I just doubled my prices – Fuck Black Friday - Pete-Codes https://nocsok.com/fuckblackfriday <comment><AUTHOR> Right on. Let's put a downward pressure on server load numbers by raising prices during promo events! This will lower c02 emissions

<comment> Pete-Codes haha, hadn't thought of it that way!

</comment></comment><comment> Pete-Codes It always seems a bit ridiculous the amount of "discounts" that are thrown around online.

I think everyone has a bit of sales fatigue already.

I doubled the prices for job board posts to illustrate the absurdity of most pricing plans. i.e. retailers usually offer goods cheaper at some point during the year before Black Friday.</comment>


Manhattan Beach, targeting AirBnB, officially bans short term rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.easyreadernews.com/99822/manhattan-beach-airbnb-ban/

<comment><USER2> I'm really curious about this. There are places like say Balboa Island and Newport Beach that have had hundreds of vacation rentals since I was a kid in the 1970s. The same is true of Venice Beach in LA. I would have assumed the same was true of Manhattan Beach in LA as well. Yet apparently those will all be banned soon.

In fact you can just go on the waybackmachine and look at craigslist listing from 10+ years ago and see there were short term rentals happening. I suppose those were technically illegal.

Maybe it was just a matter of amount. Before AirBnB there were less of them or less people using them?

<comment><USER3> VRBO also before airbnb.

Coronado CA also has a 30day minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's an odd situation because there are very few hotel rooms in manhattan beach to begin with.</comment>


Real life Snakes on a plane - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8001644.stm

<comment><AUTHOR> not 100% staple HN content but I thought you lot would appreciate the irony :D

<comment><USER2> Not 100% irony, but I did enjoy the hilarity. :D</comment></comment>


Microsoft's New Browser Will Be Called Microsoft Edge - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/microsofts-new-browser-will-be-called-microsoft-edge/

<comment><USER2> I really thought that Spartan would have been a great name for the browser.

<comment><USER3> I thought so too, but consider that "E" is what most consumers expect for an icon. "Edge" keeps that going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully it has auto-update enabled by default....</comment>


An Open Letter To Randi Zuckerberg: How Could You Do This to Real Entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/04/05/an-open-letter-to-randi-zuckerberg-how-could-you-do-this-to-real-entrepreneurs/#.T34_BscFzbU.twitter <comment><USER2> Who is voting this to the HN front page and what the hell is wrong with you? I would rather see links to 30 more DCPU-16 simulators than read this tripe. Stop it.

<comment><USER3> I think this plays more to those who come to Hacker News because of Y Combinator, HN isn't just a site for developers it is also a site for entrepreneurs (majority of which are based in Silicon Valley at this stage).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually the most shameful thing about the Bravo show is that it refers to Randi Zuckerberg as an "internet entrepreneur."

<comment><USER5> The Wikipedia page on Randi Zuckerberg also refers to her as an "internet entrepreneur."

Is this really the correct way to label her (i.e. What significant thing has she done in tech that earns her that title?)

Someone should probably edit that wiki page. But again, I wouldn't really know what to call her either — other than something like, internet marketer?

<comment><USER6> Most likely description would be "entourage member of somebody famous". Or even better "privacy advocate" and "defender of freedom of speech" - as the only thing I know from is for having made the notorious statement _I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away_.

<comment><USER7> >made the notorious statement I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away.

That would make her more of a "privacy opponent" than "privacy advocate", but that is just really a part of her job as Marketing Director at Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a Bravo Reality show. Of course they're going to sex it up. Does anyone really think the "Real Housewives" resemble real housewives? If they taped real developers in their natural habitat, it would just be a timelapse of someone sitting in front of a monitor.

<comment><USER9> One of her points, stated towards the end, says,

 _How on earth can Randi Zuckerberg — who knows how one frame of film will be taken as gospel over a thousand books, blog posts, or real interviews — sleep at night?_

People are stupid. They are going to assume the Bravo portrayal is an accurate depiction of Silicon Valley, much like how they assumed _The Social Network_ was an accurate depiction of the beginnings of Facebook. She doesn't believe it should be excused because "It's a Bravo reality show."

<comment><USER6> Most likely somebody needs to compensate for being the "underachiever" in the family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "How on earth can Randi Zuckerberg — who saw the angst over that movie by the people it affected most — sell herself out to Hollywood's desire to make Silicon Valley look like, as the pilot says, "high school"?"

Angst?

 _LIFE_ is like high school. Popularity matters. Schmoozing and getting along with people matters. Achievement matters, but less so than social skills. College is arguably somewhat more a meritocracy, but 'real life' reverts back to being more like high school than college.

I don't say that as a bad thing, but I had to do some mental adjustment once I had that realization.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hyperbole much? She is an entertainment content producer. She is producing entertainment. She is not making a documentary. And only idiots and people looking for a cheap joke really think jersey shore is an actual representation of new jersey... It's more a characterization of long island!

<comment><USER12> Or a representation of Long Island Ice Tea's perhaps! On a serious note, I just wanted to highlight your comment for it's accuracy and become others in this thread seem to be missing the point (That 'She is producing entertainment').

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's next? How about: Get 5-10 early-stage startups with decent ideas, put them in a huge house (or office building with several offices) and film them all as they make progress on their product. YC, but being filmed all the time. Judges consist of Silicon Valley bigwigs (PG, some VCs, etc.). The "winners" get funded at the end. The show's title: Series A.

No shirtless club dancing. No dumbasses.

I'm not saying this would paint a more accurate picture for viewers, but I'd definitely be interested in watching it. Call me crazy?

<comment><USER14> Bloomberg did a decent miniseries based on TechStars New York <http://www.bloomberg.com/video/75400336/>

It was a lot more serious than this Bravos show will be but they still probably manufactured some conflict to keep things engaging.

<comment><USER15> It's been claimed they did - <http://melanie.io/2011/09/30/techstars-lies- videotape/>

HN discussion @ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3132954>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Because people are people.

Because we are potentially petty, petulant, persistent.

Because fame and money motivates us differently.

So that puts us at this awkward impasse.

Either you, Sarah Lacy, have no clue and can't read people well or know the real story behind all this but decided this is an opportunity to sell yourself.

Or Randi Zuckerberg is a sellout as you said.

<comment><USER17> Sarah Lacy got her start at Techcrunch, IIRC. QED if IARC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> reposting my comment from that post

I find the show distasteful but it is as accurate a portrayal of Silicon Valley as Jersey Shore is of that particular geo/demographic. In a way, this shows you how mainstream Silicon Valley now is - instead of just being portrayed as nerds and VCs, this shows that there exists many, many flavors of people/lifestyle here in the Bay Area.

Let's be clear - this is a Bravo show, not a Ken Burns documentary. A realistic portrayal of this place would have a bunch of people staring in front of their text editors all day. Or attending meetings and whiteboarding things. Not exactly riveting television.

<comment><USER19> If anything it's going to draw more attention to things in SV, wouldn't you think? A number of people I know had only heard of the actual Jersey Shore location before the show got big, but largely have ignored the stereotype the show provides while learning a decent amount about the area on their own.

Perhaps my experience isn't an accurate depiction of the public's perception of the New Jersey coastline, but I agree that this show is an argument for how established SV has become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Manufactured controversy is a popular marketing tactic, no? If I actually had a problem with something a friend of mine was doing the last thing I'd be doing is writing an open letter about it based on a couple of 30 second promos. Unless, of course, that friend asked you to.

</comment><comment><USER21> Pendantic, but if it were an "open letter," shouldn't it be written in the second person? The body content contains two instances of the word "you," both directed to the reader; references to RZ are in the third person.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is interesting that one of the cast members is Dwight Crow, a founder of the YC company carsabi. I imagine being on a show like this could lead to quite a bit of publicity but I wonder if it is worth the distraction and likely unrealistic portrayal.

[http://sfist.com/2012/04/05/meet_the_cast_of_bravos_new_new_...](http://sfist.com/2012/04/05/meet_the_cast_of_bravos_new_new_sil.php)

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I missing something, or did the author of that screed omit telling us the name of the show that she is complaining about?

