Companies from the YC Winter 2018 Batch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-12-companies-from-the-winter-2018-batch/ <comment><USER9> YC releases a Requests for Startups list that's part VC zeitgeist, part buzzword bingo, but mostly an interesting summary where they think interesting things are: [https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs)

Was curious how these companies stack up against that list:

      1. *Energy: none*

      2. AI:
      - Cognition IP

      3. *Robotics: none*

      4. Biotech:
      - Nutrigene ? (stretch)

      5. Healthcare:
      - <USER2>
      - Nutrigene ? ("these statements have not been approved by the fda")

      6. *Pharmaceuticals: none*

      7. Education:
      - Juni Learning

      8. Human Augmentation
      - <USER3>

      9. *VR and AR: none*

      10. Transportation and Housing
      - <USER8>

      11. *One Million Jobs: none*

      12. Programming Tools:
      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>

      13. *Hollywood 2.0: none*

      14. Diversity:
      - tEQuitable ?

      15: Enterprise Software
      - Slite?
      - Storyline?
      - <USER7>
      - tEQuitable?

      16. *Financial Services: none*

      17. *Computer Security: none*

      18. *Global Health: none*

      19. Underserved Communities
      - <USER8>

      20. *Food and Farming: none*

      21. *Mass Media: none*

      22. *Improving Democracy: none*

      23: Future of Work
      - Slite?
      - tEQuitable?
      - The Lobby (and probably not in the good way)

      25: *Water: none*

      26: Other:
      - Sheerly Genius ?

I don't really know anything about these companies beyond the 1-paragraph summaries from the article, and yes, you may arrange your Startup Superheroes(TM) trading cards into slightly different piles, but the point of this is that (of the announced companies), it's curious to see where the gaps in the debutants are.

<comment><USER10> Wanting companies that work on these problems is great. But finding ones with unique and interesting value propositions is probably incredibly hard. There is a reason that the Hollywood model for instance, has managed to last 100 years. Yeah there's an absolute shit ton of protectionism going on but also no one has come up with anything better yet, and not for lack of trying. The same is true of a lot of these categories. The issues they have are hard, and expensive. I'd be interested to see the list of companies YC rejects.

<comment><USER9> > But finding ones with unique and interesting value propositions is probably > incredibly hard.

Exactly why the gaps are interesting.

Also: they need to fit the VC timeline and specific VCs' returns model (there are other business models outside of taking SV VC money)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The Lobby lets candidates buy affordable 1-on-1 calls with company insiders > to help them land top finance jobs without needing an inside connection.

This one made me smile. It's only a matter of time until the _employees_ of these companies directly monetize their connections. It happens indirectly already through hiring bonuses and quid pro quos though the latter is on a much longer timescale.

There's also the possibility of only losers trying to monetize their connections, thus watering down the overall value.

I'm not sure if the idea will generally pan out as employment agreements may bar this type of practice but it's either genius or terrible. Best of luck!

<comment><USER12> hey koolba! glad it made you smile :). Definitely issues to consider as we scale up, right now it seems to be adding a lot of value to people who are a) trying to figure out if this career path is for them but have no way of understanding what life is actually like until they speak to someone or b) getting the inside tips & tricks that can help you get hired but that you won't access without a close friend or elite school connection.

<comment><USER13> So basically people who don't know how to search or use forums?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Slite is building the first notes app designed for teams.

I don't mind marketing/bragging but that sounds silly. The first, really?

<comment><USER15> I wonder how Slite is different than Quip. Hopefully it's at least cheaper.

<comment><USER16> Or Input ([https://input.com](https://input.com)) - which looks very similar

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Slite is building the first notes app designed for teams. It's like Evernote > + Slack

Actually, I believe Evernote Business deserves that title: [https://evernote.com/business](https://evernote.com/business)

<comment><USER18> My team uses Evernote Premium, which shares collaboration features with Business, I believe, and it feels like any sort of collaboration is really an afterthought, for example:

* the complete note gets locked when someone simply places a cursor anywhere in the note, just like in the days of carbon/master copies and check-in/check-outs.

* work chat is meaningless, I have hardly seen anyone use it beyond the automatically-generated messaged when you share a note

* notes shared with you are ONLY accessible from the work chat, there is no menu item to access a list of notes that have been shared with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Question for the YC folks: these companies seem reasonably far along. One of them has 300 users already. So would a Dropbox be accepted into YC today? (IIRC dropbox had a barely working prototype and no customers)

<comment><USER20> Yes, these companies seem far along. But do keep in mind that this is somewhat of a biased sample -- the dozen or so companies that "launch" on HN months before demo day are likely to be the companies that are the most far along.

There are ~100 other companies in the current batch [1] that haven't launched. I imagine many of those companies are not nearly as far along as the ones mentioned in this article, and some are still pivoting / navigating the idea maze.

That said, it does seem like in the most recent batches, YC companies get to demo day with significantly more traction than the early YC companies. I wonder to what extent that's because YC's reputation has gotten better over time (thus self selecting for startups with traction) or because it's gotten easier/cheaper/faster for startups to build a product and gain traction.

[1] I don't know the exact number of companies in the current batch. Last batch had 124 companies so using that as a proxy [http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc- summer-2017-stats/](http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-summer-2017-stats/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to hear some discussion on the following:

I really like developer focused companies like Buglife. However, what path could Buglife take to reach a $1B dollar company?

The post notes that they are currently in 300 apps. I'd assume the majority of these 300 are on a free plan. Let's assume that they hit a growth spurt and end up in 10,000 apps. Let's also assume that _every_ one of those customers is paying for their Premium plan. That works out to a little over $2 million a month in revenue.

Not only that, but there are already very established companies in this space (Fabric/Crashlytics, Firebase, Sentry, etc.). It's also fairly trivial to switch to another provider.

How do companies like this propose they hit that $1B mark?

<comment><USER22> 1) Does YCombinator only invest in companies with a plan to become $1B?

2) What you're doing right now isn't necessarily the thing you end up doing in the long term. Sometimes it makes sense to create a simple product with a smallish market that people use now, and adapt over time to address or create a larger market. This other discussion today is relevant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16334035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16334035)

<comment><USER21> I think it's a pretty well known fact that YC tends to invest in companies that have the opportunity to be billion dollar ventures.

> What you're doing right now isn't necessarily the thing you end up doing in > the long term.

What sort of opportunities do you think a company like Buglife could focus on?

<comment><USER22> > I think it's a pretty well known fact that YC tends to invest in companies > that have the opportunity to be billion dollar ventures.

"Tends to" isn't the same as "always". I expect they'd rather invest in unicorns, but maybe they're willing to invest in a few more modest endeavors for various reasons.

> What sort of opportunities do you think a company like Buglife could focus > on?

Beats me. I wouldn't have guessed that Amazon was going to become a cloud provider back when they were just an e-commerce site. I think Paul Graham has said that sometimes YCombinator will accept founders who have an uninteresting idea if they seem like the sort of people who are capable of generating new ideas and changing course as the situations demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting to see how a new YC kind of startup is the company serving the rest of the YC startups.

Buglife, tEQuitable, Slite and Cognition IP all fit that bill.

It takes making shovels to sell to the gold rush seekers to a whole new level.

<comment><USER24> Not really new. I think of Stripe and Docker as examples.

<comment><USER25> Heroku and Parse were big examples of this before they got acquired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Storyline looks cool. Currently watching the tutorial.

Reminds me of the recent beta of Twilio Studio. Both should help when you want to quickly develop some tools.

</comment><comment><USER27> Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cJrWf1e...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cJrWf1elWqQJ:blog.ycombinator.com/meet-12-companies- from-the-winter-2018-batch/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER28> How does Cognition get investment as a law firm? My understanding was that firms can't receive investment from or share profits with non-lawyers.

Or are they doing what Atrium is doing and really running two entities, a tech company and a law firm?

<comment><USER29> Bryant here from Cognition. We're running two entities, a tech company and law firm, and the tech company received investment from YC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I want Statecraft to win. IMO theirs are the most important problems of this list.

</comment><comment><USER31> Happy to see Ukrainian companies there :)</comment>


Use Google Analytics to generate your own 75x18 interpolated graphs - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought you'd have to be logged in, but it looks like you don't -- so maybe this is another free Google service. :-)

Just change the p= to your own base 36 number (0-9 a-z):

https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/sparkline?p=0055009900ff00mm00zz00

Or http, but IE might warn you about "showing non-secure items":

<http://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/sparkline?p=0055009900ff00mm00zz00>

</comment><comment><USER2> Could it be something that the Google analytics team forgot to close off to the public?

