relevant industry experience and they will focus on specific/limited areas of technology.

Patent attorneys that are good at software or computer-based inventions will tend to work exclusively with those types of inventions. This is because there is a high demand and patents for software/computer inventions command high fees. Gadget patents typically have lower fees that really are not worth the time for a computer/software oriented patent attorney to handle.

Also, even big law firms with name-brands can have terrible patent attorneys. So the best way to find one is word of mouth from other CEOs/CTOs or your VCs.

6) Startups filing for patents in the US should be doing Track 1 (Prioritized Patent Examination). It guarantees that your that your patent will be examined within 12 months. It only costs $2070 more than normal filing fees for companies with less than 500 employees.

If your US patent attorney has not recommended Track 1 filing, you probably need a different patent attorney. Track 1 is a 'new' option, but it has been around for several years now. There is no reason not be filing Track 1 if you are a startup. If your attorneys argue against it, consider seeking new attorneys.

In three years you could have several issued patents instead of still waiting for your first response from the USPTO.

7) A good patent attorney only needs 1-2 hours of inventor time to draft a patent. If your patent attorneys are meeting multiple times with the inventors, especially to work on claims, you should look into finding better patent attorneys.

8) All good patent attorneys charge high fees, some bad/mediocre patent attorneys charge high fees. However, all low fee work is done by bad patent attorneys (or they are sub-contracting out to bad patent attorneys).

There is too much demand for good patent attorneys for them to charge low fees. Unfortunately, plenty of bad patent attorneys charge high fees too, especially if they are at bigger firms.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article is software centric.

Good luck getting VC in hardware without patents.

</comment><comment><USER16> If apple can risk it all by going into the music industry then I think your small startup can take the risk.</comment>


Estimating the Damage to the U.S. Economy Caused by Angry Birds - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/estimating-the-damage-to-the-us-economy-caused-by-angry-birds/244972/ <comment><USER2> substitute lost productivity for piracy and you have the same sort of argument the RIAA and MPAA make about lost sales.</comment>


Amazon Kinesis - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/amazon-kinesis-real-time-processing-of-streamed-data.html <comment><USER3> As a team member helped built the service, I would like to offer some of my personal understanding. I am not with Amazon now, and all my views are based on public information on the website.

Like all AWS offerings, Kinesis is a platform. It looks like kafka + storm, with fully integrated ecosystem with other AWS services. From the very beginning, the reliability, real-time processing, and transparent elasticity are built in. That's all I can say.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is essentially a hosted Kafka ([http://kafka.apache.org/](http://kafka.apache.org/)). Given the complexity of operating a distributed persistent queue, this could be a compelling alternative for AWS-centric environments. (We run a large Kafka cluster on AWS, and it is one of our highest-maintenance services.)

<comment><USER5> We are about to deploy Kafka in our ecosystem and I am curious what maintenance you have? Can you explain or write a blog post? Is it on 0.8 beta?

We are choosing Kafka over other solutions like RabbitMQ because we like the persistent txn-log-style messages and how cheap consumers are.

<comment><USER4> We're running 0.7 and most of our problems have been around partition rebalancing. I'm not the primary engineer on this, but here's my understanding:

If we add nodes to an existing Kafka cluster, those nodes own no partitions and therefore send/receive no traffic. A rebalancing event must occur for these servers to become active. Bouncing Kafka on one of the active nodes is one way to trigger such an event.

Fortunately, cluster resizing is infrequent. Unfortunately, network interruptions are not (at least on EC2).

When ZooKeeper detects a node failure (however brief), the node is removed from the active pool and the partitions are rebalanced. This is desirable. But when the node comes back online, no rebalancing takes place. The server remains inactive (as if it were a new node) until we trigger a rebalancing event.

As a result, we have to bounce Kafka on an active server every few weeks in response to network blips. 0.8 alleges to handle this better, but we'll see.

Handle-jiggling aside, I'm a fan of Kafka and the types of systems you can build around it. Happy to put you in touch with our Kafka guy, just email me (email@example.com). Loggly's also running Kafka on AWS - would be interesting to hear their take on this.

<comment><USER6> Pushing a couple terabytes a day through kafka 0.7. We don't use zookeeper on the producing side and it alleviates this a lot. It's a little more brittle pushing host/partition configs around, but we accepted loss of data in this system and its worth the simplicity of it. Also played with the idea of putting an elb in front.

I'm having way more trouble with the consumer being dumb with the way it distributes topics and partitions. End up with lots of idle consumers, while others are way above max.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the note, we'll have to take a look at that sort of configuration.

Your consumer problems sounds similar to one we had. Root cause was that the number of consumers exceeded the number of active partitions. The tricky part was that the topic was only distributed across part of the cluster (because of the issue described in my parent post), so we had fewer partitions than we thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's going on with Amazon recently? We're seeing a torrent of new technologies and platform offerings. Are we finally catching a glimpse of Bezos's grand scheme?

<comment><USER8> Amazon's reinvent conference[0] has been going on over the last few days, it's an obvious time/place to announce.

[0] [https://reinvent.awsevents.com/](https://reinvent.awsevents.com/)

<comment><USER7> Oh, derp. Well that makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The 50KB limit on data (base64 encoded data) will be a gotcha you'll have to deal with similar to the size limit in DynamoDB. Now you'll have to split your messages so they fit inside the Kinesis records and then you'll have to reassemble them on the other end... Not fun :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Having to base64 encode data is also a bit awkward. They should be passing PutRecord parameters as HTTP headers (which they are already using for other properties) and let users pass raw data in the body.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting to see these messaging platforms and the new use cases starting to hit the mainstream a la kinesis, storm, kafka.

Some interesting things about these kinds of measaging platforms.

Many exhanges/algo/low-latency/hft firms have large clusters of these kinds of systems for trading. The open source stuff out there is kind of different from the typical systems that revolve around a central engine/sequencer (matching engine).

There's a large body of knowledge in the financial industry on building low- latency versions of these message processors. Here's some interesting possibilities. On an e5-2670 with 7122 solarflare cards running openonload, its possible to pump a decent 2M 100byte messages/sec with a packetization of around 200k pps.

Avergae latency through a carefully crafted system using efficient data structures and in-memory only stores can pump and process a message through in about 15 microseconds with the 99.9 percent median at around 20 micros. This is a message hitting a host, getting sent to an engine, then back to the host and back.

Using regular interrupt based processing and e1000s probably yields around 500k msgs/sec with average latency through the system at around 100 micros and 99.9% medians in the 30-40 millisecond range.

Its useful to see solarflares tuning guidelines on building uber-efficient memcache boxes that can handle something like 7-8M memcache requests/sec.

</comment><comment><USER11> Before I clicked the link I was hoping Amazon was releasing a clone of the kinesis keyboard. Anyone else have that initial hope? :-)

<comment><USER12> I wondered why would Amazon enter the keyboard market...

<comment><USER13> They already have:

[http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-KU-0833-Wired-Keyboard- Bl...](http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-KU-0833-Wired-Keyboard- Black/dp/B005EOWBHC)

<comment><USER14> I could be wrong, but I don't think Amazon actually designs or manufactures anything under the AmazonBasics brand. It's like buying a "white box" PC from a company like MSI and reselling it under your own brand name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone with enough knowledge give a high level comparison to Kinesis compared with something like Storm or Kafka?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm really excited about this - data streaming has been a crucial missing piece for building large-scale apps on AWS.

If the performance and pricing are right it's going to relieve a lot of headaches in terms of infrastructure management.

<comment><USER17> Forgive my ignorance, but what would this potentially replace? Kafka/Storm/Something else?

