Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance - <AUTHOR> http://bryank.im/instrumachines <comment><USER2> There are big EDM artists that have really been pushing the envelop on what you can do in live performance for a while now. Deadmau5 specifically has a real obsession about trying to do everything live and it's obvious that this requires a large amount of musical and technical knowledge and talent.

Here is a video with him talking about his live set set up from 2010 and is a really interesting watch: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTCqeWu094I>

I remember hearing somewhere that he has switch over to a complete live show since then, but I can't find a link to confirm this right now. Needless to say what he does is way more then just play some tracks that he made. Which is one of the reason he despises the term "DJ" to describe what he does.

Edit: He is also incredibly obsessed with the lights at his live show and handles the lighting including the rig himself.

<comment><USER3> I saw him play at Sasquatch in 2010 while walking back from the main stage not even intending to see his set (totally respect his talent and really enjoy the pieces he writes musically, but his genre just makes it unlistenable to me), and it was probably one of the most brilliant/memorable performances I've ever seen. I'm generally not impressed by random lighting setups because they're impersonal to the performance. Just set them up, have them go off at certain points of the music and you're done.

Everything on his stage was choreographed down to a T including his own movements, and when the crowd coos and freaks over every single detail (some of us not believing what we were seeing), it just makes it all the more immersive. Even knowing that he puts such detail into his shows doesn't prepare you for what you see. None of the videos I've found online even begin to do it justice.

I didn't get to see ISAM when it came through, but I'd be interested in seeing how they compare in fidelity.

<comment><USER2> He is uncompromising when it comes to the quality of his live shows. It's clear he cares a lot about them and is trying to master what he does. And wether or not you like his style of music I think that people need to respect that.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. I would highly recommend everyone go to one of his performances at least once in your life, even if you think you'll need to put some earplugs in. I was way in the back and at 5'2 I can hardly see through a crowd, but standing on my tip-toes for an extra hour was beyond worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great topic!

Daedelus (<http://daedelusmusic.com/>) is one of my favorite artists, not only because of his tunes but because of how much fun he has just rocking on stage with his Monome/various toys, and how it faces it towards the audience to show what he's doing, even if that's a personal positioning preference. He's also in a documentary about circuit bending available on YouTube that's worth watching called Glitch (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlYM5Js450>). Your ears won't thank you, but your geek will.

Other artists that are entertaining to watch fiddle with their digital instruments are Side Brain (hacks gaming peripherals to make music), No Sir E and the ever-wonderful Shigeto.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's such music you don't need to ignore.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA>

<comment><AUTHOR> you know, i remember being obsessed with this vid when it came out. i'm embarrassed i didn't work this into the essay. i might need to...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait, this is saying that a genre that was created through instrumachines — people playing a bunch of old roland x0xes, then later the sp-12s/1200s, then later MPCs, live — will somehow be revolutionized by the newer forms of the same instrumachines?

I think essentially the argument is that "laptops are not any fun to play live with" and really, that was just a short phase of electronic music. We all did that for a few years, then found our controllers, monomes, modulars, mpcs, etc. much more fun, and have just returned to what was already there. A laptop can be an instrumachine for the right artist with the right controllers (e.g., Daedelus and his monome <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCzHpQtNduE>) attached to it, just as an MPC + SP1200 have been the right instrumachine for hiphop (KRS-One & BDP use one next to the turntables in every concert) for decades.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying the earlier gen synths, controllers and laptops are any less legit than newer gen stuff. I'm thinking strictly from the fan's perspective, the non-musician's perspective, the concert-goer's perspective. That is, how visually obvious is your live performance gifts from the floor? To a digital musician, it might sound reductive. But live performance is it's own beast.

<comment><USER5> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXayqIrAYE>

=D

this goes back way before "the earlier gen synths, controllers, and laptops"

see my other comment. it's awesome you have come to this realization, but what i am trying to help you understand is that this is cyclical. it is not a revolution, it is how instruments evolve and has been for ages.

<comment><AUTHOR> gotcha. yeah this vid is pretty crazy, down to the "Playing it by ear" bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The concept reminds me of the "synthe-axe drumitar" played by Future Man from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

<http://flecktones.com/page/Futuremans-Synthaxe-Drumitar>

</comment><comment><USER7> Two cool things to see on this topic: anything by beardyman (who uses a mic and processors to emulate just about any genre you want) and imogen heap's magical music gloves (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btFObRRD9k>)

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess I'm getting old, but the demo both looks and sounds like a man virtuoustically playing a pair of typewriters.

More seriously, I think this is cool, but a little overblown in someways, we've technically been able to do this kind of performance (using sliced up digital samples) for a very very long time -- decades. Digital sample machines, of many kinds of forms have been used in live shows for a long time. Think of your favorite 80's new wave band and they probably had live shows with digital synth triggering samples off of a keyboard.

I think this is more of a cultural shift than any kind of technological shift, but interesting nonetheless. The methods of playing these things is much more akin to being a drummer or an old school DJ scratchoff than anything else. But just like complaints about all modern music being overcompressed, these guys have to work off of only two performance vectors: sick beats and cool samples. There's no dynamics in the performance or playing with tonality. Glissando, spicatto, breath control, tonguing, etc. are all right out the window.

Music has been reduced to learning and playback a la guitar hero. A generation of musicians, messing around with samples from music they themselves could never perform.

We talk a lot about technology we no longer have the means to make and knowledge lost in fires and wars and natural decay, and toy with that idea in sci-fi and real life. However, today we certainly have a much greater pantheon of fantastic accomplishments in these areas.

But I wonder if we should consider a similar phenomenon with culture and cultural skills? We may be entering a time were previous cultural knowledge, like how to play piano virtuostically is lost, exchanged with how to play a sampler at similar high levels of skill. We may have lost the means to transmit that culture forward to future generations, but outside of a vague sense of loss, nobody really cares because what we have now is also vast and complex and has its own set of interesting skills that need to transmit forward.

Is this the cultural equivalent of cleaning out the memetic closet to make room for new stuff?

<comment><USER9> Totally with you up until the lost culture thing. More people know how to play the piano virtuostically than ever. Culture is expanding and being recorded permanently in the digital world. How are we losing it?

It reminds me of what the blue-man-group does. It's novel, a few people make a lot of money doing it, but it's not the next electric guitar by any stretch.

I think one of the core attributes of EDM is that it is performed by machines. The MPC-live thing seems like an effort to step backwards just to have something to do on stage. I'd rather listen to someone mix a 808/909/303 live. The subtle timing and tuning shifts they make are a thing of beauty (and laptops don't do this). But that's probably just my preference for techno over hip-hop/dubstep coming through.

Anyway, good article regardless.

<comment><USER8> Yeah the 303 is a really interesting example, it offered several entirely interesting performance vectors, almost none of which were tied to actually playing the notes. Lots of people I know who used to do great 303 stuff barely even knew what the letter notes along the keyboard were. But the little knobs at the top gave them tons of ways to express the music that really aren't typical in traditional musical performance. (I'd have killed to have a freq cutoff and resonance cut off when I was studying classical violin).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The grandfather of this exploration is Moldover and for the purposes of this discussion ignore his current tendecy to involve an electric guitar in his sets ... a recent development.

