Browser Page Load Performance - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/browser-page-load-performance/ <comment><USER2> Oh and while I'm thinking about it, this is a cool tool but I'm not sure of how much it will do to pressure browser manufacturers into improving. Obviously Steve's suggestions have gone into Chrome but beyond that I wonder how much influence he has...

<comment><USER3> It already had influence. When the tool came out it helped us to find a regression in redirect caching that occurred from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. We fixed it and it's back to working again in Firefox 3.1. Steve has good clout - he knows his stuff and is happy to provide easy test cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Did anyone else spot Safari 4.0 on Steve's page? Is that some Apple folks trying out their latest offering, perhaps? I'm pretty sure WebKit nightly comes out as WebKit.

<comment><USER3> Steve is simply labeling the WebKit nightlies as "Safari 4" - it's a little bit heavy-handed but it will, technically, be correct. Probably moving un- released browsers off into another area (Minefield/Firefox 3.1, Safari 4, and IE 8) would make things more consistent.

<comment><USER4> Odd, I'm running WebKit nightlies, and I was marked as Safari 3.1

<comment><USER5> I suspect the profiler's UA detection code is confused by the way WebKit nightlies just run your installed version of Safari but linked to the newer WebKit framework. (Look inside the WebKit.app bundle: the binary itself is under 100Kb.)

Unless you have installed Safari 4 Developer Preview (available to any body with an ADC account), your WebKit.app User-Agent string will say Safari 3.x, with a nightly revision number. The exact same revision on a system with Safari 4 will have a different string, though. So it's entirely possible to have a newer version of WebKit running in an older version of Safari, and vice versa.

I think any nightlies since the DP was released in August _ought_ to be counted as Safari 4, but some may not be for this reason.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Focusable – Set a spotlight focus on DOM element - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable

<comment><USER2> This overlay technique works beautifully for guided, interactive tutorials.

We've had great success using it in our tutorials to get users quickly up to speed with our product.

It works better than the similar "show bubble beside dom element" technique[1] for a few reasons:

1) With bubbles, you need real estate next to the element to display the help text. This often doesn't exist, especially e.g. inside a frame in a Firefox sidebar. By fading everything else out, it is easy to have the help text in a different location.

2) Bubbles are typically not as high contrast as the overlay, so they are a weaker mechanism for drawing attention.

3) With the overlay technique, you can highlight multiple elements at once, which is impossible with bubbles. This is critical when you need to explain how two things relate to each other, and something that seems to be missing in this library.

You can check out how we did our interactive tutorials at [http://www.parsehub.com](http://www.parsehub.com) (they're within the extension).

[1] [http://css-tricks.com/bubble-point-tooltips-with- css3-jquery...](http://css-tricks.com/bubble-point-tooltips-with-css3-jquery/)

<comment><USER3> I've used Intro.js[1] in the past for this technique, and I've been pretty happy with it.

[1] [http://usablica.github.io/intro.js/](http://usablica.github.io/intro.js/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, intro.js is a great lib, I know that, but for me has an important missing feature; you can't interact with the focused element, I mean, you don't have any mouse event or similar... this is the only bad thing I think.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this feedback dude, I will concentrate to address remaining issues, including what you mentioned.

Cheers :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks great, and glad to see that removing the jQuery dependency is on your todo list!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks sir! At the beginning I tried to implement the lib only with the Dom api, but was a little painful because isn't very agile and tedious... so I ended with the jQuery dependency, thing that I want to remove in the future.

<comment><USER6> Maybe an intermediate (or even final) solution could be to make it work using only zepto?

<comment><USER7> (shameless plug) Here's a similar library with no dependencies :)

[https://github.com/notduncansmith/showcase](https://github.com/notduncansmith/showcase)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since it's tangentially related, is anyone aware of a tool (browser based or Mac-supported) that would take a CSS selector and, rather than spotlight it, capture a screenshot of its bounding box? Ideally, capturing multiple screenshots if there are multiple matching elements?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that you're looking for is that [http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/](http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/) :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd need to look into the code as I couldn't find a live demo to quickly noodle with, but my first thought was to add a border radius or some sort of blur filter to make it more spotlight-like? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find a live demo here ([https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable/tree/master/sample- app](https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable/tree/master/sample-app)).

About adding a border-radius, I'll love that feature, in fact I was thinking about implement it, but isn't as easy as it seems.

TLDR: Right now they are 4 divs for making the focus enable:

1- Fills the left part of the page. 2- Fills the top part of the page to the top part of the element. 3- Fills the bottom part of the element to the bottom part of the page. 4- Fills the right part of the page.

These divs are absolute positioned inside a wrapper that have disabled the pointer events to enable the interaction with the focused element.

So for that reason I can't simply add a border-radius for the active element.

This images can help me to explain you how it works [http://cl.ly/image/3g2K2N1j1S3S](http://cl.ly/image/3g2K2N1j1S3S) [http://cl.ly/image/031j3p283235](http://cl.ly/image/031j3p283235)

<comment><USER10> Create a 5th div that exactly overlays the focussed element, and give the overlay an inset box-shadow. (You may need to pass through mouse events programmatically.)

<comment><USER11> no need to manually handle clicks, [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3680429/click- through-a-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3680429/click-through-a- div-to-underlying-elements)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! is the approach I also follow in the library, you can check it here [https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable/blob/master/app/focus-e...](https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable/blob/master/app/focus- element-overlay.js#L165)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've attempted to remove the jQuery dependancy [https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable/pull/11](https://github.com/zzarcon/focusable/pull/11)

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me a lot of Fokus ([http://lab.hakim.se/fokus/](http://lab.hakim.se/fokus/)).

</comment><comment><USER14> This would be great for user on-boarding of our product. Perfect timing... will let you know how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thanks, this is useful.</comment>


Why move to New York when you can just go online? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/opinion/30wasik.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Because talking to people is a much richer interaction that just typing, and camming still feels weird.

Also, having grown up in Brooklyn, I find Manhattan quite a thrilling place to visit.

</comment><comment><USER3> NYC the capital of the world, hmmm.... the NET is the new capital of the world.

</comment><comment><USER4> Although the internet may not be as poetic as traveling to NYC and finding your "big break," it's a whole lot cheaper, and possibly more effective these days.

</comment><comment><USER5> Any experiences people wish to share about their own move to NYC? How much did it cost to get established? How much would it cost to get established if you wanted to live in a part of the city without worrying for your safety?

<comment><USER6> NYC is safe, man. Last summer two of my good friends and my girlfriend all moved to NYC. Harlem, Williamsburg Brooklyn, and Lower Manhattan respectively. One is a rapper and english lit working with Literacy Through Hip Hop, coaching kids, making about $2k a month and he did fine. The other is a fashion reporter, blogger and PR guy, an struggling one at that; Made just about as much but nighlife was bleeding him, IIRC. My gf is a singer and we had a free apartment (I couldn't tell you how much it cost, but it was on Park Ave and 57th) however a lot of her friends where struggling artists and actors and there were shared apartments where one could get a bed for $400/mo or so in theater district.

FWIW, we find Sydney to be heaps more expensive than NYC; at least I do. But Sydney is far more habitable.

<comment><USER5> Well, it's pretty much Chicago or NYC next year so I can be close to the exchanges. If I get lucky, maybe I could even end up in Frankfurt. In all three cases, it's the cost I am worried about.</comment></comment></comment>


Brave browser can now show ads, and soon you'll get 70% of the money - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-browser-fix-for-online-advertising-pays-you-to-view-ads-that-respect-privacy/ <comment><USER2> If users are payed to see and click on ads won't the entire user base be incentivized to just behave like a giant clickfarm?

</comment><comment><USER3> "We think we can make advertising great" \- every ad tech company for the last 20 years.

And yet adevrtising _isn 't_ great, and for that matter never has been. Ads are never the amazing assistant who knows just what will make your day better, they're a distraction stealing your precious attention to try to make you want something you were perfectly happy without a moment ago. That said, I respect Brave for letting me run uBlock Origin on my phone.

<comment><USER4> As bad as advertising has got, in its essence it is to inform you of things that you didn't seek out. This can be a good thing like public service annoucements or products/services that you may not have known about and very related to the article you're reading at the moment.

Unless we have a way of running an economy without marketing/advertising, we should try to make advertising better by whatever means we can imagine until it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excited to see how this works out! Congratulations Brave team for taking the first steps toward your goal.</comment>


Backdooring JavaScript using minifier bugs - <AUTHOR> https://zyan.scripts.mit.edu/blog/backdooring-js/ <comment> yoz-y I wonder. Should one ever use minified javascript code on a server? Assuming that you are using it on your own server and not distributing the code to clients.

Is there any benefit to it?

<comment><USER2> > Is there any benefit to it?

Well, in theory yes. When determining whether a specific function can be inlined into its call site, V8 looks at the length of the function _source code_ to try and guess whether it's worth it. Functions longer than 600 characters (including comments) cannot be inlined and therefore they will typically be slower.