Yes, I realize (after a little research) that the show is called "Silicon Valley" and that the phrase "Silicon Valley" does occur several times in the article, but unless I missed one, those are all references to the actual Valley, not to the name of the show.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want a semi-realistic startup reality tv show to watch right now, try TechStars on Bloomberg Tv: <http://www.bloomberg.com/video/75400336/> or Start-Up Junkies: <http://www.hulu.com/start-up-junkies></comment>


Where do YC applicants host their projects? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
Quick question: what do YC applicants prefer - dedicated servers, co-location, VPS, regular hosting plans or somethings else?  Where are they being hosted at?  Are there any major hub of startup hosting?
Thanks! <comment><USER3> Taking the list of YC-funded companies from wikipedia, excluding those marked as defunct or sold, resolving www.${domain} to an IP address, and then looking that up via whois, I see:

Amazon.com (presumably EC2?) -- 2

Layered Technologies, Inc. -- 2

NoZone, Inc. -- 2

Rackspace.com, Ltd. -- 2

Software Technologies Inc. -- 2

BitPusher, LLC -- 1

Carnegie Mellon University -- 1

Columbus Network Access Point, Inc. -- 1

Global Netoptex, Inc -- 1

ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. -- 1

So it looks like YC-funded companies usually have dedicated servers, but there's no single place where they tend to congregate.

<comment><USER4> Next time try whoishostingthis.com instead of whois - quicker for knowing who's hosting them.

<comment><USER3> I could query whois for a list of IP addresses by piping the list through "xargs -n 1 whois". It would have been rather more complicated if I wanted to query a website.

EDIT: Here's the code in case anyone's curious -- note that most of it is just a list of domain names:

echo anywhere.fm adpinion.com fuzzwich.com slapvid.com versionate.com auctomatic.com buxfer.com heysan.com octopart.com socialmoth.com virtualmin.com weebly.com whitenoisenetworks.com writewith.com xobni.com iilwy.com jamglue.com scribd.com thinkature.com justin.tv audiobeta.com flagr.com inklingmarkets.com snipshot.com sproutsys.com wufoo.com clickfacts.com loopt.com | xargs -n 1 | lam -s 'www.' - | xargs -n 1 host -t a | grep 'has address' | cut -f 4 -d ' ' | xargs -n 1 whois | grep OrgName | sort | uniq -c | sort -srn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've got two boxes at The Planet, and we're planning a box at RackSpace, and probably an Accelerator from Joyent. A lot of the guys I know from YC use the following hosts and said at least a few good things about them:

Joyent/TextDrive

Rails Machine

Amazone EC2 (though I also hear a lot of reliability complaints)

Rimu

Slice

There is no major concensus on the best. I've been using The Planet and RackSpace, or the cheaper ServerBeach offering from the RackSpace folks, for many years and have never had any complaints. Service is good and reliable, prices are fair (RackSpace is a wee bit pricier, but they provide good service and reliability).

<comment><USER6> The company where I currently work just moved away from Rackspace. Their prices are high and as far as I know (I didn't deal directly with rackspace) we had interesting performance issues due to their networking setup. I wouldn't recommend them but you might have better luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will answer the hosting part of your question.

1\. get a list of all YC companies 2\. get the AS (Autonomous System) number plugin for firefox 3\. visit these YC companies to figure out where they are hosted

<comment><USER8> This method presumes that all hosting companies have an ASN. Often, this will just tell you who the connection provider(s) is (are).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have any thoughts on ServerBeach (<http://www.serverbeach.com>)? I've heard YouTube started with them.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I know for a fact that a bunch of YC companies use them. I was told so by a YC founder. So we signed up with them and so far no complaints. They are quick, and somehow they caught wind of when we launched and sent us an e-mail asking of there was anything they could do for us. It was a nice touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A little-known, fantastic host is Reflected Networks (<http://www.reflected.net>). I talked them down to an insanely cheap monthly rate for a dedicated server with 3mbps. It's so inexpensive that I'm worried Mr. CEO will fire whomever did it.. :) The service there is fantastic: Zero downtime, free support, and a quick setup. So you should shoot them an email to see what special rates you can get (much less than what they advertise on their site).

<comment><USER11> Just how cheap are we talking... less than $50 a month?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somebody please correct the title.

</comment><comment><USER12> We have two servers (for various project sites) both VPS One from RimuHosting and one from Slicehost. Both are excellent, although you pay significantly more for Rimu but they have the best service I've ever encountered with a VPS hosting solution. We also have an EC2 invite but haven't got around to trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't tell you where YC applicants host anything, but we've had a nearly flawless experience with Slicehost.

<comment><USER14> Slicehost have fantastic customer service but unfortunately had problems hosting SBCL when I tried them (SBCL is known to interact badly with bugs in some versions of Xen).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I advise anyone who is considering hosting with Layered to take backups -- frequently. Drives fail like third-world goverments over there.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am on a slicehost VPS. I think it is probably the best deal for money, in terms of memory allocation.

</comment><comment><USER4> For anyone considering a host - be sure to check out webhostingtalk.com - <USER2> will find out whether your chosen host has had issues with others. You can also find some great deals from top hosts there ...

</comment><comment><USER17> Although I am not an YC applicant (I wish I was but my co-founders will not relocate), I am pretty happy with dedicated boxes at The Planet

<comment><USER9> Apply anyway.

<comment><USER17> What is the reason to apply if I am the only co-founder ready to move? I am afraid it is not following YC model

<comment><USER3> According to pg, exceptions can be made to any rule if the rest of the application is good enough.

I applied as a sole founder who was unable to move to the bay area -- breaking the requirements far more than you -- until it turned out that I wouldn't be able to fly out for the November 3rd/4th weekend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Site5. Excellent support. They answered a question of mine 2AM on Christmas Day.

</comment><comment><USER19> We use colocation for now.

</comment><comment><USER20> Been using Voxel.net since July. No complaints.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't care what anybody says, we use GoDaddy and they're great.

(Not for heavy duty stuff, but great for low traffic stuff)

<comment><USER22> i had a hard drive die on me after 6 months in. they are cheap and decent, but if you do use them make sure you cron some auto backups. right now i have it on raid 1.

<comment><USER17> I had filesystem corrupted after 3 months or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ours is RackForce.

</comment><comment><USER24> MediaTemple anyone?

<comment><USER25> Can't recommend them.

Been with them for a month, major outage earlier this month for two days.

They seem good for blogs, or staging, but if you require reliability, go somewhere else.

<comment><USER26> I have to agree.

Their admin UI is great and their staff is really helpful; but it's been days and they still haven't resolved their issues...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> vps here. we're applicants though.</comment>


I wrote an iPhone app to remotely control my gf's vibrat... (NSFW?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2b8FzrjWMU

<comment><USER2> How are you controlling the OhMiBod while also having a phone call? I'm a little rusty on iOS AudioSessions - were you able to route the phone call audio to the iPhone speaker, while sending control audio signals through the headphone port to the OhMiBod?

<comment><AUTHOR> The OhMiBod runs off audio signals, but it doesn't require both audio channels to operate so I send the audio signal from the app through one channel (i.e. the right speaker) while the phone conversation runs through both. To have a conversation that doesn't include the clicking sound I generate to pulse the vibrator, you just listen in on the left headphone.

Now, that means the conversation is also driving the vibration, but that can be fun too. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Btw, if any HN readers want a copy, let me know your UUID (here or at vibetogether.com). Latest version also vibrates phones, so you can use it w/o an OhMiBod.</comment>


The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits - <AUTHOR> http://grantland.com/features/the-rise-of-nintendo-video-games-history/ <comment><USER2> What struck me from reading this was the amount of failure and "suck" they had to deal with before they finally had any success:

"Despite middling results from titles like Wild Gunman and Battle Shark, Yamauchi remained committed to his new vision and continued to allocate a vast amount of resources toward videogames. " ...

"Space Fever was followed by Space Launcher (underwhelming), which was followed by Space Firebird (disappointing), which was followed by a slew of unsuccessful non-space-themed games. After this string of mediocre misfires, Stone and Judy were ready to quit, and Arakawa couldn't help but reconsider his new vocation. "

...

"That foreboding was validated after the three thousand units finally arrived and Stone and Judy found that operators had little interest. Radarscope was fun at first, the consensus appeared to be, but it lacked replay value."

on and on through failure after failure they kept trying until finally, Donkey Kong.

It's a lesson: while consistent reliable and predictable success is what everyone wants to achieve, the reality is often "failure, failure, failure, failure... huge success that finally makes up for all of the previous failures".