<http://moldover.com/>

<http://vimeo.com/moldover/live-at-future-everything-excerpts>

He ended up designing and building his own controllers using arcade buttons.

Since this is hacker news I'll point out the whole investigation is largely a technology issue. Many studies have shown that expressiveness of great instrumentalists rests on incredibly small timing variations, which ARE NOT random. Because of latency and more especially jitter in the hardware/software interface true virtuosity is either very hard or impossible to develop using most currently available tools. What the actual acceptable level of machine induced random variations are is a much debated point. This is why I pushed Lippold Haken so hard to increase the sampling rate of the continuum fingerboard to its current sub-millisecond levels. The underlying technology of the madrona soundplane can be implemented at audio rate, which, by definition, should be fast enough to obviate this need.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm always mystified when I see people's fingers move that quickly. I can see myself typing on the keyboard, but it's a simple letter that comes out when I press it. It might just be that it's so normal that I don't think it's cool anymore, but people who can mix music like they type is just awesome to me.

Here's two more videos of people mixing/making cool music on the 'fly'

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baWlIzwksHs>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA>

</comment><comment><USER12> I am not a musician and I don't keep up with production methods too closely, but this method of "load a bunch of loops into your devices, trigger them in interesting manners" sounds almost EXACTLY like what I've read about the way Orbital has been working since somewhere in the early 2000s.

I think the only difference is that the price of these kinds of looping tools has dropped precipitously, so there's more people fooling with them.

(And I am not trying to disrespect the musicianship of people doing this. I'm just questioning it being a NEW THING.)

<comment><USER5> Not a new thing at all, you're right.

Sidenote, totally trivial, but in case you care: Orbital only recently (past 5 years) moved to Ableton as a control hub, but still use a ton of outboard gear. Before that they were running the rig off Alesis MMT-8s, and famous for doing so. Those would trigger loops, yes, but they would trigger those loops in samplers, which is why most orbital tracks loops are limited to starting, stopping, looping, and getting cut up a tiny bit, not much more. The MMT-8s are essentially step sequence loopers and arrangers, kind of the most frustrating form of what the MPC-style offers. But since they were masters of them, there was no reason to switch until something better (Ableton) came along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've actually had a very similar thought recently. I also feel like it is somewhat easier to master electronic music production (I know that it's still hard but compare how much one knows after playing piano for 6 months with learning Ableton for 6 months). I think that this is awesome since people will be able to concentrate on making interesting music as opposed to learning the instrument.

<comment><USER14> "I also feel like it is somewhat easier to master electronic music production (I know that it's still hard but compare how much one knows after playing piano for 6 months with learning Ableton for 6 months). I think that this is awesome since people will be able to concentrate on making interesting music as opposed to learning the instrument."

The thing is that Ableton isn't your instrument, it is just a way to arrange what music you've already created. If you're going software based you would have your synth(s) and then other plugins (VSTs) to modify your sound, each with their own learning curve. Then you would have to learn Ableton or whatever Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) you choose. Plus, since sounds are being created from scratch there is a lot to learn about the theory of sound so that you don't get frequencies overlapping. I know that I thought it would be really easy going into it, but I have found that it is much harder than it seems and I have a new found respect for those releasing their music.

<comment><USER13> Correct, but Ableton includes a bunch of instruments out of the box so when I said learning Ableton, I meant those as well. Furthermore, all the VSTs are not that conceptually different. Like yeah Massive and Sylenth1 are different but they still have an oscillator, envelope, LFO, filter and effects. And if you understand how synthesis works and know one well picking up the other is not that hard compared with say if you know how to play piano and want to learn to play the guitar.

For me, not having frequencies overlap falls under mastering which I consider to be kind of separate but related issue. If you wanted to be in a traditional (as in, a band with 'real' instruments), you'd still have to learn that to make your music sound good in addition to learning the instrument. And I still think that learning Ableton (+VSTs) is easier than learning to play a 'real' instrument. Minus maybe the bass guitar :-). It's definitely more fun which is why I might think that it's easier. But it is true that in electronic music, mastering is probably more important.

For anyone who's interested in this I can recommend this free book [http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise-a- comprehensiv...](http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise-a- comprehensive-guide-to-synthesizer-programming) (they ask for your email).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also revolutionized (seen that long before) the street music: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a1dHCmcJzg>

</comment><comment><USER16> Controllerism has been around for awhile. I discovered it via Moldover -

<http://www.youtube.com/user/moldover>

Before him, it was called "live pa"

<comment><USER17> thanks for clearing that up. Controllerism does not seem to be all that new to me.

<comment><USER18> 'electronic dance music' does not seem to be all that new to me. I'm amused by the idea that something popular in Europe for decades which originated in US alternative cultures is only now catching on in US mainstream culture.

<comment><USER5> What's even more amusing is that sentiment ("electronic music is now catching on") finds its way up every decade.

      80s -> Disco & House -> Pop, New Wave
      90s -> House -> Pop
      00s -> Electro & DnB -> Pop, Hiphop
      10s -> Dubstep -> Pop, Hiphop

That's just a crappy sketch but i'm sure someone could flesh it out further. The reality is that it's a continuum, things go in and out of style, what's popular changes, the audience changes, but the music never really goes away, we/you/i just don't know about it. Dubstep is simply the hair metal (80s), grunge (90s) of the times, not a statement about electronic music's popularity or unpopularity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I wrote this thing. And I know there must be disagreements with the arguments here. Bring it on!

<comment><USER19> Sure. Its actually going backwards. Back to a focus on the performer as a simple human who does feats, macho virtuosity and does crowd conscious manipulations.

What electronic music opened up is much larger. Music is internal, electric (like our central nervous systems) and cosmic. The focus is in the body and mind of the people experiencing it. Its in the speakers and on the dance floor. The composer disappears, the audience disappears, the technique disappears (and all that thinking about "is the performance technically accurate/innovative ?")

As soon as you put some clown on the stage all the beauty evaporates and people stand around yelling "woot" and generally not dancing. Or if they do it involves fist pumping and making rock faces.

As soon as you put a live musician in the track then you start thinking about technical execution and about what the musician is feeling and thinking. It limits it. I love live musicians (I majored in Saxophone, I have a piano in my room here), but I just want to point out that the revolution of electronic music is that we took music past the limits of performance.

Its pure sound, pure feeling.

Also you should realize that even jungle, juke, IDM, breakcore are often written with furious fingers and lots of live tweaking. And AraabMuzik is using the auto rolls all the time and he has breaks that set the pace. And he has the dynamics turned way down so its actually pretty hard to make a mistake. Turntablists like Q-bert are a thousands times more impressive. Listen to Sabar drumming and forget about the simple boom bap and cheap rolls that AraabMuzik is doing here. Jungle at its peak twisted the mind with intricate rhythms that really blew minds.