<comment><USER18> Yep, Amazon's version of Kafka/Storm with pay as you go minus the headaches of maintaining the cluster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _it is possible that the MD5 hash of your partition keys isn 't evenly distributed_

how? i mean, apart from poisson stats / shot noise, obviously (and which is noise, so you can't predict it anyway).

thinking some more, i guess this (splitting and merging partitions in a non- generic way) is to handle when a consumer is slow for some reason. perhaps that partition is backing up because the consumer crashed.

but then why not say that, instead of postulating the people are going to have uneven hashes?

[edit:] maybe they allow duplicates?

<comment><USER20> Yes, duplicates, I think. Looks like the partition key can be set to whatever you want, so maybe you log, I dunno, hits sharded by page, and your homepage gets a ton. I'd lean towards sharding randomly to avoid that, but, eh, they're just giving you enough rope to mess up your logging pipe with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like a useful reworking of SQS, but all the hard work is being done in the client: "client library automatically handle complex issues like adapting to changes in stream volume, load-balancing streaming data, coordinating distributed services, and processing data with fault-tolerance."

Unfortunately, there's no explanation of the mechanics of coordination and fault tolerance, so the hard part appears to be vaporware.

<comment><USER16> > Unfortunately, there's no explanation of the mechanics of coordination and > fault tolerance, so the hard part appears to be vaporware.

I think it's unfair to call it vaporware - Amazon doesn't tend to release vaporware. You can also be fairly confident this has been in private beta for some time, so we'll probably see a few blog posts about it from some of their privileged (big spending) clients - typically someone like Netflix or AirBnB. But I agree it would be nice to get some more information on the details.

As for the client library handling load-balancing, fault tolerance, etc - <USER2> might not be ideal, but as long as I don't have to do it myself then it might be okay.

<comment><USER21> The client handling it is ideal from a systems perspective, because the app won't forget to be fault tolerant on its connection to the server.

Its less ideal from a maintenance perspective, because there will need to be feature-rich clients in Java and C (with dynamic language bindings). Applications will be running many many versions of the clients. Also, for coordination, the clients will need to communicate, so there may be configuration and/or firewall issues for the app to resolve.

It will be interesting to see Amazon make this tradeoff for what I believe is the first time.

<comment><USER22> It's not exactly the first time, but close - the Simple Workflow Service has client helper libraries for both Java and Ruby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Kinesis consumer API is somewhat equivalent to the Simple Consumer API in Kafka. You'll have to manage the consumed sequence number yourself. There's no higher level consumer API to keep track of the consumed sequence numbers.

<comment><USER9> Looks like AWS decide to put this capability in their Kinesis Client Library, which keeps track of the checkpoints in DynamoDB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting I/O limitations in Kinesis:

1MB/s writes with 1000 writes/s 2MB/s reads with 5 read/s

<comment><USER23> Per shard.</comment></comment>


One weird trick to enable Brotli on all CDNs - <AUTHOR> http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2016/enabling-brotli-even-on-cdns-that-dont-support-it-yet/ <comment><AUTHOR> Brotli offers better compression than Gzip, but most CDNs don't support it yet. Most CDNs assume that gzip is the only compression format on the web, making it hard to add support for newer formats like Brotli. This article goes into a way to get past these restrictions and support Brotli on your website.</comment>


Investor Day - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/investor-day <comment><USER3> As an investor, I think this will accomplish a few things:

1) A lot of scheduling friction will disappear. The week just after demo day is usually crazy because hundreds of founders and investors are all trying to schedule meetings with each other, and there are inevitable race conditions that lead to a lot of rescheduling and wasted time. (E.g. I email three founders with 5 possible time slots, and they all reply and ask for the same time slot.)

2) I think this will be great for investors who act quickly and go by their gut. There are plenty of investors out there -- especially those who write smaller checks -- for whom 20 minutes will be enough time to make a quick decision.

3) I'm not sure if this will be great for investors like me that approach investing more methodically rather than with their gut.* I love 1-hour meetings because that's plenty of time for both sides to dig in and learn a lot about each other. Twenty minutes feels very short to me, and I'm not sure if a 20-minute meeting is more likely to save me and the founder from an unnecessary 1-hour meeting, or if I end up having just as many 1-hour meeting -- but now with an extra 20 minutes tacked on.

That said, I don't want to judge this process before I try it at least once, and I'm looking forward to trying it out in August.

* FWIW, there are great gut-based investors and great methodical investors, and I'm not implying either approach is better.

<comment><USER4> I am an investor and my experience is, if you have done enough homework about the startup you want to meet, twenty minutes shall be long enough to clarify a few key things so you can make an informed decision.

<comment><USER3> I personally like asking a lot of questions, so I'd still prefer >20 minutes. I 100% agree with you though that preparation can save a lot of meeting time. One catch with YC companies in my experience is that they rarely have detailed pitch decks or significant web presences, so there's often not that much to research before a meeting.

<comment><USER4> Did you check out The Macro - [http://themacro.com/](http://themacro.com/) ? Yes the info disclosed by YC for each startup is still limited but better than nothing in the before.

<comment><USER3> Definitely helpful, but AFAIK only about a dozen startups from the 100+ startup batch have been covered so far ([https://www.google.com/#q=%22meet+the+batch+s16%22+inurl:the...](https://www.google.com/#q=%22meet+the+batch+s16%22+inurl:themacro.com%2Farticles)). I can imagine the coverage will double or triple by demo day, but I'm skeptical that all startups will be covered. Btw, I love the /data subsection of your website!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ...if Investing/General Partner is not present, the slot will be cancelled.

These seems to be an attempt to reinforce FOMO to force key people to attend demo day. Resorting to these tactics implies a pretty big perceived power imbalance... Eg. is this a reaction to senior partners sending their underlings because of DDay burnout? If so, this could backfire. The senior partners might just not show up (still), and force founders to attend offsite meetings later anyway (in addition to the new DDay meetings). In other words: This might just be a net increase in founder effort without changing the investor-founder DDay dynamic. After all: What do the senior partners gain / lose by this new situation? Not much (aside from FOMO), I'd guess. But the best investors will always be in demand anyway -- whether they attend DDay or not.

<comment><USER5> Why the downvotes?

Seems like a well-reasoned hypothesis and contributes to the overall discussion. Has HN become that critical of different opinions that downvotes are used to punish dissent rather than using upvotes to indicate agreement?

<comment><USER6> Who cares about downvotes! just enter the "Aspergian mindset" and write what you think is right.

If you are looking for social feedback you will never get far on startups.

<comment><USER7> Well, users are social feedback . . .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are investors weighted by their fund's size? Or are founders told the ranking they were given by each interested investor?

I can imagine many firms go into demo day with the resources and willingness to fund 10-20 ventures, whereas others are looking for only one or two.

I would much rather be the fifth choice of the former than third choice of the latter. If I knew my position in the stack I could figure it out for myself, or it could be calculated for me if YC is trying to avoid the negative consequences of making that transparent.

<comment><USER9> Investors are not weighted by their fund's size - they are ranked by the founders individually. Founders would be able to apply your stated preference for meeting with larger funds or with known high frequency investors, if they were so inclined.

<comment><USER8> Without knowing how one ranks, though, it's substantially harder to prioritize.

This doesn't hurt the big funds so much as it does the small ones. If I were an eCommerce or Logistics company, for example, there are a subset of niche funds which would be great strategic investors; but knowing they're only going to invest in one or two ventures would leave me disinclined to prioritize them when high-frequency investors are in the mix.