Whether that makes any meaningful difference to your application performance really depends on the application. In most cases it won't.

<comment><USER3> Wait, what if you have really really long comments? Or do they get stripped out beforehand?

<comment><USER2> Comments affect this heuristic, so yeah, commented code can be slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to read text on a clever find.

Could somebody please confirm or invalidate my understanding, that this backdoor is just exploitable in addition with other (severe) issues?

An attacker would have to have the ability to tailor/manipulate JS scripts which should be under control of the victim?

Or am i mistaken?

<comment><USER5> That's correct. I did not discover vulnerabilities in existing libraries or add backdoors to any of them. :)

The attack scenario described in the post is (1) attacker writes some plausible-looking patches to an existing library like jQuery, (2) attacker convinces library maintainer to merge the patches, (3) someone builds the library with a buggy minifier, which creates the actual backdoor.

<comment><USER6> It's interesting all the same, It's kind of why exploits in very popular things like wordpress become problematic for so many for so long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really slick. To translate the idea behind compiler backdoors to JS minifier backdoors is pretty clever.

</comment><comment><USER8> Applying DeMorgan's Law to reduce a few characters in JS seems really overkill...

Reading this makes it seem hardly worth saving a few bytes over.

</comment><comment><USER9> This makes me think that there could be similar bugs in the browser, when it JIT-compiles or optimizes Javascript code. That could be used to take control of the whole browser/OS if used in an add-on/extension (given that it has sufficient privileges).

<comment><USER10> There have been similar bugs in browser JITs that allow websites to escape the sandbox - usually incorrect optimisations that cause the JIT to elide bounds checks when it can't safely do so, probably since those are the easiest to exploit.</comment></comment>


What those fields in your profile mean - <AUTHOR>

I found myself wondering what some of the fields in the profile actually mean, and found the explanations scattered throughout the news page here:
http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html
In particular:
"showdead" - "Anyone who does want to see the stuff killed by the editors can do it by setting showdead to yes in his profile."
"noprocrast", "maxvisit", "minaway" - "If you turn it on by setting it to "yes", you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between."
"delay" - "...lets you specify the delay (in minutes) between when you create a comment and when it's visible to others; this was added because many users edit comments immediately after posting them." <comment><USER2> thanks, always wondered.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a link at the bottom of the news page labelled "FAQ".

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html></comment>


Cryptic transmission of Covid-19 revealed by genomic epidemiology - <AUTHOR> https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see that the Seattle Flu Study has been able to start doing localized community testing for COVID-19 in the past week and that their work will be able to help 'decrypt' the transmission among the community.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool to see evolution in real time and the virus RNA mutate.</comment>


Accidentally Quadratic: Hashtable Edition - <AUTHOR> https://www.scalyr.com/blog/accidentally-quadratic/ <comment><USER2> It wouldn't harm to point that out to the relevant Java maintainer. This function really is horrible and should never have been published. (spoiler- free version. read it all, it's good)</comment>


Want to see if you can be a dotcom millionaire? Try the Web 2.0 Simulation Game! - <AUTHOR> http://www.onemorelevel.com/games.php?game=566

<comment><USER2> "Warning: mysql_query(): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/db/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) in /hsphere/local/home/slackor0/onemorelevel.com/games.php on line 22 Warning: mysql_query(): A link to the server could not be established in /hsphere/local/home/slackor0/onemorelevel.com/games.php on line 22 Temporary server problem, refreshing your browser should reload the game"

Clearly, they fail at scalability.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cashed out with $9 billion after being acquired by Google. Woohoo! How did I do it?

Spent my first $1 million on PR consultants. Didn't build a single product or hirer any developers. Went to Bubblecon 2008 to raise some VC with my army of consultants. With $20 million in the bank I then bought Super Bowl Ads until I got acquired. Yay!</comment>


You Aren't Going to Need It – Yet - <AUTHOR> https://www.gustavwengel.dk/yagni-yet <comment><USER2> > In hindsight, the right call here would be to write the documentation at the > end, when the API had stabilized.

This is unrealistic and will set you up for failure in multiple ways. For starters, no project beyond weekend lullabies will see a point where the spec is final. You may bump your API version from v1 to v2 and v3, but at the end of the day, there isn't going to be one big "now we're done" moment.

Even if there was, how do you expect 1) someone to consume endpoints until then and 2) document the endpoints once that moment of reckoning arrives? No API lives in isolation. Even if you're building a simple CRUD application, you will have other parts of your application that will need to interface with your endpoints. Without documentation, that's not going to happen without incredible friction and waste of resources.

Even if you somehow dig through the integration issue, documenting things after the fact is not realistic. When you write code, you know what it does and how to use it. Not so much if you come back to it a month, a year, or possibly many years from now. Documentation is there to cover both the basic use as well as any nuances your API may involve. You're going to lose all of the latter and most of the former if you separate writing the endpoint from documenting it.</comment>


Getting attention by being creative and useful - <AUTHOR> http://www.strategyinternetmarketing.co.uk/competitive-community-content-linkbuilding/

<comment><AUTHOR> My first blog post in over two years.

TL;DR: whilst it might be very efficient to get lots of poor outsourced content written on the cheap and pushed on to article sites, it's nowhere near as effective as great content published and promoted properly on your own site when it comes to attracting link weight, traffic and brand awareness

Discussion/thoughts always appreciated</comment>


Introduction to WAMP, a Protocol Enabling PUB/SUB and RPC over Websocket - <AUTHOR> http://fr.slideshare.net/sametmax/intro-wamp

<comment><USER2> Proposed benefits:

      -  Direct browser to browser communication.

Except it's not, because everything goes through a router, so how's that different from using an HTTP server in terms of moving parts?

      -  Can work outside of browsers.

So can HTTP.

      -  Allows independent microservices.

Again, so does HTTP.

      -  Has push and pub/sub.

Ok, but so does anything based on websockets, I don't see how that's an argument for this protocol.

To extend that reasoning, there are many things sockets may be better for but I'd like to hear the arguments specifically in support of WAMP.

<comment><USER3> WAMP is interesting to scale WebSocket (WS) application, going from 1 websocket procesus to several. You can do the same with Redis or else.

Otherwise said it allows to create clustered websocket (WS) applications.

E.g. two clients are connected to the same web chat room but via different WS servers, WAMP will allow to forward messages happening in one websocket server/processus to the other, otherwise their would be the equivalent of an IRC net split. You can do that with Redis too, but with WAMP "it just works"(tm).

\- WS doesn't support natively RPC as «function call + return value»

\- PUB/SUB is also nice to have, especially since it's cluster-aware.

> \- Direct browser to browser communication.

There is a router and that is all, you don't have to setup your own (cluster aware) dispatch logic.

edit: this might be helpful [http://wamp.ws/why/](http://wamp.ws/why/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> WAMP came up on Meteor's mailing list some time ago. One would compare it with Meteor's own pub/sub and rpc protocol called DDP ([https://www.meteor.com/ddp](https://www.meteor.com/ddp)).

DDP has clients in Objective-C, Java, Python and some other major languages, too: [http://www.meteorpedia.com/read/DDP_Clients](http://www.meteorpedia.com/read/DDP_Clients)

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/meteor- talk/wamp/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/meteor- talk/wamp/meteor-talk/9-pTabvQeHw/XUG9t6qMbtcJ)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have used WAMP 1.0 for a few projects and converted some Play framework code to pure Java EE7 code. However I haven't used it in any of my recent projects because of support, I like losing the HTTP header, saves a fair bit of traffic.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> he de facto open source WAMP router, crossbar.io, is written with Twisted, Python. For now it's Python 2.7 only, but Autobahn Python, the Python client, works with Twisted or asyncio (Python 3)

The cool thing is that it's an open standard registered at IANA ([https://www.iana.org/assignments/websocket/websocket.xml](https://www.iana.org/assignments/websocket/websocket.xml)), and you can talk WAMP with clients in C++/Java/C#/PHP/JS.

It's pretty nice for the IoT and real time apps.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been using WAMP for a while now. It is a fairly established standard for publish/subscribe/rpc with multiple implementations and examples.</comment>


Ask HN: Best options for an alternative online MBA? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, I want to ask if you couldn't take an MBA in a top Business School, how could you reach a similar level on knowledge and networking embracing activities online ? <comment><USER2> Well the main draw of an MBA program is the network. The information itself isn't really that hard to come by (The Personal MBA is pretty good.)

So, honestly, if you can't do a top MBA, or even a MBA in person period, don't bother. You'd be better off reading a bunch of books and networking at a ton of local events.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read Personal MBA, then join/start a startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Reading a book and joining a startup would give you a very different opportunities and knowledge compared to a MBA in a top business school. In any case, if you have a technical background isn't easy to change into a Business role in a startup. I compare it as a self learn developer, it can achieve a great level but in my opinion won't match in average someone with a similar profile and with a theoretical background.</comment></comment>


Tarnished Silver - <AUTHOR> http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/tarnished-silver/ <comment><USER3> Have we still not agreed to stop paying attention to Paul Krugman altogether? It's been sad watching the quality of his column tumble since 2009 or so - <USER2> column in January 2014 actually referred to Amy Adams's cleavage[0].

