Has Oracle been a disaster for Sun's open source? - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Has-Oracle-been-a-disaster-for-Sun-s-open-source-1030066.html

<comment><USER2> Actually, I thought the article winds up making the opposite argument from what it thinks it is making.

To be clear, the blame for this situation for this lands on Sun. It isn't Oracle's fault that Sun withered away to the point where it needed to be acquired.

The article seems to show that Oracle is doing just fine by ignoring Sun's open source assets. This line in the article "They also need to start to think more seriously about how Oracle can contribute to Sun's open source products, and not just the other way around." needs substantiation. If I were Larry Ellison, I see no reason to do that right now. Especially when Sun's contributions to open source didn't do them (Sun) a world of good in pure financial terms.

The other interesting statement is this one "The problem is that Oracle is naturally trying to optimise its acquisition of Sun for its own shareholders, but seems to have forgotten that there are other stakeholders too". As a public company, Oracle has a fiduciary obligation to protect its shareholders interests. It has no such obligation towards the open source world at large.

<comment><USER3> Most of Sun's open source strategy didn't make them a lot of money, but letting Java languish was not a smart move then and is not a smart move now. (I dislike the language, but it fits well with Oracle's enterprisey business.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oracle is paving the way to turn MySQL into (essentially) SQL Server Express: a free hobbled version of an otherwise commercial database, designed to do one thing and one thing only: pressure existing MySQL developers into moving to (and paying for) a commercial Oracle license. MySQL is nothing more than an onramp to Oracle. This was obvious when Sun was acquired. It's obvious now. Every word I've heard from Oracle regarding MySQL confirms this.

This is what Oracle means by "integration".

You think the number one commercial database provider in the world is going to help build and improve a free, robust, industrial strength database for the _good of the open source community_? Like they could care less whether you use a free DB or shell out for an Oracle license? Please. Oracle sees MySQL as a huge potential market, nothing more. And this is how the evisceration begins.

<comment><USER5> Just in case you didn't know, Oracle already has an Express version of the Oracle db. It has several limitations (mainly memory and a 5gb storage limit), but it is completely free.

[http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe/index....](http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe/index.html)

It's currently 10g, but from rumors I've heard, the 11gR2 Express version isn't too far away.

<comment><USER4> We're running a project on it right now. I'm not sure why my comment was downvoted-- shoot the messenger, I suppose-- but how is this relevant to the disposition of MySql as a payramp into commercial Oracle licenses? Or are you saying MySQL users have nothing to fear because Oracle already _has_ a free "express" DB?

<comment><USER5> I was simply stating that Oracle already has an Express edition, since you mentioned you thought they were going to turn MySQL into a SQLServer Express- type product. I actually agree with your overall point. It's definitely not in Oracle's favor to improve MySQL or attempt to increase its use. If anything, they will continue to have a free, community edition, of MySQL, and then probably also spin off a commercial version targeted to those that don't need the full power of an Oracle database.

Oracle seems to make a majority of its money in support contracts, not licensing. I think they could do quite well if they released a commercial version of MySQL and sold support for it. (They may already do this, I'm not sure.)

<comment><USER4> Good point, and it all comes down to whether Oracle wants to play hardball. I saw a good discussion of this a while back, even touching on the disposition of some of the MySQL forks. Can't seem to find it anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's probably obvious to say this but Java 7 will be very telling for how Oracle is going to proceed. Java needs some punching-up if it's going to continue as a go-to language (yes, I'm well aware of the trends away from Java and the general opinions here on HN - that doesn't change the fact that Java is one of the most deployed production languages around and will continue to be used/maintained for years to come).

<comment><USER7> > _but Java 7 will be very telling for how Oracle is going to proceed_

Considering how the Java7 milestones / OpenJDK developments are going right now, I think you're going to be disappointed.

<comment><USER8> Would you care to elaborate?

I'm about to move to a Java shop and for a long time I've just been taking the criticism of Java at face value. Now that I will have a stake in it I am really interested in what people who have been with Java a long time are seeing as the trends.

<comment><USER6> I'll venture a guess - there hasn't been enough clear focus on what Java7 will be and there's been a long gap between 6 & 7 (4yrs versus 2yrs for previous versions). Combined with Oracle's acquisition of Sun, there are a lot of questions in the air. Hopefully, JavaOne in September will provide some answers.

That said, Java is a good enough language and still quite powerful. You can do a lot of things that are possible in other languages, but the code isn't as concise. There are open-source libraries and frameworks for just about everything. Spring and Google have both taken up Sun's slack.

Java's not going away any time soon because it's too widely used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In spite of other products, Oracle seem to be committed to an Open Source Virtualbox.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sun's failing has been a disaster for its open source assets, not Oracle buying them out.</comment>


Before You Grow - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/before-you-grow/ <comment><USER2> Building something users love is, of course, the challenge. 99% of startups are unable to do this, and some of those that can't still manage to raise money because someone involved went to Stanford or is otherwise well- connected, only to inevitably fail later on. Generally speaking, these days if you don't have rabid fans of your product almost immediately among some group of users - however small - the product as you have implemented it is destined for failure.

If you fail to attain at least some group of rabid fans right after launch, then you have to ask users and find out what changes you could make that would turn them into rabid fans - if anything. If you don't get some sense of agreement among users from the responses, odds are that you should move onto another project. Products that the masses love are very rare. Creating them is hard, and because it involves a tremendous amount of subjectivity and pure luck, it will likely take far more than one try. But you can only fail at it if you stop trying or let yourself get bogged down with attempting to make something work that users simply don't and will never care about.

<comment><USER3> VCs are optimizing for something other than love. They're optimizing for potential scale. You can build a product that customers love, but with a low ceiling for the market (like, say, building a really awesome surfboard). VCs want to see billion dollar market potential. So they may invest in something without real proof of customer love, or even customer need, just because the market potential is great.

<comment><USER4> That might be true at the seed stage, but no competent VC is going to keep funding you if you've launched and aren't able to demonstrate that some people love your product.

Of course, product/market fit is not a sufficient condition for success. You also need the market to be big enough.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, the OP's assertion that money just flows to people who "look right" (my words, but true) without real regard for the product itself, applies largely to seed money only. A proper Series A round (or more) should require a strong product and customer feedback. So I think my point still holds. Seed VC is looking at market opportunity and founders who "look right", not a killer product that customers love, because the product may not exist or have a significant customer base yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "And if you're just starting out, take the time to build a product your users love, no matter how long it takes. "

There's this weird balance between the lean "get it out as soon as you can, fail fast" and "make sure it's a good product before you ship".

<comment><USER6> No, the rule still applies. Get it out fast so you can find out if your users love it. Just don't push it to a broader audience.

Iphone app companies do this one neat trick for this. They release in foreign markets (Canada, Australia, etc) and make sure their users love their apps before releasing in the US.

<comment><USER7> Time to release utes in the US!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_(vehicle)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_\(vehicle\))

<comment><USER8> Pity there is no company left making these in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is good advice but on a practical level isn't clearly compatible with other advice like "fix the plane while it's flying".

Also I was under the impression YCombinator focuses on helping companies grow and organizes a demo day 3 months later to help them raise money from VCs. The pg article even mentions growth targets during YC. If this is true then companies accepted to YC should already have a product people love and be ready to hack growth over the next 3 months. This clearly is not the case (eg Airbnb joined YC after about a year not 1000 days).

If YC is not only about growth but also about helping companies at much earlier stage still working on the product people love stage, that would seem to be a challenge. What do YC speakers talk about? Growth or Product? It's like putting kids learning Algebra in the same class as those ready for Calculus, not easy at all. Maybe there should be two types of YC sessions then? One for early startups still working on product, another YC for startups working on growth...

Every founder I have ever met wants their product to be loved, but unfortunately they need time and money to figure this out. Other issues: it's hard to know when to walk away pre-product and pitching VCs without growth doesn't seem to work. So founders raise money by showing early "growth" without PML (product/market love), then they go back to work on the product and when PML doesn't materialize in the first couple months they start to get nervous and switch resources back to growth hacking their mediocre product so they can be ready to raise money again and have another chance.

Obviously this is all very complicated, full of exceptions to rules. In reality product and growth have to be going on at once - but the timelines and resources and challenges to do product and growth at the same time should be part of the advice.

<comment><USER10> I'm not affiliated with YC in any sense but trying to clarify some things:

" _fix the plane while it 's flying_".

This is typically advice for startups that have found product-market-fit (i.e. have a product people love) but there are a million other things broken. In that case the advice is often to fix these things "while flying", i.e. while simultaneously growing sales and the company in general.

" _organizes a demo day 3 months later to help them raise money from VCs_ "

I understand the purpose is primarily to help companies raise seed/angel rounds, not big "institutional" rounds. And just generally make connections for later.

" _The pg article even mentions growth targets during YC._ "

Clearly this is not applicable to all companies. E.g. what's the "growth target" for a company like Rigetti who build a quantum computer?

" _One for early startups still working on product, another YC for startups working on growth_ "

One of the primary (if not the most important) benefits of YC is the network. You get that regardless of whether you're in product or growth stage.

" _pitching VCs without growth doesn 't seem to work_"

Depends on what you're pitching for. Seed and Series-A are two entirely different games.

" _So founders raise money by showing early "growth" without PML (product/market love), then they go back to work..._"

Good investors aren't fooled by that and will ask the right questions to quickly uncover any fake metrics. Besides that a seed round is typically raised on team, talent, idea and early traction, not growth.

<comment><USER11> >> Seed and Series-A are two entirely different games.

Are you actually in a position to offer advice? What you say seems outdated - seeds grew to multi-million figures such that "seed is the new series A" was a thing back in 2013 - firms now offer "pre-seed" funding and "second-seeds" seem increasingly common.