</comment><comment><USER3> Show me how I can use the shiny maps they have and you'll get a high five.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're only worth a high five? :-) I presume you mean the Analytics maps ... they're Flash, so I'm stuck there. But there are always these ones: <http://www.google.com/apis/maps/></comment></comment>


Tablesaw – A group of plugins for responsive tables - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/filamentgroup/tablesaw <comment><USER2> Great to see some innovation with data tables and UI. You might also like Backgrid which has the following features out of the box:

\- Sorting

\- Filtering (server/client/fuzzy)

\- Searching (client/server)

\- Persistence (using backbone REST routes)

\- Inline Editing (multiple types including dates, urls, dropdowns)

\- Pagination

[https://github.com/wyuenho/backgrid](https://github.com/wyuenho/backgrid)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> If you just want _responsive_ tables, you can pop this into your CSS:

        img,canvas,iframe,video,svg{max-width:100%}.overflow-container{overflow-y:scroll;-webkit-overflow-scrolling:touch}

This seems to be doing a lot more, of course, including sorting, column selection and more.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just wondering if OP is a dota friend. Tablesaw just reminds me of Timbersaw(a hero in dota) lol</comment>


Why can't a Govt. understand that its approach to guaranteed tax is incorrect? - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/wealthy-americans-queue-up-to-surrender-us-passports-in-bern/articleshow/12972413.cms

<comment><USER2> Why is it incorrect? Exactly what value are these sort of people to a nation? If they're willing to surrender their citizenship for a tax dodge, then it seems unlikely they would be particularly useful citizens. If we didn't tax them so that they stayed exactly what value would the nation get out of the bargain?</comment>


Reverse Engineering the Hacker News Ranking Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://sangaline.com/post/reverse-engineering-the-hacker-news-ranking-algorithm/ <comment><USER2> Or you could just search for Paul Graham's posts[0] :)

> (= gravity* 1.8 timebase* 120 front-threshold* 1 nourl-factor* .4 > lightweight-factor* .17 gag-factor* .1)

        (def frontpage-rank (s (o scorefn realscore) (o gravity gravity*))
          (* (/ (let base (- (scorefn s) 1)
                  (if (> base 0) (expt base .8) base))
                (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity))
             (if (no (in s!type 'story 'poll))  .8
                 (blank s!url)                  nourl-factor*
                 (mem 'bury s!keys)             .001
                                                (* (contro-factor s)
                                                   (if (mem 'gag s!keys)
                                                        gag-factor*
                                                       (lightweight s)
                                                        lightweight-factor*
                                                       1)))))

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417)

<comment><USER3> Yeh I'm not sure why this is even a thing. I thought everyone knew that algorithm at this point? Hell, I'm using the same thing on a couple projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

 _I find this to be a particularly interesting question, not because I actually care about the answer, but because it feels like the data should be able to tell us the answer... My main goal was to tease out the ranking algorithm from the data in a simple and elegant fashion. This made it a little more interesting as an endeavor and hopefully makes it a more interesting read as well._

You're right, the details of the algorithm aren't hugely interesting and are generally available. The point here was to use the data to uncover it in a somewhat novel way. Figuring things out can be fun in and of itself, even if the answers are already available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone interested in the topic of HN's ranking algorithm should look through the HN's submission archives:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=How%20Hacker%20News%20ranking%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=How%20Hacker%20News%20ranking%20algorithm&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

For example: [https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news- ranking...](https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news-ranking- algorithm-works-1d9b0cf2c08d#.x86yaez0u)

</comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a piece a while back around implementing your own ranking algorithm. Thought this audience might find it relevant/interesting.

[https://jkchu.com/2016/02/17/designing-and-implementing-a- ra...](https://jkchu.com/2016/02/17/designing-and-implementing-a-ranking- algorithm/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the article that was discussed in yesterday's "The stories that Hacker News removes from the front page" [1]. After speaking with @dang, it sounds like what happened with the original submission was that a moderator accidentally put "(2010)" in the title and users flagged it because they incorrectly thought it was old. He invited me to resubmit the article today to allow for real discussion and to demonstrate that what happened to the first submission was accidental.

I know that this analysis will get less attention than the one from yesterday, but I personally find it far more interesting and hope that it can stand on its own merits. I'll be around to answer any questions that might come up.

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086)

<comment><USER6> > it sounds like what happened with the original submission was that a > moderator accidentally put "(2010)" in the title and users flagged it > because they incorrectly thought it was old

mhm, I'm sure that's what really happened

<comment><USER7> Which bit? The 2010 thing is precisely what happened. It was a case of sleep deprivation, which is one lesson of how trying too hard to make this place good can mess with a person.

The other bit was just my attempt to explain why users might have flagged the post. User flags were what demoted its rank, and it isn't obvious why people flagged it. There's also the issue that meta posts aren't great for HN in the first place, but those rarely lack for upvotes.

<comment><USER4> It would be nice if there was non-filtered view of HN available for users with a rep above 500, much like the "show dead" option for user comments that have been hidden. Basically allowing the submissions to be placed in the submission rank as if their ranking was not pinged due to users flagging the submission.

<comment><USER8> I consume HN via an RSS feed, and it is an excellent experience. I don't need a hivemind to do my filtering and thinking for me.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, "the feed" (assume you mean the new feed) is populated by the hive, it's just not sorted by votes or any other filter; of course unless the mods remove/hide a submission for some reason.

<comment><USER8> I'm using /rss - I see a lot of stuff on there that subsequently gets flagged.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans' Emails About Foreign Targets - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/us/politics/nsa-surveillance-terrorism-privacy.html <comment><USER2> We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story.

Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable."

NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian.

I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect" because I don't have time to track down and read the relevant article. But the upshot is-- their definition is idiosyncratic and misleading for a piece that has a general audience like this one.

<comment><USER3> their definition (via secret interpretation of USSID 18, according to Bill Binney[1]) is roughly that it's only collected if they actually go back and look at it at some point down the line. your web browsing history (or whatever) sitting on a hard drive in utah doesn't fall under this definition until they look at it.

[1] [https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE](https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE)

<comment><USER4> This isn't really a secret interpretation, I and a lot of people I knew noticed the same thing over a decade ago by reading the privacy policies of tech companies. Reading the data requires a warrant. Recording the data doesn't.

<comment><USER5> The important aspect for the NSA's interpretation is that algorithms can look at and process the data and create metadata or synopsis information from it.

Having an intelligence system ingest this metadata and synopsis is not considered "collection".

Essentially, if it can be automated, it isn't collection. If a human gets pulled into the loop to look at data, that's when it's collected. However, a human could be shown a synopsis or an inference about an American target and this could still not be collection, as the summary information being viewed isn't considered the person's private records.

Basically a loophole in a loophole. I'll be happy to keep databases of, and run software over, our national security records. I won't collect any of it, though. I won't even look at it. I'll just get summaries of the information contained in it from my algorithms - and if I want to look at a specific document I'll punch a rubber stamp on it first.

<comment><USER6> And what will you need to show to obtain said rubber stamp? This is not secret, either:

Search for "how FISA works" here: [http://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files...](http://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IC- book-finalasof12JUNE.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Curiously, a fair amount of genetic research is done this way: the genetic info is PHI, but the covered entity holds the data and the computer capacity. The researcher just pushes an algorithm to the cluster and gets aggregate results back.

<comment><USER8> That's the idea, but in practice GA4GH is still working on the API's and protocols to make this work in an automated and containerised fashion for modern genetic data. We do often send the algorithm to the data but mostly by way of granting an account to collaborators and them sshing into a remote cluster because copying 120 terabyte datasets is no fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and > received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials > said.

"Oops didn't mean to."

Keep in mind that the NSA lied to Congress very recently. Thanks to Snowden they were caught in that lie. I don't believe anything they say.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2014/mar/11/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2014/mar/11/james-clappers-testimony-one-year-later/)

<comment><USER10> The only credible way to trust that NSA had stopped wiretapping would be a drastic enough reduction of its finances (and no transfer to FBI/CIA for that purpose).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Things that I do not for one second believe: this.

Maybe this one particular program, under one particular name, sure.

But overall? I just don't see it. I am not saying this cynically, I just don't. Data collection is too easy, database queries too simple.

<comment><USER12> Sure.

Prior to World War II, the FBI began keeping a list of people to be rounded up "in the event of a national emergency" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Index) ). Some people on this index were put in concentration camps during World War II, notably people of Japanese heritage (and as Cygnus co-founder John Gilmore notes, some of these people were identified, via a legal fiction, by them filling out that they were of Japanese heritage on census forms [http://www.toad.com/gnu/census.html](http://www.toad.com/gnu/census.html))

World War II did not end the list, it grew. Finally, Watergate, the death of Hoover and exposure of programs like COINTELPRO led to the Church Committee and the supposed disabling of the list.

Since then, all information has been that the only thing that has changed is that the list is not officially for the detention of American citizens. Some of the people involved in Iran-Contra in the 1980s were also maneuvering for a US military invasion of Nicaragua, which they thought might necessitate putting anti-war protesters into concentration camps( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84) ). Of course, that plan was so far out that the plan might be more nutty than scary, but then again, these are people who secretly broke the US's own arms embargo against Iran to sell Iran weapons, the money from which they used to fund a war against Nicaragua which Congress had banned.

It's kind of like that Utah Data Center ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center) ) they're building to store what is probably permanent recordings of our phone calls, SMS messages, e-mails, web browsing history etc. They didn't spend $1.5 billion on it so far to not use it.

<comment><USER13> Remember in the 90s when reading your email was seen as a creepy deed done by greasy, social outcasts? Contrast that with our government, today, spending unholy amounts of money to do that while Americans go without clean water and healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How would we even know? No one can even go down in there. Congressional oversight is done by them coming up to Congress and saying "Nope, we're not breaking any laws. Not wittingly."

<comment><USER15> [http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com](http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They're trying to get a PR win out of that fact that---for now---they're not continuing the program. Later, when they've refined their technical infrastructure in a way that makes it easy to comply with whatever new requirements the FISA judge(s) came up with, they'll resume the program but not tell a soul.