> But data never tell a story on their own. They need to be viewed through the > lens of some kind of model, and it's very important to do your best to get a > good model. And that usually means turning to experts in whatever field > you're addressing.

His first two sentences are spot on - data must be matched with a story (I might not use the word "story" here, but the general principle is right).

The amusing part though is that he assumes that Nate Silver _isn 't_ an expert at this point. I've been following 538 since before 2008, and the quality of analysis _from a non-statistical level_ was consistently far higher than almost any other publication (except perhaps the Economist).

If anything the quality level once 538 signed with the Times decreased slightly, but only because a number of the other contributors (Andrew Gelman, etc.) stopped contributing at that time.

[0] Krugman hit an impressive low in January with this column - a rather vapid dismissal of the Silk Road as (and I quote) "libertarian derp", devoid of any actual analysis or supporting arguments whatsoever: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/derp-pirate- robe...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/derp-pirate-roberts/)

<comment><USER4> And yet, he's been right about the consequences of the financial crisis, austerity, and debt hysteria where everyone else in the punditry has been wrong. I'm sorry that he thinks Silk Road and bitcoin are stupid. I happen to agree with him, but even if I didn't, I think with his track record you ignore his analysis on macroeconomics at your peril.

<comment><USER5> _he 's been right about the consequences of the financial crisis_

I'm not so sure. He did predict that quantitative easing would not cause inflation; but the reason QE has not caused inflation is that banks are not making loans; they are letting $2.4 trillion of QE money sit in their accounts at the Fed instead of loaning it out.

Krugman most certainly did _not_ predict that outcome; he said QE would cause a recovery in the loan market. It hasn't. Getting one prediction right by accident because you got another prediction egregiously wrong doesn't make you a good predictor.

<comment><USER4> _he said QE would cause a recovery in the loan market._

Can you provide a citation for that claim? Because my recollection is that he said QE would have limited effects. I can't find much supporting this memory right now, aside from this entry about QE2[1]. He definitely supported QE, but I don't think he ever argued it would fix everything by itself. He's consistently argued that the Fed can't fix things by itself.

On the other hand, here's this entry where he says that, contrary to what you suggest, the whole point of QE is to cause inflation [2].

[1] [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/how-to-think- abo...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/how-to-think-about- qe2-wonkish/) [2] [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/fiscal- aspects-o...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/fiscal-aspects-of- quantitative-easing-wonkish/)

<comment><USER5> _my recollection is that he said QE would have limited effects_

You're correct, he did say that back in 2008. See Amezarak's post in response to me upthread.

 _he says that, contrary to what you suggest, the whole point of QE is to cause inflation_

I think he meant that the Fed thought it would cause inflation. But he has said a number of times that if the economy is in a "liquidity trap", printing more money will not cause inflation. (QE is one way of effectively printing more money.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I missed whatever controversy started the current round of 538 commentary. All I know is that they put out a statistical march madness bracket and heard something about their global warming piece not worth the time figuring out what the drama was about.

So I'm behind the times. Why are most of the comments on this article pulling out all well-worn Hacker News tropes for dismissing the article and/or making the field slippery enough that I can ignore what Krugman says?

As far as I know, Krugman and Silver are both regarded as real smart dudes in their respective fields (both with actual political hacks ready to paint them as hacks), and nobody is expected to bat 1.000 so this looks like a "hey kid new to these waters, be careful there be dragons."

So is the drama over a politically sensitive topic? I'm assuming. Is the narrative about the issue coming out of 538 more pleasing to the ears of entrepreneurial self-styled "hackers" than the one from Krugman? I bet so! Now that I've posted this, I'll go catch up on the drama to find out just how wrong I am.

<comment><USER7> I don't think its that deep, most of the comments here appear not to know what the column is about, so they're just churning out standard anti-krugman or pro-silver cliches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Unfortunately, Silver seems to have taken the wrong lesson from his election- forecasting success.... What he seems to have concluded is that there are no experts anywhere, that a smart data analyst can and should ignore all that._

Doing your own analysis doesn't mean you believe there are no experts. It means you believe experts are sometimes wrong and there's value in doing original analysis from the source data.

I love that about 538. Most news sources are writing based on the same small set of sources and quotes. Even if I don't agree with 538's analysis, it's useful to get the perspective of a critical outsider armed with data.

<comment><USER9> > Doing your own analysis doesn't mean you believe there are no experts.

Krugman isn't criticizing Silver for doing his own analysis, he's criticizing the lack of judgement he displays is hiring Roger Pielke, Jr., -- who is neither a neutral data scientist nor a climatologist, but a political scientist who has long been selling a very specific position regarding climate change -- to do his analysis for him on the issue of climate change, and then publishing his report with the specific flaws that critics have identified in Pielke's piece, and suggesting that the process that allowed all that to happen was a result of Siver's disregard for expertise in the domain.

Personally I think that Krugman is attacking Silver for the wrong reason -- I don't think that Silver's problem is a lack of respect of real expertise in any domain (and in his own work, while he was conducted his own analysis, he has also demonstrated respect for -- without unquestioning deference to -- domain experts), I think its more likely that if there is a problem its just a simple failure of judgement regarding someone else's abilities and interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The few articles that I've read on fivethirtyeight so far have all been of excellent quality. While Krugman might have some ideological grievances with this website, there are no concrete flaws that he can actually point to, therefore his criticism remains very abstract, and for practical purposes moot. I would take his criticism a lot more seriously if he can pick out a handful of articles published on fivethirtyeight, and show that their conclusions have been refuted by various expert researchers in that domain (while saving the data).

<comment><USER11> He does point to concrete flaws by linking to this article: [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/19/3416369/538-clim...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/19/3416369/538-climate- article/)

He does not rehash them for brevity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ironic, and telling, that Silver presents a viewpoint against Krugman's and backs it with data, while Krugman simply refutes his arguments by espousing on his same opinion with no data whatsoever.

This statement from Krugman, to me, flies in the face of scientific thought - "you should be very wary if your analysis runs counter to what a lot of professionals say." Not at all true - the "lot of professionals" should be wary if a scientific study runs counter to _their_ analysis.

<comment><USER13> By the professionals Krugman does not refer to political analysts/hacks that spew opinion. He is referring to scientists. He is cautioning Nate Silver against dismissing the work done by scientists who use scientific methods. Nate Silver's crew ignoring scientific studies would be no different than political analysts ignoring Nate Silver's work based on anecdotes.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Statistics without purpose, ie. as a fishing expedition, is dangerous. Scientists use statistics all the time, but usually under the guidance of hypothesis driven experiments. Krugman is merely mentioning that if Nate Silver keeps drawing conclusions based on statistical analysis without a deeper understanding and grounding, it is highly likely that he'll come to some bone-headed conclusions.

The best value of statistical wizardry is when it works alongside domain experts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ignoring the personalities for a moment, I viewed this column as pushing the Bayesian vs. frequentist views.

Nate Silver believes you should be purely frequentist viewpoint of the data first.

Krugman is pushing the Bayesian viewpoint. Given experts' assumptions (that have been built up from examining lots of prior data with critical thinking), let's examine this data.

This is a battle that is being fought on many other stages than Krugman's blog.

<comment><USER5> _Nate Silver believes you should be purely frequentist viewpoint of the data first._

Does he? A recent column on 538 (not written by Silver himself, true) talked about using Bayesian methods to help find the missing airliner:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians- could-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians-could-help- find-flight-370/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a feature that Silver's group is approaching data from outside of the circles of the various fields of study.

Krugman is probably worried about what pure stats will say about the predictions of most economists.

<comment><USER14> Krugman frequently disparages the predictions of most economists... His own record isn't perfect, but pretty good. IMO, he is pretty careful about not making too many falsifiable claims. His main point over the past couple of years has simply been that under current economic conditions money printing won't result in inflation, and that the government should have done more to address unemployment as the biggest problem of the financial crisis.

<comment><USER5> _His main point over the past couple of years has simply been that under current economic conditions money printing won 't result in inflation_

But the reason it hasn't is that banks are not making loans with the new money; they are letting $2.4 trillion of it sit in their accounts at the Fed. Krugman most certainly did _not_ predict that; he said QE would help restart the loan market. So he got one prediction right only by accident, as a result of getting another prediction egregiously wrong.

<comment><USER17> Krugman most certainly did predict that. In fact he repeats it constantly, and says that monetary policy can only be effective in the current crisis by changing expectations. Indeed, Krugman is always pointing to Japan as an example, and the same thing happened in Japan, which Krugman explained in a paper in 1998. Krugman's attitude seems to have mostly been "if we can't have fiscal policy that would actually solve the problem, then I guess we'll have to hope that QE does something but I doubt it."