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone interested in this topic, this is a great, great book on the rise of Nintendo:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over_(book)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over_\(book\))

<comment><USER4> I believe a copy of that book came with my Gamecube preorder, all those years ago. It's a great book, easy to read, very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though this excerpt of the "Console Wars" book is about Nintendo, according to this Wired article[1], the book focuses heavily on Sega as well, and Sega of America is the protagonist of the story.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2014/05/console-wars-book- sega/](http://www.wired.com/2014/05/console-wars-book-sega/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It appears like Nintendo acted like Apple does with apps (stringent reviews that have to meet their expectation, share of revenues, etc). Can anyone who has had software development experience with both Nintendo (back in the day) and Apple (iPhone days) juxtapose the two software distributors? (Using any pieces of anecdotal similarities you wish)

<comment><USER7> Nintendo had two intents - preventing shovelware that killed the Atari 2600, and requiring royalties as well as making publishers purchase ROM cartridges from Nintendo.

It didn't quite work. There were still quite a few downright horrible games for the NES, look at any 'Worst Nintendo Games Ever' list. Two great examples were X-Men and AD&D: Heroes of the Lance.

Also, Tengen (from Atari) released their own games with their own chips, including a copied NES lockout chip. Remember those games that came in the strange black cartridge that didn't look like other NES games, notably the first Tetris, Gauntlet, and Ms. Pacman? Those were Tengen games, and they ended up in a legal battle with Nintendo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a huge fan of Grantland and HN, love it when a Grantland piece makes it on here.

<comment><USER9> Who do you like more? Bill, Clairvoyant Bill, Jalen with Baseball Bat, Jalen with Sunglasses or plain old Jacoby?

<comment><USER8> Hmmmm, probably Jalen with Sunglasses, since Champagning and Campaigning is my favorite segment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Growing up with games from Nintendo, Sega, and bunch of old-but-goodies, sort of miss the old days. Playing Super Mario 3 on the original nintendo, then the awe of Super Mario World on SNES.. Sonic the Hedgehog's awesome CD background music...

Life was much simpler back then. You get your game featured on one of the game magazines then you hit gold. No version updates, just plain big releases. Game reviews...

</comment><comment><USER11> For an important side-note relating to Nintendo's history, have a look for the BBC4 documentary "From Russia With Love" which covered the unexpectedly interesting history of Tetris (particularly the politics and corporate machinations around its move into the west) in which Nintendo played a part.

</comment><comment><USER12> [humor] tl;dr? Cartoon version here: [http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2012/04/11/400-the- hist...](http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2012/04/11/400-the-history-of- nintendo/)

</comment><comment><USER13> tldr The real story in 8 bits: A long time ago.... it was True, then True, then False, then True, then False, then True, then False, then False.

The end.</comment>


Burnout Prevention and Recovery (the MIT stance) - <AUTHOR> http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/Random-Collected-Documents/MIT-views.html

<comment><USER2> I read this and (like most readers I suspect) smiled and enjoyed the satire, although I have to disagree with the statement "Drink more coffee" - in my day it should have been "drink more Mountain Dew".

However the article did bring up two unpleasant memories.

1\. The suicide of Fes-Mike Moore: <http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N2/moore.02n.html> <http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N3/martinez.03o.html> \-- I was living in the dorm room that was directly three floors below his - the Campus Police misread the leading "5" in his room number for a "2" and they came to my room on the night he jumped. I didn't know Fes-Mike personally but I remember seeing him on his roller blades as he came down the central stairwell. He always had a smile for everyone.

2\. Carrying a fellow student downstairs who was experiencing severe (what we suspected was) stress-induced ulcer pain to a waiting ambulance.

I can laugh at thess kinds of submissions and my experience at MIT certainly made me stronger (in fact _nothing_ in my professional life has been as hard as MIT, and I say this as someone who has almost been killed on the job more than once), but an elite education isn't something worth dying over. If you are at the breaking point, please take a step back and try to enjoy life a little. A "C" (heck, even an "F") isn't the end of the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here's a Microsoft-adapted version of the same document: [http://www.bouldertherapist.com/html/humor/MentalHealthHumor...](http://www.bouldertherapist.com/html/humor/MentalHealthHumor/burnout_prevention.htm)

I wonder which one came first.

</comment><comment><USER4> this is very accurate, even if you don't come in like this, you come out of MIT with this view.

5 years later I've never escaped the "MIT VIEW: Increase intensity. Maximum intensity = maximum productivity. If you find yourself relaxed and with your mind wandering, you are probably having a detrimental effect on the recovery rate."

I love it, but I completely recognize that I came in a person and out a machine.

<comment><USER5> Wait? Is that an honest comment? Because I go to a somewhat challenging Tech School, and am down in the trenches.

If that is indeed true, I might try and adopt some of the listed stuff, given that I already do some of these.

Please let me know!

<comment><USER4> hey-so in my interpretation the basic thesis of this document is that MIT's culture doesn't really support "burnout prevention and recovery" which rings true to me.

I never experienced burnout at MIT but yea my intuition about avoiding it is strongly warped just for having been there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having gone to MIT, gotten burned out, and gotten better... Yeah, that about sums it up.

</comment><comment><USER7> This has been passed around MIT circles for a while and is as profound and relevant for me as ever.

</comment><comment><USER8> Took me a while that this is pretty tongue-in-cheek.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's just say that I had a meeting with my boss at 7pm last night. Yes, Friday. But at least we all went for beers afterwards.</comment>


Google Actually Sells Out Of A Google Glass Model - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/google-actually-sells-out-of-a-google-glass-model/?ncid=rss

<comment><USER2> Great, more potential developers the better. Give me Dennou Coil! xD</comment>


The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing - <AUTHOR> http://www.dspguide.com/

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Scientist+and+Engineer%27s+Guide+t...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Scientist+and+Engineer%27s+Guide+to+Digital+Signal+Processing#!/story/forever/0/Scientist%20and%20Engineer's%20Guide%20to%20Digital%20Signal%20Processing)</comment>


Scaling deep learning to 10,000 cores and beyond - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.washington.edu/htbin-post/mvis/mvis?ID=1338

<comment><USER2> Link to talk given by the host on the subject. <http://vimeo.com/52332329>

</comment><comment><USER3> _However, these methods have been fundamentally limited by our computational abilities, and typically applied to small-sized problems._

Is this true? I think these kind of networks are more limited by our abilities to generate effective heuristics and ontologies. When I populate my Markov models I need states: and if I don't have any good, domain specific states, no amount of expectation matching will solve my problems. The more incorrect states the more noise I get, so it is immediately clear that simply increasing computing power is a no-go.

<comment><USER4> The idea of deep learning is to eliminate the need for domain experts to write heuristics, ontologies, feature detectors, etc. In deep learning you feed the learning system raw data and it automatically creates feature detectors to model the data. Then once you have a good set of features you can train the system to perform a specific task using those features.

As the network gets bigger and deeper the feature detectors become more abstract and capable of higher-level tasks. For example, given a bunch of images, a small network might learn to distinguish straight lines from curvy lines, while a large network might learn to distinguish humans from cats.

So if deep learning actually works, then the main constraint on the capabilities of the learning system is compute power, not the cleverness of the domain experts writing your feature detectors. The main problem becomes scaling.

<comment><USER5> It also relies on having a lot of data (unlabeled is fine for learning features).

By contrast, manually chosen heuristics assumes _you've_ seen a lot of data and you're bootstrapping the model with features deduced by your biological brain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen Depending on what the RAM/IO requirements are, that could be done with as little as $1400 worth of GA144 cores (70*144 = 10080).</comment>


France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/france-plans-5-digital-tax-as-governments-chase-internet-giants <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a remarkably easy way for governments to raise revenue without directly harming their citizens. Not all 193 sovereign countries in the world can (or would want to) implement such a tax. But, I can imagine that there are dozens of countries that are going to view this new approach to taxation as the easiest money they've ever confiscated.

</comment><comment><USER2> This was posted yesterday with a great discussion going....

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19294213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19294213)</comment>


AT&T Cracking Down on Free Tethering via Jailbroken iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://modmyi.com/forums/iphone-news/755094-t-cracking-down-mywi-tethering.html <comment><USER2> I'm always surprised that phone companies in America can get away with charging extra for _how_ you use your mobile's internet access as opposed to _how much_ or _what_ you use it for.

Seems like such a false boundary to segment the market on.

<comment><USER3> What a land of contradictions - on the one hand you have world's best companies like Apple and Google and on the other, these awful, badly run, penny wise pound foolish crapfests like AT&T.

I actually just got back from a month in the US, mostly in LA, staying around west hollywood. The phone coverage was just _bullshit_ and I'm not exaggerating. I was constantly amazed how I'd be standing outside, on Sunset Blvd, with 1 bar of coverage or nothing at all - I'd have to be deep in a basement or in an obscure train tunnel to get that in Sydney. I'm amazed that anyone can use this tethering at all, I was lucky to be able to check my e-mail.