The assumption today seems to be that if you have no connections, you must self-fund / bootstrap / FFF your way to traction to even attract angel interest and for you, seed is for growth. However, if you have prior exits and connections then you play a different game and can probably raise a MM seed without even an idea of what your new business might be.

<comment><USER10> _Are you actually in a position to offer advice?_

Are you in a position to question that I am?

I've raised a seed round for my company 3 years ago and we are now going for Series A. I feel experienced enough to share some of my thoughts. Feel free to ignore it if you disagree.

<comment><USER11> Sorry I said that aggressively. I'm tired of low signal startup advice that does not address real-world complexity and it got the better of me.

What would have been fascinating, practical and not have raised my doubts would be if you compared the metrics and institutions you used to raise your seed compared to what you are using for your Series A.

Anyway, best of luck. Three years seems like a long time to live on a seed.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. We hustled to "Ramen profitability" so we don't actually need the money. We'd still very much like it though to speed some things up and to buy ourselves some ice cream to the Ramen every once in a while ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _You'll have to rely on inorganic means like ads, marketing, or PR to maintain your growth, and this gets very hard to sustain_

This is a point that I am always curious/skeptical about because growth will always become marginally harder. So ads, marketing and PR are always going to be necessary at some point.

Using his examples, facebook is creating airplanes to deliver facebook to people they can't reach otherwise - talk about high acquisition cost. AirBnB has a ton of TV [2] and Print ads.

Further, companies like abcmouse [3], dealdash [4] all blanket the airwaves with their ads and seem to be doing well.

So maybe some companies/products lend more to traditional ad spend than others, or maybe the idea that viral is the only way to grow and sustain is wrong.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/the- technolog...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/the-technology- behind-aquila/10153916136506634/)

[2] [https://www.ispot.tv/brands/oLp/airbnb](https://www.ispot.tv/brands/oLp/airbnb)

[3] [https://www.ispot.tv/brands/d9N/abcmouse- com](https://www.ispot.tv/brands/d9N/abcmouse-com)

[4] [https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Tc0/dealdash](https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Tc0/dealdash)

<comment><USER13> The point is not to never do paid marketing, but to make sure that you have something in motion that doesn't rely 100% on paid marketing before you do. If people are talking about your product, paid marketing can help amplify the signal and the reach (facebook, AirBnB), but if you can get no one excited about it, if no one talks about it, then going all in with paid marketing is akin to shoving down people's throats something they don't want; it's unlikely to be sustainable even if you have large pockets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recommend using [https://www.promoter.io/](https://www.promoter.io/) to measure NPS. It's a brilliant starting point for getting useful feedback too. I've ended up using it for the conference and coworking community that I run as well as for a software product.

<comment><USER15> I would love to see a comprehensive list of all of these tools to measure NPS. Does one exist?

<comment><USER16> Sorry for the shameless plug, but just by coincidence, I have recently started building a simple NPS tool. Currently it's only a landing page, but I'd appreciate anyone interested to subscribe: [https://nps.io](https://nps.io)

I have extensive experience applying the NPS to the hospitality industry, and I can tell you that it's not a marketing gimmick as I have read in some other comments. That's why I decided to roll my own service :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who finds actual value from Net Promoter Score?

It's a vanity metric, just like asking "would you pay $10 for this?" instead of getting someone to actually pay $10. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter#Criticism_of_NPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter#Criticism_of_NPS)

<comment><USER18> You're correct, the number by itself, doesn't provide a ton of value beyond a measurable KPI. For some companies however, that KPI is one of their core metrics. Some companies even base compensation around the score.

That said, the NPS methodology is much more than the overall score. The real value is in the individual scores, verbatim feedback and its proven ability to tie those results into both growth and churn. All combined (and when done correctly)it can help drive funding, determine PMF, guide your product roadmap, forecast revenue and drive measurable growth (just to name a few benefits).

Breaking it down to just a score is looking at NPS far to simplistically.

<comment><USER19> atrributing verbatim feedback to NPS is misleading though. getting feedback is just talking to customers, surveys and methods that have existed for years. saying its part of the NPS methodology is giving it credit for something it did not invent.

<comment><USER18> You're right, feedback isn't exclusive to NPS, but you're missing the point. It's the type of feedback that is the critical difference here.

Yes, you can ask any customer any question and get a response, but does that question/response elicit the same intelligent and predictive value of the NPS questions? Will randomly surveying your customers generate the same response rate as an NPS survey?

NPS is a proven methodology with predictive intelligence and high response rate, what you're suggesting is not. The choice is yours though.

<comment><USER19> "NPS is a proven methodology"

That's a blank statement that tries to be authoritative and sounds nice, but where's the proof?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

<comment><USER20> Then you want to bargain a discount, a faster delivery, a whatever, for being a public reference.

In other words, if they want something, and want it badly, instead of monetizing it with $$, monetize it with a case study.

Personal favor also. You go the extra mile for one user/infleluencer/decision maker in a customer company. Then ask to return the favor: "could you spend 15 minutes talking to this prospect of mine, it would help me a lot".

They can say no, find an excuse. But it will hurt them because they know you helped them unreasonably in the past, it was valuable to them, and you may be less willing to do so in the future.

Some will say yes. You just need one or two.

<comment> mck- We also encountered some customers like that - true evangelists but refuse to partake in public endorsement for fear of losing competitive advantage. We even offered discounts, but to no avail.

On the contrary, we found the European and Australian customers to be completely different; competing companies in the same local markets seem to be quite chummy and will share such information freely.

Obviously not to be generalized. We have North American evangelists too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recently came across an app lets you measure NPS directly on your website - [https://www.metriculator.com](https://www.metriculator.com)

Seems really nice. I figured it might be useful for folks trying to run an NPS survey after reading Sam's recommendation.

<comment><USER22> I hate sites that have these.

<comment><USER22> IMO, if bothering the user at all, you should limit the number of options to two. E.g., after finishing a certain process like submitting an order, you can ask the user "Do you like our website? YES / NO". If NO, then you can take them to another form so they can complain with details. Having choices 1-10 is way too granular (we're not trying to get Yelp ratings). And popping up on the screen makes me want to leave the site.

On the positive side, I have had pleasure of using some well-designed interfaces, and the giving of positive feedback probably reinforced in my mind that I liked the site. I.e., it made me cognizant of the good design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Small nitpick: The blog is hard to read with so much bright orange distracting from the main content. I use a script to fix that on my browser. Thought the feedback might help with the new blog.

<comment><USER24> Orange, to Make Startups Great Again?

I try to let my own CSS (particularly fonts) on Safari trump the sites I read a lot, such as Hacker News. Safari's reader view is good too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A lot of this has to do with experience and whether or not you're trying to fulfill expectations (VCs, etc). You really don't know when a product will become loved no matter how much you iterate and it's also impossible to know for sure how long you need to "slog" it out. Some products become loved far earlier than others. The best thing to do as a founder is to drive at your vision hard as quickly as possible, acquire users to test multiple theories and gather feedback, and iterate when there are signs. Even then, not all iterations or pivots are created equal. There are many different ways to grow a business (many of which veer from traditional silicon valley values) and it's up to the founder to stick to his/her own values and to what makes sense at the time. I don't think there's a single founder out there who wants to build just a mediocre product. This is why product-market fit should be the primary focus for any growing business.

</comment><comment><USER26> i don't mean to be a dick but citing airbnb and facebook seems like bad taste. those companies are massive outliers with billion+ dollar valuations. nowhere near your average ycom startup.

i think i'd be smarter to cite maybe smaller companies that exited in the million/100,000 dollar range. seems more accurate.

i understand that ycom wants the people they're funding to focus on ideas that generate billions as that's ultimately advantageous for ycom, but, realistically, most of these companies will putter out or exit in the low millions, which is still cool as hell too!

doesn't seem to make much sense for anyone to constantly cite huge outliers like googs or fb or salesforce etc. when there's plenty of dope ass smaller ycom companies that probably did exactly what sam is talking about: build high quality, fun, exciting, engaging products.

<comment><USER27> FriendFeed focused on being loved more than growing users and had a $50MM exit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a delicate balance, for sure. Focus on product until you have something that really works. But don't fall into the 'build it, and they will come' trap.

As a side note: the new UI for blog.ycombinator is really ...uncomfortable. 3 columns? 4 if you count the social share buttons jutting out on the left. Designed on a > 21" monitor :(

The list of tags doesn't need it's own column... each with it's own row. Just make it a tag cloud above or below the blog list, and give a little breathing room to the actual article.

<comment><USER29> The tags turn into a tag cloud at the bottom if your screen/window is small enough (I had to zoom out to get them to move to the right on my dinky x60). Smaller still, and everything (including the social share buttons) turns into one column.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30>
      >> Airbnb slogged for 1000 days before discovering how to make their product loved.

Airbnb had a network effect product (marketplace of buyers and sellers). Growth accelerated once they had enough of both.

      >> It's unclear exactly when Airbnb implemented what's become their most famous growth hack, ...
        Craigslist had one thing that Airbnb did not - a massive user base.
        https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb

</comment><comment><USER31> Everyone says to create a product that is loved (agreed), but how do you get constructive feedback in the early days?

I've experienced that many users are unwilling to engage in conversation, they test it and if they don't like it they leave and won't communicate why.

Suppose one creates a new Whatsapp-like product, how would one, in practice, go about gathering feedback?

<comment><USER32> The "unwilling to engage in conversation, if they don't like it they leave and won't communicate why" _is_ your feedback.

Dirty secret that startup methodologies usually doesn't tell you: it's mostly trial and error. You observe people, you form a hypothesis about what they want, you put something in front of them, and you see if they want it. If they don't, change something. It's not unusual to require dozens to hundreds of iterations before you converge on something folks like.

