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results from 2008 acm programming world finals: as always, russia leads the way.
1 st. petersburg university of it
2 massachusetts institute of technology 3 izhevsk state technical university 4 lviv national university
5 moscow state university 6 tsinghua university
7 stanford university
8 university of zagreb
9 university of waterloo
10 petrozavodsk state university | hasn't china and russia/eastern europe been winning competitions like these, in all fields (maths, physics, computer science) for ages? how come the winners stop performing when they grow up? or is it just that it takes 30 years to evolve from "excellent at solving small tasks" to "excellent at solving real tasks"?it seems to me like these countries (and china in particular) have a culture of overworking and overperforming, while most of the time managing to avoid making a significant impact on society as a whole. a young, ambitious chinese student studies as hard as most start-up employees, while aiming for much smaller gains. | doing well in the the acm programming competition requires training time imho. the best competitors will have strong programming skills and a deep knowledge base of problem patterns and the best way to solve them. i was on the stanford b team back in the day ('80s), and i know that if i were a student now, i'd use my free time to build a product/company rather than spending much effort preparing for the acm competition. while some student programmers aren't swayed by the tremendous capitalist forces, i'd be surprised if it didn't have an impact on which programmers made it through campus preliminaries. there's just so many opportunities competing for your time if you're a good young programmer nowadays.as well as mit and stanford performed, i'd have to wonder about student programmers who skipped the competition because they have their sight set on bigger prizes. the same might be said, though, for the other universities even if they aren't entrepreneurial hotbeds. |
results from 2008 acm programming world finals: as always, russia leads the way.
1 st. petersburg university of it
2 massachusetts institute of technology 3 izhevsk state technical university 4 lviv national university
5 moscow state university 6 tsinghua university
7 stanford university
8 university of zagreb
9 university of waterloo
10 petrozavodsk state university | doing well in the the acm programming competition requires training time imho. the best competitors will have strong programming skills and a deep knowledge base of problem patterns and the best way to solve them. i was on the stanford b team back in the day ('80s), and i know that if i were a student now, i'd use my free time to build a product/company rather than spending much effort preparing for the acm competition. while some student programmers aren't swayed by the tremendous capitalist forces, i'd be surprised if it didn't have an impact on which programmers made it through campus preliminaries. there's just so many opportunities competing for your time if you're a good young programmer nowadays.as well as mit and stanford performed, i'd have to wonder about student programmers who skipped the competition because they have their sight set on bigger prizes. the same might be said, though, for the other universities even if they aren't entrepreneurial hotbeds. | if they've good hackers in abundance then why there are no emerging startups? don't they look at the business side of technology ;)
just curious? can anyone share some insights about startup scene in russia? |
results from 2008 acm programming world finals: as always, russia leads the way.
1 st. petersburg university of it
2 massachusetts institute of technology 3 izhevsk state technical university 4 lviv national university
5 moscow state university 6 tsinghua university
7 stanford university
8 university of zagreb
9 university of waterloo
10 petrozavodsk state university | if they've good hackers in abundance then why there are no emerging startups? don't they look at the business side of technology ;)
just curious? can anyone share some insights about startup scene in russia? | this sunday is the contest at my university, i'm participating with two other friends. i aim at solving at least three problems, though winning with any number is welcome too :-) |
results from 2008 acm programming world finals: as always, russia leads the way.
1 st. petersburg university of it
2 massachusetts institute of technology 3 izhevsk state technical university 4 lviv national university
5 moscow state university 6 tsinghua university
7 stanford university
8 university of zagreb
9 university of waterloo
10 petrozavodsk state university | this sunday is the contest at my university, i'm participating with two other friends. i aim at solving at least three problems, though winning with any number is welcome too :-) | pfft, russia doesn't always lead. :-pthanks for the results. |
russia moves to ban online services that don’t store personal data in russia
| it sounds evil but balkanisation of the internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium. the nsa/gchq scandal only pushed it a little further. we all know that any great medium starts out as a bastion of understanding, sharing and common good until a bunch of trolls show up to ruin it all (ahem, reddit, ycombinator, digg, etc). until that moment we enjoy all the freedoms that such a medium offers and we assume it is something of and unto itself, never to be destroyed. in the internet's case the trolls were capital coming to understand how to modify the internet to extract wealth and governments looking for a competitive edge over others using the internets structural flaws to obtain that edge.the erosion in this case is more harmful to many people than trolls showing up to reddit. so i think it's natural that people recede slightly from the idea a globalised common communal identity created by the internet and look toward their national structures to protect them. as snowden said in some qa "our founding fathers did not say that all [us persons] were created equal". until the irony of that statement is not cleared up internationally and human rights are absolutely universal balkanisation of the internet will come. russia, despite being an odd democracy, is only jumping onto a boat that already sailed in brazil and other locations. | brilliant move: protect the russian citizens from foreign government spying by making sure that all their data stays in their own country under the protection of their democratic government. oh wait... |
russia moves to ban online services that don’t store personal data in russia
| brilliant move: protect the russian citizens from foreign government spying by making sure that all their data stays in their own country under the protection of their democratic government. oh wait... | i think the problem with privacy violation is twofold.1) protecting citizen's data from snooping attempts of foreign intelligence agencies. which is state's responsibility imo, which in this case it's carrying out. in this regard, this is good news,2) protecting citizen's data from the state itself. this is a particularly tricky one, since there's no government agency which acts as counterweight to the intelligence agencies. in this regard, i am not so sure if its good news. what if this law was only passed to enable russian intelligence agencies to gain easy access to all the citizen's data? which seems plausible and predatory (nobody spies on our citizens but us).it will probably take a combination of technological and legal changes to really ensure privacy of the people. i can see how it could possibly come about. there's a small set of people (read big government) who want to maintain control over citizens by compromising their privacy. there's a big set of people who stand to get harmed by privacy violations. but there is a third set of people who has influence on first set (read wealthy class in all its forms), but who also stands to lose from privacy violations, and who also has means to fight it legally and legislatively. the third class would probably be the drivers of privacy reforms we'll see in coming years/decades. |
russia moves to ban online services that don’t store personal data in russia
| i think the problem with privacy violation is twofold.1) protecting citizen's data from snooping attempts of foreign intelligence agencies. which is state's responsibility imo, which in this case it's carrying out. in this regard, this is good news,2) protecting citizen's data from the state itself. this is a particularly tricky one, since there's no government agency which acts as counterweight to the intelligence agencies. in this regard, i am not so sure if its good news. what if this law was only passed to enable russian intelligence agencies to gain easy access to all the citizen's data? which seems plausible and predatory (nobody spies on our citizens but us).it will probably take a combination of technological and legal changes to really ensure privacy of the people. i can see how it could possibly come about. there's a small set of people (read big government) who want to maintain control over citizens by compromising their privacy. there's a big set of people who stand to get harmed by privacy violations. but there is a third set of people who has influence on first set (read wealthy class in all its forms), but who also stands to lose from privacy violations, and who also has means to fight it legally and legislatively. the third class would probably be the drivers of privacy reforms we'll see in coming years/decades. | it's sad that it's spiraling down to this but it is in practice no different than what the us is doing. there's no free speech without privacy so this looks like a "choose your dictator" kind of thing. |
russia moves to ban online services that don’t store personal data in russia
| it's sad that it's spiraling down to this but it is in practice no different than what the us is doing. there's no free speech without privacy so this looks like a "choose your dictator" kind of thing. | while at 143 million people russia has the largest population, this is rapidly shrinking, russian internet (runet as they call it) was already mostly balkanised mainly due to language.i find it amusing that they are doing this in "the name of combating piracy" when right now a certain russian site is hosting 1.2 million (mostly western) pirated ebooks and 28 million pirated scientific articles |
ask hn: review our startup: tonido
| the site is beautiful, but even after reading the blurb, i'm not sure what tonido is. is it for users or developers? | has anything changed since the last time you posted this?<link> |
ask hn: review our startup: tonido
| has anything changed since the last time you posted this?<link> | sketchiness quotient increasing:<link>8t=44it doesn't look like you mean the same thing that everyone else means when you say "open source". you want to update this? |
ask hn: review our startup: tonido
| sketchiness quotient increasing:<link>8t=44it doesn't look like you mean the same thing that everyone else means when you say "open source". you want to update this? | your pitch is good enough that i was really annoyed when i realized that it is closed-source. i do not expect the crypto/privacy aficionados to help you out with this product. |
ask hn: review our startup: tonido
| your pitch is good enough that i was really annoyed when i realized that it is closed-source. i do not expect the crypto/privacy aficionados to help you out with this product. | yeah, i'm still clueless in regards to what its actual functionality is. |
wikileaks is dead. now what?
| while assange has caused problems for wikileaks, i think he has accomplished something that is not really talked about in this article, and that is important for any wikileaks replacement: he turned those leaks into news. it's all too easy for information to be leaked and no one to care, even if the leaks seem important. assange helped by being the face of wikileaks, and i think he's also done good work working with journalists to get the news out there. not that journalists and assange have had a happy relationship, or even a healthy relationship, but he did manage to get real coverage.i would worry that a committee organization will be too conservative and technocratic. that is not an inevitability, of course; if the committee understands the importance of publicity maybe they can delegate appropriately... but it's not something a group of people can really do well together. | "the real cause of their death is the loss of their moral credibility because of julian assange, his decisions in managing the project and his behavior in his personal life."really? besides allegation i have not seen anything. looks more like a perfectly oiled (and highly successful) smear campaign against him. |
wikileaks is dead. now what?
| "the real cause of their death is the loss of their moral credibility because of julian assange, his decisions in managing the project and his behavior in his personal life."really? besides allegation i have not seen anything. looks more like a perfectly oiled (and highly successful) smear campaign against him. | i apparently missed the bit where assange misbehaved. what did he do (assuming the swedish rape allegations are fake)? |
wikileaks is dead. now what?
| i apparently missed the bit where assange misbehaved. what did he do (assuming the swedish rape allegations are fake)? | cryptome.org has been around for a very long time. it's probably easier to just submit to them. |
wikileaks is dead. now what?
| cryptome.org has been around for a very long time. it's probably easier to just submit to them. | so since they are dead, why don't they release the key to that 'insurance' file? this is what i want to see. i can't imagine it would cost them a dime to release that key. |
hiring your startup’s next great employee
| i've read some useless hiring advice posts here, but this one resets the bar. have a nontechnical person in your technical interviews so that you can be sure at least one person on your interviewing team is human. if you're hiring for a role and meet someone "great" that doesn't work for the role, fuck it, hire them with no role, because a jim collins book talked about that. "ask real life questions", like they do at an interview for a retail job at best buy. oh and here's the "scoring system" you should use for "soft no hard no".now, go forth and build an awesome company. | the advice in general is reasonably solid but this particular point is absolute madness:around 8 people is perfect to interview a candidatehalf that number is perfect for interviewing a candidate. you simply don't need 8 different opinions to get a gauge on technical ability and culture fit.i wouldn't even dream of jumping through so many hoops for a job. finding good people is difficult, adding hurdles like an intense or lengthy interview process just makes it more difficult. |
hiring your startup’s next great employee
| the advice in general is reasonably solid but this particular point is absolute madness:around 8 people is perfect to interview a candidatehalf that number is perfect for interviewing a candidate. you simply don't need 8 different opinions to get a gauge on technical ability and culture fit.i wouldn't even dream of jumping through so many hoops for a job. finding good people is difficult, adding hurdles like an intense or lengthy interview process just makes it more difficult. | > me- “tell me about the last time you got involved in a
> debate on hackernews.”
>
> candidate- “hmm, i don’t really talk to people online. i
> don’t see the value in talking to people i don’t know.’
>
> she didn’t get the job.it seems that they were interviewing for a "technical community manager", in which case i can see the logic behind not hiring them.but if they weren't, i wouldn't suggest that was a "hard no". a lot of people don't get involved on social news sites, for a variety of reasons (maybe they have done in the past and don't like being attacked by a bunch of strangers for their opinions). if they had never heard of hn, i might have to think twice, but i certainly wouldn't rule someone out for not getting involved in "debates" (all too often flamewars) on social news sites. |
hiring your startup’s next great employee
| > me- “tell me about the last time you got involved in a
> debate on hackernews.”
>
> candidate- “hmm, i don’t really talk to people online. i
> don’t see the value in talking to people i don’t know.’
