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The “Melissa Worm” Through the Eyes of the FBI - morisy
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2019/nov/13/the-melissa-worm-through-the-eyes-of-the-fbi/
======
octosphere
More on Melissa here and also some more detail on David L. Smith:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_(computer_virus)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_\(computer_virus\))
> The virus itself was credited to Kwyjibo, who was shown to be the macrovirus
> writers VicodinES and ALT-F11 by comparing Microsoft Word documents with the
> same globally unique identifier
Not sure how that explains how the FBI caught David though. Can someone else
elaborate? What sort of OPSEC fail is at play here?
~~~
jtaft
Just a guess. Sounds like the global identifier is generated at installation,
tied to a license key, or perhaps even a unique file/system fingerprint. When
saving/creating a word document, the identifier is embedded in the document.
If the same identifier is found in documents for legitimate use and malicious
use, one can associate the two identities.
One could potentially get a few suspects by approximating the time the the
virus appeared, then looking at ISP logs and server files to determine when
and who uploaded it, and go from there. If it was a legitimate copy of word
being used, could be even easier.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
Anyone know where unique document identifiers in MS Office products are
documented?
~~~
steve1977
Internally at Microsoft I'd guess. ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GNU Wget2 1.99.2 (Beta) - lelf
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2019-09/msg00001.html
======
saagarjha
I didn't even know that there _was_ a Wget2…what's the development progress on
this? Can (or should) I be using it instead of Wget?
~~~
msla
It can download faster due to using more modern features (parallel
downloading, If-Modified-Since) but the main focus is to make a cleaner
codebase which is built around a reusable library, so it's easier to add
features and make other code which uses those features, and so the libcurl
monoculture gets a little fire under its ass.
~~~
paulddraper
Does libcurl need a fire under its ass?
~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Every monoculture does.
------
msla
> In many cases Wget2 downloads much faster than Wget1.x due to HTTP2, HTTP
> compression, parallel connections and use of If-Modified-Since HTTP header.
This appears to be offical:
[https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2](https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2)
Which has this wiki:
[https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2/wikis/home](https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2/wikis/home)
> The idea is to have a fresh and maintainable codebase with features like
> multithreaded downloads, HTTP2, OCSP, HSTS, Metalink, IDNA2008, Public
> Suffix List, Multi-Proxies, Sitemaps, Atom/RSS Feeds, compression (gzip,
> deflate, lzma, bzip2), support for local filenames, etc.
> Some of these feature have been built into Wget in the meantime, but some
> other are really hard to implement into the old codebase.
~~~
darnir
Another feature not mentioned in there is support for verifying GPG signatures
of binaries you download.
If a gpg signature file exists, Wget2 will automatically verify the binary
against that signature file
~~~
rurban
With a .sig or. asc extension? gnu differs from gpg here.
~~~
darnir
Configurable. Default extension type is sig. However you can specify a list of
extensions and it will attempt to verify against the first it finds.
------
molticrystal
I see a MingW64 build in the pipelines for continuous integration builds [1],
but they only seem to be making Debian artifacts. Besides using wsl, are there
any releases for officially anywhere, or are there any unofficial places?
[https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2/pipelines/80747921](https://gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget2/pipelines/80747921)
------
pram
so will you explicitly need to specify 'wget2' in a package manager, or is
this replacing wget. i certainly hope it's not the former!
~~~
peterwwillis
If they replaced 'wget', and you need HTTP2 support, you might be using the
old 'wget' without HTTP2 support, or the new one with it. You would have to
wrap all your commands with a version check, and ask people to install the
newer, different software package, to get HTTP2 support.
_Or_ , call 'wget2' to get HTTP2 support. You can then either install both
'wget' and 'wget2', or the package maintainers could install a symlink for
'wget' backwards compatibility, so you'd only need to install the newer
'wget2' package.
From the package maintainer's perspective, they're literally different
software projects, and changing an established package name to be different
software would break many systems.
~~~
Fnoord
This could be solved with wget1 for Wget 1.x, and wget/wget2 binaries (linked)
for Wget 2.x. Only thing that does is break scripts.
~~~
peterwwillis
> Only thing that does is break scripts
That's not really an acceptable change... Would you like all the scripts you
run on your Linux distros to break every time you do package updates? I
wouldn't touch such a distro with a 100 foot pole
~~~
Fnoord
Who said there's no grace period? Python 2/3 is dealt with the same way.
On 1) a rolling distribution not called NixOS 2) which mindlessly installs
wget2 3) and does not use their own power to install or name the binaries
according to their own view, sure 4) nor use a grace period and badly informs
the user(s) which something like Homebrew would... then yes, it is a problem.
On a distribution which has stable and LTS releases such as
Fedora/Ubuntu/Debian it is no problem as long as users would read the release
notes.
It could be a problem on Arch and Gentoo, but whenever those users run into
trouble you could argue PEBCAK or go fix it yourself. Same for those running
-CURRENT on *BSD.
------
farisjarrah
Anyone know if/when this will filter down to the distros?
~~~
einpoklum
FYI - Debian 10 Buster (and thus also Devuan 3) uses wget2 1.99.1, so not far
behind.
------
chocolatkey
It looks like the biggest new feature is support for http2. Will http3 be in
wget2 or a "wget3" though when it eventually happens?
~~~
darnir
Nope.
Wget2 was required since we wanted to break some backward compatibility with
Wget 1.x releases. So we decided that a major version bump is warranted.
It is also an entire rewrite of Wget in order to support HTTP/2\. But this
won't be required again when HTTP/3 or other protocols come out
~~~
marvy
> we wanted to break some backward compatibility
examples?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Git from the inside out - beliu
https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
======
xelxebar
I read somewhere about a person wanting to understand git, so they made .git
itself into a repo and watched what changed as they used git normally. Thought
that was pretty clever.
------
chmaynard
Looks like this blog post was adapted from a video presentation by the author:
[https://youtu.be/fCtZWGhQBvo](https://youtu.be/fCtZWGhQBvo)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Discovers Extraordinary New Planetary System - civilian
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/new_planetary_system.html
======
cryptoz
I'm going to be hanging on to the edge of my seat for the next two years,
waiting and waiting for that most incredible and exciting announcement! I can
just hear it now: "We have found seven Earth-mass planets orbiting sun-like
stars in the goldilocks zone. One of them is 15 light years away"
Exoplanet discovery is by far the most exciting thing happening right now. In
any field. It's incredible!
~~~
AndrewO
I know what you mean. Every time I hear something like this (but especially
when it's within 10s of light years) I think "Time to bring back Project
Orion!"
------
cryptoz
There's a Kepler Mission Ops Controller answering questions on reddit right
now:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/fe0ps/ive_done_this_b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/fe0ps/ive_done_this_before_and_received_little_interest/)
~~~
robryan
Interesting comment on reddit about Earth like planets:
_As stated above, I don't see the data... However, I feel I can say beyond
probability that yes, there are a LOT of goldilocks planets waiting for
verification. I am unsure of the amount, but I would be surprised if it were
less than Order[1000]. You bet it detects planets that small :)_
------
Eliezer
Someday humankind will colonize the galaxies, but by the time we get there we
won't give a tinker's damn about "habitable planets". Interstellar travel is
not for protein minds.
------
robryan
It's interesting with Kepler that the majority of peoples interests lie in
finding a planet which has the potential to host life as we know it, whereas
for the scientists on the project and those doing follow up observations every
system discovered like this is essentially rewriting the assumptions on
planetary formation.
------
civilian
I was really sad to hear that it was 2,000 light years away. However, this
discovery still helps us understand what planetary systems are possible.
~~~
ComputerGuru
At this point, it really doesn't matter how far _anything_ is - with the tech
available to us in the here and now, anything more than a few years' journey
(at conventional speeds even, not in lightyears) is just too far.
Whatever breakthrough it is that'll let us get half a lightyear away will get
us to 2,000 lightyears away. But until then, nada.
Think of all this as an over-eager child researching what his parents (errr,
Santa, I mean) will get him for next Christmas 11 months from now - planning
and fantasizing about every last detail, even though there's just no rushing
it.
------
nika
Whenever I see these news releases, I instinctively look to see if there's an
earthlike planet, or a likely candidate, and feel let down if there isn't one.
I guess I'm ready to go!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The 64GB Surface Pro Ships With Just 23GB of Usable Space - justinbkerr
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/64gb_surface_pro_ships_just_23gb_usable_space123
======
Osiris
Windows, for a long time, has consumed 15-20GB of space on a clean install.
The Surface Pro is running a full install of Windows 8, plus included
applications and most likely at least 6-10GB restore partition.
I think it would be pretty easy to account for why so much space is being
used, but I still think that Microsoft is playing a little loosy-goosy with
the amount of space that it uses just for the OS. Winsxs is always a source of
confusion because it can use up to 15+ GB on its own.
------
Trezoid
This was talked about yesterday
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5135911>) with much more discussion.
------
jimmthang
I'd rather get MSI's convertible.
~~~
Nerdfest
I'd rather have rope burn.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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First ever blockchain based elections - stoneheads
https://coingape.com/sierra-leone-elections-2018-with-permissioned-blockchain/
======
austinary
Other countries also like india, china, where corruption level is very high,
must take inspiration from it..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Earn Bitcoins with your t-shirt - verybadge
http://badgerhunt.com
======
drcode
This idea is not viable as far as I can tell... Besides the obvious flaw of
this service (it is a centralized business, which compromises most of the
benefits a decentralized currency like Bitcoin has to offer) there HAS to be
an objective way to determine whether a person is fulfilling their obligation
to wear the tshirt. The only way I can think of to do that is to have "eyes on
the ground", a second group of people who are "verifiers" who monitor the
"badgers", and who are independent contractors willing to accept a very fluid
employment arrangement... at this point you are sort of hamstrung with bitcoin
because it has no significant smart contract system to encode the
responsibilities of the various parties (the verifiers, badgers, and
badgerhunt.com)
Until a cryptocurrency-based smart contract system becomes established (such
as ethereum or codius) I just don't see how this type of business idea is
going to be feasible (but certainly the roads of silicon valley are paved with
the bodies of people arguing this or that business model is never going to
work :-)
~~~
verybadge
We are actively working on a multisig scheme where advertisers won't need to
trust us with the money and we will only act as a pure middleman, signing
transactions when the campaign is completed. The scheme is relatively well
know at the present stage of Bitcoin development, but it still takes some time
to implement right. We ourselves are not interested in holding other people's
funds, it's dangerous.
~~~
drcode
Well, I guess I'm not too worried about the question "can badgerhunt run away
to Cuba with everyone's money", which is of course always a concern and is the
problem multisig solves... I just see that the incentives of a "badger" are
not aligned with the incentives of an advertiser- The incentives of a badger
are to PRETEND to advertise a product, in a way that requires the least
effort. Unless you can find a way to penalize "badgers" who cheat (through a
sophisticated independent verification and enforcement mechanism) I'm thinking
the compliance among "badgers" would be low.
On the other hand, if you DO have a way of providing such penalties in a cost-
effective way, this concept would have more potential... and the only
solutions I can think of still need more technology infrastructure to be
developed.
~~~
verybadge
That is a good question. But think about it, why would compliance be low? It's
not like you have to wear a giant rubber dick on your head to advertise
something. You only wear a t-shirt or put a bumper sticker on your car.
Possibly, of a brand that you might actually like. Where exactly is the
incentive to cheat? Sure, some people might cheat and there are ways in which
you can minimize this number of people which we've been discussing. But for
the majority, there's really no incentive whatsoever to not wear that t-shirt
and not fulfill their obligations.
~~~
drcode
Certainly, lots of people said airbnb customers & hosts would cheat like crazy
and were proven wrong. Best of luck to you.
------
syswarren
Services like getchute.com use image recognition to make pictures with logos
available to brands. They mostly use the pics for online advertising. In a
sense, they broadcast the brand to a bigger audience than what you could make
with one person in the street and offer a way to track how many people have
seen / will see the ad.
How would you compete with those kind of services? What would be the
advantage(s) for a brand to offer free tshirts/stickers/caps to people so they
can become "living ads"?
This kind of sponsor/ad thing has been working with celebrities, do you think
everyone can be visible enough to be interesting for big brands?
------
eli5
One thing I found a bit alarming is that the FAQ page says advertising funds
are held by the site. It's good they realize the threat though and say a
multisig solution will be rolled out. I hope this multisig solution will be
rolled out quickly, otherwise I don't see big advertisers trusting the site
with a lot of money.
~~~
chrisBob
This especially worries me for a site where the contact page doesn't list any
names or addresses. A site with no address that only wants BitCoin screams
scam to me.
------
final_approach
So this looks like a dating site for advertisers and those who are willing to
provide some advertising space on their t-shirts. Seems to me, not a very new
concept. But somehow, I find it less humiliating then when people are dressed
as mascots for some real-estate agency. Decency preserved.
------
prot
Slightly offtopic, but it's nice that the default option when signing up is
"Never send me news emails". Says a lot, in my opinion.
------
uptown
Why involve Bitcoin into the whole thing? Couldn't you just use cash?
~~~
smoochy
I think it'd be impossible to do such a thing on a large scale with cash or
credit cards/paypal, especially if it perates worldwide. High fees, many
people unbanked, subject to lots of regulations depending on the jurisdiction.
That would be a major pain in the ass. Projects like these is where Bitcoin
shines.
------
Geee
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-tRPhxm41I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-tRPhxm41I)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Renormalization: A Common Logic to Seeing Cats and Cosmos - patocka
http://www.quantamagazine.org/20141204-a-common-logic-to-seeing-cats-and-cosmos/
======
thisisdave
This could be an important result, since there's a _lot_ of theory and
expertise regarding renormalization group methods, but I think it's too early
to tell.
The write-up is a bit misleading, though: the model in their preprint[1] is
about stacks of restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs), and are very different
from the other examples of deep learning mentioned. The Google Cat Detector
model, for example, didn't describe a probability distribution over images,
which is the kind of task that the preprint is about. And in almost all of the
recent cases where deep neural networks have made substantial progress over
the previous state of the art, the models have not been probabilistic, or
trained layer-by-layer, or unsupervised, like the RBM-based approach in the
preprint.
I don't speak physics, but my reading of the paper says that could be
summarized pretty accurately as follows:
1\. Hinton et al. (2006) showed that each layer in a stack of RBMs improves a
variational lower bound on p(x).
2\. Variational methods for RG also iteratively improve a variational lower
bound on p(x).
3\. The two methods would thus be equivalent, if we could fit them without
error (which we can't).
4\. Here’s a figure from a stack of RBMs that vaguely looks like RG results
(not shown)
I don't see any comparison between the approximations that physicists normally
use versus the contrastive divergence for training RBM-based networks, or
evidence that their results are more similar in practice than any other
technique.
Am I missing something?
[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.3831](http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.3831) [2]
[https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/fastnc.pdf](https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/fastnc.pdf)
------
digital55
This is the paper in question:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.3831](http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.3831)
------
MrQuincle
Very interesting. I was working on renormalization theory in the context of
self-organized criticality - [https://dobots.nl/2012/02/27/the-
renormalization-group/](https://dobots.nl/2012/02/27/the-renormalization-
group/) and swarm robotics.
I didn't think of it to apply to deep networks, but it makes a lot of sense.
What is not so likely in the brain is that these topographically mappings are
the only ones. There are probably some mix-and-match schemes that allow
integration of information on longer distances on scales different than that
of the most coarse layer. Just my two cents.
Oh yeah, and although physicists like fractal-like structures (the fixed point
in the renormalization flow can be seen as having the same mapping between
every two subsequent scales of granularity), people with real-life machine
learning problems probably would like to study more temporal and dynamic
aspects. When time gets introduced, things become complicated.
------
lutorm
So about these deep neural networks: I seem to remember from some introductory
AI class many years ago that a multilayer neural network can't do anything a
single-layer one can't. So what's the deal here then? Is it because the
algorithms for learning can't be reduced to an equivalent single-layer
network?
~~~
Houshalter
There isn't anything a large number of if-then statements can't do either. Why
do programmers use nested if-then statements or states?
~~~
cma
For some GPUS, all code runs, no nested its, just flags to turn unused paths
into no-ops. All I'm trying to say is even in your example, the optimal thing
we could come up with depended on the problem at hand (graphics vs general
purpose). Newer GPUs are different, but still, the ridicule of his question
isn't appropriate, reasoning by analogy is error prone, and the real answer to
his question is probably a lot more rigorous.
~~~
Houshalter
This is because GPUs are parallel and can't do nested ifs, not because
representing code that way is efficient.
Even GPUs do sequential operations. You could never program the vast majority
of algorithms like "if the input is exactly 100011110101... then output
100011001...".
If that seems silly, that is exactly how the proof that single layer NNs are
perfectly general works. It proves that you can represent any series of if
then statements like that in an NN. And people who don't understand the proof
are mislead into thinking single layer NNs are just as good as deep NNs.
------
trhway
our brain came up with renormalization in physics probably because that is how
our brain deals with complexity. Deep neural networks were built following the
way we know our visual cortex and recognition works. The same brain, the same
method. Not surprisingly. What would be surprising is if it happened to be the
best/optimal/etc method :) as this method is a subject to biological
constraints where is computers (or whatever another "thinking entity" would
appear) don't (willn't) have them.
| {
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A case for a four day work week - ifearthenight
http://www.inc.com/jay-love/the-case-for-a-four-day-work-week.html
======
MortenK
Excellent article, and especially good content in the comments on the site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Hidden treasure in the D standard library - nkurz
http://nomad.so/2014/08/hidden-treasure-in-the-d-standard-library/
======
thinkpad20
I'm curious how D implements memoizing an arbitrary function. To memoize
something, you need to be able to check if it's being called with the same
arguments. But to do that, you need a definition of "same" (i.e., an
equivalence relation). For example, if the argument is a dictionary, is it
considered the same argument only if the pointer is the same, or if the keys
and values are the same, assuming a recursive definition of "same"? Also, you
need a way to store computed values, using the arguments as keys, which for
efficiency would require either an ordering (for a tree) or hashing (for a
hash table) on the arguments. Multiple arguments would further complicate
things. How does this get automated? And for some things, memoization wouldn't
make sense (for example, with function arguments in higher-order functions).
Sensible defaults would take care of most of these things, but it makes me
wonder how they chose to address these things. And is the memo recreated each
time the (outer) function is called, or is it stored for the duration of the
program? Also, how does the type system play with this? What's the type of
`memoize!`?
~~~
andralex
1\. Sheer comparison for equality is used. (It is user definable.) For e.g.
built-in hashes, contents must compare equal.
2\. The store is a hashtable.
3\. Multiple arguments are grouped in a tuple - no major complication.
4\. Where memoization doesn't make sense you'll get a compile-time error
because e.g. comparison for equality is't defined. At least most of the time
:o).
5\. The memory is thread-local.
6\. memoize takes the name of the memoized argument and creates a distinct
type for each memoized function.
TL;DR: business as usual
~~~
delluminatus
> 1\. Sheer comparison for equality is used. (It is user definable.) For e.g.
> built-in hashes, contents must compare equal.
Wow, so if you compare aHash == anotherHash, it doesn't just compare the
references, it actually examines both hashes for content equivalence? That's
fairly unconventional, but probably convenient sometimes.
~~~
andralex
Affirmative. Use "aHash is anotherHash" to compare references.
------
Shorel
Memoization is one the most useful things I learned about in Common Lisp. Glad
to see it in D.
It allows the program to have recursive algorithms with the performance of
optimized for loops.
~~~
blt
Memoization is pretty easy to implement yourself without any special language
support. It's cool to make it part of the standard library but it's not like
some magic sauce. Especially given that D always uses hash tables. In the
Fibonacci example given, a simple array would have much, much better
performance.
~~~
repsilat
> In the Fibonacci example given, a simple array would have much, much better
> performance.
When I looked at the output of the hash function in Python for integers a few
weeks ago it looked like the identity function was being used. You'll still
have greater complexity than an array, but I'm not sure how much greater.
------
Zardoz84
I recommend try std.parallelism. I did a test with a n Body simulator and runs
very well on a 15 core machine with a speed up around x13-14 over the serial
version.
[https://github.com/Zardoz89/nBodySim](https://github.com/Zardoz89/nBodySim)
------
tonysuper
The "flag" example could be easily replaced with named parameters. Seems a bit
unnecisary to add a new type for that purpose, unless I'm missing something.
~~~
asterite
You are not missing anything: named parameters would have been a much nicer
choice, but I think they don't want to make the language more complex.
~~~
EvenThisAcronym
Are there any plans to add named arguments a la C# or Python in the future?
~~~
renox
Currently 'the plate is full': D is full of features and many of them are not
finished/polished so I doubt that they will add such kind of feature in the
near future..
------
pyed
Haskell has treasures.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Top Common and Crucial Challenges Faced by Startups and Ways to Overcome Them - kiranpateltech
For any business challenges are to come and they will have to find ways to overcome it and definitely it is an important step. For the same reason, it is important to make sure that these issues are not taken lightly. They need to know some skills and have profound knowledge to ensure the company moves towards success. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-common-crucial-challenges-faced-startups-ways-overcome-patel/
======
kiranpateltech
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-common-crucial-
challenges...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-common-crucial-challenges-
faced-startups-ways-overcome-patel/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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NPR's Planet Money Podcast: Bitcoin - mukyu
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/13/137795648/the-tuesday-podcast-bitcoin
======
mukyu
Features discussion with Gavin Andresen (bitcoin developer), Bruce Wagner,
Benjamin Friedman (economist at Harvard), Ronald Mann (law at Columbia) and
covers the basics of bitcoin, legality, and even mentions recent events
(including MtGOX's recent problems).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Is investment taxed? - legally
Is venture, angel, or friends and family investment taxed? Does the company receiving investment pay the tax or does the investor? Are there investment tax credits? I'm in the United States, but it would be interesting to see how it works elsewhere.
======
simon_
Proceeds from investors (debt or equity) are not profits, and the company
receiving the investment will not pay taxes on the amount.
The investor will have to pay taxes on any capital gains / dividends /
interest she receives.
------
faramarz
I'm not sure what the rates are in US, but I suspect here in Canada we would
pay more tax per capital gains.
In Ontario All capital gains and Canadian dividends are taxed at lower rates
than other income.
Interest income and dividend income are received or accrued each year, and are
_taxable in the year_ you receive or accrue the income. You have no control
over which year the income is paid. You are not taxed on capital gains _until
your investment is sold_ , so you have some control over which year you
receive the income, because you can choose when to sell your investments.
The tax paid on capital gains is low, because _only 50% of capital gains is
taxed_ , and the gains are not taxed until the investments are sold, except in
situations where there is a deemed disposition
------
jacquesm
How it works 'elsewhere' depends greatly on where elsewhere is. In some
countries you can write off your investments when they tank, but in those
places you can expect to pay a healthy tax if they appreciate. In others both
the losses and the gains are not part of your taxes.
It also depends on what you qualify as an investment, for instance, investing
in real estate or antiques can be tax free but a business investment might be
taxed.
You can't really answer this question in a general way without at least
specifying locality and the specific kind of investment.
So the 'how it works elsewhere' portion of your question is not easy to answer
without a long list of examples and localities.
------
dfranke
The profit you make on investment is taxed as capital gains. The law makes a
distinction between short-term and long-term gains: if there's less than a
year between when you invest and when you cash out, you pay the same tax rate
as for ordinary income. If there's a year or longer, then you pay the more
favorable tax rate of 15%. If you lose money investing, you can claim the
loses on your tax return and use them to offset gains in future years.
~~~
jlangenauer
This is roughly how it works in Australia, except that the discounted capital
gains tax rate is 50% of the normal rate for investments held for over 12
months, and the discount is only available to individuals (and, I think,
trusts) but not companies.
------
aristus
In California the assets of a corporation are taxed I believe, so the stuff
you buy with the investment has a liability.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists Dispute 2-Degree Model Guiding Climate Talks (via wsj.com) - raspasov
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjan4qah7fJAhWDnYgKHd3nCrgQqQIIHjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fscientists-dispute-2-degree-model-guiding-climate-talks-1448829047&usg=AFQjCNHN1-9eRAxq4DzR-OfWVxVnGSLUeA&sig2=A5kbcG9HD6H3a8jDJeHW0g&bvm=bv.108194040,d.cGU
======
Daishiman
Let's start things off on the proper foot, scientifically:
Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions today, the world is very likely to hit
significant tipping points already, unless you're the sort of person who
doesn't consider the disintegration of the Larsen B ice shelf, the massive
Greenland glacier melts, and the increase of Siberian methane emissions (that
lovely, pants-shitting and realistic close-range extinction scenario) to be
"tipping points".
The only way this plays out is that the less damage you do, the easier it will
be future generations to stabilize the situation through proper technology and
policy (or you think people will just idly accept 500 years from now that the
actions of today will lead to their demise?).
So models have curves where depending on the different scenarios, the amount
of damage varies. Since this is a continuum of environmental effects, not
discrete points, picking a single point as a goal is a mix of what you can do
realistically and the amount of political buy-in we can get about how much
guilt we can take for fucking things up, plus/minus the inherent uncertainty
in any model.
So yeah, you can say that it's arbitrary about as much as a recommended
dietary intake is arbitrary, or a recommended maximum radiation dosage is
arbitrary, or the number of minutes of exercise per day is arbitrary.
This is a great example on how to turn a one-paragraph response into a two-
page fluff article.
------
themartorana
_" Still, many scientists back the goal because they see it as giving policy
makers a clear-cut target to shoot at in the fight against global warming."_
When your options are nuance or action, sometimes action.
Remember your audience.
------
jrk
I clearly should have known, but: oh my god the comments section…
------
NickHaflinger
“It emerged from a political agenda, not a scientific analysis” Yes it is
patently obvious there are powerful wealthy backers behind the Global Warming
hoax :)
------
vixen99
Scientists can dispute all they like: nothing will happen.
Whatever your views on global warming, it is simply a fact that people in the
developing world want to enjoy the standard of living experienced by the
developed world and that means much increased energy consumption. The latter
will not be met in any very significant way by windmills or solar panels.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linux Summit Will Preview New Advanced File System - ajbatac
http://www.osnews.com/story/20383/Linux_Summit_Will_Preview_New_Advanced_File_System
======
qhoxie
While ext3 with some tuning has done me proud for a long time, it is really
exciting to see stabilization in these advancements.
Having used ZFS extensively in Solaris enviroments, I can say whole-heartedly
that I cannot wait for COW, snapshots, and inbuilt striping and mirroring in
the mainline kernel someday.
------
Herring
Knowing SUN, they'll GPL theirs when this filesystem is 90% done.
Btw, can we screen the devs a bit better this time?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to apologize for fixing a non-bug: Instapaper - joeybaker
http://blog.instapaper.com/post/1135784328
======
daniel02216
Sometimes 'technically correct' isn't always the best kind of correct.
Thanks, Futurama.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An elastic conductor makes possible cheap, conformable displays - dhimes
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22632/
======
frankus
One step closer to my slap-bracelet cell phone
([http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Slap_20Bracelet_20Cell_20Phon...](http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Slap_20Bracelet_20Cell_20Phone))
:)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Traffic Is Fake, Audience Numbers Are Garbage, Nobody Knows How Many See What - bobajeff
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160915/18183535533/traffic-is-fake-audience-numbers-are-garbage-nobody-knows-how-many-people-see-anything.shtml
======
tomludus
There are also a huge number of people using as blockers which actively block
many of the tools people use to calculate users.
Furthermore these ad networks charges are based on this "traffic" with some
vague and highly opaque promises that the bot traffic is filtered out.
Makes you wonder how much money is wasted on bot traffic.
------
automatwon
_Could they even be off by a factor of 10?_
I used to work in Data Science. I definitely agree with this sentiment.
Sometimes we did statistical calculations of 'confidence'. Personally, I
rarely felt confident, due in part to my constant OCD / skepticism. Question
for people who know statistics better than I do: what does accuracy mean when
there isn't a known "true" / standard value? What's the precision of a
measurement when things are an order of magnitude off?
The article mainly talks about attribution. Another possibility is for some
non-trivial portion of data to be systematically missing altogether. Data
which isn't a randomly distributed sample, but a particular characteristic.
_but all these numbers are actually good for (maybe) is relative comparisons_
I also agree with this. I guess it's okay for metrics to be wrong? As long as
all the metrics are equally wrong in perfect proportion? This is why I also
like to track the proportion between metrics, as well, as an internal
consistency check. My mathematical intuition is that if the metric in question
is a monotically increasing (growth) / decreasing metric over time, there will
be a interval of time which this relative proportion is useful, after which
the metrics, growing at different rates, will diverge to incoherence. Of
course, models are not perfect representations of the world, and merely
reductions to the key components. To give a concrete example of a model where
things look good in some narrow domain, but breaks down. I wrote a physics
wave propagation simulation. Instead of actually implementing the Wave
Equation which is too much math for me, I used Hooke's law as an
"approximation" if you can call it that. It's a good enough visual
approximation, but there will is a critical value at which the system implodes
or some fuzzier value at which things no longer look "unnatural" to say the
least. Then again, Newtonian physics breaks down after a while too.
Also, when the model IS outputting the right answers, it could be for the
wrong reasons. Companies will spend money on a particular thing, which they
correlate and assume causes growth. For example, a particular marketing
campaign. It could just be coincidence / fluke. Does Descartes' evil demon
like trolling analysts?
I'm also a self-proclaimed minimalist: materialistic, and beyond. I'm curious
what's people's experience with "hoarding" metrics? Given how hard it is to
have accurate metrics, I feel reporting should be reduced to a small set of
metrics one can be confident about, rather than a large set of metrics, none
of which one can feel confident about. If I ever work on my own startup,
that's how I'd run things, or so I hope. Maybe businesses gets pressured, to
feel productive, to build confidence with employees, or by their investors to
crank out metrics? I'd love to hear your stories there.
The article talks about having no idea what we're talking about. Sometimes we
have no idea what we mean, ie: Semantics. A metric which we describe
qualitatively in English can drastically differ in value based on how we
formulate a query / computation. Maybe basic English sentences are not Turing
complete, even. This notion doesn't really make sense though, because the
issue of Semantics is also about communicating the idea between two people,
and each person's mapping of a English sentence to a computation is a somewhat
abstract idea. Anyways, either the semantics of the query doesn't reflect our
qualitative definition of the metric, or querying the dataset is not a
"closed-path", meaning one or more of the paths consists of wrong or
inaccurate data. In which case, the solution is to be explicit about how a
particular is computed, rather than WHAT we're desperately thinking we're
getting at. Actually, it was when I first wrote two different queries to
calculate the same metric, and having the numbers differ on an order of
magnitude that I realized what we call confidence borders on quantified faith.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
First impressions of an Amazon bookstore - walterbell
http://www.idealog.com/blog/first-impressions-amazon-bookstore/
======
tzs
It sounds like something out of the song "In the Year 2525".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Jakob Nielsen Is Wrong About Mobile Websites - boopsie
http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/04/why-jakob-nielsen-is-wrong-about-mobile-websites/
======
psweber
Yes, everyone please stop listening to Nielsen.
Also, check out the staff section on the Nielsen Norman Group site:
<http://www.nngroup.com/about/people/>
\- 4 old white dudes \- 12 young, attractive women
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Acceptable Ads explained: monetization - kawera
https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-monetization
======
dingo_bat
Already moved to ublock origin. Goodwill is a funny thing, once you lose it,
it's impossible to gain back.
~~~
vmorgulis
Me too. ublock is far better.
I play sometimes with tag selector (the "pipette" icon) to remove ads. I
wonder if it's possible to share that easily.
------
amelius
Can't they just offer paid subscriptions, that remove all ads by paying the
publishers?
Framed differently: AdBlock as a micropayment service.
~~~
joelhaus
Probably possible, but this creates an environment where independent small
publishers would rely on donations to sustain. Only cash-rich corporations
would be able to foot this bill... reminds me of the net neutrality issue.
I prefer this solution:
[https://contributor.google.com](https://contributor.google.com)
------
Elhana
It is really easy to bypass any kind of adblock filtering by just hosting your
ads locally on your own domain, but for some reason all the 'content creators'
are to lazy to go back to the old ways. When you buy a newspaper, you can't
magically cut images out of it, especially if layout changes from time to time
and same can be applied to web pages.
Blame those hassle-free, privacy violating personalized ad networks that
infected everything.
~~~
JohnTHaller
Most companies won't pay for advertising online without the ability to monitor
performance independent of the publisher (who could easily lie to make more
money) and without the ability to more accurately detect fake clicks (which
the publisher could help fake). Part of the way the big ad networks work is to
detect fake visitors/clicks - on behalf of the publisher and the advertiser's
competitors - and exclude them. We can argue the success/failure of how well
they do it, but we can't really argue that companies want it.
One way you can do self-hosted ads is pay for purchase instead of pay per view
or pay per click. In this, the website would participate in an affiliate
program or company, promote their product on the site, and then get a cut of
revenue (sales/subscriptions/etc). Unfortunately, this is a very small portion
of advertising revenue and is very hit or miss.
------
DanBlake
My guess as to what will take down ABP will be their 'antiadblock' filter
list.
Essentially they are writing and maintaining a anti-anti-circumvention tool. I
know it might sound crazy, but think about this example-
Bob writes a computer game. He wants it to be free for registered users, but
guests can either pay a monthly subscription or be ad supported to use it as
well.
Joe writes a crack for said game, so everyone gets the paid experience.
I think anyone would agree the above scenario is a prime case for a DMCA
lawsuit as it is the definition of a circumvention of access control.
I do not see how it would be different for doing the same thing on a website.
In the eyes of the law, they are both software getting circumvented. Adblock
plus is developing and maintaining ways to circumvent access controls
developed by other companies.
Personally I dont have a issue with adblock and the generic filters. I have a
issue with the site specific filters as I think they are likely illegal
depending on each sites tos
~~~
twwhoevenknows
I don't get how its illegal -- I don't see any EULA I have to agree to when I
load a web page.
~~~
DanBlake
The lack of a EULA does not mean you can do whatever you want. The DMCA still
applies.
Also, many sites have a tos that governs what you can and cannot do.
Regardless, its not illegal for you the user, but for ABP the company. They
are profiting from circumventing software.
------
zelcon5
Why doesn't Google et al provide a shim for web servers to proxy ads off their
own domains, with the same URI routes as the actual content? That way, an
adblocker would also prevent the content from being served. (Why waste your
networking load on non-paying customers?)
The main obstacle is that this introduces a middleman---so Google et al should
only offer this service to the BIG money-makers (like nytimes.com) until they
can ship something secure. Adblocking "problem" solved.
WHY don't Ad companies do this? I can see this as an Apache/nginx module or
middleware libraries for whatever web server is used, without having to change
anything else. How long would this take for the army of 140 IQ Google
codemonkeys…like 1 day lol?
~~~
Nullabillity
Ad blockers don't just look at the domain name.
~~~
zelcon5
Adblockers may use more than the URI, but it starts with the URI and if it
does not match, then it does not block.
If a video file is served from cdn.example.com/video/?file=3w0rjwo, then have
a DoubleClick ad serve from cdn.example.com/video/?file=0239fjad with phony
HTTP headers including mime type.
------
x0x0
They carefully elide one of the most important criteria: pay eyeo.
~~~
LeeHarveysGrave
No kidding, nor do they explain that ad agencies have little to no interest in
selling their clients this 'acceptable experience'.
Nor do large brands have any interest in promoting expensively created brands
with sub-par adverts.
Truth be told they're after a slice of the remnant and low rent market so
they're effectively extorting the small and medium businesses, "mom and pop"
outfits, folks that use adwords and similar to build their brands.
Extorting publishers and telling them to pay to advertise on their own content
is pretty cheeky.
~~~
thecolorblue
I would second this.
Is there any data out there on ad placement effectiveness? It sounds like they
are removing the ads that are actually effective and leaving the ads nobody
notices, in other words, the ads that nobody would pay for.
As someone who used to work for a SaaS company, it always amazed me how many
people expect to get things for free.
~~~
tomjen3
I can't remember the last time a promoted tweet was relevant for me. I am not
going to buy Samsungs new super expensive phone, I am not going to be using
mail-chimp.
So why do I keep seeing ads for crap I don't need and products I already know
about, instead of new products that are useful that I can actually use? Maybe
if ads were useful people would want to see them and so they wouldn't have to
be annoying.
~~~
thecolorblue
That is a good point, relevant ads are less annoying. Are you fine with ad
companies collecting information about you to give you better targeted ads?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Madness - guglanisam
http://sameerg.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/startup-madness/
======
bootload
_"... Each time we met a new person, we were constantly thinking of how this
person can help our venture, . Everywhere we went, we explored if there was
something there that could benefit our startup. Frankly we were classical
‘opportunity hounds” and quite shamelessly so ..."_
I've seen this so many times and it tends to work well in a boom. I'm curious
how well does this idea work in the current crash?
~~~
guglanisam
I would think importance of this increases in the bust / crash times as money
is scarce / precious, one has to use innovative / free ways to get things
done. In fact it happened with me most when madhouse was running with very low
cash.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CNAME support for GitHub Pages - bprater
http://github.com/blog/315-cname-support-for-github-pages
======
teej
this is practically unreadable on the iPhone.
~~~
ichverstehe
This is practically unreadable on my Nokia 3200.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How do I find a job at a non-profit? - debacle
Salary has been my #1 focus for the last few years. I've done well for myself, but now I'm looking at what I want to accomplish outside of making money.<p>I'm a software generalist, with people + technical skills. My salary requirements are flexible, but I want to find something I'm passionate to work on.<p>Where should I be looking? Are there recruiter that specialize in non-profit placement?
======
chmaynard
As an alternative, consider founding a non-profit. I did it last year and I
will never go back to a salaried job. George Bush was right when he said that
a thousand points of light will outshine a single star.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Hate Adobe - marcamillion
http://marcgayle.com/2010/04/21/why-i-hate-adobe/
======
raganwald
The title is linkbait (Capt. Obvious, at your service), but the post itself
was a worthwhile read. Two paragraphs stood out for me:
_...I have to restart Firefox, which then loads Adobe Download Manager, which
then hits me with a ton of banner ads that slide from side to side (that I
can’t close or block) and, while downloading Acrobat – which I then have to
install. On top of that, once acrobat is installed, they also installed ‘Adobe
Air’. It could have been that they gave me the option to opt-out, but I was so
pissed by this install process that I glossed over it, but it just made the
entire process even worse... Is Adobe joking? This reminds me of some shady
‘third-party’ app site._
And:
_Adobe…stop worrying about Apple’s 3.3.1 change in their iPhone TOS and start
focusing on your own customers and improving their experiences and lives.
Maybe if you did that, and made Flash better people wouldn’t allow Apple to
get away with the shafting they are now giving you and many other developers._
~~~
krainboltgreene
Dude, half this site is link bait or reads like some car salesman.
------
machrider
It's weird that he recommends Foxit at the end of the article, which is also
bundled with a ton of crap these days. (I was shocked the last time I
installed it.) Then I found Sumatra -- open source FTW.
~~~
hazzen
Old versions of Foxit were ad-free. Only the newer versions have turned into
some kind of crapware mess. The same thing happened to BSPlayer (VLC-like
media player). None of these programs force updates, so someone who hasn't
updated their program for years will blindly reconmend them to friends, only
to get laughed at for proposing such crapware.
~~~
gxs
wow I learned something today. I've been using foxit forever and you just made
me feel like a douchebag because when people ask, I always recommend it.
Indeed, I've been using the same old version for a long time.
------
Tichy
Things like that suck, and Adobe is not alone with it. Almost all noob PCs I
have seen in recent time had the Yahoo toolbar installed, for example. They
push it with a lot of downloads apparently (maybe even Mozilla?). That is
close to criminal in my opinion.
Another reason why I love Linux with a good package manager and reliable
repository. Open Source apps usually don't try to slip crap onto your PC.
~~~
rm-rf
"Open Source apps usually don't try to slip crap onto your PC"
Unless you blindly run CPAN.
~~~
TorKlingberg
Care to clarify?
------
protomyth
It is starting to scare me that Adobe is acting more and more like Real every
day.
------
guelo
The question is who doesn't do crap like this with popular consumer downloads.
Apple does it with itunes+quicktime, last time I had to download Java there
were toolbars, WinAmp ditto. Maybe Google and Microsoft are the only ones that
don't, though they don't really have super popular consumer downloads besides
maybe Gtalk and some of Microsoft's document viewers.
~~~
ugh
No, Apple doesn’t. You click a link and the file downloads. You can enter your
email address but you don’t have to. You can download a standalone version of
QuickTime if you really want to [1] and it’s pretty obvious that iTunes won’t
work without QuickTime.
[1] <http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/>
~~~
armandososa
But they install Safari for windows whenever you update iTunes. You can opt-
out (just with the adobe download manager) but it's not obvious for the common
user.
I've heard both from my dad and my sister say 'Hey! what's this Safari thing?'
because they don't remember installing it.
~~~
ugh
Admittedly, their Windows software sucks :)
~~~
mishmash
And I've never understood that.
------
DrSprout
I only use Foxit for filling out forms from trusted sources now. Now that
Evince has been ported we're in really good shape (also Sumatra, but its
implementation is minimal - which can be a good thing when you find security
vulnerabilities in the spec.)
~~~
Terretta
Until a couple weeks ago, FoxIt Reader automatically ran executable programs
embedded within a PDF document without asking for a user's permission. It was
actually worse than Adobe Reader:
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174612/Adobe_Foxit_e...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174612/Adobe_Foxit_examine_new_no_bug_needed_PDF_hack)
[http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/31/using-foxit-
because-...](http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/31/using-foxit-because-you-
think-its-safer-than-adobe-reader-thin/)
Make sure you're on 3.2.1.0401 or newer. Or, as you mention, switch to
Sumatra:
<http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html>
On the Mac, help friends switch back to Preview as their default PDF reader
after Adobe Reader hijacks doc mappings.
------
mey
Other Adobe fun <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/>
~~~
matrix
Another good one is: <http://dearadobe.com/>
PS: Adobe people: please read that site. Especially the bits about your
updater.
------
dgallagher
Adobe, fix you Mac Flash client. The horror, my god, the horror:
<http://daved.posterous.com/12301965>
FYI, ClickToFlash (<http://clicktoflash.com/>) is a lifesaver/CPU-saver if you
use Safari on the Mac.
------
FluidDjango
Plus: _my_ reason to hate adobe...
I use DreamWeaver (relax: mostly for file management), and got a chance to
upgrade to CS4 inexpensively (ed. discount package) and to check out adobe
Contribute. Result: now DW creates a new directory (_notes) in _each_ of my
30+ sites' directories, subdirectories, etc.
Last time I searched for help (goog, etc.), I found _no_ way to disable the
Contribute "features". Adobe wouldn't want to make it _convenient_ for me to
disengage from any of their products, now, would they? (expletives deleted)
[/rant]
~~~
jules
Maybe this is a strange question, but _why are you using Dreamweaver for file
management?!_
~~~
RyanMcGreal
I understand Dreamweaver does a good job of managing _projects_ \- if not of
managing actual, you know, HTML.
------
shrikant
I know it's ugly, and you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get ONLY
what you wanted, but...
You don't HAVE to install Adobe DLM - you can choose to cancel the Adobe DLM
plugin install, and click on the "start download now" to get the Adobe Reader
installer alone.
~~~
marcamillion
I never noticed that. Maybe I was shell-shocked.
Truth is, when I am doing these fresh installs, I usually am multi-tasking and
not paying much attention because they usually are routine. This time was no
different, so I very well could have missed it.
But still.
~~~
fnid2
Stuff like this often happens to people who don't pay attention.
------
sohooo
Hating Adobe can be fun too; just look at some of those hilarious crash
reports :) <http://log.maniacalrage.net/tagged/cs4cr>
------
Silhouette
I don't hate Adobe, but I really wish they would stop insisting on invasive
copy protection technology. I have nothing against paying a fair price for
high quality work, and indeed I have paid quite a bit to Adobe themselves for
fonts over the years. Several of their applications are clearly better than
anything else in the market for professional work, and I would gladly pay the
price they ask for those as well. However, I don't install software on
machines used for professional work if that software messes around with parts
of the system, like the operating system directories or boot sector, where it
has no right to be.
~~~
derefr
I believe their point of view is that, if you really are using, say, Photoshop
professionally, then the machine you use it on is likely just a "Photoshop
box," and they can thus take as much control of it as they wished. (I can
imagine that, if they didn't want to avoid dealing with drivers et al, they
would just make "Graphics Studio OS" as a drop-in replacement for Windows and
OSX.)
~~~
Silhouette
Have you ever met anyone who bought a dedicated computer just to use Adobe
Creative Suite? I surely haven't, and that includes several guys I'm working
with fairly frequently who specialise in the kinds of work where Adobe's
software is dominant.
I think Adobe's basic problem is corporate arrogance. Because they have -- for
now -- the only top-class graphics software in town, they don't really care if
people are upset about their DRM and so on. Either they're in denial about
lost sales opportunities like me, or we're just not significant enough as a
group for them to worry about us because they think (rightly or wrongly) that
they get more money out of preventing people ripping their stuff illegally.