Krugman, 2008: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/the-humbling- of-...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/the-humbling-of-the-fed- wonkish/)

2009: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/followup-on- samu...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/followup-on-samuelson- and-monetary-policy/)

2013: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/hawks-doves- and-...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/hawks-doves-and- ostriches/)

I don't know what it is about Krugman, but he seems to have his views misattributed more than any other commentator.

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/nobody-could- hav...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/nobody-could-have- predicted-monetary-edition/)

<comment><USER5> _Krugman is always pointing to Japan as an example_

You're right; I had forgotten that he pointed out that QE didn't help Japan's loan market at all.

 _Krugman 's attitude seems to have mostly been "if we can't have fiscal policy that would actually solve the problem, then I guess we'll have to hope that QE does something but I doubt it."_

Yes, he often talks about "forward guidance" as his preferred method. I didn't mean to say he was in favor of QE in preference to other methods.

Personally, I'm as skeptical of "forward guidance" as I am of QE, mainly because the Fed has, for quite some time now, been trying to double-promise that it won't raise interest rates for a while even if the economy starts recovering. The problem is that nobody appears to believe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I expected more from Krugman. All I saw were statements that carried no weight and complaints about how Silver and his team, instead of asking for the blessing of their "peers", tried to do the job by themselves.

Krugman's mentions "But data never tell a story on their own.", and does the polar opposite, tries to tell a story with no data, and that's the wrong kind of story for what he was aiming for.

Using Krugman's own words, his post "looks like something between a disappointment and a disaster."

</comment><comment><USER19> Krugman seems to be attacking a straw man here. I don't think Nate Silver has argued that data must be examined in an absolute vacuum.

However, Krugman often takes it (as in this case) to the opposite extreme – like many economists, finding a model, then examining the data and interpreting it to fit that model. This sort of confirmation bias and narrative-based news is what Nate Silver is trying to oppose, not the lack of a narrative or model whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER20> Even if Krugman is right he should support Silver's experiment. This is how it should work. Krugman asserts one thing, and Silver assets another thing. Silver creates a way to test the theories. I like it, regardless of who is right.

</comment><comment> chestnut-tree We need more journalism that uses data to support a story. In the UK, there are countless reports in the national press where journalists simply dress opinion as fact or push their own beliefs often in a deliberately misleading way. Even opinion pieces ("op-ed") state facts which may not be true but which supports the opinion writers' point of view.

There's an interesting experiment from the UK Daily Mirror (a broadly left- leaning tabloid newspaper) called ampp3d: a website which tries to use facts and infographics to tell a story. The editorial tone varies quite a bit from story to story, but tends towards the informal and light. I like aspects of their approach and can see the potential but I actually wish they were more rigorous in picking their sources.

Here's an example where they try and unravel claims about welfare benefits:

[http://ampp3d.mirror.co.uk/2014/02/04/wed-rather-have-big- be...](http://ampp3d.mirror.co.uk/2014/02/04/wed-rather-have-big-benefits- facts-than-a-big-benefits-row/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This sounds a lot like the attitude that Palm CEO Ed Colligan had about Apple entering the phone market:

> We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a > decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not > going to just walk in.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nick Confessore had a great tweet about journalists' resentment of Nate Silver being rooted in the subtext of journalists knowing stats being worth more than journalists who don't.

</comment><comment><USER23> My favorite part of the whole flapperdoodle: John Holdren's fisking of Roger Pielke[1]. Best quote:

"Senator Sessions quoted from testimony before the environment and Public Works Committee the previous July by Dr. Roger Pielke.... Specifically, the Senator read the following passages from Dr. Pielke's written testimony:

"' _It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally. Drought has "for the most part, become shorter, less, frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U.S. over the last century"...._ '

"Footnotes in the testimony attribute the [statement] in quotation marks [...] to the US Climate Change Science Program's 2008 report on extremes in North America....

"...[A]ny reference to the CCSP 2008 report in this context should include not just the sentence highlighted in Dr. Pielke's testimony but also the sentence that follows immediately in the relevant passage from that document and which relates specifically to the American West. Here are the two sentences in their entirety ([http://downloads.globalchange.gov/sap/sap3-](http://downloads.globalchange.gov/sap/sap3-) 3/Brochure-CCSP-3-3.pdf):

"' _Similarly, long-term trends (1925-2003) of hydrologic droughts based on model derived soil moisture and runoff show that droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U.S. over the last century (Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006). The main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where increased temperature has led to rising drought trends (Groisman et al., 2004; Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006)._ '"

Yes, Pielke argued ¬P by carefully picking a quote immediately next to a statement of P.

Extra credit for the mention of "Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama", who is the smarmiest goof-ball I've ever heard present. Really, no one is a bigger fan of contrarian scientists than I am; one of the best things Einstein ever did was to ensure the quantum mechanicists had their shit together. But starting off your talk by referring to everyone else in your field as "politicians and scientists who want to be politicians" just isn't "god does not play dice" and it sets off every kook alarm I have.

[1] [http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ost...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/critique_of_pielke_jr_statements_on_drought.pdf)

<comment><USER24> Pielke's response is here:

[http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/john- holdrens-e...](http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/john-holdrens- epic-fail.html)

It was extraordinary that Holdren should write such a harsh attack on an individual scientist, particularly when as pointed out by Pielke that his response is entirely consistent with IPCC SREX.

Here is the most important quote in Pielke's article:

What the IPCC SREX (2012) says: "There is medium confidence that since the 1950s some regions of the world have experienced a trend to more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia." For the US the CCSP (2008)20 says: "droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U. S. over the last century."21

It appears that stating what the IPCC says is now outside the consensus according to Holdren.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The New York Times as the jilted ex.

<comment><USER26> It's also the case that a lot of people at the NYT disliked him already

(see e.g. [http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/nate- silver...](http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/nate-silver-went- against-the-grain-for-some-at-the-times/) )

and now they no longer have any reason to hide it.

<comment><USER25> That's because Nate Silver shows that all the drama that political journalists manufacture has next to nothing to do with what's really going on, that the race is never quite as uncertain as they say it is, and that numbers really do tell most of the story. In short, he makes them if not completely irrelevant, then much less relevant than they are now. And he shows them to be deeply mistaken at best and dishonest at worst about the reality they're covering. So yeah I'd expect political journalists to be resentful of Nate Silver.

Perhaps they could become relevant again by analyzing the actual data as opposed to engaging in this false personality narrative all the time, the kind of personality narrative that elevates corrupt individuals like Chris Christie because, well, he has a big personality. But I doubt they're going to do that.

That said, Krugman is more of a data-minded columnist, as you would expect since he's an economist, so I find his objections to Silver's new site surprising. I don't think Nate Silver ever said that data without interpretation is all there is; but that data _with_ interpretation tells the actual story, as opposed to whatever all these political journalists are doing .

<comment><USER17> > That said, Krugman is more of a data-minded columnist, as you would expect > since he's an economist, so I find his objections to Silver's new site > surprising.

Krugman in his earlier blog posts was more specific:

"I feel bad about picking on a young staffer, but I think this piece on corporate cash hoards — which is the site's inaugural economic analysis — is a good example. The post tells us that the much-cited $2 trillion corporate cash hoard has been revised down by half a trillion dollars. That's kind of interesting, I guess, although it's striking that the post offers neither a link to the data nor a summary table of pre- and post-revision numbers; I'm supposed to know my way around these numbers, and I can't figure out exactly which series they're referring to. (Use FRED!)

More to the point, however, what does this downward revision tell us? We're told that the "whole narrative" is gone; which narrative? Is the notion that profits are high, but investment remains low, no longer borne out by the data? (I'm pretty sure it's still true.) What is the model that has been refuted?

"Neener neener, people have been citing a number that was wrong" is just not helpful. Tell me something meaningful! Tell me why the data matter!"

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/sergeant-friday-was-not-a-fox/

So his objections do take the form of something like you'd expect - this post is just the latest in a series. Krugman clearly had very high hopes for the site - this is his 3rd of 4th post about it, which makes sense given Krugman's prior cheerleading for Silver.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who's looking for a cofounder? - <AUTHOR> I just stumbled upon an old Ask HN with the same topic from 2010 and I thought this could be useful to resurrect.<p>You should probably mention what you are working on, where you are located, what stage you are in, who you are looking for, what you can bring to the table and a way to contact you. <comment><USER2> Hey everyone,

I develop Streamus, [https://streamus.com](https://streamus.com) // [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/streamus/jbnkffmin...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/streamus/jbnkffmindojffecdhbbmekbmkkfpmjd/)

Streamus is a browser extension alternative to Spotify powered by YouTube. I have been developing the software for ~3 years and it currently has 300K active users. I'm interested in working towards a first round of funding after having misc. angels express interest in the past.

I live in San Luis Obispo, CA (smack dab in the middle between LA and SF).

I'm mostly looking for another developer fluent in JavaScript to aid in development. Bonus points for having a business/start-up background.