And people have been doing crazy live electronic performance for ooooh.... 60 years now. We used keyboards and drum pads and MPC/SP type machines.

<comment><USER20> > Jungle at its peak twisted the mind with intricate rhythms that really blew > minds.

You can't just throw something like that out there and not make recommendations ;)

I gotta admit, I can't stand about 98% of EDM, but some small amount of it actually is really good.

<comment><USER5> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT9wUifJ-hQ>

> You can't just throw something like that out there and not make > recommendations ;)

here's a podcast full of hive, tech itch, etc.

<http://www.mixcloud.com/lars-mion/unashamedly-nostalgic/>

This stuff was all done with intricate editing before izotope, audio damage, etc. had one-button tricks to stutter and mangle.

Noisia, Phace, Rockwell, etc. are leading the new charge on d&b. Amazing shit.

<comment><USER20> Ok, I have to admit that didn't really do much for me. I need a little bit of melody... think more along the lines of like Massive Attack or vintage Jamaican Dub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow. That music is incredibly annoying.

<comment><USER22> To each their own. However, it helps if you define _which_ music you find annoying. There are 3 distinct styles of music being mixed in those videos. Araab's was one I enjoy. #2 was ok, #3 sounded bad and the guy looked like a 3 year old hitting blocks into a Fisher Price toy. Had no sense of the skill level executed by Araab and #2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Aww, it's so sweet! Whatever next? DJ's learning to play an instrument?

<comment><USER2> A lot of EDM artist do play instruments. A lot of them grew up with classical training in the piano and to a fairly high level.</comment></comment>


Ultra Light Startups - Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques - <AUTHOR> http://ultralightstartups.com

<comment><USER2> Summarised - the Messy Truths:

      1. You need to do a lot of testing
            Measure measure measure ...
              The problem is, the data tells
              you stuff you really don't like.
              Deal with it.

      2. It's all about relationships in the team.
            To build anything great, you have to
            deal with a lot of really annoying people.

      3. Reinvent what you're doing
            Change is hard, but it's essential to
            stay on top.

      4. The importance of morale
            Frustrating things happen, and you need
            to deal with keeping the morale high.

      5. Focus and obsession.
            No fun!  No vacation, no going to the bar,
            no goofing off.  The core challenge is:
            How do you make it fun!
            You're in this for the long haul.

To build a successful company you're in a race, but it's not a sprint.

It's an endurance race.

<comment><USER3> 3 is unclear (I didn't watch the video). What does change have to do with the top?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am Graham Lawlor, founder of Ultra Light Startups and organizer of the New York chapter (we are also in London and Boston now).

I just found this page via Google news alerts. I'm a huge fan of Y Combinator and everything they stand for - very much the same approach I had when starting Ultra Light. I'm thrilled that the YC community has found us. I'd love to hear more feedback and suggestions from anyone who has been to one of our events (or even if you haven't). If you'd like to reach out, send an email to info at ultralightstartups dot com.

PS. thanks wmeredith for catching my typo on the home page - I just fixed this.

Best regards, Graham.

</comment><comment><USER5> For the NY Entrepreneur Forum ULS events they have two ticket prices - $5 for those giving a one-minute pitch and $15 for no-pitch. I've only been to a couple of their events but I think this strategy played a part in keeping the proportion of actual entrepreneurs high.

I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you're at all interested.

</comment><comment><USER6> You might want to kill that typo in your second line of text: "If this is of _interested_ , please join us at our next event or in one of the online communities listed."(Assuming someone with access to the site will come here.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm on a panel at this one in NYC soon [http://ultralightstartups.com/newyork/twitter-based- business...](http://ultralightstartups.com/newyork/twitter-based-business- models.html)</comment>


Ask HN: how to monetize email list? - <AUTHOR>

I'm fascinated by the story of Peter Shankman and Help-A-Reporter-Out making $1m / yr just from those little sponsorship paragraphs at the top of each email.  Another interesting example is IdealBite.com, which sends out daily tips on eco-friendly living to several hundred thousand subscribers and sold for like $20m last year.<p>But what about the smaller end of the scale?  Let's say you have a handful targeted email lists with 1000 - 5000 subscribers and you're sending out emails 1-5 times per week, with a typical open rate.  What's the best way to monetize this?  Is there a good provider of ads for something like this?  Are there firms that you can outsource your ad sales to?  Would love to hear any success or failure stories on this topic. <comment><USER2> Don't see your lists to a third party. That breaks faith with your subscribers.

I subscribe to email lists that have ads. The ads dont bother me much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know who provides the ads?

<comment><USER2> They are mainly newspapers. I presume the ads are their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not mail list expert but I have a couple decent sized lists, and I usually use them to promote products I'm selling, or cross-promote some of my other websites. I've tried putting affiliate links at the end of the emails but that hasn't been very successful so far.

</comment><comment><USER4> i know at least the sourceforge.net email lists have ads on every mail going out. hotmail did this and may still (does anyone still use hotmail?). it seems like it would be difficult for a 3rd party to provide an ad network like the many web advertisers do because the ad generation would have to be integrated into your mailing list software and run on your server, which may put it out of the reach of many list operators.

perhaps you should reach out to your own subscribers and see if any of them would be interested in advertising on the list. setup a web form, run your own ad at the bottom of list emails saying "to advertise here go to ...".</comment>


A Universal Basic Income Is a Poor Tool to Fight Poverty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/economy/universal-basic-income-poverty.html <comment><USER2> Only right wing dogma. The fact that people will have money for basic needs doesn't mean they will have enough money for what they materially want.

They will work whether to have something expensive that they want or for passion, and at least won't work just to survive. That would be overall a better society.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although it sounds attractive on many fronts, it can never work. Let's say we give out $1 trillion worth of basic income. Is there $1 trillion more goods and services to spend that on? No. In fact, depending on how many spend their time on non-productive work, there might be a lot less. So a lot more money chasing fewer goods and services. Classical inflation will quickly make that basic income of little value.

<comment><USER3> Why the downvote?</comment></comment>


Has Ycombinator ever funded a group that hasn't known each other long? For instance, a group that met at Startup School? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> one thing to remember is that much like doing a startup in general, there are no hard and fast rules about getting YC funding.

YC had every reason not to invest in us - we weren't technical, we already had angel money which complicated issuing new shares and we were based in the UK. they still funded us.

YC funding is less about worrying about all the reasons you won't get funded and concentrate on making as many reasons why they will fund you.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know of cases where cofounders met at startup school, but we haven't funded any. The most ad hoc group of founders we funded were a pair who knew one another online but hadn't met. That didn't work out very well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would imagine such a situation to be dicey. Startups are forged around shared passion, trust, and ability to work well together, not too different from marriage. Using the marriage metaphor, I think going into business together on a first impression puts you and your cofounders in a tight spot.

<comment><USER5> It's not automatically dicey. My cofounders and I found each other specifically for the purpose of starting this business. We're four months into our venture now. We get along extremely well, our skills complement each other nicely, and we have a lot of faith in each other and in our business. I can't imagine having a working dynamic as strong as this one even with my close long-term friends.