This is also why founders that are building for themselves have such an advantage: then you _do_ get some signal about exactly what you might need to change, and why you would want it. You've got to know (and accept) yourself pretty well to be able to listen to it, though.

<comment><USER31> Yes, I understand that it is a tacit feedback, but it is so binary that it is hard to infer something from it besides we need to change.

Iteration, it feels like a company could use the run rate iterating and never figure it out?

<comment><USER32> Most do. That's why most startups fail, after all.

The lesson to take from this is to get your iteration velocity up and your burn rate down. If you can, you also want to be extracting as much information as possible from the failures, so it's not _entirely_ random, but even if you're brilliant and 100% paying attention there will still be a lot of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> """Startups are defined by growth, but growth isn't step one in building a great company."""

I'd argue it is. Building something people love is all about growth. If they love it, they'll talk about and champion it. In fact measuring generic word of mouth growth is a decent way of figuring out if people love the product (my working hypothesis is that engagement is great but if they go beyond that...we're golden).

I'd say ignore all kinds of growth except word of mouth growth. I don't care about user acquisition schemes...as soon as the word of mouth growth flattens the alarm bells must go off and all other measures are probably just life extending measures.

I'd also say ignore "growth hacking" especially of the "I'll trick people to like my product" variety. Genuine product improvement is the best growth hacking there is.

</comment><comment><USER34> Another alternative: don't build something huge, don't get funding from VCs, build a comfortable business for yourself instead of a gimmicky trend that will be irrelevant in a few years. I feel like this is really underrated these days, if you spend the time truly earning it, not only is it more rewarding but the company may last more than 3-4 years.

Build a small focused product to generate some revenue, then hopefully that will give you time and financial freedom to build more complex products down the road.

<comment><USER35> _> don't get funding from clueless VCs_

Usually if people put money down and there is an entire industry around it, the collective mindset of that industry is close to optimal. They might be wrong on a couple of important issues. They also might be _very_ wrong, but they're still close to optimal by definition because nobody's doing it better.

TL;DR: calling entire world-class industries clueless implies naiveté.

<comment><USER34> Removed my "clueless" generalization. It's anecdotal, but most that I've encountered (relating to SaaS products) don't have much of a technical background at all, just throwing money at buzzwords, meanwhile they think critical services such as logging aren't worth going after, just because it's not trendy. I'm sure it varies from industry to industry.

<comment><USER36> Logging is indeed a critical part of many processes, but it's very hard to do it in a way that pleases everyone. Most loggers don't even support renewable inputs like bamboo.

Before you think this is a mere joke, consider that normal people don't even know what computer logging is, much less want to become a user of a logging service. The addressable eyeballs are few, and it's a market chock full of free products already. Plus the most serious consumers always end up with a bespoke proprietary solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, platforms and such.

When a single user gets no utility from your product if there aren't enough already using it, what does one do? You kind of have to spend some money marketing to get the initial word out. This is something I've been struggling with. We've been doing a lot of writing content and there's some word of mouth happening. We spend small amounts on FB too. But we're seeing a lot of users drop off with the reason "there just aren't enough other people using this".

<comment><USER38> Didn't Tinder start off by seeding your experience with friends of friends on facebook?

<comment><USER37> I believe Tinder did a lot of going to campuses and throwing parties, that sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I really wish we could see some metrics on products people 'love'.

I'm working on a product that is seeing great growth (free atm), and what appears to me to be good customer engagement.

When I break things, users email and let us know, time on site is good, etc. etc. At what point do you go, yup, this is something people love.

Of course, I'm still making product improvements and figuring out what people will pay for.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm curious about how this maps to enterprise products? Can you create an enterprise-targeted product that users truly love?

Any examples of this?

<comment><USER41> Yes: [https://www.Odoo.com](https://www.Odoo.com)

But we did not follow Sam's path. 1/ we made resellers and developers happy (being open source played an important role early on) 2/ we grew 3/ we made end users very happy 4/ we grew much faster

The reason we took this part is that it takes a lot of time to both build the enterprise features, and make it great. We built the scope first and made it great after, which is not an usual path.

Disclaimer: I am the founder.

<comment><USER40> Nice.

How do you grow your reseller network?

I would presume that reseller's interests don't always align directly with end-user interests?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> My takeaway: Build a product that people will love (don't forget about yourself too!). If not, fix it immediately before it's too late/difficult.

</comment><comment><USER43> Easier said than done :-)

But, I have a better advice: Do not spend money and time promoting something that sucks or it is not useful.

</comment><comment><USER44> that's actually why best startups are those who make products for themselves, so they tested on themselves first; they don't really need public launch date; because the product is already being launched and getting instant feedback during development

examples are airbnb and dropbox

</comment><comment><USER45> I have an even harsher take.

In the old days if you didn't have a product that "sold itself" (i.e. loved) then you'd just make it cheaper than the competition.

These days software products are by and large free (your users pay in time), so there is no obvious competitive strategy on similar products. If you don't have evangelical user base that loves your product and spreads it or at least a well defined niche use case, you've literally got nothing.

There is no room for "Facebook but cheaper". Heck there isn't even room for "Facebook but marginally better" anymore.

<comment><USER46> There's plenty of room for other Facebooks. In fact, there are major competitors to the likes of Facebook & Linkedin & Google.

They just happen to be national companies (russia, china, some european).

If anything. The thought that they have no competitors/alternatives is just a display that SV totally ignore the local non-english competitors (no matter how engrained they are in their market) and generally disregards anything that is under 1 billion unique users.

<comment><USER47> This is only for ad base products.

Tesla has far under a billion users and SV loves it.

Many b2b startups have a few hundred to thousand users.

If you want to sell Ads and be free, you need billions. If you have an actual product you charge money for, you need far less.

<comment><USER48> What if you want to sell users data? Isn't that what most free web and mobile apps are really selling?

I have a lot of great software ideas (great in that I wish they existed and want to use them), but no clue which could actually be monetized effectively. Billions of users seems like a tall order, and not a sensible thing to pursue.

<comment><USER47> Easiest is b2b. Are any of your ideas something a business would pay to use? Start with a product that cost say $50-$500 per month.

Much easier to sell 100 copies of something than get 100 million people to use your software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> TL;DR - Two good ways to measure if you're making something people love: 1\. Your users actively tell their friends about your product. 2\. NPS surveys.

In the beginning it seems like the best way to measure if people are telling their friends is by not measuring at all. Just talk to users. You'll find out if people are about to tell their friends or how new users found you (an existing user sent them your way).

I'm always weary of surveys since they can be a dangerous mix of qualitative and quantitative. NPS seems solid since there's no denying a number. Sometimes I see NPS surveys that only ask for the rating (1-10) and don't ask a follow- up question ("Why did you choose 5?"). This is such a missed opportunity since the "why?" text can contain feedback gold. There's also no substitute for following up after the NPS survey to do more in-depth qualitative feedback gathering through user interviews.

I'm curious to hear more about what Sam thinks about measuring DAU/WAU/etc in the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER50> Comment withdrawn. I've withdrawn this comment, but per site policy / encouragement I'm leaving my original comment below the lines.

Pre-edit:

\---

I liked your comment but you won't believe how I felt about one part:

>Iphone app companies do this one neat trick for this.

I'm sorry, I just found it very distracting... like you use clickbait title interspersed in your writing. I tried to replicate the effect for you at the top of this comment. There's nothing wrong with what you said, it's just kind of like the format of clickbait titles, you know? Thank

EDIT: got voted to -1 but I'm keeping this - it's genuine feedback for someone. the phrasing "do this one neat trick for this" doesn't come from normal writing or conversation and I find it distracting in an otherwise nice and informative comment.

<comment><USER4> They're obviously parodying the "one neat trick" trope.

<comment><USER50> I don't think so because they're not talking about a marketing gimmick, but rather talking about an actual business strategy - I just found it distracting. They could have at least put it in quotation marks if they really meant to include it in their writing for some reason. I've withdrawn the criticism.

<comment><USER51> I don't know if it's a "gimmick", but it seems precisely "marketing".

<comment><USER50> I think you didn't get the point blazespin wrote: they said (or I read it as them saying) that since there's no way to get a "test market" in the U.S., rather than blow their "one shot" on the launch version which they can't iterate on before the whole U.S. market sees it, they use a proxy for a U.S. test market: they use a smaller foreign market. They don't care about "burning" those users or losing their "one chance" to launch, since those markets are small or at any rate a smaller launch. They then take their learnings, incorporate them and launch in the U.S. with a first version that is markedly better.

so it's product development. the point isn't about marketing at all. (Except in a broad sense.) it's a product development trick, like a closed beta. I don't think you would call a closed beta "marketing" exactly.

at least, this is what I read the comment as.

<comment><USER51> That was the point I got from it. My point was that it sounds a lot like what's done by the people I know who work in marketing at big companies. Marketing is not just (or even mostly) advertising.

<comment><USER50> all right :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Saw the title, assumed it was going to be about weed.

</comment><comment><USER53> Wake me up, before you grow grow.

(Sorry, could not resist)</comment>


NGINX Configuration for Django with SSL - <AUTHOR> http://championix.com/blog/2014/06/30/nginx-configuration-django-ssl/

<comment><USER2> your setup is pretty bad (performance and security), here comes why:

1\. combine all listen 80 - serverblocks into one, and then

return 301 [https://$host$request_uri;](https://$host$request_uri;) instead of rewrite, it is faster and you can skip the if (scheme) - part, because if is evil [http://wiki.nginx.org/IfIsEvil](http://wiki.nginx.org/IfIsEvil)

2\. where are your ciphers? they are bad anyway and doesnt seem to be the defaults, and RC4 as preferred ciphers, phew!