I'd like to think I bring a lot to the table. I'm currently coasting on savings while working on Streamus full-time, unpaid. I contract ~12hrs/wk to cover bare necessities. I have 4 yrs xp as lead developer of a small software company and am an active contributor to Backbone.Marionette, one of the leading open-source JavaScript frameworks. My efforts on Streamus are well known on Reddit with my latest marketing efforts resulting in the #4 post of all time in r/music, [http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/2sypcn/seven_months_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/2sypcn/seven_months_ago_i_showed_rmusic_my_software/). My efforts have also been featured on TechCrunch, LifeHacker, TheNextWeb, Product Hunt (twice), and many other tech. blogs. I've declined a potential position at YouTube Music in order to pursue this project further.

Feel free to hit me up at email@example.com for any business inquiries, or if you just want to chat and learn more about the product. :)

Cheers

<comment><USER3> I don't know Sean or anything about Streamus as a business, but I use it on a regular basis and it's a really well thought out Chrome extension.

It would be great to see support for easier sharing of user-created playlists (beyond copying/pasting URLs), such as an official & searchable repository with ranked lists of playlists for different genres and purposes (reading, coding, etc.).

<comment><USER2> :) It really would be nice. It's been on my mind and I've been gradually taking steps to evolve the website into something usable for that purpose, but, for now, I have a firm priority list of things which need to get done that users don't care much about. YouTube TOS concerns (nothing huge, I've worked through them with YouTube I just need to finish writing the code), some security/oauth concerns, and getting SoundCloud added as an additional catalog source. Once those things are done I'd expect a lot of the 'smaller' features to get implemented very quickly.

You can see a full list of feature requests here: [https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/issues](https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/issues). I haven't embellished on all of the ideas yet, but the list should give you a general idea of what I think needs to happen -- including improving the UX of sharing playlists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, I'll bite...

I'm looking for a cofounder for a small business deal. I want to sell GNU Octave. Something like what the Julia folks are doing[1]. I do not foresee this will be a startup, not a build once, sell infinitely often kind of deal (I don't consider what the Julia people are doing is a startup either). We are in all probability not going to become millionaires. But hopefully we will be doing good in the world and we will find a way to fund others who are. Matlab is huge, and while Julia and Python chip around the edges of its market dominance, we need something like Octave that can take it head-on and be a drop-in replacement.

I do mathematics and programming. I know GNU Octave well, and I also know its community. I don't know how to do market research, advertising, how to negotiate contracts, or how to look for funding. If you think you could help me, contact me at email@example.com

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516298)

<comment><USER5> you mean sell support right (like what redhat does), or the actual software?

<comment><USER4> Both. And Red Hat also does both. You don't get access to download their software if you don't pay. If selling custom binaries for Octave works (under the terms of the GPL, of course), we should try that too.

<comment><USER6> I suppose you could sell custom binaries, but if you distribute them, you likely have to publish the code. That said, you could maybe run them in the cloud yourself and sell access.

<comment><USER4> > but if you distribute them, you likely have to publish the code.

Sure, publish the code to the person we sell them to, and no one else. If they want to take the job of rebuilding the binaries themselves, they're welcome to try, but I think the hassle of doing that is what we would be getting paid to do.

Maintaining an online version of Octave seems like another possibility. A couple of people have already built online versions of Octave, and when I approached one of them several months ago, they seemed receptive to the idea to commercialise it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm the founder of Shaxpir, a word-processor in the cloud for fiction authors. I have a software engineering background, so I build the MVP myself. After two years of prototyping, I just launched the beta 2 months ago, and by now there are about 100 people using the beta. It's a desktop app built with web technologies (like Slack or Atom) and a Java backend on AWS with Elasticsearch.

Anyhow, I'm getting ready to start raising money in a few months, after the beta ends and we launch the product publicly. I've already recruited two co- founders, but I'm looking for a VP of Engineering. I'm based in Portland, OR, so somebody in the PNW would be ideal.

Here's a teaser video introducing the product:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFG8fpYkDxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFG8fpYkDxA)

And the product website is here:

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

You can email at email@example.com if you're interested.

<comment><USER8> Cool product, but how big is the market?

<comment><USER7> Have you ever read a book? Seen a movie? Bought a comic book?

It's a big market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope we can get this monthly topic added to the "whoishiring" posting routine. Or perhaps this will surface where other's have had success finding matches, provided it doesn't get crushed by the Monday news cycle.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am toying with the idea of "startup as a service" meaning taking care of anything that is on a startup checklist. That is, taking care of things like incorporation, hosting, even tiny amounts of seed money (a few hundred dollars) so that in this case rather than hitting up family, a 19 year old founder can fail fast anywhere in the world by just building and trying to get traction on our "startup as a service" platform. In other words, making it absolutely, positively, free to start a startup and start getting customers. (With ourselves as investors if it starts getting traction, or, of course, they are free to move off of our platform if they want.)

The idea is that nothing should come between a founder and the idea/MVP. Nothing. my ideal cofounder would have considerable experience with legalities, experienced regarding terms (since it's our model), and potentially on board for this as a future source of dealflow (i.e. someone who wants a source of investments personally would be a match as well.). hit me up if you'd like to have this conversation.

Things that scale to 10,000 founders:

-> Incorporation process with standardized terms

-> Docker containers with hosting (that we host) that we can look into and judge actual traction (to keep founders from wasting _any_ time whatsoever on a seed round, no matter how disconnected they might be - traction unlocks it automatically, they should just build, build, build)

-> collective service agreements on behalf of all our founders, so that we can take care of service integrations. For example giving all our founders stripe integration so they can start billing for whatever they put up.

-> Basically everything that can be taken off of a startup checklist, when someone is first starting out and doesn't want to be distracted for weeks with business and service arrangements that are not about building product!

-> Streamlining a PR process by having key contacts get a steady stream of stories of traction by our founders.

<comment><USER11> I have been mulling over a similar idea. I was thinking about including the creation of an MVP as part of the offering to encourage non-technical founders to get involved.

However, the financial model I had been thinking about was that I would charge the founders at cost for time and materials for all the initial set up. With scale you could do it much faster and cheaper than they could and would reduce their risk. Max implementation time frame of 2 months. Hard limits on scope creep/late changes. Use frameworks to make implementation as fast as possible. Probably cost the founders $20k - $30k. You want them to pay up front to make sure they are committed to the project and aren't just wasting your time. I would head towards having standard code bases for various types of start up models.

Retain 20% equity in the start up that you've helped create.

Worst case scenario, the start up goes nowhere and you've covered costs. Best case start up does well and you've got 20% equity.

It's a good deal for founders because they reduce their risks, they get speed to market and they have access to a development team for further development if they get traction.

<comment><USER10> I'm afraid we have radically different visions here, mine is an incubator/accelerator model, yours is a consultancy model. I've deleted the rest.

<comment><USER11> I understand what you are saying and I agree that our visions are very different :)

What would be your financial model? Bear in mind that I'm in Australia, so $20k - $30k to me might be something completely different to you. From my perspective, if you can't find $20k, you aren't serious about your business. Also, in my model, $20k gets you to a point where you have a business that you can market, run and start taking orders.

AFAIK, YCombinator doesn't build you an MVP, or provide you hosting or do all the items on your start up checklist, so I don't think this is a fair comparison.

As for valuation, at the point that you walk in with an idea and nothing more, I think your idea is worth about $1. Valuation at this stage is fairly meaningless. They are paying $20K at cost for the services I'm providing. I forgo making a margin on these services in exchange for 20% equity. So, in effect we share the risk. I reduce my risks by making sure I at least cover my costs. They reduce their risks by knowing they'll get to MVP stage without any hassles caused by their inexperience or lack of technical prowess.

Maybe 20% is too much equity, I don't know. What I do know is that I want a potential piece of any large upside I might help create. That's my price for forgoing margin on the initial services I provide.

Yes, for the model you envision the marginal costs should be low. However, you are looking at requiring a very long runway. How long do you think it would take before you start making money? You've got to include the time not only to launch your own start up but launch the first customer's start up that makes money. Considering a potential 90% + failure rate, you might be waiting a while. This is why I think you need to at least try and cover your costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Putting my 2 cents in - I think this is a really cool idea. While I'm not actively looking for a co-founder I'd love to read a regular post and see if I could lend a hand to a new project.

<comment><USER13> Could definitely be a useful, regular, monthly post.

It seems like there are a lot of interesting projects out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a somewhat technical founder currently bootstrapping an elearning startup - Tapfun. Although I have a biz dev / marketing background, I wanted to be able to contribute on the product so I rolled up my sleeves and built all of our iOS apps to date. I grew up with computers but was never deeply technical (just building websites for extra income).

We have over 1M downloads on iPad and everyday tens of thousands of young students use our apps. Recently I hired some contractors to help build the next gen of our products with a proper backend. We have our first school client for the platform and they are rolling out an app for all of their grade 1 students using this technology (in place: contract iOS dev, backend, front end).

I've realized that I really need a technical partner so that I can trust someone to really own the technical side of the business and I will focus on raising a seed round and growing the customer base. I'm planning to move from Toronto to the US in the fall (either NYC or San Fran) depending on how my accelerator applications go.