Just one of those crazy things ..

<comment><USER4> That really depends on the provider. Verizon seems to have pretty comprehensive coverage. There were some very public horror stories about their customer service a few years ago, though, which could turn out to be a downside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironic that many of the folks here (myself included) are in the business of charging extra for packets of data by building SaaS. Our goal is to "commoditize our complements:" We want to extract all the value from the chain and have the hardware vendor, the OS vendor, the browser vendor, and the carriers all become commodities surviving on a tiny margin on top of their costs and slitting each other's throats.

It seems AT&T want to charge more for packets that have more value. Or putting it in another way, they're performing a kind of price discrimination. All things we like to do, we just don't want them done to us :-)

<comment><USER6> I agree - phone companies must intercept your phone calls and your internet traffic and charge extra money when you use it for business. Excellent suggestion, thank you!

<comment><USER5> Hahaha. If only you knew... In Canada at least, they charge more for a business landline with unlimited local calls than they charge for a residential landline with unlimited local calls.

Sounds exactly like what you suggest :-)

<comment><USER6> It is same in many other countries too, just because business phones are used much more often. It also hard to reuse such phone number, which is listed in many places: it will be "hot" for years.

Now, it is time to validate your home landline phone. Are you really doing no business over it? ;-)

<comment><USER5> I suggest that the cost to provide the service is either exactly the same thanks to amortization of equipment or only marginally higher for a small business with a single line.

Everything else is just the way they create price discrimination and exploit the customers' perception of value, much the same way that Microsoft have sixty-three jillion versions of Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a shame that they are finally cracking down on MyWii and the other jail broken tethering applications. Those applications, at least for me, helped to make the iPhone usable while AT&T dragged their feet on enabling proper tethering for several years. Now that Verizon is finally putting pressure on their (lack of) business model, we get stuck with an overpriced official solution instead.

Hopefully Verizon won't pull a similar move: they seem to be largely ignoring the unofficial tethering solutions for Android phones.

</comment><comment><USER8> How do we suspect AT&T are able to determine when a device is being used to tether?

<comment><AUTHOR> One reddit user suspects that they are looking for TTL's on packets that do not match what iOS uses. I would love for somebody more knowledgeable about TCP/IP on HN to evaluate the likelihood of this...

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/g62wv/i_woke_up_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/g62wv/i_woke_up_this_morning_to_this_lovely_email_from/c1l6ixe)

If this is the case, user agent spoofing will _not_ work, and it would be quite a bit of hackery to trick iOS' IP stack into spoofing TTL's for packets from tethered devices.

<comment><USER9> hmm, apart from ttl, you can use other tcp fields e.g. windows, tcp-options, packet-length etc. then, from a captured trace run passive os fingerprinting to find out with reasonable certainty the device generating the traffic.

these can/may be manipulated via ip-tables, but then you still have a huge data-volume to account for...

<comment><USER10> Can iPhone just route all your traffic through some encrypted VPN? I've heard there's a port of OpenVPN for iOS — that should be sufficient.

At least you'll be sure telco guys are not inspecting your packets by any means, be it "teethering detection", blocking some kind of traffic, or something more malicious, like profiling your Google searches. (Timing analysis may still apply.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if they can also detect proxies (e.g., <http://code.google.com/p/iphone-socks-proxy/> )

</comment><comment><USER12> Bleh. I wish the system wasn't so broken. A straight up metered usage billing system would be fine, as long as the pricing was fair (which for some reason no company can get it in their head to try). With that sort of system there's then no reason to charge extra or to try to inhibit tethering.

</comment><comment><USER13> The interesting part of the email was where they said they would enroll you automatically into the DataPro plan. Can they really change your contract without your permission? Would this be grounds of canceling your contract for free? I know that when the iPhone first came out, I was on Sprint, and people would watch for when they would change their contracts and you were allowed to cancel your contract free of charge.

<comment><USER14> This is covered in section 1.3 of AT&T's Wireless Customer Agreement: [http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone- service/legal/index.j...](http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone- service/legal/index.jsp?q_termsKey=wirelessCustomerAgreement&q_termsName=Wireless+Customer+Agreement&subSection=canAttChangeMyTermsRates&q_subTitle=Can%20AT%26T%20Change%20My%20Terms%20And%20Rates%3F)

Basically, being able to get out of your contract without paying an ETF is only possible if they change the price of services to which you subscribe. Since tethering would not be a part of the data plans of the affected iPhone users, this would not apply.

<comment><USER15> Also, after being enrolled you'd be able to call and/or log in to your account and simply have the tethering option removed without invoking the ETF...

<comment><USER16> ... but by then, you'd be forever bumped off the unlimited data plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> T-Mobile ([http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=845532&...](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=845532&mode=linear)) and Orange/SFR in France (though it never happened to me yet) have been sending the same type of messages after User Agent detection...

User Agent spoofing should be added to MyWi/PDANet to avoid this!

</comment><comment><USER18> Got tired of AT&T's BS with iPhone plans, bought a Samsung Captivate, flashed it with Phoenix ROM and now have free tethering.</comment>


Defining Public Interest on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/publicinterest.html <comment><USER2> >We're not going to delete it but we're going to algorithmically prevent discovery

Tech monoliths like facebook, google, and twitter are starting to show very obvious political biases.

If we push them to be equitable to differing opinions, they basically get to continue enforcing their own political biases because we can only ever do blackbox testing. God knows what the backend is doing.

If we push them to own their biases try to get more platforms representing differing political opinions, we create admitted echo chambers and further polarize a political climate (in the USA) where we're already arguing whether communists or nazis are trying to destroy the country.

This is a complex problem without an easy solution but it's not unreasonable to bet twitter is going to abuse this new feature to either allow people they like to blatantly violate the rules (without actually algorithmically demoting the tweets, people will ignore the notice) or effectively shadowban people they don't like without explaining why a tweet doesn't follow the ToS until the subject matter is out of the news cycle.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand:

If your political stance violates the TOS that is enforced on non-public offical users, is it really "political bias"? Maybe you should rethink your politics if bullying, inciting violence, and inciting hate speech is part of your position.

<comment><USER4> I've seen far more on the left calling for bullying, inciting violence, and inciting hate than the right.

<comment><USER5> Oh good, I'm not alone in seeing this trend. The left seems to have a more "if you're not with us you're against us" stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Critical. I applaud them taking leadership here. I feel like the climate of the internet has us in a nasty quagmire where these companies are find themselves in a "damned if they don't but perhaps double-damned if they do" kind of impasse. So kudos to twitter for actually trying.

I really hope they create a system whereby the public can audit their decisions and deliberations.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one big reason Twitter hasn't been (and may not be) acquired. Who needs this headache and expense?

This isn't as disturbing as Vimeo's takedown of Project Veritas, or the bias exposed in their video, but the trend is seriously alarming.

<comment><USER8> Project Veritas is nonsense. Nothing they have ever reported has been factual. Good on them for removing it.

<comment><USER9> I never understood the blind obedience towards Google vs. pretty much every other tech company. Is it historical?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently on Twitter, and not appear in [...] Timeline when switched to Top Tweets

Oh good, another reason to always sort chronologically (until Twitter removes the ability to do so)

</comment><comment><USER11> Why the special treatment for politicians? I could imagine Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos saying something edgy and of similar significance.

<comment><USER12> Elon already has the SEC getting on him for his tweets, I imagine they would go after Bezos too. Both would face shareholder lawsuits for anything sufficiently controversial, so it probably doesn't need to be as much of a priority for Twitter.

<comment><USER13> Okay what about celebrities? Charlie Sheen has tweeted some far out stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently on Twitter, and not appear in:

>Safe search >Timeline when switched to Top Tweets >Live events pages >Recommended Tweet push notifications >Notifications tab >Explore

Getting out in front of the 2020 election, I see. Better conform to Twitter's code of conduct if you want to maximize reach!

Edit: Good time to get to know who will be making the decisions on throttling exposure- do not cross these groups! [https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety- partners.html](https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html)

<comment><USER14> Do you have a better solution? I am honestly thinking on how would I solve the problem where I own a popular social network or forum/subreddit, I want to prevent it to become a shit place, so I would like to put some rules like HN and other communities have , how can I prevent the situation where people will call me as censoring them on my own community? My only solution would be to ban political discussion completely and implement some hard punishment for people that don't respect the community rules of conduct even banning the bad actors.