>
> she didn’t get the job.it seems that they were interviewing for a "technical community manager", in which case i can see the logic behind not hiring them.but if they weren't, i wouldn't suggest that was a "hard no". a lot of people don't get involved on social news sites, for a variety of reasons (maybe they have done in the past and don't like being attacked by a bunch of strangers for their opinions). if they had never heard of hn, i might have to think twice, but i certainly wouldn't rule someone out for not getting involved in "debates" (all too often flamewars) on social news sites. | << soft no(-2) means “nah, there’s just something that doesn’t feel right” << or “loved her, just not for this role”<<so remember this when hiring: the person you are interviewing may be <<terrible for the role, but perfect for your company.
<<when you find that awesome person, hire them.i hope there was a little bit more consistency between the rules explained here. |
hiring your startup’s next great employee
| << soft no(-2) means “nah, there’s just something that doesn’t feel right” << or “loved her, just not for this role”<<so remember this when hiring: the person you are interviewing may be <<terrible for the role, but perfect for your company.
<<when you find that awesome person, hire them.i hope there was a little bit more consistency between the rules explained here. | leveraging your own network may mitigate some of the risks in this article.<<"rule #1- it’s much better to say ‘no’ to the right person, than ‘yes’ to the wrong one"the rule #1 increases the chances of your hire to be a great person, but slows down your hiring, which may mean missed business opportunities. |
how a programmer can discover an asteroid
| interesting. here's the link to the asterank discover page: <link>'ve gone through a handful or two of images now. although he says "the app occasionally serves control images to get a sense of whose responses are trustworthy," i have yet to see anything move. it'd be nice to have a higher number of catch trials with a game-like interface. "congrats, you found the moving dot! this is asteroid xxxx" or: "oops, you missed it, try again" or: "hey, this is a new one! we'll check on it and get back to you."i think that'd help train and reward those who look through all these images.edit: after a few dozen, i think i found one. but i don't know if it was a catch trial or not. | this seems like a good time to point out the zooniverse project (<link> which is using similar crowdsourcing techniques in the browser to do all kinds of things from cataloging galaxies to entering data from ships logs to extend our view of earth's climate. |
how a programmer can discover an asteroid
| this seems like a good time to point out the zooniverse project (<link> which is using similar crowdsourcing techniques in the browser to do all kinds of things from cataloging galaxies to entering data from ships logs to extend our view of earth's climate. | the 3d view, <link> is very snazzy. |
how a programmer can discover an asteroid
| the 3d view, <link> is very snazzy. | quite difficult (but very cool).the way that the brightness (if that's the right term) varies between frames made it hard for me to distinguish between movement and adjacent objects appearing and disappearing. i wonder if there would be a way to normalize the brightness based on the brightest of the frames (i.e. the frame with the most objects visible) to make it easier to detect actual movement as opposed to what looks like movement due to stop-motion-like hiding and revealing of adjacent objects. |
how a programmer can discover an asteroid
| quite difficult (but very cool).the way that the brightness (if that's the right term) varies between frames made it hard for me to distinguish between movement and adjacent objects appearing and disappearing. i wonder if there would be a way to normalize the brightness based on the brightest of the frames (i.e. the frame with the most objects visible) to make it easier to detect actual movement as opposed to what looks like movement due to stop-motion-like hiding and revealing of adjacent objects. | hey great project i always wanted to set set aside time for similar projects, mainly going over through the troves of data available from the kepler that is publicly available. i might start a a project and put it on github but as you all know such things are incredibly time consuming, yet are possible with a small and dedicated team.if anyone would like to collaborate on such a project in a dedicated and professional manner i would love to chat.i have 2 friends onboard (google and ms search engineers) who will put in time too given proper dedication. |
ibm watson to battle patent trolls
| unfortunately, this article is just speculation. ibm is processing and mining the patent database, but everything else in the article - particularly the parts about about finding prior art ("battling patent trolls") is the from the extremetech author, not ibm. | having ibm make a watson instance that is dedicated to all patents would require a significant investment by ibm. it seems like it takes a lot of time and money to create specialized watson instances. they have a specialized one that recognizes pharmaceutical patents right now. in the long run it would make sense to create something that fights patent trolls because the initial investment might pay itself off by avoiding patent licencing or having people find prior art etc... |
ibm watson to battle patent trolls
| having ibm make a watson instance that is dedicated to all patents would require a significant investment by ibm. it seems like it takes a lot of time and money to create specialized watson instances. they have a specialized one that recognizes pharmaceutical patents right now. in the long run it would make sense to create something that fights patent trolls because the initial investment might pay itself off by avoiding patent licencing or having people find prior art etc... | ibm watson team is focused on medical data mining now. training ibm watson just for jeopardy took over 7 years. they are struggling how to make watson learn faster. it's not the cpu or ram limitations. there are a lot of custom pipeline building that needs to happen. medical data is usually behind firewalls, password protected. even medical books and articles are not easily accessible. there is no place for side projects. |
ibm watson to battle patent trolls
| ibm watson team is focused on medical data mining now. training ibm watson just for jeopardy took over 7 years. they are struggling how to make watson learn faster. it's not the cpu or ram limitations. there are a lot of custom pipeline building that needs to happen. medical data is usually behind firewalls, password protected. even medical books and articles are not easily accessible. there is no place for side projects. | ah, the march of technology busily grinding the concept of intellectual property into dust. glorious. imagine if every patent troll was greeted by thousands of citations of previous use? |
ibm watson to battle patent trolls
| ah, the march of technology busily grinding the concept of intellectual property into dust. glorious. imagine if every patent troll was greeted by thousands of citations of previous use? | how long before watson discovers how profitable patent trolling can be for a brain powerhouse like it [he can or soon will be able to generate "method and apparatus for user interaction with interactive screen through rest interface" faster than thousands sv programmers] and switches sides? :) |
ask hn: a languishing startup with a great product - thoughts?
i found <link> a few years ago. it's a keyboard-substitute that clips over the back of your hand, and interprets the tendon movement as you "type" into text.<p>the device is elegant and compact, but better yet it's an elegant solution to the problem of mobile typing/data entry. it's the missing link for a new era of mobile computing - it completes the trio: cellphone, pocket projector, senseboard.<p>use just the phone, or the phone + projector, the phone + senseboard, or all three. that trio would be smaller, more portable, more comfortable and more flexible than any netbook.<p>now is the perfect time; screen size and data entry are <i>the</i> major limitations for mobile devices. powerful pdas and cellphones are here. phones with 'proper' operating systems. pocket projectors are just appearing to get around the limitations of small, low resolution displays and they wont stop at being 640x480 and dim. soon they will hit netbook screen quality. but data entry is still limited to those foldaway keyboards that are both big and unwieldy compared to a phone, full of delicate moving parts, and still small and cramped to type on. senseboard is a much better alternative.<p>the big problem is - it's vapourware. best new product of 2001. nothing but a couple of minor press releases since then.<p>"so what?" you ask. well, i've mentioned it here a couple of times and had no discussion. i decided to submit it directly as a link to publicise it a bit - it plummeted from the new submissions page with no comments and no votes. that's life, eh? i would probably have left it there except i said this:<p><link><p>and got <i>27</i> upvotes. 27! for a pernickety grammar correction one-liner! right now, that contrast is really getting under my skin. i know there are technical people here, people who've used the twiddler, successful business founders, hardware and software developers, vcs, people who might see what i can't, might also care, and might have influence, so i ask hn:<p>do you think the senseboard is as cool and potentially game changing as i think it is? do you think it could be a successful product?<p>can we outsiders <i>do</i> anything to encourage it into existance, and - should we?<p>(i have no affiliation with the company, i'm just tired of seeing what seems to be first class ideas like this sidelined while streams of clone digital cameras, media players, gps receivers, cellphones and so on pour into the market as if the world wont be satisfied until there's ten models for every human - and that needs to happen yesterday!) | i see two basic possibilities: one, it ran out of money before it could launch, or two, it doesn't actually work.i would put relative probabilities of those two as somewhere around 1:9.i look at this thing as an engineer and i see a signal processing problem that means it's probably pretty easy to build something that's right about 70% of the time, and with great effort you could get to 85%... but that's terrible for an input device. maybe i'm wrong. but i also know for a fact i've encountered tons of people who have faced other problems like this, and in their boundless optimism are sure that the last few percent are just a matter of trying harder, and some of them go on to blow millions on "trying harder" on what is fundamentally impossible. the truth is, electronics really don't care how optimistic you are.most of the 'first class' ideas you think are being overlooked are actually the second case. 3d interfaces, a whole whackload of input devices (including the fun case of exotic video game console interfaces), energy sources, new circuit types that are going to blow silicon out of the water, and the list just goes on and on. most of them just plain don't work like the advocates said they would.some of the advocates are honestly wrong. some... are not.just about the only thing that factors in this thing's favor is that exotic input interfaces have historically faced a very steep uphill battle. dvorak and other alternate keyboard layouts have gotten very little traction, and that involves no extra hardware at all. i've used a couple of exotic input devices or methods that work perfectly fine but stand no chance of general acceptance because people have no interest in learning how to use them.(i would point out that i've left open the possibility that it does work. but i'd want to see a lot of evidence not coming directly from the company. everybody always claims awesomeness.) | this is one of those ideas that sounds wonderful, just like the touchscreen of the iphone sounded wonderful... but people are rightly skeptical of things that claim to be game-changing which haven't launched.the instant this exists and a reporter slips it on and can "type" 70 wpm with minimal errors (with no learning curve) is the pr shoots straight up.until it's changed the life of a single user, it's science fiction. i'll cheer 'em on in the meantime (just like i'll cheer for techcrunch's 'crunchpad'), but i'd go hoarse if i evangalized every game-changing product that hasn't been built yet.(flying car? jet pack?) |
ask hn: a languishing startup with a great product - thoughts?
i found <link> a few years ago. it's a keyboard-substitute that clips over the back of your hand, and interprets the tendon movement as you "type" into text.<p>the device is elegant and compact, but better yet it's an elegant solution to the problem of mobile typing/data entry. it's the missing link for a new era of mobile computing - it completes the trio: cellphone, pocket projector, senseboard.<p>use just the phone, or the phone + projector, the phone + senseboard, or all three. that trio would be smaller, more portable, more comfortable and more flexible than any netbook.<p>now is the perfect time; screen size and data entry are <i>the</i> major limitations for mobile devices. powerful pdas and cellphones are here. phones with 'proper' operating systems. pocket projectors are just appearing to get around the limitations of small, low resolution displays and they wont stop at being 640x480 and dim. soon they will hit netbook screen quality. but data entry is still limited to those foldaway keyboards that are both big and unwieldy compared to a phone, full of delicate moving parts, and still small and cramped to type on. senseboard is a much better alternative.<p>the big problem is - it's vapourware. best new product of 2001. nothing but a couple of minor press releases since then.<p>"so what?" you ask. well, i've mentioned it here a couple of times and had no discussion. i decided to submit it directly as a link to publicise it a bit - it plummeted from the new submissions page with no comments and no votes. that's life, eh? i would probably have left it there except i said this:<p><link><p>and got <i>27</i> upvotes. 27! for a pernickety grammar correction one-liner! right now, that contrast is really getting under my skin. i know there are technical people here, people who've used the twiddler, successful business founders, hardware and software developers, vcs, people who might see what i can't, might also care, and might have influence, so i ask hn:<p>do you think the senseboard is as cool and potentially game changing as i think it is? do you think it could be a successful product?<p>can we outsiders <i>do</i> anything to encourage it into existance, and - should we?<p>(i have no affiliation with the company, i'm just tired of seeing what seems to be first class ideas like this sidelined while streams of clone digital cameras, media players, gps receivers, cellphones and so on pour into the market as if the world wont be satisfied until there's ten models for every human - and that needs to happen yesterday!) | this is one of those ideas that sounds wonderful, just like the touchscreen of the iphone sounded wonderful... but people are rightly skeptical of things that claim to be game-changing which haven't launched.the instant this exists and a reporter slips it on and can "type" 70 wpm with minimal errors (with no learning curve) is the pr shoots straight up.until it's changed the life of a single user, it's science fiction. i'll cheer 'em on in the meantime (just like i'll cheer for techcrunch's 'crunchpad'), but i'd go hoarse if i evangalized every game-changing product that hasn't been built yet.(flying car? jet pack?) | my guess is that it has not gotten a lot of traction because it appears to be completely vaporware, and it's hard to get excited about something that doesn't exist, and does not seem to be on a path to completion.the internet, and the vc startup world, is littered with fancy product illustrations, mocked-up demos, and empty press releases. what makes this one worthy of a fan-club above all the others? |
ask hn: a languishing startup with a great product - thoughts?
