React Is a Terrible Idea - <AUTHOR> https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150311-react-bad-idea <comment><USER2> To summarize:

> React, Bad; Web Components, Good

And that's literally all the justification the author is going to give you. "I _could_ tell you why React is designed poorly, but I won't. Instead, I'll complain about the fact that it's made by a COMPANY. A company that MAKES MONEY. And that's BAD for everyone".

Yeesh. React makes web development way more enjoyable and maintainable to me. Don't tell me THAT web components are better, tell me WHY. Tell me HOW React, which is functional in nature and makes composition and reasoning about view code incredibly easy, is making my app an "unmaintainable hair ball of unreadable code". The author conveniently leaves out actual argumentation.. for the entire article.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, I would've loved to see some more arguments, but to play the devil's advocate, he did offer some reasons against react:

      JSX wants you to couple your view with the model and controller

      I could give you a lot of specifics—separation of concerns, coupling views with models, the focus on needless optimizations, the importance of supporting open standards—but I'm going to tell you a story, instead.

Ok, I agree, he didn't give any reason aside from separation of concerns and company bad, web components good.

<comment><USER4> This seems untrue in my experience. How is the view in any way coupled to the model since the "model" is simply a plain object passed down from a parent component? How could it be any more decoupled? I'm not even sure what a "controller" is in the context of react, but nothing about react or JSX forces you to couple your logic to the render function, in fact, a react "stateless" component is literally a pure function without any knowledge of state or the wider application.

<comment><USER5> React breaks away from the traditional MVC model. MVC may work great on the server, but I just don't think MVC fits with modern UIs. Component-based architecture is far more powerful and scalable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > React's design is bad. I could give you a lot of specifics—separation of > concerns, coupling views with models, the focus on needless optimizations, > the importance of supporting open standards—but I'm going to tell you a > story, instead.

The "story" is that Flipboard made React Canvas. The author wants me to think that this is bad in some way, but doesn't say how, except that it's tied to React.

But without saying what's bad about React, he hasn't actually conveyed anything bad about React Canvas, either.

In the second half of the article, the author argues that we should prefer Web Components to React, which is like comparing apples to barrels.

[https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/webcomponents.html](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/webcomponents.html)

> Trying to compare and contrast React with WebComponents inevitably results > in specious conclusions, because the two libraries are built to solve > different problems. WebComponents provide strong encapsulation for reusable > components, while React provides a declarative library that keeps the DOM in > sync with your data. The two goals are complementary; engineers can mix-and- > match the technologies. As a developer, you are free to use React in your > WebComponents, or to use WebComponents in React, or both.

<comment><USER3> > The "story" is that Flipboard made React Canvas. The author wants me to > think that this is bad in some way, but doesn't say how, except that it's > tied to React.

He says Flipboard could've contributed to the core of the browser to add the smooth scrolling feature instead of writing a framework.

> Instead of contributing to various efforts to speed DOM rendering, Flipboard > decided to write their own canvas-based rendering engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a pretty silly article. The author makes no real points. He just seems to dislike React because it's not an open standard, and questions Facebook's motivations in creating it. He alludes to the existence of actual architectural criticisms and then never states them.

The meat of his criticism, to the extent that there is one, is that somehow React's not being a web standard is going to be bad for the open web. Which, if true, would indeed be an important and negative thing. But the author makes literally zero attempt to prove that point, and instead simply says that FB benefits from walled gardens (true, but irrelevant).

As far as I can tell, React is detrimental to FB's direct business interests. It's true that FB is a walled garden, but it's also true that React makes it much easier to create nice web experiences in your own garden, on the open web. So perhaps they have shot themselves in the foot there a bit, but that's alright with me.

</comment><comment><USER8> I once tried to learn Angular, but failed miserably. The documentation is so awful and the framework is so bloated.

So I gave a chance to React and I liked it first, easier to learn, object- oriented, etc.

But now I found [VueJS]([https://vuejs.org/](https://vuejs.org/)), which is even simpler. You don't need to deal with the painful tooling of React (webpack and a huge number of files in a node_modules folder), it works out- of-the-box. Include the script tag and start coding, this is how things should work! The simpler, the better.

<comment><USER9> Neither framework requires you to use webpack out of the box. But even VueJS creators offer a big tooling solution (check out vue-cli).

<comment><USER8> Yes, but with Vue it is optional. With React, it's required to use the tooling, specially because doing React without JSX is not fun.

<comment><USER10> Not so optional.

You arrive to vue searching for simplicity and, when you start with Vuejs, you don't even need to download vue, you can use it from a CDN.

Then you want to make a component, so you start typing the html in your javascript (because less is more!). Soon enough, you realize what a mess that is, so you decide to separate your component in the vue.js way.

Then you realize that in order to 'compile' your component you need a preprocessor (webpack for instance). So you want to install webpack, and the sane way for that is npm. So you have to install node in order to install webpack in order to write .vue component files (that, by the way, your IDE doesn't know how to show)

Then you start to think in going back to Angular. Naa, just joking, vue-cli is a good invention (when it works).

Despite everything I said, I think I'm going to stay with Vue.js for a while.

I really would like that Elm was in a more mature state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> React isn't always a terrible idea.

Yes, most web apps would be better off using something simpler (like, say, my baby, [http://intercoolerjs.org](http://intercoolerjs.org)). Yes, facebook has an ambiguous relationship with the web (OTOH, google doesn't and yet they turned out Angular, so...) Yes facebook fanboys and trend followers are piling in and over-applying it.

But there are still jobs for which React (or similar) is the right tool. False dillemas make for good clickbait headlines, but they are no way to think about life.

</comment><comment><USER12> Author has no idea what he is talking about, gives virtually no real criticisms of React besides just saying "it's bad".

React does not tightly couple model controller and views, in fact, most of the documentation on react is all about de-coupling the view from everything else, and all the model frameworks that sprung up around React are examples of this. Flux, Redux, etc.

<comment><USER13> It does put your view and viewmodel into the same file though, which makes it very easy to form a tight coupling there.

But.. from what I've read their argument is that the view and viewmodel _are_ coupled by nature, and that it makes sense to do it this way.

Do you have a different viewpoint? Sounds like you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author does not even try to make arguments about what makes React bad and Web components good. I expected some strong opinions about this backed by performance benchmarks but all the author cares about is saying that React is bad because it is not a web standard and it was made to fight with google for best engineers! Really, i failed to see it. We, at AdPushup, chose React for Visual Editor and i can give many reasons as its justification.

\- One way data binding flow (Much easier to learn, implement and debug as compared to more traditional two-way data binding, not to mention Cascading MVC updates that decreases your productivity by a fair margin)

\- View render is independent of component state

\- render() encapsulates component's every possible UI state

\- True reusable components, we have been using many of them in our Visual Editor

\- ViewModel is nothing but just an object literal that lives in every component, only if needed. So, no View can be more 'decoupled' with its model.

Further, React docs themselves talk about how React can be mix-and-match with Web Components and both of them are built to solve different problems.

An excerpt from this comment section:

In the second half of the article, the author argues that we should prefer Web Components to React, which is like comparing apples to barrels.

[https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/webcomponents.html](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/webcomponents.html)

> Trying to compare and contrast React with WebComponents inevitably results > in specious conclusions, because the two libraries are built to solve > different problems. WebComponents provide strong encapsulation for reusable > components, while React provides a declarative library that keeps the DOM in > sync with your data. The two goals are complementary; engineers can mix-and- > match the technologies. As a developer, you are free to use React in your > WebComponents, or to use WebComponents in React, or both.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you step passed the obvious X is bad mentality, the article makes a great point about React, and that it is only one thing: the React Component. This component is model (state), controller (lifecycle and callback methods), and view (render). This makes proper separation of concerns very hard. React says it's only view, but actual implementations are a full app. There are solutions like Providers and High Order Components, but these are just built on top of the React Component.

<comment><USER16> Facebook/React's counterargument is that you can't effectively decouple those things, and maybe it doesn't make sense to. Instead of having confusing, leaky abstractions, just let things be coupled when it makes logical sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Waiting for web standards, let alone advocating them while you wait is a HORRIBLE business plan, and is a disservice to your users who could be getting a better experience NOW. The history of web standardization alone provides ample proof that nothing is predictable, nothing is as expected, and you shouldn't wait. The fact that React Canvas could be built is a testament to where web standards are now, and that's the end of it.

In fact, it's precisely because developers push the limits of current platforms that standardization bodies get a clue of what is important and what developers want.