<comment><USER12> I actually think it's a great compromise, but I do wish users could see which Trust and Safety partner determined each violation on a tweet by tweet basis.

I.e. Twitter in partnership with [GLAAD; ADL; etc] determined this tweet contained [violation]. Then we could quantify, drill down and get some great insights.

<comment><USER5> That's an excellent idea, actually. Transparency is key in these situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm confused. What's an example of a tweet from a government official which breaks the rules but deserves to be kept up?

<comment><USER16> Threatening violence is against Twitter's rules and yet world leaders have threatened war on Twitter. Those tweets deserve to stay up because they have public value, but Twitter needs some concrete policy on why a world leader saying they will "obliterate Iran" is different than a random person saying they will assault another random person. I am not sure this policy is a good answer to that, but they needed to do something.

<comment><USER17> > a world leader saying they will "obliterate Iran"

It's also worth noting that saying they _would_ "obliterate Iran" under a specific set of circumstances is completely different from saying they _will_ "obliterate Iran".

One is an (admittedly blunt) form of diplomatic and political threat, the other is a statement deliberately taken out of context to make someone look worse than they already do.

<comment><USER16> I disagree. One of the primary aspects of many threats is defining the specific criteria that would lead to violence. The point of a threat is usually not to actually inflict the violence but instead to use that possibility of violence as a motivation for changing behavior. It is roughly equivalent to preemptive terrorism. I therefore don't see how putting qualifications on the threat of violence should be enough to circumvent the rules. I would still expect to get in trouble for saying "I will kill you if you ever state that political opinion again" even though the threatened party could easily avoid any fear of violence by simply refraining from stating that opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When a offensive twit with 1 million plus followers that gets news about why it was not moderated, this will shut up those high horse talkers.

</comment><comment><USER2> >We're not going to delete it but we're going to algorithmically prevent discovery

Tech monoliths like facebook, google, and twitter are starting to show very obvious political biases.

If we push them to be equitable to differing opinions, they basically get to continue enforcing their own political biases because we can only ever do blackbox testing. God knows what the backend is doing.

If we push them to own their biases try to get more platforms representing differing political opinions, we create admitted echo chambers and further polarize a political climate (in the USA) where we're already arguing whether communists or nazis are trying to destroy the country.

This is a complex problem without an easy solution but it's not unreasonable to bet twitter is going to abuse this new feature to either allow people they like to blatantly violate the rules (without actually algorithmically demoting the tweets, people will ignore the notice) or effectively shadowban people they don't like without explaining why a tweet doesn't follow the ToS until the subject matter is out of the news cycle.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1 point by creaghpatr 1 minute ago | parent | edit | delete [-] | on: Twitter adds labels for tweets that break its rule...

>When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently on Twitter, and not appear in: >Safe search >Timeline when switched to Top Tweets >Live events pages >Recommended Tweet push notifications >Notifications tab >Explore

Getting out in front of the 2020 election, I see. Better conform to Twitter's code of conduct if you want to maximize reach!

Good time to get to know who will be making the decisions on throttling exposure- do not cross these groups! [https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety- partners.html](https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html)

<comment><USER19> Please don't cross-post like this. Repetition lowers the signal/noise ratio. Also, it makes merging the threads a nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Migrate to an alternative app, such as Parler, ASAP.

<comment><USER21> Why does this decision change anything? They've been allowing rule-breaking material from politicians for a while, they just now let the user know and prevent the rule-breaking content from spreading.

<comment><USER20> I guess it shouldn't change when one migrates off of Twitter: the action should be undertaken regardless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the past few years, Big Tech has gone full Orwellian. I fear for our future.

<comment><USER23> This is hardly a serious example of being Orwellian. Out of all the good examples, this isn't one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> No company should be attempting to define what's in public interest. Especially not Twitter. There's huge information asymmetry not to mention that they've already demonstrated themselves as being not even remotely politically neutral.</comment>


Show HN: Image Sniffer at commentto, coded in 2 days - <AUTHOR> http://commentto.com/?code=hackernews

<comment><AUTHOR> This new Image Sniffer feature at commentto is in private beta at this time, but with the link provided, you can take part in it. 50 invitations.

I think it's pretty cool, because you just select the images in the popup on the page you are viewing, and the result is a nice looking excerpt such as this one: <http://commentto.com/excerpt/14660>

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like in action (different excerpt): [http://commentto.com/images/Screenshots/_privateBetaPopup.pn...](http://commentto.com/images/Screenshots/_privateBetaPopup.png) The first iPad image is selected.

I think commentto has potential, because it helps people save online information quickly and easily.

Please do provide feedback, as that will help me make this product more robust. Thanks!</comment>


Bitcoin passes 600 - <AUTHOR> http://bitcointicker.co/

<comment><USER2> Do these numbers really mean anything? Not being sarcastic, this is a legitimate question. When people talk about Bitcoin it sounds like unicorns. Can you really just buy & sell & turn a profit? How does a currency inflate so much in a short period of time?

I wish I could hear an economist's analysis rather than the inevitable chorus of "I told you so, I'm a jillionaire now!" from Bitcoin advocates.

<comment><USER3> Limited supply, excess demand.

Creates an awkward situation where no one will pay pizza with bitcoins for awhile.

<comment><USER2> Yeah but where is all this demand coming from? Do people really think it will just keep going up without a crash?

Personally I wouldn't pay $600 for something that someone paid $5 for in recent memory. It's like buying a stock during the peak of a bubble that's about to burst.

<comment><USER4> Check the other article published on HN "why the value of bitcoin is skyrocketing". The more people thing there is value in Bitcoin, the more it's going to go up. I don't think the value of Bitcoin is a bubble, rather a bet on the position of this currency in the future. A very different thing.

<comment><USER3> I think it's just going through the technology curve. It jumped out of containment from the early adopters and now it's hitting the mainstream.

To an average guy that just heard about some online investment opportunity where you put in $500 now and you get $100 more in a few days is a dream come true.

Here's the pivotal point: there's now energy, momentum, and attention.

The best thing you can do is establish domain expertise and market understanding and make bitcoin work.

Or else it's going to be the next betamax. Shit, that was expensive too.

<comment><USER4> I don't there it's anywhere near mainstream yet. I know a number of my friends who follow economic newspapers regularly and who have yet to have paid serious attention to Bitcoin. It's still very much a niche, at least in the circles I know of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


This French tech school has no teachers, no books, no tuition - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/13/this-french-tech-school-has-no-teachers-no-books-no-tuition-and-it-could-change-everything/?hn=true <comment><USER2> I'm a student at Epitech, 42 it's a fork of Epitech. They have almost the same program. I love the school methodology it teaches you that grades are not important and that learning is your responsability. I think the conventional system teaches students to be insecure persons that are always looking for validation from authority figures.

In this type of system you learn how to search knowledge it changes the pasive role of the student into an active role. Also you learn that healping others and teaching them is good for everyone and never a waste of time. I think the school works really well and one would need to measure the succes of their students in the happiness and sense of acomplishment they have.

The school is not a factory producing identical products. It's a human journey of knowledge seeking and personal developement and everyone developes diferently. At times it's very intensive and people that are not really passionate and motivated drop out.

As an example of what we do this year the first project we worked on was to recode the malloc function in c. To do this we have some videos explaining the basics as well as some introductory excercises. After some research i found that the projects at harvard cs61 are very similar to what we will be doing in the unix module so i used the book they recomend there Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. I read the relevant section and afterwards i coded a lovely implemenation of malloc. I finished in time the project. Some times it is more dificult, for example for the assambler module i found that it is more dificult to find good explanations online. But this time another student explained some key things and afterwards i was coding in intel assembly.

The most dificult information to come by is with respect to parsing and compiler theory or coding in Ocaml. Sometimes i think that if i had a teacher which was an expert in the field this sort of thing would be easy. But the truth is that learning is a personal journey and no one will solve it for us. Education needs to evolve to generate mature people that study and learn because they find that doing so fulfils them and not because they are searching for validation or an external reward waiting for someone to clasify and rank them. Clasification and ranks are subjective and are only means and not ends.

<comment><USER3> I like your description of your journey through school but your anecdote is a bit odd:

> As an example of what we do this year the first project we worked on was to > recode the malloc function in c [...] after some research i found that the > projects at harvard cs61 are very similar [...] so i used the book they > recomend there Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. I read the > relevant section

So you used the materials put together by the teacher responsible of CS61 at Harvard, and you read the book recommended to the class

You say Epitech and 42 are similar and it describe 42 as: "This French tech school has no teachers, no books, no tuition"

Yet to succeed in that case you used the Harvard teacher information(maybe some lecture notes, slides?) and read a book.(borrowed from the library? or 'found' a pdf online)

Also on a side note: you had to be able to read and understand that book so your English level had to be at a good working level, level that you do not really have when you're straight out of French high school, does 42 expect their students to be proficient in English?