i found <link> a few years ago. it's a keyboard-substitute that clips over the back of your hand, and interprets the tendon movement as you "type" into text.<p>the device is elegant and compact, but better yet it's an elegant solution to the problem of mobile typing/data entry. it's the missing link for a new era of mobile computing - it completes the trio: cellphone, pocket projector, senseboard.<p>use just the phone, or the phone + projector, the phone + senseboard, or all three. that trio would be smaller, more portable, more comfortable and more flexible than any netbook.<p>now is the perfect time; screen size and data entry are <i>the</i> major limitations for mobile devices. powerful pdas and cellphones are here. phones with 'proper' operating systems. pocket projectors are just appearing to get around the limitations of small, low resolution displays and they wont stop at being 640x480 and dim. soon they will hit netbook screen quality. but data entry is still limited to those foldaway keyboards that are both big and unwieldy compared to a phone, full of delicate moving parts, and still small and cramped to type on. senseboard is a much better alternative.<p>the big problem is - it's vapourware. best new product of 2001. nothing but a couple of minor press releases since then.<p>"so what?" you ask. well, i've mentioned it here a couple of times and had no discussion. i decided to submit it directly as a link to publicise it a bit - it plummeted from the new submissions page with no comments and no votes. that's life, eh? i would probably have left it there except i said this:<p><link><p>and got <i>27</i> upvotes. 27! for a pernickety grammar correction one-liner! right now, that contrast is really getting under my skin. i know there are technical people here, people who've used the twiddler, successful business founders, hardware and software developers, vcs, people who might see what i can't, might also care, and might have influence, so i ask hn:<p>do you think the senseboard is as cool and potentially game changing as i think it is? do you think it could be a successful product?<p>can we outsiders <i>do</i> anything to encourage it into existance, and - should we?<p>(i have no affiliation with the company, i'm just tired of seeing what seems to be first class ideas like this sidelined while streams of clone digital cameras, media players, gps receivers, cellphones and so on pour into the market as if the world wont be satisfied until there's ten models for every human - and that needs to happen yesterday!) | my guess is that it has not gotten a lot of traction because it appears to be completely vaporware, and it's hard to get excited about something that doesn't exist, and does not seem to be on a path to completion.the internet, and the vc startup world, is littered with fancy product illustrations, mocked-up demos, and empty press releases. what makes this one worthy of a fan-club above all the others? | i'm just tired of seeing what seems to be first class ideas like this sidelined while streams of clone digital cameras, media players, gps receivers, cellphones and so on pour into the market as if the world wont be satisfied until there's ten models for every human - and that needs to happen yesterday!)it always seems that what could be built and hasn't been is so much better than what can be built and is. this is how technology matures. the market explores the new space with tons of releases with tons of features. eventually, the best features are evolved and incorporated into all models via consumer selection. sometimes this takes "ten models for every human" before we come up with the one model for every human.the thing i've found about most of these sound-bite vaporware products that are going to "change the world when its released", is that most suffer from the 95% problem. the idea 95% works. but the 5% that doesn't makes it unusable.in this example, perhaps it works just like a keyboard! the only thing we haven't been able to solve yet is that it confuses j and n 25% of the time. so its useless.many products get into the 95% phase, generate all of their buzz, tout their impending, world changing release, and then flame out struggling for that last 5%. to make matters worse, their investors then sell the leftover company for pennies to patent trolls who ensure that its not worth it for anyone else to solve that last 5% either. |
ask hn: a languishing startup with a great product - thoughts?
i found <link> a few years ago. it's a keyboard-substitute that clips over the back of your hand, and interprets the tendon movement as you "type" into text.<p>the device is elegant and compact, but better yet it's an elegant solution to the problem of mobile typing/data entry. it's the missing link for a new era of mobile computing - it completes the trio: cellphone, pocket projector, senseboard.<p>use just the phone, or the phone + projector, the phone + senseboard, or all three. that trio would be smaller, more portable, more comfortable and more flexible than any netbook.<p>now is the perfect time; screen size and data entry are <i>the</i> major limitations for mobile devices. powerful pdas and cellphones are here. phones with 'proper' operating systems. pocket projectors are just appearing to get around the limitations of small, low resolution displays and they wont stop at being 640x480 and dim. soon they will hit netbook screen quality. but data entry is still limited to those foldaway keyboards that are both big and unwieldy compared to a phone, full of delicate moving parts, and still small and cramped to type on. senseboard is a much better alternative.<p>the big problem is - it's vapourware. best new product of 2001. nothing but a couple of minor press releases since then.<p>"so what?" you ask. well, i've mentioned it here a couple of times and had no discussion. i decided to submit it directly as a link to publicise it a bit - it plummeted from the new submissions page with no comments and no votes. that's life, eh? i would probably have left it there except i said this:<p><link><p>and got <i>27</i> upvotes. 27! for a pernickety grammar correction one-liner! right now, that contrast is really getting under my skin. i know there are technical people here, people who've used the twiddler, successful business founders, hardware and software developers, vcs, people who might see what i can't, might also care, and might have influence, so i ask hn:<p>do you think the senseboard is as cool and potentially game changing as i think it is? do you think it could be a successful product?<p>can we outsiders <i>do</i> anything to encourage it into existance, and - should we?<p>(i have no affiliation with the company, i'm just tired of seeing what seems to be first class ideas like this sidelined while streams of clone digital cameras, media players, gps receivers, cellphones and so on pour into the market as if the world wont be satisfied until there's ten models for every human - and that needs to happen yesterday!) | i'm just tired of seeing what seems to be first class ideas like this sidelined while streams of clone digital cameras, media players, gps receivers, cellphones and so on pour into the market as if the world wont be satisfied until there's ten models for every human - and that needs to happen yesterday!)it always seems that what could be built and hasn't been is so much better than what can be built and is. this is how technology matures. the market explores the new space with tons of releases with tons of features. eventually, the best features are evolved and incorporated into all models via consumer selection. sometimes this takes "ten models for every human" before we come up with the one model for every human.the thing i've found about most of these sound-bite vaporware products that are going to "change the world when its released", is that most suffer from the 95% problem. the idea 95% works. but the 5% that doesn't makes it unusable.in this example, perhaps it works just like a keyboard! the only thing we haven't been able to solve yet is that it confuses j and n 25% of the time. so its useless.many products get into the 95% phase, generate all of their buzz, tout their impending, world changing release, and then flame out struggling for that last 5%. to make matters worse, their investors then sell the leftover company for pennies to patent trolls who ensure that its not worth it for anyone else to solve that last 5% either. | if you are going to carry around a pocket projector, why not use the bluetooth laser virtual keyboard. and best of all, it's not vaporware.<link> |
the scariest chart in mary meeker’s slide deck for newspapers
| if my behavior is anything typical, advertisers are going to be a world of hurt. when i read a newspaper, i tend to be open for advertising. i usually am looking for movie reviews, concert information and the like. ads for concert series, festivals, ... are welcome in this environment. to me, these ads can often make me willing to deal with the advertiser.however, when i am using a mobile i tend to be doing something with that mobile. looking at mail, getting map information, watching a video or browsing my cycle of blogs and rss feeds. while i am doing this i tend to find advertisements rather annoying. they suck down bandwidth i'm sometimes paying for. they get strangled when there's not enough bandwidth to go around. contrary to print ads, these tend to make me unwilling to deal with the advertiser. particularly if they're intrusive, animated or noisy.as many others have said, if you show me pertinent(!) ads when i'm interested in ads i'm happy. if you ram stuff in my face, spend my time and money and keep me from doing what i want to do i'm unhappy. here's a clue: unhappy people don't make good customers. | mobile ads suffer from 90%+ accidental, "fat finger" and "creative use of page loading effects" ad clicks (yes, the reported 40% or so numbers are wrong). the resulting conversion is terrible and both apple and google are knowingly keeping it that way because fixing the problem would mean greatly reduced clicks and ad revenue. just try to promote a free mobile app download for a well-known website (no click-baity advertising at all, viewers know exactly what they'll get and have no reason to click on the ad unless they want to download) using google's mobile app promotion ads, you'll get something like 1-3% actual conversion and many users telling you they hit the deceptively loading and positioned ads by accident, which shows clearly how big the problem is.sooner or later advertisers are going to realize how they're being hit by this problem and that advertising in print media or desktop browsers is still the better way to go. the mobile ad industry is in for a world of hurt ... |
the scariest chart in mary meeker’s slide deck for newspapers
| mobile ads suffer from 90%+ accidental, "fat finger" and "creative use of page loading effects" ad clicks (yes, the reported 40% or so numbers are wrong). the resulting conversion is terrible and both apple and google are knowingly keeping it that way because fixing the problem would mean greatly reduced clicks and ad revenue. just try to promote a free mobile app download for a well-known website (no click-baity advertising at all, viewers know exactly what they'll get and have no reason to click on the ad unless they want to download) using google's mobile app promotion ads, you'll get something like 1-3% actual conversion and many users telling you they hit the deceptively loading and positioned ads by accident, which shows clearly how big the problem is.sooner or later advertisers are going to realize how they're being hit by this problem and that advertising in print media or desktop browsers is still the better way to go. the mobile ad industry is in for a world of hurt ... | my main problem with mobile ads is that they often completely break the user experience.why not make ads analogous to print: just (arguably) beautiful photography with some text on it and place them within the article where it makes sense. i never felt bugged while reading a multi page article in a magazine, when it says "continue on page 43" and got interrupted by a full page ad.but no, mobile ads have to be huge in size, animated – or even better videos (because everybody has a unlimited data plans now, yeah), block scrolling and or slap you in the face after you already started reading.just nobody seems to care about quality of advertising on the web and mobile. a lot of big companies still focus on their traditional channels and pay a few bucks extra for the web/mobile part of the campaign. the advertising agency assigns the implementation task to the intern who knows a thing or two in jquery. and in the end the it department of the newspapers just copy & pastes the code in without testing.*a company would most likely never send a smelly alcoholic to sell their product on the streets. but they to that on the web.*this paragraph may sound harsh, but this is how i often felt, when i was working for a big online newspaper responsible for custom campaign implementations and development. |
the scariest chart in mary meeker’s slide deck for newspapers
| my main problem with mobile ads is that they often completely break the user experience.why not make ads analogous to print: just (arguably) beautiful photography with some text on it and place them within the article where it makes sense. i never felt bugged while reading a multi page article in a magazine, when it says "continue on page 43" and got interrupted by a full page ad.but no, mobile ads have to be huge in size, animated – or even better videos (because everybody has a unlimited data plans now, yeah), block scrolling and or slap you in the face after you already started reading.just nobody seems to care about quality of advertising on the web and mobile. a lot of big companies still focus on their traditional channels and pay a few bucks extra for the web/mobile part of the campaign. the advertising agency assigns the implementation task to the intern who knows a thing or two in jquery. and in the end the it department of the newspapers just copy & pastes the code in without testing.*a company would most likely never send a smelly alcoholic to sell their product on the streets. but they to that on the web.*this paragraph may sound harsh, but this is how i often felt, when i was working for a big online newspaper responsible for custom campaign implementations and development. | it isn't necessarily scary. the charts show "time spent" vs money spent. but what you really want to know is "money spent" vs "results taken". ie: which channels drive revenue.on the flip side, you can measure these things on web/mobile platforms, it gets much more difficult with print ads.fwiw i'm more likely to respond to an ad i see on the economist or monocle than one i see on my mobile phone.
at the moment just the fact that it's on my mobile phone tells me it has less value. |
the scariest chart in mary meeker’s slide deck for newspapers
| it isn't necessarily scary. the charts show "time spent" vs money spent. but what you really want to know is "money spent" vs "results taken". ie: which channels drive revenue.on the flip side, you can measure these things on web/mobile platforms, it gets much more difficult with print ads.fwiw i'm more likely to respond to an ad i see on the economist or monocle than one i see on my mobile phone.
at the moment just the fact that it's on my mobile phone tells me it has less value. | since 1993, the only ad i've ever intentionally clicked on was for belroy wallets. i still haven't bought one, though the idea is pretty cool.i have accidentally clicked on many ads due to site that load the ads first and then put the content in the middle, so the page is continually shuffling around for the thirty seconds to a minute it takes to load on my "high speed" adsl in australia.so take those click-through statistics with a grain of salt: how many of them are forced due to pages shuffling elements around? |
ask hn: llc vs c-corp? what about the state?