One of these days, someone is going to show up with a serious competitor,
whether it be a commercial organisation that sees an opportunity in the market
or some of the community-driven stuff getting some serious support behind it
and stepping up to Creative Suite's level. At that point, Adobe may come to
regret alienating so many paying customers (or would-be customers). But
unfortunately, until then they have a _de facto_ monopoly, so those of us who
don't absolutely have to use their stuff even if it means setting up a
separate machine for it will just have to accept their terms or not. I figure
if we at least shout about it for a while each new release of CS, maybe
someone senior at Adobe will get the point eventually, though.
~~~
derefr
> Have you ever met anyone who bought a dedicated computer just to use Adobe
> Creative Suite?
No, I've never heard of someone buying _themselves_ a computer purely for
Adobe-ware—but I've definitely heard of someone's _boss_ buying _them_ a
desktop workstation and restricting it so that it only _runs_ Adobe-ware.
~~~
Silhouette
But this is my point: for a lot of professionals who probably rely on Creative
Suite, there is no difference, because they work freelance. For people in that
position, buying a whole extra workstation just to run some drawing software
is a significant expense. So the point of view you suggested on Adobe's behalf
in your earlier post still doesn't really make sense, because all of those
freelancers would potentially switch to a competitor product of sufficient
quality and save hundreds/thousands in hardware costs regardless of the price
of the software.
------
RyanMcGreal
>I needed something to read PDFs and that’s the first thing that comes to
mind.
Unless you're looking for advanced Adobe stuff like annotations, FoxIt and
sumatraPDF are just fine. (Note: the former only lets you select a page at a
time whereas the latter doesn't appear to let you select content at all.)
------
apphacker
Adobe is a great software company. They are a corporate software company and
they do things that software companies do because they have investors to care
for. Microsoft, Google, Apple (more of a software company than a hardware
wouldn't you agree), Sun, Oracle, etc are the same way. Maybe there's a better
way to govern a software company, not sure, but the ones that work that way
have made it to the top and stuck around. By "that way" I mean obvious self-
interest, it's what investors want.
Having said that, Adobe has done a great many good things for developers, and
part of that is the Macromedia legacy they inherited (bought).
\- Adobe has some of the best developer support in the industry. Their
documentation, training and support has always been excellent. They have given
developers and designers a lot of power through their tools. They have given
developers the power to do a great deal with the web, and this is evident in
the desire many of us have to get HTML5 to do what Flash can already do. We
want the web Macromedia and Adobe envisioned, but we don't want it to be in
their clutches, which is understandable, but I would be amiss if I didn't
credit Adobe with that vision and the vision of those they've enabled.
\- Adobe has supported open source, and open protocols and standards. They
pursued ECMA4 through a standards body (and lost that fight), but still. They
have a decent proprietary flash player for Linux which they didn't have to do,
I doubt they did that for any other reason other than for developers. Their
Flex SDK is open source. There's a whole list here of open source projects
they have:
<http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home>
\- Adobe AIR has a bad rep for no good reason. I also thought negatively of
Adobe AIR until I started developing with it. It's fun to work with, I made a
desktop app in JavaScript quickly (an IRC Client), and it works on three
different platforms without any real effort to make that happen. I hope Adobe
AIR is successful, because I think it is a promising runtime, that can only
get better.
Anyway, I think I'm a better software developer today because of Adobe. One of
the first client side apps I've produced was a Flash color picker. It was fun
and easy to build and it put me on a path to be a software engineer. Sure this
download manager thing is annoying, but you know Sun had the exact same thing
when you downloaded the Java Runtime, which by the way also installs the Yahoo
Toolbar last time I checked. Microsoft installs the MSN Toolbar, Google puts
their toolbar on PCs from various manufacturers.
If you are RMS or a die hard GPL proponent, you are probably not going to
agree with me, but that's ok. I also want HTML5 to supplant Flash wherever it
can, but if Adobe gets around to making their Flash player work better on
Macs, I don't really want to see Flash go away.
So you had to deal with a download manager, so what. I don't hate Adobe for
that. I think they're a great company. If I ever started a software company
I'd hope to become a smidgeon of what Adobe is.
~~~
Locke1689
Sorry, but Flash is poorly written software on everything but Windows and
Adobe Acrobat is just poorly written. It actually took less CPU time to
_virtualize Windows in VMWare_ and run an HD Flash video than it did to simply
play that video in Linux or OS X. You have to _try_ to write software that
bad.
~~~
uriel
Flash is a horrible nightmare on Windows too, it just is even worse on Linux
and OS X.
------
barnaby
I hate Adobe flash and all, but does the author know that if he installed
Ubuntu instead of XP then he wouldn't be having these problems? The install
process there is very quick and ad free.
It's 2010 for Pete's sake! Friends don't let friends suffer with Adobe's crap
on XP.
~~~
marcamillion
Funny story barnaby...the machine I was installing XP on...actually had a
flavor of Ubuntu. These people are not fully tech savvy and they begged me to
re-install their original XP back to it - because of software compatibility
problems - driver problems for some obscure webcam, etc.
So yes, for some people Ubuntu and other flavors of Linux run nicely. But for
others, it can be just as much of a pain as Adobe in this case.
Just my $0.02 :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Stock Option Value Calculator - linouk23
https://valuation.vc/startup_options.html
======
uberman
The calculator _might_ be good (I did not try it), but from my experience a
good rule of thumb is that your startup stock options are worth nothing.
The most likely positive exit is that your company (assuming you are actually
at a startup and not something like Dropbox pretending to be a startup) is an
outright purchase. In that case, VCs will take a preferred multiple of their
investment first, should there happen to be anything left it will almost
certainly go to direct compensation to retain the principles during and
immediately following the buyout.
If there is anything left after that (almost certainly will not be) then your
options _might_ (but probably are not) worth exercising.
The notion that your options at an actual startup are worth anything related
to "Post-money valuation at last financing round" is sadly laughable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Exciting Twist on Fundraising - FundCrazr
https://fundcrazr.com/how-it-works
======
FundCrazr
Looking for thoughts on: Is our mission clear? Do you understand our concept?
Would you participate as a fundraising manager and/or a supporter? Thank you!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best Python Reference Ever - pizzaburek
https://github.com/gto76/python-cheatsheet
======
FZ1
A key hallmark of Python is readability - which this cheat sheet has managed
to royally screw up.
It looks more like an XML cheatsheet at first glance.
I work in python full-time for a living, and found myself having to re-examine
several times to make sense of this wacky, non-standard notation.
\-------
Edit:
Keep in mind there's a standard way to represent these options in a clear,
consistent manner (lists, sequences, optional args).
No need to re-invent something that's hard to read and understand.
See: [https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-
typ...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-types-list-
tuple-range)
~~~
nixpulvis
the hallmark is readability?! really!?
Please explain to me why then you introduce a binding _after_ you use it in
array comprehensions.
[x*2 for x in range(1,10)]
~~~
vharuck
As a person who majored in math, this is very readable.
~~~
nixpulvis
As a person who often struggled in math for perhaps many reasons, this was a
common issue for me.
First you define things, then you use them.
No other rule makes sense generally, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.
Now is a simple set like { 2x : x ∈ ℝ } going to confuse me, probably not...
but when variables are just thrown around all willy nilly, I get confused
pretty quick.
------
seemslegit
The <thing> notation is pretty confusing and I find myself using my knowledge
of python to understand what half of the examples are teaching rather than the
other way around.
------
gjm11
Seems like a needlessly editorialized title. (The actual title at the far end
of the link is "Comprehensive Python Cheatsheet".)
------
meowface
Don't think I'd ever use this, but this was new to me:
>To dynamically access function's first free variable use
'<function>.__closure__[0].cell_contents'.
------
strogonoff
A good way of specifying variable types in sample code is with Python’s native
type hint syntax[0].
Using angle brackets is an option, but it results in invalid syntax (confusing
to beginner programmers) and is used by languages such as TypeScript and Swift
to signify generics (confusing to established engineers coming from those
languages).
[0]
[https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html)
------
umvi
"Basic Mario Brothers Example"
This needs to be a thing for every programming language cheatsheet
------
siquick
Great resource
>> <list>.append(<el>) # Or: <list> += [<el>]
Not a fan of the += syntax in this instance - seeing _.append_ instantly lets
me know I'm dealing with a list whereas += can be used on almost anything
------
saeranv
I use Python full time and I found this useful. Starred it for future
reference.
Why does everyone find the <thing> notation confusing? <list> means its a
list, and so on. I'm really surprised it's tripping people up.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mini, Micro Funds for App Developers - kanny96
http://www.iphonedev.in/iPhone/Mini-Micro-Funds-for-App-Developers.html
======
ktharavaad
The iPhone craze right now reminds me a lot of the rush in summer 2007 onto
the facebook platform. After the initial success of the FB apps, didn't a lot
of VCs also start up funds for facebook apps.
Of course, there are differences since for iphone apps, an app sold is a few
dollars for the dev.
Look at where facebook apps are at now today. Do you think that the deluge of
apps for the iphone will cause apple to implement similar system as facebook
to control the quality of apps that goes into the store?
~~~
kanny96
The app review at Apple is already under stress and criticism. But contrary to
your facebook example, Apple recently started even being more lenient with app
acceptance policy.
It seems they really want to scale the platform to the PC level as more apps
on App Store means more iPhone sale as well. And the future is also towards
the small form-factor, wire-free, intelligent UI based companion device for
all one's information, communication and entertainment needs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Collection of CSS Creations | CSSDeck - jalbertbowden
http://cssdeck.com/#.T7zRSFbe2MQ.hackernews
======
ashamedlion
The homepage design is certainly "inspired" by Dribbble.
~~~
binarydreams
honestly, when i launched the website, i came to know that dribbble had
similar listing (from such feedbacks like yours :P). trust me, neither was i
inspired from dribbble's listing nor did i steal/copy/ripoff anything from
there.
well, its ... mmk.
~~~
scoot
The design isn't "inspired" by anything - it's Bootstrap. That has it's place,
when thoughtfully deployed, but not in a site espousing good CSS designs.
------
dkroy
You probably already know this, but your website doesn't function correctly in
IE.
~~~
binarydreams
but Chrome is the no.1 browser :D
~~~
dkroy
Lol, yeah I remember seeing that article. It is kind of funny I use each
browser for a different purpose. I develop for IE, develop in Firefox, and
browse in Chrome.
------
PelCasandra
Glad to see some great implementations here.
It would be nicer if it wouldn't be needed to hover the images to read what
the effect is about.
~~~
luzon19
try the "live list" listing type
------
TazeTSchnitzel
(this post contained some errors, removed at author's request since they
exposed some of the site's architecture)
~~~
binarydreams
i am extremely sorry regarding what happened. we were just moving today and
upgrading things. should be all fixed now!
------
binarydreams
wow, i was fixing bugs and improving parts but then suddenly website gone
down. server hungup :|
Then i checked various tools like GA and found HN hit up with massive traffic,
lol :D
I just launched V2 today and was moving servers, hehe.
Sorry if anyone faced bad downtime/errors.
~~~
fourmii
Nice site! Well done, I've just been looking through it this morning for some
inspiration.
------
PierreSN
I am currently learning Css and I always love getting new stuff. Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Death by Internet? (Tyler Clementi’s suicide) - gkmarshall
http://marshall2law.com/
======
samstave
No, we should not use emotional events to find ways to regulate the internet -
or let politicians creep in where they shouldn't be meddling.
If you want to try this guy, try him on privacy violations, breaking and
entering, or someting along those lines.
The last thing we need is a precedent for increasing punishments because they
used the internet as a tool.
Christ, we can't even prosecute the bankers and politicians that stole
trillions and crashed the economy. Or cops that murder and maim citizens. Go
get them. Why not focus on fixing the shit that is really broken as opposed to
simply looking for ways to make more and more laws.
The laws we DO have aren't even working.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My open source HTML5 puzzle game - adam-a
http://ohgames.co.uk/pingpongspidermother/
======
html5
Hi OhGames!
Just a quick note that I tested the game on Safari (Latest/Mac) it the
keyboard keys are not recognized.
Regards, HTML5
~~~
adam-a
That is strange. I don't have a mac to test on until next week unfortunately.
Thanks for the note though.
~~~
html5
Download Safari on Windows and give it a try. Also test it on iOS & Android if
you can.
------
timinman
It's not loading for me at the moment.
~~~
adam-a
I don't know what was happening, it seems to be ok now, perhaps just a little
busy. I only have a cheap VPS.
------
dvoiss
Game plays great for me, nice job!
------
uokesita
Nice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Patent for a Wireless Taser Could Signal a New Competitor - IntronExon
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007376/axon-taser-monopoly-digital-ally-wireless
======
mmcconnell1618
From the article, it sounds like the shock is triggered wirelessly from a
projectile that is conventionally fired at the target person. The person who
fired the projectile has the ability to trigger the shock or to wait and see
if the targeted person complies first.
The actual charge is not sent wirelessly. I was hoping this was some kind of
"phasers on stun" breakthrough.
~~~
Natsu
In theory you could use one or more lasers to ionize the air and potentially
make it conductive enough to zap someone. In practice, I expect there would be
a serious risk of eye damage for everyone involved and it would probably be
unworkable, but who knows?
~~~
Qworg
You could also send a thin wire, then vaporize it to create the ion channel.
=)
~~~
Natsu
I think some existing stun guns work in that manner? Granted, they might not
vaporize the wire. Still an interesting idea.
------
rm_-rf_slash
Considering how often my Bluetooth speakers get confused between my computer
and the two iPhones in the house, a wireless device that can emit lethal
amounts of electricity scares the shit out of me.
I know comments are gonna come out of the woodwork about the difference
between Bluetooth and wireless tech they use. Whatever. Like you’ve never
written bugs.
~~~
theknarf
I agree; that is problematic. At least the article hinted at the possibility
to have a built-in time limit to avoid a deadly dose. Hopefully, this might
lover the number of deaths from tasers.
------
imglorp
The real "phasers on stun" wireless method may be the laser-induced plasma
channel: a brief UV pulse ionizes the air, making a conductive path over which
an electrical current can be sent. There's a lot of applications of this, from
stopping people to HERF-ing things, but none have made it to market yet...
Maybe it's a hard problem?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser)
------
sova
Fuck tazers and their brutal outcomes. Fuck Taser Corporation's [now "Axon"]
coverup of all the lethal dosages of electricity from their devices.
------
hliyan
I hope they've thought about targets using wireless jammers, or worse yet,
someone hacking the signal...
------
SlowBro
Does the projectile store the charge in a supercap or something?
------
alexnewman
signel or signal
~~~
IntronExon
My bad, sorry!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook open sourced object detection from images technology , SharpMask - tachyons
https://code.facebook.com/posts/561187904071636/segmenting-and-refining-images-with-sharpmask/?refid=52&_ft_=qid.6322801441051145749%3Amf_story_key.1023434960795274919%3AeligibleForSeeFirstBumping.1
======
epberry
Wow this field is moving fast. Just yesterday I was commenting on RCNN which
apparently is old news now! Although it appears the same basic architecture is
still used. If you're looking for a nice history of object detection leading
up to a survey of current methods and a discussion of RCNN, check out this
talk by Larry Zitnick:
[https://youtu.be/UXHWNNzdPVM](https://youtu.be/UXHWNNzdPVM), one of the key
people behind the OP.
At the end of this post they talk about extending this to video. This, in my
opinion, is a much harder problem. Convnets are standard for images but no one
has found a really good architecture for video. Some key questions I have
about video: 1) How do humans perceive moving things? My guess is that there
are major differences down to the visual cortex that would warrant brand new
architectures. 2) Could we operate neural nets directly on encoded data, such
as h.264? Not only would this be computationally much more efficient than
decoding video into frames and processing each one but some codecs give you
motion vectors and other useful temporal data for free. 3) How do we handle
temporal information? LSTMs work well for sequential data and there's been
some work on using them for video but I'm not aware of much success on using
sequential networks to detect things like plot points in movies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A brief history of AI - aidanrocke
https://keplerlounge.com/2017/02/08/a-brief-history-of-ai/
======
aidanrocke
tl;dr:
The main point I’m trying to drive home is semantic in nature. There is no
hard and fast rule that AI has to be digital or that it must be programmed via
a laptop. The key thing is that there are universal design principles for
building substrate-independent AI systems.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Time series analysis - dageroth
I am currently interested in time series analysis as it seems to be a great feature for all kinds of software to report unexcpected events. My first go is rather simple with just taking the last 90 datapoints and then look whether it differs more than 2 or 3 times from the standarddeviation. Does anyone have a simple approach for more sophisticated time series analysis? or rather, links and book recommendations?
======
revorad
R has a lot of packages and functions for time series analysis. These links
might get you started:
<http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/TimeSeries.html>
[http://www.stat.pitt.edu/stoffer/tsa2/R_time_series_quick_fi...](http://www.stat.pitt.edu/stoffer/tsa2/R_time_series_quick_fix.htm)
<http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Ricci-refcard-ts.pdf>
[http://people.bath.ac.uk/masgs/time%20series/TimeSeriesR2004...](http://people.bath.ac.uk/masgs/time%20series/TimeSeriesR2004.pdf)
[http://www.statoek.wiso.uni-
goettingen.de/veranstaltungen/ze...](http://www.statoek.wiso.uni-
goettingen.de/veranstaltungen/zeitreihen/sommer03/ts_r_intro.pdf)
<http://www.r-bloggers.com/tag/time-series-charts/>
------
michael_dorfman
The classic work on Time Series is Box-Jenkins. I've got the 3rd edition, but
it looks like the 4th is now available-- I suppose I'll have to upgrade.
[http://www.amazon.com/Time-Analysis-Forecasting-
Probability-...](http://www.amazon.com/Time-Analysis-Forecasting-Probability-
Statistics/dp/0470272848/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bloomberg launches $2,000 Email Newsletters - Cmccann7
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d10f15c-e532-11df-8e0d-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss
======
sushi
Good Luck with that. They'll need it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Combustion-derived nanoparticles in Alzheimer disease development: study - okket
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-culprit-hidden-plain-sight-alzheimer.html
======
Tharkun
I guess fine Particulate Matter (PM) is the lead of the 21st century.
Hopefully findings like these (and those linking it to cardiovascular issues)
will prompt legislators to action.
~~~
hammock
Fine particulate matter was the lede of last century too. Asbestos
(mesothelioma), talcum powder (ovarian cancer), titanium dioxide (it's in
everything), plastic microbeads (voluntarily discontinued), 9/11 cleanup crew
issues, Doritos flavor dust (I saw an article on this somewhere...)
How do we solve particulate getting in your brain though? Nanorobots for
removal?
~~~
extra88
I think Tharkun mean "lead" as in leaded gasoline and lead paint.
~~~
hammock
Good one, thanks. In that case I would expand lead to be heavy metals
generally (lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic etc)
~~~
Tharkun
Ah yes, sorry about the confusion. I was indeed talking about lead (Pb), or
rather tetramethyllead as it was added to gasoline as an anti-knocking agent
last century. It's something that was suspected to be bad early on, but the
scale of it wasn't realized until much later. Of course, political nonsense
and corruption came into play as well.
Just like now.
------
giardini
Magnetic air filters for the home, anyone? Its an untouched market!
Not to mention magnetic filters for motorcyclists. Asia is full of
motorcyclists who use dust masks. Adding a "magnetic filter", even one barely
effective, might be very popular in Hanoi and Saigon, for example:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=motorcyclists+in+saigon+wear...](https://www.google.com/search?q=motorcyclists+in+saigon+wearing+masks&client=opera&hs=fJq&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDt_TFwbbUAhUKw4MKHSm2Dj0Q_AUICigB&biw=1105&bih=845)
Finally, an application for old disk drive magnets!8-)): grind them up into
coarse domain-sized grains at low temperature (so they don't lose their
magnetism) and then toss them into the paper/fiber pulp mixture used to make
masks. You should get a mask that filters the usual particles and also
captures iron nanoparticles.
Add a few billboards on major highways depicting nursing-home residents with
Alzheimers' disease and saying "Don't end up like this!" and those masks will
be flying off the shelves. Profit!
~~~
exhilaration
This sounds like a pretty brilliant idea to me, why isn't it already on the
market? The article specifically calls the problematic particles "airborne
iron-rich strongly magnetic combustion-derived nanoparticles (CDNPs)".
~~~
giardini
It _has_ been discussed before: I just found a 2007 paper about dust problems
in lunar living environments; the suggested solution is a magnetic air filter.
Their solution is different of course (I was simply brainstorming about the
powdered domains solution - there are many ways to magnetically filter
particles from the air):
"DUST MITIGATION: LUNAR AIR FILTRATION WITH A PERMANENT-MAGNET SYSTEM "
[http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/1654.pdf](http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/1654.pdf)
There are probably many more such ideas published.
------
neonbat
"combustion-derived nanoparticles" they mean car exhaust right? airborne
pollutants from burning things. seems like just another reason to get rid of
fire based energy.
~~~
semi-extrinsic
FWIW, particulate matter comes not just from exhaust, but also from road wear
etc. that EVs will actually be worse at (since they're heavier).
I don't recall the split off-hand, but here's a paper that should have some
numbers:
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013002732)
~~~
audunw
I'm not sure if it has been looked into yet, but once EVs are abundant it
would make sense to look into ways of reducing pollution from road wear. Right
now it's not worth it as much, since pollution from the cars themselves
dominate. But once road wear is the dominant source it'll make sense to look
into it.
Automated cleaning trucks which sweep the road for dust every day maybe? New
materials for roads and tyres?
~~~
Tharkun
New materials might be tricky. Roads are very abundant, and in some places of
the world they're a convenient way of disposing of the leftovers of
incinerated waste.
------
awjr
"A Look Into the Dramatic Rise in Alzheimer’s Cases"
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-j-
hall/alzheimers_b_51789...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-j-
hall/alzheimers_b_5178982.html)
I'm guessing this is a time bomb that will be with us for some time.
------
devoply
Well then I guess switching from combustion engines to electric engines will
reduce this contamination. But how much new stuff that uses nano particles for
all sorts of things is going to mess up our bodies and cause other health
problems they will be dealing in the next century if we're still around.
------
sogen
Oddly enough this sounds like Stephen King's The Running Man ...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Winds – An Open Source Personalized RSS Reader - tortilla
http://winds.getstream.io/
======
AdmiralAsshat
Do people really want recommendations?
I personally want to just have an RSS reader that gives me the articles from
the sites I freaking asked for. Not what some service _thinks_ I'll like.
Google, Pocket, and other sites are already doing a great job of thumbing
through what I read and trying to sneak in their "suggestions": that's the
kind of invasive data-combing that I want to avoid.
~~~
saulrh
There are a few distinct use cases for RSS readers with _very_ different
requirements for automatic filtering.
I use RSS readers to keep up with infrequently-updated fiction and webcomics.
In this use case, "suggestions" are worse than useless - if I miss a daily or
weekly strip or, worse yet, a chapter being posted, that can cripple my
enjoyment of the story. I check my RSS feeds once ever two or three days and
read exactly every single post in them, all twenty or forty of them.
There are other people (myself about six years ago, for example) that use
their RSS reader as a news firehose. They get a hundred posts an hour and even
checking their _titles_ manually would be difficult. In this case suggestions
are not just a good idea but actually required.
Personally, I'd like an RSS reader that has a per-feed toggle for automatic
filtering. I so far haven't seen that.
~~~
fryguy
And even both at the same time. I have a set of comics and low-frequency
posting blogs that I want to always read every post, _in order_ , and defer
them if I didn't want to read it right now. And then a firehose of other
articles that I may or may not be interested in reading and can skim it to see
if I want to read it, and then open it in a new tab and continue.
I feel like it's challenging to get both of these use cases in the same app. I
could do it in google reader by having categories, but when it closed I
switched to Inoreader and it does the "helpful" thing of only showing the last
30 days if you want to read it in chronological order, and used up my mental
energy switching and basically just gave up RSS after that and haven't read
them in a long time.
------
jklinger410
Sorry I'm not interested in a Feed Reader that tries to give me suggestions. I
like to follow the stuff I like to follow. I do the footwork of finding
quality sources by myself.
Maybe I'm not most RSS users in that regard, I'm not sure, haven't done the
market research.
It feels to me that suggested sources leads to promoted sources leads to paid
content.
~~~
fny
I'd actually bet this isn't going to be monetized that way since Stream is
using the reader to showcase the personalization service they sell.
------
snvzz
Not very fond of their "Try it out" feature, which after making me waste time
on their "select 3" first step, then proceeds to try and cajole me into giving
away my email address.
Wish they posted some screenshots or static pages or something of the sort, so
I could take a look and see if I like it more than stringer, which is the
current solution I'm using.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
A little worse than that: Even once you do all that, the feed is empty. It
seems to only get stories posted after your account creation, rather than
pulling the existing feeds like most RSS readers.
So after doing all this setup, I had to go back to the site later to actually
try out how it arranged content.
~~~
SparkyMcUnicorn
Yeah, a fledged out demo account is a "must have" when showcasing a product.
------
mintplant
In the category of self-hosted stream readers there's also Tiny Tiny RSS [0],
which I use and enjoy. It has a nice Android app and pluggable scrapers for
extracting webcomic images and full content from summary feeds. Although it's
been described as having "the most hostile primary maintainer of a piece of
software I've ever encountered", which I experienced a bit of personally last
time I tried to contribute upstream.
[0] [https://tt-rss.org](https://tt-rss.org)
~~~
jancborchardt
Did you try out Nextcloud News? [https://github.com/nextcloud/news/#nextcloud-
news-app](https://github.com/nextcloud/news/#nextcloud-news-app)
We have a more modern design than Tiny Tiny RSS, are way friendlier, and if
you would contribute that’d be majorly awesome! :)
------
Veen
For work (writer) I go through dozens of feeds every day.
About 90% of what I see is irrelevant, but I need to see it to filter out the
relevant data. I'd pay a decent amount for a service that can tailor itself
and deliver relevant results without much manual intervention. InoReader and
some other RSS readers have decent filtering, but it's all manual.
So this excited me, but without a way to import my existing feeds it's largely
useless to me.
~~~
tschellenbach
This is by far the most commonly requested feature. Top of our list for 0.2!
------
jroblak
It's going to be extremely hard to convert anyone who uses an RSS reader
without import functionality.
There is 0% chance that I'm going to switch no matter how good your
recommendation algorithm is if I can't also keep up with my current feeds.
~~~
djhworld
It wouldn't be so bad if they had like a suggestion box or something at the
side with feeds you might like to add.
~~~
nparsons08
[https://github.com/getstream/Winds/issues](https://github.com/getstream/Winds/issues)
------
hedora
I'm confused. It looks like this won't work unless you use the stream API,
which is (apparently) not open source / self hosted.
The only reasons I can think of to host my own RSS reader are to prevent third
party profiling, editorial transparency, and future proofing against the
provider shutting down or evolving the service in a way that I don't like.
This provides none of those advantages.
Am I missing something?
~~~
irickt
Some part of it is open source: [https://github.com/tschellenbach/Stream-
Framework](https://github.com/tschellenbach/Stream-Framework)
------
Touche
Looks really good! The design is fantastic, well done.
My only criticism would be that the Getting Started page is definitely skewed
towards a specific segment. Like, how is Sports not an option? Music? I
understand that there are only 9 slots in your designs, but please choose some
that are more representative of general interests, not just Palo Alto mid-20s
coffee shop startup founders.
~~~
tschellenbach
We launched this on Product Hunt yesterday so it's currently tailored to that
audience. More topics are coming! Going to need some community help with
curating the feeds for those topics though.
------
tschellenbach
Which features are you looking for in an RSS reader? Some ideas we're
discussing for Winds 0.2.0:
- Secondary links (ie comments link for HNews and Lobsters)
- Batch OPML import
- Deploy to Heroku button
- Follow suggestions (we're working on this)
- Switching between feeds should be easier
- Lightweight task queuing system for emails and discover endpoint
- Keyboard shortcuts (vim style)
- GraphQL style APIs so you have more flexibility for building your own mobile apps
- Android & iOS apps
- Support more sites (RSS data quality is pretty poor and often needs custom logic per site/feed)
- Search article's you've read using Algolia
- Folders/Groups
- Sharing support (e.g. Buffer, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
~~~
awowl
hackuser posted a requirement which has my full support: Since you're doing
machine learning, try and apply that to avoid showing me articles with
overlapping content. Often quite a few sites I follow will cover the same
thing, and obviously, I want to read it only once.
~~~
hackuser
To clarify my version of the idea, I would like to see all the articles on the
same subject but grouped together, perhaps in a collapsible outline, so I can
choose which one or more articles I want to read on the subject.
------
webwanderings
Digg RSS Reader has been unbelievably good. The best thing about it (so far -
knock on wood) that they don't tinker or change anything, because everything
is working like it should. I don't really see a reason to try anyone else.
------
arkadiyt
How are people still launching apps with sign-in over http - jesus christ.
------
hackuser
Does anyone know an RSS feed reader with these features?
1) Deduplication
2) Grouping of articles on the same topic. For example, grouping all articles
on Angela Merkel's latest Brexit comments, so I can easily choose one and
ignore the rest.
Grouping would make me an order of magnitude more efficient when reading RSS.
I'd happily pay $100 for that feature.
Also:
3) Efficiently and automatically manage broken feeds: Automatically retry
(over X hours or days), automatically look for a replacement feed, and then
let me know which feeds need my attention.
~~~
soufron
I designed one a few years ago, but it was to help the newsroom of a magazine
who wanted to publish blog articles every week. You can check it online, it
was called "vendredi". It worked well.
~~~
hackuser
Could you provide a link? I looked around and couldn't find it. Thanks. I'd
love to try it.
~~~
soufron
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendredi_(hebdomadaire,_2008)](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendredi_\(hebdomadaire,_2008\))
I am afraid there is not much left online now.
------
tschellenbach
Github Link:
[https://github.com/getstream/winds](https://github.com/getstream/winds)
------
nparsons08
Nick here from GetStream.io (Winds). We didn't expect Winds to see so much
traffic today, so we're experiencing temporary downtime. We'll have everything
back up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for all of your support!
~~~
nparsons08
Back up and running smoothly. Sorry for the delay!
------
tschellenbach
You can also run it as an OSX app:
[https://github.com/GetStream/Winds/tree/master/native](https://github.com/GetStream/Winds/tree/master/native)
------
vsloo
Our team at Reamaze is all trying Winds right now since seeing on Product Hunt
yesterday. Love the machine learning in-progress. I find the content to be
curated quite well for my preference. The main issue I'm having is actually
adding RSS feeds from sources I read on a daily basis. Not sure what the issue
is. Love the two display options since not everything is relevant all the time
and it's just easier to go chronological.
~~~
tschellenbach
Just open a ticket on Github with the RSS feeds in question. We'll gladly add
support.
------
bryanrasmussen
since this is built on top of Getstream.io
[https://getstream.io/](https://getstream.io/) I guess it follows their
pricing structure -
[https://getstream.io/pricing/](https://getstream.io/pricing/) free for 3
million updates...
what defines a feed update:
The number of feed updates depends on how many
activities you publish via the API and the number of
users who follow those feeds. If you add an activity to
a feed that is followed by 50 other feeds, this will
trigger 51 feed updates.
which sounds to me like if you use them to do stuff you have to control not
just your feeds through their api but also your users - otherwise how will
they know really how many users following the feeds?
------
otto_ortega
The GUI is nice, very well done. It suggested a good website I didn't know, I
will give it a try.
The thing I didn't liked is that, if it's supposed to be "learning" how comes
I can't load new stories after I'm done with the initial set?
------
metellus
This website has absolutely no information about the product it's trying to
display.
------
dpkrjb
This is a bit too full on for me. I'm currently using feedly at the moment but
I'm looking for something I can read without a browser. Does anyone have a
recommendation for a battle tested rss reader with a good cli interface?
------
randomsofr
Does anyone have actual screenshots? I don't want to put my email address.
~~~
rch
Looks like there are a few screenshots on the project site:
[https://github.com/GetStream/Winds](https://github.com/GetStream/Winds)
------
tedmiston
It would be nice to be able to try the whole app without signing up with my
email. That's what I thought "Try Winds RSS > Clicking 3 feeds > Continue Now"
would lead to.
------
arc_of_descent
I use Feedly pretty much everyday. A recommendation engine for news doesn't
really cut it for me. But of course, it would be a good exercise in ML.
------
randomsofr
It says Node 7, is there any feature that you use on Node 7 that is not
available in previous versions? Just curious.
------
cad
does it support firefox?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why are there no unions for employees in your startup? - vinnyglennon
======
Cyberdog
I don't work at a startup currently, but I have in the past, so I'll answer it
as if that company hadn't failed and I still worked there:
Because nobody has taken it upon themselves to start one, I suppose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Great Pacification (review of Steven Pinker's new book) - klenwell
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-angels-of-our-nature-by-steven-pinker-book-review.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema2&pagewanted=all
======
klenwell
The detail I found most interesting from the review:
_If the average teenager today could go back in time and take an I.Q. test
from 1910, he or she would have an I.Q. of 130, which would be better than 98
percent of those taking the test then._
~~~
tokenadult
The detail you mention is called the Flynn effect. Here is a link to a lecture
by James Flynn, the discoverer of the Flynn effect, on the implications of
that research.
[http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/page/109/beyond-the-
flynn...](http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/page/109/beyond-the-flynn-
effect.htm)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Don't People Manage Debt Better? - sergeant3
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/why-don-t-people-manage-debt-better/
======
imgabe
Anyone at a point where they are making monthly payments on multiple credit
cards has already lost the debt game. People don't manage debt better because
they have been marketed to and taught to use debt completely inappropriately.
Debt should be used to purchase an asset that will appreciate or otherwise
provide an income in excess of the interest payment on the debt. Full stop.
That is how businesses use debt and that is the only sensible strategy. As a
consumer, a house may be a sensible use of debt. A reliable car needed to get
to work may be a sensible use of debt. A student loan might as well. Carrying
a balance on a credit card is almost never an appropriate use of debt.
Unfortunately, marketers have instead convinced consumers that debt is an easy
way to buy things they can't afford and pay for it later. This is almost
always a losing proposition for the consumer, who invariably ends up paying
much more than they would have if they had just saved up and bought the thing
in full up front. The way to sensibly manage this is to not fall into the trap
in the first place.
~~~
bradleyjg
I don't think such an absolute position is warranted. It's true that saving up
for a big purchase will end up costing you less money than borrowing to pay
for it and paying it back. But you will have the item purchased for less time.
Suppose you have enough disposable income to pay for a new $1200 TV over the
course of 12 months. In scenario 1, you save $100 each month. The bank pays
you 0.5% interest. As of January 1st next year you'll have a new TV and $2.75.
In scenario 2, you put $1200 on a credit card with a 10% APR. You pay $100
each month towards the credit card bill. As of January 1st next year you have
a TV you've been watching for a year already and owe $69. You've essentially
paid $72 for the privilege of getting the TV you wanted a year earlier.
Is that worth it? Well that depends on a lot of things, some of them
intangible, but I wouldn't say it can't possibly make any sense. The sort of
Puritan attitude towards consumption and debt may not be the worst attitude to
have, at least for oneself. But when combined with evangelism it is pretty
annoying.
~~~
ac29
> Suppose you have enough disposable income to pay for a new $1200 TV over the
> course of 12 months. In scenario 1, you save $100 each month. The bank pays
> you 0.5% interest. As of January 1st next year you'll have a new TV and
> $2.75. In scenario 2, you put $1200 on a credit card with a 10% APR. You pay
> $100 each month towards the credit card bill. As of January 1st next year
> you have a TV you've been watching for a year already and owe $69. You've
> essentially paid $72 for the privilege of getting the TV you wanted a year
> earlier.
I think this is a good point, but the sort of people who would need a year to
save $1200 do not have the sort of credit to get a 10% APR credit card, APR's
closer to 20% or higher are more likely. Run the math again at 18% APR ($133
in interest over the 14-month payoff period) or even 24% ($185 in interest
over the 14-month payoff period), and you quickly see just how much premium it
costs to get that TV a year earlier.
I'm ignoring the negligible savings rate interest in your example and,
probably foolishly, assuming this hypothetical person only has this single CC
debt.
~~~
epimetheus
Actually, a lot of places constantly run "Zero Interest If Paid Off In 12
Months" deals all the time. Lowes, Furniture stores, and even some Credit
cards.
We've paid off Couches, A refrigerator, a new Sewer Drain, and several other
things (a nice Kitchen Table most recently) this way. It's not as good as
saving for it, and getting a few dollars of interest, but that's a marginal
gain anyway.
~~~
evunveot
The Amazon Prime Store Card is an example. You can choose per transaction
either 5% cash back or 6/12 (sometimes 24) months interest-free financing,
depending on the size of the purchase. (You can only use the card at Amazon,
though, and there's the Prime membership fee.) I've bought several plumbing
fixtures and a laptop without paying any interest this way.
~~~
padobson
This is effectively how the low fed-funds rate trickles down to the consumer -
there are 0% financing opportunities everywhere.
Ultimately, these deals are subsidized by people who get charged with massive
deferred interest payments because they don't plan properly, and that sucks
for them, but as you say, it's a great way to start experiencing the benefits
of a purchase instantly.
Even better is to use the financing opportunity on something that makes money.
I've furnished apartments using 0% financing, and I'll get anywhere from
50%-100% increase on rental income for a furnished apartment - while paying no
interest on the loan! It's like putting extra money in your pocket every month
for free.
~~~
forgetsusername
> _This is effectively how the low fed-funds rate trickles down to the
> consumer - there are 0% financing opportunities everywhere._
Indeed, and it's important to point this out to those who insist "Average Joe"
doesn't benefit.
Three of the largest investments people will make in their lives are 1) their
home, 2) their education and 3) their vehicle. All 3 are generally financed,
and financing rates are at historic lows.
~~~
maxxxxx
The prices of 1) and 2) are at historic highs though. Even if the interest
rate is low you still have a lot of debt to pay off.
------
kdamken
Better question: why do people buy things they can't afford and most often
don't need, putting themselves in this position?
So many of my peers don't make a lot of money, but then still go out and buy a
new or newish/used car and put themselves on a multiyear payment plan. "Oh but
it's only 200 a month, I can swing that". Repeat for like 3-4 other things and
suddenly they're always complaining they have no money and don't know why.
I highly recommend to anyone who's looking to take their financial situation
more seriously do two things:
1\. Read up on Mr. Money Mustache, a guy who managed to retire at 30. Even if
you don't plan to retire early, it's eye opening to realize you don't have to
spend your entire paycheck every month:
[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-
from-...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-
hero-in-one-blog-post/)
2\. Check out YNAB (You Need a Budget):
[https://www.youneedabudget.com/](https://www.youneedabudget.com/). Takes a
little work to start using, but once you do, you'll understand your money in a
way you never thought possible.
~~~
RUG3Y
Mr. Money Mustache is pretty awesome but the guy had a very highly paid job
that allowed him to retire early. Some of us are fiscally responsible and
don't make all that much cash - I find that a lot of his advice is fairly
useless unless you have some money to begin with.
~~~
kdamken
I'd disagree on that last part - I'd say that if you're not making a crazy
salary his advice is even more valuable. Most people spend an obscene amount
of money on things they don't actually really need. Some classic examples:
A $3 coffee everyday adds up to about $90 a month, when you can usually just
drink free coffee from your office or buy some cheap pre-ground stuff.
Spending $5-6 for lunch each day at work can easily add up to another $100+
dollars a month, when you could just make a bunch of peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and spend a fraction of that.
So there's close to $200 a month, right there.
If you're trying to retire early, it's definitely way tougher on a lower
salary. But improving your spending habits is an important skill for everyone,
especially for those making less.
~~~
charlesdm
This is the best way to get depressed. It's always significantly easier to
negotiate a $1k raise than it is to reduce your spending on basic stuff by
$1k.
Focus on earning more, not saving (on useless expenses).
~~~
kdamken
I like buying stuff as much as the next guy, but if not buying things you
don't need would make you depressed, you probably have deeper issues that need
addressing.
~~~
charlesdm
If you want to save money, do it on large purchases. Buying a $30k car?
Negotiate aggressively so you can buy it for $23-25k. Anything above a few
$100 is worth haggling over.
Do you know how many people pay the listing price of a car, yet cut coupons to
save a few euros/dollars? A lot. It's ridiculous.
Some of the joys in life are simple things, such as drinking a $2-3 coffee or
having a cocktail in a nice bar, etc.
~~~
Ocerge
Absolutely. I fully recognize my $2.50 americano every morning could be a
couple of cups of free office coffee, but I look forward to it every single
day. I also drive a 10-year-old but reliable car, so I don't have any huge
monthly expenditures outside of rent and my $150 student loan payment. I'll
take the $100 or so hit every month in exchange for me starting my mornings on
a positive note. It's not going to positively change my life enough to not
have that americano every morning.
~~~
kdamken
Playing devils advocate here: you're spending $1200 a year on coffee. With
that money you could not only buy a really nice coffee machine and make it
yourself every morning, but also have a bunch of money leftover to put towards
your loans, invest, put towards a nice vacation, etc.
The idea is that those small daily expenses tend to add up, and there may be a
lot more of them than you realized.
~~~
billmalarky
Reminds me of the old joke:
"If you had stopped smoking 10 years ago you could afford to be driving around
in a Ferrari right now."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Then where's your Ferrari?"
Point is don't sweat the small things. Sure they add up, but you should
dedicate a portion of your cash flow towards investments at the start of the
pay cycle, not "what's left at the end." Then the rest can be spent on
anything arbitrarily with a clear conscious.
------
clarkevans
When a late payment is $39.99 and a mark on your credit record, even the
smallest, lowest-interest debts become high-risk. Reducing the number of risks
(and mental energy managing them) easily outweighs the interest differences.
When you have to spend a 1/2 day to refinance a credit-card to an unsecured
personal loan, it's not always a clear win: you might not get the loan, or the
loan offered might have significantly higher interest rate than advertised,
etc.
~~~
CPLX
Exactly. Every small balance is a potential disaster in the making, an autopay
that inexplicably fails, a teaser interest rate that expires, an unexpected
annual fee or recurring charge from a merchant, a supremely annoying hour on
the phone, etc. I had the exact same reaction to that part as you did. If
you're going to evaluate economic actors for rationality you have to make sure
your assumptions of what's rational are well grounded first.
~~~
xivzgrev
I agree. I find my self doing this often with to do lists. Knock off quick and
easy stuff so i feel like im making headway even if its not the most important
/ impactful. I find that more tempting in personal than work where i am only
accountable to My self. So I can definitely to the "irrational" people in
here, it's not so irrational when you think about all the consequences.
------
pilom
This is showing that the Dave Ramsey "debt snowball" (pay off smallest debts
first to get a psychological win and some breathing room by having fewer
minimum payments) is a more effective way to get people to pay off many
separate debts than paying off "highest interest rate first" even if it is
less optimal for a rational actor. Just another case of people aren't 100%
rational that many people have known for a while.
~~~
DannoHung
I have literally have people tell me that this is still rationality because
it's the rational thing "for them". Like, the weirdest one was a cognitive
psychology doctoral student.
I mean, okay, if you can redefine rationality to be completely subjective,
then sure, rationality is flargikriggendurf.
~~~
jerf
In addition to the other fine replies, let me point out that "humans are
irrational" is the negation of a very small point. It allows us to think we
know something, when in fact what that statement tells us is only that we _don
't_ know something about human behavior. It is logically much like saying
"Humans are not 7-year-old bulldogs named Fido living in New Jersey on the
second floor of a shared house." It's a true statement, but carries virtually
no information because it only identifies an incredible small, precise part of
the possibility space and negates it; it does not, on it's own, tell you much
about what humans _are_.
Humans are not merely "irrational", they positively behave and think in very
specific ways. No human is immune to this. It is, therefore, perfectly
rational to discuss rational ways of managing the _specific_ human behaviors
that lead to irrational behaviors.
This is also while ritual denunciations of "homo economicus" are really quite
sophomoric... the nonexistence of rational economic actors does not mean that
you can simply model humans in whatever way you please to make your
preconceived notions work. It means that you've got to go _learn_ what humans
_actually do_ , which is going to be very challenging, and take that into
account, which is almost certainly going to shock anyone who tries it. It
means the problem is suddenly immensely _harder_ , not easier.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
>This is also while ritual denunciations of "homo economicus" are really quite
sophomoric...
Admittedly, this is because "homo economicus" is sophomoric in the first
place: it proposes an actor who has no computational or informational bounds
and sees the world only in terms of a single real-valued variable called
"utility", which is generally constrained only to be any monotonic, continuous
function of their monetary net worth. This actor then optimizes expected
utility with no regards to modeling causal structure _or_ to which observables
are actually ergodic.