<comment><USER4> > This French tech school has no teachers [...] Yet to succeed in that case > you used the Harvard teacher information

I don't think anyone imagines that human beings can educate themselves into pushing the state-of-the-art in technology, especially in the XXI-th century, without benefiting from actively transmitted knowledge from former generations.

What's disrupted by 42 isn't the concept of mature people helping younger ones acquire knowledge and later expand it; it's the school setup, its organisation around academic authority, its mass production mentality (use exams to filter uniform kids--socially and intellectually--as input, so that you produce normalized batches graduates as output, through a highly scalable and repeatable process). The teacher's knowledge, and his ability to condense it into a synthetic form (here a book), remains as valuable as before, if not more. Teachers currently have to use the Ivy league bureaucracy in order to turn those skills into a livelihood, but that can be changed.

Schools destroy kids' curiosity and self-confidence, although those are the best individual learning drivers. That's not (only) willful sabotage: the problem is, those drivers are well suited for tailor-made education, but they're considered unmanageable to handle batches of hundreds or thousands of kids. What 42 questions is: can't we claim those drivers back, now that Internet has deeply altered how humans can interact? I'm thrilled to see the answers they come up with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's a great initiative! It might work, it might fail, but at least it is trying! I hope they will manage to produce well rounded graduates, and not just monkey coders.

> France already has a reputation for creating great engineers (in software as > well as in many other fields).

Engineering schools[1] however have a lot of teachers, students have more than 35 hours of class a week. The tuitions are already very low compared to US schools (and there is already no books). Their process is a lot different from what École 42 tries to do.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles#List_of_gra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles#List_of_graduate_engineering_schools_.28grandes_.C3.A9coles_d.27ing.C3.A9nieurs.29)

<comment><USER5> In my opinion the goal (as with Epita/Epitech) is to produce monkey coders. What is at least sure, is that these school give a very limited background in cs theory, which is very difficult to overcome to go beyond the monkey coder stage.

Because of the shortage of coders, big french consulting companies (Atos, Cap Gemini, ...) hire since decades graduates from every domain more or less related to science/technology and give them a six months training (in the best case) before sending them to the clients.

So I'm not that surprised that such a school will be successful as long there is a coder shortage. When the next bubble blows, these graduates will probably be the first to be layed off.

<comment><USER6> I was graduated from Epitech and it's right the background in cs theory is very poor but the goal isn't to create monkey coders.

The goal of this school and by extension of 42 (the school mentioned in the OP link) is to create real hackers, people able to learn by themselves. Most of the projects are coding projects right but it's oriented in a way that forces you to learn all along the way if you want to succeed. Learn from internet, books or your peers. RTFM is the motto of the school.

You'd be surprised by what the students are able to achieve.

If that matters some Epitech students work in very successful companies (fb, twitter, google or microsoft) and the Docker founders were in Epitech.

<comment><USER7> I come from a French grande ecole but from my experience, I prefer people coming out of Supinfo and Epita/Epitech than people fresh out of a French Grande Ecole.

The problem of most people coming out of grande ecoles is that they lack experience, after a few years on the job, they can become great, but newly graduated engineers from Grand Ecoles are not very efficient at the beginning on average.

On the other hand, I've seen great candidates from Supinfo and Epitech who learned a lot of the CS theory on the side by themselves and were really good...

I think learning CS Theory without a good practical background is actually wasted a bit and that more Grandes Ecoles should try to get students to have more practical experiences which would help them connect the theory to actual situations they've had.

<comment><USER8> Did you see a difference in ability to abstract and or learning speed ?

<comment><USER7> No I didn't, but then I do have to say it's not a huge sample size (6 people altogether 3 from Grande Ecoles, 2 from Supinfo, 1 EPITA) but the effect of lack of actual practical experience and slowness due to that was flagrant for the Grandes Ecoles.

It was for Rails web application which I have to say requires somewhat less pure CS theory (although it is very useful to reason with).

<comment><USER8> Fair enough, that said I feel it's a waste of resources to allocate someone from a 'Grande Ecole' to low level things like a rail app.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say either that a Rails app is low level. Developing a rails app that can handle really high level of traffic does need a lot of specialized and deep knowledge.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough, I was too quick to judge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Yet École 42 is harder to get into than Harvard

If you select the very best few, you could get them into an empty barn, or have them walk the Appalachian Trail or whatever and the "school" will have great success measured by what the smart motivated students accomplished.

<comment><USER10> Actually I don't think it's harder to get into than Harvard. They have many, many applicants because they don't put any restriction. You can apply even if you didn't go to high school.

Also, they have no tuition but neither do the public universities in France ("Grandes Écoles"), and the most selective and prestigious schools are public. So while the "no tuition" thing is impressive for a private school and may sound like a dream for Americans, it's not really rare in France considering the choice you have with public schools.

Finally, not really related to the way they teach there, but here's the director (same guy in the picture on the article) spanking a girl in a classroom during off-hours (nsfw). [http://www.19h59.com/WTF/10238_Le- directeur-de-lecole-42-don...](http://www.19h59.com/WTF/10238_Le-directeur-de- lecole-42-donne-des-fessees-une-fille)

<comment><USER11> What's the deal with the spanking story? Is that part of some private sexual education tutoring? I guess only in France somebody is able to keep his job after something like that.

<comment><USER12> It's no big deal, the girl was not a student. It's just the director thinking he's at home in the school. We 42 students are a little bit pissed off (we fear some misinformed parents forbid their kid to attend the school because of this), but mostly wildly amused by this story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title is misleading.

As koolkat said, 42 is a fork of Epitech. In those schools, programming is taught by projects, and supervised by teaching assistants. The teaching assistants are older students selected by their CS knowledge and their human abilities.

This method is preferred by the school because a TA costs less than a real teacher ; and preferred by students because the TA have a closer relationship with them and have a better understanding of the projects (they coded this project 1 or 2 years before).

Personally, I was head of the teaching assistants in EPITA for 1 year. EPITA follows the same principles of projects and teaching assistants. We were a team of 30 students and lead the projects for approx. 300 students.

<comment><USER14> If you or anyone can suggest a less misleading title, we can change it.

<comment><USER13> It should be a bit more nuanced but I don't have a better suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it is fantastic to make many programming hours during your education.

However, I am wondering if these students would learn the computer science fundamentals which are usually found in more or less dry books. Programming analysis, logic, fundamentals of programming language implementation etcetera. You can't say: look on the internet and find the relevant papers in all those fields and synthesize the theory by yourselves. That would be highly inefficient, a problem we tackle with education. If you make the comparison to Harvard you aim for more than educating people to become good/ exceptionally effective developers in my understanding.

<comment><USER16> You're right, they don't ( i've interviewed people from the epitech, which was created by the same people). That's the one big shortcoming of the curriculum. They're claiming to teach the next zuckerberg or page, but they forgot that those two people have a strong general scientific background.

Yet, they do create people that are truely amazing at coding.

<comment><USER17> zuckerberg doesn't have any relevant computer science or non-basic programming skills (page has ~4 years more relevant computer science background that motivated google.com algorithm), and 99.99% of people in any of these schools are not going be the next zuck or page. facebook was one of dozens of social networks that were poppping up in the 2000s, and its success had more to do with investor and hiring connections then anything special about the original product.

For both zuck and page, their uncommon technical accomplishments came from people they hired: a small army of very-well-educated engineers with traditional education.

<comment><USER8> How was Page and Brin paper on web indexing by graph connectivity received back in the days ? I get that being PhD students, paper reference numbers may be a simple thing to imagine and realize. But it was still a lot better than the technical foundation of common web search at that point. I think I remember only altavista used crawlers + index, and may not have ideas like page connectivity to sort results, while other websites being only hand collected directories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (French Engineer inside)

The project looks awesome obviously. What you need to know out of the context with it's director (Xavier Niel), is the guy is an ace of communication.

Looking a little more into details and feedbacks from people who did the school, it's a VERY different story. I would highly doubt anything that comes to the communication about 42.

Probably the vision is achievable, I'm not sure it is by this school.

<comment><USER19> > Looking a little more into details and feedbacks from people who did the > school, it's a VERY different story.