That's how I'm interpreting this, anyway. I hope I'm wrong.

<comment><USER17> And it may have been the only way to satisfy the court anyway, they had previously assured the court surrounding communications to these wouldn't be searched, and then they were searching them too (so even if you didn't mention a targeted email, if your email was in an internal email provider bundle (like a backup across data centers), it was getting searched too:

>But last year, officials said, the N.S.A. discovered that analysts were querying the bundled messages in a way that did not comply with those rules. The agency brought the matter to the court's attention, resulting in a delay in reauthorizing the broader warrantless surveillance program until the agency proposed ceasing this collection practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and > received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials > said._

Yeah, sure. Maybe don't do mass surveillance then?

> _The agency then proposed putting the bundled messages in a special > repository to which analysts, searching through intercepts to write > intelligence reports, would generally not have access. The court permitted > that type of collection to continue with that restriction.

But last year, officials said, the N.S.A. discovered that analysts were querying the bundled messages in a way that did not comply with those rules._

This seems to happen Every.Single.Time. I wonder what _really_ prompted the NSA to stop this collection. Maybe they just want to act all "We're good boys now" to convince Congress that they can be trusted with FISA Amendments' renewal, later this year?

<comment><USER19> We'll probably have to wait for the next Bamford book to find out what happened.

Given past performance, I would put money on this being replaced by a functionally identical program with a legal hack, and of course a new name. (The new name is vital so that "we no longer collect that data under that program" remains a technically-true statement.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If they don't collect it under this program, they'll collect it under some other program. Or they'll just let one of the FIVE EYES partners spy on Americans. That's how they operate.

<comment><USER21> One of the main points of the Five Eyes agreement (originally BRUSA) is that the member states have a "no-spy agreement" with each other. That's why you see French leaders in the leaks but not heads of state of Canada or the UK. [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-exclusive-club-the- fi...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-exclusive-club-the-five- countries-that-dont-spy-on-each-other/)

The rumor that they spy on each other and share that data is not substantiated in any leaks and specifically goes against one of the main planks, making it an especially strange rumor.

<comment><USER20> > _The rumor that they spy on each other and share that data is not > substantiated in any leaks and specifically goes against one of the main > planks, making it an especially strange rumor._

Huh? GCHQ has been spying on Americans for a long time. Here's the latest example: [0]

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british- spie...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first- to-spot-trump-team-links-russia)

<comment><USER21> They were spying on Russians.

"The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't like how this article implies that they aren't saving and storing all of your emails unless you are communicating with a surveillance target. In reality they are sucking up all data in transit and only _looking_ at it when it involves a foreign target.

But technically they are storing it regardless if you do or not, and we are basically trusting them to not look at it.

This seems to be the biggest issue that is never addressed in these articles.

Not to mention the FISA court process being oddly rubber-stampy. Despite claims that they try really-really hard to get each one right, as an explanation why every single one gets approved.

<comment><USER6> > Not to mention the FISA court process being oddly rubber-stampy. Despite > claims that they try really-really hard to get each one right, as an > explanation why every single one gets approved.

What's wrong with those claims? If the guidelines are clear and their lawyers are competent, they can turn down a request without bothering the court. Surely you'll agree DoJ lawyers can tell whether a request meets the criteria for a legal intercept the vast majority of the time? "Probable cause" isn't exactly novel case law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A fundamental conflict keeps coming up:

1) Security agencies are much more effective if they collect data before they know it's important. If they wait until Jane Doe blows up a building to start collecting intelligence on her, much of the evidence and other valuable information will be long gone.

2) Spying on innocent people violates their privacy, their legal rights, and is a tool for oppression. Warrants are required for a good reason.

One somewhat obvious solution is to store the data in escrow, available only with a warrant. Nobody would trust a private company with all that data (I hope, though I some countries require ISPs and other service providers to maintain some history), so who can we trust? I wonder if the courts are an answer. On one hand, it is not their role to provide investigative tools to the prosecution and could even violate their independence and neutrality. On the other, there would be little question about whether law enforcement had a valid warrant or whether the courts would respect by their own authority to issue warrants (and on the third hand, rather than the courts cleaning up the corruption, the corruption could spread to the courts too).

Does anyone know if there's a precedent?

<comment><USER24> As another comment mentioned the NSA definition of collect seems to be (or was) only when they "look" at it, whatever that means exactly.

An interesting thing that I like to imagine happens with 1 (though I have no evidence) is that often Jane Doe does blow up a building, but then you see in the news over the next few weeks reports of rounding up terrorist cells related to Jane Doe. If they had to start fresh every time I don't think they could do that, they must have prior information, so I like to think it's the powers involved paying the Palantir tax. It's very reactive, which sucks for the people killed by Jane, but perhaps it's indicative that things haven't yet gone full Minority Report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It looks like this is likely a temporary cease & desist in order to get court authorization for their "broader warrantless surveillance program" while they figure out how to get those "bundled messages" into a separate repository.

I'd guess the NSA will eventually resume this massive email collection program once they can get it such that it's in compliance with the Court rules (which they seem to have been unable to do quickly right now hence ceasing it).

The good news, however slight it may be, is that the NSA may be at least obeying court orders somewhat rigorously.

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't ever rely on email to be secure. It is an insecure medium despite all the bandaids on it. It's useful for sure, but assume it's being read by the government before you send a message.

</comment><comment><USER27> This program likely started under Bush but was KEPT by Obama. It really upsets me that people give him a free pass for such an egregious violation of the Constitution.

<comment><USER28> And has yet to stop under Trump.

Let's hold all presidents to the same standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Imho this has nothing to do with privacy or law. This is an operational decision. The bad guys aren't using email these days. I don't agree with much of the "going dark" narrative, but it is clear that bad guys are using IM services and other not-email means of communicating. So to hear NSA talk about not collecting email is like them saying they are going to stop monitoring library records: It sounds like a win for privacy but only on paper and we know that they will simply redeploy resources to the interception of other communication.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you.

We'd need to understand what their definition of NSA, or collection, or emails are.

I think it's most likely they are saying that the entire NSA as a whole isn't doing collection, only some subset of the NSA is... and maybe they define collection as capturing and retaining information for 10 years, and now they are only doing it for 9 years 11 months... and emails mean everything you ever do online and SnapChat and Signal and Texts too.

Do not trust these people.

<comment><USER31> You forgot about World of Warcraft [1]

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/nsa-spying-video- game...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/nsa-spying-video-games/)

<comment><USER30> This is hilarious. That someone in the government was paid to watch Barrens Chat full of Chuck Norris jokes, debates about if STR or AGI was better for Enhancements Shaman, and links to in-game items that would make funny dildos really amuses me.

/1 Anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The problem stemmed from certain bundled messages that internet companies > sometimes packaged together and transmitted as a unit.

Wat?

<comment><USER33> If you intercept traffic from gmail as a whole you would get messages from US citizens, not only from foreign people, not counting replies, fws, etc. That's my take from this excuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> These criminals are sorry they broke the law, promise not to do it again. I'm all warm and fuzzy.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know why Snowden is so quick to tweet that this is a victory. To me, it's a multivariate equation, and all they've done is made one of the variables smaller. They can sustain collection at the same amounts, by making another variable proportionally larger. For instance, what's changed is that they no longer collect signals that mention a target, only signals to or from a target. So all you need to do to keep collecting the same amount, is to make a lot more targets.

</comment><comment><USER36> Err, the same emails that only a few years back they claimed they weren't 'collecting' anyway?[0] Totally believable. Yeah, totally — and I'm the King of England.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata- not-...](https://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-think- again/)

</comment><comment><USER37> The filter on XKS that prevents US hits on selectors has been enhanced to satisfy ruling of the court.

Its still collected in perpetuity, but under the Schrödinger approach to surveillance it no longer exists.

Maybe nothing can truly change, just as one cannot uninvent a technology -- telephony, broadcasting or social media are with us forever. Maybe true to for global passive surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can we get an inside contractor to leak proof of such? Because, you know, trust or the lack thereof.

</comment><comment><USER39> The NYT story was way too friendly in my opinion. It almost took the claims at face value that the agency did this voluntarily. I liked this version better: [https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on- major-...](https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on-major- surveillance-program-that-captured-americans-communications-without-a- warrant/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Even then - the data of rest of the world is still sucked up wherever possible.

Signed, A non-US citizen of this world

</comment><comment><USER41> 5 Eyes is collecting AND STORING EVERYTHING that enters or leaves their respective country.

<comment><USER42> They're also collecting everything inside and outside their country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Easy, now they just get it from the rest of 5 eyes then store it :)

</comment><comment><USER44> so, the infrastructure equipment used to do this is up for sale right? anyone know where? I'm in the market for cheap network/server/security gear.

</comment><comment><USER45> MFW trump making it harder to prove links to foreign government happens to coincide with my 4th Amendment rights...

</comment><comment><USER46> Wow can't say I expected this under President Trump, It's something I thought Obama would do.

</comment><comment><USER47> Sorry, but the NSA has zero credibility at this point. I don't believe a word of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Only 4% of humans live in America. The other 96% deserve human rights, too.

<comment><USER48> If they're not residing in America nor are a threat to the US, the 96% should be ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I doubt that, esp with all the russian tenssions recently.

