Show HN: Koalephant Shell Script Library - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/koalephant/shell-script-library <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this, on-and-off for a while, and I've finally found the time to get it usable/reliable enough to make a public release.

Shell being what it is, the library functions are largely just ways to make code more obvious (i.e. `k_string_pad_left 10 foo` vs `printf '%+10s' foo`).

One big goal is portability, so wherever possible things are done in pure shell, or using POSIX-defined tools. For that reason, there are some current external tool uses (notably `cfget`) that I want to replace, and of course use of things like `gpg` basically requires the environment has a working implementation,

One of the parts that's been both time consuming but also rewarding (in terms of mentally and in terms of results) has been `k-script-build`, which facilitates turning a script with relative source (`.`) statements into either a self-contained script (by inlining those scripts) or a script with absolute references (i.e. if you re-use a `.lib.sh` type file, and want to reference it in a location like `/usr/share`).

The installed versions of the tools, and the library files are themselves built with `k-script-build` which in turn, relies on the library. It's dogfooding/self-hosting up the wazoo.</comment>


Rules to live by   - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/rules-to-live-by/

<comment><AUTHOR> Rules to live by:

* You must not dilly-dally.

* You must be your word.

* You must have good intentions.

* You must admit to being the maker of meaning.

* You must not feel sorry for yourself.

* You must have a vision that you are striving for.

* You must tie creativity and experimentation with survival.

* You must be the change you want to see.

* You must rally others with your vision.

* You must stake your reputation on your better self.

* You must be comfortable with the consequences of being who you are.

* You must share.

* You must make your own advice and take it.

* You must manage your stress, health, and clarity.

* You must study your mistakes.

* You must retry things you don't like every once in a while.

*You must make time to enjoy things.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some less known but powerful/important companies? - <AUTHOR> Do companies similar to, for example, Qualcomm exist. <comment><USER2> It depends what you haven't heard of. I've certainly heard of Qualcomm and I don't even live in the same time zone.

There's companies like Mindgeek which own about 80% of the porn on the internet.

Nestlé, Pepsi Co, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg's, Mars, Associated British Foods, and Mondelez own nearly all the major food brands in the world.

Agriculture is also huge - many of the billionaires in my country are related to agriculture, or agricultural products like latex gloves and condoms.

Chinese tech companies tend to be underrated because many of them are private. Huawei makes similar revenue to Google and probably writes more code, but you don't see people fantasizing about working there. There's also ZTE, Tencent.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on what you mean by less known/powerful

A lot of companies that the general public doesn't tend to hear about are either outside of CPG/outside of your geography/outside of industries you hear about in the news or just private companies or holding companies. Some have really high revenues or # of employees.

A couple of companies I was surprised by revenues:

\- Cargill/Koch both have $100B+ revenues

\- Exor (Italy/Netherlands) $143B+

</comment><comment><USER4> G4S is the world's third-largest private employer; they run private prisons.

</comment><comment><USER5> Many private equity firms are the real owners of a lot of brands you probably heard of i.e. JAB holdings owns Peet's coffee, Panera, Pret, Krispy Kreme, Krueger, etc etc

</comment><comment><USER6> MarkMonitor, who provide big-enterprise domain name registration and brand protection. You'll find a significant number of big corporations have their domain name registered with them.

</comment><comment><USER7> think tanks.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think will happen to Facebook in the next 1-2 years? 10? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I suspect Facebook won't be around in 10 years. Social media sites and services tend not to last forever, and with the way public opinion seems to have turned against the company and the inevitably of a competitor coming along with a new focus/different features, it's almost certain Facebook's days are numbered.

Eventually, they'll be another Myspace. Another Digg. Another Friendster. Whatever.

In the short term, well that's harder to predict. They'll probably get in a bit of hot water over their attitudes towards privacy and the spread of 'fake news' on the platform. They're already being called up in front of governments to answer for their actions, and I suspect things could get much worse for them there.

And then the inevitable will happen. People will keep calling for Facebook to change, and eventually it will. In a way that basically destroys the selling point of the site and drives people off to that hip new startup offering an alternative.

The cycle continues.</comment>


World's oldest known wild bird is a mother again on Midway Atoll - <AUTHOR> https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/02/11/hawaii-news/worlds-oldest-known-wild-bird-is-a-mother-again-on-midway-atoll-2/ <comment><USER3> Very cool to see the fruits of a long research project. I had no idea birds could live that long or produce offspring that long.

<comment><USER4> I think more interesting is that it, and presumably many others, survived so long in the wild of all places. Many species are known to have significantly extended lifespans in captivity compared to the wild, so that alone isn't unusual. What is is that in all that time, the bird has avoided sickness and disease, predation, other natural perils, as well as man-made perils (according to Wikipedia, major man-made threats for the species are fishing, plastic pollution, lead poisoning, and introduced species), and so on. The bird is going on 70 and has never had access to modern healthcare - <USER2> unthinkable for modern society.

<comment><USER5> Albatrosses have a unique adaptation (dynamic soaring) that allows them to live most of their lives on the open ocean. They don't face many predators or even humans out there. Interestingly enough, global warming is actually helping albatrosses, as increased temperatures lead to increased wind speeds, allowing them to expand their range.

<comment><USER6> >>Interestingly enough, global warming is actually helping albatrosses

This will always be the case whenever there are some extreme changes to the environment. Some species will thrive and some will go extinct. The Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction event exterminated three quarters of all life. We are descendants of those mammals that made it through.

I remember reading somewhere that had it not been for that extinction event we probably would not be here. Don't know if it's true.

<comment><USER7> It probably is true. If it weren't true, there would be something very peculiar about the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just a small token of appreciation for explicitly qualifying this as 'known' superlative. One of my pet peeves anytime there's a headline discussing the -est of anything.

<comment><USER9> Anthropocentrism isn't big on humility, but is on being "first" or whatever- est, as if that changed anything. I guess it's purely a game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If these birds mate for life then isnt the mate ~ the same age? Or is this a until death do us part situation?

<comment><USER11> Until death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Midway is also known as one of the places in the region most polluted with plastic garbage.

<comment><USER13> Many of the Pacific Islands are lined with plastic bags. It's really quite sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist_

</comment><comment><USER15> My father's entire life fit inside of this bird's life. He was born after her and died before her.

That's insane.

<comment><USER16> The oldest tortoise around was born during the Industrial Revolution.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.livescience.com/61210-shark-not-512-years- old.ht...](https://www.livescience.com/61210-shark-not-512-years-old.html)

"Eye tissue analysis presented a probability range suggesting that the sharks were at least 272 years old, and could potentially be as much as 512 years old,"</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I convince my coworkers to start a company? - <AUTHOR> I work at a FAANG and have a lot of side projects that I'd like to try turning into businesses, but I'm having a hard time finding cofounders. All of my close friends work at <large company> however and they all say that the security of the job is why they won't leave even though the product sounds fun and they'd want to work on it. Obviously, this isn't something I can offer. I want to offer something better, however I'm not sure how I can pitch a convincing argument.<p>So, for those of you who managed to convince a friend or were otherwise convinced, what tipped the scale away from job security? <comment><USER2> You have to find like minded people, and people who want the security of a large corporation are the exact opposite of the risk taking adventure entrepreneurs take. Entrepreneurs as a group consider working for a large corporation to be a major risk, really working for anyone is a risk. Personally I think having a "job" is a major risk but sometimes it is fun to do too, just like building a business.

The people you are talking to are comfortable and not the right crowd, I am sure some work at the company that would love that opportunity.

Just a word of caution, be careful actively recruiting while on the job, it is a fast way to either A get fired, or B get fired and sued for your side project depending on the company. A lot of FAANG and startups that emulate them have clauses about side projects and so you have to be really careful here if you have one of those. I am all for you doing whatever you want, but just make sure you know the details on how it could affect you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those friends/coworkers won't make it in the long-run, even if you can convince them in the beginning.

