Is Europe Disintegrating? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/is-europe-disintegrating/ <comment><USER2> You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. We will see a huge change in European political landscape within the next few years. People have to slowly assimilate into a culture in order to allow for a gradual, peaceful change in that culture. Shocking these types of systems with any sort of migration is a recipient for instability.

Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort of stupid anti-Muslim rhetoric, just a geopolitical observation. I think if you look at the United States you'll see a model of Muslim integration.

<comment><USER3> > You can't have short-term, mass migration

Well, luckily, we don't have that, eh?

In the 90s and 2000s, Western Europe took over a million refugees from the balkans – by 2005, all of them were deported back.

There was no wave of nationalism back then, no political change.

Even today, in Germany, most are in favor of the current refugee policy.

I don't see why any of what you said has to happen. It hasn't happened the last time this happened either.

<comment><USER2> Why were they deported? Is that the same situation as now? Will Germany deport these new refugees back as well? Or are they hear to stay?

<comment><USER4> 1\. Refugees are not citizens. They are to be deported when the "risky situation" in their zones of origin ends.

2\. Balkan refugees were not problematic and were fully identified. The opposite is the case of current refugees from the Middle East. That's why these problems are arising now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No.

Pro EU sentiment increased markedly in pretty much all of Europe post- Brexit[1], and hopefully national politicians will stop playing the silly "do bad/unpopular things and then blame them on the EU"-game.

This game was thought to be without cost, now it is clear that it is not, and the ones who played it most extensively are paying the biggest price.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/08/brexit- causes-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/08/brexit-causes- resurgence-in-pro-eu-leanings-across-continent)

<comment><USER6> Yes anti-EU rhetoric went down post-Brexit. But it's still very high, and will likely continue to rise once Brexit is settled. It's clear

>and hopefully national politicians will stop

They won't.

<comment><USER5> > Yes anti-EU rhetoric went down post-Brexit.

Nope, anti-EU _rhetoric_ went up. It just wasn't effective as pro-EU _sentiment_ in the population rose (from mostly already high baselines).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Europe is learning the same thing that the United States did in its early days: it's impossible for a union of disparate states to survive without strong, overarching federal authority. It's as unpalatable to member states now as it was to the original colonies, but the alternative is to be subsumed by some outside, more centrally organized power. The Russians understand this, which is why they work to encourage nationalism among EU members. Once the infighting has weakened everyone, they can swoop into the vacuum and become this central authority.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that the EU was founded on the principle of never superseding national sovereignty or identity.

<comment><USER7> The US was founded on similar principles with regard to its states and had to revise its entire political system just thirteen years into its existence. When faced with various existential threats throughout its history, the US has always renegotiated these terms towards more centralized federal power. Europe faces a similar challenge now, and will either peacefully arrive at more centralized political authority, or dissolve and watch its former members be subsequently swallowed up by some larger outside power.

<comment><USER8> You have 2 nuclear powers in Europe, and a few other countries that host nukes under the NATO nuclear arms sharing treaty which gives them discretionary access to said arsenal.

You have NATO and even without a centralized government the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association which together form one of the largest economies in the world.

Europe would do just fine if it decides to scale back on the pan-European EU government faculties and just go back to it's let's make trade, not war roots.

And lastly there isn't a single outside power wanting or being capable of swallowing Europe, Russia doesn't have plans to expand westward beyond it's immediate strategic needs (mainly a warm water port), it only cares about security and mobility as well for the EU not to overstep and have NATO on Russia's borders or try to circumvent Russia's economy by taking control of the caspian and near east oil and gas routes.

Trade prevent war, the benefits of a central government beyond that are fairly limited, the Federal government didn't stop the US civil war from happening it might have initiated it, but the US had their civil war and came out stronger, and Europe had it's own share of not so civil wars and also came out stronger in the end.

Currently there about zero chance of war happening in Europe between European powers, whilst there is a lot of Euro-skepticism the worst that may come out of it is bye bye to the European Parliament and a few other institutions. The EEA would still be there, the Council of Europe would still be there and everyone would go their merry way.

<comment><USER7> Well, I hope for all our sakes that a historically expansionist, authoritarian regime exercises as much restraint as you ascribe to them. I'm personally more skeptical. In an era where the US seems to be rapidly cozying up to Russia, denigrating NATO, and withdrawing public support for former allies, things are impossible until they are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> European Union is not working because too many different economies are in the eurozone. I was a fervent Pro-EU, now realising a federation of independent countries might work better than a superstate.

<comment><USER10> EU in its simplest form is harmonization of rules and a bigger market for you to sell your goods. That part works _exceptionally_ well. I don't see a single reason where that could be a negative in a mid to long term.

The euro zone, which tries to connect some very different economies is not working that great but EU countries can decide to stay out of that part.

<comment><USER11> The problem is that it's exceptionally difficult to have 1/ that functions well without 2/

The Euro was designed as a bulwark against currency speculators and people trying to arbitrage between imbalances in the different European economies.

<comment><USER10> Not difficult at all, many EU countries have decided to stay outside the euro zone. They are doing just fine.

<comment><USER12> not many, of the original EU founders only Sweden hasn't adopted euro.

The other 6 out of 25 that are not using the euro are all ex communist countries. and other two (Monte negro and Kosovo) adopted euro without being part of EU.

<comment><USER13> what? Sweden joined in 1995.

Denmark and the UK are examples of other EU states that were not communist that do not use the Euro

<comment><USER12> UK has never been EU. Sweden was among the founder states when Euro was born, not the original states forming EEC in 1957. Denmark is in ERM-II and its Krone has a EU controlled exchange rate against euro. It is possible to be outside euro, but not advisable, the main market for the east non-euro countries is the EU zone, if euro falls down, their fragile economies will follow.

<comment><USER14> > UK has never been EU.

What? I'm trying to find any context where that statement makes sense, and I can't do so.

UK has never used the Euro, but that's not what "EU" means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It most definitely is and it takes a very starry eyed sort of person to expect otherwise. The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, mores, histories, frames of reference, economies could somehow achieve monetary or much less political union under the rule of an un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy of "commissioners" who rule by means of "directives" (you couldn't make it sound more soviet-y even if you tried) was beyond ludicrous from day 1. A modest trade union with some freedom of movement for qualified workers was achievable and maybe in the end it will settle to just that. In fact I think the soviety approach to building the whole thing ensured its demise. Diverse people can collaborate productively and profitably under win-win free market arrangements. But in the EU system there's too many zero-sum games being constantly played and decided on a purely political level (rather than by market forces) and that creates a lot of bad blood pretty quickly. The reluctance of Germans to bail out southern Europeans is just an instance of that.

<comment><USER3> > un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy

So tell me, what is this? [http://i.imgur.com/zhVYPwN.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/zhVYPwN.jpg)

And what is this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhafgcPeXes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhafgcPeXes)

Or is it maybe actually elected, actually held accountable?

> The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, > mores, histories, frames of reference, economies could somehow achieve > monetary or much less political union

Aha, so how did the US do it? By the time it was formed, not even half of the people spoke a common language (There was quite a large amount of German and French immigrants in those days), it was full of groups with different religions and traditions.

<comment><USER15> The US did it by virtue of it being a lot more homogeneous when it was first created. Last time I checked they didn't need any translators when they were debating the constitution, nor is the US constitution printed in 17 official translations like all EU documents and treaties are. Also, most people actually came to these shores having nothing but bad memories (if not outright contempt) for the countries they left behind and they were eager to embrace a new identity. The new land had a dominant cultural identity and they quickly aligned to it. Finally, the experience of the revolutionary war and a few more major wars down the road helped with "bonding" \- to use a cute phrase. None of above conditions hold for Europe. The French are not eager to shun their national character and start speaking German and the last time they went to war they fought against the Germans and the Italians, not alongside them.

Additionally, crossing the Atlantic served as a filter to select only those people that were truly desirous of becoming Americans. Disgruntled EU voters have the nasty habit of lingering around.

<comment><USER7> That's a quite humorously inaccurate depiction of early American unity. Under the Articles of Confederation, the burgeoning country almost collapsed because individual states pursued independent agendas that undermined the efficacy of the whole. The British would have loved for this to continue so they could sweep in and rest back control. Thankfully, the states later organized around the more centralized, federal authority outlined in what we today call our constitution.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Articles_of_Confe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Articles_of_Confederation&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop#The_United_States_of_America_under_the_Articles)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Based on the following graph[1], yes. If the UK has voted to leave the with an EU favourability rating of 44, Greece at 27 and France at 38 will not be far behind.

[1]([http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/07/euroskepticism-beyond- br...](http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/07/euroskepticism-beyond- brexit/pm_2016-06-07_brexit-00/))

</comment><comment><USER17> Based on my recent experience of visiting Europe - yes, it is. I stayed mostly in France, was there during the Brexit vote, and everyone I spoke to was pretty keen on exiting the EU, voting right-wing, and seeing it all crumble. They also have several separatist movements, especially in Brittany, which seems to be more anti-EU than anti-French...