Facebook is a member of w3c, as is every other big company, and their rivals. [https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List](https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List)

</comment><comment><USER18> Two years ago I would have agreed with the author. However, now I just disagree flat out. I think React actually has it correct. Web Components while useful and a step forward, is not better than React at what it does. Web Components bundles Javascript, CSS and HTML together just like React does. I guess being closer to the "metal" is better in theory. The truth is you are still writing Javascript. I think it's easier for me to read and reason about a .jsx file than it is a Web Components file. Additionally, I don't have to wait for current browsers to support React. Web Components is still a ways off before it is ready for use in production and it doesn't offer up as much or more than React already does. For me that's a problem...

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't stand this (x is awful) attitude. That's the great thing about choice, use whatever you want. What's the point about being negative? React is not going anywhere and I enjoy using it.

<comment><USER16> The way to learn and grow is to see people criticize X, often as a way to explain that Y is better. I personally grew a lot by reading criticism of OOP in favor of FP. I don't think just saying "FP is good" would be possible without also explaining why the way I was currently doing things -- OOP -- was causing avoidable problems.

That said, this article doesn't accomplish that. Uninformed/incomplete criticism is not a reason to avoid all criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Follow up post by Original Author from a few months ago: [https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20160331-facebook-react- pa...](https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20160331-facebook-react-party-gone- wrong-socratic-dialog)

</comment><comment><USER21> The author is obviously mislead :-) The reason why React is great is that it allows you to specify a big part of your DOM like a functional programmer would, making much of your code cleaner and more understandable. Especially if you don't program it in Javascript, but for example in Scala.

Now an ecosystem of reusable web components? Not even the link he gives for that is relevant anymore.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Because Facebook is battling Google for engineers. So you've got a big fight > between two companies over which company is the coolest place to work, and > both of them are companies that your grandparents love. How are you going to > win this fight? One way is to have the hippest Web framework.

And who ends up winning? Web developers everywhere. I don't see why this is a bad thing.

<comment><USER23> Yes, web developers end up winning. But be honest: web developers already are winning. We're freakin wizards. What we need is to cooperate upon and use standards that can be used by generations after us. React is a patch for profit, not an earnest attempt to make a piece of the web that will be used in more than a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really liked this line - "Angular is Google's baseball cap. React is Facebook's."

Most people I meet, who want to learn Angular or React, just want to learn them so that they can say they know these things. They don't even want to know how to make a simple Ajax call in pure javascript. The only time they want to learn pure javascript is when they want to go for interviews! I find it really saddening.

</comment><comment><USER25> Please add (2015) to title.

I actually found the tone of the text much more agreeable than a typical 'x is harmful' post. The points it presents about the ideas of Web Components and Shadow DOM being the real meat behind React are fair.

But in truth, React is a ready-made lib that combines a few good ideas into a framework, backed by a large company unlikely to disappear tomorrow. Especially in ecosystems like npm, it hit a sweet spot between productivity, thoughtful design, understandability, and promise of longevity.

</comment><comment><USER26> Jesus, could I read _one_ evaluation of a JS library without it immediately veering into "oh here the cool kids go again!!" territory? People have different ideas on how to avoid the jQuery jello slime-pile disasters we've built in the past and those ideas are competing. Heaven forbid.

</comment><comment><USER27> (Mar 11, 2015)

</comment><comment><USER28> Not being happy with React or Angular, I wrote a very clear and concise solution in Dart (with components as the main idea), I hope someone finds it useful: [http://nestui.romansnitko.com/](http://nestui.romansnitko.com/)

</comment><comment> peter-m80 Please. Someone should tell the author that React is NOT a framework. Just a UI lib.</comment>


Rails vs. Django: 100-Slide Smackdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/itisreal/rails-vs-django-study-presentation

<comment><USER2> Good, but _very_ old. I am not sure how Rails has evolved since Django 1.0 was released (which happened after this presentation). Django is currently on 1.3.1 and it's a major improvement over 1.0 (and 0.9x)</comment>


Ask HN: how you successfully quit your full-time job? - <AUTHOR>

So you just managed to quit your full-time job to focus entirely on that project, business or idea. You have had no regrets so far. The question is how did you manage?
1. My story (why I need to learn from you)
I am employed and I get a monthly salary less than $500 and my contract has no other benefits such as gratuity, health, education or anything. Meanwhile I am able to make on average $600 monthly on small web designing projects (thanks to WordPress)despite spending a lot of time at work.
2. My challenge
For the past few months I have been having sleepless nights thinking its time to quit my job and focus on building a small business around my part-time web designing projects. I have tried to do both (full-time job and part-time business) and its not working for me.
3. Your Advice <comment><USER2> Those dreams you're having are the "lost opportunity" dreams that any of us have from time to time. On a larger scale it is the same feeling that forces entrepreneurs to lose focus and expand into another product before their first MVP is done.

So, focus! Grow this side business until you _cannot afford_ to work at your $500 gig any more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shift your freelancing efforts towards things can generate recurring income.

Browse through [http://envatomarketplaces.com/](http://envatomarketplaces.com/) and find the unsatisfied demand. For example, while most of the CSS stuff isn't particularly well patronised, there's a few snippets in there that have sold more than 200 times, and the top one has 900 sales at $4 a pop. There are jQuery sliders on there with 10000 sales at ~$12 each. And so on... Look for the features that _aren 't_ on there and build them.

Pro tip - if you negotiate your "small web designing projects" contracts well enough, with a license of the code rather than ownership going to the person you're designing for, you could be getting someone to pay you to develop a feature that you can then sell on sites like envato. You lose nothing, you might gain recurring income. That's a _big_ win.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do I understand correctly that your part-time side business makes you more money than your fulltime job? That sounds like an excellent opportunity to quit that job and expand that side business.

How? I don't know. Continue doing what you did with that side business, but now fulltime. Whatever it is, it seems to be working.

I took a totally different route: I already had a small financial buffer when my employer went into technical bankruptcy. A few people had to be fired, and I volunteered. Got some extra pay, got into unemployment, and started on a track where I could start my own business while keeping unemployment benefits for 6 months (this is Netherland, so probably doesn't apply to you).

I first wasted some time doing my own thing, exploring some new tools and techniques and stuff, meanwhile looking for small freelance jobs. Got a few, made a bit of money, but eventually it ran out and I decided to go for bigger freelance jobs. Less variation, but steady pay.

</comment><comment><USER5> The key question in my mind would be how predictable is the flow of WordPress projects? Is the flow steady? Also how much sales effort does it take to land the projects?

If the flow is reasonably steady and you know where and how you would market yourself and can discipline yourself on a sales process, it would seem you are ready to make the switch.

Another question you could ask yourself that might help clarify the situation is this: If I quit my full-time job and pursue the web design projects but find the flow of work is too uneven, how hard will it be to find a new full- time job at comparable rates? If you are convinced that it would be relatively easy to go back to full-time work if needed then make the jump to freelance work.

Also consider cost of living. Are you able to live on $500 to $600 a month, or do you need the full $1100 that you are currently making?

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone who is seriously considering leaving a job with a salary in the upper 10% of software developers in my city (over 15x what you are paid), plus benefits and who doesn't, as of yet, generate _any_ side income. I'd say that your "risk" of leaving the job seems very low to me. If I were in your position, it'd be a no-brainer.

I understand this is all relative to your point of view, but just wanted to give you someone else's perspective.

<comment><USER7> With no generated side income how do you throw off the yolk of that monthly income?

<comment><USER6> In my case, frugal living (have multiple years of savings as runway) and income from my wife.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't have any relevant experience, but I would recommend accumulating a sum of money which will let you live while looking for free-lance for about 6 month.

</comment><comment><USER9> I saved about a year's worth of living expenses before I quit my job, but I was probably being overly cautious. Just know that there are lean times (and slow-paying clients), so it's advisable to have enough saved to cover those shortfalls.</comment>


Verizon extends deadline for Yahoo Groups shutdown to January 31, 2020 - jonah-archive https://www.fastcompany.com/90441669/verizon-says-archiving-yahoo-groups-would-strain-its-resources-the-reality-is-much-sadder <comment> jonah-archive Hi all, Archive Team is still working on backing up as much of Yahoo Groups as they're able to, as discussed in this previous post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737696)

Info about the archival process: [https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Yahoo!_Groups](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Yahoo!_Groups)

Details about downloading groups you're a member of: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qNCAgMN-Q9koFK1EzEFek2k4...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qNCAgMN-Q9koFK1EzEFek2k4iFNLeHo03blIk20-H7s/edit)

Tooling to do this from the CLI: [https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/yahoo-group- archiver](https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/yahoo-group-archiver)

If you want to help the effort, run yahoogroups-joiner to help the Archive Team join as many public groups as possible: [https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups- joiner](https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner)

Run the Archive Team Warrior if you have available compute/storage: [https://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior](https://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior)

(Disclaimer: I don't work directly with Archive Team, but I work for the Internet Archive, which is where most of this data will end up living hopefully forever. We're also in the midst of our annual fund drive -- [https://archive.org/donate/](https://archive.org/donate/) if you're able and interested in helping out monetarily.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The title of this post is very misleading. Verizon has made no change to the schedule of the shutdown other than allowing more time for end-users to request a partial download of data that they've posted. These downloads are incomplete and do not contain much of the metadata required to be useful for archiving.

