A Simulated Stable Planetary System with 416 Planets in the Habitable Zone - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-i-built-a-stable-planetary-system-with-416-planets-in-the-habitable-zone <comment><USER2> Previous submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14764125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14764125) (91 points, 32 comments)

<comment><USER3> It's the same article, same content, same title, but different publication date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although obviously ridiculous in many ways, the ability to design large stable systems is relevant for when thinking about the question "How many O'Neil cylinders can we build in the habitable zone?".

If we mine the asteroids, Mars, and Mercury for materials we can build habitable surface areas that are in aggregate many times greater than Earth in size. Each carbon fiber Bishop Ring could have an internal surface area the size of India.

This simulation reminds us that space is really, really big, and really, really empty. If you can fit 416 planets, just think how many space stations you can fit.

<comment><USER5> > the ability to design large stable systems is relevant for when thinking > about the question "How many O'Neil cylinders can we build in the habitable > zone?".

pretty sure the answer is "as many as we can figure out how to get the mass for".

absent dismantling the gas giants themselves, you're not going to do anything very interesting do the dynamics of the solar system, regardless of what you take apart, or how you reconstitute it.

and the man-made structures can include mechanisms for closed-loop control of their position. which they'd need anyways, as they'd accumulate positional error from vehicles coming and going.

<comment><USER6> I think the point of building habitats is that spherical planets are a very inefficient use of matter from a surface-area-to-mass ratio point of view. We could create a lot more surface area (i.e. usable land) with less material if it were arranged in a more useful configuration.

<comment><USER5> those are all completely true things. i assume something i said has been misinterpreted, but i can't imagine what or how.

<comment><USER6> Probably this line:

> absent dismantling the gas giants themselves, you're not going to do > anything very interesting do the dynamics of the solar system, regardless of > what you take apart, or how you reconstitute it.

I would consider reconfiguring available materials to achieve more usable surface area to be interesting (not to mention potentially useful if we manage to accomplish it someday).

However, what's "interesting" is highly subjective and dependent on context. Perhaps you meant something different by "you're not going to do anything very interesting" than the way some of us are interpreting it?

<comment><USER5> "you're not going to do anything very interesting..." to the dynamics of the solar system.

the _orbital_ dynamics of the solar system. (the thing you'd be worried about if you thought you needed to learn how to make 416-body systems stable.)

certainly packing the habitable zone full of new places to live is interesting, on all sorts of social and technological levels. it just doesn't raise any questions about the stability/dynamics of the n-body system that is the solar system (until you maybe start taking apart the gas giants).

hopefully that clears that up?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, thanks.

And I agree; it turns out that planets are really heavy and have an incredible amount of inertia; moving some asteroids around isn't going to cause the Earth to slip on a banana peel and fall into the sun.

The original article about placing 416 Earth-sized planets in a stable orbit does involve a quantity of mass greater than Jupiter (at 317.8 Earth masses), but building habitats out of what we have available in and inside the asteroid belt is a much more modest scope.

<comment><USER4> I love how turning the entirety of the asteroid belt, and maybe Mercury, into livable space stations "is a much more modest scope". :-D

Not that I disagree! We also have the Hilda, Trojan, and Greek asteroids (in Jupiter's Lagrange points) to work with. The Jovian and Saturnian moons too. It'll be a long, long time before we need to worry about dismantling the gas giants themselves.

On our path towards maximizing the livable land area in the Solar System, I wonder what we will run out of first. It looks like water, iron, carbon, etc. are all pretty abundant. We'll run out of* some rarer element (like Phosphorous or something) before we ever approach maximum constructed land area.

*And by "run out of", I mean even with perfect recycling, the spot market demand for the material maintains a price level where it's uneconomical to develop further, barring discovery of new supplies or more efficient usage.

<comment><USER7> This assumes that we don't create such elements as a by-product of fusion or other processes that we develop in parallel with the technology advances required to bring significant industry outside earth's gravity well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would like to see an artist rendition of this sky.

Someone should make a VR app that lets you simulate the surface of any kind of planet and any kind of sky based on a solar system configuration.

<comment><USER4> It's real question how dark these planets would ever get. With 416 planets reflecting light, the closest ones would be pretty bright all the time. Maybe even visible discs from the surface, although I'm not sure. Brighter than Venus is on Earth though, and lots of them.

You'd have to take that into account when doing your global warming models too.

<comment><USER9> Venius is a long way from impacting earths climate. The scale is 2.512^(x-y).

Sun −26.74, Moon −12.74 (average full moon), Venus -4.89 to −3.82. So sun is around 400,000 times as bright as the moon, and the moon is ~1500 times as bright as the Venus which is bright largely because it's so close to the sun.

Mars is −2.91 at it's brightest. So 1/2 as much light as Venus because it's further from the sun even if it's closer. These might be closer than Mars, but not closer than the moon.

<comment><USER4> Venus all by itself is minimal. These planets would be closer and there'd be a lot more of them. If they're supposed to be Earth-like they'd also have clouds, making them reflect more like than airless worlds like the Moon does. I bet there would be a measurable effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't we see a simulation of this running?

Also, I'm wondering about tidal forces ...

</comment><comment><USER11> > This system is completely stable—I double-checked with computer simulations.

Until some idiot on planet 297 moves his couch from one side his living room to the other. Then the whole system is going to slowly fall apart,

<comment><USER12> When I read this article initially, I got the impression that here "stable" actually means that it's not sensitive to small perturbations - the orbital pattern is a local attactor and is thus sort of "self-correcting", at least over some non-trivial timespan. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that (in which case this whole exercise is somewhat silly).

<comment><USER13> Yeah I think HN forgot to be charitable today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought I had seen this before....

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14764125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14764125)

It even links to the same site and the blog was posted by the same guy. I wonder why he's recycling content.

<comment><USER15> The financial situation of Nautilus is not the best[0] which might explain why they recycle content.

[0]: [https://nautil.us/blog/a-letter-from-the-publisher-of- nautil...](https://nautil.us/blog/a-letter-from-the-publisher-of-nautilus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This would be like a gigantic space pinball as soon Oumuamua showed up.

Then it would just be a huge asteroid belt which would eventually form a normalized amount of planets.

</comment><comment><USER17> Impressive. Pierson's Puppeteers only managed six. [1]

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers#Homeworld...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers#Homeworld%E2%80%94The_Fleet_of_Worlds)

<comment><USER18> its worth noting, that they were not orbiting a star (I don't know if that would be a positive or negative issue, for stability .. they moved away from the star to cool off)

<comment><USER19> If I recall correctly, they were attempting to move away from the galactic core, so that they could escape some ultimate cataclysm faster than the destruction could catch up to them. Their major technological problem was rejection of waste heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's hard to imagine natural formation of such a complex structure in real universe. It needs a lot of precision (interplanetary engineering?) or luck to put 416 bodies in the exact positions and velocity for the model to be stable.

Another unnatural thing about this model is that adjacent orbits rotate in opposite directions: according to existing theories of formation of planetary systems, it seems impossible for the gas disk to go into different directions in layers.

Anyway, this model is definitely cool (416 bodies in stable orbits!) and might be a useful blueprint for interplanetary engineering of the future.

<comment><USER21> The fact that it would never occur naturally makes it even more interesting. Imagine interplanetary civilizations rearranging star systems to send the unambiguous signal "1\. intelligent life lives here, and 2. they are powerful enough to arrange planets, so a peaceful posture is probably advisable.".

<comment><USER22> Probably if you're capable of capturing and moving 400+ planets into a new sun's orbit in a decent enough amount of time, then no one is going to be bothering you.

But it'll send a pretty impressive message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could probably apply for a job on Magrathea.

</comment><comment><USER24> > This system is completely stable—I double-checked with computer simulations.

I would think that's a hilarious joke if the author didn't seem so serious.

<comment><USER25> I assume you're alluding to N-body problem?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem)

<comment><USER26> I assume he is alluding to how a simulation of finite precision can not prove anything about a chaotic system.

And yes, that the N-body problem is chaotic.

<comment><USER27> Well, that's the question - _is_ his 416-planet system chaotic? Do perturbtions get amplified or do they get pushed back to the stable configuration?

Of course, when you're talking about a civilization building 416 equal-mass planets equally spaced in 8 counter-rotating orbits, worrying about _how_ stable they are is kind of silly; as long as they're "mostly" stable the maintenance of monitoring and tweaking their orbits for a billion years would presumably both be feasible and cheap compared to the initial construction.

<comment><USER26> Orbits on a N-body system are chaotic if N > 2\. Always.

That said, the longer you simulate those orbits, the more certainty you have that they are stable. But you will never get a mathematical proof, because only symbolic math can ever prove things in a chaotic system, finite precision math can only deal with statistic degrees of certainty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is really nice read! I remember I visited a local Planetarium few weeks ago. They had a game where you will need to pick like 5 planets and design the solar system. It had the asteroid belt. Big planets and small ones. The game will end if the EARTH collides with any other planet and if the other planet collides you lose points. The simulation was just amazing.