You need someone that is hungry to start a business, sick and tired of working for someone else, and will sacrifice their free time to make it happen.

I've tried at least half a dozen times in the past to start a company with friends/coworkers..and most failed miserably for this reason.

Some people just aren't meant to start or run a company and want the stability and security of being an employee.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You need someone that is hungry to start a business, sick and tired of > working for someone else, and will sacrifice their free time to make it > happen.

Do you have any ideas where I can meet and get to know such people?

Undergrad me thought that FAANG was the place to find such people because in undergrad we were too inexperienced, but now FAANG me thinks that undergrad was the place, and that maybe grad school will be similar? But I'm worried that I again won't have much luck at grad school.

Is it really that rare of a trait or am I just looking in the wrong places?

<comment><USER4> have you thought of starting solo to begin? Why do you want partners so early on? I'm luck enough to have met a few at work that I might consider working with on businesses in the future if opportunities come, but those people are honestly quite rare. There are plenty of smart engineers I've met on the jobs that have 0 desire to run a business and enjoy stability, why go the route of resistance?

I have however started a non-tech related business on the side, don't know where this would take me but can say the least because I've started this business, I managed to meet some ambitious and risk-taking individuals, when you meet them you will know their mindset is very different from many of the folks you work with in the office, these people typically dare to lose and dare to dream.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried starting things solo before and I think my skillset is not diverse enough. I have a very engineering-heavy skillset and I've been met with failure a few times before doing things solo.

It's a fair point though and I don't see this as stopping me, but it's a sore spot and I've been trying to find a partner so I can try to take a different approach with someone who has a different point of view than me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't do it. Find someone else, who is at least as much or more enthusiastic about starting a company to work on a product.

Building a product is hard, building a company is harder. There will be lots of ups and downs, so what you don't want is to end up "try to convince to continue working on it" them again every 4-6 months.

Find someone who will convince you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Running a business isn't just about building something that's interesting to you.

There's plenty of resources on Hacker News about how to validate your business. Assuming your side project is just software you work on nights and weekends, you'll find that "writing code" is just a fraction of what it takes to start a business.

See if you can find a side project that doesn't need to be a full-time business, and figure out how to focus it to be fun. At some point you'll see an opportunity to turn it into something that pays your bills; but don't rush.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you really need cofounders ? Can you start already and find someone later on ? I am a single founder and I spent a lots of time, money and energy because I had to find a cofounder because It s what successful startups do. I might not be successful yet :) but I have a profitable startup and I am still a single founder

</comment><comment><USER8> Build from scratch. First one will be hard, but it will get easier.

Recruit college kids, they can take a lot more risks and less pay. Happy with bunkbeds and ramen. Spend the money on blingy hardware and entertainment. Need more workers, they'll recruit their friends for you.

Worst case, they have to go back to school with a lot of experience.

</comment><comment><USER9> People do startups for similar reasons to mountain climbing. They enjoy the thrill of being in control of a chaotic situation.

They like being the underdog. They are at their best when the odds are against them. They love taking responsibility.

A lot of people like that would suffer in a large, stable company.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree with others here - if you're working at a FAANG you have it pretty good. They likely value free time more than the ability to try to build a side project.

I'm looking for a project myself to work on - email in my profile if you want to reach out.

</comment><comment><USER11> as i spend all of my energy to build a great product i dont have any energy left to convince co-founders or co-workers every few weeks. i wouldnt ever found a business or project with someone not as committed to it as myself.

so: if you have to convince someone of co-founding, he/she is probably not a good match

</comment><comment><USER12> Are you in the USA or Europe?

<comment><AUTHOR> USA</comment></comment>


This is how we let Hans Rosling rest in peace - <AUTHOR> http://www.hd.se/2017-02-13/this-is-how-we-let-hans-rosling-rest-in-peace <comment><AUTHOR> Hans' daughter, Ola Rosling, words on Gapminder FB page encouraged me to read this, so I think it's worth sharing here:

"Hans would have loved reading this article after his death!

Thousands and thousands of wonderful words have been written about my father during the last days. I knew he was popular. But I didn't expect this avalanche of comforting condolences. Thanks a million everyone!

All the stories have been wonderful, but last night one article made my jaw drop. While scrolling down the page I kept thinking: Hans would have loved reading this after his death!

The article was called "This is how we let Hans Rosling rest in peace". It was written in Swedish, by someone I'd never heard of. How could this person know my father so well? Was he a close friend of Hans, whom I had never met? How could he express with such precision what my father was thinking and feeling?

After I woke up this morning I couldn't resist calling the author, Peter Fällmar Andersson, who answered with a humble voice. He told me he had interviewed Hans only ones. Hans had mainly used the time to explain why he refused being categorised as an optimist. In addition to that, Peter only had access to the same free online material as everyone else.

Peter, you must be a very good listener! Many people didn't hear what Hans was saying. And you must be a very good writer. Hans never managed to express his frustration as clearly as you do. The frustration of being fame, but not being listened to. And then you convey what Hans wanted everyone to hear!

Most people can not read our tribal language (as Hans usually called Swedish). So I asked Peter to translate the article.

Please read carefully.

Thanks Peter Ola Rosling"</comment>


Ask HN: What was it like to work at a "dotcom" in the late 90s? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious what the work environment was like back in the dotcom boom. Did the people on the ground believe the hype? What did it take to get a job in development back then? Are there any good blogs or articles I can read on the topic? I want to understand what it was like and how it's different from today's environment. <comment><USER2> The word "startup" was only recently coined. We didn't know what we were doing. At all. All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is comon knowledge today had not yet been figured out. Incubators were not a thing. The VC market hadn't yet figured things out. Hype wasn't about getting a huge exit, it was about people paying you millions for a static HTML page that happened to get some traffic. And simply the ability to put up a site could be a viable business. There was no tie between business value and company worth. It was all chaos, and truly a wild west type environment.

As far as the work environment, it is exactly what you read about. A few guys in a basement or a garage. A desktop sitting next to you as the server. Slinging code and trying to get it to customers. At my first startup, we didn't even have an internet connection - we developed on a local LAN, and transferred the deliverable to the clients via FTP from home, or sometimes even via disk. We got a few customer and rented an office space, and then had 6 guys in 3000 square feet of open space with a few folding tables. Later, we were able to build out walls, hire more people, and make it a real office.

We went public, had lots of paper numbers next to our names, and then it all crashed.

<comment><USER3> > All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is common > knowledge today had not yet been figured out.

You're right about that. The lean startup, "there's no truth in the office", Minimum Viable Product concepts just weren't a thing back then, they would have saved one of the companies I worked for if the founders had known and accepted them. Instead they spent way too much time in stealth mode, hired a corporate lawyer to get them a bogus patent, were way too worried about competitors instead of ever getting traction for their idea, spent too much time debating details of the website, and who would pay what for precisely what sort of service, and too much upfront engineering to handle a huge demand which didn't materialize due to sabotage by the last round of investors who were found in desperation half a year before launch.

<comment><USER4> What is "there's no truth in the office"?

<comment><USER3> That any discussion of your potential customers "inside" the office, purely between people in your company, is highly to entirely speculative. You've got to get "out" of the office and sell your product, or not, to _know_. Hence the emphasis on having a Minimum Viable Product as soon as possible to know if there's real demand for it, and at what price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I attended a well regarded Engineering school back in the mid '90s and people were getting developer and "IT" jobs really quickly and without much interview rigamarole. If you could build a computer and install Windows you'd probably get an IT job (not a great one, but the pay was decent). Able to configure an office NAT? You must be a networking genius. Pure software developer jobs were harder to get than IT jobs, but not that much harder. It was also easier for people with Engineering Degrees (e.g. Electrical Engineering) to get an actual decent paying engineering job as opposed to software becoming a landing place for all degrees engineering.

That being said, a lot of stuff that is trivial today was a complete mess. Ever spent days debugging why all the new computers are crashing and it turned out to be the driver for your network card conflicting with another card the IT department installed? Jobs in software and IT could be a total mess because of all the different things technical people were doing.