Verizon are giving a tiny, meaningless concession to change the narrative and make everything seem fine now, but it is not. A vast trove of important historical information will become inaccessible and essentially lost forever in less than four days.

Verizon provides no way for anyone to download a complete, archival quality copy of groups. The only method currently available is by using the third party software that Verizon is attempting to block and this method will become completely unavailable after the 14th.

<comment> jonah-archive Sorry, I was trying to get the date/etc into the field. Maybe someone can suggest a better title.

Given that this was just announced, we don't really know what's going to happen, but it does seem like they're going to disable access on the 14th as expected, and provide their broken tool for downloads after that (until the latter deadline). All the more reason to download as much as we can as quickly as we can, and continue putting pressure on Verizon.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is Google doing to stop Google impersonator scams? - <AUTHOR> I just got another call today from a company pretending to be Google and offering to get my company "listed" on Google for a fee. I get calls from this company all the time and I'm sure they are successfully scamming lots of small businesses that aren't tech savvy out of hundreds or thousands of dollars.
What action is Google taking to crack down on this? I just reported this company to Google via this online form https://support.google.com/business/contact/rbc_form?hl=en
I've been getting calls like this for years. Why isn't Google doing more to shut these scammers down? <comment><USER2> Back when I did a scan of corporations in Delaware I discovered more than 20 defunct corporations that existed only to infringe on Google trademarks. I assume that they emptied their bank accounts before Google came for them, then Google came, and that is why they are defunct.</comment>


Show HN: RedditHiring – A curated list of freelance jobs from Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://reddithiring.com <comment><USER2> "curated" as in "automatically dumping in all new posts from a short list of subreddits"? That word really has lost all meaning...</comment>


A Simple JavaScript change to reduce your build size - <AUTHOR> http://patrick-gordon.com/blog/2016/8/31/reducing-bundle-size-easily <comment><USER2> Another effective change:

npm un --save lodash

<comment><USER3> No-trololo: Lodash is modular so you can use cherry-pick the methods you want. There's plugins to make it easier and further reduce bundle sizes.

[https://github.com/lodash/babel-plugin- lodash](https://github.com/lodash/babel-plugin-lodash)

[https://github.com/lodash/lodash-webpack- plugin](https://github.com/lodash/lodash-webpack-plugin)</comment></comment>


I want to join a Startup Chile team, help me get this noticed - <AUTHOR> http://supcofounder.com

<comment><USER2> Just in case you didn't already know of this, but they have a job board for the Startup Chile companies: <http://startupchile.org/joinastartup/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, thanks, I have found the job board. They post jobs (and not many cofounder opportunities) for current teams but since I'm looking for a cofounder role I'd really like to meet teams before any of us have even arrived in Santiago. But I do keep an eye on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm a founder from a past-round Start-Up Chile selected team. I don't see the reason for the mystery. As a founder I would have been suspicious about your offer. If I would have been looking for a co-founder after being accepted , I would have been looking for someone that cares about my project, and not someone who wants to be in Start-Up Chile just for the sake of it (I'm not saying this is your case, it's just hard to know why are you doing it).

It would help if you tell more about why you want to do it, and explain your skills a little bit more (which Startups have you made a career on, language that you use, OSS projects that you have contributed).

Start-Up Chile is a great experience, hope you can find what you are looking for. good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> You should mention why you are interested in joining a startup that is going to Chile. Are you in Chile yourself? Or is there some other reason for this.

I am not going to Startup Chile, but the question popped on my head as i read your website.

</comment><comment><USER5> It will also be helpful if you can update your contact details in the YC Profile too. Have it in the description field. The Email field can be seen only by YC.

</comment><comment><USER6> The anonymity is off-putting. A more detailed post with known author, past work examples and preferred industries/product areas would act as a better filter for both sides. It currently reads as: a) someone who just wants to go to Chile for summer then go from there OR b) someone who was but no longer is, part of a StartUp Chile team and wants to remain in Chile for summer by joining another team.

</comment><comment><USER7> Instead of doing the "guy*" thing where you point out that you're just as excited to work with women as men, I would remove the gender-specific language altogether. Then it's a non-issue. If you don't exclude female co-founders right off the bat, they will most likely assume you're just as excited to work with them.

<comment><USER8> With all the gender bias issues awareness on HN, that explicit call out might actually be taken as evidence that he's serious about it and not just paying lip service by using the correct gender neutral language.

What say you, women?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am really interested in the Startup Chile program and I've heard frequently teams need technical cofounders. This is my attempt to reach out to them.

Please email/tweet/upvote.

Throwaway account because I'm trying to control who knows who I am.</comment>


Trump apparently bans Huawei from US telecommunication systems - <AUTHOR> https://techerati.com/news-hub/trump-issues-order-to-protect-us-communications-from-foreign-adversaries/ <comment><USER2> if huawei would ban trump from all of their infrastructure, he could do nothing anymore outside US.... :')</comment>


Hackers may have broken Playstation 3 security  - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-hackers-may-have-broken-ps3-security

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems strange how simple it is to boot your PS3 into debug mode after all of Sony's boasting on how secure the PS3 is.</comment>


Please consider Mailbox before adding attachments - <AUTHOR> Where I work, the standard attachment size is becoming around 3MB and we are only allocated 512MB of Outlook storage space. Rather than my email signature reading "Please consider the environment before printing this email", would it be unprofessional to change it to something like "Please consider Mailbox before adding attachments"? What's a better way of phrasing this if I were to use it in my email signature? <comment><USER2> Don't try to change how others use their email, talk to IT about getting a reasonable quota.</comment>


Man who avoided arrest in Florida handicap space shooting has been charged - <AUTHOR> http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/Shooter-charged-with-manslaughter-in-Clearwater-stand-your-ground-case_170853729 <comment><USER2> As he should be. Going around picking fights (as he was known to do) just because you know you can end them with a bullet does not justify the excuse that you're "standing your ground."</comment>


Might be as good as Old Spice Marketing...pleaseshutup.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.pleaseshutup.com/hidden-videos/#/video/amishcountry

<comment><USER2> Aren't these the same skits from Trigger Happy TV?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHqdz-g8tQk></comment>


Facebook: MVC Does Not Scale, Use Flux Instead - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/05/facebook-mvc-flux

<comment><USER2> MVC scales fine for what its meant for. I'm going to hazard a guess and say they were putting far more than a web app layer into the thing. MVC by definition is easy to debug you can look at the inputs and follow through to the output exactly. Their complaint of a messaging bug saying the user had a message when they didn't is a clear cut example of muddling routes and code duplication.

If you're trying to push an api layer into MVC you're probably going to run into problems at any kind of scale because your application doesn't end there, it goes through into the client layer and loses control of how data is represented.

Keen to hear any other thoughts on this but that is my view.

Put 54gb of code into any framework and you're going to run into "scaling" issues.</comment>


A paraplegic undergoes pioneering surgery - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/one-small-step-annals-of-medicine-d-t-max <comment><AUTHOR> This story is very meaningful to me because my late dad had a slip and fall on ice in a public place in 2002 and spent the last six years of his life paralyzed from the chin down from a crack in one of his cervical vertebrae that bruised his spine. An immobilizing injury like that is financially devastating even for someone like my dad, who planned for retirement and supplemental retirement medical insurance carefully and who was eligible for Medicare (of course, like all older Americans) and Veterans Administration medical care. It stresses a whole family when a family member is immobile and helpless. I saw a lot of other patients (many much younger, often injured in motorcycle accidents) at the care facilities that treated my dad with the best available contemporary care, and all I can say is that there is a LOT of work to do to improve treatment of spinal cord injuries.

The experiment reported in the article submitted here is very preliminary and may not work for many patients. It will be interesting to see if this treatment approach can be refined and become more generally useful, or if further clinical investigation and basic science research will lead to other approaches to treatment that are even better.

</comment><comment><USER2> I was with this story until I read his desire is to get well enough to be able to kill things again.