after doing some research, this is what i've come up with - it's better to start off as an llc (they are simple to set up, avoid double taxation and still support multiple classes of stock if needed) and convert to a c-corp later when we're ready to take funding (an llc does not really allow for shareholders, so if we want outside investors, an llc won't fly, in fact some vc firms have structures that do not permit them to invest in an llc).<p>1. does this make sense?<p>2. we're based in nyc, but i'm hearing that the cost of setting up an llc can be 10x the cost of setting up a c-corp. any advice on the state to incorporate in? why? (assuming of course that we can incorporate in a diff state and work out of nyc) | i'm a professional tax accountant and i deal with corporate reorganizations and giant pain-in-the ass org charts on a daily basis.first understand what an llc, s-corp, and c-corp are...vcs prefer c-corps because they provide the "best investment vehicle," there is no limit or rules to the ability of how you can split the shares. for example, a c-corp allows you a variety of different classes of shares. generally the only time this option is realistic is if you will be guaranteed a large source of income at least 200k plus or a huge influx of funding. lastly, c-corps are the most stable entities with the most case-law.llcs are agile, quick and lean. but, as an investment vehicle there are variety of problems that are related to tax and legal issues. its great for a company that's starting out small, but you'll have to pay the self-employment tax on all earnings (15.3%).s-corps are awesome for small business as well because you avoid paying self-employment tax (15.3%). theres a bit more paper work but if your bootstrapping then its definitely an awesome option.i'm not going to get into all that much detail about the llc and s-corp but i did write a blog post of them with more detail at:
0a href="<link> and llcs0/a2please note that if you incorporate in nys, there a few quirks you should realize. first, you have to pay a fee here no matter what every year, used to be 300 dollars for city and state but they recently changed it to 100 dollars total. also, nyc does not recognize the s-corp status and they also consider an llc an "unincorporated business" for taxes. setting up shop in ny can be pricey in general, but if you're located here your going to have to pay these costs either way.lastly, delaware is often cited because they have assloads of caselaw or guidance for how a legal issue is going to play out. corps like certainty and delaware provides that, more importantly, delaware is majority ownership friendly. delaware will generally side with the majority stockholder for any reasonable business decision.hope this helped. | it's my understanding that:1) if you don't intend for investment now, go for the llc route so that you avoid double taxation.2) if you want vc, you'll need a c-corp as you noted.for the weird states... you may want to register in nevada or deleware. however, the state you reside in may make you register as a foreign entity [which costs money], so in most cases in may just make sense to register in that state. ymmv.for my second llc, i registered in nevada by using bizfilings. very stupid, it cost much more than it needed to. for my third business, my partner just walked into my secretary of state (nebraska) and filled out the paper work. very simple form. we were a business in less than 24 hours.again, ymmv depending upon the state. llc is the most likely answer for most businesses to just get up and get going. good luck. |
ask hn: llc vs c-corp? what about the state?
after doing some research, this is what i've come up with - it's better to start off as an llc (they are simple to set up, avoid double taxation and still support multiple classes of stock if needed) and convert to a c-corp later when we're ready to take funding (an llc does not really allow for shareholders, so if we want outside investors, an llc won't fly, in fact some vc firms have structures that do not permit them to invest in an llc).<p>1. does this make sense?<p>2. we're based in nyc, but i'm hearing that the cost of setting up an llc can be 10x the cost of setting up a c-corp. any advice on the state to incorporate in? why? (assuming of course that we can incorporate in a diff state and work out of nyc) | it's my understanding that:1) if you don't intend for investment now, go for the llc route so that you avoid double taxation.2) if you want vc, you'll need a c-corp as you noted.for the weird states... you may want to register in nevada or deleware. however, the state you reside in may make you register as a foreign entity [which costs money], so in most cases in may just make sense to register in that state. ymmv.for my second llc, i registered in nevada by using bizfilings. very stupid, it cost much more than it needed to. for my third business, my partner just walked into my secretary of state (nebraska) and filled out the paper work. very simple form. we were a business in less than 24 hours.again, ymmv depending upon the state. llc is the most likely answer for most businesses to just get up and get going. good luck. | first off: <link> aren't even mentioning an s-corp. is there some restriction that is keeping you from an s-corp status? they also avoid double taxation while still giving the benefits of a corporation. |
ask hn: llc vs c-corp? what about the state?
after doing some research, this is what i've come up with - it's better to start off as an llc (they are simple to set up, avoid double taxation and still support multiple classes of stock if needed) and convert to a c-corp later when we're ready to take funding (an llc does not really allow for shareholders, so if we want outside investors, an llc won't fly, in fact some vc firms have structures that do not permit them to invest in an llc).<p>1. does this make sense?<p>2. we're based in nyc, but i'm hearing that the cost of setting up an llc can be 10x the cost of setting up a c-corp. any advice on the state to incorporate in? why? (assuming of course that we can incorporate in a diff state and work out of nyc) | first off: <link> aren't even mentioning an s-corp. is there some restriction that is keeping you from an s-corp status? they also avoid double taxation while still giving the benefits of a corporation. | i see a couple delaware recommendations, but no reasons given. that is because there generally aren't any good reasons to incorporate in delaware over your home state unless you plan on being a large public company that gets sued a lot, or you are trying to impress investors who have more money than brains and will think that if you go delaware like many giant companies do that will ensure you become giant.the delaware advantage is that their laws and court system are good for and good at handling large complicated litigation, like tricky m8as or complex shareholder suits. they make much of the state income from this, and charge accordingly. if your company is the kind that needs that, you would not be asking for advice here. if it doesn't need that, save the money. you can always reincorporate in delaware later if needed. |
ask hn: llc vs c-corp? what about the state?
after doing some research, this is what i've come up with - it's better to start off as an llc (they are simple to set up, avoid double taxation and still support multiple classes of stock if needed) and convert to a c-corp later when we're ready to take funding (an llc does not really allow for shareholders, so if we want outside investors, an llc won't fly, in fact some vc firms have structures that do not permit them to invest in an llc).<p>1. does this make sense?<p>2. we're based in nyc, but i'm hearing that the cost of setting up an llc can be 10x the cost of setting up a c-corp. any advice on the state to incorporate in? why? (assuming of course that we can incorporate in a diff state and work out of nyc) | i see a couple delaware recommendations, but no reasons given. that is because there generally aren't any good reasons to incorporate in delaware over your home state unless you plan on being a large public company that gets sued a lot, or you are trying to impress investors who have more money than brains and will think that if you go delaware like many giant companies do that will ensure you become giant.the delaware advantage is that their laws and court system are good for and good at handling large complicated litigation, like tricky m8as or complex shareholder suits. they make much of the state income from this, and charge accordingly. if your company is the kind that needs that, you would not be asking for advice here. if it doesn't need that, save the money. you can always reincorporate in delaware later if needed. | surprised no one has mentioned this, but it depends on your end-game, or what you are going after.if you are looking to get funding, or are looking to build and sell the business, instead of making it a lifestyle business, you will definitely want to do a c-corp, issue your stock while it is worth nothing. if you get bought, you pay capital gains tax(hopefully long term) instead of taking the entire amount as income.aside from that you do have a few advantages of c-corp, but llc is definitely the least amount of paperwork. llc's can elect to be taxed as a c-corp and then an s-corp, at least the last i read.but from what i have read almost everyone that gets vc has to be a delaware c-corp. |
building a devops team
| i just created this account to comment on this. i am a generalist. i started out as a hardware and software designer, but then focused on software for many years. later moving from development to operations where i can write code and deal with sys admin stuff at the same. writing monitoring tools, installation packages, automation for release and builds, as well reading all the developers code that gets checked into the source code repository. troubleshooting servers, permissions, network issues, software bugs in websites, client/server apps, sql... whatever it took.i got my previous first job about 8 years and i remember the person hiring me saying that they wanted “specialists”. i firmly replied i am a generalist. i didn’t hear back for a month or 2 but then got the call that i was hired. for the first few years, the generalist mentality was actually how things ran. everybody was expected to dive into code, databases, server, etc. suddenly, they said that silos were forming and in order to improve the organization, a re-org was needed and you had your various teams of architects, dev, support 8 ops, dbas, q8a, project management, etc..you get the idea.a year after this process the whole team spirit was crushed. the whole “not our problem, it’s that team’s problem” starting gaining ground. people that were once team mates were now (using the someone eles’s words) throwing problems over the wall back and forth. people also threatened management that if they ever got put on team ‘x’, they’re quitting. yup, they made specialists out of the wrong people. if only they had just left the generalist structure be. for me, understanding something from the beginning to the end is very important. how can someone write programs if they don’t understand how security is handled on the web server, or how sql statements affect performance, or how deployment is done? i think having an assembly like structure (specialists) can work, but it’s not as responsive as a generalist structure. products will get shipped with less silly mistakes if you know what the destination looks like. release and deployment is so misunderstood by many developers. people need to get their hands dirty.i have since left that organization and i’m now back to a generalist position where i can get my hands dirty. it’s tough because you’re starting from scratch again and trying to hire once again. hiring is hard. typically, new organizations need generalists more than established ones. that is not to say that established organizations should have less of a use for them. i tried to change the shift from specialists to generalists at my previous work, but you start hurting your career if you’re constantly grinding it out with upper management. you have to know when to let go.i really like this term devops. because you developers do need to be able to understand operations, and vice versa. | i really like his interview process. having you actually install wordpress and troubleshoot a broken mysql installation, while having full access to google and other resources, is much closer to real sysadmin work than the type of interviewing that google and the rest of the tech elite seem to like.i am so sick of getting asked basic administrivia that you never need to know in your daily job, or can easily be googled within 3 seconds. our brains have selective memory - we remember what is important to us.if i have to sit through one more interview being asked about esoteric junk like the structure of an inode on disk or how to code an algorithm that you never use outside of a compsci course in university i'm going to hang up on the interviewer. |
building a devops team
| i really like his interview process. having you actually install wordpress and troubleshoot a broken mysql installation, while having full access to google and other resources, is much closer to real sysadmin work than the type of interviewing that google and the rest of the tech elite seem to like.i am so sick of getting asked basic administrivia that you never need to know in your daily job, or can easily be googled within 3 seconds. our brains have selective memory - we remember what is important to us.if i have to sit through one more interview being asked about esoteric junk like the structure of an inode on disk or how to code an algorithm that you never use outside of a compsci course in university i'm going to hang up on the interviewer. | i've always thought this type of person was called a 'generalist'. i like devops a bit better.the problem i've found being a devops-type person is that hiring managers have a hard time figuring out what you do and why you're valuable (author of post excluded).i've received comments that my resume is too unfocused -- they'd ask if i wanted to be a sys admin or a developer, to which i'd answer "both!" |
building a devops team
| i've always thought this type of person was called a 'generalist'. i like devops a bit better.the problem i've found being a devops-type person is that hiring managers have a hard time figuring out what you do and why you're valuable (author of post excluded).i've received comments that my resume is too unfocused -- they'd ask if i wanted to be a sys admin or a developer, to which i'd answer "both!" | could the timing be worse? "brian henerey heads up operations engineering in the online technology group at sony computer entertainment europe." talking about devops? it's almost as fun as sony's scheduled tweets, inviting to play online while their network was down. whatever he wrote in this article, i'd be thinking about their security problems and how they relate to what he's promoting... |
building a devops team
| could the timing be worse? "brian henerey heads up operations engineering in the online technology group at sony computer entertainment europe." talking about devops? it's almost as fun as sony's scheduled tweets, inviting to play online while their network was down. whatever he wrote in this article, i'd be thinking about their security problems and how they relate to what he's promoting... | great articles, including those from the links.i have troubles in finding such a position, even though i focus on start-ups only. |
how to put on a nerd conference
i drew this at techcrunch disrupt today.... | it seems that there are people who are able to follow this model and make money by throwing "nerd conferences".in my mind, the key differentiator between mediocre events and great events is who the target audience for the event is: - a great even is designed for the benefit of the audience.