<comment><USER29> what local planetarium is this? that sounds worthy of a visit.

<comment><USER28> Downtown Salt Lake City. It had a huge screen with touch controls. You can drag planets around run the simulation to see if the system in stable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Makes you wonder whether the remarkable density of terrestrial planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system is the result of engineering. Maybe somebody is planning far ahead and counting on the tiny star's long lifetime (which is in the trillions of years) to keep their civilization going?

On the other hand, the intense star flares and tidal locking seem very inconvenient.

<comment><USER31> > which is in the trillions of years

Is it always such a big lifetime for small stars? White dwarfs have a long lifetime, but they have interesting stories behind them; what about other types of small stars?

<comment><USER32> If I'm not mistaken, the smaller stars don't have as high a gravitational gradient and are fully convective so the helium ash and hydrogen fuel mix closer to uniformly, allowing them to burn through all of it. Stars on the scale of sol slowly build up helium until it chokes out, compresses and starts burning helium at higher temperatures, causing the rest of it to expand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If only one inhabitant of any of these planets so much as sneezes too hard, it will destabilize the whole system. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect)

</comment><comment><USER34> Couldn't you fit in more if you didn't assume all planets orbit in the same plane?

<comment><USER35> A planet cannonballing through the plane is generally very disruptive, giving anything they pass near an impulse normal to their orbit and eventually making the whole thing wobble like a plate on a circus clowns finger

<comment><USER36> I want to see that simulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's a lot of eclipses no?

<comment><USER38> And a lot of collisions, resulting in formation of bigger planets.

<comment><USER39> Or maybe a white sky and hard rain scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Makes me think about Firefly with "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons".

<comment><USER41> Reading the article, I imagined what the people (?) on those planets must think when they discover they're not alone.

Let's say we discover we are not alone. We know those aliens must not be from our galaxy, so do we push for development of faster-than-light travel? If so, why? Intelectual curiousity, defense, offense, trade, habitation?

As for the hypothetical galaxy with two planets of life: Are they developing the same? If not, do they, and if so why, expand to the other? If they are, are they afraid of each other? Do they have a "cold war"? The possibilities are endless.

Like Firefly, there are many posibilities for great sci-fi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> They're all still orbiting in a single plane. What about the z axis?

</comment><comment><USER43> Call up Isaac Arthur, I'm sure we'll have an episode on how to build this system soon.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Our moon is almost half the size of Earth"

What? No, it's not.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does this remind anyone of the "Golden Hour" from House of Suns?

</comment><comment><USER46> Wake the Magratheans.

<comment><USER47> I for one was expecting the author to be Slartibartfast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Yeah but now connect them all with space elevators.

<comment><USER49> space catapults, good aim, good timing. (and lots of pillows)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Would make for an interesting sky

</comment><comment><USER51> Who can summarize why this is interesting?

<comment><USER52> Becoming a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale might involve construction of a Dyson swarm. This is a thought experiment in which each of the swarm elements is Earth sized, presumably providing near-ideal additional habitat for a larger human population.

<comment><USER53> Is a complete Dyson sphere even possible? Given the mineral resources available in a solar system.

Say you are an advanced alien civilization. And you reach the point where you haven't nuked yourself to death, so now you can expand into space. The first thing you do is to mine all the asteroids, that hadn't coalesced into a planet. So you spend all this energy to capture them, to smelt them, and then you build out your Dyson sphere.

You can achieve some coverage of the star, but is it even possible to cover the entire star with solar collecting panels, to capture all the energy output of the star?

At best, I think you might be able to get a ring around the star. But even this, is dubious.

<comment><USER52> You would likely need to obtain the material via ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting)

and possibly large scale transmutation. Disassembling the gas giants might be enough for some designs.

My understanding is that it isn't physically possible to construct rigid spheres or rings in that orbit, so it would be an orbital swarm of some kind, with the elements able to actively correct for the inevitable perturbations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Easier and cheaper than a Dyson sphere?

</comment><comment><USER55> God? is this you?

</comment><comment><USER56> What's the point of this if it's impossible to arrive at?

</comment><comment><USER57> I imagine this sort of thing is how HN will actually look in a hundred years, if humanity survives that long.

</comment><comment><USER58> This points to a fundamental problem in the understanding of planetary systems. Planets do not come to being out of nothing; enourmous amounts of matter have to come together to make up a planet. Great example of experts ignoring "details" outside their expertise.

<comment><USER59> "But nature would have a tough time forming this system. If it exists, it could only have been built by a super-advanced civilization."</comment></comment>


What Good Is 'Community' When Someone Else Makes All the Rules? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/magazine/what-good-is-community-when-someone-else-makes-all-the-rules.html <comment><USER2> >> There's an association that still lingers between a "community" and a physical location — the idyllic small town, say, or the utopian village, real or imagined. It evokes a cozy, friendly, simple place in which people live in easy harmony and cooperation, each with a role to play, each mattering to the whole.

>> "Community" makes everything sound better. It makes "the activist community" sound approachable; it makes "the skin-care community" sound important; it makes "the Christian community" sound inclusive and kind; it makes "the medical community" sound folksy and skilled at the bedside; it makes "the homeless community" sound voluntary; it makes "the gun rights community" sound humanistic; it makes "the tech community" sound like good citizens.

All these "communities" that we're told we're part of all the time are really just labels. Very few of them actually have the organic bonds or genuine feeling of comraderie that real communities are supposed to have. They exist, but are much fewer and far in between than everyone uses the word for.

<comment><USER3> > Very few of them actually have the organic bonds or genuine feeling of > comraderie that real communities are supposed to have

There is a tradeoff between freedom and community.

Organic bonds with real feeling come from a true alignment in interests. One of the simplest ways of creating interest alignment is making sure everyone has a long-term commitment. But the flip side of 'commitment' is that people can't be free to leave whenever they want.

A highly mobile society where everyone is largely free to join or leave any virtual community, neighborhood, is one where nobody feels any form of permanent attachment to that institution or to their fellow community members, because there is no long-term commitment, either from themselves, or from their fellow members. A neighborhood where _everyone_ has the ability to freely come and go is one where nobody has a strong incentive to sacrifice for their neighbors, because who knows who your neighbors will be tomorrow, or whether you will still be there?

You can see one aspect with the rise of no-fault divorce; in the past, perhaps many people were trapped in unhappy marriages, but by the same token, the lifelong commitment may have encouraged many couples figure out ways to make it work. Nowadays, it is no longer possible for both members to bind themselves to one another. And since both partners can walk out at any time (and both people know it), why go to extraordinary lengths to make it work?

<comment><USER4> > There is a tradeoff between freedom and community.

This largely depends on the conception of freedom in question. If freedom implies that individuals as a result of a the proliferation of human rights are able to live atomistic lives without much interaction with most anyone else than the state and their employers, then I agree. The last ~100 years is empirical evidence of this.

If, however, freedom implies that beyond a few obligations and non-intrusive rights (e.g. a right to free speech doesnt impose on anyone else, whereas a right to education or health care does), then freedom and community are correlated goods. We can see the evidence of this in the 19th century. Alexis de Tocqueville for instance wrote extensively about how in America, people organically formed their own communities in the absence of de jure social classes (beyond citizen and slave, which he found grotesque), and that this was a unique aspect of the relative freedom found in America at the time.

All of this is to say that the conception of freedom dictates the cohesion and veracity and quantity of organic communities. Or, perhaps stated another way, there is a trade-off between organic community and both inclusion and state intervention in private arrangements.

<comment><USER3> > there is a trade-off between organic community and both inclusion and state > intervention in private arrangements.

I think this line becomes heavily blurred in a democratic society where laws are authentic expressions of people's preference for how their society should be ordered. The laws surrounding marriage being the obvious prototype.

You can see the proposals to abolish marriage in the wake of the French Revolution as a recognition it is the ultimate intrusion of the state (and Church) into deeply private affairs, but one which we as a society tolerate due to long practice and because we ultimate recognize that the necessary _freedom to enter into a binding commitment_ is more valuable than, say, the freedom to be able to change your mind at any time (modern, unilateral no- fault divorce notwithstanding).

I agree that the way freedom is defined strongly matters and I attacked a bit of a strawman, but one that represents a trend. A naive conception of freedom, where all rules, traditions, and authorities are seen as inherently limiting, ultimately leads to normlessness and anomie.

I'd say that what many modern societies lack are meaningful commitments, freely entered (strong, cohesive communities being one aspect).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me the greatest issue with the Facebook 'community' is that it is the conglomeration (the umbrella) of sub-communities which, in not being a Facebook member, excludes me from accessing any of them. It's basically like having to obtain a passport just to enter the neighbouring town's pub.