Find a more worthy patient, there have to be plenty out there.

ps. He's not hunting for survival, he's hunting because he likes to kill things

and why is a doctor needing a patient for pioneering surgery charging them $10,000 ?

<comment><USER3> From the article:

"I don't think shooting from the car is very humanitarian"

This should be enough to let you know that this man likes to hunt and not to kill.

<comment><USER2> The man enjoys making things die by his own hands.

He eagerly looks forward to being able to do it again.

He doesn't get the full entertainment value in it doing it from a car.

<comment><USER4> Please stop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Weekly coffee delivery for startups - <AUTHOR> http://getgravity.co At many of my past jobs we always had the problem of running out of coffee or just getting the same kind of coffee every single week.  That's why we started Gravity Company.  We love coffee.  I think it has an import role for the startup efficiency and productivity, so why not have someone deliver excellent sourced coffee to your office weekly. <comment><USER2> Interesting idea but wouldn't work for me - though as a solo founder in Australia, I guess I'm probably not your target market. Some quick feedback:

* Not having a choice of beans (or knowing what the flavours/kinds are) is a bit of a turn off for me. While I like to have variety, my favorite coffee is a chocolatey flavour, and I like that first coffee of the day to be something I really, really look forward to & enjoy.

* As a solo founder, I'm not going through 16oz of coffee every week, so weekly deliveries would be too much for me. Your pricing is surprisingly good though, once I did the math of how many grams are in 16oz.

* No information on whether your deliveries can be left at the front door / in the mailbox. Not having to sign for the deliveries would be a huge bonus.

* Again, talking as a solo founder... it's actually kinda important for me to get out of the office / house sometimes. Working from a cafe is not just about atmosphere, it's also about mixing with people. I tend to buy my coffee beans while I'm on one of those days out with the HuMans. So having beans delivered could actually be a negative for me, remove an excuse to take a break & get fresh air / exercise / socialize.

* If you can guarantee freshness of beans, that would be a bonus. Occasionally I've bought beans from a cafe, only to discover it's an old pack roasted a year ago. Blech.

* Have you thought about extras? I'm a fan of having dark-chocolate-coated coffee beans on hand as well. Or variety, an 8oz pack with your favorite beans, and another 8oz pack with something new for you to try.

<comment><AUTHOR> SnydeRyder: awesome tips. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think Tonx ([https://tonx.org/cb2dd1d7](https://tonx.org/cb2dd1d7) note: referral link) s one of the most established companies in this space. They charge $19 for 12oz of freshly-roasted coffee sent biweekly (Roasted on Sunday, shipped out Monday from LA, delivered Wed/Thurs to NYC).

Gravity is $1 cheaper for 4 oz more, but how fresh is the coffee? The beans are sourced from coffee shops, but where/how are those beans sourced?

Tonx also ships out 2 oz free samples to let you get a feel for the quality of the coffee. I made amazing coffee at home with that sample and immediately signed up.

<comment><USER4> Tonx seems like it is more for people who like to try a lot of different coffees, because you get whatever they send you, and there is no possibility to get more if you like one in particular. I don't think that would work well in an office where consistency is more important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the 2nd "Show HN" coffee startup this week. Am I missing something? Is it so hard to go to the store to buy coffee when you're buying the other office supplies?

<comment><USER6> It's the same thing I thought seeing the first one but than I realized that his prices were actually even lower than any coffee I could find around so it had a reason to exist. But for this one, $20 a week seems an awful lot. Ok it's start-up oriented, but if a start-up is going to get a shipping of coffee it would make sense to just receive it with any other goods that supermarkets can ship you no?

And to answer to the "why?", to try and get any opportunity to create a business, this sort of things seem to be pretty common for everything this days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like office coffee delivery is pretty common. Ronnoco in St. Louis, they hook up restaurants, offices, convenience stores, auto mechanics. Places where people work and where customers waiting rooms need coffee. Getting a bag of coffee in the mail is great, but Ronnoco will stock you with everything you need including make sure your equipment is in working order. I kind of like the all or nothing approach. What's the alternative, having an office manager or admin assistant go to costco every couple weeks, probably the productivity gains are there over the cost. It helps that Ronnoco coffee doesn't give me any kind of stomach problems (at least what we brew here, so they have a special place in my heart).

</comment><comment><USER8> _" That being said, good coffee is important for culture."_

Without wishing to go all wikipedia, _citation needed_. What evidence is there that coffee has any impact on things like brand reputation, employee productivity, retention, morale, _happiness_. Those are the measures of culture. Show evidence that coffee changes them if you're going to make bold claims like the one on your website rather than assuming people's views are aligned with your own.

Not that I'd buy. You used the word "artisanal". Total turn off. :)

<comment><USER9> Well I guess good coffee > bad coffee, so all things being equal perhaps a company that pays for better coffee for its employees cares about the well being of its people more than companies that don't?

Of course, all too frequently this comes with the added expectation for employees to work longer hours.

Also, non coffee drinkers may be peeved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "We love the startup office culture but we hate running out of coffee in the office. "

No, no, no, no, no.

This is going to kill you (I don't mean the startup, I mean the people with this kind of attitude). If you can't find time to go out for a coffee, or if you simply don't want to leave the office even for a coffee (how long is that, 10 mins?), then you're in a trouble.

I've seen people who get free food at their desks in the office. It's plain sad.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take a look at graze.com if you haven't already. Their model seems to be working - you select a bunch of stuff you like and you receive a selection randomly.

Good luck! I think you'll need to find your niche because coffee delivery to offices isn't something new. Most offices get their coffee deliverered. You can differentiate by having a higher end product, perhaps providing some background on where it came from etc

</comment><comment><USER12> As others have mentioned, consistency can be important in coffee. I ask for the same coffee every time in Starbucks, and make mine the same every morning at work.

But... That's not to say you aren't on to something. Cranky folks stuck in their ways probably aren't any disrupter's target market. And you could always introduce, "Just stick with last month's beans" as an option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Especially if I get on a good bean that I like, I want to run it's course for a while.

We are thinking of implementing some type of rating/feedback system so we can get to know preferences and curtail each shipment based on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congratulations on launching. I like your presentation but there seems to be a lack of content, like where you source the beans from etc. I'm sure most coffee drinkers will want to know things like that. I felt like after going through the site I didn't really know much about the service, it left me with questions

<comment><USER14> Agree on lack of content. I'd like to know more about the actual coffee options and not too keen on providing my email just for that. Also, 'free shipping' sounds mighty tempting to me since I'm in the middle of nowhere in Spain :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shameless plug: We're currently setting up a similar thing in Berlin, Germany: [https://kaffeebitte.de](https://kaffeebitte.de)

We're in Beta, but shipping already (also to individuals), so if you're interested, get in touch!

</comment><comment><USER16> In the UK I use 'Pact' to get coffee shipped @ £6.99 / bag twice a month. The packaging fits through the letter box and the variety is great.

If you want to use this kind of service but aren't based in the US, give them a go.

www.pactcoffee.com

<comment><USER2> Looking at the Pact Coffee page, it answers all the questions I have about their service (except for pricing, which was hidden away). Bonus points for being able to select that I brew my coffee with an Aeropress & get recommendations specifically for that. Gravity Coffee should probably take some inspiration from the Pact site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like the idea but 2 quick points

$44 per kilo of coffee ? ($20 per pound) That sounds a bit on the expensive side.

No details on if it's ground or bean coffee.

</comment><comment><USER18> My favourite of going to get a coffee, is leaving the office for a little bit. I find a change of environment gives me new ideas.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why "for startups"?</comment>


Asking America's Police Officers to Explain Abusive Cops - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/This-american-life-cops-see-it-differently/385874/ <comment><USER2> From 2015.

Is there a followup where any cops do explain the egregious abuses described here?</comment>


Climate Chaos Is Coming – and the Pinkertons Are Ready - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/magazine/climate-change-pinkertons.html <comment><USER2> The Pinkertons have always been thugs for hire, and this is no different.

In the old days, they brutalized unionized labor, now they're preparing to brutalize poor people desperate for food.</comment>


The time I 'nearly' solved the Twin Prime Conjecture - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/the-time-i-nearly-solved-the-twin-prime-conjecture-8f033030fe90#.2rokf2ura <comment><USER2> I once had a similar experience with the Goldbach conjecture, funnily enough.

<comment><USER3> And I once had a very similar experience "breaking" RSA. Haha</comment></comment>


Scientific method: defending the integrity of physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is a very tact-full way of calling bullshit on dark matter and dark energy.