</comment><comment><USER50> Right. And Trump starts caring about the environment.

That's just adding one more insult to a stack of insults that's already higher than the Trump tower.

</comment><comment><USER51> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181195)

</comment><comment><USER52> sure, collecting emails has no benefit unless people believe that they are not being watched!

</comment><comment><USER53> > give the N.S.A. copies of internet messages _that cross the international > border_ and contain a search term that identifies foreigners

That's a pretty misleading way to state the criteria. A reader that doesn't know any better would assume that a message that is sent from within the USA to somewhere else within the USA, would already have been exempt from this program.

But everybody with a little bit of background knowledge, including the author, knows that internet packets are routed, cached and stored all over the planet without regard to international borders. Even a packet or message that has both endpoints on US soil is very likely to cross international borders at some point in its route, because that's how the internet works and these services' infrastructure.

Just like calling this a "major development". I mean really, is this defeat? Sunk the bar that low? Call it "highly unlikely", "unprecedented" or something like that if you want to highlight the fact how _unusual_ it is that the NSA gives up a tiny crumb of its capabilities. Call it "promising" maybe if you want to be really optimistic about it (hah).

But in what universe is this a "major development", instead of a tiny insignifant drop in the ocean of the NSAs vast and total surveillance capabilities? Does _anybody_ believe that they are now in any way subject to less surveillance than before? It's like lowering the speed limit by 0.1mph and calling it a "major development" for the safety of kids playing on the streets.

Here's another nice one:

> The inquiries were conducted for legitimate intelligence purposes, the > official said, but under rules imposed by the intelligence court, analysts > were not supposed to search for Americans' information within that data set

So ... the inquiries were conducted for legitimate purposes, it's just that they were against the rules, is all. I'm not sure I'm familiar with this new interpretation of the word "legitimate".

No but seriously can anyone explain this line? If I'm being as favourable as I can possibly manage, I suppose they mean this: The _purpose_ of the inquiries was legitimate, it's just _performing_ them is not. So what does it mean if merely the purpose is legitimate? Did this official just try to let off these NSA-analysts because "the ends justified the means" ??

Not that it matters that much to me any way, because I am one of those filthy foreigners that doesn't have any right to any privacy whatsoever in the eyes of the NSA and a worryingly large percentage of US citizens cheering them on for that, because it is not them--ehm I mean because it is their job (if you don't think too hard about it). There's so many people arguing, many people who are otherwise very reasonable, that it's somehow okay to utterly violate people's privacy (on an unprecedented global scale) for _no other reason_ than they are foreigners. No other reason. Being foreign is enough that you decided my private life is somehow not my own. And of course that my government is doing it too! Except that they don't have the budget or the _unique_ position in internet infrastructure to violate privacy on such a global scale. But they do still try. And I won't let that slide or cheer them on for it either, just because they're doing it to "other" people.

</comment><comment><USER54> Sure they did.

</comment><comment><USER55> Right....

</comment><comment><USER56> Sure they did.</comment>


The Verge Abusing Copyright Claim System to Hide PC Build Video - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbH17HMBusc <comment><USER2> For those who don't want to watch the video:

The Verge sent YouTube DMCA takedown notices for videos that parodied a (apparently bad) tutorial on building a gaming PC made by The Verge. After appeals by the authors of the parody videos, YouTube has restored the videos and contacted The Verge's parent company Vox Media with concerns about their abuse of the copyright strike system.</comment>


Where are the women in Startups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-12789-Boulder-Startup-Business-Examiner~y2009m6d15-Women-in-Boulder-startups-where-are-you

<comment><USER2> This post has nothing to do with bashing women in startups or tech. I AM one! Tara and I represented our views and desire to see more of a collective voice of women in startups especially in Boulder while we also said, we are a powerful and amazing group.

Whenever I spend time with other women in tech the level of support and comradery feels good--so why don't we have a medium or forum to continue this support?

Whenever I attend a tech event (which I'm sure to make time for out of my busy schedule) I notice I'm part of the small percentage of women that show up. This says something about the community and I'm glad Jo was able to highlight that and begin an interesting dialogue.

</comment><comment><USER3> The startup lifestyle can be challenging for everyone. While Boulder has up to five events every week, they're full of men. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but there are women-focused conversations that need to be had in a non-male environment. There are women in startups in Boulder. But where are they?!

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you mean as founders or employees? True, most founders are men, but I know plenty of women in the tech startup scene. In fact, I've been going out of my way to meet women _not_ in the scene because they have a different perspective.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In Boulder less than 10% of startups are by women - and Boulder has the highest number of startups per capita in the US and one of the most supportive startup communities. Why aren't there more high profile entrepreneurs?</comment>


Verisign offers recursive DNS service - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/08/verisign_launches_cloudflare_rival/

<comment><USER2> > OpenDNS has grown dramatically in recent years, and claims it has 2,000 > paying customers alongside many more users of its free service. It charges > $28 per user per year for its most basic package

This seems like shockingly low revenue.

> Adding security to one of the most important control points on the Internet, > the DNS, is important

But not important enough to back something that would have actually added real security, like DNSCurve or DNScrypt? As operator of a major TLD registry, they could have pushed this unilaterally.

This service will open up opportunities for mining user queries. This is the registry that hijacked NXDOMAIN for their "site finder" service, after all.</comment>


Dutch prisons are closing because the country is so safe - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinsider.io/dutch-prisons-are-closing-2016-3 <comment><USER2> Indeed, the US system can a lot from the Netherlands.</comment>


E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contracts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/e-book-sales-weaken-amid-higher-prices-1441307826-lMyQjAxMTE1MzAxNDUwMjQ2Wj?utm_content=buffere3d81&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> When an ebook costs over 90% of the price of a hardcover, am I going to buy the ebook, which I can't lend, resell, or give away, or the ebook, which can only be read by me? The answer is simple, I'm going to buy whatever the cheapest physical book is.

In Canada, with a Kobo, buying from Chapters/Indigo, the trade paperback is often _cheaper_ than the ebook. This is my situation, and it means that the only time I buy an ebook is if I'm extremely motivated to read a book _right now_ and I can't get it digitally from the library. If I had a situation where I was travelling and extremely space-constrained I might pay the premium for an ebook, but that hasn't happened to me yet.

All that doesn't mean I don't read ebooks, but that I don't buy them. The ebooks I read come from the library, (I'm a member of two libraries with great ebook selections), or are classics from Project Gutenberg or similar.

<comment><USER3> I suppose it depends on your priorities. For me, the value of instant delivery, searchability, zero physical space consumed, and near infinite portability far outweigh the value of lending, reselling or giving away. Maybe I'm selfish, but if I have to choose between something that works really well for me while I have it, and something that is easier to pass on to someone else, I'm going to go with the former. Having both would be better, but if I'm forced to pick one, it's an easy decision...

<comment><USER4> for me it is the opposite. i like to pay more for the physical book because i don't want a delay of over 1s while flipping pages.

<comment><USER5> That sounds like you've chosen poor hardware. I've not had this problem in five years (with the three different devices I use for ebooks, one being an e-ink reader)

<comment><USER4> so you seems to have a magical eink reader. most eink take 0.5s to clear and 0.5s to draw a full screen in most usable resolutions.

<comment><USER6> It's not really fast, but it's not a second, either. Just ran a quick test on a kindle paperwhite, repeatedly paging after I saw the page refreshed. 20 pages in under 14 seconds, and there was definitely lag time between the page being refreshed and my finger tapping again.

That said, the page turn lag bugs me, too. It's better on tablets/phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was about the publishers being able to set their own prices wasn't it? Maybe they tested out if people were willing to pay more. If they find out they don't they can always go back to the discounts.

Trouble was before Amazon had that power. Seems fair that publishers should be able to set their own price.

Personally I don't buy an ebook if it isn't in single digit price. Anything more and I might as well buy the hard copy if I need it badly, otherwise I am better off not buying it at all.

</comment><comment><USER8> Surprise: higher prices do not mean higher profits, especially if most of your business relies on impulse buying and disposable income, and your goods are fundamentally intangible.

You didn't need to be a genius to see that coming. The more I see ebooks I'm vaguely interested in selling for £15 or more, the less I'm going to buy them.

<comment><USER9> It really baffles me that a company will still treat customers like this. Amazon has become bigger than wal-mart because they focus on the customer, maybe other companies will catch on and follow suit. Customers are not stupid, they understand that e-books are a lot cheaper to produce/distribute than a physical book, and they should be priced accordingly.

I wonder how long we're going to see these inflated e-book prices before the publishers drop the prices to what they previously were. If this sales trend continues they'd be dumb to not drop the prices of e-books.

<comment><USER10> "Customers are not stupid, they understand that e-books are a lot cheaper to produce/distribute than a physical book, and they should be priced accordingly."

If customers "understand" this, they mostly understand incorrectly. While it may make intuitive sense that printing and distributing a book should make up a lot of its cost, that's not actually true. I haven't looked at the details for a few years but this is something I wrote a while back on the topic: [http://www.cnet.com/news/why-e-books-arent- cheaper/](http://www.cnet.com/news/why-e-books-arent-cheaper/)

(To summarize that post, printing plus the take of wholesalers who handle distribution is only about $5 for a hardcover.)