A specific example: a local tabletop gaming store has a 'Facebook community' but no alternative forum. There is potential friendship and worthwhile discourse to be had by joining the community, but it is not accessible without joining Facebook.

This problem just doesn't seem significant because so many are already in the 'Facebook community' already. It's not that Facebook set the rules or defines the community, it's that _they own the front door and you need their key to enter._

<comment><USER6> Facebook killed my favorite real community's local discussion forum on their own hosted website. Everyone just uses the Facebook group now and so I can't just leave facebook which leaving the communication I have with this group.

<comment><USER7> I had an active forum before facebook and twitter. the forum died and was not transferred to facebook. Rather it seems like people's free time to participate in tb forum got occupied with their time on fb and twitter.

Unfortunatelt neither fb nor twitter are really designed to support forum style interaction. No list of topics and threads

<comment><USER8> My understanding is marketplace is killing a lot of neighbor garage sale facebook groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well written and makes a lot of great points, however... I am no fan of Facebook, but you have to give it and other social networks some credit for giving communities - real communities - tools to organize. For example, we've rapidly gone through a generational shift in how people view lgbtq persons in the past 20 years, and I entirely (admittedly without any hard data) attribute that shift to the tools the internet and social networks have provided that have allowed lgbtq communities to connect, organize, and educate non-lgbtq folks like me.

<comment><USER10> You can't give Facebook credit for lgbT acceptance when for a long time they banned trans people. They're also bad at moderation due to not understanding language; [https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-hate-speech- policies-c...](https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-hate-speech-policies- censor-marginalized-users/)

The internet may well have been great for lgbt acceptance but it's despite not because of Facebook.

<comment><USER11> I think many people (not just FB) have made mistakes on lgbT acceptance, and trans acceptance can be one of the harder areas to get right (many people just don't know what accepted behavior is).

I had no idea about dead-naming etc. I think FB should have done better, but I think their apology did seem genuine.

So I think criticism is valid, but they also deserve some credit. It's not like _anyone_ knew how to run a social network in 2012.

<comment><USER10> More of a "customer service" problem: there were plenty of people telling them it was a bad idea right from the start, but they didn't listen.

> It's not like anyone knew how to run a social network in 2012.

Only if you try hard not to see prior art. "Online communities" of one sort or another have existed as long as the internet, and wrestled with questions of what constitutes abuse.

Really the problem is that Facebook has gone from a mere product to something quite important to society without going through a self-examination period. It's also, oddly, never really tried to have a relationship with its users as a community or communities. Tom being your "friend" on Myspace may have been a gimmick but at least it was pretending that the relationship existed.

<comment><USER11> _there were plenty of people telling them it was a bad idea right from the start, but they didn 't listen_

Perhaps, but it seems to me that (most of?) these people were actually saying the "real names" policy was a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py IMO forums & listhosts are richer, healthier & better-moderated than the platforms.

I think this author is right to link community to ownership & governance.

<comment><USER12> Yes. If you can't vote to fire the leadership, you're not a "member". You're a customer at best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Nobody feels any personal kinship with "community" of billions of fellow Facebook users_

That's kind of disingenuous, no? I'm sure this fits some dictionary definition of "community", but it is quite different from the context the rest of the article is using. That's like comparing my kinship to a human across the world I've never met because we're humans vs my kinship to my gaming group, whom I meet with weekly.

These two "communities" are very different, and yeah, even in my offline gaming group, we are beholden to the gaming store (and to a lesser extent, the companies who make the games we play) who set rules, in a similar way to the way Facebook users are beholden to Facebook. I don't think this is unreasonable, as they are providing a service. I also don't certainly feel like a loser for playing by these rules, even if the gaming store, or Facebook, is winning (I guess by profiting more? or asserting their rules? I'm not really clear on what the author's premise is here).

<comment><USER14> The premise is that FB is the target of lots of recent scrutiny about how they've exposed your data and that of many, many other FB users, even turning a blind eye to companies collecting that data in violation of FB's own terms of service.

While being beholden to standard terms-of-service arrangements are to be expected, it's very different from your gaming example where you've paid someone for a product and must simply abode by certain community guidelines when interacting with other users. To FB, you are the product. If you're really not aware of this dynamic, googling "Cambridge Analytica" is a good place to start.

The way FB and others have capitalized on people willingly giving up personal info so that advertisers can pay for more effective ways to manipulate its users is rather disengenuous given all the talk about "community."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> See: Ethereum.

Boy, I really want a 17-year-old making all the macroeconomic decisions for my currency! I guess we're doing a deflationary currency now, because he did a "joking not joking" April Fools "prank"!

</comment><comment><USER16> If someone else makes all the rules, it's more like a cult than a community. A community would have decision mechanisms for making their own rules.

</comment><comment> noir-york Well written article with excellent points. "community" is another instance of using language to frame or spin an issue, with the consequent diluting of what a real community is.

"Community is the spoonful of sugar that makes the othering go down." was particularly evocative.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone else is always making the rules. Because we are always only one amongst billions. Why would I expect to make the rules?

And many of the rules we have to follow are handed to us by nature.

What matters is what we do within the rules that exist. Which can potentially be a lot if you don't hobble yourself with self-made rules that aren't really valid. The rules in your head are the biggest challenge.

<comment><USER18> Rules of most groups are, directly or indirectly, decided by the same group. Such as professional associations, your local tabletop gaming group, homeowner associations, or democracies.

They're not perfect, but at least there is a chain of input. For Facebook, that group has opposing motivations to this "community" – its lets and requirement is to exploit this resource, ie your cold hard data.

This is not a critique of capitalism – it is an argument that large corporations cannot create communities.

<comment><USER19> Local tabletop gaming groups have rules set by store that hosts the meetings. It is not members setting rules, but the place setting rules. Professional association have rules set by few companies with others not having realistic chance to change the rules.

In many places, homeowner associations is something you have to be member of, whether you want it or not.

<comment><USER20> In all those examples of communities, the members have real channels of influence over the rules, they are not merely subject ones handed down by a distant authority. HOAs have boards that members can petition or join, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In response to the title, nation states and employment and companies is not that much different. We may gravitate to certain countries or companies because we like the culture those rules create. I don't see why online social networks should be different.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's not a community, that's a 'congregation'.

<comment><USER23> or even just "population."

we used to have this debate over and over in grad school.

People would invent things and hope for a "community" to form--- that was the ultimate validation. But it was naive and pretentious to expect that any single invention could lead to community, especially within the time frame of grad school.

<comment><USER22> LOL. I seem to recall spending a grad school time sitting in a cubicle in a remote corner of the library with a pile of books and papers. Not too conducive to 'community' except for the 2 or 3 people who -had- to read my scrivening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What I find interesting now is many people do not know their neighbors in a physical location. I know a few people in my neighborhood, but for the most part everyone is a stranger.

I happen to live in an HOA where a select few make rules for everyone else. This idea of an online community and the draw back of rule makers seems to extend to the real world in this situation.

</comment><comment><USER25> Your problem is capitalism, subset: private property. The idea that essential mass communication infrastructure can and should be owned and fully controlled by its owners, and that outweighs the wishes and intent of _fully a quarter of all humans alive_.

I simply disagree with it.

</comment><comment><USER26> China

</comment><comment><USER27> When I read the title, I thought it was an essay about the European Union...

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems every other day something on HN makes me glad we built an open source platform to empower people and unite communities.

Open source removes a lot of the criticism in this article. The trick is to make it powerful and easy to use enough to compete with Facebook. Like Wordpress or Discourse do a great job doing.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)</comment>


Show HN: LifeSnapper.com (Alpha) - <AUTHOR>

We've just launched the alpha of a 10-month bootstrapped project at http://www.LifeSnapper.com
While I'm going to guess that HN is perhaps not our target audience, I wanted to show you guys what we've built because I've done a lot of helpful reading here over the past two years. I shared some really key links found on HN to our coder, Katherine, and our Sugar Daddy, John while we were laying our team foundations out and that stood us in good stead.
We do of course eat our own dogfood, and have made a simple LifeSnap of our company story so far:
http://www.lifesnapper.com/LifeSnapper
We've got (closed) alpha testers, a business model, a dev roadmap, and we're really psyched for the future of LifeSnapper. Feedback very welcome; thanks for looking! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links: <http://www.lifesnapper.com/>

Demo timeline: <http://www.lifesnapper.com/CaraFitz>

LifeSnapper's timeline: <http://www.lifesnapper.com/LifeSnapper>

</comment><comment><USER2> I like this idea a lot. A lot of these types of photos (weddings, babies, etc.) are put on facebook, but a little too personal for casual sharing, this is a service I could see myself using. What is the business model/how much are you charging?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am so delighted you like this idea! With the caveat that all business models are pie in the pixel sky until they aren't, the idea we've been building toward is this:

Membership is free. A number of themes are free. Other themes are not free, and are $5 (or less) each. (Tumblr does themes this way and we like it.) You can use any theme you buy for as many of your events as you like.