I worked for a small company with a CEO who had done well for themselves running a small non-tech company and they decided to invest their money in a .com/internet venture. It was almost a textbook example of a CEO who thought there was money just waiting on the internet and all you had to was build something. No strategy around how to make money, users, or much of anything. The company was circling the drain even before the product was released and I was too young and stupid to quit the day the paychecks started bouncing. I don't think that's very different than many startups today.

Another friend worked for a bigger hardware company that was living on all the .com money floating around. He loved it. When everything went bust that company went bust as well. Another friend was a CEO of a company that was "Surviving on signed contracts where we signed a contract with another company and they signed a contract with us." You can imagine what happened when the bust occurred - all that paper money vanished.

I actually think software jobs are a lot better now. There's a lot more definitions and better discipline about what a developer does. The tooling is certainly better. I think there's also more respect and awareness about software development from others. Plus, I can move my big monitor now and not end up with a back injury :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I worked for a .com (a German company, so technically a .de) roughly from 1999 to 2003.

The way I got the job was by founding a startup in the same industry that was bought by said company.

We mostly believed the hype. However, for that particular company and industry it wasn't all hype but founded on reasonable assumptions. The company had its problems and has been transformed several times over the years but it still exists to this day!

Working as a developer back then was different because that role wasn't the more or less well-defined job it is today (or in larger, established companies for that matter).

As a developer you often were responsible for all things technical, from the office network to installing new servers hardware to actual software development. Basically, it was DevOps before there was DevOps - albeit in a much less well-structured manner.

Interestingly, back in the day designers and developers rarely worked together in the same team. It was more of a "We throw web design artefacts over the wall and see what happens." set-up.

</comment><comment><USER7> The documentary "Startup.com" provided an insider's view into one such dotcom. Check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked as a programmer in SF/South Park for three different startups from 97 to 2001. The hype and excitement was intoxicating. The launch parties were crazy and money was being thrown around like confetti on New Years. There was a huge demand for talent and many offers were made on the spot after short interviews. There were no coding tests. One interviewer said "I'm running late and have no time to talk to you. I read your resume and I think you can do the job, the job is yours if you want it" The deepest questions were along the lines of "can you explain what a constructor is?"or "Can you sketch out an object oriented design for a vending machine". After the crash was like the day after a huge party and you wake up in a trashed living room with a bad hangover. I moved to the suburbs and took a job with a company that inspired the Dilbert cartoon characters.

<comment><USER9> Oh you worked for Pacific Telesis? With the whole AT&T breakup and then re- merge that must be a good story on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just missed it. I graduated in 2001 and looking for a job was terrible. Companies that were larging it at the recruitment fairs a year ago were under water. I opted out of the "graduate recruitment cycle" as I didn't want to take days out traveling to London when I should be studying. So I was looking for a job in a state of effectively unemployment.

I was so desperate I applied to a company that was just a one man shop, and I'd be maintaining Access databases. And got rejected for a better candidate! I also had a job interview where "we get always the girls in for an interview to see what they look like" ... I'm a guy, but was pretty horrified. Did I instantly reject the company? No... I needed to eat. This was also at a time when "personality" questions and questionairres were all the rage, I suck at them, and man it was so good to be offered a job by a reasonable company that liked me for my ability to like ... write code.

I was like hold on they talked to me, gave me a coding test and made me an offer. Wow that was easy! Like now I'm thinking that should be standard. Any company who gets me in for 2 full days (after a first interview), unless they are sending me to the moon, can f'off.

<comment><USER5> >I just missed it. I graduated in 2001 and looking for a job was terrible.

I think for a lot of people that experience was a wake up call to the reality of the world. One year everybody with a technical degree is graduating with jobs waiting, the next year there are no jobs and even the most specialized (e.g. Microelectronic engineering degrees) people are having offers revoked. Family and parents don't understand because supposedly if you have a degree in IT or CS jobs are just waiting for you and plentiful. New graduates are wondering what's wrong with them that they can't even get the most basic job.

Plus, at that time you had to deal with Monster.com, which was one of the most horrible and SPAM filled BS job sites on earth. Post your resume and get an "exiting offer to be an entrepreneur" and it turns out you can be an agent for an insurance company in your local area. That made job-seekers even more depressed.

<comment><USER11> I worry this is going to happen again in the next five years. Things right now just feel too good to be true for someone with a CS degree (or even a bootcamp certificate).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One thing to focus on is how much of the crash was telecom vs. dot.com companies. An excess of fiber was laid, which was a boon to later companies like Google which bought dark fiber at low prices, competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_car...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier)) rose and fell based on changing law and regulations in the US, equipment manufacturers like Lucent were at the whip end of demand, especially since they financed a lot of the purchases of the equipment they were selling, and some of the biggest Internet service providers blew up in one way or another, see Worldcom for example.

The hype? Largely justified, even if the timing was off, there's no denying this has become a very big thing, note Amazon was founded in 1994. For me getting a job was no different than getting one prior to the Internet really taking off in this first wave.

BjoernKW's comments about the job being not tightly defined, and being responsible for many things including raw hardware matches my experience. And "cloud" alternatives to your own hardware, even if installed at a colo, weren't an option, weren't even for the start of 2nd batch of companies following the crash. And like his experience, one of the companies I worked for in the late 1990s lasted through it and way beyond, was independent until a few years ago when they were bought and folded into another company.

One very big difference is that the IPO exit option largely ended for most companies, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002 seems to have been the tipping point.

</comment><comment><USER12> All the VCs thought you had to have Sun servers running Solaris, so that was what everybody used. I remember seeing pallets of them delivered.

</comment><comment><USER13> It was interesting. Shame [http://fuckedcompany.com/](http://fuckedcompany.com/) isn't on [http://web.archive.org](http://web.archive.org).

<comment><USER14> Pud roams around HN, maybe he kept a copy he could gift to the Internet Archive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've read Bad Blood about the horrors of modern startups, but I've been looking for good books about the horrors of dotcom companies. Any recommendations?</comment>


Ask HN: My company plans an ICO despite my opposition as CTO, any advice? - <AUTHOR> I'm really sorry for creating a new account to stay anonymous. Feel free to ban this one if it is considered misbehavior.<p>Having that said, you can read the full story on my first comment below. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm in my late 20s. It's been almost 4 years since we founded our startup company. We pitched for a year and eventually gathered enough investment to give it a go. The initial plan was to release our app in the local market (middle east) and aim for more users. At the end of first year, with the approval of the board, we decided to delay marketing spending for more development to polish existing features as well as to add more ones. We revoked one feature (not ads) which would provide early cash flow as it turned out to be too ambitious and rash.

We pivoted and decided to go global with our proven to be fun features highlighted. It went smooth and retention rates grew tremendously until finally the day for series A arrived. The lead investor (the one with the most equity) already hinted that he would be willing to invest, some others followed as well. They are all angels btw.

Mails exchanged, meetings happened, places were visited and it turned out what we can gather is not enough to handle marketing costs for aimed growth. We contacted people from crowd equity funding companies. Apparently, none of them is currently accepting applicants from our country.

During our last meeting, the board discussed the idea of an initial coin offering. Some of our investors are crypto enthusiasts and many of them think it is a good idea to fund a project publicly with tokens. The thing is, our product doesn't resemble anything like a currency, not even a commodity in my opinion. It sounds unnaturally arbitrary to have tokens inside our app, or a token with our app's branding on top. Moreover, as someone who is the most technically proficient person in the board, I can easily deduce that all the proposals about hows and whys of the ICO resembles an obfuscated fraud. I couldn't believe what I heard that day and it seems I am the only one who thinks that way.

I plan to spend my all remaining days until the next meeting to prepare the hugest report ever written, hoping it will prove that it is the worst idea we ever discussed. As my voting rights being limited, I have no idea what to do if my report doesn't stop its happening. I still need to work for a year to permanently gain rights on my own equity. If I quit now, I'll lose everything except the lessons learned during these 4 years.

