Ask HN: Economy after coronavirus – what can we do? - <AUTHOR> As all of us are acutely aware, the current pandemic is dismantling the economy worldwide. With luck, few months from now the world will either recover or adapt to the new reality, but we'll still end up with seriously damaged national economies. Particularly hurt are all the people whose livelihood is tied to physical workspaces - gastronomy, services sector, manufacturing, etc.
My question is a call for ideas and analyses. What can we do to help our economies recover faster? That is, to help those badly hurt by present disruptions recover? What do you think the needs will be? What market opportunities?
Don't be reluctant to share your best ideas - after all, execution is king, and in the post-pandemic world, there will be plenty of space for competing approaches. <comment><USER2> One interesting idea I've heard recently is gift cards - essentially a way for people with enough disposable income to sustain gig workers across a shutdown. I know I'll be back at my local coffeeshop and taqueria as soon as I can. I know I'll be taking Lyft again. I know I'll be wandering through bookstores and going to theaters and so forth. And I'm not spending that money right now because I'm staying at home.

If I can buy gift cards for these sorts of services and that money can be used to fund workers, that's going to help them with cashflow. There's still going to be this several-week gap of lattes and tortas that went unpurchased, but it can be smoothed out a little bit.

There are logistical difficulties to sort out here to make sure money gets to the right place, including that food service workers rely on tips and that gig workers (like Lyft drivers) aren't the platform (like Lyft itself). So probably this would have to be worked into the concept of a gift card to make it solve the problem properly.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting idea. Do you know if any store or operation is trying that?

I think it might need some additional promotion to work, in particular with feedback to the customers - otherwise it turns into a prisonner's dilemma situation. If I'm about to spend the next few months burning through my savings, I'll not be willing to buy gift cards to support a local coffee store unless I know others are doing the same; otherwise I take a meaningful hit on my savings while not ultimately helping the business at all. I wonder if such businesses could organize a Patreon/Indiegogo-style funding, declaring e.g. "we need $50000/month to keep our venue and 5 employees", with a visible progress bar?

Supporting gig workers with gift cards might be tough also because AFAIK they're considered a disposable and easy-to-replace resource, often not directly affiliated with the companies they serve most.

<comment><USER2> Right, I think this is specifically marketed with people with steady jobs (either people with WFHable jobs like tech workers, or people who are going into work anyway like doctors and retail workers) who are continuing to earn their usual income during the lockdown. If you're not getting paid yourself, it doesn't make as much sense for you to be a buyer.

At least where I am, enough of the customers of independent coffee shops / food places / stores / etc. are people with steady, WFHable jobs that it seems like simply managing cashflow and making sure it gets to the right people is helpful in and of itself.

I don't have a good answer to the gig-worker problem (well, my preferred option is government-run safety nets; the other option is regulations saying gig employment should be disallowed, but those have their own problems), but I want to throw it out there for brainstorming. One potential option is the platforms offer zero-interest loans to their workers, e.g., "here's $1000 now, but we'll want $100 back per month when this is all over, if you continue driving for us we'll automatically take $100 of your earnings per month, if you don't you'll just owe us." Of course many platforms can afford to do that on their own, but they could also fund the program with gift cards from customers. That is, there are two levels of gift cards here, one from customer to platform, one from platform to worker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Boost unemployment payouts in the USA, make it 60 or 90 days with ~80% of what you made at your job. Then taper it down after that on a monthly period (and you can improve that in times of crisis). You will need to pump up contributions, but the gov can seed that with bailout money. Long term you gather those payments with a progressive tax per business, not the silo model we use now. Some countries in the EU do something like this, basically, your unemployment is pegged to your salary.

This makes it somewhat "easy", if a restaurant in Seattle sees foot traffic at an 80% decline they fire their team and hunker down for 2 months. Then start back up once we get this thing beaten. And, this invests in labor/consumption and doesn't have the negative side effect of keeping businesses afloat that shouldn't be.

High rent is a killer, that is a harder one to solve. But, you could start a rainy day fund (and seed it with a bailout). Basically offer a 0% loan to any business that needs to pay rent during a time of officially declared national crisis, but the deal is the loanee has to take ~50% off the rent payment for the month in order to get it. And, make that work its way of the pyramid. The idea being the person running the building takes a hit, the bank with the mortgage takes a hit that month...

Note - In the USA unemployment maxes at 790 a week, and it scales depending on some calculations. It doesn't include tips too so most people who work in restaurants are really in trouble.

<comment><USER4> I can speak about Italy right now: we should (they are still debating) froze employment tax, consider that as an employer for each 1$ i give to my employee I pay roughly 0.60/0.80 in tax, this means i am cutting my costs of 60/80%. We have frozen any mortgage or installment for business and individuals. Obviously this would not be a long term procedure but even if it holds for 5-6 months this gives a lot of possibility to invest.

About rent i can give you my experience: Most landlords here are boomers who don't need rent money so they prefer to keep prices high rather than rent for lower fares. I am confident those boomers will start panicking and lower rent.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing, sending good thoughts to Italy and hopefully it starts leveling off in 10 days or so. I live in Spain (but I am American). Everyone here is on the first day of lockdown and in high spirits.

In the USA the payroll tax is around 20%, so that isn't going to do as much if they pass that through to employees (esp as people employed are less a worry). Better to help on unemployment as the service industry is all going to get fired shortly if not already in the USA. The problem in the USA is unemployment is the pay is not based on your salary but maxes at 790 a week / 2800 a month. And it scales all the way down to a minimum of $188. Even worse tips don't count against insured wages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What industries will be unaffected? Most big tech, media, healthcare. What industries will take a huge hit? Small business, retail and travel. Will this leave permanent effects? My theory is that consumer discretionary industries will struggle and that may last a long time. Biotech may be eclipsed for awhile by the outbreak. It's been said that eventually we would transition to a post-consumer economy and it seems like this outbreak could be a major catalyst to making our goods, services and distribution almost exclusively digital with the exception of food and necessary items. It seems like now is the time to capitalize on escapism and "netflix and chill" culture, (i.e. games, eBooks (or paper books) and VR). I've seen tons of user-generated home cooking/and home projects happening. If your company is direct to consumer and enables people to eat or make perishables like food/bev/cannabis (with some DIY aspect) it seems like a good bet for the next few months.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _What industries will be unaffected? Most big tech, media, healthcare._

Healthcare will be completely shot everywhere in the Western world. Quite possibly everywhere on the planet, period. Some media industries seem to be affected already - video production is cancelled to protect actors and staff, trade shows no longer happen. A lot of tech is just a component or service to meatspace-based operations, so I expect our industry will feel the damage too.

That said, tech and media may indeed be some of the least affected sectors.

I agree that this may be the catalyst for a much stronger push for switching some physical goods and services into digital. But can we start using this to re-employ people laid off from exclusively meatspace businesses?

On a somewhat related note, seeing as most of Europe just went into lockdown and is going to face _huge_ unemployment problem a month or two from now, I wonder if this isn't the time to bite the bullet and introduce UBI.

<comment><USER6> How is UBI supposed to work without major price controls?

<comment><USER7> I personally don't think UBI works. Period.

But some kind of financial relief may be in order to try to prevent worse things. Having no money easily creates situations where "the battle was lost because the nail was lost."

<comment><USER8> any reason or evidence for why you think it doesn't work?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, lots of reasons and lots of what I believe is evidence, but nothing most people think makes sense.

The short version is that every time humans have ever tried a "share and share alike" scheme, it's inevitably been ruined by freeloaders taking advantage of the system. The pilgrims tried this before the US was a country. They had to move to "you don't work, you don't eat."

This was also basically what communism was supposed to be and that went spectacularly badly.

We do have a few places where people get their share of a local natural resource. Both Alaska and at least one Middle Eastern country give all residents a check from their oil wealth.

But it's tied to something in specific: Oil. So we have a good idea of how to make adjustments to the payout and under what conditions it would end. It isn't a promise of "forever."

Historically, we had nuclear families with one primary breadwinner and benefits for others through that person. That's largely dying out for various reasons. We need a new system that allows for some people to work (for pay) and some to not and more or less everyone to get access to housing, health care, etc.

We mostly aren't talking about that. UBI sounds like a rich persons fantasy of hush money. "We'll just cut a check and the problem will go away."

Money is generally a proxy for the value of other things and one of those things is human labor. UBI actively discourages human labor and cuts the ties between money and the creation of actual value.

I think this is enormously dangerous and a bad idea.

Maybe some kind of expanded earned income credit would make sense. In the US, we would benefit tremendously from fixing our health care system.

But I think just passing out money/resources to "everyone" has a long history of failing every time it has been tried in some fashion. It actively undermines a lot of social contracts that are the very basis for civilized life and replaces it with "You and all your friends just won the lottery and the rules don't apply to you anymore."

From what I gather, about 2/3 of lottery winners are bankrupt in five years. This is another piece of evidence that you can't fix life, the universe and everything by just throwing money at it.