We are not clear if people will simply buy each theme as they want it or will buy credits to spent on themes ala iStock and Envato marketplaces. The credits model seems to have a lot of advantages. With credits, you could also _gift_ the themes to friends for occasions, which is nice.

We will likely also have a premium membership model that lets you upload video, create slideshows instead of having a static main image per event, and gives you archival cloud storage of your original uploads. This would be $20 per year or less. Premium membership will likely come with some credits, too.

I'd be very keen on feedback about this if you have any thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> well done. seems like a very viable business. Great website. Just make sure that you make a free sign up button nice and prominent on the home page when you're taking sign ups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! "Viable business" is good to hear. Will for sure take the big signup button advice when we're ready for public beta :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> well done for a 10 month bootstrapped site. signup for for alpha.</comment>


Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2015/07/14/tesla-cto-batteries-solar-will-lead-to-cheap-electricity-within-10-years/ <comment><USER2> > Straubel ended his talk with a slide that featured a quote from Sheikh > Yamani, a former Saudi oil minister: "The stone age came to an end not for > lack of stones. And the oil age will come to an end not for lack of oil."

I remember when calling long distance was a big deal. It cost real money, and multiple big companies specialized in it and competed fiercely. Today for Internet connected folks, long distance phone calling is too cheap to meter.

It's not just that the price fell, although it did. It's that better technologies came along--cell phones and Internet--and the remaining cost of long distance just become embedded in them.

It's interesting to think of where energy generation or storage costs might become embedded. Homes? Cars? Appliances?

How much energy storage do you have in your house right now? Looking around right now, I've got 3 laptops, 2 tablets, and a smartphone in view. We're slowly accumulating watt-hours, just as a side effect of buying mobility.

<comment><USER3> I anxiously await the plucky zoning committee that decides to make it a zoning requirement that all new roofs must be made of solar panels.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're a house owner in California, what economic motivation is there to not do it?

<comment><USER4> Falling solar costs. Next year's deal will be even better than this year's deal. And so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Utility grade solar already has a less then 8 year payback. For profit companies are setting up money making solar plants in the SW right now. Solar here. I applaud the Saudis for shutting off fracking in US. It was kinda like a fever that cleared the system of pathogens.

<comment><USER6> Saudi Arabia hasn't shut off fracking in the US in any respect.

As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%.

In fact, the Saudis have accomplished the effect of forcing US companies to innovate and make fracking even cheaper. What people seem to fail to understand about fracking, is that it's a shift in technology, not a temporary blip. It will continue to get cheaper and more efficient, and it will spread globally, leading to a wave of oil for decades. Just wait until you see what US frackers can do in Mexico with a liberalized oil market there.

As an example of technology making fracking cheaper, meet re-fracking:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-06/refracking...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-06/refracking- fever-sweeps-across-shale-industry-after-oil-collapse)

<comment><USER7> Counting new rigs/new investment is much better metric, and rig counts have responded to pricing pressure by stopping drilling. Counting current crude is just measuring what happened before the Saudis dropped the prices.

Most fracking companies are pretty bloated right now and they have plenty of things they can do to improve returns w/o new tech. But lower gas prices means higher risk - thus less investment.

<comment><USER6> It's not a better metric. The only metric that matters, is output. The US is producing one million more barrels per day than a year ago. The only thing the reduction in rigs will cause, is slowing down growth.

The Saudis weren't the primary cause of the price drop anyway. The US dollar going on its greatest run in decades is what broke the price of oil. The strong dollar also caused the low price of oil in the late 1990s. The US dollar is the only thing that coincides with the drop in the price of oil. Global oil production had been in significant over-production for years prior to the price falling.

<comment><USER8> Drilling a well takes a long time, and it typically is not worth stopping part way. So it takes a long time for output to respond to price signals.

Most of the increased capacity is due to wells that were started before the prices dropped. You'll see the output dropping once those wells start tapering off, and no new ones are coming online to keep up the supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a startup in solar software, and the big thing that I don't think people here realize is that 64% of the installed cost of solar in the U.S. is soft costs (i.e. not hardware)[1]. The industry is incredibly inefficient when it comes to customer acquisition, marketing, distribution, project development, permitting, monitoring, analytics. etc. There's a huge effort by the DOE[2] and the industry itself[3] to attack soft costs with software and process improvements. The vast majority of innovation in solar over the next decade will be in software.

However, strangely, much of the startup community remains uninvolved. Why? The solar industry is expected to grow by 100-200x over the next 30-40 years[4], even when it's already a $14 billion dollar industry[5]. And yet, this week in SF, there's a huge solar conference[6], and I personally know most of the software companies there (there's only a few dozen of us). Why isn't more of the startup community coming in an "disrupting" solar software along side us? We just got $100k in free money from the DOE. We closed a seed round in less than 6 weeks. Pretty much every solar software company we know (including us) is hiring. Yet when I go to normal bay area startup events, no one there has any any clue that solar is taking off like a rocket ship and their biggest pain points right now are completely solvable with software.

Come join us. In the last few years, the solar industry reached "grid parity", which means that the unsubsidized installed cost is now cheaper than buying power from the grid. That's why this industry is the fastest growing industry in the country. This isn't some subsidy-dependent industry anymore. We work hard and we make real money (while conveniently also saving the planet).

[1]: [http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware- costs](http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs)

[2]: [http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/soft- costs](http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/soft-costs)

[3]: [http://www.solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content...](http://www.solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.13981)

[4]: [http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next- internet/](http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/)

[5]: [http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry- data](http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data)

[6]: [https://www.intersolar.us/en/home.html](https://www.intersolar.us/en/home.html)

<comment><USER10> >their biggest pain points right now are completely solvable with software.

What pain points are those?

<comment><USER11> "customer acquisition, marketing, distribution, project development, permitting, monitoring, analytics. etc."

(I'm not vouching for this, I have no personal experience.)

<comment><USER9> Yep, you'd be amazed at how much solar work is still done in Excel and on pen and paper.

<comment><USER12> I imagine most contractors for all forms of construction are still working on paper or in spreadsheets. What makes solar so different that some organizational software will slash consumer prices? I guess from a sales, customer acquisition, permitting point of view at least.

I guess if we are talking advanced mathematics to pick out optimal installation patterns and angles (for fixed position panels), maybe this is where the software would be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its an interesting proposition, although I'm not sure that you can really make that leap with just solar, wind, and batteries. There is a lot of base load to make up for.

I could see however individual houses become independent of the grid. And that will have tremendous benefits when things like storms hit, no longer knocking out power to residents, simply factories and office buildings and street lights. Presumably with a more simplified infrastructure that could be protected and repaired more easily.

[side note the unexpurgated page had 150+ tracking tools attempt to load according to ghostery! That is a record for me so far.]

<comment><USER14> Almost none of the solar installations today can run with the grid down. Almost all are grid-tie because it is thousands of dollars cheaper.

<comment><USER13> Hmm, while your statement is technically correct it is also ignoring all of the hype around Tesla's "whole house battery" technology which is, as part of its positioning in the market, turning grid tied installations into more stand alone installations. And yes, it is "thousands of dollars" cheaper to do a grid tie system, and yet the regulatory changes are making it harder on home solar systems to recover costs (mostly because it shifts peak load costs toward the utility and away from the individual rate payer, the utilities are trying to avoid that).

And the article is discussing a "future" world where almost all individual houses are _not_ grid tied, rather they are perhaps grid backed up, in the event that there isn't enough solar or wind to keep their house batteries up.

So in that world, where folks are converting their "old" grid tied system to the "new" grid independent systems, it is going to change other parts of the community that break when external events disrupt the grid. That will mean that communities will be less impacted by the "grid" getting knocked off line by a hurricane because their normal mode will be to not be on that grid. And that has some positive implications for community planners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it is time for JB to take over as CEO so that Elon can spend more time at SpaceX (and still be chairman of Tesla).

<comment><USER16> I don't think that's going to happen until the Model 3 is launched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Electricity will become cheaper thanks to renewable energies (Solar, Wind...) and energy storage improvements (Batteries). But, I think we should point out that those energies represent large investments at first. For instance, building solar electricity plants is very expensive, the same way as Wind power. Germany is a good example: they stopped nuclear plants to increase their renewable energy production but costs of electricity increased a lot there. I'd say electricity costs will go up first (because of high investments) and then will decrease.

<comment><AUTHOR> The cost of solar production is highly dependent on geography, and in some places, like California, Nevada or Arizona deserts cheap land and good weather allows for massive economies of scale [https://gigaom.com/2015/01/20/a-special-report-the-rise- of-a...](https://gigaom.com/2015/01/20/a-special-report-the-rise-of-a-mega- solar-panel-farm-why-its-important/)

Countries with sunny deserts do get an economic edge on this one though compared to overcast, densely populated countries [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/acwa- power...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/acwa-power-wins- contract-to-build-dubai-solar-plant-acwa-ceo)

But there's no turning back - once the newcomer into space gets a massive economic advantage by having access to cheap energy, they attract industries that are relying on cheap energy, and soon those market participants overrun their competitors whose cost structure includes higher energy costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Electricity already is very cheap. But I'm happy to know that it will be even cheaper, and cleaner.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know what's the latest news about long-distance superconducting cables?

