Using old laptop batteries to build homemade powerwalls - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/people-are-using-old-laptop-batteries-to-build-their-own-versions-of-teslas-powerwall/ <comment><USER2> The comments here are more evidence the "hacker" part of hacker news really no longer applies :)

In seriousness - of course putting this in your house is a a pretty risky and likely dumb idea. I absolutely have plans to do this though, just with a fire resistant (concrete block) "power shed" 50 yards away from my house.

Someone that can build a working DIY powerwall can cheaply build a cinder- block shack and run conduit back to the living quarters. If you can't afford to do that I'd say you can't afford to do the project at all.

<comment><USER3> "Hackers" historically developed such a depth of understanding of some system that it allowed them to modify and subvert the system to suit their needs. The people here who have built power systems for Battlebots and are familiar with the variability in specifications for 18650 cells and are saying that this isn't a good idea for reason X, Y, and Z, those people are the hackers.

The people that are saying, "a battery's a battery, I'll just put it in a shed" are dabblers. They don't understand the technology well enough to do it safely, so they just build it with the assumption that it's going to go FOOF someday.

<comment><USER4> A battery _is_ a battery, any lithium battery from a drill to a tesla is simply a 1.5 volt cylindrical cell stacked in series to produce the desired Voltage, then these stacks are connected in parallel or series again as needed (depends on application) to increase the load it can handle (Amperage).

The safety features you're so worried about are just fuses. And maybe some diodes if you're that worried. I can say that installing a bank on a piece of plywood on your garage wall _is_ obviously stupid, but a simple opening of the NEC book will show the code for a battery bank, _shall_ have clearance from a wall and rest on non-flammable/non-conductive material, usually in a nuclear power plant or a substation we would build a rack out of metal then install ABS plastic shields.

Source: I'm an industrial electrician and went through an IBEW apprenticeship,

<comment><USER5> Nope, different lithium batteries have different chemistry compositions.

A LiFePO4 will happily catch on fire if you charge it with the same voltage/current curve as a LiPo(3.6v vs 4.2v).

[edit]

To expand a bit, this[1] is a fantastic reference on exactly how complicated and involved the different chemistries can be. This is talking about Lead -> LiFePo4 but a lot of stuff applies to LiPo and other variants as well.

[1] [https://marinehowto.com/lifepo4-batteries-on- boats/](https://marinehowto.com/lifepo4-batteries-on-boats/)

<comment><USER6> From your linked article:

> Please note that in all 68 of these RUINED LFP banks, that I have to date, > there was not one incident of fire, explosion or dangerous off-gassing.

So you can destroy them easily by overcharging or other mistake, but LiFePO4 is probably the safest of the lithium chemistries as far as fire goes.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, I'm used to pushing the packs a bit harder on discharge so I swapped that around(charge/discharge).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a great way to burn down your house and potentially injure firefighters coming to your rescue. Seriously this is quite a few leagues above normal DIY territory. Proceed with caution.

<comment><USER8> Exactly right. It will catch on fire, it will burn down the house. I expect the insurance would not cover it (just like it doesn't cover fires caused by storing gas or propane in your garage)

I got a crash course on battery charging subtleties when building battle bots and there are _many_ ways this can so south quickly, not the least of which is a battery in the middle of the pack developing dendrites and deciding its time to burn. The only way to prevent that is to have temperature sensors on every battery and a good enough model of the heat convection between the internal battery and the surface to recognize the temperature rise of a battery on its way to failing. Even with modern "battery monitor" chips like the ones Maxim and others sell there are corners in charge rate/temperature/battery that can get away from the algorithm before it recognizes a battery failure.

The reasons this is "easy" with flooded lead/acid batteries is that, when they fail, the lead doesn't then turn into a torch at 500 - 600 degrees F. So you have a chance to fix failures and move on.

<comment><USER9> > I expect the insurance would not cover it.

I see this blanket assertion in lots of comment threads, but never with a citation.

> (just like it doesn't cover fires caused by storing gas or propane in your > garage)?

This is an assertion I have never seen before. It is extremely common to keep gas cans in the garage around here (IL, USA), where else would you keep them that is safer?

<comment><USER8> I have discussed it at length with the USAA insurance people, I expect there are policy documents on their web site. The _exact_ discussion was, "If the source of the fire is tracked back to a leaking gas can or a propane tank we won't cover the loss, we recommend you store flammables in a shed away from your house."

My impression from them was they were very dubious about "off book" uses of things as well, which leads to my expectation that they would push back on covering a loss due to a "home made" battery wall. Could I sue them and get them to cover it? I don't know, perhaps. But, as with my propane tanks, I would keep this stuff out away from the house to limit my losses and avoid having to go there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once I volunteered at a large tech non-profit. Between projects, I took over an unused desk in the sysadmin team cave. After lunch one day, I heard a loud noise. I went to the cave door - it looked out over a large cubicle farm.

There were now a dozen fires burning over a forty foot diameter, along with little bits of smoldering cubicle wall.

Someone had apparently removed the battery from a laptop, plugged it into a bench power supply, and then gone off to lunch. It exploded in their absence. It gave me an instant respect for li-ion batteries, plus a small concern every time I fly in a small metal tube full of a couple hundred laptop and phone batteries.

But several hundred used laptop batteries, with no balancing, in my garage, mounted on wood. NO FREAKING WAY EVER.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a counterpoint to the hysteria expressed in most of these comments, a few years ago I was watching a youtube series by "Rinoa Super Genius" where a similar project was undertaken to create an e-bike battery from disassembled laptop batteries.

The videos are done by an interested amateur with basically a pocket knife and a large soldering iron. I'd highly recommend it if you want practical and confidence building knowledge on the actual behavior and safety of batteries, rather than this comment section which is filled with outrage and "experts" referencing their credentials and years of experience.

I'm an experimenter not an entrepreneur so I'll never claim I can produce battery packs in my basement safe enough to sell to grandma, but I've had no problem ripping apart broken electronics, charging old cells with a DIY dc power supply, and using cells in all kinds of 'dangerous' manners.

Personally I think chance of injury is far higher with dozens of other technologies used every day by non professionals: chainsaws, cars, and many other types of motorized or heavy equipment.

<comment><USER5> > chainsaws, cars, and many other types of motorized or heavy equipment

You know what a bunch of those have in common? A ton of effing safety measures.

Chainsaw chaps, ROPS, etc all exist exactly because those things are so dangerous. The power density of an e-bike is at least one if not more orders of magnitude less than a 40kWh bank of batteries.

He also has the potential to not only burn down his house but kill a lineman working on the line if the power ever goes out.

<comment><USER11> All the table saws I've ever used have been super dangerous. Car crashes are a leading cause of death for young people. I could go on, these sorts of things can't be made safe while still being useful. Beyond a point, it's up to the user to understand the danger, learn behavior that minimizes risk, and pay attention when using the tool.

With all of those things, like batteries, it's not good to assume the general public can use them, so they shouldn't be as common as elevators, shopping carts, and other ubiquitous tools/machines. But it's very dis-empowering to claim only elites can use these tools.

Your final comment regarding lineman safety is completely decoupled from DIY battery pack with re-used cells. That would be a failure of the inverter in a grid-tied system. You could have an unsafe grid-tied inverter with a 100% functional battery pack with every certification in the universe and backfeed the utility lines, or I could connect a faulty battery to a proper grid-tied inverter and it would not cause the utility lines to be energized by my house when the utility shuts off the power upstream.

Additionally, you can use a home storage battery without a grid-tie inverter at all.

<comment><USER5> Your tablesaw example doesn't really disprove anything, that's why they now have riving knives[1], push sticks and lifting guards that make them a heck of a lot safer.

It's not that they can't be made perfectly safe, but that you take reasonable safety measures and mitigate risks appropriately. If he had this off in a shed ~40ft from the house that's a lot different than inside the garage.

The article didn't mention how he's connecting it to the grid so there's a very real possibility that he could have an inverter directly connected which is why we have building codes and inspections to catch things that have the possibility to kill people or do significant property damage.

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

<comment><USER11> But the dangerous tables saws were still used to build things by lots of people before 2009 when riving knifes were mandated.

I don't see why it's a crime to build a battery pack if you aren't working for Tesla.

I still don't get how you can bring up mis-wired inverter as anything related to a DIY battery pack. Without using _any_ batteries, I can go take a wire strippers and 2 extension cords, make a male-male 120VAC cable, plug it into the gas generator in my shed and plug it into an outlet in my house when the powers out and shock a lineman.