I don't want to kvetch here, it's a _much_ better system than the current free-for-all. But since investors already get the first-mover advantage, it would be nice if entrepreneurs had more complete information.

To carry the theme of relationship analogues in this thread: knowing who's interested in me is great, but I'd rather be someone's dream girl than a fallback or fling.

<comment><USER9> We do have a lot of context on investors that can help founders when choosing who to meet with. In addition, we're going to let investors specify a reason why they want to meet with each company (optionally). This should give less well known investors who are highly suited to particular companies a chance to get noticed.

<comment><USER8> > we're going to let investors specify a reason why they want to meet with > each company (optionally).

Even better! You guys have really thought this through. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like that they cancel slots when no partners of the VC firm are present.

</comment><comment><USER11> I assume this is using the same or similar algorithm as the NRMP algorithm uses for U.S. residency match day?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the Stable Marriage problem provides a solution for matching these ordered preferences between two sets of people/elements: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Depending on how this is organized, this can be a spectacularly BAD idea.

Investors would love it because they now have visual confirmation of who all are the "hot" matches. I bet everyone other than the Sequoias would be straining to look at who the hot startups are...and completely ignore the ones in front of them.

For the long tail of a YC batch - the ones that are not hotly contested - <USER2> could be a disaster. Previously, investors would be forced to actually look at a startup and decide _in isolation_. Now they can simply look at the Big VC.

I can completely see why investors would love this.

One might as well make public the interest match list and rank it by order of "likes" received.

People are perfectly capable of driving up and down the Bay Area. Guess what - we get a few free meals and coffees out of it.

EDIT: guess what, you can bring associates to tailgate Sequoia & A16Z investors.

EDIT2: what you guys might be trying to do is be helpful. For example, this lets you force-schedule investor meetings for startups that had no investor interest and term it as "the AI did it!". But I'm not sure if that will be really helpful ... at the cost of drastically reducing FOMO factor for most other startups.

<comment><USER14> I don't see anything in the description that allows investors to see an aggregated ranking of YC startups.

<comment><USER13> I said - it might as well be that. They can physically do that now (using their associates,etc) by checking out the marquee VC activity in the room.

Even if these were individual rooms, you would have significant tailgating behavior.

People don't realize this, but the most popular question of demo day is "who else is investing in you"

While earlier every deal was always evaluated in isolation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a signaling issue introduced at all?

1) can investors see that a startup is not at the venue or at a table all morning and get a feel for demand?

2) can investors gather any information from the matching results to get a feel for demand?

3) is there a chance for investors to send false signals by showing their interest in other startups artificially? Vice versa for startups at all (would require collusion so unlikely)

2 and 3 not so much but regarding number one, will physical observation of the meeting space introduce any signaling oppurtinities be it genuine or fraudulent by either party?

<comment><USER13> This is exactly what will happen (re: my comment in this thread). This is a highly investor friendly move and will benefit the top 10 startups of a batch. This will worsen the situation for the long tail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a solid idea. I honestly thought something like this was already in place so it makes sense. Still though the first thing I thought of is what it might feel like to be part of the statistic few who get zero investors clicking the button (I mean statistically this should happen at least a couple of times due to the batch size, right? Or am I severely underestimating the amount of investors that attempts do demo day?)

<comment><USER17> If you can't get a single investor to give you 20 minutes after Demo Day you've got much bigger problems.

<comment><USER18> A few years ago sure, but 2016 has been pretty brutal for seed and series A. I imagine a small percentage of great companies will lose out as a result of a cold funding climate.

<comment><USER19> Seed is roughly the same as it's always been. Even if a lot of VC firms are retrenching, there are still tons of angel investors and seed funds out there casting wide nets.

Series A, definitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is extremely valuable data for YC to capture for themselves. I wonder how they might use it other than for a match-making algorithm..

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great, it would have saved us (GitLab) a lot of driving around. It is one of those idea's that are very obvious in hindsight but for sure I didn't think of it.

</comment><comment><USER22> The stable marriage problem has two natural algorithms that produce a stable matching: one algorithm give priority to women's choices and one gives priority to men's choices.

If the algorithm used by yc to produce the matching for each slot is based on these, which algorithm is used? The one that gives priority to women's choices or to men's choices? A variation that doesn't give priority to any gender choices?

<comment><USER23> _The stable marriage problem has two natural algorithms that produce a stable matching: one algorithm give priority to women 's choices and one gives priority to men's choices._

This is true under two conditions: 1. Marriages are heterosexual; and 2. Marriages are monogamous.

While startup/VC relationships are heterosexual (err, heterofinancial?), they are absolutely not monogamous, so the analogy to the stable matching algorithm already fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me a lot of Waterloo's co-op matching system, Jobmine.

<comment><USER25> Which is an absolutely awful system, for a multitude of reasons.

One of the biggest faults that looks like it might be replicated here (the article does not specify) is that once employers (VCs) rank students (startups), the students can't see the numerical ranking they were given.

For example, if I'm a student who was ranked by several companies, I cannot see the numerical ranking they gave me. This introduces a significant bias against students for no apparent reason; employers do not lose out if we can see how they ranked us.

This is one of the reasons that UWaterloo as a school is hugely overrated (although the students are generally as good as they are hyped up to be).

<comment><USER26> Why is sharing the rating with students so critical? I can see why people would be curious, but I'm not sure why it matters so much?

<comment><USER27> Because students don't know how much a company wants them, and so cannot set their ranking with that knowledge in mind. For example, Apple could rank a student a 9 and Microsoft a 2, but to the student it looks like their level of interest is the same. The student could personally prefer Microsoft, but have a low chance of getting matched, whereas if they knew Apple was closer to a sure-shot of having a job, they might be more risk-averse and rank Apple as their most desired over Microsoft.

<comment><USER26> I still don't see how on average it's worse for students. It might be worse for student A who would have applied to MS knowing a higher chance of getting in, but that's then probably worse for student B who genuinely wants to work at MS and doesn't get the slot that A took.

Isn't it better if everyone expresses their true preferences and then we do the best matching we can on that basis, rather than having students attempt to game the system in response to company ratings? Your description makes the system sound close to optimal to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Using both these ranked inputs, our software will create "Investor Day" > schedules for each investor and each startup, which will take place at the > Computer History Museum on Wednesday 8/24.

Sounds like the backend of a dating site for startups and investors.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is almost exactly how some law schools run their on-campus interviewing process (except the bit about actual decision-makers being required to attend). From what I've observed, it works really well. Pre-screening for at least some level of mutual interest can save everyone a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER30> From the way they've set this up, it appears to be optimal for investors and pessimal for founders. Anyone else notice the same or disagree? It's in the proof for a particular theorem.

<comment><USER31> I disagree and believe this should be better for founders. Demo Day works so well because it's a forcing function for getting a lot of investors to see you at once and make a decision quickly, because so many other investors are deciding at the same time. Typically, investors want a long time to consider a company, and they only move fast if someone is / might bid against them. Scheduling meetings post-Demo Day is tough, and most people do it sub- optimally (by scheduling them too far apart). This new system makes meetings happen faster and more per day, increasing a chance of getting a bite quickly, which should lead to a higher chance of closing the round.

The downside I see is that if you are bad at meeting investors / need to iterate on your pitch, these meetings won't allow you to do that, as they'll be over before you can rethink it. But I think it's generally worth more / faster meetings.

*As another investor pointed out, 20 minute meetings may also be too short. I am not sure what the optimal meeting length should be. 30 minutes might be better. 1 hour is probably too long (you can always schedule a follow up meeting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "all the companies will be set up at tables to meet with you face to face."