My question is, what would you do?

<comment><USER2> Here's an opposing view, from someone a little older and maybe a little wiser. In the big scheme of things, you're not that important. Your company is also not that important, and whether or not your company chooses to adopt this coin is not that important. If it's a "fraud" by your definition, then many, many other coins (and companies, for that matter) are also fraudulent, and it's not a very important fraud, so don't worry so much about saving the world from it. If you have any interest in working on blockchain technology, go with the flow. Leverage what skills and advantages you have in your life, don't burn bridges, and especially try to keep from burning your bridges because of ego issues. Remember, you're not that important. But you are important enough to do what you enjoy, important enough to have people in your life and career who look out for you, and important enough that every single day you learn something or work on something that progresses your ambition in some way. Maybe this coin offering can be a part of that and maybe not, but the answer is more likely to be found within your own psychology than the details of this particular technological/business crossroads.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe they actually see something that other people are failing to see.

I was in a position like that a few years ago. A manager a few levels above me had done a severely flawed study, and proposed completely restructuring our company's revenue model based on the results. He pitched it to us before going to the executive team. I pointed out that his numbers were too small to achieve statistical significance, and he was inconsistent in how he calculated the key metric in the study.

Another engineer in the room indicated that they were also concerned that he was proposing a massive change to our company based on very shaky evidence. Other people mostly sat quiet, too scared to make the manager angry.

And indeed, he got pretty pissed. He pretty much told me to shut up, and I let it go. I really wish I hadn't, because the results were even worse than I'd imagined.

He took it to the executives who loved it, and promptly restructured the company. We lost 2/3 of our revenue almost overnight. Investors were furious, and many of them sued us. Most of the executives were forced out, and the company was sold off for a tiny fraction of its previous value to one of our competitors.

The acquisition didn't go well. A lot of my co-workers lost their jobs in the process. I was fine because I saw the writing on the wall, and I started interviewing almost as soon as that disastrous meeting adjourned. I was long gone by the time the hammer fell.

I feel really shitty about being bullied into silence. I saved my own ass, but dozens of people lost their jobs. I could have fought harder for them. Yeah, I probably would have made things worse for myself, and I might have even gotten fired. I still feel like I did the wrong thing.

<comment><USER4> I would recommend pointing out errors one on one, not in a meeting of a manager's direct reports.

In this one on one, I would feign having trouble understanding the model and ask the manager to walk you through it in more detail so you can understand it. During the review, ask some pointed questions that will lead the manager towards the error.

In many cases while explaining the model in detail, the manager will discover the error on their own.

This approach allows the manager to save face. Many times, the manager will be very relieved and many times they will realize you knew there was an error all along.

<comment><USER5> I like this approach. It sounds like a play right out of "How to Win Friends and Influence People". But... This also needs a good chunk of maturity and trust in both the employee and manager. Doesn't mean don't try it, but also don't be surprised if it doesn't work.

<comment><USER6> It plays out exactly as described in "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High"[1]. Recommended.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking- Stakes-...](https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes- Second/dp/1469266822)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> #1, if you think the company is going to go ahead with something fraudulent, leave. This has nothing to do with your CTO role -- applies to any job at any company.

#2: is it fraudulent? Some people think all ICOs are fraudulent, some reasonable people may disagree. If you think all ICOs are fraudulent, see #1 above. Or if you think they are legit but this one has fraud in it, ditto. But (not knowing the situation) you may be overreacting.

#3: Sticking tokens into the app may simply be a dumb business decision, but not actual fraud. It's OK for you to disagree with a business decision, but if you don't agree with the direction, at the end of the day too bad. "CTO" can mean a lot of things but it's rarely an executional job -- most often it's "chief talking officer". So your opinion counts, but shouldn't be decisive. If you decide "well, OK it's not fraud, just bogus" you have to stop complaining about it OR leave.

Finally...lots of good ideas look weird from a technical basis. I thought YouTube was weird: why sort content by media type -- shouldn't a video about X be part of a web page about X? I thought the Apple II was weird: who wants a home computer you didn't design and build yourself? Clearly I was wrong!

But if actual bad behaviour is the plan, do leave, even if you think they will get away with it.

<comment><USER8> Fraud is not the only issue. OP needs to assess what his liability will be if the SEC concludes that the token is an unregistered security and demands that the company return all funds to investors.

<comment><USER9> Companies doing responsible ICOs should seek legal advice and this is part of the cost.

Disclaimer: my company does ICO campaigns, assesment, development, and security audits, but we add external lawyers to the loop.

<comment><USER10> /disclaimer/disclosure/

When you disclose somthing, that's a disclosure.

<comment><USER9> Thank you! My fault. The edit option for the comment expired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Being a corporate officer means getting-the-fuck-out-of-Dodge the moment things get questionable.

Check out "STRICT LIABILITY FOR CORPORATE EXECUTIVES" on page 3: [http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/files/20160801-criminal-a...](http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/files/20160801-criminal- and-civil-liability-for-corporations-officers-and-directors-142383.pdf)

<comment><USER12> OP is in the middle east, so the linked document is probably not relevant.

However, similar laws do exist in many countries.

<comment><USER13> It will affect them if they plan on traveling to the United States...ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I and fellow colleagues had to do this once. As a founder I gave up 7 years of building that company due to some really unethical moves by the CEO.

At the end of the day, as a c-suite officer, I would have been liable by being complicit.

Once I stated my objection, I and my fellow c-suite colleagues went to the board with our objection, and CEO decided to continue executing the unethical behavior, I and a few of my c-suite colleagues all bailed. That sucked hard.

PS. That signal from us leaving ended up preventing the securities fraud that was about to happen.

<comment><USER15> >> _I and my fellow c-suite colleagues went to the board with our objection, and CEO decided to continue executing the unethical behavior, I and a few of my c-suite colleagues all bailed. That sucked hard._

Your board should have taken action against the CEO if the behaviour or decision was indeed unethical. Allowing the CEO to proceed means the deck was stacked against the rest of you. Sounds like those of you that resigned in protest made the right decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My .02 on this:

You've already lost. The decision has been made, they're moving ahead, and it's clear (a) you can't change their minds and (b) you aren't onboard with it.

You should treat this as a learning experience about decision-making and corporate politics.

Put aside the technical issues and take some time to consider the people issues. Who is the decision-maker? What is his/her motivations? How are decisions made in your organization - top-down, consensus, debate, face-to- face, etc? What role did you _think_ you should have in making this decision, and how did that differ from the role you actually had? How do you feel about all of this?

Maybe you felt this was your decision to make, or should've been given more weight/input on the decision. This is a relationship problem. You don't have the role you want with the others.

Another view might be, you were consulted but ultimately you weren't the top decision-maker in the org, the decision didn't go your way, and you need to either (A) get onboard with it or (b) leave.

It's very reasonable to want out at times like this. Don't do anything rash, but if you can't get onboard with this decision and really do object to it, leaving this organization might be your best bet.

It's important to realize, when you aren't the head person, there are some things that aren't going to go your way. You can argue and fight and debate, but ultimately, a decision has to be made, and it might not be the one you want, but you have to either tow the line, or leave, doubly so as an executive. As bad as this situation is, it's way worse to have a bunch of people who can't agree, and decisions not getting made, than MADE decisions that don't go your way.

If you truly have ethical or legal issues, you should get out. You're young and will move on to something else quickly. But I think this stuff (ICOs and coins in general) is grayer than you might think. There's a lot of gray between 100% upright business practices and fraud, and you're somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER17> Given the OP's description of the situation, I strongly agree with eldavido. Both his assessment that the time to convince them to step back is past, how to think about the current situation, and how to handle subsequent events seems spot on to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would collect a list of every ICO fraud story in the press, and just ask if your board wants to be added to the list (whether officially or in the social zeitgeist).

I would also ask the board how many examples they can find of companies who did an ICO, and were later successful.

Also, I'd be looking for a new job... Even if they listen now, it doesn't sound like good leadership.