<comment><USER20> Its waiting on room temp superconductors I believe. Otherwise you have to cool a 1000km of cable and of course the material needs to be reasonable ductable. And dont hold your breath on room temperature superconductors, it may not even be possible...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone done a DIY solar installation recently? any links/pointers? What's the cheapest way to put this together? Are microinverters worth it? I am thinking of starting with a few 250w panels on my outhouse

<comment><USER22> No particular tips on how to do it; but at least make sure you don't put too many in serial if you're at all concerned about fire safety.

My father was once involved in a big lawsuit over fires caused by faulty junction boxes and he swore he'd never let the total wattage exceed say 500, max 800, or so watts for panels installed on a house.

After all; it only takes a single slightly faulty contact and you essentially have an improvised arc welder on the top of your roof.

<comment><USER23> More generally, you need to be aware of the ratings and proper installation methods for the equipment and materials you are using. Nearly all PV modules today are rated for a 600V system voltage, as are most combiner boxes and common wire types. Not all breakers are, though! Higher voltage requires higher-rated and sometimes more expensive equipment as well as more careful work, but it allows longer wire runs with less copper which saves money, and it may enable you to use more efficient equipment as well. All depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you aren't comfortable doing a 600V (or 300V, or 150V) wiring job, you need to weigh the disadvantages of lower system voltages (less flexible, more costly to wire, limited options for batteries and other equipment) against the cost of hiring someone qualified to do the work.

I don't subscribe to the idea that a rooftop system should be limited to 800W. An 800W system is not viable for grid-tied use (with modern modules you're looking at 3 modules in series which will not even give you 120V much less the required 340 or 480 to do proper grid-tied installation), and will not be cost-effective for an off-grid application unless you have a very small house, minimal power needs, and have a sunny climate year-round.

Know your needs. Know your abilities. Know your equipment. Safety first should not be in conflict with building a cost-effective system that meets your needs; if you can't figure out how to do so properly, hire someone who knows!

<comment><USER22> I'm not that up to date on the whole solar thing but I guess he then probably recommended not exceeding 600V (not W) for private uses.

The lawsuits were over high end equipment with higher ratings (I'm guessing voltage-wise) that had a small possible weakness which, when combined with installation which was too rough, ended up causing fires in hay-barns all over France.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will Gmail Leave Anything For Me To Do on My Own? - <AUTHOR> http://profy.com/2008/10/22/will-gmail-leave-anything-for-me-on-my-own/ <comment><USER2> I didn't think sensationalism could be _this_... sensational.

Basically, Google thinks everyone is dumb by adding extra, helpful features to GMail, many of which are opt-in. Google thinks we're lazy, not stupid... and it's right. GMail that can write my e-mail _for me_? Where do I sign up?!

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally _love_ having computers do shit for me.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. The ideal computer should magically figure out my intent and do it without any input whatsoever. Until we reach that ideal, it makes sense to make tireless computers do as much of the work as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The feature they added today - "canned responses" is priceless if you are using Gmail for your business. It's even more useful when you are running your customer support via Gmail.

<comment><USER6> </sarcasm></hope>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A sensationalist overreaction. It seems like she ran out of things to write about.

To actually address her point, GMail isn't assuming its users are brainless cabbages, they're merely allowing you to reallocate your time & brainpower to more important things.

<comment><USER8> Can't help but wonder if anyone noticed any irony in the title? It was more of a joke, just an observation that Gmail is getting all the things a human should do from us. Sorry, did not mean it to be sensational, really.

<comment><USER9> You should apologize. Most posters are American and thus by definition very good at irony.

/irony

<comment><USER8> Ok, let this comment be accepted as my public apology :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, what a troll. And I am feeding it, but had to say it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Gmail and other email providers are just beginning to add features that will effectively move a lot of the intelligence that is required from the user today to the software. It is not exactly easy to use email today, people come up with a lot a solutions on their own to be more effective. Email programs will be doing most of the work that was traditionally done by humans which not only is waste of our time but also requires quite a lot of discipline.</comment>


WebVR - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/vr/ <comment><AUTHOR> This solves an issue I've been having where the Daydream headset has small rubber knobs that accidentally press the address bar or bottom of the screen when a Pixel phone is inserted.

Not to mention the NFC causing the phone to launch the Daydream app on its own instead of displaying the webpage.

With this it will request that the user insert the phone into the headset making for a much smoother experience.</comment>


Can Entrepreneurs be Made? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/can-entrepreneurs-be-made/

<comment><USER2> I couldn't agree any more. I definitely wasn't a stereotypical "sells lemonade door-to-door" entrepreneur in school, or in college. Sounds cliche, but I just didn't care about money. I was more interested in hacking and creating, starting from Legos, ZX Spectrum computer, etc.

It was only after I entered a corporate hell, was greatly dissatisfied with it, and read some books that opened my eyes on the whole issue, that I realized that I needed to be an entrepreneur to really achieve my dreams.

I'm still much better at hacking than business, but I'm learning, and I believe that eventually, with lots of hard work and some luck, I could be as successful as some "natural-born" entrepreneurs, if not more.

<comment><USER3> Which books did you find particularly influential?

<comment><USER2> \- The first one, even with all its well-known shortcomings, was "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kyosaki. It opened my eyes to "there's another option out there".

\- Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (translated into modern English).

\- PG's "Hackers and Painters" (why I joined this forum).

\- Tim Ferris's "Four Hour Work Week" (has to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt, but has many very helpful and practical tips and ideas.)

\- "Mastery" by George Leonard

\- "Good to Great" by Jim Collins

And finally (and I don't want to turn this into a political flamewar, "grain of salt" applies here as well, etc, etc) but the book that had the most influence on me was "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Unlike all the others on the list above, it's a work of fiction, but I think it is the best at capturing and romanticizing the joy and euphoria that you feel when you build something that works.

<comment><USER4> "Rich Dad Poor Dad" - wow. Do you also make vision boards on Youtube and ask others if they know The Secret?

<comment><USER5> C'mon, it's not credible but it's a popular book that gets people to shift their perspective on money (I read it in 8th grade). I think it deserves recognition for that, even if the rest of Kiyosaki's stuff is pure shill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tendencies don't have to be heritable to be inborn. Nor do they have to be expressed to be heritable.

<comment><USER7> How can something be inborn without being heritable? (Unless something is considered inborn if it is taught extremely early in life...)

<comment><USER8> If a trait is determined by a mutation it is inborn but not inherited.

This is one possible explanation, but I am not a biologist, and I am not sure when the op intended.

<comment><USER9> Or if a trait is a composite effect of 'sub-traits' from both parents. It is inherited in its parts, but neither parents have the whole trait. What I mean: your dad has A, your mom has B, and AB leads to the successful trait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any "born vs. made" question is poorly defined. I recently decided to leave grad school after 2 years to launch a startup. So, now I'm an entrepreneur for the first time: Was I born or made that way?

I remember reading about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the age of 12 and thinking, "Hey, I'm going to do that!" Then I thought I'd be a senator. Or an astronaut. I campaigned for Nader and thought Ayn Rand was stupid. Then I started studying economics and thought I'd be a professor, and maybe Rand was on to something after all.

So you could easily argue that I was born to be an entrepreneur if you looked at some slices of my childhood, and you could argue that I was made one if you looked at others. I'm much more interested in well-defined questions, such as: Is the Kauffman Foundation's Fast Trac program effective in making people into entrepreneurs?

</comment><comment><USER11> This is like saying 'marathoners are not made, they're born'. It's a combination of factors. Lots of people have the entrepreneurial spirit, but are not entrepreneurs. What about all the 'idea' people who don't execute? where do they fall? are they entrepreneurs?

Couldn't we equally say the common factor is people who 'simply got tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired. So they took the big leap.'

Is an "Entrepreneur" anything more than a person with a 'get it done, and do it right' mentality?

</comment><comment><USER12> Substitute "white and affluent" for entrepreneurial in

"They believe that successful entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and that they start their entrepreneurial journey by selling lemonade while in grade school."

and you pretty well have the gist of what Jason, Fred and Silicon Valley VCs believe in. Not quite racism, but certainly when asked "what does a great entrepreneur look like?", their answer is "just like me."

<comment><USER13> That's the natural tendency toward "mirrortocracy". Most people are disastrously bad at assessing the talent of people who are not like them.

<comment><USER12> Great word.

<comment><USER13> It's not mine. Mitch Kapor used it at Startup School 2007.