- mediocre events are designed for the benefit of the sponsors or the organizers. | while hanging around with all those nerds, be sure to ask them about the difference between jpeg and png. |
how to put on a nerd conference
i drew this at techcrunch disrupt today.... | while hanging around with all those nerds, be sure to ask them about the difference between jpeg and png. | is it wrong that i've been to these sort of conferences and actually enjoyed myself?webstock (<link> in particular is great if you're ever in my part of the world. great signal-to-noise ratio, fantastic speakers, very little of the standard tech conference douche baggery ("10 tips to monetize your blog"; any panel comprised of commentators rather than people who make stuff; etc.) and an upbeat sort of atmosphere that's difficult to articulate. |
how to put on a nerd conference
i drew this at techcrunch disrupt today.... | is it wrong that i've been to these sort of conferences and actually enjoyed myself?webstock (<link> in particular is great if you're ever in my part of the world. great signal-to-noise ratio, fantastic speakers, very little of the standard tech conference douche baggery ("10 tips to monetize your blog"; any panel comprised of commentators rather than people who make stuff; etc.) and an upbeat sort of atmosphere that's difficult to articulate. | the jpg is still there: <link> |
how to put on a nerd conference
i drew this at techcrunch disrupt today.... | the jpg is still there: <link> | and name it web 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 conference |
how americans die
| about three or four slides in you get the take-away message, which is often missed in discussions about mortality here on hacker news: "if you divide the population into separate age cohorts, you can see that improvements in life expectancy have been broad-based and ongoing." and this is a finding that applies not only to the united states, but to the whole developed world. i have an eighty-one-year-old mother (born in the 1930s, of course) and a ninety-four-year-old aunt (born in the 1920s) and have other relatives who are quite old and still healthy. life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[1] an article in a series on slate, "why are you not dead yet? life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. here’s why."[2] explains what incremental improvements have led to better health and increased life expectancy at all ages in the united states. the very fascinating data visualizations in the article submitted today highlight the importance of research on preventing suicide, reducing drug abuse, and preventing senile dementia such as alzheimer disease, which is where some of the next progress in prolonging healthy life will have to come from.professional demographers try to think ahead about these issues, not least so that national governments in various countries can project the funding necessary for publicly funded retirement income programs and national health insurance programs. demographers have now been following the steady trends long enough to make projections that girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100,[3] with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. the article "the biodemography of human ageing"[4] by james vaupel, originally published in the journal nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. his striking finding is "humans are living longer than ever before. in fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."i was in a local barnes and noble bookstore back when i was shopping for an eightieth birthday gift (a book-holder) for my mom, and i discovered that the birthday card section in that store, which is mostly a bookstore, had multiple choices of cards for eightieth birthdays and even for ninetieth birthdays. we will be celebrating more and more and more birthdays of friends and relatives of advanced age in the coming decades.[1] <link>[2]
<link>[3] <link>[4] <link> | the data is interesting, but somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from without considering how different rates are impacting other rates. what is really noteworthy here is the approach to showing the data. its effortless to scroll through.here are some things i noticed after the fact:1. i naturally wanted to finish the presentation and was compelled to click to see if there were any amazing insights.2. after the fact, i have no idea how i even advanced the presentation, all i knew was that i clicked something. it was 100% natural.it fully pulled me in. i can't remember if there were ads on the sides or more information.[added] i went back and looked at it again and i think what made it so flawless is that the first page gave me no option but to click the right hand arrow which taught me what to look for. i clicked the right arrow, and then i knew to click it again to advance. the progress dots on the top let me know that i didn't have much time left. really amazing work here. |
how americans die
| the data is interesting, but somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from without considering how different rates are impacting other rates. what is really noteworthy here is the approach to showing the data. its effortless to scroll through.here are some things i noticed after the fact:1. i naturally wanted to finish the presentation and was compelled to click to see if there were any amazing insights.2. after the fact, i have no idea how i even advanced the presentation, all i knew was that i clicked something. it was 100% natural.it fully pulled me in. i can't remember if there were ads on the sides or more information.[added] i went back and looked at it again and i think what made it so flawless is that the first page gave me no option but to click the right hand arrow which taught me what to look for. i clicked the right arrow, and then i knew to click it again to advance. the progress dots on the top let me know that i didn't have much time left. really amazing work here. | ugh, the fact that many of these charts show raw # of deaths versus deaths/100k really masks how much things have improved. in 1968, the population was 64% of our current population... so a flat line is actually a pretty massive improvement. |
how americans die
| ugh, the fact that many of these charts show raw # of deaths versus deaths/100k really masks how much things have improved. in 1968, the population was 64% of our current population... so a flat line is actually a pretty massive improvement. | "and, how do suicide and drugs compare to other violent deaths across the population? far greater than firearm related deaths, and on the risein 2010, 19,392 of the 38,364 suicides were "by discharge of firearm" [the same term used for classifying 11,078 homicides and 606 accidental deaths]. seems a bit odd that the report classifies the accidents and homicides as "firearm related deaths" but the suicides as unrelated.from a public health perspective, a 50% reduction in suicide by firearm would save more lives than the complete elimination of hiv deaths or cervical cancer deaths or uterine cancer deaths.<link> |
how americans die
| "and, how do suicide and drugs compare to other violent deaths across the population? far greater than firearm related deaths, and on the risein 2010, 19,392 of the 38,364 suicides were "by discharge of firearm" [the same term used for classifying 11,078 homicides and 606 accidental deaths]. seems a bit odd that the report classifies the accidents and homicides as "firearm related deaths" but the suicides as unrelated.from a public health perspective, a 50% reduction in suicide by firearm would save more lives than the complete elimination of hiv deaths or cervical cancer deaths or uterine cancer deaths.<link> | if you liked this, you might enjoy some of their previous articles. it's interesting to see them iterating on the technique.consumer spending (from last december): <link> prices (from february): <link> |
the next 1,000 start-ups
| good move by braintree.as much as i love stripe and their innovative moves, the bulk of my business's transactions have been handled by braintree over the last 4 years. that includes both saas subscription billing and third-party payment aggregation (we do niche ecommerce, take a transaction fee, and ach to customers). our transaction fee is below the (now seemingly) standard 2.9% which adds up when you get to hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in processing. braintree's support is great ... i'm talking rackspace-level great.some of you talk like braintree is an old-school behemoth which is being disrupted by stripe, which is silly. news flash: braintree is not paypal. obviously they are all competitors, but i see nothing to indicate that braintree can't keep pace with stripe moving forward.i do use stripe for things–and i do love it. but we wouldn't be where we are today w/o braintree. | a cute marketing trick. no you're not doing this just because you want to "help new startups". that's a nice way of rationalizing it, but really1) braintree is suffering from the competition, especially on hn, stripe is loved like no other2) they're not giving away 2 million dollars. with so many startups failing to ever generate significant revenue, i wouldn't be suprised if less than 10% of companies that are the first 1000 to register actually wind up generating $50k in revenue through their service. i'm sure braintree have their own internal calculations about how much this will cost them and that number is certainly no where near 2 million dollars.3) the primary purpose of this is to bind new businesses to braintree. the scenario of "getting their free processing here and then going somewhere else before they pay us a nickel." is cute, but misleading. at that point in the company's development switching the entire payments system is much more expensive and would not make any economic sense.props to braintree for coming up with this, i think in the end it's beneficial to the startup community, though i dislike the "second coming of jesus christ"-vibe of the announcement. they're doing this for business reasons, not because they woke up yesterday and felt a little charitable. |
the next 1,000 start-ups
| a cute marketing trick. no you're not doing this just because you want to "help new startups". that's a nice way of rationalizing it, but really1) braintree is suffering from the competition, especially on hn, stripe is loved like no other2) they're not giving away 2 million dollars. with so many startups failing to ever generate significant revenue, i wouldn't be suprised if less than 10% of companies that are the first 1000 to register actually wind up generating $50k in revenue through their service. i'm sure braintree have their own internal calculations about how much this will cost them and that number is certainly no where near 2 million dollars.3) the primary purpose of this is to bind new businesses to braintree. the scenario of "getting their free processing here and then going somewhere else before they pay us a nickel." is cute, but misleading. at that point in the company's development switching the entire payments system is much more expensive and would not make any economic sense.props to braintree for coming up with this, i think in the end it's beneficial to the startup community, though i dislike the "second coming of jesus christ"-vibe of the announcement. they're doing this for business reasons, not because they woke up yesterday and felt a little charitable. | there are multiple aspects to payment processing with basic payment processing and integration being the minimum -- stripe currently has the most beautiful story here.things get more complex on the back end of the payment being processed at scale, namely fraud detection and risk mitigation. this is where some of those behemoths in the industry actually shine more.stripe passes the risk directly through, you are on your own.for a lot of folks here working on startups with their first few-hundred customers, that isn't the problem -- the problem is accepting payments and getting back to work. i don't see anyone beating stripe in that game.for the folks that have huge customer bases, mitigating risk and dealing with fraud is a much more frequent/costly problem and having a processor help out there is why companies like paypal (and braintree?) are still in people's vocabulary even though a good majority of their experience on the front-end suck.this is one of those problems that doesn't matter to you at all, until it does... then it is a huge nightmare and you scramble around looking for a solution and suddenly realize why "everyone doesn't just use stripe" -- or some equally hot new processing startup. |
the next 1,000 start-ups
| there are multiple aspects to payment processing with basic payment processing and integration being the minimum -- stripe currently has the most beautiful story here.things get more complex on the back end of the payment being processed at scale, namely fraud detection and risk mitigation. this is where some of those behemoths in the industry actually shine more.stripe passes the risk directly through, you are on your own.for a lot of folks here working on startups with their first few-hundred customers, that isn't the problem -- the problem is accepting payments and getting back to work. i don't see anyone beating stripe in that game.for the folks that have huge customer bases, mitigating risk and dealing with fraud is a much more frequent/costly problem and having a processor help out there is why companies like paypal (and braintree?) are still in people's vocabulary even though a good majority of their experience on the front-end suck.this is one of those problems that doesn't matter to you at all, until it does... then it is a huge nightmare and you scramble around looking for a solution and suddenly realize why "everyone doesn't just use stripe" -- or some equally hot new processing startup. | interesting move. too bad it's us only for now.we're currently using fastspring but both the recent opening of braintree towards europe and the price getting a clear 2.9% + $0.3 are making it pretty interesting.make a similar promotion for europe and i'll probably switch. |
the next 1,000 start-ups
| interesting move. too bad it's us only for now.we're currently using fastspring but both the recent opening of braintree towards europe and the price getting a clear 2.9% + $0.3 are making it pretty interesting.make a similar promotion for europe and i'll probably switch. | this is classic competition at work. along comes stripe that forces companies that are not asleep, like braintree, to compete on price or innovation or some other axes. |
darts, dice, and coins: a beautiful article on a beautiful algorithm
| loved the writeup - honestly, i have no problem with the extra detail between the first super-naive approach and the ultimate best solution, it strikes me as a great way to teach problems like this. especially when compared to the upper-level math "strip the scaffolding" approach, which always leaves you wondering "how the hell did anyone ever think of that?"one small nitpick. [tl;dr - please pick a proper license when you publish code on the net] i went to the code snippets page because i was considering using this code in one of my projects (it's a bit cleaner than the code i've been using), and found this statement:if you're interested in using any of this code in your applications, feel free to do so! you don't need to cite me or this website as a source, though i would appreciate it if you did. however, please don't plagiarize the code here by claiming authorship - that would just be dishonest. i also caution you that while i'm fairly confident that the code on this site is correct, i haven't mercilessly tested every line, and so there may be a lurking bug or two here.please, if you're releasing code on the internet that you hope for people to use, just pick a standard license, and ideally, put the license specification in the comments of the code itself (this one sounds like mit, bsd, or zlib would probably be fine with the author). i know, you're being nice, you're being casual, you want people to use your stuff, and you're not going to sue anyone.but a self-penned informal license like this means that when joe java wants to pull in aliasmethod.java to help out a math library that he's working on at his bank job, he can't just go ahead and do it, because it's not on the pre-cleared list of code licenses that he's allowed to import external code under. he has to get explicit approval from legal first, which means that he has to convince someone there that spending 15 minutes looking over the license text and deciding whether it's solid enough to trust is a worthwhile use of time, all over a couple dozen lines of code that he could implement a naive version of in 20 minutes plus testing. at a lot of companies, that just means "no." it also presents difficulties for open source projects that might otherwise like to incorporate your code because of license compatibility concerns, in many cases requiring them to e-mail you for specific permission to include your code inside a differently-licensed project.more concretely, i'd be nervous relying on this license statement for a couple reasons: first, it says "using any of this code in your applications". would a separately distributed library file be considered an "application", or are we only allowed to use the code inside full running programs? second, what about redistribution of the source code, and derivative works? it's sort of implied that this is allowed (how would someone claim authorship of this bit of code if they weren't redistributing it?), but a proper license should make source redistribution and modification rights extremely explicit, without that it's typically assumed that there are none. | this is an extremely beautiful problem.it was also a great interview question because most candidates have never seen this before, and it requires problem solving skills and a very basic amount of algorithmic knowledge that every cs major should have.looks like i'll have to find a new interview question.again, this is such a gorgeous problem. it's one of the rare gems that used to show up on hn all the time, and now have become quite rare. |
darts, dice, and coins: a beautiful article on a beautiful algorithm
| this is an extremely beautiful problem.it was also a great interview question because most candidates have never seen this before, and it requires problem solving skills and a very basic amount of algorithmic knowledge that every cs major should have.looks like i'll have to find a new interview question.again, this is such a gorgeous problem. it's one of the rare gems that used to show up on hn all the time, and now have become quite rare. | all this method does is break the continuous [0,1) range into enough discrete buckets that each bucket contains at most two choices. because the buckets are the same "probability-size" you can pick a bucket with o(1) and then do an o(1) comparison.everything between "loaded die with a fair die" and "vose's alias method" seems superfluous. |
darts, dice, and coins: a beautiful article on a beautiful algorithm
| all this method does is break the continuous [0,1) range into enough discrete buckets that each bucket contains at most two choices. because the buckets are the same "probability-size" you can pick a bucket with o(1) and then do an o(1) comparison.everything between "loaded die with a fair die" and "vose's alias method" seems superfluous. | thank you for posting this. important as sopa is, i'd love to see a few more like this mixed in with the other stories. |
darts, dice, and coins: a beautiful article on a beautiful algorithm
| thank you for posting this. important as sopa is, i'd love to see a few more like this mixed in with the other stories. | i'm a little skeptical about the domain of usefulness of this algorithm. the simple method that computes the cdf and uses binary search for sampling is called "roulette wheel selection" in this writeup.the only difference at the big-o level between the "beautiful algorithm" and the above simple algorithm is, the latter takes log(n) steps for sampling versus o(1) (setup and memory usage are the same).how many problems have n large enough so const1*log(n)+const2 is significantly more than the constant in o(1) algorithm? not many, i'll bet, especially since const1 and const2 are small due to the simplicity of the simple cdf-based algorithm.if it was o(sqrt(n)) vs. o(1), this would be a different thing, but log is different.this is not to diminish the inherent interest in the sampling arguments used, and the existence of a big-o faster algorithm. |
how big brother and big media can put the internet genie back in the bottle.