3\. you are vulnerable to the latest CCS-vuln [https://8ack.de/scan/result/sslvulns/71ba019e9d4bf25fd422ab0...](https://8ack.de/scan/result/sslvulns/71ba019e9d4bf25fd422ab0395e9fdc12a18ddf9a8e1583b769fe7f075e19290f5d9d44e23c0902fb6dd17da6e4c9bf1f647b44a3e1fd82c1ea982062a474c27)

4\. you use an quite old nginx-version; debian? you should use a newer one that supports SPDY (faster loading for all those images)

5\. OH NOES .... [https://wbsrch.com/admin/](https://wbsrch.com/admin/) rule nr. 1: never expose admin/backend-logins to the interwebs

6\. no HSTS

7\. you support TLS 1.2., but no PFS, is there a reason for this? otherwise, this is a bad decision [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=wbsrch.com](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=wbsrch.com)

8\. define STATIC - resouces with django; advantage: you dont have to try_files and can skip the regex-location for static content [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static- files/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/)

9\. why did you turned off ssl_session_cache??? [https://www.mare- system.de/guide-to-nginx-ssl-spdy-hsts/#opt...](https://www.mare- system.de/guide-to-nginx-ssl-spdy-hsts/#optimizing-for-better-ssl-performance)

10\. use proxy_cache for /

11\. turn off server_tokens e3c4676d14a8ddd07d140f6d3e771ae8994ff5f4a159ba70fa5f5a9eaf026ada9a9f61021ef5ec27466718573c8a73621d119c385eb284fe322eaefaff2d1b42

more on nginx + ssl: [https://www.mare-system.de/guide-to-nginx-ssl-spdy- hsts/](https://www.mare-system.de/guide-to-nginx-ssl-spdy-hsts/)

<comment><USER2> sslabs gives you grade F [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=wbsrch.com](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=wbsrch.com)

btw, where are your cipher_suites from?</comment></comment>


3taps vs. Craigslist -- Who owns public data? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/craigslist-3taps-the-court-battle-for-the-soul-of-public-data.php <comment><USER2> It's not "public data". Illustrating example: people can and do make different offers on Craigslist than they do in other channels.

<comment><USER3> Thing is, factual data itself, such as "Someone is offering to the public to sell X for $Y," is not subject to copyright. Copyright-eligible works must include some element of creativity, however small. (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural>)

So the text of a classified ad itself is indeed copyrightable, but the mere fact that a house at 123 Some Avenue is for rent for $1,000 per month is not. Having learned of that fact from a copyrighted work, and in the absence of an NDA or something similar, you are free to disseminate that fact as you like.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

<comment><USER2> That might be true, but it doesn't follow that you can lawfully scrape facts out of copyrighted content on someone else's website.

<comment><USER4> How is this different than Feist v. Rural in your mind? A fact is not copyrightable and is scrapable according to that case. I don't see how having copyrighted content next to non-copyrighted content affords any protection to the non-copyrighted content.

<comment><USER2> First, Feist says nothing about content being "scrapable". It's a 1991 case. To pull content off Craigslist against their will, you have to cross the CFAA.

Second, phone numbers are raw facts, but advertisements are not; every advertisement ever has been copyrighted, and a whole 11-figure industry depends on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The more Sherman Act claims that are brought against web incumbents, the sooner one is going to stick.

The CL blog stinks of entitlement.

Craigslist "stole" the classifieds business from local newspapers. Now they are accusing others of trying to "steal" the "CL idea" from them.

I am one of (probably) the few who actually prefer a CL type interface. But the way CL is behaving in the face of competition is just embarassing. If someone wants to reshape the data, then you have to let them. The data is not the property of CL. If users do not want their data on some other site, then that's their issue to raise, not CL's.

<comment><USER6> You'd need to show that CL copied ads from newspapers in order to attract traffic, and I don't believe that's the case. taking away market share and scraping someone's website for content are vastly different things.

<comment><USER7> But when giving away an exclusive license, as CL requires, you aren't allowed to run the same content in both the newspaper and CL, right?

I have always wondered about running a similar listing somewhere else first, then running something lightly edited on Craigslist, sending their registered agent, by registered mail, a note that the exclusive license applies only to the relatively minor editorial changes applied.... I wonder how fast such would get delisted....

<comment><USER5> Do you think most people listing ads on CL read the terms and understand them as you did? (Or were the terms confusing?) Are CL's terms different from what one would normally expect from a newspaper? That is, would you expect that the newspaper would require an exclusive license and prohibit you from running your ad anywhere else?

<comment><USER7> Yes, they are. Normally if someone wants an exclusive right to content they pay the producer for them. Virtually everyone else asks for a non-exclusive license. This is _very different_ and has been discussed here on HN before.

<comment><USER5> And didn't CL change their terms (excl-->nonexcl) after some blogger posted about them? And didn't they make some changes to their site (collaborate with a maps provider so users can now get geo mappings) after filing this lawsuit? I've already forgotten now. This case just seems laughable to me. But what do I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _3taps will file an antitrust countersuit, alleging that Craigslist maintains a [monopolistic control] over numerous markets related to online classified advertising. If successful, 3taps could open up the market to numerous innovations atop Craigslist data and bring about the user interface and search features, whose lacking seem to be exemplified by the popularity of sites such as PadMapper_

\-- Anti trust is an interesting angle.

The Irony is that newspapers (the competition) were all reliant on classified ads, which have been decimated by craigslist. As it is, Craigslist is just a good competitor with a more efficient system and better pricing. There are other choices, just at different pricepoints. Its not clear this is a winning formula.

It will be interesting to see if there are other angles of attack -- such as fair use -- which would also allow re-purposing of data posted to quasi-public internet places, that hold non-exclusive rights on said information.

<comment><USER9> Sigh, antitrust is a dead end. It _might_ have been possible to argue prior restraint if Craigslist had stuck with their silly 'we own this' clause but they didn't.

My guess is that any judge would say "Can anyone else make a classifieds site?" and "Does Craigslist interfere with anyone on their site using a different site?". Since the answer will be 'No' and 'No' thus they don't have a monopoly.

<comment><USER10> That seems overly simplistic. Anybody could have used a different browser/OS (there were several available in the 90s), yet MS was still found to be violating antitrust laws.

The real question is whether Craigslist is using its market dominance in a way that hurts consumers. It's a far more nuanced question and one that will be fascinating to watch get answered. Craigslist _did_ some awesome things for consumers once upon a time. Now? I'm not so sure it's all positive.

<comment><USER8> Your counter-example (ms windows+expolorer) is not-quite on point, though. Consider: windows _had_ a legitimate monopoly, and then they "abused" it. But, because you are presuming the existence of a monopoly for CL this does not work. CL is an online classified ads business. The barriers to entry are de- minimus (unlike, OS software + hw compatibility, ect). So the _premise_ of monopoly can be attacked fairly and directly.

CL arguably is not abusing a monoploy because they don't even have one. They just have a cheap service, and nobody wants to pay to do it different. The consideration you raise -- are they anti consumer -- is an interesting one to think through. It does seem they over-reached (re: the exclusivity of data). But without any _contractual_ exclusivity or _confidentiality_ its not clear that CL can "monopolize" publicly _published_ data, given that the most valuable bits are (at least for rentals) nothing but street adresses, apartment #s, and possibly Telco #s. These data are not legal-sense "intellectual property" under most concepts (patent, copyright, or trade secret).

It would be an interesting argument to see the threshold case: when/where do 3 facts become a creative work? Its not a trivial argument, though, because at some stage N words becomes a lyric a poem or an idea. You cant copyright a word, though. Its highly unlikely you can copyright an adress. They might try to argue its like a "recipe" or some such (list of common ingredients?). Who knows. But somewhere in there, I'm guessing we'll find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If data is deliberately made available to the public, then it's public data. Even if's made available for free, that won't stop some on the web from trying to repackage it and derive commercial benefit from it. We've seen this many times. These folks have been very lucky that the validity of their assumptions has not been thoroughly tested in court. Somehow they become convinced they own the data. In reality they are merely the distributor.

Even if CL wins, e.g., they are granted an injunction to stop another site from scraping, scrapers can just get the same data from search engine caches. It's hard to argue trespass to chattels when the alleged trespasser never touches your servers. Moreover, search engines are themselves scrapers so clearly scraping is not per se a damaging activity in CL's view, only when it suits CL to view it that way. Arguing that robots.txt is a "license" is a stretch. It's designed to be read by a machine not a human.

And what if CL loses? What are the stakes then? Well, I'll let you answer that one. What exactly does 3taps have to lose?

CL claims they own the copyrights to facts and descriptions uploaded by CL users. Are users aware of this? Is it reasonable?

3taps' Answer should be a fun read.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does the USA not have a database right?

<http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/copyright/Page92.html>

Effectively acknowledging that the contents of a database may have varying copyright (owner, public works, facts, etc), but that the database itself is given protection implicitly if the database is "original and the result of substantial investment".

This is why you find fake data in Google Maps, the Rare Record Price Guide <http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0953260194> and so on. Because they are representations of databases and all the companies behind them have to do to have the protection is to prove that other representations of the data have been sourced from their database, which they do by pointing at the secret fake data that is part of the database.

Does that not exist? It offers protection to any entity that has compiled an original source of data at their expense.

<comment><USER7> The US does not recognize copyrights over databases. The issue though is that depending on the ads in question there may be creative elements.

For example, suppose I place an ad to rent my house out and include just info. Not likely protected but if I do it in iambic pentameter, probably is protected.