I'm curious to know where are those people who came out of42. The school opened like 4 years ago right? So the first graduates must have been last year.

If you have any stories to share I'm curious :)

<comment><USER20> > If you have any stories to share I'm curious :)

I did 42 for 1 year. Now I'm working as sysadmin.

During the first year, we had projets with limited time (depends on the difficulty, from 1 to 6 weeks). We had 2/3 projets at the same time.

This school is kinda like Epitech. The staff is composed by students (I was one of them, I joined them after 3/4 month of learning at 42) and people who came from Epitech (sysadmins, 'teachers', web dev). Yes, there is a kind of 'teachers'. They create the first videos, the subjects (mostly taken from Epitech too :))

But this year, there was a big change. Now student can create subjects, videos. The projects are not limited in time. We are not working for 100hours/week, but a lot of people are at school for more than 50hours/week. This depends on their faculty to learn and their motivation.

But...

There is some bad points for 42.

There is no labs. There is no books. There is no English class (as you can see with my poor english :) ), no math class, no French class (and a lot of people really need it....). When you see people reading the man pages in french, you feel sad for them. Whe you see people not able to do some math, you feel sad for them too. And, seriously, a library or some labs for the students can be a good thing.

42 is a cool thing for people who have not the 'baccalauréat'. I dont have this degree but thanks 42, now I have a great job. If I had this degree, my choice for a school might be something like ENSIMAG / ENSEIRB, but definitly not Epita / Epitech.

Btw.

> In fact, 40 percent of École 42's students haven't finished high school. > Others have graduated from Stanford or MIT or other prestigious > institutions.

Why someone from a prestigious school would like to come to 42 ?

<comment><USER21> Why having an english or french class when the school is actually paying so we can follow online course on a website like babel??? (don't remember the name). Truth is some people are lazy and don't want to bother learning another language.

<comment><USER20> It's optional. It does not give credits/point/xp whatever if you do it. So they don't go on it. Sometimes they may not know the existence of this thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once tried to find interns for my startup at Epitech (42 is a copy of Epitech). Their level in mathematics was abysmal. I mean they didn't even understand how to use basic trigonometric functions. There is a very good reason if the best engineering schools in France only admit students after a 2 years curriculum of pure math/physics/chemistry.

<comment><USER23> I have quite a few friends in Paris who have also told me that 42 is good at teaching most standard CS concepts but they were definitely not a good choice for "mathematical" projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nothing revolutionary at all, its manager (Nicolas Sadirac) had created EPITECH in 1999 (I did this school). The program is _exactly_ the same. The only things which change is that Ecole 42 is free and takes only the 3 firsts years of EPITECH instead of 5.

<comment><USER25> Doesn't prove anything but Google Paris organized a programming contest last month and 42 along with all Epitech perform very poorly

[https://sites.google.com/site/hashcode2015/results](https://sites.google.com/site/hashcode2015/results)

<comment><USER26> Some of the top schools on this list only let in people who are already extremely good _before_ they even get in the school (École normale supérieure for example), 42 accepts almost anyone. If people getting into a school are already very good before they get in, how do you know they got better thanks to the school? They would probably have scored very high at any school.

I think, if you consider that the job of a school is to educate people, then if 42 can turn someone with little education into an average to great programmer, that's a great accomplishment. In comparison, Ecole normale sup turns extremely bright and knowledgeable people into great programmers, not such a great accomplishment IMO.

<comment><USER25> > 42 accepts almost anyone

Well, that's not what the article says.

"Last year, 70,000 people attempted the online qualification test. ... In the end, 890 students were selected for the school's inaugural class"

But I agree that it's difficult to judge the quality of formation considering that the student populations are different. But still, I don't see how how throwing programming challenges at CS beginners with no supervision can be better than university professors.

<comment><USER27> The "Ecole normal superieur" of the Ulm Street takes only 11 students in CS. So yes, in comparison, 42 accepts anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The story that Xavier Niel (school founder) is trying to tell is that there are many bright students that didn't fit in the traditional/oldish education system, but they could reach their full potential in this new school.

I don't buy it. First, there's a large panel of CS formations in France, most of them virtually free. It goes from highly selective schools "grandes écoles", to universities or undergraduate programs that anyone with a high- school diploma can attend. There's room for many different student profiles there.

Then, I don't see why it would be such a progress to get rid of the teachers and the books, are they that bad that they prevent the students from improving?

> The students are given little direction about how to solve the problems, so > they have to turn to each other — and to the Internet — to figure out the > solutions.

Usually, this is what professors do when they are too lazy to cook up a real project.

<comment><USER28> Your comment made me realize that for instance at ENS (one of the French topmost Grande École) we had professors but the courses were focusing on theory, and for example there is no courses on a programming languages (there _is_ a compiler / programming language course, but it is focused on the theoretical aspects of things, what I mean is that there is no C or C++ or Python course, you are just supposed to pick it up yourself if you need it).

Meanwhile, we also had projects that we had to figure out by ourselves. For instance in the first semester of the first year, there is a course that explains theoretical stuffs that are supposed to have a relation with hardware (like 2-adic numbers [1]). The project for this course consists in programming a watch that displays time. But we have to program the watch in an assembly language that we have designed ourselves. And that asm has to execute on a processor that we have designed ourselves. And we have to write the processor code in a hardware/netlist language that we have to design ourselves. And we have to write ourselves the interpreter we will use for that netlist language.

That was what we were told to do, with no additional instructions. Some students learned C by themselves for that, some other C++, some other OCaml… And all of them learned or reinvented how to design memories, or a CPU (for instance, me and a friend decided to invent a single-instruction processor, just for the fun, we got it working but it was rather slow compared to other who decided for instance to learn how to implement a simplified MIPS).

All this to say that there is absolutely no incompatibility between having professors and teaching (partly) by projects.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-adic_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-adic_number)

<comment><USER27> >Your comment made me realize that for instance at ENS (one of the French topmost Grande École) we had professors but the courses were focusing on theory, and for example there is no courses on a programming languages (there is a compiler / programming language course, but it is focused on the theoretical aspects of things, what I mean is that there is no C or C++ or Python course, you are just supposed to pick it up yourself if you need it).

The ENS is a special case, as it does not wish to form engineers, but researchers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a fantastic initiative, and like a lot of businesses built by Xavier Niel, I hope it leads to positive changes in the industry.

This said, what I would be worried about with this system is how long it will take for the employment market to adapt to this/those schools. When it comes to jobs, French companies, especially large ones, have a really strong bias towards applicants from well known and somewhat elitist public schools, no matter how efficient those might actually be at their jobs.

Unlike the US, France doesn't really have a strong and major software industry competing for raw programming talent, so developers have nowhere near the salary, status, or lifestyle they could expect in places like SV or NY. Very few companies have a real incentive to hire a great programmer over a good one, which might reduce the efficiency of a school that focuses on training very good developers without giving them the access to the prestige of the (also free) traditional public schools.

It will be interesting to see how salaries and career paths available to programmers trained at École 42 will compare with those hired after they graduate from École Centrale Paris.

Nevertheless, I look forward to hire from this talent pool.

<comment><USER25> > French companies, especially large ones, have a really strong bias towards > applicants from well known and somewhat elitist public schools,

Not only French companies, but also banks, hedge funds, companies like Google and so on...

I was saying that in an other comment, but recently Google Paris organized a programming contest. All teams in the top ten came from top schools (mainly ENS, but also ECP and X) whereas 42 performed extremely poorly.

There's a reason why employers are biased towards elite schools.

<comment><USER26> 42 performed poorly because it's only been in existence for a year so they have no graduates yet. Only people who've been learning for a year. Time will tell if this school will produce great coders.

<comment><USER28> The people participating in the Google hashcode contest for any school do not have graduated from that school yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> FWIW I have heard terrible things from people studying there. While it looks good on paper, the sad reality is that it's basically a code monkey factory. Also, I don't really think that this kind of trade school are relevant in France where access to education is low.

</comment><comment><USER31> Seems like another initiative to disrupt the traditional model <good university> -> <good job>, after the MOOCs and soon Star Fighter.

I think it's a good thing to disrupt prestigious universities that hire on credentials, but France is not exactly the country for that since education is mostly free and admissions (at least in engineering schools) tries to be more meritocratic.

EDIT: disclaimer: I did an engineering school in France.

</comment><comment><USER32> It sounds very novel and interesting, but for me for example I know I need _some_ structure to learn something. It doesn't have to be a formal university degree structure, but some kind of arrangement of material, mentorship, progress tracking, experience sharing, feedback, etc. is necessary for me.