A study on speed dating showed an increased opinion from the person that approaches the other. Intentional?

</comment><comment><USER33> If you're interested, please swipe to the right...

</comment><comment><USER34> This is cool. Good to see YC improving.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is so romantic!

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't know, your answer very wrong to me. What do you even know about math.

Did you even win the Putnam, if not then please don't be bolder than the parent poster.

<comment><USER37> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12051967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12051967) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Free online eBook + sell PDF/ePUB, or just sell PDF/ePUB eBook? - <AUTHOR>

If you were writing a technology centric eBook, would you publish it free online and sell a digital eBook (PDF/ePUB/etc.) and Print on Demand version, or just have it for sell with a free sample chapter like most traditional publishers?  I'm noticing many online eBooks that are available fully free online but with for pay extras, http://railstutorial.org being a good example.  The free content would obviously be a great way for people to discover your writing, but also lowers the likelihood of them paying.  Then again, a for-pay eBook that no one knows of won't get sold either.  Most of all, there's no reason we need to stick with only the most traditional sales methods with eBooks.<p>What's your feelings about each method, and which would you choose?  I've almost decided what I want to do, but would be interested to see the general thoughts on both models. <comment><USER2> I would have it all online/freely available but w/ the ability to purchase a lulu physical copy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cory Doctorow has some thoughts and numbers:

<http://craphound.com/walh/about/the-process>

<http://craphound.com/walh/2010/10/monthly-financials>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. What are your thoughts about releasing a free web-based eBook and selling a download copy? This would be similar to 37signals' Getting Real: you can read it free online, or purchase a PDF copy. Do you think this would be an effective marketing strategy, especially for an author's first book?</comment></comment>


DropMeme: The Fastest Way to Create Your Memes, Trolls, and Other LOL's - <AUTHOR> http://dropmeme.com

<comment><USER2> Not enough memes. Obama memes are very popular right now, but it's not an option on the site. Otherwise, pretty site.

<comment><USER3> We do plan to add more built-in memes very soon and perhaps categories and whatnot. Until then you can use any image on the web with ?template_url=*

Enjoy! [http://dropmeme.com/?template_url=http://blogs.telegraph.co....](http://dropmeme.com/?template_url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/04/Barack- Obama-EU-January-2012.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Hahah.. Sorry I had to: [http://drpm.me/VNZ3](http://drpm.me/VNZ3)

<comment><USER3> As of right now we don't want automatic memes on the home page. Working on something even better as we speak.

We'll keep you all posted (@DropMeme) Thanks for your feedback @vinhboy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Impressive turnaround time!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Please report any bugs, that goes without saying… ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what events and parties 1 should attend to increase the user base? - <AUTHOR>

i believe that to get the critical mass, we must meet influential people to see the app, install it & speak about it. Am looking for suggestions on parties/events/etc where i can meet these people. <comment><USER2> First find 10 people (business apps) or 100+ people (consumer apps) who need it like they need oxygen, _then_ worry about meeting influencers.

After you have found people who need your app like they need oxygen, ask them where they hang out / who they listen to for advice on $YOUR_FIELD. Go there, meet people, show them the app that people in $YOUR_FIELD can't get enough of, explain why their audiences would be best served by hearing about it.

Some people think that Justin Bieber tweets about you and then, bam, business. This is not actually the way businesses are made.

<comment><AUTHOR> some details: we run a link sharing service called [http://teamgum.com](http://teamgum.com) for teams (B2B). launched a month ago at TNW amsterdam. 170+ teams/600 users are using it currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its strange that you didn't include what your application does or who is marketed too. Once you've defined that, then you should go where those people are. I'm reminded of the fact that the Pinterest founder used to visit homes and have Pinterest parties with what was IIRC, middle aged women, (I think this was Startup School 2012?), in order to get the word out on his app.

<comment><AUTHOR> we run a link sharing service for teams called [http://teamgum.com](http://teamgum.com). we are targeting small teams to make use of the product. We launched the service in last week of april (1 month ago) and we have about 170 teams/600+ users using the service.</comment></comment>


How You Nest Modules Matters in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.thescore.com/how-you-nest-modules-matters-in-ruby/

<comment><USER2> I've always encountered issues with my namespaces. It's very minor and easily corrected, but annoying nonetheless.

Great article that actually simplifies and explains the things I've experienced myself!</comment>


TopTrendBooks - <AUTHOR> https://toptrendbooks.com <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit is a great place to discuss and recommend books. But if you are like me search can quickly get hectic due to the huge community. So we created a project that automatically ranks over 15,000 books everyday based on Reddit posts/comments.

Please checkout the site and share us your thoughts :)</comment>


San Francisco at 'boiling point' over tech, houses, homeless - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/3a5aaa8ed10d46ba9fd84fe8242ada49 <comment><USER2> As a native San Franciscan I can truthfully say that this is a problem of our own making. We continually support failed policies, terrible politicians and awful city planning. We've got a 40 year backlog of housing that needs to be filled and it disproportionately affects the poor. Our city leaders are failing its people and that has to stop.</comment>


The new X-Men movie explained in Git - <AUTHOR> http://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/x-men-days-of-future-past-explained-in-git

<comment><USER2> Except you've thrown away everything that's happened since 1973, some of which you may still want. There's going to be a lot of awful lot of manual conflict resolution to handle - or is there a "world" script that can be run off the new HEAD that plays out the series of events that result from the sentinels being prevented?

<comment><USER3> I think the idea is that you don't have access to the other timeline, because none of the characters should. All that's left of the dark timeline is in Wolverines's head, which is accounted for!

<comment><USER4> So Wolverine at the end of the film wouldn't remember anything that happened to him (and his body) between 1973 and the present in the new timeline which he created, right? He would just remember his original timeline, plus the stuff that we see him do in the film.

You see that in the film, where he meets some characters he previously knew but didn't expect to see. But we don't see the other side of this: there are surely characters in the new timeline that Wolverine is very close to that he will have no memory of. I guess that sucks for those characters.

<comment><USER5> >I guess that sucks for those characters.

Wolverine's return to the new future essentially kills off the one that had been living in that timeline since 1973 and nobody cares.

<comment><USER6> But, there's a nice narrative symmetry because he had missing memories when he was first introduced way back in _X-Men_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also:

        apocalypse@eygpt$ git init

        touch README.md; git add README.md

        git commit -m 'Build Pyramids'

<comment><USER8> LOL...

      git remote add horseman1 email@example.com/apocalypse.git
      git remote add horseman2 email@example.com/apocalypse.git
      git remote add horseman3 email@example.com/apocalypse.git
      git remote add horseman4 firstname.lastname@example.com/apocalypse.git

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Easy to explain cronology of new X-Men movie. I want to see you do the same with Primer!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha now that would be a challenge

<comment><USER10> Though in large part it's a challenge because we only see hints at some of the timelines, so we'd have to make guesses and leave some placeholder branches in...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think you should mention that 1973 wolverine enlists young punk Quicksilver (1000x developer) who force pushes a ton of undocumented, yet amazing, features with little to no commit messages, then sadly disappears.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wrong title, "Git explained in the new X-Men movie" ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice intro to (advanced) git :-) If anyone else was curious about the state of bisect in mercurial (it's been in standard mercurial for a while):

[http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/BisectExtension](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/BisectExtension)

As for git stash, the closest equivalent appear[1] to be the shelve extension (distributed with mercurial since 2.8, November 2013):

[http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ShelveExtension](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ShelveExtension)

However, as we'll be needing to do a bit of history editing, we might want to just go straight for the (also bundled with mercurial) queues extension:

[http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MqExtension](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MqExtension)

Also relevant:

[http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/EditingHistory](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/EditingHistory) [http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MqTutorial](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MqTutorial)

I'm a little tempted to redo this for mercurial, just to look at the differences -- but the first order would be to create an actual repo -- say just a file with timestamps and events:

        -479: Artaÿctes crucified
        (...)
        1973: Wolverine wakes up in random bed
        1973: Mystique kills Trask
        1973: Mystique's DNA stolen
        xx: Last mutant killed by sentinel

(With every commit appending one or more lines).