<comment><USER2> > _The short version is that every time humans have ever tried a "share and > share alike" scheme, it's inevitably been ruined by freeloaders taking > advantage of the system. The pilgrims tried this before the US was a > country. They had to move to "you don't work, you don't eat."_

UBI/welfare works very differently in a scarcity economy like the Pilgrims' and in a close-to-post-scarcity economy like ours. In fact, I wonder to what extent we're _already_ post-scarcity, we just don't have the logistics worked out to make it realistic. I think that's a much more interesting question than whether UBI is a good idea in the abstract. It seems to me it's an obviously bad idea when the risk of people not working is an existential threat to your society, and an obviously good idea when it's not.

For instance, if wizards showed up tomorrow with the ability to create unbounded amounts of food, clothing, housing, and medicine, it would make little sense to deny those resources to everyone who needed them.

> _Money is generally a proxy for the value of other things and one of those > things is human labor. UBI actively discourages human labor and cuts the > ties between money and the creation of actual value. I think this is > enormously dangerous and a bad idea._

I agree with that, but I also think that this _already_ applies to the rich. Once you own a certain amount of money, our existing systems already discourage human labor and encourage you to spend your time re-investing your money, paying other people for labor, etc. Once you own a bit more, our systems discourage even that and encourage you to spend your time moving your money to offshore banks, lobbying the government, etc. Once you own a bit more, our systems encourage you to spend money trying to just _be_ the government.

So we need to figure out how to cope with a society of people who are disconnected from money in that way, independent of whether UBI is a good idea or not.

Alternatively, we need to find a way to prevent people from exiting the state of being dependent on their labor - no engineers with windfalls from their employer's IPOs, no business magnates, no trust funds or inheritances enough to pay for more than your college education, etc. Everyone needs to keep working until retirement, and nothing you do will let you retire early. I suspect that option is too politically distasteful to everyone (probably even to myself) to make it viable. (That said, most obvious way to do it is extremely heavy taxation, at which point you can afford a generous welfare state.)

<comment><USER7> _Alternatively, we need to find a way to prevent people from exiting the state of being dependent on their labor_

Just for the record: This is not something I'm suggesting and I absolutely don't agree with it.

This is part of my mental framework:

Americans are slaves to the grind in part because cheap housing options simply don't exist anymore and our health care system has very serious problems with regards to the financial end of things. Addressing those two issues would give Americans real relief. Instituting UBI in the US without first addressing those things would actively discourage the US from trying to address those issues. If you don't address them, no amount of "free money" fixes our problems.

This is not argument. I just don't want other people to come through here, read what you have said and go "well, that must be what she means and I'm not for a system that denies people leisure time and retirement."

If people want to know what I think, they can ask me what I think (or read my writing elsewhere in some cases). Please don't rely on other people's mental models to decide what I supposedly think.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, yes - I don't mean to imply that's what you think.

And I do actually think that's a coherent system, and I personally think that it is in some ways more humane than our current one, so I don't even mean that such a system is negative. I also don't think such a system needs to deny people leisure time and retirement: I did specifically suggest that such a system would involve retirement, just no _early_ retirement. Since the vast majority of people in our current society have that option closed off to them in practice, this doesn't strike me as unjust.

As a straw man, let's say minimum wage is N, and taxes cause your net earnings to approach 1.2N asymptotically as you make more and more income. You can apply for government support if you make less than N for good reason, or if you hit retirement age. That puts strong pressure on housing and healthcare to be reasonably priced, because people _can 't_ pay more than a certain amount - nobody has it. But it also ensures that everyone, rich and poor alike, must work to eat. (That is, in this system there's no UBI; there should still be some sort of social safety net for people who _can 't_ work, but no support is provided for people who can work but _won 't_, until retirement age.) At most, you can take a sabbatical every 6 years, in theory; in practice it'd be less than that. Such a system will strongly incentivize the richest among us to support generous labor conditions (vacations, leave for childcare, etc.) because problems will apply to them just about as much as to anyone else.

There are a bunch of practical flaws with this straw man proposal, but I would argue that if we genuinely value the link between how much money you have and your labor, we should be thinking about systems that more closely resemble it than the ones we have now. I'm just genuinely undecided on the value of that link, because I don't have enough information - we don't have a good idea of what a society looks like when you can set up that link _and_ you have copious amounts of "free money" to go around.

<comment><USER7> I don't frame this problem space at all like you do.

I think there is value in doing work, but I don't think we need a system that ties your income to your labor per se. It's fine if the system ties your income to your ability to add value to the system in some way.

Education, know how and stewardship are all important ways to add value to the system. They are all ways to add value while reducing our own direct dependence on labor per se.

I'm fine with rich people owning shares in a company.

I'm fine with founders getting rich.

I'm fine with college grants and a system that actively encourages and financially rewards the pursuit of education.

I'm not okay with a system that cuts ties between human choices and financial outcomes because I think when you do that, you will eventually kill the goose that's laying your golden eggs.

People need to know "The goose is sacred. Don't kill the goose. This how the gold gets made."

And UBI sends the signal that it comes from nowhere for doing nothing and I think that's a fast track to cutting our own throats.

Insisting humans need to still figure out how to effectively interact with the system so the system produces things of value is intended to protect the ability of the world to keep producing things of value. I think UBI destroys that.

I think it is a superficial, inelegant answer. We need deep and elegant answers.

We aren't going to find them if we don't even bother to look because we went with UBI.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, that's helpful.

My personal vision of UBI is that it should provide what you need to live but not what you need to have a good life - i.e., if you so much as want a Switch with _Animal Crossing_ , you have to contribute to the system and earn it (via labor or otherwise - in this system you _could_ still get arbitrarily rich, and you can reinvest your earnings), but if you want (non-fancy) meals and (personal) housing and medical care, nothing is required from you, we treat that as an inalienable right. I think such a system still maintains the link you want to protect, right?

Maybe this is not really what people mean by UBI? (Perhaps I should call this "welfare without means-testing" or something?)

<comment><USER7> There are various policies that generally shrink the individual burden in a way that also shrinks the public burden.

One of those is a good health care system. It benefits the public to make sure everyone can see a doctor if they need to, even if they are broke.

Letting poor people just get sicker and sicker tends to negatively impact other people and force costs up. When done well, universal health care doesn't inherently have adverse incentives. It doesn't actively encourage people to get sick so they can consume more medical care.

Another area that can simultaneously shrink individual burden and public burden is good housing policies that make it possible for people of limited means to find adequate housing that supports a reasonable quality of life.

In America, "affordable housing" has more or less become synonymous with _slum housing._ Slum housing tends to help trap people in poverty by limiting access to education, jobs, shopping, etc.

We have a nationwide shortage of affordable housing. I mean actual affordable housing, not slum housing.

Off the top of my head, health care is something crazy high, like 20 percent of GDP. For most households, housing is the single biggest household expense in the budget.

Transportation is typically the second largest expense because America makes it nigh impossible to live without a car. That fact is largely rooted in and tied up with housing policy.

If you provide universal health care and shrink the overall cost of health care while making it a lighter burden for individuals with health issues who are likely to have trouble earning an adequate income because of their health, you will remove a big chunk of the financial burden for America generally and especially for the most burdened Americans.

So just spitballing here, if you theoretically make health care free, you theoretically remove up to 20 percent of the financial burden from people -- possibly more for many people.

Some people are paying more than half their income in rent, and another like 25 or 30 percent on transportation. If they can have a life without having a car and can find a home for far less money, you begin to get to the point where a part-time minimum wage job can keep body and soul together.

If you have a small retirement check or something like that, intermittent gig work can be enough to make your life work adequately well.

That's currently out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. It shouldn't be.

It should be readily possible to find a small, cheap residential space, live without a car and get medical care even when you are flat broke. Then, you only need some really minimal income to get by and you can dream of better things and work towards them.

At that point, most people can find some way to muddle through.

I would be for expanding our military medical benefits such that any term of military service gives you access to the military medical system for life.

I would be for expanding and enhancing our Earned Income Credit on federal taxes.

I would be for being freer about providing food stamps with a lot less means testing, etc.

But a universal basic income makes no sense. Elon Musk doesn't need a check from the government for $10k annually.

Anyway, I'm running a fever, not feeling well and no longer sure where to go with this ramble. You have a good day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems clear to me that the economically productive section of society is going to be in hiatus for a significant period of time, which in itself is going have a massive and widely shared impact on the consumers of their production, but the elephant in the room is to what extent the rentier class is going to take its fair share of the pain.

If families and businesses are going to be hitting pause, through necessity and for the public good, then we can't have landlords expecting to be paid in full all the while.

Of course some of them will take a hit anyway when their tenants go to the wall, but it would be better for all concerned if the economically productive can do what they can, without the threat of the rug being pulled out from underneath them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Start thinking in terms of years from now, this isn't going to be papered over like last time in 2008. Don't execute any business plan without revenue in sight immediately. Shun all forms of debt. Raise capital. Protect what is close to you. Be safe out there.