No such creature ever has, or in fact ever _can_ , exist in the real world. In
limited domains where ergodicity holds, computational needs are few, and small
sample sizes can yield very good inferences, we can do thought experiments
about what such a creature _would_ do, and act according to those if we
please. But holding that such behavior is the _normatively correct_ way to act
when it's actually _impossible_ is the kind of religious thinking one gets
when composing "normative theories" without experimental basis.
------
breischl
The article ignored the completely rational reason to pay off small debts
first - increased liquidity.
By paying off small debts first you can reduce the amount of money you have to
come up with each month. If you have any uncertainty around income or other
expenses, there is real value in that.
Doubly so for debts that could be foreclosed on - if you prepay your mortgage
a bunch and then fall behind and get foreclosed on, all that prepayment is
just cash down the drain. If you had completely paid down some smaller debts
instead, you would be in a better position.
Basically, paying down higher-interest debt first is optimal only if you're
certain that you'll never default on anything.
~~~
bbcbasic
Good point. Also, at least in my county a bank may look at limit of the credit
card rather than the actual borrowings when deciding whether to give someone a
new loan (say a mortgage). So if you have a couple of 10k credit cards, and
one has $200 owing you can just pay it off and cancel the card, and
potentially could be the difference between getting a home loan or not. Again
this is along the lines of increased liquidity.
------
Spooky23
If all things were equal, and your repayment terms were a fixed artifact, the
strategy assumed to be optimal in the article would be correct -- it would
make more sense to focus on the higher interest rate to avoid accruing
interest. But they aren't.
Credit cards in particular are tough -- if you have alot of debt and credit
lines and don't make significant impact on principal, they start cutting
credit limits, which incurs fees. Interest on fees and fees have payment
precedence over regular interest and principal, so it starts a vicious cycle.
You end up in a situation where the banks assume you will default, so to
compel you to pay more to _them_ , the credit card will drop your limits to
trail your balance.
So you really have two priorities: paying down debt and maintaining credit
lines to avoid capricious changes in your payment terms.
When you have lots of credit lines, minimum payments start to matter alot, as
they sap your re-payment power. If you focus on closing the smaller accounts
and walk your payment focus up the stack, you'll be able to make more
significant payments and stay afloat. When you make alot of progress, you have
a higher likelihood of refinancing the bigger debts, which is ultimately where
you save on the high-interest accounts.
------
danjayh
I find myself a bit bemused that the article specifically mentions student
debt as an example of something that people can refinance but don't. I hadn't
ever had any student debt until marriage, but since then (and until recently)
my wife and I have been working through a great deal of it together.
As someone who has worked through paying down a large amount of student debt,
I can tell you that student debt is _very_ difficult to refinance. Our student
debt balance was much higher than the median, but I believe that our
experience with refinancing _was_ very typical: we couldn't refinance our
student debt at an interest rate that was even remotely attractive.
We reacted to the dearth of refinancing options by deciding to eliminate our
debt as quickly as possible, and when we first got married we dumped about
$35k into debt reduction. We chose to go after the high interest rate first,
which was also the largest loan. Had we gone after the smallest loans first we
could have paid off several of them instead of merely making a (significant)
dent in the higher rate loans, and this is where the psychology comes in.
Dumping a ton of money into a debt without changing anything but your
principle balance is _discouraging_. It was for us, and it is for nearly
everyone else too. Personal finance counselors like Dave Ramsey actually
instruct people to intentionally pursue the smallest debts first because the
feeling of momentum helps most people to maintain dedication to getting out of
debt, which in many cases will more than offset the difference in interest
rates (paying down faster due to more resolve = less interest overall). We
sold stuff and skimped like crazy people and we killed our debt, but it's a
very common thing for people to run out of determination before they run out
of debt. Since that's such a common problem, I'd say that it's not necessarily
a bad thing that people pay debt in a _financially_ non-optimal way if the
method is at least _psychologically_ optimized.
------
carsongross
I used to think that the medieval western distrust of usury was backwards and
foolish.
Then I read about the roman experience with debt, and now I am far less sure
of that.
~~~
navait
Is there a book/article you'd recommend?
~~~
carsongross
Without endorsing all the ideas in them, here are two interesting books:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_of_Civilization_and_De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_of_Civilization_and_Decay)
------
bcheung
There's an important factor that is ignored by the article and it is a
fundamental principle in finance. That principle is risk.
Any time anyone asks a question in finance the correct answer is always, "It
depends".
Absolute answers like always pay highest interest card make sense
mathematically in certain cases but they are not the whole story and don't
take into account other factors that are equally if not more important than
paying the least amount of interest.
Another factor to consider is cash flow.
If you are someone that lives paycheck to paycheck and can pay off a card or
loan sooner to create some additional cash flow that has major benefits for
increasing cash flow, peace of mind, and providing a buffer for unexpected
expenses.
It lowers the risk of default and late payment fees / increased rates if you
have more cash flow. Ultimately leading to paying less in interest and fees.
If there are unexpected expenses you will be glad to have the available cash.
That's worth paying a little more interest in the long run.
There's also the fact that it may not make sense to pay down low interest
rates like a 4% fixed mortgage when you can invest at rates higher that. In
that case you want to pay it off as little as possible and maybe even take out
equity to put into investments.
------
mark_l_watson
I have so many friends, and some family members, who act as though the optimum
life strategy is to buy as much material stuff as they can without getting
into a default situation. Given a lifetime exposure to marketing I don't much
blaim their attitude.
The thing is: the idea of maximizing material success is so very wrong. A good
life is about experiences, not material stuff. Having savings and flexibility
that entails makes life more relaxing and pleasure full.
~~~
bcheung
It's subjective to the individual. It may be wrong to you but to them you're
the one that is the fool for not enjoying life to its fullest.
Some people are motivated by taking trips, others by the big house. Personally
I don't care for traveling and find it boring and at best a hassle. I would
much rather have the bigger house.
People have different risk profiles and needs for material possession. Some
people rather have peace of mind, others don't really care and rather have
material comfort.
I think the important thing is not to judge people based on what is important
to them. Just because it is not what you think is important doesn't make it
wrong.
~~~
mark_l_watson
I agree with you. I meant to be talk about my own preferences, rather than
lecture other people what to do.
------
jakub_g
A big part of Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking. Fast and Slow" is devoted to
economic behavior and in general, people are not rational when it comes to
money - in some cases risk averse, in other risk seeking. He explains a lot of
studies on the topic. If you have some spare time, I recommend the book
(though it's not an easy read, as it's very information-dense).
~~~
jmckib
I've been meaning to read that. Did you end up getting anything practical out
of it?
~~~
ibero
there are a lot of small near-practical applications, but it all really
revolves around trying to be cognizant that our initial impressions/estimates
vary wildly and are biased.
The book spends the entire time giving you countless examples to hammer the
point home.
My favorite example from the book (via wikipedia)
_Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in
philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of
discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear
demonstrations._
_Which is more probable?_
_a) Linda is a bank teller._
_b) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement._
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy)
~~~
bcheung
:D
I skimmed through a little bit of that book and that is one of the ones I
remember seeing that was very interesting. I should finish reading through it.
------
alexashka
We all know why people don't manage debt, health, relationships and everything
else better.
Because they're dumb :)
Debt is just another tool the folks in power have to exploit the poor.
When you have 100 mil, you can hire a smart person to take advantage of debt.
When you have 100 dollars and you live around other people who have 100
dollars, you know what happens, you're the one being taken advantage of.
Everything else is talk.
ps. I am just starting to not be dumb and I'm almost 30 and I've had a ton of
support and luck go my way. Most people will hopelessly get exploited and
spend their days coping. Just have a look around - don't believe the 'hi how
are you' smiling faces, they're pretending and you know it ;)
------
gspetr
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the
exponential function." \--Albert Allen Bartlett
Considering that 97% of the survey participants allocated their debt payments
in financially suboptimal ways, perhaps the second greatest shortcoming of the
human race is our inability to understand the compound interest.
"Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is
withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is
the rate and usage of this exchequer."
\--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation,' Essays, First Series (1841)
~~~
pc86
Paying off debt in the way that saves you the most interest over multi-year
timeframes may be optimal financially but is not necessarily optimal
psychologically or logistically.
If you've got a 2% debt you can pay off in 6 months to open up $200/mo in cash
flow that may be better psychologically than plugging away at $80k in student
loans that are 4/5/6%. Yes 50 years from now you will have slightly less
money. Suboptimal does _not_ mean wrong.
------
rconti
The more time a person spends analyzing their debts and trying to find the
optimal repayment or refinancing strategy also brings the unpleasant debt to
the foreground. I think people prefer to pretend that it's not even there. It
hurts them financially in the long run, but avoids confronting a painful
reality.
When I got out of college, I had some debts to repay (car loan, credit cards,
student loans). Someone who I thought was a friend ended up bringing her
manager with her to hard sell me on starting a retirement account with them.
Partially because I was stubborn and annoyed at being tricked into the sales
call, I simply stonewalled for 3 painful hours. I tried to be nice (I suppose
I am too nice), so I didn't kick them out. I simply kept insisting that I was
better off putting $0 into investments until my higher interest debts were
paid off. They pulled out a bunch of lines about "starting a pattern of
saving" and so on, that are definitely correct on some level, but I stood by
the math.
Eventually they got the memo, and left. Once my debts were paid off, I started
putting money towards my 401k and short term savings. Every time I've gotten a
raise or a big bump from switching jobs over the past 10 years, virtually
every additional dime has gone into savings.
Have good principles. Then stick by your principles.
------
CPLX
This article makes much of rationality, but the concept of a rational actor in
economic terms is really way more complicated and sophisticated than these
sorts of analyses. So much so that it's possible to argue that there is no
such thing as an objectively defined rational actor at all.
To do my best to shorthand the issue, assume that a rational actor is defined
as someone who takes the course of action presumed to have the greatest
likelihood of a positive (or the most positive) outcome. In order to evaluate
their current strategy for rationality you have to have forward looking
prescience to determine if the strategy is in fact the most probable to lead
to the desired outcome.
This runs headlong into the issue of uncertainty, familiar stuff like
sensitive dependence on initial conditions or just simple complexity.
For a thought experiment, consider a game such as chess. The game is
completely discrete, all possible game states can be easily defined, the rules
are known, and there is no element of random chance or rules changing during
the game.
Nonetheless, the idea that you can put an average person in front of a chess
board and say "OK, play rationally" and expect everyone to cheerfully plot out
the exact same sequence of moves is obviously ludicrous. There are too many
possible outcomes and threads to reason about fully, there are competing
priorities in any strategy, etc.
Then when confronting an economic system that is certainly as or more complex
than a simple game of chess, we expect rational economic decisions to be an
objective truth?
------
k__
I had a single mother and she had 3 bank accounts, all about 500-1000€ in the
red for most of my childhood. This made me rather adverse to taking credits.
I only took one, for paying study fees. And it was "only" about 4000€ which I
paid back one year after getting my first job.
After that I always tried to have enough savings to live from for a year.
------
mixmastamyk
I've never needed or carried any debt my whole life, unless trying to build
some credit on purpose when I was younger. But, "unfortunately" my car is in
great condition and over 10 years old. I have zero need for a new car as I
work remotely and live in a walkable neighborhood with metro and uber, et al.
But beware: Credit expires after 10 years! I didn't know that. You wouldn't
believe the hell we had to go thru last time we moved. Trying to get a
landlord to accept a tenant with "no credit" was like pulling teeth.
------
lithander
Wow, this is mind blowing. 10% interest rates are really, really high in the
current state of economy - they don't become a great deal just because there
are credit cards with even worse conditions. I don't have a problem with
borrowing money when I need it. I'm indebted for the years to come because I
needed a 200k loan to buy a house. But that's okay because I'm paying 1.2% APR
on it. This is far less money than I would have to pay to rent a house so it's
a great deal. I've not even used all the cash I have when buying it because
some of it yields higher (guaranteed) interests then what I pay for the loan.
So there's still a lot of wiggle room for emergencies. And this is the first
time that I hear that you need to have a history of loans to get large loans.
What a devious system... I have a VISA credit card too, because it's
convenient to pay with, but I don't pay any interest on it. I just pay a flat
fee per year for the service and they settle the balance each month by direct
debit authorization. (Sorry for the bad english)
------
melted
Easy: there's a saying, you borrow somebody else's money for a time, but pay
back your own and for good. So paying off debts is inherently a much less
pleasant activity, which people want to avoid thinking about. Combine that
with the complexity a typical financial arrangement entails, and peoples
inability to comprehend basic math, and you can see why they don't manage
their debt better.
------
kamaal
Debt is basically an illusion that you owe money in the future. And people
commit things for the future without thinking about the consequences. Its
always easier to commit to eat healthy food next week, or planning to go to
gym next year- But doing them in the present is what is difficult. For the
very same reasons people are bad at saving and investments. They think they
have a lot of time in the future, so they might as well splurge a little
today.
From that perspective, you always feel you have time to buy a home, or start
saving for a personal retirement fund. Or time to pay off your credit card
bills, or the illusion that you borrow money for luxury today and defer it for
the future.
As time passes and you become more cognizant of the fact that your energy
levels and motivation to commit to large financial slogs like a house or a
retirement fund are wearing thin, you just think you should've started being a
little disciplined long back.
------
Wonderdonkey
Paying off small debts first isn't just a "natural tendency." Consumer advice
sites actually encourage this as a motivational strategy. Every single one of
them.
Having read this, now I question the objectivity of those types of advice
pieces.
For example, here's a story on US News that covers three strategies for paying
off credit card debt. The first tip is to pay off higher interest cards. But
the second is to pay off the smallest debts first and pay the minimum on the
other cards. What?!?
[http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-
finance/articles/2014...](http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-
finance/articles/2014/10/20/3-strategies-to-pay-off-your-credit-cards)
This "3 strategies" thing is very widespread, and all of the sites are the
same, from bank sites to credit recovery sites to financial reporting in
magazines and newspapers. The first that's presented always sounds complicated
(calculate bla bla bla). The second strategy is always "pay smallest debt
first." Nice and simple. If both are presented as good strategies, which do
you choose? The one that requires work, or the one that seems simple?
I used to read these types of advice pieces when I had high debt following a
layoff in 2002. I've recovered since then (paid off $65k in debt all at once
with a cash out on my house, thus avoiding bankruptcy). And now the No. 1 rule
is do not use credit cards to pay for things you can't afford. Use them only
as a tool to stay on the grid so that you have a good credit rating so that
you get better deals on everything that involves looking up your credit
rating. (You'll get a lower price on a car, for example, if you have a better
credit rating.) So take out a couple cards; make small purchases; auto-pay on
a regular schedule. (Do not change you payment schedule or make extra
payments. Some credit reporting agencies lower your score when you do this.)
~~~
Jtsummers
Not all articles on this are so clear, but at least this US News one is:
The optimal (highest rate first) approach is a slow slog that can be
discouraging and result in relapses. The sub-optimal (smallest debt first)
approach shows progress much faster, and if paired with the snowball approach
(as debts are paid off, freed cash goes to the next debt), it creates the
illusion (until high value debts are all that remain) of fast progress. It's
_psychologically_ easier to stick with.
> But the second is to pay off the smallest debts first and pay the minimum on
> the other cards. What?!?
Again, this article in particular, but the actual recommendation is to pay _at
least_ the minimum, which is not the same.
------
m1n1
Here's another debt choice: given a mortgage with over 20 years left on the
term and a sudden cash windfall of, say, 20% of the remaining principal, and
assuming there's nothing better to do with the money than applying it to the
mortgage would you rather (1) pay off some principal now thus effectively
shortening the term but allowing the monthly bill to stay constant or (2) re-
cast the loan by paying off some principal, still have 20 years left of
payments, but each monthly bill is now smaller? ... Personally I'd opt for (2)
because it immediately gives more breathing room especially if something bad
were to happen. Going with (1) may save more money ultimately, but doesn't
reduce the financial risk until the final payment is made.
------
JustSomeNobody
He how goes out owing the most wins. He's lived like a king and didn't pay for
anything.
But seriously, every article I read on personal debt talks about how to get
out of it after the fact. I think we need to do a better job of educating
people on this subject BEFORE they get into debt.
~~~
3dk
Agreed. Public schooling in most places completely fails at teaching the
general population how to plan for their future and learn basic financial
responsibility. A first step would be to show students what sort of options
will be available to them and what consequences of each option could entail.
------
orionblastar
I used to manage debt and save money until I got too sick to work and ended up
on disability. NO my wife and son and I live paycheck to paycheck and had to
file bankruptcy chapter 13 due to medical debt. If I didn't get sick I'd be
managing my debt better. Even with health insurance you can still rack up a
lot of debt and go over your head.
I worry that one day we might lose the house and end up homeless. I am not
medically cleared to work, and trying to find work as a freelancer when you
are disabled is really hard to do. Can't get a 9 to 5 job either. I have a
mental illness and medicine that threats it that makes me drowsy and hard to
focus and concentrate. I can't even drive a car anymore.
------
mdorazio
Good article and interesting study with multiple psychological inputs. I think
debt in general is difficult to process mentally because "negative" money is
quite different than "positive" money. Money that you have can be visualized -
you can spend it or even pull it all out in cash and see exactly how much it
is and how it grows or shrinks. Debt is purely a number on piece of paper or a
screen. You can't "run out" of debt or go to the bank and get your debt in
negative dollars. So without paying careful attention to financial rules like
compound interest, dealing with debt is something that humans just aren't
inherently very good at.
------
jonesb6
We have an entire generation growing up with the idea that large debt is
natural and acceptable. I've had countless friends go down $10,000 in debt and
say "what's $20,000 in debt really?" and it's a vicious cycle from there.
~~~
duderific
Yep - and they probably got there eating out a lot, opening a tab at the bar,
buying the latest and greatest electronics, traveling etc. There is no concept
of living within your means.
~~~
jonesb6
Honestly I think most of the things you mentioned are completely do able and
can improve quality of life enough to justify the expense.
Overpriced car straight out of undergrad? That's a different story entirely.
Those things could anchor an air craft carrier.
------
swehner
Even professional economists struggle to understand the exponential function.
~~~
tonyedgecombe
Professional economists struggle to understand economics.
------
dpierce9
One wrinkle here is that some debts have variable rates. For instance, if you
have a balance with a 3% variable rate and one with a 5% fixed rate, but you
are in a rising interest rate environment, the 5% fixed rate loan is
effectively a hedge on the 3% loan. It drags up your effective loan rate while
interest rates are lower than 5% but it lowers your effective rate if rates
rise above 5%. You can determine whether this is a valuable hedge by
estimating the likelihood of rates exceeding 5% long enough to make exceed the
cost of the hedge.
~~~
greenleafjacob
Wouldn't this depend on how frequently it's capitalized? If it's continuous or
even monthly it's better to just look at the APR.
------
eli_gottlieb
Because they don't have any money to pay it off with. Sometimes the simplest,
most obvious explanation is the most correct.
------
hcmag
Could someone well-versed with bankruptcy please explain the pros/cons of
going that route? I have heard that credit card debt is essentially free money
because filing for bankruptcy will wipe out all the debt.
If you already own a home/car, and have no intention of getting a loan in the
next 10 years, what is wrong with this strategy?
~~~
remyp
A pesky thing called morality and the fact that incurring debt with the
intention of later going bankrupt is fraud?
~~~
tamana
Don't be moral with corporations that have no intention of being moral with
you. The National Mortgage Foundation defaulted on its own mortgage!
~~~
tunesmith
> Don't be moral with corporations that have no intention of being moral with
> you.
Why not? Seriously.
------
spdionis
It's interesting to think that somehow I am better off than most americans
living in a third qorld country even if most have at least 5x my income just
because I don't have any debt.
We don't have credit cards with higher than 0 credit limit here. Those credit
lines sound very generous to me.
------
Mz
"Managing debt" is an oxymoron. You have to manage your _life_ better in order
to reduce debt. Most things that talk about debt or money management or
budgeting talk about it like it is a math problem. It isn't. It runs a lot
deeper than that.
------
PaulHoule
What is scary is that "how to manage money" is secondary to "how to manage
debt". For the most part I have thought about my bank balance first and
figured that my credit score would take care of itself and that has generally
been the case.
------
larryla
Same reason people don't manage their weight better; the bad behavior is
instantaneous and easy, the good decisions are extremely lengthy and
difficult.
------
blahdeeblah
Color me shocked that most MBA students don't have enough math skills to
intuitively choose an optimal payoff strategy.
------
brightball
There are a number of factors in the way that people manage debt payments that
the article seems to question as illogical.
Just take a standard setup of a mortgage where we'll give a generous 7%
interest rate, along with a couple of credit cards with a 15% rate and let's
put some decent sized balances here for sake of comparison:
$300,000 mortgage @ 7% over 30 years $10,000 credit card @ 15% $20,000 credit
card @ 15%
This is a random hypothetical with numbers made up out of thin air and without
factoring in tax deductions. From a sheer cash flow perspective, say you have
$4,000 to apply to your payments and the minimum payments are something like:
$2,500 for the mortgage $300 for the first credit card $500 for the second
credit card
So you've got a total of $3,300 in payments with an extra $700 to use to
accelerate payments that you've got to decide how to allocate between them.
If I apply it to the mortgage, this would be how the payment structure pans
out over time (using Debt Repayment calculator)
$300,000 at 7% with payment $2,500 = 208 months or 11.4 years to payoff with
$212,241.36 in interest (total paid $512,241.36)
$10,000 at 15% with payment $300 = 44 months or 3.5 years to payoff with
$2,983.59 in interest (total paid $12,983.59)
$20,000 at 15% with payment $500 = 57 months or 4.75 years to payoff with
$7,802.46 in interest (total paid $27,802.46)
Now, let's look at two strategies to applying the extra $700 cash with the
mortgage vs the small debts.
First the mortgage way:
$300,000 at $3,200 = 137 months or 11.4 years to payoff with $184,138.98 in
interest (total paid $484,138.98) $10,000 at $300 = 44 months or 3.5 years to
payoff with $2,983.59 in interest (total paid $12,983.59) $20,000 at $500 = 57
months or 4.75 years to payoff with $7,802.46 in interest (total paid
$27,802.46)
Now the smallest debt way:
$10,000 at $1000 = 12 months years to payoff with $1,354.08 in interest (total
paid $11,354.08)
But now our formula changes because after 12 months, I now have $1,000 to
apply to the next smallest:
$20,000 at $500 for 1 year (total interest $1,642.62, principle paid
$4,357.38) $15,642.62 remaining principle then at $1,500 after one year = 12
more months to payoff (24 months total) with $2,091.00 in interest (total paid
$23,733.62)
And now after 24 months I have $1,500 to apply to the mortgage.
$300,000 at $2,500 for 24 months (total interest $24,489.39, principle paid
$35,510.61) and then at $4,000 after that on the remaining $264489.39 = 86
more months to payoff with $107,086.21 in interest (total paid $442,597)
When you factor in cash flow into a total debt payment allowance you end up
with an increase in applied payment if you payoff the small stuff first. The
result here is a total net payment of $477,684.70 and no debt after 110 months
or 9.16 years vs a total net payment of $524,925.03 and continual debt
payments for 11.4 years.
EDIT: I need to go back in and adjust the mortgage way to accelerate payments
more when the 2 credit cards are paid off. My bad.
------
anon4
Don't fall into debt. If you must fall into debt, then do so to a friend at no
interest. If you still have to fall into debt, do so to a reputable bank and
pay it off as quick as you can - sell whatever assets you have if you must.
This of course applies to private individuals, not companies, banks or other
institutions.
~~~
maxxxxx
I would advise people not to lend money to friends and family. I have done it
several times and every time it led to problems and a lot of pain.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Giving money, that can work. With a glad heart.
~~~
tamana
People won't accept gifts. Give a "loan" but treat it like a gift --never
mention the balance ask for the repayments.
~~~
maxxxxx
From my experience even that doesn't work. People will feel guilty about not
paying and resent you even if you stay quiet. But they also won't pay. At
least that's my experience with two members of family and one business
partner.
~~~
fluxquanta
Agreed. I have a sister who every year around Christmas, like clockwork, begs
for a "loan" with the promise of "I'll pay you back with my tax refund". Many
years and thousands of dollars later, in 2015 I finally said no. We no longer
speak to each other, and I was publicly (via Facebook) labeled the ungrateful
brother who only thinks of himself.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Does this look familiar to anyone? - lurkage
http://www.founderscoop.com/apply.php
======
brett
I would argue that if you're going to go the trouble of including a "Shout-
outs" page, you should mention the company who's application you stole
verbatim:
<http://www.founderscoop.com/shout-outs.php>
~~~
chengmi
Brad Feld, whose blog appears on that page, also has a hand in TechStars
(their application was copied from YC too).
------
brfox
Here's their apology:
[http://crashdev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sincere-apologies-to-
pa...](http://crashdev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sincere-apologies-to-paul-graham-
and-y.html)
------
aneesh
Actually, I don't think YC should mind. If they're not smart enough, or
dedicated enough to think of a few due diligence questions on their own, would
a really good startup want them on board as investors?
------
lux
Another thing is trust -- would you trust a knock-off to have that much
experience and insight, when you can verify via PG's essays the insight
they'll bring to the table? Hard sell if you ask me.
~~~
davidw
Supposing you 1) dont' want to live in the Bay Area, or 2) weren't accepted to
YC, or have some other issue with YC, having some other options isn't bad,
even if they're not as good as the original.
I don't get the need people seem to have to put these YC clones down. Yes,
copying the application is lame (we'll see if the guy responds), but having
more options is a _good thing_. If your idea (YC) is any good, people will try
and replicate it, and that's what we're seeing here. The early-stage-seed
whatever area is not some kind of network-effect amped winner-takes-all market
where PG needs to grow things at an insane pace to grab market share. Far from
it, he does well by his funded companies to dedicate his time to them, and not
worry if people copy his idea.
~~~
lux
I'm not putting the idea itself down at all. In my other comment I saw the
likelihood of these types of investment companies increasing since YC proved
the concept viable. This one here was blatant plagiarism though, which make it
look like they didn't put the time into starting it properly, which means
they're not likely to put due diligence into the companies they investing in.
Trust is a big factor in accepting someone's money in exchange for part of
your creation, and that doesn't instill it. Looks like they did apologize now
though (haven't read it yet).
Local is a definite plus, having to move to Boston or Cali can be a deal-
breaker for some I'm sure. I'm waiting to hear when a Canadian equivalent pops
up myself ;)
They also had one other interesting idea I haven't seen before, which is that
they ask companies to put up 5% to a pool that's shared among all the startups
from that funding round. They figure that will encourage more collaboration
and help, since everyone wins a little when anyone in the group wins. That was
in their FAQ. I wonder how that will turn out for people in practice.
------
brfox
hey guys, chill out. Is the application the same as YC? (It is not currently
posted on YC, so I don't know).
Other than the unattributed copying of the YC application... This seems like a
totally different deal. He's not just giving a tiny bit of money to fresh
college grads and making you move to San Jose for 3 months, it looks like it
is going to be an actual co-op where each group accepted gets part of the pie
from everyone else, and its not only limited to 10k. I live in Seattle and
have 2 little kids, so I can't exactly do the YC thing, so I'm actually kind
of fired up about this idea. I've read about the two founders of this group so
it seems legit.
~~~
vegashacker
Yeah, it's basically verbatim plagiarism. Check out, for example,
[http://web.archive.org/web/20060825161615/ycombinator.com/w7...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060825161615/ycombinator.com/w7app.txt)
~~~
brfox
Here's their apology:
[http://crashdev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sincere-apologies-to-
pa...](http://crashdev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sincere-apologies-to-paul-graham-
and-y.html)
------
aristus
Calm down. This is precisely how industries standardize. No one thought it was
"sickening" when search engines pages started to imitate each other's blue
title + grey descr + green url design. It was just an obviously good idea.
~~~
iamwil
My first reaction was also, "hey plagiarism". But then again, on second
thought, it'd be nice to have one application form to fill out, and then you
just send them to different programs.
Before the days of standardized applications forms for colleges, it was a pain
in the ass to fill out the same types of questions. I think it's rather lazy
of them. However, since they're all going for startups, it's rather likely
they'd ask a set of basic questions. It might do to have some sort of
standarized basic set of questions, and then tack on one or two specific
questions for that particular program.
~~~
randallsquared
I think there's a lot to be said for standardization, as you say. Founders who
are just getting started have little enough time as it is, without having to
come up with just slightly different answers to just slightly different
questions. If that's their reasoning, they probably should have mentioned it,
though.
------
chaostheory
what I don't understand is that why these people don't even try just changing
around the wording at least just by a little bit... are they that uncreative
and lazy? or at least (as brett mentions) give credit where it's due
~~~
rokhayakebe
becasue this is exactly what they intended to do. Have the entire YC community
talk about it and cr8 some interest about their program. It seems to work.
~~~
gruseom
I once had a philosophy professor who liked being provocative. He was a sort
of evangelical atheist. He gave a talk entitled, "Is Belief In God Immoral Or
Merely Irrational?"
That (unethical or merely incompetent?) is the sort of interesting debate
they've created about themselves.
------
lux
These all seem so blatant at this point, but if the trend is moving towards
early-stage/micro-investments like this, then most likely we'll be seeing lots
more where this came from.
But when YC has all the cred which serves to give a nice profile boost to YC-
funded startups, what can these others offer that amounts to the same thing?
There's the community, experience and hookups with further funding
opportunities, but these knock-offs just seem like they're lacking in
comparison to the full value proposition YC offers. I wonder how they can
compensate for that...
~~~
Raphael
Local is a plus.
------
wheels
Again, I don't understand the super-reactionary responses here every time that
there's something based on YC. By the YC founders own assessments they can't
accommodate all of the good ideas that they're receiving.
And what of this, "Well, they're going to suck..." Do you think YC was perfect
right off of the bat? Really? Sure, the copy-cats will be rough at first, then
they'll, like most ventures, find ways to differentiate themselves and do
their thing or die.
Or is the big objection that they copy-and-pasted the form? Other than very
minor copyright infringement, which I'm sure they'd rectify if asked, it's
obvious that they just went live. I can think of dumber ideas than copying
your role-model as a place-holder until you have time to rewrite the form.
~~~
wright
It's not about copying the idea.
It's about making yourself look like a total asshat by copying someone else's
writing verbatim and passing it off as your own.
> _which I'm sure they'd rectify if asked,_
"If you have to ask..."
> _then they'll, like most ventures, find ways to differentiate themselves and
> do their thing or die._
There's a YC copycat in India that differentiates itself by posting armed
guards to keep you in your office until midnight. And not let you sleep.
Seriously.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158049>
~~~
wheels
> It's about making yourself look like a total asshat by copying someone
> else's writing verbatim and passing it off as your own.
There's a famous line by Igor Stravinsky. "Good composers borrow. Great
composers steal."
If you're working on something, and you see someone else that's got part of it
righ, by all means copy them!
I don't mean plagiarize them, but emulate what they're doing and figure out
the parts that you're good at. If you read through what this co-op is about
there's some interesting stuff there. They're trying to get people in Seattle
for a year, are offering more funding and trying to build integration between
the companies they're investing in. This is a good thing. Ask them to reword
their questions if you must, but cheer these people on! Comparing this the
Indian proposal from a little while back is just silly.
~~~
mwerty
>"Good composers borrow. Great composers steal."
Interestingly, he probably stole that quote from T.S Eliot: "Immature poets
imitate; mature poets steal"
~~~
wright
It was Picasso and artists.
------
gruseom
The hackers they'd like to attract all know about YC. Most probably knew about
it long before they did. A good many probably have the YC application
memorized. To make a verbatim knock-off and pretend you didn't is just so...
inept. Certainly ineptitude is among the leading qualities I look for in an
investor, how about you?
To anyone who knows the first thing about hackers, it's obvious how to do
this: give full credit to YC, praise YC to the skies, point out that not
everyone is suited to YC and argue that there's room for more than one.
Differentiate yourself by being Seattle-focused or whatever.
------
reitzensteinm
Does anyone else find this sickening? I'd be unable to plagarise in a
professional setting even if I knew 100% that I wouldn't get caught. I'd feel
way too slimy afterwards to even consider it. What ever happened to taking
pride in your work?
Add in to that the absolute certainty of getting caught on the internet (hell,
you can automate the process), I'm just amazed that people still do it. I just
don't understand their thinking at all.
------
antoineg
Chris has responded to this issue on his blog:
[http://crashdev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sincere-apologies-to-
pa...](http://crashdev.blogspot.com/2008/04/sincere-apologies-to-paul-graham-
and-y.html). Those of you throwing around uninformed, flaming commentary would
benefit from a quick read followed by a few deep breaths.
~~~
webwright
He uses the phrase "modeled after", which is pretty light. They lifted most
questions verbatim, removed the references to boston and News.YC (usernames,
etc), and shuffled order on a question or two.
I'm a little iffy on whether I feel this is terribly unethical-- an
application is not really a creative work. I do think it shows a lack of
creativity! I can think of 2 or 3 questions that I'd add/adjust if I was
spinning up an early stage outfit.
~~~
antoineg
I agree it was a lapse in judgement - both the lifting and the lack of
attribution. However, in the grand scheme of things it's not that huge a deal,
and the important thing for me is that he is correcting the problem right away
as soon as possible after being informed of the criticism.
------
okeumeni
We have built a search of their sites and blogs, whatever you want to know
about Founder's co-op, just search for it here:
[http://www.intelliverb.com/Search/?ul=en-
us&six=src63343...](http://www.intelliverb.com/Search/?ul=en-
us&six=src633439433255440000f)
------
edw519
Look at how much you can learn about these people from this little bit of
data:
1\. They are creatively challenged.
2\. They are professionally challenged.
3\. They are ethically challenged.
Suppose you get involved with them. What do you imagine would happen as soon
as a difficult situation came up?
Personally, this tells me just enough to run, not walk, the other way.
~~~
davidw
Well, if by "learn", you mean "extrapolate", "surmise", "conjecture" or
"speculate". I don't think you can make such sweeping statements without
knowing more.
~~~
edw519
They copied someone else's intellectual property without giving credit.
What data could anyone possibly add that would change my thinking?
~~~
edw519
I sit here with egg on my face as I reply to myself. davidw, you were
absolutely right and I never saw it.
When I wrote, "What data could anyone possibly add that would change my
thinking?" I never expected an answer. I just read the Crash Dev apology, and
that's the data.
My apologies. Now I understand the difference between "learn" and "infer".
------
okeumeni
YC is a great idea, Founder's co-op is the proof. Honesty dictates that they
mention YC as their source of idea. This is another opportunity for startups
to get seed and backing. Coaching may not be as YCs, but hey why not try,
apply!!!!
------
smoody
I know this is off-topic, but isn't asking for the applicants' ages illegal,
as it can be used as a basis for discrimination? -- in the same way that
asking if the applicants have children would probably be illegal.
~~~
dcurtis
This isn't a housing application-- discrimination is completely legal.
In fact, the application is designed to discriminate against people who would
be bad founders.
~~~
brlewis
More relevant, this isn't a job application. Employers do have to avoid
discrimination.
------
paulgb
> 12\. Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate?
Heh
------
wright
I find it dubious not only for the massive plagiarism (even the word limit!)
but in that they seem to lack the l33t skills needed to make an HTML form
submission page.
I think having YC in your corner is a boost; these guys look like they'd HURT
your chances. Why would you want people who are unoriginal and unscrupulous
dragging you down?
~~~
trevelyan
saves you from writing two application forms?
~~~
rms
I think that was the idea Techstars had. Since they got away with it outside
of this community, I can see why other new microseed funds want to keep using
the same application.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Recent engineer grad. What should I study/do for junior dev positions? - cocoawhale
In terms of CS knowledge, I have the equivalent of an Intro CS class and a Data Structures/Algorithms class under my belt. I have many projects on my GitHub but all of the projects (about 5-6 of them) are Hackathon (crappily written un-bragworthy) code. I'm focusing on mainly back-end WebDev junior developer roles. I graduated about 6 months ago and have been focusing exclusively on picking up software skills for these last 6 months.<p>I DO have 10 months of traditional engineering experience but no Software engineering experience.<p>Should I at this point, focus on Cracking the Code Interview/Hackerrank problems mainly? Would top-tier companies care about any projects I build? If so, should I focus my attention on projects? Should I look for only internships at this point? What is a good course of action at this point considering one can only choose to do so many things at one time? Will companies hire a postgrad as an intern? So many tough questions, will I ever find all of the answers?
======
MichaelCrawford
First, you need your own website.
Of the projects you've written - the Hackathon stuff &c. - pick out the one
that would appeal to the most people, were it well-written. Host your own git
server (not GitHub - you want people coming to your site, not someone else's!)
then refactor the code so that it is well-written.
Have a read of my articles "How to Promote Your Business on the Internet" at
[http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/website-
promotion.htm...](http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/website-
promotion.html) as well as "White Hat Search Engine Optimization" at
[http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/search-engine-
optimiz...](http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/search-engine-
optimization/)
------
tdefarbus
don't waste your time. have you tried devdraft.com..you take a few coding
challenges and then you get in front of tons of companies. some of the best
coding challenges i've ever seen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to force customers to be more efficient - source99
Hi all,<p>I work with a customer's engineer (subject matter expert) that is responsible for reviewing some outputs from my tools. Specifically a video. Specifically dozens of videos a day.<p>I sync all the videos to dropbox. He views the videos manually through the dropbox web video player. This is painfully slow and lacks fine grain control.<p>It would be much more efficient if he synced the folder, but i can't seem to convince him that the minor overhead of keeping the folder in sync would drastically out weight the hourly annoyance he gets from viewing through the web interface.<p>Any feedback on how to actually convince him to make this change?<p>Thanks
======
ian0
Upload them to youtube as private videos?
Assume its the better player + there are plenty of tools to ease uploading.
Also he likes leaving nasty comments theres no better place!
------
dozzie
Start publishing the videos with rsync?
Why do you care about him working more efficiently, anyway?
~~~
source99
I'm not sure how rsync solves this any differently than dropbox.
I care because any in-efficiency just drives me crazy and we would be more
productive($$$) as a whole if he was more productive.
~~~
dozzie
> I'm not sure how rsync solves this any differently than dropbox.
It's quite simple: there's no web player to click, so he's bound to download
files to his workstation.
> I care because any in-efficiency just drives me crazy [...]
That's what I thought. Give up, you won't gain much from making him faster,
and the world is full of people who don't give a damn about their efficiency.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What to do when you don't have enough problems to solve? - _bxg1
Sometimes I come home from work at the end of the day and I still have the hankering for a problem that needs solving with code.<p>The issue is, if it's something that someone else has already done a strictly better job of implementing, it tends to feel empty. Now, obviously it's uncommon for an individual without a PhD or a senior FAANG position to do something that's both generally-useful and truly an improvement on what's out there already. So most of us instead occupy ourselves with solving narrower problems specific to a given organization.<p>But that still leaves the question: what problems can I <i>truly</i> solve - even small, narrow ones - in my spare time? Outside the context of a job or even a business idea.
======
WheelsAtLarge
It's hard to find problems without narrowing your focus. Your goal is to pick
an area and get informed and educated on it. Once you know enough you'll find
areas where you can make a difference.
Also, talk to more knowledgeable people in that area as they will be able to
identify areas of pain.
One of the fundamentals of software engineering is a needs analysis. A process
where you ask a lot of questions that help you understand where and how
software can help. But you need to focus otherwise you won't be able to get
any usefull information to act on.
------
vlod
An exercise to get you noticing problems around you, is take note of what
you/or people around you complain about.
If you immediate say "Why don't they do it this way..." take notes and leave
it for a few days. The goal is to get in the routine of flexing those mental
muscles.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Internet Advertising Model - Pay-Per-Chat - comptr
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/02/prweb2181914.htm
======
comptr
Pay-Per-Click sucks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub Down with a 503 - cheese1756
https://status.github.com/
======
dmoy
Random somewhat on-topic question. How does one measure ones technical
capability to keep up services that are more available and dependent than
third party solutions? I mean obviously starting out, almost everybody can
benefit from doing a lot of stuff not in-house, but at some point you'd be
able to do better yourselves. But then maybe for certain services from certain
providers, raw technical capability never catches up?
How do you know when that point is? Is there even data out there on how
frequently big providers go down? (Not just Github, but stuff like aws, etc)
~~~
bricestacey
By the time you're talking about 99.9% uptime there is only 9 hours downtime a
year so there isn't much wiggle room for failure. There is never a reason any
one person should assume they can do better than a third party because you're
likely sleeping 2920 hours a year. Basically, you're never good enough on your
own. If you care about uptime you're going to need to pay good money for it.
~~~
increment_i
But, hypothetically speaking as of now, could this be automated? And if so,
how?
~~~
bricestacey
In short, no, unless you think people replacing broken hardware or patching
bugs in your software can be automated.
Your question is too vague. Github is up enough that I don't care. However,
it's down enough I wouldn't want to not be able to deploy because it's down.
Therefore, I may mirror my repo somewhere else. That's easy because git is
decentralized. It's a lot cheaper than running some alternative that I
guarantee is always running. You can do this by simply pushing to a mirrored
remote branch.
If you're just interested in the subject, research high availability.
------
argonaut
Reminds me of the classic bumbling quote: "Why don't they just host GitHub
where they host the status page?"
~~~
cshimmin
"Why don't they make the whole damn plane out of the black box?"
~~~
altcognito
I'm always impressed that life support systems on star trek fail, but
artificial-gravity never ceases to work.
~~~
lloeki
Probably there are a handful of gravitons or something embedded right in the
floor, or there is massive inertia to the system. We tend to forget that not
all solutions require active power.
~~~
larrybolt
This does makes one wonder that if you need to make an app that has as little
downtime as possible perhaps the best solution is to port as much as possible
functionality client-side with client-side caching of data.
(theoretically, if I could cache every repo I visit using squid-proxy, even if
github has an hour downtime I can still access the repo's I visited in the
past, not perfect, but it's something!)
------
Aqueous
Alright...well, it looks like this whole programming thing was a bust. Was
good while it lasted, but yeah, uh, I guess I'm gonna go home, er, something -
so...see you guys later?
------
cclogg
Haha, I wonder how many of us came here because we couldn't push or pull
commits, so just taking a HN reading break... and boom the top post is about
Github!
~~~
mafro
When Github appears down, I come to HN to find out if it's affecting everyone
:p
~~~
YoukaiCountry
'Gee, github is down. Is it just me? Better check HN!' Exactly what I just did
too.
~~~
pwelch
This is what I do as we'll. :)
------
mrmondo
It's amazing how often github actually goes down - 90% of the time they don't
log it on their uptime / status page - it got so bad at one point I added it
to our Nagios monitoring to prove a point to our devs that they shouldn't rely
on external services for builds when our internal git(lab) server hasn't gone
down once this year.
~~~
copperx
How does one depend on Github for builds if git is, um, distributed?
~~~
lloeki
go get, npm install
BTW the official standing on dependencies in Go is to actually fork all deps
you need, possibly using submodules or even vendorizing by adding src/* to
your project VCS.
------
ereckers
I was waiting for this post :)
Let's see who the Saturday team is!
~~~
rsanheim
We have an amazing team of people who are available and on-call 24/7 for these
sorts of incidents.
~~~
ereckers
Oh I don't doubt that. I meant finding out who was lurking around HN on a late
Saturday early Sunday. The team at Github does great work!
------
viclou
[https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/421116237792284672](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/421116237792284672)
------
martinvol
Exception percentage just got over 100%, new record! (?)
[http://i57.tinypic.com/4hphtd.png](http://i57.tinypic.com/4hphtd.png)
~~~
saurik
It is now up to 175% a couple minutes later (and 205% a couple minutes after
that). The issue seems to be that it is actually currently more like 10000%,
and is being averaged down throughout the month to a mere 100-200%. What is
this even measuring?!
~~~
helper
If I were implementing something tracking the rate of exceptions a reasonable
thing to measure it against is the total number of requests. In such a system,
if each request generated multiple exceptions you would have >100% exception
rate.
------
aroman
I was wondering why my `bower install` was failing... :/
~~~
qntmfred
Doesn't bower install from a local cache if network request fails? npm on the
other hand...
per docs at [https://github.com/bower/bower](https://github.com/bower/bower)
oh....
~~~
aroman
Yeah it does pull from cache, but I didn't have the packaged cached yet.
As for the docs, it is somewhat crazy to think how much documentation is
hosted by GitHub these days...
------
wildmXranat
Yep. All metrics down and exception rate is up gentlemen:
[http://imgur.com/Ncm5Rrx](http://imgur.com/Ncm5Rrx) . I just noticed when
SQLMap install was hung and every tarball/zip download on their site also
leads to Github , oy vey!
~~~
AYBABTME
At least webhooks are becoming faster..!
------
robbles
Could Github store mirrors of all repositories on some third-party service,
like S3?
Even if they were only updated every 24 hours and had a limited history for
each repo, it still seems like it would be a really useful fallback that they
could put up when things like this happen.
~~~
eli
It's actually not _that_ hard to set up your git to push to both Github and
another repository at the same time.