<comment><USER11> When a publisher sells an ebook, they receive wholesales not retail price. Wholesale prices in the book businss range from about 35% of list (if you use a full-service distributor) to about 5o% of list (if the publisher sells directly to the retailer). You present an example where the list price is about $28, which means the publisher will get at best $14. But your calculations are based on the supposition that the publisher would get the full list price.

Here's another huge cost you don't include for the publisher with print books -- they are returnable and often get returned. If a publisher gets 25% of the books sold returned, effectively the publisher is getting only about $10 for a list price of $28 / wholesale $14. (Return rates can be higher or lower, but there are always returns.) Using the cost figures you use on your referenced example, the publisher loses money on the print book. And, you omit other costs incurred by traditional print book publishing, including shipping, warehousing books and fulfilling orders.

With ebooks there are no returns (a huge factor in the analysis), no printing, no shipping, no warehousing. Wholesale prices are a higher percentage of the list price. We publish ebooks and get about 65% of list from Amazon, Apple and Barnes and Noble (it's a bit higher or lower depending on which vendor) So it's obvous that our costs are lower for ebooks and the share of revenue we get is higher. In other words, list price of ebooks indeed should be far less than print, and ours are.

<comment><USER10> >And, you omit other costs incurred by traditional print book publishing, including shipping, warehousing books and fulfilling orders.

In the figures that I quoted, I believe that those are rolled into the wholesalers cut.

Ebooks can certainly be priced so prices are lower to consumers than hardcovers (as well as PoD) while the author/publisher makes at least as much. My point with the figures--which seem to be surprisingly difficult to nail down authoritative sources for--was that printing/distribution isn't the lion's share of what someone is paying for when they buy a hardcover book.

<comment><USER11> It's much more than you are saying. If you start with the retail price of the book (which your referenced article does), there's 50% off the top generally for wholesale discount (that is, the retailer pays about 50% or so). There's an additional 15% for a distributor's share (this means a company that has a sales force, generates orders, etc.; if you don't use a distributor, you need your own internal sales department which will cost almost as much). You don't need a distributor for ebooks. You have returns -- at least another 20% or so of your revenue will be eaten up there for most titles.) No bookstore returns for ebooks. There is printing, shipping, warehousing. (Normally estimated at about 15% of the cost of print books) No printing, etc. for ebooks. There's capital costs associated with doing print runs -- you put money up front and then have to wait for return while books sell, and also you run the risk of printing books that never even ship to stores. Hard to estimate but another cost that doesn't apply to ebooks. If you add it up, 15% for distribution. 20% for returns. 15% for printing etc. These print book only costs come to about 50% of the wholesales price. It's just not so that ebooks cost almost the same as print books.

Traditional publishers still have a business model that depends upon bookstore sales. The real problem for traditional publishers is, if ebooks are priced much lower than print books, it's an obvious problem for an important part of their business model. So they struggle mightily to keep ebook prices high and to persuade people that the costs of ebooks and print books are the same. As the article indicates it's not working -- self publishers and non-traditional publishers can produce ebooks at a much lower price point, because the ebooks cost less to produce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who knew, if you raise prices, through collusion or explicitly, you might just take in less money.

But part of it is probably just the same that is happening with music and TV. There are now very diverse sources to fuel media consumption, you are not bound to a specific "curated" collection. Hence the success of US series in Europe, where most of the time you can't even see them legally.

</comment><comment><USER11> The posted article has some huge errors. It actually says, "Amazon was willing to buy a title for $14.99 and sell it for $9.99, taking a loss to grab market share and encourage adoption of its Kindle e-reader." That is complete poppycock. No retailer pays list price for books; they pay wholesale price, which in the book business is usually about 50% for print books; sometimes higher for ebooks. (It depends on the publisher/retailer deal) During the time when the lawsuit was pending, the standard wholesale price for big publishers was more like 50%. So when Amazon buys a book that lists for $14.99 they paid $7.50. Marginal cost of selling an ebook is not very large. If Amazon bought a product for $7.50 and sold it for $9.99, they marked up the product about 33%. This is not "selling at a loss"

Big publishers did not object to Amazon selling for below list because it would impact Apple. They objected because they thought selling books at a discount would cause consumers to expect a lower price and they would no longer be able to sell higher-priced books. This is just what's happening right now. Amazon prices books very effectively and even more signficantly, Amazon has opened the marketplace for book sales to self=published authors and to independent publishers who are trying new models. For example I'm CEO of Booktrope which has a new model that produces ebooks that can be sold in the range of $2.99 to $9.99. (We pay a higher percentage royalty of authors in view of the lower prices.)

Amazon primarily but also Apple and Nook have opened up huge markets to us and our books are available broadly to readers. It means that big publishers will face competition from us, publishers like us, and self-published authors, and it's not going away.

The only way for the big publishers to avoid that would be to somehow block out competition including self-published authors and smaller, more efficient publishers who can produce ebooks at a lower price point. It's not going to happen so big publishers are at a crossroads and we should expect them to adjust or they will face continuing decline in sales.

<comment><USER13> I think the book publishers were also scared amazon might replicate the ipod/itunes playbook, ie they might wake up one day and amazon kindles might be 90% of the ebook market at which point amazon has way more leverage over them than they would like. So I think for the publishers this is a way of leveling the playing field and trying to create competition in the book reader market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "If you have a good book, price isn't an issue."

Because if it's that good, it will show up on the various pirating sites quickly.

There is a new ceiling on media prices, books included, and these companies are just going to keep loosing money until they adjust their pricing to the new reality.

<comment><USER15> But is that really true. Piracy is so easy only an extremely deep discount will sway me.

Pirates are only a certain percent of the population.

The optimal revenue generation probably occurs when you just ignore pirates. If they dash prices 75% and double the number of sales, they still lose revenue. You'd need to quadroople sales to just break even.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A Kindle was my first e-reader but I have since switched to a Kobo. If I cannot find a book to buy in DRM-free ePub I don't bother with it now.

Music is DRM-free these days, no reason for books to still come with horrible restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER17> I always check kindle prices, and if they are close to physical price of the book I will more often then not simply not buy. Overall I still prefer to buy hardcover versions of books I really really want, but if I'm on the fence and see a kindle book that has at least a decent markdown I will more easily make that purchase then give away precious bookshelf space to a book I'm not sure is a must have. I've forgone quite a few purchases I would have been likely to make for that very reason.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure I read somewhere it depends on content: niche-domain knowledge and test-preparing e-books sell ok at $10-$15 even if pirated more than often; self-empowering fluff and cuisine titles sell nicely below $10; mainstream novels, essays and general prose sell below $5. If I'm able to trace down the report, will add a link for your reference.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Publishers said the current pricing model involves some sacrifice but they > felt it was worth it to keep Amazon in check.

> Before 2010, book publishers operated with a "wholesale" model for e-books > in which they sold titles to retailers, which could discount as they saw > fit. Amazon was willing to buy a title for $14.99 and sell it for $9.99, > taking a loss to grab market share and encourage adoption of its Kindle > e-reader.

> Publishers worried that such discounting kept Apple Inc. and Google Inc. > from emerging as competitors, as those companies might not want to lose > money on e-books.

Seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER20> The publishers want to keep ebook prices high to keep them from eating into their traditional print business, just as Kodak kept their digital camera prices high to keep them from eating into their traditional film business.

The problem is that the publishers aren't the only people who can produce ebooks, just as Kodak wasn't the only company that could produce digital cameras.

This is going to bite them in the butt in the long run.

<comment><USER19> Maybe, but their goal and rationale seem fairly reasonable, even if there are counter-arguments. If being rationally optimal were easy there would be far fewer divergent opinions in the world.

The headline of the article is that they have lost revenue because of their business decisions. I just wanted to emphasize that there's more to business than maximizing sales revenue of your product: The way you sell your product shapes the market downstream, and it is reasonable for publishers to think that Amazon's market share grabs were anti-competitive and that a lack of competition is worse for them.

Demand curves are not the only thing that go into pricing decisions.

<comment><USER20> If they think that keeping their prices high is going to reduce competition, they are in for a rude, rude awakening.

<comment><USER19> There is an intermediate market between publishers and their ultimate consumers. They were selling their products at the same price as they are now to Amazon before, it's just that Amazon was allowed to take a loss on the sales to build marketshare which possibly prevented other players from entering the distribution market.

Are you unconvinced that allowing Amazon to absorb losses in order to dominate their distribution market is possibly bad for them? Or are you satisfied with treating them with contempt because it's so "obvious" to you that they're being boneheaded?

<comment><USER20> "it's just that Amazon was allowed to take a loss on the sales"

That is absolutely not true.

The marginal cost of delivering an ebook is so close to zero that it's hardly worth calculating.

Amazon (or anyone else) can easily deliver ebooks for $0.99 and still make a profit on every single sale.

<comment><USER19> They bought the ebooks for 15 dollars and sold them for 10 dollars.

<comment><USER20> No, they did not. Perhaps a occasional loss-leader was marked down that much, but overall Amazon has always sold ebooks for more than the cost of acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These publishers are absolute idiots. Ebooks for 12 to 16 dollars just to support their outdated business model of the hardcover to paperback cycle.

I have a whishlist of over 1000 books on Amazon. I can just go through that list and wait with the newer ebook titles until they drop down in prices. This will be my "customer buying pattern" from now on.