That way we could use it as a nice way to compare work flows across scms... Who's up for doing RCS?

Come to think of it, as the initial series of commits are linear, they could be specified in some linear fashion (yml maybe) -- and then replayed to create the initial "broken" state -- then one would only have to document the "fixing" part for different systems... Another alternative would be to convert (eg via mercurials git/svn plugins -- but I don't think they cover bzr, monotone and rcs...).

[1] [http://selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial/2011-December/041164....](http://selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial/2011-December/041164.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> This had the exact opposite effect on me of further explaining some Git features via the X-Men movie!

<comment><USER15> Ellen Page actually played Gitty Pryde.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was expecting the picture of a shiny directed acyclic graph, what a let down

</comment><comment><USER17> Alternatively: Git/version control explained in terms of time travel.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is also accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also: the movie starts with a branch where nearly everyone dies, and Kitty Pride/Bishop reverts a few commits.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's funny. My friend just told me this too -- I got to the theater about 5 minutes late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why did Wolverine regain his memory in the future?

<comment><USER4> (In case it's not a given, spoilers for Days of Future Past below.)

He didn't. He just has all his memories from the original timeline (e.g. previous X-Men and Wolverine films), plus the events he experienced during Days of Future Past. He has no memory of what happened to him between 1973 and the present in the new timeline (which he created). That's why he's surprised to see a few characters at the end of DoFP. He remembers them from the original timeline, but he also remembers them dying in the original timeline. What would be much stranger is if they had never met him in the new timelines (in which case he would remember them but they wouldn't know him), or if he had met someone in the new timeline but not the original timeline (in which case they would know him but he would have no memory of them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What, we didn't get to use git annotate? I guess we don't want to go assigning blame in such a complicated situation :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> I understand that this is just for fun, but wouldn't the rebase at the end require a force push to the remote?

</comment><comment><USER21> You forgot the post-credit scene showing Apocalypse 5000 years ago in Egypt with his 4 horsemen! :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> So what about "Lost"?

<comment><USER23> Whatever happened, happened. There's no rebasing involved. There's just a lot of jumping around to various tags at different points in time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> wibbly wobbly timey commit.

<comment><USER25> Do you mean timey wimey? <shudder>

<comment><USER19> Where did Torvalds get that screwdriver?!?

<comment><USER15> Someone should name a tool timey wimey.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jake Dyson Lighting - <AUTHOR> http://www.dyson.com/lighting/csys.aspx <comment><USER2> Is this a joke? $600+ for a desk LED lamp? Even if current LEDs lose brightness, you could just replace the bulb every month for the next 10 years before this lamp even came close to an ROI. But I guess Dyson isn't going after the "value" market, just the cool factor.

<comment><USER3> > Is this a joke?

I see you're new to Dyson's business model. Keep in mind, these are the guys who make a $400 fan in a niche full of $10 competitors.

<comment><USER4> And ignoring how it looks for a second, the Dyson Air Multiplier is kind of mediocre anyway (and VERY mediocre for the price point).

The rest of the electric fan market has shifted over the last ten-ish years to noise-efficiency. Meaning the most air movement for the least amount of noise. So we've seen new blade shapes, smarter motor designs, enclosures that attempt to dampen the noise, and so on. And Dyson's Air Multiplier could, in theory, have done well in that competition but they care more about form than function, so they stuck this tiny little motor with a higher RPM in the thing which has made it extremely loud for the amount of air that it can move.

In terms of noise-efficiency, it sounds as loud as fans from the 1990s and before.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's getting hard to find a fan that I can run at night to cover the noise of the city. Every time I buy a fan, it's quieter and quieter, but I like loud fans to help me sleep.

<comment><USER4> No sarcasm: Look into Nursery Sleep Soothers. While they sell white noise machines targeted at adults, they're all terrible because it is a niche market. But in the nursery sleep soothers category you can find a bunch of high quality white noise machines for a good price.

For example the Marpac Dohm has an actual spinning fan inside designed to generate white noise. But you can find digital noise simulators who can do: industrial sounds, water, fan noise, nature, and so on.

<comment><USER6> Is the Marpac Dohm actually targeted at nurseries? I've seen it quite frequently in medical waiting rooms. It helps provide privacy for those having sensitive conversations behind flimsy doors.

<comment><USER4> On Amazon at least they sell it under Baby Sleep Soothers and Sound Therapy Products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stays bright for 37 years, has a 2 year warranty.

<comment><USER8> I think a true innovation would be a light that stayed bright for 2 years and had a 37 year warranty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heat pipes are used in laptop, desktop, GPU heatsinks and coolers. They are also commonly used in oil-pipes thru permafrost. Are they using some interesting long-life LEDs?

<comment><USER10> Probably. The heatpipes are either overkill, or these LEDs run very hot (combined 10W+ of heat). Wouldn't the metal frame of the lamp itself sufficiently cool 'normal' LEDs?

<comment><USER11> sufficiently cool may not be enough to get the stated life.

Like a processor running at 70C vs 35C, 70C is sufficiently cool (it's within spec say at 80C) but heat damage is continuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was such a huge Dyson fan, bought a cleaner a decade ago, read his books.

Had the suspicion the cleaner was crap. Lots of reviews said the same. But I convinced myself I and the others were wrong, Dyson is a genius.

Some years ago I finally admitted it was expensive crap and got something else.

<comment><USER13> I bought a Dyson vacuum 5 years ago or so for 1/2 price from a clearance sale. It has been one of the best vacuums I have owned. Was it worth the original $400 price? Probably not, but for $200 I think it was a good deal.

<comment><USER14> I paid almost double that ($700 US), and it is still definitely worth it. The product does much better than any other I've used, it's easy to clean, and it takes all manner of abuse. It's one of my favorite household tools by a long stretch.

<comment><USER15> > The product does much better than any other I've used, it's easy to clean, > and it takes all manor of abuse.

Dyson! It takes on all manors. It'll take on yours. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have you seen their other lighting product? That's some serious heat-sinking!

[http://www.dyson.com/lighting/ariel.aspx](http://www.dyson.com/lighting/ariel.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER17> They don't even tell you how bright their expensive lights are. they give some value in lux but that depends on the distance in which it is measured. I want lumen values!

</comment><comment><USER18> At what point does a product last "too long"? It seems that designing an expensive lamp and marketing the fact that it lasts 37 years seems kinda...dumb.

First there is the issue at the business level. Returning customers are the easiest and cheapest sells...but if your customer only buys a product every 30+ years...not great for business.

Then there is the technology. Why make something last that long with current technology when in 10 years or less, something more efficient and "better" will come along.

I'm not sure many people can even keep track of a lamp over that long. Between moving, things breaking, etc.

<comment><USER19> >First there is the issue at the business level. Returning customers are the easiest and cheapest sells...but if your customer only buys a product every 30+ years...not great for business.

This exact line of thinking has created scads of products that suffer from the opposite problem -- products that are kind of cheap and need to be repurchased every couple years, overall costing several times more than a good product would and generating several times more garbage.