Even though i've been at this for 3+ years i'm open to bringing in a cofounder. Seeking full stack expertise (bonus points for ML experience) with a desire to make a huge impact in the learning space. Drop me a line (email in profile) to chat about how education will change in the future.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm a technical founder building an easy way for consumers to seek justice against the large corporations we are forced to deal with every day (Comcast, Verizon, Bank of America) via small claims.

I'm seeking a legal cofounder to shape the product to be compliant and effective.

Currently building prototype. Email firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER16> Best of luck to you. I have considered something like this before. This would be very important work, and I really hope you succeed. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not "actively" seeking a co-founder, but if the right person comes a long and we're in sync on the right things, i'm open to the idea. But I don't mind DIY either.

working on: The rebolder, an online social news site with a focus on donating to charities and providing an experience worth paying for in itself. There are no upvotes/downvotes but instead voteable tags, signup requires donation to charity, enchanced paid posting options and VIP accounts with more vote weight.

Stack: Rails + Postgres + ES

I live in Philadelphia.

Who I'm looking for: deeply ethical pragmatist and social capitalist, willing to make a living serving a public good on multiple fronts, not a build & flip. Interest in news and newspapers and associated history. Absolute unwavering loyalty to the users and their best interests.

What I bring to the table: everything that's not financials or legal, more or less.

Stage: mostly designed and built, a few integrations and tweaks to go.

Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER18> This sounds very cool—sign me up for the beta if/when that's available!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a technical founder (full stack + Android), currently bootstrapping a no sign-up, private/anonymous blogging platform. I've got the architecture and apps built out and in "beta," so the last step is building out optional user accounts and the premium features to go along with it.

I'm looking for someone primarily with business/marketing experience who's done this before, or someone technical who knows security and/or iOS. But above all, I need someone who believes in developing more privacy-focused tech. I'm trying to build a long-term business, and this product is just the start of a bigger picture I have in mind.

I'm based out of Jacksonville, FL, but location shouldn't matter. My email is email@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are too many apps out there (that includes websites). Hence, I'm building something that will replace them all (or 80%, to be realistic).

I don't care what you are, as long as you agree with the premise. This is your project too.

PS: For those who lack imagination, think of it as "what would computers and the internet look like if they were invented today".

<comment><USER21> Is the idea so earth shattering that you can't reveal it here?

<comment><USER20> I despise secrecy, copyrights, patents, etc. I will answer every question.

That said, there's not much to reveal. It's pretty much what I said above. Isn't the solution obvious?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am working on Wealth.ai ([https://www.wealth.ai/](https://www.wealth.ai/)) -- a virtual financial assistant that consumers communicate with using natural language.

I have a technical background and am working with an excellent designer who has experience in an adjacent space. We're in NYC and SF, respectively.

We're looking for people on two fronts: marketing and technical (especially NLP and machine learning for technical folks). We've been operating with the plan of not bringing anyone else on, and have an excellent product nearing initial release, but would love to bring on someone with complimentary skills if there were a great match.

I'm also just happy to chat if you'd like. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER23> Primrose Editor is a syntax-highlighting text editor component for virtual reality applications built in web browsers. Very soon, it will be a framework for creating applications and games in WebVR:

        https://www.primroseeditor.com/

I have also developed haptic devices for use with VR applications.

We will pitch consulting services in VR to universities, hospitals, retail spaces, reception halls, etc., to continue to build out the framework. The framework will be the core technology to games and applications we create.

I'm looking for help with biz dev, marketing, sales, systems ops, and software development.

Contact me through my HN profile.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've built a working prototype of an intelligent system that can act as a virtual assistant for a narrow set of tasks. Think what clara labs or magic try to do - they are partly human and partly automated. Here's my earlier post [1] with more details. I'm looking for a cofounder with,

* A CS background (algorithms/ml)

* (Some) experience in implementing machine learning systems

* (Some) experience in low latency web services

* Generalist coding skills

In case you're into product stuff - lets chat as well!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9565645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9565645)

</comment><comment><USER25> What: classic online games (chess, bridge etc.)

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

[http://www.kurnik.pl/](http://www.kurnik.pl/) (in Polish)

Location: Warsaw, Poland

Stage: self-funded, profitable

Who: full-stack developer with strong html5/hybrid apps skills; obsessive about design, minimalism, ux

More info in Polish: [http://www.kurnik.pl/misc/ninja/](http://www.kurnik.pl/misc/ninja/)

<comment><USER26> I have a request, poker texas holdem please :P

Two player.. for now..

All I have for a simple poker game, that I can play is a flash game written 9 years back..? [http://www.geewa.com/poker-texas-hold- em](http://www.geewa.com/poker-texas-hold-em)

all others are desktop apps with registration and things like that..

I was soo excited when I found your link and saw several games, only to realize there is no poker :(

Thank you..

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We're building a 'TurboTax for personal financial plans.' Think LearnVest but automated instead of using human financial advisors. [http://www.nickelhq.com](http://www.nickelhq.com)

I'm a product designer and my co-founder is a certified financial planner. We're using lean startup and as of our eighth prototype I've maxed out my programming skills. We're looking for a technical co-founder to join us.

Contact me at victor (at) nickelhq.com

</comment><comment><USER28> Great thread!

I created Post.As – a social platform for creating and sharing web pages. Drag and drop design with text/media/embedded players etc. "Instagram for web pages"

• Current version live at [http://post.as](http://post.as): A very simple page creation tool - allows pushing pages out to feeds / following members.

•• The next version - simple page creation with ability to add powerful widgets for all kinds of social interaction. A social network like clay. Instead of content sitting inside of the social network's brand - every page on network is visually designed/owned by members. A kind of "subweb" vision with API for creation of widgets.

I am sole coder/designer (angularjs/rails). Looking to build team or find right collaboration.

A few example pages on current site: [http://post.as/PostAs:9254687](http://post.as/PostAs:9254687) \- Mcsweeny's mashup [http://post.as/DanNewman:6079957](http://post.as/DanNewman:6079957) \- Hotel Utah show [http://post.as/DanNewman:2782425](http://post.as/DanNewman:2782425) \- Videos with original music

Email me: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER29> I have a fashion-media startup called FutureClaw - it's both a print magazine and a website - that I bootstrapped and work on part-time over the last several years:

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

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

We've been featured in E!, Vanity Fair, Style.com, etc.

I do all aspects of the business myself, including graphic design, editing, writing, publicity, as well as full-stack web development in Django.

I also deal with hundreds/thousands of the worlds top fashion brands, creatives, publicists, etc., that I've carefully built relationships with over the years.

I'm looking for people that would like to create the next top fashion media brand. I'm open to ideas and also have a lot of original ideas in this space, from basic web-tech, to high-end e-commerce, advertising, photography, and more. All this could be based on what I've done and the relationships I've built.

These brand relationships are so important. I've seen so many fashion startups go under because they don't have work with the top brands or creative people, or are just out-of-touch stylistically and don't know the market.

Anyways my background is here: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mozumder](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mozumder)

I'm in the Washington, DC area if you want to meet. You can contact me at: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER30> Disclaimer: I'm in the adult industry.

Not looking for a co-founder. But looking for someone who can help with a current project with ML (Machine Learning).

My company is in the ad space. I built the platform which is a mix of an ad server, tracking platform and email system with the data sharable among all pillars.

We buy traffic globally on a monthly basis and are able to generate our own banners, landing pages and email templates.

Through that inventory, we can spin any text and images for multi-variate testing. In addition, we can capture things like referrer, category, geo- location, mobile carrier/isp, device meta (30 data points), time spent on page, funnel activity and come out with many many data points for reporting to see what works and what doesn't.

I am looking for someone to help with the ML aspect. To analyse the data and optimise campaigns automatically, that is change the headline, call to action, hero image for the banner/landing page/offer page and also decide what is working and what not working across campaigns, pages, offers, images, text, etc. Potentially there is a lot of data to pour over.

In addition, I'd love to start figuring out how to analyse and catelog images in our repository. To give them scores and work out if certain images rank higher than others for certain categories.

Where I would want to get to. Is to get higher conversions for what we are selling when a user clicks a banner and lands on a specific sales page. Depending on the origin, the ML bot would test the best converting headline, copy, image for conversion and eventually have a winner.

If you want to talk more, hit me up on my username @gmail.com.

Thanks

<comment><USER30> Very appreciative of the replies I have had so far. Unfortunately, there are no positions for just software developers.

I'm looking specifically for Machine Learning developers and that you already have put a project consisting of ML into production already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> We are working on creating a smart ecommerce platform for women's clothing. People face following two problems while shopping online -

1\. They are not able to buy all the matching things which can complete their look. Please visit here to see what I mean - [http://www.janjuaclothing.com/black-white-net- dress](http://www.janjuaclothing.com/black-white-net-dress) . There is a section called 'Complete The Look'. We recommend items in this section based upon the current dress. This would be all done automatically. We are working on it

2\. Finding the right size. We are also working on this. We will recommend perfect fitting brands\clothes to our users based upon their size. We are going to do without asking a single question to our users.