<comment><USER11> so... long SPY? 12-18 month recovery has to be right around the corner. at the worst, 60 months

<comment><USER8> not wsb, please don't bring that.sort of comment here, I may also be guilty of it myself but let's not redditify HN, or at least let's slow it down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazon, shipping, streaming games/media, ebooks, healthcare, internet-based medical services will be fine.

Many people are about to have enormous amounts of idle time to dedicate towards home-based hobbies, creative projects or entertainment, especially elderly told to self-isolate for several months.

Domestic healthcare product manufacturing will be high-incentivized for a decade or so.

Disposable income industries, especially travel and tourism, will be in free fall for months to a year. Luxury goods tend to also mostly dry up.

New ventures should focus on much improved (and defensible) essentials and better delivery of essentials that aren't as painless as ordering from Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been thinking about this a lot and will be writing a blog post soon in terms of thinking about risk post-COVID-19. Thanks for asking the question because it's an important one -- it's easy to lose sight of the longer-term implications, given that we DO need to focus on saving lives in the short run.

There are a few things I'd say...

(1) COVID-19 is destroying international trust. The EU nations are closing their borders to each other, there is hoarding of supplies between countries, and stories are coming out now that countries might want to have exclusivity to vaccines. This is NOT supposed to happen with allies, and I think countries will have major trust issues and collaboration issues post-COVID-19.

(2) A lot of the economic stimuli will lead to significant increases in debt, but also NEW monetary and financial strategies. Countries are discussing encouraging central banks to buy stocks, mortgage-backed security, nationalize factories, and more. This means government debt will increase significantly, and corporate debt will be an issue as well. As earnings announcements are made for Q1, Q2, etc... we'll see just how bad this has gotten.

(3) Small businesses will be shutting down. Even if there are debt forgiveness programs driven by government debt (i.e., #2 above), the stress and short-term cashflow issues of many small businesses will likely cause many to shut down.

I can go on and on... I can also provide citations for any part you'd like to see.

Having said all of that, I think a few things are important:

(1) Promote social cohesion. People are scared, nervous, unsure what to do -- organize online events, reach out to people, etc.

(2) When it's safe, SPEND MONEY with SMALL BUSINESSES. I think this will be critical.

(3) Encourage your governments to work with other governments, and speak out against the politicians/governors/MPs/whatever that specifically were irresponsible during this period. Don't let them get re-elected.

... I can go on and on... Just let me know. :-)

<comment><USER14> Why do should we spend on small businesses? I know this sounds a little harsh, but do we really need to keep them from shutting down? A lot of big businesses today had their start during an economic downturn. If a small business shuts down, the owner often ends up working in another more robust business and gets a good ride up.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's harsh -- I think it's a good attitude to question this stuff.

I put myself in the shoes of the gym, coffee shop, or restaurant owner... The businesses that contribute to our communities but likely won't be consolidated into bigger companies. They add value to our communities without necessarily being hugely profitable. I think it's good to support those businesses.

I wish I had a stronger economic argument but I don't, right now.

<comment><USER13> After responding to a few other posts, I came across an important number -- about 50M Americans work for businesses that are 99 people or less in size. That's a lot. Even if a small percentage of these businesses go under during this entire crisis, that'll lead to a big shock to the financial/economic system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, I'll be that guy... I think this recession will hit bigger companies rather than smaller one, small means resiliency. Online consumer companies like Amazon wins because of their ability to cut prices, what if: Sending goods will be more expensive than having a retail shop? If manufacturing goods will be cheaper in your home country? I think we will see local industries flourish at expense of multinational who will be not able to change that fast. Any tech business that is able to support local business with their daily troubles and help them cutting costs will build the future.

<comment><USER15> a small business, e.g. a hair salon will shut down if having to pay people without any customers for a month. Amazon can wait

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My 2 cents. Interest rates are so low that central banks will no longer be able to use that lever to stimulate economies. One idea is salary tax holidays i.e. do not tax wages for a period of time such as one or two months. More money will be in the hands of people to spend in the local economies.

</comment><comment><USER17> A key issue for parents is kids stuck at home. Parents can't work, even remotely (very well), with kids cooped up for months. There is a huge lack of childcare now and it will be worse on the way back to normal until schools are open.

My idea is to facilitate linking teens to nearby families with younger kids for babysitting. This already happens normally, of course, but in cities like SF it is less common. With dual working parents solving the childcare issue is a requirement.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are lots of service workers who are about to be in trouble. In places where white-collar workers are staying home, baristas and waiters and Uber drivers are still at it. If they aren't sick enough to be hospitalized, they're probably still at work, because they can't afford not to be.

What opportunities might there be for "Uber for X" that people can do from home? Amazon's Mechanical Turk comes to mind, but I can't think of any others. And usually when the only present solution is a catch-all, there's space for more niche solutions that can thrive by specializing around specific sub- markets.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think that, in the long run, we will see a de-urbanization movement pushed by all the works that, being potentially done from remote, will be done from remote.

This will bring _a_lot_ of consequences like a drastic drop on rent and prices of apartments, a fast reduction of small shop/pub/restaurants inside the big cities, a change in the way universities make courses, etc...

It is going to impact every aspect of life considering we pushed urbanization to its limit in the last 6-8 decades.

<comment><USER11> I wish a _fraction_ of the employers right now asking people to work from home realized "shit, people could work from home all of the time, not just during a global pandemic"

<comment><USER6> Old world managers would freak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> move more of it online. Thanks to decades of e commerce the economy can already function without brick and mortar. More of this, in a health-conscious way (e.g. special uniforms for deliverypeople, drop-off stations for products, contactless payments). It needs to be deployed fast, too

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html)

<comment><USER14> While I agree with the essay, keep in mind this is peak survivorship bias.

<comment><USER20> Agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Be more self sufficient,localize production

</comment><comment><USER7> This will be rambling, and I apologize.

I run r/GigWorks on reddit and I run some websites aimed at helping people trying to do GigWork.

I've been batting ideas back and forth with someone about a website called The Butterfly Economy, inspired by a comment I made on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732)

That website is currently a landing page.

While homeless, I developed an online income. It's never been enough, but it was better than not having it. I've been trying to lay the groundwork, both online and in meatspace locally, to help homeless individuals and others to connect with earned income via the internet.

I'm not getting a lot of traction and I'm not sure there's any point in continuing to push for something that no one else seems to want. I end up feeling like the world would literally rather let a bunch of people die than listen to me and I don't have a solution for that.

And talking about it that way is probably the worst way to talk about it, but a decade of getting kicked in the teeth and not taken seriously has taken its toll. I don't know how to escape that mental space while still stuck in that reality where I don't get taken seriously and so forth.

The old guard never seems to voluntarily step down. Perhaps this crisis is an opportunity.

From what I gather, people online are saying things like "Yeah, my boss, who always told me my job can't be done from home, is letting me do it from home now because of coronavirus. The asshole."

So I feel like we've long had the pieces in place to move to a different way of working and of living, we just dug our heels in and refused to jump on the bandwagon. But people are beginning to embrace it more now that the other option is death, basically.

I think -- and have thought for a long time -- that with 7 billion people on the planet, we need to change how we do things or there will be a massive die back of the human race. We do a lot of things that worked when population levels were lower and I think a major sticking point is germ control.

I'm aware of that because of my medical situation, but I get literally told I'm insane and making things up. So it's been impossible to tell people "I think you should do things differently." That's point and laugh at me, at best.

I'm tired and short of sleep and feeling pretty hopeless about a lot of things. I hope to be more productive on various projects in coming weeks.

And it's probably a mistake to answer this in public, but you and I aren't good friends and I don't want to bug you privately and blah blah blah. So there's some of my thoughts, fwiw.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't apologize, I enjoy reading your ramblings. And feel free to bug me about this privately. I'm very grateful for the advice you sent me last time; we've implemented some of it.

With all your experience with homelessness, what's your opinion on how the homeless population will handle the pandemic, and what can be done to help them? Somewhat surprisingly to me, I've seen exactly _zero_ comments about this in the press, and I've been a COVID-19 news junkie for the past two weeks. It's like these people don't exist.

<comment><USER7> I actually posted a thing about how this is impacting the homeless in the US less than 24 hours ago. It got no real traction.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580519)

I don't have solutions. I live in a hundred year old building and nothing is square anymore and there was a really terrible storm one night some weeks back with both rain and high winds. The curtains and window sill inside my unit got soaked and the curtains molded.

I planned to remedy that quickly, but new policies delayed my tax refund by like an entire month. So that was dealt with about 10 days ago and I'm still running a fever and coughing up phlegm.

This is likely a large part of why I personally feel hopeless. I'm not getting much of anything done at the moment. I expect that to change in a few days.

But I really, really wish the US would stop it's nutty housing policies and begin building SROs and Missing Middle Housing and stop objecting to how "But those are tenements and that's a bad thing!" when that de facto means people are homeless because of it.