| this is from 2003. it's not entirely outdated, but it is rather quaint.the author foresees a future where everyone has to use personal certificates to communicate, which has various pros and cons - while enabling commerce, it could be the end of anonymity. he didn't anticipate a world where the government is simply hoovering up all the plaintext. | microsoft wants arm machines to be locked in windows 8 mode, probably to block android. from what i can tell, it goes both ways. existing android tablets are not windows8-certified, so they won't run it.microsoft being the runner-up in the tablet market, i find the move puzzling. what do they have to gain? why would vendors want to lock themselves in the hands of microsoft, given ms's past behavior?more puzzling yet: what is the force in the microsoft dna that prompts them to systematically return to this kind of anti-competitive behaviors as soon as they get a chance? |
how big brother and big media can put the internet genie back in the bottle.
| microsoft wants arm machines to be locked in windows 8 mode, probably to block android. from what i can tell, it goes both ways. existing android tablets are not windows8-certified, so they won't run it.microsoft being the runner-up in the tablet market, i find the move puzzling. what do they have to gain? why would vendors want to lock themselves in the hands of microsoft, given ms's past behavior?more puzzling yet: what is the force in the microsoft dna that prompts them to systematically return to this kind of anti-competitive behaviors as soon as they get a chance? | this article seems to focus on closed-source solutions. what about linux? if the trusted computing code would be open-source, that creates another rather huge problem for the big brother and big media. does that mean linux machines would be unable to connect to the internet? or would they need closed-source trusted computing drivers instead? |
how big brother and big media can put the internet genie back in the bottle.
| this article seems to focus on closed-source solutions. what about linux? if the trusted computing code would be open-source, that creates another rather huge problem for the big brother and big media. does that mean linux machines would be unable to connect to the internet? or would they need closed-source trusted computing drivers instead? | wait, can someone explain what the hell is going on?!?!last i heard the no-images-except-signed ones was for for arm devices only. did ms just put this into x86? can you turn it off in the bios? |
how big brother and big media can put the internet genie back in the bottle.
| wait, can someone explain what the hell is going on?!?!last i heard the no-images-except-signed ones was for for arm devices only. did ms just put this into x86? can you turn it off in the bios? | how was this peer-to-peer internet actually put to use, and why isn't it used that way anymore? i think i could name usenet, but what else? most of things i do on the internet nowadays is using the www - a hierarchical structure. but were there p2p equivalents of any of the websites we use today? |
“if you're not paying for the product, you are the product” is hogwash
| regardless of whether you agree with the implied sentiment behind it, it is factually correct in google's case. they are selling ads. the product is access to people to display ads to, which advertisers are buying.on a further note, no, we're not ever going to love google anymore. google is a huge multinational corporation that is beholden to its shareholders. that's just what happens when you get that big. we're not going to praise you for being moral, we're just going to use your products, and you're going to profit from it. that's the deal. | i feel like i just read an article from a farmer about how much he cares about their animals. it's awesome to see a farmer who loves their animals. i would love to be able to buy meat only from people who really care about humane and healthy animals. and yes, it does make good business sense! maybe google is the whole foods of tech.but, i'm not convinced that the users are the customers no matter how much care they are treated with. the money that keeps the data centers lit comes from advertisers who are are buying users' attention. |
“if you're not paying for the product, you are the product” is hogwash
| i feel like i just read an article from a farmer about how much he cares about their animals. it's awesome to see a farmer who loves their animals. i would love to be able to buy meat only from people who really care about humane and healthy animals. and yes, it does make good business sense! maybe google is the whole foods of tech.but, i'm not convinced that the users are the customers no matter how much care they are treated with. the money that keeps the data centers lit comes from advertisers who are are buying users' attention. | "everything google does is done for our users. ... you are not product; you are our customers!"regardless of whether google's users are its "product", i'd maintain that google's customers are the people who give them money in exchange for a product or service (that's the general usage of the term "customer"). these would be mostly the people who buy ads, since selling ads is by far google's largest source of revenue."even ads is viewed as a service to our users. random ads are garbage. useful ads are a benefit."if i were a gmail user, how would "useful" ads enhance my use of gmail? they're a distraction to getting work done. i don't go to my e-mail when i'm interested in shopping for something, and i'm pretty sure that most other people don't either. in fact, i pay money to use an e-mail provider who does not show me ads. |
“if you're not paying for the product, you are the product” is hogwash
| "everything google does is done for our users. ... you are not product; you are our customers!"regardless of whether google's users are its "product", i'd maintain that google's customers are the people who give them money in exchange for a product or service (that's the general usage of the term "customer"). these would be mostly the people who buy ads, since selling ads is by far google's largest source of revenue."even ads is viewed as a service to our users. random ads are garbage. useful ads are a benefit."if i were a gmail user, how would "useful" ads enhance my use of gmail? they're a distraction to getting work done. i don't go to my e-mail when i'm interested in shopping for something, and i'm pretty sure that most other people don't either. in fact, i pay money to use an e-mail provider who does not show me ads. | it occurs to me that maybe product/customer is a false dichotomy. isn't it possible that users are customers of google's search results and products for google's advertisers at the same time?only when you imagine that a company can only have one product, does this dichotomy make sense. google operates a system in which there are multiple products and customers. one could even arguably say that advertisers are the product in the sense that they provide users with patronage for their free searches. |
“if you're not paying for the product, you are the product” is hogwash
| it occurs to me that maybe product/customer is a false dichotomy. isn't it possible that users are customers of google's search results and products for google's advertisers at the same time?only when you imagine that a company can only have one product, does this dichotomy make sense. google operates a system in which there are multiple products and customers. one could even arguably say that advertisers are the product in the sense that they provide users with patronage for their free searches. | i was ready for someone to take that "if you're not paying..." line to task. as this was on google plus i just assumed it was by some opensource project member. they've got a convincing retort built in. it would take all of two sentences.i edited my post to not be smarmy here, but this is just flat out wrong and i don't need to reiterate how google works. brian, i believe you believe what you wrote. until you and your privacy concerned co-workers get together to surface a "delete all stored data on me and opt out" button, i'm going to think you've let your close relationship with google warp your perspective and allow you to draw faulty conclusions on how far up your attitudes permeate. |
crunchbase 2.0
| this looks like it was designed by someone new to web design...so bland and such weak use of space. the gradients and shadows are oddly used as well. this just comes off as a rough prototype put together over a weekend, not a year-in-the-making-23-person-team real product.they should really have a ui/ux expert come take a stab at a redesign of this. hell, throw it up on dribbble. | "if you had an account on crunchbase previously, you will need to register again. - see more at: <link>;not loving that. i actively maintained my crunchbase account and now i have to re-register?did not come here to complain, but did what to report this very odd fact. |
crunchbase 2.0
| "if you had an account on crunchbase previously, you will need to register again. - see more at: <link>;not loving that. i actively maintained my crunchbase account and now i have to re-register?did not come here to complain, but did what to report this very odd fact. | hmmmm... at first i felt i have to complain, then i remind myself that new designs mostly are very controversial because humans on average don't like changes that require them to adapt to a new usability pattern. so maybe i need some time to adapt.here is my first opinion: the new page looks a lot more fancy and modern, but the company detail pages just waste a lot of space. the older version wasn't that pretty, but it had all necessary informations on one page without much scrolling. now i need to scroll a lot, which is a thing that i really don't like. might be better on tablets, thou. |
crunchbase 2.0
| hmmmm... at first i felt i have to complain, then i remind myself that new designs mostly are very controversial because humans on average don't like changes that require them to adapt to a new usability pattern. so maybe i need some time to adapt.here is my first opinion: the new page looks a lot more fancy and modern, but the company detail pages just waste a lot of space. the older version wasn't that pretty, but it had all necessary informations on one page without much scrolling. now i need to scroll a lot, which is a thing that i really don't like. might be better on tablets, thou. | i had a detailed interview with crunchbase president matt kaufman a few months ago.imho matt and his team are smart, focused, on-target, and have very good ideas about improving crunchbase. our discussion ranged from the long-term big picture to the nitty-gritty tech needs, and all of it impressed me as solid, worthwhile, and brimming with interesting opportunities.(i don't have any affiliation with crunchbase, and i don't get anything for recommending them.) |
crunchbase 2.0
| i had a detailed interview with crunchbase president matt kaufman a few months ago.imho matt and his team are smart, focused, on-target, and have very good ideas about improving crunchbase. our discussion ranged from the long-term big picture to the nitty-gritty tech needs, and all of it impressed me as solid, worthwhile, and brimming with interesting opportunities.(i don't have any affiliation with crunchbase, and i don't get anything for recommending them.) | i liked crunchbase 1.0 better. it was easier to browse and find new companies with. now you can only look up companies you already know about. |
vpn access being disabled in china
| this sucks for travelers and ex-pats, but for china's future this is a very, very, very big deal.i lived in shanghai last year, and chinese internet surveillance is unreal. i could use gmail chat to talk about tiananman square, but as soon as i did all of my google apps would suddenly be unavailable. i can only assume that when i used certain keywords my every chat was being monitored. a vpn was the only way i could access youtube, twitter, facebook, and even some google searches.but reality is 90% of the young population of shanghai didn't really care what the "great firewall" did, because everyone used a vpn. i saw more people watching youtube in china than i do in the states, even though chinese versions of these platforms exist. some platforms, like renren (facebook-like but more similar to russia's vkontakte) were popular, but most just used the us-built versions. now most of them won't be able to.this absolutely terrifies me. i was literally minutes away from being on a bullet train from shanghai to beijing that killed "x" people. chinese authorities cite incredibly low numbers for a train traveling at 300 km/h. most non-state observers cited hundreds of deaths. china slowly grew its number from 20-40.it's illegal for foreigners to talk about the "three ts" with chinese nationals - tibet, taiwan, and tiananman square. but previously the youth learned through their vpns letting them access the outside world. with that shut down, the government might as well be burning books. | before travel to china, create a throwaway email account on a service, possibly yahoo. don't touch your real email accounts while you're there, if possible. the only time i've ever had an email account hacked is following use in china. |
vpn access being disabled in china
| before travel to china, create a throwaway email account on a service, possibly yahoo. don't touch your real email accounts while you're there, if possible. the only time i've ever had an email account hacked is following use in china. | here is a real test for anonymous; take down the worlds most notorious firewall. |
vpn access being disabled in china
| here is a real test for anonymous; take down the worlds most notorious firewall. | time to create bitcoin-enabled p2p vpn market?i have thought about the idea for some time. the marketplace operator could take something like 30% cut. any private invidual could sell their internet connection to the chinese and earn some bitcoins in the process.there could be some rules which could stop the chinese goverment from knowing which ip's operate in the market. for example, someone could buy certain vpn/ip address recurringly, and others couldn't purchase that specific ip - that way the goverment would have no way to know how that specific connection is used.and of course, bitcoin isn't very easy or well established payment method - bring in the resellers/market makers from china. these could (with some easy to use software/api) resell these vpn's to the chinese inviduals. |