For a bit of context, dark matter is simply a placeholder name physicists give to explain an anomaly in the observed rotation of far-from-centre stars in galaxies---using our best estimates of the total mass in in the galaxy, we would expect the rotational speed of galaxies to fall off, the further they are from the centre of rotation. The observation does not match the expected behaviour, so somebody just said "there must some sort of mass in the galaxy that we don't see" and picked a peppy name for it: dark matter.

Similarly, dark energy is an invention to explain the observed rate of expansion of the universe. Current observations about the expansion of the universe don't follow from what we know about the balance of mass (collapse- tending) and energy (expansion-tending) in the universe, so physicists postulate "there must be something energy-like which we don't know about" and call that thing 'dark energy.'

A more intellectually honest terms for dark matter and dark energy would be: invented concept to harmonize observations with other things we believe to be true.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve)</comment>


Client Certificates at Netflix - <AUTHOR> https://www.scaleft.com/blog/client-certificates-at-netflix/ <comment><USER2> It's unclear from this and the slides what the UX for the engineers is? The repo contains a bless-client that'll fetch a newly minted cert, but the slides talk about integration with SSO - is there another piece that invokes bless and drops the cert on disk?

[https://github.com/Netflix/bless/blob/master/bless_client/bl...](https://github.com/Netflix/bless/blob/master/bless_client/bless_client.py)

<comment><USER3> You linked right to it.. what do you mean? $ ./bless_client.py region lambda_function_name bastion_user bastion_user_ip remote_username bastion_source_ip bastion_command <id_rsa.pub to sign> <output id_rsa- cert.pub>

If successful, I imagine it signs the pub key "id_rsa-cert.pub" which you then can use to SSH as you please (until the cert expires).

<comment><USER2> That isn't the workflow described in the slides. They talk about signing in via SSO to generate the cert, so it looks like this client is just an example of what would be run at the back end of the web interface you sign into (with 2FA etc), to drop the cert. Look at that as a UI as well, it expects the bastion user to know their own IP to put into the command? Nope. That's a command to be run by something else.

But that just brings up more questions. Generally you want as little as possible running on the bastion; it really is just that choke point. So I presume the SSO front end is also not running on the bastion, but in another subnet, then pokes the key back out...somehow?

<comment><USER4> Author of the blog post here.

I wasn't at the talk, but had the same question.

BLESS, as released, appears to be intended to drop onto an AWS bastion host and recommends an AWS IAM role to authenticate the bastion to the Lambda function that acts as the CA. Like you mention, there are a lot of limitations to that, but its still a neat demonstration of using ephemeral client certificates without having to spin up a bunch of infrastructure.

At ScaleFT we're building a solution on the same principles that offers some of what you're talking about out of the box:

      1. Authenticating users against a variety of SSO systems
      2. Treating bastions as nothing more than an untrusted TCP proxy

For me the critical takeaway though, is that whatever automation you're layering on top, client certificates make great ephemeral access tokens and they're increasingly catching on. Its just a matter of building the right automation, integrations, and tooling on the client to make the experience good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://speakerdeck.com/rlewis/how-netflix-gives-all-its- eng...](https://speakerdeck.com/rlewis/how-netflix-gives-all-its-engineers- ssh-access-to-instances-running-in-production)

That's a great slidedeck, looks great and I can actually learn something from it just reading the slides.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure how much BLESS really improves the overall situation. It just shifts the problem from securing SSH secrets to securing AWS/IAM secrets, which seems pretty much the same to me.

<comment><USER3> The AWS/IAM secrets wouldn't be passed around, except on initial creation.. Not sure what you mean?

The problem they are fighting is host-level SSH authentication. Developers tend to have SSH keys stored all over the place, and it's near impossible to know if they protected their private keys with a password, or if they ever accidentally published them (how many private keys can you find on github these days?

Using client certificates instead, the developers have to ask for a certificate (presumably with some BLESS client), and after authenticating (with their credentials + 2FA) get issued a SHORT-LIVED certificate (5 mins) signed by your own internal trusted CA, to use for SSHing into bastion host or whatever.

So now, there is no key material handed to developer which will be trusted for more than a few minutes. Even if their password/secret were leaked, you still need 2FA and network access to get a client certificate. If you leak the client certificate, unless someone snatches it up within it's validity period, still no worries.

<comment><USER4> Author of the blog post here. You totally nailed it about the problems with SSH keys.

I think what zokier is referring to is that the BLESS client uses an AWS IAM role to authenticate users, so if you wanted to invoke it directly from an end-user machine they would need their AWS credentials on disk there. Instead BLESS seems to be intended to be invoked from a jump host which has a machine role giving it access to the Lambda function - which gives you a nice choke point for auditing, but obviously has some other limitations.

I get the impression from the slides that Netflix might have some additional internal tooling for authenticating users against SSO. I'm just excited to see client certificates taking off as a form of ephemeral access token. I see too many organizations that require MFA to access the corporate wiki but let users authenticate to production with a private key from 3 jobs and countless laptops ago.

<comment><USER7> For a layer of security, when using the client you could do IAM role assumption in your local machine. You have your static creds and an MFA device, then use those to export temporary credentials to actually run the bless client. [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/STS/latest/APIReference/API_Assum...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/STS/latest/APIReference/API_AssumeRole.html)

Some tools to make the process easier: [https://github.com/remind101/assume- role](https://github.com/remind101/assume-role) [https://github.com/trek10inc/awsume](https://github.com/trek10inc/awsume)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to compete against Apple mult-touch with pen-based UI - <AUTHOR> http://lindsay.at/blog/ipad-hegemony.html

<comment><USER2> If you interested in existing pen-based UI that is pretty awesome check out Ken Hinckley's work. He's a researcher at MSR and has plenty of cool videos on his website. <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kenh/></comment>


An alternative News.YC feed with a link to the comments thread in the body of the posts - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.re.inklesspen.com/newsyc <comment><AUTHOR> I got tired of waiting for News.YC to implement the comments links in a format usable by my newsreader. (Yes, I know they're in there, but I don't know of any reader that actually uses the comment tags.) So I made this one. When you hit it, it downloads the feed from News.YC and reformats it into an Atom feed (I like Atom; there's only one standard, not 9 like there are for RSS (see <http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss> )). The feed is cached for the next five minutes in order to be nice to pg's servers.

Total code: approximately ten lines of Python, thanks to some excellent libraries like <http://www.feedparser.org/>

pg, if you have any technical adjustments you'd like me to make, like adjusting the time between hits to your rss feed, let me know.

<comment><USER2> _I don't know of any reader that actually uses the comment tags_

rss2email does. Or at least it does after I made a slight change.

<http://rss2email.infogami.com/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to improve emotional intelligence to be a more creative inventor? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
Hear me out HN, I am curious about this.
Assumption 1: You need strong emotional intelligence to relate to others.
Assumption 2: You need to relate others to identify their problems.
Assumption 3: You need to identify problems and frustrations of mass populations, to make very successful niche products and services.
Examples: Uber, UberEATS, AirBnb. Of course there are other advantages of these services, increasingly so as they grow. But I believe it solves a lot of frustration for people when it comes to engaging cab drivers, hostels etc.
Question : How do you work on your emotional intelligence to better understand frustrations of others? <comment><USER2> I'm good at the emotional intelligence thing. Some things I have done:

I have taken college classes pertinent to the topic, like Intro to Psych, Social Psychology and Negotiation and Conflict Management.

I have attended conferences with pertinent info. I also attended parts of the conference that were more social and less technical in nature in terms of the kind of info covered.

I have read a lot about how the mind works and how different people experience life differently because of various issues.

I constantly wonder what the first person perspective is. When we take a third person perspective, we often feel people are just behaving badly. But people generally have reasons why they do the things they do. Trying to see it from their perspective is powerful for problem solving.

If you do nothing else, do that last thing. Always wonder how people are experiencing what they experience and their motives for making the choices they make. Context matters and most people seem to forget that.

<comment><USER3> > I constantly wonder what the first person perspective is. When we take a > third person perspective, we often feel people are just behaving badly. But > people generally have reasons why they do the things they do. Trying to see > it from their perspective is powerful for problem solving.

I have found this helpful too, in training my empathy--breaking out of the "default mode"\--and ability to relate to others. I started from the oft- quoted David Foster Wallace commencement speech [0], relevant bit below:

 _Or, of course, if I 'm in a more socially conscious form of my default- setting, I can spend time in the end-of-theday traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUVs and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just twenty stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks, and so on and so forth..._

 _Look, if I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do-except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn 't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: It's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a way bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am-it is actually I who am in his way. And so on._

 _Again, please don 't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made- lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line-maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Department who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible-it just depends on what you want to consider._

[0] [http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html](http://bulletin- archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since someone already suggested acting, I found playing tabletop RPGs (like Dungeons & Dragons, Legend of the Five Rings or Mage: The Ascension) helpful too.