Winners: 2 to 3 year old books and Amazon. Loosers: New books and the publishers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just write shorter books.

<comment><USER23> That's perhaps excessively terse, but there's probably quite a bit of that going on. EBooks remove the physical hints that differentiate between the latest doorstop from George R. R. Martin or Neal Stephenson and something that's 5 words over the novella/novel dividing line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I believe consumers as a whole have an innate sense of fairness and it's this that drives a lot of piracy. Australia has had historically high amounts of TV piracy because Australia tends to get treated poorly. One of the country's largest ISPs admitted over half of traffic was BitTorrent [1].

I live in the US now. I don't have cable TV but I do pay for Netflix and HBO Now and will probably pay for the ad-free Hulu Plus now that it exists (I'd never pay for an ad-supported streaming service) and, what the hell, probably Showtime too. In part because I watch them but I don't really need all of them. I really want to put my money where my mouth is here and support such services.

I often now see novels on Amazon where the paperback is $8 for a book that's been out for years. The ebook is... $10.

Now in the case of print media like the NY Times and the WSJ, I get why they prefer the physical copy: it comes down to advertising. Advertisers will still pay more for print ads and certain advertisers will only buy print ads so they have to print physical copies a bunch of people won't read. It's why, just now in going to this page, you see the WSJ advertising print + online access and why print + online is usually cheaper than just online.

But I don't get this at all with ebooks. Paper books need to be typeset and printed, supplies for that bought and the physical products need to be boxed and shipped to various distributors and so on. The distributor, printer and retailer all need to take cuts.

The ebook is essentially direct to market with zero distribution costs.

Now ebooks offer a lot of advantages to the consumer: immediate access, searchability, more portable. But they also come with negatives: you can't as a general rule resell or even give away an ebook so it can only generally be read by the buyer and their immediate family.

Publishers should be loving this because publishers hate the preowned book market. It's why textbooks are often changed from year to year: just to devalue used previous editions and force students to buy new books.

Yet publishers are acting in a way that strongly suggests they just want to kill the ebook market. Could that be it? They just know how to print and sell paper books and want to keep on doing it? Could it be fear of piracy and the inability to adapt to this new business model?

My own sense of fairness kicks in here: when I see a $10 ebook for an $8 paper book I just don't buy either.

I'm reminded here of the cable TV industry. Cable TV is dying. It's why cable companies will essentially give you free Internet if you subscribe to TV services (and charge you $50-80/month if you don't). This artificially props up the number of TV subscribers, which is important because the price of content is driven by the number of consumers. The more consumers a provider has, the lower the pre-consumer cost of channels. This is also why Comcast was so desperate to merge with TWC and has since merged with Dish: to reduce content costs and increase their negotiating power with content providers.

But all of this is just seeking higher land in a flood: eventually you run out of land anyway so you're just delaying the inevitable.

We see the same thing in the music, TV and movie industries where direct-to- market versions are often more expensive than, say, buying a CD or DVD and having it shipped to your house.

Perhaps this really is the long game of setting price expectations.

Piracy seems to be the response of the market to "unfair" pricing and licensing practices and it does seem to eventually force change. The problem is that once you've taught a whole market to be pirates, only some of them will switch back to more legitimate channels.

It still astounds me that you can be forced to watch FBI disclaimers and the like on movies you legitimately buy and have incompatibilities that won't allow you to watch HD content (HDCP versions and the like) yet what has none of those problems is pirated content. It's a wholly better user experience.

I really wish these old world industries would just accept we live in a digital world and get over their anachronistic business models.

[1]: [http://www.itnews.com.au/news/day-13-iinet-ceo-says- bittorre...](http://www.itnews.com.au/news/day-13-iinet-ceo-says-bittorrent- dominates-traffic-159742)

<comment><USER25> This idea that ebooks are dramatically cheaper for publishers to produce is the single biggest problem they have. Because the actual production and distribution of the paper books is not a huge cost component of the price of a book. With the deals they were previously getting with amazon the distribution channel of ebooks could frequently be _more_ expensive than their traditional book distribution channels, which have had many years to become more efficient.

The vast majority of the cost of the book is not in the production of the paper product, but in the production of the content of the book and the marketing of it. This remains static regardless of the delivery vehicle, but is non-obvious to the consumer.

My big concern is that the consumers attitude about the price of books is going to lead to a world where it is impossible to maintain the current standards around content creation, and that the drive to the bottom in prices will mean much fewer opportunities for professional writers, editors and booksellers. I believe that will be worse for me as a book consumer.

<comment><USER26> > With the deals they were previously getting with amazon the distribution > channel of ebooks could frequently be more expensive than their traditional > book distribution channels

How so?

<comment><USER11> Not actually so. The canard that print books are not more expensive than ebooks comes from traditional publishers trying to justify high prices for ebooks, but it's not so. Costs for print books that are higher than ebooks: printing, shipping, warehousing, capital costs (sunk costs of a large print run meaning investment in books that might take years to sell or never sell). Another huge factor in the print book business is returns -- nearly all bookstores are consignment shops and regularly return up to 30% or more of the books shipped to them. It's the custom in the book business (to avoid shipping costs) that "return" means, the retailer actually destroys the books that aren't sold and gets a refund for them from the publisher. (Really!) Returns can add another 30% or more to the effective cost of print books sold in bookstores. (Returns are a smaller factor for bestsellers, one reason why traditional publishers are so focused on that corner of the business.) Remarkably, Amazon is one of the few retailers that tries to minimize returns -- they try to get smaller shipments from publishers so that they can avoid overstock.

So why do traditional publishers say that ebooks cost as much as print books? (Booktrope is an online publisher focused on ebooks and print-on-demand paper books, and we certainly do not say that ebooks cost as much as print!) For traditional publishers, low ebook prices can undermine print sales. A big part of their business model is selling print books at high prices through bookstores. Lower ebook prices obviously are a problem for that model. Also, traditional publishers are used to a world where they have great connections with tastemakers and can persuade people their product is "better" than the competition. If you can do that, you can keep your retail price high -- like Apple does in the phone/tablet/computer world. But it's not working -- there are lots of great books being self-published and coming from non-traditional publishers these days, so, as the article says, big publishers are really starting to suffer from their own pricing policy of trying to keep ebook prices artificially high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I recently subscribed to Kindle Unlimited and it has definitely saved me money. And with the selection getting better and better, I envision this "Spotify for ebooks" business model as the new normal.

I own a Kobo too and hope Chapters / Indigo offers the same service.</comment>


Ask HN: Great programming books you read in 2009? - <AUTHOR>

Give me list of top 3 programming books you read in 2009 <comment><USER2> _Programming Language Pragmatics_ by Michael L. Scott: The explanations of many things I'd read in other sources are no less than fantastic, I now _understand_ a bunch of things I had only superficially "got" previously. [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Pragmatics- Third-...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Pragmatics-Third- Michael/dp/0123745144/), check out the overview and reviews.

 _Coders at Work_ by Peter Seibel: By far the best of this type of book (well, not counting the '80s classic _Programmers at Work_ which I haven't read since then), one of the best Lisp authors interviews in depth a lot of really interesting and/or important people, from James Zawinski to Donald Knuth, with Javascript, static FP and PARC people, Guy Steele, Peter Norvig, Ken Thompson, Fran Allen ( _really_ important interview which points out how C/C++ to the exclusion of truly high level languages have been a disaster when used beyond their proper niches), etc. All are masters who've gotten their hands dirty, many are theory people as well. [http://www.amazon.com/Coders-at-Work-Peter- Seibel/dp/1430219...](http://www.amazon.com/Coders-at-Work-Peter- Seibel/dp/1430219483/)

 _Garbage Collection_ by Jones Lins: Pretty much the only book in the field (except for the forthcoming _Advanced Garbage Collection_ sequel in the middle of this year), covers the territory as of the mid-90s. Much more fun than trying to track down 100 individual papers and trying to make sense of it all. Exposition is clear and you get a real feeling for the subtleties of the field (especially when you try fun things like generational and/or concurrent GC). [http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms- Automati...](http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms-Automatic- Management/dp/0471941484/)

</comment><comment><USER3> by categories:(definition of "read, past tense": spent at least 45 minutes in Borders flipping thru)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

FP:

\-- Cesarini/Thompson, Erlang ; Logan, Merritt, Carlsson, OTP in action

\-- Halloway, Clojure (supposedly, besides the Manning MEAP PDF book, another Manning and a Apress book are in preparation)

\-- Scala: (all 3 books look pretty good, tho I haven't spent a lot of time digging in, and haven't decided if scala's language syntax is denser than clojure's; Payne/Wampler text freely available online

\-- haskell: Real World. content freely available online.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

NoSQL, kvstore, docstore, mapreduce:

\-- Hadoop: Oreilly (White) and Apress (Venner) look good at first glance

\-- couchdb: freely avail draft by Anderson, Slater Lehnardt

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Messaging queues and brokers: AMQP, rabbit, XMPP, ejabberd:

\- no books / drafts, PDF beta books I'm aware of

<comment><USER3> some metadata: the 3 freely available texts above, and the cheap MEAP/ beta book prepub drafts from Manning, Oreilly and Pragmatic are definitely good things (tho the Manning drafts are really rough).</comment></comment>


Windows 8.1 Will Start To Roll Out Tomorrow At 4 AM PDT - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/16/windows-8-1-will-start-to-roll-out-tomorrow-at-4-am-pdt/ <comment><USER2> _Trust me, you want to upgrade. Windows 8.1 is to Windows 8 as Office 2010 is to Office 2007._

Bad analogy to anyone who thought Office 2007 was really good (which would be most who upgraded from Office 2003 and went through the 1+ year learning curve).