~~~
robbles
Sure, it's easy to do with your own code. But what about apps that don't
vendor their dependencies? If you need to pull in third-party dependencies
when you deploy or test, it's still possible to maintain your own mirror, but
it would be nice if you could depend on the code being "up".
------
ChiChou
Somehow I opened the GitHub Status Page subconsciously early this morning,
then everything suddenly became 503 in less than 10 minutes!
I still have the tab opened now, saying "All systems operational"...
~~~
ChiChou
Seems like it's back now. (3:13 UTC)
------
mattkrea
Why have they gone down so often in the past few months? Is this another DDOS?
I've personally wondered about their stack but I imagine that has little to do
with that--mostly Ruby though right?
~~~
sinaa
It seems to be MySQL related this time:
"github.com is currently unreachable. We are investigating mysql cluster
issues."
------
4dl0v3-p34c3
I hope it was just an error or something. Nothhing political, like this:
[https://gist.github.com/kyledrake/e6046644115f185f7af0](https://gist.github.com/kyledrake/e6046644115f185f7af0)
More info:
[http://www.theverge.com/policy/2014/5/9/5699510/web-
hosting-...](http://www.theverge.com/policy/2014/5/9/5699510/web-hosting-
company-puts-fcc-in-slow-lane)
~~~
hayksaakian
the gist link is also a 503
------
papercruncher
Tempted to deploy via rsync on my laptop
------
co2
I'm wondering if this will give bitbucket a boost in unique visits.
------
joshdotsmith
Right in the middle of a major push to production. Awesome.
~~~
akerl_
It's too bad git requires a central server.
~~~
AYBABTME
How is this a useful comment? Everybody knows that Git is distributed.
Everytime Github's down, somebody feels the urge to remind everybody else
about that.
Github's not only Git. Lots of services integrate with Github. Stuff like
continuous integration, continuous deployment. If your system is built on
those things, Github being down will prevent you from deploying.
What's the alternative, replicate everything in-house/self hosted? Should
startup stop using third party service providers?
~~~
akerl_
If your workflow involves services that integrate with GitHub, you should have
a plan for when GitHub is not available. You've got your source code
elsewhere, you should have docs and procedures for running the tests in your
own dev environments and for utilizing whatever staging/deploy process you
prefer without GitHub as an intermediary.
I continue to post comments like that because while I love GitHub, watching
the community put all their eggs in GitHub's basket, especially when GitHub
lives on top of a tool designed to avoid SPoFs, is concerning.
~~~
hamburglar
100%. GitHub is amazing. GitHub is a wonderful tool. GitHub is also just a
service cooked up by a handful of jokers who got enough funding to make it
happen, and they do a reasonable job of keeping it running most of the time. I
wish them all the best, and yet making my own company's infrastructure reliant
on it is not something I'm comfortable with. Sometimes they're going to blow
it, and that's ok. If them blowing it means my business is affected, _I 'm_
the dummy.
~~~
skrebbel
> _jokers who got enough funding to make it happen_
While I agree with the general gist of your comment, GitHub was entirely self-
funded up until about a year ago or so. they didn't "get" funding, they made
real money and reinvested it and grew.
~~~
hamburglar
Fine, bootstrapping jokers are my favorite kind of jokers. No offense
intended. My point is it's just a small company with no SLA, express or
implied. It could have been anybody with the same great idea, and just because
they had a great idea doesn't make them automatically reliable enough to pin
your infrastructure on.
------
danielhellier
Curious, which chart lib is GitHub using for those charts?
~~~
cheese1756
They make calls to d3 in the chart snippet, so I assume it's that. Here's the
relevant code from application.js:
[http://pastebin.com/ApL9SxXs](http://pastebin.com/ApL9SxXs)
------
mhahn
all the overachieving engineers working on a saturday...
------
StepR
Oh damn. The Github team is in for a rude awakening...
------
nodesocket
> We are investigating mysql cluster issues.
------
simplon
Yeah seems so.. [https://status.github.com/](https://status.github.com/)
~~~
StepR
Thats what the link above goes to
------
OutThisLife
It's all over now.
------
thamaraimedia
GitHub now available.
------
iancarroll
and right when I wanted to clone something. damn.
------
zcs
It's back!
------
nxbtch
you are really the early bird.
~~~
cheese1756
I was setting up a new repo, and then everything stopped working. Lucky
timing, I guess.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fundraising $5000 for my Startup - ITpro
http://www.9mim.com/
======
indeed30
If you want money, you'll need to explain to me:
1) How kibitzO is different to Quora
2) How moozeekaa will be better or more than just aggregated youtube tutorials
3) What on earth kingdomlove actually is.
I'm not trying to put you off, but I think you need much more focused plans
for each of these.
~~~
ITpro
Thanks for your feedback/questions.
I do have very detailed plans for each one.
However, you can agree with me that having plans (& business plans) is not as
important as doing something tangible.
Time is money & spending too much time on planning phase is not wise since I
already know what I'll do & even the best plans change & they should according
to the real time feedback of the users!
I am planning to engage the users from the beginning & will have a detailed
feedback system so I can have a detailed feedback on everything from the logos
to layout to features etc
I tend to make complex systems out of simple ideas. This detailed feedback
system would be very useful for startups & in fact it can be a startup by
itself!. Imagine if you have such a system where money or time is never wasted
so you can reach your milestones as efficiently as possible.
From experience, if one can not afford the time one shouldn't engage in such
complex endeavors. This is why I need to secure the money to be able to do
this.
In today's world it's almost impossible to compete without a backing.
Answers:
1) Quora is just a question-and-answer website & there are many like it.
KibitzO is focused on friends/family where you specifically solicit from them
"opinions" mainly so it's a social thing not just Q and A. Also, what would be
really different is the functionality. Today, uniqueness of functionality is
what makes any website/startup stands out as there are many copy cat for
almost any kind of a website. If I reach beta then you'll have a chance to see
the functionality 1st hand.
2)MooZeeKaa is different than anything out there. I can guarantee that to you
because on this one I did a comprehensive market research as I tried to get
investment for it. You'll be hard pressed to find quality music lessons for
free!. Also, could you imagine having a famous musician be your mentor? or
give out free lessons/vids! If you went through the features list you can see
that tutorials is just one part of it. The main difference here that it's an
ecosystem! it'll have a complete platform to allow anyone from musicians to
beginners to 1) have everything related to music in on place (Wal-Mart of
music) 2) create an income of it, so you feed the ecosystem & be fed by it
3) Kingdomlove is a social platform to connect people based on what they love
(love as a broad term not only as in dating so love of art, money, animals
etc) so it has all the social features (like facebook) & a platform that allow
useful sharing & growing your love based interest. Example, some people love
sports, you ask yourself how 1) allow them to find people based on that love
not just interest as someone who loves sports is different than someone who is
interested in sports! 2) What tools do they need to allow them to grow this
love in a productive way? So, for each love based there are suitable tools!
Example, money love> business2business tools/features, lead generation etc,
animals love> adaptation features, medical history tools etc
Please up vote!
------
ITpro
Fundraising $5000 for my Startup!
This is the best place to get a feedback :)
I'll do them regardless, however with your help it can happen faster
Thanks in advance
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Built an AngularJS Training Site on Rails - joelhooks
http://joelhooks.com/blog/2013/09/15/why-i-built-an-angularjs-training-site-on-rails/#
======
_mtr
This isn't a full-blown example, but AngularJS works phenomenally as an
interaction layer on top of a REST API. Creating such an API with Rails is
almost trivial. Postgres + Rails + AngularJS (via Bower) has become my go-to
stack and is an absolute blast to develop with.
~~~
joelhooks
This is the approach I'm taking for the Admin, actually. Haven't started yet,
but __really __looking forward to it.
~~~
_mtr
Nice. If you're not already familiar with Restangular, be sure to check it
out:
[https://github.com/mgonto/restangular](https://github.com/mgonto/restangular)
I tried rolling my own Angular API service, and it was a great learning
experience, but Restangular trumps any vanilla service I could roll.
------
tourbillonfunk
Congrats on relaunch! You mentioned, you had no real experience with Rails
outside of tutorials. What kind of problems did you run into while creating
your first production quality app? I'd love a post about how it was working
with Rails.
~~~
joelhooks
The biggest hurdle was using Rails 4 and Bootstrap 3 because the gems I was
trying to use weren't quite there yet.
I'd argue that it is production quality ;)
There are no tests, which makes me feel bad about myself, and in the future
I'd prefer to TDD the whole thing, but in terms of cognitive load up front it
was too much to take in.
------
typicalrunt
I browsed egghead.io (it looks great, btw!) and I'm trying to figure out what
parts are Angular and what are simply Rails server-generated views.
The signin/signup look to be using standard Rails, but what parts are using
Angular?
~~~
joelhooks
There are no AngularJS pieces to the site (outside of the videos themselves,
which are almost strictly geared towards Angular)
~~~
typicalrunt
heh. I get the title now, and explains my confusion with the article content.
It led me to believe that you build an AngularJS-and-Rails-powered website.
Thanks for the clarification.
------
kmatthews812
Has anybody figured out how to add headless tests to this stack (Rails 4,
AngularJS)? I've tried using Karma and Teaspoon and they both ran into
problems. Karma would cause PhantomJS to crash on launch and Teaspoon could
never load the asset pipeline properly, so Angular was never being included.
Example links would be greatly appreciated.
------
bhaumik
The first few videos wouldn't load for me on the website itself thoug [latter
ones do] - on Macbook Pro/Chrome
Watching them on Youtube - very useful!
------
waffle_ss
Where did you get your Privacy Policy copy from?
~~~
joelhooks
[http://www.bennadel.com/coldfusion/privacy-policy-
generator....](http://www.bennadel.com/coldfusion/privacy-policy-
generator.htm) is a generator
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Princeton Piton Processor - rbanffy
http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/#
======
nickpsecurity
I keep telling OSS HW people to build on OpenSPARC given you have an ASIC-
proven, badass design to start with. Good to see that they not only did that
but put 25 cores on a 32nm node. We have Raptor trying to get OpenPOWER for a
more open processor, RISC-V designs in the making for multi-core, and the RTL
of a fully-open SPARC with 25-cores ready to go. We also have a need for high-
performance, multi-core CPU's as our root of trust. Anyone see opportunity? ;)
Next step for any academics reading is modifying these suckers to have
extensions like Watchdog[Lite] or CHERI CPU's. Dover is already doing SAFE
with RISC-V. FreeBSD already runs on CHERI, though, so hardest work is done.
Modify OpenSPARC & compiler backend for it as they did their BERI MIPS. Add
I/O MMU & trusted bootloader. Boom! The beginning of a secure, open SOC. :)
------
AstroJetson
It's always cool when research projects show that they would work in the real
world. Lots of times they are some professors pet idea and don't really go
anywhere. It will be interesting to see if in a year to 18 months if anyone
else is using OpenPiton.
~~~
mhayenga
Eh, Wentzlaff (professor behind this) co-founded Tilera. He can definitely
make something others could use. I view him doing OpenPiton as an attempt to
give back to researchers now that he has become a prof.
------
crudbug
Why not OpenSPARC T2 ?
~~~
dorimonn009
I think it's because of these guys' strong focus on FPGAs. If you dig back on
the opensparc scene a few years back, you'd find almost no materials on the T2
implemented in FPGA...
~~~
crudbug
Yeah, I see some T1 related academic papers. Research on RISC-V [0] with this
hyper-scale architecture would have been a better choice for PI.
[0] [https://riscv.org/](https://riscv.org/)
------
revelation
I can think of a lot of exciting custom silicon, so if as an Academic you get
the extremely rare occasion that someone funds you a 32nm chip... why on earth
would you then go and build something that all of the commercial players are
also doing?
~~~
maaarghk
I suspect the grant was to build this chip rather than to go and have fun play
times with a 32nm fab.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Migrate your Java Application from Heroku to OpenShift - OpenShift
https://www.openshift.com/blogs/migrate-your-java-application-from-heroku-to-openshift
======
sghill
I haven't used a serious app in production on OpenShift, but I have been
playing around with a Java project recently. Assuming I get it to production,
I'm going to stick with OpenShift. I think the blogs, forums, and docs are
great.
I started out with gradle and embedded jetty, and found no out-of-the-box
support. They did do a nice blog post on how to use gradle for builds[1].
Unfortunately, the blog uses gradle version 1.6 and that's the last gradle
version that doesn't throw an exception while building[2].
Wanting things to be easier, I switched over to maven[1] and tomcat:
OpenShift has supported Apache Maven as default build system for Java based projects since the first release.
Since going with this setup, things just work.
I also really like that the environment configuration is stored in the
codebase under the .openshift folder. This makes it very easy to, for example,
develop locally against http but make all your traffic go through https on
OpenShift. And the free piggyback ssl means https just works too.
[1]: [https://www.openshift.com/blogs/run-gradle-builds-on-
openshi...](https://www.openshift.com/blogs/run-gradle-builds-on-openshift)
[2]:
[http://issues.gradle.org/browse/GRADLE-2871](http://issues.gradle.org/browse/GRADLE-2871)
------
arikrak
OpenShift's free tier provides 3 "gears" with 512MB RAM per gear and 1GB disk
space. This seems to be much more than Heroku's free tier of 1 "dyno" with
512MB RAM and 10k rows DB space.
(I'm on Heroku for now though I wonder if it's worth switching.)
[https://www.heroku.com/pricing](https://www.heroku.com/pricing)
[https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing](https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing)
------
dz0ny
Just don't. Opeshift has terrible performance, containers will stop to work at
random times. It's just bad experince.
~~~
agibsonccc
Did you use it during the free trial? I've found it give you just enough
control. It's leagues ahead of what I saw from heroku as far as java goes.
They were great when I asked for more resources and the like as well during
the trial. I've found a VPS better for my own purposes, but I'm kind of an
outlier as far as the kinds of things I develop. Most people don't need that
fine grained of control.
Openshift itself is a great model. That doesn't even count HN's love child
Docker throwing their lot in with these guys.
I wouldn't mind evaluating their enterprise offering if it becomes relevant.
I'm sure the paid product is much better than what was in the free developer
preview a long time ago.
At least Red Hat is sticking by it, I haven't seen much in the way of cloud
foundry in the while (keep in mind I haven't looked in to it in a while, so
feel free to correct me here.)
I've also tried cloudbees and the like. I liked the fact that red hat is good
on multiple fronts. It seems like they're nailing it overall.
That being said: heroku is usually the standard. I'm not really too much of a
ruby person myself, I'm sure it's amazing for that though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions - OyoKooN
https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions
======
habosa
You'll notice the entire Bitcoin community has changed tone. It used to be
"this is the currency of the future, down with cash/Visa!" but now you hear
"Bitcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value".
The wild price swings, slow transactions, high fees, and loq merchant
acceptance make it complete garbage as a currency. But as a store of value,
none of those arguments apply. It only has to compete with gold bars, which
are crappy in their own ways.
~~~
jondubois
I don't see it as a store of value. It's just a very reliable network for
sending very big transactions.
If you send 1 million dollars in Bitcoin, a $20 fee is negligible - The
reliability of the Bitcoin network makes it worth it.
For smaller transactions you should just use a different coin.
~~~
canoebuilder
If you're in good standing with the various governmental authorities, what are
the scenarios that make it worthwhile to convert to some cryptocoin, "send a
transaction," then convert back on the other end? There are traditional
channels for sending money to various places, what do these extra steps get
me?
You may feel a $20 fee is negligible, how about a 1% price move? 10%?
It's funny how often one sees these sort of high-dollar scenarios described
for this "decentralized"! "currency of the people"!
Like, sending million dollar wires is a fairly niche market, and to my
knowledge people regularly engaging in such things seem to be getting along
just fine, there not crying out desperately for a better solution. And how
exactly is bitcoin better for doing this if your million dollar transactions
don't consist of the spoils from an exchange hack, exit scam or the like?
_It 's just a very reliable network for sending very big transactions._
Do you think the traditional channels for sending million dollar wires are
_unreliable_? This seems like an area where the market is likely to converge
on the very most reliable options and any service provider in this area with
even a hint of unreliability would rapidly fade away.
------
45h34jh53k4j
This is referring to the minimum cost in fees for a transaction to get copied
from the mempool to a block. Only when a transaction is in a block is it a
valid transfer of bitcoin. Its nothing to do with trading or exchange rates or
energy costs or fiat.
Bitcoin is working exactly the same as it has always, however now because of
the backlog, transaction fees are very high. In the order of Western Union +
Visa Fees + Bank Wire fees all at the same time!
I made a very small transaction for a friend a week ago (~$50) and paid $2 USD
in fees. That is not enough and the transaction will sit waiting until the
backlog decreases, it may never clear.
Bitcoin is kind of broken right now.
~~~
gomox
Most wallets allow you get out of this situation with a clever feature.
What you do is raise the insufficient fee after the fact by issuing a new
transaction that is dependent on the first one, and adding a large enough fee
to the second one. This is known as "child pays for parent" in BTC lingo.
That being said, the fee for a good transaction now is around $22 so it might
not be worth doing for your $50 send.
~~~
esaym
Where does this $22 go? What hard ware do I need to set up my own machine to
process these transactions and get the fees to keep?
~~~
eat_veggies
All fees go to the person who mines the next block, so in order to guarantee
you get the fees, you need a mining machine that wins every time (in which
case you'd be in control of way more than just the fees). Basically, you
can't.
------
macawfish
People who actually use bitcoin must be ignorant of all the much more usable
and useful alt-coins. Can anyone think of a good reason to actually use
bitcoin vs. ripple/stellar/dash/zcash/monero/nem/...? Maybe it's just cause so
many platforms have been built around bitcoin?
~~~
rhino369
Because your drug dealer only accepts bitcoin? Does anyone else actually use
it? Other than as a get rich quick scheme?
~~~
Casseres
Craigslist now allows people to mark their posts as crypto-friendly.
Anyone who accepts Bitcoin runs into the problem where others can know their
balance by looking up the address (and thus could be at risk for
theft/mugging).
If people want to keep their balances private and not share their transaction
history (or later transactions), they should use a coin that's private by
default such as Monero.
Additionally, Monero has a dynamic blocksize, so as usage increases it won't
experience the transaction backlog that Bitcoin faces.
~~~
njarboe
You should create a different address for each post on Craigslist. It is
pretty easy and prevents this problem. If you have a website and have an
address displayed for donations, then you will get multiple donations to the
same address. With any one-off just make a new address in your wallet. (I use
bitcoin core wallet. Not sure how others work.)
~~~
Casseres
And then later on transfer it to your main wallet and pay another fee, and
trust that whomever your first address still isn't paying attention to it, or
hope they didn't get their coins from a tainted source?
~~~
jameskegel
It’s all the same wallet just a different address, no transfer needed.
~~~
njarboe
That is how it works for me.
------
Buonaparte
I've had a couple of thousand dollars "stuck" across several bitcoin
transactions for over four days now (106 hours+), due to low fees suggested by
my wallet/exchange. Something needs to change, because it's currently
unusable.
~~~
tinus_hn
Yes, your wallet/exchange needs to change because it's giving you incorrect
suggestions.
------
rankam
How does this impact buy/sell orders? If I place a buy order at t = 0 where
btc = 10, but the order isn't processed until t + 3hours where btc = 15, do I
pay 10 or 15?
~~~
gomox
Exchanges (where trades like the one you describe happen) operate outside of
the blockchain. You only transact with them on the blockchain when depositing
or withdrawing money from the exchange.
~~~
rankam
Thanks, and just so I understand correctly, these pending orders are waiting
within the blockchain to be executed, similar(ish) to a task queue?
~~~
gomox
Yes. They are waiting to be picked up by a miner, based on the fee that the
transaction has paid to be included in the blockchain. You can still make a
quick (by BTC standards) transaction in these scenarios, it's just more
expensive to do so. Right now, a regular simple transaction would have to pay
USD 22 to be included in the next block (i.e. within 10 minutes).
Here's the reference website for BTC blockchain backlog. It allows you to
understand what a good fee is at a given time.
[https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/](https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/)
~~~
rankam
Awesome, makes sense - thanks for your help!
------
Glendoe
The miners are greedy bastards. They will be the ones to run this thing into
the ground and Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.
ShapeShift.io is charging an unprecedented 0.003 per transaction. The Coinomi
Android wallet is listing their minimum transaction fee (the "LOW" fee) at
0.002 as of last week. The Mycelium Android wallet is trying to scavenge about
0.0025 per transaction at the high end.
And the reason for the high fees IS NOT because of the network congestion:
It's because so far the greedy bastard miners are finding where they can get
away with it. Probably in fact they purposely slowing down the network to
cause the congestion as a ruse in claiming it for an excuse to charge
exorbitant fees. This is also an age-old trick that union workers use to get
more money for doing nothing on the job by just purposely slowing down the
work pace.
Right now anyway, I've seen where the average Bitcoin ATM machines are quite
busy with greenhorns who are shoving their cash bills into the machines for a
little dab of Bitcoin here and there. Most of those people are buying it to
hold it for awhile with the idea in mind of selling it back to the same ATM
machine they bought it from and turn a profit. So about the time more and more
and more people begin to understand that they are being fleeced for exorbitant
transaction fees that dramatically cut into any gains they would have made off
of typically small investments, then they will STOP buying Bitcoin from the
ATM machines.
Bitcoin will be all washed up within a couple years if for no other reason
than these greedy bastard miners who are going to find out that although they
made more money in a shorter period of time with their greed, they WOULD have
ended up making more money over the long term if they hadn't been the greedy
bastards that they are.
Greedy bastards. All of them. Greedy bastards.
------
eknkc
Also $4.3m worth of pending transaction fees.
------
syphilis2
Does the number of pending transactions impact Bitcoin in any way? If so, what
happens if users create large numbers of transactions with low/0 fees
attached?
~~~
brokenmachine
I believe it doesn't. All the miners will just ignore the transactions that
don't have a large enough fee attached.
------
zeep
Bitcoin Cash is now trading on GDAX/Coinbase, it probably will help alleviate
the burden a bit.
[https://www.gdax.com/trade/BCH-USD](https://www.gdax.com/trade/BCH-USD)
------
drtillberg
Chicken and egg: Are the unconfirmed transactions because people are selling?
Or are people selling because there are so many unconfirmed transactions?
Looks a bit like a bank run, complete with the lines at the teller.
------
etqwzutewzu
If bitcoin is becoming even more successful (in the sense of high transactions
number) and if blocksize remains at ~1 MB, what will be the impact on fees?
And could we imagine unsustainable fees?
~~~
blunte
The utility of bitcoin depends on your perspective. As a means of value
exchange, high fees make it less useful. But as a store of value, high fees
matter little.
~~~
prawn
As an example, wasn't there an $80m transaction the other day, where the fee
was $20? I wonder what banks would charge to facilitate that?
~~~
rsynnott
As far as I know, even for very big payments, most banks charge either no fee
or a flat fee for SEPA. My bank charges nothing for normal SEPA transfers or
20 euro for expedited ones (or it did a couple of years ago; I think there’s
some new regulation reducing max times for transfers, making expedited less
relevant). No upper limit mentioned on the forms. Of course, that’s only
relevant within the EU.
~~~
blunte
EU is WAY ahead of the US in many areas. I daresay that's because corporate
monopolies have a bit less power here (Europe).
The older folks in the US (the same group who put the US in the situation it's
in now) are still writing paper checks, putting them in envelopes, and sending
them through the postal service. Sure, you can send a bank wire, but the
sender will pay $15-30 for the privilege, and the receiver often has to pay
$15 or more as well. Oh, and it can take 1-2 business days; and the receiving
bank may decide, based on whatever reason, to hold the funds for 10 business
days.
Things are slowly changing with US banking, becoming slightly more modern; but
it's still the dark ages.
I'm amused when I visit family in the US and hear local people expressing
superiority over the rest of the world, while Kenya has been doing mobile
banking for 10 years.
Anyway, until you've lived in the US, you don't know how sucky banking is. Any
extra-bank financial system in the US is better than what they have now!
------
johanols
That's why I use Litecoin. Transactions fee are one of the lowest in all of
crypto and it's transactions speeds are acceptable. Always within a couple of
minutes.
~~~
etr-strike
Litecoin is essentially the same as bitcoin with slightly different chosen
constants. Bitcoin is optimizing for decentralization, Litecoin is not.
If people actually used litecoin it’d have the same exact problems.
~~~
A3mercury
I think this is what people don't fully understand. Bitcoin is not the
exception, it's just the first to hit this wall. Even if Bitcoin Cash were to
take over with larger block sizes, we'll see the same problem just further
down the line.
------
dr_win
Making bitcoin transactions is digital equivalent of melting and recasting
gold bars. You should not try this at home if you don't know what you are
doing. This base-layer Bitcoin is not suitable for average Joe and I doubt it
will ever be. Average people will have to move to upper layers where they will
work with something more convenient backed by those gold bars. Hence Lighting
Networks and/or Sidechains.
------
bb88
Basically BTC dropped 10% of it's value in 24 hours.
I wonder if this set off a bunch of triggers to sell BTC.
~~~
blunte
Bitcoin gains or loses more than 10% in a day quite often.
------
lobo_tuerto
And more increasing by the second... will it ever catch up?
------
mtmail
At 20 transactions per second it's a delay of 3 hours. (200000/20/60/60)
~~~
loopdoend
"The bitcoin network's theoretical maximum capacity sits between 3.3 to 7
transactions per second."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem)
~~~
westurner
The OT link does say "Transactions Per Second 22.54".
The solutions for this 3 hour backlog of unconfirmed transactions include:
implementing SegWit, increasing the blocksize, and Lightning Network.
~~~
viraptor
I think the link counts incoming transactions. I.e. you can always schedule
more, but it doesn't mean they're going to be acted on in a reasonable
timeframe.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A little bump in the wire that makes the Internet faster - eadmund
https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201808
======
Animats
The bufferbloat guy is much better at explaining this than I am. The problem
needs a PR guy, and now it has one. I wrote this up in 1985 as RFC 970, "On
packet switches with infinite storage", which is about why giant FIFO queues
are bad and you need fair queuing at a bandwidth choke point. People who read
RFCs and IEEE Trans. on Communications know about it. But I've been out of
networking since 1986. (A non-networking startup wanted me to Do Something. I
did. It worked out well. I never went back to networking.) So nobody was
pushing this.
Fair queuing seems to have been an idea that was used for a while and then
forgotten. It's been an obscure option on Cisco medium-speed routers for
years, but only on by default for 2mb/s links and below.[1] Most of the
attention on congestion control went into the TCP side, not the router side.
There was too much attention to packet dropping, rather than packet
reordering. In a router, you can do three things about congestion - drop,
reorder, and delay. For decades, most of the action revolved around dropping,
with Random Early Drop being popular. Reordering means you get to make
decisions about what to reorder. That leads to policy issues, traffic shaping,
quality of service, administrative interfaces, tuning knobs, and customer
service/help desk calls. Which is why QoS never went much of anywhere outside
of some tightly managed networks.
A big contribution of the bufferbloat guy is that he promotes the original
dumb fair queuing - each source IP/source port/destination IP/destination port
is one flow, and you service each flow equally. Nice and simple. No tuning. If
that was in the middle of the network, you'd worry about people getting more
bandwidth by gaming port numbers or something. But what's the point of gaming
your own personal DSL router? In practice, the things that need really good
latency on home DSL uplinks are acks, voice over IP, and game user action
traffic, all of which are low-bandwidth. So the simple approach is good
enough.
Early routers had barely enough CPU time to copy the bytes, let alone do fair
queuing. So it wasn't in early routers. It's also a bit complex for a FPGA, so
it's not in the big ones which route in hardware. (Nor is it that helpful
there, because backbone routers don't buffer much.) That's how we got here.
It's embarrassing that this is still necessary to talk about. There's no
excuse for big DSL operators deploying millions of routers with giant dumb
FIFO buffers. Come on, AT&T.
A fair queuing add-on box is a definitive win only if the next link has a
fixed data rate. DSL yes, cable maybe, cellular probably not. Cable modems at
DOCSIS 3.1 and above are supposed to have DOCSIS-PIE [2], which is supposed to
fix this.
Now will someone please do a startup that builds a little box? As a hobbyist
thing this goes nowhere. As a little box you buy at WalMart, it does.
Or, AT&T guys, get your act together and ship this as standard. Thank you.
[1]
[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios/12_2/qos/configura...](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios/12_2/qos/configuration/guide/fqos_c/qcfwfq.html)
[2] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-aqm-docsis-
pie-02](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-aqm-docsis-pie-02)
John Nagle
------
p1mrx
I read through the first few pages thinking, "Get to the point: how did you
detect the upload/download speed?" Finally,
> The only catch is... what upload/download speeds should we give to cake?
> Okay, I cheated for that one. I just asked my dad what speed his DSL link
> goes in real life, and plugged those in.
So the critical problem remains unsolved. If the ISP ever increases their
speed cap, it goes to waste; if they decrease the speed cap, the fix stops
working. I use a similar solution, but I have to turn it off and retest a few
times a year, because Comcast sometimes changes the speed without notifying
me.
~~~
rkeene2
One way to solve it is to look for TCP resends, over a diverse set of
connections, and decrease the apparent line speed if there are "too many". The
bloglog entry I posted earlier [0] goes over this.
[0]
[https://rkeene.org/projects/info/wiki/176](https://rkeene.org/projects/info/wiki/176)
------
learc83
It's a device that goes between your router and your LAN that attempts to
alleviate bufferbloat.
I think the blog really overdid it with the analogies.
~~~
rplnt
Can I get an explanation why bufferbloat is? As in, why is it slowing things
down? I got it's to do with big caches on devices? Or not? The article is
extremely long without ever getting into it (I didn't click the article I was
told not to click).
~~~
learc83
The TCP congestion control algorithm depends on dropped packets to calculate
bandwidth. TCP will send more and more packets per second until they start
dropping, then it will back off.
If there is a huge buffer, it will take a while for packets to start dropping,
so the congestion control algorithm won't function optimally--it won't respond
fast enough and lower the rate it sends packets until the buffer is full and
packets start dropping. Once the buffer is full, packets have to wait in line
in the buffer until they can be sent along so they take longer to get to their
destination.
Eventually the buffer empties, but then the TCP congestion control algorithm
starts increasing the rate it's sending packets and starts the problem over
again. You end up with a very variable latency--depending on where in the
cycle you are.
~~~
Animats
Actually, one TCP connection all by itself will do fine. It's multiple
connections that will get you. In particular, doing an upload and a download
at the same time will show terrible performance if there's a big FIFO buffer
in the upload direction. The ACKs for the download, a small number of bytes,
get stuck behind the bulk upload traffic. This runs the measured round trip
time way up and causes the download TCP stream to slow.
This is why uploads interfere with downloads, even though they shouldn't.
~~~
learc83
>Actually, one TCP connection all by itself will do fine.
That depends on your metric. It isn't necessarily true if you're targeting
stable latency for whatever reason.
------
scarface74
Slightly off topic....
He mentioned that over 20Mbps you really don’t notice better browsing speed.
He’s right. I have gigabit internet - usually around 950Mbps up and down.
Nothing takes advantage of it in the real world. The best real world
throughout I’ve gotten is through my work VPN in the middle of the night or
transferring something to AWS. Even then it’s only 100Mbps. BackBlaze tops out
at around 70Mbps with multiple threads running.
Video streaming at its highest but rate is only 15Mbps.
~~~
nfriedly
> Video streaming at its highest but rate
I expect you meant "bit rate", unless you're streaming a particular kind of
video ;)
~~~
scarface74
I was going to edit it...but your reply made it worth keeping the typo....
------
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Interesting topic, but the analogies actually make the article harder to
understand.
~~~
justwalt
Agreed. I found myself skipping over them in the hopes that the translations
afterwards would be adequate. You’ve heard of bufferbloat, now try
bloggerbloat!
------
jtbayly
Back in the day (2004 maybe?) I bought a device called the Broadband Booster
(I think it was also called BBB). Two Ethernet ports (10/100 I think) and a
power port. Really just a bump in your line.
Worked like a charm. I remember that it was specifically designed to get rid
of buffer bloat, with traffic prioritization for streaming, VOIP, etc. I
honestly think it was config-less though, so it doesn’t make sense unless it
was also testing the speed on a regular basis and adjusting itself.
Edit: found it: Hawking Broadband Booster (HBB1)
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009PLO0Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_jEiB...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009PLO0Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_jEiBBb9R5CFVG)
~~~
no_identd
Vendor Page:
[https://hawkingtech.com/product/hbb1/](https://hawkingtech.com/product/hbb1/)
Apparently based on Ubicom's StreamEngine technology, here's an old review:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20050829204222/http://www.tomsne...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050829204222/http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Reviews-210-ProdID-
HBB1-1.php)
This also points out the existence of the D-Link DI-102, which supposedly does
the same thing.
------
cloneman
I tried to replicate this setup with a Linksys E4200v1, but the
ports/interfaces are labelled differently in the UI (vs. the author's D-link),
so I'm having trouble getting this to work.
I got my Eth port 1 to bridge to WAN but it's not doing any shaping - my port
4 to Wan standard dual-nat shaping is working, however.
------
0xffff2
I find it amusing that anywhere with the option for wired internet is
considered "rural". Is bufferbloat an issue for satellite based internet in
the same way that it is for DSL?
~~~
war1025
I have family in what is definitely rural Minnesota [1], and they have fiber
to the home. I believe 50/50 is the base package, and when I looked into it,
it was less than I pay for 25/25 in significantly less rural Iowa.
[1] The nearest town is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillman,_Minnesota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillman,_Minnesota)
~~~
bradknowles
Yup, rural co-ops can do a whole lot of things for their customers, when the
big cable companies and telcos aren’t squeezing the sheeple for every red
nanopenny.
Funny how that works out.
------
recursive
Is there any hope for setting something like this up for someone who doesn't
really understand networks? I've got fiber service from my isp. Wires go in
one end, and wifi comes out the other. I can get to the web-based config
panel, but I wouldn't know how to go about making hardware changes.
------
resters
Does anyone know what the cheapest hardware solution for buffer bloat is that
can handle gigabit speeds?
I'm currently using an EdgeRouter Lite iii which reduces the download speed
from gigabit to 130 Megabits per second when SQM is turned on.
~~~
apenwarr
You’re unlikely to experience bufferbloat at gigabit speeds, for the simple
reason that your buffer will empty at gigabit speeds, which is about as fast
as you can fill it.
~~~
resters
Interesting. That matches my experience so far. It's not a symmetric
connection so I have SQM running only on the uplink (40 megabits per second)
at present.
------
rkeene2
I have a similar rant:
[https://rkeene.org/projects/info/wiki/176](https://rkeene.org/projects/info/wiki/176)
------
wmf
Speaking of apenwarr, I ran the fast.com test and was sad to discover that my
OnHub still has bufferbloat.
~~~
apenwarr
apenwarr has very little to do with OnHub. That said, OnHub is a
wifi/firewall/router, and the bloat is in your modem, not in the router. OnHub
can’t fix that unless it uses a configurable token bucket like in the article.
------
larrydag
Has anyone tried this? I'm curious about experiences with this setup.
~~~
mnw21cam
Uh, yeah, since about 2002.
apt-get install wondershaper
Specify your upload/download speed. All done.
It works really well if your upload and download speeds are predictable, as
they were when I had cable. Now I have ADSL, and upload/download speeds vary
with the weather (yes actually), and phase of the moon (probably), so it
doesn't work so well, unless you set it to the lowest speed you are likely to
see. (Don't do this on ADSL - it isn't pretty.)
~~~
wmf
Note that CAKE is better than wondershaper and just as easy to use, but
wondershaper is certainly better than nothing.
~~~
mnw21cam
It should be noted that wondershaper is now 16 years old, and it should be no
surprise at all that there might be something a little better out there. It is
fairly comprehensibly rubbished in
[https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Wondershaper...](https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Wondershaper_Must_Die/)
------
unixhero
Interesting topic, I guess.
However this is too much editorializing - I don't bother reading any more with
this style of writing.
>Okay, new analogy: oil pipelines! Wait, those are unfashionable now too.
Uh... beer taps... no, apparently beer is bad for diversity or something...
chocolate fountains!
------
ars
This writing style is really unnecessary.
You installed rate limiter that drops packets and doesn't buffer.
You don't need to write it like you're writing ad copy "This one little
secret".
~~~
samschooler
I actually find this style of writing interesting and engaging. It makes a
mundane topic like rate limiters, easy to understand (along with the topics
related to it). Not everyone enjoys the same styles of writing, but if I’m
learning something new, I want it to be engaging.
~~~
falsedan
> _if I’m learning something new_
If I'm reading something to learn something new, I want to end up learning
about it by the end of it or I hit the limit of time I have to spend on
learning about it.
------
mkirklions
Blogs are such a waste. I dont need to hear your life story and opinions.
Post the situation, the plan, and details/documentation.
I do not have the time to read a literal 6,000 words.
~~~
dang
This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: " _Please don 't post
shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment
teaches us something._"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
~~~
mkirklions
> A good critical comment teaches us something.
How about that the format for this post was bad? Dont use blog formats when
teaching a lesson.
Very quickly you will lose feedback if you downvote honest advice.
------
brootstrap
damn, this is what this guy does on vacation? shit! I spend most of my time
exploring the area (hiking, beaching etc) and usually have a couple brews in
me by noon :p
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Not your grandfather's braking system - elblanco
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/not-your-grandfathers-braking-system/article1456851/
======
davidmurphy
Call me old fashioned, but when it was just mechanical, there'd be less that
could go wrong.
Yes, I realize, less that could go right too (in terms of stability features
in braking). But still...
~~~
MikeCapone
Like most of the other technologies we trust everyday without even thinking
about it, this will mature (or be changed to something else that is equally or
more advanced) and probably become more reliable than old-style brakes.
The question is, was this put on a production vehicle too quickly, without
enough testing?
------
csmeder
Was this really the best time to announce this, given that every one it
talking about how Toyata's uncontrollable acceleration problem is probably due
to a software bug?
So you cant stop it from accelerating and now you can't even depend on the
breaks? I'm guessing it probably has some redundancy built in...
------
Zak
I can't say I'd want this on a car; I like the direct feedback of a hydraulic
brake system with no more than moderate power assist. I'm also undecided on
ABS for myself, but I want most people to have it. Maybe I'm just old-
fashioned, but I like being in control of the car, not the other way around.
------
nopinsight
Unless the system contains enough redundancy, having more connected parts to
control something creates more points of failure and its probability adds up.
A question for those engineers: Should safety really be sacrificed for
efficiency's sake?
------
julius_geezer
A look at the comp.risks archives for the history of Airbus's difficulties
getting fly-by-wire right could be informative here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Guess What: iCloud Uses Windows Azure Services For Hosting Data - martymatheny
http://www.redmondpie.com/guess-what-icloud-uses-windows-azure-services-for-hosting-data/
======
varunsrin
[http://gigaom.com/2011/06/10/apple-icloud-microsoft-azure-
am...](http://gigaom.com/2011/06/10/apple-icloud-microsoft-azure-amazon/)
This article from GigaOm explains it better - Apple is likely using Azure /
AWS as a CDN, because their data centers are centrally located (however this
is not fact - we still don't know the extent to which they leverage azure /
aws)
I think its a win-win for everyone involved - Azure makes money, and bags a
high profile customer which validates their platform. Apple can leverage
Azure's distributed datacenters to deliver a great experience for their users.
If this is true, I wouldn't say that it was embarrassing for Microsoft - much
like how Google Maps on the iPhone is valuable asset for Google , not an
embarrassment.
------
kenjackson
This is a win all the way around. Azure needs customers and who better than
Apple to stress it and force them to make it better. But I'd hate to be the
Azure VP if Jobs calls you because something isn't to his liking.
At the same time Apple wins because they can focus on their core competency,
UX, not cloud plumbing.
Is Apple or Samsung embarrassed because the chips, flash, and display are
sourced from Samsung? Of course not. Samsung is proud that their parts are the
ones Apple choose, and Apple sells the experience, not a collection of parts.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
Apple often removes any mention of the suppliers on the chips, sometimes
cheekily putting Apple logos on chips bought from others, so they appear to be
somewhat embarrassed about it.
Similarly, Samsung seemed a trifle embarrassed when announcing that their
Galaxy S II phone would ship in some territories with Tegra 2 chips rather
than their own Exynos chips.
~~~
Refringe
I'm nitpicking, but I wouldn't say Apple "removes" the logos, just special
orders the chips with their logo instead.
------
karl11
Wouldn't this make a successful iCloud even more embarrassing for Microsoft?
They have the technology, but can't market it or make it easy for consumers to
use?
~~~
statictype
Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an
embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but
didn't.
~~~
Legion
37signals takes Rails and makes the products they intend to make.
Microsoft has attempted to make a successful cloud platform - their
commercials all proclaim, "To the Cloud!" - and yet, they fail, while someone
else takes their technology and (potentially) succeeds.
~~~
cube13
>Microsoft has attempted to make a successful cloud platform - their
commercials all proclaim, "To the Cloud!" - and yet, they fail, while someone
else takes their technology and (potentially) succeeds.
I don't really think that MS has targeted Windows Azure towards the general
consumer market, though. It's basically the same as Amazon Web Services. Apple
using that tech gives them an incredibly strong marketing tool, especially for
companies that are trying to decide between using Amazon or something else for
cloud-based services.
~~~
bad_user
AWS is cheaper. It matters less to me what companies the size of Apple do, as
I'm not Apple.
------
sandis
Just thinking – couldn't this be a temporary pre-launch solution because
Apple's huge NC data center isn't fully operational yet?
~~~
bengl3rt
Probably. But, in order to run on Azure, don't things have to be written in
C#/.NET? That would suggest that their production stack will also leverage
these technologies, potentially on windows (unless Mono over Linux or BSD is
actually mature enough for this sort of thing, I wouldn't know)
~~~
jasonlotito
> But, in order to run on Azure, don't things have to be written in C#/.NET?
No, not at all. They also have support for Java, Ruby, and PHP.
~~~
balakk
More precisely, the Azure storage API is HTTP/REST-like. Hence it practically
supports any language that has a HTTP stack.
~~~
bengl3rt
I see. I mean, if they're just using the storage backend, I fully understand -
they realize that solving the problem of storage provisioning and redundancy
is not their core business, and that they should outsource it to somebody
that's already very good at it.
------
mamp
I imagine the SVP for cloud computing at Apple is happy to pay for highly
redundant services so he doesn't invoke the Wrath of Jobs (TM). Steve Jobs
probably pushed for multi-vendor redundancy so he could confidently say at the
keynote that they stuffed up the Mobile Me launch, but wouldn't make the same
mistake.
~~~
glassx
Your reply makes a lot of sense, considering we had a major Amazon outage just
a few months ago. Redundancy is the way to go.
------
bane
Didn't Apple just build a couple huge data centers? I was under the assumption
they were supposed to be for iCloud?
~~~
webXL
Perhaps they have a bunch of windows servers inside, but why windows.net?
~~~
sriramk
windows.net is the root URL for all the Windows Azure storage services. Back
in 2008, we knew that Windows Azure was going to have the 'Windows' part of
it's name. Since Microsoft already owned windows.net, this made it an obvious
choice. So we get blob.core.windows.net, database.windows.net, etc.
------
flocial
Windows Azure can be a number of things. Since they use AWS and the article
shows http requests they might be using it as just a blob store or CDN with
redundancy across providers. I doubt they're running Windows Azure on their
servers not that it wouldn't be pragmatic to.
------
tlrobinson
Wait, so what was that billion dollar data center [1] Apple built in North
Carolina for?
[1] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apples-nc-data-
cen...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apples-nc-data-center-
coming-online-this-spring.ars)
~~~
tvon
My guess is that AWS/Azure is only used for short term storage.
------
jpalomaki
Relaying on their own data centers and their own cloud stuff would have
created a dependency between iCloud and the data center level stuff. If the
data center project would have been delayed for a reason or another.. too bad
for the iCloud.
Also it might not be a good idea to start testing your inhouse cloud
infrastructure with a high profile product like iCloud that is likely to
attract quite a few users in coming months.
I think it absolutely makes sense to do the development and initial launch
with outside services and then later on maybe migrate to your own data centers
and own cloud stack.
------
geuis
Does it really matter what cloud services Apple uses? Yes, they have their own
data centers but why should it be surprising if they also utilize others as
well?
Microsoft is, in many ways, lots of little companies that all live together.
If the Azure business unit makes money from Apple, it doesn't really matter if
the Windows Live teams are failing in their products.
The oft-mentioned great thing about cloud services is not having to worry
about managing hardware. Leave that to the people that are really good at it,
and build your business on top.
------
saetaes
This seems to be a logical multi-vendor play to me. Especially if Apple's data
centers aren't geographically distributed, it needs to get other vendors
involved.
------
some1else
Microsoft.com purportedly uses Akamai(Linux) for load-balancing and caching
their websites[1]. I don't see anything wrong with using appropriate
technologies.
[1]
[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/08/17/wwwmicrosoftcom...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/08/17/wwwmicrosoftcom_runs_linux_up_to_a_point_.html)
------
mrich
I find it funny how everybody here tries to spin this to portray Apple in a
positive light, even putting the blame on Microsoft somehow.