Edit to add: Your equity is only worth something if the ICO works. If there's no ICO and you still can't find investors, your equity is also worth nothing. I wouldn't even consider it...

</comment><comment><USER19> If you don't believe in the technology that you're developing; run. A company should never develop technology against the better judgement of its CTO.

That being said: Using things like blockchain to represent stock ownership; and using crowdfunding, are great ideas. They just don't replace the fact that your company needs a viable business plan, paying customers, and actual investment.

Things like an ICO are like the old story from the 1990s about a lumber company changing its name to "lumbar.com" because there were plenty of fools trying to invest in anything related to the internet.

So, even though this is new technology, how is it relevant for your business? Crowdfunding is great for funding artists, and great for swindling unsavy suckers. Blockchain technology is still too primitive to represent ownership for a run-of-the-mill company; even for a run-of-the-mill "tech" company. Why? Because the tech of blockchain will be too much of a distraction from building your real business.

Anyway, when I read your details, I see a startup that's not going anywhere, and is considering an ICO out of desperation. It's probably time to assess if your company is viable or not.

If you're going to leave, don't try to be too diplomatic. Be frank with your board, "I am leaving because I do not believe that our company is viable. An ICO is a distraction from finding a viable business model and savvy investors. Blockchain / ICO will be a useful technology in the future, but at this time it's too immature and will be a distraction from building our business and product. I recommend that you concentrate on the shortcomings of the business and its product."

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised there isn't a single person here advising you to stay and figure out something that the token can be used for in your app. This is exactly the type of software and product design decision that a CTO should be doing, and you might even be proud of the result if you come up with a good idea, not to mention the potential financial benefits. Maybe it's a little flaky, but it's not fraud if you tell everyone what the token is and what it's used for beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER21> Most ICOs are deeply unethical in the sense that they exist only to circumvent traditional funding regulations, and not because they actually utilize cypto- tokens for their business. If you feel that this describes the plan, I would absolutely back out. It may not currently be illegal, but chances are it will be. It certainly does not reflect well on the business.

<comment><USER22> >>Most ICOs are deeply unethical in the sense that they exist only to circumvent traditional funding regulations

Care to explain what makes this unethical? What if you think these regulations are unethical?

<comment><USER23> Then work to reform the regulations. There's a perfectly consistent position in thinking that the circumvention of unethical rules is itself unethical.

<comment><USER22> What if there is a law against homosexual intercourse? Should people be expected to refrain from participating in it until they can convince enough people in their country to change the law?

If you need to start adding a bunch of qualifications to this principle of illegality being unethical, meaning that if you can't apply it consistently, then it's probably not well founded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Life is too short to waste on other people's shifty ideas. The investors have a portfolio, so they think a 1 in 10 chance of a quick 100x is a great idea. But you're the one who has to build it and live it every day.

Decide where you draw the line, and tell them. Don't try too hard to fight the idea or persuade them, just make your case calmly and if their decision is over your line, walk away. And wish them well as you walk away, no reason to burn bridges.

</comment><comment><USER25> If this is fraudulent or not is of course very, very important. But from reading your comment I feel there are some weird trust dynamics at play here. My view is that for a company to work you need to have people working in the same direction with a large amount of trust. That means that if you are a specialist in your are I will trust your judgement. I need not understand how you came to that decision. If I do not trust you to make decisions in your area or if you are not aligned with the goals of the company I would find someone else for your role. That's how I think trust should work.

That also means that if my judgement in my area of expertise is not trusted I will quickly start looking for something else to do. "If you don't trust me to do what I'm good at I'll go somewhere else or do something else".

If I were in your shoes I would not feel trusted anymore and look for something else. You also mentioned that all your shares are vested. I'm more used to schemes where you shares vest over time e.g. you receive 33% of your shares per year worked so you will own all your shares after three years. If this is how your vesting works consequences for leaving should not be that bad.

However if none of the shares have vested you should thread carefully. Having been part of a similar situation with vested shares and leaving I know there are compromises to be made. All parts have a lot to earn from an amicable deal that let's you and the company part ways without any bad blood.

</comment><comment><USER26> ICOs are only fraudulent if you make them so. We don't know if you're based in the US either, which matters quite a bit since even the most well-intentioned ICOs constitute the sale of unregistered securities under US law. If you are, and since they're going ahead with it anyway, you might take a look at the SAFT Project [1], which is a legal framework for ICOs in the US created by the Cooley law firm.

In short, leave if you believe they are doing something illegal, and then sue them for creating a situation where you had no choice but to leave your job. But not all ICOs are, by default, illegal.

[1] [https://saftproject.com/](https://saftproject.com/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Ah, the age-old question on the morality of taking money from suckers. Basically, as always, two options:

1\. be moral, walk away, maybe talk, get no money

2\. stay, make lots of money, wipe tears away with hundred dollar bills

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like they are going to go with an ICO, it sounds like they think that is the only choice, so it's most likely happening with or without you.

I'm not sure I would rock the boat since you still care about your equity.

I would spend your time trying to make the app better, let someone else handle the ICO to bring in funding to get you to your vesting mark.

If you don't feel the ICO is a good idea or is potentially fraud, just don't participate in setting it up, keep your name out of it. I'm sure they will use a service or outside experts to handle it.

It will bring in funding to get you to your vesting date which sounds important to you.

You're in your 20s so this isn't your last rodeo, ride this one out, see what happens, use your knowledge and experience toward the next one.

Good luck riding it out.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would rephrase the question as the following:

My company plans on partaking in a legally grey area with a real potential for liability down the road, do I want my name associated and put my neck out for something I don't believe in?

I think you know the answer already.

</comment><comment><USER30> Run!

But first go get a good lawyer.

I'm guessing there is a playbook for "fundamental disagreement among execs/founders in a startup" and a chapter in said playbook for "CEO doing questionably ethical stuff".

</comment><comment><USER31> You're on the right path, drafting a well rationed argument as to why its not a good idea. If they decide to move forward, you should quit.

I'd seek good legal council regardless of what happens.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think ethics are somewhat overrated in this situation. But more importantly it sounds like your app/whatever is dead in the water. If it's not good enough to convince people to invest more - and investing just to burn money on marketing sounds like a terrible idea - then it's not going to survive. I mean let's be honest if you have rich Middle Eastern contacts and they won't put money in, it's a dog. Just cut loose and don't waste more time on it.

</comment><comment><USER33> "No matter how much you try, you can't stop people from sticking beans up their nose."

[https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/07/08/beans-and- noses/](https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/07/08/beans-and-noses/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Are you sure your company is not planning to use this as a utility token. Several companies ICO with this promise. For example Binance (a crypto- exchange) introduced BNB tokens. You can pay with Bitcoin but if you pay for your trades with BNB tokens then your trades cost 50%.

<comment><USER8> I recently heard of a utility token being scrutinized by the SEC. You need to make sure that the token's price is in line with the utility's economic value. If investors drive the price up to a point where it doesn't make economic sense to buy the token for its use value, the SEC's position is that the Howey test applies.

Not a lawyer, not legal advice, etc. Just heard this on the grapevine, could be false. (But I find it very plausible.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I left the thread alone, hoping to see some answers in a few hours, yet I had no idea it would explode like this. Thank you everyone, your support has no match around my proximity.

I read all 92 (and increasing) comments. There are some duplicate concerns, questions, suggestions etc. I want to be as transparent as I can to leave a useful record for people who will be in similar position as me. Below is my attempt to do so.

* Many people commented or touched on the topic of my role as CTO. Things I did can be summarized as these: building the proof of concept (vanilla Java for Android) before the very first seed; constantly be in dialogue with investors and the other co-founder (CEO); gathering all the dev team including the designers; managing outsourced development; having code contribution on 10% of server side code (especially mission critical parts such as auth and soft real time systems); %50 code contribution on Android (Kotlin, Java, RN hybrid); %50 code contribution on iOS (Swift, RN hybrid) including migrations to latest Swift versions; deciding frameworks, platforms, SaaS components; literally scripting all the dev-ops; building small demos for investors to test ideas; hacking all day when the dev team is able to self organize. Despite all the hardships, I must admit it was the most amazing playground I could ever hope for on this age. I have a BS degree on Computer Engineering if anyone wonders.