And I've studied the history of housing in the US for a long time. It's why I had a class in Homelessness and Public Policy. I wanted to be an urban planner and I was pursuing an environmental studies degree with a concentration in Housing as preparation.

So I know just a whole lot about housing and I never know how to succinctly and compellingly make my points. It's a source of personal frustration.

I'm quite confident that an updated version of the SRO with some modern amenities would go a long ways towards remedying a lot of problems in the US. And I have absolutely no idea how to get there from here.

I hope you and your family are well. They are closing the Walmart at night now here. It was open 24 hours and we were shopping there in the middle of the night to avoid the crowds and I'm starting to feel like the pandemic is doing more than being a minor inconvenience for me at this point.

But I very seriously doubt me or my sons will get sick from it. We are too careful about germ control as a matter of course because two of us have CF and the other is a carrier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts. Sad that this post got no real traction. It's an important issue, both from ethical and epidemiological POV.

My family and I are well; we went into full social distancing mode, only going out occasionally to a store. We've cancelled everything that didn't already cancel itself (this week, Poland implemented shutdown of shutdown of bars, restaurants, cinemas and all other kinds of non-essential, gathering-inducing businesses).

Do get to that Walmart and stock up a bit if you can (as a low-pass filter). The virus will definitely affect you, if not directly then by the panic it induces in people. Get well, and stay safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> put extraordinary effort on developing suitable antiviral and a vaccine in a fraction of the ordinary time period.

</comment><comment><USER22> UBI</comment>


Gatsby in New Delhi (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://nplusonemag.com/issue-10/essays/gatsby-in-new-delhi/

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what this has to do with the character gatsby, unless the author is referring to the sandwich instead - it makes about as much sense.

I didn't see the recent movie(s), but from the previews it looked like it was mostly about lavish parties and not so much pain - so the author went to some lavish parties in India I guess. But the character he describes is hardly gatsby.</comment>


Interesting New Startup - <AUTHOR> http://convertmyflash.com/

<comment><USER2> This was posted a week ago under 'Ask HN' as a review.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009521>

It was deleted after the poster was outed for making fake accounts to comment and upvote. It shouldn't detract from the startup and its reviews, but I guess at least an apology is in order for trying to game the community.

<comment><USER3> umm..those were REAL accounts by real people..who truly liked the service. All i wanted to do was to spark a conversation..which is Finally happening. Im not running for president. i dont need votes. just your feedback which im very grateful for.. thank u HN

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The domain name is pretty clever assuming your customers are already drinking the "flash-is-dead" koolaid, but this is a service that any web developer can offer. Incidentally, the tracypaul demo isn't HTML5, and doesn't even animate like in the original site.

And don't even get me started on the comment at the top triggering quirksmode.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you need to drink any "koolaid."

There are many reasons to convert from Flash to HTML, not least of which is cross-device compatibility. Philosophy and ideological arguments might be interesting over coffee at 3am, but right now, companies want HTML5 sites.

Sure, any web developer can offer this service. The point is that they ARE doing it, and packaging their service very well.

I've already sent this site to friends at three different agencies, and got enthusiastic responses all around.

<comment><USER4> For the record, I'm not trying to start a silly argument about philosophies or whatever, I'm just making an observation that many people who are not techies don't really care if you're using a guy in tights or a movie about coffee.

FWIW, my company already offers these same services, (in addition to many other). These days, you'd be foolish not to, since it requires such a trivial skillset (as far as webdevs go anyways).

I did mention that I liked the domain name. I just wasn't all that impressed with the quality of the demo (both in terms of pizzazz and code quality).

<comment><USER5> I have to agree now that I've looked more at what they're really doing.

It's a good concept/name, like you say, but doesn't look like they're actually executing on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me, the idea of 'converting my flash' isn't just about content. I think they need to set the bar low for customers.

I was expecting that somehow they were maintaining the animation and interaction of flash.

Of course it is very impressive that in the demo they are able to take a flash heavy site and make the content viewable in a similar design but in straight html. They have lost the music, the animations, and some of the design intricacies.

For most of these reasons, I think that a good developer/designer would push the customer to move the site to html5 and pay a few thousand dollars and only maintain one code base. It seems to me that at some point, something here would become a legacy system. If the world is going to HTML5, should I be writing in Flash and converting (and to a less engaging experience)?

</comment><comment><USER7> What the heck is an "iTouch"?

Using correct brand names conveys trustworthiness.

<comment><USER8> ipod touch. I've seen/heard it referred to as iTouch numerous times.

<comment><USER9> pak definitely knew what an iTouch was, and I similarly cringe when I hear people refer to it like so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not really 'convert my flash' is it, it's 'adapt my homepage to work with non-flash compatible devices'

It's a compromise more than a direct translation!

Nice idea though, I like the succinctness of their message, it gets the idea out to people what they do instead of just offering it as one of their services

<comment><USER3> it is..actually.

we can create an exact replica of the flash site both in design and functionality. ( but this would be a custom project with a greater price tag )

but we realized giving them 95% their flash site is good enough for them to start out. Then as they grow, they can easily build on the framework themselves or have us do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find their service pretty low quality. Especially for 900$.

Their example is this website: <http://www.tracypaul.com/> That they converted to this: <http://tracypaul.convertmyflash.com/>

The pages are not the same, much less nicer. No music anymore (even tho I don't like music, html5 has music and I think it is important for the site to be identical). Also if you change pages on the html5 site, there is no animation! It just changes pages in the browser, which is ugly and completely useless! AJAX!!!

</comment><comment><USER5> Without digging on the details of the service, the concept is great.

Incredibly easy to sell to a client, and a strong promise. If they can just deliver, they'll be doing great for the immediate future.</comment>


120K Instagrams by Russian election attackers hit 20M Americans - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/instagram-election-interference/ <comment><USER2> I think it might be really difficult to measure the true impact of these posts on people.

I for one usually ignore political type posts on social media just like I ignored banner ads of the 90s</comment>


Awful Programming Advice - <AUTHOR> http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/69753.html

<comment><USER3> I think it's a bit skeevy to start an article with "a square is not a subclass of a rectangle is not a subclass of a polygon" and end with "and maybe that's why Tornado couldn't use Twisted Python".

<comment><USER4> I think his point was that having a simple and clean design would make the software easily adoptable.

What's wrong with that?

<comment><USER3> Because things should be as simple as they can be, and no simpler. He made a case for simplifying square -> rect -> poly. He made no such case for Twisted, but still tarred them with the same brush.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a very interesting thought and I have a gut feel he's onto something.

Last two times I used subclasses were in case of a C++ library that was designed very much like twisted (except it used threading a great deal more): there were events coming from epoll() and going to a pool of worker threads.

I subclassed this framework to create my own asynchronous network server. However, that got me thinking: wouldn't this have been better implemented using callbacks?

The other time I've used subclassing was in Java with the "decorator" pattern: I needed to extend the functionality of object foo, while still allowing any subclasses of foo to behave as they normally would. However, the Scala approach to this (mixing in traits) seems a great deal more elegant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Classes (and OOP) are there to help you, and they apply to a specific set of problems - use them where they help, and don't when they don't.

I just finished a game with monsters, soldiers, snipers, movable barricades, etc. Someone who's class-crazy would probably make a soldier class that inherits from a generic "entity" class, ditto for each monster type, etc - <USER2> don't think that's efficient, I wind up with too many files and too much repetition. Instead I built a single "character" class with a constructor that takes a "type" - monster, soldier, etc - and drive behavior of each method with "if" statements where required.

I'm sure some purist is having heart strictures right now, but I'm not writing an API - I'm working in a living structure where the map format and drawing format may change from day to day, and I don't want to make updates in half a dozen files if the rules for aiming change. I want a single "aim" method that behaves differently based on type.

I subclass system objects all the time of course, but like the author I rarely subclass my own objects. Am I being pragmatic or foolish?

<comment><USER7> > _but I'm not writing an API - I'm working in a living structure where the > map format and drawing format may change from day to day, and I don't want > to make updates in half a dozen files if the rules for aiming change._

I find that I am always writing APIs, and it's not always clear which is going to be 'public' or 'private'. That is, I generally work bottom-up, and my lower-level classes present a sensible API that I can work with directly, e.g. in irb. This makes the design of higher-level classes easier, if I've done the low-level API correctly.

> _I want a single "aim" method that behaves differently based on type._

Hm, you mean like _char.aim_? Where char may be a Monster, Soldier, or ?

<comment><USER6> >I find that I am always writing APIs, and it's not always clear which is going to be 'public' or 'private'.

I understand the sentiment, and I believe in SOLID principles. I just mean that I'm not building a library that other people will use. No one is ever going to subclass my "player" class, not even me. Unlike my sound or graphics or AI code it's unlikely to be reused even in another game.

>Hm, you mean like _char.aim_? Where char may be a Monster, Soldier, or ?