In the country I live in we have building codes that describe how the work must be done. An owner without a license is allowed to perform that work and have it inspected and permitted. Screwdrivers aren't like lightsabers that can only work if you're a jedi (or have a college degree or certification).

I disagree with lumping every form of DIY together. Incompetent DIY projects are dangerous therefore all DIY projects are dangerous?

<comment><USER5> > Without using any batteries, I can go take a wire strippers and 2 extension > cords, make a male-male 120VAC cable, plug it into the gas generator in my > shed and plug it into an outlet in my house when the powers out and shock a > lineman.

Yup, and that's _highly_ illegal because it can kill someone. If you want to do that you're required by code + law to have a mains transfer switch.

I don't think anyone is saying you can't play with battery packs, it's just that this guy is a freaking idiot for doing it in his house where any miscalculation can cause a chain reaction that may kill him and his family.

It's about orders of magnitude and safety mitigations.

Look at blackpowder/low power explosive regulations. You can keep a small quantity in your house to reload/etc. However if you want to store more you need a separate shed + BATF is allowed to show up at your house and inspect it any time. Back when I was involved with amateur rocketry all of the our vendors went through this process. It's a standard thing when you're involved with elements that have a high potential energy and can go wrong if not treated with the right respect.

<comment><USER9> > Yup, and that's highly illegal

Which part? Powering your house w/out transfer switch (when disconnected to the utility), or actually back-feeding power to the utility? I would be surprised if the former was uniformly illegal across the US, but the latter certainly is.

<comment><USER5> NEC requires a proper transfer switch: [https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/22154/are- generator-...](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/22154/are-generator- interlock-kits-permitted-in-residential-applications)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 18650 cells are great!

But be sure to protect them, and be aware that most commercial li-ion chargers and off-the-shelf protection circuits are designed to maximize _short-term_ battery life. They'll charge to 4.2V, and many won't cut off until 2.5V.

Also know what to do if they short and catch fire; have an appropriate extinguisher and a plan for quickly getting failed cells outside and onto an inert surface like concrete.

If you want to make a 'powerwall' whose batteries could last you for a significant amount of time (e.g. decades), you'll also probably want to design your own charging and undervoltage protection circuits.

There's some good information here: [http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...](http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries)

<comment><USER13> > have an appropriate extinguisher and a plan for quickly getting failed cells > outside and onto an inert surface like concrete.

There are two problems:

a) There is no appropriate extinguisher when you have a thermal runaway on 20 kWh of chemical energy.

b) This isn't some shielded, extinguisher-nearby, one-time experiment, when you, for example, solder something off and then while yelling "see, I'm still alive!" run outside and throw it out. This is something that is intended to be running 24/7 at your home (and maybe mounted on wooden wall like the pictures in the link...). Unless you post guard duty shifts around the clock, there simply may be no person to perform the plan of getting failed cells onto concrete.

I see this as super-dangerous, especially when dealing with cells from many different vendors scavenged from thrown-out laptops.

<comment><USER14> On A) a diyer could solve this the "nuclear" way by storing the batteries underground or submerged in a deep tank of fluid.

Of course, then you run into cooling and maintenance access issues.

<comment><USER15> That's _quite_ an understatement. Venting superheated steam is no walk in the park, either.

<comment><USER16> Well it certainly wouldn't be superheated steam and it's not like it would be a ton of steam in the grand scheme of things. It takes about 2500 kJ of energy to boil a liter of room temperature water. Someone else mentioned 20 kWh of batteries which in a catastrophic failure I'm assuming the cells might release a little more than that amount of energy but for the sake of argument since I don't know exactly what percent to tack onto that we'll just look at the nominal capacity of the cells. 20 kWh is 72 MJ so that's only enough to boil a bit less than 30 liters of water. Submerging a burning lithium ion pack in something like a bathtub full of water is a great way to absorb all of that energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> in middle school for a science project I converted non-rechargable batteries into rechargables. They all worked, they all held 80-90% of their original capacity.

They all leaked/exploded 6 months later while they were idle in flashlights and rc cars. The chemistry is different but that experience taught me to be more careful with 'outside spec' electronics.

</comment><comment><USER18> I see lots of people doing this in Puerto Rico, but mainly they are installing them in outbuildings, such that even a complete runaway fire will probably not really damage anything else. In that case, worth the risk I think.

<comment><USER19> Hell, I'm planning to buy a commercial solution, and I am still going to put it into an outbuilding. It's not an option for everyone, but when you start planning for failure, there's a lot of sense in not putting anything into your house itself that you don't have to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > While there are some risks to building a powerwall if you don't have the > proper tools and resources

understatement of the century there. DIY electricity is risky. DIY li-ion at scale with used batteries is suicidal.

</comment><comment><USER21> Jehu Garcia [1] does a bunch of youtube videos on old batteries and different DIY powerwall designs. I'd say to always double check his work, because I've seen some stuff that looked a little dangerous, but for the most part what I've seen is good.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcMfCkN1juSa49DJFYltOTw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcMfCkN1juSa49DJFYltOTw)

</comment><comment><USER22> I recently bought an APC UPC to protect my DSL modem and phone when the power goes out. I have enough battery powered devices that I can be in communication as much as I need.

Those two devices draw about 8 watts, but the UPC I bought can run for only about 10 hours on that load. It could run a lot longer except that the inverter is scaled to handle a larger load so efficiency is bad. And why the hell is it converting AC to DC, then converting to AC, then converting it to DC in some awful wall-warts.

Since you don't run the inverter for really long times, there is a pressure to put in a cheap, inefficient inverter. However, if you took out the inefficiencies, you could afford to use lithium batteries and produce a much better product for this market. Hell, maybe the thing supplies power to the phone and modem through USB-C and it is just a super-powerbank.

Basically a "micro-powerwall". Safety issues still concern me but smaller scale reduces the odds.

<comment><USER23> Something like this 50Ah battery pack?

[https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-External-50000mAh-Portable- No...](https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-External-50000mAh-Portable- Notebook/dp/B073R6NKLW)

Google around for external laptop batteries, they make some really big ones.

<comment><USER22> That is close. The single 12V port packs enough amperage that I could wire the two devices in parallel. I'd still have to make cables to connect to the devices. (The phone in question is a cordless phone connected to a landline. It probably should take usb-c but it does not.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> People aren't making hacked versions of Tesla's powerwall. Tesla is making cooperate versions of preexisting diy power storage solutions.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a startup incubator West of Lansing, Michigan in the little town of Grand Ledge called The Fledge [http://grandledgefledge.com/](http://grandledgefledge.com/) It's really a cross between a makerspace and an incubator.

I toured there and among the projects I saw was someone who had made a Tesla Powerwall from laptop batteries. Another was a solar array on a trailer which they explained could be shuttled between your house as well as a cottage up North.

Course building a project is less than half the journey to successfully commercializing it however it was inspiring to see what people were creating.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a tangent^: How many people dump a laptop with a usable battery. My experience has always been that the battery is first to fail/suck.

^to the main point, this is a cool project. go DIYers. try not to get killed

<comment><USER27> Typically what happens is only some proportion of the cells are bad, but that makes the whole battery unusable. Scavenging these batteries requires testing each cell individually to find which are suitable for reuse.

<comment><USER26> Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This isn't news. People have been doing this before the Powerwall has come out (except jehu has started branding them this way after it did). Newer Li-on batteries aren't all that dangerous, especially the round cells. Even when overcharged absurdly they don't combust nowadays.

<comment><USER28> The real downside is that according to my calculation, at least from German E-bay, DIYing gets about the same price per capacity without all the added technology and convenience of buying from someone.

<comment><USER16> It's not much cheaper but you can get good deals on 18650 cells. It's not unheard of to find deals on genuine cells for as low as $1 a cell.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpv4G6HY2Rs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpv4G6HY2Rs)

Then there's the option of buying lightly used battery packs like a single module from a Tesla.

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tesla-Smart-Lithium-Ion- Battery-186...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tesla-Smart-Lithium-Ion- Battery-18650-EV-Module-57-Volt-3kWh-SOLAR-POWERWALL-/252144461952)

That's $690 for 3kWh that is all assembled, tested, cooling is taken care of, BMS included, individually fused cells as well as a 100A fuse on the entire pack. That's not too shabby, slap an inverter and a charger on that pack and you've got yourself a somewhat decent diy powerwall for like $1100 bucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems like a really stupid thing to DIY to save money, and a great way to burn your house down.