* Some people expressed their concerns about my mental and physical health. I can say I failed almost on all of those. My cigarette consumption skyrocketed. I smoked weed almost on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis. Having no time to cook, I ordered take away food a lot (it hurts to eat outside financially). I stopped doing sports last year. Socially, everything is much more OK. I have a really supportive life partner who I never disappointed. I didn't lose a friend without my own consent. My family is worried but also proud with all their best wishes and support felt here.

* I understand some people's suspicions on me having a bias towards fraudulent ICOs. Let me explain our situation a little more, you can decide for yourself. First of all, we can still gather investment without the ICO, just not enough for a meaningful (or hasty) boost. It has its consequences though like hibernating for a while, losing the original dev team (they are already informed by me btw) for cheaper labor, figuring out how to deal with ancient local law etc. It will almost feel like a new startup. Some people may therefore think "the project is dead" and that is true if looked from the inside. The sad thing is we finally built the real thing which our users really love. Ad revenue interpolations shows hope.

I have some other reasons (technical and observable) to think that our attempt would be fraudulent.

Firstly, there has never been such a plan, not even a bite-sized bit of it. The ICO is definitely an idea emerged as a reaction, a reflex. The startup scene here is visibly shifting towards blockchain tech, that is a fact. But issuing a token in our app feels like watching Pinterest issue its own coin for people to spend on pinning some content. In the end, all the brainstorm in the meeting can be summarized as "placing a button to spend/receive the token inside the app for some arbitrary reason which we can figure out later" in terms of UX. It's a feature without a problem to solve.

The next thing is, all the other B2B solutions we can pivot to are quite cheaper, easier to build and equally doable without a blockchain. No business has ever demanded from us an immutable, distributed database with fail recovery. We are repeatedly told that a dev-friendly API is more sell-able than bleeding edge cool technology (lesson of my life).

About the shady stuff: If the value of our token drops after the initial offering, the ones who are gonna get hurt by it are mainly the early adopters who would all be selected from angels or ventures. We only plan for a private, invite only ICO to benefit from network effects among some rich people. It is even spoken out loud that, and I'm quoting, "all we need is some well designed PDF with our successes (there are some after all) and vision highlighted, some kind of white paper as the jargon tells". The excuse has been debated as the token will be traded publicly despite the private distribution, and will always be promoted within the app. So the existing user base will be harvested to create the hype, investor money will be grabbed via private offering when shown enough hype is there, the market will do the rest. Almost all gathered liquidity will be converted to fiat to buy time to figure out a viable business plan. If the bought time is not enough, the crypto world will be blamed, all will be well. It really sounds like an IPO without the risk and responsibilities coming after that.

* The million dollar reality is not all ICOs are against law. This is completely true and applies in our case. We have good legal advice and will definitely get away with all of our actions. Regardless of the future incidents, nobody is going to jail or even paying fines for anything. Nonetheless, as stated by some commenters, it still may create some issues outside if we (founders, investors, the board, dunno) plan to travel and do business abroad. I didn't know that, thank you so much for the intel.

* Some boring facts and misconceptions: There is no us vs them culture between the founders and the investors. There is actually only a little politics between people, and mainly because of age differences. What drives the pursue is mostly misinformation about blockchain news, lack of technical knowledge and shareholders' being able to carelessly act due to having the safety net of financial resources. It is pure luck or lack of it that I am the only one who is capable of navigating through the echo chamber in our board, where right now words like "crypto is the next big thing" is resonating among people who have no idea what even a software protocol mean.

* Completely off-topic, or maybe not, nonetheless I want to make games some day.

Thanks again everyone. It's been a pleasure to read you all.

<comment><USER35> > feels like watching Pinterest issue its own coin for people to spend on > pinning some content.

I think this actually sounds interesting, if it cost a little to pin something but it also means that content creators get a little bit of $$ just for creating content that people pin. Of course nothing about this requires a blockchain or a new coin, but it could be fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> ICOs are not necessarily fraud - are they outlawed in your country? Do you simply need to register them properly with any countries you decide to release your app in?

</comment><comment><USER37> Run as fast you can. If they don't value what you say, and it may put you in a legal world of hurt it's time to jettison.

</comment><comment><USER38> Trust your gut

</comment><comment><USER39> Make sure you have some stock or coins and enjoy the nice pop and free money you get....

<comment><AUTHOR> I have $30 of DOGE. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Go on, take the money and run.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hopefully you are not working at Facebook. I think you should start looking for other jobs. Last I saw, there are 72 different ICOs on coinstats. There is not an inch progress from any adoption towards ICOs. Don't get rippled!

</comment><comment><USER42> watch the movie Office Space and do what Milton did.</comment>


Show HN: Connect all of your communication channels in one place - <AUTHOR> https://www.plummapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

my name is Wiktor. It took more than 1 year, but I'm finally done building the minimum viable product for Plumm. I worked mostly nights and weekends. I coded the whole thing in Python and JS. This is my side project, but it is fully functional and stable product, which you can use right now.

Product:

Plumm is a single place where you can chat with your team members and support your customers. It can integrate your email inboxes (for now only GSuite) and provide livechat for your website. In the future I am planning to add more integrations, so it will become single place for all communication channels, for example it should integrate with facebook groups or twitter.

Motivation:

I've built Plumm, because I wanted to chat with customers and my team members in one place (one tool). Using separately livechat, email accounts and Slack was not perfect for my communication needs, because I needed to switch all these tools constantly.

I'm excited to start talking to customers and see what they think about the product so far!

But, also I would very like to get feedback from you indie hackers. What do you think?

Cheers, Wiktor</comment>


Auroracoin market cap has surpassed Litecoin. Second only to Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://coinmarketcap.com/mineable-all.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Before anyone starts liquidating their assets to buy-in to this, remember that cryptocurrency is highly, highly speculative. A post on bitcointalk.org give some insight into this meteoric rise:

\---

From: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497736.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497736.0)

I looked around, and for some reason no one is talking about this..

I was looking up Auroracoin, and now I know why it's marketcap is insanely inflated: There are only 98476 coins in circulation, but coinmarketcap is also including all 10,500,000 (50%) of the premine coins for a total of 10,598,476 coins.

The true value of the Auroracoin marketcap is currently $2,552,498. When the airdrop happens, expect the price to eventually plummet to less than 1% of it's current value when the airdrop is finally complete. If I were an Icelander, I'd grab my free ~$900 USD and dump it right away, the price is only going to drop as the supply inflates by %10,000 in less than a year's time.

Additionally, people don't seem to realize that currently one entity controls 50% of the total Auroracoin supply (10,500,000) while there are only ~100k coins being traded by everyone else. So when the price "jumps" 60-70%, that's actually not uncommon for low valued coins; however, because the pre-mine number is included, this jump looks magnitudes larger than it really is.

People usually scream bloody murder to premine (even as _low_ as 10%!), but some guy comes along and says "give me 50% premine, I promise to distribute it, trust me" and suddenly everyone is convinced.

\---</comment>


Teracrawler - <AUTHOR> "Crawl anything at any scale TeraCrawler can adapt to projects or any scale. Our rotating proxies infrastructure gets you past IP blocks with over 2 million residential proxies. With us you get:
Rapid Web Scrapping in Millions of sites Faster proxies to get your work done easily and rapidly.<p>TeraCrawler is an ambitious project that aims to solve all these common problems and reduce it to a simple point and click interface. " <comment><USER2> Link?</comment>


curl - <AUTHOR> https://curl.haxx.se/ <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"Supports...

DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, Telnet and TFTP. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, HTTP/2, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Plain, Digest, CRAM-MD5, NTLM, Negotiate and Kerberos), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and more.