What this wouldn't prevent is someone scraping CL for facts (appartments for rent, x bed, y bath, z sq ft), extracting those facts, and arranging them in another order. That doesn't strike me as protectable in the US, even if it involves scraping directly from CL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think we should create an app called clscraper which does as follows:

Given a set of resources, crawls across the site, extracting specific information from listings (price, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square ft etc, contact info). Puts them in a very simple database. This should be 100% trouble-free copyright-wise at least in the US. The larger issue becomes what happens under other laws. However building a generic tool to extract (non-copyright-worthy!) facts from ads should by itself be more or less trouble-free.

Make this generic enough to work on most ad sites out there. Push the boundary back.

</comment><comment><USER12> Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but this is how I see this whole ordeal.

Craigslist, a website that built up its user base and functionality by itself (lots of persistent hard work over the years) has listings.

3TAPS believes this information is public and should be freely accessible by anyone.

How does that make any sense at all? If I work for years to build a website, I will use and lease MY damn data however I please. A 3rd party has no right to claim that the website I have created that people use is "public property". I built the house. Now you're going to tell me it's a shelter?

</comment><comment><USER7> Those who doubted that an exclusive license was truly exclusive should take note.

Craigslist here is arguing that they own essentially full copyright on all listings. This means if you advertise on Craigslist and you submit the same listing somewhere else you are guilty of breach of contract, and the other party may be guilty of copyright violation. How long before users start getting sued by one party to such litigation?

This is big trouble. We need to highlight that you give away all rights to all issue listings including the same material elsewhere.</comment>


In Florida Recount, Sloppy Signatures May Disqualify Thousands of Votes - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/us/voting-signatures-matching-elections.html <comment><AUTHOR> Of particular note, the article points out that younger voters are hit hard because many of them never developed a fluid cursive signature through penmanship lessons in school.

<comment><USER2> Signatures aren't judged by how _neat_ they are, just how _consistent_ they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never said neat. The point is, if you don't sign your name frequently, then you don't develop a "hand" that stays the same across multiple executions of your signature.</comment></comment></comment>


How To Pull an All-Nighter - <AUTHOR> http://codedump.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/how-to-pull-an-all-nighter/

<comment><USER2> My typical solution for how to pull an all nighter is don't, unless there is some horrible deadline. Life's a marathon, not a sprint and those extra 8 hours of increasingly less productive time (~6 hours @ full capacity) will cost far more than this in lost productivity working off that sleep debt. The author also talks about the 6 hours he spent prepping it and that 90 minute talk and a couple hours playing cards... everybody could just put in 2 extra hours a day for a week and nobody hoses their days? I think all nighters feel more productive than they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it... so many articles explaining how to do something so simple - so long as you're not doing something you absolutely despise or is terribly boring, it's just a matter of making a conscious decision to remain awake despite the time....

Many times I find my alarm clock ringing its wake-up call while I'm still hunched over my PC churning out the code, because I'm in love with what I'm doing and couldn't let it go just so I can sleep.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't whether you've read the post or not, but it's talking about preparing for a team's all nighter.

<comment><USER3> I hadn't but I did later - my point still stands.

I've pulled group all-nighters before, and - again - you needn't do anything different than during the day. A pizza around 2am is good for the stomach and great for the morals :)</comment></comment></comment>


YouTube reverses edits in YouTube Studio without asking or informing - <AUTHOR> Youtube used to have reasonable good deshaker filter. Now all those edits are cancelled and live shots are original jerky shit. Only later I someshow know this would happen and learned to use ffmpeg-deshaker properly. Editing one hour film is hard work, thank you very much again Google. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://youtu.be/FIrid_7qDt4](https://youtu.be/FIrid_7qDt4)</comment>


Humanity Star - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehumanitystar.com/ <comment><USER2> I hope no one else copies this idea. I would hate for the night sky to start filling up with all sorts of christmas lights. I can imagine a bunch of red and white satellites moving in tandem spelling out "Coca Cola".

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more! What a horrible idea! The night sky is sacred</comment></comment>


Show HN: Strapdown.js - Instant and elegant Markdown documents - <AUTHOR> http://strapdownjs.com

<comment><USER2> I like the use of markdown for this kind of purpose but i'd rather just compile from markdown to the generated HTML and put that online for a better user experience (no flash of unstyled markdown content) and possibly better Google indexing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fair. I personally wrote Strapdown since I couldn't find a really simple Markdown framework that generated beautiful docs and Just Worked(TM) :)

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, it generates great output for sure, I might just write a simple wrapper (in PhantomJS or whatever) to automate the compilation step using a markdown document and strapdown, or if I'm lazy I'll just save the generated code from the Chrome inspector :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really love this approach. It simplifies a lot of back and forth that I have to do on a server, even with all the plugins to make things easier, front end is the right place to do this. So, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did someone come across any stats about markdown adoption/acceptance among regular users over richtext editors?

</comment><comment><USER5> I do like it, one question though, anyone can speculate as to why he says use an xmp tag, but then himself uses a textarea on the page? And will google index it?

<comment><USER6> I hadn't heard of the <xmp> tag before now. His reasoning ("so that users don't have to escape special HTML characters") seems to be correct, except that it's a deprecated tag (<http://stackoverflow.com/q/4545>). Perhaps he used a <textarea> on this page so he could have the literal "</xmp>" in it?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. Although the tag is deprecated, I've tried it with all modern browsers (IE and mobile Safari included), and it seems to work just fine.

I'd think it would take a long time to phase this tag out as it was apparently popular among HTML spec writers, which means there's probably a ton of them still in the wild:

<https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12235>

<comment><USER7> Couldn't you just escape it, i.e.

        <\/xmp>

inside the text?

<comment><USER6> There's no provision for escaping things inside an <xmp> tag. From the HTML 2.0 spec: "no markup except the end-tag […] is recognized" [http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html- spec_5.html#SEC5.5.2...](http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html- spec_5.html#SEC18.104.22.168)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Scrape all posts from a Facebook Page, with individual Reaction counts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper <comment><USER2> Please be aware that Facebook has sued previous scrapers out of existence and left the founder holding a bag of $3 million in personal liability. See _Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc._

Executing a program that scrapes data from Facebook is illegal in the United States, at least until you get an explicit license from Facebook to do so. IANAL and this is not legal advice; just a layperson's opinion.

<comment><USER3> He's calling it a "scraper" but it just seems to call public API endpoints, so it's perfectly fine to run and use.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying that. I edited my message to be a more generic warning about executing actual scrapers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What if I just want the text/images/links from the posts, not any reaction? Does this work with personal profiles?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will get that data too with the scraper.

This implementation could theoetically work with your own profile (which is not as useful since Facebook lets you download that data), but it definitely will not work with other profiles.

</comment></comment><comment> geek--god How to download posts from closed groups?</comment>


HPC – The Next Twenty Years - <AUTHOR> http://perilsofparallel.blogspot.com/2009/09/hpc-next-twenty-years.html

<comment><USER3> That was fascinating. Well worth a read.

I'm particularly intrigued by the idea that Moore's Law is running out - <USER2> that that doesn't matter...

<comment><AUTHOR> If SaaS ever becomes the predominate way of deploying applications, just about everything with a closed set of data will be "embarrassingly parallel".</comment></comment>


Candor - programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/indutny/candor

<comment><USER3> Small suggestion: you're essentially using Candor's github repo as your landing page. You only have a few seconds to grab someone's attention. I would add a section to the very top of your readme that asks "What is Candor?" and then explains:

\- What it is

\- Why it's better

So far, I get that it's kinda like Dart, but not. As a "web skimmer", I'll need a bit more incentive right up front to dig deeper, or you've lost me.

From one language geek to another, I wish you the best of luck on your project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point!

<comment><USER3> Awesome. Thanks for the update! Next nitpick: the readme on a github page is "below the fold". Your current description is about the codebase, not about the product.

You might consider changing it to something like "Candor - <USER2> simplified" or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you start a new language, why not use OOP and eliminate language crutches such as: sizeof expr and keysof expr? An OOP approach is easier to both implement and grasp - expr.size and expr.keys. And lastly, the main difference with JavaScript I see is the lack of the "function" keyword - is this a good enough reason to advertise this as a new language?

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it transcompiler like coffeescript? If no, what is the benefit of using this? Read readme but didn't get point yet.</comment>


HTTP caching inside out - <AUTHOR> http://kamranahmed.info/blog/2017/03/14/quick-guide-to-http-caching <comment><USER2> Did not read all of it. But looks nice.</comment>


Ask HN: When should someone pay with Bitcoin instead of cash or credit? - <AUTHOR>

Bitcoin has clear advantages as a currency, but only in macro terms. Yes, it's decentralized and represents a true "gold standard." Many people agree with this. Society as a whole may benefit from adopting Bitcoin. Regardless of how many argue against this, the fact remains that Bitcoin has widely hypothesized advantages. Whether they represent actual  advantages or not, nobody can know... But at least there exists a set of apparent advantages.
But no advantages of Bitcoin represent a clear advantage to individuals. For example, most likely your neighbor sees no advantage to buying a pack of gum with Bitcoin instead of cash or credit. Ironically, he has less incentive, since most Bitcoin holders believe it will increase in value as a currency. So why spend it?
A currency cannot succeed without consumers transacting with it. Otherwise, the currency implodes.
So why should 90% of consumers choose to transact with Bitcoin? Imagine you are creating an ad for Bitcoin to show to an audience representing a wide cross section of the population. What argument has the highest probability of convincing them to buy Bitcoin with the intention of spending it? <comment><USER2> I recently tried to transfer funds to a bank in China, and had the Chinese bank refuse to process the deposit because the middle name on the deposit account was not provided, even though the account number and name otherwise were perfect.