<comment><USER30> You can unplug from the electrical grid with one of these. If you don't have 5 grand to plunk down on a giant battery I'd say it's a pretty effective way to save money.

You don't have to keep it in your house. If you have a small section of land which would otherwise normally house a shed, you can build a fireproof enclosure outside to house the pack. If it burns down, your house doesn't. And if you're building it from scratch, you can include enough sensors for it to auto-shut down when an unsafe voltage or temperature is detected. (the linked video mentions all this)

When people build their own car, they're also taking their life in their hands. But if you learn the right way to do it, you won't blow yourself up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If I were to do this, I would go the old-school lead-acid deep-discharge marine battery route. They are safe enough to put in the basement or garage. How to do this is well understood and doable by hackers.

Lithium batteries are pretty scary. For example, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_problems) is pretty frightening.

</comment><comment><USER32> To at least satisfy all of the "fire" comments, what if you designed a Powerwall with many interchangeable batteries? Like a street light, instead of having a massive bulb that is expensive to repair/replace, hundreds of tiny little lights that are cheap and the repair/replace of a single failed unit is not as detrimental.

Could the home battery then be formed in a similar manner to this article, without the scary "fire" danger?

<comment><USER33> That's how a power wall works. They are made up of thousands of 18650 cells. The problem is charge balancing. When you have a pack with thousands of different cells from different origins with different internal resistances, keeping the charges balanced becomes a really tricky thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> TIL you can get 18650 batteries from old laptops, which is something I use in my mechanical vape..

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GpvOvw5oEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GpvOvw5oEc)

<comment><USER35> Yeah true I use these for vaping, although regulated mod not mechanical mod.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm personally using old laptop fan and hard drive motors to build my own version of Tesla's Roadster.

<comment><USER37> Dont forget to use the wifi adapter to ward off evil spirits

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> To people coming into this thread, let me sum it up "don't do this it's dangerous let tesla handle it"

</comment><comment><USER39> There will be fires.

</comment><comment><USER40> My paranoid side wonders if this is more clever marketing/pr by or for Tesla. Why headline this 'powerwall' rather than 'home battery packs' or 'rechargeable lithium-ion battery home energy storage'?

'Powerwall' is like a prelaunch version of 'Hoover' for vacuum cleaners, a brand name used to describe a generic. People have been experimenting with capturing energy from solar panels for years. We know it is fraught with risks.

Powerwalls are really expensive, barely launched and not a proven household name with reputation like Hoover. Is this ultimately a 'better choose safety and choose the known brand' gambit?

<comment><USER41> Eh, a powerwall is a well defined product with well-defined uses. "Home battery pack" is nearly meaningless—are you talking about a UPS unit, or something that backs your home power, or is it something that feeds back into the grid?

Not saying you're wrong, but I think the name is undeniably useful at quickly describing a set of functionality. This could also be a case of poor evangelism on behalf of people who care/competitors.

<comment><USER40> [https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/04/energy-storage- war...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/04/energy-storage- wars-3-products-going-head-to-head.aspx)</comment></comment></comment>


Escaping Callback Hell with ClojureScript macros - <AUTHOR> http://brianmckenna.org/blog/cps_transform_js

<comment><USER2> How does exception/error handling work if you code like this? I'd love to be able to do the same in CoffeeScript.

<comment><USER3> Look at <http://tamejs.org> library and this threads for CoffeScript implementation: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2776938> <https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/350>

<comment><USER4> Can't wait till this async issue get solved in CoffeeScript. To me it's currently the biggest weakness in the JS family, especially given how much we all rely on the event-based style of programming in this language.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple sold $4.2B of product in New Zealand, paid $0 local taxes - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/03/report-apple-stiffs-new-zealanders-completely-on-taxes/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussions with interesting comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13916811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13916811) (111 points, 21 hours ago, 70 comments)

[flagged] [dead] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918712) (13 points, 16 hours ago, 7 comments)

I'll copy a comment by bobbles in the last post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918791)

> _\- $0 taxes referring to income tax only_

> _\- completely within NZ tax laws_

> _\- they 're paying 30% tax to Australia instead of 28% to NZ because of the > AU/NZ tax agreement_

> _\- typical clickbait headline_</comment>


Turboencabulator - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator <comment><USER2> I have vowed upon my sacred honor to include the phrase "side fumbling was effectively prevented" in some technical documentation.</comment>


Is it stupid to pay for beautiful things? - <AUTHOR> http://screamingatmyscreen.com/2013/7/is-it-stupid-to-pay-for-beautiful-things/

<comment><USER2> Evidence suggests that buying things is an inefficient way to turn money into happiness (you're better off buying experiences). You tend to end up on a treadmill where you have to buy more and more expensive versions of everything just to maintain your level of satisfaction with them.

When I buy a "thing" it's as a means to an end - it's not what I own that matters, but what I do with it. Sometimes that means the power of a tool is important, but most of the time it means buying the cheapest thing and spending my money on things that are more meaningful. I remember what I've done, and forget what I own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I agree with you that "buying things for happiness" is not the best idea someone can have.

But there are things someone needs to buy and I see buying something someone needs and spending some extra money to get something he or she likes to look at or use as a good idea.

IMHO those are two different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is the beauty contest, and then there is Keynes' beauty contest, in which people flock to what they think other people think is beauty.

I think people respect an informed choice about an asethetic, but some distrust the flocking.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you buy school kids to help get them hacking and tinkering - <AUTHOR>

The Brief:
Can we come up with a box of toys/tools, with instructions, that can be given to a class of middle school kids with internet connectivity & smart phone access that, without direct technical supervision, could show them they have the ability to tinker with technology and inspire a few of them to explore it further?
Background:
I'd like to use my Grandpa's inheritance it to help the kids at his old middle school. I'm looking for ideas for the most impactful and high leverage way to use this money. Ideally this would be approach that could be scaled and replicated in other schools.
The school in question is in a rural part of China with internet and 3G connectivity. The kids are from farming families and don't get a great technology/engineering education.
If they had a chance to use technology to build and tinker, it would be tremendously empowering and encourage a few of them to learn more. Hopefully this would open up an alternative to becoming unskilled migrant labourers.
Me:
I don't have kids or any experience in ed tech. I know there are tons of new toys / tools out there. My ask is for advice on what to consider given the constaints listed above. I have design skills, the patience and connections to create the supporting instructions / other materials.
I'm willing to spend $1-5K to make this happen. If the cost can be lowered with a similar impact we can send more packages.
Thanks for your suggestions and discussion! <comment><USER2> I think your heart is in the right place, but realistically do you think throwing "stuff" at the kids and hoping for the best is the most optimal strategy? I mean if tomorrow someone handed you a book on insects and an insect catching kit, are you going to learn it and go do it? Likely not. That is how much interest some of these kids have in this subject.

A lot of organisations, grants, and so on throw money at things and hope for the best. Technology in particular is popular. They give out millions in technology grants with no specific focus or plan, and then they wind up with everyone having an iPad, no apps, no training, and no specific educational outcome.

So someone, no doubt, will suggesting buying Raspberry Pis for the entire class, and they're great. But the question is: What then? With no instruction, even 101, do you think many kids will pick it up and do much with it? Maybe you should be talking to the school about what could help THEM.

It might sound "boring" but honestly just buying them some digital projectors might do more for the kid's education than actually trying to buy the kids themselves bits and pieces, unless you have a plan to instruct the kids and get them going down a path (this would likely require cooperation with the school, maybe parents too).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that feedback. This is precisely the concern I have. I had looked into the popular ed tech gadgets out there but just felt they weren't really viable for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

Part of the reason I asked was to see if anyone could suggest a different approach. I do think there is a way to achieve a win by focusing down the goal and working within the constraints you describe.

I full expect to do some onboarding work e.g. create videos / instructions etc. I'm looking for the right project kit to get them started. The equivalent for my Grandpa's generation was a radio. I wonder what today's "gateway project" would be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What about the lego Mindstorms kits[0]? I haven't got my hands on them yet but I hear they are good. You could even pace this out into a few phases, like:

Phase 1: Buy them normal Lego sets to get them well acquainted with the toys.