Face it, this would be a big deal for any other large company. When a tech
giant builds his latest project on out-of-house infrastructure, how can this
be good? At best, it is a waste of development resources (when it is
temporary), At worst, it is a business risk/reliability nightmare waiting to
happen (when this is their final infrastructure).
~~~
mechanical_fish
You are aware that Apple doesn't own its own chip fabs? That its hardware is
manufactured for it by third parties? That the building space for most Apple
Stores are leased from malls and landlords?
_Every_ enterprise builds on infrastructure owned by others. That is what
contracts are for. What matters is the degree of lock-in and who controls the
roadmap. And the whole point of modern "cloud" infrastructure is that you
don't own the hardware, you don't have the capital costs of the datacenters,
you have a nice temporary lease that you can nonrenew or perhaps even break if
needed, and your internal architecture is probably generic enough to be ported
to another cloud if needed.
------
signa11
i think this is all based on the VL2 paper, described here:
[http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/05/VL2AScalableAndF...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/05/VL2AScalableAndFlexibleDataCenterNetwork.aspx)
and the paper available here:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.156...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.156.6990&rep=rep1&type=pdf).
it boasts of some freakishly fast ability to shuffle 2.7Tb between 75 servers
in 27 seconds...
------
galvan
<http://xkcd.com/908/>
------
ch0wn
Embarrassment or not, I'm surprised by that. This is a big deal and the first
time we hear about it is after someone took a closer look at the headers.
------
dexen
Wasn't the big idea of cloud that you aren't tied to provider and can move
your services anywhere?
Anyway, what other big cloud providers are out there -- ones that aren't
direct competitors to Apple? Amazon's AWS is out of the question, as Amazon
competes directly on those hot multimedia and e-book markets with Apple.
Google's stuff, too, as Google is a major competitor on mobile and multimedia
markets. Microsoft doesn't seem to directly compete with Apple in the hot
markets -- at least not until they squeeze some Windows Phones from Nokia.
~~~
patrickaljord
Read the article, it says it uses AWS too...
------
gfodor
I think there's more to the story here because otherwise there was no point to
Apple building the data centers.
~~~
SoftwareMaven
I don't think the implication is that Apple has none of its own
infrastructure, just that they've bought some pieces from third parties.
------
bonch
While this may just be temporary, I don't see why it would matter if it
wasn't. Apple probably also uses Linux and FreeBSD for things.
~~~
josephcooney
Agree. Even though Apple have their own data-centres, they might use some
Amazon or MS capacity just as a redundancy hedge.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop Measuring Everything - smalter
https://savagethoughts.com/stop-measuring-everything-8adb1118e0e5#.j0b6kqsfq
======
lmm
The correct response to bad measurement isn't to throw up your hands and stop
trying to measure. It's to get better measures.
Be careful about your measure. Check that what you're measuring actually
corresponds to what you think you're measuring. There are a lot of good
examples here, but the answer isnt' to stop measuring, to resort to "art" \-
it's to get better at it.
~~~
codezero
Yep. It seems like they took the opposite approach to what they should have.
They killed their billboard campaign because their attempts to attribute the
value of the campaign to growth failed.
They talked to a few people (got attribution) and learned it had a wider
effect than their original attribution did. This is more data, not less.
It sounds like they should have taken a different approach to attribution in
the first place when they moved from purely digital marketing to meatspace
ads.
~~~
garysieling
I'm curious if you or the parent have any suggestions for a problem I've been
thinking about.
I've been building a search engine for standalone lectures
([https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)). For me, the
ideal outcome of being introduced to a new concept is that an idea sticks in
my head for a while and won't let go, and I'd like to help people replicate
that experience.
Are there ways that you could track something that gets at whether this
happens for people, or is this so qualitative that the best option is to
interview users?
~~~
codezero
That's tricky and I don't have any great advice. If you could find some
tangible piece of knowledge associated with each video, then have a quiz after
some time, that might help. Or introduce some kind of spaced repetition.
Alternatively, if you make the video categorization about what the viewer is
interested in learning (that is, make the interface drive people to see videos
based on what they want to learn, rather than having a hierarchical
organization), then you can ask them later "did you learn X?" with some other
survey like questions.
------
incongruity
The piece isn't terrible – the author has found the value of _qualitative
research_. Yay! (I do a bit of that, so I'm biased).
The _title_ however, is wrong. It's more about figuring out how to measure the
right things and not missing signal because of bad measures.
Open-ended, qualitative research is good at that because it helps the signal
stand out – you can find unknown unknowns and then figure out _how_ to be more
systematic in _measuring_ them.
------
iamthepieman
Money. You should measure money. everything else is just a proxy for that.
~~~
noja
That's a very sad way of thinking.
~~~
thunderbong
Yes, it is. But let's also not forget time. It should be money/time.
------
godelski
I don't understand this whole dichotomy between art and science. Or why people
are so insistent that they are mutually exclusive. Science is an art, taking
part in this myth hurts both art and science as a whole.
~~~
initram
I agree. And most art these days involves quite a bit of science. Photoshop's
image processing algorithms aren't just sloppily thrown together, for example!
It takes a lot of science to make good artistic tools, and artists often do a
lot of science when creating their art. (Checking audio levels, figuring out
when the light will be just right, etc.)
------
ihaveahadron
I think it helps to learn how to gamble or /play poker properly.
You'll learn what the poker players call "varience".
If you know varience (not patience) then over the long term, you aren't
gambling. Or you are gambling but in a way if done properly that will make you
money over the long term with 100% success.
~~~
dasil003
Assuming you are better than the other players.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shellcheck: a static analysis tool for shell scripts - pyotrgalois
http://www.shellcheck.net/
======
dpina
Just spent some time sending my scripts to this site for it to analyse and see
what it does. I can see that while it wasn't be able to tell me of more
efficient code to achieve my goal (wasn't really hopping for that), it did
spot 1) one liners where some commands are not needed, 2) variables which are
not used, 3) where I should use double quotes to prevent word splitting and 4)
lines where my ssh was eating up my stdin.
What a great sanity check for the days when I'm writing something on my own
without a second pair of eyes to proof-read it.
------
Chico75
Combine it with the sublime text plugin
([https://github.com/SublimeLinter/SublimeLinter-
shellcheck](https://github.com/SublimeLinter/SublimeLinter-shellcheck)) and
you got real time static analysis while without your shell scripts !
------
eridius
Shellcheck is great. The Vim Syntastic plugin already knows about Shellcheck
so if you use Syntastic and install Shellcheck you'll automatically start
getting warnings on your code.
BTW, it can be a little hard to figure this out, but if Shellcheck gives you a
warning that you want to ignore (because you intended to trigger that
behavior), you can put the following comment above the offending line:
# shellcheck disable=SC1234
where "SC1234" is replaced with the actual error code that Shellcheck gives.
------
Munksgaard
This looks very helpful: bash scripts are notoriously difficult to get right.
I wish it'd suggest best practices like `set -e` and the like though.
~~~
koala_man
The jury's still out on whether `set -e` is worth it.
On paper it sounds like it's equivalent to `on error goto 0`, making a script
fail-fast -- which would have been awesome.
Instead, it makes a script fail sometimes for things that are sometimes
errors. The rules for how and when are unexpected and unintuitive, several
weird cases are described on
[http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/105](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/105)
If enabling it just granted a free 50% chance of stopping on any given error,
it would have been worth it, but it triggers on false positives as well.
~~~
vetrom
Well, dealing with horrible exception handling is still better than just
silently running off the edge on errors.
Much like any language, you need to read and understand it to be able to truly
write, I think. bash is deceptive in this regard IMO, due to how low its
barrier to entry is.
Now if you want to see some truly horrible code, implement a shell script that
runs in bash and zsh and does exception printing in both.
------
nimrody
The real problem with shell scripts is that they usually tie together a few
external commands and tend to pass information around using the filesystem.
This, together with poor error handling is a recipe for disaster: Problems
with permissions, insufficient disk space, etc. Instead of stopping when
encountering an error, most shell scripts will happily continue break at some
other point in time (or worse - destroy valuable data).
------
grymoire1
The emacs interface is very nice as well, using flycheck
------
reedlaw
I ran it against a deploy script generated by Mina [1]. Only a few deprecation
warnings and notes about using find instead of ls to better handle non-
alphanumeric filenames. I've learned a lot about error handling by reading
Mina-generated scripts.
1\. [http://nadarei.co/mina/](http://nadarei.co/mina/)
------
rtpg
Isn't this a pretty good argument against shell scripts? I feel like we've
advanced far enough in PL research to think of something a bit safer
~~~
xiaq
Time for advertisement! You might like elvish
[https://github.com/elves/elvish](https://github.com/elves/elvish) which
proudly has optional typing and much more well-defined semantics than say,
bash. This is work in progress though.
Advertisement aside, there is some inherit unsafety in shell scripts that
cannot be easily resolved, namely the unsafety involved in interacting with
external commands.
Compared to other scripting languages, the greatest advantage of shell
languages is the convenience of interacting with external programs. However,
at least in Unix, there are few static constraints you can apply to them.
Everything we know is that the program will (probably) parse something in argv
which are just bytes, (probably) take something from stdin which are just
bytes, and (probably) put something to stdout which are again just bytes;
there is no universal method to check that the commands arguments are well-
formed, or the input format is correct, or the output format conforms to a
certain schema without running the actual program. A solution is to define
some kind of static protocols for external programs so that their invocations
can be statically checked, but it's already too late.
~~~
rtpg
I think a decent solution is to have a shell alternative that defines
interfaces for known programs (much like autocomplete scripts do now).
I know ls returns a list of files, so I should be able to use that. I don't
know foo, so it's basically string -> string or whatever, but if an
entrepreneuring spirit does know about foo, he could write an abstraction
layer for it.
The trick is making a simple interface for that
~~~
hyperpape
Also there's a question about whether you can properly deal with option hell.
Parsing every possible output of ls reliably in the face of malicious
filenames sounds...fun.
Edit: It's really impossible to avoid edge cases. Take find: you can't parse
it, because it's just a list of filenames separated by \n. But filenames can
contain just about any character. How do you handle /home/bar\n/tmp?
Maybe you just ignore pathological input, but now you're regressing towards
the state of bash.
~~~
xiaq
Option hell is indeed a problem.
The problem with `find` happens to have a solution (-print0). However it is a
PITA in deal with \0-separated strings in traditional shells, unless you pipe
it to another command that happens to recognize \0-separated strings.
With elvish you can parse the \0-separated strings outputted by `find ...
-print0` into a genuine _list_ \- not lines (which are \n-separated strings)
or \0-separated strings, but real lists that support indexing, iteration, etc.
and there is absolutely no chance that two consequent items will run together
or one item will be treated as two. Imagine how fantastic it is to deal with
that :)
------
ygra
As someone who regularly answers batch file questions on Stack Overflow, I
think this would be invaluable for all the mistakes people make there too.
------
xrstf
This is awesome. As a beginner when it comes to writing shellscripts, this is
my new jshint equivalent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best Site to Upload Video To? Want Quality and Portability. - berecruited
Of course there is Youtube... but quality stinks.
I love Vimeo, but the upload process takes FOREVER.
I used to love VideoEgg, but they killed the consumer part.<p>Where should I go?!
======
jacobbijani
I think Vimeo is still the best if you want quality without having to host it
yourself. The delay in uploading only happened recently. I imagine it will go
away soon, but it is pretty horrible at the moment.
------
aaroneous
Shameless self-plug: www.viddyou.com - We have a lot of features like the best
consumer HD (1080p and 720p), fast uploads + transcodes, you can view all your
videos on your mobile device, a special interface just for the iphone, you can
take your videos into Facebook, upload your videos or record directly with a
webcam. If you have any questions, please drop me an email: [email protected]
:]
------
truebosko
Kind of the same question as the original but what about for videos that
promote a product/etc? At work, I shoot and edit a lot of videos (A new one
each month or so) on products we carry. Right now, we have them all on YouTube
but the quality DOES shrink down a lot
I looked into Vimeo but they do not allow videos that promote a product
(basically an ad). Anything with the quality and easability of Vimeo out there
without that restriction?
------
maxniederhofer
<http://www.dailymotion.com/>
has HD, can deliver everywhere, is fast. we're investors so this is shameless
plug but it really is the best video site that no one knows about (except it's
tens of millions of users each month).
------
paulgb
I've never used blip.tv to host video, but I like their flash player and the
videos there seem to be much higher quality than youtube.
Edit: nevermind, they put annoying ads in your video. Best to stick with vimeo
I guess.
~~~
rtf
Ads are uploader-controllable. Almost every feature in blip.tv is optional and
that's what I love about it. Far more featureful than Vimeo or anything else
I've seen.
------
danielrhodes
Fliggo!
Plus we are coming out with some great analytics tools soon.
------
nradov
Are there any video sites with native support for AVCHD? Both Yahoo Video and
Youtube require me to convert my videos to MPEG first, which wastes a lot of
time and reduces the quality.
------
amitry
If you are willing to go paid, take a look at <http://lightcastmedia.com>.
------
markbao
Vimeo, as you said, while disregarding the upload... Or try Viddler, perhaps.
Too bad Brightcove.tv closed down :(
------
jotto
<http://www.viddler.com/>
------
wave
<http://omnisio.com>
------
frankgrimes
ooyala.com has this great product called Backlot. I love how they let you
scroll through the video and the quality is pretty good.
------
d3xion
if you're looking for quality, there's <http://www.fixmymovie.com>
------
entelarust
vimeo by far
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you have a bucket list? - josephwegner
If so, why? What’s on it? Have you completed anything? What’s your plan to make progress on it?
======
kwiromeo
I had one in college and it had some very college things on it (this was 7
years ago). It was a short term bucket list. Here's a short copy/paste: \-
Make a viral video (I integrated video) [note this would be on the beat of I
just had sex by lonely island] \- Learn about style and Fashion \- Be able to
do 100 sit ups \- Be able to do 100 push ups \- Be able to do 20 pull ups
Visit Europe/Study Abroad [x] \- Build ipod touch latin application \- Learn
Spanish \- Become awesome at math \- Become awesome at drawing
I only accomplished the Europe one.
Some of these I would still like to do, but I would definitely change the
wording and use the SMART goal framework to attempt them. Some don't make
sense anymore. I don't think an latin app really matters at this point, nor
does a viral video. Looking at the list is a trip down memory lane.
What's your list like op?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zirtual may have just abruptly shut down - opendoorryan
Slack message from my ZA 10 min ago:<p>I'm up late tonight and received an email to my personal email from Zirtual that for financial reasons, they cannot continue as a company effective immediately. I would still like to help you in any way I can! I no longer have access to my Zirtual accounts, including the secure system where I had saved your passwords, but I'm glad I can still access this Slack! I can still access your calendar, too. I would be happy to discuss how to continue our assistant-client relationship if you would like. I'm also sending you an email from my personal email [redacted]. This would be a difficult transition, but once I have access to everything like [redacted] again, we can just continue as we had been before
======
7Figures2Commas
From around 44 minutes in at [http://thisweekinstartups.com/maren-kate-
donovan-zirtual/](http://thisweekinstartups.com/maren-kate-donovan-zirtual/):
_You have an $11 million run rate business now. It 's just extraordinary. I
think the investment community has probably missed this investment. I think
they really should be more focused on it. I consider you like a sleeper. At
some point the investment community is going to look at this like, well this
could be like, similar to an Uber or Lyft or one of these companies that
really scales because there is such a huge opportunity to arbitrage between
the cities and the work and when you get into the specialized stuff, it's
going to be game over. _
It gets even worse towards the end, with Calacanis going full talk-up-my-
investment mode, gloating about Zirtual's revenue and margin numbers, and the
founder's abilities.
That was Friday. Today on
[https://twitter.com/jason](https://twitter.com/jason):
_1 /sorry to hear about @Zirtual shutdown today, as a fan of the service & as
an investor. I don't speak for the company & have limited 411._
_2 /we have @marenkate booked for @TWistartups for this past Friday for
weeks, I found out about issues on Saturday while out of the country._
_3 /wouldn't have suggested being on the show Friday if I knew they were
shutting down Monday; confused at a $11m a year business imploding._
You just can't make this stuff up.
~~~
dennybritz
I think this is a good demonstration of the difference in impression you get
from the press and what's actually going on.
~~~
7Figures2Commas
But this isn't the press. This is an investor hyping one of his own
investments infomercial style and then a few days later, when it implodes,
claiming he didn't have a clue. It's embarrassingly cringeworthy.
What this demonstrates is that many startup investors know little more than
what _they_ read in the press. Lots of people assume prominent startup
investors are smart, diligent and informed but the reality is that many angels
know little more about the companies they've invested in than the suckers who
were eagerly buying toxic mortgage-backed securities in 2007.
------
tracilyns
I'm a ZA, and I can confirm that Zirtual did just shut down. I got an email
from the CEO at 1:30 PDT telling me I no longer have a job.
------
sixQuarks
Wow, very awkward timing considering the latest "This Week in Startups"
podcast is all about Zirtual
[http://thisweekinstartups.com/](http://thisweekinstartups.com/)
~~~
benliong78
Literally finished listening to that episode like an hour ago before seeing
this post. Talk about bad timing.
------
jacquesm
Wow. That sucks for the 400 or so people that depended for their day-to-day
living on this. Nice to have a bit of a warning too.
Let's hope that at least they'll pay out what is due and refund un-used funds
to users so they may continue to use the VA even if they're no longer using
Zirtual. After all, the credibility hit should be limited to Zirtual, not to
the people that worked hard as VAs.
------
bruceb
Looking at @marenkate twitter there is this:
[https://twitter.com/marenkate/status/628400241511796736](https://twitter.com/marenkate/status/628400241511796736)
I guess she confronted reality a week ago and told everyone today.
------
brandoneley
Both emails sent to clients AND employees posted here:
[http://www.brandoneley.com/zirtual-shut-its-doors-what-
does-...](http://www.brandoneley.com/zirtual-shut-its-doors-what-does-this-
mean-for-outsourcing/)
Definitely some WEIRD stuff going on here. I don't see how any investor would
ever give them another round of financing after firing all their employees AND
clients, and leaving many having paid up front for services they never
received.
------
extramargin
fyi - Red Butler (Z competitor) responds.
[http://prn.to/1IUibKq](http://prn.to/1IUibKq)
------
allenbrunson
fun fact: many years ago, zirtual's ceo used to participate here.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=maren](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=maren)
~~~
automathematics
That gender identity is confusing me. That's really her?
> "on a mission to become a self made man"
~~~
allenbrunson
yes, it is definitely her. she used to keep a blog:
[http://www.escapingthe9to5.com](http://www.escapingthe9to5.com)
"one girl's quest to become a self made man"
------
codeonfire
They had 400 employees. So with $5.5MM investment they could operate for a
month or two.
EDIT: Oh, low wage jobs. Still overhead for W-2 employees is going to be some
log_x of payroll.
------
debacle
Can anyone explain what Zirtual is/was?
~~~
escaped_hn
A min wage assistant for lazy people.
~~~
pc86
They were paid nearly twice minimum wage.
------
allenbrunson
official confirmation:
[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/10/virtual-
assistant-s...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/10/virtual-assistant-
service-zirtual-is-pausing-operations-immediately-leaving-clients-in-the-
lurch/)
------
rajacombinator
Sounds super shady ... !
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cisco buffer overflow vulnerability with remote code execution - silenteh
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160210-asa-ike
======
silenteh
Here a nice explanation of the vulnerability:
[https://blog.exodusintel.com/2016/02/10/firewall-
hacking/](https://blog.exodusintel.com/2016/02/10/firewall-hacking/)
There is also a Snort signature to detect attempts to exploit this
vulnerability.
------
madsushi
Cisco was also rushed to release the fix, as all of the new builds are tagged
'interim' and warn users that they have bugs and stability problems that will
be fixed later. Most notably, several issues with ASA Clustering were found in
the new builds. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
------
tyingq
Edit...this is wrong-> _It 's specific to Cisco ASA firewalls with a version
level < 9.1(7), which was released in January of 2015._
Edit: Gelob, below, is right. There's a really unfortunate "read more" link
that hides the important bits on Cisco's documentation and caused my
confusion.
~~~
EwanG
Given the tendency for large enterprises to not upgrade unless there is time
to do a full regression test, and then to prioritize creating new features
over system maintenance, I wouldn't assume that means that there aren't quite
a few of those still out there.
~~~
feld
People who have firewall needs and no skills hire people who know what Cisco
products are, get someone to implement an ASA for them, and then it sits for
years without any software updates. Maybe a rule update every now and then,
but definitely no software updates.
~~~
code777777
Perhaps most do but I see a different trend these days. "The network" is a lot
more important now since so many things are cloud-based.
Our networking group automated a deployment for the fix and contacted everyone
that has ever bought an ASA from our company and updated them. We have ~400
ASAs across the country still have < 50 to go. There are still a few
stragglers and the older ASAs need a bit more TLC.
Many of those clients have a maintenance agreement with us that includes these
sorts of things and changes. All of them were updated and tested within 24
hours.
We did the same thing for the Juniper exploits (albeit we only had a handful).
EDIT: typos
~~~
kjs3
I can think of at least 8 of my clients (between 500 and 15000 employees, with
probably 100 ASAs total) still on ASA version _8_ , much less 9. For some, the
more critical in infrastructure, the less they want to update.
------
achillean
Here's an overview of devices that are running IKE on the Internet at the
moment:
[https://www.shodan.io/report/h2Naw1fd](https://www.shodan.io/report/h2Naw1fd)
------
xyzzy4
As someone who used to work at Cisco, I'm not surprised. Everything is coded
in C, and there are memory leaks all over the place because releases are made
before most of these bugs are fixed.
------
virtualwhys
> Note: Only traffic directed to the affected system can be used to exploit
> this vulnerability.
I'm confused, how else would the system be compromised, by directing traffic
at the moon?
Running an EOL ASA in colo on v8.2. Have been holding out due to the post-v8.2
changes to NAT. Looks like you need a SmartNET contract to get the fix,
unfortunate, many legacy devices will left vulnerable as a result.
Well, there goes the weekend...
~~~
chris_overseas
You don't need a SmartNET contract, but...
We own affected hardware and don't have a support contract. It took me about
four hours working my way through Cisco customer and tech support to get
updated. Now that the interim patch is applied (complete with bugs mentioned
elsewhere in this thread?), it doesn't sound like we'll easily be able to get
a bug-free update at a later date. So while we're hopefully safe, we might not
be stable.
Early on in the process (after 2-3 email iterations) their customer support
called me to say we weren't eligible for a fix because we didn't have a
support contract. I'd mentioned in my initial request that we had no contract
but also pointed out that the advisory said we didn't need one. I had also
provided a link to the advisory in my initial request, so that should not have
been an issue. I was then told my request was "very confusing".
Once I finally convinced them we were allowed the update and verified the
serial number of our hardware, I was thankfully forward on to tech support.
They then checked our firmware version and I was supplied with a patch
download URL quite quickly. The actual download was hampered in several ways
by their poor website (registration required, browser autocomplete and cut and
paste caused their JS validation to fail, and I couldn't get it to work with
any browser other than IE). Once I finally had the patch, it applied without
issue.
In short - the patch process was long, frustrating, complex, and as a small
business owner makes me never want to ever, ever deal with Cisco products
again.
~~~
virtualwhys
Just called Cisco TAC and am heading down the same road shortly ;-)
I'm going to renew SmartNET not for this particular vulnerability but for
simply getting over the NAT hump from to 8.2 to 8.3 (and whatever other
gotchas have come up between 8.2 and latest 9.x). Cisco TAC has been pretty
awesome in the past, definitely don't trust myself to navigate the upgrade
path in production.
------
SpyKiIIer
Rackspace pushed this update to all their clients last night, as they have
seen this attack against some of their infrastructure...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows vs Unix system count. - arunagarwal
Windows vs Unix system count.
Just got in debate that around the world including PCs and Servers which operating system used most.
Any ideas?? Any links??
======
davidcollantes
UNIX? What do you mean? I doubt this entry will go anywhere, but you might
want to restate it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything - evo_9
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/3314456/Surfer-dude-stuns-physicists-with-theory-of-everything.html
======
aphyr
I don't want to flag this, per se, but readers should be aware that this
particular article is rather old. The theory has been picked up, criticized,
defended, and a subsequent paper published.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything)
[http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/garrett_li...](http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/garrett_lisis_new_e8_paper)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 years later, Twitter still isn't making money - chirau
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/21/technology/twitter-10th-anniversary/
======
atishay811
Twitter has been giving away more and more ground to Facebook. Facebook groups
are not even suited for a lot of things that they have become and twitter
should have been there. Twitter needs to look at what the use cases are:
\- Customer Support, twitter is customer support for a lot of companies and
being public makes grievance redressal possible. They just need to get better
tools and charge companies for being their support interface. The companies
may not have choices.
\- Events. Twitter is the heart of events. Create tools to manage public
events and charge for them. Give something to the organizers and take money
for it.
\- Pages. Give an alternative business model to facebook. Its too big to fight
right now. Give a paid version of facebook pages with a promise of not losing
organic growth. Brands spent a lot on getting tons of likes that are not
useful any more. Followers are still somewhat valuable. Make pages interesting
for brands (give them something to justify the payment).
\- Advertising is not always the solution. Customize for the key use cases.
\- Open up. Facebook is the AOL of social. Someone needs to step up and be as
open as the internet. Aren't you suffocating behind the closed doors? Did you
really have a reason for closing them?
I know twitter isn't listening.
~~~
eigen-vector
I would pay for a TweetDeck subscription. They have consistently acquired
products and have ignored them. It is a shame they don't invest more resources
on TweetDeck. I am just an end user and I find TweetDeck to be one of the only
sane ways to use Twitter. I simply cannot imagine how beneficial TweetDeck
would be as a tool for someone who does marketing/handles brands.
A recommended tweets/articles tab a la Pocket's recommendations feed would
also bring in a lot of customers for their promoted tweets. The problem isn't
ads/sponsored tweets, its how poorly Twitter chooses to present them.
------
unabst
Twitter users _have_ money because adults have money. The inability to make
any value proposition worth paying for is almost admitting you're worthless.
Per James Altucher, for my 10 ideas a day exercise:
\- Pay-to-view, pay-to-subscribe twitter accounts. Exclusivity always sells.
\- Twitter tools/analytics for fees.
\- Developer tools for fees.
\- Pay with your twitter account (we already login).
\- Paid tier for advanced users who manage multiple accounts.
\- BUY straight off a tweet.
\- Sell API access to power users (rate limit tiers).
\- Remove ads for a fee.
\- Push twitter search, and sell more ads on increased searches.
\- Sell themselves to facebook.
These are all pretty obvious, so they must have reasons not so obvious not to
do them. One would guess twitter's brainstorm meetings are veto-fests just
from their lack of interest in doing anything interesting or progressive...
but maybe they just don't sweat it because they're sitting on 3B cash. (that
must be it)
~~~
coldtea
Most of these are "tried and failed again and again" attempts that have been
"obvious" since 1999.
Sure, they could sell "no ads", "exclusive accounts", "developer tools", etc.
None of these will entice enough users to be remotely worth it -- as it hasn't
worked in most other platforms.
This is for something at the scale of Basecamp or Automattic to make money,
not Twitter.
~~~
kmnc
Your probably correct, none of these solutions in this thread could actually
beat the advertising model even if that isn't profitable for them and trying
them isn't worth the risk. It just seems weird to me that twitter basically
owns the fanclub for every celebrity in the world and can't monetize access.
~~~
coldtea
> _It just seems weird to me that twitter basically owns the fanclub for every
> celebrity in the world and can 't monetize access._
I think the problem is they don't own the fanclub. Only part of it.
Fans also go to: the artist's webpage, the artists YouTube channel (or YT in
general), the artist's Facebook, and places like Spotify, Apple Music etc,
even places like Reddit for AMA, news sites for interviews, etc.
If Twitter had managed to create and provide a full blown artist/entity
"fanclub" experience they would probably fare much better. Just seeing artists
"tweets" wont cut it.
------
kmnc
Here is my vision for twitter: copy the patreon/twitch/kickstarter model which
you should of lead from the beginning. Why can't I subscribe to @lebron_james
for 5$ a year and get exclusive lebron james emotes that can be used on
twitter? Then @lebron_james has giveaways, product bonus codes, exclusive
subscriber only tweets etc. Exclusivity is the new product and people will pay
for it. Then lebron's social media team actually has something to do, paying
customers, and an incentive to increase quality of his presence on twitter.
If people could sub to @lebron_james for 20$ a year and it got me in
ticket/product giveaways, fancy lebron james emotes, a free sneak peak at the
next kanye album, removed ads when viewing his feed, and the odd exclusive sub
only tweet would people do it?
~~~
cableshaft
If the Patreon model were as simple as clicking a button on a user's twitter,
I'd probably use it more. I think you're onto something here.
------
zelias
Twitter is a great product that lacks an effective business model. A similarly
influential product that has been used widely for many years (Wikipedia)
didn't have to deal with this problem because they are a non-profit.
Maybe the only way to save Twitter the product is to kill Twitter the
business.
~~~
johncolanduoni
I don't think Twitter will receive the kind of donations Wikipedia does, from
either individuals or institutions. The increasingly toxic nature of discourse
on Twitter (whether you agree with what people are saying in a particular
instance or not, most viewpoints end up being accompanied with death threats
and doxing) makes it unlikely they can make a successful case for filling an
important need of humanity.
~~~
digi_owl
Frankly i see that kind of behavior spreading across the net in recent years.
I find myself thinking it started with Anonymous getting a bunch of press for
similar antics. And over time other individuals and groups have adopted them
to further their own goals.
Hell, some of it may well be organized as a kind of online cointelpro.
------
spangry
I've commented on this in the past so here's the short version (long version
here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077269)):
As heretical as these sound, I think there are only three ways for Twitter to
generate significant profits (and they all carry significant drawbacks):
\- start charging for API calls above some threshold (i.e. charge for market
research)
\- start charging commercial entities based on number of followers (or volume
of tweets)
\- use adsense (better user data linkability)
tl;dr - Twitter creates significant value. But it's difficult for them to
capture at least some of that value as profit (unlike Facebook).
~~~
troels
_use adsense (better user data linkability)_
The problem is that if twitter is stripped down to a protocol/platform, you
can't really force ads in there. It's something that can be put in clients.
That's what got them in trouble before.
~~~
spangry
Good point. It's a bad example. In hindsight, what I was trying to get at in
the third idea was slightly different to the other two. The first two are
methods to capture some of the value they generate. But it's a risky
proposition IMHO; when capturing value some of it will be destroyed (kind of
like how taxation causes dead-weight loss). There's a possibility that the
value proposition hits zero or goes negative, at which point Twitter is dead.
The third, less risky, option would be to capture data in adjacent markets
(probably via start-up acquisition). If they capture adjacent data that, when
combined with existing holdings, the value they can offer to the 'money' side
of their platform (e.g. advertisers, developers) increases more than linearly.
At which point it's safer to 'tax' the money side of their market. Personally,
I'd go for advertisers first: unlike developers, advertisers don't increase
platform value for the other side of their market (users).
------
hackaflocka
Twitter is suffering from "nostalgia" syndrome.
They keep talking about how they were the first at such and such thing. About
how they invented this and that thing.
This is the reason why Steve Jobs had the Apple museum removed from 1 Infinite
Loop.
They need to start looking at how competition is eating their lunch, instead
of living in the past.
------
Animats
Looking at Twitter's 10-K as an ongoing business:
Current liquid assets: $4,381,792,000
Net loss for year: $ 521,031,000
Time to live: 8.4 years
Twitter is a public company with one class of stock. It's ripe for a
takeover.[1] Market cap is about $11 billion today, so a straight liquidation
is out, but a takeover with a downsizing is likely.
[1] [http://www.fastcompany.com/3055735/fast-feed/twitter-is-
ripe...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3055735/fast-feed/twitter-is-ripe-for-a-
takeover)
------
nissimk
Unfortunately, Twitter's user facing technology has been declining in quality.
It's too bad because I like twitter a lot. I can report the following issues:
1) many links to deep inside twitter (eg: user's feed or a particular tweet)
will actually bring me to my twitter home page.
2) android app destroys the battery. This is true of many social media apps,
but unlike facebook, twitter's mobile web app is barely usable. It keeps
insisting that I get the native app and it's extremely clunky and slow. Also,
many features aren't there, particularly twitter search.
Back when they were more open with their api and there were alternative
clients it was a better experience.
I know none of this has anything to do with their lack of a business model.
Also, I don't want to discount their contributions with bootstrap and the big
data stuff they've done. Hopefully they won't end up like Yahoo.
~~~
m52go
Have you tried turning down the sync interval (located in Settings >
Notifications)?
That tremendously helped my battery usage.
------
DickingAround
If there were functioning micro-payments system on the net I suspect this
would have turned out a lot different. Customers would be less angry paying
$1/month for the service (230M users, ~700M in costs per quarter ~=
$1/user/month). They might even be able to cut that by 75% or more if they
just stuck to their core competency, which is communications, not advertising.
~~~
tamana
$1/mo isn't micropayments, it is easily charged by credit card mobile phone ,
with auto recurring
------
codingdave
This conversation has been re-hashed ad nauseum over the past 6 months. My
take on it remains the same -- their revenue is fine. They need to reduce
costs.
------
daxfohl
Twitter needs to market itself more as a platform. If HN had "its own twitter"
and SO had "its own twitter" and BBC had "its own twitter" I'd probably have
accounts on all of them. If those could be aggregated, but still kept
independent, even better. There needs to be a layer somewhere between
"Twitter" and "user". I still like twitter a lot, but have to admit I'm
feeling it less these days.
~~~
junto
It sounds like email, but limited to 140 characters!
------
metaphorm
So the question on my mind after reading these kinds of articles about Twitter
on a regular basis for years now is this one:
what does Twitter think the value of Twitter is? do they have an idea but
won't say it (vis a vis charging money for it) or do they just not even know?
------
nsxwolf
I'd love a federated alternative to Twitter. If Apple, Google and various
Linux people all agreed to bundle a compatible client into their operating
systems, it would have a chance at overcoming network effects.
------
alexberman2
Classic twitter - the ads just aren't effective. As a marketer I want to spend
on new channels but there needs to be an ROI.
~~~
chirau
So as a marketer, how would you pitch Twitter differently to make it more
lucrative?
~~~
criddell
I think advertising is the wrong model for Twitter.
Every ad I see makes Twitter maybe 5 cents? I'm guessing they earn $40 / year
on me (I'm not a heavy uesr). I wish I could just pay them $40 and not have
any ads inserted into my stream for the rest of the year.
~~~
emeerson
Both the 5c/per ad and user-willingness-to-pay estimates are way optimistic.
Ads you see probably has a CPM (cost per milleu, or thousand) of at $5 on the
upper end and I'm guessing average around $1 CPM, which would be .5c and .1c
respectively.
Facebook's per-user revenue in the US as of Q4 2015 was around $11/yr (source:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-average-revenue-
per-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-average-revenue-per-user-is-
up-sharply-2015-11)) although its grown by 50% yoy.
Chances are if FB / Twitter / Instagram had high confidence that could
monetize their product with a subscription model averaging even $10/user a
year I think they wouldn't hesitate to implement such a model.
~~~
criddell
Yeah, I tried to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt. It's kind of
depressing to me that they are willing to make their product shittier to earn
a fraction of a penny.
I think comparisons with Facebook are a big part of Twitter's problem. They
aren't Facebook, never will be, and shouldn't try to be. If they use Facebook
numbers as a benchmark, then they are totally screwed.
------
udhan
As almost everyone is using twitter now a days for some sort of customer
support I am wondering why twitter isn't monetizing that aspect. Provide
businesses better tools and applications to manage support and charge premium.
Similar services can be offered to govts as well.
~~~
Animats
That was kind of a fad a few years back, but many companies have backed off
from it.[1][2]
[1] [https://consumerist.com/2012/12/06/charter-ends-twitter-
and-...](https://consumerist.com/2012/12/06/charter-ends-twitter-and-facebook-
customer-support/) [2] [http://time.com/3916355/social-media-customer-
service/](http://time.com/3916355/social-media-customer-service/)
------
collyw
I don't really see the point in Twitter. All of my friends and family are on
Facebook, but I only know a few people that use Twitter.
I am sure it only gets as much media attention as it does because of the lazy
journalism it allows - what's trending, Twitter's reaction, etc.
~~~
hobo_mark
Different use cases, on Facebook you friend the people you know, on Twitter
you follow the people you wish you knew.
Also, news (especially breaking news) and commentary from people who (mostly)
know what they are talking about is only on Twitter.
My use case is opposite to yours for example, as most of what is posted on
Facebook/Instagram is showing off to your friends and has little informational
value.
~~~
collyw
OK, not many people "I wish I knew", but I get your idea. I can still follow
"famous people" on Faceboook (though mine is limited to a couple of
professional kayakers).
I agree that Facebook is generally full of crap, but when I look on twitter I
don't see it being any better. The content seems worse due to the character
limit.
------
csomar
Ads -> Ad block. Especially for Twitter audience.
I wonder how many people are ready to pay for special stuff or accounts on
Twitter. Like a "Premium" account, or double highlights, or special sh*t.
But maybe, even if they exist, it is not enough to maintain a multi-billion
dollar company.
------
jetskindo
What I like is that everyone has a solution on how twitter should run, but no
twitter to run.
------
Negative1
A whole cottage industry of services exists to improve a power twitter user's
experience. The fact that Twitter does not have any significant piece of this
pie is surprising.
------
netman21
Twitter should just have implemented Google Ads ten years ago. They would have
made money from day 1. Google would have acquired them.
~~~
gherkin0
> Google would have acquired them.
And then perhaps shut them down...
------
BlytheSchuma
Twitter is suited more for a ZeroNet-type platform.
------
mamon
And here we are, 17 years later, repeating the dotcom bubble :) Of course
technology moved forward, now things like Twitter or LinkedIn or Badoo looks
much nicer than some random online shop or Kittler owner's forum from original
dotcom boom, but the principle still stands:
Lots and lots of people have been fooled into investing in companies that has
nothing but a fancy website and ridiculous dream to "change the world". And no
money in bank.
Put your life jackets on because Wall Street is headed towards another
iceberg.
~~~
m52go
Twitter has 412 years of cash in the bank, assuming current burn levels, debt
levels, and profitability.
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/01/25/twitt...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/01/25/twitter-
has-412-years-fix-itself/79301680/)
~~~
mamon
You misunderstood my point.
The problem isn't that Twitter will go bankrupt, because it might as well
operate for those 412 years as you said, no problem here. But if it won't be
making any profits then it's stock price can fall another 77 percent, or more.
Twitter's CEO and employees will be fine, but shareholders will loose patience
(and money).
EDIT: I've just thought of the way Twitter should proceed with it's business -
stop pretending it is a business in the first place.
Twitter should be officially converted to what it really is: charity
organization with focus on freedom of speech. This would give them some tax
benefits plus the possibility of raising money through donations.
------
alohahacker
It's all about target marketing. I remember some tweets I would make hundreds
of dollars and on most of my tweets I was getting $5-$10 epc. The beauty of
Twitter is the power of the warm leads in its search. If they can effectively
monetize that, there could be light at the end of the tunnel!
~~~
hackaflocka
People can make money from Tweeting? Really? Like YouTube creators? I had no
idea.
~~~
Falcon9
There's a whole marketplace of influence out there, if you only start asking
the right people. Want a cute but not overly bright reality TV star to tweet
about your handbag company? There's a price for that. Looking instead for a
popular recording artist to mention your viral video? Pricier, but very
doable. Of course, Twitter doesn't get a share of this money.
~~~
dexterdog
Which is why they should charge for usage above X followers. You can't send
unlimited emails to a 1mil person email list for free so why should you be
able to do your marketing for free on twitter?
------
giardini
Neither is Amazon:
[http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/031414/amazon-
nev...](http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/031414/amazon-never-makes-
money-no-one-cares-amzn-aapl-wag-azo.aspx)
~~~
SilasX
Please stop spreading this. "Reinvesting enormous profits in yourself" breaks
sharply from the common understanding of what "not making a profit" means,
even if technically correct.
Half the accounting industry basically exists to document how much taxable
profit you made "even when spending all the money that comes through".
~~~
pessimizer
"This" is an observation that Amazon makes no profit, and is obvious to
everyone. What you're spreading is Amazon P.R. about how no profit is profit,
and you have the burden of proof.
[http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/jeff-bezos-amazon-
and-t...](http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/jeff-bezos-amazon-and-the-lack-
of-profits)
[http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/franklin-foer-
confuses-...](http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/franklin-foer-confuses-
amazons-subsidies-from-the-govvernment-with-profits)
~~~
jvagner
"Profits are independent of investment decisions, at least if a company is not
engaged in accounting fraud."
Right or wrong, for good or worse, this author is being deliberately obtuse on
this matter.
Amazon generates profits and re-uses them before they're on the books as
profits. It's a tactical decision, and the letter of the accounting law
doesn't contravene their strategic decision.
If you don't like it, don't buy their stock. They've been at this game for a
very long time.. so, it's no surprise.
~~~
npizzolato
As someone ignorant of accounting law, it's not obvious to me why he's being
obtuse, and just saying he is doesn't add anything to the conversation. In the
other article, he goes on to say
"The people who say that this is due to the fact that they are investing in
building up their business are showing their ignorance. Reinvesting and
profits are two separate issues. Profits reflect the difference between
revenues and costs on current business operations. These can all be used for
investment in expansion (as opposed to being paid out as dividends and share
buybacks), but they should still show up as profits. Amazon doesn't show
profits or at least not much. This means that it costs them as much to run
their business as they are getting from customers in revenue. That is not
viable as a long-term model even if they are always expanding."
Both statements seem like reasonable statements to me (who is, again, ignorant
of the law). Is he wrong? Could you expand on why he's wrong?
------
fulldecent
Money gets into the ecosystem by ads (which I have found not to deliver ROI)
and paid influencers which have large follower counts. Paid Influencers are
paid outside Twitter and that won't change. The solution is to charge a usage
fee to people with a large follower count. If CocaCola is reaching 1 million+
people on the platform, or even Beyonce or Staw Wars kid, then I'm sure there
is a value to those people to maintaining that audience. This implementation
might not be the cleanest. Has anyone else seriously thought about ways they
might actually make this into a business?
~~~
Zikes
Large influencers are what attract people onto the platform in the first
place, which is where ads and the like are supposed to take over. I remember
when Oprah and Ashton Kutcher were battling to be the first to reach 1m
followers, they bought _billboards_ with their Twitter handles on them. The
amount of new users that must have brought to the platform must have been
tremendous, better than any other marketing efforts from Twitter at the time.
Twitter should be paying people with large follower counts, not the other way
around. If they start charging for that, they'll just take their massive
audiences elsewhere.
~~~
dexterdog
Where will they take them?
~~~
Zikes
What was Twitter before?
Twitter is where it is today in very large part thanks to the big names that
attracted new users. Wherever they choose to go then has the potential to grow
in just the same way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression - Aegaeus10111
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/evidence-mounts-gut-bacteria-can-influence-mood-prevent-depression
======
perilunar
"Two kinds of microbes, Coprococcus and Dialister, were missing from the
microbiomes of the depressed subjects, but not from those with a high quality
of life. ... They also found the depressed people had an increase in bacteria
implicated in Crohn disease, suggesting inflammation may be at fault."
Ties in with this thread from a few months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18750985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18750985)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tom Gonser looks to find the next “market-bending unicorn” - jkujawski
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/tom-gosner/
======
yurek123
How many unicorns are there already?
------
kokomo6
do IBM, HP, Apple and likes count?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dropbox Hits 25 Millions Users, 200 Million Files Per Day - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/17/dropbox-hits-25-millions-users-200-million-files-per-day/
======
brlewis
Thanks to Dropbox my photo sharing site has the world's best uploader. (1)
Since it's an ordinary folder, all photo management software (iPhoto,
Aperture, Lightroom, etc.) can export to it without installing a plugin. (2)
People can queue up photos to upload while traveling even if they're currently
without Internet access. (3) Mobile clients are already built, and people can
use the same client either to upload to my site or to send to their desktop
for post-processing.
If you're running a site that people upload files to, I highly recommend
integrating with Dropbox. They have an API, but I just did it by letting
people share a new folder with [email protected] and pulling photos from that
folder.
~~~
joelhaasnoot
Sounds great for people that already have dropbox, for others that might not
work so great. Most savvy computer users understand dropbox, but sometimes
(less savvy users) just can't get it to work.
~~~
brlewis
I wouldn't make it the only upload method, but I highly recommend it at least
as an option. And with 25 million users, there's a good chance a lot of your
new users already have Dropbox, especially within the early adopter crowd.
------
staunch
I know it will probably end up being the first $1 billion+ exit for YC but I'm
really hoping it's the first IPO. It'd really put an end to the myth that YC
startups are "dipshit companies" once and for all (not that Heroku didn't do a
decent job of that).