Their inability to deposit the funds requested did not prevent both banks from charging around 80 USD to reverse the transaction. So in the future, I will be sending funds to China via bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've said it before - Bitcoin should not be an alternative to the USD, it should be an alternative to Paypal. A simple, secure, fee-free way to perform transactions online.

> "Ironically, he has less incentive, since most Bitcoin holders believe it > will increase in value as a currency."

This is one of the dangers of a deflationary currency that economists keep warning about. It's rarely a good idea to incentivize people to hoard cash.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the solution to that to make conversion as frictionless as possible? Then hoarding and spending become two separate activities. For spending you simply convert your local currency to BTC at the time you want to spend. And vice versa for receiving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When buying something illegal, like LSD, clearly. Tumble the coins for a bit and use it. Bitcoin is metal, not currency.</comment>


A Simple Fusion Recipe - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00745-7 <comment><USER2> Sadly, I'm surprised nobody patented the idea of "using natural magnets in a fusion reactor".

<comment><USER3> That's probably because there is way too much prior art. We used NeFeB magnets in my fusion reactor... in 1995. I'm sure we weren't the first.

The insight that Zarnstorff had wasn't that permanent magnets are strong enough to help fusion (neos aren't significantly stronger than they were a few decades ago), it was that the poloidal field twist in a stellarator could be assisted by permanent magnets, saving energy.

You may be familiar with donut-shaped tokamaks. To work, a tokamak has to have a field in both the toroidal (around the donut hole) and poloidal (up through the donut hole) direction. This causes a twist in the region where the plasma is. There are a number of ways to make the poloidal field; the classic way is to run current through the plasma.

A stellarator has magnets that already incorporate that twist in their magnetic field, so they don't need current in the plasma to supply it. What this paper is about is using permanent magnets to supply some of the field needed for that twist instead of using the main magnets, so you can use fewer or weaker main magnets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a bit light on details. Not even a link to a paper or anything.

<comment><USER5> Sure there is. But it's styled not to look like a hyperlink, because that's a good idea? Anyway, [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.095001)

<comment><USER6> I guess it lets Nature say they always link to the papers they discuss while minimizing outbound traffic to competitors. Ugh.</comment></comment></comment>


Two crazy Mexicans outside Startup School - sidengo-jorge http://snd.sc/ueNvlr

<comment> sidengo-jorge Hey guys! It was great meeting some of you today at Startup School. We came all the way from Mexico to this event and it was well worth the trip. It's our first time in the Valley, hopefully we'll be back in a couple of weeks for a YC interview!

Our startup is called Sidengo (<http://sidengo.com>, <http://twitter.com/sidengo>) and we'll be launching in a few weeks.

Any other people from outside the area today at SS?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is good to see Mexican Entrepreneurs here. I don't consider myself an entrepreneur, but I am currently building a startup with my friends from Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. Maybe we can share experiences and help each other.

Our product is iKnode (<http://iknode.com>). We are building a service to allow people to easily write apps in the web and for the web. :D

<comment> sidengo-gabriel Thanks! It would be great to share experiences. My facebook profile is /garzagabriel. We are based in Monterrey Mexico, if you are in town we can meet up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live close to Los Angeles. We can definitely do it online. I subscribed for your service. So I'll give you a good feedback when the beta is open. I would appreciate it if you would do the same. We are currently in close beta, and we are testing our idea.

BTW, your facebook profile is closed to people outside your network. So I wasn't able to add you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> sidengo-gabriel It really was an awesome day today at Startup School. We were not accepted to Startup School, but said to ourselves hey, what the heck, let's not take no for an answer, go anyway, we'll meet amazing and really smart people and we'll figure a way in once we are there. So we did precisely that, and after 8 hours of standing outside the auditorium watching the talks on justin.tv, we finally got in when the crowd cleared up a bit after M.Zuckerberg finished his talk.

The trip was well worth it. But actually, the best stuff happened in the breaks, outside the auditorium where all the networking was done. We met amazing people and got to talk to Drew Houston and Matt Mullenweg. We also said hi to Paul G and many other great people.

We were also lucky to meet Robert Scoble. We talked to him for a while, told him our story and then he interviewed us!

You can hear the interview here: [http://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/the- mexican-entrepreneurs-a...](http://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/the-mexican- entrepreneurs-at)

This was an awesome visit to SV, and like my co-founder said, we hope to be here for the interview in a couple of weeks!</comment>


What is Yahoo Mash? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/what-is-yahoo-mash/ Yahoo recently leaked its new social networking site <comment><USER2> It's their new social network (with a bit of a twist), and the beta launches tomorrow afternoon. It's supposedly going to tie together a lot of their services, so it'll be interesting to watch.</comment>


Microsoft Performance Point Server: Dead - <AUTHOR> http://cobb.typepad.com/cubegeek/2009/01/microsoft-pps-dead.html

<comment><USER2> BTW, what is Microsoft Performance Point Server?

<comment><USER3> According to MS it:

"Microsoft Performance Management allows customers to monitor, analyze, and plan their business as well as drive alignment, accountability, and actionable insight across the entire organization."

[http://office.microsoft.com/en- us/performancepoint/HA1016395...](http://office.microsoft.com/en- us/performancepoint/HA101639571033.aspx)

I don't understand either.</comment></comment>


The Topic of Suicide for a Transgender Woman - <AUTHOR> https://blog.intralizee.com/suicide <comment><USER2> [https://300writers.com/blog/transgender-issue- essay.html](https://300writers.com/blog/transgender-issue-essay.html) check this link it might be useful</comment>


Ask HN: So HNers, whatd'ya get for Christmas? - <AUTHOR> I think I made out like a bandit! Lots to read now over the break.<p>http://i46.tinypic.com/24pmip2.jpg <comment><USER2> I got the skin of a leopard. Completely unasked for, totally illegal and now I'm feeling very guilty, but unsure what to do. It's not good to have naive family members go on safari.

<comment><USER3> This probably isn't a popular thing to say, but assuming it's legal, I'd keep it. Anything that rare and precious is worth cherishing for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER4> So he should cherish something just because it is rare and precious? It sounds like he couldn't care less and would probably store it somewhere in a closet. And good for him: we shouldn't care about what _others_ think is valuable (except to prevent ourselves from needlessly offending them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got woken up at 1:30AM for a database replication problem, which wasn't a problem at all, there was no new data because IT WAS CHRISTMAS and there were no goddamn transactions to replicate. FFS!

Anyway, Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER6> At our ultrasound in October, we asked the sonographer to write the baby's sex in a sealed envelope. Instead of exchanging presents, my wife and I opened the envelope this morning.

It's a girl.

<comment><USER7> Congratulations! Our first girl is coming soon as well!

<comment><USER6> Congrats to you as well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm Jewish... but I got a winter break from college to spend with the family. For that, I thank you all (while my patience with my mother lasts).

<comment><USER9> Amen from your Muslim brother. :)

<comment><USER10> And your atheist friend too :)

<comment><USER11> And from the Buddhist friend :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From my dad: A card that says, "This card is redeemable for cash in the amount of the cost of the Feb 2010 bar exam if you pass it." He's trying to incentivize me to study since I'm such a procrastinator. I have to admit, that's pretty creative of him.

From my two younger married sisters who each have kids: a box with a stuffed baby bunny and a handwritten sign inside urging me to "MAKE BABIES!".

FYI: I'm 30, male, single, working on a law-related software startup, and considering a New Years' resolution of flying away from the bay area to other cities on weekends to meet more women. Good idea?

<comment><USER13> "handwritten sign inside urging me to 'MAKE BABIES!'."

Oh, nice; a start-up idea!

<comment><USER14> One with very little return on your investment.

<comment><USER15> Not true. If all goes well, they'll be there when you are too old to do stuff on your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An IR thermometer! I've always wanted one but never got around to getting it. I've been measuring the temperature of /everything/ since this morning. It's awesome to see how fast heating elements get hot, or quantify just how cold your coffee has gotten.

</comment><comment><USER16> Rejection from a grad school and a call from a collecting agency!

<comment><USER17> Hey I got that too, the collecting agency that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey, there are 12 days of Christmas, so I've got 11 more days to find out what I'm getting... ;-)

(Seriously, we celebrate most gift-giving on Epiphany, the traditional 12th day of Christmas, when the Magi brought their gifts to Bethlehem. Takes the "gift whammy" off Christmas itself, though we have a few minor gifts.)

<comment><USER14> Are you Russian Orthodox Christian?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got Monopoly City, an old Chase Manhattan stock certificate, and a mint condition 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar note.

<comment><USER20> I have (though I bought it myself) a Carolco bond (which covered Terminator 2), and framed it, and I point at it and go "Without this paper, no Terminator 2!"

<comment><USER19> I am a huge fan of finance. I used to collect assets from other banks for accounts I opened, and I always loved looking at the old stock certificates. By far, the most amazing certificate I have ever seen is one from Disney. It's a piece of art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had an arduino board and the books "don't make me think" [http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach- Usability/...](http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach- Usability/dp/0789723107) and "programming clojure" <http://pragprog.com/titles/shcloj/programming-clojure>

<comment><USER22> Yup I got an arduino too. Absolutely GREAT fun.

So far the best project I want to aim for is a UAV (<http://www.diydrones.com>) - either that or as a controller unit for a coil gun.

Any other suggestions for us?? :D

<comment><USER23> I got an Arduino last year and just finished a medium scale project. I hooked it up to a <http://hexbug.com> for remote control over a network with XMPP. If you want to take a look all of the code is at <http://github.com/bnmrrs/HexBugNc>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24>
      Andrey Tarkovsky's Sculpting in Time
      Milorad Pavic's Landscape Painted With Tea
      A signed and framed picture by Will Cullen Hart
      Herzog Zwei for my Sega Genesis
      Planescape Torment for PC
      Leadbelly collection
      A brick of soft lead (I need this for swaging).Someone found it and thought of me :)

Just the coolest stuff this year. Enjoy your day :)

<comment><USER25> +1 for the tarkovsky. and the landscape. and the torment. Damn I want your presents!