Then Mark Zuckerberg came on an hour later and preached about how you should only hire young people...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If having entrepreneurial parents, going to an ivy-league university (vs a mediocre college), and having entrepreneurial aspirations early in life doesn't make you an entrepreneur, what does?

I liked the article, but it focused on proving the current misconceptions wrong rather than explaining what goes in to the making of a successful entrepreneur. Any opinions on this?

<comment><USER14> _If having entrepreneurial parents, going to an ivy-league university (vs a mediocre college), and having entrepreneurial aspirations early in life doesn't make you an entrepreneur, what does?_

The first two don't make an entrepreneur by any means. The last might have some bearing, but I'd imagine a fair number of people have aspirations and end up not becoming entrepreneurs, and vice versa, so it seems more of an indicator than anything else.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't implying that I think parents, school, and aspirations makes an entrepreneur... those are just the points that were covered in the article.

I recognize that they _do not_ make an entrepreneur, what I was asking was factors other people think _do_ make an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER15> my guess is their social situation and their mindset. if they think it's ridiculous to even try, and everyone around them does too, they won't even consider it. if they think it could be worthwhile, but everyone around them thinks it's ridiculous, they still may try, but it's going to require a bit more balls and dedication. but if they think it's a good idea, and even some people around them do as well? that's a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Only a quarter caught the entrepreneurial bug when in college. Half didn't even think about entrepreneurship, and they had little interest in it when in school._

I think the shock of entering an average large corporate bureaucracy makes a lot of people suddenly very interested in entrepreneurship - I know it's worked that way for a bunch of my friends.

</comment><comment><USER17> _Of course_ they can be made. The biggest thing that YC gives to the founders it accepts is _permission to be an entrepreneur_. They recognize it, which is why they beg people who don't get in to keep going since the permission itself has no intrinsic value.

<comment><USER15> i relate to this. the hardest part, in my experience, of getting started with startups isn't the money, knowledge, or any of that. most of that is available easily enough in one way or another. what's hard is getting over the idea that you're crazy for even considering it, and finding people who don't think it's crazy, so you can bounce ideas off of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is something I hear quite a lot from designers that irks me quite a lot. I would hate to ever leave the impression on someone that I thought what I did was a natural born talent they couldnt possibly learn.

</comment><comment><USER19> They are made by cutting business taxes.

<comment><USER16> Do you _really_ believe there are large numbers of would-be entrepreneurs who are holding back only because of business taxes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My favorite lines -- totally resonated with me:

 _They simply got tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired. So they took the big leap._

<comment><USER21> Yeah, when I read that, I couldn't help but think of a crowd of people marching from an office building pumping the goat's head sign above their heads with Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it!" blaring in the background.

(probably shows that I am a little old and immature at the same time...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The major problem is this: the default position on a funding position is close to 0 (rejection). It might be 0.001. In any case, it's so low that even talking to a random smart person (who might be the next Sergey Brin) is treated as not worth the time.

The people who are able to move the needle past 0.5 are usually not the best bets, but those who are able to project an image that turns the people setting the appointments and holding the checkbooks into impulsive fanbois. These traits are almost never those of visionaries, but those of people-pleasers.

It's the same reason why shitheads get laid a lot in college. Only dirtbags are able to convince an 18-year-old stranger to jump into bed with them, because their default position (and for very good reason) is not to do that with a person they don't know. Only the garbage that are able to override that (necessary) resistance are able to have such "adventures".

<comment><USER22> The first part of this is sensible, but the analogy is not.

Plenty of non-dirtbags get laid a lot and plenty of assholes don't. Unless of course you choose to define any confident, gregarious and/or good-looking guy as a dirtbag, but that would be more defense mechanism than objective quality.</comment></comment>


System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage - <AUTHOR> https://system76.com/servers/starling?utm_source=system76&utm_medium=email&utm_term=arm-server&utm_content=arm_release&utm_campaign=newsletter <comment><USER2> Ordered a 1U from them. Going on a month now with no delivery date yet and no indications there would be a problem until after we ordered. Not a big deal for us, we can wait and ordered it because it was cheap, but consider yourselves warned.

<comment><USER3> I had a pretty crappy experience buying from them in 2007. At that time I think they were just getting started, so I chalked it up to "beginner's mistake", but it seems like these problems persist.

My data-point, as best I can recall:

\- ordered a serval laptop

\- long delays with minimal communication

\- laptop arrived and motherboard died within a few days

After sending it back for repairs and haggling over the warrantee (DHL damaged the case, so they didn't want to pay for the motherboard initially), I got the thing replaced and it ran smoothly for many years.

EDIT: to be clear, I was ultimately happy with the device itself -- it finally died in 2013. It's rather the shipping/service/etc that was disappointing, though I've seen much worse.

<comment><USER4> I also ordered from them in 2007, but I had a good experience. I was ordering a server (tower form factor), which would be easier than a laptop. IIRC, they were out of the particular CPU I had ordered, so they replaced it with a better one (one of the first dual-core chips) for the same price. That system ran very well, in a musty basement, for a number of years. I recently used the case—an Intel server model—to house a gaming rig.

<comment><USER5> I also wanted to put out there that I had a good experience ordering a Galago UltraPro from them in circa 2014.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vhost- I got Lemur 14" laptop a while back and absolutely hated the build quality. The keyboard is terrible and the screen has the worst viewing angles of any laptop I've ever owned. I got tired of it after 4 or 5 months and converted it to a home server and it's been super reliable in that mode since 2014. AND it also has the benefit of staying online during power outages.

<comment><USER6> Clevo is a huge Chinese OEM computer manufacturer which exclusively produces cheap, low-quality laptop computers.

System76 selects Clevo configurations that are more-or-less compatible with Linux, puts a brand on them and sells them at a somewhat-inflated price.

<comment><USER7> Not really that inflated. I built a Clevo laptop about 4 years ago, and compared it to an identical System76 build, it was only $70 difference.

That thing was pretty poor quality though. Died fall of 15, replaced it with an XPS 13 which is still going strong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a Gigabyte server, probably one of the following:

[http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack- Server/R150-T61-rev-110](http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack-Server/R150-T61-rev-110)

[http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack- Server/R150-T62-rev-100](http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack-Server/R150-T62-rev-100)

What value-add does System76 provide?

<comment><USER9> The ability to actually buy it? I'm not joking; most ODM equipment is a hassle to buy, especially in small quantities for POCs.

<comment><USER10> also the ability to RMA faulty gear, get support, yell at someone to send you stuff faster, although ... judging from the comments in this thread, maybe not.

fwiw, nobody in this space really gives a shit about you unless you're spending $50k or more, and realistically $250k or more on an ongoing basis. you're better off going to fry's or buying from a used gear vendor if you want small quantities.

<comment><USER11> There are plenty of smaller companies you can buy from to act as intermediaries. My experience (in the UK) is that you pay a small premium for it over the larger providers, but you certainly can get providers where you deal with someone who'll remember your name and actually answer the phone/e-mails even if you only order a single server here and there.

<comment><USER10> we buy from a tiny company located literally down the road from the building where the servers get shipped in from the port.

it cost us a considerable amount of money and time finding this vendor, so i consider it a trade secret (and the oem too). fwiw, their website and marketing are atrocious but they deliver product on time every time. i've been in business long enough to know how these things work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sadly these gen-1 ThunderX cores are pretty poor in performance and not particularly power-efficient either. Cache performance is especially sucky. [https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium- thunderx...](https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium-thunderx- dual-48-core-96-core-total-arm-benchmarks/) [http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium- thu...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium- thunderx-48-arm-cores)

I hope that this is just a rebranded system showing the redyness of System76 and raising awareness about such products so that they're better positioned for the ThunderX2 release later this year.

<comment><USER13> ARM was never particularly power-efficient. ARM was designed for low power, not power efficiency. The only case where an ARM core is more power efficient than a Xeon core is when they're both idle -- primarily because the ARM core was designed to be idle most of the time, while the Xeon core was designed to be in use most of the time.

<comment><USER14> ARM the architecture has very little to do with power efficiency as it is out of scope (except that the old the ARM 32bit instruction set was amenable for a very low power implementation).

ARM the company does design both low power and power efficient implementations of the ARM architecture. In fact for some specific power targets (mobile for example) they are more efficient than the corresponding Intel CPUs.

This is still irrelevant as Cavium design its own ARM cores from scratch (i.e. it doesn't use ARM reference designs) specifically for server use; now, they are not very good, but that's another story.

<comment><USER13> > In fact for some specific power targets (mobile for example) they are more > efficient than the corresponding Intel CPUs.

I agree, but only if the measurement of power efficiency includes idle periods -- eg. "browse for 5 minutes, lock phone and wait 30 minutes, repeat".