vpn access being disabled in china
| time to create bitcoin-enabled p2p vpn market?i have thought about the idea for some time. the marketplace operator could take something like 30% cut. any private invidual could sell their internet connection to the chinese and earn some bitcoins in the process.there could be some rules which could stop the chinese goverment from knowing which ip's operate in the market. for example, someone could buy certain vpn/ip address recurringly, and others couldn't purchase that specific ip - that way the goverment would have no way to know how that specific connection is used.and of course, bitcoin isn't very easy or well established payment method - bring in the resellers/market makers from china. these could (with some easy to use software/api) resell these vpn's to the chinese inviduals. | vpn and ssh[1] have been means of evasion. but there have been anecdotal evidence of "unstable" vpn[2] and ssh connections before.[1] <link>
[2] <link> |
ask hn: show us your abandoned (and probably incomplete) side projects
i think most of us have some abandoned projects collecting dust on github. post them here so others can work on it or you even get enough motivation to start working on it again.<p>for example, i started an user mode network stack in python: <link> which responses to ping requests, but nothing more. | when flickr announced 1tb of free storage, i thought it'd be funny to build a way of mounting it as a filesystem which encoded your files as pictures. it reliably stores files and trees, i just never finished up the fuse binding:<link> | flightsight: <link> google maps, flightaware and the usgs database of named places to provide google street view for flights.essentially, you could look up any flight in real time and get a map showing points-of-interest viewable (ideally) from the plane. i had everything working but then racked up about $200 in flightaware api calls so i shut it down. |
ask hn: show us your abandoned (and probably incomplete) side projects
i think most of us have some abandoned projects collecting dust on github. post them here so others can work on it or you even get enough motivation to start working on it again.<p>for example, i started an user mode network stack in python: <link> which responses to ping requests, but nothing more. | flightsight: <link> google maps, flightaware and the usgs database of named places to provide google street view for flights.essentially, you could look up any flight in real time and get a map showing points-of-interest viewable (ideally) from the plane. i had everything working but then racked up about $200 in flightaware api calls so i shut it down. | open pixel platformer: <link>
a sample game using a custom engine. however, the organizer, hapiel iirc, got busy. i got busy and couldn't take over, but it had some nice support from the artists at pixel joint, and i'd be willing to continue implementation work on it. i don't feel i have the time at the moment to organize it, though. currently, you can walk around, and ctrl-e gets you an editor.editabled, the editable pixel editor: <link>
(live demo) broken on chrome, because they effed around with web workers. so i need to look at that. it's basically a js-based rendering engine. if you look closely, you'll note the lines you draw aren't antiailiased, which lines drawn with the canvas2d api are. fast compositing engine using typed arrays. async rendering using web workers. infinite canvas, you can scroll with the arrow keys and no matter how large it gets it never seems to slow down. ^_^ potential, might have the time to pick it up again, but that was before i was properly employed. very technical atm, but i might get back around to it in a bit. :/
that's about it here. there's also <link>, my attempt at an indie game, which is downloadable from github. i am no marketer, so i only sold a handful of units. (ie, i can count sales on one hand) also available on <link> there's more potential here, and i think it's pretty easy to extend. the game comes with an editor, so you can make and share your own maps. sort of cute, really pushing my graphics abilities, and ended up with it's own pathing algorithm which i never did add the people for. it was scheduled for v2, but i was pretty tired of the project by then.eh, hardly an impressive folder compared to some of this stuff (nanopond), but oh well. |
ask hn: show us your abandoned (and probably incomplete) side projects
i think most of us have some abandoned projects collecting dust on github. post them here so others can work on it or you even get enough motivation to start working on it again.<p>for example, i started an user mode network stack in python: <link> which responses to ping requests, but nothing more. | open pixel platformer: <link>
a sample game using a custom engine. however, the organizer, hapiel iirc, got busy. i got busy and couldn't take over, but it had some nice support from the artists at pixel joint, and i'd be willing to continue implementation work on it. i don't feel i have the time at the moment to organize it, though. currently, you can walk around, and ctrl-e gets you an editor.editabled, the editable pixel editor: <link>
(live demo) broken on chrome, because they effed around with web workers. so i need to look at that. it's basically a js-based rendering engine. if you look closely, you'll note the lines you draw aren't antiailiased, which lines drawn with the canvas2d api are. fast compositing engine using typed arrays. async rendering using web workers. infinite canvas, you can scroll with the arrow keys and no matter how large it gets it never seems to slow down. ^_^ potential, might have the time to pick it up again, but that was before i was properly employed. very technical atm, but i might get back around to it in a bit. :/
that's about it here. there's also <link>, my attempt at an indie game, which is downloadable from github. i am no marketer, so i only sold a handful of units. (ie, i can count sales on one hand) also available on <link> there's more potential here, and i think it's pretty easy to extend. the game comes with an editor, so you can make and share your own maps. sort of cute, really pushing my graphics abilities, and ended up with it's own pathing algorithm which i never did add the people for. it was scheduled for v2, but i was pretty tired of the project by then.eh, hardly an impressive folder compared to some of this stuff (nanopond), but oh well. | for my first go project, i decided to emulate perl's popular params::validate library: <link> though, i got sick of go and sick of writing the library. i'm not much of a fanboy of anything, but ya generics. they woulda been nice. i operated on the blank interface type a lot, and it's honestly just annoying doing all those case statements checking what type it is when i coulda just wrote a polymorphic method for the types i support. i always read on here though that you gotta adapt to the go style.. so maybe there's some more elegant way to go about it than i was, but meh, not worth diving into for me personally.now i'm writing my first scala library and i looove scala! i'm taking this library very seriously and expect to have a show hn within a month or two. |
ask hn: show us your abandoned (and probably incomplete) side projects
i think most of us have some abandoned projects collecting dust on github. post them here so others can work on it or you even get enough motivation to start working on it again.<p>for example, i started an user mode network stack in python: <link> which responses to ping requests, but nothing more. | for my first go project, i decided to emulate perl's popular params::validate library: <link> though, i got sick of go and sick of writing the library. i'm not much of a fanboy of anything, but ya generics. they woulda been nice. i operated on the blank interface type a lot, and it's honestly just annoying doing all those case statements checking what type it is when i coulda just wrote a polymorphic method for the types i support. i always read on here though that you gotta adapt to the go style.. so maybe there's some more elegant way to go about it than i was, but meh, not worth diving into for me personally.now i'm writing my first scala library and i looove scala! i'm taking this library very seriously and expect to have a show hn within a month or two. | ballen: parallel cucubmer tests runner powered by docker
<link> had issues to run cucumber tests. there are many tests and they are slow. some tests are randomly fail affected by the state of other tests. that's why i made baleen. it runs cucumber tests parallel and independently on docker containers. unfortunately, i couldn't use in real env because my tests are dependent on oracle database and running oracle database in each container are slow which defeats the first goal of baleen. here is also a post about how it works. <link> |
nosql data modeling techniques
| first off i find the nosql term in itself very strange. how can you say anything intelligent about "everything that is not using sql as a query language"? its like talking about nojava, instead of talking about ruby.props for a well written article with lots of nice graphs but i dont agree with much of its content.a few examples:"software applications are not so often interested in in-database aggregation"in my experience this is what 99% of business support apps are doing. doing this aggregation in procedural application code will only give you more code to maintain and more bugs."joins are often handled at design time as opposed to relational model where joins are handled at query execution time"im glad you know beforehand about your changing requirements over the next 10 years and can "design" your joins for every eventuality right now.
it feels like the exact oppisite of agile.i also agree with the very insightful comment by voice in the wind (comment #4 below the article) | this is an interesting article.i am primarily a postgresql guy who does all sorts of things like hierarchical data representation in sql. while these things have come a long way in the past few years. this being said, the more i read about nosql data modelling techniques, the more it occurs to me that some of these techniques may work well in relational data environments where data is read-frequent/write-seldom.in ledgersmb (<link> we already use key-value modelling in cases where it makes sense (system settings, and a few other things).currently what hierarchical stuff we are doing wouldn't benefit from the ideas in this paper, but i wouldn't rule it out for some other things in the future.i guess what this is reinforcing for me is that nosql and sql models are not entirely mutually exclusive..... |
nosql data modeling techniques
| this is an interesting article.i am primarily a postgresql guy who does all sorts of things like hierarchical data representation in sql. while these things have come a long way in the past few years. this being said, the more i read about nosql data modelling techniques, the more it occurs to me that some of these techniques may work well in relational data environments where data is read-frequent/write-seldom.in ledgersmb (<link> we already use key-value modelling in cases where it makes sense (system settings, and a few other things).currently what hierarchical stuff we are doing wouldn't benefit from the ideas in this paper, but i wouldn't rule it out for some other things in the future.i guess what this is reinforcing for me is that nosql and sql models are not entirely mutually exclusive..... | i like the comparison of the design themes of relational modeling and nosql modeling as, respectively, "what answers do i have?" and "what questions do i have?" |
nosql data modeling techniques
| i like the comparison of the design themes of relational modeling and nosql modeling as, respectively, "what answers do i have?" and "what questions do i have?" | party like it's 1969! <link> that many old things don't work, well in some circumstances even. i'm just having a hard time seeing how throwing away acid and denormalizing data is "post modern" rather than "back to the future".denormalization? how about a materialized view to support common searches to reduce i/o from assembling data.aggregates? you could probably abuse and extend entity attribute values to (physically) cluster arbitrary / sparse / repeating field values around a common parent.it's actually a pretty good article, otherwise, i should probably leave myself a marker to find it. sooner or later, i'll end up having to maintain one of these things -- long gone contractors will build a "latest and greatest" app using a database system not unlike a 1970 mainframe. there are a number of good work-arounds in the article for dealing with systems with poor indexing capabilities -- a single key field to be filtered. |
nosql data modeling techniques
| party like it's 1969! <link> that many old things don't work, well in some circumstances even. i'm just having a hard time seeing how throwing away acid and denormalizing data is "post modern" rather than "back to the future".denormalization? how about a materialized view to support common searches to reduce i/o from assembling data.aggregates? you could probably abuse and extend entity attribute values to (physically) cluster arbitrary / sparse / repeating field values around a common parent.it's actually a pretty good article, otherwise, i should probably leave myself a marker to find it. sooner or later, i'll end up having to maintain one of these things -- long gone contractors will build a "latest and greatest" app using a database system not unlike a 1970 mainframe. there are a number of good work-arounds in the article for dealing with systems with poor indexing capabilities -- a single key field to be filtered. | i've the feeling that when talking about data modeling, redis really does not fit into the key-value category. |
ask hn: where are the capitalist and conservative technology presentations?