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks, Techcrunch. I just set a cron job on my gentoo box to emerge world at 4PM PDT, to honor Microsoft's Windows 8 bugfix.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I get some feedbacks for my platform? - <AUTHOR> http://ideatorslab.co <comment><USER2> It's just a webpage with a form at the moment, so there's not much to provide feedback on. The premise is fine but extremely vague so I think you'll probably struggle to get some traction since theres already existing resources for that sort of thing.

Note: You need to secure the site.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Folks, I am building a platform that would help people from various domains to work on their side projects. Our platform would assist users in finding people with similar interests, browse through different ongoing projects in their field and request owners to collaborate with them. Here is the link for the landing page of my platform. [http://ideatorslab.co](http://ideatorslab.co) Please let me know what you think about it. Thanks.</comment>


I'm proud to announce my product - <AUTHOR> http://uwapi.net/ <comment><USER2> Please change the title to something descriptive. For example: "Uwapi - Generate your web service in a few clicks".

If you made it and want more feedback and you'd like to answer questions you can add a comment, something like "Author here. Happy to answer any question." You can also make a ShowHN, but please read the rules before [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

\--

Some feedback:

It's very strange that the FAQ goes to google groups. It's probably fine, but it's strange.

In the login form make the "Register if you don't have a local account" link bigger, or transform it into a button. (As an extreme example in Dropbox, the register new user is the first form you see.)

Is there a test account to try without registering? Perhaps a account where the web service can only return numbers instead of text. (Only numbers will probably avoid spam and strong language, but it may be enough to test.)</comment>


Why ['1', '7', '11'].map(parseInt) returns [1, NaN, 3] in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dailyjs/parseint-mystery-7c4368ef7b21 <comment><USER2> This isn't strange or surprising. parseInt takes two arguments, the second one is the radix and map will call with three arguments, the value, the index and the whole array. You just have to know this and it might be different in other languages. [ ... ].map(x => ...) is the right way to do this.

<comment><USER3> It may be logical but:

\- I know all that, have been programming for 15 years, yet I still would have done the mistake.

\- Simple unit tests may very well not catch this bug the first time.

\- The language design allows your brain to ignore the index parameter because JS accepts superfluous parameters, which is a terrible decision.

\- map() is a mapping primitive. It's supposed to adapt a type to another type so that you can pass it to a monoid. JS breaks this convention.

\- Even traditionally not functional languages know better than that and separate iteration from indexing. E.G: python map() just maps, and if you want numbering, you use explicitly enumerate(). Ruby has each() and each_with_index(), etc.

Just another of the numerous sucky things in JS. They are not big, but they accumulate very quickly and make it one of the worse language existing. Certainly the worst of all modern stack languages. It's a shame it has a monopoly on the most awesome platform in the world: the web.

In fact, it's such a big problem the most popular JS projects are all things to avoid coding in JS or workaround JS deficiencies: typescript, coffeescript, jsx, babel, webpack, lowdash ...

<comment><USER4> As a (mostly) outsider, I've never understood why JavaScript is so popular in web dev circles. There are so many awesome compile-to-JS languages these days (ClojureScript, PureScript, Elm, ReasonML, Scala.js, etc). What makes people want to use JavaScript instead?

<comment><USER5> Any time you use anything non-native, you add layers of indirection and potentially lots of impedance mismatch between languages/runtimes. For instance, I know all of the ones you mentioned would be non-starters at my current job because it means we would have to wrap all of our JS libraries/APIs in the language of choice, which is a non-trivial amount of work. Plus, debugging becomes more challenging as you're basically having to do it at two levels simultaneously.

Even with all of JavaScript's deficiencies, it's still far easier to just deal with them than to switch languages entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has less to do with "parseInt" than it has to do with "map" in JavaScript. It doesn't work exactly like .map in Java, Ruby, Elixir, etc., because ".map" in JS also passes in the index, and the full array.

</comment><comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I don't know Javascript, but that's why:

      > ['1','7','11'].map(console.log)
      1 0 [ '1', '7', '11' ]
      7 1 [ '1', '7', '11' ]
      11 2 [ '1', '7', '11' ]
      [ undefined, undefined, undefined ]

      > parseInt(1,0)
      1
      > parseInt(7,1)
      NaN
      > parseInt(11,2)
      3

The correct way is:

      > ['1','7','11'].map(x => parseInt(x))
      [ 1, 7, 11 ]

same as:

      > ['1','7','11'].map(x => parseInt(x, 10))
      [ 1, 7, 11 ]

<comment><USER8> Those are unfortunately not the same. The _second_ one (with an explicit radix of 10) is correct; the first is not (or is at least a bit riskier). See [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt#Description) (ctrl+f for "always").

<comment><USER9> But see also [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt#Octal_interpretations_with_no_radix) and especially [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt#Browser_compatibility) — that comment is increasingly stale unless you support browsers which are no longer supported by their vendors like IE8.

<comment><USER8> Good point. I've edited my comment to be more qualified.

<comment><USER9> The web is a fascinating study of advice that changed over time: there's something like a half-decade window where the two argument form became common, with unsafe usage before and safe usage after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So in summary:

JS map doesn't behave like anybody else's map.

JS argument passing prefers doing the wrong thing to interrupting the programmer.

These two things conspire together and poor parseInt does its best with the resulting garble.

<comment><USER11> I don't really see any issue here.

JS map behaves sanely - It adds extra params, but I've had them be useful every now and then, and I've _never_ had them cause a problem.

Arguments behave... Like arguments behave in JS. Arguments have ALWAYS been variadic and accessible through the "arguments" variable within a function. That's not the "wrong" thing, it's just a thing. If you want named arguments - put them up top. Otherwise you'll get an array-like with everything passed. This is entirely consistent with the language.

Finally - These two things conspire together to do _what_ exactly? This isn't a subtle bug where it works correctly 99% of the time and blows in prod late on a friday. This is an obvious error with even dead simple test cases that clearly show the dev has messed up.

Unit test your shit, or hell, just run it once or twice before using it and you're fine.

\---

Basically - you should know how your std library works. That includes JS. I think this is pretty trivial. Worse, I actually find this behavior far more intuitive than something like ConfigureAwait(false) in C#, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stuff like this is what drives me crazy when I work with dynamic languages like JS or PHP. I have seen a lot of code that looked perfectly fine but suffered from unexpected casts or defaults.

I much prefer languages like C#, C++ or TypeScript where the compiler warns me of such problems.

<comment><USER13> This has nothing to do with casts or defaults. Map passes multiple parameters and parseInt accepts multiple parameters. Being unaware of the functions you're using is the problem, not some sort of weird gotchas of the language. The code in the title makes multiple assumptions, and those assumptions all proved wrong.

<comment><USER14> A typed language would absolutely fail this at compile time.

<comment><USER15> Only because map's third provided argument exists. If map only supplied element and index to the callback, this would pass most type checkers I'm familiar with, and would remain just as confusing.

<comment><USER16> Precisely - this is an API design failure, pure and simple. Not a problem with typing, optional arguments, etc.

<comment><USER17> It's both. Silently accepting variadic arguments increases the odds of something like this happening. This case wouldn't have happened without it.

Though as I said in another comment, best-effort parsing was a decision that arose out of the Web ecosystem and its one of the few things about Javascript's language design that can't br blamed on incompetence.

<comment><USER15> What does this have to do with best-effort parsing?

"Variadic arguments" (really optional arguments with defaults/signature overloading, which is only arguably the same thing) existed long before JavaScript, and, indeed, the web. Optional arguments are also widely considered to be good/useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams >> "If the radix provided is falsy, then by default, radix is set to 10."

The official docs for parseInt says this:

>> An integer between 2 and 36 that represents the radix (the base in mathematical numeral systems) of the string. Be careful — this does not default to 10. [1]

I just found it confusing whether the author meant the default value is 10, or if a falsy parameter (not undefined) turns out to be 10.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt)

<comment><USER18> So looking at the rest of the documentation, the parameter not being set causes the default radix to be 10 unless the number starts with 0 or 0x, in which case they radix is 8 or 16 respectively. Though newer versions of JS no longer support the octal syntax (it likely just caused bugs for people who had initial zeros in their strings sometimes)

parseInt("0x10") == 16 parseInt("0x10", 10) == 0

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Easy fix ['1', '7', '11'].map(Number)

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Number is not only more obvious than parseInt for other coders but also defaults to base 10, whereas parseInt (at least historically) does not (edit: ...if you've got leading zeros, see post below).

<comment><USER21> > defaults to base 10, whereas parseInt (at least histortically) does not.

To clarify for others (because this probably sounds crazy): The default is implicit like the rest of JavaScript, it will change base depending on presence of the prefixes 0x (16) and 00 (8), it doesn't seem to have included 0b yet. The confusing bit was octal because as you can imagine some sources might have base 10 padded with zeros, ES5 basically removes implicit octals in parseInt to avoid this issue.