To stay on topic I got a Michal Palin book signed by himself! :)

<comment><USER24> I've been apprehensive about the Tarkovsky book, which was why I never bought it for myself. But he's my favorite director. It just seemed badly translated to me, from the preview I read on Amazon.

But now that I've read a few chapters, I have to say that this book is a must own for anyone who loves Tarkovsky. It still may be the case that the translation sucks, but I am over it. I'm going to to go through each of his movies one-by-one again, and read his corresponding chapters.

I recommend this book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A food processor! I can't wait to use it!

[http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DFP-14BCN-Processor- Brushed-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DFP-14BCN-Processor-Brushed- Stainless/dp/B0000645TW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=home- garden&qid=1261764490&sr=8-3)

<comment><USER27> Will it blend!

<comment><USER28> I've got one, the home Blendtec, it has yet not to blend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A WakeMate! Well, a printed email confirmation of a WakeMate preorder.

</comment><comment><USER30> Rejection letters from several banks for a small RV loan, even _with_ a co- signer. So my Christmas gift to myself, an RV, will have to be paid for with cash, and will be a few years older than the one I thought I was getting. I'm also wondering where my tax dollars are going, if they aren't going into consumer loans for people with great credit and reasonable income. (Note to other startup founders: Getting a loan as a startup founder is _really_ difficult, even if you have a reasonable salary and credit score in the 700s; plan accordingly.)

A Kindle. Which allows me to get rid of all of my books, making my transition to RV living that much easier.

Cash from my parents, as contribution to my RV fund.

<comment><USER31> _I'm also wondering where my tax dollars are going, if they aren't going into consumer loans [...]_

Is this some young geeks joke that old geeks don't get?

<comment><USER32> I think he is referencing the fact that politicians gave money to banks to encourage loans to consumers and it apparently didn't help this case

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had an HN-Christmas. I got stuff that I saw other HN'ers recommended over the last year.

First was the CDs. Arvo Part Fratres. Arvo Part Tabula Rasa, Gorecki' Symphony #3, and Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians (These are REALLY GOOD) I am enjoying the heck of of them so far this morning.

Then, from another HN thread, the ultimate nerd game, Settlers of Catan. Can't wait to try it out later today.

Finally some custom teas. Good stuff! I'm drinking a double-spice chai with milk and Splenda. Delicious.

By the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, you can be bad and Santa still brings you cool stuff. I think this whole "making a list" stuff is just a big lie. If you ask me, the big fat man is a pushover.

<comment><USER33> Settlers is great. It has a bit of a learning curve, though, so if you have any friends who know how to play (and who would be okay with a few "open hand" rounds), you might invite them over. Have fun!

<comment><USER34> If you find yourself enjoying Settlers, take a look at BoardGameGeek's top 20 list of games: <http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame>

While Settlers is a nice gateway game, there's a fair amount of chance involved that can be frustrating. I'd highly recommend Puerto Rico, Tigris & Euphrates, and Caylus. Good games, although they're a bit more involved than Settlers.

<comment><USER25> Puerto Rico is indeed amazingly chess-like; deterministic to a point where you start to pull your hair out because you didn't take the corn field in the beginning when you could. It also has the nice point that the situation can turn extremely quickly and your opponents start pulling _their_ hair :)

I would also add Agricola which is similarly deterministic but notoriously diffucult to develop a strategy for!

<comment><USER34> I'd argue that Agricola isn't deterministic. The cards dealt out at the beginning are done so randomly and often lead to asymmetry. Beyond that, I don't recall any chance.

One feature of Agricola I don't like much is that it's difficult to assess another player's score at a glance. In Caylus, for example, it's quite clear how well another player is doing.

Environmental attributes in board games: <http://www.cognitivesandbox.com/posts/board-games/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just got cash. I'm impossible to shop for, since I just buy whatever I want. So about 5 years back we just agreed that I just get cash, since that allows me to buy the stuff I really want, when I get the itch.

<comment><USER2> My rule is exactly the opposite - I have cash and I can buy anything I want basically, and I can always save for more expensive things.

So the rule is simply - I neither give nor receive cash or gift certificates. That way I get things I may not have known I wanted, or unexpected things. It also brings a lot more fun into unwrapping presents.

<comment><USER36> Gift certificates are like being given a ToDo list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My present was my extended family agreeing to play Werewolf for the first time. I've been dying to play ever since I heard about it, but haven't had enough people to try it. (It requires at least nine; eight players and a moderator.) It was a huge hit and we're playing it again tonight with even more people.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_%28party_game%29>

I also got a kegerator.

</comment><comment><USER37> 2010 scion tC... Totally sweet ride, korman book, and much needed socks

<comment><USER38> I have an '07 tC and love it. I've put 40k miles on it in 2 1/2 years, and I haven't had a single problem besides bent rims. Speaking of the rims, I don't know if they've changed in the past three years (doubt it), but if they haven't, be careful with them. My dad bent one hitting in pot hole in San Antonio, and I bent two at some point (no idea how). It might not be immediately obvious they're bent, but they can suffer pretty nasty blowouts when the sidewall does finally deteriorate. Neither my dad nor I have done that in any other car, so I think it has something to do with the rims (although we _can_ be a little rough on cars).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Four days off. :)

</comment><comment><USER40> The Guggenheim Museum & Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright in Lego.

<http://architecture.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx>

Ordered by Mrs Nailer and shipped to the UK.

I've loved Lego and modernist architecture since I was a child.

</comment><comment><USER41> From my girlfriend: an Atari shirt (since I'm always lamenting that the one I have now is literally falling to pieces); a copy of The Bro Code; A bunch of amazingly delicious homemade chocolates; A stocking shaped like Kuribo's Shoe from Super Mario Bros 3 (<http://bit.ly/kuribo>).

From my mother, a $25 sbux gift card and chocolates.

Given that I don't actually celebrate christmas and didn't want gifts, it's a pretty good haul.

I also got my girlfriend a sock monkey patterned after Rorschach from Watchmen (<http://bit.ly/5h0nfB>), which she liked (huge Watchmen fan and loves sock monkeys).

</comment><comment><USER42> I got CDs of the Brandenburgs, a desktop sundial, and a build-it-yourself 1/20 scale model of the Wright flyer.

Also socks and some other stuff. But there are more presents to come tomorrow as we visit the in-laws.

</comment><comment><USER43> Some old Piers Anthony/David Eddings books from my 14yr old son, which was possibly one of the most personal gifts anyone has ever given me. My daughter got me a laminated Spanish vocab foldout which was really awesome because I've been meaning to make up my own. Finally spending a Christmas with my European wife was the best though. ;)

My gift to us all as a family was to go see Avatar in IMAX 3D tonight. It was amazing.

</comment><comment><USER44> bought myself another 80GB X25-M SSD along with MCE optibay so I can RAID-0 them in my 17-in unibody macbook pro. Also a 32GB Class 10 SDHC card for my Kodak Zi8. And a UI stencil set for making website mockups <http://www.uistencils.com/>

I got my family a 23andme ancestry DNA test and they LOVED it. Gave bro-in-law & sister a Flip MinoHD for baby vids

<comment><USER45> That optibay, is that the thing that replaces the DVD drive? I have been tempted to do that too.

<comment><USER44> Yup, that's the one. The only issue I ran into with install today was that in my unibody 17-inch (latest gen, got it just a few months ago), the bluetooth module does not screw into the optibay (it was originally screwed into the superdrive). There are holes in the optibay for it, but the screws don't fit. Not a big deal though, the module is very small and won't move if left by itself (attached to a larger display cable).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> A Novation Launchpad, which I have already hacked to play Connect 4 with. I really wanted to play with a Monome a couple years ago but I could never get my kit to work very well (electronics were no problem, building the case was), so this is perfect.

Also the world's most awesome toy car: <http://www.geekfu.org/things/delorean-1.JPG>

</comment><comment><USER45> I got a watch, scarf, and gloves. I am at the airport on my way to visit my girlfriend and am interested to see what she gives me (she is getting a sweet camera).

But now that I have kids the giving is so much more fun than the getting. I got them a Samsung N130 netbook, mini helicopters, some books (DIY Diary of a Wimpy Kid looks fun), moleskines and no socks or underwear. Being santa is fun.

</comment><comment><USER47> Am not a Christian but happened to close a big project last week so took the Christmas week off; so got holidays! Am using this time to explore new MacBookPro my wife gifted me earlier this month for my b'day.. ..and (this is the part where I remm saying 'Jesus sure does not love me all that much') results were out for one of the professional exams I gave in Sept and I flunked.

</comment><comment><USER10> I received a Kindle 2 from my boyfriend and this awesome ceramic electric slow cooker. Anyone for pot roast? :)

Kindle 2 is absolutely amazing. I bought "The Business Of Software" and noticed that the graphs and tables didn't render legibly at all. So I emailed the Kindle feedback folk and within an hour I had a reply offering a refund. Best service ever, Amazon - and on Christmas Day too!

</comment><comment><USER48> I got a really nice citrus press - [http://www.amazon.com/Breville-800CPXL- Die-Cast-Stainless-St...](http://www.amazon.com/Breville-800CPXL-Die-Cast- Stainless-Steel-Motorized/dp/B000A76VCY). I make orange juice with breakfast every morning and this will cut juicing time from 5-15 minutes to 2 depending on how many I'm juicing for.