<comment><USER4> I see what you're saying, but, to a certain extent, you won't be able to test what your team is truly made of until you guys hit that first bump -- this is when things become clearer, and I would imagine you wouldn't want to wake up one morning wondering how you got in that bed in the first place.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to hear that you were able to find good cofounders!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I met my current co-founder at the first startup school. We've been working together for over a year now. Our first (self-funded) startup hasn't really taken off, but we managed to meet an angel investor in in the SF Bay Area with similar ideas to our own and are now working on a new site - so don't give up hope on getting funding.

</comment><comment><USER7> Though rare, it's also not unheard of for yc to fund single-person startups. I applied as a single founder, with the stipulation that I would find someone before the summer. It all worked out, but I'm also the kind of guy who gets along with most anybody.

This was replicated in at least one other yc startup I know.

</comment><comment><USER8> The marriage metaphor, as JMiao put it, works well. When you're setting off to start a family with someone, you don't want any adverse surprises. The same goes with starting a company. And similarly, making foundation changes will be expensive as hell, in time and money.</comment>


Show HN: Mashup using the Twitter and Official.fm APIs on sinatra.rb - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.official.fm/ruby/officialfm-ruby-gem-ofmtweet/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting! =P</comment>


Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22285424

<comment><USER2> "However... you can't just give a team of coders a year's supply of whiskey and tell them to get cracking."

[http://xkcd.com/323/](http://xkcd.com/323/)

<comment><USER3> that's a pity. however I do remember a similar study done ages ago (pre- internet) showing how some mathematics could improve their solving capabilities the ingestion of alcohol (wine in this case). after a certain amount there was a - plausible and expected drop in performance.</comment></comment>


Kiva.org takes on world poverty with its peer-to-peer microfinance marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://uk.intruders.tv/Premal-Shah-of-Kiva-org-on-microfinance-and-helping-poor-help-themselves_a226.html

<comment><USER2> I could see doing this if there was reliable third party credit reporting and interest rates _starting_ at 20 percent/year.

Also, how do they make money on this...just through the float? Seems like it:

 _When my business makes a repayment, can I reloan or withdraw the funds immediately?

No. You will not be credited for your loan funds until the entire loan has been paid back in full, at which time you may reloan or withdraw your funds._

...seems like there would be all kinds of ways to game this.

<comment><USER3> I gather that the recovery rate of microfinance institutions is quite high. Grameen bank says they recover 98 %. So that means I'm going to lose 2 % on defaults + 2 % inflation + 4 % opportunity cost (what I get for short term funds). So I would do it for 8 % interest or consider it a donation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> MicroPlace.com just launched the other day and apparently actually allows you to charge a nominal interest rate so you can get a return on the loan. The point isn't to make oodles of money off of developing world entrepreneurs, but it is a slightly more attractive offer than Kiva's 0% interest loan. If you so decided, the interest you generate from MicroPlace could get then go back into another loan so the cycle continues again. Rinse, lather, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really like kiva, my only complaint at this point is that there seems to be more investment interest than loan offices on the ground to sink it. That is ultimate a good thing of course. I wonder if there is a way to actually donate to those loan offices. Since these loan offices could generate income (in theory) it might even be possible to loan them money to setup the office.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like the site in general. Great design, great content.

But that "CAMARA CHRONICLES" kills me. Can you guys spell camera correctly, please?

<comment><USER7> LOL. The UK version is run by Vincent Camara, its supposed to be clever :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry Aston, that's my last name...our aim is to have one site per country so we decided to personalize each edition! Thanks for your comment</comment>


Ask HN: Any non-saas profitable side projects? - <AUTHOR>

It seems most webapps these days are SAAS projects.<p>I'm curious, if you can share any small side-project you've worked on that has turned profitable (eg. makes at least 50$/month or so) and is not a SAAS app. <comment><USER2> I sell revision notes from college students at <http://www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk>. One module, £25.

I started the project by selling my old law notes from Oxford law school online, and, after a lot of work, the project makes enough money to meet my basic needs.

I've just added a commission-based system so if anyone, particularly smart Hacker News types, has typed up notes from college (their own material, not lecture handouts), I'll share the profits with them.</comment>


NASA has found sugar in meteorites that crashed to Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/21/world/nasa-sugar-meteorites-intl-hnk-scli/index.html <comment><USER2> They took some candy along the trip

</comment><comment><USER3> SWEET!</comment>


We're switching to Free + Ad-Supported - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagerduty.com/2012/04/were-switching-to-free-ad-supported/

<comment><USER2> _This is a perfectly cromulent business model_

This gave away the April Fool gag right in the second paragraph, but still had me laughing. Good work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since everyone on HN uses an Ad Blocker anyway, I'd recommend the Free + Spyware business model instead.

<comment><USER4> People don't have ad blockers for e-mails, texts, and audio which is where these ads would appear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hilarious. I can't wait to see content relevant to my interests in my PD alerts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Finally a bold move that proves we aren't in a bubble.

<comment><USER7> Totally! If it was a bubble, PagerDuty would be paying _their_ users a monthly amount to "get big even faster"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately I missed the fact it was an April fools gag, as I tend to stop reading anything when I see the phrase "next Facebook or Google"...

</comment><comment><USER9> Great. Now all I will have to do is to put the phone down for 30 seconds.</comment>


D6tflow: Python library for building data science workflows - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/d6t/d6tflow <comment><USER2> > We have put a lot of effort into making this library useful to you. To help > us make this library even better, it collects ANONYMOUS error messages and > usage statistics. See d6tcollect for details including how to disable > collection. Collection is asynchronous and doesn't impact your code in any > way.

That seems really out of place. I'm somewhat used to automatic data collection from applications, but automatic data collection from programming libraries / frameworks? Really?

<comment><USER3> I have a strong, negative reaction to this. I read the collection code (in d6collect), and it does as they claim (with perhaps minor qualms about what anonymous really means). And (for now) it's easy to disable without mucking around in the code. But in fact I'm not sure what I was really looking for, since I don't imagine using this library when I might need to reverify that they still aren't collecting anything I don't want to be collected.

On the other hand, I'm glad that they mentioned it --- I would have a much more negative reaction if I had to find this out on my own.

<comment><USER4> I feel like an even better approach here would have been for the developers to offer the data collection functionality as a separately installed module, and then make the case to the user during installation of the main package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently read that there are over 100 workflow engines [1], it is still often difficult to make the case that Make is insufficient

[1] [https://vatlab.github.io/blog/post/sos-workflow- engine/](https://vatlab.github.io/blog/post/sos-workflow-engine/)

<comment><USER6> It's easy to make the case that make is insufficient. There are three very distinct domains being conflated here:

1\. The day to day experimentation and iteration by a computational researcher. 2\. The repeated execution of a workflow on different data sets submitted by different people, such as in a clinical testing lab. 2\. The ongoing processing of a stream of data by a deployed system, such as ongoing data processing for a platform like Facebook.