<comment><USER4> Living in one of the PIGS, I can tell there's not much going on here about leaving the EU. Nobody has seriously brought it up. That said, I see important problems in the EU going on now that must be solved:

1\. I know the EU is completely against the "two-speed Europe". But that MUST be put in place if the EU is to survive. There's a clear divide between regions in the EU. It is a cultural divide in the way work is seen, perceived, in the way money is handled, on how corruption is seen by citizens, etc. That's why after decades the economies of the PIGS have not adjusted to the rest of the EU, and they probably will never adjust. It's a cultural thing that won't change.

Also, I suppose rich and poor countries don't equally agree with the amount socialism/interventionism the EU should be establishing. For example being from one of the PIGS I like interventionism from the EU because I see local politicians/courts/etc as useless. If you go to court and the verdict is stupid, you can go to a European court. But I suppose people from the north like their local politicians and courts and don't like it when the EU interferes.

2\. Many people don't like immigrants. Whether that's racism or not, or whether those people can be educated or not... that's irrelevant. The EU is literally shoving immigrants down people's throats. Immigration from A8 countries MUST be regulated (end of Schengen) and also countries should be able to decide if they want Muslim refugees or not.

Remember this is just my opinion and what I've seen around me as a citizen of one of the PIGS.

<comment><USER18> for those wondering: PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece & Spain (some people jump to comments)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, trying to google that acronym would have been utterly futile.

Why do smart people assume that their own familiarity with a subject is a suitable guideline for tossing around opaque acronyms without prior definition? Why are people just supposed to know the acronym?

<comment><USER20> The article defines the acronym:

 _He points to the acronym PIGS, coined for four crisis-torn, Southern European debtor countries of the eurozone: Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The EU and its member states will have to adapt. If they don't then yes: Disintegration and a return to rampant nationalism might be the consequence.

The EU in its current incarnation as a centralised, geographically-defined bloc could be considered a relic of colonial, pre-globalization times (as much as nation states are a remnant of pre-industrial, pre-Information Age times).

In order to be able to address the issues of the 21st century we need a much more decentralised structure, more devolution of government to the local level and more cooperation between these decentralised entities.

Large cities in different countries and their respective populations often have much more in common than people from rural regions have in common with these city dwellers (as evidenced by Brexit). Yet through arbitrary national borders they're simply lumped together. The same applies to border regions. Why shouldn't companies and other organisations from different countries be able to work closer together more easily?

Finally, why should organisations such as the EU be defined in terms of geography instead of in terms of shared values? As of now, Canada for instance would be a much better fit to the EU economically and in terms of values than some of the Eastern European member states.

There are a few interesting articles about this subject and 'neo-medieval' overlapping authorities and multiple identities as a possible outcome:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329850-600-end- of-n...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329850-600-end-of-nations- is-there-an-alternative-to-countries/)

[https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit- possibility/](https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/)

[https://fieldnotes.mike-walsh.com/brexit-and-the-rise-of- the...](https://fieldnotes.mike-walsh.com/brexit-and-the-rise-of-the-city- state-d501a0354773#.y8yl3190c)

</comment><comment><USER22> > What Orbán has done, for example in his takeover of the media, undermines > democracy itself.

Those of us who actually lived in Hungary know that the media needs to be regulated to prevent the media from picking our next president.

Orbán was the first politician who had the balls to call out the West on their irresponsible immigration policy, while everyone else was too busy being politically correct. The Austrian media blasted him, however when Austria started doing the same exact thing, they reported it differently.

Look at the Buzzfeed "reporting": they knew the document was most likely fake, yet they decided to publish it anyway.

<comment><USER23> > Those of us who actually lived in Hungary know that the media needs to be > regulated to prevent the media from picking our next president.

So it's better if the president picks the next president?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Integrating all countries of eastern Europe at once and much too early was the beginning of the end. The countries that had been members before were getting so close economically and culturally that I think the current situation would not have been possible and a real united state might not have been only a dream. Politicians wanted too much and too early and did not take the population with them. I love my polish colleagues, but on a macro scale it did not really work.

<comment><USER25> Yes, the geopolitical motivations were pretty obvious. Of course you were labeled a hopeless conservative or conspiracy nutjob by the europhiles if you brought it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I feel very weird that most of my recent comments have been book recommendations, never the less, as usual peripherally related. And yes, i know Europe is not a nation. Hence peripherally. :) [https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins- Prosperity/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins- Prosperity/dp/0307719227)

</comment><comment><USER27> I really hope this rise of Nationalism is just a phase. If not it won't end well for Europe and the world.

<comment><USER28> Last time the body count was 25 million, right?

I'm afraid we got much better at increasing body counts recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting article. I do believe that the EU will collapse, and that it is only a matter of time. First of all, there is not a single instance in History where a common currency, such as the Euro, succeeded. It always has collapsed. Different people in France have developed about this exact subject.

I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that people need to understand, is that a referendum was held in 2005 in France, and that the people have been asked if they wanted to integrate the EU. The No won by over 55%. Even though, Sarkozy signed the treaty and put France into the EU.

EDIT: People also realize that people who run for presidency, only present a program that is actually the program of the EU... In the case of France, there are some specific laws and orientations that the EU is trying to push on the country, on different areas, such a Work law, or GMO. Those laws goes against what generations and generations of people fought for. Other people who run for president also put in their program stuff that would go against the EU program, and that is NOT APPLICABLE. If those were applied, the country would be fined heavily by the EU. Which I think, makes those politics either liers, or incompetents.

The second thing is that more and more people realize that the way it works isn't sustainable, and this for a simple reason; having 28 countries together, who have to obey to the same set of rules (EU treaties), in different area such as Education, Immigration, Finance, Farming, etc... is not possible. Why? Because the interest of Estonia in Immigration are totally different than France's interests in that same area. Italy interests in finance are different than UK, etc... You cannot apply the same rules to everybody.

A simple metaphor to understand the problem is this: \- If you own your own house, you can do whatever you want and paint your outside walls as you like. \- If you own an apartment in a 6 stories building, you probably wont have the freedom to put whatever window you want on it, and there will be a few rules that every story of the building will have to follow. \- Now take a building with 28 stories, is it now harder to make everyone happy? or easier?

If there is a leak under the roof, the owner of the last story will be mad and will want to do something about it. However, it won't be the others owners' priority to fix that. If the first floor has an issue of recurrent flooding, the people for the above stories won't have that as a priority either...

Now, if you want to modify the European treaty, you must have the unanimity of all its members. How is that possible, knowing that each country does not have the same interests/concerns, in any area? It's not. And this is probably why UK tried to negotiate with the EU on a different set of topics, before actually holding the referendum.

Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects, than countries who are part of the EU. A lot of novel prices of economy also stood up and explained that the EU will collapse, and one of them even resigned from the BCE (Banque Centrale Europeenne), and joined a French political party who wants France to get out of the EU, using the Article 50 of the treaty.

<comment> nommm-nommm Your house/building analogy is flawed because there are extremely significant rules/regulations about what your house can look like and what materials you can use to build it leveed by all sorts of levels of government as well as HOAs. Doubly so if you live in a historical neighborhood.

And somehow people do manage to live in skyscrapers without flooding the first floor.

I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a currency something like the Euro before.

<comment><USER30> > I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a currency something like the Euro > before.

Well, from 1865 to 1927 there was the 'Latin' monetary union, which failed because some countries (e.g. Greece) simply couldn't afford to produce the coinage and instead debased the currency.

<comment><USER29> USSR had one as well, the Soviet Ruble. You are right about the Latin Monetary Union, it is one of them. There was also the Scandinavian Monetary Union (SMU), and many more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > For now there is crisis and disintegration wherever I look: the eurozone is > chronically dysfunctional, sunlit Athens is plunged into misery, young > Spaniards with doctorates are reduced to serving as waiters in London or > Berlin, the children of Portuguese friends seek work in Brazil and Angola

How much truth is there, to this statement i.e. "young Spaniards with PHDs are serving as Waiters in London or Berlin."

Anyone? I find it quite shocking and want to know if the Author is engaging in fear-mongering, or if Europe is indeed falling apart and the part about Greeks, young Spaniards and Portuguese peeps is true.

<comment><USER32> This is just anecdotal but I know that spanish people have trouble finding jobs and often stay in school longer while living with their parents.

I know two spanish people with a BA, one went au-pairing in france, another one couldn't find a job and moved to morocco cause it was cheaper.

So while it may be exagerated, there's probably some truth to that statement. The euro has destroyed the mediterrean economies.

<comment><USER4> >The euro has destroyed the mediterrean economies.

That's implying Mediterranean economies would be better off without the Euro. I beg to differ.

<comment><USER12> Coming from a Mediterranean Country, I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As long as austerity is enforced under the eu-mark the disintegration is a certainty.