What's curl used for?

curl is used in command lines or scripts to transfer data. It is also used in cars, television sets, routers, printers, audio equipment, mobile phones, tablets, settop boxes, media players and is the internet transfer backbone for thousands of software applications affecting billions of humans daily."

Source Code:

[https://github.com/curl/curl](https://github.com/curl/curl)</comment>


Minimizing Faulty Executions of Distributed Systems [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/nsdi16.pdf <comment><USER2> _Abstract

When troubleshooting buggy executions of distributed systems, developers typically start by manually separating out events that are responsible for triggering the bug (signal) from those that are extraneous (noise). We present DEMi, a tool for automatically performing this minimization. We apply DEMi to buggy executions of two very different distributed systems, Raft and Spark, and find that it produces minimized executions that are between 1X and 4.6X the size of optimal executions._</comment>


Show HN: Keep track of everything you watch and easily find things to watch - <AUTHOR> https://www.addtothelist.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I wanted to share something I've been working on for some time that I hope you will find useful. It's called AddToTheList: [https://www.addtothelist.com/](https://www.addtothelist.com/)

You can keep track of everything you're watching with AddToTheList. You can rate, make notes, and mark which streaming service a title is on. You'll also be able to see IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings for titles with links to each site if you want more information.

You can add your friends once they've signed up as well and then you can easily recommend each other things to watch. You'll be able to easily see what your friends are watching to get a better idea of what to watch. You can also easily copy titles from other users to your own lists.

There are pre-populated Smart Lists that also give you ideas on what to watch. These range from Popular Shows to Upcoming Movies. These lists will update as you use the site more.

You'll also be able to see when titles are coming to Netflix or Amazon Prime as well as when titles are leaving Netflix. Then you can plan what to watch better as well. (I'm planning to add Hulu soon.) All of these are only supported for USA. You'll also get recommendations on what to watch as you watch/rate titles.

You can view a sample user here to see how to organize your lists, but it's entirely up to you how you want to do it: [https://www.addtothelist.com/user/sample- user](https://www.addtothelist.com/user/sample-user)

Once you sign up and login, you will see more of the available features such as IMDb/Rotten Tomatoes ratings and when titles are coming to certain streaming services.

I hope you will sign up and hopefully it's as useful for you as it has been for me. You can also import lists from IMDb or Trakt directly into AddToTheList.

If you have any feedback, questions, issues, etc. just comment below or use the contact form here: [https://www.addtothelist.com/contact_us](https://www.addtothelist.com/contact_us)

Also check the FAQs as they might help answer some of your questions: [https://www.addtothelist.com/faqs](https://www.addtothelist.com/faqs)

Thanks!</comment>


Spinning Up in Deep RL - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/spinning-up-in-deep-rl/ <comment><USER2> This developed-and-maintained package is a good approach towards furthering RL development; as the writeups state, the biggest problem in RL is subtle bugs from an implementation which don't cause an error but tank learning performance. (+ loggers/utils to help debug things)

Granted, a lot of RL thought pieces/examples on places like Medium.com take an existing RL implementation without many tweaks, run it on a new task, and see what happens. A better RL library might make this workflow more prevalent; hence why it's very important for researchers to make their pipelines transparent.

<comment><USER3> I've made some effort to provide a set of similar high-quality implementations available in PyTorch: [https://blog.millionintegrals.com/vel-pytorch-meets- baseline...](https://blog.millionintegrals.com/vel-pytorch-meets-baselines/)

In my opinion PyTorch code is easier to understand and debug for newcomers. Code is definitely lacking in documentation, but whenever there was a tradeoff between clarity and modularity in the end I've chosen modularity. Ideally I would like others to be able to take bits and pieces and incorporate into their projects to speed up time to delivery of their ideas.

<comment><USER4> +1 on that, that's a great project.

PyTorch with its explicit state that can be easily examined by hand in PyCharm debugger will be way easier for people coming into the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome and I hope will allow more people to _experiment_ with algorithms, instead of only re-applying OpenAI's baselines. Baselines are great, but are very hard (for me, at least) to tinker with.

It helps me to understand something new if I can controllably break it. In other words, I progress by predicting the edge-conditions when something shouldn't work - and then testing if algorithm indeed experienced expected type of failure. Transparent algorithm implementation is key for this.

One thing, which I immediately checked in the spinningup-repo is if it uses TF Eager. And it doesn't. @OpenAI what's your reasoning for that?

<comment><USER6> Hi! Primary developer for Spinning Up here. The code for this was developed mostly in June and July this year, and Eager still felt relatively new to me. I wanted to wait for Eager to stabilize and hit maturity before investing in it. I also wanted to see how TF would change on the road to TF 2.0, since that could change the picture even more.

At the six month review in 2019, we'll evaluate whether it makes sense to rewrite the implementation examples for TF 2.0. I'll speculate that the answer will be "yes, it does." Since Eager execution will be a central feature of TF 2.0, the (probable) revamp for Spinning Up will include it.

Good luck with your experiments! And please let us know about your experience with Spinning Up---we want to make sure it fulfills the mission of helping anyone learn about deep RL, and user feedback is vital for that.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing your thought process!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> whenever I see high quality submissions I bookmark it and promise myself to come back and spend time learning it.

this time...I promise myself its different

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi! I really appreciate you sharing this with the community. The documents and code look really clear and concise. I do have one question. Is it possible to change the dependency on Mujoco engine to something else (to for e.g. Roboschool)?

I don't have access to a computer with GPU and I am currently using google colab to do my DL projects. I tried installing Mujoco on colab but unfortunately, the computer id generated seems invalid. Any help is highly appreciated.

Thank you!

<comment><USER6> Hi!

A few people had this question on Twitter also. Our response: "Several of us at OpenAI are thinking seriously about how to make something like this happen! I can't promise anything, but we definitely want to remove barriers to entry." ([https://twitter.com/jachiam0/status/1060595172285632512](https://twitter.com/jachiam0/status/1060595172285632512))

In the meanwhile, you can still use Spinning Up with the Classic Control and Box2d envs in Gym (which don't require any licenses at all). And what's more: for most of these environments you don't need a GPU! CPU is fine.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for replying promptly. I am willing to help with such a change, if planned. Meanwhile I'll get started with running spinning-up on my laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like an awesome initiative! I think it will be very valuable for people trying to enter the field. I particularly like the clear advice on how to get started doing RL research. Have you considered setting up a forum for the community to share their experiences?

</comment><comment><USER10> Discovered two small issues in the doc. Where can I send feedback?

<comment><USER6> Let us know by opening an issue on Github: [https://github.com/openai/spinningup/issues/new](https://github.com/openai/spinningup/issues/new)

<comment><USER10> Perfect. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> is there a Dockerfile with everything set up already?

<comment><USER6> No, but please open up an issue on Github and we'll look into making one! :)

[https://github.com/openai/spinningup/issues/new](https://github.com/openai/spinningup/issues/new)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought this was something about roguelikes. :(</comment>