> At what point does a product last "too long"? It seems that designing an > expensive lamp and marketing the fact that it lasts 37 years seems > kinda...dumb.

Well it is somewhat dumb because nobody believes it will last 37 years, partly because of the "everything is junk these days" effect that we've come to expect, but also because it comes with a _two_ year warranty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a Koncept Z-bar desk lamp (~$300) that I got at my lighting shop after looking for something that was cool to the touch and had a nice even light pattern. One minute I use it on "low" for lighting up my desk and the next I'm using it at full brightness for computer vision tasks.

I suspect that you have to be old enough that your eyes need a little help before you can appreciate a good lamp.

</comment><comment><USER21> I thought heat pipes needed convection to work. How would the liquid move in a straight, level pipe?

<comment><USER22> The liquid in a heat pipe can return to the hot end through capillary action, and I believe this is how heat pipes in computer equipment work. They can work in any orientation.

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

<comment><USER23> I agree that this is most likely to be a capillary-pumped heat pipe. For more reading about how the wicks work:

[http://www.thermalfluidscentral.org/encyclopedia/index.php/C...](http://www.thermalfluidscentral.org/encyclopedia/index.php/Capillary_Wick_Designs_and_Structures_in_Heat_Pipes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm really surprised that there are no technical specifications that would include, say, colour temperature. I've yet to see an LED bulb that produces light anywhere close to the warmth and spectrum spread as a halogen bulb. At $649, I'd definitely need to see that in person.

I'd also be in favour of a 37 year payment plan at $17.54/year.

<comment><USER25> LED bulbs have been getting gradually closer to the color fidelity of incandescents, I would think for most people in most situations, those with a CRI greater than 90 would be sufficient (certainly worth it for the the efficiency gain), e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_CRI_LED_lighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_CRI_LED_lighting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't it a bit too much for an LED light?

<comment><USER6> You're paying a premium for the industrial design.

<comment><USER27> You're paying for the name. This has all the industrial design as the vesa mounts I have for my monitors and they cost $25.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it just me, or does this completely fail to mention the amount of lumens it produces, the wattage of the lamp, or the incandescent-equivalent rating? Basically, all the fundamental parameters you'd normally expect when buying a lamp aren't there.

<comment><USER29> "Eight LEDs provide 587lx of warm, white light for 37 years"

But that's the only reference on the page.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, which is pretty meaningless because lux is a measure of light intensity at one particular spot and it doesn't provide any information about the distance at which that's measured, how big an area it'll reach that lux value over, or anything. My little 1 watt torch could probably produce ridiculous amounts of lux so long as it was only over an area the size of a postage stamp, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It looks perfect for a cleanroom but in my office those little wheels would be covered in dust immediately.

<comment><USER31> There's also an "Ariel" lamp that doesn't appear to have any moving parts, but I imagine those fins would be a disaster… [http://www.dyson.com/lighting/ariel.aspx](http://www.dyson.com/lighting/ariel.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yeah, right. Like a normal person will pay that much for a lamp.

<comment><USER31> What suggested to you that the target audience was "normal persons"?</comment></comment>


Congressional accountability site that compares your voting habits to Congress - <AUTHOR> http://4usxus.com <comment><USER2> The fact you compare votes with instant metrics is what's up!</comment>


The Easter Rocket War of Vrontados - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/04/the-easter-rocket-war-of-vrontados/100720/?utm_source=SFFB&single_page=true <comment><USER2> This year, the Greek Orthodox Easter is on the 1st May.

Therefore, if you want to witness the Easter Rocket War in person, you can travel to the Island of Chios (Greece) and be there in the evening of 30th April (a Saturday). The rocket war starts late in the evening of that Saturday.</comment>


Ask HN: Adobe AIR - <AUTHOR>

What's the opinion on Adobe AIR? The popularity among Hackers? It seems good to develop front-ends and nicely portable applications, but, I am a C++/Java programmer, it's a first for AIR, so: if you do use it, what for? Is it the basis/platform for one of your applications, or is it a front-end?
Just wondering, and thanks. <comment><USER2> Air and Flex are dead technologies. [http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/adobe-donates- flex-t...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/adobe-donates-flex-to- foundation-in-community-friendly-exit-strategy/)

<comment><USER3> AIR and Flex are two very different beasts.

<comment><USER2> Not really. Air is Flex packaged up to run as a standalone desktop app.

<comment><USER4> Really. Air is AS3 (which can be Flex or not) packaged to run as (standalone) desktop app, android and ios.

Also Flex is now open source and continues to be one of the best cross plattform dev frameworks.

<comment><USER5> > continues to be one of the best cross plattform dev frameworks

If you don't care about performance or quality of interface

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am Java/Python programmer, I used Adobe Air recently for pilot project at work trying to find if we could use it in our applications.

I can sum up my experience as below while developing a task management app.

Good Stuff : Very easy to learn, develop, debug and package.

Missing Stuff: No threading support. No direct web-workers support.

It can be easily used for Small GUI apps. But for something more serious ,I would rather give titanium desktop or Kivy a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> All right, awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've developed a mobile app with adobe AIR that's been downloaded over a million times on android and iOS. The performance is pretty good (I'd say better than the html5 frameworks I've seen) but the platform is targeted at mostly games.

Companies don't like to brag about the use of AIR in their products because it has a bad stigma to it (see HN) but it's actually still the most powerful platform for building and distributing especially games across windows, iOS, android, and mac. If you look at the alternative (html5) - it's the clear winner IMO.

Definitely AIR is always used as a frontend. And it's a damn good one because you can quickly create a beautiful UIs in Flash CS5 and then just wire them up in AS3.

The thing that scares me the most about AIR as a platform is the negative attitude towards it. I care about AIR because it's the right tool for most of the things I want to do. The negative attitude is killing it when there is no other viable replacement.

</comment><comment><USER8> See my company Live Documents www.live-documents.com. Built in Flex. The advantage it gives us is the same code base can be used for the web, desktop and mobile platform (yes that includes ios).

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't quite checked out Flex, although I heard it's similar, but going slightly down, now. Any other improvements for Desktop apps, et al?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't actually develop AIR apps but I've only seen them noticeably in the form of front-end because of the cross-compatibility with Operating Systems. From this I've come to think of it as a more desktop (opposed to browser) aware version of Flash.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, all right. Although I'm not a big fan of Flash, myself, I try to take advantage of the HTML5 (what I can squeeze from my little knowledge of), apart from TweetDeck, though, what are some good apps to check out made in AIR, that you use?

<comment><USER10> Klok, one of the better time-management software for the Mac, runs on AIR.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.balsamiq.com/> and many others too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty much dead. Latest versions don't work on Linux. And its not really popular on Windows or Mac OS either.

If you want to make desktop apps in HTML+CSS+JS, try building an embedded WebKit app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was looking for something along those lines (i.e. Brackets style, but I have no idea what to do about the file access and C++/CUDA integration (as I need to do some large parallel computing, the app is simply a front-end)).</comment></comment>


David Karp Quit School to Get Serious About Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/technology/david-karp-quit-school-to-get-serious-about-start-ups.html

<comment><USER2> You could say I'm the flip side of the "drop out of high school and make a million bucks" coin, although I'm not giving up yet. I dropped out of high school 2 years in due to a confluence of factors (primarily boredom and some family issues that resulted in me entering foster care.)

My perspective is that the academic aspect of high school is nearly worthless for the long tail of people who have above-average intelligence. What _is_ valuable is the social interaction with peers and other extra-curricular activities. You can get most or all of those activities elsewhere, but it's harder. Additionally, if you have plans of attending a prestigious college you may have more trouble getting in with a GED - although a reasonably high score guarantees admission to a lot of state schools.