I don't believe you can provide a source showing an ARM CPU executing a particular workload (i.e. not including idle periods) at greater power efficiency than a same-generation Intel x86 CPU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> aah system 76. I hope they have improved recently with their customer service but I had a horrible experience with them back in 2013 when they had to replace a keyboard (the CEO actually sent an email explaining how shitty their keyboard was) and when I asked for a refund, they simply refused. NO refunds. I had to literally open the laptop myself and install the new keyboard.

I am not one of those types who asks for refunds on anything. This was genuinely a defective laptop with a faulty keyboard (turns out that is how they were shipping it back then to everyone) and their answer was to replace with the new one (after the CEO sent a bulk email to every customer) . Why should I have to go through that hassle ? This was the first time I almost thought of doing a chargeback but didn't.

<comment><USER16> So we have a data point from _four years_ ago and you are still harboring a resentment so hard that you feel you need to air your grievances for a completely different product. I get it. Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

<comment><USER17> I have two coworkers that just had to get replacement keyboards for their System76 laptops. They have to replace them themselves as well.

<comment><USER18> > They have to replace them themselves as well.

It happens. I've done field replacements on Dell laptops for DOA components for non-technical friends, most recently a dvd drive and previously a keyboard. Dell shipped the components and I swapped them out for exchange. Dell quoted moderately long (over a week) round trip if it went to a service center but my friends wouldn't have attempted it themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me Type 2A at Packet.net, a similar 96 core processor, 128GB RAM and 340 SSD for $0.50 USD /hr [https://www.packet.net/bare- metal/servers/type-2a/](https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/servers/type-2a/)

<comment><USER20> This looks very palatable. If only they had more disk space options...

<comment><USER21> They have block storage.

[https://www.packet.net/bare- metal/services/storage/](https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/services/storage/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see that they're releasing a new laptop: [https://system76.com/laptops/galago](https://system76.com/laptops/galago)

This is probably the first laptop from them that I could consider buying, judging solely on that small picture of it.

Still super-thick, and I don't know if I would feel comfortable buying that over the XPS, but at least it's got HiDPI, which for the price they sell their laptops for I feel should be included.

<comment><USER23> >Still super-thick

You make your laptops super thin and people complain about ports and only 16GB of RAM and no repairability. You make your laptops repairable with three different kinds of USB ports plus HDMI and 32GB of RAM, and people complain it's super-thick.

<comment><USER24> It's like different people have different opinion on stuff!

<comment><USER23> But they all share one thing in common: complaining on the Internet about products that aren't marketed toward them.

<comment><USER24> From the laptop's marketing page: "Thin".

Absent from the page: "repairable", "three USB ports", "32GB of RAM".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If anyone wants to use these for web servers, you might want to think again.

Facebook did the same evaluation recently and decided that the Intel Xeon-D chip was best [1].

YMMV

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11254755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11254755)

<comment><USER26> Yea, decided it was best for them. I would like to see benchmarks of a BEAM app running on the Xeon-D and an ARM server with a huge number of physical CPU cores.

<comment><USER25> BEAM would be an extremely interesting benchmark given the parallel nature of Erlang.

Hopefully the WhatsApp team is investigating high-core count ARM architecture and will report on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you're looking for a server dedicated to supporting Linux, I suggest checking out Penguin Computing. They have a much better reputation and have much better servers than this System76 attempt.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wanted to like System76. I had a dead pixel on a new machine that was to be my new workhorse AAAAAND that's how I learned what a dead pixel policy is!

Turns out, theirs was rubbish. The whole laptop wasn't elegant or well constructed, but it was durable. I had to send it in for repairs once, that went well. Still, I'd never buy anything of theirs again. Ever.

<comment> vhost- I had 3 on a brand new macbook years ago and apple wouldn't take it back because it wasn't enough. they were very noticeable.

<comment><USER29> Don't you have a 14 day return window for any reason?

<comment><USER30> Yes. And I've used it a couple of times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [http://www.cavium.com/pdfFiles/ThunderX_CP_PB_Rev1.pdf?x=2](http://www.cavium.com/pdfFiles/ThunderX_CP_PB_Rev1.pdf?x=2)

Spec sheet for the CPU is there. I just don't see how IO doesn't end up murdering performance. 16MB shared L2 is across all the cores?

<comment><USER9> The cores are so wimpy that 16MB is an appropriate amount. For comparison a Xeon D only has 12MB.

<comment><USER31> Xeon D's also have a 256KB L2 though then 1.5MB per core shared L3. Whereas this is 333KB per core L2 which is presumably shared.

Not really informed enough to say it would be the performance bottleneck but it seems like it would be to me in most server environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If anyone is interested in buying a System 76 product and have it delivered outside of US, please take into account that the price doesn't include VAT. This has to be payed separately, which usually means that each device is ~20% more expensive (when delivered outside of US).

I ended up having to pay 400$ more for delivery + VAT for a laptop (didn't know about the VAT tax at that time). Very good performance, but rather mediocre quality (1 usb port is completely unusable).

</comment><comment><USER33> From $6399USD. That's quite a price-tag, but a lot less than a high-spec Xeon server where the CPUs alone are $3000 each.

It'll be interesting to see benchmarks of how this performs.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium- thu...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium- thunderx-48-arm-cores)

[https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium- thunderx...](https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium-thunderx- dual-48-core-96-core-total-arm-benchmarks/)

[https://www.servethehome.com/cavium-thunderx-micro- benchmark...](https://www.servethehome.com/cavium-thunderx-micro-benchmarks- enterprise-arm-developers-need-machines/)

<comment><USER16> The big deal is on the [http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating- cavium-thu...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium- thunderx-48-arm-cores/19) page: the MySQL transactions per watt is absymal compared to the Xeon D. Really, badly absymal. So... this is not a useful server. When someone says ARM I am thinking "low power" but this is a 120W CPU which is beaten by the 65W Xeon D-1581. Pass. Let me emphasize: very often I do not care about absolute performance numbers because your power budget is almost always limited in a data centre, what I care about is performance per watt. Which here the Xeon D wins. Like, big time. Tangentially: this is where Ryzen battle will be as well. I was crunching the numbers from [http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph11170/85875.png](http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph11170/85875.png) and the Ryzen 1700 is only beaten in performance per watt by the i7 7700T and only by 5% while in performance for dollar the 1700 has a comfy advantage over every Intel CPU, 62% over the i7 7700T which is a lot to pay for a 5% advantage. This shows the Ryzen is practically on par with the i7 series: the 7700T is 4 cores in 35W, the 1700 is 8 cores in 65W and they are head-to-head. I want to see the 8 and 16 core Xeon D chips battle Naples but I am afraid AMD is simply not yet in the low wattage game. But I really would love to see some competition there!

<comment><USER34> The TDP numbers from the specs does not necessarily reflect the power draw you will see in practice. Test results here [https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD- Ryzen-7-1800X-R...](https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD- Ryzen-7-1800X-Review-Now-and-Zen/Power-Consumption-and-Conclusions) show the Ryzen 1800X (95W TDP) actually drawing 20% more power than a 7700K (91W TDP) and about the same as a 6950X (140W TDP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> No offense to System76, I'm very happy they are entering this space early. I just will wait for one of the biggies (e.g. dell, lenovo) so that I know the hardware could be supported.

I'm really wanting to shake Intel if possible, and I'm struggling to find chassis that support the amount of addons I require... but with these ARM servers and the network I/O they have onboard, I'm quite excited.

<comment><USER36> Looking forward to riscv here, since it will be possible for tons of competition in the wackass chip features department. We should get some great purpose built servers out of that in 10 years or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Slightly off-topic; the "FakeHtop" element on the page is mesmerizing.

<comment> git-pull For those who don't know, that thing with meters on it is htop(1). [http://hisham.hm/htop/](http://hisham.hm/htop/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> In 2013, I ordered a laptop from them as well. First, my screen died within a few months. I encountered hidden fees and rudeness trying to work through their tech support and warranty policy. Then, the motherboard died within the year.

</comment><comment><USER39> So many product lines for such a small company. Laptops, Desktops, Servers. Not even Apple is able to effectively manage this many different products.

I don't know much about them, but from my first impression it looks like a company with lack of focus. I'm not sure how they will be able to create killer product in any of the segments they're trying to compete in.

Based on my above observation (admittedly superficial), I would never buy anything from them. I would not trust the quality nor their ability to be able to support it.

<comment><USER40> Note that they're primarily rebadging existing products, while apple is far more involved in the design and manufacture of new products.

Also note that their niche is shipping Linux preinstalled devices. If they did have a killer mass consumer product, they'd have a difficult time coping with consumers expecting and demanding windows on PCs.

<comment><USER41> Most consumers don't demand Windows, they don't even care what OS is installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Purchased two linux desktops from them. Neither lasted more than a year. Purchased two small servers, both doing fine. Overall I can't really recommend them.

</comment><comment><USER43> Ordered a laptop from them back in the day. Worst purchase in my entire life.

<comment><USER44> Can you expand upon this please? I'm considering doing the same now but this gives me pause.