Phase 2: show up with something cool you assembled from a Lego Mindstorms set. Hopefully a lot of them are going to say "Wow! Cool! How did you make it do that?" And that is when you can start teaching them bit by bit. (Also this is when you let them play around with a Mindstorms set)

[0] [http://www.lego.com/en- us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms...](http://www.lego.com/en- us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms.lego.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a great idea. So fucking obvious. I think that's a good MVP for this approach. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently played with the GoGo Board recently: [http://gogoboard.org/](http://gogoboard.org/)

Starter kit looks to be around $30-35. It comes with a board, a bunch of sensors (humidity, temperature, light, proximity, etc.), and a couple motors. It also connects to NetLogo Lab ([https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/)), where you can explore various models.

</comment><comment><USER5> If they have computers, or if you can get them ones, Minecraft is a good idea. Highly moddable, in multiple languages, huge communities and Redstone! Plus, it's fun.

</comment><comment><USER6> buy an algebra book, let them study galois.</comment>


Google Starts Deprecating Web Hosting Support in Google Drive - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/31/google-starts-deprecating-web-hosting-support-in-google-drive/

<comment><USER2> I was just looking into this yesterday and it looks like the ship has sailed. Dropbox used to make it easy to share HTML pages on the public web, but I couldnt get that working right yesterday either.

Are there any consumer-level cloud services that would make it brainless for a non-technical user to share a single-file HTML page publically?</comment>


Detroit is kicking Silicon Valley's ass in the race to build self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/3/15164336/detroit-vs-silicon-valley-self-driving-car-navigant-ranking <comment><AUTHOR> Link to underlying study: [http://www.navigantresearch.com/research/navigant- research-l...](http://www.navigantresearch.com/research/navigant-research- leaderboard-report-automated-driving)

</comment><comment><USER2> Nobody believes this. This pure PR commissioned article. Shame on The Verge to publish this.

I am all for competition, but at the moment, we are not seeing any of what this article describes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah fucking right. According to some bullshit market research company Detroit is ahead even though Tesla is the only company with an easily software updatable car with self driving hardware, and GM recently acquired Cruise for their autonomous tech? Okay, sure. Clearly the financial markets do not agree with this headline.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, sounds like lots of money in GM if it's going to be the first with autonomous car technology. Best get on it now when it's cheap. After all, they've perfected the hard part of building the cars, and there's only the trivial task of automating the driving that remains.

<comment><USER5> /s^1024 ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> But will they also be self-stealing cars?</comment>


Dear Google, I like the Old 'Google maps' better - <AUTHOR> https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=202507363158809892865.000465f4b82d61eaeda9b&dg=feature

<comment><USER2> Ironically, google maps has pushed me full circle around the web and back to mapquest.

The only problem I have with the new google maps, and with mapquest, is that they aren't the recently departed google maps.

</comment><comment><USER3> What, the Google maps where street-view actually worked? Don't be so old- fashioned gramps!

</comment><comment><USER4> What's an MSID, and why doesn't it work in the new Google maps?</comment>


Ask HN: Should we seek funding? - <AUTHOR>

I co-founded a consulting company that is at a turning point. We're fairly successful and have just under $1mm in revenue a year, of which we could consider $200k profit.
We've been developing a product for the past 12-18 months that is finally ready to launch.  It is a SaaS product that will cost $50-75 per month.  The market we are in is very competitive, but also very fragmented.  I can honestly say that our product is great and it has been very well received while in beta.
This is a first company for the founders, so there there are no cash reserves beyond what the consulting company generates.  We suspect we could raise $250-500k from small investors should we really try.  We're bootstrappers by nature and would rather have our first business be a strong base hit than aim for the fences.
Should we accelerate the product with financing? Wait and do that later? Or continue on the 37Signals path?
To us, this is as much a life choice as it is a business one. <comment><USER2> I think that you are perhaps you and your co-founder are the only ones who can answer this question. I know that sounds trite but that's not what I mean it to sound like. My point is this: no one knows better than you two what your goals are with the company. You said, "We're bootstrappers by nature and would rather have our first business be a strong base hit than aim for the fences." I'll take you at your word that this is true.

So the question that you and your co-founder have to answer is whether or not you want your personal finances to be at $25m, $50m or higher in 10 years? If so, it's less likely that this will happen if you bootstrap rather than raise/sell. And there is no right/correct answer - no one can tell you which you should do, only what they might do in your situation or what they think someone like you might do in that same situation.

There are other aspects to it as well but the key point is, in 5-10 years from now, what will you want? Do you still want to be running the business or will you want to have hit the "reset" button and have moved on to something else? There's no crystal ball so you have to take the risks and rewards all into account.

Good luck and congrats on getting to where you are!

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, you shouldn't rule out funding options.

It's up to you to do the math. If you stay on the bootstrap path, you own 100% of the company, and have a slower development schedule.

If you take financing, you give up some ownership in exchange for acceleration.

For most people looking at funding there is still a lot of "mystery". Can the team build the product? If they build it, will the users come? And so on. This leads to valuations that are highly speculative (lot's of risk involved), and funding terms that reflect this.

For your case, much of the mystery has been removed. This also reduces the possibilities of crazy-high valuations, but also gives you a lot more power in the negotiations.

My guess would be you might not be the traditional VC big investment big speculation kind of deal, but might look attractive to the lower-end of some of the super-angel sized deals. If your math is good, you could represent a good medium-risk investment.

If you really "only" need $500k and you've got $200K of profit, I would tend to think you could investigate debt financing instead of equity financing. Silicon Valley Bank might be one outfit worth talking to about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> If we took a smaller angel deal, to what extent would we likely be giving up operational ownership in addition to fiscal ownership?

<comment><USER3> There is no generic answer.

My quick thoughts (and I'm not trying to pass myself off as an expert here, just have some basic experience).

Valuations for businesses at your stage seem to vary from 2-5x annual sales, to 2-10x annual profits, depending on many many factors. But in either case that seems to put you in the $2MM-$5MM valuation range. If you're looking for a $200-$500K investment, you're looking at about a 10-20% equity stake. This would be a non-majority stake, so you _should_ be able to structure this so than an investor (or group of investors if you got 4 or 5 angels) didn't have majority control... though in that case you'd probably have to pay attention to number of board seats if you actually took multiple investors.

IMO, what you most likely need is an experienced (super)angel who can give you solid advice about managing the growth of the company. This would probably include introductions to finance people (eg: CFO/Controller types), cash management strategies, biz dev/strategist folks and so on. Basically you'd probably look for someone who brings a little money and a lot of connections who is looking to provide solid business guidance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome advice -- thanks!

Right now the product makes maybe $80k/yr. Not bad for something that hasn't officially launched, but hardly our companies key revenue source. We naturally would rather grow this than the consulting side of things.

I think what I am seeing in this thread is that it probably makes sense for us to hold on investment until a bit after we've launched. We'll learn more about what our growth bottlenecks are that way and what we really need.

It seems a bit premature at this point to take investment against our consulting income if we can avoid it. My guess is that we could probably get better terms if the product is doing well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bootstrap your way to stardom. Its not like you won't survive if you do not get funding.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is our instinct, but are we selling ourselves short? SaaS loves $$ to grow fast.

<comment><USER4> Another way to look the whole situation apart from bootstrapping gung-ho which I suggested earlier will be to ask yourself the following 1\. Do you already have customers who have shown intent on using the product? - if Yes then it indicates that people are waiting for your product so there is a reason for you to release soon. If No then find these potential customers

2\. If you already have a set of potential customers then reach out to them and validate whether they need all the features which you are planning to include in the first release? - If the features (the basic set) is less than what you had understood then you need to check how much money you need to get it out to the users. Again you are just validating your understanding and not asking the users for what features they'll want.

3\. Do you have a kick ass team which anyone who you go for funding will ask you for? - This as mentioned above matters to anyone whose going to give you money

4\. Is there competition to your product? If yes then how do you stand up against them?

Answers to these questions will indicate something and then on top of that you should add you gut feel whether you are comfortable or not with taking outside money.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Yes. There is overlap with our consulting customers as well as a 'release notification' email list of ~2k.

2\. Initial release is feature complete.

3\. Our team is awesome, but young/inexperience.