Yes. My "aim" method is 90% identical for all types, about 10% specific to the type - if(type==monster){do this}; if(type==soldier){do that}

I've heard "if you're using if statements like this you're probably not using OOP correctly", but in my case I don't want six nearly identical methods spread out in six class files. That's repeating myself, which is the real sin I'd rather avoid; it comes back to haunt me if the map format or some other data structure changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _if Twisted followed this example straightforwardly .. then Tornado would > never have been written._

The only reason Tornado came about is that it is far more interesting to _write_ your own code than to _learn_ someone else's. It has very little to do with whether Twisted was designed well or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> The referenced blog post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822354>

</comment><comment><USER10> I think he's right.

If you end up thinking about non-trivial tree of classes, like shape-circle- oval, square-rect-polygon, triangle - you're doing it wrong! I don't know why, but it just does never seem to work. You can generalize it to a polygon, tho, and it would work.

What you really want from subclassing is interfaces (Set and List come to mind immediately) and civilized monkey-patching (you have a class, you want some of its behavior changed, so you override a method or two).

<comment><USER11> Excellent point,

It's worth having Objects represent a particular hierarchy of characteristics that you would like to concentrate on and to allow other characteristics be represent by containment and list objects. I've programming in c++ w/ QT lately and it seems like it actually has most of what I've gotten used to in Ruby if I represent a significant amount of the data structures with hash and list templates rather than trying to represent everything with the class construct.</comment></comment>


My competitor send his employee to spy on my site - <AUTHOR> what would you do ? <comment><USER2> Nothing you can really do. It's the Internet. I suppose you could block specific IP addresses but that seems futile. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, it depends if you want to play his game or not. If you are sure you could start using the employee to feed bad info to your competitor.

If you don't want to play their game, then get rid of the employee.</comment>


Tech Roundup: The Vast Criminal Enterprise Lurking Behind Spam Emails - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/technology/tech-roundup-the-vast-criminal-enterprise-lurking-behind-spam-emails.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fbits&action=click&contentCollection=technology&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=collection <comment><USER2> I wish they would send me some

email@example.com</comment>


What's your biggest frustration, fear, or challenge? - <AUTHOR>

I want to help HNers, but first I'd like to know what common challenges we have.<p>What is your biggest challenge in life/business right now? <comment><USER2> Biz: Don't what to sell.</comment>


Android and its Market: So Close Yet So Far - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appboy.com/2010/04/android-and-its-market-so-close-yet-so-far/ It is no longer a secret that out of all the many mobile operating systems out there, such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, Maemo, WebOS, Android, and iPhone, only two really understand where the future of mobile lays. Have you figured it out yet? There is a pattern among the former four members of that list that is in complete contrast to the latter two. <comment><USER2> Android is a way better and more functional than an iPhone. Unfortunately it is still not enough popular to make on app development as much as for IPhone... :/

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems when you hit saturation point for apps an obvious next step would be for some of the competing apps to throw in with each other either simply by merging, or working from a common code base by factoring out shared functionality.

How well does Android support these open source development methods?

</comment><comment><USER4> This situation grinds my gears. I love my HTC Hero, and it's great to be able to show off the many ways it beats an iPhone.

But for AAA paid apps, the iPhone wins hands down.

</comment><comment><USER5> iPhone is a toy. Android is a great tool - for fun, for business or anything other.</comment>


Event Tracing for Windows: The Worst API Ever Made (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0025 <comment><USER2> This is giving me Win32 flashbacks. I cannot HANDLE it HWIN this happens!</comment>


Bootstrapped startup saves over $100K by dropping IE - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/01/bootstrapped-startup-saves-over-100k-by-dropping-ie/ <comment><USER4> This is one of those times I wish HN wasn't so strict about the title of the submission matching the title of the article--this title is extremely misleading. (As a guest post, I'm guessing the author didn't get to write the title, so I'm not blaming him). 4ormat didn't "drop" IE, they never supported it. As a result, their calculation of how much they "saved" appears to be based on some back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much more expensive it would have been to develop for IE over a period of years.

tl;dr: if you build a tool which solves a significant and recurring pain point for creative professionals, you can get away with not supporting IE.

The article does not provide much insight into building a consumer-facing application--this is the equivalent of a company using an intranet app which is IE6-specific.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the 100K is based on a back-of-the-envelope, but for a startup with zero revenue every development and design hour we can spare helps us focus on the real task at hand: figuring out our market fit and making a great product.

This is less about supporting this browser or that browser and more about making sound business decisions and putting our users' needs first. We'd like to think they would rather see requested features over support for a browser they don't use.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if the value was higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Choosing not to develop for IE makes perfect sense if you're building an app. Here's my own little anecdote:

In the last 4 months or so I've written around 10k loc for a JS app. and probably 3x that many lines of combines CSS and HTML. Number of hours troubleshooting differences between Firefox and Chrome? I'd say about 8. So one developer day's worth of work to sort out some minor issues with vendor prefixed css. I've gotten to the point now that I routinely go days without testing in FF, and when I do fire it up.... everything just works.

My estimate that supporting ie6+ would have put my progress back by about 2 months. On top of that is the ongoing technical debt of continuing to support IE.

I don't want to say goodbye to potential IE customers and that's where Chromeframe comes into play. Chrome frame is AMAZING. Takes about 60s to install. Allows you to create your own install procedure i.e Your_Site -> Install_Chromeframe -> Your_Site. Doesn't require a browser restart and no admin rights needed. Wow.

Of course if you're just building a regular website then sure suck up the few hours it takes to make it work in IE and bill 2x for the trouble.

</comment><comment><USER8> What is this? There was no real argument, no mentioned technologies, that were the ice-breaker.

Sure, in IE6, even the PNGs weren't working properly, but, talking layout, IE7+ is mostly a question of 5-10 additional rules (on small scale websites) and IE8 actually works without any (mostly), save for a css3 features like border-radius, etc.

As for the design, having less visual effects and no rounded corners doesn't have to be a problem – most of the designs work without it rather well (not to mention 4ormat's design doesn't use plasticity, gradients and shadows that much)

This article would gain much more credibility if it mentioned at least one or two technological obstacles that take you more than 30 minutes to sort out.

<comment><USER9> I don't think anyone cares about the design. They're talking about JavaScript implementations, which differ between browsers.

<comment><USER8> Okay, then it's the javascript. But what javascript (running jQuery+UI) providing async script loading and few UI elements, can cost $100.000 to debug on IE8+, for instance?

I'm not saying there [on the 4ormat] isn't technical solution that could be this expensive to debug on IE, but none is visible on 4ormat page and nothing less obvious is mentioned in the article, thus diminishing article's credibility;

You know, instead of something awesome like 'we implemented geolocation, offline aps and 20-years-too-soon-UI, so we ditched IE', they are doing 'Hurr Durr bad IE can cost up to totally out of my ass pulled $100.000'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I signed up to say this:

This is the lowest quality article I have ever read for a product which virtually no-one knows (except the minute techcrunch ecosystem and out of pocket VCs) trying to trash a product which is actually used at least 5 orders of magnitude more often by 5 orders of magnitude more people.

Trashing IE was fun once, but the world has grown up in the last couple of years.

Also, that's a theoretical 100k saved now until the Windows tablet market and Windows v.next peak grows (which it will as it always does) at which point it'll cost 200k to sort it out. I worked at a Microsoft monoculture org for a number of years and that's what happened when other browsers had to be supported (Firefox, Chrome, Safari). Save now, pay later.

Welcome to the 2012 version of an IE6 only web site...

<comment><USER11> Sorry, did you actually checked the website? Your argument regarding Windows tablet market seems really shallow. They already optimize it for iOS devices and Android which is like 90% of the market. I agree, the market is webkit all over, which sounds like a monoculture. But, there is no windows tablet yet and for design professionals ( which the website targets ) this is IMHO not the target. So, no early optimization. I am not going to comment on "actually used at least 5 orders of magnitude more often by 5 orders of magnitude more people" because this seems to be disconnected from reality.

<comment><USER10> It isn't disconnected from reality. Consider China alone - IE is still king there as it is in the majority of large organisations (who still like to have control over their users with AD/Group Policy).

I'm not saying preemptively design for it, but if you preemptively exclude its predecessors and your path will be frought with many less turds to not step in i.e:

In 2 years: "Oh shit we did it all in Webkit and Gecko features - The growing 20% of Windows tablet market doesn't support it - we're going to have to rewrite or ship an app both of which are costly".

<comment><USER12> > "Oh shit we did it all in Webkit and Gecko features - The growing 20% of > Windows tablet market doesn't support it - we're going to have to rewrite or > ship an app both of which are costly".

If Windows tablets take off (and that still seems like rather a big if), you'd hope they have a vaguely compatible browser.

<comment><USER13> Vaguely compatible doesn't help if the site is deliberately locking out browsers that look like the current crop of Internet Explorer browsers.