<comment><USER43> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854293)

It was a terrible experience across the board, never again. Highly recommend the Zenbook or the Dell XPS for linux distros :).

I personally have the Zenbook but I have three friends with the XPS now. There was some complaining on the XPS about the backlight or something?

<comment><USER45> I think it has some kind of firmware that manages the backlight, so if you switch between really bright and dark windows a lot (like a browser and terminal) then it changes brightness a lot which is annoying, and there's no way to turn it off. Personally the only thing I've had issues with (on Linux) is the soundcard producing low-level noise because of the CPU going into powersaving mode. It's fixable but I can't remember exactly what I had to do to get it to stop.

On the bright side, it does help a lot for the battery life (I get around 8 hours usually).

I also have an older system76 laptop and I would definitely recommend the XPS (13 or 15) over it if you want something lightweight with good battery life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The CPU seems to be 2x Cavium ThunderX_CP for a total of 96 cores.

</comment><comment><USER47> What would be a typical use case for something like this?

</comment><comment><USER18> anecdata: bought a Bonobo from them a couple of years ago at $EMPLOYER for a [semi]portable workstation. Arrived in just few days and it was as expected.

The developer who used it liked it though it didn't move much once it hit his desk. I didn't like the keyboard and thought the finish wasn't polished but I wasn't using it.

</comment><comment><USER48> How does that thing boot and does it work with a mainline kernel I do not have to compile myself?

</comment><comment><USER49> All 96 cores share the same memory? Does the thing choke on memory bandwidth, or what?

</comment><comment><USER50> Each 48 core cpu lists for $800. So why does the base system start at $6399?

</comment><comment><USER51> thats impressive. 96 cores starting at 6k? did anybody else configure a silverback workstation with all the options to see what it would cost? ($33k...but wow.)

</comment><comment><USER52> What sort of workloads would this be suitable for?

<comment><USER36> Arm build farm comes to mind

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> What is the CPU speed for these 96 cores?

</comment><comment><USER54> Why arm?

<comment><USER55> The ecosystem. That's its main selling point.

<comment><USER54> Thanks - for servers? Would this be used to host a database?

<comment><USER55> Christie covers the argument for proprietary ISA's in this discussion:

[https://research.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/papers/ieeemicro16_c...](https://research.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/papers/ieeemicro16_card_isa.pdf)

It not the ISA that makes it desirable. It's all the tooling, apps, branding, and talent around it. You have to rebuild that stuff for new ISA's. You also have to get the market to trust a new one after so many perished. _That_ is why companies pay ARM $1-15 million for licenses to use that ISA and brand name.

<comment><USER9> Since we're talking about servers, it doesn't seem like any of those are advantages for ARM _compared to x86_.

<comment><USER55> It's apples to oranges. ARM is designed to be customizable with all kinds of pluggible accelerators and stuff. x86 is what Intel decides it is. I heard they followed AMD in building a semi-custom business but with who knows what limitations or costs. So, you get a lightweight, easy-to-customize SOC with huge ecosystem for both software and hardware accelerators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I need this.</comment>


The Last Survivors of Meridian 59 - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-last-survivors-of-meridian-59

<comment><USER2> I'd heard of M59 back in my EQ days, but never even saw a screenshot of it before, so the article was interesting.

EQ was much more a PVE game (with PvP certainly present), and as others have said, inspired by MUDS. Having never been much interested in MUDS, we shipped "Prince of Destruction" a multiplayer (LAN) 2D RPG in 1994 which had many of the features of later games (including persistence between sessions). I say this because these ideas were all "in the air", and it's silly to suggest the EQ guys based their stuff on M59. D&D (RPG concept), RuneQuest (skill systems), Rogue, Akalabeth, Wizardry, etc. had established the basic concepts by 1982, and the idea of making giant servers with hundreds of players or whatever was merely a question of execution.

One of the underappreciated aspects of EQ was the rather sophisticated (for the time) monster AI from which a lot of gameplay _emerged_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like many, I never played Meridian 59 but knew it as a major inspiration for arguably the first popular MMO: Everquest.

Here's the earliest video I know of EQ, and it has a very M59 feel: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKrlynZNtU&list=FLrvKUlysHt...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKrlynZNtU&list=FLrvKUlysHtYslGY0jtMIsJQ&index=6)

<comment><USER4> I would argue Ultima Online set the bar for MMOs long before Everquest. The UO servers had 3000+ players online vs the 300ish of Meridian 59.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't sure how to phrase it. The first two real MMOs (in the massive sense) where UO and EQ, with UO coming first. That said I think modern MMOs would claim more in common with EQ than UO.

<comment><USER5> They do. Pre-patch UO was much more of a free for all. Then the 2nd Age created a mirrored server that prohibited all but mutual combat. It took a lot of the excitement out of it for me. The risk/reward of going to dungeons and territorial feuds were what drew me to the game.

<comment><USER6> Minor correction: Renaissance, not the 2nd Age, split the world into two mirrored facets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never played M59, but heard about it endlessly as "the good old days" when I played EverQuest.

Every few years I Google for happenings on the EQ server I frequented in 1999. There have been all sorts of mergers and consolidations, but it appears a number of people are still playing regularly 15.5 years later and still arguing about the exact same things.

It's like dropping onto Skull Island[1].

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Island](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Island)

</comment><comment><USER8> I beta tested and played M59 when I was 14-15. Was astounding at the time, and I still remember it as great. Beta tested EverQuest after that as well. Much like people talk about UO being transformative, M59 was just something else, indescribable to be that age and experience something so immersive. It was so rough that your imagination filled in so much, it was far more real than a modern MMO.

<comment><USER9> Hey, me too. I burned the entire summer of 1996 between M59 and getting my driver's permit. We had a dial-up internet connection on the same line as our phone, so after numerous lag-related deaths caused by my mother or sister picking up the phone, I started playing almost exclusively at night. It was always so eerie (and, in hindsight, it seems kinda sad), sitting alone in the basement trying not to be killed by giant ants or spiders. I was crap at the game, but I really found myself immersed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have fond memories of this game too. :) I'll always remember how at some point it was possible to edit the game binary and create a character with maxed out stats that could kill the strongest monster in the game (the ghost) in one hit. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have fond memories reading stories about Meridian 59. "Virtual" marriages and the likes in german game magazines. I think the publisher of PC Games, Computec Media, had the rights to publish (and run) the game in germany. In hindsight the articles probably were just barely disguised advertising. ;)

I was about 13-14 at the time and obviously had no pocket money to spare, so I never played the game.

</comment><comment><USER11> Link to source code for the game:

[https://github.com/Meridian59/Meridian59](https://github.com/Meridian59/Meridian59)</comment>


Ask HN: DropZap has a high rating in the US app store. How should I market it? - <AUTHOR>

Demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ub6gCU03iE
App store link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropzap/id338490375?mt=8
What should I do to market this game? <comment><USER2> Marketing is something that you probably should have been thinking about well before you released the game. That said, at least you're thinking about it now. A lot of app developers think that "if you build it, they will come" and with all the noise in the App Store, that's just not going to happen.

Presumably your game has a specific target audience in mind, so the goal of your marketing efforts should be to reach out to that audience. Figure out where your audience lives online.

As a last resort, you could drop a link onto HN and hope people follow it. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any specific suggestions? Should I use AdMob?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> peteysd is sort of right - a target audience has to be established before the app is developed. Otherwise you're creating an app "for everyone", and the truth is that selling apps "for everyone" is much much harder than for specific target. Targeting is king.

In your case I suggest to target people who like brain-teasers and also tetris communities - there must be some of those. You need to find them and talk to them. Another angle is teachers and people working with children - you can try to pass it as "helping develop brain, reaction, quick-thinking" or whatnot. A long shot, but it doesn't look like you have too many options.

A few practical advices:

You can't improve what you don't measure. First step - stop sending out iTunes links and start sending out shorted and click-counted linkshare iTunes links - not only you will know how many people clicked, you will also know how many of them buy.

Your demo video is doing a god job but is too long. Make it 30-60 seconds to improve chances of people even _starting_ to watch it.

Everything I heard about AdMob is that it's making money for them and losing money for developers - there are clicks but there are no purchases. You could try, but I wouldn't expect much from it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very god job on video quality by the way, how did you encode it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Snapz Pro X

<comment><USER3> What were the encoding parameters? Resolution, bit-rate etc. I tried to put couple of demos on YouTube and they don't look nearly as good, even though the source video is very crisp.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used the default ones. This software has a free trial btw.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dutch Intelligence and Security Service Christmas Puzzle 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.aivd.nl/documenten/publicaties/2018/12/11/aivd-kerstpuzzel-2018 <comment><AUTHOR> As is tradition, every year our Intelligence and Security Service post a Christmas Puzzle with challenging/cryptographic puzzles. Translation from Dutch is a extra difficulty step.</comment>