i recently commented on the anti-capitalist bias that rsa animate seems to tend to have, like "crisis of capitalism":
<link>
and the "high-tech workers don't want raises" presentation at: <link><p>but i've also thought that some of the ted talks i've seen tend to have more liberal speakers as well.<p>i know that political bias is inevitable, and that there are just a lot of liberal and anti-capitalists speaking up recently, but where are the best and brightest presentations of capitalists and conservatives located? | the best advice i can give you is to treat your political life like your sex life, and largely keep it outside of your professional life. i know extremely good people on both sides of the political isle, and i think it's important to go out of your way to be able to work with people who have differing views politically, religiously, and sexually.i mean, you don't need to hide who you are, but especially on divisive issues, don't rub it in someone else's face. be conscious of who you insult; it's pretty easy to insult people on the other side of a political debate, or to demean people with different religions or sexual proclivities. you never know when the guy next to you is one of "those people" and really, you are trying to work. it shouldn't matter if the guy next to you is one of "those people."ignoring my own advice here, i think the noise about "high-tech workers don't want raises" and "money doesn't matter" is just mba propaganda. nothing to do with "right" or "left" usually when companies say that what they really mean is "we'll donate to some bs charity run by our golf buddies rather than giving the workers raises; they are too dumb to know the difference." the truth of the matter is that money isn't everything; yeah, we all knew that. but you know? all other things being equal, almost all of us will choose more money over less. | i think part of the issue is the conflation of capitalism and conservatism. many conservatives pay lip service to capitalism with free-market rhetoric, but both their actions and many of their values are in direct conflict with it. capitalism is fundamentally a dynamic system -- people start companies to change the world, not conserve the status quo.i agree that capitalism has taken a beating in much of the country (though in my experience it's still alive and well in the valley). |
ask hn: where are the capitalist and conservative technology presentations?
i recently commented on the anti-capitalist bias that rsa animate seems to tend to have, like "crisis of capitalism":
<link>
and the "high-tech workers don't want raises" presentation at: <link><p>but i've also thought that some of the ted talks i've seen tend to have more liberal speakers as well.<p>i know that political bias is inevitable, and that there are just a lot of liberal and anti-capitalists speaking up recently, but where are the best and brightest presentations of capitalists and conservatives located? | i think part of the issue is the conflation of capitalism and conservatism. many conservatives pay lip service to capitalism with free-market rhetoric, but both their actions and many of their values are in direct conflict with it. capitalism is fundamentally a dynamic system -- people start companies to change the world, not conserve the status quo.i agree that capitalism has taken a beating in much of the country (though in my experience it's still alive and well in the valley). | your question is conflicted; capitalism is a type of liberalism, while conservatism leads to anti-capitalism.if you're looking for new capitalist ideas, take a look at seasteading, bitcoin, digital gold currencies, and the like.the internet by its very nature is liberal. if you're really looking for new conservative ideas, take a look at drm, national firewalls, paypal data mining, and most of "web 2.0".(edit: bittorrent is market-based, but not capitalist. there's more market-based technologies than strictly capitalist ones) |
ask hn: where are the capitalist and conservative technology presentations?
i recently commented on the anti-capitalist bias that rsa animate seems to tend to have, like "crisis of capitalism":
<link>
and the "high-tech workers don't want raises" presentation at: <link><p>but i've also thought that some of the ted talks i've seen tend to have more liberal speakers as well.<p>i know that political bias is inevitable, and that there are just a lot of liberal and anti-capitalists speaking up recently, but where are the best and brightest presentations of capitalists and conservatives located? | your question is conflicted; capitalism is a type of liberalism, while conservatism leads to anti-capitalism.if you're looking for new capitalist ideas, take a look at seasteading, bitcoin, digital gold currencies, and the like.the internet by its very nature is liberal. if you're really looking for new conservative ideas, take a look at drm, national firewalls, paypal data mining, and most of "web 2.0".(edit: bittorrent is market-based, but not capitalist. there's more market-based technologies than strictly capitalist ones) | wall street. |
ask hn: where are the capitalist and conservative technology presentations?
i recently commented on the anti-capitalist bias that rsa animate seems to tend to have, like "crisis of capitalism":
<link>
and the "high-tech workers don't want raises" presentation at: <link><p>but i've also thought that some of the ted talks i've seen tend to have more liberal speakers as well.<p>i know that political bias is inevitable, and that there are just a lot of liberal and anti-capitalists speaking up recently, but where are the best and brightest presentations of capitalists and conservatives located? | wall street. | tea-party rallies?seriously though, cato, mises institutes etc might be a good place to start if you don't like these commies infiltrating your precious bodily fluids. |
show hn: i love weird socks and i'm finally launching my lifestyle business
| design feedback:
your 'buy now' and 'learn more' buttons on the homepage are very hard to see. they need to stand out. make them bigger and bolder, or change the color (red would stand out much more and still fit into your overall theme), or fade out the background slightly. or, ideally, do more than one of those things. you really don't want those buttons to be hard to see.cost and details of what you get should be listed prominently on the signup page. i see the cost on the homepage, but only after looking really hard. you need details on what kinds of socks you're going to be sending out. pictures seem essential for something like this. (don't make me go looking for them. make them bigger.) your 'learn more' page desperately needs actual information as well. | make it more obvious to buy thisput a gigantic button under that sock graphic that says:"sign up now for $11/mo"i want to sign up for your service, but i almost closed the page thinking that you hadn't launched yet. the only thing that kept me looking was the gallery. since it looks like you've been doing this, i /kept/ looking for the sign up link.you need ot change this immediately!also put a price on this thing! |
show hn: i love weird socks and i'm finally launching my lifestyle business
| make it more obvious to buy thisput a gigantic button under that sock graphic that says:"sign up now for $11/mo"i want to sign up for your service, but i almost closed the page thinking that you hadn't launched yet. the only thing that kept me looking was the gallery. since it looks like you've been doing this, i /kept/ looking for the sign up link.you need ot change this immediately!also put a price on this thing! | this feels more like a blog than a quirky site that sells socks. you need a couple of things fixed:1. front page needs to be clearer about what you are offering. the socks themselves are not directly described, the cost sort of shows up in the wall of text below, and the call to action buttons are small. the option to actually view the socks is hard to find at the top bar2. the sock gallery page needs a lot more work. i can't seem to click to actually see more images. why are the images themselves so completely boring? take some filtery pictures, take pictures of you wearing your socks, i don't know, something. you're only selling a small range, this really shouldn't be a problem. remove whatever php 2002 gallery code you're using and build something more image friendly that's less about lists. we live in the age of pinterest.3. when you fix your gallery, replace your front page with it.4. i think your actual product has a lot of potential, although i don't think your socks are particularly quirky enough. for example i don't see what's so special about the may pair (maybe because i can't click to actually look at it in detail). i want a pair of socks that has captain picard and darth vader having a fist fight. |
show hn: i love weird socks and i'm finally launching my lifestyle business
| this feels more like a blog than a quirky site that sells socks. you need a couple of things fixed:1. front page needs to be clearer about what you are offering. the socks themselves are not directly described, the cost sort of shows up in the wall of text below, and the call to action buttons are small. the option to actually view the socks is hard to find at the top bar2. the sock gallery page needs a lot more work. i can't seem to click to actually see more images. why are the images themselves so completely boring? take some filtery pictures, take pictures of you wearing your socks, i don't know, something. you're only selling a small range, this really shouldn't be a problem. remove whatever php 2002 gallery code you're using and build something more image friendly that's less about lists. we live in the age of pinterest.3. when you fix your gallery, replace your front page with it.4. i think your actual product has a lot of potential, although i don't think your socks are particularly quirky enough. for example i don't see what's so special about the may pair (maybe because i can't click to actually look at it in detail). i want a pair of socks that has captain picard and darth vader having a fist fight. | i love this idea. i love the site. i hate that 3 minutes of searching didn't reveal to me the price. i'm going back to search a bit more. |
show hn: i love weird socks and i'm finally launching my lifestyle business
| i love this idea. i love the site. i hate that 3 minutes of searching didn't reveal to me the price. i'm going back to search a bit more. | i absolutely love this and was about to sign up when i noticed that you don't specify sizes.i have large (size 15) feet. are your socks going to fit me? you should mention sizing or let people choose.also the blog isn't working. |
a few high end cloud server io performance comparisons
| i would love to see some longer-term measurements. i get the impression that this benchmark was doing a one time measurement. but the one big problem i have with cloud services is i/o performance over a longer time period.we read so many times about very unreliable performance. sometimes it's ok and sometimes it's really, really bad.without any kind of time period to continuously run a benchmark in, this doesn't really help. for all we know, the first placed service was just having a good day and the last placed a very bad one. | i was surprised that the storm on demand ssd instances didn't seem do better (really only ~2x as fast as spinning disks?). turns out this is some weird bundle of benchmarks.i spun up a storm-ssd-3gb instance and ran bonnie++ on it. results here:
<link> i'm reading right, its ~868mb/s seq write (cpu bound) and ~594mb/s seq read (cpu bound). not sure how to read the random io results. the bigger instances would probably be faster still (more cpu).so the storm on demand ssd instances seem to be blazingly fast. |
a few high end cloud server io performance comparisons
| i was surprised that the storm on demand ssd instances didn't seem do better (really only ~2x as fast as spinning disks?). turns out this is some weird bundle of benchmarks.i spun up a storm-ssd-3gb instance and ran bonnie++ on it. results here:
<link> i'm reading right, its ~868mb/s seq write (cpu bound) and ~594mb/s seq read (cpu bound). not sure how to read the random io results. the bigger instances would probably be faster still (more cpu).so the storm on demand ssd instances seem to be blazingly fast. | i'd like to see the measurements displayed as iop per dollar. what is the cost of the benchmark? |
a few high end cloud server io performance comparisons
| i'd like to see the measurements displayed as iop per dollar. what is the cost of the benchmark? | the service seems really interesting but the charts/graphs could use a little tufte love.why are the bars in the chart in a different order than the lines in the table? maybe have the different amazon/xyz-provider be different shades of the same color? |
a few high end cloud server io performance comparisons
| the service seems really interesting but the charts/graphs could use a little tufte love.why are the bars in the chart in a different order than the lines in the table? maybe have the different amazon/xyz-provider be different shades of the same color? | interesting from an io point of view. it would be nice to have a clearer tie-in with cpu and other benchmarks for these providers. does anyone have any experience with storm on demand to share? their prices for ssd-based servers look enticing. |
tiobe : c overtakes java as the no.1 programming language
| so scala ranks behind the lego mindstorms language and visual foxpro in terms of community popularity? sure thing. i know that valid results don't always conform to expectations, anecdotal evidence and intuition; there's a believability limit, though, which is being crossed here. tiobe may be measuring its thing correctly, but in that case it's measuring the wrong thing. | please, please, stop with this tiobe nonsense. this index is a joke - can't someone with a burning desire for a weekend project create an open-sourced index website and engage with other hackers to incrementally improve it? |
tiobe : c overtakes java as the no.1 programming language
| please, please, stop with this tiobe nonsense. this index is a joke - can't someone with a burning desire for a weekend project create an open-sourced index website and engage with other hackers to incrementally improve it? | their methodology is suspect as hell:"tiobe programming community index is an indicator of the programming language trends. it is updated monthly, this list is based on the number of experienced programmers,courses and third-party vendors on the internet. it uses the well-known search engines (such as google, msn, yahoo) as well as wikipedia and youtube to calculate the ranking."frankly that doesn't sound like a proper method to determine a ranking of anything, let alone programming languages. |
tiobe : c overtakes java as the no.1 programming language
| their methodology is suspect as hell:"tiobe programming community index is an indicator of the programming language trends. it is updated monthly, this list is based on the number of experienced programmers,courses and third-party vendors on the internet. it uses the well-known search engines (such as google, msn, yahoo) as well as wikipedia and youtube to calculate the ranking."frankly that doesn't sound like a proper method to determine a ranking of anything, let alone programming languages. | yes, and in other news:while aquarius is in the seventh house of the principal equinox and jupiter is aligned with mercury and thor is napping in the trunk of a ford pinto, java shall tremble at the sight of the blood running down the walls of fear, for clojure shall overcome mindstorms when the adjudicated maximus crosses the greater chaotic plane, and bofh's everywhere shall rejoice! ia, ia!!! chtulu fthagn!!(iow, no, i don't put much stock in the tiobe index.) |
tiobe : c overtakes java as the no.1 programming language
| yes, and in other news:while aquarius is in the seventh house of the principal equinox and jupiter is aligned with mercury and thor is napping in the trunk of a ford pinto, java shall tremble at the sight of the blood running down the walls of fear, for clojure shall overcome mindstorms when the adjudicated maximus crosses the greater chaotic plane, and bofh's everywhere shall rejoice! ia, ia!!! chtulu fthagn!!(iow, no, i don't put much stock in the tiobe index.) | assuming that we trust these numbers, what does it say about mobile development that obj-c continues to shoot up, while java has lost momentum (though still high on the list)? there are more android devices out there than ios, but the development market seems skewed in favour of the latter. |