I kind of doubt that giving a person with no programming/CS experience Google and a task like "write a concurrent distributed high-performance database system" would lead to a good outcome. There is a lot of trade lore, experience, knowledge of what works and what doesn't, etc. which is better passed by a teacher in an carefully constructed narrative than by random discovery by an uninitiated person.

But it is interesting to see what comes out of it, maybe they prove me wrong.

<comment><USER33> "some kind of arrangement of material, mentorship, progress tracking, experience sharing, feedback"

There is (more or less) all that in 42, thanks to the "peer to peer" approach.

<comment><USER32> Mentorship from peers may lead to a "blind leading the blind" situation. I'd prefer some experience/knowledge transfer involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> ITT: French people busy scornfully labelling technically proficient Epitech/42 programmers as "code monkeys" (just ctrl-f for monkey). Meanwhile hackers in the US are too busy building things to care what other people call them. Makes me glad I moved over.

<comment><USER35> It's weird, Ive worked with a few people from Epitech. They say the same thing about software engineering in France, but they are some of the best developers I've had the privilege to work with. If it drives them to work over here, then glad to have 'em!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I did the online tests (which were pretty difficult, a lot of logic), and I was admitted to get in to do some additional testing.

It's in Paris, and the cost of living there is astronomic. Thanks but no thanks.

On top of that, what's the point of taking the smartest young individuals and teaching them how to be engineers ? It's elitist. I agree that the fact that it being free is great, but to me, those students would have been great programmers without that school.

It's easy teaching kids who already know almost everything.

<comment><USER21> Not the smartest, those who are born2code. The selection is here to separate those who can deal with the teaching system of the school from those who can't. The cool part is that there is no other requirements, you don't have to pay 8k per year for the school like students of other schools have to, and you get better results than public schools.

The only programming experience i had before 42 was some html/css (far from knowing everything), i could barely do a static website (and i'm not young either, i am 27years old), there is no way i would have learn so much (c, php/js/mysql, assembler, ruby on rails, using docker) all by myself with no guidance at all and absolutly no idea where to start. Being in 42 gives us the motivation, alone at home with a slower learning, not so easy.

Yes living in paris is expensive, but if you live in the suburb, maybe part- time work for some people (no deadlines means you can actually work if you want or need it), you can manage it, it's just 3years, with a 6months internship during the first year (you can be paid) and a third year with possible sandwich course if you need it.

<comment><USER36> I won't live in paris ever again, sorry.

As to learning how to code, I bought a C++ book, and I learned the basics of C by myself, but never really coded anything until I got into some french BTS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone knows where to find some sample projects from this school ?

<comment><USER38> [http://wolf3d42.tumblr.com/](http://wolf3d42.tumblr.com/) [http://raytracer42.tumblr.com/](http://raytracer42.tumblr.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> hey, i'm a student of 42, would like to clarify a few things. About the teaching assistants : we do have a few students helping the pedago team, but they aren't TA, they are in the "bocal" to help the team in place to create new projetcs, maintain the school servers and the intranet, that sort of things. Except if you encounter a bug or if there is something wrong with a subject or some hardware you are not suppose to expect any help from them, at all.

Yes 42 is a bit of a fork of epitech, but they don't have the same program anymore, the basic program is the same (projects for the beginner) but new projetcs are totally new, and students are encourage to create new projetcs too (we actually have some, like a project including docker, a student is preparing a OcamL pool etc...).

"All of École 42's projects are meant to be collaborative, so the students work in teams of two to five people" This is not true, the main concept of the school is the peer learning, you are not suppose to do solo projects with other peoples, you are suppose to learn how to do the project with other people, this is actually a different concept, we do have group projects though but it's a minority.

<comment><USER39> Hi. Does knowing only English allow you to feel comfortable in 42, or French is mandatory?

<comment><USER21> Personnaly i'm french, but from what i saw it is possible to attend 42 even if you don't speak french (it's a good opportunity to learn it though), sometimes it would be tricky (i think videos are only in french) but if you have question, people who speak english will help you. Actually we have people from usa, ireland, marocco, singapore, romania i think and probably others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So basically, it is a big/free internet cafe?

</comment><comment><USER41> Curious about the name I looked around further and according to [http://www.42.fr/faqs/](http://www.42.fr/faqs/) it is a HHGTTG reference:

> Pourquoi 42 s'appelle 42 ?

> On vous met sur la piste… regardez du côté du Guide du voyageur galactique

"Don't Panic" would certainly be an appropriate slogan for a school like this.

</comment><comment><USER42> Well the teachers are(will be since it's the first year) the students. Several engineering schools do that in France and abroad.

It's a good PR for Niel.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think that without teachers, the concept is lacking. Even the brightest need teachers. An expert could have helped the students learn more.

</comment><comment><USER44> >The only requirement is that they be between the ages of 18 and 30.

I'd estimate that well over half of my bootcamp cohort was over 30.

<comment><USER45> Now that you mention it, isn't this just age discrimination?

I would get in serious legal trouble if I posted an ad saying "Hiring software engineers; ages 18 to 30 only." Doesn't the same apply to schools?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> ...and France is well known for its leadership in modern technology, especially software.

the last big IT assets are being sold off, complete failures. europe as a whole basically is SAP plus its ecosystem. nothing else has survived. and even SAP is investing massively in its shift from Walldorf to the Bay Area.

so yeah, a lot of countries have elite schools. hint: all big founders never finished theirs....

</comment><comment><USER47> Yes, and it's a terrible school ("citation needed"). There are also other schools (like ETNA for example) where the teachers are almost non-existant, your teachers are the students of last year, (you actually pay for this, it's not public schools).

Engineering schools do not have a lot of teachers in France, I don't understand where you get that from.

<comment><USER47> Thank you for the downvote. Sorry but I am just telling the truth. If you have any counter arguments, please tell them, I would be happy to learn something about the tech schools in my country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What's with all the fruit? Is that really the best use of funds?</comment>


Extracting Useful Review Snippets from Yelp Using Natural Language Processing - <AUTHOR> http://aria42.com/blog/?p=127

<comment><USER2> The code from the paper is available at [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/rbg/code/content_structure/code....](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/rbg/code/content_structure/code.tar.gz)

You can see a demo of the site at condensr.com. There will be substantial changes to the site including predicting the best dish at a restaurant on the site soon. An academic paper should follow shortly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting fact: I was asked to program something that did just this for my interview with Yelp.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone know what software (open source, Java/Python) that is out there that can give me similar results? I've looked at LingPipe, but the closest thing it does is sentiment classification.

<comment><USER5> Check out the open source Stanford Parser (Java) <http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/lex-parser.shtml>

I also wrote a free open source javascript API for the Stanford Parser if you want to play around with NLP in JS. <http://nlp.naturalparsing.com/browserparser/parse> (it is a bit slow at the moment, someone is using it to parse all of wikipedia).</comment></comment>


Show HN: A book recommendation engine backed by 7 million book ratings - <AUTHOR> https://abooklikefoo.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! This app is backed by a graph db containing around 7 million book ratings/affections and 150k book titles published prior to 2020. A query requires at least two books to run and will go about finding books for you based on the collaborative filtering of millions of existing affections. The data used is garnered from a variety of book review websites and open datasets. As well as collaborative filtering it also uses basic criteria like genres to find you matches. Users have found the results to be shockingly accurate so far.

</comment><comment><USER2> Clever. I felt like it started to lock in on my reading tastes only after I had 5 selections, but that is still a decent app.

Also, I don't mind sites that make money from Amazon's affiliate program, as long as they are delivering value, and the links they provide actually are useful to people. This fits that bill nicely, and is a great example of the right way to monetize links.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like it. As going through it though I had read so many in the list it provided. I see 6 is the maximum for a search, but it'd be useful to "neutralise" all the ones that have already been read to clear the stage a bit

</comment><comment><USER4> This is nice :)

I tried on Firefox and the thumbnails remain gray, I can only see them when I hover the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, the site uses book images from Amazon's CDN so you may need to disable your ad blocker. I think that's what's happening.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, I have an ad blocker. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are so many good books it lacks... But still a really neat idea. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER6> Feature Request: Save the results, at least locally..</comment>


New Budget Proposal for NASA cuts funding for the ISS by 2025 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa_fy_2019_budget_overview.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Additional releases: [https://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Is any of this due to SpaceX and Mars or is that where SpaceX would get it's funds?</comment>