The only way it could be saved would be to jettison the euro or at least the convergence criteria. Germany doesn't seem keen on a succesful EU, perhaps there's some underlaying anger over those last couple of attemps to ruin Europe. One can only guess.

</comment><comment><USER33> edit: -deleted- this thread has been moved from the front-page, back 5 pages. There is no point making (nor leaving) good arguments in dead threads that no one can see nor take part in.

<comment><USER34> Huh? It's about creating an identity, a single market, and in the process, creating peace. I don't feel it is attempting to destroy national identity, if anything, it allows it to thrive (as long as it is compatible with the EU idea). Same goes with individual and national rights. EU policy provides a common framework, and if anything, it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens (see ECJ).

<comment><USER30> > It's about creating an identity

Sorry, that sounds like socialist nonsense.

> A single market

The single market was and is designed for a collection of industrialized nations that no longer exist. 2/3 of the EU economy today is driven by services (80% in the UK) and yet there is no single market in services worthy of the name.

Even the EU commission admits that the single market is a dysfunctional mess; of course their answer to the productivity problem Europe has is 'more single market!'

> and in the process, creating peace.

It's only been through the interests of the US that peace has been maintained. The expansionary EU threatens that.

> it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens

In what world is it a good idea that unelected and unaccountable judges can _overpower_ the elected and accountable governments of member states?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you track user activity? - <AUTHOR>

User feedback is a great way to improve your service. However, often times, direct customer feedback is not enough to justify next product direction. I want to track user activity on my web applications to provide solid set of statistics to help understand my customer base.
I looked at performance monitoring services like New Relic, but they are designed for developers, but I am looking for options and tools which help analyze application data.
It sounds like a common problem for an entrepreneur. I would like to ask  HN community following questions -
1. How do you analyze data stored on your web applications 2. What parameters are most helpful for you to decide next set of features 3. Are there service/tools available for me to extract and represent data graphically for detailed analysis. My applications are primarily written on Rails and .NET
Thank you! <comment><USER2> It would help if you provided a concrete example of the type of information you're looking for. If you want to get click-stream tracking, funnel breakdowns, eCommerce conversion, search usage, time-on-site, etc. just install Google Analytics. Takes just a minute and you'll learn more than you could have imagined.</comment>


Real profanity and disease on the internet is untouched while you police decorum - <AUTHOR> http://davidsimon.com/bourdain/ <comment><USER2> It took a lot of effort to get Twitter to acknowledge that these mock death threats are a form of abuse.

</comment><comment><USER3> One interesting thing is that this perspective - displeasure that decorum is being enforced instead of underlying issues being addressed - is loudly shared by both left and right on the internet these days. After a few decades of insincerity and bad faith argument it seems like everyone is getting fed up, and most people running platforms have no idea what to do about it.

Look no further than Gab, a no-censorship right wing Twitter alternative that is now in crisis due to fights between users and corporate leadership over a mix of death threats and - you guessed it - decorum.

<comment><USER4> I can't help but think that a lot of the people making free-speech (online) arguments are being deliberately obtuse.

The Constitution and general body of law doesn't really address interactions on privately owned forums. It doesn't even really cover publicly (shareholder) owned forums, either, because they are, in effect, private as well.

Government-owned/controlled forums are a different matter entirely and they can't be censored in the same way.

Any online site has the right to say: this far and no further. How simple is that? State what you're not going to allow, admit that some things are judgement calls and call it done and dusted.

I will fight for your right to say any damn stupid thing you want (barring yelling fire in a theater), just don't try it in the middle of my f---ing living room.

<comment><USER5> You're confusing the First Amendment with the principle of Free Speech.

When it comes to privately owned forums, they _may_ have absolute control over what is acceptable to say, but those who disagree with their policies are perfectly justified in criticizing them for violating the principle of free speech.

But it isn't even as black and white as you say from a legal standpoint. There is precedent (Marsh v. Alabama) for the owners of a publicly-used, privately- owned space to have their rights limited in order to protect the constitutional rights of persons using the space. The same principle could apply to sites as large as Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A rich hollywood producer complaining about being deplatformed - surely we have better things to do with our time?

<comment><USER3> If you've spent much time working in media, you'd know a considerable number of people are just chasing down every project to pay rent. Just like open source software and startups, not everyone gets rich off of a success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel the same argument could have been made for someone thrown out of a tribunal for constantly swearing at the defendant.

Sure there's an emotional side of it, but following a set of rules doesn't prevent from expressing one's opinion to a satisfactory point.

<comment><USER3> I think the argument being made by TFA is that rules and structures can, if constructed incorrectly, privilege 'civil' advocacy for abhorrent behavior over discourse that accurately characterizes it for what it is.

Hyperbolically decrying minor things as atrocities has led to rules of decorum that assume no atrocities actually occur, and any heated argument is automatically bad.

<comment><USER7> The TFA isn't about accurately describing behavior, it's about voicing disgust in feel-good words for the author.

> But the hyperbolic and comic hope that a just god might smite the slanderer > or brutalizer with a deadly skin disorder is somehow beyond the pale.

Words are plenty, there would be no shortage of them to express the author's point within relying on deadly skin disorders. Nobody [edit: here at least] is denying atrocities, the point is to adjust communication to the medium used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> David Simon isn't even right in the argument he is having with those who he wishes to die of boils - Non-nationals entering or attempting to cross the US border at a non-designated time or place _is_ a crime according to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

<comment><USER9>
        > "mothers who have their children kidnapped and held
        > incommunicado from them at the American border are criminals
        > - and both mother and child deserve that fate"

I doubt his main point of contention is whether or not the mothers are criminals.

Not that I'm very enthusiastic about his main point. There are ways to communicate scorn that don't involve death wishes.

<comment><USER8> I think that is his whole point. He was responding to someone who basically said "When American parents commit crimes, they are also separated from their children in the penal system".

But I should point out that I don't really know how twitter works and have a very hard time following conversation there. Maybe something different went down.</comment></comment></comment>


Another slice of π ? (generating the digits of π in Common Lisp & Haskell) - <AUTHOR> http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2009-08-10-104159_another_slice_of_pi.html

<comment><USER2> This is kind of situation where LOOP really shines.

        (defun machin-pi (digits)
          "Accurately calculates PI digits using Machin's formula
           with fixed point arithmetic and variable digit guarding."
          (flet ((arccot (x unity)
    	       (loop
    	          with xsq = (* x x)
    	          for positive = t then (not positive)
    	          for n upfrom 1 by 2
    	          for xpow = (floor (/ unity x)) then (floor xpow xsq)
    	          for term = (floor xpow n)
    	          until (= 0 term)
    	          sum (if positive term (- term)))))
            (when (> digits 0)
              (let* ((guard (floor (* 10 (log digits 10))))
    	         (unity (expt 10 (+ digits guard)))
    	         (thispi (* 4 (- (* 4 (arccot 5 unity)) (arccot 239 unity)))))
    	    (floor thispi (expt 10 guard))))))</comment>


Show HN: Say Cheese - a cross-browser compatible webcam API - <AUTHOR> http://leemachin.github.com/say-cheese/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I started this thing off as a bit of a jumble of incongruous features (take pictures, take pictures of just parts of the image, etc. etc.), and have since been whittling it down to two core components: getting a webcam feed up and running; and giving you the option to capture images from it.

Instead of adding more features before 'shipping', I probably deleted a load instead. Didn't need 'em.

<comment><USER2> Does it work with mobile browsers?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've not tested it (due to not having a phone with a front-facing camera), but I'm not confident there's support for it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No demo in sight, would love to see this working in a small demo. :)

Edit: Tried this but it isn't working: <http://jsfiddle.net/fPTTz/5/>

<comment><USER4> The link is for the demo, but the webcam won't show unless you allow it in the browser. I'm using Chrome and a yellow permissions bar pops down for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody know what the stats are for how many users generally have a webcam either on their computer or attached? It seems the only way to know is to actually use their camera either via HTML5 or Flash, or to look at user agent and infer from the OS, but that wouldn't tell you about attached webcams.

It would be a useful stat to know before adding webcam-related functionality into our site.

<comment><USER6> If someone doesn't have a camera on their laptop/desktop, I would still bet on them having them on phone if they have a smart phone. I hope iOS supports getUserMedia() soon.

On top of that, I think cameras have been standard on laptops for several years now. That fact coupled with the fact that most computers don't get more than 4-6 years of use leads me to believe that for many demographics the percent of attached cameras is probably pretty high. People with desktops are less likely to have attached cameras, but desktops largely went out of fashion with consumers a few years ago when the laptop became powerful enough for most consumer uses.

All in all, I'd say that cameras are probably on the computers and phones of well more than 50% of the population that uses the internet daily. The only exception would probably be work desktop machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know the timelines for non-flash cross browser webcam access?

<comment><USER8> 90% penetration will not be for at least 4-5 years, if that.

Thank mostly IE for that, But also Safari and a host of mobile browsers.