For (1), there is a crucial insight that is often missing: the unit of work for such people is not the program, but the execution. If you have a Makefile or a shell script or even a nicely source controlled program, you end up running small variations of it, with different parameters, and different input files. Very quickly you end up with hundreds of files, and no way of tracking what comes from which execution under what conditions. make doesn't help you with this. Workflow engines don't help you with this. I wrote a system some years ago when I was still in computational science to handle this situation ([https://github.com/madhadron/bein](https://github.com/madhadron/bein)), but I haven't updated it to Python 3, and I would like to use Python's reflection capabilities to capture the source code as well. It should probably be integrated with Jupyter at this point, too, but Jupyter was in its infancy when I did that.

For (2), there are systems like KNIME and Galaxy, and, crucially, they integrate with a LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) which is the really important part. The workflow is the same, but it's provenance, tracking, and access control of all steps of the work that matters in that setting.

For (3), what you really want is a company wide DAG where individuals can add their own nodes and which handles schema matching as nodes are upgraded, invalidation of downstream data when upstream data is invalidated, backfills when you add a new node or when an upstream node is invalidated, and all the other upkeep tasks required at scale. I have yet to see a system that does this seriously, but I also haven't been paying attention recently.

For none of these is chaining together functions with error handling and reporting the limiting factor. It's just the first one that a programmer sees when looking at one of these domains.

<comment><USER7> > what you really want is a company wide DAG where individuals > can add their > own nodes and which handles schema > matching as nodes are upgraded, > invalidation > of downstream data when upstream data is invalidated

I've never seen this work in practice, and doubt it can work, due to the complexities involved.

<comment><USER8> It really helped in our case. We have a team of 10+ researchers who alse ship code in production. They were repeatedly running into a problem where they recompute same data in runtime, or reinvent the wheel because they didn't know somebody already computed that datum. I end up writing a small single-process (for now) workflow engine running a "company-wide DAG" of reusable data processing nodes (all derived from user-submitted input + models). Now it is much easier for individuals to contribute + much easier to optimize pipelines separately. I might open source it some time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel so frustrated by the emergence of these things and the constant attempt to brand them or stylize them towards data science.

There are just engineering projects. There are not any other things.

For some engineering projects, you need to support dashboard-like, interactive interfaces that depend on data assets or other assets (like a database connection, a config file, a static representation of a statistical model, whatever). Sometimes you need a rapid feedback system to investigate properties of the engineering project and deduce implications for productively modifying it. These are universal requests that span tons of domains, and have very little to do with anything that differentiates data science from any other type of engineering.

At the level of an engineering project, you should use tools that have been developed by highly skilled system engineers, for example like Make or Bazel, or devops tools for containers or deployment and task orchestration, like luigi, kubernetes tools, and many others.

For a web service component, you should use web service tooling, like existing load balancing tools, nginx, queue systems, key value stores, frameworks like Flask.

For continuous integration or testing, use tools that already exist, like Jenkins or Travis, testing frameworks, load testing tools, profilers, etc.

Stop trying to stick a handful of these things into a bundle with abstractions that limit the applicability to only "data science" projects, and then brand them to fabricate some idea that they are somehow better suited for data science work than decades worth of tools that apply to _any_ kind of engineering project, whether focused on data science or not.

<comment><USER10> I might be wrong, and I also highly value and use the tools that you mentioned. However, I have to say that I see the emergence of these tools as a positive thing for 2 reasons.

The first one I think is that more and more people are now using/trying to use machine learning models in production and they discover that the workflows and tools they used to use and work with are not suited for delivering machine learning models in fast, repeatable, and simple way.

The second reason is that I objectively think that a machine learning pipeline or CI/CD system is a bit different than the one used for pure software engineering practices, partly because machine learning does not only involve code, but more layers of complexity: data, artifacts, configuration, resources... All these layers can impact the reproducibility of a "successful build". Hence, a lot of engineering is required to both ensure that teams can achieve both reproducible and reliable results, and increase their productivity.

<comment><USER9> I am a long-time practitioner of putting machine learning tools into production, improving ML models over time, doing maintenance on deployed ML models, and researching new ways to solve problems with ML models.

All I can say is that in based on my experience, I would dramatically disagree with what you wrote.

I've always found pre-existing generalist engineering tooling to work more efficiently and cover all the features I need in a more reliable and comprehensive way than any of the latest and greatest ML-specific workflow tools of the past ~10 years.

I've also worked on many production systems that do not involve any aspects of statistical modeling, yet still rely on large data sets or data assets, offline jobs that perform data transformations and preprocessing, require extensibly configurable parameters, etc. etc.

I've never encountered or heard of any ML system that is in any way different _in kind_ than most other general types of production engineering systems.

But I have seen plenty of ML projects that get bogged down with enormous tech debt stemming from adopting some type of fool's gold ML-specific deployment / pipeline / data access tools and running into problems that time-honored general system tools would have solved out of the box, and then needing to hack your own layers of extra tooling on top of the ML-specific stuff.

<comment><USER5> I was going to make a less general comment along these lines, that I have put models to production with GitLab CI, Make and Slurm, and it keeps us honest and on task. There's no mucking about with fairy dust data science toolchains and no excuses not to find a solution when problems arise because we're using well tested methodology on well tested software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "For data scientists and data engineers, d6tflow is a python library which makes building complex data science workflows easy, fast and intuitive. It is built on top of workflow manager luigi but unlike luigi it is optimized for data science workflows."

But they didn't really explain/sell what those optimisations are in the readme.

</comment><comment><USER11> \- I really don't think that Python needs an additional layer of abstraction, especially when using scikit-learn which is high level enough as it is.

\- The workflow in the readme is missing the part when you actually use the model. This will often need to be connected to your original preprocessing in some way - for example, if the dataset that you're predicting on has a categorical variable with a unique value which wasn't present in the training dataset, this effectively introduces a new feature in your dataset, which makes it impossible to do model.predict(). The need to manage things like this changes that workflow chart quite a bit.

<comment><USER12> The full machine learning pipeline goes far beyond sklearn scope. Think about scheduled data reading or scheduled model updates. I think there is a need for such frameworks to help using ml.

<comment><USER13> Going far beyond the scope of sklearn pipelines isn't necessarily a good thing. I don't really see what there is to be gained by making scheduling part of the remit of pipelines.

I'd rather assemble together a set of tightly scoped "UNIX philosophy" libraries and tools rather than try and use an all encompassing framework and be straitjacketed by its imposed structure.

At work I have what are essentially cron jobs running scripts which invoke sklearn pipelines. I've never even thought to make the scheduler aware of what they were running and I'm not sure why I would.

<comment><USER12> Sure, you can use cron jobs for it. But cron is missing for example notifications about failures or info how long it takes to execute the task.

<comment><USER13> I don't actually use cron directly. What I do use is capable of scheduling and error detection (nonzero errors). Even if it weren't, the script it invoked could do both with < 4 lines of code.