Doesn't look like that they are User-Agent sniffing, so that means that maybe they are detecting features. That's kinda the right way of doing it - <USER2> for their failure to adhere to progressive enhancement best practices.

But feature detection isn't "No Internet Explorer support here" approach. So the story seems at odds with the actual behaviour of their site.

Now what happens when an Internet Explorer - either on the desktop or tablet, or phone, passes the feature detection in place on this site? You don't get the "Go Away!" message, but instead you get an insufficiently tested experience which exposes the lack of attention on quality - that's something that's going to turn away an audience geared to wanting to see quality.

If you are going to publicly stop supporting an entire browser range, make sure your developers don't leave obvious gaps in that non-support. Maybe here's one place where User-Agent sniffing actually complements the actual requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Leaving aside the misleading title, i am not sure how the $100k number was arrived at. Developer hours? cutting off one dedicated developer who fixed IE issues?

If you are catering to creative professionals, who are going to be using huge apple monitors and macs (66% of the site's users are on a mac), ignoring IE isn't going to be a big deal. Even many of those ~4.5% of IE visitors might be on IE9 /10 which are pretty decent browsers. I am not here to support IE, i hate it like every other developer who builds stuff for the web. Also, compete.com tells their approximate UVs for February was around 13k. Ignoring a small number of users here is not going to have a huge impact. If your are site/app with millions of users, then it will be a big deal.

PS: If you are building a hipster social network or a video post processing tool, ignoring IE is going to save you significant time but if you are catering to e-commerce/finance or any other common demographic even thinking about ignoring IE isn't wise at this point.

</comment><comment><USER15> These "developers" would have saved company X a fair bit of money by actually researching IE. Microsoft has graciously provided a massive amount of documentation covering most Internet Explorer variants and their quirks (via MSDN)[0].

One of the main problems in web development today is the creation of browser- specific code; "IE6" in particular is a scapegoat for poor code. I found that once I studied MSDN and wrote no browser-specific code that IE 8 became elementary to support. IE 7 soon followed. IE 6 & 5.5 were close behind.

For CSS, the key is understanding that every page does not need to look the same. Furthermore, reading MSDN's CSS compatibility grid[1] provides more insight.

For JavaScript, the key is simplification. Using DOM 0 events over fancy DOM 3 events yields big gains. Avoiding selector engines will also yield gains.

I'm getting very tired of incompetent web developers and their browser elitism. Do your homework.

[0]: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms533050(v=vs.85).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms533050\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

[1]: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc351024(v=vs.85).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc351024\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

<comment><USER16> Its not browser elitism when you have 4 browsers that work and 1 that doesn't. If you are doing trivial ui work, it is not hard to support IE. If you are doing anything close to innovative or competitive with what is out there, it is a huge pain.

<comment><USER15> s/browsers/platforms/. Don't lump all browser versions into one pile.

I can grasp what you're referring to. Bleeding-edge features are tough to support in large part because of Internet Explorer's slow release cycle.

However, the decision has still been made to jump onto a runaway train. All users should be treated the same. Choose an approach that doesn't pick favorites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the argument of what browser(s) you do/don't support really depend upon your site's focus.

I'm pretty sure if Gruber/daringfireball.net dropped all IE support, his traffic decline would be close to 0.

On the other hand, if codeguru.com did the same, their traffic would probably drop off close to 75+%.

If your budget is tight or skills limited, focus on your target market first and make that experience the best you can. Though, that pretty much applies for browser support as well as many other things.

<comment><USER18> Absolutely. I work for a 'start-up' in the insurance sector, where everyone uses IE (the only non-IE entries in the access logs are myself on the development sites). If we ignored IE (and I'd love to, given the number of headaches over the years) we wouldn't have any customers.

We could get away with not supporting Chrome and Firefox though as I doubt anyone would notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Recruitment secret weapon. It warms our hearts to see the look of > incredulous joy on the face of a job candidate when we assure them "You > heard right, we really don't support IE."

I can imagine that look _so_ well...

<comment><USER20> I know that look myself. But most experienced web coders know how to whip IE into submission, so I'm very skeptical about the 30-100% figure. (I usually guesstimate it at around 20% for a normal website.)

65% of their traffic is from Mac users, so this sounds like a good decision given their audience.

<comment><USER21> Nah ... that's about right, I've been doing html/css for almost 9 years and hard core javascript/ui stuff for another 4 or so.

Almost without fail, fixing stuff for IE takes as long as it does to just build the feature in the first place (so 4 hours to do a layout then another 3 or 4 to get it working properly in IE), with CSS/html layout that number has dropped as IE6 has been phased out, but I find that its actually moved over into doing js stuff in IE8 and 7.

<comment><USER22> The solution may be to design your site and test in Internet Explorer before even looking at it in any other browser. It might be faster for you to resolve the quirks in FireFox & Chrome then IE. Reversing your process might speed up your development time by 20%.

<comment><USER13> No, that introduces the same type of bias, just from the opposite direction. The key is to keep a broad range of browsers quickly on hand to regularly check _while_ you develop.

There's no reason not to have multiple browsers quickly available - <USER3> computers have sufficient processing power to run multiple applications simultaneously these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There seems to be a common sentiment that experienced devs can tame IE, thus it's not really an issue.

Speaking as someone who can tame IE, I can categorically state that I don't want to. I'd much rather have that time back so I could do something much more fun.

</comment><comment><USER24> _"not a single person has ever contacted us requesting support for Internet Explorer."_

While that may be considered evidence of potential customers switching browsers just to use 4ormat.com, it may also be considered evidence that potential customers using IE are very much put off by being told to use another browser.

Just running the numbers on a back of envelop:

The company was founded in 2008.

Not supporting IE has saved $25,000 per year.

12 months x $7 per month = $84 per user.

330 lost users = $25,000 +/- per year

10,000 responses to the call for action * 4% using I.E. = 400 visitors who are much more unlikely to use 4ormat.com because the call to action doesn't work. Their negative experience is much more likely to lead to negative network effects than positive ones.

Even worse the lost revenue scales as the customer base grows, but the work to support IE is roughly fixed and is relatively modest.

$25,000 is 4% of $625,000 a year. Above that, the company is losing money (on the back of an envelop). With four founders, one would expect that 4ormat.com's revenue is projected to exceed that or has already.

<comment><USER7> Supporting IE means taking on board a technical debt that will follow you for the life of the project. There are lots of things that can be accomplished in ie6 but then you need to consider performance. If you're building an app that means a lot of JS and possibly DOM manipulation... which is dog slow in ie.6,7,8

Now factor in support costs. I can picture it now:

Customer: Uhhh your app sucks it's so slow.

Support: Hmm looks like you're using IE6. We've worked really hard to make our app function in every browser, however if you'd like the best possible experience then please upgrade.

Customer: What's a browser?

The best solution is to use chrome frame. The installation can be made seamless and if your app is worth using then your customers wont mind the extra 60s it takes to install.

<comment><USER24> Leaving aside the appropriateness of lumping IE6 with IE8 and 9, the support costs are already in the $100,000 number.

Slow speed of execution in IE might well be considered a vast improvement compared to the current state of affairs in regard to the potential customer's standpoint - i.e. IE not working at all.

Again, "change your browser" is a poor way to convince the customer that 4ormat.com is worth using given that the customer has already responded to the call to action.

Indeed, one might argue that there's no excuse for failing to inform the potential customer that IE is not supported before the call to action is clicked - obviously 4ormat.com is capable of testing for browser versions.

<comment><USER7> Seems win-win to simply use chromeframe. Given this is a web app which presumably customers are already invested in using (since they're paying for it), requiring a 60s one-time install seems like the best course of action for everyone involved.

 _Slow speed of execution in IE might well be considered a vast improvement compared to the current state of affairs_

Unfortunately the general public doesn't think like that. To the average Joe your site is slow therefore it sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I dislike developing for IE as much as the next guy, but does selectively supporting browsers, even when reasonable IE versions exist, bring us back to the "best viewed in Internet Explorer" days? Is this a step back for web standards?

<comment><USER15> It sure does. Developers seem content to keep moving the goalposts and treating "inferior" users as slime.

<comment><USER26> You seem to be taking this rather personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Honestly, I drop support for IE <=8 for most of my sites. IE9 is pretty good and aside from a few glitches and IE specific stuff (usually 1 small hack around per problem). IE doesn't pose as much of a problem as, say, Android browser or Mobile Safari which will do things like ignore overflow:auto.

I can't imagine supporting IE 9+ would take that much money. But then again, I don't run a startup.

<comment><USER28> IE8 is pretty good and aside from a few glitches and IE specific stuff

IE7 is pretty good and aside from a few glitches and IE specific stuff

IE6 is pretty good and aside from a few glitches and IE specific stuff

Isn't that the point

<comment><USER29> ...No, not really. The extra development work required to support IE9 on top of other browsers is vastly smaller than that for IE6.