<comment><USER6> Why 4-5 years? That seems like an awfully long time for an API that is pretty well defined. If it takes that long it can only be because Apple is deliberately avoiding building support for it.

<comment><USER8> Because enterprise. Go look at IE8 stats right now. Keep in mind IE10 does not support this, so ask yourself when nobody will even be left on IE10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Author wrote a blog post for sample usage with Sinatra and Mustache

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4822993>

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmmmm could you do the same for microphones?</comment>


Amazon&Simon Look at Turning Sears&J.C. Penney Stores into Fulfillment Centers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-and-giant-mall-operator-look-at-turning-sears-j-c-penney-stores-into-fulfillment-centers-11596992863 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/GNff3](https://archive.vn/GNff3)</comment>


Mai Mai Sze and the I Ching - <AUTHOR> http://jhiblog.org/2016/03/14/mai-mai-sze-and-the-i-ching/ <comment><USER2> This looks like a follow-up to the review posted at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270181).</comment>


The Pirate Bay is down - <AUTHOR>

The Pirate Bay seems to be down. Who's to blame?<p>http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://thepiratebay.se <comment><USER2> This is unrelated to the PRQ Police Raid.

Currently The Pirate Bay is blaming it on a power-failure.

Source: [http://torrentfreak.com/prq-police-raid-takes-down-dozens- of...](http://torrentfreak.com/prq-police-raid-takes-down-dozens-of-file- sharing-sites-121001/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You kids and your fancy pirate bays, in my day you went to IRC or went over to your friends house with a stack of floppy disks.

<comment><USER4> sneakernet is still the fastest method of transferring data. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the Internet. Who's to blame and who gets blamed are two distinctly different entities.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who's to blame? Dexter</comment>


Fotopedia Alternatives – A Short List - <AUTHOR> https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a-short-list

<comment><AUTHOR> We were advised to put this list together here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8124832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8124832)

Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any thoughts or comments.

Thanks!</comment>


The Emerging Revolution in Game Theory - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428920/the-emerging-revolution-in-game-theory/ <comment><USER2> This is roughly the 5th article on a "Revolution in Game Theory" that I've seen and not a single one of them has successfully described what the so called revolutionary strategy is.

Here is a direct link to a PDF of a paper defining the Zero Determinant Strategy. <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2666v1.pdf> I don't really understand it. Neither do journalists it seems. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER3> Actually, the original paper is this one: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/16/1206569109.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/16/1206569109.full.pdf+html)

Here is an description of the result and its implications [http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2012/07/zerodeterminant_...](http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2012/07/zerodeterminant_strategies_in.html)

<comment><USER4> Wow. Not long ago I was trying to test whether an idea for a certain kind of online interaction would work out the way I hoped. I built a simulation with agents that evolved their strategies, trying to optimize their own outcomes.

Maybe that's not such a good test after all.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe this outcome is optimal from an evolutionary standpoint. It requires the other player to know what your strategy is and accept the ultimatum (I will do x% better than you). The other player still has the option to reject the ultimatum, screwing over both parties.

In other words, for this strategy to work it needs "pragmatic" other players that are (a) intelligent enough to know what the other player is doing and (b) willing to accept the unequal outcome. This strategy isn't symmetric: if you turned two of these bots against each other the total outcome would be much worse than if two TFT bots played each other.

Thus it stands to reason that TFT or some small variant is still the evolutionary winner.

<comment><USER4> What I'm thinking is, it appears that players with a theory of mind may not actually use the optimal evolutionary strategy. Since humans have a theory of mind, my simulation may be a poor predictor of what my users would actually do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's inspiring to note that Bill Press is 64 years old, and Freeman Dyson is 88! Here's a more technical explanation, gleaned from <http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.2666>.

Each prisoner dilemma round has four possible outcomes: CC, CD, DC and DD (C=Cooperate,D=Defect). We study probabilistic strategies which depend only on the previous round, so for instance, P(player 1 plays C at round i+1|CD was played at round i)=0.3. From the paper:

 _Such games can be described by a Markov process defined by the four probabilities that characterize each of the two player's strategies [9] (because this is an infinitely repeated game, the probability to engage in the first move–which is unconditional–does not play a role here). Each Markov process has a stationary state given by the left eigenvector of the Markov matrix, which in this case describes the equilibrium of the process. The expected payoff is given by the dot product of the stationary state and the payoff vector of the strategy. But while the stationary state is the same for either player, the payoff vector–given by the score received for each of the four possible plays CC, CD, DC, and DD–is different for the two players for the asymmetric plays CD and DC. Because the expected payoff is a linear function of the payoffs, it is possible for one strategy to enforce the payoff of the opponent by a judiciously chosen set of probabilities that makes the linear combination of determinants vanish (hence the name ZD strategies). Note that this enforcement is asymmetric because of the asymmetry in the payoff vectors introduced earlier: while the ZD player can choose the opponent's payoff to depend only on their own probabilities, the payoff to the ZD player depends on both the ZD player's as well as the opponent's probabilities. This is the mathematical surprise: the expected payoff is usually a very complicated function of six probabilities (and four payoff values, for the four possible plays). When playing against the ZD strategy, the payoff that the opponent reaps is defined by the payoffs and only two remaining probabilities that characterize the ZD strategies._

</comment><comment><USER7> " _Nevertheless, in a single game, the best strategy is to snitch because it guarantees that you don't get the maximum jail term._ "

Huh? That isn't correct is it? Snitching is best because it gives the highest payout regardless of what the other person does (snitching strictly dominates not snitching).

If the other does not snitch and you do, you go free. If the other person does snitch, you should as well, because it gives you 3 months instead of 6.

<comment><USER8> You describe exactly what that sentence says...

<comment><USER9> Not really. The sentence says that the reason you defect is specifically to avoid the worst possible result. This is bad logic. The reason defect is considered dominant is because, regardless of what the other player does, your outcome is better if you defect. It is a very different statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hrrm... I'm no game theory expert, but I thought that it had been known for some time that there were strategies which could beat "tit for tat" in IPD. But this article makes it sound like "tit for tat" was the state of the art until this particular discovery.

Guess I need to go back and do some more reading on the subject. This reminds me, I've been meaning to read _The Evolution of Cooperation_ [1] forever, and haven't found time yet. _sigh_

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cooperation>

</comment><comment><USER11> A separate example of very advanced strategies in the simplest game: Rock Paper Scissors Programming Competition

<http://www.rpscontest.com>

Personally I think it is somehow ahead of these academic researches in some sense.

<comment><USER12> Except it is not difficult to prove that you can't win in expectation against a random RPS player. The programming competition is only fun because the players are nonrandom.

<comment><USER13> Nope, the random player ends up in the middle, on average.

If you'd join a tournament with _only_ random players then your optimal strategy, actually doesn't matter because you're going to randomly win/lose (because your opponents always play random) and on average, end up in the middle rank, just like everybody else.

If there are other non-random players, then you can aim for the middle rank by playing random (and one of the other non-random players will do better than the other, and you will do worse than that one and better than the other). Or you can try to beat the non-random players (while still doing near 50/50 odds on the random ones).

So if you play random, and there is more than one non-random player, you will lose.

Also, check out some of the strategies. There's a couple of really well- performing ones that are incredibly clever, but not all that hard to understand.

One goes like this:

It's based on trying to predict the opponent's strategy and playing against that. But what if the opponent _expects_ that and plays _you_ against that? A-ha but what if _you_ play against your opponent trying to play _you_?

You'd think that this reasoning can go on forever, but since there are only three moves in RPS, and they circularly defeat eachother, you only need to consider these three steps as the next one brings you to the move of square one.

The algorithm then basically keeps a running score of these three different depths of pre-emptive strategy, and picks the one that works best based on historical moves "what would have won" (and runs random while collecting data).

This algo did extremely well in the first couple of tournaments held many years ago. I don't know what the most popular strategy is currently though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A little OT, but I'm currently watchin Benjamin Polak's game theory elctures and they are great!

<http://www.academicearth.org/courses/game-theory/> (you don't need an account)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm getting pretty tired of technology review extremely poor explanations for science discoveries. I only know vaguely more than I did when I started reading the article. When I got to the bottom I didn't know if I should be excited or not.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sort of related in that it pertains to Prisoner's Dilemma, and suggested to some that there is a 'solution' to PD:

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/amazing_round_...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/amazing_round_o.html)

The relevant vid link within:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8>

</comment><comment><USER16> So, this paper is not really demonstrating anything against the standard game theory applied to the prisoner's dilemma.

In a single game, the proposition of the dilemma still holds true. The best solution is if both don't talk.

In an iterative game, then things change.. but that's pretty obvious. So not sure what is so revoluationary about this paper.

<comment><USER17> I thought it said in a single game your best strategy is to talk? This guarantees you will not take the maximum penalty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "This and similar "quant" nonsense is precisely what has led to the biggest uncollectable pile of derivative securities and assorted options of the too big to fail banking disaster we are currently confronting. All these gambling scenarios are counter productive to improvements necessary to increasing the world's real physical wealth. These studies are worse than useless, they are parasitic cancers on society."