4\. Yes. I believe we stand up VERY well. Our only downside is that we're new/unproven.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shame on GNIP for shutting their "community edition". - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gnip.com/2009/08/26/gnip-license-changes-this-friday-aug-28th/

<comment><USER2> Why shame? They're building a business, and figuring some things out as they go. I say good for them for recognizing early on what is going to help them create a sustainable business.</comment>


Ask HN: Side Project You're Working On? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm trying to merge whatsapp|facebook|twitter|medium|youtube|google photos into a single monster, respecting privacy too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds scary

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> chezmoi: a tool for managing your dotfiles across multiple machines. [https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi](https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice</comment></comment>


Ruby OpenSource Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://rubyosc.com/ <comment><USER2> Can't connect but downforeveryone says it's up. Anyone else having trouble?

<comment><USER3> The page is working, give it a shot one more time.</comment></comment>


Designing a Faster, Simpler Workflow to Build and Share Analytical Insights - <AUTHOR> https://open.nytimes.com/faster-simpler-workflow-analytical-insights-ae6c7055e187?gi=c5b282e18728 <comment><USER2> This seems so overengineered. If you're using a BI tool like Looker, you can configure how often and how long you would like your "query" to be persisted. They also support dynamic triggering - when value X changes, rerun query Y. This is all 2-3 lines of LookML configuration.

Also, pulling this out of the dependency graph of the rest of your ETL system seems silly. Analysts now have to schedule their queries "sometime roughly when I think the data will be available" vs "immediately once the data is available".

It sounds like Chartio isn't really keeping up with their workflow. So assume for a second they need to ease this pain but can't justify a vendor switch right now. What's the fix? I think you make it easier for analysts to put jobs into Airflow. That way you aren't reinventing the wheel (building a completely isolated ETL scheduling tool) and you're actually attempting to solve one of th underlying problems (Airflow isn't "analyst friendly").

I'd love to hear other people's experience. I recognize I'm being a bit of a negative nancy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cane here to say just that. This feels wayyy over engineered. First of all, do they really need 30 analysts pouring over viewer stats?! Isn't their primary business journalism and producing good quality content? I wonder how many analysts and data engineers they have supporting the articles and research.. Couldn't they just use data exploration tools like Looker and focus on their primary business instead?

Now, I go back to my naive village wondering why The Times Digital subscription costs so much...</comment>


Apple Is a Hypocrite on Data Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apples-hypocritical-defense-data-privacy/581680/ <comment><USER2> My summary: _The Atlantic_ , rather than arguing for government regulation, argues for Apple to be the regulator. The argument is that Apple only enforced the contractual agreement, and did not enforce as a part of their privacy stance (which, to my knowledge, is not part of a canonical, enforceable document).

 _" Crucially, Apple didn't ban Facebook from the App Store or the iPhone platform: You can still download and use Messenger."_

AFAICT, Apple has no legal leg to stand on were they to do so. There is nothing in their contract with FB (assuming it is at least similar to the one us little folk get) that says FB has committed an app-banning offense. IANAL, etc., but this strikes me as the magazine's attempt at "but Apple's just as bad!" click-bait.

<comment><USER3> As I read it, their argument is that Apple doesn't do enough. And they cite the fact that Apple still associates with privacy offenders as their proof of Apple's hypocrisy.

So yeah, virtue-signaling click-bait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to distill down to this one line:

 _" Apple didn't take a position on Facebook's creation of a paid "research" program to extract data from users. It enforced the terms of a licensing agreement; appearing to fight for user privacy is just a side effect."_

Expecting a stronger argument against Apple given the title of the article.

<comment><USER5> What's odd about that paragraph is that it's not an either/or situation. Apple can enforce a licensing agreement and fight for user privacy by having a licensing agreement that is predicated around user privacy. Which is what the licensing agreement does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is ridiculous. Apple is not "merely" enforcing a contract, they're eliminating Facebook's workaround of the app review process, which is prohibited by the enterprise cert contract. It's the app review process that enforces their privacy rules. The whole reason Facebook did this was that Apple started rejecting Onavo in the app review process on privacy grounds.

</comment><comment><USER7> Basically the author is calling Apple to be its clients' privacy guardian. What if somebody prefers the much touted Apple design and is perfectly fine with his/her data being used and misused by anybody? Apple's positioning as a "force of good" rather than another tech company hellbent on making profits, kind of encourages these "naive" interpretations of Apple's marketing positioning. BTW how many units sold does Apple's privacy stance move per quarter? If I was in Zuckerberg, I would give a free iPhone to those who adhere to the spy program :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> So the problem with the walled garden is the walls aren't high enough?

</comment><comment><USER9> Article title is "Apple's Empty Grandstanding About Privacy"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would Apple have banned the research app, had it been submitted to the Apple app store? And if so on what basis? The basis for pulling Facebook's enterprise cert is that they violated the part of the agreement that says such enterprise apps are for internal use only, while the research app was deployed outside of Facebook to regular users.

And to what degree does GDPR require Apple and Google, to take responsibility for the privacy safeguarding of apps in their app stores? Does it only bind the application developer, or does it also bind the distributor?

</comment><comment><USER10> Arguments about the big companies ultimately devolve into whataboutism. But google does this! and Apple did that! And facebook did this!

It's frustrating how we treat publicly traded companies somehow as agents of morality. They aren't and never will be. Isn't it obvious that this needs regulated by a government?

<comment><USER11> In fairness, if you're waiting for your government to protect your privacy rights, you're going to be waiting a long time. They have a vested interest in circumventing the privacy of their citizens, (and circumventing the privacy of everyone else' citizens too in fact.)

I think the best you'd _ever_ get out of a government is _maybe_ a law that forbids companies from sharing data with anyone _EXCEPT_ the governments themselves. This is _kind of_ what GDPR does, but even that doesn't really have any teeth in it as we're starting to see. No one at all has really stopped hoovering up all the data they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The issue with Apple regulating apps that abuse data is that this now encompasses a significant portion of the App Store. So while Apple can and does slowly lock down the amount of data you can pull off a device, if they decided to pull every app that sent data off the phone they'd have very few apps left…

<comment><USER13> I'm trying to understand what you're saying - so lots of apps are abusing privacy rules, thus it would be a problem if Apple banned those apps because then there would be few apps left? Are you arguing that privacy abusers should have safety in numbers?

<comment><USER12> > I'm trying to understand what you're saying - so lots of apps are abusing > privacy rules, thus it would be a problem if Apple banned those apps because > then there would be few apps left?

Yes.

> Are you arguing that privacy abusers should have safety in numbers?

No.

The argument I'm trying to make is that the choice for Apple isn't as easy as the article makes it out to be. If Apple decided to remove every app that collected excessive user data, the App Store would be quite bare. This isn't something that I think users would let Apple get away with.

<comment><USER13> Ah okay, that makes sense. I think in this case, making an example of Facebook is probably the perfect strategy from Apple's perspective. It sends kind of a "shape up or ship out" message -- if they're bringing the hammer down on a huge business partner like Facebook (which has enjoyed numerous native integrations in Apple products) then they can do it for anyone else.

<comment><USER14> > ...like Facebook (which has enjoyed numerous native integrations in Apple > products)

That was a thing of the past and doesn't have any value now. The integrations in Apple's OSes were removed more than two years ago. [1]

[1]: [https://www.imore.com/twitter-and-facebook-are-no-longer- int...](https://www.imore.com/twitter-and-facebook-are-no-longer-integrated- ios-11)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Future of Podcasting - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2016/the-future-of-podcasting/ <comment><USER2> As an extremely heavy listener of podcasts, there's no way I would listen anymore if I had to have 20 different apps to run to listen to them. It's an absolute non-starter. And then to have ads on top of that. Fuck that.

Maybe the author's right that what works for current users won't work for the masses. I don't know. But I do know that I will not listen to more ads (that's why I stopped listening to radio and I suspect I'm not the only one), and I will not go to the trouble of using more than a single app.

<comment><USER3> Are you willing to pay the ads away?

<comment><USER4> You are implying that the current ad model, with a small number of high-value crafted announcements, doesn't work. I suspect it does. Gimlet has been pretty open about how their revenue exceeds their expectations and put them under pressure to grow their offering faster than planned.

<comment><USER5> It probably works for the listners, the direct advertisers and the podcasters. It doesn't work for the advertising industry as a whole because the middle men are cut out.

They want a cut and will work really hard to take it. L

<comment><USER6> I agree, I mostly hear ad's with promo codes on podcasts. The companies paying for the exposure know exactly what they are getting. It works out quite well as is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >publishers should offer podcasts through their own app that measures listens, and either sell ads themselves if they have the scale or outsource it to a company like Midroll. Midroll, for their part, should leverage their new player technology to offer skinnable apps for publishers who can't build their own.