I am looking for a co-founder who have strong background in sales\marketing\business development especially in fashion industry. I have technical background. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hi all,

Product designer here. My project is Bicycl. I'm reimagining the calendar app for freelancers and people who don't need to schedule every hour of every day.

Bicycl gives people a way to track their progress over time, starting with ideas and to-dos (future), to what you accomplish and learn (past).

[http://bicycl.co](http://bicycl.co)

On a meta level, I'm fascinated by our perception of time--how we learn from our past, our personal cycles, how we expect things and believe in the future --and ultimately, how that impacts the rate at which we grow, progress, and create meaningful work.

On a practical level, there are gazillions of apps for managing future work, and only a small handful for retrospectives, but none that put it all together in a useful daily calendar, especially for the vast majority of people who don't use or need a schedule to micro-manage their time.

Over the past year, I've launched 2 mvp iterations to test different aspects of the concept (social, retrospective), and am now starting to build the next iteration. I'm open to receiving help in many forms. I'm a jack-of-all-trades (master of none), currently making a living as a designer based in Boulder, CO.

I'm mostly looking to join forces with an iOS developer. Though, a cofounder who can take a technical lead on all aspects of a consumer app's growth (eg Evernote) would be ideal. Local's great, but I've also been working successfully with people remotely forever. Talent and heart foremost.

So if you're interested, or have questions or inquiries, give me a shout at firstname.lastname@example.com or [http://twitter.com/@crackedboulder](http://twitter.com/@crackedboulder).

PS. Long time lurker, first time poster. Thanks HN.

<comment><USER33> FYI - tried to add my email on your site and received error Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/bicyclco/public_html/download.php:4) in /home/bicyclco/public_html/download.php on line 48

<comment><USER32> Thanks Greg, fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ux-app I've developed [https://www.ux-app.com](https://www.ux-app.com), I'm looking for someone to partner up with who is interested in business development/marketing.

If you're a UX or Interaction Designer with an interest in business dev and marketing then I'd be keen to hear from you too.

my email is email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm working on developing open source pharmaceuticals. I'm located in Oakland, CA. The stage is "on-paper only". Looking mostly for someone who is on the business end of things (referrals welcome). I've got the tech down. I am probably okay at but could use help getting media attention, and I am probably not good at: wrangling legal issues, and (most importantly) developing business relationships with commercial partners.

The plan is to enter an incubator to pilot a proof of concept and then seek seed investment. I also have a strategic plan (hires, etc) on taking the seed to a series A with MVP potential.

Requirements: Passion for the idea of expanding open source. You're also willing for the company to make 1 billion, instead of 10, but leave the world a better place. An ability to understand and communicate either biology, code, or both.

Bonus points for experience in law/IP materials.

Contact info in profile.

<comment><USER35> Do you want to talk bioprinters? I got one built.

<comment><USER34> No, the short-term end goal is large-scale manufacturing of FDA-approved drugs. The long-term goal is to corner the manufacturing market.

<comment><USER36> What about all the generics manufacturers that already exist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm a serial entrepreneur & young angel investor, with some coding background, but most of my value-add is in growth, sales, marketing, and other aspects of building a business. I'm searching for my next venture - to start or join - and seeking a talented tech founder or team, with some idea in dmind. I'm interested in / have insight into real estate, media, subscription services, uber-for-x. I also enjoy studying security, but have no special insight into the field, and am open to projects outside my core interests.

I'm happy to share more over email or skype. I don't have any particular project in mind (well, more specifically, I have too many projects in mind and can't seem to be inspired to dive into either of them full time just yet).

I'm also happy to provide some feedback and guidance on your project even if we don't end up working together.

</comment><comment><USER38> What: HypedSound, [http://www.hypedsound.com](http://www.hypedsound.com), soon to be [http://www.hype.co](http://www.hype.co), community where creatives can upload their media and sync their social networks to one simple, clean profile to showcase to their audience. Currently have API integrations with Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube, Instagram, and tumblr. Example: [http://www.hypedsound.com/hypedsound](http://www.hypedsound.com/hypedsound)

Stage: Self-funded, bootstrapping

Where: NYC, but willing to talk to people elsewhere

Who: Django developer who wants to help take the site and community to the next level. I'm the only person in the company, I work with freelancers, so I can offer very fair equity and possible stipend/contract work to start.

Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER35> I kind of am. Been doing done stuff since 2009, considering taking it past "personal project" and into something bigger.

I've refused money from, among others, NASA and Google.

[http://www.robots-everywhere.com/](http://www.robots-everywhere.com/)

<comment><USER39> It looks awesome. Is there way to get in touch with you?

<comment><USER35> mkb@robots-everywhere will do it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Right now it's two of us. We are in NYC and Chicago. We raised a small amount of debt from an advisor. We have developed a long-short trading model based on data mining of SEC filings. We have innovated on academic white papers in our area. Between the two of us, we have a background in tech, software, math, sales, and marketing. Our latest selection model has a Sharpe over 90 but there are only one or two such opportunities per year; we have another model with Sharpe over 3 that offers more plentiful opportunities. We are looking for someone experienced and connected in quantitative finance to join the team. Email email@example.com with LinkedIn or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER41> Looking For a Co-Founder

[http://www.orbert.io/](http://www.orbert.io/)

iOS game launching in December 2015. Written in Swift 2.0 with mostly SpriteKit. Team is two: graphic designer + digital musician, also both programmer.

About you: have a Mac, use XCode, have been learning Swift. Want to download the most recent El Capitan beta and XCode 7. Are excited to work on a game for iOS 9, which includes the brand new Gameplay Kit and updated SpriteKit. BONUS POINTS: Have a game on the App Store. Are an Objective C ninja. Know how to use storyboards and GameKit for social add-ins.

E-Mail me if you're interested: email@example.com

Compensation: We have no budget. You will earn 33% of the profits from the game.

</comment><comment><USER42> One for the non-technical guys out there...

I'm working on Mondable - the best way to make new connections.

I started 1 month ago (in Zurich, CH) and have paying users & very strong growth. We're expanding to other cities (including NYC, London & Berlin) in July and I'm looking for non-technical people with experience in sales/marketing/UX, if possible with experience of the dating or headhunting industries.

Everything from a full cofounder position down to paid city-ambassador positions (3-5h/week, only in major cities) are on the table.

Get in touch via email@example.com and find out more at [http://www.mondable.ch](http://www.mondable.ch)

Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER43> Business person looking for a technical guy interested in building a location- based social discovery app. Particular market space open to be dominated :)

App is already designed and mapped out, high potential, already building interest with future users, just need a code warrior (or two) to build. Quit my job to work on this so I can only offer equity, but I can guarantee funding will come easy once we have an MVP out. I have already received interest from some investors, but I need a team and a usable product.

If you leave a comment with your contact info, I'll email you the link to the website so you can check it and see if it sparks your interest.

<comment><USER44> > but I can guarantee funding will come easy once we have an MVP out

you can't guarantee anything and this will be a huge red flag to anyone with half a brain

<comment><USER43> Haha, ok. So I was a bit salesy with my description :) I've already received offers of investments, but they were in small amounts (~10k) that I didn't ask for and didn't accept (why give equity for such small amounts?). Technically I could guarantee funding, but indeed, I can't guarantee specifics like how much, when. I can say that the likelihood is optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm working on an app for foodtrucks that's yelp/urban spoon on the consumer side, but for FoodTrucks it's a POS, Employee management, Catering Management tool. - List your meals for the day and location and all users will be able to find you on the map. They can also order on the app and skip the line to make you have more time to make food, than take orders. It'll also have loyalty programs built in, etc.. Price point will be around $50/month/truck. Also a free tier -just for listing current locations.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm working on vrcollab.com. We are trying to create a HTML like 3d standard and editor for virtual reality. How do you represent <table> in 3d? A 3d table.

We are located in sunny Singapore. We just got our first seed funding.

We are looking for another developer that is fluent in Javascript and interested in Webgl and WebVR. Or, Graphic (opengl) guy that is interested in bringing 3d to web.

It is an interesting project, the project will be open source (good career boost) and we got the funding! We will be providing Singapore working visa.

My email is email@example.com

<comment><USER6> Umm... you know there is a standard for that. VRML was the original, but X3D is it's successor.

<comment><USER46> Yup, canvas to webgl SVG to X3d (declarative 3d)

But I want to build a modular html like standard with the power of web component. Drop me an email if you wan to discuss more!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm building an online community of rappers, lyricists, and producers to write and share rap songs, collaborate, learn how to freestyle, improve their craft, etc.

Tech + creative tools (natural language processing, lyrical analysis, etc.) + community = best place to get better at making hip hop.

[http://www.rappad.co](http://www.rappad.co)

This is a side project for me, but it's been going pretty well recently and I've gotten excited about it. I'm looking for anyone that would like to help.