This comment below the article made me smile. I kind of feel inclined to agree, even though it is of course too simplistic a view.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not linking to original sources. Is this poor journalism, or market strategy?

(see @jorleif's post here for the links)

</comment><comment><USER20> Good old rock, nothing beats rock. Doh!

<comment><USER21> Do you actually think this comment is intelligent or otherwise improves the discussion others are having about this topic? For one, I am pretty much completely lost in terms of what this article is saying, and inane commentary does not help in the process of understanding.

<comment><USER20> The gist of the article is that a long held strategy has been found inferior. This has been hailed as a revolution by some (the author and no doubt some of the community he's writing about) while the longer view, which can be seen in the post's comments is that it's expected:

 _"This just seems to be an extension of the folk theorem to the family of probabilistic strategies. 1. Any level payoff level can be supported in equilbrium (Press & Dyson), 2. None of those equilbria survive evolutionary refinements (this paper). Interesting stuff, but not quite revolutionary as it is suggested. "_

The reference I was making was a famous line from the Simpsons where Bart's strategy of "good old rock, nothing beats that" is adapted to by Lisa who picks paper. Yeah I misquoted, season 4 was a long time ago :)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMxzU6hxrNA>

No it probably wasn't the most intelligent or informed comment I could have made. Sometimes the not most intelligent comments can be useful. Maybe this one wasn't one of those but, /shrug I would probably make it again.</comment></comment></comment>


Vienna Circle - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Circle <comment><USER2> why was this posted here?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19180189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19180189)

Intellectually curiosity. I actually want to think what is HN views on this. Since the circle of Vienna was the last good community about logic and was rigurious. Did everything stop since then?</comment></comment>


"I have an idea worth minus a million." - <AUTHOR> http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/161/

<comment><USER2> Beyond being an interesting quip on business ideas, I love the interesting site design and the $2400 dream keyboard [1].

As for ice cubes for the $10 bottle of water - the ice cubes need to be packaged and delivered with the water. Sounds like a good way to differentiate yourself from other brands of expensive water.

[1] [http://store.artlebedev.com/computer_add-ons/optimus- maximus...](http://store.artlebedev.com/computer_add-ons/optimus-maximus/)

<comment><USER3> Couldn't one just pop open a bottle, freeze some ice cubes, tell your customers you are using "ice made from _brand of water_ " and ignore the expensive, prepackaged option from the supplier?

<comment><USER4> When I was in Thailand, at a reasonably nice hotel in Bangkhok, when we ordered water the water "opened our bottles for us" - I immediately sent them back for unopened bottles. My friends thought I was a little paranoid, but we were all cautious about the water, so not that big a deal.

I killed myself laughing when I saw the same scam being pulled by one of the characters in Slum Dog Millionaire.

In other words - if it doesn't come with a factory seal, presume that it's not factory fresh.

<comment><USER5> Demanding that the factory seal be intact is standard practice for traveling in the developing world. You definitely weren't paranoid.

In areas that don't have bottled water from a brand I recognize, I drink nothing but fermented beverages (I've brushed my teeth with beer).

I'd use brand-name ice cubes, if they were packaged in a known, trustworthy manner.

<comment><USER6> Carbonated drinks are also safe - the acid kills pathogens.

You can also easily carry water purification stuff - a bottle of polarpure lasts many many uses, and there are stirring wands that use UV light to kill germs. You may need to do a bit of research about what kills what, though.

<comment><USER7> _Carbonated drinks are also safe - the acid kills pathogens_

What acid? There's no hydrogen in CO2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many gems on that site

Here is one more

<http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/141/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I thought this was going to be about a different lesson.

For an idea to be worth a million, it's got to be worth the customers _paying_ a total of a million, i.e. to them it's worth _losing_ a million.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have an idea worth "minus a million" in a different sense:

My medical condition is supposed to cost big bucks to manage and the doctors promise you no hope of actually getting well. Getting healthier has been cheaper than the conventional treatments and yields the bonus that the healthier I get, the more productive I am while at the same time costs have steadily declined.

Now I just need to "package" it and figure out how to market it.</comment>


Ask HN: Any experiences with Aliyun, Alibaba's cloud offering? - <AUTHOR> I just started to research into Alibaba's cloud offering Aliyun. They started their massive international rollout last year and I would like to learn about some experiences on their infrastructure vs. the other global contenders before considering them. What works well? Where are the rough edges?What workloads are well suited for their offer? Thx. <comment><USER2> Do they have us/eu site/datacenters ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet but I expect that pretty soon given that they earmarked $1Bn. for international expansion. Footprint so far is East China (2 regions), North China (2 regions), South China, Hong Kong, Singapore, US East, US West. Their website says: "At present, AliCloud has regional nodes in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Singapore, and the United States. New data centers are also planned for Japan, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere."

<comment><USER2> Can you find pricing for they table+messages services ?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice regarding past due accounts and getting paid? - <AUTHOR>

My company does hosted load testing on a consulting basis.  Most of my competitors don't demand upfront payment, so we haven't either. My last two clients are proving difficult to collect payment from. This is a huge let-down to me.<p>I'm wondering if anyone has advice on collecting past due accounts (or preventing them)?  I'd like to hear how you approach collection in scenarios like this?  Steps? Timeframes? Lawyers? Rules of thumb? Etc. Thanks! <comment><USER3> Re. past due accounts: Call. Every day. Be very polite, tell them that you still haven't received payment and that you'd like to know for sure that payment has been made. Repeat.

This worked flawlessly for me in the past but I did take in to account that I probably wouldn't be working for those customers ever again (and funny enough, in most cases I did, and in most cases I used these as reasons to demand up front payment on future jobs).

The squeaky wheel gets the grease...

<comment><USER4> yup, calling every day was the only way I managed to get past due payment I was owed in the past. If they hedge (oh it's in our internal systems) ask for a day to call them back and call back the day before. For my cases it's usually been someone different handling the finances side of things, and the customer who I dealt with is actually embarrassed payment hasn't been made.

You could also start charging interest on the overdue bill, but I believe you have to state this in your invoice. then you have an excuse to call - <USER2> update them on the amount they owe.

I've not heard of anyone at startup level resorting to a collections agency but I have heard of the small claims court being involved sometimes. Never had to go that far myself, so I can't really comment.

<comment><USER5> I'd go collections before a lawsuit, for sure.

Most collections agencies cost you little or nothing up front, they just split whatever they collect. Hiring a lawyer or spending your valuable time deciphering legal forms is almost definitely going to cost you more up front.

<comment><USER3> Depends on your location, in plenty of places you can go to small claims court without representation. Especially for an uncontested bill.

<comment><USER5> Having sued people in small claims court, I can tell you that it will take up a lot of your time just to fill out the paperwork.

Also, small claims court has caps on what you can sue for. More than a few grand and it's not an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Demand upfront payment. ;)

Failing that, make the quantum of unpaid work as small as possible. Offer them the first three hours on credit, but make them pay a bill before they get a second three hours.

Write your contracts to specify several intermediate payments. This is how, e.g., construction contractors work: one third up front, one third at the midpoint of work, one third at the end. Or something like that.

Write contracts that involve writing code and demonstrating it to the client, but stipulate that you won't deliver the final product until after you're paid.

Keep them on a very regular schedule. Don't go very far out on a limb: Don't ever let yourself get several months ahead of the paycheck. This is particularly important with the _first_ paycheck: Don't work too much before sending the client some sort of bill -- even if it's just a partial bill -- and establishing that they will pay. For all you know, your client is a mid- level employee without signing authority who cannot pay you without permission from a higher-level manager in a rival department. Or something.

But, of course, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Customers run out of money. Customers turn over their personnel. Customers have internal reorganizations. Trust, but verify.

<comment><AUTHOR> The going out on a limb part is tough as a solution as the testing itself happens pretty quickly--it isn't quite the same as something like web development which may go on for a while. I might switch to demanding half up front for all but the largest customers, though.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I realize this. But you understand your business better than I, and it's possible that if you think about the business in terms of "I need to get some earnest money as soon as possible" you'll think of a way to restructure your deals.

The concept of "refundable deposit" may be useful to you, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I offer a 12.5% discount for customers who use 'express service' which basically means that they agree to pay within 7 days of invoice and agree to use my simple NDA/contract and not use up my time doing contract negotiation.

If they don't pay on time, they lose the discount.

I've been lucky: only one no-pay in 12 years, and that was for about an hour of work on what was originally a half day estimate (the "customer" sincerely thanked, but said that it was not worth his trouble to pay a tiny one hour invoice). I just let it slide, but in retrospect, I wish that I had re- submitted the invoice.

<comment><USER8> I'll usually do 5% discount for Net15 (15 day turn around). More than 10% is pretty steep...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We invoice again with a big red OVERDUE stamp and call. Then call again. And again. Then send a letter and another invoice. Call again. If there are enough outstanding accounts we sometimes hire a stern-voiced contractor to call people.