Unfortunately I wasted any potential gain by spending a few years not doing much of anything except playing video games - in hindsight, probably due to depression.

Currently I'm taking college classes and working independently on some projects; I'd be happy to answer most questions.

<comment><USER3> This is a more recent occurrence in schools. From my experience, the best place to be to be stimulated was school. But with budget cuts it's getting harder to keep students interested, period. When I started middle school we had a fully equipped science lab, week long camping trips to the everglades, snorkelling, scuba, sailing and computer camps at various universities. All paid for by the taxpayers. By the time I graduated highschool the money had dried up through budget cuts and those programs were shuttered.

My old, college roommate worked in the admissions office told me exactly why they don't bother with GED applicants. If you are that smart you are supposed to be doing college prep courses. Getting a GED means you might be smart but probably lazy. And they have no shortage of smart, college ready students applying. If you didn't immediately enrole into community college after getting your GED you're cooked. It also means you don't have any of the minimum requirements (4 years english, 4 years math, physics, chemistry, 2 years language, etc.) to enrole to even the lowest ranked state school.

> Unfortunately I wasted any potential gain by spending a few years not doing > much of anything

This is the type of the student universities tend to avoid.

Have you gotten treated for the depression? Are you working towards an AA? Full-time or part-time student? Colleges will allocate some spaces for non- traditional students but the good ones prefer FT students.

<comment><USER2> State schools I've looked at just require minimum GED scores (I had no problem getting perfect scores on several parts) and a few years of foreign language.

> This is the type of the student universities tend to avoid.

Agreed, but retroactively fixing mistakes is impossible so I have to settle for not repeating them.

I'm taking classes full time right now, if I get into a "good school" it'll be a transfer. I'm not sure if I'll get an AA; either way I'm planning to get a computer science BS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's continue to preach anecdotal evidence about million to one chances of becoming ridiculously rich.

<comment><USER5> But Mark Zuckerberg didn't wash his socks for a whole month while fleshing out the idea that would become Facebook! _No one_ should wash their socks. Innovation would be through the roof! </sarcasm> ;-)

<comment><USER6> We should all emulate the 80's entrepreneurs and sport full beards </serious>

<comment><USER7> Currently sporting a reasonably full beard. I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is bit of a nitpick but he did not quit school to work on tumblr. He was homeschooled, first of all, while working at various startups. Secondly he started tumblr in 2006?, long after he had dropped out of high school.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not a parent and this article may be 20/20 hind sight so parents please correct me if I'm completely off base. Allowing your child to drop out of high school is a poor choice assuming they are capable of finishing it. I could maybe see this if you started the site when you were 11 and were looking at VC funding when you were 15 but based on the article Tubmlr wasn't even started when he dropped out. There was no guarantee that David would have founded Tumblr and you were basically taking a lottery ticket on something like this. I'm glad it worked out for him but this isn't a path any 15 year old with decent tech skills should follow.

<comment><USER10> A big part of high school and even college is figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life. You learn a little bit about a lot of different things and hopefully by the end have some sense of what you want to pursue further.

He had already figured that out by 14.

<comment><USER11> >>A big part of high school and even college is figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life.

Frankly speaking, looking back what I was when I was 14. I am very glad I didn't make that 'what to do with the rest of my life' decisions back then. I'm sure 100% I would have made a very big mess of my life.

14 years is way to younger to make such decisions.

<comment><USER12> It depends a lot on the person, and maybe quite a bit on how they've invested/been raised those first 14 years. No need to extrapolate from one anecdote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Again the media fall in love in the "drop out of school makes millions story". But that's not reality. only 0.0000000001% of school and college dropout will get such a huge deal. Other will just waste their life. What's sad is that somewhere a child is reading this and thinks he really got a chance to beat the odds. It's no different than pumping out lottery raffles.

<comment><USER14> Hardly, this is only true if you believe that high school is the most effective way to gain the knowledge that high school teaches and/or that we are still stuck in a credentials orientated world that won't let someone without a high school completion (that basically says nothing about their ability) should be given any kind of good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _He speaks at a rapid clip and, often, for minutes without stopping_

Aaron Levie seems to speak this way as well.

I'm not sure what it stems from - but many founders/entrepreneurs have this trait.

Has anyone else noticed this?

<comment><USER16> usually folks that talk for minutes without stopping like the sound of their voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it is more like he left formal schooling and started home school,which is not exactly the same as quitting school.

</comment><comment><USER18> David Karp may or may not be in for a surprise. He may realize, after all this time and all this work, that no amount of money will make up for a lost childhood.

<comment><USER19> Karp lost nothing, and gained a great deal. I suspect that he can only shake his head at the notion that anybody with a three-digit IQ would step inside a high school under any circumstances.

<comment><USER20> Anti-intellectualism at its finest. You advocate that people not learn. What Karp lost is knowledge. He can try to gain it back as an adult, but most likely he'll be too preoccupied with his lottery winnings and socializing in the business world to care. Meanwhile, others will make serious progress for our society.

Unless you have the luxury of equivalent or better education than high schools provide, you are choosing a life of ignorance.

<comment><USER14> Are you saying that he isn't at it above the level of the average high school graduate?

I would argue that he has made more serious progress and impact that most of us ever will. Of course no doubt some will say that Tumblr is worthless to society, pretty much the same thing that crops up every time there is a thread about Mark Zuckerburgs achievements.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://donmelton.com/2014/04/10/memories-of-steve/ <comment><USER2> There was also a muli-part interview with Don Melton and Nitin Ganatra in 2014: [https://m.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i- demoin...](https://m.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoing- software-steve-jobs)

[https://m.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii- under...](https://m.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii- understanding-apple)

</comment><comment><USER3> im glad steve jobs did what he did, because i love my apple products as much as the next person, but everytime i read something like i realize there is no way i would have wanted to work for him even if i was "changing the world". life is simply too short.

<comment><USER4> This article is the first time I've read something abou Steve that makes me think, "I would totally love to work for Steve"

It's the parts about how Steve conducts reviews. I feel like too many people beat around the bush, when asked a question they get flustered and make stuff up. I actually kinda enjoy being put on the spot. Say I don't have an answer or give my personal opinion, or be open and honest, or have to come up with ideas and such. I don't get flustered or bothered if I'm yelled at. I've had bosses that I think are worse than what Steve is sometimes described as. But damn if I haven't enjoyed those reviews or design sessions.

<comment><USER5> I studied photography and one of the teachers was blunt about quality and talent to the point of rudeness. He'd tell people they wouldn't even make a photographer's arsehole, let alone a photographer.

The day he handed back one of my photographs and said "Congratulations, you're now a photographer's arsehole" was a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a weird and fascinating read since it says almost nothing about Jobs (good or bad), but is only about the fear and fawning and deference of the people meeting him. There is nothing in the stories that explains _why_ they have this fear and fawning. Apparently Jobs made some silly practical jokes where the fun was that the victims were initially too afraid of him to acknowledge the joke. But no hint of why people would be afraid in the first place.

Apparently Jobs asked how the IE bookmarks bar looked and this guy googled an image. And this was one of the must harrowing but ultimately triumphant moments of his life.

</comment><comment><USER7> Story time with gramps!

<comment><USER8> Not sure if you're getting downvoted for "gramps" – but in case people don't know:

[https://donmelton.com/2015/11/30/why-they-call-me- gramps/](https://donmelton.com/2015/11/30/why-they-call-me-gramps/)

<comment><USER7> Wow yeah I hadn't seen the downvotes but seriously anyone who has worked with him knows about "story time with gramps".