I think it would actually be professionally negligent to introduce coupling at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is so abstract that its purpose is incomprehensible.

It would be much clearer if they compared side by side a few simple examples with regular makefiles that do the same thing, and people could see the advantages.

</comment><comment><USER15> For another way to do data science workflows, there's the Common Workflow Language ([http://commonwl.org](http://commonwl.org))

<comment><USER16> Most of what I've heard about CWL is that it's unwieldy to use directly; it's main value is as a backend or as an interchange format between different workflow systems. However, I haven't tried it myself and would be interested to hear others' experiences on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I missing any major difference between this tool and a solution like Apache Airflow?

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there any advantage in using this (D6tflow) instead of some Data Management tools like StreamSets ([https://streamsets.com/](https://streamsets.com/)) or NiFi ?

</comment><comment><USER19> Would be interested to find out what other tools are available in this space and how this compares with them. What's the difference beteeen d6tflow, Luigi, Airflow?

<comment><USER20> Quickly perusing the code, it looks entirely luigi based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The reasons I choose not to use any pre-existing workflow are complexity and extra compute overhead. I think there's a need for micro workflow where it's simple enough you can setup a simple production workflow in a single python script without requiring a ton of heavy package. d6tflow seems light enough for me, using luigi and two dataframe libraries.

</comment><comment> black-tea "Databolt" is nowhere near long enough to need abbreviation and in any case you should tell people what it is before you start abbreviating it. Starting with "D6t", which is horrendous to pronounce, is silly.

Internationalisation is long. Databolt isn't.

</comment><comment><USER22> This looks pretty interesting. I am currently implementing DS workflows that are essentially python classes to orchestrate R scripts. I'll have a closer look on Monday but if I can use it to handle rpy2 R format data I'll be happy

<comment><USER23> Are you using reticulate ([https://github.com/rstudio/reticulate](https://github.com/rstudio/reticulate)), or having Python spawn a new worker process for R?

<comment><USER22> We have python spawn processes for R.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> D6t appears to stand for databolt. Took me a while to figure that out.</comment>


Solving a 2014 Google I/O Secret Invite Puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://blakecaldwell.net/blog/2014/4/23/solving-a-2014-google-io-secret-invite-puzzle.html

<comment><USER3> >I'd try to find and solve one of the secret puzzles Google was hiding, to get a chance to buy a reserved ticket.

I find it amusing that giving money to Google is almost spoken in terms of privilege. "Today, Google will allow users to buy Google Glass for $1500" or in this case, solving a puzzle for the opportunity to buy a $900 ticket outside of the if-you-win-you-pay lottery.

More amusing is that I/O is a conference of how to use Google services and platforms[0]. Really, look at it. It's almost entirely talks on how to build products for their platforms and pay-to-use APIs.

[0] [https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions](https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions)

<comment><USER4> _More amusing is that I /O is a conference of how to use Google services and platforms[0]. Really, look at it. It's almost entirely talks on how to build products for their p platforms and pay-to-use APIs._

Presumably the developers still get their money's worth. If /when they don't soon or later these conferences will be full of empty chairs. So the question each person asks: "what do I gain by it," not what Google gains by it.

<comment><USER5> The developers who manage to successfully get a ticket through the lottery*.

Why are the two coupled anyway? That's a huge issue with the WWDC and it's becoming an issue here. If you want developers, don't offer "the next big thing" in consumer electronics to anyone who attends, then leave registration open for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These scavenger hunts aren't merit based reserved tickets. What do they actually do? Who are the targets, and why does Google want these people to attend I/O?

The answer can't be "developers" or "to learn things." Not while the prevailing reason people attend I/O is to get the new shiny toys and the primary means for getting a ticket is a random lottery with no prerequisites for entry and no fee to prevent gaming. What we need for learning is mostly put on YouTube promptly, so presence is not necessary there, either.

I don't understand it at all.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the constructive insight.

I'm glad we collectively understand the general purpose of downvotes. There's a reason they aren't defaulted to 0 pointers; they aren't "agree/disagree".

Go back to slashdot where inept moderation is the norm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an URL to the game posted directly on a Google website, which I only recognised as such after reading the post.

[https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/push-to- deploy](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/push-to-deploy)

The second image from the bottom has an URL plastered on it. When I noticed, I wondered how that happened. I tried the URL in incognito tab but it requested permission to identify my Google account, so I thought it's for internal Google use only, and closed the tab.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice find.

On a side note I couldn't find the I/O with different colors from Australia, no matter how much I refresh the page.

Location based maybe?

</comment><comment><USER8> It's telling that Google still pretends to be a company where technology and geek cred matters. Despite being in reality a fast follower whose revenues come almost entirely from selling the details of those who fall for what they offer, they hold onto the least-cautious "hackers" (term used very loosely) with references to text adventures and towels. Oh well.

<comment><USER9> Fast following means that rather than developing something out of whole cloth, you simply copy the functionality of another product exactly, i.e. literally steal the R&D, (including screen layout and exact behavior) while changing just the art assets enough to remain a hair on the right side of the law. In order to fast follow, Google would have to fast follow _something_ , copying it down to the layout and exact functionality. What do you think Google is copying?

Also initiatives like Google Glass are certainly not copying another product, but are among the most ambitious consumer R&D projects of any company on Earth. It is a category of product that does not exist.

<comment><USER8> That's simple equivocation - you think you can redefine "fast follower" so narrowly? It would certainly be convenient to ignore the similarities of Android and Google+ to their predecessors, but it wouldn't be particularly honest.

<comment><USER9> I'm not redefining the word, you are. "Fast follower" is defined very narrowly. (Go ahead and look it up.) Here is how we use it [https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/fast%20foll...](https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/fast%20follow) and [https://hn.algolia.com/#!/comment/forever/prefix/0/fast%20fo...](https://hn.algolia.com/#!/comment/forever/prefix/0/fast%20follow)

and see Google.

Just like if you were to accuse them of "trademark infringement" or "copyright infringement".

It's just not a very broad word, it's quite specific, and you shouldn't use it. You can call them derivative or unoriginal, for example, or describe what you think they're doing. But you can't call Google+ a "trademark infringement" of Facebook, for example, because they don't use the word Facebook, and you can't call it a "fast following" either, because it's not close enough.

Google Search wasn't "fast following" Yahoo web search, and Gmail wasn't "fast following" Yahoo Mail (another web mail), and Google maps weren't "fast following" mapquest or whatever people were using, and Google+ isn't "fast following" Facebook.

Not because they aren't in the same space, or taking cues. But because of the meaning of fast following, which is extremely specific. (Almost like feature and layout matching.)

You see how it works? Look up trademark, copyright, and fast following - <USER2> you will see that you really can't use these particular words of Google. You can use other words of course.