They have a strong collaborative storytelling aspect (unless your group only likes to slay monsters), and it puts you in the shoes of a character with a life completely different than yours. A lot of problem solving and diplomacy situations are involved too. I recommend trying out a personality/background different than what you are used to.

</comment><comment><USER5> Suggest taking an acting class if you want to first be able to detect emotion then put yourself in a state to feel / understand them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I might actually try that. I tried improv for a while, it makes you more watchful, observant of other people's behaviours, attitudes etc.

<comment><USER6> It might also be worth looking into whether you want to be able to merely identify/analyse the emotions of others or whether you wish you actually empathise/understand their views.

I say this in reference to how you have noted services such as Uber; who might be masters of exploiting untapped opportunities but are not necessarily known as sympathetic and suffer PR and ethical backlash for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting question, thanks. I think there are at least three levels of emotional connection:

1) cerebral/logical/abstract: these emotions spark from the application of "meaning" in the world. We are making meaning, finding it each moment and all that has been given meaning is real, is rational. the problems to solve here will involve concepts like precision, efficacy, economy. value addition will come from scale. the solutions will likely be a rehash of existing ideas, resulting product will likely be incrementally better.

Example: Jon Stewart interviewing Bill Gates, asked him "What does the F12 button do?", to which Bill replied "Why don't you start from F1 and work your way up?".

2) emotional/physical/kinesthetic: once you break the shackles of reason, thinking, and logic, the only other accessible world with problems to solve is the material/aristotelian world, where emotional intelligence will mean tapping into "state" in which meaning(s) exist. these "states of meaning" may or may not be meaningful themselves, but they are important to us. Concepts to watch out for involve: habit, need, convenience, identity etc. value addition comes from synthesis.

Example: Scrub daddy. doing dishes with soft and hard sponge are two different "states of meaning" and its value lies in its combination of the two, making a more convenient product.

3) coherence/consistency: the last approach is to do something more "safely" with/because less human involvement, people will pay for taking away their uncertainties and this is a big emotional issue for some. outside of speculation, perhaps this is the most lucrative area an inventor can crack open. value comes from exploitation of risk-aversion. Example: crypto, insurance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very insightful answer! Thank you! Do you know of any books or related hub of knowledge on these topic? I am trying to find some sources of information to learn more about these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't blame the success of Uber on the founder's emotional intelligence. Quite the contrary.

</comment><comment><USER9> Smoke some Weed, (in normal doses) find your strain, sit back and think</comment>


CNN acquires Zite iPad Magazine App - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/08/30/zite.cnn/

<comment><USER2> Happy to answer questions, btw.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I've got a few questions:

What are the challenges you're looking to tackle next for the product?

Are you looking to expand beyond tablets and iPhone to desktop?

Are there any plans for an API?

What resources from CNN (besides money) are going to be useful for moving Zite forward?

How long are the founders locked into staying?</comment></comment>


Foxconn Chengdu Manufacture Plant Explosion - <AUTHOR> http://micgadget.com/12651/breaking-foxconn-chengdu-manufacture-plant-explosion-video/

<comment><USER2> What genius editor decided to put multiple auto-playing videos into one article?

I know that this is probably a stupid view to have, given so many life- destroying things happen all over the world, and indeed all-over China, but I can't help but feel for the people of Chengdu specifically. I was working out there 18 months ago and it was clear that they were still a long way from recovering the earthquake that devestated the area 18 months before that. There were still buildings all over the place that were just rubble on the ground, others with huge cracks running right through them, not to mention the human cost that the earthquake took.

I guess, for me, it's just because most of my travels are to extremely developed parts of the world, and the fact that the worst I've seen is in Chengdu, it rings home particularly when more bad things happen to that area.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this was intentional?

</comment><comment><USER4> Good luck with them trying to cover this up.</comment>


GRaphaël's - A Charting Javascript Library based on Raphaël. - <AUTHOR> http://g.raphaeljs.com/ <comment><USER2> I really wonder why Chrome (one of the most used browsers in the world) is not mentioned in the list of supported browsers.

Opera, a browser virtually nobody uses, on the other hand, is. Since Safari is supported, there's a fair chance Chrome is as well.</comment>


Tom Stoppard's Arcadia (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/is-tom-stoppards-arcadia-the-greatest-play-of-our-age-1688852.html <comment><USER2> Arcadia is wonderful. We read it in a high school English class at my STEM- focused high school.

The teacher decided that we should focus on works that had interesting implications for science.

Arcadia is one such work because it talks about what knowledge is, why it matters, and how historians bring their own biases to interpreting the past. We see characters in the past do one thing and characters in the present misinterpret it several times. We see a child prodigy discover math concepts before anyone else, and then have a historian dismiss the evidence of that because she had the ideas "too early," even though her discoveries were basic and from first principles. The historian is trying to prove his incorrect pet theory but is blind to something even more significant because he doesn't expect it. (All of this is from memory years later)

Other books we read in this class include A Canticle for Liebewitz and a book about Galileo whose name escapes me.

<comment><USER3> Was it the play "Life of Galileo"?

That's a fascinating concept for a high school English class. Is it reasonable for you to dig up the entire reading list?

<comment><USER2> It was! I looked it up and the summary matches what I remember.

I found the list, it may be missing some poems but this is largely what we covered:

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr

Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

Dulce et Decorum est - Wilfred Owen

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

Life of Galileo - Bertolt Brecht

Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw

Suicide in the Trenches - Siegfried Sassoon

The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King

The Lady's Not for Burning - Christopher Fry

The Mortal Immortal - Mary Shelley

<comment><USER4> Well, at leats they had Canticle, so well done for not being totally closed, but the problem with this and many reading lists is it's just. so. predictable.

Authors in the above I have not heard of: Laurie R. King, Christopher Fry

I'm not saying these are bad but the list focuses on what's well known, not what's obscure and perhaps better. In that sense it's gutless. It invites you down the well trodden paths where there's no risk of upset, all carefully vetted. And it makes me sad because it seems to want to usher people into conformity, of not being open to new ideas. Don't scare the horses.

I don't have time to list books I'd find interesting, but this is depressing for me.

<comment><USER4> ...aaand the inevitable downvotes. Not "you're wrong, here's why", just a surly response that you don't like it. I made my point clearly enough, the lack of a constructive response kind of backs up that being stuck in a rut is a _good thing_ in literature.

(I suppose it could have been down to me not offering an alternative reading list, but I don't think that's all of it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious coincidence to see this here. I happened to read this a few weeks ago. It's a brilliant conception, hiliarious and passionate. Usually when math and physics rear their heads in a work of literature, I get ready to cringe. But not here. Nothing is gratuitous; everything has meaning.

</comment><comment><USER6> We saw it in London he week it opened. I still don't know how my wife managed that. I'm not normally a huge fan of the stage but I was captivated. Not a comedy per se, but some sly elements really made me laugh!

Still a favorite today.

<comment><USER7> Not a comedy, maybe, but uproarious at times for sure.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Every good serious story will have comedic elements to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was the first play I ever read for fun (instead of for a class). I fell in love with it, and over the years I've re-read it several times. I don't know what it was -- it just bit me, somehow.

Some theater company was performing it here in the bay area not too long ago, but at the time I was broke (and too old for the cheap "We must find a way to get young people to watch theater" tickets). Now I could afford it! But I guess there's not a lot of live theater going on at the moment...

</comment><comment><USER10> There is an audio recording by L.A. Theatre Works [https://beta.prx.org/stories/43614](https://beta.prx.org/stories/43614) and [https://beta.prx.org/stories/43844](https://beta.prx.org/stories/43844)

</comment><comment><USER11> Another play from Tom Stoppard that I enjoyed is "Darkside", combines Pink Floyd, Philosophy and humor.

</comment><comment><USER12> Arcadia is one of the best contemporary works, period. Highly, highly recommended.

<comment><USER7> Tom Stoppard is an amazing playright. Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead are two of the greatest plays.

<comment><USER13> "Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" is quite a Stoppardesque grammatical construction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My wife dragged me to see Arcadia in 1995 (Stage Door Theatre, San Francisco) - I was mesmerized. Reading it is good; seeing it performed is much better.

<comment><USER5> While reading it I kept wondering how it would be staged, especially near the end, with the characters from different periods in the scene together. It seemed to me it would be really difficult to produce, but could be a wonderful theater experience if it were pulled off.