Shrug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is how I know I would suck in a company like this. Yeah, it's Steve Jobs - but I find the level of reverence on show in this piece to be a little hard to take. It's certainly revealing of the culture there at the time.

> And when you can get the time for thoughtful reflection on your idea from a > visionary like Steve — well, that's a good day.

Being humble is one thing, but forcing yourself into this kind of fawning emotional servility feels dangerous to me. He was smart; he was lucky; he was a human, like anyone else. I don't think this level of hierarchy is something that I would seek to build at any of my startups, or would hope to support in a startup that I invested in or advised. It just feels unhealthy to me.

<comment><USER10> There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that:

1\. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone

2\. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him

3\. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonetheless not a sensible idea.

In other words, you're correct in your business practices, but possibly blinded to the fact that Steve actually was very, very good.

<comment><USER11> Like insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook?

I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.

<comment><USER12> "I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas..."

... as you walk along you path you meet a man. 50% if the time he tells you sage advice that makes you a multimillionaire and 50% of the time he tells you sage advice that doesn't make you richer. What do you value the mans afvice as?

It's not a cult or a conspiracy when what the other part is selling actually materializes.

<comment><USER13> Does your evaluation change if, instead of making you fantastically rich his advice makes him fantastically richer?

<comment><USER14> If everyone has stock options, this isn't quite true. And not sure about the eningeers, but the execs at Apple seem to be doing pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > between rounds of Overwatch

Ah, an Overwatch player. This explains everything ;)

In all seriousness, WSL has improved A LOT and I use it frequently on my gaming PC so I don't have to pull out my MacBook. Performance is definitely a bit worse but I have a Ryzen 2700X and an NVMe drive, so it's still plenty quick enough despite the inefficiencies on the software side of things. I used to always dual boot Linux on my desktops, but I just don't have a need to do that anymore.

</comment><comment><USER16> "As a manager, you should never share such things with someone who reports to you."

Sharing a human moment (being upset that a superior is sick) w/ a subordinate is off-limits?

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

<comment><USER18> I've seen this kind of strange behavior elsewhere with less famous people who are in charge of companies.

People who don't regularly interact with them seem to act strange around them (which isn't that surprising if they're not seen that often and they're in charge), but the weirder thing to me is that all the supporting staff around the leader also acts strangely and seems to make it worse.

It reminds me of the story when Carmack had a demo and one of Jobs' support staff said they couldn't use it because "he doesn't like blood". When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine.

Something about it feels weird.

<comment><USER19> > When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine.

That seems less like the kind of "aura of reverence" you're talking about, and more like a respect for another creative person who makes carefully-considered choices (and perhaps a knowledge that most people in the audience for the demo know the artist and _also_ respect them.)

Even if you don't agree with someone's tastes, if those tastes are a _coherent_ part of a polished work, and you value the work itself, then you'll tend to let your aesthetic disagreement slide.

For a different concrete example: when the average movie director puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it _sticks out_ in a way that makes you wonder whether they have a fetish and wanted to indulge it—and that breaks the verisimilitude of the work, lessening its impact. If, on the other hand, a director like David Lynch puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it's usually a critical element that fits the tone of the work, and doesn't break verisimilitude at all. It doesn't really matter whether David Lynch likes a given weird sex thing; it would still be a part of the work even if he didn't, because it belongs there.

Blood _belongs_ in Carmack's games, in a way that means you'll tend to appreciate the bloodiness for its contribution to the overall tone of the game, even if you don't like blood.

<comment><USER18> Yeah that makes sense to me - my comment was more about how the support staff acted like "oh we can't do that - he wouldn't like that" when it turned out to be totally fine when interacting with him directly.

I'm not sure if that's a thing with Jobs and people being afraid of him, but I've seen similar stuff where people around the person act like they're delicate or everything requires special consideration when interacting with the leader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 2014 tag would be helpful

</comment><comment><USER21> Talk about being brainwashed, this man sees Steve Jobs as a god.

</comment><comment><USER22> Disappointed. I was expecting at least some screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER23> I used to think Jobs' Reality Distortion Field only worked on tech bloggers who loved Apple's story and narrative so much, they went overboard to praise their products, in spite of tone-deaf stuff Jobs would say in public like "You're holding it wrong".

Turns out there were plenty of people right there at Apple who fell under that same RDF.

<comment><USER24> Did you really think the RDF as you say didn't apply to workers inside Apple? Almost always the biggest kool-aid drinkers for any company are the employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Steve didn't like the status bar and didn't see the need for it. "Who looks > at URLs when you hover your mouse over a link?" He thought it was just too > geeky.

People who don't want to be phished? People who don't have absolute trust that a hyperlink posted by some random schmuck on the internet won't take them somewhere they shouldn't go?

This sort of background mentality of "Make the happy path look slick, and if the happy path doesn't work for you, good luck," has always turned me off from Apple stuff. But, of course, I'm not the target audience.

<comment><USER26> One thing I miss when using Safari instead of Chrome

<comment><USER7> The article literally states that they convinced him to have a toggle...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > I don't want those few and fleeting memories fractured and confused by other > people's interpretations.

So you want to maintain dogmatic ideological views without subjecting yourself to an uncomfortable re-examining of how rose-tinted your glasses might have been?

I was immediately turned off by this, and had a hard time finishing the post after reading that. Sometimes admitting that your idols are flawed human beings, but often trying their best nevertheless, can end in a better appreciation of the person.

<comment><USER28> He wanted to keep his first hand memories intact, and not be distracted by a dramatized or fictionalized account.

Why do you need the interpretation of people who weren't there, of events you have directly experienced yourself?</comment></comment>


How Dropbox Won - <AUTHOR> http://www.seejay.net/2010/11/how-dropbox-won.html

<comment><USER2> Don't miss reading the actual application (link at the start of the blog): <http://files.dropbox.com/u/2/app.html></comment>


Was Flash Crash triggered by a large fall in AAPL price on Nasdaq? - <AUTHOR> http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/apple-microsoft-flash-crash-market-capitalization/6/7/2010/id/28621

<comment><USER2> Why did I bother reading the article? As usual, the answer to a question posed in a headline is "no".

To avoid wasting your time, skip to the end. At some point near the beginning of the crash, Apple's stock dropped by 23% through causes unknown.

Good to see the headline on HN has been corrected now.

<comment><AUTHOR>
       As usual, the answer to a question posed in a headline
       is "no".

Reading this comment makes me stop and consider whether we were reading different articles.

He correlates three significant factors, showing the nasdaq cash index as the source of the decline, and then points to a major event occurring just before that which would explain the nasdaq decline.

Near the end the writer says, "If a large trader(s) precipitated the market crash on May 6, Apple was the vehicle."

This was a thorough, well-written piece! It doesn't come to a definitive conclusion, but there's a lot more content in it than anything else I've seen on the blip.

<comment><USER2> The (original) headline asked the question "was it Apple's fault?"

The answer is no. I cannot believe that Apple would do anything intended to lower their stock price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, yes. Sorry about that. Your timing was very unlucky to catch it as I think that version of the headline only lasted for a minute or so before I changed it to the corrected one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A "Flash crash" triggered by Apple? Funny.

</comment><comment><USER4> One should keep in mind <http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html> and note that the analysis is post-fact, and for any shred of credibility, the author ought to look for similar patterns in the past and in the future.

This is about as content-free as Cramer.

</comment><comment><USER5> No, it was caused by Adobe.

<http://flashcrash.dempsky.org/></comment>