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice digital picture frame (I was running out of room on my desk for all the photos, so it's nice to have them all in one frame on a slideshow),some DVDs, new speakers.My biggest joy today has been watching my daughter, who is 7.5 and has taken a serious interest in digital art/design, as she learns all the ins and outs of how to use her first WACOM. :)

</comment><comment><USER50> I got Lego! Brilliant idea from my brother, and I must say that I enjoyed it just as much now (I'm 22) as I did ten years ago.

</comment><comment><USER51> Samsung N130 Netbook, A $50 bond and a coffee mug. Oh, and a Rubik's cube that has been eating up far too much time.

For my Dad, I promised to pay for a golf club he has on backorder. For my girlfriend, I got a PS3 with MGS4 and Little Big Planet (which is really so I can play LBP). Still trying to get my Mom to tell me what to get her, sadly.

<comment><USER45> I bought my kids an N130 too. Pretty sweet little machine and you can put a 2GB RAM chip in there (which I did for $60).

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Capicola and some Italian bread dipping sauce from my Mom, with a bottle of raspberry ice wine (yum!) on the way. New York hard rolls (oh how I miss New England sometimes) from my dad. Investments by Bodie, Kane, and Marcus and a hangover from myself. It's been a good Christmas already.

</comment><comment><USER53> The little schemer! I knew I forgot to ask for something. I seriously love getting books for Christmas.

<comment><USER54> Dude. . . this is a great book. I plan on finishing it today, in fact. Warning: the last two chapters are mind-bending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I got a cool Threadless shirt (101 cameras), a nice vest, a David Sedaris book, a nice light, 'The Ruby Programming Language', 'The Definitive JavaScript Guide' and a wonderful day with family.

I'm digging into the JS book now and loving it, very comprehensive.

</comment><comment><USER56> I got some beer brewing equipment. Now I won't have to use old water jugs and spill stuff all over the kitchen. Come to think of it, this may have been just as much a gift to my girlfriend as to me... (she got me the stuff)

</comment><comment><USER57> 2 hangovers in a row (maybe 3? we'll see...)

Coupla magazine subscriptions since I don't really want much else right now.

By the way, just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a few weeks ago. Great read even though I don't agree with it all.

</comment><comment><USER58> A llama.

(Go, Heifer! <http://www.heifer.org/>)

<comment><USER45> My dad gave me bees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> A new set of tires for my car and a really nice scarf. I love practical gifts.

</comment><comment><USER60> The foodstuffs I received this year. Didn't get much outside of foodstuffs. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/brutimus/4216683268/>

</comment><comment><USER61> Batman cufflinks. Unfortunately they do not fire poisoned bat darts.... yet.

</comment><comment><USER62> An Intel SSD. Best speed-up I could get short of getting a new laptop. :-)

</comment><comment><USER63> Sleep! Having family over is forcing me to take a break. Bah! :P

</comment><comment><USER64> A "Wiz" ARM-based open handheld gaming platform. And socks.

</comment><comment><USER65> Logicomix. Paul Theroux travel books. Borges short stories.

<comment><USER66> Logicomix is brilliant, got it for my birthday in November. Enjoy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Celestial navigation stuff. Books, including Nautical Almanac and some "layman" items, sextant, watch synched to radio time signal; all cool stuff!

</comment><comment><USER68> Christmas came a bit earlier here, so I got a hangover!:), but I used the break to get my next Project to 95%, I am targeting release in January!

</comment><comment><USER14> I got more ram, pocky, a gift card to amazon.com, and money.

Also lots of bdsm gear from my SO, including some really nice suspension cuffs. (Is this TMI?)

<comment><USER3> No, but I missed the "bdsm" and just went for an interesting Christmas jaunt on Google.

On second thought probably so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> A necklace, a lamp, a dress, the 'inventor's almanac' book 'They Made America,' and several socks, the limiting factor for startups.

<comment><USER49> Socks are indeed an important business asset. We've always said that when our startup is actually profitable enough to have a proper office, it will include a dry-erase floor and a large supply of corporate socks... you know, for all the planning meetings and UI sketches and what not.

<comment><USER70> That is a brilliant idea. I've wanted some dry-erase wallpaper <http://www.walltalkers.com/> since I worked in an office that had it, but the dry-erase floor is now on my list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Logitech DiNovo Mini Keyboard. If you have an HTPC, this is a must have. I have it working with ubuntu plug and play. It rocks.

<comment><USER72> i have a logitech mouse waiting for me in the states, which is a present to myself (i have a glass desk and they just introduced a mouse that works on glass).

but what i received was a very nice black jacket kind of thing. not sure how to describe it - like a thin fleece, but not very fleecy. i am sure it's a horribly technical piece of clothing for climbing up mountains or something, but i will be using it when i go north next week (summer here in the source - just had a xmas day picnic!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> 2 Books, a grease gun and shop light (I'm teaching myself car repair) A case for my new droid phone and lots of candy.

<comment><USER74> The shop light was a good choice. I'm a little confused about the grease gun. I've worked on cars since I was really young, and honestly cannot remember pulling one out, except on farm equipment.

I'd recommend a set of wrenches, sockets, socket adapters (get EVERY combo you can here), and 2 really good socket wrenches. Don't skimp on the socket wrenches. Money well spent. Also, a hammer, (rubber mallet, and metallic kind). Last but not least, some sort of ginormous pry bar and a 2-3' section of 1/4" steel pipe, that fits snugly around your socket wrench. Trust me, you will understand why very soon.

Get those items, which shouldn't break the bank, and you are ready to tackle damn near everything, aside from a crankshaft replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> <http://calcul.biz/amazon_covers/007054235X.jpg>

New.

<comment><USER76> How do you keep the ladies at bay?

<comment><USER75> I have a /lot/ of Expos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Suffering from a serious case of GAS (Gadget Acquisition Syndrome) :( Canon 70-200 IS 2.8 and a 17-55 IS 2.8.

<comment><USER77> 70-200 is a great lens. The only non-prime I've owned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Some sweaters and $280 in cash. I'm thinking about a ebook reader to read scientific papers on any ideas?

<comment><USER79> Kindle (latest generation) seems like the best from the people I've asked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Several nice sweaters, a suit, some decent stationary, a watch, and a plane ticket home to see my family.

</comment><comment><USER81> For Christmas I got an ESX losing power and bringing ~10 clients down with it. Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER13> I got a book on making pop-up books and cards, and some glue sticks.

Time to make stuff people can touch!

</comment><comment><USER79> Kindle (latest generation)

And some books, notably Hackers & Painters, although not in eBook format.

</comment><comment><USER82> Cash towards a Canon 500d. Really looking forward to getting into photography.

</comment><comment><USER83> Nothing.

</comment><comment><USER84> Repair manual and performance handbook for my 1993 Mazda MX-5.

<comment><USER55> Even though I drive a Ford Explorer I think I would have enjoyed getting a repair manual for it. I derive way too much pleasure from fixing my own car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> The Little Schemer! You've got a lot of fun ahead of you :)

</comment><comment><USER86> convertible mitts! <http://www.ems.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3651700>

</comment><comment><USER70> I want a Winnebago.

<comment><USER87> I want the phone number of the girl with the uzzy gun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> A Panasonic DMC-LX3 camera was my big present.

</comment><comment><USER77> Magic Mouse, an AeroPress and some cigars

<comment><USER89> How's the mouse?

<comment><USER77> Great, so far. I haven't used it much as I promised the wife I wouldnt get on the computer today :)

But so far, it seems like a keeper. And this comes from a guy who has never liked any of Apple's previous mice. (using a logitech until now)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Kitchenaid mixer. Totally awesome.

</comment><comment> adam-_- Massive wooden chopping board :)

<comment><USER91> Hopefully you'll get the knife set either for your birthday or next year?

<comment><USER92> Superstition says giving knives as gifts is bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Kindle ;-)

<comment><USER94> Kindle 2 or DX ?

Any idea how are the PDFs on Kindle 2 ?

<comment><USER52> PDFs on the Kindle 2 are effectively unusable in 99% of cases. There's no zoom function, so unless you break out a magnifying lens, you won't be able to read a damn thing on most PDFs. Quite sad, as I was looking forward to the update :(

<comment><USER3> With a DX in rotated mode I've never had a problem -- and I've downloaded and read dozens of different PDFs, including e-books with lots of diagrams.

<comment><USER95> They might be okay on the DX due to the bigger screen. But I agree that PDFs on the Kindle 2 are completely unusable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> New tennis racket.

</comment><comment><USER97> Chocolate :D

</comment><comment><USER98> A massive hangover...

</comment><comment><USER99> I was treated intolerantly and kicked out of a fat guy clothing store by a crazy catholic store clerk for not caring that the Pope fell down.

<comment><USER100> Given that most people would care if even a stranger were assaulted and pushed to the ground, perhaps the clerk reasonably assumed you didn't care because it was a Catholic figure who was the target. In that case, he would be right in assuming YOU were intolerant - of Catholics.

Well, at least people around you must be tolerant of fat people.

<comment><USER99> Forgive me, I don't watch fox nows, and generally do not find myself making a fist over the scandal of the minute. If anything, I'm intolerant of the tabloid nature of the press, and the people who find themselves filled with righteous indignation over every single sensation in the news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> PSP Go!</comment>


Vapourware: The emperor's new clothes of the software world - <AUTHOR> https://www.parkersoftware.com/blog/vapourware-the-emperors-new-clothes-of-the-software-world/ <comment><USER2> Why is this website overriding my browser's scrolling behavior?</comment>


Doc Brown and Tony Hawk show off a real-life hoverboard (or not) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/4/5470408/doc-brown-tony-hawk-show-off-huvr-real-life-hoverboard

<comment><USER2> Or not. If this technology existed nobody would comment on hacker news because we would all be riding our levitating boards all the time.</comment>