Norton Medical and Scientific Research & Biotechnology - <AUTHOR> http://norton-scientificmedical.com/resources/ Norton Medical and Scientific Research & Biotechnology - FDA approves kidney cancer drug from Pfizer<p>BY ADMIN, 4 DAYS AGO The medicine made by Pfizer against advanced kidney cancer was recently approved by Norton Medical and Scientific Research & Biotechnology regulators for commercial use despite a warning of possible side effects. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that the drug (with the generic name of axitinib) is effective in curing patients who do not show response to other drugs against kidney cancer. The advance stage of kidney cancer usually begins in the lining of the kidney's tubes. Inlyta does its work by blocking specific receptors that are involved in the growth of tumor. According to FDA, Inlyta is already the seventh drug it approved to cure advanced cancer of the kidney since 2005. American Cancer Society said that more than 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with kidney cancer last year and 1 out of 5 is expected to die from them. The FDA approval has come as a welcome opportunity for Pfizer since they have lost revenue from their cholesterol drug, Lipitor, after generic counterparts started to come out last year. However, Inlyta will still face tough competition from the 6 other drugs for kidney cancer that have their respective market shares already. An advisory committee of FDA endorsed the oral drug last month and announced that it is as effective and as safe as the kidney cancer medication from Bayer AG, Nexavar. Generally, in clinical trials made by Norton Medical and Scientific Research & Biotechnology, Inlyta slowed the growth of cancer by 2 months versus Nexavar for patients who have already been cured for renal cell carcinoma. However, the results differed based on what certain medicines patients have taken prior. For people who took first the Sutent (also from Pfizer), Inlyta slowed the spread of disease only by one and a half months, compared to the more than 5 months for patients treated with cytokines beforehand. Most of the advisers of FDA stated that the drug does not have a huge advantage over others. However, the fact that it has different side effects than the other medicine in the market could be an important deciding factor for patients. Several of the most common side effects of using Inlyta include high blood pressure, weight loss, vomiting, loss of voice and diarrhea. Some patients also reported bleeding problems that can possibly lead to fatality in extreme cases. FDA issued a warning to patients with high blood pressure, intestinal bleeding, or untreated brain tumors in their intake of Inlyta. Meanwhile, Pfizer is conducting further tests of Inlyta for liver cancer treatment. <comment><USER2> great</comment>


Cenario - <AUTHOR> https://www.cenario.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Cenario helps get your data into one singular source of truth so you can start making better decisions, fast.

Our mission is to help more companies become more successful with more data- informed decisions.

We're simply not just another dashboard. Most dashboards focus on being reactive.

We focus on being both reactive and PROACTIVE.

Curious? Find out more by visiting the link [https://www.cenario.co/](https://www.cenario.co/) or type in "Cenario" on google and you will find us :)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you conduct effective code reviews? - <AUTHOR> Please share any tips, insights from doing so regularly. <comment><USER3> Things practical things that have helped me:

\- The idea of different types of comment. Suggestions vs questions vs more serious, "I think this might break X"

\- As a submitter, take the time to do screenshots if it is UI focused. Read through it once and if some bits require explanation then add your own comments. Basically due diligence

\- Be hyper aware of how language can escalate a situation. Ditch abrasive sentences. Re-write to be more questioning or helpful.

\- if it's a naming problem, make suggestions. "I find the name X confusing because Y. How about something along the lines of A or B"

\- If it's a larger problem, and you can meet face to face. Then do so. It will save a lot of back and forth. Or make a phone call. You're there to make the cosebase better for everyone. Not a public flame war.

\- Agree as a team etiquette. Ideally codify it

\- Ask yourself the question: "Does this really matter?" Sometimes I don't bother commenting because while I disagree, I realize that it's a style thing and it doesn't affect the codebase at large. Sometimes it's also worth commenting anyway. That way there is a potential to steer things "your way" but no big deal if not.

\- Make positive comments. Try not to dish out praise. If you see something cool, a neat trick or a really elegant solution or even something you didn't know, then it's worth writing

\- It's okay not to comment at all. If you can't find fault. Then just green light. Too many people feel they have to find "something"

\- I find it useful to acknowledge when comments have been addressed. This can simply be "Done".

\- The offer to pair on a solution to a problem can be effective

I was going to put this and more into a blog post but have never got round to it

</comment><comment><USER4> (non-native english speaker, be kind) I'm not even a good code reviewer but I think I can share some insights:

1 - First of all remember these two things: "There is no perfect code" and "There is a human, who doesn't know everything, on the other side". 2 - Understand the scope of the Code. What is this piece trying to achieve? 3 - Read. Calmly. 4 - Read. Calmly. Again. Reading code is hard and takes practice. 5 - If you think something could be done better but it is not required, open the discussion, not everything is a 'change request'. 6 - <USER2> you don't understand something, ask. 7 - It's a team play. 8 - Praise what needs to be praised. 9 - Read the tests, for god sake. Try to think test cases that the PR didn't cover. 10 - Understand the moment that the project is. Sometimes some changes are too big for this review. If this is the case, could it be done later?

I know these are pretty simple insights, and no real technique, but they are often forgotten :/

<comment><USER4> Ah, and last: Don't be afraid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the most important thing is empathy. It can be pretty hard for some people to put egos aside when doing/receiving code reviews.

Other than that, have clear standards regarding formatting (preferably do it automatically with something like clang-format), build and run a linter/tests on CI so that the most basic things are caught automatically.

Finally, remember the objective is not criticizing someone else's style, since we all have our own, but instead sharing knowledge and improving quality.</comment>


Show HN: Deskguru.io' a team wellness app for Slack - olly-thomas https://deskguru.io/ <comment> olly-thomas Hey HackerNews!

My names Olly, a UX/UI designer from the UK. I'm currently in the process of validating a product idea and I thought you guys would be the perfect people to run this by and get your feedback.

I've been working on DeskGuru, a team wellness app for Slack. It's designed to build happy, healthy and mindful teams by delivering simple and accessible meditation, stretching and wellness routines straight to Slack. I want it to be your Slack integration to a healthier work-life balance. I'm not a hippy type but I have found working in small daily habits such as a quick mindfulness meditation before I start work, taking well timed breaks and keeping active during the day has really helped me focus, increase productivity and feel healthier in general.

So why did I think this was needed? Over the last few years I've noticed that the wellness of a team is becoming more and more important to employers, especially as we are shifting toward a remote, working from home culture. It's easy to forget to keep mentally and physically healthy when working alone at home. There's no one there to remind you to take a break, get up and stretch or go home at the end of the day. I wanted to create something that could be accessible to a team which wasn't cheesy or 'hippy' whilst keeping it super lightweight and customisable to everyones preferences.

You can check it out the landing page here- [https://deskguru.io/](https://deskguru.io/)

So, what do you think? Is this something you think is needed for you or a team? Can you see yourself using this to help improve your mental and physical health on a day-to-day basis? I would love to hear your feedback, thoughts, fears, stand-out-bits and anything in between. It's currently in a very early stage so any feedback would be really valuable. Oh yeah, and if you're into it please sign up with your email and I can keep you up to date with my progress!

Kindest thanks, Olly

Ps. If you really dig it you can support my bootstrapping efforts and pre- order a years subscription now for half price! Find it at the bottom of the homepage </comment>


CleanRL: RL library focusing on experimental research (beginner-friendly) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vwxyzjn/cleanrl <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

Author here. I have created a yet another reinforcement learning library. [[https://github.com/vwxyzjn/cleanrl](https://github.com/vwxyzjn/cleanrl)]

This repository focuses on a clean and minimal implementation of reinforcement learning algorithms. The highlights features of this repo are:

* Most algorithms are self-contained in single files with a common dependency file common.py that handles different gym spaces. * Easy logging of training processes using Tensorboard and Integration with wandb.com to log experiments on the cloud. Check out [[https://app.wandb.ai/costa-huang/cleanrltest](https://app.wandb.ai/costa-huang/cleanrltest)] * Easily customizable and being able to debug directly in Python's interactive shell. * Convenient use of commandline arguments for hyper-parameters tuning.

Currently I support A2C, PPO, and DQN. If you are interested, please consider giving it a try :)

Motivation:

There are two types of RL library on the two ends of the spectrum. The first one is the demo kind that really just demos what the algorithm is doing, only deals with one gym environment and hard to record experiments and tune parameters.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have OpenAI/baselines, ray-project/ray, and couple google repos. My personal experience with them is that I could only run benchmark with them. They try to write modular code and employ good software engineering practices, but the problem is _python is a dynamic language without IDE support_. As a result, I had no idea what variable types in different files are and it was very difficult to do any kind of customization. I had to see through dozens of files before even able to try some experiments.

That's why I created this repo that leans towards the first kind, but has more actual experimental support. I support multiple gym spaces (still working on it), command line arguments to tune parameters, and very seamless experiment logging, all of which are essential characteristics for building a pipeline for research I believe.</comment>


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