Worst case, we give a collections agency the extremely delinquent (like, _years_ old) accounts. They basically split whatever they can collect with us. They usually don't get much (if people were gonna pay, they'd have paid)

Oh, and of course we don't continue to sell to people who are more than a few months overdue.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a businessweek slideshow.. [http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/02/0212_how_to_collect/...](http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/02/0212_how_to_collect/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> some links:

[http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/08/28/getting-delinquent- clie...](http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/08/28/getting-delinquent-clients-to- pay-you-on-time/)

[http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/09/11/tips-from-the- trenches-...](http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/09/11/tips-from-the-trenches-get- your-clients-to-pay-up/)

[http://www.acuitydesigns.net/how-to-deal-with-non-paying- cli...](http://www.acuitydesigns.net/how-to-deal-with-non-paying-clients/)

<http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/7-great-rip-offs></comment>


Ask HN: How do you start a website that requires user contribution? - <AUTHOR> How do you attract users to use your website, if the website requires users to create the content? When there is no content, there will be no users. When there are no users, there will be no content. What are the best practices to escape this loop and build up a user base that is most likely to visit repeatedly?<p>Do you know/Do you remember what StackExchange looked like in its early days? How about Quora, Wikipedia or any other website with similar experience? <comment><USER3> One story I've heard is from Alexis Ohanian one of the founderes of reddit.com. He said that in the beginning they created multiple accounts and posted lots of content themselves. So basically, they faked it for a while. :)

I believe the story with Yelp is that they paid people to write reviews in the beginning.

I definitely feel you, I have had similar struggles. I made a site that had some limited traction, mostly my friends used it. I think if your close friends are actually in the demographic you are looking for, then that is a great place to start.

Something else I try to consider is to make a site that strives to serve millions of users but can be useful to far less. I've been working on a locally focused, social network and I am creating it in a way that even if 10 people are using it, as long as they goto the same places, it should be useful. 10 people in the same area would be worth 1000 people strewn across the globe in my case.

But I do believe that it is a problem that has a solution which differs greatly from case to case. It's certainly a chance to show your creativity and hustle, I suppose. :)

<comment><USER4> Steve Huffman talks about this in his Udacity course on web development: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME)

(The whole unit 7 talks a lot about how they built Reddit.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless you have an existing audience you've built up before launching, I think the not-so-secret secret of most user generated content sites is that they faked it when they were starting out.

Alexis Ohanian has talked about how they seeded Reddit with posts made under various fake usernames for the first few months after launching. They made it so that as admins, they just had an extra field for "username to post with" when creating new posts.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One way is to pay users to generate content.

Back in 1999/2000, I was CTO of a startup building a website aimed at independent travellers (which we defined as anyone who wasn't on a package holiday - i.e. people who were booking their own flights and hotels, and picking their own activities). Our plan was to become something like what Wikitravel is today - a kind of crowdsourced travel guide, with recommendations from other travellers for places to eat/drink/stay, things to do, sights to see, etc.

The idea was that a traveller would come to our site, search for, say, places to stay in Dublin, and the list they would get back would consist of recommendations/reviews submitted by other travellers.

We faced the exact same chicken-and-egg problem the OP describes - we had a website based on user-generated content, with no content.

People who were travelling/backpacking around the world during their gap year were a clear part of our target market and, at the time, there was no mobile internet, so gap year travellers would use internet cafés to access their email. The biggest and most popular internet cafés in London were run by easyEverything, where, on any given day, you could find dozens of travellers and tourists.

So, we did a deal with easyEverything to buy terminal usage in bulk, and we then gave away £1 worth* of usage to anyone who wanted it, in return for them writing a piece of content for the website.

We literally had people, wearing branded t-shirts, at these cafés, grabbing people as they came in and asking them if they wanted some free Internet time. From our perspective, it was a very successful approach - we were getting UGC for less than £1 per piece of content and, at the same time, publicising our site and getting a bit of brand awareness.

Unfortunately, the company didn't survive the Dot-com Crash but that's another story...

* I say "£1 worth" because easyEverything used demand pricing - if the café was empty, that £1 might buy you 90 minutes, if it was busy, it might only buy you 20 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER8> You have to fake it. Yelp seeds every city they enter with paid copywriters for instance, Reddit was entirely fake accounts initially. Airbnb pays for photography of nicer listings.

Either hire professional copywriters or recruit unpaid off-site interns to do it for you. Personally the intern method I think works best because they are dedicated to giving you good content, but really rough around the edges and the content feels very genuine. The NYC craigslist jobs section works phenomenally for this.

<comment><USER9> Will people really agree to an unpaid internship for some brand-new, unknown company? What's the reasoning there?

<comment><USER8> For those trying to get a foot in the door in competitive creative fields, an internship is an important first step in starting a career or pivoting to a new one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having worked on a growth team for a few years and where I incremental millions more active users above trend, the underlying techniques are surprisingly simple.

\- implement many different ways you can display the content you have and try to make it relevant

\- don't display empty pages, try to show the most relevant content you have even if it's not great

\- if you want people to perform an action (here, adding content), ask them to do it and make it easy :)

\- send out email or other notifications, giving social context of other people performing the action you want them to perform and with a clear call to action, once again

</comment><comment><USER11> The cynical way to say it is to "Fake it til you make it." The nicer way would be to say "Be the change you want to see in the world."

When we launched MuckRock, a user-generated FOIA request site, we had about 50 early registered users who were dying to use the site. Then we set them loose, and after 2 months, absolutely no one had filed. So I started filing a _ton_ of requests on my own, got back really good information, and all the sudden users started filing.

When I went back and asked why they hadn't filed before, they said they simply didn't know what filing should look like, so having some examples was helpful.

We also found a few power users who were already doing this on their own, and gave them free premium accounts. We lost hundreds of dollars on them for the first year, since we covered cost of stamps, scanning, etc., but it more then made up for it in helping model the kind of community and content we wanted to have.

So the short answer is, find ways to bootstrap it yourselves, whether that's just you compulsively dog fooding your own site or paying users to ask questions (it's almost always harder to find good question _askers_ than answerers, and the latter comes naturally to sites with good questions), or, like Wikipedia, intelligently and ethically scraping some bootstrapping material from existing resources.

</comment><comment><USER12> You have to create the content by yourself. No user is going to create your content magically on an empty site. So build your content (it will be a rather long process), and then it will (not organically) generate interest.

Also, target your friends / people you know that could use your website, and ask them which content they would like to see, if they want to help you build the initial content.

What's your website ?

<comment><USER13> This is what I had to do with [http://www.cocoacontrols.com](http://www.cocoacontrols.com) for about six months before I had enough UGC for it to be sustainable.

Finding acceptable repos on GitHub, downloading them, running the projects in the iOS simulator, screenshotting them, and writing up a description took a significant amount of time.

<comment><USER3> What is UGC?

<comment><USER13> user generated content.

<comment><USER3> Ahhh cool. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people call this a chicken-egg problem. For some reason, that's supposed to make it seem hard to solve, when in real life, anybody could start a chicken farm very easily.

You simply buy chickens.

If your question is how do I start a chicken farm without buying chickens, then you have made the problem unnecessarily complex.

The thing is, though, when you buy a chicken, you can be relatively sure that you will get eggs. And you can be sure that if you have eggs, it's not too hard to get chicks.

Your real problem isn't how to get content (that's simple, you buy it), but how to then get users that want that content. And then, how to get some of those users to make content.

(to answer your direct question: StackExchange was seeded by JoelOnSoftware and CodingHorror readers -- it was a closed beta until they got enough content. In other words, Joel and Jeff already had chicken farms, and they donated a bunch of them to StackExchange)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is called a "chicken and egg problem" and searching for that term will find you previous articles and discussions on HN. Here is a list of links I once put together: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209)

</comment><comment><USER16> Another approach is to make it backward compatible with something else. For example, if you wanted to make a new site/network similar to StackExchange (but presumably with some revolutionary changes; not just a "me too" copy), you could start by adding an interface layer using the StackExchange API and adding some of your new smarts to give your users some of the benefit of your tool, on top of the StackExchange content. Most likely you wouldn't be able to add all the new goodness there though, so you would also do as other comments have suggested to build up your own content. Maybe even incentivize users to add stuff based on StackExchange answers they find (assuming some manual intervention is necessary to make the answers suitable for your site - <USER2> also assuming you comply with terms of use and such).

It's hard to give exact examples without knowing what you plan to do of course, but that's the general idea. Make it backwards compatible with whatever the closest thing is out there already, so that even in cases where you don't have any of your own content to return for a user, you at least have _something_. Then do everything you can to ramp up your own content asap.

<comment><USER17> Does that work in most cases? Most communities don't provide APIs. A few will provide RSS feeds - not clear if you can legally reuse them like that?