<comment><USER7> The staging I saw had it happen in one room, with a window into the yard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's the only modern play I was exposed to in an academic setting, so I think that is a good indication that it will stick around.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shepherds and the Third Law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_in_Arcadia_ego#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_in_Arcadia_ego#/media/File:Nicolas_Poussin_- _Et_in_Arcadia_ego_\(deuxième_version\).jpg)</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I find a list of flagged HN submissions? - <AUTHOR> After a submission is flagged, it's removed from the main page. Can it be found again?
It would be instructive to see which attributes typically induce flagging by this community.
Sometimes it's tough to decide between "flagging this will maintain civility in our community" and "flagging this would be censorship". (Of course, both might be true...)
Having access to the list of flagged posts would let us figure out which way the community leans, and assess whether we're getting it right. <comment><USER2> [http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com) can be used to see which submissions reached the front page and then were marked [dead]. [dead] is distinct from [flagged] and can occur for administrative reasons. [flagged] means that enough users have flagged the story to penalize the ranking, but not to remove it.

[http://hnrankings.info](http://hnrankings.info) can indicate which submissions were [flagged] by enough users to be penalized. You'd be looking for sudden drops in ranking. Note though that the 'flamewar detector' (based on the number of comments to upvotes) can also cause sudden drops that can be hard to distinguish.

If you think your reasons for wanting this are well justified, consider writing a polite email to firstname.lastname@example.com and asking if they would be willing to provide it. Personally, I think it would be an interesting analysis, although they may have legitimate reasons to keep the information private.

<comment><USER3> The "flamewar detector" sounds like an interesting concept - can you elucidate?

<comment><USER4> I don't recall the exact numbers anymore, but if you have a high number of comments relative to the number of upvotes early on, it gets automatically deprecated by the software. So, you get a few upvotes, it hits the front page, a bunch of people promptly post something, it falls off the front page, basically. The assumption is this is a fighty subject and the kind of conversation breaking out is not the kind they want to foster here -- or so I understand it, as someone who is just a member.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not exactly what you want, but if you go to your profile page ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=superbatfish](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=superbatfish) ) and enable the "showdead" option, you will be able to see all the [dead] posts. Try visiting the newest page and you will see many [dead] stories.</comment>


VC Due Diligence Question re: co-founder's history - <AUTHOR> Hey YC community,
Long story short, our co-founder got canned from his first job because of a few overtime dinners that weren't eligible for reimbursement (one of those jobs that make you work 90 hrs a week), and a lot of companies are getting really strict about it. He's talented no doubt, but im worried this could be a thorn when we're fundraising w/ investors. Does anyone have any insight into how big of a deal this might be, and whether this would derail our process? Would they care a lot about something like this? His performance at the job was excellent and there are references to  back that up.
Thanks team, any help would be appreciated <comment><USER2> Absolutely nobody will care.</comment>


Godot game engine reaches 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-reaches-2-0-stable <comment><USER2> Godot is awesome. It's a great alternative to Unity. It has a friendly community (IRC). The all-in-one editor is nice. The scripting language is easy to get into and if you need to, you can extend the engine and scripting language with C++. And the export to windows, linux, mac, ios, android and web works actually quite well.

What's really nice is the notion of scenes which I prefer to the way scenes are handled in Unity. Scenes in Godot are are simply node-trees which you can instantiate in existing scenes. For example you create a character in a single scene which you instantiate in a level scene. I always had the impression that this favored encapsulation compared to highly interdependent components in unity.

What brought me back to unity was 3D, scripting and debugging. 3D in Godot feels limited. Shader graphs are not really usable, yet. It's a lot simpler to create something nice in Unity with the standard shader and some assets. And well, the debugger, it's simply not comparable to Visual Studio. Variables are sometimes not inspectable. I missed refactoring alot. And sometimes you need to dig very deep to understand how stuff works because many things are not yet documented.

All-in-all, I love Godot. It's a nice cross-platform development environment. I simply hope that I can come back later when all rough edges are gone.

<comment><USER3> My problem with it (and many of the other alternatives) is not having an associated Asset Store. Not that I have an overarching need to buy stuff, but because there is a curated place where I can find a model or prop I need that will (almost always) import properly and work and scale the way I expect. Yes, you can scour the internet for "free" 3d stuff, but as often as not it's worth what you paid for it, and unless you're running the program it was created in you will spend more than a little time getting it to behave.

My .02 worth as a casual indie developer.

<comment><USER4> Looks like it is going to happen next.

From the post:

> Godot community keeps growing and users keep producing more assets, scripts, > modules, etc. we are in need of an unified platform for sharing them. As > such, we will be working towards having an asset sharing platform (website + > REST API + Godot integration) for 2.1. The built-in platform will be free > (it will be integrated with GitHub), but we will make sure that the REST API > is well defined so anyone can make a commercial asset sharing platform and > integrate it with Godot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I don't get with game engines: why do they feel the need to make a X-like scripting language, where X=Python in this case, and X=JavaScript in Unity's case?

Why do they make people re-learn the specifics and slight differences of a language that has been around for more than a decade? On top of this, they are making their engines more difficult to maintain: bug fixes, new features, deprecation and backwards compat., keeping docs up to date, writing tutorials for the language, etc. etc.

I just don't see why these engines want to re-invent the wheel, even though what they end up with is simply a slightly modified wheel. /endrant

The engine looks cool however, and the fact that it's FOSS makes it a better option for budding game devs. I might give a go when I decide to make a simple game.

<comment><USER6> This should answer your question, [http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/reference/gdscript.htm...](http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/reference/gdscript.html?highlight=gdscript)

As for my personal experience with GDScript, I used to experiment with Godot a while back, and honestly I never felt like GDScript was some sort of hindrance never felt it was in the way. It was really, really easy to pick up if you know another programming language already.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree. I made the same small game in Unity and Godot about a year ago to compare them. Learning and using Godot script was no big deal.

The main difference was that I could use VS for Unity and it had a vim plugin, but if I wanted to edit text in-editor I was stuck with Godot's own one.

<comment><USER8> Why didn't you just set the external editor options in Godot and use whatever editor you wanted?

<comment><USER7> It was a while ago, so I can't remember exactly. It was either that the option didn't exist at that point, or the pain of using the built-in editor was offset by something else, like the ability to debug or syntax highlighting or autocompletion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So we are no longer waiting for Godot. Don't you think this puts them in a bit of an existential crisis?

<comment><USER10> Came in wanting to make this joke, was surprised when I didn't see it already in top comments. Good for you, sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The features page looks well presented but has anyone actually used Godot? What are their experiences with it compared to writing your own games from scratch?

<comment><USER12> "From scratch" isn't the right metric, you'd compare it to unity or unreal. The key difference is this is actually open source so you have 100% control over your own distribution and licensing.

I haven't looked at it in 6mo but back then on the 1.x branch there were many, many thoroughly polished example games ranging from 2D (platform / isometric / tile) to 3D (third person, others i forget).

Normally you get 1 incomplete mechanic as an example, not an actually playable "game" with more polish than most app store stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised with these polished examples, but at that time the docs were not that thorough (cursory look tells me they've improved), but the examples pretty much made up for it. Almost any game you'd want to make you could start with their example and build out.

I'm excited it's growing. I'll probably play with it for 7DRL.org in a couple weeks.

<comment><USER13> I don't see the sample games listed on their site but found some googling. I'd be very interested in a good sample point&click adventure game especially for a FLOSS-engine. Creating one has always been in my "neat project" pile but I suck too much at drawing to motivate myself. Last time I tried (with no engine, just pygame) I got stuck figuring out a good way to do paths/movement/blocking areas and it sort of fizzled :D

<comment><USER12> Yeah like I said the docs could be improved, the website could be improved (although I checked yesterday and the whole site is new).

The examples are in godot/examples or something after you extract it I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anybody know if Godot has a business model behind it or is it co-ordinated purely by volunteers? Perhaps it's enough that improving the game engine via open source could help Okam Studio produce games more quickly?

</comment><comment><USER15> Atomic Game Engine is also pretty sweet. I actually like it a bit more.

[http://atomicgameengine.com/](http://atomicgameengine.com/)

<comment><USER16> Kind of a bummer that it cannot build for Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really need to get around to trying Godot. I've had it installed since 1.0, but I've been too busy/lazy to try any (amateur!) gamedev lately.

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone who just wants to try it out, really wish the site had https and hashes with the supplied binaries.