I will give you an exception. I think shortly after the iPhone came out, Samsung literally had a strategy of fast following it. (Immorally.) [http://bgr.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-patent-lawsuit- inter...](http://bgr.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-patent-lawsuit-internal- report-copy-iphone/)

This is the meaning of "fast follow". You can look it up. Other companies that had a close follow strategy have been Zynga:

[http://nibletz.com/2012/01/31/fast-follow-the-game-zynga- lik...](http://nibletz.com/2012/01/31/fast-follow-the-game-zynga-likes-to- play/)

You see? This is how the whole word is defined. Nobody, but nobody, accuses Google of using this strategy. They're just not doing it, just like they're not committing trademark infringement.

it's a very real strategy that is very shitty. I'm not redefining the word to refer to it - you are if you want it to be broader :).

You can use any other word you want, but the "fast follow", for better or for worse, has a specific meaning that does not apply.

By the way I am a _huge_ opponent of the fast follow strategy! I think it amounts to theft. The only legal protection companies have is design and utility patents, but that opens its own can of worms.

It is better if companies simply don't use this strategy to steal other companies' work.

I hope in reading the above link you will come to the same conclusion, and use different words to describe what you mean. Thanks.

<comment><USER8> You could search the web as a whole and find many examples of fast follower used as I used it. You don't have to look very hard at all to find it applied to Google. Your definition is excessively narrow.

Even Don Dodge calls Google a fast follower: [http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/10/first...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/10/first- mover-vs-fast-follower-who-wins.html)

Guess where he works?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want to be the guy whose job it is to come up with these puzzles.</comment>


LocBox Raises $5.1M Series A To Empower Local Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/locbox-series-a/

<comment><USER2> Great job Saumil! If there was anyone that could pull off going from single founder to raising $5.1m, it's you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Super impressed! Great products and great team.</comment>


BuzzData: A social network designed for data (beta coming soon) - <AUTHOR> http://buzzdata.com/about/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to see something coming in this space. I had been very sad to see DabbleDB go away, and Google Fusion Tables, Google Refine, and Google Docs Spreadsheets seem promising yet somewhat neglected, unfocused, and disjoint.

Surely, though, there must be a more descriptive term for this than a "social network"? Even though you could consider it (to some degree) to be a social network, Github doesn't describe itself as one.

<comment><USER3> Dude.

Help us find better words. We hate it at least as much as you do. If someone told me two years ago that I'd be passionately building a social network in 2011, I'd have laughed in their face.

That said, it's inarguable that you all knew what we were talking about, even if you groaned. That's what we're up against.

All I can ask is that you suspend your judgement and assume that this is the effort of people with a clue. We're motivated to be loved, not hated.

<comment><USER2> If I were going to describe this to a friend, I'd probably say "like flickr, but for data"... not something you can put in marketing materials, I know.

I'd like to abuse this reply to ask that when you add tools for geodata, that you please please please do what you can to help people produce visualizations and rankings that are not horribly skewed by poor choices of geographic boundaries.

I know this is a hard problem, but for people who don't do this all the time, it's really easy to end up with a headline like "Manhattan Leads the City in Pedestrian Deaths Per Square Mile, Study Finds" (Manhattan is, of course, the densest borough in New York City, so this probably isn't terribly useful information). I've seen maps that might show, for example, the areas of the US with the highest number of coffee shops per square mile, but the map is done based on counties, so here in Seattle we end up not looking terribly dense since over half of gigantic King County is mountainous and unpopulated.

<comment><USER3> I can do two better:

1\. Give us good feedback on the things you care about, and we'll listen. We're a small team and we're listening to everything people tell us.

2\. We're specifically not providing tools that create visualizations. There's a hundred startups and software products that already do this. BuzzData is where you put your visualizations and articles and apps when you're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting project. What type of data are we talking about? Would you host leaked data a la Wikileaks?

<comment><USER3> Out of the gate, we're dealing with tabular datasets — think CSV, TSV, Excel and soon Stata/SPSS.

In the Fall, we'll be adding support for map shape data and structured/node in the form of JSON/XML.

Politically, we're trying our best to be a neutral common carrier in the same way that Vimeo, Flickr and Scribd are.

We're progressive individuals so we'll try to stay on the side of fighting the good fight. <\- not approved by legal :)

<comment><USER4> I read your blog and discovered ScraperWiki through it (thanks!) so it makes a lot of sense that you're primarily focusing on structured and re-usable data.

Would love to see some big picture blog post on the web data gathering and transformation eco system, e.g. how all the different tools/services - scrapers, rss, FreeBase, Yahoo Pipes, InfoChimps, etc - can be used in real business cases. Right now there seems to be a rich rhizome growing but the big picture issues are hidden beneath the soil.

<comment><USER3> You're speaking to where we want to see all of this go.

There's no easy answers, but you might want to check out:

<http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/23/flightcaster-flight-delay/>

[http://eaves.ca/2011/03/07/launching-an-open-data- business-r...](http://eaves.ca/2011/03/07/launching-an-open-data-business- recollect-net-vantrash-2-0/)

[http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/7/2/research- driven-s...](http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/7/2/research-driven- startups.html)

I have also ordered Sarah Lacy's new book, about info entrepreneurs in the developing world:

[http://www.amazon.ca/Brilliant-Crazy-Cocky-Entrepreneurs- Pro...](http://www.amazon.ca/Brilliant-Crazy-Cocky-Entrepreneurs- Profit/dp/0470580097/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen Pete speak about BuzzData and his vision in general -- I can't wait to see this launch!

</comment><comment><USER6> Just an aside, but you specifically explain the proper spelling of your name as "BuzzData", but your logo uses a lowercase "d" while still using an uppercase "B", i.e. "Buzzdata" instead of "BuzzData". Not important, just thought I'd point out the discrepancy.

<comment><USER3> It's actually a conscious decision made by our branding team, and there's a blog post explaining our process coming in the future.

Death, taxes and branding. Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So what do you do guys?

<comment><USER3> Lots of stuff! More than I have time to type into this textarea.

I can say what we're _not_ , however. BuzzData is NOT "a web-service for creating live embeddable charts with comments" so don't tase me, bro. :)

<comment><USER7> That's nice, will sleep better ;) Seriously, what's your 1-paragraph pitch? Too many general words on your web site.

<comment><USER3> If you know how to fix that problem, then you're in the wrong business.

Also, if you want to level that criticism, I suggest you spend a few minutes trying to understand what Vertica.com is offering. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Want Some Facebook Stock At A $3 Billion Valuation? We Know Who To Call. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/28/want-some-facebook-stock-at-a-3-billion-valutation-we-know-who-to-call/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'd buy at a $3B valuation...

Facebook is reasonably valued at $5B-$7.5B, right? And by reasonably I mean as a strategic acquisition.

<comment><USER2> Nobody really knows what a reasonable valuation for facebook is. They've yet to turn a profit, and it remains to be seen how well they can monetize all those users. Plus, value is in the eyes of the investor: it was worth over $15 billion to Microsoft, but not even $3 billion to whoever is selling.

I say it's all just speculation right now, since their shares aren't very liquid. And even if their shares were liquid, on what basis would you value them?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the next two years of Facebook, they could only be acquired as a strategic investment, valued at $5-7B if a large player like Google/Microsoft/Yahoo tries to buy them. Maybe a sovereign wealth fund? Unless those funds stay away from Web 2.0.