<comment><USER18> StackOverflow, Wikipedia, and other creative commons sites provide good starting data sets because all you need to do is attribute to them. No expensive licensing things, or anything like that.

Often you can write a pretty good bot using their data, and emulate user interactions. Enough users won't notice the site is run by bots that it's better than nothing if you don't have funding :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is important to keep in mind that the following is only an assumption. We'll be able to test it in few months when our website is live.

We have approached the situation from similar angle as many people here already described.

However, we involve a tool which allows people to make "cool albums" and can easy share it outside the site, into their existing communities.

We assume that since we will have almost none real users (beside the fake ones), inside action will be non-existent. Thus if the users use the tool to share outside, we might benefit from the outsiders checkout the album of their mates.

Of course, while this sounds clever, it hides risks - the early adopters should provide at least like-able content. And this, by experience, is not the general case. To be counted, also, is that our early adopter is someone who is already member of an existing community.

And whoever registers in the site should be carefully caressed to feel special in order to, at least, provide feedback.

tl;dr - fake accounts; a lot of personal attention from founders; people can benefit from the site without inside users.

</comment><comment><USER20> Platforms require two important factors - self-marketing and publishing tools. It's important that the published content benefits everyone within the community, which helps build up to true Network Effects.

Github (same-sided platform): publish your repo, users can download and contribute to your code. More code, more branches, repeat.

Youtube (two-sided platform): Published content provides entertainment. Users can respond to others video to provide additional relevant content. Each publisher promotes their own channel for recognition (and in turn, promotes your platform).

I'd recommend reading: [http://platformed.info/](http://platformed.info/) The author really dives into Platforms vs Marketplaces and how to increase your chances for success. It's the only blog I've ever subscribed to.

<comment><USER19> This seems pretty sound.

It should provide benefit of publishing inside regardless of the inside crowd (to a point of course).

Another example like yours - soundcloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A) Do it in Q/A form, where people can ask questions and answerers get some kind of reward/currency/rep token in exchange for taking the time to answer. That way the initial content - questions - is low cost and easy to add to the site, and the high-value content is compensated for with something other than money out of your pocket.

B) If that's not an option, and you can afford this, fake it. Go to a freelance writer jobsite and find freelance writers who specialize in bootstrapping content for social news/discussion sites. Hire a bunch of them to create the initial content..

</comment><comment><USER22> StackExchange is not a great example since it was started by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood who already had a significant platform where they were engaging with their target market without user generated content.

</comment><comment><USER23> In my case, we have a sort of the "Guide with the most views/shares get this prize X - every week!"

It's a minimal investment ($30 per prize) on our side but the yields are enormous!

<comment><USER24> I was kind of wondering if we should do this for [http://www.LiveFanChat.com](http://www.LiveFanChat.com) accounts, eg king of the season at the end of a year etc.

Can you give more details about what you did?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You should know the difference between users, like readers and producer. Obviously, you need producer come to your website and create the content, if you don't want to "fake it" all the time. Readers will be attracted if the content is good enough.

So the problem is how to convince the producer to write here even though there is nearly no reader here.

Maybe "share" can be a good option. Producer can take your website as a tool and you can show the content to more users.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a sort of similar experience. I am developing a jamming platform and to lift it off we're looking at paying/artificially creating accounts that imitate real users. Its not cheating or anything, its just creating great content and making it look like at first this is coming from genuine users. Another method is to ask early adopters here (and possibly on reddit) to have the first go at providing content. some will respond :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Import some content from other services (under their terms).

You can promote your service to the users that they've been featured in your site and give them something better within your service, so they are willing to contribute through your site (perhaps including crosspost on the original site).

If it makes sense, you should focus on creating an initial user base with high network density, i.e. people very much connected with each others.

</comment><comment><USER28> I started a classifieds site a while back. I advertised it on google adwords. 10 cents a click US only. it got users. I spent $1000. It cost me about $1 per post with email address no email validation. stopped advertising and traffic dropped like a rock. If your interested in doing a tech news faq site. I might be interested in working with you on it.

</comment><comment><USER29> A founder of Reddit came and talked at a hackathon in NYC once - he said everyone involved ran tons of fake accounts at first. :)

</comment><comment><USER30> I've done this. I started with introducing it to a few friends. We made 11 posts its first night. Then I spent $15 on an ad as a sort-of "pre-launch" to see if it would stand up to a little bit of user testing. I checked back in 10 hours and the site had over 100 posts. It was a good start.

The site eventually made it to the top 200k on Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER31> Incentivize contribution by giving them something they want (recognition, exposure, points, $$$). Dangle this incentive in front of them in all the other places they currently hang out. Try to make the incentive one that also requires competition among the rest of your community.

</comment><comment><USER32> From what I've heard, Quora was originally known as the place you go to get your questions answered by Charlie Cheever. I believe that Adam D'Angelo said this at his Startup School talk, but I may be mistaken on the source.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've seen a couple new sites out here in the bay try paying "beta testers" $5 or so each to contribute a little content. I remember doing that with BlockAvenue (they advertised via Craigslist SFBay).

</comment><comment><USER34> Be the expert/guru/magician/cult-leader/rock-star and grow an audience through the power of 'cult of personality'.

Let's take an automotive analogy.

Supposing you wanted to have a Q+A site for people wanting to get the most out of their Model T Ford cars, get writing and become the authority on the subject. Don't shy away from injecting a bit of personality in there and use your superior web-saviness to get better SEO, page-load times, responsive-ness and so on than what others already writing on the subject can do. A simple blog will suffice for the purposes of getting initial interest.

After a while a regular audience will materialize and they will start talking to each other in the comments. Some might even start offering spare parts to one another, uploading pictures and posting links to videos. Ideally they are drawn to your site to see what you have to say this week however they stay for the comments.

For this automotive analogy you would probably want real world community things, e.g. meet ups, galleries, a way for people to enable film-makers to hire their Model T's, a supplier's directory, a 'wiki' and so on.

Once enough 'user generated content' arrives you can move the 'forum' (or whatever) to the homepage and relegate your original articles to some archive buried somewhere in the site. By now some users might have branched out from 'Model T' to things like 'Fordson Tractors' and make the site the place for discussing everything 'Fordson'.

The need being met might be people wanting to show off their cars to others that truly appreciate such things combined with a need for people to get specialist parts. This arrived at set of needs is very different to what the site started as, e.g. the best resource on the topic. A deliberate pivot is made and the original specialism broadened.

There are many sites that have grown with a variation of the above. Cult of personality works for many writers, rock stars, diet experts, politics pundits, celebrity bloggers and probably even z-grade porn stars. Assuming you are none of those things and don't have a fan club, just by writing stuff people enjoy reading you could create a name for yourself to be someone in your field. You could become the expert in Model T Ford cars, respected for that for people that care about that particular car. Clearly in this example the market is only so big so interest might not be exactly huge, however the principle is the same. Just serve a poorly served niche with something better and grow from there.

</comment><comment><USER35> Two excellent thinkers in this area:

[http://andrewchen.co/recent/](http://andrewchen.co/recent/)

[http://platformed.info/](http://platformed.info/)

Read their articles.

</comment><comment><USER36> Youtube founders have talked about this. They definitely had a "fake it until you make it" approach. I seem to recall they paid attractive women to upload videos, among other sketchy schemes.

</comment><comment><USER37> Fake your traction until you get your own, do the things that don't scale :) [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> I think you want to take a page out of the "Internet marketing launch" playbook and focus on growing a mailing list of those who are a fit for your website.

</comment><comment><USER39> Gasbuddy.com is a good example too.

They pay in gas coupons for top contributors, through different means.</comment>


Learning Notes – Beginning Objective-C Programming - <AUTHOR> http://localhost:8888/learning/beginning-objective-c-programming.html

<comment><USER2> Localhost?

<comment><USER3> I guess the link was supposed to be [http://eugenis.org/learning/beginning- objective-c-programmin...](http://eugenis.org/learning/beginning-objective-c- programming.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Look like I can't change the link, re-post again here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701902)

Sorry for the confusion caused :(</comment></comment></comment>


When scale confounds our perceptions, stories can clarify them - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/why-you-didnt-see-it-coming <comment><USER2> You know what's wonderful about allegories? You can make them say anything you want. Stories can as easily mislead as clarify; their effectiveness rests on _verisimilitude_ —they have to _seem_ plausible, not _be_. And that, it turns out, can be divorced perfectly happily from the actual truth.

One of the first examples in the article makes this point, actually, but maybe not on purpose.

> _The late physicist Albert Bartlett was concerned that people didn't fully > comprehend the consequences of exponential population growth and the > inevitability (and speed) of resource depletion. "The greatest shortcoming > of the human race," he said, "is our inability to understand the exponential > function"—that is, change that builds on previous changes._

You know who else noticed that and wove a compelling story about it? Malthus[1].

The point is that stories and analogies on their are not sufficient—but people treat them as if they are. After all, what convinces is, well, how _convincing_ the story is, and that's a quality unto itself. It's orthogonal or, at least, loosely correlated with what we _should_ care about.