Here's my problem with this idea:

I, like many people, listen to a lot of different podcasts. Dozens, in my case. I have a podcatcher app that puts them all in one place. That makes it easy and convenient for me. Some of the shows I only listen to maybe once per month when there's a guest on that I enjoy, or if I run out of new episodes of everything else. If each show required its own app for me to listen, I'd only listen to the ones I really, really enjoy and support, and the rest I'll do without or bootleg. So, in a sense, the individual app per show idea would be limiting the potential audience.

I'm already seeing this happen with Libsyn custom mobile apps[0]. There are a number of shows I listen to that have paywalls for old episodes which can only be accessed through subscription plans available in individual apps. $1.99 or $2.99 may not seem like much by itself, but if it's 10 or 20 shows you're listening to this becomes an unjustifiable bill.

The only viable alternative I see is the further growth of podcast networks, where multiple shows are available for one price. But, currently, this model is still too small and fragmented. Until the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts comes out, I'll be left to pick and choose which deserve my support enough to justify buying into their distinct "ecosystem".

Edit: I see that my points here were addressed in the paragraphs following the one I quoted, but I'm still not buying the idea that siloing is the best way to monetize podcasts.

[0] [https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile- apps/](https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/)

<comment><USER8> Regarding your point about "the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts" it is important to remember that by far the majority of their content is at least a full season old. They are able to secure the rights to it for less than the cost of producing it because the networks are receiving ad dollars the first time around.

Most of the podcasts I listen to aren't timely so listening to them a year after they "air" isn't a big deal. I'm not sure if I am in the majority there though.

My suspicion is that podcasts are going to borrow from the music industry in the form of podcasts being something they give away in hopes of making money through merchandise, events, additional media such as books or subscriber-only episodes, or more likely, broadcaster access in the form of communities. (Off of the top of my head I can think of four entrepreneurial podcasts that have their own membership communities: Startups For the Rest of Us, Tropical MBA, Entrepreneur on Fire, and Chris Ducker. I imagine there is a lot of audience overlap but not membership community overlap and maybe a different method would be to have a single entrepreneurial podcast membership community that shows can join for a portion of the subscription fees. A smaller piece of a bigger pie...)

And like music some people will still create them out of a labor of love.

<comment><USER7> >My suspicion is that podcasts are going to borrow from the music industry in the form of podcasts being something they give away in hopes of making money through merchandise, events, additional media such as books or subscriber-only episodes, or more likely, broadcaster access in the form of communities.

I primarily listen to podcasts from stand-up comedians, and this exactly what most of them do now, and I agree that it may be the best (or at least more realistic and palatable) option for everyone involved.

My favorite podcasts are the "comic hang" type. They're basically an hour or two of funny people being funny, and producing these podcasts seem to benefit the hosts and guests in a few possible ways:

1\. As an avenue to gain fans who will attend live shows or buy albums and other merch (which are in turn promoted on the show)

2\. As a platform to publicly work out new stand-up material in a conversational setting (giving us "civilians" a glimpse inside their creative process -- probably my favorite part)

3\. As a direct revenue stream through donations/subscriptions/advertisments/sponsorships

I've been listening to comedy podcasts since probably 2007, and, unfortunately, I've seen more than a few take a nosedive in quality when point 3 becomes the priority.

<comment><USER9> These are my favorite type of podcasts as well. Do you have any recommendations, I'm always looking for new stuff?

<comment><USER10> 'giving "civilians" a glimpse inside the creative process'

One of my favorite podcasts is Song Exploder. Artists talk about how they create a specific song, including the thought process, context, and history behind specific sounds and segments that make up the song, and then the song is played in full at the end. It covers quite a variety of genres.

I don't object to any genre wholesale, but there's only a couple that I really like listening to. But the story and creative process that is broken down in Song Exploder is completely agnostic from the genre it was produced under and is interesting enough for me to drop any other podcast I'm playing to listen regardless of the genre.

<comment><USER7> I'll give that a shot, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Obligatory mention for the No Agenda podcast [1], by the "father of podcasting" Adam Curry and tech broadcaster John C. Dvorak. They have an interesting model in being 100% listener supported, with no advertisers or sponsors, and yet still managing to make a living off their show, putting out 2 shows every week (today show #832):

"Their funding model is strictly listener supported, and it's working. The premise being that keeping outside influences away from content development gives listeners untainted news, opinion and entertainment... they refer to it as a "value-for-value" proposition -- listen to the show, if you get something worthwhile from it make a donation. This model should change the face of podcasting.

More and more independent podcasters will probably take note of this new model, and they should. Open, unsullied content creation and delivery should be the goal of everyone in the media -- a free exchange of ideas, opinions and content is the cornerstone of a free internet and a free society.

Podcasting has always been a medium searching for a successful funding model. Curry was a pioneer in getting podcasters to band together to try and attract funding from advertisers and sponsors. Curry started a couple of companies to support this model -- he would probably be the first to admit that the main- stream media model is not the best one for podcasting... but his constant tinkering and experimentation with the medium he created is starting to pay off. Curry and Dvorak may be the first "professional" podcasters to make a living doing a show that is truly independent, insightful and listener supported."

[1] [http://www.noagendashow.com/](http://www.noagendashow.com/)

[2] [http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes- podcasting-r...](http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting- relevant-and-profitable)

<comment><USER12> I suspect that Adam and John don't need the money they make from the podcast to pay their bills, so I'm not really sure what "it's working" means to them. The article you linked to doesn't mention any specifics.

<comment><USER13> Maybe Dvorak doesn't need it but Curry blew all his money from the MTV days I believe. He is not exactly living a glamorous life.

I like the show, the model seems to work although the newsletter is constantly pushing people for more donations. Their wording makes it seem like they are on the edge of being sustainable all the time. This could be true of course.

If you take the time to listen to them longer , > 10 podcasts or so your start to pick up on the type of thinking they have, it really can be refreshing and No Agenda should certainly be part of a healthy news diet, as they call it.

By the way, strange to see nobody mention TWIT, I enjoy it every week, they seem to do very well. Also, the Jupiter Broadcasting network (Linux Action Show, Linux Unplugged, Unfilter, etc) is an absolute joy to listen to. Very motivated team that exists by doing ads and using patreon. They prefer not to use ads and gladly take donation but I think they hit a nice balance.

My app of choice is Pocket Casts, works very well.

Oh, I also used to be a fan of Linux Outlaws, they had a fan made foss app that integrated with Indenti.ca (foss twitter clone based on status.net), you could automagically chat using a hashtag unique to the current episode. That was a nice experience and worth using the app for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I run a small podcasting network called TSRPN.

When I talk to non-listeners about podcasts, I hear two things:

\----

1\. "I don't know how to listen to podcasts."

2\. "I don't know what to listen to."

\----

There are many great podcatching apps out there, and for those of us who "get it" and are motivated to listen to podcasts, it seems like Pocket Casts, Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand. Yet apparently they aren't.

Discovery is another issue altogether. NPR One, Pandora, Stitcher, et al have tried to do some level of podcast recommendation, but the lack of thorough metadata and text transcripts make it difficult to apply the kind of algorithm that works for blogs or music.

What makes it easy for the average non-techie to use a browser to read blogs, an app like Spotify for music, or their Facebook app, but not to use a podcatcher app?

Is it simple lack of familiarity? Or do we need an entirely new approach? I wish I knew the answer.

<comment><USER15> I'm not convinced by what people say. It might be partially true, but i think there's something deeper behind it: blogs, music and video are addictive for the right people. Hence they'll spend a bit of effort to ask around what app to use, and ask about good tv, etc. Also because they're addictive and the barrier for sharing is much lower, they'll get shared much more often, talked about much more often - so you get discovery.

Podcasts aren't addictive(and i like podcasts). Lectures are boring by nature, and demand tons of focus(something we we may have more than the average guy). And even in fields that could be addictive(and don't demand great focus), like comedy, the quality is terrible - most comedy podcasts don't even come close to professional comedians doing standup.

Here's one idea: build a podcasts comedy site that curates only consistently great podcasts, and enables extremely easy sharing including sharing of very short segments.

Make the transition from the using the site to using it while driving easy and habit forming.