~~~
citizenkeys
Your comment makes me wonder if Dropbox has an exit strategy. Or if they're
going to do like Digg and sit there until the entire industry moves on. With
anything cloud-related being big busines right now, Dropbox should quit
winners and either sell-out or go public.
~~~
pg
"Your comment makes me wonder if Dropbox has an exit strategy. Or if they're
going to do like Digg and sit there until the entire industry moves on."
Those are not the only two alternatives.
~~~
hnsmurf
Especially not when your company has a solid plan for making money. Digg never
did, Dropbox does.
------
edanm
Dropbox is the best startup to rise in the last few years. In terms of
startups I use that have actually changed the way I use computers in a _huge_
way, it is right up there with Facebook. It is one of the services that I
simply could _not_ imagine living without, now that I know it exists.
If you haven't used it, or are still on the free plan, you really should try
it out and buy at least 50gb. Stick all your most important files in there,
and forget about that annoying thing called "backups".
~~~
JonnieCache
_> Stick all your most important files in there, and forget about that
annoying thing called "backups"._
Good luck with that, when dropbox has its first inevitable data loss incident.
If you don't have physical control over the hardware, it doesn't count as a
proper backup.
~~~
TillE
The neat thing about Dropbox is that your files get automagically mirrored to
all your computers with Dropbox installed. So unless the client blows up too,
odds are good that a data loss incident on their servers wouldn't be
catastrophic.
This isn't an enterprisey backup solution by any means, as I don't believe
previous versions are stored locally. But it's a whole lot of really
convenient redundancy.
~~~
rlpb
Does it automagically sync file deletions and corruptions, too?
~~~
davidu
It keeps file revisions server-side. So you'd have to have one heck of a
failure to find out:
1) Have all your nodes syncing at the same time and connected. 2) Introduce
file corruption and deletion. 3) Have all your sync'd machines get the
deletion. 4) Have Dropbox's file revision history go wonky on their side.
~~~
rlpb
> 1) Have all your nodes syncing at the same time and connected.
That's not necessary. All you need is your nodes to connect and sync at a time
before you notice a problem, or if after you notice a problem but accidentally
let it connect (consider a non-technical user here).
> 2) Introduce file corruption and deletion.
If this didn't happen, you wouldn't need backups. By discussing backups, we're
already assuming this might happen. Unless you consider backups to protect
only against theft or fire. Accidental deletion and corruption are also major
factors.
> 3) Have all your sync'd machines get the deletion.
That's what the system is designed to do, so that's a given.
> 4) Have Dropbox's file revision history go wonky on their side.
There well be one error that leads to both file revision history going wonky
_and_ the introduction of file corruption or deletion.
I'm not having a go at Dropbox, it works as expected. But backups need to be
independent, not heavily integrated. Otherwise what you get is some kind of
pseudo-backup that won't cut it in particular, relatively common failure
modes.
It certainly isn't "one heck of a failure". It's one failure.
~~~
Dylan16807
The clients hold copies of old revisions for three days. That's a healthy
margin to find the corruption in case of the dropbox servers failing terribly.
------
citizenkeys
Proving that dreams sometimes do come true, the Dropbox Y Combinator
application from 2007: <http://files.dropbox.com/u/2/app.html>
Google never got around to releasing the "G Drive". None of the other
competitors for Dropbox ever caught on, either.
------
maguay
It'd be really interesting to see how many of their users are paying
subscribers. Most of the heavy Dropbox users I know do have pro accounts, and
for me, it's the best spent SaaS money I've every spent!
------
rmorrison
Wow, the most impressive thing here is the exponential growth: 2 million users
in late 2009, 4 million mid 2010, 25 million now.
~~~
tzs
Looks like O(n^2) growth to me. If we take month 0 as being in late 2009, then
it looks like at month n they have about 19x^2/162-5x/6+2 million subscribers.
~~~
anonymoushn
This is true of any function if you evaluate it at only 3 points.
~~~
tzs
That was the point.
------
jcampbell1
Has dropbox taken money since the $6M in 2008?
Their financials must be incredible. If it costs $2/yr to support a free
customer, they must already have 500k paying customers to cover the cost. They
could just as easily have 1M paying customers and be wildly profitable.
My guess is they are keeping their financials a massive secret, because if
they became public it would invite competition from copycats with a budget for
TV ads.
~~~
jackowayed
They do have something like 40 employees, so they're spending on the order of
$10M/year on salaries + benefits + office + etc.
That said, I get the impression (from how PG talks about them, the fact that
they seem to have supported this massive growth in users & employees without
more funding, etc) that they are doing very well, and improving quickly.
~~~
roel_v
I don't know - the Backblaze guys did several blog posts on the economics of
online file hosting/backups and it came out very expensive in terms of
hardware. Plus the custom software and management. Dropbox accounts are
generally small, so maybe that's making it easier. I'm not saying they aren't
doing fine, just that online backups are low margin (Dropbox is special, they
aren't regular 'online backup' providers, I realize; and they operate at a
premium price point; but still...
~~~
jonknee
Plus, Dropbox isn't doing hardware (they use Amazon's). I'd imagine they are
S3's largest customer.
~~~
sachinag
They may be S3's biggest customer, but Netflix is easily AWS' biggest customer
overall.
------
tropin
Dropbox it's ok, but what I'd really love is a software which does something a
bit different: to arrange all the unused space in the hard disks of a LAN as a
big virtual folder, with redundancy and all.
Every time I think of the Outlook-and-Word users I have at the office with
500Gb hard disks...
------
RK
Maybe I should send an unsolicited job application to Dropbox for a (sexy)
data scientist position. 25 million users is pretty crazy.
~~~
dhouston
go for it :) [email protected]
~~~
tuhin
Do you even need UI designers especially that there is basically just no
UI/Interaction?
~~~
roc
have you ever seen the web interface?
~~~
tuhin
Yes, but I honestly believe it suffers neglect and a lot can be done to
improve it. I have never seen a posting for a UI Designer hence wondering.
Also the major USP is that Dropbox behaves just like a folder on the OS and
not a seperate entity.
~~~
roc
I was just pointing out that there definitely is a UX piece and plenty of room
for designer contributions.
Not to mention the installers and the rarely-used menus and preference
windows. Just because you don't see them very often doesn't mean they wouldn't
benefit from thoughtful design.
------
revorad
A hockey stick made of money! Thanks Dropbox for setting such a kickass
example of a great technology product and company.
------
stef25
Dropbox worked great for me for quite a while. Then my Keypass password.kdb
file got corrupted. This file contained all the passwords to my personal /
freelance and office projects. Impossible to retrieve the data. Major PITA. So
now I just use it for funny pictures and music but I don't trust it with
really important things anymore.
~~~
ssebro
I'm pretty sure dropbox does file versioning, so you should be able to revert
to an earlier (uncorrupted) version of your file. Tell me if that works for
you, b/c I use dropbox+truecrypt for hosting my super important docs...
~~~
stef25
Can't seem to find a mention of file versioning anywhere. When I login into
Dropbox I find the file via search, clicking on it just downloads it.
When I try to open the file it says The following error occured while opening
the database: Hash test failed. The key is wrong or the file is damaged.
I'm not the first one with this problem:
<http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=26321#post-163634> and
[http://superuser.com/questions/187885/keepass-lost-
password-...](http://superuser.com/questions/187885/keepass-lost-password-and-
or-corruption-due-to-dropbox-keepassx)
~~~
ssebro
Looks like the directions are here: <http://www.dropbox.com/help/11>
It does seem like it only keeps 30 days worth of versioning though...
~~~
lubos
I use dropbox on multiple computers. one of the computers is running
jungledisk to backup whole dropbox content. The problem is both services work
on top of amazon cloud but I will eventually resolve this issue too.
~~~
nielsandersen
Jungledisk lets you choose where you want your data hosted. You can choose
Rackspace over Amazon IIRC.
------
loso
This is definitely a service that I have no problem paying for. Whenever
people say to me that people will not pay for online services and you have to
use ads, I use Dropbox and Netflix as an example now that Netflix's streaming
service has really taken over.
------
geoffw8
Dropbox - the result of building something people actually want.
------
rakkhi
I am massive fan of Dropbox and like to see it doing well. I have talked about
its virtues on many Quora posts. I have ussually recommended using a Truecrypt
volume within the Dropbox folder to guarantee encryption.
Now reading findings like this and the authentication issues exposed in the
last few weeks I'm getting quite worried about the security of the whole
solution. Going to have to change a lot of my posts to say do not store
anything sensitive without Truecrypt:
[http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-
sacrifices-u...](http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-sacrifices-
user-privacy-for.html)
------
didip
Dropbox had helped me accomplished the impossible.
Convincing a girly teenage girl to have a habit in backing up her computer
regularly.
No other service could do that, not even Time Machine.
------
sdizdar
Amazing... One thing I would like to point that even though people claim that
systems such as Dropbox are "simple" it is really not so simple to implement.
Just ensuring that Windows piece does not mess up your computer (eat all your
CPU, bandwidth etc.) is really hard. There are a lot of not-so-sexy work
behind the curtains.
BTW, we just started private beta for cloudHQ for Dropbox
(<http://www.cloudHQ.net/dropbox>). Basically this service provides
synchronization of Google Docs and Dropbox files and backup of Google Docs to
Dropbox. And we have a cool thing that you can edit Dropbox files directly
with Google docs (you need to install our Google Chrome extension). We need
some beta testers ....
------
plainOldText
im wondering how many of these users are paying customers, since subscription
is dropbox's only source of income as far as i know.
------
Fester
Awesome numbers. I wish I could participate in design/implementation of a
system like that.
------
brown9-2
Anyone know if that is 25 million _active_ users or 25 million registrations?
~~~
huhtenberg
Registrations, of course.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lyft moves San Francisco IPO roadshow as drivers protest - anigbrowl
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-25/lyft-moves-san-francisco-ipo-roadshow-as-local-drivers-protest
======
ummonk
I'm not sure it's possible for ridesharing to be adopted en masse by consumers
at a price point that would provide healthy wages to drivers. E.g. if a rider
works 40 hours a week and uses ridesharing for 2 hours a week, for the driver
to earn as much as them, they'd need to be spending 5% of their pretax income
on the ridesharing, in addition to gas and car value, with a multiplier on top
for ridesharing inefficiencies since drivers don't magically pick up new
riders in the same time and spot that they drop off. Pool / line can help
lower this cost but in my experience I've ended up just riding alone more
often than not anyway.
Of course, that doesn't mean Uber and Lyft aren't taking an unfairly large cut
of the revenue, further reducing drivers' earnings.
~~~
jacobolus
Is anyone expecting ride-sharing to be adopted by a majority of the population
for everyday trips? My impression is that taxi rides are inherently
transportation for the upper middle class or occasional necessities for anyone
else, not an everyday mode of transportation for the masses.
~~~
francisofascii
I had hopes that multi-rider trips would catch on more. So 2+ passengers would
split the fare. My commute is toward the city center like most of the single
occupant traffic. And I don’t need dropped off exactly at my place. Close is
fine. (Last mile problem)
~~~
jacobolus
> _My commute is toward the city center like most of the single occupant
> traffic._
This is the problem mass transit is ideally suited to solve. Hiring 1
professional driver per 2–3 commuters when there are thousands all going the
same place is ridiculously inefficient. A bus can easily fit 10x more
passengers.
~~~
chess93
I've only ever been impressed with mass transit in megacities like NYC. SF
public transit left a lot to be desired. The muni was not worth the hassle and
I did not have a bart station near my rented room in a house.
~~~
pmoriarty
I used to avoid the Bay Area's buses like the plague for many years, but in
the last couple of years I came to ride them a lot and have been pleasantly
surprised.
They're really convenient, with buses being able to take me to within a five
to ten minute walk from most anywhere within the Bay Area that I want to go,
and even closer within SF proper. They're a lot quieter than the BART (where I
feel I need ear plugs to protect my hearing), it's as clean or cleaner, and
there are now apps like Citymapper which tell you exactly which bus to take
and when to get where you're going.
My main gripe is that a couple of times buses just didn't show up at all when
they were scheduled to arrive (not just late, but just skipped a bus).
NYC's subway system is definitely way better than BART in terms of having way
more stops and going virtually everywhere, but it also has its own problems
(like the stops being deadly hot in the summer and freezing cold in the
winter).
~~~
jacobolus
Note that BART has gotten a lot quieter recently.
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-rides-
quiet...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-rides-quieter-
metal-why-so-loud-13419926.php)
------
themark
They lost almost a billion dollars last year.
Doesn't profitability rely on eventually being able to replace drivers with
automated systems?
I feel sorry for the drivers at that hotel.
------
gamechangr
It's not a great experience to work for an algorithm.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How does your web app handle public facing pages? - wallawe
There are two main schools of thought I've seen on this:<p>1) Use Wordpress. Have the web app on a subdomain, for example app.example.com and any public facing pages on example.com, and use a CMS like Wordpress serve up any external/public pages (home, about, contact, etc).<p>Cons:<p>- You have to use Wordpress. Many front-end devs would prefer to work in a modern framework/library like React/Vue/Angular. (I'll get to the headless CMS in a moment)<p>- Very hard to use custom designs. If your company has a design library and pre-built corresponding components, then you basically have to have two sets of code.<p>- VERY difficult to do things like allow a signup/signin modal that is connected to your webapp, rather you have to send users to your signup/signin pages, e.g. app.example.com/register. I also don't know how you handle tracking if you use Segment and the likes.<p>Pros:<p>- Easy for non devs to edit content<p>- Many themes available if you are starting from scratch and can be flexible on design.<p>2) Use your front-end JS library or just plain old HTML/CSS and build out custom external pages.<p>Cons:<p>- Takes more time and effort to build out the pages, since you aren't using a pre-built theme. There are HTML themes you can buy but I've always found them <i>extremely</i> bloated and difficult to wrangle into a front-end framework, and almost always end up tossing them by the wayside.<p>- Can be difficult for non-devs to edit content. You have to use a headless CMS like Contentful for fetching any content that you may want to change frequently (header text or images for example).<p>Pros:<p>- Easy to integrate any custom functionality (tracking, a/b testing, data fetching, etc)<p>- Much more pleasant development experience. All the code can live in the same repo.<p>---<p>I would love to hear some of HN's thoughts on this as well, as I've seen both approaches frequently and would like to know if there's something I'm missing about approach #1 especially.
======
chrispalmo
I need to make this exact decision soon too. It really depends on what
functionality is required for your public facing site. I’m considering using
Hugo for the “marketing landing page” part of my site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to build WordPress plugins with Vue.js (with hot reload) - robert197
https://medium.com/@devs_group/wordpress-vue-js-with-webpack-and-hot-reload-7c4faea9d0d9
======
robert197
Awesome!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Credit Karma Launches Free Credit Monitoring, Enrolls 100,000 Users In A Day - FluidDjango
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/credit-karma-launches-free-credit-monitoring-enrolls-100000-users-in-a-day/
======
citricsquid
> Within the first day of its existence (the option became available just
> yesterday), the company has managed to enroll an impressive 100,000 users
> for the opt-in credit monitoring service. The move brings Credit Karma’s
> total user base to over 4 million.
> Says CEO Kenneth Lin, Credit Karma is now on pace to register over 500,000
> users this month thanks to the launch of the new monitoring service.
huh?
~~~
WesleyJohnson
\- On pace to register 500,000 new users this month
\- Enrolled 100,000 users in the optional opt-in monitoring service (This is
the new option that just became available. You can sign up for the site
without enrolling in this feature.)
\- Total user base of +4 million.
------
moocow01
Seems that they are only using TransUnion. The one thing I've never been able
to find is a place where you can pay for a full credit report from all 3
agencies WITHOUT getting automatically enrolled in some monthly monitoring BS.
Credit Karma - I will gladly hand over some money if you guys offer a clean
cut transaction on a full report from all 3.
But on another note, this is the first credit site that makes me feel like I
don't have to take a shower after visiting.
~~~
ComputerGuru
There are many cheap sites that provide credit monitoring and reporting from
all three agencies on a monthly basis.
I get mycreditinform.com for free with my CapitalOne MasterCard. They're OK,
they provide very detailed raw data and info that you can go through and read.
~~~
moocow01
But what I want is not on a monthly basis. It looks like that site is 8.99 per
month while what I want is a complete snapshot without getting enrolled in a
monthly payment plan for monitoring. Basically just pay once for my current
credit report and nothing else.
~~~
dkasper
AnnualCreditReport.com will do what you want for free but only once per year.
For $40 you can get a report from all 3 bureaus from Experian at any time. I
did this once when I was renting an apartment and didn't come across any
issues. <http://www.experian.com/consumer-products/tribureau.html>
~~~
moocow01
Thanks - that Experian link seems to be what Ive been looking for
------
andrewcooke
so what's their business model?
i ask because it seems like the kind of thing that would be worth knowing
before signing up for something free. if i am paying for something then i am
the client, but if not, am i - or my data - being used somehow?
~~~
jlogsdon
<http://www.creditkarma.com/about/faq#charge>
~~~
andrewcooke
that's a rather weak answer that suggests that it comes down to altruism. i
suspect it is incomplete.
~~~
ceejayoz
The sponsors are credit card companies, who generally give pretty decent sums
- $50-$100 - for successful referrals.
------
CountHackulus
Too bad it's US only. I'd love to have something email me about whenever
something happens regarding my credit (for free would be best).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Little Coder's Predicament - bootload
http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/theLittleCodersPredicament.html
======
optimal
This is an old article, but in my opinion kids today have the same opportunity
to learn programming, only now it's not tied to a particular hardware platform
or operating system--it's the Web! They might start playing with simple HTML,
text and graphics and maybe some JavaScript. Or customizing MySpace or
whatever.
The Web is also more collaborative--instead of coding in isolation they can
share their results with the world.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Does Away With “Sponsored Links” Label, Now Ads Are Labeled “Ads” - ssclafani
http://searchengineland.com/google-does-away-with-sponsored-links-label-now-ads-are-labeled-ads-54956
======
benjoffe
I like "Ads" much better, it conveys the same information more succinctly, and
without the cheesy euphemism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What to do when your side-project takes off? - amerf1
Very curious to know how things change when you have hyper growth. How do you deal with priorities? Do you reach out to get seed-funding? Who do you speak to? Do you sell?<p>I am asking because I read a lot of stories of people getting #1 on HN or PH and suddenly their servers are down because of heavy traffic. What do you do after that? It seems super crazy
======
ezekg
For B2B, HN and PH users rarely convert, so you would do nothing, because it's
not "taking off" \-- it's being flooded with tire-kickers. I think people put
too much focus on launching on HN, Reddit, PH, etc. And you also shouldn't
expect "hyper growth." I went nearly a year without a paying customer. Growth
is a slow thing, not an overnight thing (I know, I know, you hear about these
romanticized stories a lot and it's hard not to expect it for yourself).
Expecting hyper growth from these channels will result in you giving up early
due to unrealistic expectations of bad marketing channels. You're not going to
get seed funding because you got a sudden spike in bad traffic.
For B2C, I'm not sure on conversion rates, so I won't comment on that.
------
jermaustin1
The death hugs I have seen have usually been products that are on shared
hosting, which is never a good thing, even when testing an idea. The few that
are hosted somewhere like DigitalOcean or Linode, they didn't scale the VM
before getting hugged.
Based on the small handful of times a post of mine has hit #5 or higher, you
can expect between 20k and 40k visits. How many conversions you get completely
depend on your product.
My blog has had 4 posts that have taken top marks. A total of 150k visits
(during those days) and I have had 0 newsletter signups, 0 contact form
submissions, $0 in advertising revenue, and $0 in attributed business.
~~~
amerf1
You know its funny this reminds me of one of the videos I posted on YouTube
which went viral and got 2 million views ($0 from advertising)
------
muzani
It's a "good problem". At that point it's easier to raise money at a good
valuation.
Everyone is energized. Strap on, put it the fires. If you did your
architecture right (e.g. put it somewhere like AWS), scaling up the servers is
no problem.
We were so energized that we built the whole customer management system in one
day, something that takes others weeks to build.
If this is happening, customers usually need whatever you're selling and are
much more fault tolerant. At peak, we had 10 crashed a day per user. But it
was a good sign that they kept logging on despite the crashes. If you have too
many customers to handle, a rule of thumb is to deal with the latest ones
first because you've likely already lost the ones who were in the queue for a
week.
The biggest threat IMO is that you can actually overestimate yourself. We
tried to push at a valuation that is too high, because we got our hockey stick
early, but it was much more than investors were willing to take.
~~~
amerf1
This is very valuable info. Never thought of focusing on the latest ones first
thats a new perspective
Thank you for your post!
------
buboard
HN traffic is not sustainable
------
LifeQuestioner
build a side project you think is good. Then worry about this.
~~~
tudelo
I don't think OP is asking so that they can get hyper growth, they are just
curious about peoples experiences.
~~~
amerf1
That is correct I was mainly referring to peoples experiences
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are the best Linux-based laptops? - sadanapalli
Who has the best Linux laptop - System76 or ZaReason or Dell or anyone else?
======
fingerprinter
I've stuck to ThinkPads. They are great....or were great. They recently
changed the keyboard (bad) and also got rid of the physical mouse buttons
(NOOOOOO! BAD LENOVO!).
With those gone, there isn't anything particularly compelling about the
current ThinkPads. In that case, just pick most anything and go with it.
Ubuntu should run great on most anything these days.
------
egor83
A couple of links containing reviews, tests etc:
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Laptop](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Laptop)
[http://www.linlap.com/](http://www.linlap.com/)
\-------------------------
And a bunch of earlier HN discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6514512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6514512)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5088260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5088260)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503047)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4847720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4847720)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262106)
------
trouserpants
Are you aware that you can install a Linux distribution on just about any
hardware? System76 are OK, I've never been wowed by them. Realistically, I
would just go with a Thinkpad, unbeatable keyboard and great build quality
(though lately Lenovo has been messing up on both of those)
~~~
sadanapalli
Yes, I am aware of that. I am talking about things just working out of the
box. It depends on which linux distro you use. I am not talking about just
installing linux here.
There are choices - Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse etc. and each distribution
differs in user interface and the hardware support (graphic
cards/wifi/bluetooth etc.). So far, Ubuntu seems to have a slight upper hand
on hardware compatibility.
------
aosmith
I just bought an x1 carbon and loaded it with ubuntu. Just about everything
worked out of the box, less microphone mute button and sleep button. It's
pretty flawless and hands down the fastest machine I've owned. Battery life is
also awesome (5-6 hours).
------
cjbprime
ThinkPads have a historically good reputation because kernel developers tend
to use them. But as trouserpants says, almost all of the machines from major
manufacturers will work fine.
~~~
nycticorax
I'm sorry, but this just does not agree with my experience. Yes, if you work
at it, you can probably get 80-90% of things on your machine to work. But even
getting to that point takes some effort. And quite often, there is that 20-10%
that just doesn't work quite right. Like not being able to wake from sleep
reliably. Or having popping noises when you play audio. Or having some of the
audio jacks not work. And it just frustrates me to see this kind of blithe
assurance: "Oh, don't worry, everything will work."
It's the same story with distributions. So often, someone asks what the best
one is, and several people say something like "They're all good---you can't go
wrong!". Which, again, doesn't agree with my experience. There's always
something janky no matter what distro you choose. But the good ones (like
Ubuntu pre-Unity) had considerably less jankiness.
I wish we lived in a world where you could install any Linux distro on any
random hardware and have everything just work. But that is not the world we
currently live in.
------
drill_sarge
If you want some 100% no issues working, just get something with Intel CPu and
GPU. Although the free Radeon drivers are pretty good now too. Avoid some kind
of integrated GPU+extra discrete chip combination. Otherwise there isn't
really anything special to worry about or to buy a special "built for Linux"
machine (which I consider marketing bullshit).
------
thekevan
Honestly, I just install it and don't pay much attention to the brand of the
machine. The issues I have had installing an OS seem to be about even whether
I am installing Windows or Ubuntu.
The only issue I had with my Toshiba Satellite P855-S5312 was getting around
secure boot, which is easier now. I've been running Ubuntu on it for about 15
months with no issues.
------
lsiebert
I use a ThinkPad. Mine is a t530, and a good balance of the things I want.
16gb ram and a discrete video card are nice.
Best is vague. Best bang for your buck? Best ultra portable? Best workstation?
Best battery life?
------
jamespcole2
I have owned a couple of System76 machines and they have always been pretty
good, I currently have the Darter and I have no complaints.
If you want something small and portable my Asus X202E works well.
------
niftylettuce
[http://niftylettuce.com/posts/linux-mint-ubuntu-nodejs-
hacke...](http://niftylettuce.com/posts/linux-mint-ubuntu-nodejs-hacker-
setup/)
------
lbarrett
I got the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition. I like it.
~~~
thaweatherman
Same here. It's been solid so far for me!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight - sp332
https://rapidshare.com/#help_faq
======
tomku
It's important to remember that the business model of file locker sites like
RapidShare and Mega is to convince you to upload your files to their site so
that they can monetize access to them. Your access as the original uploader is
no exception - if they think they can squeeze a couple dollars/euros/bitcoins
out of you through changes like this, they'll do it. If you don't want your
files to be held hostage, you should probably consider hosting that has a
different business model.
------
JohnTHaller
All the free users are screaming about how this destroys RapidShare's
reputation and how they'll never use RapidShare again. Here's the thing,
though. RapidShare used to care about free users when lots of folks were using
it to host illegal files since it would encourage people to pay for faster
downloads. As RapidShare is focused more on legitimate files, they don't care
about these free users since the free users cost RapidShare money. Even if
only 1% were to pay, RapidShare will make far more money off 100,000 paying
users than they will off 10,000,000 free ones.
~~~
StavrosK
Okay, data time:
I created a full-text-search bookmarking app called historious
(<http://historio.us>). It started out as free for everyone, since I just
built it for myself and people found it useful, but I quickly had to charge,
after realizing that people had more than my 10-20 bookmarks (some people had
80 THOUSAND).
I changed it to 2,000 free bookmarks, and unlimited paid, which worked well.
Then I changed it to 300 free, then to 50 free. The reason why I did this is
this:
As per my analytics package, on average, it takes _less than two_ minutes for
95% of my users to upgrade to paid. Basically, from what I can see, users
register, try it out with one or two bookmarks, then upgrade immediately if
they like it. If they don't upgrade then, they are not very likely to ever
upgrade.
Thus, it doesn't make sense for me to support free users (this is very
expensive, since it stores the entire page for everything you bookmark,
twice), so the free tier is more of a "trial" tier now.
I'm not sure how many people who would have upgraded if they'd tried it saw
the limit and said "I won't use this, the free limit is too low", but, based
on the data (and it sounds reasonable to me as well), they are not many.
People reasonably want a short trial run, and then they either upgrade or
don't.
~~~
whyleyc
Thanks for providing an interesting data point. I had a few questions I was
wondering if you might be able to answer ?
1\. How did you deal with existing free users already exceeding your new
limits ? (and how did they react) ? 2\. Did you see a measurable increase in
upgrades after doing this ? 3\. Did you see a measurable decrease in free
users of the service after doing this ?
Thanks.
~~~
StavrosK
1\. I store the limit as a field on each user's profile, so you get to keep
the limit you signed up with (grandfathering). Users don't mind (obviously),
and if I ever increase the limits, I just increase them for everyone. Storage
is expensive, but it's not _that_ expensive that I need to retroactively
reduce old users' limits.
I have also needed to cull unused accounts (of free users who haven't logged
in in months). This provided a great boost to the service (saved me from
needing to keep upgrading the server for the past few months), but it has also
produced a few false positives of people who hadn't used their accounts for a
few months and came back. Luckily, I keep backups they can just restore.
2\. The last limit change was a few days ago, so I haven't had a chance to
gather significant data on this. I guess we'll know in a few months.
3\. I will also track this, that is a good question. I anticipate that a few
users will be deterred from using the service for free, but that might not
necessarily be bad (I am not sure).
~~~
whyleyc
Thanks - and good luck !
------
EwanToo
If you're shocked, then you've not been paying the slightest bit of attention.
Don't trust free services for anything important, and don't trust "unlimited"
services, ever!
~~~
rsync
Agreed.
And while this is largely self evident to most people here, if you're looking
for a deeper theoretical underpinning as to why this is the case, feel free to
use this:
[http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-
stora...](http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-storage-
services-vs-rsyncnet.html)
... it seems we have occasion to repost this about once a week these days.
And since we're sharing anecdotes, let me tell you what we just did yesterday:
We sent out an email to every customer we have that is _both_ 500+ days in
arrears with billing _and_ 200+ days idle with usage, and asked them, please,
for the love of god, get in touch with us and let us know whether to close
their account or input an up to date credit card or whatever.
We feel so strongly about our duty to safeguard data for our customers that
even if they haven't paid a dime for 500+ days, and by many measures have
clearly abandoned their account, we still keep them fully live, just in case.
The OP shows us what happens when your business model is a clownshow
(freemium, ad supported, whatever) and our mailing yesterday shows what
happens when you charge real money for real service.
------
oellegaard
They should leave existing users data, if they wanted to keep any respect in
the community I'd say. It is sad watching all these companies giving "free"
services away, just to remove them again.
Don't trust anything free, because nothing really is.
~~~
tomku
Paying them yourself isn't enough when it comes to file lockers. Their goal is
to get not only the original uploaders paying to keep their files online, but
also some percentage of downloaders as well. That's why sites like this have
countdown timers, bandwidth limits and waiting periods. They're hoping that
people will get so sick of the bullshit trying to download your files that
they'll spring for a premium subscription.
This is why they've had such an interesting relationship with copyright
infringement. Obviously, they want to avoid getting shut down - but people
uploading TV shows, games, music, movies, etc on places like DDL forums drive
so much traffic and so many premium memberships that their business model
almost depends on them.
Some of them even pay dividends to the popular uploaders, as a thank you for
driving traffic. This drives an entire underground economy, where people
upload copyrighted content to file lockers, then use the payments from the
file locker service to buy more content to upload.
Edit: One example of this kind of underground economy is in the anime
fansubbing community. You've got people who want to widely distribute
200-500mb files (generally) that are... not entirely free of copyright, to say
the least. Hosting the files yourself would be a pain, as you'd get takedown
notices AND have to pay for servers and bandwidth. However, you can upload
your episodes to a couple file locker services and post the links on your
site. You'll get a kickback from the file lockers for driving traffic, and if
they get taken down, you can just reupload them, possibly even at the same
site. The fansub groups say they use the money to pay for hosting and buy Blu-
rays to rip and release, but I'm sure some of them pocket some as a salary
too.
~~~
Retric
Most fansub groups stop when the content owners licence the product in the US
or simply request that they do so. As to making money that's theoretically
possible, but only in the spending all day helping a friend move for a beer is
'making money'.
~~~
tomku
I think your knowledge might be a little outdated. Now that streaming (and
less frequently, retail) rights are being sold before the shows even air,
there's very little mid-season dropping due to licensing - the groups that sub
airing shows know that they're licensed, and they don't care. DVD/BD rip
groups care even less, and they seem to use file lockers a lot more regularly
than the actual fansubbers.
As far as profitability, I don't think that most of them are raking in the
millions, or even doing it as a full-time job. Most of the profit is on the
file locker's side - otherwise they wouldn't be giving payouts in the first
place. I suspect that the groups that really push the DDLs probably make
enough to pay for hosting and some percentage of the DVDs/BDs they buy.
Whether you view that as profit is up to you - but I think it's a little more
than getting a beer for helping a friend move.
~~~
Retric
I have not looked into fan-subs in a few years so you could be right. However,
I have not seen a significant increase in the amount of anime translated so
are you talking about 'rights' or the 'option' to buy said rights. Because, it
seems odd if companies are paying significant amounts of money for
distribution rights just to sit on it.
PS: Though if there is some great streaming service for anime I don't know
about feel free to fill me in on that one.
~~~
tomku
Crunchyroll[1] is the big name in streaming nowadays, and they simulcast a
substantial portion of each season. Funimation licenses for retail, simulcast
and library streaming, and I believe they do their streaming via Hulu. Anime
on Demand is a newer player, and Neon Alley is a PS3-exclusive (for now)
service run by Viz that airs dubs on a schedule like a TV station. Some of the
older players (Sentai Filmworks does a lot of this) will split a license with
Crunchyroll, so one has retail and the other streaming. I'd say that the
English-language market has generally switched to streaming, and that DVDs and
BDs are almost an afterthought now.
Edit: Almost forgot, a bunch of the Japanese studios just announced their own
English-subbed streaming service named Daisuki[2], but it won't launch until
April. Will be interesting to see what impact that has on the foreign
companies.
[1]: <http://www.crunchyroll.com/>
[2]: <http://www.daisuki.net/en/>
------
xtc
I had been a long-time premium user of Rapidshare through it's peak in 2007 to
2009 or so. Their service was wonderful (or so it seemed) until almost nobody
used it anymore. The business model that Rapidshare held on to is clearly
failing them as more and more users are switching to other sites that are
either free or not that expensive (Mega, Mediafire, etc.)
~~~
gwern
Mediafire seems to be hitting the tubes, though. They used to be one of the
best no-nonsense upload service (reliable, instant download, very rare
CAPTCHAs, multiple concurrent downloads, no timeouts), but they've gotten much
more aggressive about deleting files and putting in quite intrusive
advertising-based CAPTCHAs - which broke bulk downloading tools like
jDownloader, as I learned when I went to download a few hundred albums
uploaded from Comiket 83 (I wanted to listen to them but also use them for a
side-project on Touhou music statistics I've been working on).
------
sp332
A link posted earlier by lightning
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5397414> has some good information.
_However, if free users want to “add storage space” – i.e give RapidShare
some money – they can keep their files.
For 9.99 euros for 30 days (or 99.99 euros per year), users can have 250GB of
storage space. The 500GB storage account costs 19.99 euros per 30 days or
199.99 per year.
So what happens when users want to store more than 500GB? TorrentFreak was
told that a user asked RapidShare how much it would cost to host around 2TB of
files and was given a price of 120 euros ($155) per month. For less money
anyone can buy a real-life hard drive, not just once but every single month._
So, it looks like they might also delete data from paying users, with only 24
hours notice.
~~~
dietrichepp
2TB for $155/month? S3 would be $175/month, or $140/month at reduced
redundancy. What a shock that you might pay market rates for online storage
services.
------
namenotrequired
I don't understand why people are willing to pay hundreds or a few thousands
on a good computer and then expect everything on the internet to be free. I
think people need to be more prepared to pay for good services. (Not
commenting on the quality of the service in question, I haven't used it in a
long time)
~~~
freehunter
I, for one, shy away from paying for subscription content online because even
some of the best merchants have proven time and time again that they are
unable to properly secure my data. People paid money to Sony. People paid
money to Dropbox. People paid money to LastPass. People paid money to Linode.
And these companies have all let their customers down in security. Why should
I believe RapidShare etc would be any better?
------
josteink
And this is why I host my own. Noone else is able to mess with my data.
------
alevans4
Am I missing something or did the date change? Looks like this happens on
April 8th, 2013.
------
dcc1
Why does anyone use that piece of turd? <http://filecloud.io/> has more
features and hell even has bitcoin option for us geeks
~~~
TheOv3rminD
www.symform.com gives you UNLIMITED cloud storage. The catch? you get a
certain amount free but for more space you have to share your hard drive
space. I use it for data redundancy and it works fuckin great =)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PeerTube - Decentralized, Free, Ad-Free Video Hosting - peter_d_sherman
https://joinpeertube.org
======
soared
I do not understand this idea of replacing social media sites with open
software but then exposing/forcing users to choose an instance. Unless you're
strictly trying to make your social media site for devs this makes no sense.
Any common user will see this 'instance' choosing option and exit really fast.
I guess instances are required for federation? What is federation? Why do I
care? Why do I need to "Get Started" rather than just a search function like
youtube? Why can't these instances exist on the backend and you just provide a
front-end ui that combines them for users?
I do not understand federation and neither do your non-dev users (98% of the
market).
------
themodelplumber
It's really cool to see things like this from the libre point of view.
However, the decentralized bit was confusing to me when I tried out Mastodon.
It was like I was trying to figure out whether I should join the North
American Combine or the Paneuropean Federation _with the catch_ that geography
was not really a factor. So did the decentralization make things easier for
everybody or harder? I know I never really got into Mastodon after trying it
twice, though I'm open to trying it again.
I'd honestly rather just swim with the whatever the tide is in such cases
unless I'm applying for a literal passport. Point me to a popular way of
accessing the thing and using it, and I'll give it a shot. Any given community
with a good amount of traffic ought to self-sort to allow me to find what I
like.
------
sctb
Several discussions about PeerTube in the last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17386609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17386609)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18013705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18013705)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18220475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18220475)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560)
------
all2
As an advertiser, can I work with creators to play my ads before or during
their videos?
Could creators have a 'subscription' that allows consumers to bypass my
advertisements?
Or maybe the 'subscription' allows early access, or extra content hidden to
regular viewers?
Without some localized incentive (money) for creators, this won't work. I know
there is the "Support" button, but that doesn't really do what a creator
needs. Hoping for money isn't a business model (and major content creators run
businesses, regardless of the image they project).
~~~
hcal
I don't think it is intended to be a business or business model. I think its
just about the technology. It aims to provide scalable distribution of video
without a huge youtube-size infrastructure. Maybe you can build a business
model on top... or maybe you just host your own videos and use the federation
tools to share the files with others.
~~~
all2
I think what I've described is possible given the API documentation.
An application on top of this would be interesting, I think.
[https://docs.joinpeertube.org/api.html](https://docs.joinpeertube.org/api.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
‘X’ Marks a Curious Corner on Pluto’s Icy Plains - japaget
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/x-marks-a-curious-corner-on-pluto-s-icy-plains
======
ChuckMcM
Reminding us once again how cool it would be if we could "easily" send robotic
probes to go and stay on various solar system "places of interest."
Something I hope that comes out of SpaceX's reusability of boosters is a way
to put a mission package into orbit, then launch a boost unit with the
necessary engine and fuel that then docks with it, and then puts it into the
necessary orbit to get to its destination.
~~~
joedrew
Pluto in particular would be a problem, though, because it is a) very small,
and b) very far away. In order to get there in a realistic time, your probe
has to be going _very quickly_; in order to stay in Pluto orbit, the probe has
to be going _very slowly_.
So, unfortunately, to stay in Pluto orbit, either you carry a lot of fuel with
you to slow down (which makes launch incredibly difficult, because you need
more fuel to accelerate the fuel you need to slow down, and then you need more
fuel to accelerate _that_ fuel, and so on), or you wait a long time to get
there.
The bigger, closer planets and planetoids, though, will see a lot more
exploration as the cost of launch decreases.
~~~
venomsnake
Or you send some self replicating stuff on the moon, build some factories and
solar panels, and build and launch robots from there. We have the technology
to do this right now if we are willing to put the money. And if we polish the
moon we could beam excess energy to earth.
~~~
japhyr
What do you mean by "polish the moon"?
~~~
jharger
Colonize it with Polish people, of course.
~~~
fishnchips
Just make sure to send the government up there first.
------
mrfusion
I think the "snail" in the middle of the picture is more curious than the x.
What is that?
~~~
japhyr
> The darker patch at the center of the image is likely a dirty block of water
> ice “floating” in denser solid nitrogen, and which has been dragged to the
> edge of a convection cell.
I love that we (the public) are still getting regular updates about what
scientists are finding from the Pluto flyby.
------
sandworm101
It isn't really a capital 'X'. It looks more like the stylized, more wide than
tall, X of a spaceX landing pad.
Compare with this:[http://i.space.com/images/i/000/045/531/i02/spacex-rocket-
la...](http://i.space.com/images/i/000/045/531/i02/spacex-rocket-landing-
drone-ship.jpg?1423529560)
------
kleer001
Looks to me like conditions ripe for life. Not necessarily life we're familiar
with, mind. And maybe not necessarily clicking all of the check boxes of
"Life", but structures far more interesting than dumb rocks.
------
graycat
Okay, as expected, Pluto is a very cold rock. No surprise.
What the heck is NASA looking for out there, some evidence of trash left by
ET, a big, black, rectangular parallelepiped with some strange audio and
electronic signals pointing to Jupiter? Don't think they will find it.
We have to expect that in the universe, both near and far, there are a lot of
really cold rocks orbiting a lot of stars, "billions and billions". To get
something "curious" on one of those will be really rare.
Want to see what one of the really rare ones looks like? Okay, three guesses,
the first two don't count. Hint: Look at where you are standing.
IMHO, NASA needs to find some more important questions to ask.
Mars? Okay, if there is good reason to go to Mars, then, first, do a lot in
robotics: Net, send robots that can build a colony, make rocket fuel from
whatever is there on Mars, fuel a rocket, sent it back to earth successfully.
Iterate several times. Build a bigger and bigger colony that is more and more
capable. The colony should be really good, and safe for humans -- food, water,
heat, comforts, safety, etc., and a rock solid, highly reliable, very well
tested way home. Then test a lot more -- much, much more testing.
Then maybe send some humans.
~~~
InclinedPlane
Let's review some history for the moment. Back in the 19th century "egghead"
scientists conducted numerous lines of research into several subjects which
were at the time considered to be extremely esoteric, the essence of pure,
"blue sky" research. Some examples from that century would be:
electromagnetism, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and gas laws.
As it turned out, understanding such things lead to lots of innovations which
had not been anticipated beforehand. Everything from electric motors and
lightbulbs to micro-processors, cell phones, internal combustion engines,
fertilizer, and AIDS drugs. Those innovations built on the back of once pure
scientific research have resulted in billions of years of human lives lived
that would not have been other wise, and billions of years of lives lived in
improved conditions (due to more food, cleaner water, greater wealth, and so
on), literally tens of trillions of dollars per year of added economic
activity due to those innovations and _quadrillions_ of dollars of added value
and increased wealth to human civilization. All due to egghead scientists
studying stuff just because they were curious.
What will be the next set of breakthroughs? Where will it come from? How much
value will they add? We don't know, that's why we continue to sustain and
support our curiosity across such broad ranges of subjects.
Not only might breakthroughs come from surprising directions, but I think the
scientists have more than earned it. Not everything we do needs to have some
tangible return-on-investment back to some concrete bottom line on Earth in
the near term.
~~~
graycat
Sure, but you left out some crucial parts: "Often we find that a good question
is more important than a good answer" \- Richard Bellman. IMHO pictures of
Pluto do not answer good questions.
Commonly, one of the most important steps in good research is good problem
selection. IMHO, getting pictures of Pluto is not good problem selection.
Mars? It's closer in. There we might get some clues to the formation of the
solar system. And we have a chance of setting up a base on Mars for astronomy
or whatever. Pluto? As we have long known, it's really 'out there'.
Pluto? Wild guess: There is so little going on there, and it's so darned cold,
that maybe we could use it as a source of a _preserved_ record of some of the
major events in the galaxy over the past 5 billion years or so Pluto has been
going around out there. For this guess, maybe look at the justification NASA
gave for the Pluto effort.
~~~
InclinedPlane
You seem to be missing it. Let me try to break it down again.
First off, plain and simple, we don't know what we don't know. So
straightforward it's tautological. It makes sense to expand our knowledge in
every direction possible.
This is the MO of a curious species. And curious species are vastly more
successful than incurious ones. To paraphrase Randall Munroe, the legacies of
incurious species are carefully discovered, studied, and remembered by curious
ones. Curiosity is a survival trait.
Dedicating less than 4 parts per million of our country's enormous economic
activity toward studying an important part of our stellar neighborhood seems a
worthwhile entry in the activities column of a sufficiently curious people.
Moreover, the return-on-investment on unbounded curiosity is so close to
infinite that it's hard to view complaints about such comparatively tiny
expenditures in regards to their practicality or short-term tangible returns
as anything other than laughably myopic.
~~~
graycat
> It makes sense to expand our knowledge in every direction possible.
Not quite: Instead, for any amount of money, there are, or, as we start
spending the money on research, soon will be, more candidate research projects
than money. So we have to pick and choose our research projects.
IMHO we have better candidate research projects, including just in
investigating the solar system, than getting fly-by pictures of Pluto.
Maybe NASA has some longer term ideas for research on Pluto where the recent
pictures, and maybe also just the trip there, are just the beginning. Okay,
land there, in a bunch of nitrogen snow. Take and analyze some samples and
radio the data back to earth. Maybe get some data unique and valuable data on
the formation of the solar system, maybe on some gamma ray bursts or super
nova explosions, etc. Maybe. But just the pictures? IMHO, not so good.
------
chaosfox
kind of OT but, "Its surface is separated into cells or polygons 10 to 25
miles"
reminds me of glimmervoid:
[http://magiccards.info/mma/en/223.html](http://magiccards.info/mma/en/223.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Facebook bug policy: Stick head in sand - stickfigure
http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=11754
======
stickfigure
Anyone else notice that even the clearest, most obvious bugs logged at the
platform bug tracker tend to be closed out of hat, then moved to WISHLIST
after you reopen them?