It's a cost-benefit analysis. Messing about with words by stretching the what you can reasonably describe as "few glitches and IE specific stuff" to try and draw a false equivalence doesn't change the actual analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Given that tHN is full of developers, I'm pretty disapointed that so many ppl are lumping all the IE's together as a single product.

I totally see that IE6 & 7 are not worth the dev effort, IE8 is probably border-line, but IE9 is a good browser and people seem to be vastly exagerating how much work goes into getting IE9 to look and work like other browsers (i.e. not very much).

So not supporting IE9 seems a bit lazy to me, and I have to say, a little "religous" (they seemed to have ruled out IE10 already without doing any research into why). Also find it strange that they actively block it rather than just warn people about it being unsupported.

However, I will cut them slack because the target market are creatives, and it's an admin site rather than a consumer level site, so probably few IE users here. But others here seem to be extending this idea to the public web, which seems like a mistake...

<comment><USER31> Sure, you couldn't get away with this on an ecommerce site such as for a bank or store. But I bet you could for many things such as games or social sites.

People know there's something uncool about IE, even if they don't know why. And it can be replaced in 5 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can sympathise with this. We _only_ support Firefox for our CMS editing interface, and then, only test in the latest version.

This is a somewhat more extreme version of the OPs decision but we also started work on Decal when the only browser with a JavaScript debugger was Firefox[1].

The interesting thing is we've _deploying_ Decal ourselves for quite a while and only now just starting to try and open it up as a platform for other designers.

We have never had a client object to having to use Firefox to manage their content, however in running people through our "Decal 4 minute challenge"[2] we've found a huge amount of resistance amongst designers themselves.

This leaves us in a tricky predicament: we want designers to sell the system to their clients who, in our experience, don't care about using Firefox to manage their content, but in order to engage/on-board those designers in the first place we have to get past that initial hurdle (as it turns out, 4 minutes is way too long and we're refining that on-boarding process down to a target of about 30 seconds).

[1] <http://www.decalcms.com/page/Support/#whyFirefox>

[2] <http://www.decalcms.com/page/4_minute_challenge>

</comment><comment><USER33> Not a big deal these days.. most things behave the same in IE8/IE9 as they do in Chome, Firefox and Safari. It's only IE7 that's a headache and that's <1% of traffic for most techie-oriented sites. If they were doing this 5 years, it'll be worthy of a headline...

<comment><USER34> >> most things behave the same in IE8/IE9 as they do in Chome, Firefox and Safari

Having recently developed an HTML5 single page web app, I can assure you that this statement is utterly false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wait, what does it matter that they were bootstrapped? The title could just as well be "startup that took investments and venture capital saved boatloads of money ...". The fact that they paid out-of-pocket seems immaterial to the article?

</comment><comment><USER36> "To date, almost three years after launching 4ormat, not a single person has ever contacted us requesting support for Internet Explorer."

 _yeesh_

<comment><USER9> Of course they didn't. They just left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> As a web developer who deals with IE issues everyday, I can testify that this is worth it for those who can get away with it. If you are a startup that targets anyone creative or "new" end users, or if you have a significant web application, I'd highly consider it.

There are people who say that an experienced web developer can work around IE issues -- and they can. The problem is, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Let me explain. The cost to make your application support IE is enormous. And I'm not just talking about the cost to make it work and feature complete in the browser. I'm talking about the cost that you could be working on other products or features that drive the business -- the stuff that really matters and delights users.

Beyond preventing you from focusing on what matters, there's also a significant amount of technical debt that has to be inherited with every IE hack you add to your code base, and in some cases supporting IE can mean saying no to certain product features that otherwise could have been possible. This means that IE is actively inflicting damage to other browsers and is in effect lowering all your users -- even if they have a good browser -- on to a least common denominator experience.

IE also hurts your customer service and support personnel. Troubleshooting IE specific issues and quirks is painful, random and at times non-deterministic. You'll likely be consulting arcane MSDN articles published in the early to mid 2000's, and in general frustrating customers and developers alike. It can affect your entire organization, keeping everyone busy working around the issues -- from your front line customer service people, to product managers and developers. It's simply amazing what damage the browser can and does do to a web company.

I also agree that IE, in any version thus far widely available, is an albatross. In Microsoft's defense, I haven't used IE10 for development purposes nor do I target it (that's because almost no one uses it and access to the browser is hard to get outside of developer previews). But even IE9 is simply too little, too late. And in too little I mean it still doesn't get all of CSS3 right (I still have to create hacks around various issues and have only marginally more confidence compared to IE8). Not to mention the fact that users must be on Vista or Win7 means many Windows users will be stuck on IE8 for years, making it even more irrelevant. By the time IE9 has finally reached critical mass, the other browsers will likely be light years ahead (Chrome major version 30 by then??). This issue with upgrade path and slow speed of innovation is cause for great concern with developing anything on IE.

Developer tools in the IE browsers are also less than stellar. Microsoft has invested large amounts of effort and time into its Visual Studio line of tools and it shows. They are generally high quality and provide an excellent developer experience for working and debugging code. In stark contrast, IE Developer Toolbar, F9 Developer Tools, and Microsoft Script Debugger seem like after thoughts. The experience is subpar in almost every category compared to working with Firebug in Firefox, built-in Firefox debugging tools, and the amazing WebKit inspector and remote debugger. In addition, the tools and usage of them is fragmented across the different IE versions (a different combination of tools is needed per version to debug issues and inspect the DOM). As far as I know, remote debugging isn't widely available for IE, in any version.

Why has this happened? I largely feel that Microsoft's lack of focus on the browser and web standards over the past 10 years, and instead it's focus on Visual Studio and .NET have led them to a serious game of catch up. The browsers themselves are inadequate, the developer tools are not high quality, and the upgrade speed and innovation path takes years. Add all this together and it's a recipe for continued issue and pain with IE - in any version. Incremental improvements may be made, but they are just that. There will always be a game of catchup to be played, along with a new bag of hacks to implement and associated organization pain.

So if you can, do it! Drop IE! Your developers, employees and customers will thank you!

<comment><USER38> Note that Visual Web Developer can be used as a script debugger for IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can't tell whether this is web or only photo hosting, but I have to wonder whether this prevents their customers from showing full web authoring competence by publishing portfolios that demonstrably work in every browser.

<comment><USER5> The sites generated by 4ormat support IE so our user's customers can definitely see their work in every browser. It's the app itself which you can't use in IE which is the overwhelming majority of our development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In case anybody who is not running windows wants to see what their site looks like in IE, I fired up parallels out of curiosity:

<http://i44.tinypic.com/54vewk.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER41> For sites with a technical audience, IE is pretty much expendable nowadays. For example, looking at the analytics for railstutorial.org shows that more than 96% of visitors use something other than IE.

</comment><comment><USER42> Can't believe I just wasted a few minutes reading that article. I went to find out how to save over $100k and learned nothing other than what I already knew: older versions of IE cause issues.

</comment><comment><USER43> Please tell me this is not an April Fool's

<comment><USER44> I assumed so

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Normally I'm not worried about IE7/6. The only time it is an issue is when a corporate client (who else is stuck using those browsers, these days? not many) complains that their new, cutting-edge social media app doesn't render properly in their antiquated browser.

</comment><comment><USER46> We have done this for many of our projects and saved a lot of money and time. And actually it had only a marginal effect on our site statistics compared to the efforts we had to put into testing and developing for IE.

</comment><comment><USER38> So what about IE10? It is still missing WebGL, but do you use that?

<comment><USER5> Nope. Not even IE10. If they pop Webkit rendering into IE maybe we'd consider it.

There also just aren't that many users showing up to our site using IE. That graph in the article is straight from Google Analytics for our main landing page.

<comment><USER47> IE 10 is a high quality standards compliant browser. Webkit rendering is not the web. You should support it. And Opera. And IE9 unless you absolutely require features it does not support.

<comment><USER48> Has there ever been a business case for supporting Opera?

<comment><USER49> You need a business case to write standards compliant accessible code that is browser agnostic?

WWW - as envisioned by Berners Lee - is getting worse.

> _Berners-Lee identifies universality as one of Web's key principles, > providing people with the freedom to link to anything, regardless of > hardware, software, or Internet connection._

<comment><USER16> I would say that the responsibility on the developer for that vision to occur is to write standards compliant code. Working around bugs or quirks in a specific browser I think falls into the realm of business case.

<comment><USER13> "Works in WebKit" isn't necessarily equated to "write standards compliant code". For organisations that manage to develop a website that requires a $100,000 outlay to work in Internet Explorer, that can't possibly be a web standards compliant code base they are starting from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What's interesting is that 40% of the users were on Safari (Mac) and 65% users were on a Mac. This automatically precludes IE on this very large percentage of total users.

</comment><comment><USER51> All I can say is great news. I hope this catches on with other startups.

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting... Wonder how much they lost...

</comment><comment><USER53> IE sucks, I don't blame them. Helping us push to the future.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wouldn't go out of my way to support it either.