Beyond that, yes, they'll have to show revenue. Facebook will be a good test of the ultimate stability of the Web 2.0 Bubble. I think their best strategy is to go into the mortgage market, but the consensus of this board seems to be that Facebook won't succeed in the mortgage market.

<comment><USER3> I highly doubt a sovereign wealth fund would invest in Facebook. Most of their recent equity investments have been in dividend-paying stocks of US banks; they also tend to buy a lot of fixed income assets. Facebook won't be able to pay dividends any time soon, and while I recall them doing a debt offering, I can't imagine it's on the scale that would appeal to an SWF.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the West fears insects while Japan reveres them - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/society/why-the-west-fears-insects-while-japan-reveres-them/

<comment><USER2> I think my reaction is stronger with spindly insects, like mosquitoes.</comment>


Python command line project - <AUTHOR>

	Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas of a project I can work on? I've been trying to generate ideas for days and I just can't think of anything "new" to build. I simply want to practice more python and I've been using it for around 2 months.
I'd prefer to build a command line app just because I hate working with GUIs :). Would it be better if I improve my Python by rewriting some GNU tools?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I've been in that situation before. One thing that you can try is find a cool API and make a tool that uses it.

<http://www.programmableweb.com/> is a great place to search for APIs.

A few ideas:

* Command line client for the Indeed job search engine. Maybe make it similar to the top command? (<http://www.indeed.com/jsp/apiinfo.jsp>)

* Find a recipe, using what you have in your pantry, by using the BigOven API. Perhaps make a way to catalog your food? (<http://api.bigoven.com/>)

* You can find plenty of location data with the SimpleGeo api if that's what you're interested in (<https://simplegeo.zendesk.com/entries/209068-python-tutorial>)

* Make your computer talk to you a new notification, email, tweet, tell you the weather, etc. There are some software libraries you can download for this, and some online services you can check out as well (e.g. <http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=hello>) You could also hook it up with Notifio (<https://api.notifo.com/>) to speak when you get a reply on HN or a notification on some other website.

Hope that helps. Good luck and have fun!

</comment><comment><USER3> Write a cool python program which when given a youtube url provides with all the stats about the video e.g. Ratings: 6467 Comments: 1,565 Favorites: 124 to judge the popularity of videos</comment>


How to spot trends early using Google (free course) - <AUTHOR> https://treendly.com/course <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I just launched a new course on how to spot trends. It's free if you create a free account on the platform.

In the course you will learn useful Google tools to spot trends as well as how to piggyback on the existing demand created by a trend.

I was too cheap to buy a platform to host the course on (Podia, Kajabi, etc..), so I built one myself where users can mark lessons as completed, and comment (through disqus).

Full disclosure: I own a startup in the space (Treendly). That means that I eat and sleep trends, so I think you will learn a thing or two, hopefully.

Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks interesting! Nice job, and I will give the course a try!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and sure, let me know what you think!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup folded, leave up social media accounts, or take them down? - <AUTHOR> My startup went bust, and we are in the midst of winding everything down.  Should we leave our social media accounts up, or take them down?  What about LinkedIn, will it look bad to future employers if there is no company attached to your job profile on the platform? <comment><USER2> Leave the social pages up but make it very clear the company is defunct.

</comment><comment><USER3> What was the topic of your startup?</comment>


Viaweb was the first level 3 web platform according to the definition given by Andreessen? - <AUTHOR> http://lispmeister.com/blog/lisp-news/ning.html 'd like to point out that, as far as I know, Viaweb, an online shop system build by Paul Graham and Robert Morris, was the first level 3 web platform according to the definition given by Andreessen: <comment><USER2> Better: Paul Graham invented the internet.</comment>


Ask HN: At what time and how frequently do you visit HN? - <AUTHOR>

At what time do you visit HN? How frequently do you visit HN?<p>I usually visit HN around 1PM(EST) and around 2-3 times a day. <comment><USER2> 7 times a day? It's a great place to find out the latest news, check the comment count to know what's really interesting, and only then click on the articles.

</comment><comment><USER3> 7 days a week, first thing in the morning and multiple times during the day. It´s addictive.

Sometimes I even get to HN for inspiration when stuck in a project/problem.

<comment><USER4> I'm on the same schedule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In between checking email and Google News. I don't have a regular schedule as I'm freelance.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems best answered by server logs.</comment>


What I learned not drinking for two years - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andymboyle/what-i-learned-not-drinking-for-two-years-c94167ecd329#.se35n8hju <comment><AUTHOR> The author, Andy Boyle (not me), is a writer, comedian, and web developer.

[http://andyboyle.com/](http://andyboyle.com/)</comment>


Wikileaks screws up and publishes its secret donor list - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/20/wikileaks_donor_leak/ <comment><USER2> this is an interesting development. I don't think being named in that list is something to be ashamed of, rather something to be proud of.

But the fact that the document contains the text begging for money raises the possibility of a publicity stunt.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> whats amazing is that they didn't delete the list after it was submitted by users to their system</comment>


Netcat mode on OpenSSH - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rootshell.be/2010/03/08/openssh-new-feature-netcat-mode/

<comment><USER2> Aw man, I was hoping this would be a passthrough mode for the transport.

Sometimes I'd like to have secure authentication but otherwise have no encryption — the overhead is way too high on slower boxes when you have a good amount of bandwidth available. One classic case I'd run into is using a nice old Sparc workstation as a remote X terminal to a fast new box: if I used SSH to forward the X session its process would regularly spike the local CPU, so I would end up just using a completely insecure X server instead.

It can be too slow even on decently fast boxes when you have gigabits of bandwidth available — I'd just end up piping tar through netcat to avoid the overhead.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much of this is just because you're using a slow encryption function. On my (quite fast) machine, the default 128-bit AES encryption can handle a little under 800 Mbit/s. Meanwhile, Threefish-512 can encrypt at 4 Gbit/s on the same machine, with what we lightheartedly hope is an equal or greater amount of security. And if you use CTR mode for block chaining, you can parallelize it among however many cores you have, for several times speedup -- my quad-core machine could manage 16 Gbit/s with Threefish-512 in CTR mode, which is really quite zippy.

What I'm saying is, faster transfers _should_ be possible. And they probably already are, if you're willing to find out how to tweak the OpenSSH settings. Maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A really useful thing I use with ssh and netcat is to forward SSH connections through a bastion host like this - <http://backdrift.org/transparent-proxy- with-ssh>

It looks like netcat can be substituted with the openssh 5.4 builtin.

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently, just open one term window to do the 'ssh -L', and a second window to do the 'nc'.

This enhancement just saves me the trouble of opening a term window.

<comment><USER6> Well, the big advantage is it doesn't listen on a port, which means if the system in question has a crazy local firewall policy, this works better. Also, on a multi-user system, this is more secure as other users cannot connect to this port.

Plus, I'd rather use one command than two, makes scripting easier.</comment></comment>