This feels a lot like police departments distorting crime statistics by
recategorizing reports. I suspect the actual bug statistics for the Facebook
platform are _far_ higher than the ones they announce each week. And the ones
they announce are terrible as it is.
~~~
acavailhez
Developping on top of Facebook Platform is very unsettling : always moving,
inconsistent, under-documented, poor libraries outside of python and PHP, at
least 3 types of access to the same data (deprecated REST API, FQL queries and
Graph API), etc. Yet you get their gigantic audience and unprecedented data at
hand, which is thrilling. Developping for Facebook is almost a separate kind
of programing, with its own set of rules.
------
AlexC04
Oh man! If this was "Step Up 3d" the entire room would have erupted into
cheering and shouted stuff like "You got served yo!" and "Damnnnn"
Jeff Schnitzer was just completely awesome!
I loved that. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Truth About Building With Glass - jamesbritt
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031286/on-the-willis-tower-the-truth-about-building-with-glass
======
iancarroll
I was with a tour group right before this happened. The group of people is
blaming me as I made a show of jumping on it to prove its integrity. Hopefully
I didn't, uh, encourage the breaking...
(Here's me jumping on it an hour before:
[http://imgur.com/kk1DTht](http://imgur.com/kk1DTht))
~~~
zacinbusiness
Actually, you may have proved exactly how safe it is by damaging the
protective layer and leaving the main glass unharmed.
------
tieistoowhite
An article about what sounds like a very cool thing. Its architect describes
it "as a peaceful, meditative place." I found the cover photo inappropriate,
though.
~~~
pekk
Inappropriate how?
------
ChuckMcM
I admit it would freak me out to have the glass start cracking as I was
standing on it. It really is an awesome view though, we stopped by on our last
Chicago visit and you can't really help but clinch up a bit. Recommended if
you're travelling.
~~~
jamesbritt
When I was in Toronto some years ago I visited the CN Tower, which has a
glass-floor observation area.
[http://www.cntower.ca/en-ca/plan-your-
visit/attractions/glas...](http://www.cntower.ca/en-ca/plan-your-
visit/attractions/glass-floor.html)
The conflict between what my eyes were telling my brain and what I otherwise
believed to be true was quite enlightening.
I guess it's the neocortex arguing with the reptilian brain.
------
agapos
The only thing I find to be strange: why there isn't a small metal plate with
this written on it, just to make sure people won't panic when this happens?
edit: something like this "The top layer of glass is used to protect the rest
from scratches and wear of use. The covering glass is designed to crack at
it's end-of-life, but this will not effect the integrity of the structure."
------
webhat
I was fooled this would be an article about building apps for Google Glass. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HeyZap (YC S09) Launches Microtransaction Platform - judegomila
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/flash-gaming-payments-heat-up-heyzap-launches-microtransaction-platform/
======
tybris
At some point someone's going to set-up a succesful virtual currency exchange
and the government is going to step in for creating an illegal currency.
~~~
crescendo
I was actually wondering the other day whether Apple does any kind of
arbitrage behind the scenes of their international app store sales. Seems like
they could be making a lot of extra money that way.
Maybe there's an opportunity for a startup here?
~~~
eru
How should that arbitrage work? (As far as I know exploiting arbitrage on
foreign exchange markets tends to need insane amounts of money.)
------
callmeed
50/50 revenue split ... good for them if it works, but I don't usually see
ecommerce providers taking that big a cut ... except maybe amazon
~~~
vaksel
yeah I think developers would prefer Kongregate's model better since they give
100% of revenue to the game developer.
~~~
judegomila
Kongregate only offer up to 50% rev share on the advertising and if they offer
100% on the virtual goods part then its not a business model for them.
~~~
vaksel
that's for ads, the tips go 100% to the developer
edit: it may not be a business model for them, but that's kinda the point. It
makes Kongregate look more developer friendly.
------
rudyfink
This is the modern equivalent of the quarter fed arcade game. Instead of games
designed to kill me off not matter what I'm now going to see games designed to
limit my progress no matter what? I can't say I'm looking forward to this bold
new era of incentives for games designed to try and up sell me.
~~~
eru
They will have to compete against games that are nicer to you.
------
vaksel
what does USV stand for in the title?
~~~
callmeed
Union Square Ventures [http://blog.heyzap.com/uncategorized/heyzap-receives-
funding...](http://blog.heyzap.com/uncategorized/heyzap-receives-funding-from-
union-square-ventures/)
~~~
lacker
Interesting that Zynga and Heyzap are both USV-funded now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Advice to advisers: Stop being so nice. - jaf12duke
http://www.humbledmba.com/advice-to-advisers-stop-being-so-nice
======
jseliger
This post reminds me of a favorite passage from _Lord of the Rings_ , when
Frodo is debating whether he should wait for Gandalf in the Shire, or press
on:
_“… The choice is yours: to go or wait.” [Gildor said.] “And it is also
said,” answered Frodo, “Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say
both no and yes.”
“Is it indeed?” laughed Gildor. “Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for
advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses
may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself;
how should I choose better than you? But if you demand advice, I will for
friendship's sake give it.”_
The problem is, most of your advisers probably didn't know and, more
importantly, couldn't know if the IBM sale would pan out. If they said stop,
and you did, and failed anyway, what if they felt bad at whether the IBM sale
might've worked?
The world is big and unpredictable and replete with stories of people advising
others that something can't be done or shouldn't be done that way, only to
have the advisees ignore the advisers and do great things. Hell, see this
post: [http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-i-almost-
killed-f...](http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-i-almost-killed-
facebook.html) for an example of well-meaning advice that, if taken would've
been wrong.
------
vsl2
It took me a while to understand the full benefit of people's criticism. My
team's initial idea was a to build a mobile product that essentially focused
on everything and added a ton of features, thinking that we'd get users from
being so ubiquitous and awesome. After hearing the same "you're not focused",
"how can you get users" criticism from many in the industry (including
multiple YC partners), I finally got it through my head that maybe I couldn't
impose my naive vision on the world just because I believed it was powerful.
However, its just as important to never stop thinking about your world-
domination vision. I'm sure every one of the most successful tech companies in
the world has heard all of the same criticism from well-meaning advisers along
the way. Start with a focused smart plan, execute it well, and don't lose
sight of the ultimate destination (which may change along the way too as you
learn more).
------
wccrawford
"I now ask better questions of my advisors and explicitly welcome their
roughest criticisms. I gravitate towards those advisers that rip into me with
skepticism and challenging questions. "
Just as you used to do, most people do not listen when criticized harshly.
You can try to blame your advisers for not telling you to avoid IBM, but in
the end, it's still your fault and not theirs. In fact, they probably tried to
tell you that, but you didn't want to hear negatives.
It's good that you can hear them now, but that still doesn't help most other
people, and those advisors still have to deal with those people.
------
gamble
The reason people don't typically act this way is that anyone who tries to
give honest advice quickly realizes than in 90% of cases, the person seeking
advice doesn't want to be challenged. _Especially_ budding entrepreneurs, who
are often precariously balanced between wild optimism and despair. It's very
hard to stay positive when someone points out that your baby isn't _quite_ as
beautiful as you imagine.
------
kb101
This guy is being way too hard on himself. Running out of cash is hard and
painful enough, no need to unduly heap blame upon oneself. If people at IBM
were talking to him about a deal, then they weren't doing it to coddle his
startup or be nice... trust me, if people aren't interested they won't be shy
about saying no. I think he got caught out by the slow-moving bureaucracy of a
big firm... too bad for them, their loss. As for IBM being a stalwart of the
tech industry not needing help from a brash young startup, isn't that exactly
how Microsoft got its first big contract?
This wasn't a case of needing harsher advice (too many people are addicted to
self-flagellation, as if crushing your own dreams was a sign of maturity) but
a case where a fledgling company took a big risk. Risks are risks, there's no
way to to apportion blame or change course in hindsight. This just as easily
could have been a post thanking his many mentors for their sound advice and
encouragement that saw him through to getting his first big sale to IBM. Just
because the other party in a negotiation is a big corporation that lumbers
along and takes forever to make up its mind, there's no need to berate oneself
for not having tried harder or seen x,y,z in retrospect. I say good on him for
having gone balls to the wall to bring his vision to life, and good luck with
his current venture. But the lesson here is not about advisers, in my view, it
is about caution when dealing with massive organizations.
------
twelvedigits
I don't know who your advisers were, but there's an alarming trend in
tech/startups right now where anyone associated with a startup becomes
classified as a mentor. Some of the accelerator programs sprouting up have
some very speculative names as "mentors" -- people who just seem to have a few
years of experience, perhaps mid-level experience, who haven't built their own
company, haven't led their own go-to-market strategy, and whose advice on
product is no better than you'd get on any forum.
------
swombat
I'm not sure how this matches up with your previous article,
<http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-give-bullshit-advice> , that made the point:
"Don't tell an entrepreneur whether you think his idea will work. You don't
know. You have absolutely no idea."
Either you give advice about what doesn't work, or you don't... you can't do
both.
~~~
gamble
I'm not sure they conflict. The post you linked is about keeping an open mind
and offering advice on specifics, instead of just shutting someone down
because you think their idea isn't viable.
------
SamHo
As an advisor (on the giving side) and an entrepreneur (on the receiving side)
I totally agree with this.
It's tough because people are nice, but as an entrepreneur, I learn the most
from the negative advice I have gotten from mentors (I've been ripped apart
many times).
So now, when I give advice, I give my true honest opinion if I don't think
their idea will work. I just preface with it saying, look, this is only one
opinion, and not to take it personally.
And when I get ripped into, I always listen and ask questions, but I don't
necessarily let it discourage me.
I think you can always tell by people's expressions if they are holding back.
If you think they are, you should ask them: "It seems like you have some
reservations about this, what are some of the risks you see?"
With that, you'll be able to get more insight, and you just have to remember
that there's tons of risk, it's just up to you to decide how risky each
situation is (and how to mitigate that risk).
------
amandalim89
I totally agree. Advisers should be more like Asian parents. "Western" parents
(much like "Western" advisers) start with the premisse that their children's
self-esteem is fragile and therefore constantly try to reassure their children
about how good they are. While Asian parents start with the premisse that
their children's self-esteem will build up with improving performance hence
are consistently critical and pushing their kids to improve. here's a link to
different parenting styles - [http://proto-
knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/01/asian-vs-western...](http://proto-
knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/01/asian-vs-western-parenting-styles-and.html). I
think advisers might learn a thing or two about "parenting" startups from it
------
venturementors
I believe honesty is absolutely essential for a good mentoring relationship.
But it's sometimes counterproductive to be too blunt or too harsh. One way
mentors can help the entrepreneur without coming across as negative or
critical is to ONLY ASK QUESTIONS. Don't give advice. Don't lecture. Just ask
a series of good questions. More often than not, while answering one of those
questions the entrepreneur will have an aha moment on their own. Good
questions from a trusted mentor have provided many a helpful knock-up-side-
the-head for me -- without things getting adversarial or emotional.
------
ohashi
I've actually found it's quite hard to get negative feedback from most people.
I've literally heard one person shush another person who was trying to say
something negative about what I was building - when that was the exact
feedback I really wanted. I bet if I looked closely and in retrospect I could
figure out what people didn't like after it fails, but that doesn't help me
now, I wish people were more direct and honest.
------
sc68cal
I might be foolish, but being able to say that you were in intense
negotiations to have IBM acquire your app is still a HUGE deal.
Even if it was not successful, it is a great story and demonstrates great
potential. Congrats on your failure!
------
mbesto
I always ask people "what's wrong?" and "tell me what sucks about it?" or "why
won't you use it?". Positive feedback rarely spawns growth. Criticism and
negative feedback is PURE GOLD.
------
bradybd
As an advisor, this is tough advice to follow, but if you don't, you aren't
provided real value.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If you were as rich as Bruce Wayne, what would be your secret dream project? - jaylin
Maybe more realistic to ask: Hackers, if you won the $600M Mega Million jackpot, what would you hack after that?
======
killerbat00
Definitely the hologram like HUD/interactive display that Tony Stark has. I'd
spend most of the money on research and development, and attempt to write the
code myself. It could take me the rest of my life. In fact, that'd be
preferable! It's not like I'd have to work very often....
------
ajuc
I would buy worldwide copyright limit: 5 years and everything is public
domain. The same for software patents.
------
Arjay
Alright, everyone is thinking this but no one has mentioned it. I'd build
myself a girlfriend
------
katiepatrick
Something to gather the world's environmental data affordably.
------
jaylin
I want to build a more interactive web browser.
------
Arjay
build a killer robot for the tv show robot wars and make children cry as their
robots get obliterated
~~~
Arjay
And build a flying car
------
paulhauggis
A toilet made out of gold.
~~~
jaylin
c'mon hacker. That is what Austin Powers would want.
~~~
geoffrey1211
lol that's a must-have but no technical challenge
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Won't Use Rimuhosting - joao
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rimuhosting
======
SwellJoe
Several of our customers are hosted with Rimuhosting, and we've interacted
with them on a number of occasions because of that. In my experience they are
very responsive, knowledgeable, and helpful. That's not to say this isn't a
pretty irritating set of events...and silently shutting down Apache shouldn't
be anyone's first instinct.
But, I've had bad experiences with literally every single host I've ever used
(dozens of them), and the longer you stay with a provider, the more likely you
are to find a tech having a bad day, or their network fiber getting cut by the
utility company, or various other demonstrations of man's fallibility.
I think the good probably still outweighs the bad with Rimuhosting...as Aaron
mentioned, they do have a good reputation among many people who ought to know.
The horror stories I hear about _really_ bad hosts leave this event in the
dust in terms of sheer stupidity and lack of good intentions. If this is the
worst you've ever experienced with a hosting provider, count yourself very,
very lucky. The data loss stories I've heard, in particular, are enough to
keep me awake at night.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'll mention that Rimuhosting is a
customer of ours (along with thousands of others). So, if you reckon a
commercial relationship worth a few hundred bucks a year would sway my
opinions, feel free to take this comment with a grain of salt or not at all.
~~~
apotheon
Gaining root in such an underhanded manner against the client's wishes is
bordering on criminal behavior. It doesn't get much worse than that.
Of course, I write about security professionally. Maybe I have a different
perspective on what constitutes unacceptable behavior than you have.
~~~
SwellJoe
_Gaining root in such an underhanded manner against the client's wishes is
bordering on criminal behavior._
No. Not even close. Rimuhosting owns the box in question. You can't possibly
break into your own box.
_Of course, I write about security professionally. Maybe I have a different
perspective on what constitutes unacceptable behavior than you have._
I work in the hosting industry professionally. I've never been or worked at a
service provider, but I've worked for the industry for 12 years as a vendor.
As a security professional, perhaps you can take the other side's view for a
moment...
What would you, as a security professional who was dumped into the role of
running a hosting data center, do when a box on your network (which has
thousands of other boxes) has been rooted and is sending out spam at a rate of
a million messages per day, even if you _know_ that your paying customer is
not responsible for sending those messages? This much traffic is impacting
network performance for others, is spewing filth into the mailboxes of
innocent people all over the world, and your customer is unable to stop it or
cannot be reached in a reasonable time frame. What do you believe your
responsibility would be in such a case?
How about if it is (innocently) DoSing other systems on the network? This
happens a lot more than you'd think.
Many people here are suggesting that simply applying resource limits would
solve this problem...but that exhibits a lack of understanding of how such
resource limits work, and the likely end result for the customer of such
resource limiting in the event something has gone wrong. To the customer, a
limit on resource usage could very well also result in services becoming
unavailable. If you cap CPU at 10%, and your website gets enough traffic to
need 90% of the CPU, you'll only be able to serve a small percentage of your
clients (and they will wait a long time). The same is true of nearly every
resource limit in a hosting environment. If you are using more than your fair
share (which I know Aaron has explained he was not; again, probably poor
judgment and problem assessment on the part of the tech) then when the limits
are imposed, you will be "turned off" for some of your users. You needed those
resources to serve all of your requests...you don't have those resources
anymore, so you can't serve all of those requests anymore, or if you do, you
do so very slowly.
As programmers, you all know there are no silver bullet for solving hard,
complex problems. Resource usage in a virtualized environment with untrusted
users is a hard, complex problem. No amount of hand-waving about your "rights"
makes that less true.
~~~
apotheon
> No. Not even close. Rimuhosting owns the box in question. You can't possibly
> break into your own box.
I don't think you're familiar with the common uses of "bordering on".
> What would you, as a security professional who was dumped into the role of
> running a hosting data center, do when a box on your network (which has
> thousands of other boxes) has been rooted and is sending out spam at a rate
> of a million messages per day, even if you know that your paying customer is
> not responsible for sending those messages?
I'd stop the server _without_ gaining root against the client's wishes,
immediately inform the client, and try to get things cleaned up to everyone's
satisfaction (except the security cracker who rooted the box, of course). I
_wouldn't_ gain root on the box in violation of the client's obvious wishes,
particularly after articulating specific policy saying that you can remove my
initial root access to the box if you like, and shut down specific services
that are making my life difficult for reasons entirely unrelated to the
client's running of the site, then send an email later pointing out my policy
that fails to mention I might do this.
Privacy is security, after all:
<http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=293>
Nothing you say in your hypothetical examples in any way justifies _accessing
the customer's data_ , particularly by _breaking in_ to the system. Shut it
down? Sure, if circumstances call for that. Start meddling with server
configuration and establish what amounts to a rootkit on the system (in
effect, if not in technical truth) without the client's permission? That's
just shady.
> No amount of hand-waving about your "rights" makes that less true.
Perhaps you should stop waving your hands about that straw man, then.
~~~
SwellJoe
_I don't think you're familiar with the common uses of "bordering on"._
I'll promise to read up on it, if you'll learn the meaning of "not even
close".
_Nothing you say in your hypothetical examples in any way justifies accessing
the customer's data, particularly by breaking in to the system. Shut it down?
Sure, if circumstances call for that. Start meddling with server configuration
and establish what amounts to a rootkit on the system (in effect, if not in
technical truth) without the client's permission? That's just shady._
I will merely mention that most hosting provider customers not only accept
this kind of thing, they _demand_ it. If you spend a little time on web
hosting forums (as I must because it is my industry) you will notice a very
strong tendency for complaints to be system administration related. The
customer expected _more_ involvement than the hosting provider offered, and
thus things went horribly awry.
I agree with you, _entirely_ , that if you ask the host to never login to your
system, they should respect that wish. But, I can also state without
hesitation that you and I (and most people here at HN) are thoroughly in the
minority in wanting our hosting provider to never login to our hosting
systems. The default mode for hosting providers is to drop in on the box
within a couple of comments in their ticketing system...if it can't be solved
with one or two replies, then it's safest to simply drop in and fix it. For
most hosting customers this is not an invasion of privacy or "breaking in", it
is "great support".
Finally, as a security professional, I'm sure you're also aware that with
access to the hardware, your host _has_ root all the time. There is nothing
you or I can do about it. Even more interestingly, the host also has the
ability to login, poke around, and _never tell you about it_ (and not leave a
trail...just boot up a live CD, mount up the disk read only, and poke around
til their heart's content). Also nothing you or I can do about that. With
someone else having access to the hardware, you have nothing but good faith on
the part of the hosting provider.
~~~
apotheon
> I'll promise to read up on it, if you'll learn the meaning of "not even
> close".
I don't see how "I know you are, but what am I?" is a very strong argument.
> I will merely mention that most hosting provider customers not only accept
> this kind of thing, they _demand_ it.
Give it to customers who want it. Don't ask someone if he wants it, get a "no"
answer, then turn around and do it anyway. The former is good customer
service. The latter is shady and underhanded.
> The default mode for hosting providers is to drop in on the box within a
> couple of comments in their ticketing system...if it can't be solved with
> one or two replies, then it's safest to simply drop in and fix it. For most
> hosting customers this is not an invasion of privacy or "breaking in", it is
> "great support".
Most hosting customers don't have explicit suggestions from the host that if
they don't want the hosting provider logging in to the system they can remove
their SSH keys -- and, more to the point, most hosting customers don't do that
then find out the hosting provider's support personnel have been rooting
around (pardon the pun) in their data anyway.
It's "breaking in" in this case _only_ because the SSH key for access was
removed, with the hosting provider's blessing, and they basically leveraged a
local access vulnerability to give themselves root access.
If the hosting provider had a policy that forbade customers from obstructing
host administrators from logging in to the machine, articulated in the terms
and conditions of use, I'd say go for it -- but that's not the situation in
this case _at all_.
> Finally, as a security professional, I'm sure you're also aware that with
> access to the hardware, your host has root all the time.
In principle, sure -- but when there's a clearly encouraged expectation of
privacy, it's _really_ bad form to break in to the system against the
customer's wishes by virtue of having access to the hardware. That's a
betrayal of trust.
> Even more interestingly, the host also has the ability to login, poke
> around, and never tell you about it (and not leave a trail...just boot up a
> live CD, mount up the disk read only, and poke around til their heart's
> content).
Indeed. The fact it wasn't kept secret in this case just shows how little they
value the customer's request that they don't log in to the system with root
privileges and muck about with the customer's data. I didn't say they were
necessarily _malicious_ about it -- but that doesn't mean it's not _bad_.
> With someone else having access to the hardware, you have nothing but good
> faith on the part of the hosting provider.
. . . or, in this case, bad faith.
------
Maro
Something similar happened to us a few days ago on our RimuHosting VPS. A
Python script was eating ~80% of the VPS CPU, so their tech guy, without
asking us, tries to login as root to our box (WTF?). He fails, so he responds
by rebooting our VPS, thus (?) causing some disk corruption, which he then
tries to repair. Then, after-the-fact, he writes us a very confused email
about the whole story.
Needless to say, we're moving away from RimuHosting. This is unacceptable.
An excerpt:
"I noticed your VPS was using a lot of CPU. I was not able to log in there,
and on the console I saw lots of out-of-memory messages.
I restarted the VPS to make sure it was running in a sane state. I checked the
console after a reboot and saw an error indicating some filesystem corruption.
I stopepd it again and repaired that. Then replaced the /etc/inittab file
which appeared to be corrupted. Now I see that has booted fine."
------
sho
This article reminds me of Hard Disks. Talk to any "PC fan" and they'll regale
you with a story of how they will never, ever use $HD_BRAND after it crashed
and lost all their data. Thing is, the brand changes depending on who you talk
to. And a real professional will tell you that all the brands have similar
failure rates, not to put your faith in any hardware, and advise you on a RAID
and backup strategy.
Same here. I know people who use rimuhosting, they seem happy enough. I use
Linode personally but have no real preference. This article smacks of a one-
off bad experience which could happen anywhere - and doesn't even seem that
bad. It's a VPS, for christ's sake, if you don't like it get a dedi or even
better a colo.
~~~
apotheon
The reason I don't use consumer-grade Western Digital drives has nothing to do
with a specific drive failure event, and everything to do with the fact that
consumer-grade drives from WD are basically factory seconds of WD's
enterprise-grade drives.
~~~
Confusion
Which is exactly the kind of story that gets perpetuated over and over again,
with different $brand's substituted. It doesn't even make sense: what
criterion is used to seperate 'enterprise' from 'consumer'? They can't
possibly test every drive (too expensive) and if they watch production
parameters and decide based on those, chances are that most consumer drives
are 'enterprise' as well. I find stories like these extremely implausible.
~~~
apotheon
A nontrivial percentage of the "consumer" grade drives (basically, the stuff
you can get at Best Buy) were actually manufactured as higher-capacity drives
for the premium line (I forget the model line term WD uses at the moment) but
had bad sectors coming off the line. They marked off those sectors, rounded
down, low-level formatted so it only reported the "new" size, and sold them as
lower capacity drives for retail consumer sales. Is that a more helpfully
precise explanation?
~~~
Confusion
That explanation still leaves some questions open, like: is there a reason to
suppose that a drive with 'bad sectors coming off the line' actually has a
higher expected failure rate? Or is it actually more like what happens with
CPU's, where a batch may 'fail', but will still yield CPU that can be sold as
'lower' CPU's than the batch was originally supposed to deliver.
Marking something 'enterprise' grade is often a placebo and has more to do
with service, contracts and well-marketed expectations than with actual
differences in the goods involved.
~~~
apotheon
> is there a reason to suppose that a drive with 'bad sectors coming off the
> line' actually has a higher expected failure rate?
If it doesn't hurt me to choose a different brand or a different model line,
the more relevant question becomes "Is there sufficient reason to believe that
a drive with 'bad sectors coming off the line' _doesn't_ have a higher
_actual_ failure rate?" It's better to be safe than sorry, as they say, and my
experience is that once a drive starts degrading, it keeps degrading.
The reason CPUs can often be sold at a lower capacity than originally intended
without worrying about an increased likelihood of later failure is because
transistors are discrete devices; if half of them fail, as long as the rest
can still be accessed, you just have a CPU with the same architecture and half
the transistors. On a hard drive, however, permanently hosed sectors represent
actual problems on _part of_ a single discrete device -- the hard drive
platter -- and it's entirely possible that the rest of the device may be
affected by this. Magnetic areas on a platter are quite so distinctly
segregated as transistors on a chip.
> Marking something 'enterprise' grade is often a placebo and has more to do
> with service, contracts and well-marketed expectations than with actual
> differences in the goods involved.
True -- but when you explicitly use drives that have failed the quality
control required for "enterprise" drives as your retail consumer grade drives,
that kinda changes the landscape a bit.
------
edgeztv
In my 2+ years hosting typeracer.com with Rimu, they have been absolutely
outstanding. All my questions, no matter how complex, were answered within
10-30 minutes. Hundreds of times. Anything I've asked them they did. They
installed all kinds of packages and performed configurations I requested, all
for free and without hesitation. And I'm not a premium customer by any
stretch. I only have 2 quarter-VPS instances with them for about $200 a month.
In the 2 years I only experienced 20 minutes of downtime recently due to a
one-time network hardware upgrade (1 week's advance notice was given - a bit
short but forgivable) and another 20 minutes due to a DDoS on their network
about 6 months ago (which most likely prompted this recent hardware upgrade
:).
I really hope people don't jump to conclusions from a single data point
(aaronsw). I would recommend RimuHosting to everyone I know without
hesitation.
------
olihb
I'm with Rimuhosting since forever.
Their support is unbeatable. Many times they helped me(I'm a dev. not a sys.
admin.) for free where other companies would have charged me.
I agree that adding their key on the VPS without talking to you sucks but
having a 100% utilisation of your CPU is a bit egoist. That means that nobody
on the host machine can burst their share for a quick high-cpu job.
If you want total control over your machine, get a dedicated box. Even then,
some hosters demand root access on your box.
~~~
tdavis
_nobody on the host machine can burst their share for a quick high-cpu job_
That only makes sense if there is only one other VM on the machine. Which is
basically never the case.
EDIT: Or they use a pedestrian virtualization layer.
~~~
olihb
I'm not sure I understand.
If there are 8 VPS on a machine and I'm always using 1/8 of CPU time, nobody
else can't have access to this 1/8 share. I know that 1/8 of the CPU share
"belongs" to me but it's a shared box and it's just being a good neighbour. I
appreciate it when I need to run a quick high-cpu on my VPS and I can use more
than my 1/8 share of CPU.
~~~
jonknee
You'd need seven "bad" neighbors for this to be the case.
~~~
olihb
You're right but in this case the user is a freeloader.
He can use more than his 1/8 share of CPU time but others can't use his 1/8
share.
~~~
tdavis
Who cares? He should only be using the other 7/8s when nobody else is; that's
the entire point. If their virtualization isn't setup to keep people from
bogarting resources on a "first come, first keep" basis, that is their poor
decision to live with; they shouldn't be taking it out on customers by killing
processes and so on.
A VPS host shouldn't be asking or telling customers to manage their own CPU
resources, period; that's the point of a VPS in the first place. It's a
virtual _private server_. It _should_ be isolated in a fashion such that even
if I'm using 100% CPU 24/7, it doesn't affect anybody else. If a host told me
to "use less CPU" I'd tell them to "acquire better virtualization" and find a
better host. Ridiculous.
~~~
olihb
I agree but you should not be using a VPS if you are a high CPU user. You use
a dedicated server for that.
Most shared providers will charge you more if you use more CPU or require that
you upgrade to a dedicated server. I'm pretty sure that any hosting company
will be happy to lose you as a customer if your usage degrades the other users
performance.
~~~
jonknee
Being able to use up to your share of a VPS is why you pay for a VPS and not
shared hosting. If you pay for 1/8th of a server you are entitled to use 100%
of that quota 24/7/365. Using your resources doesn't "degrade" other
customers' performance unless the server is set up incorrectly. As long as
they can access their 1/8th everyone should be happy.
------
neilc
_They ... offered to take a look at the problem if I gave them root on the
box. “Over my dead body,” I thought_
That seems a little silly to me. If they control the hardware, they basically
have root already. They shouldn't _need_ root to investigate the alleged
problem, of course, but the level of trust you need to grant your VPS provider
is essentially the same as giving them root.
~~~
aaronsw
Technically the police can break down my door too, but that doesn't mean that
I'm going to trust them with a key. There are both social reasons (a key is an
invitation) and technical (it's much more noticeable if they break down the
door).
~~~
brk
Yes, but in this case they weren't breaking down your door (at least not yet
anyway). They were asking for a key for entry in order to assist you.
You could have most likely also given them an account and appropriate sudoer
rights.
~~~
aaronsw
Did you read the article? They edited my partition to add their key to my
authorized_keys, logged in with it, and turned off my webserver. Whatever that
is, it's not asking to assist me.
~~~
sho
You make it sound more difficult than it is. In other words, they mounted your
partition, cat mykey.txt > authorized_keys, then ssh'd in and shut down your
misbehaving app. They probably have a script for it since I bet it happens all
the time.
You're dangerously close to whining, did you know.
~~~
_pius
_You make it sound more difficult than it is._
Hmm. I'm sorry, but I don't see how this matters at all Sho. Do the ethics
change based on whether you have a rootkit or you do everything by hand?
~~~
sho
Ethics? Ethics don't enter into it, this is pure business necessity. Fact is,
a $20/month VPS account has no rights and if it causes trouble it will be shut
down, simple as that.
Pay $250/month for an account at Rackspace (or whoever) and you will be
treated very differently.
~~~
SwellJoe
_Pay $250/month for an account at Rackspace (or whoever) and you will be
treated very differently._
Actually, the reason you pay $250 (more, probably) at Rackspace, is _because_
they will login to your box on a regular basis to "manage" things. Rackspace
is focused on "managed hosting"; they help you administer your system, which
is why people pay a big premium for it. Most hosting customers have no idea
what they're doing, and they need a lot of hand-holding, and a "grownup" to
make sure things stay sane on their systems.
~~~
sho
True. A rackspace account is more like $450 for a single server. They keep
their prices secret for a reason.
------
mark_l_watson
I have been using RimuHosting for my own projects and for customers for test
deployments for years - so far I have had good experiences with them. They did
complain once that I was using too much CPU, but I checked, and found problems
(my fault) with a Merb deployment).
------
shabda
In a way, isn't this a reason to use Rimuhosting. They obviously care about
their customers enough, to proactively monitor and step in that everyone gets
a fair CPU share.
~~~
aaronsw
As I note in the article, they already had placed a CPU cap on me. They could
have lowered it to whatever my fair share is instead of breaking into my box
and turning off my webserver.
~~~
blasdel
It would have made a lot more sense for them to just pause your VPS.
------
blhack
Would you mind posting what the offending CGI was doing? If you coded up your
index.cgi to walk all over the CPU as badly as it sounds like you did,
something was probably very _very_ wrong.
That said, they were absolutely in the right to do this (except that they
should have notified you first...).
I saw that you (or somebody) used the analogy of a landlord and an apartment.
Let's explore that further...
Say you are renting an apartment, and the landlord doesn't charge you anything
for water (which is pretty common, if not standard). Now, there is a bit of a
gentlemen's agreement here. Yes, you have "unlimited" water but, like
everything else in life, this needs to have the words "within reason" appended
to it.
Now lets say that, for some reason, your apartment was using 10x as much water
as everybody else in the building...so much so, in fact, that nobody else in
the building could reliably get _any_ water.
Your landlord calls you and says "Hey, joao, would you mind cutting the water
back, please? You're kindof using too much", which you ignore.
A couple of months later, again, the landlord calls
"Hey, Joao, you're still using a shit-load of water, and your sortof hogging
it all. Some of the other tenants are complaining...if you want, leave a key
to your place in the office and we'll go check it out!"
Which you respond "over my dead body".
So, finally, after months and months of you hogging the water, they just use
the master key to the building to go into your apartment, where they see that
you've had the shower, the sink, and the toilet all running _constantly_ for
the last 4 months. They shut them off, then call you
"Hey, joao, yeah, we noticed that you pretty royally messed up and kindof left
EVERYTHING in the bathroom on at the same time. Not cool...so we shut it off.
Sorry for the inconveinience. BTW, sorry for having to go into your appt. like
that, but the other tenants were complaining. Here are some instructions so
that you can change the lock on your door an keep us from being able to help
you like this in the future. Have a nice day!"
And your response to ignoring their totally legitimate requests for you to
stop hogging all the resources is "WHAT A BUNCH OF PRICKS!!"
I think somebody needs to calm down and take a step back from the situation.
~~~
pyre
Great analogy, but you missed the point. (Great analogy because I can still
use it to demonstrate the point) I would be pretty pissed if my landlord use
the master key to access my apartment _when he had a valve in the utility
closet to just shut-off all water to my apartment_.
These are VPSes here. They can just pause the entire VPS instance, or further
cap the CPU usage from what they had already capped it at.
~~~
blhack
Hooray for this analogy! Sadly, you didn't really use it correctly :(.
Pausing the VPS instance would have been like locking them out of the
apartment completely...
I would much rather have a landlord come into my apartment to turn my faucet
off (keep in mind: after I ignored her requests to for MONTHS) than lock me
out of it completely.
~~~
pyre
You missed the 'or further limit his CPU share' part. The entire point was
that they had options to limit his affect on other users without directly
accessing his instance.
In this case, they also have given the users the option of the 'master key.'
Their ssh key is in the authorized_keys file by default, but the users are
allowed to removed it. To me that is a statement to Rimuhosting that this
customer would prefer that they did not access his VPS directly.
------
robertduncan
Am I the only one thinking that Rimuhosting is a rather unfortunate name?
~~~
helveticaman
Fanatical service, man.
------
callmeed
Couldn't agree more. I got a VPS from them after asking HN for VPS
recommendations in Europe.
Had issues from the start. The setup wasn't what I ordered. Once it was setup
properly, I started getting alerts from their staff that my VPS's resources
were spiking– _but this was before I had even logged into the system and done
anything_. That didn't do much for my confidence in their operation.
Anyway, I canceled with them and will probably use Rackspace as they have
UK/European data centers.
------
tszyn
I signed up with RimuHosting a few months ago, since everyone was raving about
their competent and responsive support. So far it has been a mixed bag for me.
They offered to set up some services for me when I was signing up (a
monitoring service and a pop3 server). Whoever was setting these up did a
horrible job; I'm talking about basic mistakes in the config files that
prevented these services from even working. So I would not trust RimuHosting
to set up anything on my server.
On the other hand, when I experienced weird routing problems between my
machine and my home, Rimu eventually offered to move me to a more expensive
London VPS at the same price, even though the dropped packets were not their
fault. So they are willing to go out of their way to make a customer happy.
As I said, a mixed bag. I'm not planning on changing hosts anytime soon.
------
mattculbreth
I've used Future Hosting <http://www.futurehosting.com/> for a few years now,
with two different VPS instances for $30/month each. Never had a problem, and
if they did something like this I'd be shocked.
------
pbhjpbhj
It can't be left unsaid: I assumed (no pun intended) this was a joke posting
when I first saw it, seriously "Rim You Hosting"??!
------
mleonhard
I've had good service from Linode for nearly 2 years:
[http://www.linode.com/?r=73dc8f5748a14c821e64febc5e461a606f6...](http://www.linode.com/?r=73dc8f5748a14c821e64febc5e461a606f6bf7b1)
~~~
chollida1
was the referral link really necessary?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Porn Sites Feel Exposed by Flash, Get It on with HTML5 - nzp
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/porn-sites-feel-exposed-by-flash-get-it-on-with-html5
======
tekheletknight
You can always trust Vice to keep this industry covered.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“How News Feed Works” Nothing New, but It's Important - willianfaraujo
http://firedoglake.com/2015/03/26/facebook-to-use-metadata-from-chats-to-alter-news-feed/
======
sgwealti
I wish I could get a reverse chronological list of news of everyone I am
connected to on Facebook that I haven't unfollowed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zynga Tried To Kill A Cute iOS Game One Ex-OMGPOP Dev Made For His Wife [Evil] - coloradogiant
http://www.cultofmac.com/156508/zynga-tried-to-kill-a-cute-ios-game-one-ex-omgpop-dev-made-for-his-wife-evil/
======
asmosoinio
No they did not:
[http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga_Why...](http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga_Why_I_opted_out_of_the_210M_Omgpop_buy.php)
\--- \- I was not directly asked to give up control of my indie game. I was
only asked to sign a job offer -- which might have that legal consequence. (If
this seems like a flimsy point over which to worry so much, ask yourself: if
you were asked to sign a document that might mean that you lost custody of
your child, with no assurances otherwise -- would you do so? I don't have a
child, I have Connectrode.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do we really live longer than our ancestors? - sea6ear
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity
======
apo
_Our maximum lifespan may not have changed much, if at all. But that’s not to
delegitimise the extraordinary advances of the last few decades which have
helped so many more people reach that maximum lifespan, and live healthier
lives overall._
The benefits of some of those advances are questionable at best. Those who
have visited a nursing home may know what I'm talking about.
Spending the last decade of your life commuting to doctor's offices (or
bedridden) ain't no picnic, nor is rotting away in a forgotten corner of a
human warehouse.
The quality of life position has always intrigued me for this reason.
Sometimes what technology giveth with one hand, society taketh away with the
other.
~~~
mikekchar
On the other hand, because I live in rural Japan and am only really friends
with the people who live near me, almost all of my friends are over 70 (I'm
50). While this is of course selection bias (as well as being anecdotal),
people I associate with don't end up in nursing homes -- at least long term. A
quick google search tells me that only between 2 and 5% of people over 65 live
in nursing homes and that jives pretty well with my experience. Most people
seem to live pretty well until a year or so before they die, and then they
essentially fall off a cliff.
My wife's aunt passed away last year from some kind of brain issue (I never
did figure out exactly what the problem was -- lack of vocabulary). She was in
and out of the hospital for about 3 months and while distressing, I think she
very much appreciated being alive in those 3 months. After that she
essentially ended up in a kind of semi-coma where she was awake for maybe an
hour a day -- and she was in a nursing home. After another 5 months or so she
passed away. I don't know if she got much value from those 5 months, but I
know her husband definitely was able to use the time to come to grips with the
reality of the situation. Again, just an anecdote, but I think it's
illustrative of the complexity of the situation.
Anyway, I think most people can look forward to enjoying their old age. Of
course it makes a big difference if you look after your body when you are
young and it is _much_ easier to do so.
~~~
coldtea
> _On the other hand, because I live in rural Japan and am only really friends
> with the people who live near me, almost all of my friends are over 70 (I 'm
> 50). While this is of course selection bias (as well as being anecdotal),
> people I associate with don't end up in nursing homes -- at least long
> term._
That's not what selection bias is -- that's just an accurate reporting of what
you see around you. It would be selection bias if you additionally claimed
that this must be the case elsewhere too.
~~~
mikekchar
I just mean that I don't hang out in nursing homes, so all of the 70+ people I
know are those who aren't in nursing homes. This may cause me to believe that
older people don't normally live in nursing homes. Probably I could have
explained that better :-)
------
sandworm101
Be careful when reading about the age "40" and "80" in some ancient cultures.
"40" used to be a term for "many", as we might say "millions" when we really
mean "a great many". Mohammed was 40 when he received god's message. Ali Baba
had his 40 thieves. Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years. The Noah
suffered 40 days and nights of rain. There is a famous story in Islam of a
woman being stung by a scorpion 40 times while at prayer. So a tale of a woman
being 80 years old, a suspicious doubling of 40, should probably be read to
say that she was very very old rather than literally eighty.
~~~
mamcx
This sound incredible unbelievable. Also, all the cultures across centuries
use the same idea?
Exist many samples of the use of numbers in the thousands, btw..
~~~
kmm
Mohammed, the people who told the story of Ali Baba and the ancient Jews all
spoke Semitic languages. As with a lot of metaphors, it might have come with
the language. Like how early Indo-European cultures had patrilocality and sky
gods
~~~
int_19h
Things like these can jump across language and culture boundaries easily, too.
In Russian, there's a fairly obvious pattern to numerals like 20, 30, 50, 60,
70, 80, 90. It's not super consistent, but you can easily pick each of those
apart and see that it references the corresponding digit, plus some variation
of "ten".
Note that I didn't list 40. That's because it's special - it has its own word
for it, that is completely unrelated to the word for 4 or any other number.
Its etymology is contested, but it's certain that it was already special many
centuries back, and used to count things (in groups of 40). And then you have
archaic idioms like "forty forties", which basically means "hell of a lot".
Of course, it can well just be convergent evolution - there's only so many
round numbers. And then if you pick one as the standard size of the group for
counting, and it's large enough, then a square of that number is also a fairly
natural choice for "many". But identical choices in other cultures might give
the initial push, or reinforce one of the early roughly equal candidates.
------
martin-adams
I've always been frustrated by these figures because life expectancy has gone
up due to reducing infant mortality. It doesn't mean our lifestyle has made
humans live longer.
It would appear that a more useful metric is number of centenarians per
million. On the 1.1.1960, England & Wales had 11.6 centenarians per million.
On the 1.1.1990 this increased to 76.3 centenarians per million.[1]
Another way to look at it is the risk of death for a given age tracked over
time.[2] If you were 60 years old in 1900, would you have a higher risk of
death compared to 2000?
[1]
[https://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/Books/Monograph2/search.htm](https://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/Books/Monograph2/search.htm)
[2]
[http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html](http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html)
~~~
MarkMc
You may find this graph useful: [https://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/Life-e...](https://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png)
It suggests that life expectancy has gone up sinificantly for all age groups,
not just life expectancy at birth.
~~~
883771773929
Here's the methods protocol [0] for designing version 6 of the Human Mortality
Database being visualized at that link.
Notice how I explicity said the word _designing_ and not something like
'calculating' which would misleadingly characterize such a scheme as something
that is objectively derivable from verifiable information with valid
uncertainty bounds and without the potential for advocating policy with
dubious constructed data.
If you've ever thought p-hacking was a riot in academia's social sciences
bullshitting, wait until you read through stuff like this with think-tanks
coming up with whatever numbers are necessary to justify a policy to secure
more funding to shroud misinformation in a thin veil of perceived scientific
validity to people who feel comforted if you just put on a white coat. Not
only does it go through "careful rexaminations" of methodology with new
versions every year tweaking subtle but fundamental things like "we used to
assume uniform distributions of births across the entire year on v.5 and as of
v.6 now we decided to assume a proprietary non-uniform distribution that
flucuates per year (and our policy objectives...) because there were wars that
changed reproductive strategies that we conveniently forgot to account for
that last year and the error cascades through to every successive year's death
risk. Stay tuned for v.7!"
On top of that and pretty much a direct consequence of this so called
'research' being complete bollocks, is that none of this junk is ever peer-
reviewed. Couldn't even clear that hurdle.
Sorry to ruin your parade but the statistics accessible via think-tanks and
public governments are a complete fabrication. Want to see actual life
expectancy tables? You need to buyout a multi-national insurance conglomerate
that has survived the test of time with financial crises and political cycles,
peeking into actuary tables without the gimmicks of literal data engineering.
I highly doubt you, nor anyone here, would ever get close to these secrets.
And even then, the usual business model of such corporations that can attain
that large of a risk pool and _could_ identify these stats are usually
incentivized to profit from regulatory capture rather than the public-face
tagline of accurately predicting the likelihood of risk to perfectly balance
premiums against claims and extract profit from investing on the float.
[0]
[https://www.mortality.org/Public/Docs/MethodsProtocol.pdf](https://www.mortality.org/Public/Docs/MethodsProtocol.pdf)
~~~
coldtea
Think tanks and political organizations (including government bodies, the UN
and such) are more in the business of selling numbers, than reflecting reality
accurately.
The problem is that most others don't have access to the infrastructure and
raw data to get accurate numbers themselves (or redo the data collection with
better methodology).
~~~
883771773929
I don't have the link right now, but one of my favorite tales is a group of
traders who called the bluff of both a pervasive incumbent government spouting
all kinds of GDP fudging nonsense around the election cycle and a sprawling
company who tends to work closely with and aggressively court rusted towns
down on their luck as a source of cheap labor with dependent customers who are
forced to rely on conditional subsidies that serve to keep labor in line
during a growth hacking period to monopolize and export the company-town model
requiring more negotiating leverage by leading shareholders with over-
optimistic revenue guidance.