I think doing that you can get users "addicted". And once they are, they'll get your app, they might listen to other podcasts, etc.

<comment><USER16> > Podcasts aren't addictive

Speak for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Podcasting right now seems to working wonderfully. It's one of the most expensive ways to advertise. If it's not broken don't fix it. Tracking and the targeting didn't save online advertisment, it won't safe podcasting.

<comment><USER4> That is spot on. Advertising works great on podcasts, and is expensive as a result, because listeners develop a great amount of trust for the podcasts they listen. Anything that undermines that trust is likely to just create a regression to the mean of the value of podcast advertisement: just as valuable as a random online ad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been wrestling with the idea of how to enable monetization for smaller podcast producers since I decided to start building an AppleTV app for playing video podcasts this past winter. What I think could work is namespaced tags for specific players that offer ad-insertion. This allows for the platform to remain default-open and opt-in for publishers who want to go this route.

For example, much like <itunes:explicit> is not part of any RSS spec, a publisher could choose to include a tag like <castanet:monetize>yes</castanet:monetize>, which would tell the Cast-a-net app that the publisher of that podcast would like ads to be inserted. The publisher would then need to setup an account with Cast-a-net to share the ad revenue, verify ownership, etc.

There is a significant chicken and egg problem, of course. The player needs to have enough users for the publishers to consider setting up an account to be worthwhile. The ad experience also can't get so obnoxious that users move to other apps. This approach allows publishers to gain monetization and metrics without ceding ownership and control to the platform.

By the way, my player, Cast-a-net, doesn't yet offer this feature. I've been working on making the UI good enough to attract real users first, then hoping it can grow to be something worthy of specific attention from video podcast producers.

(edit: as was pointed out in a reply, Marco is very anti-ads, so I swapped the example tags. I had only meant to use Overcast as an example of a popular independent player that doesn't want to become a walled garden for just a subset of the total podcast universe.)

<comment><USER19> One possible alternative/addition is what I've done for my Podcast app, SkipCast ([http://skipcast.net/](http://skipcast.net/)).

I worked with Blubrry to create a new donate tag:

[http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced- tool...](http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tools-and- options/syndicating-a-donate-link-in-your-podcast/)

If the feed supports this tag, a simple donate link appears in SkipCast and when tapped, takes you directly to the donate page. This tag can be supported by any Podcast client.

To me this is a clear win-win situation, though the feature depends heavily on adoption of simple, easy to use and deploy donation services, and of course the user supplying the tag.

One good example of the donate model working is the Crate and Crowbar podcast (PC Gaming). They created a Patreon and literally shut it down after a few months. The reason: they got hundreds in weekly, recurring donations and simply didn't need that much money.

Donations can work, and could be a huge boon to smaller, independent Podcasters. This could in turn ensure a healthy ecosystem that's more resilient to monolithic entities.

<comment><USER18> SkipCast looks really cool! Nicely done!

I think there is a lot of potential for funding the production of great content via donations. I think the "right" way to fund a particular piece of content depends largely on the content itself. For example, PBS funds NewsHour largely through donations and sponsorships, but NBC funds Nightly News via advertising. Both are valid choices, and I believe everyone is better off when publishers are free to decide how to monetize, and viewers/listeners are free to decide what they want to give their money and attention to.

I'd love to support the <rawvoice:donate> tag in Cast-a-net, but unfortunately AppleTV doesn't have a web view, so a link to a Patreon page wouldn't really work. I may try to set up something like a <castanet:acceptdonations> tag that uses in-app purchases, though. I think both users and publishers might like that better than the first monetization options being advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Comparing Podcasting with Blogging is a neat approach. I think there's more overlap than the article might be able - or willing - to address when discussing monetization.

To wit: In order to monetize, a lot of what is appealing about Blogging/Podcasting would be diminished - paying is the opposite of free content, commercials interrupt the listening, and authenticity corrupted by advertising perogatives.

Or, in other words, a lot of what the "Mommy Blog" sector seemed to try and keep under the surface: [http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy- blogger/](http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/)

Just like in music, there will be a few case studies with large revenues, and thousands barely making anything, if not actually going into the red for their troubles.

<comment><USER21> In arts and entertainment, the lines are blurring between content creation and recreation, at least for the lower 99%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Podcasts are hot right now. Big Money is coming. Big Money isn't going to sell nicely designed, hand-crafted, RSS-backed podcast players for $2.99 or ask you to pay what you want to support them, because that doesn't make Big Money. They're coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary "technology", and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone's revenue._

Hats off to that guy for succinctly summarizing why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER23> We're already sort of in that state now.

There a few podcast networks that have their own software but if you want good data on your listeners you're basically stuck between Blubrry & Libsyn and they're both severely outdated platforms. And you pretty much have to use iTunes.

I've been toying around with building my own open platform for podcast hosting/analytics for a while since I could use it for my own podcast and I have friends who would use it.

<comment><USER24> Honest question, why are podcasts not just platform independent .mp3's or Ogg Vorbis audio for the purists?

Note that I don't understand how a podcast is different from a radio show that somebody recorded on a computer, so maybe I'm missing key functionality.

<comment><USER25> Right now? They are. A podcast is really just an RSS feed of episodes in MP3 or AAC format. That's it.

You can barely track how many people download, let alone listen, when they stop, etc. All the things advertisers want to know.

<comment><USER23> Right.

It's still a hard thing to integrate an RSS feed into a modern website...RSS is only really popular with podcasts and hasn't had much development in a while. Working with XML sucks.

Libsyn and Blubrry manage this part for you (having an RSS feed that is also a site's content and does tracking) but you're limited to hosting on their sites, wordpress or needing a developer.

There's a lot of room for improvement here.

<comment><USER25> You're right for websites. Other services can take care of both sides (Squarespace, for example).

<comment><USER23> The thing that I'm trying to avoid is forcing people into a pay-to-play platform to host their podcast. You don't know if it's going to make money. There is nothing open to compete with the paid services right now -- nothing that's packaged for general use anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the article's ideas on advertising, particularly the idea that brand advertising HAS to come to podcasting because direct advertising won't scale is a bit flakey.

Why won't direct advertising scale? Direct advertising opens up the long tail of companies. Small Business X can't spend money on branding but can spend money on acquiring paying customers.

In fact, direct advertising has become so popular thanks to things like AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc. that companies need to find new places to address their target audiences and podcasts might just be a great place to do that. The stuff with coupon codes, special URLs, etc. are pretty trivial to set up and a company like Midroll is going to coordinate between you and the podcast so you can line up that stuff well ahead of time.

There was also this:

"The not-so-secret reality about podcast ads, though, are that advertisers are quite concentrated: a FiveThirtyEight intern heroically listened to the top 100 shows on the iTunes chart and counted 186 ads; 35 percent of them were from five companies. More tellingly, nearly all of the ads were of the direct marketing variety."

I did not read the 538 article on this, but it makes a lot of sense for a company to carpet bomb their advertising. So if you're listening to all the top 100 podcasts in a one-week period, you might have an advertiser hitting a lot of those podcasts in a one-week period. However, if you listened to the same 100 podcasts three weeks later, you might hear another set. Presumably, the companies finding routine success are the ones who you hear all the time.

On the carpet-bombing strategy, if you deploy in relative isolation, you should be able to measure the real effect of the advertising and not just the people who came through a URL or used a coupon code. If I normally sell $100 per week and the week I advertise I sell $200, I don't have to rely on campaign tracking to assume attribution. Wait a few weeks and advertise again and see if the effect holds up.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Stitcher is thought to be the 2nd most popular podcast player, although it > has long been controversial in some circles for its default practice of > hosting podcasts itself (instead of directing users to download them > directly from a podcaster's server) and inserting ads.

Why would a consumer install such a program, when AntennaPod exists?

<comment><USER25> If the podcast you want is only available through Stitcher.

And it's only on Stitcher because that's Midroll's service and only Midroll ads pay well enough (this is hypothetical-future).

And they only pay well enough because of all the tracking in Stitcher.

<comment><USER27> I'm just curious how this walled garden bootstraps. Are there Stitcher exclusives?