But they're oh-so-satisfying! A neat explanation, just counter-intuitive enough to seem like a revelation but reasonable enough to accept, perhaps a bit glib, makes you feel like you really understood something. There's a whole genre of books like this now—think _Freakanomics_ and Malcolm Gladwell. Even if the arguments in a book like that are reasonable (not always the case!), the sheer quality of storytelling dominates and makes them more convincing than they have any right to be. Which in turn makes people more confident in their own understanding than _they_ should be.

Then this is compounded by the second-order effect people look for: social proof. Perhaps better known as "popularity". Not a great system either!

It's funny that the author mentions social media as a way to spread stories because that's where I see _a lot_ of extremely pat stories get shared around—regardless of their merits. Even ignoring my own judgement, enough of them are self-contradictory that they're obviously unreliable. And yet they all get viral and spread around quickly and effectively.

This is not to say that stories are useless, by any means. They're great for building up intuition which is crucial for understanding. But you can't rely solely on stories.

In essence, I guess, I agree with the article that stories are _powerful_. They really are. But I disagree, vehemently, about what that power entails. In the end, stories are about _convincing_ , not _understanding_. And using social media to spread stories? Again: powerful. And again more about manipulation than edification. Fundamentally, your stories are no different from propaganda hammering away at a Big Lie. Your lie just happens to be true. (Or so you believe, presumably.)

I'm a bit conflicted with the whole mode of thought presented in this article which also seems to pervade modern politics. (Or perhaps all politics?) It's the idea that the obstacle to overcome is not finding the right conclusions and properly motivating them, but rather—given conclusions that are assumed right—the problem is to convince everybody else. And I agree with a lot of the specific details this mode of thought espouses, but solely as effective tactics for convincing people. It feels incredibly manipulative even if I agree with the ideas people are pushing. (As it happens, I see this mostly with progressive issues. People are very open about relying on social manipulation to push their views since their views are so obviously correct. But that's just the circles I move in; I'm sure it's just as true for people trying to push religion.)

The problem, of course, is that these tactics work regardless of the underlying issue. But people who use them don't see it this way: they see success as justification of their own narratives. Both parts of that, I think, are unhealthy. Pushing our views at any cost means that they are left unchecked, and we can't be right about everything! And then interpreting _success_ —a mix of convincingness and popularity—as a strong signal exacerbates these problems.

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

<comment><USER3> I think you've made a good point here. The article talks about emergent phenomenon, and how difficult it is to describe high level dynamics when one is simply looking at the components.

A "story" is the way to convey the dynamics of a complex system while conveniently discarding the constituents of that system. If we don't keep the components, how can we prove the story is true? One problem is no one really cares or thinks they know enough to challenge the story. They accept it at face value.

I feel this is a deeper limitation of human thinking. It's very difficult to see something at different levels simultaneously. We can understand behaviour on a high level (e.g. income inequality), and we can understand behaviour on a lower level (e.g. not having enough money to eat), but we can't intuitively understand how low level behaviours effect and affect high level behaviours.

It's not like we're not trying to understand, it's more that we don't even have a basis for understanding. We know how elections work, but it's so easy to intuitively think "my one vote doesn't really count". We're observing high level dynamics while simultaneously contributing to them.

It's weird. Like thinking about one's own consciousness.</comment></comment>


Little scripting language written in Rust (no_std WASM example) - <AUTHOR> https://www.polaris64.net/resources/programming/p64lang_wasm/ <comment><AUTHOR> I created a little programming language parser and interpreter written entirely in Rust with an optional "no_std" Crate feature allowing the parser/interpreter to work in environments where the standard library is not available (e.g. embedded devices).

The excellent Nom library was used to build the parser. The interpreter itself has no external dependencies.

By way of an example, linked is a live demo of the parser and interpreter compiled to a WASM module, allowing scripts to be parsed and executed entirely within the browser.

The project is mainly a component of another project that I'm working on, but I thought that some of you might be interested in the progress so far. Everything's open source, so please take a look at the code too (GitHub link on page). I'm planning on writing a tutorial series about this too, so I'll post a link to that when it's available.

Thanks!</comment>


Mozilla, WebKit To Support Debugging CoffeeScript and other JS Languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/08/debug-languages-on-javascript-vm <comment><USER2> This is great news. The only thing that kept me from using a "higher level Javascript language" was this.

I predict a massive surge in CoffeeScript usage over the next couple years.

<comment><USER3> I just wish that browsers would allow some bytecode format with linemap/registermap/... data for debugging, and entirely forget about directly supporting languages directly.

<comment><USER4> I have to agree, a sandboxed version of llvm bytecode would open up all sorts of opportunities.

<comment><USER5> Have a look at pnacl - LLVM executables in NACL sandbox:

      http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf

      http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> fyi, I may be late to the party, but if you want to debug minified js in firefox and prefer not to wait until its integrated, I have been using this add-on[0] with success.

[0]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/javascript- de...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/javascript-deminifier/)

<comment><USER7> This feature is also available built-in in Safari and Chrome (in the dev tools, Script pane, look at the bottom buttons bar, its rightmost button is a pair of braces `{ }`. Click on that, it will reformat your source to allow for debugging, the reformatting lasts until you reload the page so it's very handy to try and debug SPA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would also be nice to get this support in Node for those of us using JS server side.

</comment><comment><USER9> Only a matter of time before coffeescript is natively supported by the progressive browsers, I think.

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure about that because CoffeeScript is a very fast moving language (one of its benefits) and it doesn't make sense to slow down the iteration cycle by integrating it with browsers directly. Then you would have to worry about which CoffeeScript features you could take advantage of, instead of just compiling to the lowest common denominator of JS, so to speak.

<comment><USER11> (This is exactly the reason Brendan Eich has said he prefers the "compile to JS" approach to incorporating other languages of a VM into browsers.)

<comment><USER11> Should read _or_ a VM -- I still don't entirely understand how HN determines when you can still edit a post, pretty sure I've edited posts this old before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I missed the "JS" the first read-thru and was hoping the title alluded to maybe Python somehow being used in the browser.

Oh well. I guess that's just hoping a bit too much.

<comment><USER13> This would apply to Pyjamas (Python that compiles to JS) too.

That said, Coffeescript is very similar to Python.

<comment><USER14> I actually think Coffeescript has one up on Python in some places. Splat assignment, for example, and a slightly simpler idiom for iterating through objects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome! It will be nice to see what kind of debug tools we can come up with.</comment>


MIT inFORM ShapeShifting Project – 2.5D Interactive Morphing Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.hardwarepal.com/inform-shapeshifting-project-2-5d-interactive-morphing-table/

<comment><USER2> I really like the concept of seeing 2 variable math functions in 2.5D. I wonder if these things could have better resolution(more linkages) they can really help interactive and MOOC based education platforms in a not to distant future.

I'd like to see a professor make a class all around the world live or pre- recorded in many classrooms where kids could interact with the things they learn so they might actually be interested in Math, Science, Physics, Biology etc. Not even for the sake of for a career but maybe just for the sake being curious and interested in something.</comment>


Streaming application log events to the Cloud from the Docker fire-hose - <AUTHOR> http://www.emergingstack.com/2015/05/11/Cloud-Logging-and-the-Docker-Firehose.html

<comment><AUTHOR> SUMMARY: A kubernetes deployed 'logging container', running on every host, streams every docker-hosted application event to AWS Cloudwatch. Cheap, quick, real-time, re-usable and accessible anywhere.</comment>


Ask HN:  Coming soon pages worth it? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all-
So I'm working on an app now and I am considering setting up a coming soon page. I already have a domain name, but I assume I would need to either buy some actual hosting, or farm it off to some service like weebly or whatever. Two questions:
1) Is it worth the effort/expense?  Evidence? 2) Rec's for cheap ways to do it.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'd say it's worth it. It won't take long. Try and do what you can to squeeze out some SEO juice, throw in Google analytics, and an email field; see if you get any hits or email addresses.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are two sides to this:

Yes, do it if there are already people operating in this space, the idea is already out in the open so you won't lose any 'window' by announcing your intentions.

If not put a fake for sale sign on the domain so that you get an idea how many people are thinking about entering the space, that's valuable information. (Assuming the domain name is linked to the product you intend to market).

<comment><USER4> If you've told anyone about your intentions or if people know you have the domain they're going to look quite negatively on a "for sale" sign though.

I'd add a "submit your email address for news" box and include a well crafted para about what you're doing in order to start ranking for your chosen searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's definitely worth it. You need to have something. I'd throw up a Wordpress install with a landing page theme that you modify. I saw a few on themeforest for $7. You should certainly start blogging around your industry as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Add a mail chimp form with: We will let you know when we launch.

There is definitely some value with getting a page up. I think there is even a webapp that will do it for you. I forgot the name though.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google Apps + Google AppEngine. Total cost: $0 (since you already have a domain).</comment>