</comment><comment><USER19> Some meta discussion: "xyz reaches/releases version number 234234.324234" is entirely meaningless and the best way to ensure that nobody will care about your release announcement. Your project may internally have a very well defined and entirely logical policy as to how exactly to change version numbers based on internal project changes, but from the outside this is 100% untrustable and invisible, meaning your 2.0 release could mean anything from "we rewrote the entire thing" or "a set amount of time went by" (see Firefox/Perl/probably others).

If you actually care at all about your release announcement being read, include in the title line the actual benefit the new version provides to people.

<comment><USER9> I have to disagree. Announcing a major new release by version number is enough to be most people to click on the link.

Now a lack of release notes and a major features/what's new document - that's a release promotion fail.</comment></comment>


What is your opinion on Audio Books? - <AUTHOR>

How do you use audio books? Are you able to digest the information as well as if you were reading it?
My interest in the question is regarding how well was the content absorbed. I've had mixed feelings on it. There was a marketing book that I felt digested pretty well, but then there was a philosophy book (Meditations - Marcus Aurelius) where I felt the audio version of it didn't let me grasp the content as well as I could have.
What's your experience? Any recommendations on how to use them wisely? <comment><USER2> I think an important element to good audio retention is the intentions of the writer. If a book is written by a skilled writer, in a fluid, conversational manner, then a well-read dictation of it will likely be more enjoyable and carry higher retention.

There are some books (writing styles) that just don't translate to speech well. I believe that is more the writer than the content. A technically brilliant author can write in such a way that its impossible to follow word- for-word spoken, while his methods make perfect sense on the page.

Good topic OP- I have a few back-burner ideas involving audio components in web environments, and this area has always been of interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like auditory learning if there is an actual person doing the speaking. Audio books never really cut it for me, it always feels to transitory. Without a real jaw flapping to anchor my focus it wonders off and gets lost. If you throw something else in there to help anchor your focus it works better. Several listens can also help it sink in.

</comment><comment><USER4> With audiobooks (and speeches/lectures) I mostly listen when going to sleep. Then the next night I go back to the last part I remember and start back, usually recognizing a few more minutes as it plays, then reaching new material, and eventually falling asleep again.

If I were to sit and focus, I'd prefer regular text.

</comment><comment><USER5> I tend to listen to audiobooks while driving, so I don't generally like content I need to think about. Notwithstanding that, if I don't have a visual, my retention and comprehension of difficult topics is horrid.

</comment><comment><USER6> Audio books are nice, if the person speaks really clearly on them.</comment>


Ask HN: Dashboard tool that displays data along time series? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for a dead simple dashboard service that displays a chart with data points along a time series. Let me explain: I want to just push the cpu load of my server to this service every minute (via REST or whatever)
when i open the dashboard, it display the trend on how the cpu load changed in a nice line chart. I can also drill down to see the exact cpu load in a particular point of time.
Replace CPU load with pageviews or whatever. I dont think the metric should really matter. I am not loooking for something complex with bells and whistles like Klipfolio. whats the easiest tool that can do this? <comment><USER2> Grafana for dashboarding, and one of [Graphite, InfluxDB, Prometheus] for collecting, storing, and querying the metrics.</comment>


Moderna Announces Positive Interim Phase 1 Data for Its mRNA Vaccine Against C19 - <AUTHOR> https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-positive-interim-phase-1-data-its-mrna-vaccine <comment><USER2> This is very promising, although the data set is very small. At least, it is worth continuing testing, given that neutralizing antibodies are generated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Obviously I hope the vaccine is successful, but there's a lot about this company that scares the crap out of me.

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

\- They've been around almost 10 years but have never had a drug make it to Phase 3 let alone gain FDA approval.

\- No company has ever created an mRNA virus for use in humans that was FDA approved.

\- Long history of secrecy and not publishing peer-reviewed results.

\- They started work on this vaccine in January, had it ready to start Phase 1 in March, and now are releasing (partial, non-peer reviewed) results showing damn near a 100% effectiveness in creating neutralizing antibodies with minimal mild side effects.

\- Combine all that with the timing of their financing and relationship between their board and the Trump admin.</comment>


Plugins - custom_migrator - <AUTHOR> http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/custom_migrator <comment><USER2> Some of these problems have already been solved with timestamp-based migration naming.</comment>


Flexport (YC W14) raises $65M Series B - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/26/freight-forwarding/ <comment><USER2> Why does everyone keep saying international shipping isn't sexy? It has a profound global impact and you can see it happening massively everyday with the work of thousands of people as giant ships come into the port and load/unload. I know the heart wants what the heart wants, but it should be considered at least as sexy as hosted version control, mobile marketing analytics, 'big data', automated taxi dispatch, or any other hot areas.

<comment><USER3> Of course it is a profound problem in a massive market with tons of financial and world-changing potential. So are things like commercial fire systems, utility-line inspection, and senior care. My snarky barb about the unsexiness of it comes from what feels like excess coverage of gaming, "shared" economy services, and on-demand services. These things are certainly important in their own right, but offering a different way to deliver me a Jimmy John's sandwich is far less meaningful on most every level than, say, reducing the radiation and waste created everytime more concrete is poured.

I hope Flexport is super successful. My jab was not at them at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a former developer at one of the mentioned "large competitors", it became clear to me that the logistics and shipping field is wide open for startups like Flexport. DHL and Expeditors are still thinking it's the 80s and they don't know any other way of conducting business.

Congrats on the raise, I can't wait to see what you guys do in the future!

<comment><USER5> My experience with flexport has been nothing short of awful. Poor sourcing, unqualified staff, and high prices. Compared to established enterprises that are experienced shipping perishable goods reliably they are not a serious competitor. Flexport couldn't even tell me the dimensions of the crates, number of crates, or weight of the crates they were supposed to deliver. Innovation is not a pretty UI in the freight industry.

<comment><USER6> Same, I stopped my interview process early and kept my job in industry. They have a few OK senior guys, sort of, but the rest are just startup monkeys learning as they go. Most companies don't like that when they see it given, you know, you're trusting them with your supply chain. Awesome idea though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now we just have to pretend we didn't so we don't waste it all...

<comment><USER8> Just picture @pb asking you what your burn rate is, and that should help.

Congrats on the raise! Any specific plans between now and series C?

<comment><USER9> That would be a good motivational poster :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I reading this right that they did $500k of revenue in August?

'The round came together over the summer, but "we've grown revenue 80% in two months," and racked up $500,000 in August, Petersen says'

What does that mean, 'racked up'? Surely they are not 'very profitable' and also worth $300m on a $6m revenue run rate...right?

Also -- seems like a great company and power to them. Just confused by that line in the article.

</comment><comment> a-no-n This is great to see as having likely validation. In 2009, I met some Russian guys whom moved to Long Beach specifically to do fractional freight-forwarding matching/auctioning startup to replace the crazy amount of manual paperwork and inefficient legwork involved in that industry at the time. I think they might've been much too early, and timing is one of the more important success factors.

</comment><comment><USER11> Flexport customer here; compared to working with other freight forwarders abd customs brokers the experience is night and day a better and simpler experience.

<comment><USER12> Same here, changed the game for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey FlexPort, are you hiring :) I would love to be considered for a software engineer position!

<comment><USER14> [https://www.flexport.com/careers#join](https://www.flexport.com/careers#join)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hopefully this will allow them to take on smaller clients -- we've wanted to start to move some of our shipments from air to sea, but unless you're shipping multiple containers a year they don't have capacity for new clients right now.

There doesn't seem to be a great solution for trying to save money when you're shipping only a few thousands KG a year.

<comment><USER11> Keep asking, and get bigger:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's curious that there are four comments in two hours because this industry - like many ready for big change - are unsexy.

<comment><USER16> I think they're a very fascinating company! I just don't know what else to comment. I hope they do well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Met Ryan in 2013 at Startup School.. could already feel he was going to hit it big when he was telling me what Flexport was doing!

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know much about Flexport but it feels like a scammy company to me. I listened to the their interview at start up schools radio, I didn't like their attitude.

There is also lots of fake comments praising the company in this thread. Very weird to do this at this stage of company.

<comment><USER19> While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I think a better comment would have involved research and a more concrete position on why you think they feel "scammy" to you. Clearly they have large customers that pay them for a very specific, tangible service (shipping), so I'm not sure where the scam angle is.

Calling a company scammy because you don't like their "attitude" might be jumping the gun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Every time Flexport is hiring on HN, it goes front page. I always wondered why...

Are they gaming the system? Has PG a way to pump them up since he is an investor? Or is shipping sexy to the HN crowd?

<comment><USER21> YC companies can post on the jobs board ([https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)). Job postings automatically go to the frontpage and don't have any upvote system</comment></comment>