Of course, the story is more of a feel-good rationalization of fickle lottery
tickets, due to the realism of "the market can be irrational longer than you
can remain solvent" even if you're correct and especially due to the
incentives involved to keep the insanity going as long as possible, bail out
insiders, and conveniently backtrack on contracts due to concerns that
actually losing money as a counter-party is not acceptable for the entrenched
interests because the boogeyman of contagion would spread as the house of
cards comes collapsing down with highly leveraged banks and pension funds
unwinding the horrible bets they made that were rationalized by a feeling of
untouchability when cozzying up with politicians.
But the details of the story are more interesting in that the methods used,
such as realtime satellite based photography to more accurately estimate sales
are definitely out of the current realm of accessible infrastructure and data
collection methods for mere mortals who know in the back of their mind the
stats are a ruse but can't possibly prove it.
------
poulsbohemian
Anecdata: I can trace my maternal family tree back approximately 600 years,
with records also available for a number of siblings, cousins, etc - so pretty
robust data. It's obvious when a flu or similar came through, because you'll
notice a number of clustered, young deaths. Meanwhile, those that survive into
adulthood were living 70-90 years, and in my direct line generally on the long
end of that. This would appear to line up with our genetic markers as well
(thanks 23andMe). In my ex's family, genetically there is a clear propensity
for cancer, so many deaths in the 50-60 range.
So, what's my point on all this? My own anecdata tells me:
1) Eat real food, like those long-lived ancestors. 2) Move / exercise. Most of
them were physically active farmers, while I sit here coding away at a desk.
3) Hope you don't have any obvious genetic markers for cancer, heart disease,
etc. 4) Be thankful for modern sanitation and immunization! Get your shots,
including flu shots!
~~~
austinjp
While I generally agree with (2), and (1) is likely right for the wrong
reasons, it's (3) and (4) that are the real trump cards. Mainly (3).
~~~
883771773929
If any of those, (3) is the red herring. Your genetic markers are not write-
once-at-gamete-recombination / read-only-at-every-transcription. The genetic
code humans have includes many graceful degradation mechanisms that allow for
plasticity in widely varying conditions. Many 'code sequences' are actually
selected by the environment throughout an individual organism's life and the
resulting signaling pathways can amplify or suppress various fallback modes.
There's a lot of these scenarios that are well documented, anything from the
loosely defined and often poorly understood epigenetics processes, but also
the signaling regulation of cell growth and death, resulting changes with
hormesis, acclimatization, availability/scarcity of nutrients, hormones,
pharmaceuticals, viruses, and even mental state.
(1) is typically the largest factor of all that listed, with experiments
showing repeatedly that 'genetic markers' specifying risk for heart disease,
cancer, etc all vastly improve with a reduction of excess body fat and
elimination of recreational drug usage such as excessive alcohol and
cigarettes.
And as for (4), definitely a trump card is not taking a dump in your drinking
water supply without reasonable recycling treatment. Many people tend to
associate the medical industry as responsible for the supposed improved living
conditions of modern developed countries. However, if you look at the repeated
succession stages of colonialization throughout the past several hundred
years, it's obvious that when people in underdeveloped countries stop shitting
in their food and water, illness and resulting death plummet until a few
generations later when economically enforced diets and 'sensible medical care'
are in full effect leading to a rebound of misery.
~~~
dennis_jeeves
Hi 883771773929, I noticed your posts. It chimes in with what I understand.
You seem to be an objective and intelligent guy. I’m always interested in
groups/individuals that may further my own ability to survive in this nutty
world. So care to share your email, and/or the groups ( online or otherwise)
that you think is worthy of attention, with me? Email is on my profile.
------
philipkglass
People who didn't die of violence, hunger, infectious diseases, accidents, or
complications of child bearing could expect roughly as much remaining life
span as adults as adults expect today. When you strike those caveats and look
at every human born on Earth: yes, people really do live significantly longer
now. Whether or not you find this surprising depends on how much you already
knew about leading causes of death in centuries past.
~~~
NeedMoreTea
The highest mortality was in the first five years of course. Take that out of
the comparison and the figures change surprisingly.
Once you got past that, and assuming you didn't get dragged off to war or
succumb to some sort of pestilence, life span wasn't so different.
Which makes watching or reading period fiction frustrating when they treat a
40 year old as we might an 80 year old. We live longer, but we sure don't age
at half speed.
~~~
philipkglass
I haven't encountered period fiction where a 40 year old is treated like an 80
year old, but that would grate on me too.
There was still a significantly lowered life expectancy in adulthood due to
disease, hunger, violence, childbearing, accidents.
See for example John Graunt's life table of Tudor period Londoners:
[http://www.stat.rice.edu/stat/FACULTY/courses/stat431/Graunt...](http://www.stat.rice.edu/stat/FACULTY/courses/stat431/Graunt.pdf)
Only 25% (!) of Londoners survived until age 27. More than a third of adults
who lived to 27 died before age 37. In modern London you can neglect
pestilence as almost a rounding error within overall life expectancy, but in
some ages of London-past pestilence was the dominant term.
~~~
sharkmerry
But this is data analyzed in 1661, gathered 127 years prior. so its 1 data
point from 1 year, tough to make an accurate call on it as variance would be
ridiculously high right?
I also did not see any data on sample size, etc.
this seems to say life expectancy was ~50 years if you reached 21.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=T4DLK7zLxYMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...](https://books.google.com/books?id=T4DLK7zLxYMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q&f=false)
graunts life table says 33% chance of living to 21. 8.8% of living to 50.
Shouldnt it be closer to 16%? if average is 50, means 50% beyond, 50% short.
so 50% of 33% would be 16.5%? perhaps Im looking at this wrong
~~~
philipkglass
That table is for aristocrats only. It contains only men. The table also
excludes "those who had died by accidents, violence, poison, or in battle."
Admittedly, Tudor England was not a very urbanized society, so looking at
Londoners alone is also unrepresentative of the whole nation. I think it is at
least a bit broader than 52 noble men who managed not to die of accidents or
violence.
EDIT: a page later in your source, it also notes "These rates [of death for
women] are very high by modern standards... In the 16th and 17th centuries,
11.3% of fertile women died from complications of childbearing."
~~~
sharkmerry
Does Graunt state his sample size? or provide the datasource?
I cant find it. seems odd to dismiss the data i provided based on sample size
when his data is not even avail for scrutiny.
> In the 16th and 17th centuries, 11.3% of fertile women died from
> complications of childbearing."
great, what was the average age of a woman at childbirth? We're discussing
mortality after 21 right?
~~~
philipkglass
According to Graunt's own account, he used London's bills of mortality (weekly
records of deaths in in London parishes) that were kept in the parish clerk
halls. According to the account beginning on page 51 (as numbered in the scan
linked below), the people who collected corpses in London would report to the
parish clerk how many people had died and the manner of death. Every Tuesday
the reports were compiled, printed on Wednesday, published on Thursday. Graunt
claims (page 59) that over a period of 20 years these bills recorded 229,250
deaths. Numbers of births came from records of christenings.
Here is a scan of Graunt's book "Natural and Political Observations mentioned
in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality." It is old and a
bit hard to read. [http://echo.mpiwg-
berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/...](http://echo.mpiwg-
berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/echo/mpi_rostock/Graunt_1665/index.meta&start=51&viewMode=index&pn=59)
There is also a transcription of it at Wikisource, but it contains frequent
OCR/transcription errors:
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_and_Political_Observa...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_and_Political_Observations_Made_upon_the_Bills_of_Mortality_\(Graunt_1676\))
Average age of a woman at marriage was 23.5, and vast majority of births were
to married women, so mother's average age at first childbirth was above 24:
[https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmate...](https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmaterials_demographics.pdf)
There appears to be a large collection of the actual bills of mortality
scanned and archived here:
[https://archive.org/details/collectionyearl00hebegoog](https://archive.org/details/collectionyearl00hebegoog)
------
forkLding
This article is a bit presumptuous.
I don't think I ever equated lifespan with life expectancy, I never ever
thought you would just randomly die of old age at age 30 or even somehow reach
old age at age 30. I merely presumed sickness and war would wipe you out and
you would die of something like that than somehow superhumanly jumping into
your old age as soon as you hit 30.
------
schizoidboy
> Our maximum lifespan may not have changed much, if at all. But that’s not to
> delegitimise the extraordinary advances of the last few decades which have
> helped so many more people reach that maximum lifespan, and live healthier
> lives overall.
Sure, maximum might not be changing much, but the fact that the average has
changed so drastically means there has been unfathomably less death and
suffering than otherwise would have been. Also, the advances have not been
just over the last few decades, but more likely one or two hundred years (i.e.
since the industrial revolution).
There are also serious thinkers (e.g. Kurzweil) who think that biotechnology
will increase maximum lifespan pretty soon. I found it strange for an article
tagged with 'Biology' to not talk about biotechnology potential related to
longevity.
~~~
b_tterc_p
Useful biotechnology may increase life expectancy in the near term, but not so
differently as has been discussed here. We have basically zero chance of
counteracting a life time of bioaccumulant toxins, telomere shortening, and
numerous other shortcomings such that actual maximum lifespan sees a
meaningful bump.
~~~
Erlich_Bachman
There are other organisms that do this, so there is no physical limit in this.
It's just an engineering problem.
For example, telomere shortening is already being worked on. Look up Bioviva
science, they have made first human experiments and results look very
promising.
I think people just got used to being fatalist in this regard, because it is
psychologically easier than to tackle this problem.
------
LeanderK
Is there any interesting research happening on what's limiting our lifespan?
Is this super interesting and important question being given enought attention
in the research-community? Or is it super-niche?
~~~
marsrover
Genesis 6:3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with humans
forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years."
I think this is pretty interesting even if you're not religious.
~~~
Nition
One thing I always thought was interesting about that is it happened during
Noah's lifetime, when he was probably already older than 120 and lived a few
hundred more years after. He's lucky the new rule wasn't retroactive to those
who were already alive!
Also, there's some debate about whether that line means the obvious (maximum
lifespan of around 120 years), or whether it's actually saying that people
have 120 years left until the great flood comes. Most people (and me
personally as well) think the former but the latter does make _some_ sense as
an interpretation in context. Well, except for the fact that it does mark a
point in the Bible where people's reported lives stopped being ridiculously
long.
~~~
michaelmrose
There is absolutely no reason to believe that Noah was already older than 120
or that he lived longer than a normal life span. There is every reason to
believe that nearly everyone's body falls apart between 50 and 120 if disease
or malice hasn't gotten them prior.
When you fabricate its better if the fabrications concern things either long
ago or far away and if the present situation is different from that described
you have to explain why if you don't want your audience comparing present
reality to prior and seeing through the hoax.
Example if you wanted to posit that insert legendary figure here was 30 feet
tall and came from a village where most were 20' and up you can't set the
story in the next village last year because someone has probably been there
and noticed that people just aren't that tall.
If it was a thousand years prior across an ocean you can claim that people
became less mighty as the years went by and lost touch with their gods which
plays to people's tendency to filter the past through nostalgia.
If a 30 foot tall giant seems less likely than a 900 year old man then you may
need to apply critical thinking skills.
Just because its still socially OK to believe nonsense doesn't mean its true.
~~~
Nition
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was _all true_. I'm not Christian either.
When I say "Noah lived for hundreds of years" (950 in fact!) I just mean
according to the Bible. Same way I'd say Darth Vader ruled the Empire.
------
hyperpallium
Civilization has the cure of which civilization is the cause.
If you select people who avoid the ills of modern diet and inactivity, while
enjoying modern medicine, you may get a different curve.
~~~
Erlich_Bachman
You also get unreliable age reporting. At least in some of the supposedly
long-lived villages outside of civilization (lika Hunza), it has been shown
that when westerners come their and try to study people's age - what they get
in response is not the calendar age, but something akin to "social status". If
you have a big family and many achievements, they say they are 80. If you
haven't achieved that much yet - they call them 60.
~~~
bachbach
Like leveling up in an RPG!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon drops gendered categories for toys - DiabloD3
http://kottke.org/15/05/amazon-drops-gendered-categories-for-toys
======
cristianpascu
There is significant scientific evidence for differences between men and
women, both psychologically and physiologically. For one, if I may, mental
illness strikes differently in men and women. In other news, it seems that
women have been overmadicated for a long time because medical studies have
ignored differences, for different reasons, one being the fear of sexism
accusations.
And while it's silly to be offered only pink dolls, I do think that little
girls and little boys have different preferences which are not instilled by
their parents, but rather emerge from their own psychology. I find it very
hard to believe that all of our passions and preferences have a source in
somebody telling us that we should be this or that way. Like me starting to
play guitar, mathematics, physics or now being a programmer and entrepreneur.
It's things I just happened to like to do. There's been little encourgements.
I think there's a danger in fighting an wheel mill by enforcing a culture of
uniformity because "girls need to learn about science too". I hate it when the
world is accused of pushing pink on girls while everyday, on the streets,
girls and women dress nicely in hundreds of colours and variations while men
just wear t-shirts. I think that girls and women can manage this, and they're
not as easilly to manipulate as some might think.
~~~
xvedejas
Even if men and women are different, I'm not certain that prescribed gender
categories for toys is really aiding that anyway. Isn't it more convenient for
both genders to not miss or avoid a toy because someone has labeled it as not
belonging to their gender?
~~~
PopeOfNope
On the other hand, most consumers buy toys for children based on gender. How
difficult does Amazon want to make it to find a toy for your niece or nephew?
Not being able to filter for one or the other is an inconvenience. Now, if
they have data that suggests nobody used those categories, that's one thing,
but removing it for political reasons is another.
~~~
mc32
The other filter people use a lot when searching for toys is age. They could
remove the ages filter too, and expose you to all toys without any
distinction. Just a toy firehose. I don't think the gender filter is helpful,
but maybe it is to some people. But then it's Amazon's property, so I don't
care about it, so long as they don't remove the gender filter for adult
clothing.
------
rverghes
I wonder if Amazon actually A/B tested this, or just dropped it because of
pressure from activists. If they did A/B test it, and found it increased sales
or search efficiency, they should tout the finding.
But part of me wonders if they didn't just end up making their website worse
for people actually trying to search for a present.
~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Even for searching for your own kids gender categories are useful thing. Not
everybody subscribes to the idea of ungendered toys and cloths.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Even for searching for your own kids gender categories are useful thing.
I dunno, when I've searched for gifts for children I know (and, really, the
same thing goes for adults), I've usually had _some_ idea of what I was
looking for which was more useful than a gender category.
~~~
the_mitsuhiko
When you search for baby toys you often have no idea what to look for. Gender
categories are useful for that.
~~~
PopeOfNope
You two are talking past each other. The way it was before, you both could do
what you wanted: either use the gender filter or not use the gender filter.
Now there's no choice.
------
taurath
Its still amazing how much we sort boys and girls based on gender and not
interests.
~~~
pauleastlund
Personally I'm of a like mind and I consider this progress. I have a bunch of
(smart, curious) daughters and I feel a real struggle against gender role
orthodoxy when I'm trying to nurture their interests in legos and science and
Tolkien and their friends are into American Girl dolls and Disney princesses.
With that said, you can see why retailers would be slow to drop gender
categorization. For people who aren't particularly progressive on this issue,
Amazon just made shopping harder. For the average adult shopping for kids'
toys, I bet the single most valuable bit of information to predicting their
purchase is the gender of the recipient.
~~~
xupybd
Also if you are shopping for someone else's kids. If you don't know the kids
interests it's a lot easier to look for toys of around that age and for the
gender of the child. Sometimes its all the info you have.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Also if you are shopping for someone else's kids. If you don't know the kids
> interests it's a lot easier to look for toys of around that age and for the
> gender of the child.
If you are shopping for someone else's kids, how hard is it to talk
(/text/email/etc.) to the parents about the kids interests?
~~~
kps
> If you are shopping for someone else's kids, how hard is it to talk
> (/text/email/etc.) to the parents about the kids interests?
Or even talk to the kids about the kids' interests (with written permission
from the parents and social services and in the presence of at least three
independent board-certified chaperons, of course).
~~~
pbhjpbhj
How? There are kids in my child's class at school I've never met; I don't know
their parents and in some cases there are never occasions where we share
geographical location (their kids are picked up by carers). Schools don't give
out the parents information; relaying contact details through children under
about 8yo is impossible.
Then what? Arrange to meet them at their home to talk to their child for 30s
about what they want for their birthday (that's in my price range) - the whole
process is costing more than the present at this point.
Am I right in thinking you're not a parent?
Asking a parent you know for ideas for a party present for a kid is quite
reasonable, asking the child won't help unless it's a child you're close to
and you're spending a considerable sum and I'd warrant know the child's
personality pretty well.
------
egwynn
A lot of sites have moved to non-binary gender representations. Some do it
because they see heteronormativity as a close-but-not-quite-close-enough false
dichotomy that leaves too many people out in the cold. I’m not sure if that’s
why Amazon did this, but they certainly wouldn’t be the first ones to do it.
FWIW, I tend to agree with this recent perspective. In the endless debate over
nature-vs-nurture, why should we insist on nurturing this dichotomy? We’re no
worse off for not reenforcing that which marginalizes/disenfranchises so many.
Are we?
------
mkr-hn
As someone who liked all kinds of toys as a kid and is largely indifferent to
gender as an adult, this appeals to me.
~~~
xname
How could this appeals to you? If you don't like the gender categories, just
DO NOT USE THEM! Why the hell would you want the categories to be removed?
------
blacksmith_tb
It appears that what's actually been dropped is the filters from nav, since
they still have the boys-toys girls-toys categories. This seems like a
reasonable compromise for people want to shop that way, versus just choosing a
kind of toy they think the child they are shopping for would like.
------
kristopolous
Can we get some financial theories as to why they did this?
------
sergiotapia
So how do I find toys for my son and toys for my daughter on Amazon now?
~~~
mcv
By searching for something they like, rather than merely trusting blindly in
labels and their cultural expectations.
------
xname
For narrow minded people here:
\- existence of the gendered categories does not force you to use the gendered
categories
\- dropping the gender categories does prohibit others to use the gender
categories
------
mahouse
Towards a more robotic future.
~~~
mkr-hn
I must be misunderstanding you, because it looks like you're saying refusing
to conform to gender roles makes us more robotic. Which would be ridiculous,
so you probably don't mean that.
~~~
mahouse
You are understanding me well. I think gender roles are a very important part
of what makes us human. (Or animalic.)
~~~
pauleastlund
I get what you're saying, but there is a vast gulf between:
\- gender is not just a social construct, men and women in aggregate don't
have the exact same strengths, and that diversity is beautiful rather than
something we need to suppress
and
\- boys should play football and girls should play with dolls and wear frilly
dresses
I think people who agree with the former, but not the latter, should overall
feel good about Amazon not gratuitously dividing all sorts of categories of
toys into "his" and "hers."
~~~
baddox
> should
Amazons categorization probably does not imply a normative belief. I doubt
Amazon cares if you order an Iron Man toy for a female.
~~~
chc
I can't see how you'd interpret "Boys' Toys" and "Girls' Toys" in a non-
normative way (unless we're talking about the set of toys that are actually in
the possession of those groups right now, which is plainly not the case here).
Surely the meaning is something like "Toys that it is normal for boys to play
with."
~~~
baddox
Sorry, I meant "normative" in the philosophical sense, as in normative ethics.
My non-normative interpretation is "toys marketed to and widely considered to
be intended primarily for boys" and "toys marketed to and widely considered to
be intended primarily for girls."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TetrisRant (1999) - farazzz
https://tcrf.net/The_New_Tetris
======
lubujackson
Love the "crashing game is a secret not a bug" solution at the end too!
~~~
Crinus
Yeah i remember reading something similar about a DOS game where the game was
crashing when you exited and the developers hexedited the DOS extender to
replace the crash message from 'Protection fault at blah' (or something like
that) to 'Thank you for playing the game' (or something like that) :-P.
~~~
pjc50
"Thank you for playing Wing Commander"
------
t0mbstone
Entertaining read! Kind of like a time capsule revealing what was going
through their heads at the time. From reading it, it's pretty clear that
shrooms and weed were heavily involved in the culture there at H2O.
------
nmeofthestate
Damn, they come across as angry teenagers with supercar posters on their
bedroom walls.
~~~
jkoudys
Some are good, but that Lupin guy... geez. I'd like to think I'm a lot less
elitist than I was when I was so (I assume) young, but he comes across a bit
"racisist" himself.
~~~
ashleyn
This is an interesting snapshot of how racism seemed to be viewed at the time.
Reading this I get the impression that bemoaning black women's hair seemed to
be A-OK as long as you called her "african american". Can you imagine the
recall that would happen today if this leaked out?
------
iforgotpassword
Rom dumping and illegal distribution was already going back than. If I
understand this correctly this was not obfuscated in any way and located near
the end of the rom. Fan translations of Japanese NES games should also have
been around by 99, so people already fiddled with those dumps. So I'm a bit
baffled by the intro text claiming the dev didn't expect anyone to find this
for a long time.
------
umvi
I loved The New Tetris - specifically the power block mechanic (if you create
a 4x4 square out of assorted tetrominos you make a silver power block, if you
create a 4x4 square out of the same tetrimino you make a gold power block). I
keep hoping we will see power blocks come back in newer Tetris games...
------
jkoudys
I'm making a trello card with a "reach goal" of saving things in 8.4 bits
right now.
------
Thorrez
>25] Web pages that pop open other pages and windows and then disable your
'back' button.
I guess the web hasn't changed that much after all in 20 years.
~~~
codesushi42
Right, but even worse since we didn't have multi tab browsers yet.
So much usage of early JS on the web was simply malicious, and JS had a bad
reputation for years. Many would even disable JS completely.
Amazing how AJAX was able to save JS on the web.
~~~
isolli
How did AJAX save JS? I would be interested in reading about that!
~~~
codesushi42
Mainly because updating a page without a refresh was novel. Then developers
began exploring how they could manipulate the page in response, using the DOM.
The need for DOM manipulation led to a lot of early JS frameworks--
scriptaculous, then eventually YUI and jQuery afterwards. The explosion of
clientside code in the browser also led to the V8 engine; before that, JS was
far too slow for web apps to seriously compete with desktop apps.
But before all of that, JS was hated by both end users and developers. It did
not have much use outside of dropdown navigation, image maps, and plenty of
malicious (or at least annoying) client-side hacks (alert box spamming,
popups, disabled back buttons, etc). It was not uncommon for users to have JS
completely disabled. You needed to design sites knowing some significant
percentage of users could not run your JS.
~~~
fps_doug
The improvements in JS performance over time is crazy.
I was an Opera user (started with 5.x IIRC) and its JS engine was pretty slow.
I mean so slow that even in the early 2000s some pages with just a few
animations were annoying to use and better viewed in IE.
Then at some point they rewrote the engine from scratch and also implemented
JIT compilation to machine code. Opera might even have been the first browser
to do so. After that it was lightning fast, ahead of IE, Firefox and Chrome
before Blink/V8. If you use the last Presto Build of Opera today, those pages
that still manage to render at all and use heavy JS are painfully sluggish,
close to unusable.
Opera's JS engine rewrite felt like performance was suddenly IE times 10. Now
it feels like Chrome/Firefox are Opera Presto times 100.
------
codesushi42
Wow. Just wow. What it must have been like to be a coder in the 90s. Your job
was your hobby.
Now the industry is full of crap kids who only studied CS for the money. But
the truly gifted engineers are the passionate ones who live and breathe the
craft.
Much respect for this time capsule.
~~~
codesushi42
I found out that the author died only two years later in 2001, and was only
29. Very sad.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Common for startup winding down to not even refund stock options money? - simonebrunozzi
======
troydavis
By “stock options money,” do you mean the price you paid to exercise options?
If so, then yes, it’s totally normal. No bankrupt company would pay out money
to shareholders. The point of exercising options is to accept the risk and
reward of ownership, and one of those risks is that the shares can become
worthless. For that reason, many people exercise immediately prior to selling
(sometimes causing their gains to be treated as short-term capital gains).
If you don’t mean the price to exercise options, please clarify what you paid
for.
~~~
simonebrunozzi
Yes, that's what I meant.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Dedesign the Web 2 – Guess the website based on its wireframe - kevinyun
http://dedesigntheweb.com
======
oliv__
The placeholder hints at a name.something format so why is facebook.com
incorrect? Also, after guessing Medium correctly, it seemed as though the
image was out of sync with the input as it flashed the incorrect banner,
telling me that it was something else.
~~~
pimlottc
I didn't recognize Medium as I never even knew it had a front page. I've
always clicked through on article links.
------
AliAdams
This is a bit promotional given the last answer (being the company who made
the quiz). Any mods agree?
~~~
hhjj
Indeed, it's one of many posts talking about some characteristic about well
known sites where i can advertise some other sites because they share that
characteristic (usually top 10 websites to do X).
------
jfaat
When I answer a question correctly (Chrome 37, OS10.9) both the "try again"
and "correct" options show with the "try again" message covering the "correct"
message, so it appears as though I answered incorrectly.
------
sejje
This site displays that I'm incorrect when I'm correct. I started over several
times trying to guess the url format they'd accept.
~~~
bitJericho
It was buggy but my score remained correct.
------
snowwrestler
Hey guys, it's wikipedia.org, not wikipedia.com.
------
ecesena
How did you build the wireframes? Automatically? If so, that's impressive!
~~~
netbek
Sqetch [1] is listed in the credits, so I'm guessing done manually in
Illustrator.
[1] [http://w3.eleqtriq.com/2010/08/sqetch-wireframe-
toolkit/](http://w3.eleqtriq.com/2010/08/sqetch-wireframe-toolkit/)
------
pimlottc
It took me a while to figure out how to submit my guess at first as my brain
automatically registered the header as a navbar and skipped over it.
------
blktiger
I guessed youtube.com for one of them, and the screenshot of the answer is
youtube.com, but it told me that facebook.com was the correct answer.
~~~
okbake
Yea, this happened to me on all of them. I missed the first answer which was
facebook (I know...), then all of the subsequent ones I answered correctly
told me I was wrong and the answer was facebook. Though I still got the
points. I'm thinking it has something to do with me allowing javascript after
answering the first question, I'm not sure though.
------
Vervious
The site is super buggy; it's difficult to know what sort of input it's
expecting, and banners were out of sync.
------
bitJericho
This was tough. I'm ambivalently surprised and unsurprised at how the color
scheme provides so much to the design.
------
bacon
I guessed facebook and facebook.com and it said incorrect? Cool idea, but that
execution tho...
------
thehoneybadger
Ugh, speaking of UIs, this UI has a pest problem. Dedesign this site before
promoting it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Writing an Nginx authentication module in Lua and Go - StavrosK
http://www.stavros.io/posts/writing-an-nginx-authentication-module-in-lua/
======
daurnimator
Lua string comparison IS constant time (its always just a pointer comparison).
The timing attack (i.e. memcmp) would happen at the string interning step;
which cannot be avoided: but as a lua_State persists longer than a single
request, I'm unsure if a timing attack here is plausible.
~~~
StavrosK
I don't understand how you can compare two strings in constant time by doing a
pointer comparison. Can you elaborate?
~~~
harrytuttle
Does Lua do string interning? If it does then every string the same will be at
the same memory location so you can do a simple address comparison.
edit: someone answered this in a sibling post with 'yes'.
~~~
VMG
reference:
[http://www.luafaq.org/gotchas.html#T9](http://www.luafaq.org/gotchas.html#T9)
------
pkulak
I don't think I've ever heard "not enough documentation" as a complaint about
Go. It's always seemed fantastic to me. But, I don't use Lua and Python much,
so maybe they are even better.
~~~
ancarda
I have that personal gripe about Go's documentation. Compared to C# and even
PHP, Go's documentation is very short, often being a single line. For a
beginner, it's difficult to learn Go this way.[1] Since taking it up, I've
found it more helpful to buy books on Go, whereas I've been able to learn PHP
and C# almost solely off the documentation. I still don't know much about Go
and I feel Golang could do a much better job of documenting the language and
making it accessible to beginners.
[http://golang.org/pkg/io/#WriteString](http://golang.org/pkg/io/#WriteString)
vs
[http://php.net/fwrite](http://php.net/fwrite) and
[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms143376.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms143376.aspx)
[1] Edit: I'm aware that learning via documentation is probably not the right
way to do it, but it's part of the learning process and thus, good
documentation is important.
~~~
StavrosK
I was also surprised by this. Googling "Python <problem>" usually gets me a
solution in the docs or a blog or SO, Go only got me a few relevant projects.
~~~
ancarda
I imagine this is caused by Go being so young.
------
casca
I'm also getting a lot of value from nginx+lua. It's amazing how many problems
can be solved quickly and easily without going to another level of coding. And
with the ability to call C libraries from within lua, integrating with 3rd-
party binary libs has been another way to avoid another layer.
~~~
jemeshsu
Beside the authentication highlighted by the article, any other use
cases/problems that can be solved by nginx+lua?
~~~
crawdog
i have been using lua for request manipulation and logging.
here's a use case: you want to proxy request cookies from your application
into 2 cookies (session/persistent), but you don't want to rewrite the legacy
app. lua does a great job with request/response manipulation.
------
moonboots
Also, the if c1 ~= c2 branch is obviously not constant-time, but in practice it’s close enough that it won’t matter for our case. I’d prefer XORing the two strings together and seeing if the result is 0, but Lua doesn’t seem to include a bitwise XOR operator. If I’m wrong on this, I would appreciate a correction.
LuaJIT provides bitwise operators out of the box [1], and the creator also
provides an extension for regular lua [2].
[1] [http://luajit.org/extensions.html](http://luajit.org/extensions.html)
[2] [http://bitop.luajit.org/](http://bitop.luajit.org/)
~~~
StavrosK
Thanks, our nginx is linked with 5.2, it turns out, it's just my test box that
had 5.1/didn't support bitwise. I'll change the code, thanks.
------
pjmlp
Well, I remember writting proxy modules for Apache and IIS in C/TCL back in
the day (~ 2000).
So not much different.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do I grow my startup? - cassim89
I have launched Indiebookish.com a few weeks ago and battled to get any customers to subscribe. After a few days, I dropped the pricing by >50% and still had no success. I am now offering my debut release as a free option to build a database of users that I could potentially sell my paid subscription to once they see the value of my product.<p>How else would you suggest I build with no Marketing investment?
======
tirrellp
I went to the landing page and I dont immediately know what this service does
or why I should buy it. Suggestion 1: Look at some copywriting tutorials and
implement those lessons on your page copy. Suggestion 2: Dont hide behind
'Us'. Who are you? At the early stage, your personal story is important. When
I click 'about us', I get sent to #Deliverable. Which is not what I'm looking
for. Suggestion 3: Show me, don't tell me. Let me download an example from a
well-known book of how you took the lessons and injected real-world
applicability.
Hope this helps.
------
Gollapalli
>Summary of an accredited self-development book >Our expert opinion on how to
incorporate the takeaways from the book in your practical life >An actionable
template to help you add value to your life based on the key insights and
advice in the book
How is this different from blinkist? And why bother doing this? What problem
annoyed you so much you tried to build a whole company around it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New blockchain-based music streaming service Audius is a copyright nightmare - thecroutonator
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/9/20905384/audius-blockchain-music-streaming-service-copyright-infringement-piracy
======
madmaniak
Copyrights is a nightmare itself. Right?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why the Granny Coder decided to make her first iPhone game aged 77 - dejv
http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Gelex/feature.asp?c=15588
======
cesare
Very original marketing gimmick.
Edit: as if it wasn't obvious enough, check the hands in this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZATuhCoJLc>
Of course a story like this brings a lot of traffic to pocketgamer. It's not
worth to check if it's true.
~~~
daleharvey
"I have a huge support from my three grandsons. Michal bough me an iPhone as I
mentioned, then they gave me a Mac, because I had a Windows PC. One of them is
studying IT at university, so he is my adviser sometimes. And all three of
them are watching everything I create and give me feedback. They've also made
the videos on my blog."
not that that means its not true, but still.
~~~
cesare
She knows how to code a game. She has learnt objective-c, Xcode, the iPhone
sdk api and the chipmunk physics library. She also does her own graphics (a
blog entry is titled 'How to polish your game', in two parts) with a style
that is clearly made by a twentysomething and that would require a very sharp
eye.
But she couldn't operate a video camera?
------
alex_c
The inevitability of growing old scares me like few other things. My biggest
consolation is that I should be able to keep creating no matter how old I get
- and unlike other passions, this passion of ours only requires a sound mind,
not necessarily a sound body.
I want to be like Marie when I grow up.
~~~
rubentopo
It's such a relief for those of us who share that fear. I stumbled upon this
letter yesterday, it's a complaint that a 98 year old lady wrote to her bank's
CEO. (<http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art42630.asp>)
These two ladies are an excellent example that age is not an impediment for
doing things (or doing something about things...in the latter case).
~~~
cubicle67
Hmmm... the Internet seems to have helped develop in me a very strong level of
cynicism such that I'd put the chances of this being genuine at < 5%, and the
Granny Coder at about 40%
------
Raphomet
Oh, man. From the title I thought _why came back in a brand new geriatric form
- Why the Granny Coder. It's going to be a long day.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
<http://www.whythegrannycoder.com> is available if you're interested :-)
------
petercooper
What a lady! This makes me feel ashamed for throwing in the towel with iPhone
development simply because the method names were too verbose and hard to
remember and the whole deployment profile/signing stuff.. :)
~~~
jrockway
The things that annoy professional programmers are very different from the
things that annoy "amateur" programmers. (I use quotes because I don't want to
imply that this lady is not a good programmer or whatever. Her goals are to
create a single fun game in her free time, so the things that annoy her are
going to be different than what annoys someone who has to write a new
"business app" every month.)
~~~
petercooper
That's a great point - I hadn't thought of that. 10 years ago I just put up
with and accepted a lot of weird stuff related to programming because I was
pretty much a novice and just got on with it. Now I've reached a point where I
can question things.. just a bit too much though, it seems!
------
wallflower
Inspiring. Another cogent example of how the reasons we give for not
wholeheartedly pursuing a project challenge are really just excuses. I look
forward to buying and playing her iPhone puzzle game.
<http://grannycoder.blogspot.com/>
~~~
callahad
I must say, I love how she starts her posts with "Hello, kids." I was as first
offended, at least until I reconsidered what we look like from her
perspective.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tech entrepreneurs’ politics: Liberal, with one big exception - gnicholas
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/silicon-valley-politics.html
======
walshemj
Far left no 80% of sv employees would be described as centre right (probably
more socially liberal) in uk terms a wet one nation tory which is what pres
Obama is.
If sv is so far left why do no sv companies have Union recognition?
Far left is those that support Assad and think that stalin was right aka
"Tankies".
~~~
pc86
I think it's important to appropriate contextualize things like "left" and
"right." Most importantly, why are we comparing Silicon Valley to Europe?
They're completely different political climates, _in different countries_.
Comparing political ideologies between two countries is a fool's errand more
often than not.
Within the context of American politics, San Francisco (and SV to a lesser
extent) is one of the most liberal places in the country, probably top 5 and
certainly top 10. Even within the context of the California politics
specifically (itself the 3rd or 4th most liberal state), it's center left.
Trying to frame San Francisco as anything right of center is ridiculous unless
you're comparing it only to things like Communism and Socialism.
Edit: And let's not forget than most people want to frame themselves as either
center left or center right. Very rarely will someone proudly say they are far
left or far right, regardless of context.
~~~
walshemj
its to the right of some conservative's in the uk
~~~
pc86
Did you read the comment?
~~~
walshemj
yes and less American Exceptionisam might help in this discussion
~~~
pc86
It has nothing to do with American exceptionalism, it's about appropriate
context. I don't see anything useful coming out of trying to force San
Francisco residents and London residents onto the same political spectrum.
They're two entirely different spectrums, and "left" and "right" mean
different things.
------
jessriedel
> Over all, the study showed that tech entrepreneurs are very liberal — among
> some of the most left-leaning Democrats you can find. They are
> overwhelmingly in favor of economic policies that redistribute wealth,
> including higher taxes on rich people and lots of social services for the
> poor, including universal health care. Their outlook is cosmopolitan and
> globalist — they support free trade and more open immigration, and they
> score low on measures of "racial resentment."
> On most culture-war issues, they are unrepentantly liberal. They oppose
> restrictions on abortion, favor gay rights, support gun control and oppose
> the death penalty.
> ...The study found one area where tech entrepreneurs strongly deviate from
> Democratic orthodoxy and are closer to most Republicans: They are deeply
> suspicious of the government’s efforts to regulate business, especially when
> it comes to labor. They said that it was too difficult for companies to fire
> people, and that the government should make it easier to do so. They also
> hope to see the influence of both private and public-sector unions decline.
~~~
bmmayer1
...so in other words, libertarian
~~~
pc86
> _some of the most left-leaning Democrats you can find_
> _economic policies that redistribute wealth_
> _universal health care_
> _support gun control_
Is that what a libertarian is to you?
------
maxxxxx
People should drop the "far". This is just propaganda talk to mark something
you don't like as extreme.
~~~
thrill
The chart in the fine article shows the "technology founders" are about half
as libertarian as the general Democrat and nearly twice as likely to support
redistribution - but hey, let's not call that or them far left.
~~~
maxxxxx
Watch what people do, not what they say. Technology founders are either
capitalists already or aspiring capitalists. In theory they support
redistribution as long as it doesn't come out of their pockets or equity. You
can't call them far left on the economical scale. That makes that label
meaningless which it is anyways. Americans should stop agonizing about what's
left or right, Democrat or Republican and start thinking about issues. There
are tons of problems this country has that can't be explained or solved by
labeling them left or right. When I came to this country I thought it's a
pragmatic country that gets things done but now I wonder it's just a bunch
delusional ideologues based on the public conversation.
------
flashdance
Far-left is a bit of a stretch for me, this sounds slightly to the right of
Canada's big-tent Liberal party, which is centre-left on a radical day.
For reference, a far-left party is the ML party of Canada.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Canada_(M...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Canada_\(Marxist–Leninist\))
That doesn't remind me of Elon Musk for some reason...
~~~
flashdance
It appears the title has been un-editorialized! I take this back.
------
beager
At first blush, sounds like these folks are generally liberal as a result of
their upbringing and higher education, and then they run into a spot in
entrepreneurship where liberal ideology restricts business growth
(ideologically to the benefit of the consumer). Reconciling high ideals with
how they might restrict your business is always a struggle. Some may use those
ideals to their advantage, some may embrace the cognitive dissonance, some may
turn on their ideals altogether.
------
beepboopbeep
Just want to say-- I will never come back to this site if it devolves into the
political bull shit of reddit. If you folks want to reddit-ize HN, go for it,
but be ready to reap what you sow.
~~~
fortythirteen
To be fair, I think SV has been far too politicized and that's why you see it
here.
------
gnicholas
TLDR:
> _The tech elite’s mix of views is unique; no other group in the survey
> favored both greater wealth redistribution and laxer regulation._
~~~
notyourday
Of course. They were just not asked in details which way they would like the
wealth to be distributed.
~~~
gnicholas
They probably also didn't ask about details on regulation. Techies heard
"regulation" and thought Uber/Airbnb, not runoff wastewater, asbestos, and
formaldehyde (which is what many other people would think of when hearing
"regulation"). I'd guess techies are similar to other liberals in wanting
these other things regulated. They just don't want _tech_ to be regulated.
~~~
pc86
The article itself tells you what definitions they used. In the context of
regulation and redistribution, they mean this:
> _the government should [not] tightly regulate business, and should [not] tax
> the wealthy to fund social programs_
My default would be "should not" and "should," respectively, which is where
most tech founders fell, and puts me in the minority in the other four
categories.
We can argue about tax rates and deductions until we're both blue in the face
but most people agree that the more you make, the more you should pay in
taxes, as a general rule. And "tightly" has a distinctively negative
connotation to me. I think something should be legal and unregulated until
there is some evidence that it needs to be either regulated or outright
illegal. Business, generally, should not be _tightly_ regulated, except in
rare instances (healthcare, yes; banking, probably; insurance, probably).
------
CPLX
If they side with moneyed corporate interests and management against labor
then they aren't left wing.
The lack of an actual labor party in this country is a disaster, and is
underpinning the wildly unpredictable and regressive nature of our current
politics.
~~~
peoplewindow
According to the article they only surveyed people who _are_ management and
corporate interests - founders and billionaires!
------
nextstep
Mostly virtue signaling. The piece finally address labor at the very last
graphic: most entrepreneurs think labor unions should have less influence. The
NYT painting this as “far-left” is a sign of how far to the right the US has
come.
------
rjsw
Is that "Far Left" by US standards or by those of the rest of the world ?
~~~
werber
American : pro choice, universal health care, gay rights, and gun control, but
anti labor
~~~
maxxxxx
By today's standards they would probably mark Reagan as leftie. And most of
Europe has dropped off the spectrum completely.
------
d--b
Now this is an interesting study. In some ways it reflects the shift that
happened in France lately, where the new president is doing pretty much that:
increasing taxes on capital and decreasing regulations for businesses while
being very liberal regarding social matters.
I also suspect that in silicon valley there is a difference between the 30+
age group and the 30-. It's a shame they didn't make that data available but
it sounds to me that younger people are more libertarian than people in their
30s.
------
pixelperfect
Biggest surprise of the article for me: only 36% of Democrats and 41% of
Republicans believe "florists raising prices on holidays is fair."
~~~
nolepointer
Yeah, seriously, this is Econ 101.
------
uoaei
If HN's signalling is anything to go off with respect to political leanings,
SV is mostly libertarian with a dash of social democracy to rein in the big
players. This is hardly what anyone outside of an entrenched centrist news
media institution would consider "far left."
------
lj3
This isn't a study, it's a survey. Of course they're all going to say they're
as far left as they can possibly be. Saying anything else will make them a
target of the unhinged left wing nutbag brigade.
------
jancsika
Someone who hasn't read the article: please define far left.
I think you'll find _after_ reading the article that the term has been
misinterpreted in order to follow a story arc.
~~~
gnicholas
Totally agree. I actually left "far" out of the original title when I posted
on HN, because I didn't remember it being there - and because after having
read the article I didn't get that impression. Granted, I live in CA, so
perhaps my definition of "far left" is different than others, but I can see
that others here seem to share my sense that this was exaggeration on the part
of the NYT.
------
pdog
According to this study, you agree with "libertarian philosophy" if you agree
with the following statement
_> I would like to live in a society where government does nothing except
provide national defense and police protection, so that people could be left
alone to earn whatever they could._
What a joke. Of course, it turns out that technology entrepreneurs are not
really libertarians when you ask it like that. What if they asked individuals
whether they agree or disagree with the following statement:
_> I believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition
for a free and prosperous world._
Would they get a different response?
~~~
looki
What strikes me as incredible is that 44% of Democrats agreed with the
original statement. I'm not an American, but isn't that totally incompatible
with the party's ideals?
EDIT: The fact that the vast majority of them agreed with the two options that
are for redistribution of wealth kind of confirm that, in my opinion.
~~~
chamby
I would say that our two party system is why this seems so strange to
foreigners. Americans with nuanced opinions must shoehorn themselves into
Republican or Democrat to participate in our democracy. This often means
compromising on your ideals to have your voice heard on whatever issue is most
important to you at the time.
------
baursak
Why did you change the original NYT title, which is "Silicon Valley’s
Politics: Liberal, With One Big Exception"?
What on Earth is "Far Left"? Surely Silicon Valley's politics are nowhere near
Marxist or anarchist.
EDIT: apologies, you obviously didn't change it.
~~~
CPLX
It was the NYT that changed it, not the poster on HN.
The NYT changes headlines constantly, it's actually sort of fascinating to
watch in real time, which you can do by following this automated Twitter
account:
[https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/905407322658402304](https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/905407322658402304)
~~~
quuquuquu
Damn dude, awesome work finding this.
Completely changes the dynamic of the accusation above.
It seems NYT follows the "post now, edit later" approach
~~~
jknz
It could be worse than "post now, edit later".
The author could propose a list of a few possible headlines, say 10, each more
or less urging/click-baity/informative. Then let an algorithm choose the most
click-baity headline as visitors click on the headlines in ads or in Google
news (using AB tests or multi-arn bandit algorithms).
I don't know if any news site does this yet, but it could explain the increase
of click-baity or uninformative headlines in Google news.
~~~
gnicholas
WaPo AB uses a tool called Bandito to do just this:
[http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/how-the-washington-post-
bui...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/how-the-washington-post-built-its-
tool-to-re-engage-the-attention-of-distracted-readers-on-mobile/)
------
trentnix
It's mostly virtue signaling as far as the eye can see.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ecology and Economics for Pandemic Prevention - sradman
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2020/07/to-prevent-pandemics-invest-in-conservation
======
sradman
Paper by Peter Daszak et al:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6502/379](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6502/379)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Disturbing Secret Behind the World’s Most Expensive Coffee (2016) - kimsk112
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-luwak-captive-civet-coffee-Indonesia/
======
aphextim
Answer: It's not exactly vegan friendly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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