Arguably this is more of a problem with the ambiguous octal prefix than the concept of using prefixes to determine base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is extremely awesome that JavaScript has conditioned a ton of the world's programmers to think that needing to compose your function with the identity function to achieve the desired result is not surprising or bad.

I will not be convinced that an implementation of map that gives different results when there are identity functions in the middle is doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article made me curious to why a Base-1 or Unary Numeral base system has not been implemented in parseInt() as noted by the OP, since the second argument radix must be between 2 and 36:

        parseInt('1', 1)   // same error for '0' or '|'
        > NaN

The result is intriguing still as "NaN" seems to indicate a invalid input in the first parameter instead of a invalid second parameter.

I've found that apparently there is no consensus [1] on Base-1 notation or parsing, although my primary intuition is correct [2] in that a parser could be written that would parse a "1" as a 1 base10, "11" as a 2 base10, "111" and so on. The parser would probably look a lot like a simple length() function, but that could vary with certain base-1 encodings like the ones used by the Golomb Rice compression algorithms, which have each string end in "0" (unary coding).

[1] [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/371972/what- would-b...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/371972/what-would- base-1-be)

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

</comment><comment><USER24> The extra args passed by map coupled with the optional extra args in standard methods is the cause of a lot of confusion, but this feels like a missed opportunity for demonstrating functional programming. In the end author suggests

        ['1', '7', '11'].map(numStr => parseInt(numStr));

I think you'd learn something much more useful with

        function radixParser(radix) { return numStr => parseInt(numStr, radix); }
        ['1', '7', '11'].map(radixParser());
        > [ 1, 7, 11 ]
        ['1', '7', '11'].map(radixParser(8));
        > [ 1, 7, 9 ]
        ['1', '7', '11'].map(radixParser(2));
        > [ 1, NaN, 3 ]

<comment><USER25> If you're gonna use arrow functions, why not go all the way!

      const radixParser = (radix) => (numStr) => parseInt(numStr, radis);

<comment><USER24> because I still think

        function foo() { ... }

is a clearer way of indicating "I'm defining a function named foo". I tend to use arrows only for anonymous methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://imgur.com/EAaJho6.jpg](https://imgur.com/EAaJho6.jpg)

Thanks Medium! Great readability.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's reminded me to this funny talk [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess JavaScript like to use the "principle of most surprise"?

</comment><comment><USER29> let's work to bring back brevity the answer is that map is passing extra args just use an arrow func to pass args to parseInt explicitly there saved you a minute scrolling to the bottom

</comment><comment><USER30> Because parseInt isn't a unary function?

</comment><comment><USER31> This isn't a quirk of JS at all. It's somebody purposefully calling `parseInt` incorrectly.

</comment><comment><USER32> tl;dr: parseInt takes an optional second argument, the radix. It defaults to 10 (so the number is parsed in base 10). Since map() passes in each item in the array as the first argument, and the index as the second, you're parsing each string with the radix of whatever the index is.

Not too weird IMO.

</comment><comment><USER33> To quote the tl;dr: ['1', '7', '11'].map(parseInt) doesn't work as intended because map passes three arguments into parseInt() on each iteration. The second argument index is passed into parseInt as a radix parameter. So, each string in the array is parsed using a different radix.

That's hilarious. Everybody loves the syntactic sugar that makes things easy, until the unexpected point where it makes things very hard.

<comment><USER22> What is the syntactic sugar here? I mostly see a map that doesn't behave how anyone would expect.

<comment><USER34> The syntactic sugar here is that map and parseInt can be called without specifying all parameters. (But, since JS has no function overloading, it's the same function you're calling.)

<comment><USER15> Optional/defaulted function arguments are an extremely useful feature of many programming languages; are you arguing that they are always harmful?

<comment><USER34> Point me in my remark where I said that they are harmful. I was answering the question what the syntactic sugar was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> TL;DR, parseInt() takes the number base as a second argument, and map() passes three arguments (value, index, whole array).

Using directly like this a function with map() is just incorrect, the correct way to do it is:

        ['1', '7', '11'].map(x => parseInt(x))

_edit_ I'm getting downvoted, it doesn't matter much but I don't understand it when the most upvoted comment seems to say more or less the same?

</comment><comment><USER36> Because It's JavaScript.. stop using unsafe languages, really

<comment><USER37> A bit of a BS comment since there are no languages that will prevent you from misunderstanding the values passed into or returned from whatever methods/procedures/jump destinations you're working with.

More generally, general purpose languages don't provide safety guarantees in the problem domain. They can provide certain guarantees in the solution domain, but it's left to the programmer to compose the elements of the language into a correct solution.

(In my experience, by far the biggest barrier to a correcty solution in the problem domain is that no one actually knows what that is, much less has expressed it. Instead, people express certain specific behaviors they think the system should have, from which the programmer needs to extrapolate the actual requirements -- not straight-forward since to a greater or lessor degree the expressions will be vague, self-contradictory, self-defeating, and/or incoherent. Then they need to compose those requirements in the solution space. BTW, the language is just a part of the solution space and "safe" languages are usually only referring to static checks, which the solution space often consists of distributed components which aren't strictly controlled in lock-step by the same static sources, meaning the static guarantees are useful, but in a limited way.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Recently I learned that in Javascript,

      [5 * 5] * 2 // 50
      [5 + 5] * 2 // NaN
      1 + [5 * 5] * 3 // 76
      1 + [5 * 5] - 1 // 124

Interestingly, even Typescript will not ( by default ) catch this class of bugs.

<comment><USER39> [5+5]*2 is not NaN

<comment><USER38> True, I was playing around to get examples in runJS. I think I mis pasted that one. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is _not_ one of the weird things about Javascript. When you use a function (like map), always check the documentation to know its behaviour and don't assume it's similar to some similarly named function from another language. End of story.

<comment> cbm-vic-20 > don't assume it's similar to the same named function from every other > language

<comment><USER41> Not every language has such a function.

Even languages that do have different versions of it on different objects (e.g. Scala's zipWithIndex)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Use Typescript. Regular JS just has too many gotchas to be usable in large applications.

You can crank up the settings in TsLint and never worry about things like this again

<comment><USER9> Did you try testing that? The TypeScript compiler does't say a thing about that code:

[https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/index.html#src=alert(%5B...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/index.html#src=alert\(%5B'1'%2C%20'7'%2C%20'11'%5D.map\(parseInt\)\)%3B)

TSLint similarly reports nothing even with the tslint:all ruleset:

[https://palantir.github.io/tslint- playground/?saved=N4Igxg9g...](https://palantir.github.io/tslint- playground/?saved=N4Igxg9gJgpiBcIDaByAjCgNAAhQdi1zQwF0A6AWwEMAHAChqoCcBnGASQDsAXASgG4AOpxCZwETgDMAlgHMEIAPSLsATQgBXbGCqdsFaNMkBPbNwAWMbRJmyNTKt2kTslplYDu0i9mOam2BAenGTCytgAslQA1lYs9lYWjr7+2ABWLC7SLNgAblQANtJQOLpQ2EYpWkwaetI8EGEqEBYwAdnxMCw43EymYJZg0fWyZpbWnJkFVpIQAW1McyyhnMLAwtib2IIgMAAe3DCcUCw78NhIO9wsRTzwhQU7JJgbWzs106cI2MAAvtjhKhQcpAqDeZycQrYD5dbBlMYwaQBSBSOT2RwQ4S-YQgX5AA) [https://palantir.github.io/tslint- playground/](https://palantir.github.io/tslint-playground/)

<comment><USER42> Doesn't seem right, are all the strict compiler options enabled?

<comment><USER9> Yes, can you post the configuration you used for your original claim?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atomic operations and contention - <AUTHOR> http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/atomics-and-contention/ <comment><USER2> This is one of the reasons using things like boost's boost::shared_ptr (which uses atomics for ref counting) can have a huge time overhead in multithreaded code.

Often people think atomics are much faster than mutexes for simply checking or incrementing single count/bool values or pointer swapping (and they can be), but they can also be just as slow, depending on the use-case and situation.

In certain situations, they can even be slower! as using them in spinlocks doesn't allow the thread to yield, wasting CPU time doing nothing.

<comment><USER3> mutexes and spinlocks use atomic operations to function. If you can use an atomic operation to replace either of them, your program will be quicker. It will be even quicker if you can use per-cpu or per-thread variables to reduce synchronization overhead.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should PR agency be an option to get your growth hacking viral? - <AUTHOR>

We have been trying different growth hacking techniques but out of 5 attempts only 1 was covered by tech blogs and media in 2012 , later when we tried to mail the tech blog writers we didn't receive any reply. How to hack in this situation ? Of course one option is to spend on PR Agency . Is there any other alternative? <comment><USER2> Is your perfect, ideal, dream audience tech blogs? Are they literally the best source of new customers for your company?

If they're not, and that's almost 100% of the time, you should forget them and look for the best places to spend your time and energy pursuing.

1000s of pageviews from techcrunch/hn/etc may only be 10s of potential customers for your industry or niche, and _then_ you apply your funnel and don't really have anything at all when the dust has settled.

So I would say it's worth hiring PR people to help you if:

1) the audience is your ideal audience

2) it will land you 100s of new users because of 1)

3) those 100s of new users can absorb the cost of reaching them

</comment><comment><USER3> You should have a story to tell. a story worth sharing makes the basis of growth hacking(without paying anyone)</comment>