It is built with Rails.

<comment><USER48> This is awesome, digging the site. Shoot me an email, it's in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> An internet of things startup based on South East Asia, Indonesia. To be precise, Depok district in West Java. No funding at least for now (still struggling building the product). Currently we are creating something to easily track expedition truck. We are looking for people who understand about embedded system and ZigBee. Feel free to mail me d2F6YSBhdCBmYXN0bWFpbCBkb3QganA= (please decode that base64. I hate spam)

Hint: ODB bus, distributed network. At the backend, we use Postgres and Rails.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm actually looking for a biz dev/sales type person who is familiar with the digital ad sales space/publishing space.

Location doesn't matter right now except would be great if you were in a (relevant) major city. I'm in Bali right now, Malaysia & Singapore next week, Tokyo for the rest of July.

Product is there, currently talking to people about it.

Best to get me on firstname.lastname@example.com (Intentional obfuscation)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm looking for a cofounder. I am a Full Stack Developer with Android experience and getting into Swift. I am looking for either another developer, a designer or a business person. I'm working on a project to help people to maintain their weight or at least stop gaining weight and shift towards eating healthier food and exercise so they can be more productive and feel better.

<comment><USER48> This is something I am passionate about. Business person here. Email in my profile.

<comment><USER43> Also a business person. I am very into fitness and eating healthy. How can I contact you? Btw I'm not a "professional" designer, but I am pretty good and creating mock ups/wires as well.

<comment><USER48> email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I have developed Nirror [https://www.nirror.com/](https://www.nirror.com/) a SaaS solution designed to support your customers on your website in real-time.

Looking for a bizdev / co-founder with experience on bootstrapping this kind of service.

The company is located in Paris, France but your location should not matter.

Contact me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER53> The project: file version control for the non - programming demographic.

Project status: About to release first version. Currently in the process of raising seed funding.

Looking for: Technical Co-Founder: Past Experience in Cloud infrastructure such as Azure/AWS/Rackspace. If you are not from a technical side, I would still love to hear from you.

Location: Bangalore, India

Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER54> perforce?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I started in the design/marketing side of things and worked my way to the back-end. I created apps that you can see at [http://maxsavin.com](http://maxsavin.com)

I'm looking for a co-founder who would like to focus on back-end so I can get back to design/marketing/etc.

</comment><comment><USER56> If you're interested in fashion & tech and based out of NYC, hit me up - email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER57> Just saw this a day late :(

I'm looking to join with someone(s) to help collaborate on ideas and build something. I have an idea curation list on Trello. If anyone wants to look at it and add to it, possibly join forces let me know -

email@example.com

<comment><USER13> Can't you just post a public link? I would love to have a look and add something.

</comment></comment><comment> chroem- Currently working on Uber for supercomputers. Would appreciate someone who is also college-aged in the Seattle/ north Puget Sound area.

I've got a website and a working prototype. If interested, email email@example.com .

<comment><USER58> What is "Uber for supercomputers?" I can't think of any interpretation that makes any sense to me.

<comment><USER59> "The Cloud"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Looking for: a domain expert with a great idea they want help on executing

Me: a full stack developer with some startup & business experience

Why: I have savings and a drive to launch a startup, but no good ideas

Where: NYC currently

Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER61> What: Open Source Firebase, [http://gunDB.io/](http://gunDB.io/) . Realtime, graph, decentralized, javascript database.

Stage: Funded, seed stage, with Tim Draper as lead investor.

Where: SD, LA, SF, and currently: Provo, Utah.

Who: A co-founder that has an academic/technical background and industry respect in databases, and wants to do more administrative/business/Series-A/enterprise/sales/marketing side of the coin.

Offer: 20% of the company, a small "cover your needs" $60k salary to start.

email@example.com

<comment><USER62> I find myself needing this every other week. Best of luck. I wish I had time to be more than an onlooker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'd like to build a competitor to Betterment. I'm looking for someone to help me follow the steps to becoming a brokerage, find funding, and to build the app and website and tools needed. I found this [http://www.investopedia.com/professionals/faqs/general/21010...](http://www.investopedia.com/professionals/faqs/general/210105.asp) I have the domain greenrobot.com and an LLC. My email is andy at greenrobot.com

</comment><comment><USER64> Looking for a co-founder who has a strong ML background for SaaS business in retail/brick'n'mortar space.

<comment><USER65> ML as in MatLab or OCaml/Standard ML?

<comment><USER66> He means machine learning.

<comment><USER65> I guess this further shows how ambiguous of an acronym ML is.

<comment> white-flame Wait, which Machine Language are we talking about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> looking for a cofounder with experience in apache spark, rails, and search.

I founded [http://bookprice.co](http://bookprice.co) .. feel free to hit me up at email@example.com if you are interested in building a search and fulfillment engine for not just books ;)

</comment><comment><USER68> Looking for folks who are interested in working on IoT startups. Hit me up if this interests you!

<comment><USER69> Hey, I'm interested and have relevant tech and non-tech background in the space. My email is in my profile; couldn't find yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> tech guy with domain proximiny.com

interested in playing around with ideas involving mobile/local based on user location.

if you share the same interest, hit me up at email@example.com and let's chat to see if there's a match

located in nyc

matt

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm looking for a technical co-founder for a geolocation app.

</comment><comment><USER72> Currently working on a new type of design course at [http://designflicks.com](http://designflicks.com) which aims to teach good visual design to coders, startups, beginners who basically start crying when it comes to designing nice things.

People who can build things but not nice looking things is our target market. The videos are creating using a inhouse animation engine which provides some cool effects right in the browser which is then screencasted for production.

Based in India, feel free to contact me @ email@example.com

I am looking to team up with designers who can design good looking things with a logical explaination. Also looking for people who can market and sell the course. Location isn't a problem since remote work is pretty good for me.</comment>


VS Code is getting flak for removing Santa hat emoji - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/search <comment><USER2> Misleading, clickbait title. It sound like they disabled its usage in the app and there is now a backlash.

In reality, they had added a Santa hat to the UI in an update (see screenshot[1]). There doesn't seem to be much of a backlash to the removal anywhere except from a few dozen users.

It's totally reasonable to expect applications from international corporations exclude religious symbols. I doubt this conversation would have the same tone if it were Muslim symbols that they'd pushed to users instead of Santa.

One person's harmless, fun religious symbol is another person's reminder of death or oppression. Regardless, it's not necessary or appropriate to inject into an app that many people must use for work.

1\. [https://user- images.githubusercontent.com/4748045/71110025-c...](https://user- images.githubusercontent.com/4748045/71110025-c9bbf100-21c6-11ea-8531-666e20a812a1.jpg)

<comment><USER3> What religion has ever used a Santa hat as a symbol in any meaningful way? Maybe github should stop using stars which actually are used as religious symbols?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original complaint which led to removal: [https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268)

<comment><USER4> I hate to say it, but this is cancel culture. The question is what other emojis are coming to get band because someone finds them offensive?

Listen, I'm not religious at all. This has lead to many intense conversations with my mother as well. That being said, but I celebrate xmas. Why? for me, it's about family.

Honestly, I'm very curious what's the next emoji to be banned? Wine/beer/champagne emojis because they "encourage" drinking? The Crescent moon () because some might feel it's "too islamic" lol

Can someone insert Michael Jackson eating popcorn or would that be offensive because of his legal issues lol

Okay sorry. I just had to say it... well not really sorry because I said it so saying sorry is bullshit on my behalf lol

Hopefully people learn to treat each other with respect and stop trying to censor everything.. it's getting a bit silly.

<comment><USER2> > _I hate to say it, but this is cancel culture. The question is what other > emojis are coming to get band because someone finds them offensive?_

They didn't ban an emoji. The title is misleading.

They injected a Christian icon into every installation of VS Code. A non- Christian asked them to remove it.

Cancel culture is free markets and free speech at work. It's not censorship. Microsoft did not have to remove the emoji if they didn't want to.

It may irritate you, but international corporations always bend over backwards to avoid offending their massive variety of customers.

<comment><USER4> > Christian icon

The Santa Claus hat isn't a Christian icon. Santa Claus isn't a Christian figure. That being said, cancel culture is bullshit and not free markets. It's bullying. Free market is "Don't like the Santa Hat? Don't use VSCode."

> It may irritate you, but international corporations always bend over > backwards to avoid offending their massive variety of customers.

It doesn't offend me that they added/removed the Santa Claus hat; I don't care. What's offensive is the last part of your statement.

> to avoid offending their massive variety of customers.

What about the people it offended because someone "didn't like the icon"?

Cancel Culture is trying to censor a comedian like David Chappelle because they found his jokes offensive. Now if you can't see the issue with this, that's fine and we won't agree on the subject. That being said - your post is very offensive to people sharing opinions and I think we should take it down. It's offending a variety of readers.. And take down my comment because it offended a variety of readers.. better yet, let's take down hacker news because there's so many offensive things on here lol

Free market - just don't use VS Code and use Atom.</comment></comment></comment></comment>