If it happens to work in IE, then fine. If not, tough Rocco's.

</comment><comment><USER55> Kind of brings you close to this thought on Microsoft's position to Firefox:

<http://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-to-acquire-Mozilla></comment>


Are there any high quality freelance project boards? - <AUTHOR>

Not for $500 - $1,000 freelance jobs that are a dime-a-dozen.
But high quality, $20,000+ projects.
GroupTalent started off nicely (with great potential for supplying jobs), but haven't heard much from them in a few months.
Ideally, I am talking about web app development jobs - but I am curious about other types too. <comment><USER2> I recently beta launched <http://exquisitejobs.com/> a job board where all jobs are hand picked, and only the best hackers/freelancers/applicants get in (invite only) to ensure the highest quality for all parties involved.

Might not be what you're looking for, but it does aim to be a higher quality job board.

Corresponding HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3244078>

<comment><AUTHOR> How can I see a list of the jobs to decide if I want to request an invite?

<comment><USER2> While we're in beta I am still lead building and establishing connections with people who would post jobs. Launch is soon though, at which point you may be able to view (but not apply for) jobs when you're not a member.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Folyo (a site that I launched a couple months ago) is exactly that, however it's only for freelance designers. Feel free to check it out:

<http://folyo.me></comment>


Ask HN: If a person was a SEOgod, would he be the king of micropreneurs? - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hackernews, I have a question for you guys.  I've been doing a lot of reading lately about SEO, and started to wonder: why aren't all these SEO experts super rich?  With the skills they have, they could probably make a living without working for anybody!<p>So anyway, if I were to become super good at SEO, would I be able to make a full time living off of it? <comment><USER2> There are some SEOs that do extraordinarily well for themselves. Think of an industry awash with cash, like say consumer finance. Does there exist an affiliate program in consumer finance? Does there exist advertising in consumer finance? If so, is there _any_ space for a new entrant in this field? If yes, there exists at least a few SEOs who are probably doing pretty well for themselves.

There are many reasons why someone who is really good at SEO might not be rich. That goes for any white collar profession, like say lawyering. See that unrich lawyer, what's wrong with him? Maybe he's not good at lawyering, but is good at writing about lawyering or playing a lawyer on a social network, which describes quite a few SEO "experts." Maybe he's good at lawyering but not good at extracting value from it. Maybe he works in a sector where money does not naturally concentrate, like public interest law. Maybe he doesn't really care for money. Maybe he's rich and doesn't feel like talking about it. Maybe he's playing a different game or one with different time horizons.

As to whether you can make a full-time living doing SEO: yes. People do. Nota bene: most of the SEOs I know have diverse skill sets -- some understand broader marketing well, some have deeper technical abilities, some have ready access to capital, some have domain expertise or industry connections, etc etc. The field is quite like programming in that regard.

<comment><AUTHOR> YES. Patrick. FUCKING McKenzie. I don't know this if this is appropriate for me to say, but it is 2:18AM where I am at right now, and I've kind of been hoping you'd answer. Why I haven't emailed you instead I don't know.

I'm only getting into the whole marketing thing now, and I gotta say it's pretty interesting, and studying it is not a grind at all. I am a programmer, and I thought search marketing would be a nice skill set for my new hobby of micropreneurship.

It's really interesting how you mention that there are people who are good at teaching SEO, and people who are good at actually executing SEO. I guess I should start applying what I've learned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can do very well for yourself, but you have to commit a significant amount of time, research, and be constantly monitoring/changing.

It doesn't just "happen" for everyone. A SEO god is pulling in millions per year, but so is everyone in the top 1-2% of their industry. The money is there, but you likely will not get it.

Remember the barriers to entry here are zero - anyone with the desire can get in that game. It is crowded. Your first idea has to be to find a market/niche, and then go full out. Then you have to repeat. One a week while keeping up everything. Once you have 52 hooks in the water you'll start to do OK, assuming you've done everything the way you should. It is a lot harder then you think!

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally know of one SEO who earns upwards of $50k/month. While not exactly super rich, I wouldn't complain about that kind of money!

<comment><USER5> And how is he doing it? What's special about him? Does he have industry- specific knowledge, does he know how to get big accounts?

<comment><USER4> He gets results & it's all white hat (the only thing that could be considered a bit dodgy is the content writing but it's generally of good enough quality to be useful to a human).

He can point to previous clients whose traffic has jumped 2, 3 or 4 times over after he went through their sites.

People will happily pay $50,000 to make an extra $200,000. If he just said to them "give me $50,000 and I'll do your SEO", he'd be laughed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like the others have said if you are really good at it you can make a very good living. A lot of the very successful SEO's aren't the ones speaking at conferences all the time or writing books, why? Because they are busy actually doing SEO or aren't they type that need public recognition to be happy. Just like in anything else you need to be at the top to make good money. In my case I only work with companies in a consulting role instead of doing affiliate marketing because I get more satisfaction in working with other people and being part of their success.</comment>


Study: Ambition Makes You Happy - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201108/study-says-ambitious-goals-make-people-happier.html <comment><USER2> 1\. Everyone in the study was allowed to succeed in their goals, so a conclusion cannot be stated beyond "those that set high goals and have them met are more satisfied than those who set lower goals and have them met."

2\. Correlation is not causation. Perhaps those who set higher goals were more satisfied in general already, or had some other reason to feel more satisfied about anything that might happen to them.</comment>


Nvidia 196.75 drivers causing graphics cards to die - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/games/nvidia-196-75-drivers-causing-graphics-cards-to-die-2010035/

<comment><USER2> Ok, the driver was buggy, but why don't these cards have some kind of protection against overheating? If the temperature is too high they could downclock or even shutdown.

</comment><comment><USER3> Exactly this has happened to me early this week with a 9800GTX+ (for some reason the drivers identify it as a 250GTS) except I was lucky enough to catch it before the GPU itself became damaged. I thought it was merely a broken fan, so went about ripping apart a case fan and McGyvering it onto the card.

However I haven't played any of those games, or really done anything terribly intensive aside from Zbrush and Maya, so I'm uncertain if it's related or merely a coincidence. Although, to be fair, I've never had a fan of any description die.

Does anyone know of some way to check or ultimately claim for this?

<comment> Tuna-Fish > 9800GTX+ (for some reason the drivers identify it as a 250GTS)

It's because it's the exact same card. On most rebrands, at least they bother to change the relevant identifiers, but 9800GTX+ differs from a GTS250 only by the number on the box. As such, the drivers have no way of knowing which of them you have -- they cannot even make a solid guess from batch numbers because unsold 9800GTX+ were repackaged as GTS250's. Faced with this, the driver programmers decided that less people would probably complain if they just called all the cards by the latter name.

Fun fact -- differently harvested versions of the G92 chip have been sold as:

         - GeForce 8800 GT   $2
         - GeForce 8800 GS   $1
         - GeForce 8800 GTS
         - GeForce 9600 GSO  $1
         - GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 $$
         - GeForce 9800 GT   $2
         - GeForce 9800 GTX
         - GeForce 9800 GTX+ $3
         - GeForce 9800 GX2
         - GeForce GTS 150
         - GeForce GTS 240
         - GeForce GTS 250   $3
         - GeForce GT 330

Groups marked with $n are all _exactly_ the same card, with no differences whatsoever. Many other sets have only very minor differences. $$ denotes the biggest ripoff award -- halved memory bus width and cheap memory make this card only half the speed of the normal 9600 GSO.

So, if you wonder why NVidia is swimming in cash, it's because G80, and it's slightly modified shrink G92, are insanely good designs. G80 debuted in late 2006 and G92 in late 2007, and it's still selling.

<comment><USER4> Well I can't complain, I bought a 8800 GTX (G80) 2,5 years ago and still play all new games on high settings and 1920x1080 resolution. No other piece of hardware I ever bought had such longevity - this chip is pure gold.

<comment> Tuna-Fish True. If the guy who led the G80 project isn't worth a 100M, NVidia is not paying him properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you! I literally JUST BOUGHT a machine with no O/S and a GTS250 and was about to install the O/S along with those drivers that I had already downloaded. What are the chances I saw this article just in time?

<comment><USER6> How exactly did you download them? Nvidia removed them from their website, and you should only download drivers from there.

<comment><USER5> I had ordered a bespoke desktop. It took a little while to procure, build, test and ship, so in the meantime I got everything ready in anticipation :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not the first time something like this has happened. My brother got a 9800GX2 from EVGA, and due to inadequate fan settings programmed into the card's BIOS it overheated and destroyed the thermal interface between the GPU and heatsink (though the GPU didn't seem to be damaged -- the computer would boot and run for about 2 minutes from a cold start). After getting a replacement, he uses Rivatuner to force the fan to 100% when doing anything 3D. He still gets occasional frame rate drops on one of the two GPUs, though it claims its temperature is fine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow thanks, just upgraded to those. Now downgraded back to _21</comment>