<comment><USER25> I don't know, but they could use Midroll's money to entice (or flat out buy) desirable content for bootstrapping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> for another perspective, here's an interview with two early podcasters working outside of this recent race to monetization

[http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah- du...](http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-dude-about- why-its-better-to-be-happy-than-rich)

<comment><USER29> uyd is one of the best podcasts, strange but great to see them here, and in a relevant monetization context

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you're looking for a free, hyper-functional podcast app that will search _thousands of RSS feeds_, allow me to introduce [PodcastAddict]([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict)). I've been using it for some time now, and every day I discover something new to enjoy. It's indisputably the best podcast app for Android, and it's leagues beyond iOS's native app.

</comment><comment><USER31> "They're coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary "technology", and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone's revenue"

This made me realize that Midroll/Earwolf already tried this to an extent last year with Howl.fm. It was an iPhone exclusive app/service that launched with a ton of exclusive podcast series, some old comedy albums, and the thing that really showed how little they cared about their listeners-- Earwolf was taking down all the old episodes of their podcasts and putting it behind the Howl paywall.

Many people might not be familiar with Earwolf, but in the comedy world it's huge. improv4humans is hosted by a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade and it's basically like sitting in on a master class in long-form improv. Comedy Bang Bang has recurring characters that date back years and people love going back and listening to hear how they evolve by "yes and"ing their way through conversations. They don't get dated like maybe a tech podcast might, so taking them down just to help bolster some cash-grab podcast subscription service was just so insulting, and to make it only available on iPhones showed how out of touch they were.

<comment><USER32> There was a big thread on Earwolf when this was announced. Everyone agreed that Earwolf was deserving of money for its wonderful products, but Earwolf never combatted the question: why not just a password-protected RSS feed? (Jimmy Pardo's podcast, which Earwolf acquired, had successfully used this model for years)

Largely, it seemed to be paranoia of users sharing files (Earwolf was also unsympathetic to the concept of downloading shows locally for listening offline), which seems to be missing the big picture.

...I'm not a typical user (I don't own a smartphone, and I don't plan to), so their attitude was fairly disappointing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It increasingly feels like we're living in the end of the "golden age" of podcasting to me. I've got my little homegrown podcatcher downloading files and sticking them on my server so I can stream them over my LAN or load them onto my devices for offline play. Presumably publishers will muscle into this market to "monetize" the entire thing and completely fuck it up. No more MP3s to load on my devices, etc.

Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe I'll end up breaking out the old rig I built back in the early 2000's to timeshift public radio shows to MP3s.

</comment><comment><USER34> One more model: the guys at Partially Examined Life used their content-rich philosophy podcast to build a participatory community of listeners. Now you can pay a subscription to be a P.E.L "citizen" which gives you the chance to participate in "not school" seminars with other citizens. Also, of course, access to their back catalog which is behind a paywall.

George Hrab leaves his 400+ episode Geologic catalog open, but pushes a subscription fee: be a "geologist" to get a weekly email and access to other subscriber-only material.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been using the Remarks social podcasting app for the past week. They are trying to address the retention (for sure) and monetization (I assume they're going to roll out an ads platform) problems mentioned in the article.

I've been posting my thoughts as I listen and really like when the host is on the platform and I can react to their posts. Only challenge for me is that I listen to a lot of my episodes while driving and can't scroll through posts.

<comment><USER36> Founder of Remarks here. Currently, we're focussed on building a great platform for people to discuss the podcast their listening to with other fans and the host. We're trying to get as many hosts as possible on board.

An ad platform is something we've talked about, but I'd need to see a huge upswing in usage before building that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's a super depressing future.

My imagined future involves serving podcasts with different ads each time you download the episode. Maybe a subscription to ad-free versions. There's no need for a separate player for subscriptions, Rss feeds can already be password protected.

If anyone is working on the above, hit me up - I'd love to talk.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'll take the (probably unpopular) advertiser-centric approach here...

I agree with a lot of what Ben says (and his podcast is the highlight of my commute these days). What is fascinating is that the space has been the domain of direct response advertisers for a while, and only a handful. I was familiar with all of the ones mentioned, but was absolutely shocked that they were such a large percentage of the mix.

Either podcasting ads are so nascent that only a handful of people are in on it, or there are performance challenges (whether it be attribution or overall poor performance). What I'd love to see is the # of advertisers to made a solid go of it and had dismal experiences despite having success in other channels. That would be very telling.

The conversion tracking piece is a big missing chunk of the equation. I could see ads embed audio tags that any reader could parse, but I fear the tracking restricted to individual platforms. That puts all of the control on the sell- side of the equation, and also conveniently impossible to audit or compare numbers against. I'd LOVE to see DoubleClick/Turn/etc. get into the game with some tracking solutions here. They are the industry standard and would integrate well into existing ad stacks. Anyone who provides good tracking solutions might consider them for possible acquisitions.

Beyond that, I think that podcasts make a lot of sense with the shift to native ads. Many people feel they have a relationship with the podcaster because it is in fact a real live person that you listen to because you like them. In speaking with Midroll for our own forays into podcast ads, it looks like you provide a list of bullets on your offering, and the podcaster works to craft the ad in their voice to make it more natural.

That is a win for both the advertiser and the listener. The more natural format likely boosts receptiveness (and thus performance) for the advertiser, and the listener gets something that isn't horribly disruptive to the listening experience as good podcasters (like Roman Mars on 99pi) make them fun and have found that people stick around to even listen to the post rolls because he's so good at them.

Anyway, that's my $.02. I think the space is nascent, and I hope that the inevitable power struggle between publishers and platforms doesn't kill it as it could be really powerful when done right. Advertisers have some challenges but that hasn't stopped them from testing before. I'm frankly just shocked at the lack of overall advertiser volume.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've tried to built something to solve the discovery problem. It was featured on HN a while ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835)

</comment><comment><USER40> My take - snippets will drive discovery. Take a ten second snippet of a podcast and you can find a hundred "keyword" searches or Facebook headlines that it will fit perfectly.

This can drive subscriptions to the podcast

That might actually make a workable business ...

</comment><comment><USER40> tl;dr - facebookization of podcasts (one discovery process in one app) is the worst outcome for publishers (who already have this for actual text)

So the least worst alternative is for each publisher to have their own app for listening to their podcasts and drive folks to download said app by using star power and marketing. To get there we will see some podcasts bribed with huge gobs of cash.

Ok - seems plausible but frankly as a podcast listener I prefer the Facebook solution, and am unconvinced by his arguments that most people wont

</comment><comment><USER41> > A major challenge in podcast monetization is the complete lack of data: > listeners still download MP3s and that's the end of it; podcasters can > measure downloads, but have no idea if the episode is actually listened to

That's not exactly true. Marc Maron always encourages his listeners to use his offer code (often "wtf") to get discounts. Surely they have data on that.

<comment><USER42> That's addressed in the article. Direct marketing with offer codes or special URLs is only applicable to certain products. Brand (awareness) advertising is where the real money comes from.

<comment><USER41> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Like pando for news, I'd rather pay for a podcast than get it free w/ ads.

</comment><comment><USER44> podcast stats, amirite?! I don't trust feedburner, libsyn, or blubrry -- but i've been _thinking_ about using keen.io redirects in my rss & itunes feeds so i can collect ip/agent info and analyze that.

i distribute my podcast (well, it's a video show, but still podcasty) via YouTube in part because I can actually get view/retention/source/subcriber stats + use links/annotations + I can also feed it into itunes. I even made a little jekyll repo that helps you make landing page & video/audio feeds: [https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube- Show](https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show)

</comment><comment><USER45> Repost: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391)

<comment><USER46> Reposts are allowed on HN if a story hasn't had significant attention yet ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). Links to previous submissions aren't helpful if there's no actual discussion at the other end, which explains the downvotes here.

Your post beat this one in time but this one won the luck of the draw. Sorry about that. We're hoping to change the duplicate detector in a way that gives the original submitter credit more often, but for the time being there's still a lot of randomness in which post gets traction. For now, the way to mitigate that is to submit many good stories; it evens out in the long run.

<comment><USER45> Thanks for heads up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Now THIS is podcasting!</comment>


How I Write Django Reusable Apps - <AUTHOR> http://paltman.com/2011/12/31/how-i-write-django-reusable-apps/

<comment><USER2> It's a nice overview, but it's _extremely_ basic. I would have appreciated some further reading (specifically for Django signals and injecting into views). The Python skeleton package is cool, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm planning some additional posts to cover these in detail.

<comment><USER3> I agree: great topic but light on details. If you're considering ideas for additional posts, I'd personally love to see case studies from Pinax itself to see exactly how/why to use the techniques you talked about.</comment></comment></comment>